kilometrestone

it's not quite a milestone - about 5/8 of the way there. But my first article has been published in Cosmos magazine proper, issue 12 dec 2006/ jan 2007. it's the article about mutant white mice who can tan and will never ever suffer cancer. My heart goes out to these brave mice.

A male friend of mine - a deep friend - found out about cloaca the other day. When did you find out about cloaca? You recognised its significance immediately, did you not?

I am currently preparing a counterpoint to the opinion piece written by Martina Newell-McGloughlin. It will appear in the pages of

History of the Roman Empire, Vol. 3
Nimrod - Octavius Flubius

the shitz

i've got 'em. they're with me. We travel in threes. Jorgondy, Blasman, and me.

403 lumps of mini demountable furphies. just as long as i can keep them close to my chest, the cards can fall as they may. i do not care. it's surreal, this feeling. like momentarily lifting my head above the compound walls and catching a speck of the outside world. some people believe that everything happens for a reason. what they don't realise is that nothing actually happens. ever. there is - and that, my enemigos, is it.

Four forwards with impressive numbers

But extremely varying wraps. TD, everyone knows he's a star. Dwight Howard, well he's the definition of a manchild. People go on an on about his upside, but if he keeps up what he's doing now, that's enough for me. Carlos Boozer was almost hounded out of town for being a no show in the first year of a six year, $65 million deal with Utah. Now people think he's actually earning that. Which brings us to Andris Biedrins. Nobody expected him to be putting up numbers like this, and nobody expects him to maintain it for the season. We'll see. As it is, he's top 15 rebounding, top 5 field goal percentage, top 5 blocks.

The lines:
TD @ GSW
22pts (9 of 18), 16 boards, 4 assists, 1 steal, 6 blocks, 5 turnovers

AB vs SA
18pts (8 of 15), 15 boards, 4 assists, 1 steal, 6 blocks, 1 turnover

a win for golden state surprisingly

DH @ Jazz
21 pts, 16 boards

CB vs Magic
21 pts, 9 boards (mind you, AK47's back and he took a little of the scoring and rebounding slack off Boozer, putting up an AK-like 11 pts, 5 boards, 5 assists, 3 steals, 4 blocks)

a win for the Magic, suprisingly

the only surprise I need now is GS to win @ Orlando.

In other news, I got my results for Honours yesterday. And they were good.

FACT

i am bitterly disgusted by the behaviour of the federation against copyright theft. They put out a really funny anti-piracy ad and i am forced to watch it before my lano & woodley dvd.

Somebody made a factual addition to their entry at wikipedia referring to this proper Gandhi, but it was removed by the thought police. Instead, we now have this:

"FACT's adverts appear at the beginning of many videos and DVDs, urging consumers to check whether they have a genuine copy, and providing contact details to report any illegalities."

Which version do you prefer?

The essence of pure flavour

if it's pure gold in science journalism that you're after, please: dig in.

Kind of surreal

Seeing this clip

Coming out of the clothesbox

It's time I outed mice elf. I am an avid fanatical bozo of the NBA. i like:

Amazing athletes. These people are tall, fast, powerful, have stamina and entirely imposing. My all time supa vaforit e is Latrell Sprewell. When he busted on the seen he was an instant success, which lead to the pinnacle of his career, the Landlord (3pt Phoenix? Owns it. Baseline Seattle? Owns it. Tell 'em about Orlando. Owns it.) series of shoe adverts. He then went through the Strangler phase, which included him strangling is boss. Then he played with an original manchild Kevin Garnett. Now he runs a fish gutting operation out of East River on the Hudson, Mississippi. Times is tough, but he'll always have his first team defense and all nba second team credentials to reminisce on/upon.

Then there's the 720 dunk. Are the general public aware of this feat? I think if they were it would radically alter their weltanschau. there should be a video of these running perpetually in a medi-yum such as televiJohn. i tried this manouevre down at my local court, and the judge threw me out. When i tried it at my local basketball court, i managed 540 degrees but couldn't get it in the hole, to quote Niles Standish.

Good commercials. The LeBrons Nike series is quite good, which many people understand to mean very good.

Good commentators. I remember joking with my schoolfrenz about the dude from the one from NBA Action! Tasty dishes! We're havin' a block party!

in other news, i was shocked and amused by this

Two stuff

These withered hands
have dug for a dream
sifted through sand
and
left over nightmares

ooover the hill
a desolate wind
turns shit to gold and blows my soul crazy

the end
oh the end
we live again

oh I grew weary of the end

That day I found Beck again. Somewhere along the line I'd lost him. Been to the Museums of the mars volta, the Westmeads of ween and the Petershams of crash test dummies. Back the soul mass transit system's just pulled in to Platform 1 at Becksville, and it's good to be back.

Dude can write lyrics.

But the real reason I wrote is to inform you of what is undeniably a return to form of ...The [zoom out clouds] Siiiimpsons...

They got a movie trailer. You MUST WATCH IT NOW

It's about time I give credit where it's do

Tony Martin is one cool dude. Well, he's funny. And it was on his radio show that I discovered the talents of Stan Bush. There's also some very funny clips of politicians saying strange things at his website (below).

Comedian's with the knack for making you laugh are a rare breed indeed, and they cost quite a bit, then you have to get a license, use a leash in many areas. It's just not worth it.

But these are:
Tony Martin's latest incarnation
Shaun Micallef
Lano & Woodley

They're all from the Austrealand Region, my beloved ice cream bar.

You've got the touch

You've got the power.
After all is said and done, you never walked you never run. You're a winner.

Stan Bush is my personal motivational speaker and his words in song form are killer. Do yourself a favour and listen. It does get a bit old after a while, but don't we all? Don't we all.

