Meet Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, the bacterium that does it all: fix carbon, fix nitrogen, synthesize all essential amino acids, locomote — an organism that can exist totally independent of other life. It doesn’t even need the sun. This fucker basically lives on sulfur, rock, and electrons*. It’s an obligate anaerobe, without even the most rudimentary […]
"To Prove Free Will, You Have To Do Something You Don’t Want To."
Category: ink on artI stumbled upon the premiere of this new television show last night. It contained the eponymous line, which is a bit pithier than the usual prime-time broadcast dialog. Even cooler, this line was a quote from a psychopathic assassin named Edward who’d recently been upbraided by his boss for gratuitously killing his target; in a […]
Fear and the French
Category: writing newsI’ve gone back and posted a coda at the end of Wednesday’s fear and religion entry; the recent hysteria at Republican rallies is chillingly consistent with Oxley et al‘s findings that Conservative=Fearful. But let’s move on to fear and horror of a more existential sort, the kind you might find in the shadow of a […]
Understanding Sarah Palin: Or, God Is In The Wattles
Category: ass-hamsters, evolution, just putting it out there..., sociobiologyHere’s a question for you. Why hasn’t natural selection driven the religious right to extinction? You should forgive me for asking. After all, here is a group of people who base their lives on patently absurd superstitions that fly in the face of empirical evidence. It’s as if I suddenly chose to believe that I […]
Head Cheese Gone Wild
Category: AI/robotics, biotech, neuro, relevant techI was plenty pleased when little porridges of cultured neurons took their first baby steps towards running flight simulators or operating robots in the lab; I was downright smug when folks noticed that I’d got there first. Now, though, researchers from the Missouri University of Science and Technology are planning on putting head cheeses in […]
For want of a nail.
Category: misc, rantFor decades now, experts from all walks have provided sage wisdom about the need to save for my declining years. We no longer live in a word of services, they’ve told me. We live in a world of ownership. It is not enough to save. You must invest. And this can sometimes be hard to […]
Placeholder
Category: misc, neuro, writing newsYeah, I know. Merciful extended silence again. Not that there’s nothing to talk about. There’s a paper just out in Consciousness & Cognition which purports to prove that logical thinking requires consciousness (which would seem to contradict other findings, but I haven’t read the paper yet so who knows). I’ve been ruminating on the inherent […]
Avast! Here Be a Blindsightinator for Ye!
Category: biology, blindsight, neuro, scienceAye me hearties, be ye rememberin’ that time in Blindsight when Rorschach, she be putting the sun in scurvy Szpindel’s eyes? “Argh, I be seein’ naught,” Szpindel be sayin’, his timbers a’shiver. “It be the EM fields,” James be barking. “That be how they signal. The briney deep, she be fulla words, she be—” “I […]
Category: writing news
A couple of you asked about my offhand reference to an Israeli book deal a few days back. It now appears to be a go. Blindsight, by Peter Watts, is being translated into Hebrew by Kitdmat Eden, of which I know little beyond the fact that they put out some very nice cover designs. Or […]