Waterloo Birdhaus

2011-12-30T22:37:00.000+01:00

Tubulin Prep and Meeting My Meat.

Most of what I do in the lab involves manipulating DNA in little tubes, growing cells in culture dishes, and taking images of them with fancy microscopes. The most striking images are inevitably those where microtubules are labelled (in the image below in white).

These filamentous structures are not only beautiful but extremely functional in the cell, and myself and thousands of other scientists around the world spend a lot of time studying how the cell uses them to carry out a variety of essential functions.

Several people I work with use purified microtubules outside the cell to study how other proteins interact with them and modulate their physical characteristics. Microtubules are made of small proteins called 'tubulin', which stick together in an ordered way to eventually generate the long skinny structure. Getting reasonably pure tubulin is not trivial. It's just not as easy to generate and purify as some other proteins. So the best way to get lots of tubulin has been to get it out of cells that have already made it naturally. The most tubulin is in nerve cells, and the most nerve cells are in the brain. So the best way to get tubulin is from brains. And the best way to get lots of tubulin is from lots of brains, and the bigger the better.

My friends Simone and Per, who are expert tubulin biochemists, recently decided to organize a large tubulin purification. And until some brilliant person comes up with a way to purify large usable amounts of tubulin without brains, this means acquiring lots of brains. Of course I jumped at the opportunity to help. This sounds like real science.

Now, it turns out that tubulin in brains doesn't freeze well, so the best way to get tubulin is actually from lots of big fresh brains. It also turns out that thousands of big fresh brains are simply trashed in these parts each day in an effort to satisfy the German craving for Schwein. The mission, then, was to go to a slaughterhouse in the wee hours of the morning, and get 100 fresh, warm pig brains, right out of the pigs.

Coincidentally, at that time I was going pseudo-vegetarian, after reading the moving book 'Eating Animals' by Jonathan Safran Foer, and felt this would be a good opportunity to see the inner workings of a slaughterhouse. Since I knew I would not realistically be able to cut out all meat forever, I thought I should at least know first-hand how it got to my plate. And who knows, maybe it would have some sort of impact. I was starting to fall of the wagon.

So Per and I got up one morning before sunrise to drive to the slaughterhouse, collect brains, and be back in the lab with enough time for all the biochemical processing to get the tubulin. I think we were in the lab around 5am to get the supplies, where we found a friendly note from Simone:

She had arranged a chocolate basket and note for us to bring all the guys down at the slaughterhouse as a thank-you for all the brains.

I don't have any photos from the slaughterhouse, I didn't even bother trying to take my camera in there. As Per and I arrived in the dark the entrance looked like the registration lobby of a hospital: clean, white, cold, sparse, open. After we explained we were the scientists there for the brains, our contact guy came out to greet us wearing a full body lab coat. He then gave us each protective wear, including shoe-covers and hair nets. We had several heavy containers of ice that the three of us then had to carry all the way to the slaughterhouse floor, which was a long trip though a maze of cool, white, fluorescently lighted corridors and locked doors, even more emphasizing the hospital feel. Except that at with each door we crossed, a distinct scent registered stronger in my nose, undetectable at first, and overbearing by the last door. At the last room before the slaughter floor, we passed over a machine that scrubbed our feet, and then through a door, where we were instantly confronted with a large, loud, crowded room with a thick suffocating stench, and absolutely buzzing with activity. Dozens of workers, men and women, and hundreds of pig carcasses where whizzing around. There was a long assembly line, which came in the room beyond our vision, twisted throughout, and back on itself, and then exited on the opposite side. Our contact, probably younger than both of us, very matter-of-factly took us to the place on the line where the brains were removed, and then asked me a question. With all the noise, and the guy's thick Saxon accent, I could just not understand what he was asking, but eventually gathered he wanted me to follow him to the other side of the room. He very adeptly navigated across assembly lines of hanging carcasses being whisked through stations. I had to pause often to get the timing right for fear of getting whacked with a carcass, but more so of somehow screwing up the whole operation. Eventually he took me to another guy, high up on a metal grating, seemingly overseeing all the operations of the floor with a panel of knobs and phones. I was to come back to this guy when we were finished getting brains so that we could be led out of the floor.

Once back at the de-braining station Per and I decided to dive into collecting. We then realized that with all this protective gear, we were never given any gloves. As we glanced around, we only then noticed that in fact nobody on the floor had gloves. To ask for gloves would mean bothering three more people, interrupting the whole operation, and potentially receiving the scorn of the people in the room that were already looking at us with annoyance. So we dug in with bare hands. From our position, pigs came by cut in half. They were whole about 30 meters to the left of us, where a guy stood with what essentially looked like a giant chainsaw with a firehose integrated. He cut the pigs, hung by their forelegs, perfectly in half, head to tail. When the half pigs came by us, a woman was grabbing the brains and kidneys, and tossing them into separated cartons. We then grabbed the half-brains, about 3 seconds out of the pig, and still quite warm, and tossed them into an ice-cold saline solution. Occasionally a kidney would accidentally fly into our carton. It probably took us 15 minutes to collect 200 half-brains.

After we had packed all the brains in the car and ready to go, we were blocked in for several minutes by a huge semi truck - with a trailer containing dozens of pigs sticking their little snouts out through grates in the side of the truck, eyeing us in confusion. If we had come 30 minutes later we would have had their brains in the trunk.

Back in Dresden the sun had come up and a small team had assembled to process the brains as fast as possible. The first step was to clean them up. A cold room was set up to process them.

It was a cheerful environment as the team whistles while they work:

Ultimately the brains were liquified in a giant blender for further processing. The official protocol says they should be blended until the consistency of a nice strawberry milkshake.

More milkshake action, in the 4 degrees C room. 10 liters of brains in the end.

The rest of the purification consisted mostly of hours and hours of centrifugation steps and running protein over columns until reasonably pure tubulin was isolated. One thing I did not foresee was that the incredible penetrating stench of the slaughterhouse would stay in in my clothes and skin.

Here Per and I had changed clothes from the slaughterhouse, but the stench of the worn clothes were so great we had to wrap them in plastic bags. And were only in there for 30 minutes! My skin even smelled for a day. I can't imagine working 40 hours a week in that place. I guess you get used to it, but that smell must be permanently attached to you.

In the end the prep was a success, but we slightly underestimated our brain capacity and could have collected more in the beginning. By making tubulin ourselves, we saved literally tens to hundreds of thousands of euros compared to buying it pure.

As for the experience of seeing a slaughterhouse in action, and my newly found pseudo-vegetarianism, I was glad for the opportunity to visit. It wasn't really all that disturbing to me while inside, as the pigs were already partially processed by the time they came in our room (dead, with no hair or skin, more like being in a giant meat locker). It did kind put some things in perspective when the truckload of live ones showed up as we were leaving. These are intelligent fully-aware individuals being processed. And the sheer number was astounding.

Our expectations for having meat for every meal really doesn't make sense when you sit down and think about it. It's not sustainable, it's not in anyway necessary for health reasons, and as I've found out, meat actually tastes a whole lot better when you eat it on rare occasions, and when it's of the highest quality. I've gone from about 10 meals a week containing meat, to less than one a week on average. I don't miss it, because if I really have a craving, or if I'm in a nice restaurant, or traveling, I go ahead and have some, preferably of free-range origin. I'll never give up an occasional BBQ brisket or fresh homemade bratwurst, but I'm happy to give up cold-cut turkey (I cut out turkey, cold-turkey, so to speak, going from 4 sandwiches a week for the last 10 years to zero since I stopped), low grade hamburgers, canned tuna, and tasteless steaks that you just stuff in your face to make you full.

2011-12-04T23:10:00.001+01:00

December in Germany

Okay, 9 months since my last post. Anybody who read this blog regularly is long gone. December is here, and along comes the wonderful Christmas season in Germany. This winter so far has been unseasonably warm, and while I really can't complain, I do hope we get a good snowfall at least once before the holidays are over. Two years ago I posted a round-up of the Christmas markets around Dresden with photos. Last year I posted a time-lapse movie over-looking the Striezelmarkt.

Last year I got a few nice photos when there was some snow on the ground, and I'll post them now since it hasn't snowed this year. The first is from the Neumarkt Christmas market, currently the best in Dresden:

Last year I went down to Nürnberg during the season, too, and luckily it snowed. What a beautiful town.

And the year ended with fireworks in Dresden

2011-03-09T21:38:00.001+01:00

Cell Phone Camera Dump

About a year since the last one, random images and observations accumulating on my phone:

If you live in Germany, sometimes, even if you're leaning vegetarian lately, you just have to go for big hearty German meal, like Haxe, Saurkraut, Knödel, and Bier.

This is a photo of the sleeping situation I've encountered multiple times in hotels. This bed is two mattresses. There is a space in the middle. The frame of the bed is once piece. Who is this for?? If you want to sleep two together, or spread out alone over the bed, somebody falls in the crack. If you want to sleep two separately, you cannot separate the mattresses. On the other hand, I HAVE gotten used to the whole no covering sheet thing in Germany. Just a mattress covering sheet and a duvet.

This vuvuzela has been in our lab for years. It is not used anymore, but at one time it was the bane of my existence, and so I wrote "Use only in case of emergency" on it. And somebody got smart with an extra comment.

Speaking of vuvuzelas, last summer was of course the world cup. I happened to be traveling while Germany was playing, along with several other unfortunate souls. I think this was the Frankfurt airport, where not only was the gave live all over the airport, not only did they even pipe it in on planes, but the buses that took us to the planes had a live feed over the speakers. What you hear here is the drone of vuvuzelas over the radio.

This photo is also from the summer. I was at a conference in Heidelberg, and as I was leaving a full cafeteria of people on the last day after saying goodbyes to catch the train home, I walked smack straight into a clear glass door. I did not look back to see people staring, but walked straight on to catch a cab, pausing only to reflect on the pain and take a photograph of the welt developing on my forehead.

Flohmarkt on the Elbe. Cliff and Sarah rented a stand to get rid of their wares in preparation for moving back to the States. I joined and sold a shirt and a headset!

This was on odd, uh....snack I found on the shelves in the supermarket. Texas barbeque-flavored Taccos. My impression is that it's some sort of god-awful combination of tacos, texas BBQ, and some sort of shish-kebab. So I went to the Chio website to learn more. You should visit, it has a very cheesy sound intro followed by - and it changes when you reload - either a man or woman essentially having an orgasm. If you navigate to the Taccos page, you learn they "schmecken wie deftiges Texas Barbecue, kross über dem Lagerfeuer geröstet - ganz so, wie's die Cowboys lieben". riiiiiight.

The tortillas chips you can find in stores here are basically terrible, even though I've gotten used to one brand...but the Chio brand are the worst. They taste and have the texture of pure chemicals. And the cheese dip they market, I literally could not eat. Had to throw the whole thing in the trash.

In conclusion, not even the lure of a free trip home can get me to buy this product.

This is my favorite Hefeweizen. It's not super-easy to find in Dresden, you have to know where to go, but when you find it it's 79 cents a bottle I think. This photo was taken in a supermarket back in the States, don't remember if in NY or TX. Excited they had the beer, was subsequently saddened by the price tag. If and when I get back to the States this will be a hard transition.

Last month I went skiing in Austria. This was the view (click to enlarge; taken with cell phone camera - not masterful at panorama stitching) at the top of a lift where we ate lunch a few times. Unreal.

2011-01-31T23:05:00.008+01:00

Singing Sinatra

This year's MPI-CBG Christmas party was a bigger hit than usual, and I think most people agreed it was due to a new format, which was basically much more informal, and with lots of live music, spearheaded by Tim Cross. Several months prior, Tim sent out an email calling for anybody with any sort of musical talent to sign up to play at the Christmas party. I sent an email back saying I'd always dreamed of singing Sinatra with a band, but had never sung before an audience, nor had been trained in any way. I did not expect Tim's response, which was "RIGHT FUCKING ON!!!", and a promise to assemble a band. I then attempted to back out several times over the next couple months, thinking I was in over my head, but Tim wouldn't have it. And so a band was assembled, and with a handful of rehearsals, but never with the entire ensemble present, we pulled off a number of tunes that night:

Tim is on bass, Per's on guitar, Coleman on the drums, Guillaume on paino, and Veikko on violin. These guys basically pulled this off without really practicing, and with me asking for stupid things like changing the key up a couple steps cause it was more familiar that way. It was quite impressive.

I don't have videos of any of the many many other acts from the night, but they were
quite phenomenal, sometimes to a jaw-dropping degree. It's amazing to see your colleagues really jam and wail.

2011-01-23T21:31:00.002+01:00

Dresden Neustadt - Old and New

One day in a random web walk I came across some old black and white photos of Neustadt on somebody's flickr page. It appears that they were taken in the early 90s - not long after the wall came down. Several seem to involve some of the first BRN (BunteRepublikNeustadt) festivals. Most of them include what most likely were long neglected and then rapidly abandoned buildings - most of which (but my no means all) have been since restored. I thought it'd be fun to try to identify the same places in Neustadt as a sort of puzzle, and then try to photograph them today, from the same perspective. Some of them were easy to find, some were difficult, and some basically impossible (closeups with little clues). Below are the ones I've found (I've made mine black and white too for better comparison).

The first is of Alaunstrasse, where there are now a couple of crappy bars. What used to be a bricked up part of the facade is now the entrance.

A closer photo nearby shows how another previously bricked-up entrance is transformed into....another soulless bar....

Also on Alaunstrasse, you see how the buildings have been renovated, and right now they are reconstructing the road here.

I like this next one. Böhmischestr., just around the corner from my flat. This was unmistakably Raskolnikov, with the characteristic window shutters (one of the decent bar/restaurants in Neustadt). To be sure I actually was able to find the exact same stones in both photos. Notice the new photo is the one with cobblestones. Those are about a year old. This is still one of the best streets to visit during BunteRepublikNeustadt - it seems maintains some of the original vibe.

