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I don't even think this is a chimera by definition, but it looks cooler.
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Human-pig 'chimera embryos' detailed
Jan 2017, BBC
Scientists create the first ever autistic monkeys
Jan 2017, BBC
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Biology Takes Acid
Human-pig 'chimera embryos' detailed
Jan 2017, BBC
Scientists create the first ever autistic monkeys
Jan 2017, BBC
Droneboarding
idk it just looks cool...and sometimes I just get upset when I see something that I just didn't see coming.
Droneboarding takes off in Latvia
Jan 2017, phys.org
It's Alive
AKA - The Selfish Meme grows legs
Network Address has been slacking on the Fake News front, simply because we tend to avoid anything on the front lines (since you're probably already getting that news from somewhere else) but this stuff is just too good...
As information bursts forth from the noosphere into the anthroposphere, from the inorganic to the organic, from the dematerialized idea to the materialized corpuscule, we see...
Cambridge scientists consider fake news 'vaccine'
Jan 2017, BBC
Researchers suggest "pre-emptively exposing" readers to a small "dose" of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims. ...like a virus...contagion...
POST SCRIPT
But let us not forget - Charles Darwin used the taxonomy of Language to explain his theory of evolution.
Natural Selection X Artificial Intelligence
Network Address, 2012
Also check out The Extended Phenotype, Virus of the Mind, Thought Contagion, and memes, meta-, and memetics in general
Welcome to Asgardia
Asgardia is the first ever space faring nation.
"Asgardia's philosophical envelope is to ‘digitalise’ the Noosphere, creating a mirror of humanity in space but without Earthly division into states, religions and nations. In Asgardia we are all just Earthlings!"
Not sure what a philosophical envelope is, but I do like to see the word Noosphere in print...
JOIN
Friday, January 6, 2017
To See Better
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The automation of artmaking - Adobe's Project Felix
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Adobe’s Project Felix Uses AI to Help You Craft Hyper-Realistic 3-D Renderings
Nov 2016, WIRED
This thing is nuts, and makes me scared for my job. (But not really; I used to be an art teacher, but am no more.)
The Nightmare Machine
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| This is not from the Nightmare Machine, but from the 20th century horror-artist Francis Bacon. Surely he could teach Google's AI a thing or two. |
AI creates gallery of nightmare images for Halloween
Oct 2016, BBC
The creators of the Nightmare Machine are trying to "help our algorithms learn scariness." In other words, they're teaching machines how to scare us. They called it the Nightmare Machine, not me. And if this isn't enough to scare Stephen Hawking on Halloween, I don't know what is.
Two techniques they're using are called style transfer and generative adversarial networks; just mentioning this because they sound cool.
POST SCRIPT
On Google AI's previous project, Deep Dream:
Inceptionism vs Trypophobia
Network Address, 2015
Deep Bosch
Network Address, 2015
Reprotech
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HR Giger's Babies, the guy who did Alien
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BBC News, Oct 2016
They take the baby out, perform surgery on her, and put her back in for 12 weeks.
I don't know what it is about advances in reproductive technology, but it always seems to scare the sh** out of me, like the three-people babies stuff.
I don't know what it is about advances in reproductive technology, but it always seems to scare the sh** out of me, like the three-people babies stuff.
For those who aren't up to it yet, "three-people babies" are when the mitochondrial DNA of one mother is implanted in another mother (who's mDNA is no good), which results in an organism with DNA from three people, which is totally unprecedented in life as we know it.
Gene Therapy To Prevent Inherited Diseases May Cause Other Ills
NPR, Jan 2017
On the dangers of using mitochondrial transplants:
"When the mother's nucleus is transferred, it's like a plant dug up out of ground — a bit of the original soil (in this case, the mother's mitochondria) is still clinging to the roots. That creates a situation that never happens in nature: Two different mitochondrial genomes from two different women are forced to live inside the same cell. In most cases, a tiny percentage (usually less than 2 percent) of the diseased mitochondria remain — but that tiny percentage can really matter."
