trippin’

on socialism

i think that it would be nice if we had some more socialist institutions. i like universal helathcare, public transportation, public education, public broadcasting. i don’t understand why people hate socialism so much. as long as the people control things and not an authoritarian government it should can be really great. that is all.

high altitude experiment

iris experiment

quarter

the quarter lay there wedged between the girder and the concrete. the crowds pass close by unaware of the small treasure. the quarter spends its days weighing the value of currency in exchange for for purposeful ponderings. everyday for a few minutes it catches a glimpse of the sun just before the foot traffic wanes to a stop for the evening. adjacent buildings are eventually turned down and rebuilt in dynamic sweeping fashion. the roads and train tracks ascend higher, weaving through the skyline. the clacking of foot traffic transforms into a melodic hum. the quarter remains an isolated entity in a sea of change.

on sleep

a strain to keep my eyes open. the demons of drowsyness toy with me. invisible tendrils pull at my mind. too tired to sleep. to sleepy to function. i find myself an insomiac zombie. my actions are neither here nor there. my state of hibernation neither squirrel nor bear. nay, i am some stranger beast, blind and boogily. thoughts smart and not spout from my oral twat. is this good or bad or happy or sad? spinning crumbling and sometimes rumbling i will see you there.

on mushrooms

it can be so hard sometimes to find food without mushrooms. they are one of those things that everybody wants to sneak into your food. whenever you order “vegetables” your food arrives with vegetables and fungi. I wish we could pass a law making it illegal to consider mushrooms vegetables. they aren’t even plants for christ sakes. they are biologically more similar to animals than they are to plants. now i know there is some discrepency about what defines something as a vegetable, but i think we can at least agree than in order to be a vegetable something must at least be a plant.

please stop sneaking shrooms into my veggies. that is all i have to say. thank you.

Vortex

Vortex

on color

This is my response to this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/nina_jablonski_breaks_the_illusion_of_skin_color.html

I think that Nina may be unaware of some of the implications of what she is saying. Nowhere in her talk does she propose creating the equivalent of sunscreen to solve the vitamin D issues associated with darker skinned peoples in less UV intensive areas. She seems to say that darker skinned people should go outside more instead of proposing that more buildings have more skylight or something like that. One could even take this as a proposal that people with dark skin go back to taking outdoor jobs, because they are better suited for it. That doesn’t sound could. I really wish she would have been more careful. She really should have said more about nutrition perhaps or architecture and less about dark skinned people being indoors.

Even if people are adapted to live in one place or another place we can no longer afford to tell people that belong in one place or another. We can no longer tell people to rely upon physical adaptations. We must create artificial adaptations where physical adaptations are insufficient. There is no more space for telling black people to watch out for office jobs. Even as a joke that is based in science that is an offensive thing to say. If office jobs are for white people it is because of the way that those offices are built for white people and not for black people. If Barack Obama is at risk of vitamin D deficiency tell him to let some more UVB into the oval office, don’t make it sound like he should be afraid of the oval office. Christers! I don’t tell white people be afraid of going outside just because they might get sunburned. At the worst I might suggest that they wear a hat or something. If you are going to talk about the dangers of being indoors talk about the solutions too. Otherwise you risk sounding a little bit racist. For God sakes, it sounds like Nina is trying to say that the White House is “White” for a legitimate scientific reason.

Ethics and Eugenics

Eugenics has some tricky ethical problems. Nobody wants a holocaust. Nobody wants genocide. On the other hand nobody wants psychopathic killers or genetically transmitted diseases either. We also don’t feel right about telling people whether or not they should breed or how they should breed. So how can we improve humanities children without infringing on the rights or freedoms of specific parents or specific children?

In a sense humanity’s genes and the next generation of humans belong to humanity as a whole not to any particular people. Now some might say that these things all already belong to the next generation and not the current generations of humanity. The problem with this is that all potential humans if they deserve a say deserve an equal say in whether they get to be conceived or not, both those with weaker genes and those with stronger genes. If we have the power to tip the balance in favor of the stronger gene pool shouldn’t we do so?

Things seem relatively clear at this point. As long as we can change the next generation enough to weed out undesireable genetic burdens on humanity we should do so. However, this is not so simple as it may seem. How do we define which traits are desirable. Once we start breeding children to become stronger or more beautiful haven’t we already crossed the genocide line? Isn’t a preventative genocide of genetically sick people still genocide, even if they are being replaced before conception with healthy people? Is the luck of the draw really the only fair way for humanity to propogate?

Perhaps the best thing that humanity can do is draw up a list of specific genetic traits that simply do not do any good. These traits can then be tracked or treated to some extent. They may never be eliminated but at least we would have the knowledge to stop their transmission in many cases if we should choose to.

On the other hand. Some of us may choose to take this farther and start communities with a different set of genetic ethics. Some us may decide to genetically modify ourselves and our offspring to be any number of things. If some of us decide to artificially evolve in this manner should the rest of us tolerate it?

I am inclined to allow it. I am curious to see what new species might evolve out of humanity. Surely our evolutionary path is not complete simply because we have aquired advanced technology? I suspect that at least some of us will inevitably evolve into our technologies or into new biology, likely both.

Perhaps the only difference between evolution and genocide is the difference between selective breeding and selective killing.