You love reading science news stories

Some psychologists believe that if scared rats are any indication of human behaviour, we shouldn't rush in to treat the fears of recently traumatised people. Hmmm.

But can they tell how many donuts I ate last week? I'd like to see them try. Some researchers have examined ancient teeth to find out what ye olde hominid ate.

Potent potable - I mean painkiller discovered in saliva. I love it because just when people think they know about the body, they discover a totally new compound right there in somebody's spitball. Of course, you'd have to be a Pavlov's dog (or padlocked door) to drool enough to get any kind of effect.

My next article will be entirely self-generated. That is, I am seeking out the news meself. Oooh, I wonder what I'll find!

This is the end...of fish cakes

Read all about it.

The Summer of George

Actually, this is A Sports Guy's preview of the summer of sport which is presently crashing down over our heads even before the season has turned.

League
The tri-nations are just not as exciting as many regular season NRL games. Maybe if the Kiwis had SBW, and maybe if they had Benji, and maybe if the Warriors were a force...then we would see a contest as gripping as a Grand Final or State of Origin. You know, where you are generally interested in the game the whole way through? Which brings me to...

Cricket
I'm sorry people, but any sport that causes this much ink to be spilled had better translate into great entertainment. But who can say they are gripped by cricket the whole way through? Not the commentators, who are forced into rotation to maintain freshness (TV) or mundane patter occasionally interrupted by commentary (radio). Yes, it has its damn good moments, and part of the hook is that you have to watch the whole freaking five days in case something happens. Some parallels to the slow burn of soccer there. But you can't seriously maintain that you won't be reaching for that remote, or finding yourself absolutely not wondering what you're missing as you have a beer in the backyard.

Tennis
Always the bridesmaid, never the groom. Tennis can generate drama, but is capable of perhaps more boredom than cricket. The problem here isn't the game itself, but the fact that 95% of games are shite. The good ones are damn good. Spanning a couple of hours, the length is reasonable. And the emotion of it all, after a marathon (can we try another metaphor here, please? How 'bout triathlon, because they're harder) five setter... Tennis also has a strange stable of commentators that always manage to grab some attention. Whispering John Alexander, effusive Bruce McAvaney, happy to be there Sandy Roberts, frail John Barrett. And incisive, insightful commentary from Newk. What I like about him was that as Rafter was trying to get out of a difficult period in a Wimbledon semi, he'd say "I was just talking to Pat about this on Wednesday, and we agreed that he needs to be more, not less aggressive on these kinds of points." After which Rafter would win the point and there would be a moment of silence.

Basketball
The cool friend who isn't cool any more. Not sure what happened, but this once-on-the-cusp sport has failed to deliver for so long that we might as well call it Braith Anasta (Love your work Braith, but it was either you or Mark Philippousis. Have you noticed how for the last four years "my best tennis is ahead of me"? He'll be saying this from the seniors tour). Thing is, I watched a game the other day as part of Nine's new 'commitment' to basketball and the players were rudely talented. You had these up and comers who nobody's ever heard of draining threes, taking it to the hole and generally showing the kind of promise that NBA scouts would drool over. A little schooling, a few tats, some work in the weight room and these guys could be on $20 million contracts. And yet there's the defending champs, drawing a crowd of 1,500 to their home games and being ignored by the press. I don't know what would give Australian baketball the props it deserves, and the people who run the NBL have no clue either.

Snooker
Watching a professional female snooker player wearing a visor mishit so badly that she grazed the white ball and sent it three millimetres to the left - priceless.

Football
Why the obsession with the EPL?

Social success went to our heads

This was my way of summarising a story I wrote about some evolutionary scientists and mathematicians interested in the Machiavellian hypothesis - that the explosion in brain size that occurred in Homo sapiens from about 350,000 years ago to about 50,000 years ago was driven by social competition. It works a little like this:

Have little brain --> can't do jack
Brain gets a bit bigger --> can deceive, form alliances, flatter etc
Those with slightly bigger brains can do more of the social scheming and get more intercourse and pass on more genes for bigger brains.

~~~

The acquisition of knowledge in the sciences these days is astounding. Yet Craig Venter couldn't have put it better when he said that we don't know shit. I think this statement means different things to different people. To me, it shows an appreciation for the complexity of the life that saturates the world we live in. In my opinion - which I'd like to think is factually correct - we can't ever explain everything, if only for the simple reason that there are more species than person-hours to understand them. The sooner we realise our limitations, the sooner our priorities reflect reality.

The thing is, a layperson might interpret Venter's comment as an attack on science or its validity, which I think if you look at Craig Venter's history, it wasn't.

The continual hyping of research (which is an industry and which I am now a small part of) is rarely accompanied by serious and thoughtful commentary on what we know and what we don't; on how sure we are of the things we think we know; on why we fund what we fund; and what this knowledge means for us all. Does it mean that we understand life? That a cure for cancer is just around the corner? That we understand ecosystems?

Even if we could get better media analysis of science, I'm with David Suzuki and that communications theorist he quotes in a recent book, that science blurbs are part of an overall pattern of information flood which renders the receiver unable to do anything. It's all too damn passive. Just like this blog! At least you can post a comment if you please.

~~~

By the way, the hypothesis that lies behind all medical research (which is the vast majority of all research) is that we should live forever, free from pain, suffering and abnormality. I couldn't begrudge a sick person treatment but wait a couple of decades for the science to advance and lots of people - and politicians - will be asking themselves questions about this. This is too meaty a topic for further exposition here.

