Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt. – Franz Kafka
Even though it’s in German, I think you’ll appreciate this short animation of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” provided by Ed Krayewski (or else you won’t). The links above it were contributed by Nun Ya, Scott Greenfield, WWAV, Mike Siegel, Brooke Magnanti, and Michael Whiteacre (in that order).
- As one does.
- Dear Feministing: No.
- Paging Frank Herbert.
- I hate it when this happens.
- Boris Karloff’s recipe for guacamole.
- And if you do call them, they’ll be acquitted.
From the Archives
- Cops, animals, vocals, daycare, The Bus, blasphemy, Bill Watterson, Benedict Cumberbatch, stupidity, names and Scandinavia.
- Cops, costumes, hysteria, Dick, clowns, parody, prohibition, animation and giant sex toys.
- Remember the sex worker who killed the cop & I said there was more to it?
- Satanic child abuse doesn’t really exist, but anti-Satanic child abuse does.
- Idea women might have minds & agency unacceptable to Canadian cops.
- Whether the infection is biological or technological, it’s always the same.
- And this, kiddies, is why Maggie McNeill, LLC is registered in Delaware.
- Teen threatened with “sex offender” registry for prank hangs himself.
- Jerry Brown pretends prison inmates don’t have sex with each other.
- Substituting the word “evidence” for the proper term, “propaganda”.
- Charlotte Shane’s scathing review of Sudhir Venkatesh’s new book.
- Abuses always start with stigmatized groups, but never stop there.
- Sex workers contaminate Amazon wishlists with our dirty sex rays.
- How can I get an escort to shower immediately before seeing me?
- University bans pole dancing due to its association with stripping.
- Canadian politician caught in US sting supported by sex workers.
- Florida cops try to penalize people for driving on certain streets.
- Natalie Rowe raided by police after revealing dirt on a politician.
- A unique and highly principled escort faces an ethical dilemma.
- Cop beats sex worker; people talk but nothing happens to cop.
- The especially-revolting French version of the Swedish model.
- These lies are outrageous even by “sex trafficking” standards.
- Crypto-moralists try to pretend that fatty foods are addictive.
- The usual ludicrous nonsense from one of the usual suspects.
- “Prostitution” is often an excuse for harassing black women.
- “I received death threats from Somaly and her entourage…“
- It’s still good news if her lawyer can get a raid thrown out.
- Online bookstore blames porn for its poor website design.
- A man seeks therapy for help with a recurring nightmare.
- The noisome fruit of the “mandatory prosecution” tree.
- Cops lure drug buyers to Florida in order to rob them.
- Prohibitionists never care about little things like facts.
- More on my then-upcoming trip to Chicago & Seattle.
- Another UN agency reaffirms support of sex workers.
- Prisons don’t actually have to be torture chambers.
- Dave Krueger on the evil of consensual crime laws.
- A month of horrible violence against transwomen.
- At least a few Swedish politicians seem to get it.
- Rupert Everett’s anti-Swedish model campaign.
- Somaly Mam and Uncle Sam will not be happy.
- Another look at how this blog is put together.
- Caging teen girls to “protect” them from sex.
- Apes certainly deserve it more than zygotes.
- A short interview with Dr. Heidi Hoefinger.
- Rapist cops of the week, 2013 and 2014.
- Somaly Mam caught in another huge lie.
- Criminalizing the use of public urinals.
- The horror of good customer service.
- Another stupid “sex trafficking” play.
- Yet another rescue industry fraud.
- Advice on being a good mistress.
- An anti-Swedish model tool kit.
- The Brittany Maynard Fund.
- “Confidential informant“.
- R.I.P. Gabriela Leite.
Gregor Samsa:
While I find Kafka tedious to read, his ideas are often deeply insightful and describe the nature of some types of humans perfectly.
I also had a brief “Waaaah? Has the world spontaneously changed and this blog is now German?” moment, which meshes fine with Kafka.
That was exactly the reaction I was hoping for!
re: Paging Frank Herbert.
A great example of lousy science reporting. But what would you expect from a New Age website that gets its info from a Murdoch tabloid?
The researchers might start by reading the decades of scientific literature that underpins the field of epigenetics. It’s called ‘methylation’. It can only be called ‘memory’ in the most general sense – in the same way the scratches on your door are ‘memories’ of when your dog was locked out.
Remember the guy who claimed epigenetics proved Lamarckianism?
What proves what? Ah. I see.
As “memory” or “recording” critically needs significant abstraction and generality of the mechanism, no such thing is possible with genetics. Well, you can record general things to DNA, but then it does not work as DNA anymore as the interpretation mechanism is rather limited.
I guess it depends on what you call ‘memory’.
Obviously these guys are trying to suggest you can access the episodic, narrative memories of your ancestors via DNA. But if you take a more general definition of memory as ‘trace of past events’ then computer chips hold memory, fossils hold memory and DNA itself holds memory of the evolution of the organism. In fact you could even argue that if everything once existed as a single point prior to the Big Bang then everything holds a memory of everything else (minus losses due to entropy).
Actually there seems to be massive redundancy in the human genome (though researchers regularly surprise themselves by discovering ‘junk’ DNA that isn’t redundant after all) so in theory at least you could record a lot of data on it without impairing it’s protein coding capacity.
With four separate base pair combinations it has greater potential information density than does binary storage media. Adding methylation effectively doubles that, though it’s less robust than the base pairs themselves. You’d have to use your own interpretation mechanism of course.
Yeah. As with neuroscience and quantum theory, poorly understood genetics has been leaped upon by every crackpot who thinks he can make science conform to his superstitions.
Indeed. Not to mention a simple but gaping logical consequence which the article does not address.
Assume arguendo that ordinary memories can be passed down to future generations through parents’ DNA.
Barring magic, even with the memory inheritance mechanism, no memories involving post reproduction events that bring reproductive offspring can possibly be inherited by subsequent generations.
That eliminates a host of memories for which inheritance is even possible.
So, for example, any claim to have inherited memories of being Mozart composing any work later than about K570 (Piano Sonata No. 17 in B-flat) cannot possibly be true even under the putative mechanism.
re: Boris Karloff’s recipe for guacamole.
Canned chilies!
He truly was a master of horror.