This is another photo from Böhmischestr., now between Rothenburgerstr. and Alaunstr.
Notice there's a patch of cement on the new photo where there was some sort of piping in the old photo. It looks like the doors have been totally replaced, but keeping part of the design. Also, you see holes in the wall from an older sign exist on both photos.

Here's the corner of Louisenstr. and Alaunstr. Now mostly vegetation in front of "Katy's Garage". Which is not actually a garage, but.....another crappy bar.

Here are a couple shots from Sebnitzerstr. First, a "Kinderplatz", where the ground seems to be about two feet higher than it was 20 years ago, based on the building.

And a row of seemingly abandoned buildings

Finally a photo I took this month, but could easily have been from 1993, with the Trabant and graffiti....

2011-01-03T19:42:00.004+01:00

Albertplatz Time-Lapse

Here's another one of these fun time-lapse movies. This one I shot from the top of the 'Nudel Turm' at Alaunplatz - a decent vantage point.

Albertplatz, Dresden from Alex Bird on Vimeo.

Filmed from the Nudel Turm, Dec 2010, with a NIkon D300S.

Music: "fire cut" by CIRC

2010-12-16T19:27:00.003+01:00

Miniature Dresdner Striezelmarkt

Miniature Dresdner Striezelmarkt from Alex Bird on Vimeo.

After the first experiment I made a point to try to capture the Streizelmarkt with this effect, since it's not around for long, and especially with the snow. Fortunately, the old Kreuzkirche stands overlooking the almarkt, and for 2.50 euro you can climb to the top of the tower. So I took my camera and tripod up there, and was surprised to find my self all alone up at the top. And then I realized that is was cold and extremely windy up there! You can tell in the video, as the wind was pushing around the camera on the tripod. And I couldn't protect my hands or face much because the way I had the camera perched on the ledge I was afraid a large gust might push it over, so I had to be ready to grab it without actually touching it. I had to duck inside the tower between shots just to keep warm enough to continue.

2010-12-12T22:46:00.010+01:00

Tilt-Shift Time Lapse

You may have seen some of these videos recently, where somebody takes a time lapse movie of a scene from a high vantage point, then processes the individual photos for a "tilt-shift" effect (essentially just applying a blur to the image such that it appears as if there is a very shallow depth of field, which gives the impression that one is looking at a a very small scene filmed with a macro lens or something). Usually the saturation is also cranked up in these movies so that everything looks painted or plastic, adding to a miniature/toy effect. Here's a couple photos I snapped of the model train set at Bahnhof Neustadt. This is basically the effect you want.

I decided to give it a go making the real life movies now that I have a digitial SLR as well as Photoshop at my disposal. Here's my first attempt, filmed from outside my bedroom window looking down Rothenburgerstrasse in Dresden:

Not bad for a first attempt, I think. I took images at one second intervals, the playback is at 6 frames/second. Going up to 10 frames per second is less jerky, but then everything is just too fast. Next time I'll probably take 1/2 second intervals. Also, I live on the second floor (first floor for Germans). So this isn't really high enough to get a good effect. But it's enough to give me confidence to go seek out interesting places around town, where I can get higher up, and look out a bit further (e.g. from Nudel Turm looking over Albertplatz). I hope to have some much cooler movies of familiar places soon.

2010-11-21T22:23:00.008+01:00

Holga in the Heide

For my birthday I got one of these Holga cameras, the old cheap Chinese plastic job that has become more popular in recent years for the old school aesthetic you get using a kinda messed up lens and 120 film. I'm sure there's an iPhone app now to emulate every kinda feature it produces, but really, it's pretty fun to go back to some high quality big ass good ol' film. I took it for an initial spin on a bike ride out through the Dresden Heide ("hills", a large park area), and was quite pleased with the results. Especially considering there's basically one shutter speed (1/100) and two aperture options (f8 and f11). Below are a couple of the images I got, for the rest checkout this Flickr slideshow.

2010-11-07T23:56:00.001+01:00

Cocktails

I've sort of picked up a hobby over the last few years of making cocktails at home. In the last couple months I've been taking pictures of them occasionally, and now I enough photos of most of my favorites to share them.

At some point Colby gave me a nice cocktail/bar recipe book, which I've used as the starting point for many of the cocktails I have here. Really, this is one of those cases when relying on the internet can be a big mess. There are probably a hundred different recipes for any given cocktail, some worse than others. And visiting a cocktail recipe website will give you tens of thousands of recipes where anybody can upload something. Nobody has time to try all those out.

Manhattan

The Manhattan is probably my favorite cocktail, and my go-to cocktail because it's quite easy. Bourbon, sweet vermouth, and Angostura Bitters (plus a Maraschino cherry for decoration.) As you see in the photo above I found these pretty cool cocktail sticks, that actually look like little silver sticks.

Sidecar

Another classic cocktail that I make often is the Sidecar. Also simple, it's just Brandy, Cointreau, and lemon juice. One way to make cocktails like this to taste GREAT is to simply use fresh squeezed lemons - world of difference.

Martini

Maybe the most popular, and easiest, cocktail to make of course is the Martini. Gin and dry vermouth. Only recently have a I really started making Martinis on a semi-regular basis, as I've found a way to give them just a subtle interesting kick - a few dashes of orange bitters.

Martinez

Similar to the Martini, and sometimes considered the predecessor, is the Martinez. I make it with gin, sweet vermouth, Maraschino Liquor, and orange bitters. That makes it of course significantly sweeter than the Martini, and for my taste the trick is therefore to be very conservative with the non-gin ingredients, especially the Maraschino liquor, which can quickly overpower any cocktail.

Whiskey Sour

Another easy classic, just bourbon, lemon juice and simple syrup. I make this less and less because between the sugar and lemon juice I just can't seem to add a small enough amount not to drown out the bourbon.

Mint Julep

I only started making this this summer, mostly because before I never had fresh mint around. But I planted some, and was very impressed with what I could come up with. Just a bit of simple syrup added to some bourbon with mint leaves. After my experience with whiskey sours, I figured it would be a waste of time to use a higher-quality bourbon for this, but I did a taste test and was TOTALLY WRONG. Just a tad of simple syrup and a few muddled mint leaves, and the complexity of the bourbon still comes through.

Margarita

The classic. Again, using fresh limes here means ALL the difference. Also, as with most other cocktails, keeping the glasses in the freezer gives a nice frosty appearance and keeps them cooler that much longer.

Other favorites, that I haven't remembered to take photos of, include the Brandy Alexander (with Heavy Cream, Creme de Cacao, and Nutmeg; like a dessert), the Brandy Crusta (similar to a sidecar), the Gimlet (just gin and lime juice), and the Sazerac (think Whiskey Sour with a kick, by adding a little Absinthe and some Angostura bitters.)

And then occasionally I try something new. For example, an avocado margarita:

This looks pretty, but was a lot of work, and didn't taste like anything I'd ever want to make again.

2010-09-21T22:45:00.000+02:00

Istanbul

This year mom and I continued our tradition of meeting someplace in Europe for a week or so in the summer. Last year it was Reykjavik, the year before Venice. This year Mom and her friend Nora rented a flat in Istanbul. I've put all the pics contained in this post, and more, up at my flickr site for better viewing.

I was only joining for about 5 days, but didn't want to try to pack the days with sights so tight that it was more stressful than relaxing. I did of course check out the must-sees, such as Hagia Sophia, the 1500-year old Cathedral-turned-Mosque-turned-museum:

Also the Topkapi Palace, including the buildings of the Sultan's harem:

My favorite sight, though, by far, were the ancient city walls, which are very much still intact.
I've had a keen fascination with old city walls ever since moving to Europe, and these are of the most impressive in history.

To add to the fascination, right before the trip I read a book entitled 1453 :The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West, about the famous siege of the city by the Sultan Mehmed. The book was very vivid and featured the city walls very prominently. Thus, it was quite amazing to walk over and inside these very same walls, visualizing what it was like 500 years ago as a soldier. These were some of the most impenetrable city walls every built, due to their architecture, sheer size, and extent. The most amazing thing about the walls today is that they cut right through the middle of the city.

Small sections of the wall have clearly been rebuilt, so as to illustrate what they may have looked like so long ago, and some nice green areas have been landscaped before some sections, but for the most part they appear largely ignored, not only in terms of upkeep, but by the residents that live in and around them as a whole. The outside of the walls follows a highway, while the inside butts up against middle- and lower-class neighborhoods. Walking on the inside at one point I noticed a man had made the inside of one of the towers into his personal little workshop, doing some sort of machine work in the darkness.

I took a subway ride out to the walls one day to walk along a bit - and ended up walking back the entire length of the wall and then on home - they extend about 4 miles long on the Western side.

The flat we were staying in had an amazing view over the Bosphorus. Here you can see the flat:

The arrow points to the flat

From this vantage point I was able to get some nice photos looking out towards the Atatürk bridge.

In the last one you see Mom with an iPhone!! She's checking and sending emails and photos, on vacation. Never thought I'd see that. I don't even have an iPhone.

One interesting thing about Istanbul is that there are cats EVERYWHERE. Especially in our neighborhood. They were just everywhere.

On our last day, we took a boat trip up the Bosphorus. We passed this fortress (Rumelihisari) I had read about that Mehmed built in the run up to his conquest of Constantinople. Amazing it is in such condition 500 years later.

At the halfway point of our boat trip we were dropped at a little tourist-trap village where we ate lunch and I was able to get some great photos of kids jumping off our boat into the sea.

Finally, a common theme in my recounts of my travels has been the food. Istanbul was of course no exception to interesting and tasty food. The best dish I had was lamb on top of this sort of eggplant mush. It was incredibly tasty. Next best I'd say was the baklava. I ate it until I got sick.

Mom and Nora fell in love with this mint-lemonade concoction a guy whipped up where we were eating lunch.
Afterward they guy suggested we take a peek from the view of the tables on the roof. Look at this. Nobody was even up there. What an incredible view, they were hardly advertising it.

A few nights, I just went out roaming for random take-out that looked tasty and brought it back so we could eat out on the balcony. The last night I went out and got a dürüm for myself, just to compare it to the dürüms I get in Dresden. I have to say, it was much more different than I expected, almost a different dish altogether, and the meat was clearly of a higher quality.

One morning I went out to get milk from the local convenience store. But when I got in there I realized I had no idea what the Turkish word for 'milk' was. I found a white refrigerated carton with a cow on it, that I was pretty sure was milk, but still had my doubts. Just at this time, I heard a couple speaking German behind me, which was odd because we were not in a particularly touristy area, and at a random little shop. So I took the opportunity to use my German and ask them what milk was - and it turns out that what I almost bought was actually a yogurt drink.

It is rare that speaking some German comes in handy outside of Germany, so it was really surprising to use it again in Istanbul. A couple days later Mom had a little swelling in one of her ankles, and although not painful, a little concerned of the deep vein thrombosis things having just gotten off an international flight. So we went over to the nearby hospital to check it out. Turns out, one of the receptionists did not speak English, but did speak German (it was a "German" hospital) - so I was able to translate instructions to Mom for waiting to see the doctor, etc. Turns out there was nothing wrong with the ankle, but Mom got to see the self-proclaimed best doctor in Turkey!

I was just getting comfortable getting to know my way around the neighborhood when it was time to go. The streets were most confusing mess and craziness. Like Venice, but with hills. Clearly, five days is just not enough to get a good feeling for Istanbul.

2010-08-29T17:54:00.006+02:00

Phoenix

Speaking of France, if you don't know the band Phoenix, you should really really take a look.
This is easily my favorite band that I've never seen live. There's nothing better than goofy looking rock stars with great voices/songwriting. Check out these Acoustic/Stripped Down performances by Phoenix:

1901

Phoenix - 1901 from KEXP RADIO on Vimeo.

"Lisztomania" and "Armistice" in the same session are also amazing with Thomas Mars' voice just booming out there, but here are some different recordings for variety.....

Lisztomania/One time too many

Take Away Show: PHOENIX part2 from vincent moon / temporary areas on Vimeo.

By the way, if you don't know about La Blogoteque shows, you should also really check it out. If one of your favorite bands is on here, you will REALLY enjoy it.

Armistice

All these tunes were from Phoenix's last album.

2010-08-02T00:01:00.003+02:00

Paris

Back in May I went to Paris for a long weekend. It was my first time to Paris, my first time to France in fact. I never had a great desire to visit Paris. I don't know exactly why, it just kind of seemed like it would be extremely touristy, and as an American I always just heard of how much the French hate American tourists. So it never really appealed to me. Plus, I always figured I'd get to Paris at some point in life, and I should be spending my efforts while living in Europe going to places like Krakow or Istanbul or Reykjavik. But I kind of had an opportunity I couldn't pass up when a friend of mine from Paris, a bit shocked I'd never been to France, suggested tagging along to Paris on one of her relatively frequent trips back.

One of the things I knew I'd like was the food. Ariane had looked up the bakeries in Paris that had won various awards in the last year (e.g. best croissant, best baguette, etc.) so that we could hit them and have a sampling. The first thing we did when I got into town was hit an award-winning bakery and sample the macarons (not to be confused with macaroons). I'd never had or even heard of these things before, but my goodness they were good. Sweet and bursting with a variety of flavors, and so soft and creamy. I can't even describe them, and apparently these were of a different class than the average macarons around Paris.

