Tuesday, January 20th, 2015
James Gallagher, Health Editor - BBC News (U.K.)
Stephan: In 2006, after following genetic engineering for some years I realized where this trend was headed and that year I wrote a paper,
Homo Superiorus (My schoolboy Latin was not quite up to the task it should be Homo Superior). In any case at the time readers wrote to tell me I was alarmist in thinking that we were at the opening of a trend to create a new sub-species of human. My concern was that over a few generations the rich would have access to these technologies, and a permanent uber class of Homo Superiors would emerge. If you consider the wealth inequality that is also reported in today's edition you can see exactly how this is going to happen, and I have no doubt that it will.
Credit: BBC
Rapid progress in genetics is making “designer babies” more likely and society needs to be prepared, leading scientists have told the BBC.
Dr Tony Perry, a pioneer in cloning, has announced precise DNA editing at the moment of conception in mice.
He said huge advances in the past two years meant “designer babies” were no longer HG Wells territory.
Other leading scientists and bioethicists argue it is time for a serious public debate on the issue.
Designer babies – genetically modified for beauty, intelligence or to be free of disease – have long been a topic of science fiction.
Dr Perry, who was part of the teams to clone the first mice and pigs, said the prospect was still fiction, but science was rapidly catching up to make elements of it possible.
In the journal Scientific Reports, he details precisely editing the genome of mice at the point DNA from the sperm and egg come together.
Dr Perry, who is based at the University of Bath, told the BBC: “We used a pair of molecular scissors […]
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Tuesday, January 20th, 2015
Maddie Oatman, Research Editor - Mother Jones
Stephan: Nobody in government, ours or anyone else's, seems to be willing to talk about it but the truth is humans have destroyed the ecosystem of the world ocean, and in short order wild-caught seafood is going to become a luxury only the rich will be able to afford. The single sustainable fishery in the world is the Salmon fishery of Alaska and Canada. Yet seafood is a significant and growing part of the human diet. The answer has to be fish farms. The question is whether it will be the usual chemical industrial model, or whether we will finally learn to work with the systems of nature. Here is one approach.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations “State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” 2014 report
When I meet Kenny Belov mid-morning at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, the boats that would normally be out at sea chasing salmon sit tethered to their docks. The steady breeze coursing through the bay belies choppier conditions farther out—so rough that the local fishermen threw in the towel for the fifth morning in a row. Belov scans the horizon as he explains this, feet away from the ware
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Monday, January 19th, 2015
Robert O'Harrow Jr., Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich, -
Stephan: This is good news. I have held on to this story for a few days waiting to see what kind of push back it stimulated. Surprisingly, there have been very few credible objections. One of the major corrupting influences rotting the integrity of law enforcement has been the civil forfeiture law -- see SR archives for how grotesque this situation had become. Now, at least at the federal level this has been curtailed. However, this welcome change does not address state and local forfeiture regulations, which can be very onerous, particularly in the Red value states. Note that Holder promises there is more to come.
Attorney General Eric Holder
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.
Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.
Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.
The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. It allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.
“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” […]
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Monday, January 19th, 2015
Ray Corrigan, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, Computing and Technology at the Open University, UK - NewScientist (U.K.)
Stephan: The entire premise for the surveillance state is that it makes people safer. Politicians parrot this endlessly. This essay by a mathematician who actually understands the issues involved makes the case this is just another paranoid lie designed to overcome civil liberty arguments. His logic is irrefutable, and recent history makes his point as well.
NSA computers
In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, the UK government is redoubling its efforts to engage in mass surveillance.
Prime minister David Cameron wants to reintroduce the so-called snoopers’ charter – properly, the Communications Data Bill – which would compel telecoms companies to keep records of all internet, email and cellphone activity. He also wants to ban encrypted communications services.
Cameron seems to believe terrorist attacks can be prevented if only mass surveillance, by the UK’s intelligence-gathering centre GCHQ and the US National Security Agency, reaches the degree of perfection portrayed in his favourite TV dramas, where computers magically pinpoint the bad guys. Computers don’t work this way in real life and neither does mass surveillance.
Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, who murdered 17 people, were known to the French security services and considered a serious threat. France has blanket electronic surveillance. It didn’t avert what happened.
Police, intelligence and security systems are imperfect. They process vast amounts […]
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Monday, January 19th, 2015
Tim Dickinson , - RollingStone
Stephan: Here is some more good news about the transition out of the carbon era. If you own stocks or are invested in a fund take a look and maybe it is time to re-allocate your investments.
Heirs of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, have decided to rid their family fund of fossil-fuel investment.
Credit: Hiroko Masuke/NYTimes/Redux
When the fossil-fuel divestment movement first stirred on college campuses three years ago, you could almost hear Big Oil and Wall Street laughing. Crude prices were flirting with $100 a barrel, and domestic oil production, from Texas to North Dakota, was in the midst of a historic boom. But the quixotic campus campaign suddenly has the smell of smart money.
One of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil – the Rockefellers – announced last September that they would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of “risky” oil investments. And that risk has been underscored by the sudden collapse of the oil market. After cresting at more than $107 in mid-June, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate dipped below $50 a barrel in […]
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