Filed under: Health, NPR, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Organ transplantation used to be purely the stuff of Science Fiction. Now it is fairly routine, though still problematic due to the need for powerful immunosuppressants in most cases in order to avoid rejection. And there is a constant need for donor organs, which has also led to a couple of other staples of Science Fiction: cloning and organ farms.
[Mild Spoiler in next paragraph.]
I use both cloning and organ farming as a plot element in Communion of Dreams, which is revealed with the discovery of Chu Ling’s real history. Scientists have been working on cloning replacement organs, and there have been fairly solid reports of real organ farming (harvested from executed prisoners) to come out of China (one of the reasons that I used China as Chu Ling’s home). But cloning organs hasn’t been solved yet, and even if you have vast sources of donor organs, transplantation is still problematic due to tissue rejection.
Thankfully, scientists tend to be more innovative than writers, and have sought other solutions to the problem of replacement organs. One case I heard about last night on NPR’s All Things Considered uses an actual solution containing an active ingredient in shampoo:
Researchers Grow a Beating Heart
A custom-built replacement organ sounds like science fiction, but researchers working in Minnesota have figured out a way to construct a beating rat heart in the lab.
***
Taylor and her colleagues knew that when nature builds a heart, the cells attach to a kind of scaffold, or frame, made of things like proteins. “It’s basically what’s underneath all of the cells, the tough part that the cells make to hold each other together,” she says.
The researchers decided to see if they could take a dead heart and remove all of its cells, leaving this scaffold behind. The scientists thought they could then use the scaffold to construct a new heart out of healthy cells.
How did they remove all the original cells? With soap:
He tried enzymes, but they dissolved the heart. Other chemicals made the heart swell and change shape. Then one day, Ott grabbed a chemical known as SDS. “It’s a regular component of shampoo,” he says. “It’s a soap.”
At first nothing seemed to happen. Then, patches on the heart began to turn white. The red part, the meaty part, was disappearing.
“You can see the detergent working and making the heart literally translucent so it turns into a jellyfish sort of appearance,” says Ott, who explains that it looks just like a jellyfish shaped like a heart, with all the organ’s intricate 3-D structures.
Read the whole thing, and there is video there as well showing the process. Simply fascinating.
This is the thing that I love about science – a willingness to try crazy ideas, to experiment, to learn and then apply that learning to new problems in ways which could not have been foreseen at the start. And it is the thing I envy about science, because had I proposed such a procedure/technique in my book, it would have been considered absurd and dismissed by most readers.
Bravo to the scientists and researchers.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Daily Kos, Flu, General Musings, NPR, Nuclear weapons, Pandemic, Politics, Predictions, Press, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Violence
I usually save the ‘political’ stuff for UTI or dKos. And, for the most part, I intend to continue that policy even through what promises to be a very ugly election year here in the U.S.
But I want to chat here about this morning’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. Why? Because it ties in with Communion of Dreams a bit. And because I think that the news really should be examined more widely than in just ‘political’ or ‘news’ forums.
First, the Communion connection. [Mild spoilers to follow next paragraph.]
In the “history” of the novel, following the chaos of the world-wide pandemic flu, I have an unspecified regional nuclear war in Asia. The characters reference it in terms of the state of things in China and Chu Ling’s health. I kept the specifics of it rather vague, since I see about a dozen different ways that such insanity could easily occur, involving China, India, Taiwan, Japan, North and South Korea, and Pakistan. And, once started, such a regional conflict could easily draw in more than the initial combatants, depending on exactly what the alignment of allied countries was at the time. This would further cripple the economic powerhouses of Asia, and could be part of the motivation the Japanese would have for seeking to establish a colony on Mars.
OK, that’s fiction. I actually worry that reality could be worse. Worse? Yeah – rather than ‘just’ a regional war, this could precipitate a wider war, or draw in the U.S. in our current paranoia about Islamic fundamentalism.
