Mad Science Sunday: Back to Cultivation

When last we visited the lab, while waiting for preparation of the test subject to complete, we temporarily set aside our attempt to cultivate a viable replacement limb in an empty soda bottle in favor of a simple progress report on our cloning project.

This week, the fraternal twin cloned Santas seem to be getting on quite well --

-- really extremely well, I think --

--so let's leave them for now and go back to the limb project.

Uncharacteristically continuing our experiment by daylight, which as you know is not always considered the best environment for mad science but the deleterious effects of which in this instance were mitigated by the muted silvery light of a massive snowstorm, I went to check on our test subject.

The subject had shrunk a little more, I think (again failing to take measurements, not really seeing the point in starting that at this stage).  While not quite as small as it had begun, its texture was quite dry and foamy, very lightweight.  I decided the time had come.

In preparation for this moment, earlier in the week -- but not on a Sunday night when the only store open would be CVS, whose selection of beverages contained in clear plastic bottles we have already found to be rather limited -- I purchased a clear plastic soda bottle containing something I felt would be less of an insult to my personal biology than anything containing high fructose corn syrup or phenylalanine.

That's as it may be, but what I did not expect was the profound insult my tongue would suffer.  This stuff is really quite vile tasting.  And yet somehow it has been produced, packaged, shipped and, ostensibly, sold to more than one person.  I am curious to know whether anyone has ever tasted it without the probably ameliorating influence of vodka.  Anyone beside myself, that is.

Naturally, needing a clear head for mad science, I tasted it without vodka, and this was the result.

(By the way, do you see that pretty little handcrafted blue ceramic sponge holder?  You can get your own for a very reasonable price at Mud Stuffing Pottery on Etsy.  Though it is definitely inhibiting the number of ecosystems our kitchen can support at one time, we've only owned ours a few months and it's already saved us money on scrubby sponges and reduced the number of unpleasant smells in our kitchen.  But I digress.)

Even the residual fragrance of the "flavored" seltzer was disgusting, so I washed the bottle quite thoroughly with extremely hot water, hot enough to slightly deform the bottle shape, and grapefruit-scented detergent.  Then I filled it with clear, cold, filtered water.

It was time to introduce the test subject to its new environment.

Voilà!  The next phase of the experiment commences!  Are you not excited?  I know I am.

This week was actually quite inspiring in a number of ways.  While waiting for the car to have a new headlamp installed at the mechanic, who was kind enough to squeeze me in without an appointment, I took a stroll around West Concord, through the tiny Christmas tree lot set up temporarily down by Nashoba Creek, and breathed in its incredible forest scent while hearing from the proprietress that all she could smell was the incredible bakery all day long.  I went to the post office and mailed off our Netflixes and a couple of other items of interest.  I wandered over to Debra's and stuffed my tote bag and, sadly, two other paper bags (don't worry; I recycle religiously -- no, really, religiously; this is even more important to me than chocolate suffragists) with organic produce and a few other needful things.  And then, needing a new cheapo frying pan for our morning scrambles, I visited the home of all our test subjects, the West Concord 5 & 10, where I bought three frying pans, plus a cookie cutter, two spatulas (because you can NEVER have too many spatulas, and these were quite inexpensive) and a small wire wisk (see note on spatulas).  And then a most wonderful thing happened:  I was permitted to photograph for you The Hand, the very hand which has inspired the current stage of our experimentation.

Allow me to present it to you now.  (Click to enlarge.)

I am informed by the owner that this is an extremely popular but also well traveled hand, having accompanied the owner to a variety of rock concerts including some by the Grateful Dead and possibly the Allman Brothers.  (A third band was mentioned but, fittingly, I can't remember what it was.  Equally fittingly, it may have been The Who.)  I am further informed by the owner that a favorite pastime of The Hand's transporters to these venues has been to ask concert security whether it "could use a hand...because there's one strapped to the roof of the car."

Another inspirational event occurred on either Tuesday or Thursday afternoon, whenever the program Wired Science plays on the local PBS HD station.  It was during the airing of this program that I discovered that there is actually a name for this particular field of mad science that we are messing with in my kitchen and dining room:  "regenerative medicine."  Even better, many people don't think it's mad at all.

