Ant logic makes sense in space

A spacecraft skin is being developed that assesses the severity of any damage it suffers from space debris and other impacts. The project, which is inspired by the behaviour of ants, is seen as the first step towards a self-repairing craft.

Shades of the organic "bitek" spacecraft in Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. I suspect spacecraft two-hundred years from now will more closely resemble hives than machines as we're used to them.

Elevator Going Up!

An Earth-to-orbit elevator (sometimes called a "Beanstalk," a "space bridge," or an "orbital tether") is one of those ideas that, at first blush, sounds almost too ludicrous to be real. After all, we're accustomed to thinking of rockets as our only way into space, mixing danger and adventure; taking an elevator into space sounds almost boring. It turns out, however, that a space elevator is not only plausible, it's potentially revolutionary. Perhaps more importantly, given all that has happened in recent days and weeks, the notion of a space elevator can provide a bit of almost giggly optimism about the future.

We're already cranking out ribbons of carbon nanotubes. No, they're not quite strong enough for the job and we can only produce a few feet per hour, but we're getting there. In fact, I'd argue that we're making more actual progress toward a functioning space elevator than we are toward sending humans back to the Moon.

It's a quiet revolution, which makes it all the more interesting to watch.

Exosingularities, pancyberspermia, and SETI@home

If the advent of a technological Singularity on Earth is inevitable and if more than one technological civilization exists in the universe, it follows that there must be more than one Singularity. If some of these plural Singularities involve the uploading of sentience, then sentience may be broadcast as a "file" on light. Earth may be bathed in this modulated light which passes by with no effect until such time as the Cybereon we are building develops sufficiently to act as a substrate for the sentience encoded in the light. A file of sentience, able to recognize the sufficiency of an emergent cybersubstrate, inserts itself into it as if an interstellar computer virus.

(Via Variable Gravitas Content.)

You know what would be really cool? If these luminal viruses carried plans to build devices by which they could migrate to the nervous systems of a host species -- a sort of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" upgraded for the cyber age. And wouldn't it be hilarious if the first recipient of an interstellar information virus was one of SETI's "can't get here from there" crowd? (Oh, to have Seth Shostak carted off to Area 51 where we'd be spared his insufferable wit.)





Rudy Rucker addresses a similar scenario for galactic travel in his novel "Saucer Wisdom," in which Fermi's "paradox" is resolved when an eccentric UFO contactee learns to decrypt omnipresent encoded aliens.

Looking for a summer read? Norman Spinrad (author of the protocyberpunk masterpiece "Bug Jack Barron") is giving away "He Walked Among Us." He'll email it to you; all you have to do is ask. (Take that, Charles Stross!)

See Spinrad's website for details.

Hip new buses have descended on Kansas City like the vanguard of a vehicular invasion.





Called "the MAX," the sleeker-than-usual buses ply the pot-holed streets like blue-and-silver troop carriers. I can generally see at least two MAX buses from my window at any given time.

The bus-stops are chunks of Plexiglas that could pass for props from forgotten science fiction movies: booths with jutting canopies set next to scrolling electronic signs that erupt from the pavement like the steeples of subterranean churches. And the benches are surprisingly comfortable.

While in New Mexico, I was quite disillusioned to discover that the Mars Exploration Rover mission is a hoax. I never really thought of myself as a "conspiracy theorist," but you can't ignore the evidence.





Here's me on "Mars." As you can see, the air is quite breathable. And I didn't even need a jacket.

Astronomers discover 2 more oddball objects

Although the peculiar orbits of all three could shed fresh light on the earliest epochs of the solar system's formation, the astronomers now concede that maybe it's best not to think of them as planets at all.

Later:

"Santa is crazy, and it's my favorite -- by far the weirdest of the three," Brown said. It is significantly larger than Pluto, it's shaped like a huge cigar, and it rotates end-over-end every four hours; it also has a single tiny moon about 60 miles in diameter orbiting around it.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Good lord -- they've found the mothership!

Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'

Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.

In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health.

Perfect. Just fucking perfect.

Human brain still evolving

The human brain is continuing to evolve, apparently moving towards ever-greater intelligence.

