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I feel like this is a bigger deal than just some Collgehumor video.
Electronic Tattoo Display runs on Blood
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Clive Thompson on Science Fiction
"If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas."
Have you ever wondered what space smells like? Yeah, me neither.
NASA beams the Beatles into space
NASA broadcast "Across The Universe" into outer space using the Deep Space Network. Asked to comment, Paul McCartney wisely noted, "Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens."
The Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer (ENDURANCE) is a $2.3 million project funded by NASA's Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets Program. It's autonomous underwater vehicle designed to swim untethered under ice, creating three-dimensional maps of underwater environments, and ostensibly is a test for exploring Europa, the icy Jovian moon that just might harbor life.
The Archive of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences: as amazing as it sounds.
Literally!
I love it when the New York Times gets all tripped out on science stuff.
Hugest Black Hole Ever Discovered
18 billion times the size of our sun!
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February 2007 Archives
Universe Worldcast #2
Archived From February 19, 2007 (10) Comments
Following the runaway success of the first Universe podcast, I have decided to make this -- so to speak -- a running thing. This one is less "vibes" and more "ambiance," and includes some human voices reading texts, so if that kind of thing upsets you, steer clear.
Some highlights, which might elucidate the relevance of any of this, are the Brian Eno recording of algorithmic bell tones inspired by the Long Now clock's now-prototyped chime mechanism, Cacao's wonderful Bucky Fuller-inspired dome music, Mort Garson's Moog version of "Let The Sunshine In," and a couple glimpses into yours truly's archaic 4-Track recording projects, one of which features the voice of Unarius founder Ernest Norman.
Universe Podcast #2 (27.9 MB, 30:22 Min) Playlist:
Pyha Vuori -- Thunder Sundress (Unreleased)
Having a Coke With You (1960) -- Frank O'Hara (The Voice of the Poet)
Changes Where Bell Number = Repeat Number -- Brian Eno (January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now)
Why I Take Good Care Of My Macintosh Computer -- Gary Snyder (Poetry on Record)
Let The Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures) -- Mort Garson (Electronic Hair Pieces)
Buoyant -- Cacao (Domes of the World)
Reciting The Airships -- Eluvium (Copia)
Tesla (Unarius Version) -- The Skulls (Unreleased)
Little Black Buzzer -- Ivor Cutler (Hammersmith Lyric, 10-Mar-02)
What About Dying? -- David Ignatow (Poetry on Record)
Throughout this podcast, there are snips of ambient noise from the recording "Steam" by Alfred Schnittke, from a record called "Electroacoustic Music (Russian Early Electronics 1964-71)." These are mostly to make the poems sound less like poems.
For your iPod!
5:33 PM | Permalink | (10) Comments
Dark World, Dark Signs
Archived From February 13, 2007 (1) Comments
The most recent issue of Cabinet Magazine has a really good article by artist and CIA expert Trevor Palgen about the iconography of military insignia, particularly of those branches of the military that "don't exist." How do you celebrate your work with traditional military regalia, Palgen asks, while retaining the secrecy which defines it? It's an interesting question.
Well, sometimes you don't. Take for example this embroidered patch, distributed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the US "black" space agency primarily responsible for the operation of military reconnaissance satellites (and God-knows-what-else). The patch was released by the NRO to commemorate the launch of a Titan 4B from Vandenberg Air Force Base -- one that boosted, according to the Air Force, a classified payload into orbit.
Classified, that is, unless you can read into the NRO's weird symbolism. Apparently, the patch -- right down to the angles of those boomerang shapes -- is a dead giveaway about the launch payload, that, it has now been confirmed, were four "Lacrosse" recon-satellittes, which give the U.S. military the ability to monitor problem spots around the world and accurately target weapons in almost real time. Yikes, that is a whole other ball of yarn entirely that I am not going to tangle with now.
On a more abstract level, these kinds of patches betray the U.S. military's deep-rooted love of insignia and symbolism. So profound was their desire to reduce, stylize, and graphically compartmentalize the event that they couldn't contain themselves from nearly giving away really classified information. It's baffling, though. Who is this highly-coded symbolism, this "formal doctrine of signs," as Charles Sanders Pierce had it, for? The people that fly the covert experimental CIA jet-planes? Most of the time, the visual rhetoric is so obscure, and yet so clearly steeped in a formal methodology of signifiers, that it's hard to see who might have the pleasure of "getting" it.
The Cabinet article has nice, full-color reproductions of some particularly oblique NRO patches, one depicting the planet wrapped up in three giant, venemous snakes flanked by the latin phrase "Nunquam Ante, Nunquam Iterum," which literally means, "Never Before, Never Again." It's enough to make me think that there's something to the whole reptoids thing.
