Gut Feelings

Here's a link to the article that was brought up today about the bacteria in our guts influence on mood.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/18/244526773/gut-bacteria-might-guide-the-workings-of-our-minds?utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook

"MAN" by Steve Cutts

http://vimeo.com/56093731

Beauty

                                                           Fuck the Beauty!

            The forest is on fire. The drunk is asleep in the corner.

A man dies alone.

Nothing is the same

Everything is the beginning.

Everything is born to die, born to be unique in the world. Born to assert their beauty and experience death. Such is a thing of beauty.

            But I see pain in beauty. How is it fair? Our lives are so short, beauty is so fleeting, we  spend our lives longing for it, yet we can never hold onto it. Sometimes I wonder whether or not it’s worth it. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to just look at life as a logical progression and shut out the beauty, because beauty hurts. It makes me want to throw myself…that’s it, just throw myself. Throw myself at it, in it, around it. Embrace it. Yet I know the pain will come. It always comes. Yea nothing is the same and everything is the beginning, that’s where the beauty originates, but everything dies, everything passes, and that gets old.

            Sorry, that was a little bit of a tangent. Sometimes I just like to think you know? But what I’m really trying to get at is does the impermanence of beauty, the destruction that originates from it and follows it, contribute to our longing for it? Yea that sounds like a good question.

            Darwin was a man who studied the beauty in destruction. He saw it all around us. He saw it in the successive generations of each species; they all died only to be reborn with the next generation as a new form. Death must occur in order to provide for new life. In On Natural Selection, Darwin writes:

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications (Darwin 71).

            I believe that the world is truly a “Tree of Life.” It takes the weak and pushes them down, casting them into the dirt, forming the surface on which it grows. Those that have the fortitude and ability to rise to the top do so and continue to exist through their offspring. It’s a sad truth, I know. Well maybe it’s a little defeatist, cynical even.  I’d like to think that we are each given our fair share, that everyone is dealt the same hand. But that is not the case. Nature shows us this. You all have you own skill sets. You’re own way to survive. But if I am not fit to live amongst the other apes then I cannot be allowed to live. Such is a “beautiful ramification.”

            Forest fires are a hugely important part of a forest. They clear the underbrush so new trees may form and existing trees can receive nutrients more efficiently. The destructive force of a forest fire is beautiful and terrifying. When you look at it with the eye of a naturalist you no longer see this conflagration as a point where hell has spilled onto earth. You see it as an evolutionary force, creation. The duality between appearances, between destruction, and natural fact in nature is what inspires awe in us. It’s what inspired Darwin to look critically at each species, at each plant, at each generation. It’s what makes you feel human.

            The onlooker finds tragedy beautiful. A car wrapped around a telephone pole prompts a line of cars to build up as each person takes their turn looking for the body. They deny it but they love it. It’s their nature. Curiosity at its finest. They are drawn to it because it reminds them of their inevitable end, yet they can breathe a sigh of relief because it’s not them. They’re not the ones fused with their steering wheel; they’re not the one who has earned a twenty-second spot on the evening news.

            And here’s Alexandra with the traffic report:

A man died on the highway and everyone stopped to see.

            Plato illustrated man’s yielding to “repulsive attractions” in The Republic (Sontag 74):

On his way up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, he noticed the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground, with the executioner standing by them. He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and tried to run away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his eyes wide, he ran up to the bodies and cried, ‘There you are, curse you, feast yourselves on this lovely sight (Sontag 75).

           

            They cannot help but to feast. Tragedy draws them out. Out of their moral shells. It really is beautiful. The loss of order, of life. It’s the internal struggle between humanity and curiosity that compels them to pull the car over, to get out, to become an observer, a participant in the tragedy. There is beauty in this struggle. Like the “Tree of Life” that is grown from the struggle between life and death for the next generation you emerge from the struggle between morality and curiosity as a newly formed being. Awareness, numbness, mortality covers your heart with its enlightening shade.

