Nominations for the Darwin Award

1) Several of the Local Police:
Apparently one local policeman has a blog on mySpace. He and his buddies posted discussions of arrests they'd made (including names and photos of those arrested in a couple of cases), derogatory remarks about gays and the disabled, and comments about the city government (their employers) that were less than complimentary. They also posted pictures of their badges and cruisers. It was only a matter of time until someone in power found out about the web site...

2) The State Legislature:
For two bills they voted on this session. The first, which was passed, allows for the sale of anti-abortion tags (car license plates). Rationale for passing this: it will save lives. The second, which they overwhelmingly voted against, was for a primary seat belt law. That would have allowed the police to pull you over and ticket you for not wearing a seat belt (right now they can only ticket you for that if you're pulled over for another reason). Rationale for not passing this: erosion of civil liberties...



Sigh.

To laptop or not to laptop...

That is the question. My current PowerBook is getting old. It still runs fine, but is a little slow and it is only a matter of time before the hardware begins to break down. And I have money in a grant to buy a new computer for work that I should spend this year...

It will be a Mac. I've always been a Mac person and that isn't about to change. Besides, based on what I've read about Microsoft's to-be-released-sometime-in-the-distant-future Vista OS, I can't imagine why anyone would want to stay with them. I don't want to buy into a very-soon-to-be obsolete technology, so the G4-based iBooks are out. That leaves the dual-core Intel-based MacBook Pro. Adopting Intel CPU's was perhaps the smartest thing Apple has ever done. Well, second smartest after the iPod. Okay, third - Mac OS X has to be the second. But there are two issues with the MacBook Pro.

1) It's a brand new architecture (at least for Apple).
They've only been shipping for a couple of months. I'm always loath to be an early adopter of new computer stuff. Hardware or software. I prefer to let others debug the system first. Although the very few issues I've heard about with the MacBook Pro appear to be minor, and Apple has fixed them rapidly, it's really too early to tell if there will be more major issues... And most software isn't as yet native. Sure, they will run using Apple's Rosetta emulator, but native is better and who knows what kinds of issues will arise as software is converted...

2) The name MacBook Pro really, really sucks.
I mean, really sucks. What were they thinking? They had this nice little two-line thing going. The iBooks and the PowerBooks. The iBooks for your iWorld. The PowerBooks for the "power users" (not that I consider myself one of those). The whole iThing has worked well for Apple. iBooks. iMacs. iPods. And the PowerThing too. You had PowerBooks and PowerMacs (the desktops). And you could imagine at some point Apple developing a new version of the iPod with a fancy 12" fold-out color LCD screen for watching movies. They would call it the PowerPod...

Who in their right mind is going to buy a MacPod Pro? Sounds like some kind of invasive medical device. Especially if you mispronounce it MacProd Po...

And now for something completely different...

Well, different to the post I just submitted...

I had Baked Alaska for the first time last week. Made me wonder who first thought of putting ice cream inside meringue and baking it. I mean, this is not something that is likely to have happened by accident...

"Chef Bigponce! I accidentally tripped and dropped the meringue batter on your ice cream sculpture! The one built on top of the sponge cake!"

"You dolt! And the French ambassador is waiting for that meringue! What should I do?????..... I've got it! I'll bake the meringue on top of the ice-cream!"

"But Chef Bigponce, won't that result in a melted, soggy, inedible mess?"

"Of course it will! Remember, this is for the French ambassador. Those garlic-smelling, frog-eating cowards don't support the War on Terror! They deserve nothing more than a melted, soggy, inedible mess for dessert!"

Brief pause while baking

"Good grief Chef Bigponce, it's not a melted, soggy, inedible mess!"

"Drat those French!"







Okay, it's the end of the day. Obviously I'm losing it. Time to go home...

Fighting Terrorism 101

Apparently this is how you do it...

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing but the greatest admiration for the men and women of the US military. I just have my doubts about their leaders...

Shuffle blather

I've been listening to my iPod on the shuffle setting the last couple of days. Here's the artists from the first 10 songs I heard on shuffle:

The Cranberries, The Cranberries, Natalie Cole, The Cranberries, Hunters and Collectors, Eric Clapton, BB King, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, Eric Clapton

Doesn't seem so random. I really don't have that many Cranberries and Eric Clapton songs on the iPod. In fact, the odds of getting three Cranberries and three Eric Clapton songs in the first ten work out to be about one chance in 115,000,000... Given the number of U2 songs currently on my iPod, it's actually more likely that I would get ten U2 songs in a row.

