"By the year 2010, scientists predict we will be immersed in a sea of miniature computers."
See, this is where it starts. (See post on substrate-hopping electronic viruses.)
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
By now, supporters of my bid for the presidency are probably wondering: "But where can I purchase official Mac Tonnies for President merchandise?"
I've got your answer right here. (Thanks to Katmak.)
Some of you may also be asking: "Does he have a running mate yet?"
In fact, I do. And a capable one, at that -- Chapel Perilous' own Bsti. I might break the mold and recruit additional, back-up running mates. Inquire within.
I've got your answer right here. (Thanks to Katmak.)
Some of you may also be asking: "Does he have a running mate yet?"
In fact, I do. And a capable one, at that -- Chapel Perilous' own Bsti. I might break the mold and recruit additional, back-up running mates. Inquire within.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
I'd like to take this opportunity to announce my "write-in" candidacy for President of the United States. I haven't decided on a running mate yet. I might just do without one. Seriously: Who cares? "Politics" is simply a convenient label for the process by which stark realities are assigned numbers and filed away for the benefit of speech-writers.
By now you're probably telling yourself, "I bet Mac would make an ideal President -- but where does he stand on the issues?" I think that's a fair question. But before I start in on a bunch of nebulous political concerns (of which I honestly know quite little), I think it's fair to examine these vague, frequently abstruse, self-perpetuating phenomena we call "issues."
What, exactly, constitutes an "issue"? And why do we keep hearing about the same "issues" every four years? Granted, I have no former experience in the political arena, but it seems to me that the defining nature of an "issue" is its subsequent resolution. The fact that the so-called "issues" that dominate presidential elections are never satisfactorily resolved strikes me as extremely curious. If I didn't know any better, I'd even consider the possibility that there's an implicit vested interest in perpetuating various problematic "issues" so that voters can be more easily manipulated.
I also hear a great deal about "values." You're probably wondering right now where I stand on the issue of values. (And yes, as far as I can discern, the very prospect of "values" constitutes an "issue" of its own; conversely, "issues" can take the form of a pressing "value." I think. It's all quite complicated. And again -- it often seems as if this state of near-terminal abstraction is willfully perpetuated, like a gear in a machine that's lovingly oiled lest the entire mechanism come screaming to a disastrous halt.)
Forgive me for sounding cavalier, but my stand on the "issues" is that there are no issues, at least as popularly conceived. I think issues are flimsy thought-viruses, mere gears in the electoral machine. Deeming something an "issue" is a way of distancing oneself from it.
As President, I'll do away with "issues." Completely.
By now you're probably telling yourself, "I bet Mac would make an ideal President -- but where does he stand on the issues?" I think that's a fair question. But before I start in on a bunch of nebulous political concerns (of which I honestly know quite little), I think it's fair to examine these vague, frequently abstruse, self-perpetuating phenomena we call "issues."
What, exactly, constitutes an "issue"? And why do we keep hearing about the same "issues" every four years? Granted, I have no former experience in the political arena, but it seems to me that the defining nature of an "issue" is its subsequent resolution. The fact that the so-called "issues" that dominate presidential elections are never satisfactorily resolved strikes me as extremely curious. If I didn't know any better, I'd even consider the possibility that there's an implicit vested interest in perpetuating various problematic "issues" so that voters can be more easily manipulated.
I also hear a great deal about "values." You're probably wondering right now where I stand on the issue of values. (And yes, as far as I can discern, the very prospect of "values" constitutes an "issue" of its own; conversely, "issues" can take the form of a pressing "value." I think. It's all quite complicated. And again -- it often seems as if this state of near-terminal abstraction is willfully perpetuated, like a gear in a machine that's lovingly oiled lest the entire mechanism come screaming to a disastrous halt.)
Forgive me for sounding cavalier, but my stand on the "issues" is that there are no issues, at least as popularly conceived. I think issues are flimsy thought-viruses, mere gears in the electoral machine. Deeming something an "issue" is a way of distancing oneself from it.
As President, I'll do away with "issues." Completely.
New Evidence Bush Pushed Iraq War Right After 9/11
"The White House continues to deny that the president immediately began planning an invasion of Iraq in the days after 9/11, calling such charges 'revisionist history' and claiming Iraq was 'to the side' immediately after the attacks. But new revelations by a former top British official confirm that, immediately after 9/11, President Bush started planning to use the terrorist attacks as a justification for war in Iraq, despite having no proof that Iraq had any connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11."
"The White House continues to deny that the president immediately began planning an invasion of Iraq in the days after 9/11, calling such charges 'revisionist history' and claiming Iraq was 'to the side' immediately after the attacks. But new revelations by a former top British official confirm that, immediately after 9/11, President Bush started planning to use the terrorist attacks as a justification for war in Iraq, despite having no proof that Iraq had any connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11."
Russian "Flying Saucers" to Grace American Skies
"You might not have to go to New Mexico to see a UFO -- flying saucers are coming to your home skies, thanks to Russian aircraft designers. The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has signed an agreement with Russia's EKIP Aviation concern to cooperate in the production of unique flying saucer-shaped aircraft developed in Russia, perfect for putting out forest fires and monitoring oil pipelines."
Putting out fires and monitoring pipelines. Right. It's an invasion!
Environment 'stunts young brains'
"The brains of children in many parts of Europe are suffering greater damage from environmental risks than previously recognised, scientists say."
Maybe, from an economic-industrial perspective, "stunting young brains" is actually a fortuitous by-product. Stunt enough young brains with toxins and maybe those kids won't ask questions or file class-action lawsuits when they're dying of cancer thirty years from now.
Today I bought "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman in mass-market paperback. Why? Because I see his blurbs for other authors everywhere. From China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station" to William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition," Gaiman has the genre covered. And from the various blurbs I've read about Gaiman's own work, I'm convinced he must be good. I remember someone (probably in a coffeeshop) telling me how good "American Gods" was; if "Neverwhere" lives up to its reviews, I'll eventually have to read that, too.
You know the old "Twilight Zone" (or was it "The Outer Limits"?) where the guy seals himself in a bomb-proof safe and weathers a nuclear holocaust so he can spend the rest of his days reading . . . and then breaks his glasses? I feel for that guy. I relate.
That's why I have shatterproof lenses.
You know the old "Twilight Zone" (or was it "The Outer Limits"?) where the guy seals himself in a bomb-proof safe and weathers a nuclear holocaust so he can spend the rest of his days reading . . . and then breaks his glasses? I feel for that guy. I relate.
That's why I have shatterproof lenses.
Monday, April 05, 2004
It's hard to believe it's been nine years since the "alien autopsy" footage debuted on television. That's longer than the interval between Morrissey albums. Still no answers.
Have you seen me?
Even though the footage is ancient by contemporary standards, we still don't know who filmed it, or what, exactly, it depicts. An actual dissection of a nonhuman entity? A bit of psy-ops esoterica? Human experimentation?
There's credible reason to believe the footage has existed since the 1960s. I personally doubt it has anything to do with 1947's "Roswell Incident" -- but that doesn't mean that it's not "real." But "real" in what sense?
Have you seen me?
