Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, General Musings, Government, MetaFilter, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, Space, UFO
Source at U.N. tells of secret UFO meeting February 12, 2008
I received the following email from two trusted colleagues (Clay and Shawn Pickering) regarding a reliable source informing them that a secret meeting occurred yesterday morning (Feb 12) at the New York office of the United Nations concerning the recent spate of UFO sightings. It appears that a number of nation states are concerned about the impact of increased UFO sightings and wish to be briefed about what is happening. Their source, who currently works in the diplomatic corps, had to travel for an early morning off the record meeting at the UN. Their source revealed that a secret UFO working group exists that is authorizing the release of such information to the public, in an effort to acclimate others to what is about to unfold. A date of 2013 was given as the time for official disclosure and/or when extraterrestrials show up in an unambiguous way. In the interim there will be acclimation related releases of information. Importantly, the source revealed that the events leading up to official disclosure will involve more ethically oriented extraterrestrials, and they will not pose a military threat to the world.
Aha! Now we know the real reason behind those UN black helicopters!
The above passage is from Michael Salla‘s site Exopolitics. But not to worry – the aliens, called “Controllers”, are actually not going to be revealed until 2017, according to Salla in this post:
What follows next is a report of a further meeting between Clay and Shawn Pickering and their confidential source regarding the UN meeting on UFOs held on the morning of February 12, 2008. They pointed out that the “unambiguous showing up” of extraterrestrial life – sitting over major cities – would occur in 2017, rather than 2013 as described in the earlier article. The role of religion and population growth was also allegedly discussed, and appeared to raise many issues at the meeting, especially for India.
A significant descriptive term chosen by Clay’s and Shawn’s source for the extraterrestrials that would show up in 2017 was “The Controllers.” Such a term has clear psychological connotations and was chosen to have a particular effect on the target audience – both UN member states in attendance and the general public to which the information was being leaked. This is a clue that Clay’s/Shawn’s source is conveying information that has been designed to trigger a certain psychological reaction that influences how issues are framed and discussed.
Hmm. Where have I heard of such a scenario before? Let me think . . . hmm . . . oh yeah, Arthur C. Clarke’s book Childhood’s End.
Clarke should sue for royalties. Sheesh.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Apollo program, Architecture, Art, Arthur C. Clarke, Buzz Aldrin, Government, MetaFilter, NASA, Neil Armstrong, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Writing stuff
I’m also interested in human culture, what we do, where we have been, what we have left behind. Ruins are windows into human histories, they tell tales of the past through the architecture and things left behind. Memories are inscribed on the walls and in the discarded objects; the silent rooms and dust covered furniture recall moments when these places were occupied. Ruins are the containers of events played out, still vibrant and surprisingly alive with the memories of the past. These places are true living museums, preserving the past in its unpolished and raw form. The aging surfaces bear the etched marks of former times.
There is a layered meaning in these places, random pieces of a historic and social puzzle are clumped together, confused by years of decay. These ruins are an archaeology of our culture, they reveal unexpected artifacts of a past that seem distant and foreign. Archived in these ruins can be found the collective memories of a changed culture, the forgotten pieces of the past being preserved as if in a time capsule. Modern ruins exist in the fringe landscapes of our cities, places that were once hardwired to the center of the social and industrial infrastructure, place once the cutting edge of technology and manufacturing, now they have become faded shadows hidden behind cyclone fences on the outskirts, along old canals and abandon rail lines. They map an old system of industrial landscapes now encroached upon by office parks, expanding suburban sprawl and shopping malls.
That’s from the intro on Shaun O’Boyle’s site Modern Ruins, containing his photographic essays from numerous locations. Working primarily in black & white, his images capture the stark beauty of decay. It’s worth spending some time to explore his work.
I got directed to O’Boyle’s site via a thread on MeFi about his recent photos from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. That set mostly covers artifacts from the Apollo Program era there at the KSC, but has other images from the NASA manned space program as well. I love this stuff, always have – and O’Boyle brings a nice artistic sensibility to capturing the images of these artifacts. The image of the Saturn V F-1 engines at the bottom of this page is one of the most iconic images from the early space era. When my finances are a little more stable I will have to order a couple of his prints to have, just for inspiration.
