I like to think of how I'd explain the world of 2004 to a citizen of the 1940s or 50s . . . someone with a good grasp of science for whom descriptions of ubiquitous marvels like DVD players and global positioning systems would seem like technology, not fantasy or mysticism. Nevertheless, a daunting task.

Let's say I've got only a couple minutes to sum up the post-millennial zeitgeist. Where should I start? Even a typical street scene is liable to sound like bad science fiction, what with people coasting by on Segways as they prattle into cellphones that double as cameras. To say nothing of those drinking $2.50 cups of organic coffee as they establish wi-fi connections with their laptops, which they use to "surf" this enigmatic thing called "the Web" and transmit messages that dance across the globe in fiber-optic cable.

Blogs. Depleted uranium. The search for Hawking radiation. 9-11-01. Stem-cells. Global warming. Computer viruses. Mars rovers. Chat-rooms. Dish TV. MP3s, PDAs, GMOs, SUVs and MRIs. The Higgs boson. Quantum encryption. Transgenic art. Dirty bombs. Solar sails. Google.

Actually, here's what I might say to my hypothetical friend from the 1950s: "Do you read science fiction? There's this author, Philip K. Dick. You might enjoy him . . ."

Robotic pods take on car design

"Built using environmentally friendly plant-based materials, the single passenger unit is equipped with intelligent transport system technologies that allow for safe autopilot driving in specially equipped lanes." (Via Nerdshit.com.)

These things are a blast -- Segways with profoundly serious delusions of grandeur.

Here's another idea whose time has come: virtual homes. Put on a VR headset and stroll through the house (or city) of your dreams, even if you're sitting on a crowded bus or waiting in the grocery check-out line. Now that "augmented reality" has arrived in the form of Human PacMan, I don't see any significant hurdles.

Perhaps the real-estate market of the mid-21st century will be dominated by customized digital environments, both consensual (as in a Gibsonian chat-room) and solipsistic. People will pay real-world money for them too, as witnessed by the guy who recently paid over $20,000 for a gaming environment that exists only in cyberspace.

Campaign of deception used to push patriotic song up charts

"The Bumper of My SUV, which was written by Wright, tells how she was driving down West End Avenue in Nashville in her SUV when someone saw her bumper sticker supporting the troops and made an obscene gesture. The song calls for support of the troops no matter what a person thinks of the war in Iraq."

You know how professional wrestling comes with the disclaimer "sports entertainment" -- meant to discourage the credulous from thinking the matches are anything but rehearsed skits? In a similar vein, I think certain kinds of music should be labeled "music entertainment." "Young country" is one of them. It's always been stupid; now W's Iraq War has pushed it hurtling past the threshold of self-parody. ("The Bumper of my SUV"? Jesus!)

Rap -- generally artless and formulaic -- is another form of "music entertainment." "Gangsta rap" devotees buy Snoop Dogg CDs for image, not aesthetic virtue. Britney Spears? More "music entertainment." Same with Marilyn Manson and other contemporary "goth": sheer gimmick with little or no redeeming substance.

I just ran across this great quote from Rudy Rucker's "Saucer Wisdom" notes (PDF):

"The answer to the Fermi paradox is 'They do exist, and they are already here, but we haven't built a modem that can distinguish them from white noise so they just zip past without decrypting.'"

Rash of UFOs in Eastern Hemisphere

"It's been a busy December for skywatchers in the Eastern Hemisphere, as citizens of Indonesia, China and Australia have all reported seeing unidentified flying objects."

More!

Blasts in Indonesian cities possibly meteor - media

"Police, on high alert after warnings from Western governments of possible terror attacks over the Christmas and New Year period, said they had no information on the blasts. A presidential spokesman also said he had no details."

India and UFOs: What is Going On?

"There have been a few earlier stories reported here, and now another story from India Daily that floats rumors of contact has appeared. This story, for the first time, mentions the possibility that there has been official contact between India and extraterrestrials."

