Word: containability
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...Venter hungered for the biggest prize in biology: the map of the human genome. In the 1990s such a project was almost unthinkable, a feat of mind-numbing complexity that involved determining the placement and makeup of every one of the human genome's genes, some of which can contain thousands of nucleotides...
...everyone believes he will succeed - or if he does, that it will matter much. Corporate giants like DuPont already put synthetic biology to industrial use. In the company's Loudon, Tenn., plant, for example, billions of E. coli bacteria stew inside massive tanks. The bacteria's genomes contain 23 alterations that instruct it to digest sugar from corn and produce propane diol, a polyester used in carpets, clothing and plastics. The hard-working bugs churn out 100 million lbs. (45 million kg) of the stuff each day, and all it took was a little tinkering with their genomes...
...blink. As the Saudi army did when Saddam attacked Khafji. Both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at the time were armed with some of the most modern and sophisticated arms in the world. Why should we think it would be any different today with Saudi Arabia trying to contain Iran...
Bush's latest strategy involves trying to contain Iran by arming Sunni counterweights in the region, like Saudi Arabia and other gulf states. Such a strategy is rooted in the cold war mantra that even if a regime was a "son of a bitch," it should be supported as long as it was "our son of a bitch." It doesn't work. Washington supported both Osama bin Laden and Saddam in the 1980s on precisely this logic, but after 9/11, Bush himself acknowledged that coddling the enemies of our enemies had not made them friends; instead it had helped...
Today, marriage is an option, not a life sentence. Contemporary weddings may contain the phrase "I now pronounce thee man and man." We suspect that some celebrities get married only so they can make tabloid headlines with adulterous trysts. The frailty of marriage thus gives a few long-term unions--Dana and Christopher Reeve's, Nancy and Ronald Reagan's--the aura of heroism. They offer one final moral: even the famous can tend to an ailing partner with grace and devotion till death do they part...