Archive for 2005

Inkjet Printers Offer Biology Breakthrough | Emily C Kumler
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117318,00.asp
“If you think injecting ink into a printer cartridge might damage your printer, try filling it with animal cells. That’s what they’re doing at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, these days. In the name of science, researchers have developed a way to print sheets of solid animal tissue by filling Hewlett-Packard and Canon inkjet cartridges with animal cells, or ‘bio-ink.'”

New machines could turn homes into small factories | University of Bath
http://www.bath.ac.uk/pr/releases/replicating-machines.htm
“Research by engineers at the University of Bath could transform the manufacture of almost all everyday household objects by allowing people to produce them in their own homes at the cost of a few pounds. Dr Adrian Bowyer in front of a rapid prototype machine. The new system is based upon rapid prototype machines, which are now used to produce plastic components for industry such as vehicle parts. The method they use, in which plastic is laid down in designs produced in 3D on computers, could be adapted to make many household items.”NOTE: In addition to the story, there is a link to an audio file on this page

Taste for meat made humans early weaners | Anna Gosline
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6921
“A taste for meat prompted early humans to wean their children at a young age. The idea explains why we now wean our infants years earlier than other great apes. […] the nutritional benefit of eating meat at a younger age would have helped children’s brains to grow and develop more quickly. Human brains grow three times quicker than those of chimpanzees.”

Forget takeout, eat a print-out | Celeste Biever
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6983&feedId=online-news_rss20
“It is not quite the stuff of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but the fare coming out of Homaru Cantu’s kitchen is just as bizarre. In Roald Dahl’s famous children’s book, chewing gum is made to taste like a three-course meal. Cantu, a cordon-bleu chef, has modified an ink-jet printer to create dishes made of edible paper that can taste like anything from birthday cake to sushi. ‘You can make an ink-jet printer do just about anything,’ says Cantu, who is head chef at the Moto restaurant in Chicago, US, and a keen advocate of the high-tech kitchen. The printer’s cartridges are loaded with fruit and vegetable concoctions instead of ink, and the paper tray contains edible sheets of soybean and potato starch. Cantu then prints out tasty versions of images he has downloaded from the web.”

Speaking of tongues | Martin Jacques
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,6121,1435748,00.html
“From his rich picture of why major languages have waxed and waned, it is clear that there is no single model: on the contrary, while Ostler does his best to categorise and conceptualise, there are in fact almost as many models as there are languages. For all the hubris about the rise of English and how it will rule the world’s tongues for ever, it is sobering to reflect on why languages that in their day seemed utterly irresistible in their dominance and prestige, spoken across large regions of the world for thousands of years, were eventually eclipsed.”

Crime fighters brought to book | Jo Tuckman
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1432483,00.html
“Police in a sprawling working-class suburb on the edge of the Mexican capital are to fight crime with a new weapon: books. The leftwing mayor of Nezahualcoyotl, Luis Sanchez, has ordered all 1,100 members of the municipal police to read at least one book a month or forfeit their chance of promotion. ‘We believe reading will improve their vocabulary and their writing skills, help them express themselves, order their ideas and communicate with the public,’ Mr Sanchez said. ‘Reading will make them better police officers and better people.'”

But for those readers than, this is what it’s about:

The Canada Council is like the United States’ N.E.A. In my circle, I hear that artists outside of Canada are jealous that we get all these grants, but that’s not true. The Canada Council only supports 8% of those that apply, which means that there are rumours of favouritism and of cliques, and it creates the myth of prestige, so that 3 years after you graduate from artschool, you too can submit your name into this lottery for $3000. If the jury thinks your work is ‘great’, you get your taxable cheque and get to inspire envy and jealousy amongst your peers. Now, the Canada Council wants to change all this. They want to start giving out greater funds to the more established cliques, people who have somehow already been able to manage without their support. Artists who have benefited either from past funding or believe in the prestige-factor, are complaining and writing petitions, seemingly wanting to maintain the system as it is, while fearing future vindictiveness from the Council for opposing its suggested course of action.

Oh Canada!

