Alchemy and Transmutation -- Changing and Creating Things and People

Many scientists are eagerly exploring how people can be transmutated into some superior form of humanity through the convergence of nano-bio-info-cogno technologies. The hope is not only to improve humanity but to more firmly control human evolution in order to create bodies and brains that are more durable, easier to repair and more resistant to disease, stress and aging. By merging biology and electronics, bioartificial replacement parts for the lungs, pancreas, kidneys and limbs can be created. Artificial muscles can be made out of electroactive polymers. Biogerontology will result in the reversal of aging -- "engineered negligible senescence." We seem to be moving with surprising speed toward what Ray Kurzweil calls "Human Body Version 2.0" -- the new re-engineered human that will eliminate or overcome "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."

(Via PAG E-News.)

Scientists, be on guard ... ET might be a malicious hacker

As if spotty teenagers releasing computer viruses on to the internet from darkened rooms were not enough of a headache. According to a scientific report, planet Earth's computers are wide open to a virus attack from Little Green Men.

Come to think of it, Seth Shostak would makes a good spokesman for McAfee.

The Big Thaw

The two developments -- the most alarming manifestations of climate change to date -- suggest that the ice cap is melting far more rapidly than scientists had thought, with immense consequences for civilisation and the planet. Its complete disappearance would raise the levels of the world’s seas by 20 feet, spelling inundation for London and other coastal cities around the globe, along with much of low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.

Looking for alien intelligence in the computational universe

Instead of scanning the heavens for alien radio broadcasts, he thinks we should be looking much closer to home. Much, much closer: ET could be living or working with you. But the truly amazing thing about Wolfram's claim is that he believes all the knowledge we stand to gain from an extraterrestrial intelligence - surely the best reason for getting to know the alien in the first place - is already ours for the taking. We don't have to find ET; we can start the search for this ultimate knowledge right now.

You have to subscribe to New Scientist to read this one in its entirety. Damn.

Don't fuck with a moon-walker.

(Thanks to The Anomalist.)

Introducing Clifford Pickover's new blog, Godlorica. Bookmark now!

Two cool cyberpunk chicks: Alicia Framis and Lynn Hershman Leeson.

I want George Clooney's car.

Canada Defense Minister in UFO Shocker

Hellyer said, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning." He also stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

Good fucking grief. Firstly, Hellyer's use of the word "intergalactic" is suspect; if ETs are here, why assume they're from another galaxy when it seems more likely they'd be from another star in our own Milky Way?

Secondly, the presumption that we're on the verge of some sort of military conflict with space visitors not only assumes we're worthy of the envy of "intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic," but implies that we could expect a fair fight. If an interstellar foe indeed wanted to wage war, I doubt we'd have a chance. (Of course, this begs the question of why we haven't already been overrun by marauding aliens.)

If a truly intergalactic civilization wanted (for whatever reason) to engage us in a George Lucas-style conflict, we'd likewise be at its mercy. We might not even recognize an intergalactic intelligence in our midst for the simple reason that it would belie even our best science fictional portrayals; it would probably seem less threatening than simply alien -- and loaded with all the existential implications that implies.

I am, of course, biased. I expect that confirmation of nonhuman intelligence -- should it occur -- will be a subtle, enigmatic process. The "first contact" scenario in "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- or even those in "Close Encounters" and "Contact" -- strike me as more "realistic" than some shock-and-awe assault from the depths of space.

Maybe I'm simply erring on the side of optimism. After all, the unseen aliens of "2001" and "Contact" have a vested interest in humanity's survival, and I'd certainly prefer to think beings more advanced than ourselves could bypass the all-too-human inclination for tribal warfare.

Someone like Hellyer could argue -- not entirely without justification -- that my predisposition to expect benevolent ETs is merely a way of dismissing fears of H.G. Wellsian conquest while elevating our own importance in the galactic hierarchy. And perhaps he'd be right.

But when I look at the night sky I'm not afraid -- at least, not in a xenophobic sense. And while I think the UFO phenomenon poses genuine challenges to our perception of life and intelligence in the Cosmos, I think it's childish and premature to equate the unknown with something as simple as an impending invasion by trigger-happy alien warlords.

Tuneful icebergs reveal an unsung secret

"It's like something from a horror film," says Vera Schlindwein, a geophysicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. The songs can vary, from resembling bees buzzing to something more melodic, like a string orchestra, she says.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Just as amazing as the sounds from Saturn! Someone -- perhaps Brian Eno or David Byrne -- should compose a whole album crafted from this kind of stuff.

