Dear Clusterflock
Is fiction’s job to disturb the comfortable, comfort the disturbed, or both?
the world’s oldest blogger dies at 108
Olive Riley, a 108 year old Australian woman, also known as the world’s oldest blogger, passed away two weeks after making her last post.
“It was mind blowing to her,” Stone said. “She had people communicating with her from as far away as Russia and America on a continual basis, not just once in a while.”
Born in the remote mining town of Broken Hill in 1899, Riley blogged regularly in the last year of her life about growing up in the Outback, raising three children and working as a farm cook and bartender earlier in her life.
Her blogs can be found at allaboutolive and worldsoldestblogger.
(thanks, David)
Discovering Life on Mars: Bad News?
Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University thinks so:
Discovering traces of life on Mars would be of tremendous scientific significance: the first sign of extraterrestrial life ever detected. Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we’re not entirely alone in this vast, cold cosmos.
They shouldn’t. To the contrary, if we discovered traces of some simple extinct life form – a bacterium, some algae – it would be bad news. If we found fossils of something even more advanced, like the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be horrible news. The more complex the life we found, the more depressing. Scientifically interesting, yes, but dire news for the future of the human race.
Here’s the basic argument: There is a conspicuous silence “out there,” and this suggests that there is a “Great Filter” (Robin Hanson’s term and idea). This means that the filter may lie in our past (as a highly improbable step in the early development of life) or in our future (as a highly improbable leap needed for a civilization to populate the galaxy and survive extinction. Bostrom’s argument holds that finding evidence of even simple life on Mars would tend to place the GF in out future. And, as he also points out, there may be filters in our past and future.
I have to say that I would still be excited and pleased to hear that life–simple or complex–is or was present on Mars. If we decide to see everything in terms of our potential survival as a species, who needs the threat of a Filter to see our prospects as slim? In many ways I think we have the most to fear from our own egos–our sense of dominion over a galaxy we can’t even reach. News of other life elsewhere may itself be a step that leads to just the sort of curiosity we need to get through the next Great Filter.
Bozo the Clown dies at 83
Larry Harmon, also known as Bozo the Clown, died last week of congestive heart failure.
“I felt if I could plant my size 83AAA shoes on this planet, (people) would never be able to forget those footprints,” he said.
Aging: The Disease - The Cure - The Implications
Aubrey de Grey, of The Methuselah Foundation, is hosting a symposium on aging-as-disease at UCLA this weekend. He is working to raise funds to target the mechanisms of aging so that they can be reversed. He perceives the battle to be as much about public perception as about fund raising and research.
Less than a decade ago, de Grey was a relatively unknown computer scientist doing his own research into aging. As recently as three years ago a cadre of scientists wrote in the Nature-sponsored journal EMBO Reports, that his research program, known as Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, was “so far from plausible that it commands no respect at all within the informed scientific community.” Also in 2005, MIT-sponsored magazine Technology Review went so far as to offer a $20,000 prize to anyone who could prove that de Grey’s program was “so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate.” (No one won.)
why do we lie?
A pretty exhaustive (and exhausting) list.
The Unforeseen — Recommended
Cindy and I saw this documentary at the Angelica in Dallas yesterday. It’s great for those who have an Austin connection–and great for those who don’t. If it’s not showing in your area you might want to add it to your Netflix list.
One of the things I like best about this documentary is the inspiration it offers for those who want to confront the economically powerful. It very clearly makes the point that everything that stimulates the economy is not therefore positive in nature: a train wreck generates the need for clean-up hires and for orders for new train cars to be built. Here you will see the problems that result when short term ambitions collide with trans-generational values. And the film is very well edited: it shows a vast range of desires and the human weaknesses–and courage– that attend the fight to realize them.
Things are NOT fine and they’re getting worse, in case you’re wondering
Everything seemingly is spinning out of control:
Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
Like Kottke, I first thought this was an Onion headline. Then I realized it wasn’t. Then I realized it must not be very hard to get a job as an AP beat writer.
