Space...GET ME THERE NOW Part 2

 

Bye bye

In my last post I went on for a bit about how, if we stay on this planet too long, something will inevitable make us a permanent part of the fossil record. A shift in global climate, asteroid, a Palin-Trump presidency, something will put an end to us as a species. Unless we leave. It doesn't need to be all of us, or even most of us. Just enough of us, so that if things do go south here on Mother Earth, it won't be the end of us as a species. But now that that is settled, the situation becomes a bit tricky.

The difficulties with manned space travel are numerous. First and foremost comes the issue that humans don't take too well to extended periods of weightlessness. The Russian cosmonauts who stayed on the space station for a year turned into little more than porcelain dolls. Depending on thrust technology and timing of the launch a space craft can reach Mars in as little as 130 days. But then comes the problem that once outside of Earths magnetosphere, any ship becomes the proverbial bug in the petri dish for the Suns radiation storms. We haven't even touched the problems of food, oxygen and water. One solution would be to put all the passengers into some type of hibernation (cryogenic or otherwise) but that would be highly energy intensive and the ship would still require a crew to maintain it and intervene should something unforeseen happen. So that would just leave us at square one. Plus the problem of all the machinery and equipment that is needed once the colonists arrive at their destination. It all looks to be an incredible money sink for something that has an ROI just short of infinity. How on earth would we be able to make this cheaper and therefore more achieveable.

You probably not like the answer. We will have to become much better at genetic manipulation.

 Genetic manipulation on the human level is something that is very controversial right now. GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms) are still fighting a losing battle for acceptance in Europe,w here they are often portrayed as some sort of evil corporate scheme that only Ming the Merciless would cook up. Truth is, genetic modification is liable to be the next great achievement of humanity. Something that will make the it possible to grow crops that don't require pesticides because they are immune to all pests and blights. Naturally, there is always a possibility of it going horribly wrong. You just need to read Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl  for a look at a world caught in the grip of ruthless food companies that engineer crop blights to kill off competition. 

However, for the purposes of our argument, genetic modification is something close to the silver bullet. You don't need to worry too much about radiation and muscular/skeletal atrophy due to weightlessness, if you can breed a generation of colonists who are naturally more resistant to radiation and are meant for a weightless environment. Instead of a horribly expensive and energy hungry hibernation system, why not modify colonists to hibernate naturally? We could land a colony ship on Mars, filled with humans who are already adapted to many of the conditions there. What about radiation resistant food stuffs? Or plants with hyper-accelerated CO2-O2 exchange rates? There goes your need to design, test and build a complex air scrubber system or concern yourself about the oxygen supply once you arrive. 

The idea of meddling around with our genes is a very scary notion to most people, particularly the religious and those who have read Auldus Huxley's Brave New World and were scared shitless by it. But much like the social attitude towards homosexuality, television, the internet and cellphones, it will quickly cease to be controversial and will become banal and ordinary. And that day will come when genetic modification becomes cheap. The benefits are just too numerous for it not to become accepted. The ability to eliminate heredity diseases, boost children's immune systems, make us smarter and stronger.. Eventually, we will probably have something like a genetic Moore's Law: that every generation will have twice the genetic advantages and abilities than their immediate ancestors. It is, to quote one of my favorite movie villains, inevitable. As with all things, there may be a significant downside to all this. Science fiction and pop culture is teeming with warnings about the dangerous of "playing God". I take a much more pragmatic approach to this argument. Of all the species that have walked this tiny blue planet, 99% are extinct. If we wish to be part of that 1% that endures, we must seieze every advantage with the ferociousness of a starved man fighting for survival. Because we are. If that means that we must alter ourselves are a genetic level, and then leave our home planet, than we would be fools not to avail ourselves of our ability to do so. 

Charles Darwin's most famous and most misunderstood description of evolution was "survival of the fittest". We as humans will soon have the ability to make ourselves the fittest, no matter the situation. No matter the planet.

