faces

"The magic of the sentinel is that it protects the information, so that even after a hundred bacterial generations we were able to retrieve the exact message," says Wong. "Once the DNA message is in bacteria, it is protected and can survive." And as a millilitre of liquid can contain up to billion bacteria, the potential capacity of such a memory system is enormous.

faces and names

"re those advance reading copies (ARCs) of Pattern Recognition that have been popping up on eBay for the last little while.
Those are �uncorrected proof copies�, which means that they are (1) absolutely riddled with errata, and (2) in the case of this book, to some extent a variant text. There is, in particular, a completely annoying failure on the typesetter�s part to keep the email sections in the font allotted to email."

{a glimpse at the burden of proofreading. William Gibson enters the blogplatz.}

"I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here. "

More Edge:
That's true, Mr. President: liberals are not people who spend money on government programs per se, liberals are people who put money into improving social conditions because they affirm that humans can learn�from parents, peers, teachers, and what they see and hear around them. How come? Because human biology evolved for adaptation by learning. Can all humans learn equally well? Of course not, but they can learn better. We have seen that in the case of the learning disabled over the last generation. Are humans perfectible? Of course not. But liberals tend to use government to improve social conditions (which is to say, to support the learning environment in the widest sense) rather than on coercion, incarceration, warfare�and rewarding those who have already had the benefits of privileged environments. Have you ever noticed, Mr. President, how so much of the twins research that is used to argue the determining importance of genetics depends on controlling for socioeconomic status? That little phrase is the basis of the liberal agenda: give everyone an equal chance and, yes, the genes will play a large role. Inequality blocks genetic potential.

But is this science, you ask? Indeed. Anthropologists have spent the last century assembling evidence of how differently humans behave when reared in different cultural settings�and how those differences disappear when the settings change, sometimes overnight, sometimes over a couple of generations.

Mary Catherine Bateson Anthropologist
Visiting Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Author of With a Daughter's Eye (on her parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson)

More Edge: Biologist John Bonner at Princeton has, following more than forty years research, proved that it is impossible to distinguish between human intelligence and that of a social amoeba like slime molds. You just cannot demonstrate that slim molds�or bacteria for that matter�are unconscious. Since Darwin and modern genetics, the old debate around what distinguishes humans from other animals has become redundant. If anything, we are looking now into the differences betweens humans and minerals.

Astrophysicist John Gribbin�to the dismay of many�has been meticulously unscafolding away the existence of that last barrier. Life and the Universe are inextricably intertwined. There would be no planets like the Earth, and no life forms like us, if there were no clouds of gas laced with tiny traces of dusty debris produced by the previous explosions of supernova. There is no doubt now. We are made of interstellar galactic mineral dust.

Last but not least, the mother of all barriers, the last frontier between life and death is becoming ever more suspicious and difficult to ascertain. Hardly three years ago it was discovered that we humans too�like mouse and rats�have stem cells. Or, stem cells happen to be immortal. Stem cells command the process of morphogenesis from the incipient and magic zygot to the finished embryo. They are not the least important cells in the body. On the contrary. No wonder if the mother of all barriers has been deadly shaken. If atoms are eternal, and stem cells are immortal, what on earth dies out when somebody dies.

Eduardo Punset
Professor of Economic Policy at the Chemical Institute of Ramon Llull University in Barcelona
Director and Producer of Networks (a weekly programme of Spanish public television on Science).
Author of A Field Guide to Survive in the XXI st Century.

More Edge:
Optimists behave different than pessimists. They buy more, invest more, take risk for future gains, and work harder. One doesn't have to be a genius to realize that the threat of continual war, while enhancing power, leads to economic woes because investors and consumers are uncertain. While oil profits may rise, all the rest of our modern industries, from Airlines, to Investment Banking, Telecommunications, Software and Chips will continue to collapse. To end the depression, the country needs optimism about economic growth driven by expectations of peace and stability.