Living photos use bacteria as pixels

"We estimate that the resolution of these photographs is about 100 Megapixels, or about ten times better than high-resolution printers. The difference is that we can print gene expression."

What a singular medium in which to behold the Flying Spaghetti Monster reproduced in all of His noodly glory!

SETI@home killed off

The workunit totals of users and teams will be frozen at that point, and the final totals will be available on the web.

The BOINC site will allow boffins to build other volunteer computing projects in areas like molecular biology, high-energy physics, and climate change study.

Before I started exclusively using my laptop, I ran SETI@home regularly, typically finishing a work unit a week. (My old CRT monitor still bears pixelated scars from the experience.) I cringe when I see offices full of computers doing nothing but cyling through cosmetic screen-savers.

I've been pondering a distributed computing effort called "AI@home." It doesn't exist -- at least not that I know of -- but maybe it should. And I see no reason why the software behind attempts such as the Lunascan Project can't be doled out to PCs as part of an ongoing search for anomalies on planetary surfaces.

Hayabusa Landed on Itokawa Successfully

Officials from the Japanese space agency (JAXA) announced yesterday that Hayabusa successfully touched down on asteroid Itokawa last weekend, bounced at least once, and spent 39 minutes "resting" on the surface. It then launched back up into space again. Unfortunately, it failed to drop equipment that would allow it to collect samples from the asteroid's surface. Hayabusa will head back to the potato-shaped asteroid on Friday and attempt another landing.

Scott Adams ("Dilbert") could teach pseudoskeptics like Michael Shermer and Seth Shostak a thing or two.

Two gems from Results of Why I'm Stupid:

6. Hallucinate entirely different points. For example, if someone says apples grow on trees, accuse him of saying snakes have arms and then point out how stupid that is.

7. Use the intellectual laziness card. For example, if someone says that ice is cold, recommend that he take graduate courses in chemistry and meteorology before jumping to stupid conclusions that display a complete ignorance of the complexity of ice.

In addition, be sure to check out Dan Drasin's Zen . . . And the Art of Debunkery and my own list of helpful hints for Face on Mars critics.

Spirit Wraps Up a Martian Year of Exploration

Spirit, the untiring robotic "wonder child" sent by NASA to explore the eerily earthlike fourth planet from the sun, has completed one martian year--that's almost two Earth years--on Mars. Designed to last only 90 martian days (sols), the six-wheeled marvel the size of a golf cart has pursued a steady course of solar-driven geologic fieldwork, bringing back some 70,000 images and a new understanding of Mars as a potential habitat.

Anyone who honestly believes that the MERs were designed to last "only 90 martian days" should stand on his head. At the same time, it's interesting to consider our casual acceptance of the Mars rovers, which have come to seem like permanent fixtures on the Red Planet; I have a nightmarish vision of one or both of them outlasting human civilization as we know it, mutely imploring Earth for new instructions as we struggle for breath on the uncompromising shore of a new century.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! (Regular posting to resume tomorrow.)

We're Doomed!

The Singularity, for those not yet up to speed, is currently touted as not only as the Next Big Thing in sci-fi/speculative fiction -- the logical successor to cyberpunk -- but also as a science-fact apex of technological development when, maybe some three decades hence, the computer will overtake the human mind, and man and machine will meld into some as-yet-undefined über-being.

I'm a Singularity agnostic.

Yes, I think computers will approximate something like self-awareness within my biological lifetime. I think nanotechnology will revolutionize industry and likely democratize space exploration beyond the imagination of even the keenest of NASA-watchers. And I suspect biomedicine will ultimately eliminate aging -- if not in 20 years, then almost certainly in 200.

But futurists must concede that the Singularity, as popularly envisioned, might never occur. Our projections may be off the mark; our extrapolated future might be jarringly incorrect. To say nothing of the obstacles littering our path into the next century, which may well prove to be humankind's most dire and decisive.

Perhaps the Singularity will take place in stages, each providing much-needed ammunition to our impending battle for survival but failing to deliver the near-instantaneous intellectual and material harvest suggested by authors like Vernor Vinge and Charles Stross. Such a "time-delay" Singularity may ensure our survival, but seem underwhelming by today's science fictional standards. It may even go unnoticed, save for a relative handful of attentive bloggers and science journalists.

In time, we might hope to catch up with it, in which case it will have served its purpose. But somehow the concept of a "diluted" technological renaissance is less sexy than the alternative offered by Ray Kurzweil, whose new book is stoking interest in our collective future even as it renders it suspiciously inevitable.