Dead in the water: how we are killing the sea

"Having emptied Britain's shallow coastal strip of its once bountiful fish stocks, fishermen are now wrecking our last virgin territory: the sea bed."

We're merely finishing what we started. What resolve.

DNA may hold key to information processing and data storage





"The DNA molecule--nature's premier data storage material--may hold the key for the information technology industry as it faces demands for more compact data processing and storage circuitry. A team led by Richard Kiehl, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota, has used DNA's ability to assemble itself into predetermined patterns to construct a synthetic DNA scaffolding with regular, closely spaced docking sites that can direct the assembly of circuits for processing or storing data. The scaffolding has the potential to self-assemble components 1,000 times as densely as the best information processing circuitry and 100 times the best data storage circuitry now in the pipeline."

I finally installed a guestbook (see sidebar). Please take a moment to say "hi." (Sorry about the ads.)

Electronic Life Forms

"'Elf' is a two-part installation developed in the context of the research project 'electronic-life-forms' by Pascal Glissmann and Martina Höfflin. On one hand, the 'elfs' are documented in their natural habitat, and the fading contrast of electronics and nature gives the scenario a surprising common impression. On the other hand, the imprisonment of these life forms in Weck-Preserving-Glasses reminds one of childhood adventures, exploring and discovering the world around us. The light-sensitive 'elfs' desperately use their chaotic sounds and noisy movements to call the attention of the outside world."

It's a good thing Sauceruney is still blogging; otherwise I might have missed out on this . . .

In fact, I find myself inspired to try out some of my own cyber-concept art. Imagine dozens -- or even hundreds -- of insects "tagged" with miscellaneous defunct electronic components! I could totally do this.*

And what a way to shed my present image as The Guy Who Writes About Martians. Is Kansas City ready for The Guy Who Glues Microcircuitry To Bugs?

*And get the good people at PETA breathing down my neck . . .

This PDF document provides a sprawling perspective on the "silent invasion" mythos -- which, like all good yarns, works spectacularly as metaphor.*

*That's not to say some of it might not be jarringly close to the truth.

An Electromagnetic Theory Of The Paranormal

"Frequent and prolonged irradiation of the brain by EM fields has been medically shown to induce a range of seemingly paranormal effects, including a sense of 'missing time,' trance states, vivid visual halluciantions [sic], paralysis, deja vu, sudden and intense fear, and feelings of an invisible presence and of being watched. It is probably no coincidence that combinations of some or all of these effects are reported by persons experiencing angels, alien, and poltergeist encounters. Electrical stimulation of the brain's language centers can also produce disembodied voices that intrude into the experiencer's thoughts as if from an external entity."

This is a longtime fascination here at Posthuman Blues. It's likely we won't know how accurate the EM hypothesis is until years from now, when more people have had an opportunity to be exposed to the "hotspots" discussed in the article. As cellphones and satellite TV become ubiquitous, it's feasible we might have an exponentiating problem on our hands; imagine a near-future in which epileptic fits and "visionary" episodes triggered by electromagnetic allergies are commonplace. I'm reminded of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" -- we're saturating our environment with EM radiation without understanding its long-term effects, just as we once unhesitatingly used toxic chemical pesticides.

Could the thriving wireless industry be an unintentional attempt to upgrade the collective unconscious, an unwitting communion with the Other via casual contact with technology?

The BIG Picture (by astronaut John Young)





"The human race is at total war. Our enemy is ignorance, pure and simple. The last 25 years of NASA's Solar System exploration including Earth is telling us what we need to do to preserve our species. This new knowledge is useless unless we act on it. Large volcanoes on Earth, giant impacts on Earth, or unreliable solar activity cannot be ignored. Historical statistics show that these events are likely in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. Knowing what we know now, we are being irresponsible in our failure to make the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly discovered severely threatened and probably endangered species -- us. NASA is not about the 'Adventure of Human Space Exploration,' we are in the deadly serious business of saving the species. All Human Exploration's bottom line is about preserving our species over the long haul."