I can't help but wonder what the Fundamentalist -- er, "Intelligent Design" -- contingent has to say about this. As I understand it, creationism holds that human beings are pretty much perfect the way they are, having been created instantaneously by God.

In two related papers published in the journal Science, University of Chicago researchers report that two genes linked to brain size are rapidly evolving in humans.

"Our studies indicate that the trend that is the defining characteristic of human evolution -- the growth of brain size and complexity -- is likely still going on," says Bruce Lahn, lead researcher for both papers and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Meanwhile, our environment and the skills we need to survive in it are changing faster then we ever imagined. I would expect the human brain, which has done well by us so far, will continue to adapt to those changes."

I'm especially interested in the neurological demands that -- according to Lahn -- come as part of a richer, information-oriented future. When does current human wetware reach its limits? Could a human as we know him/her pass for functional in a society four- or five-hundred years more advanced than our own?

Ironically, I think the future may be a substantially easier place in certain day-to-day respects. For instance, today it's simpler than ever to interface with computers thanks to intuitive, graphical interfaces. Democratized computing and access to electronic media entail dramatically revved-up usability; simply compare today's information ecology, with its ubiquitous wi-fi hotspots, to the era of behemoths like ENIAC.

Perhaps we're in the midst of a species-wide upgrade, soon to be usurped by a redefinition of intelligence itself if something like the "Singularity" comes to pass. Of course, there's also the possibility of a massive intellectual decline along the lines of the Eloi in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine"; the aforementioned Fundamentalists certainly don't bode well.

The Walrus: the US Army contemplates building an aircraft the size of a football field

Moving an elephant atom by atom costs a lot more than moving the elephant in one pre-assembled lump. And that is what the US Army's Project Walrus is about - putting together an entire action unit of war machinery, with all the wiring and plumbing preinstalled, and placing it in the most strategic place. Whilst this would completely rewrite the way that war is conducted, the Walrus - a massive lozenge-shaped blimp the size of a football field capable of transporting 500 tons at a time - could offer solutions to myriad peacetime problems, opening land-locked countries to trade, enabling heavy construction materials to be delivered into urban centres with minimum disruption, freeing our highways of high volume, heavy loads, offering a more robust and agile air transportation network capable of absorbing disruptions due to weather or attack.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Of course, the Walrus invites comparison to the "flying triangle" phenomenon. I think it's likely that if the military is openly contemplating such an airborne monster now, then it's almost certainly pre-tested the idea with various prototypes.

The Walrus doesn't seem to account for all FT sightings, but perhaps it can help explain some of them. For example, the FTs' alarming tendency to hover over busy highways and even suburbs might make sense if the Air Force is assessing a flying platform's merit as a roving supply base for use in heavily populated areas (such as post-war Iraq or ground zero of the next big natural disaster).

Living with aliens

There is a Nasa project in the Atacama Desert. Here, the soil is so dry conditions are as close as you can get to those on Mars. To test for signs of life, the scientists soak the desert soil with nutrient soup to see if they get a reaction. Then they repeat with anti-soup - the same stuff, but made from mirror molecules. If the soil reacts the same way to both, biology can be ruled out as the cause.

So Pauline suggested we do an experiment with a bowl of anti-soup, dropping in various microbes to see whether some of them multiply. Known life would find anti-soup unpalatable, but it might be manna to a mirror microbe. The experiment is now under way at Nasa's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Huntsville is a start. But if NASA is serious about its "search for life" on Mars and other planetary bodies, it would seem this elegant experiment would have found its way aboard a rover or lander by now.

JPL's next-generation Mars rovers are as big as minivans -- certainly room enough to accommodate the space agency's mission statement. But, strangely enough, they aren't equipped with the simplest life-detection equipment. This oversight demands revision, if for no other reason than to determine what exactly the Viking landers detected in the 1970s.

'Islamic Trojan' disrupts smut surfing

"Virus writers have created a Trojan horse which tries to disrupt visits the pornographic websites by displaying messages from the Koran."

(Via Beyond the Beyond.)

Hmmm. I'm thinking of a virus that targets Big Oil websites and displays images of major American cities underwater.

Petite green cars tempt tourists

Alfredo Romeo has been taken with the idea of blobjects ever since he heard technology guru Bruce Sterling discuss them in a speech.