Arthur C. Clarke’s notion of “industrial archeology” has long intrigued me, and was one of the primary reasons that I included the character of Arthur Bailey in Communion of Dreams. Reading through O’Boyle’s writings about his interest in ruins, I can easily see him being just this kind of character – someone who brings a unique perspective on the subject of how our artifacts tell the story of our culture. Very interesting stuff.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, MetaFilter, movies, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Writing stuff
It is nothing but complete fantasy at this point, and will likely be tomorrow’s paleo-future, but this “concept device” from Nokia is intriguing:
Featured in The Museum of Modern Art “Design and The Elastic Mind” exhibition, the Morph concept device is a bridge between highly advanced technologies and their potential benefits to end-users. This device concept showcases some revolutionary leaps being explored by Nokia Research Center (NRC) in collaboration with the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre (United Kingdom) – nanoscale technologies that will potentially create a world of radically different devices that open up an entirely new spectrum of possibilities.
Morph concept technologies might create fantastic opportunities for mobile devices:
- Newly-enabled flexible and transparent materials blend more seamlessly with the way we live
- Devices become self-cleaning and self-preserving
- Transparent electronics offering an entirely new aesthetic dimension
- Built-in solar absorption might charge a device, whilst batteries become smaller, longer lasting and faster to charge
- Integrated sensors might allow us to learn more about the environment around us, empowering us to make better choices
To get a full sense of what they are envisioning, check out the demonstration video.
Like I said, nothing but fantasy at this point. For Communion of Dreams I mostly stayed away from nanotech, since the capabilities it presents in theory are so radically powerful. We’re still early enough in learning how to manipulate material at the molecular level that it is not yet apparent what the real limitations are – it would be fairly easy to envision nearly god-like powers becoming available. And for me, such power isn’t that interesting – there is just too much you can do with it, for it to be a worthwhile device for writing. I prefer a more nitty-gritty tech level, with real limitations and problems for my characters to learn to use and overcome.
But it is fun to see something like the Morph concept come along, just as it was fun back in the 60s to watch the Pan Am shuttle match up to the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey (an homage to which I have in Communion, though it may not be obvious).
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi.)
Oh baby, sign me up!
WHAT IS Frrvrr?
Frrvrr is a revolutionary tool for connecting and communicating with people that share your interests. Photos, politics, music, books, medical history, movies–anything you can think of! And the best part is, Frrvrr does all the work.Frrvrr uses cutting-edge technology to identify topics you might be interested in based on your browsing history, public records, health records, email activity, legal filings, and web profiles. Frrvrr then directs you to those topics and connects you with similar-minded people. It’s part social network, part search engine, part recommendation-aggregator. In short, it uses your existing Internet habits to deliver a richer, more personalized web experience.
How does Frrvrr work? top
When you sign up, Frrvrr’s AvaTroll Accelerator™ will download itself onto your desktop and begin cataloguing your web history, or “webtory,” from the past eight months. Once it gathers all of your information, it creates a personalized avatar of you based on the snapshot of you gleaned from web usage and sites visited.
How do others join in the conversation? top
Once you’ve completed the registration process, your Frrvrr avatar will send itself to everyone in your address book, showing off your new look and inviting them to join. And every week, your personal avatar will update its appearance based on your past week’s web habits and resend itself to your contacts to keep them updated on what you’re up to.
Man, just read the whole thing. Brilliant – and I’m guessing the folks at The Onion are behind it, based on this and the general tone of the thing.
Jim Downey
I have my doubts:
The canned cheeseburger – fast food in the wilderness.
The canned cheeseburger is sold under one of Katadyn’s best known brands, Trekking-Mahlzeiten, a subsidiary company that develops specialist ready-meals for the outdoor, expedition and extreme athlete markets.
The high tech hamburger has been developed for trekkers and the non-traditional metal wrapping reflects the Trekking-Mahlzeiten company ethos that its speciality meals should be easy to prepare and require only water to do so – simply throw the can into a water container over a fire, give it a minute or two, fish it out, open the lid, and eat. With a shelf life of twelve months without requiring refrigeration, the lightweight snack is the ideal fast food treat for the wilderness.
