I promise to post at least once every two days

It's been a while since the last time I posted a fresh post. Sorry about that. After the Googleplex (which I'll keep on posting about)I went to San Francisco for a night (what a night!), then headed to Palo Alto to the house of a person from the Millennium Project, who in a very kind move, offered me to stay with him and his wife for a couple of days before we all were heading to Orange, where my cousin lives. I got a glimpse of Northern California way of life if you are wealthy. And I must say I became in love with the landscapes of Northern California too and with many things of it. Truly beautiful and touching. And innovation is even more beautiful and puzzling in some ways (BTW: I am reading “The myths of innovation” by Scott Berkun, got it for free (TANSTAAFL?) at Google from a stand from O' Reilly Media). Went to the Tech Museum, to Pebble Beach, to Monterrey, and the to Orange. Weekend in San Diego. More about all that later.

Second Day at Scifoo part II

The second session was called “The Future History of Biology” and was by Rob Carlson.
He made a nice comparison between the history of aviation, the history of computing and the future history of Biology. According to Carlson there is a very good parallelism between these technologies. A difficult beginning with a small community of people working in key issues, with impressive achievements by trial and error rather than by any analytical method, (Lillienthal machine, Chanute, Wright bros.), with the achievements separated by years, later a phase where empirical design yields good results, but general rules are still needed (plane design during WWII) and then an age where general principles are at hand and CAD is possible (Boeing). Some people claimed that current aeronautic industry has become stagnated because the expensive that projects are and because there's no market anymore for further developments, compared to the invest they need. I pointed out that biology is not aeronautics. Biology is cheap and self replicant, so in any case if CAD becomes applied to biology the result will be more like current OS development than like designing expensive aircrafts. Some other person said that synthetic biology is impossible to become really successful because modeling the cell is an n-body problem and we lack truly accurate simulations, so, it is not possible to engineer bacteria or other organisms. I said that we do not know the exact solution to Navier-Stokes equations, and that does not prevent us from flying everyday. He called us in a very polite way (again, the eternal politeness of the Americans) ignorants, because only people ignorant of the last 200 years of organic chemistry could be so hopeful about synthetic biology. If we were computers, based in silicon discussing the possibility of this crazy thing called life, I would say he has a point. But we aren't. We are alive, we have ribosomes (something lacked by organic chemists), our bodies do molecules that are extremely complex. He liked to make this phony analogy between systems biology and not being able to travel faster than light and about the possible consequences and about the things we do not see in the universe that we would see if it could be possible to travel faster than light. But, we do see in our body and in our surroundings that in fact it is possible to create complex systems from biological parts. That it might be much more difficult than we think? That we are too happy-go-lucky about the issue? Probably. Maybe it will be tougher than we think and we are a bunch of babblers, but it is not impossible, whether or not n-body problem a cell is not a soup with n pieces of chicken, beef and vegetables. According to that argument electronics is impossible, as we cannot know accurately the position of an electron, and if we cannot know the basics, what hope is there for more advanced applications? That is the reason why we use psionic power for the Internet.
The next session I attended was a presentation by James Randi about several subjects, including homeopathy and psychics. Randi is a terrific speaker and his presentation one of the funniest in Scifoo, like his lucid debunking of homeopathy with the analogy of having to drink 26 swimming pools of water from a homeopathic dilution in order to find a single molecule of claimed active principle in some homeopathic preparations (for others, numbers are even worse!).

After that, I had lunch with Marc Marti Renom, from the Synaptic Leap, to discuss our joint presentation later, then looked for James Randi, for my first session. More about that later.

Some remarks: Yes, the food in Google is as good as the myth says.

