WhimsyLand

I was going to cover some aspect of poetry, but I'm short of time.  I do suggest you wander over to Jimmy's place and read the usual hilarious treatment of BAP (thanks RHE for the URL).  My favorite part so far is Ashbery beating the drum and wondering why he's never been Poet Laureate. 

I received the latest issue of the MIT Technology Review with a sticker telling me that it's the last issue I'm privy to until I re-up.  Interesting articles included:  studios are beginning to insert subliminal messages like "Illegal Copy" into films which don't appear at theatres, but pop up in illicit copies.  DARPA (the people who brought you the Internet) have funded the invention of an ultrasonic tourniquet that detects a broken blood vessel (typically, from a battlefield injury) and seals it with ultrasound-based heat.  I've always been skeptical of the whole Ethanol-in-your-gasoline thing that has made ADM rich, as I've read that it takes more energy and generates more pollution to manufacture corn-based ethanol than what it saves in your tank.  It turns out that lots of scientists know this and recommend using prairie grass or soybeans instead.  Google has started a program to warn you when they give your a site in response that they know could infect your computer with malware.  Carbon sequestrian science is the field of study in which they believe that carbon dioxide could be stored underground in vast chambers (like abandoned mines), but it could have a large positive impact on lots of things we worry about (like global warming).  The Hundred Dollar Laptop is actually happening.  Founded by members of the MIT Media Lab and supported by many large electronics firms (e.g., AMD) the goal is to produce millions of these laptops that can connect to the Internet, include hand-powered crank battery regenerators, and be successfully targeted to 3d World consumers (imagine trading a goat for a computer).  The sequencing of the human genome was just the start.  You need to know a lot more about how genes are expressed and evolutionary signatures to sort out why flies, yeasts, pumpkins and us turn out so differently.  NASA has developed a whole new array of boom-based cameras to help Shuttle pilots to determine if their craft is damaged.  The rest of the issue is devoted to Young Innovators of science and technology.  They're mainly American and I love that their surnames range from Singh to Liao to Paninski to McGonigal to Argyris to Shendure to Voight to Maliakal Coe-Sullivan.

More on poetry tomorrow.  Really, I promise.