Britons attack US cloning ban bid

Britain's Royal Society is backing a campaign to stop the US securing a world ban on all forms of human cloning.
[BBC News]

I don't think a world ban on human cloning is even possible. There are too many people who would be willing to do that research underground. Just think of all the mega-rich guys in their seventies that want to discover whether they can extend their life by cloning themselves.

Unfortunately...

Unfortunately, that quote is taken out of context. Tsk tsk.

Kindly provide the proper context instead of merely leaving an anonymous comment.

Guess which country

The Justice Dept. blacked out (censored) this part of a Supreme Court decision:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

Link
via [BoingBoing]

The Tao of Music

Everything I know I learned from playing the guitar.

Pain is part of it. Growth and change can be painful - you have to grow calluses on your fingers, exercise your muscles and stretch your tendons.

Work is essential to achieve growth in any field - practicing guitar strengthens your fingers, but more importantly creates new neural pathways in your brain.

Discipline - you can't just play guitar once in a while, you need to have the mental discipline to do it daily.

Surrender - you have to surrender to the rhythm, to the groove of the band - the sum of the total.

Content by Koolhaas

Man did I love this book. Man did I hate this book. Here's what I loved about it: There's just simply no one better at...
[Another World Is Here]

Ah, sometimes those are the best books, movies, songs, paintings - the stuff you have that strong I hate this reaction to at first. I can't tell you how often that has happened to me. There are paintings (and books, movies and music!) I have visited many times, at first disliking them, then discovering them, and finally loving them and how they opened my eyes.

Envisioned as a non-profit enterprise by TASCHEN and OMA-AMO, Content is being sold at the lowest price possible (€9.99, $14.99, £6.99, ¥1900). In order to cover production costs and provide a more authentic magazine feel, the book contains paid advertising.

Whoa, hold on you say, what on earth is this book about? Glad you ask...

The book’s content follows Koolhaas’s expanding interests, mixing architecture with politics, history, technology, and sociology. Its subjects are diverse: Martha Stewart is interviewed in one section; the history of African communist radio is charted in another. An anthropological study of subcultures in Germany’s Ruhr Valley is followed by proposals for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Topics are arranged according to geography: the book begins in San Francisco and travels eastwards, finally ending in Tokyo. On the way, time is spent in Brazil, Nigeria, Portugal, Russia, and China, among other places.

GE Getting Greener

Here is some good news to end the week with:

"GE: Green and European," in the current Technology Review, makes it clear how big the firm's efforts actually are. G.E. is set to open up a $52 million renewable energy research lab near Munich. The lab will look at ways to advance wind turbine, fuel cell, biomass, and polymer-photovoltaic technologies, as well as developing the systems required to integrate less-steady alternative power sources into existing electrical grids.
[Another World Is Here]

Unfortunately Siemens isn't playing, which disappoints me:

The Technology Review article notes that G.E.'s move into Germany is the direct result of the decision by its main European rival, Siemens, not to make renewable energy a core part of its business.

Frames trump Facts

From the UC Berkeley News:

Lakoff's specialty is dissecting "framing," or the ways in which conservatives and liberals position issues to fit their respective moral worldviews.

Very interesting article on linguistics in politics.

Tortillas, eggs + location-specific environmental awareness...

How to heat up a tortilla for dinner. I am having salad and a couple of tortillas with pesto, a nice Mexitalian dish.

In case you are wondering what is in the orange pot in the back - why, that's water. I frequently enjoy hard boiled eggs for breakfast and to save water I throw a bunch of ice cubes into the pot when the eggs are done, instead of pouring the hot water down the drain and adding cold water to cool the eggs. I can then either re-use the water the next morning, or water a plant with it.

It's a little thing I call location-specific environmental awareness. In some places the electricity used to produce the ice cubes might be more precious than the running water wasted by cooling the eggs - but not here in Santa Fe.

Chile strips Pinochet of immunity

Chile's Supreme Court strips Augusto Pinochet of immunity, paving the way for a possible trial on human rights abuses.
[BBC News]

Justice is a meal that is cooked slowly, very slowly.

Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch

An embarrassing snafu with an electronic voting machine surfaces during a demonstration for California officials. Voting activists say it proves the point about why the machines need a paper trail. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News]

Genetic Savings & Clone: $50,000 per pet

Two kittens have been born using a new cloning method that may be safer and more efficient than traditional methods, a U.S. company said Thursday.

Genetic Savings & Clone promises to clone anyone’s pet -- for $50,000 or so -- and started with chief executive officer Lou Hawthorne’s own pet cat.

[As reported in this article in Wired News.]

You know, just in case you're concerned about running out of housecats once they evolve into something ferocious like the Australian dingo.

[Genetic Future Weblog]

Next - how to grow/clone your own replacement kidney, or lung...

Folk : Flamenco - my answer

Folk Music: It normally was shared and performed by the entire community (not by a special class of expert performers), and was transmitted by word of mouth.

It seems to me that Folk music is an expression of a group. It makes use of a specific melody and that melody is known to the performer(s) as well as to the audience. The audience might even sing along with the performers.

Flamenco is about the rhythm, and about the soloists depth of emotion. Often a melody is hardly recognizable, and certainly the audience would not be able to sing along with the singer. This technique is called melisma (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica melisma stems from the Greek word melizein - to sing, or melos - song.) Melisma simply means a group of notes or tones sung on one single syllable, or a melodic embellishment. Very arabic, very indian (dot, not feather).

That's what Flamenco seems to all about, really. In other words it is an individual sport and not a team sport like Folk. Yes, the audience participates, might do palmas, might yell encouragement and offer loud praise, but they are there to have the singer express his or her emotion, which then delivers the group to a shared place. The individual performer as a conduit to the past or the pain of the whole group.

I think Sevillanas are Folk music, but Robin Totten simply writes in his book "Song of the Outcasts": The sevillanas are not flamenco

Did anybody come close enough to get points?

Fourth Question

For 20 points: Why do I not consider Flamenco a type of Folk music?

And since I am not a musicologist and my definitions could be wrong, an extra 10 points would go to the person who proves me wrong - needs to be linked to sources of course.

That means 30 points are at stake if one person figures out why I don't think Flamenco is Folk music AND why that is wrong.

DVD : Wreck

From CNN:

Installed as recommended, DVD players and TV screens are either visible only from the back seats or will not work unless the vehicle is in park. But owners can defeat the safety measures by installing the devices themselves, as Petterson did, according to prosecutors.

Liz Neblett, spokeswoman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said more than 25 percent of police-reported crashes are distraction related, which covers everything from cell phone use to changing channels on a radio, screaming at kids, eating, applying makeup or reading a newspaper.

Vehicles can be equipped with fax machines, cell phones and two-way radios. But none should be used if they interrupt the concentration of drivers, she said. "It's a no-brainer. If it's distracting, don't do it," Neblett said.

I think there is a huge undefined area. I have mentioned before that people applying for a driver's license could be tested for their ability to multi-task. It is a fact that some people can multi-task better than others.

Another option would be to figure out a method to insure that a certain amount of attention is given to the street. One idea would be a sound or a visual signal that appears at random and which has to be responded to by the driver or the car emits a warning signal. That doesn't seem like a perfect solution either. Any suggestions?

Comment Spam

As you may have noticed, this journal has been receiving a fair amount of comment spam. It is easy to say to hell with these spammers, but they would not exist without the idiots who buy the wares the spammers offer...

Regardless, from now on I will close the comment option a few days after my entry is posted. In other words you will be able to leave a comment within a reasonable amount of time after my posting, and your comment will remain visible after I close the comment option.

Advertsing - 21st Century style

Blogs are the hottest thing on the Net, but are they messing with traditional publishing principles? One of the most popular, Fark.com, is allegedly selling links. Is it the wave of the future? By Daniel Terdiman.
[Wired News]

I found this item in the above Wired article:

Last year, Ford paid British novelist Carole Matthews to feature the Ford Fiesta prominently in her next two novels.

