I have no overarching theme today. A bunch of interesting things came across my desk that are incoherent and chaotic. Not that my mind doesn't try. (Links are all below.)
Given its an election year, let's lead off with a lovely article on tactile illusions. Vincent Hayward has written an interesting article showing different sorts of these phenomena. What else are you going to do in a hardware store?
Some new bat fossils have been discovered that shed a bit of light on their evolution. Bats make up a fifth of all mammalian species. They are characterized by two fundamental features: All bats echolocate and all bats fly. Which came first? The evidence suggests flight came first. This seems likely to me if we also look at birds. Archeopteryx has teeth and fingers, neither feature being shared by modern birds. It makes sense that one single salient feature (flight) might have knock on repercussions.
There's a new carnivorous dino on the the block, a Carcharodontosaurids which is a group contemporary with they Tyrannosaurids that I find unpronounceable. My son, Ben, has a tooth.
Continuing on the theme of evolution, some genetic and fossil studies have shed light on the evolution of metazoans, organisms that are more than one cell. Sponges, kelp and human beings are all metazoans. The organism being sequenced is a choanoflagellate , a creature that shares characteristics with several different groups. The results are mixed.
Several articles on chimp thought and chimp behavior have surfaced. One study suggests that diet is a key difference between chimps and humans. Another pair of studies show that chimps use stone tools and have used stone tools for thousands of years. They don't do flint knapping but I wonder if they could be taught.
Climate change means more drought in the Western United States. There's a significant chance that Lake Mead will dry up in the near future (a decade or so) and a much greater chance it will dry up within fifty years as the Colorado reduces flow. Though we promised Mexico would get some of the Colorado water, it doesn't and likely won't in the future.
Orgasms are coming under scientific scrutiny as scientists try to titillate the brain. One doctor discovered an implanted electrical treatment can induce sexual pleasure. The discovery was an accident when, following administering the voltage, the female patient declared she wanted her husband to learn how to do that. The device has been patented and is now being marketed as the "Orgasmatron".
One study has declared that one million Iraqis have died under occupation. Iraq has a population of 27-- eh, 26 million.
-----------------------------
Links of Interest
Things to do in a Hardware Store
Bat Evolution. And here.
New dino in Africa
Metazoan Origins
Diet Differences between Chimps and Humans
Chimp Stone Age Tools. And Here.
No more Lake Mead
The Science of Orgasm
The Orgasmatron
1,000,000 Iraqi dead. And here.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Questionable Power of Language
I don't normally talk about writing. I think about it all the time. It's always on the back burner and pops up to the foreground probably more often than any employer would like. But I feel that talking about it is not doing it. I'd rather do it.
But a phrase came out of a recent workshop that stuck with me. In a critique of a story, one of the members said, "The story is the language [of the story]."
I think this is fiction writing's equivalent to Marshall McLuhan's, "The medium is the message." Which, I think, is an updated representation of Antonin Artaud's "Theater of Images".
Certainly, prose is the road on which a story rides. It is the enabling technology by which a story is represented to the reader. The prose must be strong enough to carry what the author wants to communicate to the reader: theme, characters, morality, whatever. But to make the prose the sole representation of that information puts more weight on language than it can bear.
Language is a coded medium. That is to say, unlike pictures or recordings, language does not directly convey imagery to the recipient; languages symbolizes it. Not to say that pictures and film and music and other things don't carry symbolic information. Of course, they do. But a picture is not a word and can never be a word. Therefore, language must cause the reader (or hearer) to create the image for themselves. Prose is the code but, like all good codes, the recipient must carry enough information to decode it.
For my own part, I can admire beautiful prose but often I also find it annoying. When I read a work of fiction, I'm interested in the characters, the plot, the narrative-- all those intangible things I must create from the coded medium of a story. One of the reasons protestant churches are often so plain is to not present a distraction from the goal: to become one with God. Similarly, admiring the fresco of the prose shouldn't interfere with my engagement with the divine within. To put it a different way: I love the sound and texture of Yoyo Ma's cello playing but where would he be without Bach?
