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May 2008
1945 Steam Punk Internet Essay: As We May Think
53 years ago this Sunday, Dr. Vannevar Bush composed this incredible bit of futurism, where he describes an Information Technology tool called the “Memex,” a device that can instantaneously serve up any article or book in its user’s possession and navigate to any spot within the text. He describes scientists working in the field, their every action documented through audio recordings and indexed.
The features of Dr. Vannevar Bush’s device are myriad, and delivered through classical mechanical and electrical means. We can imagine pullies, levers, and gears all working to bring about its complex functionality. Section 7 of this text describes our World Wide Web’s hyperlinks, but within the context of microfiche.
I got exhilarating chills up my spine reading it:
All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item.
Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.
The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.
And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.
The entire essay makes for fascinating and thoughtful reading, especially in the context of our world where these technologies have all ready manifested. As We May Think is what a Victorian Era Internet would look like, a Steam Punk flavor of the Web.
More on Steam Punk.
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Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope
Finally installed the World Wide Telescope (WWT) after downloading it to sit on my desktop (aka “The Place of No Return”) for a few weeks. It’s very impressive, but less impressive when you run it side-by-side with Google Earth (GE). Still, there are a few features that are going to make me keep both softwares running on my system (and possibly a third software as soon as I get around to reviewing Digital Universe Atlas).
WWT’s library of subject matter is impressive. A “Planet Explorer” feature allows users to get a “Google Earth” style look at Venus, Mars, the Moon, Jupiter, and some of its moons. There are also some awesome panorama shots of Mars from Spirit and Opportunity rovers. I believe a Mandelbrot example was meant to demonstrate more to come, allowing users to zoom in on the fractal with fantastic detail; however, being an infinitely complex structure, it left me wanting to zoom in further.
The problem with all of these images is the way they tease. Giving me the ability to zoom in close on a Mars rock is no good if the zoom is blurry. The view of Earth was so bad it left me wondering why include it at all? Details in WWT don’t render as smoothly as they do in GE.
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Both WWT and GE software observatories allow you to see the night sky through WMAP and IRAS; however, WWT also has SFD, VLSS, IRIS, USNOB, and other sky survey projects, each providing a unique look at the hidden dimensions of our night sky. Just getting the opportunity to gaze at the SFD Infrared Dust Map made downloading the software totally worth it. At the same time, being able to view the night sky with Rumsey Star Maps from 1972 in GE is also a wonderful resource.
WWT edges out GE slightly for educational value as well. GE has many tours of the universe and topics to explore, but WWT has many more. WWT’s tours and features of the night sky are also much more apparent. GE has all the same tourist sites, but WWT does a better job of letting you know they are there.
Both softwares divide up the night sky into areas. In WWT the areas aren’t visible until users point their crosshairs at it, in GE there is a layer of areas users can toggle on and off. In fact, everything in GE is a layer that may be toggled, which is superiorly convenient. To WWT’s credit though, when an area becomes highlighted, the upper and lower navigation bars fill with items of interest.
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GE definitely wins on navigation, scrolling much more precisely and smoothly than WWT. Spinning the Earth in WWT, the mouse slips over its surface. GE is much more precise and responsive to the mouse wheel. Plus GE has that nifty effect where you can give the Earth a spin and let it go without you.
GE also wins on fun features, with a slide bar that allows users to watch planets orbit to where they will be three months from now. It also has a slider to watch the Earth spin through night and day cycles. These features increase the entertainment value of GE, which will make it more educational than WWT in the long run, because fun keeps people coming back for more. GE mashups like Twittervision and Flickrvision also ensure GE will continue to dominate the Internet’s Mindshare.
Overall, WWT is a keeper for the harder space enthusiasts, but for people who only have enough room for one astronomy software in their life, go with Google Earth.
You can download the World Wide Telescope here.
You can download Google Earth here.
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X-Ray Photos of Brain Injuries
Amazing x-ray photos of penetrating brain injuries and the stories behind them.
Through his Skull Over a Three Month Period |
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Peak Water
“We’ll never know the worth of water until the well goes dry.” - Scottish proverb.
In November 2007 Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue prayed for rain to alleviate the state’s worst drought in history. Before this last-ditch effort, he had sued the Army Corps of Engineers to cut off Florida’s water supply. Georgia legislator even made an attempt to move their border a mile into Tennessee to claim a critical part of the Tennessee River. The state is still suffering, with water levels at Buford dam droping 15.46 feet between March 2007 and February 2008.
