Did Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer ever meet?

This question goes back nearly 20 years when I asked Professor Busch (who wrote a most insightful biography on Karl Barth) as I couldn’t find anything neither in Günsbach nor in Zürich where most of Schweitzer’s writing are being stored. But now – equipped with a national license to the digital Barth library– I found a letter of Barth to Thurneysen that makes such a meeting likely in November 1928 Continue reading Did Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer ever meet?

Independent science

The Lancet of Dec 6, 2008 shows an excellent example of independent science (and in particular public health research) and gives an account why this is necessary although I agree with the author Continue reading Independent science

First email or the driving force of science

According to Wikipedia on May 24, 1844 Samuel Morse sent his famous words “What hath God wrought” from the B&O’s Baltimore station to the Capitol Building along the wire – the first email. Continue reading First email or the driving force of science

How to secure your macbook air in the library

Visiting again the British Library Humanities Reading Room last week, I had a major problem securing my laptop as it has no Kensington slot. I haven’t found anything useful for locking it except this free (car-like antitheft)Lockdown application. If you are not too much paranoid – it is a clever solution – and a lot of fun here back in the lab to watch the pictures it takes.

Addendum

Found some lock brackets here.

How to explain genomics to lay people

I had to give several lectures last week explaining lay people how genomic studies work. I finally decided to compare the human DNA with the bible text – not so much in the sense of Collins’ language of God but the sheer amount of information contained in a single cell.
Here is just one slide of this talk – it seems that the comparison worked quite well – in particular the fact that if you can read a text you will not necessarily understand it. Continue reading How to explain genomics to lay people

Conferences I should have attended in 2008

Although having travelled this year more than ever before (with 8x Bozen, 2x London, 2x Berlin, 1x Paris, 1x Barcelona, 1x Prague and 1x Washington) there are two important conferences that I missed. Both were aiming at the inner workings of science that interests me more than science itself Continue reading Conferences I should have attended in 2008

Electric wiring diagram as a metapher for gene-rna-protein networks

Two days ago I heard an interesting by Andreas Beyer about using wiring diagrams as a bioinformatics tool box for simulating complex biological relationships. This is something that can be found also in this recent nat gen review but even more detailed in new work on eQTLs. So far, however, there is not proof that any of these methods behave much better than others in the absence of a gold standard in bioinformatics, yea, yea.

How to transfer a MS SQL server to an OS X sqlite database

Here is what worked for me: Start up MS SQL server and run a tool that can be compiled from sources at Codeproject. Transfer the resulting SQLITE3 database to the Mac where it can be accessed by R via the RSQLite library. Many thanks to Liron Levi and his patient help with tables having more than 1000 columns!
I am in the process of setting up a graphical ER management tool while the native ODBC driver still seem to have some problems. Any workaround is greatly appreciated.

In vain do individuals hope for immortality

or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon – the predicament of Sir Thomas Browne in Cyril Connolly’s “Enemies of Promise”, a book just recently recommended to me. My pidgin science is certainly not good enough to appreciate enough to wonderful descriptions like on page 30 “look on my works ye mortals and despair”. The scientist Continue reading In vain do individuals hope for immortality

Mission accomplished

… also for some people in the field the main paradigma in science. To cite Wikipedia

Bush’s assertion — and the sign itself — became controversial after guerilla warfare in Iraq increased during the Iraqi insurgency. The vast majority of casualties, among both coalition (approximately 98.3% as of October 2008) and Iraqi combatants, and among Iraqi civilians, have occurred after the speech. Due to this fact, “Mission Accomplished” is now a winged word for uncompleted operations with an unclear ending.

goodbye GB!