HISTORIES OF THINGS TO COME

Fountain of Youth 13: The Psychological Distress of Immortality

2012-02-17T00:01:00.053-05:00

What Else Is There? (2012) © by oO-Rein-Oo at Deviant Art. Reproduced with kind perimission.

On January 30, novelist Jonathan Franzen expressed his worries to the Guardian that ebooks would corrode values and diminish an appreciation for paper books (thanks to -J.). "All the real things are dying off," he sighed. This provoked plenty of sharp criticism in the comments, for example: "Jonathan Franzen warns that people shouldn't travel by train as the greater than horse carriage speed may suffocate passengers through an involuntary inhalation of ether."

But Franzen made one thought-provoking comment that, if extrapolated, could explain why we age:

"One of the consolations of dying is that [you think], 'Well, that won't have to be my problem'," he said. "Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically."

This got me thinking about the primary cause of ageing. What if the primary reason we age is not physical, as futurists such as Kurzweil would have us believe? What if we age because our brains are hard-wired to exist for no more than 100 years at the absolute limit? What if our brains cannot handle the psychological test of ageing, combined with historic change in our environment? What if it's our brains that begin short-circuiting the body, forcing it to collapse and ultimately fail? What if ageing is a measure of how we are mentally able to adapt to change, or not adapt to it? Conversely, does that mean that the true elixir of life is a case of mind over matter?

Retro-Futurism 21: Twitter Not New at All -(STOP)-

2012-02-16T03:34:00.001-05:00

The latest electronic gadget, straight from the 1890s to your desk: the Tworse Key, which digitally translates your telegraph-style Morse Code messages into regular Tweets. Image Source: Economist.

In their heyday, my parents and their friends were the last generation to travel by ship and communicate mainly by telegrams. Their collections of old private letters have wads of telegrams in them. We now see the seemingly obsolete brevity of telegraphy as romantic, and recall its peak as a form of global communication during the 1890s to the 1960s. There's even an Aussie company called Telegram Stop that lets you send old-styled faux telegrams to your friends; they say: "Our telegrams are made to look and feel like a classic telegram from the original days when telegrams were one of the only forms of national and international communications, we’ve taken great care to ensure the experience to the recipient is one that garners surprise and a sense of warmth." They've caught on like wild fire, and are especially popular in lieu of e-cards.

At the Turn of a Different Century

2012-02-16T00:01:00.233-05:00

The War of Wealth, a Broadway play by Charles Turner Dazey that dramatized a run on a bank during the depression of the 1890s (the play opened 10 February 1895). (Library of Congress; Image © Strobridge Lith. Co., c1895) Image Source: Wiki.

Exponential technological change. Recession spreading from the west to Asia. Unemployment. Middle Eastern uprisings. Occupy. Internet clampdowns. Budding cyber conflicts and a new class system. Global marketing and collapsing local cultures. Nuclear tensions. People are being tested. Hardship turns private lives upside down, but walks hand-in-hand with opportunity. The test is a moral and spiritual one above all, a test of resolve and a test of the heart. In a state of flux, some answers are superficial but look substantial, while others look risky but actually are profound and enduring. Conspiracy theories multiply, as do reports of sasquatches, ghosts and UFOs. The question is not whether these things exist or not, because they are fringe constants, the stuff of superstitions, mysteries, myths and legends. If we were to find scientific proof of all three tomorrow, they would quickly be replaced by other things. They haven't changed. We have. What changes is popular credulity. There is a rush to believe in the unbelievable, possibly because that gives a wider range of reference points and hence an illusion of stability to generally accepted reality. It becomes increasingly difficult to read the signs correctly and find stability anywhere.

On January 28, The Art of Manliness quoted a manual entitled Courage by the French pastor, Charles Wagner (1852-1918). Wagner's historic source from 1894 rings true today. The mid-1890s were a time of cultural, political and technological flux, and of economic depression after the Panic of 1893. Wiki: "Until the Great Depression of 1929, the Panic of '93 was the worst economic depression the United States had ever experienced." A credit crunch and financial panic hit Britain and there was a steep drop in trade in Europe. It lasted ten years, and the decade and a half that followed after 1900 was still shaky economically, leading straight into world war. At the same time, the 1890s decade saw the Klondike Gold Rush, the invention of the earliest standardized automobiles, of cinema (the first commercial film, , was shown in 1894), telephone exchanges, and airplanes. Just that list of innovations tells us how much we are still living in the era of 1890s. As of 24 January 2012, there were thirty people left alive in the world who were born in this decade, so it has not quite left living memory and has, in a sense, now returned.

Laugh of the Day: Hyundai Canada Sasquatch Ad

2012-02-15T20:28:00.001-05:00

Image Source: Hyundai via Bigfoot Lunch Club.

The Bigfoot Lunch Club posted a link to Hyundai Canada's new Bigfoot ad campaign. See below the jump for the first funny ad, and go here for the main site which has a whole gallery of actor Douglas Tait as the Sasquatch. This Youtube channel features the on-set bloopers with Tait in costume.

Danse Macabre at the Grammys

2012-02-15T01:21:00.003-05:00

Nicki Minaj and an actor impersonating the Pope at the Grammys. Image Source: Divided States.

The American entertainment industry did not need to fuel the widespread rumours - many of which are viciously racist and anti-Semitic - that top industry people are somehow connected to the Illuminati, Satanic worship and unfolding plots for world domination. The 54th Grammys became a classic example of how a row of events and images can be lined up online to look like the Prince of Darkness has come to visit. Following on Candlemas (aka Imbolc), and the already unsettling symbols used in Madonna's Superbowl extravaganza, wild chatter now suggests that the Grammys were the second in a series of giant public Satanic ceremonies heralding the end of the world. Because Whitney Houston's cause of death is still not determined, and the star was seen alive and well about an hour before her death, her sudden demise is now being linked to the dark symbolic content of the Grammy Awards ceremonies. Conspiracy theories that generally swirl around the entertainment industry merged quickly with theories about Houston's death. Hybrid conspiracies appeared overnight, like a new crop of mushrooms.

Over yesterday, some of the really intense chat forums even went so far as to claim that Houston was a sacrificial lamb, a critical lynchpin in some dark Illuminati ritual, bizarrely enacted in plain sight. One forum commenter plainly felt that bad magic had been set in motion: "Anyone else feeling depressed since last night. I could only watch the grammy's for a short time, it was too strange for me to sit through. Went to bed early, could not sleep, then when I did I had weird dreams. Today I am almost suicidal. Really horrible vibes going on....." For those debating conspiracy theories around Houston's death, even LL Cool J's prayer at the opening of the Grammys took on a sinister tone: "Heavenly Father, we thank You for sharing our sister Whitney with us." Yesterday, Chaka Khan claimed that the music industry was "demonic" in a Piers Morgan interview on CNN, which has fueled more Internet talk.

Gen Y: The Anonymous Generation

2012-02-15T00:01:00.007-05:00

Image Source: CNN.

CNN reports that before the Great Recession hit, nearly one third of the middle classes fell through the cracks and suffered a serious decline in their standard of living, and more will drop into poorer strata in the coming years. According to the article, most of these people are late Generation Jones and younger:

Nearly one third of Americans who were raised in the middle class dropped down the economic ladder as adults -- and that's before the Great Recession hit.

"Being raised in the middle class is not a guarantee that you'll have that same status as an adult," said Erin Currier, project manager at Pew's Economic Mobility Project. "With all the economic turmoil in the past four years, there's good reason to think that downward mobility is more severe."

Pew looked at children born in the early- to mid-1960s and assessed their economic status roughly 40 years later.

Being middle class in the parents' generation meant a household income of roughly $33,000 to $64,000 in 1979. But their children had to earn between $54,000 and $111,000 to maintain their relative standing in society in the mid-2000s. (These figures are adjusted for inflation.)

The middle class is defined as those between the 30th and 70th income percentile.

Marital status and educational attainment had a great bearing on whether people were able to remain in the middle class, Pew found. Race and gender were also factors.

Those who are divorced, widowed or separated are more likely to fall out of the middle class, particularly if they are women. And Americans who don't attend college are also more likely to slip.

One's foothold on the middle class is more secure if you are a white man. Thirty percent of white women and 38% of black men drop out of the middle class, while only 21% of white men do.

Occupy protests seemed at first to come out of a joint working and middle class movement. The initial rhetoric of the 99 per cent was (and is) very much rich versus poor, little guy versus corporate fat cats, the government, the industrial and banking establishments.

But introduce two things - the collapse of the middle classes and a tech dimension - into these protests, and the thrust of unrest starts to look like the middle classes are torn internally and battling amongst themselves for development and control of a new order.

The Mournful Effect of Impending Mayan Doomsday

2012-02-14T01:17:00.000-05:00

North Group temples, Palenque, Mexico. Image (13 Feb. 2012) © A. Evans, National Geographic.

National Geographic travel writer Andrew Evans is currently continuing his tour through the Mexican ruins of Mayan civilization (previously mentioned here) to get to the bottom of the 2012 Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy. His latest post is a poignant and touching commentary on what it really means for civilization to end, yet keep on living; to endure a massive revolution in time, and come out the other side; to persist past catastrophe, and endure with that traumatic legacy across millennia. Everyone should read his commentary on Palenque, as he ponders the haunting fact that the great Mayan 900-year-old society came to a sudden end within the span of a year or two; and no one really knows why:

Wandering among the limestone ruins of temples and palaces of the past, I could not help but wonder how such a smart and sophisticated society could crumble into ruin.

The Maya of Palenque had aqueducts of running water, intelligent architecture, intricate artwork, ball courts and residences that will last much longer than most of the chipboard-walled homes built in America today.

Just as traveling in foreign places makes you reconsider home, standing atop a ruined civilization makes you reconsider your own. Palenque was built around 100 B.C. and was abandoned around 800 A.D. That’s 900 years of civilization that came to an abrupt finish.

In historical terms, our own civilization has yet to stand the test of time. New York City is not even 400 years old—I thought about New York because I spent the morning at Palenque estimating the expanse of the ruins in terms of Manhattan city blocks. I wondered: What would America’s biggest city look like if it were abandoned for the next 1,400 years? Which buildings would stay standing for the long haul, and which ones would crumble and fall? Even in my own relatively brief lifetime, the New York City skyline has changed in a major way.

... [V]isiting Palenque showed me that a world can disappear without actually disappearing.

For the ancient Maya of Palenque, the world most definitely ended. Their city and society ceased to function, and the grandeur and knowledge of their age fell into ruin and forgetting. And yet the Maya are still here. Millions of Maya still live in Mexico today—they live quite a different reality than they did 1,400 years ago, but the people themselves have not disappeared.

Also, the ruins of Palenque still stand—just as they were part of an ancient civilization, they have become part of our civilization today. They are a tourist attraction that inspires the whole world in myriad ways.

Yesterday, resting on the Pyramid of the Cross ... I observed the different visitors interacting with the strange and exotic archaeological sites around them. ... And I, observing these New Age manifestations in silence, found myself in agreement with American explorer John Lloyd Stephens, who in 1840 described Palenque’s “mournful effect.” While their ancient civilization is long finished, the mystery of the Maya is alive in the ruins of Palenque today.

Love in the New Millennium 9: Love Them Robots

2012-02-14T00:00:00.079-05:00

Robots that love you back. Image Source: Lovotics.

Happy Valentine's Day! For my earlier posts on Millennial romance, see my post on love and the Millennial male (here) and love and the Millennial female (here). For today, here's something in between. According to Slate, robotics researchers at the National University of Singapore have solved one of the peskiest problems of Millennial virtual romance: the lack of a physical connection. They have developed mechanical avatars that can transmit physical movements on either side of an Internet link. See below the jump for the robot that physically connects people via Skype, called the Kissinger.

Kissinger is made by the same lab staff who are developing something called the Mini Surrogate. I'll leave you to find out what that is. The researchers are also designing a robot, Lovotics, which can reciprocate human love. I especially like the white plush hat they gave it. Oh, and the artificial endochrine system they're cooking up for it:

The novel advanced artificial intelligence system of Lovotics includes an Artificial Endocrine System (based on physiology of love), Probabilistic Love Assembly (based on psychology of love) and Affective State Transition (based on emotions) modules.

Psychological unit of the Lovotics artificial intelligence calculates probabilistic parameters of love between humans and the robot. Various parameters such as proximity, propinquity, repeated exposure, similarity, desirability, attachment, reciprocal liking, satisfaction, privacy, chronemics, attraction, form, and mirroring are taken into consideration.

Physiological unit of the Lovotics artificial intelligence employs artificial endocrine system consisting of artificial emotional and biological hormones. Artificial emotional hormones include Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphin, and Oxytocin. For biological hormones Melatonin, Norepinephrine, Epinephrine, Orexin, Ghrelin, and Leptin hormones are employed which modulate biological parameters such as blood glucose, body temperature and appetite.

Warning: some of the activities below are simulated.

Apollo 18's Lunar Truth: Alternate History or Time Shift?

2012-02-13T00:01:00.027-05:00

William Blake's I want! I want! (1793).

