When I look at the incredible wealth of biodiversity contained within just the class mammalia in its 164 million years of existence, it’s staggering what we don’t know. The immense number of species that weren’t preserved in the fossil record and stories that took place before homo sapiens arrived to witness them are fantastic example of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s observation, “The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance.”

Amphicyon ingens chasing Ramoceros osborni

You can check out the complete flickr set here.

A short short story where a human avatar for real life is confronted with another client’s superior robot avatar. Posted to 365tomorrows, you can read it here.

Ng’s eyes were straining as far as they could go in their sockets to get a look at the brand new shiny avataris sapiens parked at the end of the conference room table. His client’s attention was on the current speaker, a real-life sales person local to the building who was selling some sort of recently evolved market indexing algorithm. Ng was a real-life person also, but not in the context of this meeting. The avataris sapiens was not real-life in any context.

Ng had gotten a good look at it coming into the room thanks to his client lingering on it for what seemed like an eternity before greeting the other meeting members. The avataris sapiens was elegant in design and motion as it stood to greet everyone as they arrived, mimicking the motions of it user.
Ng’s suit was impeccable; his makeup and hair stylized so much as to render him almost artificial to everyone in the room, but the avataris sapiens was even less human. No matter how much Ng sculpted his body at the gym, lasered and tattooed his eyebrows into perfection, or whitened his teeth, the avataris was truly artificial.

Ng stifled a yawn, pursing his lips together tightly with a long, deep inhale so as not to draw any attention to himself. The client had brought him online at four this morning, which was four in the afternoon Eastern Standard time. This six am conference meeting was a natural compromise between timezones, but so was the six pm meeting Ng had attended for another client the previous night. He was fatigued and his stomach was grumbling for missing breakfast, but suppressing these human needs were what made him such a good avatar. Besides, the avataris did not need food or sleep at all.
“What are the metrics on this AI?” Ng came alert as his user’s voice came through his speaker, questioning the sales rep “What kind of return can we expect from its investment choices?”

“The best,” the sales rep answered confidently. “In simulation, our AI can outperform the greatest stockbrokers in the world. We are even planning a public demonstration of its superiority. It will be like when Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess, historic.”

“And so another human chore will be automated,” a voice to Ng’s left said.

Ng’s visor-harness flashed, and Ng turned his head as his user’s attention was drawn to the speaker. It was the avataris, beautifully artificial, replicating its user’s speech and movement with more grace and elegance than any real human could perform.

The sales rep replied with a jovial quip that Ng did not hear because his user was focused on the avataris. Ng’s breath caught in his throat as he imagined his user admiring it, as if admiring a private jet or corner office. Ng knew he was to the avataris sapiens as renting was to owning, and he was the medium through which his client was seeing the next best thing.

Then, to his horror, the avataris turned its head slightly, noticing his stare, and it smiled at him with otherworldly perfection. Was it acknowledging the unspoken compliment in Ng’s user’s fascination? Or was it a knowing smile, intended for Ng and his obsolescence?

Ng’s heart pounded in his throat, and his stomach grumbled.

Following in the footsteps of bloggers TGAW and Chriggy.

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page of results, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.**
12. Your flickr name

Here’s my result:

Ryan’s Mosaic Meme (Click to Enlarge)

1. Ryan McGinness,
2. “What? Sushi? What is it?”,
3. Coles runs for TD,
4. My purple all star for the first time at the park,
5. rachel maddow,
6. Bubbly girls,
7. Giza,
8. fruit salad,
9. “Toward a New Enlightenment” Seven,
10. Mars,
11. its true,
12. The New York Botanical Gardens: Darwin Tattoo

Note: PhotoFunLab has a form to create one of these, but I prefer the option of selecting my favorite photo from the first page of results.

