Resolute Vagrant

The Deluge

2010-03-07T07:02:00.001-08:00

You probably won't be able to find last weeks (27.2.10 - 5.3.10) edition of The Economist in print, but you can still get the digital version of all articles featured in the special report of managing information at their website. The articles are all really well thought out and clearly show how information management should be a topic on almost everyone's mind. I mean this is way beyond issues of privacy, and moves into what is really so interesting about all that information. Like did you know the Royal Shakespeare Company used data mining to increase subscription rates?

For instance, in the internet companies article, they highlight how Google has developed the most advanced spell-check (which Microsoft had previously spend countless millions) by analyzing misspelled search queries and the links which people follow. Also voice recognition is not about trying to understand what the person is saying but having a ginormous database which allows an algorithm to determine the statistical probability of what you just said. In other words:

"'Understanding' turns out to be overrated, and statistical analysis goes a lot of the way."

WOW!

Dust off your R manuals, people.

I see no reason why smaller companies with proprietary information (info about subscribers or visitors to film festivals, teatres. Customers at car garages, etc., etc.) can do the same thing. The thing is once you have enough information you're statistical power is already quite good. You don't need a tetrabyte-sized database. It depends on what you want to extract from that information and the know-how to do it.

My completely unreasonable statistics book recommendation is the completely unreasonably priced Fundamental of Biostatistics:

Apparently there's a new edition due this year, which will also be insanely expensive. But other than the price, this book has just about the clearest explanation of fundamental statistical problems I've ever read. By which I mean to say it's actually enjoyable to read. Don't mind that it's biostatistics, you can use the information in any variety of situations.

Get if from your library and start analyzing your own data, kids!

Rollercoaster

2010-03-06T09:25:00.001-08:00

What do you do when you're obsessing about somebody that that gives you mixed signals? Someone who is driving you mad with zero communication? You listen to this song by The Whitest Boy Alive and get over it. That's what you do.

Rollercoaster Ride

It's better that I believe
That it's over,

Waiting everyday for a line,
For a sign from you.

It's a rollercoaster ride
Of emotion
Paralyzing me,
Paralyzing me.

It's better that we build
On the dreams in our own world,
Than a bridge in between the two
That could never hold our weight,
That could never hold our weight,
That could never hold our weight.

Free Audio Books

2010-02-24T11:01:00.001-08:00

Lit2Go is a project from Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse. I have no idea what that means but I do know that you can get a massive amount of free audio books, basically all kindergarten to grade 12 for free. Check out the iTunes site for complete books from Dickens, Twain, Montgomery, Wilde, plus tons of fairy and folk tales (Japanese, Slavonic, Western). I discovered this jem of a story from Aesop:

The Kingdom of the Lion

The beasts of the field and forest had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. During his reign he made a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for a universal league, in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, "Oh, how I have longed to see this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the side of the strong." And after the Hare said this, he ran for his life.

Crying Won't Help.

2010-02-10T05:57:00.001-08:00

Click Opera, The blog of Momus, is done.

It was good while it lasted.

Creatures of the Deep Deep

2010-01-23T03:38:00.001-08:00

The BBC has a great interactive graphic (including videos) featuring research to discover life at the high pressure environments of the deep sea trenches.

Brands and Junks

2010-01-21T15:45:00.001-08:00

This video is amazing, but I'm very unimpressed with gay Mr. Clean working at the zoo. What's the point?? Every character get's either bad-ass or completely expected and predictable and no ethnic, religious, political, or otherwise group is made fun of. What gives?? Aside from this major annoyance it's still pretty amazing. It comes ironically from a fancy french fashion/style website. What's that all about?

La vie des marques from Materialiste Paris on Vimeo.

Another great video is for some kind of "energy food". I'm not even interested in finding out about it, but the advert is itself worth it.

Big News for the Little Guys?

2010-01-21T15:36:00.001-08:00

I'm not quite sure I understand how GlaxoSmithKline came to this decision. It does seem commendable, but I'm not quite sure about that, either.

GSK has in their R&D vaults some 13,500 compounds which have some kind of effect on the parasite the causes malaria. Basically what that means is they've used high-throughput biochemistry and developed an assay to test hundreds of thousands of compounds for their ability to cause some kind of change in the parasite. The rub is, in those circumstances, it's not even clear what each compound is. That's what all the R&D that comes afterward is for. There are many open questions that need to be addressed before a drug can be put out. What exactly is the compound? what does it do physiologically? What will it do to humans? etc. etc.

Well now GSK is releasing the list of those 13,500 compounds publicly, which sounds like a payload for academic (and public) scientists and is basically unheard of for profit-driven private companies, giant pharma included. It is amazing to have access to that information, but I wonder what is the real value of it. It's the first step in a long process to develop drugs. Academia is certainly not know for drug development, that fits squarely into GSKs hands, no? so what should academia do with all that information? And why would GSK give it out? In related news, they also announced guarantees to make drugs against malaria and HIV more affordable the world over.

Marshall Nirenberg, dead at 82

2010-01-21T06:38:00.001-08:00

There is an excellent obituary in the New York Times on Marshall Nirenberg, one of the scientists who cracked the genetic code.

In short the genetic code is that DNA is transcribed into mRNA (m=messenger) and is read in codons, which are little chunks of three nucleotides long by complimentary anti-codons on tRNA (t=transfer) which are attached to amino acids. There are 64 codons which always correspond to the same amino acid, the building blocks of proteins. The obituary has a nice little summary of the experiment (or check out the wiki link above).

I remember being just awed and completely inspired by the experimental beauty of this when I was an undergrad. I still don't understand how people could not find that stuff fascinating.

Defacing Money as Protest

2009-12-19T23:41:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-19T06:26:00.001-08:00

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.

Frog. Dissected

2009-12-08T08:08:00.001-08:00

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

It's Nice That has the interview.

Hands down the best cookies ever. No Bacon Needed!

2009-11-29T04:35:00.001-08:00

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!

Bacon Cookies (read yuck!)

2009-11-28T03:15:00.001-08:00

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.

Sizzla Canceled

2009-11-27T06:03:00.001-08:00

The previously reported protest, occurred with approximately 400 people:

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

Going Rouge

2009-11-26T23:48:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-26T08:17:00.001-08:00

Forward Excessively

Money in Genetic Diseases

2009-11-26T04:03:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-26T00:56:00.001-08:00

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.

The Only 5 Things You Need To Know About Writing

2009-11-22T01:07:00.001-08:00

From Merlin Mann:

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

Kraut! Rock!

2009-11-21T04:18:00.001-08:00

"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.

Smash Homophobia

2009-11-20T09:08:00.001-08:00

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!

2009-11-20T06:29:00.001-08:00

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?

Open Access Petition

2009-11-16T07:35:00.001-08:00

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%.

Mauerfall 2009, recap

2009-11-12T10:31:00.001-08:00

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 :)

We're just as irrational as you!

2009-11-04T15:36:00.001-08:00

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.

Eatin' Meat!

2009-11-02T03:03:00.000-08:00

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.

Books, Evolved

2009-11-01T13:29:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-01T12:42:00.001-08:00

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.

Germany's New Cabinet

2009-10-30T02:38:00.001-07:00

Here you can learn about the people controlling one of the world's largest economies.

Spiegel Online presents an interactive guide to Germany's new cabinet. The government is once again formed as a collation, this time between the dominant Christian Democratic Union (teamed with their Bavarian sister-party the Christian Social Union) and the Free Democratic Party (Liberals, in the original European sense of the word). It seems the favourite wonderkid is the vietnam-born Philipp Rösler, who is at once the youngest member and the first foreign-born minister (Health) in Germany. He's also been a member of the Free Democrats since 19.

$music in $city at $link

2009-10-27T05:15:00.001-07:00

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

$music = Experimental;
$city = Berlin;
$link = Echtzeitmusik; # <http://www.echtzeitmusik.de/index.php>

print "For all your $music music needs in $city visit $link!\n";

exit;

German for Sissy

2009-10-27T04:56:00.001-07:00

German's have some interesting ways of telling men they're sissies. I wouldn't read too much into them, but perhaps they give a clue into the male German psychee. Many are expressions which describe sissy-like actions.

Here are my favourites:

Warmduscher - Warm-showerer
schattenparker - Shadow-parker (so your car doesn't overheat)
foliengriller - Foil-griller (you put your meat on aluminum foil instead of directly on the grill)
s-bahn-in-fahrtrichtung-sitzer - in-the-direction-of-travel-sitter (as to avoid nausea from looking out the window in the wrong direction)
sitzpinkler - pee-sittinger
Joghurt-mit-Löffel-Esser - Yogurt-with-spoon-eater
Frauen-über-die-Straße-lasser - Women-across-the-road-letter
bei-gelb-Bremser - Yellow-light-braker
Frauenversteher - Women-Understanderer
Sauna-unten-Sitzer - Sauna-under-siter (You sit on the lower level of the sauna where it's cooler)
Turnbeutel-Vergesser - Sports-bag-forgetterer
Homobremser - Homo-braker

But there are also easier ones:

Weichei - Soft eggs (eggs = testicles)
Flachwichser - lousy wanker
Boxershortsbügler - Boxershorts-ironer
Muttersöhnchen - Little mama's boy
Memme - Sissy/coward
softi - softie
Lappen/Waschlappen - Wash cloth
Sissi - Sissy

eXperimontag @ Madame Claude, Berlin

2009-10-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

For one week, Madame Claude (Lübbenerstr. 19 in Kreuzberg) was my favourite newly visited bar/concert space in Berlin. This is because every Monday they feature all varieties of experimental music (eXperimontag). Now, when I say to friends, I like noise, they laugh, or get a headache, but really, people, there are some great noise bands out there.

So last Monday a new friend from Canada, Paolo, whom I met in Banff in August, happened to be in Berlin, and so it went that Madame Claude was the perfect spot to spend a relaxed Monday evening.

Upon entrance, you are warmly greeted by a corner hommage to Twin Peaks, which immediatly gives one a good feeling:

Supposedly the place is a former bordello, but that may already have been back in the day. The nice part is that it's decorated upside down (sorry no pix). Which means that the ceiling is decorated with garbage bins housing lights, coffee tables, chairs, upside down bookshelves (with books), magazine racks (filled), umbrella holders (also filled) to give one the impression of walking ont he ceiling. On the ground the coffee tables are turned upside also, so you place your drinks on the underside of your table, with legs sticking into the air.