Photo by Magician pug |
Thankfully, in America we have a fantastic system of governance that allows our states to resolve these conflicts of natural resources in a peaceful, legislative manner. A scarcity of water and other resources has led to conflicts in Africa, including genocide in Darfur.
Photos courtesy of NASA |
In Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea has dwindled down to two smaller bodies of water, both of which could be gone in 15 years. Efforts are underway to save what has now become the northern sea, by damming up water feeding the southern sea, ensuring its doom.
Photo courtesy NASA |
Photo courtesy Staecker |
In America, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which supply 22 million people with water in the Southwest, has a 50/50 chance of running dry by 2021, and water levels there have dropped 118 feet. Unless Las Vegas can manage to grow and conserve water and electricity, it soon won’t have either.
Courtesy of NASA |
Australia, Great Britain, South America, Southern California and other regions are all experiencing water deficits for numerous reasons from over-consumption to climate change. This is both local to the areas affected and global for the human migrations currently happening and might happen in the near future, which will destabilize other communities with influxes of water-refugees.
Something to keep a wary eye on.
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The Thrill of Loosing a Pint of Blood
My father teaches phlebotomy at ODU, but is a total wuss when it comes to donating blood. He used to fall back on the excuse that his type I diabetes excluded him from donation, but had to find another excuse when that prohibition was lifted.
I’ve been prohibited from donating blood for a year every time I get a tattoo. One time I got prohibited from donating blood for a year because I gave a false positive for Hepatitis B. The Red Cross assured me they did further tests on my blood and found I did not have Hep-B, but asked me to stop donating just the same (I was reinstituted a year later when the FDA approved a better Hep-B test).
I love giving blood. There’s a sense of camaraderie among blood donors at the drives, AND, most importantly, there’s FREE COOKIES and JUICE at the end of it!!! And you have to eat them! It’s mandatory! YOU CAN’T LEAVE UNTIL YOU’VE HAD COOKIES AND JUICE!!! FREE!!! w00t!!!
That’s why I think it’s sad that researchers have found that bad experiences giving blood can dissuade young people from repeat donations. Let me give you an incident I experienced giving blood that should, hopefully, get you kids back into the blood drives:
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About 15 years ago I was walking by a blood drive at Virginia Tech, and decided to step in and donate. No big deal. I knew the routine and within minutes I was relaxing on a cot with my arm being swabbed by a very nice woman. When it came time to stick me, she wrapped a rubber tourniquet-thingy (I’m pretty sure that’s the scientific name for it) around my bicep, let the vein stand out, and slipped the needle in with a momentary pinch…
Then she accidentally pulled it out.
Fssssst!!! A geyser of blood shot into the air.
“Oh dear,” the she understated, watching this crimson fountain uncertainly, her hand to her mouth. She had no clue what to do.
I pointed to the rubber-strap-thingy wrapped around my bicep, “I think you need to take this thing off—”
“I know what I’m doing!” she cut me off, and then proceeded to place a cotton ball over the pinhole-sized wound.
“I don’t think that’s…” I trailed off as the cotton swab quickly soaked with blood and a stream of red poured off my arm.
Next thing I know, I’m looking at the ceiling emerging from clouds of black from when I’d fainted, there’s a paper bag over my face and someone is coaching me to cough in order to get my blood pressure up. Thankfully, someone got the torniquet-rubber-strap-thingamagig off my arm, but not before half my shirt was sprayed with blood. Then I was escorted over the resting area…
WHERE I GOT TO HAVE COOKIES AND JUICE!!! YAY!!! HOORAY FOR COOKIES AND JUICE!!!
But you know what else I got? A really cool story to tell. My blood donation story kicks everyone else’s blood donation story’s butt! So you kids who won’t go back to the blood drive because you got a little queasy, suck it up!
Take pride in that queasy feeling. It’s a badge of honor, and if a metaphorical badge of honor isn’t good enough for you, they’ve got FREE STICKERS YOU CAN WEAR AS A REAL LIFE BADGE OF HONOR TOO!!!
YAY!!!
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17 Year Cicadas
17 year cicadas are emerging in 13 states. It’s theorized they come out in prime number years to prevent predators from adapting to their schedules.
Photo by Jefq |
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Robert Asprin 1946-2008
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A moment of silence please for fantasy/SF author, Robert Asprin, who has passed away at 62. Author of the delightful MYTH Adventures, a seemingly never-ending series of novellas, which chronicled the lovable Skeeve, Aahz, Tananda, the pet dragon Gleep, and the carnival of other characters making up the M.Y.T.H. mythos.
