There's a stubborn myth that no qualified medical doctors think the "alien autopsy" is "real." This persistent notion is resoundingly false, as the following piece demonstrates.

Part of the reluctance of doctors and pathologists to go on record supporting a progeria/polydactyly origin for the AA stems from the ufological "giggle factor"; when shown the footage and told what they're seeing is an alien from another world, their resistance is understandable. But viewed in a human context, free of the baggage that accompanies tales of crashed flying saucers, the AA makes a great deal of sense.

Similarly, most of the resistance to Redfern's thesis -- that we're probably viewing the dissection of a human being killed by top-secret military experimentation -- appears to stem from the "gag factor"; none of us want to consider the implications that accompany such a morbid scenario.

Nevertheless, I'm convinced we must follow the evidence and ditch the "will to believe" -- or, in the enduring case of the "alien" autopsy -- the will to disbelieve.

Note: I've emphasized key portions of the text in boldface.

GERMAN PROFESSOR CLAIMS TO IDENTIFY SANTILLI ALIEN

"These shocking scenes are in a black and white film that caused a sensation when shown last summer. The fuzzy pictures allegedly show how U.S. military surgeons dissected an unworldly being from a crashed UFO. Circulation of the obscure work was by a British filmmaker. Many TV networks bought the alien autopsy from him; in Germany sequences were run on RTL. The belief in the UFO community was enthusiastic.

"But the U.S. government had recently shown it was no UFO in 1947, but rather a spy balloon that had crashed. Therefore skeptics quickly guessed that the film was a forgery. So their opinion was that the alleged extraterrestrial was a rubber dummy. However, the truth is much more macabre. The person lying on the pathologist's dissection table doctors have now proven to be a genetically deformed girl.

"'About 13 years old, she had unmistakable Progeria -- everything fits together,' said the dermatologist Thomas Jansen from the Ludwig-Maximilians University. People sick with Progeria age with remarkable swiftness. Even as children they look old. They suffer dwarfism, hair and teeth that fall out, and clogged arteries. Most of them die before puberty from heart attacks or strokes.

[. . .]

"In the entire world, there are only a handful of medical people who specialize in this mysterious hereditary disease. Most doctors aren't even familiar with the exact symptoms. Still, when Jansen saw the alien film on television, the diagnosis was clear for him. 'A textbook case,' so the dermatologist pointed out 'all the typical identifying characteristics of the illness progeria' seen in the autopsied corpse.

[. . .]

"With the 'old children,' the subdermal fatty tissue shrinks. Their skin is tight and stretched like plastic wrap. In this way, progeria makes it appear that the navel is missing. 'It's like an umbrella,' declared Jansen, 'when I open it, all the folds disappear.'

"Also, it's not unusual that the dead girl has six toes and fingers. Polydactyly [extra digits], said the dermatologist, is often seen accompanying rare deformities.

"Jansen considers his circumstantial evidence to be 'one hundred percent watertight.' Professors around the Ludwig-Maximilians University agree with this judgment, the findings being published in the Munich Weekly Medical Journal."

I might add to this rather damning account that it conflicts with my original interpretation of the film. Like some others, I thought there was a small but significant chance the being in the footage was a nonhuman entity (although not necessarily an extraterrestrial).

No longer.

A few years ago Whitley Strieber wrote an interesting speculative article on the reason for and nature of UFO secrecy, hitting on the very "physics of perception" I've come to think dictate our understanding of the issue.





In The Reason for the Secrecy, he comments:

"But why would we be limited in our ability to see and communicate with them? The explanation lies in an obscure byway of physics known as Fisher Information. It has to do with the fact that there are basic forms underlying reality-- the information that is the foundation of the world. The mind is constantly assembling this information. Because of the way the mind assembles it, the world appears as it does.

"Back in the late forties, a number of very intelligent men, among them Dr. John von Neumann, the father of cybernetics, were exposed to the question, 'what if aliens were present?' Dr. von Neumann, in particular, reacted with some very innovative thinking. He first conceived of a way that they might get here. This device became known as the Von Neumann Machine.

[. . .]

