Filed under: Carl Sagan, Climate Change, General Musings, Global Warming, Government, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Science Fiction, Slate, Society, tech, Violence, Writing stuff
The hydrogen bomb is about six years older than I am. In other words, I’m one of the people who grew up fully expecting a nuclear war of some variety sometime during my life. And in spite of the ‘detargetting’ bullshit of the ’90s, I still do.
I’m in good company, though mostly the focus of awareness and concern has shifted to either nuclear terrorism or some kind of ‘rogue state’ conflict.
Slate Magazine has a piece currently about whether or not there exists a “Doomsday Machine” built by the USSR which is still operational. Citing several sources, they conclude that there is, though it is not a completely automated system. One of the experts they reference is Bruce Blair, who has written extensively about the dangers posed by the nuclear forces of the major powers, and how the systems created during the Cold War are still very much a threat. One small sample:
In addition, U.S. nuclear control is also far from fool-proof. For example, a Pentagon investigation of nuclear safeguards conducted several years ago made a startling discovery — terrorist hackers might be able to gain back-door electronic access to the U.S. naval communications network, seize control electronically over radio towers such as the one in Cutler, Maine, and illicitly transmit a launch order to U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines armed with 200 nuclear warheads apiece. This exposure was deemed so serious that Trident launch crews had to be given elaborate new instructions for confirming the validity of any launch order they receive. They would now reject a firing order that previously would have been immediately carried out.
Well, glad they cleared that up. But what else is lurking out there in our military, or in the nuclear forces of Russia and China that is just waiting to go wrong? And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the problems of the smaller and newer nuclear powers, who are unlikely to have as good safeguards as we do.
As I mentioned previously, initially I had an asteroid impact being the second major catastrophe of the 21st century, for the ‘history’ of Communion of Dreams. When that proved to be difficult for some of my initial readers to swallow, I dropped back to the idea of a regional nuclear war. Working off of Carl Sagan’s studies of the likely cooling effect of nuclear weapons, this would allow me to offset global warming, stymie the development of Asia, and still scare the hell out of the remaining human race and prompt the rapid development of large-scale space capabilities. Curiously, almost no one has yet expressed the opinion that they find this scenario (that of a regional nuclear war) too outlandish to believe.
Perhaps that is due to so much Science Fiction, and even mainstream fiction, having portrayed the dangers posed by nuclear weapons for so long. Or perhaps it is just that we know humankind too well, and have a realistic assessment of how likely it is that sometime, somewhere, nuclear weapons will once again be used to horrific effect.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, General Musings, Government, Heinlein, Predictions, Religion, RFID, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech
Many years ago, I read a book which changed how I view the world. It was William Allen’s The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922 – 1945. I no longer remember whether I read it for a college class, or just on my own. And I can no longer really tell you many of the details of the book, but there was one overriding lesson I took from it which remains: that most people will go along with changes instituted by authority figures, so long as those changes seem minor and “for the greater good”. Because the thing about the Nazi rise to power is that it was enabled by ‘good Germans’ – the vast population who were not Nazi ideologues, but were unwilling to stand up to incremental infringement of their civil rights because it would be just too much bother.
I see this as a recurring theme in human history. It is the rare individual who will resist such creeping authoritarianism directly, though many others will find ways to subvert or resist passively (as happened in the USSR and Soviet-block countries), and still more often people will just leave a country under an authoritarian regime given the chance. This is a common theme in literature, and certainly in Science Fiction (read just about anything by Heinlein for the most clear-cut examples), so certainly I was familiar with the trope. But to see how it actually played out in one small German town was sobering.
And it is always sobering to see it play out in small ways in our country today. One such example comes from Michael Righi, writing about his experience of being arrested at Circuit City because he refused first to show a store employee his receipt and let his bag be searched, and then for refusing to provide a cop (whom he summoned) a Driver’s License. From a summation which Righi sent to BoingBoing:
Today I was arrested by the Brooklyn, Ohio police department. It all started when I refused to show my receipt to the loss prevention employee at Circuit City, and it ended when a police officer arrested me for refusing to provide my driver’s license.
There are two interesting stories in one which I thought would be of interest to Boing Boing readers. The first involves the loss prevention employee physically preventing my egress from the property. The second story involves my right as a U.S. citizen to not have to show my papers when asked. (Despite having verbally identified myself, the officer arrested me for failing to provide a driver’s license while standing on a sidewalk.)
You can read the full account at Righi’s blog, and I would urge you to do so. It is disturbing that he was treated this way, and admirable that he stood up for his rights.
