This guitar does not lie

Possibly the most interesting talk so far @ futureruby has little to do with Ruby: we're talking biological programming. See http://openwetware.org, http://biobricks.org/, and diybio.org.

iGEM: International Genetically Engineered Machines competition sponsored by MIT. Another example: a team in Austin programming e coli to be light sensitive, to do (for example) edge detection.

Ppower and responsibility: you can make (e.g.) Polio virus @ home today, for not much.


Atwood's Oryx and Crake looking less like SF every day.

Via calum: The Dallas-Fort Worth police marked the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots by raiding a gay bar and beating up patrons, leaving one in hospital with a potentially life-threatening brain injury. Their defence? The men in the bar made "advances" on them. Because, y'know, all us faggots love a man in uniform.

The link above contains more details, updates, and email addresses for Fort Worth's councillors and mayors. I suggest writing. The Fort Worth police have also identified the officers involved.

I spent most of yesterday taking this fan off the bedroom ceiling:



And replacing it with this one:



It was a bit of a bitch to install, but the phrase "vast improvement" comes to mind.

A French study has found that some of the "inert" materials in Roundup are toxic to humans even at low concentrations. "Inert" in this context means it doesn't kill weeds; apparently effects on other organisms aren't relevant. Manufacturers aren't required to disclose the inert ingredients in their products.

Used in yards, farms and parks throughout the world, Roundup has long been a top-selling weed killer. But now researchers have found that one of Roundup’s inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.

The new findings intensify a debate about so-called “inerts” — the solvents, preservatives, surfactants and other substances that manufacturers add to pesticides. Nearly 4,000 inert ingredients are approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
:
One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.”
:
The term “inert ingredient” is often misleading, according to Caroline Cox, research director of the Center for Environmental Health, an Oakland-based environmental organization. Federal law classifies all pesticide ingredients that don’t harm pests as “inert,” she said. Inert compounds, therefore, aren’t necessarily biologically or toxicologically harmless – they simply don’t kill insects or weeds.

More details over at Environmental Health News

Via Salon (so you'll probably need to ignore an advert), the life and times of a hard-core repo man. Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez have nothing on Nick Popovich. This guy repos helicopters, GulfStreams, 747s - anything with wings. Sometimes from under the noses of armed guards.

Also, HD video of the moon's surface taken from about 21 kms up by Japan's Kaguya probe, whose lunar orbit is slowly decaying.

What I learned today says that GM would need to be worth 83 billion dollars for the US government to recover its investment. GM at its all-time peak was worth $56 billion. Not sure where the numbers come from, though.

12 of the worlds most fascinating tunnel networks.

The how-to-be-happy-in-business Venn diagram. Also, the musical elitism Venn diagram. Also, a PS3 comparison Venn diagram; the Ser-Venn-ity Prayer Venn diagram; the self-proclaimed best Venn Diagram ever; and a whole bunch of other Venn diagrams.

MonkeyLectric make LED lighting systems that fit in your bike's wheels and produce random visual effects. They look pretty frickin' awesome. so naturally I had to buy some...

So once again, someone who claims to be "pro-life" murders a doctor. Dr George Tiller, a 67-year-old doctor. In church. Why? Because that doctor performed abortions, with good reasons and among other things.

Daily Kos blogger wiscmass has posted a list of people murdered by pro-lifers over the years. George Tiller may be the latest, but he may not be the last. Warren Hern, one of Dr Tiller's friends, is a doctor in Colorado who also performs abortions. He was quoted in the LA Times saying "I get messages from these people saying, 'Don't bother wearing a bulletproof vest, we're going for a head shot.'"

Once again: fucked up.

John Scalzi turns his blog over to China Miéville, and also links to a Q&A with Miéville about his new book, The City & The City.

Aerogrammes are on the way out. Looks Canada Post has already stopped issuing them.

Memes minus people.

The BBC asks, What do you get if you divide science by God?. I don't pretend to know, but I'm sure the answer has an imaginary component.

Classic hits by Microsoft Songsmith. As in, Songsmith took out a hit on these classics. So bad it's awful.

Following up on a previous post, Canadian readers who haven't changed jobs recently may want to know that it's now (as of about five years ago) a requirement to show a new employer your SIN card, as I found out when I was getting mine replaced.

Via Ars Technica:

Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara have published a paper (PDF) detailing their findings after hijacking a botnet for ten days earlier this year.

