"As president, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I also want to keep an eye on those robots in case they try anything." --Barack Obama, speaking to Washington D.C. schoolkids on Monday as part of his science education initiative.
The things that I'm most thankful for is my family, my well-being, & my career. Everything else is secondary, but I try to be grateful for every moment I get to experience life.
However, I realize there's something I'm thankful for politically, as America & President Obama all find ourselves firmly entrenched in the vast shitstorm that is reality.
Seeing the ridiculous circus following Sarah Palin's book signing/interview tour, things could always be much worse. In my expert opinion, things would have been completely bonkers by this same time if team McPain had won the election.
I had a brief, terrifying vision just now... of Sarah debating Barack in 2012 & millions of people cheering her on. Could the people of this country be so cynical & void of judgment that she could be given the reigns of the government?
The first thing she would do if elected (with God's blessing, of course) would be to nuke the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem so she can erect her own temple & become Queen of the World.
Even though I've obviously never been a fan of hers, I don't think she's actually evil or anything. Her voice just makes me want to rip my ears off.
... and of course we all have Sarah to give thanks to this holiday - for the most unsettling & wacked out turkey-related video ever:
Maybe the turkeys were better off not hearing to her nonsense.
...because I don't enjoy having someone I don't know yelling at me from the TV.
Also, it's depressing to hear about all the missing kids & other tragedies of the sort she covers. To her credit, she also shined the light recently on animal testing, specifically on monkeys.
I have to admit that the sensationalistic, but appropriate headline, pulled me in:
I've always thought that self-perpetuating life probably exists in other places throughout this relatively infinite Universe. However, I also think that beings from other world wouldn't necessarily physically look like us at all.
Sending messages to the stars or trying to communicate would suddenly seem ridiculous if alien life appeared & floated out of a spaceship looking like the sea cucumber in the photo above. We would be in no position to expect direct communication with abstractly weird beings from another world. What if they didn't deal with sound or light at all, but communicated & navigated using subtle manipulations of gravity fields? We wouldn't even know they were sentient without evident technology.
On the other hand, it's possible that space/time traveling aliens would be able understand us- like we are deciphering communication between bees & other animals. If there are alien beings advanced enough to be visiting us, they probably see Earth like a zoo & just use their 4-dimensional technology to pop in & out of our world like people drive a jeep through a safari.
UFO's aside, It's amazing to see all the new images of life that science and new technologies are discovering on all scales. This is a set of microscopic images that I saw on io9 that is crazy:
About a week ago, my Apple "iThink" computer concept was mentioned on the gadget blog Gizmondo. It was part of a feature about the future of human/machine interaction called "This Cyborg Life."
The author used the older graphics from before I posted "Apple 'iThink' - Upgraded." It's still cool to see people appreciate the possibilities such a concept presents.
click to enlarge
Apple "iThink" Technical Specifications
• Size: 1.5 x 1.5 x .5 inches
• Symbiosis™ Neural Interface: Direct brain-computer link means your mind and computer are one!
• Intel Fusion™ Quantum Processing: Uses the power of the atom to instantly compute at the speed of thought.
• Holographic Data Storage: The iThink’s tiny internal holochip has a staggering individual capacity of over 666 Yottabytes (1000^8), for seemingly infinite augmented memory
• Intra-neural Communication: Mentally allow or block any kind of signal you want to send or recieve instantly over the wireless iThink global network
• Perceptual Immersion: Images, sound, & other data are projected virtually into your sensory fields by directly connecting into your brain’s activity
• Integrated GPS and Google Earth: Receive directions and location information anywhere on the planet, and the ability to be located in case of an emergency
Norah Jones gave an interview & performed too. Although I wasn't totally blown away by the song she played or her new haircut... she's a talented artist & she's still gorgeous. Also her Dad is a legend.
I'm not sure why the idea that sound waves form spheres is "news", since I thought it was common sense that sound vibrations extend uniformly into 3 dimensions.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, the study of cymatics involves vibrational patterns, primarily of sound. Despite my interest in this area, I still haven't lived up to my 2009 New Years resolution to learn dolphin 'cymaglyphs'.
I'm sure the idea of visualizing these energy waves in space is something that will probably be further realized through augmented reality of some kind. Perhaps there will be something like a 3D version of the iTunes graphic visualizer:
In my browsing the links of the above story, I came to realize that there is a blog devoted to the topic called The Journal of Cymatics.
It's difficult to get a perspective on the countless tribes, clans, & societies throughout history, all around the globe who have contributed to the human story. I imagine overall human evolution as an amoeba-like phenomenon, feeling into the earth's environments to create paths of survival.
The fate of the Neanderthals seems to still be uncertain, but it seems likely that humans simply engulfed & destroyed the less intelligent species. Humans probably encountered the Neanderthals, thought they were inferior beasts and destroyed them. People think of Neaderthals as savage brutes, but humans have proven to be the most successful killing machines ever. Fortunately, our genetic disposition for interconnectedness is greater than our animal instincts of aggression.
Anyway, after mentally drifting through the vast epochs of humanity's unfathomable intricacy for a few minutes... I came to my senses and realized what's really important- Obama bowed to the Emperor of Japan!Why does he hate America so much!?!?!?!?!?
There has been alot of debate lately with the release of the movie "2012" about the validity of the interpretations that modern man is applying to the Mayan Long Count calendar & whether the end of the Long Count means disaster.
I have always said that the Mayan conception of time and the cosmos was profound, but the end of the Mayan baktun at 13.0.0.0.0 is probably equivalent to reaching the year 2000 in the Western calendar. It most likely is just a marker for an age. Unlike the Gregorian calendar, though, the Mayan time is much more closely linked with cosmic cycles.
