Leo at zenhabits has a great new piece:
Why I don’t care about success. ‘Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.’ (Albert Einstein)
A lot of people in my field write about how to be successful, but I try to avoid it. It’s just not something I believe is important. Now, that might seem weird: what kind of loser doesn’t want to be successful?
Me. I’m that loser. Continue reading Science success sucks (sometimes)
A Nature correspondence letter laments
Universities are experiencing a crisis of purpose, focus and content, rooted in a fundamental confusion about all three. The crisis is all the more visible as their pace of social, intellectual and technological change falls increasingly out of step with that outside. Furthermore, universities are largely reactive where they should be visionary and critical.
Of course, that’s right – how to study “biology”? What’s should be purpose, content and focus? Maybe that’s easier with “medicine” Continue reading A crisis of purpose, focus and content
is a quote from http://current.com/182434c. The comment to the post there is even better: Continue reading Humans will need two Earths by 2030
is a quote from the Enzensberger interview in ZEIT Magazin Nr. 33 (12.8.2010).
Teaching students means even teaching yourself -as thoughts are being built during speaking.
The quote seems to go back to Kleist “Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden” who Continue reading Die Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Sprechen
A recent article in Nature Medicine finds that the price of misconduct probes can surpass $500,000. Sure, that may be expensive Continue reading Price of poor research can surpass $5,000,000
I confess, yea, there is a misunderstanding (sometimes) between generations. A new mindset list like the Beloit College List is therefore very handy as it explains
Most students entering college for the first time this fall […] were born in 1992.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. […]
7. Caramel macchiato and venti half-caf vanilla latte have always been street corner lingo. […]
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed. […]
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station. […]
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church. […]
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus. […]
Maybe I should reserve some time to rewrite that in German with my children, yea, yea.
Being hit by some recent turns in science politics I remember a quote by Freud
“I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something you can not say aloud, or perhaps even think, though your experience of life can hardly have been different than mine.”
The source, however, is difficult to find – a letter to Oskar Pfister on Oct, 9, 1918 published in: Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister, eds. Heinrich Meng and Ernst L. Freud, trans. by Eric Mosbacher. New York: Basic Books, 1963. The German version is being published in Sigmund Freud, Oskar Pfister, Briefe 1909-1939, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1963, 2. Aufl. S. 62.
Continue reading I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole
Great tips from Hugh MacLeod
1. Ignore everybody.
2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.
3. Put the hours in. Continue reading Ignore everybody
Last week, I received by mail order a new paper by a researcher who has written about 30 papers so far, mainly about T reg cells and Il-10. She concludes Continue reading The desperate struggle for consistency
Took me some time to find the famous Forbes June 2007 reference but here it is
“The risk is that 20 years from now everyone gets tested and learns they have a 5% risk for developing 10 diseases and a 2% risk for 20 other diseases– and what we do is increase neurosis instead of improving health,” frets Yale University geneticist Richard Lifton.
A new Science Perspective Paper writes about “reliable noise” which may not be the best description for a valid observation Continue reading Noise is not annoying
and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:2
Yesterday’s farewell sermon of Joachim Funk in Gröbenzell reminded me to the chapter that I once learned by heart (in Greek) and let me today go for some pictures of Kapuzinergasse in Munich, where the walls of St. Anton hold this inscription in big letters (Schmerzhafte Kapelle und Kapuzinerkloste, St. Anton).
From Slashdot today:
Scientific discovery is fraught with false starts and blind alleys. As a result, labs accumulate vast amounts of valuable knowledge on what not to do, and what does not work. Trouble is, this knowledge is not shared using the usual method of scientific communication: the peer-reviewed article. It remains within the lab, or at the most shared informally among close colleagues. As it stands, the scientific culture discourages sharing negative results. Continue reading Blind alleys
From a recent email that I received
In theory, science research laboratories are always peaceful places, where pure knowledge is being pursued. However, in recent years some tragic episodes of workplace violence have disturbed this tranquility. Continue reading Lab violence