Brin should do what many in the health-obsessed Valley unilaterally shun: Take up smoking, as nicotine has been shown to have a prophylactic effect on the degeneration of dopamine-producing brain cells in mice.

But by figuring out the single-nucleotide polymorphisms which lead to chiseled features and a high-powered metabolism, Wojcicki might figure out how to make sure her next child with Google cofounder Sergey Brin is healthy, smart and ravishingly beautiful according to media norms. My suggestion? New York's models should be making 23andMe pay them for saliva samples. It's not like Wojcicki, whose startup is already backed by her husband's employer, can't dial for more dollars from Google's new venture investment arm whenever she feels like it.

He is an advisor to 23andMe, a Google-backed genetic-testing startup. Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's cofounder, is married to Google cofounder Sergey Brin. Google has backed Church's Personal Genome Project, an effort to tie the human genome with personal health information, with an unrestricted grant. Church is an entrant in the Archon X Prize for Genomics, a $10 million genetics-research competition. Anne Wojcicki has donated money to the Archon X Prize at a Google-hosted gala. She and husband Brin, along with other Google executives, are also members of the X Prize's Vision Circle, a group of high-powered fundraising supporters. Oh, and just to complete things, 23andMe board member Esther Dyson is one of Church's test subjects.

Nothing really amiss here, but it all seems quite cozy. If Church's team wins the X Prize, Brin and Wojcicki can be quite content that their donations didn't end up too far from home. (Photo by Lloyd Ziff/Wired)

Brin has a personal foundation, funded with some of his Google fortune. One of the largest recipients of his largesse is the Michael J. Fox Foundation, an organization founded by the Canadian actor and dedicated to researching Parkinson's disease, from which Fox suffers.

In May, 23andMe announced that it was signing up Parkinson's patients for its genetic-testing services. The tests would be paid for by a $600,000 grant from the Fox foundation.

Wojcicki described the approach in a Huffington Post op-ed as "Research 2.0." To our ears, this sounds more like a good old-fashioned back-scratching arrangement.

Here are the questions people ought to be asking: Was Brin's donation really a donation, since some of it ended up going into his wife's pockets? And should the Fox grant count as revenues for 23andMe, since the money can be traced back to Brin, the cofounder of Google, an important investor in the startup? If IRS and SEC officials don't start looking into the deals, then they're not doing their jobs.

How can Brin make this right, if he really believes in his company's code of conduct and the "don't be evil" culture he helped foster at Google? Google should immediately sell its shares in 23andMe, at cost. 23andMe should return the Fox grant. And the Michael J. Fox foundation should return Brin's donation.

Brin, whose net worth was recently estimated at $18.5 billion, can easily afford to invest personally in his wife's startup. And there's no conflict in doing so; he'd merely be seen as a supportive, if indulgent, spouse. The problem comes when he starts using other people's money to fund Wojcicki's ventures. Google shareholders shouldn't be funding her experiments; neither should the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Nor should U.S. taxpayers be footing the bill. Especially considering that 23andMe's tests may not even be legal, according to the state of California.

Google's success has persuaded Brin that he doesn't need to listen to other people's advice, or follow their petty little rules; his gut instincts have made him fabulously wealthy, so why should he? He may not have crossed any legal lines in this latest episode of self-dealing — but it shows that he's on a path to do so. Sergey, stop now, before you really embarrass yourself.

Hi guys,

Are you or a graphic designer you know is looking for contract work? 23andMe is looking for contractors. (www.23andme.com)

The basic rundown:

We're looking for a super-talented individual or group that can design stuff that is clean, friendly, and smart. (no arbitrary swooshes!) If you're not working through me, then you'll be dealing with non-designers giving you project descriptions—so it helps if you're comfortable working with a fair amount of independence and can bring your own intellect to the table.