Following the obligatory boat-tour around Paris, we met a friend of Ariane's for dinner at a little place near where I was staying. Although I had recently converted into a pseudo-vegetarian, I took advantage of one of the many exceptions I've allowed myself in meat-eating (It's okay in foreign countries, as not to miss out on culinary cultural experiences), and ordered a big steak. When the waiter wanted to know how I wanted it done I said "medium rare" not wanting to overcook a great steak. Neither the waiter nor Ariane could translate what that meant, so Ariane ordered for me. Then she told me she got me the most well-cooked option. I was upset, thinking I would not be getting a real French experience with an overcooked steak. Then she told me the translation was "pink". She ordered hers "bloody", the middle option, which left "blue" for the least cooked. But what I got would be by all American standards "rare", and it was PERFECT.

For lodging Ariane knew about a little hotel in the middle of everything that was super-cheap. It was totally no frills (think shared toilet, stained carpet, creaky stairs), not even their own website. But something like 40 euros a night in the middle of Paris. And this was the view from my room:

That's Notre Dame cathedral in the background.

While in Paris I of course went to see the über-famous Eiffel Tower. I did not know the tower was right next to a river, I guess it's never in in any of the photos. Behold:

And then of course I had to have a photo of me and the tower:

And some more images I thought turned out nice:

One of the requests I had while in Paris as part of the culinary experience was to try escargot.
So we met Ariane's sister and found a nice little place and ordered a whole mess of stinky frenchy goodness:

The highlight of course being the escargot. It was actually pretty tasty. Well, rather it tasted like something rubbery baked into an overwhelming garlic butter sauce, which was tasty. But I'd totally get it again. Funnily, more than a couple customers in the busy restaurant commented that they were a bit surprised to see three young people eating a lunch of stinky cheese, random raw meat plate and escargot - and more so because one of us was clearly American - so atypical!

That night a tight group of Ariane's friends that all went to school together had a little party - I guess on the occasion that Ariane was back in Paris and they were all around - that was fun. Although I have to say I expected a party of young intellectual 20- and 30-something Parisians in the middle of Paris to be the essence of sophistication. On the contrary, this was all about cheap booze, 7-up shots, loud pop music, potato chips, etc...also fun!
I have some funny movies from that night, but as I don't speak French I don't know if there's anything unsuitable or implicating in there so I won't release them into the internets....

I did a bit more touristy stuff - took a walk around - went into Notre Dame cathedral - and of course had to go into the Louvre, where I saw the Mona Lisa:

which was most interesting for the mass of cell phone cameras held over people's head trying to get a snapshot. Why would you want a crappy cell phone snapshot of the Mona Lisa behind glass when there are hundreds of high-quality photographs online? I don't know, I guess to somehow prove you were there? But then why not get in the picture yourself? It all boggles the mind.

What was quite crazy was Napoleon IIIs lounge:

For which it turns out there are also tons of online images, but it's my blog, so pffffft. Plus that photo ain't so bad....And finally, returning to the food-theme, on the last day we went to the bakery that won the award for the best croissant in Paris, and got a couple of raspberry(?) croissants, yummmmmmmm.

2010-07-23T19:35:00.005+02:00

Balkon Bilder

I finally broke down and set up a Flickr photostream, to have a nice way to share photos with a reasonable viewing interface. I'll keep my Shown'd gallery for a small set of my favorite pics, but this way I can share more than a handful at a time.

Here's the first set, these are all photos I took on my little balcony garden, where in addition to a small variety of vegetables and herbs, I have a little Lantana bush, because it reminds me of Austin/Texas. They are all of two bees and a puddle of water on a dead leaf.

These were taken with a Nikon 60mm AF micro nikkor lens on my D300s. On a 35mm SLR this lens gives 1:1 reproduction of the image in size (i.e. the size of the image on the negative is the actual size), so in front of a 12 MP DX format sensor you can get some potentially really close up images.

2010-06-30T23:09:00.007+02:00

Edinburgh

I'm still delaying on posting about my trip to Paris because I have several pictures and stories to go with them and I've been lazy. But if Jeff can post 4 times in 2 weeks, I can drag something out this month. I was in Edinburgh last week for a conference. I didn't take many photos, but here are a few from the Castle. The weather was nice. But the way the locals were freaking out about it made me not want to live in Edinburgh. It seems like a fun town with lots of beautiful architecture and history, which I get a kick out of. But if it seemed a bit gray and dreary on the best, sunniest day of the year, I'm wondering what the norm is.

this was a dog cemetary for soldiers' dogs in the castle

Finally, this reminded me of the beer situation back at home in Saxony....

2010-05-25T22:36:00.005+02:00

World Tour 2010

Already halfway through world tour 2010, which currently has 8 countries on 3 continents, half for science, and half for pleasure....I would like to have a few pictures up from each of them eventually, here is one from Mallorca....

April
Mallorca, Spain (Research Symposium and Lab Retreat)
Vienna, Austria (Mitosys Scientific Meeting)

May
Paris, France (fun)
New York City, USA (Cell Cycle Meeting and visit Colby)

June
Heidelberg, Germany (Microtubules Scientific Meeting)
Edinburgh, Scotland (Aneuploidy Scientific Meeting)

July
Istanbul, Turkey (meeting Mom)

August
Moscow/St. Petersburg, Russia (with friends)

to be added.....Prague? Athens? Amsterdam?

2010-05-04T22:37:00.000+02:00

The Elbe - 2006 and 2010

Photos from when the Elbe flooded in 2006 (not to be confused with the all-time record flood of 2002), preceded by photos from 2010 from the same spots. It was not trivial to align these shots taken 4 years apart and with different cameras. They should sit side-by-side if you expand your browser.

View from Albertbrücke looking West from the South side

Southeast corner of Albertbrücke, looking Northeast. I should have taken the non-flooded picture when the Flohmarkt (flea market) is there in full-effect.

Looking toward the Fährgarten biergarten. The entire biergarten was under water.

Looking East from the south bank. Notice the Waldschlößchenbrücke being assembled in the 2010 shot.

2010-04-17T09:00:00.000+02:00

Trabi Stunt

This movie gets a lot of play 'round these parts ("East overtakes West"), I would just like to point out that the stunt driver there is yours truly.

2010-04-04T21:12:00.000+02:00

Old roads

I like it when old cobblestones peek through the asphault, as if somebody someday is going to look at it and say, "Oh my goodness, look at this old beautiful cobblestone road underneath this asphault" and then rip it all off like carpet over a long-lost hardwood floor.

2010-03-28T20:25:00.001+02:00

Spain

At the end of last year I took a short but memorable trip to Spain and am finally trying to find the time to post about it. I figured I should get it done before I head back there in a couple weeks. The whole motivation for the trip came when Elena (a native of Sevilla) found a beach ultimate frisbee tournament not far from there. She managed to convice 4 of us to join, not in little part due to the promise of food, food and more food like we would not forget. Fortunuately, that promise was met, and more than my expectations. Conveniently, the best flights worked out that we would really have to spend an extra 3 days before the tourney for it to make sense, a tough sell for the typical grad student and postdoc labrat workaholics afraid to leave for more than a weekend.

I had just got my new camera the week before so was able to grab some good pictures. As soon as we arrived in Sevilla we were treated to a giant home-cooked meal by Elena's entire family. This photo captures the evening, where doting hosts were continually throwing food at us.

It was all. good. And when we thought we were full, we would have a small argument about finishing the last few pieces of whatever on the plate, which we would always lose. And when said plate was finished, it meant it was time to bring out the next 3 plates. And it went on. Lots of traditional goodness that Elena had been telling us about.

Elena was basically our tour guide for the whole time, with the local tips. This not only meant the best eats, but between feedings we were able to get some good sight-seeing in. Here are some photos I have that don't involve food:

The largest Gothic Cathedral in the world only uses "Clock-O-Matic" brand clock motors.

After visiting the Cathedral we went for fried seafood. And as Per illustrates, we stuffed our faces. It was as good and as greasy as it looks

The only photo with me in it

After finishing off the fried seafood and sweet wine, we worked it off with a stroll, about 10 meters north, where we found a great place to sit down and have a glass of red wine and some sausage and cheese

here you see the proximty of the two establishments

A trip to the park, and then another break for some beverages

That evening we sampled some nice rum while listening to impromptu erotic poetry in Spanish, and then went to meet some of Elena's friends at one of their favorite places for eats:

Later on we went for more rum and I took some movies. Here is the first and tamest, to spare the viewer and those in the videos some laughs and awkwardness (and if any of you guys wanna complain about putting movies of you on the internet, well, you'll have to admit to reading my blog. HA!)

The next night we were treated AGAIN by Elena's parents, this time in a nice restaurant. And this was one of the best meals I've probably ever had. I mean, we just had lots and lots shared dishes and tapas. And everything was great. And everybody was in a great mood. We also hit the market to get some of the best Jamon in Spain to bring back home. Everybody got some, and while the idea was to also share some with friends back in Dresden, we seem to keep meeting up and just sharing it among ourselves....

...And finally it was time for the "main reason" for going, the beach ultimate tournament.
I risked bringing out my brand new camera in the salt and sand to try to get some fun action shots:

and I made it into a couple courtesy friends:

2010-03-22T22:15:00.002+01:00

Dohna

(click to enlarge)

2010-03-10T10:01:00.004+01:00

Beauty in Science

DNA (Blue) and two microtubule-associated proteins, tagged with red and green fluorescent constructs.
About 10x real time.

2010-02-01T20:20:00.010+01:00

Cell Phone Camera Dump

...all taken with my phone...What kicked it off was that today there were two new flavors of yogurt at Konsum. All I can say is...WTF? no no no no no.

Sticker on the door of one of my regular cafes:

"Stop! Stupidity won't be served here! ...for a Nazi-free and non-violent Dresden Neustadt."
Always there, but a reminder that Feb13th is coming up and the annual Nazi convergence.

Here's two shots of my bike in it's natural habitat(s)(Neustadt and nostadt):

I get a healthy dose of "German" dishes in the institute canteen:

How else could I have possibly known that I actually like something called "Leberkäse" ("Liver-cheese")??? Look at that. With a fried egg, sauerkraut AND rotkohl. (Leberkäse is a type of meatloaf and tastes something like a hotdog.)

Old and New

And lastly....Hard evidence that that Trabi can push 100! (km/h)

2010-01-24T18:02:00.006+01:00

Snowy Evenings in Dresden

Some shots I've got with my new "toy", a Nikon D300s
...and of course a big tripod and this fun little guy.

This is the intersection just north of where I live, looking East on Böhmischestr.
Haberland, Hebeda's, and Catapult all quality establishments that I'm fortunate to be so close to... (click to enlarge)

If you walk straight down the little alley in the photo above you come to this:
Martin-Luther-Kirche. My favorite platz in Dresden. It's just so.....European.

If I just walk a few blocks north towards the river from the institute where I work, you come upon this. I actually took this photo during an incubation time..... Schloss Albrechtsberg.

There's actually three castles right in a row there, lit up at night:

2010-01-18T23:22:00.000+01:00

Little Green Footballs

This is an interesting blog. It's become the blog I probably currently read the most often, and for completely different reasons than I started reading it. I first came across Little Green Footballs (LGF) a few years ago. When I started reading it, it was to more or less to keep up with the thinking of the crazy right, politically. But it wasn't really the CRAZY right, as this blog was rated as one the most popular political blogs in the country sometime around 2007. Seemed like a good place to keep in touch with the thinking, and see where these folks were coming from. A single fellow is basically responsible for all of its content. Around this time (2007ish) the majority of posts on LGF seemed to be concerning the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and Lebanon/Hezbollah, and with an obvious and hard bias towards the Israel side. So much so that it would not be pushing it to say that Israel was characterized as being a horrible victim that could do no wrong and Palestine as only terrorists and heathens who were only trying to cheat and dupe the rest of the world, while too stupid to realize how they could solve the whole problem. If you had the time to read LGF through 2007 you would see this is only somewhat exaggerated. Much of the other posts dealt with a concern about the Muslims and Islam in the United States, concerned that they were somehow abusing political-correctness that had occurred post-9/11 and were up to some devious plots.

So it made for an interesting read at the time. I linked to it in a couple of posts about people taking things a little too far. The comments in this blog were also always interesting. They generally reflected the views of the blog poster. Although often with less style, harsher and poorly chosen words, and more slant to the right. But it was clear this blog had a big following.

As the presidential election heated up I continued reading as the country became polarized. And something happened at LGF, near the end of the election and Obama's inauguration. The substance of the posts changed. Then and afterwards, many of the postings turned to science, with a particular emphasis on evolution vs. creationism at first, and then global warming and climate change deniers. There are a number of good posts on this topic, including the most recent. And then after the election when the right wing and right-leaning bloggers and commentators began going completely nuts, the creator, Charles Johnson, began to seem to be having a change of heart. It was as if the ridiculousness, including the racism and anti-science sentiments, that was abound was just too much. This eventually culminated with a post "Why I Parted Ways with the Right". I believe he is still somewhat of a war-hawk, and still clearly very pro-Israel, but the posts rarely reflect this anymore. I now enjoy many of the science posts, there's some really good stuff. And now many posts concern pointing out the crazies on the right, like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, but also conservative bloggers and politicians. Now he has become a target of the far right as he has changed his views, being a high-profile blogger. It was almost as if the guy had a plan, to form the most popular blog on the right, get thousands of loyal followers, many of which seemed to idolize they guy and kiss his ass like bunch of yes-men, and then to slowly, slowly, turn this mass of people with his powers gradually away from the right. No doubt he has lost some followers, but I bet he has taken many with him.

2009-12-27T17:06:00.021+01:00

Weihnachtsmärkte in Dresden

This year I stayed in Dresden for Christmas. I used the opportunity to get in as many Weihnachtsmarkt trips as possible. I also got a new camera very recently, just in time to take lots and lots of photos of these Chistmas markets. It even snowed the week before Christmas, to make the little markets even more fairytale-like....

