MedWorm.com provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest items from the 'Trapped in the USA' source. Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:28:08 +0100 http://boscoh.com/drawing/the-real-authentic-zhang-daqian It was said that young painters in Paris in the early part of the 20th century were scared shitless of impromtu visits by Pablo Picasso. Picasso’s uncanny ability to synthesize artistic ideas allowed him to casually pluck the germ of an idea from a young artist and develop it into a whole new style before the young artist’s career had barely got started. Picasso’s ability to straddle styles was considered peerless in the history of art. Except there is one other who can wrestle that title from Picasso. He is the Chinese painter Zhang Daqian. Like Picasso, Zhang was acclaimed universally for his virtuoso adaptability, ably flitting from style to style. And like Picasso, he was as much showman as dedicated artisan. He cultivated the classical chinese image of the great p... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2061043 Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:49:54 +0100 2061043 http://boscoh.com/performance/milk There is really no other cinema better to watch the latest Gus Van Sant biopic “Milk” than the Castro theater in the Castro district of San Francisco. I was lucky enough to watch this film there, and through the serrendiptuous incongruity of watching the film but a few blocks from where the fictionalized events on the screen actually took place, I actually blew out some kind of metacircular safety valve between the fictionalized San Francisco on the screen and the flesh-and-blood city where I live. “Milk” is a biopic of Harvey Milk, an icon of the gay movement as the first openly gay elected official in the United States. Milk was the lightning rod for that filthy piece of proposed legislation known as Proposition 6 in 1978, a legislation that proposed to fire ... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2056085 Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:51:10 +0100 2056085 http://boscoh.com/programming/iphone-apps Let it be said: I love my iPhone. And yes, I did wait 5 hours in line to get it several months ago. It is the first mobile computer that I have felt comfortable using. The touch interface is undeniable the best way to interact with a machine: I do not have to dissociate my thought processes through a mouse or a keyboard. More importantly, the iPhone app store has bought a completely new way of selling software that literally cuts out the marketing and distribution costs for software publishers. There is an incredible amount of software innovation in the app store. Still it surprises me what apps I find the most useful. I have started playing games again because casual gaming on the iPhone has brought casual to new level of casuality. I don’t even have to find a computer to play ... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2040092 Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:56:53 +0100 2040092 http://boscoh.com/science/some-reflections-on-the-tapping-of-steven-chu-for-us-secretary-of-energy There is something so deliciously wonderful and improbable that Steven Chu has been tapped to be Secretary of Energy in the United States. It’s not simply that as a scientist, I feel that science works admirably as a meritocracy and thus a Nobel prize winner ought to run the Department of Energy, but that it bodes so well for the direction of science as a social enterprise. Science is, in the end, a function of society, and it should not be otherwise. Real money is allocated from the earnings of workers to fund this enterprise and anyone who’s followed the history of science will surely realize how much it has grown over the last century. Whilst not quite as vast as the military-industrial complex, the scientific enterprise makes up a large chunk of the public sphere. Many pr... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2033225 Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:18:08 +0100 2033225 http://boscoh.com/programming/fan-tabs-tic Just downloaded the new Firefox 3.1 beta, and it’s finally fixed the one thing I’ve really wanted in a browser: completely fluent tab behavior. You can rip out a tab to form a new window, or shove it into the tab bar of another window. Oh, and the new Tracemonkey javascript interpreter is hella fast. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2027138 Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:13:13 +0100 2027138 http://boscoh.com/programming/file-management-over-several-computers Joel Spolsky may have railed about the impossibility of network transparency in file management, but my god, the guys at Dropbox may actually have done it. I’ve been using Dropbox for the last week, and it’s been seamless. Just download their app, and use the newly created Dropbox folder on your work computer as if it were a normal folder. Go home, turn on your home computer, and WOT the Dropbox folder there is exactly the same. At someone’s place? No problem. Just grab your files from the web interface. Michael Lopp explains in better detail why it’s so phenomenal. Try it now while it’s free in Beta. