Networked Bacteria

Three days before the election, time to write down my election predictions.

2008-11-02T08:33:00.001-06:00

Based upon what I have seen of the polls, campaigns and futures market actions of the 2008 presidential election, my predictions of the events of election night are thus,

-- The Democratic party candidates will win the election with room to spare, by at least 5 million popular votes and at least 100 electoral college votes.

-- The election will be called correctly by at least three mainstream 24-hour newsmedia channels before the polls close in the Mountain time zone.

-- There will be multiple allegations of vote fraud in the battleground states; they will ultimately not be sufficient in quantity of affected voters to question the validity of the president-elect.

-- News of vote fraud will be made public faster and more broadly than in any previous election, thanks in part to the advent of popular online video and netroots movements to place videographers at polling stations.

-- The Republican Party candidates will not concede the election before polls close in the Pacific time zone.

-- The Democratic Party will gain at least 7 seats in the Senate, and 25 in the House of Representatives.

Those being my predictions, I'd like to close by noting that the concept of predicting the future with certainty is folly as a claim to knowledge of the outcomes of future events is nothing more than sentiment with no value farther than interest on an “I told you so” or on an embarrassing retraction depending on its accuracy. Futurism is not about making quantifiable predictions like some fortune-teller, but rather to develop likely scenarios of potential future events in order that they can be prepared for. The predictions I make today are of little use in this respect, other than pointing out a few interesting topics to follow in the news on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008.

-Craig Blaylock
10:06:24 PM 11/01/08

Tired of this connection.

2008-08-24T12:40:00.002-06:00

Ever since I moved into this apartment, I've gotten my internet connection through a DSL provider called Speakeasy. Their customer service is awesome, and the price quite reasonable what with me being so far out of their usual service area.

The problem I have, though, is the actual connection. It's quite stable, but I'm only getting up to 1.5 down /.386 up. I wanted to get a faster line from them, but I'm too far from the local CO to get any better DSL. So I started having a look at my options.

Cable. Seems like a good upgrade, since my apartment is already wired. But the only provider that serves the area is Comcast. The monthly charge for a 3.0/1.5 connection is fair, but there's no way I'm going to pay roughly $130 in startup and installation fees when the wiring is already there.

As for fiber optics, there's two choices on the market. AT&T's U-Verse, and Verizon FiOS. Verizon's got the better service, 20/20 for $70 a month. and I'd be willing to pay the fees to get a fiber line that quick installed. Too bad it's not availible in Houston. Every other metropolitan area in Texas, but not Houston.

Which leaves AT&T. They can give up to 10/1.5, and that'd be alright with me. But according to FCC regulations, I'd have to cancel my current DSL subscription and wait a week before I could actually sign for a new ISP. When did that happen? I can't go withoout a connection for a week.

I guess I'll wait another six months, hope Obama gets elected, and that his plan to improve the poor state of the American telecommunications industry works.

On the movements of society

2008-08-20T23:50:00.004-06:00

I just finished off a good two hours of sorting and pruning my way through my subscribed feeds.

Though I get the same satisfaction with this that someone with more botanic tastes might find in tending to a bonsai tree, it strikes me how small my ability to absorb and process information is when compared to the enormity of the blogosphere. Most of the opinions and writings available online are like my blog; a few (if any) regular readers, with the general focus being either something personal, or something that already happened somewhere else in the blogosphere.

Personal inadequacy and fury at the inane-echo-chamber effect aside, every time I sit down in front of a keyboard I'm humbled at the sheer diversity of material just a short, magical hand-gesture out of sight. Since the internet went mainstream (1995 or so), it's gone from being something of a gimmick to an indispensable part of modern life.

That's only 13 years. 13 years took us from having to go to the local library to access a tiny fraction of the world's information, to having nearly all of it accessible just about anywhere within a few thousand miles of the entire planet almost all the time.

This is a big change for us as a species. This is bigger than Television, Telephone, or Telegram. It's more game-changing than Aeroplane, Automobile, or Locomotive. This is a change to society at least as volatile as the Printing Press, as innovative as Written Language, and getting right up there with Fire and Speech to compete for most important invention ever.

And it's only been around for 13 years. A system that's been running for 13 years without a single minute of global downtime. Kevin Kelly wasn't kidding when he said that it was the single most reliable machine humans have ever built.

People like to talk about revolutions. There was the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution; and they like to say that we're living in another one, the Information Revolution. I like to tell those people that they haven't seen anything yet. In these previous revolutions, it took generations for both people and society to adapt to the new structure of life. People today who have never seen the world without the web are still in middle school.

These are the kids that will truly start exploring the possibilities in an interconnected civilisation.

Re: The Metal in my Finger.

2008-08-17T19:46:00.002-06:00

So I've been needing to do this post for a while now, but I've been as lazy as I usually am. I suppose I'll start at the beginning.

