There used to be a map of above-ground nuclear test sites on Google earth. Bring some lead underwear, just to be safe.

I second this vote for Notability. I have tried a bunch of other, but find the combination of typing (with bulleted text options), hand writing, drawing, sound and picture taking really great. It also has sync and export that work well.

It may be less probable, but not improbable. Bacteria are so abundant, reproduce so fast, and can have such high mutation rates that probability is almost always on their side. They also can develop resistance in many ways other than "making enzymes." The likelihood of them developing resistance is proportional to the selection acting on them. If we put this stuff everywhere, selection will be very strong. They will develop resistance.

What is the evidence that considering those factors has increased our ability to deal with "real world problems"? I am not saying that real problems do not have multiple dimensions. I am asking why all scientists should be required to work in cross-disciplinary groups. I don't see evidence that this approach has been more productive. At the very least, I think we should examine the evidence. Training a few people in the right specialties might be a better approach. As other posts on this thread have made clear, innovative "basic" research on obscure topics have often made a huge difference when later applied to "real" problems. Training future scientists to focus on only cross-disciplinary approaches to "real" problems will cut off an important source of innovation.

Precisely why should we emphasize cross-disciplinary research? What is the evidence that this approach is better than more narrowly focussed research? I would agree that we have too many PhDs, too few jobs for them, and or too little incentive for real innovation. I would also agree that the system needs reform. I don't agree that we should all be doing cross-disciplinary research.

Are you a virtual scientist if you work on a computer?

Cornell University hosts a great biology focused site (ecology and behavior mostly). http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citsci/ One of my favorites is NestCam, but eBird and Great Backyard Bird Count are also great.

I have been using Sente. It allows you to sync one library with three copies of Sente on different computers. It also allows some copies to have restricted access, so you can share your libraries with friends. It a way to annotate within a pdf or to annotate the record.

I support this suggestion. You can then also use it for email and other management tasks, without being tied to a desk. I have begun using it for lectures and keeping track of tasks.

I would second this opinion. I am a Biologist with, as I sometimes say, "a penchant for the virtual". I have spent much of the last 8 years writing programs, sometimes rather clumsily, to answer questions or demonstrate complex concepts. I have often wished I had a programmer to help me. I cannot pay one now, but I do write $$ into grant applications for someone with more programming chops than me. Your age would not affect my willingness to hire you.

My suggestion would be to look at Bioinformatics. There is more money in that field now and a huge need for programmers. Also check http://www.nescent.org/ for an example of a broader effort to develop software to deal with rapidly growing large sequence and gene expression datasets to answer evolutionary questions. The hire people like you fairly often.