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2027139 Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:49:13 +0100 2027139 http://boscoh.com/science/rainbow-color-spectrum-in-2dplots-considered-useless What is it with these rainbow colorings in 2d intensity plots. Here’s an example of using some of my data where the intensity goes from 0 to a positive number: The rainbow color is confusing. Is it some kind of gay pride thing? I can’t see from the graph whether the yellow or the red is the “hottest” color. The intermediary colors require guesswork. I need to constantly look at the bar to get my bearings. If you’re color blind then some of the colors will be invisible. And finally, it translates very poorly to black and white, and I know some of you out there print .pdf’s on black-and-white printers because that’s all your stingy department can afford. Look how the highest values and the lowest values gets converted to black. Inste... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2013656 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:30:10 +0100 2013656 http://boscoh.com/science/rainbow-color-spectrum-in-2dplots-considered-useless What is it with these rainbow colorings in 2d intensity plots. Here’s an example of using some of my data where the intensity goes from 0 to a positive number: The rainbow color is confusing. Is it some kind of gay pride thing? I can’t see from the graph whether the yellow or the red is the “hottest” color. The intermediary colors require guesswork. I need to constantly look at the bar to get my bearings. If you’re color blind then some of the colors will be invisible. And finally, it translates very poorly to black and white, and I know some of you out there print .pdf’s on black-and-white printers because that’s all your stingy department can afford. Look how the highest values and the lowest values gets converted to black. Inste... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1996376 Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:03:29 +0100 1996376 http://boscoh.com/science/rainbow-color-spectrum-in-2dplots-considered-useless What is it with these rainbow colorings in 2d intensity plots. Here’s an example of using some of my data where the intensity goes from 0 to a positive number: The rainbow color is confusing. Is it some kind of gay pride thing? I can’t see from the graph whether the yellow or the red is the “hottest” color. The intermediary colors require guesswork. I need to constantly look at the bar to get my bearings. If you’re color blind then some of the colors will be invisible. And finally, it translates very poorly to black and white, and I know some of you out there print .pdf’s on black-and-white printers because that’s all your stingy department can afford. Look how the highest values and the lowest values gets converted to black. Inste... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1990861 Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:12:33 +0100 1990861 http://boscoh.com/writing/two-pieces-on-creativity 1. The legendary Chicago Times movie review Roger Ebert on the increased fluidity in his writing after suffering a stroke: …This autumn it has become undeniable. My writing has improved. By that I don’t mean it’s objectively better from the reader’s point of view. I mean it has expanded within my mind, reaches deeper, emerges more clearly, is more satisfactory. Sometimes I glory in it—not the quality of the prose, but the quality of the experience. I find myself writing more, because I will return to that zone longer. 2. New Yorker illustrator Bob Staake demonstrating how to use Photoshop (not Illustrator and not even the latest version) to make a most beautiful digital drawing: (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1984937 Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:06:48 +0100 1984937 http://boscoh.com/drawing/nov-4th-2008 src: Patrick Moberg (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1933296 Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:51:13 +0100 1933296 http://boscoh.com/science/first-new-particle-in-decades Okay, the Large Hadron Collider isn’t working yet but the venerable Fermilab may have found a new fundamental particle. Hopefully this will smack a killing blow to string theory. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1930283 Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:06:46 +0100 1930283 http://boscoh.com/post/quelle-surprise The great sage of economics was grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said. No shit, Sherlock. Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said. “Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.” ... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1901583 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:02:26 +0100 1901583 http://boscoh.com/science/the-historical-mix-of-tenure-academic-freedom-and-torture Juniorprof wrote a fascinating recent post on Tenure, Academic Freedom and Torture as it applies to today. In fact tenure, academic freedom and torture have run together in strange ways since the foundation of the university in the 12th century. Cribbing from the immensely detailed history of the university Academic Charisma and the Origins of the University by William Clark, the original universities had no academic freedom, no tenure, but was quite okay with torture, as long as it wasn’t granted to the Arts faculty. The original universities arose with the new found wealth of cities in Europe coming out of the middle ages, when the engine of commerce started to hum again. As rich young men of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie flocked to the cities to get an education, teachers star... