Yes, interactive robot poetry dioramas (by MindShift). I went to high school in the wrong decade. Though, I did once have an animatronic element on my Science Fair board (studying circadian rhythm in gerbils).
*Hat tip to SpongeLab.
Author: Josh Witten
http://www.thefinchandpea.com
Sometimes, “Girls with Slingshots” is a science comic…
This one goes back to November 2007, but I recently rediscovered a lovely bit of science humor and art from Danielle Corsetto in her wonderful comic strip Girls with Slingshots. As an added bonus, note that Hazel wins for “Most Sophisticated” costume, not “Nerdiest”.
The actual strip feature no real nudity, but, if your workplace or conservative christian dominated place of residence objects to pseudo-nudity, you may want click through in a private location.*
You can follow Danielle on Twitter.
*Girls with Slingshots is very funny, poignant, and has strong sexual themes. So, some employers may not want you browsing there on your work computer
Doolittle disagrees, politely
The rebuttal to the ENCODE project’s claim to have vanquished junk DNA by Graur et al. got a lot of attention for its scathing rhetoric. If you already have enough troubles in your life, W Ford Doolittle penned a cogent, but polite rebuttal of the claim in PNAS.
…what would we expect for the number of functional elements (as ENCODE defines them) in genomes much larger than our own genome? If the number were to stay more or less constant, it would seem sensible to consider the rest of the DNA of larger genomes to be junk or, at least, assign it a different sort of role (structural rather than informational)…A larger theoretical framework, embracing informational and structural roles for DNA, neutral as well as adaptive causes of complexity, and selection as a multilevel phenomenon, is needed.
Unfortunately, you need a subscription to read the full length article, which I do not. Therefore, I’m not endorsing all of Doolittle’s arguments, but I do like that he seems to agree with my assertion from “Decoding ENCODE” that evolutionary theory expects junk DNA in species with the population and genomic characteristics of humans.
*Hat tip to Leonid Kruglyak.
The CFAA Reform “Ask Me Anything”
A long list of characters and organizations involved in the fight to reform the outdated and overly-broad Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA) – the law used to prosecute Aaron Swartz prior to his suicide and criminalizes violating user agreements – just did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. It is an interesting read:
I think there’s a growing constituency that opposes over-criminalization. CEI, Heritage, TechFreedom, Right On Crime, etc are helping to legitimize that position among conservative and libertarian Republicans, on spending and state authority grounds. The majority of Dems on House Judiciary, the committee of jurisdiction here, are in the orbit of the Progressive and/or Black Caucus, and are sympathetic to concerns about over-crim, prison industrial complex, etc. We need people who are working to legitimize those concerns/frames to keep up there work and have increased success as they do so, so we can discuss issues like the CFAA through those frames and have it resonate. – David Adam Segal, Executive Director of Demand Progress
There is an irony to people asking for fewer emails kind of spamming the thread, which will make you want to skip about 50% of the comments. Most take the form of “I really support your cause, but not enough to deal with a couple of extra emails each week.” Full credit to the reformers, as I did not see a single reply from them like, “Oh, you support us that much? THANKS!”
Speculative Electro-Paleontology
Soft tissues generally do not show up well in fossils. That missing information means that paleontology is particularly fertile ground for speculation. One of my favorite bits of paleontological speculation comes from Putting the Life Back in Science Fiction where a post wonders whether plesiosaurs had long necks to allow for electric organs like electric eels, useful for defense, electrolocation, and fishing. The post is careful to note that it is indulging in wild speculation.
The speculative theory probably isn’t true, but it is more fun to imagine that it is.
The Finch and Pea 