Some reflections

Ok, first things first:

- Lebanon: as many of you already deducted by the photo I posted before and by my recent life events and discoveries (hihihi), I'm going to Beirut for New Year's... The events that have been taking place recently do not help me visualise a perfect holiday over there, at that beautiful place. W., nonetheless, gives me his own experienced opinion that things will stir for a while, but then eventually will get back to normal (whatever normal means there), just like after Mr Hariri was killed last year. For my own peace of mind, I really hope so. Lebanon deserves peace... permanentely.

- 7 New Wonders: I read somewhere that the Coloseum is already on the 21 finalists to be elected as the new great 7... (I voted for it...Yesssss!) - Please refer to my post The New 7 Wonders on October the 19th if you want to know more about this amazing selection.

- Genes: The Independent has as front page the news of a new breakthrough discovery about the genetic differences between humans. To summarise it (for those lazy of you out there!), it seems that our genome (our commonly called 'book of life', which describes our recipe, the way we are) is different one to another. "They have found that each of us is more different genetically than we previously believed. Instead of being 99.9 per cent identical, it may turn out to be more like 99 per cent identical - enough of a difference to explain many variations in human traits. Instead of having just two copies of every gene - one from each parent - we have some genes that are multiplied several times. Furthermore these "multiple copy numbers" differ from one person to another, which could explain human physical and even mental variation".

The practical relevance of these findings is that it can help understand some of the most difficult and incurable diseases. "Scientists are predicting for instance that the knowledge could lead to new diagnostic tests for such diseases as cancer".

I find this very interesting and overdue. We are finally reaching through the most elaborate and complex sides of ourselves and hopefully this will keep going at a fast pace. There are too many people dying of diseases... If we can reach the Moon and Mars, why can't we reach our own depths?