Beautiful Elektra Mini Verticale and Micro Casa a Leva Espresso Machines

These Elektra espresso makers are actually miniature versions of grander machines used in Europe. They're far from the most practical units for the home, with no direct water line, a low capacity storage container, and hard-to-clean drip plates, but they are awful big and shiny. Why, one could almost call them steampunk.

Derinkuyu, or: the allure of the underground city

Manhattan will be gone, Los Angeles gone, Cape Canaveral flooded and covered with seaweed, London dissolving into post-Britannic muck, the Great Wall of China merely an undetectable line of minerals blowing across an abandoned landscape -- but there, beneath the porous surface of Turkey, carved directly into tuff, there will still be underground cities.

(Via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society.)

Similar dwellings may exist on Mars, architectural fossils of an era predating some planet-wide catastrophe.

Free the Avatars

At the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo at San Jose, Calif., the two companies are announcing plans to develop open standards that will allow avatars to roam from one virtual community to the next. The goal is let a person create a digital alter-ego that can travel to many virtual worlds, keeping the same name, look and even digital currency.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

But do they get universal health care?

The View From The Left (Peter Watts)

I learned back in undergrad days that our brains see patterns even where none exist; we're pattern-matching machines, is what we are. But I hadn't realized that such functions were lateralized. This hemispheric specialization strikes me as a little reminiscent of "gene duplication": that process by which genetic replication goes occasionally off the rails and serves up two (or more) copies of a gene where only one had existed before. Which is very useful, because evolution can now play around with one of those copies to its heart's content, and as long as the other retains its original function you don't have to worry about screwing up a vital piece of a working system. (This is something the creationists hope you never learn, since it single-handedly blows their whole the-mousetrap-can't-work-unless-all-the-parts-evolve-simultaneously argument right out of the water.) Analogously, I see one hemisphere experimenting with different functions -- imagination, the search for meaning -- while the other retains the basic just-the-facts-ma'am approach that traditionally served the organism so well.

This one's so unabashedly good (the excerpt above is merely prelude) that I was tempted to post it in its entirety.

You mean Saturn's moon Iapetus isn't a megascale ET artifact?

I don't want to steal Paul Kimball's video-blogging thunder, but I can't help snatching this brief clip of Greg Bishop, with whom I agree 100%.



I'd like to see Bishop's sensibility go viral, at least among UFO researchers. Do your part and email this clip to at least five nuts-and-bolts Keyhoe-thumpers or impassioned "disclosure" advocates. Your call.

Somewhere in Idaho this alien head popped up on my radio which was OFF at the time. I imagine it has something to do with the screen and the CD laying on the dash, but still pretty cool.

Indeed!

Aeroscraft ML866: superyacht for the sky officially launched

A new category of aircraft that fits somewhere in between a blimp, airship or dirigible, the Aeroscraft ML866 project was recently presented at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) show in Atlanta, Georgia. The key factor of the ML866 design is that it offers superyacht size and comfort in a platform that can operate independently from airports, meaning that a new class of luxury conveyance is about to become available which appears to trump them all.

Heat May Kill Hundreds of New Yorkers

The number of heat-related deaths in and around New York City will nearly double by 2050 -- and could rise as high as 95 percent -- due to global warming, if no efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows.

On a comparatively friendly note, here's the scoop on a climate crisis-themed design competition:

The New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is sponsoring a design competition to enhance the City's ability to provisionally house residents after a major coastal storm.

My Book of THoTH interview with Jeremy Vaeni has been posted. Hope you enjoy it.

UK 2017: under surveillance

The academics who compiled the study based their vision of the future not on wild hypotheses but on existing technology, statements made about the intentions of government and private companies and studies by other think tanks, regulators, professional bodies and academics.

The report authors say that they believe the key theme of the future will be "pervasive surveillance" aimed at tracking and controlling people and pre-empting behaviour. The authors also say that their glimpse of the future is "fairly conservative. The future spelled out in the report is nowhere near as dystopian and authoritarian as it could be."

(Via Night of the Living Jackboots.)

Teleglass T4-N wearable monitor

Teleglass T4-N connects to any NTSC-capable video player (including iPods) and delivers images directly to the eye via a pair of tiny monitors tucked away behind the lenses. The 640 x 480 screen resolution at close proximity simulates the effect of watching a 45-inch screen from 2 meters (6 feet) away, and each monitor can be focused and adjusted for an optimal picture that reduces eye strain. Audio is delivered through a pair of frame-mounted earphones.