Young is absolutely correct. But ignorance is a tenacious enemy. Will we triumph, in the long run? The odds are stacked against us; I would be quite surprised if we survived our technological adolescence and went on to become a robust space-faring civilization. As a species, we appear to lack the sense of perspective so direly necessary if we're to redefine our role in the Cosmos.

Related:

Former Astronaut, Engineers Hope to Deflect Asteroid

"Former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the foundation, spoke about its goal at the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. 'To deflect an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015. And we're not saying to write a paper about it, to think about it, to talk about it. We're saying our goal is to deflect an asteroid, that is, to move an asteroid, to change its orbit, by 2015,' he says."

Superstorm Confirmation--It Has Happened Before...and May Again

"5,200 years ago, alpine meadows from Peru to Switzerland were suddenly buried in mountains of snow. Oetzi, the famous ice man, was caught in one of the storms in Switzerland and remained frozen until 1991. The world climate suddenly became much drier and colder as water vapor was trapped in ice. The Sahara desert appeared, destroying in a matter of years a vast temperate region and turning it to a sandy waste. Worldwide drought ravaged forest and grassland alike. What happened to human beings--of which there were about 250 million on the planet at the time--remains obscure, but documents like the Popul vuh, which describes an enormous upheaval, suggest that extraordinary climactic violence accompanied the change."

Meanwhile . . .

Freak storms kill six in France

"A freak hurricane-force wind has struck the French capital Paris and much of the country's north, killing at least six people, say the emergency services."

FLEETING IMAGES OF FEARFUL FACES REVEAL NEUROCIRCUITRY OF UNCONSCIOUS ANXIETY

"'Psychologists have suggested that people with anxiety disorders are very sensitive to subliminal threats and are picking up stimuli the rest of us do not perceive,' says Dr. Joy Hirsch, professor of neuroradiology and psychology and director of the fMRI Research Center at Columbia University Medical Center, where the study was conducted. 'Our findings now demonstrate a biological basis for that unconscious emotional vigilance.'"

More deliciously opaque commentary from India . . .

A secret project in India's Defense Research Organization that can change the world as we know it - anti-gravity lifters tested in Himalayas?

"Dighi in Pune, the city of the brightest Indian defense research scientists and engineers is full of whispers these days. According to some sources in Pune the scientists are tight lipped and say they cannot speak till 2012. What is going to happen in 2012? No one knows but they keep saying before any question is asked - 'I know nothing!' If you carefully keep your ears on these whispers you will realize India has tested something no one wants to talk about, It is a break through in conventional Physics and traditional mechanical and aeronautical engineering."

Your soul is bound to the Solitary Rose: The
Alone.

"When I wake up alone, the shades are still
drawn on the cold window pane so they cast
their lines on my bed and lines on my
face."

The Solitary Rose is associated with loneliness,
melancholy, and patience. It is governed by
the goddess Merope and its sign is The Sword,
or Unrequited Love.

As a Solitary Rose, you may be summed up as a
hopeless romantic. You desire love and have so
much love to give, but things just never seem to
work out the way you want them to. In life,
you can be very optimistic, even when things
are gray and nothing works out to your
expectations.


What Rose Is Your Soul Bound To?
brought to you by Quizilla



I can't say I didn't see this one coming. On the subject of doomed romance, I finally got around to starting Kathi Diamant's "Kafka's Last Love."

Remote control rifle range debuts

"A Texas company is considering letting web users use a remote-controlled rifle to shoot down deer, antelope and wild pigs."

I have an idea: Why don't we all have neurosurgery that neatly and efficiently excises the part of our brains responsible for empathy? I mean, why not just get it over with?

I'm a vegetarian; I find the idea of eating chunks of dead animals distasteful, and honestly marvel a bit at people who don't. But I typically shut up about it because when people ask why I don't eat meat, I figure I'll invariably come across as self-righteous and abrasive if I tell them the truth. So I say I don't eat meat for health reasons, which is partially true.