That brings up these thoughts:
1. Should an author or movie producer not have to disclose that s/he took money for including a certain brand in the story or movie?
2. Will we soon get so used to this sort of embedded advertising that all art will follow the modern photograph - we don't trust it like we used to, because everybody can use software to alter images.
3. Just think, Warhol didn't even get paid by Campbell!! What purity!

The Future: Common Ground

I have always felt that, when one is in a mess it matters less how one got into it, and more how one is going to get out of it. In this spirit I offer this thought:

It does not matter who is responsible for the current situation, which especially prevails in rural areas of many developing nations, where girls are not being given the opportunity to get an education, "because they will get married and have children anyway".

No, what really matters is that the situation is changed and that one prepares the ground for boy and girls alike being allowed to stay in school. Appointing blame or discussing the reasons for the current situation is not as useful as getting on with it and making sure it is different from now on.

Regarding the post on my friend, who was threatened because she spoke out against a hate-word being used: Yes, no two people of any gender should threaten a third over something s/he said.

I have been thinking about how one should deal with a situation like the one she was in. Should she have said nothing in order to avoid any confrontation? How many other people heard the man us that term. The restaurant is rather small and the tables are close together. How many diners preferred to ignore what they heard? Maybe when a hate-word is uttered in a public place everyone within earshot needs to turn around and stare at the person who used it. Maybe we can eventually create an atmosphere in which using that kind of language makes a person very uncomfortable.

Use it or lose it.

There is a beautiful story Isaac Asimov wrote, about a planet on which everything that isn't used and cared for, quickly falls apart. Knives, unused, become dull within weeks. Shoes that aren't worn regularly start pinching at first, and if neglected longer, they fall apart completely. At first the wealthy hire other people to wear and use their stuff, because they have more than they need... but it becomes to complicated to keep track of all of the items that need to be cared for, or worn. Eventually people have only the things they need or cherish.

I can think of many small and large things that this is very true for on this planet as well. Any relationship not getting the appropriate attention will wither. It will take more than the few weeks it would take on Asimov's planet, but wither it will. Democracy is like that also. Ignore it, choose to not participate in it, and it will surely wither.

Discussion

hey ottmar, i'd rather have you discuss this - you don't agree with me? let me know what you think....you probably didn't deserve such a strong response, but overall, do you see my argument? - tilak

I understand your argument but - here goes:

I believe that large systems, such as a society, have great inertia. Essentially they work like a pendulum. Or, in other words, for any action there is an opposite reaction.

Women were given the right to vote in the USA in 1920, not even a century ago. In Switzerland they have been allowed to vote only since 1984! Women haven't been allowed to go to universities for much longer than a century. Even today a woman with an opinion is often considered "opinionated", while a man with an opinion is considered "smart".

Consider that for a moment.

We are not talking about ancient times. Hell, my mother was a very smart woman, but she was not given the opportunity to get a higher education.

It is a fact that wherever women are educated in the world, the birthrate drops dramatically. This has been proven again and again in many different countries. Italy has a high literacy rate and a corresponding birth rate of 1.2. The birth rate in Bangladesh was reduced once women were allowed to receive an education. The same is true for many other countries. You can find more info about that on the net. In fact one researcher for the UN declared that the danger of over-population had a very simple solution: allow women to receive an education on the whole planet! Bingo! That's all we need to do.

In addition to that similar conditions apply to minorities, and so-called developing nations. This Planet, WE, cannot rest until everybody is lifted up. What is done to the lowliest among you, is done to me!

Then you take that our family court system, education system and the media is hopelessly biased against the male...

Hm, I guess now you know how it must have felt for women for thousands of years!

This is where I get back to the swinging pendulum. Yes, maybe there is a little bit of truth about the biases your mentioning, but the pendulum will swing until that is worked out.

I think on the whole we are in a better place than we have ever been - but that does not mean we can rest. There is much more to be done.

