I noticed an interesting post over on BoingBoing: “Comfort with meaninglessness the key to good programmers“. It outlines some research by Dehnadi and Bornat on attributes that can predict aptitude in computer programming. They conclude that a “deep comfort with meaninglessness” is an important predictor of programming aptitude.
I think comfort with meaninglessness is an important skill in studying biology (and probably other sciences too). Many times, during the description of a system, various acronyms are thrown about as labels for entities (or ‘actors’) in that system. An important skill of the scientist is being able to follow how all the actors in the system relate to each other, without necessarily knowing anything about the specific properties of those actors. There are lots of protein and gene names which often bear very little meaning relative to the biological entity that they label, and fixating on what ‘the name’ means simply distracts from the true nature of the entity.
Continue reading ‘Naming in molecular biology: get comfortable with meaninglessness !’
Something broke out of the picket-fence surrounding Nature Networks Blogs. I’ve never participated in a blog meme … but this one appealed to me simply because I liked the questions. I haven’t read anyone else’s answers yet, to avoid biasing my own.
1. What is your blog about?
I often ask myself this question. Being a scientist, I always feel like it should be about science, and the various biological systems I work with. I reality, it is about programming, bioinformatics, the web with the tiniest bit of structural biology thrown in. I used to blog about Linux related things occasionally, but I split that off into another blog (which gets 10 times more traffic 
).
Continue reading ‘That Science Blog Meme Thing Going Around’
So, here is my half-baked idea:
Why not have a special week where new online collaboration tools are promoted to scientists globally ?
Similar to the way local Linux user groups sometimes run “installfests” to install Linux for users, (just to get them over the initial interia), why not have a global “signup-fest” for the core set of online tools useful for scientific collaboration ? In each local area / University / Institute, a few Web2.0 savvy scientists could promote the event and hand-hold new users through the signup process, and help with basic usage and integration of tools. Ideally, lab groups could signup together in the same room, and make an event of it. Or in places with Wifi … a “bring your laptop” signup lunchtime event. I think you get the idea.
Continue reading ‘A “Web2.0 for Scientists Week”: signup-fest ?’
