Movie Filming

Well, yesterday they were filming Hollow Man 2 in our department (I heard it was a straight to video release - no surprise). It's a movie about an invisible assassin (Christian Slater) after a biologist (Laura Regan). So Christian Slater was hanging out in the entrance to our lab before chasing Laura down the hallway. Best line "Wow, so there really are such things as buffers" while looking in out glovebox. Both actors were really nice and talkative and asked questions about the lab between sprints. The director sent a makeup artist to work on Laura Regan in our lab with instructions "Don't touch anything.... except her face". When I had to walk through set to get to the incubators and freezers this man would walk in front of me shouting (with a grin) "Microbiologist coming through. Important experiments, watch your back. Innoculations coming through". Hilarious! I asked Christian Slater if he wanted to join the lab since he kept coming back and he said he didn't want to do that much school. In the end he signed my lab book. Experiment 21.12, book 6.

Good book

Well, it's been a very long time since I've posted. I just finished a great book called "A short history of progress" by Ronald Wright. A book about collapse of human civilizations when they've degraded their environmental base. My favorite quote is: "Wealth can buy no refuge from pollution; pesticides sprayed in China condense in Antarctic glaciers and Rocky Mountain tarns. And wealth is no shield from chaos, as the surprise on each haughty face that rolled from the guillotine made clear". Do I think a big change is coming, certainly, on the span of decades not centuries. Do I think humanity can learn from it's past mistakes and make the necessary changes. Nope. Just read Margret Wente's column in the globe and mail. Or talk to most of my relatives who can't comprehend the 'ghettoness' of taking the bus. Or my current favorite, the man I met who bragged about never taking the bus and cracking open a beer on the ride home in Vancouver.