19.12.09

Defacing Money as Protest

If you thought that the opposition protests in Iran were all over and done with... just know it continues. It appeared after the first weeks of major clashes with the police the demonstrators turned to continued pacifist (think "Gandhi did not bring down the British Empire with cannons or armies: he did it with a pinch of salt and a spinning wheel") protest. One aspect in the defacing of money by stamping or writing political slogans, such as the large green victory V or printing Neda's photo with "death to dictator", or throwing in a swastika to make sure the point is getting across. Pretty intense. Apparently there are so many notes that the government has stopped trying to control them.

Example:

Top: Death to Khamenei is crossed out/colored
Bottom: Shame can not be erased by crossing out/coloring


I love the idea of hand delivering this messages to the masses, continually and obstructively, it's in the same vein at the vegetarian argument I wrote about earlier

Full article at Payvand (via Adbusters, I also stole that Gandhi quote from Adbusters)



Three Wondrous Answers



I first read this story by Thich Nhat Hanh in the Fall 1996 issue of Parabola, a magazine whose tagline was "Myth, Tradition, and the Search for Meaning". It's now the more descriptive "Where Spiritual Traditions Meet". It was appealing to me back in 1996 and it still is, so kudos to them for maintaining the same format all these years. Anitya who? Basically the magazine chooses a topic every for every issue (Fall 1996 was Peace, others included Fear, Ecstacy, Nature, Birth and Rebirth, The Ego and the I, The Garden, Fate and Fortune, etc. etc.) and explores it from the perspective of various spiritual traditions by essays, poetry and stories. To be honest I think the magazine could use some sprucing up to attract readership, but if they are doing well, then I'm happy to continue reading.

This story is called Three Wondrous Answers. The three questions are:
  • What is the best time to do each thing?
  • Who are the most important people to work with?
  • What is the most important thing to do at all times?
It is credited to The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation from 1975. The idea of live as it if was your last day really doesn't sit well with although I can understand the live in the moment message behind those kind of sentiments. This story is along the same lines but strikes a deeper chord with me, it's not just about living in the moment, but about embracing that moment, not because it may be you last, but because it's there here and now- so love it.


8.12.09

Frog. Dissected

Adam Voorhes makes incredible photographs of dismatled/dissected objects/organisms. Like this frog, for instance:



It's Nice That has the interview.

29.11.09

Hands down the best cookies ever. No Bacon Needed!

It's Sunday, November 29th. You wake up and think. "Mein Gott ist es schon die erste Adventsonntag??" bestimmt! And you need to make some cookies because your neighbours are having coffee time to celebrate this wonderfully joyous season. What you do NOT do is make bacon cookies, because they're just gross, no matter what anyone says. Meat does not a cookie make!

So what to bake? The Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie, of course. This is the cookie of the famous urban legend, but of course the recipe given in the legend is nothing near what the actual cookie is. NM, just to show how wrong that recipe is, and how they would never charge $250 for the recipe, have posted it on their website. I discovered the recipe years ago and it immediately became my favourite home-made cookie (my favourite store-bought is of course President's Choice The Decadent. I mean it is afterall 40% chocolate).

Here then is the fool proof, low-tech guide to making the perfect chocolate chip cookie:

The recipe calls for creaming together a stick (1/2 cup) butter with a mixture of brown (1c) and white (3tbsp) sugar. The trick here is if you don't have an electric mixer, just make a double boiler and let the butter slowly melt. Don't let it go to far though, just enough to let is soften up and then mix it good with a fork. For this you'll need a good sized metal bowl and a smaller pot. put your sugar and butter in the bowl and set it over the hot water. For the rest of the mixing, the recipe also calls for an electric mixer, but your fork will do you just fine!

Note the double boiler:


You should end up with something like this creamy smooth mixture of sugar and butter:


Add and egg and 2 tsp of vanilla extract:


For the dry ingredients mix 1.75 cups flour, 0.5 tsp baking powder, 0.5 tsp baking soda and a 0.5 tsp salt:



And slowly add it to your buttery sugar egg vanilla mixture:



Now come the two best parts. The secret ingredient is espresso (1.5 tsp). The recipe calls for instant, but I don't see why you shouldn't use regular. Go for something dark if you have it, and grind it fresh if you can.


