Here's a comment, at least!

Sat up way too late last night learning preliminaries I need to know to learn about the scientific consensus in molecular biology in 2013.  

Been a ton of advances since I last poked my nose into the field.  One such is the finding that a transcription factor can set-off a cascade across gene networks, not just a gene, not just a gene network.  Another is they are really getting a handle on the mechanisms of epigenetics.  And they've found "jumping genes" in humans during neural (!) development in gestation.  (!)

Whoa.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

Our office computers are being replaced, and the new ones come with Windows 7 (not yet 8). I'm having a hell of a time trying to customize it (just what does Bill have against customization?). For example, I don't like the Show Desktop at the right end of the taskbar at all, had to find a hack to add the Windows XP icon on the left.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

We are looking forward to the weather tomorrow. Starting about 11:00 AM we will have light snow; later the temperature rises and we will have a mix of rain and snow through the late afternoon and evening. Then, after midnight through 7 AM comes the ever popular light freezing rain - for 7 hours. returning in the afternoon possibly. I am sincerely hoping that this turns out to be a worst case forecast. But I will be stocking up on some foods and bringing in some firewood. Just in case. It would be worth it to me to pay an extra few dollars a month on my power bill to have the lines buried. Then we would be far less vulnerable. As it is an ice storm or, even, a single drunk in a car can take out power for entire neighborhoods. We have local hydro generation from two dams, so we should be less vulnerable to power loss from high tension lines as we are net exporters of electricity.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Just saw that the IPR lobby in Sweden has sent a threatening letter to the Swedish Pirate Party regarding its hosting of the new and changed Pirate Bay (ie the technical solution is sligthly changed to comply with the sentences against the former Pirate Bay crew). I think the chance for Pirate election successes in 2014 (EP, local, regional and national elections) just jumped up quite a bit.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

Great Leap Forward: How To Teach Money: Presentation at UNAM (L. Randall Wray, February 18th, 2013)

As I previously announced, a 2 day conference begins today at UNAM in Mexico City:

http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/01/30/upcoming-conference-at-unam-in-mexico-city/

I'm giving 3 talks. I thought those interested in MMT might want to view the presentation slides.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

European Commission Press Release: Speech: Ten Years on, where is the Euro headed? The economic and political future of the European Union (Olli REHN, 19 February 2013)

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

(1) Long Reads | Tumblr

Augmentation becomes a way of life. Virtual and real are no longer seen as a dichotomy. Everything has a computer on board, everything is connected wirelessly. Mindgoo not only controls physical processes, but also abstract ones over the web. It mines financial data for patterns and organizes warehouse deliveries to be more efficient. People no longer tie their identities most closely to their bodies, but rather to the web of information that constantly surounds them. They can throw their awareness across the world or into abstract spaces.

Some countries clamp down on this, and new technofascist states pop up, using this connection to exert top-down control of their populace. Other areas completely decentralize, forming ad-hoc networks of information and resources. The technofascist states ruthlessly expand in order to secure resources, but the computing load placed on the network of mindgoo and augmented overlords who control the whole mess becomes too much as the network grows too complicated. It is not external democracy but internal technological limits that sends asunder the newest wave of totalitarianism as its networks fragment and violently collapse inwards against their most powerful nodes.

As the human mind becomes more abstract and less aware of the physical world, its physical footprint doesn't shrink. People are still just as large and made of meat. So are the cows that feed them. Computers are still constructed of silicon and gold. And oil and coal plants still power them while spewing carbon into the sky. Storms become worse and worse on the coasts. The weather inland varies between scorching hot in the summer to freezing cold in the winter. Food production stagnates as the weather makes farming less efficient by percentage points a year while the ocean slowly is drained of readily edible fish.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

Barack Obama Is The First Cyber War President, But A President Can't Win A Cyber War | Fast Company

Howard Schmidt, President Obama's former Cyber-Security Coordinator, told an audience of information security professionals and journalists at a Kaspersky Labs New York conference in January that the line between cyber war and cyber crime is blurred (as the National Intelligence Estimate seems to indicate), making U.S. government response tricky. Schmidt also claimed that unnamed foreign governments take kickbacks from the earnings of local cybercriminals targeting American corporations in a sort of quid-pro-pro for letting them operate. While Schmidt dislikes the use of the term cyber warfare--in a panel conversation with CEO Eugene Kaspersky he claimed the term is misleading--he also warned that malware is easy to militarize.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

Nathan Heller: The Twentysomethings Are All Right : The New Yorker

They were dressed in jeans and sported close-cropped blond hair. One of them had an elongated, toothy face, and he went on, "We slaughter two thousand sheep every day, eighty thousand in the season. He cuts out the stomachs, and we put the carcasses in the freezer. Like an assembly line."

"You kind of need an iPod," the third said.

Back in Sweden, the guys told me, they were studying computer science at university, and--well, you know how it is: one thing leads to another, and soon you find yourself carving sheep bellies for a little extra cash. Jobs were hard to come by in Sweden, but Iceland welcomed the help. Slaughterhouse employees got free rooms and six meals a day. There was too much fish on the menu, maybe, but better that than the remaindered meat from the smokehouses. Why was that? I asked this in a conversation-making spirit, but my new acquaintances stared.

"You've noticed there are not so many trees in Iceland?" one asked at last.

Yeah, I said.

"Well, what do you think they do all the smoking with? It's a fifty-fifty mixture of--I don't know what the English word is. You dig it up. . . ."

"Peat?"

"Yeah, peat," he said. "That and shit."

"Yeah--shit," the long-faced one chimed in, his voice rising with indignation. "And, listen, I am Swedish. I
don't eat meat that has been smoked in shit."

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

I have rediscovered the potato.

Ensconced as I am in a meal-sharing household of starch-deniers, I have been firmly on the 'full-corn' rice, pasta, and root school - easy and efficient to cook for one.

But the chance purchase of a large bag of local boiling spuds has reawakened my interest. With a knob of good butter! Ohhlalaa.

But better still - slightly undercook more than you need and pop 'em in the fridge later. (Slotted spoon needed). Then next day, first pressed rape oil heated in a wok and a handful of spuds added and tossed with a liberal sprinkle of Raz Al Hanout.

You can't be me, I'm taken