Now, why do I say this? I’m not an expert on Pakistan’s political situation. In fact, I’d readily admit that I do not understand even all that I know about Pakistan’s current political situation – and what I know is quite limited. But Pakistan is only one part of this puzzle. At least as important are other components – the deteriorating relationship between the US and Russia, a global recession on the horizon, ongoing tensions of every variety in the Middle East, and our own jingoism and aforementioned paranoia here.
To sum it all up, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. It is the exact same sort of feeling I had when I heard of another assassination of a political figure several years ago: Ahmad Shah Massoud. It’s doubtful that you recognize the name. But maybe this will ring a bell:
Massoud was the target of a suicide attack which occurred at Khwaja Bahauddin on September 9, 2001. The attackers were two Arabs, Dahmane Abd al-Sattar and Bouraoui el-Ouaer, who claimed to be Belgians originally from Morocco. However, their passports turned out to be stolen and their nationality Tunisian. The assassins claimed to want to interview Massoud and set off a bomb in a belt worn by the cameraman while asking Massoud questions. The explosion also killed Mohammed Asim Suhail, a Northern Alliance official, while Mohammad Fahim Dashty and Massoud Khalili were injured. The assassins may have intended to attack several Northern Alliance council members simultaneously.[citation needed] Bouraoui was killed by the explosion and Dahmane was captured and shot while trying to escape. Massoud was rushed after the attack to the Indian Military hospital at Farkhor, Tajikistan which is now Farkhor Air Base. The news of Massoud’s death was reported almost immediately, appearing in European and North American newspapers on 10 September 2001. It was quickly overshadowed by the September 11, 2001 attacks, which proved to be the terrorist attack that Massoud had warned against.
The timing of the assassination, two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, is considered significant by commentators who believe Osama bin Laden ordered the assassination to help his Taliban protectors and ensure he would have their protection and cooperation in Afghanistan. The assassins are also reported to have shown support for bin Laden in their questions of Massoud. The Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Mujahideen leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan Wahhabi Islamist, have also been mentioned as a possible organizers or assisters of the assassins.[19] Massoud was a strong opponent of Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan. The assassins are said to have entered Northern Alliance territory under the auspices of the Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and had his assistance in bypassing “normal security procedures.”[20]
So, there it is. An earlier attempt on Benazir Bhutto raised suspicions that the Pakistani security forces were involved. The method of attack was similar this time around, and only different from the assassination of Massoud in scope. Pakistan is struggling with democracy, martial law had just been lifted (and may actually be declared again by the time I am done writing this), there are known elements in the Pakistani government which are supportive of the Taliban (and Osama bin Laden), and they have nuclear weapons.
When I heard the news of Bhutto’s assassination this morning on NPR, I flashed back to that moment in September of 2001 when I heard of Massoud. And a chill ran up my spine.
Jim Downey
“Well, I’ve enjoyed my time here, but I really should go.”
I sat on the couch next to her chair. The slight hiss of the oxygen cannula under her nose could still be heard over the sound of the concentrator in the other room. Her hands picked absently at the shawl we had over her lap and legs. “Well, we’ll be having supper in about an hour.”
“We will?”
My wife entered the room, sat on the floor by her mother’s feet. “What’s up, Mom?”
“Well, I was just saying that I thought I should be getting home, but he tells me that we’re going to have dinner soon. I don’t have any money for dinner.”
“It’s OK, you don’t need any money,” said my wife.
“Oh.” Pause. Look at me. “But I should still tell my mother. She’s been on a long journey, and just got back. She’ll want to know where I am.”
This has become routine. I answer, “She knows. Everyone in the family knows where you are. They know that you live here and we take care of you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, here,” my wife grabs a nearby phone book, turns to the page we’ve marked during this exact same conversation previously. “See, right here is your name, and the address, and the phone number. Anyone who wants to find you can, right here in the phone book.”
“Oh.” Still dubious. “But does my mother know?”
“MIL,” I say, “she asked us to look after you, until she comes for you.”
“Really?”
