Click on the image to see it full size. I’m working on a new theme for the blog so that I can include larger format images. It might take some time.

This is pretty much exactly what would happen if William Shatner came ’round to tea at the Prime residence.

So I realized today that I have no really good reason for using Optimus Prime as the subject of so many of these comics (if you can call them that). Perhaps it’s that I see him as the sort of ideal outside observer. An alien not of us, but very sympathetic to us. He likes humans in a way that is not patronizing or insincere. He shows us–the inferior race–a kind of respect that is rare between humans.

Prime is the perfect idealist. His most famous quote (from the comics as well as the various Michael Bay films) was, “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” On the one hand, it’s the sort of magnanimous statement that gives a person shivers, especially when uttered by the always earnest Peter Cullen. But it’s also, when one really deconstructs it, astonishingly prejudiced against beings that are less than sentient. Regardless, I’ve always wanted to identify with Optimus Prime and I respected his sage wisdom (and awesome robot-fu) as a child.

Perhaps I use him in so many comics because I happen to own an Optimus Prime action figure myself, which makes it easy to photograph him from any angle I want. Do you know how hard it is to find a photo of William Shatner in the perfect pose?

The subject of ‘Hidden Portals’ was spawned by a headline that I saw on Science Daily. It’s one of those headlines that really plays tricks on a guy like me. I read something like this and I get really excited. I imagine, of course, teleportation (something that would really put GM out of business). And, thus, that’s the idea that I explored in my art project.

But that’s not exactly what’s going on in the article. In fact, the article is further misleading in that, try as I might, it’s difficult to figure out what, exactly, these researchers actually accomplished. Upon further research into the matter, it turns out that what they have created is not an actual, workable prototype of a hidden doorway, but instead have built a functional conceptual model of a doorway that does not permit electromagnetic waves to pass through it, but would allow other entities (say, a person) to pass through. A mirror that you can walk through.

It’s actually really cool. But this is the thing that’s frustrating about science sometimes. They’ve proved that it’s theoretically possible, but they haven’t actually built it yet. My question is, of course, why the hell not?

It’s a curious thing about science. In fact, it’s the critical difference between science and applied science (i.e. technology). What use has a scientist for technology except as a way of furthering our understanding of the world? They’ve proved that it’s possible to build the doorway. In a sense, it doesn’t matter to the pure researcher that it ever actually gets built. For the pure researcher, actually building the device would only be important if it could be used in further research. This might be an oversimplification of the pure researcher, who is, of course, only human, but the point remains.

Technology, like for instance these new metamaterials involved in the creation of the hidden portal is, essentially, a means to an end. And I don’t mean this lightly. “Means to an end” is a concept that bears considerable weight to a philosopher. Technology is a means to an end. And it is nothing more than that. To a scientist, the end is knowledge and understanding. To everyone else, the end is often creature comfort or experiential. We use technology as a means to the end of enhancing our individual lives or the lives of others. Both are perfectly reasonable ways to use technology.

Without letting this become a lecture on ethics, I think I’d like to bring this whole thing full circle.

I’d like to bring this around to what I find so interesting about Optimus Prime. He is, in a sense, a piece of technology. But he is also a sentient being. He is the ideal exemplar of a higher being that treats lower beings with dignity and respect. He is a piece of technology that doesn’t treat humans as a means to an end. They are an end in themselves. To be treated as an end and not a means. That is the true meaning of “freedom,” folks.

Now, if only someone would build some mirror-portals so that I could buy one.

Freiheit ist nicht frei.

This is one of the possible results of congress enacting the Terminators as Secret Service Agents Act. The world could use fewer jerks.

I found this article on BBC today. Augmented Reality (AR) is a pretty sweet concept. The technology looks very cool, totally validating years of cyberpunk fiction. But there’s a problem with the article as written. And the problem stems not from any direct fault of the journalist, but from a dramatic misunderstanding of the nature of computers and robots.

The article mentions “Terminator Vision” and it is this very concept that is suspect here. By way of explaining, let’s build a mental concept of the flow of information inside of a Terminator’s computer-mind.

In the films (and indeed, in many robot films) when we, the viewers, see from the Terminator’s perspective, it’s a sort of infrared image with a text-based overlay. A Heads Up Display (HUD). I always passed it off as an abstraction, so we could relate, in some way, to how a Terminator relates to the world. However, it never occurred to me that someone would take that as literal. Why, exactly, would a Terminator need to generate this needless text in its image field? It doesn’t need to read it. It creates an unnecessary step in its data processing.

