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 Saturday, September 28, 2002
DVD Makers Starting to Play Games. You've dropped your VCR player and soon you can forget your PC. At least, that's what the DVD industry is planning on. Michael Stroud reports from Digital Hollywood in Beverly Hills. [Wired News]
I love it when an industry creates a need when none exists. You need broadband for this to work and broadband is still a ways off. Besides, even though I do like the extra stuff, I buy the DVD for the MOVIE, not so I can go to some Disney site to play a game. 11:55:28 PM 
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If You Think the NASDAQ's Decline Is Large.... If You Think the NASDAQ's Decline Is Large... David Hudson forwards a piece on the end of Germany's attempt to create an equivalent of the NASDAQ: Subject: Last one to leave... Not only is recess over, they're shutting down the playground. German stock exchange shuts Germany's high-tech Neuer Markt exchange after 96 percent slide | Thu Sep 26, 7:07 AM ET By DAVID McHUGH, AP Business Writer FRANKFURT, Germany - Germany's stock exchange operator said Thursday it will eliminate its... [Semi-Daily Journal]
If you think we have it bad, as investors, just think about losing 96% of your value. Holey moley. And, remember that our Dow and NASDAQ are still highly overvalued compared to hisorical values.I think I might just bury all my money in the backyard until all this blows over. 11:46:04 PM
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I Cannot Stand It. I Cannot Stand It Paul O'Neill "dismissed a wary communiqué from the Federal Open Market Committee on Tuesday that suggested significant downside risks to the economic recovery as 'bureaucratic'." I understand that many Treasury Secretaries believe that if they say that the outlook is "mixed" people will conclude that they think the outlook is horrible. But I would have thought it would be more important for a Treasury Secretary to avoid conveying the message that he just doesn't understand what... [Semi-Daily Journal]
This is eerily reminiscent of Bush pare. I believe a fundamental reason he lost to Clinton was his percieved disconnect from the American economy. He keep stating that things were going great, that all the indications were that things were just fine, at a time where we were in a recession with lots of people out of work. Now we have major dislocations in the stock market, in consumer confidence and the possibility of a double dip recession and the Treasury secretary stating that everything is fine. He responds to concerns about the effect of war on the economy with rhetoric that evades the concerns. It certainly does not make ME feel more confidant. 11:41:40 PM
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Gnomic Utterance (Joke). From Phil Dyson: "There are only 10 types of people in the world: those that understand binary and those that don't. Ha ha ha!"... [Semi-Daily Journal]
Nerd humor. I love it and understand it. 11:34:34 PM
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What Eight Words Do You Say to the President?. What Eight Words Do You Say to the President? The BBC introduced me as "former Clinton adviser Bradford DeLong." I protested that I had "only spoken eight words to the guy in my life." And now people are emailing me with suggestions as to what those eight words must have been, so I figure I might as well make it an open contest. Any more suggestions (keep it clean, please)?... [Semi-Daily Journal]
What eight words would you use? I love the Monty Python line 'Is she a goer? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!' We could do this forever. What eight words would you say to ... (Lincoln, Carter, Bush, etc.) It would make an interesting parlor game ;-) 11:33:09 PM
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Pesticide resistance warning after gene discovery. Scientists have raised concerns following the discovery of a single gene that gives vinegar flies resistance to a wide range of pesticides, including the banned DDT. Australian Research Council [EurekAlert - Biology]
A single mutation in one gene can confer a wideranging resistance to a huge range of pesticides with very different structures. It will be interesting to understand how it does this. What is also interesting is that the mutation is obviously selective, since it has rapidly spread throughout the population. It may very well be that by selecting for resistance to say DDT, the fly mutated and now, even in the absence of DDT, this mutation confers a positive effect. This would be a nice example of the positive effect of selection on gene frequencies. It also means that we need to understand a lot more of cellular processes if we want to keep ahead of the genomes of the various pests. Those who propose that we return to DDT to kill mosquitoes in order to help people today should see this as a cautionary tale. We might effect short term gains in human lifes, while possibly degrading the environment and creating forms of insects that are immune to much more than DDT. Pest control is too complicated to envisage a single point of attack. 9:26:34 PM
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SMU and UNC researchers make an advance in our understanding of gene regulation. Researchers from Southern Methodist University and the University of North Carolina have made an important advance in our understanding of gene regulation. The new insight comes from discovering the biochemical mechanisms by which an important protein works to silence genes. [EurekAlert - Biology]
Chromosomes are covered in proteins, producing chromatin. These proteins do many things, one being packaging the lond DNA strands into a small volume so that they can fit in the nucleus. In order for a gene to be transcribed and expressed, the relevant part of the chromosome must be unpackaged. This is a very complex process but one that we need to understand if we want to fully understand how the cell works. This may be one more step. 9:18:24 PM
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