At least casual meat-eating seems innocuous enough; it's hard if not impossible to get emotional about an anonymous slab of beef, especially when it's been cooked, marinated, spiced, salted, and buried under tufts of parsley in an attempt to disguise its true identity. Hunting is different. Hunting -- which, contrary to myth, is not a "sport" in any sense of the word -- demands that the participant actively suppress his or her capacity for empathy in favor of a dose of farcical "accomplishment," a bit of macho street-cred.

In a sane world, efforts like remote-control hunting would show just how gutless and imbecilic hunting really is. Unfortunately, this isn't likely to happen; in our world, people will be lining up for this shit . . .

Here's a must-see holiday video sure to bring tears to your nostrils. If you have a slow connection, it's worth the wait; go harvest your icecubes or something.

More cryptic extraterrestrial news from the world's newest UFO capitol!

Strange microwave and radio signals around the glacier at Kailash in India-China Himalayas - extra terrestrial signals?

"People in deep Himalayas in Chinese territory have recently reported strange microwave and radio signals. The signals are most prominent around a region called Kailash regarded by Hindus for thousands of years as the door to heaven and home of God Shiva. According to tourists and pilgrims the signals are real and no one knows where they are coming from."

Have you ever been around people who are functionally dead? People whose lives have become so automatic and uninspired that they're miserable and simply don't realize it?

You find high concentrations of these people in the corporate/political world. They're typically cloyingly religious and, for simple lack of a better term, total assholes. But they've got this craving for justification; deep down, something in them requires validation. On some level they know their "purpose" -- if one can call it that -- is to stick out their genetically allotted time on this planet before keeling over from disease or age. So they become self-righteous, arrogant -- and deeply boring.

These people suck the very prospect of vitality out of the air. Their presence induces fatigue, depression, anxiety.

And they own the goddamned planet.

Better for old to kill themselves than be a burden, says Warnock

"Warnock's views are of considerable significance as she sat on an influential Lords select committee that agreed on a complete ban on euthanasia in 1993. Last year, however, she and two other peers on the committee conceded that the law needed to be reviewed and backed a private member's bill permitting assisted suicide for the terminally ill."





I think humane assisted euthanasia should be available to anyone, regardless of medical condition. We're so afraid of death that we've effectively criminalized it, as if it's something unutterably obscene; consequently, we're unable to deal with it in any productive context. Ironically enough, you run up against the same ideological paralysis when you talk about extending healthy lifespans; suddenly death ceases to be abhorrent and becomes natural, even "sacred."

We're afraid of dying; we're afraid of living forever. So most of us settle for the willful oblivion of organized religion, television-watching and flag-waving. It's not death -- not quite -- but it certainly isn't living, insofar as "living" implies some capacity for productivity.

And suicidal people are supposedly unbalanced? At least they know what they want, which is vastly more than you can say for most.

NOAA REPORTS WET, WARM YEAR FOR THE U.S. IN 2004

"The average global temperature anomaly for combined land and ocean surfaces from January-December 2004 (based on preliminary data) is expected to be 0.55 degrees F (0.31 degrees C) above the 1880-2003 long-term mean, making 2004 the 4th warmest year since 1880 (the beginning of reliable instrumental records). Averaged over the year, land surface temperatures were anomalously warm throughout western North America, southern and western Asia and Europe. Boreal fall (September-November) as well as November were warmest on record for combined land and ocean surfaces."

"Watch ants live and burrow into the highly nutritious, transparent and non toxic gel, creating an amazing pattern of tunnels. Antquariums were developed from NASA technology created to study and understand the development of animal life without gravity. The gel has special properties ensuring it does not compress and crush the ants by the immense g forces during NASA Space Shuttle take off."

Wow. Is it too late to add this thing to my Christmas wish-list?

Skeletal Systems





"Each character resides on a translucent, hinged panel. When the panel is lifted the character's skeletal structure is revealed giving each a certain validity and glimpse into its origins. Each panel is hand-drawn with archival ink and covered with an acrylic/acetate transparency."