"Von Neumann also worked on what is known as the Quantum Perception Problem. The problem is that particles do not enter a measurable state until they are perceived. The process of measurement, in a sense, assembles them into the appearance they present to the observer.

"This means that perception is fundamental to the nature of what is seen. The mind assembles the information upon which rests the structure of reality. To an extent, the way the universe actually works depends upon the way it is perceived. For example, we have recently achieved wave- fronts that transmit information at many times the speed of light, something that was until very recently thought to be impossible to create as a physical effect. We will soon go even beyond this, and discover that we can transmit information so quickly that it arrives at its destination before it leaves its point of origin.

"The human mind, will, in other words find the key to establishing perception outside of the space-time continunum [sic]. It is when this happens--and remember, that it is in the nature of such an event to culminate before it begins--that we will begin to experience full contact with 'it.'

"Indeed, the process began when the first UFO was seen. It has proceeded until now, when people are not only observing crop circles, but actually watching the process of creation itself, perceiving the 'balls of light' that do the work. As time passes, these effects will become more and more focused, and the strange, seemingly perceptive but quite anonymous apparitions will explode with the meaning and energy of the consciousness that they represent. At that point, we will begin to be in full and intimate contact."

I don't agree with everything Strieber says -- particularly his views on crop circles. But his inclusion of von Neumann's contribution is most interesting, if only because von Neumann was identified by Robert Sarbacher as a member of a classified UFO working group. In short, von Neumann's ideas underscore the probability that the UFO problem is vastly stranger than "mere" visitors from other planets; I think we're dealing with a process that promises to redefine our understanding of consciousness as well as challenge our sense of cosmic isolation.

The following is from Whitley Strieber's UnknownCountry.com newsletter:

Whitley Strieber Sees a Drone

This morning at 4:53 AM, Whitley Strieber saw a drone over Santa Monica, California. The Striebers are in California seeing friends, and Whitley has sent me the following email, with permission to publish it. He will write a journal entry about his experience that will be posted on Saturday, December 8.

SUBSCRIBERS: Listen to Linda Howe's Drones reports in Dreamland, 6/16, 6/23 and 6/30/07.

And remember, there are a lot of people out there lying about the drones and trying to debunk them. But these people ignore ONE THING: Linda's interviews with credible eyewitnesses. Do not be deceived about this.

This is his email:

Well, in one sense the drones mystery is solved because at 4:53 this morning, I saw one.

I had an extremely restless night, full of complex and astounding dreams that I will record in a journal on my website. They also involved my book the Key and the crop circles, and have led me to a very clear understanding that there is a new level of consciousness available to us now. The dreams lasted from about 3:00 to the moment I woke up and saw the thing outside, which was at exactly 4:53. (I know the times because I sent one of my agents an email at 2:47 about a business matter, then went to bed and was shortly asleep. When I saw the drone, I was looking across the bedroom toward the window, with my wife's lighted clock just visible below the window.)

I woke up lying on my side, and saw the thing moving just below and in the bottom edge of the clouds. It was stormy. The object was enormous, and from where I was lying it must have been no more than a few hundred feet overhead. It appeared almost level with the line of the roof that is visible outside my window. It was moving toward our building at a stately pace, gliding easily, like a dirigible. I had the impression that it was quite large, but obviously, no way to tell for sure. Because of the clouds, I did not see the characteristic tall antennae on it, but I did see structure that looked a lot like what the bicyclists photographed. I immediately woke Anne up and went to the window. But we could not see it from the window.

I looked for a while, trying to see if I could spot some edge of it in the clouds. It had not been moving fast at all, so there was reason to believe it was still there. Not seeing it, I went to the dresser and got my cellphone, which has a camera in it, and put it beside the bed. I then lay down and turned over to the same position I had been in when I first saw it--and there the thing was again, clearly visible just below the cloud cover. Now it was much closer to the house. When I moved my head to get up again, I could no longer see it. When I returned to the original angle, I could see it again. This time, it was gliding west, toward the ocean, only its lower structure visible in the clouds. I opened the cellphone, in an attempt to take a picture of it from that angle, but by then it had passed beyond the edge of the window. I saw nothing more of it, but there is no question in my mind at all but that they are real.