Jordan Pollack
Professor of Computer Science
Brandeis University

Susan Blackmore and the Perrott-Warrick Project:

Borderline states, like that between sleep and waking, have often set people wondering about the possibility of the paranormal - of seeing at a distance, or picking up thoughts, images or ideas from other people. Is this just fantasy? Or is there something special about the interface?

Much circumstantial evidence suggests that borderline states of consciousness are psi-conducive (that is, they encourage telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition). In addition some of the most promising experimental techniques seem to exploit this borderline. However, no one has previously approached psi quite this way, nor tackled the interesting question of what borderline is being crossed. Is the state of consciousness what matters, or is it the confusion between reality and imagination?

More Edge:

In my dream I can walk down any street in Bristol, Boston, Bogot� or Bombay and no one will steal my phone to get their next fix. No heroin�dazed beggar will plead for my change. No crack-crazed youth will kill me for my credit card. And why? Because in my dream they, like me, can walk down that street and buy any drug they like.

Cannabis and ecstasy, heroin and cocaine, LSD and aspirin, will all be sold � clean, legal, properly packaged in precise doses, with appropriate warnings and proper regulation. Tax revenue will be more than enough to treat addicts and to guide problem users. Scientists will be free to research the effects of any drug without fear. Children will be given true advice, and real drugs education that teaches wise drug use, not ignorant abuse. And global terrorism will have disappeared for lack of funds.

Our prisons will have room to spare. No one will be there for wanting the freedom to control their own mind. And no one will be there because gangs have lured or threatened them into a life of dealing and violence. Police will once more earn the respect of the majority whose lives they work to protect.

In my dream, the peasants of Afghanistan will work their poppy fields for legal wages, the farmers of South America will labour free of the fear of the drug barons, and the profits of world trade will not be siphoned off by the criminals but returned to the people who earned them.

Mr President, it is the United States of America who long ago brought the evil of prohibition upon the world, and still holds the power to prevent the rest of us from seeking freedom from prohibition. Mr President, you could win the war on terrorism, not by fighting, but by refusing to fight the war on drugs.

As your prospective scientific advisor on issues of mind and consciousness, I know that there is no more pressing issue than the problem of drugs. I urge you to act now to free us all.

Yours sincerely,


Dr Susan BlackmorePsychologist
Bristol, England
Author of Dying to Live, The Meme Machine, and Consciousness: An Introduction.

Nguyen Khac Toan, a former army officer, was arrested on 8 January 2002 in a Hanoi cybercaf� and has since been held in the B14 prison not far from the city.

RSF notes that three other cyber-dissidents are in prison in Vietnam. Le Chi Quang, who is in poor health, was sentenced to four years in jail on 8 November for advocating political reforms on the Internet (see IFEX alerts of 27 December, 8 November, 23 and 9 October, 27 September, 15 August and 14 March 2002). Pham Hong Son, who was arrested on 29 March (see IFEX alerts of 27 December, 23 October, 15 August, 26 July and 18 April 2002), and journalist Nguyen Vu Binh, who was arrested on 25 September (see IFEX alerts of 27 December, 23 and 9 October, 27 September and 23 July 2002), are in prison for having expressed opinions online and have not yet been tried. Tran Khue, a literature teacher who wrote a letter to then Chinese President Jiang Zemin which he put on the Internet, has been under house arrest since 10 March (see IFEX alerts of 4 July and 14 March 2002).