Been a bit slack on the whole updating thing lately. It's not that I don't love all you dearly; more just a {profound lack of anything,lack of anything profound} to say. My life does not suck; work is interesting but I'm not at liberty to actually say more about than that; I've been regular wii fit workouts and getting worse at things as I progress, though I can feel the benefits; fiddling proceeds apace; I now have two teachers, one for solo classes where I'm focussing on technique and a new teacher in the group class where our regular teacher is off for cancer treatment (of which there is too much in my life right now, he being the third person I know personally to be getting cancer treatment this year); the fiddling is also improving my ear for working out guitar chords for songs; a home-made pepper spray seems to be keeping teh skwrlz from nomming at least some of our tulips; we tore up a shrub and put in a lilac which seems to thriving; raspberry bushes are taking over the back garden (this is a good thing); bikes have been serviced so bike rides are in the future; there was much curry consumption last night and now I'm off to TCAF. Tomorrow we take abigor's mum to lunch then go to my sisters for tea with my mum. And then the week starts again.

Oh, and I have started satisfying my addiction to rotring newton pens. Damn you, eBay. ::shakes fist::

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Mostly for verdandiweaves but also for anyone else interested in electronic books: Meta's review of the Kindle 2. I have to say: we wants one, preciousss.

Ashley MacIsaac's "Sad Wedding Day" just came up in iTunes and I was stuck by the resemblance to the melody of both "The Patriot Game" (the melody of which came from a tune called The Merry Month Of May and "She Moved Through The Fair". Probably closer to the former than the latter, but there's a definite resemblance.

Via dan4th, Deraililng for Dummies - how to derail any awkward conversation by exercising your Privilege. Nice counterpart to the Invisible Knapsack.

If you sign a contract promising someone your firstborn, is it legally binding? After all, technically the firstborn hasn't consented to this, since (in most such cases) said firstborn doesn't even exist at the time of signing. Obviously this is a moot point in the event that the firstborn is (a) alive and (b) able to give legal consent, but suppose the firstborn is alive but the signer is unaware of this?

I suppose this all predicates on the notion of child as chattel to dispose of as you please, which in most developed-world societies is Not So Much The Case these days.

In any case, feel free to discuss below, with as much seriousness or frivolity as you feel the question merits.

Not that I'm thinking of signing any contracts that involve promising anyone my firstborn. At least, not in the last draft I looked at.

Also, for those of you wot are into gardening, I found MyFolia, a site for helping you track the progress of your various plantings. Also has communities, seed swaps, and other handy features. Go, explore!

These via tamago23: Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers' Choice for Women, an essay on living out the life of a woman who's given a child up for adoption (executive summary: worse than having an abortion), and The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of "Political Correctness", an interesting essay that explores the roots of "political correctness" in the ideological conformity of Maoist China, and its manifestation in the right-wing contemporary American politics.

If you only read one, read "Breaking the Silence", and read the comments. It'll suck up a couple or three hours, but it's well worth it. It's expanded my perspective on choice issues by illuminating some of the many, many issues that surround adoption, including the pretty much complete lack of any aftercare for the women who's given up a child and spends her life wondering about it every. Single. Day. Afterwards. The comments also include many stories from women who have adopted children, women who have given up children for adoption, and people who were adopted after their mothers gave them up. A lot of different perspectives.

I guess I should mention that if you fall into any of those categories you might find the discussion triggery, but it might be a late now...

It hasn't altered my stance, since I'm pro-choice anyway, for what that matters since my considered opinion is that anyone with a penis has no fucking business expressing any opinion whatsoever on women's reproductive issues.

From New Scientist: 8090% of Earth's surface is within 2 days of a major city. (Mostly posted for rezendi's benefit.)

It appears that the mass disappearance of queer content from Amazon over the weekend was "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error", and not deliberate and/or malicious homophobia. [The Star, The Grauniad] So yay Amazon, thanks for eventually owning up (their initial explanation was that it was "a software glitch".)

Amazon is excluding "adult" content from its Amazon Rank system to prevent it from appearing in search results. (More info at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.) As a result hundreds of gay and lesbian books have lost their sales rankings. (See Mark Probst's LJ for more info.) Thus the term "Amazon Rank" is being added to the lexicon.

amazon rank
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): amazon ranked

1. To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies).
2. To make changes based on inconsistent applications of standards, logic and common sense.

See also the twitter amazonfail hashtag.

Or Chocolate Pagan Fertility Symbol Day, or if you prefer, Lucifer's Testicles Day. (Unholy testicle Sunday!.)

As is traditional in this LJ at this time of year, a link to Billy Connolly's "Crucifixion" sketch and my transcription thereof.

Avaaz's Save the CBC petition has broken 100,000 signatures. Go help make it 125,000 will ya?

The AboutUs Weblog informs me that wikis are 14 years old today. Specfically, it's 14 years since Ward Cunningham created the first wiki, for the Portland Patterns Repository, since when they've expanded from a curiousity for a small coterie of geeks into a decentralized way to consolidate knowledge and a potentially world-changing idea.