Halifax photos 2

Despite intermittent correspondence and having read his books, I'd never actually seen Stan Friedman in person until the Symposium. It was worth the wait. Stan's a virtuoso speaker and makes a provocative case against both the "SETI cultists" (his term -- and an apt one) and the "noisy negativists" who deride the possibility that some UFOs could very well be extraterrestrial craft. Regardless of your take on the Roswell incident, one of Friedman's pet cases, there are few, if any, rational arguments against his modest proposition that technological progress comes from doing things in unexpected ways.





Nick Redfern and Greg Bishop. Greg had a hilarious T-shirt emblazoned with the head of Heaven's Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite and the slogan "Follow Me" . . . not to mention one of the coolest iPod libraries on the planet. We stayed up late the night before departure listening to trippy Theremin music. I laughed myself hoarse while Greg checked his hellokitty.com email.





One of Halifax's many virtues is its preponderance of indie coffee shops. We sampled one while waiting for Paul to finish a deserved nap at his office. The woman in the back is Will's awesome wife Lisa, who kindly indulged my craving for snapshots.





What a remarkable thing to be surrounded by people who dig cryptozoology, the subtleties of the Contactee Movement, Project Blue Book, and transhumanism.

No-Fly lists even dumber than suspected

If you've been paying attention, you already know that the TSA's No-Fly list and secondary screening lists are a joke, but even so, this excellent investigative piece from CBS News will blow your mind. The TSA's lists contain people who are dead. They contain the presidents of foreign countries. They contain incredibly common names like "Robert Johnson." These farcical lists are supposed to secure the skies, and the way they're supposed to do it is by denying air travel to thousands of innocent people (without catching a guilty person smart enough to use a fake ID). Even worse, because the gargantuan lists have to be widely circulated, the CIA won't allow the names of actual terrorist suspects to be added to them -- in other words, the No Fly lists only contain the names of people who aren't under any serious suspicion.

Having recently endured an international flight, I'm not the least bit surprised. As far as commercial air travel is concerned, this is not a "War on Terror." It's a war on convenience, decency and common sense.

On a sunnier note, here's a positive independent review of the New Frontiers Symposium:

Afternoon at the Symposium

Saint Mary's University hosted the 2006 New Frontiers Symposium on Extraterrestrial Life, Space Exploration, & The Future. Numerous speakers gave talks on subjects ranging from Project Blue Book, to contact with aliens and the science of spaceflight.

Halifax photos 1

I have many interests aside from writing. One is sailing. The high seas just call to me.





Here's Nick Redfern, who approaches a broad spectrum of Forteana with insight, humor and humility. And he's easily one of the nicest people I've ever met; aside from being fun to hang out with, he kindly mailed me some interesting declassified documents that suggest the Air Force may have once taken my "Indigenous Hypothesis" at least somewhat seriously. I hope to see him again when he hits Kansas City this December.

And let's face it -- the jacket is cool.





And here's UFO researcher Don Ledger, who attended the conference. Nice guy; unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of time to talk. A few years ago I'd read his "Dark Object," a book about the perplexing Shag Harbour UFO crash.





Below: Conference organizer Paul ("Hetero Kool") Kimball with keynote speaker Robert Zimmerman, space historian. I got to talk at some length with Zimmerman at the hotel. While -- inexplicably -- I haven't read his award-winning history of the Russian and American space programs ("Leaving Earth") you can bet it's jumped way up on my to-read list.

Want to "support our troops"? Quit buying magnets and start backing research like this.



(Hat tip: Mondolithic Sketchbook.)

Crikey! I'm gone for a few days and I miss this:

Humanity to evolve 'goblin' underclass

Mankind's future will be split between a beautiful 'genetic elite' and an underclass of 'goblin' creatures, an expert has predicted.

Dr Oliver Curry, who has spent two months studying the ascent and descent of Man over the next 100 millennia, thinks the upper class will be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative.

But he forecasts an underclass evolved into dim-witted, ugly and squat people, the report said.

Dr Curry said that science and technology could create an ideal human habitat over the next 1,000 years which may spark a "monumental genetic hangover" in the subsequent millennia.

On a purely speculative note, what if the "Blondes" reported by many alleged abductees represent an elite of sorts while the Grays -- truly goblin-like in many respects -- hail from a lower genetic tier?