“Yup. And you can stay for as long as you want, until she comes. And then you can go with her.” I’m impressed by the certainty and reassurance in my wife’s voice.
“Oh, thank you dear, that would be lovely. This is a very nice place you have.”
Indeed it is. It’s been her home for 53 years, and is just the way she wanted it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
She seems to be stable again. Following the events mentioned in this post, we weren’t sure which way things were going to go. But after talking with the hospice people, tweaking her meds some, a few days of increased sleep, and with long talks with her to help settle things when she got anxious, she settled back more-or-less into the most recent patterns we’ve seen. There’s little doubt that she suffered one or more TIAs, or a small scale hemorrhagic stroke.
But she has once again proven to be surprisingly resilient. I’m fairly confident that she’ll make it at least to Christmas, probably to the new year. But as in all things, nothing is certain.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I wrote this a couple of years ago, as a submission to NPR’s This, I Believe series.
The Power to Forget
I believe in the power to forget. On December twelfth, 1969, my world changed forever. My father was murdered. I was eleven years old.
In the middle of the night I woke to flashing lights from a police car. A knock at the door, and I heard my mom answer it. Then I heard a man say: “Marlene, Wil’s been shot.”
See, my dad was a cop. And as happens all too often, he was killed during a routine procedure, in this case a burglary investigation. They caught the man who killed my father that same night. He was tried and convicted, sentenced to die. That sentence was commuted in 1973 by the Supreme Court, and to this day he is in prison.
I think he is, anyway. I don’t know for sure, because I have tried my very best to forget him. It was that, or succumb to the hatred that threatened to define my life.
For a while I tried forgiveness, since that is supposed to be liberating. When I say for a while, I mean for years. But I failed. There are some things that cannot be forgiven, at least for me.
Instead, I have slowly, and carefully, excised his name from my memory. Now and then something will happen; I’ll come across a story in the paper about him being up for parole, or a family friend will ask “whatever happened to so-and-so,” and I’ll have to start again to forget.
It’s not easy. Much of our culture, much of our popular literature, is based around the theme of a son avenging the death of his father. The whole “find the bastard who shot my pa…” thing. You may not notice it, but I do. And every time I hear about another officer down, every time Father’s Day rolls around on the calendar, I think about my dad. And I think about his death. And I deny the existence of the man who killed him.
Even now, as I write this, his name tries to emerge, tries to struggle free from where I have buried it. But forgetting means that I don’t have live with a constant, aching anger. It means that I don’t have to be trapped in that moment of history. It means that I can continue with my life, never forgetting the love I have for my father, or what it meant for him to die, but not being possessed by a need for vengeance.
I believe in the power to forget. How many old grudges still fuel the fires of revenge in this world? How often have more people had to die because of a fixation on a memory? How much better would things be if we could just clean the slate, forget the offenses we’ve suffered and the ones we’ve inflicted, and move on?
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Now I am not so sure. Watching my MIL, caring for her as she slowly forgets even the names of her children, that she was ever married, I wonder whether the burden of forgetting is worth the peace. Certainly, she is at peace (most of the time), so long as we do not disrupt the carefully constructed cocoon around her.
I would not want that fate, even if I would be mercifully unaware of it, as she is.
Perhaps, as in most things, it is the matter of intent that makes the difference.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to dKos.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Book Conservation, General Musings, Guns, Health, Hospice, NPR, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society, tech, Writing stuff
As I’ve mentioned previously, I try and catch NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday regularly. This morning’s show was hosted by John Ydstie, and had a very nice three minute meditation titled Reflecting on a Past Generation which dealt with the differences between his life and his father-in-law’s, as measured in physical weight and strength. You should listen to it, but the main thrust of the piece is how Ydstie’s FIL was a man of the mechanical age, used to dealing with tools and metal and machines, whereas Ydstie is used to working with computers and electronic equipment which is becoming increasingly light weight, almost immaterial.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Last weekend, as part of my preparations for tackling in earnest the big conservation job for the seminary, I got a large fireproof safe. I needed something much larger than my little cabinet to safely secure the many books I will have here at any given time. And about the most cost-effective solution to this need was a commercial gun safe, the sort of thing you see in sporting goods stores and gun shops all around the country.