On the night I visited with Paolo, Acivity Centre, a relatively well-known duo from Berlin, were slatted to play but one of the members fell ill, and so it was a solo performance from Burkhard Beins. We were both really impressed with Beins, not only for the music, a perfect blend of manipulated string music, including a geiger counter, but also his performance. It was so nice to see just how he was creating the sounds, and building up his music. This was followed by Bly Kobber, a young Dane noise musician, who relied heavily on his computer to manipulate his voice, trumpet and harmonica, among other sounds. In terms of the electronic aspect of noise/experimental both were fantastic, we left

The crammped concert room at Madame Claude.

There are two downsides to Madame Claude. The concert room is really very small, so it get's packed quickly, and when people don't make room, you risk the chance of not even getting in. Then there's the people, I'm not quite sure why, but the place is overrun with English-speakers, who can be very annoying indeed (see below). I'm allowed to say that since I am one.

So last night I made a return visit to see two performances by Americans with my friend Brian. It was much less enjoyable than last week, for two reasons, the music was more ambient, which was really not doing it for me, and the audience was exponentially more annoying than last week. TIP: Do not belittle the performers! Even if they ramble on without aim about Big Foot and consist of french women called Celestial Om. If you don't dig it, geh mal raus! Anyroad, the first performer Animal Hospital made a serious effort, but I just wasn't diggin' it, I guess ambient music live is not really doin' it for me. After a pause came Daniel Higgs and a French woman, who I think was indeed called Clesestial Om. She performed with a synth and thunderstorm background sounds. Think RockyHorrorPictureShow meets the 80s. A solid performance, but also not really doing it for me. Higgs played afterwards, but I couldn't make it through the first song. But also the heckling from the crown on the part of Higgs appearance was really inappropriate and made for a bad atmosphere. I think I just need to be more selective on the noise vs ambient aspects of eXperimontag in the future.

Eating the Dinosaur

2009-10-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

Eating the Dinosaur is a new book by Chuck Klosterman. I just love these passages about the art of interviewing in the first chapter from Ira Glass, host of This American Life:

They can tell by my questions that I'm really, really interested and really, really thinking about what they're saying, in a way that only happens in nature when you're falling in love with someone. When else does that experience happen? If you're falling in love with someone, you have conversations where you're truly revealing yourself...I think small intimacy that doesn't extend beyond a single conversation is still intimacy. Even if the basis behind that conversation is purely commercial, there can be moments of real connection with another person. In an interview, we have the apparatus of what generates intimacy -- asking someone to bare himself or herself. And if you're the person being asked the questions, and if you're normal, it's hard not to have it work on your heart.

and Chris Heath, Journalist:

If a question is interesting, it is very difficult to resist answering it, because you will usually find your own answer interesting to yourself. If you have any ego at all, or a desire to share your experience and thought processes, then you may also imagine your answer will be of interest to other people. But that lure and appeal would quickly break down in a real conversation without a second factor: the person asking the question must be interested in hearing the answer. There's no single bigger reason why people answer questions. Here, of course, lies the biggest difference between a successful interviewer and an unsuccessful one: the successful one makes the interviewee feel as though he or she is interested in the answers. The unsuccessful interviewer -- and I have sat in or listened to enough interviews to know, unfortunately, and disappointingly, how common they are -- does not."

I'm gearing up to release a podcast on Genetics, in which I want to eventually have interviews with scientists. I'd love to make my interviews even half as captivating as the average on This American Life.

Again, via Metafilter

no. 23: Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

2009-10-25T04:02:00.001-07:00

I'm probably the last person to learn about Hugh MacLeod. This guy is all-round kick ass in the motivating creativity department. In 2004 he released a free eBook: How To Be Creative <PDF> which is a serious kick in the butt to get your ideas off the ground.

Anyroad, now he has a print book called Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity which is so nicely summarized in a post from this blog at No Depression. There seems to be a large amount of overlap between the publications.

Some of my faourites:

11.
The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

15.
Dying young is overrated. Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work. The bars of West Hollywood, London, and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. Meanwhile the competition is at home, working their asses off.

17.
The world is changing. If you want to be able to afford groceries in five years, I’d recommend listening closely to the (people who push change) and avoiding the (people who resist change). In order to navigate the New Realities you have to be creative - not just within your particular profession, but in everything. Your way of looking at the world will need to become ever more fertile and original. The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries. They’re easy enough to find if you make the effort, if you’ve got something worthwhile to offer in return. Avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct; they are extinction.

Check out his blog and drawings at Gaping Void.

via Metafilter.

Darwin: The Opera

2009-10-14T00:12:00.001-07:00

This looks orders of magnitude better than Jesus Christ: Super-star! And is probably the best performance that I'll never see.

Tomorrow, in a year is "a Darwin electro-opera" with music from none-other than The Knife, who give me goosebumps just by thinking about them. They teamed up with Danish performance group Hotel pro Forma. From the web-site:

Description
The world seen through the eyes of Charles Darwin forms the basis for the performance Tomorrow, in a year. Theatre production company Hotel Pro Forma’s striking visuals blend with pop-duo The Knife’s ground-breaking music to create a new species of electro-opera.

An opera singer, a pop singer and an actor perform The Knife’s music and represent Darwin, time and nature on stage. Six dancers form the raw material of life. Together with the newest technology in light and sound, our image of the world as a place of incredible variation, similarity and unity is re-discovered.

Concept
The opera-genre provides the DNA, the framework of the performance. It calls for large scale, and it forms a space where form and expression dominate. The Swedish music group The Knife creates completely new compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera music. The musical form is experimental and exploratory, and much of the sound heard was recorded while in the Amazon Jungle and in Iceland.

It is written for three singers of different backgrounds: popular music, classical opera and the performing arts. They are the narrators and the main characters in the performance. The singers tell about Darwin and they observe time and nature as Darwin.

Directed by Ralf Richardt Strøbech and Kirsten Dehlholm, the visual and conceptual universe is formed by Darwin’s thoughts, experiences and letters. The performance is divided into two parts – analogous to the development and publications of The Origin of Species.

The first part of the performance is exploratory. It concentrates on observing the underlying sequences and relationships between image, narrative, movement and music used in the performance. The second part is a synthesis of the material. A completed image and totality emerge, before the performance again mutates and passes into new forms, as happens over time with all things.

The opera presents an image of Darwin that above all reminds us that the world is a place of remarkable similarities and amazing diversity. That over time - tomorrow, in a year, or tomorrow, in a million years - change is inevitable.

AMAZING! This is art and science how she was meant to be spoke! You can also download all the lyrics on the opera's homepage. The title piece is particularly nice:

TOMORROW, IN A YEAR
An intersection of the plain
by the bank of some great stream

the animal carcasses
and skeletons would be
entombed

Tomorrow in a year
tomorrow in a million years

Ages resting in
the rings of a tree.
Fossils in lay in slate
marking the old forest’s edge

I’ve stood on a mountain
dividing three regions.
Then it was just a pebble
that I held inside my hand

In between each flap
of a butterfly’s wings,
countless changes
that have gone on unnoticed

A cricket rubs it’s forewings
together and I am forced
to think of the time that it’s taken
to build

Mountains fossils

Larva lava

The only downside is that this is a very difficult performance to see. Must like The Knive themselves, there are only scattered showing across Europe, and probably nothing overseas.

Netaudio Festival '09

2009-10-10T04:09:00.001-07:00

I found out about this way too late, but there is a seemingly fantastic music festival taking place in Berlin this weekend, including workshops and discussions:

The musical focus lies on a selection of Berlin’s finest electronic music, namely, House, Techno and Minimal. However, many artists from the fields of Ambient, Noise, Dub, Drum’n’Bass, Pop, Triphop, Dubstep, Breakbeats, Drone, Hip Hop and Techdub will add to the varied musical program.

If you can't make it out for the evening performances, you can download two free samplers from the website.

Worth the 90 Minutes

2009-10-09T08:20:00.001-07:00

via MetaFilter: Sugar: The Bitter Truth is a 90 lecture from Robert H. Lustig from UCSF as part of their "Mini Medical School for the Public" which looks like an amazing resource in itself (iTunes feed).

You're probably already are aware that despite increasing trends to reduce fat in our diets, the obesity epidemic grows further. You're probably also aware that decreased fat content processed food tastes like cardboard and is loaded with suger to keep the flavour going. That sugar is jam packed with fructose, a chronic poison akin to alcohol, as is discussed in this talk, and that is why you're fat. Everybody needs to watch this lecture and understand it. You'll never want to eat High Fructose Corn Syrup again.

Royal de Luxe in Berlin

2009-10-07T13:22:00.001-07:00

October 3rd was reunification day in Germany, and of course a big deal in Berlin (although the really big thing is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall). To celebrate Berlin called in France's Royal de Luxe to put on a show with their giant puppets, which lasted four days. You can see some great pictures and the story at The Big Picture. There are some lovely pictures of Berlin also. I tried to see the little giant on Saturday at Under den Linden, one of the main streets in former east Berlin but it was near impossible, there were so many people! 1,5mil is estimated and over the four days, I can believe it. I only caught a glimpse of her..

Here is the little giant with the TV tower in the background

And there they are leaving the city via the Spree

Fiction + Science

2009-10-01T01:04:00.001-07:00

Three really interesting articles are currently available at The New Yorker.

First:
New (and amazing) fiction by George Saunders: Victory Lap. The first time I heard about George Saunders was also via The New Yorker, with their fiction podcast. This is one of my favourite podcasts, the only downside is it's monthly, but given the quality, I can live with less quantity. Each month the fiction editor invites an author, many of which (possibly all) have been published in the magazine, to choose a story from the archives (which are extensive) and read it out loud. Engaging discussion before and after the reading introduces you to the author and that specific text. Saunders' Adams just blew me away, and Joshua Ferris does a fantastic job conveying the tone and tempo of the story. Oh and while I'm at it, Tobias Wolff reading Denis Johnson's Emergency is also fantastic. How can you resist when Wolff sets the piece up as such: "It's a classic, absoutely. It's one of those stories... that everyone knows. Every person who fancies herself literate - who I'm acquainted with - knows this story and relishes the moments in it". Apparently I can now socialize with Mr. Wolff.

Second:
Second, A Life of its Own takes on synthetic biology and offers a fairly good overview of the emerging field. But statements like this still irk me:

“When your hard drive dies, you can go to the nearest computer store, buy a new one, and swap it out,” Keasling said. “That’s because it’s a standard part in a machine. The entire electronics industry is based on a plug-and-play mentality. Get a transistor, plug it in, and off you go. What works in one cell phone or laptop should work in another. That is true for almost everything we build: when you go to Home Depot, you don’t think about the thread size on the bolts you buy, because they’re all made to the same standard. Why shouldn’t we use biological parts in the same way?”