A while back, 2004 I think, a body modification artist named Shannon Larratt filed a report with the Internets detailing the totally awesome new thing his friends Steve Harworth and Jesse Jarrel figured out how to do. After a period of healing, a tiny, but powerful magnet implanted near the sensitive nerves beneath the skin of a finger provides an entirely new sensation; the ability to feel magnetic fields. Naturally, the transhumanist and body-mod communities went crazy over this new thing. But thanks to the restraint of the artists, only a dozen or so people got the experimental new implant.

A few months later, things started to go bad. The silicone coating used to protect the Neodymium magnets from the body (and vice-versa) breached. Though various factors were involved, the general consensus is that the coating was too thin and often applied unevenly; thus the first experiment in the field was brought to a close. Although I didn't hear about it until recently, it turns out one of those original subjects had their magnet coated in titanium rather than silicone. His magnet is doing just fine.

Anyways; I relayed this story to a friend of mine, Nathan Roseborough, sometime during 2007. He was immediately facinated by the idea. His blog, http://feelingwaves.blogspot.com details the following events in more detail. In short: we did our research, discovered another protective coating material, contracted the manufacture of some new implants, and then dove right in.

In April, 2008, Nate got his first magnet implanted. This first attempt didn't turn out so well, as the healing entry wound pushed the magnet out. The second try happened in May, and was accompanied with a small stitch to heal the wound closed. After a few months of watching to see if he developed any complications, I decided it was time for my own.

In June, Nate and I selected a sterile magnet from the small collection and went to see Kieran, the Piercer at 713Tattoos on Westheimer. Kieran is the same person who installed Nate's magnet, and he has been getting better with each implantation. I'll leave out the gory details, but the process hurt less than I thought it would; stitch included.

I got my first bit of sensation the very next day when was going to warm up some water for a salt bath to help heal the wound. As the microwave clicked on there was a small but intense buzzing feeling in my finger, noticable over the slight throbbing. It really is impossible to describe the sensation as I moved my hand around the microwave to feel the subtle gradations of the field generated by the magnetron and transformer inside.

It's been about two months; and while sensation hasn't improved too much, there are always new things that surprize me. Sometimes while using my laptop, I'll find my hand wandering over the keyboard to explore the little clicks and buzzes coming from inside the device. Power supplies all taste a little different, but the 60Hz flux is nearly as familiar as my own hand.

What I did today...

2008-07-25T17:47:00.004-06:00

Today, I discovered an Essay contest on Dr. Steel's forum for Toy Soldiers, the members of his army of fun.

I didn't have much else to do, and the subject seemed fun, so I figured I'd throw my hat into the ring (Though the prize is an embroidered scarf... not much call for those in Texas). The topic for the essay was to put down at least 500 words about our personal view of what a Utopian Playland should look like.

For those that don't know, Dr. Steel is a mad scientist bent on ruling the world with his Army of Toy Soldiers, fighting against philosophies of hate and fear to build a new world where Fun is the top priority, a world he calls a Utopian Playland.

Anyways, here's my entry.

Utopian Playland Essay
By Toy Soldier Continuity Gradient (Aka, Craig Blaylock)

Dr. Steel's philosophy of a Utopian Playland starts and ends with fun.

Through the use of fun, we, the Toy Soldiers in his army, seek to change the world for the better; Culminating in the creation of the Utopian Playland of lore. The question, then, is what exactly a Utopian Playland looks like. Here is my vision.

From a distance, the daylight side of Earth looks much the same. The oceans perhaps a little bluer, the land a little greener, Antarctica and the Arctic Circle a little more pristine in their shimmering whiteness. Twelve timezones away, the face of earth is much different. The former sprinkling of stars across the human settlements on the face of the planet exploding in a carnival of lights that bathes the night sky in a blanket of twisting, swirling aurorae. The clean earth and iridescent night sky are only the first step, promoting happiness by alleviating the fear of environmental decay and the shadows of night. In the right light, you might be able to catch a glimpse of slender threads reaching out from the equator; a ring of orbital elevators giving Humanity room to grow beyond this singular orb in space.

Zooming in a little closer, we find that the bustling cities, packed highways and choked sea-lanes have vanished. Commerce and urban life have moved underground to free up the land. America, an example formerly scarred with a spider's web of interstates, is now a pristine parkland sprawling from sea to shining sea. Those that visit or live on the surface are nomadic, wandering wherever the whim takes them. Their needs fulfilled by compact fabricating machines that produce whatever they need with the materials at hand, then recycle them whenever it's time to go see the next natural wonder of the Earth.

A hundred feet beneath the surface of the planet and honeycombed throughout the crust, humanity lives and plays through billions of miles of tunnels and underground cities. The People of Earth gave over their paltry half-million square kilometers of surface area to populate the sixteen average kilometer depth beneath. Deep down near the mantle, giant fabbers siphon off geothermal energy and liquid rock to supply billions of people with whatever they need through a massive network of vacuum tubes from as wide as a bus to as small as a letter. People can travel through these as well in capsules with life-support, and can move at many times the speed of sound because of the lack of atmosphere in the tunnels. Specially designed fabbers devour rock to build tunnels, leaving behind structural supports and housing in their wake. With futuristic technologies in place, these tunnels and houses can be almost whatever the residents want them to be; sunny tree-lined streets for homes, toyshops, and theaters dug into the earth's crust.

