While the technology isn’t nearly as versatile or as user-friendly as the science fiction dream, the implications include the potential to provide the things we need in much greener, less-centralized, less resource-intensive way. But, as with any new technology, there are also potential negative effects to balance the scales. Over the long run, the human imagination will no doubt concoct new uses that appear grotesque to us now but may make sense as the technology becomes ubiquitous and famiiar.

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As geeky as this may sound, it turns out that the problems inherent in making robot fish yield some of humanity's deepest questions: How did we get here? What (and where) is thought? How much can we trust the symbols (words, images, digital signals) that dominate our lives? Long's new book, "Darwin's Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology," is part Descartes, part MacGyver and part Douglas Adams, turning from rumination on the possibility of intelligence residing in a brainless body to tips on making artificial fish vertebrae out of coffee stirrers to the dopey yet endearing jokes that seem to flourish in laboratories all over the world.

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Hey, we always knew that associate professors were the best at something. And that something is being very, very creepy (and goatee'd).

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It tracks your gaze and figures out where you're looking on the screen. That means, among other things, that you can play a game where you burn up incoming asteroids with a laser that hits where you look.

In another demonstration this week, the computer scrolled a text on the screen in response to eye movements, sensing when the reader reached the end of the visible text.

In the future, a laptop like this could make the mouse cursor appear where you're looking, or make a game character maintain eye contact with you, according to Tobii Technology Inc., the Swedish firm that's behind the tracking technology.

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This follows on the heels of a UK judge bizarrely banning a 41-year-old man with a low IQ from having sex, and both cases have disability activists up in arms and tap into the long history of involuntary sterilization. Salon spoke with Doug Pet, senior program associate at the Center for Genetics and Society, a non-profit devoted to encouraging responsible use of reproductive technologies, in an attempt to untangle the complicated ethical issues raised by such rulings. 

What do you make of this latest case in the U.K.?

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"It's basically flashes of light that you have to translate in your brain, but it's amazing I can see anything at all," said Selby, a retired engineer in Coventry, central England.

More than a year ago, the 68-year-old had an artificial implant called the Argus II, made by U.S.-based company Second Sight, surgically inserted into his right eye. Dutch regulators are expected to decide within weeks on the company's request to market the device in the EU. If greenlighted, it would be the first artificial retina available for sale.

The implant works with a tiny video camera and transmitter in a pair of glasses and a small wireless computer.

The computer processes scenes captured by the camera and converts them into visual information in the form of an electronic signal that's sent to the implant. The device stimulates the retina's remaining healthy cells, causing them to relay the data to the optic nerve.

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It's just the kind of twist the masters of science fiction gloried in -- a scene as comfortable and familiar and apple-pie-American as a state fair, warped suddenly into the Twilight Zone with one deft flick. But this story isn't science fiction. It took place three weeks ago at the real Iowa State Fair. 17-year-old Tyler Faber, reports the Des Moines Register, son of David Faber, president of Trans Ova Genetics of Sioux Center, Iowa, took home the prize for "Doc," two years after winning exactly the same prize for "Wade." Doc is a clone of Wade. (Hat tip: Barry Estabrook's Politics of the Plate blog.)

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Cardinal Peter Turkson told Catholic News Service March 9 that he would urge an attitude of caution and further study of the possible negative effects of genetically engineered organisms.

Under Cardinal Turkson's predecessor, Cardinal Renato Martino, the justice and peace council sponsored several conferences on genetically modified food as a way to alleviate hunger in poor countries.

Agribusinesses and biotech industries that produce genetically modified organisms are justified in wanting to recoup the expenses laid out for research and development, and they have a right to want to make a profit from their work, said Cardinal Turkson, who took over the reins of the council in January.

But the issue becomes problematic when a company that controls the use of genetically modified seeds and crops is motivated more by profit than by "the declared desire to want to help feed humanity," he said.

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The Genentech lobbyists, who appear to be worth every cent the Bay Area biotech firm pays them, came up with two different position statements specially targeted to Republicans and Democrats, in reference to an amendment to the House healthcare bill recently passed by a razor-thin majority.

The Democrats emphasized the job creation aspect of the amendment.

Republicans opposed the bill, but praised a provision that would give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to approve generic versions of expensive biotechnology drugs, along the lines favored by brand-name companies like Genentech.

One important line repeated by at least two representatives: "I do believe the sections relating to the creation of a market for biosimilar products is one area of the bill that strikes the appropriate balance in providing lower cost options."

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Why is this significant? Because after a certain temperature, usually around 86 degrees Fahrenheit, corn yields drop dramatically. And even the most conservative mainstream climate scientist predictions about the effect of global warming include temperature rises that would hammer the corn-growing heartland of the United States.

These insights come from a fascinating new paper, "The Evolution of Heat Tolerance of Corn: Implications for Climate Change" by North Carolina State University's Michael J. Roberts, a professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University. The researchers take advantage of a 100 years of incredibly detailed information on corn yields and temperature records in Indiana, the third-largest corn-growing state in the U.S.

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Or at least that's one theory. Some researchers at Penn State, led by biologist Andrew Stephenson, set out to find out exactly what we can expect to happen as transgenic squash genes migrate into the wild. They planted mixed populations of transgenic and wild squash and recorded their susceptibility to various viral and bacterial pathogens over a three-year period. (Abstract of paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science here. Layman-friendly summary of research here.)

