The Rage of Winter.

Canidae.

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:50:45 GMT

Self-made "bone veil."

January 2009

Abandoned Watermill.

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:52:29 GMT

I have visited this place many times in the past, it's quite nostalgic for me, really. Not only that, it is one of the more captivating abandonments I have been in thus far.
About a week ago, I went with a new acquaintance to go exploring in it, after personally not being in it for about a year.

Millville, New Jersey.

"Wolf Moon."

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:58:25 GMT

The 28th day
She'll be bleeding again
And in lupine ways
We'll alleviate the pain

Unholy water
Sanguine addiction
Those silver bullets
A last blood benediction

It is her moon time
When there's iron in the air
A rusted essence
Woman may I know you're there

Hey wolf moon
Come cast your spell on me
Hey wolf moon
Come cast your spell on me

Don't spill a drop dear
Let me kiss the curse away
Yourself in my mouth
Will you leave me with your taste?

Beware
The woods at night
Beware
The lunar light

So in this gray haze
We'll be meating again
And on that great day
I will tease you all the same

"Danse Macabre"

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:13:10 GMT

November - Mel.

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:22:16 GMT

I am finally getting around to using Photobucket again, since for a while I was wary of using it due to a possible virus one of the ads they host may cause a virus.
Anyway, as the title suggests, these photos are from November, of my good friend Mel, taken in the abandoned factory that I take many of my abandoned photos.

=>

>

Vineland, New Jersey
Gershal Avenue

December 2009.

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:11:37 GMT

This year has brought to us the most snow we have witnessed since about 1996, about two feet of it. I would like to share with you my documentation of it now.

"Fluffy"

"Izzy"

Mount Pleasant Cemetery
Millville, NJ

Red-headed Woodpecker

Organic Rust.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:05:12 GMT

Millville, NJ
September 2009

"Culture (Not Just Genes) Drives Evolution."

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:37:43 GMT

"Culture, not just genes, can drive evolutionary outcomes, according to a study released Wednesday that compares individualist and group-oriented societies across the globe.
Bridging a rarely-crossed border between natural and social sciences, the study looks at the interplay across 29 countries of two sets of data, one genetic and the other cultural.
The researchers found that most people in countries widely described as collectivist have a specific mutation within a gene regulating the transport of serotonin, a neurochemical known to profoundly affect mood.
In China and other east Asian nations, for example, up to 80 percent of the population carry this so-called "short" allele, or variant, of a stretch of DNA known as 5-HTTLPR.
Earlier research has shown the S allele to be strongly linked with a range of negative emotions, including anxiety and depression.
Critically, it is also associated with the impulse to stay out of harm's way.
By contrast, in countries of European origin that prize self-expression and the pursuit of individual over group goals, the long or 'L' allele dominates, with only 40 percent of people carrying the 'S' variant.

The study, published in Britain's Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, offers a novel explanation as to how this divergence might have come about.
Setting aside discredited ideas linking genetics and race, the researchers suggest that culture and genes may have interacted over time to shape the process of natural selection, helping individuals -- and the societies in which they lived -- to survive and thrive.
Ancient cultures in Asia, Africa and Latin America highly exposed to deadly pathogens, they conjecture, may have tended toward collectivist norms in order to better combat disease.
That social transformation, in turn, could have favored the gradual dominance of the risk-avoidance S allele.

'We demonstrate that evolution is operating at least two levels,' said Joan Chiao, a professor at Northwestern University in Chicago and lead author of the study.
'One is biological, which is well understood. But there is also a level where cultural traits may have been selected for themselves, emerging in congruence with the selection of different types of genes,' she explained by phone.
One well known example of so-called 'culture-gene co-evolutionary theory' has to do with drinking cow's milk, something humans are not intrinsically adapted to do.
Over time, milk consumption led to both the genetic selection of protein genes in cattle, and a gene in humans that encodes lactase, an enzyme that can break down the otherwise indigestible lactose in dairy.
In the case of collective cultures and the S allele, 'we don't make a strong claim on the chicken-or-egg problem' of which came first, said Chiao.
'What we are proposing is that cultural and genetic selection actually operate in tandem, and that you can view human behavior as a product of culture-gene co-evolution,' she said.
The study also argues that collectivist cultures may help protect against the genetic risk of depression that comes with having the S allele.
'Such support seems to buffer vulnerable individuals from the environmental risks or stressors that serve as triggers to depressive episodes,' said Chiao. The fact that the United States and Europe have higher rates of anxiety and mood disorders despite having the L allele may come from the stress of living in highly individualistic cultures, she suggested.
'People have treated natural selection as a rationale for looking for universal traits, across populations and species.'
'But what really matters is the diversity across populations and species which may help us better understand how natural selection has operated at both individual levels and ecosystem levels," she said.'"

