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Hitler and ... Koch & Pasteur?

If it wasn’t enough that PZ is wondering why Ben Stein doesn’t have it in for Newton (what with his clear connection to Nazism), Orac now wonders: The above principles for eliminating the Jew from Nazi territory are clearly those of Pasteur and Koch, not Charles Darwin, and Hitler repeated this rationale on many occasions, as did his underlings! Oh, the perfidy! Where is Ben Stein on this one? How is it that he can’t recognize the true sources of Hitler’s evil. Not Charles Darwin. Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur! All goes to show how simplistic the cdesign proponentsist view of history is.

Today in Science (0104)

Events 1885 - The first successful appendectomy is performed by William W. Grant. 1958 - Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from its orbit 1959 - Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon. 2004 - Spirit, a NASA Mars Rover, lands successfully on Mars Births 1643 - Isaac Newton, English natural philosopher 1894 - Manuel de Abreu, Brazilian physician 1900 - James Bond, American ornithologist 1940 - Brian David Josephson, British physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1945 - Richard R. Schrock, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1761 - Stephen Hales, English…

Today in Science (1006)

You know what to do ... Events 1995 - 51 Pegasi was discovered to be the first major star apart from the Sun to have a planet (and extrasolar planet) orbiting around it. Births 1459 - Martin Behaim, German navigator and geographer ( 1510 - John Caius, English physician 1803 - Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, German physicist 1903 - Ernest Walton, Irish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate 1931 - Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, Russian astronomer 1931 - Riccardo Giacconi, Italian-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1873 - Sir PaweÅ Edmund Strzelecki, Polish explorer and geologist 1951 - Otto…

Update from Vancouver

Well, it's just past midnight here in Vancouver and Day One of HSS is winding down. Janet, John, David and I spent a pleasant evening at a French restaurant enjoying good food and discussion of everything from the state of pre-college education, programming languages, and why philosophy of biology may not appeal to biologists. In other words, we geeked out. All good stuff, trust me. Oh, and it started raining again! No surprises. Tomorrowing morning I'm up early for the ISHPSSB Education Committee who are meeting about sessions for the upcoming Exeter meeting (July '07). So I'd better get to…

Episode CCXXII: More Symphony of Science

We all know it is auto-tuned, and that many of you hate autotuning, so for those of you who can't stand the stuff, don't listen to this, and that way you won't have to complain to the rest of us. At least this isn't like those damned chimes going off every 15 minutes in the cemetery down the street all day — I have no control at all over that crap, and I'm going to have to dynamite a set of loudspeakers some day. You just have to refrain from clicking. (Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,689 entries with 1,426,885 comments.)

Go Blonde with Fungus

Wired Science reports on a way to bleach your hair without all issues of...you know...turning it so stiff and destroyed that it resembles a donkey tail. All you women of the world itching to turn blonde, take note. The system involves an enzyme from forest fungus. Which is good somehow. Forest fungus on your hair being good apparently involves a meaning for the word "good" that I was not hitherto familiar with. Not that it matters for me. The ongoing race about whether I will lose my hair entirely or whether it will turn entirely gray is a dead heat with both being the likely outcome.

Update for the more Wonkish Among Us: Hippocampal Anatomy

I know this will be of interesting for about 1 in a hundred of you, but there is a REALLY good review of hippocampal and parahippocampal region connectivity in April's Nature Review Neuroscience. Of special interest, there is an interactive .pdf in the supplementary information where you can identify the connections between one region to every other region. Also, they discuss the functions of the entorhinal cortex and the subiculum from the point of view of update anatomy. (Unfortunately behind a subscription wall, but I feel confident that anyone who understood a word of what I just said…

Minnesota's pet wacko

What do you do with a local politician who claims that public education is her #1 issue, while accepting money from supporters of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State? That's our Michele Bachmann, claiming to be a supporter of education while endorsed by people who say this: I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education. Take a look at the people who favor completely gutting public school education at the Separation of School and State site, too: D. James Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, Tom Monaghan—it's like a chorus line of the freaky religious right. And…

What Causes People to Vote for a Radical-Right Party?

