http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...se-tweets-bird
Summary: scientists create exceptionally mutation-prone mice. One Mutant X-Mouse displays ability to tweet like a bird. Scientists promptly breed 100 more to study language
This was all I wanted for Christmas. Bless science :D
http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...se-tweets-bird
Summary: scientists create exceptionally mutation-prone mice. One Mutant X-Mouse displays ability to tweet like a bird. Scientists promptly breed 100 more to study language
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
old
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
To be honest, I don't really get the point of the project. It's a good way to get a lot of dead mice (we have humans with similar conditions; they frequently get cancer and die very early), and the generation time is still too long to really study evolution. Just do it with bacteria or yeast (or plain old RNA!) and be done with it.
Also, a 'tweeting' mouse? So what? We already have marmosets and the like that offer much more detailed information about language and are much closer to humans. Don't get me wrong, it will probably yield some interesting papers, but it's hardly earth shattering news.
A mouse that does the dishes. There's a worthwhile science project.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
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