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Interview with Natalie Jeremijenko
cynical writes "From releasing packs of Feral Robot Dogs that sniff out chemical contamination, to teaching Yale engineering students socially responsible design, to co-authoring Biotech Hobbyist Magazine, Natalie Jeremijenko's work merges engineering, biology, politics and art. Enviro-tech blog WorldChanging has an exclusive interview with Jeremijenko where she discusses how art and technology mix, garage biotech, and being the "Q" (from James Bond) of the activist community."
Anyone got pictures?
Very cool... a step towards I,Robot? :)
I'm not sure *I* personally could play with a robotic dog and feel normal, I guess I'm just old-fashioned.
None-the-less, that's very interesting...
As if security paranoia wasn't high enough around here in the first place... Interesting, nonetheless...
WorldChanging has an exclusive interview with Jeremijenko where she discusses how art and technology mix, garage biotech, and being the "Q" (from James Bond) of the activist community."
It would have been more interesting if she was the Q (from ST:TNG) of the activist community.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
crap - soon my bathroom will be full of Feral Robot Dogs.
Hmmm... I thought it was Arnold Schwarzenegger's job.
"It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad."
From an interview at BoingBoing... "Of course they say they'd use it to bring down 'problem people', i.e. direct action leaders."
Doing the right thing so often means fighting the power... Sometimes, leading is leaving. Or pissing off. If you do what everyone wants you to do, you will have no real influence on the world whatsoever.
I like her attitude.
reading articles such as this always make me feel better about the world. I am already well aware of the misfortunes of it, but it is truly inspirational to read about someone fighting for what they believe in such as 'NJ' is.
It is one thing to read about the various 'rebel without a cause' types who merely want their voice heard, but to read the words of an educated person who is using that education to attempt to make the world a better place is imo the realization of an ideal in a otherwise rather compromised world.
I had no idea this woman existed before now (perhaps I am not all that well read) and knowing she even exists inspires me to press onward and continue.
I wish her the best of luck in this battle and hope to aid the cause some day soon.
Of course, I will have to begin researching more about her to ensure that I am not a complete moron by making the former statements... But at far as I can tell presently she is an awesome human being.
I for one welcome our new feral robot dog overlords.
The 'new speak' makes reading tedious and is at odds with her 'mission'. The authors are just as bad.
Photo caption:
"Jeremijenko's pet rescued lab rabbit, Sally, noses about for spent edamame pods."
spent edamame pods?
I eat this stuff but they aren't 'spent pods' they're husks.
The photo caption is representative of the articles overall language.
He thought that Big Brother would gain power by forbidding sex to its citizens, via the JASL. Instead, our own shard of the brave new world keeps us all Soma-fied with porn sites. When Winston Smith turns out to be a hot professor babe, we don't hear her message -- all we here are choruses of "I'd hit it!"
:-P
That being said, Christ, would I hit that.
... but I'm sure she'll eventually get over you.
because she's never been able to hold a position at any institution...
And because she has the bad habit of misrepresenting her unimplemented ideas, as completed works.
Hint: It doesn't.
First there were Cyberpunks....
Then there were Cypherpunks...
Then there were Steampunks....
How about Genepunks or Biopunks (I can't decide right now which one sounds cooler)?
Bob Porter: We'll be getting hiring these people here... First, Ms. Natalie Jere... Jere... Jere... Jeregoingtobe hired immediately, anyway.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
There's a hot grits comment waiting in this thread.
Or am I thinking of another Natalie?
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I predict mankind may well be destroyed in an orgy of rampant crotch sniffing.
Biotechhobbyist is right along the lines of a PostNuke forum I set up a few years ago and have been slowly updating. I'm so pleased to see more of this sort of thing.
I strongly believe that biotech is the logical next place for the DIY revolution or the hacker approach to innovation or whatever you want to call it and that a key to getting there is for people to digest the journal articles and make it doable for people at home.
This is such a hot area for the DIY enthusiast because its an intersection of so many skills that are already honed by being a computer geek.
I'm quite impressed and I can't wait to see more.