Here's some photos of most of the ones in the region around Dresden

Striezelmarkt

Have to start with the Striezelmarkt because it's the largest in Dresden and oldest Christmas market in Germany. It started in 1434, which makes this year's market the 575th version (!!).

However, being large and old is about the most this market has going for it. It generally has the feel of an overpacked outdoor shopping mall, so if you're not in the right mood it can loose any charm real quick. I have to say, though, that every single year I've come to this market to buy a Stollen and a Räuchermann (smoking incense man) or two, because you get the best selection with the hundreds of stalls. I went down this year on Christmas eve and it was still completely packed right up until closing, lots of families were down there having Glühwein. I should also point out that there was actually a considerable effort by the city/organizers to change up this years market. The stalls were no longer arranged in rows, but more random, with occasional small platz areas, which gave it a less commercial feel and more room for people to hang out and enjoy their hot Glühwein. There was also a pretty cool display on baking Stollen, where they had some guys making it from scratch and baking it in a woodfire oven. You could then buy the dough or the Stollen right there if you chose. It was quite nicely done and the guys were very friendly and funny and full of history of the Stollen.

Stallhof Weihnachtsmarkt

In the past this has been my favorite Chrsitmas market. It has a medieval theme, and was always quite cozy and unique, even down to the mugs the Glühwein, or Met (mead), came in. And then two years ago, just after the results of a nation-wide survey labeling this the best Christmas market in Germany, there was a serious fire which damaged much of the market and the castle it was in. They got things back together for the next year, but the fire meant that they chnaged a lot, and it's just not the same. It's much less cozy with more open spaces. There is no longer a large fire to sit around. And this year there appears to be new management, because the food and drink offerings have even changed (including the beloved mugs), and the vibe just isn't the same. Nevertheless, a nice time.

Neumarkt Weihnachtsmarkt

While the Stallhof market was a bit of a let down, the new market just around the corner on the Neumarkt in front of the Frauenkirche was a fun surprise. It also has somewhat of a medieval theme, but nothing forced, so that it's just more like a nice market without any obnoxious stands selling horrible crap or with large flashing lights. And it makes sense that they should actually finally have a market on "Neumarkt", where you envision markets having stood hundreds of years ago.

Elbhangfest-Weihnachtsmarkt am Körnerplatz

I only discovered this market a couple of years ago. It's pretty small, but very cute, settled among some shop buildings with very nice traditional architecture.

Meissener Weihnachtsmarkt

I was really excited to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt in Meissen for the first time. The old town Meissen is such a beautiful little city with little alleys and old buildings - it seemed like a nice Christmas market location. Also, this photo from the webpage is really really nice and cozy:

In the end it was a bit of a disappointment, mostly just because I had already been to so many Christmas markets and without any theme or anything this one just kind of did not stand out. It was also very cold that evening. And it was rather small. On the other hand, I did try for the first time get to try Weißer Glühwein, made from the local Meissen wines.

Hauptstrasse Weihnachtsmarkt

This market, closest to my house, is nice as well, but also does not particularly stand out for any reason. They did have a giant Stollen on top of a Trabi, which was impressive:

Königstein Weihnachtsmarkt

Along with Meißen, I was excited to check out for the first time the market in Königstein. Festung Königstein is an old impressive fortress built a ways upstream from Dresden on the Elbe. It appears very cold, scary, and uninviting from the outside, particualry in a dark snowstorm.

I really enjoyed this market. It also had somewhat of a medieval theme, which fit. And maybe it was because we hiked up through the snow on unlit trails for 30 minutes to get there, but it was quite cozy inside with a hot Glühwein:

And of course the snowfall was a nice touch

2009-12-16T14:48:00.001+01:00

Happy Jam Music

From the new Gomez - Airstream Driver

2009-11-15T10:05:00.012+01:00

Trabi goes to Krakow

It's been about 6 months since Cliff and I took our journey to Krakow in the Trabi. After that adventure I managed to write a post about the car, but not about going to Krakow. Now that last weekend I took it up to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, I figure it's a good time to talk about the Krakow trip. If you don't know about the Trabi, read the post linked above. One thing that was clear to Cliff and I after we got the Trabi was that it needed to be taken on a road trip. This idea was met with great bewilderment and skepticism by most. Their next comment was either "WHY would you want to take that thing on a long trip?" or "There's NO WAY that thing will make a trip like that." The answer to the first question is much the same as that to those that asked why we would even want to own/drive a Trabi at all: If you have to ask, it's not even worth trying to explain it to you.

Part of our motivation for the trip was just to silence all the haters. People seem to have forgotten that this was almost the only car that anybody owned here 25 years ago, and believe it or not, they did go on long vacations. And survived. And so it was that Cliff an I decided to take it for a weekend to Krakow, where neither of us had been before. It's about a 500km trip each way - doable in a day. bust just barely. You can't be in a rush with a Trabi. Gotta take it easy and enjoy the ride. Notice how we are passed as if standing still:

Aside from some bad traffic and construction, the trip there went pretty smoothly. We made it to Krakow before dark, which was about our goal. When you drive a Trabi around in Dresden, nobody really cares. There's a relative abundance of them here. Chances are if you drive around for 15 minutes in Dresden, you will see one. This is not the case elsewhere. like Poland. People were freaking out a bit when they would see us. Wherever we stopped, cameras came out. Cars would even pass us on the highway with their cameras snapping away. I guess it IS pretty rare to see one out on the highway or autobahn. After all, WHY would anybody take one of these things on a long trip?

When we got to the hostel we asked the guy there where would could park our car that would be relatively safe. He called up a pay lot around the corner and told them we were coming. He asked us what we were driving and when we replied "A beige Trabi" he got pretty excited in a very Eastern European accent exclaimed, "AHHHH!! A TRABANT!!" respect. By the way, this was maybe the best hostel I've ever stayed at, so check it out if you're in Krakow: Mundo Hostel very chill, very clean, very cheap, perfect location.

Krakow itself was also a pleasant surprise, even though we were only there for a couple of days. We cruised around and checked out the nightlife in the evening, took in the historic tourist sites during the day. The first night we were out we were looking for a late-night bite to eat, and came upon a small building where there were multiple lines of people buying some sort of take-away food. We thought it would be a pretty good bet to get in the longest line to get some authentic Polish grub. It turns out what we were waiting in line for was Zapiekanka. It looked like a french bread pizza from far away, but upon biting into it was a totally different flavor experience, hard to describe even. It was like some sort of cooked squash or mushroom, covered with some cheese, then topped off with a little salami, some pickles, and some sort of sweet tabasco/ketchup-like sauce (but not really spicy) Little did we know this is a pretty famous snack at a pretty famous spot (found out the next day on a tour). So that was a win. The next day we went for another Polish classic: Pierogi. We ate at a place recommended to us that basically only served Pierogi, and we got a sample platter with out 12 different kinds.... Mmmmm.

We also decided it would be appropriate, since we came in the Trabi, to make a voyage out to the socialist realist city, Nowa Huta. This was one of the few cities actually planned and designed from the ground up to fit to the socialist ideal. They actually have a popular tour you can take of Nowa Huta in a real life Trabi for 40 euros. Here we are with our own Trabi in front of the Steel Works just outside the city. There was actually a funny moment in the hostel the next morning. We were talking with some other guests, mostly Polish and German, a bit about communist architeture and society. They seemed to think there were better ways to spend our time than visiting Nowa Huta, we thought it seemed interesting. We explained we were from Dresden, where you also see a lot of it. Like most people, they were bewildered that we came from Dresden in a Trabi. In talking about Dresden, Cliff starting relaying his feelings on how East Germans seem in general more friendly than in the West, more casual, more family oriented, and maybe this was from being brought up in a socialist state. The others sort of anxiously disagreed, kind of taken aback that at the suggestion that anything good could have resulted. And then Cliff starts talking about how nice Nowa Huta was, with the large green areas, and that it was well designed and may have been a nice place to live, from a physical standpoint. And I could see these guys thinking "Americans, come over to live in the former East Germany for some reason, buy a Trabant, drive the damn thing all the way to Nowa Huta, and are here telling us how great socialism is???" I wanted to then be like "so what do you guys know about the modern communist party? maybe you would like to take some of these flyers here....." cause that's where it seemed like it was going.

The way back much more more eventful than coming. For starters, we stopped on the way and took a long tour of Auschwitz, which was basically beyond words to describe. Sort of mind- and body-numbing. I think anybody should really go there, but you will be a zombie for a day in disbelief and reflection and just walking on the same grounds, the same train tracks, the same buildings......

One of the quirks of the Trabi is that there is no gas gauge. Basically you have a reserve 'tank', that you kick over to when you run out of gas, and then go fill up. Once you hit the reserve, you have about 4-5 liters (just over a gallon) of gas left. Well, we were cruising our way back and hit the reserve, as we always do, and looked for the next gas station. And looked. and waited. and 30 miles later, still no sign. Finally we saw a sign for gas in a few kilometers, but knew it was gonna be a close one. Well, we didn't make it. We came to a stop in front of a sign signalling 1 km to gas. And so we had to walk to the station for gas.

And then to top off the adventure we kinda made a wrong turn coming back into Germany and added a couple extra hours onto our trip home. This also meant driving in the middle of the night, tired, and trying to navigate our way on country roads through little German towns. I guess it was inevitable that we were gonna get flashed. We managed to each pick up a ticket within about an hour, crusing through these little towns, where nobody is out, but they've changed the speed limit from 80 to 50 or whatever for half a kilometer and put a box there:

(click to enlarge)

good times.

2009-09-29T19:22:00.009+02:00

Wordle!

I came across this web application on a random interweb walk. Wordle. Very very fun.
You just give it text (or a website) and it makes a word cloud, with the size of the word proportional to the frequency at which it occurs in the text. And there's tons of options for the layout. I played around and came up with the following clouds:

First is from the text of my last first-author publication (without bibliography):

I think the font and rigid borders, and B&W text conveys the feeling of a publication. Then I gave it a shot and pasted in my entire PhD dissertation, about 150 pages (also without bibliography):

Not to be completely science-fixed, I entered in the text from a dream that I had, which I had written down and later transcribed into the computer.

seems like a really cool way to display dreams. I was able to modify the colors and word-layout format to make it dreamy-like. And finally, the text from my "research plan" that describes my research goals for the next 4-5 years as I look to start my own lab:

Here the font and colors kind of represent creativity and brain-storming that goes into putting something like this together.

2009-09-13T17:16:00.017+02:00

Impressions of Iceland

Back in July I made a short trip to Iceland. Mom was there with a friend on a week and a half birdwatching/nature tour, and so it was another good opportunity to meet up in Europe for a mini-vacation, as I did last year when I met her in Venice, which unfortunately I never got around to posting about. I did however manage to put up a few photos from that trip here.

Mom and I planned that I would arrive in Iceland the same day her tour ended and we would cruise around for 4 days. I had no idea what to expect from Iceland, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Here are some interesting photos I took when we were out on a boat for a whale-watching tour:

That's a puffin in the last photo. They are pretty cool little birds, and fun to watch flying and swimming around. I learned when I was in Iceland that the German word for Puffin is "Papageitaucher", which translates back into English literally as "Parrot Diver". Nice.

And we did see some Minke whales, but the whale watching experience was overall just not all that impressive, the whales were always far from the boat and would only partially break the surface to breathe. Here's the best photo I got with my telephoto lens:

Seems like a nice view of the whale and the dorsal fin, until you see what a whole Minke whale looks like and realize most of the whale is just underwater and this is just a little part if its back.

And we never saw more than that.

As it was July, we had the neat opportunity to experience what it's like to be so far north in the middle of the summer. It really hit home one evening when we decided to stop off at a lighthouse on the way home and watch the sunset. It was starting to get late (like 10pm or so), and it looked like the sun would soon set. So we parked the car and got out and took some pictures.

And we waited around and took some more pictures, and watched some ducks, and then realized we'd been here for an hour and a half and the sun had barely approached the horizon.

It was like a never ending sunset. I think it was about 12:30am and we finally decided to head home, but the sun hadn't yet touched the horizon. You just start feeling tired and realize you should really be getting to bed.
Now, to further illustrate the point, here is a photo I snapped this quickly one night from my hotel room. What you see here is a rainbow. Yes, it's a crappy photo. But I took this photo at midnight. At midnight! How many people have seen a rainbow at midnight?!

Fun times. But it really was a bit disorienting about knowing when it was time to eat dinner and when it was time to go to bed, when it was time to wake up.

I think I'll post again (who knows when) on some of the other adventures in my short time in Iceland, including diving in a glacial spring lake at 2 degrees Celsius.

But I'll end this post with a couple screenshots from Icelandic TV. Some of the stations had movies in English. Of course Icelanders all speak perfect English. I'm sure it helps to have movies in English. And they didn't subtitle them in Icelandic, but with English subtitles. Brilliant. So educational. But it didn't stop there. I guess for the deaf viewers that did not know English, they had a dude on the screen signing the dialouge. And I don't mean a little guy in a box in the corner, but a big old superimposed hippie-guy. I mean, look at this!:

2009-08-28T13:22:00.003+02:00

Beauty in Science

I like taking the time to take an image of a particularly stunning cell while I'm at the microscope churning through the experiments:

microtubules in yellow, DNA in green, the red is an out of focus centrosome.

2009-08-16T23:03:00.005+02:00

Things you'll find on a lazy Sunday bike ride.....

..like an old Soviet cemetery filled with hundreds and hundreds of graves from WW II and soon after.

I'm gonna have to go back with a real camera....

