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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.
Tapping Feet: Boinking In The Boys’ Room Print E-mail
Opinion - Global Warning
Lisa Jain Thompson   
Saturday, 01 September 2007 20:00
Larry Craig might be the least of the hypocrites in this mess
 
Larry Craig, Republican Senator from Idaho.
"I’m Only Tapping My Foot, Officer"

The tapping your foot for sex code is historically prevalent in Europe and the United States in gay or “I’m really straight but I like to do other men” circles. This is how it works:
Stage One
The first man initiates the assignation by tapping his foot so that his foot can be seen beneath the stall divider.
If he is receptive, the second guy responds with a similar tap.
The first tapper will then move his foot closer to the other person's stall. If the other guy reciprocates, the first will inch ever closer.
This goes on a few times to confirm that the signals aren't an accident or until the two men are within penis distance.
Stage Two
One of the men slides his hand under the divider: this is an invitation for the other man to display his manhood (apparently size counts in restroom stalls).
If interested, the partner kneels on the floor and presenting his penis (or rear end as the case may be) underneath the divider (how high off the ground are these assignation dividers?).
Alternately, the partner can swipe his own hand under the divider (an invitation for the other to go first). Often married men will purposefully display their wedding band to make themselves more alluring.
Springfield, VA, USA. As you may have heard (and if you haven’t, where are you living?), during the last week, Larry Craig, a Republican Senator from Idaho, became gay and then not-so-gay in rapid succession. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge in Minnesota after he exhibited knowledge of some elaborate toe tapping mechanism in the boys' room. 
 
Who knew you could get into so much trouble with wing-tip Florsheims?
Ernest:  This is a one-shot thing we got goin' on here.
 
Jack:  It's nobody's business but ours.
 
Ernest:  You know I ain't queer.
 
Jack:  Me neither.
 
— The film Brokeback Mountain
 
Bad boy, Bill Clinton. You're a naughty boy
 
Senator Larry Craig (R–Idaho)
On Meet The Press, 1999
 
Before we go much further, let us agree that there is nothing hypocritical about being homosexual and believing homosexuality is wrong, and, because you think being is gay is wrong, to keeping your gayness hidden from friends and family. Doing so, is consistent with your beliefs.  In such a scenario, clandestine encounters in the boys’ room is a weakness, even a sin perhaps, not hypocrisy. [1] 
 
Before proceeding, a little background for people who came in late:
  • Craig was arrested in a public restroom in a Minnesota airport, widely reputed as a hangout for men seeking anonymous sexual encounters. According to an undercover police officer, Craig made sexual advances toward him.
     
  • Nearly two months later, he entered a guilty plea, albeit to a lesser charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
     
  • And for 11 weeks, Craig failed to mention the arrest to his family, his friends, his staff or his constituents. [2] 
Senator Craig has ready answers for all the questions:
  • Why did the Senator extend his foot underneath the stall divider and rub it against the police officer's? Because Senator Craig has a wide stance when going to the bathroom.
     
  • Why did the Senator wave his hand repeatedly under the stall divider? Because Senator Craig was reaching for a piece of paper (that did not apparently did not exist).
     
  • Why did the Senator plead guilty to criminal charges? Because Senator Craig was in a hurry.
There. All questions are answered and Senator Craig, in his own mind, is still safely in his closet.
 
Let me be clear: I am not gay. I never have been gay.

— Senator Larry Craig
 
That settles it then.
 
But we know that there is widespread subculture of men who don’t identify as gay who have anonymous sex with each other. They don’t go to gay bars (because they’re married or public figures).  They crave anonymity as much as they crave the male on male sex. [3] 
 
Are they gay?
 
Depends on how you define homosexuality.
 
If you believe being gay is organically driven, hardwired somewhere in the brain and hormones, then Senator Craig might be a well closeted gay guy.  Since Senator Craig is married, you cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility that he is bi-sexual (although with gay guys, as with race, the one drop rule seems to apply for some reason). Or perhaps Senator Craig is geographically gay (when he’s away from his family he gets off with guys) and heterosexual at all other times.
 
If you believe that you commit homosexual acts not because you are gay but because you are weak and cannot always resist the need to sin, then you can, in your own mind, think of yourself as a sinner rather than a queer.  The weakness is committing the sin, not that the sinner is gay.  If you just pray harder and truly believe and let Jesus into your heart, God will lift this cross from your shoulder and you will be gay no longer.
  • I'm gonna tell you this one time, Jack fuckin' Twist, an' I ain't foolin'. What I don't know - all them things that I don't know - could get you killed if I come to know them. I ain't jokin'. — Ennis Del Mar, Brokeback Mountain
This may be bad religion and worse science, but it is not hypocrisy. The more you need same sex fucking, the more your guilt and shame drive you ever deeper into the sinners closet.  What if your friends find out?  Your family?  Your pastor?
 
