Plants and Animals’ Lightshow and our fascination with visualizing sound

“Plants and Animals rock so hard, they end up overloading all the scientists’ fancy equipment”

That’s a pretty accurate description of the video for Plants and Animals‘ satisfying, pared-down anthem Lightshow. The Montreal-based trio go about rocking under controlled conditions while they are observed by two researchers. Every sound creates a digital graphic output while the lab-coated scientists struggle to tune a classic cathode-ray tube oscilloscope in the control room. In the end the solo is too much (it is really great), and they’re left shaking their heads. Continue reading “Plants and Animals’ Lightshow and our fascination with visualizing sound”

Infinite love

Quoth The Frogger: “Mommy, I love you more than I love you.”

Which is much more poetic than saying “I love you infinity”. Technically, it is the same thing.

The success of Guess How Much I Love You testifies to the fact that accurate mathematical expression of emotion is far less poetic and profitable than off-beat, grammatically dubious phrases.

Plants as a metaphor for adulthood?: Frank Turner’s Photosynthesis

A catchy and heartfelt folk song with a charming video and a scientific process in the title:  It’s hard not to love Frank Turner’s Photosynthesis. Continue reading “Plants as a metaphor for adulthood?: Frank Turner’s Photosynthesis”

Sunday Poem

The Two Apes of Brueghel (1957), Wisława Szymborska (1923-2011)

So appears my big graduation exam dream:
In a window sit two monkeys fixed by chains,
Beyond the window the sky flies
And the sea splashes.

The subject is the history of mankind.
I stammer and flail.

One monkey, gazing at me, ironically listens,
The second seems to doze –
But when after a question comes silence,
It prompts me
By softly clinking the chain.

Translation from the Polish by yours truly.
All I have to say about this poem is that a monkey rattling a chain is never a good thing, especially at a thesis committee update. See the original Brueghel painting here.

Biomedical science… is there a problem?

The big news around the ‘net today, as far as the life sciences are concerned, is the dramatic increase in the number of papers that are retracted, as documented (yet again) in this paper, and told in this NY Times piece by Carl Zimmer. (Check out some of the buzz here and here and here.) This story is primarily about the biomedical sciences, and so the question naturally arises, is the biomedical science community dysfunctional?

I’m going to say yes – but perhaps not in the way you think. As someone at a vulnerable career stage, whose future career path depends on the health of the biomedical community, I’ve experienced some of the problems in the community, and so I will offer you my opinion based on anecdotal evidence, for whatever it’s worth:

The biomedical community is dysfunctional because it has increasingly become a system based on a rigged lottery. Continue reading “Biomedical science… is there a problem?”