Category Archives: Joke
Why some women look young for their age
Here is my bit for the Ig Nobel – that piece that has just been published at PLoS ONE:
We studied the facial appearance of 102 pairs of female Danish twins aged 59 to 81 as well as 162 British females aged 45 to 75. Continue reading Why some women look young for their age
Fake it till you make it
Wikepedia defines
“Fake it till you make it” (also called “act as if”) is a common catchphrase Continue reading Fake it till you make it
Sponsor me too, please
Wiesn 2009
All scientists are currently at the Wiesn… (not to mention all the alternatives in Bavaria: Gillamos, Barthelmarkt, Volksfest Straubing, Karpfhammer Fest, … Continue reading Wiesn 2009
Collegium logicum
was die Welt zusammen hält… Continue reading Collegium logicum
Helicopter
If it wasn’t actually you
this is at least what Alexa tells me about you – what a nonsense giving averages of so different visitors ;-)

although the profile isn’t so bad at al l…
Funny? Laughable? Ridiculous?
www.cell.com/current-biology shows humour
Human emotional expressions, such as laughter, are argued to have their origins in ancestral nonhuman primate displays. To test this hypothesis, the current work examined the acoustics of tickle-induced vocalizations from infant and juvenile orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos, as well as tickle-induced laughter produced by human infants.
Omics explosion
We have learned new genomics and metabolomics (etc not to confuse with economics!) while even complete websites are now dedicated to the omics explosion. What I do not understand is the increasing omics use in completely unrelated fields like humanomics – a good or bad omen?
The use of Powerpoint has been a disaster
Being asked to give another presentation on whatesoever topic and to deposit my slides on whatsoever intranet, the famous quote of John Sweller came to my point
It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented.
So, as I tend to use only slides with cartoons and figures (but no bullet points which are in my notes only) these illustrations are rather useless as a stand-alone file at any Ilias platform. In other words
if your presentation visuals taken in the aggregate (e.g., your “owerPoint deck”) can be perfectly and completely understood without your narration, then it begs the question: why are you there?
I remember a lecture by my doctoral advisor who came in the lecture room with just 1 glass slide in his shirt pocket … More intelligent comments about that issue at presentationzen.com
A posse ad esse non valet consequentia
“the possibility does not necessarily lead to materialization”
Le Doubs
Bert Brecht
… Ich, sagte er uns
Bin der Zweifler, ich zweifle, ob
Die Arbeit gelungen ist, die eure Tage verschlungen hat.
Ob, was ihr gesagt, auch schlechter gesagt, noch für einige Wert hätte. Continue reading Le Doubs
Summertime
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.