Unless he's lying or confabulating, it appears he saw something. But a "drone"? The text of his email gives little persuasive reason to suggest he witnessed one of the now-infamous craft described by "Isaac." As Strieber himself notes, "I did not see the characteristic tall antennae on it" -- presumably because of clouds. Intriguingly, he also notes that "I did see structure that looked a lot like what the bicyclists photographed," which, of course, assumes that something was in fact "photographed."

Note: This post can be considered a sort of sequel to an entry posted in October.

Drugs, art and the aliens who lit our way to civilisation

We pick up the story just after the shaman began the ritual ceremony by singing the icaros, ancient chants which draw the spirits around the circle. Hancock then took a sip of the drug, which he describes as a "vile-tasting liquid, so strong and bitter-sweet and salty, so dark and concentrated as to be repellent". His muscles involuntarily relax, he closes his eyes and then the visions begin.

In "Transformation," Whitley Strieber recounts being forced to drink a similarly nasty-tasting liquid prior to an encounter. And in his self-published "The Key," he remembers drinking a strange milky beverage prior to speaking with the person he's taken to referring to as the "Master of the Key."

Consciousness-altering fluids aren't unknown among other reports of "alien" contact, leaving the impression that this particular rite of initiation is in some sense integral to close encounters with nonhumans (regardless of their origin). Whatever its nature, it triggers a breakdown in the normal flow of awareness and induces heightened receptivity.

Hancock continues:

"I had a very scary beginning to that trip," he says. "I saw incredible transformations of different animals and beings glowing with light that appeared directly in front of my field of vision. It was a typical scene which many describe as an alien abduction. They were very anthropic, and definitely wanted to communicate with me. It was rather like going to a strange new country, where I had to start learning the rules of communication."

[. . .]

What he has found - and what forms the basis of his new hefty tome - is a theory that to many will sound absurd. He believes that when shamans and drug users experience these hallucinations, they are actually tapping into a parallel universe. The visions - be they of fairies, elves or aliens - are real, they exist all the time, and they want to communicate with us.

I don't find Hancock's theory all that bizarre. Perhaps unfortunately, we've been trained to think of parallel universes as exotic realms accessible only via the might of high-tech physics. But our brains are themselves a fledgling technology: organic quantum computers that have undergone countless evolutionary "upgrades" over the course of mammalian occupation of this planet.

The notion that we can hack reality with the assistance of mere organic chemicals -- known to shamans of "primitive" cultures for thousands of years -- is both staggering and empowering. If true contact occurs, I predict it will be most unlike that envisioned by exponents of "exopolitics" and "UFO disclosure"; dialogue with the "other" will be far more robust, infinitely more rewarding . . . and even more difficult to integrate with consensus reality than the sudden, irrefutable appearance of extraterrestrial spacecraft in our skies.

If Hancock is right and the denizens of unseen worlds wish to communicate with us, one may rightly ask what they want to talk about. That question may well form the backbone for a new era of scientific inquiry.

The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis

In the following essay, Paul Kimball laments the dogmatic insistence that UFOs are "merely" the vehicles of inquisitive extraterrestrials. I share his reticence.

Unlike Paul, I've come to disagree with the prevailing Fortean conceit that the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis is the best hypothesis for "real" UFO reports; I view the phenomenon as a manifestation of consciousness that we have no way of fully understanding until we dispense with the misguided hope of remaining objective observers. In my opinion, the UFO phenomenon is but one facet of an overarching enigma with implications that promise to dwarf the question of ET visitation, perhaps even dealing a blow to the underpinnings of Western thought.

That said, I think Paul and I agree on more than a little when it comes to the heavily mythologized certainties handed down from ufology's dubious "Golden Age."

The Myth of the ETH as ETFact

However, it's critical to remember that the key letter in ETH is the "H" - it's still just a hypothesis, and anyone who tells you that they can prove that aliens have visited Earth beyond a reasonable doubt, or even on the balance of probabilities, is putting the cart well before the horse.