This gallery exhibition has been making the rounds online (I first encountered it at Chapel Perilous), but in case you haven't seen it, start clicking. This guy deserves a MacArthur grant.

Now reading: "Singularity Sky" by Charles Stross

What's playing:

1.) Meat Is Murder (The Smiths)
2.) Automatic for the People (R.E.M.)
3.) OK Computer (Radiohead)
4.) Bloodflowers (The Cure)
5.) The Cure (The Cure)

NASA Eyes Effects of a Giant 'Brown Cloud' Worldwide

"The ozone-monitoring instrument on the NASA Aura satellite is providing scientists with new data about the brown cloud. The high-detail images from the new instrument promise to help scientists address major questions that include 'what is pollution?' and 'what is natural?'"

I can't resist, um, "borrowing" this from John Shirley's site:

"Macy's ran a big ad for Paris Hilton's new perfume, which is called...Paris Hilton. The copy says that, like Paris Hilton, the perfume is 'sophisticated...brilliant...' Those were the two words you had in mind, when you thought of her, right? Sophisticated. Brilliant.

"Her new scent 'has notes of frozen apple, peach nectar and wet ozone,' according to a reviewer. And maybe just a hint of the terror of tortured lab animals. 'It's screaming, sure, but it's eyes aren't seriously damaged, we can approve this one.' That's the Paris Hilton spirit.

"The ad also says it reflects her 'mysterious' qualities. The mysteries of her internet porn? Like, this mystery: is that a zit or a birthmark on her thigh? I haven't seen the video but from what I've seen of porn, if there's a blemish--it's probably a zit.

"'Now you have the opportunity to share a bit of the magic that is Paris Hilton.' The magic of Paris Hilton--like when she's on reality tv, whining about having to do some work with her hands. ...

"They should describe her perfume appropriately. 'If you feel overwhelmed by your day, spray on some Paris Hilton--her shallowness will become your shallowness. You'll forget about all those nuances, those complexities--you'll think only of yourself. How you look, and who's hot, and where to shop. It's just that simple. It's just...Paris Hilton.'"

New science standards may include intelligent design





"The smoldering embers of the evolution debate that brought international attention to the Kansas State Board of Education could be fanned back to flame as the panel takes up its triennial review of public school teaching standards." (Via Jason at Busy, Busy, Busy, who has a front-row seat to this insanity.)

Even the term "intelligent design" is disingenuous. The conservatives pushing for it aren't the least bit interested in, say, the possibility that the universe was fine-tuned by some arbitrarily advanced intelligence, or that we're someone else's artificial life experiment. Those scenarios are at least as ego-threatening as evolution. "Intelligent design" is a deceptive euphemism for Biblical Creationism, in which a big dude in the sky created mankind "in his own image." That's not speculation; it's superstition.

Fun fact: In a few short weeks this blog will celebrate its second-year anniversary, which is rather surprising when I stop to think about it. I wasn't sure if I'd "take" to the blog medium or not; when I started, I was pretty much doing it as a self-centered writing exercise. So it's very cool that I've picked up a few readers along the way -- that was unexpected. I've been meaning to install a guestbook . . .

Literary projects I'm either working on, plan on working on, or sincerely wish I had the time to work on:

1.) "Women and Children First" (near-future post-"ecocaust" novel)
2.) "The Postbiological Cosmos: Artificial Intelligence and Alien Visitation" (speculative exploration of emerging technologies and their impact on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence)
3.) "Posthuman Blues" (the book!)
4.) "The Color of Television: A History of the Cyberpunk Movement" (sprawling, exhaustively researched chronicle of a science fiction sub-genre)

Any publishers reading this? Hello . . . ?

