The 5th Mercy Podcast for Liverpool Biennial, 2012 is a work written, performed and edited by the wondrous poet Holly Pester and myself (Daniel Rourke)

Featuring Original Work by: George Major : http://www.georgemajor.com Claire Potter : http://clairelouisepotter.blogspot.co.uk

Featuring Audio Samples From: Bo Didley, I’m a Man The Yardbirds, I’m a man Jacques Dutronc, La Fille Du Père Noël Davie Bowie, The Jean Genie The Winstons, Amen, Brother Danger Mouse, Interlude Die Hard Original Soundtrack (inc. Let it Snow, by Dean Martin) Featuring Textual Samples From: Roger Ebert, Die Hard, July 15, 1988 : http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19880715/REVIEWS/807150301/1023 Scientific American, Shakespeare to Blame for Introduction of European Starlings to U.S. : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=call-of-the-reviled Wired Magazine, Cue the Scream : http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-10/st_scream BBC 1Xtra, The Story of the ‘Amen Break’ with Crissy Criss : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011cjqd New York Times, 1877, American Acclimatization Society : http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50912F73B5B137B93C7A8178AD95F438784F9

I can take it no more. I wanted to dig deeper into the good stuff done by the ENCODE consortium, and have been working my way through some of the papers (not an easy thing, either: I have a very high workload this term), but then I saw this declaration from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

On September 19, the Ninth Circuit is set to hear new arguments in Haskell v. Harris, a case challenging California’s warrantless DNA collection program. Today EFF asked the court to consider ground-breaking new research that confirms for the first time that over 80% of our DNA that was once thought to have no function, actually plays a critical role in controlling how our cells, tissue and organs behave.

I am sympathetic to the cause the EFF is fighting for: they are opposing casual DNA sampling from arrestees as a violation of privacy, and it is. The forensic DNA tests done by police forces, however, do not involve sequencing the DNA, but only look at the arrangement of known variable stretches of repetitive DNA by looking at just the length of fragments cut by site-specific enzymes; they can indicate familial and even to some degree ethnic relationships, but not, as the EFF further claims, “behavioral tendencies and sexual orientation”. Furthermore, the claim that 80% of our genome has critical functional roles is outrageously bad science.

This hurts because I support the legal right to genetic privacy, and the EFF is trying to support it in court with hype and noise; their opposition should be able to easily find swarms of scientists who will demolish that argument, and any scientifically knowledgeable judge should be able to see right through the exaggerations (maybe they’re hoping for an ignorant judge?). That conclusion, that 80% of the genome is critical to function, is simply false, and it’s the notorious dishonest heart of ENCODE’s conclusions.

"Starting with the precedents set by Charles Ives and John Cage, VARIATIONS presents the principal milestones of Sampling Music, looking at examples from 20th century composition, popular art and the mass media, and the way all of these currents converge today." Curated by Jon Leidecker, who records and performs as Wobbly. "Poet Kenneth Goldsmith presents selections from UbuWeb, the learned and varietous online repository concerning concrete & sound poetry, experimental film, outsider art and all things avant-garde" in Avant-Garde All the Time. Goldsmith's the founding editor of UbuWeb and sometime DJ on WFMU as Kenny G. (Previously: CodPaste - a 14-part podcast about the history and practice of sound collage and mashups. )