Tonight, he hosts dinner with his chief researcher who’s just made one of the biggest applied biology breakthroughs in history; the culmination of a lifelong dream, and a grand occasion for the greatest hospitality he’s ever shown.

Being a kindly soul, it has never occurred to Theo that there can be too much of a good thing. His guest, however, may have ideas of his own…

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—Story Sample Below the Cut—

Self-Sustaining

by J. Daniel Sawyer

“…so tomorrow, we release it. Oh, thank you.” I accepted the goblet from my host as he passed by on the way to his throne at the head of the table. “They’ve got no idea what’s going to happen.”

Theo may have been a monk in all but name. He may have been a celibate prick with delusions of grandeur. He may even have been crazy (with the kind of money the man had, most people figured he was entitled). But one thing he wasn’t, was dull.

The Spanish red in the goblet he handed me was a minor evidence of the fact that anyone could discern after ten minutes in his inner sanctum: his studious isolation was matched only by his eloquence and his culinary taste.

Not that he indulged himself. The wine and the fancier foods were all at my end of the table to this point. A hospitable ascetic—one of the things besides his wallet that recommended him as a dining companion.

“You’ve done excellent work. Your entire team. A Nobel-worthy performance, certainly.” He flipped open the wire-cage on an old-fashioned beer bottle and decanted the contents into his stein. Home brewed, naturally.

“Not likely. It’s a process, not a discovery. And the committee’s gone sour on non-medical biotech since the Rossfield affair.” I decided to let the wine breathe for a moment.

“Still. Remarkable, my good man, just remarkable.” He took a sip of his beer. “Excellent, yes. You shall all receive an extra bonus, I think. Every man jack of you. An extra year’s pay as congratulations for a job well done.”

“I’ll drink to that!” I raised the goblet to my lips—not glass. Metal. Heavy. Ponderous. Exactly what you’d expect from a self-styled pseudomonk. The liquid inside had aged perfectly; smooth, dry, with a palate-cleansing finish that left the mouth feeling expectant, and empty.

Theo sipped his beer, and appeared to roll it around thoughtfully before swallowing. He smacked his lips and let go an appreciative “Ah, yes. Good batch—I’ll have to make this recipe again.” He smiled at me. “Blackberry lambic. Long prep time. Far more…decadent…well, I don’t indulge much, but for an evening such as this… A special occasion. Exceptions can be made.” He smiled, and I thought that behind his wizened eyes I saw a glint of mischief. “A special occasion for us both, I think. That what you’re drinking there, it’s my last bottle.”

“This is fabulous. Thank you again.” I didn’t know whether I should ask him why it was a good thing that I was taking his last bottle, so I decided to play it cool for the moment. I figured that when you’re sitting at dinner with a man who could easily buy a few small countries and still have money left over for a six pack, it’s best not to seem too easily impressed.

Of course, playing it cool didn’t leave a lot of maneuvering room for conversation. But my host didn’t leave me dangling for long. Our dinners arrived on the backs of robotic servants—another one of his affectations, born of his world-shaping moral philosophy. After taking another draught, he spread his hands in front of me.

“You may uncover your meal whenever you like.” He uncovered his own serving dish and forked a couple thin slices of meat onto his dish. He scrupulously avoided any vegetables, leaving them on the platter.

Me? I was starving. I’d had a long day wrapping up the stray pieces of a ten-year long project—in my elation I’d skipped lunch. But the yawning in my gut had nothing on the empty feeling that my mind had slid into. Accomplishment is like that – you work for years to make something happen, and the first result of winning is that you suddenly have nothing to live for, at least for a few days. Postpartum depression, comfortable as an old sweater, and twice as smelly. I lifted the lid from my dinner.

