Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Category: Life

Short (and long) reads extracted from my personal life.

  • Abstinence-Only, the Only Way to Fail

    Last week, while the Senate Finance Committee was busily voting down health care reforms supported by doctors and more importantly, the American People, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch tossed in a $50 million line item for abstinence-only sex education. This, despite the fact that one of the GOP’s main concerns about health care reform is the…

  • Occupational Hazards

    Aside from the occasional mishap, my colleagues and I do rather well managing the ever-present hazards of working in a research laboratory. Every so often, though, something happens that’s particularly interesting. We have some neat little stitch scissors for detailed snipping activities that I needed to use today. While I was cleaning them off, they…

  • A Little Customer Service Goes a Long Way

    The mantra of running a successful business in the 21st century is to “connect with fans and give them a reason to buy.” Successful companies take the time to provide quality service to each of their customers, knowing that building loyalty is more important than short-term bottom lines. Zynga, the startup responsible for the majority…

  • Nine Disappointments

    I saw the movie 9 on Saturday night, after being sufficiently excited for it by the trailer. As the title of this post reveals, I left the movie with a richer understanding of its 56% on RottenTomatoes. The animation and action sequences were great; in fact, the movie was oozing with potential. Unfortunately, thanks to…

  • Castle Crashers and Cramping

    Writing essays for med school secondary applications has been “cramping my style,” so to speak (if one is speaking as a bit actor in a late-night infomercial). The necessity of completing these assignments takes priority over a number of other activities I would much rather be doing. I often wonder if anybody actually bothers to…

  • Remember, Remember

    It has been eight years to the day since nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial jet airliners and crashed them into the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville Pennsylvania, killing 2,993 people. Every American watched in shock and horror that day, an event and subsequent response that has defined…

  • VirginFest

    After the tickets sold out practically immediately, I didn’t think was going to get to go to VirginFest. However, earlier last week one of my friends gave me a tip that a few thousand tickets had been made available directly from the Merriweather Post Pavilion box office (limit 2 per person), which kicked off a…

  • Thoughts on Health Care Reform

    I think the best thing you can do for health care is have a baseline option that is given to everybody, and make the private people compete for customers to switch to their service instead. That’s the general idea behind having a “public option,” and why it’s so important. Creating competition is a way of…