I very much enjoyed reading my way through almost all of the 19 books, which began in 1978 and may not end with the latest published just this year. For 30 years I and others have followed Skeeve grow from an inept wizard’s apprentice to the wealthy CEO of his own magical adventuring company. Many LOLs were had in these pages, and many there are many more to come as other readers discover the series.
Robert Asprin will be sorely mythed.
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Freed Educational Video Game: ImmuneAttack
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has finally released their free educational video game ImmuneAttack! Check out the trailer:
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OLPC XO2
Considering the first one was supposed to be $100 and ended up $200, I’m skeptical that this will come in at $75, but a peek at the OLPC XO2 is very inspiring.
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Michael Pollan In Defense of Food
“The dinner we have eaten tonight, was part of the sun but a few months ago.” - Weston Price
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When geneticists mapped out the human genome, they found a complex world of proteins that will take decades, possibly centuries, to fully decipher. Medical applications, such as gene therapy, cloning, and medications must go through years of rigorous testing before being tried on humans, and even then, some of these must be recalled for dangerous side effects. The long chain of events from our DNA to our physical and mental expressions is far too complex for anything else.
Nutritionists work the opposite way. They isolate nutrients out of foods that we know are healthy, and then tell us to get more of that nutrient in our diets. When they say “oatbran” or “calcium,” food manufacturers up that nutrient paste it on their refined cereals, oils, pastas, and other manufactured food stuffs. Then we consumers eat more of that isolated nutrient. Because it’s food, the same rigorous testing does not apply. We consume these nutrients in food, what’s wrong with consuming them isolated from it?
We are in the midsts of a great dietary experiment, because we don’t really know what eating specific nutrients isolated out of their contexts will do to our bodies, but we recognize the effects of this strategy overall. Our obesity rates are soaring, as are diabetes rates and heart disease.
The reasons why this strategy isn’t working are myriad and complex beyond our full appreciation. Counfounders, variables in our whole foods, are not appropriately accounted for in our nutritionist methodologies. Just as chaos theory prevents us from predicting the weather, it prevents us from predicting the effects of dramatically changing our diets. For instance, failing to take into account the ways foods work together:
We eat foods in combinations and in orders that effect how they’re metabolized. The carbohydrates in a bagel will be absorbed more slowly if the bagel is spread with peanut butter; the fiber, fat, and protein in the peanut butter cushion the insulin response, thereby blunting the impact of the carbohydrates. Drink coffee with your steak, and your body won’t be able to fully absorb the iron in the meat. The olive oil with which I eat tomatoes makes the lycopene they contain more available to my body. … We have barely begun to understand the relationships among foods in a cuisine (66, 67).
These complementary and deleterious effects of different food combinations are called Food Synergy. Our diets are more than the sum of their nutrient parts. This is the thesis of Michael Pollan’s well-written and increasingly influential “Eater’s Manifesto.”
As a child, I would often find dead bugs in the white flour in our pantry. My mother, a nurse, explained the bugs had died, “because there are no nutrients in white flour.” Pollan asks, “Is a steak from a feedlot steer that consumed a diet of corn, various industrial waste products, antibiotics, and hormones still a ‘whole food’ (143)?”
Modern agriculture first robs the soil of its nutrients, then we rob the food produced of its nutrients to preserve it. The result is that we now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron in a 1940s apple (118). This decline in nutrients is great for food manufacturers, as it forces us to eat more of their product to maintain our health, but has created a culture of over-consumption.
Abnormality is defined as the absence of normality. Diabetes has become a cultural norm, as has tooth decay and heart disease, but in the context of our species, they are not the norm. They are the result of an influx of simple carbohydrates. Combining pure glucose with fructose to produce sucrose was like turning cocoa leaves into cocaine (105), our bodies are overwhelmed by it.
Michale Pollan’s strategy for escaping this downward spiral is simple, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Pollan’s book is a quick read and a simple message, but one that belongs on everyone’s bookshelf.
The article that preceded this excellent book, Unhappy Meals, is available online, which hits many of the point in Pollan’s book about how we adopted the nutritionist approach to food and what foods we should eat for maintaining health.
Pollan’s Rules for Eating are posted at NPR.
He has also given a TED talk.
