Take me to your leader

Sometimes Economist readers spot the punchline I missed.

A commenter on my just-posted item on alien diplomacy remarks: "for the UN this represents another important milestone in their quest for relevance."

Blog: The UN’s secretive alien ambassador, Sep 28th 2010, 16:03

Quangos

In Britain the relatively new government is struggling to overcome a mountain of debt. Lots of radical plans for cutting the budget have been proposed. What is most fascinating is the reaction of all sorts of vested interests to budget cuts. Every day there is a new story about how disastrous it is all going to be, leading to riots, terrorism or a cultural black hole.

Its all fuelling a sense of increasing doom about the proposal. Proposals which, let us not forget, are about a nation living within its means rather than spending money it doesn't have, and blowing what it does on billions of pounds of interest payments.

Listening to people try to justify their ludicrous entitlements or the status quo is really informative. For example, today comes news that hundreds of quangos (strange quasi nongovernmental organisations financed by government) are going to be abolished. Hooray. Will we miss the Advisory Committee on Organic Standards and Cycling England? I doubt it.

One quango under threat is the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority which oversees fertility treatment. Its work looks set to move elsewhere. This is the really good bit. The former head of this agency, Baroness Deech, was just interviewed by the BBC. She claimed abolishing it would not save any money.

She went on, "It only costs £5m and it's not taxpayers' money. Most of that £5m comes from the patients. Now if you redistribute the functions, you're not going to save anything."

Er, hello? Earth to Baroness Deech? Women undergoing IVF are asked to pay £100 quid a cycle to fund her quango. Are you suggesting this is some kind of voluntary donation? I've never had IVF, but the idea that I'd be asked to write a cheque to support the regulator and be told that this isn't a tax is insulting.

Lord of the dance

A fun story about what makes a man's dance moves attractive to women...

http://www.economist.com/node/16984701

Updated: This story was in the top five most popular items on the Economist website during the week of September 10th to 16th.

Testing times for genetics

In America, the backlash against consumer genetics has begun. If you have ever been interested in what secrets your genes might hold, take note. In the near future, your right to spit into a tube, and have someone tell you what this means might be constrained. In short, governments of all sorts have begun to wonder whether you should be trusted with your own DNA.

Our healthcare correspondent wrote a piece in the Business Section on the issue of August 14th. I wrote a leader (op-ed), and followed it up with a blog post on our technology blog Babbage. This post is the latest installment in a sequence about consumer genomics.

I felt from the start of this story that the GAO report was strangely flawed. By that I mean it seemed determined to inflict the maximum damage on the industry using incorrect and flawed information.

I'm now fascinated to read that the genetics blogger Daniel MacArthur, is now seeking full access to the full transcripts and data used by the GAO. Presumably through FOI legislation.

Behind the scenes there is speculation that the FDA put the GAO up to this report in order to ask for money to regulate the industry.

Fruit research institute squashed in Moscow court

Read my latest Economist post about the Pavlovsk genebank and fears over its imminent demise.

Marvel, too, at the fact that President Dmitry Medvedev has just tweeted that he has received the appeal over Pavlovsk and has given instructions for the issue to be scrutinised.

Incredible diversity in the ocean discovered...

Check out this wonderful story about an American-Indonesian expedition that is discovering extraordinary diversity thousands of feet below the ocean surface in the waters of the Coral Triangle.

What lies beneath, The Economist, August 5th 2010.

Image: NOAA

Seeds of change

An alarming situation is unfolding in Russia, where a valuable repository for plant genetic diversity, which contains valuable varieties of berry, could be bulldozed in order to build luxury housing. Read about it on Eastern Approaches, The Economist's blog.

* Image: David Monniaux