Double Entendre Friday - 17 March 2006

Today marks the anniversary of the death of St. Patrick -- the dude who ridded Ireland of its non-existent snakes (some folks claim it was a metaphor for pagans). In honor of this great feat, people around the world drink green beer and pretend to be Irish. What does that have to do with double entendres? Absolutely nothing, but it's my excuse for the following lame joke:

Two transcription factors are hanging out. One says to the other, "Did you end up scoring with that cis regulatory region you were macking on last night?" The other replies, "Yeah, I gave her the old zinc finger."

More like this

I found a recent paper in Nature fascinating, but why is hard to describe — you need to understand a fair amount of general molecular biology and development to see what's interesting about it. So those of you who already do may be a little bored with this explanation, because I've got to build it…
If posting frequency is any indication, regular readers might be able to tell that the last two or three weeks have not been the highlight of my life. And, thankfully for you, I've kept much of it off-blog because of the unique personal identifying characteristics than prevent me from being too…
At least one correct answer to the question "What's the difference between God and Santa Claus?" is "There is no God." Some of you may object. What's the evidence for Santa Claus, Mr. Big Shot Atheist!? Just ask my daughter. OK, I admit she is now faithless. The scales have fallen from her eyes.…
We miss something important when we just look at the genome as a string of nucleotides with scattered bits that will get translated into proteins — we miss the fact that the genome is a dynamically modified and expressed sequence, with patterns of activity in the living cell that are not readily…

Huh. Green beer at the Gaff. Don't think I'll head anywhere in downtown State College tonight while I value my life.

That joke is terrible! Don't think I don't get it, 'cause my B.Sc. in biochemistry says otherwise, but, damn that's bad...

It's not particularly a metaphor because they weren't comparing the druids to snakes for some sort of trait. Rather, druid leaders perportedly had snake tattoos so the term came from that. Of course, that simply leaves one to wonder why the local druids would have snake tattoos when there weren't any snakes around. I don't know enough about the population movements there to propose a connection, but the tattoo thing is interesting so I wanted to share.