Blinded Me With #Scienk. Or Colloidal Silver

So I was watching the DuMont/YouTube last night, as I do, and came upon a video that had a 4:37-minute-long ad at the start.

I figured anyone who wanted to pay for an ad that long had some serious truths to tell, so I didn't skip it.

It featured some guy in a salt-and-pepper beard talking in exhilarating circular fashion about this ONE FOOD we should all be eating in order to live well into our hundreds like these fabulous people he mentioned and not like the Atkins Diet guy and Euell Gibbons who supported healthy lifestyles but died in their 60s and 70s like the pathetic losers they are.

He never did mention the ONE FOOD in specific.

However, in the interest of #scienk, I clicked on the ad to go to his website to see if he mentioned the ONE FOOD since the video ad said his book was so important he was just GIVING it away.

No mention of the ONE FOOD.

But lots of talk about the awesome athletic old guys he wanted us to emulate with his secrets as if genetics had nothing to do with longetivity and MOAR TALK of "supplements" and a "blue dye" he takes on the regular.

So it got me: colloidal silver. That's probably the dye he's talking about.

Now, if the ONE FOOD is donuts, I've probably missed out on a great opportunity. But something tells me the "free" part is basically a transcript of his ad and if I want to know the secrets of the universe I'm going to have to pay.

Why write about this? Because it's the zeitgeist, folks. #scienk rules. And those so-called EXPERTS with their education and stuff can't hold a candle to the real-life knowledge *I* possess and want to share with you for only the low cost of . . .

We laugh at Dr. Terminus in "Pete's Dragon." But they are all around us. And many of us are listening to them.

Goop

Remember, China was the first nation to send seeds that sprouted and grew on the face of another world.

Remember, because in images that’ll likely be in textbooks in a hundred years as space-farmers read holographic magazines and sip holographic coffee at the Moon-Cafes where they go once their duties of tending their moon-crops are done for the morning are going to feature something quite heavily:
Caulk.

Not the verdant green of the first cotton plants to sprout on the moon.

But caulk.

Behold:

Remember when this experiment, described here, was set up on Earth, they knew they were going to have a camera facing the soil in which they’d planted the first Moon-Seeds. They knew they wanted to record what was going on with the seeds and share those photos with the world as a FIRST!!!1!11!

So of course there’s tons of goop.

And what appears to be a cascade of glue as well. And a plastic lattice.

They’re telling me there’s a cotton plant in here somewhere. Other pictures show a much better sprouting. See?

But mostly I’m seeing caulk. And other assorted goop.

I still think it’s neat they grew plants on the Moon. Albeit briefly.

There’s such a thing, however, as presentation, folks. Presentation. Maybe the lattice is important. As is the goop, probably.

But this thing couldn’t have been designed to be less goop-dependent? Or, if the goop was unavoidable, perhaps it could have been made, you know, a lot less goopy? Was this thing built with off-the-shelf components in a nation that’s become a manufacturing powerhouse? Nobody looked at this and thought, “You know, we really should spend that extra $100 on a custom lattice that fits the space. Maybe we could take some money out of the goop budget.”

Maybe the goop is some futuristic, nutrient-rich Moon Goop?

Only the farmers sitting in the Moon-Cafes know for sure.

Are You Boys Cooking Up There? Are You Building an Interoicter?

WARNING: Spoilers.

There are two ways to go with science fiction. You can go the way where a good, science-based tale is told through the eyes and ears and minds of characters you like, but who don’t necessarily get in the way of the science. Then there are those characters who show up and demand FULL ATTENTION while the science just kinda happens in the background, and you leave disappointed that the book wasn’t better.

The latter is the case with Matthew Mather’s “Nomad,” a book I really wanted to like, but one that, at the end, is meh.

Is there time, I ask, for relationship-based jealousy as the world ends around you? The answer to Mather appears to be yes (and sets us up NICELY for the villain of the next book in the trilogy).

Also, can a bunch of refugees really hide from an phenomenon that incudes massive earthquakes and volcanic action in an area already naturally prone to such disaster by hiding in CAVES? I had a hard time with that part of the story.

Mather tells a good tale, and his science, with a few exceptions, seems to be okay. But those characters demanding full attention? They got in the way. A lot.