Now that was an odor as far from old sweaters as Albuquerque from Callisto. The tray was loaded with thin strips of meat—some looked to be steak, other strips were whiter or redder—stacked in the middle of a forest of asparagus spears and purple potato wedges. I took a healthy portion of what looked like steak, and another of what looked like chicken, and added some asparagus and potatoes, then covered the service to keep the heat in. And the smell. As hungry as I was, that smell would drive me straight into the rubber room even while I was eating—even the less concentrated version coming off my own plate had my mouth watering to beat Niagara.

The taste was even better than the smell, if such a thing is even possible. I started with the white meat–soft and melting and substantive with flavors I’d never learned to describe. Delicate and light, prune and savory and sharply sweet and turkey-salty flavors all wrapped up together in a primal package. I couldn’t speak while I ate, couldn’t even listen. I was loathe to even swallow, just in case the next mouthful wasn’t as good. Without a doubt, it was the most amazing meat I’d ever tasted.

It was…unbearable. Truly. I had to stop after only four bites to take a sip of the wine, hoping to God it would cleanse my palate so I could taste the meat again, and taste it fresh. I felt as if I’d just managed to reach the surface before my lungs collapsed, but though I could breathe in the world above, it would never again seem colorful or appealing.

“My God, Theo, what is this?”

Theo grinned as he sliced a small morsel for himself. Much smaller than the bites I’d taken—he obviously knew how to handle a meal like this. I’d spent the last god-knew-how-many-years in a lab, grabbing what food seemed good enough for me to survive the eighteen hour days. “Do you like it?”

End of sample. ©2011 J. Daniel Sawyer, All Rights Reserved

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One of them comes to Scientific American belatedly (it was originally published on May 16) from the atom smasher at Fermilab, which may just have answered the fundamental question of existence: Why are we here?

I’m not talking metaphysics, I’m talking physics. There’s been a problem in fundamental physics that goes like this: Matter and Antimatter are both created out of the probabilistic churning of the quantum foam in the vacuum all the time – and then they annihilate one another. It’s this kind of probabilistic interaction that produced the Big Bang, but if matter and antimatter annihilate one another, then why should there be anything at all?

Well, after crunching a couple decades worth of data from Fermilab, it looks like occasionally, in special circumstances (like those that prevailed at the time of the Big Bang), the quantum foam produces about 1% more matter than antimatter, so when all the annihilation happens, there’s a residue.

Assuming that the data holds up, we now know with quite a lot of surety why we’re here: because we, and the rest of the universe, were in that one percent of matter which didn’t get annihilated.

But more important than that is the scientific paper today out of AAAS from the lab of Craig Venter, the man who invented shotgun sequencing, the method of DNA sequencing that is now the most widely used in the world. In a modest paper entitled CREATION OF A BACTERIAL CELL CONTROLLED BY A CHEMICALLY SYNTHESIZED GENOME, Venter and his team announced something that will change the world every bit as profoundly as the printing press once did: The creation of an artificial organism.

Let me reiterate: Humans have now created, from scratch (the genome from scratch, that is), a life form that can reproduce, metabolize, and respond to stimuli. An artificial, designed genome runs the show. The ability to do this is something we’ve been seeking for centuries, and now that it’s here the implications are astounding. We now have the ability to, for example, resurrect extinct species, create designer organisms to dispose of pollution or convert electricity from sunlight, and that’s only the very, very tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Remember this date. In twenty or thirty years, when nothing in the world is the same and never will be again, you’ll have Craig Venter to thank for it, and May 19 will be the day on which you remember that it was today (well, yesterday now), that the human race became the author of an entire biosphere, rather than simply the usurping editor of the one in which we arose.

First, the coolest biomedical news this year: Synthetic arteries have arrived.

Second, some really cool news on dog evolution from two fronts. There’s an article discussing the stray dogs in Moscow, and what selection pressures have done to them over the last 100 years. Then there’s the new BBC documentary on how dogs shaped human development, and vice versa – and answers the question “Are dogs smarter than Chimpanzees?” Check out the video here .

Finally, the single most mind-blowing introduction to Chaos Theory I’ve seen or read. Goes into the history, the development, and the implications of the most radically disturbing area of mathematics ever to come around. See it here and prepare to be astounded.

