Well you can digest the prospect of this science how ever you want.


I didn't figure I would need to explain that statement, but here goes:

- Holy Rollers is a reference to religious activists who have generally demonstrated an intolerance to science any meddling with God's creations. Not so much corn hybrids or hunting dogs, but more with stem cells and cloning, etc. I figured engineering synthetic life would fall into that category. You seem to have taken offense to the suggestion. So I would assume you're not one of these people.

- In terms of oil companies not liking the development of synthetic gasoline-producing organisms....I think it goes without saying, but apparently not. If the science is effective, Oil companies would either have to spend money to get into the game or they would have to compete against it. Whether they see it as a problem probably depends on how they intend to react if it's viable. As a shareholder, it seems you can take solace that Exxon is involved in the R&D funding from the start. Maybe it will be a win for them. But in general, I would think the development would cause concern over the prospect of a of wholesale change in a market in which they have enjoyed decades of stable prosperity.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

Subsidies are designed to overcome greed where a need is otherwise neglected.

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The bush administration and bank lobbyists proudly killing our economic system - 2003.

I expect all of my companies to invest money wisely. Exxon apparently likes what they've seen in this research, and far from replacing oil (which it may one day but not in our lifetimes) it augments the current infrastructure.

As far as a "new" life form. Not exactly. Gene splicing, as I understand it, merely speeds up species adaptation through human manipulation, something animal husbandry has done for at least a thousand years. If, however, we were talking about human cloning, yeah, I'd oppose it.

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Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ---P. J. O'Rourke

Well, I plan on living a long time and I wouldn't mind witnessing it.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

So how much would you cost to stick in a sealed container and keep you fed on beans and rice and ... beans and rice and maybe some beer from time to time.

Piped in porno forever of course

Hell, maybe I could get off "the grid"

No more heating bill No more electric bill - maybe thats a stretch ... maybe.

Jefe the fart machine powers my household.

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Something wicked this way comes.

Some philosophical points this type of work raises:

If we create life from scratch, does that put us on an equal or near-equal footing with God? I mean sure we still have to create a universe from scratch, but creating life is half of the battle.

Most people consider it unethical/immoral in most cases to drive species to extinction. If we create a species from scratch, is it immoral or unethical to completely kill off the new species, thus making it extinct?

What if someday we make an intelligent animal, equal in brainpower to humans. If we make them slaves what would our founding documents have to say about that? (Perhaps the use of the word "creator" in the Constitution will have been a fortuitous choice.)

Well, they are using the same code all of life on earth is based on. They are also composing these life forms using existing genes. We're not builing new life forms from scratch as such, just recomposing previously evolved elements. It's still damn impressive. If man made an organism with a completely new blueprint, say a four-codon code instead of the universal three-codon code, I would agree that we have indeed created life in the true sense of the word.

I still can't picture creating a multicellular organism. Can we really achieve something like that? I just can't picture it. How would we ever be able to make an organism that has the immune properties required to battle pathogens we continue to adapt to, and have adapted to since we split ways in the evolutionary tree? Cell-to-cell signaling alone is such a complicated matter.

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The intellectual journey that had began with Copernicus displacing humans from the centre of the Universe and continued with Darwin’s insistence that humans are merely modified monkeys has finally focused in on the very essence of life. And there was nothing special about it. The double helix is an elegant structure, but its message is downright prosaic: life is simply a matter of chemistry.
- James Watson

I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is the Martians have landed, however, they eat nothing but Taliban members and piss gasoline.

(jokes older than I am)

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Alizee Jacotay, the reason god invented hips