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Karl Drais

190 years ago, today on 12th June 1817, Karl Drais presented to the world his running machine (“Laufrad”, “Velociped” – as he called it, “Draisine” – as others called it). As I believe it is the first bicycle (bi – cycle) and therefore one of the most advanced inventions ever made. It is an invention that I need 2 hours every day and an invention that could cure many of the problems discussed now at G8 conference in Heiligendamm. Continue reading Karl Drais →

 

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Philosophy

Too much checking on the facts has ruined many a good news story

So far I naively quoted others – “only to better express myself” (Michele de Montaigne). This will, however, change now after having read “The Quote Verifier – who said what, where and when” by Ralph Keyes. He nicely explains in the foreword that the misattribution process is not random Continue reading Too much checking on the facts has ruined many a good news story →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 29.11.2025
Philosophy

Kuhn is Kant on wheels

I liked that quote from Professor Lipton in a recent essay about the “World of Science” where he repeats his earlier “Kuhn is Kant on wheels“:

Like Kant, Kuhn held that the world described by science is a world partially constituted by cognition. But whereas Kant held that there is only one form the human contribution could take, Kuhn argued that the contribution changes as science changes. Kuhn is Kant on wheels.

I am more attracted by an objectivist than a constructivist view — where the world has its own structure that is only revealed by science (at least in part) and religion (also in other parts). As I am currently reading Klemke – probably one of the best books in the field – maybe that will change my mind? Nay, nay.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 29.11.2025
Joke

Mindmap

There is a new way to display Wikipedia content: WikiMindMap. Nice to view but it seems there are more ethanol related hazards…

ethanol.png

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 29.11.2025
Genetics, Vitamins

Turning pale

Humans have always been attracted by white animals, tigers, elephants and crocodiles (BTW great melanosome pictures can be found at PLOS.
There seem to be also some evidence that light skin developed only recently as reported in a meeting report in Science by April, 20 based on sweeps around SLC24A5. This is somewhat in contrast to findings published more or less at the same time by the same group (but not mentioned in the meetings report) that a highly complex network is influencing skin color. Continue reading Turning pale →

 

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Philosophy

The fourth major problem in epidemiology

Moblog: Madrid, Parque del Retiro. Epidemiology ist always a cost intensive enterprise. Only those epidemiologists have enough funds for doing research who are spending most of their time on fund raising, speaking into every microphone and smiling into every camera. Continue reading The fourth major problem in epidemiology →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 29.11.2025
Software

NetVibes, Protopage, iGoogle and my own dashboard

Having tried some of these nice web services, I would like to run it now on my own server for obvious reasons. Even after spending considerable time, I didn´t find so much useful out there. eyeOS or other web based OS produce a large amount of overhead while allowing for only one RSS reader window at a time. From the 23 or so widget management systems the only Open Source piece that I found was Posh from Portaneo who deposited at Sourceforge. I wonder why it has only 2,095 downloads so far as all other candidates (Cesar, Viewport, MuseStorm Desktop…) are demo applications only. Widgets for Posh are quite limited so far while the (most important) RSS feed widgets already work.

posh.png

More useful pages are at gnetvibes.rubyforge.org.rubyforge.org, dev.netvibes.com, reblog.org.

Addendum

Dropthings: another Open Source core engine

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 29.11.2025
Philosophy

How doctors think

I attended yesterday a video talk by Jerome Groopman as he had become too ill to travel from Boston to San Francisco. His speech was one of the highlights of this year’s ATS conference – basically a summary of his new book “How doctors think“. It tells you about MDs and how they make up their diagnosis. Mostly everything goes right but sometimes everything goes wrong. According to empirical research a working diagnosis is already being made within 18 seconds Continue reading How doctors think →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 29.11.2025