The answer of course is that a hard drive has a singular purpose, that does not change depending on the machine its in or its contents. The screw also serves one purpose, regardless of where it is being used, and it can be used in myriad places. Many genes change function dependent on their environment (i.e. INTRAcellular environment). Anyroad, Biologists in this field all recognize these things and they know how Molecular Biology and Genetics works, but I think they, like other Biologists and lay people alike, fall prey to the desire for analogies. Biologists have repeatedly tried to explain life by using analogies (very often from art) and the plug-and-play is only a further extension of that. All analogies have eventually failed us because none can truely capture the complexity of life itself and as such, they limit our capacity for new, undescrible (i.e. sans analogy) phenomenon.

Directly afterwards is stated:

No scientific achievement has promised so much, and none has come with greater risks or clearer possibilities for deliberate abuse.

People... read and understand this article please.

Finally:
Finally, an article on Richard Powers, who is now - hands down - my favourite unread author. Brain Drain explores the relationship between matter and mind in Powers' writings. I need to get my hands on one of his books: The anticipation is building. See also my previous post where I discover Powers: Mono.Kultur and The nOulipian Analects (pt.1) (pt.2 coming eventually).

But Also See:
Oh, and if you want more economics, there is a video discussion with Economist Joseph Stiglitz. He also has an older article at Vanity Fair, Capitalist Fools, that may be of interest.

Der Wahlkampf Endet.

2009-09-30T04:49:00.001-07:00

So Angie is here to stay it seems, now ruling with her right-leaning FDP buddies in what is expected to be a much more comfortable coalition than the CDU had with the left-leaning SPD in the previous years. By my accounts, Germans were lack-luster about the whole affair, which is evidenced in a drop in voter turn-out (which is anyways still a hefty 71.2%!). Rather late than never, here are some of the election posters that were on display around Berlin (and one from Kiel)

This poster stirred quite some controversy for going back to that Oslo-operahouse-excessive-cleavage picture, now paired with a female candidate for the CDU in Berlin. The caption reads "We have more to offer". No doubt.

New this year was the pirate party, which is basically pro-piracy (the caption is something like "representation change!") Blow is a colourful poster for the German Communist Party (DKP) for a rally they held back in August.

I can't help but note the Pirate Party's logo is strikingly similar to the Duffern-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board logo (below) - the fine people whom I credit my early education to (Shout out to St.Paul's!).

But the long-time incumbant had the best poster, done by a local illustrator in an almost simpson-esqu motif

I mean the resemblance to Jebediah Springfield is uncanny:

And there are also lots of fringe parties, for instance Mensch Umwelt Tierschutz (lit. People, Environment, Animal Protection) who used this striking poster (the caption is "Alternative methods instead of abusing the weak")

The left-leaning parties had a big presence in Neukölln, a more working-class district in Berlin. The top poster here is for a turkish candidate. Die Linke ("The Left"), a newly formed merger party of older entities proclaims "More money for building, not banks!" while the Partei für Soxiale Gleichheit (PSG, "Party for Social Equality") wants to let you know that "Die Linke want to save capitalism. Not us". While the DKP (communists) are so far beyond the economy, that they want to let you know that they're "No people of the armed forces. Their election campaign: class struggle" (it sounds better in German because election campaign and class struggle both use the same word for struggle/fight/conflict: kampf)

Also... Die Linke say to "tax the rich", while the PSG would like to see "Banks and affiliates under the democratic control of the employees". The communists just don't want you to forget who their "crisis consultants" are.

Ah ok, and not to forget the Greens. They went for a faux graffiti campaign. The upper placard is self-explanatory, the lower one I found a bit confusing. In one instance they are clearly against (gegen) Genetically Modified Organisms (i.e. foodstuffs) but the explosive stem resembles the typical logo for anti-nuclear proliferation in Germany.

But lest we forget what most posters actually looked like throughout Germany. Here are two very boring (and very typical) poster for candidates in Kiel for the SPD ("more caring, more equitable, more strong") and Die Linke ("Have courage! Make pressure!"). The bottom of Sahra's poster is where they put a sticker of when and where she will make an appearance, but it looks poorly designed when the space is left blank.

Trans im Büro

2009-09-29T03:23:00.001-07:00

The Harvard Business Review is not yet, I will admit, part of my regular reading diet. But I have to give kudos to this case study:
When Steve Becomes Stephanie. I ran across it while studying for a recent case interview.

The case is about how to deal with a transsexual employee who is going to undergo sexual-reassignment surgery. I am really impressed that such a topic is included in what I'd consider a main-stream business publication. The simple fact of reaching a wider heterosexual audience, who would normally never be presented with such issues, is noteworthy.

The only disappointing part is that mostly all the commentators identify themselves as trans or queer. It would be so nice to read the first impressions of people who have no background in the topic. But in any case, I can feel the gears turning, this is a fantastic way to get people thinking about sensitive situations.

Economist Are Bloggers, Too

2009-09-29T02:25:00.001-07:00

via Scott Berkun: A list of the 100 "best" economics blogs on the Online Universities Weblog. So far Economics Help: Helping to Simplify Economics seems pretty accessible. See also my previous post: Some Resources To Help You Understand The Economy.

The Future of Sci-Fi

2009-09-29T02:17:00.001-07:00

George RR Martin speaking on the future of Sci-Fi on To the Best of Our Knowledge:

"Social changes of the last 50 years has made the future something that we no longer want to go visit the way we did when I was a kid. Back in the 50s and 60s when Sci Fi was perhaps as popular as it's ever been, we really had alot of belief in the future. We couldn't wait to get to the future. The future was going to be much better than anything in the present. You know, we were gonna have robots, and flying cars, and all these labour saving devices, and we were gonna take our holidays on the moon and space stations and we were gonna go to the stars. When they took polls, everybody gave the answer yes, yes, my kids are gonna have a better life than I do and my grandkids are gonna have an even better life then they do and we're gonna go into space and were gonna go into the stars...
...People take polls now and most people think that their children and not going to have better lives than they do. They think that their children are going to have worse lives. They're worried about things like ecological problems, global warming, the growing instability of the world and nuclear proliferation, more and more nations having the bomb and all that..."

Polaris: Announced

2009-09-22T13:07:00.001-07:00

I'm not gonna say that I called it, but well... you all had fair warning.

This is what Fucked Up, winner of the 2009 Polaris Music Prize and recipients of $20,000.00 are going to do with their cash:
There were over 500 missing aboriginal women in Canada and we're going to put out a benefit record to try to draw attention to it and raise some money for these people," he said. "It's a marginalized group, it's a racialized crime, it's ignored. So we're putting out a benefit Christmas record with some really funny guests and we're gonna pay for it.
<via Yahoo>

Just like they said... Punk, but with emotion, you dig?

Generation Ich

2009-09-16T01:25:00.001-07:00

Michal Glazik, photographer and friend of mine, is showing work at a group exhibit in Hamburg: Generation Ich (Oct 10-25 at Spielbudenplz. 22)

There's not much info on the website, but Prinz Hamburg fills in the gaps:
Today's generation is not "Generation X" or "Generation Golf". They seek their identity not in groups, not in the zeitgeist. Who am I? What am I? The self is the focus. Even in contemporary photography, the confrontation with one's identity is always a central theme. But why is this generation so concerned with self? There's a public place where one can find out, or gain some insight. "Generation Ich" invites you to examine this ubiquitous topic through visuals.

Seven students of photography HAW Hamburg have taken up their own generation. In the exhibition "Generation Ich", they show their very personal work, where they have gone in search of the self.

The DNA Video

2009-09-15T13:14:00.001-07:00

In case you didn't catch it on FaceBook, here it is on YouTube:

The ourDNA.ca DNA extraction video on the streets of Banff, special thanks to the aforementioned Logan (click for his new Nerdity blog) for uploading.

Do. Make. Say. Think. Years. Happiness.

2009-09-15T12:40:00.001-07:00

Do Make Say Think is one of the great under-appreciated bands of Canada. I just never understood why people aren't more excited about these guys. They are very much a part of the Toronto music landscape and are coming out with a new album in October, after having formed in 1996.

One band member, Ohad Benchetrit, has completed his first solo album, of course on Arts & Crafts. His project is called Years and you can check out the amazingly beautiful and amazingly uninformative website here.

Also from the band, Charles Spearin came out earlier this year with The Happiness Project, which is just a small piece of genius. Basically he interviews people about what is happiness and sets it to music. It's way better than it sounds!

The good news is, since they're all the same people, you can catch Do Make Say Think, Years, and The Happiness Project all at the same time. Which is exactly what's happening this Fall in Europe and N. America. Check your listings!

The best way to hear the music is through mySpace for Years and The Happiness Project official website. Otherwise you can sign up and get a pretty decent Arts & Crafts Sampler for free, you only need to provide the felt.

Sumi Ink Club

2009-09-15T07:06:00.001-07:00

The group holds regular open meetings to execute detailed collaborative drawings using ink on paper. In each of its permutations, Sumi Ink Club uses group drawing as a means to open and fortify social interactions that bleed into everyday life. Sumi Ink Club is non-hierarchical: all ages, all humans, all styles are welcome. Each drawing is produced by many hands, through a happenstance arrangement of close friends and strangers alike.

This is from the newly available publication from nieves: Glamour Banner

But I highly recommend Kin Gordon Chronicles, vol. 1 and 2. Can you tell I'm on a Sonic Youth kick at the moment?

Some Resources To Help You Understand The Economy.

2009-09-09T04:27:00.001-07:00

I'm going to out myself here: I've been reading about.... the economy! I know: it boring, confusing, all about money and companies and only wants to cause you pain. But it's also a seriously important part of our lives, whether we want it to be or not, as much as people want to drop out of society (and the economy) you're basically stuck with it. So you might as well educated yourself about it, so you can at least understand the news and be able to make an informed decision based on the information that is at least partially validated by some knowledge of the field.

There are lots of resources now available to help people understand what is happening in terms of the world economy and crisis. Here are some things I have been listening to/reading in the past year:

1) This American Life

This American Life has so far provided four excellent shows that clearly explain how banks work, the housing crisis and other important aspects of the economy:

Episode 355: Giant Pool of Money
Episode 365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy
Episode 373: The New Boss (not entirely aobut the economy, but an informative report about Keynes)
Episode 375: Bad Bank

You can listen to the recording online at the above links and download the transcript, all free-of-charge. If you subscript to the podcast, each week an new episode is available, but only for that week. So if you were subscribed at the right time you would've been able to download these episodes. I highly recommend all of them for clear, non-partial, informative, well-produced, professional and entertaining sources. It doesn't get any easier than this folks, I mean just press play, sit back and listen.

