Science and technology with Bill Bain

The Herald:

IT’S GRIM UP NORTH

AS the flickering illusion of capitalism breeds increasing discontent in the West, it’s perhaps reasonable to imagine those living in totalitarian states enjoying more fulfilling lives than the rest of us. No technology to steal their precious time, no keeping up with the Joneses, no rushing towards nowhere in particular for another’s financial benefit.

Such bliss might be comparable to a wee detoxifying sabbatical on the Holy Isle – only with a uniform, gun and unerring allegiance to a cheese-loving manchild who clearly cuts his own hair. No, not The Donald, that definitely doesn’t classify as hair.

Life as a disposable cog in the mighty North Korean war machine isn’t all egoless subservience and hive-mind hijinks however. Just last week, a soldier miraculously survived six close-range shots from his former comrades as he slipped over the border, with South Korean surgeons quickly cutting into his wounds to fish out the bullets. An eternity spent in the seventh layer of hell could not have prepared them for what came next – a Hieronymus Bosch fever dream on psychoactive mushrooms boiled up in Satan’s sweat.

As they sliced through the soldier’s flesh, slithering molasses of monstrous gut parasites burst out of the wounds – having chewed through his stomach lining for a swim round the infected bulletholes like pigs in the proverbial. This was not an everyday occurrence for these medics. This defector was either very ill indeed or the worst piñata ever.

Although the discovery of several new varieties of parasite provides a rare insight into the nutrition, health and everyday life of North Koreans, it was certainly a high price to pay for the poor solider – who would doubtlessly have preferred to remain oblivious to the apocalyptic scenes playing out in his belly.

“In my 20-year career as a surgeon, I have only seen something like this in a textbook,” lead surgeon Lee Cook-jong said – presumably before projectile vomiting the words “kill me, I’ve seen too much” over the walls. Lee believes the soldier’s appalling condition is directly linked to vegetables in the hermit kingdom being liberally fertilised with human faeces – and not washed before consumption.

So in North Korea, life is – quite literally – s*** and then you die. Even for well-fed soldiers. The unholy horrors lurking in the civilian population’s bellies could perhaps shave a fortune off the next Alien movie’s budget. It’ll certainly be one way for the locals to make money when Trump brings democracy to whoever’s left standing.

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DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF EQUAL RIGHTS?

During one particularly merciless orgy of bloodshed last January, 47 people were executed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You have to wonder what that swordsman told the missus when she asked how his shift had gone that day. Did he confess that monotony had set in by the time the 14th prisoner’s head had hit the ground? That his mind had wandered to what soup the canteen was serving by the 23rd?

Perhaps such desensitisation can be understood. What we snowflakes view as gross human rights violations would not even begin to tickle the conscience of a fella used to such cultural perdition.

Where he lives, 10 per cent of his fellow citizens – the Shia minority – are openly discriminated against. Thousands of migrant workers are uprooted and sent back home. This United Nations member state also adheres to the strict Wahhabism form of Sunni Islam, which cloaks the female form from public view – a hint of skin presumably enough to ignite uncontrollable sexual frenzy in the streets.

Yet, it’s not all bad – especially if you’re a robot. It seems the state’s oppression of women only applies if you’re made of flesh and blood. Last month, the Saudi government granted full official citizenship to an AI-boosted android – a female one to boot. And, no doubt, reboot.

“Sophia” wore a knowing Mona Lisa smile as she appeared at the Future Investment Initiative in the capital city Riyadh. “Thank you to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” she purred at the assembled throng. “I am very honoured and proud for this unique distinction. It is historic to be the first robot in the world to be recognised with citizenship.”

So no toes dipped trepidatiously into the perfumed waters of liberalism for Saudi Arabia – stripping down to the buff and hurling oneself face first into the raging seas of change is the only way forward. Our future machine overlords may even mark the day Sophia was adopted by the human race as a public holiday.

This curvaceous AI’s physical shell was sculpted in Hong Kong by folk who are clearly not so fearful of the female form, with her “brain” consisting of US roboticist David Hanson’s impressive AI chatbot systems. Capable of carrying a fairly convincing conversation – if you’re of primary school age – Sophia is also able to learn the emotions behind complex facial expressions. Don’t get too excited, a dog can do this too.

Saudi Arabia setting the precedent in robot civil rights is perhaps not so surprising though. This is the Kingdom’s way of promoting and supporting – thus cornering the market on – the cutting-edge technology behind lifelike AIs. It is clear that advances in clean energy will soon make oil superfluous to progress’s blind march, but Saudi’s rulers certainly aren’t going to go gently into that goodnight. As ironic as it seems, their eyes are on the future.

Any Scottish AIs reading this who are thinking of emigrating should note, however, that Sophia never mentioned if her citizenship granted her the right to marry without permission, open her own bank account, get a job without male consent, dress how she wants, interact with any men beyond her family, get a fair trial or even travel anywhere without a male robot companion.

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WINTER IS COMING

EVERYONE loves snowballs, whether it’s Tunnock’s, Lees’ or the ones wee scamps throw at car windscreens knowing they’re too young to be banged up on a manslaughter charge.

It’s an infatuation tattooed onto the human race’s collective subconscious, perhaps resonating from DNA’s residual memory – back to when the Earth itself was a giant snowball 600 million years ago. This was a period known as, unimaginatively, “Snowball Earth”.

There is plenty of debate on what eventually thawed the planet and led to the astonishingly fertile Cambrian-era explosion of life – birthing plants, dinosaurs, birds and mammals – but researchers from the University of Southampton now credit an underwater volcano with sparking the pilot light in nature’s belly. If true – and it looks likely – this would be somewhat ironic, since it is also suspected that clouds and gases thrown up by supermassive volcanic eruptions also froze the Earth in the first place. And will again in the future.

The latest evidence for an ancient volcanic thaw, however, was found within crystal formations called zircons, which – rather helpfully – leak lead as they decay, allowing their age to be accurately determined.

The process then allows scientists to detect atomic quantities of carbon dioxide, which is excreted in abundance by huge volcanic eruptions. A clear detection of this gas would be too much of a coincidence if it spiked directly before hundreds of thousands of new species forming. Which, apparently, it did. But nature’s see-saw must be balanced, and after a thaw must always come a freeze.

With Bali on high alert over the imminent eruption of Mount Agung and North Korea eager to ignite a planetary apocalypse by nuking ancient US super-volcano Yellowstone, we might not have too long to wait to see if the theory is true. Those left behind – the cockroaches and world leaders cowering in their underground bunkers – may indeed enjoy a white Christmas this year.