So, since a local retailer was having a big Holiday sale, I went and bought a safe. It’s 60 inches tall, 30 inches wide, and 24 inches deep. And it weighs 600 pounds.
And the retailer doesn’t offer any kind of delivery and set-up.
“Liability issues,” explained the salesman when I asked. “But the guys out at the loading dock will help get it loaded into your truck or trailer.”
Gee, thanks.
So I went and rented a low-to the ground trailer sufficiently strong for hauling a 600 pound safe (I have a little trailer which wouldn’t be suitable). And an appliance dolly. And went and got the safe.
When I showed up at the loading dock and said I needed to pick up a safe, people scattered. The poor bastard I handed the paperwork to sighed, then disappeared into the warehouse. He returned a few minutes later with some help and my safe, mounted on its own little wooden pallet and boxed up. The four guys who loaded it into my trailer used a little cargo-loader, and were still grunting and cursing. I mostly stayed out of their way and let them do the job the way they wanted. Liability issues, you know.
I drove the couple miles home, and parked. And with a little (but critical) help from my good lady wife, it took just a half an hour and a bit of effort to get the safe in the house and settled where I wanted it. Yes, it was difficult, and I wouldn’t really want to tackle moving anything larger essentially on my own. But using some intelligence, an understanding of balance, and the right tool for the job I was able to move the 600 pound mass of metal with relative ease. And it made me feel damned good about my flabby own self.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
In contrast, the most difficult things I have ever done don’t really have a ‘weight’ to them. Communion of Dreams took me years of hard work to write and rewrite (multiple times), and yet is nothing more than phantasm, able to fly through the internet and be read by thousands. There are no physical copies to be bought, shared with a friend, lugged around and cherished or dropped disgustedly into a recycle bin. It is just electrons, little packets of yes and no.
And these past years of being a care provider, how do I weigh them (other than the additional fat I carry around from lack of proper exercise and too little sleep)? I suppose that I could count up all the times I have had to pick up my MIL, transfer her between chair and toilet, or lay her down gently on her bed. But even in this, things tend towards the immaterial, as she slowly loses weight along with her memories of this life. And soon, she will be no more than a body to be removed, carried one last time by others sent by the funeral home.
How do you weigh a life?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Art, Constellation program, Government, ISS, NASA, NPR, Predictions, Press, Science, Scott Simon, Space, tech
I have a special place in my heart for Scott Simon, the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday program. Oh, I’ve long enjoyed his reporting and work at NPR, but in particular it was the experience of being interviewed by him in 2001 for my “Paint the Moon” art project which endeared him to me. As it was just at the beginning of the media coverage of that project, and most people as yet didn’t understand what I was trying to do with the project, it would have been easy to mock the idea and portray me as something of a fool – but Simon was kind and considerate in his interview with me (which took almost an hour to do from my local NPR station facilities), and the end result was an interesting and insightful segment for his show.
Anyway, I go out of my way to try and catch the broadcast of Weekend Edition Saturday each week, and today was no different. One of the segments this morning was an interview with Pat Duggins, who has covered over 80 shuttle launches for NPR and now has a new book out titled Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program. In the course of the interview, Simon asked the following question (paraphrased; I may correct when the transcript of the show is posted later): “Are Americans unrealistic in the expectation of safety from our space program?”
Duggins paused a moment, and then gave an unequivocal “Yes.”
I had already answered the question in my own mind, and was pleased to hear him say the same thing. Because as I have mentioned before, I think that a realistic assessment of the risks involved with the space program is necessary. Further, everyone involved in the space program, from the politicians who fund it to the NASA administers to aerospace engineers to astronauts to the journalists who cover the program, should all – all – be very clear that there are real risks involved but that those risks are worth taking. Certainly, foolish risks should be avoided. But trying to establish and promote space exploration as being “safe” is foolish and counter-productive.
