Sarah Binder / The New Republic:
A Viewer's Guide to This Weekend  —  Sarah Binder is a professor of political science at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.  She is the author of several books on Congress, including Stalemate (Brookings 2003) and Politics or Principle?

Mosquitos are one of the major ways that malaria is spread, causing an estimated two million deaths per year. Wouldn’t it be cool if those mosquitos could be genetically modified to spread a malaria vaccination instead of the disease itself? Scientists have theorized about just such a solution for years, but recent work from Jichi Medical University in Japan proves that it’s actually possible, not just theoretically possible.

Associate Professor Shigeto Yoshida and his research team “successfully generated a transgenic mosquito expressing the Leishmania vaccine within its saliva. Bites from the insect succeeded in raising antibodies, indicating successful immunization with the Leishmania vaccine through blood feeding.” Of course, this vaccination idea isn’t perfect, since you’ll still have one or more mosquito bites to scratch at, but at least you won’t have malaria.

Maybe I’m alarmist, but I can’t help but think that this kind of approach throws the natural order of things seriously out of whack. As I read the story, I kept hearing Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park in my mind, saying “life, uh … finds a way.”

Two dispatches from the far frontiers of science send our panellists into orbit around such issues as "how many years will it be before we all carry our personal genomes around with us, alongside our mobiles and our wallets?" and "why hasn't ET phoned earth yet?"

We hear astrophysicist Paul Davies's views on what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would do to the religions of the world. And we consult a new book by Barack Obama's medical supremo, Francis Collins, to discover whether genomic medicine will be the saving of us, or our damnation.

We also interview the poet and memoirist John Burnside about the problems that plagued his early adulthood, from alcoholism to the neurological condition of apophenia – the experience of perceiving patterns and connections in random objects.

Reading list:

The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalised Medicine, by Francis Collins (Profile)
The Eerie Silence: Are we alone in the Universe? By Paul Davies (Allen Lane)
Take Off Your Party Dress: When Life's Too Busy for Breast Cancer, by Dina Rabinovitch (Pocket Books)
Waking Up In Toytown, by John Burnside (Jonathan Cape)

Elsewhere: Tim Radford's latest science book club choice is Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, by Ian Stewart.

Dubai hotel frees whale shark.

His name was Yvonne: German pole vaulter Balian Buschbaum.

Senator Chuck Schumer signals commitment to inclusion of LGBT provisions in comprehensive immigration reform: "I support [UAFA] and I am working on introducing a comprehensive package that would address this issue along with a host of immigration issues . . . At this time, I believe that the only way to pass meaningful and effective immigration reform is through a comprehensive bill, not through piecemeal legislation."

Janet Jackson announces release date of new single, called "Nothing".

Bo Bice (remember him?) becomes 'Bob' Bice. 

Tom Brady grows it out.

Nice knowing you, Bluefin tuna: "Global talks on the conservation of endangered species have rejected calls to ban international trade in bluefin tuna, raising new fears for the future of dwindling stocks. Countries at the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Qatar voted down a proposal from Monaco to grant the fish stronger protection. The plan drew little support, with developing countries joining Japan in opposing a measure they feared would hit fishing economies."

The NYT 'T' magazine pays a visit to the studio of Ryan McGinley.

Chicago Mayor Daley appoints new chair to gay advisory council: "Elizabeth Kelly will serve a three-year term as chairperson of the Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. Kelly is a professor of women's and gender studies at DePaul University. She was a founding member of DePaul's interdisciplinary program in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies."

Gay Facebook founder Chris Hughes starts Jumo.com, a social platform for global volunteerism: "Think of the site as philanthropy, volunteerism and social networking all rolled into one. It's a platform that will connect people and organizations around the world, and Hughes is arguably the most well-known tech entrepreneur to enter the still evolving global space." Site.

The SF Chronicle discovers Grindr.

Killer of gay bar manager up soon for parole.

Vman modeling search winners announced (site possibly nsfw).

Siem Reap, Cambodia's gay haven: "Homosexual acts are not outlawed in Cambodia, as they are in a few Southeast Asian countries, but outward displays of affection and untraditional lifestyles are rare. Yet in Siem Reap, a small town that gets about a million tourists a year, gay visitors and locals are carving out a little haven. In the last few years, a small flurry of gay-friendly bars, restaurants and hotels has opened up in the city’s center and beyond, with wink-wink names like the Golden Banana and Cockatoo."

Facebook deletes Seattle gay youth group.

Atlanta Eagle lawsuit grows: "Thirty-one Atlanta police officers have been added to a federal lawsuit that complains patrons of a gay nightclub were ordered to lie on the Atlanta Eagle Bar floor, on spilled beer and broken glass, while enduring insults about their homosexuality. The suit, originally filed in November, was expanded Wednesday to include six more bar employees and contractors, bringing the total to 28 people who say they were victimized during the highly publicized raid on Sept. 10."

The fact that many people love games isn’t really that new. Retailers and even our own governments have used our love of games to sell us products and hook us on lotteries and whatever else they can think of to boost revenue. But the rise of online games such as World of Warcraft and the social and “casual” games popularized by Zynga and other companies on Facebook, such as Mafia Wars and Happy Aquarium, has arguably made gaming a far bigger part of our culture than it has ever been — not to mention location-based apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which have explicit game-like features built in. Online payment giant PayPal said that Zynga was its second-largest merchant last year, and PayPal does business with some of the largest companies in the world. And get ready for even more games: Flurry Analytics says that its research shows almost half of the apps that are being developed for the upcoming Apple iPad are games.