Apparently this one has been hit over 2200 times

(Subliminal) erotic images float through my head
say you want to beee my one shot girl

Finished Thesis

The Role of Tropomyosins in Neuronal Morphogenesis. An analysis of knockout mice lacking exon 9d from the gamma Tropomyosin gene.

I was going to call it Gone Tropo, but I felt that it was too wordy. Does anyone know how I can post it (or a draft, for legal reasons) here as a pdf?

A Sports Guy

Welcome to the first official column from A Sports Guy, something I hope to turn into a regular feature here at Hammertime's Brog. Either that, or it's a one off.

I would like at the outset to declare my indebtedness to Bill Simmons (The Sports Guy) and other good sports writers at ESPN.com. What I feel Australia lacks is sports writers that are 'always good'. You know how some writers just always do it for you, no matter what they write about? Bill Simmons and Douglas Hofstadter are two such scribes.

Australian sports writing has its moments, and there are many who are readable. But don't all readers deserve more than just 'readability'? I want to laugh, I want to look forward to the column and tell my friends about it. I would not be so bold as to suggest this column will be anywhere near as good as its inspiration, or that of another amazing non-conventional-subject writer, Lester Bangs. He really changed my perception of music. I just throw my hat in the ring. The more voices the better, in my opinion.

[By the way, just saw a great interview with Paul McGeough on SBS's Dateline. As Negus put it, a sane perspective on an insane situation.]

I was inspired to start spreading my fingers over the keyboard by an article I read by Phil Gould. He does tend to polarise people, but I will say this about him - he is often entertaining. So I thought I'd better write something about league, that much maligned Australian contact sport.

I'd like to talk about two players, who in their own ways are freaks. Matt Utai and Greg Inglis. At his best, Utai is unstoppable. Sterlo always says he is so hard to stop from 15 metres out, but he's hard to stop anywhere. Inglis at first seems slender, and fast. Then he seems big, powerful, agile and damn fast.

Utai was at his peak during the Bulldogs enhanced funding days of 2001, 2002, 2003. He always seemed to be running down the sideline and generally straight at, then through a series of defenders. You just felt sorry for the bloke trying to tackle him, even though they were usually bigger than him. He was pretty fast, too. I wonder what he was like in his junior years.

Generally a small run for Utai was 15 metres. a good one 35 metres. He seems to have this bulk that just throws defenders off without any contribution from his arms. I wonder if he's ever palmed off anyone.

By all indications Greg Inglis was the freak in juniors that he still is now. I don't know why sheer pace is so impressive, but it is. Something about seeing one guy who you know is really fast struggling to keep up with the other. A good example is Billy Slater being chased by Luke Patten once. The Dogs got up, but Slater scored one of his typical (btw it's shocking how quickly he's gone from 'freak' to 'teammate of Inglis'. He's still got game) 95 metre tries and laughed in Patten's face when he finally knew he'd beaten him.

The pace Inglis showed in beating Brent Webb in the test was impressive. He's done that to him before, maybe round one against the Warriors. Apparently he's still growing. Projections are 6' 11'', 130 kg, who can sprint 100 m in 11 seconds. He'll be able to pick up and grip one of those exercise balls (while inflated) with one hand.

By the way, Roger Federer is a freak. He's the only guy to win 10 titles in a year three years running. His current undefeated streak is 24 games, still 11 shy of the mark he set last year. But it's the way he plays that makes him a freak. I remember when he was just one of those juniors who are touted as promising. He actually appeared on the tour and didn't do much for a while, apart from beating Pete Sampras (pretty impressive, although how impressive will it look from about 2012, when Federer has more Wimbledons than Sampras?) He could have been another Richard Fromberg, but he went even further.

I would pay for a highlights video that blended Utai, Inglis and a sprinkling of other freaks - your SBWs, your Noa Nadrukus, your Brett Mullins (I remember this one time he was chased down by Matt Seers and everyone was shocked because no one else had ever chased him down. At least that's how I remember it. In fact, while we're here, I hereby ask for suggestions on most surprising / impressive chase downs. It could be Paul Harragon on that Canberra centre, Albert Fulivai. Thanks to their exhaustive database, I can now reveal that he played 44 games over 6 years. He scored tries at the impressive rate of one every two games, or less impressive 3 and a half per year). I spose what they all have in common is being really fast and/or demolishing the defence.

First it cutteth,
then it taketh slack

For once, they used my title!

Well, mostly. I did not have the foresight nor the wherewithal to append ', not pink'. still, pretty close!

This research is about whether people partition colours into the same lexical space across cultures. Check out the article at Cosmos now!

Ant Algorithms Are Adaptable

or
Ants From Broken Homes Turn Out Ok, Computer
or
Ant Housing Market Bullish
or
Ants Pave Way to Understanding of Complexity

an article I wrote for Cosmos magazine. I managed to fit a reference to Douglas Hofstadter in my interview with the researcher for this article, but couldn't find a way to sneak it into the article. Perhaps the brog is the best place for that.

Sluggish Sperm Story

My latest offering to the good people of Cosmos.

This isn't much of a blog these days. Not much news, little nonsense, few musings. Until I finish my thesis, things might not get much better. But when I do - boy oh boy!

How now, brown mouse?

Another Cosmos article.
Smear the mouse, and it will darken. It will also be less likely to become cancerous. Read on, I urge you

Water + Bubbles = Freedom

Hurt + Bandaid = Toxic Shock Syndrome
Love + Guitar = Splinter
Hunger + Flames = Burger

Alternative Lyrics to Someplace Only We Know by Keane

I came upon
a foreign land
I knew the pathway
like my own home land

Is this the place
we used to go?
is this the place
they know as Gulp'n'Blow?