– Timothy
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Art heist | Soloman Fagan
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2005-03-10/news_story2.php
“Remember, the Council’s funding has not increased over the years to keep up with inflation ? but how does cutting developing artists’ funding remedy this? One board member told me ‘sustainability’ was the buzzword in discussions. But the two grants that individual artists can receive in four years could hardly sustain anyone at the old rates, let alone the proposed chopped ones. […] According to Balkan, the Council wants to focus on ‘breakthrough’ artists like Janet Cardiff. While I agree that Cardiff is doing excellent work and deserves support, in the context of the proposed changes her selection raises some disturbing questions. Will we let an international system of biennales determine Canadian cultural value rather than Canadians themselves? Is an artistic criterion being established that equates technological progress with cultural value? […] Apparently, one of the rationales for the drastic reallocation of funding to ‘senior’ artists is the high cost of producing pieces like Cardiff’s. This is art on the scale promoted by the international system in which countries send their representatives for collective mega-exhibitions. Here, full-room ‘installations’ of live nude female models or live tropical butterflies, à la Vanessa Beecroft, Matthew Barney or Damien Hirst, can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce. How can Canadian artists, with a current meagre $34,000 in the senior category, ‘compete’ with those who can mount works of such magnitude? While gigantism and expensive technologies are all the rage at large exhibits, it’s unclear how promoting Canada as a ‘global competitor’ in the culture wars will benefit anyone here at home. Perhaps the idea is to garner established artists a higher profile and thereby raise the status of the discipline nationwide, hoping this will ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us. But this is hypothetical. It’s the young and less privileged artists who will suffer the financial brunt of the experiment.”

A genius explains | Richard Johnson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html
“Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.”

Idealist and realist; Albert Einstein’s free spirit | Yehuda Elkana
http://www.signandsight.com/features/18.html
“Finally, it is an important legacy of Einstein to take popular science seriously, and to encourage it being written by excellent writers who know science and reflect upon it. It is well-known that Einstein ascribed his early awareness of problems, and his overview of them, to having read at an early stage the series of popular science books by Aaron Bernstein. These books left a deeper mark on him than is usually acknowledged. We talk much nowadays of the ‘public understanding of science’: often it is presumed by working scientists – even by some of the best of them – that the issue is a popular explanation of technically difficult points like how a nuclear reactor works, or what in technical terms constitutes cloning. But they are wrong: what the public needs is an argument about problem-choices, the place and importance of chosen problems in the context of social needs but also of the map of the state of science, risks and chances.”

Suffering, Empathy, Art and the Greater Good | Emily Vey Duke
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/emilyveyduke/
“The problem is that students in art schools, especially at the undergraduate level, are taught the Duchampian paradigm ‘it’s art if you say it is, and saying it’s art when it’s not artful is itself a radical act.’ They’re taught to be suspicious of the beautiful and the interesting, and to follow their quirky whims regardless of the relevance they have to anyone else. They’re also taught, without ever being explicitly told, that as soon as something is art, it’s precious. As a result, art education creates artists who believe that they don’t have to try very hard to make something of immeasurable value. This is no service to the art world. In fact, I think it’s why art is suffering such a crisis of irrelevance to the public at large. The work we’re producing is just not good enough to catch the eye of the non-art-initiated viewer, let alone to hold her attention for long enough to make her care. […] So as always, the question remains: How can we do it better?”

It is frankly one of the most sane and considered things I’ve read in a long time, and insightful in ways that most articles and press fail to be. – Timothy
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Ex-lefties and Suicide-site Guide to the City | Stef Lenk, Darren O’Donnel et al
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/x-lefties/
“[O’Donnell writes] You : ‘the Us vs. Them scenario is getting us nowhere’. Okay, well, I’ll tell you what. If you can arrange it so I can spend some quality time with one of the world’s 300 billionaires so I can really understand where they’re at then I will consider changing my position. If you can get me into one of their gated communities so we can have a heart-to-heart then I will really open myself to this person. Let me know. I’m busy until the 20th but after that I’m free. […] [Barker writes]There is an enormous potential to have a positive impact on the lives of our community, and our peers (as you identify them) through our artwork, action and example – but it is more the maturity we express as people and citizens, then as artists, that will determine that impact, peer-to-peer. We have some social power, with power comes responsibility, our social power is ours to use or misuse. But artists seem to have a tendency, at least in our subculture, towards self-centredness – perhaps no more, or no less than other kinds of subcultures – but it is the particular ways in which it is expressed in the art scene that makes me a little doubtful of the potential for rallying to goodness around the identification as artists. In any case, I don’t have any real disagreement with the opinions expressed here, just alot of personal frustration with some tendencies in my peer group! I’ll freely admit to that!”

The RCMP, Grow-ops, and Psychopaths | Timothy Comeau
http://tinyurl.com/6p2ll
“In the overblown media coverage though, no one has pointed out how unique a country we are where 4 deaths is a ‘national tragedy’. And the grow ops thing – heck even my dad sees the similarities between this type of gunslinger madness and that of the dirty 30’s prohibition. Which also reminds me of Darren O’Donnell’s concerns about the incarceration rates of the United States, which he brings up in his play, A Suicide Site Guide to the City. The United States today puts a greater percentage of its citizens in jails than any other country in the world. A majority of these are drug charges, and most of the people in jail are black. Forget everything you think you know about why that is and consider this…”