Is it just me or does the "Palo Alto CARET Laboratory" logo on this coversheet (courtesy of the enigmatic "Isaac") resemble the UFO diagram seen by Lonnie Zamora?

Take a look at this massively eroded tomb. By the time-scales used to date possible artificial structures on Mars, this thing is downright recent, and already it's begun receding into the desert landscape.

In addition to its obvious state of disrepair, it doesn't particularly look like anything. Yet critics of planetary SETI lambaste sincere efforts to study candidate artifacts on Mars precisely because they look old and degraded -- which is, of course, wholly consistent with the hypothesis that Mars is home to archaeological sites.

We tend to expect ET artifacts to be immediately recognizable, and we do so at our own cognitive risk.

Here's the page created by "Isaac," who claims to have helped reverse-engineer the craft responsible for the drone-like devices currently hyped by Whitley Strieber and Linda Howe.

I have to admit: what initially looked like a Photoshop scam has just gotten, if not impressive, then at least interesting, if for no other reason than Isaac's scans from an alleged classified manual devoted to extraterrestrial technology.

I still think it's a hoax, but it's fun watching it develop, like encountering Bob Lazar for the first time. Whoever Isaac is, I imagine he's the kind of wily thinker disinformationists long to have on their payroll.

Roswell Witness Deathbed Confession

"Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to 'Building 84' -- one of the hangars at Roswell -- and showed him the craft itself. He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 12- 15 feet in length and around 6 feet wide. He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

"He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin. They are described in his statement as about 4 feet tall, with disproportionately large heads.

With due respect to the late Walter Haut, I don't believe a word of this. While deathbed UFO confessions can sometimes offer needed insight, there's no reason to think Haut's dramatic recollections are accurate. As a highly visible witness to the Roswell events in 1947, Haut had every opportunity -- and ample commercial reason -- to come forth with these revelations while alive. That he failed to do so argues compellingly that his original testimony (relatively lackluster in retrospect) comprised the extent of his knowledge.

Letter from Tällberg: We are about to leave the Holocene

"Rogue" NASA scientist James Hansen lead the panel off with a grim pronouncement, saying that there looms a "huge gap" between what is understood (by scientists) about global warming and what is known by the public. In short, Hansen says, the climate crisis is a far more dire and present danger than most of us like to think. "We are closer to a level of dangerous, human-made interference with the climate than we realize. [. . .] We are about to leave the Holocene."

Let's say we achieve some form of Kurzweilian technological Singularity around 2050. Combined with the mounting evidence that we're engaged in a climate catastrophe of globally devastating scope, it becomes almost impossible to argue against the 21st century being the most important in the long history of our species, if not that of the planet itself.

There's a very good chance I'll live to see if our intellect is up to the challenges in store. I consider it a privilege.

Because the day here at Posthuman Blues just isn't complete without a little well-intentioned scare-mongering:

Asteroid Watch: Saving Arecibo's Radar

"Let's hope that we find all the dangerous asteroids in the next few months," says Cornell astronomer Joseph Burns. He's talking about the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which Cornell manages for the National Science Foundation. Word is that Arecibo's radar system may lose its NSF funding as early as 2008, leaving us without our premier tool for tracking asteroids of the Earth-crossing variety.

Hello Moon-Mars Initiative, goodbye everything else.

Kal Korff's decided to pick on me (and others) again. Take a look at this and let me know if I'm missing something.

It's OFFICIAL - Biedny, Steinberg, UFO Watchdog and Mac Tonnes ALL Lose Credibility!

US House Passes Bill Affirming Global Warming Exists

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday, aiming to put an end to the debate over whether global warming is actually occurring, passed legislation recognizing the "reality" of climate change and providing money to work on the problem.

US professor unravels mystery of outgassing events on lunar surface

To arrive at his theory, Crotts correlated TLPs with known gas outbursts from the lunar surface as seen by several spacecraft, particularly NASA's Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and the robotic Lunar Prospector in 1998. What he discovered, Crotts said, was a remarkable similarity in the pattern of outgassing event locations recorded by spacecraft across the face of the moon and reported TLP sites.

Data please!

