January 2010 Archives

Giants once walked the earth, and now their histories are being added to the dustbin


THOMAS EDISON just isn't who he used to be.

In a mid-January article in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Bernie Carlson, a professor of science, technology and society at the University of Virginia, said, "Edison is so 20th century, much like Henry Ford."

This is where people are getting their info mixed up: While Ford is to be lauded as the innovator and essentially the creator of the assembly line, he did not invent the automobile.
Edison's role as industrialist is getting mixed up with his start as an inventor--the quintessential American ideal of the inventor, I might add.

Edison's nickname was the Wizard of Menlo Park, a reference to the New Jersey neighborhood where his workshop was established.

Carlson was quoted in an article about the resurgence in interest in the career and life of inventor Nikola Tesla.

While Tesla won the battle between alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC), which Edison had bet heavily on - even as the wires over the streets were cracking and flaming from his DC.

But Tesla was almost forgotten, and Edison was heralded in kids' textbooks from coast to coast.

However, as time marches on, Edison's most well-known inventions, the incandescent lightbulb, the phonograph and the motion-picture camera are all being left by the wayside.

Edison's bulbs are being phased out by fanatical environmentalists; the phonograph is twice removed: replaced by CDs, which were then replaced by Mp3s; and movies no longer use film, it's all digital, even the people.

Gosh, I guess Edison is "so 20th century."

21st century schizoid man

And then there's this:

"I can't imagine writing a song about Edison...too boringly rich, entrepreneurial and successful!" Andy McCluskey, a founder of the UK-based new wave band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, told the WSJ.

But I disagree: The drive and passion he showed made Edison a larger than life figure, a character who would not be out of place in the works of Jules Verne - or Mark Twain.

It is too bad Edison is being discarded. His inventions may be "historical curios," says WSJ, but his achievements are monumental and inspirational.

These 18th century ways of thinking are holding us back:
It's time to embrace our cyborg future!

YESTERDAY, I visited a cyborg. Sort of.

Okay, I will admit that perhaps I'm using the nomenclature incorrectly - no, the person I visited will not have bio-electronic, or bionic limbs.
He will not be able to lift an automobile over his head, he won't be able to run faster than a galloping horse, he will not be able to see in the dark or long distances, nor will be able to jump over walls and fences with accompanying metallic, echoing "nanana-nanana-nanana" sound effects.

Instead, I visited a man with a new stomach.

My good friend, RH - the initials changed, as they say on a thousand TV cop shows, to protect the innocent - is currently in the hospital with ulcerative colitis and has had a big chunk of his large intestine surgically removed.

RH now has to use a colostomy bag, and as unnerving as thinking about it, let alone actually seeing it, is, that's okay. With his new - as I perfer to call it - cybernetic appendage, he will be able to live a life, instead of being a shut-in, like RH has been for the past 18 months.

He will finally be able to get a good night's sleep without interrupting and frequent rushes to the toilet. The pain of his gut collapsing on itself, feeling like a knife in the belly, will be gone.

LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH

It is 2010, we have to get used to living in the future: Science has done more than save my friend's life, it has improved it.

Now RH will be able to accomplish all the things he used to love to do frequently:
go to the movies, attend live music shows and eat food that is not bland or watered down - but no nuts, it seems those could tear his bag:
As with most things, there is room for improvement.

I joke about my friend being a cyborg because thinking of RH that way is better than thinking of him as being afflicted. I am very happy for my pal, and science via medicine has helped and healed him.

Some people have to take pills, others have prosthetic limbs, some use medical attachments, like RH. A lot of us need to wear lenses over our eyes to see. Too many people never seem to disconnect themselves from their portable computing and communications units.

Nobody's perfect - we're all cyborgs now.

Ireland's new anti-blasphemy law is exactly the type of thing Galileo and Copernicus had to worry about

In the vendor stalls in South Africa, you can buy dried vulture brains. When the brain is crumbled and rolled into a cigarette then smoked, it's supposed to give you the ability of clairvoyance and premonition.

Wildlife protection groups are concerned because gamblers of all varieties are smoking vulture brains to play games of chance or bet on the ponies - and the upcoming World Cup in South Africa is guaranteed to increase consumption as bets are placed on the games.

But smoking vulture brains is a superstition, and those are hard to break, even when the evidence points elsewhere: people will be burnin' vulture brains while watching the World Cup on a 50-inch LCD TV and placing bets on-line.

It is regretful that vultures may be driven to extinction for something so stupid, but that's how it is: until other factors come along, people will believe what they believe, and the superstitions about vulture brains will go on.

But the Republic of Ireland is not helping the situation. On New Year's Day, the nation introduced a new law, one that makes "blasphemy" a criminal offence - punishable by a €25,000 ($35,882) fine.

Don't think that because Ireland is a predominantly Catholic nation that these laws are skewed towards the Holy See alone; the law defines blasphemy as, "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion [my italics], thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted."

This goes beyond Ireland's borders: the new law "is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level," said Michael Nugent, chairman of the organization Atheist Ireland, in a statement.

It is doubtful anyone is going to determine that plastics or other petrochemicals are blasphemous any time soon - although if some crazed religious sect somewhere decides that burning oil is "despoiling the souls of our dinosaur brethren," who knows?

And what about biotechnology? There has already been controversy in the US over the use of stem cells used from embryonic fetuses - which itself developed from the spiritual/secular controversy in America over abortion, so what happens if stem cell research is declared blasphemous? And after that? Practically every form of medicine can offend someone somewhere.

Except smoking vulture brains.