Staggering Blogging Inertia

Ah ha, the mental dam has broken, and the salivary ducts of the mind have released a flood of link spam. If you read Slashdot, you'll probably recognize most of these links.

[BioTech] 23andMe:

This is pretty cool! For 1000 bucks, these guys (and gals) will run a bucket of your spit through some Illumina SNP panels and then post the results online for your perusal. Why should you care? Well, they've developed some nifty tools that range from interesting and largely frivolous (tracing your ancestry) to revolutionary (calculating your probability of developing certain diseases or conditions later in life). It's personalized medicine, for quite a reasonable price! The caveat, of course, is that SNPs are correlated with rather than the cause of most of these diseases, many of which have complex and poorly understood inheritance patterns and/or are heavily influenced by environmental factors. Learning that you have a 25% increased chance of developing colon cancer may not do you much good unless you can track down a knowledgeable geneticist who is willing to explain the relevant literature to you. Still ... since I don't have to pay next month's rent ...

Here's an interested Wired article that goes into greater depth.

[Humor] Robert Redford is my hero:

As is John Coulton. Just read this blog post.

[Being a Fanboy] Girl Genius is starting to get quite interesting

Alas, at 12:00am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I am hunched over my computer, furiously pressing F5 as rivulets of sweat trace the furrows of my wrinkled brow. I whoop with abandon as the Girl Genius homepage finally reveals a glorious panel of exploding clockwork, and do a small jig.

If you are not familiar with this comic by Studio Foglio, I recommend that you get acquainted (yes, that's Phil and Kaja Foglio, whose names you may recognize if you were into Magic cards back in the day [or now ...]). The comic is an over-the-top romp through a pseudo-steampunk world of fantastic science and political machinations. It's well worth a read for almost any fan of fantasy and good fun.

[Dumb] Cat Flushing a Toilet

It's all about the commentary.


Thus on the 1st night of the 12th month of the 2007th year ends the current installment of Link Spam.