Most Nefarious Competition

This will not do.

NOT AT ALL!

Some of you may have noticed a recent poll over at the cave of mein übel-(ekel)-archenemy Mein Hermitage. The poll asked: "Who's more nefarious? Toaster, Hermitage, Ninjas, or Pirates?"

This results are in, and Hermie and I have tied.

TIED!!!

How is this even possible when I am clearly far more nefarious than her!?

So to settle this, we had a cease-fire dinner of cookies and Bento and discussed methods by which we might resolve this. Although we each generated several good ideas, from a race to discover a new metazoan species and then find a way to cook it to a giant robot battle tournament to an air guitar competition, we also found that each of these proposals lacked one critical element to ensure a fair outcome: that of transparency.

Without transparency we could each easily engage in heinous subterfuge and use our respective resources to set traps. As such, we eventually found, the fairest way to settle this matter is a Battle of Scientific Acumen and Wit!!!!!!!!!!!!

Therefore Hermie and I will be facing off in the commons of the Internet and battling through the cyber journal club format, one round only, winner takes title of Most Nefarious*.

But we need your help. Dear reader, we are surrendering the material and terms of this contest to you. Here's how it'll work:

1) Submit interesting and substantial papers to Hermitage and I. For the sake of fairness it should be something outside of our respective purviews (Hermie = Peruvian Flying Fish, Toaster = Immunology).
2) Hermitage and I will publicly deliberate upon the papers and choose one to compete upon. This part may take a while.
3) We will each post a blog entry about the paper.
4) You will judge it, and by extension, us. We understand that some of you may have mixed loyalties, so to make it fair, each reader gets 100 points that they can divide between Hermie and I as they see fit. Points can simply be assigned in comments, which will remain open for 96h following posting.
5) Winner will be chosen by who has more points.

So reach into that stack of papers you keep meaning to eventually read and send them on in. This matter MUST be settled!

*Trophy to be displayed in blog side-bar.

Umbrage

I was speaking today with a "colleague" of mine about self-experimentation, and she at one point in the conversation she remarked that she thought that "Why the hell are we becoming scientists? I mean, you and I, we are the worst people to be scientists!".

I took umbrage. Lots of umbrage. True, that I sometimes wonder what the nutritional value of my reagents are, or what it feels like for a gastrointestinal epithelial cell to be colonized aggressively by an invading and effacing pathogen. And all she did is blather on about vanillin stains smelling good.