Schrödinger’s cat comes closer. How can you not love that headline?
Ross Karchner has created a page where you can read all the latest postings by everyone attending BloggerCon. It’s a great way to get a sense of the people who will be there.
Daniel Davies provides ready-made arguments for rightwingers who want to shrug off the Plame affair.
I particularly liked the “blind faith” reasoning: “One thing is clear, however; this issue doesnt go to the heart of government, or anything like it. Bush has addressed the problem, and when he finds out who leaked, hes going to act in his usual manner; boldly and decisively.”
As so often, I find Richard Gayle’s explanations of biological research vivid. Today he tries to explain why genomics isn’t yielding a quick supply of drug targets for the pharmaceutical companies — and why there is still considerable promise.
“So, what will genomics give us? It will give us a lot of headaches, that is for sure. Because a big reason why modern drug discovery is so expensive is that we just do not know very much about how the body really works. We have developed really elegant ways around this problem. Pharmaceutical companies have done some wonderful work to provide some incredible drugs for a biological system that is in many ways a big black box.
“Genomics is one way to make the black box smaller. Other areas of research generated by the collision of biotechnology and computation tools, such as proteomics, microarrays, and systems biology, will also help. While I am not convinced we will ever make the black box disappear, we can shrink it a lot.”