Well, perhaps they would think it was mad if they saw how we are doing it.  But you know what's really mad?  "Printing" new organs grown from a person's own tissue using a simple inkjet printer.  And yet...and yet...it's happening.  Now.

Oh, yes, I simplify.  But I am not making this up, and this is only one of the things happening in this amazing, dynamic field.  Go visit the Wired Science website, or just watch this excerpt, courtesy of Wired Science and KCET (Los Angeles):

Mad!  Wild and mad!  And too, too wonderful for words.

(Even that first guy, who makes me pity the poor porcine for about the eight bazillionth time -- and also think of pigoons.)

Comments

[Bipolarlawyercook]

Those are some bold santas. Whatever will Mrs. Claus think?

My BH and I are among those who consume Polar flavored seltzers by the gallon-- including the cranberry lime, though we like the pomegranate better. Neither one of us drinks sugary sodas, and he won't drink Diet Coke.

And that hand? Gross. Ickily, majestically gross.

[Jana]

The science vid is absolutely amazing. Thanks so much for sharing! :)

[alphabitch]

I am on the edge of my chair waiting to see what happens.

[Amorette]

Fascinating. If you come across any home-grow vertebrae kits, do let me know...I'm in the market.

On an unrelated note (and in case you didn't see the blog entry where I said it), your chocolate suffragist is in the works. Give me a week or two.

[Sara]

Sorry, folks, I got a little busy offline.

BLC -- I am not sure exactly what those Santas are up to. I am not schooled in the nuances of water-inflatable Santa clone body language, I'm afraid. They do seem to be in a different position every time I look at them. (Maybe I should stop moving the bottle.)

Also, I am no fan of the sugary soda, either, seriously, though my favorites are all just juice and bubbly water (the Switch, for example, and Izze). I'd really rather have no sugar in my beverages, though, so I used to drink a lot of Crystal Geyser's flavored sparkling waters on the other coast, and I expected this to be much the same. This stuff, though, had the most ghastly medicinal flavor, not refreshing at all. I was truly shocked.

Do you think I got a bad batch?

Jana -- I'm so glad you saw that. Give 'em ten or twenty years, maybe another war or two to push the technology along, and maybe you and I will be growing new, strong, cancer-free legs for real. Of course, as not-rich and not-military people, it might never be available to us if the current healthcare system continues. Still, these are some fascinating technologies in a truly stunning area of medicine I didn't even know existed until last week, and just go to support one of my core beliefs, that none of us knows what's going to happen next so we might as well stick around and see.

Alphabitch -- don't fall off! I think the next phase of our project is going to progress rather slowly.

Amorette -- I haven't seen a water-expandable spinal anything yet, but I know where you can get a full range of spinal components in hard plastic! Thanks to Mrs. Kennedy at Fussy.org (and also Jeanne at The Assertive Cancer Patient who published the link when I forwarded it to everyone I knew after seeing it at Fussy), we can all visit AnatomyWarehouse.com and find every part we could ever want -- pre-dissected and everything! I mean, if pre-dissected is what you want.

There's a very nice complete set of vertebrae here:

Budget Vertebral Column With Stand

I am looking forward to seeing your chocolate suffragist. Which one did you pick?

[Amorette]

A generic one, for now. I'm fairly confident. Do you have a particular one in mind?

[Sara]

Originally, I was thinking of a set, like a set of chocolate reindeer or a set of chocolate Maccabees. But I do like the idea of generic. I don't remember the chocolate Maccabees of my youth being individually named -- e.g., Judah, Mattathias, Simon, etc. At least, their individual names were not printed on their colored foil wrappers. They were just chocolate Maccabees. They were chocolate ideal Jews.

Yours can be a single chocolate ideal heroic female. Why the heck not?

[Michelle]

"I am further informed by the owner that a favorite pastime of The Hand's transporters to these venues has been to ask concert security whether it 'could use a hand...because there's one strapped to the roof of the car.'

Heh.

Hope the Santas are "ready" for the 25th! If so, double the toys for you!

[Amorette]

LOL...well, I'll see what I can do.

I special-ordered a couple of molds. It'll be about 30% molds, 68% improvisation and 2% trying not to melt it in my hands as I'm working with it.

You would not BELIEVE the kinds of chocolate molds that can be had. They seriously have bonbon molds shaped like female genitalia!

