Filed under: BoingBoing, Brave New World, MetaFilter, PZ Myers, Science, Science Fiction, tech
Just breaking:
WASHINGTON – Scientists have created a living cell powered by manmade DNA.
Here’s some more, from the source:
Now, this scientific team headed by Drs. Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith and Clyde Hutchison have achieved the final step in their quest to create the first synthetic bacterial cell. In a publication in Science magazine, Daniel Gibson, Ph.D. and a team of 23 additional researchers outline the steps to synthesize a 1.08 million base pair Mycoplasma mycoides genome, constructed from four bottles of chemicals that make up DNA. This synthetic genome has been “booted up” in a cell to create the first cell controlled completely by a synthetic genome.
Implications? I agree with Freeman Dyson:
I feel sure of only one conclusion. The ability to design and create new forms of life marks a turning-point in the history of our species and our planet.
The stuff of science fiction, now made fact.
Edited to add 5/21: PZ has a good explanation of the actual science you may want to read.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi, BB, and other places.)
A team of architectural experts, working together with historians of the Middle Ages and dedicated artisans, is raising a genuine, full-sized, fortified castle, with 45 foot high towers, a drawbridge, and 6 foot wide stone walls surrounding an expansive inner courtyard, using the materials, techniques, and rules of the 13th century.
Here in Missouri. Well, just across the border into Arkansas, actually, south of Springfield.
I appreciate insane projects.
Jim Downey
(Via.)
Filed under: Charlie Stross, Marketing, MetaFilter, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Charlie Stross recently wrote a series of long posts on his blog which explains how commercial fiction publishing actually works, at least from his well-informed perspective. I read those over the weekend, and got some nuts & bolts info that I had only known vaguely before – a nice intro to the whole process as I stand on the verge of it happening to me. I would heartily recommend that anyone interested in the economics of publishing or getting published take a look.
Then, as luck would have it, this morning Stross was the first to post in a discussion related to this topic on MetaFilter: How to Pay the Writer.
Interesting. Thoughts?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, BoingBoing, Fermi's Paradox, MetaFilter, Phil Plait, Predictions, Preparedness, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Seth Shostak, SETI, Space, Survival, tech
. . . about Stephen Hawking’s caution regarding contacting alien civilizations.
LONDON (AFP) – Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking has warned.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” said the astrophysicist in a new television series, according to British media reports.
And:
THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.
* * *
Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.
Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.
It’s also hit a number of the big aggregating sites such as Huffington Post, BoingBoing, and MetaFilter, as well as popular science sites Bad Astronomy and Discover. The more intelligent comments/discussions get into such things as Fermi’s Paradox, the Drake Equation, and SETI, and debating the why of what would appeal to aliens about us.
Man, it really makes me wish that Communion of Dreams was currently in print. Because this is all stuff that I discuss, at length, there. The topic of alien contact is as old as science fiction, but it comes and goes in popularity – and right now it’d be great to have my book on the shelves of bookstores.
Ah well. Story of my life.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Gene Roddenberry, Guns, MetaFilter, NPR, Science Fiction, Star Trek, tech, YouTube
Oh, this is much too cool:
Info if you want to see about making your own here.
Remarkable how the technology has evolved since my nutty art project.
Jim Downey
(Yes, via MeFi. When are you people going to learn and just start reading the damn site on your own?)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Government, Guns, Humor, MetaFilter, movies, Society, Violence
The news this week about the discovery of ‘lost’ documents from the coroner’s inquest following the gunfight at the O.K. Corral has fired the imaginations of many. Unsurprising, given the historical nature of that event and the number of books and movies made concerning it.
But I want to pass along something else from a little earlier in our history. It wasn’t lost, as such, but I never knew of it. And I wish I had.