More Edge:
To illustrate the importance of these findings for the health of our nation, consider the following frightening fact: the best predictor, internationally, of the level of violence within a nation is the proportion of young men in the population. Men are more violent than women in all cultures. Although cultures can shift the level of violence, the sex difference remains. Men are more heavily involved in risk taking. We now know that a significant correlate of violence in humans, both men and women, is the level of circulating serotonin�a key neurochemical in the brain. When serotonin levels are low, the level of control is lower; low serotonin levels are associated with greater impulsivity, more risk taking. We are only beginning to understand what determines and changes levels of serotonin in the brain. One thing is certain: the key lies in understanding what happens in development. A recent study illustrates this point, and shows why science must interface with policy. Genetic analyses have revealed that a particular form of one gene causes differential expression of an enzyme. This enzyme plays a critical role in the production of serotonin. In a study of several hundred young boys, results revealed that when this gene produces a low level of the target enzyme, such children are far more vulnerable to physical abuse by parents than in children with a high level of the enzyme. In particular, boys who were targets of severe parental aggression were much more likely to shows signs of antisocial personality disorder if the level of the enzyme was low than if it was high. Parental aggression should not be tolerated under any circumstance. But what this study reveals is that we are not equally vulnerable to aggression.

Marc D. Hauser
Professor of Psychology
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Harvard University

{Dr. Hauser appears to be an unrepentant vivisectionist. the possibility of his not being didn't occur to me until after a half hour's worth of condemnatory vituperation. so I hold my fire. the most difficult moral decisions before the human race are right in the crux of that debate. anyone who justifies the captivity of higher primates for 'research' is a coward. in case no one's noticed, cowardice has become an acceptable human quality. fear is now used as a justification for otherwise reprehensible acts. but I'm sure on a personal level Dr. Hauser is a reasonably brave man. as a thinker, as a philosopher, as a leader of men he's a weak fool. though I quote him because I like what he said, and agree with it.
there's a quality of 'going on', of continuing, that is a necessity for victims of many kinds, but especially for someone who is the, say, child of a rape.
accepting the inability to separate the self and its denunciation of the wrong from the wrong itself. it's what drives the internal madness of so many of the oppressed, after a while it's what you are, what you've become. Irish children with Danish features. Mexicans. out of Dr. Hauser's laboratories, with their 'humane' conditions come the new circumstances, we are this now. like Americans with the names of the indigenous peoples on their tongues all day, Chicago, Tennessee, Mississippi, Ottawa. it's what we are now. that thing that was done. pretending it was good is the most evil response possible. it wasn't good. the batteries of cages with 'apes' and 'primates' in them. rhesus monkeys are horrible enough, but chimpanzees, for God's sake.
Dr. Hauser goes on, as he must, as must we all. but the arrogance of delusion, the impossible pride in what took place, in what still takes place, pretending that it's anything but a scar, a wound, a disfiguring that can only be born with shame, means we have to live as animals, never justifying anything, because there is no justice, no higher morality, only what's possible, and it's possible to do so much now, it's almost limitless the power we have, but what have we become on the way to getting that power? I'm afraid Dr. Hauser may be on one side, and I on the other, of a line neither of us can see. but it's there. and the caged chimpanzee sees it well.}

{I let myself get blinded by the higher issue, so that the screed reads like a mis-sent bolt of inappropriate lightning. so, to tighten the segue:
the research into blood serotonin levels is practical, interesting, and ultimately as trivial as whether a serial killer has paid his taxes. for the same hands that caged these brothers and sisters, I know no other name for them that fits, cousins sounds too forced, and lacks the intimacy the nightmare brings, for those same hands to build anything, bridge, house, barn or dam, without the cleansing of acknowledged guilt and its attendant shame and remorse, is ultimately without meaning. it won't stand, as the most recent batch of swine are fond of saying. there is no way out but through. you can tear down every chemical wall in the world, you can map all the sequences of every mechanically possible combination, without that heart you're nothing. the opportunity waits. for us to pass through the fire and enter the endless possibilities, not of control, think of it! the same blind wormlike consciousness that now so desperately flees its horrible mistakes, mistakes that collapse all around us, threatening everything, everyone, with increasing pressure, that same consciousness wants to control the destiny of the human race. think of that. are we rising to that task? or crawling through the sewage of our negligence toward some means of escape? the door is there. maybe we should ask for the key. humbly. for once.}