            Artists have learned to use the conflicted internal voice to pull beauty from disaster. Andy Warhol’s silk-screened depictions of tragedies play on humanity’s draw towards the crash. In his work titled “129 Die in Jet,” Warhol presents the following…

                   http://www.warhol.org/exhibitions/2012/headlines/img/selectedworks/129dieinjet_large.jpg    

            It is not the presentation of the piece that evokes a response from the viewer; it is the carnage involved in the newsprint. Maybe you’re wondering why this would ever be an image that would be put up on a wall in an art exhibit. It serves the same purpose as any other art piece. It pulls your strings. It makes you question your morality. But there’s beauty in the sensations it evokes.            

            Picture yourself as a passenger on the plane. You know you’re going to die. You look to your left and right. They know they’re going to die too. Your mind grapples with it. Tries to find a way out. Self-preservation. But like a cat trapped in a box your mind flails against the inevitable to no avail. The next day you’re the news.

            And here’s Alexandra with the traffic report:

129 died in a plane crash and everyone let out a sigh of relief.

It could have been you but it wasn’t.

Now you’re standing in an art exhibit with your hands folded behind your back, rolling up onto your toes and you’re drawn in by the death. It’s right there in the image. But you’re safe. It’s pornographic, it’s prurient, no it’s an image of death. But they’re all the same.

            Fuck beauty.

So what if the pain comes? So what if it’s fleeting? So what if it’s so wrapped up in the world, so entrenched in who you are that you can hardly find a grasp? It comes in a flash. Its impermanence is what draws you to it. I’d like to come to terms with this. I’d like to learn to enjoy the beauty in life as it comes, to live in the small moments, because those are the most beautiful.

            Nothing is the same

            Everything is the beginning

The forest is on fire. The drunk is asleep in the corner. Everything is beautiful again.

           

           

   Works Cited

Darwin, Charles. On Natural Selection. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Print.

Ramblings

"Welcome to the world through Glass."

Google Glass, a new technological platform, informes: "this is where I am, what I am doing, what I see, and who I am with." In a way, it allows others to view the world, through our eyes. 

We always wish we could step beyond the container of our bodies. Perhaps social media is an effort to do just this.

Lingis's Outside explores the difference between our internal and external selves. Although we feel that our identity is specific to our skin, the expressions and emotions conveyed are a result of the deep structures built within our subconscious beings. 

It seems these halves (internal and external beings) carry equal weight in the existence of a being.

Yet now, a result of technology, we are able to replace our failing organs with another's. Life continues. This artificiality is not just internally true. We are now starting to move into an existence where we can see the world through another's eyes. 

If we we are able to experience the world, outside of our bodies, do we need them in order to exist? 

You are your own enemy

Human perception is limited within the restriction of nature. Even nature itself is man made, but it gives us a basic idea of what “things” are and identity of things that we cannot really explain. As a Buddhist, we believe that you are your own enemy. Many might not agree with this philosophy, but I believe that I am my own worst enemy.

As a human, we rely strongly on our perceptions and senses. Way we explain reality is depended upon our own conception facts. If we think really through with the idea of reality, everything that we know and do is based on theory. Which sometimes come back as a question against the religion I grew up in. Fires die after certain time and the heat from the fire dies at the same time. Similarly, we are restrained and constrained under the idea of time and energy. Due to that reason, we are unable to attain the knowledge to acquire truth. Truth that we always wait and strive for, but we never attain it. In fact we theorize the truth and take it as it is the fact. Due to that reason we are always in conflict with the environment and self.

Ignorance, attachment and aversion is known as the three poison in Buddhism. In order to achieve enlightenment or extreme realization of knowledge, you have to be clean from these three poison. These poison is the source of all the suffering and the burden that kept us under "Wheel of suffering" and the system of karma. These poisons constrain everyone from knowing the truth, similarly, danger yourself to suffering. Our ignorance made us to believe that we are different from everything else, because of this reason we separate “self” from everything else. I believe that we are so attach to things that we desire and we forget our own nature. Since we do not see ourselves as connected and similar to other things, we take things for granted. Our ability to dislike and like things made things made it hard for us to see everything as similar. Blinded by these poison, we are harming ourselves in a worst way ever. For example, there is racism because you see everyone as different, not similar to you. Separating everything from self and have no connection to others. We are too attach to things that we see everything as advantage to better yourself with materials. We create plastics, cars and phones etc, to make our own life better, forgetting what we need to want. Destroying the basic resources to survive with our wants. Pollution and wars are destroying the world that we all live in. Somehow, all of our actions will get ourselves into sufferings and destruction of our only home.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24880737

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/barneys-case-stirs-talk-shopping-black-20710429

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO7yxt6SZM4

Humans and Computers

I am really interested in the possibility that humans and computers are merging together as one.