The Megatsunami: Possible Modern Threat

"So should we worry? 'Maybe,' says McMurtry. He thinks that a tsunami, which can race across an entire ocean in a matter of hours, is a real threat to urbanized coastlines. Other experts agree that a large tsunami would be bad news for, say, Los Angeles or New York City. And tsunamis are not parochial. One originating in Alaska in 1964 killed people in California and generated damaging surges clear down in Chile."

On the other hand, I've always wanted to jet-ski in Kansas.

There's an influential contingent that refuses to acknowledge that depleted uranium is in any way bad -- a pretty nifty act of doublethink since the stuff is literally nuclear waste. (Of course, these are the same people who make a point not to inhale the stuff on a regular basis.) If I had the money, I'd pay to have this Flash video (or something very much like it) broadcast to millions of American TV-viewers right in the middle of Monday Night Football.

And if those deformed infants seem reassuringly distant, wait until the Iraq war comes home.

Device for the Paralyzed Turns Thinking to Doing

"Instead, scientists at the New York State Department of Health and the State University of New York designed a system to monitor the faint electricity that naturally radiates from every brain and then created special computer software to translate those reflections of thought into direct action."

William Gibson: "The street finds its own uses for things."

First-hand Accounts of Underground Explosions In The North Tower

"The damage to the parking garage and lobby simultaneous with the first plane impact are also indicative of the effects of high explosives, with widespread blast damage and fine dust covering the entire scene."

These reports seem to bolster the anomalous seismograph readings that preceded the towers' collapse. Was 9-11-01 a phildickian sleight-of-hand?

Living cells get nanosurgery

"Now, Japanese researchers have turned an atomic force microscope (AFM) into a surgical tool for cells that could add or remove molecules from precise locations inside a cell without harming it."

Very cool. We're getting closer to molecular cell repair technology.

BREAKING UPDATE!: CLINT CURTIS 'STUNS' JUDICIARY COMM HEARINGS IN OHIO WITH 'JAW DROPPING' SWORN TESTIMONY!

Hmmm. If this is real then I would think impeachment might be a very real possibility.

UFO Appears to Explode in China

"Xinhua News Agency reports that witnesses saw a strange, shining object cross the sky at 11:36 PM Saturday night, followed by tremendous booms. Over 700 witnesses have reported seeing the phenomenon. Police are searching for debris in the area where it fell. The earth trembled across a 70 square mile area around the western Chinese city of Lanzhou, suggesting an impact with the ground. But so far, nothing has been found."

An errant rocket or would-be spy satellite?

Crows as Clever as Great Apes, Study Says

"New Caledonian crows manufacture two very different types of tool for finding prey. Hooks crafted from twigs are used to poke grubs from holes in trees, while they also cut up stiff leaves with their beaks, carefully sculpting them into sharp instruments for probing leaf detritus for insects and other invertebrates."

Prairie dogs, crows . . . what's next?

I like this news item, by the way. Perhaps if humanity snuffs itself crows will reign supreme. Imagine avian archaeologists a few million years from now stumbling across the ruins of a Wal-Mart.

Reading assignment: "Brain Wave" by Poul Anderson

Film assignment: "The Birds" by Alfred Hitchcock (What else?)

NEW SEISMIC DATA REFUTES OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

"However, the Palisades seismic record shows that -- as the collapses began -- a huge seismic 'spike' marked the moment the greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck the Earth."

Louisiana teens getting driver's license also register for selective service

Oh, I just love this one . . .

"There may be no 'plans' for a national military draft, but that hasn't kept Louisiana from registering teenagers too young to serve in case conditions change."

Yes, W has "promised" that the draft will not be reinstated. Some people might even believe him. But it's the reaction of these teens that makes this article a gem. Check it out:

"After being informed of the new condition for getting a first-time license, some of the teenagers only shrugged.

"'I don't care,' Mark Fontenot, a 16-year-old student at Apostolic Christian Academy, said.

"Pineville High School student Josh Stokes, 15, said, 'I think it's good.'

"But neither student would elaborate on his view."

