Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy; the professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.
by R.Nixon and cited again by J.D.Vance in 2021
Category Archives: Joke
A preeclampsia case control study that includes males?
A Sci Hub Joke
Wenn es denn der Wahrheitsfindung dient
Fritz Teufels Spruch „Wenn es denn der Wahrheitsfindung dient“
als Reaktion auf die richterliche Aufforderung, sich zu erheben – ist heute eines der bekanntesten geflügelten Worte aus der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. Weniger bekannt ist sein Kopfstand vor der Anklagebank aus demselben Anlass, mit der nachgelieferten Begründung: „Sie haben ja nicht gesagt, wie herum ich aufstehen soll.“
Steht doch alles auf Wikipedia?
Wer sagt: Man muss nicht mehr viel wissen, weil man alles nachschlagen kann, müsste doch auch sagen: Man muss keine Witze verstehen, weil man sie sich erklären lassen kann.
[…]
Um viele Witze zu verstehen, muss man etwas wissen. Um Memes oder launige Kurznachrichtentexte zu verstehen, muss man fast immer deren Hintergrund und Zusammenhang kennen. Das ist – oft, immer? – auch ein Wissen, dass für Gruppenbildung sorgt, es trennt diejenigen, die das kapieren, und die anderen, für die das unverständlich bleibt.
gefunden bei Herr Rau
0xdeadbeef
Having many tor exit addresses with this server name in my log files, I looked up the meaning – i0xdeadbeef actually spells words as opposed to random hex values and was more likely to induce a memory out-of-range fault as it was out of the address range of systems in the last century ;-)
Some observations about science administration
I’ve witnessed an ongoing expansion of science administration personnel at local, national, and international levels. What’s more concerning is that this administration is becoming increasingly disconnected from the day-to-day realities at the laboratory bench. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as Parkinson’s Law, first elucidated 1955 by C. Northcote Parkinson (not to be confused with James Parkinson).
In summary, employees like to talk to each other in the administration office, they want more subordinates (and not competitors from the lab) while even little work is expanded to fill the time available for its completion.
After Parkinson, the annual increase in staff, regardless of variations in workload, ranges from 5.2% to 6.6%. He even goes so far as to claim that core tasks could be completely eliminated without the administration shrinking as a result.
Parkinson formulated this in the 1950s. In modern administrations, new terms have been introduced, such as Controlling, New Management Models, business indicators, etc. Often, the proportion of staff in these areas of work increases, while for the actual core tasks, staff remains stagnant or even decreases.
The best paper in 2024
“Life is too short to be serious all time”, GILE Journal of Skills Development, Vol. 4 No. 1 (2024)
In this food for thought article, we introduce the ‘Donald Duck Phenomenon’ to consider ten of the more unconventional reasons for publishing in academia. These include
(i) symbolic immortality,
(ii) personal satisfaction,
(iii) a sense of pride,
(iv) serious leisure,
(v) cause credibility,
(vi) altruism,
(vii) collaboration with a friend or family member,
(viii) collaboration with a hero,
(ix) conflict or revenge, and
(x) for amusement.
The article was inspired by the lead author’s social media search for a co-author with the surname ‘Duck’. Through LinkedIn, the lead author, Associate Professor William E. Donald, who is based in the UK and specialises in Sustainable Careers and Human Resource Management, found a collaborator, Dr Nicholas Duck, who is based in Australia and specialises in Organisational Psychology. While the collaboration may appear to be somewhat ‘quackers’, per one of Donald Duck’s famous phrases “Life is too short to be serious all the time, so if you can’t laugh at yourself then call me… I’ll laugh at you, for you”. We hope that this article offers some interesting insights and acts as a way to stimulate conversation around unconventional reasons for publishing in academia.
Ingenial
Kill notice (re: image of the royal family)
There are some indications that an image is created by AI showing wrong details of the human hand like 6 fingers. So far AI does not understand the semantic meaning of “hand” having only the visual demarcation of hands in images as trained by mechanical turks. Images of hands however, can be misleading for the trained eye where also good painters have difficulties.
Let’s have a closer look at the images of Princess Kate and their kids Charlotte (8, right) , Louis (5, left) and George, 10 (behind) by a check list that I developed earlier with another family member, the Andrew/Maxwell/Giuffre image that even fooled me in the beginning.
Image source: credible /dpa.