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Network Science News
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I took this image and the explanation below from Coventry University and phys.org
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Oct 2016, phys.org
"In the social network underlying the Ossianic epic, the 325 nodes represent characters appearing in the narratives and the 748 links represent interactions between them."
Ben Franklin Says What
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| Ben Franklin in a fur hat |
Major commuting differences found between rich and poor in Colombia
Oct 2016, phys.org
Their findings: The rich do not rise early. What do you say about that, Ben Franklin?
Beyond Biomimicry
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The Pompidou in Paris, built in 1970's by Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Gianfranco Franchini. It's not under construction, it's an inside-out building. It's probably easier to fix this way, but do we like the way that looks? (It's actually a nightmare to clean the place.)
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phys.org, July 2016
"Researchers at MIT are making fluorescent polymer gels that change color when they're shaken, heated, exposed to acid, or otherwise disrupted. Given such a response, these novel materials could be effective sensors for detecting changes in structures, fluids, or the environment."
Buildings are not alive, so they don't heal themselves. It's hard for us to find out what's wrong with them, because most of their critical parts have been made invisible according to our cultural-architectural preferences.
But now, if there's structural damage in a place that's been doped with pressure-sensitive colorgel, we can see it.
Beyond Human
Meet Graham, a 'human' designed to survive a car crash
July 2016, CNN
The TAC (Transport Authority in Victoria Australia...sort of like the DMV in the USA) in collaboration with Melbourne artist Patricia Piccinini have launched Graham, a human made of silicon designed to survive a car crash...
This is a great example of how our own technology has outpaced the rate of biological change. If technology changed at the same rate as our biology, we would look like this right now. But we don't. We also (some of us) can digest milk. That was another point at which we outpaced ourselves, putting culture ahead of genes. Ah, the human condition.
Lost in Translation
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Mathieu Tremblin's "Tag Clouds" [before]
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Mathieu Tremblin's "Tag Clouds" [before]
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Ju;y 2017, WIRED
Mathieu Tremblin's "Tag Clouds"
"He carefully catalogs each tag, erases it, and then reinstates it. But not in graffiti script. Tremblin re-stencils tags in Helvetica, Arial, Times New Roman, and Georgia."
The history of graffiti, as it relates to gangs etc., requires a degree of 'unreadability' in order to separate the intended 'readers' from the unintentional. There is something about not being able to read one's tag that makes it valuable as a work of art (if you can call it that...and if you think it's valuable at all).
Are Clothes Modern
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Are Clothes Modern? An Essay on Contemporary Apparel, Bernard Rudofsky, 1947
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Neanderthals' failure to make parkas may have sealed their demise
Aug 2016, phys.org
Insect-Affluence Index and Sociothermodynamics
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| image source |
Homes in wealthier neighborhoods found to harbor more arthropod species
Aug 2016, phys.org
"They note also that prior studies had found that richer neighborhoods tended to have more plant and animal diversity in areas outside of the home. For this study, they wanted to know what was going on inside.
...
"In studying the numbers, the researchers found that the average home in a wealthy neighborhood had approximately 100 different species of arthropods in it, whereas those in less expensive neighborhoods had roughly half that number. The researchers suggest the discrepancy is due to differences in the environment outside of the homes. Richer neighborhoods tend to have houses with lush gardens and parks and the people that live there tend to expend more time and money on them resulting in more places for bugs to breed."
Mirror Body and Virtual Self
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| This image is for the wifi article below |
Brain-robot training triggers improvement in paralysis
BBC, Aug 2016
"In virtually every one of these patients, the brain had erased the notion of having legs. You're paralysed, you're not moving, the legs are not providing feedback signals.
"By using a brain-machine interface in a virtual environment, we were able to see this concept gradually re-emerging into the brain."
The team intended to use that re-awakened control to drive the robotic legs - but within 12 months they saw such improvement in basic clinical scores that four of the eight patients were upgraded to a diagnosis of only partial paraplegia.