But what is most disturbing are the number of commentors who criticize Righi for doing so. These are your fellow citizens who are perfectly happy to “just go along” in the interests of expediency, efficiency (cost savings), and for the common good. They don’t see why Righi should object either to his treatment by Circuit City or by the demand from the police officer that he provide proof of identity.
Now, I’m not saying that the US is in some incipient form of Fascism. But there sure are plenty of people with authoritarian instincts, and even more who are willing to accommodate those instincts in day-to-day life. And that is how rights are lost, freedom forfeit. As Righi puts it:
I understand that my day would have gone a lot smoother if I had agreed to let loss prevention inspect my bag. I understand that my day would have gone a lot smoother if I had agreed to hand over my driver’s license when asked by Officer Arroyo. However, I am not interested in living my life smoothly. I am interested in living my life on strong principles and standing up for my rights as a consumer, a U.S. citizen and a human being. Allowing stores to inspect our bags at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates an atmosphere of obedience which is a dangerous thing. Allowing police officers to see our papers at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates a fear-of-authority atmosphere which can be all too easily abused.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Failure, Firefly, Guns, Joss Whedon, movies, Science Fiction, Serenity, Space, tech
I can only assume that it is a healthy respect for my martial arts abilities and proficiency with firearms that stopped my friends from kidnapping me and forcing me to watch the first episode of Firefly. That is the only possible excuse I will allow.
Yeah, I finally started watching the series. The first disc eventually found its way to the top of my Netflix queue and arrived yesterday. But as we had something else on tap, we didn’t get to it until tonight. So, we watched what Joss Whedon intended to be the pilot, the 90-minute piece titled (somewhat confusingly, since there’s also the feature film of the same name) Serenity.
It took only 20 minutes. No, it didn’t take 20 minutes to ‘get into’ it. That happened at about 20 seconds. It only took twenty minutes for me to start mentally kicking myself for not having gotten around to seeing the damned show before. And that was just because it took that long until I managed to disengage my complete focus on the show long enough to consider the matter. At 26 minutes I turned to my wife and said “OK, I’ll order our copy of the series tonight.”
I won’t belabor the point. There are countless blog posts and websites praising the series. I’ll just say two things: one, this is what science fiction television should be; two, “I’m sorry” to all my friends for being such a stubborn bastard and waiting so long to heed your advice – rest assured that I have now seen the error of my ways, and I only hope that I don’t get hit by a truck or something before I’m able to finish seeing the whole thing at least once.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Expert systems, Predictions, Ray Kurzweil, Science, Science Fiction, Singularity, Singularity Institute, Society, tech
As I’ve said before, I’m a late-adopter of tech. I’m probably the last person in the US under the age of fifty and with an IQ above room temp who has made the transition over to Firefox.
Oh, it’s not as bad as it sounds – I’ve been running Mozilla for several years, and Netscape in one variety or another before that, all the way back to when I first got online in about ’93. But with the additional options available in Firefox2, it made sense to make the jump. So, with my good lady wife’s help (she’s the resident geek, not me) I switched yesterday, and then spent much of the rest of the day enjoying the much improved surfing experience, tweaking the set-up, learning the little quirks of the new software.
And also teaching it my own preferences and habits. This was the bit that I found amusing – that in one sense, I’m teaching Seth’s great-whatever-grandpappy his ABCs. Oh, we’re about 30 iterations of Moore’s Law away from the S-Series A.I. I have in Communion of Dreams, and a couple of computer ‘generations’ (if you consider that we’re currently in the fourth generation, that quantum computing will be the fifth, with my Tholin gel tech following that.) But it really does feel like something akin to a baby expert system I’m dealing with here, as we learn from one another.
I still don’t expect that we’ll experience a true Singularity such as Kurzweil and others have predicted, and the novel is in large part an exploration of why that is. But it is certainly the case that we’re moving towards a major threshold of technological change at an ever-increasing rate. Even late-adopters like me.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Failure, Fireworks, Guns, Marketing, movies, NASA, Science, Society, Space, tech, YouTube
A buddy of mine sent me a bunch of YouTube links last night to clips of explosions (among other things). Some were compilations of failed rocket launches, some were ‘stupid human tricks’. He knows, budding pyromaniac that I am, that I would enjoy such things. Hey, what do you expect from someone whose birthday is the Fourth of July?