Michael Pollan also gave a talk at Google:
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The Aquatic Ape Theory
 Leah, a gorilla, uses a stick to test the depth of water while wading through it Photo by Thomas Breuer/WCS/PLoS Biology |
Like Humans, dolphins, whales, and porpoises are mammals. They are warm-blooded, breath through lungs, and give birth to live offspring; however, they also have fins like fish and live in the sea. The skeletons of these aquatic mammals have finger bones in their fins leftover from their ancestors. Some whales even have a tiny pelvis bone free-floating in their bodies, a leftover from when their ancestors had hind-legs. How did these animals, these cetaceans, whose ancestors obviously once lived on land, find their way back into the sea?
Cetaceans share a common ancestor that “resembled a short, legged wolf with hoof like claws.” It is called a mesonychid, and just as Polar Bears will swim for miles across open sea to find food, or Kodiak bears will fish for salmon in rivers, the mesonychid found its way into the water, only it adapted to stay there, and we can follow the long chain of changing fossils from the mesonychid to our present-day dolphins and whales.
While it’s easy to see the present resemblance between humans and other primates like chimpanzees and gorillas, it’s not so easy to explain why we became so different from them. What happened to our fur? Why do we sweat? Why do our noses look so different from chimpanzees’?
Enter Elaine Morgan’s “Aquatic Ape Theory” of human evolution. The theory proposes that our ancestors spent some portion of their history living in a semi-aquatic environment. Seven million years ago, the Afar depression in Ethiopia flooded to become the Sea of Afar. The skeleton of our Australopithecus afarensis ancestor, “Lucy,” was found in this area, where she lived between 3.9 and 2.9 million years ago. Most fossilized evidence of our evolutionary ancestors comes from this region subsequent to this flooding also.
 Sea of Afar Depression Image courtesy NASA |
So in the case of humans, we did not run to the sea, it came to us quite suddenly and catastrophically. We were thrown into the deep end of the pool, as it were, and had to adapt with down turned noses to keep the water out, less fur to streamline our bodies for swimming, eyebrows to channel the water away from our eyes, sweat glands to regulate the sudden influx of salt water in our diets, infants that can instinctually hold their breath underwater, enlarged spleens to hold oxygen-rich blood and serve as a biological “scuba-tank” that helps us hold our breath, even the ability to hold our breath, and bipedalism, the ability to walk on two feet, to help us keep our heads above water. Then the waters receded and we were left standing upright on land with much larger brains built from a diet high in fish protein.
Most evolutionary theorists are skeptical of the theory; however, as the Philosopher of Biology, Daniel Dennet observes, this is not because there is any way to prove the theory wrong, only that it seems too “out there” to be plausible. They hold to the “Savannah Ape” theory, which proposes that humans became bipedal running across the open plains and using tools.
Meanwhile, waterfront properties garner the biggest real estate values in human society. Beaches are among the most popular vacationing spots in the world (unlike savannahs). Eating fatty fish, such as mackerel, lake trout, herring, sardines, albacore tuna and salmon, supplies our bodies with omega-3 fatty acids, which help fight heart disease and depression. Scientists are also learning more and more that fish really is a “brain food,” combating mental deterioration in old age.
Perhaps, when we spend a relaxing afternoon fishing, we are getting closer to our true nature than we think?
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BioMotionLab’s Walker V1.8
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A Twittering, Flickring World
Here’s a really neat way to visualize our world in Real Time. twittervision takes the text-messages posted on twitter, and shows them on a google map as they are being posted. Watching this application with the “3D View” turned on, I was able to watch Californians planning their night as I was turning in to bed, Japanese waking up with positive affirmations about the upcoming day, and Chinese twitters that I couldn’t read at all. : )
Check it out:
(Click on 3D View for this display) |
There’s also Flickrvision, which provides the same application, but shows you Flickr Photos as they are being uploaded all over the world in real time:
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PMOG: The Passively Multiplayer Online Game
Pathmaker in PMOG |
Education is an adventure. We quest for knowledge throughout our lives, whether its the daily news, OTJ, or sitcoms. Every fact collected in our minds a tool for accessing new information and clarifying the old. Every fact is also a weapon in debate, which are battles in society’s perpetual war of ideas.
The Passively Multiplayer Online Game (PMOG) takes this principle and let’s you keep score. Deploy mines on websites to wreck other players’ concentration. Set up portals on websites to teleport other players to sites of similar interests (or, as is often the case, RickRoll them). Leave crates filled with treasure for other players to stumble upon (one of my favorite activities).