With all their basic needs met and their material desires provided for, Humanity's greatest threat is now boredom. Fortunately, Mankind is a diverse lot and the production of amusement is now the world's largest industry. The population is much larger than the paltry six billion that were crammed together on the surface, and so there are enough people to fill every niche market for curious entertainment. One of the more popular fads is the manipulation of the human body, and a corps of dedicated scientists and engineers gladly donate their free time exploring the human genome and finding out how to tweak it in amusing ways. A stroll down a busy street in this underground metropolis would feel much like wandering through a contemporary convention of sideshow attractions, yet as friendly as a sci-fi convention of that same era as things such as racism and body-chauvanism dissapear when you can spend every other week as something new and different.

No more fear or hate. Nothing to do but explore and have fun. This, to me, is an ideal Utopian Playland.

It's been too long, again.

2008-07-23T21:41:00.006-06:00

Almost three months since my last post. You might have just been thinking I'd dropped off the map if you haven't been following any of my other feeds. (Which is unlikely, as the homepage of this blog has a window of shared items from my reading.)

A little update on my status for those who only have contact with me via this blog. Yeah, that's all of Zero people out there, but this is for the sake of continuity and my own sick amusement.

In the last three months: I've received the best grade I've gotten at the end of a semester since they started dividing my school years into semesters, had an eye exam (first one since 2005 I think) and subsequently started wearing contacts (pictures will go up on my Picasa as I get them), searched for, found, and quit a job, spent a month slacking off and trying to minimize my financial output, finally saw the Avatar finale, grown ever more obsessed with RSS in all it's succulent goodness, found not one but three writers to obsess over, got my finger jabbed and a magnet installed (My first functional body mod, good stuff. I'll write more about it later), re-read Transmetropolitan twice and become the fan of no less than three separate mad scientists. More on those after some more background.

At the moment, I'm sitting in a rather comfortable, if frustratingly non-massaging, recliner at my Mom's house. My Mother, as well as all the other family members that inhabit/regularly visit the 80 acre midland Texas compound that is the Cox family land, is off on vacation in California. As happened last year, I have been tasked with house-sitting, plant-watering, and dog-taking-care-of. This is all well and good, except for a few limitations that the property has. One; it's about as far as you can go from civilization without leaving the continental USA. Two; the nearest city, Buffalo, is roughly equidistant from both Dallas and Houston. Meaning I am quite litterally in the middle of nowhere. Three; The internet connection here is a marvel of the modern age. Satellite internet. I have no open incoming ports, a bandwidth that fluctuates between a quarter of a DSL link and a 4400 baud modem, and annoyingly frequent service outages due to passing clouds. And Four; I have five animals and about two solid acres of plants to tend to.

So internet video is mostly out, torrents don't run at all unless I shut down my IM client to free up a few decabits of bandwidth, and most of my time is spent making sure nothing around me dies. Needless to say, I've had a lot of time to think and a poor internet connection keeping me from keeping up with my feeds. Instead, I've wandered through some old backlogs, some low-bandwidth browsing of websites and forums, and I've started to make some connections re: mad scientists.

They're back in vogue, for some reason. Ever since these three doctors made their way into my awareness, my perception of things has taken a half-twist, looping back around on itself like some auto-cannibalistic möbius strip.

I discovered Doctor Horrible and his Sing-Along blog via my feeds a few weeks ago; the latest brainchild of scifi film master, Joss Whedon. Starring Niel Patrick Harris, this low-budget online-only musical superhero comedy was found to be a quite amusing, if traditional, boy-meets-girl story. Unfortunately, due to the poor internet connection here, I was not able to see the third section before it vanished into torrentable memory (I'll go back and see it when I get home). I've also recently discovered Twitscoop, a tag cloud automatically generated from the latest twitter posts. While following the cloud erupting from Dr. Horrible's premier, I noticed another doctor.

Dr. Steel, by contrast, is a doctor on a mission. No three-episode internet miniseries here, this doctor is an insane post-steampunk musician bent on ruling the world with an army of toy soldiers. When I saw what he intends to do with the world once he rules it, I immediately enlisted in his army and torrented his discography to start absorbing his message. A track on his 2002 album, People of Earth, caught my eye. "The Singularity". My favorite subject. I started digging around through his forums, chatting with other toy soldiers for a while, and discovered yet a third doctor.

Doktor Sleepless, it turns out, was created by "Transmetropolitan" writer Warren Ellis. It took a full day, but I managed to torrent a few issues of the comic to absorb them. Warren's writing has only improved since that other comic I'm familiar with, the storyline is both ongoing and excellent, leading me to wonder if the local comic book shop has some sort of subscription service I can use to reserve subsequent issues.