Here’s the algorithm that would be going through the CPU’s image analysis circuit:

1. Input image from eye-cameras
2. Analyze image thusly: separate out faces, identify them, identify weapons, identify surrounding structures and other objects
3. Evaluate possible threat sources
4. Evaluate possible actions based on threats, possibility for combat, and meaningful interactions with human companions (See Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
5. Generate text cues
6. Output: Overlay text cues on HUD for Terminator Higher Brain to then READ and presumably respond.

Why would the Terminator ever need to read this text in order to make an informed decision? The beauty of being a walking computer is the ability to evaluate raw data and process it without forming it into words. It’s faster and far more efficient. I can make allowances for, say, Robocop, who is actually a man with human eyes who might actually need a HUD in order to evaluate incoming data. In fact, any scenario involving a human inside a machine is going to necessitate some sort of AR technology. A cyborg’s lower and higher brain functions occur in the same place (unlike in humans). A cyborg doesn’t need the raw data to be filtered through a process, evaluated, and then passed back through the eyes. It’s ludicrous. Thus, the entire concept of “Terminator Vision” as a euphemism for AR is formed out of ignorance of computer technology. QED.

As for the recent American behavior at town hall meetings: grow up America. Read your history and study other countries. This country is far more likely to turn into Nazi Germany than Maoist China if continue to allow ourselves to be controlled by corporate interests. Don’t people understand that the government is a non-profit organization (or negative-profit, as the case may be)?

I don’t understand how people can allow themselves to be so closed minded about this issue. There is a certain income discrimination going on in health care in this country, and so many people are totally willing to let it continue. I mean, we all know that poor people don’t actually deserve health care, right? Right?

Anyway, one other thing:

Presumably, they would stay in Canada. Where they belong.

tschüs.

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

I want to make it perfectly clear that I am, in fact, totally pumped that we’re finally getting back into legitimate space exploration. The thing is, there are perfectly justifiable reasons for going to the moon aside from the obvious intrinsic merit–the “cool” factor that I’ve talked about in the past.

It’s all a test. If we as a species wish to survive more than a few thousand more years, we need to get off this planet. The only way to do that is to learn how to survive in the absolute harshest of situations: the moon. If we can establish a permanent base on the moon, Mars should be a breeze. If we can do Mars, then I don’t see any reason why future technologies like the “ark” ships of science fiction aren’t reasonable.

What I’m talking about is pushing the limits of what humans are capable of.

Athletes are interesting because they push the limits of what a single individual can do. Tremendous feats of physical prowess. Competing over hundredths (thousandths) of a second. Scholars, poets, writers, and intellectuals push human thought to its extreme limits. They tear apart the tiniest ideas and expose their inner workings, oftentimes giving us insights into the world and ourselves that we never thought of before.

The great monuments of the world are testaments to what the combined human effort is capable of. Nobody considers what the Colosseum cost to build. Or the pyramids. The cathedrals scattered about Europe. We value these things beyond their price tags.

The Apollo program was a testament to what combined human effort is capable of and maybe, to this day, stands as perhaps the greatest human achievement outside of art. And so going back is a matter of course. We must go back to the moon because if we don’t, we are, in essence, stuck in a rut. Absorbed in our consumerism, our trite and meaningless wars, we can look at our current world situation as a symptom of a sort of species-wide depression. We did something amazing 1969 and it didn’t last long. And it’s over. And we’ve been trying to best it since then. We’ve discovered incredible new things, but we haven’t taken the next step. We haven’t gone to the next level.

My only problem is, as I’ve said in the past, just how damned slow it all happens. I’m just glad that something’s happening. I’ll be even more excited if they find the ice they’re looking for.

On the plus side, sun spots are back!

Au revoir.

The biggest problem with Mac’s “I’m a Mac” ad campagin with Justin Long and John Hodgman is that John Hodgman is so much more charismatic. I mean, is there anyone out there that likes Justin Long? Anyone that doesn’t think he’s a totally obnoxious ass?