Prose is also part fashion. We're in a nihilistic, post-modern period now. We don't read much. Many writers are not being read outside of academia: William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway , Zora Neale Hearst, and my favorite, John Dos Passos. Especially, John Dos Passos. Much of the material of Faulkner and Hemingway is at least still in print-- though without college courses and the resultant post-college culture, I think they would fade. Black Studies, thankfully, keeps Hearst's material alive. It's discouraging to consider list of works Dos Passos wrote and what's now available.
But what does keep them alive in the culture is not their fantastic prose but the stories that fantastic prose conveyed.
But a phrase came out of a recent workshop that stuck with me. In a critique of a story, one of the members said, "The story is the language [of the story]."
I think this is fiction writing's equivalent to Marshall McLuhan's, "The medium is the message." Which, I think, is an updated representation of Antonin Artaud's "Theater of Images".
Certainly, prose is the road on which a story rides. It is the enabling technology by which a story is represented to the reader. The prose must be strong enough to carry what the author wants to communicate to the reader: theme, characters, morality, whatever. But to make the prose the sole representation of that information puts more weight on language than it can bear.
Language is a coded medium. That is to say, unlike pictures or recordings, language does not directly convey imagery to the recipient; languages symbolizes it. Not to say that pictures and film and music and other things don't carry symbolic information. Of course, they do. But a picture is not a word and can never be a word. Therefore, language must cause the reader (or hearer) to create the image for themselves. Prose is the code but, like all good codes, the recipient must carry enough information to decode it.
For my own part, I can admire beautiful prose but often I also find it annoying. When I read a work of fiction, I'm interested in the characters, the plot, the narrative-- all those intangible things I must create from the coded medium of a story. One of the reasons protestant churches are often so plain is to not present a distraction from the goal: to become one with God. Similarly, admiring the fresco of the prose shouldn't interfere with my engagement with the divine within. To put it a different way: I love the sound and texture of Yoyo Ma's cello playing but where would he be without Bach?
Prose is also part fashion. We're in a nihilistic, post-modern period now. We don't read much. Many writers are not being read outside of academia: William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway , Zora Neale Hearst, and my favorite, John Dos Passos. Especially, John Dos Passos. Much of the material of Faulkner and Hemingway is at least still in print-- though without college courses and the resultant post-college culture, I think they would fade. Black Studies, thankfully, keeps Hearst's material alive. It's discouraging to consider list of works Dos Passos wrote and what's now available.
But what does keep them alive in the culture is not their fantastic prose but the stories that fantastic prose conveyed.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Safe Liberty
On 9/11 I left work after the second tower fell. I drove out to Northborough to the kindergarten where my son was, picked him up and took him home.
The next day I went back to work. Not much work was done, of course, but there was much conversation. One statement from my friend Steve went something like this: "If I have to give up my rights for the security of me and my family, so be it."
Steve was-- is, actually, just six years later-- a young man. He had a good job, a wonderful wife and a new baby in the house. I didn't fault him then and I don't fault him now for what he said. When I heard him I realized I was hearing the same conflict that has riven America since it was founded.
From the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Note the order here: Life, the security Steven was talking about, Liberty, our freedoms, and the distant third, the pursuit of happiness.
At the time, Jefferson was thinking about being jailed, tortured and hanged by the British so he was concerned about the oppression from another nation-state. But he wasn't thinking this was a safe bet. Liberty isn't something you can pursue so safely. Liberty is dangerous.
Recently, a murder plot was uncovered to kill Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists of the Mohammad cartoons that were so well received by the Muslim world a while back. The Danish newspapers responded to the arrests of the conspirators by reprinting the cartoons. Exercising liberty is dangerous.
