Dr. Claus Volko

Tomorrow I'll take an exam in image processing, the day after tomorrow an exam in information systems on healthcare, till Friday our group will have to finish some documents for the software engineering project, and till Saturday some UML documents will have to be finished for another course. This leaves me little time for studying pharmacology, which actually is my primary interest at the moment. :( Anyway, I cannot complain of boredom. The pharmacology lecture by Prof. Freissmuth is really good. I attend it every day. He is one of the rare lecturers at the medical university who seem to love teaching. His lecture contains many clinical examples, anecdotes, and interaction with students. He himself poses questions to individual students, and he is equally ready to answer students' questions. I want to choose him as my examinator. But till I can take the exam, I still have to learn a lot. The other students (less than 50 in the auditory) seem to be very interested and diligent,

Gestern las ich ein wenig in Hoimar von Dithfurts Autobiografie "Innenansichten eines Artgenossen" (die ersten paar Kapitel). In der Einleitung schreibt er sinngemäß, der Mensch sei ein Geisteswesen und bedenke dabei nicht, dass sein Leib Voraussetzung für das Funktionieren seines Geistes sei. Der Mensch glaube, seine Gedankenwelt wäre uneingeschränkt; nur im Fieber stelle er fest, dass es nunmehr schwerer möglich ist, konzentriert zu arbeiten. Dazu ist zu sagen, dass ich dieser Meinung nie war; ich war immer der Meinung, dass das Denken, die "Software", auf dem Leib, der "Hardware", basiere und durch diesen eingeschränkt werde. Auch betrachtete ich den Menschen nie als Geisteswesen allein; der Mensch kann bzw. muss auch körperliche Arbeit verrichten, sich bewegen, Nahrung aufnehmen usw. Da Dithfurt immerhin Mediziner ist und daher eine organische Ausbildung hinter sich hat, fand ich diese Statements schon etwas merkwürdig. Aber ansonsten ist er mir in dem

On April 4th, "Dr. AA" posted an article on health problems which concern people using computers a lot. "Dr. AA" is anonymous and says that he is a physician who used to be working as a webdesigner before. He reports that geeks who have visited him in his office often report about short attention spans and the preference for "multi-tasking". I think I've sometimes experienced similar problems myself. As the article explains, it's difficult to say if computers are the cause or if it's rather like this that people with short attention spans often turn to computers.

Some weeks ago I discovered the portal site jugendszenen.com, a website run by Prof. Ronald Hitzler of University of Dortmund, and had the idea that an article about the demoscene might fit in there. Well, I contacted the staff, they seemed to like the idea, and it seems that in some days to weeks a demoscene category will be added to the site. As this website is visited by social scientists, maybe this will also spawn more sociological research on the demoscene.

I've got e-mail from Donald Knuth's secretary: She would like to have my postal address as Professor Knuth would like to send a letter to me. I recall having contacted him via email some months ago as I had found two things which might be errors in his books which hadn't been reported yet... Donald Knuth is a professor of computer science at Stanford University well-known for his series "The Art of Computer Programming".

http://science.orf.at/science/news/143847 "Medikamententest: Zwei Männer in Lebensgefahr  Nach einem Medikamententest in einem britischen Krankenhaus liegen sechs Männer auf einer Intensivstation. Zwei der Versuchsopfer ringen mit dem Tod." Nothing special. This may happen from time to time. You have to be aware that taking part in the testing of new drugs is dangerous for your health. Pharmaceutical companies that act as sloppily as the one described in this story are nuts. Sloppiness is the most dangerous thing for your own health. http://science.orf.at/science/news/143842 "Forscher halten H5N1-Sequenzdaten zurück  Mit den modernen genetischen Verfahren können relativ einfach ganze Stammbäume von Krankheitserregern erstellt werden. Das eignet sich zur Aufklärung der Übertragungs- und Wanderwege von Seuchen. Doch bei der H5N1-Vogelgrippe 'sitzen' offenbar viele Labors auf ihren Sequenzierdaten, um später wissenschaftlichen Ruhm zu ernten." I guess scientist

In the evening, I will leave for Mainz and thence for Bingen. I'll be at Breakpoint 2005 until Monday. Then I'll return to Vienna. As usual, I'm not excited at all (this is not to be misunderstood: what I want to say is that I have neither positive nor negative feelings) and wonder whether the change of surrounding may do some harm to my creative flow, but it's possible that I will be able to get some interesting ideas and meet interesting people - these are the reasons for my visiting the party. I'll take along a notebook (not a computer - a notebook made of paper!) and a pen in order to be able to write during the party so maybe my creative flow will be kept unabridged. I'm not posting the results I get on tests of any kind since they have gotten on blog readers' nerves, but I want to say that when I'm taking tests now, I also try to analyze the mental processes that happen. One conclusion so far is that even culture-fair intelligence tests (supposed t