Light/Breezes

Light/Breezes
SUNRISE AT DEATH VALLEY-Photo by Tom Cochrun
Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Blues-Views-News


 "We all live under the same sky, 
but we don't all have the same horizon"

Konrad Adenauer  


        Coming across that quote this week, I thought we don't all have the same reality either, or language skills. 

       My reality was tweaked when I was in on a brief by Dr. Catherine Marsh former chief scientist for CIA's directorate of Science and Technology and now Director of  IARPA-Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity. IARPA is the Intelligence Community version of DARPA. They are about finding and funding future technologies, systems and frontier new realities. 

       How about filing data using DNA? Maybe advanced polymorphous sequencing to increase security and save space. Server farms are energy hogs, take enormous physical space and have awful carbon footprints. DNA is tiny and tidy.
        
       Tech companies evangelize the Metaverse, maybe just a  buzzword. Still, we've entered a dimension where media called social is a battle ground and war zone that has polarized and  destroyed truth and fact.
        We live with it. Some can't live without it. Some kill themselves because of it. Privacy has vanished because of it.
        Who is doing something about it? 
        Meta data volume builds, and builds, and builds and flows to manipulators.
    

        IARPA is looking to protect algorithms, defend artificial intelligence, counter "deep fakes" and more they can't talk about.
        Imagine walking through any city or village in the world, seeing and hearing all that is going on, but doing it remotely. Our tax dollars are looking for a way.

        Mixed reality.
        
        Some recognize global challenges. 
        Some believe lies while others see the challenge to the American way and they respond.
        

        Words matter more than we may realize.

     A study published by the National Academy of Sciences finds the societal balance between emotion and reason has shifted back to what it was 150 years ago.
    Scholars from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands and Indiana University studied word and language use since 1850. They discovered the shift from reason to emotion began in the 1980's and has accelerated since. 
    Truth, facts, and science have a hard time being heard in a climate where emotion trumps reason. The voices of our better angels have competition.

    Words have power and evoke a vision. 


        Journalist Ari Berman, a voting rights specialist, reported the 48 Senators who voted to reform the filibuster represent 182 million Americans, that is 55% of the population. The 52 Senators who upheld the filibuster represent 148 million Americans, only 45% of the US population.

        Realities?

        After that vote Republicans shook Senator Sinema's hand, glad to have a nominal Democrat join the new Jim Crow movement. Any doubt about that?  Here's a quote from Republican leader Mitch McConnell "African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans."  
        Mitch, you said that out loud.

          Sinema is a play for pay grifter/grafter girl.  She took big money from big pharma and voted against legislation to control medicine costs. She took hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations and voted against increasing their taxes. You have to wonder who got to her on voting rights. 

        Reality: By their actions the Republican party is anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic.  

    As David Remnick wrote, "it has become a party less focused on traditional policy values and more on tribal affiliation and resentment."

     They may have short term gains, but a truth spoken by the greatest Republican consigns them to the ignominy of history, in a pile of those without value, the dishonored. Sinema and Manchin have their own asterisk on that list. 


"We cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation."

Abraham Lincoln

        
       My bet is Americans will be pushed back, watch rights be stripped away, and oppressed only so long before the great majority rises up against the tyranny of a minority and hand out prostitutes like Sinema and Manchin. 


            There's a lot of dread, justifiable too. Climate, nature and resources are in trouble. It maybe unrecognizable to this generation, but human civilization will find ways to live, adapt, innovate and find destiny.

        As IARPA, DARPA, Bio tech labs, medical discoveries, exploration, discovery and all kindred renaissance thinking invent the future, the human will and spirit will protect itself. 

        It's safe to conclude there will be awful tolls, and maybe so, but I think it would be great to live 50 to 100 years from now, just to see the reality, the fixes, adjustments, innovations and all the new realities we humans create. And, to meet the people as exotically different as we are from those who survived earlier plagues and wars and human catastasis.

        I'm also curious about where artificial reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, genetic design, cyborging, algorithmic cascade, DNA data files, and more take us. 

        But before we go too deeply into the future, I wonder what becomes of the house cleaning mother of five who is exhausting herself with work and worry, trying to keep her family fed and housed. Or the emigres stuck between working to make their dreams reality in the US and an inconsistent and ill defined policy and attitude about immigrants. Or the millions of other working poor facing inflation, already out of control housing costs, and lack of insurance and health security. Or those around the world, victims of war, starvation, authoritarian  regimes. Or those growing numbers of humans displaced by lack of water, resources and a changing climate.

        Wonderous things are indeed coming. I wonder if they will help us with compassion, caring, equity and fairness. It is hard to hear our better angels in the din of word wars and social media combat. Will we listen to each other? To wisdom?

        Do you think we'll learn to take care of the garden?  

        Do you think we'll be closer to having the same horizon?


        Stay safe.
        See you down the trail. 


 

Monday, March 23, 2015

WHAT IS LIFE?

