Efficient Research Focus

In the last century alone, Homo sapiens has killed through war about 190 Million of his own species. First, that's not 'sapiens', that's stupid. Second, given that AIDS has worldwide caused 'only' 25 Million deaths, I guess many scientists of the biomedical research areas should change their focus, and rather ask for funds to cure war. Or stupidity?

A World of Justice

Wish you a phantasmagorgical New 2009!!
May Nutella be with you!

Hey, If you are a brave guy, and want to help obtaining some justice in 2009 with a simple email, visit this page and take action!
Cheers!
BLT

Fault Tolerance Added

[from wikipedia] "The power law distribution highly influences the network topology. It turns out that the major hubs are closely followed by smaller ones. These ones, in turn, are followed by other nodes with an even smaller degree and so on. This hierarchy allows for a fault tolerant behavior. Since failures occur at random and the vast majority of nodes are those with small degree, the likelihood that a hub would be affected is almost negligible. Even if such event occurs, the network will not lose its connectedness, which is guaranteed by the remaining hubs. On the other hand, if we choose a few major hubs and take them out of the network, it simply falls apart and is turned into a set of rather isolated graphs. Thus hubs are both the strength of scale-free networks and their Achilles' heel." What happens if one adds a hub? That's what many pathogens do... ?

INRI?

Jesus said he'd be the messiah for all the Jews. After 2000 years, millions and millions of people believe in him and his message, except all the Jews...

Museum of Forced Tolerance

In October, the Israeli Supreme Court decided to allow building the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem. In doing so, it overrun legal protests from Palestinian families, attempting to halt the construction because a major ancient Muslim cemetery was found on the site of the building.

Durragham Saif, the lawyer who brought the Islamic Court petition on behalf of three Palestinian families, Al Dijani, Nusseibeh and Bader Elzain, all of whom have members buried at the cemetery, said: "It's unbelievable, it's immoral. You cannot build a museum of tolerance on the graves of other people. Imagine this kind of thing in the [United] States or England. And this is the Middle East where events are sensitive. If this goes ahead in this way it is going to cause the opposite thing to tolerance."(paragraph taken from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-plans-to-build-museum-of-tolerance-on-muslim-graves-466028.html)

Happy Christmas, World, and good luck for 2009

Real and Reciprocal Constraints

During evolution, vertebrates can develop some morphological features (e.g. lose digits, reassign function to building blocks) but not others (grow a second head, or a third arm). Re-dimension and re-shape is ok, but not to add. This however is not true for DNA and protein, where bits and regions can be changed, added, multiplied. Nevertheless, I wonder if the morphological limitations can be translated into constraints for DNA/protein evolution. A bit like solvent flattening for crystallographic phases. Yes, maybe this is a circular argument.

Dino-waves

Have just invented a wave-mechanic-based new theory to explain the extinction of dinosaurs. Now I just need a Jurassic park to test it.

Mind-surfing

I have just developed a new method to stop insomnia, or at least to stop boredom during sleepless nights (or public transport...). It's mind surfing.
Place yourself in your mind on a surfboard, and position yourself on the surfboard in some attractive place (say the top of the Eiffel Tower). Then start surfing (e.g; down the slope of the tower). Use all attacking thoughts (about unpaid bills, reports to finish, things to repair) as waves that propulse you into another direction. Doesn't necessarily make you fall asleep, but at least it's good fun!

Darwin and Car Evolution

Went jogging and there was that little dog, black and white, quite young. It wanted to be my friend, and wanted to run with me each round. It's name: Darwin. So I guess I should write something about evolution. Here it comes. It's about evolution of cars. There was this car, silly look, and too expensive. But it's so small that you can squeeze it into any sort of parking space, which is very useful. So they called it the SMART car. Then there came new generations of this car, still the same silly look, but somewhat more expensive, and unfortunately too big, so you can't park them anymore anywhere. Should these cars be called the DUMB cars?

Dreams

In dreams, a certain type of questions are absent. I wonder what that means concerning the generation and influence of dreams.

