The Health Care Industry Apocalypse In ‘Repo Men’
Annalee Newitz reviews Repo Men on io9.com:
With health care a source of fierce debate in America, a movie like Repo Men was bound to be made. A bloody satire of the marriage between medicine and capitalism, it’s about repo men who collect on overdue artificial organs.
A cult musical about this same topic, called Repo! The Genetic Opera, came out last year, though Repo Men itself was based on a novel called The Repossession Mambo. The idea of scary semi-serial killers who kill to repossess mechanical organs seems to be in the air. Indeed, one of the best parts of Repo Men is the way it captures the sentiments of millions of people who feel dicked over by hospitals and medical insurance companies right now. But the movie’s strength is also its problem: Evil medical corporations are a pretty easy target, and Repo Men gives us a black-and-white view of a problem that is in reality all shades of gray.
First Commercially Available Jetpacks For Sale For $86,000
It’s time to live the dream: jetpacks from Martin Jetpacks are now on sale. If you’re able to plunk down $86,000, one could be yours in twelve months. The Martin Jetpack gives you 30 minutes of flight time, tops out at 60 miles per hour, and has mechanisms designed to correct for operator flight error, supposedly reducing the chance of fatal mistakes in the air. No license is needed to fly this in the United States, as of now.
Genetically-Engineered Human Have Already Been Born
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
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The earthshaking news appeared in the medical journal Human Reproduction under the impenetrable headline: “Mitochondria in Human Offspring Derived From Ooplasmic Transplantation.”
The media put the story in heavy rotation for one day, then forgot about it. We all forgot about it.
But the fact remains that the world is now populated by dozens of children who were genetically
engineered. It still sounds like science fiction, yet it’s true.
Why Google Is A Hungry Beast (Video)
Wow, if Google was making its money in the defense industry (could be) instead of advertising, it would be Skynet. Don’t be evil, right guys?
Great video from the Hungry Beast. If you’re in Oz you can watch here, otherwise see below:
Orange Dwarf Star Set to Smash into The Solar System
From Technology Review:
A new set of star velocity data indicates that Gliese 710 has an 86 percent chance of ploughing into the Solar System within the next 1.5 million years.
The Solar System is surrounded by thousands of stars, but until recently it wasn’t at all clear where they were all heading.
In 1997, however, astronomers published the Hipparcos Catalogue giving detailed position and velocity measurements of some 100,000 stars in our neighbourhood, all gathered by the European Space Agency’s Hipparcos spacecraft. It’s fair to say that the Hipparcos data has revolutionised our understanding of the ‘hood.
In particular, this data allowed astronomers to work out which stars we’d been closer to in the past and which we will meet in the future. It turns out that 156 stars fall into this category…
Scientists Have Discovered Booze That Won’t Give You A Hangover
Tim Barribeau writes on io9.com:
Booze, for all its magical wonder, still has big drawbacks: You can’t sober up quickly, and you often get a hangover. Now Korean researchers have found a way of tweaking booze to limit the fallout — without cutting its strength.
Doctors Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University studied the properties of oxygenated alcohol — booze with oxygen bubbles added — which is a popular concoction in their country. In these drinks, oxygen is added the way carbonation is usually added to soda, and the scientists wanted to know if these oxygenated beverages affected people differently than non-oxygenated ones. The answer was a resounding yes.
They ran three experiments using 19.5% alcohol drinks, and measured the speed at which people’s blood alcohol dropped to 0.000%.…
Resources For Thinking About Systems
Futurist Chris Arkenberg shares some resources for beginning systems thinkers. Via Technoccult:
In some respects, this way of thinking is a natural part of simply paying attention to things. In other ways, it’s a challenging and sometimes overwhelming course of study that can easily move from Aha! moments to a very dis-empowering sense of total non-determinism. In the face of such huge complexity it can seem impossible to make any actionable sense of things. Finding the balance and determining the appropriate scope of research in analyzing a domain is a critical skill that must be developed individually through practice, lest you tug on that thread and find you’ve unraveled the entire sweater.
