a thaumaturgical compendium

A friend emailed me indicating that he and others are trying to googlebomb the phrase issues that matter to tie it back to the September Project. I’m pretty ambivalent about googlebombing as a rule, but the Project is a worthwhile one, and I suppose what little Googlejuice I have is better spent on good spamdexing rather than links for texas holdem or Levitra.

First they came for the chimeras:

S. 659: The Human Chimera Prohibition Act of 2005

On March 17, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), introduced S. 659, the Human Chimera Prohibition Act of 2005. The bill would prohibit any person from creating, or attempting to create a human chimera. A “human chimera” is broadly defined to include various methods of mixing non-human cells into human embryos. The bill includes both civil and criminal penalties. S. 659 has no cosponsors and was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Seriously, how long is it before technology is running too quick for SF folks to keep ahead? Hopefully, this won’t pass in time for Stanford to birth some superintelligent human-brained mice:

Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.

Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he’d look for traces of human cognitive behavior.

Weissman said he’s not a mad scientist trying to create a human in an animal body. He hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

Note to self: under no circumstances should one ever say “I am not a mad scientist.”

The Guardian had a silly article on Judith Reisman’s arguments that porn produces “erototoxins” and should be regulated as a dangerous drug. Today they printed a short note I wrote in response:

Mark Pilkington (Far out, July 14) writes that Judith Reisman is concerned about “an addictive drug cocktail of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain”. I do hope she plans on regulating other sources of spikes in such dangerous psychoactive hormones, including rollercoasters and pregnancy.

Of course viewing pornography produces changes in the brain; if it didn’t it wouldn’t be so popular. But it’s not as if rightwing people in the US want to do away with other changes to the brain, like an individual’s ability to learn about the world, understand complex issues, and enjoy new experiences … oh, wait, never mind.

Finally, they say, “It’s hard to make a name for yourself in Paris.” Lie! Nothing is easier today. Published every morning, printed every week are a hundred enemy journals and twenty rival reviews that do nothing but talk, and which esteem themselves only too happy when you want to furnish them with some amusing pages for nothing, giving them the chance to say something a little malicious about their enemy while you show off. Nothing is easier for a young man of talent than to make a name in the journals. Ask rather about these old journalists without talent who are so celebrated.

Delphine de Girardin, Chroniques Parisiennes (trans. Amanda Lowry French)

Some entertaining distractions:

• Installing democracy in the Middle East

• Quicktime animation of “le building,” an entertaining Rubist short.

• Why is it that my students never break into song in my classes?

• A Japanese attempt to take over the world by giving them all repetitive stress injuries. (If not obvious, the object of the game is to keep your mouse icon from the little dude—score to beat is 1275, though I think the trackball helps on this one.)

Kudos go to one of my advisees, Jack Rosenberry, who today successfully defended his dissertation, entitled (for now!) The Fourth Estate in the Networked Age: How Online Journalism Can Promote Civic Discourse. Despite some slight videochat irregularities (one of the committee members was distant), the defense went pretty smoothly. Jack has already presented a few papers out of this at AEJMC, and will be presenting at AoIR in Chicago. A version of one of the papers is also to be printed in Journalism and Mass Comm Quarterly. Congratulations Prof. Rosenberry!

Talkr lets you podcast without actually recording anything. It takes one of your existing feeds and uses text-to-speech to create a version of the RSS feed with Audio enclosures. Here is mine. I’m not a big fan of text-to-speech, but this is actually pretty listenable. Heck, they even get my name right.