A Strangely New "Gray Mars"

Mars, 2013 - Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"We have characterized a very ancient, but strangely new 'gray Mars' where conditions once were favorable for life," said John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. 

- NASA Rover Finds Conditions Once Suited for Ancient Life on Mars

NASA announced today the results of rock samples gathered last month, and the verdict is in: yes, ancient Mars could've supported life! Of course, by "life" NASA scientists are referring to the microbial... to which the Martians among us say "ho hum"... and, of course, the verdict may be overturned at some point - like the great Martian water debate... which I'm not sure has been really settled yet - but, we may as well play along. Hell, what have we got to lose... except time? ;-)

Atomic Tom...

... recently abducted from the Art Shaman's workshop. The best part? It's functional!

(Sorry, Bob, but I just had to have it!)

A Vision of the Apocalypse - Now!

Normally, this blog is not a news site, but I just caught this bit of breaking news a few minutes ago from the Guardian: Meteorite explosion over Chelyabinsk injures hundreds,

and this video is so riveting, I was compelled to post it.  More can be found in the article.

The number of people injured varies, from 500 to 1000, but, apparently the meteorite broke up above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Hopefully there were no fatalities. Pretty scary stuff. And, although explanations vary, this isn't the first time Russia was in the cosmic line of fire... see the Tunguska event.  Mac's posts about Tunguska can be found here.

Wired: Table Of Malcontents

"Post-Human Blues: Mac Tonnies is undeniably a bit of a weirdo. Perhaps that’s why I like him so much, though I agree with nearly nothing that he writes. His subject is largely the future of humanity: he enthusiastically imagines a future, sometimes hopefully, sometimes apocalyptically, where the transhuman is real."

- John Brownlee - via this post from the 2007 Wired blog: Table of Malcontents 

More Mac trivia... an excerpt of this quote is blurbed on the PHB side-bar, but Mac also posted about it here (with comments from Brownlee and himself).

Table of Malcontents seems to have been a fine blog, but, unfortunately, only lasted 9 months.

Note: this post replaces the 2011 video, Robots of Brixton by Kibwe Tavares and Factory Fifteen. It lost too much in a small format, but, if you haven't caught it in the past, it can be seen in its full glory here.

From The Other Side

Jim Harold's Paranormal Plus Club

Brought to you from the Other Side (no, not that other side), Jim Harold's radio show... where Paul Kimball discusses his friend, Mac Tonnies, at some length. Topics include Post Human Blues; Volume I, the 2006 New Frontiers Symposium, and those enigmatic Crypto's. The Other Side is subscription-only listening, but Paul has graciously provided a direct link to the MP3. Thanks, Paul!

Note: Just in case you missed it, Paul chatted with George Noory on Coast to Coast AM last month...  notice (& link) can be found here.

The Moth & The Machine

"Lead author of the research, Dr Noriyasu Ando, said: "The simple and robust odour tracking behaviour of the silkmoth allows us to analyse its neural mechanisms from the level of a single neuron to the moth's overall behaviour. By creating an 'artificial brain' based on the knowledge of the silkmoth's individual neurons and tracking behaviour, we hope to implement it into a mobile robot that will be equal to the insect-controlled robot developed in this study...

The best way to elicit adaptive behaviours of insects is to put them into extraordinary situations. The turning bias in our study is analogous to a situation in which we try to ride unbalanced bicycles. We need training to ride such bicycles smoothly but the silkmoth overcomes the situation with only simple and fast sensory-motor feedbacks," said Dr Ando."

- Excerpt from a 2/5/13 Phys.org article: Insect drives robot to track down smells 

***

Life imitating art again... specifically my art... blogged about previously here and finally, here. Whatdaya mean you can't make this sh*t up? ;-)

By the way, it took 14 silkmoths to complete this study. I say no more.

(Hat tip to Perceval at the Daily Grail.)

(Detail) Worm's Last Memory - Digital - 2009, Dia Sobin

Mind Meld: Science Fiction and Science Fact

Screen shot from the 2002 Sy-Fi miniseries Taken

"Turns out two heads really are better than one. Two people have successfully steered a virtual spacecraft by combining the power of their thoughts - and their efforts were far more accurate than one person acting alone. One day groups of people hooked up to brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) might work together to control complex robotic and telepresence systems, maybe even in space."