Quick note: I'm still working my way through a lot of email. If you're waiting for a reply, it might take a few days. Thanks!

The fab five!





From left to right: Fortean extraordinaire Nick Redfern, po-mo UFO researcher Greg Bishop, film-maker Paul Kimball, archivist/programmer Will Wise, me.

(Click here for the full-size version. Thanks, Paul.)

Here's how Paul Kimball remembers it:

The final speaker of the morning was author and essayist Mac Tonnies. A native of Independence, Missouri, Mac tells it like it is, much like another (more) famous Independence native, Harry S. Truman (of MJ-12 fame, and apparently also a former President - who knew??). Mac spoke on the subject of Transhumanism, i.e. what the near future holds for the development of humanity. His lecture, however, was more than a simple recitation of Kurzweil-ian predictions - if there is a philosopher amongst those who research and write about the paranormal, it is Tonnies. He makes people think, and challenges their perceptions and beliefs. His presentation was as much a fireside chat as a lecture, a thoughtful and at times cryptic appeal to those in the audience to take the future seriously, and to make a difference before it's too late.

Although to be fair, my presentation probably garnered mixed reviews. I rambled a bit, but it was arguably better than a "straight" approach. And if it was a "fireside chat," it was a rather nervous one -- at first, anyway.

I actually got some reassuring feedback from the audience; the highlight was a woman who claimed I'd induced "intellectual whiplash." And a couple people asked to buy my Mars book, which I hadn't brought along. (So much for the insidious Face on Mars "cottage industry" I keep hearing about from Michael Shermer wannabes.)

I'm back in Kansas City messily readjusting to suburbia after a canceled flight from Newark International, a development that shot my circadian rhythms to hell after a night of angsty pacing (and more-furious-than-usual espresso consumption).

The symposium was a lot of fun, though. More about that later.

OK, this time I really am signing off.

Anders Sandberg has posted some great hazard stickers for plausible tomorrows. They're conceptual but eminently relevant. (I wonder if my car qualifies as an "existential threat" . . .)

(Found at Sentient Developments, which has wisely avoided UFOs for the last several days.)

Symbolism of the Veil

That the veil "disturbs" British politicians is proof that Islam isn't going to fizzle away anytime soon. Instead, it's adapting itself to modernity by imposing a powerful symbolic language on a society whose wealth and power have rendered it spoiled and apathetic. Like the hidden goddesses of the ancient world, a veiled woman attention simply by being there because she proclaims her feminine mystique - her status as something Unknowable and Secret.

Epsilon Eridani Planet Confirmed

Now we have a confirmed planet and a debris disk around the same star, compelling evidence that planets do indeed form out of such disks. The really exciting part? Hubble has a fighting chance to get an image of this planet in 2007, and so do other space-based cameras and even ground observatories.

They start off with cool tricks like this . . .



. . . but their goal is conquest and destruction! Beware the robot!

(Found at -- you guessed it -- Boing Boing.)

Red Spot Jr. is Getting Stronger

Jupiter's newly formed Red Spot Jr. is increasing in strength, according to new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. These latest measurements clock its windspeeds at 640 kph (400 mph); almost double the speeds recorded by the Voyager spacecraft when it observed one of the spot's parent storms in 1979. The increased windspeed probably dredged up deeper material from the planet, changing its colour from white to red, similar to the Great Red Spot.

I'm just waiting for some oil industry flunkie to use this to argue that storms are getting worse everywhere and that it's Not Our Fault.

Symposium press:

Halifax ventures into New Frontiers

The 2006 New Frontiers Symposium brings seven researchers and authors to Saint Mary’s University in Halifax on Saturday to talk about extraterrestrial life, space exploration, cryptozoology and transhumanism.

Award-winning Halifax filmmaker Paul Kimball (Fields of Fear), will base his talk on his upcoming documentary for Space, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases.

The lineup also includes: Washington, D.C.'s Robert Zimmerman, an award-winning historian of space exploration (Leaving Earth); Fredericton nuclear physicist and UFO researcher and author Stanton T. Friedman (Crash at Corona), the original investigator of the Roswell incident; bestselling British author Nick Redfern (Saucer Spies); Los Angeles radio host and author Greg Bishop (Project Beta); Kansas City author Mac Tonnies (After the Martian Apocalypse) and Norfok, Virginia software engineer and Project Blue Book archivist William Wise.

