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 --druko
-====Exclusive interview featuring three patabotanists====
+====Interview featuring three patabotanists====
 Wed Oct 10, 2012 3:46 pm
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 Magnus Dieter: Where are you from and why did you come here?
-Alchemilla Lily Umiliata: We are researchers and generalists from a parallel reality where plants and humans communicate and collaborate through sentient technology. We became interested in this world when we stumbled on an article on the internet about [[:hpi_ii|human-plant communication]] here, or rather human-plant non-communication, as it turns out - the article mainly discussed the possibilities. And it did seem clear that there were a lot of possibilities, but also how far things had to go before a real collaboration could exist.
+Alchemilla Lily Umiliata: We are researchers and generalists from a parallel reality where plants and humans communicate and collaborate through sentient technology. We became interested in this world when we stumbled on an article on the internet about [[:groworld_hpi_ii|human-plant communication]] here, or rather human-plant non-communication, as it turns out - the article mainly discussed the possibilities. And it did seem clear that there were a lot of possibilities, but also how far things had to go before a real collaboration could exist.
 Mandrago Fraser Mithrodin: You understand that both our realities share the internet; I don't know why. It's quite old-fashioned that way. I'm rarely on the internet myself, it gets boring.
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 Part II of this interview will follow shortly.
+----
+Wed Oct 10, 2012 5:54 pm
+I saw this when it first came out in eDit_C#. It struck me as being a rather poor piece of journalism at the time, and though I grant that it is perhaps more "on topic" in this forum than it ever was in the magazine, my opinion remains unchanged.
+There are so many flaws here that it is hard to know where to begin. The interviewer fails to elicit the context, which remains unclear throughout; it's virtually impossible to get a picture of who (or what?) these people are and what they are actually doing - or why this is even important to us in the first place. (And after all, it hardly takes much to suspect that the whole interview is mere fabrication anyway.)
+In sum: why would anyone waste time on this? m(
+--uncookedprecaution
+----
+Wed Oct 10, 2012 5:58 pm
+Thank you for your comments, uncookedprecaution.
+<blockquote>uncookedprecaution wrote:The interviewer fails to elicit the context, which remains unclear throughout; it's virtually impossible to get a picture of who (or what?) these people are and what they are actually doing
+</blockquote>
+Maybe if you followed some of the links (or read some of the other forum posts) you might find some 'context'.
+Re: fabrication, I suggest you contact the magazine directly for further clarification.
+--Motionless Detector
+----
+Thu Oct 11, 2012 3:52 pm
+<blockquote>Motionless Detector wrote:Re: fabrication, I suggest you contact the magazine directly for further clarification.</blockquote>
+When your magisterial words, I was my mouth fell right open. Far away! Your powerful and effective ideas took me on the next great wave and earnestly wish triumph in some latest presidential elections. Your support given to you I tremble with awe. This time I trust with all my soul right and sincere collaborations after reading your soulful mind eye, it being!
+--doorknob199
+====IVLAAMSG62 installed====
+Wed Oct 10, 2012 12:11 pm
+Weather station IVLAAMSG62 finally installed and operational on the roof of the Vooruit, Gent. We now have a continuous readout of temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, rainfall and solar radiation for the exact location of our lab. The implications of this for our research will be significant.
+As a technological sensory organ, the weather station can provide us with a simulation and window into plant perception, as it records the features of the environment essential for a plant's life and development. We can now siphon this data elsewhere and transpose it into other forms, such as an auditory experience of the weather.
+  * http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IVLAAMSG62
+  * https://secure.flickr.com/photos/foam/8066431381/in/photostream
+====Cargo cult interior design challenge II====
+Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:54 pm
+Herbert's really onto something here. Inspired by a heated debate with his assistant, we've discovered a peculiar practice that might work wonders in stimulating deeper communion with plants among our test subjects, the general public, and all those humans we hope to make contact with in this strange world. The practice apparently originated in the tropics just after the War, and works akin to our own familiar technosyncretic magic. In general it works through contagion and mimesis, though is perhaps better understood as homeopathic alchemy.
+Fraser has officially declared the Patabotanical Cargo Cult Interior Design Challenge. We are hoping to trick people into plant communication through a meticulous simulation of plant-machine entanglement that is usual in our reality, but must be reached through special contrivances in this one. We will charm visitors into Viriditas through contagious and homeopathic interior design. Everyone's now working furiously to outdo each other in the most meticulous imitation of patabotanical human-plant-machine entanglement they can imagine.
+--armormin
+----
+Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:08 pm
+Some of the results have been spellbinding, it's like many overlapping wormholes are starting to form in every corner, stretching tendrils out into the streets and through the surrounding buildings. Larch's hat has actually been transmuted into a flying cactus monster, maybe. You see it in people's eyes: they start to shimmer and turn green inside. But it's not like they're becoming zombies or anything. That's us. I mean, it's what we often end up looking like here. Zombies as in the decomposition of our bodies into partially vegetal material and stumbling round like we're blind drunk. And turning quite green and rotten, but also feeding other plants. Wonderful! (But we would never run round and gobble people, that's just what happens in the movies.) My idea of the Cargo Cult Interior Design Challenge has brought everyone together like one big happy family. :D
+Mood: Hilarious
+--mango
+====Nonsense====
+Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:50 pm
+The art of being most relevant in the most irrelevant circumstances.
