MommaLibrarian's Commonplaces

Going there awfully fast . . .

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
	"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where" said Alice.
	"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
	"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Isn't this just the way it is? If only we could be sure. Perhaps if someone very wise was to tell us? But I am sure I would not listen. Sometimes it seems like I am going nowhere; but I am going there awfully fast.

always makes me smile

I'm not bad I'm just drawn that way - Jessica Rabbit

For some reason I don't find this sexist or demeaning - just funny.  No idea why.  Where is the personal responsibility?  Sometimes I guess I am too tired to be a good puritan.

Heather REALLY has two mommies

"three-parent embryo." This is a technology for avoiding mitochondrial disease whereby nuclear DNA from an egg with defective mitochondria is injected into an egg from another woman with healthy mitochondria, and the resulting egg can then be fertilized."

This in not science fiction - it will stretch the mind and the heart, create a whole new code of family relationships and laws.

Samira Abbassy
"Many-Headed Lioness", 2007

 

Jeremy Rifkin identified these collections of opinion on the new possbilities in biology:

(1) bioprogressives on the left emphasize regulation, equality, and the common good

(2) bioprogressives on the right emphasize free enterprise as the most reliable source of innovation.

(3) bioconservative, religious traditionalists and secular neoconservatives regard science as a threat to human dignity, moral equality, and human nature itself

(4) bioconservative, "green" progressives harbor deep doubts about the implications of science for social justice

(5) transhumanism, embraces technological change. Transhumanists see the prospects for drastic enhancements in what bioconservatives regard as an essential human nature that is too precious and fragile to withstand manipulation.

New Biology Unites Strange Political Bedfellows:
Are three-parent embryos a conservative or liberal issue?
By Jonathan D. Moreno|Posted Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012, at 6:06 AM ET  SLATE

 

Where are you?  What excites you? What scares you?  I am all over the place (well almost).  My misanthropic self does not trust that human endeavors will result in 'good' even when that is the aim, which it will not always be.  My scientific self wants to see technology expand as far as it can.