Oh sympathy!
Where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need someone to move on

So tell me when
you gonna let me in
I'm getting tired of
drinking juice from my bin

and IF you have a minute why don't we go
TALK about it someplace with an eagle
THIS could be the end of everything
so why don't we go, baby to montego

An article I wrote for Cosmos magazine

Interested in cryonics? Alpacas? Government approval? Read on.

Poetry

There are sydney uni prizes. Cash prizes. There's a poetry one, named after Henry Lawson. It's called the Pete Babcock poetry prize. I decided I'd enter, and then realised I cannot write poetry.

Attempt #1

For the fourth time
flitting by
a rat with wings
began to smile
We exhale, seal lips.
Deep inside its cooing chest
A baby pidg’ resides in breast.
Its mother dies and so does it.
You know what? I don’t give a sheet.

Sydney Uni public toilets

As a card-carrying male, I am able only to comment on male toilets. My nominations are:

Worst: Chemistry building, outside the lecture theatre on the lower ground floor. Rumour has it that the smell of the toilet once drove an insane person sane.
Honourable mention: Fisher, and any other toilet that has been besquirted by so many, many asses (or arses, if you prefer) for so long, so regularly.

Best: {Like with travel books, the mere mention of a good place can change it, for the worse probably. Still, the truth must be told, and I assume few will read this} Old Teachers Building, ground floor. Big, rarely used, well lit, a real pleasure to … ahem…, or just pass the time.

Killing Time

The End Of Time by Julian Barbour
Published by Phoenix

“Time does not exist.” Try telling that to anybody with a deadline. Yet this is precisely the message of physicist Julian Barbour in his new book, The End of Time. Barbour, who supported his research by translating Russian scientific journals on the side, believes that time is an emergent property - like the colour violet or the temperature of a bowl of pea soup. This is a shocking thesis, yet in a straw poll conducted by the author, twice as many of his colleagues (physicists mind you, not translators) believed that time should not appear in the foundations of any theory of the world as those who thought it should. According to Barbour, there are only instants, snapshots, configurations - and a great deal of them at that. We occupy one of these ‘time capsules’ and infer the past from it.

Barbour takes up the onerous task of convincing the lay reader of time’s passing (it is almost impossible to avoid puns with this topic) with the gravity and finesse befitting such a grand topic. He sets the scene using Turner’s Snow Storm, which depicts the force and fury of a boat caught in a storm. Motion can indeed be created out of a static, timeless picture. We then fall into triangle land, Platonia and a rich discussion of the ideas underpinning his theory, including relativity and quantum theory. I grappled with some of the mathematical and physical concepts, such as the foggy notion of ‘quantum mist’, yet in asking the reader to make the effort Barbour ensures the trip is a more satisfying one. A more philosophical epilogue, ‘Life Without Time’, and extensive notes demonstrate the author has thought about much more than the physics of time. Although at times dense, this is a fascinating introduction to a timeless world.

How to destroy a soul

Take a job that drains you.
Spend as much time as possible with said job.
(Working on drains is ok)

Live for the future.

Get sucked into the meaningless pursuit of beauty.

Not realise the universe is a wundaful place. Not wonder about it.

Avoid eye contact with stars. Avoid uninterrupted vistas.

Stay indoors. Sit down. Look ahead. Don’t move.

Follow big software company’s advice on how to write.

Ignore the truth.

Live the life unquestioned.

Take things too seriously.

Forget you’re an animal with animal needs. (But Ren! I have needs!)

Consume more than is necessary.

Block ears to music. (No comment passed on soul-destroying music)

Not see the humour in statements like “if you read this you are an idiot”.

Destroyed souls may be repaired by applying salve.

Them's the breaks

I broke a stick. It cost $200,000. It’s pretty funny when you think about it. Looking back now, it’s fair to say that breaking that stick was the bravest, and yet most craven thing I’ve ever been accused of doing. Bernie said I did it. All I did was beef bibimbab. That stick was sharp at both ends, if you know what I mean. It was also sharp all along its shaft.

Wisdom? Humour? Cynicism? Whatever it be, I like it

Quoted in this article

Carlos Romulo, former president of the UN General Assembly: "If there is a problem between a weak nation and another weak nation and the UN takes action, the problem disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a weak nation and the UN takes action, the weak nation disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a strong nation and the UN takes action, the UN disappears."

Mouse Primary Cortical Neurons

These are costained for total cellular actin (red) and neuronal microtubules (green). The actin stain helps me estimate the area of growth cones and the microtubule stain helps me identify neurons. These neurons are ~30 microns in size.

My Mind Was Seeded

The other day i found myself inwardly hearing (but also a little singing i suppose (not at the same time, mind you)) "the Mississippi Delta is shining like a national guitar" and "as if I never noticed the way she brushed her hair and farted". I was enjoying Paul Simon's (with the help of Africa's musical heritage) warm, fluid and bouncy tune and I wondered how it came to sparkle through my synapses. It didn't take me long to realise.

I suppose the most common mode of musical infection is aural. You hear a snippet on the radio or while you're on hold to some godforsaken customer information line and later in the hour, you find yourself humming it. Involuntarily, too. But reading it can be just as effective. Upon very little reflection, I think cw's transmission was more effective because it alluded not to a song title, which one encounters relatively often, but to an emotive line in the song. Titles are often (but not always) texts within the song, but they are more readily hermetically sealed off as separate categories, independent on the actual sound of the song. Other lines within a song depend on the surrounding words and music and invoke them strongly. "National guitar" triggered the whole musical roundabout in my head, plunging me immediately into its lyrical waters and away I sped, naked on the back of a dolphin towards Graceland.

Something worth reading

Give peace a chance, eh?

