Whatever one’s position on the use of embryonic stem cells, it has to be admitted that restrictions on their use, and ethical concerns, have certainly spurred creativity in developing alternatives. Apparently, funded in part by the Catholic Church, Australian researchers have come up with a way to harvest useful adult stem cells from the nose.

As someone well endowed in the schnoz department, I think this is great. I don’t have a big problem with cloning, or using embryos, but I don’t have a huge letch to destroy them either. If we can come up with medical advances that everyone’s ethically comfortable with, all the better. Of course, some people are apparently morally opposed to long life and good health, regardless of the means.

I should mention perhaps the ultimate irony of this particular breakthrough. The one person in the world who seems most interested in remaining youthful forever will never be able to take advantage of it.

Whatever one’s position on the use of embryonic stem cells, it has to be admitted that restrictions on their use, and ethical concerns, have certainly spurred creativity in developing alternatives. Apparently, funded in part by the Catholic Church, Australian researchers have come up with a way to harvest useful adult stem cells from the nose.

As someone well endowed in the schnoz department, I think this is great. I don’t have a big problem with cloning, or using embryos, but I don’t have a huge letch to destroy them either. If we can come up with medical advances that everyone’s ethically comfortable with, all the better. Of course, some people are apparently morally opposed to long life and good health, regardless of the means.

I should mention perhaps the ultimate irony of this particular breakthrough. The one person in the world who seems most interested in remaining youthful forever will never be able to take advantage of it.

I’ve had nothing to say about the Terri Schiavo case, because I don’t know that much about it. But all of the major media, including The Corner, seem determined to rectify that situation. Or rather, they seek to inundate me with information about it, if not enlightenment.

I guess it’s understandable why it’s become such a compelling story–it’s a heady mix of themes both political and philosophical. We have the nature of marriage, the fidelity of a spouse to both his marriage and to what he claims are his wife’s desires, the importance of documenting those desires prior to such an event (though one can never truly know what one’s feelings will be when it actually happens), the appropriate role of the states, the federal government, and the judiciary in deciding such personal and heart-wrenching situations, the definition of “persistent vegetative state” and the uncertainties of how to determine whether it truly persists in a particular individual, the absurd hypocrisy of allowing execution without trial by passive (but not active, even though they actually are) acts, the right to live, the right to die, the value of a life bereft of cognition, even (though this is one that few talk about) whether or not such a life can even be considered fully human, and the ultimate prospects for recovery from such a condition.

I’ll ignore the politics and legal issues, which will clear out quite a bit of the underbrush. I’ll also ignore all of the speculation as to the husband’s motives and character, about which I know little, and actually care less, at least for the purpose of this discussion.

I’d like instead to delve more deeply into what I think has been ignored–the philosophical and ethical issues involved.

Continue reading Thrown Off The Ambulance →

Well, clever ones, actually. Using the internal motion sensor.

Finally, they have the technology to do what I think would be a really cool piece of software, for those of us with nostalgia for sixties childhoods–a virtual Etch-a-Sketch. If you decide you don’t like the picture you drew, just turn the thing over and shake it to clear the screen.

There actually is one on line, if you want to play with it. Kiss your productivity goodbye today.

Here’s another good reason to get out into space, as quickly as possible, and as robustly as possible–we may be past our “extinct by” date.

[Via Alan Boyle]

Stephen Gordon has some interesting predictions about the future of manufacturing.

Stephen Gordon has some interesting predictions about the future of manufacturing.

Stephen Gordon has some interesting predictions about the future of manufacturing.

In an interesting brief survey of the state of the robotic art, Alan Boyle asks if there are robosexuals in our future.

Michael Jennings has a nice photo essay about the new viaduct in France:

The materials from which this bridge has been built are vastly stronger than anything that existed even 20 years ago. I have said this before, but this is in my mind the defining characteristic of modern post materials revolution structural engineering. Structures are then, flimsy. They almost look like spider webs. The defining characteristic of industrial age engineering was bulk. But now we are in this virtuous circle of stronger and lighter materials allowing a much thinner deck, allowing the other parts of the bridge to be lighter and less substantial too, allowing still more economies elsewhere, and a rapidly dropping cost of projects like this.

That will be a characteristic of a space elevator as well, if it’s built.