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Alien Sociology
http://www.space.com/ searchforlife/ 080327-seti-alien-sociology.html
Why would extraterrestrials come here for a visit?
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SF/F Links: March/April Roundup
http://wisb.blogspot.com/2008/04/sff-links-marchapril-roundu...A little delayed, but finally I have some links for you all. There are loads more, so I think I'm going to have to go with a weekly schedule so it doesn't pile up like it is doing now. In any case, here are the links:io9Things you can do to help create artificial intelligences! You'd be surprised what simple things there are that can help in that field. Stuff you might already do regularly.Post-apocalyptic scenes made out of food! I had a link similar to this from Listverse a long while back. This is in the same vein and amazing.Anyone wanting some advice on map-making should start looking at vector maps of things on other planets and moons in our solar system. Seriously, go to this vector map of a methane sea on Titan and see how cool extraterrestrial maps are!Six earth cities that will give us ideas on how to colonize Mars. This is pretty cool actually. Rather interesting when you look at it from a realistic perspective.The Navy announces a five-year plan to build laser blasters. We've gotta keep up with those Chinese guys somehow right? Yeah. Good idea, but I wonder who is paying for it.Got a bum kidney? Well apparently there is a new way to get rid of them: give birth to it. Yeah, I don't quite understand it either, but give it a look. New medical practices are revolutionizing how we do things these days.Nano-wire shirt that generates electricity while you move, but burns out if you sweat on it. Good idea, needs rethinking.A new biomedical gel that can fix your severed spine. Works on mice, should work on us. Paralysis might not be a problem of the future!ListverseTop 10 Ways to Fly Under the Radar. Yup, for all you ex-cons out there, or anyone writing about ex-cons.10 Great Inventions That Should Be Invented! Interstellar travel here we come!Universe TodayQuantum communications might be viable in the near future if we get on top of it like this article suggests.Astrium, from good old Europe, is ramping up plans to mass produce space planes. Yup, good stuff indeed.Cassini picks up hints of organic chemicals shooting off from Saturn's Enceladus! Cool stuff indeed!13.73 Billion Years. That's the current measurement of how old the Universe is. Find out about it here.Hawaiin hippy files lawsuit against the Large Hadron Collider. Go away and stop fooling with complex science that you don't understand!New research suggests that galaxies with quasars in the middle are not so good for planet formation. Yup, not good at all. I found this online somewhere (if I got it from you, please let me know). This is a look at the differences of opinion between the U.S. and England. It's amazing how different we are. They are, by and large, far more progressive than we are.This image of these concept designs of future robotic police forces are amazing. Check out the gallery too. Simply stunning image.Michio Kaku on things we'll probably never see. Sadly, he's likely right.Ten sci-fi movie survival tips. Screaming is good, though.Scifi reading list with the subject "not quite human". Lots of goodies in there. (Courtesy of SF Signal, I think)New ScientistScientists have found the answer to the origins of two mysterious meteorites found in Antarctica. Find out here!Find ISS in this picture and you win nothing, because I have nothing to give. This is amazing though: a picture of the International Space Station over the Sun!Chrononautic Log has a video of a bizarre insect-like robot. Check it out.L. E. Modesitt, Jr. talks about SF's ability to predict the future. Good stuff as usual.One of the coolest things that has ever been desired by Kung Fu fans since Bruce Lee died is now about to happen: Jackie Chan and Jet Li are getting together to make a movie! Yes, look at the trailer now!MentalFloss has 5 reasons why we'll miss Arthur C. Clarke. *sniff* (By the way, some of these aren't related to literature, just so you know)Mike Brotherton has a hard SF writer's bookshelf. Good stuff, check it out if you are even marginally interested in writing SF.Dave Walton's page of writing advice. There is a whole lot of stuff here. Seriously. A LOT. Like two books worth.Space.com has this cool article about alien sociology. So, are the aliens going to come and kill us? Hmm?Cyber-cops are getting organized. Watch out hackers!CERN, the most complicated thing humans have built thus far! The Thinking Blog profiles it.Want to know how bad the economy really is? Look at these poor folks. Yeah, Mr. Bush, this is what you've done to this country. Congrats.
