Big Think

Personal genomics is poised to enter the consumer realm with all the whiz and bang that citizen media did in 2008. Suddenly, with the help of companies like Knome and 23andMe, those on the path to self-knowledge will be able to procure a full or partial sequence of their genome to unlock the fundamental secrets of the psyche. Personal genomics will be the ultimate litmus test of why we are the way we are. There will be no more need to confabulate why you are allergic to peanuts, close your left eye in bright sun, are woefully obese or got cancer at 45. It doesn’t just run in the family anymore. It runs in you. You will point to a long combination of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, conveniently folded in your breast pocket or downloaded to your iPhone, and explain everything to your thoroughly wowed cocktail party.

Maybe. Since Watson and Crick, geneticists have known genes express heritable traits that have been handed off to us over generations. How those traits can be interpreted in the age of personal genomics is complicated however. Steven Pinker, experimental psychologist at Harvard, recently submitted himself to 23andMe for genomic mapping. His results confirmed items he already knew about himself (above average intelligence, a predilection for walking), raised some potential reasons for worry (26.8 percent chance for Type 2 diabetes) and imparted some pretty useless errata, like the average odds for red hair. Pinker’s hair (see below) is a mass of gray.

Pinker notes that, while there is a “horoscopelike fascination of learning about genes that predict your traits,” the technology for interpreting our genomes for the public good is not up to scratch. Rather, most personal genomic technologies scan for common mismatches in the gene sequence that could cause a certain result your phenotype. Scanning for missing or repeated DNA is not part of the package yet. And identifying bumps in the sequence doesn’t necessarily advance our knowledge if we don’t know how many bumps, or at what frequency those bumps, cause a certain disease. Even if you discover you have the precise genetic sequence for obesity, no doctor can do anything with that information to help you avoid an untimely death from obesity-related complications. Eating less may still be the best prognosis, and it costs far less than a $100,000 gene scan.

Pinker has authored seven books on the nature of the homo sapiens and takes an evolutionary view to explain the puzzle of our species. When he spoke to Big Think he delved into his primary field of study, linguistic generativity with a particular focus on the nebula of irregular verbs. Grammar and language, Pinker argues, are hard-wired into our brains. When a child learns the word for a certain food, it evokes, like a page from the original hunter-gatherer lexicon, certain innate concepts. And over time these concepts imbue the word with a whole family of words and the child's gustatory vocabulary develops.

But, as other linguists have argued, one fundamental law of genetics undercuts this innate acquisition theory: generational variation. Thanks to Watson and Crick, we know variation occurs in the gene sequence. Thus, there would always be certain offspring born without entire concepts of language. They would go through life without the linguistic associations that come with "t-bone steak" or "Brussels sprouts." But such is not the case. Everyone child learns a vocabulary of food. Brussels sprouts are "yucky," a t-bone “delicious” and, unless Pinker's next foray into personal genomics will be to uncover a DNA-level support for his innate acquisition concept, social influences, more than evolution, seem to determine why we say what we say. Watch the video above for more on Pinker’s research.

 

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Baghdad’s infamous Green Zone quietly slipped into Iraqi hands on the first day of 2009. The US embassy is moving to its new fortifications nearby and the hallmarks of American culture that sustained American troops–from Starbucks to Pizza Hut–have been re-exported. But as the US military relinquished control of the huge swath of Euphrates River frontage they have occupied since the spring of 2003, questions remained over how Iraqis will govern from the new Green Zone. Though the national security situation has improved dramatically, and is now completely under an Iraqi mandate, some analysts say insurgents will surely test the zone’s new owners. Big Think looks back on the history of the American-controlled Green Zone with three items: an excellent critique of the zone from the counter-insurgency experts at Small Wars Journal last May; the International Republican Institute’s 46-page “Visitor’s Guide to Baghdad’s Green Zone” (removed from centcom website but available at Wired); and a vivid account of Baghdad’s chaos in 2006 by Time correspondent Aparisim Ghosh. With the occupation in the process of being dismantled, at least militarily, conflict experts can begin to wade through the sea of analyses--spurious and valid--that pave the way to the history textbooks. A good starting place might be the comments of Michael Walzer, Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies. He spoke to Big Think about applying the theory of a just war to the Iraq debacle.