Even though the footage is ancient by contemporary standards, we still don't know who filmed it, or what, exactly, it depicts. An actual dissection of a nonhuman entity? A bit of psy-ops esoterica? Human experimentation?
There's credible reason to believe the footage has existed since the 1960s. I personally doubt it has anything to do with 1947's "Roswell Incident" -- but that doesn't mean that it's not "real." But "real" in what sense?
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Bush attacks environment 'scare stories'
"The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy."
This means war.
"The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy."
This means war.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
While most debilitating viruses are crafted, Frankenstein-like, by conniving hackers, the Internet is aswarm with the hardy remnants of a silicon ecology that -- so far -- only occasionally manages to precipitate dire alerts in the pages of non-specialty newspapers.
But the problem is escalating. I read somewhere that email as we know it may fall out of favor due to memory-eating deluges of spam. I like to think that's so much wringing of slightly neophobic hands. In any case, what can replace email? And spam, for all of its ugly excess, is for the most part consciously perpetuated by humans -- members of a species whose caprices we can at least begin to identify and comprehend.
If the Internet is ultimately incapacitated, I predict digital "wildlife" will be responsible. As computers and Internet connections become more varied and versatile, new viruses will emerge, the binary equivalent of SARS and BSE. Aspiring viruses will engage in incredibly selective Darwinian competition, breeding fierce new strains that may well prove uncrackable and worryingly alien.
Computation will continue to thrive alongside efforts to link the nervous system directly to the Net. Which means that we may be faced with a crop of particularly savvy viruses capable of jumping the "substrate barrier" -- existing as smatterings of machine code in one instant and manifesting as flesh-and-blood symptoms the next.
The transition from chip to meat isn't likely to have a high success rate -- at first. But as viruses learn from experience, a dire and unwanted compatibility may emerge. The battle will have migrated from the abstract realm of "cyberspace" to the trauma wards of hospitals.
The first "transgenic" viruses will probably be hobbyist variations of DARPA-inspired electronic warfare programs, good for little more than brute-force nerve damage. As we augment our organs with ever-more flexible, user-friendly electronics, we bore a tunnel from the organic world to the intricate havens of machine-life, redefining cherished philosophical notions and making ourselves newly vulnerable.
As technology improves, so do the stakes. Transgenic viruses will be no more content to cause random, superficial damage than human hackers content to merely cripple a mainframe when they have the capacity to enter it and seek the informational gems within. Enter the age of "neurophreaking" and identity wars, viruses that incubate in the snarl of meat and silicon behind your forehead in order to profile your habits and consumer preferences.
Most "smart" transgenic viruses will have roots in today's Internet spyware. Others will seek to actively take over their victim's nervous system, if only for brief periods. In theory, strangers could be selected and stealthily programmed to act as terrorists. Or commanded to sympathize with a given cultural or political agenda. The motives behind the viral siege will be thoroughly familiar to anyone who's screened pop-up ads or been forced to install expensive firewalls.
But how to firewall a human being, granted that a human being can be identified by the arsenal of synapses and circuits lurking in his or her central nervous system? And what happens once the digital ecology threatens to slip beyond our control, just as spam now threatens the viability of online communication?
Substrate-hopping viruses will arguably make a bid for dominant species-hood in the next couple hundred years. What plans might they have for humanity?
But the problem is escalating. I read somewhere that email as we know it may fall out of favor due to memory-eating deluges of spam. I like to think that's so much wringing of slightly neophobic hands. In any case, what can replace email? And spam, for all of its ugly excess, is for the most part consciously perpetuated by humans -- members of a species whose caprices we can at least begin to identify and comprehend.
If the Internet is ultimately incapacitated, I predict digital "wildlife" will be responsible. As computers and Internet connections become more varied and versatile, new viruses will emerge, the binary equivalent of SARS and BSE. Aspiring viruses will engage in incredibly selective Darwinian competition, breeding fierce new strains that may well prove uncrackable and worryingly alien.
Computation will continue to thrive alongside efforts to link the nervous system directly to the Net. Which means that we may be faced with a crop of particularly savvy viruses capable of jumping the "substrate barrier" -- existing as smatterings of machine code in one instant and manifesting as flesh-and-blood symptoms the next.
The transition from chip to meat isn't likely to have a high success rate -- at first. But as viruses learn from experience, a dire and unwanted compatibility may emerge. The battle will have migrated from the abstract realm of "cyberspace" to the trauma wards of hospitals.
The first "transgenic" viruses will probably be hobbyist variations of DARPA-inspired electronic warfare programs, good for little more than brute-force nerve damage. As we augment our organs with ever-more flexible, user-friendly electronics, we bore a tunnel from the organic world to the intricate havens of machine-life, redefining cherished philosophical notions and making ourselves newly vulnerable.
As technology improves, so do the stakes. Transgenic viruses will be no more content to cause random, superficial damage than human hackers content to merely cripple a mainframe when they have the capacity to enter it and seek the informational gems within. Enter the age of "neurophreaking" and identity wars, viruses that incubate in the snarl of meat and silicon behind your forehead in order to profile your habits and consumer preferences.
Most "smart" transgenic viruses will have roots in today's Internet spyware. Others will seek to actively take over their victim's nervous system, if only for brief periods. In theory, strangers could be selected and stealthily programmed to act as terrorists. Or commanded to sympathize with a given cultural or political agenda. The motives behind the viral siege will be thoroughly familiar to anyone who's screened pop-up ads or been forced to install expensive firewalls.
But how to firewall a human being, granted that a human being can be identified by the arsenal of synapses and circuits lurking in his or her central nervous system? And what happens once the digital ecology threatens to slip beyond our control, just as spam now threatens the viability of online communication?
Substrate-hopping viruses will arguably make a bid for dominant species-hood in the next couple hundred years. What plans might they have for humanity?
Friday, April 02, 2004
Posthuman Blues now has an RSS feed
http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/atom.xml
"This is an Atom formatted XML site feed. It is intended to be viewed in a Newsreader or syndicated to another site. Please visit the Blogger Knowledge Base for more info."
Man, I feel hip.
http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/atom.xml
"This is an Atom formatted XML site feed. It is intended to be viewed in a Newsreader or syndicated to another site. Please visit the Blogger Knowledge Base for more info."
Man, I feel hip.
Breaking Mars news! Spirit rover destroyed in Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) mishap.
(QuickTime required.)
Yohimbe Tree Bark Could Revolutionize Treatment of Anxiety Disorders
"Anxiety disorders affect about 19 million Americans per year, consuming about one-third of total U.S. mental health costs of $148 billion in 1990. They include obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and specific phobias. Although these diseases are generally not deadly, they take an enormous toll in morbidity."
Prozac. Zoloft. Xanax. Is "happiness" becoming a neuropharmacological commodity . . . ?
"Anxiety disorders affect about 19 million Americans per year, consuming about one-third of total U.S. mental health costs of $148 billion in 1990. They include obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and specific phobias. Although these diseases are generally not deadly, they take an enormous toll in morbidity."
Prozac. Zoloft. Xanax. Is "happiness" becoming a neuropharmacological commodity . . . ?
