Posthuman Blues

So what if Mars did have water?

"'So what if there is water up there?' said George Washington University sociologist Amitai Etzioni, who served as a domestic affairs adviser in the Carter White House."

(The painful truth is that the "discovery" of former water on Mars by the Opportunity rover was nothing of the sort; we already knew Mars was once a watery planet. But the myopia evidenced by Etzioni's remark is nothing short of apocalyptic. Hey, Amitai: Has it occurred to you that if one planet can lose its hydrosphere, we could be next? Doesn't that warrant some concern?)

War of the Words: Scientist Attacks Alien Claims

"Plait, author of 'Bad Astronomy' (Wiley & Sons, 2002), which debunks space myths and common factual misconceptions, had for years not countered Hoagland directly, because he did not want to give a man he calls a 'pseudoscientist' the 'air time that he so desperately seeks.'"

(Hoagland had it coming. But legitimate anomaly research will invariably be tarred by the same brush.)





DARPA's Wild Kingdom

"A question seldom asked is why pie-in-the-sky creativity exists unfettered and fostered only in the context of lethal technologies?"

(That's funny; I ask it all the time . . .)