Science Sunday
Episode 1: Junk DNA
You all know that I have a bug up my butt about "junk DNA". There was an interesting article in New Scientist with an interesting observation about so-called junk DNA. It states that "the biggest differences between species lie not in the number of active genes, but in the amount of junk DNA". Humans have the largest proportion of junk DNA of any species yet tested. Scientists don't yet know why this is, but it sure is interesting. I might have to change my opinion in that previous article linked above. Maybe, instead of the junk DNA being the "basic programming" and the genes being the "data", it's the other way around. Maybe the genes are your basic arithmetic operations that all "computers" know how to process, and the junk DNA is the "data" that it operates on. Humans, with more DNA, have more data to operate on, and therefore more complex results are produced when the program is finished.
Episode 2: Manipulation of Science
The Bush administration is still muzzling the scientists they don't want you to hear from. Any remarks that NASA scientist James Hansen wants to make have to be reviewed by the public affairs staff. These directives come through informal channels such as phone conversations, which leave no paper trail. The government position is that scientists can present results but should not be speaking about policy. Colleagues have stated that he always makes clear that he is speaking for himself and not for the agency. But he's still not allowed to speak unfettered. Contrast this with the restriction on an anti-climate-control scientist during the Clinton administration, Indur Goklany. He was taken off climate-related works, but he was still allowed to speak or publish whatever he wanted, as long as he made it clear that he was only speaking of his own opinion.
Among the restrictions, according to Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to the Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.
In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.
Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, McCarthy said Deutsch called NPR "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee, that might be Deutsch's priority.
Episode 3: Undisputed fact
I was listening to NPR last week, and they had a woman on there that was some sort of head honcho at the Right To Life foundation. While I respect her right to have her own opinion about things, I have to call her on something she said, since the host of the show did not. She repeated several times that "it's an undisputed fact that life begins at conception". I wholeheartedly agree that if you believe that life begins at conception, that you may then conclude that "abortion is murder". However, it is not an "undisputed fact" that life begins at conception. In fact, I'd say that it is completely disputed, and that's the main direction from which the debate about abortion comes. And until such groups as yours start pushing hard for contraception in addition to against abortion, and against the death penalty, you will never convince anyone that you are not just an organization with a religious agenda.
1:26:40 PM 
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