Blog

Science and Showmanship

October, 2011
German researchers have drafted a position paper in which they demand science be decelerated in order to improve its quality. Their points are (Die Zeit article 4/14/2011): worldwide reduction of publications to allow scientists to survey the field and ensure quality
4 min read

One wish

April, 2011
One thing I wish I was, apart from brilliant, is to be fascinated by boring things. Think about it: it would have so many advantages. Like that linear algebra class you had in high school when you could barely stay awake, and now you try to remember how to invert a matrix.
1 min read

Language change

April, 2011
After some deliberation, I decided to write my future posts in English only, to speed up my blogging freqeuency. Translation took up too much time, and in some cases prevented me from posting at all.
1 min read

Remembering the Dead, 1

November, 2010
My grandmother could never throw anything away. Occasionally, my mom and her sisters would clean out the pantry, and my cousins, siblings, and I would stand by and bet on the oldest item.
2 min read

New York I love you, but you’re bringing me down

December, 2009
Like millions before me, I arrived in New York with a sense of wonder. I had been reading on the train ride into Penn station, so my first glance of the city was when I stepped out onto seventh street.
3 min read

Belated Birthday Wishes

December, 2009
Sometimes, you see things only from a distance. Birthdays, for example (whoever had their birthday lately knows that I need a little longer). When the Wall fell, I was eight. At that time it seemed nothing special.
2 min read

Food Nerd

September, 2009
For some time now, I have been a subscriber to the magazine “Cooks Illustrated”. A friend described it as “food porn”, but the focus is less on sensual pleasure than on scientific analysis (you know that a food magazine is serious if they print in two columns, and only in B/W).
2 min read

Summertime

September, 2009
And then, suddenly, it is summer. The days are only a little bit hotter, yet the nights are warm and mediterranean. If Angelenos sat outside, this is when they’d do it.
1 min read

Science vs Engineering

August, 2009
There are two kinds of researchers: scientists and engineers. Faced with a problem, the scientist will say “How interesting” and proceed to abstract and classify it, develop experiments to reproduce it, and come up with a theory to understand it.
3 min read

Bratwurst mit Sauerkraut

August, 2009
I love eating! And I love cooking. Perhaps even more than eating. Whoever is surprised by this does not know me well. Cooking for me is far more exciting than eating the final product.
3 min read