| Rayne Today Searching for dharma, in spite of the weather...
Bad assumptions could mean disastrous science… Scientists have “engineered” an E. Coli bacteria which produces a 21st amino acid. Only 20 amino acids are found in nature; the study in which these bacteria are being used seeks to understand why only 20 amino acids prevailed on earth. Scientists have taken precautions to limit these bacteria, in the event it would ever escape the lab: "We crippled the organism's ability to biosynthesize leucine [one of the 20 essential amino acids] to avoid any risk that the organism could propagate outside a controlled lab setting…Our unnatural organism will always live in the lab. We have no intention of putting it out in the wild or in commercial products where it could 'get out'." But as this article in New Scientist shows, genetic traits can come and go and return again. They emerge and recede in response to environmental changes. What is the genetic history of E. Coli? This is not the same as knowing its genomic mapping. What hidden traits are buried in its genome? What happens to these recessive traits in response to these deliberate changes? There are no concrete answers – it’s one of the reasons the scientists have modified this E. Coli strain, to search for these answers. And since they don’t have these answers, they cannot with absolute certainty say the precautions they’ve taken will work. That genetic traits can emerge and recede in response to conditions means that the genes are in control, not the scientists. It’s an enormous assumption for these researchers to make, that this engineered E. Coli has been crippled. We can only be certain it’s been modified. I wonder why for this reason these scientists continue, and why they aren’t using computer modeling instead to study the amino acids question. If scientists only understand a small portion of the genetic and memetic response of E. Coli, why not write a script to predict and reproduce its actions rather than court the enormity of disaster that could be unleashed with an engineered bacteria?  comment []Finally! Venezuela getting more attention than Porn! Might not be for long, but at 11:39 am EST, Miguel Octavio's Devil's Excrement blog and his blogging about Venezuela is at the top of the Rankings list:
Could this be a sign of things to come? maybe priorities are a little clearer? one can only hope. (Yeah, I'm not stupid about human nature, porn will always be higher than #3 on the rankings list.) 11:43:22 AM comment []RantsCounterRants: Another example of lousy economics… Did he just not get it while in school, the supply-demand curve thing? Was economics Dubya’s worst subject, next to international trade and policy? Or can the man simply not think his way out of a wet paper bag? This re-employment account, this alleged incentive simply will not work if there are no jobs. Period. Train all you want within the limits of $3000. Transfer and move, too, within that $3000. But if there are no jobs or extremely few jobs, this little experiment fails. Let’s take the example of a person who’s working poor; may/may not be a high school graduate, may be borderline mentally challenged, working at McDonald’s. Said person loses job. The government gives this person a $3000 account, says, use it to get training or relocate and get yourself another job. Oh yeah, you can keep the rest of the unused money if you get employed in 3 months or less. What do you honestly think will happen? Will this person be able to find an appropriate training program open in his town at the time of his unemployment? Will he have the mental proficiency to learn another skill or the other structural support required to get this skill (like an insured vehicle with gas and a driver’s license, or public transport)? Or what of this person’s skills, is this a candidate for a programming career? Do you think this person can learn enough Java, Perl, C, HTML, XML to be competitively employable in 12 weeks? Pick something else, then, if you don’t like that example – but there’s a reason this person worked in the job they had prior to losing it. And when he’s done with the training in 12 weeks or less, will there be a job waiting that will support him which utilizes whatever new skill has been acquired? And what if the person we’re talking about is at the other end of the spectrum – a well-educated person in the tech sector perhaps. What kind of training should this person pursue in 12 weeks or less that would make him any more employable than he was before? Truck driving lessons? An operator’s license? What if that job’s already taken by the person in the previous example because Example 1 isn’t overqualified and Example 2 is? It’s incredibly lame. It results in people who are underemployed or employed well below their skill set – not making for any further increase in economic stimulus. They may just make enough to pay the rent. The potential for abuse of this incentive is enormous (hell, I should start a training company and slap out certificates for a mere 8 weeks and $2500 each). Worse, the incentive works on the wrong side of the equation. The Bushies are trying to come up with a plan to reduce the cost of unemployment insurance – but the only real solution is employment. (Get it, Dubya? If people are employed, they can’t collect unemployment!! It’s the employment, stupid!) Not training for jobs, but job creation. All the training in the world won’t work if there are no jobs to be had. For those of you who find yourselves herded into this kind of system, I have only one suggestion: go into healthcare. Healthcare is screaming for help and will continue to need more staff for the next 10 to 15 years as Baby Boomers age and need more healthcare. But it’s going to take more than 12 weeks of training to get it right, and the rest of us will surely hope the person on the other side of the IV needle, admitting or billing desk has been adequately prepared. comment []
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