You know why they wouldn't elaborate? Because it's likely they're literally unable. They've been born into a mindless hive society where dissenting opinions and creative solutions are the stuff of bureaucratic nightmares, where the slightest hint of intellect arouses suspicion and hatred.

Despite their apathy, there's a better-than-average chance these kids will be dead before they're thirty.

"I don't care."

"I think it's good."

The voice of a new generation.

Ed Gehrman reports on the discovery of the alleged UFO crash site that supposedly yielded the weird-looking body in the "alien autopsy" footage. This can only get better. I don't buy the crash-recovery operation described by the alleged "cameraman" (who, like the erroneously stamped film canisters, is probably a commercial fiction), but I'm glad that others are beginning to take an interest in the site. You never know. And sometimes, when you do, you're wrong.

I had an interesting "visionary" experience while drifting to sleep last night. It was similar to other recent episodes in that it had the feel of a lucid dream (although I was awake with my eyes open) but different insofar as it seemed like I was interacting with an actual technology of some kind.

In front of my face, at reading distance, there appeared to be multiple rows of compressed text, each word encapsulated in an ellipse. Each row moved rapidly from the right to the left -- too fast for me to make out any sort of narrative, but acutely responsive, so that I could visually choose a specific word-balloon and have it persist for a moment before vanishing -- instantly replaced by a stream of words with similar connotations. It was like looking into the mind of a language database or some futuristic heads-up display word processor. It also had the feel of a timed quiz or test of some sort; I can see something like it eventually becoming a high-bandwidth Web application. If I knew how to write Flash, I could probably craft a pretty good approximation.

Perhaps significantly, I seem to have experienced increased hypnogogic phenomena like this since I suffered a retinal occlusion a few months ago, temporarily blotting out the sight in my right eye. Maybe my retina (technically, part of the brain) healed with heightened sensitivity to the phosphene activity most people experience when they close their eyes in a dark room. My subconscious could be amplifying ocular "noise," allowing me to experience certain dream imagery while not fully asleep.

Is It Time to Scrap SETI?

The mainstream dares to question the esteemed Dr. Shostak and his grant-hungry minions!

"A computer can't show a picture that has been compressed by another computer unless it knows how to decompress it, and likewise we couldn't decode a television signal that had been compressed unless we already knew the code. And, Newman and his colleagues argue, any advanced civilization that has used wireless communications for even a few decades would surely have figured out that it makes sense to encode."

Of course, you could argue that that's anthropomorphic chauvinism at its most blatant. After all, who knows what real-life ETs are going to do, or how they'll go about doing it? Still, it's a good question.





The article goes on:

"'In our paper we proved that there's an equivalent result for radio messages,' Newman says. 'The most information-rich radio message looks like thermal radiation, which is the standard kind of radiation that we see in the sky. So that would make it difficult to tell the difference between an intentional transmission that was very efficient and just natural phenomena.'"

So do we scrap SETI? Is it really a "Silly Effort To Investigate," as claimed by ufologist Stan Friedman? I argue that we keep SETI -- but take the necessary pains to keep it flexible, theoretically versatile, and democratized. Humanity needs to prize SETI -- the most potentially momentous endeavor in history -- out of the hands of a few technocratic gurus. There are many ways in which we can do this. We could, for example, enrich the SETI inquiry by calling on minds in fields as disparate as cultural anthropology and planetary geology.

Contrary to SETI dogma, it's by no means a given that a message from extraterrestrials will take the form of an electromagnetic broadcast. This possibility, once-heretical, is beginning to gain attention, with talk of interstellar artifacts surfacing in the scientific literature. We could, for example, be veritably marinated in microscopic ET machines -- "nanoprobes" -- and not even realize it. Or our "junk" DNA could turn out to be an actual message crafted by long-ago genetic engineers.

I'll be talking about this stuff in Sedona next month. If you're in the area, drop by. (More information TBA.)

Pontifical university to take on the devil

"A Vatican university said on Thursday it will hold a special 'theoretical and practical' course for Roman Catholic priests on Satanism and exorcism in response to what the Church says is a worrying interest in the occult, particularly among the young."