Hmm. Seems that it has been done before, as art. Oh, here’s pix of the real thing and someone eating it.
Ain’t technology grand?
Jim Downey
Via MeFi.
Filed under: Augmented Reality, MetaFilter, movies, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
I mentioned the other day that as in any SF, I took a look at where technology was, where it was likely headed, and tried to make sense of how it would be applied by the time of Communion of Dreams. Well, another one of the basic technological gadgets in the book just became a lot closer to reality:
Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes — visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.
The device to make this happen may be familiar. Engineers at the UW have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.
“Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside,” said Babak Parviz, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering. “This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it’s extremely promising.” The results were presented today at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ international conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems by Harvey Ho, a former graduate student of Parviz’s now working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif. Other co-authors are Ehsan Saeedi and Samuel Kim in the UW’s electrical engineering department and Tueng Shen in the UW Medical Center’s ophthalmology department.
Woo-hoo! I love it when my predictions start to become reality! There’s still a long ways until the augmented reality I envision for the novel is possible, but this is an important development. Personally, I hate wearing contact lenses, but I think I would make the adjustment if it meant that I could have all the cool benefits of augmented reality available to me that my characters have available to them.
Jim Downey
Via MeFi.
Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo Award, MetaFilter, NPR, Predictions, Science, Space, Stephen Hawking, tech, Tensegrity, Wired, Writing stuff
Via various news outlets over the last couple of days comes word of a new application of carbon nanotube tech: the creation of a new, much more efficient light-absorbing material, creating a “blacker black”. From the Reuters article:
Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness.
And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colors of light and reflect none.
“All the light that goes in is basically absorbed,” Pulickel Ajayan, who led the research team at Rice University in Houston, said in a telephone interview. “It is almost pushing the limit of how much light can be absorbed into one material.”
This is the kind of tech that I envisioned for the light-absorbing material used in the holo-theatre on the Hawking in Communion of Dreams. My notion there was that the tech would allow for a ‘cleaner’ presentation environment, more suitable to the artistic application of the holographic technology in use. I also figured that the ‘stealth suit’ tech in use by the military (referenced in that scene, and used later in the book) would be a similar application of the same basic tech.
Whenever you write SF, you have to make certain assumptions about how future technology will develop, and how it will be applied. Some authors are perfectly happy to just use a technobable approach, others keep true to a given tech but not go into a lot of detail. I tried to stipulate a certain base of technology, then develop it and use it in a consistent fashion, and explain it where it seemed appropriate.
One thing I would have liked to use, but just couldn’t quite make ‘fit’ in Communion was the kind of space elevator technology perhaps best explored by Arthur C. Clarke in his Hugo Award-winning novel The Fountains of Paradise. Well, maybe I’m just most familiar with that book – certainly the technology has long been used by other authors, and the basic concept has been around for over a century.
Anyway, one of the reasons that this development of a “blacker black” is so interesting is that it is one more step in the process of learning how to create and manipulate carbon nanotubes. To make the super-efficient light-absorbing material, the scientists had to get all the nanotubes to line up almost perfectly side-by side. This is not an easy thing to do when you are dealing with materials which are about one millionth of the thickness of a human hair.
See, the biggest technological problem currently faced by anyone interested in making a space elevator is the development of a sufficiently-strong tensile material to use as a cable or ribbon anchoring the elevator to the Earth. The folks at the LiftPort Group have a lot of good information on this. Carbon nanotubes are frequently considered the best bet for this material, yet the production of sufficiently strong nanotube ribbon in enough quantity to be cost effective has proven to be very problematic. Clarke knew this back in 1979 when he wrote The Fountains of Paradise, and he put considerable effort into explaining the problem and showing how the technological breakthrough of his ‘mono-dimensional diamond hyperfilament’ was essential to the development of the first space elevator.
This is how I see this kind of technology (really, most kinds of technology) being developed. First, the basic discovery is made. Then people start to figure out how to make and manipulate it in rather crude ways. Engineering problems are overcome, bit by bit, and new applications of the material are found and cost-effective production facilities built. Over time, more breakthroughs are made in engineering and economics, and more applications are found. Eventually the technological and industrial base is so well developed that something like a space elevator becomes not just feasible, but practical from an economic point of view.
