Mailund on the Internet

Sorry, another political post.  I’ll cut down on them, I promise…

What is a hate crime? A crime is a crime, in my not so humble opinion.  If I kill someone – I’m not planning to (but I’ve gotta little list) – does it matter what I think about the guy I kill? Is it somehow better if I kill someone I like rather than someone I hate?

Well, actually, in Denmark you do get a discount for killing your spouse.  One year is the practise.  I didn’t believe it so I checked with my brother in law who’s a cop and he confirmed it.  It has to do with jealousy and affection crimes, apparently.  I don’t get it.  Does it mean I should get a discount if I kill someone I really hate, out of affection?

No!

No discounts at all.  No extra “hate crime” penalty either!

Justice is blind.  She is not, and should not be, a bloody mind reader.

There are no criminal thoughts, only criminal acts!

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203-204=-1

The magazine about the computer science department here at AU that came out a few months ago has now been translated to English and is available online.  I’m still on the front page – with a pickled chimp – so the English version is at least as tasteful as the Danish version.

The magazine has a piece on each of the groups at the CS department and then – for some reason – a bit on bioinformatics (even if we are really an independent group).  There is a piece on Molegro, a private company that has an office just across the hall from me, and a general piece about BiRC and finally a piece about my ape research (basically CoalHMMs).

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202-203=-1

A day late, but hey, at least here it is…

Computers and the Net

• How does Ubuntu 9.04 measure up to Mac (Linux Magazine)
• Scalable bioinformatics infrastructures with BioHDF, Part V: Why HDF5? (FinchTalk)
• Fuck the foundries (dive into mark)
• New milestone of Unladen Swallow Python JIT shows progress (Ars Technica)

Fun science

• Swearing increases pain tolerance (Neurophilosophy)
• The evolution of ejaculation strategies (Zooillogix)
• Some insight into how the hollow-face illusion works (Cognitive Daily)
• Scientists singing (Byte size biology)
• Primitive beings walking on the moon (Greg Laden)

Serious science

• What happens when things go too fast? (Starts with a bang)
• Why do they hate the manimal? (Pharyngula)
• All data are not the same (bbgm)
• Distant homology and being a little pregnant (Byte size biology)
• Nobel laureates on being young and the future of science (A blog around the clock)
• Neandertals, rare big animals (Gene expression)
• Guest post: Neil Walker on the curious case of the schizophrenia GWAS (Genetic future)
• Publishing with a hidden agenda: why birds simply cannot be dinosaurs (Tetrapod zoology)
• Apollo landing sites: 40 years later! (Starts with a bang)

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202-202=0

Well, today it is 40 years since man first walked on the moon.

Yeah, I know the date is the 21th of July, and that the first astronauts landed on the moon on the 20th, but hey, in this time zone they landed on the 20th and stepped unto the moon after midnight so the 21st.  We’re at GMT+2 during the summer (daylight savings) and the landing was GMT 20:17 on the 20th and Armstrong stepped out on the moon at GMT 02:56 on the 21st.

I guess you can celebrate both days then, first for the landing and then for the first man touching the moon.

The moonlandings were over in 72, three years before I was born, so I never experienced them.  They went to the moon, then went home, and didn’t go back.  I wish they’d continued.  We could have a moon base and maybe Mars base by now.

I realize that the Apollo program was a political program more than a scientific one, and that once the US had beat the USSR to the moon, there really was no reason to continue.  No political reason at least.  There would only be scientific reasons now (and they just got started on that with the first scientist on the moon at the last moon landing).

You might get more science for the same money with unmanned missions.  I don’t really know.  But there is certainly more romance in men and women in space than robots, even as cool robots as the Mars rovers.

I hope the plans for going back to the moon by 2020 are still on track and I get to see the day we return to the moon.

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202-201=+1

There’s an intersting interview with Svante Pääbo here. In case you’ve been living under a rock the last few years: Svante Pääbo is running the Neanderthal genome sequencing program.

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195-200=-5