Enjoy! And stay tuned in the next few days for new episodes!

And now, Episode 3. Bumper by Mark Smith of Buffy, Between The Lines. Story So Far by Philippa Ballantine.

Scientific knowledge has progressed astoundingly fast since most of the current party political alliances were formed seventy years ago, and that pace has accelerated since the last medium-sized realignment thirty years ago. The lessons of history in that same period of time are also momentous – if anyone actually cares to look at them. And most don’t. This creates a problem.

I’ve had a lot of fun this election year tweaking my left-wing and right-wing friends by telling them I’m voting ‘No’ for President this year. “It’s the most important election of the last fifty years!” they tell me “You must participate.” They may be right – it could be a hugely important election, which is precisely why I’m not voting for either major party candidate of for either of the two big minor party candidates.

You see, I’m sick to the teeth of Democrats claiming the mantle of science while ignoring economics any time the findings of that discipline contradict the New Deal Keynsianism that infects the party. I’m sick of Republicans being in favor of “free markets” when they bail out failing businesses. I’m sick of both parties claiming that they are forward looking when their major alliances are built on late-1960s political expediency. I’m sick of the Libertarians pretending that anarchy and liberty can co-exist in a meaningful way, and I’m sick of the Greens claiming that opposing GMO crops and technological advance while embracing pseudo-Marxist economic policies are the key to an environmentally viable future.

In 1862, in his address before Congress, Abraham Lincoln called “Bullshit” on the way partisan politics were polarizing the north on the issues surrounding the Civil War. He said: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.” The same is true today. Thirty years ago, “left-winger” David Brin and “right-winger” Ronald Bailey could never be seen as allies, and yet now, while they have some minor quibbling disagreements on taxation policy and public research funding and other minor points here and there, both are in fundamental agreement on issues of science, technology, trade policy, environmental concerns, human morality, reproductive technology, and civil rights. The same kind of shift has occurred everywhere, as the facts of the world have shifted beneath the complacent, religious devotion of people to their political parties.

It used to be that you could marry theocrats to conservatives who loved traditional freedoms, because both were opposed to social change that seemed too rapid for the country to handle. That kind of alliance doesn’t work anymore, because the country has adapted to the rapid rate of change while preserving its heritage of individualism.

It used to be that you could bring Left-wing Malthusians together with humanist scientists over environmental concerns. But as science shows that the only way towards responsible environmental stewardship is technological innovation on a grand scale rather than a scaling back of industry, that alliance becomes just as inviable.

There is a political divide in America. But it’s not between the “left” and the “right.” It’s not even between the Keynsians and the Hayekians, although that argument will remain very important for decades to come. No, the divide is fundamentally between those who see humans as a legitimate part of the natural world and those who do not.

Those who do not see humans as a viable part of nature tend to see them instead as either a blight upon nature or the rulers of nature, but they agree that science and technology are fundamentally tools by which humans exercise dominion over nature. They may not agree on abortion, but they do agree about genetic engineering. They may not agree about tax policies, but they do agree that taxation should be a tool of social engineering. They may not agree on the ultimate destiny of humanity, but they do agree that a peaceful society must be fairly ideologically uniform. And, militarist or peacenik, they also tend towards cultural and economic isolationism.

Meanwhile, those who do see humans as a legitimate part of nature form a group that is generally favorable towards both technological advance and environmental stewardship. Favorable towards both a peaceful world and economic freedom. Opposed towards both the enforced repression of minorities and towards the prescriptive Newspeak that comes from the New Right and the New Left. And, militarist or peacenik, this group tends towards a policy of active international engagement on cultural and economic levels. This natural alliance might find internal division over issues such as gun rights, or minimum wage, but those differences are minor compared to the differences in parties of the past.

