Sexual Antagonism, A genetic theory of homosexuality

The Battle of Thermopylae according to classical Greek legend took place in the year 480 BCE. Three hundred Spartan warriors, under the lead of legendary king Leonidas I, fought an epic battle to withhold the Persian god-king Xerxes from subjecting the Greeks. Frank Miller produced an epic comic about the battle and his interpretation of the character of the Spartans and king Leonidas I in his cult series entitled 300 in 1998. Later this year, Warner Bros. will release a spectacular movie re-enacting Miller’s comic book. Although I am not a big fan of multi-million Hollywood productions not of comic books, I am set to go and see it.

There seems to occur a revival of the classic theme in Hollywood and in the consumer’s taste. With Achilles costing $250 million dollar, Frank Miller’s movie adaption by Warner Bros. costs the lesser sum of $60 million dollar, but including the mega million blockbuster The Passion of Christ by Mel Gibson, Hollywood is putting the classics back on track of mass audiences. Now, you can argue about the artistic value of a movie like Achilles and few would dare to defend it, but the artistic contribution of the cult strip by Frank Miller would be hard to deny. The movie to be released later this year was directed by Zack Snyder, who also directed Dawn of the Dead, and will be true to Miller’s interpretation rather than to the historic document by Herodotus. Frank Miller was influenced on his turn by the 1962 movie of the epic entitled The 300 Spartans by Rudolph Maté. (more…)

Is life a form of art? Thomas Baekdal thought it was and created his online Web2DNA project. The concept is simple: take a gene array, blow it up to the size of a painting, print it on canvas and put it on your wall. Genial in its simplicity. It is the proof that something good can come out of watching television, because he thought of his project one night watching television, and being bored to hell with what he saw. And thus, art came to life, or rather in this case, life came to art. The result is a genetic variation of Rothko’s mystic window into our selves.

Gene arrays come in many forms and are based on gene matching proteins, whose chemical structure perfectly match to the mirror structure of the gene during expression. Researchers thought of a way to attach a marker to the protein. The marker is a chemical that lights up under fluorescent light, so that when you create a matrix of DNA segments or probes, and genes to look for, certain probes will have active or expressed genes and others will not. This will show by fluorescent colors lighting up, most widely used techniques involve the colors green and red. The result is a mesmorizing array of black, green and red spots, differing in brightness dependent on the level of activity of the particular gene in the particular probe.

Baekdal’s project is nothing but a simple idea blown up to a life size picture, but it displays wonderfully the esthetic qualities of life and modern technology that can be found in life sciences. The quality of life science to blow your mind away, is also brought forward in another, more professional, prestigious and ground-breaking project. What both projects have in mind, is perhaps that they use the building blocks of life and they charge a fee for their product. (more…)

With the World Cup 2006 in Germany only 47 days away, soccer is grasping the head lines more and more. No one will argue that Brazil is the big favorite to win the tournament. Bookmakers rate the favorites in the win market as Brazil 16/5, England 6/1, Germany 7/1, Argentina 8/1 and Italy at 10/1. The USA is quoted at 100/1. No one will frown their eye brows, except me! Why? Because the USA has been present at all of the last four World Cups, in the 2002 quarter finals they only narrowly were defeated by the later finalist Germany by 1-0, and they currently are ranked fourth on the FIFA ranking of April 2006! The USA team always has team spirit and now they have many players in European competitions. So I decided to watch a top match in the Major League Soccer (MLS), the highest division in the USA between the New York Red Bulls and D.C. United.

The New York Red Bulls are in trouble after a powerless defeat at home against arch rival D.C. United. The team is in turm-oil after Red Bull acquired the then named Metrostars for $100 million and renamed it the New York Red Bulls. (more…)