notageek

One of the common Just-so stories about antibiotic resistance is that bacteria will generate it in the presence of an antibiotic, and then lose it when placed in an antibiotic-free environment. It’s a nice story, and really convenient when one considers all the antibiotics shoveled into food animals or used as prophylactics–but it’s not a story consistent with human experience. If M. tuberculosis et al reverted to antibiotic-sensitivity away from penicillin, we wouldn’t need the whole host of semi-synthetic beta-lactams we’ve got.

I think the problem comes from some implicit assumptions about how the resistance come about, and maybe misconceptions about how populations change under selection. A gene conferring antibiotic resistance isn’t necessarily a de novo formation; it may well be a modification of an existing gene, and it may or may not compromise the function of that gene. Either way, there’s probably some cost associated with the expression of antibiotic resistance, but the survival that gene confers in an antibiotic-saturated environment renders that cost irrelevant.

Organisms adapt to their genetic as well as their physical environs, and in a context in which antibiotic resistance is necessary, that culture of M. leprae (or whatever) will become both highly optimised and resistant. Optimisations in the genetic context of resistance are a different set of optimisations than those outside, making each a separate adaptive peak. Removing the antibiotic will then leave the resistant strain at a relative, but not absolute, fitness peak.

And that is why you’d bloody well better finish your pills–because asexual organisms don’t drift much.

Tuna Suspension:

• 740 g tuna

• 4.8 g sodium benzoate
• 4.8 g xanthan gum
• 960 mL QS purified water

1. Blend tuna in blender with small amount of purified water.

2. Dissolve sodium benzoate in small amount of water and and blend.
3. Sift in xanthan gum.
4. QS with purified water.
5. Package in amber bottle. Store in fridge.

Or perhaps it’s merely that what I once thought was defeat is not.

Sometimes when I am full of hope I start crying, and the tears welling up are exactly the same as that molten glow that sunsets spill. Sometimes that viscous happiness stays with me, sustains me–that cloying blackbody radiation illuminates the butt-ends of my days and ways. Sometimes that is enough–the secure illusion that the microcosm reflects the macrocosm, that centeris paribus there will be a tomorrow, that centeribus paribus is a legitimiate assumption at all. That there are legitimate assumptions in this case. That the world can be a better place.

I don’t know that there will be a tomorrow, a god, a universe, a lack of catastrophic failures requiring chicken-base sacrifices. I don’t know. I can’t know. All I can do is proceed as if I can and do, and be nominally prepared in case i don’t–which will be often. And which will often fail.

But a parcel of sundries–like the sun going down, like the love of my partner, like the smell of rain–stir that within me which once wanted to believe. Giving it full rein would destoy me, but so would giving it full denial. This too is me, and thrills at the sight and sound of what I might have once labelled divine.

So I don’t know, and I can’t. But I can still love it, though it be utterly indifferent to me.

open and bare
nerves surprised at the air

chewed by the toothed end of desire; a wound that scabs over.
hidden.
reopened every time I see you close your eyes.

Hi, my name is simmy, and I write a lot of bad poetry. Occasionally it’s bad pseudo-rhyme or insipid blank verse, but mostly it’s the bad sort that’s line-broken prose masquerading as free verse.

And then I post it to my **og, in the grand tradition of emotional exhibitionism. And by “grand”, I mean “stupid”. So, uh, why? That’s what I’ve been considering.

Because, first off, I’m not a particularly good writer in the first place. My habits tend toward the mechanically adequate, but decent spelling and punctuation do not a readable piece make, as my organic chem text so beautifully shows. I’ve been churning out the pages lately, but that’s because I have two three-page lab writeups due every week. I think I’ve assimilated the snore-inducing scientific style pretty well, and I pity my TA.

I’ve produced a very few good pieces of free verse, and when I think I’ve managed to do that, I have an habit of plastering it everywhere. By “everywhere” I do mean my own site and maybe my K5 diary, but the point is that I get unbearably smug and wish people to see it and ooh, and maybe swoon, as applicable. So I post most of my verbal dysentery, since any nice bits swept along by the fetid tide will then get posted by default.

Additionally, it is one of my personal duties to help fill the internet up with crap as quickly as possible. There is clearly not enough crap in existence already, and the internet needs MY crap (emotional spew, fallacious analyses, ill-considered and well-ignored advice) to maintain equilibrium.

So this is my token insincere apology for the continuing trickle of mediocrity. Long may it fester!

Now I am going to go review IR spectra, because I have a final in 30 minutes.