Category Archives: Joke

Laptop stolen – phoning home

4.02.2007 admin 2 Comments

Scientists are frequent travellers – hopefully you have always your harddisk encrypted. There are many companies that offer to trace your computer like Computrace(R), zTrace(R), LapTrak(R), BoomerangIt(R), LoJack(R) and PC-Guardian(R). Save your $/€ for your next experiment, here is the trick: During the next boot your laptop will send out a http request to any server you like. You simply need to watch the server logfile if your stolen laptop is phoning home…
For installation please download LaptopService.cmd, LaptopService.reg and two small binaries from the windows ressource kit. Adjust path and server name before running LaptopService.cmd. VoilÃ , that’s it – for a good joke look at Slashdot.

|wj_LaptopService.cmd|

Allergy, Joke, Philosophy, Software

Science of course and effective too

29.01.2007 admin

Most people in the field search Pubmed but there is another site that I frequently visit – the European patent database that often have more concise information. Look at current allergy patents – the last one will definitely work you may also use a big plastic bag ;-)

Be aware that being cynical is probably bad for your heart.

Joke

Badges everywhere

27.01.2007 admin

My favorite is the pink one that a sick child made me earlier in my career.

Joke, Video

Le Grand Content

26.01.2007 admin

Attending several large conferences every year, I know what Andre at Youtube is talking about:

This has even a name – Powerpoint Karaoke, yea, yea.

Joke, Philosophy

déjà-vu

17.01.2007 admin

ZEIT online has an interesting article about ddéjà-vu – a rare syndrome. Some psychiatrists believe that déjÃ -vu episodes are the result of a faulty memory that brings up a similar episode. Others believe that there is nothing at all – just electric loops of a petite mals that can also be triggered by electric stimulation of the gyrus parahippocampus. ZEIT online also cites a study of Alan Brown that adds evidence for some kind of implantable memory.
I have frequently déjà-vus when reading the scientific literature (sometimes I even believe in groundhog days). One of my teachers in Marburg always said that “study of the scientific literature prevents from new discoveries”. Yea, yea.

Joke, Software

Playing with your browser

16.01.2007 admin

Some blog authors are nuts about protecting their web site from copying files. There are many ways to protect your site – but only one really good (publish nothing). I often see small javascripts that disable the ability to right-click where javascript.about.com has a much simpler solution:

<body oncontextmenu=”return false;”>

Please try a right click now…
If you are fooled by a web author in such a way, what could you do? tech-recipes has the answer: Of course, we can use javascript to turn it back on.

When visiting the offending website, type the following into the URL bar of your browser:
javascript:void(document.oncontextmenu=null)

Happy browsing, yea, yea.

Joke, Software

Scientific spam

12.01.2007 admin

I am sending here a trackback to David who asked if a new series of spam email may be

nothing more than an intricate social engineering endeavour and that Iâ€™ve been duped into responding in this way.

I found me also answering an email where a 15 year old asked (after having smoked a few cigarettes) if she will now have an increased lung cancer risk. Only 10 minutes later at the coffee machine I heard that a dozen people had just answered exactly the same email. Think of it like an April Fool’s joke, yea, yea.

Joke, Philosophy

Do what you will this life’s a fiction and is made up of contradiction

7.01.2007 admin

If you also like William Blake’s poetry you might be interested in more quotes that have a true scientific background.

Joke, Philosophy

Celebrities on science

4.01.2007 admin

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.

Joke

New Edge questions online

2.01.2007 admin

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 :-)

Joke

What would you choose?

24.12.2006 admin

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?

Joke

BMJ Christmas edition

22.12.2006 admin

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.

Joke

Easter Eggs

29.11.2006 admin

In medieval ages messengers had tattoos under the scalp hair. Charles Dickens also described how women used to purl and to knit for hidden messages. Many software developers also insert messages or features in the code. The motivation may be to sign it or put some artistic touch on it – you will find a lot of websites out explaining the necessary keystrokes and web links.
I wonder if also other colleagues are hiding initials, words or messages in scientific papers? Unfortunately due to the online submission, publishers will now recognize faked references. What about using steganography to mark pictures or PDFs?

Joke

Without words

28.11.2006 admin

Addendum

what others write

Genetics, Joke

What people search for

28.11.2006 admin

“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 shouldnÂ´t be as complicated as you may imagine from this nature reviews genetics paper, yea, yea.