Liberty, like forgiveness, isn't something intended for convenience. It doesn't just apply to the guys I like with the opinions I support. To support freedom doesn't mean succumbing to terrorism. But if it has value it will have cost. The wages of a free society means we take it on the chin sometimes. This is not good or to be welcomed. It is merely inevitable.
"Conservatism" should mean to conserve our principles. It's should not be a code word for security via tyranny, liberty for the wealthy and powerful and preservation of only those ideals with which we agree.
When 9/11 happened, George Bush said we should continue to live as Americans otherwise the terrorists would win. I agree. But I don't think living as Americans consists of making sure we keep shopping.
We will get hit again. By creating the training ground that is Iraq, Bush has made that a certainty. That the only solution he's been able to provide involves the cost of our liberty shows the paucity of his imagination and the imagination of his supporters. But even if we didn't have Iraq, Timothy McVeigh showed that it could happen here.
I'm not surprised. After all, that's what "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor" is all about.
------------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Toothpick Art
Compressed Air Car: Here, Here, Here.
Science Debate 2008
Why journalism fails.
Evolution vs Economics
Creation vs Evolution
PBS: The Question of God
Darwin Overview
Dinos Done In By Disease
Trunks Terminated By TB
Heat Harms Hadrosaurs
Lummoxes Lethalized by Lots of Lethalizers
Preposterous Posts by Popkes... Naah.
The next day I went back to work. Not much work was done, of course, but there was much conversation. One statement from my friend Steve went something like this: "If I have to give up my rights for the security of me and my family, so be it."
Steve was-- is, actually, just six years later-- a young man. He had a good job, a wonderful wife and a new baby in the house. I didn't fault him then and I don't fault him now for what he said. When I heard him I realized I was hearing the same conflict that has riven America since it was founded.
From the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Note the order here: Life, the security Steven was talking about, Liberty, our freedoms, and the distant third, the pursuit of happiness.
At the time, Jefferson was thinking about being jailed, tortured and hanged by the British so he was concerned about the oppression from another nation-state. But he wasn't thinking this was a safe bet. Liberty isn't something you can pursue so safely. Liberty is dangerous.
Recently, a murder plot was uncovered to kill Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists of the Mohammad cartoons that were so well received by the Muslim world a while back. The Danish newspapers responded to the arrests of the conspirators by reprinting the cartoons. Exercising liberty is dangerous.
Liberty, like forgiveness, isn't something intended for convenience. It doesn't just apply to the guys I like with the opinions I support. To support freedom doesn't mean succumbing to terrorism. But if it has value it will have cost. The wages of a free society means we take it on the chin sometimes. This is not good or to be welcomed. It is merely inevitable.
"Conservatism" should mean to conserve our principles. It's should not be a code word for security via tyranny, liberty for the wealthy and powerful and preservation of only those ideals with which we agree.
When 9/11 happened, George Bush said we should continue to live as Americans otherwise the terrorists would win. I agree. But I don't think living as Americans consists of making sure we keep shopping.
We will get hit again. By creating the training ground that is Iraq, Bush has made that a certainty. That the only solution he's been able to provide involves the cost of our liberty shows the paucity of his imagination and the imagination of his supporters. But even if we didn't have Iraq, Timothy McVeigh showed that it could happen here.
I'm not surprised. After all, that's what "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor" is all about.
------------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Toothpick Art
Compressed Air Car: Here, Here, Here.
Science Debate 2008
Why journalism fails.
Evolution vs Economics
Creation vs Evolution
PBS: The Question of God
Darwin Overview
Dinos Done In By Disease
Trunks Terminated By TB
Heat Harms Hadrosaurs
Lummoxes Lethalized by Lots of Lethalizers
Preposterous Posts by Popkes... Naah.
Back to the Dark Ages
I've been pretty silent on Creationism lately. I figured I'd pretty much heard both sides, commented on what I saw and left it there. Being an atheist, a Deity is not congruent with moral decision and Sunday becomes the second day of the weekend.