I Fell Down But They Laughed

Why does this sentence not ring true? After all, people laugh all the time. People fall down quite often too. It's the 'but' that's out of place. It really should be 'and'.

Why is this reaction so common? It seems to be a core part of our being, which probably evolved three million years ago when we were roaming the savannahs of Africa, looking for Marbig expanding folders. It's a gut feeling, an instinctive response. It's funny to see others lose their dignity. That's a shame, but we might as well make the most of it and "drink to good times".

You've Now Heard of a Western Blot

Biologists are interested in proteins, because they do so much. In fact, if there's anything to be done on a molecular level, it's mostly proteins that do it. To most people, protein is something you get in meat; something athletes are interested in; the basis of some diets. It's clearly a category of things, but they are all roughly equivalent. In biology, this couldn't be further from the truth. There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of different proteins, depending on your definition. People dedicate their whole lives to studying a single protein. Genes are much more famous though. They are passed from one generation to the next and everyone knows about the double helix. Genes are the grist to evolution's mill.

Well, a protein is to a gene as a running program is to the program's code. Most analogies fall down somewhere, and this one falls down all over the place. The point is that a protein is directly reliant on a gene for its existence, but once its out there, it can do all sorts of wonderful things. For every gene there is a protein, and often more than one. Genes tend to sit in cellular nuclei, while their protein minions do their bidding all over the place. Genes are largely stable, while proteins come in and out of existence all the time, depending on the needs of a cell.

Western Blotting is a really common technique in biology. The aim is to find out whether certain proteins are expressed and to what degree, and also whether certain treatments change their expression. For such a central component of a life scientist's toolkit, the visual results are abjectly boring. They are ubiquitous though, and if you pick up a journal article from a science journal (which is extremely unlikely for the average person) you may encounter one. The input to a Western Blot is any kind of biological sample containing protein, and the output is these bands. A Southern Blot detects DNA, and was named after Mr Southern (true story). The theme was extended with Northern Blots (RNA), Western Blots and the very rare Eastern blot, which i'm told detects lipids. These substances account for the contents of every single organism, save for precious carbohydrates and other organic compounds like cholesterol, and minerals.

I could write for a long time about Western Blotting, but that would be bad. The main thing you need to know is that the dark bands represent proteins, and these dark bands can be there, or not be there, they can be thick or thin, high or low. All these things tell you about the nature of your protein sample. To the trained eye, much information can be gleaned from a blot. As with all techniques in science, interpretation is everything, and there are many assumptions and variables involved.

Forwardly flippant

Can you smell my whole... life?

you've got to hand it to ween for coming up with some super bizarre lyrics.
tastes good on the bun
sail brown bay to chocolate town

one style i like is a lyric that sounds like one thing, but is actually something else
eg "jets flew in formation", but i normally hear as "gets you information"
eg "i called upon a force of space and time" sounds a lot like "i called your mom, a force of space and time"
beck also does that. i once had the thought about mutations that there are several lines that are repeated, but with slight variations (mutations!) in different songs
eg the wild lives are so mild

When the chips are down, eat them

Why has poker taken the world by storm? Humanity's predilection for gambling is not new. In fact it was Alexander the Great who coined the term "to coin a term". He had been having difficulty getting some of his elephants to navigate some treacherous mountain passes, and deciding to make things interesting, bet his second in command, Barry, that he could make the elephants move faster without touching them. Barry naturally scoffed and suggested that the winner of the wager would receive free tuition for their eldest child for three months, or one term. Alexander proceeded to release a mouse under the feet of an elephant, at which point it trumpeted, picked up speed and trampled two dozen of his finest men. Barry accepted defeat with good grace, and handed Alexander a special bronze coin, noting "My liege, your term with this coin." Alexander was suddenly struck by a severe anal discharge and proceeded to empty his bowels all over the coin, which he had dropped a moment earlier, owing to the fact that he had perpetually sweaty palms.

Have You Ever Been Paralysed By Indecision?

There are stages.

Stage 1: awareness of option.
Everyone has options of some kind or another. In my case, it's the end of my Honours year, signifying my entry into the world of academia, industry or neither. Will I stay in this specific area? This field? Will I research? Will I talk/write/administer science? Or will science see the back of me?

Stage 2: research of alternatives.
Before I had broadband, I really felt the lack. Now that I have it, I'm not sure it's made things any better. There are times I feel I am closing in on a decision. I have it within my grasp. All of a sudden, it rears up on me, whinnies and bolts away, often kicking me in the head in the process. Then there are the times I feel no closer to a decision than ever. It's times like these I can be paralysed by indecision.

Stage 3: decision.
This needn't be a lifelong commitment, although a PhD does entail at least 3 years of research. The comforting thing is that time has an inexorable way of passing. Thus, despite my current ignorama and ignominy, in but a few months the decision will have been made. I find stress about exams can sometimes be eluded in a similar fashion.

Stage 4: awareness of option.
About three months after the decision has been made, new options arise. The cycle resumes, with hilarious consequences.

The Ineffable Anxiety of Planning Experiments

Next week I begin a large series of experiments, on which my Honours thesis hinges, swaying gently in the breeze. If I'm not careful, i'll cut myself on the screen door like Cletus.

There are essentially three steps:
1) grow some neurons
2) take some of them and
a) visualise the location of several different proteins using fluorescent antibodies
b) examine their morphology using other fluorescent antibodies
3) take the rest and meaure the amount of certain proteins

If I could perform these steps sequentially I'd be living the life of Riley. Nary a worry in the world, but so slow that my scientific competitors would rise above me. So I must do 2 and 3 at the same time, and therein lies my fear. Still, that's what molecular biology is made of. Is it any wonder women do well here, with their notorious ability to multitask, while men flounder and bream? This is just a stereotype to make me feel better, but I'm sticking with it 'til the sun don't shine for three months.

