There are many copies. I don't know if they have a plan.

Olivia Judson, a.k.a. Dr Tatiana, made an informative post on cybrids earlier this week. It concerns the technique --- it is fair to describe it as controversial, when human DNA is involved --- of transplanting a small cell of one species into the egg of another, in place of the target cell's own nucleus. The nuclear DNA then ends up being entirely from the transplanted species ...

... but the nucleus is not the only thing with DNA. Some organelles, specifically the mitochondria, have it too, and mitochondria are important. Whether the (say) human/bovine mitochondrial differences, or other differences between human and bovine eggs, are important, I'm not well-placed to judge.

I was struck by the statement that "A mammalian egg may contain as many as 200,000 mitochondria": I had no idea that it could be so many. (Lots of cells have only a handful.) This seems to be another of those areas where even people like me, members of the scientific community in good standing but with only rudimentary biology, know some of the facts but not their relative importance or proportion: where we miss the "feel" of the thing. As I have learned over the years, the interior of a cell can be a very complicated, crowded, non-soup-like place. This is not what I was told at school.

Addiction, oversharing, and the new economy

I felt liberated — finally, a job where I could really be myself! Never again would I have to censor my office-inappropriate sentiments or shop the sale racks at Club Monaco for office-appropriate outfits. But at the same time, I wasn’t quite convinced that the system of apprenticeship and gradual promotion that I’d left behind when I left book publishing was as flawed as establishment-attacking Gawker made it out to be. I’d been lucky enough, in my publishing job, to have the kind of boss who actually cared about my future. At Gawker, I barely had a boss, and my future was always in jeopardy. In my old job, I’d been able to slowly, steadily learn the ropes, but now I was judged solely on what I produced every day. I had a kind of power, sure, but it was only as much power as my last post made it seem like I deserved.

And as with the employment conditions, so (it turned out) with the social conditions. The quote is from a terrifying-yet-oddly-fascinating article to appear in the upcoming weekend magazine section of the NYT, by writer Emily Gould on her period as an editor at Gawker Media, "a network of highly trafficked blogs".

The whole thing is interesting to reflect upon as a topic for intergenerational argument. Does Emily's mother (or perhaps her grandmother) understand the world, the economy, the social circle in which she is moving, and its rules and opportunities and risks? Almost certainly not. Is that world an example of everything her (grand)mother warned her against? Almost certainly, yes.

The Pentagon's hidden hand

If you are interested in the media response to (and responsibility for) the progress of the war in Iraq, may I recommend an article in today's New York Times, "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand". It's the more devastating for being sober in its tone.

The standard of investigative journalism in this paper --- supported by the exemplary American Freedom of Information regime --- is excellent. It's in signal contrast to the partisanship of papers in (say) the UK, and the self-importance and shallowness of papers in my own country.

If seeing is believing ...

If seeing is believing, then we better be damn careful about what we show people, including ourselves – because, regardless of what it is – we are likely to uncritically believe it.

It's sentiment I endorse, but I'd be a bit suspicious of it coming from me, or from someone likewise conservative. In fact the author is Errol Morris, writing in his blog at the New York Times. As a documentary film-maker who himself uses dramatic re-enactment as a tool, I'd say he can speak with some authority on this question.

The article is a little long, but well worth reading: on re-enactment generally, and on some fascinating individual cases. And (somewhat off-topic), if you haven't seen Morris' documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, then truly, you must.

The NYT deep-sixes Ice Nine

In recent days my friends --- including several physicists --- have been tormenting me with the news about the court case in Hawaii attempting to stop the turn-on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I would like to think that I have a sense of humour about my work, but I do not have a sense of humour about relentless focus on the spectacular (as opposed to the central, or the important); nor do I have much time for the current conviction that crackpots and obsessives, for some mysterious reason, deserve to be given cultural space.

Ahem.

I was pleased to see an editorial in the New York Times today, dismissing the concern while having fun with it at the same time. I may not have a sense of humour in this matter, but at least I can appreciate it in other people.

[I have previously posted on the LHC, and on the ATLAS experiment, which I am joining this year.]

Fish, on a fish out of water

In the NYT opinion section there's a post from Stanley Fish that tries to distinguish good and bad reasons for opposing a controversial university appointment: thoughtful as always. For example, here's a striking portrait of the plight of the outsider in certain special kinds of community:

he or she will lack the internalized understanding that renders the features of the enterprise intelligible, and in the absence of that understanding, the wanderer in a strange land will see only anomalies and mistakes that should be corrected. Items in a practice are not known piecemeal; you don’t learn them by listing them. You learn them by being so embedded in the practice that everything that happens within it has a significance you don’t have to strain for because it is perspicuous without any mental effort at all ...