Until I discovered the Answers Research Journal, as nasty an anti-science rag that was ever spawned from human consciousness. It is a very pleasant, misleading and extremely hypocritical journal that purports to put up scientific, peer-reviewed journals in support of creationism.
Now, I don't particularly have a problem with fundamentalists per se. As I've said in previous posts, once you posit an all powerful God, there's no proof that we all didn't suddenly appear de novo about thirty seconds ago, universe and memories intact. Nor is there any proof we could not have just appeared, equally de novo, six thousand years ago, fossils and all. Through metaphysics and religion, all things are possible. I don't believe it but so what? Faith, or lack of it, has nothing to do with intellect.
But one must be consistent. If such a thing had happened, then the world was created as it is. Not how Creationists want the world to be. That means it was created with all of those nasty evolutionary relationships functioning and intact. That means that the DNA homology between humans and chimps was there at the beginning. The phylogenetic evidence of vertebrate history would be there as well. (Hey! Guess what! All mammals share the same bone structure. Surprise! Look! Most of the mammalian bones are homologs of reptiles! Wow!) In short, all of the evidence that scientists use to support evolution would be there on the morning of the seventh day-- or at least after the expulsion from Eden. I'm not willing to speculate on the DNA make up of animals before the introduction of sin into the world. But afterwards, they had the same DNA relationships they do now.
Enter the Creationist Lobby.
Not content to look at the world as it is, they try to make the world into what they think it should be. They try to blind themselves (and anyone else they can snag) to the evolutionary relationships right in front of their eyes.
I was at the Saint Louis Zoo a few years ago and they had a chimp with a rare disease. The disease caused all of the hair of the chimp to fall out. I came up on the exhibit so that the chimp was leaning forward, her head out of sight as she looked at the ground at something. All I could see was her back, shoulders and arms. The first thought I had was: what's a naked person doing in that cage? You could not tell that chimp was not human from that perspective. The kinship between us was undeniable.
Now, if you were a truly religious, thinking person, you could say something like, God has built us all according to His plan. Our kinship is obvious since we all have been built by the same Creator. When He created the world, according to His plan, it was one thing and it is incumbent on us to understand that Creation in order to understand His thoughts. We must look at the world as it is. Not as we, fallible children of Adam, would wish it to be.
But someone who was unscrupulously manipulating the gullible might instead say, there is no relationship between us and anything else. We were made last and singular. That the same physical forces that drive generators and light bulbs say the stars are many thousands of light years away is an evil lie perpetuated by evil scientists. That the same biological understanding that enables us to save premature babies and develop life saving drugs demonstrates evolutionary relationships is a story by God hating humanists bent on leading us from the true path.
This is not just fundamentalism. This is propaganda. This is the same mental bait and switch so beautifully characterized in 1984. Don't try to fight truth head on. Instead, change the frame of the debate. The Creationist Lobby as Big Brother.
I have no idea what the goals are of the Creationist Lobby-- except, possible indoctrination of the young, satisfaction of a constituency and the pursuit of power and wealth. As we know from Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, none of these people ever lost money doing this sort of thing.
What the Creationist Lobby is doing, and what I find so offensive, is trying to impress their own narrow definition of God onto the natural world. If God is infinite and nature is the expression of Him, then understanding the natural world on its terms is one of the highest forms of religious pursuit. Attempting to impress some tiny God onto nature is a level of arrogance I cannot stomach. People doing so show themselves to be insignificant in their thinking and trivial in their faith.
Pity so many people believe them.
Until I discovered the Answers Research Journal, as nasty an anti-science rag that was ever spawned from human consciousness. It is a very pleasant, misleading and extremely hypocritical journal that purports to put up scientific, peer-reviewed journals in support of creationism.