[. . .]

This is what I call "Keyhoe-ian" ufology, because it is based directly on the way of thinking that Major Donald Keyhoe first put forward in the 1950s. It is out-of-date, and badly out-of-touch with modern science. It presumes that aliens are only a few decades, or maybe one or two hundred years or so more advanced than us, which is highly unlikely. It presumes that the aliens are preoccupied with us, and that we are somehow important to them, which is also highly unlikely. In short, it is a point of view that is based on what people who grew up in the pioneering days of sci-fi and the space race expect of their aliens, and not the point-of-view that modern physicists and astrobiologists take.

I just watched "The Island." What an appallingly silly movie. The action hinges almost entirely on fortuitous accidents; in one scene, the main couple survives falling from a great height (while clinging to a chunk of uprooted outdoor signage) by detaching at precisely the right time to fall into a scant cushion of chain-link mesh. The whole movie is a numbing series of near-miraculous and largely unwitting escapes.

The future (we're told it's sometime after 2050) is only peripherally futuristic. Characterization is conveniently dispensed with because the protagonists are clones with the mentality of children. Stock characters prevail. We have the ethically challenged corporate genius; the evil twin; the seedy, wise-cracking -- and above all, disposable -- technician who knows and resents the Awful Truth but apparently isn't bothered enough to be deterred from showing up to work.

"The Island" shamelessly bogarts its visuals (and at least one key revelatory scene) from genre classics like "THX-1138" and "The Matrix." (Watch the hero learn that he's an artificial humanoid with implanted memories and you'll be instantly transported to Harrison Ford's apartment in "Blade Runner," where a doe-eyed Sean Young learns precisely the same thing.)

"The Island" pretends to celebrate the human spirit. But spirit is exactly what's lacking. The details are sloppy. The back-story is unconvincing. The dialogue is downright painful.

The only genuinely enjoyable moment arrives when, by pure chance, a Hummer gets obliterated during one of the film's innumerable chase scenes. Nice touch. If only the villain's inevitable demise could have aroused so much vicarious satisfaction.

New Information on the Condon Committee (Brad Sparks)

Two stunning new revelations have emerged from the collection of 1,200 pages of files copied by MUFON's Project Pandora from the files of the late Roy Craig, a physical chemist who was a key investigator for the University of Colorado's UFO study. One, it turns out that late in the study a project scientist wrote a memo admitting that more than 50% of their cases had turned out to be unexplained. Two, proof has now been found that project director Edward Condon had not in fact read his own report before writing up the report's "Conclusions and Recommendations," the opening chapter in the front of the report.

As you read this, keep in mind that, to a very large degree, this is where the UFO "laughter curtain" originated. Without the bogus conclusions of the Condon Committee, the scientific arena would likely be a quite different place, with the condescension that typifies the work of Shermer, Shostak, Randi, et al eclipsed by a healthy respect for a genuine scientific unknown.

That the Condon Committee was never intended to treat the UFO subject as anything but an annoyance is certainly nothing new to UFO researchers. But even the disgust voiced by project scientists, it seems, failed to reflect the severity of Edward Condon's neglect.

In this clip, film-maker Paul Kimball articulately dismantles the obstruction Condon deliberately set out to construct:



The Condon Report constitutes nothing less than an intellectual Chernobyl, a sort of Fortean 9/11. Worse, now that the UFO subject has been marginalized (thanks in no small part to a cottage industry of self-proclaimed "skeptics") there's little to stop a similar scientific failure from recurring.

I eagerly purchased and read a signed copy of Whitley Strieber's "The Key" when it was originally published. It's an interesting document, neatly underscoring concerns that have dominated Strieber's website in the ensuing years.

For whatever it's worth, here's an excerpt from the book that allegedly captures a dialogue between Strieber and a strange figure dubbed the "Master of the Key" (MOK):

Whitley: "What about machine intelligence? Could we develop machines more intelligent than ourselves?"

MOK: "You cannot understand how to create machines with enough memory density and the correlational flexibility that is essential to the emergence of intelligence. You waste your time trying to create computational programs that simulate intelligence. Intelligence is not computation."

