Last year a new genetic engineering technology called CRISPR - Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats - showed up on my radar at a local conference. Long story short, CRISPR is a highly precise technique for editing DNA in situ which follows from the discovery of short sequences of DNA which allow for precise location of individual genes. It's a fascinating technology; there are even tutorials (archived copy, just in case) online for developing your own guide RNA to implement CRISPR/Cas9. What you might not have known is that CRISPR/Cas9 is being actively studied as a theraputic technique in humans …

For the past couple of weeks, my weekends have been busy enough that there hasn't been much of interest to write about. Not that they weren't interesting interesting, but to be frank talking about driving around all over the place running errands, going to appointments, and things like that doesn't make for terribly gripping reading. This weekend, however, stands out in memory because it was the first really laid back weekend that we'd had in a long while.

On Friday night Lyssa and I went shopping to get the stuff to make a lamb stew, some of which we'd be …