Recent Content
How do we know the vaccine works?
posted on 2021-12-17
In the past few months, and especially in the last weeks, I have been doing some pretty intensive research on the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccines. I was getting a lot of questions on it from some of my friends, and I wanted to be able to give them my perspective on this as a biologist looking at the scientific literature. I've been working on a longer document looking at all sorts of issues that people bring up, but for starters I‘d like to give a quick overview of some of the studies that look at the vaccines’ efficacy. In other words: how do we know these vaccines actually work?
more...Putting the vaccinated at risk
posted on 2021-09-24
Background: A friend of mine shared a meme about Covid vaccinations with the caption: “The protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn't protect the unprotected.” Here is my response:
more...Tote Kinder durch Corona-Impfung?
posted on 2021-06-30
Hintergrund: Eine Bekannte teilte online die Analyse eines Biologen (Hervé Seligmann), nach der angeblich Covid-Impfungen von Erwachsenen zu einer erhöhten Mortalität bei nicht-geimpften Kindern führt. Hier schaue ich mir diese “Studie” genauer an:
more...On the effectivity of masks against Covid-19
posted on 2021-04-29
Background: A friend of mine shared a post that quoted the CDC as saying: “CDC is not aware of any randomized control trials that show that masks or double masks or cloth face coverings are effective against COVID-19.” As my response turned out a bit longer than expected, I'm archiving it here for future reference…
more...Review: Lessons from the Presidents
posted on 2019-12-23
“Leadership – Lessons from the Presidents for Turbulent Times” is the magnum opus of US presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is hands-down the best book I read this year, and quite possibly the most inspiring book on leadership I have ever read. But let's start at the beginning.
more...A poisoned democracy
posted on 2019-11-05
It's time to talk. I've been thinking about this for months, and it's time to – well, not stop thinking, but start talking. What's bugging me? That Americans have stopped talking. Or at least, that they no longer seem to talk with each other, but only about each other – that the concept of political debate has been given up in favour of self-reinforcing bubble building and the creation of an all-pervading enemy mentality.
Why does this bother me, sitting safely on the other side of the Big Pond? Because I can see it affecting my friends, and because the same societal patterns are beginning to manifest themselves here in Germany, too. America was the first modern democracy and we have learnt much from its experience and example. But right now, I find myself praying: “God, don't let us become like the United States.” The Land of the Free and the Brave has become a poisoned democracy.
more...Some final thoughts on programming
posted on 2019-10-14
In the past seven posts of this series, we've looked at how to make software understandable, reliable, and extendable. We've seen techniques for dealing with errors, reducing complexity, and developing in teams. We've touched on different programming languages and paradigms, and conventions for documenting code. Of course, these have been very cursory glances; but hopefully enough to give a brief overview of what to think about when developing software in a scientific context. Now, in closing, I want to mention two last topics and give a few pointers on where to go from here.
more...Developing in a team
posted on 2019-07-30
Although a lot of scientists who write code usually work on their own, there will always be occasions when one becomes part of a development team. This could be because a junior colleague is joining your project (or vice versa), or because the software you are working on is so large and complex it requires the joint efforts of several people to complete. These scenarios not only make the principles we have already discussed more important (readable code, good architecture, etc.), they also necessitate a whole new set of procedures.
more...Dumping Mendeley for Zotero
posted on 2019-07-15
For several years, my library program of choice was Mendeley, which used to be a fantastic piece of software that perfectly fit my needs. Unfortunately, phenomenally bad management and some very dubious design choices have made it pretty much unacceptable. I've hesitated for a long time, but last week I decided it was time to take the plunge and have now switched to Mendeley's open source competitor, Zotero. Here's my first impression.
more...Programming tools: paradigms
posted on 2019-07-08
When we talk about “using the right tools” in programming, that applies to a lot of different choices one can make. One is the choice of programming language, which we covered in the last article. Another important “tool set” to be aware of is that of programming paradigms.
more...This blog covers africa, animals, biology, books, christianity, computers, conservation, covid-19, democracy, deutsch, ecology, education, essay, favourites, games, gis, history, leadership, lisp, politics, programming, projects, science, social media, society, terranostra, tutorials, writing
