Blog of the day: Madonna of the Toast

John Shirley explains why he's not a Libertarian.

Urban Security Suit, body armor for the jet set

Trendsetters like [Paris Hilton] might eschew duct tape and Cipro for the Urban Security Suit. Designed by Tim Smit, the USS is made of neoprene, though it's also lined with body-molded Kevlar to ensure you can stop bullets while turning heads.

But does it have a keyboard molded into the pants?

If this reminds you of this, you're not the only one.

My latest SETI.com post introduces Terence McKenna's ideas regarding panspermia:

Boldly venturing away from conventional evolutionary narratives, McKenna speculated that homo sapiens might owe its unique cognitive abilities to exposure to psilocybin, a mushroom-derived substance with pronounced neurochemical effects. In McKenna's scenario, the medium is the message: the bizarre worlds encountered by people under the influence of psilocybin are components of an "invisible landscape" with which we share a profound and unacknowledged symbiosis. (McKenna credited the advent of language, among other phenomena, to chemically altered states.)

Orangutang Goes Spear-Fishing

Those of us who have watched The Planet of the Apes are probably concerned about where this is going: a male orangutang was photographed on Borneo using a pole to try to spear fish in a river.

"Machine Gun" (Portishead):

I somehow missed this one:

Meat futures redux - just leave the brains out

Livestock without brains? Go for it!

Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom considers the discovery of life on Mars bad news. As in really bad news -- so bad, in fact, that finding even relatively primitive organisms eking out an existence among the ice would entail nothing less than our ultimate doom.

Bostrom sets the theoretical stage this way:

The more complex the life-form we found, the more depressing the news would be. I would find it interesting, certainly--but a bad omen for the future of the human race.

How do I arrive at this conclusion? I begin by reflecting on a well-known fact. UFO spotters, Raëlian cultists, and self-­certified alien abductees notwithstanding, humans have, to date, seen no sign of any extraterrestrial civilization.

By dismissing a significant body of evidence suggestive of some form of nonhuman contact, Bostrom manipulates the playing field in such a way that he can argue essentially anything he likes. Evidently Bostrom expects the lay reader will buy into his daft notion that the UFO phenomenon has something to do with Raëlians. And his smearing of "self-­certified alien abductees" is the stuff of rabid pseudo-debunkery.

Bostrom goes on to illustrate the concept of a "Great Filter" -- a kind of evolutionary black hole through which a potential extraterrestrial intelligence must pass in order to fulfill its destiny. (Bostrom's hypothetical ETs are a conspicuously anthropomorphic lot, but I'll cut him some slack; given the vastness of the observable universe, is it that bizarre to expect that a relatively tiny number will possess traits in keeping with our own?)

Pondering the sort of threat necessary to silence a candidate ET civilization, Bostrom writes:

The Great Filter, then, would have to be something more dramatic than run-of-the mill societal collapse: it would have to be a terminal global cataclysm, an existential catastrophe. An existential risk is one that threatens to annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential for future development. In our own case, we can identify a number of potential existential risks: a nuclear war fought with arms stockpiles much larger than today's (perhaps resulting from future arms races); a genetically engineered superbug; environmental disaster; an asteroid impact; wars or terrorist acts committed with powerful future weapons; super­intelligent general artificial intelligence with destructive goals; or high-energy physics experiments. These are just some of the existential risks that have been discussed in the literature, and considering that many of these have been proposed only in recent decades, it is plausible to assume that there are further existential risks we have not yet thought of.

A bit later, Bostrom cuts to the chase:

If the Great Filter is ahead of us, we have still to confront it. If it is true that almost all intelligent species go extinct before they master the technology for space colonization, then we must expect that our own species will, too, since we have no reason to think that we will be any luckier than other species. If the Great Filter is ahead of us, we must relinquish all hope of ever colonizing the galaxy, and we must fear that our adventure will end soon--or, at any rate, prematurely. Therefore, we had better hope that the Great Filter is behind us.

I must admit that I'm taken aback by Bostrom's assumption that "colonizing the galaxy" is necessarily the raison d'etre of a technologically robust ETI. Although he cites the possibility of less aggressively materialistic aliens early in his piece, it's almost as if he wishes we'd forget about them.

What has all this got to do with finding life on Mars? Consider the implications of discovering that life had evolved independently on Mars (or some other planet in our solar system). That discovery would suggest that the emergence of life is not very improbable. If it happened independently twice here in our own backyard, it must surely have happened millions of times across the galaxy. This would mean that the Great Filter is less likely to be confronted during the early life of planets and therefore, for us, more likely still to come.

