January 15, 2008
“The smoking [aerosol] gun” at Ft. Detrick?
A comment from the Sunshine Project biodefense listserve:
“…and there are so many dual-use, offensive-defense projects in the April 2007 CBDP (Department of Defense Chemical and Biological Defense Program) Report that it would take me an entire chapter of another book to go through them all, including aerosolization projects. One even calls for the aerial delivery of an alleged GM vaccine for nerve gas. a sick joke and a fraud. all US armed forces have injectors for nerve gas. you have to inject yourself within about 10 seconds after exposure or you are dead about a minute later. no way you could wait for some alleged vaccine to be delivered by air. you would have died a hideous death by then. no it is clear they are developing a system for the aerial delivery of nerve agents in combat as a weapon. remember: offense (agent) plus defense (vaccine) plus delivery system (aerosolization) equals a weapon.”
sunshine project: biodefense
link to 2007 CBDP report
September 7, 2007
Conference: On the relationship of empirical research and anthropological theory
Conference of the German Anthropological Association
1st-4th October 2007, University of Halle (Saale)
Questions of dispute – On the relationship of empirical research and anthropological theory in the beginning 21st century
The dispute between an interpretive and an explanatory, hypothesis-examining anthropology has not really been settled. It rather has been overscored by a succession of so-called turns (linguistic turn, literary turn, cultural turn, iconic turn) and their respective counter-movements. Also, excitements over postmodern approaches have worn off – without a result that can easily be identified. The various adjectives – interpretive, positivist, constructionist, postmodern – have become mutual sweeping judgments without much expertise and disposition to distinguish.
August 15, 2007
Esther Dyson on emerging technologies
For those interested in the question of emerging technologies, here’s a link to a discussion on the Charlie Rose television show with Esther Dyson . I don’t know much about Ms. Dyson, but she seems a particularly thoughtful variety of… what should I call her… investment capitalist.
Here she talks about everything from putting her own genome up on the web to facebook to what comes after google to weather reports for Indian farmers. These are not suprising topics of themselves, but what struck me was her sense of nuance in approaching them… an attitude a bit like the one I saw us trying to develop last year in our approach to the contemporary.
August 6, 2007
Knowledge Collaboration and Proximity
Hello fellow ARConauts. I hope Summer finds you pleasently dispersed.
Since I’m under the assumption that not everybody is a regular reader of European Urban and Regional Studies, I thought I’d bring the following article to your attention:
Moodysson, Jerker, and Ola Jonsson. 2007. ”Knowledge Collaboration and Proximity: The Spatial Organization of Biotech Innovation Projects.” European Urban and Regional Studies 14(2):115-131.
http://eur.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/2/115?etoc
July 18, 2007
Mushrooms and Bioterrorism
by Tom Banse
Over the years, you’ve no doubt heard people make different arguments for protecting the remaining stands of old-growth forest in theNorthwest. Here’s a new twist on the subject: saving ancient forests as a matter of national defense. The connection is a local mushroom that could be useful to counter a bioterrorism attack.Tucked off a rural road in south Puget Sound lies a thriving mail-orderbusiness. Fungi Perfecti produces gourmet mushrooms and medicinalmushroom extracts in a complex of “growhouses” and laboratories.
Paul Stamets: “Shiitake! Lots of shiitake.”
Paul Stamets is a bearded, bespectacled entrepreneur. He picks his way through damp and dimly lit shelves.
Paul Stamets: “Watch your step here. It’s wet, high humidity environment ”
Stamets knows from years of personal study that mushrooms produce potent antibiotics. His curiosity was spurred to a new level by theanthrax attacks on the East Coast late in 2001.
Paul Stamets: “So it came to me to be very clear that if you wanted to fight anthrax, tapping in to some of the antibiotical systems that these mushrooms produce would be logical first step.”
Stamets says most people fail to take mushrooms seriously or appreciate their medicinal value. Bioterrorism may change that.
Paul Stamets: “I have tuned into the fact that mushrooms do not like torot. They are surrounded by all these hungry microbes that want to eat them. But they resist being eaten.”
In particular, there’s a rare type that grows on 500 year-old trees inthe Pacific Northwest. The wood conk mushroom, also known as Agarikon.It looks like the hoof of a deer or a cow or perhaps a small beehive.
Paul Stamets: “Because they’re in the old growth forest under such wetconditions, I’m real curious how can something stay in the woods for solong and not rot. I thought, well that’s a good group to look at.”
Paul Stamets cultured numerous strains in his lab and prepared natural extracts. For the past two years, he’s submitted samples to the Defense Department’s BioShield program for testing.
They go to a top security U.S. Army lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Itscreens for potency against contagions that might be used as terroristweapons.
The Army says Stamets’ wood conk extract shows promise against smallpox and similar viruses.
Paul Stamets: “I believe our old growth forests are important for our national defense. This is a clear example of that.”
Smallpox is one of six diseases the U.S. government considersterrorists most likely to use in a biological attack. Routine vaccination of Americans stopped decades ago after the deadly sickness was eradicated worldwide. Or so we thought.
John Norris: “But the Russians and others apparently kept their stocks of smallpox and somehow we believe that smallpox has been acquired bypotential terrorists. So it is a real threat.”
Investor John Norris chairs a private bioterrorism institute in Boston.He’s just signed a partnership with Paul Stamets to commercialize amushroom-based antiviral drug.
John Norris: “Not everybody is either able or willing to be vaccinatedso a therapy is needed as well. A therapy would allow for people who have been exposed or have contracted the disease to prevent itsincrease within their systems.”
Norris sees potential to sell hundreds of millions of doses to the American, British, and German government stockpiles of biologicalweapon defenses. First, the anti-smallpox drug has to prove itself inanimal trials and then get FDA approval. That typically takes years.
One footnote, don’t try this at home or bother tromping through an oldgrowth forest to harvest this rare mushroom yourself. Only the extract–produced by a secret patented process–works against smallpox.
Fungi Perfecti LLC
US Army Medical Research Institute
© Copyright 2007, KUOW
March 7, 2007
Where next at ARC?
I just had a conversation with two guys from the Institute for the Future of the Book, a little project started by the Annenberg school. They have a number of extremely cool projects underway, including a multimedia authoring tool called Sophie that is gorgeous and absurdly easy to use. More interesting for ARC, however, are the web experiments in creating better commenting and collaborative writing tools. Check out, for instance, their version of the Iraq Study Group report. This is the kind of thing I imagine being useful for ARC as it seeks to explore the co-creation of concepts, and the challenge of getting beyond single-author call and response forms of co-labor…
January 16, 2007
A different kind of concept work
Just browsing to see what “Concept Work” gets us. One thing it gets us is this.