And of course the chocolate chips (1.5 cups). I use PC's The Decadent, or course! (Yes, I brought a kilo of chocolate chips to Germany with me, do you know how hard it is to find chocolate chips here??)


Mix it in good:


The recipe says you can get two dozen cookies, but I made them a bit bigger and got 18:


Bake for approximately 20 minutes at 150C


Awesome, Awesome, Awesome! They are soft and delicious. The combo brown sugar, coffee, and decadent choco chips is amazing. I pig out every time I make them. There aren't gonna be enough for Adventsontag. ENJOY!


28.11.09

Bacon Cookies (read yuck!)

Pork and maple syrup I can understand. Veggies are even better: the way that vegetables, cooked just right, begin to caramelize boes perfect with the sticky sweetness of maple. Especially autumn and winter veggies (your friends will think squash and maple syrup .is gourmet!). But bacon? in cookies? with chocolate?

One of the hottest cookies this year is Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies. If you haven't yet hopped on the bacon dessert bandwagon, then now is the time.




27.11.09

Sizzla Canceled

The previously reported protest, occurred with approximately 400 people:




resulting in the cancellation of the concert by Sizzla, a homophobic reggae singer!

26.11.09

Going Rouge

love it...



BBC:

Meanwhile, a book of critical essays about Palin, with a strikingly similar cover to Going Rogue, has been confusing some US media outlets.

Pictures of the book, called Going Rouge, have been used by USA Today and Fox News to illustrate their coverage of the former vice-presidential candidate's memoirs.

And, according to the LA Times, CNN mistakenly reported that White House officials were sharing copies of Going Rouge, when they had actually been reading Palin's book.





Peace Now For Burma

Forward Excessively






Money in Genetic Diseases

Nature announced earlier this week on the bankruptcy of Iceland's deCODE, a pioneer in monetizing genomics and self-described "global leader in analyzing and understanding the human genome."

They made waves back in the day for having exclusive access to the icelandic population. Basically, that's significant because you can obtain detailed information on many many individuals of a recently shared common ancestry, and an island (read isolated) population to boot.

Indeed, many (102) publications were amassed, but no drugs were marketed:
But the business of turning genetic discoveries into cash has long been difficult, and many such firms have converted themselves into drug-discovery operations. Unfortunately for deCODE, it could not develop drugs quickly enough to satisfy investors.
And while the argument is made that the case of deCODE is not systemic, the article alse reports that "This year the personal-genomics company 23andMe, based in Mountain View, California, announced two rounds of lay-offs, lost one of its two co-founders and announced a series of product and price restructurings."

23andMe, famously co-founded by the wife of Google co-counder Sergey Brin, basically surveys your genome for common disease-associate variants. Their latest offering is to map your ancestery:
Relative Finder is a breakthrough feature that uses autosomal DNA to help you find relatives from all parts of your family tree. With Relative Finder, you can grow your family tree like never before, and discover relatives you never knew you had.
Which I imagine means they measure how many genetic variants you have in common  with all the other people in their growing database and maybe throw in some statistical tests and then tell you that you're related, distantly, to so-and-so. I'm still at a loss as to the exact purpose of it, aside from entertainment - which could very well be enough of an incentive for a real business model.

Sequence on!


In a Hot Tub of Evolution

Just to show you how divided evolutionary biologists are in regards to how to approach the evolution-creationism debate, I present you with Marck Changizi's The Jacuzzification of Evolution (Jacussification apparently means being so comfortable in the jacuzzi that you don't realize how crazy that thing is. I think you all know how much I love hot hot saunas, so no comment there).
In particular, we get used to evolution. We scientists, especially. We’re so accustomed to evolution that when we find skeptics of evolution, we think of them as poor, blind, close-minded saps who can’t see the most obvious truths.