I have been doing research on this topic for another class, but I think it is completely relevant to our exploration.

Computers have become intertwined with contemporary life. As this technology rapidly evolves users have become absorbed, and wonder: where will the computer take us? It seems as if beneath the screen their is an alternate world of endless knowledge. The novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson describes a “future” where humans live between two closely related dimensions: Reality and the Metaverse, a virtual reality experienced through the computer. Though completely fictional, there is a lot of truth behind many of the concepts Stephenson explores, ideas that writers such as: Lev Manovich, Henry Jenkins, and Marshall McLuhan grapple with. Humans have become increasingly dependent on computers to provide information, social connections, and interactive cultural experiences; as this dependence strengthens, the computer begins to act as an extension of the human brain and subsequently, the line between computers and humans has become increasingly ambiguous
 
The ways in which humans interact with computers, or the human-computer interface, has only increased with advances in technology (Manovich, The Language of New Media). This is because computer software targets convenience, allowing people to utilize applications in order to communicate and save information. This is the concept of “cultural software” which Manovich describes as: “deeply woven into contemporary life. . . in manners both obvious and nearly invisible.” The computer has, in other words, become essential to modern culture. Software can now assist us with: “creating, sharing and accessing cultural artifacts which contain representations, ideas, beliefs, and aesthetic values”, “engaging in interactive cultural experiences (for instance, playing a computer game)”, “creating and sharing information and knowledge (for instance, writing an article for Wikipedia, adding places in Google Earth)” and, “communicating with other people (email, instant message, voice over IP, online text and video chat, social networking features such as wall postings, pokes, events, photo tags, notes, places, etc.” (Manovich, Cultural Software). Manovich’s ideas of the “human-computer interface” and “cultural software” show the human dependence on computer technology. Many of our everyday activities, listed above, are made possible through electronic media. It seems as though the human and the computer, once two separate entities, have begun to merge together as one. We now transfer our information, our “software”, to another platform. Our understanding of the world, our “data”, is being hosted outside of out bodies, extending our knowledge, linking us to different hardware.

This transfer of information, from the brain to electronic media, has allowed humans to share and access information quickly and without pause. Suddenly, we are all able to contribute parts of our “software” and host it on an expansive and growing platform. This is Jenkin’s idea of “collective intelligence.” Humans now have the ability to know, access, and control this massive accumulation of knowledge, this collective brain (the computer). This accessibility of information has redefined knowledge. People are now able to acquire endless information, without the need to remember it. This transition belittles the human capacity to remember. Our intellectual selves are being stored elsewhere. In this sense, electronic media is an extension of the human being. This extension of the self means that beings are no longer completely contained within their own bodies.

Marshall McLuhan writes of media as extensions of the human. He furthers this discussion by exploring “the final phase of the extensions of man”. “Today, after more than a century of electronic technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the technological simulation of consciousness.” McLuhan’s argument is connected to Jenkin’s idea of “collective intelligence”. McLuhan emphasizes that the “creative process of knowing” will be “extended to the whole of human society”. McLuhan then advances this idea through his belief that this extension is more than a transfer of information, but rather, “we have extended our central nervous system itself”. McLuhan’s argument, of this extension, is that we have created technological consciousness. This artificial consciousness is not tethered to the human realities of both space and time, subsequently “the globe is no more than a village.” Through becoming involved with electronic media, people are now able to learn about or view a place, without ever physically going there. This creates a virtual reality that makes it possible to know everything and experience nothing. 

