It’s easy to forget that all of us have built-in tools for chemical analysis. Before biting into a filet of fish, your nose tells you if it is rotten with microbes that will make you sick. And if your nose fails, hopefully your taste buds warn you before swallowing. Today we use our senses of smell and taste for eating, but before the invention of pH meters and microscopes, physicians relied on their noses and mouths to diagnose diseases.
What substance could doctors use that contained information about the health of a patient’s entire body? It would have to be the dumping ground for chemicals in the digestive system, blood stream, and endocrine system. That’s right; doctors once tasted urine to diagnose their patients’ sicknesses. They used charts like this one from 1506 to match illnesses with the colors, tastes, and smells of different types of urine. In fact, physicians didn’t even have to meet their patients to diagnose them as long as they had a sample of their pee and a “urine wheel.”
Urine could be salty, sticky, thick like molasses, or cloudy and white, which possibly indicated pregnancy. One disease that was easy to distinguish was diabetes. Because diabetes prevents the body from absorbing sugar, all of that sweetness ends up filtered out of the bloodstream and into the urine. However appetizing that sounds, I wouldn’t recommend trying uroscopy at home.
blockquote> Dr Grimes then looked at four alleged plots, estimating the maximum number of people required to be in on the conspiracy, in order to see how viable these conspiracies could be. These include: the theory that the US moon landings were a hoax (411,000 people); that Climate Change is a fraud (405,000 people); that unsafe vaccinations are being covered up (22,000 people assuming that only the World Health Organisation and the US Centers for Disease Control are conspirators and that others involved in advocating, producing, distributing and using vaccines are dupes. 736,000 people if, as would be more likely, pharmaceutical companies were included); that the cure for Cancer is being supressed by the world’s leading pharmaceutical firms (714,000 people).
Using the equation, Dr Grimes calculated that hoax moon landings would have been revealed in 3 years 8 months, a climate change fraud in 3 years 9 months, a vaccination conspiracy in 3 years 2 months, and a suppressed Cancer cure in 3 years 3 months. In simple terms, any one of the four conspiracies would have been exposed long before now.
He then looked at the maximum number of people who could take part in an intrigue in order to maintain it. For a plot to last five years, the maximum was 2521 people. To keep a scheme operating undetected for more than a decade, fewer than 1000 people can be involved. A century-long deception should ideally include fewer than 125 collaborators. Even a straightforward cover-up of a single event, requiring no more complex machinations than everyone keeping their mouth shut, is likely to be blown if more than 650 people are accomplices.
Simplification reduces the base case (Nil) and the induction step, simplification leaves us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.
Flying 250 miles above the Earth aboard the International Space Station has given me the unique vantage point from which to view our planet. Spending a year in space has given me the unique opportunity to see a wide range of spectacular storm systems in space and on Earth.
The recent blizzard was remarkably visible from space. I took several photos of the first big storm system on Earth of year 2016 as it moved across the East Coast, Chicago and Washington D.C. Since my time here on the space station began in March 2015, I’ve been able to capture an array of storms on Earth and in space, ranging from hurricanes and dust storms to solar storms and most recently a rare thunder snowstorm.
Blizzard 2016
Hurricane Patricia 2015
Hurricane Joaquin 2015
Dust Storm in the Red Sea 2015
Dust Storm of Gobi Desert 2015
Aurora Solar Storm 2015
Aurora Solar Storm 2016
Thunderstorm over Italy 2015
Lightning and Aurora 2016
Rare Thunder Snowstorm 2016
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A Thai airline will allow passengers to purchase seats for life-like dolls that their owners treat as real children due to their belief that they possess supernatural powers.
Current fish wet biomass is about 2 billion tons, so removing them won’t make a dent either. (Marine fish biomass dropped by 80% over the last century, which—taking into consideration the growth rate of the world’s shipping fleet—leads to an odd conclusion: Sometime in the last few years, we reached a point where there are, by weight, more ships in the ocean than fish.)
If the politics of many of these algorithms is commonly located on a spectrum between autocracy and deliberative democracy, I think we could start to discuss the limitations of those approaches. In Mouffe’s words, “when we accept that every consensus exists as a temporary result of a provisional hegemony as a stabilization of power that always entails some form of exclusion, we can begin to envisage the nature of a democratic public sphere in a different way.”
