Deep thoughts and silliness

The University of Oxford is advertising for a Transgenic Research Assistant. I would recommend applicants attach a photo of themselves taken under UV light. If you’re not glowing green, you may not be acceptable.

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I was going to write a post about ecotrons, and explain the lamppost, but I’ve been too busy doing other stuff. So, instead here are some photos that I just took whilst perambulating around Tvärminne.
I don’t know much about what I photographed, so if anyone can say anything interesting about them, please do! Oh, and click through, and look at some of the large versions. Just admire the ability of technology today to overcome the user’s camera shake.

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A lamppost, yesterday

Yes, the latest Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was published today yesterday at Greg Laden’s Blog. Greg included one of my pieces, but there is also some good stuff there.

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I’ve just been spammed by the American Chemical Society. The spam starts:

Polymorphism Articles from Crystal Growth & Design

Based on your previously published work related to polymorphism, we thought you might be interested in these recently published articles:

and then lists a bunch of articles about crystals. Something that has nothing to do with my work – I don’t even take sugar in my coffee!
Because I’m not a chemist, I’ve no idea if this is a reputable society, or a bunch of jerks. I’m leaning towards the latter, but can anyone fill me in?

Over at Myrmecos, Alex Wild was musing about blogging about peer-reviewed research.
One of his commenters, Psi WaveFunction, commented

I don’t get the whole peer review worship going on in the general public as well as academia. It’s almost as if people in the whole WANT to keep scientific knowledge locked up accessible to few and practiced by even fewer.

This got me wondering – why do we consider peer reviewed research to be important? I’d actually suggest that peer review is of secondary importance, so I’ll discuss that later (if I remember). So, why do we need a scientific literature? Well, here are my half-formed thoughts.

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This was another post, but I’m not sure what happens when you save rather than publish (there was a bug that screwed things up). I created it as a new post, but thought I’d do something with this one.

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Admit it. Next February you all want to read read about the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Well, if you want to help you can.
Grrlscientist has entered a competition for a blogger to go on a cruise to Antarctica, and blog about it. And take photos. And probably fall over and break her arm.
Anyway, you should all go and vote for her (you’ll have to register). and then tell all your friends to vote for her too. Do it, or all the penguins will be sad.

Sorry, I’m the only one up. The rest are still in bed, crying because you wouldn’t help Grrl visit us.

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It was Earth Day on April 22rd, and Mike Dunford started a blog meme around this. As you can see, I am (*ahem*) a bit late on this. I was so late that I decided to do this 2 months after Earth day.
ahem
Anyway, as I’m so late on this anyway, why not use it as an opportunity to see how we’ve all done over the last few months to make the environment a better place.
Anyway, Mike asked us all about three things we could do to help save the earth. Here’s what he asked, and my responses:

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Via Snowflake, and others, and because it’s Saturday, here’s my cyborg name:

Get Your Cyborg Name

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