Tag 23andme (6)
no-longer-quite-as-rainy link friday
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2009-11-20 14:59:00
Tags: 23andme gay politics links
Words: 233
I finally took the plunge and ordered a 23andMe kit. I got the kit in the mail last night and spit into the tube (they wanted a lot of spit so it took 5 minutes to do), sealed it up and sent it off this morning. Now the waiting begins...
- The District of Columbia is proposing a same-sex marriage law. (yay!) The Catholic church, upon hearing this, warned that they would stop providing social services for DC if the law passed, despite the fact that they law specifically exempts religious organizations from having to recognize the marriages. They would, however, have to obey city laws preventing discrimination against gays.
- In other church news, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church leaders have signed the "Manhattan Declaration", saying they will not cooperate with laws about abortion or same-sex unions that they don't agree with. Again, every same-sex marriage law that I'm aware of carves out a pretty wide exemption for religious groups, so I'm a bit put out by this. HRC responds along the same lines.
- In other other church news, the Catholic Church has found that gay priests were not a factor in the sex abuse scandal. Who woulda thunk it?
- Gay Marriage & Marijuana: You can't stop either. Why that's good. I agree, although his timetable for 10 years having all states recognize same-sex unions seems a bit optimistic given the current state of affairs.
life recap
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-11-17 09:51:00
Tags: 23andme math wedding worldofwarcraft genetics
Words: 504
World of Warcraft:
The second expansion to WoW, called "Wrath of the Lich King" (or WotLK) released Wednesday midnight. (the late midnight, not the early midnight)
We assumed it was like other midnight release events we had been to - get in a short line to pay and get your receipt validated (sticker or highlighter squiggle or whatever), then wait in a longer line to get the game (that would only start moving at midnight). We walked by the tent where there was some music and stuff, and decided to wait in line to pay first before enjoying the festivities.
It turns out, there was only one very long line, and that was the line to pay. So we gamely got in the back and waited in the cold (djedi ran in to Barnes & Noble and got me a hot chocolate and himself a tea :-) ). And waited. And waited. Every fifteen minutes or so we'd move up like four or five paces. I wish I was exaggerating. wildrice13 and later destroyerj joined us so that was kinda fun, but midnight came and went and we were still in line. At this point the smart thing to do probably would have been to give up and come back the next morning (especially since I had to get up early to take destroyerj and skimmerduk to the airport) but that never occurred to me. Finally at 2:20 we got our copies and left. They only had two registers going for what must have been 500 people. Booo gamestop!
Having said that, the game is good and I got it to install on linux with the usual tweaking.
Math talk:
My math circle talk is Saturday, and it's coming along OK. I finished sketching out the talk and worked on my slides last night, although I then changed part of the talk to make a bit more sense. New theme: graph theory in computer science, with parts about register allocation and Huffman encoding. Still need to actually do the rest of the slides, then make up a worksheet, then practice it. I did get to pick out what sort of cookies would be served, though, so that's a plus :-)
Game night:
Sorry to those who I told we'd be hosting a game night this week, but between talk preparation stuff and djedi work crunch time we can't do it this week. Hopefully soon, though.
23andMe:
I think I'm going to take the plunge and get my DNA analyzed soon, maybe after the talk. Should be fun and exciting!
Wedding/Commitment ceremony planning:
We're actually starting to move forward on this - investigating locations, etc. More stress to come, I'm sure.
closing ads
Mood: cheerful
Music: scaaaaary Arabic music
Posted on 2008-10-30 12:31:00
Tags: 23andme genetics politics
Words: 65
Work is being stressful, but I'm eating lunch and happy for now...
Interesting ads from both sides: here's Obama's hitting McCain on the economy and (for the first time I can remember) Palin:
and here's McCain's hitting Obama for wanting to talk to Iran without preconditions, complete with scary staticy backgrounds and Arabic music. Grrr.
The Retail DNA test is Time's Invention of the Year.
linkdump
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-09-22 13:41:00
Tags: 23andme genetics politics links
Words: 146
Busy today - links!
- Rock Band 2 is out for XBox 360 (PS3 version coming soonish) - it looks good (here's the new track list, all downloaded songs are automatically transferred and you can transfer almost all of the Rock Band 1 songs for a one-time $5)
- Really leaning towards getting my genes genotyped by 23andMe.
- Banning gay marriage in California is now losing 55-38. Yaaaay!
- short Bruce Schneier column - if liquids are so dangerous to take on planes, why aren't people arrested for trying to take them on (like guns)? The answer: because they aren't dangerous...there shouldn't be a class of stuff that you can't take on a plane but you don't get in trouble for.
- fairtax.org has what seems to be a pretty reasonable tax proposal.
- wonderjess posted this dialogue between Obama and Jed Bartlett - written by Aaron Sorkin! Oh this makes me miss West Wing...
genome hacking redux
Mood: thoughtful
Music: Toadies - "Possum Kingdom"
Posted on 2008-09-10 14:46:00
Tags: 23andme genetics
Words: 71
A few months ago I considered having my genome sequenced. Today 23andMe announced their service just got a lot cheaper, down to $400 (from $1000), and they're analyzing more SNPs now. I'm playing with their free demo (with sample data) and it does look pretty neat. $400 is still a lot of money, but if it came down to this or one of the new 32GB iPod touches I'd take this :-)
genome hacking
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-05-31 15:06:00
Tags: 23andme proandcon genetics
Words: 179
I've kinda peripherally been aware of this, but you can get your genome sequenced from 23andMe or deCODEme and get back a full report on genetic risk of diseases and stuff. And then you can compare the raw data with known genetic datapoints at SNPedia. This is like super cool. I'm like vaguely considering having this done.
Pro: This is like wicked awesome. A 2MB zipped text file with all of my genes? Awesome.
Con: There are some privacy concerns, although both companies stress their commitment to privacy and all that.
Con: It costs $1000, which is a lot of money for a science experiment.
Pro: Did I mention it was wicked awesome? Think of all the interesting things I could learn!
Con: I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac and I can't imagine this would help.
Pro: In theory I could be on the lookout for warning signs for diseases I'm prone to. (but see "hypochondriac" above)
Con: Still, $1000.
So I think that's a "no" for now. Maybe when it gets a bit cheaper I'll revisit it.
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