{"id":26,"date":"2010-12-17T10:40:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T10:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/?p=26"},"modified":"2010-12-17T10:40:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-17T10:40:06","slug":"in-which-i-am-outwitted-by-swag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2010\/12\/17\/in-which-i-am-outwitted-by-swag\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I am outwitted by swag"},"content":{"rendered":"

A good scientific meeting will often lead to more questions than it answers. And sure enough, I’ve recently returned from the American Society for Cell Biology with a mystery object that has evaded all powers of comprehension. In the spirit of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research, I thought I’d crowd-source its identification.<\/p>\n

One afternoon wandering around the Expo hall, I was selected at random to receive a plastic bag bulging with swag from various exhibitors. Upending it later in my hotel room, I found myself the proud owner of a wide variety of items including four extra-extra-large T-shirts; a pack of post-it notes; a keyring torch; a 4 GB flash drive; an oddly seductive glass paperweight dedicated to the Silver Anniversary of the first publication of Leninger’s Biochemistry; lens paper; a mini-slide holder; and no fewer than 26 bizarrely over-engineered ballpoint pens, some with the girths of bananas.<\/p>\n

And this little fellow: <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In short, what the hell is it? The device opens and snaps shut like a clam shell, and those white ovoid pads are made of a very firm foam substance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever it is must be somewhat useful: the mystery item is inscribed with both a US and Chinese patent number, although searches on the internet for their applications drew a blank. In my jet-lagged state, I tried to image what it might be for, but the only thing I could come up with was a device for pressing Drosophila or other small model organisms for your scrapbook, as children press flowers.<\/p>\n

Any guesses, serious or otherwise, are welcome! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A good scientific meeting will often lead to more questions than it answers. And sure enough, I’ve recently returned from the American Society for Cell Biology with a mystery object that has evaded all powers of comprehension. In the spirit … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,9],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-silliness","tag-conferences","tag-swag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}