0924

Last year I ran a series of photos and quotes in celebration of Take a Child Outside Week that purely rejoiced in nature. For this year’s event, running from September 24th through the 30th, I’ve chosen quotes emphasizing the importance of nature in education and understanding ourselves:

Hawaiian Tree Fern Credit: brewbook

“Sit down before a fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”
– Thomas Henry Huxley

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
– Albert Einstein

0925

Honeycomb Credit: justus.thane

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
– Albert Einstein

“Human beings are part of nature. Anything they do is natural. It’s impossible for anything in nature to do anything unnatural.”
– Philip Jose Farmer

0926

Cactus Credit: Colin Warren

“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge. . . observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.”
– Denis Diderot

“Nature does not give to those who will not spend.”
– R. J. Baughan

0927

spiderweb Credit: Noel Zia Lee

“Man, being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”
– Sir Francis Bacon

“We cannot command nature except by obeying her.”
– Sir Francis Bacon

0928

sunflower Helianthus annuus Credit: Esdras Calderan

“God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

0929

Shell Credit: cobalt123

“Science is a mechanism, a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe, and seeing whether they match.”
– Isaac Asimov

“It can’t be Nature, for it is not sense.”
– Charles Churchill

“Nature never says one thing, Wisdom another.”
– Juvenal

0930

Snowflake Credit: AriCee

“Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown.”
– Humphrey Davy

“Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding.”
– Jacob Brownowski

“The salary of the chief executive of the large corporations is not an award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm gesture by the individual to himself.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith

Is there any academic field more in desperate need of empirical standards than economics? Just consider the following statements:

Where’s the peer-reviewed study on these statements? What methodology did they use to test these hypotheses/theories? What were the controls? Or are the economists just pulling this out of their butts? Is it possible economists just make this $#!@ up?

Let’s take the last bullet point about the wealthy passing higher taxes the government places on them onto consumers. Sounds logical right? In fact, it’s based on the following business model:

Funny thing about this model though, it’s completely out of date. Businesses stopped using it a long time ago. The new model is fixed-price. You always charge the absolute most money for your product that consumers are willing to pay to maximize profits. Under this model, reducing costs becomes the primary means of increasing profit:

Funny. Why don’t all these talking-heads mention this stark economic reality when they’re babbling on and on and on (and on)? Why doesn’t anyone point out that there were $18 billion in Oil Industry tax cuts under Bush, and that prices didn’t go down? Why do the economists who have no idea what they’re talking about get to come back on television to continue bull$#!&ing us?

A characteristic of scientific research and implementing scientific innovations is regulation. When a new genetics breakthrough comes about, there must be a lengthy and in-depth review of its implications and unintended consequences. When a new medicine is developed, there must be years of review and testing to ensure it does not do more harm than good. Imagine if science used economic’s model of anti-regulation, letting scientists genetically engineer, clone, and manufacture pharmaceuticals however the heck they want? After all, a magical invisible hand will prevent the scientists from wreaking havoc. Right?

Interesting, isn’t it? These guys spend hours on the television talking about this stuff, they have entire cable channels dedicated to the subject, and they send e-mails criticizing me for posts like this and this, and telling me that economics are just too complicated for me to understand… And then they’re wrong far more often than Meteorologists (No, I haven’t tested that hypothesis).

Economists have no Science, and yet we hang on their every word.

Fascinating.

Note: Shouldn’t we be worried that the $700 billion socialist power-grab bailout for our corporate oppressors includes the following?

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Sounds ominously totalitarian, doesn’t it?

If I were to travel back in time 25 years and tell all the science fiction writers alive back then that the world of the future included an expansive network of computers circumscribing the globe, I probably wouldn’t be telling them anything all that surprising.

If I told them that people would have access to digital encyclopedias of knowledge that would dwarf their bookcases of Britannica volumes, these same authors would shrug their shoulders, of course.

But what if I were to add that this same online encyclopedia was the emergent result of a collaborative effort of amateur volunteers who spend their free time anonymously adding content to it, and that the encyclopedia was just as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica?

Those science fiction authors would laugh me out of the room.

The future is wild. Happy One-Web Day. : )

Something that always sorta blows my mind about human origins is that one of the ancient ancestors to all mammals was something like this:

Edaphosaurus Boanerges

You can view the complete flickr set here.

Kira was still wailing in the background when Jillian dialed the web address tattooed on the lifeless kitten’s belly. She had to talk her way past two chatbots before finally being put in touch with a human being.

“Good day Jillian Dillard,” the customer service rep announced. “My agents inform me you have an inoperable pet on your hands?”

“Not so good a day,” Jillian replied coolly and shifted the phone to her other ear in a futile attempt to hear the woman on the other end over Kira’s crying. “My daughter broke her kitten.”

“Oh dear,” the rep replied with almost-convincing sincerity. “I’m sorry to hear that. How long have you owned the pet?”