And it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why. The characters in, say, Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” don’t exactly sit back while science happens to them. But there is enough plausible awe in them that they keep themselves in check as they go about their sciencey explorations. Not so with Mather’s characters, who are all sorts of irrational as the irrational goes on alongside them. Want to settle a century-old bout of bad blood? Make sure you’re doing it as the world is ending around you. And by all means compress Armageddon, terrorism, and sexy times into as few days as possible just to make sure you hit the socio/religio/economical BINGO card as much as you can.

The best disaster stories are those where the protagonists don’t know what’s going on all around the world; they struggle to know what’s going on just in their tiny little neck of the woods.

This book smacks of building an interocitor. You have the plan, you know you’ve got 2,535 parts, and by golly you’re going to follow the plan and use all those parts, no matter if they’re related to soft-serve technology. Nomad checks off the boxes, but it’s poorly written. Every time you see a spool of magnetic tape, or a floppy disc, or a compact disc, the author’s going to remind you of the era that item is from. The opening paragraphs should be your first clue:

“Big enough to what?”

“Destroy the entire solar system,” repeated Dr. Muller, a sixty-something, pot-bellied man with thick spectactles below a tangle of gray hair. “And the Earth with it.”

Ben Rollins stared at him in dumbfounded silence and rubbed his bleary eyes. “That what I thought you said.” He wiped his hands down his face to pinch the bridge of his nose between his forefingers, squeezing his eyes shut. Opening them, he brought his hands away from his face together, as if in prayer, and exhaled slowly.”

BFOO Ahead, with Robert Heinlein

Reading Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth” kinda hits you with something: Whereas other science fiction writers are getting all philosophical on us and asking the Big Questions, Heinlein is busy answering the little questions.

Will settlements on the Moon and other planets develop their own cultures? You bet they will. And those visiting Earth from these other worlds will feel it.

Will kids wander off on the Moon and get lost? Duh.

Will these settlements be utopias, or will they have their own madmen? Do we even need to ask the question?

Heinlein is an eye-opener. Especially for a schlub like me who has written one speculative fiction novel that needs some brushing up.

Blinding flash of the obvious ahead: There’s such a variety of published matter out there. Who would have thought simple things like this would get ink (of course, this was in the era of pulp magazines and such, long gone now). And yet what Heinlein wrote certainly has a point: The normalcy of life here on Earth would follow mankind out into the solar system. Kudos to him for writing them down.

Mind=Blown

Internet, is there anything you can’t do?

I begin to doubt it. Found this site today: A real-time visualization of satellites, rocket parts, and other space debris orbiting Earth.

http://stuffin.space/

That is a LOT of stuff up there. And I wonder what it looks like for others looking for intelligent life? Should we be looking for this kind of debris? And is it even visible from where we are? I suppose if we could see the debris, we could pretty much see everything – lights, pollution, etc.

We are making our mark – and showing how just observed a planet Earth really is.

This Study Makes Me Angry [In A Futurama Kind of Way]

So it appears Facebook, back in 2012, manipulated some users’ news feeds to show them, for the period of two weeks, more negative news than they would otherwise have seen.

Hands up anyone who noticed. Anyone. Truthfully. And I want proof from your Facebook feed that you were manipulated. And that the manipulation was harmful in any way.

CNN Money tries to explain the manipulation thusly:

Toying with people's emotions is always a potential byproduct of A/B testing, but it's a step too far to intentionally make some users feel negative emotions. That distinction might be subtle, but it's important.

For example, most people would be fine with an Amazon experiment that manipulated search results that drove us to make healthier food purchases. But there would be an uproar if Amazon drove a group of customers to make less healthy choices for a week. 

To that, let me say this: Hahahaha.

Additionally, let me add: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

An uproar?

Has the author of this piece actually looked at any type of, for example, television advertising since the 1950s? Tell me television advertising hasn’t been – and still isn’t – rife with manipulative drivel that makes us want to make “less healthy choices.”

An uproar? Really? We’re so used to advertisers urging us to make unhealthy, unwise choices do you think we’re even going to blink if an Internet company is going to offer us more sad news than usual during an experiment?

Maybe we should be upset. Maybe there should be an uproar. But taken in context, this Facebook manipulation is small, small, small potatoes.

