1. Salt is your friend. 5 molar, 3 molar, 1 molar, there's plenty of options. And if you get bored of the good old NaCl, you could always try calcium or potassium chloride.

2. Bunsen burners are incredibly useful. When using the burner for warming of meals, make sure your plate is touching the blue part of the flame. This is the hottest part and will allow for optimal heating time. If cooking or oven time is needed, use the autoclave.

3. Petri dishes are great places for sides like corn or dressing. However, please make sure to wash once or twice if the dish was previously used for bacterial research.

4. Label all food items using lab tape with your name, type of food, date of creation, date of consumption, and your PI's name.

5. Know which items go in which freezer. Keep the 4 degree, -20 degree, and -86 degree straight. Food stored at -80 degrees or below is good for several years.

6. Keep meticulous notes in your lab notebook about the food you ate, what time you ate it, who you ate it with, method of eating, and calorie content.

7. Make use of electrophoresis. If you find some random food in one of the freezers yet you can't quite remember what it is, no problem! Just run a sample of it on a gel! Every food's got a characteristic band so you should have no problem identifying it. Simply melt the agar afterward and you've got safe, friendly food consumption.

8. Always wear gloves. Always.

9. Lab ice is totally fit for consumption. The people who put the labels on the ice machine have no idea what they're talking about. If you're looking for an especially cold drink, the dry ice adds a nice foggy touch to make things a little classier.

10. Lunch is the best time for making small talk. You know that recent immigrant in the next lab bench over? This is the best time for you to find out if he really can speak English. Plus, you can find out about all the latest lab gossip. Whose mice died last week? Which researchers have been "collaborating" lately? SHE got a paper published in Science?

As it finally begins to feel like summer, I've caught myself watching a little more TV than I use to. Since dancing is one of my recent hobbies, one of the shows I've gotten into is So You Think You Can Dance. Prior to this season (Season 7), I would watch videos of the best routines from the various seasons on YouTube but I never actually got into watching the show. I decided now was as good a time as any to give it a shot. And so I delved into the competitive, emotional, sexy world that is SYTYCD (Apparently, you're not a true So You Think You Can Dance fan unless you use the abbreviation regularly and without hesitation).

The newest season of SYTYCD introduced some major changes. For instance, this year the show started with 11 dancers instead of the customary 20. In addition, with each routine, dancers perform with an "all star" from a previous season instead of with a partner on the show. After there is 7 dancers left, the contestants do two routines each: one with an all star and one with another contestant. The new style has certainly added a little bit more excitement to the show.

Yet with all these changes, there's one that stands out as the most prominent: SYTYCD's gradual change from selling innovative routines and incredibly talented artists to selling evolution's best friend. In the newest routines, dancers come on stage with virtually no clothes and somehow still manage to take another article of clothing or two off while on stage. Take a look.





Fortunately for those behind SYTYCD, it seems to be working. Fans are loving every minute of it. To me, though, it seems that this move towards a sexier scene has taken away from the show. The choreography is less innovative than in previous seasons and the judges are less focused on precision more so on presentation skills. When all you have to do is take some clothes off to get viewers, then what's the point of kicking the choreo up a notch? Without this sexier clothing, poor choreography would result in less viewers, forcing SYTYCD to up the choreography level and improving the show. With the new progression, however, this selection pressure is no longer as relevant.

"Sex sells" seems to be a fast and steady rule. Yet what people fail to notice is the drawbacks that giving in to hotter media can have. If sexier media requires diminished quality, then a balance is needed so true quality can be maintained. As we grow older, we move past the shallow face value and start to look deeper into the effect that things have and how impressive they are in all their qualities, not just those that are visible. This process, though, doesn't have to be passive. You can push yourself to look deeper into media, experiences, even people. So, give it a try, see how inhibiting shallowness can be.

It is true, then, that sex sells. The question, then, is whether it's always worth buying.

And to tell you the truth, I just plain can't stand Mia Michaels as a judge.