"Sterling said something that I really love," says Mr Romeo. "He said, 'Blobjects are going to float our world.'"

The Spanish entrepreneur loved the name. He felt it matched his vision for what personal transportation might be like in the future.

Only 20 MPH, but I like 'em anyway.

Shoe Leather As A Renewable Resource: Penn Biologists Invent Power-Generating Backpack

If you already have a little spring in your step, a team of biologists at the University of Pennsylvania would like to put it to good use by adding a few more springs in the form of a power-generating backpack. Details of their prototype "Suspended-load Backpack" were announced today in the journal Science. The device converts mechanical energy from walking into electricity up to 7.4 Watts more than enough energy to power a number of portable electronic devices at once.

(Via Future Feeder.)

The Presidents and the Hard Evidence (interview with Grant Cameron)

There were a number of attempts. "Close Encounters" was one, "Project UFO" a TV series was another, produced by Colonel Coleman from Blue Book, that ran for two years. This was rumoured to be one of the schemes to drag the truth out without disclosing the cover up. Walt Disney was offered footage in 1956 and it was pulled back at the last moment. Mike Malloney, a British photo journalist talks about going to Disney and being shown some footage in 1972 by a guy called Kimball.

In 1980 Linda Howe was offered the Holloman film. She was working on a documentary for HBO at the time. She was contacted by Richard Dowey [sic] and people in the DIA and she was made the same offer. The Holloman clip was to go into the HBO documentary and they dragged it out and dragged it out. She didn't get the footage and in the end, they tried to get her to go to PBS as they felt they could control the Public Broadcasting better than they could HBO.

I think covert government agencies are interested in the UFO phenomenon for two main reasons. The first is data collection. With a bizarre, potentially nonhuman spectacle unfolding in our skies, it's logical to enlist the efforts of private researchers, even if their perceptions have been muddied by disinformation and the distortions of belief.

Secondly, it makes sense to keep the public in "standby" mode in the event of an unexpected breakthrough -- which may not have anything at all to do with extraterrestrials. UFOs, while real enough, make wonderful scapegoats for "black ops" aerospace projects because our culture is impregnated with filmic visions of alien contact.

Whether movies like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" play a semi-official indoctrination role, as argued by Cameron, is an entirely secondary issue and, in my opinion, camouflages the central dilemma by fostering a false sense of imminent disclosure. For if we are indeed being visited by humanoid aliens with comprehensible motives (itself a dubious proposition), I can't help but think that revelations of any meaningful sort will only be forthcoming from "them."

Tunguska event half as likely

One of the most famous recent cases of a devastating visit from space is the huge fireball that hit the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908.

Trees within about a 14 kilometre radius were incinerated and those within a 40 kilometre radius were knocked down.

Many scientists believe the fireball was caused by an exploding comet, around 100 metres wide, says Francis. Others believe a meteor caused the devastation.

Still others have made a case that the Tunguska explosion was due to a crippled alien spacecraft, a possibility that -- while remote -- shouldn't be abandoned. I recommend "The Fire Came By," a speculative interpretation of the Tunguska mystery with a foreword by none other than arch-UFO skeptic Isaac Asimov.

(Some readers will have noted the "block quote" format above. I'm thinking of using this from now on when citing others' writing. Hard-to-read? Let me know.)

Nuclear stockpiles could create 300,000 bombs





"An updated global nuclear inventory, published by ISIS on Wednesday, reveals that there were 1830 tonnes of plutonium in 35 countries at the end of 2003. That is enough to make 225,000 nuclear bombs.

"The total amount of plutonium, which is created in nuclear reactors, is increasing by 70 tonnes per year, the report says. Most of it is combined with radioactive waste in spent fuel, and is hence relatively difficult to access."

Moms Battle Genetic Engineering





"'Just because science can, should science? And how far will they go?' said Currie, who is a former member of pop group the Thompson Twins.

"MAdGE has posted five ads in Auckland and two in Wellington. The billboards will stay up until the end of October.

"The public response has been mixed. MAdGE has gotten some complaints from people who find the billboards offensive.

"'It is definitely degrading to women, but more degrading to women is putting human genes in milk,' Currie said. 'It's punk art.'" (Via Cyborg Democracy.)

Wouldn't you know?

