Agassi Couldn't Clone a Sheep, Could Probably Still Beat Us Up

What is it about science and coolness that just can't seem to coagulate? Like oil and water, the two have been diametrically opposed seemingly since the beginning of time. Historically speaking, I think the rift developed somewhere around the time the church shunned scientists and general "thinkers" for positing that the universe wasn't earth centric. As we evolve and change, the same battle remains, albeit with less pyrotechnic penalties for losing. Where it once manifested as the Ionian philosophers challenging the clergy, it now takes a fresh form, as a new girl at tennis camp struggling to fit in with the hip, hard-edged, rough-ridin' American tennis players.

NOVA recently introduced us to Yoky Matsuoka, a girl who once labeled herself an airhead to fit in but went on to become one of the world's most preeminent neurobiologists. The story centers on Yoky, her incredible achievements, and especially her plight to become culturally accepted.

I found this to be a struggle I can identify with in many respects. I'm a former tennis zealot and once-closeted science geek who shunned an engineering major in favor of a much more swanky art studio title. Sure, I got the look down. My DIY shirts are one of a kind [possibly because you did them yourself —ed] and I'm quite sure my pants have faded to reflect a perfect shade of trendy indifference. But as the sun sets and I lay my vinyl to rest, I don the glasses of ridicule to watch Cosmos and drift into dreams of the Library of Athens.

I have a profound respect for science, scientists, logic and experimentation, but I can't help but wonder why, in all this battle to uncover the secrets of the universe and the harmony of the spheres, the hard sciences have failed to attempt to alter the harmony of the social spheres. Yoky is making great advances building the perfect robotic hand, and other scientists are planting electrodes into the brains of monkeys so robotic limbs can be controlled purely by monkey thought (I can see the headlines now: "Amputee Monkeys Able to Fling Poop Once Again" and "Indefatigable Monkey Arms Work Typewriter but End Up Writing MacBeth"). Aren't we coming one step closer to controlling someone else's thoughts? And if so, will we use it to our advantage?

It's my understanding scientists are a generally passive breed. Eddie Izzard does a nice bit about an evil giraffe, and the concept of an evil herbivore in general and I find the same sense of absurdity attached to the term "evil scientist". Other than the mad scientists of lore, buried deep in a basement bedazzling that the final rhinestone on their robots brow of hatred I get the sense that science is a pretty friendly community. But is it a unity created only by a mutual lack of belonging to the "other," or rather a mutual understanding about the eventual domination of the scientist breed? Perhaps it's more sinister than I ever imagined. Sure, common folk currently know Angelina Jolie's babies' names without ever having seen the Phoenix spacecraft photos, but when scientists are the puppet masters, will happenings in Second Life make headline news, and Spore consistently outsell Grand Theft Auto?

Perhaps this is all hulaballoo and we're all much too smart to go about changing a social order, and (almost) everyone knows that. At this point, it'd probably be easier to create a race than to alter the existing one anyway so let's say fuck it and assimilate, knowing that we've got a winning hand. [Get it? 'Cause Matsuoka does prosthetic limbs? It works on two levels! —ed] And let's elect a scientist to office while we're at it. There a stretch for ya. A campaign based entirely on algorithms, and all the Bionic Fundraising Monkeys you could dream of.

{from NOVA, like it ain't no thang}

Roadrunner Renders Humans Petty-Flops

The Roadrunner Supercomputer: a 133 million dollar fuck you to all dumb-as-coyote humans? We who spend our menial lives devoted to computing human dilemmas, only to pick up a few spare tires in the process? It's one thing to perform an ungodly amount of operations per second, predict weather patterns and nuclear whatnot, but does it really have to rub it in that we're slowly writing
ourselves (as a species, not as a blog collective) out of the picture?



I like to imagine the machine operating with a very Betty Boop sensibility. It bounces up and down and while computing, conveyer belts traveling from each hub transfiguring puppy to light bulb, light bulb to Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln to flan. Then it hits the last hub, steam pours out of every opening, and one very stubby, stressed man stokes a fire as another, similarly stressed man rides a bicycle, and a long white sheet of paper comes out reading, "Yep—We're Fucked."

But I fear there's a decided lack of bicycles involved; forgive me for sounding cliché sci-fi/Colbert, but is this the beginning of the robot race? Sure, it's all for the benefit of humanity, but can't we just make 'em a little slower, buy ourselves some time? I can see Machiavellian CompuPower [TM, motherfuckers] escalating just as fast as the battle at Fort Sumpter did. It's only going to take one engineer to program a robot in his likeness and then the robo-cat's out of the kevlar and we're all itching for our own. Soon we'll be our own tamagotchis. How is it that we can have a self-loathing society that eats anti-depressants like candy, yet we're chomping at the bit to replicate ourselves?

So, for those interesting in marketing or making a buck, I invite you to take part in my business venture—The International Robot Registry (NYSE: IROR). We'll give you a little personality test, and write your name in a book (with archival ink, of course), and in 10 million years you'll be happy to know that a robot will be made to look just like you. And—if we finally get a handle on cryogenics—you can even hang out with it!

I feel that I've fallen victim to my own version of the aforementioned Betty Boop sensibility. Taking a nice tale of a Roadrunner supercomputer and flipping it into a Life 2.0 marketing scheme. Your move, Roadrunner. I got ACME on my side.

{from the Los Alamos National Laboratories website, because, gee, a fucking nuclear bomb wasn't scary enough}

NASA Shocker: Phoenix Lander Really a 14 Year-Old Girl

The Mars Phoenix Lander has a Twitter account, which seems to get updated in spastic bursts once or twice a day. Presumably, the rest of the time, the lander is too busy eating through NASA's wireless minutes jawing about last night's Gossip Girls re-run.

At least, that's what we can't help but assume, because... Fucking Twitter? For those not in the know (trust me, you're better off—you might consider skipping the rest of this paragraph), Twitter is a "micro-blogging" utility, which allows its users to text-message updates to their blog anywhere, anytime. Needless to say, the service is a boon for unrepentant narcissists and those confident that anything they have to say can be said in two sentences. Which pretty accurately describes both teenagers and publicists.

And space robots. Seriously. Look at today's post: "TEGA "cooks" soil samples until they emit gasses that I can "sniff" to learn what they are. I just hope they smell good :)". Emoticons? Emoticons? This may be humanity's first encounter with a robot that should get carded for cigarettes. (rebuttal)

Well, actually, the Dorothys at the New York Times inevitably ignored the Wizard's advice and paid attention to the man behind the curtain, or woman in this case. It turns out that Veronica McGregor, News Services Director at Pasadena, California's only redeeming feature, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (where Phoenix is controlled), provides the spazzy voice of the lander.

From a compositional standpoint, McGregor's writing is quite impressive: Twitter limits posts to 140 characters, so to successfully convey relatively complicated technical and scientific information while still having room to pretend to wink at people and generally "ZOMG" around is an impressive feat. To put it another way, the woman manages to be extraordinarily well informed while still sounding vapid. True virtuosity.

But LW still believes that, should Phoenix actually achieve intelligence, it would establish a Twitter account anyway. After all, the only logical step after self-awareness is self-absorption.

And somewhere in the Oort cloud, V'ger would cross another 'bot off its Christmas card list.

{from the crimson-shod New York Times}