HOLY SHIT SYNTHETIC LIFE!

I'm not sure what sort of coverage this will get in the mainstream media, but it had better be big. Huge. Epic. What is "this"? Oh, only a watershed moment in human existence; the creation of synthetic life!

I'm still watching/listening to the press conference (accessible through the link above if you see this in time, but so far my understanding is that they have synthesized an entire genome (!) and inserted it into an existing bacterial cell with the DNA removed. The DNA they synthesized seems to have been coded/designed (I'll have to talk to some of my biologist friends to learn the correct terminology) on a computer and then more or less literally pieced together from synthesized A, C, T, and G molecules. It's a pretty minimal genome, I think, but what's important here is that now that we've done it once at this level of complexity, it's only a matter of time before we scale it up. So far the projected applications are in fuel generation, water purification, and improved vaccines...and I think that's just future bacteria!

I can't find it, but I think I linked some time ago to a similar sort of experiment done by a group whose aim was to create not just a minimal genome, but also to detangle the inelegant "spaghetti" code which has accumulated over the course of evolution. In the natural world, as long as it works it's ok - but when you want to start building something that a human coder can work with, you'd like him or her to have a powerful and intuitive programming language. I recall that they had succeeded in creating an organism that was somewhat less viable, but still workable at some point in their research. I don't think these are necessarily connected groups, but someone should probably introduce them! If any of you reading this have ever owned a lego mindstorms kit, you'll remember the oft-maligned programming interface in which tasks were connected like so many lego bricks into little if/or trees; say what you want about the implementation: the dream of synthetic biology has been to render down the genetic code into little modular packages so that we're not limited by the little idiosyncracies of one organism or another when we want to purpose-build a bacterium to, say, make oil into plastic for us. Now that we seem to have had successes on both fronts, I'm getting pretty intensely excited!

There are, of course, some significant ethical/philosophical issues in light of this breakthrough. It seems that these researchers are already designing safety measures to prevent unchecked proliferation of synthetic organisms outside the lab, which is comforting. There's also the highly contentious issue of patented genes and life forms. I'm not sure where I stand on this quite yet; on the one hand I see the need to encourage further research in this field, but on the other hand we should at least draw a complexity barrier past which we start treating a synthetic being as we would any other. Maybe once a life-form can be reasonably expected to feel pain? Of course that leaves a great big loophole if we could ever create a complex being without the capacity for pain (bad idea!). I think also that while some reproductive controls should obviously be required for safety reasons, we should not start setting dangerous precedents. Terminator seeds (which sprout once, and which farmers must buy year after year) I find already disturbing. It will be a long way before we have to start worrying about farmers who can't reproduce their synthetic plants, but we should be mindful not to allow some industries to acquire disproportionate power over the livelihoods of others. Especially once food and fuel begin to enter the picture!

With all of this having been said: HOLY SHIT HUMANS JUST MADE LIFE!



...one step closer to this:

"Take control of the input, and you shall become master of the output"

A popular gambit among my friends in games of Apples to Apples is to go for broke on "Pond Scum". That card has a track record of victories that would have made Napoleon green with envy. Turns out that pond scum is actually more fantastic than we had previously imagined. You see, a gene first isolated in a certain variety of pond scum is a key component of the emerging field of Optogenetics.  What's optogenetics? Why, it is all about controlling genetically-modified cellular matter...



...with LASERS.
(Well, most any light source of the correct wavelength[s] will do.)

 "What's so exciting about that - besides the lasers, of course?" you ask?
How 'bout super-precise mind-machine interfacing? It turns out that direct electrical stimulation of the brain tends to excite more neurons than you actually want to activate. Optogeneticists have added markers to their inserted genes for light-sensitivity such that they will only be active in the desired type of neuron, and can infect relatively small areas of brain tissue with the retrovirii that deliver the genes. The upshot? It is now possible to activate very specific groups of neurons in the brain. It gets better: toss in a gene that makes neurons glow (green, it turns out) when they're active, and you have an equally-precise mind-reading technology. Two-way communication between the brain and external machinery is a huge milestone in cybernetics, and it is within our reach now.

