Let there be -- bacteria

Said the J. Craig Venter Institute research team - and there was life.

While the human race, or at least Homo Americanus is preoccupied with destroying itself with it's pet mythologies and peremptory political philosophies and general stupidity, a few of us have been at work actually creating something that constitutes a giant leap for mankind. It's always a very few, isn't it?

A team of American scientists have succeeded in animating a cell with a synthetic genome made out of raw chemicals. The implications of this huge accomplishment are beyond anyone's ability to foresee and I'm not talking only about the ability to design or reproduce life from scratch or even to bring extinct species back from extinction: I'm talking about dispelling another myth, explaining another mystery without relying on further myths and mysteries ad infinitum.

Remember the scene from Blade Runner where the genetic engineer looks at a snake scale to find an identification number encoded in the artificial snake? Perhaps the team who put together a synthetic "replicant" bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides remembered when they encoded the names of the 46 scientists in the project along with the project's e-mail address into its genome.

Beyond being another blow to the "I don't understand how it works so God must have done it" fallacy, the creation of living, reproducing things from bottles of Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine will require us to re-examine the nature of life itself and just when it "begins."

I wonder if looking back at today's newspapers 200 years from now we won't wonder why it didn't make the headlines, but perhaps the reason is the same reason we're in so much trouble right now: 300 million self-absorbed, short sighted, ignorant life forms trapped in solipsistic bubbles ( or tea bags) unable to see much beyond the membrane.

Some like it hot

Others not.

So have the figures that show a tight linkage between human lifestyles and changes in climate and atmosphere been tuned up for purposes of "clarity?" sure looks like it. Is this going to legitimize other hypotheses? Could be -- and if one cares about science, should be. It's certainly not the first time that academic politics went to war with science and if the reality turns out to differ from the current consensus in one way or another, I certainly won't be surprised. Science is supposed to follow the data while opinion usually follows authority which follows the money.

Don't be downhearted, unplugging your cell phone charger or even driving a Prius wasn't going to change anything anyway, much less "save the planet" and I suspect you're only "going green" because it's a new way to buy into hipness.

While I do believe that science is the best possible route to truth, I don't automatically believe in the intrinsic honesty of those who practice it. If global warming does not have human activity as the predominant factor, that doesn't mean the people who lobby for the oil companies are honest and face it, they're spending huge amounts to influence scientific opinion as well as public opinion to support doing absolutely nothing that might cost them anything. Perhaps the Industrial Revolution / global warming link is true and perhaps the decrease in solar activity since the late 1950's has masked or counteracted it. The Maunder minimum does correlate strongly to a long period of solar quiesence after all. There's evidence for several schools of thought, but I just don't know and so I'm not going to be like the trolls, many of whom have jumped on a competing bandwagon hoping to ride it to where the Wizard will give them a brain and resort to mockery -- nor am I going to be a counter-troll and fling dung on anyone with other data that might be ignored at present. After all, this "climategate" thing may prove to mean nothing in the long run.

I am however, going to mention that even if we have caused atmospheric CO2 to rise and average temperatures to follow, particularly at the high latitudes, the Earth's climate is too complex and dynamic a system not to call into question simplistic long term predictions. What if the obvious warming at the polls does precipitate a sudden and catastrophic drop in temperatures as some have been arguing rather than the boiling hell of the planet Venus as others like to predict? Evidence grows that this is what happened with the Younger Dryas freeze some 12,800 years ago. Global warming could lead to global cooling and no fooling. This planet has been in a relatively long period of climate stability and change is always coming -- don't count on any change making you happy.

Odds are that I won't live long enough to see any of the hypothetical scenarios play out and I'm certainly not going to sell my coastal home or put it up on stilts. Who knows but that my Great Grandchildren won't desperately be dogsledding down here to Florida 50 years from now anyway and some future Palin won't be crossing the frozen Rio Grande heading for refuge in Mexico.

Does any possibility make alternative energy a bad idea? I don't think so. We are going to run out of things to burn eventually and the little bit of oil we might get out of the Gulf or in any Alaskan wildlife reserve won't matter one way or another - indeed arctic oil may be covered under miles of ice if that scenario proves real. We're always going to need more energy if we're to remain a civilized species -- or become a civilized species, that is.