Anyways, at the end of each Doktor Sleepless comic there's a bit of text from the author. Warren's been busy lately, it seems. There's a wiki for the comic, a webcomic he's writing for and it's associated forum, and so on. But something caught my eye. The body mod community in the Doktor Sleepless universe, "Grinders", are represented in the fictional blogosphere by a groupblog at grinding.be... but grinding.be also exists in the real world as a groupblog for transhumanist subjects. I've been following this blog for months... Weird how I'm just now discovering it's origins.

And even weirder, it seems Warren has somehow woven his way closer to me. While writing a weekly column for SuicideGirls, Warren worked alongside and mentioned Zoetica Ebb; who's blog I follow and is also a contributing writer to Coilhouse, an art blog I also follow. Also, that webcomic he writes for, FreakAngels, is also another one I follow...

It's strange how people gravitate towards those of like mind, even without noticing it.

Nietzsche is hard to spell.

2008-04-30T13:39:00.004-06:00

I've been doing research for a paper on rhetoric (which is due in a little more than 23 hours... I should probably work on that...), mainly focusing on the difference between Nietzsche's and Foucault's view of truth. In my study, however, I've come across an interesting definition of the Nietzschean "overman".

The overman (übermensch, occasionally translated 'superman') is an extension of Nietzsche's philosophy of "the will to power"; which is seen as the basic human motive. Expressed most blatantly in shows of force, conquest, slavery, etc., the will to power also manifests itself in art as the human desire to gain control over the chaos of experience. It's not defined as good or bad any more than people are; the will to power is also the motive for self-control.

The overman concept takes the will to power to it's logical conclusion.

The übermensch is one who has successfully organized the chaos of existence, one who strives for perfection and refuses to compromise with the forces of partial rationalism (represented by science and philosophy) and partial irrationalism (represented by religion).

In most writings that I've read up until today, the übermensch was seen as a sort of nebulously defined perfect human, both a goal towards which humanity strives and the primary source of moral virtue since the death of God. The definition I found, however unconventional it might be, is something profoundly tangible; A perfectionist artist-thinker with a profoundly resolute ethical stature.

What strikes me is both how overly simplified this definition is, and how reachable it is. The three components of this übermensch, though rarely contained in a single individual, fit perfectly to at least one stereotype that comes to mind. Japanese artists. How fitting, then, that the overman ideal was eventually subjugated to fuel "master race" propaganda-ideology in the axis countries of World War Two.

Curiously enough, the übermensch also provided the allies with superheroes to idolize after the war; Superman most blatantly, and others such as Captain America in a more subtle manner.

We have still yet to reach the true ideal of the overman in our modern times and it might be that übermenschliches (superhuman, overhuman) people are beyond the boundaries of human possibility. But people have a startling capability for breaking through and bringing fantasy to reality; perhaps someday we can reach Nietzsche's transcendent goal.

Once again

2008-04-27T03:16:00.002-06:00

I lag too long between blog updates.

It's not entirely my fault, I blame college for viciously sucking up my time trying to give me an education.

I'll be free for the summer soon.

Weighing in on Anonymous

2008-04-09T12:32:00.006-06:00

Having just watched this video on Youtube,

I feel its about time for me to throw in my $.02 on Anonymous.

I've spent a good many years on Ebaums, hanging out in the online community that would eventually mutate into an activist collective. I'm what Anonymous would call an "Oldfag", someone who was around early enough to remember when Anonymous' websites were full of hatred, racism, bizzare pornography, and disturbing images of gore. I consider my time in that realm to have been a coming-of-age of sorts, it was the sort of community that seperated the men from the boys (with weak stomachs).

But what has happened in the last two or three years to turn this wretched hive of scum and villany into a burgeoning sociopolitical movement? Right-wing talking heads would probably call it "The Pussification of the Internet" if they saw it the way I do. Allow me to explain.

Human nature is one of those things that's hard to code for. When Anonymous first started self-organizing on Ebaumsworld, early members bickered over 'The Rules of the Internets". First and Foremost among these are two rules adapted from Fight Club.

1. Do not talk about *****.
2. Do Not talk about *****.

The way the oldfags intended was for Anonymous to remain small, spreading like like a conspiracy theory to anyone curious enough to track down the source of our memes.

But that's not how people work. Anonymous spread by word of mouth, despite rules 1.&2.

The word spread and , like a hipster with a record deal, Anonymous sold out as soon as it got popular. The original Internet Hate Machine has been co-opted by reality-friendly interests. Namefags (people who are not Anonymous) like Wise Beard Man grabbed the reins of the collective consciousness and pulled, and Anonymous was weak enough to be turned.

The greatest strength that the oldfags wrote into the Anonymous charter turned out to be their greatest flaw. By virtue of anonymnity, anyone can be Anonymous; and thus, anyone can change what it means to be Anonymous.

The Anonymous of today is not the Anonymous I remember. The Anonymous I remember was cruel and heartless. The Anonymous I remember had no concept of mercy, pity, or restraint.