They make a lot of claims in these ads about Mac’s superior security, stability, and performance. I’m sure there has been endless debate on all three counts, with PC users vehemently defending their machines, cobbled together from parts made by twenty or more different companies–reminiscent of the Road Warrior, the electronic version of a rat bike–while Mac users sit back with their user-friendly, cute-as-a-button, yuppie machines. The fact remains that a computer is only as useful as a user is able to make it.

There are a few things that I’d like to say that might level the playing field as far as Macs are concerned and the first involves a story about a virus. One of the Macintosh’s selling points is the fact that they never get viruses. The reason for this, of course, is not because they are more secure. It’s because they have a far smaller market share than Windows. About 90% to 10%. The danger is that as Apple’s market share grows (and it is currently doing just this) it will attract many more hackers.

Imagine you’re a hacker and you want to write a virus. Your primary goal is, of course, to infect as many computers as possible. The best way to do this, would be to write a virus for the most ubiquitous platform: Windows. That’s why PC-users get more viruses and why Mac-users suffering from malware are few and far between.

I suppose it’s interesting that this new Mac virus was found primarily to be haunting popular porn sites. Presumably the people suffering from attacks from this virus are Mac-users who happen to have a penchant for the naughty. And perhaps even more interesting is the fact that, Mac-users, inexperienced at dealing with viruses and with fewer bits of free software to rid themselves of these viruses, are having a much harder time cleaning their systems.

I really feel for them. It’s like forcing a five-year-old to oversee the merger of two large corporations. They are simply ill-equipped to deal with this.

I wonder if you are familiar with one Alan Turing. He was a cryptographer during World War II and his story is fascinating. Most importantly, he is considered by many to be the father of modern computing. His “Turing Machine” was a thought experiment that is the basis for modern file systems and, while modern computers aren’t directly based on it, the “Random Access Stored Program” machines that today’s computers evolved from Turing’s original ideas.

And this brings me to a point that has always struck me as bizarre about Apple Inc’s logo. You see, Alan Turing was a homosexual. This was illegal in England at the time and this was eventually discovered by the powers that be. He was stripped of his security clearance and convicted of the very same crime that Oscar Wilde was. He avoided jail time by submitting to chemical castration. A horrifying atrocity.

I’m not sure if this lead directly to his death or not, but the fact remains, he was found dead with a half-eaten apple next to him. The autopsy revealed that he died of cyanide poisoning and it was ruled a suicide. That’s right. The official theory is that he killed himself with a poisoned apple.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to draw a connection between Alan Turing’s death and the Apple logo, but that doesn’t make it any less odd, especially considering that the Apple logo has a single bite missing, implying that the apple is only partly eaten, just like the one that killed Alan Turing.

Is this deliberate? Apple Inc’s Wikipedia page says that the logo was inspired by Isaac Newton and the apple that inspired the theory of gravity, but that seems like a ludicrous idea with only a very tangential connection to a modern home computer, whereas the apple that killed the father of modern computing seems far closer.

It just strikes me as odd, that’s all.

Anyway, while the Macintosh is in many ways a superior machine to most PCs, it is definitely not what the ads sometimes make it out to be. They are just as prone to glitches (I’ve operated some seriously glitchy Macintoshes) and, as we shall see, just as prone to viral infection as their more versatile counterparts.

Adieu.

I’m getting married in a couple of months that entails a honeymoon that me and the future missus are planning on spending on the north shore of Lake Superior. A lovely town called Grand Marais. There are bike trails in the area, so, rather than rent bicycles there, we decided to bring our own bikes. This made a bike rack for the old Buick a necessity.

As luck would have it, we received one as a gift recently. While trying to decide whether to install it immediately–the only upside being the pleasure of being seen as the type of people who have a bike rack on the car–or wait till later, I noticed the above label which so intrigued me that I snapped the picture you are now glancing up at with my cellphone.

In case you’re not up on your French or Spanish (or English), the three sentences are informing you of where the rack itself was manufactured. Presumably, if you speak English, it was manufactured in the good old US of A. If you speak Spanish, however, then you be under the impression that it was manufactured in Mexico. But the French could only assume that it was manufactured in China.

To imagine that this exact bike rack’s place of manufacture is wholly dependent on the language that you speak is absurd. So there must be another explanation. I see two possibilities.