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1895040 Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:26:32 +0100 1895040 http://boscoh.com/science/the-joy-of-a-citation-manager Sometimes you come across a program that fulfills a need that you never knew you had and gratifies it in an immediately satisfying way. Zotero is one such program. It is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to store references to journal articles and books with a sweet click on a Zotero icon. Everything is stored in your browser. I never knew that collecting citations could be that easy. But I wouldn’t have heard about it if were not for Thomson Reuters, the publishers of Endnote and the Web of Science, litigating against this open-source program. What? Litigating against a free program? Actually you can’t really sue an open-source piece of software, so they’ve resorted to suing George Mason University. This is really nothing but the panic caused by the same corrosive te... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1886428 Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:56:50 +0100 1886428 http://boscoh.com/science/the-joy-of-a-citation-manager Sometimes you come across a program that fulfills a need that you never knew you had and gratifies it in an immediately satisfying way. Zotero is one such program. It is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to store references to journal articles and books with a sweet click on a Zotero icon. Everything is stored in your browser. I never knew that collecting citations could be that easy. But I wouldn’t have heard about it if were not for Thomson Reuters, the publishers of Endnote and the Web of Science, litigating against this open-source program. What? Litigating against a free program? Actually you can’t really sue an open-source piece of software, so they’ve resorted to suing George Mason University. This is really nothing but the panic caused by the same corrosive te... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1883374 Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:39:46 +0100 1883374 http://boscoh.com/protein/how-the-serpin-protein-traps-the-digestive-powers-of-the-enzyme-serine-protease Perhaps the most spectacular motion of any known protein is the springing of the trap known as the Serine Protease Inhibitor, also known as Serpin, a name that perhaps might be better suited to a protege of Darth Vader. To understand what Serpin does, you will have to know what Serine Protease does. Serine Protease is one of those awesomely destructive enzymes in our biological arsenal, whose sole purpose is to digest other protein. When cells spit out Serine Protease, the Protease goes about its merry way chopping up every protein it can find. Specifically it looks for dangling loops of another protein (green), binds to it, then cuts it at the cleavage site (purple). The Serine Proteases constitute an important but dangerous class of enzymes that destroys other proteins. Indeed, ... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1873093 Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:34:41 +0100 1873093 http://boscoh.com/protein/what-is-computational-biology I just submitted a manuscript to a computational biology journal, and during the process, I was asked how to classify it. Not being sure just exactly what computational biology is, it turns out that the website gave a handy little sub-categorization scheme for it, which clarified things immensely for me: Alternative Splicing Comparative Sequence Analysis Computational Neuroscience Ecosystem Modeling Genomics Literature Analysis Macromolecular Sequence Analysis Macromolecular Structure Analysis Metabolic Networks Metagenomics Molecular Dynamics Molecular Genetics Population Genetics Protein Homology Detection Protein Structure Prediction Sequence Motif Analysis Signaling Networks Synthetic Biology Systems Biology Transcriptional Regulation (Source:... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1859583 Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:35:19 +0100 1859583 http://boscoh.com/writing/birds In every silk screen In every poster There are those same damn two birds Mother fucking birds There’s so many birds in the world Look, a fried chicken restaurant Let’s eat one and we will reduce the number of birds by one We can poop it out later ~ Zeecee Randall (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1856091 Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:43:25 +0100 1856091 http://boscoh.com/writing/birds In every silk screen In every poster There are those same damn two birds Mother fucking birds There’s so many birds in the world Look, a fried chicken restaurant Let’s eat one and we will reduce the number of