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2010-04-06T15:34:00.001+02:00

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The upset mind

2010-04-06T14:45:00.005+02:00

Sometimes life is just too much to handle, everything at once. When there seems to be no right answers, and nothing to hold on to, everything is uncertain, the knowledge that everything is temporary can be a relief.
When I get emotionally overwhelmed I calm myself by the mantra "It is just a feeling, it will pass" and I thank Philip for reminding me.

Image courtesy: Hold your head up, NYtimes

The race for the Oscars

2010-02-17T12:52:00.002+01:00

Inspired by this link from a friend, I decided to challenge myself for a race for the Oscars. I want to view all the Oscar nominated films before the Academy Awards on March 7. Even though the project is ambitious, I have chosen to limit it a bit so it wont be entirely impossible, so I will only count the films that are nominated in the categories: Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress. With this limitation, I only have 13 films left to view before March 7. That should be possible... right?

Image courtesy: Oscar Ramblings

Myeloma

2010-01-07T11:55:00.005+01:00

Multiple myeloma or myelomatosis, both are different names for the same cancer illness, though sometimes defined as different stages of the cancer development.

My mother got a myeloma in her head - not in the brain, but in the cavity behind the nose, the so-called rhinopharynx (label 6 in the picture above). It is a rather peculiar place to have, and not to say to find, a tumor. My mother only discovered it when she went to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist after being bothered by symptoms of a blocked nose for over a month. That was last spring. At first the specialists thought they could treat it effectively by an intense radiation therapy through the summer, but unfortunately the tumor was made of harder stuff. Now my mother has had surgery to remove most of the tumor and she is currently going through several rounds of tough chemotherapy to kill the remaining myeloma cells.

Illustration courtesy: www.info-radiologie.ch

First stop: Iceland

2009-12-01T18:13:00.001+01:00

I looked out to see the setting sun over the sea of clouds, and I discovered clouds of a texture that I did not recognise from anywhere. It was beautiful, and I thought to myself: this is what clouds look like when they are freezing.
The fact that the stewardess not just once, but twice addressed me in Icelandic proves to me that she was convinced of my Icelandic nationality. She looked rather surprised when I later asked for a cup of tea - in English. So I could not help trying myself to facespot the Icelanders at the airport. My clothes and the shape of my face could go for Icelandic, but I think my nose would have given away my non-Icelandic heritage if she would have had a closer look at my profile.
Imagine being Icelandic. Imagine having these amazing landscapes as your home. Would you cease to see the beauty of it and leave in search of greener pastures? Or would you be bound in your heart and soul to love the views of your homeland under the forces of nature. To me it looks magical, and I want to look closer. Iceland: I will be back!

Learning the Dhamma

2009-11-09T11:50:00.000+01:00

"Don't set up any desires, because the setting up of desire is a deficiency, a hunger. And hunger, no matter when or what the sort, is pain: Hunger for sleep is pain, hunger for food is pain, hunger for water is pain. When was it ever a good thing?"

In my breaks at work, I relax by reading online texts on mindfulness and meditation. I can highly recommend this kind of reading. One very good resource for these texts is AccessToInsight.com. The above quote is from the collection of Thirteen Talks on the Practice of Meditation.

Photo courtesy: RechargeYourMind.com

Mountainscapes

2009-11-02T17:27:00.001+01:00

Lately I have been dreaming a lot about driving and travelling. Always going somewhere with some friends or family, and the setting is always somewhere away from home; a small village, narrow mountain roads, a glacier, or an open field at high altitude - sometimes with snow.
A few days ago I had a particular beautiful memory from my dreams. I was (with friends/family?) in a sort of tram in the shadow of the mountain, and when I looked around I saw the most marvelous mountainscape of yellow-green mountainsides, bathed in the last rays of the setting sun, against a clear (autumn?) sky.

I googled mountainscape and found this photo that reminds me of my dreamview.
Photo courtesy: http://fotofoobar.shankraft.com/

The enormous chocolate shop

2009-10-20T13:00:00.002+02:00

I dreamt of an enormous chocolate shop. No, not a shop made of chocolate, but a shop selling chocolate: bonbons, marcipan, cakes and the like. And the shop was big - like a supermarket. And although I took my time to explore it, I did not even see it all. All chocolate was arranged on plates set on tables covered with white cloth, which gave the whole shop a very exclusive look. I found it strange that the items near the counter turned out to be also chocolate, but from known brands like Toblerone bars and marcipan from Anton Berg. Funny how you remember strange details from dreams...

Illustration courtesy: White Rabbit Chocolate

The land of cranberries

2009-09-30T13:20:00.002+02:00

The island of Terschelling, in the Dutch Waddenzee, is famous for its cranberry delicacies. It did not really occur to me how how famous or how ubiquitous before I realised that the umpteenth meal I was served there contained the ump^2-iest version of cranberries I had been served. They make cranberry jam, cranberry cake, cranberry juice, cranberry liquor, cranberry you-name-it-and-they-got-it!

Illustration courtesy: Vinkes Web - Cranberries

Where did the shrimp go?

2009-09-24T14:57:00.003+02:00

Have you seen this shrimp? Two weeks ago, I added five black crystal shrimp to our department aquarium in addition to the three red crystal shrimp and three larger Malawa shrimp already there. The black striped shrimp soon went into hiding, and became difficult to spot, but as of today I fail to find any of them. Have you seen them? Did they leave a message? Did you or a Chinese girl eat them?

We welcome any hints to solve the mystery of the missing shrimp.