The Jellyfish 45 Habitat fantasy future underwater love hotel

Designed to float along under its own power, designer Giancarlo Zema's creation can comfortably house up to six (non-claustrophobic) people and contains five levels linked by a fancy spiral staircase. The top bit sticks out of the water, while the bottom bit is your observation zone, should you want to get a good look at raw sewerage and rusty cans.

(Via The Keyhoe Report.)

I fully expect craft like this to become virtually de rigueur among the leisure class once we start losing major cities to rising coastlines.

Blog of the day: The Keyhoe Report

OK, so it's not a blog in the contemporary sense, but it's updated daily, which is close enough for me.

Egypt Plan to Green Sahara Desert Stirs Controversy

With only five percent of the country habitable, almost all of Egypt's 74 million people live along the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea. Already crowded living conditions -- Cairo is one of the most densely populated cities on earth -- will likely get worse as Egypt's population is expected to double by 2050.

I once began a short-story in which overpopulation in Cairo was so pronounced that the Egyptians had built a habitable scaffolding around the pyramids themselves. That's probably one I should have seen through to the end.

Paul Kimball and Kris Lee McBride have returned from a magical tour across the US. Get the lowdown here.

I intended to include this photo in my post congratulating Tony for his well-deserved local blogging renown but it was late and I forgot.

I can't help but like this concept car, but I can easily see myself strangling the perky robot head grafted into the dashboard.

(Thanks: Communist Robot.)

Best UFO Resources

This Website offers a collection of hand-picked UFO resources: real UFO pictures (see the "summary" and "technical overview" pages), video documentaries, video footage and testimonies, technical data and over 480 links to scientific studies, books, portals, newsfeeds, blogs and forums. In short, by combining info from many diverse sources, our goal is to share a selection of valuable and representative UFO info, as concisely as possible and some possible answers.

I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer

The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.

[. . .]

Mr Venter believes designer genomes have enormous positive potential if properly regulated. In the long-term, he hopes they could lead to alternative energy sources previously unthinkable. Bacteria could be created, he speculates, that could help mop up excessive carbon dioxide, thus contributing to the solution to global warming, or produce fuels such as butane or propane made entirely from sugar.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Strange but True: The Largest Organism on Earth Is a Fungus

The discovery of this giant Armillaria ostoyae in 1998 heralded a new record holder for the title of the world's largest known organism, believed by most to be the 110-foot- (33.5-meter-) long, 200-ton blue whale. Based on its current growth rate, the fungus is estimated to be 2,400 years old but could be as ancient as 8,650 years, which would earn it a place among the oldest living organisms as well.

Terence McKenna probably would have had something witty and thought-provoking to say about this . . .

If you live in the San Fransisco area, there's no excuse for missing this. None.

Melting ice pack displaces Alaska walrus

Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.

Alaska's walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and fall are usually found on the Arctic ice pack. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas.

Terrestrial Planet Forming?

Are we seeing an Earth -- or at least a Mars-sized world -- in the making? Look no further than HD 113766, a binary system perhaps ten million years old some 424 light years away, for the story. One of its stars contains a warm dust belt that may be undergoing planetary formation. If that's the case, the emerging planet will orbit in the classical habitable zone, defined as that region where liquid water can exist on the surface.

Before I forget: congratulations to Tony of Tony's Kansas City, winner of The Pitch's 2007 readers' poll for best blog. (Local readers might have noticed that TKC is the only Kansas City-related blog in my sidebar. There's a reason for that.)

I might as well admit it: I actually bought a TV. Used. For $20. I don't have any reception, but that's fine as I don't intend to watch any broadcasting anyway; the next step is to pick up a cheap DVD player . . .

The Apartment at the Mall

A few artists discovered an apartment-sized vacant space under a mall in Providence, RI, and over several years proceeded to build a living space which they furnished (with things bought at the mall) as an "art piece."

Ah! Indirect support for my theory that shopping malls will serve as refugee camps for victims of future ecological crises . . .

No, this isn't "steampunk" -- this decrepit automaton harpist is the real thing. No batteries. No optical sensors or force-feedback units. Not a single chip hidden away inside the delicate porcelain skull. The irony is that its movements, limited as they are, are noticeably more "natural" than those of recent androids.

Don't believe me? Take a look:



(Both videos sighted at Beyond the Beyond.)

NASA chief: China will beat us back to the moon

"I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a low-key lecture in Washington two weeks ago, marking the space agency's 50th anniversary, still a year away.

"I think when that happens, Americans will not like it. But they will just have to not like it."