Over the past few months, one of the most popular posts on this blog has been this one, which I wrote about the movie, Apollo 18. Now, the Space Review has recently dumped cold water all over the rampant Internet buzz about this movie, and questions as to why its revelatory website, Lunar Truth, was seemingly gagged online. Nor are there any hints of self-deprecating ironic humour among conspiracy theorists as they search for something with a built in oxymoronic pun like 'lunar truth,' but I digress. No matter what the critics say, space exploration and other major Millennial historical events remain topics where reality is constantly questioned. If we one day settle Mars, I wonder whether there will be groups of people on Earth who believe the colonists simply are not there?

V is for Vindication

2012-02-12T17:50:00.001-05:00

Image Source: BBC.

What does Alan Moore think of the worldwide appropriation of his Orwellian 1980s' comic book character, V, for the purposes of global anti-capitalist and anti-government hactivism? He's just fine with it, and thinks it is a sign that the 17th century is alive and well:

Today's response to similar oppressions seems to be one that is intelligent, constantly evolving and considerably more humane, and yet our character's borrowed Catholic revolutionary visage and his incongruously Puritan apparel are perhaps a reminder that unjust institutions may always be haunted by volatile 17th century spectres, even if today's uprisings are fuelled more by social networks than by gunpowder.

Some ghosts never go away.

As for the ideas tentatively proposed in that dystopian fantasy thirty years ago, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that whatever usefulness they afford modern radicalism is very satisfying.

Image Source: BBC.

Flu Scare at Auckland Airport

2012-02-12T17:35:00.000-05:00

Image Source: NBR.

Following up from this post, there is an ongoing Flu scare at Auckland airport right now:

A major health response is under way after an Air New Zealand plane landed at Auckland Airport with children with flu-like symptoms on-board. A group of 73 children arrived into Auckland off NZ90 from Narita, Tokyo, at 9.20am this morning with the symptoms. Air New Zealand is following public health procedures and has advised the Auckland Regional Public Health Service. The Boeing 777-200 has 274 passengers on-board, and no-one has been allowed to exit the aircraft.

Medical staff are now on board the plane.

Mayans, Mayans, Mayans! The Place Where Time Began

2012-02-12T17:29:00.000-05:00

Where time began, according to the Mayas. Izapa Photo: A. Evans (2012) © National Geographic. Reproduced with kind permission.

With fears that the Mayan Long Count Calendar will count down to the end of the world this year, one travel writer, Andrew Evans of National Geographic, is currently taking the trouble to find out where the Mayans thought time began. Yesterday, he visited the ruins of Izapa in Mexico. His remarks clarify the Mayan prophecies, briefly explain the Mayan calendars, and allow us for just a moment to step into the shoes of the Mayans and their predecessors. Below are some selected comments he made, but make sure you read his whole post here:

I began my investigation of the Mayan calendar by traveling back to the ancient site of Izapa—a place “where time began” ...

Izapa is where the Maya started counting—at least this is what the current theories say. They also say that it wasn’t the Maya who started counting, but rather their predecessors, the Olmec. Either way, so much of Mayan numerology originates right here in Izapa.

The Tzolk’in calendar comprises twenty different days in a cycle of thirteen (tercena), resulting in 260 unique days, each with religious meaning. For example, today’s Tzolk’in date is 1 Chicchan, which means the serpent day of the first day in the current tercena.

The Haab calendar comprises eighteen months of twenty days each, totaling in 360 unique days (the extra five days were an ill-omened “free space” occurring once a year). Today’s Haab date is 13 Pax, which signifies the thirteenth day of the “planting time”. ...

Time begins only when we begin to measure it. The sun may rise and fall, the earth can spin round that same sun, and babies may be born, but until humans can count these moments, they become almost impossible to define. ...

Today’s doomsday theorists are focused on the final number: The End. But that number originated here — the ancient Maya started counting right here at Izapa due to the very specific latitude and the sun’s positions over time. They made sense of their world from this very particular point on the planet and thousands of years later, I had traveled to this same point to make sense of the world today.

Today, he is at the Mayan jungle city of Palenque, tracing the Mayan past, which at this site dates back to 100 BCE. He has walked the equivalent of 10 New York City blocks of cleared ruins. More areas of the city lie still buried beneath the jungle, which gives you an idea of how huge this city was. You can follow Andrew on Twitter as he continues his trip through the Mayan empire, here.

Temple XII, Temple of the Skull at Palenque. Image: A. Evans (12 Feb. 2012) © National Geographic. Reproduced with kind permission.

Face sculpture, Palace of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Image: A. Evans (12 Feb. 2012) © National Geographic. Reproduced with kind permission.

Millennial Mysteries: Dolphins Die at Cape Cod

2012-02-11T23:24:00.001-05:00

Image Source: CNN.

Here's an odd beach towel photo that belies its subject, namely, a disturbing development at Cape Cod. CNN reports: "The number of unexplained dolphin deaths on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, rose Friday, with rescuers tallying the toll at 103. About 160 common dolphins have been found since the animals began stranding themselves in early January, said Michael Booth, a spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the organization leading the rescue the effort."

Click to see all my posts on Millennial Mysteries.
See all my posts on Millennial Omens.

Soul at the end of the Twentieth Century

2012-02-11T20:33:00.000-05:00

An American singer in the early 1980s.

Soul at the end of the twentieth century: farewell to singer Whitney Houston. Below the jump, a video I have posted before on July 4; it is what some consider to be the best modern popular rendition ever done of the American anthem, Super Bowl XXV during the First Gulf War (1991). To have the world in the palm of your hand, and lose it all. The highest of heights, the lowest of depths: this life weighs so heavily on some of us.

A Recipe for Millennial Immortality

2012-02-11T00:01:00.191-05:00

Image Source: Topics in Chinese Medicine.

From the annals of Millennial anxieties and weird politics: The Rantings of a Gothic Atheist had a remarkable post up at the end of January about a law which could come into effect in November 2012 in Oklahoma, USA. The Bill bans the use of human foetuses in food production. Ohh-kay. In fact, the Bill's author refers to the highly politicized debate in the United States on the use of embryonic stem cells in research and industry.

Millennial Horrors: Flu Research Moratorium in Effect

2012-02-10T00:01:00.226-05:00

Image Source: WHO via Charcoal Handwriting.

I had already seen reports on this floating around in academic discussions, but recent news on controversial research on the deadly Bird Influenza H5N1 has become mainstream. Slate notes that scientists have tweaked the virus so that it can jump between mammals. This was done to understand the virus better and prepare a vaccine, but it's not like nature and Bioterrorists needed help with the human contagion aspect of the disease. Ian Lipkin, Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, stated that, “publishing this information would give people a roadmap to creating Frankenstein viruses.”

Epidemiologists were worried enough by this research that the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity successfully demanded that all research in this direction stop publication for two months so that the scientific community can discuss its hazards. H1N1 broke out into a global pandemic in 2009 that was contained through mass vaccinations, although 14,286 people died. It was the second H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic in history (the virus actually combined several strains, including a Bird and two Swine Flu strains); it was not as lethal as its predecessor: the first H1N1 global pandemic was the 1918 Flu pandemic, which killed between 50 and 100 million people, or 3 to 6 per cent of the world population at the time. The 1918 pandemic killed 25 million people in its first 25 weeks. This type of Flu tends to affect healthy, younger adults most severely.

760 Million Year Old Animal Discovered - Origin Species of All Complex Life

2012-02-09T00:39:00.001-05:00

Otavia antiqua. Image Source: Gizmodo.

Gizmodo reports on a 760 million year old animal, a sponge that was the original life form from which all other animals evolved:

"Scientists believe that this is the animal from which everything else evolved. The first multicellular being that spawned every living being in this world through billions of mutations, from fish to amphibians to reptiles to birds to mammals to you. It's an amazing discovery. Its name is Otavia antiqua, and it is the oldest animal ever discovered: 760 million years old. Scientists claim that it used to chill out in calm, nice, shallow waters, chewing on algae and bacteria through its pores and into its little tube body."

Millennial Extremes: BASE Jumping in Singapore

2012-02-08T00:01:00.029-05:00

Here's a 2012 Happy New Year video from BASE jumpers in Singapore, done against the city's skyline from the Marina Bay Sands Skypark. Hat tip to The Atlantic: "As if leaping from the top of a 55-story resort weren't spectacular enough, this video uses Singapore's futuristic skyline and Marina Bay Sands Skypark as a backdrop. The video was directed by Snow R. Shai of Snowdrum Audio Visual, and the BASE jumpers are Marta Empinotti, James Pouchert, Amanda Vicharelli, Anne Helliwell, Tim Mattson, Brendon Cork and Jeb Corliss."

The Predictioneer

2012-02-07T00:01:00.284-05:00

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Image Source: Good Magazine.

One of the alarming trends of the turn of the Millennium is its extreme literal mindedness. The notion that all information on Earth can be pooled and tabulated to yield the ultimate secrets of human existence and the mysteries of the universe is a great fallacy. This assumption shows how the new technology has bewitched us and altered our judgement in the post WWII era. At the same time, however, science and tech are genuinely pushing the boundaries of what we understand at an exponential rate. It is a great time to be alive, to see this incredible revolution in human thought unfold, along with all its unforeseeable ramifications, and the amazing tension-filled overlap it generates between fact and fiction.

Maybe it's all good, just so long as everyone understands that any random accumulation of information does not necessarily constitute 'a fact.' Looking at it from another angle, perhaps there's no worry that extreme literal mindedness will lead to an official bean counters' version of reality, since scientists, computer researchers and logicians are showing a marked taste for mysticism and other esoteric arts.

Perhaps we may count Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, eminent Professor of Politics at New York University and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution among these Millennial figures, who has turned number-crunching into the fine art of discerning oblivion. He has developed a rational choice theory computer model over the past 25 years, which purportedly predicts the future in international relations and politics. In other words, he believes he is cracking the ultimate mystery: time.

Superbowl Apocalypse

2012-02-06T01:09:00.000-05:00

Image Source: Reuters via Daily Mail.

Below the jump, the Chevy Superbowl 2012 Apocalypse ad.

Web Bot Algorithm for the Future Stops at 2012

2012-02-06T00:01:00.131-05:00

Things to Come (1936) © London Film Productions (based on H. G. Wells's 1933 book, read it here). Image Source: Love for Life.

In a January 2011 episode of Brad Meltzer's Decoded, Web Bot expert Mel Fabregas casually asserted that "remote viewers cannot see beyond" 2012. He then spoke of the use of the Web Bot. The Web Bot is an online bot, conceived in 1993 and created in 1997 to predict the stock market. From there, its creators began using it to scan changing emotional values as correlated to key words on the Internet. After crunching the data with something called Asymmetric Language Trend Analysis, they have begun to predict the future. This software is what creator Clif High calls, "superset theory in complex aggregation at multiple different levels." The closely-guarded Bot algorithms were developed by High and George Ure. These self-proclaimed 'Time Monks' have made various predictions, with some success. They claim to have predicted 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Their Website is Half Past Human. Clif High discusses the Bot's predictions, which he calls 'future viewing' via his blog, here, with the following disclaimer:

"Please note that our interpretations are provided as entertainment only. We are to be held harmless for universe placing substance behind our words. Or not, as it so chooses. The interpretations provide a broad brush view of the future over the next few years. The broad view of the future is based on set theory and provides a collection of linguistic clues which can be used to forecast developing trends."

Clif High does assert that the Web Bot generated claims are, "twice as good as chance would allow." The 2010/2011 (rather wild and woolly) report is entitled The Shape of Things to Come - Volume Zero. You can see a report on the Bot here.

The Jet Stream Procrastination Before the Apocalypse

2012-02-05T00:01:00.006-05:00

Some claim that willpower and training emotion is the key to managing procrastination and achieving goals. Maybe we should ask what instincts we're trying to manage when dealing with time and Cyberspace. Image Source: Sugarroy Coaching.

A lot of New Year's resolutions probably concerned procrastination and the Internet. Even as I was writing this post, my horoscope popped up and told me I would achieve my goals as long as I didn't get distracted. Yeah, that could be said about everybody. Einstein once said he was not much more intelligent than other people, but he felt he was able to focus on any given particular problem without getting distracted longer than anyone else. He did not lose the thread of concentration and followed questions to their ends.

I've discussed cyber-procrastination before and the transformation of reality and the economy (here, here - and here). Within the space of a few months, I ran across two apparently contradictory blog posts on how to control time and life in the Cyber Age. One was a site on women's wellbeing and self-improvement run by Tara Mohr. The other was The Art of Manliness, devoted to the self-improvement of Millennial men. Although they come at the problem of willpower from two very different perspectives, they actually both point to the same thing: take the long view and encourage the factors needed to maintain focus over the long term. In other words, don't lose track of the big picture. Don't lose the plot.

But the plot, they both conclude, depends on underlying emotions, the great subjective unconscious. I have a question for both of these bloggers. What do you do when consciousness, the very unquantifiable, nebulous stuff from which our emotions hail, has been radically redefined by Virtual Reality in less than a decade?

Is the Internet really only a distraction, something negative - a sick, proto-obsession, an addiction indulged in by millions - or are we collectively building a new world? Regardless, confronted by the Internet, could we do anything else at this time other than be totally immersed in it? Is Cyberspace not a collective project where the world labours on a new global collective unconscious and renders it visible, in a way that has never been seen before in all of human history? How on earth does one deconstruct one's emotions about, and manage responses to, that?

