BBC reports about celebrities speaking on scientific issues – and comments by experts. I would like another BBC news feature about scientists speaking on scientific issues from different disciplines, for example famous molecular biologists about ethics.
Category Archives: Joke
New Edge questions online
Just a quick link to a new Edge series What are you optimistic about? Why? that is just online for 24 hours. (I have recently been teached on being only 1x negative on being 5x positive – this post counts for 5x :-)
What would you choose?
At the moment I am reading the biography of Otto Warburg eloquently written by Hans Krebs. Here is a nice story about the banking house M. M. Warburg in Hamburg: Aby Warburg renounced his right to share in the banking business on the condition that his brothers would pay the bills for all the books that he deemed necessary for his library. The brothers enormously underrated the magnitude of this financial obligation – Aby Warburg (1866-1929) assembled a unique art history library which is now at London University. Would you like to have a brother who is a banker or would you like to be a banker with such a brother?
BMJ Christmas edition
We are already waiting for the BMJ. This year
- Physicians in opera: Stefan Willich about Le Nozze di Figaro
- Sword swallowing and its side effects: Brian Witcombe’ s finding that sword swallowers run a higher risk of injury
- Daisy the Doctor, Dr Dose, Dr Grizzly, Dr Amelia Bedelia, and colleagues: Monica Lalanda works on the image of doctors in children books: kind, professional, and reassuring
- Phenotypic differences between male physicians, surgeons, and film stars – comparative study: Antoni Trillas rating of “good looking” men – the winner, sorry, are not the surgeons
- From a 16th century monastery to a 21st century orthopaedic hospital: P (not Alberto) Tomba, worth a visit
- and much more
Yea, yea.
Without words
What people search for
“Dissecting the complex genetic basis of mate choice” is the lengthy title of a lengthy text that tells us
males produce complex signals and displays that can consist of a combination of acoustic, visual, chemical and behavioural phenotypes…
The authors come from a school of integrative biology. I wonder why they have missed the excellent work in humans on HLA, fertility and mate choice.
Having said that, I would even suggest a radical different approach by looking at “What people search for” – hopefully I get now also hits on my blog for Paris Hilton, Renee Zellweger, Britney Spears, Heidi Klum, Pamela Anderson, Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Lopez ;-) Dissecting the complex genetic basis of mate choice shouldn´t be as complicated as you may imagine from this nature reviews genetics paper, yea, yea.
email@nirvana.info
-moblog- Last week I asked an author for some additional information that was not available in his online supplement. He responded immediately, I saw the email arriving in Thunderbird, but when I wanted to read it a couple of hours later I couldn’t find it – neither in in the inbox, spam nor trash folder. Bugtraq has identical user reports – which makes me believe that also Activesync sometimes drops items form the todo list, mainly the important ones. Computer are only a higher ordering system for managing the chaos but there is no reason to believe in impeccability. Yea, yea.
World record
Just found this note at the bottom of a paper offered by Ingenta Connect:
The paper is the result of public funded research, written by researcher who is only partially paid for his work while both referees were not paid for their work. Yea, yea.
Calibrate!
This is a quick link to Eye of Science, a website with impressing micro photographs. Calibrate your monitor first at sriker, then goto Eye of Science. Oliver Meckes is quoting Albert Einstein
People should be ashamed to use the wonders of science and technology if they don’t know any more about it than a cow knows about the botany of the grass it relishes in eating.
Getting older – still the same?
Jonathan Keller is taking a picture every day since Oktober 1998. As seen on Youtube – with more series on the web. “Sie haben sich gar nicht verändert”. “Oh!”, sagte Herr Keuner und erbleichte (Bert Brecht).
On the limits of science
Have you ever heard of the Wikipedia Knowledge Dump? With the headline “WikiDumper: The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure†Dr. Cliff Pickover collects the best entries. For example you can read about the Beard Theorem that suggests that the size of one’s beard has a direct correlation to the radicality of a person’s socialist views. The site is as good as the Ig Noble, yea, yea.
Sex, drugs and DNA: Science’s Taboos Confronted
Highly recommended by a friend, I have ordered “Sex, drugs and DNA” by Michael Stebbins. Also Publishers Weekly finds
Continue reading Sex, drugs and DNA: Science’s Taboos Confronted
Ethnographic studies at Oktoberfest
Having many years of experience with ethnographic studies at Oktoberfest München, I am fascinated by a new Cell paper that shows distinct behavioral responses to ethanol. This is something that I alread assumed (although I did not known about this particular RhoGAP18B isoform only about ADH deficiency). Will the knowledge of more and more mutations in the lifestyle area raise ethical problems? Yea, yea.
More doctors smoke Camel
Not so long time ago many doctors smoked while it still hurts the self esteem of many epidemiologists that Doll and Hill have not been adequately honored for describing the association of smoking and lung cancer. Yea, yea.