Back in 2005 when I spent a month as a visiting scholar at Dresden Technical University in Germany, I was stunned to be told by several graduate students that in the rural areas of Saxony a quarter of voters supported so-called neo-nazi political parties and organizations. Now one of my favorite academic outlets, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, features in its latest issue two essays debating the roots of public support for radical right parties in Europe. For those logging on from an academic or institutional gateway with a subscription, the two essays are well worth…

THE SCIENCE AND PASSION OF FLY FISHING AND HUNTING: New Blog Explores The Dynamics of the Great Lakes Region

A few readers know that I originally hail from outside of Buffalo, New York, home to some of the best hunting and fly fishing in the country. Recently my younger brother Drew launched the Dreams of Steele blog exploring the science and passion of fishing and hunting in the Upstate New York region. There is a little something for everyone at this multi-media site, including some great shots of the outdoors, and even this photo and post detailing Drew's first buck of the season. (And for those wondering, no I don't hunt, nor own a gun. For some reason, I escaped the fever.)

Science Tattoo Friday: A Textbook On Your Back

"My tattoo is from an Irving Geis illustration of DNA. I was attracted to his attention to the molecular detail while also drawing in a representational spiral that doesn't ignore the basic beauty of the double helix. This particular sequence (I've BLASTED) is too short to be specific to only one gene, but one human gene it's found it is the 5' UTR of one of our tight junctions."-Matthew MacDougall, 4th year medical student Is there no end to the science tattoos out there? See the 70 I've gotten so far at the Flickr set.

Spontaneous Book Club Meetings?

It's a brave new world for us book authors. Today's case in point: PZ Myers assigned some of his students to ready my book Soul Made Flesh, which chronicles how humanity figured out what the brain is for. Some of his students have bravely agreed to post their reports on the book on Myers's blog Pharyngula (here and here). The comment thread has turned into a wide-ranging book-club discussion. I'm chiming in from time to time too (here and here, for example). I'm definitely enjoying it and will check in as long as the discussion goes.

Science Tattoos Hit Mainstream Media

Your scientific body art just keeps getting more attention. Can I just say that, as a science writer, I find it strange to get calls from other reporters wanting to interview me about other people's tattoos? Who put that in my job description? Anyway, here are a few links-- Wired: The Coolest Science Tattoos Metro (UK newspaper): Sci-ink-tific tattoos all the rage Chemical and Engineering News: Science Tattoos Long Island Press: "These pics, collected by science writer Carl Zimmer, capture nerdiness in its most badass form." So, if you want the world to see your inky love of science, send in…

Jack Kemp Phillis Schlafly: Evolution as Evil Plot

From his latest column: Liberals see the political value to teaching evolution in school, as it makes teachers and children think they are no more special than animals. Childhood joy and ambition can turn into depression as children learn to reject that they were created in the image of God. He may not be in office any more, but this piece wins Kemp an honorary spot in the creationist-friendly political pantheon. Update: Thursday 8/24 Turns out this is the work of the old foe of evolution, Phyllis Schlafly. Kemp's view on evolution remain a mystery. More here.

What to do after you lose your job at NASA

Congratulations to Dan Vergano of USA Today, Michelle Nijhuis of High Country News for winning the 2006 journalism awards from the American Geophysical Union. The AGU is the country's leading organization of Earth scientists. Both reporters won for articles on global warming. You can read Vergano's article here, and Nijhuis's here, here, and here. I imagine that George Deutsch is looking for some things to do to fill the time he once spent censoring NASA scientists about global warming. As an ex-journalism major, he might be interested in reading some reporting that scientists recognize for…

Attention Nutmeggers

If you live in the New Haven area, I hope you'll consider joining me tomorrow at 5 pm for a talk at the Yale Medical School about my book Soul Made Flesh. The talk will be at 5 pm, Thursday October 6, in the Beaumont Room at the Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street. It is free and open to the public. If you need directions, here's a map. I can promise lots of cool images to accompany my talk, of stuff like excorcisms, miraculous resurrections of murderers, and alchemy. All the normal things you'd expect from a seventeenth-century powerpoint.

Charles Robert Darwin, 1809 - 1882.