Smart Phones May One Day Be Universal Translators
Sure beats inserting a Babel Fish into the ear. Ryan Kim writes in the San Fransisco Chronicle:
In science fiction, characters often turn to a portable universal translator to help bridge the linguistic divide, either among humans or with aliens.
But the concept doesn’t just exist in the imagination of “Star Trek” writers or the pages of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Researchers are actually closing in on the technology and foresee its application in the coming years in a very familiar device: the smart phone.
Imagine walking into a restaurant in Beijing and ordering off the menu and talking with waiters in Chinese. It’s a future that is on the way to becoming a reality.
Real-Time Movie-Quality CGI for Games?
Evan Newton writes on h+ magazine:
There aren’t very many games today that, graphically, give one goose bumps. While movies like James Cameron’s Avatar or Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings have graphical effects that appear absolutely real, many wonder if games will ever achieve that level of detail.
Now get ready for Project Offset. This little-known development team, owned by Intel, is building a game engine that may make you believe that the richness of reality in the virtual world is not so far away.
Videos posted on their website show a variety of graphics engine experiments. You will find video footage that ranges from the detailed facial expressions of an ogre to a meteor shower blasting through ancient stone pillars.
DNA 2.0: A New Operating System for Life is Created
Linda Geddes writes in New Scientist:
A new way of using the genetic code has been created, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or “improved” life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue.
In all existing life forms, the four “letters” of the genetic code, called nucleotides, are read in triplets, so that every three nucleotides encode a single amino acid.
Not any more. Jason Chin at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have now redesigned the cell’s machinery so that it reads the genetic code in quadruplets.
In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of the four nucleotide letters; these genetic “words”…
Where’s Your Flying Car (and Your Jetpack)? (Video)
Via h+ magazine:
This article lists three real flying cars that are already in development — and provides video of each one!
MIT engineers are already taking deposits for next year’s roll-out of a “Roadable Aircraft” that can fold and stow its wings in less than 30 seconds — and then drive like a regular car.
And NASA’s electric-powered flying suit will even take off vertically like a helicopter before converting into a propeller-driven airplane. Though it accelerates up to 300 mph, one NASA engineer reports it has zero emissions, and “It’s a 10 times reduction in noise from the quietest helicopters today.”
Artificial Stem Cells? Researchers Transform A Skin Cell Into A Nerve Cell
Via h+ magazine:
Stanford researchers just changed a skin cell into a nerve cell. “Only stem cells have been known to do this… The direct conversion of one terminally differentiated cell to another changes the facts, and shakes our understanding – implying that, just maybe, under the right conditions, all cells are pluripotent: with the proper tools, all types of cells may form all types of cells…
“There is much to hope for as we discover this great leap sideways…”
The team bathed skin cells in “delivery viruses” containing proteins to trigger a neuron-specific DNA sequence, and discovered the skin cells changed completely — growing rounder, extending axon-like processes and even forming functional synapses…
This article suggests ultimately research in this field “could lead to revolutionary progress in the fight against Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and neurodegenerative…
The Science (Fiction) Of Embodied Cognition
John Pavlus writes on io9.com:
Science fiction has long played with the idea of projecting unified personalities/minds/”souls” into different bodies. The premise is baked into the plots of stories like Avatar and Caprica. But how would it work in the real world?
That’s what the science of “embodied cognition” is all about. The basic idea in this new(ish) research area (which overlaps with cognitive psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, and others) is this: Your mind is defined by your physical form. Not just in terms of “the mind is what the brain does”-we all are pretty down with that already. This takes it further to encompass the whole enchilada: your mind-your “I”-is a function of a cephalized, bipedal, plantigrade, bilaterally symmetrical body between 1.5 and 2 meters tall with two arms terminating in five-fingered…
Interview With Institute for the Future Researcher Chris Arkenberg
Via Technoccult:
How exactly does forecasting work? What’s the process like?
To begin with, I’d like to just underline that forecasting and prediction are very different. As futurists, we’re not making predictions but, rather, making approximations based on existing trends. I like to think of it as collapsing probability space into the most likely futures.
