“Sending a letter to the White House is getting a digital upgrade … In addition to accepting hand-written missives by postal mail and emails, the public can now send a note to President Obama via Facebook.”
Hmmm.
With the advent of CRISPR genetic engineering technology, humanity is on the cusp of an evolutionary revolution. We now possess the technology to modify our own genetic code (DNA). In a few more years, it will become more reliable, less expensive, and more available.
Continue reading “Why Humans Should Be Genetically Engineering Their Children Now” »
“A new United Nations report has found that e-government is an effective tool for facilitating integrated policies and public service by promoting accountable and transparent institutions, such as through open data and participatory decision-making …”
Posting for the friends who hasn’t heard about the US funding the new program to grow half human and half animal embryos. Part of the goal is to enable organs to be made available for transplants, etc…
The federal government is planning to lift a moratorium on funding of controversial experiments that use human stem cells to create animal embryos that are partly human.
The National Institutes of Health has unveiled a new policy to permit scientists to get federal money to make the embryos, known as chimeras, under certain carefully monitored conditions.
China’s big win.
Last week a team from Chinese 3D printing construction company WinSun visited Saudi Arabia, meeting with department of housing official and others to discuss the kingdom’s housing shortfall.
According to 3ders.com and others, the Chinese firm’s chairman and vice president met officials from the housing department and investment authority, and were told the Saudi government believes WinSun’s technology could help meet a shortage in available housing. WinSun was invited to open a Saudi factory.
Continue reading “Saudis look to Chinese 3D printing company to tackle housing shortage” »
Made in China motto is gaining speed in China.
SHANGHAI Foreign firms say they are struggling to gain access to China’s vast railway market as the country, seeking to transform its domestic industry into an export powerhouse, tightens the bidding criteria on rail tenders.
The complaints echo similar concerns raised in other industries including technology and renewable energy, and highlight what some foreign companies see as an uneven playing field when operating in China.
Continue reading “Foreign rail firms shunted as ‘Made in China’ mantra gathers pace” »
“The White House has asked whether Zipline’s drones, pioneered in Rwanda, could fly much-needed drugs and blood to Americans.”
Thinking about Eugen Sänger’s photon rocket concept inevitably calls to mind his Silbervogel design. The ‘Silverbird’ had nothing to do with antimatter but was a demonstration of the immense imaginative power of this man, who envisioned a bomber that would be launched by a rocket-powered sled into a sub-orbital trajectory. There it would skip off the upper atmosphere enroute to its target. The Silbervogel project was cancelled by the German government in 1942, but if you want to see a vividly realized alternate world where it flew, have a look at Allen Steele’s 2014 novel V-S Day, a page-turner if there ever was one.
I almost said that it was a shame we don’t have a fictionalized version of the photon rocket, but as we saw yesterday, there were powerful reasons why the design wouldn’t work, even if we could somehow ramp up antimatter production to fantastic levels (by today’s standards) and store and manipulate it efficiently. Energetic gamma rays could not be directed into an exhaust stream by the kind of ‘electron gas mirror’ that Sänger envisioned, although antimatter itself maintained its hold on generations of science fiction writers and scientists alike.
Enter the Antiproton
The following is a selection of points of interest to futurism and forecasts of the political future from the recent Mont Order Conference of July 2016:
STATEMENT 1: NEW SECRET WIKI CREATED
The Mont Order’s secret wiki created via PBworks holds information on the origin and literature of the Mont Order as well as our current structure, ranks and members. Members will be invited via email and will be able to contribute pages or post comments and questions on this literature. The public will not have access to it.
Continue reading “Futurist-linked groups talking at the Mont Order” »
The following is a selection of points of interest to futurism and forecasts of the political future from the recent 