The new Anonymous is different. They're making the world a better place.

Earth is lucky.

A new update on magnetic implants.

2008-04-07T13:10:00.006-06:00

Recently, I added a link to the blog of a friend of mine to my sidebar. Nate at Feeling Waves has finally posted an update on the procedure he received on Saturday.

(Note: This is terribly dangerous and essentially amounts to human experimentation. Nate has done his research and understands that this may result in surgery to remove the implant, or worse. Neither Nate nor I are responsible if you're stupid enough to attempt this yourself.)

The procedure in question is a new kind of implant dreamed up in the body mod community by Jesse Jarrell and Steve Haworth of BME fame. While subdermal implants have gotten fairly popular, they are all basically the same thing as a silicone breast implant. A small object, coated in a biologically compatible substance such as teflon, surgical steel, or silicone is inserted beneath the skin to create a raised shape (see the BME Encyclopedia article for more info). This new implant, however, is derivative of a magnetic implant Sampaa von Cyborg had installed in his arm to hang metallic objects from. That earlier experiment turned out to be a failure when it was realized that the skin pinched between the magnet and the outside object would die.

Jesse and Steve turned that idea completely around. Rather than use the magnet as a glorified message board, why not use it to detect where other magnetic fields are? Thus, the Magnetic Sense Implant (MSI) was invented. They created tiny rare-earth magnets coated in silicone and implanted them in the ends of fingers where the nerve density is high enough to pick up the small vibration due to magnetic fields.

The result? The MSI implant gave it's owners "Magnetic vision", a sixth sense never before experienced by humans. Quinn Norton of Wired Magazine wrote a lengthy article describing her experience receiving her new sensory organ.

Unfortunately, this was destined to be short lived. Due to a defect in design and construction, the tiny magnets had a tendency to break out of their protective silicone sheathes. Most famously, Shannon Larratt's experience with the failing implants spread almost as fast as word of the concept itself.

Recently, when he discovered the articles and began his research, Nate contacted me regarding the idea. We started brainstorming and discovered that silicone, teflon, and steel aren't the only things medical science has cleared for implantation. You can read about the research and more in Feeling Waves' archives.

As for me, I'm planning on getting one of these myself. Just as soon as Nate's human guinea-pig trick confirms that there isn't too much risk.

UPDATE:
Nate has added some pictures to the last few posts on his blog; be sure to check it out again if they weren't there before!

Updates go here

2008-04-06T21:20:00.003-06:00

I promise I'm not dead or anything. The semester is building towards it's inevitable conclusion; meaning I'm swamped with tests to take and papers to write.

I really shouldn't be taking this blog too seriously. According to Adsense, I've received a grand total of 250 impressions and 0 clicks since I put ads on my site. That pegs my site's worth about $.03. I don't get enough page views to really consider making this blog a for-profit venture, and I've got no idea how to drive more traffic my way. I'm not likely to show up on any popular searches and there are officially two people linking to me.

To quote a friend of mine on a forum somewhere, NetworkedBacteria exists, despite the glaring futility.

Science can read you like a (progressively less expensive) book

2008-03-26T12:17:00.003-06:00

Venessa Posavec at MemeBox FutureBlogger uploaded this deceptively short post today.

Her post describes the very rapid decrease in the cost (in both time and money) of having a human gemone sequenced. While she focuses on the utility and function of these mounds of data, I'd like to give a different perspective, the role of technology.

Gene sequencing, of the kind done by the Human Genome Project, is a hugely complicated process. It might sound simple, there are only four letters in the language of our DNA, but actually getting down and reading out the book of life for the first time took millions of dollars worth of man-hours and laboratory equipment. After all, you cant just grab your microscope and get somebody to take notes while you read off the code. The individual base pairs of DNA are only a couple of nanometers wide, too small for even the most powerful vision enhancement. Even if you could read the DNA directly, there are some 3 billion base pairs in the human genome and there is no room for error.

So how did they solve this problem? By inventing the new techniques and machines to assist in reading out and piecing together the code. The Human Genome project used what they call the 'shotgun' approach. They take a strand of DNA, make a few billion copies (which is easy, because DNA is designed to do that), then break these copies up into short chunks. These chunks are small enough for specialized machinery to read off the letters a few hundred at a time. Once the DNA is broken up into random pieces and fed into a computer, it then takes a relatively simple, but highly time-consuming process to piece matching portions together into a complete strand.

As with most other sciences, the rapid improvement of informational technology boosts the second two steps of the process exponentially. The jigsaw-like matching algorithms have been improved over time, the computers that run them have gotten faster, and the system for reading off the individual chunks has been improved as well. Yet at the same time, these systems become more inexpensive and require less expertise to operate.

Technological advancement like this is the root of nearly all the recent leaps forward in science that have yet to make themselves felt. The first human genome was sequenced in 2003, but we still haven't finished translating the finished code into usable knowledge.

An unprecedented human condition.

