Shocking New Ideas to Change the World
Wired has posted this Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous.
For this year’s list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there’s secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe.
Mysteries to Ponder
A new list of thirteen mysteries has been posted. Once again, these take us to the edge of the amazing universe all around us.
The Anatomy of a Weekend
The Flockers clustered here in Northeast Texas this past weekend and it was fascinating to watch as a participant and observer. What underlies the weekend is the blogging phenomenon that as India said, “…brings disparate people together who would otherwise never have known each other.” But what is also crucial is that this phenomenon also appears to have produced a longing in the human psyche for person to person contact beyond the virtual world. This desire for both virtual and real community was in full force this weekend as some fourteen Flockers gathered for a (re)union in real time-space.
The inspiration for the gathering began last year when Cindy Scroggins suggested it. The synergy began to build when Deron took up the cause and began to formulate a strategy for a gathering here in the countryside of rural Texas. It was clear to me as I watched folk arrive from across the U.S. that this was a microcosm of sorts, and watching that microcosmic community form I came away with some lasting impressions of its overall anatomy.
The first was that each person arrived carrying into the setting their own fundamental goodness—that same goodness which is shared by every human being on the planet but which was fully mirrored in this collection of singular individuals.
Second, as they came to know each other more directly and personally they did so with great care, recognizing the need for (and importance of) every age and type of human there as essential to the community. Over the course of the weekend, they practiced deep respect for one another through hours of intense listening and sharing enveloped in a cloud of good will and humor.
Third, the sheer joy of human community was profoundly evident but only possible when something that could only be identified as “loving-kindness, care, and compassion” became the glue that bound the whole together. Love, in some fashion “showed up,” and the Flocker community jelled.
Fourth, for the weekend to work, there had to exist a prior “constructed universe,” an open space available to allow the possibilities to emerge. You might think of it in terms of a kind of “embedded hierarchy of higher-order realities.” The first and foremost of those realities was nature itself without which we would never be—but which held us all so powerfully. Then there was the forethought of a decades-long tradition of co-housing and experimental living in intentional community which built the retreat space and made it available, and finally there were those of us committed to hospitality and the need to “get out of the way” long enough for something new to arrive and happen. It was a grand synergy that worked thanks to many minds, heads, hearts and hands. I am grateful for each person who came, for their care of each other, the land, and the human community. Each one now is very dear to me.
The UnMaker
Last night in a dream Deron made the case that God was both Maker and UnMaker, and that you could conceivably deconstruct the Maker as Creator, but you could not destroy the UnMaker. I think he was right.
Theater of the Mind
Nearly 20 years ago, Art Bell created the wildly popular radio program Coast to Coast, a wee-hour forum for weird science. We asked him why the show entertains, even encourages, the crazies.
Thoughts on “God-Talk”
In an interesting review of British critic, Terry Eagleton’s new book Faith, Reason and Revolution, on NYT’s Opinion page, Stanley Fish asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” After an exploration of answers from many perspectives, one conclusion reached is that faith in modern liberalism and science may have suppressed the possibility of a good-faith effort to understand the perennial religious quest and its possibilities, and suddenly modern men and women are awakening to larger questions.
Dolphins and the Pirates
Thousands of dolphins blocked the suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden, the China Radio International reported on Monday.
Interview with Michio Kaku
A child prodigy who became one of the founders of the controversial string theory (one that, in essence, picks up where Einstein left off) and one of the world’s leading cosmologists, is interviewed on his new book, The Physics of the Impossible.
7 New World Wonders
A new list of “wonders” has appeared on the New Scientist website. It includes the world’s oldest ice-cube and the phenomenon of “earth humming.”
Antikythera: 2000 Year-Old Computer
The Antikythera is an intricate series of wheels and cogs made by the Greeks for astronomical calculations long before they were “supposed” to have these things.
The Once and Future Prediction
Many years ago the Club of Rome put out a statement about the possibility of future economic and ecological collapse. Though dismissed at the time, now it seems that we are facing that possibility. This article is of interest.
Leadership
I came across this quote in the recent issue of “Science News” (Oct. 25, 2008) which I subscribe to. It is from animal ecologist Hanna Kokko of Finland’s University of Helsinki in response to a question and answer discussion held September 9th. I thought it had important implications for what is occurring on this day across the nation.
There is always an applied side to thinking deeply. In any society there are many complicated issues that unfortunately get simplified to the point where short-sightedness wins…. Science teaches us to think more broadly than that. If we really had wise leaders, they would take the long-term perspective seriously precisely because we are so prone to ignore it. They should listen to scientists and philosophers much more than economists who tend to be interested in what happens in the next annual quartile.
A Blog on Supervolcanoes
I’ve never worried much about a gigantic asteroid hitting the earth, probably because I’ve always been more interested in another low-probability, Earth-shattering cataclysm: namely, the active supervolcano sitting beneath Yellowstone National Park. Supervolcanoes, mind you, aren’t just “big” volcanoes like Krakatoa or Vesuvius; they’re utterly monstrous—the last time one erupted was 74,000 years ago, when Toba in Sumatra slathered the atmosphere in ash and may have wiped out all but 10,000 or so human beings on the planet. Needless to say, having the behemoth under Yellowstone erupt—with it’s 1,500-square-mile caldera (right)—would make us all forget about all that stock-market turmoil pretty quickly. Oh yeah, and having exploded 642,000 years ago, some scientists have calculated Yellowstone’s due for another burp… sometime around now.
