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.

The news on Ted Kennedy

The ABC nightly news in Sydney on Wednesday reported Senator Ted Kennedy's cancer diagnosis in the following terms: that tributes had been pouring in from Democrats, and that the situation was tragic.

As reporting this is incompetent, and as a judgment it is absurd.

Among the prominent well-wishers in the United States have been President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain, and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. None of these people were Democrats the last time I checked. Senator McConnell is quoted in the New York Times in these terms: "Senator Kennedy enjoys great respect and admiration on this side of the aisle [i.e. among Republicans] ... He is indeed one of the most important figures to ever serve in this body in our history." That respect would be because Kennedy has been serving in the US Senate for 46 years, is acknowledged by all persons as one of its leaders, and in the manner of active members of that institution habitually forges alliances with, and drafts or co-sponsors legislation with members of the other side. The death or serious illness of a legislator of Kennedy's stature is a sombre bipartisan event in the US. You do not need to be an expert on American politics to know this sort of thing, and for the premier television news program in Australia to be tone-deaf to it ... I'm sorry, it is just inexcusable.

Oh and BTW, for a little context, the guy doubled over and weeping at the podium over Teddy's cancer in the broadcast (Robert C Byrd) is 90, and is the only person who has been in the chamber longer than Senator Kennedy. So he has a free pass to cry in this matter, it would seem to me.

As for the situation being tragic: the Senator is 76. It is sad for him and for his family and friends (there are rather a lot of both), poignant given his brothers' fate, and in the manner of these things it has brought everyone up short with a reminder of the inevitability of death: lots of people participate in this particular illness. But it is not a tragedy. Cancer striking down a teenager or a person in their twenties, a mother in her thirties, a family man in his forties --- that is tragic. To live into one's late seventies in reasonable health and vigour, with wealth and family, and moreover in a position of great power and acknowledged leadership --- that is a good innings under any definition. It is regrettable that it will likely be cut short (for as I understand, the prognosis is poor for a man of the Senator's age with this kind of tumour) but it is not a deep offense against the proper order of things. Let's get some perspective.

[Disclosure: I lost my own father to cancer at 80, on about a week's notice, when he had otherwise been in very good health for a man of his age. So if I'm being unreasonable here, it's not for lack of exposure to the phenomenon.]

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 ...

Four reactions to an apology

I guess even people outside Australia have noticed that on Wednesday the federal parliament passed a motion of apology to the nation's aboriginal people, in particular the so-called Stolen Generations: victims of policies of removal of aboriginal children from their families. Of almost equal symbolic importance was the speech by the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in support of the motion.

There has been a lot of talk on this during the week and in a sense I do not have much to add to it. But by chance it's my duty to offer prayers this morning, on behalf of the 10:00 AM congregation at my church, and so I have to reach some kind of publicly useful position on the week's business. On the one hand, this is dark history that (as the PM says) cries out for recognition and redress. On the other, it is a fearful thing to inject irrelevant polemic into a public prayer, and so I've been trying to understand to what extent this apology really is controversial. As a way of thinking through this, here are a couple of (very different) reactions I think should be rejected; and one, equally critical, that I think should be treated with respect. (Skip to the end if you want to get to the positive bit!!)

(1) Easiest to dismiss is Miranda Devine's statement in the Herald that the PM was fanning the flames of the "culture wars". Coming from a serial arsonist, this really was a bit much ... and if Ms Devine truly thinks (as she says) that Mr Rudd is taking up the approach of former prime minister Paul Keating, then her memory is worse than mine, or her imagination more powerful. I fully admit to having enjoyed Mr Keating's use of aboriginal rights and history as a cudgel to beat his political opponents: at the time, I also thought it was clever politics, a way of bringing the Labor Party in line to support land rights (after the initiative of the High Court) that it might otherwise have held at arms length. In retrospect he was wrong, and so was I. That polemical approach sowed the wind, and we then reaped the whirlwind for eleven-and-a-half long years: reaction that could point to what it reacted against, accuse it of partisan ideology and impracticality ... and be at least partly right.

So there, Ms Devine: I was wrong; so was Paul Keating, at least in this respect. As for the Labor Party, it is currently led by a dentist (figuratively speaking), a bureaucrat, a plain and uninspiring speaker (although his litany-inspired speech yesterday was, for him, unusually good) ... the kind of man who can say without irony that he is excited by establishing evidence-based policies. I take that as a token that the ALP is also willing, in this matter at least, to move on. Perhaps you could try it yourself. I understand that newspapers thrive on controversy, and on "debate" between "opposed" positions, and thus there's a kind of premium on taking a contrary view. But come on: this is important.

