Archive for the ‘Earth Systems and Biosystems’ Category

“the planet is fine; the people are fucked”

A commenter here posted this link and I found it rather interesting…
As in, a useful perspective to keep in mind, every now and again. I liked it not so much for any sentiments against environmentalism, as I did for sentiments against our sense of importance:

I have been out-pessimism’ed…

I introduce you to David Benatar, who hails from South Africa and writes books with titles like “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.”
Just skimming through this third-person account of his antinatalist philosophies, I found myself fighting sporadic impulses for raucous laughter, interspersed with righteous eggings on (“yeah - you tell it like [...]

it’s all them pooting moo-cows

tee hee… OK I admit to just wanting moo-cows on my homepage (aren’t they adorable)?
Makes you think though…

Complex accounting is routing strategy. It’s here to stay.

[updated : 2009-12-19]
The only thing that’s interesting about the copenhagen climate summit is the strategies that nations employ to wriggle out of real and tangible cuts in emissions.
The interconnectedness of environmental and other systems on our planet has made us turn, naturally, to network theory for gaining useful insights. This is becoming more so with [...]

rising apette spotted at a small angle theta from…

“Comfy?! SEX SHOULDN’T BE COMFY!!“
- chiwetel Ejiofor as Lola, in the movie ‘Kinky Boots’.
[I warn you that, even for the tinuum, this is going to be a spectacularly nonsensical (to you), rambling post. And downright incoherent.].
***
Since you are still here I will ask you this: have you sworn an oath of allegiance to Mother Nature, [...]

Biosynthetic programming tools and technologies

Wow – what an amazing roundup… if you haven’t checked out Melanie Swan’s recent posts on bioinformatics, do so now.
Most of the concepts are way over my head but it is interesting to see how yet another “information technology” discipline bootstraps itself into being.
What would be great to see:
1) traditional software development methodologies continuing to [...]

Re-grown tracheas, livers and hearts? Get outta here!

OK. I’ve waffled about genomics in the past, but do please go ‘n get this stuff straight from the horse’s mouth (as it were): Hop over here and then skip the vid ahead or click on the ‘programming cells‘ link.
Have a listen. Is that not insane?! And yet awesome at the same time? Also keep [...]

more genomics…

Check out this post about the future of biology at broad perspectives (formerly futurememes) on more interesting developments in the world of genomics. To quote briefly from the post,
“The two biggest current revolutions are in personalized genomics and synthetic biology”…
Yep. That’s as expected. And that’s why we need more open-ness.
And also more education. I wonder [...]

Open Genomics

Interesting little site, this: http://www.sgc.utoronto.ca/.
It reminded me of Andrew Hessel’s talk at SciBarCamp about how scientists are now able to create their own biological entities from scratch, by writing software. Yep – writing genetic code; creating your own baby bacterium that has never existed anywhere on earth before. This isn’t a process that uses vectoring [...]

It’s not your grandmother’s planet

Is it just me, or is the pop science world finally starting to tune in to the earth sciences?
It isn’t all high-school geography fodder either: forget about lava cones and knowing your stalagtites from your stalagmites – media on the hip new earth touches on everything from geohazards to lithospheric insights about our evolutionary past [...]