Second Day at Scifoo part I

More on Scifoo:

On Saturday I attended to several sessions:

A session on Open Science 2.0, by Bora Zivkovic that was not as productive as I expected. In fact, it gave origin to another session next day, by Alex Palazzo and Andrew Walkingshaw. The session wasn't specially interesting because most of us did not agreed about the direction we should be heading to and about the real effect of blogging, open notebooks and the future of the peer review system. Discussion about tenure was a major issue and showed one of the fundamental disagreements, based on the fact that blogging and keeping an Open Notebook was much easier and risk free when one is a tenured professor rather than a young scientist. I am not worried about the issue and given the fact my thesis advisor is interested in exploring the open side of things, I will probably have an open notebook once I begin my experimental work, if someone is obnoxious enough to not accept me at his lab or at his program because I have blogged or because I have written about strange matter like animal uplifting and economic effects of nanoassamblers, then that person is somebody I do not want to work with. And I am not afraid of not getting grants because of the same reason. Let's put it in another way: I am afraid of that whether open access and open notebooks or without them. Science is a difficult field. But I can understand that people are afraid about blogging and is not as cold blooded about the fact as is my case, after all, I am an undergrad who has almost nothing to lose (and a lot of things to win, I have traveled a lot thanks to my unconventional writing) and a thesis advisor who has proven unconditional approval and almost infinite patience, their situation might be different, being in top universities, extremely competitive places and possibly about to begin their own research, as they are postdocs (And they are so young, man, I am ashamed!). But let me focus on this session, as the facts I have discussed partially belong to the other session on Sunday. In a surprising situation (or perhaps not so surprising), the young scientists told to the old ones to discuss more about the current set of rules about blogging and open access, rather than speculating about the mid term future of publishing, it was nuts. A couple of not-so-young (let's be polite, as Americans are extremely polite) people were besides me talking in whispers and complaining about these kids who dared not to look at the future. Scifoo is a really special conference, it seems. Another traditional complaint that arose was the extreme slowness of the peer-reviewing process in Biology and the subjectiveness of the “impact” or earth-shaking criteria that allow papers being published in certain top-journals.

Among the new things said there were the need about separating the communication of the results from its evaluation (Open Notebooks), suggestions about including criteria for grant selection that encouraged open access. The difference between Open Access and Free Access, this is, freedom to use vs. freedom to read only. The Nature Precedings were not discussed in-depth in this sessions, but I am very happy that people in Nature Publishing Group is going in the right direction. Other interesting ideas were creating a certifying system for scientists, a Science Whuffie (nobody used the term, but I think it's corrrect to call it that way), based not only in publications but in reputation among peers. I think I would do better in that one that in the current system, so I am biased and please do not take my opinion as a neutral one, but I just love that idea.

Bora Zivkovic from the Public Library of Open Science (PLOS) gave some thrilling numbers: So far, in three years, they have published more than 700 papers, 40% of which are rejected for non sound science, as they are open, not uncritical, but earth-shaking-ness is not necessary, they publish now around 30 papers a week. I learned that blogs have been cited in papers and that there are people that say we need alternatives to citation systems, something I had never thought about. Others argued about the current format of papers being doomed in the mid term future, and that the future lies in machine readable formats that we humans learn from without worrying by petty issues, others argued back that papers are now machine-readable, pdf is convertible to text. Wow. Did I say that it was a kind of disappointing session? Yes, it was! A lot of extremely good ideas being overwhelmed by the discussion on more pedestrian issues and extreme disagreement. But I will write more about that later.

Another geek in the con

Finally.
This was the Day 1 of the Scifoo.
I will deliver a presentation about Open Source Biomedical Research and another one about skepticism and rational thinking.
Today's presentation were great, about presenting scientific data in new and innovative ways, the total amount of energy available on Earth, about systems biology and Eau D'E. coli, coli bacteria that smells like banana and about life in space. We had a lot of fun, the Googleplex is amazing and I spotted some big names in science and software development, and in SF too. And in skepticism.

I am barely awake, I will post more tomorrow. But today I met: Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Bear, James Randi, and a lot of interesting biologists too. And I got a model of a Buckyball!

Alert. Orange Code.

I am not dead. I was in Minneapolis at the time the bridge collapsed, but I wasn't near it, I was at the Mall of America, the biggest mall in the USA, the temple of the religion of consumerism. And I found it pretty disappointing. Even in Venezuela there are much nicer malls. And, as most the things the stores had to offer were not interesting for me, so it was like a giant and very neat junkyard. But you know, one man's trash is another man's treasure. The Lego store was amazing. There, even I became a consumerist. The T rex was great. And I bought some Lego for my brother too. And some postcards. I will post the pics once I return home, cable is not here.

