It's a Miracle!

It's been a busy week in the world of science. A new Mars probe has been launched, which ought to clear up some big questions in about 300 days or so. Clearly this will serve a dual purpose. They say that they're trying to find evidence of life on the red planet, but scouting out viable sources of water on the planet would be another good use. Don't know if you've ever read Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. I haven't read it either, but I did read the first page last week and was surprised to find out that the minimum trip that a human from Earth could ever take to Mars would be somewhere in the neighborhood of three years.

The trek itself is like ten months. Then you've got to stay there for about a year for Earth's and Mars's orbits to sync up properly again, and then, of course, there's the return voyage. It'd be rough. You'd really get to know your ship buddies. The psychological turmoil would probably be fairly significance. you'd probably want to screen potential trekkers. Wouldn't want any psychotic episodes.

That would make a good suspense movie, though. A quirky crew of astronauts bound for Mars run into a bit of trouble when one of their own decides to stab someone in the throat with the straw he used for his freeze-dried meals. Messed up. Lots of blood. Can you imagine the scene if someone were to bleed out in zero-G? Holy crap would that be fucked! Just little droplets of blood floating, suspended grotesquely in your cramped little cabin of a spaceship.

In other science news: Parthenogensis! Holy, Mary, Mother of God! Jesus, titty-fucking Christ! And the most famous scandal-fucked Korean scientist of the last year discovered something maybe even cooler--and certainly more controversial--than stem cells. I'm sure you all remember Woo Suk Hwang (You Suck Wang?)

It'll change everything. Men, lock up your wives now, because the technology finally exists for them to reproduce without you! Fucked up, right? Soon, it will be just a matter of taking a "pregnant drug" and women will spontaneously give birth to genetically superior offspring. And without all that tedious mucking about with relationships.

"But Doctor!" all you men say, "Won't that leave us with more time to fish, hunt, and masturbate?"

Shaking my head sadly, I say unto you: once women don't need us to make babies with them, they don't need us at all. We're finished. We will no longer be a necessary half of the species. And if I were womenkind, I would have us eradicated. Women might make the claim that they'd keep us around for slave labor. Don't believe them. It's a trick. They're trying to get you to do slave labor. And we all know how fucking bullshit that is.

I think our only option is a preemptive strike, at the heart of the female empire. Um... someone capture Oprah and find out just where the hell that might be. Make it so!

P.S. You know what would have made the Nativity story cooler? If Mary had had eye lasers and Jesus had been born with all the powers of a Bene Gesserit.

Because I choose to!!!!

Okay, here it is, readers. The final straw. The idea, the conclusion, the bit of logic that will make your brain explode!

Look at him. Go ahead, I know he's just too gorgeous, too cool, and too badass for you to keep your mind clear for what's to come, but take in his vapid, empty, almost Buddha-like countenance. Be certain that Keanu is a Bodhisattva.

I just watched this documentary.

I'm not going to ask you to watch it, because it's kind of long, though it is a very interesting BBC production. Probably one of the best on time travel that I've ever seen.

It's also one of those documentaries that's just a huge cock block. They lead you in, sort of give you a bone, make you think that "Yes! Finally, time travel is fucking possible!" but then it drops you on your nuts with a, "but wait, there's a catch."

Of course, the final catch, according to how the math works, is that if you were to build a time machine, you could never travel back in time to before the time machine itself was built.

Yeah. I know. Fucking bullshit, right?

It's at almost exactly the 40 minute mark that the really interesting stuff comes up in the video. The last possibility for time travel: artificial simulation. I'm not sure if Moore's Law still applies, but it is clear that processor power will continue to increase. Our processors will continue to get smaller--just to give you an idea, the most advance chips are manufactured using a 45nm process, 450 times the diameter of an atom....very, very, very, very tiny--hard drives, RAM, things like that will get faster and more sophisticated. The point is, if trends continue--and right now, there's little reason to believe that they won't--some advanced civilization will be able to create a computer with, in essence, infinite computing power.

With a computer that powerful, you can "time travel" by simply modeling the conditions of a long, long time ago and, in essence, bring the past to you, a-la, the holodeck.

