Filed under: Architecture, General Musings, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Travel
So, I’m curious – given some kind of time-travel technology, what would you like to witness from the past? Let’s say that something about the technology prohibits you from interacting with the past – all you can do is passively watch/listen.
And note I said “from the past”, not “from history”, because while I would want to see some of the famous events, I think I would actually more like to see little things that seldom show up in history books. Like the building of our house (go down to the “Hurst John” house second from the bottom). Or maybe something from my childhood, since I remember so little of it. Sure, everyone would want to resolve some of the mysteries from history, and to witness specific events, but it’s more interesting to hear what personal moments of the time would attract your attention.
When would you go?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Carl Sagan, Fermi's Paradox, movies, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Society, Space, tech, Titan, Travel, UFO, Writing stuff
There’s a good piece by Seth Shostak over at Space.com about the possible motivations an extra-terrestrial race might have for visiting our pale blue dot. (Shostak is one of the principals of the SETI Institute, and knows whereof he speaks when he addresses these kinds of issues.) First, he dismisses the usual SF plot devices of an alien race wanting our turf, our resources, or even our bodies:
Taking our cue from Tinseltown, I note that most cineplex sentients come to Earth either to solve some sort of ugly reproductive crisis or simply to take over the planet. The former doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. You can’t breed with creatures at the zoo, despite the fact that most of the base pairs in the inmates’ DNA are identical to yours (note that this is a biological incompatibility, and not just zoo regulations). The aliens, needless to say, will have a different biochemistry, and probably no DNA at all. Forget, if you can, the breeding experiments.
Taking over the planet would only make sense if there were something really special about our world. The best guess of the exoplanet specialists is that the number of Earth-size planets in our galaxy exceeds tens of billions. That doesn’t sound like our hunk of real estate is terribly privileged.
They won’t come here to mine our minerals, either. The entire universe is built of the same stuff, and while the solar system has a higher percentage of heavy elements than found in many stellar realms, it turns out that this is precisely the condition that seems to foster planet formation. In other words, ET’s own solar system will be similarly blessed with these useful materials. So why would they come here and incur multi-light-year transport charges?
Why, indeed? These various issues are ones which are discussed in the course of speculation about the alien artifact discovered in Communion of Dreams. And while I never actually reveal the motivations that aliens might have for having left the artifact on Titan in my novel, I do have thoughts on the subject (which might come out in a future sequel to Communion.)
Be that as it may, Shostak does go on to make a pretty good argument that if indeed there are a large number of technological civilizations out there, that they may just not consider us worth the trouble of contacting/visiting. Again, from the article:
Then again, there’s that last point: they just want to learn more about us. Well, perhaps so. Maybe that’s really what’s interesting about Homo sapiens. Not grabbing our habitat, saving our souls (or our environment), or subverting our industrial output — but assaying our culture. I’m willing to consider that even very advanced beings might find our culture mildly worthy of study.
Keep in mind that if they’re near enough to find us, that implies that there are many, many galactic societies (otherwise the distances between any two of them will be enormous). If there are lots of them, then we’re just another entry in a big book. Once again, not all that special. Kind of like another weird fish found in the Atlantic. I don’t expect mammoth expeditions to be sent our way.
It is a good point. I would counter, however, that we have seen plenty of evidence in our own history of people going to enormous trouble to bother to learn about seemingly trivial things. One only has to look at the difficulties encountered in sea-faring during the time of the great naturalists – people were willing to go to great expense, to risk great hardship and a fair chance of death just to add another entry into the botanical texts or to discover a new species. Even today we mount insanely expensive expeditions into the deep ocean just to expand our knowledge.
We have no evidence of extra-terrestrial life, let alone advance civilizations. Yet I think that you can make a fair case that any space-faring race which may exist must have some degree of curiosity – and that curiosity may alone be reason enough to come check out the new kids on the block, whatever the hurdles or cost.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Cory Doctorow, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Government, movies, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Travel
Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.
Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.
‘If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,’ said Pugh. ‘You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won’t. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.’
“We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society” . . . and turn them into criminals by the way we treat them from the very start.
The Minority Report, anyone? No, not the movie, which was OK, but the original short story by Philip K. Dick, which also shows the dangers of a post-war military regime/mindset to a civil society.
