Just reading through some of the headlines recently. I generally don’t pay much attention to news, a mixture of not listening to the radio, not watching free-to-air TV and being too slow a reader to want to buy a paper. Some random things that caught my attention though:
Watson’s DNA sequenced: It’s pretty impressive that one of the guys involved with discovering DNA was still alive for his to be sequenced. We’ve come a long way in 50 years. Sadly the article didn’t do much explaining about why it was useful to spend $1mill on one man’s DNA and $400mill on the project. Apart from a quote by Watson regarding genetic discrimination, “We probably won’t increase the amount of unfair discrimination, but we may explain some of it.”
Aussies are concerned about climate change: Is that right? Does the government think that throwing money at tourism to drought stricken areas is going to alleviate that? Get off your bums and make some policy to motivate people to change their habits, inform people on how they can help the effort to save the earth! Huh, today is actually World Environment Day, did you know that? The topic is Melting Ice – A Hot Topic?, not a coincidence that it’s international polar year (north and south poles that is). An important issue, for the animals that live at the poles, for the islands that will get swallowed up by water, for the biomass that lives at the poles and all the compounds they produce. As the ice melts there will be lots of gases that are released into the atmosphere, including methane, which will compound the problem that we’ve already created.
Purple fluorescent frog: Cool! How good is natural fluorescence?! Shame it’s in danger.
