Link & Video Round Up #1

First up I'd like to throw the wonderfully witty and well thought out essay by Donna Haraway, entitled A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. I'll have more to write about this, but the one thing that didn't trip me up last year was the whole body squick that sent conniptions through some quite randomized sections of the feminist blogosphere, with regards to both boobies and transpersons, let alone trans-identity in the abstract. this probably owes not a small amount to the steady innoculation of sci-fi reading I've done, where characters who are just brains in jars (and sometimes it's not even the inhabitants' original brain) are sort of a standard trope, and hence make mere transsexuality or mild body modification somewhat meh. Until the MRA start gettign their cocks replaced with biomechanical and self aware serrated pruning shears I don't care.

And even then I'll only care because it's cruelty to the pruning shears.

Some neat Videos now, first up a brilliant example of the evolutionary process that at the same time also debunks the whole "watch" metaphor natural theologists have been whipping out since before Darwin

One interesting point that maybe needs pointing out is that the computer model used produces clear and remarkably unmistakable "explosions" and "plateus", as does the fossile record.

And a guy jumping out of a balloon on the edge of space?
Wheee!

And now a little sarcastic trans-humanism to wash it down with, from the same guy who does Dresden Codak, with Enough Is Enough: A Thinking Ape's Critique On Trans-Simianism:

Klomp predicts that through a technology called ‘hygiene’ we could extend the simian lifespan well into the late 20s or possibly 30s. What exactly will the post-simian do with all that time? Do we really want to live in a society populated by geriatric 27- year- olds? In living so long and spending so much time ‘thinking,’ do we not also run the risk of becoming a cold, passionless race incapable of experiencing our two emotions (fear and not fear)? How much of our simianity are we willing to sacrifice for this notion of progress?

I'd link to BA's coming out post, or anything written by BFP, or stuff from a wide variety of people, but I shan't. because they're all too good for you.