Martian methane probe in trouble





"Without nailing the methane numbers, it will be hard for all scientists to agree on a source for the gas. For now, many say it is probably due to heating of water and carbon dioxide with a mineral called olivine, rather than life, says Sushil Atreya, a member of the PFS team from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor."

First the Beagle 2 crashes. Now this.

Truth, Magic, and the Internet

"The BlackBerry incorporates both e-mail and an addictive mechanism. That mechanism is the click-reward system that works with slot machines and pigeon feeders. It's highly addictive to humans. This is exacerbated by its ritualistic nature -- and ritualism is often found with addictions. I have never known a BlackBerry user who has not pulled out the device numerous times in my presence, almost like a cigarette smoker fiddling with a pack."

I'm reminded of Rudy Rucker's recent trip to Europe. His laptop had died, and he confessed to making the journey feeling like he was missing a part of his brain. This is because, like it or not, electronic devices have become extensions of our nervous system, filling largely subliminal needs. Revealingly, we have yet to develop a mature vocabulary for the Internet; online mavens continue to write about the Web as if it's some magical parallel universe.

Exotic-sounding neologisms from the hacker/gaming counterculture have become commonplace; the Web is home to countless "daemons" and "avatars." But despite our casual relationship with them, they're still limited to an abstracted existence between the wires.

We might expect them to become more palpable in the not-so-distant future. Soon, in a reversal of our daily pilgrimages to "cyberspace," our mind children will make the evolutionary transition to "meatspace," clad in increasingly agile robotic bodies. The Internet is the new primordial soup.

Boy, Espresso Porn puts my own caffeinated photography to shame . . .









(Thanks to Coffee and Caffeine Blog.)

Good news: Another publisher has expressed interest in my unfinished nonfiction book "The Postbiological Cosmos" and wants to see a sample chapter and outline before committing to an advance. (The working title might have to bite the dust, but I can live with that.)

Kevin Randle sticks to his guns: Roswell was the crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle. (Nick Redfern's response to Randle's review is posted below.)





The debate triggered by Redfern's "Body Snatchers in the Desert" promises to be unusually civil, at least by ufological standards; the dissenting researchers (including Paul Kimball, Karl Pflock and Stan Friedman) are a refreshingly mature bunch with considerable evidential standards.

The undisputed truth about Roswell in our lifetime? It's not impossible.

Earth Departure Movie

"The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER's Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a movie documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth.

"Comprising 358 frames taken over 24 hours, the movie follows Earth through one complete rotation. The spacecraft was 40,761 miles (65,598 kilometers) above South America when the camera started rolling on Aug. 2. It was 270,847 miles (435,885 kilometers) away from Earth -- farther than the Moon's orbit -- when it snapped the last image on Aug. 3." (Via Boing Boing.)

This footage is genuinely beautiful and awe-inspiring. Absolutely worth the download, even if -- like me -- you're stuck with dial-up.

Deep Impact spewed the stuff of life

"According to A'Hearn, one of the more interesting findings may be the huge increase in carbon-containing molecules detected in spectral analysis of the ejection plume. This finding indicates comets contain a substantial amount of organic material, so they could have brought such material to Earth early in the planet's history when strikes by asteroids and meteors were common."

Ultimately, could we be unwitting immigrants from the Oort Cloud?

It's brightly colored!

It's aesthetically diverting!

It's ideal for climate refugees!

It's Electroland's Urban Nomad Shelter! (Select "Urban Nomad" under the main "Projects" menu.)

"The 'Urban Nomad' inflatable shelter is conceived as both a social and humanitarian act. As a social act, the intention is to distribute thousands of these brightly colored structures in order to foster a dialog about the invisibility and marginalization of the homeless."

Hey, Electroland! I've got New Orleans on the phone; they want to buy in bulk!

Scientists pursue system to explain facts that slip through the cracks

"In each of these areas -- physics, biochemistry and social science -- the theories are mature and largely uncontroversial. Each discipline has its own language and its own separate machinery. Rarely is a scientist an expert in more than one area, because the worlds and languages are so different.

"This means that we can't answer complex questions that depend on more than one field." (Via The Anomalist.)

