It’s eight years later, and men’s deodorant scents continue to be nonsense. I currently favor “Cool Wave,” myself, because who doesn’t want to smell like a cool wave.
Note: they don’t specify what it’s a cool wave of.
Note from Missy: At least guys get scents other than flowers, even if they’re mysterious waves. If you’re a woman who thinks floral scents are disgusting, there are very few options. If someone made a deodorant that gently smelled of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, or Froot Loops, or pepperoni pizza, I’d stock up on that shizz immediately.
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Fifty years have elapsed between Woodstock and today, and Cobain’s death is the mid-point, 25 years from each. When I was a kid, Woodstock was ancient history. It might as well have been the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Cobain’s death, on the other hand, feels like it happened a few years ago.
If that freaks you out, think about this. Fight Club, The Matrix, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and The Mummy (The Brendan Fraser / Rachel Weisz version) all came out in 1999. Those are twenty-year-old movies! Do you ever flip through the channels on a Saturday afternoon and marvel at how much more current the movies they show to fill time on basic cable now are than the ones they showed when you were young? Yeah, THEY AREN’T! To a current teenager, the Matrix might as well be The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.
My point is that I’m getting old, and people my age are also getting old. We have to keep that in mind before we try to foist out cultural tastes on younger people.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to explain to anyone who’ll listen why Picard is a better captain than . . . whoever’s captain on Discovery this week.
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Enlarge / Mitochondria (red) and cell nucleus (blue) of two connective tissue cells prepared from mouse embryo. (credit: Institute of Molecular Medicine I, University of Düsseldorf)
The vast majority of our DNA—the chromosomes in the nucleus of each cell—is just what you’d expect: a mix of genetic material from both mother and father. But mitochondria are an exception. They contain a relatively tiny amount of DNA, and in nearly all mammals and even unicellular organisms, that DNA comes strictly from the mother. We've even used that fact to trace the spread of humanity around the globe.
But in 2002, researchers in Copenhagen reported a jaw-dropping finding. In an effort to work out why one of their patients had extreme fatigue during exercise despite seeming healthy in many respects, they started examining his mitochondria—the energy-generating power stations living in each cell. What they found floored them: the man had mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that matched both his father's and his mother's.
Since 2002, no other cases of paternally inherited mtDNA have been reported in humans, despite several research groups actively looking. But a paper in this week’s PNAS reports mtDNA inherited from both parents in 17 different people from three families. This kind of inheritance is still extremely rare and seems potentially linked to mitochondrial disease, but the robust confirmation of it in humans is huge news for biology and medicine.
I’ve blathered before about how my nephews’ Christmas lists are the stuff of science fiction. VR headsets, hoverboards, 3D printers, that kinda thing. This year is different, I don’t know if it’s because they’re older or it’s just how things progress, but this year they seem to be asking for videogames for consoles they already own and new copies of things they already own and have broken, which is pretty much what I was asking for at their age.
Had an interesting discussion with one of their parents about how many of the things they want are primarily sold digitally, so most of the things that get wrapped up and put under the tree are clothing, which I think we can all agree, were always the least satisfying things to unwrap.
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I stand by my position on Steve Jobs. He didn’t invent anything but his own public image, but he had tremendous taste and high standards, and we have all benefited from them.
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