I know it may seem trite for the subject of a blog entry, but today was remarkably pleasant. Great weather, so I spent the afternoon strolling the Plaza, circumnavigating the giant bipedal rabbits and pausing to take a group photo for tourists who entrusted me with their camera. The world seemed anomalously shiny and happy.
Of course, I know damned well it's not. The biosphere is faltering. The Bush administration is lying its way to another election "victory." A new study reveals that humans are inundated with industrial neurotoxins deemed "acceptable" despite unknown long-term effects. Our "best and brightest" are committed to designing grotesque new ways to kill or disable large numbers of people while relatively small-budget projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope are abandoned due to a presumed lack of funds. I don't have a girlfriend. The bodies of American civilians are being dragged behind cars in Iraq. And to top it all off, the new "Left Behind" book just came out.
Armageddon is in the details.
Of course, I know damned well it's not. The biosphere is faltering. The Bush administration is lying its way to another election "victory." A new study reveals that humans are inundated with industrial neurotoxins deemed "acceptable" despite unknown long-term effects. Our "best and brightest" are committed to designing grotesque new ways to kill or disable large numbers of people while relatively small-budget projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope are abandoned due to a presumed lack of funds. I don't have a girlfriend. The bodies of American civilians are being dragged behind cars in Iraq. And to top it all off, the new "Left Behind" book just came out.
Armageddon is in the details.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Mysterious 'fairy circles' defy explanations
"The three main theories to explain the origins of the mysterious 'fairy circles' of Namibia have just been dismissed, following an in-depth study by South African researchers."
Could these African "fairy circles" have something to do with the formation of crop circles, assuming any crop circles are anything other than hoaxes?
"The three main theories to explain the origins of the mysterious 'fairy circles' of Namibia have just been dismissed, following an in-depth study by South African researchers."
Could these African "fairy circles" have something to do with the formation of crop circles, assuming any crop circles are anything other than hoaxes?
I should have seen this coming -- assuming I'm not the victim of a particularly subversive April Fool's joke.
Even if you find the subject matter repugnant, you've got to admire the concept; I could write a wordy essay on ubiquitous electronic monitoring devices and postmodern Warholian superstardom, but I'll refrain.
The weird thing is that I feel like I'm eavesdropping. Did the subject know her corpse was going to be webcast? I'd like to think so.
And yes, I found this at Chapel Perilous (where else?).
Even if you find the subject matter repugnant, you've got to admire the concept; I could write a wordy essay on ubiquitous electronic monitoring devices and postmodern Warholian superstardom, but I'll refrain.
The weird thing is that I feel like I'm eavesdropping. Did the subject know her corpse was going to be webcast? I'd like to think so.
And yes, I found this at Chapel Perilous (where else?).
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
I'm reading a rather fat science fiction novel called "The Alien Years," an invasion-from-beyond epic by Robert Silverberg, an author best known for his delicate psychological fiction. I'm 100 pages into "The Alien Years" and I don't know precisely where it's taking me. So far, Silverberg has provided some scenic, well-written cliches but little else; the prose is only slightly more subtle than the cover art.
This book raises the question: How to write a genuinely new alien invasion story? Ever since H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," the genre has been littered with variations on the same theme, both in literature and film. It goes something like this:
Initially inscrutable alien spaceships appear in our skies. Mankind looks up in awe and fright. Then Bad Things start happening. The humans wise up; the aliens are here to Take Over the World, although the way in which they attempt to do so seems curiously anthropomorphic. Life as we know it comes to a crashing end. Meanwhile, a savvy network of resistance fighters gradually realizes the omniscient-seeming aliens have a convenient weak spot. The rest of the story dutifully chronicles the humans' effort to eradicate the alien presence.
Thus far, Silverberg hasn't deviated from this formula one bit. I'm not saying it's a bad novel, or that surprises aren't in store. But I expected something uniquely Silverbergian, a sense of the surreal that's (so far at least) disappointingly absent.
Interestingly, there's a cop-out authors use when they release a Wellsian invasion novel: They simply proclaim that their novel is a loving homage to Wells. True, it's tempting to crank out a page-turning variation on the "War of the Worlds" theme (the temptation to employ cool literary special effects alone is enticing enough for many authors), but the homage bit is played. I'm not sure I buy it anymore. How many tributes does Wells need? Is it conceivable that SF publishers are inclined to publish formulaic Us vs. Them novels because they tend to sell?
The last really good alien invasion novel I read -- John Shirley's "Demons" -- wasn't about ETs at all; the villains were supernatural. But they were genuinely weird in a way that Silverberg's invaders are not.
Another extremely good alien novel (not quite an "invasion" story, but related) is Whitley Strieber's "Majestic," a truly creepy fictionalized reconstruction of the Roswell UFO crash (written, incidentally, long before "Roswell" became a paranormal buzzword). Check your local used-book store.
This book raises the question: How to write a genuinely new alien invasion story? Ever since H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," the genre has been littered with variations on the same theme, both in literature and film. It goes something like this:
Initially inscrutable alien spaceships appear in our skies. Mankind looks up in awe and fright. Then Bad Things start happening. The humans wise up; the aliens are here to Take Over the World, although the way in which they attempt to do so seems curiously anthropomorphic. Life as we know it comes to a crashing end. Meanwhile, a savvy network of resistance fighters gradually realizes the omniscient-seeming aliens have a convenient weak spot. The rest of the story dutifully chronicles the humans' effort to eradicate the alien presence.
Thus far, Silverberg hasn't deviated from this formula one bit. I'm not saying it's a bad novel, or that surprises aren't in store. But I expected something uniquely Silverbergian, a sense of the surreal that's (so far at least) disappointingly absent.
Interestingly, there's a cop-out authors use when they release a Wellsian invasion novel: They simply proclaim that their novel is a loving homage to Wells. True, it's tempting to crank out a page-turning variation on the "War of the Worlds" theme (the temptation to employ cool literary special effects alone is enticing enough for many authors), but the homage bit is played. I'm not sure I buy it anymore. How many tributes does Wells need? Is it conceivable that SF publishers are inclined to publish formulaic Us vs. Them novels because they tend to sell?
The last really good alien invasion novel I read -- John Shirley's "Demons" -- wasn't about ETs at all; the villains were supernatural. But they were genuinely weird in a way that Silverberg's invaders are not.
Another extremely good alien novel (not quite an "invasion" story, but related) is Whitley Strieber's "Majestic," a truly creepy fictionalized reconstruction of the Roswell UFO crash (written, incidentally, long before "Roswell" became a paranormal buzzword). Check your local used-book store.
Take a look at these extremely bizarre UFOs. Several of them have an intriguingly "organic" appearance. "What the hell?" indeed.
To anyone who's seen David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers," this may come as a somewhat disturbing revelation. But I can relate to the twin gynecologists played (with freaky artistry) by Jeremy Irons. Cronenberg's psychological vivisection is a singular metaphor, alarmingly identifiable.
"Dead Ringers" is probably Hollywood's most successful portrait of psychology stretched to aberrant extremes. The "identical" twins at the film's core form a composite organism, each the cerebral mirror of the other. One is socially cunning and icy-suave; the other is painfully shy, awkward, self-absorbed. Despite their glaring differences, each is utterly dependent on the other. Functioning in stealthy unison, they comprise an integrated (if chillingly synthetic) self.
