CGI invades Mars!

"I fucking hate robots!"



(Thanks, Justin!)

Firefighters' Manual Teaches First Responders to Deal with UFO Attacks

No, I'm not kidding: A recent ABC newscast focuses on how a commonly-used firefighters' manual from FEMA has an entire chapter devoted to UFO preparedness.

Mars Phoenix Lander Runs Out of Juice

Originally slated for a mere 90 days near the Martian north pole, clever NASA power engineers kept the Lander doing science for nearly two months beyond that goal. But now mission officials are certain: The lander has run out of power for its internal heater and is presumed to be frozen on the arctic plane.

Related:

Has Mars Science Laboratory Made the Discovery of the Decade?

NASA team leader Michael Mumma puts forward the idea that subterranean bacteria could be producing the noxious fumes, which periodically percolate to the surface in short lived bursts. But it could also be a geological source deep below the surface.

Chandrayaan-1 Now Successfully in Lunar Orbit

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon, successfully entered lunar orbit on November 8. The spacecraft fired its engines to reduce velocity and enable the Moon's gravity to capture it; engines were fired for 817 seconds when Chandrayaan-1 was about 500 km away from the moon. Next up for the spacecraft will be to reduce the height of its lunar orbit to about 100 km.

"I'm already living in a controlled environment, Sam. Nothing can touch me here. I'm alone. I'm safe."



"Have you ever heard of insect politics"?

Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says

The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger -- a multiverse -- and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

It's cat video time.




More here.

BLUE

You give your love and friendship unconditionally. You enjoy long, thoughtful conversations rich in philosophy and spirituality. You are very loyal and intuitive.

Find out your color at QuizMeme.com!

Yeah, whatever.

Michael Stipe: you've marveled at his lyrics -- now wear the shirt!

Found Image #26

A Balloon in Titan's Skies

The balloon concept is particularly intriguing. You may remember reading about a 1983 NASA workshop at which the idea of seeding the atmosphere of Titan with floating laboratories was discussed. A large balloon or powered blimp would move through the skies while dispersing smaller balloons to operate between ten and 100 kilometers above the surface. The TSSM concept is not quite so grand but seems more realistic, with a pared down mission scenario that builds upon our experience with Cassini and Huygens.

My Top 10 Most Useful and Informative Twitter Users

What? I wasn't included? An outrage!

;-)

"What do you look like?"

"It depends on who's looking."

For those wondering (like me) what an Obama presidency might herald for science and the environment, here are some interesting links:

Obama promises new era of scientific innovation

Obama on science, in his own words

And for anyone seeking a level critique of the challenges in store, George Dvorsky (Sentient Developments) offers a welcome reality-check:

Obama may have paved through some unprecedented political inroads on election night, but the popular ranking between himself and John McCain was shockingly narrow. Obama's mandate is not as flamingly progressive as many have made it out to be. To go beyond it would not only be political suicide in a stubbornly conservative country, it would run contrary to his rather vanilla election promises.

Many Americans, I'm afraid, have confused his campaigning messages of "hope" and "yes we can" with that of actual progressive politics.

So Little Time, So Much Damage

President Bush's aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others -- few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball.

There's really only one word to describe the mind behind this, and it's most definitely NSFW.

First Hoagland, now Strieber: Will Obama Mean UFO Change?

To be fair, I agree with Strieber's recommendations for a disciplined empirical study, regardless if we're dealing with "visitors" or something else entirely.

The results from my first poll ("What do you think the UFO phenomenon represents?") are in. A total of 103 readers responded to the question.

Perhaps surprisingly, only 28 voters (27%) ascribed the phenomenon (or phenomena) to extraterrestrial visitors, mirroring the 28 voters (27%) who selected "Misidentification and/or the 'will to believe'" as the most likely culprit.

22 voters (21%) selected "Beings from a parallel world" while 18 (17%) opted for "An aspect of Jung's collective unconscious." A scant 13 readers (12% of the vote) selected "Time travelers" as a possible explanation.

