Consider Bookhling

A little update on the state of my life first. I have been working on something that might be awesome for the io9 madscience contest. Although I am approaching the contest through a sort of team-based brainstorming and responsibility sharing method, I have become increasingly aware of my limited understanding of the molecular biology and genomics, so there are a whole lot of things I need to brush up on before the contest deadline of August 25 midnight PST. So no blog posts about nothing for a while, folks.  I would like to take advantage of this moment to urge anyone still not aware of the awesome coolness that is the io9 madscience contest on synthetic biology to get cracking for that secret mad science idea you have been hoarding to yourself, and drag all your friends and families with you into participating.

Despite the busy lifestyle I lead between the study for all the crazy exams and the field of synthetic biology, I also manage to surf the web and fish out interesting websites… Which might suggest that I am not actually busy but I assure you that I am nearly numb from all the busy-ness that is my life. Eating fast and sleeping less does wonders for time micromanagement-on-the-go. Anyway, I came across this website, wordie during one of my excursion around the Internet. It is one of the many web 2.0 based sites we see popping up all around these days, with emphasis on entering and making lists of words, while sharing those lists and favoriting other peoples lists and words… Basically a web 2.0 community website devoted to the pursuit of lexicographical side of the world. The feeling and layout of the website reminded me of the eponymous everything2 for some odd reason… And I believe that the spirit and purpose of the website is not very far from some of the more obvious characteristics of the everything2 as well. Which is a good thing.

I was rather surprised to find out that the *words* I could enter into the website database were not necessarily limited to words in dictionaries, or words in any form, actually. One of the most commented on words at the wordie website at the moment is *shaken baby syndrome* which is quite clearly something you will not find in any dictionary that came off the printing press. There are a number of words in foreign language, like Chinese (though such are few at the moment, who knows what will happen in the future?), with the function to make diverse lists and being able to favorite words I especially like being some of the more notable, and welcomed features.

What I especially love about the wordie webpage is its design. Just white background and black letters, with the fonts I find attractive for some odd reason. I think the wordie blog Errata is especially representative of the minimalist aesthetics underlying the design of the main wordie webpage. It is simple, it gets the point across, it is easy to access using variety of Internet-enabled devices, and the service as a whole seem to integrate well with other Internet/communication services, which I admit is a work-in-progress but shows great potential nonetheless. Sometimes people underestimate what can be done with simple arrangement of black things on white spaces and certain choices of fonts.

I like what I have seen so far of the wordie. I think this is a service I see myself using frequently for a long time, whether it be entering an interesting word I found, or tagging and commenting numerous words already present in the webpage. If you have a minute or two to spare, maybe you might want to give it s try as well. Who knows, maybe it will even increase your vocabulary.

Who in their right mind does not want to become a mad scientist? Underneath the prim and proper veneer of sanity and polite gestures, I know that there is a darker longing gravitating us toward the callings of mad science.

Yet the fact of life is, there are usually few opportunities, if any, to pursue and perfect the dream of mad science in this world, whether it be societal taboo or physical restraints. In the light of the scared world we live in, I am very happy to announce the contest for mad scientists, aimed primarily at the emerging field of synthetic biology.

There are two categories of the contest, and each category offers a delicious prize for the taking. The category one is the more realistic mad scientists in all of us. You are supposed to work with the real BioBrick parts and form an artificial synthetic organism/something to sate the mad genius inside you and possibly even help the world in the process. The prize for the category one winner is an all-expense paid trip to Hong Kong for the upcoming Synthetic Biology 4.0 conference and a chance to present your work before the whos who of the synthetic biology scene today.

The category two is the one for the imaginative madhouses in all of us. While scientific reasoning behind your creation must be present to certain plausible extent, the second category does not force you to figure out real PCR amplification rates or the roles of each specific BioBrick parts, something you should be proficient with should you decide to compete in the first category of the contest. Instead, category two seem to be leaning toward discovering truly imaginative applications of the tenets of synthetic biology and possible social/industrial implications of such a noble craft.

This is not a contest cooked up by bunch of enthusiastic crackpots either. Some of the judges are full-time professional devotees/founders of the very field of synthetic biology itself, like Drew Andy.

So spread the news, and get all of your families and friends involved. This is a contest for the mad scientists of the world, and we really need diverse and crazy ideas that deserve the mantle.