2) Naomi Klein

Also, Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine book is an easy read and explains the background of Neo-liberalism. Her first book, No Logo, which I read in my early 20s, discussed branding and globalization. I really liked it, it was clearly written, gave explicit real-life examples of what she was talking about and had the impact on me that it sought. This book feels very similar, what I like best is that she clearly explains the Chicago school and different ideas about economics. That in itself is worth the book. But the main point of the book at the examples (in South America, Russia, etc.) in which Neo-liberalism was put into practice, to some extent, and then the book takes on a more sensationalistic tone. Ok, the book is a best-seller, so you're probably already familiar with it.

3) Adbusters

Another useful book (read magazine) is the current issue of Adbusters: Thought Control in Economics. I've been reding Adbusters since I was a teenager, and wow, these guys have really come a long way! (Remember the McDonald's Grease stickers?) I don't read it often because it costs an arm and a leg in Germany, but I picked up this latest issue when I was recently in Canada. It's full of informative articles, discusses different perspective on Economics and is not overly over-the-head-bashing in its approach, which turned me off many of the earlier issues, and is also more informative than beligiert and beleaguering. It reads more like a book than a magazine. If you can stil find it on the newstands- pick it up! If not, get a back-issue order online.

3) Paul Krugman

I've only just begun to read article by Paul Krugman regularly. He is a regular contributer to the New York Times where he has a blog: The Conscience of a Liberal (i.e. From last week: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?) and is also clearly on the left-of-center platform. If you are using Google Reader, you can find a list of his favourite reads with the Power-Reader feature (scroll down).

4) Marginal Revolution

For a very different perspective you can read the decidely conserative economist Tyler Cowen's hyper-activ blog Marginal Revolution, and his two-year old critique of Klein's Shock Doctrine he published in the New York Sun.

5) The Economist

Also on the other end of the spectrum is The Economist magazine itself, which is apparently founded on fiscal-conservatism, but often supports liberal politics. For instance they have featured the case for gay marriage in the US on their cover. So there are somehow mixed I guess. In any case there is always alot of information in each issue, plus special reports, so it is not bedtime reading, but once you get into it it gets easier to understand.

Sonic Youth, Live

2009-09-08T04:01:00.001-07:00

NPR's All Songs Considered has a downloadable live recording of a Sonic Youth Concert from Jul 7th in Washington, DC.

It just short of 90 minutes and good quality.

Antony does Beyonce

2009-09-08T03:53:00.001-07:00

You're love... got me looking so crazy, right now.

Amazing:

Antony and the Johnsons

Punk, But With Emotion, You Dig?

2009-09-07T15:55:00.001-07:00

This is Sandy Miranda (aka Slumpy, aka Laundry, aka Mustard Gas), bass player for the Toronto band Fucked Up (Blog, 2nd Blog, Matador):

Who wudda thunk she'd be part of a hard-core punk outfit (I mean they do have emotion, let's get that clear). I have been listening to their Chemistry of Common Life album for months and I still love it! They are touring and releasing material like mad and apparently in the studios as we speak. To tie you over they link to a 40 minute mix tape on their blog. Be forewarned, it is not new material, but it is a mix tape, and it may make your ears bleed.

They are up for the Polaris music prize this year but they have some serious competition. My other top pick is gonna be K'NAAN. I love Dreamer:

And also T.I.A. The video itself is absolutely amazing:

More Anatomical Art

2009-09-07T05:49:00.001-07:00

by 9000:

via MetaFilter.

Deutsches Essen, Teil 1

2009-09-07T03:44:00.001-07:00

German cuisine? Probably makes you think of:
Wurst (all variety of sausage)
Cabbage (Sauerkraut, obviously)
Beer (but only in gigantic glasses carried by large-breasted long-haired blond women)
Yes, the Germans have all of those, but German eating gets a seriously bad rap. I'm not even an expert but I know there are some very good things you can only get in Germany, or at least are things the Germans excel in. I want to start introducing them to you all.

Lebensmittel 1) DER QUARK

If you make your way down to the Maybachufer Wochenmarkt (the farmers market at Maybachufer, a street on the bank of the Spree in Berlin), you'll stumble upon this thing of beauty:

Yes, a Quark stall. I have being trying to figure out what Quark is in English since I moved here, but according to the dictionary it's simply Quark, although more recently it's now translated as curd cheese. If someone offered me curd cheese in Canada, this is not what I would expect! I've never seen it, but my chef buddy Tara says you can pick it up in some local (read Arab) markets around the T-dot, and it's just called Quark.

So what is it? Quark is a very low-calorie soft-cheese. Think Philadelphia cream cheese meets mascarpone. In other countries you can apparently find varieties with less water content, which I guess resemble curd cheese more than the German variety. It's also very high in protein and even with some amount of Lactose intolerance, I don't get problems with it.

It's very creamy, but it has a tart after taste that I don't like. You can eat it straight up, or as I was shown by Bettina Harr, a research associate, the best way to eat it is by mixing in pieces of fresh strawberries (in season, of course) and some sugar if it's still not sweet enough for you. The result is something like strawberry jogurt, but probably better for you.

This is what was on sale at the Quark stall above. Instead of buckets of ice cream, he had buckets of flavoured quark:
Chocolate
White Chocolate
Nougat
Poppy Seed
Cappuccino
Coconut
Honey
Vanilla
Lemon
Banana
Mixed-berries
Strawberries
...and a variety of other berry flavours. He gives you a cup with two flavours, sandwiched between is a layer of muesli, or fresh fruit, if you like.

Mono.Kultur and The nOulipian Analects (pt.1)

2009-09-06T12:28:00.001-07:00

This is gonna be all about constraints.

Yesterday I did end up going to that self-publishing book fair. It was exactly what I expected. Lots of amazing books, really interesting topics, stuff you would never see anywhere else. I did notice several books which are available at the proQM independent bookshelf. But there are two publishers who I am very excited about!

The first is a collective of writers, designers, journalists, photographers, editors, etc. who collaborate as a collective to put together a magazine called Mono.Kultur. Their back-issues read as a who's who of people you should know about - in detail. There are about 8 people who make the collective and they have to unanimously decide to feature an artist - of any persuasion - in the magazine. Each issue is dedicated to that artist and can possibly include photos, art, an intro, epilogue, etc. Part of the idea is to promote German artists abroad, but all three back issues I picked up are of Americans:

Miranda July (Artist)
Trent Reznor (Musician)
Richard Powers (Author)

The Miranda July issue is packaged in a sleeve which unfolds to reveal one of he signature posters:

The interview is well done and lots of her personality come through. If you are not familiar with her, get this issue, or else see here and the awesome website for her book here.

My favourite part of the interview:

I guess I really like systems. It's like plyaing business when you are little, or playing library. Tehre is something not very creative about having no rules, you know. No rules is sometimes paralyzing. If I am sitting down to write, I want to have something pretty narrow, a task like, 'Try and make this character not so annoying today.'

Here are some things you can try at home:

#14: Write you life story in less than a day.
#53: Give advice to yourself in the past.
#10: Make a flyer about your day.
#63: Make an encouraging banner.
#58: Record the sound that is keeping you awake.

July has her fingers in many pots and it really incredible. They sum it up really nice in the intro:

You could be thinking, 'what a bunch of lucky breaks.' The truth is, she works ridiculously hard - obsessively, intensely - all the time, and she has been acively pursuing creative projects since she was a teenager.

The Reznor issues is very much about his getting over alcoholism and drug addiction, and the interviewer mostly limits himself to very short questions. July and Reznor were two artists who I already were comfortable with, so I asked for a recommendation for a third issue to pick up, that's how I ended up with Richard Powers, which turned out to be my favourite issue. I have to admit I never heard about him before I picked up his Mono.Kultur issue. The first thing to note is the seriously fantastic ASCII art (see wiki and this gallery for the uninitiated) by Ute Kühn, ~~who actually does photography, painting and installations~~ (UPDATE: Wrong Ute, here the real Ute's web-site: www.playconcrete.com). For example, the cover:

Here is a detail around the eye:

Powers was heavily influenced to write his first book, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985) by an August Sander photograph (1914) of the same name:

The photograph is part of a series to document the people of Westerwald, situated between Cologne and Frankfurt. Here it is reproduced in all it's ASCII glory:

I mean the detail is just spectacular! Here's a zoom of the two farmers on the right:

In the field between the first and second farmer is a quote from the book:
The love of the moribund, the belief that the sickly and perverse hold more possibility for experience than the status quo, has been our times' epidemic of preference. But an opposite mentality, a perennially unfounded optimism, is equally to blame for catastrophe.
I wonder if that quote will ever be out-dated.

There are several amazing ASCII pieces, here is another favourite:

In his tie is written:

As for the interview, it is the longest of the three and also the most intimate, most personal one. Powers is such a profound man, I'm almost ashamed to not be familiar with him. But I will elaborate with some examples in a future post, oh ja, and also get to the nOulipian Analects.

Knowing World Religions

2009-09-06T04:06:00.001-07:00

I was listening to an old (oct 11/08) podcast of NPR's To The Best of Our Knowledge last week, mostly because I find the topic very interesting: Finding Religion. You can listen to the whole thing here, but the first interview is probably the best bit.

They begin by talking with Stephen Prothero, chair of the religion dept at Boston University and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - and Doesn't. It starts off with a quiz. Below are my honest answers in black and the ones I had to look up in red:

1) What are the first five books of the Hebrew bible, or the Christian Old Testament?
Genesis
Deuteronomy
Numbers
Exodus
Leviticus
OK, one missing, not too bad.

2) Can you name the ten commandments?

I know that the first three relate to God, so:

Thy shall not take the lords name in vain
Thy shall not take false gods
Do not make an image or any likeness of what is in the heaven's above
And the other seven have to do relations between people
Thy shall not covet they neighbour's wife
Thy shall not steal
Thy shall not lie
Honour the Sabbath
Honour your parents
Do not murder
Do not commit adultery
oh man, I'm only at 5, but do I get a bonus point for knowing about the 11th:

3) What are the 4 Nobel Truths of Buddhism?
All life is suffering (or diseased, if you like)
Desire is the cause of suffering
Eliminating desire eliminates suffering
This can be achieved by the eight-fold path:
Right mindfulness
Right action
Right speech
Right practice (livelihood)
Right view
Right intention
Right effort
Right concentration
OK, that really is a shame when I can only list four, I have always had a hard time to remember them, there are way too many lists in Buddhism! Better to just have be a good practitioner :) Well at least I did get the four noble truths.

