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What books are you reading?
Deozaan:
I have this memory / image-in-mind of a jar that has a bottom piece (which has a blade attached) that can be unscrewed from the jar. Perhaps such things used to exist (still exist even), though I wonder about leakage...-ewemoa (June 04, 2010, 03:35 AM)
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The blender we just replaced does that. And it leaked on us quite a few times when it unintentionally became unscrewed while simply inserting the jar onto the motor.
40hz:
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Currently reading Greg Bear's "Blood Music". I'm on a sci-fi/fantasy kick of late.
-Darwin (June 03, 2010, 03:13 PM)
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Great book! And especially appropriate in the wake of some recent news coming out of the Craig Venter Institute:
First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell
First Self-Replicating, Synthetic Bacterial Cell Constructed by J. Craig Venter Institute Researchers
ROCKVILLE, MD and San Diego, CA (May 20, 2010)— Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit genomic research organization, published results today describing the successful construction of the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell. The team synthesized the 1.08 million base pair chromosome of a modified Mycoplasma mycoides genome. The synthetic cell is called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 and is the proof of principle that genomes can be designed in the computer, chemically made in the laboratory and transplanted into a recipient cell to produce a new self-replicating cell controlled only by the synthetic genome.
This research will be published by Daniel Gibson et al in the May 20th edition of Science Express and will appear in an upcoming print issue of Science.
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http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher/
http://www.darkdaily.com/pathologists-take-note-c-craig-venter-just-created-the-first-synthetic-life-form-604
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Be really cool if they could relocate their facility to either the moon or the international space station until they're absolutely sure about the safety and ramifications of what they're doing. From the documentary running on the Science Channel, it doesn't look like they practice a high degree of containment at their labs. No 'bunny suits' or isolation rooms to be seen anywhere. And the staff gets to go home at night so there's also that vector for something getting out.
from Jurassic Park -"Broadly speaking, the ability of the park is to control the spread of life forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way." Malcolm shook his head. "I don't mean to be philosophical, but there it is."
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Sorry if I sound paranoid. But in the wake of Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl and BP's latest fiasco in the Gulf, I'm no longer comforted when an expert says "Trust us! We've though of everything that could possibly go wrong - and planned for it."
:)
Carol Haynes:
Just finished the Stieg Larsson Millennium Trilogy:
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (originally "Men who Hate Women")
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Brilliant thriller/crime series originally in Swedish. Unfortunately the author died before he witnessed his success.
All three have now been made into well respected films (in Swedish) but apparently Hollywood is planning how to ruin them!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Dragon-Tattoo-Stieg-Larsson/dp/1847245455
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Dragon-Tattoo-DVD/dp/B00361GC7A
The first book takes a while to get into but once you do they are not easy to put down! I had a number of sleepless nights reading and ended up giving up a weekend to finish them off ;)
Deozaan:
First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell
First Self-Replicating, Synthetic Bacterial Cell Constructed by J. Craig Venter Institute Researchers
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-40hz (June 04, 2010, 08:08 AM)
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That sounds like an article I read recently, except the headline was something like "First biological life form made from scratch" and as I read it it became increasingly obvious that it was not made from scratch. The genome was copied from another "simple" lifeform, then modified, then created and injected into a "host" lifeform, which then split, creating one of the original lifeforms and one of the synthetic lifeforms. Then the researchers killed the original lifeform and let the synthetic one proliferate. I wonder if that article was about the same you just posted.
Be really cool if they could relocate their facility to either the moon or the international space station until they're absolutely sure about the safety and ramifications of what they're doing. From the documentary running on the Science Channel, it doesn't look like they practice a high degree of containment at their labs. No 'bunny suits' or isolation rooms to be seen anywhere. And the staff gets to go home at night so there's also that vector for something getting out.
[...]
Sorry if I sound paranoid. But in the wake of Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl and BP's latest fiasco in the Gulf, I'm no longer comforted when an expert says "Trust us! We've though of everything that could possibly go wrong - and planned for it."
-40hz (June 04, 2010, 08:08 AM)
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I'm with you on that! It really is an amazing discovery, but potentially a very dangerous one. Obviously someone could create a new biological weapon with this technology, but even if it was only used with good intentions, such as creating a bacteria that "ate" carbon dioxide gases to reduce global warming (which is what the article I read said they wanted to do with it), unintended side effects could still destroy life as we know it.
What if the population of these bacteria gets out of control and all the carbon dioxide is removed from the planet, first killing all plant life, then without plant life to supply oxygen, all animal life dies? Or perhaps the atmosphere breaks down because of an imbalance in the gases and whatever else it's made up with, letting dangerous space/sun rays murdilize us all? Those are probably extreme ideas, but even something simpler such as causing birth defects or some sort of unintended disease-like function of the bacteria could cause big trouble.
There are so many possible scenarios of things that could go wrong. It's both awesome (grow back amputated limbs, or diseased/damaged/destroyed organs!) and frightening (biological warfare) at the same time.
Deozaan:
I've recently taken an interest H.P. Lovecraft. I'd heard from various sources about the Cthulhu mythos and the Necronomicon, and even played a game that I loved (Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem) which I found out later was greatly inspired by his works. But I'd never read any of Lovecraft's material.
I found out that quite a lot of his work is in the public domain, and there's quite a bit of it available at WikiSource.org.
So far I've read The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in the Darkness. I'm not sure what to think about The Call of Cthulhu. It's a really short story, only 3 chapters long, and some of the events didn't make sense to me such as:
SpoilerIf Cthulhu was released from his millenia long slumber, why did he go back to sleep again instead of destroying the world or whatever?
The Whisperer in the Darkness, on the other hand, was longer and much more tense. It's kind of interesting how right at the beginning the narrator tells you that he never saw any strange creature, yet:
SpoilerTowards the end when he's in the midst of them you forget all about that and think they're going to do horrible things to him.
So far I'm slightly disappointed, because I expected much more detailed descriptions of what the horrible creatures look like, but I suppose it's better this way, since Lovecraft lets your imagination do quite a bit of the work by simply saying the horrors are much too alien and terrible to describe (although he does make a good effort of giving a basic description).
I do like the "purer" use of the English language, that is, using words with their original meaning, although it can lead to a misunderstanding here and there (i.e. when he describes "nuclear chaos" in space, he's not talking about nuclear energy--which didn't really exist at that time--but rather the center, or nucleus). And he certainly had an extremely large vocabulary!
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