2009-08-12T20:40:00.016+02:00

My Widgets

Now that everybody seems to finally be buying macs, I thought I'd fill some blog space with the 'widgets' I use with the mac operating system. When this 'dashboard' concept first came out I thought it was pretty gimmicky, and was sure I'd never start using it. But now, 4(?) years later, I use every widget I have just about every day. So I thought I'd share with you the widgets I use to make my daily life that much easier. I don't actually spend much time looking for new widgets.
So if you have any of your own favorites, comment on what they are, there's a million out there these days, I'd be curious to know what else is cool.

In no particular order:

Leo translator widget

This is pretty invaluable. With a brush of the trackpad I get a text input to type whatever German or English word I need to translate, and then get a browser window opened up to that word on the leo webpage. I truly use this multiple times a day.

Currency Converter

I also look at this one many times a day. Watching the euro vs. the dollar mostly, but also any country I'll be visiting soon. As an example, I want to buy a camera soon that is sold in Europe, England, Canada, and the USA at different prices in different currencies. I can quickly convert what each would be in euros to see where the best deal is, having friends in the other countries that could potentially hook me up.

Yahoo Finance Stocks

I stopped looking at this one for a while because it was more depressing every day. But things are looking up now. You can follow real time updates of the dow jones, or individual stocks, or even combined mutual funds that you may have.

Calculator

Needs no explanation. handy.

Converter

This guy is a real do-it all and converts various units in volume, area, length, weight, energy, temperature, time, currency, speed, pressure and power. Particularly useful for converting the more awkward metric to US conversions.

Accuweather

Again, self explanatory.

MPI-CBG lunch display

Pretty useless for anybody that doesn't work in my institute, this widget will give you the lunch menu for the day or future days of the week in the MPI-CBG cafeteria. Can be helpful for deciding when it's one of those days where it's time to go out for lunch, or if it's build-your-own hamburger day and you should probably show up for lunch 10 minutes earlier to avoid the lines.

MPI-CBG staff search

Again, institute-specific, but easy to quickly look up emails and phone numbers. Would be nice if it included pictures like the database, though, in case you need to find somebody you haven't met before.

Genetic Code

This is my most recent addition, and I've been using it a lot. You get all the codons plus the 3 letter and one letter amino acid code. They appear to even be color-coded as to their structure/function. With a quick brush of the trackpad, it's much faster than finding a book or website. This is my nerdiest widget.

Screenshot Plus

This guy comes in handy because I can NEVER remember the keyboard shortcuts for taking screen captures/window captures/etc. You get a number of options, then a preview, and an option to save the picture, re-take the picture, or open it up as a preview. I use this actually more than I would have expected.

Right, that's it. Le me know if there are others I'm missing out on.

2009-07-18T20:25:00.003+02:00

New website

I haven't had time for many new posts recently, but there's a number of things I want to post on - mostly being held up by the time it takes me to scan in my slides/negatives since I've decided I would no longer pay 15 euros or whatever for the photo developer to scan them in. It's like 4 euros to get the film developed. So I've been doing it at home which is a constant battle against dust and, in the case of color negatives, color-balancing. Eventually I'll have some cool pics of Iceland, and also my experiments with infrared film, which is my way of staying sane with my old 35mm SLR while I wait to buy a digital job.

Anyway, I've also been spending time recently making a new work-related website, one about what I'm studying in the lab and why and how. It's geared towards other scientists, but there are some pretty pictures and movies I made in there.

Visit the new site here.

2009-07-02T09:40:00.003+02:00

Deep.

Watch the following video and try to understand the logic:

Get that? Yes, I know what you're thinking. We all are. But it's funny when somebody with comedic skillz writes it down:

special bonus: notice the horrible fear that the politicians will appreciate praise of 'teh Europeans'. Those God-hating socialist terrorist-loving Europeans.

2009-06-06T22:32:00.002+02:00

The Trabi

My blogging has slowed down considerably recently. Other than the last post, I had one post of a youtube video in the last 2 months. Unfortunately, nobody complained. Nevertheless, I will push on. Again, in the spirit of documenting my experiences as I go. And it may be long-winded. I still actually need to finish posting on my Africa trip, which is now over a year old. But this first. For those that don't know, last year I was part of an effort among friends/colleagues to acquire a Trabant 601. This is the Trabant, also known as a Trabi:

This is ours, and as you see it has a custom logo on the side. More on that in a minute.
At first this was going to be a post about an epic trip from Dresden to Krakow in the Trabi, but then I realized I should just start with a post about the Trabi itself, and get to Krakow another time.

The Trabant is basically the car of the DDR (GDR/former East germany). This was far and away the most common car in East Germany, and it was made not far from Dresden. I don't know the numbers, but judging by photographs I would say 90% of the cars on the roads during the time were a Trabi. Google 'Trabi" or "Trabant" to learn more about it. It was not built to appeal to customers. It was almost the only choice, and most had to wait 10-15 years or more to get one. For most of the 30+ years the Trabant was in production, it was more or less the exact same model, the 601, and it basically did not change. A '69 and an '88 Trabant 601 are more or less identical.

Dresden likely has the highest concentration of Trabants anywhere in the world I would say. Perhaps Zwickau has more. I'm not basing that on any stats, but I would be surprised if I was wrong. Drive anywhere in Dresden and you will see a Trabant.

And so, I became very curious about this fascinating tiny little car. They even have "Trabi Safaris", tours where for a price you can get behind the wheel of real Trabi and drive with other customers around Dresden. I never had any plans to have a car while in Germany, but I thought if I ever did, it would be fun to get a Trabi. But that was about the extent of it for years, just thinking about it. Then a couple years ago this fellow Cliff shows up in the lab. One of the first things he does after arriving in Germany is to buy a 70s-era BMW motorcycle. interesting. We get to talking and I say how I've always dreamed of having a Trabi, and we toss around the idea of buying one, maybe to share between a few people, and also to tinker around with.

Search the German Ebay for Trabant and you will see dozens of old Trabis for sale - almost all under 1000 euros. This was promising. But between Cliff and I we just didn't have the activation energy to pull the trigger. He had just invested in a new motorcycle, and I was thinking the German bureaucracy involved in purchasing, owning, registering, etc a new car was pretty daunting. As I said, we had thought of maybe getting a few guys to go in together on it. And then it occurred that maybe the coworkers in our lab would get a kick out of it. We approached our boss, Tony, with the idea of a "lab Trabi". Tony was instantly on board, and quite excited about the proposition. Within minutes he was on the phone with his local mechanic, inquiring into where and how the best way to get a respectable Trabi around here was. And before we knew it, the three of us were out looking at Trabis.

In the end, Tony was so game on the idea of a lab Trabi, that we worked out a deal. Tony would buy the Trabi and pay the initial expenses to get it running smoothly. Then everybody else that wanted to drive it would pay for registration, etc, and any repairs or costs that would come up over it's lifetime. A good deal. As it turns out, there's only 4 people that account for 90% of the mileage on the Trabi, and Cliff and I account for about 60%.

Since it's the lab car, we needed a logo. Nate had designed a logo for the lab, a mitotic spindle (the apparatus that divides chromosomes when cells divide, and the focus of most of my research), and so we had in translated into decals made to stick on the car. It actually turned out pretty nice, and Cliff, Misho, and I managed to professionally apply it to both sides in a few hours one evening.

There's so much more to tell about the Trabi, I really love the thing. Driving it is quite an experience. For example, there is no gas gauge. There is a stick under the hood with liters marked in it that you stick into the tank. It holds 24 liters (~ 6 gallons). It's a 2-stroke engine, like a motorcycle or a lawnmower, and you mix oil directly with the gas every time you fill up - mix it right into the tank. Top speed (in perfect conditions) is about 110 km/hr (70mph). The gear shift is on the steering column. etc.

We have the "kombi" - kind of the station wagon version of the Trabant 601. Basically instead of a trunk it's a hatchback. And it's functional - perfect for a trip to the gardening store:

2009-06-03T19:16:00.009+02:00

Obamamania in Dresden (Nu Glaar, We Can)

Tomorrow, Barack Obama is coming to Dresden. And the city is FREAKING OUT. It's quite impressive. The newspaper has been running articles on it for 2 weeks. The Dresden police have been rehearsing for the visit the same if not longer. The city has even set up a website specifically for the visit: www.obama.dresden.de

Obama will be here I believe less than 24 hours total. He will make no scheduled public appearances. He will give no speeches. But that doesn't matter. The hype is out of control. Not being one to ignore hype, I got involved with Nate and Cliff and we conceived and designed the following graphic:

For those not familiar with Dresden, the building there is the most famous Dresden landmark, the Frauenkirche. Below, "Nu glaar, we can" is a shout out to the Saxony German dialect, where instead of "ja" you sometimes will here "nu" for "yes". "Glaar" is a phonetic spelling of the Saxon "klar". So it's meant to be a "yes we can" with a local appeal. Cliff and I have made it into stickers. I'll write it again here "nu glaar, we can", in case anybody sees a sticker and googles it - this is where to give credit/hate.

To give another example of the mania surrounding Obama's 18(?) hour visit to Dresden, every single tram in the city, as far as I can tell, has been outfitted with a banner declaring "Welcome, Mr. President!". This has been on the trams for the last week.

Air Force One is scheduled to land at the Dresden airport sometime tomorrow evening, along with ELEVEN other planes of support staff. And that doesn't include the giant C-5 that landed at the airport a few days ago and unloaded a helicopter and limo that will be Obama's transportation while he's here. Less than a day!!

Anyway, the city seems to be encouraging people to get out and about to perhaps catch a glimpse of the president - but with no guarantee that he will even appear in public. Also, a sizable fraction of the Altstadt around where Obama will be staying will be off limits to almost everybody as a security precaution. You're not even allowed to swim or fish in the Elbe tomorrow - special orders. I think I'll go out to check out the commotion, maybe to the airport, maybe around the secure area. The city apparently is planning a celebration nearby featuring American activities such as "cheerleaders" and "mechanical bull-riding" (no joke, check out the webpage). If I see anything interesting, I'll post more.

2009-05-01T18:51:00.001+02:00

Sublime....

CocoRosie - Animals

2009-04-18T19:24:00.011+02:00

In the Supermarket

I decided one day in the supermarket I would take a photo of everything with American- or Texas-related marketing. Interestingly, you see almost as much Texas stuff as American stuff.
As you will see, it's the most unhealthy and tasteless looking stuff you can find that gets the American branding. Sadly, fitting.

Here's what I saw:

We start off with the American classic, the cheeseburger. This one is prepared, packaged and frozen for your convenience, with the American flag in the corner. And what American wouldn't go for a good ol' "gebratene Rinderfrikadelle mit Schmelkäse" aka Cheeseburger?

And of course if you have cheeseburgers you got to have hot dogs:

American Style, which I suppose means made with all the bad parts of the pig and not the good parts like much German sausage. Although it's not very American-style to put them in a glass jar and advertise that they're wrapped in their own soft skin. Notice the prominent Statue of Liberty. A theme repeated in the American Style Pizza Supreme:

Also with American flag decoration. You can even more region-specific with a Texas big pizza, which appears to just be a spiced up pepperoni pizza. Although this combination brings up an interesting quirk of ordering pizza in Germany as an American. If you ask for 'pepperoni', you will get spicy pepper. If you want pepperoni, you would ask for 'salami'. Thus the peperoni-salami pizza below:

And then you have the Texas-Ribs. Already marinated and cooked and ready to go.

These don't actually say "American" or "Texas", but it's close:

It's not just meat, too. Check out the "Old Century Bourbon Whiskey".

Notice that it is "De Luxe". I wonder how much of the 8 euros per bottle is just to cover importing it from the USA. This stuff just seems really scary.

These may look familiar:

"Cool American" Doritos. Of course in the US we just call them "Cool Ranch". And I think when you're on a cool ranch you just call them "doritos."
And finally, I saved the best for last:

Feurige Texas Nudeln. It's like instant cup-o-soup. I actually had to buy this one. Surprisingly, it was actually spicy. Not real tasty. But it was spicy. Which is hard to find over here. Even when something says "fire-hot!"

2009-04-06T20:50:00.012+02:00

Africa - Part 3: Visiting a Masai 'village'

On the second day before we headed out in the morning the guides asked us if we wanted to take an opportunity to see a Masai village (the tribe of this region). They would show us around their village and their traditions, show us some sort of traditional dance, etc. etc., and it was going to cost us each 40 dollars, I think it was. Maybe it was 20. Anyway, my initial reaction was to skip it – especially with the 40 dollar price tag in the middle of the Masai Mara – it seemed like there’s no way it would be genuine but rather a rehearsed show and dance that would leave me feeling uncomfortable. But the other five in our group were happy to go through with this and so I went with the crowd. We arrived at the village and were greeted by a young group of the village men. Most of them could speak English to some extent, some much better than others. These guys were all very tall and all looked to be between 17 and 25 in age. Except for one guy, who played kind of the part of tour leader among them, who looked unusually short and in his late 20s, but who was also the best English speaker and seemed to be in charge of the whole production. We later found out that he was the only one of the men not married, especially unusual given his age, and were given the impression he never would be. It wasn’t clear to me if this was because of his short stature which would make him relatively unattractive to the women in terms of the tribe traditions, or because perhaps he was gay. I’m thinking it may have been both.
So these guys did some singing and yelling and dancing for us – kind of what I had expected. And then proceeded to start what I’ve many times seen played out on TV and decided was one of my worst nightmares…
This is the part were the local tribe is doing their traditional dance and drags one of the white guys up in front of them to join in - simultaneously seeming to me to be making a mockery of their traditions and knowingly or unknowingly making a fool of the guys up there trying to dance (see George Bush on a number of occasions.) (Or maybe everybody’s trip to Hawaii that I’ve seen photos of.) You get the idea.
And so I was thrust into the middle of the Masai Mara warrior men to dance their traditional dance with them, trying my best to be a good sport and actually enjoy the experience, but in reality just thinking “this touristy crap is EXACTLY why I didn’t want to come out here and lose 40 dollars”. Anyway, all the guys in our little group were forced to eventually give it a shot. And at least I can come away saying I didn’t go through it sporting the most ferocious white man’s overbite that Mike was wearing (HA!) (see photo/click to enlarge)

They then showed us how they traditionally make fire...and then tried to sell us the sticks and wood they used to do this. Next we split up and each went into one of the family huts and the father figure would explain some of daily life...which was really the only interesting part of the whole thing. These tiny little huts made of cow dung were so dark and cramped. And then they would build a fire inside of them so also full of smoke. I guess they were very cozy though.

