pithovirus, satellite virus/virophage, lumberjack patron saint, Shameless

Mini rant: Various mentions of a new gigantic DNA virus which infects amoebas, uncovered in the Siberian permafrost, has been making the rounds on FB. More than two of my friends have independently associated this new virus with zombies, for reasons outside of my understanding. Can anyone please explain the zombie virus link to me? And it's that the virus is a zombie, apparently, and not that the virus is making cells into zombies (but the last one makes entirely more sense, as most viruses tend to just take over cells with the intent of producing new viruses, but that's another couple of posts entirely). This probably stems from the same source of irritation with which i view statements like, 'kills 99.9% of viruses'. Honey, you can't 'kill' them when they're not alive (this is also a hugely debatable topic and clearly i belong to the 'viruses are not alive' camp). However, someone DID link this incredibly comprehensive zombie classification chart.  Furthermore, the BBC article regarding this has decided to stir up sensationalist smallpox fears (with a nice, cover-all-the-bases caveat there at the end).

While poking around online, i came across this article (citing a guy clearly in the 'viruses are alive' camp) for virophage, or a small virus that co-infects a cell with (much) larger virus, for use of that larger virus' replication machinery. At the risk of sounding all hipster here, satellite viruses have been a thing in plant virology for years and didn't even get a mention (sigh), but i was pleased to note this statement on both wikipedia pages, "However, the usage of this term remains controversial due to the lack of fundamental differences between virophages and classical satellite viruses."

So i lost and subsequently found my notepad, after i'd already made a new one. My also-Catholic labmate Ryan commented about a patron saint of paper (writers, who happens to be St. Francis de Sales, btw), and this branched off into the patron saint of lumberjacks. i was impressed by this gentleman's footwear, and linked it to Bryan.

 me:  check this guy out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sint_Gommaar.png

patron saint of Lumberjacks

 Bryan:  i hearby declare too many saints

 me:  what?

you don't have that power

 Bryan:  you can't have a saint for every little thing

at most you can have like 320 saints

 me:  you can have a saint for every profession

and he's the patron saint of a lot of stuff; childless people, cowherders, glove makers, people with hernias, and wood cutters

 Bryan:  hmm

google says there's more than 10,000 canonized saints

 me:  i was just about to link that

no Brians/Bryans

no jessicas

i mentioned yesterday to Jack that i had the Garth Brooks version of the Billy Joel song 'Shameless' stuck in my head, which is bad because it's not necessarily one to howl in public (and in hearing the Billy Joel version, it's incredibly weird without the steel guitar that my childhood training taught me to expect). Jack, i'm pretty sure you've heard multiple Garth songs, for instance his Friends In Low Places (and let me just state here that i had a heck of a time finding a non-cover of this song. Sheesh, even the first one that pops up on youtube via google is a cover, though it is not labeled such.)

Thing that i finally learned this week; Holland is a northeaster region in the Netherlands, despite being applied as a name for the whole country.