Here's another one . . .

Although I'll probably post a few more times today, I'm putting this blog on "standby" until I return and get back to a normal schedule (although, honestly, my schedule is never exactly "normal").

I've got an early flight tomorrow morning (Friday the 13th!), which gives me a day to chill out before the "gig."

Expect a full report.

A cute kitten plays on top of a keyboard. Go on. Watch.

I'd like to see cartoon animation software designed along similar principles.

(Thanks to Cosmic Variance.)

Is autism a "disorder"? Is psychopathy a "disease"?

Are people with autism disfunctional? Are psychopaths genetically adapted to survive by exploiting the rest of us?

CBC's Quirks and Quarks, my favorite science radio program, has run a couple of pieces recently about the idea that some of what we think of as "disorders" in human behavior can be more usefully treated as speciation -- a different kind of human.

Urban Grids / Respiratory Oases

In direct response to the 2005 EU Clean Air Strategy, a London- and Berlin-based design firm called Elegant Embellishments has developed "a decorative, three-dimensional architectural tile" that can reduce vehicular air pollution, including nitrous oxide and ground-level ozone. The tiles -- algorithmically designed and modular in assembly -- can thus "rapidly improve urban environments in terms of air quality and visual appeal."

(Via Mondolithic Sketchbook.)

Almost as cool as printable toast!

Once I've succeeded in upgrading ufology for the new millennium, there's only one logical thing to do -- return to my science fiction "roots." One of my aspirations is to appear in an annual "best of" anthology like one of these.

You just watch.

Cliff Pickover does YouTube!

Time capsule to be beamed from Mexican pyramid

Mexico's Teotihuacan, once the center of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.

Starting on Tuesday, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message.

I actually agree with the SETI Institute's Seth Shostak on what we should transmit to potential ET civilizations: Send the whole Internet. No more picking and choosing. No more putting on a good face for an intelligence that, in all probability, already knows damned well what we're really like. Maybe by seriously facing the prospect of others we'll finally achieve the nerve to face ourselves.

NS Filmmaker Hosts Leading UFO experts at Halifax seminar

Halifax moviemaker Paul Kimball - and head of the local motion picture production company Redstar Films - is hosting a one-day international UFO conference at St. Mary's University on Saturday, October 14th.

Called The New Frontiers Symposium, it will consist of several globally-known UFO specialists giving presentations, along with question-and-answer sessions with conference attendees.

The presenters will include Greg Bishop (who will speak on the Contactee Movement), Stanton T. Friedman (on Flying Saucers and Physics), William Wise (Project Blue Book), Nick Redfern (Chasing Strange Creatures), Mac Tonnes (Towards A Post Human Future) and Robert Zimmerman (Stories From Space).

Kimball himself will make a presentation entitled Best Evidence: The Top Ten UFO Cases, which is also the subject of his latest film for the Space Channel.

They spelled my name wrong -- nothing new, believe me. But that's OK, because now I can flaunt the title of "Globally-Known UFO Specialist." And don't think I won't!

Print Lovin' On Your Toast

This conceptual toaster printer burns black and white pictures onto pieces of toast. It can mount on any wall, and is automatically activated when you slide in a slice of bread.

Unfortunately, it only prints abstract pictures held in its memory, but Adam says he would like to see it do some toast messaging.

Sometimes my faith in humanity really plummets. But then I see things like this and, somehow, I know we're gonna make it after all.

When You Smell Sulfur, Is SOMETHING ELSE Going on?

In close encounters and UFO sightings (and some Bigfoot sightings), people have reported the smell of sulfur (a rotten eggs smell). Now scientists have learned that that hydrogen sulfide, which produces this odor, can alter consciousness without causing physical harm, by causing a state of suspended animation. This could also be a clue to the phenomenon known as missing time.

Paging John Keel . . .

A little David Bowie to get Tuesday off to a good start . . .

Jake and Dinos Chapman

Often the subject of controversy, the Chapman brothers are famous for making sculptures based on the theme of anatomical alteration with a series of mannequins of children, sometimes fused together, with genitalia in place of facial features.

David Cronenberg would be proud.

