Wednesday, January 10, 2007

As of this writing, Amazon.com has one (used) copy of "After the Martian Apocalypse" in stock. It's going for $77.56! I don't know what make of this. Maybe the vender is really reluctant to part with his copy . . .

(Thanks, Steve!)
Defense Workers Warned About Spy Coins

Can the coins jingling in your pocket trace your movements? The Defense Department is warning its American contractor employees about a new espionage threat seemingly straight from Hollywood: It discovered Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.


Canada! Ah-ha!
Meanwhile, in meatspace . . .

My neighbors have been given their eviction notice. From what I've gleaned from the apartment manager, they have a court date this month but seem to have no desire to get packing. Apparently they've managed to work their way into an interesting legal cul-de-sac: since they presumably realize their days are numbered, they know they can get away with anything. So the midnight "house parties" continue unabated. Police come and go to no avail. All is noise.

The manager, perhaps sensing the absurdity, promises me they'll be gone soon. I'm not sure I can bring myself to believe it.
Graciously pimping tomorrow night's appearance on "The 'X'-Zone," Nick Redfern comments:

I consider Mac Tonnies to be one of the few cutting-edge researchers of today.


As well he should. He knows I give away free coffee.
Blog of the day: Resilience Science
2006: USA's Warmest Year On Record





NOAA's National Climate Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, reports that 2006 was the warmest year on record for the United States. The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was slightly higher than the record set in 1998. Seven months in 2006 were much warmer than average, including December, which ended as the fourth warmest December since records began in 1895 and the hottest December in the history of Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Dead birds showering Western Australia town

Over the last month, thousands of dead birds have rained down on Esperance, Australia and nobody knows why. Quite a few species--including wattle birds, yellow-throated miners, new holland honeyeaters, crows, hawks, and pigeons--have all turned up by the dozens dead in residents' yards.


This can't be good . . .

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Nick Redfern hates aliens. Specifically, he deplores the disturbingly widespread belief that extraterrestrials are here to save us from ourselves in a gesture of galactic philanthropy.

And it would certainly seem he's backed by the evidence -- or, rather, the lack of it. Despite the persistent presence of unusual objects in our skies, we have yet to receive an ultimatum a la "The Day the Earth Stood Still." While UFOs have displayed apparent interest in military and nuclear facilities, a mass landing doesn't appear forthcoming. Whoever "they" might be, they're not the altruists we might wish they were.

Redfern's essay addresses hypothetical interstellar visitors in the context of the so-called "contemporary" UFO era, which began in 1947. On the other hand, a widescreen perspective reveals just how deeply the prospect of nonhuman contact has permeated our culture, perhaps predating history.

If an alien intelligence is accountable for even a small degree of our collective preoccupation with the "other," it's conceivable that we have, in fact, established a dialogue of sorts. Maybe we're being taught a new mythological syntax so that, confronted with the specter of planetary disaster, we'll have the means of rising to the challenge.

I'm not suggesting we'll be saved at the last minute in some alien Rapture. But the UFO phenomenon's symbolic importance shouldn't go unrecognized. Perhaps, as Carl Jung mused, UFOs signal a change in the collective unconscious. The UFO intelligence might be attempting to hasten that change, if only for ultimately selfish reasons. It might be devastatingly lonely and need us to keep from withering away in the long interstellar night. Or the truth could be more immediate: just because we might be someone else's property, an idea espoused by Charles Fort, doesn't mean we're not valuable property.

In almost any scenario, the sort of peaceable contact foreseen by the contactees of the 1950s is extraordinarily unlikely. The evidence indicates that life on Earth will become increasingly severe; we may or may not survive intact. But it's just conceivable that someone or something hopes we make it.




A New Meme: We All Know UFO Really Means Aliens From Outer Space

This article deliciously exposes the semantic war waged by pseudoskeptics who seem to think ignoring the UFO phenomenon will make it go away.
Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night

Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
Warming Could Spur 'Evolution Explosion' - Study

Fast-growing weeds have evolved over a few generations to adapt to climate change, which could signal the start of an "evolution explosion" in response to global warming, scientists reported on Monday.