-Create stuff that can scale between print and web nicely.
-Ability to make sweet diagrams a plus (think Wired for level of science + accessible).
-Ability to make flash animations a plus
-Ability to edit video also great
-You will probably need to learn a little about our technology along the way. Poorly researched allusions to double-helices will not cut the proverbial mustard.
-Good communicator. We are busy and can be vague (I had this when I was a contractor) so you need to feel comfortable asking questions to get you the info you need.
-Work will target a wide audience from average Joes to researchers.
-Project by project basis, most likely the work will be in marketing materials and not tied to the actual website. So think items like booklets, logos, icons, posters.
-The items being created are small in scale but in content are very complex. you'll have to get a nuanced message across that is both sophisticated and accessible.
-Potential for full-time hire if interested.

Seeing as how 23andMe gave a free test to California resident Michael Arrington, that some doctors are skeptical of the medical value of such tests, and that the company freely admits that the tests are for novelty purposes only, I'm guessing the consumer complaints over accuracy and cost that prompted the investigation aren't wholly without merit. Twelve other companies, including San Francisco's Navigenics, are also being investigated. (Photo by Sergio Calleja)

The tests can help to pinpoint a person's ethnic heritage, as sent up in the latest episode of The Boondocks.

This suggests an alternate business model for 23andMe. Why doesn't Google run racial-background tests on all their employees? The company might just discover that there are more black Googlers than previously thought.

She sounds like a real keeper, Mikey! By the way, if you find yourself having certain ... thoughts ... reading this post, just give me a call and I'm sure we can work it out. I wouldn't want you doing anything rash. Mmkay?

(Photo by Brian Solis)

a second goal of 23andMe [is] to collect a large database of genetic information and then come back to you over time with invitations to provide specific health data and participate in research.

But while we're at it, Wojcicki's a bit cheap, too: She's married to Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who lent her startup money until Google itself came in as an investor. you'd think she could afford to spare a few more Spit Kit giveaways.

Start

• Superpowers fighting to claim the melting, oil-rich Arctic will want the moon next; we need the rule of law.
• New unsticky "Clean Gum" won't mar sidewalks.
• Satellite photos caught an empty Burma during a communications blackout.
• Faceslam: Facebook snub. Crowd farming: Stadium foot traffic as power plant.
• Forty rocketeers made an X-Wing, but it exploded.
• Chipuya Town is a Japanese mobile MMORPG.
• Matter/antimatter mix powers superlaser.
• Athlete's foot medicine contains no surprises.
• Mr. Know-it-all: Surgical masks do little against Chinese pollution. eBay bidding just for good feedback violates TOS. Shark cartilage doesn't fight cancer.
• Russia's covering Chernobyl with a steel shelter.
• Fire hoses spray mist on ignitable gases.
• Lace running shoes more comfortably: One normal cross, then up to the next eyelet, then cross again.
• Memorize numbers by giving each digit a mnemonic, then think of those mnemonics appearing along a walk around your block.
• Google buys companies that dominate, are first to a space, or could be a threat if Microsoft buys them.
• Self-absorbed geeks = "microcelebrities."
• Preteens are the best competitive texters.
• If The Golden Compass makes bank we'll see two sequels.
• Scotsmen have reinvented ancient Scottish ale.
• Infoporn: Silly Santa math.

Play (highlights)

• Stripper-blogger Diablo Cody wrote the sweet new comedy Juno.
• Comic book Persepolis became a 9-out-of-10 film.
• F4CC motorcycle could go over 200 mph but the tires would melt.

The Angry Mogul

• CD sales fell 10 percent in 2006. The future is digital.
• Universal Music CEO Doug Morris made Yahoo and YouTube pay to run music videos. He made Microsoft pay UMG a dollar per Zune. He's pissed at piracy. But he's letting Amazon sell DRM-free MP3s.
• Why DRM-free? To break Apple's monopoly. iTunes represents 20 percent of all U.S. music sales.
• UMG's digital revenue comes from iTunes and cell companies (ringtones).
• UMG will sell a subscription service (with DRM) called Total Music, urging Microsoft to add it to Zunes.

