Small farmers, conscious consumers, and conservationists of all stripes are, at the very least, wary of genetically modified crops. They’re a wild, largely untested disruptor in already-fragile ecosystems that have gotten along just fine without any intrinsically-tinkered species. But that hesitancy doesn’t really hold water if there’s no ecosystem to begin with. Like on Mars, say.

Mars’ atmosphere boasts one-hundredth the density of Earth’s, which will pose a deadly radiation threat to any life that might ever try to inhabit it, including human colonists. According to Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh, “Any crew dispatched on the 18-to-30-month mission to Mars will face highly elevated risks of cancer, tissue degradation, bone density loss, brain damage, pharmaceutical spoilage, and other health threats.”

You could argue that, of course, humans didn’t evolve alongside the Martian landscape. But that’s just you muzzling your inner science-fiction geek. Why let a little thing like “near-inhospitability of a planet” crush our dreams of solar system stretching Manifest Destiny? That, suggests Cavanaugh, is where genetic engineering comes in.

Human enhancement—creating a pre-adapted colonist—may be the only way to survive the initially hostile terrain of other planets. Which only makes sense for an intelligent, multi-planetary species. “A future for humans on Mars,” writes Cavanaugh, “requires us to clear a conceptual hurdle, to accept that the human form is not a norm or an ideal or even a default. It’s how intelligent life adapted, with many inefficiencies, to a particular place.”

Some scientific inquiry, according to Cavanaugh’s reporting, is already brewing to develop organisms suited for life on Mars. He spoke to Peter H. Diamandis, the CEO of the X Prize Foundation, about various privately-funded ventures for interplanetary travel. “There’s no question,” Diamandis said,

that we will soon be in a position to genetically develop specific strains of bacteria and perhaps algae that can live under Martian conditions. The X Prize has been looking at a $1 million competition [for] the first team to adapt an Earth-based single-cell life form that can grow under the pressure, temperature, and atmospheric CO₂ levels of Mars.

This seems like a necessary arena of scientific study to explore if we wish to boldly go where no genetically modified human has gone before.

Source: Reason (not yet available online) 

Image by NASA Goddard, licensed under Creative Commons. 

As Internet users, we all skim above the surface of programming code. It’s a language that we interact with on a constant basis, yet, like tourists in a far-flung locale, most of us never learn to speak it. But code is slowly becoming an element of many of our careers. I find myself diving into HTML many times a day (twice to write this blog post, even).

A new Internet startup called Code Academy is trying to prepare the programming-illiterate for their impending techno-savvy future. They’ve developed Code Year, a free web-based education course that teaches the elements of coding—from the fundamentals to the nitty-gritty details—over the duration of one year. The organization claims that, if you stick with their lessons, you should be able to write a basic video game or build a website at the end of 12 months. “Make my own video game?” I thought as I read about Code Year. “That’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was, geez, 10 years old.”

Liz Dwyer, the education editor of Good, did a nice job of explaining the interface of the course. I’ll defer to her example:

“Hey! Let’s get to know each other. What’s your name?” the prompt asks, instructing you to type your name with quotation marks around it, then press enter. Within a minute, you’ve learned enough code to ask the program to tell you how many letters are in your name and do basic math problems. The program even awards badges to keep participants motivated and allows you to tweet your coding achievements.

As technology and software continues to advance, digital literacy will be absolutely crucial if you want a career in, well, any field. It’s time to start speaking a new language.

Source: Good 

Image by derekGavey, licensed under Creative Commons.