Chief Prognosticator

The first complete mapping of the Human Genome was done by, well, who else, The Human Genome Project between 1990 and 2003. Since then additional projects have been executed in the private and public sector including one by the company Celera Genomics. They mapped DNA from five different people including their own lead scientist Craig Venter. Just a few weeks ago (September 4th, 2007), Craig Venter published his complete DNA sequence for the world to see and examine. His is the first genome of a single individual released.

This raises some very tricky implications of human genomes. What sort of privacy laws need to be in place? Or what about genetic discrimination. Think about it — we are becoming more able to determine future susceptibility to diseases based on genetic information. What if people started being discriminated against according to genetic abnormalities or certain proclivities? Yeah, the future is here and I don’t want it to be like GATTACA.

There is some legislation currently being developped for this but it’s not yet approved. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) would prohibit health insurance companies from discriminating for coverage when the reason is only based on a genetic predispotion. The GINA would also prevent similar discrimination in the workplace against companies who would want to fire someone based on an increased insurance liablity. GINA passed the United States House of Representatives as H.R. 493 on 25 April 2007 (by a vote of 420 to 3) but is stuck in the United States Senate.

Image: (Source Wikipedia, cGNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

First we need to define what is the “Deep Web”? The Deep Web is the content of the Internet which is not easily accessible for one or more reasons. These reasons include password protected sites, sites that have ZERO incoming links, or sites which are meta-created and change very often. In contrast to the Web we normally see and use (the so-called “Surface Web”), the Deep Web is a vastly unexplored and unknown area. It is estimated that only 1% of all information on the Internet is in the Surface Web. That leave thousands and thousands of Terabytes hidden from view.

The Deep Web is of great interest to many in the scientific and security community because it is seen as a harbor for Terrorists. How do you find and shut down these Deep Web sites used by Terrorists if you can’t find them? Well that was one of the topics of conversation on a recent episode of Talk of the Nation Science Friday on NPR. Listen to the podcast online. In the show not only the Deep Web (or Dark Web, at the guests refer to it as) is discussed but also how computer scientists and mathematicians are using social network modeling to discern hierarchical structures of terrorist organizations. Very interesting!

First of all, with all this buzz about “reducing your carbon footprint”, I’d like to say how useless it seems given the billions of people in India and China who don’t give a rats ass about it and continue to grow their countries at break neck speed with little consideration of the environment. No seriously, you want the worst air quality in the world? It’s not America, baby — it’s Beijing, China.

Now here’s a crazy idea I heard on a podcast last week — the biggest thing a person can do to reduce their carbon footprint is…. have less children. Just married and have your heart set on three children? Stop at two and reduce your carbon footprint 20%! Have just one kid and reduce it 40% over your entire life. Is this crazy? Yes. But in some countries and even demographics where people have two, three, four or five kids in their family, it could really make a big difference.

I see a trend in the world of software applications. They are becoming more and more widgetized. That means instead of having large programs capable of many tasks, we are instead seeing smaller programs (like widgets) which perform very specific tasks. One example is AdesClrPicker available on AdesBlog.com. This little color picker app lets you capture the exact color code of any color which appears on your screen. Pretty specific, huh? But for someone who needs this tool and uses it semi-regularly in photography and website design, it can be much more easy to use than opening Photoshop or Corel. This little prograsm just sits in the Windows tray, ready for use:

I really think this trend will continue. It’s just so convient and it’s also a reflection on how we work on the Internet. If you are interested in AdesClrPicker, it’s currently half price and available as the new versionv2.0.