It was a letter of former slave to his owner, and it provides a fascinating glimpse into the life of the man (Jourdon Anderson), and how the Civil War changed things. Here’s the introduction:
Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
There’s a taste of Mr. Andserson’s wry cutting humor. There’s a bunch more in the letter, as he goes on to say that he’s willing to return to his former master but asks for back pay (and interest) for the work he and his wife did over decades as a sign of good faith of the Colonel’s intent. The letter isn’t long, and ends with this:
P.S. —Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
Jourdon Anderson was evidently illiterate, and this letter was written for him (but according to his instruction.) I don’t know whether the actual phrasing was his or someone else’s. But it really doesn’t matter – it remains a masterpiece. And it is a shame that it isn’t more widely known. I don’t expect that it will ever receive the attention that the O.K. Corral documents have. But I would have to say that it is in many ways more important that those documents, for what it tells us about our history.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi.)
Filed under: Humor, MetaFilter, Neil Armstrong, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Space
Oh, this is fun:
Lets say you’re the first human ever to make alien contact…
Maybe I should rewrite Communion of Dreams again to include this advice. Hmm.
Jim Downey
Via MeFi.
Filed under: Bad Astronomy, Emergency, Failure, MetaFilter, Phil Plait, Predictions, Preparedness, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech
I grew up reading post-apocalyptic science fiction – it was part & parcel of the world of the 1960s and 70s, and so helped to shape my view of things. Unsurprisingly, this had an influence on my own writing, and shows up in my novel. From the homepage for Communion of Dreams:
Communion of Dreams is an “alternative future history” set in 2052 where the human race is still struggling to recover from a massive pandemic flu some 40 years previously. Much of the population is infertile. National borders and alliances have shifted. Regional nuclear wars have prompted some countries to turn to establishing settlements in space, and there’s a major effort to detect Earth-like planets in nearby star systems for future colonization. Fringe eco-religious groups threaten to thwart the further advancement of science and technology, and resist any effort to spread humanity to the stars.
Post-apocalyptic, but not in the sense that civilization has completely collapsed – though that is a threat which does show up in the book. Anyway, it is an interesting topic, and a popular one, leading to all manner of websites, books, and religions.
For me, the interesting thing is not the apocalyptic event itself – I have very little interest in disaster films or books – but how a civilization picks itself up from the ruins and moves forward (or doesn’t). Having had any number of personal setbacks and failures in my life, I suppose I’m just interested in the human drive to survive and rebuild. And so it is that I find this completely fascinating:
Today we received another email about creating a record of humanity and technology that would help restart civilization. The latest one is inspired by an essay that James Lovelock published in Science over 12 years ago called A Book For All Seasons (excerpt):
We have confidence in our science-based civilization and think it has tenure. In so doing, I think we fail to distinguish between the life-span of civilizations and that of our species. In fact, civilizations are ephemeral compared with species. Humans have lasted at least a million years, but there have been 30 civilizations in the past 5000 years. Humans are tough and will survive; civilizations are fragile. It seems clear to me that we are not evolving in intelligence, not becoming true Homo sapiens. Indeed there is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through the 5000 years of recorded history.
Over the years these proposals have been in different forms; create a book, set of books, stone tablets, micro-etched metal disk, or a constantly updated wiki. I really like the idea of creating such a record, in fact the Rosetta Disk project was our first effort in this direction. These Doomsday Manuals are a positive step in the direction of making a softer landing for a collapse, and the people creating them (like ourselves) are certainly out to help people. It took millennia for the world to regain the technology and levels of societal organization attained by the Romans, so maybe a book like this would help that.
The Long Now Foundation is an interesting organization in its own right, and one I should probably get involved with, but life is so hectic and rushed as it is . . .
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi.)
. . . and I do mean *really* back in the day, I worked in advertising. This was between college and grad school. Like 207 years ago. I wrote ad copy for local radio, and was recruited to work for a large ad firm in the MidWest (which I declined).
Anyway, because of this, I have always had this really disturbing tendency to pay attention to clever advertising. I’ve even remarked upon it. Thankfully, my friends and family have forgiven me this quirk.
But thanks to this particular twist of personality, I want to share this gem with you: sound in the mail. Via MeFi. Clever. I approve of clever.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 
