I imagine the recent negotiations to have gone something like this. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I like to imagine that Uncle Bill threatened Kim Jong Il with a Roman spatha.

I for one am glad that Bill Clinton gets a little attention. He gets to be the goddamned hero for once. And you know what? Despite everything that anyone says, the right thing happened. Two innocent women were freed from a very bleak future.

This is vitally important. It is not possible to see this as a bad thing unless you are a terrible person.

So anyway, NASA has released an image that was captured by the Spitzer telescope. I like Spitzer and I am a huge fan of the things that we get to see because of Spitzer. And this new image is not a disappointment. It’s an interesting spiral galaxy with a strange eye-shaped structure at its center. I think the most notable feature, however, is smaller galaxy that appears to caught up in orbit around the larger galaxy’s nucleus. It makes a lot of sense from a physics standpoint. The moon orbits Earth which orbits the sun which orbits our own galactic center. Why not have larger, binary galaxies? All around pretty sweet.

The thing that I wanted to focus on, however, is not the image itself, but rather, the language used to describe the image. And exerpt:

• “The ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy is causing the ring to light up with new stars.”

I know that I’m not the first person to point this out, but if we want to be perfectly accurate with our language and consider that this galaxy in the image is about 50-million light-years away, shouldn’t the above quotation be phrased more like this:

• “The ring around the black hole was bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy was causing the ring to light up with new stars.”

I mean, really. The image is of the state of that galaxy fifty million years ago. I’m not an astronomer, but I am a linguist. When astronomers discuss these things, do they use past-tense language? I’m really curious about this, because it seems to me that by using simpler language to ease communication, then some information is lost in the discussion. By using present tense, you must make the (to be fair, usually accurate) assumption that the reader understands that “is” actually means “was the case fifty million years ago.”

On the one hand, I’m curious about the type of language that professional astronomers use. On the other, I feel like I ought to lobby for the use of accurate language when describing celestial objects like distant galaxies.

Perhaps the most viable solution would be to take Rush Limbaugh, freeze him, stick him in a pod and launch him to that other galaxy so that he can report back to us about what it’s doing. With any luck, we’ll miss and he’ll be lost in the inconceivably vast void between galaxies forever.

Would it be easier to just send him to North Korea where he would be forced to do hard labor for ten years?

Singen Sie mich adieu.

It’s a difficult world that we live in. It’s a world of expectations and everyone seems to expect different things from it. As some would have it, we are to submit to the pseudo-random flux that is evolution. A biologist might define evolution as: the change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

Humans have the unique ability in all the animals on Earth to sort of transcend their instincts. We can act in ways that are contrary to the way we have evolved to act, in other words. I’m not trying to get into a free will debate here, but the fact remains that our ability to perceive evolution for what it is allows us to make reasoned judgments about it. It allows us the unique ability to consciously manipulate it.

Creationists often argue that evolution has never been observed in a lab. Apparently they have never heard of the Westminster Kennel Club.

As the technology for gene manipulation becomes every more sophisticated, a debate is growing about the ethical implications of so-called designer babies. I have very clear objections for eugenics, but as long as gene-screening of embryos is freely available to everybody who wants a child–and not available exclusively to the filthy rich–then what’s the harm? Everyone has a different idea of what beautiful is. What can possibly be wrong with giving your children a little extra edge in the uphill battle for survival?

What I wanted to talk about today is a little different than designer babies, however. I’m almost thirty years old. I’m past the point where my genes could be screened and I could be selected out of a pot of possible embryos. My Adonis-like beauty and Einsteinian intelligence were the result of good old fashioned chance. But that’s it. There’s no way I can improve myself further at the genetic level.

But are there other options? I came across this article today on Science Daily and it got me thinking. There’s a lot of technology being developed for people who lose limbs. This particular new technology is promising because it involves laying microelectrodes on the surface of the brain, rather than embedding them within the neural tissue as a way of detecting neural impulses, translating them, and using them as a computer interface or as a method of controlling a bionic limb. I actually really like that the article uses the words “bionic limb,” terminology that used to be the playground of science fiction writers.

So far, the technology is able to improve the lives of crippled individuals. It is not, however, capable of bringing them back to full power, so to speak. The question that we must entertain at this point is: what happens when it is?

What happens when bionic limbs meet–or exceed–the capabilities of our natural limbs?

Bionics and cybernetics are pretty science fictiony, but this article shows that dramatic progress has been made in the field, and perhaps in ten or twenty years viable, lifelike appendages can be attached with all the articulation of a real hand. But maybe they’re better and stronger than before! A wounded soldier with his purple heart proudly pinned on his cybernetic chest stands tall and proud among a crowd of normal people. He smiles benignly upon them, only dimly remembering the day when he was a mere mortal. He holds his metallic fist above his head, a salute to his great-great-grandfather who had nothing but a leather-wrapped stick to bite down on when the field medic went at his gangrenous leg with a rusty hacksaw.

It’s not that far-fetched!

And even if it were, what are the ethical implications? It’s called “transhumanism.” One could call it forced human evolution. It is a movement that supports the use of biotechnology to augment the human body, not just in the case of injury, but as a voluntary act. A purposeful denial of the limitations of our naturally selected man-bodies. The idea that injury, aging, disease, and death are involuntary and undesirable carries a lot of merit.

Buddhists spend their entire lives attempting to overcome suffering, but their approach is holistic. It emphasizes acceptance of things that can’t be changed. Transhumanism, as a philosophy, urges people to reject the notion that their body is a temple that should not be altered. Body-modification as art is one thing. Body-modification in the name of utility, physical improvement, and life affirmation is another matter entirely.

