Can they rebuild us? is an article from Nature (dating from April 2001) about the possibilities of cloning and using stem cells for tissue replacement: The idea of therapeutic cloning, which offers the potential of growing replacement tissues perfectly matched to their recipients, is falling from favour. But there are alternatives…
.
The New Scientist has an interesting story about scientists who set up a bacteria with an “extended” genetic code: they got the bacteria to create a new amino acid (p-aminophenylalanine, which is not one of the 20 amino acides that appear in the genetic code), and incorporate it into a protein when the sequence being translated (from DNA/RNA to protein) contained a specific group of 3 nucleic acid bases (a “codon”, a basic unit of the genetic code) that doesn’t code for any amino acid.
Now, is this feat of genetic engineering just an incredible party trick, or will it have widespread applications? I say it’ll take 10 years before they find something cool to do with this, but I’m not backing that bet with money.
Just ran across another Victorian map of London, in additional to the impressive Greenwood’s Map of London 1827, there’s also Dr. John Snow’s 1859 map. Snow used a map published by James Reynolds in 1857 to plot epidemics of Cholera, as documented nicely on the site.
Rock Scissors Blog is a cooperative blog written by a group of (roleplaying) game writers and developers.
Here’s one interesting idea from there: Forever Young, or Nearly So, which proposes that the various classic D&D demi-humans (halflings, gnomes, elves, dwarves) might be considered as different generations of a single highly long-lived race.
Peter Seebach has written The Hacker FAQ, a document designed to explain to managerial types how to handle “hackers”. He’s also sold it to IBM and, at their request, written a complementary piece called (naturally) The Manager FAQ, to explain the curious habits of “suits” to hackerkind.
I like the manager document better than the hacker document, which comes too close in my eyes to painting hackers as highly creative and prodigiously talented Heinleinian supermen, but I sense there’s a sales-pitch angle here. Why should we put up with these stubborn weirdos that play games all day? Because they’re incredibly productive creative types, and they’re just decompressing when it looks like they’re lazing about, it says.
Well, maybe sometimes, they’re just lazing about.