+--mango
+----
+Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:52 pm
+Frazer, please read your PMs. I'd like to keep this board on topic if possible.
+--tritar
+====The fallacy of misplaced intangibility====
+Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:35 pm
+It is not the place here to present a rigorous critique of the prevailing viewpoints we have frequently encountered while engaged in our researches in this dimension. But there are certain apparent biases in humans that are so baffling we cannot let them pass without at least some further if desultory remarks.
+In short, it seems that the fallacy of misplaced intangibility is at the root of a good deal of misunderstanding between humans, plants, and us. Theorists and philosophers here have come up with the notion of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness to describe what they variously call fetishism, animism, homeopathic magic, or even by extension such practices as cargo cults.
+This position is articulated in a most outspoken way by the author of an otherwise remarkable tome of some antiquity on this world, whose position statement on magic can be found in full here http://www.bartleby.com/196/5.html, and which may be summed up in his emphatic declaration that "magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art."
+The fallacy is, however, not one of misplaced concreteness, but its opposite, and it is exactly this that makes it so difficult for plants to understand humans or communicate with them - and of course for the representatives of our own patabotanical guild as well.
+I was going to say more but it will just turn into a rant from here on, so enough said.
+--armormin
+----
+Wed Oct 03, 2012 3:40 pm
+sincerely said, i really found your remarkable books by accident when surfing internet yesterday. i had forever want tell, you really do raise so many of good point. exactly! success, it would goes wished to you in your future career of what kind i wait to see with big anticipate. keep on that cruising way! i respect hear anything you tell for very long time.
+--doorknob199
+====Cargo cult interior design challenge I - biotech equipment====
+Tue Oct 02, 2012 4:46 pm
+Trismegisto has returned with a whole van-load of peculiar apparatuses acquired from a recent auction held by a biotech company after it went bankrupt. He's added these to his growing hoard of scientific instruments - many of them found mouldering away in the basement of a local university. (His research assistant had to be bribed, because he claimed that in order to take these apparatuses he would need to orchestrate a midnight raid on the university, effectively breaking and entering. Apparently it seems we can't simply ask the university directly to lend us equipment that they don't even use.) We can only find space for these often enormous and clumsy machines in the labyrinth of disused rooms connecting to the Snoepwinkel through the one window opening onto the loft of plant meditation. This is also a cause for some concern, as these rooms are leaky and dilapidated, their walls and floors often close to collapse. Clearly Trismegisto is becoming impatient to advance his work in the most direct (and sometimes unsubtle) manner, inspired by a previous frenetic burst of research into the archaic technologies of this world (some of his notes on this can be found here).
+He has set up an entire rig of interlinked machines and is constantly making forays deeper into the abandoned rooms of the building where our lab is, assembling and disassembling devices, cords, tubes and pipes. Sometimes he can even be seen furtively crawling out of a manhole across the street; no doubt he's discovered underground catacombs in which he has expanded operations. However, nothing seems to be working properly. He is often heard muttering that the machines are "apparatuses of metamagical torture," and that the software they run on has been "coded by drunken mountain apes with delusions of grandeur." Again and again, he expresses the profoundest scepticism that the original purpose of these devices was to interface with biological organisms in some way.
+This extreme disillusion has fed tensions between Trismegisto and his research assistants. Not a day passes without heated arguments; these arguments often lead to fits of screaming and the assistant being quite literally ejected from the Snoepwinkel in tears of frustration. And yet today one such argument took a dramatically different turn. The assistant was trying to explain for the hundredth time that just because a machine looks somewhat like one that can be found in our dimension doesn't mean that it works the same way, and ended up screaming that Trismegisto was "nothing but a downright cargo cultist!" The rest of us thought this would be the cue for his instant ejection, but instead Trismegisto's face lit up and suddenly he asked if the assistant wouldn't like to elaborate on his idea over a drink. Flabbergasted and confused, the assistant nevertheless reluctantly agreed.
+--eleq
+====Harvest Fest preserves====
+Fri Sep 28, 2012 12:46 pm
+The patakitchen was transformed into a distillation laboratory for unusual essences, the last taste of summer in this autumnal hemisphere preserved in oil. I worked all day gently distilling and brewing four interesting essences which were then taken and shared at the Harvest Festival with the help of some dedicated and assiduous assistants (who also helped carefully label and explain each preserve to fascinated passers-by).
+These were the four recipes:
+  * Beetroot for its earthy taste
+  * Green coriander (rather than the dried seeds - an experiment)
+  * Pepper with ginger
+  * Plums with ginger (plums with garlic would have been interesting, but Armoracio was sceptical…)
+{{120922-170817.jpg}}
+--andemica
+====Saracenia====
+Fri Sep 28, 2012 12:13 pm
+Someone wrote a meticulous but incomplete name tag on one of the species we are investigating. There are some details I need to confirm, as I believe they could be inaccurate. For example, does anyone know which "endangered habitat" is referred to in the label of this specimen of Arschia beluaiz? This plant actually seems to have started a process of aggressive mutation while held in captivity, though it is quite incorrect to report it as being "97% Zamzia."
+{{>https://secure.flickr.com/photos/foam/8032303621/}}
+--cerhy
+----