tisiwoota

So apparently MIT is planning to host the first and only Time Traveler’s Convention this Saturday.

Why is it the first and only?

“Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted.”

So if you want to meet the future, better book your ticket to Boston quick. Although, if you entertain aspirations to become a time-traveler in the future– it might be best to stay at home, so as to reduce the risk of running into yourself and wrecking history. In that way, this is really a nice implicit acknowledgement on the part of MIT that if any US science and technology university is to invent time-travel, it would be the superior one– so better to host it at the one with minimal risk of figuring out such a complex challenge…

A really excellent editorial from SciDev.net about the push for a global R&D treaty. It’s a good read, but the summary is this:

Under the treaty, countries would be required to commit themselves to making minimum levels of investment in R&D, according to their national income. Flexibility would be provided through tradeable credits, as with the Kyoto Protocol.

This kind of system could make important progress in addressing what is known as the 10/90 Gap– the finding that only ten per cent of worldwide expenditure on health research and development is devoted to the problems that afflict 90 per cent of the world’s population.
(more…)

For all those terrorists in my readership who’ve had their freedom-hating nail clippers confiscated by airport security, now there’s a way to get them back and resume your subversive jihadist plots! Check out the E-bay NTSA auction– though you may have to pool your resources with several co-conspirators, since the items are only sold in bulk…

According to this article, New Zealand has plans to use nematodes to spread a genetically-engineered biological control for possum overpopulation. The technology would make females infertile by prompting immunological attacks on their own eggs. A naturally-marked strain of the parasite will be released to study dispersal patterns into already-infected populations and test the feasability of this kind of containment strategy.

I already knew that California is home to the country’s first cat clinic, having driven my roommate there for her pet’s annual checkup. Today I learned that it is also home to the world’s first commercial provider of cloned cats, whose business the state has just decided not to prohibit.

I don’t see anything wrong with “vanity pets” per se, if they provide comfort to a bereaved owner, or allow allergy sufferers to own pets, but it sounds like the anti-cloning lobby has a point– as the article says, “[s]uccess comes only after many tries, leaving the guinea pigs either deformed or dead.” That’s a lot of needless pain and suffering for a comparatively trivial benefit.

On the other hand, sharing an apartment with Miranda, the most meowingest pet in the world, sometimes makes me re-think how the rules of morality are applied to non-humans, specifically as regards the proper course of action to take when one feels tempted to test the dictum about cats always landing on their feet…