Wasting Time in the Real Dreamscape

2012-02-04T00:01:00.277-05:00

Image Source: Inspiration Can Come from Dreams.

The very first reality TV show on American television was a series called An American Family, which aired on PBS in 1973. The ground-breaking documentary revealed the inner life of a San Diego family with an anthropological analytical subtext, which was echoed in a 2011 film about the project, Cinema Verite. There's been a lot of talk about the bastardization of the genre, and for that matter, reality itself, as Reality TV has given way to found footage films. But the mother in the family, Pat Loud, raised an interesting question that spoke less to the confusion between reality and fiction - and more to the current confusion between dreams and fiction.

Millennial Extremes: 24 Hours to See a World Hidden for Millions of Years

2012-02-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

Image Source: BBC.

Antarctica is home to over 400 subglacial lakes that are sealed off time capsules, miles beneath the ice. These bodies of water retain their liquidity due to heat from the Earth's core and have not seen the light of day from anywhere between 125,000 years and several million years. Three teams of American, British and Russian scientists are racing to drill at different points on the Continent to see what life forms survive in these freshwater lakes. The Americans are preparing to drill at Lake Whillans in Operation WISSARD, a project running from 2009 to 2015. The Russians have been drilling for a few years and are metres away from reaching Lake Vostok - a 15 million year old time capsule; for Russian photos of their operation - go here. At Lake Vostok, summer temperatures average minus 30 degrees Celcius and winter temperatures are around minus 80 degrees Celcius.

Underneath this ice sheet, Lake Ellsworth is considered more accessible than most subglacial lakes.

BBC just reported about a British team that is getting closer to starting their operation at Lake Ellsworth. Drilling will begin in November of this year. The conditions are terrible: in high summer, it is minus 20 degrees Celcius with extremely fast winds (30 knots). The probes have to be completely sterile so that these hidden environments are not contaminated. Once the hole is open, two miles through the ice, the team will only have 24 hours to conduct experiments before the hole freezes up again. Sounds like practice for space exploration, and indeed, the "Europa Jupiter System Mission team will be watching closely. They plan to send a lander to drill into the moon Europa’s ice-enclosed oceans to look for life."

See all my posts related to Antarctica.

The Halfway Point

2012-02-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

Roman celebrations of Lupercalia involved whipping women in the streets to encourage fertility. Image Source: Res Obscura.

It's Candlemas - no, not the Swedish Doom Metal band - and Groundhog Day. Both celebrations refer to the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox; this date has been celebrated under different guises since ancient times:

Candlemas primarily focuses on Jesus’ early life. Many Christians believe that Jesus’ mother Mary presented him to God at the Temple in Jerusalem after observing the traditional 40-day period of purification (of mothers) following his birth. According to a New Testament gospel, a Jewish man named Simeon held the baby in his arms and said that he would be a light for the Gentiles (Luke 2:32). It is for this reason that this event is called Candlemas.

Many people believe that some of Candlemas’ activities stem from pagan observances such as Imbolc [also known as St. Brigid's Day], a Gaelic festival, or the Roman feast of Lupercalia. However, others have argued that there is too little evidence to shed light on Candlemas’ substitution for these festivals. Either way, Candlemas occurs at a period between the December solstice and the March equinox, so many people traditionally marked that time of the year as winter’s “halfway point” while waiting for the spring.

Lupercalia was an ancient festival; its celebration continued after the founding of Rome in 753 BCE. It was: "one of the most ancient of the Roman holidays (one of the feriae listed on ancient calendars from even before the time Julius Caesar reformed the calendar)." Lupercalia is also now associated with Valentine's Day; it referred to February as a period of spiritual cleansing. It was a sort of early spring cleaning of the soul. It demanded reexamination of one's actions and an expulsion of evil spirits. The Romans fashioned the date as a wolf festival: Lupa was the wolf that suckled the infant twins Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. The details of the Lupercalia celebration - which you can read about here - were pretty weird. They make our modern Candlemas rituals and Groundhog Day festivities look nice and tame. Even so, the underlying message of all these holidays is identical.

Millennial Mysteries: The Answer to Arctic Owls Flying South and Other 2012 Arctic Bird Oddities?

2012-01-31T02:59:00.001-05:00

Painting of Snowy Owl (1996) © Kim Hunter.

Never seen a magnificent Arctic Owl? Depending on where you live, now could be your chance. I recently mentioned strange Canada Goose migrations. Snowy Owls are currently migrating hundreds of miles far south from Arctic climes - in a way not seen in many decades, such that some observers are calling the phenomenon a 'wildlife event.'

A once-in-a-lifetime sight: "The Missouri Department of Conservation said no one has seen a snowy owl this far south since 1974." A Snowy Owl in northern Jasper County, Missouri, January 2012. Image Source: Carthage Press.

The birds' winter range normally does not extend south of the Great Lakes in North America, or south of Russia in Central Asia. But they have been spotted quite far south all over the United States. Unlike most owls, they are active during the day, making sightings more likely. Unused to human environments beyond their Tundra habitat, they are stressed and confused and getting into trouble. One owl showed up at the airport in Hawaii, and startled staff shot it. One owl in Kansas City was killed when it flew into a train. Another is being cared for at Washington State University in Seattle after it collided with a car; the owl is being kept on a tub filled with ice with a fan blowing on him, which you can see here. Yahoo News reported on 28 January:

Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts.

A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions.

"What we're seeing now -- it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana.

"This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades.

Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese.

An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said.

Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal.

Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia, he said.

The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests. ... This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature. "There's a lot of speculation. As far as hard evidence, we really don't know," Holt said.

For further reports on the Snowy Owls from MSM outlets and local bird-watching societies, go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. The Great Backyard Bird Count expects to record this irruption. The Bird Count is an annual event in which people across North America submit reports on the numbers and types of birds they see in their backyards. This information helps keep track of phenomena such as Arctic birds flying further south than usual. The Great Backyard Bird Count starts February 17 and runs until February 20 (to participate, go here). Last year, 11.5 million birds were counted by amateur bird-watchers in the Bird Count, which also runs a photo contest and gallery.

Although this owl irruption is a really popular Internet story, no one has bothered to ask (at least, as far as I could see) whether other Arctic avian species which normally stay within a certain northern range are flying south as well. This is where this seemingly isolated event gets interesting.

A parliament of Arctic Owls in British Columbia's Boundary Bay (7 January 2012) © Sandy Milliken. Image Source: via The Spokesman-Review.

Happy Australia Day!

2012-01-26T04:21:00.000-05:00

To all my Aussie readers: Happy Australia Day! Below, the First Fleet reenactment from Sydney Harbour for the Bicentenary on 26 January 1988, featuring a hodgepodge of time periods with fighter planes overhead, all in one photo.

Image Source: National Archives of Australia via Wiki.

Photos of the Day

2012-01-25T00:01:00.010-05:00

Image © Bjorn Jorgensen. Image Source: MSNBC.

Recent solar flares have created incredible auroras in the northern hemisphere. These photos are from near Tromso, Norway. For more photos, go here.

Images © Bjorn Jorgensen are reproduced solely for non-commercial discussion and review.

From Russia with Love: Life on Venus

2012-01-24T01:09:00.001-05:00

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968; watch it here, or see below). Image Source: Horror News.

A report at i09 observes that one Russian scientist is publishing claims that the Russians found life on Venus back in the '80s. I think a lot of people found life on Venus back in the '80s, but OK, OK.

Happy Chinese New Year

2012-01-23T00:01:00.123-05:00

Image Source: Water Dragon Inc.

Today is the Chinese New Year, calculated through the lunisolar calendar. Hence it is also known technically as the Lunar New Year, celebrated as well in other cultures. In the Chinese astrological tradition, this is the year of the Water Dragon, and the beginning of the Chinese Spring Festival. According to this site, a Water Dragon year, last experienced in 1952, is one where conformity and authority can be challenged and innovation encouraged. The watery aspect is a positive one, and calms the dragon's showy enthusiasm and gives the expansive fire a measure of introspection and contemplation.

Picture of the Day

2012-01-21T01:09:00.001-05:00

Image Source: M. Novak via Instagram.

This is the "official beer of the Apocalypse," courtesy of Matt Novak of Paleofuture; the label has a bonny picture of Quebec and the Maritimes on it. The beer (the name means 'The End of the World') has been brewed since 1994 by Unibroue Brewery in Quebec. More here. The name doesn't actually refer to the Apocalypse; it refers to explorers who thought they had found the ends of the Earth when they reached the eastern tip of North America. But in 2012, I'm sure that won't matter for beer sales.

Quote of the Day

2012-01-19T00:01:00.008-05:00

Image Source: Allan R. Bevere.

I've often wondered what figures from the past, such as Mozart or Kepler, would make of today's societies and our technology. The Quote of the Day comes from Benjamin Franklin, via Matt Novak of the great blog, Paleofuture:

"I have sometimes almost wished it had been my Destiny to be born two or three Centuries hence. For Inventions of Improvement are prolific, and beget more of their Kind. The present Progress is rapid. Many of great Importance, now unthought of, will before that Period be procur'd; and then I might not only enjoy their Advantages, but have my Curiosity satisfy'd in knowing what they are to be."

-Benjamin Franklin to Rev. John Lathrop, 1788

Imagine a Future

2012-01-18T18:41:00.005-05:00

Imagine a future where we look back to 1995-2015 as the heyday of the free Web, a kind of wild west era before the clampdown. I never would have imagined it, back in the heady 1990s when the Web exploded with wild idealism. The Atlantic marveled today that Wikipedia, a site founded on the 'neutral point of view' (NPOV) took sides very clearly on protests against proposed American legislation that will censor copyright infringements online. Wiki was never a democracy, but today, it entered into what the Atlantic writer Megan Garber calls "pseudo-democratic digital collaboration." The train of thought that brought Wiki to this extraordinary decision ran as follows, according to Jay Walsh:

I thought about NPOV, but realized that NPOV won't matter if Wikipedia becomes too much of a liability to exist anyway. The way the bill is formulated reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works. The repercussions are global. ... The point of the temporary inconvenience is to raise awareness and therefore political participation. Without the blackout there will be no story, so no awareness. Political participation outside the US will be ineffective, so there is no point in creating the inconvenience for them. ... You can't be neutral when your very fabric of being is under threat of erasure.

Times are changing. Today's protest could hint at future ways of organizing (and even governing) societies through altered administration of communication. Alternatively, today's anti-SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and anti-PIPA (Protect IP Act) protests made me think of a future where large parts of the Internet are available only by specialized subscription, or not available at all. In MSM shorthand, this is a conflict between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley.

Image Source: Gizmodo.

DCnU: Another Day, Another (Real?) Multiverse

2012-01-14T19:14:00.001-05:00

All images in this post are from: Before It's News.

There have been a lot of loud complaints and a hell of a lot of kicking and screaming in the fanbase about DC Comics' September 2011 reboot, in which the famous pulp company tossed 75 years' worth of history out the window in an effort to catapult itself into the 21st century. The open wound that is DC's handling of the Titans aside, I have written a post on how DC's shifts to new entertainment genres and new media (such as digital publishing) correspond with the transformation of the comic publisher's fictional universe. I have asked whether those Fourth Wall and metafictional turns may lead to the discovery of new standards for heroic values in pop culture. I've also talked about how comics stories, especially at DC, are the only forum in pop culture where quantum physicists' ideas of a multiverse have been consistently and constantly considered over several decades.

"There may be inifinite Earths being infinitely created."

DC's characters, stories and tumultuous reboots actually contend with the problem of what it would mean to live in a mulitverse, assuming it existed. What would happen to reality? Well, DC speculates, some of us would become superhuman, but at a terrifying price. What would happen to people in that reality? What would happen to values of right and wrong? Good and evil? No one else, not even the quantum physicists who are looking at the multiverse as a possible scientific fact, are pondering would it would mean for all of us if their wild theories aren't just theories.

"Reality may be more tenuous than imagined."

Now, some weird online stories about 'real' cases of people have surfaced (here) who claim they have shifted from one parallel universe to our world; these accounts are exactly mimicked in the storyline of an upcoming May 2012 DC title, World's Finest (with the great George Perez serving as co-artist): "Stranded on our world from a parallel reality, Huntress and Power Girl struggle to find their way back to Earth 2." The oldest team of comic superheroes, the Justice Society of America, finds itself on the alternate Earth 2 in another new series, simply called Earth 2.

Superweather

2012-01-12T17:08:00.000-05:00

Image Source: The Weather Network.

A monster snow storm has just blown in here, but it's nothing compared to a record-breaking system that hit eastern Russia today:

Russians are experiencing some harsh winter weather. It’s so cold even Canadians would shiver.

A Russian meteorologist says two months worth of snow has fallen on Eastern and Northern Russia in just 12 hours, calling this the worst snowstorm they have seen in 50 years.

Along with the mass amounts of snow, Russia faces extreme winds, racing up to 144 km per hour. Power lines have been knocked down due to the winds, leaving around 20 villages in the dark.

Temperatures in Russia have been as low as minus 49°C [minus 56°F].

