I really like the way this commercial casually employs the android meme to such subtle erotic effect. I mean, who wouldn't want a slender chrome avatar of the posthuman future to assist with the shaving process? And the way the electric razor emerges from the bot's wrist is a clever (if disturbing) twist; perhaps the human in the commercial is actually languishing in some off-camera suicidal fantasy . . .

While I'm lamenting my crippled computer mouse, Greg Bishop wants a few words with you regarding UFOs as a participatory artistic phenomenon.

The scroll-wheel on my optical mouse just died. I had no idea how reliant on that thing I'd become. Damn it!

6 die from brain-eating amoeba in lakes

It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

So this explains Creationists!

But it gets even better:

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

A Gibsonian moment:

Interactive supermodel hologram ad

The 3D ad system features an external touch-screen control panel that allows aspiring fashion coordinators to select from 4 situations -- "Date," "Work," "Party" and "Holiday" -- and arrange 12 different fall/winter outfits for Anne's hologram, who walks around in the glass-enclosed booth showing off the selected clothes.

My Creative Commons-licensed short-story "The Reenactment" appears at Alterati. This one's the better part of a decade old. Although I find portions of it clunky, I'm not wholly ashamed of it. Yet.

Blog of the day: Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society

Now police are told they can use Taser guns on children

Police have been given the go-ahead to use Taser stun guns against children.

The relaxing of restrictions on the use of the weapons comes despite warnings that they could trigger a heart attack in youngsters.

Until now, Tasers - which emit a 50,000-volt electric shock - have been used only by specialist officers as a "non lethal" alternative to firearms.

(Via Night of the Living Jackboots.)

Crash: Architectures Of The Near Future

This year Unit 15 will continue its research into 'synthetic space', that is spaces that exist as hybrids of the 'actual' and the 'virtual', by examining speculative, narrative architectures, based on the work of the writer J G Ballard. J G Ballard is one of the most original and distinctive authors of the last part of the C20th, and beginning of the C21st. His writing has encompassed topics as diverse as ecological crisis to technological fetishism and augmentation, and from urban ruination to suburban mob culture, and he has pursued these topics with a wit and inventiveness that is without comparison.

(Via Ballardian.)

That's right: an architecture course inspired by and based upon the works of J.G. Ballard. This is something of an intellectual wet dream come true.

Radio Burst Flags Celestial Oddity

An odd radio burst that seems to signal a previously undiscovered astrophysical phenomenon is now on the scene. Culled out of archival data gathered from the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, the burst may signal something exotic indeed, the last stages of the evaporation of a black hole. Another candidate: A collision between two neutron stars.

Sometimes I wonder if some of the "odd bursts" emanating from deep space could be inadvertent ET signals spawned by megascale industrial processes. Like Michio Kaku, I'm sympathetic to the idea that we could be essentially blind to the activities of any sufficiently advanced extrasolar intelligence.

Bullets fired by William S. Burroughs are up for auction on eBay. Somebody buy this for me!

Earth's oceans were 'home-grown', not from outer space

Oceans on Earth were 'home-grown' and formed because the young planet had a thick blanket of hydrogen, which reacted with oxides in the mantle to form lakes and seas, Japanese planetary scientists have said.

The dominant view has been that Earth got its share of water from moisture-rich asteroids and comets that rained down on the planet during its formative years.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Get those iPods ready: The Other Side of Truth's Paul Kimball appears in The Book of THoTH's latest podcast. Next up: me.

Instead of sending HUMANS to Mars 11 times, the USA sent them on a Mission to Iraq

Exclusive! Bruce Sterling shamelessly outs himself as a Mundane SF sympathizer!

Snowmelt in Antarctica Creeping Inland

The worst melting happened in the summer of 2004-2005, with snow and ice melting in unlikely places, the researchers report.

"2005 was an extreme event," said Marco Tedesco of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Records of surface temperatures confirm that it was an unusually warm year at the bottom of the world, as well as one of the warmest years on record for Earth.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Ax the manipulative footage of jubilant crowds and mock control-room drama and you've got a decent effort at YouTube pamphleteering.

Virginia Tech's Three Legged STriDER

The Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot (STriDER) walks by swinging one leg forward using gravity to carry it and preserve energy like humans, but it also flips its entire body upside-down with each stride. This unusual form of locomotion is surprisingly stable and efficient but the technology still needs a bit of work before we can expect to see this sort of thing traveling outside of the lab.

Obviously reverse-engineered from Wellsian Martian war machines.

Have you heard? Global nuclear holocaust is "in" again!

Drone UFO video in Kentucky.

