I’m in the home stretch on the book (yay!) and so my post will need to be short today (boo!), but I wanted to share some of my research on the book. I’ve always had a fascination with big machines, and since Feral Sapiens takes place in an asteroid mining colony, that means I get to indulge myself by digging up (yuk! yuk!) information about some of the biggest moving machines on Earth: mining machines.

I used to do engineering consulting for a mining company, and though I never got to see any of these machines up close, even from a distance, even in pictures, they inspire awe. This site, btw, is a great one-stop shopping source for the big machines and their handiwork.

The biggest moving machine is apparently this one:

And just to give you some perspective, here is a drawing of the same machine, laid out next to the Eiffel Tower:

But my favorite has to be this big, roving earth mover:

Here’s another view:

The drivers of these things told me that they don’t even feel it, when they drive over “smaller” equipment (like bulldozers and things). Never mind people. These creatures’ descendents will be planet eaters.

I was thinking about Maureen’s post about Not Science Fiction, and I really enjoy NSF. But I have to admit, well written SF about big machines and the people who live in them definitely floats my skimmer, too. I am fascinated by the tools we build, and how they come to be an extension of ourselves, in all kinds of ways. This also has to do with the concept of the Singularity… and to illustrate, let me tell you a joke.

Once, a man had a frog growing out of the top of his head. He went to the doctor, who said, “My, my, this is unusual! How did this happen?”

The frog replied, “You’ll never believe this, doc, but it started out as a wart on my ass.”

Each of us on one level is an individual, whole and complete. But in a larger sense, we exist as a member of society. That society is a system. A sort of meta-entity. All systems we build are tools. Governments are tools. Money is a tool. Resource consumption, the vehicle of capitalism, is a tool. Language is a tool. Science is a tool, as is math. Our tools extend the reach of the entity that is humanity, both physically, and in terms of our knowledge.

What the Singularity really is, at its heart, is a question: what level of complexity must our tools achieve before they become the point of the whole exercise, and we are merely a means to ends that don’t serve our best interests?

Aren’t we already in the grip of forces beyond our control? Hasn’t technology already taken us to places we could never survive without it? There are more than six billion people on this planet. Without fertilizer, fossil fuels, and big machines, we could only feed a fraction of that number. Medical advances are enabling us to live longer, healthier lives. There is no doubt that we have benefited greatly from our ability to conceptualize, build, and use tools. But there is also no doubt that our systems are straining at the seams. It’s a long way down from the heights we’ve scaled to date.

I’m not so sure, in other words, that machine self-awareness is a pre-requisite for the Singularity.

From a retrospective of Computerworld ads.

This one was in the November 16, 1981 issue:

:

:

Terrifying stuff, eh?

It took all of the self-restraint I possess to keep from posting the next ad first. I may come back and switch them around later anyhow.

It stars Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. With a chainsaw.

I’ve always considered Elvira to be the perfect woman, though I never knew she was such a technophile.

Check her out, below the cut.

:

: Read More »

We are marching slowly but surely toward February 15th, 2008, the release date of Jumper, the movie. They don’t have a trailer yet but as of this week, they have a website.

Though I don’t have adorable kitty pictures this week, (not that I couldn’t have adorable kitty pictures at the drop of a hat, mind you) I do have a collection of random stuff that’s been floating in the ether at Casa Spector. (I know. I should really clean the freaking ether up here.) 

*   *   * 

I had to give up drinking coffee a couple of years ago.  For the most part, I was successful at this, though I have been known to poach coffee from The Dude at Saturday breakfast.  (Saturday breakfast is a tradition Sven Knudson started about twenty years ago.  A fluctuating group of malcontents show up at various restaurants to consume vast quantities of food – and to bitch.) 

Anyway, I met a friend at Starbucks the other day.  I haven’t been in Starbucks since I quit drinking coffee.  Not unlike the alcoholic who should stay away from bars, I found just being in a place so redolent of brewing Sweet Nectar of the Gods was more of a temptation than I could stand for the first year or so. 

My friend arrives and gets an iced coffee.  Being the shameless mooch I am, I ask if I can have a sip of her enticing cold beverage.  (Mmmmm, caffeine.)  She graciously obliged.   

I take a sip. And then I have that moment we’ve all had, (girls more so than guys I suspect) the, “Do I spit or swallow?” dilemma.  Because what I have in my mouth is not Sweet Nectar of the Gods, but rather Satan’s Piss.   

You know: The Devil’s Urine.  Beelzebub’s tee tee.  Lucifer’s pee.  Mephistopheles’s piddle.   This stuff is so foul I’m pretty sure they must have an EPA permit to sell it. 

Read More »

Or How Can I Get Anything Done When Someone is Looking at Me Like That?