If you modeled a human brain, if you built a computer simulation of a human brain and then ran it at speed, do you realize what you'd create? If you built it from the atomic level up in simulation, do you know what it would be? It would be a conscious mind. It would have an ego. It would be, for all intents and purposes, alive.

You get me?

So here's the clincher. In the documentary, linked above, they talked about the laws of probability. ("If-Then Statement" alert) If the computer of the future is creating these simulated realities, these virtual worlds, if this computer is possible theoretically--and we can be reasonably certain that it is--then the machine most certainly has been built at some point. And if that's true, then the probability of the world you and I live in being the original world, the odds against us living in the "real" world are billions to one.

Yeah.

Let it sink in.

The argument is sound, dear imaginary friends and readers. It's rock solid. The odds of you being real, are very, very tiny.

What does that say about the possibility of the soul? How many layers of artificial reality would you have to claw up through to get to the real real world.

You know what would have made The Matrix a better film? If it turned out that the matrix was just a matrix within a matrix and even the machines were a computer simulation that was subjugating a species that was also just a computer simulation. That would have been the mind fucker of the century. I would have hailed the Wachowski brothers as visionary geniuses.

I know I'm not the first stoner ever to say, "What if, like, the matrix is real? What if, like, we are, just in a computer program?" Even the Wachowski brothers weren't the first to think of it. Descartes probably wasn't even the first.

But did it ever occur to you that it was almost certainly the case? Did it ever occur to you, that you're just an NPC in someone else's ridiculously complex game of The Sims?

It's fucking bullshit, I know.

Here I come to save the day!

Schizophrenia is the most awesome of all severe mental diseases. That is to say it is awe-inspiring and powerful and mis- understood. There is no other comparable disease.

They say that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the land of crazy people, the schizophrenic is a god.

This is why scientists at Johns Hopkins have decided that other species can benefit from this most holy of brain-crippling diseases. In the past, one might reasonably imagine that schizophrenic people might have been elevated in society. It might have been a desirable characteristic in a shaman or chief or medicine man. The schizophrenic sees things that others don't. He hears things that others don't. He pushes aside the Veil of Maya and makes connections that we only see in our dreams.

I myself have witnessed a schizophrenic acquaintance of mine treated as a shaman type by a hippie chick. She followed him around for hours and hung on his every uttered word. Look at Twelve Monkeys. Pitt's character was a lucid schizo who gathered a following.

"But," you say--O ever astute reader--"Doctor! Schizos are just crazy people! They paranoid, delusional, and insane! They imagine things!" And I say to you, my friends, the schizo is often paranoid and delusional and they are most certainly insane, but no one is so...immaculately insane. Get my drift? It's such a perfect disease. The schizo doesn't necessarily see himself as insane. He has lost his ability to separate the incoming stimuli from the outside world and the world that exists solely in his head. The one becomes transposed over the other creating a mesh, a sort of synthetic world in which miraculous things can happen.

Of course, there's sort of an inverse relationship between a schizo's lucidity and insanity. The more lucid, the less crazy (the less inspirational, but perhaps more charismatic). The less lucid, the more insightful, the less charismatic. A balance must be struck.

I don't know if you've ever heard of Louis Wain. A fascinating figure. An artist who drew nothing but cats. He was famed for his anthropomorphic cat drawings, and also for having "suffered" from late-onset schizophrenia. Here is an interesting progression.

This sort of shows his descent into madness. Bear in mind, this guy only painted pictures of cats. He goes from only vaguely intriguing and perhaps whimsical image of a feline, to.....


oh, kinda weird....



that's pretty.....




um......



Holy fucking psycho-crazy shit, Batman!



It's really quite remarkable. I mean, Wain is the only artist I can think of that actually manages to capture even the slightest hint of what it's like to experience LSD intoxication. This page has higher-res versions of the images, along with biographical info that you might find interesting.