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson shows a world in which this extension is complete. A world where people can live vicariously through an avatar.  This simulation of reality is what Stephenson calls the Metaverse. Hiro Protagonist, the main character and skilled computer hacker, lives in a “big nice house in the Metaverse” (24) but in reality he lives in a small room with a “concrete slab floor” (18). The Metaverse is similar to McLuhan’s global village in that people from all over the world are able to connect at one “place” without ever having to leave their couch. “Hiro in the U-Stor-It in L.A. and the four teenagers probably on a couch in a suburb of Chicago, each with their own laptop. But they probably won’t talk to each other, anymore than they would in Reality” (33). This quote emphasizes how the Metaverse constructs the illusion that they are having an experience, becoming something larger than their small suburban lives; but at the same time, nothing really changes. Some people utilize the Metaverse for the “experience”, Hiro uses the Metaverse to gain “knowledge” of the world around him. He has his own “office” and his own “Librarian daemon” who is computer software translated to appear as a “pleasant, fiftyish, silver-haired, bearded man with bright blue eyes” (99). Everything about the Metaverse is a rendition of reality, furthering the illusion of life, but eventually everyone has to take off their goggles, and face their physical concrete beings.

The Metaverse, though a platform for communication and knowledge, also becomes an escape from reality. The Metaverse’s realism allows its participants to construct an alternate world. Some characters are extremely dependent on the Metaverse, making this two demential space their primary form of existence. This is the case for the character Ng, who, in reality, has broken “hardware”. “Everything else, from the temples down, is encased in enormous goggle/mask/headphone/feeding-tube unit, held onto his head by a smart strap that are constantly tightening and loosening themselves to keep the device comfortable and properly positioned” (210). This description of Ng shows how he has created a situation that allows him to stay in the Metaverse, never needing to remove his goggles. Why is Ng so dependent on his avatar? Perhaps because the Metaverse, like the final extension of man, transcends both time and space, allowing people to manipulate “space” and travel through “time” in order to exist within an ideal. This is the case for Ng who, in reality, has a body that is formed by “huge bundles of wires, fiber optics, and tubes” (210). In contrast, Ng’s avatar “is a small, very dapper Vietnamese man in his fifties” (206). It seems as though the Metaverse allows people to alter their visual identity, and live a life of imaginary wealth and success. Despite how hard Ng tries, there is still a disconnect between reality and this human extension. This barrier is the inevitable realization that the Metaverse is a man-made concept, a two dimensional space, translated and transcribed by a computer; without the human “software” such a reality would be essentially impossible. 

The idea that computers are man-made alludes to the conception that humans can alter computers but not the reverse. McLuhan writes that computers have “extended our central nervous system”, this suggests that there is more than just a transfer of information, and that perhaps there is a transfer of behavior and means of existence. Snow Crash delves deeper into McLuhan’s text by demonstrating how computers can actually act upon humans. The central conflict in Snow Crash is a computer virus that can infiltrate into the “deep-structures” of the human mind. Interestingly, the nature of this virus does nothing to the physical brain, the “hardware”, rather it effects the “deep structures”, or the “software”. The virus itself targets people with specific knowledge; in this case Snow Crash targets computer hackers: “‘Da5id’s not a computer. He can’t read binary code.” “He’s a hacker. He messes with binary code for a living. That ability to firm-wire into the deep structures of his brain. So he’s susceptible to that form of information””(189). This reverse manipulation bridges the gap between computer software and human consciousness, suggesting that computers will eventually transcend the description of “an extension of man” and instead form “the technological simulation of consciousness”. In some ways Snow Crash goes beyond the “final extension of man” through the computer’s ability to implant its information within the human mind and subsequently reform human software.  It is through this transfer the the human becomes an extension of the computer.  

"Nuclear Power is A Hell of a Way to Boil Water"--Albert Einstein

400 metric tons of radioactive water leaks into the ocean every day from fuel rods containing 14,000X more nuclear energy than Hiroshima. Prediction: Entire Pacific contaminated with radioactive waste within 6 years, concentrating in higher levels as it moves up the food chain from plankton to crustaceans to fish to human beings. Leading expert on the disaster states, in dire seriousness: "If there is another earthquake, and building four collapses, which contains the cooling pool with fresh fuel, I am going to evacuate my family from Boston."

http://www.naturalcuresnotmedicine.com/2013/11/this-11-minute-video-shows-us.html?m=1

Slippery

When examining the man/animal equation we're always forced to read in-between the words. In class we've used a double-sided arrow, but a backslash or simply a space can be substituted.The obvious crux of the problem that we're engaged with is then the articulation of the non-lingual, of the literal or figurative, gap between words. It's kind of a psychoanalytic truism at this moment to talk about what the patient doesn't say; in free associative practice it has long since been noted that the subject's internal logic in choosing words hinges around the unsaid. But here we are dealing with a problem of a slightly different nature because the symbol is not simply something that is unsaid, it is (if you'll excuse the Derridean turn-of-phrase) what is anti-said.