On the one hand, perhaps someone screwed up. It’s entirely possible that the person who designed the label got mixed up and the copy-editor didn’t catch the error. Or, what seems more likely, is that the factory that built this bike rack actually exists in some sort of pocket dimension, outside of our objective reality, that happens to have openings into our reality in the US, Mexico, and China. I just find it so unlikely that someone missed this obvious error on the packaging, that this is the only logical conclusion.

The question is, if this company has independently developed the technology to build factories in pocket dimensions, why aren’t they marketing that instead of just building bike racks. The question almost answers itself. They did not, in fact, build the factory. They happened to stumble upon the open rifts to another dimension accidentally and there was already a bike-rack factory there. Perhaps left there by an ancient civilization that had developed dimensional travel technology and presumably enjoyed taking their bicycles with them when they went on road trips.

So all at once, this label is proof of the existence of pocket dimensions, the possibility of accessing them, and the past existence of a great and mighty civilization capable of dimensional travel that, for one reason or another, has long since disappeared without so much as a trace.

Take that, causality.

In 1961, Kennedy said, “Hey, Russia. We saw your Sputnik, and that was cool. But hey, guess what? We’re going to put a dude on the moon. That’s right. That moon.”

And we did. In 1969, Neil Armstrong ambulated in a way that was at once small and giant, once again proving that distance is dependent on perception–without a doubt the most important discovery of the Apollo missions.

So that’s why things like this are really frustrating. Why is it that this so complicated? I would really like it if someone could explain to me why it takes fifteen years to build a nuclear reactor, when Wal-Mart can throw up a store in seven weeks? Is it a question of money? They’ve got the design already. What is it that costs so much?

We used to be able to set a goal and meet it. What went wrong? Is it a matter of money? Motivation? Are we simply not smart enough?

What is this barrier that’s preventing us from cranking out a working tokamak in six months? The design and the technology exist today. If it’s a problem of motivation, perhaps it’s that we don’t have anybody with a forceful enough personality to come out and say, “Here’s how shit’s going down, so listen up.” We need an Alexander. We need a Genghis. We need a freaking Kennedy. And none of the old, red-faced, boring Kennedys. We need the young Kennedy who told us we could land on the moon. Nuclear fusion should be a walk in the park by comparison. I had high hopes for Obama. I’m not seeing the results that I want, but I haven’t given up on him. Yet.

We know that there’s an astonishing amount of money locked up in hydrogen. The math is solid and so is the physics. It’s a given. It’s clean energy. It solves almost all of the energy problems that currently plague us. It’s as abundant as stray cats in Rome.

The deputy director of the project says, “you really need to know whether the major components work. It’s absolutely clear that this is the right approach.” I’m not so sure. But I can see a couple of different perspectives.

It’s entirely likely that this is a situation where we have too many hands in the pot. It’s great to see an international project that brings people together into a unified goal. But when that goal is just a huge, inefficient money sink, then it’s not serving anyone’s needs. My problem is the fact that this is actually something that we need. This needs to happen or we’re all screwed. Fifteen years is too long to wait for a solution to our budding energy crisis. We need it like yesterday.

Maybe it wasn’t Kennedy that was our motivator. Maybe it was the Russians. It was a threat that the Russians were going to beat us to the moon that really kicked the space race into high gear. What we need is the new millennium’s Russia. Terrorism is obviously not it because they’re not strong enough, not pervasive enough, and nobody really takes them seriously. There’s no palpable fear. We need a threat the size of Russia during the Cold War to drive us toward what we’re actually capable of. Alien invasion, maybe?

Perhaps the guy is right. Maybe the fusion project actually is too big to complete without the kind of bureaucratic machine behind this one. If that’s the case, then I have my doubts about whether we’re capable of such a feat. I mean, look at the Large Hadron Collider. It was proposed and approved in 1995. Fourteen years ago, we decided to build it. That means that it was theoretically possible for us to build it fifteen years ago. This means that technology has not improved in that time. It was beset by problems and delays and other nonsense and despite the fact that it was successfully activated, it broke pretty much right away.

If we extrapolate that out, assume that the same level of ineptitude is likely to plague this fusion project, there’s very little hope that this thing will be operational until 2050, far too late to solve any of our energy problems.

Our only option, as far as I can see, is to not hold our breaths on this one. Our current attitude toward goal-setting is pretty loose. In the 60′s we set goals and we met them. We don’t really do that so much anymore. Multiple sources of energy are going to be needed to fill the gaping hole left when oil prices get too high. Solar, wind, and possibly good old fashioned nuclear fission. Fusion is probably going to remain a pipe dream for some time yet.