Only when this duality is shaken by a love interest does their shared world begin to disintegrate. If each brother represents a respective brain hemisphere, any attempt at individual autonomy is like severing the knot of tissue that makes an anatomically bifurcated mind function as an undifferentiated whole. For the twins, escape from symbiosis equals suicide.
Reality fractures when the two hemispheres fall out of synch. In "Dead Ringers," Cronenberg illustrates this schism by assigning left- and right-brain attributes to each twin. Esteemed doctors, both live in the same swank apartment, ritualistically regrouping at the end of each day to synchronize. Their lives are carefully modulated so each can reap the other's experience -- an automatic process in an organic brain, but one that the twins must manage with incredible finesse lest their composite-self begin to fracture.
"Dead Ringers" may be disturbing, but the central concept is enacted within our minds on a near-constant basis. Cronenberg and Irons humanize a process most of us would prefer to consign to neurology textbooks, revealing how fragile that link between the hemispheres really is -- how something as trivial as a romantic obsession can cut deeper and more exactingly than the sharpest scalpel.
"Dead Ringers" is probably Hollywood's most successful portrait of psychology stretched to aberrant extremes. The "identical" twins at the film's core form a composite organism, each the cerebral mirror of the other. One is socially cunning and icy-suave; the other is painfully shy, awkward, self-absorbed. Despite their glaring differences, each is utterly dependent on the other. Functioning in stealthy unison, they comprise an integrated (if chillingly synthetic) self.
Only when this duality is shaken by a love interest does their shared world begin to disintegrate. If each brother represents a respective brain hemisphere, any attempt at individual autonomy is like severing the knot of tissue that makes an anatomically bifurcated mind function as an undifferentiated whole. For the twins, escape from symbiosis equals suicide.
Reality fractures when the two hemispheres fall out of synch. In "Dead Ringers," Cronenberg illustrates this schism by assigning left- and right-brain attributes to each twin. Esteemed doctors, both live in the same swank apartment, ritualistically regrouping at the end of each day to synchronize. Their lives are carefully modulated so each can reap the other's experience -- an automatic process in an organic brain, but one that the twins must manage with incredible finesse lest their composite-self begin to fracture.
"Dead Ringers" may be disturbing, but the central concept is enacted within our minds on a near-constant basis. Cronenberg and Irons humanize a process most of us would prefer to consign to neurology textbooks, revealing how fragile that link between the hemispheres really is -- how something as trivial as a romantic obsession can cut deeper and more exactingly than the sharpest scalpel.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
It seems I'm always happening across extraterrestrial "unreal-estate" scams like this one.
Lunar kingdom - or lunacy?
"Dennis Hope, a Nevada-based entrepreneur who sells lunar property through his company, the Lunar Embassy, claims to own the entire moon and eight other celestial bodies in the solar system. He says he has sold 410 million acres on the moon and properties on Mars, Venus and one of the moons of Jupiter to nearly 2.5 million people."
Doesn't this guy keep up with cosmology? If he did, he'd know that we live in an infintesimal branch within an unthinkably vast quantum multiverse. Why sell bits and pieces of planets and moons when he could sell entire universes? Granted, you can never actually visit, but . . .
Lunar kingdom - or lunacy?
"Dennis Hope, a Nevada-based entrepreneur who sells lunar property through his company, the Lunar Embassy, claims to own the entire moon and eight other celestial bodies in the solar system. He says he has sold 410 million acres on the moon and properties on Mars, Venus and one of the moons of Jupiter to nearly 2.5 million people."
Doesn't this guy keep up with cosmology? If he did, he'd know that we live in an infintesimal branch within an unthinkably vast quantum multiverse. Why sell bits and pieces of planets and moons when he could sell entire universes? Granted, you can never actually visit, but . . .
Sewerage and fertilisers 'are killing the seas'
(Yes, you read "sewerage" correctly. This is a British 'zine.)
"'Humankind is engaged in a gigantic, global, experiment as a result of the inefficient and often over-use of fertilisers, the discharge of untreated sewage and the ever rising emissions from vehicles and factories,' said Klaus Toepfer, the UN environment programme (UNEP) director. 'The nitrogen and phosphorous from these sources are being discharged into rivers and the coastal environment or being deposited from the atmosphere, triggering these alarming and sometimes irreversible effects.'"
Maybe I'll start flipping off Hummers after all . . .
But wait! It gets better:
Nanotech buckyballs kill fish
"Scientists today announced research suggesting buckyball molecules can trigger organ damage in fish, raising fears over the safety of the technology. When added to aquarium water, the particles also devastated the population of Daphnia, the tiny water-fleas near the bottom of the food chain."
If we can hasten the demise of our biosphere using primitive industrial technology, just imagine what poorly understood stuff like nanotech is likely to do if stupidly unleashed into the environment.
The upshot is that we can eventually design nanobots programmed to seek out pollutants and render them harmless. But by the time we develop a technological immune system for our oceans and atmosphere, the ecological bedrock may have crumbled beneath us. It will be too late; our only option will be to terraform our own planet, just as some optimists hope to "revive" Mars (which, ironically, doesn't appear to be quite as dead as everyone's assumed).
In any case, a massive human dieback is inevitable. Millions -- perhaps billions -- will probably die in the next few hundred years. Those "dead zones" out in the oceans may seem comfortably distant now, but wait until the United States finds itself situated in the middle of one. Wait until Europe is one big ecological Chernobyl, drenched in greenhouse heat. And do you really think everyone's going to peacefully wait for high-tech deliverance? No, there will be wars.
We are bounding blindly in the twilight.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Private spacecraft could launch this summer
"Some of the 27 teams pursuing the $10 million X Prize for the first privately funded manned spaceflight are closing in on a goal that once seemed outlandish, and organizers believe a space trip could be attempted as early as summer."
The great thing about living on the 9th floor is watching the car wrecks. I'm not kidding. I mean, I rarely see them happen, but I commonly hear the telltale SQUEAL-THUNK of frantic tires and colliding metal and stop what I'm doing to observe the aftermath. There was a crash just a couple minutes ago in the intersection below my kitchen. I'm listening to the sirens now. Last night there was another one in almost exactly the same spot. White cars each time. It's like there's some electromagnetic anomaly buried in the street that causes drivers to space out and lose control.
And while I stand in my kitchen laughing with smug disdain, I'm not without sympathy. The truth is that driving scares me. I'd rather not do it, given the choice. I wish we had telepods like the ones in "The Fly": instant, petroleum-free molecular reconstitution for the masses. But on the other hand, look what happened to Jeff Goldblum. Do you honestly think public telepods could be kept insect-free? I personally doubt it.
And while I stand in my kitchen laughing with smug disdain, I'm not without sympathy. The truth is that driving scares me. I'd rather not do it, given the choice. I wish we had telepods like the ones in "The Fly": instant, petroleum-free molecular reconstitution for the masses. But on the other hand, look what happened to Jeff Goldblum. Do you honestly think public telepods could be kept insect-free? I personally doubt it.
