mycoblogging

One is at this point intimately familiar with Quorn,
the vegetarian protein product made form Fusarium
venenatum, a mold that is grown in vats until it
is mixed with egg whites and flour, and shaped
into ersatz chicken nuggets. With its conservative
critics who wax physic on the mold's gastrotoxicity,
and its liberal fans who insist that you try it in your
breakfast cereal, it's no wonder that Quorn has
captured the popular imagination.

But has anyone considered its potential for
use in online communication? The proteins
are manufactured in "two 150,000 l pressure-cycle
fermenters in a continuous process which outputs
around 300 kg biomass/h. The continuous
process is typically operated for around 1,000 h.
One factor which has limited the length of production
runs was the appearance of highly branched mutants
in the population. Several factors affect the time of
appearance of such mutants and a number of
strategies for delaying their appearance have
been investigated."

Ah, but there we must break with Dr Wiebe of
the Institute of Life Sciences, Aalborg University,
Denmark. Delay the production of mutants?
Pish posh. Our proposal is to accelerate the
production of mutants, and to form them into
specially-tailored hyper-textual nuggets.

What we need are (1) home fermentation
tanks; (2) integration with Twitter, so that
a text message sent from your cell phone to
your friend's fermentation tank will produce
a new strain of mold that will instantaneously
convey your sentiment in the form of a
semantic network or "bubble diagram".

In this way, the unassuming filamentous fungus
can help us "stay connected" with friends
far and wide, build meaning across language
barriers as easily as we ask for the salt
from across the table.

For further reading on Quorn, I recommend:

http://www.fungi4schools.org/Reprints/Mycologist_articles/Post-16/Foods/V18pp017-020_Quorn.pdf

THE THINGS I FIND MOST DEPRESSING, e.g.

Anything having to do with the idea that "everyone's a
winner". If the game itself isn't fun, winning some
crummy junk is no reward.By the same token, any time a person extends themselves
beyond their limited means to obtain something cheap or
tawdry, this is the most depressing thing in the world,
because -- look, how it has me criticising their modest
enjoyment, and lamenting the "human condition"!
You want me to find the good in any situation, to see the
beauty in everyone, but I just can't do it -- every time I
try, what I see is my own duplicity; the impostiture of my
mercurial wheeling and dealing that would have the world
for its plaything and the people in it its pawns and
ragdolls. That's only me playing cat and mouse with my
emotions!Under these conditions (which are, unfortunately, the
conditions of daily life), no judgment can be trusted.
Every sight is cloak and dagger.And even so, the rhythmic sound of synth bells, the taste
of coffee with sugar, and a few minutes spent in peaceful
composition bring me back from a horribly constricted
"edge" -- but it would be my absolute undoing if I were to
learn that this moment -- was made in China.
But, no, it can't be... outside, the wind in my face as
I'm moving, my breath stirring a little bit more; and I'm
thinking... I've written a nice little piece of
existential geography -- e.g.!

writers workshop

"The workshop is a crucible in which every part
of the human equation is tested: creation, destruction,
leadership, control, privacy, exhibitionism, voyeurism,
love, hatred, fear, collaboration, cooperation, order,
chaos, victory, devastation, humility, pride, shyness,
bravado, and spirituality. For technical people, the raw
emotion is surprising; for the creative writer the clinical
coldness is alarming."

-- http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WritersWorkshopTypeset.pdf

five years, five chapters

Chapter 1. "Miserlou" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU0RMV_II8)

Epigram: "As I've said many times, the future is already here. It's just
not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson

What is the future? It's just trends from the past continuing. Some of
these trends are mathematical, like exponential growth or sinusoidal
pulsing. Some of the trends are more abstract, cosmic, personal,
not described by any known mathematics but rather, the trash and
logic that would itself describe mathematics (if only they weren't so
autistic)... the dirty coffee cup, the stroll by the lake, a visit from an
old girlfriend.

The future is a giant demolition derby of all trends. For example,
technological progress (the exponential speedup of computation,
the growth of human knowledge) crashes head on into global
warming and disintegrates overhead like some sort of rocket
explosion out of "Gravity's Rainbow" (which we don't have time
to read right now due to the exigencies of modern living).

Chapter 2. "Monks 1966"
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWR4r78CWEQ&feature=related)

The easy corollary of William Gibson's statement is that the future
has always been here, will always be here, will never be uniform.
I'm inclined to look at the mechanism of a pocketwatch, and especially
at that little spring... what's going on with that thing? To understand
the future is to understand the unwinding of that spring.

In order to do this, we need to get past the tautological "Five years
in the future we will all be five years older" -- William Burroughs
staring at his wingtips wasted on opiates (or any other creature
hypnotized by life circumstances). For no other reason
than because I feel like it, I suggest that within five years,
we will have SIGNIFICANTLY cut through the "autistic"
barrier that enwraps prolonged moments of this nature...

I don't mean that "time travel" per se will be possible, but that
we will not get "stuck" in the present anywhere near as much.
This has to do with the increased interpenetration of mathematical
and amathematical thinking -- computer programming, for example,
will be doable at a speed much closer to the "speed of thought".
At the same time, so-called "information overload" will be
less of a problem. Life will be rife with prosthethics for
thinking better.