And what, exactly, did this “manipulation” discover? This deep, dark Facebook secret: When Facebook users see more negative news in their news feeds, they tend to post more negative news of their own. And when they see more positive news in their news feeds, they tend to post more positive news.

Feel manipulated?

Here’s what the study paper says, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive scale [emotional] contagion via social networks. This work also suggests that, in contrast to prevailing assumptions, in-person interaction and non-verbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and that the observation of others’ positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.

So what Facebook did is to determine what should already be mostly obvious: We tend to reflect the emotional states of the people we associate with. If we associate with gloomy people, we’re going to trend gloomy. And if we surround ourselves with more chipper fellas, well then, we’re going to be happier.

(PDF of the PNAS paper.)

Of course, who cares about the science of it all when there’s the whaarrrgarbl to be had over the fact that Facebook didn’t let these anonymous users opt in to the experiment, but instead buried text letting them conduct testing and research using content posted on Facebook in those dreaded End User License Agreements that absolutely none of us read. (Add to that the fact that the study uses the scary word “contagion” which freaks out anyone who doesn’t realize they’re just talking about the spread of positive or negative vibes, not some scary virus.)

I know there are legalities and such that must be met for studies to go forth. I don't know all their ins and outs. PNAS does -- and they published the study. If there's ethical concern there, then that's PNAS' kettle of crazy to stir.

Let us opt in to such experimentation, they say. That’s more fair.

It’s also weaker science.

Put a bunch of drivers on the road and they’re going to drive like they always drive. Until they see a cop. Then all of a sudden that normal everyday behavior changes. People drive more cautiously. They put away the cell phones and surreptitiously put on their seat belts. Nobody speeds, everybody behaves. But as soon as the cop pulls off the highway, all that normal behavior returns.

What information is more valuable in determining whether roads are safe, whether speed limits could be increased, or whether seat belt laws are being followed?

So please, spare me the drama. And go back to posting mysterious posts of your own in which you emotionally manipulate your friends into posting that you’re pretty, you’re manly, or random bits of encouragement to your post which merely says: Bad mood.

A Thousand Monkeys . . .

So, are we heading towards a world where an algorithm – a complex one – could write a book you’d want to read?

Maybe.

But we are in a world now where wonks are analyzing what good books have in common and are coming up with some interesting things, some things that line up with any random collection of writing tips you could pull out of your hat.

For example, here’s a study done by a group of computer scientists at Stony Brook University in New York. They admit they don’t know all – “external factors such as luck can also play a role,” writes Matthew Sparkes at the Guardian, concerning the study’s results. But there are some interesting things there for any writer to consider.

Less successful books, they discovered, “rely on verbs that are explicitly descriptive of actions or emotions . . . while more successful books favor verbs that describe thought processing and verbs that serve the purpose of quotes and reports.”

Let’s parse that a bit. Successful books appear as if they’re getting into the characters’ heads – the thought processing – and steer away from heavy-handed “quote and report” words like promised, cried, cheered (as in “’Hooray! We’re all alive,’ the crows cheered”.

Less successful books also relied more on negativity, more clichéd “topical words,” such as love, and more extreme words – breathless, never, vary, absolutely, perfectly. More successful books included more prepositions and more connective words – and, which, that, after, since, etc.

Here’s something else that’s interesting:

“The work of Douglas and Broussard reveals that informative writing (journalism) involved increased use of nouns, prepositions, determiners and coordinating conjunctions whereas imaginative writing (novels) involves more use of verbs and adverbs. Comparing their findings . . . we find that highly successful books tend to bear closer resemblance to informative articles.” So maybe that ten years in journalism will pay off after all.

Or not.  Because there’s that luck factor. And I’ve read some real stinkeroos produced by journalists.

Anyway, there’s a lot of things to swim through in the study (link to it from the Telegraph’s page). I don’t know what to make of it all. Hope I can figure it out before a computer does.

Armstrong in Color

Would have been fun to watch this live. Still, it's fascinating watching this on YouTube 43 years later.

And speaking of Armstrong, here's a funny bit at Slate.com in which the author discusses how journalists tried to decipher Armstrong's famous "one small step for man" line. The takeaway: "Forget history, we had to deal with editors." That made me laugh out loud.

