Category Archives: Joke

Joke

Computer names, sequencer names, freezer names

Creativity in science – look how computer are being named (seemed there are many da Vinicis and Picassos in bioinformatics). The MDC microsatellite center in Berlin named their sequencers by volcanos (even before pyrosequencing became in vogue), we use European cities for our freezers. Famous chess players would be another idea or use car brands …

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026
Allergy, Joke

Something in the air

New studies further question the hygiene hypothesis of allergy induction. One study shows that a household bacterial elimination strategy does not lead to more — it even leads to less asthma.

Children living in a house regularly cleaned with bleach were less likely to have asthma (OR, 0.10; CI, 0.02-0.51), eczema (OR, 0.22; CI, 0.06-0.79) and of being sensitized to indoor aeroallergens (OR, 0.53; CI, 0.27-1.02)

Another study, by designing a 16S rRNA chip, examined a snapshot of urban air in San Antonio — the aerosol harbored at least 1,800 diverse bacterial types

a richness approaching that of some soil bacterial communities

You probably know the joke that before taking a deep breath think where the air has been before…

Addendum

The ecology of human skin has now been also reported – highly diverse, well conserved but low-level interpersonal consensus: scienceblog:doi:10.1073/pnas.0607077104

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026
Joke

Random news, oxymorons and paper generator

â€"Day 6 of Just Science Weekâ€"

No idea, what to write in your next scientific paper? Use the random medical news for some ideas. Here are also some expressions ready for cut & paste. Or you may want to go directly to SCIGEN (thanks to Christine for that link).

randompaper.png

This page took 0.134 seconds of computer labor to produce. No computers were harmed in the making of this page. Some browsers whose name starts with Internet may be though (from Matt s blog).

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026
Joke, Software

Laptop stolen – phoning home

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. Voilà , that’s it – for a good joke look at Slashdot.

|wj_LaptopService.cmd|

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026
Allergy, Joke, Philosophy, Software

Science of course and effective too

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 ;-)

patents.png

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

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026
Joke, Philosophy

déjà-vu

ZEIT online has an interesting article about ddéjà-vu – a rare syndrome. Some psychiatrists believe that déjà -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.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026
Joke, Software

Playing with your browser

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.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026
Joke, Software

Scientific spam

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 I’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.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 28.07.2026