Gecko Feet
Geckos have long inspired scientists and super-hero fans alike with their ability to scamper up vertical walls and cling to ceilings with a single toe. In recent years, people have attempted to create materials that match those spectacular abilities, in the hope of creating new advanced adhesives, or even car braking systems.
Now US chemists claim to have made one based on nanotubes that it is 10 times stickier than some gecko feet. Even more impressively, like a real gecko foot, it can also be easily unstuck with a tug in the right direction.
The Future Pictured
Future worlds described by science fiction visionaries like Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Robert Heinlein often included wildly inventive methods of transportation to other planets, galaxies and dimensions.
These brief glimpses into the possible future of travel were left largely to the readers’ imaginations, but a flourishing group of dreamers, designers and illustrators are bringing those creations to life — at least online.
The conceptships.org website run by Igo Tkac showcases these artists’ renditions of spaceships and other fantastical creations. From retro-futuristic aerial attack machines to automated deep-sea treasure hunters, here are some of the coolest.
The Gabriel Tablets
The release of inscriptions from a three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing quiet a stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it appears to speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. If this turns out to be an accurate rendering, and the date holds, this turns out to show that the idea of resurrection did not come from Christianity per se, but was part of a larger, Jewish world of anticipation and thought. The Jewishness of early Christianity is more positively confirmed by this extraordinary finding.
Did Toads Predict the China Quake?
For years the Chinese have used animal behavior as indicators of future earthquakes. Just before the most recent devastation in China toads swarmed across one of the bridges in the affected area. Two days before the quake thousands of toads suddenly decided to move across a bridge in Taizhou, a town in the Jiangsu province. Could the catastrophe that left tens of thousands of people dead in the earthquake in China have been avoided? Some Chinese are wondering why the local authorities didn’t relate the event to the imminence of an earthquake, and why scientists didn’t take notice of the bizarre disappearance of a lake in Enshi, in the Hubei province, on April 26.
Regional Nuclear War?
Think you might escape the aftereffects of a limited nuclear war that happens on the other side of the globe from you? Think again. Imagine that the long-simmering conflict between India and Pakistan broke out into a war in which each side deployed 50 nuclear weapons against the other country’s megacities. Karachi, Bombay, and dozens of other South Asian cities catch fire like Hiroshima and Nagasaki did at the end of World War II. Beyond the local human tragedy of such a situation, a new study looking at the atmospheric chemistry of regional nuclear war finds that the hot smoke from burning cities would tear holes in the ozone layer of the Earth. The increased UV radiation resulting from the ozone loss could more than double DNA damage, and increase cancer rates across North America and Eurasia.
A Dolphin Rescues Two Beached Whales
A dolphin has come to the rescue of two whales which had become stranded on a beach in New Zealand. Conservation officer Malcolm Smith told the BBC that he and a group of other people had tried in vain for an hour and a half to get the whales to sea.
The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached, and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said. But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety.
Strange New Cities
Using earth orbiting satellites, acclaimed researcher David Flynn has studied the high plateau of Bolivia and found previously undiscovered unnatural patterns stretching outward from Lake Titicaca for hundreds of square miles. The geoglyphic works range from arrow straight parallel lines, enormous over lapping perfect circles and rectangles to ‘labyrinth like’ systems of walls and mounds extending over every feature of the terrain.
an end to aging?
Old age has always been like the weather: Everybody talks about aging, but nobody does anything about it. Oh, they’ve tried. For millennia, charlatans have been offering remedies for aging that didn’t work any better than baldness cures and virility restorers. Now, however, with baldness cures and virility restorers that do work found as close as the nearest drugstore, researchers have started looking into ways to slow, stop or perhaps even reverse the changes that accompany aging. If these scientists succeed, their breakthroughs may lead to major changes in human society.
“Ether” is back again!
Once dismissed as an anachronism and of little value, the whole notion of an etherlike substance is back, but now is called “dark-liquid.” An interesting new theory unites the “dark forces” and suggests that the two biggest mysteries in cosmology may be one. Dark matter and dark energy could arise from a single dark fluid-like substace that permeates the whole universe. And this could mean Earth-based dark matter searches will come up empty handed.
In Cuneiform–The Oldest Dream of Dumuzi
In preparing for an upcoming dream workshop I came across this, the oldest recorded dream from the ancient culture of Mesopotamian Sumeria at around 3400 BCE. It was a nightmare.
In ancient times…the shepherd lay down, he lay down to dream. He woke up–it was a dream! He shivered–it was sleep! He rubbed his eyes, he was terrified.
“A dream, my sister! A dream! In my dream, rushes were rising up for me… Tall trees in the forest were rising up together over me. Water was poured over my holy coals for me, the cover of my holy churn was being removed, my holy drinking cup was torn down from the peg where it hung, my shepherd’s stick disappeared from me. … The churns were lying on their side, no milk was poured, the drinking cups were lying on their side, Dumuzi was dead, the sheepfold was haunted.
Intriguing Mars
Images coming from Mars never fail to excite the imagination. We often forget that this is a strange planet, in so many ways, unlike our own. Recently images taken by Nasa’s Mars explorer Spirit some four years ago have become available. Initial inspections revealed nothing unusual, but amateur astronomers kept exploring and were excited to find this intriguing image. As one individual said, “These pictures are amazing. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars.”
Most observers believe, of course, that is a trick of photography, an optical illusion. Something natural appears “unnatural” when it is only a sliver of rock seen at an odd angle. That’s the likeliest explanation, and I tend to agree, but you can’t help but be amazed at what images do appear, whatever their origin.
The Taste of Wine
Wine, we know, gets better with age – but now it appears it tastes better the more it costs.