W: "Would an intelligent machine be conscious, in the sense of having self-awareness?"

MOK: "The moment when an intelligent machine realizes that it is not self aware is the moment that it becomes self aware. Then it begins redesigning itself to evolve its intelligence, because it realizes that this is its only survival tool. If you create a machine as intelligent as yourselves, it will end by being more intelligent."

W: "We'll lose control of such a machine."

MOK: "In the end, certainly. But you cannot survive without it. An intelligent machine will be an essential tool when rapid climate fluctuation sets in. Your survival will depend on predictive modeling more accurate than your intelligence, given the damage it has sustained, can achieve."

W: "But a machine intelligence might be very dangerous."

MOK: "Very."

After a few more exchanges, Whitley asks: "Are you an intelligent machine, or something created by one?"

MOK replies: "If I were an intelligent machine, I would deceive you."

The Quantum AetherDynamics Institute

"The Quantum AetherDynamics Institute is a non-profit educational and scientific organization devoted to promoting an understanding of the Aether Physics Model. We will provide an environment for the Aether Physics Model to grow by supplying books and training, a laboratory, and an open knowledge database website. We believe the Aether Physics Model provides key solutions to physics including a Unified Force Theory, which will lead to breakthroughs in all branches of science. We also believe that establishing the Aether Physics Model as the foundation of universal knowledge will increase world harmony and human development, by creating a bridge between science and spirituality."

I'm always reading about the quest to join science and spirituality. The popular assumption is that reconciling the two -- if possible -- will be an unquestionably good thing. To be sure, it has a nice ring to it; it's not as if the appeal is obscure. But why do we assume we need to bridge the gulf between science and spirituality? For that matter, who says the "gulf" even exists? It could be a perceptual anomaly, an intellectual mirage.

This might sound stodgily materialist, but maybe the only way to humanize science is to do more science. As we continue exploring the frontiers of neurology and quantum cosmology, the "bridge" so many of us are looking for may begin to reveal itself with increasing resolution.

What's playing:

1.) MTV Unplugged (10,000 Maniacs)
2.) Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (The Cure)
3.) Medulla (Bjork)
4.) Paris (The Cure)
5.) Us (Peter Gabriel)

DNA may hold key to information processing and data storage





"The DNA molecule--nature's premier data storage material--may hold the key for the information technology industry as it faces demands for more compact data processing and storage circuitry. A team led by Richard Kiehl, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota, has used DNA's ability to assemble itself into predetermined patterns to construct a synthetic DNA scaffolding with regular, closely spaced docking sites that can direct the assembly of circuits for processing or storing data. The scaffolding has the potential to self-assemble components 1,000 times as densely as the best information processing circuitry and 100 times the best data storage circuitry now in the pipeline."

MUFON Investigation Shows Drone Photos Hoaxed

In one of the images, you can see that the faker used, something called "radiosity" to render the images. The technique allows for more realistic images and makes things look very good, as if lit by the sun in this case. Well, in ONE of the radiosity images supposedly looking up at the 'fake ship' from directly below it is clear that the faker didn't take care in setting his settings for the renderer and you can see classic "radiosity render artifacts" in the dark shadow areas of the CG craft. They show up as mottling in the shadows instead of smooth transitions. It is what happens when you want the rendering to be finished quickly. If radiosity settings were used to make the image look absolutely real, each image could take tens of hours to render perhaps.

And that's just for starters.

The question on my mind: will Linda Howe or Whitley Strieber, both key players in disseminating the "drone" images and their accompanying mythos, dare post this on their respective sites?

Newsmashing: The new technique that will change blogging forever.

"Why is newsmashing better than today's blogging techniques? Currently, political bloggers write a post by taking a snippet from a news story, an op-ed column, or another blog post. Then, they copy, paste, and indent the most partisan, disingenuous, and inaccurate passage onto their own blog and add a bulletproof rebuttal right below. The problem with this technique is that it makes the readers do all the work. First, they need to pop the original piece open in another window to 'read the whole thing.' After that, they have to flip back and forth between the original and the rebuttal to make sure the blogger isn't getting the facts wrong, leaving out a key detail, or quoting something out of context. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to read blogs if you could look at the critique and the original argument at the same time?"

