What is an enemy, who is he to us, and how must we deal with him? Another way to put it, for example, is: What is cancer? - a growing collection of malignant cells that we must at all costs expel, excise, reject? Or something like a parasite, with which we must negotiate a contract of symbiosis? I lean toward the second solution, as life itself does. l’m even willing to bet that in the future the best treatment for cancer will switch from eliminating it to a method that will profit from its dynamism.

Why? Because, objectively, we have… ]]> Wed, 14 Sep 2011 05:01:00 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/10199710371 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/26/james-wood-the-new-atheism?CMP=twt_fd Trapped in the childhood literalism of my background, I had not entertained the possibility of Christian belief separated from the great lure and threat of heaven and hell.

The New Atheism is locked into a similar kind of literalism. It parasitically lives off its enemy. Just as evangelical Christianity is characterised by scriptural literalism and an uncomplicated belief in a "personal God", so the New Atheism often seems engaged only in doing battle with scriptural literalism; but the only way to combat such literalism is with rival literalism. The God of the New Atheism and the God… ]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:21:05 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/26/james-wood-the-new-atheism?CMP=twt_fd http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15evolve.html The origin of animals was one of the most astonishing and important transformations in the history of life. From single-celled ancestors, they evolved into a riot of complexity and diversity. An estimated seven million species of animals live on earth today, ranging from tubeworms at the bottom of the ocean to elephants lumbering across the African savanna. Their bodies can total trillions of cells, which can develop into muscles, bones and hundreds of other kinds of tissues and cell types.
The dawn of the animal kingdom about 800 million years ago was also an ecological revolution.
Animals devoured… ]]> Sun, 20 Mar 2011 05:37:46 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15evolve.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873004/ According to this view, ancient viruses, as with the ones today, could only make copies of themselves by succesfully infecting a host. So they become engines of innovation, using every possible dodge to get their genetic payload inside the host cell. In an early, RNA-protein world, there would not be enzymes to degrade DNA, so a virus encoded by DNA would have a big survival advantage. This suggests a scenario in which a clever parasite brings along DNA plus the means of copying DNA-- a different parasite at least for bacteria and archaea/eukaryotes-- and hijacks the cell's existing interpretation equipment.… ]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 07:32:46 -0700 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873004/ http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/01/malaria-caught-breaking-and-entering-red-blood-cell.html The video above captures the moment when a malaria parasite invades a human red blood cell - the first time the event has been caught in high resolution.

The Plasmodium parasite responsible for malaria is transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes, and is thought to kill almost 1 million people worldwide each year.

Jake Baum at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues used transmission electron microscopy, immuno-fluorescence and 3D super-resolution microscopy to record thousands of high-definition images of separate invasion events, a process that takes… ]]> Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:54:00 -0700 http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/01/malaria-caught-breaking-and-entering-red-blood-cell.html http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/08/16/rsbl.2010.0521.short?rss=1 Parasites commonly manipulate host behaviour, and among the most dramatic examples are diverse fungi that cause insects to die attached to leaves. This death-grip behaviour functions to place insects in an ideal location for spore dispersal from a dead body following host death. Fossil leaves record many aspects of insect behaviour (feeding, galls, leaf mining) but to date there are no known examples of behavioural manipulation. Here, we document, to our knowledge, the first example of the stereotypical death grip from 48 Ma leaves of Messel, Germany, indicating the antiquity of this behaviour. As well as probably being the first… ]]> Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:40:00 -0700 http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/08/16/rsbl.2010.0521.short?rss=1 http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html So what would happen if there were none? Would anyone or anything miss them? Nature put this question to scientists who explore aspects of mosquito biology and ecology, and unearthed some surprising answers.

There are 3,500 named species of mosquito, of which only a couple of hundred bite or bother humans. They live on almost every continent and habitat, and serve important functions in numerous ecosystems. "Mosquitoes have been on Earth for more than 100 million years," says Murphy, "and they have co-evolved with so many species along the way." Wiping out a species of mosquito could… ]]> Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:17:00 -0700 http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/rancieres-ignoramus

Jacques Rancière prepares for us a parable. A student who is illiterate, after living a fulfilled life without text, one day decides to teach herself to read. Luckily she knows a single poem by heart and procures a copy of that poem, presumably from a trusted source, by which to work. By comparing her knowledge, sign by sign, word by word, with the poem she can, Rancière believes, finally piece together a foundational understanding of her language:

“From this ignoramus, spelling out signs, to the scientist who constructs hypotheses, the same intelligence is always at work – an intelligence that… ]]> Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:43:36 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/rancieres-ignoramus http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/audio-essay-on-pharaohs-cults-and-parasitism

audio essay : On Pharaohs, Cults and Parasitism (The Condition of Division)

Originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM as part of Antepress’ Digestives series, Monday 24th May 2010

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

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]]> Mon, 24 May 2010 10:29:22 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/audio-essay-on-pharaohs-cults-and-parasitism http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/05/the-opposition-paradigm-together-again-for-the-first-time.html

by Daniel Rourke

figure i : he stands opposite his rivals

You are the only one who can never see yourself apart from your image. In the reflection of a mirror, or the pigment of the photograph you entertain yourself. Every gaze you cast is mediated by a looking apparatus, by an image you must stand alongside. The gaze welcomes itself as a guest. The eye…

]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 21:15:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/05/the-opposition-paradigm-together-again-for-the-first-time.html http://www.livescience.com/animals/Spiders-Picky-Eaters-100513.html A spider that only eats ants is choosy about which body parts of its prey it devours based on their nutritional value.

These new findings are the first to demonstrate that "specialist" predators relying on a single food source might have evolved feeding behaviors to maximize what they get out of meal time, the researchers say.

"We found that these spiders do have to balance their nutrient intake by choosing different body parts of their exclusive ant prey," said Stano Pekár, an assistant professor of ecology and zoology at Masaryk University in the Czech… ]]> Fri, 14 May 2010 03:35:00 -0700 http://www.livescience.com/animals/Spiders-Picky-Eaters-100513.html