WORMHOLES
I feel like this is a bigger deal than just some Collgehumor video.
Electronic Tattoo Display runs on Blood
Remember getting your mind really blown by new technology?
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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September 2007 Archives
Pale Blue Dot
Archived From September 25, 2007 (5) Comments
To aid in the gestation of a new project, I've been watching a whole lot of Carl Sagan programs.
Namely, the 13-part epic of Cosmos, which remains, to me, the most comprehensive survey of the Universe and our place within it ever presented to the lay public. Sagan's devastating empathy, his respect of the viewer's intelligence, as well as his often outrageously optimistic sense of human community, have never been replicated in television. He shifts deftly from dallies in human history to well-diagrammed explanations of evolution, stressing the clarity and self-evidence of science and framing its longstanding opposition -- organized religion, unenlightened government policy, etc -- as natural and understandable human foibles that we must overcome together.
Modern science programs are usually hosted either by flashy, serious-voiced British actors or anonymous narrators; Sagan, however, takes it all on himself. He never conceals the fact that he's a total nerd, a courduroy-jacketed cosmologist from Brooklyn who gets stoked about watching live Voyager feeds from the JPL labs in Pasadena. Rather, he embraces it, presents himself as a helpful authority, someone genuinely invested in the well-being of the human race, happily taking on the enormous responsibility of educating us.
For an example of the moral themes put forth by Sagan (as well as his close collaborators, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter), witness this, an excerpt from his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. I found this while errantly clicking on Google Video (incidentally, Google Moon?!), and came pretty close to losing it.
3:07 PM | Permalink | (5) Comments
Time-Based Art
Archived From September 13, 2007 (1) Comments
This is almost certainly irrelevant, last-minute information, but for those of you readers who are both a) Portland residents, and b) free this evening, I will be presenting a once-ever-only immersive Power Point environment at PICA's Time-Based Arts festival tonight. It will be around 10:30pm at this year's "The Works," the Wonder Ballroom, at 128 NE Russell St.
This event presumably costs some money, but will be excellent. Other than myself, Lucky Dragons, Hooliganship, and Mean Age will present information and music. Also screening will be a pantheon of animated films from such luminaries as Takeshi Murata, E*Rock, and Michael Bell-Smith.
7:18 PM | Permalink | (1) Comments
Creatures of the Cosmos
Archived From September 4, 2007 (5) Comments
"We are one planet. We know who speaks for the nations, but who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?"
-- Carl Sagan
2:05 PM | Permalink | (5) Comments
Conclave of Light
Archived From September 3, 2007 (3) Comments
Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with my tenderness for the Unarians, a UFO cult-cum-Renaissance science foundation that has been based in El Cajon, California since the 1960s. In 2006 I made something of a pilgrimage to their compound and left with a profound sense of mystified pity, or pitiful mysticism, which was ultimately a kind of admiration for the pastel dreamscape of their cosmology.
In any case, I occasionally receive the "Unarius E-Flash," an enlightened e-mail newsletter. In its better moments it makes glowing pronouncements about the Unarius public-access television production studio going HD or the re-release of "Infinite Perspectus" on MP3. Today, I received the email I've been waiting for since my El Cajon visit: a flyer advertising the much-awaited Unarian celebration, "The 24th Interplanetary Conclave of Light." If I weren't otherwise occupied in the month of October, I would be there with my turquoise sweat-suit on. Is there anyone I can wrangle into a little investigative reporting?
If you have any doubts, this pictorial tour of the 2005 conclave and video (sorry, Realplayer) of the dove release (FROM A UFO) into the blazing San Diego sky might change your mind.
11:00 AM | Permalink | (3) Comments