I Thought You Were the Roh-butt

(Go to 2:20)

There’s a good chance that if you read a lot of news online, you’ve read something written by a robot.

Well, an algorithm, at least, devoid of camshafts and gears and servos but certainly able to imitate the styles of Ring Lardner, Mike Royko and other distinctive writers, if the folks at Narrative Science and Wired reporter Steven Levy (who swears he’s not a robot) are to be believe.

The Chicago-based company is already using algorithms, coached by “meta-writers” in human form who help them with nuance and slant – at least in the beginning – to write stories on Little League games and some aspects of financial news, where the algorithms can draw on vast databases of statistics and numbers with which to craft play-by-play narratives.

Read more about it in levy’s Wired Gadget Lab post here.

Flesh and blood news reporters have nothing to worry about, per Levy – at least not yet:

[Narrative Science CEO Kristain] Hammond assures me I have nothing to worry about. This robonews tsunami, he insists, will not wash away the remaining human reporters who still collect paychecks. Instead the universe of newswriting will expand dramatically, as computers mine vast troves of data to produce ultracheap, totally readable accounts of events, trends, and developments that no journalist is currently covering.

This service could be a boon to local newsrooms, already stretched thin and unable to cover Little League and other kiddie sports. But if parents keyed in stats from the games via their smartphones and Narrative Science computers were tied into that information and the local newspaper bought the stories, local news could offer on the cheap stories that their readers want.

Such technology could tap into markets not touched by traditional media: Hammond envisions his algorithms giving play-by-play of World of Warcraft sessions, in which “players could get a recap after a big raid that would read as if an embedded journalist had accompanied their guild,” Levy reports. Try getting your local paper to do that on anything more than a one-off feature story basis.

It’s a weird world we’re going to live in.

There’s another side to the coin, of course.

Such technology could be vexing to, for example, college writing instructors (of which I am one) if it fell into nefarious hands. Why pay a flesh-and-blood ghost writer if an algorithm will write your essays for you?

Internet Learnding of the Day: This kind of thing was foretold, rather snarkily, by Roald Dahl, of all writers. Pretty amusing stuff, this.

And a bit scary. Spoilers ahead:

But on the whole, it was a satisfactory beginning. This last year — the first full year of the machine's operation — it was estimated that at least one half of all the novels and stories published in the English language were produced by Adolph Knipe upon the Great Automatic Grammatizator.

Does this surprise you?

I doubt it.

And worse is yet to come. Today, as the secret spreads, many more are hurrying to tie up with Mr. Knipe. And all the time things get worse for those who hesitate to sign their names.

This very moment, as I sit here listening to the crying of my nine starving children in the other room, I can feel my own hand creeping closer and closer to that golden contract that lies over on the other side of the desk.

Give us strength, Oh Lord, to let our children starve.

Moonwalk One

There are still dreamers.

There are still builders.

There are still those who would dare to do what appears impossible, on deadlines that seem too strict and with technology that is built by the lowest bidder.

Maybe things seem small today. Maybe there are those hwo think we aren't reaching as far as we used to, that the will is gone, that the desire has faded.

They are wrong. It's little things, like money, priorities, politics, bickering. The big things -- physics, electronics, propulsion, psychology, the limits of men -- are ready. It's the little things that stop us today from repeating what was done in the past, what limits us from reaching further into the future.

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, for what you did. You worked hard. You were in the right profession at the right time. You studied and became stronger both body and mind and, for a while, showed us a future when, like Miss Pickerell, we anticipated that soon anyone could go to the Moon, into outer space, to one of the colonies established by man, with only a minimum of effort.

Our time may yet come.

Hey, Voyager 1, LEAVE ALREADY

As much as I admire the work the Voyage 1 space probe has done, I think it’s about time it got out of the house. Or at least about time NASA stopped sending out press releases or answering questions about the probe’s imminent departure from the solar system until it actually departs.

For the past three years, we’ve been treated to stories like this, stories that, I’m sure, are 98 percent boiler plate because the details are the same and the news really isn’t all that new.

In Space.com’s latest installation, we don’t get to the meat of the update until the seventh paragraph, aside from a typically breathless quote from a California Institute of Technology scientist in Paragraph Two.