So having said that, there are many forecasting methodologies but most of them begin with scanning. This is a process of tracking information flows to get signals around your domain. Signals are essentially any event within the domain that you’re researching. So you pay attention to as many data streams as possible to get a feel for the emerging trends, where the money is flowing, social politics, etc… And from this you can start to derive estimates of…
Spray-On ‘Liquid Glass’ Protects Surfaces From Just About Anything
This sounds a bit like Ubik to me, if you read these articles from the Independent and the Telegraph. Here’s Clay Dillow’s take on it from Popular Science:
Much as it did for hair styling products and fake tans, spray-on technology now stands to revolutionize everything from locomotives to winemaking to textile design, thanks to a versatile new spray known as “liquid glass.” Applied to nearly any surface, an invisible non-toxic layer of silicon just one millionth of a millimeter thick can protect underlying matter from water, bacteria, dirt and even UV radiation.
Made almost entirely of pure silicon dioxide, liquid glass is harmless to the environment and could replace a variety of harsh cleaning chemicals. The coating can be cleaned with water alone, and tests by food-processing companies have shown that a good hot water rinse left liquid-glass-coated surfaces as sterile as normal surfaces doused with strong disinfecting bleach. The coating is also flexible and breathable, so it can be applied to both static and non-static surfaces.
Why The iPad Must Be Hacked: To Prevent Crap Futurism
After reading Gizmodo’s “8 Things That Suck About the iPad” and seeing this image illustrating that article for me, I really though the iPad was nothing more than a bulky, expensive iPhone. But there is one difference, it’s not a phone — something that you want to be totally reliable (work all the time). While many people jailbreak their iPhone to provide greater control over what you can do with it, I have been resistant to due to concern I might screw it up.
But after reading Annalee Newitz’s io9.com article about the iPad I realize the iPad is a device that you buy to hack. Not only that, it must be hacked. She makes the excellent point that Apple’s latest “must-have” device is nothing like a computer, it’s more like a television:
Apple is marketing the iPad as a computer, when really it’s nothing more than a media-consumption device — a convergence television, if you will. Think of it this way: One of the fundamental attributes of computers is that they are interactive and reconfigurable. You can change the way a computer behaves at a very deep level. Interactivity on the iPad consists of touching icons on the screen to change which application you’re using. Hardly more interactive than changing channels on a TV. Sure, you can compose a short email or text message; you can use the Brushes app to draw a sketch. But those activities are not the same thing as programming the device to do something new. Unlike a computer, the iPad is simply not reconfigurable.
Japanese Scientists Create Elastic Water
Kevin Parrish writes on tom’s guide:
Elastic Water could eventually replace plastic, or be used in an environmentally-safe plastic.
Bernama, a part of the Malaysian National News Agency, reports that Japanese scientists have created “elastic water.” Developed at the Tokyo University, the new material consists mostly of water — 95-percent — with an added two grams of clay and organic material. The resulting substance resembles jelly, but is extremely elastic and transparent.
The invention was originally revealed last week in the latest issue of the Nature scientific magazine. According to the article, the new material is quite safe for the environment and humans, and may be a “long-term” tool in medical technology, possibly to help wounded or surgically cut tissue to remain closed.
A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter: Is This How Artificial Intelligence Begins?
Very weird. I agree with the author of this article, does sound like it came from the mind of William S. Burroughs. Scott Timberg writes on io9.com
A devious device looking suspiciously like the pain box from Dune — or a minimalist sculpture from the ’60s — is now selling on eBay. In fact, that’s all it does. This robot sells itself on eBay every week.
Called “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009),” by the artist Caleb Larsen, the imposing cube has a mind of its own, literally:
Hooked up to the internet, it will put itself up for sale every seven days. Right now — the auction lasts until Thursday — you can land it for just north of four grand. But a week later, the cube will offer itself up for sale…
NASA Announces Designs for Personal Flying Suit
DAN SALTZSTEIN writes in the NY Times:
Forget the Segway. Leave that jet pack behind. NASA is working on a personal flying suit.
Conceptual designs for the experimental vehicle, called Puffin, were introduced by Mark D. Moore, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, at a meeting of the American Helicopter Society on Jan. 20 in San Francisco. The Puffin is designed to be 12 feet in length, with a total wingspan of 14 and a half feet; it would weigh in at 300 pounds (without a pilot).