But the "winning" vote went to "Other," drawing 36 readers and beating out "Extraterrestrials" with an in impressive 34%.

Terence McKenna on individuality and democracy's inherent tendency to atomize, cheapen and reject the human experience: "We have been infantilized by our cultural institutions to accept the notion of ourselves as citizens consuming these regurgitated scientific models which are then hashed through by Madison Avenue and then handed down to us by the organs of mass culture and this is supposed to be what we anchor our lives on."

Sentient Developments on the aftermath of Proposition 8:

Gay marriage, plebiscites, and the tyranny of the masses

Democratic governments should work to protect the rights of minorities not by querying the collective (who at the individual level tend to be ignorant of the intricacies of social justice, law and fairness -- not to mention their often prejudicial and reactive nature), but by having accountable institutions (like the Senate) recognize and enshrine civil rights and freedoms within the constitution or a bill of rights.

Otherwise, governments are enabling the majority to lord it over those who need to be protected from exactly that: the masses.

Moon craters may hold traces of early life

Ice deposits hidden in the Moon's darkest craters might contain traces of early life from meteorites blasted off the Earth by asteroids billions of years ago.

These remains could reveal clues about the origin and evolution of life on Earth or even contain remnants of life from other planets in the Solar System, such as Mars, said astrobiologist Joop Houtkooper, of the University of Giessen in Germany.

Suddenly, it may be cool to be an American again

When you're an American abroad, you can quickly become a whipping post. Regardless of your political affiliation, if you happen to be living and working overseas at a time when the United States has antagonized much of the world, you get a lot of grief.

You can find yourself pressed to be some kind of apologist for Washington. And you can wind up feeling ashamed and alone.

On distinctly funnier note, I just surfed over to Richard Hoagland's "Enterprise Mission" site on the hunch that he'd be milking Obama's election for imaginary Fortean relevance. I wasn't disappointed. Click to take in "The Hyperdimensional Election of Barack Obama . . . and 2012."

Maybe it's just me, but certainly seems like the word-verification ("weevie") spam-filters used by Blogger have become mostly pronounceable. I've even noticed actual words where once was pure gibberish.

What do you think?

Top 12 videos of creepy automata

Russia to deploy short-range missiles near Poland

"We will not retreat in the Caucasus," he said, winning one of many rounds of applause during the televised 85-minute address.

Talking tough, he fleshed out long-promised military measures in response to U.S. plans for missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, former Soviet satellites now in NATO. The Kremlin claims the system is meant to weaken Russia, not defend against Iran, as Washington insists.

If I ever direct a near-future science fiction movie, at least I know who to hire as costume designer.

British beekeepers seek help to save honeybees

Beekeepers swarmed Parliament and the prime minister's office on Wednesday, demanding more funds for research after the number of Britain's honey bees dropped by nearly a third in the past year.

The British bee losses have not been as dramatic as those in the United States, but beekeepers say it is getting worse.

Climate crank Michael Crichton dies at 66 (obituary with comments by Bruce Sterling)

As a voracious science fiction reader, I'm afraid I'll remember Crichton as one of the very worst writers in the field. His prose was so bad it was alarming.

Your host in a rare unguarded moment:





For more photos, see my Flickr stream.

On a less morbid note, Obama did, in fact, mention a few points in his victory speech that I found encouraging.

1.) He used the words "planet in peril." So at least it would seem he's aware there's a problem, presumably one that can be lessened by the application of "science and imagination" -- and yes, he used those words too.

2.) Although the context was purely historical, Obama made reference to the Apollo Moon landing. If reason prevails, there will be another . . . and it's not inconceivable that the groundwork could be essentially completed during his own presidency.

"Hope"? "Change"? I'm skeptical, but in the original, healthy sense of the word. I want to see what Obama can do, and I'm willing to offer him my support if his promise to dissolve the corrosive, masturbatory zeitgeist of the Bush debacle has teeth.

