h a l f b a k e r yThe mutter of invention.
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Right, here's my go.
Because I love cats so much, you know our feline friends who are just so cute and adorable!!! I am proposing a method to slightly resequence my own DNA (in the junk bits) so as to include pics of cuddly, cute kittens.
Probably AGCT is some going to give lousy kind of greyscale,
but the creator couldn't think of everything.
//Working on the basis that you can say b-a-t-h and the dog won't do a runner, I'm guessing that the b-o-r-g won't cotton on to this one...
such a cute kitten!!!!
http://upload.wikim...Turkish_Van_Cat.jpg
[not_morrison_rm, Jul 09 2013]
Or this one!
http://4.bp.blogspo...llpaper-782249.jpeg
[lurch, Jul 10 2013]
a genuine photo of the Borg
http://www.mensfitn...mf/209828/15546.jpg
[not_morrison_rm, Jul 10 2013]
Scottish kitten
https://i.chzbgr.co...78730496/hA416DBA8/
[pocmloc, Jul 13 2013]
[link]
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Actually, you could do better than that. Just
encode a complete cat in your junk DNA. |
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OK, a complete cat would be pushing it. But, for
example, the complete genome of the pufferfish,
Fugu, could be comfortably encoded in your junk
DNA. You could become a walking menagerie! |
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Who would want to be a were-tabby? I don't like fish that much and a tendency to lick own bottom is hardly going to please descendants. |
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The idea of interstitial genomes has many
possibilities waiting to go unexplored. |
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Concerned about the fate of Partula snails? Have
a couple embedded in your children's genomes! |
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Fancy giving your great-great grandchildren the
opportunity to become international terrorists?
Give your kids the Yersinia genome as a family
heirloom! |
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Actually, I am now itching to create a spoof
website, offering (via IVF and bit of GM magic) to
encode poems, photographs or favourite pets in
your children's genomes. My guess is that I'll get
as many enquiries as complaints. |
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What's my percentage again? |
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Of course I will spend it all on adorable, fluffy kittens and cat rescue centres and Hello Kitty crap, |
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Ohh, cats are so wonderful :-) |
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//Whats the capacity ? Could it do e.g. the 16K
ROM from a zx81 ?// |
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This has been done. The Sanger Centre recently
encoded a bunch of stuff (I believe there were a
couple of books, some pictures, and some
digitized music) in a piece of synthetic DNA and
showed that it could be decoded faithfully. |
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As for the capacity of the human genome... well,
nobody knows for sure how much 'junk' DNA is
actually 'junk' (but, for the record, most of your
three billion basepairs have no known function). |
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Very conservatively, you could probably add a few
tens of megabases of DNA here and there without
doing any harm, although it might take a bit of
trial and error. Since one basepair is two bits, and
the ZX81 uses 8bit bytes, you could certainly put
10 megabytes of data in there. You'd probably
want some redundancy against mutational errors,
so maybe halve that number. |
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In fact, you could probably put a 16K into your
mitochondria. They are a bit flakey when it
comes to their DNA, so it would bring back those
fond memories of wobbly RAM packs. |
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That's what I was thinking of in my anno above. It
really would make a spiffing website. Photographs
of a pearly-toothed couple looking adoringly at their
baby: "She's got her Grandma's smile, her daddy's
nose, and her mommy's favourite Eminem lyrics." |
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this will only end in tears... |
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You're in luck, [po]! As an introductory offer, we can
write the short motto of your choice in your
daughter*-to-be's mitochondrial DNA for a never-to-
be-repeated price of Gz999.99 per character! |
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"this will only end in tears" can become your family's
heirloom for just Gz26,999.73!! (Local taxes apply.) |
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*this service is not available for male children. |
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If we work it right, we can include an inducible
recombinase that could - for a fee - splice out the
offending phrase in the event of religious
conversion. |
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Hey! We can market it as a security feature too!
Imagine your child is snatched at a young age.
Decades later, the child discovers that its 'parents'
are, in fact, its kidnappers. But how to find its
true parents?? A quick visit to a sequencing
centre reveals its parent's names and address!