What is the impact of all that gaming on our society? One academic, Lee Sheldon of Indiana University, says the generation that has grown up with ubiquitous online gaming is bringing that culture with it into the educational system, and ultimately into the workforce. “As the gamer generation moves into the mainstream workforce, they are willing and eager to apply the culture and learning-techniques they bring with them from games,” Sheldon, an assistant professor at the university’s department of telecommunications, told ITNews. He said older managers will have to “figure out how to educate themselves to the gamer culture, and how to speak to it most effectively.”

Sheldon is already experimenting with that: over the last year, he started grading two of his classes (both involved with game design) using a system based on “experience points” or XP, similar to the way gamers in World of Warcraft and other massively-multiplayer games award points for various tasks. Students started the year at level one, with zero XP and then gained points — and higher grades — by completing “quests” and “crafting,” which corresponded to giving presentations and doing exams and quizzes. Students also formed “guilds” similar to the gaming groups that rule WoW and other multiplayer games, and Sheldon says that his students seemed far more engaged than they had been before.

A similar phenomenon was the topic of a panel at the recent SXSW conference in Austin, where Christopher Poole, the founder of the controversial discussion forum known as 4chan, and Web historian Jason Scott discussed the site and its culture — which in some cases consists of offensive material, but also involves public advocacy through offshoots such as the Anonymous group. According to a description from Austin360, Scott compared the behavior at 4chan to a game, but one in which the objective was to come up with something more shocking and/or hilarious than your competitors.

Scott noted that another site behaves in almost the exact same way: Wikipedia. And he’s got a point — the “crowdsourced” encyclopedia relies in many cases on unknown and unpaid editors and writers to produce and structure and verify its content, people who to some extent compete for the recognition of their peers on the site, and in some cases wind up “levelling up” to become senior editors and members of the internal Wikipedia “cabal” of site managers. Although Wikipedia doesn’t explicitly award experience points, the concept is the same, and it motivates people in similar ways.

The moderation of comments at Slashdot is based on a very similar system: users are able to gain “karma points” through positive actions such as posting sensible comments, voting on other comments and flagging abusive comments. When they get enough points, they are selected by the site’s algorithm to be official moderators, and can then “spend” the points they have removing comments. In such a system, it doesn’t ultimately matter whether someone is anonymous or not, because there is an incentive for them to follow the rules and behave properly (although there are always users who don’t care about the rewards and try to “troll” or disrupt any site).

The bottom line is that good games take advantage of people’s innate desire to compete with each other, but balance that with their need to receive rewards, including the approval of their peers — rewards that in some cases can be used to modify their behavior in certain ways. Those are principles that don’t just apply to games. Jesse Schell, a former creative director at Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, had a great presentation at the DICE 2010 conference last month in which he talked about the rise of social gaming and what we can learn from it, which is embedded below.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Stock Xchange and Flickr user chanchan222

• UBC mathematicians receive national honours
• UBC prof awarded 3M National Teaching Fellowship
• Fisheries professor receives honorary degree
• First prize for International Criminal Law Studies awarded to UBC prof
• UBC zoologist part of research group to recommend ivory trade monitoring and enforcement
• UBC to host Summer Institute in Sustainable Urban Design
• Engineering co-op announces contributions and awards
• Chilean students thank Dept. of Mining Engineering and UBC community
• Green College Visiting Professor gives talks on fairy tales and folklore
• Botanical Gardens featured in parenting blog
• Campus volunteers invited to reception

The so-called “iPod tax” is resurfacing in Canada with news that New Democratic Party MP Charlie Angus has introduced a a pair of proposals to amend the country’s Copyright Act.

One would extend the Private Copying Levy, first established back in 1997, to portable media players like iPods. Specifically, C-499 says the tax will cover any “device that contains a permanently embedded data storage medium, including solid state or hard disk, designed, manufactured and advertised for the purpose of copying sound recordings, excluding any prescribed kind of recording device.”

This would finally give consumers some much needed control over legally purchased products while simultaneously opening up a new revenue stream for artists in the downloading age.

“Artists have a right to get paid and consumers have a right to access works,” he says in a press release. “This is what balanced copyright is all about. The government has declared their intention to update the Copyright Act. If they are serious then we need to update key elements of the act like the copying levy and fair dealing.”

The other is a “fair dealing” motion (M-506) that would allow reasonable use of copyrighted materials for innovation, research and study.

It states:

29. Fair dealing of a copyrighted work for purposes such as research, private study, criticism, news reporting or review, is not an infringement of copyright.

Angus said that after years of talk, it’s time parliamentarians got serious about updating our copyright laws.

“Digital locks and suing fans are not going to prevent people from copying music from one format to another,” he said. “The levy is a solution that works. By updating it, we will ensure that artists are getting paid for their work, and that consumers aren’t criminalized for moving their legally-obtained music from one format to another.”

However, the renowned Canadian academic and law professor Michael Geist, though “supportive” of the fair dealing proposal, finds the iPod tax troubling. Why? Because the device definition is vague enough that it could also cover smartphones and PCs.

“While the CPCC (the private copying collective) may not target all of these devices, there is nothing in the bill that prevents them from doing so,” he says.

Geist also worries that since video recordings are not included it could mean the introduction of a new tax at a later date, pushing it perhaps to upwards of $100 or more.

Most important of all, though a noble experiment it is, the iPod tax would only cause consumers to purchase iPods and other devices covered by the tax outside of Canada where it didn’t apply. As for how much it would be one can only guess, but the last time around was in the $75 range.

The Canada’s Private Copyright Collective (CPCC) has been pushing for a similar levy as far back as 2007, but those efforts were defeated early last year by the country’s Federal Court of Appeals.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

[Hat Tip]