east-enders or construction-spree

Although this sounds like a perennial face-off, since the city council has supported the building project since 1992, and more contemporary architectural initiative—like the unfinished money-pit of the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport or the reconstruction of the City Castle (Stadtschloss) lost during DDR times. make the government’s excuses and poor-mouthing seem less than genuine—one does not need any additional details or background to be shocked and livid at the on-going efforts of planners to raze one of the last remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall (disassemble and relocate, rather) to make room for a block of luxury flats.

Throughout the division of Germany the Wall was a pallette for graffiti and protest, and after Reunification international artists were invited to turn the remaining Wall into a canvas for free expression and personal liberties, here in particular on a section called the East Side Gallery running parallel to the Spree river, and it would be a tragic loss of culture and memory should it be made to tumble, especially for sake of real estate speculation. Protests continue as well but are now mobilized in the street and on-line, fixing solidarity, and hopefully will prevail.

elective affinities or the boys from brazil

Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis has recently brought experimentation to the scientific community and the public with much enthusiasm and a certain flair that demonstrates the possibility of a future forms of communication, suggestion, via pure thoughts with a brain-to-brain interface. The trial consisted of two laboratory rats, geographically separated: one, the transmitting rat in a facility in Nicolelis’ native Brazil was conditioned to associate certain cues with the chance to get a reward, sweetened water as opposed to plain water. The other rat in the States, the receiver, was in a similar environment and opportunities for the treat were precisely synchronized.
The rat in America, however, was not privy to any of the sending rat’s cues, except that the rats’ brains were wired with electrodes and the former could telegraph via cables in the facility and over the Internet a micro-stimulus to the latter when he anticipated getting the reward. Their coordinated responses resulted in the American rat going for the reward at the exact moment the Brazilian right got the cue nearly seventy percent of the time; the Brazilian rate was transmitting the same conditioned response, impulse practically every time. The success rate shows that some significant mental exchange was going on but also suggests the limitations of scientists to pin-point the exact same neurons in two different subjects and that while there may be over-arching similarities, no two brains—or though-processes for that matter, are exactly identical. This sort of tethering is not telepathy or even Bluetooth. Communication was not reciprocal and who knows what the strangers would have thought if they knew their roles? What do you think? Will such stuff of science-fiction be the twitterpation of the near future and should we pursue this route?

turn-on, tune-in, drop-out

A sort of national Sabbath, with no allowable fictions or preparations needed, is observed tomorrow with the national Day of Un- plugging—such a movement has taken on universal proportions, I think that all of us have an embarrassment of choices available to us when it comes to being off-line, dozens of analogue and manual things to make whole and appreciate. It’s not downtime, like a power-outage, that usually inspire thoughts like “I could do the vacuuming, except—“ but really a disconnection that pulls one’s attention elsewhere. I am really not one to speak to this sort of Lenten forfeiture, but it does seem like a very good idea that bears regular repeating. How do you plan to observe this date and spirit it represents?

oracle or time and temperture

A really engrossing article from Aeon magazine profiles some more big-thinkers regarding the fracturing future possibilities for mankind. Building from an earlier clever interview that leaned towards the apocalyptic, our impulsive and unhelpful tendencies are explored but also our positive capacities and how they might be synthetically extended.
Like some hard-hitting thought-experiment, which does not seem so far-fetched like the classic Cartesian teasers of Brain-in-a-Vat or Teleportation that involves re-assembly of a subject on-site with simultaneous destruction at the origin, the dialogue summons up a hypothetical, benevolent and omnipresent Artificial Intelligence, having gradually won acceptance, that’s like the Ancient Greek household gods, cults, patrons, oracles and wishing-wells, only closely monitored, mimicking current trends in social networks and driven traffic, also known as popularity. The intelligence’s only manifestation in the real world would be as a question-and-answer service—a very sophisticated one, which would learn by aggregation of all queries and solutions offered, evaluating and project their outcomes. Such a universal internet, pervasive and accessible, could learn as well by positive-reinforcement, and here I think is where the dialogue veers towards doom and gloom, sort of like a lab rat (by who are the overlords and who is the subject?) who avoids an electro-shock or earns a treat from historical successes and failures. It all sound eerily familiar, and the landscape, world-view of inquiring minds. But how accommodating is the landscaper? Certainly most problems are not without precedence and our predicaments and quandaries are not as unique as we’d like to think in some form, but a lot of examples from the past do not necessarily yield a right, correct answer

conclave

Although not without historical precedence, the more reflection dedicated to the Pope’s resolve to resign his post enlivens some interesting repercussions. It seems that one cannot simply retire from the office, and his intentions to repair to a Roman monastery make me wonder if Benedikt will be a mentor, a shadow pope, inviting a second succession of schisms for the Church Universal.
And does his decision open up an expectation, the option for all predecessors to gracefully bow out, whether a divine directive or public perception of being outmoded, like some old and tired politician. With some providence, we will not be overcome by such intrigues.

autodidactic or natural interface

A team from the University of Karlsruhe has been awarded an honourarium from an internet giant for having developed an “air-writing” system to make using touch-screens easier and more intuitive.

The input device is a glove—with hopes of reducing the apparel, the tether to a wrist-band later, and seems quite promising. The idea that we could reify our gestures makes pashas of us all, clapping to summon a servant to feed us grapes. I don’t know about integrating the ability to shout demands into everything, since words are a form of communication and not just a one way street and characters are made of a lot of errant gesture, not all of which are appropriate to realize right away or with the help of an over-zealous assistant. I do like the idea, however, that one could write on a make-believe tablet or make a telephone call by pantomime.

horse-feathers

There is due cause for revulsion and concern when it comes to food-security and integrity—and I don’t think that this strange phenomena is polluting clinical studies but it is something to consider when one has everything under the microscope and genetic makeup is something writ-large like a rancher’s brand—but Nature periodically orchestrates a very elaborate waltz between genomes, in ways not fully understood though more and more bizarre examples are being discovered.

In a process called horizontal gene transfer, DNA chimeras have been lurking unseen for eons, with volumes of genetic information inserted among very different animals—complete sections so that one can identify the host’s donor. This practice is standard procedure for bacteria but biologists did not think such exchanges were possible for complex organisms. Although there’s no means to test the hypothesis yet, one idea is non-discriminating parasite, like ticks and fleas, have helped facilitating these series of incorporations. It’s also unclear how these out-of-context sequences assist the animal, or are they merely hitchhiking, like the parasite that might have introduced this spice to accustom itself to a new taste.

shoo fly

Experimentation is possibly demonstrating the waning efficacy of pesticides, namely in tests involving the pervasive chemical DEET. Mosquitoes that are spreading the scourges of mankind that defy overcoming on first exposure avoid the active ingredient, developed by the US military to make jungle warfare more tolerable, but upon their second encounter, seem inured to the taste and don’t seem to mind it so much, like acquiring a taste for coffee or beer and maybe even a liking for it.

Seeing mosquitoes ignore the intended effects after just the next exposure is interesting enough and I’m no advocate of dousing oneself or one’s surroundings with concoctions of dubious value (or making it a pedigree of one’s fruits and vegetables), but it gets really interesting when one raises the question whether such circumstances exist in the field, do mosquitoes get the opportunity to return to the same watering-hole a second time, would be a fair question—or are the laboratory stocks of mosquitoes and their forebears too acclimated to such synthetic experiments, like little trained fleas whose talents run in the family. Departure—prematurely, from the scientific method builds up undeserved confidence and we would do right to wonder about what’s not dispensed with moderation