24 hours without using google (I can’t get this badge.) |
Earn badges for changing your web-surfing habits. Go 24 hours without using Google. Read xkcd once a week for four weeks. visit 100 websites in a 24 hour period (first badge I got, and wasn’t even trying). You can view the complete list of badges and archetypes here.
Create quests for other players to take by setting up a series of lightposts around the Internet for them to follow, exploring websites as they go. All the while earning datapoints, which increase your level and may be spent on new items at the shoppe.
The game is currently in the beta-testing phase, and there’s much room for improvement and expansion. Sign up now to earn your PMOG “Beta Tester” badge, but remember that, as a Beta, you will experience issues. I’ve had to scrap some missions I was building and start over from scratch because the Mission-Generator application is somewhat buggy.
Most of all, have fun. Learning is a game, and with PMOG you can keep score.
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Stephen Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought
“Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.” - Hobbes
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I once had a conversation with a girl that went like this:
“Ryan, you’re a bama.”
“What’s a ‘bama?’”
“It’s… you know… what you are.”
“That makes no sense.”
“A bama’s a bama, and you’re a bama.”
“You can’t use a word to define itself.”
She shrugged, “Well, that’s what you are.”
The conversation went in circles like this, never making it anywhere, but it does raise questions about how new words enter our lexicon and how they derive their meanings. The semantics of language are an often debated subject in politics and law, as with the lawsuit over whether the World Trade Center attacks constituted one or two “events”, which affected the insurance pay off by billions of dollars.
This is the subject Stephen Pinker tackles in The Stuff of Thought, the third book in his trilogy on language. As with The Blank Slate, there were numerous inaccuracies in Pinker’s writing, but I was more forgiving of them as his politics were much tamer in this book. Reading Stephen Pinker is like reading spaghetti, anecdotes here, references to future chapters there, digressions abound, overly erudite at times and mind-numbingly thorough at others. But reading Pinker is an overall rewarding experience, and his style works for this subject.
I come away from Pinker’s books with a plethora of new anecdotes. In TSoT I learned that the Turkish language has an inferential tense, which communicates whether something was learned firsthand or as hearsay, a proof for the theorem that a horse has an infinite number of legs, and all the Beatles symbolism surrounding the death of Paul McCartney. In English we describe time as forward and backwards, the Chinese phrase it as up and down, and the Aymara describe the future as coming up from behind us, which makes sense metaphorically. Creationists and Evolutionists have a very different definition of the word “species,” with Creationists taking a view that includes strict boundaries between different animal types, and Evolutionists seeing a blending of characteristics from one form to another.
All of these anecdotes raise interesting questions about language. Does a culture’s language restrict what it may think about? If Paul McCartney died in 1966, and someone else took his place, then what does the name “Paul McCartney” refer to? Were the WTC attacks one or two events? Are the differences between Evolutionists and Creationists a reflection of a relative worldview butting heads with a dichotomous one?
A section on baby name fads was fascinating, as people try to choose uncommon names, and, in doing so, inadvertently choose a name that will be common. Consider all the brainiacs named “Steve” in science literature (Hawking, Gould, Pinker, Project Steve), or consider how names like Ethel, Ruth, and Agnes make us think of old people, but these names were simply popular when these people were born. You can check with the Social Security Administration to find out what names will be the “old people” names of the future.
Pinker explores how much of our language is programmed, with examples like the fact that swearing in our own language is more cathartic and that there is an instinctive basis for swearing. An entire chapter on swear words both defends the fact that swear words aren’t intrinsically worse than any other, and upholds the restriction on their use, as their cathartic effect would be dampened and language cheapened if everyone started using them all the time. I also learned the origins of words like “jerk” and “scumbag,” which are no longer considered especially offensive, but would be if people knew what they refer to.
Then there’s the part I personally find confusing, the way people speak indirectly. How, instead of telling someone to pass the green beans, we ask them if they could pass the green beans. Or how it is considered completely offensive to request a sexual encounter with someone, so the appropriate thing to do is ask them in for coffee or a nightcap. A year after my “bama” conversation, I was in a clothing store and overheard the following:
“What’s a ‘bama?’”
“It’s what you are.”
“I don’t get it.”
The young couple paused when they noticed me smiling knowingly at their exchange before moving on. It had finally clicked with me what a “bama” was.
It was an excuse to flirt.
Note: The UrbanDictionary has several definitions for “bama”, one of them mentions the phrase being local to Washington DC, where both of these conversations took place.
