Lest we forget:
“Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself–a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.”
–Frank Herbert
A microbe that grows in the Dead Sea is teaching scientists about the art of DNA repair.
Halobacterium appears to be a master of the complex art of DNA repair. This mastery is what scientists want to learn from: In recent years, a series of experiments by NASA-funded researchers at the University of Maryland has probed the limits of Halobacterium’s powers of self-repair, using cutting-edge genetic techniques to see exactly what molecular tricks the “master” uses to keep its DNA intact.
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“We have completely fragmented their DNA. I mean we have completely destroyed it by bombarding it with [radiation]. And they can reassemble their entire chromosome and put it back into working order within several hours,” says Adrienne Kish, member of the research group studying Halobacterium at the University of Maryland.
Slowly but surely, we’re getting there…
So. We’re back from DragonCon in Atlanta, the science fiction convention we were going to, then weren’t going to, and then at the last minute were going to again. We visited Atlanta while Hurricane Frances was beating up Tampa, more’s the better.
Thirty thousand science fiction geeks. The mind reels.
Shelly got Borged out and made an outfit out of saran wrap, which was great fun:
Lots of other fun photos, of zombies and faeries and cyborgs and carbon nanotubes and zensidhe getting assassinated, cut for your viewing pleasure…bandwidth-intensive and probably not work-safe.
Without further ado, Show me the half-nekkid geek chicks!
In light of smoocherie‘s and fatesgirl‘s comment on my recent grammar rant, I started thinking, and what I thought was, “hey, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate,” and then I thought about how much it’s not cool to be a chalky, powdery substance that settles to the bottom of a teacup, and then I started thinking…well, you really don’t want to know what I thought after that.
Nevertheless, they both have good points. So, in the interest of being part of the solution, I’ve decided to add a grammar cheat sheet to my Web site, so that if someone’s confused, it’s there and easily accessible. Any suggestions are welcome. 🙂
I also updated my BDSM and polyamory pages, while I was at it.
The House Not Found housewarming party was a great deal of fun, so much so that we’re thinking about turning on the webcam on a semi-regular basis, just for the benefit of all you voyeurs out there. If I get another Mac laptop in the next few months, I may even dedicate my current laptop, which is running OS X Server, to being a QuickTime Streaming Server for the camera so i can stream live video. 🙂
In other news, I’ve recently started receiving death threats from a well-known spammer and software pirate named Art Schwartz. These threats are, in their own particular way, far too funny not to share, and Art’s even been reading my LiveJournal lately. So I’ve put ’em online here. I particularly like the one about how he’s going to expose my child-pornography ways to my wealthy parents so they’ll quit supporting me. 🙂 One wonders what color the sky in his world is.
And now the linky goodness:
Dog Available. Read the description BEFORE you look at the picture.
LoveChess: Chess as a sex game. And people think I’m a pervert.
Courtesy of ladytabitha: The Myth of Unconditional Love.
In the Department of Homeland Stupidity department of the Axis of Asshat: Brown Equals Terrorist. The thing about this story that most strikes me is that it reveals the same flaw the writers of Star Trek often have. The Star trek writers don’t actually know anything about research and have never met any research scientists, so the Star Trek version of a research scientists is cartoonishly distorted; local cops have never met any terrorists and have never been trained in terrorist tactics, so their imagination of what a terrorist would act like is also cartoonish and unrealistic. Hint; Terrorists blend in. They don’t stand out. The 9/11 hijackers were instructed to shave their beards, wear cologne, and forego traditional Muslim garb in favor of casual American attire, remember? A terrorist who wanted a photograph of a bridge would not stand out by the bridge, exposed, with a tripod, day after day. He’d be in a pack of tourists inconspicously with a digital camera, fools! Assuming, of course, he needed a photograph at all…
The House Not Found Housewarming Party Webcam is up, though there’s nothing to see yet…most of the guests haven’t arrived. Tune in and see what’s going on!
“‘I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner’ doesn’t technically qualify as transhumanism, does it?”