Illustration courtesy: www.petshrimp.com

Get rid of those fruit flies in your kitchen

2009-08-31T11:29:00.003+02:00

When it is not enough to just remove fruit fly attracting stuff, it may be necessary to employ more drastic methods for fruit fly elimination. In our kitchen we have had great success with the following recipe:
In a small bowl, pour half a cup of vinegar, one drop of detergent and a bit of water to mix. Soon the flies will be circling the bowl and, after tasting the deliciously smelling mix, they will drop dead [evil laughter!]

Illustration courtesy: eHow - How to naturally get rid of fruit flies

Dinosaur Comics

2009-08-24T14:09:00.006+02:00

My favourite T-Rex appears every day in dinosaur comics on qwantz.com

Illustration from this interview "Humor from the North" from the People You Don't Know podcast.

Light after the storm

2009-07-25T16:53:00.003+02:00

The weather has been very moody lately, sunshine, rain, storm, sunshine, clouds, sunshine, thunderstorm, rain, rain, sunshine, clouds... But I love the way the colours of the world are illuminated by the returning sun.

Photo courtesy: shenqiflow.gaia.com

Waterboarding

2009-06-17T15:43:00.002+02:00

Nobody these days claim that the "witches" of the middle ages were given a fair trial. It is obvious that they were tortured till they either confessed or died. Then why would anyone believe the argument that torture is a reliable way of interrogating suspected terrorists?

Illustration courtesy: clouddragon.wordpress.org

Get up!

2009-05-16T13:43:00.002+02:00

If you spend too much of your day sitting down, you are likely to have a shorter life span than if you sit less. Thorough research from a long-term (12 year) study of 17,013 Canadians showed that mortality rates increase with higher level of daily sitting time, independent of leisure time physical activity. In other words, the bad effect you get from sitting down for most of the day is not eliminated by increased exercise in your spare time. So get up from that chair!

Read the original research paper from Katzmarzyk et al.
Illustration courtesy: AdjustableBeds.com

The pied piper

2009-05-12T14:34:00.002+02:00

Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

When I mentioned the children rhymes of A.A. Milne, Philip drew attention to the rhyme of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The origin of the story is not all fiction, but we can be certain that the story is not all facts...

Currently reading

2009-04-28T17:04:00.002+02:00

Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake
Dreaming - a very short introduction
The Brain - a very short introduction
QED by Richard Feynman
Collected short stories by Roald Dahl
Den femte revolution by Lone Frank
The man who mistook his wife for a hat by Oliver Sacks
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Emotions - a very short introduction

Since I started writing this post I finished reading Mr. Pye, but I left it here, just to make the list look longer...

Blossom rain

2009-04-24T12:55:00.003+02:00

Cycling to work today, a brisk but warm breeze came against me, just as I was passing by a row of trees in bloom. Moments like that are too surprising, too short and too rare to catch on film or show to friends, but the image is still on my mind. I will dream of it again, reminded by photos like this of awesome cherry blossoms.

Photo courtesy: Fine Rain on Flickr

Danish culture

2009-04-23T17:17:00.002+02:00

Trying to catch up on the Danish culture I have missed out on by ignorance or simply by living abroad, I have watched a lot of Danish films lately. Yesterday, reviewing Idioterne, I came to think about how little censorship was and is enforced in Danish media.
Naked people? No problem, show it on the silverscreen, show the kids on primetime TV. Naked people by Lars von Trier? The same... however these characters engage in explicit sex, in broad daylight, 10+ people in the same scene. No big stir, no uproar, except outside Denmark. So I am wondering: does this give Danish culture an image of tolerance, or plain blunt insensitivity?

Lost my number

2009-04-16T18:40:00.004+02:00

I have lost my Skype-in number... It belongs to someone else now. It is like loosing a little piece of something that was part of my identity, along the lines of loosing a domain name that you have been using for years. Rather sad circumstances, but that is the way things go if you do not renew your subscription.

And here I must say that it is not because Skype did not give me the chance, no they notified me even more than once that my subscription was due, and that they would keep the number in reserve for me for three months (in case I would still like to keep the same number). Unfortunately for me, three months passed, I did not renew, and now my number is gone.

The worst part is to choose a new number, and then circulate it to all my friends, telling them the old one is no longer valid. Maybe it will happen sometime in this millenia...

Illustration courtesy: www.invata-mate.info

Water the plants

2009-04-06T13:47:00.002+02:00

A company specialised in installing and caring for plants in office environments did exactly that; they installed and cared for plants in our whole department. Except, they did not manage the "care" part. To some it may seem to be a bigger problem to buy and transport the plants and decide where to place them, but for these guys it seemed to be more difficult to send someone to water the plants at a regular interval.

Now we water our plants ourselves.

Illustration courtesy: homeexchangetravel.blogs.com

Garfield minus Garfield

2009-03-16T11:30:00.002+01:00

Did you ever imagine reading your favourite comic without the main character of the comic? Well, Dan Walsh did, and he unfolded his creative idea (apparently with the blessing of Jim Davis) by making the website: GarfieldMinusGarfield.net

I love it! Thanks Dan, I will keep an eye on your blog to see what else fun you are up to.

Postcard from Norway

2009-03-14T12:41:00.003+01:00

For the first year of many, I have not been on skiing holiday with my family. Today I received a postcard with greetings from everyone. It sure made me long for the snowy deserts of Norway...

Bioinformatics and experimentation

2009-03-09T12:38:00.003+01:00

Russ Altman got a good discussion going on his blog. The many reactions were initiated by a post about bioinformatics people and whether or not they benefit from experience in the experimental lab.

See also: The blog of Russ Altman

I am an idiot

2009-02-18T00:59:00.001+01:00

You will find more excellent comics at xkcd.com