And so I think we reach her strongest argument for why thinking about agonism is important. This is why a pluralist democracy, she writes, “needs to make room for dissent, and for the institutions through which it can be manifested. It’s survival depends on collective identities forming around clearly differentiated positions, as well as on the possibility of choosing between real alternatives.” And I think that’s a fairly key concept here.
So this is why it matters whether algorithms can be agonist, given their roles in governance. When the logic of algorithms is understood as autocratic, we’re going to feel powerless and panicked because we can’t possibly intervene. If we assume that they’re deliberately democratic, we’ll assume an Internet of equal agents, rational debate, and emerging consensus positions, which probably doesn’t sound like the Internet that many of us actually recognize.
So instead, perhaps if we started to think about this idea of agonistic pluralism, we might start to think about the way in which algorithms are choosing from counterposed perspectives within a field where rationality and emotion are given. As an ethos, it assumes perpetual conflict and constant contestation. It would ideally offer the path to choose, I think, away from these disappointingly limited calls for “transparency” in algorithms, which are ultimately kind of doomed to fail, given that companies like Facebook and Twitter are not going to give their algorithms away, for a whole host of competitive reasons, and also because they’re afraid of users gaming the system.
Instead, I think to recognize value of different perspectives and opposing interests involves an acceptance of what Howarth calls “the rules of the game” and an understanding that algorithms are participants in wider institutional and capitalist logics.
Spot freight rates on the world’s busiest trade route have halved since the start of the year after falling 26 percent to $545 per 20-foot container (TEU) this week—a level not considered to be commercially viable for most vessels.
Container rates usuaally rise ahead of the Chinese New Year, which this year begins on Feb. 8, as companies try to ship goods to Europe before factories close and millions of workers travel home to celebrate for at least a week.
Last year, considered to be a bad one for shipping, average freight rates were $1,098 per TEU ahead of the Chinese New Year and $1,659 per TEU the year before. Rates this year for Asia to Europe have averaged $739.
#dfartworks #parisfashionweek Wish you all a beautiful and save time in Paris at the Paris Fashion Week by df_artworks (via https://www.instagram.com/p/BAwj6R7my7l/)
“Science and engineering today, however, is focused on things like synthetic biology or artificial intelligence, where the problems are massively complex. These problems exceed our ability to stay within the domain of the artificial, and make it nearly impossible for us to divide them into existing disciplines. We are finding that we are more and more able to design and deploy directly into the domain of “nature” and in many ways “design” nature. Synthetic biology is obviously completely embedded in nature and is about our ability to “edit nature.” However, even artificial intelligence, which is in the digital versus natural realm, is developing its relationship to the study of the brain beyond merely a metaphorical one. We find that we must increasingly depend on nature to guide us through the complexity and the unknowability (with our current tools) that is our modern scientific world.”
recent research seems to indicate that flattening workplace hierarchy is not only much more complicated than it seems, but that people prefer a pecking order. One Stanford study found that egalitarian work structures were disorienting. Workers found hierarchical companies were more predictable, and therefore preferable, because it was easy to figure out who did what and how compensation should be doled out. Another Stanford paper, which looked at why hierarchical structures in the workplace have such staying power, concluded perhaps the obvious: Hierarchies work. They are practical and psychologically comforting.
Google,
Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, Nekoma, North Dakota, October, 2012
This is what the missile site of the previous post looks like from the road. From the blueprints, the pyramid structure is about 75 feet / 23 meters tall (the structure continues below the berm). Cold War Tourist.com offers some photos of what the complex looks like inside recently. The very bottom of the page indicates the missile site was up for sale and, remarkably, was purchased by the Spring Creek Hutterite Colony (a group with some similarities to the Mennonites), for a sum of $530,000 USD. The government was generous enough to offer to pay for the extensive environmental cleanup. Click through the source to experience the drive-by, it’s a beautiful location, with the exhaust towers contrasting with the delicate windmills.
