many things make a post
February 16, 2010
* My day just got a little bit brighter. Also, the lovely Ms Pandora Boxx lives in the Hub's hometown. Maybe we can catch one of her shows...
* Reminder: Your vagina is not OK. Related: this might be the best gift ever.
* I can't wait to see how the Picture Book Report develops. Plus, Daniel Krall, who has illustrated some of my stories/reviews for the Baltimore City Paper, is involved, which makes it a double-win.
* Note to self: Spend more time in caves.
* Two stories that I'm putting here so that I remember to read them later: DIY Genetic Engineering and "How Christian Were the Founding Fathers?"
* Bitch, PhD writes one hell of a rant. That sound you hear is me, applauding.
* Stories like this one remind me how privileged I am to live in a developed country and that make me wish there was more that I could do to aid in such easy-to-solve situations.
* I couldn't quite put my finger on what the skaters in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies reminded my of. Fortunately, io9 figured it out for me.
Damn you. Now I'm going to have to subscribe to Bitch, PhD, and I need another RSS feed like I need a hole in the head.
Posted by: Trish | February 16, 2010 at 11:01 AM
Sue and I have been commenting on how this is the Tron Olympics. We keep seeign things like the Opening Ceremonies and the speed suits folks are wearing and thinking they look very Tron-ish.
Posted by: anj | February 16, 2010 at 11:49 AM
I'm with Trish.
Also...okay, I was just going to talk about waxing and manscaping and I think it will be easier for us to meet in April if you don't know anything about my vagina.
Posted by: Anna | February 16, 2010 at 03:58 PM
The DIY Genetic Engineering article was fascinating. It's cool that biology has reached this point. But I sure wish they had spent more space talking about some of the risks of this kind of thing. They almost pooh-pooh it (although to be fair, there's a couple paragraphs on the last page):
"GEM has been grooming an entire generation of the world’s brightest scientific minds to embrace synthetic biology’s vision — without anyone really noticing, before the public debates and regulations that typically place checks on such risky and ethically controversial new technologies have even started."
I can't really talk about ethics, but the possibility for screwing things up with this seems enormously high. I mean, how many viruses are currently floating around the net right now? And this is human-designed computer programming languages we're talking about, on specific hardware; ENORMOUSLY less complex than DNA.
I know, "everyone at this conference seems looking for the good this could do". Sure, yes, but what's going to happen if someone inadvertently makes a virus that suddenly consumes all the sugar and turns it into oil, and it gets away from the lab? Look, I mess things up on computers on a daily basis, and the side effects of what I'm doing are vastly limited. Ugh, it just really gives me the shivers. I know a few people whose ideas of the "good right thing" aren't anything what I agree with.
Posted by: Big Alice | February 16, 2010 at 11:49 PM