Psychologist: 'Alien' faces are none other than Mother

In fact, when Malmstrom optically altered a photo of a woman in a way consistent with the characteristics of a newborn's vision -- astigmatism, an extremely shallow focal plane -- the resulting face looked remarkably like those big-eyed aliens drawn by self-declared abductees, he reports in the latest issue of the magazine Skeptic, which features scholarly articles on the paranormal and other extraordinary claims.

Very interesting -- and certainly more intelligible than the "birth trauma" hypothesis, which compares the "Gray" face to that of a human fetus. While I'm not sure this latest spin explains perceived abductions, I think it deserves methodical follow-up.

Interestingly enough, none other than contactee extraordinaire Whitley Strieber was the first (to my knowledge) to propose a female archetypical origin for "alien" encounters (see "Communion").

Early Earth Wasn't So Hellish

"This is a radical departure from conventional wisdom regarding the Hadean Earth," said Professor Harrison.

"But these ancient zircons represent the only geological record we have for that period of Earth history and thus the stories they tell take precedence over myths that arose in the absence of observational evidence."

"The simplest explanation of all the evidence is that essentially from its formation, the planet fell into a dynamic regime that has persisted to the present day."

I wonder if Mars experienced a comparable geological renaissance.

Rudy Rucker tells it like it is:

Science fiction is writing that analyzes some fast-changing aspect of society by extrapolating current trends into the future or into an alternate world. Traditionally science fiction has certain standard tropes that it uses, but new ones are being developed all the time --- I'm thinking of things like blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, holograms, immersive virtual reality, robots, teleportation, endless shrinking, levitation, antigravity, generation starships, ecodisaster, blowing up Earth, pleasure-center zappers, mind viruses, the attack of the giant ants, and the fourth dimension. I call these our "power chords," analogous to the heavy chords that rock bands use.

When a writer uses an SF power chord, there's an implicit understanding with the informed readers that this is indeed familiar ground. And it's expected the writer will do something fresh with the trope.

This implicit contract isn't honored by mainstream writers who dip a toe into "speculative fiction". These cosseted mandarins tend not be aware of just how familiar are the chords they strum. To have seen a single episode of Star Trek twenty years ago is sufficient SF research for them! And their running-dog lickspittle lackey mainstream critics are certainly not going to call their club-members to task over failing to create original SF. After all (think they), science-fiction writers and readers are subnormal cretins who cannot possibly have made any significant advances over the most superficial and well-known representations, and we should only be grateful when a real writer stoops to filch bespattered icons from our filthy wattle huts.

Don't misunderstand; some mainstream authors who dabble in SF are quite good -- I'm thinking of John Updike ("Toward the End of Time") and Margaret Atwood ("The Handmaid's Tale").

The problem, as Rucker points out, is the critical establishment's unadulterated fawning, which relegates worthy SF to the ghetto of geekdom. (One unfortunate by-product of this marginalization is the success of "techno-thrillers" by the likes of Michael Crichton, who shamelessly steal SF tropes and repackage them for dumbed-down audiences, all the while thinking they're operating at the genre's bleeding edge.)

Of course, some SF writers manage to make the arbitrary transition from "science fiction" to "literature" -- but usually posthumously, as in the case of Philip K. Dick.

Industrial Origami: Hope for economical space station design?

Blog of the day: Unexplained-Mysteries.com.

I've finally decided to go back to school and get my Master's degree (and possibly my Ph.D. while I'm at it). I'm profoundly tired with my "meatspace" life; all is a dreary succession of forgettable busywork and superficiality. Enough. I want to work in an academic setting where my writing habit is encouraged, not looked upon with puzzlement or dismissed as a pointless eccentricity. So I'm casting myself upon strange new shores in a bid for change, cheerfully -- if a bit apprehensively -- dismissing my previous mostly bad college experience.

So there's actually a chance I'll be "Professor Tonnies" in a couple years. I can live with that.

The other night I watched "Communion" on DVD. "Communion" is a true independent film, and actually benefits from its modest budget (quite unlike the lavish budgets usually equated with Hollywood "alien" movies).

In "Communion," the "Gray" aliens are spindly marionettes. And they look like marionettes, despite efforts to make them look weird and forbidding. But this only makes them more cryptic -- more alien. And, fittingly, more in line with the dilemma of the main character, who spends the first half of the movie questioning the actuality of his encounters.

Cyberpunk luminary/Viridian pope-emperor/design maven Bruce Sterling has just married -- and he's leaving Jesusland for the greener pastures of Belgrade.