Military vehicles have been dispatched to clear streets. The snow filled roads have affected 800,000 people, forcing them to stay inside or walk to work. ... Russians even experienced some thunder and lightening as the snow fell. “Thundersnow” is triggered when there is a strong convective system with a combination of cold and intensity in the atmosphere.

File Sharing Becomes an Officially Recognized Religion

2012-01-11T08:38:00.000-05:00

Image Source: Det Missionerande Kopimistsamfundet.

Radio Free Penzance just noted that in Sweden, file sharing was officially recognized as the new Missionary Church of Kopimism just before Christmas; in the new faith, information is holy and copying and sharing torrents are considered sacraments because these acts multiply the spiritual value of the data. Control+C and Control+V are considered sacred symbols. If you go to the new faith's main Website, here, you will notice that Kopimism has branches sprouting up all over the world. The religion has been growing since 2010. From RFP:

For many people, file sharing is a way of life. At any given time, they will be seeding handfuls of torrents, downloading several more, and searching The Pirate Bay for something new. The practice provides a cathartic experience that you could even say gives meaning to their lives. So why not take the next step and turn it into a religion? That’s exactly what one man tried to do. The crazy part? He succeeded.

Yes, file sharing has been officially recognized as a religion by the Swedish government. The Church of Kopimism is the fruit of philosophy student Isak Gerson’s efforts. After two unsuccessful attempts to convince authorities to recognize the religion (its methods of praying or meditiaton were deemed too informal), Kopimism was finally granted religious status.

It was only a matter of time before we started worshipping zeroes and ones. This is also an interesting merger of the old institutional establishment and new technological concerns. Could, for example, Kopimists eventually claim protection against religious persecution and discrimination under EU law when the authorities tracked them down over copyright infringements? There are other spiritual, philosophical and political dimensions popping up around intellectual property rights. Sweden, home to the people who run The Pirate Bay, already has a political party founded around the idea of file sharing, called the Pirate Party (est. 2006). The party's official Website is here. For other reports on Kopimism, go here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Gerson is on Twitter here.

Wolf Moon

2012-01-09T00:01:00.019-05:00

Image Source: Corbis via Kitchen Witch.

Today's Full Moon is known in North America as the Wolf Moon, which refers to Native Americans hearing wolves howling hungrily outside their villages at this time of year. It is also known as the Old Moon or the Moon After Yule. Astro Dispatch recently commented on what this Moon signifies astrologically; apparently, it urges introspection, contemplation, a need for reappraisal and better judgment about the balance between our inner and outer worlds, aims and desires:

On Monday 9th January 2012, the full moon in Cancer at 18 degrees 27 minutes is a Wolf Moon. ... Full Moons signal completion, endings or culmination points. It is a time when the moon is brilliantly reflecting the sun’s light. We are urged to gain a healthy balance between the inner (Cancer) and outer (Capricorn) world, our home (Cancer) life versus our career (Capricorn).

Full Moons also tend to reveal the shadow sides of the signs involved, in this case, Cancer and Capricorn. The intensity of the lunar radiance may expose the emotional drought in us, where our inner needs are sacrificed or simply not met (Cancer). It can also indicate the shirking of responsibilities or being power hungry (Capricorn).

Theophanic Hibernation

2012-01-06T00:01:00.010-05:00

Grafton (1992) cover of P. K. Dick's Valis. Image Source: Esoteric Online.

Welcome to Epiphany. It is a celebration of a Theophany, a day when god appears to man. In the Christian tradition, Epiphany marks the Theophany of the Christ child as a god who appeared in human form and was baptised. Today follows yesterday's Twelfth Day of Christmas; it is also Orthodox Christmas Eve in the Julian Calendar.

Theophanies are mysterious, tricky events that have been recorded in religious texts and myths throughout human history. They pop up a lot in Greek myths. If you want to read a modern account of an 'actual' Theophany, consider reading (if you haven't already), Philip K. Dick's semi-autobiographical novel, Valis (1981), published just before he died. In Valis, Dick claimed to depict his encounter with god on 3 February 1974. It can be pretty hard going, but it is fascinating: he describes a human grasp of the Gnostic divine mainly in temporal terms, a "loss of forgetfulness," a recovery of our hidden memory of life across the ages. To see god is to see time as it really is, the point at which time turns into space. Dick thought it meant living in 'orthagonal time,' and consciously existing in past and present lives simultaneously: "We are not 3D subjects trapped in linear time; we are 4D objects composed of hypertime." Where it goes from there, well, you have to read it to find out. It presents an ancient subject, revealed in modern terms. Dick was absolutely fearless when it came to facing and conveying the mad twists and turns of the human mind grasping the ungraspable; there are some excerpts online here from the appendix.

Atomic Bomb Cenotaph Vandalized

2012-01-05T01:20:00.002-05:00

Image Source: Japan Probe.

Is nothing sacred? The Japan Times reports that the A-bomb cenotaph in Hiroshima was vandalized last night (early January 4):

Hiroshima — The cenotaph for atomic bomb victims at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park was found defaced with what appears to be gold paint in the early hours of Wednesday, police said.

Paint was sprayed over part of the cenotaph's inscription, which reads, "Let all souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil," the police said.

A security guard rushed to the cenotaph shortly before 1 a.m. after someone entered the site, setting off an alarm, police said.

According to a local security company, passersby saw a man with gray hair approach the cenotaph and use something resembling a spray can.

"I have come here every day to pray for peace over more than 30 years. It's a pity . . . that someone does a thing like this," said an 80-year-old woman.

Occupy 1848 and Millennial Mash-Ups

2012-01-05T00:01:00.264-05:00

Barricade on the rue Soufflot, an 1848 painting of revolution in Paris by Horace Vernet. Image Source: Wiki.

Will European and global economic problems, combined with the Tech Revolution, give rise to new ideologies, new alliances and trading zones, and new forms of imperialism? One of my friends who has been avidly following the Occupy movement recently asked me what I thought about its comparison to 1848, which comes straight from veteran Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm. The 1848 revolutions constituted, in Wiki's words, "the first (and only) Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority." Hobsbawm makes this comparison because he sees the middle classes collapsing and throwing in their lot with the working classes, something that did briefly happen during the 1848 revolutions. The assumed parallel also rests on economic problems, among them, a crisis with a common European trade zone in 1848 and 2011. In both eras, trade zones provided problematic bases of political unification. In addition, technological advances, respectively mass print and the Internet, sparked broad protest and demands for increased representation and accountability.

Occupy Protesters. Image Source: Brighter Life.

Fountain of Youth 12: Kurzweil on Cheating the Reaper

2012-01-04T00:01:00.019-05:00

Image Source: Dark Roasted Blend.

This is a post on why Ray Kurzweil's immortal singularity will never happen. Kurzweil claims we will obliterate ageing via technological advances. His Boomer sensibilities seek an eternal youth in which a combination of drugs, vitamin and diet therapies and the injection of cell-repairing nanobots will obliterate not just disease, but ageing itself, thereby jolting humanity to its next transhuman evolutionary level. You can see one of his discussions on this topic below the jump.

Samoa Jumps the International Date Line

2012-01-03T20:18:00.000-05:00

Image Source: Hannah Johnston / Getty Images via MSNBC.

Last week, Samoa skipped a whole day, December 30, in order to jump across the international date line and move away from the American trading sphere. The Economist reported on the proposal earlier in 2011:

ECONOMIES can be revived from slump or slumber in a variety of ways. Policymakers are not limited to a forced choice between good old Keynesian stimulus or laissez-faire market mechanisms. A more unorthodox approach has been proposed by the prime minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who hopes to shift his Pacific island-state westwards in December—to reappear on the other side of the international date line. The better to trade with its neighbours of course. Since the international date line is defined only by the official time kept by the Pacific community, it will in effect shift, zigging and zagging to accommodate Samoa in a new, East-facing orientation.

There is nothing in Samoa's economic performance to suggest that it is falling out of line with the rest of the Pacific region, but its current chronological location is odd. The country is 24 hours ahead of neighbouring Tonga, despite lying almost due north. This means that Tonga is three hours ahead of eastern Australia and one hour ahead of New Zealand—yet Samoa is 21 hours behind Australia and 23 behind New Zealand. These numbers form the economic case behind Mr Tuilaepa's proposal.

Tuilaepa's proposal went ahead: "When the clock struck midnight Thursday, the country skipped over Friday and moved 24 hours ahead -- straight into Saturday, Dec. 31." The change also applied to the New Zealand-administered islands of Tokelau (population 1,400), pushing both islands west in temporal terms:

Samoans gathered around a main clock tower in the capital of Apia for the historic moment, applauding in celebration as the midnight hour struck to the wail of sirens and burst of fireworks. Drivers circled the clock tower blaring their horns, and prayer services were held across the country. Samoa aimed to align its time zone with key trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region by shifting west of the international date line.

Millennial Mysteries: 20 Tonnes of Dead Fish Wash onto Beaches at Kvaenes, Norway

2012-01-03T19:30:00.003-05:00

Image Source: Washington Post.

Caption for the above photograph: (Jan Petter Jørgensen / Scanpix / Norway/Associated Press) - In this image taken Saturday Dec. 31, 2011 Molly the dog walks amongst the dead herring on a beach at Kvaenes northern Norway. Norwegians were puzzled on New Year’s Eve, tens if not hundreds of thousands of dead herrings carpeted a coastal stretch in northern Norway.

Here we are, ringing in the New Year with conspiracy theories, predictions about the end of the world, and dead animals, in this case thousands of dead fish in Norway which washed up on the beaches around Kvaenes on 31 December, and then disappeared (reports here, here, here, here). For two of my earlier posts on this subject from 2012 and 2011, click here and this post has a list of all such incidents from 2010 into mid 2011.

Thousands of dead herring at Kvaenes beach (Credit: Jan-Petter Jørgensen). Image Source: The Watchers.

Dead fish were spotted by people walking their dogs on New Year's morning (Credit: Jan-Petter Jørgensen). Image Source: The Watchers.

Click to see all my posts on Millennial Mysteries.
See all my posts on Millennial Omens.

The Problem with Memory 4: The River

2012-01-03T00:01:00.025-05:00

Thomas Cole: The Course of Empire: Desolation (1836).

Tara Mohr recently circulated the following metaphor about memories reappearing in daily life as huge events, crises or mistakes. She suggests they surge through our lives because they represent a correction, or some deeper pattern from the past, seeking a personal return to an innately-appointed path and perhaps greater destiny:

“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for [houses] and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. ― Toni Morrison

... What “river” in you got straightened out somewhere along the way in life – changed from [its] natural form to accommodate practical realities or other people’s agendas? How is the river’s yearning to go back [its] original shape manifesting in your life right now?

Have you been calling it a flooding – a random and dangerous event? And what happens if you recognize it as a remembering?

The soulful affirmation aside, the metaphor conjures up a vision of the splitting of life, between individuals as living legacies of past centuries, incarnate in the present, and people who strain to evolve into the future. These are two parts of consciousness, balanced (or imbalanced) in time.

Look Skyward: The Quadrantids

2012-01-02T00:09:00.000-05:00

Quadrantid Meteor Through the Trees (2011) © Jeff Berkes. Image Source: Flickr.

Tonight and tomorrow night mark the peak of the first meteor shower of the year, the Quadrantids. They are visible from January 1 to 5. However, unlike other meteor showers that peak over a few days, the Quadrantids peak intensively in one 8 hour period; this year, the peak is on the night of January 3-4 and the best time to see them is after 4 a.m. when the waxing gibbous moon has set. The source of the shower may be a minor planet or comet (astronomers are still debating): "The parent body of the Quadrantids was recently tentatively identified (in a paper by Peter Jenniskens) as the minor planet 2003 EH₁, which in turn may be the same object as the comet C/1490 Y1 which was observed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers 500 years ago."

Spacedex 2011 Quadrantids guide. Image Source: Spacedex.

In the Northern Hemisphere, look North and search for the Big Dipper and Little Dipper. The meteors will originate just below them. In the Southern Hemisphere, it will be difficult to see them. You can see a worldwide map on where precisely to look, according to your location, here.

The meteor shower is named for the defunct 18th century constellation that once lay in its radiant, Quadrans Muralis. Look for the constellation of Boötes as the source of the meteors: "[In the Northern Hemisphere, i]t lies between the end of the handle of the Big Dipper and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco."

Boötes, the Plowman: the radiant constellation for the Quadrantids meteor storm. Image Source: Wiki.

Millennial Mysteries: Dead Birds Fall from the Sky in Arkansas and Weird Migrations

2012-01-01T09:04:00.006-05:00

Bird kill reported in Arkansas, 1 January 2012. Image Source: AP via THV.

Early this morning, someone on Twitter said, "I can remember 2011 like it was yesterday." Here is another reminder of last year, this one inauspicious: 2011 began with the mass deaths of birds and fish (see here, here and here). New reports are coming out of Arkansas today of a repeat case of dead birds:

Thousands of dead blackbirds rained down on a town in central Arkansas last New Year's Eve after revelers set off fireworks that spooked them from their roost, and officials were reporting a similar occurrence Saturday as 2012 approached.

Police in Beebe said dozens of blackbirds had fallen dead, prompting officers to ban residents from shooting fireworks Saturday night. It wasn't immediately clear if fireworks were again to blame, but authorities weren't taking a chance.

