Pseudoscience

To quote Del:

"Everybody loot the store, get your canned goods..."

I posted the following rant over at Salon, in response to this rambling mess of an article by Alan H. Goldstein. I hate to come off as reactionary, but not only is Goldstein's piece seemingly alarmist and arrogant, it is horribly written. If you are going to make unconvincing arguments and try to pass them off as immutable human destiny, at least try to write in a clear style that doesn't make you sound like a kook. My response is cross-posted below:

Quick, everyone, let's go back to the caves and draw pretty geometric pictures on the walls with pieces of carbonized wood!

The author's sole real argument, buried under pages upon pages of solipsistic gibberish, is that because we "will soon" have the ability to exchange electrons with living systems, we must quickly discover what this will mean, look like, how it will affect carbon-based life, and we must do this before we even know what we are dealing with- or else. I hate to bring it to the author's attention, but my Blackberry is currently radiating microwaves in to every cell in my hip at a density of about 3.6 watts/Kg. The author's scare-use of arbitrary and meaningless scaled-up power densities in microvolts across tiny areas scaled to millions of volts across two-dimensional planes (not volumes or masses) is meaningless- a true consideration of power density would take amperage (thus watts) in to account across a three-dimensional volume. Better yet, it would use the accepted SAR measure of watts per kilogram. Electrical, electromechanical, optoelectric, radio frequency and other systems are constantly in contact with biological material. Mutation doesn't just happen without a specific system of evolution in place which allows it to happen. And "physio-chemical damage" doesn't just constantly happen whenever electrons are excited in a biological system. An example would be this: you don't get a tumor from being subjected to an MRI.

All this is beside the larger point, which is that humans have evolved with our technology (in many ways, we are our technology) since the first bone weapon was used to slay the first prety Kubrick-style. There is no reason to beleive we will not continue to evolve with our technology, not be destroyed by it (barring any unforeseen catastrophes such as nuclear holocaust or Bill Joy gray goo scenarios.)