The Golem

It is neither the sci-fi novel by Lem nor the ancient Jewish myth. It is about science.

Its heroes are researchers and the monsters they fight are gravity waves, neutrinos and cold fusion. Watch out. Read this book by Collins and Pinch. Tah-dah.

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I would like to make a film out of this book, although the sexual behaviour of the whiptail lizard would be hard to sell to a producer.

Neutrino detectors buried deep within uranium mines could be easier to capture and to promote.

I am writing this without having read the last pages of the book, and especially the scientists’ reactions. I wonder if they understand and so I am looking forward to read the last pages of the book.

5 Minutes

5

I wonder what I can write about in 5 minutes. My typing is rather slow, so…

4

…I guess that is the first constraint. However, I can mention the Bauernbergpark Man

3

who is gone, and the Goschpoidls who can be found almost everywhere…

2

time is running out, I am really a slow person

1

and proud of it

Bio:fiction film festival

10 impressions

1  The Museum of Natural History as well as the Bellaria cinema offer a real unique atmosphere, which was even more beautiful when the musicians were playing at the gala event

2 The conversations I had were very cool although sometimes I talked too much instead of listening.

  (Hmm a very general statement, nevertheless my thanks especially go to Malthe, Rüdiger, J.J.,Virgil and Laurens and to my employers and colleagues)

3 In some of the discussions a seemingly unnecessary polarization occurred. Some people only see black and white although their intellectual capacities seem to go far beyond that.

4 I especially appreciated the tough work done by Helge and Alexander who spent lots of time observing and will spend a lot of time analyzing the festival

5 At some point I was alone in a corridor after 10p.m., the light was dim and I was surrounded by all sorts of bears, a polar bear among them. That was a unique experience.

6 The mix of people, speakers and audience alike was wonderful again.

7 I was not bored for one single second. That is special for two and a half days.

8 The after show party at Rote Bar in Volkstheater, was as nice as the one three years ago

9 It seems to be quite fruitful and interesting to organize such a festival more than once in a lifetime

10 However, this is also an ecological niche, that was miraculously filled for three days.

Ecological niche

I occupy an ecological niche in the culture that surrounds me. It keeps me going and alive.
My tastes seem unusual to me, maybe a little bit nerdy but not too much.
My work is hard to explain, but is somewhere between total euphoria (Bio:fiction film festival) and depression (useless discussions with people who love to listen to themselves talking)
My lifestyle is between Zen philosophy and fast-as-lightning capitalist acolyte.
It is time to make decisions.
It seems to be the right time.
Freedom seems to be at hand.

Eeeeeleeeectricity

Yes

Stuck in matter

Just before starting work I am stuck in matter. The material world has caught me.
I am trapped.
However, this is a good feeling. Although a way of escape seems invisible or unreachable, I am feeling fine.
Although freeing one's mind should be the objective, I am a happy prisoner now. I am here and I am feeling a sense of presence amidst all the rubbish and nice things that surround me.
And I am giving in.
It makes me a free prisoner, a paradox a singularity.
Let's get going:
I have filled a jar stuffed with coral sand and shells with gin to purify the mixture and to get rid of the smell. I do not care if it works because I have shut the lid of the container again, and I am outside and not inside of it. The alcohol is pushing the smell out of the glass and it reminds me of our time in Ireland when we collected the sand and the shells.
So the ocean is with me here in Central Europe. My material prison is suddenly filled with the smell of the Atlantic Sea.
What a nice starting point for working myself out of the rubbish.

While I am writing this IS troops are fighting Kurds near the Turkish border to Syria, farming planes are spraying tons of pesticides on GMO crop fields, new nuclear power stations are being built or tested, Ebola is finding its way out of Africa and millions of people are wondering how to get food or clean water.

What else can I be but happy, that for the moment I am not involved in any of this, be grateful to be trapped in my illusion of safety, somewhere in a quiet place on this crazy planet. I wish that any of my next movements and actions could reduce the suffering, be of any help to anyone.

As I keep passing through little moments in other people's lives I will try to give them a little of the peace I am enjoying now…

…and a smile.

Reincarnation again

…hurts. Either way. The Osiris and the Christ version.
It gives you headaches, loss of orientation and depression.
On the other hand it is nice to be back, back from the beyond.
The first Wiener Schnitzel after death or insanity is a true feast.
The first kiss, the wind and the rain, the sun and the song of a distant bird.
They are very intense.
However something seems to be lost, lost in transition, in translation, in metamorphosis.
Some elements seem to be lost forever, although they are here forever (as Parmenides would say).
Digging up the dirt again is also a very painful process.
And you promise to turn back next time before it is too late again.
Hopefully.