Bummer.

The expression “to have one’s cake and eat it too” has always struck me as strange. It is, essentially, the act of consuming a resource and then attempting to further benefit from it after the fact. But if we deconstruct the actual words of the expression, it is a completely incomprehensible word salad. In the context of the sentence “to have” and “eat” are equivalent, so having and eating are both happening in the first half of the expression. The last part is redundant. I’m not deliberately trying to be obtuse here. I understand what the expression means idiomatically. I just think it’s a stupid expression.

What I want to talk about is organic food, using eggs as an example. I happen to work at a natural foods grocery co-op (maybe sometime I’ll get into my take on cooperativism). Some people call us a health-food store, which has certain negative connotations for certain types of people. I prefer to call it a grocery store because that’s what we sell. In fact, a pretty large selection of our product is not even healthy. Candy and potato chips (organic or not) are probably not to be consumed without restriction because you’re still going to get diabetes.

A few days ago, Science Daily ran this story. The article poses the question of whether or not organic food is really worth the cost, which is often double or more than the cost of conventionally produced food. The question is whether purchasing and consuming organic food is equivalent to having your cake and eating it too. Are you really getting health benefits that justify the cost of admission?

The article does little except ask the question. The dietitian quoted in the article is most likely right in the assertion that actually consuming fresh fruit and vegetables (organic or not) is preferable to not consuming them at all. Obviously. She also points out that there is little scientific evidence that pesticides are harmful, or that organic produce is more nutritious. Though, I suspect that there might be a suppression of evidence fallacy committed here. I have read numerous articles touting the higher nutrition value of organic food versus conventional foods.

Admittedly, the evidence is often shaky. Studies have been conducted, though there is suspicion of bias.

So, here’s my take on organic food, nutrition value aside. For the record, I consume a fair amount of both. I shop at my co-op (since I work there, it’s sort of unavoidable) and I shop at the local conventional grocery store (and also for the record, our organic produce is about fifty percent the cost, on average, of theirs).

One: Organic food tastes way better. There’s simply no comparison, especially in terms of animal products like eggs, milk, and meats. Organic, local milk is far superior to the watery lactose-juice that gets peddled at the local store. Some people think it tastes “funny” but if you start drinking it, you’ll grow to like it, and then the conventional milk will start to taste funny. Eggs are the prime example. And here, it’s not even organic that makes the difference. Free range is far more important than organic. Free range eggs have richer yolks, are more flavorful, and according to at least one study, contain half the bad cholesterol and double the good proteins and other nutrients. Whether it’s true or not, the taste justifies the cost.

Two: It’s better for the environment. A recent study showed that farms that grow organic produce had a dramatically decreased impact on soil degradation than conventional methods. And this is the clincher because, as hippy-ish as it sounds, this is the only planet that we have, and we’re going to be in a whole crap-ton of trouble in a decade or so if we keep doing things the way we are now. I’m not trying to be on a soap box or anything. Far be it from me to care about anything other than my own personal well-being, but the fact remains, these problems are imminent and might actually affect those golden years that I’d rather spend building model airplanes and blogging than dead or worse–scavenging in a post-apocalyptic world for fifty-year-old canned goods with no labels.

Now, there are other things to consider here. What is considered “conventional” in production standards was revolutionary not so long ago. The use of pesticides and herbicides dramatically increased the food supply and may or may not be responsible for the current level of comfort that Americans enjoy. We could suddenly produce food in vast quantities cheaply. Great. The long-term costs are up for debate, however. Large scale irrigation is not sustainable. Aquifers will run out of water and then where will we be? The long term health effects of pesticides and herbicides are also not known regardless of whether the foods themselves are less nutritious. Regardless, you should probably wash all produce before consuming it.

What about genetically modified food products? Anything genetically modified is automatically considered non-organic (no matter what other methods are employed in its production). Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is. Genetic modification is something we’ve been doing for years. We’ve been putting selective pressures on all sorts of crops and food producing plants and animals for thousands of years. So much so that very few of them would survive as species without humans around. Have you ever heard of Ray Comfort? He’s this guy that uses the banana as proof of god’s existence. The problem is, for thousands of years, the banana has been undergoing forced evolution. It has been domesticated over thousands of years. Wild bananas? Not the most edible food in the world. They are ugly and look nothing like the fruit that we buy by the bunches at the grocery store.

