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The world is simultaneously infinitely horrible and infinitely wonderful

The world is simultaneously infinitely horrible and infinitely wonderful – a short quote to promote this great online book on “Trauma and nonviolent social change” – power up “power-under.

Oppression is a social toxin which, through the mechanism of trauma, literally makes people sick. It is a sickness that causes massive personal suffering, and when left to its own devices it is self-perpetuating and severely impedes efforts to achieve social change. We need to understand how groups of people who have been traumatized by oppression can harness our traumatic experience in ways which enable us to build effective social change organizations and movements. We particularly need to find ways to transform traumatic rage into a constructive force – one which can serve both individual recovery and societal transformation.
I will propose the concept of constructive rage as a framework for addressing this challenge. I attempt in this chapter to present strategies for how to contain the destructive potentials of traumatic experience and power-under, and how to harness the power of traumatic rage as a force for liberation.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Allergy, Genetics

A fancy new category for a GWA result: same direction

screenshot7 Isn’t that a funny new category as reported in the last asthma genome scan – “same direction”? Should that provide evidence that isn’t there?
Of 10 samples only one replicates (FHS) and one shows borderline (COP) association to PDE4D / rs 1588265.

… in the absence of biological evidence we cannot exclude the possibility that the associations we measured were due to chance only

yea, yea.
BTW Also here – magically, previously associated genes disappear …

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Joke, Philosophy

FGA

Frequently given answers – an article at Spiegel online has some of the answers you will need when being asked by research administratives or journalists for your work.

  • Everything is possible, we will make progress, future research will show, adds significantly to our understanding – blabla attack
  • Sorry, could you repeat your question (usually when asked to give short! summary) – the noway attack
  • Can I send you some more documents – the flooding attack
  • sorry for having to go now to the kindergarden – the privacy attack
  • no idea – the unpolite attack
  • silence – the ivory tower attack

Please, please, please don’t try on my phone.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Genetics

Security of genetic data

The judge at the highest court in Germany Hans-Jürgen Papiersaid in an interview last week

Wir stellen nicht erst seit gestern fest, dass dem Grundrecht auf Datenschutz nicht nur von staatlicher, sondern auch von privater Seite Gefahren drohen können

What will happen once my genome once it is on “medical” hardware? Is it as save as the 8,257,378 Virginian patient records that are now under ransom? Continue reading Security of genetic data →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Genetics, Philosophy

Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab

Campbell writing at Edge about Maddox

Despite his original establishment of the peer-review process at Nature, Maddox always had strong reservations about its conservatism. These were perhaps best reflected in his view that the Watson and Crick paper on the structure of DNA wouldn’t pass muster under the current system. That paper was published as a result of recommendations by Lawrence Bragg Continue reading Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Philosophy

Paper, supplement or what?

A reviewer just wrote in response to one of our papers

I am first concerned over the structure of this manuscript, being divided into what will be a printed article and an on-line supplement. The description of what I consider to be essential methods are fragmented across these two segments, making the article disjoint and difficult to follow.

I fully agree as I have the same problem with many Nature and Science papers. By the online evolution papers are even more difficult to read. Curiously, even PLoS does this split although there is no printed paper at all.
What about abandoning the supplement practice in favour of a full and an abbreviated version of an article? So we would have an abstract for quick screening, a brief version for the printed journal and a long, fully referenced online version, yea, yea.

Addendum 1-7-09

NG continues with this artificial setup

Starting this month, readers will notice a new section called Online Methods in our Letters, Articles and Technical Reports. Material previously published as Methods and Supplementary Methods is now combined, fully edited and hyperlinked in the new format that will be present on the journal’s website and reprints, and can be downloaded in PDF format. Readers of the monthly print journal will now be directed to find the Methods online.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Genetics, Philosophy

Is evil contagious?

Here comes an update of the Lucifer post as there are new books on the market. Some want to understand (like Arendt or Amery) while others (like Nietzsche and Sartre) would strongly oppose. I am somewhere betweenboth parties with an increasing tendency to explain human (and corporate) behavior by social group pressure while there is still room by inborn personal differences. Continue reading Is evil contagious? →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Genetics, Philosophy, Software

Mirror neurons and science careers

Spiegel online has an excellent report about mirror neurons, empathy, social background and research (taking up a theme in the ZEIT 2003)

“In unserer Kultur sind am erfolgreichsten die”, sagt Gruen, “die am meisten von ihren Gefühlen, von der Fähigkeit zum Mitgefühl abgeschnitten sind.”

Continue reading Mirror neurons and science careers →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025
Allergy, Philosophy, Vitamins

Shift happens

The current issue of the blue journal has more stuff on the vitamin D hypothesis (that has been shifted recently into the opposite direction). I agree with the editorial that

Intervention studies of vitamin D in the primary prevention and treatment of asthma raise a number of difficult scientific, ethical, and regulatory issues.

That may be true while the editorial includes the widely quoted myth that immunological effects occur only at high doses Continue reading Shift happens →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 30.11.2025