Goodbye blog, welcome Facebook

I realised that I need no blog to share my ideas with all of you friends, now that facebook gives me the opportunity of expressing my mood, post links, videos and other objects. So I guess this is my last post here. I am sure you will not miss me. If you do, just come on and visit me: http://www.new.facebook.com/reqs.php#/profile.php?id=643947002&ref=profile

Contribute!!!

Personally, I pledge to give some - don't have decided what yet. probably 50US$. I've used wikipedia often in the last years... I even tried to edit some pages, but didn't really give back as much as I took. So, if I can help pay the bills, I'll do that!

When brains are outlawed...

An old blog post found thanks to the guys at Freakonomics...

When Wonderbras are outlawed, only outlaws will have wonderbras

August 24, 2006 · 3 Comments

It is once again safe to wear gel-filled bras on airplanes.The TSA pretty much HAD to do this as it realized the only other move would have been to ban breast implants as well which would have shut down LAX.

Hilarious...

Occupational Questions...

Stephen Dubner, one of the two people behind Freakonomics, comes up with a bleg forwarded by a reader:

When I’m at a party and get asked what I do (I am an architect), I always hear one of the same five responses:

+ What kind of architecture do you do?

+ Hey, you can design my dream home!

+ I like Frank Lloyd Wright, do you think he’s good?

+ My brother/father/aunt is an architect.

+ I thought about going into architecture.

All of these responses are fine, but just knowing how consistent they are, it makes me wonder in what ways I ask stereotypical questions of others.

It would be nice to avoid this by having a list of what jobs get what kinds of responses. This idea has led to many interesting party conversations — because many times, the responses are not so nice!

So here’s my bleg question: what are the typical responses you hear when you tell people what you do?

So, how about myself? Well I have given up (mostly) trying to explain people what I do in detail...

I am a computational chemist. people usually says one of these two things:

• - A what?!?
• - Complicational Chemistry? Uh, interesting... I sucked at chemistry in high school / college / primary / whatever...

So, how about you?

Any european...

...who believes that ANY American president (or presidential candidate) will give a crap about their idea of how america should be is in for a (nasty) surprise. Mark my words.

Harry and Paul - Clarkson Island

Spore: for real this time.

Zebrafish development tracked cell by cell

Microscopic imaging reconstructs embryo's first day.

Laura Starr

Fluorescence microscopy can reconstruct a digital zebrafish embryo.P. KELLER/EMBL

A new type of microscope has allowed scientists to map the behaviour and movements of cells during zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryonic development, and create a three-dimensional digital movie of the process.

The team, from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, says that this is the first complete developmental blueprint of a vertebrate. They think that the technique, called digital scanned laser light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (DSLM), could be applied to embryos of other vertebrates such as mice and frogs.

more on nature.com

Got a new (finger crossed) job

I've got a new job, starting (probably) end of the year more or less.

nice position, challenging, where I'll be able to learn lots of techniques and, if everything goes according to plan, manage at least partly my own drug discovery project.

More to follow soon.

Running!

This is what I ran this morning. Little, I know, just 2Km (+ un allungo da 200m) in circa 15' totali.

View Larger Map

Ora speriamo di continuare nei giorni successivi...

Been far away

As per topic, I've been far far away, mentally if not geographically.

lots of things to do in these weeks, with my almost-brother-in-law's wedding preparations first and celebrations then - in fact, as expected, the two parts got heavily mixed resulting in very little sleep for between wednesday and yesterday night, with all the going to-and-from the various Belgian cities, waiting for things to happen, skipping lunches and then gorging on buffets of the more or less traditional kind.

All in all, it went very well, the external face put up that o a fairytale wedding, with an inside made of sweat, grit and sometimes all-out open war between the people involved. Ok, may be not 'war' but some heated arguments. But then, I've a very short temper myself, so who am I to judge? I am aware that all of this may be quite uninteresting for whomever reads (if any) but hey, that's my diary, I think i got the right to write everything I feel like no? No? Well then...

Pictures coming soon, for those of you who would like to see us wearing fancy suites (the men) and wonderfully hand-stitched dresses (the girls)...

So long...