Concerning the title of this entry, it is what I have been listening since I entered at the airport in Minneapolis. In fact, I saw the message in a billboard a couple of km. before the airport. It's so strange to be here in these circumstances. The paranoia is damn real, but at the same time the people is smiling, polite (Side note: Something really awful happened at Transvision 2007 that made me painfully aware of the degree of paranoia currently experienced in the “freest country in the world”, but I will post about it later) and even the TSA officers are joking, well at least some. Certainly not the guy who inspected my laptop looking for traces of explosives. He did not looked very happy when the answer to the question “Where are you from?” turned to be “Venezuela”. To hell with him, and to hell with Chávez too.

I am currently at Denver, switching planes, waiting for going to San Francisco. But here there is not free wi-fi. Neither in the Minneapolis airport. It's more difficult than I thought to find free wi-fi, and it beats my expectations of free wireless connection becoming something like public lights. So far for agalmic connections, but, fortunately, this country is not the whole world. From the point of view of studying models for post scarcity societies, it does not matter, since I will be this afternoon at the Googleplex.

I am very nervous, now I am on the plane. Going to my baptism in Geekness (Or should I say Geekhood?). Google, there I go!

I'm still alive

And rocking.

Wow, last week has been incredibly exciting. I am all wasted. Fortunately, I have two days to rest before the SCifoo.

I will try to write a longer post tomorrow, but these are the highlights:

Transvision 2007: It was a great conference. Speakers were hyper-interesting, and I met a lot of people. Maybe some projects will come out. Sorry I cannot give any detailed reviews now, but George Dvorsky is already doing the reviews, and very good ones, I must say. We had a lot of fun and he was one of the few people who attended my presentation the day before the main events.

Planning Meeting of the Millennium Project: An unimagined diversity. People form everywhere except Antarctica, in words of Jerry Glenn. A diversity of issues, and my work was recognized, and appreciated. I might begin to work as consultant applying their State of the Future Index to local nodes. Paid job!.

World Future Society: Your standard futurist mostly rich-Caucasian meeting. But there were good conferences also. A pity that I am now sick of conferences, too tired. But it was exciting, and I had a lot of things to say. Hopefully, next year they will webcast.

Interesting people I met:
Anders Sandberg
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Ron Bailey
Gregor Wolbring
Sprite X

And a whole lot more.

Funny issues: Currently I am at Minneapolis, I expected to find a lot of fundies. I did not, but as I was writing this post, there comes this guy, blond, goatee, staring at me and smiling. What the hell is this? And then he comes, he lowers into the chair and whispers "Jesus loves you". I pretend to not understand, and when he say it again, I say "Oh, man love another man. Jesus gay?". He just said "HAVE A NICE DAY, SIR"

Updates. 4 dollars in my pocket, a million of dreams in my head:

Greetings from... Colombia!

Finally I begun this trip. I am anxious.

I could not leave Mérida last Tuesday, because the University still had not bought my ticket because the person who was supposed to it wasn't at his office. Finally I got the money for the ticket on Wednesday, but then, it was too late, because of the holidays. There wasn't a single ticket available for the twentieth, the available tickets were for dates like the 26^th and the rates the double of the money my university was going to cover, so I was going to miss Chicago, even if could still go to Minneapolis and to Mountain View. I was desperate, but the travel agent did a great job and found an itinerary for today, arriving to Bogotá today in the morning, then waiting 14 hours in Eldorado Airport and arriving to JFK airport in New York tomorrow morning. A little bit far, a lot of time waiting, but what the hell, I was lucky to get a plane and deliver the presentation.

I was worried about the fourteen hours, since I have almost no cash, due to the currency exchange control. I have almost four dollars in cash. In my prepaid credit card (another strange consequence of the currency exchange control, a card that officially is a credit card but works as a prepaid one) I do have money, but I was still worried. But my good luck was beyond belief, I am am beginning to think I am an ancestor of Teela Brown, because due to the lack of seats in the flight to NY, I got a first class seat and then I am allowed to use the VIP lounge at the airport. So, I am writing this from a cozy leather couch, drinking iced mocaccino and eating sandwiches. I am saving my tuna cans for later, three meals I will enjoy without paying. I slept well, I installed Ubuntu again, I am downloading Bioinformatics packages, I sudo-ed, installed the drivers and got functional wi-fi again, which is impossible for me in Windows for strange reasons.