[Sara]

Sognatrice -- Yeah, I'm not even sure what "ready" would be. The Hand at the West Concord 5 & 10 has been suspended in that bottle for a very, very long time. I don't know how long it took to get to its current state. I don't know if the Santas even can get to that state (or if I want them to), not to mention how many Christmases would have to pass before it happened.

Amorette -- I do believe it. I have seen a great deal of this sort of thing. However, you do know that this level of specificity was not what I had envisioned for the chocolate suffragist(s), right? Again, I don't want to hinder your muse, but I was thinking they would be depicted clothed. Still, if you have a different vision, or if you want to emulate Rodin sculpting Balzac and start with the naked only to end with the fully, deeply cloaked -- or petticoated -- I can only respect your choice. ;)

[sugared harpy]

That leg and hand are skeeving me out. ICK! I can't take it! I'm trying! But I CAN'T!

[Sara]

Quick! Focus on the Santa clones! ;)

[Amorette]

bwahahaha...no, that level of specificity. I was just amazed to see a whole mold of 'em, in neat little rows. Imagining the context.

[elizabeth]

I'm confused because I thought I posted a long post about how you seemed to have gone deep into Victorian territory of the artist/scientist who conducts experiments where one isn't exactly sure anymore who is in change - ala Dr. Nikola - the experiments MUST continue! (do you find yourself saying this, I think it is Step 9 on the 12 steps to being a Mad Scientist). Do you now have a room with all those creepy jars with unrecognizable things in them that you must have, must be able to fondle and pet and pick up the jars (like the HAND!)

Well, at least you are busy....doing....um.....things!

[Sara]

hee hee -- Elizabeth, you aren't going crazy; you did write a little of this in your last e-mail to me.

But yes, I do have a certain affinity for exactly that kind of person, though you won't catch me wearing a corset or petticoats. I'd be more likely to execute that vision à la George Sand, in trousers.

I think I feel such affinity for those people because of my mother. She had Victorian sensibilities about a lot of things, but also she was a great collector. She had shelves and cabinets filled with fossils, shells, and mineral specimens and also miniatures and dolls and doll parts. There was one cubby hole filled just with china doll heads, another with those molded and painted china dolls which have no legs because they are supposed to go on top of pincushions shaped like full, long skirts. Somewhere, either on her desk or in her sewing area, was a carved wooden hand which she had embellished with paint and glue-on jewels.

She also had dollhouses on tables and little groupings at the edges of our floors of those old German and French dolls that were made of bisque and leather and just about the size of a small child. They had wigs made of mohair and also human hair, long eyelashes made of the same stuff fringing enormous glass eyes that closed if the dolls were tilted, and little rose-lipped mouths, smiling but open a little to show tiny white teeth.

It was not uncommon for us to have a birthday party where some child would leave screaming because of those dolls.

Meanwhile, if you told my mother our house was "just like a museum" or that she ought to open an antique shop, she would get quite insulted.

[patry]

One of the best parts of having a blog is sharing your science experiments. Ted just brought my laptop to the hospital yesterday, so I'm catching up with experiments and adventures of all kinds.

Happy holidays to you, Sara!

[Sara]

Patry!!!!!

I'm so happy to hear from you, but so bummed to hear you're back in the hospital, especially this close to Christmas. I'll write to you separately over the weekend, but meanwhile please know that I've been thinking of you and hoping real hard that things will turn out well.

Massive, suffocating hugs to both you and Ted.

[Ron Sullivan]

Collecting stuff like that is very Victorian. I find myself drifting more and more toward doing the whole flat up in Wunderkabinett style as I get older, myself. I bet I just misspelled that. My only problem is keeping the damned stuff dusted.

My recent visit to the Body Worlds show is very much informing my appreciation of The Hand and The Leg. The Santas, I dunno. That's just weird.

[Sara]

Ron, one thing I can assure you of: I will never correct your German spelling. Never. :)

Also -- and I hope this doesn't disappoint anyone -- it is extremely unlikely that I will dissect either the test subject severed leg or either of the Santa clones, nope, not even for science.

Heck, not even for art.

[carrie]

the seltzer is WAY better with a tiny bit of cranberry juice and a lemon wedge! or even just the lemon!