Kid A, no. Kid B, no. Kid C, yes.

Apparently we are now capable of screening human embryos for diseases and other characteristics, thus allowing potential parents to select their desired children: click. While this is not a trivial (or cheap) procedure, it raises some controversial questions.

This takes natural selection to a whole new level. I like the idea of being able to screen for debilitating or fatal genetic diseases, but I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of designer babies, i.e. choosing gender and other physical characteristics. I don't think I can say that I'm opposed to it, though.

The strugling economy is apparently taking a bite out of recycling...

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/will-recycling-survice-the-recession.php

An interesting essay on the impossibility of reconciling science and religion.

http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=1e3851a3-bdf7-438a-ac2a-a5e381a70472

Jerry Coyne's piece, entitled "Seeing and Believing", in The New Republic is a review/critique of two books which attempt to unite science and religion in a Darwin Year (the 200th anniversary of his birth). The article is a pretty long read, but there are quite a few portions that are worthwhile if you have any interest in the topic.

A few excerpts that caught my attention:

"It is a depressing fact that while 74 percent of Americans believe that angels exist, only 25 percent accept that we evolved from apelike ancestors. Just one in eight of us think that evolution should be taught in the biology classroom without including a creationist alternative. Among thirty-four Western countries surveyed for the acceptance of evolution, the United States ranked a dismal thirty-third, just above Turkey."

"True, there are religious scientists and Darwinian churchgoers. But this does not mean that faith and science are compatible, except in the trivial sense that both attitudes can be simultaneously embraced by a single human mind. (It is like saying that marriage and adultery are compatible because some married people are adulterers. ) It is also true that some of the tensions disappear when the literal reading of the Bible is renounced, as it is by all but the most primitive of JudeoChristian sensibilities. But tension remains. The real question is whether there is a philosophical incompatibility between religion and science. Does the empirical nature of science contradict the revelatory nature of faith? Are the gaps between them so great that the two institutions must be considered essentially antagonistic? The incessant stream of books dealing with this question suggests that the answer is not straightforward."

"In other words, God is a Mover of Electrons, deliberately keeping his incursions into nature so subtle that they're invisible. It is baffling that Miller, who comes up with the most technically astute arguments against irreducible complexity, can in the end wind up touting God's micro-editing of DNA. This argument is in fact identical to that of Michael Behe, the [intelligent design] advocate against whom Miller testified in the Harrisburg trial. It is another God-of-the-gaps argument, except that this time the gaps are tiny."

"Most scientists can tell you what observations would convince them of God's existence, but I have never met a religious person who could tell me what would disprove it. And what could possibly convince people to abandon their belief that the deity is, as Giberson asserts, good, loving, and just? If the Holocaust cannot do it, then nothing will."

"And they fail for the same reason that people always fail: a true harmony between science and religion requires either doing away with most people's religion and replacing it with a watered-down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims."

"It would appear, then, that one cannot be coherently religious and scientific at the same time. That alleged synthesis requires that with one part of your brain you accept only those things that are tested and supported by agreed-upon evidence, logic, and reason, while with the other part of your brain you accept things that are unsupportable or even falsified. In other words, the price of philosophical harmony is cognitive dissonance. Accepting both science and conventional faith leaves you with a double standard: rational on the origin of blood clotting, irrational on the Resurrection; rational on dinosaurs, irrational on virgin births."

"So the most important conflict--the one ignored by Giberson and Miller--is not between religion and science. It is between religion and secular reason. Secular reason includes science, but also embraces moral and political philosophy, mathematics, logic, history, journalism, and social science--every area that requires us to have good reasons for what we believe."

You can also read some interesting responses to the article (including posts from both authors that were criticized) here: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne09/coyne09_index.html.

Some of the best words that I could ever hear from my father...

"Just keep it up, you are in no way falling short of what I am hoping that you would eventually become."

Thanks, Pa.

Boeing cafeteria goes green.

When I went to the cafeteria at work today, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they had replaced the styrofoam plates with ones that are made out of 100% recycled paper (and are compostable). The only downside is that there is no convenient plastic cover for these plates like there was for the old ones, though they did have some plastic wrap available to cover food. I guess this is part of our commitment to ISO 14000.

If I ever become a vegetable, please let me die.

A recent article about the death of an Italian woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) reminded me of the Terri Schiavo case. I'm pretty sure I fall on the "right to die" side of that argument. It seems to me that in these cases one thing that made the choice of whether to disconnect life support (or not) more difficult was that the conscious parties involved did not know what the vegetative person would have wanted. So this is my attempt to make my preference in that undesireable event clear: if I am in a PVS for more than a year, please pull the plug. And after I'm done, go ahead and donate my organs and cremate my remains.

A humurous take on the "base" metaphor.

What does it mean when someone says that he reached second base with another person? Today's XKCD may help answer that question, and is sure to entertain in the process. Check it out here: http://xkcd.com/540/. I think some of it will be lost on non-techies, but it is worthy nonetheless.

More proof that wikis are awesome.

Even the U.S. intelligence community uses one to share information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the general public will never see an article on there, though.