So, Phase 1 complete. The talks seemed to go over pretty well (and ten minutes afterwards, in deepest Norway, Caitlin was talking in Spanish to a Peruvian grad student about his own writing, because that is just the kind of thing the BUG does). We had beers with an author of a recent paper in […]
Black Metal, Deep Vents, Unicorns.
Category: On the Road, public interfaceDateline Pearson International Airport: if you’re the kind of person who reads the fine print on blog sidebars, you might know that a week from now Caitlin and I are going to be in Upsalla for Kontrast; I’m looking forward to it, and the BUG will doubtless also be looking forward to it once our […]
If you meet Neil Degrasse Tyson on the Road, Hug Him.
Category: ink on artColbert shut down The Bump yesterday. I assume you can see the clip here if you live in the US; for the rest of us, this1 will have to do: What I said before? I take it all back. 1Grabbed from fuckyeahstevejonandsteven
If You Meet Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the Road, Kill Him.
Category: sciliticsAn excerpt from a talk I’m working on, to be delivered a month and an ocean away: Two thirds of North America believes in Angels ; only half accept the reality of global warming. 78% believe that human beings were created by an invisible sky fairy, and 46% believe that this fairy created them in […]
Fruit Flies, Freeloaders, free will.
Category: neuro, sentience/cognitionFor the past few months an image has been itching at the back of my mind, like a piece of grit waiting for a story to accrete around it: a neuron culture in a petri dish, like a rifters head cheese but without any inputs to keep it sparking. We presume that all internal feedback […]
A Nose of Dinaricized Atlantid Configuration.
Category: miscI’m not quite sure what to make of this. Apparently I don’t fit in with the Brits or the Irish, on account of my nose. Although someone who whose avatar looks like Trinity describes me as North Atlantid, which sounds pretty close.
Lateral Transfers
Category: biology, biotech, evolution, fibletThe whitecap’s skin glows with a golden tan of cultured xanthophylls. Joel’s smile grows a little more brittle. He’s heard all about the benefits, of course. UV protection, higher blood oxygen, more energy — they say it even cuts down on your food requirements, not that any of these people have to worry about grocery […]
Pimppourri
Category: ink on art, public interfaceA bit of place-holding pimpage, which is all I have time for while I beaver away on things I cannot talk about. On behalf of folks doing things they can talk about.. Do It Yourself Moviemaking One of them is Jim Munro, Maestro of the Microbudget, who originally made a name for himself by […]
Sealing Fate
Category: biology, marine, sciliticsI’ve got a soft spot for seals. Back in the day I built a fair bit of my truncated biology career on the little beach maggots; Pacific harbor seals formed the very heart of my doctoral thesis, in fact (Attila, Thalidomide, and Strangway: I salute you, wherever you ended up). They even netted me a […]
Coincidence? You Decide!
Category: blindsight, evolutionNew York Times (NYT), LaChance et al1(L) Blindsight endnotes (BSE), “Vampire Domestication: Taming Yesterday’s Nightmares for a Better Tomorrow” (VD) Dr. Tishkoff’s team interprets these divergent DNA sequences as genetic remnants of an interbreeding with an archaic species of human … the geneticists estimate that the archaic species split from the ancestors of […]