Blog of the day: Colony Worlds

Monday, January 08, 2007

'Plutoed' chosen as '06 Word of the Year

Pluto is finally getting some respect -- not from astronomers, but from wordsmiths.

"Plutoed" was chosen 2006's Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting Friday.

To "pluto" is "to demote or devalue someone or something," much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn't meet its definition of a planet.


So what does it mean if you "Uranus" somebody?
Astronomers seek out alien TV





At present, efforts to find extraterrestrial life are concentrated on searching for messages deliberately beamed across space, which would miss a civilisation that does not advertise its existence as the Earth does.

The beams would search for electromagnetic signals used on Earth for radio broadcasts, television and radar.

David Aguilar, the centre's director of communications, said: "We may pick up spurious signals from people that never meant for us to hear them and get an inkling that something's going on."

(Via Aberrant News.)




A Defense Against Planetary Attack

Not comets or asteroids this time, folks. No, we're talking about the mother of all "existential risks" -- aliens, man!

So when this group tackles extraterrestrial invasion, they do it soberly, with a hard look at strategies, tactics, and weapons that might be used if the longshot scenarios of some science fiction authors -- or even B-grade movie directors -- ever become reality.
Robot Mother For South Korea

Kyunghee University Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea has began using a life-sized robot replica of a pregnant woman to give obstetric students hands-on experience with childbirth.


David Cronenberg meets RealDoll. You've got to see this thing.
I realize Keats' idea is intended as social commentary, but I can't help but feel he's onto something with legitimate commercial applications . . .

Since the beginning of time, pure silence has been available only in the vacuum of space. Now conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has digitally generated a span of silence, four minutes and thirty-three seconds in length, portable enough to be carried on a cellphone. His silent ringtone, freely distributed through special arrangement with Start Mobile, is expected to bring quiet to the lives of millions of cellphone users, as well as those close to them.
Scientist: NASA found life on Mars -- and killed it





Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have found alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist is theorizing.

The Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the wrong kind of life, so they didn't recognize it, a geology professor at Washington State University said.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Sunday, January 07, 2007

I'm making some modifications to www.mactonnies.com. A lot of the accumulated "link salad" seemed unbecoming for a blog era-website, so I've begun stripping it down and hopefully making it more accessible. I even considered doing something radical and changing the template (such as it is) but decided to leave well enough alone. Besides, the black-and-white format has a certain clunky dignity.

I've already made a few incremental alterations. I'll be making more. If any seasoned Web designers have any wisdom to share, bring it on.




Just a note that on Thurs., Jan. 11th, I'll appear (again!) on fellow Zorgy Award winner Rob McConnell's "The 'X'-Zone."

I'm billed to discuss "subversive ideas" and "bleeding-edge science." (It says so on the 'X'-Zone website.)
Behold!



Someone better actually drink those lattes. Otherwise the waste of espresso is quite unconscionable.

(Found at Neatorama.)
THE NEXT STEP

At some point in the last 6 or 7 months, I realized that the signal to noise ratio of internet information isn't acceptable to me anymore. But I'm not arrogant enough to believe that my definition of what constitutes signal and noise should be anyone else's. What I need is an intelligent adaptive filter. It doesn't really need to be self-aware of course, though if AI is going to arise, that's one of the areas I'd expect it to be born. For now, an intelligent internet agent just needs to be smart enough to know my personal preferences, filter the entire internet in accordance with those tastes, and keep pace with me as my tastes evolve over time. What could be simpler?


I'm totally down with this.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Dark Restaurant: Where one eats in total darkness

The first dark restaurant in Asia is officially opened on the 23 December 2006. This restaurant, located in Beijing, China, has its interior painted completely in black. Customers are greeted by a brightly lit entrance hall and will be escorted by waiters wearing night vision goggles into the pitch dark dining room to help them find their seats. Flashlights, mobile phones and even luminous watches are prohibited while in this area.


