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.