I’m thrilled Voyager 1 is still capable of sending information – sciencey stuff – since its launch in 1977, and I’m gobsmacked that scientists on Earth can still pick up its infinitely weak signal from more than 11 billion miles away. But it’s time for Voyager to leave the solar system so we can stop getting these breathless updates. Even NASA’s own reporting on the event buries the most important news (and proves that Voyager has another reason to leave the solar system – that terrible lens flare from the sun).




I guess what grouses my cookies is the reporting here, which wastes too much time reminding readers what this is all about – what Voyager is and such – rather than getting to the real news. And the eager scientists don’t help, either – they’ve been saying we’re near the edge of the solar system since 2009. I know we’re talking cosmic distances here, but I think they should be a little less eager to get the news out and more patient for the event to actually happen.

So, how would I report it?

Like this:

Steep increases in the number of cosmic rays hitting the 35-year-old Voyager 1 space probe indicate this wanderer from Earth may be at the edge of the solar system.

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have noted the number of cosmic rays --- high speed atomic and subatomic particles shot out of black holes and exploding stars at nearly the speed of light – have been hitting the probe in increasing numbers since January 2009. Spikes in the number of rays hitting the probe starting on May 7, 2012, however, indicate to scientists the probe may be at the edge of the heliosphere, the bubble of magnetism that surrounds the Sun.

Then you move on to the breathless blah-blah and the exposition that people who don't know or don't remember what Voyager 1 is need to fill in the blanks. This is called inverted pyramid writing, something they evidently don't teach or practice much at Space.com any more.

I guess I resent the blah blah since I already know this stuff. but even for folks who don't, they ought to have a quick reason to get interested in the story aside from the headline. Giving them the meat, then the boilerplate, is a lot better in my book.

When Touring the LHC, Please Stay With Your Group

Mining in Space

I like it when reality even approaches the coolness of science fiction, so to hear of a Wahsington state company making plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for materials makes me a happy man.

Rather than wasting money by pursuing the Apollo 11 engines resting at the bottom of the sea (like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos) the investors in this company hope to see a future when resources mined in space are used on Earth or in orbit for building everything from rocket fuel to space-whale-repelling battleships (of course, one of the investors is James Cameron, who seems bent on giving us vapid entertainment between trips to the deepest recesses of the ocean floor and the Titanic, so they’re not all innocent here).

In short, Planetary Resources hopes it will be in a crucial and lucrative position of not only boosting terrestrial industry, but also setting up a network of fuel depots that humanity will need to better explore the solar system and beyond.

"The Earth is feeling a resource pinch, and ultimately we will have the ability to turn that which is scarce into abundant," [Peter] Diamandis, who co-founded Planetary Resources with Anderson in 2009 but generally kept mum about the project until this month, said at a press event in Seattle on Tuesday.

"It can be done, and yes, it's very difficult ... but the returns economically and the benefit to humanity are extraordinary," added Diamandis, who also is chairman of the X Prize Foundation.

When I worked for the Post Register, I actually interviewed Diamandis for some story whose import and subject are completely lost to me now. Probably had something to do with the X Prize, though why a lowly reporter from a Podunk paper like ours was interviewing him I can’t remember. I’ll have to sort through my files to see if I can find the article. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to see people still doing that forward-thinking that characterized so much of the post-war era and that, in many ways, seems lacking today. When he talks of fuel stations scattered throughout the inner solar system, all I can conjure up is images of Arthur C. Clarke’s Imperial Earth, and how awesome it would be if science fiction could become science fact.

Near-Earth objects abound, but you have to wonder if they’ll come in the size these guys need to make their company viable. I find it hard to believe that objects as big as Eros have gone undetected in near-Earth orbit, so they’ll have to be contented with smaller pickings or go further afield. Given their moxie, I don’t see the latter bothering them all that much.

I just hope the scout satellites they're sending up aren't just MAMA in disguise.

Mandelbrot and Fibonacci Mush

I’m trying – really trying – to understand why I should care about Fibonacci numbers.

