Country Human Development Rank

The Economist has an interesting thought exercise about Venezuela and Chavez lies even if none of them is mentioned.  In the chart below, using available data, The Economist has tried to imagine where would the different US states rank in the world Human Development Index if each one tomorrow became an independent nation.

Quite surprising no?  Mississippi, US 50th, above Italy, world 25th!

My point is that on occasion Chavez loves to point out how Venezuela is rising in such ranking games (with data offered by the regime, data that cannot be audited, data that international organizations accept at face value because, well, no one can conceive a government able to fraud and fudge tot he extent the Venezuelan does).   Well, The Economist does not bother taking us, Venezuela, into account, not even Chile, our top of the class.  On occasion also Chavez tells us how the US is unfair and has extensive pockets of poverty that the glorious bolivarian revolution must help rescue.  For example giving discount heating oil to misery laden Massachusetts (not in the table but certainly comparable to neighboring New York at position 6 or Connecticut at position 1).  Or bemoaning the fate of the poor in the South with Mississippi maybe at 50, is above Italy and quite close to Britain that no one in Venezuelan imaginary would consider a poor country...  Heck, even Texas is above socialist Denmark!

Maybe Chavez can arrange for me to be traded for someone equivalent, education and responsibility wise, in Jackson Mississipi.  The way things are going in Venezuela I am willing to consider the swap.

Memories of a Molecular Biologist

Yours truly used to be a hard core scientist, PhD in Molecular Biology. But life went through and I dropped the matter over a decade ago. Yet, that does not mean I forgot about it and thus I am offering you this find of stunning videos on the inner working of cells. What surprised me most is, in addition of a technology that we could not even dream on when I was a student, that I still managed to recognize on sight a lot of organelles either through their shape or function (well, after a couple of views for many, let's be honest here).

Powering the Cell: Mitochondria « XVIVO

harmit09232010 from XVIVO | Scientific Animation on Vimeo.

Still, what made me bring your attention is that the animations of these scenes is, in my opinion, more exciting that what you can find in Star Wars and the like. There you have imagination at play in interstellar combat whereas in these videos it is nature, it is what we suspected was happening 20 years ago; and in beauty and complexity it surpasses anything that intergalactic imagination has been able to come up with.

There are other videos by this company, one that I liked The Inner Life of the Cell « XVIVO. The life of an immune system killer cell.  Beats the Death Star!

Now that I think of it, my past probably explains a lot why I have little patience with fundamentalists and creationists of which chavismo is only one weird variety.... but i digress....