I only spent a day in Caracas, I could not see my sisters, I was pretty sad about it, but I will see them next month. What a hectic day yesterday. I called to my cousin in California and she bought a ticket from NY to Chicago, I will arrive tomorrow at 3:00. Thanks, darling! Human altruism never ceases to amaze me. This trip is possible thanks not only to the people who invited me, but to a lot of people who believes in me and are helping me. Not just my family, but friends and my thesis advisor. I am lucky to have them and I am deeply thankful for it.

I got a grant request for getting my ticket to San Francisco payed refused. Well, I still have chance to get it paid. If not, I'll have to borrow money, but, what the heck. This is once in a lifetime chance.

I am getting sleepy, these lasts days were a constant rush and I did not sleep last night. But the nerves are hard to overcome and I finally do not sleep. At least no yet.

The VIP room is alien to me. An agalmic environment, obviously, but not a useful one. Here you have the basic needs covered, but does that leads to creativity? Maybe yes, maybe no. But the fact that I am writing this entry, downloading bioinformatics packages and studying for the presentation rather than complaining and sited in the floor. The people here is very rich, and often, very old. Some of them are really strange persons, they seem to live in another world. A guy was hitting his laptop and shouting at it because something dropped its value. Some of their kids look like spoiled brats, but not all of them. I am feeling like a field anthropologist today, lol. And this place triggers my interest about the analysis of current agalmic environments: All included-resorts, VIP lounges, the Googleplex?. Can we find some patterns in these temporary situations that gives clues about the development and organization of post-scarcity societies? Or is it a delusion because the current agalmic environments are distorted at core by its scarcity-driven surroundings?

I would love to discuss these ideas with the anarco-transhumanists in Chicago and at the Googleplex.

Well, in 8 hours I would be leaving to NY. Hopefully I won't be rejected at customs.

First they came for my donkey, then, they came for my cow. Now, they are coming for me.

Some people in Kenya are mad at the government because the damn government (Would they be Libertarians if they moved to the US?) wants cleaner streets and want their donkeys to use diapers (I had problems with the word "nappy" until I learned what it meant few months ago).

Mr John Kinyanjui, a donkey owner, said: "The council itself has workers. They can do the sweeping. We are paying taxes." Another anonimous donkey owner said "If we have to put nappies on our donkeys, soon they will say our cows need them too,".

Tips ( for Open Notebook Science

Jeremiah recently posted some really useful tips about Open Notebook Science, you can see them here:

J's blog: Tips (rules?) for Open Notebook Science

A brief excerpt:

• include high quality images in your documents; things like agarose gels will need to be zoomed in a lot to be inspected in detail; if you convert your full resolution tiff to low-quality jpeg, it'll just look like pixelated blah. Then again, you can't always use full-size images, particularly from a high megapixels camera, because the notebook will quickly become giant; so here is my suggestion:
  
• if the image is small (<1mb)>
• if it is huge but detail doesn't matter, include a decent resolution image that can be zoomed in 2-4x and still look nice
• if it is huge and detail matters, include a decent resolution image, but also include a link to the full size image like you would for other raw data
  
• construct the document in such a way that it is easily indexed by search engines (otherwise no one will find your results; people probably wont read your lab notebook for fun)

Be sure to check the tips, they are realy useful if you are going that way. I think I will post my thesis and the models before they are released, however, probably I will write almost everything in Spanish and Fortran (Maybe SBML and Mathematica too) code.

Packing

Today my mother came to see me with my stepfather and my brother.
We had a meal together and they left to Valera, 4 hours from Mérida.
As I am leaving to Caracas on tuesday, they came to say good bye. I should be in Chicago the friday, and I will deliver my presentation on sunday.

I have already packed my clothes, my books and like 10 tuna cans, as I am going to be without much money this coming month. Hopefully, there will be wi-fi in a lot of places. I am lucky I will have a free hotel room in Minneapolis and free food and hotel in Mountain View, I also have a cousin in Anaheim, so Chicago is going to be the toughest place to be.

I am afraid about not delivering a good presentation, but I will do my best.

US, there I go.