Am I a geek or what?

By the way, the Eric Clapton/BB King/Elvis Costello set (songs six through eight) were Cocaine/Let The Good Times Roll/Clubland. "Intelligent shuffle" perhaps?

Solution to the energy problem!

I think I have a way to cure this country's gas-guzzling addition. Just find a way to harness the energy expended as a result of this guy's bigoted, ignorant big fat mouth.

And to think people actually listen to him...

Not so random ponderings

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Just not too much to say recently... Here's some not so random thoughts to tide you over until my next epiphany.

It's Spring Break here at Big State U. That means no students for a week. As I walked onto campus this morning a crushed empty beer carton tumbled by blown by the wind. Seemed somehow apropos.

I read a little article on the BBC News web site last week about a woman in Ireland who was in court because she had been caught by a camera used to detect speeders. She wasn't speeding. In fact she was driving well under the speed limit. The problem? She was putting on makeup. One hand was holding a mirror and the other was applying eyeliner or something. Pop quiz: how many hands were on the steering wheel? Her lawyer was arguing that the case should be dismissed on the grounds that a few days after she had been photographed driving sans hands she had been caught driving drunk and had lost her license anyway...

The above reminded me of a couple of things. Last year the state legislature here failed to pass a bill making driving while using a cell phone illegal (using a "hands-free" headset would have been okay under the proposed law). One of the most outspoken opponents of the bill argued that she put on her makeup every morning while driving down the highway to the State Capitol and that if she could manage that, people should be quite capable of using a cell phone while driving... Remind me to stay off that highway in the morning.

It's illegal in this state to drive while not wearing a seat belt. However, you can't be pulled over for not wearing a seat belt. You can only be charged if you're pulled over for some other reason like speeding. The state legislature recently turned down a bill that would let the police pull you over for not wearing a seat belt (ie for breaking the law). The reason they turned it down? It infringes on people's civil liberties...

The mayor here recently proposed installing cameras at intersections with traffic lights. You know, those cameras that take pictures of people going through red lights. The council turned down the proposal on the grounds it was too "Big Brother is watching you"...

So here we are in a country where the President and his cronies can listen in on your phone conversations and read your private emails, but God forbid we use cameras to catch people who are breaking the law and putting other people's lives in danger. Or we enforce seat belt laws that not only save lives, but also vast amounts of money (think about how much it costs society to deal with an accident with injuries or fatalities). Those would be invasions of privacy. Erosion of civil liberties.

Is it 2008 yet?

Ponderings with a sore back

Somehow I managed to put out my back yesterday while putting together furniture at work. Yes, faculty get to do that. I could have got the Big State U physical plant people to put the stuff together, but they would charge me more than the furniture itself cost, would take six months and would get it wrong. Anyway, here I am at home today resting my sore back. This all leads to the following ponderings:

My wife and children, while laughing heartily at my predicament, told me I'm walking around like an old man (a result of my sore back). So now I know what it's like to walk around like an old man. You look down a lot. I guess that means you have a much higher chance of finding money or other small valuable items dropped by others. Not that it does you any good. Apparently old men can't bend down to pick that stuff up. Interestingly going up stairs is easier than going down. I would have thought it would be the other way around. So old men dislike stairs not because they can't climb them, but more because they're afraid they'll get upstairs and not be able to come down. It would be rather embarrassing to have to call the fire department to rescue an old man stuck on the second floor. And old men can't sit for too long for fear their backs will lock up. They also can't stand for too long because it hurts. No wonder so many of the poor buggers are grumpy.

On a completely unrelated note... I read in the newspaper yesterday that President Bush's approval rating is at it's lowest point ever - 34%. Which leads me to ask, what are those 34% thinking?

I fear I have sat too long. I'd better go stand and ponder how I'm going to pick up that quarter I spotted last night on the floor in our bedroom upstairs. And then I'll devote my efforts to figuring out how to get back down stairs again.

Ultrasounds...

...are really cool. We saw the baby this morning. The quality of the images has improved tremendously from the fuzzy pictures we got with our first child. We even saw a little hand with fingers and thumb. Saw the heart beating. You could count the vertebrae in the spine if you wanted to.