I was going to post the text of a talk ("The Myths of Darwinism") that I gave to the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix in February 2002. But I can't find a scanned copy. I should be able to post it tomorrow, though. So, in place of that, I give you ... "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

Smart drugs, constructed selves, and the tip of my nose

When one of the founders of cognitive neuroscience is helping you plumb the mysteries of consciousness, the self, free will, and the two minds that coexist in our skulls, it helps every now and then to touch your nose. To understand why touching your nose is such a profound experience, check out my talk today on bloggingheads with Mike Gazzaniga. (And if you want to see what Mike was like as a young post-doc 50 years ago, check out this video from the early1960s about his split brain research. It's also evidence of how much science documentaries have changed...)

Springtime Will Be Complicated

This is a new and fascinating map. It shows how next spring is probably going to come early here in New England, as it has come earlier and earlier for the past few decades. But in Florida it will probably come late. Both changes stem from the same source: our carbon addiction. I explain why in my first foray in a new column for Wired.com called Dissection. The column, on all manner of science, will come out every other Friday. Let me know what you think, there or here. Greenup of the Planet Is Not Black-and-White

Experimental Biology 2016 - August Krogh Distinguished Lecturer Dr. Jon Harrison

This year's August Krogh Distinguished lecture, the highest award given to an accomplished Comparative Physiologist from the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology section of the American Physiological Society was awarded to Dr. Jon Harrison, Arizona State University. Dr. Harrison gave an outstanding seminar in which he reviewed some of his major research discoveries. His work has included examining how insects tolerate various temperatures and how changes in the levels of atmospheric oxygen may relate to variations in insect growth and overall body size. He has also examined the mechanics…

Mystery of the buzzing ocean discovered

Left Top: Pacific hatchetfish; Left Bottom: longfin lanternfish; Right: an acoustic instrument in the Pacific Ocean. (Images from Scripps Institution of Oceanography press release) I love a good mystery. This one has puzzled scientists for several years now...ever since they discovered a humming or buzzing noise in the Pacific ocean, an otherwise rather quiet place. This was no ordinary noise, that they knew of. In a recent interview on NPR, Dr. Simone Baumann-Pickering, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (La Jolla, California) shared what she and her team think is causing all that noise…

Lott on that meaningless BBC poll

Lott has a post (scroll to 1/10/04 entry on his blog) on the meaningless poll that discussed earlier. Lott's headline is: A BBC Poll Shows that Most British Want a Law authorizing homeowners to use any means to defend their home from intruders Of course, as I explained earlier phone-in polls are not at all representative of the population. Nor in any case was there majority support for the shoot a burglar law, which received 37% of the votes. Lott links to a post by Eric Rasmussen, who also seems to think that the poll is representative of public opinion in Britain…

Cloning endangered animals

I just read an article about conservationists in Brazil at the agricultural research agency (Embrapa) who are planning on cloning endangered animals using tissue samples collected from carcasses. The researchers want to clone animals that are not yet critically endangered in order to maintain them in captivity in the event that wild populations decline significantly. Emprapa is planning to start with the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), a species that is "near threatened" according to the IUCN Red List of endangered species. Other planned species include jaguars, black lion tamarins, bush…

Making perfume from whale barf

You may recall a prior blog in which I talked about the wonders of whale poo and a substance called ambergris that can be either defecated or regurgitated by whales and is used to make expensive perfumes. Well, my favorite comic strip, Piled Higher and Deeper (i.e. PhD Comics), posted a 2-minute thesis presented by Baillie Redfern from the University of British Columbia on how whale barf is used in perfumes and how her research is attempting to re-create the wonders of ambergris in the lab. These 2-minute thesis presentations are great. Keep it up PhD Comics!

Please forgive the temporary silence around here

Dear faithful blog readers, Please excuse Jane from regular posting for a few days. She has hit the perfect storm of multiple deadlines combined with a hell week for Mr. Jane and very poorly timed day care closures. Once she figures out which deadline can be dumped or postponed with the least dire consequences, once she stops having to do the Day Care Shuffle, and once things return to "normal", she will be back to posting as usual. (And probably have a few things to say about backup child care arrangements.) Fondly, Jane's brain (hmmm, I seem to be having a sense of deja vu, here.)

