DailyDirt: NYC Subways Filled With Unknown Species

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

No one would want to lick a handrail on the New York City subway because it's just gross -- and who knows what kind of germs and stuff are living in the urban grime? Well, now we have a better idea. Thousands of samples have been analysed, and the results are published. A city-wide metagenomic profile of NYC could tell us demographic data and confirm census polls, and a map of the data is available online. Follow a few of the links below for a bit more info. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: anthrax, bacteria, biology, bubonic plague, cockroaches, dna, ecosystem, humans, microbes, nyc subway, species


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  • identicon
    Guardian, 12 Feb 2015 @ 5:02pm

    fringe science ahoy...dna not known

    i know its form walternates universe

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Gracey (profile), 13 Feb 2015 @ 5:06am

    I foresee a run on white cotton gloves after this.

    Maybe all those mom's from the 50s and 60s got it right.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Rosco P Coltrane (profile), 13 Feb 2015 @ 7:00am

    Old News

    This is old news. The Onion broke a similar story back in June:

    http://www.theonion.com/articles/anthropologists-classify-43-new-species-of-weirdo,36332/

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 Feb 2015 @ 7:16am

    "NYC Subways Filled With Unknown Species"

    One percenter wallstreet types can confirm.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 15 Feb 2015 @ 3:40am

    Of corse your going to hate this but this is important Big Data to collect in order to begin to estabish a baseline we can then use to detect for and surveil against biological attacks. It would be good for everyone at techdirt , and your readers, to read an upcoming book 'future crimes', which pretty much gives the rationale, although perhaps not explicitly, for the actual as opposed to paranoid motivations behind Big Surveillance. Pretty much also explains why a Constitutional scholar would nevertheless surprise the nation and himself by being so , er, flexible about things like the 4th Amendment....

    Reality always holds all the cards that matter and determines the outcome of every battle. Best first, therefore, know what it looks like. Only after that can you safely set about the business of calibrating your moral compass, your sense of outrage, etc. etc.

    If too much of what you agitate for turns out to be factually and catastrophically wrong, and the discredited bulk ends up taking the rest of your voice down with it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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