Whenever people don't understand something, they seem to attribute magic powers to it. In a teaser for a recent television news broadcast, I heard the phrase "we can find out whether Saddam is dead or alive using DNA". I envision a scenario of military personnel breaking into an underground bunker and discovering a hair on the ground. They bring it back to the lab and stick it in some big expensive machine, and a dot matrix printer prints out "Identity: Saddam Hussein. Dead."

I'm no cellular biologist, but I've watched enough CSI to know that you cannot determine the identity of a DNA sample without having an existing known sample to compare it to. And I don't recall their being a magical tag in the DNA structure that says whether the source organism is dead or alive. So unless we have a known sample of Saddam's DNA lying around and the source of this DNA is, say, Saddam's entire brain, there is no way we can determine whether he is dead or alive "using DNA".

Using this same logic, in an ad for one of those technical commuter colleges a "success story" (read: actor) explained that he went to said school because he wanted "a career in computers". Well that narrows it down. Does that mean using a computer to do some other job? Programming computers? Building computers? Testing computer software? Doing tech. support for a computer company? Making movies using computers? Apparently this college will prepare you for all of these things in only 2 years, that is if you don't decide to take Vatterott up on their offer of a degree in electricity.