Anyway, it got me thinking about a niche cable channel which would be sure to be a huge hit: The Explosions Channel. Oh, I know that The Discovery Channel does some of this, as does The History Channel. But on those, explosions provide the punctuation for other stories, with the occasional feature on firearms, artillery, fireworks, demolitions, et cetera which has a higher-than-average explosion count. But think of the potential for a channel where you just *know* that you could tune in and catch some big explosions, anytime, day or night! It’d be like MTV for the jaded geek, pure visual heroin for the explosions junkie. Guys like me could turn it on, and sit there, slack-jawed and drooling, eyes wide, as explosion after fireball after thunderous report . . .
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Astronomy, BoingBoing, Fermi's Paradox, Gene Roddenberry, General Musings, movies, NYT, Predictions, Quantum mechanics, Ray Kurzweil, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Singularity, Sir Arthur Eddington, Space, Star Trek, tech, Writing stuff
“Grrrr.”
“Easy, Alwyn.”
“Grrrrr! GRR!” His growls grew from a distant throaty rumble into a near bark, as we came around the corner across from the lawn with the sprinkler. Yeah, my dog was growling at a lawn sprinkler. This is not normal behaviour for him.
But in fairness, it was an odd lawn sprinkler. A big plastic dog lawn sprinkler. White, with black spots. Looked vaguely like a St. Bernard in size and shape, but a Dalmation in coloration. The hose attached to the tail, which fanned water all over while doing this odd jitterbug wag. Looked like some overgrown kid’s toy. Which it might well be. Since I don’t have kid, I don’t keep track of these things.
Anyway, it was clear that my dog thought that it was some kind of bizzaro-dog with a serious bladder problem. Perhaps an Alien Zombie Dog or something. So, he did the natural thing: he growled.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As I’ve noted before, I’m a big fan of the original series Star Trek and of Gene Roddenberry. But one of the things which has always bothered me about that series and most other SF television or movies is the fact that so often the Aliens are depicted as some variation of humanoid, albeit with a little makeup and prosthetics as the budget would allow. Though, in fairness to Roddenberry (and others in different series now and then), sometimes there was an attempt made to depict alien life as being just completely odd, unlike anything we’ve known or seen. This notion that extraterrestrial life might be difficult to even identify is a staple of good Science Fiction, of course, and one of the topics which I explore at some length in Communion of Dreams (and part of the reason why we never meet the aliens responsible for the creation of the artifact). It gets back to “Haldane’s Law“:
Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose.
(Which is decidedly similar to Sir Arthur Eddington‘s attributed comment: “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” But since I am talking more about life here than astrophysics, I thought I’d go with the evolutionary biologist…)
But now actual science has perhaps caught up with Science Fiction. From the New Journal of Physics comes a paper discussing what seems to be the discovery of inorganic life. The abstract:
Abstract. Complex plasmas may naturally self-organize themselves into stable interacting helical structures that exhibit features normally attributed to organic living matter. The self-organization is based on non-trivial physical mechanisms of plasma interactions involving over-screening of plasma polarization. As a result, each helical string composed of solid microparticles is topologically and dynamically controlled by plasma fluxes leading to particle charging and over-screening, the latter providing attraction even among helical strings of the same charge sign. These interacting complex structures exhibit thermodynamic and evolutionary features thought to be peculiar only to living matter such as bifurcations that serve as `memory marks’, self-duplication, metabolic rates in a thermodynamically open system, and non-Hamiltonian dynamics. We examine the salient features of this new complex `state of soft matter’ in light of the autonomy, evolution, progenity and autopoiesis principles used to define life. It is concluded that complex self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter that may exist in space provided certain conditions allow them to evolve naturally.
That’s a bit dense, so let’s go to the critical bit from the Press Release:
‘It might be life, Jim…’, physicists discover inorganic dust with lifelike qualities.
Until now, physicists assumed that there could be little organisation in such a cloud of particles. However, Tsytovich and his colleagues demonstrated, using a computer model of molecular dynamics, that particles in a plasma can undergo self-organization as electronic charges become separated and the plasma becomes polarized. This effect results in microscopic strands of solid particles that twist into corkscrew shapes, or helical structures. These helical strands are themselves electronically charged and are attracted to each other.
Quite bizarrely, not only do these helical strands interact in a counterintuitive way in which like can attract like, but they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.
So, could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive? “These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter,” says Tsytovich, “they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve”.
Obviously, there’s more to it, and it is worth reading at least the entire press release, or the full paper if you have a chance.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
There’s another possibility, of course. This one can best be summed up as being that life is “a dream within a dream“. The latest popular version of this is “The Matrix“, wherein life is an artificial reality construct, designed to keep the human ‘power cells’ docile. But this too is an idea extensively exploited in Science Fiction, with many different variations on the theme. Of late, this idea has been more and more tied to the concept of a ‘Singularity’ , with speculation being that we are just some version of post-human research/recreation as a computer construct. And in a piece published yesterday in the NYT titled “Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch” this gets the mainstream religion treatment:
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
. . .