Stupid over-reaction

I think this is a stupid over-reaction to what a couple of dumb men did - first of all, the number of men who are uncomfortable with the changes over the last century is about equal to the number of women - it is just that the men tend to be a lot more visible. Also, almost all the transcendence and push toward a higher stage comes from men - there is almost zero contribution from women in terms of cultural evolution. So the fact that people like to keep a watch on the negatives of men shows their own "reverse sexist" tendencies! Ottmar included! - Posted by tilak at August 5, 2004 09:17 AM

I don't mind being called stupid if women can ignore the statement that there is almost zero contribution from women in terms of cultural evolution. No, wait, let's not accept either. I ain't stupid and I have known too many women who contribute enormously to the cultural evolution to accept the above comment. In fact the comment seems to be a typical male response - unless the writer is a woman, which would surprise me... or it's a friend of mine, who is provoking the provoker...

It's All About The Customer

Fast Company, Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos:

"And 'sometimes we measure things and see that in the short term they actually hurt sales, and we do it anyway,' he says, because Amazon managers don't think the short term is a good predictor of the long term. For example, they found that their biggest customers had such large collections of stuff -- especially CDs -- that they accidentally ordered items they had already bought from Amazon years ago. So they decided to give people a warning whenever this was about to happen. Sure enough, the warnings slightly reduced Amazon's sales. But it's hard to study the feature's long-term effects. Would it reduce sales over a 10-year period? They didn't think so. They thought it would make customers happy and probably increase sales. 'You have to use your judgment,' Bezos says. 'In cases like that, we say, 'Let's be simpleminded. We know this is a feature that's good for customers. Let's do it.'' "

[vedana.net]

I am glad somebody thinks beyond tomorrow. Bezos should go into politics where nobody even seems to think more than four years head. Looking ahead by ten years would revolutionize politics. Mind you, I think politicians should always look a generation ahead, but that's just me.

I think there are parallels in all fields. In music a pop band can build an audience by touring, which takes time, or they can create a controversial video and get MTV-fame. What some people find out is that those MTV bands don't know how to perform live - unless they use full backing and just move their mouths...

Men!

A friend told me the following story:

Recently she ate by herself in a local Santa Fe restaurant. She was seated close to two couples, tourists from another state - it doesn't matter which state they were from, as I believe that these kinds of people live all over this land.

The two men talked rather loudly an my friend, who sat only a couple of feet away overheard them saying that the U.S. needed to invade the whole mid-East. Then they talked about the "Spic" who is New Mexico's governor, and that last remark was a little too much for my friend. After she finished her meal and on her way out of the restaurant she turned to the four tourists and said: "You are guests in this state and I do not appreciate you calling our governor a spic."

Well, the two men got up and followed my friend to her car in the pouring rain. "Commie Bitch" was the nicest name they called my friend as they attempted to get into her car. Luckily my friend's dog came of age that evening and defended the car and his master.

I think there are several points in this story that are interesting to examine.

1. In private these tourists should be allowed to call the New Mexico governor, or anybody for that matter, anything they please. But that kind of hate-language is absolutely not appropriate in public - and a restaurant is a public place.

2. Two men should never threaten a single woman, period. Especially when she only remarked that she did not appreciate them calling our governor a "Spic". That comment was mild compared to them calling her a "commie bitch". That's like nuking a country in return for a couple of their soldiers invading.

3. This brings me to another subject I have given a lot of thought to recently: I am wondering whether extreme political views and extreme language, as displayed by these men, is a sign that certain men are not comfortable with the changes of the half-century. Some men talk about men having been emasculated over the last few decades, some join "men's groups" and run through the forest naked, or whatever those groups do, and many return to cave-man politics and cave-man speech. My first reaction would be to knock them upside the head, another typical male response that would obviously not change anything. No, I believe we all, as a whole, as a society, have to create a climate in which such talk and violence (running after a woman and threatening her in the above described manner is violence!) cannot foster and the perpetrators would know that it is not tolerated. And to men such as those I would say: "grow and change because your days are numbered!"

the answer

since the question is who has "traditionally" had the highest rank, I'd have to say in Traditional Chinese Medicine the Herbalist has had the highest rank. Herbal remedies are still being used in modern chinese medicine, and "traditionally" they were #1! - posted by vincent@mystictraining.com

The herbalist was indeed #1 traditionally, and still is. I believe that in many modern hospitals in China the herbalist still ranks above the surgeon.