Today’s contemplation all started with today’s New Adventures of Queen Victoria comic strip, in which artist Pab Sungenis the following:

I’ve heard of the sequence before. I know that it’s been “spotted in nature.” I know it gets math nerds as excited as Winston Churchill retorts get word nerds excited.

I just don’t know why I need to be excited about it.

Whee. The Fibonacci sequence has been noticed in the clustering of florets in some flowers. That’s neat. It’s just as neat as the phenomenon of pareidolia, which involves people spotting, say, images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in tortillas, tree bark, or grilled cheese sandwiches. Just because you can sorta see something in something else doesn’t mean it’s there on purpose or that I should get all whipped up about it. Maybe those florests arrange themselves that way because that’s how they’re arranged. Then we come along behind and notice that some mathematical sequence happens to match the pattern and then boom it’s the Face on Mars all over again, but since it’s science-y, that takes the curse off it.

All of this reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “The Ghost From the Grand Banks,” in which the story’s requisite genius has a lake in the form of the Mandelbrot Set. He had to include the Mandelbrot Set in a novel because, well, it was the newest, neatest science-y mathematical thingie to mince down the pike.

Problem is, he had no idea what to DO with the Mandelbrot Set now that it was in his novel, except to have it be the place where the requisite genius (or whomever, it’s been a while since I read it) meets his/her/its end. The lake could have been in the shape of, say, a four-leaf clover or the sigmoid colon and the end would have been just the same: Genius and/or minion and/or relative dies in the lake, shaped like the whatever.

If a science weenie like Clarke (he came up with the concept of geosynchronous satellites, for heaven’s sake) can’t do much beyond introducing a mathematical wowie as a mediocre plot device in a rather boring novel, then how do the rest of us stand a chance at getting all excited about it?

Heaven knows I tried. Waaaaay back when the Mandelbrot Set was all the rage, I labirously typed a computer program into my Radio Shack Color Computer 3 to reproduce the Mandelbrot Set on my computer. I remember sitting there, watching the image slowly – and I mean slowly – form on my screen, and stroking out every time one of he pixels turned up a color other than black, because that meant the program was going to run faster for a while until it got back to that familiar field of black.

I’m not saying here that these sequences and sets aren’t neat, or that they don’t help to solve problems, or help mathematicians to visualize what’s going on in nature or the universe or whatever. I’m just saying that the public relations people they have working with them aren’t doing their best to get the rest of us excited about it all.

Maybe I’ll go read about Mario Mertz instead.

Matt Ridley: Genome

So, what are you?

A complicated biological machine beset by innate programming and external conditions bent both on keeping you alive and eventually killing you?

Or are you the creation of a supreme being, both soul and body, possessed of a free will?

And though Matt Ridley, in his 2000 book “Genome: The Autobiography of A Species in 23 Chapters,” leans to the left in this equation, he still writes an incredibly balanced and above all scientific book about the human genome, what we know about it, how we think it works and how we misunderstand the science that’s delving into figuring out how that double helix of DNA can turn two germ cells into a complicated biological masterpiece.

Ridley, in the footnotes to his book, acknowledges that it was, at its printing, already out of date. Ten years further along, of course, it is certainly even more out of date. But what’s not out of date in this wonderful book is the critical approach Ridley takes to this science. And it’s not critical in any political way, but critical in a scientific way. He reminds the reader constantly that what is known about the human genome is small compared to what is not known, that cause does not necessarily mean effect, that a firm belief in genetic determinism is just as foolish on the left as is a firm belief in free will is on the right. More importantly, he reminds us all that what we have, as far as genetics goes, is some knowledge bolstered by a lot of unsupported belief.

Here’s an example:

We instinctively assume that bodily biochemistry is cause whereas behavior is effect, an assumption we have taken to a ridiculous extent in considering the impact of genes upon our lives. If genes are involved in behavior then it is they that are the cause and they that are deemed immutable. This is a mistake made not just by genetic determinists, but by their vociferous opponents, the people who say behavior is “not in the genes”; the people who deplore the fatalism and predestination implied, they say, by behavior genetics. They give too much ground to their opponents by allowing this assumption to stand, for they tacitly admit that if genes are involved at all, then they area t the top of the hierarchy. They forget that genes need to be switched on, and external events – or free-willed behavior – can switch on genes. Far from us lying at the mercy of our omnipotent genes, it is often our genes that lie at the mercy of us. If you go bungee jumping or take a stressful job, or repeatedly imagine a terrible fear, you will raise your cortisol levels, and the cortisol will dash about the body busy switching on genes. (It is an indisputable fact that you can rigger activity in the “happiness centers” of the brain with a deliberate smile, as surely as you can trigger a smile with happy thoughts. It really does make you feel better to smile. The physical can be at the beck and call of the behavioral.)