By now you get the idea: if life is commonplace, we can expect to encounter an insurmountable existential hurdle at some point in the future -- specifically, before we're able to announce our presence to the galaxy (assuming we'd want to, and there are a host of arguments suggesting that it might not be the bright idea we're tacitly assured it is). Bostrom's argument is tantalizing and, on first glance, impressive. But it hinges on so many anthropocentric conceits that it reduces itself from a legitimate "either/or" to a merely interesting philosophical conjecture.

It's equally clear that Bostrom is most likely in for a dose of ennui; our solar system abounds with the ingredients for life, from Mars to Europa and beyond. Indeed, we may have already found it.

But none of this bothers me nearly so much as the fatalism at the core of Bostrom's thesis, which purports to reveal the role of intelligence in the universe but delivers little more than litany of uncertainties dressed in racy new clothes.

Bostrom is, of course, perfectly free to quake with dread when we finally confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, I'll be breaking open the champagne.

Cheers, Nick.

Urban Miners Look For Precious Metals In Cell Phones

It's called "urban mining", scavenging through the scrap metal in old electronic products in search of such gems as iridium and gold, and it is a growth industry around the world as metal prices skyrocket.

The materials recovered are reused in new electronics parts and the gold and other precious metals are melted down and sold as ingots to jewellers and investors as well as back to manufacturers who use gold in the circuit boards of mobile phones because gold conducts electricity even better than copper.

If you're reading this blog, there's a good chance you know who Alex Grey is. If not . . .



(Thanks: Reality Carnival.)

The First MRO Images of the Cydonia Suburbs

As for a possible artificial explanation for the suburbs, the Cydonia Quest theory is that they may represent a kind of horizontal arcology. In other words an underground city may have once been tunnelled out below the Cydonia surface. Where the chambers of this underground city have collapsed their geometric shapes and arrangements have been imperfectly transferred to the surface in the appearance of the resulting subsidence pits.

I encountered this cryptozoological stencil graffiti on a walk today.





Any examples of this in your hometown?

Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

Two-thousand people? Hell, we humans now routinely kill each other in much larger quantities.

My, have we come a long way.

Russia to Send Monkeys to Mars

I must admit, I had to read the story twice before I believed it. Russia wants to send monkeys not only into space, but to Mars. I had an idea that monkeys (or more specifically macaques) were used in space missions in the past, but in my mind this was in the past and would be considered cruel in this day and age. But hold on, aren't macaques used in medical experiments the world over anyway? Why is it so shocking that macaques should be chosen to pioneer interplanetary travel before mankind?

It's late and perhaps I'm not thinking clearly, but right now I'm positively envying the macaque who gets to make the trip.

Lest you underestimate our species' ability to pollute . . .

File under "Suitable for Framing":

Watercolors of irradiated mutant bugs

Science painter Cornelia Hesse-Honegger collects and paints mutant bugs in the vicinity of irradiated wastelands like Chernorbyl, around nuclear plants, and nuclear refining sites.

Robotic jellyfish in action!



Ectoplasmosis comments here.

The Cryptic Cosmology of Synchromysticism

Says Jake Kotze:

"My idea about the significance of meaningful coincidences in movies with mystical connotation is not that it points towards real truths, but that they point towards possible realities that might emerge from the collective psyche into consensus reality. We vie and jostle for acceptable limits of consensus reality through our art and philosophy. Our ideas and concepts about reality are the very fabric of reality itself. We try to sell each other beliefs in a creative effort to allow new 'things' to emerge into the accepted matrix of the now. I don't fundamentally fret about what 'is' real; I care about checking the zeitgeists' temperature in order to project future possibilities of acceptable norms and find hidden pockets of knowledge embedded in the pattern of 'AUM'."

The Color of Plants on Other Worlds

If it isn't easy being green on Earth, where chlorophyll is well tuned to absorb most of the energy in our sun's yellow light, imagine the difficulties elsewhere in the galaxy. Plants growing on worlds around cooler, brighter or more tempestuous stars would need to rely on red, blue or even black pigments to survive. That insight offers astronomers new clues about what to look for in their search for extraterrestrial life.

Features a killer slideshow courtesy of Mondolithic Studios.

Europe Turns Back to Coal, Raising Climate Fears

At a time when the world's top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy's major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.

At this point we're pretty much begging for it. The shotgun barrel is in our collective mouth and our finger has started to twitch.