Teenage boys are human after all ...

... according to a survey discussed in the NYT on the weekend. This reads like another of those studies that gets over-interpreted because its results are striking on their face, but the discussion in the article is interesting. A sample: after noting that the survey results --- which showed that boys were motivated by things other than sex --- had been greeted with derision by male bloggers, it's stated that

skepticism about boys in their teens isn’t surprising ... but it reveals more about what’s going on in the minds of adults, than of teenagers.

“Grown men often deny how dependent they are on women,” said Michael G. Thompson, a psychologist specializing in children and families and co-author of the book “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys.” “The idea that you could pine for a girl, and be devastated by a girl makes an adult man uncomfortable. It reminds them of how profoundly attached they get to women.”

The science of pretty pictures

There's a great set of photos in The Week in Science at the New York Times, with links to the relevant articles (both in the NYT and in journals etc.)

Two takes on the US budget ...

... both from the New York Times: one from the science pages, hoping that America's recent unilateral disarmament in Big Science may come to an end; and one from the editorial page, lamenting the fact that the budget as a whole is broken.

I am torn. If my own concerns were to take a hit as part of some reasonable, overall accounting --- a spreading-out of necessary restraint --- then it would be hard to object. But the process in the States at the moment is neither reasonable, nor global, nor an accounting. The Bush Administration is a long bad dream, defiantly resisting its wake-up call, and the new president is still a whole year away. (It is going to be a long year at that.) Meanwhile the Congress is in some kind of holding pattern.

A propos of the election: how strange is it that Hillary Clinton seems the least fictional option for president? An Obama v. McCain contest would resemble nothing so much as the final season of The West Wing, with John McCain playing Honest Arnie Vinick, and Barack as Matt Santos, substituting black for brown. If the junior senator from Illinois is considering an older man as his running mate, he would be wise to first insist on a visit to a cardiac specialist ...

Give the man his due

Olivia Judson (a.k.a. Dr Tatiana) blogs on the NYT side concerning Alfred Russel Wallace, evolution's Other Guy. It was his birthday on January 8th (OK, so I missed it), and in five months it will be a hundred-and-fifty years since his letter to Charles Darwin that, by showing that someone else was onto the idea, prompted him to publish The origin of species by means of natural selection.

Second in time and in profundity to the sainted Charles, Wallace has missed out both on being a scientific pin-up and on being the scapegoat for a million social and conceptual ills. (Heads up, people: "it" is not Charles Darwin's fault. Or Alfred Russel Wallace's. Or the fault of biology. If you want someone to blame for whatever dreadful thing you think has been unleashed, you might more accurately try Herbert Spencer.) Of course, I should not wish the latter fate on anyone's memory. But as for Wallace's scientific standing: this is a man who, whatever his other weaknesses, independently hit upon the idea of evolution by natural selection, one of the great concepts of any age, and the key in the lock of natural history. Let's give him his due.

The Clinton legacy

The Democratic primary contest for the upcoming US election is remarkable in that former two-term president William Jefferson Clinton --- can't you just tell, from their names, that Americans take themselves more seriously than Australians do? --- is a leading campaigner ... on behalf of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There is an excellent article in this weekend's magazine section of the New York Times, The Clinton Referendum, discussing the extent to which Mrs Clinton's campaign is turning into a referendum on her husband's legacy: this then opens up into a discussion of that legacy itself.

It is interesting to reflect on the similarities, and the differences, to the situation in Australia, where there has been a long-overdue renewal of Labor Party government. I have missed the Hawke/Keating administration with a passion for all of the last eleven-and-a-half years, and it is true that Kevin Rudd is neither Bob Hawke nor Paul Keating ... but then, for all that he stands on their shoulders, it's good that he isn't either of these men. Theirs were not flawless governments. I am glad to see that we are moving on from them, in a way (I must hope) that acknowledges and builds on their strengths. Maybe the way to do this, in the American case, is with a president who is not also a Clinton?

Atonement, gentlemen!

I have been numbering the days to the Australian release of Atonement, Joe Wright's adaption of the extraordinary Ian McEwan novel. I love McEwan, I enjoyed the novel, and I was very impressed (despite my prejudices) with Wright's adaption of Pride and Prejudice, and with Keira Knightley as Lizzy. So after reading rave UK reviews of the new film back in September, I started counting down to Boxing Day.

