Here is my blog equipment – an A4 Moleskine (Italian), Perfekter
Bleistift Faber-Castell (German), a HP IPAQ (US or Taiwan?) in a Piel
Frama cover (Spanish). Yea, yea.
Category Archives: Joke
Paper cemetry (is La Sombra del Viento)
-moblog- Probably inspired by reading Carlos Ruiz Zafon “La Sombra del Viento – Shadow of the Wind – Schatten des Windes” telling about a cemetry of books I wonder whether it would make sense to
have also a cemetry of rejected papers. Would that be useful to have an arXiv.org-like access to papers that will otherwise be forgotten? Yea, yea.
Role of Faust
-moblog- Edge The Third Culture has a long portrait of Craig Venter: “… His enemies have nicknamed him Darth Venter and accused him of putting the future of biology in jeopardy … journalists have cast him in the role of Faust…” The Celera genome admired in the East Room of the White House had been a composite of 5 different people including Venters own DNA (read about DNA sources). He is now going to make his private DNA public as well as an autobiography. Is anybody interested in reading any of the two? Nay, nay.
Idea dumping
A site that helps to remember good ideas proposes to
- Always carry paper
- Be descriptive when writing it down
- Plan for not planning on it
- Good environments matter
- Think big picture down
- Organize your thoughts
- Know when to stop
Forms are also available. Sorry, already forgot what I wanted to write. Yea, yea.
Doorlink
Ever failed with a grant application? Sad? Don´t worry, submit your grant somewhere else.
This will, however not work in Bornemouth. As the local newspaper says: “A new telephone system has been launched in Bournemouth town centre that aims to stop troublemakers from getting into bars, clubs and pubs. Doorlink enables doorstaff to take pictures of any problem drinkers via their mobile phones and within seconds circulate them to other venues in a bid to stamp out violent behaviour.” Yea, yea.
Just a barf bag
Following the 8/10 discussion, some politicians now advocate that all hand-luggage should be prohibited on airplanes. What will happen if all frequent traveller scientists are no more allowed to take anything inside of planes? No laptop, no organizer, no paper to read, nothing to review, nothing to administrate? Imagine that the inflight magazine is only good for 5 minutes and that there are no interesting flight attendants anymore. Just a pencil and a barf bag in front of the seat. Would that revolutionize science?
Le abia o non le bia
One of my favorite stories that I heard in Venice two years ago (and recall it only from memory, please correct me if I am wrong): The rich Venice merchandiser Labia arranged big parties for his guests. With his temper at height, he was throwing golden plates through the window, crying: “Le abia, o non le bia, saró sempre Labia” – “if I have them or if I have them not, I am always a Labia”. (It turned out that some of his servants were waiting at Canale Grande to pick up the golden plates coming through the window). Yea, yea.
The best human genome cartoons
All top editorial cartoonists on one site. Of course you already know globecartoon and Daryl Cagle*s Professional Cartoonist Index. Youtube has also excellent DNA videos. Yea, yea.
Mini-München: University for children
Have you ever heard of a city of children? Adults may have access but whole life (including a university with 4 lecture rooms) is completely managed by children. We are proud to participate in Mini-München now for many years. Here are the rules, rule 3 says that studying is being paid like any other work… Yea, yea.
 
 
 
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Well organized
Just came across a company called Genvault – they are advocating to add a short DNA sequence to the DNA samples as a identity tag. The oligos are mixed to represent binary numbers, see online docu for description.
Addendum
Another company has some thoughts on the same problem: Illumina and Veracode.
Hello world!
Setting up this blog was a matter of 10 minutes while filling it will probably take some more time. I have been a net citizen since its beginning. Having sent out my first (stored) email on Jan 18, 1993, while my first web page dates back to Feb 1, 1995. I was running one of the worlds largest websites on asthma and also a gene database for many years but haven’t done anything useful during the past years.
Addendum
This blog serves as a testbed for the next few months if this kind of information exchange is of any use (except for paying bills of a lawyer). I will broaden here my view on science and refer to my archive of ~16,000 scientific papers that I have collected since 1986 when starting my thesis.