Why I am able to write (by Charles Stross)

"Let's suppose you've got all these attributes. There's still a very important item missing off the list of ingredients for a successful novelist: a willingness to understand how the publishing industry operates. The romantic mystique of the artist starving in their garret while preparing a work that will revolutionize our conception of literature is, frankly, a load of rubbish: artists who starve in the attic either die in obscurity or eventually wise up and get a real job. Romanticizing deprivation and fetishizing ostracism is not the way to get your ideas in front of the reading public. While writing fiction is an art form, it's necessary to bear in mind that art is pointless without communication; if your form of art fails to attract people you have an audience for very long. Funnily enough, since editors are people too (in fact they're one of your two main audiences -- a point I'll get back to later), if they find your fiction repellant they won't buy it. If you want to revolutionize our conception of literature, it therefore follows that you must get us to pay attention to you . . . which brings our romantic mystique into a headlong collision with the base requirements of entertainment, because there's a dirty little secret that literary columns don't make a big point of: people usually read fiction in order to be entertained."

Science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick died in 1982, but the guys behind PKD-Android.org are bringing him back. They're even blogging their progress.

(Thanks to Sauceruney.)

When Nanopants Attack





"The Eddie Bauer protest highlights a growing movement aimed at probing the potential health risks of nanotechnology, which is finding its way into commercial products despite scant research into its long-term effects. While still nascent, the backlash recalls other environmental challenges to new technologies, notably genetically modified foods, which have spawned grass-roots opposition movements amid fierce denials from companies that their products are harmful." (Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Everyday is like Sunday

This first picture shows the crumbling, leprous hand of one of the Chinese warrior statues that have been the bane of the Plaza ever since the first vandal realized that removing their heads is alarmingly easy . . .





Everywhere I look workmen are repaving, a near-Sisyphusian effort at urban renewal.





Typical flooding along Brush Creek.





A lion surveys the aftermath. The warrior statues can be seen standing ineffectively in the distance.

Possessed puppets and a forum on UFOs

"'I don't know why, but for some reason they do things,' he says. 'People who own clown puppets often find that strange things are happening around them.'

"Zaffis has several other possibly evil clown puppets in that basement, along with a few thousand other inanimate objects that just might be possessed -- all part of his museum of the paranormal." (Via The Anomalist.)

I think "Possibly Evil Clown Puppets" would be a great name for a punk act.

U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Crosses 1,700

"The military announced the killing of four more U.S. soldiers on Sunday, pushing the American death toll past 1,700, and police found the bullet-riddled bodies of 28 people -- many thought to be Sunni Arabs -- buried in shallow graves or dumped streetside in Baghdad."

A couple sun-soaked shots of the Hallar's front display:









The "stuff" visible in the bottom picture is merchandise being readied for tonight's reception.

I stepped into the Hallar Gallery and wandered around briefly.

I found these hooded figures reminiscent of some close encounter reports. In fact, the painting has a vaguely ufological subtext, complete with a ray of light emerging from the clouds as if from an unseen "mothership":





And how about this Medusa likeness? I must have one for my kitchen.

I just returned from the vet's; my oldest cat, Spook, needed her ears cleaned. The clinic is in walking distance and it was raining, so I got soaked. The client before me was a punked-out purple-haired girl with a kitten who'd lost an eye to an infection -- really cute, one eye or not.

I'm debating whether I should blog less so I can get more "real" writing done, now that I've got a green light for a new book. Maybe I should discipline myself to a post every couple days, or eliminate links to news items and only post original content. (More alien essays, anyone?)

Worth a look:

"There is a large and growing potential for global societal breakdown and a descent into chaos -- Apocalypse, in a word. It might be triggered by economic meltdown, warfare, environmental collapse, or a great natural disaster, or by some combination of these or other factors. It might come on suddenly, or gradually. Or it might not happen at all.

"I believe it is likely to happen, and may even need to happen to preserve the Earth as a home for humanity."