Let’s start with the obviousness of evolution. First and foremost…evolution ain’t obvious! Evolution is perhaps the craziest true theory ever!   "Let me get this straight: Add a teaspoon of heritable variation, a ton of eating one another, and epochs of time…get yourself a superzoo of fantastically engineered creatures. Yeah, that’s not crazy!”

The only reason most of us scientists don’t find evolution crazy is that we’re jacuzzified to a wrinkley pulp. And this level of comfort with the bizarre theory of evolution can be counterproductive when trying to explain evolution to the uninitiated.
I'm basically of the complete opposite opinion. Evolution is obvious, it's ALL AROUND US. It's not abstract or crazy or obscure. Darwin saw artificial selection in his pigeons and every year we see natural selection with the emergence of new flu strains. Where do you think those things come from? It seems quite obvious to me.


22.11.09

The Only 5 Things You Need To Know About Writing

From Merlin Mann:
  1. Set reasonable goals and honor them
  2. Draft with complete abandon; edit with surgical precision
  3. When you sit down to write, focus without distraction; when you’re not writing, keep it off your mind
  4. Read great books (actual big books, not blogs or magazines) as often as you can
  5. Just write, and just keep writing, and just keep writing, writing, writing. Then write more.


21.11.09

Kraut! Rock!




"Don't worry," this narrative structure seems to say "we all go slack and paunchy in the end. Even the visionaries."
Momus has a great post of a BBC4 documentary on Krautrock with all six segments embedded. Both his little critique article and the docu itself are worth getting familiar with.





20.11.09

Smash Homophobia



Smash Homophobia is a blog for organizing protests are concerts of homophobic singers. I mean singers that oppenly call for violence against gays and lesbians. From the blog:
A concert by the Jamaican dancehall "artists" Sizzla has been announced for Nov. 26th in kesselhaus at the Kulturbrauerei in Prenzlauerberg. Sizzla is known for his homophobic, misanthropic lyrics, which sometimes openly call for the murder of homosexuals. For instance, he singes in the song "To the point" (translated) "Lesbians and gay men, I say, they should be dead. I trust in Babylon for a second. I go and shoot gay men with a weapon." Similar messages are found in at least a dozen other of his songs.




Have yourself a good DNA!

This is too cool. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press is well known withing the biological community (specifically molecular genetics) as the go-to place for courses (at CSH itself) and printed matter (including manuals, text books, biographies, and so much more).

Now, they offer you, yes, you - the English-speaking elementary school student who wants to be well-informed in a world of increasingly complex health-related and environmental issues - your very own book series!

Enjoy Your Cells!









I love the Gene Machines cover. This is just what the children of today need. Christmas anyone?




16.11.09

Open Access Petition

Forward Excessively, even if you are not in science, this is an important issue around accessibility and business models of published scientific material.

=========
Dem Bundestag liegt eine Petition zur Kostenfreiheit von wissenschaftlichen Publikationen vor: Link

Wer sie unterstuetzen moechte, kann das noch bis zum 1.12. tun. Wird eine öffentliche Petition innerhalb von drei Wochen nach ihrer Bekanntmachung von mindestens 50.000 Personen unterstützt, behandelt der Petitionsausschuss die Petition in einer öffentlichen Sitzung. Diese Dreiwochenfrist läuft im vorliegenden Fall am 1.12. ab.
=========
A petition regarding the free cost of scientific publications is being presented to the German Federal Parliament (Link).

If you would like to support the petition, you can do so until Dec. 1st. If a minimium of 50,000 people support the petition within three weeks of it's introduction, it will receive public consideration. In this case the three weeks end on Dec. 1st.

Text of Petition

The German Bundestag may decide that scientific publications resulting from publicly funded research, must be accessible free of chargeto all citizens. Institutions which  are autonomously conducted by state research funding, are urged to adopt such rules and create the appropriate technical conditions.

Justification

According to the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, the public sector supports research and development with about 12 billion euros annually. The results of this research, however, are mostly published in fee-based journals. It is not appropriate that the taxpayer must pay again to access research already funded by them.