Party Signalling II

... cont: but if cellular signalling events are like parties, then maybe one could use parties to describe and learn about signalling events. Choose the right descriptors, record party, match party descriptors to characteristics of known signalling events, identify best matching signalling event, and then use party dynamics to learn about best matching signalling event (complete, extrapolate, test hypothesis). "After the third drink, Sue sat on the couch to chill; this attracted quickly Pete, Jo and Matt. Sue would have preferred to chat with the cute Ben, but he was off wiggling his bum to impress Amy. But Pete was quite funny tonight, so she sat down for a while and listened; Matt thought some more drinks might help getting things going, and went off to fetch some from the fridge. This however perturbed the starting love affair between Jean and Nelly; Nelly had to leave just thereafter, and went to Singapore next day without exchanging email addresses with Jean. As a result they did not get married, her son Kevin was not born and could not save London from a fatal bio-gas attack forty years later." Maybe this matches to T cell receptor signalling? I guess we will learn to appreciate the importance of the unspectacular parties, and signalling events, to keep up criticallity.

blinded by the Light

Why is it that all sorts of night-active insects fly straight into light sources? Being programmed to be active at night, attraction to light does not make any sense. If they strive for light, they could just fly during the day. And wouldn't there be the danger of just trying to fly straight into the full moon on a clear night? Is that a hint that nocturnal insects have evolved from diurnal ones? And why has no insectivorous species developed light sources - like deep-see fish - to easily capture all these badly programmed prey?

Car fusion

It was shown that a mean human face (i.e. where all measures between and for facial features are the set to those corresponding to the average values of human populations) is beautiful. If one averages the 20 % of the most beautiful faces, then the average top20% beautiful face is perceived as being even more beautiful than just the average face. If one then calculates the vectorial distance between the 'average' and the 'top20% average' face, and uses the same vector to 'exaggerate' the top20% average, then the top20% + average face is even more beautiful than the top20% face. All this to say that one should use the same algorithm to conceive car profiles, and built the most beautiful vehicle of all - very simply. If that works for car profiles, then maybe other objects could be tackled, too.

Party Signalling

Cellular signal transduction was initially viewed as a kind of chinese whisper. A talks to B who goes off to talk to C who switches on the light. Others are not concerned. I guess however signal transduction it's more like a party. Who ever is there will talk. Duration of the interaction will depend on compatibility and personal predisposition. If by chance there is THE FUNNY GUY, or THE PERFECT GIRL, then people will congregate. If not, then someone else will tell jokes or be pulled, however only moderately, depending on how much alcohol. An evening with three moderately funny guys might still be very enjoyable. Most parties finish in a rather unspectacular way. The likeliness for a spectacular outcome (e.g. Gilles dancing naked on the table) will depend on the sum of all attractions plus personal predisposition plus some energetic fluctuations. It's about functional redundancy and compensation, criticallity.

Top Score

The saddest species of all: 70+ year old poor Caucasians.

Random Hacking

Having said this, I have never really tried, so let's go:
diosqsokdf qsd zpzei vfdsidijhrtnzscqbbq olzd zer csdqsqdoihze sqdoihr sdfzezownbvvbnzqp^sdk poffezearesaqrit mlsdvxsor qsf te ar enfdsqio mdiogz elfiojq zqf goot aiodf bbsdeioropa sdfg poiuicerea oirea sfdz p tezhsioc pojz lishe as froa shu.
... well maybe not this time, unless it means something awfully beautiful in wolof. However, I guess it just shows how long 1 million years are.

Inbalance

On one side of the globe there are so many in need of so much, while on the other side of the globe educated persons get depressed because there is no sense to their lives. What do we learn from that?

Biotristesse

There is something wrong with organic (food) shops. They are just not funny. Neither the people, nor the lay-out. Rather than meeting a happy folk eating healthy food, I see a bunch of grumpy and frustrated people, aged 35+, cruising though austere food rows. There is something like a silent accusation in the air. I wonder why.

3-Dimensional Language

Language is a tedious thing. I've always these wonderfully meaningful 3D picture of things (objects, issues, facts) and their links (causal, temporal, spatial) in my mind. It's all clear and reassuringly contained. But to communicate this 'sensogram', I need to squeeze it into the one-dimensional tube that is our language. Too much reduction, so much frustration, and a lot of misunderstanding. We really need a 3D communication system!