A pound of PETA

"The protest, in which three people placed themselves in containers resembling supermarket meat trays, was meant to compare eating meat with cannibalism." (Via Dr. Menlo.)

(Must-see photo.)

A case of mistaken identity crisis

"As Daniel Dennett, the philosopher, puts it: 'Complex systems can in fact function in what seems to be a thoroughly 'purposeful and integrated' way simply by having lots of subsystems doing their own thing without any central supervision.' The self, then, is not what it seems to be. There is no soul, no spirit, no supervisor. There is just a brain, a dull grey collection of neurons and neural pathways -- going about its business. The illusion of self is merely a by-product of the brain's organisational sophistication." (Via KurzweilAI.net.)

I cringe at the use of the word "merely," as used here. I think the evidence that our brains -- gnarled masses of meat -- can produce a sense of self (or, even more fantastically, two or more of them) is genuinely awe-inspiring. I don't know about you, but I don't find the notion at all demeaning; if anything, it's liberating because it suggests that we can duplicate the feat, eventually re-engineering our neural system architecture at will.

As for the non-existence of the so-called "soul": I'm not so sure. Parapsychology is patiently but inexorably teaching us we're much more than the sum of our molecules. Dennett may be comfortable dismissing centuries of conflicting evidence (anecdotal and empirical), but I'm not as easily swayed.

Whitley Strieber needs to fire the people who handle the "news" portion of his website. Here's one reason:

Dreamland -- Brazil Announces ETs are Real

Note the unqualified headline. One would assume that the Brazilian government has issued an official statement announcing that extraterrestrials exist and are, presumably, among us. But there's a problem: No such event has occurred.

The article continues:

"Dr. Roger Leir went to Brazil and investigated the Varginha case, and talked to doctors who actually treated the rescued alien, before it was given by the Brazilian military to the United States Air Force and, presumably, murdered."

Says Leir, podiatrist-turned alien-stalker. And who knows? Maybe he's not as credulous as some of his past activities and writings would suggest. Maybe he's really onto something. The problem isn't Leir, but whoever decided that a straight "news" format was the best way to convey his claim. It reeks of hokey sensationalism, especially when you get to the part that lets you know you have to be a paying subscriber to Strieber's site to hear the interview in question.

Then there's this:

"This being left behind an unforgettable message that Dr. Leir discusses with Whitley Strieber in this interview, that has gained new meaning now that the Brazilian government is releasing information that its UFO contacts are true."

So now we find out that Brazil is taking steps to democratize its once-secret UFO data. Does this mean that "ETs are real," as announced in the headline? Hardly. It means, simply, that Brazil is admitting to the presence of UFOs, which, by definition, are unidentified flying objects. The unfortunate truth -- as Strieber himself is the first to point out -- is that world governments appear frighteningly ignorant as to what UFOs may or may not be.

Strieber has two distinct, contradictory personae: the inquisitive intellectual who looks at the phenomenon with awe, humility and concern, and the overzealous huckster perpetuated by his online presence. One of them needs to go.

I had these pictures on my hard-drive; now I'm sharing them with you. Viewer discretion advised.

The following photo was used by eWarrior to create my current "publicity photo," which I plan on retiring sooner or later -- although it's served its purpose admirably. This picture makes me look pretty weirded out, but it's not entirely unrepresentative.





I took the following shortly after moving into my current apartment, which would have been in 2000.





Last but not least, here's an early self-portrait -- taken way, way back in 1999 with my then-new Web-cam. That manic look in my eyes is disturbing even to me. And my hair appears to be subtly violating some physical law or another.

I just returned from a date. Mercifully for both of us, it lasted under an hour.

Singing benches let loose in city

"Robotic bins that move and chuckle, benches that flock together and sing when the sun comes out, have been unleashed in Cambridge."

Better yet, they're solar-powered.

Rudy Rucker's new book comes out this fall.