Red Computer Bucket

Arthur a grammar. What is a question.
How'm I s'posed to get outta here, somehow?
I am king of plasma.
That's the only thing i want so much.
Kim's got her watermelon gun.
You sold me fifty dollars.
A tear drops my eye.

Nonsense or fact? You be the judge.

World's Oldest Bat Discovered Underneath Fat Man

The oldest bat in the world was discovered on a couch previously occupied by a morbidly obese man. The bloodsuckler was a Townsend's Big Eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) and biological testing confirmed its age as 37, beating by seven the previous record held by a little brown bat.

The man involved was identified as Barry Templeton, a 62 year old man from a village near Bristol, England. Templeton, who weighs 132 kg, explained that he would not have noticed a thing, but his dog, Marmaduchess alerted him to the unlikely visitor's presence after he had gotten up to answer the door. Templeton took the bat to his local vet, who pronounced the bat dead on arrival. Templeton said he had "no idea" how the bat got there.

Although a battery of tests were used to establish the deceased bat's age, the clincher was DNA testing of blood which had dried around its lips. This was amazingly traced back to a male pig-tailed monkey (Macaca nemestrina) known as Bonnie, who died of heart failure whilst in orbit around the earth aboard the NASA spacecraft, Biosatellite III. The monkey passed away 9 days after being launched in June, 1969.

Templeton, an amateur astronomer, casually mentioned the story to a friend working at NASA, who recounted the tale of Bonnie. NASA regularly takes blood samples of humans and animals it sends into space for identification purposes. Although it usually keeps these records confidential, NASA had no problem releasing the data to the Bristol veterinarian.

A NASA official was unable to confirm whether Bonnie had been bitten by a bat, but suggested that a trip to the zoo a few days before launch by members of the Biosatellite III team, including Bonnie, would have been the only time the monkey would have been exposed to bats.

Alright, I'll write something about science

After claiming to be a scientist (at least in training), it is probably time that I offered something of a scientific bent. I may still manage to fit sport in somewhere.

The world media was aflutter with reports of a paralysed man who controlled a cursor and a robotic hand using his brain, but not his muscles. Y'see, he had a sensor in his brain which sent signals to a processor, which decoded them and moved said cursor/robotic hand.

What to make of all this? First of all, it's worth checking out the article itself:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7099/pdf/nature04970.pdf

It's nice that Nature has made this freely available, as like most scientific journals they have a way of keeping things to themselves and their subscribers. When faced with a journal's website telling me i'm not allowed to view an article, I go here: http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/ejournals/
and access is usually forthcoming.

Nature Publishing Group is also one of the most respected/highest impact/popular series of journals in scientific publishing. If you're a scientist with a paper that you think is white hot, you might try sending it to Nature.

Returning to our cybernetic tetraplegic, MN - for some reason, subjects are always referred to by their intials. Does it really protect their privacy when there's pictures of them in the article? And how hard can it be to find a tetraplegic with those initials? They also mention that his injury was from a knife wound that transected the spinal cord between cervicl vertebrae C3-C4. C'mon, you can't give those details but not explain any more!

One of my first thoughts was: how the heck do they transduce his brain signals? To me, it all came down to the signal processor. Measuring neuronal activity is not such a big deal, but converting that into movement of a cursor seemed to me more complicated. This probably reflects my background in neuroscience and I would like to now call upon anyone with an engineering background (you know who you are) to fill in the other details.

Without knowing anything, the following sketch may not be too far from the truth. The sensor uses its 100 electrodes to detect the activity of neurons - sometimes single ones, other times groups. This activity is measured in microvolts. What they then do is build up a database of firing patterns associated with certain movements. Imagine putting your hands together then apart, get pattern X. Open and close your hands, get pattern Y. Imagine manually tracking a technician-operated (in Australia we call them research assistants) cursor, get pattern Z.

This pattern was converted via a filter function into a two dimensional output signal - the neural cursor. This makes sense for imagining moving a cursor, but I'm not sure what a 2D output would mean for opening your hands or shrugging your shoulders. I still have no idea how the filter function works, but it seems to do the trick.

They then compared MN's neural cursor with the techinician's actual cursor. Over 6 sessions the correlation between the neural cursor and the technician's was 0.56 +/- 0.18 on the x axis and 0.45 +/- .15 on the y axis. It would be weird if there were a difference between x and y axes. This didn't seem to me to be a particuarly impressive correlation, but the results were 'similar or better than those seen in intact monkeys'. Unsurprisingly it turns out that they've done this in monkeys before. 'Preclinical animal studies' are a common story in neuroscience research.

It turns out the robotic control was also by using his cursor skills. Later on they got him to open some simulated email. Why was it simulated? I have no idea.They also got him to adjust the volume, channel and power to his television. Now that's research you can take to the bank! They also made movies of MN playing Neural Pong and Neural "HeMan" game. I'd love to watch these but damn MediaPlayer can't play the mov file.

Am I alone in finding many scientific papers hard to get through? This one had a lot of techniques I was unfamiliar with but still, it'd be nice if they converted it to a laywoman's version. Most newspaper reports just don't even try.

It seems like they had a few technical difficulties with the sensors, one of which required 'clinical protocol change', which meant cutting MN open and fiddling with the device. In a second subject (no initials for him) a technical issue caused an abrupt signal loss at most electrodes, the reason for which is being evaluated. I suppose this would be like getting disconnected at a critical time. Impressive research, though more reporting of difficulties and problems would better serve the public.