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Daily del.icio.us Bookmarks for 03/28/08
http://www.flishfun.com/blog/?p=332These are my daily “Good to Know” links for 03/28/08 … please enjoy: Legs manual wins odd title prize | BBC NEWS A self-help guide called If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs has been voted the oddest book title of the year. Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller, said of the winner: “So effective is the title that you don’t even ne The Accurate Watch Reminds You Of Unavoidable Death | OhGizmo! The only things that appear on the face of this watch are a simple second hand along with hour and minute hands that read ?remember you will die.? Seriously, how morbid is that? I don?t think anyone is really going to forget the fact that they will John McCain’s First Presidential Ad | YouTube With such a head start (and such a good ad), I have a feeling Democrats will have a very hard uphill battle this year. Alien Sociology | Space.com According to Hollywood, Earth is surely one of the galaxy’s “top places to visit before you die.” Cinema aliens come here often enough that the State Department should probably set up passport control. Of course, that’s fiction. But in the last hundred y Medical transcriptionist melts keyboard with fingertips | Boing Boing “We have a medical transcriptionist on staff who has been using the same keyboard for the last 8.5 years. My co-worker replaced it yesterday, and when he first showed it to me I thought someone had taken a blowtorch to it! The most frequently used keys ha Prepare for the Worst, Because Solar Storms Are About to Get Ugly | Wired Every 11 years or so, the sun gets a little pissy. It breaks out in a rash of planet-sized sunspots that spew superhot gas, hurling clouds of electrons, protons, and heavier ions toward Earth at nearly the speed of light. These solar windstorms have been Make Ur Lolcat Famous Contest | I Can Has Cheezburger? From the site: “Jones Soda wanted to put a lolcat on their clever soda bottles across the country. So we asked if we can run a contest to find that special lol. (It?s like American Idol, but we don?t has to listen to ur singing voice.)” Made You Look | Adobe Photoshop Express Adobe’s new Photoshop Express… 2 GB of storage space, a gallery, and an online version of Photoshop. Oh, and it’s free. Could you ask for more? MacBook Air gets seized in 2 minutes flat | Engadget At PWN 2 OWN, famed iPhone hacker Charlie Miller showed the MacBook Air who its daddy really was. Miller visited a site which contained his exploit code which then allowed him to seize control of the computer. What worms, virus and spam attacks look like in 3D | Vallywag On April 7, the Varnish Fine Art gallery and bar in San Francisco will host an exhibit called Infected Art. The works represent what worms, virus and spam attacks such as Storm, MyDoom and Netsky look like when put through a “computational art” algorithm. Come back for more links tomorrow!!
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SF Tidbits for 3/28/08
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/006462.htmlFree fiction!Free read...for a limited time: Crown Publishing is allowing Scott Sigler to give away free PDF's of his book Infected from March 27 through March 31. The hardcover version is due in stores on April 1st. [via MobileRead]Free audio fiction: "The Stickball Witch" by Peter S. Beagle, read by the author himself. [via The Green Man Review]More free audio fiction: StarShipSofa narrates Jeff VanderMeer's story "Shark God Versus Octopus God". [via SFFaudio] Eos is giving away 10 copies of The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. At SciFi Wire, John Joseph Adams profiles Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, editors of The New Weird. Analog will be serializing Robert J. Sawyer's Wake, the first book in the WWW trilogy. Science Fiction Awards Watch reminds us that all of us can vote in the 2008 Locus Poll & Survey - no fee/subscription/membership required. The deadline for voting is April 15. Over at Wired, Gary Wolf interviews Futurist Ray Kurzweil. [via Boing Boing] What do P.D. Cacek, Jack Ketchum, Terri Windling, Midori Snyder, Jeff Somers, Stefan Merrill Block, JoSelle Vanderhooft, and John Kessel have in common? They are all part of upcoming Fantastic Fiction@KGB readings, conveniently listed by Ellen Datlow. The Sci-Fi Dominion is a social network for sci-fi fans. [via Sci-Fi Storm] CNN has info on the censored Rod Serling script that may finally be realized the way Serling intended. There have been a few watered-down versions of it, but his original script of a story based on the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, an event viewed as one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement. Speaking of Rod Serling, another Twilight Zone story written by Richard Matheson is headed for film: "Death Ship". (Link goes to YouTube, which unfortunately prevents embedding these particular videos.) Real Science: This Space.com article about alien sociology by Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute explains why aliens won't ever visit Earth. No, it has nothing to do with George Lucas making Han shoot first. [via Mike Brotherton] Movie Crunch lists 10 Guy-Fi Movies, "movies that fall into the Vampire/ Horror/ Sci-Fi/ Superhero/ Fantasy/ Comic Book/ Graphic Novel genres and have elements of guy movies." From Dusk Till Dawn...buckets of awesome, that. Lisa Paitz Spindler lists her Thirteen Favorite Firefly Quotes. Topless Robot's headline says it all: Star Wars Golf Bags...Seriously.