Now, I don't particularly have a problem with fundamentalists per se. As I've said in previous posts, once you posit an all powerful God, there's no proof that we all didn't suddenly appear de novo about thirty seconds ago, universe and memories intact. Nor is there any proof we could not have just appeared, equally de novo, six thousand years ago, fossils and all. Through metaphysics and religion, all things are possible. I don't believe it but so what? Faith, or lack of it, has nothing to do with intellect.
But one must be consistent. If such a thing had happened, then the world was created as it is. Not how Creationists want the world to be. That means it was created with all of those nasty evolutionary relationships functioning and intact. That means that the DNA homology between humans and chimps was there at the beginning. The phylogenetic evidence of vertebrate history would be there as well. (Hey! Guess what! All mammals share the same bone structure. Surprise! Look! Most of the mammalian bones are homologs of reptiles! Wow!) In short, all of the evidence that scientists use to support evolution would be there on the morning of the seventh day-- or at least after the expulsion from Eden. I'm not willing to speculate on the DNA make up of animals before the introduction of sin into the world. But afterwards, they had the same DNA relationships they do now.
Enter the Creationist Lobby.
Not content to look at the world as it is, they try to make the world into what they think it should be. They try to blind themselves (and anyone else they can snag) to the evolutionary relationships right in front of their eyes.
I was at the Saint Louis Zoo a few years ago and they had a chimp with a rare disease. The disease caused all of the hair of the chimp to fall out. I came up on the exhibit so that the chimp was leaning forward, her head out of sight as she looked at the ground at something. All I could see was her back, shoulders and arms. The first thought I had was: what's a naked person doing in that cage? You could not tell that chimp was not human from that perspective. The kinship between us was undeniable.
Now, if you were a truly religious, thinking person, you could say something like, God has built us all according to His plan. Our kinship is obvious since we all have been built by the same Creator. When He created the world, according to His plan, it was one thing and it is incumbent on us to understand that Creation in order to understand His thoughts. We must look at the world as it is. Not as we, fallible children of Adam, would wish it to be.
But someone who was unscrupulously manipulating the gullible might instead say, there is no relationship between us and anything else. We were made last and singular. That the same physical forces that drive generators and light bulbs say the stars are many thousands of light years away is an evil lie perpetuated by evil scientists. That the same biological understanding that enables us to save premature babies and develop life saving drugs demonstrates evolutionary relationships is a story by God hating humanists bent on leading us from the true path.
This is not just fundamentalism. This is propaganda. This is the same mental bait and switch so beautifully characterized in 1984. Don't try to fight truth head on. Instead, change the frame of the debate. The Creationist Lobby as Big Brother.
I have no idea what the goals are of the Creationist Lobby-- except, possible indoctrination of the young, satisfaction of a constituency and the pursuit of power and wealth. As we know from Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, none of these people ever lost money doing this sort of thing.
What the Creationist Lobby is doing, and what I find so offensive, is trying to impress their own narrow definition of God onto the natural world. If God is infinite and nature is the expression of Him, then understanding the natural world on its terms is one of the highest forms of religious pursuit. Attempting to impress some tiny God onto nature is a level of arrogance I cannot stomach. People doing so show themselves to be insignificant in their thinking and trivial in their faith.
Pity so many people believe them.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Exciting Days
These days the data on the natural world is getting pretty overwhelming. Recently, a missing link for crocodiles has been discovered, linking modern crocodiles to their ancestors. A new monkey species has been discovered.
There's even been an interesting synthesis between geology and biology recently, cross checking against one another. Geologists have inferred for a while that the oceans of ancient earth, some 3.5 billion years ago were hot ocean; an ocean around 60 degrees C. We're talking in excess of 120 degrees F-- hotter than your hot tub unless your hot tub is a Yellowstone hot pool. But, like a lot of scientific speculation, there's been some discussion of the matter.
Now, living systems have a protein (EF-Tu), essential for life, that is finely tuned to species temperature. Mammals are tuned to body temperature. Reptiles would be tuned lower. Temperate plant species tuned lower still. (One wonders if EF-Tu can be tuned dynamically so a tree can optimize replication throughout the spring-fall temperature range. But I digress.)