At the end of the tour we were directed over where, immediately adjacent to the village, was an area of about the same size, but compromised completely of makeshift cow dung tables where tribe women were selling handcrafts. It was basically a Masai shopping mall for tourists. I couldn't imagine this was representative of Masai life, which we'd paid 40 dollars to learn about. I'm not even convinced anybody there made the majority of things they were selling.
And I couldn't figure out what they could be doing with all that money. This little tribe must have been taking in 1000 dollars a day if not more in peak season. They appeared to be living off the land with everything we saw. I assume they actually lived there.

The rest of the day we spent finding more giraffes and elephants, hippos and crocodiles, ostriches and antelope.
The next morning we got up early and made the long journey back to Nairobi, and on the way we actually passed some real Masai villages, where the guides urged us not to take any photos.

We arrived back in Nairobi in the afternoon and Mike and I were able plan and buy tickets for the next leg of our trip, which we decided should be to fly straight to Zanzibar, as I didn’t have a lot of time to waste cruising by land over Kenya and Tanzania to get there. We found some dinner downtown near our hostel and got off the streets before it turned late.

2009-03-23T22:27:00.017+01:00

Africa - Part 2: more Safari

We booked probably the shortest safari possible – 3 days, 2 nights I think it was. During the day on the way in to the park we already saw enough to be excited about, and we got up early after the first night in the camp to head out again. About 10 minutes out of camp I went to put my long lens on my camera and discovered I somehow had failed to include it in my backpack that morning. Distressed at the thought of bringing that giant lens all the way there and then going out on a safari in one of the situations where it really is necessary, I started to fret out load at my predicament, wanting to gauge if anybody cared enough to be willing to go back for it. The truck stopped, and after sitting there and some discussion, it was clear that nobody was really excited about turning around the truck and wasting more time, but nobody wanted to say it and probably wanted to keep me happy since we’d be spending the next 3 days together. And then just as we turned around I found my lens sitting next to me, which was quite embarrassing, but a relief for everyone.

At first it was very exciting to spot elephants and giraffes off in the distance. But I never imagined how close we could drive up to them. As long as we approached slowly, they seemed almost unaware we were there. I always imagined a safari as sneaking up on animals from 200 meters away, catching a glimpse as they ran away and desperately trying to photograph them with a super-telephoto lens. The elephants, giraffes, various antelope, and buffaloes we came across were none shy. But nothing compared to the lions. They would always just be lying there – we could drive up literally to within 5 feet of these guys. And they would just yawn and stare off into the distance. It was surprising, but then again, I guess with no predators they are well aware they are the kings there. What were we gonna do, get out of the truck? Even when they had cubs there jumping around – couldn’t seem to care less we were there. On the other end of the spectrum, unfortunately, were the warthogs and hyenas (not to mention of course the creatures we never saw). The sound of the truck in the distance would usually send these guys scurrying off. They were both particularly intriguing because of, if nothing else, their ugliness and the ways in which they would carry themselves. The warthogs like giant cute pigs vs. giant rodents. The hyenas were like stray dogs, yet evil with their hunched shoulders and large mouths. The animal that most impressed our guide, because he had not seen one like it before, was a giant snake. It was impressive, but with all the input we were getting so fast I would not have appreciated it as much of we had not been told how rare it was to see.

The landscape and atmosphere out there was really breathtaking. At one point I told myself I was going to smack Mike if he said “This is God’s country” one more time, but there was some sort of feeling of truth to it. Standing out the top of the land-rover, Titanic-style, with the wind though my hair as we cruised over the endless plains of grass with tiny giraffes and elephants always in the distance was unforgettable. I spent a lot of time when we were flying completely alone across the savannahs between animal sightings imagining that I was part of a party here in the 19th century, before photos and video and stories of Africa had really reached the west. What it would have been like to be along with the first new westerners that would explore (and exploit) the region for adventure and tales of adventure, tracking new animals. What it was like to be of necessity self-sufficient in ones travels. Wealthy, but nevertheless putting themselves in extreme danger.

I was able to get a number of nice pictures and a few movies of some interesting creatures, here are some of my favorites (click on them, as well as the ones above, to enlarge):

Next up:

Africa - Part 3 - The end of the safari including our little trip to a 'real' Masai village.

2009-03-15T20:32:00.013+01:00

Africa - Part 1: Nairobi and Day 1 of Safari

I’m finally getting around to putting up some stories and photos from my trip to Africa. 9 months late. This seems to be a problem. I also would like to post about my trip to Venice, the ‘new’ Trabi, a trip Munich, and more….all that happened last year. But then I get lazy, especially now that I’m scanning in slides, and everything goes up 3 months later or not at all.
I regret from previous travels that I didn’t document or keep a dairy of what happened, as I find I randomly remember some old interesting stories, only vaguely jarred back to memory in unusual situations. Thus I think I should try to use this blog as a sort of journal to write this stuff down. Which could make for slow reading, but will serve well for having a more detailed description for myself to read in the future.
Anyway. Africa. There were a number of reasons this trip came together: 1) I’d never been anywhere in Africa 2) I wanted to go somewhere where I could dive, but hadn’t been before, and preferably not too touristy (i.e. not Egypt). 3) My old friend Mike could finally no longer contain the travel-itch and was planning on heading to Africa as well, so we timed heading out together. Mike visited Dresden for a few days and got to take in BRN before we headed for Nairobi.
I got off to a rough start. In the middle of our long flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi it somehow suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t packed my diver registration card. The worst feeling of doom swept over me as I convinced myself that I would now not be able to dive and this would consume me and my whole trip would be ruined. In dread I wanted someone to commiserate with me and I turned to Mike who was sitting behind me, but he had finally managed to find sleep. I was desperate to share my misery so I actually poked Mike to wake him up and said. “Mike. Mike. Mike. I forgot my dive card.” As you can imagine he was not enthused by all this. He just kind of looked at me like “thanks for waking me up, asshole.” I felt guilty and returned to my seat. I spent the rest of the flight trying to figure out scenarios in which I could get my card or manage to dive without it, and failing that how I would mentally not let it ruin the vacation. I’ve never seen a place let anybody dive without showing a card, but maybe this day and age they would have it all in the internet. But would the remote and probably sketchy dive operators have a facility to use this? Would it be possible that they would look the other way at the prospect at getting a hundred dollars from taking me out? This drove me crazy.
We didn’t spend much time in Nairobi, and it wasn’t just by luck. Nairobi has always had a pretty bad reputation for violence and crime, and with the recent violence following the elections in Kenya in December, it seemed more than sketchy. I managed to find a hotel to book that was across the street from the safari operator I had booked a safari with. That way it would be easy to roll out of bed in the morning to walk over and get on the truck out to the park. The hotel was typical budget lodging in a third world country – no frills. Mike and I had become somewhat disoriented with what time zone we were in and when exactly we were supposed to show up for the safari in the morning. Not wanting to miss the truck, Mike went down at what he thought was 5:30 am to walk over and check out the situation. Turned out it was 4:30am. He nearly tripped over the concierge who was sleeping inside the lobby stairwell, who woke up and asked Mike what the hell he was doing trying to go outside in downtown Nairobi at 4:30am. No, no, it’s too dangerous he told him. The safari leaves at 8 anyway - go back to your room. We showed up then promptly at about 7:30 to make sure we had all the forms/supplies we would need, and, as would become a theme on the trip, there was no urgency on the part of the people there, who suggested we go get breakfast or something. We found a nice looking, although empty, restaurant in the same building and ordered breakfast – eggs, sausage, toast, tea. The waiter was happy to take our order and disappeared into the kitchen. Shortly thereafter some of the staff left out the door. About 20 minutes later a boy came back in the restaurant with a grocery bag with what we expected was eggs, bread, and sausage. Seeing this made us laugh and Mike claim “I was worried you may not get the real Africa experience. Yeah, this is what I’m talking about.” Another 20 minutes later we were served our breakfast.
Eventually after stocking up on water, toilet paper, cheap rum, and cookies, the safari took off from downtown Nairobi. Nairobi I think must be the most polluted city I’ve ever been in. This includes cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Quito, Dar Es Salaam, and Makassar. It seemed like every vehicle on the road was pouring out thick black smoke that left everything grey. I noticed in the city between the jammed streets at one intersection a little gardening – some flowers. Put there by the city, with a proud sign. It was there to point out that they were trying to beautify the city and make life there better. It was so sad. Just so little among the backdrop of dust, trash, black smog, etc. If the city council really were to make an impact on this city it would have to start with some sort of cleaning and/or pollution legislation. As we made our way outside the city, the trucks were still expulsing thick black smoke, but they were much more diluted in number and the smoke no longer seemed trapped by the buildings. There were 6 of us on the safari, packed into a Land Rover along with our driver/guide and our cook. I think the ride was like 6-7 hours, most over unpaved roads. On the way to the park we passed along the Great Rift Valley and stopped for a photo-op and obligatory souvenir-stop:

This is the old don't tell 'em it's a movie at first trick

Besides Mike and I the safari participants were all teachers on summer break: Two American women working at international schools in Budapest, and an Irish couple that were I believe taught English back in Ireland. We arrived at the park in the late afternoon, and got our first glimpse of some wildlife while driving through the park on the way to our campsite on the other side. The wildlife was already breathtaking. Outside the park we did see some animals, but only various antelope and maybe some buffalo.

Once we got in it was completely different. Not long after we entered the park we came upon a colony of vultures on the side of the path we were driving along. They were clearly very aggressively devouring something. As we drove up they ignored the truck for the most part and we saw they were eating a baby antelope – and making quick work of it.

The company we booked with has a permanent sort of campsite set up not far from the outside of the park (it’s not allowed for them to have them inside). It actually had a number of permanent basic lodges and tents. But it was completely empty. Our guide explained to us that since the violence following the elections, we were the first group they had to go out on a safari. The camp could hold 60-80 people, but we were the only ones there. It was nice in that we had booked to sleep in tents but they upgraded us to the empty little cabins. Nothing luxurious – there was no electricity, and we shared a common outhouse. But what was pretty luxurious was that one of the guys would get up early and start a fire under the water tank/pump so that we would have hot water for a shower. The food was quite good, the guys cooked it up over a fire in the floor. The first night there Mike was restless and instead of sleeping decided to go out and explore around at night, eventually settling on our little porch and waiting to spot nocturnal wildlife. Or maybe elephants across the stream our cabin overlooked. At some point in the night, when everybody else was asleep, there was this sudden thundering of feet across the front of the cabins, causing, we found out the next morning, each of us to wake up individually. The others speculated that it was one of the guards chasing off some animals or something. In fact Mike had spotted a small nocturnal cat on one of the other cabins' stoops with his flashlight, and as it ran away attempted to chase it down, probably frightening the heck those in that cabin.

next, but probably not soon:

Part 2: the rest of the safari (with lotsa pictures of magnificent beasts)

2009-03-08T11:58:00.002+01:00

Nice

Back in September I mused about what it may look like when, as Sarah Palin says, "Putin rears his ugly head and comes into the airspace of America" and how one could capture this with photoshop. Well, somebody did a very good job capturing this:

And lest you think Sarah Palin was a thing in the past, an embarrassment that much of the country wants to go away, a series of recent polls, including that of the CPAC conference indicate the top three choices right now of republicans for who to run in 2012 seem to be

Mitt "who let the dogs out" Romney
Bobby Jindal of the Republican Response to Obama disaster fame
and
Sarah "In what respect Charlie?" Palin

2009-03-05T23:18:00.001+01:00

Nazi march and protests

You know you live in Eastern Germany when you get an email like this at work:

Date: February 10, 2009 12:54:37 PM GMT+01:00
To: mpi-cbg-staff@mpi-cbg.de
Subject: [mpi-cbg-staff] Caution on 14 Feb!

Dear expats,

on 14 Feb there is not only Valentines Day but also a huge demonstration of Neo-Nazis announced in the City Center in connection with the remembrance of the destruction of Dresden in 1945. About 8.000 Neo-Nazis are expected and the police will have it's biggest operation this year (see below).

Please watch out if you have to go to the City Center on this day not to get into trouble, or maybe just don't go at all :)

Of course upon reading this, I GOTTA check it out.

Actually this happens every year. February 13/14 is the anniversary of the beginning of the bombing of Dresden in WWII, but it seems that what is this weekend at the forefront, at least what seems to dominate the media headlines and conversations in Dresden, is the annual Nazi march held on the same date. The Nazis use the thousands killed during the bombing, and also exaggerate it (if that can really be done), as some sort of counterpoint to the holocaust and attempt to further nationalistic feelings that we (or Germans) should be mourning this more.

Unfortunately it seems that in an attempt to go against the nazis (past and present), there is some sort of attempt to justify the bombing, or at least accept it as a means to and end. This is of course part of the broader phenomenon that due to Germany's history a generation of Germans have been raised that it is practically a sin to be nationalistic - to the extent that it was very not-cool as a German to fly a German flag for a long time. That is until a few years ago, and in particular the last world cup, when the flags all came out, finally guilt-free.

