Useful, Time-waster, or Useful time-waster?

Edinger-Westphal neurons in culture. Stained for Tubulin (green) and Synapsin (red) Image via flickr

I've come to the conclusion that people in science are just really efficient procrastinators. And you know what really smart people do when they procrastinate? They come up with really cool ideas. Like this, meet Bionumbers. (B1ONUMB3R5?)

Its tagline is "The database of useful biological numbers", for when you just need a number and you end up poring through text books or endless articles when you need, the radius of an ATP molecule (~.7 nm) or the mean excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) amplitude of C. elegans. (38 +/-2.1 Hz), gosh I always forget that one, or just, overall human genome size (~3.08e9 bp). Oh, and an adult male brain has an average of 8.61e10 +/-8.12e9 neurons. Which makes perfect sense.

You search for something, it pops up in a handy table, and it even comes with a citation, so you know, you don't have to cite Bionumbers in whatever homework assignment/paper you're doing.

It looks like fun. I just spent a lot of time under Amazing BioNumbers and found out that the characteristic heart rate of a pond mussel was 4-6 beats per minute.

I would classify that piece of knowledge as could-be-conceivably-useful-in-conversation-time-waster.

Those systems biologists, what will they come up with next.