Rhinocrisy

Scientists have created mice from two genetic mothers and no dad. This isn’t possible (yet) with humans for both technical and ethical reasons. This is supposed to come out in the April 22 issue of Nature.

It may seem like a “why’d they do that?” sort of experiment, but it touches on my field of molecular biology (epigenetics) and adds a lot to a very important topic. In mammals, the set of genes inherited from one’s father is treated differently than the set of genes inherited from one’s mother. Some genes are marked differently so that long after fertilization in an adult animal, the cells “know” which of the two copies of a particular gene came from dad, and which came from mom. It normally isn’t possible just to add any two halves of a genome together and expect that an animal will develop - there’s something special and (we thought) necessary about the complementarity of having half of a genome from dad, and the other half from mom. It’s quite amazing the scientists only had to tweak two genes in order to get it to work without this complementarity. Of course, my opinion of the research is subject to modification pending my reading of the actual journal article.

While I think it’s exciting work, I am worried about the ethical implications. The scientists who did this had no intentions of doing this in humans, but that was the same story with Dolly, the cloned sheep.

The cloning frenzy that ensued led to the attempts of some groups including one associated with the Raelians and another with fertility doctor Panos Zavos to clone humans, despite warnings from experts in the field that cloned mammals have severe developmental problems.

The Raelians made a series of claims that they’ve succeeded despite having no track record of cloning expertise and no evidence of their “success.” We haven’t heard from Panos Zavos in a while, but let’s hope he didn’t actually make the attempt, which according to the predictions of the world’s animal cloning experts, would have yielded many sick babies.

Brave new world, or scary, scary one?

I read some Ann Coulter today. (If you’ve never read any Ann Coulter, don’t start now. She has nothing going for her except bile, which you can produce yourself just by sticking your fingers down your throat. That, I assure you, will be a more pleasant experience than reading Ann Coulter.) It caused me to reflect on the fact that most people who are passionate about politics rarely allow themselves to drift outside of their political comfort zones - how often do people really have extended conversations with people of differing political persuasion?

I’ve often pined for a right-wing buddy who could de-mystify the seemingly irrational world of conservative politics for me. Is there anyone interested in being my conservative pal? I’ll even take a neo-liberal.

Apparently health authorities in Los Angeles are now pushing for mandatory condom use during sex scenes, according to an update article. This seems like something of which one should have thought before. (Aargh - hanging out too much with a grammar snob means I start writing awkwardly.) The delay before one might test positive for antibodies against HIV (which can be 6 months) is another scary factor. The basic upshot - use condoms, dammit. And being a porn star can be dangerous to one’s health.

Honestly, how can someone do such a complete 180? I read this article of his, comparing Iraq to Vietnam. He still seems to have his head on straight about Vietnam, but his arguments about the Iraqi resistance are ridiculous.

First of all, he calls them cowards, saying they were ‘notably inconspicuous for their bravery’ during the Saddam regime. Excuse me, Hitchy, but how could you possibly know? There was resistance under Saddam, and it was brutally put down. The Kurds that he seems to be full of praise for rebelled in the same way - the peshmerga only took points and kept them once they had the benefit of no-fly zones protecting them, whereas those in the South were quite open to Saddam’s retribution. Also, al-Sadr’s father was quite openly opposed to Saddam within Iraq, and was gunned down by the regime along with his eldest sons. It’s entirely possible that a good number of the current resistance fighters did fight against Saddam. Since we haven’t done a survey, there’s no way to know, but that does mean that it is entirely artful propaganda to suggest they are cowards.

Then he praises the US for its efforts at creating democracy. I assume he has some excellent example of precedent to cite here, since I can only think of examples of US disruption and destruction of democracy, installation of dictators and support for juntas and capitalist elites. If Hitchens can give sound reasons why he believes that THIS time, we should believe that the US is sincere and actually intends to create democracy, I would love to hear them. Blind faith in the US is not something I am capable of.