A teaser from my new SETI.com offering, "Fermi's Legacy":

Today, Fermi's query has attained the status of a cosmic statute, especially among theorists convinced that intelligent life is witheringly rare. Proponents of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, for instance, believe the universe shows unmistakable evidence of existential "fine tuning," presumably to allow the existence of human life. (An engaging alternative is that the universe is as we perceive it because, if it were otherwise, its history would have precluded our evolution and we simply wouldn't be here. More recently, cosmologists have speculated that we might inhabit a "multiverse" comprised of an infinite number of universes, all governed by variations of the laws of physics as we know them. If such is the case, we shouldn't be especially surprised to find that physical laws seem "fine-tuned" for our existence, as our universe would be one of many: a cosmic jackpot well within the realm of probability.)

'Planetary sunshade' could strip ozone layer by 76%

Pumping tiny sulphate particles into the atmosphere to create a sunshield that would keep the planet cool was first suggested as a solution to global warming by Edward Teller, a physicist was best known for his involvement in the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, US, used computer models to see how a sulphate sunshade would affect the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful UV rays. She says it could have "a drastic impact".

Just finished reading:





Now reading:

It's been a long time since I've seen "Dr. Strangelove." Too long.



(Thanks: Gerry Canavan.)

Species loss 'bad for our health'

"While extinction is alarming in its own right, the book demonstrates that many species can help human lives," said co-author Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist at IUCN (formerly known as the World Conservation Union).

"If we needed more justification for action to conserve species, it offers dozens of dramatic examples of both why and how citizens can act in ways that will conserve, rather than destroy, the species that enrich our lives."

Unfortunately, UFO artist Jim Nichols appears to have been taken in by the Billy Meier saga -- but at least that makes for some interesting "what if" paintings.

I actually used to have one of his works on a T-shirt (purchased by a friend in -- where else? -- Sedona, AZ).

Universal 'babelfish' could translate alien tongues

Deacon argues that no matter how abstract a symbol becomes, it is still grounded in physical reality because it refers to "indexical" words -- words we use to point directly to objects in the real world. That limits the number of relationships it can have with other symbol words. In turn, this defines the grammatical structure that emerges from stringing words together.

If that is true, then in the distant future it might be possible to invent a gadget that uses complex software to decode alien languages on the spot, Deacon said.

What if William Burroughs was right and language is an organism independent of the human nervous system? What if we're merely hosts?





Lately I've been almost painfully aware of thinking in words. How strange consciousness must have been before the invention of language; indeed, there's a theory that humans were effectively self-less zombies until the advent of words. Maybe we exist in a symbiotic relationship with the Word Virus, in which case my fear is that we've allowed language to eclipse more intuitive methods of imparting and extracting information. Nick Herbert's rather romantic notion of "quantum tantra" would seem to be an alternative worth investigating . . .

New masthead!

Huge thanks to Denny Unger of WorldWorks Games for his considerable help in giving PB an overdue facelift. If you'll pardon the narcissism (yes, that's me looking angsty over on the right), I think it's dead-on.




I had hair then.


My only complaint rests with Blogger itself, whose template obstinately refuses to let me replace the generic masthead but does let me resize a graphic and post it on top of the default graphic. For example, I was unable to erase the blue "chiclets" you see on the left-hand side. Not that they necessarily look bad, but I would have preferred to post Denny's graphic in its original full-size glory. (He actually sent me two of them, one blue; I thought the gray version contrasted better with the background.)

Thanks again, Denny!

Solar Sail Space Travel One Step Closer to Reality

Using a fan of very long, electrically charged cables (stretching many kilometres from the central spacecraft), the similarly charged solar wind particles (mainly positively-charged protons) will hit the fan of positively-charged cables (generating a repulsive electric field), giving the cables a small proton-sized "kick", exchanging their momentum into spacecraft thrust. Cable charge is maintained by a solar-powered electron gun, using two conventional solar panels as an energy source.

I strolled by a Sony store tonight. A high-definition screen had been hooked to a video camera. Unable to resist, I paused to take this self-portrait.

Air Traffic Controllers Who Saw UFO Muzzled by FAA

Ian Gregor, FAA regional spokesman, says the agency's policy won't allow controllers to comment even if they want to relate their experience.

Gregor confirmed that "several" air traffic controllers in the tower saw the staggered formation of mysterious lights moving in the sky, apparently over North Phoenix. He says he heard that second-hand, though -- the tower's manager told him about it.

The controllers didn't consider the source of the lights to be a hazard, because nothing was popping up on radar, Gregor says.