2008-03-25T09:17:00.003-06:00

Issues of gender in the U.S. are generally approached with the same kind of schizophrenic doublethink normally associated with abortion, election, and race. I can only imagine how the public will react to this news.

Paul Raven at Futurismic posted this article just a few minutes ago in which he describes a unique case where transgendered male Thomas Beatie (who did not elect for sterilization when 'she' became a 'he') has successfully become pregnant. While the main article can't be reached at the moment, most likely due to the slashdot effect, Grinding.be adds to the report that he has been in contact with doctors and the pregnancy is so far without complication and sets the due date at around July 3, 2008. Since Thomas has been legally recognized as a male by the state, he's been able to legally marry his wife, Nancy. Together, they spent more than a year trying to get access to a sperm donation.

Discussion of male pregnancy has been brought up before. Some scientists have considered the possibility of an abdominal pregnancy, a rare case in which a fertilized egg becomes implanted outside the uterus. Only 5% of these pregnancies successfully come to term. Another possibility examined by science is the implantation of a uterus into a male, which has been tested successfully on lab rats.

This is a wonderful advancement that should hopefully get lots of people thinking about what gender and pregnancy mean in an increasingly fluid society. We've already seen laboratory research that made sperm cells from female tissue, and it wont be too long before we see a male, who was born male, becoming and carrying a pregnancy.

Things you can expect from this news; The liberal, body mod, and left-wing communities will generally acknowledge this case as something unique and might even go as far as to suggest that it's a significant step for both transgendered people and alternative-gender issues. Right wing and fundamentalist factions will, if they take notice at all, decry it as yet another harbinger of depravity and doom for society.

On one's return from an unannounced hiatus.

2008-03-19T21:38:00.004-06:00

Just what do you say when you come back to the blogosphere from an extended leave of absence from an audience that is both incaptive and , for the most part, non-existent.

The only thing that comes to my mind is to post something quite random and nonsensical, since nobody is going to be around to hear it anyway.

For this great re-opening of posting to the blog, I'd like to start out with a post from one of the artistic blogs I follow. A recent Ectoplasmosis posting was headlined "Noise du Jour’s High Concepts: “Bitch, Go Buy Me a Hot Dog” by Bogart Shwadchuck". I found the title of this album, as well as the premise "This is a concept album. The concept is that I tell a bitch to go buy me a hot dog, and she does. While she is buying me a hot dog, I wait patiently, and do The Robot. I eat the hot dog and it is delicious." to be so confusing that I could not avoid downloading and listening to the entire four track release.

Was it misogynistic? Was it some sort of pimp-rap? Is it possibly some sort of conspiracy by Oscar Meyer to get us to buy weiners of dubious origin?

Actually, the latter seems the most likely, as the entire track is an upbeat Electronica dance mix occasionally cut with audio from old Frankfurter commercials. I wouldn't mind bringing this along to the next Anonymous protest.

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

2007-05-02T02:24:00.000-06:00

Without apologizing for the delay...

2007-04-28T10:08:00.000-06:00

More news important to your future.

KurzweilAI.net Is my sister publication in a way, though I didn't discover it untill after I began this blog. A post references a New Scientist article describing new miniscule sensors that change their shape to move in the harsh Martian environment. This seems a logical step towards the possibility of nanoscale exploration of the universe.

Engadget posts a video uploaded to youtube by IBM. Big Blue apparently has some interesting ideas for the future of computing. My guess is that it wouldn't take more than three years to see this stuff ubiquitous in the market if there was enough push for it. Voice recognition at this level is doable today and the wireless technologies for the purposes demonstrated are in production. The only thing in between is software and hardware development.

Physorg.com posts an article on the Gravity Probe-B experiment, giving a thorough explanation of how the new experiment works.

Another post describes the studies scientists have done to discover the genes associated with learning and memory. Not only have they identified the genes involved, they've also made this database availible and searchable, making use of this knowledge much more efficient.

Yet another describes the current state of plastic solar panel technology and how it will soon be cost-effective to deploy.

Two more articles were posted on KurzweilAI.net in rapid fire, researchers are hard at work enabling printers to make electronics and bones from scratch. Add these to the list including plastic, chocolate, cake icing, metal, ceramics, paper, and soon organs. This is personally one of my favorite disruptive technologies. Being able to make your own stuff is what seperates people from large corporations.

Breaking with my usual trend of just the news that matters in the long run, I'd like to put in a quick shot to Swaptree, described in this DownloadSquad post. It's a new web2.0 beta that works like Ebay, only you trade items rather than buy them. They finally approved my application and I made my first trade yesterday, my copy of "Rayman: Raving Rabbids" for Stephen Hawking's "Illustrated Theory of Everything". I'll let you know when it comes in.

That's it for the moment, but I've got some news to browse for the pest of the day and you may see another post by monday.

Space, politics, computers... all that sort of stuff.

2007-04-16T23:37:00.000-06:00

Here we go, another post in not too many days. I'll use up to my backlogged news eventually.

