Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Waiting for the cavalry to arrive, alternating between sleep, sulking, and distracting myself by compiling more links to take my mind off my troubles. So here's an extra dose this week.

• Genetically-modified vaginal bacteria may be able to serve as a "living condom", secreting proteins that protect women against HIV. "Lee and his colleagues chose the vaginal native Lactobacillus jensenii and genetically-engineered it to secrete soluble CD4, a protein HIV grabs hold of to break into cells. In test tube experiments, the enhanced L. jensenii was able to completely block laboratory strains of HIV from infecting human cells, and blocked infection by a strain recently isolated from patients by more than half." [...] "Human trials of other strains of natural lactobacillus suggest these microbes can successfully colonise the vagina for days or even weeks."
• A message to clueless website authors presents a lot of good reasons not to write bad web pages. Not intended as a tutorial, it's an attempt to convince web designers to go read proper tutorials. Probably worth sending to the webmaster of the next site you encounter that doesn't work with JavaScript turned off, or blocks your browser because it isn't Netscape or MSIE.
• Pupils shocked as teacher vanishes through floor again (Need I say more? The "again" is the boggling part.)
• Beware of this sign!
• There's a discussion of the study that showed "holes in the brain" resulting from a single dose of Ecstacy, which turned out to have used the wrong drug, over in errorist's journal.
• CNN reports that a man shipped himself from NY to TX in a crate, by plane and basically managed to scare the %&$^ out of the TSA in the process. "The TSA is working with the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office to investigate and determine if there are any federal charges for this incident." (Thanks to littlebuhnee for the pointer)
• BDSM Tech Support (what it might be like working helpdesk). Uh, probably not for everyone, but I know a significant subset of my friends will find it funny.
• Okay, in the really not for everyone category (I can think of one or two people who'd be quite bothered by this) and probably "not work safe" for many workplaces, here's an amazingly creative bit of bodyart that incorporates both tatoo and piercings into a unified design.
• errorist recently posted Kent M. Keith's "Paradoxical Commandments", which I probably ought to print out in large type and stick on a wall. "People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. [...]" (There's also a link to a page telling where that list comes from.)
• And finally, theferrett wrote something I was going to write, only a few orders of magnitude better than I was going to, about the new plan to red-flag air travellers based on profiles. Really, go read it now.