There are certain questions that people ask which are deep and profound. Like, what is the meaning of life? Why be moral? But, there are some questions which people seem to think are deep and profound, but which I don’t think are. Like the “if a tree falls in a forest…” question (HT: Kiwi_grrl) So [...]
Over on Benchpress I referred to a new ad by Roche for their LightCycler 480 PCR machine. My buddy (in offering poor prices for poor companies) Anthony provided the most fitting testimonial of: “If RT-PCR was this cool, I’d do it everyday.” Well done, Roche. Well done:
The “holy grail” of aging research is the ability to actually reverse the aging process. Or in other words, turn the clock back on this aged fellow on the left and transform him back into the handsome young thing on the right: Of course, as with all things biological, nature figured this out long before [...]
From Slate (HT: Marginal Revolutions): The world of scientists remains distant and bizarre to most Americans. Only 18 percent of Americans know a scientist personally, according to a 2005 survey (subscription required), and when asked in 2007 to name scientific “role models,” the results were dismal. Forty-four percent of Americans couldn’t come up with a [...]
Last week, I posted on Creative’s “ambitious” ad campaign for their new Zii product, the one laden with “intense” PR-speak proclaiming the dawn of an age of “stem cell computing”. Well, as expected, this was somewhat overhyped. Now, don’t get me wrong the Zii chip architecture (block diagram to the left) is very innovative. The [...]
I’m a big fan of House, not only because the lead character is someone we all (or maybe just me) wish we could be (someone so brilliant that he can get away with saying and doing just about anything), but because of their use of bizarre medical cases showing off some of the extreme things [...]
I recently made a post on Bench Press about the potential for distributed computing (projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home which combine the computing power from volunteers over the internet to do supercomputer style calculations) to help any initiative needing extra number-crunching power, as well as steps that the scientific and distributed computing communities can take [...]
I had an interesting exchange with a high school friend of mine about the difference between "love" (in the sense of romance) and "just friendship". In her extreme geekiness (come on, don’t act surprised, she and I did quiz bowl in high school after all!), she used a chemistry analogy about chemical bonds to try [...]
(Cross-posted from Bench Press)Inspiring students to be interested in (or at least to value and respect) science is something which the scientific community has unfortunately passed on to under-prepared teachers. This has serious consequences. When leading US politicians can pander to the public by asserting that vaccines can cause autism or that fruit fly research is pointless, I [...]
(Cross posted from Bench Press) I was going to write a long essay about how web technologies have advanced to the point where science can be shared and discussed and shown in sophisticated ways through the web. But, rather than bore you with those trivial details, why not just show you. Before the Web: Read [...]