Man on bus aka burning man

In Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Ltd. there is a man on a bus.
In the sci-fi horror movie Event Horizon there is a burning man.
Nothing is complete without the man on the bus aka the burning man.
It is not Hamlet or Luke Skywalker, Faust or Captain Kirk, who are the key players.
It is the burning man on the bus, the Bauernbergpark Man, the Auersbergplatz Man and the man at St.Peter's station.
The world is not complete without the man on the bus.
Event Horizon is nothing without the burning man.
We trample on the weak and laugh about the feeble.
But what are we to do so.
Nothing more than grains of sand and nothing less than tiny universes.
Enough pathos for today.
As Bowie used to sing: when I die, moon-dust, will cover me....

The Master

I met the master near St.Pieter's station in Gent. He looked pretty humble but he told me that in the form of the Bauernbergpark Man he had had an eye on me already.
When he tried to bring my legs into the lotos position, we had great fun and shared a cigarette. A big moment of teaching. A true master.
Now, after receiving his teachings I am blogging myself back into sanity.
It's been a long way.
Welcome back.

Regenesis?

Everything will be fine. Everything? Yes, everything! – Given, that synthetic biologists all over the world are free to act as they want and in addition do so in a responsible fashion.

This of course is an oversimplification of what took me three months to read.

It took so long, not because it is too boring or too complicated, too badly structured or missing a story line. No it took me so long because all these four attributes can be found in passages of the book. To be fair, some parts of the book are really brilliant, rich in metaphor, thought provoking and a very interesting summary of cutting edge technology. In other chapters it is easy to get stuck.

So the book was like a pilgrimage for me, through the mindset of one of the leading scientists in his field, through state-of-the-art technology and through visions of a future full of technological solutions for our problems.

If the cloning of the Neanderthal man, or other extinct species, mirror life or space travel, personal eugenics or total extermination of viruses does not frighten you then you will be at home here. Regenesis offers all of it.

Whereas my favourite vision was the one with cheap bio-fuel derived from Cyanobacteria, the ironic criticism of Venter’s philosophic approaches in creating Synthia could fire back: Yes indeed: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.

In between the visions (he who has visions should see the physician) and the sometimes enthusiastically formulated technical details one can find very interesting stories about iGEM, SYNBERC, DIYBio and drug production.

Sometimes the book seems to be over-enthusiastic about the possible achievements of synthetic genomics or synthetic biology. However, the authors do not fail to mention certain drawbacks of every single industrial revolution in the past, and also the possible ones of the future.

Do we really have to push the frontier of technology further into the cell, into the realm of the living. Are we doomed to join the race against exponential curves of all kind.

The seven decisions or questions about the future with which the book ends, sum up all its core messages.

I won’t tell you about them. Read yourself.

And what do I think about all this. It is simple:

If we change our minds we do not need to change our genomes.

Metamorphosis

Well. I have written the title of the post without thinking about the content. But that does not keep me from writing something. Anything.
It is a kind of freedom. And it will be about Metamorphosis. That is what everything is about, anyway. Only butterflies and frogs are very good at it and do it rather obviously.
However, we live in constant metamorphosis, in constant change. Even rocks can do that.
So we are a big family: butterfly, slate, humans. Ha. I know that already, but do you, dear follower, reader, facebook friend? Open your eyes and see.
In an empty world, full of Goschpoidls and Bauernbergpark Men, we can see it every day, every second, every blink of an eye.
But how do we react? We are either angry (in the case of Goschpoidls) or frightened (in the case of Bauernbergpark Men). We are so self-centered that we don't realize that this is part of the game, of us, of ourselves.
We moan, and suffer, instead of sitting still, watching and enjoying. We ruin our days by switching on the TV or reading the news. We could do something good instead: Nothing.
It is magic.
You'll never know what you can achieve by not doing things.
The clever ones among you followers, readers, Facebook friends, Romans, countrymen and lovers will say: Yes I will starve.
However, someone might just come along and feed you, and then only your pride can starve you to death.
Metamorphosis: From Ovid, to rock formations, from frog to butterfly, to us. Watch out and fly on the wings of change.