Ridley, I believe, successfully finds and holds that middle ground. Our genes certainly influence who we are and what we become. But our behavior can, in turn, influence our genes. We are machines, beautiful, free-willed machines, capable to some extent of reprogramming ourselves.

Here’s a thought I had on the bus this morning: Our genes are like the model tank kit we can buy at the hobby store. We follow the instructions religiously and build that magnificent tank. Everything works. The wheels turn. The gun turrets rotate. The tracks allow the tank to maneuver through any kind of terrain. And then we take that tank not into the battlefield, but gently down a city street, to the park, to the grocery store, trundling along. It is still there in its essence of tankness; everything that makes it a tank is still there. And yet our use of it for domestic purposes does not mean that its innate tankness takes over; we drive it to the grocery store and load it with groceries, we do not drive it to the grocery store to level the building with our tank shells.

So brain and genome, tank and the purpose we put with it, work together. As Ridley writes:

The human brain is a far more impressive machine than the genome. If you like quantitative measure, it has trillions of synapses instead of billions of bases and it weighs kilograms in stead of micrograms. If you prefer geometry, it is an analogue, three-dimensional machine, rather than a digital, one-dimensional one. If you like thermodynamics, it generates large quantities of heat as it works, like a steam engine. For biochemists, it requires many thousands of different proteins, neurotransmitters, and other chemicals, not just the four nucleotides of DNA. For the impatient, it literally changes while you watch, as synapses are altered to create learned memories, whereas the genome changes more slowly than a glacier. For the lover of free will, the pruning of the neural networks in our grains, by the ruthless gardener called experience, is vital to the proper functioning of the organ, whereas genomes play out their messages in a predetermined way with comparatively little flexibility. Yet . . . the dichotomy is a false one. The brain is created by genes. It is only as good as its innate design. The very fact that it is a machine designed to be modified by experience is written in the genes. The mystery of how is one of the greatest challenges of modern biology. But that the human brain is the finest monument to the capacities of genes there is no doubt. It is the mark of a great leader that he knows when to delegate. The genome knew when to delegate.

I think what I enjoyed most about reading this book is that I learned a few things. Genetics is a pretty fascinating field of science, and I think if we all learned about it a bit more, we could have more intelligent discussions on the subject that what we see in political and media circles. Politics tends to get too black and white in this subject, and the media, for the most part, either boils things down too simply or merely presents both sides of the argument without really bothering to explain anything to the layman about what's being discussed. Ridley does a wonderful job explaining to the layman, but keeping it intelligent enough that the curious layman is able to keep exploring and asking questions.

Aliens are Coming to Steal our Slood

As much as I admire Stephen Hawking for his work in theoretical physics and popular science, I’ve got to say that his current thoughts on extraterrestrial beings are slightly mental.

Part of what he says, I agree with. This is what he told the Times in London:

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

To think that the only scrap of life in this universe is on Earth is not only scientifically ludicrous, but also flies in the face of what is taught in (whisper) scripture, if you read it – and you don’t even have to read it carefully to come to the conclusion that life, and indeed intelligent life, is not unique to this planet. So yes, there is life elsewhere in the universe, and some of that life is intelligent.

Then he flies off into mental territory:

[A] Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

A few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

All we’re hearing, of course, is that ALIENS ARE COMING TO STEAL OUR SLOOD! when in actuality Mr. Hawking says that “a few” alien species might be like that.

I have to disagree with him slightly, not on the motivations, but on the targets. Because we already know that looking into motivation, whether alien or terrestrial, is like looking into an empty room. (In my own poinion, however, I've got to say that I'm a bit shocked at Hawking latching onto the tired "hostile alien" theory. I also cringe at his use of the Columbus metaphor -- even though it't apt -- because it's going to be misinterpreted as "arrival in order to steal resources and push out the natives" rather than "first contact that leads to unintended consequences, such as the introduction of new diseases" which is the reality of Columbus' visit.)

