Tag Archives: dance

Wetware – Dennis Bray

by Myrna Posted on August 26, 2019

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Wetware

A Computer in Every Living Cell

Dennis Bray

Genre: Biology

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: May 26, 2009

Publisher: Yale University Press (Ignition)

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


“A beautifully written journey into the mechanics of the world of the cell, and even beyond, exploring the analogy with computers in a surprising way” (Denis Noble, author of Dance to the Tune of Life ).   How does a single-cell creature, such as an amoeba, lead such a sophisticated life? How does it hunt living prey, respond to lights, sounds, and smells, and display complex sequences of movements without the benefit of a nervous system? This book offers a startling and original answer.   In clear, jargon-free language, Dennis Bray taps the findings from the discipline of systems biology to show that the internal chemistry of living cells is a form of computation. Cells are built out of molecular circuits that perform logical operations, as electronic devices do, but with unique properties. Bray argues that the computational juice of cells provides the basis for all distinctive properties of living systems: it allows organisms to embody in their internal structure an image of the world, and this accounts for their adaptability, responsiveness, and intelligence.   In Wetware , Bray offers imaginative, wide-ranging, and perceptive critiques of robotics and complexity theory, as well as many entertaining and telling anecdotes. For the general reader, the practicing scientist, and all others with an interest in the nature of life, this book is an exciting portal to some of biology’s latest discoveries and ideas.   “Drawing on the similarities between Pac-Man and an amoeba and efforts to model the human brain, this absorbing read shows that biologists and engineers have a lot to learn from working together.” — Discover magazine   “ Wetware will get the reader thinking.” — Science magazine

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Wetware – Dennis Bray

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Ben Carson’s Babysitter Attacks Press for Allowing Ben Carson on TV

by TobyGarrett17 Posted on October 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Steve Benen points me to Jake Tapper, who interviewed Ben Carson recently about his opposition to “wealth redistribution”:

TAPPER: I want to ask you about comments you made year to Politico about education funding, in which you said—quote—“Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the money in a pot and redistribute it throughout the country so that public schools are equal, whether you’re in a poor area or a wealthy area?”

CARSON: Well, that’s a different concept altogether…

TAPPER: But isn’t it redistribution of wealth? It’s redistribution of education wealth, but it’s redistribution, right?

…CARSON: I think that’s very different than a situation where someone is working hard, is making, you know, a lot of money, is providing a lot of jobs and is contributing to the fabric of America and then us going along and saying, well, he’s got too much. And this guy over here, he has too little, so let’s just take this one and give it to that one. That’s much more arbitrary.

TAPPER: Well, you’re talking about doing it on an individual level. But when it’s school districts, if it’s funded from local taxes, so isn’t it the same principle at stake?

CARSON: No, it’s not the same principle at stake because we are talking about the entire nation and we’re talking about what makes us competitive in the world, and the great divide between the haves and the have-nots is education. That’s very different than redistributing funding because you feel that that’s the social thing to do.

After a while you start to run out of things to say about this. We’ve already been through this dance once before, posting all the idiotic things Donald Trump said and then shaking our virtual heads over them. That finally got boring, so now it’s Ben Carson’s turn. But it’s weirdly different. Trump used bluster to hide his ignorance, but at least that suggests he knew he was ignorant. Carson doesn’t even seem to know. He tosses out his flaky ideas and then earnestly defends them. In this interview, he didn’t take the easy route of saying he’d misspoken, or was taken out of context, or has since changed his mind. He just went ahead and defended himself. Massive redistribution in education funding isn’t real redistribution that’s done because “you feel that’s the social thing to do.”

In other words, it’s okay if your motives are pure. I guess. Anyway, one of Carson’s minders quickly covered for his boss, saying “Dr. Carson does not support the national pooling of property tax receipts. That is a falsehood.” So I guess we’re redefining “falsehood” too. Now it means something Carson actually said that turns out to be sort of inconvenient.

I can only assume Carson is a smart man. How can a smart man who’s running for president know less about policy than the average Joe in a construction yard? It is a mystery.

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Ben Carson’s Babysitter Attacks Press for Allowing Ben Carson on TV

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If Only Every Lawmaker in the Country Performed a Whip/Nae Nae YouTube Dance to Get the Budget Passed

by EulaFBBDfchcqb Posted on September 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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In an attempt to draw attention to a state budget impasse and its effects on education funding, a group of Pennsylvania state Democratic legislators have come together in the spirit of dance. Not just any dance. These lawmakers thought it was best to show the kids they care by deploying the Whip/Nae Nae, featured in the song “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” by Silento.

Fan tributes—like this one by a group of Texas senior citizens, or this one performed by a mom and her adorably precocious daughter—have made the hit song a kind of sleeper viral sensation across summer. Whether the dance by lawmakers has worked to drum up support has yet to be seen. (But for some reason, as of the time of writing, the video seems to have disappeared from the YouTube page run by the Pennsylvania House Democrats.)

