"Why is this a cautionary tale?"

Because GMO means evil, and GMO with humans is so evil that it might as well be Republican.

The objective described in the paper is well clear of ethics problems, because it's correction of a genetic abnormality, thalassemia.The first step, of course, is to learn to do this reliably. Then we'll be getting into enhancements. Tetrachromat vision? Enhanced memory? An immune system that can nuke anything?

when we get to the point of making changes in the human germline that are not just bug fixes in our firmware, we need to develop an ethical standard. And no, beiong afraid to explore the potential of the tech is not an ethical standard. How about: thou shalt not restrict the choices available to your offspring? For example, you could go for better memory, but not for lower intelligence.

Parent is dead right. I can remember (Fifties and Sixties) when elaborate stories were spun by science popularizers about the supposed rarity of planets, just like the stories you see now "explaining" the lack of SETI finds as proof that some special barrier exists to the evolution of intelligence. In fact, the prevailing hypothesis of planetary formation was another star happening to pass sufficiently close to the Sun to draw out a filament of gas, which then condensed into our planets. Naturally, the odds against stars passing so close were already known to be ridiculously high. Hence, our solar system was thought to be almost unique in the galaxy.

That's exactly why we use a design that doesn't require a large-water heat sink. All reactors use water as a coolant, but what you're talking about is the medium to which the heat is dumped.

This is why the Greens' whole approach is to make both electricity and water scarce and expensive, to punish man for the sin of having civilized prosperity. If we could unleash technology on the problem with no restraints, as we have in the computer/electronics field, we could make both those resources cheap and plentiful. But under current conditions Greens would love to set urban society against the agricultural world by maintaining artificial scarcity until southern and central California become deserts once more, as they were in the state of nature.

Why is putting research papers on a website such a big expense that a paywall is required? Hosting scientific papers is an area in which the open source cultists could become public heroes.

"How about build a desalination plant with use of nuclear power in California?"

California won't generate any sort of power without thirty years of court fighting. We will gladly add more reactors in Arizona for the needed energy.

If the people in Liberalwood want to do something constructive, they wold stop opposing desalination and let that $30 billion be spent getting California its own water supply. Putting the best minds in Silicon Valley to work on the problem would benefit all the other parts of the world where drought is a problem.

"What's wrong with anesthesia?"

That was supposed to be the whole point of lethal injection using propofol, the most common surgical anesthetic. Everybody knows what propofol feels like (I had three procedures under it in 2014 alone), so execution with an overdose of it satisfies the Eighth Amendment test.

But apparently our whole supply of it is made by one company in Germany, which hasdthreatened to withhold the entire US supply if it keeps being used for executions. This is what prompted the use of a variety of different anesthetic mixtures, some of them little tested for sensory effect (Eighth Amendment fitness) and today's host of lawsuits.

Should we invoke the TRIPS agreement to bust patent and make our own propofol? Nitrogen satisfies the same "everybody knows wha it does" test without being in any way proprietary or endangering lucrative trade with the EU.

Nothing is as sharp as obsidian. It's still used in some surgery.

If low-gravity icy moons are outgassing into orbit, they must be sharing chemistry, perhaps including the precursors of life. Since Saturn's moons have widely differing widely differing geology and chemistry, that's a lot of mixing going on into a lot of potential niches.

Now consider that the same thing is probably happening at Jupiter.

A sufficiently detailed human physiology mode could mean a big drop in the time and expense of searching for and qualifying new medications.

It's the stupid, scumsucking usage cap.

For a long time the reason why schools of boffin sometimes beached themselves in places like the Thames estuary was unknown, but we now think the cause is a vain search for funding.

Simpler tahn closing arms would be closable netting in the upper half of the funnel. As has been pointed out above, a booster is strong in only one axis, so you don't want any points of concentrated stress in any other direction.

I remember road salting also. And every car more than about two years old has huge suppurating rust holes in it.