SO, all aspects of our reality seem to have a never ending vastness that we, as mid rank intelligences, can never hope of knowing, or understanding it all.
This is an amazing thing. No matter how hard you look, study, contemplate and work, you will never know everything. And since the universe is constantly evolving, eroding, creating, expanding, interacting with other realities, there is always an infinity of new things.
This footage was taken early this morning in Norway, and nobody seems to know what it is. The crackpots are out there talking about UFOs, 2012 and the Large Hadron Collider. But nobody seems to know what is it.
The Russians are denying that it was the result of a rocket test.
It really doesn't look like the aurora borealis.
Any theories from any of you?
Personally, I'm hoping it's a test of some tech based on Tesla's work. Death ray, anyone?
Or maybe a wormhole opened up!
UPDATE: Occam's Razor is a pretty useful thing. It's also often disappointing. The most likely explanation for the spirals in the sky was a failed Russian missile test. Now New Scientist is reporting that, despite Russia's earlier denials, a failed missile test is exactly what cause the strange sight.
The first full price hardcover I ever bought was Carl Sagan's (and Ann Druyan's) book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. It cost me $29.95 with tax. I was fourteen and living in a town at the end of the road on Vancouver Island.
Usually, I survived on books from the library or cast-offs from the school. And once a year I would spend the money I had saved up for months to buy books in Vancouver.
But in the middle of the winter, on a rainy day, I found myself with forty dollars from my Grandma. In a local tourist/stationary/new-age store called the Crow's Nest, there was a small shelf of books. Mostly they were new age books, nature porn, and the wannabe ethnobotanist books that were first coming around in the early nineties. On the second shelf with it's spine sticking out was a golden green book that stuck me.
"Carl Sagan," I thought.
I had just spent the last month going over, and over, and through his book Comet. The idea dirty slushy mountains in the sky may have helped foster life on Earth, and may be a new home in the future blew my little teen mind.
Before Comet , all I knew about Sagan was that an alien handbag impersonated him in "My Step-mother Is An Alien," and that he was on the Tonight Show every once and a while. Sure, I knew he had something to do with Mars and those nifty plates on Voyager that had a naked woman on it, but that was all.
So I picked up "Shadows," scanned the table of contents, and was hooked.
With chapters titled "Snowflakes fallen on the Hearth," and "Life is just a three letter word," and "the Archimedes of the Macaques," a world of genetic and geological intrigue, a world where the amazing was found in very simple things, a world where god had no place, because he wasn't needed.
It was Sagan that told the world that we are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
Incredible words for a kid mired in pseudo-science and latent religion.
And then I was on to other science writers, books, movies, girls (well, one girl really) and Carl Sagan kind of drifted out of my life.
But he was always there in the background, reminding me of our early ancestors and the comet trees of Freeman Dyson. in the last year or so, I've started to notice Carl again. Like a short period comet that is nearing the inner solar system again, Carl is coming back.
From comics, like Atomic Robo, where Sagan reconfigures a lightning gun to destroy a fourth dimensional Lovecraftian hero, to the mash-ups that use his voice, to days named in his honor, Sagan seems to be on a wave that could take him up to Richard Feynman levels.
And so he should. Sagan brought the stars down to the public in a way that has yet to be matched.
Carl Sagan is a future soon science hero
"We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos."
It's really cool to be liked, especially by an artist who knows hot to make an airship look cool.
But I'm partial to airships.
Franco Brambilla is an Italian sci-fi artist who got a lot of play with his mutations of vintage postcards. These pictures are Twilight Zone with a big budget.
But Franco has an incredible ability to make big giant spaceships look like big giant spaceships that you would actually see in the future. Too often, sci-fi art can get lazy, but Franco really gets the idea of scale. If you want someone to draw a Big Dumb Object, got to Franco.
Some of you might remember that little radio thing I did in journalism school. Well after two years of working for the Mother Corp, I finally sat down and started to take them seriously again. In a bid to get these radio pieces to a radio station near you, I've been putting together a few of these little monsters over the last two weeks. One way or another, I will continue with this. So, if anybody out their has advice, a critique or well wishes, send them on my way. I'm a craven attention getter.
MY personal favorite crop circles are these two. Chris, the one on the right is called the Tesla Crop glyph because is looks like one of his transistor designs.
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