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The Top 10 Human Genes
As the purposes for various genes are identified on a weekly basis in the news, this list will be obsolete in a few months, but I wanted to post this. There aren’t enough plain-English reviews of human genes out there. I apologize if I bullox up something. My criteria was based on the importance of the gene to human beings specifically, novelty, and how well we know the gene does what we think it does.
Click the links for any of the genes listed to learn about how the gene appears to work:
1. FOXP2: This gene may be the most important of all in separating the humans from other primates. FOXP2 is crucial to our ability to talk to the elaborate degree we humans are able. A British family with an abnormal copy of FOXP2 has “immobility of the lips, tongue, and mouth, which makes their speech garbled.”
2. OT: The oxytocin gene is what makes mothers motherly, lovers snuggly, and housepets cuddly. It’s a chemical reward our bodies give us for forming social bonds with one another through physical contact.
Image by Fvasconcellos |
3. AVPR1a: One of Homo Sapiens’ strongest adaptations for survival is our social-bonding, our willingness to sacrifice our own well-being for the community and work together for common goals. A variant of AVPR1a appears to have a strong influence on this behavior. Nicknamed the “altruism gene,” it is also found in other species that exhibit strong social bonds. (Another variation of this same gene leads to ruthless behavior, earning it a “ruthless gene” nickname.
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4. SRY: Carried on the The Y Chromosome (often considered a “genetic deadzone”), this is the gene responsible for the masculinization process. Mammals lacking the SRY gene are female; therefore, men are the mutation. This gene is important for sexual dimorphism, as the evolutionary adaptation known as “sex” may allow species to diversify their genes and evolve more quickly.
5. OPN1LW: The Gene for Color Vision is found in the retina, and people with color blindness probably have a defective OPN1LW. The evolutionary importance of OPN1NW has downgraded the importance of olfactory genes (the genes for our sense of smell), which have been going dead in our recent evolutionary history, because smell is not as important for survival when you can see in color.
6. RB1: this was the first of the Tumor suppressor genes discovered. The entire Human Apoptosis Gene Array is responsible for killing cells in your body that have gone cancerous before they are able to spread. These genes are like the enforcers for the police-state that makes up your multi-cellular existence.
7. FIT2: This is a gene that many of us would like to knock out the way researchers have knocked it out in animals to prevent fat storage; however, without this gene it’s doubtful humans would have survived this long as fat storage is crucial to surviving times of famine.
 In culture, the number of adult neural stem cells triples in the presence of the Sonic hedgehog protein. |
8. Sonic the Hedgehog: Cool for being named after a Sega Genesis video game character, but also cool for its importance. Part of the hedgehog family of genes, which are regulators of animal development, Sonic is crucial to the development of neural stem cells.
(Not part of this list is the POKemon gene, found to cause cancer, had to be renamed after a lawsuit by Nintendo.)
9. HAR1F: An important gene separating us from other animals, HAR1 has mutated at an accelerated pace since we split off from other primates a few million years ago. The gene is believed to affect brain development, but more research is needed to understand what it does exactly.
10. Noncoding or “Junk” DNA: It appears that about 80-90 percent of the human genome serves no purpose, and we don’t know why. Are we carrying the “extinct genes” of our ancient ancestors? Are there messages from god written in our DNA, as some creationists want to believe? Are these great genetic deserts a way of preserving our good genes, protecting them by diluting their chance of mutation? There is a genetics joke that Junk DNA actually reads, “this space intentionally left blank.” Junk DNA makes the list for inspiring so much controversy and speculation.
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Earn a Nobel Prize Playing Video Games
No joke. This free software, FoldIt, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. More on the art of protein folding here.
Check out this demo:
I mentioned it’s FREE (as in beer) and well-made, so go download it now.
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Attention Flickr Users
Hat Tip to Clint for pointing me to this. If you have a flickr account, you can view all of your photos sorted by popular/most interesting. Just click on this link and replace my username (“ideonexus”) with your own. Very neat feature.
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Suicide Online
A recent study in the BMJ Suicide and the Internet, found that results for suicide-related search terms most frequently support or encourage suicide.
I like to think of the Internet as one big ecosystem of ideas, or memes, where our minds naturally select out the good ones. Obviously, if most sites are pro-suicide, then we need to get some better memes online.
So if you’ve stumbled across this blog post after googling “how to commit suicide” or “should I kill myself?” or seeking other suicide advice, please take a moment to consider the following reasons not to logout of this great big game of life:
Don’t you want to know what happens next? Like what’s that show Lost all about? I mean, really, what’s the deal with that freaky island? Is it a crazy scientific experiment, a paranormal limbo, or the imagination of some four-year-old girl playing dollies in a sandbox somewhere? If you kill yourself, you’ll never find out! And there’s a lot of other stuff you’ll miss out on too, like movie sequels and xkcd comics and the end of George Bush’s Presidency!
