some info bits from bob's scanning
Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
by Bill Joy
Wired April, 2000 8.04
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04". . . Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies &emdash; robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology &emdash; pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. . . ."
Many people think that the kinds of technological advances that Joy's article address are science fiction, making for interesting reading and story lines for the next science fiction thriller. Read the article in the New Yorker about the genome warrior and the future seems to be a little too close for comfort.
Profiles: The Genome Warrior
By Richard Preston
The New Yorker
June 12, 2000". . . One of the buildings contains rooms packed with row after row of DNA-sequencing machines of a type known as the ABI Prism 3700. The other building holds what is said to be the most powerful civilian computer array in the world; it is surpassed only, perhaps, by that of the Los Alamos National laboratory, which is used for simulating nuclear bomb explosions. … the Command Center, a room stuffed with control consoles and computer screens. People in the Command Center monitor the flow of DNA inside Celera. The DNA flows through the Prism machines twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."
The merger of computers and genetics is already a reality. Corporations like Celera Genomics can extract the code of life from any life form on the planet -- then they own it. Just like we have CoAmerica Baseball Park in Detroit, instead of Tiger Stadium, we will have endless corporate named species -- it won't be just Douglas Fir, but Georgia-Pacific Douglas fir after Georgia-Pacific buys the extracted genetic code from Celera Genomics (http://www.celera.com).
Climate Change Impacts on the United States
http://www.gcrio.org/NationalAssessment/
This report was prepared by The US Global Change Research Information Office (GCRIO). The draft of this report can be downloaded from the web. It looks at various aspects of climate change by geographical region &emdash; a great resource.Historical Trends in Lake and River Ice Cover in the Northern Hemisphere
Science, Vol. 289, 8 September 2000
"Freeze and breakup dates of ice on lakes and rivers provide consistent evidence of later freezing and earlier breakup around the Northern Hemisphere from 1846 to 1995. . . ." This article contains supporting data from Grand Traverse Bay.
United States Space Command
http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace/index.htm
If you don't know about the militarization of space, you should &emdash; check it out.Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares, a group (Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte are members), protested the militarization of space on September 9th, 2000 at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. More information here: http://www.nrec.org/plowshares.html or Citizens for Peace in Space, PO Box 915, Colorado Springs, CO 80901, (719) 389-0644, bsulzman@juno.com