File Modification Date/Time : 2024:03:11 07:00:09+01:00
File Access Date/Time : 2024:03:11 16:27:05+01:00
File Inode Change Date/Time : 2024:03:11 16:27:04+01:00
Image Width : 1024
Image Height : 1536
SRGB Rendering : Perceptual
Exif Byte Order : Big-endian (Motorola, MM)
Image Description : 10.03.2024, Großbritannien, Windsor: Das undatierte, vom Kensington-Palast herausgegebene Handout-Foto zeigt Kate, Prinzessin von Wales, mit ihren Kindern, Prinz Louis, Prinz George und Prinzessin Charlotte, aufgenommen in Windsor, Anfang dieser Woche, vom Prinzen von Wales. Prinzessin Kate bedankte sich in einer Botschaft in den sozialen Medien für die anhaltende Unterstützung und wünschte den Menschen einen schönen Muttertag. Foto: Prince Of Wales/Kensington Palast/PA Media/dpa – ACHTUNG: Nur zur redaktionellen Verwendung bis zum 31.12.2024 und nur mit vollständiger Nennung des vorstehenden Credits. Das Foto darf nicht bearbeitet oder im Ausschnitt verändert werden. +++ dpa-Bildfunk +++
Artist : Prince Of Wales
Exif Version : 0232
Date/Time Original : 2024:03:10 02:34:23
Create Date : 2024:03:10 02:34:23
Source : Kensington Palast/PA Media
Urgency : 4
Transmission Reference : 911-004243
Instructions : UNITED KINGDOM OUT, IRELAND OUT, PICTURE DESK USE ONLY. NO SALES. HANDOUT
Supplemental Categories : Leute
Credit : dpa
Caption Writer : kde
Title : urn:newsml:dpa.com:20090101:240310-911-004243
Elvis ID : 9WexS6c3amM9b0m_iOBING
Keyword : Monarchie, Royals, Familie
Credit Line : dpa
Image Size : 1024×1536
Megapixels : 1.6
Situation: credible, should show their well being
Photographer: allegedly husband
Camera: unknown, cropped wide angle?
The overall look: A bit weird and plastic look in my eyes. Dimensions are wrong as her upper body seems too large for her legs. The right arm of Louis (and even George?) seem too long. Trying the posture of her in reality shows that it is unreal to get the embracing hands in this position.
Hands: The fingers of Charlotte’s left hand are larger than the fingers of her right hand. The index finger of Louis is missing which is difficult to reproduce in front of a mirror.
Teeth: Kate’s teeth look authentic when compared with other pictures of her, except for an unsharp band on the upper front teeth. Without having other images at hand, the teeth of the children look age-related (although Louis may be older than 5 on this picture).
Pattern: Floor looks good except left wall. There is a gap at the patten of right arm of Louis and lower left arm of Charlotte. While images of natural objects never have 100% identical patterns, such patterns are frequent with man-made objects — and difficult for AI to reproduce.
Sharpness: Floor mosaic: gets unsharp from tile 6 onwards – which is otherwise a perfect sharp area in the rest of the image.
Irregular: Kate’s right upper shoe border looks double. Zipper misaligns.
Sun/Shadow: sunshine on Kate’s left hand although there should be shadow under Charlotte’s arm. And well there background in the triangle under Charlotte’s arm is missing. The window mirror shows a tree that could cast more shadow on the scene.
General: Green leaves on the background trees in early March?
no clear results from splicing probability heatmap and ELA
no clear results from AI detectors, maybe it’s not de novo fabrication but merging of multiple sources?
March 11, 2024
Maybe that business should be left to professional photographers?
More comments at SPON by Matthias Kremp: Another possibility is a Google Pixel 8 that combines internally images which is however unlikely here. Kremp notices also the white paint at the step behind Louis.
SZ highlights some details that I do not understand.
March 12, 2024
The public interest continues ;-) BBC and Youtube while the palace doesn’t show the original picture.
but here is a new image version
March 15, 2024
Medium “something more serious”
ZEIT “trust retouched”
SKY believes that The first save was made at 9.54pm on Friday night, with the second at 9.39am on Saturday morning.
The image was taken at Adelaide Cottage – the family’s home in Windsor – on a Canon 5D mark IV, which retails at £2,929.99 and used a Canon 50mm lens, which is priced at £1,629.99.
which contradicts the dpa exif data…
March 20, 2024
Guardian “Photo of Queen Elizabeth II and family was enhanced at source, agency says” and a famous photographer Pete Souza “lets not call it photoshopped”.
Slow virus is good for your lab
… because it keeps you lab running.
Writing now a review in immunology, I found a nice joke in The Atlantic quite early in the COVID-19 pandemic
There’s a joke about immunology, which Jessica Metcalf of Princeton recently told me. An immunologist and a cardiologist are kidnapped. The kidnappers threaten to shoot one of them, but promise to spare whoever has made the greater contribution to humanity. The cardiologist says, “Well, I’ve identified drugs that have saved the lives of millions of people.” Impressed, the kidnappers turn to the immunologist. “What have you done?” they ask. The immunologist says, “The thing is, the immune system is very complicated …” And the cardiologist says, “Just shoot me now.”
H-index prices (joke)
Do not reply
Live, Love, Learn and Leave a Legacy
I think the quote goes back to Steven Covey while it is also a motto for many scientists, isn’t it?
Software solution to c’t quiz 1/2024