One of the insights from our class on Monday that really struck me was the notion that tautology can only hold meaning for God. The reason language can by virtue of its infinitely imprecise nature make meaning is in the disconnect. To return to psychoanalysis, one of Freud's ideas that has (not coincidentally) become mainstream in its usage is the notion of the slip, eponymously titled. If psychoanalytic practice can use the slippage of words to access the unconscious and the unsaid, is it fair to say Derrida's project is to use the slippage of signifiers to access the anti-said?

I know I'm late to the party but I think it's worth noting that Derrida's use of linguistic play (how he is saying) in “L'animal que donc je suis” is perhaps more central than what he is saying, as far as interpretative meaning goes at least. It's interesting to me that writers like Lacan, Derrida, and contemporaneously, Zizek get slandered as clowns by their detractors. To me, this is Derrida's greatest strength. While his borderline-autistic insistence on homophone, portmanteau, idiom etc. is only rarely at all comical, I think it is here where we can begin to access the heart of the matter. The ability of the humorous to subvert the chain of signifiers is the slip incarnate. However violent Derrida is upon the reader and upon language, he is tenfold on himself. He sets himself up, intentionally slips on the (to make a really really crass analogy that I like to think he would approve of) signified banana peel, brings the house down, and lands on his ass. And while my intention is not to defend Derrida, I think it goes without saying that it would be asinine to not give his clowning the time of day.

the divine machine

We live our lives surrounded by animals, we eat them, keep them as pets, they terrify, fascinate, and amuse us. We are very close to animals, biologically speaking we are animals, yet they are nevertheless inaccessible to us, aliens in our human universe. Thus the otherness that we sense in animals is contrasted with a strange feeling of closeness; for, inasmuch as we define and are defined by, master and yet are inexorably bound up in the animal kingdom, we are caught in a dichotomous, irresolvable dialectic with it. This dialectic, what Agamben calls the “anthropological machine,” is essential to our self-definition as human beings, and thus it provides the basis upon which meaning is constructed and the human universe founded. It is this fundamental connectedness to something so indefinable, so utterly without meaning to us, that adds instability, inexplicability and mystery to our world. “seeing oneself seen naked under a gaze that is vacant to the extent of being bottomless, at the same time innocent and cruel perhaps, perhaps sensitive and im-passive, good and bad, uninterpretable, unreadable, undecidable, abyssal and secret. Wholly other, like the (every) other that is (every bit) other found in such intolerable proximity that I do not as yet feel I am justified or qualified to call it my fellow, even less my brother.” (Derrida, p.381) Animals, plants, nature as a whole, appear to us as an abyss, a secret to which we have given name, system, and science, yet whose fundamental nature we cannot understand. Thus man, the giver of names, is an isolated creature, and it is in this isolation that we find the freedom to create, to generate meaning. Through this freedom we build our world, an intelligible, definable, systematic world, out of the irregularities of nature. Human beings obey order, we live by codes, and we are comfortable with ourselves only inasmuch as we belong to these codes. Thus one can imagine that the experience of mankind if we were stripped of all our creations, our religions, societies, sciences and beliefs, would be similar to that of Derrida standing naked in front of his cat. Forced to face the animal universe without his self-defining shell of humanity, man feels ashamed and afraid. In facing the vast, immutable presence of the natural world, inaccessible and yet vital to us, we experience our own weakness (and our own pride in having masked this weakness in the proliferating richness of our creation, which, however miraculous, is nevertheless, when broken down into its constituent parts, nothing but a bizarre permutation of nature) as shame. The animal world, seeing humanity stripped down, seems to reproach the feebleness of our attempts to define it, and the names we give to it seem only to reflect back to us our despair in the inadequacy of our efforts. Nature as God, the divine, immutable, incomprehensible presence, reproaches us for only being like God, unable to cross the divide, to shut down the machine with one, final, all-encapsulating metaphor, a perfect word, the perfect system. What Agamben says about the end of history takes on a different nature in light of this idea. If humanity could complete itself, if we could shut down the machine, end the dialectic by removing the barrier between man and animal, if we could live in a tautology governed by a perfect system, a complete mechanization of man, of animal, of nature, if we could remove the abyss, then surely we would have achieved redemption from our own weakness, our shame and confusion. We would become like people living after the apocalypse, man-animals, we would be naked and unashamed because we would have no need to cloak ourselves in meanings, no need of self definition outside of nature. But this then raises the question, if we ended history by the sheer force of our technology, which in its perfection takes away all necessity, all struggle, all interaction with the other that is nature, then what would we be? Meaningless, divine, divinely meaningless, or just bored? 