Parallel Evolution

Inspecting the beautiful palaeolithic cave art of the Chauvet Cave, scientists are shaken in their believes: How come that these drawing are as -or even more- skilful than paintings from civilisations that flourished 10-15,000 years later? Is something must be wrong with the dating of the paintings!

Inspecting the increasingly complete fossil record, it is now established for many developments that the view of a linear evolution needs to be supplanted by an iterative evolution of "developmental homoplasies and convergent ecological specialisations". Evolution is characterised by consecutive waves of radiation of species (many of which dead-end groups) into the same ecological niches - and not by an orderly step-by-step advancement.

Are humans part of nature, after all?

The French Disconnection

The French are convinced to live in the most beautiful country, the have the best food, and the most beautiful women; they work less than other nations, but have more holidays, and spent an awful amount of time on their favourite hobby: extramarital seduction and sex. Yet, despite all this, they use three times more antidepressants than any other nation. What do we learn from that?

Mirror-me

Every day we inspect ourself in a mirror, see our mirror image in shop windows, car mirrors etc., and we identify ourself with what we see. However, what we see corresponds to the mirror image of ourself, and since left and right halves of a human face are never the same, we have a different perception of ourself than what everyone else sees. On a global scale, are there effects of this?

Our own Holocene mass extinction

Our brain, which is too big for our body, excessively exalts emotions. Simultaneously, it creates self-awareness, and self awareness ultimately leads to a hedonotropic behaviour, where pleasure seeking -i.e. the satisfaction of emotion- becomes the central motivation for action, not success. Is that why humanoid intelligence has never been developed before us - because it is a catch 22 unsustainable condition for an organism? After only about 200,000 years of existence, Homo sapiens has caused a mass extinction event that, if it continues at its current pace, is predicted to wipe out half of all species within the next century. Is that how the short story of Homo sapiens, error of evolution, is to end?

Egocentricity

What if China's authoritarian capitalism provides a much better economical system than Western liberal capitalism? Is a people more powerful if it acts as one organism, disregarding individual misery? Is a society where individual happiness primes over global success sustainable? And if not, will it be supplanted by better working models in the future? European leaders have lost the mean of directing their people through unconditional patriotism and religion. And Europe loses possibilities to export productive misery. Do we need to fool all the people all the time?

Shop 'n pub

While waiting for over 30 min in front of the changing cabinets of H&M's female section, holding one of my wife's potential thongs (yellow), I was wondering why large cloth shops don't symbiose with pubs. Using a special display over the bar, one could enjoy a beer and the company of other mistreated males, while supporting one's partner's shopping. "Here's your lager, sir, and let me just remind you that your wife requests your comments - she's on monitor five now, wearing the same shirt in S, rather then XS."

Ballerina Camouflage

Just remembered how I felt like John Wayne, like a true cowboy, when I had to wear that gun on my belt for that 24h of duty at the military base entry gate during my military service, back in '89. I hated the military service, and I hated feeling like a cowboy because of that gun, but it's the crown that makes the king.
Human minds go both ways, and I just wondered what would happen if all armed forces had to wear, say, pink ballerina dresses, or full-body picachu gowns. How much violence would this take away from armed conflicts?

Lost man

I wish Feynman would have been a Molecular Biophysicist.

Holy Week

Sorry, must be my holy week... but here's another one: Was just wondering who of the persons on which major religions are based would be least depressed seeing what mankind has made out of - and justified with - their original teachings. Jesus? Mohammed? Siddhārtha? My personal guess would be the latter.

To ben or not to ben

Oh and by the way (see previous posting), I just wonder how Jesus would feel like now, seeing that he, called Jeshua ben Josef (=Jeshua, son of Josef) will be remembered as Jesus, son of God. On top, he was born in year 1, meaning that he was one year younger as the Calendar that was created after him.

Jeshua not ben Josef

For people to believe that Jesus was God's son - rather than Josef's - there must have not been a significant resemblance between them. Thus, if we manage to find out how Jesus looked like, we would be able to say how Josef did not look like. I'm not sure if this insight would present a significant advance of science...

