Galaxy III
- Am I happy? Oh yes.
Dog Interviewed (Oh dear)
Hello Folks,
Dog has done an interview with The Guardian about TECHNOLOGY. He knows NOTHING.
You can read his ramblings here http://t.co/rM35tpJ
Woof!
This is amazingly cool!
How the origin of mammals could be written in our genome … by viruses.
Every human being starts the same way, with a sperm and egg becoming one, 23 chromosomes from each parent contributing the genetic instructions that will one day make, well … you. But the genes, the actual DNA that writes for proteins, make up only about one one-hundredth of all the DNA in those 46 chromosomes.
A full 8% of the DNA in your genome, though, are the remains of ancient viruses. A certain type of virus called a “retrovirus” is capable of inserting its genome into its host, literally writing itself into your DNA. This is the family that HIV belongs to. If a retrovirus infects an egg and inserts its genome, it can get passed down to the next generation. We are full of these remnants, as inactive but still recognizable fossils of past infections.
Dr. Samuel Pfaff and his team were trying to come up with a list of genes that were turned on in a developing mouse embryo, just after sperm and egg had come together. In its earliest stages, an embryo’s cells can become any tissue (one of the ideas behind stem cell therapies). What genes make this possible?
It turns out that for over 100 genes, the switches (called “promoters”) that turned them on came from a very unlikely place: viruses. WHAT?! We know that these genes must be activated in order for an embryo to correctly develop, but the switches that control them come from ancient viral infections! The genes themselves? Purely mouse.
What an odd paradox of evolution!! We need these genes on at a very precise moment, and off a short while after that. If any of it goes wrong, no baby mouse. So evolution selects these viral sequences to be the control mechanism. Could an ancient infection have been the key to the very existence of mammals?
Carl Zimmer has more at The Loom.
"The Romney 2012 campaign will be a big test for the national news media. Is it possible to stonewall and lie shamelessly throughout an entire presidential election campaign without being called on it in a significantly damaging way? It’s the “secret plan to end the war”, but with $5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich offset by a secret plan to balance the budget."
—
Romney’s “secret plan to balance the budget” tests press objectivity (via wilwheaton)
Reason number 10,000 I am not moving back to America.
(via wilwheaton)
So this guy, Charles Carreon, on behalf of funnyjunk.com, decides to write a demand to Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal fame. He’s demanding Inman pay him funnyjunk.com $20k because Inman said nasty things about his client. Of course, his client was stealing Inman’s content, but hey.
Inman responded in the style of The Oatmeal, here: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk_letter
Long story short, he vowed to raise the $20k as donations, take a picture of it, and send the picture to Carreon along with a picture Inman drew of Carreon’s mom having sex with a bear. (As a personal aside, if I could get Inman to draw a personal picture for me, that’d be awesome, but I’m not stupid enough to write shit about Tesla or demand $20k for stealing his work, so it will probably never happen. /sadpanda)
Anyway, cue the ire of the entire internet, and Inman has raised $200K plus to date. He raised the initial $20k in 64 minutes.
Now, see above. Carreon, not content with being a raving douchecanoe, has now decided to sue Inman, The American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Federation. Also IndieGoGo, the site that Inman hosted his fundraiser on.
Having read the complaint, he’s suing the above…because fuck you, that’s why. At least, as near as I can tell.
This can only end very badly for Carreon and funnyjunk.com, and very well for The Oatmeal and Matthew Inman.
Also, why would you take on the entire fucking internet? That’s literally insane.
But it makes for good entertainment, anyway.