subreddit breeding ground for viral web content

 Mysterious Subreddit Underworld If You Could See It

10%

There is nothing that situates my thoughts concerning this course more than Ted Talks. I see Ted Talks as window into a world wherein the complex theories we delve into in class manifest into relatively applicable modern scientific studies. 

Last week, I came across a TedTalk given by Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist. Her piece, 'How Bacteria Talk', had my head reeling within the first few minutes as she declared "At best, you're only 10% human". What Bassler meant by this statement was that at any moment a human being has about 10 trillion bacterial cells in his or her body, about 10 times as many bacterial cells than human cells. The cells that I believe make me human, allow me to function as a human in our biosphere, cells that feed my cognition, are actually outnumbered by these foreign, distinctly non-human organisms. 

There is no cause for alarm, as the bacteria found in our bodies are not free-loaders. Through evolution, human beings have developed symbiotic relationships with bacteria that allow us to remain healthy, as bacteria aid in food digestion, the education of our immune system to recognize dangerous microbes, and even create vitamins. However, you cannot ignore that there are bacterium that wage war against the human body, such as STDs, cholera, malaria, and so on. One single bacterium can not totally inhibit the function of human beings; it is in a collective that damage is done.

Despite the collective power of a dangerous bacterium such as cholera, bacteria have always been considered too small to have an impact on any environment, and are generally regarded as asocial organisms. Our tendency to perceive bacteria this way is what sparked Bassler and her team to research whether or not there is a different way that bacteria co-exist. The curiosity of the team lead them to study a bacteria called Vibrio Fischeri, which generates bioluminescence through sociability. Bassler notes that, “When the bacteria were alone, so when they were in dilute suspension, they made no light, But when they grew to a certain cell number all the bacteria turned on light simultaneously"(Bassler 2009). The bacteria were able to detect when they were alone and when they were clustered in a community but communicating with one another. I have to be honest, this was a Copernican-esque turn for me. 

Too often, we relegate the power of communication to more evolved organisms, not tiny, unicellular bacterium. Our exclusivity of communication ignores the idea that even electrons and protons, the smallest elements of life, communicate with one another. Bacteria work together in order to achieve one specific goal, in some ways, their actions are purposive. For example, a single bacterium can secrete toxins into a human, but it is unlikely that the actions of one will actually effect the human body as we are enormous and complex organisms. Instead, "they get in you, they wait, they start growing, they count themselves...and they recognize when they have the right cell number that if all of the bacteria launch their virulence attack together." (Bassler 2009) Bacteria hold power in their control of pathogenicity, but is it through will (can I even go as far as to say a 'lowly' bacterium has a will) or programming for survival? 

What was so incredible about Bassler's work is that she and her team discovered a molecule called AI-2, a fixed carbon molecule shared by many species of bacteria. Every bacterium has “the same enzyme and makes exactly the same molecule. So they’re all using this molecule for interspecies communication. This is the bacterial Esperanto.” (Bassler 2009) Through this discovery, Bassler and her team are now focusing on drug resistant bacteria (drug resistance being a characteristic that derives from the bacteria's ability to communicate with one another), and redesigning antibiotics in the 21st century. The inhibiting of intraspecies and interspecies communication systems is key, and Bassler's team are developing a molecule that would basically jam the receptors of hte bacteria, thus making a "species-specific, or disease-specific, anti-quorum sensing molecules." (Bassler 2009) With this, Bassler hopes to create a universal antibiotic that will work against all bacteria.

Global Human Births & Deaths In Real Time