In a recent discussion about the feasability and desireability of cybernetic enhancement, a friend of mine argued that the major disadvantage of cybernetics (as opposed to external enhancements, ie. powered exoskeletons) is obsolesence. Who wants to have a set of electrodes implanted in their brain if they'll need replacement with the next model in three weeks' time? What strikes me about this new technology is that adding this send/receive technology to the brain is done by retroviral engineering. I'm a little fuzzy about the particulars, but I think it's conceivable that should an enhanced version of these genes be developed, it could be as simple as just another few injections. Ok, so they're injections RIGHT INTO YOUR BRAIN...but I think I'd take that over really really really invasive surgery to stick metal permanently in there. I hope that's how it'll work, anyhow.

I'm getting ahead of myself, of course. The early applications for this breakthrough are mostly therapeutic. Still, it's good to know that the inventors do have their priorities straight.

Now, I suppose the only question is : how long will it be until Nintendo and Microsoft start building this tech into gimmicky, over-hyped game control systems?

-Loud!

o/ lord I was born a ramblin' writer/speaker/thinker o/

BOOBtubeS!

I think it's more than safe to say that of all media, television is the most maligned. Forget Shakespeare's lowbrow roots, forget about the harlequin romance, the incessant repetition of this year's "hits" on 9/10 radio stations, Meet the Spartans...the pollution brought by these wretched works doesn't seem to contaminate their respective art forms the way we have allowed bad television to colour everything we see and hear on the good ol' boob tube (even though most network TV is too tame to show anything remotely resembling the actual female breast...). Videogaming is I think a close second, despite the best efforts of self-appointed moral crusaders. At least games are known to improve co-ordination and problem-solving skills. Television gets pretty much zero good press as a medium.

Which is why it's so awful that I am a sucker for good TV.

If I'm tired enough, I'm a sucker for just about any TV, but that's neither here nor there. No, I'm talking about Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica (remake), Cowboy BeBop, jPod...intelligent TV. I might as well toss in Mythbusters, Magic School Bus, Robot Chicken, Popular, Buffy, Heroes, and Dead Like Me, while I'm in a listing mood. These shows are all different, but they can be collected into groups, sometimes overlapping. You've straight-up solid writing, acting, and wit; you've got pertinent social commentary; educational value; comedy, romance, psychosis: you have art.

When you think about it, TV is the perfect mirror for society: sure, a lot of it is made with very little thought input, or a great deal of thought is put in to ensure that very little comes out, but either way, a lot of it is the bland homogeneity and routine - filler - required as if by law to stop the masses from discovering existentialism (gotta keep your power sources safely plugged in, after all). But there's always that small, rogue band of people who keep thought alive, with such alien concepts as "plot", "character", and "cinematography". I may be overly melodramatic in casting TV as some kind of socio-political battlefield, but maybe there's something to it. Television has, like Religion, been called "the opiate of the masses", after all. It would certainly explain why intelligent TV tends to get cancelled with alarming regularity: get too subversive, and the Capitalist Oppressor takes you off the airwaves. I think Heroes, Galactica and Farscape managed to hang on (although the latter was cancelled after 4 seasons) by having a strong emphasis on family, which the conservatives must like enough to make up for their boldness elsewhere. Looking deeper, I guess Heroes and Galactica both feature powerful elites making decisions that affect the fate of humanity, and they generally tend to make the right choices. The powerful elites must like that vindication.

So, with new TV comes a new cast of shows to be examined, the ones I've seen at all would be jPod (already in the list of intelligent TV, and duly cancelled), the Sarah Connor Chronicles (which I think survives on overtones of family and religion, as per my theory), and finally Eli Stone, which I'm still evaluating. On the one hand, they did do an episode where a vaccine maker was trying to hide the fact that it's products could cause Autism (dumb, 'cause that myth does not need more support: note how the vast majority of people are non-autistic and immunized? Yeah, I thought you might enjoy your health). This week, though, was much better: they totally took the US government to task for only funding the LIES of Abstinence-only "sex education"! On TV, in front of (hopefully) millions of viewers. I like their style this week, although I wonder if they mean to educate, or just to provoke a different group every week by subverting their usual message somehow? Also, the whole "Eli-as-prophet" storyline has the potential to get really, really annoying and preachy if done wrong.

I guess the bottom line is that Eli Stone has Natasha Henstridge, which should keep at least the male viewers, even in the event of severe shark-jumping.