Time to Register for ScienceOnline2010!

Yes folks, it's that time again:  Registration is now open for the great ScienceOnline2010 meeting that will take place (as always) in Durham, NC in January.  The program features many great scientists, science bloggers, and science journalists, and promises to be lots of fun. I'll be running a session with Tom Levenson and Brian Switek called "From Blog to Book: Using Blogs and Social Networks to Develop Your Professional Writing," and I'll also be doing a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts workshop helping folks develop proposals for books and articles.  See the program for details, and sign up!  

Future of Scifi

The latest New Scientist magazine has soundbites from writers like Gibson and Atwood and much else. Give it a read. E M Forster in Aspects of The Novel, asks a pertinent question: Will the mirror get a new coat of quicksilver? Will the creative process itself alter? (By mirror he means novels, and the creative process is story telling - through words, paint, clay...). This is the kind of meta question about art that only those who engage in speculative fiction can address, IMO. Science, of course, is the best possible vehicle for speculation because it is more consistent than most other…

Who's hot and who's not

Keep those hot things under cover, especially if you are in the UK where hot-mapping is all the rage. Hot-mapping is thermal imaging houses - usually by flying an aeroplane with imaging equipment - to figure who's hot and who's not. Haringey, a town near London has now got its own hot-map. [via BLDGBLOG] The map, I must say, is just ugly. Shouldn't it be possible to export the data into a KML format, suitable for google earth or World Wind? From the Haringey website: [In] a poorly insulated property, up to 1 out of every 3 pounds spent on heating is being wasted Holy pounds!

All ur quantum belong to me

The second part of Enemies of Reason, the two part series hosted by Dawkins, aired yesterday night here in the UK. At some point, Deepak Chopra, the quantum quack, was interviewed by Dawkins. Mr Chopra said the word quantum is used as a metaphor in alternative therapies, and then - to the eternal surprise of reason - claimed scientists have hijacked the word. Scientists have hijacked the word quantum? Right, all ur quantum belong to me, said the LOLcat. Dawkins barely controlled himself from exploding. I don't think he would want to interview Chopra again. Note on first part here. What's a…

India's new President Pratibha Patil

Amit Varma writes in India Uncut blog: Pratibha Tai will also not let India's traditional sciences wither away just because they are nonsense. (What kind of silly reason is that anyway?) Consider astrology: Just last year, while launching an astrology website that she surely knew would succeed, she said, "Astrology is a serious and deep subject which has a great influence on our society. The growing expectations of the people from this subject requires application of science and technology." India's president is a ceremonial post. But, you can expect the new president to advance the cause of…

Travelling

Yours truly is travelling to his beloved country early morning today for three weeks (real early, am sleepless in amersham). Expect a short break at this blog for the next few days. I'll make the odd post from Namakkal and provide you with a glimpse of the southern country with my newly minted Sony camera. If you are hanging about in Chennai, you can spot me at Shaastra. I'll be there on Saturday night and Sunday morning. I am quite thrilled to have Mark Twain in my bag. A couple of books of his to enliven the trip. So long.

Khayyam on the finger

Omar Khayyám was an accomplished mathematician and an astronomer although he is most often remembered for Rubaiyat. That one line introduction out of way, let's get to the finger part. Khayyám wrote thusly, "The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." We will all do well to remember that. Now, head over to Sunil's post on Khayyam, Galileo, fundies and the finger salute where he discusses much more and quotes from a recent article in Nature magazine.

Malnutrition - India's Silent Crisis

Dilip writes in How the Other Half Lives , "Malnourishment, particularly of kids, has been in the news in recent weeks and months. In Guna district of Madhya Pradesh (check this photo essay), in Orissa, in Maharashtra's Melghat, and even in Bombay. Is this a new phenomenon? Not at all. Malnutrition has been an Indian phenomenon for years. By some estimates, over half of India's children are underweight or malnourished today. This is the highest number in the world. In fact, together with our South Asian neighbours, we account for half the world's malnourished children. " The picture is from…

Apple as Editorial Overlord

The Columbia Journalismi review speaks plainly about Apple's insistence on editorial control of its iPad apps: Look, let's face it. The iPad is the most exciting opportunity for the media in many years. But if the press is ceding gatekeeper status, even if it's only nominally, over its speech, then it is making a dangerous mistake. Unless Apple explicitly gives the press complete control over its ability to publish what it sees fit, the news media needs to yank its apps in protest. Yes, this is that serious. It needs to wrest back control of its speech from Apple Inc.

