cornucopian or QED

Though many clever and novel ideas are later disproven or shown to have specious connections—not unlike spontaneous generation, the theory of humours, leechcraft or alchemy but not plate tectonics, natural selection, the heliocentric solar system, and so on—a hypothesis, regardless of how intriguing or alluring it sounds at first, is something that is to be tested and ought to be taken as such while the verdict is still out. The verdict is still out on a lot of things. Boing Boing’s science correspondent understands the scientific method very well and warns readers to proceed with rigour and caution when entertaining this brief from Discovery magazine regarding a supposition from the University of Copenhagen that environmental pollution, specifically elevated carbon-dioxide levels, may be contributing to the marked increase in the incidence of obesity.

The argument, though untested, holds that breathing an excess of carbon-dioxide turns the blood slightly more acidic and throws off the chemistry of the body and the mind, triggering people to feel hungry more often and be less inclined to sleep properly. This notion has sparked some rather strident opinions on both sides, which underscores, I think, the importance of scientific thoroughness, especially when it has become all too common for pharmaceutical interests, environmental activists, nutritionists and the agricultural lobby to skew results in their favour, and basically setting up competent authorities to act as their pushers. A cornucopian, by the way, who could be characterized either as a denier or an optimist depending on one’s leanings, describes a futurist who believes, either through attrition or innovation, that mankind will not run out of resources any time soon. Traditional wisdom is not necessarily bad science or pseudo-science, but when false connections take root, it can be very hard to disabuse people of those beliefs, especially with a strong marketing force behind them. The idea of the slight change in the pH levels of one’s blood could contribute to obesity (it seems that the whole glass-of-wine-a-day argument and the fitness of French people approached this hypothesis from the other side, and the idea about the acidic of blood making someone prone or immune to disease reminds me of the mysterious survivors of the alien outbreak in the Andromeda Strain, whose blood was too acid to allow the virus to take hold) possibly simplifies the condition, since it seems far more likely that the afore-mentioned peddlers and pushers and a sedentary lifestyle are the causes, and it doesn’t seem quite right to entangle care for the environment with personal health or vanity, though that may prove most effective for bettering both.

d-base or memory hole

The British tabloid The Mirror (via Boing Boing) is reporting on a proposed scheme that could virtually over- night deputize all filling stations in the UK as agents of Miniplenty: closed-circuit television cameras, already installed at gas stations in order to catch motorists who dash off rather than paying for the fuel that they have pumped, will soon be cross-referencing tax-authorities’ and insurers’ databases to make certain that each and every car is current on its obligations.

In the interest of public-safety, cars found to be dead-beat drivers or if their records cannot be found, the driver will not be allowed to gas up. There is a similar scheme in place in Germany, dating back to the times of the Red Army Faction to help police track criminals on the run, but it has not expanded, grown more pseudopods into other areas of people’s lives—yet, nor does it have a mechanism to switch off the pump. This is an absolutely chilling development, which I think will yield more inconvenience and bad bookkeeping and loss of revenue for filling-stations than delinquent drivers. Having a line of liability does not make the streets safer or prevent accidents and only enables inflated settlements and enriches the insurance companies. Only a very small percentage of drivers, as the proponents behind this idea, some 4%, state and tax-dodging with an automobile sounds as if it would be no worth the effort. Why should authorities stop there?  Why not make the purchase of essentials linked all across the board, ensuring that everyone of us has discharged our debts, public and private, on schedule (and with positive indicators that we will be able to continue making timely payments in full in the future)?  One has to wonder what sort of retro-future and insincere visions inspire such surveillance.

pepperland

The creative haberdashers at Civilicious (sadly no longer in business it seems) have released this tee-shirt, Sea of Hope, featuring the Obamas rendered in the artistic style of Yellow Submarine (DE/EN). They also offer a whole line of political-themed apparel with some clever and subtle references.

rico sUAVe

Ruben Bolling who writes the uncomfortably true Tom the Dancing Bug series over at Boing Boing perfectly captures the off-putting dissonance behind the latest by-products of the war on terrorism, which is now turning back on itself--like the Ouroboros, the archetypal symbol of the snaking consuming itself and which ought to be the badge for this whole mission--in a helpful pamphlet. I found it most hard to understand how an individual with a background in constitutional law (Verfassungsrecht) could possibly, not under duress, let such conclusions and interpretations have free reign. There must be some horrendous goods and rank majesty out there to persuade those in power and in the public to suffer such a stance so lightly.  I like the pamphlet’s suggestion, for those equally confused, to write an essay about it which the CIA will grade after the thought criminals are dispatched with, but the whole subject, reality outstripping satire, is not so much conducive to humour.

jump back loreta or velvet underground

The golden city of Prague, for all its tangible history and its legend and lore, is an inexhaustible place, a story-telling at every pass, corresponding point for point. Here are just a few impressions that didn’t fit elsewhere. The Loreta church of the Immaculate Conception is a pilgrimage site, inspired by the Holy Hut where Maria lived that was salvaged from Saracen raiders and brought to Italy, with an altar and reliquaries dedicated to the Holy Family.