Very cool. I fell in love with the baby. Not that I didn't already love it at some level already. Life is wonderful.





No, we didn't find out the gender. Didn't want to. It's going to be a surprise for everyone.

I'm baaaaaccckkk!

I'm sure my loyal fan base (both of them) are wondering why the silence here for the last week or so. Well, I spent a few days in scenic Salt Lake City at the 50th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting. Five thousand or so of the geekiest science geeks descended like flies upon the city of Mormons. Just think of the possibilities for clashes between these two exceedingly different cultures!

There weren't any. Interculture clashes that is. At least not that I saw. Interesting place though. It's a(n unnaturally) clean, very modern city with wide streets and rather striking architecture. Although the city itself is quite flat, it is surrounded by very beautiful mountains. The people are friendly, in a somewhat plastic way. Despite the common perception, alcohol is readily available (trust me, if it weren't the meeting wouldn't have been held there). Oh, and my room-mate determined that there was plenty of porn available on the hotel TV. No, we didn't watch any - he had a bet with his wife over whether or not Mormons allowed porn. She lost. And they have homeless people just like any other US city. How the homeless survive the cold is beyond me - I'm not sure it really got above freezing while I was there.

The meeting itself? I enjoyed it. The talks were almost uniformly abysmal, with just a couple of exceptions. However, the schmoozing went well. And that, after all, is why we go to these things. I may even have picked up a new collaboration (a good thing). All in all a successful trip.

And now I'm back.

Oh worms!

I guess it was inevitable. So now the Mac OS has a worm of it's very own. Still, you'd have to be pretty stooooopid to fall for this one and, of course, we Mac users generally don't fall into that category. :-)

Now it's time to get my smug self a coffee.

Shadow dance

You know those Apple iPod ads where someone is walking along the street listening to their iPod and their shadow is dancing wildly?

Now my shadow can dance too.

Okay, so not earthshattering news, but I'm a happy fellow.

The really not quite so super Super Bowl

For the first time in quite a while I managed to sit and watch the Super Bowl. It was not impressive...

The Game:
Neither team played all that well really, and the officiating was at times unbelievably bad. The two calls in the second half that moved the SeaHawks from the Steelers 1yd line to almost mid-field were well beyond appalling.

The Commercials:
There's this hype about the commercials every year. Maybe the fact that there wasn't nearly so much hype this year should have been a big hint... This years commercials were at best ho-hum. IMHO the Bud baby horse pulling the Bud cart was the best, and only because of a high cute factor. The "life comes at you fast" series was not only predictable, but also just plain bad. The "Stunt City" ad for whatever deodorant it was was a waste of what was probably a very, very large amount of money. And so on.

The Half-Time Show:
Okay, so I'm probably going to annoy some hard core Stones fans here, but guys, it's time they hung it up. They should get out while people still think they're good.... The Stones just couldn't hold it together last night. Yes, I know it's probably really hard to play in that kind of venue and that they probably couldn't hear what they were playing all that clearly, but frankly, the Stones were not that good. All I could think while they were playing was I really, really hope Keith Richards doesn't have a wardrobe malfunction...

Woo hoo!

After three desolate days, my email is back!

Alas, all that extra nonsense Big State U puts us through to keep the administrative types looking busy and important came back with the email...

Sigh, I guess you can't have it all.

Isn't it ironic...

...that the President who has done his best to isolate this country from the rest of the world, indeed has alienated many our traditional allies, can stand up in front of the country and make statements like:

"In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline."

"America rejects the false comfort of isolationism."

"Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies; it would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need."




Where's a sick bag when you really need one?

Alas dear email, I knew ye well

The email system here at Big State U has now been down for 24 hours. I've developed a twitch in my right eye, my hands are shaking and I'm sweating uncontrollably... I think I'm going into withdrawal...


Oh where, oh where has my email gone?
Oh where, oh where can it be?
With its spam and junk,
And its mail for me,
Oh where, oh where can it beeeeeeeeeeeee?





This (hopefully) temporary insanity is brought to you courtesy of the Big State U IT department.

I'd hate to be him...

A BIG oops...

To Nobel or not to Nobel...