Obama's been criticized for waxing "messianic." But "messianic" is something I can handle; the wanton, unapologetic stupidity that defined the McCain campaign (especially in its desperate final months) is not.

Goodbye, Sarah Palin. Farewell, Joe the (sort of) Plumber and Officially Sanctioned Barometer of the American Psyche. You were never anything more than cynical fictions; take solace in your imminent plunge into obscurity.

For the moment, at least, the future belongs to the elitists.

Yeah, yeah, so perhaps things are looking up on the political front (although, if absolutely pressed, I'd still argue that the game is up, as far as humanity's continued reign as this planet's dominant land mammal is concerned).

But on a slightly more positive front, even as NASA's manned spaceflight program withers and convulses before our eyes, there's still reason to be excited about space. I'm with Stephen Hawking: if we can make it "off-world" -- and stay there -- there might be something to say for a human legacy.

If not, in 100 years no one's going to give a shit about Obama.

Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President

More essential Onion coverage: Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

Found Image #25

I have seen the future -- and it's biodegradable.

Cardboard office by Paul Coudamy

Storyboard by Jan Van Hoof

Obama becomes first black president in landslide

Just in case you haven't heard.

;-)

Tired of givin' it away

"I'm sorry to be so agitated," says Peter Davenport from Harrington, Wash. "I'm at the end of my rope. With the government, with the press, with the American people. You've caught me at a strange time."

This week, on his National UFO Reporting Center Web page, the man who runs one of the world's busiest eyewitness databases announced he was on the brink of shutting down his live telephone Hotline.

Deadly New Virus Thought to Be Contained

A new virus that causes fatal hemorrhagic fevers has been discovered in southern Africa. It killed four people in South Africa and sickened a fifth, but health authorities believe the outbreak has been contained.

Scientists clone from frozen mice

Cloning has largely been done using just live donor cells, transferring their DNA to recipient eggs.

Using previously frozen cells runs the risk of ice damage to the DNA unless carefully handled.

The scientists in Kobe, Japan, said their technique raised the possibility of recreating extinct creatures, such as mammoth, from their frozen remains.

More messages from our sponsors.

Two intriguing items from Universe Today:

Mars Methane Mystery Still Beckons

And the mystery of how methane on Mars is being replenished has scientists continuing their observations in an effort to understand what's happening on Mars. Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland was one of the original methane discoverers. Observations he and his team have made over the last four years show methane is not spread evenly around Mars, but concentrated in a few "hotspots."

Can Cassini be Used to Detect Life on Enceladus?

McKay's paper suggests that the non-methane hydrocarbon to methane ratio needs to be lower than 0.001 for the methane to favour a biological origin.

This method was recently used on hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. A higher ratio of non-methane hydrocarbons were measured, indicating the gases emitted from the vents were non-biological in origin. This research suggests that Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) can be used in a similar way to see if the organic compounds detected in the Enceladus plume can be attributed to biological processes.

Centauri Dreams returns to the prospect of detecting interstellar beacons. Have we already intercepted ET transmissions without realizing it?

10 Things 3D Printers Can Do Now!

The concept of custom manufacturing is exciting to nearly everyone, but it always seems to be something that will happen in the "future". Gibson was right and the following list of applications for 3D printers show the truth in the saying "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."

(Via Beyond the Beyond.)

This is perhaps the most wincingly delicious prank call I've ever heard.

Found Image #24





Fun fact: I own a copy of this very issue.

Is Greg Bishop being watched?

Paranoids are easy to create and feed if you know how to flatter their egos: "He picked me. I must be on to something." The basic level of fear created is helpful, since most of us like a scare, and if it seems to be real, the funhouse (or spookhouse) illusion is complete. All that is needed when this is accomplished is to keep the frightening "insider" info coming in small doses. At this point, your target is basically a puppet and mouthpiece, ready to infect others with carefully crafted disinfo, which of course is mostly true, but injected with a small amount of ear-tickling lies.

If paranoids are easy to create, consider how childishly simple it is to create a True Believer.