On August 28th this year, Kentucky resident Jeromy Staggs was filming the lunar eclipse to show his four year old daughter the next day. Using a high quality Sony model DCR-HC21 Mr staggs waited for the eclipse to begin and began filming the event. He managed to get 7 - 8 minutes of the rare celestial show - and then perhaps something more unusual moved into view.

[. . .]

The main similarity which has struck most of those in the know, is the amazing resemblance Mr Staggs video has with all the 'Drone' pictures which have come forward during this summer.

(Via The Anomalist.)

The resemblance is tenuous but intriguing, as is the object's conspicuous presence during an eclipse. Hoax or not, the "drone" was intended to be seen.

Police raid doomsday cult born from floods

Ugandan police have arrested 12 leaders of a doomsday cult that believes floods swamping large parts of the north and east of the country herald the end of the world, state media said Sunday.

Apocalyptic sects are a particularly sensitive subject for the east African nation, where another group killed nearly 800 followers in massacres and a mass suicide after its prediction the world would end at the start of 2000 failed to come true.

It has been among the hardest hit of 17 African countries ravaged by floods in recent weeks. Some 300,000 Ugandans, many already uprooted by conflict, have been affected.

I hate to be bleak, but these guys haven't seen anything yet.

NASA aims to put man on Mars by 2037

NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, the administrator of the US space agency indicated here Monday.

This year marks the half-century of the space age ushered in by the October 1957 launch of the Sputnik-1 by the then Soviet Union, NASA administrator Michael Griffin noted.

In 2057, the centenary of the space era, "we should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars," Griffin told an international astronautics congress in this southern Indian city where he outlined NASA's future goals.

2037 is ridiculously far-flung. Take away ten years to make it 2027 and I'll (reluctantly) cease complaining. In the meantime, perhaps it's time to re-read Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars."

Rejoice -- OddThings is back!

Parallel universe proof boosts time travel hopes

But the existence of parallel worlds offers a way around these troublesome paradoxes, according to David Deutsch of Oxford University, a highly respected proponent of quantum theory, the deeply mathematical, successful and baffling theory of the atomic world.

He argues that time travel shifts between different branches of reality, basing his claim on parallel universes, the so-called "many-worlds" formulation of quantum theory.

The new work bolsters his claim that quantum theory does not forbid time travel. "It does sidestep it. You go into another universe," he said yesterday, though he admits that there is still a way to go to find schemes to manipulate space and time in a way that makes time hops possible.

Suppose someone's figured it out. They're wouldn't be violating causality, so they could enjoy a surprising degree of freedom. If they're a version of homo sapiens, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect them to be interested in us, in which case some UFO testimony begins to make sense.

As Deutsch is careful to note, quantum time travel doesn't seem to be possible anytime soon. So if popularly described "aliens" are in fact terrestrial visitors from a version of our own future, how advanced are they?

Amazon Forest Unexpectedly Resilient to Drought

"Instead of 'hunkering down' during a drought as you might expect, the forest responded positively to drought, at least in the short term," said study author Scott R. Saleska, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University Of Arizona. "It's a very interesting and surprising response."

(Via The Anomalist.)

See? I'm not always doom and gloom when it comes to climate change.

Nano UFOs

Since it is propelled by a miniature rocket, the prototype NAV will have a flight time of only a few seconds. But any species capable of crossing galaxies (or dimensions) will doubtless have long progressed past the stage of powering their vessels with controlled explosions. Imagine the surveillance capabilities of a NAV with a flight time of minutes, or even hours. Why fly conspicuously clunky flying saucers over military bases to take photographs when you could instead deploy a squadron of spying sycamore seeds to do the job for you?

The presence of said "conspicuously clunky flying saucers" is one of the principle reasons I think the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis fails to account for UFO activity. I've written more on this angle of the debate here.

I really, really, really, really like vintage pulp book covers. The more lesbians and tentacled aliens the better. Having gotten that off my chest, here's an excellent gallery of pulp art I discovered thanks to Ectoplasmosis.

Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History

Sea level rise is "the thing that I'm most concerned about as a scientist," says Benjamin Santer, a climate physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

"We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it," said University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris. "It's going to happen no matter what -- the question is when."

Transparent frogs? Big deal. There are plenty of people I can totally see through.

Mars 'Life Detection' Kit Launched into Space

Scientists and engineers are hoping that the life-sensing chip will remain viable in the harsh radiation, temperatures and vacuum of space during a journey to Mars. The kit is designed to detect trace levels of biomarkers, which should be able to reveal if life currently is, or ever was, present on Mars.

"This will be the first time that these types of materials will have flown unprotected in space in a manner similar to a flight to Mars," said Andrew Steele, a molecular biologist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.

