I have a long Clinton/Obama post in the works, musing on the complicated gender dynamics of the campaign, which will culminate in a recent photo of Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, with his arm around the waist of Jessica Grogan, wife of me, who’s holding little Jolie, daughter of me.
The picture, however, hasn’t arrived yet (one of the Clinton campaign volunteers is supposed to email it to Jess), so instead I’m going to link to "Assembling the Tree of Life: Scientists map the evolutionary relationships for all life on the planet," which was written by my alter-ego, "Daniel Oppenheimer," science writer for The University of Texas at Austin. It includes such fine passages as this:
Within a decade, scientists could have a crude version of the “tricorder” that characters Spock and Bones use on Star Trek—a handheld device that can take a sample from an unknown species, rapidly sequence its DNA, connect remotely to a database of known species and make highly accurate predictions about its nature, habitat, mating patterns and ecological niche.
Within a few decades, patients should be able to walk into their doctors’ offices with a common cold and walk out with a treatment that’s been cooked up, on the spot, to combat the particular strain of cold that’s afflicting them. Within a hundred years, biologists may be able to play with the design of life as easily as Apple plays with the design of its laptops.
More simply, the AToL project will realize a founding dream of modern biology. It’s the “tree of life” that Charles Darwin envisioned when he published “The Origin of Species” in 1859—a nearly comprehensive family tree showing how a single organism evolved into the tens of millions of distinct species that now populate the Earth.
I’m not going to lie — it’s a bit science-y, but if you happen to be interested in this kind of thing, I do a pretty nice job of translating the science for the layperson.
