inkbluesky

red shutters

The Color of Plants on Other Worlds - On other worlds, plants could be red, blue, even black

The longest wavelength yet observed in photo­synthesis on Earth is about 1,015 nm (in the infrared), in purple anoxygenic bacteria. The longest wavelength observed for oxygenic photo­synthesis is about 720 nm, in a marine cyano­bacterium. But the laws of physics set no strict upper limit. A large number of long-wavelength photons could achieve the same purpose as a few short-wavelength ones.

The limiting factor is not the feasibility of novel pigments but the light spectrum available at a planet’s surface, which depends mainly on the star type. Astronomers classify stars based on color, which relates to temperature, size and longevity. Only certain types are long-lived enough to allow for complex life to evolve. These are, in order from hottest to coolest, F, G, K and M stars. Our sun is a G star.

Our sun is a G star and because of the length and intensity of the waves of light it emits we have plants that appear green to the human eye. Those same wave lengths of light have made our culture different then if we had an F star. Van Gogh’s wheat fields might have been black, when someone got angry they might see purple instead of red. The Blues would have been whatever color that we, assuming that humans had evolved, came to associate with being sad - B.B. King sings the maroons. Maybe neon produced lighting wouldn’t have been over kill in a world with so much dark ground cover, medium greens and soft yellows would have been plenty to attract attention. Even day light might produce some dark Gothic landscape on the clearest day. Colors like red, royal purple and white that have special significance in some religions would be different - for instance red in southern baptist churches signifies the blood of Jesus Christ.

lazy morning surf

In The GOP on the verge of imploding by Sidney Blumenthal we get over four decades of history shoved into four pages. While he might be off on his interpretation of some things he makes some very cogent points. But before anyone breaks out their shovel and starts tamping down the dirt on Conservatism’s grave there are elements of modern Rightnuttiness that will remain appealing for some people for some time to come. One is its social-darwinism. The other is various takes on xenophobia. No matter how much they protest xenophobia is a major force in the Republican party and like a yearly virus its back and worse then last year’s strain, Will McCain denounce Floyd Brown?

There is nothing remarkable in the sudden reappearance of right-wing con man Floyd Brown, whose latest venture is an inflammatory television ad now airing in North Carolina that attempts to blame Barack Obama for gang murders in Chicago (and international terrorism, too). Nobody familiar with Brown would expect him to resist smearing an African-American presidential contender.

[ ]…What is remarkable about Brown is that no matter how much America changes, he does not. He not only survives but thrives, cycle after cycle, playing the same ugly game that first won him notoriety in 1988, back when he scripted and televised the flagrantly inflammatory Willie Horton ad. He lurks on the fringe of presidential politics because the Republicans tolerate and sometimes secretly encourage him, so long as they can claim that they have no connection with his schemes.

Is Your Daily Life Enslaved by the Electronic World?

On March 30, 2008, a group of teenagers in Florida lured one of their own peers to one of the girl’s homes and videotaped her beating. With one girl behind the camera to record the episode, and two boys guarding the door, the rest mercilessly beat the young woman into a concussion. It was for a dual purpose: to “punish” the victim for allegedly “trash talking” about them on MySpace, and to post the footage on YouTube. The most telling line during the beating was when the young woman behind the camera yelled out: “There’s only 17 seconds left. Make it good.”

[ ]…On CNN a few days ago splashed a typical story that spoke volumes of our modern impulses: “Wife Brings Drama of Divorce to YouTube.” Private lives are increasingly translated into a public space, oftentimes turning intensely personal dramas into perplexing global phenomena.

What makes the incident in Florida unusual, however, is not the violent acts themselves — girl fights have been well reported, after all — but that the girls’ actions were dictated not by a pure act of revenge but by a kind of exhibitionism rarely seen before.

Its honestly coincidence that yesterday I posted about how most of our interactions with others are either pretty good or not especially bad. But that story did mention there are a certain number of anti-social types and I don’t mean the occasionally cranky mood. Another Yoytube video I saw posted on Digg a month ago was a 13? year old that threw a fit because his brother had altered his MySpace page. Its starts off almost funny and quickly degeneratred into the kind of hysteria that makes me glad that few months in high school where I thought about being a clinical psychologist was just a passing phase. What do these people have to be angry about really. They have homes. They seem well feed and wear nice clothes. Where’s their sense of self worth. Only someone with a deeply fragile ego could think some mild slight would warrant not just an obscene level of violent retribution, but the humiliation that was supposed to go with it by posting the video. I felt a little sorry for the divorced woman, but ultimately that tirade accomplished the opposite of what she intended. Most people ended up wondering how her marriage lasted as long as it did.  Andrew Lam, the author of the opinion column thinks that people need to learn to stop making information age fools of themselves, but I think that’s the point these people think they’re being clever or enjoy the role of “microcelebrity” fool. A new net assisted sad-masochism is apparently, among some people, a twisted virtue.

park neon.