SETI SEARCH OVER

"ET is attacking us by stealth. Using our own computers against us." Dacre insists. He claims that the US government, in tandem with other 'friends', know that the interstellar computer virus arrived from a star system approximately twelve light years from our solar system. "A stone's throw on the galactic scale of failing suns!"

Alien computer viruses? Oh, come on! If you're going to make up a silly SETI conspiracy at least do better than that.

Here's a delightful gallery of insects Photoshopped to look like mammals. Or is that the other way around?

Carnegie Mellon's New Prototype Lunar Rover

Consider this: there are two rovers crawling around the surface of Mars. Isn't it strange that we don't have anything similar on the surface of the Moon. I mean, come on, it's so close.

I've been hearing about up-and-coming lunar rovers since at least 1998. In particular, I remember Radio Shack gearing up as a sponsor for a privately funded rover mission that never happened (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's opinion of Radio Shack . . .)

Examining these massive circular mining sites, I can't help but be reminded of certain exotic formations on Mars.

(Thanks: PAG E-News.)

Arctic vault takes shape for world food crops

In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster.

Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom.

American Spy Satellite Downed In Peru As US Nuclear Attack On Iran Thwarted

Russian Military Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that one of the United States most secretive spy satellites, the KH-13, targeting Iran was 'destroyed in its orbit' with its main power generator powered by the radioactive isotope Pu-238 surviving re-entry and crashing in a remote region of the South American Nation of Peru, and where hundreds are reported to be ill from radiation poisoning.

OK. Now it all makes sense.

(More coverage here . . .)

Blog of the day: Dark Roasted Blend

Here's a damned cool remote-control flying saucer I really wish I had. With a little improvisation, I bet I could use it to drop turds onto the heads of the sidewalk preachers that plague my neighborhood on weekends.

Can you spawn complex emergent behavior with a bunch of unruly virtual ants and some algorithmic breadcrumbs?

(Tip of the hat to Reality Carnival.)

Pollution May Cause 40 Percent of Global Deaths

Water, air and soil pollution, along with other environmental factors, contribute to 40 percent of deaths worldwide each year, a new study concludes.

In a review of research into the effects of environmental pollutants and other sources of environmental degradation, Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel estimates that 62 million deaths per year (40 percent of all that occur) can be attributed to environmental factors, particularly organic and chemical pollutants that accumulate in the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Metaplace: open DIY virtual worlds for everyone

Metaplace -- a virtual world creation system that lets anyone make their own multiplayer games, link them and share them -- has just launched, at the Techcrunch 40 event. Metaplace was created by Raph Koster, the architect of Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online -- and the author of the incredible Theory of Fun. Metaplace is a world-creator that runs right in your browser, and that makes it incredibly simple to share objects, characters and entire worlds.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

I might give this a shot, assuming my graphics card is up to the challenge.

There's the Red Vote, the Blue Vote . . . and the Little Green Vote

Federal law limits the participation of resident aliens in the political process. But it is silent on the role of extraterrestrial aliens.

This loophole has not been lost on the life forms who arrived on these shores aboard flying saucers with little more than the antennae on their backs. After years of suffering without suffrage, these beings are now seeking to play a role in the 2008 presidential campaign.

You guessed it: another shallow, dismissive piece on the "expolitics" movement as it readies itself for a new presidential election. Like my friend Paul Kimball, whose UFO documentary "Best Evidence" made its American debut at the X-Conference in Washington, D.C., I think exopoliticians' certainty that UFOs represent extraterrestrial intelligence is premature; perhaps a more productive approach to the controversy would entail dispensing with expansive "cover-up" allegations and focusing on the scientific unknowns posed by the phenomenon (whatever its origin).





None of this is to suggest the U.S. government is being entirely truthful about what it knows about UFOs. Clearly, secrets are being kept -- many of them for reasons only marginally connected to the UFO enigma. And while I'm sympathetic to claims of crashed ET vehicles and recovered alien bodies, I'm unaware of a single case that could be reasonably wielded as proof of alien visitation. Instead, we're faced with 60 years of unexplained activity that hints, remarkably, of some form of intelligence -- fascinating to committed students of the unknown, but decidedly less desirable to disclosure activists committed to unearthing a "smoking gun."

Vegetation on Mars? It would certainly appear so. Of course, appearances can be deceiving. What do you think?

A brand-new ish of FLURB, edited by Rudy Rucker, is online. I'm not in it this time, but that's hardly a let-down considering some of the wildly talented writers who are.

Hey, when did H.R. Giger start designing Dust Busters?

(Hat tip: Beyond the Beyond.)