A restaurant with no cellphones? That's it -- I'm off to Beijing!
Army mistakenly asks deceased to re-enlist

"Unfortunately, the database used to address those letters contained names of officers who were killed in action or wounded," the Army said. "Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters."
UAVs And The Flatwoods Monster





Commenter Bill Hancock pointed out the similarities of the "Guardian" UAV in my last post to recently re-rendered paintings of the famous Flatwoods (WV) Monster. I checked, and damned if it doesn't look like a UAV staring out at us from fifty years ago. What are we to make of this?


Good catch!
Amazon boss shows off spacecraft





The billionaire founder of Amazon.com has released the first images of the launch of a private spacecraft that could bring space travel to the masses.

A video of the cone-shaped Goddard vehicle shows it climbing to about 85m (285ft) before returning back to Earth.

The test launch took place in November 2006 in a remote part of Texas, but details have only now been released.

The images mark the first time Jeff Bezos has broken his silence on the work of his space company, Blue Origin.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Here's Whitley Strieber interviewed by Larry King in the late 1980s:



Fast forward almost twenty years to "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson":



Finally, here's a clip from the underrated film version of Strieber's "Communion":

Almost the entirety of the single best part of Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds":



A scene from "The Quiet Earth," a gem you may have missed:

The beginning of the new year has slammed home just how unsatisfied I am living in Independence, Missouri. Not only am I miserable, I have nothing to keep me here aside from an increasingly tedious part-time job. So I'm seriously considering a move. I can't just "leave," as some have suggested: I need income, health insurance, some realistic hope of a better (read: tolerable) life.

Assuming I move, I might as well do it right; just because I need to make a grounded decision doesn't mean I can't make an adventure out of it. I'm considering Canada. From what (admittedly little) I've seen, the landscape is almost utopian in comparison to the pale, conformist sprawl that characterizes the Midwest. I want to live where I can take walks and visit bookstores that stock titles other than "Christian inspiration." Where drive-thrus haven't completely obliterated the need to leave one's car. Where the coffeeshops spend more time making coffee and less time hawking God.

This is a town for greedy, over-fed, cellphone-wielding know-nothings: a true dystopian nexus that promises little and delivers far less. I can't help but think I can do better.
Year End Gala





In bringing 2006 to a close, the Cassini Imaging Team is releasing its best maps of Titan and the major icy Saturnian moons, and other eye-catching images collected from our travels around Saturn.

(Via Beyond the Beyond.)

Thursday, January 04, 2007

An Eschatological Taxonomy





What do we mean when we talk about the "end of the world?"

It's a term that get thrown around a bit too often among a variety of futurist-types, whether talking about global warming, nanofabrication, or non-friendly artificial intelligence. "Existential risks" is the lingo-du jour, referring to the broad panoply of processes, technologies and events that put our existence at risk. But, still, what does that mean? The destruction of the Earth? The end of humankind? A "Mad Max" world of leather-clad warriors, feral kids, and armed fashion models? All are frightening and horrific, but some are moreso than others. How do we tell them apart?

Here, then, is a first pass at a classification system for the varying types of "end of the world" scenarios.
Wow . . .



(Found at: The Speculist.)
Cloaking material created

Metamaterials, also known as left-handed materials, are exotic, artificially created materials that provide optical properties not found in natural materials. Natural materials refract light, or electromagnetic radiation, to the right of the incident beam at different angles and speeds. However, metamaterials make it possible to refract light to the left, or at a negative angle. This backward-bending characteristic provides scientists the ability to control light similar to the way they use semiconductors to control electricity, which opens a wide range of potential applications.




And don't you forget it.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Cool new graphics in Araqinta's Gallery of Transmutations.