More Edge:
I would like to urge you to provide more support for basic scientific research. But I would especially urge more support for the most productive, and most underfunded, scientific community in the country. This group of scientists and science educators do more to provide the basic intellectual infrastructure of the nation than any other. Every year they make fundamental discoveries in physics, biology, mathematics, and psychology, as well as ensuring that the discoveries of previous generations of scientists are transmitted to the scientists of the future. Yet they typically receive salaries somewhere between zero and $15,000.00 a year, and 20% are below the poverty line. Most of the science educators in this group actually make major financial sacrifices to do their fundamentally important work. They receive less federal and state support than any other part of the scientific community, no grants, no scholarships, no R and D write-offs, less even than public elementary schools or community colleges. In fact, both your administration and the preceding one have actually cut the small amount of funding that was once earmarked for this group. These unsung geniuses, are, of course, children under five and the many women (and a few men) who take care of them.

Alison Gopnik
Professor of Psychology
Coauthor of The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind

More Edge:
The prime task of 2003 and beyond is to re-define and re-discover the intellectual and moral roots of science. For science has become bound with wealth and power into a positive feedback loop from which it cannot escape: its perceived role in the present age is to provide high technologies of the kind that generate capital which in turn supports more science, of the kind that will provide high technologies to generate more capital and so on and so on. It becomes more and more difficult to finance science that offers no obvious short-term commercial or military reward. Worse: an entire generation of scientists and politicians has grown up that takes it to be self-evident that science should accept its role as the handmaiden of commerce and power.

Colin Tudge
Oxfordshire
Three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award.
Author of The Time Before History

More Edge:
The task of such a bureau would be to allocate a goodly proportion of the national revenue to projects that are important to our survival and wellbeing. Not to the discovery of more foul chemicals, deadly viruses, or laser guns circling around the planet. Instead, ways to produce clean energy, clean water, to keep biodiversity from disappearing should be supported. We should be preparing for the future, Mr. President, not continuing to invest in a mythical past. Currently science is at the service of speculators and mindless traffickers in destruction. It is time the rest of society reclaimed its right to have a voice in determining what their lives shall be like.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Davidson Professor of Management
Claremont Graduate University
Author of Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience

Lawrence B. Brilliant, M.D. in the Edge Foundation's volley of concerned (real) thinkers advising a concerned (imaginary) President of the US.

"Here is why I chose not to vaccinate my family:

� 1) To the best of my knowledge, there is no proof of any link between the experiments at Vector and either Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, but concern is understandable. If any proof of linkage arises, I might change my mind.

� 2) If Saddam Hussein has smallpox, I believe he might well be crazy or desperate enough to use it as a "doomsday weapon" if he were about to be destroyed; but it is also likely that Iraqi scientists have the ability to genetically alter the virus to make it vaccine-proof. If it is an end game, why would he use a virus that we have a vaccine against? It makes no sense.

� 3) If Al-Qaeda has the smallpox virus, I do not believe they would be willing to use it. Unlike Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda seeks the victory of an entire people, a culture, a religion-not the hegemony of any individual. Smallpox is the ultimate boomerang weapon. If it is released from its captivity at Chicago O'Hare airport, it is only a matter of days before it infects Mecca and Medina. It is not a likely weapon for a war that is a "Clash of Civilizations" unless a combatant sought the destruction of both civilizations.

� 4) Smallpox can be prevented if an exposed person is vaccinated as late as four or five days after exposure. While there is some risk that smallpox could be spread unseen for the first attack, within two weeks cases would start to appear and for nearly all Americans, there would be ample time and ample vaccine to be vaccinated after the first attack and still be safe.

� 5) I do not want to go into the fear that a small minority of Americans have that the your administration is prone to exaggerate the risks of terrorism in general and smallpox in particular as part of an attempt to frighten the public into accepting the erosion of civil liberties. As horrible as that allegation is, I simply have no information on which to make any comment other than to note the fear exists. And for my purposes here, it really does not matter. Based on the evidence I have seen to date, the risk of getting a case of vaccine-preventable smallpox today is just not as high as the risk of an adverse reaction to the smallpox vaccine."

