Jinn of Quality and Risk

A Japanese-Chilean research firm, BioSigma, reports new technology that uses bacteria to cheaply extract copper from low-grade ore. Chile's state-owned Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, holds two thirds of BioSigma and Japan's Nippon Mining & Metals Co. Ltd., Japan's biggest copper smelter, owns the other third. The company aims to develop bioleaching methods that are cheaper and cleaner than common smelting.

This is part of the inauguration of the Biotech Revolution. We are about to master bacteria and genes as surely as we mastered steam, electricity, and oil. 

Belmont Club: On June 21, 2004, Bert Rutan is going to attempt to put the privately-funded SpaceShipOne into sub-orbit. If he succeeds, individuals using only commercial resources —in principle anyone— will have achieved what the UK, France and Germany or Japan have not attained as nations. ... Atmospherically the event recalls nothing so much as Lindbergh's attempt to solo the Atlantic, as this poster perceptively suggests. In an age when bravery itself is suspect and achievement considered a kind of oppression; when every new technology is hedged around with anticipatory restrictions it is wonderful to know that some men at least would like nothing better than to rise on a column of fire toward the beckoning stars. For every successful flight of this nature slips not only the surly bonds of earth but also breaks hidebound modes of thinking. It departs not just from a place but from a time. It takes us not from where we ought to be, but to where we belong.