Because of the high cost and their large numbers, scientific research journals are available only in a few libraries. To most people, access to the science they fund it not only difficult, but in fact completely closed.

The exclusion of citizens from science is not only dangerous but also unnecessary. Other countries have already implemented similar projects. The US-American National Institutes of Health (NIH) organization requires that all publications of research financed by it are accessible to the public at a central location within 12 months of publication. Thereby, the basic structure of the scientific publication system is not changed.
=========

Ok, will take a few minutes of your time because you'll have to register. It's all in German, but it's not hard! Here's what to do:

On the linked page click registrieren (register).

Then just fill in the fields, they're self explanatory, but you may get stuck on:

Passwort Wählen (choose your password - minimum 8 characters long and cannot be the username or email address).
Passwort wiederholen (repeat your password)
Anrede (title)
Name (your last name)
Vorname (first name)
Straße und Hausnr. (street name and number)
Postleitzahl (zip code)
Ich bin einverstanden (I agree, click on that)

Fill in the funky word game, and you're done. Activate your account through email and then you can sign the petition.

Go back to the website, log on and go to the petition again. In the column "Anzahl Mitzeichnungen" (number of signatures) click on "Petition mitzeichnen". You'll get a big green notice that says "Bestätigung der Mitzeichnung" (confirmation of signing)

At the time of posting they're just over 20%.

12.11.09

Mauerfall 2009, recap

If you aren't overwhelmed with coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Mauerfall, here are some really good items:

The Big picture had a collection of wall pix with the same location after the fall overlayed. Very nice.

The world's How We Got Here has a collection of longer interviews aired on The World commemorating the event.

Also, don't forget the 1200 dominoes that fell:








For my part, I didn't go to Brandenburg Tor, or any of the concerts even, I know it was really bad, but after facing the crowds at the giant puppets I couldn't imagine going again. Instead I spend the entire day at the sauna with a friend. Time well spent :)


4.11.09

We're just as irrational as you!

This Week In Science is a science podcast from KDVS radio and the University of California, Davis. This is how they introduce the show:
Mankind gains knowledge of the world only through reason. If knowledge is to be shared with the masses, the masses must be reasonable aswell. We will not make the ground-breaking discoveries of the future based on the impulses or opinions of an irrational world. Science does not make up a democratic decision, nor does an ideology. This is objective, reasoned, methodical calling of the intellect and... it's about to be broadcast live to the rational masses here on... This Week In Science.
I don't think I've ever seen so many completely and inexcusable wrong sentences in one spot!!! Scientists are NOT robots and the are NOT reasonable. They are passionate, irrational people who love to discover and think about things. Why is irrationality so difficult to accept? I mean we're not economists here, right? Humans are by their very nature contradictory and irrational - scientists are no different.

Oh, and as an aside, decisions are indeed made on a democratic basis, peer-review journals based their decisions on the (anonymous) opinions of experts in any given field (but the editor also has a large stake). Another example is the demotion of Pluto, that was decided at an international meeting of astronomers.



2.11.09

Eatin' Meat!

Good has a nice review of Jonathan Safran Foer's new book Eating Animals: “A straightforward case for vegetarianism is worth writing, but it’s not what I’ve written here.”
The book is rather a perplexing, complicated set of provocations disguised as stories intended to raise more questions than answers.


I love this concept of planting seeds of thought in non-belligerent ways. My Kitchener-born, Berlin-loving vegan roomie received a care-package from an old room-mate back home with articles from local papers. Included was a piece from the The Toronto Star "Where they grow our junk food", which appeared on the front page of the Sunday edition (Oct 11). I love that is was featured on the front page, and that it has a captivating headline that makes you think. Ja, Just where does our junk food come from? There are lots of things lacking (it is quite short), but as an introduction to getting people to make the link between their health and... their food and... their obesity and... their environment and... their local economy and... the future of farming is commendable. Encouraging people to make healthier choices, for their health, their local growers, and their local economies and environs is an encouraging start. And so I love that a best-selling popular author throws his weight behind an important global issue such as meat eating in a format that allows people to begin thinking without feeling that they are being told to (or being beat over the head).

