Archive for the 'cyborg' Category

"The next day, I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as “Horizon,” “Outer Space,” and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown. I watched the sun set, listening to the colors change as the sky darkened."

TED talk from Aimee Mullins, whom I know primarily as one of Matthew Barney's muses and accomplices in the Cremaster cycle. She discusses the possibilities of prosthetics beyond simply regaining or replacing lost or diminished function.

"She does not always perceive the arm but 'retrieves' it when needed, doctors told the Swiss news agency."

"We wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now there are mermaids swimming about in your local pool."

"Some ant nests are so enormous that they are akin to the skeletons of whales. Those of one species of leafcutter ant from South America, for example, can contain nearly two thousand individual chambers, some with a capacity of fifty liters, and they can involve the excavation of forty tons of earth and extend over hundreds of square feet. Coordination within such giant colonies, which can house eight million individual ants, occurs through ant communication systems that are extraordinarily sophisticated and are the equivalent of the human nervous system."

"Louis Weiner, director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre at Georgetown University, Washington, wrote that Yee's work 'underscores the remarkable potential of the immune system to eradicate cancer, even when the disease is widespread'."

"Capizzi…says his…terrier, Candie…is scared of his new Pleo…'She's terrified of it. She bites it,' he says. 'That dog really believes it's another animal.' He sent Pleo home with his fiancée's mother, who 'fell in love with it and treats it like

Quick rundown of the actual reasoning behind the IAAF's original ruling and the reasoning behind the overturning of that ruling by the CAS. Also makes the point that as prostheses continue to improve, the Paralympics will likely become a superhuman event.

Nice, long post about the recent ruling that allows double-amputee Oscar Pistorius of South Africa to attempt to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. He runs on two carbon-fiber "blades" modeled after the lower legs of a cheetah.

"It’s fun to think of it as ‘dusty’ blue because of what befalls it later. It’s by far the best suit in the movie, in the movies, perhaps the whole world."

Best part? It's called the Argus II. Argus is the name of several mythic figures, including Argus Panoptes (the hundred-eyed giant), Odysseus' faithful dog, and both the shipwright of the Argo and also a shipwrecked traveller rescued by Jason.

A not particularly carefully OCR'd pdf of Clynes' and Kline's groundbreaking article on the plausibility of modifying the human body to adapt to extended periods of spaceflight. Might be worth considering in the face of the doping scandal, might not.

The glow-in-the-dark cats and the schizophrenic mice should get on well together.

All of the bacteria in an adult human would fit into a half gallon jug, and surpass human cells in quantity by 10 times. Not only that, but some of our genes appear to be "bacterial in origin."

Information on the newly recreated "Turk."

Pretty amazing story about a mechanical prosthetic with the unfortunate name "X Finger" that operates without electricity based on the movement of the patient's hand. Unclear whether they're also in the thumb business, but articulated fingers are swell.