Yeah, yeah, Cola & Mentos videos are getting somewhat tired. Still, this one really goes overboard: Ha! Now how does the Cola & Mentos reaction work? Well, first, the Cola & Mentos thing is a physical reaction, more than a chemical one: it happens mainly due to nucleation sites provided by the pitted surface of [...]
For old-school geeks who spent the better time of their childhood prefecting their Space Invaders and Donkey Kong skills. A NYC disaster movie meets… well, something. Hat tip to Mickey.
Recently, a judge in Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Myriad’s patents on BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes were invalid, being a “products of the law nature” and could be patented no more than, say, mount Everest. These two genes are associated with breast and ovarian cancer, and are used in testing for susceptibility to [...]
Marketing yourself is a process you go through many times. The job hunt comes to mind — but not only. Academia is rife with self-marketing: grant applications, promotion & tenure reports, attracting students to your courses and to your lab, competing for conference lecture slots, giving a lecture. But not only academia, and not only [...]
Boys and girls, it can be done. Published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results (Where else?)
A nice take on the vi / emacs wars Also, real programmers browse the web using the vimperator.
Speaking of sampling bacteria, this ties in well with the previous post about GEBA. And by “well” I mean “in an alternate-universe/ altered-consciousness manner”. The voices in the song are sampled from this KFC employee training tape. The video won a prize in machinima.com. So if you like World of Warcraft, bacteria, KFC, sampled music, [...]
Floated in my email inbox recently. Bears blogging. Dear Editor, I would like to thank the editorial board and the referees for their comments and contributions to our manuscript. We have carefully considered the comments when rewriting the manuscript, and believe it to be much improved now… …Oh, screw this. Let’s cut the bull. Mmkay? [...]
I was recently reminded of this classic by Geoffrey James. Here are a few of my favorites. The whole text is available online. In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time. Therefore Space and Time are Yin and Yang of programming. Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are [...]
I didn’t write this one, but I wish I did. I found it on Science after Sunclipse. I guess that a CC license can be safely applied to anonymous chain letters. Today CBSG continues with its pointers for budding scientists with the second part on serving as a peer reviewer for papers and grants. Okay, [...]
Respected Sir, I am Distinguished Professor First Class Nebulous Nimbus, Department of Organismal Motility of the University Technicality of Upper Freedonia. I have many articles accepted and pending in PLoS Biology, PNAS, and BMC. Unfortunately I cannot pay the Open Access publication costs as my University has suffered abysmally from ill-advised investments in derivatives both [...]
A bit late in the day, but here are the Ig Nobel prize winners for 2009. Cut and pasted from Wikipedia. The prizes were awarded Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009 at Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2009 Veterinary medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, UK, for showing that cows with names give [...]
Stephen Colbert had an interesting lineup for the past two nights: Richard Dawkins on Sep 30, and Francis Collins last night. Enjoy the vids: The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Somehow, sharing the same problems with Uri Alon makes me feel almost absolved of the sins against my own family in spending Sundays at the lab. Almost: Ron Laskey has a whole collection of songs, published as an audiobook in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. (I guess CSHL Press does not qualify as an indie [...]
5. Question: “You know, our group has been working on this for a long time, and we found that…” Really means: “How come you got invited to talk about this and not I?” 4. Question: “Have you tried using Y instead of X?” Really means: “We are doing the same thing using Y, since we [...]