The DailyTech blog reports that IBM has developed a new vertical stacking method for computer chips. Most modern integrated circuits are all sketched onto a single plane, but by expanding upwards, they allow much more processing power to be contained in less real estate. The downside being that there is less surface area to dissapate heat, requiring more complex cooling systems.

Physorg.com is running an article about the development of a new telescope. This telescope is similar to the very large array in Arizona, with the notable exception that it is an optical-, rather than a radio-telescope. This first generation tech will only have a few telescopes small working in concert, but they will have an effective aperture of dozens of meters. One can easily imagine blanketing the sky with a large array of these sometime in the future, making a telescope the size of a planet.

Also out in space, Wired reports on a Pentagon imagining of orbit-based solar farms beaming power down to the planet. Unfortunately, economics will most likely prevent it from occurring without a breakthrough in solar panel efficiency or great reduction in shipping costs to space. Fortunately, developments are working along both those lines, see the previous post or google for space elevators.

Slashdot reports that the NSA and the leaders of our executive branch are working on expanding the already broad power granted to them. Now, I'm totally not opposed to letting the president tap phones at will and do whatever he likes as long as we are granted the same power. If the NSA wants to listen in on me, let us listen in on them. It's a balance of power between the three branches of government (which is being demolished) and the state and people tha has maintained our nation for so long. Times change and the balance will shift but we have to push back so that no one leg of our five-legged table grows too long and flips us on our metaphorical backs.

An Iraqi veteran is one of 25 or so trying out a new prosthetic leg designed for above the knee amputees. The new limb acts more like a natural limb than those previous by sensing the environment and preforming the actions of calf muscles. It's being called the first bionic prosthetic for it's efficiency in acting like a regular limb, and personally, the guy looks awesome wearing it. Check out the pic through the link.

And our last article for the night, also from physorg.com, describes a new online census showing more female Americans are online than male. It's not stunning news, what with myspace, flickr, and other social and life-sharing sites popping up, it stands to reason that more persons less interested in viral video would come onboard. I guess the old meme about there being no girls on the interwebs has finally had it's coffin nailed shut.

2007-04-14T18:54:00.000-06:00

My apologies for the lack of updates. My Internet connection is still a work in progress and a multitude of distractions weigh themselves upon me.

Much of the news for today is from physorg.com. Two separate groups of biomedical engineers have published experiments regarding evidence that the nano-scale surface texture of implanted materials assists in the substance being accepted by the body. This research could pave the way for new materials science to crafting implants that will not be rejected by the growth of new tissue.

Also at the atomic scales, another engineering team has designed a new form of solar panel that utilizes a miniscule 3d pattern on it's surface to reflect un-absorbed light back into itself. A process by which the panels can be made has been developed, but testing has yet to be preformed to determine if these panels will be more efficient.

Even more from the nano front, a generator has been designed that can harvest energy from vibrations at the sub-microscopic level. While much research has been preformed on the tools and uses of nanomachines, not much thought has been put towards powering them. This generator is capable of producing microamps of electricity, more than enough to power anything we'd like at that scale.

Zooming in a step smaller than the nano, scientists are working on deriving a communication medium from the strange realm of quantum entanglement. The Caltech Quantum Optics group has tacked on a third first. Previously, they succeeded in creating a remote pair of entangled nodes, and then used them to teleport a photon. Now, these scientists have demonstrated a quantum based repeater segment, one that divides a group of entangled atoms. the scientist separated them by threemeters and employed an encryption method known as photon polarization to ensure a secure transmission.

The last big story is, that a large number of alpine and ice climbers are reporting eyewitness accounts of global warming. Climate science may seem remote when one talks about a few degrees change over a century, but with mountaineers bemoaning ice dissapearing from peaks all around the world, it gets much more personal.

Since I've been away so long, here are a few quickie headlines.

Studies show that tendency towards religiousness is a partially genetic trait.

Los Angeles plans to pump sludge down into empty oil and gas resivours to generate energy.

Scientific American reports that a study shows that people prefer an even distribution of wealth.

That's all for today. I'll try not to procrastinate so long with my next post.

The Weekends' News.

2007-04-09T21:34:00.000-06:00

There’s a good deal of news today as I’ve gone the whole weekend without making an update.

Engadget reports a Computerworld article questioning the validity of banning RF devices on planes. The article reports that it’s a lot easier and cheaper to ban cell phones, Wi-Fi, and other wireless communication devices in flight than it is to independently test and certify every product. The author makes a very compelling argument: If wireless devices could take down a plane, what’s to stop terrorists from doing so? Then goes on to suggest that the lack of news reports implicating radio technology in plane crashes indicates that it is not too dangerous to ban their use completely. This is a fallacious assumption, as RF does interfere, but the possibility of the ban being intended as a crowd control measure certainly bears investigation.