Officer John Weeks said the first reports of "birds on the streets" came around 7 p.m. as residents celebrated the year's end with fireworks in their neighborhoods.

"We started shutting down fireworks," he said. "We're working on cleaning up the birds now."

He said police were working with animal control workers and others to remove the birds and determine a death count.

"We're not sure if they're going to continue to fall throughout the night. I can't tell you," Weeks said.

Scientists say the loud cracks and booms from celebratory fireworks likely sent the birds into such a tizzy that they crashed into homes, cars and each other before plummeting to their deaths last New Year's Eve. The birds landed on roofs, sidewalks, streets and fields. One struck a woman walking her dog. Another hit a police cruiser.

The blackbird die-off, coupled with tens of thousands of dead drum fish that washed up on the shores of the Arkansas River, flung the state into the national headlines and drew conspiracy theorists and filmmakers to the town about 30 miles northeast of Little Rock that shares Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe's last name.

Some people speculated that the birds had been poisoned; others said their deaths marked the beginning of the apocalypse.

2012: The Shift

2012-01-01T00:01:00.409-05:00

Black hole at centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. Image Source: ESO via Wiki.

Happy New Year! 2012 will be a year filled with wild stories about cataclysm and renaissance. Pop culture is going to have a field day. I'll follow these paths on this blog, but I want to be clear about one thing right at the beginning: just because I discuss this stuff does not mean I literally believe in it. Enormous amounts of information available online don't constitute facts, even if they look like they do. Several facts can be strung together to form many amazing non-facts. They may indicate something else, fears, fads or conspiracy theories. I consider these things largely to be cultural phenomena, reflecting mentalities of the times in which we live. I suspect that 2012 will be a year when the tension between fact and fiction will be pretty relaxed. If you already have a highly developed metaphorical sense, this should be a great year.

To open the New Year, I bring you a nice word from the realm of astrology: the Yod. One thing I like about astrologers is their love of geometry, a mathematical field that lies at the heart of human civilization. They take that geometry, read it astronomically, and endow it with mythical, narrative, imaginative and fantastic meanings. The validity of this correlation is sort of irrelevant when you consider it is an expression of the profound human impulse toward making sense of chaos, of the unknowable, of completing the incomplete. This need to find the ultimate Gestalt may be laughable for some, but it is the basis of how our brain allows us to see the world, construct societies, and communicate through language. It also is the cerebral root of memory and thereby builds our awareness of time. As a species, we are universally driven to make the imperfect and fractured make sense. This concerns the puzzling jump from the biomechanics of the brain as a bodily organ to the metaphysical and philosophical evolution of consciousness. Whether or not we should be anthropomorphizing the unsolved mysteries of perception and cognition and projecting them onto maps of the night skies is a subject for another post.

Anyway - the Yod. Right now, astrologers are fixated on a great big black hole in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, which they think symbolizes rebirth. In December of this year, they believe that this black hole, sometimes confused with the Galactic Great Rift, will either align or intersect with the plane of the ecliptic, the plane on which the planets revolve around the Sun.

Plane of the ecliptic "of the Earth's orbit around the Sun in 3d view showing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter making one full revolution. Saturn and Uranus also appear in their own respective orbits around the Sun." Image Source: Lookang via Wiki.

For critical debunkings of this idea, regarding the ecliptic intersection with the Great Rift go here, regarding the December Solstice alignment go here, and regarding the Black Hole alignment go here. Proponent of the idea, astrologer R. de Looff, writes:

In 2012 the galactic equator cuts the ecliptic at 0 degree of the Western zodiacal sign Capricorn. 0 degree Capricorn is the point of the zodiac where the Sun is during the December solstice.

At December 21, 11.12 GMT during the December solstice the Sun touches the Dark Rift, which is located near the Galactic Center. According to the Mayas the Dark Rift is the cosmic womb: the place of dead, transformation, regeneration and rebirth. This moment shows the end of their calendar. ...

[Above] you see a picture of the center of the Galaxy. ... Th[e] dark part is a gigantic black hole which is the center of the Galaxy. This dark hole is a region of immense spiritual power.

A Quincunx

De Looff refers to the planets' apparent alignment with this thing as a Yod. A Yod is a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It also refers to a rare astrological aspect when one planet forms a triangular shape (a 150 degree angle, also known as a quincunx) with two other, mythically incompatible, planets in the heavens (the latter have to be 60 degrees apart, also known as a sextile). On the Winter Solstice 2012, a Yod will appear in the skies (see a picture of it by scrolling down at this site).

Quincunxes are thought to be tough because you have to go through a change whether you like it or not - no retreat, no contemplation, no introspection - you have to act. You have to go forward. Quincunxes can feature in death charts or signify loss, crisis or fate. A Yod compounds the bottleneck idea because the triangle is created through two quincunxes, overlapping each other: it's incredibly hard, but you have to do whatever it demands in order to make further progress. To astrologers, it means: 'expansion through sacrifice.' De Looff remarks that the Yod is also known as the 'Finger of God,' a celestial angle that channels or points to huge painful metamorphoses, especially changes in our spiritual beliefs and philosophical systems.

A Sextile

Wiki on the Yod: "This aspect activates either a powerful conduit of energy, or a deeply-felt block, in the direction of the quincunxed planet." In 2012, there is a Yod - pictured in the chart below - formed on December 21 between Jupiter (expansion), Saturn (painful learning) and Pluto (radical change, death, rebirth). Jupiter is the focal point of the strain. There are other astronomical events and astrological theories that have 2012 watchers stirred up, such as galactic alignments, solstices, eclipses, and planetary transits, which I'll talk about in later posts. To understand the chart's astronomical and astrological symbols below, go here.

Image Source: Living Astrology Blog.

Romanian astrologer Dan Ciubotaru has checked how often this aspect has appeared in the past 400 years:

Once excepting 2012. In May 1989 when Jupiter was still focal point but Pluto was in Scorpio and Saturn in Capricorn. I’ve used [the] Configuration Hunter tool to perform the search – see here. This means that the 2012 Yod is a mirror [of the] Yod of 1989: Saturn and Pluto switch places. In 1989 the Yod took place on 13th degree while in 2012 will be on 8th degree. ... In my opinion the 2012 events are linked with the 1989 events – at least from political point of view. And 1989 was quite an important year for world politics: end of Cold War, end of Communism regime in Eastern Europe, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (took place on exact Yod configuration) etc. See Wikipedia for 1989 for full details.

Ciubotaru thinks the planets in the Yod represent the USA, Russia and China.

For 2012, De Looff has also drawn up a Chinese Four Pillars of Destiny chart, with the Four Pillars representing the Year, Month, Day and Hour. To him, this chart speaks either of environmental disasters or of an analagous emotional struggle in the collective unconsciousness:

A meteorite falling in the ocean would be one expression of this chart. Or a vulcan (fire and earth) exploding and causing a tsunami (water). It could also indicate floods. Water and Earth the strongest elements of this charts are enemies to one another. Since Water is more powerful in the chart, this may indicate large-scale floods. Therefore of all the events possible large-scale floods are the most likely. ...

In my opinion what this chart indicates is that the polluted energy of the collective unconsciousness will turn against humanity. Whatever happens, it will be an expression of the energy that is radiated by a humanity that is unable to live in peace and to make the right choices (for peace, welfare, health and inner spirituality).

Below the jump: astrological predictions for 2012, from astrologer Diana Garland, ending with a video entitled 'The Shift.' In this video, she anticipates the mood for this year. She, too, draws from the symbolism of the Black Hole as womb of the Galaxy and assumes it translates into a story of 2012 birth - or rebirth.
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2011: Adieu

2011-12-31T00:01:00.139-05:00

Photo © Joachim Beyrowski.

To mark the end of the year, here are a few of the most interesting images I've come across on the Web as the year closed. No copyright infringements are intended.

Farewell to a strange year. Whatever tragedies, struggles and rewards it brought, it became a year en route to something larger. They say the journey is more important than the final goal, and perhaps we will look back on 2011 and miss it for precisely that reason. It was a year with some answers, but not all of them, a year when we still did not know what would happen; we were like people clustered in the cafés of 1910. It was a year of hanging threads, cliffhangers, a year that needed a sequel. In retrospect, maybe we will remember that it carried promise and hope, a potential for something beautiful and amazing that will change everything. The year began with catastrophe, was filled with upheavals, violent endings and still, the unseen promise of things - whether they will be good, or bad, or terrible - to come. It was a year of suspended animation, as we waited for the recession to end and more of the world's sleeping secrets to awake. Now, this year's dance is done.

Possibly in anticipation of trials to come, some of us did not make it (see here; here; here; here; here; and here). Whatever it will bring, tomorrow is a new dawn, one step deeper into the second Millennial decade. But until that countdown to January 1, Fin.

The World's Most Dangerous Ideas

2011-12-30T00:01:00.133-05:00

Image Source: Columbia Pictures via Popular Mechanics.

Wiki's list of the world's most dangerous ideas tries to predict eight future dystopias. Wiki drew from a 2004 list compiled by the periodical Foreign Policy, co-founded by the late Samuel P. Huntington. The most dangerous ideas are:

Transhumanism is the one concern that moves past the standard political and foreign policy discourse; Ronald Bailey comments on Fukuyama's article:

In his Foreign Policy article, Fukuyama identifies transhumanism as "a strange liberation movement" that wants "nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints." Sounds ominous, no? But wait a minute, isn't human history (and prehistory) all about liberating more and more people from their biological constraints? ...

Fukuyama would undoubtedly respond that ... [w]hat transhumanists seek is very different. They want to go beyond current innate human capacities. They want to change human bodies and brains. ... Can one be so transformed by technology as to be no longer human?

Fukuyama predicts that genetically altered transhumans would regard themselves as superiors to normal humans, in a Gattaca-type world where the latter's civil rights would be removed. Bailey, meanwhile, criticizes Fukuyama's fears as a barrier to improvement and progress. In fact, the end results of transhumanism might be much more ambiguous than either Fukuyama or Bailey expect.
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The Chronal Economy

2011-12-29T00:01:00.614-05:00

Second Life's virtual banking crisis (2008). Image Source: Second Life via Digital Alchemy.

We are making a transition from the New Economy to a newer kind of economy. The origins of that newer type of economy lie in the Knowledge Economy. The names for the rising system vary: the Digital Economy, the Information Economy, the Global Economy, the Internet Economy, the Network Economy, the Virtual Economy, the Learning Economy, and one of my favourites: the Cognitive-Cultural Economy.

I would argue that these new economies are all types of a 'Chronal Economy.' Digital, knowledge-based and virtual economies depend on a changing experience with time brought about by our interaction with technology. Perhaps the growing relationship between the virtual and the real, understood via new ways we experience time, will reveal what is happening to the global economy. It is that transformed relationship with time, so poorly understood now, that lies at the heart of constant financial concerns.
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Time Landscape

2011-12-28T00:01:00.119-05:00

Google streetview of Time Landscape (2011). Image Source: Google via Cryptoforestry.

In the run-up to the holidays, I was reading a back issue of the now-defunct and sadly-missed Gourmet magazine. The December 1990 issue covered the Time Landscape, an art installation built in Greenwich Village, NYC, in the 1970s by Baby Boomer artist, Alan Sonfist.

Time Landscape (1978) was conceived as one of the first environmental art pieces. It constituted an effort to recapture a lost, pre-colonial landscape at the corner of West Houston Street and LaGuardia Place. Sonfist hired historians, botanists and various scientific researchers to replant indigenous plant species, including trees and wildflowers like violets and Black-Eyed Susans, on a small area of land in Manhattan. This effort saw, he claimed, the return of bird species to the area, such as hummingbirds, not seen there since the days of New Amsterdam.

Image Source: peeepl.

The origins of Time Landscape did not lie in 60s' enviro-ideology but in an attempt to recapture a personal memory from the late 1940s. A native New Yorker, Sonfist grew up at a time when one of New York City's last patches of wild forest still survived in the South Bronx:

As he described it, the concept for the project originated in the mid-sixties and grew out of his memories of a forest he had known during his early childhood in the South Bronx. "It was a ravine next to the Bronx river," he recalled, "and it was one of the last true forests anywhere in the city until it was paved over with concrete. (Gourmet magazine, December 1990, p. 85)

The Lifestyle You Ordered is Currently Out of Stock

2011-12-27T06:48:00.000-05:00

The economic quote of the week goes to Banksy, who left a new artwork on Canary Wharf almost a week ago. Report at HuffPo.

Particle Collider Real Estate

2011-12-27T00:01:00.258-05:00

Image Source: Ghost Hunting Theories.

Here is a loss the US government is not discussing as the Great Recession drags on, amid tedious political finger-pointing about how to invest properly in the economy. At Ghost Hunting Theories, Autumnforest recently reported on an unused Particle Collider that is up for sale for $6.5 million in Waxahachie, Texas. She writes: "Do you want 135 acres of Texas real estate complete with a 20-year-old facility built with the future hope of being a particle accelerator but never got completed? There are 8 buildings and 14 miles of underground tunnels. How much did your government spend on this debacle? A cool $2 billion." Before the recession, the facility was appraised as having a saleable value of $20 million, but the real estate market has hit it hard. (More reports: here, here and here.)

