Under The Sun

No posts for a while; time for a family holiday. This holiday marks a few firsts for us: it’s the first time we have arranged our own accomodation, flights and transport rather than taking a packaged holiday, the holiday was entirely arraged via the internet- accomodation, flights, airport car parking, insurance and car hire, and it’s our first European holiday since the Euro was introduced. A few years ago we travelled to Yugoslavia (as it then was) by coach, and needed to take Belgian Francs, French Francs, German Marks, Austrian Schillings, Italian Lire and Yugoslavian Dinar!

Will the World Scream?

Scienctists at the California Institute of Technology plan to send a probe to the centre of the earth using an artificial “reverse volcano”

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the molten metal would crack open the Earth’s crust, kick-started by a nuclear explosion or artifical earthquake, and allow the capsule of instruments to be carried down 3,000km (1,860 miles) to the edge of the Earth’s superheated core. The journey would take about a week. It would be like plunging a huge knife of molten metal into the surface of the globe.

Reminds me of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story, When the World Screamed …

Neandertals Not among Our Ancestors, Study Suggests. This may not apply to the BNP councillors in Burnley.

Whites Only

I thought racial segregation ended in the USA in the 1960s, but apparently it’s still alive and well in Georgia. Such an event would almost certainly be illegal in Britain, under the Race Relations Act. Not that 27 years of race relations legislation has eliminated racism in Britain either: the neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP) has recently increased it’s tally of local council seats to 15. There are 22,000 councillors in the whole country, so it’s hardly a tidal wave, but that’s still 15 too many.

From the Now Show, a satirical BBC Radio 4 programme, How To Recognise A Racist:

• If someone opens a conversation with “I’m not a racist but…”: he’s a racist.
• If someone opens a conversation with “I’ve got nothing against black people as individuals…”: he’s a racist.
• If someone opens a conversation with “Here’s a snippet of information I got from a really alarming article in the Daily Mail…”: he’s probably a racist.

The 3rd item was a joke. Probably.

Virgin birth for “ethical” stem cells

Researchers are on the brink of obtaining human stem cells using parthenogenesis:

In parthenogenesis, an unfertilised egg keeps two sets of chromosomes and begins developing as if it had been fertilised. Some insects and reptiles can reproduce this way but even though an electric or chemical stimulus can induce parthenogenesis in mammals, the resulting embryos die after a few days. And that, according to its proponents, is the beauty of the technique as far as stem cells are concerned: it produces embryos that could never become human beings. So destroying these embryos to obtain stem cells would avoid the ethical concerns that have led to restrictions or bans on embryonic stem cell research in many countries.

Personally I can’t say whether this would really be ethical or not — I am out of my depth both scientifically and theologically.

Not So Almost Human

The often quoted statistic that we share 98.5% of our genes with chimpanzees has been called into question by a new study. The researchers have not generated a new figure, as they point out that it depends on how you compare the genomes.

Because of the chimp’s genetic similarity to humans, the small amount of DNA that differs between the two species promises to reveal important secrets about what makes humans human.

Of course, you can’t really assess the similarity of two organisms purely by a percentage genetic difference, as the effects of individual genes is highly complex and non-linear. And you can’t define what it is that makes us human purely in terms of genetics.

Googleliving

Google is changing social habits, as users look to the search engine for information about the Dixie Chicks, SARS, job applicants and prospective dates.

Engineered to run and not grow weary

A 2-part Guardian article paints a nightmare picture of the consequences of widespread manipulation of human genes. The author argues that a combination of zealous parents, big-money corporations and faith in technological “progress” makes this almost inevitable, unless we make political choices now about acceptable boundaries.

Almost without our noticing, scientists have reached a point where they can not only clone human beings, they can fine-tune genes in embryos to produce a super race. If we let it happen, argues Bill McKibben, the consequences will be terrifying: the end of meaning, the end of what makes us human.

It’s possible to imagine a politics emerging that takes technology seriously. A politics that over time generates the net of regulations, and hence of taboos, that keeps us more or less human. We’ll never win a permanent victory over these technologies - just as the strongest treaty won’t make physicists forget how to build nukes, so germline engineering will always be out there, tempting us. A new part of what it means to be human is to live with these possibilities, and to guide, direct and, when necessary, foreclose them.