1) Scientists Look to DNA for Data Storage

It seems counter-intuitive that the best tool for storing the mountains of data generated by today’s digital age comes from nature, but that is what scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute are using DNA for.

Scientists at the institute were able to extract and translate data stored in man-made DNA with 100 percent accuracy.  While current technology for storing information has come a long way in the past few decades, DNA could prove to be a superior alternative.  One gram of DNA has the potential to hold the data equivalent to one million CDs, while storing that information for hundreds of thousands of years.  Considering nature has been perfecting data storage in DNA for billions of years, the leap from digital to DNA storage is tremendously more efficient and effective one.  While this success in the bioinformatics field is significant, there are still plenty of hurdles before DNA can be used for commercial data storage.

2) Go to Trial: Crash the System

It seems counter-intuitive that a judicial system wouldn’t be able to handle people demanding a trial, but if people refuse plea bargains, it may well do so.

Susan Burton is helping previously incarcerated citizens regain all of their basic civil rights.  She argues that the mass refusal of plea deals would force the judicial system to have trials of all the accused, and if there are enough accused, there wouldn’t be enough judges and attorney’s to hold all of the trials.  Over 90 percent of all criminal cases never go to trial, and instead end with plea deals and the forfeit of constitutional rights.  The shift towards plea deals comes from the harsh laws on crime in the US and the supreme court’s upholding of prosecutors able to threaten harsh punishments for minor crimes.  By simply exercising constitutional rights, the US judicial system could crash under the 90 percent of crimes that never go to trial.

3) Happiness cannot be pursued It must ensue

It seems counter-intuitive that sacrificing happiness can give more meaning to life than pursuing it.  Viktor Frankl, a well-known psychiatrist who survived Nazi concentration camps from WWII, found meaning in life while in the camps.  He believed that having a reason to live stems from ones idea of what life expects of them in the future.  Today’s culture is not centered around meaning in life, as much as finding individual happiness.  Frankl argued that happiness cannot be pursued because one had to have a reason to remain happy.

Psychological scientists found that being happy is about feeling good and lacking stress.  A lifestyle of “taking” was typically found to be a happier one.  People who have found meaning in life are usually giving and make sacrifices to happiness in order to benefit others.  The meaning derived from a selfless lifestyle comes from the sacrifice to something greater than oneself.  While happiness is temporary and fades, meaning lasts in life through the past and future.  Frankl ultimately chose meaning in life when he decided  to help his parents and other people in the concentration camps rather than travel to the US for his pursuit of happiness.  He found that the more you give yourself to another person or cause to find meaning in life, the more human you are.