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(But first, a little blogosphere archeology. I was alerted to the story by a link from Mark Thoma to a Discover Magazine blog post titled "Will the Super-Rich Evolve Into a Different Species?" But Discovery attributed Saffo's comments to reporting by The Guardian while linking instead to a Telegraph story titled "Rich May 'Evolve Into a Different Species.'" The Telegraph, meanwhile, reported that Saffo's comments were made to the Sunday Times, whose story had the less sensationalist title "What's Your Place in the Brave New World?" And after following this trail, the quote marks that the Telegraph placed around "evolve into a different species" seem a trifle suspect, because it's the Times writer, Dominic Rushe, who uses the word, not Saffo.)

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In April 2008, the last time HTWW reviewed global herbicide pricing trends, Monsanto was raising RoundUp prices, sticking it to farmers. The reason? Both the cost of production and demand for weedkiller had risen sharply. Industrial production of glyphosate, the key ingredient in RoundUp, is highly energy intensive, and the commodity boom that pushed corn and other grain prices sky-high in 2008 had farmers hungry for as much weed-killer as they could get. Even though Monsanto's patent for RoundUp expired in 2000, paving the way for scores of Chinese generic glyphosate companies to enter the market, demand was still so high that Monsanto could cover its rising energy costs and still reap significant profits.

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By Mr. Toenniessen's calculation, about half the world's population goes to bed every night after consuming grain descended from one of the high-yield varieties developed by Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues of the Green Revolution.

There can be no doubt: Dr. Borlaug's signal contribution: breeding varieties of wheat and rice that could absorb the extra nitrogen provided by chemical fertilizer vastly expanded grain production in Latin America and Asia, saving hundreds of millions of people from starvation. It is an astonishing accomplishment, one of the great achievements of science in the twentieth century.

But as we plunge into the 21st century, we must ask ourselves, again and again: Is the Green Revolution sustainable? Borlaug himself noted that "If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species." It is one of modern science's great paradoxes that the population growth that made his breakthroughs such life-savers, also ensured even more population growth. And even putting aside the question of how many human life forms the planet can support, there's also the problem that the production of key components of synthetic fertilizer requires significant fossil fuel consumption. How long can that go on?

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Most of the focus on the newly invigorated antitrust division of the Department of Justice has centered on the possibility that the feds are taking a hard look at Google's domination of the online advertising market. My former colleague Farhad Manjoo does a great job of explaining why that's not a particularly smart idea. But for the foodies, organic and family farmers, and anti-GMO activists of the world, there's a far more provocative target at which to aim the antitrust cannon: the Roundup, GMO-corn and GMO-soybean king, Monsanto.

This is not idle speculation. On Aug. 7, Philip Weiser, a newly appointed deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division, gave an important speech in St. Louis, which just happens to be where Monsanto is based. The title of the speech: "Toward a Competition Policy Agenda for Agriculture Markets."

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It turns out the president cannot separate politics and science so easily. No sooner had Obama issued his order than conservative lawmakers in state legislatures began proposing new restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, ranging from criminal penalties to bans on state-level funding. In fact, Obama's decision has emboldened conservatives to increasingly link stem cell research to abortion. Far from conceding the issue, they are in it for the long haul.

But the stem cell battle is not just a high-profile clash of values. The dispute provides a sharp focus on how science may help reshape America. Several states have set aside billions of dollars to support stem cell research, and the new federal money Obama is promising will generally flow to those areas. That means states supporting stem cell research will experience an economic windfall while attracting highly educated technology workers who tend to vote Democratic. The more conservative states restricting stem cell research will attract fewer funds and fewer socially liberal voters. In short, a state's stem cell policy will influence electoral results and help determine whether a state turns red or blue.

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Herring argues that Asia and Europe see genetically modified organisms in starkly different contexts. In Europe, messing around with DNA is often seen as a crime against nature -- or as plot by multinational corporations to make all farmers their vassals. Or both.

But it's different in Asia.

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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its own "official" count on Friday, but that's little consolation -- the ADP survey has historically come in lower than the government total. And if the BLS declares that the U.S. lost 700,000 jobs in December, reports the Financial Times, that would be the worst number in 59 years.

However, after undershooting the government numbers in November, the ADP changed its methodology, so the past doesn't offer us too much guidance. Still, no wonder the markets are upset this morning, (The Dow was down 185 an hour after opening). On Wednesday, Time Warner announced it was writing off 25 billion worth of losses for the fourth quarter of 2008, citing a decline in advertising revenue for its cable operations, and Intel reported that fourth quarter revenue would decline 23 percent, due to slacking worldwide demand for semiconductors. Two other industrial giants, IBM and Alcoa, both announced imminent job cuts.

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Noting this letter, in which Pollan et al. suggested some potential appointees Obama could choose, I pointed out that they were fighting tradition, as “the job of agriculture secretary is often a token post for a Farm Belt politician, who presides over a department largely interested in the interests of agribusiness.”

Well, now Obama has chosen former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack for the post, about as Farm Belt politician as it gets. Here’s what Pollan told Salon about the appointment:

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Make no mistake, the biotechnology industry and big agribusiness corporations are mighty pleased with the prospect of Vilsack as Ag secretary. Grist's Tom Philpott notes that "in 2001, the Biotechnology Industry Organization named him 'governor of the year' for his 'support of the industry's economic growth and agricultural biotechnology research'" and that Vilsack has supported several measures reducing the power of local governments to regulate agribusiness operations. Philpott also points us to the Des Moines Register, which features a handful of illuminating quotes.

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