Bioengineering is hot. Scientists are looking at how to get bacteria to make electricity, which could open up some very interesting solutions to the 21st Centiry energy crunch.

Bacteria that convert hydrocarbons into power will still vent CO₂ of course, but it would be a hell of a lot more efficient than burning the hydrocarbons and trying to capture that heat to boil water to spin a big magnet around to make electricity.

The real mojo would be if someone started engineering a way to get juice from photosynthesis. Biologically-captured solar power is where we get most of our energy (food, oil/coal/natural gas) from anyway. Theoretically it should be possible, but it's a whole different thing to work with plantlife as opposed to bacteria.

Two episodes in the torrentfeed. I have not yet watched. Maybe tonight.

Connelly is bloggin' again.

Photo from ColOmbia... creepy. (spelling tip: Yuliya)

From the Jung book I'm reading on my subway rides (emphasis mine):

We should expect the doctor of have an infleunce on the patient in every effective psychic treatment: but this influence can only take place when he too is affected by the patient. You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.

This is a pretty deep thing, and it goes well outside psychotherapy. It's something I wrestled with a lot when I was more regularly into acting and performing. Creating a space of vulnerability on stage was a critical part of the method that I pursued. This involves breaking the fourth wall, bringing the audience into direct human contact with the performer. It's a powerful technique that only works at close-range, but I really enjoyed using it.

This is also something that I have to work on in my personal life. In spite of my gregarious nature, I keep a pretty sizable portion of myself to myself in most situations, or at least immune to external input. That's a limitation, maybe borne from defense (once bitten, etc), that I'd like to work out.

From the Jung book I'm reading on my subway rides (emphasis mine):

We should expect the doctor of have an infleunce on the patient in every effective psychic treatment: but this influence can only take place when he too is affected by the patient. You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.

This is a pretty deep thing, and it goes well outside psychotherapy. It's something I wrestled with a lot when I was more regularly into acting and performing. Creating a space of vulnerability on stage was a critical part of the method that I pursued. This involves breaking the fourth wall, bringing the audience into direct human contact with the performer. It's a powerful technique that only works at close-range, but I really enjoyed using it.

This is also something that I have to work on in my personal life. In spite of my gregarious nature, I keep a pretty sizable portion of myself to myself in most situations, or at least immune to external input. That's a limitation, maybe borne from defense (once bitten, etc), that I'd like to work out.

(GD anthem!^*)

Wild mood swings lately. Serindipity's been riding high as well, me calling out to people just as they were doing the same otherwise. Strange connections across the lattice. I feel kind of like I'm coming out of a shell; little cracks and breakthroughts and then, oh man, slow down, I'm beat.

It always comes in fits and starts, and my overactive superego isn't helping much. Sans bike I've been reading on the MTA a bunch, picking up The Dharma Bums for a little brain-candy, and C.G. Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul for a little more substance. They make an interesting combo, but they're helping, no doubt.

Also a relief: I've been sweating this bachelor thing this weekend, but it all seems to be coming into focus. People piling on to help out, being major sports about getting into the act. It should be grand fun.

Still excited about getting my ass in motion, but starting to think about the people I won't be seeing, even just the neighborhood I won't be able to walk around in. Gives me a bit of pause. It's typical Koenig -- all jazzed up to be on the move and only later on really thinking about what's been left behind. Oh well, c'est la vie.

^*I found that music above -- and clearly that other link to the same artist -- via my old collaborator Johnny Nichols (who's on my MySpace now, natch) who's getting effing married himself. Cheerio there.

(GD anthem!^*)

Wild mood swings lately. Serindipity's been riding high as well, me calling out to people just as they were doing the same otherwise. Strange connections across the lattice. I feel kind of like I'm coming out of a shell; little cracks and breakthroughts and then, oh man, slow down, I'm beat.

It always comes in fits and starts, and my overactive superego isn't helping much. Sans bike I've been reading on the MTA a bunch, picking up The Dharma Bums for a little brain-candy, and C.G. Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul for a little more substance. They make an interesting combo, but they're helping, no doubt.

Also a relief: I've been sweating this bachelor thing this weekend, but it all seems to be coming into focus. People piling on to help out, being major sports about getting into the act. It should be grand fun.

Still excited about getting my ass in motion, but starting to think about the people I won't be seeing, even just the neighborhood I won't be able to walk around in. Gives me a bit of pause. It's typical Koenig -- all jazzed up to be on the move and only later on really thinking about what's been left behind. Oh well, c'est la vie.

^*I found that music above -- and clearly that other link to the same artist -- via my old collaborator Johnny Nichols (who's on my MySpace now, natch) who's getting effing married himself. Cheerio there.

Maybe I should stop reading Glenn Greenwald. He's so damn efficient at rendering the insanity. It's a hard time to be an American. I wrote a post a while back called "In it for the Country?" in which I sort of outlined why I still expend the psychic energy to pay attention to politics:

[C]ommunity is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics.

Basically, you can't get away from politics without going off the grid -- either as a hermit or in some kind of Pirate Utopia -- and I don't think that's really a feasible way to live for me (or for anyone, but God bless you if you try).

So I'm in, but it gets harder and harder to see how we're going to pull this stuff out, how we can set it right. I find myself so amazingly turned off -- not even angry anymore, just limp and tired and sad -- at how the Bush administration comports itself, at how cheap, petty greed runs the congress, at how what passes for "debate" is almost pure, uncut psychobabble. None of these are things I want to be a part of.

I feel like I'm back in high school a lot of the time, watching people vie for popularity and unfluence under terms that are barely comprehensible. Why do they do it? How did they become so powerful? Why do so many play along?

I want to make a break; not to drop out, but to go forward on my own terms. I think a lot of people feel that way. In the end it comes down to voting and deciding how to use power, but the process for determining how and why this is done seems deeply and (I'm sad to say) irrevokably fucked to me. I don't believe that the late-20th/early-21st century combine of big media and big money politics will ever right itself. We need another way.

They take away our freedom
In the name of liberty
Why don't they all just clear off
Why won't they let us be
They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell

Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Question everything you're told
Just take a look around you
At the bitterness and spite
Why can't we take over and try to put it right

This is what I hope to accomplish with the summer's writing, video and book stuff.

Big Ups to Franz, the Girth and Melissa for surviving the crucible of law school at their respective institutions. I've always instinctively felt that my social network was an above-average galaxy of connections (world-class, if you must know), but seeing so many friends power through a ritual experience that often results in washout, breakdown and/or general psychosis makes me proud. It's evidence of excellence.

Plus, it's good to know that when the shit hits the fan, I'll have some litigators I can call.