Saturday links

A couple of links that were worth passing along:

• Risk of Autism doubled with Single Gene Mutation: "This discovery has far-reaching implications because this gene, a variant form of a gene called MET, is not just specifically a brain gene but rather a gene which has its effect on multiple systems in the body such as immune function and gut repair." (H/T to SDA)
• Perry de Havilland goes Dancing with Sister Morphine: "I felt surprisingly well considering I have been under a general anaesthetic and had quite a few squishy bits from inside lopped off me. In fact I felt amazingly well.
  
  "The journey back home was interesting. The colours were so very bright and someone seems to have turned up the contrast. Sometimes when I looked closely as the things written on the back of people's tee-shirts whilst walking down King's Road, the words seemed to suddenly zoom away from me towards some vanishing point."
• Radley Balko points out the WTO-violating aspect of the Internet gambling ban: "The WTO allows a country to ban some goods and services within its borders (Muslim countries with alcohol, for example), but you can't ban a good or service from another country while allowing it to be sold from domestic providers. That's sort of the whole point of "free trade." The gambling ban does exactly that.
  
  "This has already been hashed out before. The tiny country of Antigua filed a WTO complaint against the U.S. last year, well before this latest law was passed. Antigua won its complaint in March. The Bush administration — free trade champion through and through — has chosen to simply ignore the ruling."
• Jane Galt indulges in a little (too much) "Full Disclosure: Andrew Heller is a vicious human being whose superficial charm fools only those who have never met him before, or heard about him from someone who has. After one junior journalist wrote that his work was 'Interesting, but a little too shrill for my taste', Mr Heller spent three years ceaselessly campaigning for her destruction. She was found three weeks ago in her car with empty bottles of SoCo and Valium, and a note that just said 'It's just not worth the hassle.' I would rather have all my teeth extracted without anaesthesia than say something that might offend him."