"I could care less..."

So, though it's been a couple weeks, I should probably not be blogging at this precise moment. I've got some rather pressing things to do, namely I need to put together a talk for a branch meeting this Saturday (American Society for Microbiolgy, AK Branch). It'll be a rather small affair, one invited speaker, a famous microbiologist I've not hear of, and well, a bunch of locals. Despite that dis, I really like this meeting. This year, basically I will have 20 minutes to convince - mostly people from my lab- that I've made progress in the last 6 months. I guess I'm as curious as they are really...

In any case, no, I don't want to work on that right now... what I want to do is tell sundry things to the whole world (or those handful of individuals that will read this in no particular hurry relative to my urge to write it). Aside: The etymology of "Blog" is pretty well established, being a very recently born word... it's a portmanteau of weblog. But I'd argue it's also onomonopoetic. I don't know if anyone has yet to argue that blog is onomonopoetic. I don't want to know, so I won't Google it. I would like to think this afternoon that I'm the first person to be struck that Blog has connotations similar to burp, or belch, barf, other b- words. Like... like.. the sound that verbal diarreah makes when it can't be held back from the keyboard. We all have to blog at times, just let's try not to do it in public or more than we abosolutely have to.

So, despite that introduction, I'd like to announce that I have nothing particularly well thought out or formulated for you today. Don't get your hopes up (ever...), it's just that my fingers get to itching, and I feel like I may suffer consequences if I don't write together the loose threads of thought that seem like they might be braided into something emergent. (I'm seriously swapping/mixing metaphors here, sorry... am I braiding or barfing? not sure)... In any case, today's meandering musings will be on: science training, scientific success, apathy, causation vs. correlation, and beer. Or maybe something else. Oh, and the Gray Lady, the New York Times . She'll make a couple cameos. She's always invited... poor Gray Lady, she probably get's blogged on more than almost anyone else...

So, my title... So, today I sub tought a science course lab for a friend who is out of town. It was a computer lab, and I arrived early to set up the projector. Two students, who having never seen me before, were having no reason not to speak candidly. "What the hell are we doing in lab today?" asks one to the other a few yard away from me (diligently futzing with the projector setup, which I thought might have been a good clue). "I have no idea... I could care less." Right... Actually, I think it might be telling (about me) that the first thing that entered my own private thought baloon was: "Could NOT. You could NOT care less!" A reaction of secondary intensity was the more obvious mild annoyance at the blase attitude. It turned out later these were a couple rather sharp students... but that's immaterial... I've been through enough educational institutions to know that blase is cool someplaces (Turlock High School, I was VERY cool...) and the antithesis of cool elsewhere (At Berkeley, I was, well, sort of cool... I think, but don't quote me on that)... In any case... the first thing I did in lab was have everyone discuss a recent article in the NYT by Amy Harmon. She covers a lot of DNA and genome issues. You can email her at dna@nytimes.com. 'Nuff said. Nick Wade is good too. Read his book: Before the Dawn. Um... OK. So the article we read (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/research/04geno.html)
deals with the story of the first millionaire to pay a commericial outfit to sequence his genome. He forked over $350,000. If you'll allow me to do some math that I believe is original to me and not something Ms. Harmon figured... we have the following:

Equation 1.

three hundred fifty thousand [dollars] divided by six billion [approximate base pairs in a diploid human genome] times 100 [pennies in a dollar]

I kid you not: if you copy and paste the above into Google (sans brackets and included text), it will duly crunch those words and spit out: 0.00583333333. That's right. Folks, by my calculation this guy bought his own "book of life" for 0.005 cents per letter. So, is that a "good deal"? It's a ridiculous question of course. Amy Harmon reports the conceit of comparing the total price tag to a new Bently. Old Jim Watson is then quoted as saying to him it's a toss up between a Bently and one's genome sequence. He of course had his genome sequence a bit back now, for the price tag of $1.5 million... not out of his own pocket though. Jim think's the Bently is a "nice car," but hey, he's already got his genome sequenced... he's looking forward to the day of the "Chevrolet genome." And that's of course the point of the article... the price is dropping... someday... soon... we, me and you, will have the option, or doctor's recommendation...we'd better figure out whether we could care more or less, 'cause soon we'll have to start making some decisions... In fact, there's a whole slate of things to talk about regarding that, but I have two very discrete things I meant to be on track for with this post. First, I wanted to use a slightly different conceit than the luxury car metaphor... how about the more apt metaphor of a book. I'd argue that the story contained in a human genome is the single most interesting story that the universe has ever produced. Woaa, that sounds pretty bold now that I'm looking at it... I'm wanting to hedge now- my natural instinct is to say incredibly declarative brazen things and immediately hedge- but no. I do think this. The human "book of life" says more of interest than any other single record that has ever existed. I believe that. So how does the price compare... Well using the following Google Search

"average book new york times bestseller 'number of words'"

The hit that I liked occured midway down the first page and stated:

"Most nonfiction books average about 50,000 to 80,000 words."

OK, rigorous research done. Let's say 60,000. I'm going to say that $30 is average for hardcover. Please, don't argue... you'll see why...

So, Google, tell me... 30 [dollars] divided by sixty thousand [words] times 100 [pennies per dollar] = [drumroll] 0.05 cents. (finishing touch to the fuzzy math is that the average word has 10 letters, I have no reason other than my own desire to believe that is true... but hey.)

Wow. So I'd say the current rate of a genome is about the same as a new hardcover book on a per letter basis. Or within an order of magnitude one way or another. So, I think IT IS a good deal... And only getting better as the paradigms shift... So, can I ask you "Could you care less?" I know I could. A lot.

Ian

P.S. I just blew an hour on this digital back of the envelope blog and it's math. I'll try to stay away from even my brand of fuzzy math in the future... But, having worn myself out, I'm going to save my musings on the relationship between scientific success and beer and the Times article that goes with that for another day soon. I'll keep you posted. Hey, but I'll put up a couple quotations to end this particularly bloggy blog entry...


"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant

... a lot of quotations say about the same thing, to varying degrees of pith, but they're all true...


"Against logic there is no armor like ignorance."
- Laurence J. Peter

... yep... but wearing armor couldn't be bliss... that crap looks uncomfy at best...


"Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water."
- WC Fields

... this will segue nicely into my next post on scientists and beer and causation vs. correlation...