Paul Kimball rings in 2007 besieged by idiots:

Ring Around the Rosey... from Korff Back to Horn

First, as the Meier defenders (a very, very small but also a very, very vocal group) are the ones asserting that the photos are legit, it's up to them to prove that they are - it's not up to me, nor anyone else, to show that they are not. If these folks knew anything about the concept of burden of proof, in either law or science, they would realize that.
2007 Set to be World's Warmest Year - UK Met Office

This year is set to be the hottest on record worldwide due to global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, Britain's Meteorological Office said on Thursday.

The Met Office said the combination of factors would likely push average temperatures this year above the record set in 1998. 2006 is set to be the sixth warmest on record globally.

"This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world," said Met Office scientist Katie Hopkins.


Meanwhile . . .

Exxonmobil Cultivates Global Warming Doubt - Report

Energy giant ExxonMobil borrowed tactics from the tobacco industry to raise doubt about climate change, spending US$16 million on groups that question global warming, a science watchdog group said on Wednesday.
I'm on the mend. My fever burned itself out sometime last night, leaving me tired and congested but able to perform minor tasks (besides updating this blog) and -- better yet -- actually taste my food. I celebrated by going out to eat.





I'm vaguely assembling a "to-read" list in my mind, knowing perfectly well it's more of a general guide than an actual list. (I read less in 2006 than I'm happy admitting.)

Steve Erickson's "Our Ecstatic Days" gets near-top fiction billing, as do "Schild's Ladder" and "Diaspora" by Greg Egan. I also want to get at least somewhat up-to-speed with Alastair Reynolds. Must-read short-story collections include "Visionary in Residence" by Bruce Sterling and "Mad Professor" by Rudy Rucker.

And I really, really need to catch up with Richard K. Morgan and see what the fuss about Elizabeth Bear is all about. Oh, and Paul J. McAuley -- I've managed to neglect him as well.

Nonfiction-wise, I suppose I'll read "The Singularity is Near" -- kind of an intellectual obligation -- and Dawkins' "The God Delusion." "Fortean" writers on my list include Graham Hancock and Terence McKenna.
Today's weird architecture fix:

iPod is inspiration for new tower in Dubai: "iPad"

Dubai-based real estate firm Omniyat Properties plans to construct a tall building in Dubai modeled after the Apple iPod. The name of the 24-story tower: iPad.


Fab Tree Hab

In congruence with ecology as the guiding principal, this living home is designed to be nearly entirely edible so as to provide food to some organism at each stage of its life cycle. While inhabited, the home's gardens and exterior walls continually produce nutrients for people and animals. As a direct contributer to the ecosystem it supports an economy comprised of truly breathing products not reconstituted or processed materials. Imagine a society based on slow farming trees for housing structure instead of the industrial manufacture of felled timber.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Poll: Americans See Gloom, Doom in 2007





Another terrorist attack, a warmer planet, death and destruction from a natural disaster. These are among Americans' grim predictions for the United States in 2007.

But on a brighter note, only a minority of people think the U.S. will go to war with Iran or North Korea over the countries' nuclear ambitions. An overwhelming majority thinks Congress will raise the federal minimum wage. A third sees hope for a cure to cancer.

(Via Aberrant News.)
No religion and an end to war: how thinkers see the future

Philosopher Daniel Denett believes that within 25 years religion will command little of the awe it seems to instil today. The spread of information through the internet and mobile phones will "gently, irresistibly, undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance".

Biologist Richard Dawkins said that physicists would give religion another problem: a theory of everything that would complete Albert Einstein's dream of unifying the fundamental laws of physics. "This final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue death blow to religion and other juvenile superstitions."

(Via Chapel Perilous.)


Sadly, an end to religious intolerance and conflict are among the last things I expect to see banished in the readily foreseeable future. And while I welcome a Theory of Everything, there's withering reason to think we'll find it anytime soon. (Even if we did, I think the effects on entrenched religious ideas would be minimal; we've seen religions successfully shrug off far more immediate "death blows," from the realization that the Earth orbits the Sun to the discovery of DNA and genetic engineering.)
The bad cold I complained about yesterday has become a very nasty flu. Posting may become sporadic.