Do some charity work! Giving to others has been scientifically proven to make people happier. Suicide might end you, but everyone else has to live with the burden of your death. Instead of transferring your pain to others, work to easy their pain, and improve your own outlook on life in the process.
Puppies! Ending yourself denies you the opportunity to meet all the puppies still to come into this world!
Just another reason not to commit suicide. Photo by ehecatzin |
Pain isn’t forever. It only feels that way. Death is forever. That means it lasts longer than high school, bankruptcy, heartbreak, and the extended director’s cut of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
People will make fun of you. (Q: How does Kurt Cobain collect his thoughts? A: With a dust buster.)
Kittens! Awwww… Wookie da wittle kee-kees! Aren’t they just adorable? Go pick one up from the SPCA today!
They don’t want you to commit suicide Photo by Ruskis |
Stop taking life so seriously! Look, according to Dr. Nick Bostrom at Oxford University, chances are pretty good that we are living in a computer simulation and Brian Whitworth at Massey University has even got a pretty good explanation of how our physical world is a virtual reality. And I’ve got a short story online exploring the implications of this hypothesis. Go spend some time in Second Life to get some perspective.
Do you know what happens to Super Mario every time he dies trying to complete a level? He has to go back to the beginning and start all over again. If life’s a video game, then you’re gonna have to relive all this until you get it right.
Don’t log out of the game, get into it!
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Follow Up On Vista
Hat Tip to Chriggy, who sent me this link of a microsoft manager explaining that aggravating the heck out of me with Windows Vista was by design. Incredible.
Hat Tip to TGAW for sending the following PC vs Mac commercial:
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The Joys of Windows Vista
Microsoft has come up with a novel solution to the issue of security in Windows Vista. The basic principle is don’t let the user do anything. You see, if users are prevented from any productivity whatsoever, they can’t screw things up right?
Take for instance User Account Control. This is a new “feature” (note the scarequotes), which asks the user for permission every time they try to do something:
so I had to get this photo with my digital camera. |
It works like this: When you double click on Firefox, you get this pop-up stating that it appears Firefox is trying to run. Do you wish to allow it? You click OK. You try to share a folder, and you get this pop-up stating that it appears something is trying to share a folder. Do you wish to allow it? You click OK. You double click an MP3 and get a warning that Windows Media Player is trying to run. You click OK.
Turning off this “feature” walks you through the depraved sadism that must exist in the minds of Microsoft Developers. I could really feel their contempt for me as a user when I first went to the Windows Security Center and found User Account Control listed there, set to “ON,” with no way to modify it.
There was, however, an unhelpful link below this meaningless status indicator reading, “How does User Account Control help protect my computer?”
How indeed. The help topic unhelpfully explained that User Account Control protects my computer by making me click “OK” every time I want to do something.
Truly fascinating, but as Benjamin Franklin wisely cautioned, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” So despite the immense security clicking all these “OK” buttons was affording me, I decided I would trade security for freedom and efficiency by turning them off.
The help topic on this “feature” had nothing to say about how to do that.
So, of course, I consulted that great oracle of how to’s for usurping Microsoft’s bureaucracy, Google, and found this article, which directed me to “User Accounts and Family Safety.” Where I was able to disable the feature, after, of course, being informed that something was trying to disable User Account Control and clicking OK.
Now every time I start Windows Vista, I get a helpful alert message warning me that User Account Control is turned off.
Windows Vista is extremely pretty though.
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One of a Kind
If you are reading this, then you are a member of the human race.
You are a member of Kingdom Animalia, meaning you are multicellular, but, unlike plants, your cells do not have a cell wall. You are a member of Phylum Chordata, meaning you have a central nervous system, and Subphylum Vertebrata, meaning you also have a backbone to protect your dorsal nerve cord.
Your warm bloodedness and mammary glands put you in Class Mammalia. Your Subclass, Placentalia, means you were fully gestated inside your mother before birth, as opposed to being grown in a pouch like kangaroos.
modern chimp in the upper left-hand corner, then a chronologic sequence of hominids ending with modern humans. Image courtesy NSF (Click for Larger Image) |
Like other members of the Order Primates, you have grasping hands, fingers, and both incisors and molars for teeth. Being in the Family Hominidae, you stand upright, have a large brain, stereoscopic vision, and a flat face. Your Genus, Homo, defines you as having an s-curved spine, and your Species, Homo Sapiens, means you have a well-developed chin and high forehead, which provides room for your brain’s frontal lobe, giving you cognitive ability to imagine the future and plan ahead.