Since I forgot to set the points for this questions, I am going to give ten points and here is the leaderboard, ladies and gentlemen:
Vincent - 13 points
Victor - 10 points
Brad - 5 points
Carol - 5 points

Performing Rights

On Aug 2, 2004, at 11:57 AM, Eric Nolan wrote:
Let me know if I'm coming out of left field here...  I read an article on wired.com about dentists in Canada having to pay SOCAN fees to play music in their offices.

Okay here is where I disagree with the whole enforcement of paying for music.  Music, itself,  has nothing to do with business. It is a celebration of life through sound. I mean really, how much does the actual artist get paid if someone pays $100 a year for music services after everyone gets their cut? Can't imagine it would be much. No, I think that all artists are like those people you see on the corner with their guitar and an open guitar case. Some people will drop money in, some won't, but everyone will be able to listen to the sound of music (to coin a phrase). Let people support the artist in whatever way they're comfortable with. Some may just contribute by clapping, others by giving money. Artists are to be appreciated for their unique view of our world not the dollars and sense that big business attributes to their talents. I'm sure that people can come to their own conclusion of paying money for the artist ! they wish to support, not the artist's opulent masters. I don't see anyone paying the city of Santa Monica for the artists that play on their streets...do you?

Yes, you are, Eric... Every public performance means money for the composer and many old musicians depend on that income. A dental office is as much a public place as is a cafe, restaurant or store. If they are using music to make people comfortable, or entertain them, or whatever - they need to pay.

The amount of money they have to pay depends on how many customers they entertain, i.e. the performing right fee for a dentist's office will be a lot lower than the fee a restaurant or super market would pay. $100 bucks is less than $10/month. If the dentist should feel that that is too much, they can order a subscription service such as the Dish Network, Direct, or Muzak, which are more expensive and which, by the way, include the performing rights money in their fee. Every six months I see some money for my music played by those services.

All of those fees go into a pot and are distributed between all of the members of the performing rights organizations, e.g. BMI or ASCAP.

I bet that the writer for Wired would be very upset if his article was re-published by another magazine without him getting any money, yes?!!!

I am getting tired of so many writers claiming that music should be free when their articles usually are not! Ask a photographer about a photo s/he took of you a few years back and which you paid for (fee plus expenses) and might want to use for a new CD. That photographer will talk about them still owning that photo and you only licensing the image.

Let me give you an example. When a photographer took pictures of me for the "Little Wing" CD, s/he was paid by Epic for the rights to use those images on CDs, posters etc., and when I decided to use one of the images for T-shirts, I had to pay a new fee to the photographer for the right to use that photo. Do you understand now? Images, words and music have all moved away from ownership and into licensing. Even a painter, who sold you his painting has the right to get paid if you should use that image for advertising, for example. After all you bought the painting and not the right to do whatever you want with the image. There are web sites for art, where you can search through photos of paintings and then license the image for an advertising campaign, or your new CD - without buying the painting.

Now, I personally gave CDs to my dentist and told him I would not mind him playing those CDs without notifying the performing rights organizations, but that is not the point.

How would you suggest we differentiate between the public performance of a piece of music in a dental office, or in a restaurant, or on the radio, or on TV, or in a movie theater?

Do you want musicians to go back to the good old times: living on hand-outs, or having to find a rich benefactor? Surely not!

Maybe you are proposing a world in which everyone works for tips. I should suggest that to my dentist. He should put up a tip jar and "Some people will drop money in, some won't, but everyone will be able to get dental care. Let people support the dentist in whatever way they're comfortable with." Yeah, sure!!! If he gets paid, I want to get paid as well.

Third Question

Infected tooth. I just came home from back to back visits with my acupuncturist, who I have seen for a decade and half, and a brilliant Chinese herbalist, who I saw for the first time.

That brings me to question number three:

Who has traditionally the highest rank in a Chinese hospital:
Surgeon
Acupunturist
Herbalist
Massage Therapist