DEFINITIONS OF LIFE
   Do you think it is possible to reach a place in the progression of human life where we cease to be human? That begs a number of questions, not the least of which is what is a human being?
    Nicholas Wade wrote in the New York Times of a call by eminent biologists to stop the use of genome editing that could change how human DNA is inherited. While it might cure genetic diseases it could also be used to change qualities like intelligence, physical development and more.
The scientists are concerned the technique will be used before the human race understands the ethical challenges such technology presents. Remember the old potboiler The Boys From Brazil? Imagine the bruisers the NFL could breed, for example!
     This exciting new science develops as humans continue to demonstrate a propensity to screw up and to exercise lack of judgement.
     A lawyer in Huntington Beach is a poster child of such.
Matt McLaughlin has proposed a California ballot proposition that would authorize the killing of gays and lesbians. It's a case that tests limits of free speech, but has caused a reaction that questions why can't something that would be illegal be stopped.  In the meantime some are trying to get McLaughlin disbarred. 
     So, back to the rise of amazing and fantastic science and the potential of human idiots and miscreants to get their hands on such. 
    We should never halt the progress of advancing knowledge, but we have probably reached a cross roads where ethics and implications need to be studied and weighed more arduously than ever.
     We are flirting with cyborgs as we implant new knees, shoulders, hips, heart valves and etc. A chip, placed in the brain to limit the effect of a neural and muscular disorder is a wonder, and so too is the potential of similar procedures to halt dementia. But is there a point at which we change what it means to be human?  This question is probably more relevant when considering artificial intelligence, though we are beginning to blur the lines and draw more closely to a change in the evolution of human life. Biology and nanotechnology present us with new horizons.
      There are bright minds and deep thinkers among us and they are pondering what used to be the stuff of science fiction and fantasy.  Do you think the balance of humanity is up for such deep thinking? Or are we populated by larger numbers who would rather prioritize their own desire to live longer, or to birth beautiful children, or create NBA superstars who can fly, or breed warriors who fight wars with unending force, etc?  What do you think? How should we enter this future?

POTPOURRI
An oddball assortment of images stuck in the corner file
 Spring fresh
   Palm Springs Patio mellow
  Patience at Lampton Cliff
   Hearst Castle via telephoto
 Barrel Room setting for a Zin Fest Weekend Winemakers Dinner at Le Vigne
  Wow & delicious!  

   See you down the trail.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

TRICK SHOTS AND TRICKY CALLS & HOPE

TRICK SHOT
   If you care to, comment as to how this shot is a bit of a trick.
THE WORST KIND OF TRICK SHOT
       Iranian television's altering of Michelle Obama provides a frightening visual of what happens when religious zealots or right wing fundamentalists, in this case Islamists, have power.  
    Certainly they, or anyone else, are entitled to hold their view of what is proper, even if others regard that view as being archaic or repressive. However, it is the dishonesty and distortion of reality I find repugnant and evil. It would have been more honest to simply insert a large black spot over her exposed skin than to fabricate a gown.  Both are stupid, but at least the one measure is honest, as if to say, as your moral guardians and police we have determined that to protect, we will not permit you to see reality.
    American networks use a beep tone when they bleep what someone considers to be offensive language. That action and motivation is another discussion sometime, but for today it is enough to know the heavy handedness is at least played out in an honest fashion. It is a modest nod to  notions of honesty, though censorship of any sort is the work of tyrants. 
A CASE FOR THE COURT
     Are you watching the Supreme Court's action on whether  police can take DNA samples?
     Justice Alito says it is the "most important procedural case in decades."  
     While noting its efficacy in solving cases Justice Scalia compares it to "unreasonable search."
     Justice Ginsberg worries about the 4th Amendment which prevents unreasonable searches and seizures and requires judicial warrants and basis of probable cause.
     The preliminaries on the DNA case strikes me as an irony, coming at a time when the court ruled 5-4 to not permit challenges to the Federal Government's expanding  power to monitor your international phone calls and emails.
      It is part of the expansion of tools to fight terrorism and comes with less candor on government policies and powers, less access to those records and no challenge to the underpinning laws. 
FEBRUARY GREEN 
     Hope these images bolster those of you caught in winter's icy or snowy grip.  Spring has begun on the west coast.  She'll head your way soon.

WAITING TO BLOOM
     See you down the trail.

Friday, September 7, 2012

THE WEEKENDER

WONDERMENT
     INTELLIGENT IDEAS
              John Muir appreciated wonders of nature. 

        His sensitivity points us to behold the power and even mystery of life beyond or beside human parameters. 



             Out there, up there, even in there are forces and natural occurrences that form the basis of science and dumbfounds rational tools.  We theorize.
              Watching star populated night skies over the Pacific and lightless mountains propounds the dazzling concept of interstellar space.  Seeing depth in a star field lends credibility to the vast distances of space and time. Out there are perhaps dark holes, worm holes and theories  we can't fully explain.  And now the little Voyagers are about to pass the limits we biped's have postulated to in up there
              Learning about in there is accelerating in a post DNA gene sequencing world. Medicine is getting more precise. The closer we look, the more we see forces beyond our making and which influence destiny.
           And there are spirit, heart, soul, religion and philosophy which bind an alternative in there. Wisdoms, truths, transcendence and riddles are pondered yet they too  stand in the face of mystery.


           
           Let something give you a sense of wonder.

           See you down the trail.