I am often cynical and somewhat disparaging of the intelligence of my fellow humans. But I actually believe that if you give people honest answers, honest information, and explain both the risks and benefits of something as important as the space program, they will be able to digest and think intelligently about it. We have gotten into trouble because we don’t demand that our populace be informed and responsible – we’ve fallen very much into the habit of feeding people a bunch of bullshit, of letting them off the hook for being responsible citizens, and treating them as children rather than participating adults. By and large, people will react the way you treat them – and if you just treat people as irresponsible children, they will act the same way.
So it was good to hear Duggins say that one simple word: “Yes.”
What we have accomplished in space, from the earliest days right through to the present, has always been risky. But for crying out loud, just going to the grocery store is risky. None of us will get out of this life alive, and you can be sure that for even the most pampered and protected there will be pain and suffering at times. To think otherwise is to live in a fantasy, and to collapse at the first experience of hardship.
I think that we are better than that. Just look at all humankind has accomplished, in spite of the risks. To say that Americans are unwilling to accept a realistic view of death and injury associated with the exploration of space is to sell us short, and to artificially limit the progress we make. I think it *has* artificially limited the progress we have made.
One of the most common complaints I get about the world I envision in Communion of Dreams is that the exploration of space is too far along to be “realistic”. Nonsense. Look at what was accomplished in the fifty years that lead up to the first Moon landing. In a world filled with trauma, war, and grief, some risks are more easily accepted. In the world of Communion, post-pandemic and having suffered regional nuclear wars, there would be little fixation on making sure that spaceflight was “safe”, and more on pushing to rapidly develop it.
We can go to the planets, and then on to the stars. It is just a matter of having the will to do so, and of accepting the risks of trying.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, BoingBoing, Book Conservation, Jeff Bezos, Kindle, NPR, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech
A friend dropped me a note last night, asked what I thought of Kindle, the new e-book reader from Jeff Bezos/Amazon. My reply:
I think it is still a hard sell. $400 is a chunk for something which only kinda-sorta replaces a real book. And if you drop it in the mud, it isn’t just $7.95 to buy a new copy. But it does seem to be an intelligent application of the relevant tech, and sounds intriguing. There will be those who snap it up, just ’cause – but Amazon has a long way to go before it is mainstream.
That’s my guess.
As I mentioned in this post back in March, something like the Kindle has been a staple of SF going way back. Way back. But for all our progress in tech to date, I think it’ll be a while before actual paper & ink books are obsolete. It’s a simple matter of economics and risk, as I indicate in that note to my friend above. Joel Johnson at BoingBoing Gadgets says much the same thing in his review – here’s an excerpt:
Although I can hold a $400 eBook reader in my hand, it only feels truly valuable because I have a $7 book inside that I want to read. If Amazon can find a way to lower the barrier of entry on either side of the platform—a cheaper Kindle, or free content—it may then be worth wider consideration.
Bezos might be right, and me wrong. Certainly, I don’t have the track record he does, and haven’t earned the kind of money he has with his hard work and predictions. Then again, he has the wealth to afford being wrong for a long time before he is right, as may happen with this kind of project .
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Government, NPR, NYT, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
. . . the one I have in Communion of Dreams about a military EM jamming device which shuts down all communications in a given area is actually pretty lame. This sort of thing has been a staple of Science Fiction just about forever, and in fact real radio jamming equipment has been used since the early days of radio. I remember back in the ’70s reading about something called an ‘Odien Coil’ which could be used to blanket all radio and television broadcasts for up to about a half-mile. For Communion, I just set a few different parameters for the device, and gave it the ability to disrupt all the electro-magnetic spectrum used to carry the data of a ubiquitous computing/augmented reality society, then allowed it to play an important role in the plot.
