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Genetically-modified foods and cloning started the ball rolling and there’s no stopping it now: artificial life is on the way.

In the December 17th edition of the Washington Post, Rick Weiss reports that “researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.” According to Weiss, this ability will force a “rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.” He quotes anthropologist Paul Rabinow as saying, “This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be.”

Weiss quotes M.I.T. researcher Drew Endy as saying, “We’re heading into an era where people will be writing DNA programs like the early days of computer programming, but who will own these programs?”
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What if you could feed your discarded junk into one end of a machine and get oil and natural gas out of the other? This would solve two problems at once. One inventor claims he has created a machine that will do that very thing.

In Popular Science, Rena Marie Pacella quotes inventor Frank Pringle as saying, “I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me.”

It turns out that the machine only works with objects that contain hydrocarbons, but since plastics fit this definition?and they are not biodegradable?this will solve a major worldwide trash problem, as well as producing cheap automobile fuel. However, the fuel produced this way will still emit greenhouse gases, so we still have a third problem to solve.
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We’ve talked about the power of words. Now we want to tell you about the power of names?why people with some names succeed, while people with other names fail.

In LiveScience.com, Andrea Thompson quotes researcher Joseph Simmons as saying, “People tend to gravitate toward life outcomes that resemble their names. So for example, we know now that people named Jack are more likely to move to Jacksonville as compared to people named Phil, who are more likely to move to Philadelphia.” They are also more likely to choose romantic partners with similar names (so President Jack Kennedy was destined to marry Jackie) and to buy products that resemble their names.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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We’ve reported before that animals can’t survive on genetically-modified food. Now a new study from Australia shows that GM food KILLS rats.

In the December 5th edition of the Herald Sun, Jeffrey Smith reports that almost 10 years ago, researcher Arpad Pusztai discovered that GM food caused “massive damage in rats.” The result? “Dr. Pusztai was fired after 35 years and silenced with threats of a lawsuit.”

Smith also writes about California researcher Ignacio Chapela, who published evidence that GM corn is wiping out indigenous Mexican corn, which is an essential part of the diet there. He received a phone call from a Mexican government official who told him, “We know where your children go to school.”
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