birds by one We can poop it out later ~ Zeecee Randall (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1853633 Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:52:14 +0100 1853633 http://boscoh.com/protein/computational-chemistry-challenge-the-power-stroke-of-myosin-that-powers-muscle-contraction One of the most spectacular properties of proteins is that they can operate as motors. This is due to the unique property of a protein (as opposed to other polymers and small organic molecules) to spontaneously collapse into a very specific and very rigid 3-dimensional molecular arrangement for the protein. For the most part, proteins are rigid. However, there are flexible regions in the protein that allows the protein to undergo large rigid body motions that, when coupled with chemical reactions, result in a chemically driven motor. We know much about how about some of these motors work. For example, myosin is a motor that contracts our muscle cells. Myosin exists as little heads on a brushy fiber that spans the length of a muscle cell and this fiber is connected to the both ends of ... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1844779 Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:49:24 +0100 1844779 http://boscoh.com/protein/how-to-compute-chemistry-conference-report I kind of stumbled into my current field of research – molecular dynamics simulations of proteins – by accident and as a consequence, I never actively joined a particular community of researchers. I sometimes call myself a biophysicist but I am not really a physicist. But neither do I know a drop of chemistry. Whilst computational biology sounds like a great buzzword, it doesn’t really, well, mean anything. And nobody in my wet lab understands what I do, oh boo hoo. This all changed a couple of months ago when I went to my first Gordon Research Reference. As soon as I got on to the bus, I immediately got into a slanging match about atomic force fields. During the next 2 and a half hour bus ride, I argued with a bunch of strangers about thermodynamic ensembles, and integ... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1825791 Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:32:44 +0100 1825791 http://boscoh.com/post/question-why-does-treasury-need-exactly-700-billion-for-bailout Answer: “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.” (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1825792 Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:57:20 +0100 1825792 http://boscoh.com/performance/oktapodi-animated-short oktapodi from inkman on Vimeo. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1811343 Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:33:08 +0100 1811343 http://boscoh.com/science/dolphin-birthing Some lucky photographer was outside the right tank at the right time somewhere in Italy, captured on film, for the first time ever, a dolphin giving birth. No yoga, or prenatal classes, or spiritual counseling – can you believe that? it just popped out. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1794437 Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:01:32 +0100 1794437 http://boscoh.com/performance/museums-that-i-saw On my recent trip to the East Coast, I gorged myself on museums and monuments more than usual. I had once thought that the USA was a poor cousin to Europe in the self-glorification stakes, but I think that no longer: This time to New York, I avoided the usual suspects in the line-up of large-scale museums hoping to find small boutique museums but I still managed to stumble onto a magnificent museum that I had never heard of, the PS1 Museum of Modern Art. After visiting a former flatmate’s silk-screening studio in Queens, I found myself in Long Island City with nothing to do but visit the PS1. First off, it’s cheap – I paid all of $2 (as a student) to get in. This museum breaks the mould of the typical museum architecture of modernist temple. Instead, the PS1 is housed i... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1750216 Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:08:04 +0100 1750216 http://boscoh.com/programming/how-to-avoid-some-pain-at-working-at-a-desk-for-hours-and-hours So lately I’ve decided that my computer posture is abysmal, often leaving my shoulder, especially my right one, throbbing with ache. But now, I’ve finally done something about it. Several things in fact: 1. Get a mouse pad with a wrist rest. This is the single most important thing that alleviated my shoulder pains. I realized that before, I was manipulating the mouse as a whole arm movement. Moving the mouse means that I must be able to move my hand freely. Without a wrist pad, this required moving my whole right arm, starting with the shoulder. The longer I use my mouse, the more I work my shoulder, driving it into oblivion at the end of the day. In order to use the mouse without straining my shoulder, I need a mouse-pad with a wrist pad. I can then rest my wrist or th... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1734034 Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:29:59 +0100 1734034 http://boscoh.com/post/travel-report-the-iphone So I’ve left this blog a little fallow because I’ve been been traveling in the East Coast the past month (due to visa restrictions, I had to stay within the confines of the United States). In this trip, I got to put my shiny new iPhone 3G through it’s paces. I am glad to report that the iPhone has become my indispensable travel companion of choice, I am particularly glad since I waited in line for 5 hours to buy it (damn you AT&T and your activation-in-store policy). One of the pleasures of living in a new city is letting the geography of a new city seep into your skin. From day to day, the repetition of a thousand inconsequential acts superimpose themselves into the pavement of the city in my mind’s eye. It took me months to figure out the mazy streets of th... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1730703 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:49:09 +0100 1730703 http://boscoh.com/protein/a-birds-eye-view-of-bioinformatic-journals Neil Saunders has done us computational biologists a great favor by using fancy-pants web 2.0 technology Wordle in generating a word analysis of bioinformatic journals. Surprising and informative. A great way to get a feel for a journal, especially if you’re looking for somewhere to dump that troublesome manuscript. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1729465 Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:19:54 +0100 1729465 http://boscoh.com/protein/how-history-affects-pattern-matching-inside-the-genome I don’t think there will be many times in my life that I’ll see a basic bioinformatic algorithm published in a Science magazine article but such is the lament of the theorist. Nevertheless, the recent Löytynoja-Goldman paper published in June 2008, is one of those times. Not only that, but the paper also exposes a fundamental flaw in one of the basic algorithms of the trade. Löytynoja & Goldman show that all current Multiple Sequence Alignment algorithms – the bread-and-butter algorithm for biologists studying similarities in genes across different species – completely fail to detect independent insertions in the alignment of sequences, and thus, erroneously mismatches regions of evolutionary volatility. In their improved MSA algorithm, PRANK, they use hist... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1696242 Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:23:19 +0100 1696242 http://boscoh.com/protein/how-history-affects-pattern-matching-inside-the-genome I don’t think there will be many times in my life that I’ll see a basic bioinformatic algorithm published in a Science magazine article but such is the lament of the theorist. Nevertheless, the recent Löytynoja-Goldman paper published in June 2008, is one of those times. Not only that, but the paper also exposes a fundamental flaw in one of the basic algorithms of the trade. Löytynoja & Goldman show that all current Multiple Sequence Alignment algorithms – the bread-and-butter algorithm for biologists studying similarities in genes across different species – completely fail to detect independent insertions in the alignment of sequences, and thus, erroneously mismatches regions of evolutionary volatility. In their improved MSA algorithm, PRANK, they use hist... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1658160 Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:54:15 +0100 1658160 http://boscoh.com/protein/how-history-affects-pattern-matching-inside-the-genome I don’t think there will be many times in my life that I’ll see a basic bioinformatic algorithm published in a Science magazine article but such is the lament of the theorist. Nevertheless, the recent Löytynoja-Goldman paper published in June 2008, is one of those times. Not only that, but the paper also exposes a fundamental flaw in one of the basic algorithms of the trade. Löytynoja & Goldman show that all current Multiple Sequence Alignment algorithms – the bread-and-butter algorithm for biologists studying similarities in genes across different species – completely fail to detect independent insertions in the alignment of sequences, and thus, erroneously mismatches regions of evolutionary volatility. In their improved MSA algorithm, PRANK, they use hist... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1649067 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:32:52 +0100 1649067 http://boscoh.com/protein/how-history-affects-pattern-matching-inside-the-genome I don’t think there will be many times in my life that I’ll see a basic bioinformatic algorithm published in a Science magazine article but such is the lament of the theorist. Nevertheless, the recent Löytynoja-Goldman paper published in June 2008, is one of those times. Not only that, but the paper also exposes a fundamental flaw in one of the basic algorithms of the trade. Löytynoja & Goldman show that all current Multiple Sequence Alignment algorithms – the bread-and-butter algorithm for biologists studying similarities in genes across different species – completely fail to detect independent insertions in the alignment of sequences, and thus, erroneously mismatches regions of evolutionary volatility. In their improved MSA algorithm, PRANK, they use hist... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1646026 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:55:40 +0100 1646026 http://boscoh.com/books/how-to-describe-a-woman-viscerally From ‘Summer Sweat’, a short story in the collection Faithless by Joyce Carol Oates: A slovenly-glamorous woman with gray-veined black haystack hair; a fleshy, sensual body; and a beautiful ruined face like a smeared Matisse. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1634955 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:46:41 +0100 1634955 http://boscoh.com/science/science-article-web-design-done-right Finally, a major science journal gets their online website design right. The new redesign of PNAS hits all the right notes. No wonder, one of the consultants of the redesign is usability expert Jakob Nielson. Consider the simplicity of their front page. There is actually enough whitespace so that the eyes don’t go epileptic. Clean and elegant: there are only simple headlines links that entice you to click. Gone is the potpourri of links that seem to plague every other science journals’ front-page. There are all sorts of neat little touches like the pop-up abstracts in the table of contents and search: However, I was most impressed by the layout of the article page itself. For starters, the most prominent graphic element is not the journal name, nor the navigati... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1631124 Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:54:09 +0100 1631124 http://boscoh.com/drawing/delicious-fried-seahorse-on-a-stick Sidewalk fast food in Beijing: (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1605940 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:44:37 +0100 1605940 http://boscoh.com/post/extreme-home-entertainment-system I once spent 2 hours debating an audiophile friend about the meaning of audiophilia. I mean I just didn’t get it. Why would someone pay $tens $upon $thousands on a piece of equipment when most of the hairs of most peoples’ ears aren’t sensitive enough to distinguish hi-fi from wi-fi. So I posed a counterfactual: let’s say you do a blind test between a recording of an acoustic guitar and a real guitarist. What if you can’t tell the difference? It didn’t matter, he said. It doesn’t matter at all. No, I didn’t get it. So I went on and on and on until finally it clicked. An audiophile does not buy equipment for the subjective experience of listening. An audiophile is interested in equipment for the objective knowledge that the sound wave is... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1605941 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:49:00 +0100 1605941 http://boscoh.com/programming/my-sore-right-shoulder It’s something that creeps up on you, but after awhile, you suddenly realize that your right shoulder, and just your right shoulder, is always sore. It’s kind of a dull aching pain. Sometimes it even happens in the morning when you wake up. I don’t have the most poise in my posture. I slouch a lot. But as I’m getting older (mid-30’s) I am paying more attention to aches and pains and posture. It’s no fun to sleep it off when the pain starts up again first thing in the morning. Fortunately, one of my friends has recently started massage training and she happily gives free massages. And in the last session, when I was asked if there was anything I wanted to concentrate on, I said my shoulder. Thinking about it, my right shoulder feels wobbly compared t... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1603087 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:25:08 +0100 1603087 http://boscoh.com/drawing/love-in-san-francisco In San Francisco, sloshy vale of decadent dot-coms and baudrillardian hipsters, a couple is not a couple unless they dress to signify their (love) and connectedness. Ergo, one must coördinate one’s aesthetic in dress sense with one’s computational hardware. (it’s apple, it goes without saying). (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1563945 Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:59:35 +0100 1563945 http://boscoh.com/drawing/love-in-san-francisco In San Francisco, sloshy vale of decadent dot-coms and baudrilliardian hipsters, a couple is not a couple unless they dress to signify their (love) [..eliptical authenticity..] and connectedness. Ergo, one must by necessity dress to coördinate one’s aesthetic with one’s computational hardware. (it’s apple, it goes without saying. said). (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1560905 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:58:12 +0100 1560905 http://boscoh.com/writing/news-in-widescreen You’d think that online news is so done, with nothing new under the (virtual) sun. But here’s an innovative new photo-journalism blog from the Boston Times, called appropriately The Big Picture. It’s amazing what a width of 990px will do. It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite magazines, the short-lived “Le Monde 2”, a bi-weekly photo-journalist supplement to Le Monde. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1551426 Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:00:10 +0100 1551426 http://boscoh.com/performance/the-2008-us-election-as-rpg An oldie but still damn hilarious, and prescient: (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1531344 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:07:55 +0100 1531344 http://boscoh.com/science/longevity-in-science I recently had the pleasure to listen to the venerable chemist Harold Scheraga from Cornell. For a man of 87 years of age, he remains a sprightly figure, and his remarkable career has spawned over 1200 published scientific papers (pdf). Truly the productivity of 10 ordinary scientists, and probably the most heavily cited chemist in the world. When you’re born in 1921, you can get introduced by someone like Ken Dill (himself a distinguished NAS member) as someone who published in Protein Science before even Ken was born. Harold’s talk was a truly remarkable overview of his career from work in the early 1950’s when even the sequence of proteins was unknown to today where simulations can track the motion of every atom inside a computer. He was actually there at the beginning... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1518719 Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:08:17 +0100 1518719 http://boscoh.com/programming/beautiful-user-interfaces I think about user interfaces a lot. I like to understand how people interact with software, so much so that I used to be a regular reader of Jakob Nielson’s useit.com, perhaps the only example of an expert whose aesthetic sense was inversely proportional to his understanding of user behavior. The pleasure of using a great interface doesn’t apply to the “average” user, even hardcore programmers enjoy the beauty of a great user interface. Besides, hardcore programmers rarely make great interface designers. So here’s a couple of drop-dead gorgeous interfaces I’ve stumbled onto recently. All of these had something so awesomely simple and beautiful, that whilst using it, I’d just stop and stare at how wonderfully all the parts fit together. 1. Tape... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1516566 Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:12:21 +0100 1516566 http://boscoh.com/drawing/footwear-pigs-and-the-fear-of-mud Obessive Compulsive Disorder does not afflict just humans, it can afflict pigs as well. When this little piggy was first brought to the farmyard of Debbie and Andrew Keeble, she stood shaking with fear on the edge of the dirty disgusting mud pit in which her siblings were luxuriating. “Owners Debbie and Andrew Keeble were at a loss, until they remembered the four miniature wellies used as pen and pencil holders in their office. They slipped them on the piglet’s feet.” “Now she runs over to Mr Keeble so he can put them on for her every morning.” src: dailymail.co.uk (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1512203 Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:36:39 +0100 1512203 http://boscoh.com/protein/finding-fellow-bottom-feeders Hola! There is another structural biology blog (with an emphasis on allostery) out there in the wild! And the rest of Michael Clarksons’s blog Discount Thoughts is pretty great too. (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1508480 Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:14:06 +0100 1508480 http://boscoh.com/drawing/no-matter-how-many-times-i-look-at-this-this-fun-day-at-the-zoo-cracks-me-up “Fun Day at the Zoo!” [hat tip: reddit] (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1451848 Mon, 19 May 2008 01:37:40 +0100 1451848 http://boscoh.com/performance/for-my-money-one-of-the-greatest-songs-ever-written Armed with a killer acoustic guitar sound, Ani Difranco’s “Both Hands”: (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1429086 Thu, 08 May 2008 03:19:34 +0100 1429086 http://boscoh.com/science/essential-computational-biology-clothing I know that we, computational biologists, are sometimes jealous of ye olde white labcoat that our experimental colleagues wear, and which immediately identifies them as scientists. What can we, who sit in front of a computer all day, wear to truly show that we are master of our cpus in the service of science? Here’s the solution, from designer Erik De Nijs: hat tip: Petrice Gaskin (Source: Trapped in the USA) Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1391073 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:49:10 +0100 1391073 http://boscoh.com/science/the-business-of-drugs Here’s a thought experiment. What if we think about drugs like any other commercial product? Then a drug company, like any other company, should simply be viewed as a machine geared towards making money. If it doesn’t make money by selling its product for dollars, it has no commercial right to exist. There are two types of products that make money. A product that moves high volume, or a product with a high margin of return. In terms of drugs, this really means two things – a very common illness, or a life-threatening one. It is either something as common cold or a nasty one like AIDS or cancer. By the fact that the common cold is common, it means that’s it’s incurable, and profit is made by its ubiquitous recurrence. The nasty high-margin one is due to the l... Trapped in the USA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1379425 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:44:41 +0100 1379425