But then I read A.O. Scott's review in today's New York Times. To quote it in part:

This is not a bad literary adaptation; it is too handsomely shot and Britishly acted to warrant such strong condemnation. “Atonement” is, instead, an almost classical example of how pointless, how diminishing, the transmutation of literature into film can be. The respect that Mr. Wright and Mr. Hampton show to Mr. McEwan is no doubt gratifying to him, but it is fatal to their own project.

My anticipation of the film is now taking on a different colour. Ominously, the novelist remarked that "The one thing movies don’t do particularly well is consciousness, and the book is largely about consciousness. But I think [the filmmakers] got around it pretty well." I took that one way when I first read it; now knowing Scott's reaction to the film, it's adding to my unease.

Of course, I'm still going to see it. Two hours spent watching Keira Knightley and Vanessa Redgrave can never be entirely wasted; and they say that Saoirse Ronan, the newcomer playing the young Briony, is superb. But even so I have to hope that A.O. Scott is mistaken: and that doesn't happen often.

Brisbane in the NYT

Australia's fastest-growing city has made the travel pages in the New York Times, under the heading Once Just a Stopover, an Australian City Grows Up.

I was in Brisbane for a week last year at a conference, travelling from our accomodation to the convention centre each day by ferry on the river, and thinking "I could get used to this".

The Manhattan Project

There's an interesting historical piece in the New York Times (complete with 5-min video) on the links between the Manhattan Project and New York, specifically Manhattan island. The original headquarters were there --- hence the name --- and in the early stages of the project it was somewhat New York centred.

Odd as it sounds, I had never really thought about this before: it seems I'm not alone.

One notable detail is that two thirds of the uranium came from a single supplier: a Belgian civilian with a mining company, who somehow knew about the potential for atomic weaponry and wanted the uranium to which he had access in Allied hands, rather than letting it fall to the Germans. Apparently his initial approaches to the US government were unsuccessful ...

Talk is cheap

Now here's why I have mixed feelings about blogs: a succinct and measured remark on the recent "outing" of Hogwarts' headmaster, a mere paragraph in length, followed by 61 comments (and counting) of the most tedious nature imaginable.

In an earlier post, I remarked that there are related matters which are more plausible in the films than in JKR's text. Presumably other people have noticed this. So following this latest discussion, we can look forward to the film of Deathly Hallows being dragged into the culture wars.

Great. I'm really looking forward to that.

----------

UPDATE: There is an excellent reflection on this matter in the New York Times. Three cheers for the old-fashioned medium of print (which, of course, I access via the Web).

The New York Times is free again

Editorial and other opinion columns at the New York Times, and the archive, are once again free online.

I've been a subscriber since this content went secured --- because the NYT is that good --- but on everyone else's behalf at least, I'm glad that it's back out in the open. Do I prefer that people's blogs link to some other unverifiable ranting guy, or to articles in a disciplined and relatively independent paper? Hmm, lets see, difficult choice ... not sure what I think about that ...

Playing with loaded dice

Consider the contrast between the following news items:

In the New York Times: There is a gene called BRCA1; a woman with a defective copy of this gene has a 60 to 90 percent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime, and about 50 percent of getting ovarian cancer (cf. 2 percent for other women). It's possible to test for this gene. One woman discussed in the article, a 33-year-old who tested postive --- some of whose relatives came down with cancer in their thirties --- has just had a double mastectomy as a preventative measure. She is going to have her ovaries removed when she gets to forty.

All over The Sunday Telegraph (and the evening news): "The Royal Australian Navy is paying for women sailors to have breast enlargements for purely cosmetic reasons, at a cost to taxpayers of $10,000 an operation." The women in question were officers, not enlisted, a point not unnoticed in the online comments. There is something of an irony here: on the Navy's current PR vehicle, the fictitious patrol boat HMAS Hammersley, two out of the three officers are women, remarkably good-looking, and unlikely to win a breast-size contest any time soon. The least the Senior Service could do, it seems to me, is to get its story straight in this important matter.

"Are you happy to pay for this surgery with your taxes? Vote in our home page poll", the Telegraph howls. I would suggest as an alternative that $10,000 per episode of Sea Patrol be removed from the budget for fancy helicopter shots, and spent on a decent script doctor. Because at present, this show is making Patrol Boat look better every day.

Back to the New York Times article (which is extensive and very good, by the way): the story does at least have a hero. Cancer girl, while considering her eventual choice of mastectomies followed by reconstructive surgery, consults her boyfriend:

“Does the thought of plastic surgery bother you?” she asked.

A moment passed.

“It would if I thought the person I was with was doing it because they didn’t like the way they looked,” he said. “But that isn’t this situation.”

Good on you, mate.