4) You've heard the saying "God helps those that help themselves"? Is this in the Bible? If so, where?

No clue.

5) What are the 7 sacrements of catholism?
Baptism
First communion (Eucharist)
Confirmation
Marriage
Reconciliation (Confession)
Holy Orders (Ordination)
Anointing of the sick
6) Can you name one of the sacred texts of Hinduism?
Bhagavad Gita
I also knew about the vedas, but I forgot just how many other texts there are.

7) George W. Bush spoke in his first innaugural address of the Jericho road. What bible story was he referring to?

I'm thinking this is the good Samaritan parable. If it is, that is too much irony, even for Bush.

ok, that was a tougher quiz than I thought, but to be be fair it was very Christian-orientated and I don't think I did half-bad. But what about the five pillars of Islam? The three schools of Buddhism? Taoism vs Confucianism? Jainism? Luther and the 99 theses?

In the interview they talk with Prothero about the importance of being religiously literate in order to understand our own and other cultures. I can't agree more with this point!!! Too often knowing about a tradition (i.e. religious) or philosophy or political/economic perspective is akin to accepting it as your own, and so people tend to shy away from it. In particular with religion because often times the education aspect is coupled with a recruitment drive.

One of my absolute favourite courses as a high school student was grade 11 World Religions, and that was in a Roman Catholic high school where we all wore uniforms. I can still remember the day our religion teacher came to Christianity and point blank asked us to put up our hands if we doubted the existence of God. You wouldn't believe how many hands went up in that oh so quintessentially Catholic school! In the same class we visited a mosque and a synagogue, not to mention having regular (albeit not intensive) meditation sessions and a visit by the Hare Krishna.

Most people are genuinely surprised that such a class is offered in a Catholic school and I have yet to meet a student from the public school board who had a similar class. The point was education about other traditions, because they saw the importance religion plays in many, many people's lives and the importance of understanding what those people believe in. I went on to take world religions in my first year at the University of Toronto and later took a second year Buddhism course, which complimented my learning about the tradition I got in temples, from monks and lay people.

So it's surprising to me that such a conversation as to the importance of religious literacy is even on the table. It is clearly important, the question is what is necessary to know and how is the best way to get that information across. It think it's in a similar problem as science communication. People find both topics intimidating (scary even) and so vast they they are afraid to delve in. The solution for both could lie in the integration of both information into everyday practice, where people are educated without even knowing they're getting a good dose of real information.

Anatomical Drawings: Interiors with Faces.

2009-09-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, as I admited at the Scientific Communications course in Banff, I really do love anatomical drawings. Here I discuss some of my favourites.

To begin: I discovered Fernando Vicente just yesterday while perusing illustration books at proQM, a bookstore that I found out about via momus, who is now my unofficial Berlin bookstore guru (as an aside, I highly recommend this gem of an art-illustration-design-architecture-fashion-magazine-city-culture bookshop). This is why I got so excited about Fernando:

Those are from his Vanitas series. He has some other anatomical based drawing on his website/blog, but Vanitas is definitely my favourite. He's really taking anatomical drwing up a notch, but it is very much in keeping with the theme of dissection in situ, so to speak. For instance, of having models cadavers, dissected and in place within a scene. You can see some of these in Taschen's Encyclopaedia Anatomica which is basically a catalog of the Museo La Specola in Florence (I also recommend a visit to the museum if you are ever in Florence, it's worth it!). In that instance diaoramas of the four horsemen of the apocylapse are displayed in all their horrid waxy glory (not literally, but representatively - Think a gaggel of diseased corpses strewn about a cityscape). Ok, but that may be a strecth, because the four diaoramas are not that spectacular, but many dissections are presented like a window into the interior, for instance this woman:

and the book cover itself:

There are no flaps of skin and blood streaks to suggest that the people are dissected. There is certainly something disquieting to see a recognizable person and look right into their insides. All the women and men in the above pictures are not in pain or even discomfort, the wax figure looks even quasi-euphoric (that or she's having a bout of indigestion, she is after all, missing her intestines). So in both instances we see internal organs out of their usual context. That is, we don't see the usuall marks of dissection, which let's us know what has happened and yet there is the rest of the body, looking like nothing in particular has happened. Both the comfort of context and the abstraction of a medical image is taken away when we see such images. We are looking into a special kind of mirror.

Ok, so far I've ignored Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds. I saw his "Cycle of Life" exhibit when it came to Berlin this summer. And although he most certainly does qualify as removing the abstract from the medical image, I had some problems with his presentation. If your not familiar with his art of plastination, there are enough videos on YouTube. The "Cycle of Life" is notable for displaying very early stages of humn embryogenesis, which is simply facinating, but that's about all there is conerning the cycle of life, there are no displays of children, adolescents, seniors, there is now typical diagram of changing bodies over time, so I'm not sure why it was called "Cycle of Life" if they werent going to show it. Another item that disturbed me was the Santa Claus exhibit, it was pretty tasteless. there was a sleigh, reindeer (also plastinated) and the fellw who was Santa complete with fake white beard. He was basically exploded and suspended from the ceiling so you could see every intimate detail, but still it was tasteless. The captain of the pirate ship, complete with parrot, was not a strong point either, nor was thr "rugby player" holding an American pigskin. Both had their muscles obviously pumped up. But perhaps the most disappoingint part was the sex scene. You knew there had to be a sex scene, and there is was in the last room before the exit. There sat upon a chair was a man with a woman proped upon his lap. For her part she was cut in half so when you went around the back side you got a glimpse of intercourse from the inside. The disturbing part is that she was wearing really cheap black leather boot and black nail polish and he had a black mohawk, all of which was thoroughly off-putting and unnecessary. My favourite pieces, aside from the embryos, were the placenta, a remarkably interesting temporary organ that is much underappreciated, and the head of an obese man cut in half. There you got to see all the fatty bits in situ that were mysteriously abscent from all the other (supposedly) lean, muscular models in the exhibit (sorry photographs were not allowed).

So although he shows us an entire cadaver, and would be a perfect example of this window to the interior, I wasn't as excited. I know I should feel bad to say that, but maybe it was even too realistic, or I was just so caught up in the details of the bodies and imagining preparation artifacts, that I didn't get the right impression. I think in the end the advantage of the above two examples is that art can portray life in a way life itself, ironically, can never do.

------

Here is the mouse pad that I couldn't resist buying:

It's covered with a clear plastic layer and in the jelly layer in between is a blood coloured fluid that swishes around as you move your mouse.

Oh, and apparently Body Worlds in coming to the T-dot in October with the "Story of the Heart" exhibit. Expect lots of blood vessels! and you can probably pick up the mouse pad there also.

Momus in Berlin

2009-09-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I found out (via Kottke) that Momus (who is now living in Berlin) has a blog: click opera. The man posts frequently and has useful information for Berliners. See for example his post on favourite Kreuzberg bookstores, which led me to discover that Motto is having a one-day self-publishing fair on Saturday (whew, I almost missed it).

But also he is coming out with The Book of Jokes this month and has a reading at the Staalplaat Working Space on the 17th. And also he posted this reading of The Death of Bunny Munro:

herr von eden

2009-09-01T09:14:00.001-07:00

I discovered herr von eden earlier this year while searching for affordable yet cool suits. I happened upon the pinnacle of Anzug-coolness but the price tag was more than I could bear. I mean cool in the sense that they are the only suit outfit that advertises in electronic music magazines. The suits are so sharp they raise the bar to a whole new level.

So I was excited to find out that they are having a nation wide (read four city) one-day-only sale! And to confirm how cool they are, I do believe that is Peaches (former-Toronto, current-Berlinerin) in the safari outfit.

Der verdrehte Blick

2009-09-01T08:52:00.001-07:00

Ex-girlfriend of former-student presents her illustrations in The Skewed View.

The vernissage is on sept. 12th at WIR Gallery (Boxhagener str., Berlin) and included a picture-text performance from two of the participants and a musical performance from someone.

The World... an Addendum

2009-08-24T20:50:00.001-07:00

Oh ja, on the same August 19th broad cast of The World (look here), there is a great little feature on industrial music in China. It's really worth a listen, but they don't have a specific excerpt of that section, so click on this and skip ahead to 45'30"

The band is called White and their producer just happens to be the legendary Blixa Bargeld (Just to put legendary into perspective: Bargeld is German for Cash, although Blixa is hardly as common as Johnny). He is one of the fathers of industrial music through the band Einstürzende Neubauten (roughly: collapsed new-built). You may be familiar with his name because he is also one of the legendary Bad Seeds backing Nick Cave. He also has solo material but I'm not familiar with it. Also he does some pretty crazy stuff. Here he is in some commercials for a German hardware shop, he's basically reading the random bits in their flyer:

Welcome to advertising in Germany.

Teaching Science in Canada

2009-08-24T20:19:00.001-07:00

The Globe and Mail reports in Why science class has become a 'daunting slog'.

The World... it Really is That Good.

2009-08-24T15:47:00.001-07:00

Just to be clear, The World, a daily one-hour "global perspective for an American audience" is probably the best thing going in terms of radio magazine/news right now. Take, for example August 19th, 2009.

In a single episode The World not only questions the significance of female politicians in Iran, giving a much needed Iranian female perspective...

...but has two excellent pieces of gay rights issues. One is a discussion of the only group fighting for gay rights in the arab world, in Beirut.

That is followed by a brief discussion of honouring the mistreated Alan Turing, the father of modern computing who was instrumental in cracking the nazi enigma code during WWII.

German Graphic Design, The Future of

2009-08-24T15:09:00.001-07:00

I just found out about a neu book on German graphic designers over at CR Blog. (scroll past the horrendous goalkeepers diary to Neuland).

The book sets out to map the landscape of German graphic design - or rather, more specifically, to look at emerging, young graphic design talent in Germany. Not only does the book showcase work by a selection of 50 designers and studios, but it looks at where they are based, where the founders of the studios studied - and asks of each of them "what does it mean to you to be German and a designer?"

Oddly enough it's from a Barcelona-based publisher, ACTAR (check out their website for lots of other interesting projects). And even more curiously, it's edited and designed by a Barcelona-based design group, TwoPoints.NET. I'm always interested in these large compilations of designers, but never enough to actually buy them. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to get an outsiders perspective on German design.

SciComm Blog Roll, pt 1

2009-08-16T00:18:00.001-07:00

Logan Banadyga: Science Club

SciComm, Day 1

2009-08-10T16:41:00.001-07:00

I'm almost done the first day of the 2009 Banff SciComm course. There are some seriously smart people in this group! The participants range from senior PhD students, to professors, to people who have been producing original content at science centers for over 20 years. Amazing! And it's soooooo nice to be back in Banff.