Aside from keeping my bookshelves stocked with provoking, witty science fiction (I recommend "Schismatrix," a posthuman space-opera predating Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross), Sterling was kind enough to lend a cover blurb to my debut short-story collection, "Illumined Black." (The magnitude of this favor can only be appreciated if you've actually read the stories.)

Hey, kids! Have you or someone you love been killed or displaced by climate change or nasty terrorist attacks? Well, FEMA for Kids wants a word with you! (Or, more specifically, Herman, the site's affable official "spokescrab"!)

For extra-special fun, sharpen your crayons and download "A Scary Thing Happened"!

Remember: Being afraid is patriotic!

Be awed by the cosmos

"Techno-sublime" is how Leesa Fanning, the museum's assistant curator of modern and contemporary art, describes Manglano-Ovalle's piece, which is really a cosmic "lie."

The thousands of lights twinkling across the three huge screens in the darkened gallery are not a video of outer space but a computer-generated digital invention.

Nor does this continuous display loop like a video. At the end of each 15-minute cycle, in which 10,000 to 300,000 "stars" appear on the screens, the computer regenerates a whole new cosmos.

In his cyber way, the artist plays God.

"Vanishing Sky" -- while not exactly awe-inspiring -- is an effective piece of conceptual art that has less to do with the majesty of the Cosmos than the powers of computatation. The forever-regenerating starscape recalls Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument and Rudy Rucker's "universal automatism." I found myself drawn to the imaginary worlds promised by the endlessly synthesized stars.

Ironically, the piece actually benefits from the discreetly illuminated sound-board affixed to the far wall; it pulsates with LEDs that suggest an abiding intelligence like that of Clarke and Kubrick's HAL 9000.

On Ohio Flatland, a Megachurch's Eye-Catcher Dominates

Drive another quarter-mile up Interstate 75, past the billboards for Bristol's Strip Club and Trader's World Flea Market, and suddenly the image appears in all its full dimensions. Jesus, depicted from the waist up, is six stories tall and seems to burst from the ground, as if he might gather a tractor-trailer in his Honda-size hands and lift it to heaven.

(Via Exploding Aardvark.)

I just love seeing what the humans will come up with next.

That's one prolific chicken . . .

Just when you think you've seen every possible online dating service, along comes FarmersOnly.com.

From their site:

There are basically two groups in America. Group one, their life revolves around four dollar cups of coffee, taxis cabs, blue suits, high heels, conference rooms and getting ahead at all costs in the corporate world. If you fall into this group you're probably in the wrong place. Group two, enjoys blue skies, wide open spaces, raising animals, appreciating nature and truly understand the meaning of southern hospitality, even if you don't live in the south.

Funny . . . I don't seem to fall into either group (except for the four-dollar coffee part). I'm personally much more comfortable in my own island universe of ubiquitous Internet access, contemporary art, cosmology, Martian enigmas, and R.E.M.

Gene turn-off makes meek mice fearless

Deactivating a specific gene transforms meek mice into daredevils, researchers have found. The team believe the research might one day enable people suffering from fear -- in the form of phobias or anxiety disorders, for example -- to be clinically treated.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Perhaps in an ideal world. I think it's more likely DARPA will seize on this as a way to create better, badder soldiers.

Rupert Sheldrake:

It's easy to be a media skeptic. You get the last word. You can say what you like. You don't have to spend years doing actual research. And you yourself can remain immune from criticism, because those you criticize have no right of reply. [. . .]

The problem seems to be in part that the media feel the need to present a "balanced" view, and this creates an opportunity for negative skeptics to pursue their agenda. Well-funded skeptical advocacy organizations like CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, concentrate their attention on getting their message into the media as often as possible, always with the privilege of the last word. They are very successful. Some TV channels, including National Geographic in its current "Is It Real?" series, have allowed themselves to become mass-market vehicles for organized skepticism.

If the media want to give a balanced view, one simple solution would be to reverse the normal procedure. Ask the skeptics to speak first, saying why they think something like telepathy is impossible, and then let those who have carried out real investigations present actual evidence. Better still, create a level playing field. Allow replies. This would be much more interesting for readers and viewers.

Unfortunately, media skeptics like Michael Shermer seem to be afraid of real debates. I would love to see a televised dialogue between you and him, with equal time on both sides. But I think he would do his best to avoid such an encounter. (Via The Anomalist.)