"When I saw this, I couldn't believe it," said Prof Nicolelis.
[and don't forget]
'Brain wi-fi' reverses leg paralysis in primate first
BBC, Nov 2016
And then, let's also not forget that in the remote controlled monkey brain experiments, the wifi-controlled monkey across the world gets its remote signal faster via wifi than our own nervous system. In other words, it takes longer to go from your brain to your legs than it does to go from NY to Shanghai.
Fake Police
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| You got that?? |
'Chemtrails' not real, say leading atmospheric science experts
Aug 2016, phys.org
"Well-understood physical and chemical processes can easily explain the alleged evidence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program, commonly referred to as "chemtrails" or "covert geoengineering," concludes a new study from Carnegie Science, University of California Irvine, and the nonprofit organization Near Zero."
POST SCRIPT
On the Illusion of Intent and Mass Conspiracy
Network Address, circa 2014
Culture Fail
Network Address, circa 2012
On Knots
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| Captain Tying Knots |
You've heard of string theory. What about knot theory?
Feb 2016, phys.org
Tait Flyping Conjecture: the basis for a periodic table of knots in which hydrogen would be the "unknot" — the unknotted circle — and heavier elements would be knots whose filaments crossed over themselves an ever-higher number of times.
A new mathematical model predicts a knot's stability
Jan 2020, phys.org
On Science and Religion
Study finds beliefs about all-knowing gods fosters
co-operation
The research, an international collaboration among
anthropologists and psychologists, looked at how religion affects humans'
willingness to co-operate with those outside their social circle.
I'm a strong believer that religion serves the purpose of
large-scale human population cooperation, and that despite how much people
(like myself even) think it instead today acts as a thought-smothering default
state in response to difficult decision-making tasks, it has been, in the early
development of human civilization, totally necessary for that development to
take place, and that science (a kind of anti-religion) would not exist today
had it not been for religion, and that the two are part of the same continuum
of cultural evolution. This piece here is a good start for a more
well-articulated discussion on the matter.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
A New Way of Seeing
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| image source |
New imaging system uses an open-ended bundle of optical fibers—no lenses, protective housing needed
Feb 2016 phys.org
In Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants 2011, he mentions how seeing always makes eyeballs, and digestion the gut.
***
cool blog about eyes
and a video about the The Evolution of the Human Eye
What One is Not
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| image source |
The Surreal Drama of Actors Playing Sick for Med Students
WIRED, Jan 2016
I thought this was cool because I like pretend things, and especially fake things.
“The important thing about simulation is that imagination, or suspension of disbelief, is required,” Botz says. “Pretending to be a doctor is not easy for some, but life requires a certain amount of pretending to be what one is not. As a young resident, you must convince a patient you are more competent than you feel.”
-photographer Corinne May Botz
(check out her series of photos Bedside Manner here)
And btw, I heard someone say the other day they were 'texting all messed up' when they called-out of work, which made me think this is the new version of coughing while you're on the phone with your boss.
Nature Nature Everywhere
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Van Gogh's starry swirls are generally known to be formed according to Levy distributions, which are mathematical formulae, and can be found in turbulent water and other natural phenomena
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phys.org, Jan 2016
"The researchers found that the distribution of melodic intervals in two classical concertos and two folk songs can be modeled by a Lévy distribution... [which] describes many other diverse scenarios, such as the turbulent motion of a particle in a liquid or gas, the changes in the price of a stock, earthquake activity, and the foraging paths of wild animals."
It really makes you wonder natural vs artificial, and free will etc.
Did Van Gogh really put those lines there, or was he just following his animal instinct. Debussy?
POST SCRIPT
Music, the Arts and Ideas
Leonard B. Meyer, U. of Chicago, 1967
“It is impossible to stand outside of culture, for the models and categories we use on conceptualizing and ordering the world are necessarily limited to, if not determined by, those which are provided by our particular culture.” (viii)
“A culture, like a musical style, is a learned probability system.” (p17, footnote 21)
Culture as Learned Probability System
Network Address, 2012
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