Unless I’m grossly mistaken, there’s a lot of raw material out there in space that isn’t currently claimed or occupied. Even in our own tiny solar system, you can find such things as organic compounds – perhaps even crude oil – in places like Io and Titan. You can find water and other lighter elements and molecules on Europa, the Moon, in the Oort Cloud or any other number of locations. And if you’re interested in minerals or metals, it sure seems a lot simpler to mine the asteroid belt or any other local rocky body, rather than descending upon earth, wipe out the aborigines with some kind of space measles and then claim what’s left.

And forget scenarios such as unobtainium. That’s all science fiction hooey.

Is there risk in seeking contact with extraterrestrials? Maybe. Are they likely to come storming in as if the Earth were suddenly the center of the universe as in all those Star Trek shows? Highly unlikely. There are, to speak in the parlance of the old west, richer seams, better claims, greener grass and bigger watering holes out there than our humble little Earth. To think otherwise is to be guilty of once again over-emphasizing the importance of Earth in the context of the galaxy.

Theory of Anything

Well, I feel a little bit smarter than I was a few days ago. But since, like Homer Simpson, every time I learn something new it forces something old out of my brain, I wonder what I’ll lose for having gained this knowledge. I hope it’s the poorly-memorized periodic table of the elements I picked up in high school chemistry.

What I’m babbling about is this: Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, which I finished reading today. As “popular” books on science go, this is a good one as Hawking walks the reader through the basics of general relativity, quantum mechanics and other current physics theories. It’s enough to offer a good foundation to people like me who have an interest in science but were scared away from the subjects by my abject failings in the world of algebra and the aforementioned chemistry. But now I’m older and wiser and can see that gaining science knowledge is actually going to be helpful, especially if I want to climb in the ranks of technical writers – though I’ll have to get directions to the ladder first.

I can’t help but feel like I need something meatier, though. Perhaps I spoiled myself by reading first Ricahrd Rhodes’ The making of the Atomic Bomb, which tackles a lot more of the technical aspects with aplomb and success than Hawking achieves in this book – but then again, it is true that this book offers a good foundation. Now I just need help finding something meatier that won’t part my hair as it flies over my head.

Side note: I couldn’t help but to chuckle when the narrator of this BBK production said Hawking’s seeking a “Theory of Everything.” That reminded me of poor Ponder Stibbons in Terry Pratchett’s books, also seeking a Theory of Everything but, that in moments of despair, he would have settled for a “Theory of Anything.” I know that feeling well, Stibbo.

Look at the Little Bricklayers

Check this out: using nothing more complicated than a swarm of about 5,000 bacteria and a computer-controlled magnet, researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal built a very, very simple step pyramid using the bacteria as workers and tiny epoxy bricks.

There's a lot more technical detail here, but watching the video itself is pretty amazing. Well, it doesn't seem amazing until the last fifteen seconds or so when the action is sped up -- but then you watch the video again to watch these little hoddies at work.

There's a lot of talk out there about using nanotechnology to do things from deliver cancer drugs precisely to tumors to building tiny electronic components to repairing organs and cells. The big problem with a lot of the research going on out there is that the material being used to build the nano-robots is stuff like carbon and titanium dioxide. Further research shows that the titanium dioxide is toxic at nano-scale, and that the carbon strings used in this technology can cause asbestos-like lesions in lungs. So why not use a natural bacteria as the robots and engines, while figuring out a way to make them do what you want.

That's where this particular bacteria, magnetospirillium, comes in. They have tiny strucutres within their cells that react to magnetic fields. Tun on a magnet on, say, the east side of a petri dish, these little buggers swarm to the east side. Get them bunched up ad as they swarm, they can push and/or carry stuff. That's how the pyramid is built.

Watch the video, then marvel at how science is able to figure things like this out.

Honestly, I feel for the little guys. I called them hoddies -- that's slang for a bricklayer's assistant, which I used to be growing up. Dad and my older brother Albert didn't have magnets to make me work, but the call of the paycheck was enough to keep me motivated. So I understand how these little bacteria must feel.