MOPEDER’s Neighbors

2nd Annual DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:19:20 -0400

2008 Donors Choose Blogger Challenge

How would you like to make a difference in the life of a public school students?

For the second year in a row, Six Apart is participating in the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge. The challenge runs all throughout the month of October, and we'd love for you to participate along with us. Just as we did last year, Six Apart is sponsoring the award for the bloggers who reach the most kids.

How It Works

The Blogger Challenge is a friendly contest amongst bloggers to raise money for low-income public schools. Here's how it works: teachers from all over the country post items for which they would like funding, such as writing supplies for a journalism class, equipment for a science lab, or music instruments for a band class. Bloggers choose their favorite projects and link to their challenge page in a post or via a giving widget on their blog. The bloggers who raise the most money or reach the most kids will win an award.

Here's how you can participate:

Go to the Donors Choose Blogger Challenge page and find a blogger's giving list you'd like to support.

Set up your own challenge and let your readers know in a blog post or by installing the widget (it just takes a few clicks).

No matter which way you choose to participate, you should feel incredibly proud of yourself for helping to bring resources to students in struggling classrooms.

Donors Choose will announce the results in early November, and we'll reveal the winners of the Six Apart award for bloggers who reached the most students shortly thereafter.

Are you going to accept the Blogger Challenge? Tell us about it (and link to it) in the comments!

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Your Genome's a Mess

nobody@vox.com(Steve Betz) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:29:30 -0400

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" Hamlet, (Act II, Sc. II).

Throughout my time as a scientist, I’ve always been curious about genetics and evolution, and our recent capacity to accurately and rapidly sequence whole genomes is shedding all sorts of new light on life and how different organisms go about it.

Certainly, it stands to reason that our big brains (Beverly Hills Chuhuahua being #1 at the box-office and the current financial climate notwithstanding) reflect on a macro-level our excellence at the genomic level. If “survival of the fittest” rules, then our genome should rock, right?

Good outside, messy inside

Wrong. It turns out that only about 5% of our genome is what’s required to make us, well, us. The rest? More or less crap. As a species, we’ve incorporated lots of genetic flotsam into our 3.4 billion base-pair genome – the majority of it consists of repetitive stretches of DNA called LINEs and SINEs (Long – and Short – INterspersed Elements) – which are the debris of DNA copying machinery mistakes. It is the equivalent of storing all your junkmail into a giant spare room.

You, me and everyone we know

Well, maybe all species are like that? Nope. Some species do better – much better. Microorganisms have incredibly lean genomes. Among vertebrates, the winner for efficiency (dare I say the most Intelligent Design?) is the puffer fish. The puffer fish has just as many functional genes as you or me (~30,000), but its total genome is about 1/8th the size of ours. The reason for this efficiency: the puffer fish has developed a way to keep the spare room of his genome clean. Go fugu!

Model of Efficiency

Does that help the puffer fish in any meaningful way? (And conversely, does our accumulated crap hurt us?) Not that we can tell, and it seems like the nucleus can carry a bunch of extra baggage and not really care. But to me, it’s sort of a humbling lesson – that at a very fundamental level, we’re not remarkably special. Many genomes are much larger (wheat’s genome is five times the size of ours) and many are better organized.

More than 500 years ago, Copernicus taught us that we weren’t the center of the astrophysical universe. Turns out, we’re not center of the biological one, either.

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Bombtrack- Rage Against the Machine

nobody@vox.com(Aidan) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:05:52 -0400

01 Bombtrack

Rage Against The Machine

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QotD: Lending a Helping Hand

nobody@vox.com(Aidan) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:50:31 -0400

Have you ever volunteered for something? If so, what?

everything from historical enactment, supervising on archaeological digs, first aid-ing and helping my friends hand out flyer's for the nightclub the work at.

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Ineptitude at the Highest Level

nobody@vox.com(Jerry) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:12:41 -0400

Most Interesting

I am ordering this book now. It is a perfect example of how we can't trust any of our leaders to do anything. And it is a great example of mismanagement and misunderstanding by our government. I cannot believe these dolts.

Ignoring the moral quandry that situations like this place me (or yourselves in), I simply want this to illustrate the ineptitude that guides us in this war. I would also like to commend the soldier in the video. For those without military experience, following orders is paramount. Oftentimes, in spite of your better judgement, you have to carry out orders. Anyone who faults the soldiers has no ground to stand on in my book, unless they have been there.

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Leadership

nobody@vox.com(Timothy) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:19:44 -0400

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Obama supports Hawaii secession from the United States

nobody@vox.com(Timothy) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:30:20 -0400

Well, this is a fine mess. Obama wants to allow Hawaii to reorganize their state government and transfer all authority to the state and move toward secession. What is going on with Obama.

The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act (“Akaka Bill”).
The Akaka Bill would create a separate race-based government for persons of Native Hawaiian descent. The race-based government would have the authority to exercise broad sovereign powers, including the ability to negotiate with the federal government concerning criminal and civil jurisdiction, civil-rights protections, and the transfer of lands and national resources.
The bill would permit Native Hawaiians to sue the federal government for claims related to the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Its supporters concede that ultimately, secession is a possibility.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that the bill would discriminate on the basis of race and national origin and further subdivide Americans into discrete sub-groups accorded varying degrees of privilege. The White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy strongly opposing the bill.
Sen. Obama, a former resident of Hawaii, has pledged his unqualified support for the bill and vowed to sign it if he becomes president.

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There you go again Joe

nobody@vox.com(Timothy) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:02:09 -0400

The Beltway Boys on FOX with Fred Barnes had some interesting comments about the VP debate.

PALIN: Oh, man, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider and someone not used to the way you guys operate. Here you voted for the war. Now you oppose the war. Americans are craving that straight talk and just want to know, hey, if you voted for it, tell us why you voted for us and it was a war resolution.

Barnes remarks

BARNES: Mort, if she made the mistakes Joe Biden did, a fraction of them, in that debate, we'd be saying maybe she should drop off the ticket.

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Newsweek bashes Sarah Palin again

nobody@vox.com(Timothy) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:40:41 -0400

Newsweek and MSM thinks that Sarah Palin is just to common to be VP.

Newsweek's Jon Meacham thinks that Governor Sarah Palin is too much a commoner and too stupid to be allowed to become vice president of the United States of America and apparently his employer agrees with him.
The October 13 cover of Newsweek features a close up photo of the Governor with the headline "She's One of the Folks (And that's the problem)," and Meacham writes the accompanying cover story.
Be clear about what this means: This is a direct attack on Mr. and Mrs. America. We are all too stupid to be president in the elite opinion of Jon Meacham and Newsweek magazine.

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Europeans glee over America's meltdown

nobody@vox.com(Timothy) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:25:05 -0400

On the other end of the political spectrum, among leftists who have long predicted calamity for what they call the "savage neoliberal capitalism" of Wall Street, there were gleeful allusions to the stock market crash of 1929.

Today, things are different. Europeans are now wondering about their own economies. When I read an article about European glee about our meltdown a month ago, I wondered why do Europeans possess a disdain for America. Now, Europeans are starting to worry.

The New York Times leads with, and the Wall Street Journal fronts, a look at how European governments are taking steps to prevent major banks from going under while trying to prevent panic from spreading by boosting insurance levels on private accounts.

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