Managed like a herd of cattle for canned enthusiasm, Puppet Theater in the Mosh Pit

Felicitously, Edward Wyatt’s Reporter’s Notebook in today’s Times details how strictly micromanaged and coordinated is the canned euphoria of American Idol--why, it’s as if Leni Riefensthal were waving a sparkled baton, orchestrating the camera fodder to maintain unison:

“At the end of every performance you will stand on your feet.” That is one of the commandments offered by Cory Almeida, the indefatigable warm-up man who exhorts and instructs the audience for 15 minutes before each performance and during the numerous commercial breaks.

For the audience members who stand in the “mosh pit,” the area immediately in front of the stage, special instructions are required. “When you are applauding after a performance, we need your hands above your head,” Mr. Almeida said before a recent Tuesday performance. “Otherwise we can’t see that you’re clapping.” As he spoke other stage technicians offered more individualized guidance to mosh pit enthusiasts, including how to wave their arms from side to side over their heads during slow songs.

Reality TV keeping it real.

Paleontologist and professor of the history of science, the late Stephen J. Gould once wrote that that most encounters we have with other people aren’t particularly positive or negative.They were for the most part relatively neutral. When I read that I had to stop and think for a moment. Probably because when we do have negative encounters they tend to stand out to the point where they color our general outlook, giving us a less then idealistic view of our fellow man. Gould was right though and it turns out that statistically not only are neutral and positive encounters dominant in our daily social interactions, those actions are predetermined, Brains are hardwired to act according to the Golden Rule

In his book, Pfaff proposes a theory that explains, in a parsimonious way, how people manage to behave well when they do, and under what conditions they deviate from good behavior. He describes how memories of fear, as well as various brain hormones, can play a vital role in whether people choose to act ethically or violently toward others. One’s behavior is a balance, he says, between “prosocial” and “antisocial” traits — a balance shaped by early life experiences.

“You have some people who are prosocial, who face the world with a smile and are uniformly nice to other people,” says Pfaff. “Others face the world with a snarl and are routinely aggressive and thoughtless. Most of us are a balance — we are able to treat each other almost all the time in a civil and thoughtful way.”

kiwi crossing.most of us are even hardwired to slow down and watch out for odd little new zealand birds.

The debate or controversy that surrounds stem cell research has, for the most part been much ado about nothing on one side that has created arguments based on little that resembles reality. Arguing with them is akin to arguing with a seven year old arithmetic student about vectors and missile launches. The U.S. military much to their credit, at least some of the time, tends to want what it wants and blow-up doll arguments about stem cells are not going to stop them from pursuing a promising field of medical research, The military’s plan to regrow body parts

Yesterday the Department of Defense announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which will go by the happy acronym AFIRM. According to DOD’s news service, AFIRM will “harness stem cell research and technology … to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers.” The government is budgeting $250 million in public and private money for the project’s first five years. NIH and three universities will be on the team.

The stem cell issue aside. Its not much of an issue anyway, the ability to regrow genetically impaired or war damaged body parts has some fairly profound implications as far as defining what constitutes you. The original parts or the new and more likely then not, improved parts.

brazil nightscape

Few people have heard of P.J. O’Rourke. Probably for good reason, he is what passes for a comedian on the Right.  He heard of the Vatican’s new list of sins and while they are ripe for parody this is the best P.J could come up with,

Not to argue theology with the Vatican, but environmental pollution is hardly among Satan’s strongest temptations. Pollution is not a passion we resist with an agony of will for the sake of our immortal souls. I’ve been to parties where all seven of the original deadlies were on offer in carload lots. Never once have I heard a reveler shout with evil glee, “Let’s dump PCBs in the Hudson River!”

The original sins available in “carload lots”? The so-called original sins are not actually spelled out in scripture which kinda impedes the reader’s ability to imagine what P.J. encountered at these parties and then one is forced to imagine the mass of them in increments of “carload lots”. Forget it, just the thought of some drunk rich Conservatives in a room trying to have clever conversations between original sinning in any quantity is too much like thinking about prostate exams.