Space...GET ME THERE NOW! Part 1

A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. His special guest that night was astrophysicist, bon vivant and man about the town Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a man so charismatic and knowledgeable that I am frankly appalled he hasn't been made Science Czar of the United States. (His weekly radio show Star Talk, can be heard as a pod cast. To say I highly recommend it would be a vile understatement.) Mr. Tyson was there to talk about all things spacey and climate change, and at one point had to defend the need for NASA and the space program to his host. Mr. Maher, apparently, believed that such an extensive and expensive program was unnecessary given the problems on on terra firma, and additionally stated that any sane American ought to oppose a man trip to Mars simple because it was brought to life by former President George W. Bush.

I very nearly put my fist through my computer screen. Which would have been monstrously unfair of me, as my computer has done nothing to deserve such treatment. Mr. Maher on the other hand would have deserved the black eye.

There are times when I find my world turning into something out of Carrol's Wonderland, and those times generally seem to involve whenever Republicans are defending the space programs against Democrats. It is the one instance I can think of, where conservatives defend science against progressives. At close to 30, I still have not been able to silence the cognitive dissonance this creates. It seems to me, that when listed in order of importance the ability to leave this planet, should the environment become toxic for us or a asteroid the size of Mexico City decides to nestle in Pacific Ocean, would far, far outrank the public sector unions right to hold everyone hostage if they don't get their 2.5% raise. While this may seem callous of me, my reasoning is fueled by a very certain and frightening fact.

In the history of our planet: there have been five mass extinction events. Of those, the last one, the Cretaceous-Tertiary event was the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Lesser extinction events have been recorded as well, which means in those instances only  less than 50% of animal and plant life died. Going to the Wikipedia page for "Extinction event" is a chilling undertaking. Half way down the page, one of the reasons for a significant die off is listed as "Sustained and significant global warming". Fuck those lousy politicos with their "the science isn't all in" prevarication. Scientists don't need to be sure about the cause of an event to know if it will kill us all. 

My point, is that for us as a species to survive, we have to get off this rock. Soon. I would love to see NASA grab a slice of the Defense budget. I am pretty sure that with 100 billion annually at their disposal, those walking Pentium processors would be able to build us one hell of a Mars base by 2025. Question remains then, how will we survive once we get there?

Things I like...AND YOU SHOULD TOO!!

The Bugle! Audio Newspaper for a visual World!

For a little over a year and a half now, The Bugle has been my favorite podcast. I would even go so far as to say that it is indeed, the best podcast in the history of the world ever. Amen. The basic premise of the 'cast is that John Oliver (pictured on the left, him of The Daily Show fame) and his friend Andy Zaltzman (of whom I can honestly say, I had never heard of before). Every week, these two jokers get together (via the internet) and take the piss out of global current events. I guess a more genteel way of putting it would be that they highlight the absurdities of international events, Often using pretty awful puns. Luckily the puns don't overshadow the avalanche of awesome that generally follows.

The show roughly follows the format of a news show, with segments dedicated to current events, sports and listener emails, as well the occasional guest commentator. The duo does have a stable of favorite targets that generally consists of dictators of the ridiculous variety (Hugo Chavez, Col. Gadaffi, Kim Jong Il), sports stars heralding from the lunatic fringe (Delonte West) and Italian Prime Minister and lecherous octogenarian satyr Silvio Berlusconi. The "occasional guest commentator" I mentioned earlier takes the form of The American, a caricature portrayed by comedian Rory Albanese (a producer at The Daily Show) who is basically every stereotype of a Newark resident combined with a dictionary of American exceptionalism and xenophobia.

Completing this confederacy of dunces is the producer Chris, who only recently took over the position from his predecessor, Tom the Producer. Bugle listeners welcomed the new arrival by inundating the poor bastard with so many good natured "fuck you" emails that the movement metastasized into a website. Which just shows you what types of asshats listen to The Bugle, and why I am proud to count myself among them.

In essence, it is hysterically funny, it comes on every week and you all should listen to it. Do it. I am waiting. SUBSCRIBE YOU BASTARD!

