Brains: Now, This Is Science!
Dec. 4th, 2008 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs
- Cool: Scientists design triple-helix molecule for storage and "life-like" techonologies
- Just too cool. Scientific American brings us an article by researcher Peter Nielsen in which he describes his search for a sturdy, biologically neutral molecule that could be used to deliver influential drugs right to the nucleus. What he got was a molecule so useful it could be the basis of an artificial biology.
- The Secret Signals in Human Sweat
- The New Scientist brings us a rather broad and shallow article about human pheremone response. Now, I'm convinced that we have some smell-mediated responses, mostly due to my own experiences with hte way some people just smell good to me and others don't, and it's purely subjective, and I've had others disagree with me for similar reasons. But you can just hear the ad machines warming up already.
- Universe's Dark Matter Mix 'Just Right For Life'
- At least the article goes out of its way up front to say that in an infinite multiverse, if our universe is just one occurence among many, we should not be surprised to find ourselves alive in a universe that supports our kind of life.
- Python 3.0 Released
- This falls under "Oh, heck."
- PASWO: William Murchison says we should suspend the Constitution until those damn Muslims stop trying to tread on us
- Murchison paraphrases "the left" as saying:
We needed to close the Guantanamo holding pen for terrorists, tighten the rules against spying on Americans, renounce disgusting forms of interrogational persuasion (usually labeled torture), and broaden the judicial rights of suspected or accused terrorists.
"Usually labeled torture?" Look, waterboarding is torture. US Army Interrogators are now saying that it doesn't work. It's not "usually labeled" torture, it is torture, and we need to cut it out or lose any moral backing we have.
Murchison argues that the attack happened in Mumbai and not, say, Atlanta, is proof that all of these anti-Constitutional measure work, and dammit, our safety and security is worth these little indignities, aren't they?
No, they're not.