But it is still evident with these demonstrations against the Nazis, that people get so wound up going against Nazis, that it's almost like they are pro-WWII catastrophy. I understand that they want the world to recognize that they know that Germany was on the wrong side so to speak, but can't the tragedy that was Dresden be left out of it? By any standards, without getting into all the details and complexity, it was a tragedy, and thousands and thousands of innocent people were burned and suffocated alive.
It was a little weird to see the few US and British flags being paraded around on the anniversary of one the most questionable acts of war. But what was REALLY ridiculous was to see flags with the ensign of the Royal Air Force. What. the. fuck. I'm sorry, I hate the Nazis and what they stand for too. But that's just wrong.

Anyway, I wandered around the city and found myself in the middle of an anti-Nazi march. In the middle of a bunch of punks. Police were imported from cities all over Germany to make sure order was kept.

Their job being to protect the Nazis from the thousands of counter protesters.

It got a little hairy every know and then. Some of the crowd I was in started hurtling things at the riot police. I saw a glass bottle break off a policeman's mask. And then the police would charge the crowd. I saw some real baton-on-back beat-downs of kids too slow to get out of the way. It actually happened at the end of this video below, but you can't make it out...

Here's another video....

All in all an interesting day. except that the city's mass transit becomes paralyzed and I ended up walking all the way to work and back home. And the Nazis succeed in stealing the limelight of this historic day from where it should be focused.

2009-02-24T17:08:00.004+01:00

Photography 'portfolio'

I found a kinda slick site where I could put up some of my favorite photos I've taken into a portfolio-type format. Limiting the number of total images and cutting out the debris I think really accentuates the best ones. Almost all of them are from 35mm film, the exceptions being mainly the micrographs and the underwater photos. I'll probably slowly be adding photos here and there as I scan in old slides.

Click here to visit....

2009-02-15T21:50:00.012+01:00

My first surgery

I wanted to post about my trip to the hospital a few weeks ago. As with pretty much every appendectomy, is was a quick surprise thing. I’d never had real surgery before (unless you count wisdom teeth removal), and I’d never had an extended hospital stay. I’ve always kind of romanticized the idea of spending a few days in the hospital – with nurses and doctors doting over you – not having do anything but eat, sleep, read – having visitors come with gifts – almost like you could let reality go for a few days and have absolutely zero responsibilities or something – with sweet people attending to your every need. But now of course that image is shattered. This was nothing but stress and frustration. Not necessarily that I wasn’t at a good hospital, or that the German way of doing things is any different (I wouldn’t know of course without a frame of reference). But I’m certainly not left with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I came into the ER late on a Thursday night with severe abdominal pains and vomiting. This has happened before to me – but never this bad. Thankfully I have a good friend, Alex, that has car and is German, and could take me in and also help navigate the system in my delirium. Actually her help would be invaluable throughout the next week for helping me prepare for my stay and eventually get home.
After a time of moaning and rolling around they hooked me up with an IV and gave me some "pain killers" (salt water?). I’ve run into this before. In Germany they REALLY don’t like to give you pain killers. It’s probably a good thing in general, when compared to the US, where vicodin prescriptions are written with wild abandon. But it really sucks when it’s you and you’re really in pain. First they gave me what I think was just fortified water in the IV, and after a while of complaining and moaning and intense pain, they bumped it up to metmizol, an NSAID, a bit stronger than ibuprofen or naproxen. Another 45 minutes or so later with no relief they gave me Buscopan, which is not a pain-reliever at all per se, but a kind of muscle-relaxer to prevent spasms/craps. Basically the intense pain reduced to a moderate level on its own, after like 4 friggin’ hours, my moaning and begging having no affect on the doctors. I can’t explain how much this sucked and the level of pain. While this was happening they did an ultrasound, which was inconclusive, and I spent the night at the hospital.
The next day the doctors determined that although without fever, my white blood cell count was rising quickly, and the region and type of pain was consistent with appendicitis. The night before they actually said they thought it was NOT appendicitis, but the surgeon they brought in the morning had a different thought. I actually felt much better in the morning, and the last thing on my mind was having surgery. I was just waiting to leave. My doctor came to the conclusion that, while not certain, it could be appendicitis, and I gathered the thought was that it was too risky not to go in, and if it was something else then they may see that too when they cut me open.
Let me say here that the communication here was mostly in German. About 100% German with the nurses and some doctors, and about 50/50 German:English with the other doctors. The latter is still frustrating because neither of us could really express ourselves comfortably as well and accurately as we wished in our non-native tongues – a situation you don’t want to be in when they are deliberating cutting you open. It makes the conversations very short.
At some point a nurse came in and says they have decided I probably have appendicitis and they want to have surgery without delay, that night. But don’t worry, it’s a standard procedure to take the appendix out – just three little cuts and they go in and it’s 20 minutes. The doctor came in later having somehow found an English version of some papers explaining the procedure for me to read and sign. I noticed there were two boxes for “open appendectomy” and “laparoscopic appendectomy”, and the “open appendectomy” was checked. This did not make me feel good. Why not the laparoscopic like the nurse described? It’s supposed to be better for recovering, healing, less certain complications, smaller scars, etc. I asked the doctor about it when I saw him again. He said something vague about the facilities...they don’t like to do that here…if something goes wrong... it wasn’t really clear. Then he said plus, we usually do that for women and not men. I asked him “why” and he literally just stared at me silently for 5 full seconds like “you need to stop asking questions. right. Now.” Maybe he was just frustrated because I was having him trying to explain it in English. I can’t remember what he said eventually but it was nothing that made sense to me. But it was clear he was not going to go for the laparoscopy. This did not instill confidence in me. Especially the part about not having all the facilities if something went wrong. Because I no longer was in pain, I felt it may be worth trying to get a second opinion. Or at least somewhere where they would be able to do laparoscopy. I thought maybe there was another good hospital in Dresden. I called my boss from work, with hopes that he may have some advice on where to get a second opinion. He said that he didn’t personally really think the other hospitals were any better, this was the biggest, the university hospital, and all the doctors he knew worked there. But said he’d make some calls. Soon after a nurse came in to get the signed surgery consent and get things rolling. When I told her I had not decided if I wanted to have the surgery or not she was not happy. She stormed off saying, “well, we’ll have tell the doctor about this as soon as possible!” Yes, fine, whatever. Then I got a call back from the boss. He said he had talked to some people, and basically got in touch with the head of surgery for the hospital, who was of course at home at this hour on a Friday night. He said the chief was going to call the hospital and see what was up. A few moments later my doctor comes back in, says “Well, I just got off the phone with Dr. so-and-so (the head of surgery)” in a very accusative voice. “You know, if you really want laproscopic surgery, fine, we can do it”. He was clearly not happy about what appeared to be me going over his head and getting his superior to force him to change the procedure. In a way that is what happened, but I didn’t know it was happening. I tried to explain it wasn’t my call that things went this way, mainly because I didn’t want this guy who’s about to cut me open fuming. I tried to discuss with him again why he wanted open vs laproscopic in the first place and again never really got a good answer. My feeling it that it may have a been a combination of a)open is easier and faster for the surgeon and b)he wasn’t 100% sure it was appendicitis and if it wasn’t he could see around better for other things with open, versus having to make a while new cut and start over with a new surgery if he started with lapro. I don’t know though. But at least it was settled, and I could rest a bit easier. In the meantime however, I heard that nurses were not impressed with my second-guessing and hesitation on the matter, and were in fact gossiping about me outside in disapproving tones. And hence I would become the bad guy for the rest of my stay….
This wasn’t just my imagination either. Before this last episode a nurse was asking me questions and being very friendly and happy. Afterwards she was not. I was trying to be as nice and humble as possible, but it was not changing their minds. Meanwhile my roommate was practically cursing at them and they seemed much more eager to help and be friendly to him. Maybe part of it was my surely tortured-sounding German. And the fact that they needed to speak a bit slowly to me and lose the Sächsisch accent. The meal Frau was exceptionally nasty. And the rations she would bring atrocious. After basically two days of fasting (except for what came in the IV), I was eager for my first food at lunchtime. A big bowl of potato soup, I was psyched. Until I tasted it. Wow. Didn’t know you could do that to potato soup. Especially in Germany. It still didn't, by the way, prepare me for what came the next breakfast - double brown surprise (pictured). I ate some of the potato soup anyway (can't say that for the breakfast) since I was pretty hungry. But it would be fair to say afterwards I was really looking forward to some dinner. The meal-frau came in and asked if my roomie and I wanted dinner. He said no, and she said something to me like “and you don’t want any either?” Which is one of those questions to which I never know what ‘yes’ or ‘no’ really means…. So since he had said “nein”, I went with “ja”, with a nod of the head to make sure. I figured it would be unusual to refuse dinner so even if there was some question she would err on the side of bringing me dinner. Apparently not. Food never came. She came in a few hours later to bring water or something and I asked her if there wasn’t going to be any dinner this evening. Then she said I told her I didn’t want any. So I said, no, he said “no” and I said “yes”. To which she kinda shrugged it off saying there was a misunderstanding. So she started to leave and I had to stop her to ask her if I could have some dinner. But right at this moment a very poorly timed chance coincidence happened. See, my bed was not long enough to fit me. And there was a large board at the end, which my feet would press up against. Well, just at this moment, the bed finally did not want to contain my legs anymore, and the board broke off the end and came crashing to the floor right at the woman’s feet. I’m sure there was no question in her mind that it was intentional. But it wasn’t! Anyway, it made such a crash that a couple more nurses from outside came in, looked at the board, and the looked at me in a kinda of “yup, this one” look. Now the food lady replied that there was in fact no more to eat. And of course now things were getting a little contentious and it was getting harder to understand her as she spoke faster and got frustrated. I would tell her I wanted to eat and she kept asking me a question I could not understand. So I said “ah, mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut, können sie bitte langsamer sprechen?” To which she simply repeated what she said exactly the same, but REALLY LOUD with an angry tone. So I calmly said “nicht lauter, aber langsamer and deutlich, bitte”. Which didn’t make her want to help anymore so I just said “ja” to her question assuming she was asking if I wanted something in particular. Well it turns out she was asking I guess if I wanted “zwieback”, because that was my dinner. 3 small hard bread crackers. Fortunately a nice nurse came in an hour later and asked if I got dinner, I told her no and told her about the food-frau and she kind of rolled her eyes, and my roommate interrupted to tell her the woman was very unfriendly. So fortunately she was able to find me some decent food that apparently the food-schwester did not have access to or something.
Lunch the next day was actually a surprise. A genuine heavy German meal, complete with sauerkraut. But then the next two dinners consisted of nothing but two pieces of bread. And one day a slice of cheese on top.

I ended up in the hospital for about 5 days total. Right as I was going into surgery my doctor said I would be able to see the video of the surgery afterwards. But upon asking him each day after I came out, he always said it wasn’t possible, it wasn’t easy, they don’t usually do that. Which made me wonder what changed his mind. He eventually showed me a still photo of my appendix before it came out. As they were ushering me out (to go straight home to my couch, I could hardly walk) they provided me with all of TWO pain pills. I asked if I could get some more and they told me I needed to see my general practitioner for that. I also asked how long I should stay at home, when I should resume activities. They also said to go to my general practitioner, who hadn’t seen me in a year. Nevermind the fact that I would eventually have to drag my ass in that state halfway across town for this appointment, why on earth should he be brought in to this situation he knows nothing about? The next day I made it in, he took a look at me and was kinda like “yup, looks like you had surgery.” He game me a prescription for more metamizol and asked how long I wanted a note to get out of work for.

2009-02-13T09:48:00.004+01:00

Postcard

A Zeppelin-fanatic friend of Cliff's got this antique post card and asked if he could decipher the English on it - it has become a sort of puzzle for a group of us now. And we're looking for help. We're pretty sure of about 50%, 30% we have a guess and about 20% of the words no idea.
If you have time post an attempt at it - we're getting bogged down in our first impression.

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

2009-02-09T22:58:00.004+01:00

Current playlist...

Okkervil River - Girl in Port

Great tune, and nice simple video to match.
Got to see them in Berlin a few months back

Alicia Keys - Like You'll Never See Me Again

Awesome song. Lucky for you, the embedding was disabled on the official video. Because it is crap. It is so cheesy, stupid, and obvious it actually detracts from the song. The sound quality on this isn't as good, but you are spared.

Old Crow Medicine Show - I Hear Them All

Cool tune. And unlike above, this video actually adds to the song.

Jason Mraz - I'm Yours

don't act like you don't like it.

2009-02-01T20:33:00.005+01:00

I'm famous

Colby recently had a few more interviews in NY magazines Heeb, Time Out New York, and Corduroy. Rather than me talk about them, click on those links to read for yourself. I just wanted to say that in the latter, the teaser sentence leading into the interview is:

Corduroy had a chance to sit down with the polarizing photographer-cum-sculptor to talk about the creative process, Bushwick’s best duck confit, and why a microbiologist in Dresden is his most important critic.

In case you're wondering, that would be me.

(not me)

ahem.

2009-01-29T18:17:00.006+01:00

Blinddarm weg.

Friday night I had surgery to take out my appendix. I started writing a big blog post about the whole escapade covering the last week, but it was getting really long-winded and I was still on the first 24 hours. I'll figure out what to do with that later.

For those who asked, here are a couple pictures of the wounds. Not very impressive, still have bandages and stuff over them. All clean and shaven, though. I'm really afraid to pull on the little plug in my belly button.

Below for your viewing pleasure is somebody else's laparoscopic appendectomy. it's kinda long. The part near the beginning where they poke through with the instruments helps me understand why I hurt.

I was actually planning on having video of the whole laparoscopy of my own for you here exclusively, but after the surgery the doctor suddenly had second thoughts on giving me or even letting me see the video. For this and other sketchy tales, stay tuned...

