To add onto that (since I was reading up on this), the cell itself splices in the new DNA sequence very rapidly and efficiently, since it's a mechanism the cell uses to avoid cancer.

In the double helix, when one strand of the DNA is broken, the string of DNA is held together by the other strand, it's an easy fix. Both strands broken at the same place means the DNA has come completely apart, has sustained some serious damage. The cell detects that pretty rapidly. The cleaner way is to find the sequence on the other chromosome and use that to repair the broken chromosome. A simpler but more dangerous way is to just grab two broken ends of DNA and stick them together. It's possible the cell will grab the wrong broken strand of DNA though and the result will be cancer.

Either way can be used to insert DNA where you want it.

No. That's nonsense. Crispr needs to get into a cell in order to do anything. These things aren't self-replicating either.

Say a terrorist has a crispr combo that mutates several of your anti-cancer genes. He's got nothing: he'd need to get that into at least one of your cells in order to have any chance of giving you cancer. If he has a means to introduce it into one of your cells... he doesn't need crispr. He could just use a poison or some normal carcinogen.

Terrorists kill with pipe bombs and planes. Watching them try to do advanced biotech would in fact be quite hilarious.

I'm not so sure. They handled the nexus Q thing pretty honorably.

Remember that we ultimately only concerned with safety. We care about paying attention and stopping distance only because those translate into deaths. I'm pointing out that we need to compare them on that level in order to make rational choices.

Look on the bright side: if health insurance companies get between Americans and junk food and/or alchohol, within minutes congressmen will have to barricade their doors from angry citizens pounding it down demanding national medical healthcare.

Insurance companies start dinging us for doughnuts? Cops like doughnuts and have guns and pepper spray. Just sayin.

I don't know, but I do know every human source has a bias, and every non-human source for reviews can be gamed. You're never going to get an absolute truth about how good or bad a doctor, or even a burrito restaurant, is. Which isn't so terrible since even the best doctor in the world could make a mistake that kills you, and even the dumbest doctors can save your life.

One step forward and two steps back? I can't think of a google service that was worse than the competition. Google + is about the closest thing, and that's only because no one actually switched from facebook.

It is annoying when they stop offering services, but do you actually lose anything when they do that? Take google reader: I paid nothing for it. When it was being shut down, google made the transition simple.

You bring up android and chromebooks. That's one giant step forward in my book (android) and you agree it's better than iOS. It sounds like chromebooks are better than the netbooks they replaced. So... isn't that at least a small step forward?

I've heard this accusation before, but I'm not seeing much evidence of a trend.

Goggling "pay DLC cheat codes" brings up a few examples that I then looked into with gamefaqs. Dead rising 2 has some cheats you can pay for, but there were no cheats in dead rising one. Saints row 3 appears to have other cheats for free that are roughly the same thing. Sleeping dogs cheat DLCs appear to simply be shortcuts, like buying in-game money.

It seems to me like more games are simply cutting out cheats altogether, for free or paid. I suspect it's more about wanting to make sure cheats don't ruin the mandatory online multiplayer portion that all games seem to have to have, or ruin the achievement/trophy systems. GTA had always been good for cheats, but GTA V, the cheats are severely limited. Invincibility only for 5 minutes, and cheats can't be used in missions. It's annoying: replaying games with cheat codes gives more replay value: several months after beating a game fairly, I might want to play it again, but don't want to spend as much time getting the hang of it again.

Remember that we sacrifice safety for convenience every time we get into a vehicle. I'd like to see data comparing speeds to using a cell phone: if allowing drivers to use phones is as dangerous as increasing the speed limit by 30 mph, that's one thing. If using a cell phone only translates to the same risk as raising the speed limit by 5 mph, then I say allow it.

A two million dollar home is a hell of a thing to gamble in an effort to win a small bit of public land. Yes, I think the homeowner didn't know.

Yes, for instance Obama and Congress working together to pass an amendment that "No, it's cool, software patents stand." Bipartisanship! Wooo!

You dislike a popular game? Such taste! Wow! Very knowledgeable! Impressed!

Friends don't let friends buy ubisoft games at release for more than $20. I raise this point because I don't think an outright consumer-organized boycott is likely to be effective. Telling someone to "never buy that game you are interested in because of ethics" is a hard sell. Saying "Don't buy that game for a month or so because they're assholes, and besides it will drop dramatically in price while you're playing other games anyway" seems much more convincing to more people. And publishers would count that as a loss anyway.

When big groups of MBAs get together, they often decide that preventing someone else from getting money is the next best thing to getting money themselves.

Some men just want to watch "the competition" and consumers burn.

That's a bit disingenuous: the mirror argument for that would be "what's the positive side of loss of biodiversity and creating herbicide resistant pest species (with GMO)?"

Conservatives who argue about climate change argue that fighting climate change would be problematic, not that climate change itself would be good. Likewise, liberals who are opposed to GMO aren't opposed to GMO itself or ending world hunger and diseases related to vitamin A, they're opposed to the negative potential effects of GMO.