GalacticMu

I have returned to my tallow-lit cave-hole after spending two weeks in sub-tropical splendor. While I promised tears at The Space Center, I managed to keep myself under control enough that BattleGate never got a clear shot of me. An extended review of The Space Center is forthcoming.

Otherwise: carry on.

A portrait of the author in front of a fake space module.

Video artist Kara Hearn re-enacts a boohoo worthy scene from E.T. for Learning to Love You More (assignment #47), Battlegate slobbers on self laughing.

Tomorrow, by the kindness and generosity of the best crew ever assembled (though very sadly without our Psych Officer Halcyon and resident Space Wizard Quagmire), I will be at the Space Center.

I have no idea who these fools are.

So!  BattleGate has a long day ahead of her since she will be in charge of taking photos of me crying uncontrollably the entire time.   I can only imagine the scene that will be made should I encounter an actual astronaut.

Back when my mom first started poking around the internet, she was understandably distraught by the overt lawlessness of it all. This was a time when email viruses made the evening news - remember that? Don’t open an email with a subject line that says “I love you”!!! Lightning will shoot from your monitor and destroy your child’s inheritance! At the time she had vague notions that the government might need to step in and control things.

Pshaw! I said, and described it thusly: the internet is like the Wild West; if you prefer things controlled, safe and predictable, stay in the established areas. If you are interested in independence, discovery and deviancy, then feel free to roam. Like the time of western expansion, these latter options are vital: those willing to take risks and explore new things are in fact forging a new lifestyle and future for the rest of the populace. People get hurt and porn pop-ups occur, but such is the price of sitting back and letting the maniacs win all the rest of us fun new things. My mom was agreeable to this idea and has since become a happy webizen. Not that she needed me to make this fairly weak analogy, but I think it might have accelerated her acceptance: we’re a family that believes the bleeding edge must exist.

These days I find myself thinking of the internet as an organism. Clever, right? Shut up. Anyway, in my mind it has become a vibrantly pustular, fecund, pendulous, expansive, obese, tentacular creature, saturated with diseases, genetic mutation and facing a future unknown. Which means that I love it.

Lucky for me, I am not alone. Lucky for all of us, people like Romanian artist Alex Dragulescu like to make it visible (like the Trojan to the left there).

By entering a few parameters into a 3D rendering program, Dragulescu has produced organic-looking objects by which we may delight and entertain ourselves, much in the same way we once marveled so satisfactorily at the brutal shape of the HIV virus two decades ago.  After all, Grendel wasn’t a monster until he had a face.

What Does A Computer Virus Look Like? at eWeek.com

There are times when I reel from the event horizon that occurs between the present and the future.  One of these times was Aargh telling me that he’d ingested an anti-energy drink.

Now, this is where culture, society and futurism collide in a messy Sprawl upchuck: Purple Drank is a very real underground narcotic cocktail made from codeine-based cough syrup and a mixer (often Sprite, occasionally with Jolly Ranchers added for flavor) (as an aside, you can flavor any alcohol with candy, you just have to be patient) popular in the Houston, Texas rap scene.

This arguably brilliant idea - oh come off it, you want a codeine martini too - has morphed into a low-grade sleepytime beverage to counter the teeth-grinding speed tribe of energy drink consumers.  Three independent reports  (Aargh + two guests) confirm that this valerian-root and melatonin drink does indeed slow one’s roll, as advertised.  No one could remember how it tasted.

The entire world including the C.H.U.D.s already know about this because it was on Boing Boing, but sometimes my mind gets a little blown and then I have to vent.

In summary: a man’s house in Bosnia has been hit by meteorites FIVE TIMES in the last six months. Unsurprisingly, the man suspects that aliens are pissed off at him. I myself would have a combo Job/paranoia reaction: Why are the aliens testing me? It doesn’t matter, I still love them. Unless it’s not aliens.

The thing is, most folks, like Boing Boing, categorize this under “That’s funny!” Mmm, yes, what kind of fool would think aliens would chuck carbonaceous chrondrite at him? Also, imagine that being said by someone with a monocle and a mustache. I do.

However: seriously? Five times? In six months? That is as close to impossible as I care to bother with, statistically. Which means that it is not random. Clearly there are further explanations, but each of these is as unproven as alien malevolence. Magnetic resonance? It only happens when it rains, which makes it even more bizarre - why would atmospheric precipitation affect the trajectories of space objects? That’s a trick question, since it wouldn’t. Unless we are looking at it entirely the wrong way - what if the objects aren’t coming from space? What if they are coming through a trans-dimensional wormhole that also triggers rainclouds? Eeee!

So anyway, welcome to my internal thought processes.

Man ‘targeted by aliens’ via Boing Boing

Apologies for the lack of content, but we are doing some science reconnaissance.  And what science it is!

We found this, for example.   If you care to follow the progress, feel free to peruse my photos.  Don’t make fun of my pale legs, it’s a byproduct of my space-faring ways.

The want for a society free from violence, free from want, free from meatiness, it is still here.  Because we haven’t yet created our soon-to-be plastic and alloy caretakers.  In the meantime, keep an eye on the folks at MIT.  Which is good advice on any occasion, really.

M.D.S. Personal Robots at The MIT Media Lab.  Be sure to watch to video - this robot’s movement and control are fantastic.  Note to MIT: please stop using plunky jazz bass soundtracks for your robot videos.  This is neither an episode of Seinfeld nor a corporate training video.  One word: Vangelis.  

(Found by BattleGate)

April Fools’ Day has been a major internet holiday for many, many decades now. This particular one was no exception, though it was exceptionally lame. Google’s Gmail offered a false new feature allowing you to set your email’s time of delivery. Uh. April Fools? I thought it was a great feature not because of their intended punchline (closer reading showed that it was powered by an “eflux capacitor” and intended to only insert an email into the past) - postdating blog posts has been a staple for years now, why not email? Blerg, I’m cranky.

Another large entertainment website had the headline of “Paris Hilton and Benji Madden Get Married!” Again? Wait, which celebrity got hitched and then got it annulled? Double-wait, didn’t Nicky Hilton also do that? Oh my god, I wasted precious finger skin on this. Oh yeah, my point: that’s your April Fools’ joke?

The “big” one was that Google and Virgin (with a big hardy-har tip off of naming themselves “Virgle”) are teaming up to send people to Mars. And that, friends, is just fucking mean. “Hey, we’re gonna cure cancer! JUST KIDDING!”

But! Just in time Quagmire spotted this gem, which might still be available here: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=610771

If it isn’t, I nabbed some images (click on thumbnails to view large):