Okay, people, listen up–the next time I read something in LiveJournal, on a newsgroup, or in an email that makes one of these mistakes, someone’s getting stabbed. Fair warning.
1. It’s “Lo and behold,” not “low and behold.” The word “lo!” is a Middle English expression of surprise. “Lo and behold” is kind of the equivalent of saying “Well, hey, look at that!”
2. It’s “Nothing fazes me,” not “nothing phases me.” To “faze” is to disturb or frighten. “She was unfazed” means “she retained her composure.” “He was unphased” means “he was not made of a number of waveforms that were in synchronization.” Big difference, folks.
3. It’s “etc,” not “ect.” “Etc” is an abbreviation for “et cetera” (two words), which is Latin for “and so forth.” “Et” means “and,” which is why “etc” is sometimes written “&c”. “Etc” is correct. “&c” is correct but archaic. “Ect” is not, never has been, and never will be correct.
4. The abbreviations “ie” and “eg” do not mean the same thing! You use “ie” when you mean “in orther words.” It’s Latin for “id est,” which means “that is.” For example: “He is a businessman; ie, he makes his money by operating a business.” On the other hand, “eg” is used to mean “for example.” It’s Latin for “exempli gratia.” “I do not like spectator sports–eg, football and baseball.” For example: eg. In other words: ie.
5. And while we’re at it, “insure” and “ensure” do not mean the same thing either! “Ensure” means “to make sure of.” Double-check your math on your tax return to ensure you don’t get an embarrassing phone call from the IRS. “Insure,” on the other hand, means “to provide insurance for,” you insure your house in order to ensure that you won’t be financially ruined if it burns down.
6. To be caught “between the devil and the deep blue sea” does not mean “between two unattractive options.” It means “to be in a position where you have no room to manuver.” The ‘devil’ on a wooden sailing ship is the main spar of the ship–a brace that runs the whole length of the ship from front to back, around which the frame of the ship is built. There is a very narrow space–typically less than 3′ high–between a ship’s devil and the bottom of the hull; this was sometimes the space where the most lowly members of a ship’s crew slept–“between the devil and the deep blue sea.” It’s a very, very tiny space.
7. “Too” means “also” or “to a great extent.” “To” means “in the direction of” or indicates an infinitive. Get these two wrong, and you might end up in the position of the unfortunate street racer I saw yesterday whose vanity license tag reads “TO L8 4U”. “2 L8 4U” or “TOO L8 4U” would’ve communicated the idea that he was trying to convey; the idea conveyed by “TO L8 4U” is “Hi! I’m illiterate.”
Don’t even get me started on “accept” and “except,” or “affect” and “effect.”
Any typos in this post are a feature, not a bug. We now return you to your regularly scheduled friends list.
…and only one week left ’til the formal housewarming party of House Not Found (so named because our apartment number is 404, of course).
You should be there. Really. I mean you.
This last week or so has been an unending series of boxes to be packed, moved, and unpacked, and even with the assistance of a large number of friends, it’s been slow going. Right now, the new place is stacked eyeball high in oxes waiting to be unpacked.
Still, it’s starting to come together. Most of the computers in the computer room have been hung from the ceiling by chain, making the computer room look a bit like a cross between Hellraiser and Resident Evil, the loft bedroom is more or less assembled, and the space is gradually becoming livable.
Which is good.
On the not-so-good side, we’ve received a couple bits of bad financial news in the last week, meaning that we won’t be able to attend DragonCon after all. Disappointing, but we’ll be there next year.
On the good side, merovingian will be in town for the housewarming party next week, and that will be very cool.
Also on the good side, we were able to have lunch with an old friend, Fritz, yesterday, and learned that he too is a transhumanist…who knew? He came up with the best answer yet to the question “If you completely change your body for a totally artificial one, or upload your consciousness into a computer, will you still be recognizably yourself?” His answer: “Who cares? Life is about evolution. If you change, so what?”
And on that note, I’m going to bed.
Periodically, I like to get a sense of the people who read my journal–especially those of you I’ve never met in person. This poll is one way to do that, and it’ll only take a minute of your time. Ready? Here we go!