How I know the Verse has a sense of humor

Far back in the day, when I was no more than a strapping young lad in high school, my family got caught up in the Magnetic Poetry fad. For those of you who have been blessed and have forgotten this particularly insipid little fad, it involved many words printed on small magnets that you could then place on your refrigerator (in our case, a flat radiator) and then arrange the words as you saw fit. As is human nature, most of illuminating sonnets that were produced consisted of nothing more than dirty phrases about "boobs" and various bodily functions. Occasionally someone would be struck by the pretentiousness virus and try to put up something deep and meaningful, but thankfully that was a rare occasion.

Luckily, as it always is with such gimmicks, our interest waned. We left the magnets on the radiator because frankly, we couldn't be arsed to take them down. My mother started using them to hold several of her favorite pictures in place. The majority were severely pixelated print outs of our dog. One day I came back to my parents house, was surprised to find it had all disappeared. Magnets and pictures seemed to have evaporated. Only one word seemed to have survived this mysterious purge. Now, every time I walk past it I can't help but think that the cosmos is somehow trying to tell me something.

I also grin.

The Reduced Star Wars

A long time ago, on an island not too far away, but it would still be questionable if you would want to go there, a trio of unbelievably geeks (though not the original, only one of those) were granted permission to apply their unique brand of comedy/faffing about to the works of one George "The Bearded Hutt" Lucas. Thus shielded from the dark legions of the LucasArts Legal department, the went on a bit of a tear and produced for our viewing pleasure Star War Shortened!!

Should be viewed for many reasons but foremost among them:
"Hi, this is my student Obi Wan Kenobi and I'm Liam Neeson!"
Episode II presented entire with acoustic guitar
Flow charts
A tent standing in as Jabba the Hutt
Rotating tassels

PLUS the entire series broken down in less than 60 seconds!

Oh Reduced Shakespeare Company.  You make life bearable.

Part The First


Part the Second

Just what I am listening to...

I have been on a bit of a music binge as of recently, and my obsession has been fixed in two oxymoronic directions. First we have the group The Glitch Mob.

A electronic trio hailing from the West Coast of the United States, ediT, Boreta and Ooah mix some seriously sick beats. I first stumbled upon their music when I found a video one of their fans had created in homage of the group, mixing together snippets of dozens of movie trailers. (I included the vid below.) After watching the thing once I went and checked out their website and was delighted to find that they offer a bunch of music for free. This includes several remixes and half hour mash ups. I also downloaded their debut album Drink The Sea from Amazon and I heartily recommend it to anyone who likes music like Daft Punk.

My second musical obsession of the moment is a french soul & funk prodigy Ben L'Oncle Soul. A frenchman from Tours, Ben L'Onkel actually wanted to call himself Uncle Ben, but changed his nome de plume due to fears of copyright infringement and possibly lawyers.

Taken under contract by Motown France ( I know! O_o), Ben L'Oncle has made it his thing to bring that old school Motown feel back. His music, his clothing even the artwork on his album cover, all of it screams Motown. The music is a mix of French and English, covers and original work. Some of the choices for covers seem odd (Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers The Other Side) but the guy manages to pull it off, giving each rendition something new and making it fit. I included his Seven Nation Army cover to give you a taste.




BEN L'ONCLE SOUL from yamoy on Vimeo.


Here are the album covers and some additional artwork. Just because I like it and no one seems to be willing to stop me.

The Glitch Mob Drink The Sea

Bem L'Oncle Soul, (Eponymous)

Ohhh Interesting!!

A peninsula ON ANOTHER PENINSULA!

So, I was a little caught off guard when it was announced that Qatar would be hosting the the 2022 World Cup. Now I believe I was ahead of roughly 70% of the Earth's population, given that I knew that Qatar was a country, one of those small oil rich Arab peninsula countries . Oh, and conservative in a way that would give the right wing of the Republican party a three hour erection.