In the comments to my previous post, my good friend Milo pointed out that I seem to be lusting for the Nobel prize. As he is no doubt well aware, my previous posts on winning a Nobel (here and here) were written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. I honestly cannot imagine ever being in the running for a Nobel. In my post on how you win a Nobel I left out one essential criterion - knowing the right people. Many (not all) Nobels are won with not just great science, but also a large amount of schmoozing... Unfortunately for any Nobel aspirations I might have, I am not much of a schmoozer. C'est la vie.

However, I am just like any other scientist in that there is some small part of me that enjoys, even craves, recognition for the work I do. Scientists are people, and just like everyone else, have egos that like to be stroked. I'm certainly no exception. It is gratifying when your work is acknowledged in a positive manner. It can even be gratifying when some well-known individual in the field, who possesses a significant god-complex*, is publically negative about something you've done (at least when you know you're right and they're wrong).** Everyone likes to be told they're doing a good job. For scientists this generally comes in the form of citations in published papers (the authors refer to your work) and sometimes in talks where the speaker points out something you've done. I'll readily admit to being delighted when hearing someone mention my work in a talk. And I'm something of a ISI Web of Knowledge junkie (this is a web site that let's you look up how many times your papers have been cited - only available to people at institutions who pay the hefty subscription fees). I like to see who is citing my work and in what context. And I honestly don't believe I'm any different from my peers in that regard. All scientists care at some level about how they are perceived.

So, do I want a Nobel? I certainly wouldn't turn one down if it were offered. But I'm also not making that a life goal. Or a goal of any sort. My only real goal with my work is to keep doing the stuff that fascinates me, and hopefully manage to keep others fascinated too.




* Someone with a god-complex thinks they are one.

** That sounded rather arrogant, but I WAS right. Really I was.

Who are those people?

This weekend my wife and I had an hour or so to ourselves (ie no kids!) and we found ourselves sitting in a coffee shop watching the world go by. While there I overheard the barista telling a customer all about some friend of a friend who got this job with a web site design company and how he was sent off to live in Aspen, Colorado, and how he got to go skiing every weekend and how his life was one big party... I got to pondering, isn't it funny how it's always someone else who gets to live the dream life? I don't mean someone other than me*, but rather how it's always a friend of a friend, or a cousin's second cousin, or an aunt's step-father's daughter's son... Does anyone really know one of these people? Do they really exist, or are they some kind of collective urban myth created subconsciously to assuage feelings of shortcomings in our own lives?


More importantly, why wasn't the barista making my latte rather than carrying on about some mythical skiing party dude?



* I actually think I am living the dream life - a wonderful wife, two great kids (and a third on the way!), good friends, a job I love. What more could I want?

Stockholm? Not yet apparently...

I've finished reading Peter Doherty's "The Beginners Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize." (Okay, so it's taken a while...) It was an interesting read. Covered Doherty's career, his ideas on religion and science, science funding etc. I would recommend it to anyone in science or interested in science. As I noted before, he rambles, and writing a book like this is clearly not his forte. Still, a good read.

He saved the "how to win a Nobel" bit until the last chapter. Bugger me if I'm not already doing (or have done) pretty much everything he recommends!

1) Get good training at good institutions.

Okay so my undergraduate and graduate degrees aren't from a world-reknowned institution. They are however from an institution with a good reputation for solid training. And the place can (now) claim two resident Nobelists. I did do my postdoctoral training at high profile institutions that have spawned, and have resident, multiple Nobel prize winners. So I think I've got this criteria covered, more or less.

2) Work at a high profile institution.

This is the one where I'm somewhat deficient. Big State U is known for stellar athletics, not academics... However, the department I'm in is ranked in the top 20 for a public university in the US, so it's not all bad.

3) Work on something really important.

I've got this one down. My area of study, protein folding, is widely considered to be one of the more important areas in modern biology. If you're interested, you can get brief introductions to protein folding here and here (the latter focuses too much on "misfolding" diseases in my opinion).

4) Work on something the Nobel committees care about.

Again, got it covered. The study of protein folding has lead to Nobel prizes in the past.

5) Be open to explanations/discoveries outside the accepted "norm".

I try to be. In fact I think I'm somewhat successful at that, even if I do say so myself.

6) Don't piss off your peers.

Obvious really. The Nobel committees ask distinguished scientists and past winners to nominate people for Nobels. And this is all done in a very secretive manner, so you have no idea who's been asked to nominate and who's been nominated. If you piss people off, you probably won't be nominated. I'll try to be nice...

I have it covered then. But still no trip to Stockholm...