An excerpt:

"When I open my heart to universal automatism, I can see that it's not as far-fetched as it sounds. The key fact is that, far from being dry and dull, computations can generate physical, biological, and psychological phenomena of great beauty. Maybe a weird explanation is better than no explanation at all. Might it be that, by analyzing the notion of computation, I can finally understand what it means to be conscious? I'm prepared to follow the argument wherever it goes. If it turns out that universal automatism is right, and I really am a computation, then at least I'll know a little more about what kind of computation."

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





In The Reason for the Secrecy, he comments:

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

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

[. . .]

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

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

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

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

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

Meditation skills of Buddhist monks yield clues to brain's regulation of attention





"The findings suggest that processes particularly associated with one-point meditation--perhaps involving intense attentional focus and the ability to stabilize the mind--contribute to the prolonged rivalry dominance experienced by the monks. The researchers conclude from their study that individuals trained in meditation can considerably alter the normal fluctuations in conscious state that are induced by perceptual rivalry and suggest that, in combination with previous work, the new findings support the idea that perceptual rivalry can be modulated by high-level, top-down neural influences."

This reminds me of shamans who can purportedly create and maintain "tulpas" -- seemingly real people or entities that exist due to subjective belief (shades of the idea that UFOs are part of a "global quantum event").

The replicator: create your own body double

"TELEPORTATION might not yet be on the cards for us humans, but Seth Goldstein and Todd Mowry may have come up with the next best thing. This pair of computer scientists are trying to build an intelligent material that can replicate a physical three-dimensional facsimile of you from nothing more than a stream of video images. If it works, all you'll need to project yourself around the globe is an internet connection and a pile of their intelligent nanodust at the other end to assemble your replica."

Sounds cool . . . but will it go the way of the "vision-phone"?

'007 spy suit' found in Nasa bunker

"Space historians are trying to find out who the mystery man is after his spacesuit turned up, along with an identical outfit bearing number 008, in an abandoned space agency (Nasa) blockhouse last used to launch Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom into space in 1961."

This sounds like a discarded premise from J. G. Ballard's "Memories of the Space Age."

Here's an interesting UFO video from Arizona. If authentic, it would seem the objects are actively attempting to attract attention.

Alien thinking





"'What are the other possibilities?' said Mack. 'Dreams, for instance, do not behave like that. They are highly individual depending on what's going on in your sub-conscious at the time.

"'I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way, that's mysterious. Yet I can't know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry.'"

Alien visitation: a global quantum event?

In my recent posts on the nature of apparent "aliens," I've been assuming that the UFO intelligence adapts to fit the prevailing psychosocial matrix, effectively camouflaging itself by insinuating itself into a given culture. But there's the equally appealing possibility that manifesting in terms comprehensible to witnesses reflects the perceptual constraints of the contact experience.

"Aliens," whether perceived as gnomes or fairies or demons or even humans (as in the case of the mysterious airship sightings of the late 19th century) may be forced to appear as they do by the cultural biases and limited expectations of the witness. Thus we have a pageant of fantastic beings of all descriptions: robot-like monsters, winged entities such as the infamous "Mothman," furry giants, all manner of "little men," and, of course, the ubiquitous "Grays." However, most if not all of the above may share a common psychical origin; only by appealing to our collective unconscious can they take form at all. As such, they constitute an ongoing waking dream; they are "true hallucinations" -- quantum composites that, while objectively real (as revealed by physical effects on the environment), demand a level of unconscious participation on behalf of their wide-eyed spectators.

Jacques Vallee conducted a noteworthy study of reports in which UFO occupants were seen outside their craft, usually engaged in such bewilderingly innocuous tasks as taking soil and plant samples. He concluded that, given a statistical distribution of apparent UFO landings, there are simply too many landings for the extraterrestrial hypothesis to remain tenable. But if in fact UFO events require the presence of at least one observer, then Vallee's rogues' gallery of "absurd humanoids" makes more sense: Landings aren't as numerous as they may seem because they only occur when witnessed. From this, we can only conclude that at least some close encounters are staged events.