As I am always at least making a token effort to expand my admittedly pitiful base of knowledge before I am flung from this life with the force and disgust of French chef disposing of some low grade American hot dogs that had recently turned, I ventured onto the Wikipedia page for Qatar to give myself at least a superficial idea of what the country is all about.

Okay I also checked CIA Factbook. 

Hey Hey My My

Outta the blue/into the black
You paid for this/they give you that
Once you're gone/you can't come back
Outta the blue/into the black

Doo do do doo do doo do doo dooooo.....

Currently a song apply titled "Barbara Streisand" by Duck Sauce is haunting the airwaves and it is probably one of the most addictive songs I have heard in a good long while simply because it seems to fully embrace how ridiculous it actually should be. That and after hearing it you will be humming "do do do dooo" to yourself for a very, very long time. Then, in a flash of genius inspired procrastination, I went to YouTube and found their video which I present to you hear. I will not break out the "...so much win" emoticon again, as I am not willing ot over use that little chestnut quite yet but it is there in soul. Enjoy!

Strange Things in the World+Television!! = Bizarrovision! Hawaii 5- WHHAAA???

This is my first combination post, and I think the subject is particularly worthy of comment since it is probably the most puzzling thing that has ever crossed my path. Well that is not entirely true. "Female logic", Sarah Palin, Germany's anti-nuclear energy policy, American Conservative policies, Japanese card game based animes and the Winter Olympics are all things that no one has been able to explain to me to any satisfaction but in terms of Us popular culture and television, there is nothing more bewildering than the remake of Hawaii 5-O, which is now called Hawaii Five-0. Cause it's different, see?!

A little history first: Hawaii 5-O, was your grandfathers Law & Order. Spawning on US television for the first time in 1968, the show was the prototype cop show, the one that came up with the phrase "take em away", a dead horse of a cliche so thoroughly beaten that it really is just a slightly damp piece of  ground at this point. The show ran for an eye popping 12 years and featured a multi-ethnic cast with extras that more or less reflected the racial reality of the island. In the 1960's that was nothing less than a Jesus getting drunk and turning a donkey into a Winnebago sized miracle. The show ended in 1980, and as we are currently stuck in the remake epidemic, television producers at CBS decided that this little hallowed piece of US television history had been resting peacefully long enough. So they pillaged the grave and cracked open the coffin to see what leftover pieces of cadaver they could stitch together into something vaguely resembling a show. This may seem I am being incredibly hypocritical in my opinions of the remaking scourge as I am on record as one of the many geeks who would willing sign up for the armed forces if Edward James Olmos made a recruitment video for the Marines wearing his Battlestar Galactica uniform. However, I feel that BSG is the very large exception that proves the rule about remaking old properties instead of taking a risk with new ones. The results often fall into the "intolerable horseshit" category. To be fair, Hawaii Five-0, isn't that bad, but it does carve out it's own niche in the remake paradigm: "bizarre". That word will crop up often.

Self Annihilation

Driving down to Frankfurt from Essen, it was roughly around 5 pm and the sun was setting. Evening comes quickly in the winter, draping everything in a smothering blanket of inky darkness. It makes you feel like a insomniac at 6 pm, a wandering zombie stuck between waking and sleeping. The sunsets however, are...something else. The tell-tale purple fringe was clearly visible over the trees, at this point nothing more than dark skeletons, their bare and dessicated arms scratching at the clouds. Behind them, the sky was on fire, bright yellow fury, held back by a cage of branches. For several minutes, the display was blocked, held at bay by its wooden gaol and the foreboding, quadratic silhouettes of buildings. Then, in a moment, all obstructions disappeared. The sun had set further, turning what was once bright flame into liquid gold. The color filled the sky, it seemed to consume everything in my field of vision.

Seconds and eternity switched places incessantly. There was no thought, no contemplation, no heartache, no happiness, no yearning.  Bathed in the liquid crepusular light, it was blissful obliteration. Nothingness, dissolved and dispersed. I was nothing.

