Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Hello Blogosphere!


PREFACE


A couple of weeks ago, when I found myself reading "PREFACE"s of several books I was about to borrow from the library, I felt like I was getting old and serious (not in a bad sense though). This was something I would have hardly done before. Now I understand why books have such intro pages, and who reads/needs them.

I had to read them, because there was a pile of 20 books on "religion and evolutionary theory" (which will be one of the popular topics I'll be writing on here), I did not want to borrow all of them because I am not an alien with 8 arms, so I needed a quick summary of what a book was about. I also wanted to know the vision of the writer. (As a part of growing up, another thing I knew was that not all books were worth reading, and I was smarter than a lot of people. Obviously, though, I was still too young to be modest, but lets talk about it later).

So, call me boring, and skip this very first entry of this blog if you like, but for those out there who do not have the time trying to figure out what the blog is about and what kind of a person I am, here is my very first PREFACE (sounds like the first grey hair growing out of my skull doesn't it?)

I am a graduate student (as we speak) working on limb development and regeneration. I live in New Orleans - USA, I am an expert of evacuation from hurricanes -which is a crucial qualification as a grad student if you live here-. I am originally from Turkey (where there are maybe 3 camels, no pyramids, and craziest creationists on the planet).

I love research and science, and I want this blog to revolve (and evolve) around science. I want it to be more conceptual than just discussing some hard core scientific data, or reporting what's new in the literature (although I'll probably do these as well). The idea of having this blog originates from the fact that, -I believe- most people in biological sciences tend to get lost in their specific research area, and they (including me) forget to look at the bigger picture. We almost lose our imagination. I live with the paranoia that the answers to my questions are so obvious and easy, but I cannot see them because I am obsessing myself with details. I am hoping that you smart people out there will come up with these answers and eventually write my Ph.D. thesis for me.

The tag cloud of this blog might look like this in a year:

regeneration, limb development, evolutionary biology, creationism, Gallus gallus, Xenopus leavis, alternative model organisms, science and religion, science education, open source science, creativity, "I love progressive", "I am confused"...

Finally, the name of the blog comes from, well obviously one of the greatest movies ever made. But also, besides from being a suitable definition of my thoughts, Frizzled is a receptor of Wnt signaling pathway. When I started graduate school, the first project I worked on was how the Wnt signaling pathway regulated kidney development. So now, I have a thing for this pathway :)

I hope you'll enjoy reading this blog and will share your frizzled thoughts so we can poke each others brains, bounce and get ideas from each other. Science has to become more "open source". And I'll be brainwashing you all here in this blog about that as well.

Ok good people of Earth, it's on!

Photograph by A. Murat Eren.

7 comments:

  1. This is wonderfully exciting! I'm looking forward to reading all about your work... I've added the RSS to my homepage, so I'll be checking daily! (^_^)b

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  2. I met with a well-known physicist (he develops theoretical approaches to biological problems) and he told me I need to learn how to look at my research from 30,000 feet away. He also told me people who work especially in biological problems forget this approach and lose themselves in details.
    By the way, the system I try to understand its binding specificity (PDZ domain) is related to Frizzled :) So I am also looking forward to reading your work.

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  3. Yes, I think the people who can come up with novel techniques or simple but great ideas are the ones who can look at the research 30,000 feet away :) I guess most of us have some sort of vertigo though. You just have to get over it.

    My current work is not related with Frizzled that much, but that does not mean that I will not write about it.

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  4. "Religion and evolutionary theory" sounds great! I can't be counted "very" familiar with evolutionary theory itself but I have a big appetite nowadays, hey, have a made start already, as being very close to finishing Dennett's book, "Beraking the Spell".

    Looking forward to your posts.

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  5. "A couple of weeks ago, when I found myself reading "PREFACE"s of several books I was about to borrow from the library, I felt like I was getting old and serious (not in a bad sense though)."

    Nice save with the parenthesis, as I have a fetish of reading prefaces in bookshops. I think prefaces tell a lot about a book in a brief glance, and a brief glance is all you will get when you're in a library or sth with tones of other books begging for your attention.. So I don't judge a book by its cover, you see, but i do judge it by its preface.. (Nah not really, I just made this up, sounded cool enough)

    Welcome to the blogosphere!

    But that's enough sweet talk. :)) Come on, write something already! I want this site to brim with fallacious creationists (not that I've seen one that it isn't, that's almost by definition) and, to counter that, to brim with lots of intelligent biology stuff that I probably won't have a clue as to their actual meanings. But if you think that this cluelessness will deter me from making uninformed and, let's face it, longish comments about them and bugging the living willies out of you, I say you got another think coming..

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  6. I've added you to my RSS reader and look forward to your blog. Show the creationists who's boss!

    lex
    thejoyoflex.wordpress.com

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  7. http://nodrylight.wordpress.com/about/

    Check out the second comment. I mailed him back accepting the offer. You should totally join too! So you'll have an excuse to kick-start this site (any other blog owner, with an admiration of Darwin who reads this should jump in too). I'm writing this here, instead of in an email, so that I can do, hmm how do you say in Turkish, emrivaki?

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