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a textbook victim of specialization. In the case of seeking out ETs, we've forfeited the search to a highly specified and rigidly defined group that wields the political might to tell us what is and what is not possible for reasons more political than scientific. In exchange, we're served up hypothetical alien civilizations that are little more than high-tech caricatures of our own, burdened by the same trivialities and condemned to a planet-bound existence because of the presumed expense of space travel.

The idea that we're being visited now, or have been visited in the remote past, is subject to particularly stringent scrutiny; if SETI were a nation-state and not a research effort, it would almost certainly be totalitarian, its populace communicating aberrant ideas through ill-financed samizdats and subject to humiliating public trial if discovered.

Seth Shostak is watching you.

Submerged solar robots to assess water safety

"According to Sanderson, the SAUVs communicate and network with one another in real time to assess a water body as a whole in measuring how it changes over space and time. Key technologies used in SAUVs include integrated sensor microsystems, pervasive computing, wireless communications, and sensor mobility with robotics. Sanderson notes that the underwater vehicles have captured the attention of the U.S. Navy, which will evaluate their use for coastal surveillance applications."

I can imagine a fleet of similar bots plying the concealed waters of Jupiter's Europa and returning constant images much like the Mars Exploration Rovers.

HARNESSING WEATHER

"In 1996, a group of seven U.S. Air Force officers, who had prepared a research paper about weather warfare, issued a report, which concluded that there was technology under development that would provide 'warriors of the future' with the means to control the course of military conflicts, including through the use of weather modification."

A Response to Kevin Randle (by Nick Redfern)

"Randle says that the book provides a 'nice theory' for the allegations that there was more than one crash site for the Roswell vehicle. It does. And we could argue that the reason why the theory is so 'nice' is because it is the literal truth."

I'm pondering what to do with my Cydonian Imperative blog, which presently exists semi-independently of the original CI site.

Blogger's templates are convenient but limiting, and I'm considering grafting new Mars content back onto the mactonnies.com domain, continuing the blog "manually" (and keeping it distinct from the one you're reading now). This should be welcomed by readers who liked my Mars site "the old way," and it might have the added benefit of forcing me to follow current and forthcoming Mars missions more closely and carefully.

A sequel to "After the Martian Apocalypse" is doubtful -- but hey, I've got the Web.

Fractal World Gallery -- wow!

(Thanks to Scarab Dreamer.)

Katrina's real name

"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming."

(Must-read.)

Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

"Dear Mr. Bush:

"Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag."

I don't typically find Michael Moore all that clever or funny -- or at least not as clever and funny as he obviously thinks he is. But I liked this one.

Brace for more Katrinas, say experts

"For all its numbing ferocity, Hurricane Katrina will not be a unique event, say scientists, who say that global warming appears to be pumping up the power of big Atlantic storms.

"2005 is on track to be the worst-ever year for hurricanes, according to experts measuring ocean temperatures and trade winds -- the two big factors that breed these storms in the Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic.

"Earlier this month, Tropical Storm Risk, a London-based consortium of experts, predicted that the region would see 22 tropical storms during the six-month June-November season, the most ever recorded and more than twice the average annual tally since records began in 1851."

The speakerphone in my apartment lobby:





"Ruth," one of the better-known Plaza sculptures. She's biblical, so I suppose there's a moral of some sort lurking behind that ashen, unassuming face.





I see this guy about every week. He sets up shop outside the Cheesecake Factory and plays keyboard and electric guitar. I'd kill for one millionth of his musical ability.





After indeterminable months of construction, I've finally got an electronic crosswalk. No more dodging across the street only to circumnavigate traffic cones and gaping holes in the ground.

A robot trying to look human or a human trying to look like a robot?

Damn, this game is hard.

(Requires Java.)

I started writing what I hope will become a completed short-story/novella this evening. Here are the first two paragraphs:

"Dep stopped climbing and extended her legs on the narrow concrete balcony, only peripherally aware of the lichen prickling her knees. She breathed deeply, smelling dust and the nuanced odors of decaying machinery from far below. Although comfortable with heights, she dared not look down. Fatigued from her long climb up the shaft, she narrowed her eyes at the dimness above, imagining she could see a hint of daylight. Nothing. She reached up, appraising her calloused hands, peering through the spaces between her thin brown fingers. She tried to envision the next stage of her climb, cursing her unfamiliarity with the shaft.