Chapter 3. "Dr Who" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF2x5IKxmAQ&feature=related)

There is a reason that the best things that contemporary
popular culture can provide are remixes of old ideas.
People have been around for a long time already and they
have pretty much thought of everything. Or at least so
it would seem. (I'd argue that we are at this point on
the verge of actually new thoughts, sort of like physics
in the late 1800s...) I would suggest that sometime
around five years from now we will have gotten all the
millennial crap out of our systems, we will be less
obsessed with "the old". So in addition to all the old
stuff continuing to play out and make steady technological
progress, I think we will see some completely "new" stuff that
will capture popular imagination (just in time for the centenary
of Einstein 1914, but completely unrelated).

Chapter 4. "The World is a War Film"
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe4luvg1Ltg&feature=related)

We imagine that conflict and chaos threaten our
future (see Chapter 1). I think it is more likely that
they only threaten our ability to predict the future
or to control or direct its development. I suggest
that rather than letting our hearts and minds be
tortured by fear and uncertainty, and at the same
time avoiding the opposite extreme of retreat and
apathy, we should embrace values of reasonably
safe experimentation and ("non-reactive") creativity.
I think in response to the current global economic crisis
(but even more in response to all the noise about it),
we will see new subcultures arising that make possible
a greater embrace of these values. (Different from
any sort of "counter-culture" or "cultural critique" that
we've seen in the past.)

Chapter 5. (Untitled.)

If *my* past five years are any indication (i.e. the
time I've been out of school), the trends we're
seeing now have to do with the rise of personal
power (as opposed to the power of traditional
institutions and other enduring modes of relating).
The traditional stuff will all continue to exist and
be remixed and even gain in popularity (like "Miserlou"
appearing in "Pulp Fiction"). But I think the
countervailing trend -- towards "unpopular"
innovations -- will become more prevalent. Perhaps
this sounds like some kind of "alternativey utopia"...
maybe... but I think it will be brought about not
by a 80's and 90's style consumerism, but by a
new sort of "producerism".

At least, that's my hope!

you make me like charity

The song's logic of insufficiency or ineffectiveness
is really reminiscent of states I get into: "whatever
I do, it won't be enough!" Of course, not every
situation is so dire. But the remarkable thing is
that I seem especially to strive to "transform"
the aforementioned into logics of "always-already
enough"; into situations where "attendance counts
for 100% of the grade".

And what kind of transformation would this be? Is
it purely in my mind, perhaps -- seeking to delude
myself? Or is there some more subtle or essential
mumbo jumbo that one can enact upon the world
and one's bearing within it that renders the new
logic "true"?

For example, the knife applied to the square peg,
solving the round hole problem, gordian knot style.

Or... speaking of knots, there is some famous monkey
related thought experiment, but I did find an interesting
real monkey experiment on peer pressures.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place

activist anthropology

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw
back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative
and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of
which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the
moment one definitely commits oneself, providence moves
too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents,
meetings and material assistance which no man could have
dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or
dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and
magic in it. Begin it now.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quoted at:

http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/activist_anthropology.htm

thinking of scarcity

I am the thin king of scar city
that lives in you at sunset,
when you look at the light horizontal
and at midnight
when you see the brightest stars in the sky
and no others

you, too, can be part of a think tank

http://www.ssfthinktank.org/

growing up in the country

"It is wonderful how people, who never come up against reality
from the cradle to the grave, and live all their lives a purely artificial
existence in some city divorced from all contact with primitive
nature, get into the habit of supposing that the conventions which
regulate their businesses and livelihoods can be applied to the
economy of the world at large. It would be quite impossible for
any member of the agricultural community, for example,
accustomed to the ways in which wealth is really produced, to
fall down and worship the institution of usury in such a naive
fashion, or for a Labour Government, to be guilty of the confusions
between wealth and debt which are characteristic of orthodox
politicians at the present time. We have in the hitherto association
of the function of Government almost entirely with those who live
by rent, interest and profit, and thus take from rather than
contribute to the revenue of the wealth of the community, a further
justification for the view already expressed, that the community in
its struggle for existence resembles an army officered almost
entirely by the enemy."

F. Soddy, at http://habitat.aq.upm.es/boletin/n37/afsod.en.html#fnmark-5

the doctrine of virtual wealth

This summary of the 1926 book "Wealth, Virtual Wealth and
Debt: A Solution to the Economic Paradox" contains by far the
most sensible-sounding economics ideas I've heard in a while,

http://nesara.org/articles/soddy88.htm

Innovative, but in some ways not dissimilar to a self-winding
watch w/ a regulator (i.e. as opposed to a "perpetual motion
machine")

It's enough, this morning, to make me feel like I'm having a
good day.

scarcity, excess, and sufficiency

First of all, it occurs to me that these three "regimes"
correspond to spherical, hyperbolic, and Euclidean space,
respectively.

Second, it seems interesting to ask: Which things
are scarce? Which things are there too much of?
Which things are there enough of?

And -- are these things inherently scarce, over-abundant,
or sufficient -- locally, or globally?

What can be done with a scarcity or an excess?
(E.g. in the bath, you can turn on hot or cold water
as needed -- or if the bath itself gets too full, you can
unplug the drain.)

I think there are plenty of times when I'm interacting
with what I deem to be a scarce resource (perhaps because
of "artificial" constraints -- whether or not the "artifice" is
explicitly productive) and I get into some sort of panic
mode. There will never be enough, there is nothing I can
do about it -- and so forth and so on.

I'm guessing that just by requiring myself to go through
the checklist (1) Is it locally scarce or globally scarce?
and (2) if it is only locally scarce, what can I do to get
to a position where it is sufficient? -- I might open up
mental pathways that would allow me to break out of
my panic.