I Prefer a Complete Captain
"These problems don't end with mosquitoes. One of Crispr's strengths is that it works on every living thing. That kind of power makes Doudna feel like she opened Pandora's box. Use Crispr to treat, say, Huntington's disease—a debilitating neurological disorder—in the womb, when an embryo is just a ball of cells? Perhaps. But the same method could also possibly alter less medically relevant genes, like the ones that make skin wrinkle. 'We haven't had the time, as a community, to discuss the ethics and safety,' Doudna says, 'and, frankly, whether there is any real clinical benefit of this versus other ways of dealing with genetic disease.'"
"Let me do a little psychoanalysis. If you look at 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' it basically split James T. Kirk into two people. Picard was Kirk’s rational side, and William Riker was his passionate side. I prefer a complete captain. To be effective, you need both heart and mind... he original 'Star Trek' was grittier. Kirk is working class; Picard is an aristocrat. Kirk is a passionate fighter for justice; Picard is a cerebral philosopher. The original 'Star Trek' pressed for racial equality, which was one of its best characteristics, but it did so without sermonizing."
"In the novel, both Alison and Bruce clearly express a gender nonconformity that only gains political and social recognition from others through their same-sex attractions. They do so in the context of an American legal and social system where homosexuality is the form of gender-nonconformity that has proven most difficult to repress, because physical and romantic desire is such a cornerstone of Western subject formation. Its resilience has helped homosexuality become the site of activism, albeit at the expense of the wider collection of gender-nonconforming identities that transgender and nonbinary people inhabit. Conflating sexuality and gender expression makes Americans uncomfortable, as the delicately negotiated terrain of sexual politics has tried to demarcate a line between the two."
4. The possible murder mystery of the SL-1 nuclear reactor meltdown.
"Apart from their favored hypothesis, the investigators felt that they could not rule out two other possibilities: suicide, or murder-suicide on the part of Byrnes. Operators of the reactor knew the consequences of pulling out the central rod of the reactor. In a history of the Idaho nuclear reactor test range published in 2012, former operators were quoted as saying that, informally, they’d decided to do just that in the event of a Russian invasion, destroying SL-1 to deny it to the enemy."
5. Submarine fires underwater drone.
"The US Navy has reportedly launched and recovered an underwater drone from its USS North Dakota submarine, which is said to be its first such mission. The submarine-launched unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV) are considered to be cost-effective alternative to extend the reach of the US Navy's submarine fleet. The Virginia-class vessel completed its two-month mission in the Mediterranean Sea, and returned to its base in Groton, US."
On Fusion: Meet the (surprisingly sympathetic) man who has had a crowdsourced Internet girlfriend for three months.
1. wired.com | @amymaxmen 2. nytimes.com 3. thenewinquiry.com 4. passingstrangeness.wordpress.com 5. naval-technology.com | @telstarlogistic
I Prefer a Complete Captain