An Italianate arcade surrounds the chapel, Casa Sancta, and there is an impressive treasury and museum with a detailed history of the cult and patronage.

Prague is also a canvas for revolution, aside from the famous and ephemeral John Lennon Wall, a side of a building belonging to the Knights of Malta who allowed the graffiti artists to make their statements throughout the times of the Velvet Revolution until today, like this infinite loop, Möbius strip, of tanks and construction vehicles tearing across the city.

The city has done an extraordinary job in preserving the sacred and profane, acknowledging that invention and openness are sometimes the better curators.  Also on the palette of expression were these looming--close by the canals and water-wheel of the the Lennon Wall, giant and monstrous baby sculptures in the park on Kampa Island in the Vltava.

ahoj-hoj or bohemian rhapsody

PfRC is taking a few days of vacation in the Czech capital. Please be sure to follow our continuing adventures on our little travel blog. In the meantime, here is an interesting point to ponder: the ancient city’s host of kings and emperors are famous for their patronage of the occult arts and sciences, like alchemy, astrology and numerology, through a few highly visible landmarks, like the Astronomical Clock or the dormitories and workshops of the royal hermeticists on the Golden Row below Prague Castle, but there is also a more subtle homage to the esoterical. The pedestrian bridge spanning the Vltava (Moldau) was realized at 0531 in the morning on 9. July in the year 1357, when the bridge’s namesake (Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV) personally laid the first foundation stone. The precise time is known because this palindromic timestamp (the same forwards and backwards, 135797531) hewn into the bridge tower was picked by court astrologers as the most auspicious time to start building the bridge.  I wonder what other mystical symbols might be hiding in plain sight.

centennial

With the deadly cruise ship fiascos of the recent weeks, the somber commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic coming up in mid-April probably constitutes one of the most infamous events of the year 1912, but that year, on the cusps of revolution, exploration and war, was filled with a calendar of events. The year, framed by drug issues, begins with the International Opium Convention, ratified at Den Haag and ends with a Germany pharmaceutical concern developing and patenting the amphetamine that would become known as Ecstasy. In between, a biochemist identified and defined the concept vitamins, isolating essential nutrients, and another pharmacist developed an organoleptic scale to rate the relative spiciness of chili peppers. The studio system in Hollywood was formed at this time, man reaches the South Pole and the Balkan Powder Keg began to rumble. Monarchy was not the exception but rather the rule in Europe, with only the Swiss Confederation and twee San Marino as republics, and European colonial possessions formed a patchwork in Africa and Asia for later strife by proxy.

 There were firsts for aviators and aviatrixes, with national air defense forces formed in earnest—and the auto-pilot came into being. Bold experimentation in the arts took place, during the active periods of the likes of Picasso, Kandinsky and Duchamp, as well as the literature of Joseph Conrad, Willa Cather, DH Lawrence, Jack London and Thomas Mann--Bertrand Russell also philosophizing and Carl Jung probing the collective unconsciousness. Some of the art and personalities seem distant and unreachable—not dismissed and forgotten, but only just so, on the advancing edge of modernity. I wonder how people might remember about 2012 and how vital those far-off ripples from our time might heave or wash-out.

uncanny

Surely the mad scientists in the government that have seeded the clouds with drones and brought the public dragnet surveillance have always been churning out creepy and diabolical inventions but, I guess, were made to dip their flag to publicity and P-R (or just out of pride) and put their technological achievements on display. Dexterity and upright posture are only a question of degrees and will improve, I think (barring some unknown Pinocchio principle about balance), but as with aerial drones, a robot whose mobility can outstrip man's is unsettling.

Such a contraption could round up undesirables, be an expendable cat-burglar, but I suspect that it won't be primarily deployed in search-and-rescue missions, like a fire-fighter's companion. Nimbleness and agility are exclusively human domains, but even without a modicum more of artificial intelligence, the way that man interacts with machine will change significantly. Ethicists and sociologists are drafting laws, rules of conduct to try to anticipate this new cultural shift, which I am sure will touch on all areas of human life, labour and leisure. Broadly, I am sure a lot of highly intelligent visionaries are trying to equip philosophical quivers against all contingencies and changing norms, but those robot laws that I have heard proposed so far seem naïve and inadequate and very pro-business. It is as if one is getting a parody, like the sorry and pointed lampoon of Dr. Seuss' Lorax, instead of Asimov: 'no robot should be designed primarily to kill or harm a human being; no robot should exploit the empathy of humans, nor should they be indistinguishable from humans; one should always be able to determine who has legal responsibility for a robot…' That is all well and good but seems a little shallow. Machines have been making their human counterparts redundant for some time, but advances in robotics equates to the shock the first criminal who was caught by his finger-print had and the perfect crime entailed more than outwitting a detective.  Progress cannot be legislated but it can thrive within an ethical and sufficient framework—bureaucracy is still trying to catch up to the personal computer. This next revolution needs to have creative and thoughtful architects, and the rate of progress will be exciting and catapulting.