This political realignment has been in progress for some time now, and it may take quite a while for it to conclude. But personally, I’m sick of participating in a quadripolar political game that is fifty years out of step with the fundamental facts of the world. Since I live in California I have the luxury of my vote not counting no matter what I do, so this year I’m taking advantage of it to make my point.

Whichever way you vote, take time to consider the fundamentals of your political philosophy. Dig down below your policy positions, figure out what really matters to you. Examine your positions and values critically, and see if they really line up. See if they line up with the candidate you support. Don’t just vote out of habit.

As for me, this year I really am voting “No.” On everything.

This recent opinion piece on abortion illustrates the point nicely, although the language is very religious and the whole essay is shot-through with magical thinking. Even removing those magical elements, the view articulated there holds true even for many Republicans whose worldview is primarily secular (yes, they really do exist).

Of course, this view of abortion doesn’t just rest on religious authority, it claims to be rooted in a clear understanding of history and to take seriously the view that if we mess around with our biology we are playing God (a job we’re not qualified for). A zygote is a living organism that, if left alone, will develop into a human, therefore abortion ends a human life, therefore it must be murder, and any ethical gerymandering to the contrary can’t change that fundamental fact. Ditto for stem cell research, which destroys human embryos, or for hybrid experimental cloning, and for dozens of other biotech research techniques.

At first blush, that seems to be a pretty solid rooting in biology – but it’s not. A true ethical grounding in biology has to contend with a few other facts that make the connections between point A and point B very tendentious.

The first problem is evolution: All life is made from the same stuff, and human life on a biological level is in no way distinctive. Human nature and human biology are subject to the same selective pressures as the rest of the biosphere, plus the internally imposed selective pressures of human culture. It’s not impossible to make a case for human exceptionalism (I’m a human exceptionalist myself), but it’s not axiomatic.

The second problem is embryology: only somewhere between 25% and 60% of all zygotes become viable pregnancies, and 8% of those that do fail to make it to term without any intervention. Not every conception results in a life – and most wouldn’t even if medical abortion were never discovered. George Carlin had it right: If life begins at conception, then every sexually active woman who’s had at least three periods is a serial killer.

The third problem is technology: Since the conception of a zygote creates a life, and if that life is seen to have value because it is a potential human being, then technology poses a new and frightening problem. A zygote has only a minority potential of surviving to birth – and so does a clone. Although cloning tech is still in its infancy, it is now possible to artificially split embryos in vitro, making every IVF procedure the potential ancestor of countless offspring in one generation. More importantly, it is now possible to take the genetic material from an adult skin cell and implant it in the nucleus of an ovum, throw a few hormonal switches, and have a viable zygote. With this the reality, every time I scratch my arm I’ve engaged in a holocaust of potential human beings.

The fourth problem is medical: We now know beyond any doubt that the seat of human consciousness is the central nervous system (i.e. the brain). You can argue about souls all you want – whether there is a ghost operating the machine or whether we are all machine – but the machine does not operate at all without a brain. Before the 22nd week of gestation, there isn’t enough of a brain there to operate the machine. Any ghost that may exist can’t have moved in yet. Citation.

These four problems are not the only problems with Republican attitudes towards biotech. There’s also the question of those who die from potentially curable diseases if research is suppressed – are their lives worth less than, or more than, the lives of potentially viable zygotes and blastocysts?

Banning pre-viability abortions, banning biotech procedures, or banning government funding of either will neither reduce the number of murders in the world, nor will it reduce eugenics. It will not further respect for human life – in fact, as demonstrated in the book Freakanomics, an abundance of unwanted children leads directly to an increase in violent crime and a lessening of the social value of human life. Therefore here, as with the Democratic equation of "mitigate global warming by reducing energy consumption," the policy prescriptions will not – and can never – achieve the aims they are meant to achieve. And yet right-wing Republicans and abortion, just like left-wing Democrats and global warming, the prescriptions themselves are a matter of doctrine, not of reason, and it’s a damn shame.

Join me for my concluding thoughts on the whole topic in Part 3