The Deluge

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

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

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.

Click Opera, The blog of Momus, is done.



It was good while it lasted.

Creatures of the Deep Deep

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

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?

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

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.