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SF Tidbits for 3/28/08
http://scifi.technophobiac.net/2008/03/28/sf-tidbits-for-328...addBookLink("0307406105");Free fiction!Free read...for a limited time: Crown Publishing is allowing Scott Sigler to give away free PDF's of his book Infected from March 27 through March 31. The hardcover version is due in stores on April 1st. [via MobileRead]Free audio fiction: "The Stickball Witch" by Peter S. Beagle, read by the author himself. [via The Green Man Review]More free audio fiction: StarShipSofa narrates Jeff VanderMeer's story "Shark God Versus Octopus God". [via SFFaudio] Eos is giving away 10 copies of The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. At SciFi Wire, John Joseph Adams profiles Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, editors of The New Weird. Analog will be serializing Robert J. Sawyer's Wake, the first book in the WWW trilogy. Science Fiction Awards Watch reminds us that all of us can vote in the 2008 Locus Poll & Survey - no fee/subscription/membership required. The deadline for voting is April 15. Over at Wired, Gary Wolf interviews Futurist Ray Kurzweil. [via Boing Boing] What do P.D. Cacek, Jack Ketchum, Terri Windling, Midori Snyder, Jeff Somers, Stefan Merrill Block, JoSelle Vanderhooft, and John Kessel have in common? They are all part of upcoming Fantastic Fiction@KGB readings, conveniently listed by Ellen Datlow. The Sci-Fi Dominion is a social network for sci-fi fans. [via Sci-Fi Storm] CNN has info on the censored Rod Serling script that may finally be realized the way Serling intended. There have been a few watered-down versions of it, but his original script of a story based on the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, an event viewed as one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement. Speaking of Rod Serling, another Twilight Zone story written by Richard Matheson is headed for film: "Death Ship". (Link goes to YouTube, which unfortunately prevents embedding these particular videos.) Real Science: This Space.com article about alien sociology by Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute explains why aliens won't ever visit Earth. No, it has nothing to do with George Lucas making Han shoot first. [via Mike Brotherton] Movie Crunch lists 10 Guy-Fi Movies, "movies that fall into the Vampire/ Horror/ Sci-Fi/ Superhero/ Fantasy/ Comic Book/ Graphic Novel genres and have elements of guy movies." From Dusk Till Dawn...buckets of awesome, that. Lisa Paitz Spindler lists her Thirteen Favorite Firefly Quotes. Topless Robot's headline says it all: Star Wars Golf Bags...Seriously.
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Alien Sociology
http://www.mikebrotherton.com/?p=448Alien Sociology March 27th, 2008 Seth Shostak over at space.com has a nice article today mostly about why aliens won’t visit the Earth. I agree with the vast majority of his assessments, and the one reason he proposes that they would. As he points out, most “aliens coming to Earth” stories (at least on TV and in the movies) are stupid. Star Trek, however, seems to fit this reasoning pretty well in most cases.
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Sociología alienígena
http://www.cienciakanija.com/2008/03/27/sociologia-alienigen...De acuerdo con Hollywood, la Tierra es seguramente uno de los “lugares que no puedes dejar de visitar antes de morir” de la galaxia. Los alienígenas del cine vienen lo bastante a menudo como para que el Departamento de estado piense en colocar un control de pasaportes. Por supuesto, esto es ficción. Pero en los últimos cientos de años, el Homo sapiens ha estado lanzando extravagantes pistas al espacio que podrían alertar a extraterrestres técnicamente avanzados de nuestra presencia. El radar y la televisión, extraños compuestos químicos en la atmósfera, e incluso alguna nave ocasional enviada más allá de la heliopausa son todos los mensajes en botellas que posiblemente podrían llegar a las costas de planetas ETs. Cuando apunto esto en mi charlas, una reacción frecuente es “¿No vendrán aquí a matarnos?” Ofrezca esta respuesta como una prueba del optimismo general de la humanidad del siglo XXI. Sin embargo, puede que merezca la pena tener en cuenta esta visión pesimista. ¿Vendrían los extraterrestres aquí – si no para matarnos – para tomar nuestros recursos o comprometer nuestra virtud? La respuesta, por supuesto, cae dentro de la disciplina de la sociología alienígena — un campo en el que los datos son, podríamos decir, escasos. Es más, dado que no tenemos idea de cuáles pueden ser las motivaciones o costumbres de los extraterrestres, se podrían concluir que, en realidad, no hay nada que se pueda decir sobre si los alienígenas vendrían o no. Pero existe una alternativa a esta aproximación de “conocimiento nulo”. Vamos a considerar lo que