Similarly, the genetic hybridization program supposedly conducted by Gray aliens, recounted in Budd Hopkins' "Intruders" and David Jacobs' "Secret Life," makes more sense when viewed as a paraphysical agenda. Abductee Whitley Strieber has famously described the abduction experience as an attempt at "communion" between two radically different kinds of intelligence. From his narrative and others, it indeed seems as if "they" want or need something from us. But I doubt that that "something" is genetic material in the usual sense; it seems more likely to me that encounters with hybrid children and distressingly intimate "exams" are attempts to encourage belief that Grays are flesh-and-blood ET anthropologists. Their antics, while horrifying, may be as bogus as the many sightings of alien beings taking soil specimens (an activity that, as Vallee notes, echoes the itinerary of the Apollo astronauts).

I think the "aliens" are waging the equivalent of a "psy-ops" campaign on the human species. It's doubtful their ultimate goal is anything so quaint (or comprehensible) as transgenic offspring, but neither is it necessarily malign. Simply, our "visitors" appear to be striving to become adept at accessing our reality, in effect becoming "more real" and thus increasingly compatible with us. We nourish them with our attention, and as they penetrate the barrier separating them from consensus reality (in which the subject of aliens and UFOs is systematically marginalized), they finally begin to loom above the bunkers of myth -- incidentally, in the case of the Grays, becoming rather like ourselves in the process.

Whether they come to us from the upper tiers of John Keel's "superspectrum" or from some other parallel reality, their activities betray an apparent need for attention to which ufology has been essentially blind, despite case after case of "playful" UFO behavior (especially pronounced during aircraft encounters). Perhaps by engaging our psyche, they pass the burden of their arrival onto our collective shoulders.

The UFO intelligence seems curiously out of its element, a fact that should arouse extraordinary suspicion; one would think, given the time it's had to observe us, it should be thoroughly familiar with us and able to "pass through" without risking curious bystanders. But as even a summary examination of the UFO literature demonstrates, curious bystanders seem to be the whole point -- and therein, I suspect, lies the ultimate identity of our unlikely guests.

According to Paul Sadowski's Birthday Calculator, as of 6/8/2005 10:38:31 AM CDT, I am:

29 years old.
358 months old.
1,555 weeks old.
10,885 days old.
261,250 hours old.
15,675,038 minutes old.
940,502,311 seconds old.

Man with what appeared to be a bloody chain saw let into U.S.

"On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres.

"Then they let him into the United States."

Well, wouldn't you? Take a look at this fine, upstanding young fellow -- the very picture of innocence!

Seriously -- how is it that the same country that detains travelers in airports for carrying weighted bookmarks in their luggage lets dudes like this slide? We're obviously paranoid, but in a curiously patchy, inconsistent way.

'Walking' octopus inspires soft robots

"This extreme flexibility and strength is of great interest to biologist Bob Full, who believes the octopus is an excellent model for how robots that move might be built without hard parts." (Via The Anomalist.)

This reminds me of the sentinel 'bots in "The Matrix."

Grass fungus once called 'fairy rings'

"'Fairylore,' the Web site continues, 'is full of stories of careless trespassers whisked off to fairyland, returning the following day to find some 20 years have elapsed, or forced to dance in the circular revel until some faithful friend comes to the rescue.'"

I find the "missing time" aspect of purported fairy intervention especially interesting. Further, the fairies were keen on other activities -- such as abduction and hybridization -- that researchers like David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins now attribute to extraterrestrials.

It only looks like a fire hydrant. In fact, it's a binocular periscope maintained by Deros living deep underground so that they can observe our activities without arousing suspicion . . .





