Science

Some scientists at the University of Utah have developed an HIV blocking gel that can be inserted into the vagina pre-sex that somehow contains the semen to keep the virus from spreading.  It seems like kind of big news that I hadn’t heard about…

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810024837.htm

The Genetic Protection in Insurance Coverage Act of 2007 basically says that insurance companies can not discriminate based on genetic information.

I find this concept amazing.

For a second think about insurance companies.

one mississippi.

Insurance companies are a simple exercise. They take individual risk, weigh it against the pool of insured or likely insured and make a decision on how much a person is worth. They figure when a person is most likely to die and how much they need to charge that person in order for them to profi over the life of the policy.

If I were to apply for a new insurance policy they would weigh (no pun intended) all of the negative factors and balance against their pool and give me a monthly payment. This is why actuaries exist, think ‘About Schmidt.’

So, insurance companies have a good baseline of study. A 29 year-old white male with my height and weight with my socio-economic-status should live to be about 70 (give or take 50 years based on modern medicine).

What amazes me is that we have decided the point at which insurance companies can stop gathering information and must start making guesses. Basically, Math (actuarial science) is ok, genetics is not.

How can we possibly make some sort of arbitrary decision on how much knowledge is ok? Why not assail the actual algorithms altogether (that sentence took some work, but it is fun). How can we allow for insurance companies to compile one list of happenings and base a payment but not another?

How can we possibly not agree that more information is better?

It’s a tricky-deal. Should we punish those, by having higher premiums, who are weak? Now I am entering Darwinian zone here, but why shouldn’t the most healthy of our species be rewarded for their superior genes? We’ve been playing that game for, well, a long time. Then, there is that whole euthanasia thing.

Now, what if I were to argue that we don’t really make any decisions? My ability to be fat is a direct result of how I was raised within my genetic disposition. Nature and nurture. If it is a choice, then it is ok for insurance companies to gouge me–ask smokers (and actuaries usually live within these lifestyle factors). But what if I can’t control my weight? By that I mean any disposition or symptom that we show may not be a choice, but in fact may programmed. What if that is really true? (This goes for any kind of disorder in which people make ‘choice’. I am simply picking on myself for expediency.)

I don’t know, it really fascinated me tonight. There was a dude on Colbert who was talking about this. 2 things struck me.

1) He decided he didn’t want to know if he was disposed toward Alzheimer’s.
2) He had a gene that would say he would be bald by an 80% certainty. He has a beautiful healthy swatch of hair.

Anyway, I was amazed that this guy wouldn’t want to know, and, in the context of his argument, it seemed amazingly disarming. He too was drawing a line of should-be-known-knowledge.

This is what I am saying. Either you want to know or you don’t.

The march of rationalism has and will continue to run against an ethics that was born in a previous era (thank you David Harvey). Every time we run from that we rob ourselves of understanding. How can ever knowing more be a bad thing? It might mess up how we look at the world, but there is no value in pretending that known knowledge doesn’t exist.

Like I said, half-formed.

Two final thoughts.

1) Look at how many tags this topic invokes.
2) I looked up the decay/decadence idea from my last post. It comes from the Latin root–as M-W online states (but won’t let me copy and paste off their website [this is particulary interesing in light on the post, why not let me copy from a definition--how is this sacred knowledge?]) from Late Latin decadere to fall, sink.

An electron microscope image of a spider’s spinneret. Fascinating.

Pedal energy

We should see about getting one of these. Alupa is concerned about the armogeddeon. So after the bomb, or after our google histories put us all on big brother’s list and we can’t use the banking system anymore, or just generally after we run out of natural resources and the grids collapse, we should move to the country and form a real self-sustaining cooperative, with this jobbie keeping us juiced up. We can take turns : )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y5eBRWQerY

That dapper band in the background is “Pulp.” Shatner covered this song (Common Peoples) on his 2004 album “Has Been.”

This has been your VH1 popup video moment of the blog.

How to charge your ipod with an onion and gatorade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfPJeDssBOM

How to make your own ‘zine
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xh1W15BWCUk

How to make your own vertical wind turbine
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9UPe6A_UVPc – Part 1
http://youtube.com/watch?v=24LSnATIZhw – Part 2

How to embalm someone at home
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TYUiZxDFi1c

“Walking as bad as driving for global warming” was the headline on Glenn Beck’s show.  This ‘news’ was based off this article:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

“Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” a calculation based on the UK Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Ok, sure let’s not bring transport into the equation for gasoline, but just for food.  That makes sense.  Secondly, beef, milk?  Both inefficient ways to get calories.  What about the energy use of the treadmill that wouldn’t get used that day?

Point is, this article uses terrible ’science’ – an actual, thorough comparison was not done.  And Glenn Beck just reported it that way without actually doing any journalistic research.  Brilliant.  The message was “Why do anything?  Everything causes global warming.  Don’t let those liberals fool you that we can make any difference.”  Frankly, the reporting was so irresponsible I was disgusted.

Apparently out space has a smell that is “a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation.” That is according to astronaut Don Pettit from his last mission into space. I think we need confirmation of this. Dillon, would you mind launching yourself into space and taking a big, deep breath? When you get back you can report your findings here.

The physics world is abuzz. This 248-dimension structure (graphical representation and explanation of its immense size) has been solved. It is being sold by a surfer/physicist (no university affiliation) as the new grand unifying theory.

if mirror neuron theorists are right, the advantages of directly understanding others may be so great that it blows the evolutionary cost of occasional self-sacrifice out of the water. What’s selected for might be the ability to imitate others, and to understand and feel what they are feeling. Self-sacrifice and altruism might be mere byproducts of mirroring and not themselves adaptive in a way selected for by evolution