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May 21, 2004

Transgenic Tombstone Project Hits Snags

Yikes this one freaks me out -- A project to splice the DNA of dead people to apple trees as a way to preserve people's "essence" after death. Fortunately, it has hit some snags. I would not want to bite into an apple and find out that I was actually eating grandma!!!! This project really gives new meaning to the story of the apple in the Garden of Eden. I don't think we should be making such apples -- let alone eating them. And I'm not sure I like the idea of inserting even so-called "junk DNA" (which recently has been found to be less likely to be "junk" -- it may in fact code for important steps in development) into food, let alone into the environment in general.

Posted on May 21, 2004 at 03:47 PM in Biology, Environment, Food and Drink, Genetic Engineering, Religion, Science, Things I Don't Like |

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Nova's Trip to Edge of Space

  • Stepsedgestratosphere
    In 1999 I flew to the edge of space with the Russian air force, with Space Adventures. I made it to an altitude of just under 100,000 feet and flew at Mach 3 in a Mig-25 piloted by one of Russia's best test-pilots. These pics were taken by Space Adventures from similar flights to mine. I didn't take digital stills -- I got the whole flight on digital video, which was featured on the Discovery Channel.

Nova & Friends, Training For Space...

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    In 1999 I was invited to Russia as a guest of the Russian Space Agency to participate in zero-gravity training on an Ilyushin-76 parabolic flight training aircraft. It was really fun!!!! Among other people on that adventure were Peter Diamandis (founder of the X-Prize and Zero-G Corporation), Bijal Trivedi (a good friend of mine, science journalist), and "Lord British" (creator of the Ultima games). Here are some pictures from that trip...

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