Site of the day: Modern Ruins
"I'm reminded that nothing is permanent, that everything is always in a state of transition. And we see ourselves in our own transitions, sometimes too focused on where we're going to notice and appreciate where we are."
More Mars methane madness . . .
Methane poses Mars life puzzle
"Methane has been found in the Martian atmosphere which scientists say could be a sign of present-day life on Mars."
"I'm reminded that nothing is permanent, that everything is always in a state of transition. And we see ourselves in our own transitions, sometimes too focused on where we're going to notice and appreciate where we are."
More Mars methane madness . . .
Methane poses Mars life puzzle
"Methane has been found in the Martian atmosphere which scientists say could be a sign of present-day life on Mars."
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Today I addressed a bunch of review copies of "After the Martian Apocalypse," finished Benford's "In the Ocean of Night" over coffee at LatteLand and -- as an afterthought -- read the first few pages of Robert Silverberg's "The Alien Years" at Starbucks.
I feel an absurd affinity for Starbucks, an ersatz nostalgia. I'm drawn to simulations, lured by attempts to reproduce authentic experience that deftly exclude the very humanity they're designed to commemorate. Starbucks franchises are like tiny bubble universes where the rigors of reality are temporarily suspended and dissolved. All is plush furniture, shimmering, overpriced merchandise, yuppies intent in front of color-coordinated laptops, and the omnipresent sursurration of cellphone conversation.
Of course, the entire production is synthetic, up to and including the brittle smiles of the baristas, who almost invariably screw up my order. But I don't mind; Starbucks lulls me into an uncharacteristically accepting stupor. I want so direly to sit in those absorbing, womb-like chairs savoring the smell of espresso, categorizing the faces behind their inscrutable flatscreens. I sometimes find myself ordering coffee simply as an excuse to linger, entranced by the almost library-like hush that predominates between outbursts of anonymous laughter.
Starbucks straddles the zone between crass commercialization and authenticity, or at least pretends to. Like an airport or a hotel room, a Starbucks is reassuring because it's implicitly transitional, an easily discarded prop stripped of sentiment. I walk into a Starbucks and find my own alienation abruptly justified, my ego severed and allowed to float, disembodied, amidst the canned music and aromatic steam.
I feel an absurd affinity for Starbucks, an ersatz nostalgia. I'm drawn to simulations, lured by attempts to reproduce authentic experience that deftly exclude the very humanity they're designed to commemorate. Starbucks franchises are like tiny bubble universes where the rigors of reality are temporarily suspended and dissolved. All is plush furniture, shimmering, overpriced merchandise, yuppies intent in front of color-coordinated laptops, and the omnipresent sursurration of cellphone conversation.
Of course, the entire production is synthetic, up to and including the brittle smiles of the baristas, who almost invariably screw up my order. But I don't mind; Starbucks lulls me into an uncharacteristically accepting stupor. I want so direly to sit in those absorbing, womb-like chairs savoring the smell of espresso, categorizing the faces behind their inscrutable flatscreens. I sometimes find myself ordering coffee simply as an excuse to linger, entranced by the almost library-like hush that predominates between outbursts of anonymous laughter.
Starbucks straddles the zone between crass commercialization and authenticity, or at least pretends to. Like an airport or a hotel room, a Starbucks is reassuring because it's implicitly transitional, an easily discarded prop stripped of sentiment. I walk into a Starbucks and find my own alienation abruptly justified, my ego severed and allowed to float, disembodied, amidst the canned music and aromatic steam.
Science on verge of new 'Creation'
"Scientists eagerly talk of a new world of ultra-small living machines, where marvelously made-to-order cells heal the body, clean up pollutants, transform electronics and communication, and much more."
Just thought you should know.
"Scientists eagerly talk of a new world of ultra-small living machines, where marvelously made-to-order cells heal the body, clean up pollutants, transform electronics and communication, and much more."
Just thought you should know.
Posthuman Blues encourages you to Flip Off A Hummer . . . although, honestly, you won't see me doing it. Flipping people off is one of those things I simply can't do. I'm too damned nice. (Although I once fast-balled a cup of coffee at the windshield of a car whose driver I found particularly obnoxious.) But if you're already a flipper, now's your chance to participate in an actual grassroots movement. Can't beat that. (Thanks to Chapel Perilous.)
Saturday, March 27, 2004
I've discovered Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series. I'd promised myself to stay away from multivolume epics, but I might make an exception if "In the Ocean of Night" (originally a stand-alone) wins me over. The series is about humanity's realization that organic life is rare, with the galaxy dominated by ancient machine intelligences.
Rudy Rucker's "Frek and the Elixer" is out. I'm tempted to get this one in hardback. Check out the book's official site; Rucker isn't a bad painter at all.
Bruce Sterling has a new one on the way: "The Zenith Angle," reportedly to be marketed as a technothriller rather than science fiction. I feel obscurely guilty that I still haven't read "Zeitgeist."
Last night I enjoyed one of the best night's sleep in memory. I attribute this in no small part to brand-new pillows; I'd had my previous pillows for something like five years, and they'd become compacted by the weight of my head until they had the approximate buoyancy of dough. I gladly tossed them into the dumpster.
Rudy Rucker's "Frek and the Elixer" is out. I'm tempted to get this one in hardback. Check out the book's official site; Rucker isn't a bad painter at all.
Bruce Sterling has a new one on the way: "The Zenith Angle," reportedly to be marketed as a technothriller rather than science fiction. I feel obscurely guilty that I still haven't read "Zeitgeist."
Last night I enjoyed one of the best night's sleep in memory. I attribute this in no small part to brand-new pillows; I'd had my previous pillows for something like five years, and they'd become compacted by the weight of my head until they had the approximate buoyancy of dough. I gladly tossed them into the dumpster.
Imagine human consciousness as a palpable, visually arresting substance, a vibrant flowing stuff emanating from our minds and blending into fractal auras and impossible hues. From the air, cities would appear as congested, pulsating domes of color; up close, streets would writhe with brief, fantastic forms, office towers and apartment buildings bleeding livid Technicolor awareness into the night like vaporous portals into Mind itself.
An evening's stroll through an electric fog of roiling, mercuric awareness, tides of phosphoresence mingling, perpetually replenished.
An evening's stroll through an electric fog of roiling, mercuric awareness, tides of phosphoresence mingling, perpetually replenished.
Methane find on Mars may be sign of life
"Each group has independently discovered tantalising evidence of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane, a waste product of living organisms on Earth, could also be a by-product of alien microbes living under the surface of the Red Planet."
Unexplained tree-like formations on Mars.
This could signal the end of NASA/JPL's cult-like insistence that Mars is lifeless. The "Life on Mars" meme is gathering evidential moss on a near-daily basis.
So what if life (or its unmistakable signature) is discovered and recognized for what it is? Either NASA and the European space agency will begin serious proposals for a near-term manned mission or else the next generation of rovers will be equipped for on-site biological analysis. Either way, the current sterile milieu will be forced to adapt. And JPL as we know it will cease to exist as exobiologists, ecologists and microbiologists gain much-deserved control over NASA's geology-driven Mars exploration program.
(It's a safe prediction that if we make it out of the next few hundred years alive and intact, all of this furor over Martian life will seem quite amusing.)