Quote of the day: "Who is your who?" (Linda Campbell)

Illustrators and Publishers of Different Worlds, or, I Love Doury.

2009-07-28T23:25:00.000-07:00

Zitty (something like TimeOut for Berlin) has a short article on an illustration book called "Freistil Black". I give you my translation:

Draw me a world

The book "Freestyle Black" is an opulent overview of contemporary Black and White illustration.

"I don't believe in what I see ..." is the motto of the latest edition of the illustration handbook "Freistil" (freestyle), which has been published biannually since 2001. In a time when the flood of images is constantly growing, when all events are photographically accessible, when one's faith in the truth of a photograph diminishes given the increasing possibility of technical manipulation, there is a growing desire for "real" pictures. In recent years, illustrations have served this purpose. "What touches us," says publisher Raban Ruddigkeit - who began his career as a comic illustrator - "is the personal view." The book introduces illustrators - mainly from German-speaking countries – showcasing styles, trends and developments in a form of expression which is continually moving into the arena of media content. By choosing to devote oneself to only Black and White illustration, the origins of the art form in the drawing become visible and the workmanship-like characteristics understandable. The complex pressure and the thick, partly painted paper make each page a visual and tactile experience, and a declaration of love for the printed book.

I think there are a couple corrections needed. The full motto is: »Ich glaube nicht an das was ich seh. Ich glaube nur an eine gute Idee« (I don't believe in what I see. I only believe in a good idea."). But the first part is good enough for what they are talking about. Also, I don't think the series has been around since 2001. "Freistil Black" is only number 4 and number 1 was published in 2003.

You can see some page exemplars at the publishers homepage and the book homepage. At first I was excited; nice illustration makes me blush. But it all seems too clean and the focus on media-ready illustrators is a bit of a turn off, although interesting nonetheless. The publishers link to the Zitty review and comment, again my translation:
Apparently our book cautiously enters the mainstream market. Something we are very happy about, as a broader readership may succumb to the magic of illustration.
I don't understand how they are not mainstream, they were invited to the "sei Berlin" (think I♡NY but with bockwurst) store launch. I expect fully-polished, advert-ready illustrations that will blind me with beauty. And I think they can deliver that.

This is in complete contrast to another book series, one which I am in love with. Mollusk is a serial publication from the Bongout publishers. Bongout has a gallery space in Mitte focusing on illustrators of Germany and France, although they seems to have fingers in lots of pots. I discovered Mollusk serendipitously at a comic/graphic arts shop and was immediately drawn to an issue which showcased Pascal Doury, a recently deceased and severely under-appreciated French artist (it was published in 2007, he died in 2001). The publishing house is pretty small, and the book feels very intimate. Articles are written in the first person by people who knew Doury, there are private pictures and after reading the essays and absorbing the illustrations I wasn't just in love with Pascal but I felt like I knew him, like a familiar novel character. His artistic career spans a good deal of time and styles. For example:

And that's just part of his world! Here is a larger collection of his works, and also see this. There is a quote in the book (I think from Art Spiegelman) about how one could imagine inside Doury's head a massive universe, a whole other dimension, bigger than what we could imagine. Looking at his illustrations, it almost feels like stepping foot into a different existence. I think this is still the only book which collects and presents his material. Highly recommended.

Doury is featured in Mollusk #4, which you can order online from Picturebox Inc., who I also love and have previously recommended.

More Cameras

2009-07-21T12:39:00.001-07:00

The Canadian iTunes store is carrying since today a new Hidden Cameras EP: In the NA.

From Arts and Crafts:
The In The NA EP is just a hint of what fans can expect from the group's fifth full-length album, Origin:Orphan, due for release on September 22 in North America. The EP features an extended version of the first single from the forthcoming album, along with two b-sides, and two remixes of "In The NA", including the "Crystal Pepsi" remix by French electronic music producer Stuart Price (a.k.a Thin White Duke) and Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters.

Some Health Matters

2009-07-21T02:30:00.000-07:00

From the big name media outlets:

Yahoo Canada reports on a Japanese study showing "chubby" people live longer than underweight people. I haven't read the article but it sounds an awful lot like the Canadian study (not even mentioned in the ar which I spoke about here.

Plus, if there is still a need for Health Education among lay people, BBC reports that lower IQ is associated with increased risk of certain diseases, making the conclusion that public health messages need to be dumbed down. That link is not particularly surprising, but the conclusion to dumb-down should be taken with a grain of salt. How about new strategies to public health and understanding of scientific appreciation? How about showing people how taking care of their health directly benefits them, and not just in an abstract way.

Reminder: Eat Local!

2009-07-16T01:31:00.001-07:00

via MetaFilter. Here is a video on Vimeo highlighting the dire situation of importing foodstuffs in Canada. The main message is to buy and eat local! I'm amazed at the amount of imported food products. Esp. the part about the meat, and in Alberta nonetheless! I remember in Calgary how fantastic the Crossroads Farmer''s Market was. It was seriously worth driving out there to get food. In Germany, supermarkets- and even most farmer's markets- will display country of origin, and in most farmer's markets you can indeed buy direct from the farmer. The big gap in information is the local produce shop which gives absolutely no information whatsoever concerning origin or bio-status (read organic) so as a rule of thumb I never buy from them.

One thing curiously left out in the video are Bananas. In many supermarkets bananas are the no. 1 product hands down. I was amazed to find that out. Of course, they are all imported. I wonder how things would change if Bananas fell out of favour.

It's nice that they focused much attention on produce, but I'd love to see another piece of this sort on the meat industry. I don't mean a vegetarian you-better-stop-eating-meat-right-now video, but more about the industry, the economics of importing meat, the land and energy used to produce it and the returns we get from that investement. I'd be happy with a buy local, buy high quality, buy less message for meat that would be more effective than a beleaguering peta advert.

Brillelust

2009-07-15T01:02:00.001-07:00

ok, I confess. I have a long-standing eyeglass ~~fetish~~ ~~obsession~~ ~~lust~~ ~~habit~~ fascination. I have been buying frames on and off for the past ten years and have a descent collection to get lenses fitted into, including antique pinchnez and the ones with springs that wrap around your ears, remember those? (probably not, if you're younger than 90). I remember as a teenager lusting after a pair of too expensive LA Eyeworks frames that I couldn't afford. Whenever I passed by a high-end eyeglass shop I would just go in and casually try them on and pretend like I had never seen them. Don't pretend like you haven't done the same. And I still remember loosing a pair of Ray Bans at Lady Bay in Sydney - that hurts! My most recent acquisition is a pair of Swiss military issue glasses (circa 1960s) that I found at a flea market. Beautiful! And they only cost me a few euros. Should I be ashamed to admit that I have prescription glasses and sunglasses that i) I don't even wear and ii) that I wear only with specific outfits? Sometimes I will forgo sunglasses, even thou I have several pairs, if I feel it doesn't match my outfit. I know it's starting to get out of control, but I can't stop it.

Needless to say I'm a big fan of good quality sunglasses. The cheap ones will give you headaches, destroy your eyesight and in the long run cost you more money! They are worth the investment, and my favourite sunglass company is Ray Ban. I mean just look at these glasses: They are part of the 2009 Wayfarer colors collection. I mean these beauties are seriously going to be classics. Those are the glasses you'll still be wearing in 15 years. And Ray Ban lenses are hard to beat unless you jump to polarized Revos, but then you're spending about four times as much.

I need a cold shower.

Forward excessively

2009-07-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Hidden Cameras, who are basically just short of orgasmic and probably my favourite band of all time, are coming out with their fourth album Origin:Orphan in September.

You can already download the first single Walk On at the Arts & Crafts homepage!

a tip o the hat to Music is my Boyfriend mailing list. Is it a strange cosmic coincidence that I wore my Music is my boyfriend t-shirt yesterday? Strange.

oh, and here is the track listing:

1. Ratify the New
2. In the NA
3. He Falls to Me
4. Colour of a Man
5. Do I Belong?
6. Walk On
7. Kingdom Come
8. Origin:Orphan
9. Underage
10. The Little Bit
11. Silence Can Be a Headline

via tiny mix tapes. And just for the record the Maritimes are Eastern.

Walt Whitman Has Come Down Today...

2009-07-09T01:43:00.001-07:00

...and he wants you to know:

Stolen from Tojietto at imgfave.

btw, that Whitman reference is from a peom by Perry Brass:

Walt Whitman in 1989

Walt Whitman has come down
today to the hospital room;
he rocks back and forth in the crisis;

he says it's good we haven't lost
our closeness, and cries
as each one is taken

He has writen many lines
about these years: the disfigurement
of young men and the wars

of hard tongues and closed minds.
The body in pain will bear such nobility,
but words have the edge

of poison when spoken bitterly.
Now he takes a dying man
in his arms and tells him

how deeply flows the River
that takes the old man and his friends
this evening. It is the River

of dusk and lamentation.
"Flow." Walt says. "dear River,
I will carry this young man

to your bank. I'll put him myself
on one of your strong, flat boats,
and we'll sail together all the way
through evening."

You can find it in the book Sex Charge. Also it appeared in song form on the Gay American Composers album (Chris de Blasio). Think very deep voice and slow tempo, just perfect. You can have a listen over at amazon (maybe after I will upload it to my radio if I can find the file).

Can we give some more respect to Whitman please?

Ernst Haeckel: Darwin of Germany

2009-07-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

A nice biography and examples of his art work at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Der Dritte Tempel: Truth for all Humanity

2009-07-03T10:26:00.001-07:00

Benyamin Reich has an exhibit until the 26th at RISE in Neukölln.
The prophet Isaiah described the Third Temple as a source of divine inspiration and truth for all humanity. Reich's first exhibition at RISE Berlin entitled 'The Third Temple' is autobiographical, it expresses a desire to unify the spiritual and secular elements of his life (Reich was raised within a Jewish ultra-orthodox family; he attended religious schools and yeshivas until he left home at an early age to find his way in the secular world).

In the installation the viewer is given a unique and privileged view into Reich's extraordinary world, a world that contrasts the sensuous flesh and physical beauty of the secular world with the strict formality of orthodox religion, Reich somehow finds spirituality and eroticism in both.

You can see some more pix on the gallery home page and some other ones at Siegessäule magazine and still more on his mySpace page.

Porn? Yuk!