THE DEEP DWELLERS: Subsurface Inhabitants in Folklore, Myth, and Literature

When reading and studying the available fiction which touches upon the topic of a subterranean world, many similarities come to light, which is interesting insofar as the various writers were not necessarily familiar with one anothers' works. It is obvious that many of them drew upon folktales and mythology, as well as the latest scientific findings and theories of the day, drawing indeed upon a huge matrix of archetypes and forms with which to work. Religious traditions have also been a major influence on the development of fiction about subterranean worlds and inhabitants, and some brave souls have shared accounts of what they have believed to be their own encounters with the denizens that dwell within the Earth's crust. In this work all of these aspects of underworld studies, and more, will come under careful examination, but this is not so much an examination of the underworlds as it is of their inhabitants.

It's like Survival Research Labs meets "The Chronicles of Narnia."



(Found at Boing Boing.)

Bush quietly releases major new space policy

With an almost a sneak-it-under-the-door approach, the Bush Administration has quietly announced a major new national space policy, one that promotes a Moon, Mars and beyond agenda, and addresses what is says is the need for intelligence-gathering both outside and within the U.S. Don't go looking for it on the White House web site, or even on NASA.com. But at its heart, the policy says no one should get in the way of U.S. space assets as they carry out their future missions (*cough* China *cough*) declaring "freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power."

"Operation Martian Freedom"?

North Korea says nuclear test successful

North Korea said Monday it had conducted its first nuclear weapons test, setting off an underground blast in defiance of international warnings and intense diplomatic activity aimed at heading off such a move.

U.S. and South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the North Korean report but the U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a seismic event with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2 in northeastern North Korea that coincided with the country's announced nuclear test.

IS STRING THEORY FRAYING?

I do tend to be a little suspicious of the idea that String Theory MUST be true because it points a possible way to a Grand Unified Theory of Everything - and there MUST be a Grand Unified Theory of Everything - because that would be elegant.

In fact, there doesn't have to be a Grand Unified Theory of anything, and it's perfectly possible that the universe isn't ultimately reducible to a single simple formula. Maybe it is - but if it is, it's not because nature has a proclivity for neatness and symmetry. We want it to, but only because we're hard-wired to find harmony and patterns in everything. The universe isn't required to conform to our esthetic preference for elegance, and I think we should be deeply skeptical of any line of inquiry that begins with the assumption that an elegant solution is just waiting to be found.

World Hits Annual Sustainable Resource "Overshoot"

The world went into the ecological red on Monday -- meaning that for the rest of the year mankind will be living beyond its environmental means, scientists said.

Ecological Debt Day or Overshoot Day, measures the point at which the consumption of resources exceeds the ability of the planet to replace them -- and it gets earlier every year.

"The fact that this year, ecological debt day falls on Oct. 9, only three quarters of the way through the year, means that we are living well beyond our environmental means," said the New Economics Foundation (NEF) think-tank.

A Six-Fingered Alien in Florida, 1992

Frankovich said that they finally came to a kind of tunnel that was formed from densely growing vines on the dead trees. "He darted right into it and disappeared. The moment he entered that tunnel -- I was still in motion, running with him -- I hit a wall of stench like I have never hit in my life. It was a combination of sulphuric acid and formaldehyde. It was so strong that it actually burned the lining of my nose. It was like running into a concrete wall, that strong.

[. . .]

Linda Howe asked Frankovich if she went back to that spot later. She said that she and the dogs went back the next day and had a different kind of encounter.

"I had my dogs, was running them, and low and behold, here comes this black car, right at me in the grove. Government plates. It pulled up next to me. Two fellows sitting in the front seats, both had on black suits. The one sitting nearest to me on the passenger side said, 'Have you ever seen anything strange in this grove?' And I wasn't about to tell him or anybody else what I'd seen.'"

Frankovich said that the man gave her a business card that had a raised gold emblem of the White House on it, but no other information that would connect them to a particular agency. After a brief conversation, they drove away. Frankovich was left with the impression that these men already knew about the beings and were mainly trying to determine if she knew anything.

This report is worth reading in its entirety not because it proves anything (it doesn't), but because of the being's striking correspondence to the cadaver in the so-called "alien autopsy" video and hasty retreat into a "tunnel" -- implying a terrestrial origin.

The Wit and Wisdom of the 21st-Century Printing and Packaging Biz

"We're in the business of putting goo on a substrate."

But really -- what business isn't?

I like this one, too:

"You can't take on the Silicon Gorilla face to face."

Truer words never spoken.