Anyway, what this all goes to show, is that we don't really know anything about schizophrenia or its effects on people. It is clear that some of what the mind sees when inflicted with this disease is akin to what many a hippie experiences when consuming psychedelic drugs. We all know that the shamans of yesteryear (and maybe some still today?) used them for ritualistic purposes. Tribes in Mesoamerica believed that psilocybin mushrooms allowed one to contact the divine.

Perhaps it is more utilitarian...more...useful, to temporarily induce the kind of insanity that schizophrenia is famed for, but that doesn't mean that these scientists aren't trying to create some sort of mouse god-speaker that will lead its people on towards a greater and brighter future for all of mousekind. Maybe, the tree of knowledge is just a mental illness away!

To You, O, Murdoch, We Humbly Pray!

I've been thinking a lot about war lately. I saw this video. I also saw this video. And then I thought about an old movie. And it occurred to me that if we're going to be spending all of this money anyway, why bother with all of this nonsense about sending troops across the ocean?

Wouldn't it be far cheaper to build giant robots and have them duke it out in Death Valley? Two go in; one comes out. It'd be hella entertaining, and almost as much of a resource hog. It would be utterly pointless and absurd, and hell, we'd actually probably spend less money. We could... I don't know, give the leftover money that we would have spent feeding and housing and outfitting, what, 140,000 troops...to the poor or something. That'll shut them the fuck up. How was the Iraq war supposed to help America anyway? I can't figure that out.

Giving the gift of Democracy (which doesn't work so well here, I might add) to Iraqis whose apparently unanimous rebuttal is "Who the hell asked you, anyway?" Can you smell what The Rock's cooking now? Mmm...that's right! That smell is just a little bit of Freedom, bitches!

Whether you like it or not.

Giant robots fighting would give us valuable entertainment--and I think everyone can agree that we deserve at least a little entertainment--and it would cut down on the number of casualties from...umm...let's see...27,000 to... well... between 0 and 1, rounding to the nearest whole number.

I think it's only fair that a living, breathing human would have to be piloting the giant robot. I mean, gladitorial combat would lose all of its fun if there wasn't the possibility of death. We can genetically engineer and specially train these pilots from birth and that's all we'd need them for.

And hell, once this little scheme has solved all of the world's problems, we can start having giant robot fighting leagues. That would be sweet. It might even me a new Olympic event!

And speaking of that, what's with all these pussies saying that athletes shouldn't use performance enhancing drugs? I mean, wouldn't sports in general be more interesting if everyone across the board were juicers? Let's require steroids and crystal meth and...I don't know...crack or something. I think if there's enough money pumped into it, we'll see safer and more effective stimulants and 'roids to make our athletes better and better.

Besides, sports are boring as they are. If we kicked everything up a notch, maybe we'll see some crazy shit new records for...I don't know...the hundred meter dash and home-runs and most touchdowns in an inning or something.

It'll be a brave new world of athletics and warfare. Instead of just televising wars, let's make wars into the entertainment event of the summer! Time it for sweeps, and then totally bank. I bet Rupert Murdoch, in all of his crotchety Australian glory would agree.

Do you really think we can trust the Decepticons?

With the release of the new Transformer's movie just a scant 485 hours away, I recently acquired a copy of the original 1986 film.

From the cheesy retro 80's soundtrack to the star-studded cast (Leonard Nimoy, Orson Wells, Eric Idle, Judd Nelson, to name a few) to the fairly interesting retelling of the old King Arthur tale, there is a lot to like in the old film.

It's brutal, first of all. Optimus Prime and Starscream totally get killed. Ultramagnus almost bites it, and well...let's not even talk about the strange death that Unicron endured. Not even sure how that was supposed to have happened...I mean... is the matrix technological? Or magical? Or what? What the hell is it?

But that aside, there's an interesting thing about the movie that I think is very daring on the part of...well...whoever the hell it was that made the movie. It's going to take a bit to explain, but if you'll bear with me, the payoff is exceptional, especially if you're a fan of science and speculative science fiction, like I am.

Okay. What are the transformers? Giant robots from outer space, right? When they came to Earth (in the TV show), perhaps thinking that the dominant form of life on the planet was the automobile (which is understandable), they assimilated the designs of Earth vehicles as a way of blending in.