Oh, you can also find an interesting lecture about humour from Foer at the same link.


1.11.09

Books, Evolved

If you love evolution, and in case you've missed it, you will be interested in a slate of new books aimed squarely at the lay person by several big-hitters.

1.
Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion (Full disclosure: I am an evolutionary biologist, and I am not an Athiest, nor could I get past the first chapter of that book), who recently stepped down from his post as Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, releases The Greatest Show on Earth. You can hear a full length lecture oh Dawkins discussing the books contents in this poscast from Science and the City. The terrible thing is he makes evolution absolutely unappealing. the amount of exciting discoveries to include in such a book is astounding but I can't imagine, after listening to that lecture, any lay person who would get excited enought o buy the book, let alone anyone who really does believe in Creationism. And that's excatly the point, Dawkins' book is all about the argument of Creationism vs. Evolution. I just wonder how many self-identified Creationist lay-people will actually pick it up.

2.
The other book the just came out is from the literary powerhouse that is Carl Zimmer. Here is how he described his book, The Tangled Bank:
I envisioned my potential readers as curious people who didn’t know much about evolution–what the idea actually is and how scientists study it. I envisioned people who might be interested in learning the nuts and bolts of processes like selection and drift, and who might be intrigued by sexually deceptive wasps, whales with legs, the viruses that dominate our genome, and other features of life that evolution allows us to understand.
Zimmer excels at making science accessible and he has a long standing focus on Evolution. He is a natural for this kind of book. But he really is putting out a text book. I have to admit, I haven't read either, but there is a clear difference in the offerings.

3.
Jerry Coyne, a well known and respected evolutionary biologist (as is Dawkins) based in Chicago give his own offering: Why Evolution is True. To be honest I haven't gotten much into Coyne's Blog or the reviews of this book. Coyne often takes part in and argues against creationists, which is commendable, but according to this review at penmachine, he doesn't let that infiltrate his book. respect!

4.
Ok, but as for my recommendation, I can tell you I have actually read a laybook on evolution that I loved and is very accessible. It's the mainstay from Ernst Mayr (also a very well known and respected evolutionary biologist, now deceased): What Evolution Is. Not only is this book very accessible, it is wonderfully written and lays out clearly and concisely what exactly we are talking about when we say Evolution. For example, this is what evolution is, summarized as Darwin's Explanatory Model of Natural Selection (5 facts and 3 inferences):

Fact 1. Every population has such high fertility that its size would increase exponentially if not constrained.

Fact 2. But, the size of populations, except for temporary annual fluctuations, remains stable over time.

Fact 3.
The resources available to every species are limited.
Inference 1. There is intense competition among members of a species.

Fact 4.
No two individuals of a population are exactly the same.
Inference 2. Individuals of a population differ from each other in the probability of survival (i.e. Natural Selection).

Fact 5.
Man of the differences among the individuals of a population are, at least in part, heritable.
Inference 3. Natural selection, continued over many generations, results in evolution.



All Over The Kiez

Shortly after arriving in Hamburg you will invariable discover the dichotomy of the city. Everyone remarks on it. Hamburg is a very rich city (and way too expensive and beautiful). On the one hand you have the über-chic centre and the new Hafen City and directly beside are the anti-über-chic (but chic nonetheless) schanzenviertel and St. Pauli. St. Pauli is most famous for housing the city's red-light district (including the dreadful reeperbahn), and all the industry you'd imagine to find there - including a men-only street (yes, there are big gates blocking off the street, all the women on the street are behind windows).

all over the kiez is a photo exhibit that is not a photo exhibit. The photographer has taken to exploring his neighbourhood (kiez), you can see all the pix on the web-site or by clicking on the geographic co-ordinates on this handy map. Ordinarily I wouldn't get so excited about this kind of photo essay, but I love how completely untypical they picture are. Admittedly I am no Hamburg aficionado, but I could only place on building (the old war bunker, which is very distinct). It reminds of the gritty side of Germany, that you tend to forget even in the grittier parts of Hamburg.