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?

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.

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

Holister Scares the Living Shit out of me

That's right, Living Shit, capital letters. I know that my age puts me far outside of the Holister target demographic but that doesn't mean I can avoid them. There is one in the new MyZeil Gallery in Frankfurt and which is gifted with Europes longest escalator that carries you straight to a Coa restaurant. Coa is a chain of 2000-y health Asian food fusion thingies that has food good enough sell one of your closer relations for. Maybe a cousin. In fact the whole set up seems to be made with Led Zeppelin 'Stairway to Heaven' jokes in mind. It's that good. Hang on I seem to have wandered off for a moment there...

Oh yes...Holister = Evil got it.

Like I was saying, I am fully aware that this little rant make me look like a decrepit pensioner trying to chase little snot chavs off of my front lawn, what with their flash dancing, hip hopping and lower back tattoos, but just look at the place!!

They keep the lights so low anyone over the age of 16 will continually bump into the fixtures or find themselves caught in an unwilling close encounter with the homoerotic wall spanning photos ripped straight out of a Playgirl magazine they decorate this hellish abode with. They fill the air with some putrescent, pheromone laced skunk musk to attract more of the braces wielding, training bra wearing, voice cracking, Tobey McGuire in Spider-Man 3 hairdo sporting zombies and then artificially limit the their occupancy rate to force the rest of us human beings to have to walk past this cavalcade of awkward pubescence. Look at the first picture, they have a chandelier hanging at genital height, those vile, tasteless philistines!!!

The whole get up doesn't so much shout "hip, edgy clothing retail branch" as it does "satanic goth-rock BDSM night club/rape shack". Any time I am forced to pass this place, I am struck by an adrenaline fueled fight-or-flight response as I am sure that one of the Ken Doll, 14-pack ab equipped, grape smuggling speedo models with excellently moisturized skin bouncers is going to clasp me between his faked tanned fingers, and with a flick of his purpose styled and highlighted surfer mop, hurl me into this den of sin and despair, where the succubi sales assistants will do unimaginably horrific things to me before I emerge 45 minutes later feeling skeezy, oily and supremely violated, carrying a paper bag of $65 dollar v-neck t-shirts that I would need to go on a all smoothie and wheat grass diet to squeeze into.

These places are Hellmouths I swear it!To make matters worse, the targeted demographic won't even get that reference!!

The Wild Eyed Bibliomaniac - The Girl who did or had something-something

 Image courtesy of halfpricedbooksonline

I love reading. There is probably no greater joy for me in the world (it contends with drugs, sex, alcohol, all the standards) and I have often sworn that the day I stop reading is the day I die. Books, magazines, blogs, news sites even those archaic flaps of thin paper called newspapers, none can escape my grasp. This is why I will from now on write about those books that either particularly impress, annoy or distress me.

A word of warning for the unaware: this "review" will likely contain spoilers and may be unintelligible for those people who haven't read the books. My purpose here isn't so much to inform or recommend, but to document my thoughts about the book as I was reading it or after I finished it. It really should be viewed as something of a ill-informed diatribe by something akin to the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.So bewared unwary traveler, here may be spoilers. And rantings.

So...here we go.

Flips GLORIOUS World Cup Blog-o-rama Extravaganza - Second day of football withdrawl...

Its been dismal. Just dismal. The second day of life without football has been a horrendous ordeal without end in sight until I saw an interesting article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) about how Bastian Schweinsteiger (or Schweini as he used to be called, which means "Piglet"), had made several combative statements regarding the Argentinians and the infamous brawl that broke loose after Germany had beaten Argentina on penalty kicks in the 2006 quarter-finals. So far it had only been the Argentines who had been making a lot of noise about how they were going to get revenge for last time. Maradonna had even crooned that he would post a team line up that was "guaranteed to beat the Germans".

Flips GLORIOUS World Cup Blog-o-rama Extravaganza - I Love Football

I love football. I love it in a way that I cannot possible love other sports. Don't get me wrong, I love basketball and there is nothing more relaxing a game of baseball in the late summer. But football truly is the beautiful sport. No other sport can have me nervous before the game has even start. Screw biting my nails, I was way past the cuticles for this Germany vs Ghana match, I was chomping on my knuckles. And the match proved to be be worth the name "Preliminary knock out game".

An open letter on the Winter Olympics

Monday February 22, 2010
 
To all:
I do not follow the Winter Olympics! They are a worthless set of snow games invented by a bunch of Scandinavians drunk on fermented reindeer urine and suffering from combination of snow blindness, cabin fever and gnome hallucinations! They range from the unbelievably silly (curling) to the mind numbingly monotonous (ski jumping) and the hair-raisingly suicidal (the skeleton)! I do not care how my country fares in the medal count in this horrendous, "my-country-tis-of-thee" money-sink. I do not care about corrupt french ice skating judges, doping scandals or if Apolo Anto Ohno is was in fact the inspiration for Jim Brewers Goat Boy character! I cannot fucking stand Bob Costas! The Olympic Anthem is less inspiring than the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, actually scratch that, it less inspiring than the fucking Titanic soundtrack, and that is bloody well saying something. How can anyone claim this is an event in celebration of the human spirit and athletic achievement when you need, at minimum, a structured loan on you house, kidneys and unborn children just to buy the fucking equipment to participate? Once you have then bankrupted yourself, you are then forced to undergo the added humiliation of squeezing your worthless, lumpy body into a suit so tight, most LA street hookers would consider it to be too revealing. Good Lord, they probably feed a bunch of blind, mongoloid baboons sets of crayons and then let them fling their poo at these outfits! Do they need these ridiculous colors just so they don't lose the "athletes" when the inevitable take a wrong turn and end up lost in the snow. It would also help if you need SPF 450 in order to go on a walk on a cloudy day, if you catch my drift. It's a an unbelievable waste of money and time. The only sport that be considered remotely exciting is ice hockey, and even that is only great for people to exorcise long simmering ethnic and international tensions via burly men slamming each other into walls or beating each other with sticks.
Thank you very much.