22.12.07

Work it!

I thought Instructables.com was pretty cool but now:

Evil Mad Scientists! How cool is that!

Everybody, get to work. Quick!


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20.12.07

This is Parra

And I think I love it!



DoucheBag

WorldChanging: Changing the world?

It's amazing how mainstream being eco-friendly has become in the past few years. It is almost like if you want people to take action on something, you need to make it cool and sexy and marketable. take Worldchanging.com for instance. It has been around for a while and is getting more popular but I have to admit I only just stumbled upon it last week. At first I thought "cool, this looks like a great resource" but after perusing the site for a bit, I wasn't so excited anymore. For instance here is an article that obviously caught my eye: "Biomimicry Certificate Program". So of course when a Biologist thinks biomimicry, we think of poisonous butterflies. But hold on, biomimicry also means people literally mimicking biological processes. "Do you personally want to use biomimicry to redesign the world?" who can say no to that but can I believe that "...many people they have taught now teach biomimicry at universities, primary and secondary schools, and as consultants." well there are some very good points on the topic but I failed to see how it was immediately relevant to the average person looking to "change the world".

Anyroad, as you can imagine there is a book to go along with the site: "WorldChanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century". But what do I really need to buy a book for? Here is an excerpt that is provided on the web page "In the middle of Denver, in the middle of December, you can walk into
most any supermarket and buy a ripe mango. This has been true long
enough that almost nobody stops to think of the remarkable distance
that mango traveled or of the tree it fell from, which is probably
enjoying a balmy tropical day on the other side of the planet.
Proponents of eating local food balk at the ubiquitous midwinter mango.
Why? Because they think about the baggage that mango flew in with." yeah, big surprise. Most conscience consumers realize these things. The title on that blurb is "Buy Local". Isn't that old news? As in "Think Global, Act Local"? Did everybody miss out on that in school?

I was curious as to what people had to comment about this book. Over at Amazon I found some very low ranking scores and one person recommended this book: "The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet" which is published by none other than the Cato Institute. Ironically Cato is something I found out about some months ago but have only started to dig into this past week. (Did I say I was busy in the lab? um, I meant I have lots of incubations). Baiscally, this book in the complete opposite of WorldChanging. So far, the point seems to be: "everything is great! Be Happy, Don't Worry!" Didn't I also hear that somewhere else before also?

Well I'm not sure how much of this Cato Institute I can support but their seminar "The Mind of the Market: The Case for Capitalism from an Evolutionary Perspective" should at least be entertaining. Oh, did I mention that Evolution is everywhere (but that doesn't mean anybody understands it). As for WorldChanging, I still have to wonder how much is really useful information vs marketing gimick, but if it gets people turned onto eco-friendly, there must be some redeeming qualities in there.

16.12.07

What is Life?

Erwin Schrödinger, 1944:

"How can the events in space and time which take place within the special boundary of a living organism be acocunted for by physics and chemistry? ...The obvious inability of present-day physics and chemistry to account for such events is no reason at all for doubting that they can be accounted for by those sciences."

Chains and Networks (read Interconnectedness)

I was browsing around Amazon when I found "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" on the New York Times best-sellers list for non-fiction. Here is an excerpt of a review from The Washington Post:

"...almost everything we eat has used enormous amounts of fossil fuels to get to our tables. Oil products are part of the fertilizers that feed plants, the pesticides that keep insects away from them, the fuels used by the trains and trucks that transport them across the country, and the packaging in which they're wrapped. We're addicted to oil, and we really like to eat."

"We've lost touch with the natural loops of farming, in which livestock and crops are connected in mutually beneficial circles."

These are great points and I am reminded of a Buddhist outlook on the situation. In the days of my M.Sc. I sat down to a wonderful home-cooked Indian meal from a friend of my roommate. The three of us plus another friend sat down to eat. We decided it would be appropriate to show our appreciation for the food and so each of us in turn said something (you can imagine the usual thanks offerings). When it was my turn I thanked the cook but also talked about the grocery store, the farmers, the transport companies, the employees of those companies, the truck manufacturer and their employees, the road and highway planners and those that maintain them, big gas & oil, and on and on. The point was that although our friend had prepared the meal there were countless people behind it, just like in every single thing we do everyday- none of us are independent.

If this book helps to get people to think about these topics more that will be a great feat and although I will probably never read the book, I have to be somehow glad to see such topics on the best-sellers list.

5.12.07

The Intellectual Entrepreneur

Another Bio article on salon.com, Craig Venter is the Future, more focused on the changing trends on how science is done:

"In the 20th century, the tenured professional supplanted the
independent gentleman scientist: James Watson succeeded Charles Darwin.
In the 21st century, the tenured professional is becoming outmoded,
replaced by the intellectual entrepreneur: The mantle is passing from
Watson to Venter."

In the end they conclude with a somewhat more comforting thought:

"In fact, Venter and his fellow intellectual entrepreneurs differ from
20th century tenured professionals most of all in their resemblance to
the researchers who the tenured professionals ostensibly eradicated:
19th century gentleman scientists, such as Darwin, who answered only to
themselves."

But although the tenure scientist is a different species to the "gentleman scientist" every professor I have met so far has a story that runs through all their research. I guess the fundmental difference is who they associate with.

Evolution Through Genetic Exchange

A colleague of mine mentioned a 'new' book on Hybrid speciation: Evolution Through Genetic Exchange (Michael L. Arnold). Acutally I found it came out in '06 (hardcover) but was recently released as a softcover. I was a little bit sceptical at first because it didn't really look like a hybrid speciation book, but those concerns are put to rest on the first page where Arnold points out that what he basically genetic exchange means hybridization. He begins by giving a brief treatment of the history of how hybridization (i.e. hybrid speciation) has been marginalized and/or disregarded by established post-synthesis evolutionary thought. Well I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it's easy to read and I think pretty relevant to the new views on evolution and speciation being passed around. The downside is that the paperback costs an unbelievable 50EUR! Mann! I am getting the library to order this for sure.

4.12.07

Zotero

Zotero looks like a pretty useful plug-in for Firefox that helps to organize research projects while on the web. You can click on little icons in the url line and instantly add information to a database that is stored on your computer and hence available offline. You can also export all the information, including papers, for use in other programs.

1.12.07

The Testis as a Conduit for Genomic Plasticity

This has to be the coolest conference that I never heard about! Kudos to the organizers for publishing transactions, something that most other meeting are not involved in.

The Testis as a Conduit for Genomic Plasticity