I was looking up articles today and came across the website for Biochemical Journal. It makes me feel 14 again!

As I was going through this morning's stack of e-mail, I found that today's word-of-the-day from WordSmith was algorithm, which is derived from the nickname of the inventor of the algorithm, al Khwārizmī ("the person from Khwārizm"). The Wordsmith post mentioned that Khwārizm is now Khiva on the border of Turkmenistan in Uzbekistan:

View Larger Map

Let me pause to say that I'm still a little wow'd by the fact that I can see Khiva within seconds of learning of it existence. I was admiring the old city walls, when I noticed the map looked like a fish head (or maybe a chameleon) in profile. In particular, it looks kinda like the Wolf Fish featured in the logo for Uwe Onken's Fishing Tours. I've been to Uzbekistan, but I've never been to the North Sea, birthplace of the Onkens. The Pilaf was better in Uzbekistan.

YouTube has finally caught up with my childhood even better than Yesterdayland (R.I.P):

Star Wars Trumpet Solo

The good folks at Zillow finally have a property value heat map for the St. Louis area:

Although St. Louis has a much narrower dynamic range than the larger cities, the map gives a great overview of the socio-economic regionality of the metropolitan area. There's a thesis project in there somewhere.

(Thanks again to Ned at Starchamber for first posting about Zillow Heat Maps.)

I was driving in to work today and ended up behind a Kia Exterra with a dealer sticker on the back that looked like:


I guess I have to go to Centralia, IL to buy my next car.

The eye cancer field has really heated up in the past few years, which has added to everyone's stress over publications and grants, but has also elevated a once second-tier cancer to the limelights. Of course, the old guard are still working desparately to stay relevant, but many are resistant to the changing face of scientific research. Here's an example of an article that is clearly trying to move ahead, but has missed that most important leap:

Barak V, Frenkel S, Kalickman I, Maniotis AJ, Folberg R, Peer J. (2007) "Serum markers to detect metastatic uveal melanoma." Anticancer Research 27(4A):1897-900.

Here's the European competition along the same lines, but modernified:

Schuster R, Bechrakis NE, Stroux A, Busse A, Schmittel A, Scheibenbogen C, Thiel E, Foerster MH, Keilholz U. (2007) "Circulating tumor cells as prognostic factor for distant metastases and survival in patients with primary uveal melanoma." Clinical Cancer Research 13(4):1171-8.

Can you spot the major differences?

Ned over at StarChamber turned me on to a new option on Google Maps: you can now include waypoints in your driving directions. Being a consummate wonk, I went to work using this feature for entirely the wrong reasons, and found that, although smaller in area, Central Park in New York has a greater perimeter than Forest Park in St. Louis. As if Google hasn't already wasted enough of my time...

Just when I thought I had some semblance of a grasp on the current state of the onlines.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/DO_NOT_WANT

This has all that I have learnt over the past month, including:
Encyclopedia Dramatica
LOLcats
4chan
/b/tards

and, ultimately, the passing on of webmemes like AYBABTU to the next generation.

I'm still working out some kinks and personal preferences in the new format. In the mean time, try out some of the links over there (==>) to see what I''ve been doing with the last few years.

So, I've gone to the touble of updating the weblog: partly because it needed it; partly because I finally moved it over to blogspot; mostly because my webpresence at MadSci is on hold.

Four years later...