Real estate advertisement image.

Here's the Real Estate announcement from Newmark Knight Frank, Global Real Estate Advisors:

SUPERCONDUCTING SUPER COLLIDER Located about 30 miles south of Dallas, Texas, the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) is a scientific complex that was once a profoundly expensive dream of the U.S. Department of Energy in the late 1980's to house the world's largest and highest energy particle accelerator and its supporting facilities. Plans for the SSC included a proposed 54 miles of underground tunnels that would extend and eventually encircle the town of Waxahachie, Texas and also comprise approximately 213,000 square feet in supporting facilities, buildings and infrastructure improvements. Its approximate 135 acre site located west of Waxahachie was to be totally self-sufficient and self-sustaining. Construction of the multi-billion project began in 1991, but was subsequently halted in October 1993 due to spiraling estimated costs to complete (more than doubling to over $8 billion) and U.S. budget concerns. At the time of the project's cancellation, approximately $800 million had been spent to improve the site, complete the supporting facilities, and finish approximately 14 miles of the proposed tunnels. SSC is now for sale on an "as-is, where-is" basis. Hunt Ventures, advisor for the ownership entity, will be responsive to all credible offers. Offers without any or only minimal contingencies will receive strong consideration.

Wired reported on this facility in 2009. In the 1980s, the Texas site was conceived to house the biggest particle accelerator in the world. Congress yanked the funding in 1993, ensuring that the world's biggest particle collider - and the future of scientific research in this field, with its vast potential for cheap energy sources as well as an array of commercial and defense applications - would end up in Europe at CERN. If there is one area of science that could change everything in our future, and is the basis of the whole Tech Revolution through which we are currently living, it is particle physics. There is a short history of particle accelerators, once called 'atom smashers,' here at Wiki.

This is a classic example of politicians viewing scientific matters through ideological lenses, and mucking up long term projects that they don't understand. Wired has another related report here, entitled the 'Last Days of Big American Physics.' In February 2011, the American government denied funding to the Fermilab accelerator near Chicago, which, despite the existence of smaller US colliders that do different things, undermines US competitiveness in this field; Fermilab closed its Tevatron collider permanently in September 2011. As with NASA's ending the Space Shuttle program due to government cuts, there has been a serious crisis in American confidence with regard to the government's footing the huge bills for global-level scientific advances.

But the alternative - Big Business going it alone - is not so great, either. The problem remains that private companies cannot fund this level of research by themselves because it is so expensive. And if private companies grow enough to be able to do so, we will face corporate conglomerates of the kind that were featured in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy: business entities that are as powerful, or much, much more powerful, than nation-states or even groups of nation-states. It's worth contemplating that this alternative of unfettered corporations would likely spell the end of modern civic freedoms and governmental democracy in technologically advanced societies; as anyone who has read an employer's regulations manual knows, the internal legal principles that determine corporate governance and day-to-day management have few pretensions about being democratic.

Then there is the state-industrial mix. Is the current model of government-industrial cooperation, which ensures these endeavours, all that great? Not really. There is a sticky, predictably nasty politicized debate around Big Government and Big Science, with typical discussions here and here. The more science and tech advances we see in this century, the more the power, money and authority required to drive them will likely reflect a hybrid public-private model for Public Administration and Management. In time, that new model will potentially provide a whole new legal foundation of government. This is why it is worth keeping an eye on changing currents in Public Admin theory, you know, just in case we end up electing armies of public-corporate management consultants, government contractors and business administrators instead of actual representatives and legislators. The book excerpt below concerns one of these burgeoning Millennial grey areas. It is taken from S. P. Osbourne, The New Public Governance?: Emerging Perspectives on the Theory and Practice of Public Governance (Routledge 2010). This excerpt concerns a template of public-private hybridization over big research and investment projects; that template involves public contracts with private companies in the US Military and in the famous example of the Challenger disaster.

Source: Googlebooks.

For now, as far as giant colliders are concerned, the US is playing catch-up. There are reports from late December 2011 that a new particle accelerator is being built in Batavia, Illinois, with US government funding (see here, here and here). It is due to be completed in 2013 or 2014.

Construction of new accelerator, Illinois, 16 December 2011. Image Source: Jeff Cagle/Sun-Times Media via Napierville Sun-Times.

As for the Texas facility, there are reports that its collider tunnels have been filled with water. See more images of the Texas accelerator facility from Wired below the jump (all photos below are by Jim Merithew/Wired.com). There are pictures of the site when it still had its equipment, here.
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Laugh of the Day: One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor

2011-12-26T00:01:00.010-05:00

Many thanks to Tony Morrill for tweeting the Google Maps walking directions from the Shire to Mordor and the Two Towers (complete with auto-warning). This was an internet gag that was circulating about a week ago. Sean Bean's line has also become a LOLcat type meme.

Image Source: Troll Meme Generator. Also available as an avatar!

Christmas

2011-12-25T00:01:00.003-05:00

Woodstock, Vermont Christmas Parade. Image Source: Discover New England.

Happy Christmas! For the day, here are a couple of New England Christmassy photos. Below the jump, a light post with twelve 'top ten' videos - one for each of the twelve days of Christmas - and each one relevant to the blog's themes.

The Polar Express train at Edaville, Massachusetts. Image Source: Discover New England.

Getting Closer to the God Particle

2011-12-24T00:01:00.049-05:00

Image Source: AllVoices.

Over the past week and a half, there have been reports that scientists at CERN have gotten even closer to finding the so-called 'God particle.' They have just found a new subatomic particle, which they have named Chib(3P). The Higgs boson particle is important because it is not expected to be made up of smaller particles; it is also the last missing piece of the Standard Model in Physics. Newsweek: "the Higgs mechanism is critical to today’s theory of the basic elements of matter. Higgs and his colleagues theorized that space itself contains a sort of charge. Elementary particles acquire mass through their interaction with the charge (you might think of this charge as a traffic camera that slows down traffic even without any actual policemen to stop the cars). Space isn’t filled with Higgs-boson particles—you need a collider such as the LHC to make those—but the Higgs boson is the telltale sign that there really is such a 'charge' in space." Mark Buchanan generally refers to the Higgs boson as a particle that could explain how the universe gets 'something' out of 'nothing.' Very roughly, it would let us confirm the transition of states in matter, from 'non-being' to 'being.' Proving this notion may in turn explain the origins of the universe. While acknowledging that this transitional concept appeals to our love of mythical and religious metaphors, Buchanan insists that the idea is soundly grounded in scientific study and hypotheses.

Image Source: AllVoices.

Banknote Nostalgia: Spanish Village Brings back Peseta Currency

2011-12-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

Image Source: AFP/File, Miguel Riopa.

AFP is carrying a story that the Spanish village of Salvaterra de Miño has brought back the old peseta currency this fall. Initially, the experiment was only supposed to last one month, but it was so popular that town leaders are allowing it to run to December 31. Nostalgia for the currency, which has been obsolete since 2002, is very high amid the euro's woes and the old coins and banknotes are being welcomed like long absent friends.

The 'blonde,' the much-loved 100 peseta coin. Image Source: Business Insider.

It's an interesting phenomenon, demonstrating how economies really work; perhaps it is a reminder of the days when economists thought economically, before they began applying abstract mathematical formulas and dynamic physics concepts to human trading realities. Sometimes, the realities defy theories, abstractions, and differential equations:

In Salvaterra, nostalgia is high for the old gold-coloured coin affectionately known as "the blonde", and the old peseta notes.

"Every time an old note turned up I would touch it, since I was really glad to see it again and touch it again," says Fina Rodriguez, owner of an electrics shop.

The euro is less well-loved. In a recent survey, 70 percent of Spaniards said they had gained no benefit from the single currency.

"When we changed the currency, everything got dearer," says Montse Ledo, owner of the Fenteiros bar, one of 58 businesses taking part in the project.

The peseta scheme had been due to last just a month from the start of October, but locals dug out so much of the old currency that in the run-up to Christmas Salvaterra is still a peseta zone.

The town now plans to wrap up the experiment on December 31 and change the accumulated pesetas for euros, since no time limit has been set on cashing in the old coin since the single currency took over in 2002.

Prometheus Trailer

2011-12-22T21:50:00.000-05:00

There's lots of buzz on the Internet today regarding a teaser trailer (see it below) for Ridley Scott's 2012 semi-prequel of the Alien franchise, entitled Prometheus. Everyone is happy to hear that H. R. Giger has been working on the project, and Scott promises to get to the bottom of the alien origins of human life on our planet (a very popular Millennial eschatological conspiracy theory). He will also explain who and what the Space Jockey was in his first Alien movie. Scott suggested in a recent interview that the Space Jockey's ship was a weapons transport, and that the Xenomorph, which appeared in all the Alien movies so far, was not the original alien, but a some kind of derivative species of the real alien species. The trailer and the image shown here are from Apple iTunes and Trailer Addict and are © 20th Century Fox.

Curios: The Santa Claus Banknotes

2011-12-22T20:16:00.000-05:00

Santa: Bottom right (click to see larger image). Image Source: Heritage Auctions.

Curios is my blog series on weird artifacts that come up on the block at auction houses. In January 2012, in Orlando, Florida, Heritage Auctions will be selling off the Durand collection of banknotes which had special issues with images of Santa Claus printed on them. You know, this was back in the days before people were disgusted by Christmas being emblematic of rampant capitalism. The collection includes counterfeit bills. From the Heritage Auctions announcement:

Heritage Currency is pleased to present The Roger H. Durand Santa Claus Notes Collection as part of our FUN Signature Currency Auction being held in Orlando from January 5 thru 8. Given the fact that most of the notes with Santa Claus vignettes are scarce to extremely rare, this is indeed a fabulous and noteworthy collection. Roger's initial purchase that began this collection took place in 1960 at a cost of $17 — several multiples of what most Obsoletes cost at that time. At that time, there was only one reference on the subject — a five page monograph by John A. Muscalus, Ph.D. published in 1959. That work was followed in 1973 by a publication from Larry L. Ruehlen that ignited the interest of collectors.

There were far fewer notes than there was demand for and the notes are generally prized and closely held, so building a collection was quite the challenge. Although that is still the case, the sale of the American Bank Note Company archives in 1990 did add more material to the marketplace along with Part VI of the Ford sale in October 2004, although the Ford sale consisted primarily of material he purchased at the 1990 sale. The continued interest in the Santa Claus vignettes is evidenced by the fact they took the number 23 spot on the list of The 100 Greatest American Currency Notes list, and the recent auction sale of a circulated Santa Claus note for over $40,000, an amazing price indeed for any obsolete banknote.

May your eyes twinkle and your dimples be merry this holiday season.

Santa: Bottom right (click to see larger image). Image Source: Heritage Auctions.

Santa: Centre (click to see larger image). Image Source: Heritage Auctions.

Image Source: Heritage Auctions.

Hail the Winter Solstice: Deus Sol Invictus

2011-12-22T00:30:00.496-05:00

Winter Solstice: Dawn at Stonehenge. Image Source: Stellarium.

Today, at 5:30 a.m. UTC or Greenwich Mean Time, the Winter Solstice occurs. Thank Heavens. It's been getting pretty dark out there. In Antarctica, it is Midsummer and the Sun is shining nearly continuously. See the three videos in the bottom of my post here, which explain the Winter Solstice and the origins of Christmas in earlier Sun god worship.

The Solstice is the core of many religions and mythologies in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact, since the dawn of human civilization in the Stone Age, the Winter Solstice and the days that follow it have been celebrated to hail the victory of the Sun, or the powers of light, life and good - in short, basic survival! - over the powers of dark, death and evil.
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The Man Who Told the Internet He Came from the Future

2011-12-21T20:13:00.000-05:00

Image Source: Xetobyte on Deviant Art via I09.

Even at the dawn of the Internet Age, the time-bending and time-altering potentials of Cyberspace were very evident to some. I09 has just posted a very interesting piece about a message board contributor in the 1990s, one 'John Titor,' who told people he had been sent back from the future to retrieve a 70s'-era IBM computer in order to fix computer glitches that would later cause a lot of trouble in the 2030s. He made several dire predictions about world affairs in the early Millennium, some of which have come true. In a twist that sounds like it came straight from DC Comics' time-gutting continuity manuals (DC had already had one big chronally-driven crossover event in the 1990s that touched on Titor's premise; it is entitled Zero Hour), Titor also said he came from a slightly different timeline, thus safely granting his futuristic predictions a margin of doubt. As anyone familiar with the Terminator film franchise knows, the time traveller sent back to the present to stop a future calamity became a highly-compelling, widely-used pop culture trope from the mid-1980s onward.

Yet Titor seemed to be a 'real' version of this pop cultural trope, which was why his curious claims attracted so much attention. This was an early case of manipulation of the Internet to create false verisimilitude based on virtual reality mimicking the authoritative reference points of actual reality - even if the reference points from actual reality were fictional! It was very clever. Titor's story has been debunked by I09 as a virtuoso first in viral online marketing. Nevertheless, it still makes fascinating reading. For it is, in fact, the Internet that has become our real time machine, as anyone who has spent the last fifteen years staring at a computer screen during most of their waking hours can attest. From the report:

What if someone from the future popped up in our timeline and started answering questions from people on internet message boards? That's exactly what John Titor did in the late 1990s. Claiming he was sent from the future on a mission to retrieve an antique computer, he talked with thousands of people online and told stories of futuristic life in 2036. Many of his tales warned of imminent disaster for the world, but he said he couldn't help.

