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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."
Here's one. Oh yeah!
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.
Yes, she is fighting for what she believes in, and that's all noble and good, but having met her on several occasions and being familiar with some of her research projects, the reality of it all is that she's very, very good at self-promotion, and very, very bad at actually doing anything of real value.
Sure, feral robot dogs, great. But the actual idea is simply using comodity components to lower costs for a technical project. The dogs themselves are woefully inadequate, the 'programming' and 'sensors' were ridiculously primitive, and her entire approach to the field relies solely on ideas rather than a fusion of ideas, knowledge and hard work.
She has also apparently misrepresented her qualifications in the past, and as another poster pointed out, often has very short appointments in places due to her quirks. Hopefully, for her sake, she'll learn to rely on her presumably real gifts and strengths other than mere self-promotion.
It's a bit like people who talk about Steve Jobs as being the most brilliant computer genius because he single-handedly (as some think) created Apple and all of it's inventions.
But don't take my word for it, go listen to her talk sometime, or audit a class of hers, and judge for yourself. In my mind, we can find better role models!
C'mon. You COULD have used this picture, or (by popular demand) this picture (somewhat NWS in today's "politically correct" world, but it doesn't actually show anything).
Ah, got the second link wrong. It's http://cat.nyu.edu/natalie/image.html.