And while one side of the world seeks to destroy it …

Biological breakthrough – fascinating article: here’s a snippet:

[I] n  2012 [Jennifer] Doudna, Charpentier and their colleagues offered the first demonstration of CRISPR’s potential.

They crafted molecules that could enter a microbe and precisely snip its DNA at a location of the researchers’ choosing.

In January 2013, the scientists went one step further: They cut out a particular piece of DNA in human cells and replaced it with another one.

In the same month, separate teams of scientists at Harvard University and the Broad Institute reported similar success with the gene-editing tool.

A scientific stampede commenced, and in just the past two years, researchers have performed hundreds of experiments on CRISPR. Their results hint that the technique may fundamentally change both medicine and agriculture.

Some scientists have repaired defective DNA in mice, for example, curing them of genetic disorders. Plant scientists have used CRISPR to edit genes in crops, raising hopes that they can engineer a better food supply.

Some researchers are trying to rewrite the genomes of elephants, with the ultimate goal of re-creating a woolly mammoth.

Writing last year in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, Motoko Araki and Tetsuya Ishii of Hokkaido University in Japan predicted that doctors will be able to use CRISPR to alter the genes of human embryos “in the immediate future.”

Thanks to the speed of CRISPR research, the accolades have come quickly. Last year MIT Technology Review called CRISPR “the biggest biotech discovery of the century.”

Read more:  https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150206-crispr-dna-editor-bacteria/#ixzz3S9KVMaDG

Well well well

Boom goes London, boom Paree…

Tunisian engineering student in Canada wanted to set off Yellowstone volcano and bring down the world. Coming from a world that teaches him that the earth doesn’t rotate, this probably wasn’t too serious a threat, but his suicidal passion is: Iran, for instance, is about to have nuclear missiles. If it were to send one over our way and explode it in outer space, our entire electrical system would shut down, with a death expectancy of 90% in 12 months. (Don’t like that link? Too alarmist? Here’s the 2005 report from a Senate subcommittee on terrorism – same conclusion, in longer length).

Mutual Assured Destruction worked when we were dealing with enemies who had no desire to join us in Armageddon; but as security teams have discovered, when an assassin doesn’t care whether he himself survives, the odds of protecting a target go way, way down. We’re facing just such madmen.

If only Obama’s Job Corp program for the Middle East and North Korea will come in time!

I’m not positive this was built on land snatched from my Huguenot ancestors, but maybe I’ll claim it anyway

Mackerel Snapper Palace

French castle built in 1507 for Catholic Cardinal now available for $5.7 million. Comes with 1,800 acres but, unfortunately, is surrounded by the French.

I can’t improve on Glenn Reynolds’ heading

Mr. Reardon, to the White courtesy phone:

Nano-Manufacturing Makes Steel 10 Times Stronger: A new way to produce metals could have wide-ranging effects.

New Listing

147 Old Church Road

147 Old Church Road, $3.150 million. It just came on, so I haven’t seen it yet (with luck, the temporary cessation of snow storms will allow open houses to resume), but this is a great street, and the price seems pretty good as well. Of course, I’m a sucker for older houses – your reaction may differ.

News from the gay community

Pitchers and catchers report for spring training

Like a bad penny …

Or the north

2 Cowdray Park Drive, up in Conyers Farm, is back, new broker, new price: $4.7 million. It couldn’t sell at auction two years ago with a “suggested price” of $4.6, but perhaps this time will be different. It sold for $9 million, once, back in 1999, but that was then, this is now.

Sale price reported

7 Hidden Brook, Riverside, $1.650 million.

As their theory implodes, global warmists raise their hysterics

Goodbye to all that

Now we’re in for it: NYC will be flooded by 2050, temperatures will soar, blah blah blah. Fortunately, Mayor DeBlasio has a plan to cut emissions 80%, and friends who, when hired, can implement that plan, so Gothamites can live in a beautiful bubble of Eden, spared from the doom awaiting the rest of the earth.

If you care to, check the link and count the number of absolute falsehoods parroted as truth by the reporter. Especially the one about the rise in sea level already “experienced” by NYC. FWIW’s own expert on all matters hydrological, (and surveying)  Mike Finkbeiner, has actually studied, measured and debunked that claim (sorry, Mike, I’m rushing this morning and will have to find your links later). The point is, these people are watching their wonderful hoax, thirty years in the making, collapse around them, so they’re panicking.

That’s a good sign; the end (of global warming) is near.

They were once credited for advancing human knowledge. The world turns

Saudi cleric instructs university students that the world is stationary – “otherwise, jet airplanes could just wait for China to come to them; there would be no need to fly there.”

I suppose this nonsense is no worse than what our own university students are being taught, but between the two, it does make one fear for the future of the world.