RFIDNA!! |
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//Is there any danger with this messing about with
DNA...?// None whatsoeveratall. It's all perfectly,
perfectly safe. DNA has been extensively tested in
animals. |
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However, we are working on the native interfacing. |
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[bigs], you are not taking this seriously. |
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I have it (but I'm taking antibiotics, so that's ok). |
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AGCT can be black/white/grey and pink for the cute ribbons. |
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Considering redoing nyan nyan cat as "borg, borg, borg, borg..." etc, but currently too bone idle. |
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"most of your three billion basepairs have no known function" erm, shouldn't that be "most of our.." |
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There is, of course, a difference between "have no known function" and "are known to have no function" (see appendix). |
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(Obligatory) <borg> All your basepairs are belong to us. </borg>. |
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Well, could we just do a rota until the borg returns, I can do first Friday of the month. |
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Luckily, there's a rota orientated summonning incantation: |
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SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS |
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It's even vaguely cat related. |
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A portable hard-drive with the following features: write
once; read many; trillions of auto back-up copies; self
correcting, except when modified by a virus, and a
very slow serial interface. |
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//a very slow serial interface// |
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Or a respectable parallel one (input = 3x10^9bp,
output = alpaca). |
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// It's even vaguely cat related. // |
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I can only find one first-degree relation. How many am I
missing? |
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// a redundant array of quantum nematodes// |
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Ah - you've worked in a call centre, then? |
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Really good sequencing could make involuntary
muscle movements, such as in the intestines. So,
everytime the individual has a pen in hand, it
inexplicably draws a kitten... |
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A second involuntary program might include the
puzzling habit of purchasing mail order kittens. |
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Come on then, Borg, watch-out, or the DNA gets it! |
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I know this idea has some obvious flaw, but use a pilot as the black box, recording the flight data onto the junk dna. |
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// Really good sequencing could make involuntary muscle movements... |
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I was pondering something similar, getting sponsorship to cover research costs, for example, the sequencee might subconsciously say "do, do, do, doo, do, do, I'm loving it" on the hour and the half hour. |
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I'm getting worried, anybody heard from 8th of 7? He
hasn't gone for this Borg bait or any other post
recently. |
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Hey 8, furry cuddly kitties here. All purry and warm! I
think everybody should be required to carry a kitten
with them at all times under penalty of law. Any
thoughts? |
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Hmm, without wishing to be excessively paranoid, the borg do assimilate and who is to say one of us here (gulps) may be the borg and not consciously know it? |
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Think, have you recently taken a dislike to cats, an interest in large calibre weapons, or woken up holding a plastic explosives brochure and not know how you got it? |
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I'm just trying to avoid the bit where the last two halfbakers face off in some burnt out Arctic base as the snow falls.... |
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I can only recommend that we go around in pairs from now on. |
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// I'm getting worried, anybody heard from 8th of
7? // He will be returning shortly. |
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Crap. Let me know when so I can delete this. The second coming of the Borg, will there be rapture and all that kind of stuff? |
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No, what will really freak them out is when they
discover that the human genome is encoded in the
digits of pi. |
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Because the series is infinite, then not only is it possible
that one genome is encoded, but all possible genomes are
encoded...including variations of MB and even a borg that
cuddles kittens. |
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And an entire population of kittens that habitually use networked computers to view and share photographs of overweight middle-aged hominids. |
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One can't properly speak of 'the' digits of pi without specifying a base. Base 10 digits can't be encoded properly in standard Earth DNA, but any base that's a power of 2 can. Base 4, obviously, gives the neatest fit. |
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According the news on Radio 4, the British
Government has just banned cats. |
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Apparently the problem is that people chew them
and get high. |
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Typical, won't able to smoke gorillas next. Health and safety gone mad. |
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Shape seems quite important in all facets of nature, whether defined as junk or not. |
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//I think you're thinking of toads and its licking not
chewing.// |
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I think it's extremely unlikely that a toad could
either lick or chew a cat. They're just not big
enough. |
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However, on further research it appears that the ban
only applies to cats spelled "khat". |
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A cat is too small for a toad to lick - I know cartoon frogs have very long tongues but I still don't quite follow this. Can you quantify please? |
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Perhaps cats are bigger where you live. |
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Mmm, some kind of lensing due to the gravitational field caused by the mountains up north? Though that would make everything appear larger so kittens would appear normal size... |
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No. We're in here ... behind you. Raise your hands and turn around slowly. |
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// won't able to smoke gorillas next. // |
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Gorrillas are too strong ... try baboons, they're milder. |
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It worked! S/he/it's here! Close the hatch, emergency
roll, flaps at 30 degrees, pull the fire alarm, translate
negative Z axis 10,000 meters, Wagner at full on all
internal speakers, full ultraviolet illumination, inflate
emergency goggles, doff tea-cozies! |
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We suggest, "Assume the position …" |
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But you knew that, didn't you …? |
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Er, er, er someone must have hacked my account and posted this...yes, yes, that's it... |
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I am sure you will have a lot of explaining to do
regarding your absence without leave. But before
the heavies get here, perhaps you'd care to explain
why you found yourself at gunpoint? Moreover, what
on earth persuaded him/her not to pull the trigger? |
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We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill
you. |
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Not that we have a problem with that, you
understand. |
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Trust me, you're too late. |
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