Categories
politics

What Ben Franklin would have thought of the Patriot Act

I doubt if the one of United States’ founding fathers and greatest thinkers would be too impressed with the subtle and blatant curtailing of civil liberties by the enactment of the US Patriot Act. I stumbled across the following quote of Ben Franklin’s earlier today while I was looking for something else. Wise words that the current administration could do with heeding.

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. “
–Benjamin Franklin

More information on Benjamin Franklin can be found here

Categories
science

Microarrays aid the study of gene activity

Just read a great article on wired.com about Microarrays (silicon chips that light up to reveal which genes are active in a DNA sequence). These chips produce huge volumes of information that scientists have found extremely difficult to process and interpret. Enter the helping hand of s/w company Salk Institute. Top code chairman, Jack Hughes, is a paraplegic who also works as director of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation researching cures for ameliorating spinal cord damage. Top coder is making a search tool in the form of the Gene Chip Data Interface available to all researchers in this field This should enable scientists to better understand the genetic effects of spinal chord damage in particular and microarray data in general.

Categories
humour

Doogle search

Some wags in Trinity College Dublin have hacked up a humorous front end for the google.ie search engine. It’s called Doogle Search. Searches are broken up into categories from the hit Irish TV show Father Ted such as drink, feck, girls & arse. Words are mysteriously appended onto your search from a list of all things Oirish e.g Connemara, shite & Guinness.

Categories
philosophy

Thought for the Day

“Cease to listen and you will hear reason, close your eyes and you’ll see the truth.” – (modification of an old Taoist proverb)