Open Lab 2007 - Best of Science Blog Writing

After reading well over 400 blog submissions for the second edition of the "Open Laboratory" the judges have finally whittled the list to the best 51 to be included in the book. Surprisingly, one of the Omni Brain posts has made it into the anthology - I think perhaps one of the only serious blog posts I've written this year. The winning list has a great variety of wonderful posts from a great variety of blogs, some of which I have never heard of. So head over to A Blog Around The Clock for the winning list and links to all of the great articles.

Diver Profile

This week, the L.A. Times ran an interesting profile of a sea urchin/sea cucumber fisherman from California. Though the author pushes us to feel sympathy for the aging diver and a declining fishery, any fisherman who was able to send his two sons to "13 years of prep school in Palos Verdes, and then sent them to two of the top liberal arts schools in the nation" cannot have been doing too badly. No, he doesn't have a 401(k) and he might continue to work his whole life, but isn't this simply the modern manifestation of the American Dream?

The History of Sushi

If you were looking for Nemo, you would be much more likely to find him in sushi (the raw fish movement that has spread from Japan to the remote reaches of the world, including landlocked Ohio) than a dentist's aquarium. Last weekend, Jay McInerney's review in the NYTimes, Raw, covered two books about sushi. Given that bluefin tuna populations are 20 percent of their 1970s levels (and that percentage would likely be smaller if we had older data to consider), understanding the sushi and sashimi movement is imperative to understanding where some of our fish has gone.

Quote of the Day - 7 April 2009

The animals of the Burgess Shale are holy objects--in the unconventional sense that this word conveys in some cultures. We do not place them on pedestals and worship from afar. We climb mountains and dynamite hillsides to find them. We quarry them, split them, carve them, draw them, and dissect them, struggling to wrest their secrets. We vilify and curse them for their damnable intransigence. They are grubby little creatures of a sea floor 530 million years old, but we greet them with awe because they are the Old Ones, and they are trying to tell us something. Steven Jay Gould Wonderful…

Scientific Equipment of Unknown Purpose.

One of the pictures in a Walter Reed Army Medical Center collection of historic photographs is a simple, black-background shot of what we can only assume is some sort of scientific equipment: The question is, what is it? According to the caption, it's a 1984 picture of a "mouse-tail wash table". My guess is that it was used to wash the tails of mice used in scientific experiments, presumably after said tails had been removed from their original owners. Exactly which lab used the device, and for what sort of research, is not so clear. (HT: Wired Science)

Should the State Pay for Science?

Timothy Sandefur and I recently wound up arguing the pros and cons of government funding for basic scientific research. We've decided to take our discussion from email to our blogs. Tim is a libertarian, and it's safe to say that he's not the world's largest fan of government funding for most things, including science. He just posted a detailed explanation of his position at his blog Freespace. I'll be posting a response here sometime tomorrow. If you're convinced that it's obviously good to have the government fund scientific research, I'd suggest that you go read Tim's post.

London

Only now, as I sit here in my hotel room eating a cheddar and roasted tomato sandwich, with a packet of Worcester Sauce crisps on the side, is the fact that I'm in London starting to sink in. In a few minutes, I'm going downstairs to meet up with Mo, and we're going to stroll over to the Jeremy Bentham, which is the first stop on a tour of scientifically-connected pubs that the Nature Network's Matt Brown has arranged. I'm bringing my camera, and I'll try to remember to let the autofocus take over from me as the evening progresses.

Yeah, that's gonna leave a mark.

PZ Myers got expelled from the line to see the movie Expelled tonight, apparently for the crime of actually being PZ Myers. That's definitely ironic, and possibly hypocritical. His family and his guest were allowed to go in and watch the movie. His guest was Richard Dawkins. Yes, that Richard Dawkins. That particular move was so amazingly stupid that they're gonna need to come up with a new word for it. No, I'm not kidding. No, this isn't a premature April Fools joke. No, it's not an attempt at satire. It's just creationists managing to shoot an own-goal hat trick.