IJsseloog is an artificial island used as a depository to store polluted silt in the middle of the IJssel River in Flevoland, Netherlands. Silt is granular material, larger than sand but smaller than clay, that may occur as soil or sediment suspended in water. IJsseloog can hold 20 million cubic metres of silt.
“Any conception of the world must include some acknowledgement of its own incompleteness: at a minimum it will admit the existence of things or events we don’t know about now. The issue is only how far beyond our actual conception of the world we should admit that the world may extend.”
Automatic Picture Transmission (called APT) that was flown on Nimbus I reduced the time required and the cost of getting photographic information from a satellite to local weather forecasters. The four pictures at the right were received at Wallops Island, Va.
F. W. REICHELDERFER, former Chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, wrote of them: “In this four-frame sequence, Nimbus I reveals many things about the weather in a 900-mile swath from Venezuela to the Canadian Arctic as viewed on August 29, 1964, from orbit approximately 550 statute miles from Earth. Through APT, the local or regional weather forecaster receives pictures of the cloud arrays as the satellite passes overhead. APT receivers are fairly simple and inexpensive.
“The two top pictures show clouds typical of systems of fronts. In mid-latitudes and the subarctic, warm fronts produce cloud ‘decks’ of cirrostratus and altostratus. Cold fronts produce convective cumulus and line-squall cumulonimbus. Intermediate frontal forms give the complex combinations of cloud forms and arrays seen in the pictures-their orientations and shapes being indicative of different wind currents, etc.
“The third picture looks down upon historic Hurricane Cleo over South Carolina and Georgia. The characteristic spiral bands of clouds first seen in full by rocket and satellite photos make it easy for satellites to discover tropical cyclones far at sea outside the usual networks of ship reports.
"In the fourth picture the many cumulus ‘streets’ often found in the trade winds can be seen; also southward are the cloud masses of an intertropical convergence zone.
"Perhaps most promising for future weather analysis and forecasting is the increasing study of clouds and their arrays as symptoms’ and thus diagnostic means for identifying atmospheric dynamic systems which make the weather.”
There’s too much to say about this latest trip. As Hesse put it in Siddhartha: “The river is everywhere.” Brad Garrett and I are talking about co-authoring a book about ten of our riparian adventures, so I may get a few solid thoughts down on paper at some point. For now, though, my mind is kaleidoscoping with infrastructure details (ingresses, especially; always ingresses), geometries, geographies, building materials, fleeting impressions…
Stevie Nicks singing, “When the rain washes you clean you’ll know, you’ll know…” as I drove into the city. Jumping a locked gate in the pre-dawn hush at the source of the river — and then every other barrier we encountered before hitting Universal City security. Fake trees disguising telco infrastructure: palm, pine, and eucalyptus. Climbing a stone wall to get a better look at Starfleet Academy. An empty parking lot beneath which 18 nuclear missiles were siloed until quite recently. Drinking whiskeys old enough to legally drink themselves. Will Self’s unexpected cameo at the Ace Hotel before a tray of room service champagne and our addled realization that all the records we liked best we had played at the wrong speed. Being guided through the ephemera of Bowtie Parcel by local artists with a powerfully strong sense of place. Buckaroo Bonzai’s logo on a warehouse (which makes sense, given that we started at the Starbucks of Rocketdyne – one of Pynchon’s Yoyodyne models). The privilege of observing nature with a scientist whose mind moves at 200 mph (and who continuously, non-confrontationally challenged suppositions with small thought experiments). Deb Chachra explaining emotional labor to me as we peed around the walls of a locked public restroom in a park. Being told by an Uber driver we looked like bank robbers (whether it was emotional labor or not). Dawn on the rooftop of an abandoned building in Downey. Anarchist infrastructure historian Adam Rothstein’s heavily annotated Thomas Guide, his impeccable route finding, a perfectly timed Benjamin quip, and his savage sentences re: Griffith J. Griffith (from a book-length project on California water he’s been working on). A mysterious government pickup truck, laden with chopped wood, driving at speed through the river. Bridge graff of a shadow coyote pack annotated: “Fuck the other side.” A guy in bright red leathers popping a wheelie on his motorcycle, tearing hell down the bike path toward Long Beach. A guy who had