Schools and universities have a knack of convincing people that hard technical problems exist in nicely sandboxed environments: Ben Kuhn provides my favourite counter-justification.
A future history of biomedical progress: an interesting wishlist. Impetus Grants does really cool grant work for biotech. Thinking about tacit knowledge is also quite important.
Some aesthetically pleasing music: Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, Brahms' 3rd piano quartet), and Rachmaninoff's Suite no.2 for two pianos). Also, Brian Eno's Music for Airports, which ironically was too interesting for airports.
Some fun papers:
- Genome-wide RNAi against Covid: an interesting application of massively parallel siRNA discovery.
- Anti-aging strategies and ex vivo organ rejuvenation
- Transposons and aging
- The data center as a computer
- How to do what you love