- http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/28/culture-genes-evolution.html

Cosmos: "Travels in Space and Time."

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:39:12 GMT

"Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well."
~ Carl Sagan

I Hate Nature.

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:44:18 GMT

Al Barker.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:30:24 GMT

Bridgeton, New Jersey
August 2009

Self-edited.

Longwood Gardens.

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:25:36 GMT

Photos taken in Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.
September 2009

Flower Garden, Downy-Thorn-Apple

nk">
Flower Garden, Downy-Thorn-Apple

Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Near the Italian Water Garden

Near the Italian Water Garden

Topiary Garden

Topiary Garden

The Main Fountain Garden

The Main Fountain Garden

A Passion Flower, at the Main Fountain Garden

The Chimes Tower

The Chimes Tower

The Chimes Tower

The Chimes Tower

The Chimes Tower

Near the Chimes Tower

Idea Garden

Idea Garden

I have also added these photos (and others) onto my Flickr account. Do add me if you have an account there also.

~Farewell, Summer...~

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:00:17 GMT

Summer is no longer here, and Autumn now embraces us, and I am so glad it is over, as I am sure are the rest of you. Summers are usually uncomfortable and leave me with a drought in inspiration at times, but still, I try to look for the positive even in that season, and I leave you with a piece by Vivaldi (entitled "Summer") to give a farewell to it (and rejoice now that is gone)...

Simon and Garfunkel - "The Sound of Silence."

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:33:13 GMT

"Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one deared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said i,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisperd in the sounds of silence."

Siloam Cemetery.

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:48:24 GMT

This is some of what I have worked on as of late.

August 2009
Vineland, New Jersey

"Why Dreams Are Forgotten After Waking"

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:02:15 GMT

"That a dream fades away in the morning is proverbial. It is, indeed, possible to recall it. For we know the dream, of course, only by recalling it after waking; but we very often believe that we remember it incompletely, that during the night there was more of it than we remember. We may observe how the memory of a dream which in the morning was still vivid fades in the course of the day, leaving only a few trifling remnants. We are often aware that we have been dreaming, but we do not know of what we have dreamed; and we are so well used to this fact- that the dream is liable to be forgotten- that we do not reject as absurd the possibility that we may have been dreaming even when, in the morning, we know nothing either of the content of the dream or of the fact that we have dreamed. On the other hand, it often happens that dreams manifest an extraordinary power of maintaining themselves in the memory. I have had occasion to analyse, with my patients, dreams which occurred to them twenty-five years or more previously, and I can remember a dream of my own which is divided from the present day by at least thirty-seven years, and yet has lost nothing of its freshness in my memory. All this is very remarkable, and for the present incomprehensible."

The forgetting of dreams is treated in the most detailed manner by Strumpell. This forgetting is evidently a complex phenomenon; for Strumpell attributes it not to a single cause, but to quite a number of causes.

In the first place, all those factors which induce forgetfulness in the waking state determine also the forgetting of dreams. In the waking state we commonly very soon forget a great many sensations and perceptions because they are too slight to remember, and because they are charged with only a slight amount of emotional feeling. This is true also of many dream-images; they are forgotten because they are too weak, while the stronger images in their neighbourhood are remembered. However, the factor of intensity is in itself not the only determinant of the preservation of dream-images; Strumpell, as well as other authors (Calkins), admits that dream-images are often rapidly forgotten although they are known to have been vivid, whereas, among those that are retained in the memory, there are many that are very shadowy and unmeaning. Besides, in the waking state one is wont to forget rather easily things that have happened only once, and to remember more readily things which occur repeatedly. But most dream-images are unique experiences, * and this peculiarity would contribute towards the forgetting of all dreams equally. Of much greater significance is a third cause of forgetting. In order that feelings, representations, ideas and the like should attain a certain degree of memorability, it is important that they should not remain isolated, but that they should enter into connections and associations of an appropriate nature. If the words of a verse of poetry are taken and mixed together, it will be very difficult to remember them. "Properly placed, in a significant sequence, one word helps another, and the whole, making sense, remains and is easily and lastingly fixed in the memory. Contradictions, as a rule, are retained with just as much difficulty and just as rarely as things that are confused and disorderly." Now dreams, in most cases, lack sense and order. Dream-compositions, by their very nature, are insusceptible of being remembered, and they are forgotten because as a rule they fall to pieces the very next moment. To be sure, these conclusions are not entirely consistent with Radestock's observation (p. 168), that we most readily retain just those dreams which are most peculiar.

* Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. Compare the collection made by Chabaneix.

According to Strumpell, other factors, deriving from the relation of the dream to the waking state, are even more effective in causing us to forget our dreams. The forgetfulness of dreams manifested by the waking consciousness is evidently merely the counterpart of the fact already mentioned, namely, that the dream hardly ever takes over an orderly series of memories from the waking state, but only certain details of these memories, which it removes from the habitual psychic connections in which they are remembered in the waking state. The dream-composition, therefore, has no place in the community of the psychic series which fill the mind. It lacks all mnemonic aids. "In this manner the dream-structure rises, as it were, from the soil of our psychic life, and floats in psychic space like a cloud in the sky, quickly dispelled by the first breath of reawakening life" (p. 87). This situation is accentuated by the fact that on waking the attention is immediately besieged by the inrushing world of sensation, so that very few dream-images are capable of withstanding its force. They fade away before the impressions of the new day like the stars before the light of the sun.

Finally, we should remember that the fact that most people take but little interest in their dreams is conducive to the forgetting of dreams. Anyone who for some time applies himself to the investigation of dreams, and takes a special interest in them, usually dreams more during that period than at any other; he remembers his dreams more easily and more frequently.

Two other reasons for the forgetting of dreams, which Bonatelli (cited by Benini) adds to those adduced by Strumpell, have already been included in those enumerated above; namely, (1) that the difference of the general sensation in the sleeping and the waking state is unfavourable to mutual reproduction, and (2) that the different arrangement of the material in the dream makes the dream untranslatable, so to speak, for the waking consciousness.

It is therefore all the more remarkable, as Strumpell himself observes, that, in spite of all these reasons for forgetting the dream, so many dreams are retained in the memory. The continual efforts of those who have written on the subject to formulate laws for the remembering of dreams amount to an admission that here, too, there is something puzzling and unexplained. Certain peculiarities relating to the remembering of dreams have attracted particular attention of late; for example, the fact that the dream which is believed to be forgotten in the morning may be recalled in the course of the day on the occasion of some perception which accidentally touches the forgotten content of the dream (Radestock, Tissie). But the whole recollection of dreams is open to an objection which is calculated greatly to depreciate its value in critical eyes. One may doubt whether our memory, which omits so much from the dream, does not falsify what it retains.

This doubt as to the exactness of the reproduction of dreams is expressed by Strumpell when he says: "It may therefore easily happen that the waking consciousness involuntarily interpolates a great many things in the recollection of the dream; one imagines that one has dreamt all sorts of things which the actual dream did not contain."

Jessen (p. 547) expresses himself in very decided terms:

"Moreover, we must not lose sight of the fact, hitherto little heeded, that in the investigation and interpretation of coherent and logical dreams we almost always take liberties with the truth when we recall a dream to memory. Unconsciously and unintentionally we fill up the gaps and supplement the dream-images. Rarely, and perhaps never, has a connected dream been as connected as it appears to us in memory. Even the most truth-loving person can hardly relate a dream without exaggerating and embellishing it in some degree. The human mind so greatly tends to perceive everything in a connected form that it intentionally supplies the missing links in any dream which is in some degree incoherent."

The observations of V. Eggers, though of course independently conceived, read almost like a translation of Jessen's words:

"...L'observation des reves a ses difficultes speciales et le seul moyen d'eviter toute erreur en pareille matiere est de confier au papier sans le moindre retard ce que l'on vient d'eprouver et de remarquer; sinon, l'oubli vient vite ou total ou partiel; l'oubli total est sans gravite; mais l'oubli partiel est perfide: car si l'on se met ensuite a raconter ce que l'on n'a pas oublie, on est expose a completer par imagination les fragments incoherents et disjoints fourni par la memoire... on devient artiste a son insu, et le recit, periodiquement repete s'impose a la creance de son auteur, qui, de bonne foi, le presente comme un fait authentique, dument etabli selon les bonnes methodes...." *

* ...The observation of dreams has its special difficulties, and the only way to avoid all error in such matter is to put on paper without the least delay what has just been experienced and noticed; otherwise, totally or partially the dream is quickly forgotten; total forgetting is without seriousness; but partial forgetting is treacherous: for, if one then starts to recount what has not been forgotten, one is likely to supplement from the imagination the incoherent and disjointed fragments provided by the memory.... unconsciously one becomes an artist, and the story, repeated from time to time, imposes itself on the belief of its author, who, in good faith, tells it as authentic fact, regularly established according to proper methods....