Hitchens glosses over American crimes in Iraq, doesn’t even mention the violence done in Falluja, and dismisses Iraqi opposition as “theocratic barbarism”. This is the same man who carefully catalogued Kissinger’s crimes and has such lucid comments to make on imperialism in ages past? I hope I don’t go batfuck crazy some day and start praising the Mighty Avenging Sword of Imperialist Justice.

Check out this body mass index calculator. The basic principle of bmi is simple: divide weight by the square of your height (which makes sense since you only have two degrees of freedom for size - height and girth, as opposed to height, breadth and width; very few people are wide one way and not the other). This one is exceedingly interesting because it has percentile rank. Observe that someone who is 185 lbs at 5′ 6″, which is just at the edge of the ‘obese’ category, is only in the 78% percentile. Holy cow! Or holy buffalo! holy ridiculously fat buffalo that has swallowed two other buffalo whole! This country is fat. Not P-H-A-T, either.

In other news, my profession (biological-type research) I get to watch research minds tinkering with upcoming medical problems. I’m pretty annoyed by obesity-focused research, which explores fundamental underlying biological ways to turn off obesity rather than things like what aspects of American diet contribute to burgeoning Americans. Money, though, lies in selling pills, not in eating well, and that’s where the research will go.

Today, Bush chastised Zapatero, PM of Spain, for withdrawing from Iraq, saying he might “give false comfort to terrorists and enemies of freedom in Iraq”. The implication being that those opposing the US are opposing freedom. Odd that you might identify an occupying power which is essentially maintaining dicatorial authority over the populace, complete with extrajudicial killings, collective punishment and imperial dictat, as synonymous with freedom. But a good example of well-placed propaganda. Smart folks, those imperialist swine.

Revenge of the bicyclists!

Part of the joy of learning German is that the swear words sound a lot scarier. It comes in handy when I must swear at the inconsiderate drivers who nearly kill me during my bike ride to work.

I work in an enormous glass building, and for several weeks the area around the base of it has been a wasteland while some guys with incredibly fun-looking jobs work on it (these same guys get to RAPPEL DOWN THE SIDE OF THE BUILDING as part of their job. And here I am in this damn cubicle). This morning the entire area was suddenly covered with sod, which is delivered in giant rolled-up mats resembling Swiss cake rolls. In a single day this area went from ugly wasteland to green lawn. This really brings home the very superficial nature of Nature in the city - we’ve reduced it to mere cosmetic drapery. I almost wish they would make the things out of green plastic - at least it would be more honest. Eventually our hubris and our disdain for Nature is going to come around and bite us on the ass. Then I will laugh. Then I will look for some herbs to make a linament for my ass.

You would think in our usually prudish society there’d be regulations

on the porn industry, oh say, something like “actors must use appropriate protection against STDs.” Apparently not, because there are such things as “non-condom” sets. The porn industry took a hit today when one of its actors tested positive for HIV.

Speaking of porn, why is porn legal but prostitution is not? In both cases people are having sex in exchange for payment.

Wow, Darryl Hannah, eco-activist… apparently she lives in a solar house and drives a biodiesel car. If you’ve ever had to deal with biodiesel, you probably know that this is not a sort of cosmetic, faddish activist thing that Hollywood types often engage in (like getting naked for PETA or something). Biodiesel fuel is made from recycled waste oils disposed from frying vats in fast-food joints. It involves a fair amount of work to create (including driving around to pick up used oil from the waste-oil bins behind Burger King) and the oil is often quite dirty, and very, very, foul-smelling (it contains the residue of tons of McDonalds burgers and fries). Darryl says:

“They actually dump billions of gallons of it a year in dumps and the diesel engine was meant to run on vegetable oil and it can. It’s actually less expensive than gas these days, and also burns green. No greenhouse gases. No war for oil.”

Right on. She goes on the “good list” with Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Marlon Brando.