- Excerpt from a New Scientist article, Mind-meld brain power is best for steering spaceships by Paul Marks, February 1, 2013

From the life-imitates-art file: I was taking my daily stroll through Graham Hancock's news page today, when I came across the link to the (above) New Scientist article about brain-computer interfacing. I'd heard of instances where brain signals can now be used to control computer operated devices - such as prosthetic limbs - but the idea of more than one brain controlling complex systems "in space" immediately rang a bell.

And then I remembered why. If you ever saw that Sy-Fi miniseries Taken (from way back when in 2002) - directed by Stephen Spielberg, and one of my personal favorites - you probably have this scene embedded in your head: a pair of middle-aged psychic twins who unwittingly become (doomed) participants in a secret government experiment to test-fly a captured alien spacecraft using human "mind power". It was ultimately pretty horrifying... the twins suffering cerebral hemorrhages as they sat, completely unprotected - in the strange alien cockpit. (see screen-shot above).

The film's premise for the alien craft was that it was powered by the alien brains... although instead of two in a virtual spacecraft, as in the article, it took 5 brains for intergalactic space travel.

Below is a clip from Taken - the first 4 minutes describing the craft's power source. As for the fate of the psychic twins - that can be found 7 minutes into this clip.

Hungry for Mars?

I guess I must be!

 Found a listing for Curiosity rover weekly reports and thought I'd share. It's about as close to a walk on Mars that one can get presently...

For past & future reports, try here.

Blade Runner Revisited

"We may not literally have built Replicants yet, but the thrust of Dick's ideas, brought to life in Blade Runner, was not really about that. The point was that the Replicants could be anyone. The robots-becoming more-human-than-human trope was only a metaphor for collective dissociation, brought on by exponential progress. In that dissociative societal process, who can say who the arbiters of rationality, normality and morality are?"

- excerpt from Retro-futurism: 1968 On the Way to 2019 via Histories  of Things To Come

For all you Blade Runner fanatics out there - and Mac was surely one - check out the latest post over at Histories of Things to Come... it just might make your day.

Roboy

This was just posted on YouTube today... Roboy, the latest artificial humanoid you will be replaced with in the future. ;-)

Happy New Year!

Cliff Pickover's "The Six Thousand"

Portrait of Mac by Electric Warrior

"6000 intriguing people you want to meet online before you die. 

Who will make the list tomorrow?"

- Cliff Pickover's "The Six Thousand"

I don't know how this bit of Mac-related trivia slipped my mind these past few years, but I was reminded last night during research for my latest Trans-D post The Doors of Perception. (Yes, another cross-post...)

I can't tell you what intriguing people might make Cliff Pickover's list tomorrow, but I can tell you who made the list Wednesday, January 04, 2006. As well he should have! If I remember correctly, the list was loads shorter in those days. But, what I do remember without a doubt was Mac having gotten a huge kick out of it.

Incidentally, I've added a new link list to the Post-Mac Blues side-bar; hat-tips to people, places and things which I've posted elsewhere on this blog in the past, and many of which I've cited frequently. (Note: I've included the UFO Mystic link, but I notice that the page has been blank for months now. No clue.)

***

Added note: Following the pixel trail I found this mention of Clifford Pickover on Posthuman Blues from 2008: apparently Mac was co-blogger on Pickover's Reality Carnival Unleashed. He mostly posted links to articles, and many of the links are now broken, but the ones that work are interesting, so, if you elect to visit the page, scroll down to Friday, August 22, 2008, and keep going.

For example, here's a sampling from April 8, 2008: Spoof "Virgle" plan proves unexpectedly plausible, and from May 7 of that year: Astrobiological nonlocality at the cosmological level.

There are numerous others!

For Cliff's mile long list of phenomenal links - continuously updated - go to Reality Carnival!

Dean Radin on Radio Misterioso

"On this program, we discussed Dr. Radin’s background and his early interest in paranormal topics, and how this led him to a career as a working parapsychologist. We then looked at the rocky early history of quantum theory (which forms the basis of a possible working theory of psychic phenomena) and how its acceptance among more scientists would be the basis of a possible renaissance of psychic research."

- Greg Bishop's introduction to his latest podcast