edit: okay, I guess I jumped the gun too soon. Even the CNN article has retracted what they said earlier about the powdery substance being Ricin. I guess my stomach just hurts because I had all-you-can-eat Salt Lick yesterday.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/25/UT.ricin/index.html
Great. Nice to know that I could have died or something.

Today I drove onto campus so that I could come into the lab to finish up some work due Monday. I went down 21st street and found that there were a LOT of news crews on campus. In fact, NBC had one of their big mobile news stations with the giant satellite dish on top parked in front of Littlefield Fountain. Anyways, I got to Jester and there was this NBC suv parked in the middle of the road. I needed to get by so I drove around it. As I was passing by, this policewoman jumps out from behind and starts yelling and waving her arms erratically at me and when I stop and roll down the window, she says, "Did you NOT see my car here with the flashing lights?" I respond, "No all I saw was the NBC car parked there" She goes, "well, my car is here. Right behind it." Hahahaha, as if that explained why I should have seen it. Anyways, I had no idea what was going on until I got into the lab and looked on CNN.

Yeah, they discovered a deadly biological agent in Moore-Hill dormitory... on THURSDAY. Great. I've walked by that dorm a million times since then. Thankfully the police officer stopped me from driving past it too. Had my A/C pulling in air from outside too. According to the CNN article, they found RICIN in the dorm. This is pretty deadly stuff, peoples. We talked about it a lot when I was at BAE SYSTEMS working on biodetection systems.

If I had to choose between injesting Ricin or Anthrax... I'd take my chances with Anthrax. Ricin is some serious stuff. But anyways, its good to know that if I start convulsing and losing all motor functions of my body, I'll at least have a good idea why.