From way back in the Stone Age to our current Silicon Age, we have labeled periods of our development as a species by the materials we have come to master: stone, bronze, iron, and so on.(1) And, at each stage, our adoption of nature’s materials has also brought with it the development of other consumables [Read More…]
From the perfect Super Venti Flat White (yes, it is ‘a thing’) crafted for us at the Starbucks drive-thru to the tailored Tesla designed to indulge our most whimsical aesthetic consideration, the world is becoming increasingly customized whether we like it or not. And however we perceive this transition – good, bad, or indifferent – [Read More…]
Fruitloopery In a Napa County Superior Court this month, actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand, Goop, accepted civil penalties in the amount of $145,000 for unsubstantiated health claims regarding some products sold on the company’s website. The online ‘wellness empire’ was found guilty of misbranding and false advertisement in a suit brought by the California Food, [Read More…]
Near to an abandoned Mayan temple in the steamy jungles of Guatemala, camouflaged beneath a matrix of overgrown vine and lianas, nestles a small medical clinic catering to the needs of, at most, a handful of patients. A private facility, not marked on any known map, the clinic is an important link in the supply [Read More…]
When you hear the phrase ‘designer babies,’ what springs most readily to mind? It’s an emotionally, socially, and politically loaded term that’s come to represent much of what’s ethically questionable in genetic research. Perhaps we might think of the movie Gattaca (that we referenced last week) in which genetics equal destiny. Or the 2003 German [Read More…]
Against a neutral blue background, the young man in a pressed, button-down shirt and polka dotted tie smiles the hesitant smile of the new hire. Blue eyes matching his suit blazer and blond hair slicked to one side, Scott Johnson’s fresh-faced, preppy college look belied the strength of his ambition and his drive to succeed. [Read More…]
In 1941, John Gillespie Magee, Jr., a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, was killed in a mid-air collision over the bucholic hamlet of Roxholme, England. Practicing maneuvers in his Spitfire VZ-H, an aircraft he’d flown in engagement with the German Luftwaffe just four weeks earlier, Magee was just 19 years old when [Read More…]
Almost two years ago, we wrote a short article on the FDA regulation of a nascent industry, one that has the FDA sounding the alarm regarding contamination from carcinogens and the vaporizing of metal nanoparticles. Despite our concerns – and those of the FDA – this industry is still around, growing, and has set its [Read More…]
In the Worlds Fair Exposition of 1893, one young entrepreneur, Clark Stanley, stood before an excited crowd of onlookers and plunged his hand into a sack of live rattlesnakes. Pulling out an unfortunate herpetological victim, he sliced it open and, in a technique that was about as far from aseptic processing and devoid of microbial [Read More…]
It’s an open secret that scientists tend to have a love-hate relationship with fiction. Not all fiction – less so the bodice-rippers or cozy thrillers that spill off the bookstore shelves – but one specific genre: science fiction. Sometimes known more prosaically as speculative fiction, this category of literature encompasses utopian/dystopian works, supernatural/superhero tropes, and [Read More…]
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