The update at this blog had been intermittent for a while due to my personal circumstances, with moving to a new apartment, and the need to write up bunch of papers happening all at once. Now that I am a bit more settled I should be able to write here regularly. At least I hope that is the case… I do not think I can handle as much workload for a while.

I have always been interested in writing things. Writing is something that comes natural to me, in that while I am certainly not good at it, I can always pick up a pen or sit in front of a keyboard and scribble/type away as I drift away to a state of reverie. It is the same as with reading a good book. There is no need to force myself to concentrate. The process is quick and natural like playing an old instrument while intoxicated by its melody, a sort of self-reinforcing phenomena.

As such, it was only natural that I would try to fulfill my predilection toward the ever vague idea of beauty. I have always been puzzled by the nature of beauty since young age. I can tell for sure when something is beautiful to me or not, yet it is quite impossible to pinpoint the specific quality of the thing/person/situation that makes it appear/smell/feel beautiful in my senses. There is no consistency in the things that are capable of displaying the traits of beauty, as a garbage can and a work by Michelangelo might display the similar sense of sublime, that strange trait that we can only refer to with the vague term called beauty. And this *beauty* appears quite immaterial. I do not believe there is a single thing in this universe capable of appearing beautiful to all observers for all lengths of time. The trait of beauty can be highly subjective, and is bound to fade away after a period of time (when in view of a single observer) regardless of the hardiness of the physical material that radiates the feeling of beauty in its observers.

Would such traits suggest that the beauty literally is in the eyes of the beholder? There is no evidence to think that inorganic objects in this world is capable of reacting to certain objects in a way that an organic, conscious object would react to a thing of beauty. So it would be possible to assume that the ability to perceive beauty and react toward it in this world is limited to complex life-like systems (this is an assumption based only on what we know about complex systems and the physical relationships within the universe at the moment, of course). Yet the problem does not quite end at that point. Prokaryotes are complex life-like systems, yet can we possibly assume that such microbiotic systems are capable of feeling the thing we conscious human beings refer to as beauty? I have never talked to a prokaryote culture before, so I would not know. Let us re-examine the trait of beauty and beautiful things in this world for a moment. From what I can tell, beauty requires significant amount of neuronal resources in terms of sensory organs and processing units, aka the CNS. Would that mean that the ability to perceive beauty must be limited by the capacity of the senses? That external catalysis of sorts is always required in order to perceive/imagine beauty? It might be tempting to say yes to such an assumption, but I think we must remember that there are plenty of things in this world that are considered beautiful despite having no physical counterpart. Beautiful ideas. Beautiful future. Such are more or less information based constructs that might be represented by certain physical objects and situations in this world but not tied to the specific characteristics of the material. If beauty is intimately tied to its nature as a construct of information, then it is possible that the ability to perceive and react to beauty is intimately tied to the information processing capability, like the brain, which is in itself a vast complex adaptive system.

I think we might be onto something here. If the things I have outlined above have even a modicum of truth in it, the illusive nature of beauty might in fact be tied to the informational structure of the brain and its interaction with the external world, within which learning and memory themselves might act as catalyst between the world and the brain in perceiving and reacting to beauty…

Here is a million dollar question. If the immateriality of the concept of beauty and its acting in concert with innate mechanisms of brain and memories are true, would it be possible to write a finite-length work capable of giving persistent impression of beauty by conjuring up any and all images and ideas that can be felt/perceived by the readers mind? Would it be possible to write a piece that can simulate almost infinite gradient of human ideas and feelings within the readers mind by the virtue of ever changing yet persistent nature of human memory and innate information processing capacity of the human brain itself, using only limited number of imageries and terms that can be utilized in a single work of writing? The idea behind such a writing would be similar to the idea behind the evolution of natural language, of how limited number of alphabets are capable of composing rich vocabulary and astronomical variety of written, spoken works and ideas born from those works. Instead of alphabets, however, the work would have to discover and utilize certain archetypes of ideas, patterns and imageries as to make it possible for the reader to create something entirely new every time he/she reads it, the only characteristic shared between the infinite variety of reconstructions being the persistent presence of the indescribable beauty.

The ideas of artscience and artificial life takes on an entirely different perspective when viewed in such light. Artificial life would no longer be static art, but rather an *engine of beauty* in a persistent yet ever changing universe. Just as Kurzweil proposed the universe of meaningful information, artificial life might as well be the first step in a whole universe of sublime beauty.