You can also buy a slightly modded reproduction of an Air Force patch commemorating a flight test of a B-2 stealth bomber. This one boasts a classic "grey" ET and the slogan "tastes like chicken," in Latin.
Trevor Palgen, who is incidentally a really interesting artist that leads camping trips to view clandestine military bases and tracks unmarked CIA aircraft, has made an entire installation called "Symbology" addressing this issue. From his website:
"The symbols and insignia shown in the Symbology series provide a glimpse into how contemporary military units answer questions that have historically been the purview of mystery cults, secret societies, religions, and mystics: How does one represent that which, by definition, must not be represented?"
8:03 PM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Next Stop Space Elevator
Archived From February 2, 2007 (19) Comments
If we're going to make it in this future of ours, we've got to stop thinking that our planet hangs in some kind of splendid isolation in the dead vapor of empty space. We're part and parcel of a dynamic system, a vast cosmos of activity and, probably, intelligence; though our home planet's life span is limited, the Universe is not going anywhere.
That said, meet the Space Elevator, probably the most revolutionary idea in the history of aeronautics. Why? Because it's exactly what it sounds like. An elevator. To space.
What's so elegant about the space elevator, to me, is that it draws a clean line of connection between our centuries-old conception of "down here" and the newly approachable "up there," or, as Bucky would have it, "in" and "out," respectively. While space shuttles, rockets, and satellites retain a certain abstract quality -- off they blast, in a florid burst of flame and noise, the mechanics of the whole thing still pretty mystical -- the space elevator is concrete, as though humankind were reaching its own tentative arm into the great beyond, an unknown which will, of course, quickly normalize.
Despite its seemingly implausible nature, the space elevator is totally pragmatic, ultimately much cheaper and more economical than the high-energy rigamarole we're currently faced with every time we need to wrest something from the grips of our planet's escape gravity. The method is simple, like most good ideas are: a tether held taut by the inertia of the planet's rotation, spanning from the surface of the Earth to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit, serving as a sort of cosmic freeway, shuttling "lifters" out of the planet's gravity and into orbit. It would be built somewhere near the equator or on a man-made island, capable of shifting coordinates if necessary.
Think about it. No thunderous rocketry. No risky landings. Rockets are so expensive -- and launching them so damn burdensome -- that they will probably always keep the democratization of space travel at bay. So what are we waiting for?
Arthur C. Clarke, perhaps the most ardent and famous promoter of the space elevator, was often asked when he thought the first one might be built. A little flippantly, he noted, "my answer has always been: about 50 years after everyone has stopped laughing. Maybe I should now revise it to 25 years."
Of course, not everyone is laughing. Some companies, such as Liftport Group, based in Bremerton, Washington, are already on it. Confident of the elevator's viability, they're already hard at work developing the ancillary technologies (the robotics, for example, which will form the heart of the lifter) that this paradigm-shattering device will need. Which is what is so stunning about the elevator: we have all the technology to implement it. The only thing missing is a strong enough material to build the tether out of; burgeoning carbon nanotube technology seems to fit the bill. Once we find a way to put the nanotubes, which have a theoretical tensile strength far and above any other man-made material, into practice, we'll have all our ducks in a row.
Brian Dunbar, systems administrator at Liftport, optimistically concedes that space elevator groups are "a little like Goddard in his cabbage patch, knowing that Nell should work - but there is more engineering and study needed before we light that fuse."
Of course, we have the technology to do a lot of things: stem cell research, cloning, a $100 computer...but that doesn't mean that we always do them. In order for a legitimate space elevator project to take shape, a friendly political climate is perhaps even more necessary than carbon nanotubes are. After all, it can be difficult to instill in an administration -- let alone the greater public -- the importance of these kinds of projects. Politicians (and most people) think in the short term, generally unconcerned with what happens 10, 20, or 1,000 years from now. If they didn't, my generation would certainly not be left with the blunder of global warming, nor would we have to agonize so much about the provenance of our food. Galvanizing people into action for something like the space elevator, which, off the bat, does not seem immediately worthwhile, is improbable. Look at what NASA is replacing the Shuttle with, for crying out loud: little rockets that look like the Apollo modules. Are we going forward or what?
As James Gardner, complexity theorist and author of The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos, more elegantly put it, "framing the political debate in a way that will lead to a sustainable political consensus will be as important a determinant of success as the capacity to overcome the formidable technical challenges that confront would-be space elevator builder."
12:56 PM | Permalink | (19) Comments