James Joyce Encoded in Venter’s Artificial Life

in Literature, Science | May 23rd, 2010

You may have heard the news last week: J. Craig Ven­ter and a team of sci­en­tists cre­at­ed the first liv­ing organ­ism – a “syn­thet­ic cell” – by way of a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed genome. We’re now see­ing the begin­nings of arti­fi­cial life. And it’s a big sto­ry, with many far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions. But where does James Joyce fit into this pic­ture? Let me add this lit­tle fac­toid to the mix: Accord­ing to The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Ven­ter’s team insert­ed DNA water­mark codes into the genome so that they can dis­tin­guish between nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic bac­te­ria mov­ing for­ward. And when this code is trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, it will “spell out the names of the 46 researchers who helped with the project, quo­ta­tions from James Joyce, physi­cist Richard Feyn­man and J. Robert Oppen­heimer, and a URL that any­one who deci­phers the code can e‑mail.” Lots of smarts packed into the tini­est of pack­ages.

UPDATE: The quotes in water­mark appar­ent­ly read: “TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE.” — James Joyce’s A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man; “SEE THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS THEY MIGHT BE.”-A quote from an Oppen­heimer biog­ra­phy, Amer­i­can Prometheus; “WHAT I CANNOT BUILD, I CANNOT UNDERSTAND.” — Richard Feyn­man.

David Simon Takes New York Down a Peg

in Television | May 21st, 2010

Speak­ing in New York City, David Simon, the cre­ator of The Wire, was­n’t shy about tak­ing the city to task. “There is no city more vain about its posi­tion in pop­u­lar cul­ture, more indif­fer­ent to oth­er real­i­ties, more self absorbed than oth­er cities.” “Man­hat­tan is [now] one big pile of mon­ey,” which leaves it divorced from the real prob­lems fac­ing oth­er Amer­i­can cities. So why are so many sto­ries and tele­vi­sion shows still cen­tered in New York, and how can they tell the real tale of urban Amer­i­ca in 2010?

This talk took place at The New School for Lib­er­al Arts in NYC.

via The Dai­ly Dish

Spring: A Short Film Based on Hemingway’s Memoir

in Film, Literature | May 19th, 2010

British film­mak­er Temu­jin Doran may be bet­ter known for his strong, high­ly opin­ion­at­ed views on democ­ra­cy and pol­i­tics, but his adap­ta­tion of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s mem­oir, A Move­able Feast, is some­thing else entire­ly.

Though still nar­rat­ed in Doran’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly urgent, rest­less tone, Spring offers a qui­et trib­ute to Parisian urban­i­ty and the rich­ness of sea­son­al­i­ty, cap­tured with cin­e­mat­ic min­i­mal­ism and eeri­ly indul­gent aes­thet­ic aus­ter­i­ty.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

The New York Times Starts New Philosophy Blog

in Media, Philosophy | May 18th, 2010

This week, The New York Times began a phi­los­o­phy blog called The Stone, mod­er­at­ed by Simon Critch­ley. The series will address “issues both time­ly and time­less – art, war, ethics, gen­der, pop­u­lar cul­ture and more.” And it will ask: “What does phi­los­o­phy look like today? Who are philoso­phers, what are their con­cerns and what role do they play in the 21st cen­tu­ry?”

Not every­one is hap­py with the choice of Critch­ley as mod­er­a­tor, but it looks like there will be par­tic­i­pants to suit all tem­pera­ments: “Nan­cy Bauer, Jay Bern­stein, Arthur C. Dan­to, Todd May, Nan­cy Sher­man, Peter Singer and oth­ers.”

Critch­ley begins with a ques­tion bound to invite snarky com­ments: What is a Philoso­pher? Such com­ments have a long his­to­ry (I’ve includ­ed a YouTube clip of my all-time favorite par­o­dy above). And so the nat­ur­al start­ing point for any answer to that ques­tion is the pop­u­lar con­cep­tion of philoso­pher as bull­shit artist and “absent-mind­ed buf­foon”: “Socrates tells the sto­ry of Thales, who … was look­ing so intent­ly at the stars that he fell into a well.” That’s a con­cep­tion that, I have to admit, trou­bled me when I was a phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate stu­dent and led me to drop out. And it has trou­bled philoso­phers his­tor­i­cal­ly: many a sober trea­tise begins with the unflat­ter­ing com­par­i­son of phi­los­o­phy to the empir­i­cal sci­ences and the stat­ed goal of rem­e­dy­ing this defi­cien­cy. And some strains of ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy argue that the solu­tion to philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems is to real­ize that there are no such prob­lems, and that phi­los­o­phy has a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est sup­port­ing role in clar­i­fy­ing the foun­da­tions of sci­ence.

