Question

What would have been Immanuel Kant's view on the ethics of cloning?

We can be confident he would not have said, "Ah, so long as it turns out to have medical uses. It is good to help people after all. Necessary means to that end."

Kant is the Arch-deontologist. Begin there.

Can we go any further?

Cellulosic ethanol

Haven't we been here before? Ah, well.

The latest claim of a breakthrough in the development of cellulosic ethanol comes from Denmark. Two competing enzyme producers said this week that they have a product that turns straw into fuel, in a way that will allow for commercial production in about a year. Genencor, a division of Danisco, announced Accellerase DUET on Monday. But then a rival in the same country, Novozymes AS, said on Tuesday something to the effect of "we can do that too!"

Straw, that is, instead of corn. If fuel can be obtained from straw or other non-foodstuffs in a commercially practicable way that doesn't rely upon government redirection of funds from elsewhere: that will be a great move forward for the sustainability of our civilization, and for our ability to live in peace with one another.

It will vindicate Rumplestiltski's old aspiration to find a seamstress who could turn, or strictly spin, straw into gold. Now I hear the themesong from "The Beverly Hillbillies" in my head. Black gold, Texas tea. But of course one good thing about this is that it would discomfort some of the billionaires who made their money roughly the way the Clampetts did.

Yet such breakthrough announcements have come to nothing before, so it is difficult to avoid cynicism about this one.

Block Island

I was on Block Island, Rhode Island, for most of Wednesday of this week and the start of Thursday.

I have through most of my life been utterly defiant of the sun and its skin-ravaging powers. Bring it on! Accordingly, I have gotten sunburnt a lot.

Yet advancing age brings caution. I actually bought sunscreen in advance of this trip. SPF 50. Or is it PDF 50? No, that has to do with computer files. I was right the first time. Anyway, with the help of SPF 50 I braved the sun, did a good bit of walking about in the daylight, and had a little beach time, without untoward incident.

You don't care? Well ... I don't say that you should. I suppose that I could come up with a profound lesson. Something about how the harmful effects of UV radiation are an example of he more general fact of our human vulnerability to the elements, and about how although technology (easy travel to beach sites, the formulation of sun screen itself) changes the terms of the vulnerability, nothing really changes the fact.

But you still likely wouldn't care. So I'll just remind you that this is a blog. Moreover, it is my blog. I don't care that you don't care. Try back tomorrow and maybe, just maybe, there will be something you might care a smidge about.

Marconi's demonstration

Today is the anniversary of a foundational event in the development of mass media of communication.

On October 16, 1899, 109 years ago, Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated his new wireless telegraph, what we call radio.

All radio could transmit at that time were the dots and dashes of telegraphy. Still, it was a marvel. And that first use, in the demonstration of October 1899, broadcast yacht racing results. He broadcast from Sandy Hook, Long Island, and the bulletins were received in Herald Square, New York City.

So give some thought to Mr. Marconi this day. And give some thought, too, while your thoughts are telegraphic, to Jack Phillips, the wireless operator who went down with the Titanic thirteen years later.

As the ship foundered, and as the captain knew the end was near, he released Phillips from his duty. A lesser man might have headed for the deck and the hope of a space on the rapidly-filling lifeboats. Phillips stayed in his seat, above and beyond the call of duty, and kept sending out the distress call until the ship's engines failed and there was no power with which to transmit.

All the lifeboats were gone by then.

Phillips' sacrifice has become myth-incrusted. Phillips was NOT, in fact, the first wireless operator to use the SOS call. The call had been proposed by a conference in Berlin in 1906, and adopted by Great Britain in 1908. The myth-busting website Snopes covers the general subject with its usual thoroughness. It documents seven examples of ships that sent out SOS calls between 1908 and April of 1912.

But the fact remains: Phillips did start the evening by sending out the older CQD call, later switching to the new-fangled SOS.

So when you toast Marconi and the invention of the wireless, make sure that whatever you're drinking is neat. No ice. Phillips would prefer it that way.

One Million

Toyota recently announced that it's passed the 1 million mark in the sale of hybrid vehicles worldwide.

Such nice big round numbers sometimes have psychological significance, and perhaps this marks a threshold, where the hybrid is no longer an innovation, but a normal part of the auto markets.

Of course, Toyota is no longer alone in bringing them to us, although Detroit still seems rather clumsy in this matter. The real challenge to Toyota in the hybrid end of the market is from another japanese giant, Honda. Here's the URL for an enthusiastic assessment (by a Brit, Steve Nelson) of the latest from Honda.

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/display.var.1543980.0.0.php

And here's a discussion of the differences between the two Japanese corporation's approaches in this area.

http://www.vicnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=36&cat=46&id=1021078&more=0

To my tastes, frankly, that second article, from a paper in British Columbia, Canada, sounds a bit too patly partisan, as if the reporter was simply putting his own name to a Honda hand-out. Still, I'm in no position out of my own technological ignorance to argue with it.