Help Wanted

More proof, if any is needed, that self-driving cars, aka autonomous automobiles, are a long way into the future. There's no application for vehicle autonomy more easily put into action than an ice re-surfacer. The ice is flat, there's no other traffic, the area is uniform, pedestrians are minimal. Yet there are as of yet no autonomous Zambonis.

The Appearance Of An Asian Girl 100,000 Years Ago

Denisovan teen. Photo by: MAAYAN HAREL

Israeli researchers have been able to reconstruct the appearance of an individual that lived 100,000 years ago through the use of DNA methylation, a process whereby methyl compounds are added to DNA molecules and the changes made are compared to other similar processes, as this article explains.

You might wonder what  kind of real benefit this research might bring about. As in so many other technological breakthroughs, it's use may very well be important to law enforcement forensics. Brilliant scientists make discoveries that aren't particularly useful to ordinary citizens. Turning these discoveries into negotiable funds means that a market must be found and that market is government, government that has money and a fixation with finding responsible parties. Few private individuals have breathalyzers on their Christmas list. Lie detectors are seldom found at Target or in pawn shops. 

In the case of molecular genetic profiling, like many other new forensic techniques, only the most educated and experienced researchers even know how the process works. Used in forensics this means that their results are basically irrefutable by a layman. Should these results be introduced in a court case, defense teams demand the relevant software and technological information to make their own evaluation of the evidence. Most of the time this information is not made available for proprietary reasons. It's a secret, like the recipe for Coca-Cola.

Should the DNA methylation technique prove somehow useful in fighting crime, its developers stand to become wealthy. 

 

Irrational Man

A society that is going through a process of dislocation and upheaval, or of revolution, is bound to cause suffering to individuals, but this suffering itself can bring one closer to one's own existence. Habit and routine are great veils over our existence. As long as they are securely in place, we need not consider what life means; its meaning seems sufficiently incarnate in the triumph of the daily habit. When the social fabric is rent, however, man is suddenly thrust outside, away from the habits and norms he once accepted automatically. There, on the outside, his questioning begins. Thrust out into the cold air of the Western Enlightenment, with its ideals of reason, progress, and liberalism . . . .

William Barrett, Irrational Man, Anchor Books, 1962.

The Return of Ivan the Terrible

The proposed sale of a painting by a couple in Connecticut has resulted in its return to the Ukraine, where it had been stolen by the Nazis in WWII, according to this story.

"Secret Departure of Ivan the Terrible Before The Oprichnina" had been looted by German troops from the Dnipropetrovsk Art Museum and then disappeared until discovered hanging on the wall of Gabby and David Tracy. Intending to offer it on auction, they contacted the Potomack Company auction house in Virginia. Anne Craner, a European art specialist there identified the work from a list of those stolen. 

The FBI, who has a department dedicated to stolen art, took some credit in the painting's return to Ukraine, although the couple could have personally delivered it to the Ukrainian embassy themselves.