"There's a life about to start when tomorrow comes..."

This item [via The Daily Galaxy] makes my heart pound with excitement, because, in the future, that very phrase may become outmoded. That's right, if you've ever cried out in fear and alarm that science is intent on forging a race of heartless cyborgs... well, you're almost right. Meet Madam Salina Mohamed So'ot, the woman without a heartbeat. This 30-year-old administrative assistant (from Singapore, apparently) has a late-model artificial heart that pumps blood at one continuous flow rate and does not beat. Ergo, she has no pulse.

Now, it's not so much the notion of everyday flat-lining that sets my heart a flutter (but oh, dear lord, are we going to have to change our idioms if this becomes prevalent!), it's the notion that this heart is actually more efficient than the meatbag ticker we've evolved with. I'll grant you, the whole four-chamber, dual-circulation adaptation (pictured below)

was a pretty awesome improvement over the old brackish amphibian salad spinner that was popular for a while, but we can do it better now! Technology 1, Invisible Sky-Beard 0! Wait, what's that you say? How can we be more intelligent designers than the Intelligent Designer? I'm sorry, I just couldn't hear you over the sound of your worldview imploding (metaphorically pictured below).

The exciting possibilities for human-driven human augmentation are starting to be realized now, and I have renewed hope that cyborg technology will really take off within my lifetime (and how cool is it to be able to say that with a straight face?). Perhaps I'm alone in not feeling an undue attachment to the clay from which I was sculpted. The human body is a low-efficiency, poorly-(un)designed machine, perpetually degrading toward decrepitude and demise. Once we can cost-effectively replace parts as they fail, or, better, upgrade them to more durable models, we can transcend our fleshy prisons in a way that would make a Cathar swoon. (Note to self: Second Albigensian Crusade against a sect of Cathar Cyborgs in the cyberpunk future - Montsegur 2144, if you will - is fertile ground for... something.) Of course, we are still light-years away from affordable cybernetics, but the pace of medical technological innovation is quick and, it seems, accelerating - so tolerate my sanguine outlook (pun intended) if you must, and join in if it humours you (two for two!).

That said, I think it would take a long time to get used to not having a heartbeat. And it would be creepy as hell for almost all of that time. But I think knowing that I was one step closer to being an optimized, streamlined Man Of Tomorrow (tm) would go a long way toward easing those reservations.

Present Engagements

1. I'm building a ballista on a $10 budget.
Our physics department is hosting a Punkin' Chunkin' competition, which is both a concept and a phrase that fills my heart with joy. The idea is to see who can attain the greatest range with a homemade, jury-rigged gourd-flinger. Naturally, I couldn't pass up this opportunity to combine my love of ancient technology with the destruction of produce (cf. Halloween 2009, "De Motu Citrus Nitrensis"). As such, I've spent a number of hours rummaging through local dumpsters and junk piles for building materials. The ten dollars went towards a coil of rope, but if I can find any for free I'll use it instead. I'd share my design plan here, but I'm keeping it secret lest any rivals stumble across this blog. If everything works out, I'll try to post pictures or videos.

2. I'm interviewing for medical school.
Tomorrow. It's my first one. Still haven't really processed it. I mean, what? Me? Interviewing for med school? How did that happen? I'm just a humble punkin' chunker from a punkin' chunkin' clan - not doctor material. Don't be silly. (Can you tell I'm a little nervous?)

Granted, part of me is sure I'm going to blow the roof off this thing like a tornado in a trailer park, but that's the same part of me that also says things like "If this medicine thing doesn't work out, you could always be Supreme God-Emperor of the Galaxy," so I'm taking its advice with a grain of salt.

If this last bit seems especially prideful to you, you're right. It's part of my campaign to hit all seven deadlies in one day, because today is 3. International Blasphemy Day. So crowning myself king of the cosmos seems like a decent way to get in pride and offend the Invisible Sky-Beard all at once. Now, I'm off to find a lingerie-clad model baking a chocolate cake she won't let me have, and that should cover another 3 or 4 no problem.

From the Motherland

Two tidbits that caught my eye, both from the land of Muscovy, both meriting skepticism:



1. Back in the 1920s, a Russian scientist by the name of Sergei Brukhonenko managed to keep a dog's severed head alive by hooking it up to the autojector device (a sort of rudimentary heart-lung machine, but with a more bad-ass name). At some Meeting of the People's Distinguished Physiological Laborers in '28, Comrade Brukhonenko managed to get the head to respond to stimuli and fed it a piece of cheese, which apparently popped right out the back end of its truncated esophagus.

So... an adept of Abdul Alhazred? Latter-day Vaucanson? Something else entirely?



2. In today's Russia, what's a listless petro-mogul, bored ex-KGB mafioso, or washed-up Olympic athlete who's been fraudulently elected to the Duma supposed to do for fun? I mean, you can only gamble at Red Square's swanky Kазино SoL so much, and the hookers on Nevski Prospekt all start to look the same after a while.

Enter Pirate Hunting. Yep, that's right. For a modest fee ($5970 a day), any Йосеф шесть-водок can go cruising along the coastline of Somalia, trawling for pirates. When the buccaneers arrive, it's open season: "AK-47 rental on the pirate cruises is apparently just $5 per day, with 100 rounds costing $12 and just in case things get out of control, a squad of ex special forces troops is on hand."

Just... wow. Many believe this to be a hoax, but if it's true... I'm really lost for words. I guess it's worth remembering that General Zaroff was Russian.

"The sixth age shifts / Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon..."

Interesting article from The Daily Galaxy:

The End of Aging?

De Grey's call to action, writes Dr. Sherwin Nuland, clinical professor of surgery at Yale University School of Medicine and author of How We Die and The Art of Aging, "is the message neither of a madman nor a bad man, but of a brilliant, beneficent man of goodwill, who wants only for civilization to fulfill the highest hopes he has for its future.” An opinion darkly countered by Dr. Martin Raff, emeritus professor of biology at University College London and coauthor of Molecular Biology of the Cell: “Seems to me this man could be put in jail with reasonable cause.”

Despite the fact that the name "Aubrey de Grey" sounds like it belongs to a megalomaniac villain, and the irony that de Grey is fighting de gray, this kind of thing is like scientific catnip to me. It has the right blend of pseudoscientific wackiness and a genuine appeal to the relief of one of my darker fears. If de Grey is a nut, then this is entertaining claptrap on the order of cold fusion. But if he's right, I'll be the first to sign up for immortality, ethics be damned.