Until someone can show differently, I don’t see any reason why adding salmon DNA to tomatoes in an effort to make them resistant to frost is somehow a bad idea. Most people that object to it have a faulty understanding of how genes and DNA work. Genes merely code for proteins. It doesn’t make the tomato taste fishy, it just makes it hardier. It’s not an exact science at this point, but I give full support to any endeavor to design foods using genetic modification. I would also like to see those foods produced without using pesticides and herbicides, but you remember what we said earlier about cake.

The bottom line here is that we can afford what we want to afford. Almost all of the families that buy their groceries exclusively at my co-op are not wealthy at all. They have merely made a lifestyle choice that I would imagine affects their health. On the one hand, their food is fresher. The fact that they buy organic food means that they are cooking most their own food and are more aware of what they are ingesting (fewer preservatives, etc). It’s a tradeoff. They probably don’t have as many other creature comforts. I mean, the simple act of cutting out cable TV frees up plenty of cash every month and would more than make up for it, increasing your well-being by forcing you to find better things to do with your time.

It’s about choices. Are you going to have your cake? Or eat it? Or…whatever.

One of the biggest evolutionary advantages that humans possess is our ability to use tools. Of course, we’re not the only species to use tools and in some cases, we’re not even the most dexterous with the tools that we do use. However, it seems to the be the case that we are alone in all the animal kingdom when it comes to the extent to which we refine our tools. The ability to use old tools to make better tools is one of our key advantages.

We don’t have claws and teeth worth a damn, so we make knives, swords, and guns. We’re not, on the average, as strong as a tiger, but our weapons and machines make us stronger. Nietzsche said that this was our capacity for simulation (a.k.a. lying). But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. I merely wanted to illustrate how our tool making and, in particular, our tool refining, is responsible for so much of what we know about the world and, by proxy, what we are able to do in the world.

Imagine what it must have been like to be Galileo. The current accepted cosmic model shows Earth at the center of everything. the vast majority of the sky is utterly stationary (the stars), but there are a few objects that move. The Greeks compared them with the gods. The Romans called one in particular Jupiter. There’s Galileo, using a telescope that he built, taking a gander at Jupiter. What does he see? Three tiny “stars” dwarfed by Jupiter but very close to it. Imagine what the next few days must have been like for him? Night after night, observing these three stars and seeing them move and even disappear. How would you explain it, if everything is supposed to orbit the Earth? Imagine how his heart raced when the only logical hypothesis formed in his mind. Heresy, but true! They orbit Jupiter!

The reason that the Copernican Model of the solar system did not meet immediate success is the fact that his observations were based on measurements only infinitesimally better than those that confirmed a geo-centric solar system. His conclusion was radical because it flew in the face of everything that the Church held dear, but also because it was actually only a little bit better. For it to be politically viable, for the Church to accept it (no matter if scientists agree), you need a damn sight more positive proof than that. Look at the theory of evolution. That’s been demonstrated time and again, but it’s not proof enough for religious folks. It seems that often what it takes is one piece of irrefutable evidence to sway the skeptical. A smoking gun.

The problem, of course, is that there isn’t always one of those just lying around. Just ask a forensics expert.

Instead, what science relies on is a slow and steady progression, a refinement of technique and technology. The tools become incrementally more sophisticated, the measurements just a tiny bit more accurate and over time we are able to construct a picture of what the universe looks like. Galileo saw with this telescope things that we had no way of knowing existed. They might as well not have existed until Galileo spotted them. Not only that, but he was able to make more accurate observations in support of the Copernican Model than Copernicus which is why he, and not Copernicus, is the “Father of Modern Science.”

The strides he made in observational astronomy were monumental. But they pale in comparison to the things we’ve been seeing lately. Two stories caught my eye today. The first is directly related to this idea of incrementally more sensitive equipment. We’ve mapped the background radiation from our perspective. We have an idea of what the universe looked like when it was very, very young. But what will we see if we increase the resolution? As it turns out, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation might have a fingerprint of sorts embedded in it. Ripples in space-time, kicked up during the Big Bang, might have left a residual polarization in the cosmic radiation. We haven’t had tools sensitive enough to detect this hypothesized “B-mode polarization” yet, but perhaps now we do. And it will change, ever so slightly, our understanding of the early (the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second) universe.