Here's a perfect example of a belief system in the act of perpetuating itself, obliviously unchecked by the so-called authorities. If you're not rolling your eyes at the implications of the above article, you're missing the delicious irony at work -- as are the rubes at the Vatican.

Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software

"According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program to 'control the vote.' At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations."

Nothing new here, exactly, but I couldn't resist the NASA angle.

Forget Canada; I'm moving to Antarctica.

"Fuelled by guilt, hype and stupidity, Christmas is certainly the biggest and most unpleasant consumer binge of the whole year. This year why not get into the Zone and make World Enterprises the centre of your anti-christmas activities."

What Do You Say to An Extraterrestrial? (by SETI's Seth Shostak)

"So here's my take on message construction: Forget about sending mathematical relationships, the value of pi, or the Fibonacci series. Rid your brain of the thought (no doubt borrowed from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind') that aliens are best addressed with musical arpeggios. No, if we want to broadcast a message from Earth, I propose that we just feed the Google servers into the transmitter. Send the aliens the World Wide Web. It would take half a year or less to transmit this in the microwave; using infrared lasers shortens the broadcast time to no more than two days."

Actually, I have in mind something a little more ambitious: Send a human. Not a flesh-and-blood human, but the uncensored digitized contents of a real-life human brain, along with a primer explaining how to assemble it in a machine substrate. (Of course, it might be a good idea to be careful who you send.)

In any case, it's nice to see Seth actually stretching his brain muscles a little. You have to start somewhere.

Someone instant-messaged me the other day to ask for my ideas on cattle mutilations. While I don't claim to know what they're all about, I'm satisfied that some of them are indeed mysterious -- but not necessarily due to an overarching alien agenda. My best guess is that a "black-ops" government project is monitoring the spread of toxins and/or diseases by sampling cattle.

The guy I was chatting with posed the obvious question: But if it's the government doing a clandestine study, why scare people when it could buy its own cattle-land for research? After all, who would know?

My answer is that people would know. They might not be aware of the ultimate purpose of the project, but sooner or later they'd be curious -- and asking uncomfortable questions. Keep in mind that Area 51 was a tourist destination long before it officially existed; hiding research projects in the Southwest isn't nearly as easy as one might assume.

So rather than risk snooping researchers who might expose a frightening secret, why not simply do all research "in the field," using made-up UFO scare-stories to keep the project safely protected behind the "laughter curtain"? I wouldn't be in the least surprised to discover that some of the UFO reports associated with cattle mutilations were actually staged to confuse the issue, and perhaps even frighten away potential witnesses. (Inevitably, there are unsubstantiated rumors of grisly human mutilations, supposedly the work of cattle-snatching alien biologists.)

Aside from remaining invisible -- albeit with its handiwork in plain view -- the project could expand its sample population by plucking cattle and horses from disparate locations; this makes sense if the goal is to actively track contaminants as opposed to studying them in the privacy of a lab.

My question: What, exactly, are they tracking? And how dire is the threat, assuming there is one?

Electrical brainstorms busted as source of ghosts

"In the past, scientists have claimed that religious or out-of-body experiences result from excessive bursts of electrical activity in the brain. In the 1980s, Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist at the Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, began exploring this idea through a series of experiments."





What this article doesn't mention is Persinger's fascinating theory that alien abduction experiences are induced by EM fields. Or that UFO sightings are concentrated in areas prone to tectonic "earthlights," phenomena often sighted near faults and preceding earthquakes. According to Persinger, someone exposed to an earthlight would enter a trance-like epileptic state and experience "alien" imagery -- and honestly perceive the event as UFO contact.

Of course, if the Earth itself is an organism, earthlights might be a way of expressing the planet's collective unconscious through human mediums.

Going even further, Albert Budden insists that man-made EM fields are also a culprit in many so-called hauntings and close encounters -- and suggests the popularized "alien face" is somehow wired into our brains.