Slashdot links an article in the UK Guardian describing a particularly troubling estimation of future trends made by their nation’s Ministry of Defence. Predictions include Marxism, famine, war, urbanization, climate change, and, in a slightly more hopeful note, direct mind-machine links through ‘brain chips’ by 2035. When ministry of defense of the English-speaking worlds’ oldest imperial nation makes a grim prediction, people better notice. You don’t get to be a 1040 year old nation by not changing with the times.

Disinformation links another article from the guardian describing the events of a small welsh village that’s leading the charge of sustainable habitation. Small towns like Lampeter are pioneering our energy-depleted futures. One can only hope that they’ll be able to iron out the kinks in time to start spreading their innovations to communities that use much more resources than the farming village of 4,000 residents does.

Another post on Engadget sends us to an article from ABC news. Citizens from a county in New Mexico have voted to accept an increase in sales tax to pay for the proposed spaceport. Critics of the bill think that the $198 million price tag should be left to the state, as Dona Ana county has its own problems to deal with. Supporters of the project are excited that the plan is finally moving forward, and hope the momentum of this election will sway nearby counties and the state to their side.

And for the last bit this evening, Techdirt reports that the judge in the Vonage vs Verizon patent has issued an injunction against Vonage to stop them from bringing in any new customers. This, according to the article, is the corporate equivalent of holding their head underwater. Without new customers to sustain the company, Vonage will eventually die. All this because Vonage’s VoIP system uses the technology from three of Verizon’s patents. These patents “cover technologies that deal with connection of VoIP calls to the regular phone network, some features for implementing call-waiting and voice mail services, and VoIP calls using Wi-Fi handsets.” So far, the company has been orderet to pay a $58 million fine, and post $66 million bond, the injunction would be the final nail in an airtight coffin around the already struggling company, but a recent update shows they’ve been granted a temporary stay pending appeal. These are monopoly tactics, similar to Microsoft in the past decades. Verizon is slowly eliminating Vonages’ competition using the broken patent system as a weapon of corporate destruction.

Saturday, April 6th

2007-04-06T21:35:00.000-06:00

Today's posts are all from the last week or so of PhysOrg.com.

A group of doctors, technicians and engineers are working together to develop an implantable tooth containing a reservoir for medicines and a dosing mechanism. This is the sort of functional body modification that anyone could agree on. Why give yourself insulin shots everyday when your teeth can do it for you?

Another article references a study done that shows the benefits of symbiotic bacteria. Not many people seem to know about the benefits of some kinds of micro-organisms, and antibiotics strip those right out of our systems.

And this article describes yet another study on the proximity of peak oil. Peak oil, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the point at which global oil production hits its max and begins to taper off due to lack of any more oil to pump out of the earth.

I encourage Emails and comments. Let me know what you're thinking about the world.

First batch of news.

2007-04-05T15:03:00.000-06:00

Techdirt reports that another ~~child incapable of taking criticism~~ nation has banned youtube for a single offensive video. The poster who uploaded the video has taken it down. As techdirt says, this sort of reaction only draws more attention to the offense in question. The proper way of censoring an idea is not to draw more attention to it.

Slashdot has a post showing patent application for a Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement. Basically, this is crowdsourcing for computers. First step towards a Manna system. I for one, do not welcome our robot-people overlords.

Slashdot is also linking an article showing how completely useless the change to daylight savings is. While the California energy department still affirms that setting our clocks back for half a year conserves energy, power companies don't seem to be feeling the difference. (Insert joke about the opposite of progress). Political bashing aside, there is a real problem with how elected officials conflict science.

And finally, Make online has a blog post up detailing Quinn Norton's body hacking talk. Hit it up for a primer on to the current state of functional body modification and some things we should look for over the next year or two. If you can stomach a ~180 MB download, there is a video link posted on BMEZine's Modblog.

Blogs aren't intended to operate in a vaccuum, so post comments and send emails to me with anything you feel like needs to be said.

1 GET

2007-04-05T14:34:00.000-06:00

I find there exists a horrible disparity between the availibility of news, expert opinions, and investigative reports, and the general awareness of such things among my 18-25 peers. In response, I am putting together this blog to aggregate important editorials and headlines in diverse fields important to my local Houston, Texas, the nation at large, and the international community.

I refuse to link the unimportant antics of (Celebrity) , the death counts and petty crimes posted in the local paper, or what venue holds the latest trend. These things only affect the parties involved. If you truly care about them you would already have read them from a tabloid or some other traditionally circulated publication. I personally track several dozen news services on a wide variety of topics, but as the attention span of my age group tends too thin for that amount of material, this blog is focused towards only the most noteworthy of articles. My intention by it is do provide the news that is directly affecting the lives of my peers and the future direction, both long and short term, of varying levels of government and politics. Some examples might be the insecurity of Diebold voting machines, abuses of intellectual property laws driving the copyright crisis, violations of human rights as a result of those in positions of power, and the latest advances in ability-enhancing modifications to the human body.

Please bear with this temporary location as I go through the process of establishing a new internet connection and setting up a website.

tl;dr, Pay attention! This is important!