What's playing:

1.) Louder Than Bombs (The Smiths)
2.) Greatest Hits (Bjork)
3.) In Time: The Best of R.E.M.
4.) The Essential Simon and Garfunkel (disc two)
5.) Live at Earls Court (Morrissey)

Outdoor sculpture at the Kemper Museum:





These crabs cluster around the base of the piece above. It's unclear if they're worshipping the woman looming above them or waiting for her to descend so they can tear her to shreds with those pincers.





This piece is one of several industrial sculptures designed to resemble the Grand Canyon. I can easily imagine someone tripping and getting impaled on that spike.

Good news: I just discovered there's hope that my next book will see publication after all. It's sort of up for grabs at the moment -- hopefully for not much longer. The title I have in mind is "The Postbiological Cosmos." It will be weird. Think "2001: A Space Odyssey" mated with "The Matrix" via Alastair Reynolds' "Revelation Space."

Homing Beacon for an Asteroid





"First off, what's actually been proposed is not to actually move it yet because the chances are that you won't have to do it. What he's actually proposing is that you put something on it that just simply measures where it is so you can tell for sure whether or not it's going to hit or not. You want to know that early enough so that if it actually was coming, then you could do something about it. That's what's behind the idea of putting a transponder; all that is is a radio transmitter that you can measure exactly where it is. If you had to move it, that's a whole other issue. But, the first thing is to know whether or not it's even an issue or not."

It's a start.

In his March 2 essay regarding the Peter Jennings UFO special, historian and abduction researcher David M. Jacobs writes the following:

"Finally, the Peter Jennings production must be seen in light of something else of which I am assuming the producers were unaware. The sighting phenomenon is the abduction phenomenon. UFOs are here to abduct people." (Emphasis mine.)

Could he be right? Certainly, UFO events seem designed to impinge on our collective psyche in some abstruse sense, but I don't agree that UFOs are necessarily "abduction machines." I might venture so far as to propose that the UFO phenomenon's central purpose is psychological conditioning, but the "abduction" experience is more than likely a small facet of an overarching agenda.

Jacobs isn't a stupid man, and he bases his conclusions on many years of active research. Although his interpretation of the alien agenda is decidedly malign (see "The Threat," an ominous treatise that declares nothing less than the impending demise of the human race as we know it), he's not easily lumped with fear-mongers such as David Icke (who preaches that humanoid reptiles have infiltrated the government).

Of course, this doesn't mean he's right. Although he professes to be painfully aware of the pitfalls of hypnosis as an investigative tool, I suspect his unconscious hunches have led him into an intellectual cul-de-sac. His UFO/abduction paradigm, while internally consistent, functions by virtue of excluding much of the absurdity embraced by researchers who tend to doubt the prevailing "nuts and bolts" extraterrestrial hypothesis.

On the off-chance that I might be a abductee -- and thus a vital piece of Jacobs' puzzle -- I decided to take his online questionnaire and share the results (excluding all of my "no" responses for sake of readability).

"Do you have any scars or marks on your body that neither you nor your parents can remember how you received?"

I have a series of shallow furrows near my shoulder. I don't know how they got there or, for that matter, when exactly they got there.

"Have you ever experienced an odd displacement in which you found yourself inexplicably in a location different from where you remember being only seconds before and it was not the common 'road hypnosis' while driving?"

Not that I can remember. (Of course, the fact that I can't remember may point toward an exceptionally well-executed abduction.)

"Have you ever dreamed of being in a hospital?"

Yes.

"Have you ever dreamed about lying on a table?"

Yes.

"Have you had any disturbing or realistic dreams about babies or small children?"

Even better: I've had a couple fairly disturbing dreams about child-like aliens.

"Have you ever dreamed about UFOs?"

Certainly.

"Have you ever woken up paralyzed with a sense of a person, presence, or something else in the room?"

Yes. But it was sleep paralysis.

"Do you have inexplicable fears about certain areas such as stretches of highway, open fields, rooms in a house, and so forth?"

Actually, I experience somewhat unaccountable attractions to certain places of no pronounced personal significance.