The Ultrabuilder

• The secret behind future "supertall" buildings is the buttressed core, a Y-shaped floor plan with a strong central support.
• Structural engineer Bill Baker is the go-to man for supertalls.
• Baker designed the butressed core to maximize window access and usable space in skyscrapers like the over-2600-foot Burj Dubai; it makes buildings taller, faster to build, and potentially more profitable.

Ode to Joystick

• Video Games Live directs live orchestra and choir videogame music performances.
• Creator Tommy Tallarico and conductor Jack Wall arrange the score and direct local musicians at symphony halls.
• VGL and competitor Play! are barely profitable, but they bring a new 20s/30s crowd to symphony halls.

Getting a Grip

• Making robots interact with a human environment, even finding and picking up a stapler, is tough.
• Solution: Make them learn. AI, for real this time, honest!
• RoboCub is a humanoid bot being taught to mimic and learn from human motions it sees.

Features
What Went Wrong

• Iraq went wrong because we concentrated on the hardware, not the social landscape.
• Since the '90s, everyone (including Wired) got excited about war in the information age.
• Under Bush, Rumsfeld made an Office of Force Transformation to give the armed forces a $230-billion networked makeover.
• That hasn't helped against our tech-primitive enemies in Iraq.
• Oh, our technology worked great for invasion, but it's rubbish at securing peace. For that, we actually need troops.
• For example, 150 troops are in charge of security for the 50,000-person Iraqi city of Tarmiyah.
• Their leading officer recruits local watchmen to help.
• US forces have sophisticated command centers on a network (CPOF), but the system was designed for "short, decisive battles" against armies, not extended missions against insurgents.
• Many forces can't get online enough to make CPOF useful.
• Meanwhile, insurgents just use the Internet and TV, and they already know the local culture.
• Psyops agent Joe Colabuno wins over informants by knowing the culture, name-dropping sheikhs and debating using the Koran. He makes posters spoofing insurgents to sway public perception.
• General Patraeus still believes in network-centric warfare, but as the man behind the surge, he believes in adequate troops too.
• The co-conceiver of networked warfare says: Combat operations are like football; stability operations are like soccer. The network model needs to adapt.
• The Army is adapting, spending $41 million on "Human Terrain Teams" of "150 social scientists, software geeks, and experts on local culture." They're credited for more local support and less combat in certain areas.
• HTTs will become more integral, but we don't know if they'll be armed or given command authority.

Back to the Futurama

• Five years after Fox canceled it, David Cohen and Matt Groening's Futurama returns on Comedy Central.
• The new shows — four features split into 16 22-minute episodes — are also being released on four DVDs starting November 27.
• Fox shuffled the show during its four seasons, and ratings dropped.
• Added to those four years, reruns and DVD sales earned over $100 million, estimates a writer.
• Creators are David X. Cohen and Matt Groening.
• Groening, Simpsons creator, still draws a weekly comic strip called Life in Hell. He has never seen any Star Trek.
• Cohen is a Trekkie, invented "Worst. Episode. Ever," and loves sci-fi.
• Futurama is about pandering to the elite audience. Cohen checks the web to see fans discover hidden jokes; then he makes the jokes harder.

Your DNA Decoded

• A thousand-dollar test tells you what diseases your genes predispose you to, as well as other factors.
• In the future, we'll use genetic information to plan our lives, and we could live an extra ten years.
• 23andMe, founded by Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, will give people their genetic info and build a database for research. Google invested $3.9 million.
• FedEx 23andMe a ten-minute wad of spit, and view your results online in under a month.
• There's still much to learn about which combinations of genes cause what conditions.
• It cost the Human Genome Project $3 billion to map an entire genome in 2003; it's about $250,000 now.
• Disease isn't solved yet; half of heart disease cases aren't explained by known risk factors.

Chat: Rich Barton, Zillow

• The housing crunch makes Zillow's algorithmic house appraisal more useful.
• Selling houses is no longer binary: homeowners can name a "make me move" price.

