Charles Betz Blog

There is a lot of talk currently going on in Luxembourg and among its bloggers about the occupation of an old house in the heart of the city. Yesterday, the police broke in, cut the electricity and wrote down the names of the occupants, then left. The house is owned by a private real estate agency, which has not yet ordered the evacuation of the occupants, as the building is scheduled to be destroyed and is only waiting for the permission of the mayor's office, and since the house is in a protected part of the old town, this usually takes some time. So I don't really get all the fuzz about this. Yeah sure, the left wing parties and student organizations called for a manifestation to show their solidarity. In a way I sympathize, I mean what harm can a couple of punks occupying a building do... But come on, even if the decision of the agency will be to evacuate the building once they have permission, nobody can complain about anything. So far no force had been applied by the government, except the breaking in part and the cutting the electricity part, both of which are absolutely comprehensible in my eyes. I mean what do you expect if you occupy a privately owned building? Can anybody expect to just walk into any vacant building they like and claim its their own? We all know what an autonomous zone for people like that would eventually turn into... So what's the alternative? I know this is a sensitive situation, which you certainly cannot resolve with stubbornness and brute force, and I don't think that those two have been applied so far in this case. So again, I don't really get why this is suddenly so much of an issue. Maybe somebody can broaden my horizon.

Optimizing the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel. Link

You know how I'm always freaking out when I come around a thunderstorm and find either my camera or the right lighting conditions missing. I adore thunderstorms. Everything about them is so terrifyingly beautiful (except maybe the lightning striking killing a person part), and in many ways, it is a photographic challenge that is all about preparation, reaction time and dynamic camera setting changes. With some equipment an a couple of cheap tricks, it may well work out though, that is if you're lucky of course. Yesterday, it all came down together in the single most amazing thunderstorm I've seen in a long time. It went on for hours, an the lightning frequency was very high. I almost rushed in my pajamas through the overly pouring rain and ice with my camera to the biocenter which usually offers a more stunning panorama, however I decided for my camera's sake that this would probably not be such a wise idea. Anyways, I got a couple of nice shots, and promise for the next storm a waterproof camera bag to the Biozentrum.

So initially I was planning on writing my Tom Ka Kai recipe that I prepared for last Movie Monday... However it really was not so much of a challenge, so I rather write about something else. Last weekend we went to the Sakura, which is a Japanese Restaurant belonging to the http://www.bahnhofrestaurants.ch/ at the SBB station in Basel. Well I must say I have pretty high standarts when it comes to Japanese food, but I gave it a fair trial. I cannot really say that I was highly disappointed, but I wouldn't see any reason to go back any time soon either. The online reservation worked very well, and the interior of the restaurant also looks appealing. The service though was on the lower end of the tolerance axis. Daniele had to wait 5 minutes at one point to get the same meal that the rest of us had ordered. I was trying out their Unayu or eel, which was alright, but miles away from the mouth wateringly good Unagi Bento dish in my all time favorite restaurant, the Kamakura in Luxembourg. Also I had tempura, which was also ok, but not sensational. The staff was mostly non-Japanese, from what I could tell, except for the sushi chefs. The sushi was also alright, but the rice was a tad on the dry side, and the fish didn't have this savouring texture that you expect. The prices were quite high. Maybe their teppan-yaki dishes (which were double the price of what we payed) are better, I cannot say...

Well worth a read... If you're a Star Trek geek or if you're a linguist... or maybe both?

My boss Mike Hall received this year a very important scientific prize (actually you get more money than for the Nobel prize, but that's not the important part) from the Louis-Jeantet foundation, and they decided to film our lab for a whole day. This is what came out... Don't worry, I hid well.

This does not look too convincing... ADR as 8th best match WTF?

This guy is my closest match? http://sozialrevolutioun.blogsport.de/ jeez

EDIT: and if I check which party to choose, it says either Greng or KPL...

Man I really love this chart. Should be expanded though!
Tastes Like Chicken?, Joe Staton, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.

Recommended reading!

Usually the seminars we have every couple of weeks are simply below the interest threshold of read-worthy blogging. This is not to say that they are not scientifically exciting or intriguing, they're simply not worth the effort of reading about on this blog. Every once in a while though, there are exceptions, true gems of scientific storytelling, both absolutely stunning on a work related as well as on a rhetorical level. They are rare though, that's why I decided to write about last Thursday's Growth & Development series lecture named TGFb in cancer. Don't feel intimidated about the title though... Anyways, we gathered at 16:15 in the seminar room on the 4th floor and brought, as usually, our pens and notebooks to be able to pretend taking notes. So the lecture started, and the first striking fact about the invited speaker (from the University of Padua) was that he could easily reach the roof by lifting his arms just a tiny bit towards the 5th floor. This is to say he was a man of a remarkable (and intimidating) statue. Did I forget to mention his name was Stefano Piccolo? He must have been used to speaking to a large crowd of noisy Italian students, since his voice was filling every last square cm in the quite moderately sized seminar room. Plus he was sort of surrounded by a U-shaped arranged set of tables that had been standing in that room, strongly looking like a boxer's ring. He was gesticulating quite a lot (well he WAS Italian afterall), and his huge arms were repeatedly reaching over the tables, as if he was literally trying to grab our attention. He was a full professor now, and his (and his lab's) publication list was nothing short of breathtaking - I don't think he can count all his Science/Nature/Cell (first-author) publications on both hands. His talk was capturing, his data and hypotheses fascinating, his voice never dull or boring. The kind of lecture you would be looking forward to if you had him as a teacher. Without getting too technical he was talking about the apparent simplicity of TGFbeta signaling, the cooperative actions of SMAD4 and mutant p53 and more. He was happy about every challenging questions and even more seemed to be honest and self-critical about his own data. The tension of his plot culminated on the instant he was uttering the words "very powerful", at which the shutters on the windows opened instantly, flooding him and the audience in bright light. I have to add that these shutters are part of one of our local Biozentrum legends, since they open and close in a seemingly random fashion throughout the day, independent (and mostly opposite) of the level of light shining on the respective window, leading to theories about a drugged monkey sitting in the 7 1/2 floor and pushing a panel of buttons at his own will. You get the idea. After the talk which went 30min over time, there was a small (in regards to the participating people at least) apéro where we had at least equally interesting chats about artifacts, life, the universe and everything... And the answer wasn't even 42... Anyways, my point being that every once in a while you meet fascinating people that can inspire you and that you can look up to (literally).