Lo-fi solutions to high tech problems rate up there with Beautiful Art and Fruit Loops on a Sunday morning. Love it. Looooove it. In a postscript to yesterdays post about bad music killing iMacs and other PC’s, it looks like the cleaver ones have found ways around this bit of Corporate bullheadedness by using two of the best inventions of the last century: Sharpie Pens and Duct Tape. With a quick modification of your encrypted Celine Dion CD it’s once again ready to rip. Here is a list of the known CD’s encrypted with this garbage, Just in case you might own them.

I don’t consider myself a sci-fi movie buff in the slightest, but the movie Gattaca delivered a great story, was well conceived with gorgeous cinematography. A real smart movie that didn’t fall into the trappings of most Sci-fi flix. I also love the movie because the future described in the movie, one where humans are categorized and comodified from their first breath, seems all so very close. To wit, Gregory Stock, a Germ line Engineer, was pimping his book, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future on the Early Show this morning, Bryant Gumble of course was asking the really hard questions. Stock’s vision, nay, hope, is that one day we will all be able to fix and select everything from the moment we are conceived in test tubes. In his book he claims that, “Never before have we had the power to manipulate human genetics to alter our biology in meaningful, predictable ways”. — Jigga what? Predictability in humans is a good thing? Sure I would love it if my friends and colleagues were a bit more predictable in their behavior sometimes, but nestled in the crevices of the human condition, where the unpredictability of the human spirit lives, are the irrational thoughts and behaviors that make this whole game interesting and worth playing. Frankly, it’s what makes us different from water coolers or my palm pilot (although my palm has been acting quite irrational recently). I am excited to see how the art and film community explores this question or this topic. I for one submit someone put together a futuristic gallery exhibition where all the pieces are done by artists posing as new genetically modified super artists. What would it look like? Would there be any art on the walls at all or would all the parents take out the art genes in their test tube babys and replace them with doctor, stockbroker, or germ line engineer genes? When someone puts this exhibition together please invite me.