Scot Bastian Ph.D.
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How Do You Face the Prospect of Oblivion? Ask a Rat.  

5/12/2014

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I'm delighted with the performance of my short comedic play "Waiting For Boa" in the Writer's and Actors Reading and Performing (WARP) showcase of plays "WARP Springs a Gnu." which just completed half it's run at the Seattle Center Theater 4. My play which was directed by John Paul Sharp and Jason Dooley, and stars Brendan Mack and Julian Garcia as the rats Elmo and Ben, Joshua Moore as the snake and Beatrix Turner-Rodriguez as the hand and voice. 
   This was based on a true story. Several years ago I visited my cousin and her young son owned a caged boa constrictor. Next to the cage was another cage containing Snakie's prospective dinner--a couple of caged rats. What were the rats thinking? What was Snakie thinking? There are two performances left. If you live anywhere near Seattle, you might want to check out one of the two remaining performances on Saturday May 17th at 8Pm or the final show Sunday May 18th, a matinee at 2PM.  Here is a link to more ticketing info.  
    Below are some pics taken by Carl Nelson of the first performances. 

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Happy Mother's Day: A Song Supporting Why De-Extinction is Misguided

5/11/2014

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About a year ago I blogged about De-extinction, a process to try and resuscitate several extinct animals, by replacing the DNA in oocytes of existing, but closely related species with archival DNA from extinct critters. You can read the blog entry at this link. Basically my misgivings were the following: 

"1)I don't believe that any of these creatures should be released into the wild.  Repopulating North America with semi-pseudo wooly mammoths or frankenfrogs? Bad idea. 2)I really wonder what conclusions can be drawn from the possible results of these experiments? Can we ever draw definitive conclusions about the behavior and biology of these "resurrected genomes?" Even the Dolly experiments, using donor eggs from the same species, resulted in adult animals with serious health problems and I expect that using donor eggs from differing species will result in even greater deviations from normal adults. 
My thinking really hasn't changed a whole lot, but now, in celebration of Mother's Day, I highlight the following video, which spells out disproportionate contribution that our moms make to our genetic makeup, which provides more ammunition to my argument that these frankencritters are likely, at best, to be little more than curiosities about which conclusions will always be suspect. Agree, or disagree, one thing we can all agree on is that moms are awesome. Happy Mothers Day! 
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    Scot Bastian Ph.D. is a scientist and artist who lives in Seattle WA.

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