The Center for the Study of Life in the Universe

"We live in an awesome universe, rich in remarkable, complex, phenomena. Every advance in our observing capabilities reveals new and often unpredicted objects, such as other planetary systems, and processes in the universe. Of all these phenomena, the most marvelous, and at the same time of the greatest interest to us as human beings, is life in the universe. How many planets exist which might support life? Indeed, what is required for life to exist? How does life start? How does it evolve, and what fabulous creatures can evolution produce? How often do intelligent creatures appear in the giant tapestry of life?"

I have little or no doubt that we share the Cosmos with other intelligent beings; in fact, I think it's very likely that we've already been visited, either by ETs themselves or their robotic emissaries . . . if such a distinction can be drawn. If we have indeed been visited by extrasolar aliens, the prospect that we're still under ET surveillance can't be readily dismissed. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the UFO data seems to indicate an ongoing extraterrestrial presence on our planet, albeit of an exceedingly enigmatic nature.





But while I'm sympathetic to the idea of flesh-and-blood aliens visiting from afar, I'm unsure if the extraterrestrial hypothesis (as popularly conceived) is the best explanation for the many encounters with apparent aliens that litter our folklore. John Keel, a controversial proponent of "ultraterrestrial" visitation, thinks our so-called visitors inhabit Earth alongside us, originating from different levels of a "superspectrum" of consciousness.

Keel's many critics within the UFO community equate the concept of meddling ultraterrestrials with medieval demonology; Keel himself has dubbed ufology a "demonology of the 20th century" with no irony intended. Interestingly enough, Jacques Vallee -- who by and large enjoys the respect of scientifically inclined UFO researchers -- has presented ideas basically similar to Keel's, even if they differ on certain theoretical aspects. Most significantly, both share the conviction that the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is inadequately strange if it's to account for the spectrum of absurdity reported by close-encounter witnesses throughout historical and contemporary times.

In addition, both Keel and Vallee share a pronounced distaste for tales of crashed alien hardware a la Roswell; according to Keel's take, a physical event as pronounced as a crippled UFO is effectively impossible, as his "aliens" are largely immune to dangers posed by the world of gross matter.

Some speculators make the mistake of thinking that the revisionist, postmodern cosmology advanced by Vallee and Keel is incompatible with the hallowed ETH. But in truth both models are anything but mutually exclusive. It's even possible to imagine technological aliens from some distant star developing the ability to access Keel's "superspectrum" for reasons we can only guess.

Aliens? Demons? Labels are inherently limiting, even deceptive. If we're to make sense of our evident heritage of nonhuman visitation, we must dispense with preconceptions, foremost among them the romantic notion that "aliens" are necessarily advanced beings from space.

Spooky Mexican rock-face!

Oh, wow -- more urban ruins. I've got this sudden urge to scrape up some money for a plane ticket to Russia.

The future emerges like a particularly unmanageable fungus; places like the ones chronicled above are nothing less than upwellings in the temporal fabric. The future is here; you just have to know where to go and how to look.

(Thanks again to Sauceruney.)

"Increasing technological autonomy, however we choose to measure it, is one key assumption behind the singularity hypothesis. Were it to be proven incorrect in coming years, singularity models would have to be fundamentally revised. However, data to date give every indication that autonomy is dramatically increasing every year. Writers on the singularity topic now suggest that progressively more human-independent computer evolution must eventually transition to a 'runaway positive feedback loop' in high-level machine computation, from our perspective."

--Acceleration Watch

Biggest ever cosmos simulation

"'We are now able, using the biggest, fastest supercomputers in the world, to recreate the whole of cosmic history,' he told the BBC News." (Via CP.)

Might an arbitrarily advanced civilization create a cosmic simulation that produces individual planets and their respective inhabitants? More to the point: How can we be sure we're not simulations?

