e pur si muove

One of my labmates’ father’s colleagues won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this morning. Apparently they had shared offices or something like that.

Anyway this year’s prize is for way cool research on knockout mice. Capecchi, Evans and Smithies invented the procedure to carefully prepare genetic mutations in mouse embryonic stem cells. When injected into mice, the artificial genes inserted into the stem cells inactivate, or ‘knock out’, those already in the mouse, thus effecting the desired phenotypes in aforementioned mice.

Knockout mice have been used to study the genetic factors responsible for a wide variety of ailments, such as Parkinson’s disease and obesity:

The department has been abuzz over who will win tomorrow’s physics prize and Wednesday’s chemistry prize. Chembark even has betting odds for the chemistry one. Oddly enough, Yamamoto Mayu’s chemical process to make vanilla flavoring from cow dung, winner of the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize¹ in chemistry and now of Toscanini’s Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist fame, didn’t make their list.

1. Other hysterical winners: the US Air Force “gay bomb”, a chemical spray designed to disrupt the discipline of enemy troops by making them horny for each other (Peace); a study of hamster circadian rhythms that showed that Viagra helped hamsters beat jet lag (Aviation); and a study that showed that swallowing swords can tear your esophagus (Medicine). ↩

This goes out to blogging heavyweight Kevin Lim, who is a finalist for a blogging scholarship. Having made it to the final round of the selection process, the sponsor (CollegeScholarships.org) has mysteriously decided to decide the final winner solely by populist voting. This means, of course, that it’s an all out fanwhoring popularity contest battle by readership.

Which means, of course, you can help feed Kevin through yet another year of graduate school.

Many of my readers probably know Kevin well, but here’s my take on the candidacy:

Why you should vote for Kevin

• Kevin has kewl namecards.

  

• Kevin knows femes people like mrbrown. This means he’s cool.

  

• Kevin let me crash at his hi-tech pad in Buffalo once. This also shows that he’s a cool guy.

  

• Kevin made me his first podcast subject. Eh, first one leh!
• Kevin was born to hack blogs. He even came up with a way to blog without really blogging. (Note to self: I need to look into this… ^_’ )
• Kevin’s academic adviser thinks he should win. Enough said.
• Kevin is a rabid early adopter of new social media technology. He tests all sorts of social media stuff (for example, CoComment) so that others like us don’t have to.
• Perhaps his crowning achievement to date is the (in)famous sousveillance backpack, which represents a big step forward toward technological wonders like backups of one’s life and social acceptance of 1984-flavored technologies. Also, version 5 makes him look hawt.

  

Why you shouldn’t vote for Kevin

• Kevin always gets to review cool gadgets that I don’t get to play with. Boo.
• Kevin has more readers than I do, which makes me jealous.

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• The competition is pretty darn good. If you’re the type of voter who makes an informed choice after considering all possible contenders, Kevin is up against some formidable folks.

As can be seen here, Kevin is a starving student who only gets to eat apples:

If you think (as I do) that Kevin deserves some cash to buy a more balanced diet for whoring his life online pushing the boundaries of online social media networking <your buzzword here> technologies, there’s only one thing left to do, and that’s to fill out the voting form here.

Reference

1. Kevin Lim, Vote for me: Help me win a Blogging Scholarship (worth $10k)!, 2007-10-08
2. CollegeScholarships.org, Announcing the Finalists for the 2007 Blogging Scholarship, 2007-10-08

Filed for possible amusement value:

 Yo mama’s like an overlap integral: she so fat, she overlap a ground-water well!

Reference

1. Eric Feezell, Science Creative Quaterly, Iss. 3.

Title says it all. Awww….