Some follow-up on the Dyson article, Our Biotech Future.

Dyson accidentally approaches the great dilemma of biotechnology, but does not address it directly, when he writes that, unlike biological evolution, “cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance.”

He takes this to mean that cultural evolution is more efficient. But cultural evolution is far more precarious than biological evolution. Cultural advances are preserved and transmitted not by genes but by education: they require the self-conscious passing down of knowledge and ideas. The fear of undermining that task of transmission through the biotechnological alteration of humanity is what motivates the worries of the “bioconservatives,” (*) and what threatens to rob the biotech revolution of any limiting principle at all. (I sought, with mixed success, to lay out this theme at some length in this 2004 essay.)

The positive potential of biotech is clear and enormous—as Dyson points out in his characteristically brilliant way. But its unique risks are also enormous. We need to understand both to be able to foster biotechnology without harming ourselves or our culture. Dyson falls far short in clarifying those risks.

(*)

Forget Osama bin Laden and the so-called clash of civilizations. The defining political conflict of the 21st century will literally be the battle over life and death.

Why die?

Dyson, Right and Wrong

The title says it all, I suppose. Click through for the ones with babies in space.

This one says, "Uphold science, eliminate superstition".

There are lots more besides these.

Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages--Chinese Space Program

The reviewer doesn't care for this book, but it's nice to know it exists.

CONNOISSEURS OF PEEVE-OLOGY, here comes the book you'll love to hate. "She Literally Exploded: The Daily Telegraph Infuriating Phrasebook," a collection of despised English usages, is now available on Amazon in the UK and Canada.

...

New usages don't wait for vacancies in the vocabulary; they just show up at work and make themselves useful. When one succeeds, we're good at explaining it after the fact: We needed just that word, with just that nuance, we say, whether it's Shakespeare's puke or the 300-year-old bye-bye or today's dumbing down.

Words that fail, on the other hand, are soon forgotten, like disadorn and aspectable. Were they superfluous, or just unlucky?

What's wrong with this question?

This seems pretty cool.

As a musician and pioneering turnable player-improviser, Christian Marclay has recorded with such collaborators as the Kronos Quartet, Sonic Youth and John Zorn. He has built "unplayable" musical instruments — including a 25-foot-long accordion — and created such signature works as "Video Quartet" and "Crossfire," film clip remixes powering mind-bending interactions among images, soundscapes and music.

Marclay's new photography book, "Shuffle," packaged as an oversize deck of cards, is an invitation to play along with his view of aural and visual potentialities.

Literally.

A stacked deck

WSJ reviews Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, a new book from Karen Abbott.

A young man walking up the stairs to a bordello encounters his father coming down the stairs. "Dad!" he says. "What're you doing here?"

"For two dollars," his father replies, "why bother your mother?"

From Publishers Weekly:

Freelance journalist Abbott's vibrant first book probes the titillating milieu of the posh, world-famous Everleigh Club brothel that operated from 1900 to 1911 on Chicago's Near South Side. ... While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their whores with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries. ... With colorful characters, this is an entertaining, well-researched slice of Windy City history.

The Most Happy Bordello

Richard Dawkins and I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory. We share an interest in culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. We are both atheists in our personal convictions who have written books on religion. In Darwin’s Cathedral I attempted to contribute to the relatively new field of evolutionary religious studies. When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues. Hence this critique of The God Delusion and the larger issues at stake.

This seems worth a look. See also Freeman Dyson on Daniel Dennett, from last year. (Full text is behind a paywall, unfortunately).

Beyond Demonic Memes: Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion

An LA Times interview with Michael Ondaatje, whose newest book is Divisadero.

A nonlinear narrative style often called "cubist" or "collage" that fragments both point of view and narrative line makes it even harder to place him. Ondaatje has said he prefers cinematic editing — he's written a book on the Oscar-winning film and sound editor Walter Murch — over the orthodox one-thing-after-the-other of the conventional novel.

Ondaatje on 'Divisadero'

I've previously mentioned Caplan's work. Here's a profile from Louis Menand in the latest New Yorker. Menand goes great work, so I'm sure it's worth reading. (See also The Metaphysical Club.)

Bryan Caplan, an economist who teaches at George Mason University, thinks that increasing voter participation is a bad thing. He thinks, in fact, that the present level of voter participation—about fifty per cent of the electorate votes in Presidential elections, a much lower percentage than in most democracies, as Americans are frequently reminded—is a bad thing.

This is a good closer:

A great virtue of democratic polities is stability. The toleration of silly opinions is (to speak like an economist) a small price to pay for it.

Fractured Franchise

When Verizon customers order FiOS, they get attached to a proprietary network and get (more or less permanently) removed from the open-access network.

Verizon's new high-bandwidth fiber lines are fully capable of carrying not only calls but also Internet data and television with room to grow. But once the copper is pulled, it's difficult to switch back to the traditional phone system or less expensive Digital Subscriber Line service. And Verizon isn't required, in most instances, to lease fiber to rival phone companies, as it is with the copper infrastructure.

Once You Go Optical, There's No Going Back -- No, Really

We develop and analyze new cooperative strategies for ad hoc networks that are more spectrally efficient than classical DF cooperative protocols. Using analog network coding, our strategies preserve the practical half-duplex assumption but relax the orthogonality constraint. The introduction of interference due to non-orthogonality is mitigated thanks to precoding, in particular Dirty Paper coding. Combined with smart power allocation, our cooperation strategies allow to save time and lead to more efficient use of bandwidth and to improved network throughput with respect to classical RDF/PDF.

When Network Coding and Dirty Paper Coding meet in a Cooperative Ad Hoc Network