“Three years,” Jillian mumbled.

“Okay. It appears that the animal was still under warranty. I just need to ask you a few questions for our claims department. How did the pet expire?”

Jillian took a deep breath, “I… uh… I stepped on it.”

“Oh… I’m so sorry to hear that,” the woman sounded a little more genuine, or maybe Jillian was craving the sympathy. “If it’s any consolation, you know, this happens a lot with our perma-kittens. The little darlings are so adorable, but they are very prone to getting under foot.”

“Yeah. I know,” Jillian’s voice was feeble. “This was our second one.”

“Not a problem,” the service rep said. “You made the wise choice with the extended warranty plan when you purchased your perma-kitten at the pet store.”

“Thanks,” Jillian said. “My daughter’s inconsolable.”

“Is that you’re daughter in the background?”

“Yeah.”

“How old is she?”

“Six.”

“Poor dear. That’s a hard age for understanding these things. Well, we’ll try to make it so she isn’t heartbroken for too long.” The representative paused, and returned with a more upbeat tone, “I’m looking at our available stock now, and it appears we have a replacement available. Just remember that this new perma-kitten is set to expire on the same date as your old one. Do you still have your current pet’s body?”

Jillian turned the light-blue kitten over in her hand, and its legs flopped like a doll’s. An inoffensive light-pink fluid tinged the corners of its mouth, “Yes.”

“Okay. If you could please hold on to that to exchange with our carrier. We’ll have a replacement in hibernation and shipped out to you this afternoon.”

“That’s great,” Jillian said, relieved. “Kira will be so happy.”

“The poor thing,” the rep said. “Well, at least her sorrow will only be temporary. Is there anything else I can do for you today Ms. Dillard?”

“No. No thank you. I appreciate your help.”

“My pleasure. I hope you have a great day, and thank you for choosing Biobaubles.”

Jillian hung up.

“Sweety,” she said then, turning to face her still-sobbing daughter. Jillian cradled the kitten in her arms as if it were asleep and stooped down so her daughter could see, “I just got off the phone with Santa, and you know what?”

My personal notes on John McCain’s answers to Science Debate 2008:

1. Innovation.

Depended on technology while in the Navy, former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, guided Congress’ wireless spectrum policy.

Will cut earmarks to free up funding to apply to science and technology. Will improve management of science and engineering within the federal government. Encourage commercialization of innovations from federally funded research.

2. Climate Change

Will implement cap-and-trade to reduce greenhouse gases.

Will enforce CAFE standards for automobile fuel efficiency with increased penalties for violations. Clean Car Challenge will issue a $5,000 tax credit to anyone who buys a zero-emissions car, when one gets invented. $300 million x-prize for a battery breakthrough to leapfrog to electric cars.

3. Energy

Will build 45 nuclear reactors by 2030. Voted against tax-credits for renewable energy because they were temporary and driven by lobbists.

4. Education

Good talking point:

Less than 20 percent of our undergraduate students [are] obtaining degrees in math or science, and the number of computer science majors have fallen by half over the last eight years.

Adults need continuing education too; will therefore reinvigorate the Community College system. Professional development programs for math and science teachers.

Would direct 35% of Title II funding to schools, %60 to incentives for teachers of merit. $250 million competitive grant for states to expand online education. Supports STEM.

5. National Security.

Military technological advances benefits civilian technology. Will increase funding for R&D.

6. Pandemics and Biosecurity.

Emphasis on community-level solutions and counter-terrorism. Mentions the importance of medical technology, but does not say he will fund research into it.

7. Genetics Research.

References the Green Revolution in Southeast Asia as an example of how science can feed the masses. Believes genetics could bring green revolutions to Third-World Nations.

8. Stem cells.

Supports “federal funding for embryonic stem cell research,” but does not clarify as to whether he supports expanding funding beyond the mostly-worthless current cell lines to which it is limited. Hopes technological breakthroughs will render this debate obsolete.

9. Ocean Health.

Bonus points for referencing the Great Lakes and Gulf of Mexico “Dead Zone.”

References the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy’s Ocean Blueprint for the 21^st Century (an exhaustively thorough, 676 page collection of policy recommendations) as evidence that ocean health is a massively complex issue that will require coordination between all involved parties, from farmers to fishermen, to find a solution.