New England Red Tide Grows

"The toxic algae bloom began in the waters off Maine last month and spread quickly. It had already shut down shellfish beds as far north as New Hampshire. On Thursday, Massachusetts officials closed the highly productive flats of the Monomoy Natural Wildlife Refuge, off Chatham, to shellfishermen. About half the state's shellfish beds are now closed."

There's something powerfully metaphorical about red tides; they're microcosms of planetary blight. Even the color is perfect.

Environment atlas reveals planet wide devastation

"The devastating impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published on Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades."

Coming in out of the cold: Cold fusion, for real





"A very reputable, very careful group of scientists at the University of Los Angeles (Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) has initiated a fusion reaction using a laboratory device that's not much bigger than a breadbox, and works at roughly room temperature. This time, it looks like the real thing." (Via The Anomalist.)

125 Large Northern Lakes Disappear

"A new study finds 125 large lakes in the Arctic have vanished as temperatures rose over the past two decades. Many other lakes have shrunk.

"The lakes once sat atop permanently frozen soil called permafrost. Other studies have shown permafrost is melting around the world, causing low-lying ground to slump and rock to fall from mountains."

Mission to build a simulated brain begins





"The 'Blue Brain' project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM's Blue Gene design.

"The hope is that the virtual brain will help shed light on some aspects of human cognition, such as perception, memory and perhaps even consciousness." (Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Even if this "reverse engineering" approach fails to produce functional AI, maybe it will help pave the way toward mind back-ups like the "cortical stacks" envisioned by Richard K. Morgan in "Altered Carbon."

UFOs, mythology and plausible deniability

There are two competing theories that propose to account for the close-encounter experience throughout human history. The first holds that nonhuman encounters found in folklore -- such as interaction with the "little people" that populate the Celtic fairy faith -- are misreadings of encounters with extrasolar aliens. Since the witnesses to fairies and their activities lacked a suitable technological vocabulary, their descriptions were naturally prone to the "supernatural."




Illustration by John Velez.


The second theory maintains that the modern extraterrestrial hypothesis, in which evident nonhuman intelligences originate from other star systems, is at least as fictitious and misleading as the notion that humans share the planet with fairies. According to this view, the core phenomenon adapts to fit the reigning zeitgeist when in truth it is something altogether different -- possibly even immune to comprehension. (One wonders what form close encounters will take once we have assumed the role of space travelers we now casually grant to "ufonauts.")

In both scenarios, the UFO intelligence retains plausible deniability. Since we necessarily comprehend it in mythological terms, it could vanish and leave our civilization largely unscathed. The contemporary UFO phenomenon has demonstrated that it is capable of assuming a physical form at least partly amenable to empirical investigation. But its liminal nature seems designed to leave room for doubt; lacking conclusive proof of nonhuman visitation, we will always be able to chalk the enigma up to various misidentified natural processes.

The phenomenon's raison d'etre seems to be to remain hidden, all the while functioning in an evasive "standby" mode. Although this strange behavior could be explained by a variety of esoteric models, it's equally possible that we are, after all, seeing "nuts and bolts" visitors from elsewhere in the galactic neighborhood. Of course, one could argue that a civilization capable of bridging the distance between stars could remain absolutely and indefinitely hidden, in which case we would have no global tradition -- however distorted -- of nonhuman contact. So our visitors -- if "visitors" is an applicable term -- would seem to have an abiding interest in keeping their presence known to us, even if that presence is confined to our mythology.

That the UFOs fail to make open contact indicates an equally stubborn need to remain hidden. Indeed, their home turf appears to be the periphery of human consciousness. All of this suggests an agenda. I don't think "they" are patiently waiting for us to make some gesture of ultimate recognition; rather, I propose that the UFO/contact experience -- whatever its goal -- is well underway.

Mystery road metal baffles Japan

"'It's eerie,' the Asahi newspaper said Saturday. 'Why are such objects, so many of them, all over the country? If they had been intentionally installed, it's a serious crime.'"