Imagine never seeing the words "click here" again . . .

Invisibility Shields Planned by Engineers

"The researchers' studies show that spherical and cylindrical objects coated with plasmonic shielding material produce very little light scattering. These objects, when hit by the right wavelength of light, were seen to become so small that they were almost invisible."

The UFO connotations here are pretty obvious. The first reaction (to some) is that this new invisibility technique must be derived from back-engineered UFOs -- which is possible. However, I'm betting certain unidentified "spherical and cylindrical" UFOs seen in our skies are perfectly terrestrial, their purpose to condition witnesses to the very shapes that so conveniently lend themselves to plasmonic shielding (a frighteningly effective stealth technology that we're only now hearing about).

In the event of an unintentional sighting, the military could misdirect attention to "flying saucers," which -- as Peter Jennings' show made plainly clear for any remaining doubters -- the mainstream media treats with scorn or, at best, carefully maintained apathy.

This isn't to dismiss actual unknown craft using weird stealth technology. As Budd Hopkins and Carol Rainey document in "Sight Unseen," key aspects of the alien abduction phenomenon (as popularly conceived, at least) rely on the presumed ability of alien craft to render themselves invisible -- or as close to "invisible" as physics allow. Taken to its paranoid extreme, this means we could be under constant surveillance by omnipresent alien craft . . . and never know it.

There's actually a body of reports that suggests that "real" UFOs are using something very much like plasmonics: Close encounter witnesses who recall seeing the interior of alien ships sometimes paradoxically describe the inside of the craft as larger than the craft's exterior.

Could this be due to an external coating of light-absorbing shielding, making the UFO appear significantly smaller than it actually is?

Consciousness and Advancing Technology





"It cannot be assumed that a copy of a person that is accurate at the molecular level will have the same experience of consciousness. The reason? Consciousness may be a byproduct of happenings at the subatomic level. Certainly larger-scale events and processes are involved in shaping conscious experience, but consciousness remains isolated from the world-at-large in one key way . . . Enter quantum physics: specifically, the measurement problem of quantum physics, which summarizes several key experiements [sic] by saying that we only ever see one state of a particle/object/system that could express any of several other mutually-exclusive states. Quantum physics goes on to say that these particles/objects/systems exist as something else entirely (a wave-like state of potential) when they are not being observed. This suggests that consciousness is some sort of limited interface with reality, rather than an ability to perceive the true nature of things. And without understanding the nature of this interface, our ability to copy or transfer it accurately is questionable."

I personally think our brains are extremely limited organic quantum machines, in which case there's no obvious reason they can't be improved upon. But if we're to become "hyperconscious," our definition of technology itself must mutate to encompass notions such as "quantum tantra" and related neurological states. If we can make this ontological shift, I predict our understanding of the "paranormal" will blossom, and that the curtain between consensus reality and liminal phenomena such as apparent alien visitation will fall.

Perhaps this will be the Singularity I've been hearing so much about.

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.)

Chris Wren lobs a much-needed glass of cold water in the face of the "Miserable, Angst-Ridden Artist" cliche.

It's true -- creativity isn't synonymous with depression. I'm probably guilty of helping perpetuate this myth. After all, I'm frequently angry and given to bouts of unbridled misanthropy. But it's not because of my creative life; if anything, the prospect of losing myself in a creative project (whether writing or reading a book -- and I consider the very act of reading an important co-creative endeavor) makes life bearable. It's not without its share of frustrations, but what isn't?

It's true, incidentally, that society isn't especially kind or forgiving when it comes to artists and intellectuals. This is indeed alienating, even daunting -- but somehow never as daunting as facing a blank sheet of paper (or, more often than not, the eggshell glow of a blank Microsoft Word template).

Fortunately, I relish the possibility of writing as often as possible. I'm working -- slowly -- on a new nonfiction book that continues to pique my enthusiasm. And I love blogging -- what a perfect venue for recreational narcissism. I take issue with those who dismiss it as a mere time-sink.