So, rejoice – that “blacker black” announced this week isn’t just some quirky geek toy – it another (very important) step to a wonderful future.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Heinlein, MetaFilter, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Stephen Hawking, tech, Writing stuff
I’m fairly sure the original seed of the idea for Communion of Dreams came to me back during my college days (some 30 years ago). It was after reading yet one more prediction that “within 20 years, fusion power should be a reality – and a home-sized fusion unit should be available shortly thereafter.” I grumbled to a friend that fusion power was likely to be discovered not by the big research institutions, but by some unknown genius, tinkering in his garage – and probably not even known to the world until after someone noticed that he hadn’t been paying any utility bills for power for ten years and went to investigate, only then discovering a functional fusion furnace supplying all his power needs.
How does that relate to Communion? Well, because with a few minor tweaks, that above scenario became the genesis of ‘Hawking’s Conundrum’, the basis for the revolution in tech that I stipulate for the book. In my alternate reality, Stephen Hawking comes up with a new model for physics which enables cheap and plentiful fusion power, but the results are so outlandish to conventional thinking that he doesn’t allow release the discovery until after his death some years later.
Cheap and plentiful nuclear power (whether fission or fusion) was a staple of SF going back to at least the 1930s. I think I likely first became aware of it through the writings of Robert Heinlein, though it is hard to say some 40 years later. Certainly, it was common – as were predictions of energy being “too cheap to meter” – and the availability of that energy allowed for all manner of technological innovation.
Well, we’re now one big step closer to that reality. Maybe.
No, fusion power is still elusive. But it seems that maybe the “home nuclear reactor” is a reality. (I say “maybe” because all I can find are variations of the same story circulating the web – no hard news outlets or official announcement from Toshiba.) The story:
Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor
Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.
The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.
Fact? Fiction? A bit hard to say. Small nuclear reactors have been built and used for any number of military applications, though those are hardly self-contained or user-friendly. I know of no technical limitations to this sort of product, but then, I’m not a nuclear engineer. This other source has a lot more to say about the news, and how this application of known technology is more or less just an innovation.
I suppose we’ll see. The first such unit is supposed to be installed in Japan next year, and then brought to this country and Europe in 2009. You can be certain if this is actually attempted, it will generate some ‘real’ news attention, not to mention a lot of gnashing of teeth over whether or not the tech is safe.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi.)
Filed under: John Scalzi, MetaFilter, Science Fiction, Titan, Writing stuff
An interesting idea, via MeFi:
The Page 69 Test –inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s suggestion to readers for choosing a novel, a new blog, inviting authors to describe what’s on page 69. One says: Not the best, but not the worst. If my pages were presidents, I’d put page 69 somewhere in the James K. Polk range.
Most people tend to agree. Some others disagree, such as John Scalzi, who said:
I’m not a big fan of the page 69 test. My page 69s are perfectly good, so I’m not worried about someone opening randomly to those pages, but I think it’s a far better thing to read how the author treats you on page one. How the author draws you into the story (or doesn’t) gives you some idea of how she’s planning to treat you the rest of the way through the book.
Page 69s are random; page ones are intentional. Page 69 could be about anything, and may or may not be essential to plot, or character or even understanding what’s going on. Page one is the about the reader, and the story, and the author putting the two together.
If an author has a not great page 69 (or page 48, or page 207) it doesn’t mean much to me because I know as an author that sometimes you have a page where you’re just pushing through to something else. If an author has a bad page one, I don’t buy the book.
Good point, but I think that there is still something to be gained by glancing randomly into a book and seeing how it reads. I’ve always done this, when I was just browsing (whether in a bookstore, at a library, or through a friend’s bookshelves). Just for giggles I decided to pull up page 69 of Communion of Dreams and see how it read. Here it is (spoilers and all):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Which implies intelligence, curiosity, and the ability to manipulate matter,” said Bailey.
“But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves again. Start with the simple, move to the complex.” Jon smiled. “Right. So, what else does this message tell us?”