Comment Problems

Greetings, Gentle Readers. I just rescued a number of comments from hang-up in moderation. No idea why most of them got moderated - they didn't even have links in them. Some of them were made many days ago. I want to apologize to you all for not getting those comments out there sooner. I have been going through a bout of almost daily migraine and have not been on the computer much at all, let alone blogging, let alone tending to the blog. Until I get my next botox treatment and it kicks in, it may continue like this so please be patient.

A Mournful Complaint

I just had to share this very recent comment with you all: I would actually very much like to avoid this blog (and a few others), but the ScienceBlogs channels - which I prefer to having to subscribe to each and every blog individually - won't let me do so. I usually just skip over the posts, but if there is any way to stop the "content" here from cluttering up my feeds, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Lazy, whiny, insulting misogyny asking for help in maintaining the lazy, whiny, misogynistic state - you gotta love it. That takes balls, I suppose - if by balls you mean arrogant whiny…

Happy Birthday, Emoticon!

From the Chronicle News Blog... ...it will be 25 years ago tomorrow that Mr. Fahlman, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, invented the digital smiley face. After a colleague joked about a contaminated elevator on an electronic bulletin board, Mr. Fahlman had his eureka moment: He recommended that future quipsters mark their jokes with ":-)" to make sure no one misconstrued their comments. What great blessings the emoticon has brought to our society! Although I do think the Abraham Lincoln emoticon is just a little too much: -- "==):-)=" -- Happy birthday, little…

A prehumous Darwin Award for Michelle Bachmann

One of the things I don't like about the Darwin Awards is that it presumes the only way to gain one is to remove yourself from the gene pool directly by dying. But that would be a Wallace Award. Darwin knew, as do we, that there are many ways one can avoid contributing to the future gene pool, and it doesn't need to involve not having children. Being totally unfit to walk around without a leash is another, if it's heritable. Down the track, the "stupid gene" will get eliminated too, eventually. So it's nice to see Michelle Bachmann get a prehumous, not a posthumous Darwin Award.

Grand Canyon tapdancing by NPS

PEER, a website devoted to promoting environmental responsibility by public institutions, notes that three years after promising to review the literature on display at the Grand Canyon National Park after creationist literature was on offer, nothing has happened. In fact, the National Park Service has refused to say anything about the age or formation of the canyon, due to pressure from Bush appointees. It seems geology cannot be allowed to interfere with the religious supporters of the Bush gang. Hattip to John Pieret. Update: The Sacrameto Bee gives some of the background and developments…

Ask a Science Blogger - Pickup lines

This week's question is What are the best pickup lines for scientists and science-savvy folk? Asking a geek this question is like asking a McDonald's chef for the recipe. Geeks don't pull. Or maybe, that's just me. Besides, I was married for nearly 20 years and I'm well out of practice. But for my money, the pickup line a woman would get me with (apart from "Are you busy?") would be: "Would you like to find a table and discuss species concepts?" Actually, a very nice woman asked me just that, but to my mild dismay, she actually wanted to discuss species concepts...

And so to Tucson

Yesterday John Lynch (he of the Stranger Fruit) took me to see the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa, which had some truly excellent displays of the feathered dinosaurs from China (they wouldn't let me photograph them, though, and none of the souvenir postcards had them either, but see here). Here's Lynch underneath an excellent bronze outside the museum - a Velociraptor, I think, or a Deinonychus, which was the core exhibit of the display. Today we're off to Tuscon to shoot some bad guys see the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. I gather Wile E. Coyote will be there.

Another stupid piece of DNA worship

By Matt Ridley, in Time: ... by the end of this century, if not sooner, biotechnology may have reached the point where it can take just about any DNA recipe and read off a passable 3-D interpretation of the animal it would create. So long as you also know the developmental machinery, the necessary ecological conditions, the structure of the cells, the maternal investment involved... in other words, if you know the facts about the structure and biology of the organism, you'll be able to read off the structure and biology of the organism, just from the DNA. Err....