True to my philo­soph­i­cal pedi­gree, I think that the ques­tion is in a way its own answer: philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems nat­u­ral­ly elide into the prob­lem of what phi­los­o­phy is and what it is that philoso­phers do. One lev­el of reflec­tion tends to lead to the next, and doubt to self-doubt. Philoso­phers are peo­ple who spend their time try­ing to fig­ure out what they’re doing with their time and why they’re doing it. And so for instance, ques­tions about how we should live (ethics) and what we can know (epis­te­mol­o­gy) are also ques­tions about whether the life of the mind is worth­while and whether philo­soph­i­cal pur­suits are prop­er­ly sci­en­tif­ic. The unavoid­able state of affairs here is that phi­los­o­phy falls per­pet­u­al­ly into one cri­sis (or well) after anoth­er –recent depart­ment clo­sures are just one exam­ple.

One way of rem­e­dy­ing the nag­ging thought that phi­los­o­phy is mere­ly a retreat from world­ly affairs, prac­ti­cal­i­ty, and life in gen­er­al is to do pre­cise­ly what The New York Times has done here, and try to ini­ti­ate more pop­u­lar and less aca­d­e­m­ic con­ver­sa­tions about the sub­ject. (And to get in a plug, it’s what I and two oth­er phi­los­o­phy grad school dropouts have tried to do with our pod­cast, The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life; and what I think Open Cul­ture does with its focus on the inter­sec­tion of edu­ca­tion and new media).

For Critch­ley, the ques­tion of time is para­mount to answer­ing his open­ing ques­tion: news­pa­pers and blogs are typ­i­cal­ly focused on time­li­ness rather than time­less­ness, and they’re meant for busy peo­ple who want to quick­ly absorb “infor­ma­tion.”

But that ten­sion is inher­ent­ly philo­soph­i­cal.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

Iron Man: The Science in Science Fiction

in Film, Sci Fi, Science | May 18th, 2010

As Robert Bly not­ed in his book, The Sci­ence in Sci­ence Fic­tion, some of the most intrigu­ing sci­en­tif­ic ideas have orig­i­nat­ed not in labs, but in sci-fi books and movies. With Iron Man 2 hit­ting the screens, Sid­ney Perkowitz, a physi­cist at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, talks about whether the sci­ence in the new pop movie has any roots in sci­en­tif­ic real­i­ty – or, for that mat­ter, whether it might inspire any new sci­en­tif­ic think­ing down the road. He offers his thoughts above. In addi­tion to writ­ing Hol­ly­wood Sci­ence: Movies, Sci­ence and the End of the World, Perkowitz sits on the advi­so­ry board of the Sci­ence and Enter­tain­ment Exchange, a Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences pro­gram that tries to bring more sci­en­tif­ic accu­ra­cy to mass mar­ket enter­tain­ment.

Thanks Nicole for the tip on this one.

Lawrence of Arabia Remembered with Rare Footage

in Film, History | May 13th, 2010

Sev­en­ty-five years ago today, on the morn­ing of May 13, 1935, a 46-year-old retired British army offi­cer was rid­ing his motor­cy­cle home from the post office, when he swerved to avoid hit­ting two boys on bicy­cles. He was thrown onto the road and sus­tained head injuries, then died six days lat­er in a provin­cial hos­pi­tal. It was a mun­dane cir­cum­stance for the death of an extra­or­di­nary man.

Thomas Edward (T. E.) Lawrence was an intel­lec­tu­al and adven­tur­er who became known to the world as “Lawrence of Ara­bia.” Lawrence could read books by the age of four. He attend­ed Oxford on schol­ar­ship and spent one of his sum­mer vaca­tions hik­ing 1,100 miles through Syr­ia, Pales­tine and Turkey to sur­vey cru­sad­er cas­tles for a the­sis on mil­i­tary archi­tec­ture. He spoke Ara­bic, Turk­ish, Ger­man, French, Latin and Greek. When World War I broke out in 1914, he was recruit­ed into the British army for his exten­sive first-hand knowl­edge of the Mid­dle East. Dur­ing the course of the war, Lawrence became one of the archi­tects and lead­ers of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks – a remark­able adven­ture that was retold in David Lean’s 1962 film, Lawrence of Ara­bia, star­ring Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif and Alec Guin­ness.

