All posts by Paul Raven

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Icelandic cod on an evolutionary fast-track to extinction

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codfishHere’s a real Zeitgeist of a story for you: not only is it strong evidence in favour of the theory of evolution by selective pressure, but it also shows that external forces – including human intervention – can accelerate the process to a great degree.

The big downside, however, is that it may be a sign that one of the largest fisheries in the world is about to collapse like a house of cards: you see, there’s a gene in cod which governs the depth at which they prefer to live, and relentless trawling has exerted evolutionary pressure in favour of the mutant fish which swim deeper than the others. [image by Hello, I am Bruce]

Fisheries are known to exert selective pressure on fish. In some cases this has led to the evolution of smaller fish.

This was thought to be a slow process. “Previous workers have concluded that evolutionary changes are only observable on a longer timescale, of decades,” Árnason says. “The changes we observe are much more rapid.”

The A gene is being driven out simply because of where those fish choose to live, says Árnason. Such inadvertent, rapid selective pressure may drive some fisheries to crash.

“Man the hunter has become a mechanised techno-beast,” the team writes. “Modern fisheries are uncontrolled experiments in evolution.”

Worryingly, the researchers found that cod in the Icelandic fishery are becoming sexually mature while still smaller and younger. Something similar occurred in Newfoundland cod just before that fishery crashed. “We think this too is an evolutionary response to the selective pressure of fisheries,” says Árnason.

So, bad news… but bad news with some valuable knowledge in its back pocket. If extreme external conditions apply evolutionary pressure, where will we see this phenomenon crop up next? Perhaps, if the environmental uber-pessimists turn out to be right, we humans will end up at the pointy end of evolution’s goad; on a planet with limited food and water and numerous existential hazards, who knows what we might turn into over the course of a century or two?

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I dance the body electric

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Remember us mentioning that electrically-conductive body paint a little while ago? If so, you might remember thinking “well, OK, but what the hell would you actually use it for?” – I know I did.

Well, here’s your answer – or one of them, anyway. Take one large perspex box covered with hundreds of of little electrical nodes that are linked to some sort of synthesizer engine, and add one painted-up and limber dance-trained young lady with a willingness to experiment and make some noise; add them together, and you’ve got something you might have seen in Buck Rogers… if that series had been more prone to episodes set in strip clubs or techno-artist squat-communes. Observe:

[via PosthumanBlues; apologies to Walt Whitman for the headline]

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I don’t know how to drive it, but it looks pretty wild

Concept cars are rather like science fiction – in that they never quite come true, and they say more about the time in which they’re designed that the time in which they would supposedly exist.

But that’s half the fun of designing them, I guess, and it looks like there’s still plenty of folk in the auto industry’s blue sky labs who know how to dream big… or who play a lot of computer games. Pink Tentacle has a bunch of concept vehicle drawings (or rather renderings) from Mazda, Toyota, Nissan and Honda that look like a mash-up of Akira, Wip3out and Stephan Martiniere; if this is what the freeways of 2050 will look like, crossing the street is going to be a crazy experience.

Mazda Motonari RX vehicle concept

That’s the Mazda Motonari RX; to quote Pink Tentacle:

The vehicle drives sort of like a street luge. Acceleration and direction is determined by two armrest mounted control points, and the vehicle’s exoskeletal frame shape-shifts in accordance with the position of the driver’s arms and legs when enveloped in the seat. Four omnidirectional wheels allow 360 degrees of movement, and the tread expands or contracts to suit the driving conditions. A “haptic skin” suit consisting of millions of microscopic actuators enables the driver to experience the road psycho-somatically while receiving electrical muscle stimulation from the onboard AI guidance system (or other remotely located drivers).

No mention of how much a tank of gas will cost… though Toyota’s design apparently sidesteps the issue by being “powered by pollution”.

There’s a certain irony implicit in the automobile industry being one of the last bastions of sleek’n’shiny futurism in these times of bright green thinking; I’d love to see streets full of things like this, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

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Dutch prisons to close; not enough inmates

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prison cell doorThe recession’s hurting all sorts of industries, it appears – the Dutch Justice Ministry has announced its intentions to close some prisons and slash 1,200 jobs, because there just aren’t enough criminals top fill the cells.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time.

Apparently they’re considering importing detainees from Belgium in order to keep the jobs open… perhaps we’ll see more outsourcing of prison services in the years to come? Steal a car, see the world…

What differences in prisoner conditions might exist between countries with more incarceration than they can handle and those with space to spare? What underlying attitudes or legal frameworks are contributing to that lowering crime rate, and how might they manifest in the prison industry, if at all? [image by abardwell]

It’s also interesting to note that I’m currently sat in a country whose prison system is full to bursting and whose crime rate is allegedly spiralling, but the Netherlands is the country with the relaxed attitude to soft drugs like cannabis – isn’t that exactly the opposite of the way the legislators tell us these things should work?

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Your new credit card, courtesy the US Treasury

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There’s no shortage of weird and wonderful ideas flying around with regard to fixing the financial systems and making them fairer for the end users (i.e. most of us), but this is the first time I’ve heard this one crop up: state-backed interest-free transactional credit – or, in layman’s terms, a credit card issued by the government.

Access to revolving credit should be rationed, but transactional credit should indeed be ubiquitous. Not having to carry and count cash, deal with paper checks, or even worry about some particular account’s balance at the time of purchase are important benefits. Indeed, an efficient payments system is a public good. That’s why states are in the business of establishing currencies, right?

In fact, while transactional credit provision is a perfectly good business, it might be reasonable for the state to offer basic transactional credit as a public good. This would be very simple to do. Every adult would be offered a Treasury Express card, which would have, say, a $1000 limit. Balances would be payable in full monthly. The only penalty for nonpayment would be denial of access of further credit, both by the government and by private creditors. (Private creditors would be expected to inquire whether a person is in arrears on their public card when making credit decisions, but would not be permitted to obtain or retain historical information. Nonpayment of public advances would not constitute default, but the exercise of an explicit forbearance option in exchange for denial of further credit.) Unpaid balances would be forgiven automatically after a period of five years. No interest would ever be charged.

As is immediately pointed out in the resulting comment thread at MetaFilter, there’s a strong aroma of socialism around that idea which would prevent its adoption… not to mention the fierce anger of the credit card companies, should the idea be tabled seriously. But if there’s one thing we should have learned over the last few years, it’s that schemes which frighten the companies who make a killing by lending us money are well worth considering more closely.