Friday Water Cooler

The False Promise of DNA Testing (theatlantic.com). "One recent study asked participants to shake hands with a partner for two minutes and then hold a knife; when the DNA on the knives was analyzed, the partner was identified as a contributor in 85 percent of cases, and in 20 percent as the main or sole contributor."

Mystery girl in Calif. gets second funeral, 145 years after she was first buried (WaPo).

Scotland Bans Fracking, Forever (oilprice.com).

India Records Its Highest Temperature Ever (CNN).

Internet Boom Times Are Over (bloomberg.com). Internet growth is flat worldwide.

"Noncoding" RNA molecules create micropeptides (sott.net). Someone now needs to continue this work with pseudogenes (many of which, we know, are transcribed to RNA) and see how many are associated with biologically active oligopeptides. Many bacterial pathogens have abnormally large numbers of pseudogenes, which tend (paradoxically) to be highly conserved, evolutionarily. Most pseudogenes are millions of years old. Why? Maybe because they are making useful products.

I Had to Leave the U.S. to Stop Pretending to Be an Extrovert (alternet.org). An ad copywriter tells how his introverted personality, a liability in the U.S., freed him in Switzerland.

L.A. County Is Proposing To Tax Millionaires In Order To End Homelessness (laist.com).

California newspaper endorses Reagan for president (cnn.com).

Twenty Thousand Commit To Anti-Hillary ‘Occupy DNC’ Protest (dailycaller.com).

Trump Leads Clinton on Top-Ranking Economic Issues (gallup.com). Gallup poll finds people prefer Trump over Clinton 53% to 43% on economic matters.

8 Quick Thoughts on the Emmett Rensin Suspension (coreyrobin.com). Newsflash: You can get fired for writing things that piss off your boss! Funny how political writers (specialists in writing about power!) don't seem to understand this. Look: If you write about raw power (politics) for a living, how can you claim to be confused or outraged when a boss fires someone (an exercise of raw power) for rocking the boat? Do you not understand how power works? Yes. it's ugly, yes, it's wrong; we get that. But this is your domain of expertise, if you're a political writer. Act like you know what you're writing about.

Art world is 'hotbed' of corruption, collector claims (telegraph.co.uk). Delete the word "art." There, fixed it.

"Welfare to work" didn't work for these women (slate.com). Welcome to Clintonomics 101. Take a Dixie cup and sit yo broke ass down.

Meaningful work not created, only destroyed, by bosses, study finds (sciencedaily.com).

Worldwide Alcohol Consumption Went Down Last Year—Except in the United States (alternet.org). Cheers!

Thanks for visiting. Be sure to check out prior weeks' Water Coolers (see links at right).

❉

Many, many thanks to the fine folks (below) who retweeted me recently on "the Twitter." Follow these tweeps. They retweet!



Buy my books (or at least click for more info):