Lawrence was an intense­ly pri­vate man who, as Low­ell Thomas famous­ly put it, “had a genius for back­ing into the lime­light.” When the war was over, how­ev­er, he suc­ceed­ed in stay­ing out of the lime­light by refus­ing a knight­hood and serv­ing out his mil­i­tary career under assumed names. He trans­lat­ed Homer and wrote a mem­oir of the Arab Revolt, The Sev­en Pil­lars of Wis­dom. And he had a pen­chant for fast motor­cy­cles, includ­ing the cus­tom-made Brough Supe­ri­or SS100 which he rode into town on a mun­dane errand 75 years ago today.

Today, to mark the 75th anniver­sary of his trag­ic motor cycle acci­dent, we fea­ture some of the only known footage of T.E. Lawrence above.

Ask Philosophers Goes Mobile

in iPhone, Philosophy | May 13th, 2010

AskPhiloso­phers puts real philoso­phers at the ser­vice of the gen­er­al pub­lic. Have a big, lofty ques­tion that only a pro­fes­sion­al philoso­pher can tack­le? They’ll answer it on the web. And now on the iPhone. This new, free app (designed by Amherst Col­lege) lets you access their Q&A archive on the go. While wait­ing in line for a cof­fee, you can chew over this kind of exchange:

Ques­tion: If you fail to stop some­thing bad hap­pen­ing to you is it the same as being com­plic­it in the act?

Answer: There is a com­pli­cat­ed lit­er­a­ture in moral phi­los­o­phy about how to draw the dis­tinc­tion between doing and mere­ly allow­ing harm and whether this dis­tinc­tion has moral sig­nif­i­cance. With­out try­ing to nav­i­gate that deep intel­lec­tu­al thick­et, it is still pos­si­ble to begin to address your ques­tion. If I’m com­plic­it in doing some­thing bad, for instance, harm­ing anoth­er per­son, then it seems I share the aim of my accom­plices in harm­ing some­one else. I intend harm. By con­trast, if I mere­ly allow some­one else to harm, I need­n’t and typ­i­cal­ly don’t intend harm. While not intend­ing harm, I may be indif­fer­ent to the harm. It depends. I may not be indif­fer­ent to the harm (more…)

The College Dorm Window Show

in Random, Technology | May 12th, 2010

Stu­dents at Poland’s Wro­claw Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy got a lit­tle techie (or is it tech­no?) this week, turn­ing their dorm win­dows into a full col­or light show. Hap­pi­ly, we can report that all lights were con­trolled wire­less­ly. Thanks Bar­tosz for send­ing this our way.

Piano Stairs

in Psychology, Science | May 11th, 2010

How can you change behav­ior for the bet­ter? It’s sim­ple. Make it fun. The next thing you know, peo­ple will climb stairs instead of ride the esca­la­tor. And they’ll prop­er­ly throw their trash away too (the sub­ject of anoth­er engag­ing video)…

Thanks Adol­fo for the great finds.

The Very End of Time

in Science | May 11th, 2010

The Big Bang gave birth to our uni­verse. But what will bring it to an absolute end? In 21 min­utes, a mere mega blip of time, this episode of Cos­mic Jour­neys offers an impres­sive visu­al account of this big enchi­la­da ques­tion, tak­ing you across tril­lions of years. The sun will die but make the earth unin­hab­it­able well before­hand. A sim­i­lar process of decay will play itself out across the uni­verse and we will enter the “degen­er­ate era.” Dark ener­gy, dead stars, and black holes will reign supreme. But what will hap­pen in the very, very end, when the cos­mic clock strikes a num­ber known as a “googol” or some time there­after? A lot of that will get sort­ed out by the work physi­cists are now doing with the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, the giant par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor locat­ed near Gene­va, Switzer­land. Give the video a lit­tle bit of time. The sec­ond half gives you the goods.

Hat tip to Wilter for send­ing this video our way.