Category Archives: Joke

Allergy, Joke, Vitamins

Ig Nobel Prize 2010

I haven’t seen the ceremony award 2010 so far but read of a prize for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride (Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University, The Netherlands) and of the management prize for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random (Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy), yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 25.10.2025
Joke, Philosophy

Different mindsets

I confess, yea, there is a misunderstanding (sometimes) between generations. A new mindset list like the Beloit College List is therefore very handy as it explains

Most students entering college for the first time this fall […] were born in 1992.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. […]
7. Caramel macchiato and venti half-caf vanilla latte have always been street corner lingo. […]
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed. […]
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station. […]
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church. […]
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus. […]

Maybe I should reserve some time to rewrite that in German with my children, yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 25.10.2025
Joke

Blogs aids creativity

Today at First Monday:

I am a blogging researcher: Motivations for blogging in a scholarly context
Sara Kjellberg
The number of scholarly blogs on the Web is increasing. In this article, a group of researchers are asked to describe the functions that their blogs serve for them as researchers. The results show that their blogging is motivated by the possibility to share knowledge, that the blog aids creativity, and that it provides a feeling of being connected in their work as researchers. Continue reading Blogs aids creativity →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 25.10.2025
Genetics, Joke, Software

Please vote for my Nobel question

At the Lindau Nobel site we can submit questions to Nobel prize winners. Most of them are trivial or even boring – basically how to make a career or what rank did you have in your university studentship. My proposal to ask there: “Is another information layer on top of the known DNA sequence?” You may want vote for my question, thanks!

One of the best questions so far is “Many people consider the peer-review system broken. If you share that opinion, do you have a solution?” by Clay Barnard.

Roy Glauber, Nobel Laureate in Physics 2005: The current system is pretty poor. So now it’s not a question of spending a lot of money, as it can be resolved very easily without. Good papers last and bad papers don’t. Individuals should rate the papers, although this may not need to be done in an official way.
Sir John Walker, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1997: The peer review system does have problems, but it is the best we have got and I am very much opposed to replacing it with a numerical assessment system. It is a lousy way of assessing people and the pressure to change this system comes from science bureaucrats. This is because it is scientsists making decisions about scientists’ work and the bureaucrats don’t like that; they want to have control.
Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1987: That’s an interesting question! I have been interested in it for a very long time. I think we need to have a control otherwise things get in the literature that should not be there …

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 25.10.2025
Joke, Philosophy

I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole

Being hit by some recent turns in science politics I remember a quote by Freud

“I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something you can not say aloud, or perhaps even think, though your experience of life can hardly have been different than mine.”

The source, however, is difficult to find – a letter to Oskar Pfister on Oct, 9, 1918 published in: Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister, eds. Heinrich Meng and Ernst L. Freud, trans. by Eric Mosbacher. New York: Basic Books, 1963. The German version is being published in Sigmund Freud, Oskar Pfister, Briefe 1909-1939, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1963, 2. Aufl. S. 62.
Continue reading I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 25.10.2025
Joke, Theology, Vitamins

Hallelujah

Two new exciting papers about Jewish ancestry in the AJHG and Nature probably missed some of the background. As another blogger noted

It is remarkable that Jews have maintained a tangible cultural identity through those 26 centuries of dispersion, and perhaps even more remarkable that genetic studies now show they have maintained a substantial genetic identity as well.

Here is the answer – sharing faith and music. Continue reading Hallelujah →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 25.10.2025