Mailund on the Internet

Remember SpaceShipOne that won the X-prize in 2004?  Well, Virgin Galactic reviled SpaceShipTwo yesterday.

With SpaceShipTwo, 6 passengers can get a short trip into space, and the plan is to sell such trips.  I don't know what the prize will be, but I guess it is safe to say that I won't be able to get a trip any time soon.

Still, it is pretty cool, and if they get to go higher than sub-orbital flight with SpaceShipThree, we might be looking at the beginning of affordable space flight pretty soon.

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Paleontology

• Paleontology references: Read this, not that (Laelaps)

Programming

• Save time and space by compressing data files (Revolutions)

Scientific life

• The complicated history of simple scientific facts (Ars Technica)
• Scientists behaving badly (Statistical Modeling)

Statistics

• Simpson's Paradox not always such a paradox (Statistical Modeling)

Teaching

• Please, please don't let this guy sit in on any of my classes! (Statistical Modeling)

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TED Talk:

It is ten years we got the first complete piece of the human genome, chromosome 22.

We've got tons of genomes now, but of course the human genome was the first large one, and it is worth remembering, in these "slash-and-burn" genome days where we get a new large genome every other month, that most of those genomes are actually only at a (rough) draft level.  Only the human and mouse genome are really considered "complete", the rest are just drafts and in many cases there are still many issues to work out with over-collapsed assemblies and such and with all the troublesome regions missing.

Hopefully, we will go back to many of the genomes to fix them and complete them, when we are done creating drafts of all the interesting species.

Anyway, I have some more to say on this issue but I have to wait for a paper that I want to review, but a paper that is held back right now waiting for the orangutan genome paper to be out... so stay tuned.

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