Recently, Dr. James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, has his complete genome sequenced. He is the first person to have his genome completely sequenced, although Dr. J. Craig Venter, scientific iconoclast, was not far behind. The real breakthrough is not that it was done, but that it was done in two months at a cost of about $1 million. Compare that to the Human Genome project, which took 13 years and $3 billion. This massive increase in efficiency is due, in part, to the sequencing developed by companies like 454 Life Sciences. Within a few years, the cost to sequence a complete genome will fall to $100,000, and it will continue to fall by an order of magnitude every few years, so that a complete genome will cost $1000 within a decade. This price point is a huge leap towards a new era of “personalized medicine,” but there are larger ramifications as well.
It looks like Internet radio will survive, but it’s not out of the doghouse yet (see savenetradio.org for all the gory details). In the past, I’ve regarded this issue with only passing curiosity—just another example of how old media doesn’t get new media—but this time around, I actually have a bit of a stake in it. I’ve been exploring Internet radio as a source for discovering new music, simply because I’m getting pretty desperate for new tunes but can’t afford to put any money towards expanding my collection. So I’ve pitted the two top, free “find new music” services against each other: Last.fm versus Pandora.
This video shows what I love about biology: there’s all this really amazing, incredible stuff going on inside your body all the time. The most basic business of life itself is a miracle. I find it all fascinating. In fact, I’m such a nerd that this video almost brought a tear to my eye. There’s also a full-length version available.
As soon-to-be parents, Caroline and I are worried about protecting our kid(s) from the ugly parts of the Internet. At the same time, I’m not convinced that this problem is best solved with legislation, so I was glad when the Child Online Protection Act was struck down recently by the Supreme Court. I found Lawrence Lessig’s comments on the COPA and his ideas for protecting kids from harmful content particularly interesting.
Lessig has a problem with private filters like NetNanny, but it’s not really clear from his post or the ACLU press release to which he links what exactly the problem is. I think I figured it out. Private filters don’t tell their users what is being blocked, nor do they provide a mechanism for blocked sites to appeal their status. This gives them a lot of power that can easily be abused. I agree that that’s a big problem, but I’m not convinced on his other point—that we need a law to address “harmful to minors” content.
Last week, I gave a presentation on my current research. My brief introduction ended with comments that are a mantra to many grad students: “…which will hopefully be my dissertation project.” The talk went well enough—the audience was just other grad students—and I got a lot of good feedback. At the start of the question-and-answer period, one of the girls raised her hand and asked, “Do you have a hypothesis?”