Laughter all part of the mind, researcher says

Ms Hale says laughter is essential because it provides a cognitive respite.

"Laughter offers a temporary respite from the everyday clutter of thought. It's a different sort of consciousness with is uncluttered by the everyday 'shoulds' and 'buts'," she said.

Ms Hale believes laughter is a uniquely human talent that operates within a cultural context but also transcends culture.

"It's a kind of perception, a recognition," she said.

(Via The Daily Grail.)

Maybe the Turing test will only be passed once AIs learn how to laugh.

Oh no, not Steely Dan again

I had already come to terms with the idea that the iPod version of shuffling creates a sufficiently unbiased distribution to earn the casual appellation of "random". What was bothering me was now something even deeper. Yes, the bothersome clusters of certain artists are within the bounds of randomness. But that made me realise that the seemingly magical effects of the shuffle function - a spooky just-rightness, even brilliance, that comes from great song juxtapositions - were also consequences of randomness.

And, in its own way, that was much more disturbing.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Interesting article. Coincidentally (?), Steely Dan took its name from a sex toy in William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch"; Burroughs, of course, is famous for drawing on random juxtapositions of text for inspiration.

Morrissey: "There Is A Place in Hell for Me and My Friends"

Attack of the killer prototype robots

"Rather than look at a 3D model on a CAD (computer-aided design) program, a physical model would be manifested on your desk," said Babu Pillai, who, along with Jason Campbell, is heading up the project. "The material would change shape under software control."

The trick is that the fabric would not be a continuous piece of material. Instead, it would be composed of millions of independent silicon spheres covered in electronic actuators--half-capacitors or electromagnets. By applying charges to different actuators, different points on the sphere would be repelled or attracted to similar points on other spheres. The coordinated movement of the spheres would then cause the fabric to assume a shape.

(Via KurzweilAI.net).

Of course, if you're a character in a certain John Shirley novel, then this amazing stuff starts swarming through the nearest orifice it can find and hijacking your central nervous system . . .

Huge 'launch ring' to fling satellites into orbit

Aside from microsatellites, the launch ring would be ideal for delivering supplies to support human spaceflight, such as food and water, which are not sensitive to such high accelerations, Fiske says. "Nearly all of this materiel could be shipped via launch rings, resulting in major reductions in the cost of manned space activities," he told New Scientist.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Saturday night I'll be chatting with Errol Bruce-Knapp on "Strange Days . . . Indeed." Greg Bishop will also be on; I think we're both doing half-hour spots. I'll be talking about . . . hmmm. It just occurred to me that I don't know exactly what I'll be talking about, although it's a safe bet it will concern weird things.





Speaking of which, the New Frontiers Symposium is fast-approaching. If you're not planning on coming . . . man, what's wrong with you?

Lazarus Microbe's Immortality Secret Revealed

Although the basic mechanism behind Deinococcus' hardiness is understood, many mysteries still remain. For one, proteins are needed for DNA repair and synthesis, but proteins can be damaged by radiation, too. It's one thing to piece together a broken genome, but how does Deinococcus do it with broken tools?

"That's still a mystery," Radman told LiveScience. "How, after months of desiccation and burning from UV sunlight in the desert, is there still sufficient protein activity to start reconstituting DNA? We don't know."

My "ambassadorship" with Sprint expired. No more cool high-end cellphone. (I get to keep the phone, just not the service. Unless, of course, I want to pay for it, which I don't.) So I tried to reactivate my old Nokia through Virgin Mobile. After two days of wasting entirely too much time dealing with sheer unapologetic incompetence, I figured it would be easier to get a new phone -- so I wound up with the Kyocera Oystr, a phone that's so laughably un-rugged and minimal that it's almost endearing. But it's a hell of a lot better than beating a path to a payphone when I'm in an airport.

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Image: 'Victoria Crater' at Meridiani Planum

This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows "Victoria crater," an impact crater at Meridiani Planum, near the equator of Mars. The crater is approximately 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter. It has a distinctive scalloped shape to its rim, caused by erosion and downhill movement of crater wall material. Layered sedimentary rocks are exposed along the inner wall of the crater, and boulders that have fallen from the crater wall are visible on the crater floor. The floor of the crater is occupied by a striking field of sand dunes.

Be sure to take in the high-resolution version of the photo, complete with rover tracks in the sand. This sort of clarity is astonishing.