genomes as commodities

"Nature" has been publishing comments from scientists regarding their "question of the year". what would you do if the price of sequencing fell to $1000? this will, more than likely, occur in the near future.
this reminds me of an old presidential debate, where ross.perot asked which you would rather manufacture -- 'computer chips or potato chips'...

the answer, of course, is ... it depends. both computer chips and potato chips have become commodities of a sort. neither is particularly profitable (that is, each has a low per-unit profit and you need to sell lots to make lots of profit). though, at least some folks are making money by selling $10/lb potato chips!

so;
what would i do?

nothing.
in a few years, the kilo-buck sequence (sorry, dr.o'brien) will only be a buck.
in a few more years our computers will be able to process the huge amount of data we are discussing. by that time, after all our genomes have been sequenced and terrabases of sequence extracted, we will finally realize what we knew way back when.

that Genotype does not exist independently of Environment and that Phenotype is an emergent property of a system -- not a sequence.

Manager resources

Webwise, there are many resources to find (legitimate) management (re)sources. e.g., Free Management Library .

However, the sine qua non of the managerial lifestyle, is the management text! These books go through surges and resurgences .. usually based on their appearance in assorted M.B.A. programs!

A few of my favorites are (not in order):

• The One-Minute Manager (by Ken Blanchard)
• The Art of War (by Sun Tzu)
• The Book of Five Rings (by Miyamoto Musashi)
• Tao of Jeet Kune Do (by Bruce Lee; yes that Bruce Lee!)

... as you can see, I've been highly influenced by eastern philosophies. These are the books I return to time after time. Having said that, I am currently enjoying The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton. The sub-title says it all: "Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn't".

How about you?? What are your top 5??

[cross-posted at Poultry Management]

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