Back from Philadelphia, and time for more links 2008

Food & Drink
First a couple restaurant recommendations in Philadelpia: James and El Vez. Great food, great service, two totally different styles. Alas, did not make it to Southwark, so it'll have to wait for another trip.

Politics
I enjoyed this useful summation of the U.S. presidential candidates' views on science, particularly evolution: Evolutionary Politics: Why we should care what candidates think about biological evolution by Ronald Bailey. This includes a most entertaining (and pleasing) quote from Senator Mike Gravel.

Science
Here's a nice overview of the kind of information we're getting from National Geographic's Genographic Project, Dr. Spencer Wells in Vanity Fair's Africa issue with an article called Out of Africa. You can also click through from this linked page to a short video on four different people's results in the Genographic Project after having been found by Dr. Wells in Grand Central station.

Sure, the new MacBook Air is nice, but I'd much rather map my entire genetic information and then have a multi-hundred dollar start on a health savings account to use toward preventative care for anything problematic it reveals. Here's an article on that kind of mapping along with a Wired Science video interview with Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki, co-founders of 23 And Me personal genome service. And here's a New York Times article on gene mapping by Amy Harmon, My Genome, Myself: Seeking clues in DNA.

The Arts
The lovely and talented Miss Varla Jean Merman will be performing her show Loves A Foreign Tongue at the soon-to-close Empire Plush Room here in San Francisco January 24-26th and Jan 31st-Feb 2nd.

What a wonderfully diverse day off I'm having! Thanks to friends for links & recommendations.