Eric Wilson

The problem with sperm donors

This New York Times article “One Sperm Donor, 150 offspring” highlights the dangers of artificial insemination from a genetic perspective. The science-based concerns back up the moral and ethical questions surrounding this as well:

Now, there is growing concern among parents, donors and medical experts about potential negative consequences of having so many children fathered by the same donors, including the possibility that genes for rare diseases could be spread more widely through the population. Some experts are even calling attention to the increased odds of accidental incest between half sisters and half brothers, who often live close to one another.

It’s about saying ‘No’

“I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying ‘Yes’ to everything. It’s about saying ‘No’ to all but the most crucial features.” — Steve Jobs.

McDonald’s, like drugs, impacts your brain

Really interesting stuff in this Psychology Today piece on the “7 Things McDonald’s Knows About Your Brain”:

Many recent neuroscience discoveries about food’s effects on our brains and how we make decisions about food are actually gold-standard trade secrets from super chains such as McDonald’s. With billions and billions served, they must be on to something. 

Coolest damn one of ‘em all

There’s races that pay more, there’s races that might have a little more prestige, but this is the coolest damn one of ‘em all. And we won today. Isn’t that awesome?

Deliberate and Definitive

If you’re not following Letters of Note, you’re really missing out. This recent entry highlights a memo from the Administrator of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. It was written a few days after President John F. Kennedy died in their Emergency Room.

It closes with an excellent reflection on the importance of a team:

the underlying factor is people. People whose education and training is sound. People whose judgement is calm and perceptive. People whose actions are deliberate and definitive. Our pride is not that we were swept up by the whirlwind of tragic history, but that when we were, we were not found wanting.

Photo

Technology has, sadly, ended the need for the House Page Program. This photo has hung for sometime in the Republican Cloakroom and shows House pages carrying Rep. Alvin Bentley of Michigan from the House Chamber after he was shot by Puerto Rican separatists in 1954.

POLITICO: House page program to end

Salah Mohamed Askar: The Fixer

This is an interesting obit for an NBC News “fixer” in Libya, but it’s also a solid piece of war correspondent journalism in the vein of Hemingway and Churchill.

Salah had arranged a briefing with the rebel commander the night we arrived back in Nalut. He took part in the briefing and asked pointed yet polite questions as though he was part of our team.  Of course by then he was, and we learned the particulars of the rebels’ strategy and tactics.  Salah, a proud Naluti with two brothers among the city’s rebel fighting force, knew the lay of the land – the dozen or so ridgeline “fronts” where the artillery barrage would commence before rebel ground units would move into the two towns.

He knew the risks, as we did – that the rebels’ artillery attack would trigger heavy retaliatory fire from below.  We’d seen it weeks earlier, when one of those heavy return rounds exploded a few hundred yards from our position.  But though the risk is minimal that a Grad rocket, an old Russian missile, will actually hit a target as small as an artillery team a dozen miles away, Salah was especially cautious this morning and made sure we were, too. 

Sorry I’m Not Sorry

While asking for and granting forgiveness is an important part of our personal lives, in the professional realm, it’s never a good idea. This post from The Next Web does a good job of articulating the reasons why you shouldn’t apologize:

“If you are late, missed a deadline or did something wrong the people who like and respect you will understand that you didn’t mean for this to happen. Your excuse will only embarrass them.

The people who dislike you will take advantage of you putting yourself in that position. So don’t apologize. Just do better next time, and don’t let it happen again.”

In other words, own it.

Photo

“[T]he practice of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI has actually been to summon all new metropolitans to Rome to receive the pallium directly from the hands of the pope on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallium

The Knight’s Tomb

Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O’Kellyn?
Where may the grave of that good man be? -
By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
Under the twigs of a young birch tree!
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone, - and the birch in its stead is grown. -
The Knight’s bones are dust,
And his good sword rust; -
His soul is with the saints, I trust.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817