Bay Area Backroads – Secluded Armpits Edition

Had a fairly nice ride in San Mateo this afternoon.  My friends invited me to go to a hidden, secret magical land, which turned out to be Seal Point Park and the surrounding environs (just south of Coyote Point).

However there were some weird, foul, and fowl things that came up.  So, when going there

The Good:
1) Going to the top of the hill above the dog park to ring the bells that are part of the art sculpture there.
2) See the cute cats farther south

The Bad:
1) …actually going to see the cats, it smells like ass in that part of the bay. It was also kinda sad to see so many strays. Spay and neuter your pets people!

2)  Biking by the large pile of manure just sitting in the parking lot. Unless you’re looking for a way to get the kids out of your hair for a while, and tell them to build sandcastles out of it.

3)  Lingering over the seabird roadkill. Nasty!

Belkin Paying Folks to Post Fake Reviews on Amazon

Check out this story via The Daily Background.

Apparently Belkin’s “Business Development Manager of eCommerce”, Michael Bayard has been found to be paying people to post positive reviews of their products, and downplay any negative reviews. The posting states you don’t even need to own it.  They used Amazon’s own Mechanical Turk service to post the job orders.

My friends are plotting against me!

DIY Biotechnologists – Start Praying

Apparently the new rage is to attempt synthetic biology in one’s home, says this article:

Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home

(via the Associated Press)

People with no training and only rudimentary knowledge doing genetic splicing in unregulated lab conditions?  Very scary.  And you thought genetically engineered food was bad?  Please.  You haven’t been scared s***less until you’ve seen Joe the Plumber trying to splice vanilla flavoring into E.coli and then injecting it into his Gun’n’Roses tattoo so he can have a scratch’n’sniff bicep.

“We should try to make science more sexy and more fun and more like a game,” says Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college and co-founder of the group DIYbio which has set up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a free Craigslist freezer.

NO.  No we shouldn’t. Science will always be sexy to the hardcore. and it is sexy to stupid people as well… but it should be kept out of their reach, and restricted to people dedicated enough to pursue it.  Is this a discriminatory statement?  Absolutely not: anyone regardless of background is free to pursue it, but they should be required to obtain the appropriate training and put in the work to get there.  There’s nothing discriminatory about meritocracy.

I cringe everytime I see college kids not using goggles and other safety equipment in lab, and they’re actually being supervised and taught proper lab technique.  Do you really want untrained individuals to be weilding even more responsability than that, in your backyard?