Hawking and the Long Result

Hawking spoke at George Washington University on Monday, where the bulk of the audience may have found a two to five-hundred year time frame uncomfortable. After all, we're not used to thinking in such terms, and in an era that demands fast turn-arounds, wouldn’t it be grand to simply come up with a star drive tomorrow? Indeed, do we have the patience to embark on a project that might last five centuries, whose outcome will always remain in doubt, and whose funding will have to be continually extracted from reluctant governments or, more likely, drawn from the philanthropic donations of a small number of visionaries?

But there's an even more pressing question lurking in the subtext: Supposing we value the continuity of our species, do we really have a choice?

The idea that technological civilizations almost universally snuff themselves has become understandably fashionable among those convinced the Fermi Paradox qualifies as a genuine conundrum. If I chose to play along, I'd argue that the sort of full-immersion VR technology represented in the above "commercial" would pose at least as great a threat to emerging civilizations, neatly accounting for the alleged absence of ET visitors.

(Personally, I don't think Enrico Fermi ever intended his eponymous "paradox" to be taken literally; I think he was posing a thought experiment -- but I could be mistaken. If anyone knows more about Fermi's famous question, leave a comment.)

(Video found at Sentient Developments.)

I've grown incredibly skeptical of online dating -- so much so that, at my most cynical, I'm tempted to suggest it's a failed concept best abandoned. But the interface portrayed in the video is so conceptually interesting that I'm willing to suspend my grudges. Will it revolutionize algorithm-based match-making? Probably not. But I've seen much clunkier attempts to reinvent the user's relationship with the Net.

Learn more here.

(Found at Information Aeshetics.)

Swamp gas over Phoenix

Predictably, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said that even though air traffic controllers saw the UFO(s) from their posts at Sky Harbor Airport, "There's nothing to look into."

Other witnesses also reported seeing or hearing jet fighters in the sky, but an official from Luke Air Force Base denied it had planes in the air.

That sounds suspiciously like the scenario in Stephenville, Texas, in January, when the military initially repudiated eyewitness accounts of seeing jet aircraft chasing an enormous UFO, only to later admit it had nearly a dozen F-16s in flight that night.

Part of me is looking forward to the obligatory cascade of press this sighting is already generating; that same part of me is also quite convinced that none of the ensuing fuss will leave us the least bit more knowledgable about the UFO phenomenon (regardless whether the new Phoenix sighting can be attributed to a genuine unknown, which I doubt).

Gadget Watch: Keyboard Pants

Just the thing to go with those augmented reality contact lenses.

The future of DIY transhumanism is now!

LucyandBart

LucyandBart is a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess described as an instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body. They share a fascination with genetic manipulation and beauty expression. [. . .] They work in a primitive and limitless way creating future human shapes, blindly discovering low-tech prosthetic ways for human enhancement.

(Via Next Nature.)

I found these images a refreshing change from the dreary cyber-fetishism that often passes for "transhuman" art. Quirkily lo-fi, LucyandBart's imaginings are like bondage kitsch from a world ruled by an iron-fisted Dr. Seuss.

Blog of the day: Tomorrow Museum

Ghost luxury hotels, half-built and rotting in the desert

I hate "borrowing" items from Boing Boing, but I couldn't pass this one up. I mean, wow. If UFO researchers can relocate to abandoned missile silos, why can't misanthropic bloggers take up residence in the carcasses of abandoned dreams?

Groovy, man:

Your Very Own Meditator (Nov, 1970)

This project was conceived to make it easier for all of us to satisfy our need for occasional moments of private contemplation. Enter the Meditator and surround yourself with the graphics which cover its walls, and something begins to happen to you almost at once.

It's difficult to predict, but you may find the sensation akin to that mystical communion with nature that you experience when alone in a forest -- or the sense of peace you feel in an empty cathedral. Or you may develop sudden insights as you study the picture-fragments of your world -- and be swept by the conviction that you're "getting it all together" at last.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Sometimes I agree with Stephen Hawking and sometimes I don't.

I'm experimenting with a new look. Comments? Yes, please.

The best simulacrum I've seen in a long while:

Alien lands his UFO in Weston?

The little yellow man was spotted setting up home in Earlham Grove and has been seen two days in a row.

David and Ann Lawrence saw their new neighbour and decided to get snap of the creature.

Ann said: "The house has had an extension built and since then, the sun shining on the window has created this image on the wall opposite."

(Via The Keyhoe Report.)

Oh, for Christ's sake . . .

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. [. . .] Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

Dare I ask what, exactly, are the "characteristics" my blog shares with spam?