A few mates and I started a book club and that got picked out of the hat first. My choice was 1984.

surely the idea of a book club is to introduce books that other people are not likely to have read..

telephone book. A classic read by nearly all people, before the intertubes came along. Now forgotten, but still.

I can recomend tons of hard and social scifi, some geeky fantasy and still. Ask yourself this What book could really disturb the mental, hard shell-shocked bastards that sit there. My recomendation,

Irvine Welsh
Matias Faldbakken

or recommend the bible or quran. Nobody asking you again, i promise.

You know, you can use old telephone books as address books. Just strike over each person that you do not know.

Myself, I'm reading the Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. It's about thinking outside the box.

Is that the one about expecting economic meltdowns?
I didnt think people who are not professionals in the field actually read these types of books.

It's about the fact that people usually only consider scenarios that have happened before when making risk calculations or similar, but they aren't actually considering all sorts of events. The title plays on the fact that before Australia was discovered, there was no knowledge of that there exists black swans, and it's not something people could consider, given the fact that all known swans where white.

His point is that we should instead put extra value on outsiders, instead of discarding them.

And who said I'm not a professional in the field? Well, I'm not really professional, but I have a master's degree.

I just started reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Just finished reading(well sort of, I'm in the epilogue) The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks.

Yea, that was weird, what happened with Henrietta Lacks' cells.

Most weird I found the fact that scientists are allowed to take your cells without your explicit permission if it's for a medical procedure. So long as it's not for research, then they would need you to fill in a form first.

If they were to then say, discover some amazing enzyme produced by your cells that cures the common cold, you would never get a single penny. In fact they would most likely never tell you that you were the one who made that discovery possible(but they would know it and secretly take cells from your family to study you more).

Also that Henriettas cancer cells are some of the most evolved cells from homo sapiens at this point (since they procreate so rapidly, they evolve faster) and could be classed as a seperate species. Pretty cool stuff.

I'd heard that they had made some laws about taking people's body parts like that without permission because Henrietta's family got really upset about what happened even happened a long time ago. People back then weren't aware enough of stuff like that for laws to be made to prevent the researchers from doing that. I'm glad her family made a big deal of it. If they didn't, then I'm sure that more people out there would be having the blood etc. taken for their immunities or biological advantages. For example, their are people out there who have immunity to HIV, but their aren't a lot of them and we can't just go up to these people and keep taking their blood or do all kinds of research on them without their permission so we could have that immunity too. These people probably get calls from research institutes and such all the time requesting their permission to do stuff like that.

He-la cells most certainly are hardy cancer cells. They're used all over the world now to culture cell lines while performing research that normally wouldn't survive outside of the body. However, those cancer cells would be problematic in a person, resulting in the possibility of that strain just dieing out because they kill their host too quickly. Killing off the host too quickly like that is not good for their evolution even if the cells themselves are highly evolved in a lab, but the cells are still good for research purposes.

You're referring to the law against taking biopsies without informed consent. That law wasn't a result of Henriettas family complaining(nobody heard their complaints really) but some white guy who sued and was awarded some money too if I remember correctly.

In another legal case a guy had done some routine surgery, removing a spleen or somesuch. Then he discovered they had taken tissue samples from that part, discovered something and made money of it, so he sued. That case went back and forth getting overruled until it came to the supreme court. They ruled that as soon as a body part leaves the body(and is not destined to go in again) then that part can be considered medical waste. Therefore the hospital can use that part however they wish, including taking tissue samples from it. Thus the guy lost the case and presumably had to pay some pretty hefty legal fees(ouch).

The doctor at Johns Hopkins who was in charge of Henrietta said he never saw such an aggressive cancer before or after that. Those cells even survive on dust particles in the air. This was something they tought impossible at the time of their discovery and well into the 70s or 80s until some guy figured out a bunch of cell lines were contaminated with HeLa. Of course most of the people who owned cell lines didn't want to admit it. But eventually they had to. Obviously since all their assumptions were moot this cost the companies fortunes in wasted research. Here have a look it's pretty funny because it's extremely common even today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... cell_lines

It makes you wonder, if cancer cells can spread by air, then could we be inhaling them? When a lot of diseases are on the rise today, it might not be environmental causes like pollution and chemicals but also stuff coming out of the labs that nobody has a clue about..kinda scary.

I don't know about the specific laws for taking cancer cells, but I do know that complaining about things like what happened with Henrietta Lacks did, at least cause scientists to revise their code of ethics, which must be followed for them to publish their research in the scientific community. The story of Henrietta Lacks is taught in university classes specifically for the purpose of making scientists aware of these standards.

Of the 5 in the club, only my flatmate and myself have read it.

This thread get derailed much?

The other day my cousin managed to completely hate on 13 Assassins in the same breath as telling me how good Game of Thrones is. Do I need to investigate these books, because I am more than a little skeptical about them.

I love the game of thrones books, top notch. they get weaker as they go on, but so many characters you care about.

Hard to say they become worst, just less focused maybe.
I read the last one just as diligently as I have the first, if not more.
I remember reading the last book on my Phone, unable and unwilling to assess the exact amount of pages, I was in constant fear of suddenly finding myself at the book's end.

Maybe they're too busy mating to care.

I finished Douglas Preston - The Codex yesterday, was good

hi 5

National Lampoon's Doon and Principia Discordia... nth try always get busy with other shit :(