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By CAROLINE KENNEDY (Daughter of John F. Kennedy)
OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.
SlashFilm >_ I was at Sundance in 2004 when Morgan Spurlock took over the festival with his documentary Super Size Me. Four years later, Spurlock returns to Park City with Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?, a film documenting the director’s search for the most wanted man on the planet. The Weinstein Co quickly snapped up the documentary, after seeing only 15 minutes at the Berlin Film Festival. Distributors who saw the footage were asked to sign draconian nondisclosure agreements.Many people are speculating that Spurlock may have done what the U.S. government has been unable to do, and actually found Bin Laden. The film’s director of photography, Daniel Marricone added fuel to the fire, telling the press that Spurlock “definitely got the holy grail.” Not much information has leaked about the film, and even the director is keeping quiet. When asked if the rumors, Spurlock would only say “Until there’s something to see, why talk about it?”
As reported by the Guardian, Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming.
Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be “a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before”.
The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.
The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition. (more…)
From The Business Shrink: In every walk of life you can find examples of the 80/20 rule. You can get very simplistic and also very complex with the examples. Some quick examples that are spoken of repeatedly in college textbooks are things like:
20% of customers produce 80% of the profits
20% of employees produce 80% of the real results
20% of the input creates 80% of the result
20% of a sales force produces 80% of the sales
You can also get more creative and look at these rules in the life as a blogger, digger or every day events.
80% of website visitors view only 20% of the web pages
80% of Digg Front-page items are by 20% of the Digg Users
20% of program features in a program like Word cause 80% of the use
20% of blog posts will create 80% of the traffic
20% of car repairs will cost 80% of your money
A well respected MIT professor named Noam Chomsky talks about the 80/20 rule in this video on YouTube here. Chomsky talks about how big business tries to figure out who the most profitable 20% of customers are and attempt to eliminate the rest of the 80% of customers to reduce costs.
It’s hard to argue with the facts of the 80/20 rule that were discovered back in 1906. (more…)
