423. But few are those who appreciate intensification as a source of development of creative energy. Of course with the thought of murder no intensification occurs. During an attack aiming at annihilation a fiery armor is necessary. Each warrior must think of such armor. This will not be the signal of retreat from battle but wise caution. There is no contradiction between burdening of heart and caution. One must be prepared for all kinds of attacks, and flexibility of thought is necessary for this. -M: Heart 1932
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231. Ancient Rome, aiming toward materialism, cannot be compared with the records of India's thought.
245. Thinkers are subjected to many persecutions. But let the oppressed ones answer "Though you persecute us, our thoughts are already sown, and nothing can erase thought in space." There is no point in exiling the thinker, his heritage is indestructible throughout all worlds. Not only is thought indestructible but it even grows in space. The very departure of the thinker from the physical world only opens a broader domain for his thinking. Murderers and poisoners show little acumen--aiming to free themselves of the sowings of the thinker by their very act they but strengthen him. -M: Aum 1936
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Why did China knowingly make headlines in America over this meaningless pledge while it continues to build coal plants on its own land and even around the world? https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2020/09/30/dont_fall_for_chinas_net-zero_carbon_trick_579085.html
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6-0-20 China permitted more new coal-fired power plants in March than it did in all of 2019. The new permits come on the heels of an uptick in coal plant construction last year — reversing a two-year slowdown in China's coal expansion.
The build-out has immense stakes for the planet. China consumes more than half the world's coal. Today it has almost as much new coal generation in planning or construction (206 gigawatts) as the United States has in operation (235 GW at the end of 2019).
All those new plants would emit 35.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide if they ran for 40 years, said Christine Shearer who runs the coal program at Global Energy Monitor, a research group that tracks fossil fuel infrastructure. By comparison the global economy emitted 36.8 billion metric tons last year
"China's coal plant build-out could single-handedly undermine the reductions in coal power use that the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has said are necessary to keep warming below 2C, even if the rest of the world phased out coal power by 2030," she wrote in an email. https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063354565
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3-31-20 More than 90% of markets, shops and malls in China and 70% of small- and medium-sized businesses have reopened as of mid-March, according to consultancy IHS Markit. China Railway has resumed work on about 93% of its major construction projects. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/china-is-using-more-coal-again-this-time-it-may-be-a-good-thing/2020/03/31/50f5d946-730d-11ea-ad9b-254ec99993bc_story.html
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5-16-2019 Team leader Jason Chin of Cambridge Laboratory for Molecular Biology: "There is a dual use to anything we invent.” https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48297647
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Nature “errs” on the side of caution; man “errs” on the side of greed/ignorance.
Man is very often confounding himself when he seeks to outdo nature. -r.
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9-25-2014 Synbio could produce both transformative science and big business. By some estimates the global market for synthetic biology is projected to grow to $16 billion by 2018.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/beyond-gmos-the-rise-of-synthetic-biology/380770/
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Ulmer's 1983 vision failed. GeneX is no longer in business. Twenty-five years later, we are still struggling to engineer the behavior of individual proteins.
The 1980s engineering vision failed for reasons discussed in a 1987 review by Jeremy Knowles, then Dean of Harvard College, entitled Tinkering with Enzymes [7]. Knowles, a chemist, understood that “scale” matters. Molecules, one to one-tenth nanometer in size, behave differently from transistors, even transistors existing at the one to one-tenth micrometer scale. This creates difficulties in transferring microengineering concepts to molecular engineering. The same is true in the next jump downwards in scale; molecules at one to one-tenth nanometer scale behave differently from quantum species operating on the pico- or femtometer distance scales.
Knowles's “Tinkering” comments are apt even today. Referencing Ulmer's paper, Knowles dryly wondered whether the engineering vision was not, perhaps, a bit “starry-eyed”. He acknowledged that “gee whiz” experiments that put things together to “see-what-happens” could aid in understanding. But he made the point that is still true, and which is a theme of this lecture: Nothing of value comes unless the tinkering is followed by studies of what happened. Especially if the synthetic effort fails. Absent that, modern synthetic biology at the molecular, DNA, protein, or cell level will be “tinkering” without consequence. Analysis of failure is generally less enthusing (and more laborious) than the initial design, as evident to any observer of synthetic biology “contests”….One is more likely to analyze a failure to the depth needed to learn from that failure if the goal is felt to be very important. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631074810001852
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11-15-2012 One key question concerns the precautionary principle: the idea that scientists should have to be pretty confident that their research won’t have any nasty, unintended consequences before they press ahead with it. Of course, the precautionary principle is rather unworkable in practice. ("Man is double-minded in all his ways." http://isciencemag.co.uk/blog/synthetic-biology-gm-all-over-again/
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