The Bone Factory

• Many medical skeletons are illegally shipped overseas. India has long been the biggest exporter.
• The country banned exporting human remains in 1985, but the black market thrives.
• India banned exports after a bone trader with 1500 child skeletons was suspected of kidnapping and killing the children.
• Skeletons are vital for medical schools.
• Example process: Corpses are taken from funeral pyres or graves, anchored in a river where they're eaten to mush and bone, scrubbed, sunbleached, and sanitized.

The Secrets of Silicon Valley

• "Ted," founder of TheFunded.com (where startuppers rate venture capital firms), is Adeo Ressi.
• Ressi, a self-promoter, made millions with 90s dot-coms, then started an online gaming platform Game Trust, which was taken over by investors.
• Ressi started TheFunded in response, getting friends like Weblogs Inc. founder Jason Calacanis to tell stories.
• When firms started invading TheFunded, Ressi banned shills to keep ratings real.
• Angel investments are surpassing VC money; hedge funds offer a low-maintenance alternative. VCs have to emphasize "customer service."

Nick Douglas writes at Valleywag, Too Much Nick, and Look Shiny. He would, in fact, read that magazine if you paid him to.

Some factoids from his chat with host Tim O'Reilly:

• In 2001, when Venter's team first mapped his complete genome, they presumed that our individual DNA codes would be almost entirely identical. Since then they've found humans vary by a couple of percentage points.
• Venter's current top project is to map the DNA of 10,000 more humans. He thinks the price will come down to under $100,000 per person in three years.
• You have more individual bacteria living in your body than you do human cells.
• A round-the-world survey ship found that in the world's oceans, DNA of the local life varies completely every 200 miles, and probably even more locally than that.
• Soldiers in Iraq eventually acquire a completely different set of bacteria in their mouths than they arrived with.
• Human DNA contains spliced-in codes for pathogens that have crept in over the ages.
• Venter worries that startups like DNA Direct and 23andMe will only check small subsections of their clients' DNA — say, to look for heart disease risk — and miss the big picture.
• Venter's green project: Looking for genetically engineered bacteria that will produce electricity from human waste or from host plants — also engineered — that thrive on currently unfarmable land.

(Photo by AP/Matt Houston)

Illumina would then be able to tell 23andMe about hundreds of DNA variations, called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, that each customer has. 23andME would make that information available through a password-protected Web site.

Oh grand. I'll just write it down with all my other passwords.

When Google went public, it set up a two-class system of shares, ensuring that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, not Wall Street, would rule the company. Intended to shield the company from short-term pressures to goose earnings at the expense of long-term growth, this structure has encouraged a tendency to insular thinking that, in turn, has lead to arrogance. Or, to use a fine Greek word, hubris.

Hubris is what leads Schmidt to think he can pad Google's payroll with a girlfriend's consulting fees. Hubris is what leads sales chief Tim Armstrong to think he can run a sideline business, Associated Content, which is designed to profit from Google's advertisers in unseemly ways. Hubris is what leads Brin to loan his wife, Anne Wojcicki, $2.6 million for her biotech startup, 23andMe — and then turn around and have Google repay his loan and more with a $3.9 million investment in her company.

The costs of these behaviors, of course, amount to pocket change compared to Google's immense profits. But the precedents they set, the carelessness they encourage, the hypocrisy they foster, could have implications down the road. When Google shares are going up, investors are unlikely to complain that Google management is running the company like a feudal kingdom. But when things take an inevitable turn for the worse, they'll be under the microscope.

In the meantime, such corruption will leave an indelible mark on the behaviors and attitudes of Google employees. If it's okay for the boss to cheat the company, they'll reason, why can't I? And before you know it, "Don't be evil" will be replaced as a slogan with "Get away with whatever you can."

A recent report by Penn State researchers suggests that narcissism among CEOs makes a company's stock more volatile. May we suggest Eric Schmidt as an excellent subject for a follow-up study?

(Photo by Esther Dyson)