I am a skeptic.

Specifically, I’m a scientific or empirical skeptic.

Scientific skepticism is different from philosophical skepticism, which questions our right to claim knowledge about the nature of the world and how we perceive it. Scientific skepticism utilizes critical thinking and attempts to oppose claims made which lack suitable evidential basis.

Skeptics such as myself have various areas of concern but they usually involve the claims of pseudoscience in such areas as UFOs, alien abductions, psychics, and all the various so called “alternate” health modalities that fail the evidence-based test. We are also concerned when religions try to influence education, public policy, and scientific research because the evidence conflicts with their ideology. (Oddly enough, they usually call the evidence-based positions “ideology,” ignoring the lack of evidence to support their own positions.)

There are many examples of this in current events. One is the stem cell debate (including Bush’s veto of research funding in that area.) One that is not as well known, is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).

DSHEA opened the floodgates for store shelves to be packed with “supplements” for every ailment and human condition. Essentially, DSHEA created a new category of health claims, referred to as “structure or function” claims. Under DSHEA products could be labeled with claims that they either enhance, improve, or support a biological structure or function without any FDA oversight. For example, a company could claim that their product “boosts the immune system” without first having to meet any burden of evidence. The FDA has no power to regulate such a claim. link

– Steven Novella, M.D. A neurologist and prominent skeptic. President of the New England Skeptics Society

While this was offered as attempt to give us consumers access to more options, what it really did is make these supplement companies billions of dollars selling products that did little to no good and in some cases, actual harm.

And one of the more obvious examples is evolution and “creation science” and “intelligent design.” (The first one is actual science and the middle one is simply religion and the other one is more cunningly hidden religion.) Every time you test the claims of creation science and intelligent design they don’t hold up. Every further investigation of the Theory of Evolution simply confirms and refines it.

I have stated in this blog before that I don’t care what people believe. I care how they act. If they act toward the public good because it just makes sense or because their relgious belief’s demand it, I don’t care. But I very much care when public policy is decided on the basis of non-evidence based beliefs.

So, when Rick Perry, Governor “Good Hair” of Tejas, recently appointed conservative Dr. Don McLeroy to head the state’s Board of Education it really concerns me.

According to Kathy Miller, president of the liberal Texas Freedom Network:

Since his election in 1998, Mr. McLeroy, a Bryan dentist, has dragged the Texas State Board of Education into a series of divisive and unnecessary culture war battles:– He voted in 2001 to reject the only advanced placement environmental science textbook proposed for Texas high schools even though panels of experts – including one panel from Texas A&M – found the textbook was free of errors. In fact, Baylor University used the same textbook.

– In 2003 Mr. McLeroy led efforts by creationism or “intelligent design” proponents to water down discussion of evolution in proposed new biology textbooks. He was one of only four board members who voted against biology textbooks that year that included a full scientific account of evolutionary theory.

– In 2004, Mr. McLeroy voted to approve “abstinence-only” health textbooks that failed to include any information about responsible pregnancy and STD prevention, despite state curriculum standards requiring that students learn such information.

Move over, Kansas, here comes Texas.

1. Cat Check

Since this is Adorable Cat Week here at Eat Our Brains, I thought I’d post a few pics of Casa Ramrod’s new feline resident, Dirty Rotten Kitty.

Here’s a shot of DRK napping with Lucy the Queen, which would be a better photo if Lucy would only hold still:

Despite the blurring, though, you can see that they’re the best of friends:

Uhh, okay, Lucy, play nice with Dirty Rotten Kitty, now:

Seriously, Lucy, I think you’d better take it — OH MY GOD!!:

Read More »

I went to Ohio for the weekend and that involves airports and planes and hotels, which means I read a lot. In the past two weeks I’ve read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Remainder by Tom McCarthy, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. The Road and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union were Not Science Fiction Books. I happen to be a fan of Not Science Fiction. (I posted about The Road and Not Science Fiction on my blog.) Read More »

Pics kindly donated by Nancy U.

“They are the two new girls in the house – Margo is the sleek black kitty, Maggie is the tabby. Margo likes to purr very loudly, and Maggie has decided that fetch is a pretty fun game when you use a toy mouse rather than a stick.”

Maggie

:

Margo

:

Handsome kittens, they are. Thanks, Nancy! I feel better now.

This beats the hell out of looking at Alberto Gonzales pics.

:

Well, my fellow citizens, this week seems to be the one that’s finally edging into the truly dire territory at the beginning of the actual fight over ‘executive privilege’, whatever the hell that is, that eventually determines whether we end up with a constitutional republic, or a dictatorship.

Or maybe I’m just being a cranky old loony.