Scientists have reconstructed ancient bacterial EF-Tu (techniques in the link) and, surprise, it has an optimal temperature of 60 degrees C.
The same sort of analysis gives some more unhappy results as well. Analysis of biofuels suggest that they are anything but green. Think about it. If you take a forest, which is sequestering carbon, and cut it down to create a field to grow sugar cane, you lose the carbon sequestration ability of the forest. It takes time to make that up. Curiously, corn-- a biofuel of a particularly pale shade of green-- fares better than, say, palm oil. Corn has a huge carbon debt engendered when it is grown, harvested, etc. But at least a forest isn't being cut down to grow it.
Further analysis of the world shows us what goes on if we reach the infamous 6 degrees C-- last seen in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55 million years ago. This has been dramatized by National Geographic in a television show. Here's its website. 6C isn't going to be fun.
As Tank said in the Matrix: "These are very exciting times."
C.
There's even been an interesting synthesis between geology and biology recently, cross checking against one another. Geologists have inferred for a while that the oceans of ancient earth, some 3.5 billion years ago were hot ocean; an ocean around 60 degrees C. We're talking in excess of 120 degrees F-- hotter than your hot tub unless your hot tub is a Yellowstone hot pool. But, like a lot of scientific speculation, there's been some discussion of the matter.
Now, living systems have a protein (EF-Tu), essential for life, that is finely tuned to species temperature. Mammals are tuned to body temperature. Reptiles would be tuned lower. Temperate plant species tuned lower still. (One wonders if EF-Tu can be tuned dynamically so a tree can optimize replication throughout the spring-fall temperature range. But I digress.)
Scientists have reconstructed ancient bacterial EF-Tu (techniques in the link) and, surprise, it has an optimal temperature of 60 degrees C.
The same sort of analysis gives some more unhappy results as well. Analysis of biofuels suggest that they are anything but green. Think about it. If you take a forest, which is sequestering carbon, and cut it down to create a field to grow sugar cane, you lose the carbon sequestration ability of the forest. It takes time to make that up. Curiously, corn-- a biofuel of a particularly pale shade of green-- fares better than, say, palm oil. Corn has a huge carbon debt engendered when it is grown, harvested, etc. But at least a forest isn't being cut down to grow it.
Further analysis of the world shows us what goes on if we reach the infamous 6 degrees C-- last seen in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55 million years ago. This has been dramatized by National Geographic in a television show. Here's its website. 6C isn't going to be fun.
As Tank said in the Matrix: "These are very exciting times."
C.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Links of Interest
-------------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
TED Talks
Tierney Thys swims with sunfish
Janine Benyus - Sustainable Design Ideas from Nature
Susan Savage-Rumbaug - Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man
Jane Goodall - Chimps vs Humans
Links of Interest
TED Talks
Tierney Thys swims with sunfish
Janine Benyus - Sustainable Design Ideas from Nature
Susan Savage-Rumbaug - Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man
Jane Goodall - Chimps vs Humans
Sour Symbolism
We live in an era of symbolism. We swim in this sea so much that when something comes around in the real world we only know how to respond to it with symbols.
The European MPs have backed a ban on patio heaters. You know these things: a pole with a propane burner on top that radiates heat back down on you. The report suggests these patio heaters are putting as much CO2 out as a car over a year. I expect that's true if you ran it every day for a year. But I suspect these units were not in use during the heat waves in previous years. Or in Greece-- except maybe during that bizarre snowstorm. But people use their cars every day. IPatio heaters are and easy symbolic target. Who in the East End has a patio? Who in Italy needs to heat one?