Similarly Spitta, who seems to think that it is only in the attempt to reproduce the dream that we bring order and arrangement into loosely associated dream-elements- "turning juxtaposition into concatenation; that is, adding the process of logical connection which is absent in the dream."

Since we can test the reliability of our memory only by objective means, and since such a test is impossible in the case of dreams, which are our own personal experience, and for which we know no other source than our memory, what value do our recollections of our dreams possess?

- section "D" of Frued's "The Interpretation of Dreams"
http://www.psychwww.com/books/interp/chap01d.htm

"5 Myths About Healthcare in the Rest of the World."

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:33:50 GMT

"1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others -- for instance, Canada and Taiwan -- rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries -- including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland -- provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.

In some ways, health care is less "socialized" overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet's purest examples of government-run health care.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.

In France and Japan, you don't get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment -- and insurance has to pay.

Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for weekends at a health spa.

As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations -- Germany, Britain, Austria -- outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.

In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don't bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. "Why don't you just drop by?" the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon's office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. "When could we do it?" I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, "Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?"

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise -- private-sector, for-profit health insurance -- is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" -- precisely the people most likely to need the insurers' service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer's "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive in a tough business.

Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can't cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. "Our customers love it," the group's chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies."

by T.R. Reid
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778_pf.html

"Lightning Helps Create Artifical Blood Vessels."

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:43:09 GMT

"Lightning bolts could help create artificial organs, according to new research by scientists at Texas A&M University.

An electrically charged block of plastic gives way to a series of tunnel-carving lightning bolts when a nail is driven into it. Adding human blood vessel cells to the tunnels could create a template upon which an artificial organ could grow.

'One of the biggest problems in tissue engineering is how to create a vascular network to feed the growing tissue,' said Arul Jayaraman, a professor at Texas A&M who, along with his colleague Victor Ugaz, co-authored the study that appears in the journal Advanced Materials. 'The structure of these networks closely resembles the human vasculature.'

The artificial organs begin as clear blocks of biodegradable plastic about the size of an inch-thick stack of Post-It notes. An electron beam fills the block with electricity, then the scientists drive nails into either end of the plastic block.

With each strike of the hammer, lightning streaks through the block and exits through the nail, leaving tiny tunnels in its wake. 'It's pretty spectacular,' said Jayaraman. 'It looks just like lightning bolts.'

These tunnels are remarkably similar to the capillary system inside the human body. At their largest size, where the nails are driven in, the lightning induced tunnels are about the same size as veins and arteries. In the middle of the block, the tunnels are smaller, about the same size as capillaries.

The tunnels also connect with each other; fluid that goes in one side comes out the other. The streaking of the lightning might seem random, but it penetrates all areas of the block, ensuring an adequate blood supply to the entire organ.

The entire process takes only a few seconds. That's much faster and cheaper than previous efforts to create 3D artificial channels, said the researchers.

Traditionally, scientists create 3D channels in plastic using the same techniques used to produce computer chips, a technique known as photolithography.

A metal mask is place over a flat surface and the pores or channel are created by shining light onto the open areas. The flat layers would then have to be assembled one on top of another to create a 3D structure. The process is expensive and time-consuming.

'You have to build it one layer at a time,' said James Landers, a scientist at the University of Virginia who builds 2D channels for sensing applications. 'If they can get lots of pores in a 3D block by simply applying a voltage, that would be very interesting.'

One big difference of the new technique is that the channels inside each plastic block are unique. The channels created by photolithography are almost completely identical.

Creating an identical vascular system for a kidney, for example, might not be necessary, said Landers.

Rosemarie Hunziker of the National Institutes of Health agrees. As long as all parts of the artificial organ are close enough to receive nutrients and eliminate waste, they don't need to be identical.