2009-07-03T10:16:00.001-07:00

Porn? Yuk! 4 days of over 100 indecent, dirty, inhuman, misogynist flicks in October in Berlin. To be seen with an audience of perverted dirty old men and helpless degraded women. Who wants that? Well, we don’t! That’s why the 4th PornfilmfestivalBerlin will show sexy, daring, edgy, feminist, lesbian, gay, bisexual, straight, transgender and most of all entertaining films about sexuality on 4 days. Aiming at a sophisticated and tolerant audience of self-confident women, progressive men and people who question gender and sexual orientation, who see pornographic films as political, subversive, fun and challenging. In its 4th year the festival team is looking forward to illustrious guests from all over the world, to films that have never been seen before, to a lively audience and to the common denominator of sex: the fun of it!

Yes, the Berlin Porn Film Festival, now in it's fourth year. 22 - 25.10.09

Spoiled

2009-07-03T05:01:00.000-07:00

When I say Berliners are spoiled, this is what I mean.

The swimming hall in Neukölln- a southern quarter of Berlin where I'm living at the moment- reopened earlier this year after renovations. It was originally built in 1914.

This is the small hall:

and the large hall:

and there's also the sauna area! Check out the 3D pix here.

This isn't even the nicest area of Berlin... what the heck!?

I'm goin' - that's all there is to it.

Psychadelic Society

2009-07-02T14:18:00.001-07:00

This part I get:

But as for the rest, I'm less sure:

The Psychedelic Society is established to aide in the evolution of communication and media strategies around psychedelics in order to have them socially reconsidered and legalized. To revitalize and engage new audiences of the 21st century – the scientific community, cultural creatives, spiritual seekers and beyond.

Escape Tools

2009-07-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

Escape tools of German prisoners, photography from Marc Steinmetz.

via Scott Berkun.

The Gay Marriage Hexagonals Diagram

2009-06-25T05:18:00.001-07:00

This via What Consumes Me:

Apparently from geocities, but I don't get that part.

Pancakes Go Veg

2009-06-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my Abschiedsparty (farewell party - you are basically obligated to give a good-bye party in Germany. Did I mention you also have to throw your own Birthday parties at work? As in you are supposed to bring your own Birthday cake).

Anyroad, I'm doing the Calgary inspired pancake breakfast instead of an evening party or afternoon cake. I decided to save my colleagues the trials of vegan pancakes so I'm going to try a recipe from allrecipes.com:

Good Old Fashioned Pancakes

Those things have 4.5 / 5 stars with over 2400 reviews! Reading them, I have come to believe that the recipe comment is truly a window into a nation's soul. Here are some reviews that are enlightening:

TEVANS211 points out:
...decided I'd make the recipe just as it calls and I recommend not changing a thing (except maybe adding 1/2 tsp of vanilla to your egg mixture).

Karl Fish tell us:
Yesterday I ran out of Aunt Jamima pancake mix and I said to my girlfriend "I gotta buy some more Aunt Jamima." And she said "Buy mix? I always laugh when people do that." And I said "what do you mean?" And she said "I make pancakes from scratch." So I figured I'd look up a recipe here. It took a while to find one that I wanted to try (I was tempted with the fluffy Canadian ones 'cause I'm Canadian) but then I saw all the reviews for this one and it sounded good.

Butterfly Flutterby notes:
I read close to 200 reviews before I made these up and this is what I came up with: I doubled the recipe to make sure I hd enough for four of us as others felt that the serving size is off, I have a ton of batter leftover - good for me, it will keep)

The White Tiger

2009-06-25T01:49:00.000-07:00

Some favourite passages from Aravind Adiga's book:

The dreams of the rich and the dreams of the poor- they never overlap, do they?
See the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?
Losing weight and looking like the poor.

Iqbal, the great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.

The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out, and read.

The description of the chicken coop society is also a fav.

Germans are sooooo Creative!

2009-06-24T04:20:00.001-07:00

I found a bunch of photos at a flea market in Hamburg that are pretty cool. An image is printed in medium format and then the first and last quarter are folded backwards to make a strange mix up. It makes for an interesting effect actually, esp. when you do it with really cheesy postcard pictures!

The first three are of Hamburg. Here is somewhere in the harbour:

and the shipping building, which are really beautiful:

and a highway, with some cranes in the background:

And I particularly like this one, a typical postcard scene of Lübeck:

The Fat Lives On

2009-06-24T04:20:00.000-07:00

I ran across two interesting fat related things this week. One is the Size Germany Project (sponsored by the textile and automotive industry: i.e. VW, Porsche, Hugo Boss and Adidas) which is currently measuring 12,000 Germans to redraw the sizing charts. You can listen to an audio broadcast in English at the link. Germans are growing an average of 1cm per decade! plus people are becoming fatter and less muscular. Also, a woman who is a current size 42 will soon be back to a size 40 without doing anything. The program talks about readjusting products (cars, seats, assembly lines, clothes, etc.) for larger people but it ignores the effects of redefining what is a "normal" size, that you can retain a smaller size outfit, while have a larger body.

A study of Canadians was just published in the journal Obesity, which showd correlations between mortality and BMI. Here's the BMI chart form wiki in case you forget.

And you can double check your own BMI here. Yahoo Canada summerizes the article with the headlin: "Few extra pounds may protect Canadian from early death". But what does the article actually do and conclude? First they use the definitions of Underweight, Normal, Overweight and Obese as accepted by the WHO and the Canadian government using the BMI parameters outline n the picture. They meaure the relative risk (RR) of death (which means they set a specific group to 1.00 and measure other groups againt them, here the Normal BMI range group). Aside: mortality = death, morbidity = rate or incidence of a disease. There are some interesting results, the major finding which Yahoo jumps on is this statement formt he discussion: "being overweight was associated with a significant protective effect as compared to those in the acceptable weight category." They state that because the RR of the overweight group is significantly lower than 1.00. But the are quick to advocate caution in interpreting the results:
Overweight and obesity have been clearly associated with morbid conditions like heart disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. The threshold for morbidity may differ from the threshold for mortality, indicating the need for the use of summary measures of population health that incorporate both mortality and morbidity consequences of excess weight. This is an important public health message, because while overweight may not be a risk factor for mortality, becoming overweight is a necessary step between being of acceptable weight and becoming obese.
The really scary part is this result:
For the younger participants (aged 25–59), underweight was not associated with an increased risk of mortality. However, for older participants (aged 60+), being underweight was associated with a significantly increased risk of mortality (RR = 1.88 (1.32–2.68)). Underweight was a significant risk factor among men (RR = 2.54 (1.47–4.37)) and women (RR = 1.50 (1.01–2.22)).
yowsa! That first part is good news as I have consistently been in the underweight category. But what if in 30 years I'm still below the Normal weight? RR=2.54! Old skinny people are doomed! Wait a minute, old people shrink right? I just need to shed a coupld inches and my BMI will skyrocket! no problem :)

The Next Revolution

2009-06-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

Iran, three articles:

At the Wall St. Journal: Spying aided by Western technology (spying ≠ censorship plus the German connection) and two pieces in the New Yorker: An eyewitness report from Tehran, and also the protests.

The Kayne Curriculum

2009-06-22T04:20:00.001-07:00

7 Ways to be a success according to Kayne West on Fast Company
Know you worth! People always act like they're doing more for you than you're doing for them. Ask yourself this question, "why would they do that?" Obviously, you bring something to the table for them to even do business with you.
I wonder... Would you rather have 100% from an average person or 10% fom someone who is outstanding?
Believe in your flyness... conquer your shyness.
You can learn more from a critique than from a compliment!
If everybody thinks it's right... You're doing something wrong!
Love you haters- they're your biggest fans!
I question anyone who questions me... but I question myself all the time!

E-mail Today

2009-06-19T05:58:00.001-07:00

What would e-mail look like if it was invented today?

Like waves, apparently. From Google, of course.

e-mail = snail mail v2.0
Waves = conversations between people, entire conversation sits on a server that users participate in (i.e. shared object).

Read and see the video via What Consumes Me.

Update: I love it.
1) Watch this (long) video.
2) Go register for Wave updates.
3) Get ready to say good-bye to gmail and hello to Waves.

20 Years Art Make-over

2009-06-19T05:16:00.001-07:00

This year Germany celebrates 60 years of the Bundesrepublik and also 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Well. There are few remaining parts of the wall still standing and the graffiti work on those parts has also taken it's place in history, for instance the East-side Gallery. However, many of the graffiti is so badly damaged, the city, wanting to preserve the few remains of that era, have invited the artists from around the world to come back and repaint their graffiti. From Spiegel Online:

Russian painter Dimitri Vrubel (above) measures a chunk of the Berlin Wall in preparation for a project that will see him repainting his famous "Brothers' Kiss" mural on one of the last remaining stretches of the famous Cold War monument. The original mural, which shows former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing his East German counterpart Erich Honecker and was created just months after the fall of the Wall, had deteriorated over the years. Vrubel's work -- along with those of other artists, 117 from 21 countries, on display at the so-called East Side Gallery -- are currently being recreated using materials that will make the art more resistent to weather and vandals. Vrubel expressed anger when the East Side Gallery's curators erased the original image without informing him. In the end, though, he agreed to come back and cover the Wall with his provocative brush strokes.
The top picture is a reminder of why I love Keith Haring so much. Here is the original article I took the image from, there is a KH movie!

Red + White = Pink

2009-06-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

Singapore just saw the first pink dot day take place on the 18th.
I'm loving the mascot:

The idea is very simple and very Singaporean. Have a gay pride day without calling it gay pride, invite all your straight family and friends, bet yourself in the paper and begin to open the door to LGBTQ acceptance in mainstream S'pore society. Somehow I like it, there is a 10 minute video- watch for the classic S'pore accent! ah, that brings back memories (so people lay it on so think you have a hard time to understand them).

But to be fair, there have been gay pride events in the past, but they were pretty exclusive and low key, so it's very nice to see something more inclusive and getting more attention happening.

Link Round-up

2009-06-18T04:54:00.001-07:00

1. Katheoy (transfolk) in Laos and HIV on BBC.

2. The Bauhaus-inspired BauBike (via Kayne West)

3. My alter ego beats me to a linkedin account.

4. The Evolution of God discussion between Robert Wright and Tyler Cowen on Blogging Heads.

5. Kottke links for Eggers forthcoming Zeitoun.

6. Educate yourself with tons of video lectures by academic types at Academic Earth.

7. Pharrell really, really loves cupcakes (and Takashi Murakami)... it sold for 2mil in 30min. (also via Kayne West)

8. 21 21st century concerns in street art at Format.