Lawrence B. Brilliant, M.D.
Interim CEO of Cometa Networks, Inc.
Medical officer for the United Nations World Health Organization(1970s) helping lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox.
Author of nearly 100 scientific articles and two books and is an expert on smallpox, currently on call as a smallpox �first responder� for the Centers for Disease Control..

Russia's Czar Nicholas II had two identical trains. On the doors of each was the gold monogram: "N II." The two trains always rolled in tandem. Nicholas was either in the front one or the rear one. Nobody, not even the railroad commissioner, ever knew which.
___
Q. Where do we get the word "hokum"?

A. From a combination of "hocus-pocus" and "bunkum."

{somewhere in England someone was made "official Cycle-Path Ranger for the stretch of national cycle-path between Sandwell & Dudley rail station and the Coseley tunnel". and wrote about it in an online journal, posting also well-done photos of local flora (a search for images of cowslips led there). and scattered amongst that rural innocence and world-healing idealism, images of feral youth with spit and violence and plastic sacks of glue-fumes.}

News from Nowhere

Joan Didion:
"... early on, after John Ashcroft and Condoleezza Rice warned the networks not to air the bin Laden tapes because he could be "passing information," heated debate about the First Amendment implications of this warning�as if there were even any possible point to the warning, as if we had all forgotten that our enemies as well as we lived in a world where information gets passed in more efficient ways. A year later, we were still looking for omens, portents, the supernatural manifestations of good or evil. Pathetic fallacy was everywhere. The presence of rain at a memorial for fallen firefighters was gravely reported as evidence that "even the sky cried." The presence of wind during a memorial at the site was interpreted as another such sign, the spirit of the dead rising up from the dust..."

Pathetic Fallacy

what once separated the United States from Nazi Germany was the protection of civil liberties for American citizens. People of Germany had no rights and did not care. Those few who did care were so terrified of their government that they did not dare to speak out. Those who did speak out were declared "enemy agents" and sent to concentration camps.

thru oblomovka:
Bicycle? Rube Goldberg?
Felsenstein got to work. He's built the solution. It's a bicycle-powered, ruggedised luggable, with a localised version of Linux and constructed from cheapo commodity parts. It's got an aerial, too: it uses WiFi to connect to a central Internet hub in the market town.
Using it, villages that currently have no electricity, telephone or decent roads can monitor the prices of crops, negotiate group purchases with other villages, and make business deals without spending days away from the farm. And with email and built-in VoIP, the families will be able to make direct contact for the first time with the Laotian Diaspora - the relatives who left the war-torn zone to earn money in the capital and beyond.

Here's his list of what the money can do:

Your donation will pay for:

* $10 20 lbs. shipping costs
* $25 Keyboard
* $50 Headset
* $75 Antenna
* $100 Battery
* $250 Bicycle Powered Generator
* $450 CPU or Mountain Top Solar Panel
* $850 Base Station
* $1,000 One RT US-Laos Trip for One Technical Consultant
* $1,500 One Complete Jhai Computer
* $2,500 One Complete Village Set-up
* $3,000 Relay Station
* $25,000 The Full 5 Village System
"I sketched out a system of rugged bicycle-powered computers, one per village, interconnected by Wi-Fi (802.11b) digital data links and coupled to the local phone system several miles away. Through this system VOIP (digital telephone) calls could be placed to the local phone lines as well as long-distance calls through Internet telephony to relatives overseas. E-mail would provide a kind of "telegraphy" and the system could be operated by village kids (100 percent literate) trained through an existing local network of Internet Learning Centers affiliated with this project."
Lee Felsenstein writes to danny o'brien

{oblomovka sets perfect trap. impossible-to-resist outlet for all frustrated altruistic impulses, or at least a place to begin. it's my first online transaction. people with notoriety in a world I inhabit the fringe of are doing things that are at the heart of what is noble in the human spirit.}