New Scientific Evidence Emerges In Anthrax Case 216
sciencehabit writes "A Science Magazine investigation uses clues from a key document unveiled last week to reconstruct the trail that led the FBI to Bruce Ivins. Among the revelations: Anthrax fingerprinting was not critical to the investigation, as many reports have suggested. Rather, brute-force genetic sequencing, with the help of the J. Craig Venter Institute, helped crack the case. New potential motivations by Ivins are also revealed."
Re:Weak Talking Points? (Score:5, Funny)
What you mean a case is put to rest 7 years later, recent/main suspect is dead and no questions remain.
And something looks fishy? You're just obsessive, these things are never covered up, or evidence is never made to match to current theory.
Doesn't happen.
I think Hans Reiser did it. (Score:2, Funny)
Dr Bruce Ivins was just a patsy. Hans Reiser actually did it.
Re:I like their music. (Score:1, Funny)
Anthrax rocks are bigger than Alan Cox.
Thanks to Scott Ian it hurts when I go peein'...
Re:not comparable (Score:1, Funny)
Did Ivins check out books from the library on terrorism a few days after the anthrax started arriving?
Re:Weak Talking Points? (Score:3, Funny)
Glenn Greenwald [salon.com] reports that the alleged timeline of Ivins' activities on the day the anthrax was mailed seems to rule him out as the one who sent the letter from Princeton. He attended a meeting he couldn't have made it back for in time if he had driven to Princeton and mailed it late enough that the letter was postmarked for the following day.
Um, that's not really a problem. I've seen this very situation on Matlock in an episode where he broke a murderous cosmetic surgeon's alibi.
You see, this doctor claimed he was at a major medical conference, with witnesses to prove it, but in fact it was just his hitherto unknown identical twin. Quite simple, really.
Re:Forgive me if I don't believe it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Weak Talking Points? (Score:2, Funny)
You're just obsessive, these things are never covered up, or evidence is never made to match to current theory.
I'm glad that dude killed himself and they are pinning it on him. You know why? Because I did it. I'll tell you how. See anthracis is easy enough to culture (especially if you are a world expert like me), but getting it to atomize is the tough part. What I did was to add triton x100 as a surfactant and wash the cells a couple of times in a 0.5% solution of triton x100 and pure h2o. You have to pellet the cells between washes and then resuspend. Anthracis is gram positive, so I didn't have to worry too much about lysis, but I didn't spend a lot of time washing. 30 sec spins, 30 sec to pull off the super. You want them clean but for the surfactant (that gram positive peptidoglycan outer membrane is a real bitch). Then you snap freeze them at about 250,000 cfu/ml in 100 ul aliquots in thin-walled pcr tubes. Now here's the part where I pulled it off, and mystified (pun intended) my co-workers (even that poor bastard Ivins), AND showed my evil genious--you fucking lyophilize the aliquots under an ultra vacuum to get rid of the water! Then CAREFU-fucking-LY put the open tube in an envelope and shake. Then, again CAREFU-fucking-LY, remove the tube. Here's another hint I learned the hard way: don't lick the envelopes, you'll be sorry.
And what have we learned here? ;) (Score:4, Funny)
Absurd, eh? And what have we learned here? Never do overtime.
If you'd rather stare into a flask than see your wife again, do yourself a favour and go get wasted at the pub. Sure, it ruins your liver, but so does Tylenol. Or get a mistress. Get a divorce. But for the love of Bast, don't be the last guy at the office.
Sure, you may think you're an IT dude, no way someone would link anthrax to your servers. Right? We'll see who laughs last when some idiot script kiddie defaces a DOD web server, and people go "OMG, it was in the same county as a computer which controls the nukes! The hacker mastermind must have planned to reprogram the computer to load itself into a truck, drive there and plug itself into the secure network! It's teh Al Qaeda! Terrorism! Jihad! Concerted attack on our freedoms! It's those dastardly... umm... hey, Jack, which country has oil and we didn't bomb already? Right, it was those dastardly Canadians and their false prophet!"
So leave Slashdot, close that SSH window, turn off the computer (is the uptime willy-waving worth someone inferring that you must have been there if the computer was up and doing stuff on the servers?), tell a bunch of co-workers "good bye" and walk out that door. Yes, you can do it. For the love of all that's good and holy, walk out that door.
And if your boss doesn't like it, tell him you're doing your patriotic duty. When that arab genius mastermind hacks a computer to load itself into a truck and drive to a nuke base, the CIA can chase him instead of wasting valuable time and resources on chasing you. It would be unpatriotic to interfere with their investigation by setting yourself up as a decoy. The future of democracy and freedom may depend on it. If you don't do it, the terrorists win!