There is a part of me, however, that wonders if the wisdom of ancient people was somehow able to understand a cosmic cycle of destruction & creation that modern science has not yet discovered.
Recently I saw that Dave Letterman has cleared up the true nature of disaster the world faces in 2012... & it has nothing to do with the Mayan calendar:
At this point, I would be completely negligent not to bring up
One great thing about the computer as a learning tool is the ability to create interactive content that let's you experience ideas in a engaging way.
Information Aesthetics linked to a site by the University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center that is a zoomable scale of microscopic entities. I thought it was a really insightful tool to experience the relative sizes of things to small to experience directly.
I saw this video on the Cynical C Blog & it had me mesmerized.
To see such a simple process like a water drop revealing such amazing things beyond our perception shows how little we really have discovered about our world.
Here is another slo-mo video of water drop dynamics, from the Discovery show Time Warp. At one point a drop creates a wave pattern equivalent to the 'Seed of Life' geometric figure I mentioned in my last post.
This past weekend I was doing a random search for images associated with cymatics, the study of vibration patterns. It's a topic I've been curious about for awhile & for some reason I felt like looking at these amazing visual representations of sound.
One fascinating picture I came across was a pattern that can be seen to contain sacred geometric shapes like the Seal of Solomon & the Seed of Life.
Google shows the source page of a searched image, & I saw that this particular one was from an intellectually dense, but engaging essay from the blog of a chiropractor named Sara Brown http://www.changethechannelstupid.com.
Some of it may seem New-Agey or just incomprehensible to some, but I think humanity is coming to terms with levels of reality that may not be currently recognized by the narrow 'mainstream' science. Anyway I thought it was an interesting read, but I eat up this sort of thinking:
I try to expose myself to pundits & commentators who I don't generally agree with. It's good to expose yourself to arguments from those whose viewpoint differs from yours. I'm not a Fox News fan, but I 'll watch it once in awhile to get the full spectrum of opinion out there.
However, politi-tainment maestro Glenn Beck is as tough for me to stomach as that bonehead Sean Hannity. I'm as interested in conspiracy theories & hidden history as anyone else, but Beck's trips down the rabbit hole become (for me) either goofy from his over-dramatization or absurd from their incoherence.
I think it's good to scratch the surface & try to understand the connections behind social power structures, but GB is such a pompous ass that the kernels of truth he's trying to sow get lost in a manure heap. It's why on the other end of the spectrum Keith Olbermann turns off so many who might otherwise agree with his views, an inflated ego & a noxious air of self-righteousness.
Anyway, the Top Teabagger, The Mad Hatter himself, was getting it from all sides as Jon Stewart & SNL had fun with his "special" brand of commentary.
"I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This Reality- whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it. " -Agent Smith "The Matrix"
I have been collecting links for awhile about emerging technologies that will inevitably enhance the phenomenon that we call "human consciousness." I think that all of the advancements I'll be listing are leading to the possibility of our minds being augmented by a future technology like my conceptual "Apple iThink."
A couple things led me to finally post what I've found so far. Recently blogger Mac Tonnies passed away unexpectedly, & he was only a few years older than me at 34. His blog Posthuman Blues was a regular read of mine that I enjoyed because of the unorthodox, mind-bending content. It was a great mix of futurism, Fortean speculations, & general weirdness.
The other factor has been my current forced week-long stint at home due to illness. Nothing makes you dream of transcending the mortal confines of the flesh than being seriously sick. I started sympathizing with Agent Smith in the scene above, except he was imagining a trip in the opposite direction- from the digital realm of light into the physical world of the human body.
The mortality & existence of man has been a source of concern since the dawn of time. The Egyptians believed we were spirits of light encased in these bodies. The Gnostics imagined Reality as a type of virtual prison that confines our luminous true selves. The Taoists believe everything is just emanations of the ever-fluctuating, infinite Tao.
Of course, our experience is limited by the sensory nature of our interaction with the world. The universe of information bombarding each of us at each moment is distilled by our physical receptors & organs including the brain. What if we could transcend these limitations? Physics teaches that as a human traveling in a spaceship speeds up and approaches the speed of light, the relative experience of time slows down. However, nothing with mass can actually reach the velocity of electromagnetic energy.
I've always wondered what would happen if the functioning of the human mind were no longer constrained by the chemical & biological processes of the neural connections in the brain. If our thoughts could somehow actually travel uninhibited at the speed of light, how would it affect our perception, & would there even be any perception left as we know it? Perhaps like an inverse, large scale Bose-Einstein condensate, our mind would expand into... everything!
So with these thoughts off my mind, I'll share some fascinating discoveries that have caught my eye- myriad doors all leading to a future in which the human experience may be much different than the limited, localized reality-tunnel that each of us currently knows.
• Symbiosis™ Neural Interface: Direct brain-computer link means your mind and computer are one!
• Intel Fusion™ Quantum Processing: Uses the power of the atom to instantly compute at the speed of thought.
• Holographic Data Storage: The iThink’s tiny internal holochip has a staggering individual capacity of over 666 Yottabytes (1000^8), for seemingly infinite augmented memory
• Intra-neural Communication: Mentally allow or block any kind of signal you want to send or recieve instantly over the wireless iThink global network
• Perceptual Immersion: Images, sound, & other data are projected virtually into your sensory fields by directly connecting into your brain’s activity
• Integrated GPS and Google Earth: Receive directions and location information anywhere on the planet, and the ability to be located in case of an emergency
