Evolving the Mona Lisa

Here’s an interesting example of genetic programming: use a program that slightly alters colored polygons, compares the results to a target, and selects variants that most resemble the Mona Lisa. After less than a million generations, a black square turned into this:

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Not bad. The description of the algorithm is a bit thin, but he promises to release the source code soon. It sounds like a million generations is an overestimate, since his population size in each generation was 1, and it also sounds like his selection was far more stringent than you’d find in nature, but it’s an interesting if oversimplified example of the power of chance and selection.

Interpretive dance, really?

Whoa. It’s kind of a standing joke that when our presentation tools fail us, we’ll have to fall back on interpretive dance to make our points. We never mean it seriously, though. Until now. Science magazine challenged researchers to actually illustrate their work with dance, and people did! There are four youtube videos at that link that show the winners. I liked the graduate student entry best, but I’ll include this one because a) it was most comprehensible to me, and b) Laurie Anderson is wonderful.

You will never catch me doing this, though — I can’t dance, and I’m too ungainly anyway.

You all missed a very nice Cafe Scientifique

You never come when I invite you, anyway, but it was still very enlightening. We branched out a bit from nothing but science this time, and Michael Eble, an artist, talked about his connection to Louisiana and recent work on the disappearance of wetlands, in an exhibit titled Endangered Lands. We got to hear* about erosion and the natural and man-made forces that are destroying the Louisiana coastline at a prodigious rate, with Michael’s efforts to capture it in a series of abstract paintings.

*We also got to hear one extraordinarily rude couple’s conversation about their finances — they sat themselves down in the middle of the coffeeshop and ignored our speaker and talked at a volume rivaling his about their distracting pedestrian affairs. It was a remarkable lack of courtesy, and it’s unfortunate that people that obnoxious are always completely oblivious, and don’t feel a scrap of shame.

Scary? Or not?

I am well aware that lately there have been several horrifying blog posts here, of a nature that might make a rational liberal want to hide under her bed or move to Scandinavia or something. So how about this for a change: Rudy Rucker has an article on the portrayal of sex in science fiction which will either titillate or weird you out. I suspect the difference will be on whether you like sex as the excitement of the exotic, or the comfort of the familiar (recognizing, of course, that everyone wobbles about a bit between those extremes). SF’s versions of sex can be awesomely weird, and sometimes very disquieting and unerotic — Delaney and Tiptree and Farmer didn’t always make it sound like fun and games.

Squid suckers

This photo won an honorable mention in the Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. They were robbed! Grand prize or they’ll rip the judges’ faces off!

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Squidsuckers: The Little Monsters That Feed the Beast
Credit: Jessica D. Schiffman and Caroline L. Schauer, Drexel University
Crunch. The satisfying sound of a crushed cockroach comes from the destruction of its chitin-based exoskeleton. The white, fanglike circles in this electron micrograph of squid suckers are also chitin, but they are not so easily crushed. Their scant 400-micrometer diameter belies the true power of the suckers. A squid uses them to latch onto prey and force the unfortunate creature to its beak, where it is readily slurped down. “They’re just tiny things, but they really keep the beast alive,” says Jessica Schiffman, a doctoral student in material science engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She compiled the image while researching chitin properties in the lab of Caroline Schauer. The iconic film Little Shop of Horrors inspired the color scheme, she says.

This is my body….take….

MAJeff here, playing “host” this Sunday.

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The image above is a bit dated. It was a poster produced for last year’s Folsom Street Fair in San Francsicso. (For those out of the know, the Folsom Street Fair is a queer leather/BDSM festival.) Of course, the tighty-righties got terribly fussy over it.

Now, if you like your christ-cock a bit more hippie-ish, or if you’re a show-tune queen, this might be more up your alley:

That’s from the upcoming film, Hamlet 2.

Of course, you could just get your jesus-jizz the old fashioned way:

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That’s El Greco’s Carducho’s Stigmatization of St. Francis, which is part of a traveling exhibit of Spanish art from the reign of Phillip III. I saw the show in Boston a few weeks ago. Very nice exhibition, overall.

The erotic had been central to many forms of religious expression, not the least of which are the various “saintly ecstasies.” However, move it into popular cultural forms, or turn “the savior” into a black leather queer, and you’ve crossed a whole lotta lines.

Well, pull out a video recorder. Give him a dildo and you can watch Jesus fucking Christ on your DVD player or via streaming video.

And I depart in a cloud of poetry

Once again, we open the floor to the lyrical expression of a few readers who have been inspired by the recent effusion of musical and poetical outbursts here. Fortunately for all, there is no gong hanging on the wall behind you, the judges…although some of these have been pretty good.

First up is a little poem written during the Dover trial by a very famous evolutionary biologist who has asked me to keep it anonymous. No confidence in the meter, huh? Or perhaps fear that declaring such talent will lead to the literary set distracting from the real work of biology?

I think that I shall never see
A theory dumber than ID:
It says that God can make a tree,
A beaver or a honeybee-
That God can simply get a whim
To make the small E. coli swim.
He waves His hand through Heaven’s air
And lo! Flagella everywhere!
But sometimes even God falls down
And makes a poor, pathetic clown:
Yes, poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make Behe.

The second submission is by a well-known atheist who does out herself.

Super Geek
by Greta Christina
(to the tune of “Super Freak” by Rick James)

She’s a very geeky girl
The kind you cheat off of in math class
And she will never let her teachers down
Once she takes her SAT’s

She likes the boys in the chess club
She says that Spassky is her favorite
When she makes a move, it’s rook takes bishop, check-mate
She’s very hard to beat

The girl is pretty bright now
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
The kind of girl you read about
(In Omni Magazine)
The girl is pretty brainy
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
I’d really like to test her
(Every time we meet)
She’s alright, she’s alright, she’s alright with me, yeah
She’s a Super Geek, Super Geek, she’s super-geeky

She’s a very special girl
From her glasses to her Oxfords
And she will help me study AP math and physics
And AP bio, too

“Live long and prosper”‘s what she says
“Back in the chem lab I’ll be waiting”
When I get there, she’s got Number Two pencils
It’s such a geeky scene

The girl is pretty bright now
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
The kind of girl you read about
(In Omni Magazine)
The girl is pretty brainy
(The girl’s a Super Geek)
I’d really like to test her
(Every time we meet)
She’s alright, she’s alright, she’s alright with me, yeah
She’s a Super Geek, Super Geek, she’s super-geeky

Judges?

As for me, it’s time for me to flee the country. Ta-ta, until I next find a wireless connection somewhere in South America!

Molecular biology teachers need a rock anthem

For those of you who liked yesterday’s little poem, here’s a somewhat rowdier piece that I was sent.

DNA (to the tune of TNT by ACDC)

Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi!

See me divide up in your nucleus on your micro-screen
I’m all of you that you can get
If you know what I mean
Proteins to the left of me, lipids to the right
Aint got no oxy, but I got moxy
Don’t you start a fight

“Cus I’m DNA
I’m Dynamite
(DNA) I’m wound up tight
(DNA) I have secrets to tell
(DNA) I’m in your cells!!!!

I’m Adenine! Guanine! Cytosine!
And Thymine man!
Nitrogen bases, a phosphate group
Understand?
G binds to C
A binds to T
A double helix plan
I run your life!
I control your cells!
So don’t you mess me around!

Cus I’m DNA!
I’m dynamite
(DNA) And I’m wound up tight!
(DNA) I have secrets to tell
(DNA)I’m in your cells!

It’s too bad we can’t get Bon Scott to sing it for us, but a Brian Johnson version would be great. Somebody send the new lyrics to the band.