“Something about size? The artifact is about a meter tall, does that give us some idea of relative size?” Klee looked around. “I mean, it’s not microscopic, and it’s not the size of Titan Prime. Doesn’t that tell us something?”
Bailey bit his lip. “Maybe. Maybe not. I think that it would be hard to draw any conclusions just based on size. I wish we had a better image of it to work from.”
For the first time Ng spoke. “I can help with that.”
“How?” asked Jon. “The reports indicate that they couldn’t get an image of the artifact, either photographic or holographic.”
Ng gave a slight smile. “We have the first mock-up to start with. And there are the initial reports, with their descriptions and what measurements they contain. I’ll talk to the people who did the original holo sketch, get impressions from some of the others who have seen the artifact. Give me a day.”
Bailey nodded. “Could be helpful.”
“I concur,” said Jon. “So, we’ll pick this up tomorrow. I’ll talk with the captain about reserving the recreation room for a couple of hours. There’s a fair-sized holo projector in there.”
“I’ve checked it out. It’s not great, but it’ll do,” said Ng.
“Sounds good,” said Jon. “So, before we break for the day, I want to remind you that tonight is the roll-over for deceleration. You might want to stow away loose items.”
* * *
He was standing at the top of a stone staircase, outdoors. Though the sun was bright, it had none of the harshness from Judith’s description of the desert scene. The stairs led down to a quiet riverside glen, filled with fruit trees in the solid green of June. A path led from the foot of the stairs to a nearby structure. It was the church from one of his other dreams, stonework with high glass windows all along the side, the blue rose in the window at the end. The church gleamed in the sun, beckoning. But he knew that he wasn’t to go to the church. Turning to see what was behind him, he saw that he stood at the start of a pedestrian bridge over a small river that was running quietly beneath him. There were no other people in sight, though some ducks swam lazily in the river along the near shore. The far shore was shrouded in a low-lying fog that seemed to hang close to the other side.
The bridge was perhaps three meters wide, and arched slowly up in front of him, so that he couldn’t see the other end. It had walls of stone about a meter high, and periodically along those walls he could see small sculpted stone vases in which grew roses. Blue roses. He went over and peered into one of the buds, could see it slowly opening, a clean blue light almost like a gas flame being revealed as the petals spread, until the flower was completely open, the heart of it glinting like blue diamond in the sun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not bad. That’s almost to the end of chapter five, by the way, while the research team is en route to Titan and trying to come to grips with what little they know about the alien artifact which has been found there. The section after * * * is part of a dream sequence which the main character has fallen into – these interludes occur at various junctures in the book.
Thoughts?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Constitution, General Musings, Government, MetaFilter, Politics, Society, Terrorism
Just in time for the holidays, comes this friendly bit of advice from your Big Brother:
As the busy holiday travel season approaches, TSA would like to help you get through the security checkpoint quickly and have a safe flight to your destination. Our Transportation Security Officers will be working around the clock to provide an efficient security process. We’re asking you to become an active partner in your security experience by knowing the rules and carefully packing your carry-on bags.
Pack smart to get through faster. Keep luggage organized by layering items; this will increase visibility for the security officers. When approaching the checkpoint, be prepared.
Yes, be prepared. I recommend the little packets of KY Jelly, or the ‘personal lubricant’ of your choice, in order to comply with security regulations and reduce pain.
*Sheesh*
I know full well what is going on – they just want to reduce the hassle of getting hassled. Comply like good little sheep in their absurd bit of Security Theater, and everything will be fine. Pack your bags to make it easier and faster for them to sort through your personal possessions. Be sure to leave any memory of the Constitution at home.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if we all just started a passive resistance movement – packing our bags extra sloppily, making sure to have IDs tucked away in the bottom of your purse, wearing shoes and coats which are bulky and hard to remove. Nothing that’d get you put on The List, or pulled off for a little extra ‘personal attention’, just slow things down by a couple of minutes. If everyone just refused to cooperate a little, soon the airline industry would be crying for less intrusive (yet more effective) security measures, and we might – just might – once again have some semblance of respect for our personal effects and private business from our Government overlords.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI. Via MeFi.)
Communion Of Dreams 