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Too often, great scientific discoveries have unintended consequences. When, in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick put the finishing touches to their model of the DNA double helix, what do you imagine they thought? Perhaps they considered what a fantastic ride an enormous version of it would make at some projected Scienceworld theme park. The standard story is that they strolled into a pub in Cambridge and declared: "We have discovered the secret of life." Maybe they meant they'd discovered the secret of life imprisonment.
DNA fingerprinting is such an astonishing breakthrough in what people will insist on calling "the fight against crime" that until this week the Home Office had wanted to keep on file the DNA profiles of 850,000 people who had not been convicted of anything - y'know, just in case.
Civil liberties groups, such as the confusingly-named Liberty (purveyors of strongly worded broadsides against invasions of privacy, own-print ties and overpriced bathrobes), have been celebrating a major victory.
I was always happy to meet the Government halfway on this, reasoning that of the three billion letters in my personal DNA sequence I would be prepared to give them the first four and they could guess the rest. Nonetheless, I'm relieved that a catastrophe unintended by Watson and Crick has been averted.
Say that eventually everyone's records ended up on file. It would be dead easy for the police to solve all crimes, wouldn't it? The major legwork involved in solving a whodunnit would become typing in all the letters of the DNA sample found at the scene.
Obviously that sounds like a good thing but if all crimes can be solved without the need for good cop/bad cop interview routines or getting blasted on whisky while listening to opera, that's going to leave ITV with a gaping two-hour gap of a Sunday night. There's not much meat left for a cop show:
PC: "Sir, there's been a murder."
Frost: "Right! Let's ..."
PC: "It was done by Mr GF Williamson of 32 Otterwall Road."
And roll credits.
On the plus side, it's less potentially confusing than, say, Morse (in my book any detective show that lasts long enough to open a second bottle is potentially confusing) but it does lack narrative drive.
So here's the fear: I would inevitably buy yet more DVD box-sets to fill the gap. Speaking as someone who drinks too much and has one-click ordering on Amazon, I've pretty much reached my limit already. Any more is going to end in large gentlemen in leather jackets and ties visiting my house uninvited to relieve me of furniture and/or legs.
And all because of the discovery of DNA. Careful where you tread, Science.
There's gold in that there shop
Harrods has started selling gold bullion. I suppose my first reaction was surprise. For all my finding the place to be a little like an oversized branch of Fancy That! Of London, I had entirely bought into its "we sell anything" boast. Clearly it didn't.
The love, pursuit and basing of whole economies on gold is one of the more embarrassing aspects of humanity, as my old tutor, Professor Austin Herring, discusses in his book Shiny Shiny Look Look - The Art of Impressing Half-wits.
Still, if you are tempted and have the £285,000 to spare, do remember that gold is incredibly heavy, so make sure they double-bag it.
Keep moans in their place
Well, it's happened. I heard my first moan about Christmas getting earlier every year at the weekend. This is becoming ridiculous: moaning about Christmas getting earlier every year is getting earlier every year.
When I was a kid, moaning about Christmas getting earlier used to mean something. It was a special time that we could all share around mid-November. Now it's dominating the period we should be spending kvetching about kids setting fireworks off every night.
Seriously, you walk along Oxford Street and there are already people blethering about the fact that the Christmas lights are up. I don't want to hear that halfway through October. Where are the people bemoaning the Americanised nature of Halloween with its tricking and its treating? Where are the people getting het up about it getting dark too early because we're putting the clocks back so as not to upset Scottish farmers?
This all-consuming focus on complaints about Christmas getting earlier is threatening to wipe out some of our proudest moaning traditions.
* Everything I have heard about the postal strikes up to this point fails to address my main concern, which is: if Postie isn't on his rounds, where am I going to get my free red rubber bands now?
Reader views (1)
er what do you use the red rubber bands for? New power source for your car? or are you making a giant red rubber thing to sit on the fourth plinth in Trafajgar Square
- Dave, London, 21/10/2009 16:53
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