Well, of course China will beat us. A space program can't sit on its hands for decades at a time and expect victory to fall into its lap. I'd like to see the US lead the way, but at the same time I'm eager to see humans of any nationality establish a meaningful presence in space. The US had its chance -- and it might still have one -- but this should hardly come as a shock.

Here's a QuickTime clip of an apparent UFO filmed from a Space Shuttle. The evidently structured object can be seen near the fuel tank about three-fourths of the way through. The UFO's "appendages," oddly enough, recall the unconventional shape of the "drones."

Click here for more NASA videos.

Animals In Formalin Preservation, a haunting gallery of specimens consigned to chemical oblivion. In dying, these creatures have transcended the boundaries of biological time and become cryptic signposts for a future inhabited solely by ghosts.

(Nick Redfern sent this my way.)

Aren't We All Just Replicants on the Inside?

"Aren't we all replicants now?" Giuliana Bruno, a professor of film and visual culture at Harvard University, asked at the panel, titled "The Future Is Now: Blade Runner at 25." In a world of rapid technological innovation that affects not only how we live but how we think and remember, "We're all suffering from 'accelerated decrepitude,'" she said, poised at obsolescence like the film's expiration-date humanoids.

In other words, we've got the posthuman blues.

Sam Harris offers a cogent reason for dispensing with the word "atheist."

Coffee needs love too.

(Thanks: Reality Carnival.)

Lunar probe shoots HDTV footage of Earth

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and public broadcaster NHK have succeeded in capturing their first high-definition video of Earth from the Kaguya lunar explorer, a.k.a. SELENE (SELenological and ENgineering Explorer), an orbiter launched in mid-September on a mission to study the moon.

Although it's no longer the principal reason for my Web presence, I haven't abandoned Mars weirdness:

Mac Tonnies illuminates MU on Mars' "Seven Sisters" caves

If, like me, you're an admirer of bulbous, industrial grade wristwatches, you won't want to miss this gallery.

(Thanks: Boing Boing.)

If the sight of "Tickle Me Elmo" writhing and kicking on the pavement while consumed in flames -- and laughing hysterically throughout -- won't elicit a feral grin from Posthuman Blues readers, I'm not sure what will.

More Elmo fun here.

(Hat tip: Beyond the Beyond.)

The notorious "drones" star in their own must-see CGI music video:



Watch those memes fly!

Q&A: Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined

HOWTO make a robotic ElmoSapien chimera

The ElmoSapien project shows you how to eviscerate an Elmo handpuppet and stretch its skin taut over a RoboSapien robot, load an Elmo "personality" into the robot, and terrorize the neighborhood children.

Just in time for Halloween, too!

Dispatch Reports Bishop Spoke Of Little People Wearing Masks

An incident report from the McKinley Metropolitan Dispatch Authority reported that Pelotte told operators ". . . gentle little people, about 3 to 4 feet tall, and wearing Halloween masks" were in the hall. The dispatch log reported that Pelotte said he hid in a closet while the people were in his home.

Is it just me or does this read like something written by Whitley Strieber?

(Big thanks to Elan for the lead.)

This gorgeous short film is based on "Rendezvous with Rama," Arthur C. Clarke's renowned first contact novel. Sit back and enjoy!

(Thanks: Space Archaeology.)

The truth is out there: Roswell incident recalled by local vet who was there 60 years ago

Hey, I didn't write the headline.

Sprouse, however, said he recalls people speaking about "alien bodies" immediately after the debris discovery.

"They took the bodies to a hangar, and there were two guards at each door with machine guns," he said.

Sprouse said one witness, a barracksmate, was an emergency-room medic who reported seeing what he called "humanoid" bodies in the hospital.

"They went to the ER room and two doctors and two nurses were called in, and they dissected two of those humanoid bodies," he said. "Then the doctors and nurses were transferred.

"My friend said he saw the bodies, and I believed him," Sprouse said. "He said, 'We don't think the humanoid ate food.' I don't know why he said that. The digestive system wasn't designed for food or something."

True, what Sprouse recalls is second-hand and inconclusive. Maybe he's just recalling goofy stories that circulated among base personnel. But if so, the bit about an unconventional digestive system not designed for food is conspicuously prescient in light of similar descriptions that surfaced decades later.

Teemu Arina interviews Bruce Sterling:



I've been a fan of Sterling since I discovered him (belatedly) in the early 1990s. The man's got a fierce grip on what's coming down the pike and an uncanny intellectual hazard-avoidance system. Oh, and he writes science fiction.