Mannequin Fetishist Could Get Life

A man who has a history of smashing windows to indulge his fetish for female mannequins could draw a long prison term for his latest arrest. Ronald A. Dotson, 39, of Detroit faces up to life in prison if convicted of a charge of attempted breaking and entering at a cleaning-supply company in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale.

(Via Boing Boing.)
Cory Doctorow nails it:

The American lifestyle frankly sucks. The media is generally shit. The food stinks. We spend too much time in traffic and too much time taking care of a badly built McHouse that has the ergonomics of a coach seat on a discount airline. Add to that the lack of health care (just listened to a Stanford lecture about the American Couple that cited a study that determined that the single biggest predictor of long-term marital happiness is whether both partners have health care), the enormous wealth-gap between the rich and poor, blisteringly expensive tertiary education, an infant mortality rate that's straight out of Victorian England, and a national security apparat that shoves its fist up my asshole every time I get on an airplane, and I don't think that this country is much of a paragon of quality living.

(Via Beyond the Beyond.)

Monday, January 01, 2007

My Paracast interview has been posted. Get those iPods ready . . .

(Thanks again to Gene and David.)
The 2006 Zorgy Awards have been announced. I'm gratified to be this year's winner for "Best UFO/Paranormal Blog." Thanks to everyone who voted!




Aside from the Hill abduction and the Villas-Boas incident, here are a few of the sightings I plan on discussing in terms of the Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis. The summaries below are taken from UFO Evidence.

Police Officer Herbert Schirmer Abduction

Sgt. Schirmer was on patrol when he encountered a UFO hovering above the road, which shot up when he flashed his high beams at the object. Soon, Schirmer realized he had experienced "missing time", and a red welt appeared on his neck. Hypnotic sessions revealed that the occupants of the landed craft came and took Schirmer aboard, and communicated with him through some form of mental telepathy. They told him that they would visit him twice more and that some day he would "see the universe".


Trindade Island Photographs

Trindade, a small rocky island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean 600 miles off the coast of Bahia, Brazil, was the site of one of the most impressive photographic cases in UFO history.


Father Gill Sighting

William B. Gill, an Anglican priest with a mission in Bosinai, Papas New Guinea, observed craft-like UFOs -- one with Humanoid figures on top -- on two consecutive evenings, June 26-27, 1959. About twenty-five natives, including teachers and medical technicians, also observed the phenomena. They "signaled" the humanoids and received an apparent response. This was one of sixty UFO sightings within a few weeks in the New Guinea area.


The Rendlesham Forest Incident

What is widely considered Britain's most extraordinary encounter took place between 26 and 28 December 1980. It involved at least a dozen civilians from villages surrounding Rendlesham Forest, a large pine wood in south east Suffolk eight miles from the large town of Ipswich. However, it also gained a high profile because of its military witnesses, part of a huge USAF contingent at the twin bases of RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge located beside the forest.


I'm also intrigued by the following tale . . .

Edo-period UFO

Aboard the drifting vessel was a finely dressed young woman with a pale face and red eyebrows and hair. She was estimated to be between 18 and 20 years old. Because she spoke an unfamiliar tongue, those that encountered her were unable to determine from whence she came. In her arms she clutched a plain wooden box that appeared to be of great value to her, as she would allow nobody to approach it.
The man with 30-seconds memory

Incredible story about a man with worst case of amnesia - his memory lasts within 30 seconds. The only things he remembers are his wife and his musical abilities.

(Via Spluch.)
In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO?

It sounds like a tired joke--but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously.

A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon.
I've got one of the worst head-colds of all time. I didn't know it was possible for my head to contain so much mucous. It's like a wormhole from the Mucous Dimension has opened up inside my skull. (That's right: I'm starting the new year with a lame sci-fi analogy.)

Anyway, here's a wonderful retro sci-fi pin-up calendar for free downloading.