(no subject)

[moonwise]

Got this message from the departmental secretary.


Public Safety and our Office of Health and Safety are advising that people from the F.B.I. may be on campus and may want to visit buildings with laboratories, etc. They will be accompanied by people from Public Safety or OHS and may want to ask questions about access to your labs, materials therein, etc.

@_@

they're after me!

but seriously... it's probably not a surprise, esp considering that many of the letters containing anthrax were sent out of Trenton, and that's a stone's throw from here...

Comments

[hidetomatsumoto.livejournal.com]

Oh oh! You better hide your anthrax cultures quick!

[fireceremony.livejournal.com]

LOL ! Quick, hide the petri dishes in the desk drawer before they see them. And put on the dark glasses. ;)

I can understand the nervousness considering the many alerts and false alarms gone off the last days. Let's hope P'ton does not get hit by a real instance and avoids the disrupting scares too....

[arafel.livejournal.com]

This is sick but one of the running jokes in the lab last week was this - first, that I'd given everyone the cold I had two weeks ago; and second, that I was going to give everyone anthrax. Other people have not seen the humor in this (wonder why *smirk*) but I guess that's what happens when the lab has been eating too much sugar.

[fireceremony.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* spreading the love around ?

that was a bit of a funny joke, sugar highs are funny. I gather it was you who supplied the sugar items too ?

[taransay.livejournal.com]

We have a couple of scares in the last few days. I think the capital had some problem but it turned out to be something else. And then there has been the case of some strage substance around a post box. Turned out to be flour @_@

[hidetomatsumoto.livejournal.com]

A lot of false alarms I know. Which makes it even harder to find out who is sending the *real* stuff, because the FBI had to deal with all reports, real or not, and that cuts down on their resources. I hope they find the people sending the fake stuff--because they are causing problems too right now.

[ssilverfish.livejournal.com]

This morning when I went for my microscopy training, the guy training me went looking for a sample for me to practice on since I hadn't brought one of my own. He left for a few minutes, and when he returned, he said, "I found some anthrax for you to look at." Because I was in a friendly mood (because he gave me a cup of coffee), I laughed, though I didn't think it was that funny. (Though the media constantly referring to the bacteria as "the anthrax virus" still makes me chuckle).

I found and focused on a bacterial cell which was surrounded by a thick matrix, and showed it to the guy. "Good," he said. "You can clearly see the macrophage consuming the anthrax." Huh? It really was anthrax after all. It was fixed, embedded in plastic resin, and cut into thin sections so it was certainly dead, but it was indeed Bacillus anthracis.

I think the whole iron-your-snail-mail thing is a bit overblown, but I'll admit that the number of cases popping up is a bit worrysome. I don't think I'm personally in any danger, but I still don't like it.