Wired News: Sexual Identity Wired by Genetics "Sexual identity is rooted in every person's biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome," a UCLA genetics professor, said in a statement. His team has identified 54 genes in mice that may explain why male and female brains look and function differently.
Well, the fundamentalists who try to explain homosexuality to be a choice is wrong.
"The aim of the Molecular Media Project is to use cells and atoms to perform useful computational tasks at the micron (10-6m) and/or nanoscales (10-9m) of organisation. molecular computing is a practical use of nanotechnology for generating glitch and error. However, it differs from traditional cut-and-paste technique or granular synthesis by exploiting chaos, self-organisation and emergence at the resolution limit of the digital bits that make-up sound! There are 1000mm in a metre (10-3m), there are 1,000,000um in a metre (10-6m), there are 1,000,000,000nm in a metre (10-9m)!"
""The sound is rather like a large jet plane flying 100 feet above your house in the middle of the night,"
An article from New Scientist about how the big bang really sounded. At the Washington Univ is sound-files that somehow can give you an idea of how it sounded in the beginning.
At first glance I thought it was a cool thing: setting up a sort of How-To about making your own campaign. And the fact that it's the well-reputated BBC that is hosting it would be a guarantee for quality.
But when I reviewed the site of I Can I sort of felt it like being some sort of Campaigning For Dummies.
"iCan is a new BBC website to help you do something about issues that matter to you.".
An instant FAQ of starting an opinion. Is that needed? Is it just another way of making questions of our life shallow and exchangeable?
BBC NEWS | 'Brain itch' keeps songs in the head: "Research in the US has found that songs get stuck in our heads because they create a 'brain itch' that can only be scratched by repeating the tune over and over. "
Totally awesome... the mystery is solved! Then it's the problem of the badly muzak that always get stuck in the head... how to solve that?
"It's hard to predict what the ethical concerns will be in 10 years' time, as we can't imagine what science will be capable of; all we can say is that they won't be the ethical concerns that bother us now."
An article about the fact that the borders of the ethical discussion in science is moving and is pushed forward: "When the first heart transplant took place in the 1960s, there was widespread condemnation and revulsion," says Dr Peter Cotgreave, director of Save British Science. "Now it's accepted as a standard medical practice. Partly this is because we have come to see there have been no long-term harmful side-effects to the individual or society, but also because science has moved on."
1977 did Beauchamp put down ethical guidelines for biomedical science: Beauchamp suggested that all experiments should be evaluated according to four principles: non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice. Which, loosely translated, means they should not do harm, they should be in society's best interests, there should be freedom of choice and that equal cases should be treated equally and unequal ones unequally. The problem is that the interpretation of the guidelines varies and the need for a bigger transparency in the work of the scientists is needed, a need that collides with the development of big bucks in the biogenetic industry. "The traditional separation between scientists, who supposedly produce objective 'facts', and politicians, who deal in power, has obscured the means by which the goals of scientific and technological research are set even more than in other areas of public policy."
The scientists is often rather worried about that the genetic tests and production of GM-food already have gone to far. But the fact that the contracts often are short do that scientists are unwilling to rock the boat. And of course the fact that a scientist is driven by his or hers curiosity gets him to sometimes take the opportunity to do the test even if it's in the borders of ethics.
The end of the road today is this: "You want some matured eggs from an aborted foetus? There's an Israeli-Dutch team of scientists only too happy to consider it. You want a hybrid embryo? No problem, there's a private fertility clinic in the US that has created chimeras by merging male cells with female embryos. You want a perfect stem cell tissue match for your seriously ill child? Just stay Stateside for your IVF treatment. And remember to bring your chequebook.". (EducationGuardian.co.uk | Research | Pushing back the frontiers)
Mr Hanson was taking a pic of a truck off-loading a bunch of Mac G5-rods at the Microsoft campus up at Redmond and then post it at his blog as Even Microsoft wants G5s. Not at all mean or giving out any unknown secrets of Microsoft. Just a funny pic. Not. Reading his blog Of blogging and unemployment and learn how the Big Evil Empire of the Digital World is working. He got sacked. Point blanc.
Myself being hunted down by a multinational company and threaten with legal actions because of a simple publishing of a logo I can wonder in what way the Big Ones are able to get their information about "violations" even in a small blog as Hanson's. Echelon someone?
The idea is: "When you put the glider emblem on your web page, or wear it on clothing, or display it in some other way, you are visibly associating yourself with the hacker culture. This is not quite the same thing as claiming to be a hacker yourself that is a title of honor that generally has to be conferred by others rather than self-assumed. But by using this emblem, you express sympathy with our goals, our values, our way of living.".
Interesting abstract on the evolutionary origin of complex features.
The scientists have used digital organisms to understand how the evolution produces more complex organisms and the findings is that it's a combination of big random steps of mutations and the natural selection of the evolution.
I understand silch but it tickles the mysterious nerve.
In my point of view this list is incomplete, since Donald Duck ain't on it. That's a true asshole. But hey, you don't need to be a waco to understand that Disney have some to say about such a list...
Leonard McCoy have a slight problem - the condom is falling of when he have intercourse with his wife and since they can't use anything else on birth control this is a big problem for them. So he thought it out and have filed a patent on new condom design.
This is another proof that frustration is the birth of creativity.
Tired of that old boring stockmarket? Stocks in faceless companies that produce boring things as computers, dishwashers and porn? Here´s the chance to use your guessingskills: Celebdaq.
Instead of looking on the points for Nasdaq-comps you can check if Britney is doing well at the market.
Totally meaningless. But who have said that everything must be productive?
photographic film maker Eastman Kodak (EK.N) was the Dow's biggest percentage loser, falling 41 cents or 1.8 percent to $22.84, a day after reporting a 63 percent drop in third-quarter earnings. On Wednesday, Kodak's CEO defended the company's plan to shift away from its declining film business and into digital photography despite an outcry from disgruntled investors. (NYT/Reuters).
Is the time of silverline over and the IOs taking it all?
Somewhat strange flic about the guy who finally got sex.com. A long long juridical fight after the fact that another guy hijacked the domain and pointed it to another IP.
But it also is a sort of sad story of a guy who somewhat had the notion of selling "good porn" and not give in to the drugsellers and herbalschamans of the Net. (Wired 11.08: The Prisoner of Sex.com)
A very interesting pick is the Confessions of a Baggage Screener from Wired Mag. About both the tech-side of airportsafety and the reality of being a screener. All this humping on the security and one learn that the ones that should be the last front and save us from being blown to pieces when eating the dinner 10k metres over the Atlantic don't get the proper training and sometimes don't care to do a proper job. And learning that the technology is not that reliable as it sometimes seem.