So, while my prediction in this regard is, as I said, pretty lame, I still got a bit of amusement out of the recent NYT coverage of cell phone jamming devices. It was mentioned again this morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, and that reminded me that I wanted to say something about it here, because while the tech is actually fairly old, how it is applied in a society becoming increasingly dependent on instantaneous cell phone communication is nonetheless newsworthy and insightful. From Matt Richtell’s NYT article:
The technology is not new, but overseas exporters of jammers say demand is rising and they are sending hundreds of them a month into the United States — prompting scrutiny from federal regulators and new concern last week from the cellphone industry. The buyers include owners of cafes and hair salons, hoteliers, public speakers, theater operators, bus drivers and, increasingly, commuters on public transportation.
The development is creating a battle for control of the airspace within earshot. And the damage is collateral. Insensitive talkers impose their racket on the defenseless, while jammers punish not just the offender, but also more discreet chatterers.
“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. “The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights.”
Bingo. We’re still in the early phase of this kind of communications tech. As I stipulate in Communion, one way such technology could evolve is to become even more personal, literally implanted into our bodies, making it completely unnecessary to speak above a whisper in order to conduct a call clearly. If this were to happen, it would solve the problem of idiots needing to chatter away loudly on their phones, and perhaps societal pressures would counteract the current situation. And if it wasn’t just a matter of politeness bringing about such a change, perhaps the application of jamming technology will push us in that direction.
One can hope, anyway.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Constitution, Gene Roddenberry, Government, NPR, Politics, Press, Society, tech, Wired, YouTube
If you haven’t really been following the latest on the Telecom Immunity/Domestic Spying efforts by the Bush Administration, or even if you just were busy yesterday, you might want to check out what former AT&T technician and wiretapping whistle-blower Mark Klein has had to say on the matter. In particular, Senator Dodd has posted a 2 minute YouTube summary from Klein that’ll give some idea of the scope of the surveillance. And in a discussion on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday, Klein goes into some detail about why he claims that AT&T was basically spying on each and every one of us who uses the internet to surf, post, or send email…before 9/11. It was, as he says in the YouTube summation, “Massively Unconstitutional”.
Yes, your government has been spying on you. Not just “looking for patterns in the data” or “monitoring overseas communication.” Spying. On. You.
Personally, this comes as no surprise to me. Not really. I sort of assumed that Bush and his cronies would be up to this sort of thing, given how much they have sought to emulate the Unitary Executive theories promulgated by the Nixon Administration. But it is damned depressing to see the Congress working so hard to cover it all up.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Blade Runner, BoingBoing, Diane Rehm, movies, NPR, Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Wired
Via BoingBoing, an extensive interview in Wired with Ridley Scott about the upcoming release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. From the prologue:
At age 69, Ridley Scott is finally satisfied with his most challenging film. He’s still turning out movies at a furious pace — American Gangster, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is due in November — building on an extraordinary oeuvre that includes Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. But he seems ready to accept Blade Runner as his crowning achievement. In his northern English accent, he describes its genesis and lasting influence. And, inevitably, he returns to the darkness that pervades his view of the future — the shadows that shield Deckard from a reality that may be too disturbing to face.
It’s an excellent interview. But then, I’m biased – I consider Blade Runner to be one of the best movies ever made, and certainly one of top SF movies. (In this I am hardly alone, of course – even Diane Rehm of NPR considers it one of her favorite movies.) The 1992 ‘Director’s Cut’ was a huge improvement over the original release, even with the crappy quality of the DVD. I particularly enjoyed this bit from the interview itself:
Wired: Dream kitchens aside, it’s a rather bleak vision of the future.
Scott:I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload. I’ve been that way for 30 years. People used to think I was — you know, not exactly depressive, but dark. And I’d say, “It’s not dark, mate, it’s a fact. It’s going to come and hit you on the head.”
Exactly. Yesterday I wrote about the tension between visions of the future and the reality of scientific achievement. Clearly, the world of 2019 depicted in Blade Runner is not going to be here, at least not on that schedule. But that’s OK. It is still a very valuable cautionary tale and damned fine alternative future history. And I think that is all that any author or artist or director can ever hope to accomplish.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 