Of course, the Autobot leader, Optimus Prime takes on the form of that king of cross-country transit, almost a symbol of capitalism itself, the eighteen wheel semi truck. And the quirky youngster takes on the form of a Volkswagen Beetle (whoa...newsflash...while writing this post, I have discovered that I was wrong to lambaste the makers of this new movie for making Bumblebee into a Camaro...apparently, it's VW itself that didn't want to lend its image to a film that portrays violence--my sincerest apologies to Universal Studios, and shame, shame on you, Volkswagen).

Anyway, before I get sidetracked any further in this analysis, let's do the dirty business.

Okay, so there's a planet called Cybertron where all of these giant robots live. It is a planet which has evolved sentient robots. Inorganic creatures which are self-aware. This is absolutely critical.

In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins (of some degree of infamy) discussed the possibility (indeed, the probability) that DNA (that is, deoxyribonucleic acid) is not the first self-replicating molecule, and, perhaps more importantly, nor is it going to be the last. It just happens to be the one that appeared on Earth.

It is unlikely that machines can be created except by another being. They are not inherently self-aware. Some sort of catalyst organic being would be required before such a thing could come about (in most likelyhood---I'm not willing, at this point, to rule out the possibility completely that the Autobots could have evolved by chance). The important thing to consider is the possibility that the transformers in their highly evolved state are possibly the creations (perhaps a reincarnation) of another organic species that created them in the first place. --As a sidenote: wouldn't it be interesting to have a creation myth that revolved around beings less evolved than yourself?

The staggering thing is, upon watching the old Transformers movie (a film I have not seen since I was a very young child, and never had the opportunity to own myself), is that Earth appears to be the only planet that actually has organic lifeforms. All other planets (Cybertron, Junkion, Quintessa, etc) appear to support, not only exclusively mechanical "life-forms" but are also made entirely of heavy metals themselves. No organics anywhere (I think Quintessa might actually have some plants...but I can't remember exactly). Perhaps if life is to evolve on a planet with little carbon, concessions need to be made. Or perhaps some dominant organic life created some sort of horrible environmental catastrophe that stripped the planets of their atmospheres and made organic life unsustainable. Who knows?

Hell, on Quintessa, Hotrod and Kup were beset by goddamned robotic piranhas! The plausibility of robotic (non-self-aware) piranhas evolving by chance seems a little thin, but that doesn't matter. Nature abhors a vacuum right? So somebody had to fill an ecological niche. Why not a robotic piranha?

The thing we are seeing with the transformers is not a genetic legacy, but a memetic one. Look it up. Since obviously, Autobots don't have DNA, there must be some other thing being passed down by generation. Again, we look to Richard Dawkins and the "meme."

Videodrome, a film by David Cronenberg, also features a meme. It's hard to make the case that the entity that is "videodrome" is self-aware, but it certainly is a non-material (non-organic) entity that self-replicates. (Whether Max Renn's death also signaled the destruction of videodrome is beyond the scope of this little essay).

The Matrix also comes to mind, obviously with a decidedly more deliberate agenda (i.e. the endless repetition of sophomoric and highly idiotic elementary philosophical ideas about free will and what-have-you), but the idea is still intact in the The Matrix trilogy. I wonder if it's coincidental that the Wachowski epic is named very similarly to the central plot device in Transformers: The Movie (1986).

Whether this discussion has any real relevance or point is entirely up to you, dear reader. I am merely drawing connections and building a plausible framework for further analysis. The important thing is that you learned something. Now, watch this video. I think it sums things up nicely.

If only we'd listened to James Cameron! This never would have happened!

Bear with me, gentle readers. This is...unprecedented I know, but I thought I needed to warn you. It is only on matters of utmost urgency that I would ever post more than is strictly necessary to maintain the ruse that "Yeah, sure, I keep a little blog on that internet thing."

So rest assured that two posts in one day is the result of very terrible news that has just been sent across my desk.

But this could be the end of existence as we know it! And you my dear friends needed to be the first to know.