I can't think of a good way to sum up this paper, so I'll end with Go the Doggies!

Zizou Butt Theories

There's too many comical items in this to single out any.

http://foxsports.news.com.au/story/0,8659,19752159-5004540,00.html

Oh, alright. My favourites are Thierry Henry's comment, SOS Racism quoting "very well informed" sources, The Times' lip reader's analysis, and Materazzi's command of whichever language it was he was speaking.

Hamish’s Portfolio Theory of Sport Following

This is quite a simple idea, but can be very effective.

One of the great things about sport is you are admitted into a world of vicarious highs and lows. This leeching of the emotional experiences of elite athletes is enhanced if you follow the athlete/team, and moreso if for a long time. In the World Cup, because the athletes are so good, and the fans so involved, it’s the ultimate sporting spectacle. But if your country happens to qualify, you top up your enjoyment account manifold. If you have followed your country’s vain attempts to qualify or progress for three decades, the ante is upped again. And the World Cup is special because your emotions (limited as they are to the sporting spectrum, but valid nonetheless) are shared by many of your countrywomen and men.

The problem with sport is the lows can be a bit a of a bummer. First of all, it can be genuinely heartbreaking seeing some losses. This is one of the easiest, sure-fire way to get one of those ‘replay the scene in your head’moments, or more likely continuing episodes. If it was a bad loss, you may temporarily forget failure and imagine what would have happened if they hadn’t lost after all. You may even map out future opponents and results of these games, if only... Interestingly, such counterfactuals are largely involuntary, and can indeed be hard to suppress. Second of all, bad moods can follow losses, which disrupt your interactions with loved ones and colleagues, and may impair your productivity, thus draining the economy of the wealth it so richly deserves. Lastly, it is frankly downright embarassing to admit a sporting team’s influence on your person. After all, are we sports nuts any better than those pond scum who indulge in gossip magazines? P’raps. I know there are many things I’d feel in my soul of souls more pleased doing - playing guitar, singing, listening to Mars Volta, playing Druglord, cooking for my wife - the list goes on. But back to sporting failure, and how to hide it under your bushel.

This is where the portfolio comes in. Having a sports portfolio - a range of teams or individuals to follow - means somewhere, sometime there is always someone winning. You black out the failures and take the winners on board. My portfolio has consisted over the years of (in rough order of frequency of support and importance) the Bulldogs in the NRL, the Socceroos, the Golden State Warriors (NBA), the Sydney Kings (NBL), and then a range of lower tier ones: Sydney Swans (AFL), River Plate and pretty much any team from Sydney, NSW, or Australia. This takes in tennis players (although for Lleyton Hewitt I’m willing to make an exception), golfers (especially Appleby, Allenby and Ogilvy), cricket teams and whatnot. In the English Premier League I generally support a team with (decent) Aussies - Blackburn, Liverpool. Because of the GS Warriors, I even retain a modicum of satisfaction when the Oakland Raiders win in the NFL - and I haven’t watched an NFL game in about 15 years. (In fact I spent more time in my youth playing the superb NFL PC game where you could make your team really fast, or fat, and we had a guy called My Main Man Maxwell, and one season later in the draft we were shocked and delighted to see that his brother had turned up - Rick Main Man Maxwell, or something like that. Tas, where are you? What was his first name?) So by having a sports portfolio, you can have success all the time, and credibility is just around the corner.

Of course, if you subscribe to the underdog school of sports supporting, you’ll rarely be pleased. But it’ll be worth it when you are. But it’ll be lame most of the time.

An added bonus is that if anyone questions why you follow so many different teams and sports, you can rationally justify it and return to the sports section unfettered.

PGC as Rohrschach Test

Regarding the revealingness of post-goal celebrations, I wouldn’t say that the more subdued the celebration, the closer to insanity. Because I can imagine myself there, on the world stage, and scoring, and perhaps because I’m such a hot player, I kind of expect it. Or I react so quickly, I am able to tone it down and so reveal my utter, utter coolness. Still, Zinedane’s placid display will surely be the last of the finals.

My prediction: whoever scores in the semis will be accosted by their team mates. First beset upon. Jumped upon. Smothered. They’ll crush the air out of him, then tear his clothes off and hoist them skyward, in the manner of days of yore. Content with their fill, and spent, they’ll return to the game. Meanwhile, our poor scorer will have nothing to wear. Shrinkage will inevitably follow, followed by borrowing of Olivar Kahn’s garb, even if it’s someone from the Portugal-France game.

Zizou's Post-Goal Celebration

This brog is turning into a bit of a World Cup site, but I suspect I'm not the only one to suffer this pleasant fate. Soon it will all be over. And no one will remember a jot, or possibly iota.

I think Zinedine Zidane has set a record for most subdued festivities on scoring a goal around the 91st minute to confirm France's victory over Spain. Spain was furiously pressing forward, when a wayward pass was snatched by the French. In a jiffy Zidane was released into open space on the left flank. The spanish defender had time to raise his arm in offside-protestation *and* go back and defend, but Zidane skipped around him in the box and wrongfooted the keeper gloriously.

After scoring, he ran not in a straight line, but in a sort of zigzag fashion. He may have been trying to throw off his teammates [incidentally, i always wonder if a teammate gets offended when they are ignored or brushed off by a scorer more interested in running very far and fast than stopping and accepting congratulation]. He wondered over to the press area and eventually was swamped by his teammates. His remains will constitute a peat bog or peat marsh some day. Admittedly there was no tv camera pointed at his face during this time, so he might have been ecstatically grinning. but i don't think so. a decidedly cool and even handed response.