The Dark Ages

Medieval times are a synonym for warfare and torture. However this epoch is full of examples of multicultural, multi-ethnic communities living peacefully together, tolerating each other's religions. Today, wars and torture remain, whereas multicultural centers are hard to find. Where are the dark ages?

Multi-Me

I tried to imagine what a world would be like where every single human being has exactly my character. A painful exercise.

Mona Lisa Unnoticed

Been at the Louvre. The Mona Lisa is the most photographed but least watched of all famous paintings. When finally in front of that most enigmatic painting, most visitors turn their back to the lady, and smile for the camera. Others only visualise her through the little screen of their digital camera, and obstinently try to get a picture of her. Once that's done they don't bother looking at her, and bugger off, satisfied.

The Farts of Freedom

In our overcrowded yet sophisticated society, it would be good to have a special type of toilet music that allows to cover elegantly our unpolite cabinet sonorities. Needs a solid analysis, to determine a histogram of frequencies humans produce on the loo, to be matched with exisiting pieces of music, so to allow a maximum cover with minimum dezibels. I guess some brass-music dominated Wagnerish orchestra music, tribal drum-based chants, or thus spoke zarathustra orgue music could be suitable. Constipation is a modern problem that should not be understimated!

Farts of God

Saw a film about Kamikaze. A sad sad film. Kamikaze means "Wind of Gods". In reality, these young soldiers were rather "Farts of the vain Emperor", an arrogant and mad man, who just wouldn't want to admit that he had lost the war. They were useless farts of the Emperor, who abused of their loyalty, and they knew it when they boarded their old planes for their last flight.

Summernight Mares

Why do mosquitoes wait until you wake up, before they go buzzing about your ears, to wreck your nerves and your sleep, and then sting you - even though some of them might end up smashed against the wall? That's anti-Darwin! Mosquitoes should have evolved to bite you when you sleep, and fly silently to avoid alarming you. Yet they don't. I actually have noticed that when you use earplugs, then you don't get bitten any more! Which means mosquitoes are sadistic little creatures in a mission from hell. But aren't we all?

Summernight wonders

Another sleepless summer night (too hot, too noisy, viva Centre Ville!). I felt that progress in science is like trying to express the notion of 'cousin', by only using the words 'mother' and 'daughter'. You'll never get there.
Just think it over: First, there is ignorance. Then someone links some sort of macroscopic event to a specific phenotype (say reduced food intake to aging, or impact of famine to offspring characteristics). Then there is the breakthrough discovery that links that phenotype to a molecular event (aging to the klotho gene, or external conditions to histone code). Everyone is happy, until the first 'yes, but's' are being published. And then a multitude of additional and contradictory discoveries flood the field, until nothing is clear anymore, and the whole area goes fractal. Consequently, this field of science will lose interest, and people start looking at other more exciting projects. That's where cell signalling has been for a long time, that's where epigenetics starts getting to, and that's where aging will be soon.

One-dimensional Toilets

Why is it always much easier to get into small toilets (in the sense of 'bathroom'), than to get out of them?

No Fear - The Return of the Ankle

Did I just say something about Fear? After having been training my bum off for months to get my lazy body and mind into sufficient shape to have at least a minor chance to pass my upcoming Taekwondo grading, I've just wrecked my ankle - on a simple staircase. My worst nightmare...
Would precise fear have helped? Sitting here now with a swollen ankle, I'm left wondering.
And only 6 days left to get back into shape...

Period of reproduction

Among other animals, Humans are abnormal in that they think about sexual reproduction every day of the year, and not just during a few weeks, say in spring. The latter, normal, behaviour would be so much more advantageous... the risk of sexual aggression and violence would be limited to two weeks in May (during which vulnerable individuals could just go to a secure place), and we would get reproductional holidays. Since for the rest of the year sex would be as interesting as Xmas in August, we would get so much less spam, and have so much more time for thinking about other things.

No Fear

I was just wondering what Humanity would be like, without fear. I'm talking about the little, daily, fears; will I get over the road crossing before the red light? will I catch a cold, just before my final exam? did I take my wallet? do I have enough chocolate biscuits for today? etc etc. These fears are omnipresent, stressful, and almost always of no use. We should just eliminate them. But it seems as if there was a steadily producing source of fears in humans; and if there is nothing real to be afraid of, that fear just spills over, and incarnates in any sort of random rubbish. Maybe experiencing once a week a real, genuine fear would make the small petty ones disappear? But how would I know, being a privileged post-war-born European?

