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I can understand why someone might be wary of them, but weary?
Hmm... Actually, perhaps that could work, if they constantly emit a soporific, ensuring everyone is too tired to bother doing anything 'bad'.
I'm going to guess you didn't actually bother to read the article then:
Yeah you only have to kill the source of the stem cells. So ridiculous!
No! Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are simply (usually) skin cells that have been 'regressed' back to the state of stem cells. There is absolutely no requirement to kill the source creature. It would be slightly unfortunate if this were the case, as they are currently being used in medical research to treat various issues such as age related macular degeneration (age related blindness) or the creation of artificial livers.
The article could have been spun to be about anything else under the sun, from efficiency to nutrition, and all we can do is kow-tow to the PETAveg crowd?
Spin is the bane of honest reporting. But, again, going back to the article:
"...cultured meat may need 35% to 60% less energy, occupy 98% less land, and produce 80% to 95% less greenhouse gases than conventional meat."
Well, what do you know, other potential benefits of the technology were addressed within the article. The fact that the summary chose to accentuate the possibility of creating meat without killing animals is not really representative of the entire article. In fact, if anything it's quite the reverse:
"Cultured meat is now grown in medium with fetal calf serum, a supplement made from blood collected at slaughterhouses; scientists have yet to find an alternative that doesn't involve dead animals."
However, I strongly suspect that the issue here is not one of inability but practicality. It would be quite possible to take blood from live animals, not killing them, and extract the serum this way. I'm just not sure why you'd bother, given the rate that biotechnology is advancing. We will soon have the knowledge and skills required to create the necessary culture 'soup' or medium, all within the laboratory.
I do find it slightly amusing that the presentation is due to be held in an arts centre. But is it really art?
In Finland you cannot give up your moral rights
Copyright is not a moral right. It is not morally right to deny others the 'ability' to copy the material in question for a period of, potentially, a hundred years or more, and certainly much longer than the lifespan of the flesh and blood creator of that material.
It is a legal right, and nothing more.
If anything it is the current laws on copyright which are immoral...
The food you eat is usually made from sterile seeds.
Emphasis mine.
There is no chance of it mutating. I hope there are lawsuits too, but not because what I eat is GM, but because the cattle were pretty much poisoned and the owners should be compensated.
Wouldn't a supposedly sterile plant spontaneously producing viable seeds actually count as a mutation? I recall something like that actually happening some years back, when gmo's were all the rage (erm...being raged about). 'Fraid you might have to use your own Google-fu on that though.
Does this mean the end of gmo's? Nope. Are most of them safe? Probably. Does this mean that the anti-gmo folk were wrong? Not all of them apparently...
You could almost argue that any block, even if you 'can' opt out of it, is an unfair restriction on free trade. As for no-one wanting their daughter involved with porn, maybe it's time people realised what equality really means, and ask the woman in question what she feels about it, as opposed to letting their own moral bias infringe upon others' rights.
Sometimes I do despair...
This is done now. Take page 23 from the final copy with signatures and a modified page 21 from an earlier copy when you submit it to the judge.
Nice to see that your people have worked out how to fully utilise the marvels of headers and footers and version numbering in your important documentation...
Can't wait for Americans to be extradited to Iran or somewhere else for violating their laws
Compare this case with that of the American soldier, a sergeant I believe, who while serving in Afghanistan decided to go on a shooting spree in a village close to his camp. He broke into several civilian dwellings, and killed 16 people, including many children. The Afghanis are understandably furious, and are demanding that this soldier be handed over to them, to be tried and sentenced in an Afghan court. So far the Americans have refused, and it is likely that they will continue to do so. Now, irrespective of what excuses they might come up with (and I'm struggling to think of any that might be termed reasonable), what does this say about America's attitude to other nations, and their rule of law? Again, compare the extradition to America of a citizen of another country, for doing something which was not illegal in the country in which he did it, to the murder of 16 people in a country by a citizen of the US, and not allowing that country to even try the man.
Hypocritical doesn't even begin to say it!
I can really see the US/UK agreeing to any demands to remove all articles about Tiananmen Square, or removal of all criticisms of any or all religions. (/sarcasm)
What is more likely to happen is that the west will veto most if not all proposals originating in the east and the middle east, and Russia and the east will veto most if not all proposals originating in the west (excuse the culturally biased geographic descriptions), and the system will be happily paralysed, resulting in no change to the current status quo. To my mind this is infinitely preferable to a system which can be destroyed, or at least greatly harmed, by unilateral action on the part of any bully-boy nation.
I'm not sure the UN taking over the internet is the right answer, but I am absolutely sure that leaving things the way they are is the wrong one. The article gives one good reason why...
How often do over reaching laws get repealed? How often does government say "hey we don't need to regulate this realm anymore because circumstances have changed"?
How often have you seen governments de-centralize things in order to make them more responsive to the needs of the citizens they serve?
Rarely, but it does happen. It does remain to be seen if anything will come of this. However it also remains to be seen if anything will come of the proposals in the article under discussion. A proposal is not a law.
If you do live in the UK, and you do care about the governance of the country in which you live, there are ways of making your voice heard. If we chose not to make use of those avenues, or we chose to limit our actions to posting here then we have only ourselves to blame.
If you're not with Ron Paul and the Freedom movement, you're part of the problem.
If you do not live in the UK, and you're posting in response to an article regarding proposed changes to the law in the UK, why the f*ck does Ron Paul have anything to do with it?
All canons on a ship are guns, matey.
What are you, a pirate?
Well, at least you'll have no where to dock and resupply, now your bay is being blocked...
One would suspect that the very idea of this fills any investigative journalist with a sense of dread (or impending doom...).
Maintaining the annonymity of their sources, a journalistic right (privilege?), suddenly becomes that much more difficult, a difficulty verging on impossible. Gone will be the days of whistle-blowing on shady goings on in the corridors or power, or in our own 3 letter agencies. The balance of power shifts once more, and not in the right direction.
I sometimes wonder if the people who propose these schemes are students of history, and if they are whether this is one huge social experiment, designed to measure demographic breaking points.
Could be time for another chat with my local MP, just to see if the 'liberal' part actually still means anything...
How can you be correct when you don't even know how fraccing works? How is the method inherently a scorched earth tactic?
I've linked this article elsewhere, but it does seem to directly answer your second question. Personally I'd call causing earthquakes somewhat of a scorched earth tactic...
Fracking can never be done safe, at least not with today's technology. You are drilling russian roulette mode, sometimes it's safe but mostly it's not.
A case in point. It's nice to know that companies can, literally, sweep the earth from under our feet, and there's nothing we can do about it...
* It's actually illegal to so much as rip your purchased CD onto a portable player for convenience in the UK
Not for long, hopefully! Proposed Changes
As one of the talking heads is quoted as saying in the above linked article:
"The review pointed out that if you have a situation where 90% of your population is doing something, then it's not really a very good law,"
A 'rare' and sensible insight! Now let's hope the government can get a move on actually passing it, as a bill, through Parliment.
An excellent video (and I do not use the term lightly) showing animations and video footage of the assembly of the Mobee...
echo^^
Harvard has filed numerous patent applications associated with the process, and is working with business to "identify disruptive applications in a range of industries."
While I'm sure there will be anti-patent people saying that since the process is "Inspired by origami and children's pop-up books" there's nothing novel or original in it, and prior art should invalidate their patents, for once I'm not sure I agree. I watched the video, and was inspired. Disruptive applications doesn't say the half of it!
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one. -- Phil White