posiblemente podría animar las visitas de aquellos que han sabido que los humanos están pavoneándose e inquietándose sobre la estación de la Tierra. Después de todo, hemos descubierto pocas cosas sobre astronomía y física, no mucho más sobre el comportamiento alienígena. Tomando nuestra sugerencia de Tinseltown, noto que la mayoría de los seres del cine vienen a la Tierra para resolver algún tipo de crisis reproductiva o simplemente para tomar el planeta. Lo primero no tienen ningún sentido en absoluto. No te puedes reproducir con las criaturas del zoo, a pesar del hecho de que la mayoría de los pares de bases del ADN de los internos son idénticos a los nuestros (nota que esto es una incompatibilidad biológica, y no sólo regulaciones del zoo). Los alienígenas, huelga decirlo, tendrán una bioquímica diferente, y probablemente nada de ADN en absoluto. Olvídate, si puedes, de los experimentos de reproducción. Tomar el planeta tendría sentido su hubiese algo realmente especial en nuestro planeta. La mejor estimación de los especialistas en exoplanetas es que el número de planetas del tamaño de la Tierra en nuestra galaxia supera los diez mil millones. Eso no suena como si nuestro pedazo de estado real sea terriblemente privilegiado. Tampoco vendrían para extraer nuestro minerales. Todo el universo está compuesto de la misma materia, y aunque el Sistema Solar tiene un alto porcentaje de elementos pesados que los hallados en muchos dominios estelares, resulta que esa es precisamente la condición que parece abrigar la formación planetaria. En otras palabras, el propio Sistema Solar de los ET habría sido bendecido con estos mismo útiles materiales. ¿Por lo que por qué vendrían aquí e incurrir en un transporte de carga a través de múltiples años luz? ¿Colonización? ¿Búsqueda de otro espacio para vivir? Si los alienígenas hacen lo anterior, no esperarían a saber de nosotros antes de hacerlo. Los británicos después de todo, no comenzaron su colonización de Australia porque hubiesen interceptado alguna comunicación aborigen. Para obtener un poco de lebensraum, bueno, los planetas no son grandes nuevos hábitats, dado que son esferas. Están malditos con la mínima superficie para su masa. Como apuntó hace tres décadas Gerry O’Neill, es más barato y enormemente más barato construir hábitats artificiales en tu propio sistema estelar. OK, puedes argumentar, pero la Tierra es más que una útil fuente de oro o molibdeno, más que simplemente una rancho cósmico aleatorio esperando a ser invadido y acallado. Es un hábitat excepcional para la vida. Agua, océanos … es tan rematadamente bueno, tan positivamente raro. Los alienígenas encontrarían adorable nuestro mundo porque es apto para la vida. Bueno, eso tampoco pasa la prueba del algodón. Si el tipo de mundo que puede dar soporte a la vida es raro, entonces no tienes por qué preocuparte por extraterrestres. No habría ninguno. Otras sugerencias sobre por qué podrían visitarnos incluyen una anticipación en el mercado de la Vía Láctea, el proselitismo, o simplemente aprender más sobre nosotros. No está claro que ninguno de esos objetivos requiera “matarnos”, por supuesto, pero la lógica es inestable en cualquier caso. Cualquier ser que realmente pudiese venir aquí estaría más allá de nuestros logros tecnológicos. Imagina que pudieses visitar a los Neandertales. ¿Te preocuparía la competencia comercial? ¿Les darías biblias? Recuerda: estas son (casi) las mismas especies que la tuya. Los alienígenas no. Te reto a que intentes convencer a las marsopas de que se unan a tu iglesia. Pero si lo piensas, hay un último punto: simplemente quieren aprender más sobre nosotros. Bueno, puede ser. Tal vez eso es realmente lo que interesa del Homo sapiens. No capturar nuestro hábitat, salvar nuestras almas (o nuestro entorno), o trastornar nuestra salida industrial — sino ensayar nuestra cultura. Estoy tentado a considerar que incluso seres muy avanzados podrían encontrar nuestra cultura ligeramente merecedora de estudio. Ten en cuenta que si están lo bastante cerca de nosotros, eso implica que hay muchas, muchas sociedades galácticas (de otra forma las distancias entre ellas serían enormes). Si hay gran cantidad de ellas, entonces simplemente somos otra entrada en un gran libro. De nuevo nada de especiales. Igual que otro extraño pez encontrado en el Atlántico. No espero que se envíen gigantescas expediciones a nuestro camino. Pero en cualquier caso, si captan nuestras señales de televisión — incluso si se molestan en tener un contacto — entonces pueden estudiar nuestra sociedad desde casa. Es mucho más barato y más rápido que salvar años luz de distancia. Espero que el Departamento de Estado no tenga que montar el control de pasaportes. Autor: Seth Shostak Fecha Original: 27 de marzo de 2008 Enlace Original Enviar post como PDF a
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