The "Disease" of Aging

I found this post on Digg today. It describes the enormous technological and medical progress being made in the field of aging. The article quotes a Cambridge geneticist, Aubrey de Grey, who says people who are alive today will be able to live to up to 1,000 years of age. Let’s just let that sink in a minute. One thousand…years of age. This man believes that, in the future, there will be 1,000 year old people. A millennium is the length of time this man says people will be able to live for.

While the article notes that Grey’s vision may be a little over the top, there is “a growing number of scientists, doctors, geneticists and nanotech experts” who believe that aging can be significantly slowed or even all-together halted.

Robert Freitas, a nanotech expert at a Palo Alto non-profit, was also quoted as saying, “…in the near future, say the next two to four decades, the disease of ageing [sic] will be cured [emphasis mine].”

A couple of points on this: first, while advancements in genetics and other technology and medicine will undoubtedly lead to longer life-expectancies, I can’t help but think that scientists have a tendency to get ahead of themselves. Human beings are immensely complex, and the likelihood of anti-aging advancements related to each and every aspect of our being progressing such that people are able to live limitlessly – without other, perhaps more substantial, health problems occurring as a result of that immortality – seems slim.

Second, and more importantly, why in the name of all that is holy would we want this? There is a frustrating, even unnerving, belief in our culture that aging is bad. Botox abounds, elders are disrespected, and young people like myself are constantly told that these are the best years of our lives. Freitas’ reference to aging as a “disease” perfectly encapsulates this notion.

But aging is, of course, part of life. Death is part of life. We must be careful that we do not become consumed by our obsession with youth.

This is also not to mention the many other problems with the idea of such drastically extended living. Having people live that long would be an impossible-to-sustain drain on our resources, including space (The Earth is only so big.).

And I for one don’t want to live to be 1,000. Life should be exciting, it should be engaging. If we live long enough, we will very quickly become bored. How many fewer risks would we take if we knew we had centuries to make up for lost time? This all amounts to a sad and, quite frankly, pathetic future.

To the article’s credit, it does recognize some of these latter points (The author quotes one bioethicist as saying, “There is no known social good coming from the conquest of death.”). And the science behind these advancements – and I hesitate to call them “advancements” – is impressive, even thrilling.

But a world desperate for panaceas and ever-lasting youth should be careful what it wishes for.

Penny for your thoughts

You arrive in the Airport terminal a bit frazzled by the traffic jams, congestion in the parking lot, the escalators; you keep looking at your watch because it's getting close to boarding time and you have that long security line ahead where you have to take off your belt and shoes and have your toiletries examined. You've begun to sweat, your heart is pounding. Quickly you look at the Departures screen to see if maybe you've lucked out and your flight is ten minutes late: WHAT? did I just see that? did the screen say "I'm going to blow up the plane" for a microsecond? Before you can finish asking yourself whether you've broken under the stress of modern air travel, two men in black suits and sunglasses grab your arms and lead you away into a little room. . . .

No, I'm not dabbling in Sci-Fi here. It's entirely possible that it could happen to you if some of the biometric devices being tested to read your thoughts and intentions are adopted. It's not enough to know whether you're carrying a dangerous nail clipper or an ounce too much of Johnson's baby shampoo any more. They want to know your intentions and they think they can do it.

"Several Israeli-based technology companies are developing detection systems that pick up signs of emotional strain, a psychological red flag that a passenger may intend to commit an act of terror" says CNN.

"One firm, WeCU (pronounced "We See You") Technologies, employs a combination of infra-red technology, remote sensors and imagers, and flashing of subliminal images, such as a photo of Osama bin Laden. Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration, signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack."

If the machine can tell the difference between the fear of losing your job if you're late for a meeting, fear of mind reading machines themselves; fear about any number of things including airplanes, I would be amazed, even though we do live in an age of amazing technology. Will the Mercedes dealer install these things to determine if you're really able to buy or are just kicking tires?

Technology gets smaller and cheaper at a predictable rate. I'm absolutely positive that within a few years it will be available for under $100 and be as small as a wristwatch or hearing aid or at least small enough to fit in your wife's purse. So don't rely on those Ray-Bans to keep her unaware of just how fascinating that mini-skirt in front of you is. She'll know.