An Era of Strangeness...

There are times when you can understand why the anti-modernists are so frantic. So desperate to prevent the 21st Century from finally arriving.


* Women applying reciprocal accountability with cell cams... exactly as in EARTH and in The Transparent Society. Holla Back NYC, a blog-cum-grass-roots movement uses digital technology to combat street harassment. They urge women not only to take a photo when men hassle or insult them in public, but to make the photo public on http://www.hollabacknyc.com/. I have always found that women seem to grasp the concept better than men do. They have benefited best from every step toward a world of accountability and light.

* Down at the commentary level, Stefan Jones pojted out a site that is of some importance in the struggles for progressive modernism. Following similar lines to my “Proxy Power” notion, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BUK41Y a site called the Scientific Activist lists organizations that can take small donations and leverage them into bullets in the hard fight to save Enlightenment Civilization. Give it a look. And then give. (This list is worth noting somewhere and passing along.)

* The first genetic map of colon and breast cancer shows that nearly 200 mutated genes -- most of them previously unknown -- help tumors start, grow and spread. The findings could lead to new treatments for cancer and better ways to diagnose...

"The vast majority of these genes were not known to be genetically altered in tumors and are predicted to affect a wide range of cellular functions, including transcription, adhesion, and invasion," they wrote in their report published in the journal Science. "We anticipate that as The Cancer Genome Atlas scales up, we may be able to identify the majority of genetic changes that cause the most important and common forms of the major cancers," I mean dang. When the process becomes this involved, this complex, this inter-dependent, you have just got to start wondering in extremely science fictional ways. These mutations are starting to look less and less like “accidents” and more and more like something meaningful, as in some Greg Bear novel.

What if you turned ALL of the mutations on... AT ONCE??? Hm...

* Superimposing computer-generated images over real scenes can dramatically help people with visual impairment, say Harvard Medical School researchers. Their device puts a cartoon on top of a person's regular view. It sketches out what the wider field of view looks like and superimposes that on the person's usual view....

* Today's cameras will let you adjust perceived reality, by altering a photo as it's snapped. Some new Hewlett-Packard cameras include a feature that makes subjects look thinner, while another mode makes facial lines and pores virtually disappear. A "skin tone" feature on some Olympus models can give consumers a leisure-class tan.

* Game theorist Robert Axelrod, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, is applying game theory to cancer. The "game" -- to grow a successful tumor -- proceeds more efficiently for all players if they cooperate. The theory could have major implications.


Fannish items.

* For a 40th Anniversary Tribute to Star Trek... in both English and Hebrew!

* An informal interview with me at the worldcon Hugo Loser's Party is now online.

* I've had some of my characters dramatized in unusual media over the years. An Australian fan made magnificent plush toys of the "noor" or "tytlal" characters in BRIGHTNESS REEF and even a Tower of Hanoi game in which successive rings get piled up to make a wise old traeki sage! Now, in the run-up to the 2007 worldcon, I have been given a CD showing details how to make origami figures of various uplift species, from urs and hoon to traeki and even the wheeled g'kek! All by expert Kazuo Sumiya. There are even plans to do a joint performance - (I’ll recite a story while he... folds?) in Yokohama next August.