More Mars fun:
God's creatures on Mars?
"Scholars with expertise in science and religion contend that the major religions practiced on Earth are elastic enough to account for intelligent life on other planets. But thinking through the possibilities could be an important exercise in getting followers of different religions to see how they can coexist."
Tell that to the boneheads who wrote the Brookings Report . . .
"Each group has independently discovered tantalising evidence of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane, a waste product of living organisms on Earth, could also be a by-product of alien microbes living under the surface of the Red Planet."
Unexplained tree-like formations on Mars.
This could signal the end of NASA/JPL's cult-like insistence that Mars is lifeless. The "Life on Mars" meme is gathering evidential moss on a near-daily basis.
So what if life (or its unmistakable signature) is discovered and recognized for what it is? Either NASA and the European space agency will begin serious proposals for a near-term manned mission or else the next generation of rovers will be equipped for on-site biological analysis. Either way, the current sterile milieu will be forced to adapt. And JPL as we know it will cease to exist as exobiologists, ecologists and microbiologists gain much-deserved control over NASA's geology-driven Mars exploration program.
(It's a safe prediction that if we make it out of the next few hundred years alive and intact, all of this furor over Martian life will seem quite amusing.)
More Mars fun:
God's creatures on Mars?
"Scholars with expertise in science and religion contend that the major religions practiced on Earth are elastic enough to account for intelligent life on other planets. But thinking through the possibilities could be an important exercise in getting followers of different religions to see how they can coexist."
Tell that to the boneheads who wrote the Brookings Report . . .
Life on Mars - but 'we sent it'
"After testing whether terrestrial organisms can survive simulated Martian conditions and the procedures used to sterilise spacecraft, he reckons there is a good chance some made it to Mars and might still be living there."
By the time we make it to Mars in person, perhaps our unwitting microbial colonists will have evolved into astronaut-eating monsters . . .
"After testing whether terrestrial organisms can survive simulated Martian conditions and the procedures used to sterilise spacecraft, he reckons there is a good chance some made it to Mars and might still be living there."
By the time we make it to Mars in person, perhaps our unwitting microbial colonists will have evolved into astronaut-eating monsters . . .
Friday, March 26, 2004
Perhaps the biggest benefit reaped by the fall of communism in the former Soviet Union is the metamorphosed Pravda, which routinely features cutting-edge investigative journalism. Take the following story . . .
Boriska-boy from Mars
"The little boy with gigantic lively eyes was about to tell a magnificent story about the Martian civilization, about megalithic cities, their spaceships and flights to various planets, about a wonderful country Lemuria, life of which he knew in details since he happened to descend there from Mars, had friends there."
The beauty of Pravda is that it has yet to become stale and self-aware like, for instance, Weekly World News. The pages of Pravda are infused with an endearing naivete; for all of the typos and blatant style errors, there's at least some heart driving Pravda, which is more than you can say for its grown-up American cousin.
Boriska-boy from Mars
"The little boy with gigantic lively eyes was about to tell a magnificent story about the Martian civilization, about megalithic cities, their spaceships and flights to various planets, about a wonderful country Lemuria, life of which he knew in details since he happened to descend there from Mars, had friends there."
The beauty of Pravda is that it has yet to become stale and self-aware like, for instance, Weekly World News. The pages of Pravda are infused with an endearing naivete; for all of the typos and blatant style errors, there's at least some heart driving Pravda, which is more than you can say for its grown-up American cousin.
You know, sometimes I really can't blame David Icke for thinking world leaders are actually malignant shape-shifting reptiles. How else to explain the following?
THE MAD GAS RUSH
"Extract as much gas and oil as possible as fast as possible, at any cost to fish and other wildlife and with enormous subsidies to industry at a time of record profits. That pretty much sums up the Bush administration's 'energy policy,' hatched in secret with the energy companies themselves. Currently the administration is devising ways to overcome what it calls 'impediments' to energy development and what the rest of society calls environmental laws."
In better news, I got a hardcopy print of my book cover today. Looks good; I think it's eye-catching.
THE MAD GAS RUSH
"Extract as much gas and oil as possible as fast as possible, at any cost to fish and other wildlife and with enormous subsidies to industry at a time of record profits. That pretty much sums up the Bush administration's 'energy policy,' hatched in secret with the energy companies themselves. Currently the administration is devising ways to overcome what it calls 'impediments' to energy development and what the rest of society calls environmental laws."
In better news, I got a hardcopy print of my book cover today. Looks good; I think it's eye-catching.
Are we alone?
"SETI is building a new radio telescope that will assist in finding technology from life elsewhere, Tarter said, similar to how the twin rovers are searching for microbes, or living organisms, on Mars. Before SETI's newest project, their researchers shared telescopes such as the Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico, sometimes giving them only weeks to work."
Ufologist Stanton Friedman quips that "SETI" stands for "Silly Effort to Investigate." I disagree; I think a vigorous search for ET radio/laser emissions is well worth our time. But daring to take the UFO phenomenon seriously and scanning the sky for intelligent signals are not mutually exclusive, as both sides of the dichotomy will typically have you believe. It's yet another symptom of Western society's addiction to binary thought, in which all eggs must necessarily be thrown into either one basket or the other.
An emerging thread in SETI discourse (as well as informed science fiction) is the notion of a postbiological cosmos. The majority of advanced aliens aren't likely to be flesh-and-blood; I suspect they'll be more like thoughtforms than anything familiar to terrestrial biologists. This catapults Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" to truly dizzy heights. In a cosmos populated by machine-based life, we are most definitely not alone; the Earth itself could be under siege by stealthy intruders. Even traveling at subrelativistic speeds, miniaturized probes designed to reproduce using raw materials encountered on their travels could overwhelm the galactic disk in "mere" billions of years.
Trends in electronics manufacturing strongly suggest that elements of the cosmic diaspora could be exceedingly small -- even microscopic. It's not inconceivable that we inhabit an airborne sea of alien machinery, a voracious "smart dust" taking up residence in our brains to understand how we think, or distributed throughout the oceans in order to track our planet's ecological plight. Of course, this assumes that the alien intelligence is interested in such things; perhaps by achieving machine-hood, ETI forfeits its stake in all matters biological. Carbon-based life might not be worthy of any special attention.
Some UFOs might be a manifestation of a machine-based alien presence. But this begs the question: If stealth is of the essence, why do so many UFOs and their ostensible "occupants" so often seek out our attention? The literature brims with credible cases of pilots closing in on uncorrelated targets -- only for them to scatter playfully in what seems to be a deliberate display of technological superiority. Maybe the alien intelligence is showing us something we can comprehend (i.e., humanoid aliens in metal spacecraft) in a gradual scheme designed to bring us up to speed.
A postbiological ET intelligence might be god-like but still yearn for companionship. So it's not unthinkable that our own evolution has been bootstrapped -- psychosocially as well as genetically -- in order to accelerate our own transition into machines. A version of this scenario can be glimpsed in the writings of Whitley Strieber, whose book "Confirmation" posits that UFO technology is ours for the taking -- but only if we're able to wrestle with its technical and political implications.
Like a lofty Olympian god, the UFO intelligence seems content to simply let us gape in wonder. But at the same time it must surely know that we're furiously trying to duplicate the bizarre physics seen in our skies.