Speaking of symbolic gestures, The Beatles "Across the Universe" is going to be beamed directly into space (and here) on February 4. This is to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the recording of that song and the 50th anniversary of the launching of Explorer I. Michael Griffin better get the cut of the alien royalties in writing. Apple has a history of stinginess. Here, boys, do this in lieu of something useful.
Nowhere is symbolism more rampant than sex and here are Gizmodo's 10 Most Blatantly Sexist Gadgets Ever Made. My favorite is the USB Pole Dancer. That's something I want on my desk.
Some symbols take over. Hello Kitty seems to have conquered the world. Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine talks about this at a recent TED conference. I mean, would you trust a God who has to show his face in a cheese sandwich?
We can even pull meaning and aesthetic satisfaction out of random noise-- or at least what is to us, random noise. Witness the pictures derived from JP Thivierge and the art from a petri dish of rat brain here in this article on neural networks.
Of course, none of these compare to the brandishing of symbols by political candidates. McCain bludgeons Romney with the Reagan stick. Romney pounds on McCain with the business club. Edwards couldn't make the populism symbols stick since he was caught between the Hammer of Historical Woman and the Anvil of Historical Black and they use their symbols to bludgeon each other. One wonders if in the political locker rooms if they compare symbol size.
Wait for the general election when things get really interesting. My friend Mark thinks McCain will twig to the ultimate symbolic soundbite: "First Obama, then Osama." You heard it here first.
Remember, reality's just a whisper away.
------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Real water problems because of climate change.
A real new species of elephant shrew.
Old age memory decline might really be reversible.
Stem cells my really repair eye damage.
Lips evolved. Really. Here are some ideas on that.
Companies don't really have to be evil.
Double dipping chips really carry bacteria.
Vaccines really don't cause autism.
The European MPs have backed a ban on patio heaters. You know these things: a pole with a propane burner on top that radiates heat back down on you. The report suggests these patio heaters are putting as much CO2 out as a car over a year. I expect that's true if you ran it every day for a year. But I suspect these units were not in use during the heat waves in previous years. Or in Greece-- except maybe during that bizarre snowstorm. But people use their cars every day. IPatio heaters are and easy symbolic target. Who in the East End has a patio? Who in Italy needs to heat one?
Speaking of symbolic gestures, The Beatles "Across the Universe" is going to be beamed directly into space (and here) on February 4. This is to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the recording of that song and the 50th anniversary of the launching of Explorer I. Michael Griffin better get the cut of the alien royalties in writing. Apple has a history of stinginess. Here, boys, do this in lieu of something useful.
Nowhere is symbolism more rampant than sex and here are Gizmodo's 10 Most Blatantly Sexist Gadgets Ever Made. My favorite is the USB Pole Dancer. That's something I want on my desk.
Some symbols take over. Hello Kitty seems to have conquered the world. Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine talks about this at a recent TED conference. I mean, would you trust a God who has to show his face in a cheese sandwich?
We can even pull meaning and aesthetic satisfaction out of random noise-- or at least what is to us, random noise. Witness the pictures derived from JP Thivierge and the art from a petri dish of rat brain here in this article on neural networks.
Of course, none of these compare to the brandishing of symbols by political candidates. McCain bludgeons Romney with the Reagan stick. Romney pounds on McCain with the business club. Edwards couldn't make the populism symbols stick since he was caught between the Hammer of Historical Woman and the Anvil of Historical Black and they use their symbols to bludgeon each other. One wonders if in the political locker rooms if they compare symbol size.
Wait for the general election when things get really interesting. My friend Mark thinks McCain will twig to the ultimate symbolic soundbite: "First Obama, then Osama." You heard it here first.
Remember, reality's just a whisper away.
------------------------------------------
Links of Interest
Real water problems because of climate change.
A real new species of elephant shrew.
Old age memory decline might really be reversible.
Stem cells my really repair eye damage.
Lips evolved. Really. Here are some ideas on that.
Companies don't really have to be evil.
Double dipping chips really carry bacteria.
Vaccines really don't cause autism.
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