 

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A year after his first conversation with Big Think, Paul Krugman sat down with us again recently to look at the state of the US economy. Twelve months hence, things have not improved. Krugman described the economic fragility during his first conversation last December as a "near recession," an observation that is now a forgone conclusion. Krugman's sober critique of the market has won him wide respect among economic thinkers, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in October for his work dating back to the 90s. A congratulatory White House dinner followed during which Krugman said "everyone was on their best behavior." Krugman is famously critical of the Bush administration's economic policy and deregulation in general. The next administration is reportedly reaching out to Krugman for his macro-economic acumen, and there's even been speculation over Krugman is being tapped for a post under Obama, but, as Krugman put it to us, bureaucracy is not his strong suit. In a recent New York Times column, Krugman instructs Americans that the next bubble--housing, dot com or some other incarnation--is not coming anytime soon, and they should instead prepare for as much as a year of "economic hell." He struck a similar chord when he broke down depression economics in his second interview with us.

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London School of Economics urbanologists have put together a short how-to for post-industrial cities to avoid complete obsolescence during the recession. Tracing the recent histories of Bremen, Bilbao, St. Etienne and four other formerly decrepit European burgs, the authors of A Tale of 7 Cities emphasize three fundamental steps cities need to follow to achieve urban renaissance: make high-tech often green investments, recruit workers laid off from failed industries and establish rock-solid mass transit networks. As the recession sinks its teeth into American cities like Toledo, Cincinnati and Buffalo--places that have only recently begun to rediscover their urban cores-- planners may wish to heed European models as blueprints. For specific ideas, reading is available at Germany’s Werkstatt-Stadt project which catalogs 156 of the country’s most innovative antidotes to the exurbs. And for the manpower, Sheffield’s JOBMatch provides the links from the dole to employment–an effort not unlike Van Jones’ Green For All on this side of the pond. When he sat down with Big Think, he expalined how the US could recruit a corps of disadvantaged and underemployed Americans to kickstart the green-collar economy. Here is Mr. Jones rolling up his sleeves.

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The Gulf of Aden’s Maritime Security Patrol Area could be the scene of a significantly messier engagement than the routine hijackings of commercial vessels that occur there every week. Shipping companies keen on avoiding long and costly detours and/or pillaging, as befell the Sirius Star, are hiring crack security teams to defend their cargo. Most employ non-lethal tactics, like the Dorset-based Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, which blasts warning sounds at 150 decibels toward pirate vessels. (This is 30 above the maximum safe threshold for humans and enough to send most buccaneers on a course back for Puntland.) When pirates have succeeded, defense personnel have not been as tech-savvy as APMSS. Rumored to soon be entering the anti-pirate market, with a decidedly more aggressive list of services, is Iraq War favorite Blackwater Worldwide. As Nick Davis, head of APMSS told Salon, introducing lethal force to the bandit seas could easily result in dead hostages on the 50 currently hijacked vessels ashore in Somalia. For the moment, on Puntland’s blossoming Riviera, hostages receive white-glove treatment from the pirates including catered meals.

For some expert perspective on the Africa's woes, let’s turn to American Enterprise Fellow and the world’s 15th most popular public intellectual Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her thoughts on foreign involvement in Africa. She endorses investment in the continent's nascent industries, certainly before more failed international aid schemes. However, the anti-piracy sector probably doesn’t make her short list.

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Texans are taking their cues from Londoners these days with the establishment of a CCTV-based surveillance program for monitoring the US-Mexico border. A public-private initiative between the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition and the digital surveillance program Blue Servo, the program has erected cameras in areas along the Rio Grande known for drug smuggling and human trafficking. Explaining the need for the cameras to France 24, Donald L. Reay, the executive director of the Texas Virtual Border Watch Program, noted, “We have a pretty open border with our neighbors to the south and bad people could take advantage of that.” Internet users are the eyes of the program. When a user logs on Blue Servo as a “Virtual Texas Deputy” they may select from 11 cameras at various stations along the Rio Grande. At this point they may sit back and let their civic duty take over. When they notice bad people, they can file a report at Blue Servo which will alert the local authorities.