The irony is that real skepticism is a priceless intellectual tool. But Shermer and his associates prefer to cling to pseudoskepticism when faced with phenomena outside their realm of expertise. Consequently, the media's perception of "skepticism" has become a flaccid caricature. We desperately need to jettison this shopworn false dichotomy.

I found this gallery while running a Google image search for "posthuman." Man, these chicks sure dig meat lockers.

A reader sent me this screen-capture. Something's obviously wrong. Has anyone else noticed anything like this? Is it a problem with Mozilla? Just curious.

Mars Express radar data analysis is on the move

The MARSIS experiment will map the Martian sub-surface structure to a depth of a few kilometres. The instrument's 40-metre long antenna booms will send low frequency radio waves towards the planet, which will be reflected from any surface they encounter.

(Via Science Blog.)

My initial reaction is to speculate on how this capability will impact the Cydonia controversy. To my own chagrin, I predict it will do little to advance the Artificiality Hypothesis, as the features in question are probably "earthworks" not entirely like those on Earth.

But the possibility that the Mars formations were constructed from something other than rock can't be excluded.

Microbes in Marine Sediments React to Temperature Changes

"Microbial processes involved in organic carbon breakdown are extremely sensitive to even small changes in temperature," said Joye. "These results suggest that global climate change may influence the efficiency of organic carbon recycling," impacting coastal ecosystems.

Alien Artifacts in the Solar System?

As the object continued to approach Earth, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla, Chile, began tracking with a 60-inch telescope. At this point, the media became aware that something was going on and press statements were issued. Meanwhile, the ESO team (astronomers Richard West, Olivier Hainaut, and Alain Smette) conducted precise measurements of the "winking" and confirmed that the phenomenon was reminiscent of the pulsations of light observed on reflective, rotating artificial satellites.

(Via PAG E-News.)

Start choreographing now!

Climate warriors and heroes

Global warming is a planetary emergency everywhere but in the White House. While the Bush administration fiddles, the rest of the world burns with concern about the earth's rising temperature. With our industries billowing a relentless stream of gases into the atmosphere, trapping heat, we're decimating our natural ecosystems, exacting an incalculable toll on our planet and future health.

The climate warriors and heroes honored here embody the environment's best defense. They are scientists, ministers, students, politicians, activists, lawyers, celebrities, inventors, and world leaders. As Al Gore says in his accompanying essay, they share little in common. "But each of them recognized the threat that climate change poses to the planet -- and responded by taking immediate action to stop it," Gore writes.

If Hoberman Transformable Design can't do it, nobody can.

Virtual teachers aimed at better learning

Humanlike software agents are being developed to improve learning by providing computers with friendly facial expressions, soothing hand gestures and attractive voices.

And whopping breasts, if the illustration is any indication.

Chris Wren has cranked out two posts about our planet and universe that deserve a wide audience.

The Joy of Mediocrity

If our solar system is a typical template, the chances for life in the universe would not be looking that great. But instead we find already an incredible variety of configurations, and that suggests to me that the universe is capable of far more variety than we thought - and that's one of those really obvious things you tend to forget as you go through your cynical 20's and 30's.

The Most Mundane of All Worlds

How would our religions and politics have developed differently if anyone with a half-decent backyard telescope could look up and see two or more other blue-green worlds, obviously crawling with life of their own? What if by now, we could resolve on those worlds the unmistakeable signs of an industrial intelligence?

Google side-steps AI rumours

"'We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,' explained one of my hosts after my talk. 'We are scanning them to be read by an AI,'" Dyson wrote in a posting on Edge.org following a visit to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of John von Neumann's proposal for a digital computer.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Let's read the key sentence one more time:

"We are scanning them to be read by an AI."

One more time, in boldface:

"We are scanning them to be read by an AI."

(Special thanks to Patrick Huyghe.)

Click here for some positively whorish self-promotion.

Ufologist Kevin Randle comments on Nick Redfern's "Body Snatchers in the Desert":

BS In the Desert

In fact, Brown had an explanation for everything found on the ranch with the exception of the bodies. He did speculate, suggesting that some kind of flying wing, this one designed by Northrop, had crashed while carrying five chimpanzees dressed in silver flying suits. Since the experiment related to the space race, and since launch operations at White Sands had been closed down because of an accident in May 1947, those involved hid their mistake.

(Via The Other Side of Truth.)

Randle goes on to reject the possibility that the Roswell Incident was due to an experimental flight of any sort -- crewed by malformed humans or chimps. While he doesn't tell us anything we haven't heard before, his central gripe -- the extraordinary nature of the debris -- poses a hurdle for researchers.