As abruptly as he appeared, Titor vanished in 2001. Did he finish his mission? Who - or what - is behind the legend of John Titor? ...

Posted by John Titor on 01-27-2001 12:45 PM. Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975. My "time" machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid. I will be happy to post pictures of the unit. ...

Life in 2036

Titor talks about his life as well, including living in Florida as a child, his service in the second American Civil War as a member of the Fighting Diamondbacks in 2013, and the communal/agricultural nature of life in 2036.

Titor admits he lives in a parallel timeline, one that varies 1-2% from ours. Enough to be slightly different, but not diverge from the major societal events. Titor is on a mission to obtain an IBM 5100 in order to debug computers in 2036 due predicted problems with Unix in 2038. The IBM 5100 emulates APL and BASIC programming languages, an interesting feature. John also posts pictures of his time travel machine along with schematics and the logo used by his military unit.

Titor's story eventually falls apart, with answers inconsistent and terse, and the user quits posting in April of 2001. The Titor story contines to grow as the conversations are re-posted onto other sites and through e-mail lists, with Titor fever reaching a peak in 2003, culminating with the release of a book about Titor, John Titor: A Time Traveler's Tale in late 2003 by the John Titor Foundation, Inc.

Hobbit Movie Trailer

2011-12-21T02:49:00.000-05:00

Bleeding Cool is carrying the first Hobbit movie trailer, An Unexpected Journey, due out a year from now. See the trailer at the bottom of this post. The studio blog on the production is here. Richard Armitage looks particularly impressive as the deposed Dwarven prince, Thorin, but they all look great.

The Dwarven cast. Image Source: The Hobbit Blog.

Cast above: (L-r) JED BROPHY as Nori, DEAN O’GORMAN as Fili, MARK HADLOW as Dori, JAMES NESBITT as Bofur, PETER HAMBLETON as Gloin, GRAHAM McTAVISH as Dwalin, RICHARD ARMITAGE as Thorin Oakenshield (center), KEN STOTT as Balin, JOHN CALLEN as Oin, STEPHEN HUNTER as Bombur, WILLIAM KIRCHER as Bifur, ADAM BROWN as Ori and AIDAN TURNER as Kili in New Line Cinema’s and MGM’s fantasy adventure THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by James Fisher.

Farewell: Václav Havel

2011-12-18T16:22:00.001-05:00

Havel to the Castle. Image Source: WSJ.

It was with great sadness that I heard of the death of Václav Havel. Today, black flags hang by Prague Castle. One of the leaders who saw an end to the Eastern Bloc in the 1989 to 1991 period, his death marks another end to that era. He represented something of the best in the Czechs, a man whose pure and ethical convictions shone in his face and life - and he did not waver. He had a rare grasp of the moral obligations shouldered by free men and women.

His Website is here and BBC and Guardian obits here and here, respectively. The Prague Post will do a large retrospective of him on December 21. The Lidové Noviny coverage is here.

Image Source: Bloomberg.

The NYT, which is remembering his plays, quoted Natalia Koliada, a co-founder of the Belarus Free Theater, who tweeted: "There is less morality in politics with his death." Lists of his dramatic and literary published works are here and here. The world is a poorer place without him. From his 1994 acceptance speech for the Philadelphia Liberty Medal:

"The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world."

Frozen Moments

2011-12-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

A teenage photographer from Tokyo, Natsumi Hayashi, has made a big name for herself since September 2010, when she started posting photos of herself on her blog while 'levitating.' Acutally, she jumps hundreds of times in one spot until she gets a perfect photo while midair, which makes it look like she is flying. (Image sources: Hayashi's site, Oddity Central, Photography Blog and The Daily Mail; all photos are © N. Hayashi.)
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Eduardo Barreto: Titanic Farewells

2011-12-17T05:37:00.002-05:00

Raven: post-resurrection emotions of a character. NTT Vol. 2, #39 (Jan. 1988).

This has been a strange holiday season. Every week, I have heard about 3-4 deaths, either acquaintances, or public figures. Today, more sad news. Farewell to a fine illustrator from Uruguay, Eduardo Barreto, who died on December 15. He graced the pages of DC's Titans title from 1985 to 1988. He followed on this series in the wake of huge fan favourites George Pérez and José Luis García-López. At the time, the New Teen Titans was still one of the hottest American comic books in the world, pencilled by two of the industry's most famous talents. Barreto filled the shoes of his predecessors and more. He made the characters his own.

Barreto had the tough task of making a resurrected, post-apocalyptic Raven have emotions when she had never had them before. The cover above from 1988 was Raven's first real smile since her introduction in 1980. After Pérez tore her apart, it took Barreto to show how a character, reborn after death, shot through with evil, would manifest emotions for the first time and bizarrely - yet haltingly and believably - come back to life to experience some joy.

New and old gods. NTT Vol. 2, #9 (June 1985).

Below the jump, some examples of Baretto's work from that period.
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Vintage Ads from 1950s' Japan

2011-12-17T00:01:00.003-05:00

Here's a collection of great ads from 1950s' Japan. (Hat tip: Maria Popova.) Marketing has sure come a long way; these were the days before Hello Kitty brought in over $1 billion annually. For a rundown of the wildest Hello Kitty merchandise, from guns, to whips to contact lenses, go here. Also: Hello Kitty maternity hospitals and Hello Kitty chainsaws. To go back to simpler days, with more Fifties' vintage ads, click here.

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1930s Déjà Vu

2011-12-16T00:35:00.006-05:00

Image Source: Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images via Guardian.

IMF Chief Christine Lagarde yesterday in Washington raised the spectre of a return of Great Depression conditions in all countries if the world does not help Europe resolve its financial crisis. (Reports: here, here, and here.) One site, looking back on the 1930s, quotes William Shakespeare: "What's past is prologue." Below, a video counting down the world's ten richest countries, based on 2011 IMF data; the non-European entries in that list are presumably Lagarde's top choices to help a beleaguered Europe. Also below, a refresher on just what Lagarde is promising as the alternative.

Image sources below, where not indicated, are from: Millionaire Acts; factoidz; Survival Spot; Everyday Life During the Great Depression; BBC; and Market Nightshift.
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Photo of the Day

2011-12-15T14:44:00.001-05:00

This is: Webb City, Missouri, December 13. (Hat tip: Phantoms and Monsters.)

The World is a Game of Chance and the Odds are Stacked Against Us?

2011-12-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

Image Source: Jazzed Banana.

In the PBS Nov 16 episode of NOVA, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap, Physicist Brian Greene explained that at a quantum level, the entire universe operates like a giant casino, and the odds are stacked against us. This idea contradicts Einstein, who believed that the universe operated according to principles of certainty. Einstein said, "God does not throw dice." What Einstein said exactly was: "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one.' I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice." Einstein had challenged Newtonian physics, the physics of the observable world. But he had trouble accepting the theories that radically extended that challenge.

Despite this lip service paid toward chaos and blind chance, our whole social, political and economic order rests on the authority of those who claim they can predict the future. In another post, I suggested that the credibility of economists and financial personnel rose according to their ability to gamble against the probability of stocks rising or falling. That credibility is waning, and they may be supplanted by scientists. Ironically, quantum mechanics also rests on prediction, on the anticipation of a range of outcomes at the subatomic level

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The Third Industrial Revolution

2011-12-14T00:01:00.003-05:00

Image Source: Salon.com.

Count Jeremy Rifkin among one of many Baby Boomer theorists who are optimistic about the future of tech and the economy. Rifkin has developed a new theory about how a huge transformation will unfold. He calls it the Third Industrial Revolution, and he bases it on the convergence of energy, communications and the economy. Forbes has a report on this vision of economic cycles of time and progress:

When we change energy regimes, it makes possible much more complex economic relations. When energy revolutions occur, however, they require communication revolutions that are agile enough to manage them. If you look at the 19th century, print technology became very cheap when we introduced steam power into printing. That decreased the cost and increased the speed, efficiency and availability of print material. At the same time we established public schools in Europe and America. We created a print literate workforce with the communication skills to organize a First Industrial Revolution driven by coal and steam power.

Then we did it again in the 20th century with the convergence of communication and energy: Centralized electricity—especially the telephone and then later radio and television—became the communication vehicles to manage a more dispersed Second Industrial Revolution, organized around the oil-powered internal combustion engine, suburban construction and the creation of a mass consumer society....

[The Third Industrial Revolution is] based on a new convergence of communication and energy. The Internet has been a very powerful communication tool in the last 20 years. What’s so interesting about it is the way it scales. I grew up in the 20th century on centralized electricity communication that scales vertically. The Internet, by contrast, is a distributed and collaborative communication medium and scales laterally.

We are in the early stages of a convergence of Internet communication technology with a new form of energy that is by nature distributed and has to be managed collaboratively and scales laterally. We’re making a great transition to distributed renewable energy sources. And we distinguish those from the elite energies—coal, oil, gas, tar sands—that are only found in a few places and require significant military and geopolitical investments and massive finance capital, and that have to scale top down because they are so expensive. Those energies are clearly sunsetting as we enter the long endgame of the Second Industrial Revolution.

Distributed energies, by contrast, are found in some frequency or proportion in every inch of the world: the sun, the wind, the geothermal heat under the ground, biomass—garbage, agricultural and forest waste—small hydro, ocean tides and waves.

The Mother Ship Has Not Landed

2011-12-13T00:01:00.049-05:00

Um, what is that planet-sized object right next to Mercury (top right)? Image Source: Space.com.

On December 1, NASA's STEREO spacecraft photographed Mercury being enveloped by a Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun. It also caught a curious, planet-sized object right next to Mercury. Conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts, as well as Planet X Nibiru doom-seeking doomsdayers expecting Earth's 2012 collision with a Doppelgänger or Shadow Planet, are all abuzz. They are convinced that the giant invisible body hiding next to Mercury is a huge alien Mothership, which is cloaked so that we can't (normally) see it. You can see a video with Mothership commentary, here. Space.com asked "scientists in the solar physics branch at the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) — the group that analyzes data from the Heliospheric Imager-1 (HI-1), the telescopic camera that shot the new footage" what that thing is. They concluded that it is a data-processing artifact, the ghost of where Mercury was the day before, which appears as result of the way they process the information to produce the photograph.

Time Lapses: A Meteoric Winter Night in a Viking Church

2011-12-12T00:01:00.021-05:00

Tonight, tomorrow night, and the night after are the peak times to see the Geminid meteor shower, the only meteor storm which is caused by an asteroid and not a comet. There is a fantastic time lapse video over at The World at Night (here), which shows the 2010 Geminids falling over a thousand year old Viking church in Vallentuna, Sweden. The image and video link are reproduced with kind permission from P-M. Hedén and TWAN.

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Configurations of a Third: The Multiverse

2011-12-11T00:01:00.038-05:00

From the Internet emerging from binary code, to the extratemporal dimension between the virtual and the real, to Dark Matter generated between the Matter and Antimatter of the Big Bang, to a bizarre cosmic consciousness arising out of gravity's mesh with space-time - the Millennial idea that our dualist Cartesian reality, split between mind and matter, can form a third, post-Cartesian reality is everywhere. See below the jump for Brian Greene's recent discussion on Nova's The Fabric of the Cosmos: Universe or Multiverse. While the Multiverse is not yet generally accepted among physicists, since 2010, the idea that there were and are many Big Bangs, generating many universes, has been gaining ground among quantum physicists, string theorists, and theoretical physicists studying cosmic inflation. Their critics argue vehemently that accepting an unprovable theory like this could undermine the very foundations of science. What is perhaps more important than the challenging theory is the overall pattern - a fundamental sea-change in outlook - these Millennial Configurations of a Third, everywhere we look (see my earlier post on tripartite aspects of Millennial thought, here and here).

In the American TV show, Fringe, there are prime and parallel universes. The parallel universe Manhattan is spelt with one 't.' Image Source: Fox via Wiki.

If the Multiverse is our reality and we don't know it, what would it be like to live there if we did know it? According to Signs of the Times: "The trouble is that in an infinite multiverse, everything that can happen will happen - an infinite number of times. In such a set-up, probability loses all meaning. 'How do you compare infinities?' asks Andrei Linde of Stanford University in California." Multiverses have been consistently popular fictional narrative devices that address Linde's question. Multiverses are constants in fantasy and sci-fi works, most recently in the American FOX television show, Fringe, and of course, Scenes from a Multiverse. But the only place where the cultural and social implications of a real Multiverse have been systematically and continually explored is in comic books. Since the early 1960s, Marvel has produced stories about a bunch of alternate realities, pocket universes and multiple dimensions. Marvel tends to have a single narrative represent a single reality: their main narrative continuity is Earth-616. Their Ultimate imprint has presented popular alternate universe stories since the year 2000. TVTropes sees Marvel's Multiverse affected by a hierarchy of positive and negative realities: English writer "Warren Ellis' run on X-Man utilized another conception of the multiverse, where in addition to Parallel Universes, there's a 'spiral of realities' stretching above and below, with the universes 'downspiral' being significantly more chaotic and difficult for li[f]e to develop/survive in than the the relatively advanced and idyllic universes located 'upspiral.'" Marvel also has an omniverse, a collection of all possible universes and realities, inhabited by characters from other fictions and pulp houses, including its rival, DC.

