In its early years, biotech company Amyris described itself as a start-up “applying its proprietary breakthrough technologies to address major global health and energy challenges.”
Its originally planned to make an anti-malaria drug, as well as renewable diesel and jet fuel, by feeding sugar to genetically-engineered microorganisms. Having spun off the anti-malaria technology to another company in 2008, yesterday Amyris said it’s giving up making fuels too. Instead, it will to focus on higher value products, such as moisturizers for cosmetics.
The company learnt first hand just how difficult it is to achieve the kind of yields seen in lab tests in large-scale production. In an update call for investors, CEO John Melo said he is “humbled by the lessons we have learned.”
Pharma Shrugs
Supply of a Cancer Drug May Run Out Within Weeks. “A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.
[…]
Thank goodness President Obama is on the case, issuing executive orders! But the existence of any kind of shortage in a market-driven economy should make one’s nose twinkle. One drug shortage might be some kind of freakish anomaly, but 180 crucial drug shortages?
Manning Centre Networking Conference
Canada’s largest conservative event of its kind. March 8 – 10th in Ottawa.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Now, the Obama Administration has, by executive fiat, determined that a private company must give away its services to a class of people it (“The Administration”) has determined should get these services.
Going back to our California example, what is to stop the Federal Department of Energy from requiring auto insurers to provide no-cost insurance to anyone driving a car running on electricity, natural gas, or bio-diesel – to promote the use of those vehicles.
For that matter, what’s to prevent the U.S. Government from telling GM (which still owes us about $25 billion) they need to provide small, fuel efficient cars to people who cannot otherwise afford them, but live in areas that have limited public transportation?
I don’t understand where that authority comes from. But it worries me, very much.
This occurred to me, too – It’s almost as if Stephanopoulos got the memo first.
h/t Dave
Not Waiting For The Asteroid
Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations
Support Greenpeace. For The Children.
Reader Tips
Tonight we take a three-minute-and-nine-second respite from anger, violence, uncertainty, strife, and woe, as we listen to Alabama-born gospel powerhouse Dorothy Love Coates belting out the uplifting All Over This World.
Okay, time’s up. The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Now is the Time at SDA When We Juxtapose
1984-01-22 – Apple releases it’s infamous ‘1984’ TV advertisement
2012-01-16 – Michigan elementary school students receive their Obama indoctrination
Yellow
It’s the new white.
I Miss W.
“So wait, that can’t mean Bush was right when he basically said Bin Laden wasn’t that important anymore, right?”
Those Moderate Muslims!
Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport “following a request made to us by Interpol” the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.
Kashgari, a newspaper columnist, fled Saudi Arabia after posting a tweet on the prophet’s birthday that sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. The posting, which was later deleted, read: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you … I will not pray for you.”
More than 13,000 people joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”.
By Special Request
Hey dhimmi, keep it down:
A Muslim activist group with links to the Muslim Brotherhood has asked the British government to restrict the way the British media reports about Muslims and Islam…
Yeah, right, as if that would ever hap….
Lord Justice Leveson expressed sympathy for Bunglawala’s plea and said that any government regulation of the British media would have to extend to the Internet and include blogs, so as to ensure a “level playing field” between print and online media.
Lord Hunt, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, a self-regulatory body which deals with complaints about the editorial content of newspapers and magazines, recently said he is looking into the idea of regulating bloggers and online publications. According to him, “at the moment, it [the Internet] is like the Wild West out there. We need to appoint a sheriff.”
Lord Hunt would invite bloggers on current affairs to voluntarily agree to regulation. They would receive a seal-of-approval rating…
The article at the Stonegate Institute notes that Inayat Bunglawala, the Muslim activist who testified in favour of press restrictions, and who “strongly objects to the use of the phrase ‘Islamic terrorism'”, once described Osama bin Laden as a “freedom fighter for…Muslims in Britain” and praised the courage of Omar Abdul-Rahman, the ringleader of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Reader Tips
Years ago my brother and I were riding in the back seat of our dad’s car listening to a local radio station when a comedy routine about a pitch-and-tempo-challenged singer giving it the old college try made us laugh ourselves sick. It wasn’t until years later that we realized that what we’d thought was a world-class piece of comedic satire was in fact an actual hit song, recorded by a reluctant and insecure young non-singer who had been plucked off the streets of Philadelphia and thrust into the spotlight by talent scouts searching for an attractive teen idol, vocal talent be damned. Here it is, for your weekend listening pleasure: Fabian’s 1959 smash hit Turn Me Loose.
I know, it’s not that bad, but it still makes me laugh.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Whitney Houston, Dead At 48
Well, nobody saw that coming.
Tony Blair’s Britain
A North Carolina Father Responds to His Ungrateful Daughter
Tommy Jordan, a North Carolina father of a 15 year old daughter, was not pleased with what she had to say on Facebook. So he made a video (mild language warning but well worth watching) :
More here
Ethical Oil VS Forest Ethics
“Please try to use your own words to make sure the panel considers each comment individually.”
Here’s Jonny Cat!
h/t Larry T.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
“The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance.”
So Long, Alberta
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
SDA Editorial Board, December 11th, 2011 – Let this serve as a warning to conservative parties everywhere: that which the left cannot defeat, they will infiltrate.
National Post Editorial Board, February 10th, 2012 – Alberta’s first NDP budget