Locust Functional Neuroanatomy

From Maplike Representation of Celestial E-Vector Orientations in the Brain of an Insect. Heinze et al (2007); Science 315: 995. These are some of the central circuits encoding orientation via polarized light signals. The complexity of the celestial polarized light vectors should not be underestimated, either.

Nuclear solutions?

Stewart Brand is a great visionary and thinker. But how did the inventor of the Clock of the Long Now become convinced that GMOs and nuclear power are a good thing? The main problem I have with his reasoning about technology is the premise he starts with; that we must maintain our current profligate and wasteful use of energy and natural resources.

If we are locked into such a zero-sum game then yes, nuclear and GMOs may be the best of many bad options. But if we can instead optimize our whole economic system we may find that designed efficiency improvements can completely eliminate our imagined need for more power plants. (I refer the reader who wants to learn more about market-based efficiency solutions to the ample work of Amory Lovins)

Unfortunately the real problem is not a lack of energy or resources (if anything, we produce too much) but a lack of price signals that would tend to optimize the current system. If the market reflects the true cost of energy (instead of reflecting subsidies and missed externalities) these efficiency improvements would already have happened and we would not be forced to choose between pollution today or pollution 10,000 years from now.

Brand argues based on the premise of the lesser of two evils, but when it comes to big, hard questions about adopting new technologies we have an obligation to do much better. Brand is at his best when he puts his faith in the emergent properties of complex systems. Unfortunately our current economic system is not perfect. The solutions do exist and it is the hope of our generation that we can implement them before we are scared into a future of increasingly hazardous big-technology fixes.

The Canary in the Coal Mine

Our lab's colony of moths is dying...horrible mutations where we all work...there are so many possible sources its impossible to test for. Maybe our society is doomed, everything wrong with it, the chortling moans of ever-increasing numbers of mentally retarded, the true voice of our generation. Nothing is right.

We've only managed to show that we can satisfy artificially manufactured desires, replacing traditional sustainable natural solutions with inferior glitzy saccharine placebos. TV for sunsets, Chain restaurant fast food for raw local slow produce. Our values are wrong: slow and quiet and uneducated are not bad...perhaps even scientific progress, the ratchet that keeps us one step ahead of crowding-induced pestilence and destitution, is misguided: Progress destroys as much knowledge as it creates. Even as we fill up the libraries of the world with new facts, the old ways of knowing become increasingly remote, fragmentary, incoherent. Just as all the movies on VHS are now lost to those of us with only DVD players, the myths and legends that made us more than animals cannot be seen in the blue flickering light of the TV screen.

I question everything, now. Astigmatism, near sightedness, orthodontic braces, "vestigial organs"...we are changing our biology and the end will not be cataclysmic but gradual decline; lowered fertility, increased birth defects, centralized stagnant control. Our schools are factories and our factories and offices and living-places are nothing but slave labor camps that strip us, divide us, leave us homeless.

It is easy to imagine the past as primitive and dirty: the myth of linear evolution (rather than cyclic). It is easy to imagine that we can "help" the oppressed and the poor in the third world. But I look around me and see that the worst are full of passionate 24-7 intensity , believing if not in Heaven than in some consumerist ultimate utopia where entitlement and legitimacy are measured in cars and real estate. Meanwhile the best lack all conviction, while away their hours "looking for answers" in books or in masochistic exercise, walk with slumped shoulders and twisted mouths, wanting to believe in something but to honest to give up that final allegiance to our sadistic broken society. Who are our heroes now?

Stressed? The constant fight or flight response to this horrible mess: to run away (to the hills?) or stand our ground even as the gastric juices of this horrible Leviathan swirl around us? If intelligence is the ability to adapt, isn't the only smart choice to pop antidepressants and social anxiety pills until we make ourselves fit, like Charlie Chaplin, into the gears and cogs of "productive society"? If the only things I can do that are of value to society (i.e. will earn me money) also dehumanize me, is the cost vs benefit worth it? Are commitment and loyalty and honesty good if they serve a sick end? Is it smart to volunteer to be the canary in the gold mine?

Nipple Lines

Ley lines, the stripes of zebras and the meridians of acupuncture; hidden patterns of dormant structure and unrealized potentiality. Why do cats and dogs have six nipples while humans only (usually) have two? When in development does that counting occur?

Traditional Foodstuffs

Native Seeds/SEARCH
Slow Food
Desert Harvesters

Money is a symbolic metaphorical system

Money is the greatest invention. A friend of mine is trying to invent a new money, he calls it "stars" (as in I have five star bucks) and plans to compete with uncle sam. But money, and American money in particular, is universal in the economy. Better to call his alternative "smiles", because a smile means in the same thing no matter what language you speak.

A Peruvian economist, who has become a national celebrity (link needed), wrote a book comparing the free market winners and looses, and concluded that globalization favors those with liquid assets. Liquid means interconvertable from one physical form to another. This is the basic insight of metaphors, and it is what makes private property and money so valuable. A good system of money can convert anything into anything else, whether it be farming rights, wheat, or human organs.

It is at heart a symbolic notation system that can be manipulated across time and space. I qualify for a $100,000 home loan because the bank knows that the home can be converted (bank auction) back into money at any time. In developing countries, the metaphorical system is shakier. People don't trust its (admittedly fantastical) conversions and machinations, and even if they did, there are more things there that money can't buy. For example, traditional grazing rights are not codified or written down.

In this sense, money is the logical conclusion of written language. Roman numerals are more universal than English words. American money is the translation between the two. The transition from literal to metaphorical culture was fought by the Catholic church, who didn't understand or approve of lending at interest, creating something from nothing by doing no work, only accepting risk.

Re: gambling vs. investing vs. buying. When you buy something it depreciates, or there is a restocking fee, and you have less money after awhile. When you invest in something, it may appreciate (increase in equity) and you'll have even more money to buy/invest in even more things -- power of positive feedback). Resistance to borrowing debt is symptomatic of this old fear, and guilty of ignorance of the power of equity feedback. But we did loose something when we started calculating human lives in monetary terms. "One of the first things a student of Old English has to learn is that the word that looks like sell usually means "give." " Interestingly, it was traditional to pay a certain amount of money to appease the family of a murdered man, his ransom.

What are things worth? Rare: moss in washington is worthless, but in Arizona it becomes rare and beautiful.
What are things worth? Kramer didn't pay me rent for living in my house for two weeks, but I let him do it because the "lost' money was the worth of his visiting me.