Good talks are rare gems. Good talks about interesting topics even rarer. Good talks that make you want to change fields and design E. Coli which smell like bananas are the best. I saw a good one earlier this week, and its now online: Learning to Program DNA by Drew Endy. If you get a chance, check out the picture of Drew going off a waterfall in a kayake on the Lower McCloud river. That’s very close to where I grew up (and don’t you city folk come up there and ruin that beautiful neck of the woods. Stay way slicker!)
The Shrimp! They See Me Polarizations!
A new entry in the best title ever competition: arXiv:0804.2162, “The secret world of shrimps: polarisation vision at its best”, by Sonja Kleinlogel and Andrew G. White. Secret lives of shrimp? That sounds more like an expose on the secret drug habits of the Roloffs on the T.V. show Little People Big World, than the title for a scientific article. (Yes it is politically incorrect to call little people “shrimps.” Having spent the first many years of my life being stared at for have a little person as a sister, however, I think you can cut me some slack, and just laugh 🙂 ) Let’s see if makes it by the title police.
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Google Search Terms
Via Digg, an article on hilarious Google searches. Hmm, reminds me of one I discovered a while back. (Below may or may not be NSFW, depending on your level of puritanism. And it can certainly lead to clicking which is definitely NSFW.)
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Short's Algorithm for Factoring Sunshine
Andrew Landahl (who really should have a blog because he is certainly one of the most interesting people I get to talk to when I attend a conference) sends me a note about recent appearances of quantum computing on prime time TV which he has graciously let me post below.
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Collaborative Wikis and Research
Over at Machine Learning (Theory), the Learner points to a Scientific American article on Science 2.0 which discusses various efforts in bringing scientists into the 21st century, and scientists reluctance to openly discuss their research in progress in public forums. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I started blogging about my own research. First of all, I’m pretty sure it would bore a large number of people into a deep comatose sleep from which they would never emerge. On the other hand, I’m not a very smart guy, so exposing my work to the vast power of the intertube’s collective neuron pool seems like a smart way to advance my own personal empire building, err… I mean research.
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So….
Friday I gave out a survey in the course I’m teaching this quarter asking for feedback. Among the many helpful responses, was one, which pointed out that I say “so” a lot. Now, I know that when I write I use “now” a lot, but I really hadn’t noticed how much I say “so.” In class today I realized that there were places where I couldn’t even proceed without saying “so.” So this is a post to remind myself to try harder to figure out how to not say “so.” Its not so easy, I must say.
Leveraging Existing Infrastructure
We’ve seen these demos before, but Johnny Lee’s TED talk still wows:
Not only does it seem that interfaces are undergoing some radical redesigning right now, but also methods to take existing “cheap” products and leverage them into something which would normally cost a lot more, seems to be catching on.
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Slide Slide Slide Slide!
I sure wish I could get my dog to do this so that I wouldn’t have to exercise her:
Baseball Season Has Begun
You know you are spoiled when the place to put your beer is the top of the dugout:
So close, the kid next to me waved at Ichiro as he returned to dugout and Ichiro waved back. Oh, and the guy with the two foot tall Ichiro bobble head doll was kind of scary.
Bowling and Taking Shots for Science
David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail, both Nobel dudes, have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the presidential candidates choosing not to participate in a debate over science and technology policy:
All three candidates declined. Apparently the top contenders for our nation’s highest elective office have better things to do than explain to the public their views on securing America’s future.
Of course they have better things to do: bowling and taking shots and being under phantom sniper fire! Don’t these Nobel prize winners read Fafblog? Without bowling and shots, where will America’s competitiveness go? I say good science policy begins with a high bowling score and a few shots, don’t you agree?
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