"She counted to twenty and stood, ropy brown hair pendulous with sweat, her gear unexpectedly heavy in the cool metallic air. She reached into the shapeless polymer sac cinched around her naked waist and withdrew a lamp. Like the majority of artifacts she was used to, the lamp was sleek and seamless and smelled faintly of biomachines: a vegetable smell that reminded her of the factories and their endless ranks of semisentient attendants. Squatting briefly at the edge of the balcony, she traced fissures in the concrete with a wary fingertip. She nestled the lamp into place; its cilia plunged into the tiny crevasse with a moist popping sound and the bulb activated, throwing her surroundings into pastel relief."

Enough doom and gloom (for now, anyway). Here are two sci-tech items that grabbed my attention:

'Miracle mouse' can grow back lost limbs

"The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

"The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine."





Design choices may hurry humans to Mars

"The study looked at more than 2000 possible mission architectures for human exploration of the Moon and Mars, and selected those that required the least investment, while optimising safety and reliability.

"Then it looked at the savings that could be achieved by settling on common designs for some or all of the requirements of getting astronauts and equipment to the three principal targets required by US president Bush's 'Vision for Space Exploration' - the International Space Station, the Moon, and Mars.

"The designs that shared the most elements provided the greatest benefit, as did proposed systems for making methane fuel from material on the surface of Mars, which could be used for the return trip."

Is New Orleans Worse Than We're Being Told?

"There are increasing indications that the situation in New Orleans may be worse than Americans are being told. TV outlets abroad are reportedly showing video of large numbers of floating bodies, and just as the US media did not show people jumping from windows in the World Trade Center on 911, it may be that we're being spared the worst. Russian and Chinese intelligence analysts are calling it a 'dead city.' Some reports estimate that as many as 50,000 people may be dead. It may be impossible to get an accurate count of the dead because alligators are devouring the corpses."

Citations, please. (Although I have no difficulty accepting the bit about the alligators.)

And while I'm waxing dystopian, here's a fragment from "Turing Beach," an unfinished short-story that takes place after the ocean, via malignant nanotech, becomes sentient and exacts revenge on humankind:

"At least the building was a hotel. Or might have been. The lobby reeked of burnt metal. Simone navigated the mounds of sodden furniture by the glow of her hair. Insects with extra heads and long, trailing legs scuttled at her approach; she made out the pocked, leathery oblate of some sort of hive blocking the entrance to the gift shop. Dormant neon tubes like emptied veins.

"She passed the elevators and the marble registration desk with its inset touch-screens. She wondered how quickly the building had succumbed to the Plagues. Considering the Plagues was little more than speculative arithmetic for Simone. A clonal fashionform, she had been spared the brutality of childhood in exchange for a distinctly different milieu.

"She climbed the stairwell to the tenth floor and dropped to a weary crouch, breathing mildew. The walls were cushioned with phosphorescent moss and stubbled with insect eggs. She felt herself sinking gently, the dark green agar sucking against the sides of her boots as she quieted her breathing and listened to the atypical stammer of her heart. She wanted to sleep. She allowed herself to succumb, eyes slitted with dreamy suspicion. She dreamt of the Ocean, forbidden shores cloaked in night."

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

"New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out, cops turned in their badges and the governor declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear."





David Bowie said it better:

And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in inches in Temperance Building
High on Poacher's Hill
And red mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City
No more big wheels

Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-Me Avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
Any day now

The Year of the Diamond Dogs

More idiocy:

Did God Send the Hurricane?

"Meanwhile, most polls show that 40% of all U.S. adults believe the physical world will eventually end as a result of a supernatural intervention, perhaps with a literal Rapture, Tribulation, Antichrist, and Battle of Armageddon described in the Book of Revelation. Nearly half of all Americans believe the Middle East will be 'heavily involved' in the events surrounding the end of the world."





It seems no one knows exactly what a galaxy is but just about everyone can fill you in on the "Rapture." And they tend to be really adamant about it, too.

Pope tells Catholics to multiply

"Pope Benedict XVI told Catholics to have more babies 'for the good of society,' saying that some countries were being sapped of energy because of low birth rates."

No words.