25.6.09

The Gay Marriage Hexagonals Diagram

This via What Consumes Me:



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




Pancakes Go Veg

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

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.



24.6.09

Germans are sooooo Creative!

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

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 :)





22.6.09

The Next Revolution

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

7 Ways to be a success according to Kayne West on Fast Company
  1. 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.
  2. I wonder... Would you rather have 100% from an average person or 10% fom someone who is outstanding?
  3. Believe in your flyness... conquer your shyness.
  4. You can learn more from a critique than from a compliment!
  5. If everybody thinks it's right... You're doing something wrong!
  6. Love you haters- they're your biggest fans!
  7. I question anyone who questions me... but I question myself all the time!


19.6.09

E-mail Today

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



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!


18.6.09

Red + White = Pink


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

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.


15.6.09

To thine own self deceive

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.



12.6.09

The Italy I know, pt. II

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



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.


3.6.09

Gimme Summa Dat Qualia Soop

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.




2.6.09

Oh, Bundeswehr

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.

1.6.09

Schizophrenia and Autism Genetics

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.