In either case, rather than rant about it again today, I think I’ll take a break from it all:

This is Secret Kitty. He’s four months old. When he grows up, he wants to become a CD collection. He’s been practicing a lot lately, so he might make it, if he continues to persevere like this. I’m proud of his ambition.

If you have any more nauseatingly cute (and original) animal or child pics that you’ve been hoarding, please e-mail them to eatourbrains@gmail.com, and I’ll publish them here. I’m needing a heaping helping of nauseatingly cute right now, to counteract the nauseatingly ugly I’ve been wading through lately.

:

Pic credit to Rachael, of course.

I love competence and professional pride. I think they’re sexier than broad shoulders or tight glutes, and right up there with a good voice and beautiful hands (hey, everyone has their buttons). But like most people, I get tunnel vision about all the different kinds of competence that are out there. Just because I’ve never wanted to be a butcher doesn’t mean that there aren’t artists out there for whom the proper filleting of a chicken breast is a deeply satisfying thing.

So: this morning I went in to have a crown put in, but my dentist wasn’t satisfied with it. Seeing that the crown is for the upper front tooth that I cleverly smashed last month, having it look like it belongs with the teeth on either side is important (in building design this is referred to as “vernacular architecture”). The dentist left it up to me whether this was something to worry about, but it clearly bothered her that the crown didn’t play well with others, and considering that it’s likely to be in place as long as I have teeth, well, her concern made some sense to me. Which is why I found myself driving to another part of the city, to the dental ceramics lab, so that her “crown guy” could get a better match for me.

My dentist warned me beforehand that this was not a glamorous place–just a ceramics lab. And in fact it was several rows of old desks littered with tools and magnifying lamps, and a patina of ceramic dust covering everything. Kind of a dreary place, not somewhere I’d want to work. I had to wait for a few minutes, until the “crown guy” arrived (tearing down the hall on a Razor scooter!) and turned out to be a tall, handsome, middle-aged Chinese guy with a deep voice, who looked at the crown he’d originally produced, shook his head, and announced that that one was all wrong. He then stood me in the light and spent five minutes debating with himself between two shades that were almost indistinguishable to my eyes. He swapped them one for the other in situ, hmming to himself as I grinned like a serial killer. And I realized that it was a matter of pride to the Crown Guy that he make my crown as close to the tone of my teeth as he possibly could. I’m gonna look great because making me look good makes him look good.

I get tunnel vision sometimes; there are all sorts of jobs I wouldn’t want to do, and many, many jobs I never even imagine. Making ceramic dental crowns is one of them. And the Crown Guy reminded me that it’s not just a job–for him, at least, it’s a calling. Cool.

Via Climate Progress, a recent study (PDF) has some great news on the green tech front. It’s looking as though plug-in hybrids are a great option, regardless of the source of their electricity.

Even coal-powered plug-ins are better than conventional cars. If 60% of American drivers bought a plug-in, we would reduce our oil imports by twice as much as we are currently importing from Saudi Arabia.

And another cool thing: hybrids would mostly be plugged in at night, thus making use of unused capacity. So the impact on the nation’s power grid would be manageable: maybe a 7 to 8% increase in electricity demand.

So what are we waiting for? Eh?

Oh, yeah, I want my plug-in hybrid. I want it NOW!

Update: here’s something fun. Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection is sponsoring a contest. Come up with a 15-, 30-, or 60-second ad to showcase what you or someone you know is doing to alleviate the climate crisis, or to inspire others to make changes. First prize is a Toyota hybrid, and they have other cool prizes in store for finalists and semi-finalists.

More info is here.

I got this in email this morning (via Tanley McMullan):

There is an awesome dance, called the Thousand-Hand Guanyin, which is making the rounds across the net. Considering the tight coordination required, their accomplishment is nothing short of amazing, even if they were not all deaf. Yes, you read correctly. All 21 of the dancers are complete deaf-mutes [sic].

Relying only on signals from trainers at the four corners of the stage, these extraordinary dancers deliver a visual spectacle that is at once intricate and stirring. Its first major international debut was in Athens last year at the closing ceremonies for the 2004 Paralympics. But it had long been in the repertoire of the Chinese Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe and had traveled to more than 40 countries.

Its lead dancer is 29 year old Tai Lihua, who has a BA from the Hubei Fine Arts Institute. The video was recorded in Beijing during the Spring Festival this year.

It’s breathtaking—truly magnificent. Enjoy.

“Mileage? About sixteen miles per bushel of underbrush.”

Here’s one for all you non-redneck liberals out there who disapprove of children playing with toy guns. Maybe this one will be more acceptable:

:

It was found, hiding on the InterTubes, by She Who is Awesome:

:

Second pic is credit to Rachael Harper