genomeboy.com

This is 17 kinds of awesome:

Scientists are to map Ozzy Osbourne’s genetic code in a bid to find out how he is still alive after decades of drug and alcohol abuse.

(hat tip)

UPDATE: “Throw some fag ash on his cornflakes.”

(hat tip #2)

But Dovekie’s test results were utterly baffling. The “Canine Heritage” swab test from MMI Genomics showed four breeds in the mix — in order of prevalence, golden retriever, wirehaired pointing griffon, bearded collie and miniature schnauzer. This means that Dovekie’s mom, Charlie, whom we met and felt confident was a purebred golden retriever, was anything but. It also meant that Romeo was no Chocolate Lab.

Typical. When you’re in heat, they always tell you what you want to hear. “Hey, Baby, I’m totally Chocolate Lab.”

I don’t know who picks out his clothes, but this Jeff Beck guy is pretty good.

The awesome Susan Orlean on mules (subscription):

The mule’s commitment to survival is interesting in a Darwinian context, because mules–the hybrid result of mating a male donkey with a female horse–have an uneven number of chromosomes and are therefore sterile. Every mule, then, is sui generis; it leaves no legacy beyond itself, no radiating gene pool to mark its visit to this world…Even the sheer persistence of the breed seems a stroke of genius. Since a horse and a donkey rarely mate on their own, mules are essentially man-made. It has been a successful invention–in fact, mules are probably the most successful and enduring animal hybrid, with beefalo coming in a distant second.

Will Saletan:

We shouldn’t overstate the case. Genes don’t determine everything, and most genes don’t vary significantly between populations. But research is constantly finding new gene-trait correlations and group differences. If your faith in equality depends on an ethnically or racially even distribution of all ability-influencing genes, you’re in trouble.

That’s why the framing question matters. People of your race may be on average faster, smarter, or more volatile than people of my race. But the opposite pattern may turn up if you and I are classified in some other way. My dad was black, my mom was white, I was born in Hawaii, I was raised in a broken home, I grew up in Indonesia, I went to private school, I played basketball, I used drugs, my grades were unspectacular, and I went to Harvard Law. Guess my IQ.

The distribution question doesn’t settle the framing question, because race is just one way in which ability can be unevenly distributed. To answer the framing question in the affirmative, you have to show something more. You have to show that classifying and comparing by race, rather than using some other classification system or judging each person as an individual, does more good than harm.