More on this as my artistic appraisal continues. I think I may just go and watch some more Battlestar Galactica Season 3 (which you should buy or rent or borrow and watch and no they are not paying me, unless you count the part where they're making more for me to watch)

LOUD!

Annihilated Ammeters, Broken Beakers, Crushed Crucibles

It's one of those glorious near-autumn days, the sort which ought to last for weeks. It's one of those superb edge-of-summer moments, in which the leaves are falling but the mercury isn't. It's that very instant in which the heart - not the brain - becomes the seat of awareness, and it aches with the beauty of the world. This is the very essence of life, condensed beyond belief yet in no way wanting for detail.

I was there, in the University Quad. And all I could think about was how absolutely shitty a Chem lab can make one feel. Missing the first one (having transferred into the course a little late) was bad enough, but now the weight of everything I am expected to have weighs heavily on my shoulders. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a fucking clue as to where I might be able to procure any of it! In an ideal world, I love Chemistry. The prof in his classroom sheds much-sought-after light on important questions, such as "what is the basic nature of matter?", and "what reactions allow life to function as it does?", which span the realms of science and metaphysics. The grandeur of life is so much more appreciable when one understands that life, however briefly, defies entropy. No reaction does, of course, and when the sun burns out, all will be lost...but for our brief span on this Earth, our very presence screams "I should not be, yet I AM!". Perhaps we will discover, in time, that life is a natural state of things, and that we all play our part in grinding down the Universe into homogenous dust. Indeed, it is likely we do. Still, the easiest path would be for the Earth to become a lifeless rock, as Mars has. This being not the case makes us - for the moment - something special.

TAs, on the other hand, don't so much illuminate as turn the FBI-surplus interrogation lamp to 11, and help you answer questions like "why aren't you prepared?", and "how did you add the silver nitrate if you hadn't calculated how much was needed yet?". The answer to the latter is that I didn't, the other TA came by while I was number-crunching away - the only sanctuary I had available - and threw our experiment together on the hot plate (at least, that's what I saw out of the corner of my eye...). TA's discuss within earshot of you how to give you a mark less than zero for pre-labs, etc. The best a TA can say is not "why, you were late to this class. Here, have a list of stuff you need", but "I'm giving you a 1 on your pre-lab because you had something scribbled on a piece of paper". Thanks a fucking load, buddy. I'm completely disoriented, I have no lab notebook, nor the lab procedures, and you're acting like I've been here from day 1 and I'm an incompetent!

Fortunately for my TAs, I've come to a realization which will spare them the trouble.

When people ask me about my science marks (hell, about any marks), I change the subject. A cousin of mine criticized my schedule for being "too light on the math and science". To be honest, I haven't the heart to tell them that I've given up on the both of them. I'm not taking Chemistry because I'm particularly facinated by it, I'm taking it because I had a dream once, and I've not been able to let go. For years, I knew what I wanted to be: I was going to be an Aerospace Engineer. I was going to be the next Burt Rutan, I was going to follow in the footsteps of Von Braun. I was gonna build fuckin' SPACESHIPS, and I was going to be the chief engineer on a Star-Trek-Style-Riverboat-Fantasy-In-Space. I never really asked myself if I thought it was possible, I even held onto it as my Math and Science marks fell with every successive year. The clues were hidden all along: I've never been good at logic puzzles, you might as well give me the Gordian Knot and no sword as pass me a Su Doku, and I've never acutally solved a rubik's cube. I've never done any model rocketry, and I'm about as mechanically inclined as a slime mould. I'm so bad at Science, in fact, that I DID NOT PLACE in the Aventis Biotech Challenge. I did research on Ginseng and U87MG glioblastomas, and I don't even know if the judges placed us higher than a group whose project name was "Hot Potato" (which, incidentally, came off as less scientific than a potato clock)! If people like me ever got to designing and building spaceships, the Astronaut fatality rate would begin to resemble that of Los Angeles.

I'm a rational Atheist, and for all that, Science still hates me. What gives?

So, please don't ask me about all those spaceships I'll never build, or all those chemical equilibria that I'll never solve. Ask me about what I want for the future, now that I think I'm ready to let go of the past. I'll never stop loving science: Its rational inquiery, the steady improvement of human life through technology, not to mention the best world view there is...but I can't go back. It was an abusive relationship, and it ends here

I am LOUD

I am NOT a Scientist

Not Anymore