Also on the micro scale, we have accurately measured the atomic mass of some isotopes of certain rare elements. More accurately, scientists have measured the nuclear masses of four specific rare elements. Rare elements like these are difficult to measure because they are rare and because when you do finally get your hands on some, they decay much too quickly to get accurate measurements. But through the use of our ability to continually refine our techniques and build more and more sensitive equipment, scientists have done what might have seemed impossible in Galileo’s day.

I like the quote from the project lead: “As an analogue, think of a scale precise enough to see how your weight changes when you pluck just one hair out of your head.”

How are such subtle changes in mass important? It depends on who you are. The thing is, in the world of science, smaller and smaller changes have bigger and bigger consequences. If some fundamental universal constant–for example, c, the speed of light–were different be as little as a tenth of a percent, the entire nature of the universe would be different. But it also has intrinsic value. The ability to accurately model the universe, to really see, in as much detail as possible, the mechanisms that power the universe, is remarkable and, when it comes down to it, it’s really all that sets us apart from chimps.

Discuss.

The word for the day is bureaucracy. NASA is in the final stages of assembling the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Part of the machine’s purpose is to search for evidence of the existence of anti-matter by reading the cosmic rays. Since not all rays on planet Earth are, by their nature, cosmic, the gadget needs to be mounted on the International Space Station, sort of like a satellite dish bolted to the top of a mobile home. Sort of high-tech white trashy.

The problem with this whole thing? Despite the fact that they are almost done building this thing, there’s no guarantee that it will launch. You see, we only actually have three space shuttles. That’s right. Three. Five were built. Two blew up. The nature of science is such that most projects take a very long time to complete. So this spectrometer project has been going on for a while, but when Columbia disintegrated in 2003, they had to alter the launch schedule. I mean, we have been pushing these ships to the limit. It’s a tough job. They are old! Older than my crappy Beretta and that thing is on its last legs. With only three space-worthy shuttles, that puts the US in a pretty awkward position. The entire world depends on our shuttle program, and the entire fleet (such as it is) is going to be retired next year. It’s pretty sad, honestly. So they finish building the spectrometer and hope that they can launch it.

Part of the AMS’s mission is the search for evidence of anti-matter. And, as anyone who has read a Dan Brown novel knows, anti-matter is pretty tricky stuff. It’s exactly like normal matter except that if it comes into contact with normal matter, both substances “annihilate” which is, they cease to be matter and are transformed into pure energy, mostly in the form of heat. In layman’s terms: big freaking explosion. Pretty cool, huh? The question is, since our galaxy is made of normal matter, is it possible that there are entire galaxies, solar systems, planets, or even intelligent life forms made entirely of anti-matter? It sounds like a plot from a bad comic book, but the fact remains that it’s entirely possible. The crazy of it is, that we could never actually meet these beings because if we tried to shake hands, we would blow each other straight to oblivion.

How much energy is released in one of these explosions? Remember the famous equation, E=mc². You take the mass of the two beings–one made of normal matter, the other, of the anti-variety–and add them together. Probably 180kg, assuming they are about the same size as we. You know, it doesn’t matter, because no matter how much mass they are, you end up multiplying it by c². What does c stand for? The fucking speed of light. That’s right. And you square it, which means that an incredibly huge amount of energy is locked up in matter. But we all knew that, right?

Wouldn’t it be ironic if NASA never got the funding to launch this machine, so we never discovered whether or not there were anti-matter galaxies, and then, say, a few years from now, some amazing energy source is found that allows us to travel between galaxies, and, wouldn’t you know it, the first galaxy that we travel to is made entirely of anti-matter? It could happen, people. It could happen, and won’t we all feel like dorks for not giving NASA their measly two billion dollars?

In other news, soon, the internet will be able to answer all of your questions. Finally! I’m so sick of the internet being totally useless. At long last, I never have to wade through google and wikipedia to find just about any information I could possibly hope for. I jest, of course, this thing looks totally keen.

Last but not least, since I’m a little strapped for time, let’s see if I can toss two stories into one sentence. Soon, you’ll be able to use your brand new, silicon invisibility cloak to avoid spiders that want to inject sperm into you with hypodermic penises. That is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.

Discuss.