"SETI is building a new radio telescope that will assist in finding technology from life elsewhere, Tarter said, similar to how the twin rovers are searching for microbes, or living organisms, on Mars. Before SETI's newest project, their researchers shared telescopes such as the Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico, sometimes giving them only weeks to work."
Ufologist Stanton Friedman quips that "SETI" stands for "Silly Effort to Investigate." I disagree; I think a vigorous search for ET radio/laser emissions is well worth our time. But daring to take the UFO phenomenon seriously and scanning the sky for intelligent signals are not mutually exclusive, as both sides of the dichotomy will typically have you believe. It's yet another symptom of Western society's addiction to binary thought, in which all eggs must necessarily be thrown into either one basket or the other.
An emerging thread in SETI discourse (as well as informed science fiction) is the notion of a postbiological cosmos. The majority of advanced aliens aren't likely to be flesh-and-blood; I suspect they'll be more like thoughtforms than anything familiar to terrestrial biologists. This catapults Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" to truly dizzy heights. In a cosmos populated by machine-based life, we are most definitely not alone; the Earth itself could be under siege by stealthy intruders. Even traveling at subrelativistic speeds, miniaturized probes designed to reproduce using raw materials encountered on their travels could overwhelm the galactic disk in "mere" billions of years.
Trends in electronics manufacturing strongly suggest that elements of the cosmic diaspora could be exceedingly small -- even microscopic. It's not inconceivable that we inhabit an airborne sea of alien machinery, a voracious "smart dust" taking up residence in our brains to understand how we think, or distributed throughout the oceans in order to track our planet's ecological plight. Of course, this assumes that the alien intelligence is interested in such things; perhaps by achieving machine-hood, ETI forfeits its stake in all matters biological. Carbon-based life might not be worthy of any special attention.
Some UFOs might be a manifestation of a machine-based alien presence. But this begs the question: If stealth is of the essence, why do so many UFOs and their ostensible "occupants" so often seek out our attention? The literature brims with credible cases of pilots closing in on uncorrelated targets -- only for them to scatter playfully in what seems to be a deliberate display of technological superiority. Maybe the alien intelligence is showing us something we can comprehend (i.e., humanoid aliens in metal spacecraft) in a gradual scheme designed to bring us up to speed.
A postbiological ET intelligence might be god-like but still yearn for companionship. So it's not unthinkable that our own evolution has been bootstrapped -- psychosocially as well as genetically -- in order to accelerate our own transition into machines. A version of this scenario can be glimpsed in the writings of Whitley Strieber, whose book "Confirmation" posits that UFO technology is ours for the taking -- but only if we're able to wrestle with its technical and political implications.
Like a lofty Olympian god, the UFO intelligence seems content to simply let us gape in wonder. But at the same time it must surely know that we're furiously trying to duplicate the bizarre physics seen in our skies.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
U.S. Department of Energy Will Review 15 Years of "Cold Fusion" Excess Heat and Nuclear Evidence
"The DOE has made a startling reversal of its past refusal to evaluate with a fresh look the large body of experimental evidence that now supports highly anomalous non-chemical magnitude excess heat phenomena in some hydrogen systems, plus associated nuclear anomalies. The details of how the review will be conducted and when it is to begin have not yet been released formally, but it is expected to be completed by the end of 2004."
Newsflash! The mainstream media has been plugging Mars anomalies thought to represent a vanished (?) extraterrestrial society. Only one catch: The "anomalies" are the specious "discoveries" of a single guy -- who will go unnamed; he's raking up enough attention anyway. (One clue: For once, he's not Richard Hoagland.)
The "Mars researcher" eating up page-space in newspapers across the country has unearthed examples of supposed letterforms in heavily processed photos taken by the twin Mars Exploration Rovers. (That's right; the Martians somehow chanced upon English. The odds!)
This is the first time I can recall controversial Mars research (if "research" is the operative term) achieving mainstream escape velocity since 1998, when Malin Space Science Systems released its first radically substandard image on the Face in a vainglorious effort to "scotch this thing for good," in the words of one participating project scientist.
Interestingly, qualified scientists of disparate disciplines -- Stanley McDaniel, Mark Carlotto, Horace Crater, et al -- have been providing objective evidence favoring possible artificiality on Mars for years and have never been mentioned outside of venues such as my own Cydonian Imperative (with the exception of highly specialized peer-reviewed journals). None of these researchers, with the exception of noted astronomer Tom Van Flandern, has ventured an unqualified declaration of artificiality, but their case, seen in proper context, is compelling indeed.
So why does the mainstream zero in on the infinitely suspect claims of one of the countless online "anomalists"? To finally give the "underdog" a fair hearing? Hardly. This is classic debunking. Wave the weakest, most outlandish and incoherent "case" for "Martians" in full view and the masses will accept it as representative of the entire controversy. It's good for a few laughs and quickly forgotten.
But in the meantime, the uppity hicks manning the Kansas City Star and other timid publications can revel in smug superiority, secure in the conviction that they're fighting the Saganesque "good fight" against pseudoscience -- even if this means tweaking journalistic parameters so that a lone fool's ravings are packaged as Actual News.
The "Mars researcher" eating up page-space in newspapers across the country has unearthed examples of supposed letterforms in heavily processed photos taken by the twin Mars Exploration Rovers. (That's right; the Martians somehow chanced upon English. The odds!)
This is the first time I can recall controversial Mars research (if "research" is the operative term) achieving mainstream escape velocity since 1998, when Malin Space Science Systems released its first radically substandard image on the Face in a vainglorious effort to "scotch this thing for good," in the words of one participating project scientist.
Interestingly, qualified scientists of disparate disciplines -- Stanley McDaniel, Mark Carlotto, Horace Crater, et al -- have been providing objective evidence favoring possible artificiality on Mars for years and have never been mentioned outside of venues such as my own Cydonian Imperative (with the exception of highly specialized peer-reviewed journals). None of these researchers, with the exception of noted astronomer Tom Van Flandern, has ventured an unqualified declaration of artificiality, but their case, seen in proper context, is compelling indeed.
So why does the mainstream zero in on the infinitely suspect claims of one of the countless online "anomalists"? To finally give the "underdog" a fair hearing? Hardly. This is classic debunking. Wave the weakest, most outlandish and incoherent "case" for "Martians" in full view and the masses will accept it as representative of the entire controversy. It's good for a few laughs and quickly forgotten.
But in the meantime, the uppity hicks manning the Kansas City Star and other timid publications can revel in smug superiority, secure in the conviction that they're fighting the Saganesque "good fight" against pseudoscience -- even if this means tweaking journalistic parameters so that a lone fool's ravings are packaged as Actual News.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Human Studies Show Feasibility of Brain-Machine Interfaces
"According to Turner, while the most obvious application of such technology would be a robot arm for a quadriplegic, he and his colleagues are planning other devices as well. One would be a neurally controlled electric wheelchair, and another a neurally operated keyboard, whose output could include either text or speech. Such devices could help both paralyzed people and those who have lost speech capabilities because of stroke or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease)."