I was violently pulled back to the mundane when trees once more sought to rob me of the view. Realization dawned that  i would have to pay attention to the road. When I was able to glance back, only a sliver of the color was left. The sky had burnt itself out, leaving embers of orange and pink before being overcome by blue and then being swallowed by black.

The Wild Eyed Bibliomaniac - Magic! It's really...boring

Given various events in my life, I have not been writing as much as I like. As a result of lacking this outlet to balance out the misery of my existence, my frustration, bitterness and anger levels have been rising to eye popping heights. That is why I will use this opportunity to release some bile and hopefully get myself into a more Zen place by reviewing Susanne Clarke's heifer of a novel: Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

I had initially run across this book while browsing io9 looking for procrastination material and stumbled over their list of the 20 Best Science Fiction Books of the Decade. Being a fan of science, fiction and their mating in a literary format, I pushed aside my normal skepticism of any type of list that proclaims some thing to be the greatest of that thing this year/decade/century/epoch and dove right in. In all I was pleasantly surprised by the choices. I had read a good number of the titles in that list and most of them I would have rated as particularly good examples of fiction that just happened to be sci-fi. Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, was smack in the middle of this list and mainly caught my eye because I had never heard of it. The brief description drew the picture of two men bound by fate and arcane knowledge, if not friendship, venturing into a dark world and dabbling with things they did not fully understand. Not necessarily an original story but the fact that it was set during the Napoleonic Era gave it a rather fresh twist. Most hack sci-fi writers would have made them wizards trying to bring down the Nazis as Hitler was trying unleash Cthulhu. After having read the list I almost instantly forgot about the novel until I saw it squatting on the bottom of a friends book shelf. "Hey I heard that was good!" I exclaimed full of unbridled innocence "How did you like it?". "It's shit," he replied, his voice the dull monotone of broken dreams and cynicism. "You can keep it if you want but I warn you, it's really crap."

Oh if only I had listened to him.

Just what I am listening to...

I haven't posted anything in a good long while so I thought I should just write about the music I am currently listening to. Recently, I remembered that I had the Mumford & Sons album and have been listening to it almost incessantly ever since. I may even be singing to it, though I would kill anyone who tries to claim to have heard me doing so. What I am trying to say, between the death threats, is that Sigh No More is a great album, and that you ought to be listening to it. Because, when life has that shit-hit-the-fan-2-min-ago feeling and you are in the middle of the clean up, some good music will really make things seem a bit lighter.

A special relationship!

The owner of the Red Sox just bought the English Premire League football club Liverpool. I do believe that there is something going on. Some inner voice is telling me that these two storied and whiny fan bases coming together is a Very Bad Thing.

Television!!: Sons of Anarchy

More than a little ink has been spilled on the splintering of American pop culture due to the skyrocketing number of cable channels in the mid-late '90's and early '00's. The addition of the internet has only exacerbated the fears of these stolid, Baby Boomer journalists who wax poetically about that mystical era when there were only 4 stations and everybody was able to talk about the same programming around that sacred grove of social interaction: the water cooler. I call bullshit on this. In a world where your options are so numerous, it puts you into a state of epileptic paralysis, the onus is on the content providers to do just as their job title indicates:provide good content. Television was shit when there were only three channels. The networks were able to throw whatever they wanted at us because Hey! We sure as hell didn't have any other options. Other than shutting the damn box off, but who are we kidding here. I believe more is better, because as competition for our time intensifies, there are only two ways for the content providers to go: the cheap (in terms of production cost and content quality) voyeurism of reality television or high quality content that will enrapture the audience. Of course this is a very simplistic and binary way of looking at a complex market, but I feel comfortable with it do let's get rolling.

For the past 6-8 years or so, FX has branded itself as the channel for dark and gritty dramas, and have created some stunning shows to back up that claim. The Shield was made of dirt, spit and the sound of skulls thumping against pavement as Michael Chiklis curb stomped The Comish from our collective memories. Nip/Tuck was sleek, slippery, and skeezy. It thrust our faces into the gore of surgery while showing us that the hallowed priests of beauty and lust were more fucked up then we could imagine. After having brutally deconstructed the Lawman and the Plastic Surgeon, FX decided to take on another of semi-mythologized and excessively glorified part of Americas gestalt totality: The Outlaw. Thus I present to you: The Sons of Anarchy.

