Archives for May 2021

“Divine” Advice

A team of scientists based in London deleted a gene from twenty-five human embryos using the gene editing CRISPR (an acronym for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”). Within two weeks they were alarmed to discover numerous unintended edits which would likely lead to birth defects and even cancer later in life. They were all killed immediately.

Yard Sale Bonanza

A 20,623% return on your investment, in less than a year?! That’s what a person in New Haven, CT, stumbled upon at a garage sale. 

The ^$35 purchase of a blue and white porcelain lotus bowl was later sold at auction by Sotheby’s for ^$721,800. It turned out to be a rare (one of only seven known) and valuable fifteenth-century Chinese artifact from the Ming Dynasty.   

Source: World Magazine, 04.10.21 Volume 36, Number 7, p. 18

A First

In a recent survey, the Pew Research Center reported that only 49% of millennials in the U.S. identify as Christian, making them the first non-majority-Christian generation in American history.   

Source: World Magazine, 11.09.19 Volume 34, Number 21, p.11

One More Race

Kane Tanaka, currently the world’s oldest human at 118, is scheduled to carry the Olympic torch ahead of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Understandably, she will do most of her route in a wheelchair but is determined to walk at least part of it.

Appropriately, the family gave her a new pair of sneakers at her last birthday. The title for the oldest person ever to live (not counting Bible characters) belonged to a French woman who lived to 122.   

Source: World Magazine, 04.10.21 Volume 36, Number 7, p. 18