How closely did you read the article? Did you read the part where it said, "They are now sending voice, images and other data over the Skynet 5A platform."

I repeat: "Skynet 5A platform."

Yes, my friends, Judgement Day is coming. And that, right soon. Stock your basements, hole up in your bomb shelters, and do not use the internet more than is strictly necessary. Skynet is a devious machination that will infect your computer without you even knowing it. I suspect Japan will be the first to suffer, because there, everything is computerized, even their goddamned toilets.

Imagine it, because it could happen to you: Sitting on the can, reading a Nancy Drew mystery while you relax all of your muscles. A malicious computer virus infects your high tech toillette, and, with a monstrous schlupping sound, an oozing disturbing sense of loss comes over you as your bowels are sucked right out your asshole!

It will happen! Mark my words! Be afraid, America! Be afraid even to poop!

Contractual Obligation

I don't know if it's me or if it's Reuters that has a problem with this, but clearly something must be done. It has to be stopped.

You see, this sort of thing wouldn't have happened, even as little as thirty years ago. People knew who their neighbors were and what they were up to.

Okay, maybe in some of the bigger cities, sure, people were detached a little bit, even perhaps from some of their immediate neighbors.

But allow me to show an example: I live in a house that has been split into two apartments. My neighbors live a scant three feet across a shared hall and stairway that leads to the basement (which is also split in two; half for each of us). I've lived here for two years. I don't know their names. I think one of them is Tim.

If Tim died I would not know it, unless he stunk up the place.

I think our problem is not an obsession with death. The story is fascinating because it proves, like the other ones I've cited in the past(here and here and especially here), that we don't know each other anymore. People don't make friends with everyone anymore. We don't need to anymore, maybe.

People get left out. I'm not even completely sure it's sad. Sure, in most cases it ends like the above story. But there are times when it leads the Chos of the world. Those are the times when even Baron fucking Samedi can't keep his sense of humor.

It's not like I care, but that's the point, right? For me, the Reuters story is a joke. It's funny. It's an "Oddly Enough" item.

I'm not trying to be meaningful, dear readers. Far be it from me to try to make an important point about anything. I just thought that, facts being what they were, it's something we might conceivably think about a bit. If the source of the societal disconnect can be located, then perhaps it can be expunged, deleted, corrected. We can slash it with white-out and maybe be a real civilization again. Or maybe we never were.

Oscar Wilde said this about America: "America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization." That does not in any way imply that there are any civilizations left in the world. In fact, one might argue that the human race is uniformly decadent and depraved. In fact, I think the quote implies that all civilizations, no matter how great, become decadent after a while. I would make the argument that any country that has even a single McDonalds qualifies for decadent status.

The point is not what or who is to blame, because everyone who doesn't say "hello" to their neighbors is to blame. Everyone who doesn't attend block parties (or indeed hold them) is to blame. Anyone who doesn't know the name of the guy who lives three feet from his fucking door is to blame.

The point, dear friends an readers, is that we don't give enough of a shit about it to actually do something about it. And if that's the way we like it, well, may good old Samedi dance on our graves. Man, he's a sharp motherfucker.

Sweet Action

Let's face it, pandas are cute. In fact, there's absolutely nothing about pandas that isn't disgustingly cute, or frighteningly tragic. I mean, they're peaceful, non-violent, adorable with their painted faces and chubby good looks, and, of course, endangered.

So it's no wonder that when something good happens to them, people get all excited. When I saw the headline, I thought that some crazy manic panda orgy had occurred. I was a little disappointed (as I always am) by what actually happened. As it turns out, Bai Yun and Gao Gao just had some sort of panda love affair.

In the end, it didn't really work out and they went their separate ways. I suspect that Bai Yun got a little clingy. She's an older gal, you know. The fact that she likes them young is telling. Gao Gao was only in it for the lesson, you know? You can learn a lot from an older girl, right? But after a while, the other pandas start to look at you funny.

