If you live in Washington, you're supposed to get used to this stuff, but I still haven't. Driving home from the office, I noted some flashing police lights in the road ahead of me. It was near a spot where, last year, a man ran a red light in his car and plowed into pedestrians on the sidewalk, killing one and severely maiming another. I feared seeing some kind of carnage.

But it wasn't carnage. There were dozens of cops. Almost one-to-one, in fact, with the demonstrators. At 8:30 at night, perhaps 50 demonstrators were chanting something along the lines of "Hey Hey Ho Ho Ariel Sharon's Got to Go!" It was a diverse crowd ~ from the now familiar version of the Israeli flag with a swastika replacing the star of David, to Jews for Peace, to college kids in kaffiyehs. Across the street was the hotel where Sharon, presumably, is staying.

At first I was unnerved. And then I was glad. I had another one of my intermittent surges of patriotism. However ineffective or naive or misguided, people come here and make a noise because they care about what's going on in the world. And the police presence wasn't there to stifle or to suppress.

In a recent email correspondence with an overseas friend, I noted that the principles and standards we hold ourselves to personally don't always scale very well to the level, for example, of nation-states. It's easy to criticize and find fault, and very difficult to find just solutions. The only hope is conversation, based in mutual respect and fueled with kindness.

I guess that scales both ways. Too bad conversations like that are so rare.

1:14:41 AM    please comment []

Read this article. If you were able to get through it without mentally wincing, then you are ready for tomorrow. I'm both impressed and concerned that these artists are pushing our imaginations forward to meet the future that's coming. Says artist Oron Catts:

We want people to recognize that the tools of modern biology confront us with a need to start to formulate a new moral framework to deal with what we know about life and our newly acquired ability to manipulate it. Frankenstein (ran) away when he was faced with his own creation. I hope we, as a society, will be wiser.

Yeah.

12:39:12 AM    please comment []

Our Man Craig is in the news again. Not content with having his personal DNA serve as the primary data set for the human genome project, he's moving on to greener pastures.

First up, a book: "I will do a detailed examination of my genetic code and use that as a basis of writing my book on genomics," he said." (I'm wracking my brain for a sufficiently caustic comment. Check back later.)

Project 2: Save The World. As described in the New York Times article ~

His energy institute is centered on a group of ancient microbes, archea, which inhabit the deepest parts of the earth and ocean. The archea do not infect humans, making them safer to manipulate. Dr. Venter said he hoped that they could be genetically engineered to suck out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, relieving the threat of greenhouse warming, and to convert the gas into hydrogen, a source of nonpolluting energy.

And number 3, my very favorite, an institute to study issues of science policy like the genetic basis of race and stem cell research. Nothing controversial there, no sir!

Actually, all kidding aside, I've got to admit to a grudging admiration for Mr. Towering Ego. Having just been forced out of Celera, he's not crying ~ just cashing in his chips and moving on to some pretty ambitious new stuff.

12:25:54 AM    please comment []