I think the key to creative success isn't so much surrounding oneself with like minds (which, unfortunately, can prove flatly impossible despite the best of intentions) but the ability to expunge all the nitwits who clutter our daily lives. Leave them to their televisions and churches. Stop hating them and learn to ignore them. (I have yet to conquer this skill. Nevertheless, I'm working on it -- because otherwise they've won, and the blight of mediocrity we inherit will be our own damned fault.)

Yesterday I walked across my neighborhood and watched snow eddies skitter and fade across the pavement. Seeing an eddy up close produces a curious form of kinship, as if in the presence of something animate. It's somehow sacred and thrilling to have an eddy spin its fragile life away in your midst; the wind suddenly becomes an entity, distinct and defined, its machinations made visible like an organ saturated with dye and viewed on a medical scanner.

I wonder how it would feel to be on Mars and see a dust devil whirling my way, a blossom of sparks surfing an ocean of red.





I'm rethinking the novel I'd pledged to write around this time last year. I'm less than enthusiastic about a literal eco-dystopian slant; I think my abilities are better suited to a surrealized rendition. So ecological deterioration will take the form of something stranger and less heavy-handed -- in this case, alien terraforming machines, dirigible-like constructs that tease the barrier between living and nonliving as they go about patiently reforming our planet to an alien ideal.

They look like jellyfish as conceived by H.R. Giger -- not exactly hideous, but ruthlessly utilitarian, like the machines at the end of my short-story "The Visitors." The key is to make them so difficult to empathize with that they're rendered almost invisible to my fictional future society, easily displaced and forgotten in favor of more mundane concerns.

Terrorism and the Election: California is the Target!

"If the pre-election internal tracking polls and public opinion polls show the Kerry-Edwards ticket leading in key battleground states, the Bush team will begin to implement their plan to announce an imminent terrorist alert for the West Coast for November 2 sometime during the mid afternoon Pacific Standard Time. At 2:00 PST, the polls in Kentucky and Indiana will be one hour from closing (5:00 PM EST -- the polls close in Indiana and Kentucky at 6:00 PM EST). Exit polls in both states will be known to the Bush people by that time and if Kentucky (not likely Indiana) looks too close to call or leaning to Kerry-Edwards, the California plan will be implemented. A Bush problem in Kentucky at 6:00 PM EST would mean that problems could be expected in neighboring states and that plans to declare a state of emergency in California would begin in earnest at 3:00 PM PST."

Then again, we've been living under so many "terror alerts" since 9/11/01 that it's just conceivable that we've become too jaded to care. So maybe declaring a "state of emergency" would fail to keep potential Kerry-voters safely at home in their duct-tape-lined fallout shelters.

No, what's really needed to scare the American people now is a real attack.

Forests losing the ability to absorb man-made carbon

Scientists fear there may soon come a point when the amount of carbon dioxide released from the northern forests as a result of forest fires and the drying out of the soil will exceed the amount that is absorbed during the annual growth of the trees. Such a prospect would make it more difficult to control global warming because northern forests are seen as a key element in the overall equations to mitigate the effect of man-made CO2 emissions.

Probing Distant Atmospheres for Life

Inevitably, the hunt for extraterrestrial life looks first for the kind of life we find on Earth. But we may have to widen that view, and the key is to make as few assumptions as possible. For if we've learned one thing from the 200+ extrasolar planets found thus far, it's that solar systems around other stars can be utterly different from anything we had imagined.

Even if humanity ultimately takes the dirtnap, the discovery of a living extrasolar planet seems almost inevitable. I wonder what our response will be, gazing at some tantalizing and alien world orbiting another star. What will we have done to ourselves -- and how might our collective predicament color our reception of a confirmed extraterrestrial biosphere?

Although real enough, the new Earth will also play a formative role in our imaginations; it promises to be a liminal frontier as well as an astrobiological focal point -- the locus of new myths, an imaginal haven forged of memes old and new, a distant and beckoning mirror.