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MonthMarch 2005
My friend Tasha asked me what I thought about all the gamma rays bombarding earth lately, and I had to confess I didn’t know anything about it. So I did some research, hoping to find news that everyone on earth would be mutating and getting cool superpowers, but if this is what she’s talking about, I guess all that happened is some longwave radio communications were interupted. Still, one can still dream of becoming the Hulk or Mr. Fantastic, just by going outside.
Science’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
Alpha is an extremely important constant that determines how light interacts with matter – and it shouldn’t be able to change. Its value depends on, among other things, the charge on the electron, the speed of light and Planck’s constant. Could one of these really have changed?
This report is from June of 2004, I just came across it.
Speaking of Genesis P. Orridge, here’s a new interview with him:
I had an epiphany about the nature of the words themselves. Each word behaves in ways that attest to the idea that in a very particular way it, THE WORD is alive and can even have its own agenda as a result of repetition and transmission in ever more compressed layers over linear time whilst apparently serving the message of the being using the word. I believe words are alive then in a very literal sense, and because each word is alive it?s another hologram, another iceberg. Everyone who has ever said that particular word has invested it with their story and anyone who hears that word puts the context of their life around that word. So each word is a memory box and a prophecy box simultaneously. They’re very precious, powerful particles of thought and energy.
(via New World Disorder)
of online radio stations. Either talk radio, or maye hipster music of some sort. I’ve become an NPR junkie since I started my new job. I drive a lot, and I decided I should use that time for something better than listening to the same music over and over. It’s been great, quite educational I think. I’ve even started listening to it on the computer at work when it’s not too distracting.
But sometimes NPR plays something I don’t really want to listen to, or they repeat something from earlier in the day. I tried listening to Air America today, but didn’t think it was work appropriate. So I’m wondering if anyone out there has any suggestions of intelligent talk radio or hipster music stations.
It’s happening already:
While scientists worldwide are only studying stem cells, dozens of Russian clinics and beauty salons claim they are already using both adult and embryonic stem cells to treat everything from wrinkles to Parkinson’s disease to impotence.
Scientists warn that while stem cells are still being researched in laboratories, treatment by clinics claiming to use stem cells may cost patients their health and fortunes. Moreover, they say, even though it’s illegal, enforcement is lax and no one knows if the injections patients are getting contain stem cells.
Link.
The word biopunk has been bandied about for some time now. Google already has over 1,000 results for a search on the term. R.U. Sirius wrote a piece in Rolling Stone a couple years ago about the possibility of garage biotechnologists, a movement he called biopunk. But I’d like to throw a new meaning for the concept out there: the near future (already here?) biotechnology black market.
The biotechnology market has already captured the imaginations of the business world. For the past few years it’s been hyped as the next big thing, the new dot-com bubble. For instance, Paul Allen wants to turn a neighborhood in Seattle into a biotech industry fueled urbanist utopia.
Ample private and federal investment is being poured into biotech research, but I expect U.S policies banning cloning research and limiting funding for stem cell research will effectively limit the U.S.’s role in biotechnology development. Less restrictive policies and/or cheaper labor will give Europe, Russia, and Asia advantages in the global biotech industry.
But other factors will drive an underground biotechnology market: the crippling expense of prescription drugs, health insurance, malpractice insurance, and student loan debts.
Chemistry students have been making money manufacturing LSD, MDMA, and other illegal drugs for years. But the demand for black market prescription drug clones could create a new use for the college chemistry lab. Imagine thousands of undergrads manufacturing HIV meds and other expensive drugs for cheap underground resale.
Meanwhile, medical school students, un-licensed doctors, or even licensed doctors trying to keep up with insurance payments will be performing a myriad of unauthorized procedures. Genesis P. Orridge could be at the forefront of a movement again. Sex changes are nothing new, but P. Orridge and Lady Jaye’s sex change as installation art project is on the forefront of the body modification movement, which constantly grows more extreme. Face transplants are about to become a reality. But these black market surgical procedures won’t be limited to weird body art projects. Uninsured Americans will be seeking all types of surgical procedures on the black market, and finding students and doctors to perform them will become increasingly easier.
Of course, those policy restrictions will create another biotech black market: clandestine cloning research labs and illegal human testing projects. Illegal human testing is almost certainly already a reality. And even with recent improvements in the job market, there are still thousands of desperate unemployed people to be taken advantage of.
And let’s not forget R.U. Sirius’s frightening prediction from his Rolling Stone article: garage production of germ weapons.
I’ve been meaning to mention this here for, but for some reason kept putting it off. I’ve made a bit of a career change. For the past three weeks I’ve been working as a computer technician for a local computer services company. Much of my time is spent doing IT for a largish local non-profit, but I do work for a lot of different clients. So I’m off the marketing and communications path and back in the world of IT.
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