Do the math, as they say

Polygamous sects have been in the news recently, with a New York Times article on the vile practice of driving teenage boys out of isolated communities into a wider world they are not equipped to handle, and separating them from their families. Such sects are said to be into control, and so an uneasy relationship with teenage boys is no great surprise; and of course it serves the older men's interest in a more sinister way. Unless men are being lost to war or accident (or expulsion), a community in which all men are expected to take several wives cannot be sustained ... but then, so much the worse for community commitment to such rules. Can't maintain your way of life? Surely the answer is just "Well, that is too bad!"

(Viewers of Big Love will recall that Bill Henrikson was run out of the Juniper Creek compound as a teenager, as a threat to its leader in several senses.)

Meanwhile mainstream Mormons and other folk are in some places learning to co-exist with polygamous sect-members via the classic means of cooperation, and respect for virtuous individuals. In certain senses one cannot argue with this, and nor should one want to. But it provides an interesting test-case for prevailing ideas on tolerance:

Polygamists (and especially their children) should not be subject to relentless taunts, quasi-legal harrassment, or irrelevant discrimination. Amen. Individuals should be treated on their merits, and ideally one should "take them as you find them" in social settings. Sure. Allowance for their customs should be made in forming moral assessments. Well of course, although this is not the same as bracketing polygamy as an issue, or approving of it: as discussed in an earlier post on Bill and Barb's "affair", it's difficult to express a coherent opinion on certain individual actions (I was against the affair) without taking a position on the lifestyle as a whole (I think Bill taking second and third wives was wrong, and the fact that his domestic commitments now prevent him from devoting himself to his first and "true" wife, even despite his feelings, is part of what made it wrong in the first place).

But it is somehow illegitimate to express moral disapproval or criticism of this lifestyle choice, provided it stays within norms of informed consent (and so on)? Um, no. Acceptance of such customs should be taught, for the sake of integration/respect/choice/whatever? Nope, doesn't follow. And so on ...

"Gay marriage" always seems to float around the back of these discussions, and to some extent discussion of polygamy can serve as a proxy for discussion of homosexual partnerships. To me, this last approach seems unhelpful: each case should be treated on its merits. Polygamy is useful to the discussion precisely because it is different, and thus throws our concepts and rhetoric into relief. For example, what does one make of "rights" in this case? What about arguments on "orientation" and "choice"?

Brave, or foolish?

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times has written an article on Jodie Foster and her new film, "The Brave One", which is both sensible and interesting. That's not especially easy.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm looking forward to this film with some trepidation. Ms Foster's best roles recently have been smaller ones, where semi-villainy (The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys), French (A Very Long Engagement), or if you can believe it Spike Lee (Inside Man) have given her the freedom to interpret a character, rather than perform: in each of those films her work was fresh, even witty, words one doesn't readily associate with her. Yet this new film could not be more central to her oeuvre: a strong woman, made a victim, and then turned Travis Bickle. Yes, I know. It could be a triumph or a fiasco, or just about anything in between.

It's directed by Neil Jordan --- a choice Ms Foster apparently had a hand in --- and that would seem like a good sign. One can only hope, because at the top of her form, and in the right company ...

... I might as well give up on the "Ms Foster" routine right here: it's no secret that I'm a Jodie tragic. At the top of her form, and in the right company, Alicia Christian Foster is one of the greatest actors alive and utterly fascinating. As for this film: fingers crossed.

A German beer trail

A recent article in the NYT describes a three-city beer crawl the correspondent took through Germany: Cologne, Leipzig, and Bamberg. It's good work if you can get it.

Despite having done German at school, I've spent little time in the country, and Bamberg is the only one of the three cities I've visited. I can certainly endorse the writer's comments about the local specialty, rauchbier: it really is extraordinary stuff. I don't know about "liquid bacon" as a description, since that makes it seem over-the-top. But I've had people look at me strangely when I wax lyrical about "smoked beer", trying to work out what that could possibly mean. (For the record: apparently the malt is wood-smoked.) All I can say is, try it.

My Lonely Planet guide advised dividing one's time on a short German trip between Bavaria and Berlin, with a stopover in Bamberg [or another town, whose name I've forgotten, as an alternate] along the way. I have no quarrel with that advice. Bamberg is a delightful town for a quick visit, pleasant in aspect and with a great variety of architecture in a limited space that can be walked in a day ... and the beer is like nothing else going. The food was great too.

To my delight, when I was working in Blackburg VA for several months, I discovered that one could buy Schlenkerla Rauchbier from a specialist alcohol merchant there. I've not found it anywhere else. If anyone knows how to source it in Sydney, I'd be very glad to know.