Links

This series of articles on Slate, written by William Saletan, and a response here, might be of interest to some people, centering on an issue that recently came up in the news. Personally, I cannot endorse what Saletan says, and I hope by all accounts that he is mistaken.

Fun with Technology

One of these days (today?), I'm going to redesign my sidebar to match up more with my new trajectory. But for now, here are a couple of interesting pieces of technology news.

First, is an opinion piece from PC Magazine rightfully complaining about the primitive attitude that American consumers have about robots. We're too obsessed with robot uprisings and worries about sex robots to take home robotics seriously, the author rightly complains. This is why Japan and other parts of SE Asia are years ahead of the curve here--and further fuel for the inevitable 21st century ascendancy of East over West. (Also, largely why I'd like to move to Tokyo one of these days.)

Second should be something even idiotic American Luddites could appreciate: growing organs from scratch! We're not quite there yet, but according to this article, we may only be a decade or so away, because nature already does so much of the work for us. It's extremely promising, showing how (again, stupidly misguided) American fears about raising clones to harvest organs are totally misplaced. I wonder what Biblical verses the fundamentalists will be wrangling up to oppose this particular advance...