feedback loop?
Posted on November 16th, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, socio, borg.
From an article in the New York Times, an interview with an experimental psychologist at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Mind and Biology:
“My part involves looking at psychological and social factors that might change the genes…”
-Dr. Margaret McClintock, NY Times, Nov 16/04
This is the level of feedback we need to be talking.
Any sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from biology.
Today we also have Dr. Kevin Warwick [he of the implanted RFID] warning that computer viruses might well infect people.
-w.
Shouty Finn Nutters
Posted on February 4th, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, music, socio.
My New Favourite Thing
MIESKUORO HUUTAJAT are a crew of shouting Finns. A choir of shouting Finns, actually.
The idea was to dress ca. 20 men in black suits, white shirts and black rubber ties, and train them to shout some of the most beloved songs in the Finnish song heritage.
There’s audio available here [mp3] and video available here [.avi]
Really. This is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time.
Lately they’ve been shouting at an Finnish Ice-Breaker
-w.
Viddy This
Posted on February 2nd, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
“The children added that while they didn’t like what they saw, none of them changed the channel.”
-w.
Water Retention
Posted on February 1st, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, socio.
A biotech company is moving into medical production with a new variety of transgenic rice.
The possibilities for growing drugs in plants - dubbed “pharming” - have been researched for years, with scientists developing a wide range of vaccines and other medicines in several common foods in the laboratory. But now Ventria Bioscience, based in Sacramento, is to break new ground by planting 130 acres with two new varieties of GM rice that will produce lactoferrin and lysozyme, infection-fighting chemicals that it will market for use in oral rehydration products to treat severe diarrhoea.
-w.
qayaqs on the Thames
Posted on January 29th, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
An article in the Independent suggests that there may soon be a need for Igloos in Hereford?:
“Scientists have long expected that global warming could, paradoxically, cause a devastating cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings as much heat to Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of Sciences has even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as ‘likely’. But until now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away.
The new research, by scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Acquaculture Science at Lowestoft and Canada’s Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as well as Woods Hole, indicates that this may already be beginning to happen.”
-w.
Psy War
Posted on December 29th, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
The website of 7Pillars Partners Publications has been down for some time, but much goodness on the tactics of Information Warfare can still be yours.
Thanks to the Wayback Machine
-w.
propaganda
Posted on August 31st, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
Niedermayer brings Stanley Cup to tired firefighters
In a display of primal tribalism Lord Stanley’s cup has been trotted out to stir the hearts of those at the front lines. Confronted with raw fire we summon the only gods we have left.
“It’s an experience that I’ll never get to see again, is the Stanley Cup, so it’s really lucky for me,” he said.
so wrong
Posted on August 30th, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
Global Exchange : Reality Tours
This just seems creepy to me.
Reality Tours offer participants an in-depth look at the reality of destination countries through direct observation of the host society. Participants learn about the country’s history, politics, economy, religion, government, health care, agriculture, education, and environment, all while participating in exciting cultural activities.
Come and see the poor and weary. Ogle their dismay. Take pictures of their impoverished conditions to show your friends back home.
Famine Porn.
Opression Porn.
Be the first in your carpool to have a firsthand look at kwarshiorkor!
but I’m not bitter.
-w.
rand kapital
Posted on August 22nd, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
Ye cats and little apples:
tank futures
Posted on July 28th, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
the Death of a Thousand Cuts
Go read This Modern World
in which we find out that the Pentagon is setting up a gambling scheme on likely future events in the Middle East. the Policy Analysis Market is modeled on the stock exchange and allows traders to buy and sell “futures contracts” - wagers on the likelihood of different combinations of events. The investor with the correct prediction would profit from a the pool of funds from the unsuccessful inverstors.
-w.
big thinking
Posted on July 23rd, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.
We are a Culture of Nomads
The Europeans are always all het up about their national identity. Every hovel on the continent has 600 years of history behind it and the inhabitants will gladly translate the brass plaques commemorating the important events which transpired on that patch of dirt. Whole wars have been fought over dead-end canyons and bare patches of dirt which have nothing to reccomend them but the quantity of blood absorbed into the soil. The only people who could coordinate all this into todays EU are the Belgians, who have been successfully scrubbed from all the history books. Such effacement is necessary in the present context.
The Americans have their fat ol’ homeland myth with its dreams and lies of beautiful glories. Picturesque anecdotes of down-homey folkiness and pithy vigour set cheek by jowl with epic bravura. Posse Comitatus. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. No matter where you come from, once you’re an American you’re one for good. They’re the beautiful people with the vaguely defined dream that promises liberty and cargo.
The Japanese polish their shards of bushido and zen.
China waits and feeds her people to the inscrutable furnace.
The Phillipines shovels her people out into the world but they still feel the islands.
The Russians have about as much space as us, a little more to be truthful. And goodness knows thae whole of what was once the Soviet Union encompassed a variation of peoples dazzling in its breadth. But touring around the country was discouraged for reasons of proletarian progress.
And like it or not I’m Canadian.
Now I don’t know about our government. They’re a wily bunch, skilled at the primate games of hoot and holler, not averse to the flinging of a little dung now and then and certainly versed in the finer points of acting like a fatuous dink in public so as to divert attention from one’s backroom exploits.
I don’t have much to do with them.
But there’s this absolutely enormous chunk of the planet on which I am allowed to move about as I see fit. I meet people and I never know where they’ve come from. Colour of skin is no indicator of origin or distance travelled. A fellow native of this soil might have come from 3000 km away. Some come from bloodlines which have been here for thousands of years. Some may be the first of their line on this soil.
There was a lot of talk at the folk fest by performers from nations other than Canada, particularly the American performers - though Billy Bragg got in on the action too - about how different Canada is from America and Europe and other places in general. Lots of patriotic self-effacement. I felt like the idea of Canada constituted some sort of confessional.
I think it’s because we have less baggage. There’s always somewhere else to go.
-w.