Scientists take step to making synthetic life

Scientists have taken a first step toward making synthetic life by transferring genetic material from one bacterium into another, transforming the second microbe into a copy of the first.

They intend to use their technique to custom-design bacteria to perform functions such as producing artificial fuel or cleaning up toxic waste, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

These images of Bigelow Aerospace's new prototype bear an uncanny resemblance to my new basement apartment . . .

I'm moved in and waiting for my Internet connection to go live. (I'm writing this from a glitchy library terminal.) In a way, it's been nice to be Netless . . . but the novelty wears thin. Posting will probably resume within a couple days.

I'm putting this blog on temporary hold while I relocate. See you soon!

Crop Circles - Hoax Or Hex?

He would not elaborate, but suggested that the act of making the circles might be an act bordering on something like evocational magick. In other words, the creation of the intricate patterns in ripe crops all over England over the past 3 decades may have had more than the desired effect of making art and befuddling believers - it may have called up something from the "symbolic realm," as I call it.

Greg Bishop's speculation dovetails with Nick Redfern's proposal that certain ancient sites in England are endowed with thought-forms. Maybe we've unwittingly activated a "psychic Internet" in which our minds are the servers and the planet itself is the monitor.

Cellphone recycling bins at Tokyo convenience stores

Since 1998, Japan's wireless providers have been recycling unwanted phones in their own stores for customers who switch models or cancel their contracts. In recent years, however, more and more customers are waiting to recycle their old handsets, as phones have grown more sophisticated and hold greater amounts of important data that users need to access after switching models.

The question you should be asking yourself: could anyone in, say, 1985 possibly have predicted this?

'Mile-wide UFO' spotted by British airline pilot

"It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a [Boeing] 737.

"But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide."

Continuing his approach to Guernsey, Bowyer then spied a "second identical object further to the west".

He said: "It was exactly the same but looked smaller because it was further away. It was closer to Guernsey. I can't explain it. This was clearly visual for about nine minutes.

"I'm certainly not saying that it was something of another world. All I'm saying is that I have never seen anything like it before in all my years of flying."

This seems to be a solid report from a qualified pilot. Comments welcome.

At last: photographic proof of the Grays' hybridization program!

For the entire photoset, click here.

(Thanks, John!)

The aliens are shambling and Cthulhu-like, adept at telekinesis. Their vehicles -- ominous stationary saucers seen through a haze of pollution and African sunlight -- border on kitschy. But by craftily exploiting genre "power chords" and setting the action in an alternate 1990, "Alive in Joburg" captures a sense of pure, unaffected creepiness. There are some wonderful and haunting images to be found here.



(Found at Table of Malcontents.)

William S. Burroughs claimed that "we're here to go." Chris at Mondolithic Sketchbook mines the same post-ideological vein here.

I think we can safely expect the alleged "drones" to become increasingly complex as new images materialize -- if, of course, the meme doesn't die out first.





The evolution of the drones' construction arguably mirrors the progression of early crop circles from relatively simple glyphs to today's geometrically sophisticated designs. Is a cabal of drone aficionados deliberately starting with minimalist designs and working its way up to the equivalent of a "mothership"? Or are we witnessing a spontaneous trend?

Perhaps in discounting the drone images we deprive ourselves a front-row seat to a meme undergoing the rigors of evolution, a process ufology has yet to fully understand for lack of sheer intellectual and cross-disciplinary flexibility.

I happened across this stop-action sci-fi yarn at YouTube. Whimsical yet monstrous.

Cliff Pickover is at it again with The Women of Wikipedia. Where else can you find Courteney Cox rubbing shoulders with Ada Lovelace?

Paul Kimball: renaissance man.

So you wanna be a cyborg . . .

Here are ten steps to get you going (or at least keep you busy) until the Singularity hits.

Watching this spoof ad (based on an actual proposed product) is disquietingly like taking in a vintage "technology of tomorrow" video circa 1985.



(Tip of the virtual reality visor to Beyond the Beyond.)

This clip is being billed as the funniest five-second video on the Net. (So far it's elicited a laugh every time I've watched it.)

(Hat tip: Boing Boing.)