There are presently 6.5 Billion beings in this club we call the Human Race. Even though we all share this taxonomic classification, we still exhibit a tremendous amount of diversity in our genes. Unless you have an identical twin, the chances of someone else having the exact same DNA sequence as you is 1 in 6 million, meaning there are in the area of 1083 people on this planet genetically identical to you.
Despite sharing this identical internal genetic code, known as your genotype, your outward expression of this code, your phenotype, is very different. Our DNA gives our bodies a great deal of plasticity when it comes to growing into our environments. All sorts of environmental factors, such as nutrition, climate, your mother’s womb, and physical experiences have all made your personal DNA expression unique.
Even if your genes did express themselves in the exact same way, as they almost do in identical twins, your personal experiences would be unique. Only you occupy the precise space and time in which you currently exist. No one else can occupy your space-time coordinates, and experience the world the way you do.
You will glimpse less than a century of the Universe’s projected googolplex years of life in your own lifetime (one followed by 100 zeros). The atoms that currently make up your body, atoms forged in the centers of stars millions of light years away and billions of years ago, will disassemble. Some of these will find their way into other living things, all of them will continue to venture throughout the Universe in one form or another until the end of time.
But nothing exactly like you will ever experience this Universe the way you are now. You are the Universe observing itself in this momentary flash of consciousness. Savor it.
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RL Iron Man
So I saw Iron Man this weekend. Totally rocked. I loved the whole superhero as inventor meme. Very exciting. Very DIY (Do It Yourself).
But something hit me as I was driving home from the theater, we can build Iron Man right now. We have the technology.
First take one of Cyberdyne’s1 Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) exosuit, the suit increases the strength of its user and has a multitude of other applications:
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Then strap on Yves Rossy’s kerosene-powered jetpack:
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Then purchase a whole bunch of ThinkGeek’s Titanium Sporks, and melt them down for the body armor! Voila!
1 Yes, named after the fictional company from the Terminator movies. I don’t know if HAL is named after the computer in 2001, which is an acronym play on “I.B.M.” (H->I A->B L->M).
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Roller-Coaster Physics Game
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FREE: Send Your Name to the Moon
Send Your Name to the Moon Project |
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Free Comic Book Day, Saturnday May 3rd
Drop into Earth 383 tommorrow and pick up some free comics for yourself and the kids. Comics are a great way to get children into reading and the many games at Earth 383 promote imagination, intelligent thought, and creative problem solving.
Earth 383 is located around the corner from Levels at 212 N. Martin Luther King St. The phone number is 252.331.7686.
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Let the Phytoremediation Begin!
The Environmental Compliance Division at the Coast Guard base where I work is tasked with cleaning up decades worth of environmental problem areas on base and instituting sustainable operating procedures in the way the Coast Guard serves America. According to ARSC’s newsletter, we “recycled (kept out of landfills) 1330 pounds of toner cartridges in 2007” and kept 1005 pounds of alkaline batteries from landfills by recycling, five times the amount of batteries recycled in 20061.
To clean up past bad practices, the ECD has started planting trees in contaminated areas, which draw pollutants out of the ground and prevent them from contaminating the water table. The fans on short poles visible amid the trees in these photos are drawing petroleum hydrocarbons out of the soil and atomizing them into the air.
Aircraft Repair & Supply Center, Elizabeth City (Click for Larger Image) |
From the information sign in front of this field:
From 1941 until 1991, the surrounding area was used as a fuel farm for aircraft refueling. The fuel farm consisted of multiple underground and above-ground storage tanks which were decommissioned and removed from the site. Evidence of a release was observed during the tank removal activities, resulting in impacts on subsurface soils and groundwater by petroleum hydrocarbons. Phytoremediation was the selected remedy to control and contain contaminated groundwater migration and to remediate impacted soil and groundwater. Phytoremediation is an innovative and cost-effective technology that refers to the use of plant-based systems to remove, degrade, or stabilize environmental contaminants present in soil and/or groundwater.
Aircraft Repair & Supply Center, Elizabeth City (Click for Larger Image) |
Both poplar and willow trees have been planted across the site to remediate subsurface soils and groundwater. The use of both poplar and willow trees within a phytoremed