Stephen Colbert:: Genius or SUPER GENIUS?!

I can truly and honestly say, from the bottom of my small grinch like heart: Stephen Colbert has the biggest balls in the world. Seriously. Ahmadinjad has nothing on this man. He is called to Congress to testify on his "experience" as a migrant worker for a day and mocks the whole decrepit lot of them! First the President, now Congress, next he will hide whoopee cushions on the chairs of the Supreme Court Justices. I love this man.

Television!! - A new segment!

It is telling that I spent an hour-and-a-half on Sunday watching a famed German show called Tatort. The show is a long (we're talking decades!) running cop drama that has multiple iterations and protagonists for every major and most minor population centers in Germany. It is what Dick Wolf dreams off, while he huffs paint and masturbates furiously to the fevered nightmare of Law & Order: Small Claims Court Tallahasse. I jest of course, Tatort is actually a fairly decent show. It tends to focus more on the personalities of the Kriminalkommisare trying to solve the really obvious cases. Call it an anti-CSI. While naturally, some series are better than others, in terms of quality the series float between your average episode of JAG and one of the best episodes of the first season of 24. The problem isn't the show. The problem is that the show is the best thing on German television.

The landscape of the German television industry is something from a post-apocalyptic sci-fi comic: blasted, lifeless, bleak and probably incapable of ever again spawning life. Most of it consists of reality shows about dreary "ordinary, everyday" people and their useless, wasted boring lives. What little original programming exists can hardly be called original, let alone good. American television may be scourged unimaginably shit shows that make you want to claw your eyes out, at least the industry is not adverse to risk taking, trying to tell new stories while German television relies on reality and game shows that are so mind numbingly pointless that you want to scream out, begging for God to release your tortured soul from this stygian neverscape.

I miss American Television.

So as part of this new segment I shall be reviewing those series, both new and returning, that I particularly enjoy and find worthwhile on a level for more than just base entertainment. How I Met Your Mother is a very funny show and I enjoy watching it, but it doesn't really enthrall me the way some of the shows do that I shall be presenting here. First up will be one of my all time favorites: Sons of Anarchy!

Why I am not at all happy about Shaq being with the Celtics.

Let Bill Simmons say what he will. I don't care about his superior sports knowledge, or that he has been diligently been following team sports in the Boston area for decades. I care nothing his Rain Man style command of statistics or his almost disturbing ability to recall the most obscure of pop culture trivia. All I need to know to confirm my misgivings about Shaq signing up with the boys in green is expressed by this picture:

WTF is happening with American politics?!

Before we begin my amateurish analysis of American politics please watch the Video below and then follow it up with this excellent blog post. It will go a great way to explaining the outlandish behavior of the Republican representatives, though it is unlikely to be much comfort.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor

A Tale of Two Sherlocks

In the past year, we have been graced with two new incarnations of Sherlock Holmes. The first  was presented to us by every ones favorite London gangstarr groupie Guy Ritchee, who seems to be back on track producing witty humorous and clever "guy" flicks (*chortle chortle*) after having been lost in the wilds of Madonna va-ja-ja for several years. The second is the Sherlock Holmes television re-imagining created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the former now the head writer and executive producer for the rebooted Doctor Who series and the latter also a writer on said series who play Sherlock's brother Mycroft in this new show. Both seemed to be trying to give us a Holmes for the modern era but they go about it in such different ways that it begs the question of which one shall be the iconic Holmes of our generation. Is this a thoroughly fruitless endeavor? Yes. Will whatever arguments I construct be flimsy pablum in the face of the fact that this is an entirely subjective decision? Sure. Am I just yapping into the void of the Interwebs in a futile attempt to let the world know that I exist! I matter! And goddamit, I'm worth it! ...Probably. Will these realizations stop me from embarassing myself? Unlikely.