'If you took kidneys from five different people and sliced them open, you would not see the exact same vascular pattern, at the microscopic level,' said Hunziker, 'even though the overall structure would be the same.'

Creating a block of what resembles frozen lightning is only a first step to growing new organs.

With a blood system, scientists can now work to implant cells that will become the actual blood vessels. Then the cells that would become the actual liver, kidney or heart would have to be implanted. As the cells grow, the plastic would harmlessly degrade, until only the organ remained.

It will likely be years before such an organ is implanted into animals, let alone humans, caution the scientists.

'This is very nice, very innovative work, but also very early stage work," said Hunziker. 'Evolution produced this vascular system that we have for a reason. And what (the researchers) can do is not only create this vascular network that resembles natural morphology, they can do it in a way that is rapid and reproducible.'"

- http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/21/lightning-blood-vessels-02.html

"Evolving Robots Learn to Lie to Each Other."

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:09:16 GMT

"In an experiment run at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, Switzerland*, robots that were designed to cooperate in searching out a beneficial resource and avoiding a poisonous one learned to lie to each other in an attempt to hoard the resource. Picture a robo-Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The experiment involved 1,000 robots divided into 10 different groups. Each robot had a sensor, a blue light, and its own 264-bit binary code "genome" that governed how it reacted to different stimuli. The first generation robots were programmed to turn the light on when they found the good resource, helping the other robots in the group find it.

The robots got higher marks for finding and sitting on the good resource, and negative points for hanging around the poisoned resource. The 200 highest-scoring genomes were then randomly "mated" and mutated to produce a new generation of programming. Within nine generations, the robots became excellent at finding the positive resource, and communicating with each other to direct other robots to the good resource.

However, there was a catch. A limited amount of access to the good resource meant that not every robot could benefit when it was found, and overcrowding could drive away the robot that originally found it.

After 500 generations, 60 percent of the robots had evolved to keep their light off when they found the good resource, hogging it all for themselves. Even more telling, a third of the robots evolved to actually look for the liars by developing an aversion to the light; the exact opposite of their original programming!

So far, the research has more application in explaining the evolution of behaviors in the natural world than in developing new programming for robots. But if you think that means I'm one step closer to trusting robots, then you're probably the sort who's attracted to the blue light."

- http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/evolving-robots-learn-lie-hide-resources-each-other

"Manic Depression."

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:26:52 GMT

Redone Jimi Hendrix lyrics, by Rozz Williams and Gitane Demone.

"Manic depression
Manic depression
Manic depression
Manic depression
Manic depression
Manic depression

Manic depression is searching my soul
I know what I want, but I really don’t know...
Feeling, sweet feeling
I wish I could remember
Manic depression is searching my soul

I'm a woman, so weary
My sweet cause is in vain
I make love, take love, break love
It’s all the same
(When it’s over)
Feeling, sweet feeling
I wanna caress
Manic depression - you've captured my soul...

I was awakened one night
With a sack thrown over my body
Arguments about where to bury the dead

I felt alone and abandoned
Cast into tumbling waves
And suddenly I am out of the light half naked
Children stare open-mouthed
At my crippled frame
Hunched inside the chaos of my love
And I don't even know who I am

My shoulders in white softness
Wings of a dove crushed beneath stone
Hidden tears, impatient
Wiped away with bruised, cut palms
A creature sold off to the evil ones

And I try to imagine the manner in which to operate
Waiting for love to emerge

Instead, it will stagnate
Sink down into itself
And make me suffer mournful shadows

And still there is no room for me
No room for me

Think I’m goin' send myself off,
And go on down
'Cause there's really ain’t no use in me hanging around

Music, sweet music, I wanna caress!
Manic depression, you're forestraying mess...

(I hope to keep the chanel open
I hope to keep the fires alive...
Hope the stars don't fall down tonite
Hope for happy days (Instead, I will stagnate)
Hope for love to stay (Sink down into myself)
Manic depression is heading my way...) (Born to suffer mournful shadows
And still there is no room for me)

Manic depression
Manic depression
Manic depression
Manic depression
Manic depression"

July

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:03:17 GMT

"Stolid Garden"

June.

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:50:43 GMT

Salad Fingers.

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:28:43 GMT

http://www.fat-pie.com/

Stolid

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:08:19 GMT

Lazy Susan
July 2009

July 2009

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:41:16 GMT