David J. Chalmers, a philosopher at the Australian National University, says Dr. Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis isn’t a cause for skepticism, but simply a different metaphysical explanation of our world. Whatever you’re touching now — a sheet of paper, a keyboard, a coffee mug — is real to you even if it’s created on a computer circuit rather than fashioned out of wood, plastic or clay.
You still have the desire to live as long as you can in this virtual world — and in any simulated afterlife that the designer of this world might bestow on you. Maybe that means following traditional moral principles, if you think the posthuman designer shares those morals and would reward you for being a good person.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
My own prediction is that unless we are extremely fortunate, and extremely open-minded, we’ll stumble badly in our first encounter with any real extra-terrestrial intelligence. Chances are, we’ll completely mistake it for something else, or try and see it through our limited perspective, not unlike how my dog mistook a lawn sprinkler for a wierdly-colored St. Bernard. If we’re lucky, we’ll survive that first contact, and then go on to see the universe with less prejudiced eyes.
If we’re *very* lucky.
Jim Downey
(Some material via BoingBoing.)
Filed under: Predictions, Quantum mechanics, Reproduction, Science, tech, Writing stuff
…of the “hey, science just took another step in the direction of my novel” variety:
First, a possible glimpse into how the putative new physics of Communion might develop, with this item titled “Scientists solve the mystery of levitation.” From the article:
Scientists at the University of St Andrews have created “incredible levitation effects” by tinkering with the force of nature that normally makes objects to stick together.
The Telegraph reports that Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin have worked out a way of reversing this force, called the “Casimir” force, so that objects are repelled instead of being attracted.
Now, the Casimir effect has been known for a long time – about 60 years – and is a manifestation of quantum theory. As I’ve said before, the math is completely beyond me, but the notion that it is possible to experimentally reverse the effect indicates that manipulation of the energy field at that level is not just a theory. This may well open up access to such phenomena as zero-point energy, and a refinement of the understanding of the structure of ’empty’ space.
[Spoiler alert.]
Secondly, and also related to one of the main subplots in the book, is the announcement that Japanese scientists have pushed the cloning of mammals further with the production of a clone of a clone of a clone of a pig:
The male pig was born at Tokyo‘s Meiji University in July, said Hiroshi Nagashima, the geneticist at the university who led the project.
Earlier attempts to clone animals for several generations were problematic. Scientists had thought that was because the genetic material in the nucleus of the donor cell degraded with each successive generation, Nagashima said.
This degradation is exactly the sort of problem I have for my subplot, and would be a major hurdle to overcome for anyone who was trying to clone humans.
Interesting . . .
Jim Downey
A friend and I got to talking earlier this year about the lack of solid data available on ballistic performance of different common handgun calibers in terms of different barrel lengths and popular ammunition. If you poke around on any of the forums dedicated to discussion of guns, you’ll quickly discover that a lot of people have opinions on the matter, but there is precious little real solid information out there. Even the gun manufacturers and ammo makers only have little bits of information, and none of it is uniform or organized in such a way as to allow anyone to compare apples and apples.
Well, from that discussion emerged an idea: conduct the necessary tests ourselves, compile all the data, then make it freely available to all on a dedicated website. Sounds like one of those great ideas which no one will ever get around to doing, because of the time and expense involved, right?
Except that I now have sitting here at home a custom designed and built testing platform consisting of a single-shot pistol and 11 different caliber barrels which will mount into the receiver. Think Thompson/Center Encore pistol in stainless steel with 11 different barrels, all 18″ long – each one to be fired using a variety of different ammo, then cut down 1″ and fired again, using the same ammo, and that process repeated until you get down to a 1″ barrel. Each firing will be documented using two chronographs, and we’ll standardize conditions as much as possible so we get reliable data.
Oh, I don’t have just the test platform and barrels. I also have the ammo. Enough for three rounds of each type at each increment for each caliber.
Now, the shooting and collecting of data still has to be done. And once all the data is collected this fall, we’ll need to construct a website and put it all online (with pictures documenting the process). There’s still a lot of work to be done. But a big first step has been made, and we’re financially committed to this project in a very big way.
I’m excited about this project, and just wanted to share a bit about what I’ve got cooking in my non-writing, non-caregiving, non-bookbinding world. More bits and pieces about it will probably show up here from time to time, as things progress, and then all of this will be archived on the website for the data when all is said and done.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 