I'm not sure if you know this, but Ben Franklin (yes, that Ben Franklin) wrote in one of his books that when you want to take on a mistress, it's a good practice to go with an older woman. There's no guilt. They're better conversation. And among other reasons, "they're so grateful!"

But eventually, there's a time to move on. I don't really think that Gao Gao had anything better coming along (I mean, he lives in a zoo, for chrissake) but three carefully documented fucks are better than getting nothing, right?

I wonder if they videotaped it. I mean...I would, but then, I'm a man of science and medicine, endlessly fascinated by the the intricacies of nature in all of its splendor. But on top of that, everyone likes panda porn. It's so rare that it can't not be totally hot, right?

I just like how the zoologists, in trying to do their job, have to be perverts. They have to voyeuristically document and watch these pandas through their whole mating ritual. It was probably like watching a modern romantic comedy, only much better scripted, funnier, and with all the naughty bits left in. Oh, and it has more of a sense of closure, because we get to see the whole relationship arc, from first flirtations to the dissolution of the relationship as they go their separate ways, agreeing to "just be friends." And we all know how that usually goes.

The real tragedy is the kids. Gao Gao Jr. is going to be manipulated by his bickering parents. In the court custody battle, Gao Gao Sr. says to the judge, "Bai Yun has been telling my son that I'm a deadbeat. How am I supposed to have a meaningful relationship with my son, with that bitch trash talking me?"

In the end, Gao Gao Sr. gets Junior every other weekend, and Bai Yun gets the rest. So it goes.

Extinction by Choice

I found this article on BBC today. "Lonesome George" is, according to the subtext of the article, more than likely the last Pinta Tortoise that will ever walk the earth.

The reason for this is astounding. Apparently, this octogenarian reptile is a homosexual.

If you didn't click the link and read the article, go ahead and do it now. I'll wait.

It's interesting because there hasn't been a female Pinta Tortoise for probably going on fifty years, if not more. Whalers used to eat them because they were easier to catch. Not that tortoises are hard to catch; it's just that some of them spend more time on the beach.

The fact of the matter is, when you've never really met very many females of your species, your sexuality gets a little messed up. According to genetic testing, they've found a hybrid of George's species and some other tortoise.

Apparently, there's another Pinta that, instead of going all homosexual, has decided to jump the species gap and bang anything that has a shell, creating some sort of unholy union. Apparently, the centuries old feud between the Isabela and the Pinta tortoises has been put on hold, while some youngsters went off on their own to consummate their illicit love and conceive some sort of tortoise anti-christ.

I can just see a screenplay about this. It will be like Romeo and Juliet. Romeo's homosexual grandfather says that he can't be chasing that hot Isabela Tortoise tail because they are from a different species and everyone knows that you don't boff another species.

This can only end in tragedy, of course. As pressure from both families forces the two young tortoise lovers to commit hari kari in protest of their parents' cruel decision. The real tragedy of course, is that the young hybrid tortoise won't be able to find a real home. No one wants a half-breed.

Or maybe this play could have one of those hopeful endings, where it is the crystal clear honesty of the young child's voice that shows the two factions their shame and brings everyone together in a real hallmark, freeze frame ending.

As the credits roll, we are informed that six months after these events took place, the young hero was captured and eaten by a rampaging horde of whalers, the tentative truce between the Pintas and the Isabelas is demolished and a bloody war raged for, well, about half an hour, while the Isabelas lynched Lonesome George, the last representative of his species.

It's a hate crime on so many levels.

Soon enough, without the competition, the Isabelas grow soft and weak, and eat all available resources and there is mass starvation.

In the end, it's always the same. Their brains will be scanned and kept in computer simulation, and their DNA stored in a test tube, just waiting for the day that the tortoises will return and take their rightful place among the reptiles of the Earth.

A doctor can dream, can't he?

See the cat? See the cradle?

I'm going to try and remember, without looking in the book, the last bit from Cat's Cradle:

"If I were a younger man, I'd write a history of human stupidity. And then, I'd climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down with my history for a pillow and take some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men, and then I'd make a statue of myself, looking up, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You-Know-Who."


Rest in peace, old man. I for one did actually shed a tear.