Unstable genes make normal clones unlikely. Dolly the sheep celebrated her fifth birthday yesterday. Most cloned animals aren't so lucky: they rarely reach adulthood, or even birth. Another reason why cloning humans might not be a good idea, "one can't expect to have normal clones - even if they appear healthy, they may have abnormal gene expression."
posted by lagado
on Jul 9, 2001 -
6 comments
Ho Hum, just the remains of another four thousand year old city discovered on the ocean floor. This one is
Harrapan of the Indus Valley which was home to the
largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The ruins extend for 9 kilometers and located around 40 metres below the water surface. "Due to geological processes and tectonic events, the entire [Gulf of] Cambay was faulted — taking down with it the then existing part of the river sections and the metropolis"
posted by lagado
on Jul 2, 2001 -
3 comments
Marxist Literary Critics Are Following Me!
"Several months ago I was approached by an individual who I have reason to believe belonged to a covert organization involving politics, illegal weapons, etc., who put great pressure on me to place coded information in future novels 'to be read by the right people here and there,' as he phrased it. I refused to do it."
How Philip K. Dick betrayed his academic admirers to the FBI.
posted by lagado
on May 27, 2001 -
12 comments
"The marbles belong to the British Museum ... which does not intend to return any part of the collection to its country of origin," PM Tony Blair ruling out the return to Greece of the so-called "Elgin" marbles, the stone carvings that were
unceremoniously hacked off the Parthenon by the
Earl of Elgin and carted back to Britain. Nearly 200 years later and despite years of Greek protest, the British Museum is not budging and has maintained thoughout that it has been protecting these antiquities from almost certain destruction (although their own record in this regard
has not been great). Should museums today be returning treasures that have were obtained though such looting?
posted by lagado
on Mar 25, 2001 -
29 comments
I was reading this article about the
new breed of modern airships when I stumbled over the line "Not your grandfather's airship". That started me off thinking about the "Not your father's X"
meme that's been part of the journalistic background noise for a while now. It seems to me to evoking something oedipal, a male child's revulsion of his father and his father's way of doing things. It's usually juxtaposed against technology or at least things that aren't all that old to begin with. Does anyone know who used it first? A
quick search of Google reveals it in everything from "
Cuba: not your father's stagnant nation" to "
XML: Not your father's HTML". Anyone got any favorites?
posted by lagado
on Jan 4, 2001 -
19 comments
So have you heard the one about the Golden Persian Princess Mummy? Discovered in October by Pakistani police during a murder investigation of an antiquities smuggler, this story has only gotten weirder. Said to be 2,600-years-old, the body of a young woman has been preserved using the
Egyptian mummification process but bears cuneiform inscriptions in Old Persian: "I, daughter of Xerxes, the great king, I am Ruduamna". Since its discovery, the governments of Iran and Afghanistan have each claimed ownership of the mummy and all three countries are now engaged in a bitter war of claim and counter-claim. Now some experts are starting to say that the whole thing looks like it's just an elaborate
hoax.
posted by lagado
on Dec 26, 2000 -
0 comments
When archaeology goes bad "For a nation that has always reveled in its cultural uniqueness, the discoveries were more than heartening; they were almost too good to be true. "
posted by lagado
on Dec 12, 2000 -
7 comments
Giant German Swastika to Be Removed From Forest. Slow Link Day. Every autumn, in a forest plantation 110 km north of Berlin, a giant 60-by-60 meter, golden swastika appears amongst the green pine trees. The symbol, which is only viewable from the air, is made up of deciduous larch trees and was planted in 1937 by a local merchant. It's illegal to display the swastika in Germany.
posted by lagado
on Dec 3, 2000 -
3 comments
The Polynesians were, undoubtedly, the greatest navigators of the ancient world. Using outrigger canoes, they were able to colonize lands spread as far apart as Madagascar and Easter Island and as far south as New Zealand. But where did they originally come from?
Jared Diamond demonstrates how, by using linguistic and archaeological evidence, it's possible to reconstruct their journey from China and Taiwan to the Philippines, from there on to Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and out to the Pacific one way and Madagascar in the other. As an exercise, try comparing
the numbers 1 to 10 in all Polynesian and Indonesian languages, to see how the language gradually changed as they hopped from island to island.
posted by lagado
on Nov 23, 2000 -
4 comments
Joel 's a little smug when he says "
Netscape Goes Bonkers and I'm very thankful, because Netscape 6.0 has been a terrific illustration of so many of the points I've made in Joel on Software over the last 6 months. Unfortunately, it's usually an illustration of what not to do." Too bad he's right.
posted by lagado
on Nov 20, 2000 -
15 comments
"I am concerned about the world's silence and co-operation with this massacre. Maybe if people at grassroots act, governments will follow." Neta Golan, 29, Israeli ctizen and voluntary
human shield.
posted by lagado
on Nov 19, 2000 -
6 comments
The Ancient Underwater Pyramids of Japan. "A STRUCTURE thought to be the world's oldest building, nearly twice the age of the great pyramids of Egypt, has been discovered. The rectangular stone ziggurat under the sea off the coast of Japan could be the first evidence of a previously unknown Stone Age civilisation, say archeologists. The monument is 600ft wide and 90ft high and has been dated to at least 8000BC. The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was constructed more than 5,000 years later."
posted by lagado
on Nov 1, 2000 -
11 comments
Okay, we know that web polls are nonsense, but I'm sure some people here on MeFi will be interested in the Time.com
virtual voter booth.
posted by lagado
on Oct 24, 2000 -
7 comments
Deconstructing the walls of Jericho Old article, but an interesting one. Archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University has said that
"Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it." Also the
BBC Article.
posted by lagado
on Oct 18, 2000 -
4 comments
Pete's Compendium of Knowledge "It was then that a large number of ducks (each with their own special little bar-coded death-ray machine) swarmed the supermarket, their eyes burning with the fury of sweet, sweet love. They knocked over the Post Toasties display, sending fruit-filled pastry wannabes flying everywhere. The TV newscaster commenting on the event blew chunks of roast beef around with an old run-down snowblower. Go figure."from
Attack of Torvas the Terrible.This site has lots of fun literary toys to play with. The above quote comes from a collaborative story writer in which anyone can contribute a few words at a time.
posted by lagado
on Aug 8, 2000 -
1 comment
The Mummies of the Tarim Basin were discovered fifteen years ago by Chinese archaeologists working in the salty deserts of far western China. These bodies date from between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and have been preserved so well in the extremely dry salty conditions that some of them look like they're still alive. Even more remarkable is that their clothing is still intact including tapestries and tartans. Finally these people were six feet tall, had long noses and fair hair and there is strong evidence that they spoke a language whose closest relatives are Celtic and Latin.
posted by lagado
on Aug 7, 2000 -
10 comments
Dack provides a
pointer to the growing backlash in the US against cell phone use. While "conspicuous" phone use can certainly at times be annoying, the general level of distaste and
phone rage seems to be a phenomenon confined to the United States.
People in Europe, Australia and Asia, took to mobile technology like the proverbial ducks to water and haven't developed anywhere near the same irritation levels.
Is this just a difficult transition for a country slow to adopt a technology or says something deeper about the American psyche?
Afterall, we are talking about the country that invented Dick Tracy and Maxwell Smart.
posted by lagado
on Aug 3, 2000 -
14 comments