See, here’s the thing: people will largely react to the way you treat them (yes, I am generalizing.) If you take one set of people, and treat them like criminals from early childhood, guess what you’ll get?
I am constantly dismayed by just how much Great Britain has become a surveillance society, to the point where it is a dis-incentive to want to travel there. In almost all towns of any real size, you are constantly within sight of multiple CCTV cameras, and there is increasing use of biometrics (such as fingerprint ID) as a general practice for even routine domestic travel.
But getting DNA of all five year olds, under the excuse that it will better allow for catching criminals? Scary. To then match that up with the notion that you can predict the future behaviour of a 5 year old, based on someone’s model of personality development is just plain insane.
And you know that if they can pull this off in Britain, there will be plenty of people who think it should be instituted here.
Welcome to the future.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing. Cross-posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, General Musings, Health, Hospice, N. Am. Welsh Choir, Patagonia, Predictions, Preparedness, Sleep, Travel
I came downstairs yesterday morning a little after 6:00 to discover from the home health aide that my MIL had not been up all night. This has happened a couple of times recently, and usually she calls or rustles around enough to indicate that she wants to get up and use the potty sometime shortly thereafter.
But not yesterday. She was quiet, sleeping until my wife and I went in to check on her. And she didn’t want to get up at her usual time of 8:00, sleeping until 9:30. Then she had a light breakfast and went back to bed, sleeping until noon, when she had some lunch and then again back to bed. Then she slept until 4:30. When I got her up then, her cyanosis was the worst it has yet been, her entire fingers a disturbing deep blue, as were her feet. This indicates a level of generalized hypoxia that shows just how poorly she is doing.
At no point whenever she was awake did she know just where she was. She kept thinking that she was on a train, or wondering where her car was, asking about when she was going to go home. We played along as best we could.
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I sent this to a good friend last night:
Anyway, then dishes, got my MIL to bed, et cetera. Now, catch up on some email, do a bit of surfing. I need to start doing some research, find a good online source for learning a bit of survival Spanish.
Why? Well . . .
You probably already know about the North American Welsh Choir tour to Patagonia next October. And you may know that in return for my wife coordinating all the reservations and money and whatnot on the Choir’s end, she is getting her cost of the trip offset (in full, it looks like). Just in the last few days I’ve decided that I am going to go along.
Yeah, surprises me a bit, as well. I have no desire to go to South America. I have never had any desire to go to South America.
But my MIL is going to die soon. And late this year I should have decompressed from that, and been working hard for months being a good little book conservator, maybe an author. It will be a good time to challenge myself in a new way, get out of my comfort zone. This tour will be a good opportunity to do that. Plus my wife and I haven’t had anything approaching a real vacation in a couple of years, and we didn’t do anything to celebrate our 20th anniversary last October. So, this will serve that purpose as well.
So, I guess I should learn some survival Spanish. It is only courteous. And doing that won’t hurt me, either. Neither will pushing myself to get in better physical condition for the trip – something I am planning on for all the other good reasons I know, but this will provide additional incentive.
It’s odd to be thinking ahead this way, to a time when my MIL will no longer be with us, no longer our hour-to-hour responsibility.
But if you know of a good online tutorial for Spanish, let me know.
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She seems somewhat better this morning. She slept well last night, but wanted to get up to use the potty at 4:30 this morning (I was on-call). I checked her temperature then, and it was almost three degrees above normal. But her hands were their normal color, with just a trace of blue under her fingernails.
And she was anxious to get up and have breakfast at her usual time, though a bit reluctant to get her weekly bath after. During her bath, my wife reported a return of the more noticeable cyanosis. After, she was limp and sleepy, barely able to stay awake while we got her dressed and back into bed.
I just checked on her, helped her get settled in a new position in bed. She is getting weak enough that she has difficulty just rolling over sometimes. This time she was also worried about whether she was going to disturb the person who was sleeping next to her. I told her it was OK – they would understand.
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It’s odd – making plans to be gone traveling this fall, yet being very tentative about what I am going to be doing this afternoon. Like so much of my life these days, it is the exact inverse of what anyone would consider ‘normal’. But so it goes.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 