The non-violent civil disobedience group Extinction Rebellion continues to fight for climate justice. To close out 2019, the Toronto chapter held its first general assembly and adopted a new demand: justice for all.
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Port de Montréal. Adrien Hébert.
The Curious Case of Reverse Translation: The Divide Between Nature and Society
The central dogma is a fundamental principle taught to all students of biology. The notion that the information stored in a protein sequence cannot serve as a template for a complementary nucleic acid strand still stands. Here, we consider the curious case of in silico reverse translation software designed by humans. Does this violate the central dogma? A discussion of society and nature is necessary to address the question.
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Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. John Singer Sargent.
The Difference Between Liberals and the Left According to Phil Ochs
Today, liberals and the left often are clumped together. But, a chasm differentiates the political ideologies between the two. Phil Ochs, one of the eminent folk singers on the sixties, recorded the sardonic Love Me, I’m a Liberal in 1966. The pointed satire mocking the liberal contradiction is as relevant as ever.
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The Savior of the World. El Greco.
Big Pharma, the Parasite
Society’s relationship with big pharma is love-hate. We despise how expensive new, life-saving drugs are, but we bite the bullet because the profit motive promotes the pharmaceutical industry to innovate like no other. That is a myth. Scientists working at universities and in the non-profit sector do the hard work. They lay the biological groundwork for pharma to swoop in at the last second and patent cures. Pharma is parasitic. Scientists can and should be in charge of nationalized pharmaceutical strategy because the current system is broken.
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Distraining for Rent. Sir David Wilkie.
Socialism and Human Health
We are taught that all improvements in societal health are causally linked to a corresponding scientific advance. This is the myth of heroic science. It is clear that lifespan has steadily increased due to a decline in infectious disease mortality. However, this has more to do with improve quality of life due to labour and socialist movements than antibiotic and vaccine development. Socialism is capable of improving our material conditions through wealth redistribution and my allowing democratic control of our scientific institutions to make sure we all benefit from our collective genius and creativity.
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