Robocop spent three films trying to regain his lost humanity, and this is one of the possible perils of transhumanism (also called “posthumanism”). Nietzsche’s description of the Overman is one who has surpassed humankind, but still cares for the transience and vitality that humankind represents.

Bear in mind that evolution short-changes us. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution. We are merely the product of a natural mechanism that allows animals that are “fit” to survive. As any biologist will tell you, an accurate description of it would be “survival of the sufficiently fit.” In other words, that which survives, survives. All a human needs to do is survive to reproduce. That’s it. In fact, that’s easy. All sorts of terrible maladies and suffering can crop up after that deed is done. Cancer. Osteoporosis. Heart disease. Love handles. And what’s worse? We pass those tendencies on to our children because it’s easy to reproduce.

The question is whether or not we want to accept the qualities that natural selection has, somewhat arbitrarily, assigned to us, or do we wish to strive for something greater? Do we make ourselves something new and distinct? Do we push the limits of human potential?

Some extra reading is important. I highly recommend anything by Nick Bostrom. He’s a professor at Oxford and a noted transhumanist philosopher. Specifically, look at:

• A History of Transhumanist Thought(pdf)
• The Transhumanist FAQ(pdf)
• In Defense of Posthuman Dignity(html)
• Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up(pdf).

In the end, it’s not about whether or not you value human life. Everyone except the most staunch sociopaths value human life. It’s about whether you value human life enough to go beyond it.

do svidania

My fiancée thinks that Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter is hot. To test it again, just now, I said, “Hey, you should see this,” and I turned the monitor so she could see the above image (before my modifications). Her eyes immediately clouded over and she smiled, emitting sort of a “hmm…” sound. The fascinating thing is that he is deliberately dressed to be androgynous. He’s a transvestite. While it’s probably obvious that it’s a man, there is a blurring of the lines here. His bone structure is that of of a man, but his behavior–if you’ve ever seen Rocky Horror Picture Show–is often feminine. You might call Frank-N-Furter a sort of melding of two genders, lying solidly in neither. Such is the nature of “trans-gender” individuals. Drag queens sometimes blur the lines further. I’ve seen drag queens that I could have sworn were women.

Word on the street is, the California Supreme Court did something today. Or rather, failed to do something, which is strike down Proposition 8. You know, back in 2008, when I first saw this commercial, I thought it was a joke. Nobody in their right mind could possibly say these things without some irony. These people defend Prop 8 on the grounds that if same-sex couples are allowed to get married, it will somehow infringe on their rights. Of course, there is no mention of the homosexuals in question having their rights restricted.

Here’s the thing. I was talking with a science teacher friend of mine and he asked me what I thought the difference between females and males was. I pretty much assumed it must have something to do with the wang. Well, as he pointed out, biologically speaking, the only clear-cut way that scientists have of differentiating between is the size of their gametes. The female of any given, sexually-reproducing species will always have the larger gametes (eggs) while the males have the smaller gametes (sperm). That’s it. There is no other way of differentiating between the two across species. For instance, female spotted hyenas have an organ that resembles the males’ genitals, referred to as a pseudopenis. To the untrained eye, it’s almost impossible to tell a male from a female.

Look at seahorses. The males are the ones that get pregnant and give birth to live young. Reminds me of a terrible Schwarzenegger movie, speaking of California.

So what’s the deal with humans? Aren’t we somehow different? We’d like to think that we are, wouldn’t we? If aliens came to Earth today, do you think they’d be able to tell a male from a female human without some research?

Sexual reproduction evolved as a novel way of blending genes between generations. The reasons for sexual reproduction persisting are not exactly clear. A number of species of animals reproduce asexually (some lizards, insects and sharks are able to reproduce through parthenogenesis), which is a lot more efficient. It is thought that wider diversity is the result of sexual reproduction and that it allows for quicker adaptation to changing environmental conditions. Regardless of the truth-value of this assertion, we are a species among many species which produce sexually.

The question of the naturalness of homosexuality arises now. Only a heterosexual coupling among humans is going to produce any viable offspring, so this is the evidence that is often cited in opposition to allowing same-sex couplings. I would posit that since the only real biological difference between the genders (and therefore making any other differences largely cultural) then any random coupling of humans is essentially the same as any other. If, by some chance, a few of those couplings are “heterosexual” and result in offspring, then so much the better for the species. In fact, the way evolution works, this is, of course, going to be far more common than a same-sex coupling. But, as we have seen with many species, including chimps, bonobos, and other mammals, homosexual couplings do happen. It is, for lack of a better word, normal. It’s not strange or weird, and nature allows for it simply because it’s possible.

I am not here to argue for whether these relationships are more or less loving and functional (there are plenty of hetero- couplings that are completely dysfunctional), but to argue that biology allows for homosexuality. The differences between the sexes are subtle and the differences between the genders are cultural.

Whether or not Chief Justice George actually believes that he is serving democracy best by upholding Proposition 8, the fact remains, the proposition itself is just another cultural battle that has absolutely no bearing on biology or the efficacy of humans to continue existing on this planet.

No marriage, no matter what genders are involved, is official until its sanctioned by the state. You can have ceremonies all day long, but until the ink is dry on the marriage license and submitted to the county registry, then you aren’t married in the only eyes that matter: society’s. I’m not a huge fan of state institutions, but this peculiar institution shows that it’s not just a religious one and it cannot be defined as such.

And that is why the California Supreme Court screwed up.