Infinite Crisis #5 (April 2006).

DC Comics' assessment is even more complex, with frayed narratives and equally divided fictional realities; its Multiverses collide and break apart, causing total chaos, infinite crises, and a constant reevaluation of its characters and degrees of heroism. Since Wonder Woman #59 (1953), writers at DC have symbolically considered what living in a real, tangible Multiverse would do to our mentalities, lives and consciousness. Since 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, when DC attempted to crunch the whole Multiverse into one single fictional universe, America's oldest comics publisher has allowed events on the Multiversal level to dominate its main narrative storyline with increasing frequency and intensity. DC soon uncrunched their single universe and brought the Multiverse back. DC's writers have reevaluated our understanding of death, of time, of narrative sequence and continuity, and of morality (see also: here); and all of this arises when the unseeable and unmeasurable beyond our perception collides theoretically with tangible reality and coughs up a third synthetic unknown.

nU Alec Holland meets nU Abby Arcane. DCnU Swamp Thing #3 (January 2012).

In short, alternate realities and parallel dimensions have of course appeared in many modern works of literature and drama, some great, some popular; but only DC has been consistently speculating on what a collective Multiversal reality would be like, month in, month out, over almost sixty years. DC's Multiverse has evolved over that time, with its most radical stories ever published this fall. The editors and writers at DC are saying the fabric of time and space could tear, turn itself inside out, and we could all find ourselves, the same but different, living in new realities, haunted by memories of our other existences. Below the jump, the speculative science beneath the story-telling.
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Look Skyward: Lunar Eclipse

2011-12-10T02:35:00.004-05:00

June, 2011 eclipse. Image Source: CNN.

A total Full Moon lunar eclipse at dawn and early morning will turn the Moon dark red. The Moon will also be larger than usual, and the effects of the Earth passing between the Sun and the Moon will be all the more dramatic. The event will be visible early in the morning of December 10 (North American time). Space.com: "The eclipse will start at around 7:45 a.m. EST (4:45 a.m. PST, 12:45 GMT), when the shadow of the moon inches across the lunar disk. The celestial show will be visible from parts of North America, with those in the western portions of Canada and the United States particularly well placed for the event. People in Alaska, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, and central and eastern Asia should also be able to catch sight of the reddened moon. 'For people in the western United States, the eclipse is deepest just before local dawn," NASA scientists said in a statement. "Face west to see the red moon sinking into the horizon as the sun rises behind your back. It's a rare way to begin your day.'" CNN states the first signs of the eclipse will be visible earlier, at 6:33 EST: "The eclipse will last from 6:33 a.m. Eastern (3:33 a.m. Pacific) till 12:30 p.m. Eastern (9:33 a.m. Pacific)"; but the main part of the eclipse will last 51 minutes. The LA Times reports that you can also watch the eclipse live on your computer: "Slooh, the online Space Camera, plans to broadcast a free, real-time feed of the eclipse from telescopes in Australia, Asia and Hawaii. You can access the feed via Slooh's homepage." This will be the last total lunar eclipse until 2014.

Fox News comments that this will be an opportunity to see the impossible - the Sun and the eclipsed Moon in the sky at the same time. This should not be possible, because when a total lunar eclipse takes place, the Sun and Moon are on a 180 degree line, with the Earth between them. We will see both in the sky because of atmospheric refraction called selenelion.

Not surprisingly, astrologers think this Full Moon lunar eclipse, with the eclipsed, out-of-sight Moon refracted back up into our line of vision, is significant. The eclipse occurs in the constellation of Gemini. For them, it symbolizes a heightening of emotions this weekend, hidden secrets revealed, the penny will finally drop - they think it is also a time of dreams and visions.

Chess for Three

2011-12-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Image Source: Slashgear.

Ack! Thanks to Lee Hamilton for a Slashgear link to this new Chess game for three people. These is more than a geekfest. Millennial shades of gray are literally becoming manifest. For my posts on Chess at the turn of the Millennium, go here, here, here and here. And for my posts on configurations of a third, tripartite agents, and triplets as one of the critical signs of times, go here and here.

Prehistory's Mysteries: Gate of the Gods

2011-12-08T00:01:00.001-05:00

Image Source: Ancient Wisdom.

There are some mysterious locations around the world which have legendary significance, but they are so old that the actual reasons for their importance never entered recorded history. Archaeologists are left to guess at their purpose and meaning. One of these is the so-called Gate of the Gods in Peru, a strange T-shaped doorway carved in a sheer rockface, large enough for a man to climb into it.

The circular indentation for the key. Image Source: Ancient Wisdom.

At the centre of the gate, there is a round hole, apparently to insert the 'key,' a gold disk. The doorway was discovered in 1996. From the site, Ancient Wisdom:

This huge mysterious door-like structure in the Hayu Marca mountain region of Southern Peru near Lake Titicaca, lies 35 kilometres from the city of Puno and is found in an area which has long been revered by local indians as the "City of the Gods." Although no actual city has ever been discovered, the area is known as a Spirit Forest, or Stone Forest, made of strange rock formations that resemble buildings, people, and other artificial structures (Simulacrum). The door or the "Puerta de Hayu Marca" (Gate of the Gods) has been, at some time in the distant past, carved out of a natural rock face and in all, measures exactly 23' in height and width, with a smaller alcove in the centre at the base which measures in at just under 6' in height.

Jose Luis Delgado Mamani stumbled across the structure in 1996 while trekking through the surrounding foothills trying to familiarize himself with the area as his job is as a guide for mountaineering tourists. "When I saw the structure for the first time, I almost passed out..." said Mamani in an interview with the local press.

The native Indians of the region had a legend that spoke of "a gateway to the lands of the Gods", and in that legend, it was said that in times long past great heroes had gone to join their gods, and passed through the gate for a glorious new life of immortality, and on rare occasions those men returned for a short time with their gods to "inspect all the lands in the kingdom" through the gate.

Another legend tells of the time when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in Peru and looted gold and precious stones from the Inca tribes. According to one legend an Incan priest of the Temple of the Seven Rays named Amaru Meru (Aramu Muru) fled from his temple with a sacred golden disk known as "the key of the gods of the seven rays", and hid in the mountains of Hayu Marca. He eventually came upon the doorway which was being watched by shamen priests. He showed them the key of the gods and a ritual was performed with the conclusion of a magical occurrence initiated by the golden disk which opened the portal, and according to the legend blue light did emanate from a tunnel inside. The priest Amaru Meru handed the golden disk to the shamen and then passed through the portal "never to be seen again". Archeologists have observed a small hand sized circular depression on the right hand side of the small entranceway, and have theorized that this is where a small disk could be placed and held by the rock.

Prometheus

2011-12-07T00:01:00.009-05:00

Here's a random image from the sets of the 2012 Alien-prequel-that-isn't-a-prequel, directed by Ridley Scott. You can see more set photos at Alien Prequel News.

Europe's Toughest Hour

2011-12-05T00:01:00.330-05:00

Image Source: The Olive Press.

The crisis in Europe intensifies. The headlines are desperate: Italy accepted new austerity measures; today, "The [Italian] minister in charge of pension reform broke down and cried as she tried to spell out the detail of the changes." Old Europe is dead, and EU advocates say a new United States of Europe, "a single, robust Brussels government for all EU countries -- or at least for the euro zone," must rise from the ashes. Merkel and Sarkozy are unveiling a euro rescue package this week that will likely require members of the euro zone to relinquish economic sovereignty through changes to the EU treaties. The Guardian expects that a number of EU countries will drop out of the union. The FT is thinking the unthinkable on a European breakup. The Economist reports that the chance the euro will disintegrate in the coming weeks is alarmingly high. The UK has told its European embassies to brace for riots if the euro collapses. The Telegraph is talking about "Eurogeddon" and says that Britain should close its doors to European immigration. The Dow Jones FX Trader has prepared an EU crisis roadmap for key milestones ahead.

This is "Europe's toughest hour since World War II." There is panicky talk of deeper integration - a new Reich - or conflict? I have long wondered why Continental-wide empire or the spectre of war are Europe's default alternatives. Couldn't the powers in Europe simply, for the first time in over two thousand years, choose not to invade their neighbours, euro or no euro, European Union or no European Union? How many non-Europeans died in the twentieth century for the sake of saving Europe from itself? And how many Europeans died in those conflicts and as well before that, in the fourteenth and fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries? And now we hear hints that nothing has been learned on that score? There's a big difference between an EU striving unsuccessfully to apply federalistic American or Canadian models - and a neo-Roman empire conceived at best in Bonapartistic dreams. Speaking of the EU as the New Rome was once the specialty only of religious eschatologists. Yet it slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.

This is not just a crisis of the economy and political power. It is a crisis of values and ideals. What does Europe stand for? I have seen some pro-EU blogs talking of the potential loss of Europe's singular greatness, encapsulated symbolically in Beethoven's 9th as the Continent's cultural touchstone. There was always some hubris and misdirected envy of America in the EU project. The choice of EU anthem made Daniel Hannan recall A Clockwork Orange. It's a sin, using lovely Ludwig Van like that.

Philosopher Jürgen Habermas, labeled the 'last European' by Der Spiegel, defends the European idea against evil market forces and inept politicians.
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Detroit Renaissance

2011-12-04T00:38:00.002-05:00

William Livingstone House, designed by architect Albert Kahn, was demolished in 2010. Image Source: Urban and Transportation News.

'Detroit Renaissance' is a term that has been kicked around since the early 1970s. The expression may finally live up to its promise. With all the doom and gloom about the economy, it's hard to find any promise for the future. Detroit seemed a harbinger and poster child for this downturn, and was stuck in a relentless decline over several decades. But times change. In the last couple of days, some reports have circulated that Detroit is set to undergo a massive renaissance in the next five years. American automobile makers face an uphill climb, with well-publicized problems, but they may turn the corner in the Motor City. From Auto Observer:

Detroit-based automakers will hire more than 30,000 new workers in the next four years, reversing years of declining employment in the ranks of Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and the Chrysler Group LLC, said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor group for the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research. Data from CAR indicate total employment of the Detroit Three automakers will increase from today’s 171,000 to 201,000 by 2015 and that auto-industry suppliers will need to add from 100,000 to 150,000 new workers over the same period. But the research group’s projected 2015 total employment figure for the Detroit automakers still pales in comparison to the industry’s heyday. In the late 1970s, the Detroit Three employed more than 1 million workers in the United States.

This is a story of Millennial hope. Detroit's decline was one of the saddest stories of industrial collapse in the late twentieth century United States.
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Love in the New Millennium 8: What Women Want

2011-12-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

Aishwarya Rai: Often considered the most beautiful woman in the world.

What do women want? Forgive the rhetorical generalizations, but lots of people would like to know, including many women. This post is a companion piece to my post on men and love and the Internet, here. In that post, I concluded that one of the reasons men invented the Internet was because it was a great democratic equalizer when it comes to pursuing women. Also, the Internet allows men to resolve discrepancies between dissatisfaction in their current situations and their desired situations. They can do this fairly seamlessly - until they have to make their online virtual reality match up with their everyday reality. Despite these wrinkles, the masculine desires for freedom and equality when searching for a mate appear to be two of the driving forces behnd the Tech Boom.

But how do the Internet, and technology in general, reflect and reveal women's greatest desires?

Back in high school, my insane English teacher said: "Don't be fooled, Boys! Women say they want love! But what they really want is powerrrrr." He said he figured this out one day when he found himself peeling a grape for his granddaughter.
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Neuroeconomics

2011-12-02T00:01:00.231-05:00

Image Source: Psychology Today.

A couple of years ago, I went to a conference where some new-fangled techniques in economic studies were discussed in one of the sessions. The novel methods involved presenting test subjects with economic choices, and then administering blood tests or brain scans to observe changes in hormonal levels and brain activity; it is an idea I touched on in an earlier post. At the time, I had a laugh; this bizarre hybrid of economics and psychobiology was chilling, yet funny, because of its dull literal-mindedness.

When the economy tanks and everyone finds economists without answers, then economic analysts sometimes poach on other disciplines' territories to find new methods. Occasionally, they move right into another field and make themselves at home. For example, they have been camping in the field of history, with an area of research they call Cliometrics. They've also expressed some interest in economics as an applied philosophy. As one of my friends who works in philosophy said, if the economists were to stop by, he would go down to the front gate and say: "Nothing to see here, Boys, move on, move on."

And move on they have, with zero sense of irony - to neuroscience, psychology and biology. It's a sign of how desperate economic researchers are. They need to find solutions to serious problems that their theories partly engendered. So far, they have come up empty-handed. Rather than containing the recession, their methods have been politicized; their ideas have been appropriated by practitioners in politics; and the economy is not improving. And so since 2008, with pressing urgency, the economists have been moving on, in a bid to develop whole new ways of economic thinking and remake the world economy.
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