10. Water.

Supports continuing negotiations between states to resolve water disputes.

11. Space.

Will extend the Space Shuttle program until its replacement is ready. Believes human space flight, while not as scientifically valuable, is crucial for inspiring Americans.

12. Scientific Integrity

Has a great talking point for Science-minded folks: Our tax-money pays for all that research the Bush Administration censors and suppresses. We have a right to that data.

Will appoint a White House Science Advisor and four assistant directors within the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)

13. Scientific Research.

Will increase funding for basic research at the NSF, and will have top scientists plan how funding will be spent.

14. Health

Technology will save us. Promotes telemedicine.

I’m sorry to say that I was not able to beat Spore this weekend, as much as I should have. As a youth I would have kicked this game’s butt in a single day of playing, but as it is, I’m two days into it and only halfway through finishing the final stage, but that’s enough to give an informed review. If this post reads like I’m reviewing five different games, that’s because Spore is five different games.

Spore’s Cell Stage (Click to Enlarge)

Life in Spore has panspermia origins. You arrive on a planet via comet, hatch, and start wiggling around the primordial ooze, avoiding predators and finding food. As pretty as this Cell stage is, with the bubbles, forminifera, and murky visions of larger animals in the deep, it’s a quick play simply to establish you as an herbivore, carnivore, or predator.

Spore’s Creature Stage Epic Creature in the Background (Stay away from those) (Click to Enlarge)

A pair, or more, of legs graduates you to the Creature Stage, where you will establish your elementary strategy for interacting with other creatures. I chose a peaceful route, which some other players have criticized as being too difficult. I’m not sure how fighting with everything everywhere you go is easier than singing and dancing with them, as I did, but to each their own.

These first two stages were very reminiscent of Sim Life, which I played on the Apple IIe in high school (like 1992), where you got to design a wide variety of animals with various adaptations and see how they faired in a world you designed. Up to this point, Spore is like that cubed. The options for designing your creature are endless, and every creature you meet in the incredible wealth of biodiversity of its world, you can create to play for yourself.

Spore’s Tribe Stage (Click to Enlarge)

The Tribe stage takes the Creature stage to a group level, from first-person to real-time strategy. Instead of controlling one creature, you now control up to a dozen. Again, your options are to beat all other tribes into submission, or conduct cultural exchanges with music and gifts. I continued my make-love-not-war strategy here with much success.

Spore’s Civilization Stage (Click to Enlarge)

The Civilization stage, where you graduate to managing a city with territorial boundaries, plays like very simple version of Sid Meyer’s Civilization, where cities must be kept happy, natural resources harvested, and neighboring civilizations conquered (either militarily or ideologically). Instead of directing tribe members, now you are designing vehicles to conquer the land, sea, and air. As cool as this stage was, it was unfortunate that the only difference between conquering through military means versus ideological was whether your units guns fired bullets or rhetoric.

Spore’s Space Stage (Click to Enlarge)

The increasing complexity in gameplay we experience in each stage of Spore becomes almost too much in the Space Stage. Your strategies here can be galactic conquest, terraforming, interplanetary trade, exploration, running missions, or, as will invariably be the case, a combination of strategies.

Spore’s Space Stage (Click to Enlarge)

The Space stage plays like a lot like Star Control II meets Elite. The game even acknowledges its many origins, as when the soundtrack to the Commodore 64’s M.U.L.E plays in the background whenever you conduct interplanetary trade. If you don’t get these references, I’m saying Spore takes the best from the best classic games and incorporates them into its scope.

One thing I’ve had difficulty learning in the Space Stage (and in all stages to some degree) is not to worry about every little thing. Are space pirates raiding one of my planets? Let them raid, I’ve got more planets and a whole lot of exploring to do. The Spore universe is way too big to hope to take it all in.

Spore’s Galaxy (Click to Enlarge)

My only major let down with this game is that it’s not as educational as I’d like. Too many of its characteristics, such as “Mining Spice” instead of energy or metals, have only a metaphorical connection to our world. When alien fantasy substitutes for real-world examples, teachable moments are lost. I wish the game creators could have put more thought into building a universe that deals with more the issues we deal with here on Earth.

The game does effectively tickle the imagination, and, overall, Spore is a relaxing, inquisitive adventure as delightful as I’d hoped, and much more epic in scope than I had imagined.