Hungarian culture has a legendary, a genius, a heroic poet, a true Hungarian cultural treasure. His name is Sándor Petőfi. He is basic in Hungary, like toddlers learn his poems in nursery schools. He did not become world famous, not because of his legacy, but because of the language he used to write his poems. He used the strange and unique nothing else to compare language, Hungarian. Petőfi was a real life hero also, he died young in battle defending freedom in 1848.
Petőfi wrote a satiric poem about Sir Pál Pató, after a long lasting wedding party, I am sure they all had a very good time, including another famous novelist Mór Jókai, where they all learned about the type of person, like Sir Pál Pató, who used to live in that area. Sir Pál Pató is a very unproductive person, he has all the means and talent but he says “Well, we can do this later!” There is something in Sir Pál Pató that prevents him from action. Petőfi, the young poet, like James Dean type, could not help to make Sir Pál Pató ridiculous. However, Petőfi partially acquits Sir Pál Pató who can’t help his genes, he was born in Hungary, all Hungarians are like Sir Pál Pató.
I respectfully disagree with Petőfi. He can not generalize this trait of Sir Pál Pató for the whole nation of Hungary. As a matter of fact, personally I have experienced the opposite. I never encountered the Sir Pál Pató type trait. Not in Hungary, not anywhere else. I lived geographically and culturally in multiple places in the world, always surrounded by quality people of extremely diverse ethnic, cultural and national background.
Well, let me admit, my favorite evening past time is to watch political talk shows and political magazine programs. They really entertain me. I love movies both Hollywood and all kind of art films. I love to watch football. But most of all when politicians are on the show, I love them all, they really entertain me. I watch political circus in all different places in the world of extremely diverse ethnic, cultural and national background.
Recently, as all of us, I have been watching the news of US government shot down. I am reading about continuing resolution (CR). I am reading about stop-gap appropriations measures. Something that fills the place of something else that is lacking, a temporary substitute, a makeshift. No solution, just a substitution. Can you see what I see? “Well, we can do this later!” So there are genes for Sir Pál Pató. We can do it later. Ok, it is more like a complex genetic trait, based on multiple genes interaction embedded in environmental factors. We don’t know what the genotype is, but we certainly see the phenotype. It is a politician phenotype. It is very complex but clearly recognizable. So, disagreeing with the famous poet Sándor Petőfi, it is not a Hungarian trait. It is the politician trait. I declare it the CR trait. Independent of ethnic, cultural and national background.
Let’s find the genotype behind the CR phenotype, lets find the CR genes. We can do this genomics bottom-up style. Like there is crowdsourcing, crowdknowledge, there is also crowdfunding. Here, I call for a genetic association study organized and managed by the people. Let’s compare 1000 elected politician DNA to 1000 business leader DNA. The DNA samples should come from diverse ethnic, cultural and national background, from any country on earth. Only criteria is to choose past and present elected politicians versus business leaders. Politicians are good people, they work hard to maintain our global democratic political system all over the world. So don’t bother about Anthony Weiner, he is too busy playing with himself. And we compare all of the politicians to CEO’s and self made entrepreneurs. The later ones have no time to do it later.
I need your help, we can do this together. Let’s make some popular and quality science here. We can use RocketHub an online crowdfunding platform to raise money for this independent, serious science projects. I need young political activists who would call their representatives very nicely to spit into a collection tube, and by the way if they do spit, why not helping us with 99 dollars (or equivalent currency) that would cover one person’s genotyping. Make one more trip to the CEO business office for another spit and for another 99 dollar check. If some of our subjects would spit but would not contribute, no worry, we will come up with the money, lots of scientist did this with the help of RocketHub. Very importantly, I need an academic lab or an industrial setting to carry out the genotyping experiments. What is the benefit: we would associate some genetic variations with the CR phenotype. We will publish the result and I will be on the author list. My role here is to be an independent scientist who’s ultimate goal is to make important scientific discovery and publish it in a prestigious scientific paper. Ultimately science will be served.
Once I pushed this idea into the public domain EpiGeneBook platform, right now, I start working on the actual scientific-businnes plan how to execute this promising gene-trait association study. In the mean time I am waiting for your input, remember we are all together: it is crowdknowledge.
By the way there is no English translation of Sir Pál Pató poem. If anybody comes up with the solution, we will publish it here on EpiGeneBook platform.
Tibor Gyuris
Personal Genomics Blogger
2013. October 11
“Knowledge is always good and certainly always better than ignorance.”–Sergey Brin
“Possideo genes ergo sum”—Anonymous Roman Philosopher
….stay tuned for the development of this provocative independent scientific project….
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