SubscribeApril 21st, 2012
comic evil doer coincidentally named Monsanto
so what do you think? How would the new comic evil doer be dressed? Should he wear cow horns? Black and white spandex? A Fox logo on his behind?
Thanks to Guava for the link.
April 21st, 2012
may I live long enough
love science and tech
April 21st, 2012
way to make ASL cool
I can just see sign language class number soaring. Way cool.
Next: get them to use their faces right.
April 20th, 2012
2 lives in 1
Trying to cram 2 lives into 1 is a recipe for disaster.
Not that disaster happened, but I am so very tired.
I had two appointments, both important to me and both very far apart in space and not so very far apart in time. So I spent Wednesday and Thursday running and getting about 4 hours of sleep. It’s almost bedtime on Friday and I’m still tired.
Oh well. At least it was sunny today and I can go to bed early.
April 18th, 2012
“knowing” one’s ancestry
Here’s the title of the article over at BBC News- How I traced my ancestry back to the Stone Age
Misleading of course but that misdirection is itself interesting. What the article actually does is recount a particular woman’s genotype results produced by a company called 23andme. What they do is match selected regions of your particular genetic information to known populations through out the world and thereby match you up. By this you get to know that you are a certain percentage similar to specific human groups.
And in this case, whether or not you have Neanderthal DNA. OK, so that’s cool.
But does it mean anything? And if so what?
I suppose, providing the technology is accurate, finding out you do (or don’t) have a genetic input from a member of the Neanderthal tribe does provide a certain – for curiousity’s sake – water-cooler conversation. But what it really seems to accomplish is to give a person some personal stake in time.
I like this a lot.
One of my pet gripes is how poorly people often understand the immensity of time on this planet and how very short amount of it Homo sapiens actually can claim. Part of this is because so many of us have been separated from the narratives that our ancestors used to define their origin stories. Probably a good thing, since many of those origin stories are us-vs-them stories that say something a long the line of we are the true descendants of (insert divine name here ). Those kinds of stories may be nice for the inner circle, but the consequences to the outer circle are usually not so good.
Anyway. Essentially, my ancestor the Neanderthal stories replace old-style origin stories with the difference that everyone can share in them to some degree or another. Even those of us who won’t find Neanderthal remnants. Because they have something else, something maybe from the story of their mitochondrial history (mom’s lineage). This is because every single one of us has the same common ancestor. All of us are connected to that time, that long-time-ago. Time and universality all in one origin story. Nice.
Oh, and 23andme have some cool little explanatory vids. This one, for example.
April 17th, 2012
oh coffee and your many beauties
Reason number 1348 to be glad I live in this time and place.
I’m not really the kind of person who would enjoy living in a house like that, but still, the idea of such technology makes me smile hugely.
April 16th, 2012
omg so awesome
April 15th, 2012
“natural” “remedy”
I probably shouldn’t find this funny:
Modern medicine became alarmed by birthwort in 1991, when dozens of young women from a “slimming” clinic in Brussels, Belgium, appeared in doctor’s offices with kidney failure. The case triggered warnings and a 2000 New England Journal of Medicine report noting that about 5% of 1,800 women given the Chinese herb, Aristolochia fangchi (another birthwort species), in a weight-loss treatment at the clinic had developed kidney failure. That triggered a Food and Drug Administration warning about the herb that mentioned 16 weight-loss products then on store shelves, and also offered a clue that only some people suffered from a genetic susceptibility to the herb causing kidney failure, Grollman says.
and
In an upcoming study, he and his colleagues looked at Taiwan, the “Land of Dialysis” in some news reports, where the herb is widely used in traditional medicine. A 2006 survey in The Lancet suggested that nearly 12% of Taiwan’s population suffers chronic kidney disease. Health service statistics there also show that about 1 in 3 patients are prescribed Aristolochia as part of traditional medical treatments delivered at doctor’s offices. And Taiwanese kidney failure patients in the upcoming study widely show the same pinpoint changes in the p53 gene seen in patients in the Balkans and Belgium, Grollman says.
April 14th, 2012
locating your self__odd to think about that
The viewing room will alternate two films. Diary is a short film that collages original footage taken by Hetherington throughout his career. Hetherington described Diary, which he directed in 2010, as “a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It’s a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media.” The film’s editing and sound design are by Magali Charrier. Diary will be screened in the gallery’s viewing room daily, along with Hetherington’s 4-minute 2009 film Sleeping Soldiers.
This describes a new exhibition of Tim Hetherington‘s work. There are some examples of his “sleeping soldiers” here and here.
The thing about his work seems to require a shift in focus – from the point of view of the viewer to that of the one who has been the target of someone else’s fear and rage. I love that about his work and it seems apropos for a man who was seeking to find his self after so many years witnessing, and participating in, violence.
Called “Henri 2, Paw de Deux” there is another Henri vid here.