Divine DNA

Today D. and I were discussing Jesus' genes. If Jesus was truly God's son, were his genes then 50% from God and 50% from Maria, or 100% God? The first scenario would mean that God and Maria were of the same species, i.e. both human, which would be unexpected. The second scenario implies that even the egg came from God, which would mean that God is a woman! The second option seems more likely, and none of both would please the Christian clergymen.

End of the Age of Reason

I just thought today, the 18th of June 2008, would be a good day to officially proclaim the End of the Age of Reason, and to turn out the lights of the Enlightenment. It has been going on for long enough anyway, and my latest fluorescence results are best explained by solid mediaeval mysticism.
Ouff, I'm happy that this is done!

Energy saving

I had that idea that one should put tiny electric spools below each key of the computer keyboard. The energy gained while typing onto the keyboard will be fed back into the electric supply, and might help to prolong the battery time of laptops, and may provide a minimum workout for overworked office personnel.

Minnimum Salary

I once heard, long time ago, that there was a man so clever that a company offered him a huge amount of money to obtain all the ideas this man has during his morning's shave. This would not work for me. I am a scientist, I only shave about once a week, and then I really have to concentrate so not to cut my chin off.

Creepy Vision

I just browsed through some 5 random blogs. They were all boring in a sweet way. Nevertheless, I guess that 99.9% of all those things that are being typed into a blog will never be read by anyone. For instance this blog, the note blog, I know that even my wife doesn't read it.
And then I had that creepy vision of legions of human beings typing restlessly things that will never be read. A bit like these neurotic lions in a zoo, walking constantly up and down, up and down... just because they can't stop doing it.

The Seven Deadly Sins

I posit that without the Seven Deadly Sins, we wouldn't be where we are today; humanity would never have started any sort of civilisation. Rather, we'd be like dolphins, and meander joyfully in our natural habitat for millions of years without moving that one important step further. Well, thank God for the Seven Deadly Sins ;)

A feyn man

Could someone help me to apply Feynman's path integral to protein folding?

Age of illusion

Maybe the age of reason was an age of illusion, and Cartesian coordinates are just the wrong system to properly understand biology and life. Maybe a coordinate system based on the movements of a flock of birds or fish would have been much better. A lot of time was wasted, but I still have chocolate biscuits.

Parallel Universes

Cell biologists are a truly astonishing folk. They've invented - and live in - parallel universes (the universe of HeLa cells, the universe of PBMC's, the universe of Jurkat cells etc etc), each with different and non-overlapping Truths of their own (the Truth of XX et al. ; the Truth of YY and colleagues). They are masters of logic (the dominant-negative mutant that blocks anti-oestrogen resistance in tamoxifen-positive breast cancer cell lines), and are not afraid of putting parsimony in the bin if that allows saving their Favourite Theory by evoking a model of gothic complexity. Yes I can give you references, just ask.
Does this teach us something about biology? Well, I guess it teaches us something about the Human Mind, and keeps a whole lot of highly qualified persons off the streets.

Faith

Is it just me, or is it really true that the most beautiful cathedrals are in the most boring towns? And if yes, what would that mean?

Bacteriosaurus

Had this thought around dinosaurs getting extinct not because of them being big, but because they were too well established, and, feeling comfy in the dry and hot late Cretacious, lacked the necessary diversification rate to have the few odd ones that would stand the comet aftermath. A bit like bacteria just before you use antibiotica.
not sure if this makes sense.

Human nature

Concerning that man who tortured and abused his own daughter for 25 years, somebody wondered how he could have been so inhuman. I think that's wrong, I think that he's extremely human. Animals wouldn't do such a thing.

The world's about to end

Found that article in Science, showing a seal trying to hump a penguin. Not sure if this means that seals are about to develop a human-type intelligence, or if, rather, other mammals than us start going wonk, and will get extinct at the next occasion.
But I've still got some chocolate left, thanks for asking.