(2) Criticism instead from the left, and (as it were) from above, comes from a guest-post by Scott Stephens at Faith and Theology: The apology and the moral significance of guilt, accusing the PM and Parliament of tokenism and empty spectacle and (his words) enlisting aboriginal people "to take part in a kind of emotional pornography for the benefit of thousands of white Australian viewers".

I find this kind of purism --- this apology does not go far enough, so it is worse than useless --- infuriating. One could take issue with the details of the argument: for example, if it's intention that matters, as Mr Stephens Kants, doesn't that count against the approach of Paul Keating? (Mr Stephens faults the PM's language for not being as robust as PK's storied Redfern Speech: "we took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life … we committed the murders … " and so on.) As mentioned, I loved the Redfern Speech and I love PK, but the man can barely open his mouth without at least incidentally swiping at his enemies, Redfern not excepted: surely this is intentional at some level, and thereby compromises the action? Or if one's vice has become so ingrained that it proceeds without any higher-level volition, is it thereby innocent? (Hint: The Christian answer to that question is "no".)

But such arguments are incidental: I just cannot see the merit in trying and convicting the Prime Minister of compromise, of judging the limits of achievable consensus --- of being a politician. This is not news. Nor is it criticism. It is self-indulgence.

And yet ... Mr Stephens is held in regard by at least some other people I respect, and I have learned from experience to be careful of dismissing someone where this is true. There's also something a bit suspicious in a scientist accusing a theologian of contrariety and self-indulgence: because I would say that, wouldn't I? Maybe my reaction against this sort of posturing is part of some Two Cultures problem, however I have, as Mr Darcy would say, not yet learnt to condemn it.

(3) Both Ms Devine and Mr Stephens appeal for support to Noel Pearson, the aboriginal leader whose fierce independence of previous debate has won him enormous authority in the wider Australian community. Read his reflections the night before the apology, and also shortly after the election last year, and you will see why. In fact, one could profitably skip the Devine and Stephens articles and read Pearson alone: the substantial points against the current bien-pensant consensus are all there, but they are set in the midst of an argument that is actually about the problem of dealing with this history, and the present, in political terms, rather than using the apology as a tool in some other dispute.

Mr Pearson is in two minds about the apology, and seems to feel no need to condense his views into a easily-repeated "reaction". I will honour that restraint by simply saying: read what he has to say.


(4) As for me, I have no plan to repeat the apology later this morning: that would be presumptuous and unnecessary. But I do want to use it as a starting point, or (perhaps better) as background: for how can one ignore it this week? And when will we get a topic more fitting for reflection during Lent? "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?", asks the hymn. The answer to the question is "Yes", but it is not a simple yes by any means, and some of the issues are the same.

At Good Friday services at the Lutheran church in Geneva --- it doubles as a kind of chaplaincy to visiting English-speakers, and (a little perversely) as a British Commonwealth get-together --- a striking hymn was sung in the nineties, adapted from a Zulu (and Xhosa?) protest song. It was powerfully used to invite reflection on the crucifixion, and on all human sin, especially sins committed in company: the simple chorus will stay with me all my life.

Senzenina --- What have we done? What have we done? What have we done?

Tanya on Jane on Catherine and reading and ...

In today's Herald, my near-contemporary Tanya Plibersek, Federal member for Sydney and recently-appointed minister for something-or-other, makes a heartfelt plea for reading, fiction in general, and Jane Austen in particular. I like her better already.

Let's talk about sex (in the NYT)

In a minor miracle, a guest columnist in the New York Times has written an op-ed on sex and contraception that abstains from the culture war. Not a single shot is fired.

Something has to give of course: the writer (a surgeon) manages his unlikely feat by taking a shot instead at the entire political class in the States:

One statistic seems to me to give the lie to all the rhetoric about abortion, and it’s this: one in three women under the age of 45 have an abortion during their lifetime. One in three. All politicians ... say they want to make abortion at least rare ... But it’s clear they haven’t been serious ...

The burden of the argument is then that individuals need to get serious: parents, certainly, but really adults in general. (I knew that abortion was chiefly an adult issue, but I didn't know the numbers: apparently only 7% of abortions in the US occur in minors.)

Just about everyone, no doubt, would have things that they might want to say on the question, that the article leaves out. But the writer is 100% for real on all of the things that he does say. On this topic, I'll count that as a result.

(Sorry, but columnists in the NYT are in the Times Select paid section. So this is another free ad.)

Colony collapse disorder

According to an article in the NYT science section, honeybee colonies in the US and elsewhere are collapsing, with one-quarter of the colonies in the States already lost. There are various suspects --- fungi and chemicals and so on --- some of them currently helping the police with their enquiries (as it were), but no-one has been charged as yet.

How is it that I am only just hearing about this? This is pretty serious stuff.