I finished Bruce Sterling's "Visionary in Residence" and began Ken MacLeod's "Newton's Wake" (a tough decision, as the library also had "Learning the World" available and I'm a sucker for first contact stories).





Meanwhile, in "meatspace," I've been idly packing for next week's move. I'm jonesing for an up-close look at the new addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which will be within easy walking distance. (It's embarrassing to admit, but the thought of being able to walk somewhere -- let alone somewhere as cool as an art museum -- seems almost impossibly exotic to me right now.)

NTT's Tangible-3D display

Researchers at NTT Comware have just made virtual reality a little more real. On June 20, the company unveiled a 3D display system that reproduces the physical feel of three-dimensional video by means of an actuator glove worn on the hand, allowing viewers to literally reach out and touch the person or object on the screen.

Bush vetoes stem-cell funds bill

Mr Bush said advances must be pursued in a way "that respects human dignity and upholds our moral values".

This is, of course, beyond the domain of mere cognitive dissonance -- but at least we can't claim we didn't see it coming.

Just because the world is burning doesn't mean we can't dress nicely.

Giant wind-powered biomechanical centipedes stroll our beaches. Awesome short video.

(Thanks: Reality Carnival.)

Charles Stross: bitch-slapped!

Take a look at the incredible packaging for the final cut of Ridley Scott's prescient cult favorite, "Blade Runner." It even comes with a replica "spinner" flying car. My inner nerd is fairly drooling over this.

FBI to Battle Zombie Horde

No, really. Read on.

Some estimates peg the number of email spams sent each day at around 55 billion, the vast majority of which are sent by infected PCs, usually without any knowledge of it by their owner.

It's all part of what's known as a botnet, giant networks of malware-infected PCs that act as slaves to a master controller via the internet. These PCs, called zombies, are perhaps the biggest security threat on the internet today.

(Thanks, Nick.)

Ghost Cities Of 2100

Whether from natural catastrophes, economic collapse or the slow encroachments of sand or water, it seems likely that at least some of today's cities will meet the same fate as Ozymandias, the king of kings who built a monument to himself. As the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, "Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away."

(Via Spluch.)

"Blade Runner" alert!

That Salt Lake Blimp--Mystery Solved . . . or Not?

On June 13, a peculiar object was videotaped moving slowly over Salt Lake City. Despite the fact that the object exhibits significant mechanical detail in a clear videotape, it has been claimed that it was a mylar blimp owned by a man called Daniel Geery. However it's not yet clear that Mr. Geery's blimp has the same configuration as the videotaped object, and a strikingly similar object was videotaped over Liverpool in England in July of 2001.

Both look like unmanned blimps or airships to me. But at least they're more interesting than the "drones."

From Now On, It's All Temperature Anomaly, All the Time

The picture kind of says it all.

Brian Eno discusses "Music for Airports," one of my all-time favorite albums:



(Thanks: Beyond the Beyond.)

Good news: in about a week, I'm getting the hell out of Independence, Missouri for the more sanity-conducive climes of the Plaza in Kansas City. My soon-to-be new apartment is light-years beyond what I'm living in now. (With lots of exposed ducts, it's a little like a set from Terry Gilliam's "Brazil.")

No more suburban dilapidation, and none too soon.

No Stars Shine in This Dark Galaxy

An international team of astronomers have conclusive new evidence that a recently discovered "dark galaxy" is, in fact, an object the size of a galaxy, made entirely of dark matter.

Yes Men Strike Oil: Civil Disobedients Make Modest Flesh-to-Fuel Proposal

"Without oil, at least four billion people would starve. This spiral of trouble would make the oil infrastructure utterly useless" -- unless their bodies could be turned into fuel.

That was the satirical message delivered by two corporate ethics activists to the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary, Alberta. The activists, part of political trickster collective the Yes Men, used the Exposition to stage their latest theatre of corporate absurdity, with Exxon/Mobil and the Natural Petroleum Council playing the fools.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Stephen Colbert on the ever-present robot menace:

Rooftop solar power just got easier.

SETI pundit Seth Shostak's credibility righteously trounced by the Easter Bunny. Read all about it.