As usual, the prevailing medical paradigm insists we help the disabled and leave the non-handicapped alone. While we should be making every possible effort to assist amputees and paralysis victims, there's no reason -- other than a mystical but politically prudent fear of "playing God" -- we can't upgrade everyone.
Bush Allows Gays to Be Fired for Being Gay
"Despite President Bush's pledge that homosexuals 'ought to have the same rights' as all other people, his Administration this week ruled that homosexuals can now be fired from the federal workforce because of their sexual orientation."
Seriously: Is this a surprise? (I think the team at EroTech should promptly send W. one of their incipient LoveLumps just to make the man squirm . . .)
"According to Turner, while the most obvious application of such technology would be a robot arm for a quadriplegic, he and his colleagues are planning other devices as well. One would be a neurally controlled electric wheelchair, and another a neurally operated keyboard, whose output could include either text or speech. Such devices could help both paralyzed people and those who have lost speech capabilities because of stroke or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease)."
As usual, the prevailing medical paradigm insists we help the disabled and leave the non-handicapped alone. While we should be making every possible effort to assist amputees and paralysis victims, there's no reason -- other than a mystical but politically prudent fear of "playing God" -- we can't upgrade everyone.
Bush Allows Gays to Be Fired for Being Gay
"Despite President Bush's pledge that homosexuals 'ought to have the same rights' as all other people, his Administration this week ruled that homosexuals can now be fired from the federal workforce because of their sexual orientation."
Seriously: Is this a surprise? (I think the team at EroTech should promptly send W. one of their incipient LoveLumps just to make the man squirm . . .)
Monday, March 22, 2004
Nigerian spammers are getting smarter. Please note the following
personalized spam, revealing that I'm related to a guy named "Pitt" . . .
Dear Mac Tonnies,
I am Lawyer GARUBA MOHAMMED, a solicitor at law. I am
the personalAttorney to Mr. Pitt Tonnies,a nationalof
your country, who usedto work with Chevron
OilProducing Company in Nigeria. Here in After shall
be referred to as my client. On the 21st of April
2002, my client, his wife and their only daughter were
involved in a car accident along Lagos;Ibadan
Expressway. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately
lost their lives.
Since then I have made several inquiries to your
embassy here to Locate any of my client's extended
relatives, this has also Proved unsuccessful.
After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided
to track his Last name over the Internet, to locate
any member of his family Hence I contacted you. I have
contacted you to assist in Repatriating the fund
valued at US$18 million Left behind by my Client
before it gets Confiscated or declared unserviceable
by the Finance Firm where these huge amounts were
deposited. The said Finance company has issued me a
notice to provide the next of kin or have the account
confiscated within the next fourteen official
Working days.
[et cetera]
personalized spam, revealing that I'm related to a guy named "Pitt" . . .
Dear Mac Tonnies,
I am Lawyer GARUBA MOHAMMED, a solicitor at law. I am
the personalAttorney to Mr. Pitt Tonnies,a nationalof
your country, who usedto work with Chevron
OilProducing Company in Nigeria. Here in After shall
be referred to as my client. On the 21st of April
2002, my client, his wife and their only daughter were
involved in a car accident along Lagos;Ibadan
Expressway. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately
lost their lives.
Since then I have made several inquiries to your
embassy here to Locate any of my client's extended
relatives, this has also Proved unsuccessful.
After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided
to track his Last name over the Internet, to locate
any member of his family Hence I contacted you. I have
contacted you to assist in Repatriating the fund
valued at US$18 million Left behind by my Client
before it gets Confiscated or declared unserviceable
by the Finance Firm where these huge amounts were
deposited. The said Finance company has issued me a
notice to provide the next of kin or have the account
confiscated within the next fourteen official
Working days.
[et cetera]
George W. Bush Is Getting Brain-jacked
"Vannevar Bush's vision was resurrected in the 1990s when the National Institutes of Health established its Neural Prosthesis Program. The NPP program pulls together disparate research on direct neural-computer communication and encourages cross-fertilization between scientists working on control of prosthetic limbs, cochlear implants, biomonitors and brain pacemakers. A central focus of the NPP is research on biomaterials, trying to find the right type of wires to communicate with human neurology."
Six-fingered tactile interface from the ever-intriguing "alien autopsy" footage.
This is imminently interesting stuff all by itself. But did you know that Vannevar Bush was a senior member of the original MJ-12 committee, allegedly created to exploit technology harvested from UFO crashes? I find Vannevar Bush's interest in brain uplinking most interesting, as some testimony -- such as that of Robert Sarbacher -- suggests that the "aliens" weren't entirely biological.
Was Vannevar Bush's interest in "cyborging" the result of attempts to reverse engineer the electronic pilot interface of extraterrestrial aircraft?
"Vannevar Bush's vision was resurrected in the 1990s when the National Institutes of Health established its Neural Prosthesis Program. The NPP program pulls together disparate research on direct neural-computer communication and encourages cross-fertilization between scientists working on control of prosthetic limbs, cochlear implants, biomonitors and brain pacemakers. A central focus of the NPP is research on biomaterials, trying to find the right type of wires to communicate with human neurology."
Six-fingered tactile interface from the ever-intriguing "alien autopsy" footage.
This is imminently interesting stuff all by itself. But did you know that Vannevar Bush was a senior member of the original MJ-12 committee, allegedly created to exploit technology harvested from UFO crashes? I find Vannevar Bush's interest in brain uplinking most interesting, as some testimony -- such as that of Robert Sarbacher -- suggests that the "aliens" weren't entirely biological.
Was Vannevar Bush's interest in "cyborging" the result of attempts to reverse engineer the electronic pilot interface of extraterrestrial aircraft?
Transgenic sex-bot alert!
"LoveLumpTM is an artificially-engineered transgenic tissue sculpture. It is created using a variety of animal and vegetable DNA strands, which is then mapped onto a host chromosome palette. It is considered to be one of a handful of new species created from the basic building material now available to us through recent breakthroughs in modern science."
What will those wacky genetic designers come up with next?
This is probably a hoax -- I think we're probably a few years from synthesizing transgenic love machines -- but you've got to tip your hat to the aspiring folks at EroTech nonetheless. And the "decency" mavens thought Janet Jackson's nipple was appalling!
Prediction: If the LoveLump is for real, the number of "restroom breaks" at high-schools all over the world will quadruple. And can you begin to imagine the reaction from Christian and Muslim fundamentalists? This (literally) fucking thing could start World War Three!
"LoveLumpTM is an artificially-engineered transgenic tissue sculpture. It is created using a variety of animal and vegetable DNA strands, which is then mapped onto a host chromosome palette. It is considered to be one of a handful of new species created from the basic building material now available to us through recent breakthroughs in modern science."
What will those wacky genetic designers come up with next?
This is probably a hoax -- I think we're probably a few years from synthesizing transgenic love machines -- but you've got to tip your hat to the aspiring folks at EroTech nonetheless. And the "decency" mavens thought Janet Jackson's nipple was appalling!
Prediction: If the LoveLump is for real, the number of "restroom breaks" at high-schools all over the world will quadruple. And can you begin to imagine the reaction from Christian and Muslim fundamentalists? This (literally) fucking thing could start World War Three!
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