this week i

saw our work cited by the front page of the new york times, and, separately, cynthia's work on samantha bee.  we split a sojourn at thai crossing.

ran in the rain.

drank a gallon of liquefied fish skins, and one pasteur street jasmine ipa.

9/27

this week i

brought dad home from physical therapy.  nursing staff forgot to cut off ankle bracelet, door alarm trumpeted his first moments outdoors in a month.

listened to christian mcbride's new jawn at blues alley with gary.

filled a new cavity.  back to tap water.

read about bioethics.

in 2016, the power of gene editing and the relative ease of its application led james clapper, president obama's director of national intelligence, to describe crispr as a weapon of mass destruction.  well-meaning bio-hackers are already selling kits over the internet that enable anyone with high school biology to edit the genes of bacteria

she describes a disturbing dream in which hitler keenly asked her to explain the technique to him.  over the last couple of years, following meetings with patients suffering from generic diseases, doudna has shifted her position, and now feels that it would be unethical to legally forbid a family to, say, remove a defective portion of the gene that causes huntington's disease from an embryo, which otherwise would grow into an adult doomed to a horrible death

there is a danger that the new technology will "transcribe our societies' financial inequality into our genetic code," as the rich will be able to use it to enhance their offspring while the poor will not

the problem with a gene drive is that it is essentially a biological bomb that could have all sorts of unintended consequences.  if we make the mosquito inhospitable to the malaria parasite, we might find that, just as with the overuse of antibiotics, the parasite mutates in such a way that it can evade the effects of the gene drive; this change could also mean that it is immune to our current antimalarial drugs.  meanwhile, the alternative approach of eradicating the mosquito from a particular environment, as doudna and sternberg point out, may lead to unexpected changes in the ecology of a region-we simply do not know enough about ecology to be able to predict what will happen

9/20

this week i

knocked on marcie's door halfway through a lazy sunday.  she offered what would have been my fifth cup of coffee, spiced chai already in the car.  we drove and gabbed, first a congested highway then rural roads.  "did all the things" would look fitting on a tombstone, we decided.  pulled into the grass parking lot, infowars bumper sticker on an opposing vehicle.  bridge over the river koi, and into the one room winery, pinotage please, wine tasting first, but spicy arugula pinotage please.  south african bartend kept us bubbling with easy smile and viticulture trivia.  "hey what's with the sign in gum springs virginia?" "the story goes dog chased deer onto neighbor's property and neighbor shot dog dead and sign was born"  we finished our cheeses, ordered bottles a la carte, lazed up state route 522 until culpepper at least.

ate and drank but sadly no thc.

listened to the podcast.

the ancrene wisse gave us the first english use of the word journey, which literally meant the distance that could be traveled in a day.  the key is the first part of the word, which meant day in french.  we can still see that in the french greeting bonjour, which literally means good day.  so journey meant a day's travel, and by the time it was used in the ancrene wisse, it had come to refer to the actual act of traveling and it was specifically used in the sense of a pilgrimage

9/13

this week i

mapped pre-existing conditions for metro areas.

worked on water street, in west end library, ate cake - and a week later - pie.

ran along the drained canal, back up to goldsboro and macarthur.  kristina asked, "who's bubba?"

listened to more history of english..

another good example of this sound difference can be found in the words "chisel" and "scissors"  believe it or not, these are two variations of the same latin root word.  and the difference between the norman and parisian dialects can be heard at the beginning of those two words.  latin had the word "catering" meaning "to cut"  in the standard french of paris, the initial k sound shifted to an s sound and produced the word "scissors" but in normandy, the k sound shifted to a ch sound and produced the word "chisel"  both words appeared in english for the first time in the late thirteen hundreds and early fourteen hundreds

9/6