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If Only Every Lawmaker in the Country Performed a Whip/Nae Nae YouTube Dance to Get the Budget Passed

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Robyn: Rökysopp’s New Album Is "Fucking Amazing"

by ReggieGRSccub Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Under the harsh fluorescent lights in the basement of a suburban DC concert venue, as they picked at a pre-show dinner of salmon and rice—I interrogated Swedish superstar Robyn and her Norwegian collaborators, the electro-pop duo Rökysopp, for details about their upcoming releases. The hugely popular Scandinavian acts are on a joint tour promoting Do It Again, their five-song, 35-minute, “mini-album” released in May.

Robyn got her start back in the ’90s as a teen-pop idol, only to leave that image behind in the mid-2000s, ditching her major label and transforming herself into an electro-pop superstar who has pumped out a string of club bangers with the sort of feminist messages seldom heard on the radio. Norwegian duo Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland formed Röyksopp in 1998, and since then have remained at the forefront of a worldwide boom in electronic music.

During our chat, Berge dropped the previously undisclosed title of their upcoming album: The Inevitable End is slated for release in November. “It’s fucking amazing!” Robyn chimed in. The duo’s last full-length album, 2010’s Senior, was a relatively downtempo affair, full of instrumental tracks that lacked the electro-pop dance sensibilities defining the band’s previous work. With The Inevitable End, Röyksopp will return to its roots, re-adding vocals, while still holding onto a bit of that introspective tone. “It’s got a dark energy,” Berge says. “And I think it’s very sincere in many ways. Well, all the music we make is hopefully sincere, but it sits with me.”

Berge and Brundtland said they might just have to steal Robyn’s description of their album: “It’s sad, but it’s not cold. It’s very warm.” If Röyksopp keeps its promise to fans, a new version of “Monument,” the opening track of their partnership with Robyn, will be on the tracklist.

Robyn has been working on a new album herself, a follow-up to her three-part Body Talk series, which spawned megahits like “Dancing On My Own” and “Call Your Girlfriend” (below).

She’s hoping to have the new one out by year’s end, co-produced with her longtime collaborator Christian Falk, who died of cancer just a few weeks ago. “I worked with him for the first time on my first album—when I was 16. So I’ve known him half of my life. We became good friends and we kept working in different ways,” she told me. “We’re finishing the album without him, which is a really strange experience, but also a really beautiful thing because we get to be around the memory of him and the music a little bit longer.”

She’s been testing out some of the new material onstage recently. The show I saw this past Thursday included three fresh songs, which blended in seamlessly alongside her old hits.

Once the Röyksopp tour wraps up, she and Markus Jägerstedt, a member of her touring band and key collaborator on her latest songs, plan to head into the studio to put the finishing touches on the album. “I think it’s maybe messier than what I usually do, because Christian was messy,” she says. “It’s a raw energy and it’s based on a club world. I think it’s going to be fantastic, I’m really happy about it.”

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Robyn: Rökysopp’s New Album Is "Fucking Amazing"

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This Is How Ringo Starr Got Involved With the New "Powerpuff Girls" Special

by CareySargent Posted on January 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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Earlier this month, you might have heard the latest song by ex-Beatle and former NORAD Santa tracker Ringo Starr. It’s a new track he recorded for (of all things) The Powerpuff Girls, a beloved Cartoon Network series about three adorable little girls with superpowers and their professor father. The show ended its original run nine years ago, but an all-new special episode, titled The Powerpuff Girls: Dance Pantsed, is set to air on Monday night. Starr guest-stars as a mathematician named Fibonacci Sequins (click here to check out his cartoon look), and recorded “Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl” for an animated music video (which you can watch below).

The A.V. Club called the video “trippy.” BuzzFeed dubbed the tune “the most adorable song.” And Rolling Stone reported that the “video, if nothing else, proves that the experimental Sixties spirit still shines bright.”

This isn’t the first time The Powerpuff Girls has been associated with The Beatles. The episode “Meet the Beat Alls,” which follows a villainous supergroup’s reign of terror, is packed full of Beatles references. But how exactly did the former Beatles drummer end up playing a part in The Powerpuff Girls? Well, according to Dave Smith (who directed the new episode and served as a storyboard artist during the show’s initial run), it took some convincing—and it almost didn’t happen.

“Brian Miller, who runs Cartoon Network in Los Angeles, came up to us one day and said that he’s one degree separated from Ringo Starr, and asked us if we wanted to reach out to him for a role,” Smith says. “We thought Ringo Starr would be fantastic as the mathematician. So we came up with a character design and sent Ringo a brief synopsis of the show and the characters he could play. And he politely declined.”

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This Is How Ringo Starr Got Involved With the New "Powerpuff Girls" Special

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