To thine own self deceive

2009-06-15T12:14:00.001-07:00

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points to a discussion of a German study: "The road to the unconscious self not taken: Discrepancies between self- and observer-inferences about implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues" published in European Journal of Personality. The abstract:

To what extent can individuals gain insight into their own or another person's implicit dispositions' We investigated whether self-perceivers versus neutral observers can detect implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues contained in video feedback (cue validity) and whether these cues are in turn used as a valid basis for explicit dispositional inferences (cue utilization). Across three studies in the domains of extraversion and anxiety we consistently obtained reliable cue validity and cue utilization for neutral observers but not for self-perceivers. An additional measure of state inferences in Study 3 showed that one reason for the lack of mediation in self-perceivers is their reluctance to use their state inferences as a basis for more general trait inferences. We conclude that people have a blind spot
with respect to the nonverbal behavioural manifestations of their unconscious selves, even though neutral observers may readily detect and utilize this information for dispositional inferences.
The basic premise is the inability of people to accurately perceive themselves, in particular when it conflicts with their previous conception of self. This reminds me of a study outlined at the BBC "Spot the Fake Smile". The basic premise there is that people have a very hard time to identify fake smiles versus real ones, and that it may even be beneficial that we wrongly precieve others as genuinely happy and friendly, even if we now deep down that they are unhappy or even lying to us. So not only do we deceive ourselves about ourselves, but also about others, but maybe that's not always a bad thing.

The Italy I know, pt. II

2009-06-12T05:26:00.001-07:00

After the time with my relatives I was able to spend a couple days with my Father in Rome.

And what is Rome without a visit to the Colosseum:

But Rome is full of surprises, like wine with the image of the last Pope. If that isn't absurd enough, they are right beside wine with the image of Il Duce (Mussolini)! Who would buy a bottle of wine with a picture of Mussolini on it?

(by the way, 12,50EUR is way too expensive for a regular bottle of wine, normally you can get a decent bottle of wine for 3EUR)

I also really liked these church pews, you can decided to kneel on cushion or on wood, if you are really hard core you can bring your own dry chick peas to kneel on.

I also found the most hideous motorbike I've ever seen, it's something like training wheels for adults:

And I absolutely refuse to go to Rome without visiting my favourite restaurant: Osteria Jenny a San Lorenzo (Piazza dei campani):

If you are ever in Rome, I seriously recommend that you make the effort to visit the San Lorenzo neighbourhood for dinner and drinks. It's a mostly student area so things are laid back and cheap and completly non-touristic. There are lots of other good restaurants in the neighrourhood aswell. A couple years ago I stayed at a B&B there, which was nice but it's not very well connected to the rest of the city.

The Italy I Know

2009-06-12T05:04:00.001-07:00

Last week I took a wonderful trip to visit my father and grandparents (and many other relatives) in the small Southern Italian town of Accettura (Map) in the province of Matera. Needless to say the food was plentiful, fresh (lots of farmers in the family) and delicious (pizza for breakfast, no joke). I usually don't share travel photos but it was such a nice trip, I decided to make this little photo post.

I spend most of my time in Accettura:

A small village of about 2500 people tucked into the hilly countryside:

At my Grandparent's farm, with anonymous dogs:

And goats:

and a wood-burning oven (note the 12kg box of penne):

And also wandering around the country side:

Which of course includes the standard shrine:

Bonus pic: (From left to right)My grandmother (84), hes sister who lives in Canada (78), and he older sister who also lives in Accettura (86). My grandmother still walks everyday to the farm outside the town.

Gimme Summa Dat Qualia Soop

2009-06-03T09:58:00.001-07:00

ok ok, I will reference internet style. I found the link to this on the log base 2 Blog. This guy Qualia Soup has a YouTube channel and some pretty freakin' good videos. The original link was for one on just what "open-mindedness" means. It's worth a look-see:

But he also has a seriously good video on Evolution. In just 10 minutes, you too can become well-versed in the new and mysterious science of Evolution! Please, please watch this and distribute. They go great as a package, too!
My only beef is I'd like him to use the term Theory of Natural Selection and not Theory of Evolution. But kudos to the very un-Darwin centric Evolution video! Darwin is, my friends in this year of the Darwin, not King.

Oh, Bundeswehr

2009-06-02T11:19:00.001-07:00

The best part of being a scientist is you can take off in the middle of the day for a quick run.

The best part of living in Plön is you can do that run around a lake surrounded by forests and farmer's fields.

The best part of all is when you encounter a pack of over 20 Germany military men standing around on a dirt road with rifles, seemingly doing nothing but waiting for you to run into them :)

How is a man supposed to concentrate on running with that kinda distraction around?!

Photo: Special Units of the German Army.

A: yes.

Schizophrenia and Autism Genetics

2009-06-01T02:13:00.001-07:00

If you've kept your eat to the proverbial structural variation ground you've undoubtedly noticed the continual attention that copy number variation (CNV) has been getting with respect to schizophrenia and autism. The very crude one-liner summary: Schizophrenic and autistic patients have a higher occurrence of rare and de novo copy number changes (Mental retardation also appears to show the same phenomenon). When these discoveries were made some years ago they were met with considerable hype in the scientific community. The major problem, however, is that we have known for a long time that schizophrenia is highly heritable. That means if your sibling is schizophrenic, you have a higher likelihood of showing symptoms also. So how do you reconcile the new information that says these conditions arise from rare and de novo mutations with the older information which supports a common allele phenomenon? The contradiction is not overly difficult to explain, because of the underlying complexity of these conditions, where both common and rare alleles can be pathogenic. Interestingly, in both reviews about 10% of schizophrenia and autism cases are attributed to rare CNVs, which is higher that what some other papers claim.

There are two review papers in press at Current Opinion in Genetics and Development detailing the genetics of these two conditions. In the schizophrenia review, the authors describe the situation:

Schizophrenia, like other common diseases, is a complex genetic disorder. It is likely that these result from a combination of relatively common alleles of small effect and some rare alleles with relatively large effects.

They summarize that up quite nicely in this plot:

The key parts are the upper-left (low frequency in the population but highly penetrant) and the lower-right (more frequent but with lower penetrance). GWAS stands for Genome-Wide Association Studies, which is basically a technique with tries to like specific alleles that are over-represented in a certain study group.

For Autism, the picture is drawn a little differently. From the autism review:

Currently, there are over 25 different loci that may be considered autism susceptibility candidate genes (ASCG) and many more implicated loci are under investigation. Most of these are rare Mendelian mutations, including CNVs or syndromic forms of autism, and only a few are dur to common genetic variation.

So there is the similar case of rare and common pathogenic alleles. In this review the authors cautiously point out the direct associations between ASCG gene products:

Such network diagrams are both much loved and hated and so the authors do themselves a favour to state "This is a first attempt to explore the connectivity between these genes, and therefore is not comprehensive. We do not mean to imply a single pathway as causative, as there may be many pathways that could be implicated." The review is a nice summary of what is known of ASCGs but given the complexities of both of these conditions, we are still a far cry from understanding their genetic etiologies.

Genetic Freaks on the Horizon

2009-05-30T12:51:00.001-07:00

Let's follow some serial posting and research-skewering. Over at Brazen Careerist Max Marmer quotes a Newsweek article which discusses an original research paper. The paper seems quite interesting. In a study of Special Forces (SF) Soldiers, they not the levels of Neuropeptide-Y (NPY) in the blood. From the paper:

In both the large group (n = 49) and the small group (n = 21), NPY values of non-SF and SF soldiers did not differ at baseline. Wen tested immediately after exposure to acute stress, however, SF soldiers had significantly greater levels of NPY compared to non-SF soldiers. In addition, 24 hours after the completion of survival training, NPY levels in SF soldiers had returned to baseline, wehereas thouse of non-SF soldiers were significantly below baseline values.

and just what is NPY good for? Again, from the paper:
A large body of evidence suggest sthat NPY is a neurotransmitter and neurohormone intimately involved in the body's stres responses. The current finding of enhanced NPY responses to acute stress in individuals recognized as "stress hardy" may represent a step toward improving out understanding of the various factors tha contribute to sterss resilience and sterss vulnerbility in humans.
They very cautiously and reasonably conclude:
The current data underscore the potential therapeutic benefits of NPY agonists in humans - an issue that may be clarified by investigating the effets of NPY agonists in the treatment of individuals suffering from anziety and stress-related disorders.
So overall, a nice finding and very safe conclusions. They have made the link for the first time between the activity of NPY and stress responses. Then they propose that we can use this information in the treatment of certain disorders because we have a better understanding of stress-related biochemical pathways. But, here is what Marmer tells us:
Soon we will be able to model the chemical composition of these genetic freaks and transfer that pattern to everybody. Not long after that we will begin trying patterns that no humans currently possess naturally. Admittedly all of this is a gross simplification but these types of technologies and procedures are on the horizon.
So in his world, we are going to find out how those individuals are regulating NPY and we are going to pump it up in everyone else and in the future we are all going to be so super stress-resistant we can.... uh.... work 100 hours a week!..... all be SF soldiers!....... yes! we can do everything! Oh, and patterns that no human currently possess naturally? how do you know that? Years and years (like decades) of work are needed to pick apart the details of biochemical pathways. I wish there would be some realistic talk about these interesting papers instead of bio-babel.

Reality Check

2009-05-29T07:39:00.001-07:00

There is no way I am ever going to work in any office in Germany without near flawless German language skills. My goals of speaking fluent German need to be seriously ramped up to the next level. I'm talkin' from elementary to doctoral here. The new goal: A self-written blog post auf Deutsch by summers end.

Belio: Kudos!

2009-05-29T01:44:00.001-07:00

Belio is a bilingual (Spanish/English) art magazine from Spain that has been around for 10 years. Their web site is nice but is only Spanish. (Plus, you can get back issues in the web store, but publication dates are a mystery.)

Each issue is dedicated to a specific theme and has artist spreads with accompanying essays. Overall it's pretty informative and they try to make it cohesive. I recently picked up the issue on Wildlife (I mean it had Darwin on the cover, could I not?) which has in the editorial:

Belio is an art and design publication, not an ecology, activism or animal liberation magazine. But as human beings, those of us who bring these pages into being also have hearts and consciences. We might be carnivores, but there is a big difference between eating meat and allowing animals' mistreatment for unjustified ends, from the genetic adulteration of species to abandoning pets in the street, passing through the extermination of animals with brutality and gratuitous violence.

I love how they explicitly aim to be an art/design magazine with a conscience.

I love how they introduce the reader to broad themes in an intelligent and non-self-righteous way.

Kudos!

Sustainable Development

2009-05-28T14:47:00.001-07:00

That report I mentioned earlier (Prosperity without Growth? by Tim Jackson) is both very long and free to download.

Plus they have an interview with Jackson. The read is pretty long but the audio is less than 9 minutes.