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Who defines normal?

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Actual is not normalThere’s a fascinating essay by Stanley Fish at the New York Times, wherein he looks at the way society defines normality, and deviations from it. [via Cheryl Morgan] [image by Kevin Dooley]

It’s a real ethical can of worms – a brief look at the comments thread on our recent post about deaf parents wanting to select for deafness in their children makes that abundantly clear – and Fish takes the very rational and pluralist line which states that, essentially, it’s a dilemma that will never be resolved.

“I am neither making nor approving these arguments. I am merely noting that they can and have been made, that they will continue to be made, that there is no theoretical way to stop them from being made, and that their structure is always the same whether the condition that asks for dignity and the removal of stigma is autism, deafness, blackness, gayness, polygamy, drug use, pedophilia or murder.”

It’s a thought provoking piece, and well worth the ten minutes it’ll take you to read it – and it’s also interesting to see sf-nal tropes turning up in a positive light in such a mainstream essay, as Fish uses the X-Men as an analogy.

It strikes me that the only route forward in light of Fish’s conclusion is that we need to become more accepting of otherness. Looking at human history, however, I wonder if we’ll ever achieve such an admirable goal.

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Holy titanium bones, Batman!

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Earlier this week, the Guardian reported on engineer-turned-entrepreneur Dr. Siavash Mahdavi‘s combination of sintering and AI optimisation software. Potential applications, according to Mahdavi, include the rapid manufacture of ‘made-to-measure orthopedic implants’ –

“A surgeon will have the existing bone MRI scanned. This information is passed via a CAD programme to the 3D printer. By the time the patient gets to the operating theatre, we will have printed out a medical-grade titanium bone which is an identical match to the one being replaced.”

But can we be sure they will be as reliable as existing implants? “Better,” insists Mahdavi. “Firstly, they are much lighter as, like human bone, they are porous rather than solid. And having an internal mesh means you can fuse the implant to the bone, so the natural bone will grow into the holes and lock itself in. Because it’s a porous structure, you can x-ray the implant and see how the natural bone is melding with the implant. And, though these e-manufactured implants are only a quarter of the weight of solid ones, the laser makes a finer material than cast metal – so is it is actually stronger than the current technology.“

From the look of their website, Mahdavi’s company – Complex Matters – is making the most of the technology, capitalising on its applications in a variety of projects.

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Catholics on Alpha Centauri?

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It seems strange that the same religious body that refused to apologize to Galileo until 1992 for claiming that the Earth was not the center of the universe (among other things) would welcome extraterrestrials as brothers. Yes, it’s true, aliens from another planet would be welcomed with open arms by the Catholic church. Without getting overly reactionary, it seems like an interaction like that would slowly begin to bring us a little too close to a Dune-like scenario of futuristic religious practices that have to cope with an increasingly expansive population – and not all on one planet.

How does one send out missionaries to the other planets in the universe? What would that do to intergalactic politics if there are aliens who have no sense of our history running around as Catholics? It seems like a very perplexing possibility, indeed. The Catholic church assures us, though, that

“Since God created the universe, theologians say, he would have created aliens, too. And far from being weakened by contact, Christianity would adapt. Its doctrines would be interpreted anew, the aliens greeted with open — and not necessarily Bible-bearing — arms.”

Modernity brings a lot of things to people, but it seems like a strange change for a religion as large as the Catholic church to express such a new theological stance. Perhaps it’s a good sign of their adaptability; perhaps it’s just a sign of their desire to convert the whole of existence. Who knows? It’s certainly an interesting topic for discussion.

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Entangled Up in Blue: Quantum Images

quantum-catsResearchers at the Commerce Department’s Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and the University of Maryland have used laser beams to produce less “noisy” images, according to Science Express via Science Daily. The experiment could lead to better computers and information-storage. The images are born in pairs, “like twins separated at birth,” at slightly different frequencies. None of that is necessarily weird, but:

Look at one quantum image, and it displays random and unpredictable changes over time. Look at the other image, and it exhibits very similar random fluctuations at the same time, even if the two images are far apart and unable to transmit information to one another. They are “entangled”–their properties are linked in such a way that they exist as a unit rather than individually.

