Verkhovensky’s Internals

(Doesn’t mean you should do it.)

I love fireworks, and, I’ll admit, this love has persuaded my better conscience into lighting them off in some dangerous situations. Having a lighter in one hand and a small-scale explosive in the other evokes a powerful feeling, a feeling enhanced by the inevitable drunkenness that inspired you to choose such a combination in the first place. But what a rush those cascading colors are!

As the US prepares to shoot down one of its wayward orbiters on thursday, a few notable onlookers are voicing their vexation. Russia, for instance, has said that,

There is an impression that the United States is trying to use the accident with its satellite to test its national anti-missile defence system’s capability to destroy other countries’ satellites.

There is an impression? What manner of fantastic thinking could lead one to such a verdict? They’re saving us from a rogue flying-machine hellbent on dousing the globe with ‘toxic fuel.’ Demonstrating to the world that America is capable of destroying ‘other countries’ satellites’ is a mere byproduct of this otherwise humanitarian mission.

What type of firework is this exactly? The impartials at the Washington Post:

The three-stage Navy missile, designated the SM-3, has chalked up a high rate of success in a series of tests since 2002, in each case targeting a short- or medium-range ballistic missile, [but] never a satellite. A hurry-up program to adapt the missile for this anti-satellite mission was completed in a matter of weeks.

That such an adaptation of the defensive weapon took weeks to accomplish is testament to its makers innocent intentions. Moreover, Navy officials went out of their way to assure anyone with (obviously irrational) fears that “changes will be reversed once this satellite is down.” I mean, once they’ve said that…

Russia is one thing, but China is really grasping at straws here. A ’specialist’ at a Beijing university - and this is some communist logic - has said that,

In my opinion, this decision is imprudent and ill advised…If this satellite is shot down, the toxic fuel will still be there. Therefore, the pollution still exists.

Sound logic, on the surface, although where the toxic fuel exists will not be the earth’s surface, but space. Of course, the US’ move will effectively prevent sensitive technologies from falling into the wrong hands, but, again, this is a byproduct of the humanitarian object of the operation. China itself conducted their own humanitarian ground-to-space dismissal of a weather satellite last year - you can’t have some weirded-out earth circler predicting off forecasts, after all. China, get a grip. You know the score.

I’m not suggesting that the US is the global version of a drunken kid with a bic and a Roman Candle (who in that scenario loses the thumb?), but they sure know how to spice up the party. The economy is hurtin’, the debt is growing, and we’re runnin’ out of booze. Ugh - fireworks!

After 24 hours of surgery, a 2-year-old Indian girl is returning to her village without 4 of the 8 limbs she was born with. 24 hours in surgery! I think the surgeons were right to call her a hero.

It’s true that I have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with all types of deformations, mutations and modifications - cycling through even some recent posts will make that quite clear. But there was something in the article that caught my attention both for its absurdity and its typicality:

Lakshmi’s parents said they were taking her back to their rural village in eastern Bihar state where she had been revered by some as an incarnation of the four-armed Hindu goddess she was named after.

Was this, perhaps, an attempt to console the parents of the sadly disfigured offspring? I highly doubt it. What’s more, I wouldn’t be surprised if the parents of the child faced some backlash from the community for destroying an image of their god. It makes me think of the numerous and equally absurd stories along the lines of “Texas woman bites into cupcake and discovers image of baby Jesus!”

Far worse, though, is the line from this article about the event:

Children born with deformities in deeply traditional rural parts of India…are often viewed as reincarnated gods. But some had sought to make money from Lakshmi. Her parents kept her in hiding after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl.

Fucking monsters! Who could attend a circus featuring such an unfortunate creature and contain their rage?

I’m glad the kid is alright.

Update: Flying Spaghetti Monster appears in Thanksgiving pie!

I don’t like pets too much. Until an animal comes into this world that can discuss the relative merits of Kant’s Categorical Imperative or the conceptual implications of Duchamp’s Network of Stoppages, I don’t see myself bringing a creature into my home (I suppose, by the above criteria, I can’t be considered a people person, either).

On the other hand, if some super mutant animal were available, I might change my mind. Say, for instance, a dog with two heads or a mouse with a human ear growing on its back. Maybe a permanently phreaked out elephant would do it as well.

But I would also consider a glow-in-the-dark cat, which may soon be available from your local pet store (well, at least my local pet store).

Korean scientists, Buddha bless them, have produced ultravioletly illuminated cats by manipulating a “flourescent protein gene.” The Ministry of Science and Technology (whom I suspect is running the country, given the technological state of things here in Korea) said,

The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans.

That is fine and good, but it is a statement that hides the true goals of the experiment: Korean wives are growing bored of merely dressing up and dying their toy pets and have been secretly pressuring the government for gmed products! And the League of Unemployed and Bored Korean Housewives is a lobby that gets results. I want my mutant pet!

Below is an x-ray of a London cat that now has metal implants in all four legs:

Apparently, the pussy has fallen out of the same third-story window twice now. Quite the luck. Nevertheless, the modification makes for a pleasant aesthetic impression, and in the end seems almost worth it. Wonderful. The vets hope that the 6 year-old patient will eventually walk as normal.

Via Boing Boing.

Unsurprisingly, Korea has a large population of Koreans. Increasingly, though, this homogenous population is confronted by a new breed of foreigner, although one that is becoming less and less foreign all the time.

On a field trip last Tuesday, my school visited a sort of science/robotic exhibition in Seoul. And though most of my time on these little excursions is occupied making sure the children don’t do anything too crazy, on this particular trip I was quite excited myself. Walking into the main play area we were confronted by a skeletal but lifelike mechanical man seated behind a full drum kit. A control panel in front of the exhibit allowed the children to control the drummer’s movements and bang out some beats. I couldn’t resist. Korea loves robots.

So much so, in fact, that there are now plans for two vast Robotic Theme Parks to be completed by 2013. I describe the plans as ‘vast,’ because, with a 1.6 billion dollar price tag, they couldn’t be anything else. I have no plans to extend my teaching career in Korea beyond the end of my present contract, but these parks, which will undoubtedly be unique in the world, may necessitate a trip back.

But robots here are not all designed for entertainment - they are also coming to play an increasingly important military role, as is evidenced by the new border guard robots permanently stationed on the Southern half of the DMZ. These sci-fi looking sentinels were developed to replace “human-oriented guards, overcoming their limitation of discontinuous guarding missions due to severe weather conditions or fatigue,” thus ensuring perpetual coverage of the South Korean front. Below is a video (with appropriately inappropriate music) of the bots in action:

This prevalence of androids has its philosophical issues, and thus the Korean government has felt it necessary to fund an official Robot Ethics Charter, providing manufacturers with guidelines to promote a symbiotic integration of their robots within society. With plans to introduce a robot into all Korean households by 2020, such a Charter has a relevance difficult to relevance that is somewhat difficult to appreciate elsewhere in the world.