Interesting that Biotechhobbyist seems to be from UCSD. I've covered a really cool story coming out of the same campus called the Discode project which calls itself an open-source biotech hardware project. It uses CD-ROMs and inkjet printers to enable DIY molecular interaction screening. Amazing stuff.
I hear they're still looking for Linux kernel hackers with good understading of CD-ROM drivers. If you're in San Diego and you're a CD hacker, you should check out the project.
How could you possibly call robot dogs 'feral'. Does this guy know the meanong of 'feral'?
See, this is what I'm talking about. I hadn't even thought of going to a pet supply store to look for cell culture incubators. This stuff is still so ground level for the home market. Sharing these sorts of tips is invaluable.
Of course what's more intriguing is doing the elctronics to make your own, but knowing where to get stuff that is easily adaptable is good too. Sometimes it's good to improvise completely from scratch, sometimes it's better to take something that gets you halfway there.
For kitchen cultures like yogurt and sourdough I've used a variety of incubators from rice cookers and crock pots to all sorts of lamps. While the DIY lamp jobs are more fun and impressive looking, the crock pots are easier to clean which is an important issue once you get beyond the first experiments.
I really recommend sourdough to anybody. It's so simple and even if you skip the bread and just make pancakes it's awesome.
It's incredibly simple to make starter, but don't trust me. Google for the sourdough FAQ and then look for the answer to how to make starter. It's amazing how it works.
Anyone got pictures?
Here we have a story about a brilliant young woman and and the first thing you do is ask for pictures of her? Maybe asking for pictures of her is your first instinct, but it is not mine. Mine was to do a Google image search...
That's a tin foil hat, you stupid! Put it on your head!
The strange surreality of the interview seemed more like a step towards the dystopia depicted in the classic '80s graphic novel to me: Attractive blonde rebel girl, radioactive seagulls, depressed rodents in the walls, Hoop? riots and weird techno weapons (no zenades though) - reminded me a little of the book by Alan Moore; "The Ballad of Halo Jones", but it was the mention of her feral robotic dogs that really clinched it.
Do you have some kind of problem with kids, and ascribe that merely to being male?
Anyway, back on topic:
"For instance, I put a camera in Fresh Kills landfill, just a little networked web cam. It went on whenever the background radiation flipped above the so-called safe level.
What was interesting was that Staten Island has a hospital on it, which was also measuring environmental radiation. Medical facilities are required to do that. So they had their dosimeter, I had my dosimeter. We're both gathering the same data and it's not that different.
But mine's triggering a web cam. So instead of presenting me with information so that it looks like science, like a little graph, it's clips. Every time the background radiation fluctuates above a certain level, you get two seconds of video.
When you look at that, you start to see things you were not looking for. Seagulls are always going past when this is being triggered. Something happens at sundown, there's a truck going past. That becomes interesting.
This issue of radioactive seagulls--there's only one other paper on it. I wasn't looking for radioactive seagulls. I had no idea about radioactive seagulls, or the concentration of radioactive diets that go on within the gullet of a seagull. It has actually been partially documented by some Greenpeace science groups in England, in Sellafield. But there are no publications on it here."
I just wanted to point this out because I think it's easy to gloss over. I LIVE on Staten Island and I haven't heard ANYTHING about this. What does the possibility of radioactive seagulls suggest to us? They sure as hell aren't eating granite. Where is the closest nuclear reactor to New York City - or is there a poorly-shielded nuclear weapons facility that we don't know about?
This, not to put too fine a point on it, is scary shit to me.
+++ATH0
who's nigga nate?
I'm a self-aware, thinking creature. Evolutionary standpoints do not matter one whit to me.
Kids are kids. At what stage in their life you meet them (birth, or afterward) or whose DNA they happen to contain really doesn't make much of a difference if you're interesting in ultimately forming a family with someone.
+++ATH0
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So you don't have to live with people looking into your qualifications, if any, to evaluate her work.
I'm simply writing you off as somebody who had a class with her as a teacher who she flunked for good reason.
Tech Public Policy stuff