The photo-montage of quantum cats is made from color-treated images used in the experiment. The lines suggest how entanglement occurs. What else could we do with quantum entanglement? It would be fun to make entangled drawings or paintings.

[Image: Vincent Boyer/JQI]

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Friday Free Fiction for 13th June

The intarwebs are my dumpster, and you are my fiction-freegan cohorts – come round for a Friday fiction feast!

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Here’s a handful from Manybooks.net:

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FeedBooks is proving to be quite a rich vein (though I’m seeing titles there that ManyBooks had first):

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Free stuff from the High Lord of Free Stuff, Cory Doctorow:

IDW adapted six of my short stories for a comic book, publishing them as singles in 2007. In 2008, they published the full collection in a single set of covers, and I released them as a Creative Commons download under the Attribution-ShareAlike-Noncommercial license. Collected in this volume are adaptations of my award-winning stories “Craphound,” “Anda’s Game,” “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth,” “After the Siege,” “I, Robot” and “Nimby and the D-Hoppers.”

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A message from Fred Himebaugh:

In case Tony C. Smith hasn’t let you know, the Starship Sofa Podcast features the following free fiction this week:

Main Fiction: Secret Life by Jeff VanderMeer

A vision of the building from on high: five glittering floors surrounded by a dull concrete parking lot. To the west lay a forest. To the east, the glint of a shopping mall, substantial as a mirage. To the north, highways and fast food restaurants. To the south, a perpetual gloom through which could be seen only more shadow.

Article – Fouque by Amy Sturgis; Flash Fiction – “Toujours Voir” by David Brin; Poetry – “Confessions Of A Body Thief” by Bruce Boston

Cheers, Fred!

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Here’s instalment 15 of Memory from Jayme Lynn Blaschke:

Beneath the palace, running the length of the perimeter was a colossal Ketza’qua. The yellow-bronze specimen was old and reeked of power. The trusses and cables holding it in place groaned and cackled every time the serpentine body flexed, but showed no signs of breaking.

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Michael Roberts just missed the boat last week, but his mention on BoingBoing probably more than made up for that. He says:

This week I wrote two more Tales of the Singularity: “Paul Bunyan and the Spambot“, and “Bruce Schneier and the King of the Crabs“. If and when I write more, they’ll be found in the relevant category of my website.

Thanks, Michael – sorry I missed your email last week!

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The Friday Flash Fictioneers are a trifle thin on the ground this week, but there’s still a skeleton crew:

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Non-fiction bonus, via BoingBoing:

“Jonathan Zittrain gets so many things right in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, his book about what he calls ‘generative technology’ and why it’s so important. It’s chock-full of all sorts of issues that make Boingers salivate – freedom of speech, copyright, open source software, digital rights activism, privacy, censorship – put together into a very convincing argument in favor of unbridled innovation. This is definitely a book that you don’t want to pass up. It’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license and freely downloadable from the book’s website.”

Looks like it’ll be worth your time; I scanned through a few pages after downloading it, and there’s plenty of food for thought in there.

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Webcomic collection bonus! If you’re a fan of Diesel Sweeties, you probably already know that R Stevens has collected the first 2000(!) strips into ten Creative Commons licensed PDF books that you’re free to download, trade and share.

If you’re not a fan yet, here’s an ideal opportunity to become one – Stevens’ wit is like Distilled Essence of Intarwebs, and his pixellated characters are surprisingly sympathetic. Or maybe it’s just me that identifies strongly with Indie Rock Pete …

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Anyway, that’s about your lot for this week. Don’t forget to hit us up with plugs and suggestions* – in the meantime, have a good weekend and happy reading!

[ * For future reference, the deadline for submissions to Friday Free Fiction is 1800 hours GMT; adjust for your local timezone, please! 🙂 ]

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