Fear is not hypocrisy, it’s human and understandable.
  • You ever get the feelin'... I don't know, er... when you're in town and someone looks at you all suspicious, like he knows? And then you go out on the pavement and everyone looks like they know too? — Ennis Del Mar, Brokeback Mountain
But because your religious faith may be screwing you up, doesn’t mean that you get a free pass.
  • Defend and strengthen the traditional values of the American family. [4] 
Craig has been a Republican leader against same-sex marriage, having denounced homosexuality as a lifestyle and a choice – a choice he made frequently.  Apparently what was bad for America was an opportunity for some really great sex for Larry Craig.
 
In 1999 Craig was one of the loudest Republican voices for President Clinton's impeachment
  • The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. [5] 
When two counts of impeachment fell shy of the needed two-thirds majority, Craig said,
  • My state doesn't support Bill Clinton on many of his policies, and they have rejected his personal lifestyle choices. ... It was not a difficult vote for me to make.
In July 2004, Craig voted for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, which failed in the Senate. in a guest opinion co-authored by fellow Idaho Republican Senator Mike Crapo, Craig decried
  • A campaign by activists to use state and federal courts to force recognition of a constitutional right to same-sex marriages, and so override the people and their legislatures.
Apparently the only same sex activity Craig approved of was his own in bathroom stalls.
 
One day before the 2006 elections , Craig released a statement saying he supported a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions.
 
Better to burn in the bathroom than have equal rights under the law.
 
The Gay Community is not sinless.  The queer press and professional public leaders are busy calling for Larry Craig’s head.  What bullshit.
 
Larry Craig is not the only politician (or movie star, or military general) who is so afraid of confronting his own homosexuality that he buries himself deep in the closet.  Yes, the public Senator is a hypocrite: being publicly anti-gay while privately getting his rocks off with anonymous men.
 
But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with being gay or being in the closet.  When did the gay community become god and start deciding how we all should live our private lives.
 
What are we to make of the gleeful gay rush to judgment?
 
Why should Larry Craig be ashamed of having sex with other men?
 
Queer sex is not against the law in the United States.  Sex is not against the law in the United States.  Public sex is.
 
The gay community and press should be outraged that police are still running dragnets to arrest gay guys in bathrooms.  Instead they are pursuing a perceived enemy like a pack of rabid dogs.
 
The gay press and community should also be outraged that a lot gay guys are perpetuating the worst aspects of the male gay image and still participating in public male on male sex in restrooms.  If a public restroom is the only way you can get your rocks off, you have a greater problem than anti-gay discrimination.
 
The Senate Republicans, trying to cover their butts (perhaps from Larry, who knows?), are clamoring for ethics investigations.  There has been no ethic violations made public:
  • Craig had sex in a bathroom with another guy (public sex, but if we are going to apply ethics rules to public sexual displays, there would be a lot of open seats in the next election).
     
  • Repeat after me, homosexuality is not a crime.  Male on Male sex is not a crime. 
     
  • The U. S. Senate does not have a constitutional power to rule on sin.  They are not the pope.  This is not the inquisition.  Keep religion (and the whiff of moral hypocrisy) out of the government like the founding fathers intended.
Of all the hypocrites involved in this mess, Larry Craig might be the least of all.  To commit a sin, you first have to know what you are doing and, second, you must commit willingly and fully to the sin.  I doubt if Senator Craig has ever committed fully to anything.
 
All the travelin' I ever done is round a coffee pot lookin' for the handle.
 
— Ennis Del Mar, Brokeback Mountain
 
Larry Edwin CraigLarry Edwin Craig, a Representative and a Senator from Idaho; born in Council, Adams County, Idaho, July 20, 1945; attended the public schools of Midvale, Idaho; B.A., University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 1969; graduate work, George Washington University 1970; farmer-rancher; member, Idaho senate 1974-1980; delegate, Idaho State Republican conventions 1976-1978; elected as a Republican to the Ninety-seventh and to the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1981-January 3, 1991); elected to the United States Senate in 1990; reelected in 1996 and 2002 for the term ending January 3, 2009; chair, Senate Republican Policy Committee (1996-2003), Special Committee on Aging (One Hundred Eighth Congress), Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (One Hundred Ninth Congress).
 
 
 
 
 
1 The public message of Senator Craig’s arrest, however, has been overlooked by most everyone: that the desire to engage in same sex activities is offensive, lewd, and criminal.  When was the last time a heterosexual couple was arrested for having sex in a bathroom stall or a parked car?
 
2 Idaho Statesman
 
3 Cottaging is a gay slang term referring to anonymous male/male sex in a public lavatory (a cottage), or to the practice of cruising for sexual partners in public lavatories with the intention of having sex elsewhere. Cottaging in the United Kingdom has been noted as early as 1729. The term may have its roots in the English cant language of polari, or in the fact that many self-contained English toilet blocks have in the past resembled small cottages in their appearance. Cottaging is more common among gay and bisexual men than among lesbians or heterosexuals. Wikipedia.
 
4 Larry Craig, U. S. Senate Mission Goal, Senate Web Site
 
5 Meet The Press
 
Ms. Lisa Jain ThompsonMs. Lisa Jain Thompson is the Co-Founder & President of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website.  Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. Lisa welcomes your comments. You can use the public form below or send private correspondence via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.
 
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Read my lips, , As embarrassing as it is to admit, Senat
04 September 2007     

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 September 2007 06:23