lashed his gear and himself into the girders beneath a bridge with a web of cables. A guy in an electric wheelchair who drove against traffic with three leashed pugs mushing ahead of him, blasting a tiny radio, then hopping up to walk into the liquor store. An old guy with a wispy Fu Manchu, ponytail, and sailor’s cap who shouted, “Close that FUCKING door!” at us, then went back to contemplating his horchata, statue-like. The peregrine falcon that shot out at me from the bushes. The corkscrew staircase between I-5 and the 110 at the confluence of Arroyo Seco and the river. A decapitated Mickey Mouse, its body twisted at the bottom of a cliff, as downtown LA came into clear view. Going garbage Tarzan on trash island. Swinging on the Tree of Woe in a pasture behind Disney’s animation studio. Talk of indigenous lizard people. Horse favelas. All of the amazing readings en route — but especially when a flock of pigeons circled overhead, ominously, as London-based geographer Harriet Hawkins read via Skype from and about Lewis MacAdams; and how Lucy Lippard’s Undermining on the subject of Spiral Jetty dissolved into whorls of razor wire separating Compton from the river. Brad recovering his balance after slipping on bird shit in a no-fall situation. The swaying, rusted catwalk we both ventured out onto. Ceremonies at the Mulholland fountain: a water offering, sigils, the naming of names. And a last group photograph, snapped by a bearded fisherwoman with the Queen Mary and Astronaut Islands behind us.
It wasn’t perfect. Despite lugging a heavy, 30-year-old raft >50 miles, we never put it into the water. Despite carrying full kit, and discovering ideal sites both days, we didn’t camp. But we did wade into the river beyond the 6th Street Viaduct at dusk and slosh it for miles through a concrete box canyon in a drizzling rain on the phase boundary of real danger. And we traversed the concrete desert south of Vernon, with commercial logistics operating on both sides of us, relentlessly, under sodium lights, in supernal silence. Unstable memories of the journey are already starting to decay, irradiating my insomnia. But that night, at least, will have a half-life like U-238.
12) San Francisco – Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco, CA 94123, USA
13) Wellington - Pataka Art+Museum, Cnr Parumoana & Norrie Streets, Porirua, Wellington, Porirua City 5240, New Zealand.
14) Massachusetts – MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247, USA.
15) Sydney – Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery Road, The Domain, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia.
16) Toronto – Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto Ontario, Canada M5T 1G4
17) Los Angeles – The Museum of Contemporary Art, Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N Central Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012, USA
18) Seattle – Asian Art Museum,1400 East Prospect Street, Seattle, WA, 98112. USA
12. Jan. 2016
Lego announces on it’s website that as of January 1st, the Lego Group no longer asks for the thematic purpose when selling large quantities of Lego bricks for projects:
“The LEGO Group has adjusted the guidelines for sales of Lego bricks in very large quantities.
Previously, when asked to sell very large quantities of Lego bricks for projects, the Lego Group has asked about the thematic purpose of the project. This has been done, as the purpose of the Lego Group is to inspire children through creative play, not to actively support or endorse specific agendas of individuals or organizations.
However, those guidelines could result in misunderstandings or be perceived as inconsistent, and the Lego Group has therefore adjusted the guidelines for sales of Lego bricks in very large quantities.
As of January 1st, the Lego Group no longer asks for the thematic purpose when selling large quantities of Lego bricks for projects. Instead, the customers will be asked to make it clear - if they intend to display their Lego creations in public - that the Lego Group does not support or endorse the specific projects.” by aiww (via https://www.instagram.com/p/BAefiH_KD37/)
A ghost ship … Sailing into port for the opening of the Prudential Eye Awards at #ArtScienceMuseum this weekend. by honorharger (via https://www.instagram.com/p/BAe3p5CMusw/)
Fragments of B-15, one of the largest icebergs ever calved from the Ross ice shelf. Melting icebergs leave plumes of nutrient-rich waters in their wake that may be trapping millions of tonnes of carbon each year. Photograph: MODIS/Terra/NASA
Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont, is an active stratovolcano on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. An incredible change in vegetation is sharply delineated between the national forest that encircles the volcano and the surrounding land comprised of intensively-farmed dairy pastures.
