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Chad A. Mirkin, Northwestern University, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Photo by Bill Arsenault. 

DNA Blueprints Guide The Construction Of Specific Human Structures

Chad Mirkin discusses using DNA to build a three-dimensional structure out of gold, likening the process to building a house. Starting with basic materials such as bricks, wood, siding, stone and shingles, a construction team can build many different types of houses out of the same building blocks.
 
The article includes an audio recording of the full interview. Photo courtesy of the UCSD School of Medicine.
Why Not the Worst? Print E-mail
Opinion - Editorials
TS-Si   
Tuesday, 06 June 2006 07:55
Springfield, VA, USA. In his weekly syndicated column, humorist Gene Weingarten offered a 16 point plan for the Democrats blowing the next presidential election (The Washington Post).
 
After suggestions for handing out coupons for free abortions and espousing full benefits for undocumented workers to include three weeks paid leave for “pet bereavement,” his fifth point was that the Democrats should
 
“5) Have an open, unbrokered convention, with everyone speaking his or her mind in a fully Democratic fashion, encouraging dissent, airing grievances, celebrating differences, resulting in a 6,000-page, all-inclusive party platform that addresses all concerns, such as ‘fairness to pre-surgical, pansexual, non-transgendered women living as post-surgical, transgendered, transvestite homosexual men.’”
 
Humor can sometimes cloak important sights. TSPR finds itself oddly in agreement with Mr. Weingarten, realizing that when middle class establishment journalists start noticing the growing number of crossdressing males who are masquerading under the umbrella of pre- and post-op transsexuals, the time has come to kick the transvestites out of the tent, no matter how pretty their party dresses may be.
 
Now that every effeminate wannabe seems to claim to be transgendered, perhaps its time we returned to some sort of meaningful standard.
 
High heels and tight gaffs do not make one transsexual.  Nor does having an account with Mary Kay cosmetics somehow magically transform a crossdresser into a person born transsexual.
 
Pretending that words have no meaning and all standards are discriminatory is a recipe for political disaster.  The carefully constructed façade of a single tent, variable valued Democratic Party cannot survive without admitting that there are differences between people and that some choices are intrinsically better than others.
 
The post modern Democratic Party lives in a looking glass world where words mean just what they choose them to mean, neither more nor less.  By having their words mean so many different things, they have constructed a world where nothing is what it is because everything is already what it is not.
 
The question remains: who is master, the academic pan-gender rhetoric or the Democratic Party?  An election may hang in the balance.
 
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Last Updated on Monday, 27 August 2007 12:06