Where was Otto Pfister when Australia needed him?

man, what a slack attack to the max. To lose in the last 5 seconds, on a dud penalty like that. we basically lacked in attack. we still have some ways to go there. could josh kennedy have gone on? perhaps aloisi earlier. still, there are some crackerjack games coming up. germany argentina, england (who have actually been boring but have to light up sooner or later, no?) portugal, ghana brazil (i'm afraid brasil will crush them), france spain (last throes for french). i'll be rooting for ukraine in a few days.

in other news, i had a significant personal achievement when my sms was read out on abc local radio 702 by simone thirtell. due to reasons of national security, i was forced to go by one of my pseudonyms, Doogie from Wyee. it was music to my ears hearing that read out. ah, the small pleasures of life.

How the years do go by

I don't like this business where the days and weeks fly by too quickly. At the moment it's like when you're on the train and you look down at the tracks outside the window and they're moving real fast. What i want it to be like is when you look off into the distance and you can easily see the shape of the landscape and it doesn't disappear too fast.

Y'see, people need to be busy occasionally. I'm not sure why - sense of productivity, actual productivity. But if you're busy too often, you can't enjoy yourself. You can't even see the time passing before your eyes. You wake up one morning in a cold sweat and realise it's 2063 and you haven't stopped to smell the roses in god knows how long. But then it's too late. That's why my new job has one busy week followed by one quiet week the whole year through.

Tonight I eat bacon and lentil soup in Leichhardt in preparation for Australia v Italy somewhere on Norton St. My prediction: everything will be booked out and we'll be forced to listen in the freezing cold on ham radio. But what an atmosphere!

I'm at a loss - Australia drew and won

Ah, the puns. I sprang out of bed and rocketed into the loungeroom for the all-important pre-game hype. when i saw that kalac had been selected, a deep tremor passed through my bowels. little did i know how he would impose his spidery persona all over this game, for the wrong reasons. sadly for my wife, i failed to change the settings on the alarm clock, so i woke her at 5 and 5:10 for good measure.

What a weird ending to the game. Players sent off, benchwarmers running on the field. i feel i have been deprived of closure. i wanted a crowd-chanted, tv-displayed countdown to ensure maximum satisfaction. still, it was pretty sweet. If i didn't have to take pictures of purkinje neurons and bergman glia in the cerebellum, i'd be home in a jiffy to watch it all unfold, refold and unfold again.

Australian enttaeuscht - immer wieder

Immer dieselbe Geschichte. Chancen verdient, Chancen verpasst. Es macht mich krank! Wenn Australia nicht ueber Kroatien siegt, werde ich mir die haende waschen. So ist das Leben.

The Holy Trinity

Geoff Ogilvy has just won the US Open golf tournament at Winged Foot (sounds painful). Although he lacks a 'b', his name can now at last be added to the pantheon of great Australian golfing "ees": Appleby, Allenby, Ogilvy. Tas, if you're out there, this one's for you. In the meantime, if I were a talent scout, golf groupie or corporate megasponsor, I would be scouring the ranks of local golfers with similar sounding names.

In other news, I am considering calling my firstborn Dugong. Or Doogie Dickens.

Life is Butter Dream

If there's one site you gots to go to for all your butter producing needs, it ain't butter productions. Go to this site if you care about Australia's hottest video art talent.

Not sure about the yellow though...and those pesky popups...

but i LOVE the site.

post goal celebrations

Mime artist feeling wall and then sticking head through

Crumping oneself

Bursting ball with hands in a show of pectoral strength

Players gather around corner post and prostrate themselves in front of it

Player pulls bubble mix and loop from pocket and starts blowing bubbles

it turns out that that movie was called dirty tricks, starring Norm someoneorother. I checked out out the quotes, and pretty much the only funny ones were the ones I remembered. Adam Sandler is mildly amusing as the devil and Chevy Chase has a funny cameo as a doctor (It should be docter. I doct.) with gambling problems.

"I can't believe you bet on Mr T in Rocky III!"

"Ah, hindsight is 20/20, my friend"

Post-Match Mania

Tim cahill shadowboxed the corner flag. i hope someone tries a pole dance with it. my prediction for aus vs brasil (they spell it with an 's', so should we. ah, yeah): zejlko kalac will replace mark schwarzer, who will be shifted to the midfield, although still be allowed to wear his goal keeper's garb. After watching the socceroos score thrice in the last 10 min to crush the dreams of the blue warriors, i wasted valuable time watching the czechs beat usa. still, if you want to make the most of the world cup, it's not about the quality of the games, but the amount you watch, especially the amount of sleep you miss.

Fortunately i saw a most amusing movie on channel sieben which relieved my sleepy soul during moments of united states ineptitude. It featured cameos from adam sandler and chris farley, but i don't know what it's called. i know i could find out at imdb, so why bother just now? anyway, this admittedly lame movie had several bits worth recounting.

an old man lies in hospital after a heart attack and shocks the protagonist by telling him he's his father. to still son's disbelief he retrieves a locket (trinket/amulet/capsulet) from under his hospital gown and opens it up to show the hero. "that's my you and my mother!... having sex!" it turns out that's the only way old man felt he could convince him. he then goes on to lament that in his day they didn't have high-falutin methods of contraception - like pulling out. Lateron, his other son (who knows he's his son) asks why he cheated on his mum, to which old man replies "she was there! who do you think took the picture?"

Welcome me

So i've gotten my act together to start a blog. I have high, high hopes for what this page will contain. After conferring with my esteemed associate cwdeluxe, I would like to have something on science, something on humour, something else too. Time will tell if I follow through as weakly as Djibril Cisse, or achieve these goals.