2009-01-29T11:51:00.003+01:00

(Yet another) Reality Check

"I don't know it's not really going in...somehow it just won't fit as nicely here as the last one"

2009-01-19T22:58:00.007+01:00

Dresden Silvester Fireworks 2008

This year was a tad bit of a letdown on Silvester. First, almost everybody was out of town. Second, it was really f'in cold that night. Third, and probably because of second, there wasn't the same crowd on the Elbe (although impressive nonetheless). And Fourth, my photos didn't come out as nicely as previous years.

But here are a few anyway (click to enlarge):

And here are links to two videos that better convey the chaos on the river:
One
Two

2009-01-16T22:13:00.005+01:00

In response to the Hairy One

Of course, I did not prepare this meat. But I sure as hell did eat it. I think the sheer volume speaks for itself and justifies a post.
Salt Lick BBQ, Austin, Texas.

y'all.

2009-01-14T22:30:00.003+01:00

Strike a Pose

So Colby's in a show in London with Crumb and Andy Warhol (and a buncha famous artists I don't know). I guess that's pretty cool.

2009-01-12T23:04:00.004+01:00

Freezing in Dresden

As we move to more and more consecutive days without getting above freezing, the Elbe becomes more and more frozen. On Sunday I walked down and took some photos. The local newspaper had the photo on the left recently, from the winter of 1928/1929. In February of 1929 the Elbe completely froze over so that people could actually walk from Neustadt to Altstadt over the river. pretty cool!

On the right is a picture I took on Sunday. That's a sheet of ice there, but it doesn't go nearly all the way across, and you wouldn't dare try to walk on much of it.
It's only happened one time since 1929, in the 60s, that the Elbe has completely frozen across. There's been some speculation that it happens less and less these days because of pollution of the rivers lowering the freezing point. Unfortunately the forecast this week is for highs just over freezing, so this won't be the year either.

2009-01-03T16:19:00.006+01:00

McCain Smiles

They sell these at the local supermarket. McCain-brand giant smile-faces with lime-green font. It's terrible, it reminds me of this:

2009-01-03T14:52:00.003+01:00

Eier kaufen

Eggs are cheap. There are various grades, sizes, and classes, which I don't completely understand. but I can work out enough. They have "freilandhaltung", which means free-range, "bodenhaltung", which I think means barn-raised (but without cages), and then the regular eggs with no obvious label, which I suppose means it is the torture-box-raised. The difference in price here is so minimal, I can't see how anybody would not buy the free-range eggs. Torture box eggs are 12.9 cents each. Barn-raised are 18.9 cents each, and free-range are 19.9 cents each. I usually get the organic free-range eggs, which jump up to like 40 cents each and are smaller, but I don't eat very many eggs. But seriously, who is going to save 1 measly cent per egg and take the bodenhaltung eggs over the freilandhaltung eggs? But then not go for the cheapest. Are people like "I support paying 6 cents not to have the chickens tortured, but free-range? Now that's just ludicrous - those hoity-toity chickens have a bigger garden than I do!"

Seriously, do they taste different or something?

2009-01-03T00:47:00.003+01:00

Tannenzäpfle Down

Sometimes I inadvertently knock the temperature wheel on this fridge to super cold when putting things in, but usually I realize it before anything freezes all the way.

2009-01-02T01:59:00.002+01:00

Good idea

Okay, so I'm usually pretty slow with picking up the viral videos of the hip world over here in Dresden, but I suppose most of the readers here are too, so it works out for everyone.

This one's kinda dirty so here's your viewer's warning, but pretty funny.

Diesel Group meeting
by baierman17

2008-12-30T22:17:00.009+01:00

Pictures of 2008 - Travel

(click to enlarge)

Kenya:

Tanzania:

Many more to come from Africa, hopefully sooner than later...

Oktoberfest, Munich:

See more from Oktoberfest here

Venice:

See more from Venice here

San Francisco:

Austin:

see more From San Francisco and Austin here

2008-12-07T18:59:00.005+01:00

Colby visits for Thanksgiving

Colby braved the overseas flight for the first time in 9(?) years to see what Dresden is all about and hangout over Thanksgiving. I'm too lazy to post photos again, so here are some on facebook. Anyway, it was a good time. Since Colby was only here 5 days, we had some early morning rushes to get everything in, but it was also a chill Thanksgiving weekend as a significant amount of time was spent watching college football and basketball and eating leftovers. Thanksgiving day involved a group of expats like last year complete will two turkeys and all the traditional dishes. Fortunately, the Christmas markets opened this weekend too, so I could show Colby that whole scene complete with Glühwein. And we took an overnight trip to Berlin to check out the art scene. Colby knew a couple people that would be around, but at least 3 or 4 other people at the openings randomly recognized Colby from NYC and said hello.

2008-12-02T22:30:00.002+01:00

Enjoy

In the vain of this, but better

2008-11-26T12:37:00.005+01:00

A date with 3 birds.

Picked up one at the airport today.

The other two will be picked up tomorrow morning.

2008-11-24T20:55:00.000+01:00

Mmmmm...turkey

In the spirit of Thanksgiving (3 days away), can somebody please tell me the difference between Puten and Truthahn?

I have this feeling that it's female vs. male? But then I thought a male turkey could be called a capon in English, a mistake which once seemed to have cost me a friendship, but I later found out it is a castrated rooster.

2008-11-23T16:36:00.000+01:00

Henry Waxman

Waxman was just voted the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I like this guy. This can only mean things getting better. The fact that he has a kinda corny smile just makes it better. Cause he seems to not like taking any shit. Here I found some interesting clips if Waxman doing his thing on youtube:

2008-11-22T15:10:00.004+01:00

Ever.

As I'm getting pumped up for the Michigan-OSU game this evening, a clip from the better times, when Michigan was not having it's worst season in its entire history, but rather going undefeated to win the national championship with Charles Woodson winning the heisman, and along the way making the greatest. interception. ever.

He was throwing the ball away. He was just trying to throw the ball away like smart QB.

2008-11-20T20:26:00.005+01:00

You're Not Helping

Some careless reporting and some unfortunate quotes and I see this thing is going to turn into a joke for the christian right creationists to use to poke fun at evolution. Of course the general scientific community will not be affected nor most readers, but at some level it's better not to encourage them I think.

"Kangaroo genes close to humans" is the sensational title of the article. But what does 'close' mean? This, of course, is all relative. Closer to humans than squid are, yes. Closer than fungi, absolutely. Close like primates? No fucking way, not even close.

Saying that "much of it was similar to the genome for humans" means nothing of course alone.
We humans have genes that are nearly identical to those in yeast.

At the end of the article there is an attempt to put it in perspective, but again with the one-liners I just can't see how the lay-reader will make any sense of any of this:

"Humans and kangaroos last shared an ancestor at least 150 million years ago, the researchers found, while mice and humans diverged from one another only 70 million years ago."

"Wait, what?" one might think "I thought we were like kangaroos. But now we're more like mice? Does that mean twice as much like mice?"

But then the end of the article is the worst of all:

"Kangaroos are hugely informative about what we were like 150 million years ago," Graves said.

No context. No explanation. An image is conjured of kangaroos walking around 150 million years ago and then evolving into humans. No no no. It's rather all very indirect and 'we' is thrown around loosely. Now coincidentally having had he opportunity to hear this very Jenny Graves speak at a top scientific meeting outside of Brisbane a few years ago (Great talk by the way and the closing talk of the meeting), I would say that if in fact that quote came from her without more context, she did it on purpose just to mix things up and get people talking. (And to of course bring spotlight to her unique research into the genomes of endemic Australian species).

But this article is just generally useless. Does anybody get anything out of it? "Kangaroo genes close to human" and then nothing. gah. It's time more mainstream press took the initiative to actually understand the science behind these discoveries and make an effort to explain it to the population. People aren't stupid. They can handle it.

2008-11-15T16:00:00.003+01:00

It Pays to Speak German (literally)

When I go see a doctor here, I usually start out using German, and see if I can make it through the appointment without one of us feeling the need to switch to English. With one doctor I've been seeing regularly for 4 years now, and who can speak perfect English, we now converse in German. When we started he would always start in German, and then only switch when I would ask. Eventually I had enough confidence not to feel the need to ask.
Sometimes when I'm seeing new doctors, like I have been recently for some sort of nagging adductor tendinitis - groin pull - I start in German, but a combination of not understanding new technical medical words in German and wanting to make sure I'm perfectly clear about what the doctors are saying leads us to switch to English. I would say 3 of 4 doctors I see can speak English much better than I can German. Even the ones that can't speak English well make a good-hearted attempt, and I appreciate that, and we try to work out the technical jargon between us.
In many ways it's fun for me to make it through an appointment without having to switch to English. Gives me a boost to start my day. But I never in my dreams thought it would be financially beneficial. Until now. I was just opening doctor bills and going through charges, and I cam across one from a new doctor that I'd never seen before. Under it, it reads:

"Begründung: sprächliche Verständigungsschwerichkeiten: Anwendung Zweitsprache Englisch"

And then a charge of 17 euros. The above says the reason for the charge is there were difficulties in understanding and the doctor had to change and use a second language, English.
I'm seriously dumbfounded. Especially since the rest of the charges amounted to 75 euros, basically for this doctor to tell me after 15 minutes I needed to see a different doctor. He didn't tell me when we were 3/4 the way through the appointment that when I asked to clarify something by describing it in English it would cost me 20 bucks.
Doctor H. Witzigmann of the Friedrichstadt Krankenhaus, a true winner.
Again, never in 4 years have I ever seen this charge on a doctor bill.

2008-11-10T23:58:00.003+01:00

Really?

Sometimes I read conservative blogs, just to see things like this.
Will Obama Blow the Progress of the Last 8 Years?
(no it's not a joke.)
Here you can find jokes.

2008-11-05T07:57:00.001+01:00

2008-10-30T17:05:00.003+01:00

Did something happen this week in the world of baseball?

Reading about baseball is even more tortuous than watching it, but I've seen a lot of photos on the sports sites.

Now, if only hockey would end and we can consolidate the sports media on the sports that are interesting.

2008-10-29T09:24:00.002+01:00

Me like Red. Sex. uh.

As a shout out to the sometimes over the top feminism of Shakesville and PunkAssBlog (blogs I highly recommend), particularly by male posters, which sometimes weirds me out a little, like, dude, seriously, you're trying too hard, I actually found this article on CNN.com kind of ridiculous.

Apparently a new study says wearing red makes women sexier and more attractive. But that's not all:

However, red won't make you look smarter or more competent, says study author Andrew Elliot, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York.
"We only found the effect for attraction, so males don't rate females in red as more intelligent, more likable, or as having a better personality; they only rate her as sexier and more attractive," he says.

Cause we all know that "attractiveness" of a woman has nothing to do with perceived intelligence, likability, or personality. WTF?

2008-10-25T02:11:00.003+02:00

German Reggae Scene

I really like these songs/videos.

This first one is new, the other two are older. They are, in my opinion, jams.

Peter Fox - Alles Neu

Jan Delay - Klar

Seeed - Aufstehen

And while we're here, here's another video. I don't like this one, and it's not reggae, I post it here because strangers have told me, sadly, that I look like Ferris MC. observe:

2008-10-25T00:59:00.004+02:00

Stupid Stupid

First off, I was wondering just now who in history has received the most write-in votes for President. So I googled it. And the first hit I got was a "Yahoo! Answers" link, featuring a question from "Christians for McCain-Palin 08" which was:

If I write-in vote Palin for President, does it still count as a vote for McCain?

Whew. yeah. So there's a nice dose of double stupid.

As for the real answer, I don't know, but Wikipedia says Eugene V. Debs got nearly a million write-in votes while in federal prison in 1920 (Out of 26 million total).

Secondly, you've probably heard by now about the girl that scratched a 'B' into her face, apparently in the mirror, and then claimed a large black man robbed her, punched her, then carefully carved a backwards 'B' into her face (presumably for "Barrack") with a very dull knife after seeing her McCain-Palin bumper sticker. And later refused any medical treatment. Wonder why not. What's more stupid was all the people over at Little Green Footballs speculating on how the 'B' must be backwards because the attacker had her in a choke hold from above and then scratched it into her face - so that when she sits up it's upside down.
Oh yeah, and it looks like she's a McCain volunteer and student at Texas A&M

2008-10-22T23:49:00.004+02:00

You're kidding, right?

McCainSpace

McCain appeals to younger voters...and only makes things worse - check out his welcome clip.
He literally sucks any life or vibe out of the 'social networking' concept, but does succeed in doing a great imitation of your out-of-touch grandfather.
Nice background with the cartoon stars, though.

2008-10-21T02:10:00.003+02:00

What I've been doing the last week

...including, but not limited to, Salt Lick BBQ....

I think the final damage for 7 of us was 18 pounds (8 kilos) of brisket, sausage, and ribs

2008-10-08T12:15:00.003+02:00

Next t-shirt I wantIn case you missed it:

2008-09-27T00:06:00.003+02:00

There's just too many to pick from

I know everybody, and I mean everybody must be thinking of this when they see these Palin interview clips:

To be fair to Miss Teen South Carolina, she probably did not have an idea of what they were going to ask her.

As an American I'm insulted by the Republican party.

2008-09-25T21:24:00.004+02:00

I can't wait for the veep debate

Putin rears his ugly head and comes into the airspace of America.

I thinking about how to photoshop what this may look like.

2008-09-23T20:03:00.002+02:00

Brilliant

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

via Poorman Institute via here

My computer is in the shop. And I've been in Heidelberg and Venice most of the last 2 weeks. So no photos and few posts. I got a macbook replacement and it broke and so now I've been downgraded to an old G3 iBook until I can show that I can take care of it. wah.