Monthly Archives: August 2009

Blog

Is psychopathy a hardware issue?

2 Comments

MRI brain scanNeuroscience continues to probe the depths of our grey matter, delivering blow after blow to that good ol’ mind-body dualism. The latest news? Psychopaths appear to have a detectable brain abnormality that “normal” folks do not. Interesting stuff, but there are some nasty implications also:

When discussions turn to psychopaths and sociopaths, talk of criminal proceedings cannot be far behind. While the study was small and has not been repeated, the mind immediately wanders to a court room where MRI evidence is given to support the conviction of someone on trial for mass murder. The controversy of the topic is likely to be heated. Could a jury be convinced with biological proof that a person’s brain is marked with the brand of a psychopath?

Given that there have indeed been recent attempts to convict people using MRI scans, it’s not an implausible scenario. But until we’re sure that the brain anomaly in question is only present in psychopaths, this is a type of scientific evidence that is probably best left outside the courtroom. [via SlashDot; image by jsmjr]

Blog

Agnotology: The science of ignorance

2 Comments

luckyMany of my fellow citizens believe that the Apollo program was faked, evolution is a lie, global warming is a sinister plot by Al Gore to take away their Hummers, and President Obama is some kind of Nazi foreigner whose healthcare plan will lead to mass euthanasia. Disinformation seems to be a winning tactic.

So, yes, Discover Magazine’s interview with Robert Proctor, Stanford science historian and co-editor of Agnotology: The Making & Unmaking of Ignorance, had some resonance with me.

Snips:

Just what is agnotology?
It’s the study of the politics of ignorance. I’m looking at how ignorance is actively created through things like military secrecy in science or through deliberate policies like the tobacco industry’s effort to manufacture doubt through their “doubt is our product” strategy [spelled out in a 1969 tobacco company memo [pdf]]. So it’s not that science inherently always grows. It can actually be destroyed in certain ways, or ignorance can actually be created.

Have you continued your focus on tobacco?
I recently collaborated on an exhibit of the most outrageous tobacco ads called “Not a Cough in a Carload.” It’s centered on medical-themed tobacco ads: that tobacco’s good for your T-zone, that it calms your nerves. Scientific tests prove that brand A is better than B, or, you know, 20,000 physicians recommend Camels, and so forth. The use of athletes and models, and the artwork is just beautiful.

How do you maintain the perspective essential to your kind of research?… [I]t’s important to see the past the way the people saw it. So I’ve written two books on Nazi medicine, and the goal there was not just to condemn them, but to see how in the world they came up with those ideas and those movements and how they justified them to themselves. So we see them as full humans and not just scarecrows, so we can actually understand the depth of the depravity or whatever. But at least we see it honestly, and that’s a traditional historical virtue.

[Image: leifpeng]

Blog

Fusion on a budget

6 Comments

fusionreactorCanadian company General Fusion are developing a fusion reactor that is based on a process called magnetized target fusion:

The reactor consists of a metal sphere with a diameter of three meters. Inside the sphere, a liquid mixture of lithium and lead spins to create a vortex with a vertical cavity in the center. Then, the researchers inject two donut-shaped plasma rings called spheromaks into the top and bottom of the vertical cavity – like “blowing smoke rings at each other,” explains Doug Richardson, chief executive of General Fusion.

The last step is mainly well-timed brute mechanical force. 220 pneumatically controlled pistons on the outer surface of the sphere are programmed to simultaneously ram the surface of the sphere one time per second. This force sends an acoustic wave through the spinning liquid that becomes a shock wave when it reaches the spheromaks in the center, triggering a fusion burst. …
General Fusion has just started developing simulations of the project, and hopes to build a test reactor and demonstrate net gain within five years. If everything goes according to plan, they will then build a 100-megawatt prototype reactor to be finished five years after that, which would cost an estimated $500 million.

Like general artificial intelligence, generative fusion power is one of those technologies that always seems to be 10-20 years in the future.

It is good to see alternative techniques to the well-known ITER project or Inertial Fusion Energy being adopted as it increases the chances that some genuinely practical approach will be found.

It’s also heartening to see (relatively) smaller operations engaging in generative fusion research.

[from Physorg][image from Physorg]

Blog

A shout-out from Montreal

This is sort of a halfway report… as I’m drafting this, it’s now officially Saturday, but barely. Given that, I’ll keep it short. Here are a few of the highlights from the convention so far:

First – thanks to Montreal, and to Canadians from all over for hosting a very friendly convention. This has been a pleasant place to be. Second, this is not normal life in a connected always-on world where conversations are tweeted and texted and take place on devices that look like Star Trek communicators. Instead, the roaming charges have got most of us carrying dead devices in our pockets and roaming the halls looking for people. I suppose that’s not entirely bad, but it feels strange.

Its been a very busy convention and the panels have been full. Nonetheless, I managed to capture a shot of Connie Willis, Amelia Beamer, Robert Silverberg, and Sheila Williams on the dealers-room floor near the Locus booth. Notice how they all color-coordinate well with their badge ribbons and with each other.

Connie Willis, Amelia Beamer, Robert Silverberg and Shiela Williams

One of the most interesting panels so far covered new astronomy (Keppler is beginning to report results, there are more extra-solar planets being discovered regularly, Venus has a new white spot). Yes, I’m a bit of a geek.

Just to prove my inner geek was in full force, I also went to a panel about three-dimensional printers. Yes, that’s the baby version of what may become the universal replicator from so many science fiction stories and movies. The new vocabulary word from this panel was “Voxel” which is “Volume Pixel.” The presenter, Tom Easton, likened the maturity of 3D printer technology now to where PC’s were in the 1990’s. If he’s right, we’re in for an interesting ride. As opposed to the information economy, it’s the design economy. We have been creating things in the no-space of the electronic world, but we will be able to re-create the physical world, perhaps over and over and over. And all this in a world culture where we don’t have the ethical underpinnings to get rid of computer viruses and spam. I may make this the topic of my next column here at Futurismic.

The party for the Analog and Asimov’s magazines got shut down for being too noisy. So I guess even with the graying of fandom, we can still get in a ton of trouble. But I did get a cake picture worth sharing:

James Patrick Kelly's cake

This decidedly alien piece of confectionary art was an evil plot dreamed up by Sheila Williams, the editor at Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, to reward James Patrick Kelly for having a story in every June issue of Asimov’s for twenty-five years. Now that’s a feat. The cake and the stories.

The cake is much bigger than it looks here. Yes, it tasted good. No, I didn’t have seconds.

There are a few more pictures of a day at the convention on the web.