(via reddit)
George Carlin, rest in peace
“Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?” he once mused. “Are they afraid someone will clean them?”
overheard
A man to his 13 or 14 year-old son, “I know, it’s going to look even more gay, but that’s what your mother wants.”
Tiger Woods to Miss Rest of 2008 Season
To all the morons on the radio who speculated that Tiger was faking the severity of his knee condition for the sake of self-promotion and marketing: suck it.
NYT: Tiger Woods to Miss Rest of 2008 Season
In other news, it’s a sign of how powerful Tiger has become — as an athlete and a brand — when news of his withdrawal from the remainder of the 2008 tour gets categorized under World rather than Sports in the NYTimes. Think about that.
(via GF)
Senator John McCu*t
Why isn’t this piece of 1992 McCain history being Reverend Wright-ed all over TV and the headlines?
(video via Cyn-C)
The F Face
The facial expressions we make when we are scared serve a biological purpose.
“Our hypothesis was that different changes on the face would lead to different amounts of sensory intake,” said Joshua Susskind, a psychology graduate student at the University of Toronto who worked on a study testing the function of facial expressions. “The idea is that fear is for vigilance. You’d expect that changes on the face, such as opening the eyes, would be characteristic of fear, because you’re trying to assess more information in your environment.”
Want to Know How I Know the World as We Know It Is Ending?
(via GF)
self explanatory
Police Markedly Improve Earth’s Gene Pool
Now that I am a father, I can’t bear stories like this anymore.
TURLOCK, Calif. - Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people’s attempts to stop him on a dark, country road, authorities said.
I post it here because I want to celebrate the fact that there is one less piece of shit walking the planet.
After Every Apple Keynote, We Get This
I know Apple memes go viral incredibly quickly and all, but can we just have one major Apple event without everyone speculating that Steve Jobs is sick?
In 2006 the same thing was speculated, and not just by one source. There were a few murmurs of it in 2007, and this year it’s back with a vengeance.
I know that tens of billions of market cap dollars rest on Steve’s position at the helm of Apple, but perhaps Steve has changed his diet? He seems, given what we all know about his lifestyle at a meta level, to be the sort of guy who would investigate a CR-based diet to extend his health and longevity. Or perhaps we’ve all forgotten what a lean person looks like. And let’s not forget the man is in his mid-50s, and there’s this thing called natural aging. Has anyone heard of it?
I know I’m adding to the meme with this very post, but to me, Steve didn’t look unhealthy, just thin.
Coal: Cheap, Abundant, Clean
I present the following video to you in memoriam of a conversation I recently had with a person who did not realize electricity comes from coal. And no, I am not making this up. Sometimes the depth of American ignorance and entitlement is more remarkable than I’m comfortable facing.
This video is done by the Free Love Forum, a sketch comedy troupe whose endeavors have covered TV, radio, animation and theater. I discovered them (and this video clip) via And I Am Not Lying, and have followed them ever since.
This is obviously satirical, and it represents the perfect intersection of ignorance and the current, trendy alternative-energy meme.
Coal: Cheap, Abundant, Clean (Video)
Letters To Those Who Have Been Left Behind
Here’s a fantastically insane blog hosting letters written by Christians to non-Christians about why all the good people have up and disappeared from Earth and the lowly heathen jerks have been left behind.
Dear Friend,
Are you looking for me? Is the world looking for millions of missing people that have just vanished in an instant? Are all little children around the globe part of the missing group? If so, I can tell you what has happened. Don’t believe the very convincing lies you will hear. Don’t believe UFO’s got us. Don’t believe some cosmic reaction erased us.
The truth is - are you ready for this? - we’re at a wedding. Yup. In fact, we are the “bride.” The “groom” is Jesus, the Messiah, the Promised One from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Hear, O Israel!) He has come to take His cride, the true Church and all little innocent ones, out of this world because of what is coming.
Yes, yes, I know. There are all sorts of Christians running around now insisting that this explanation CANNOT be the correct one because THEY are Left Behind. This may include some very visible Christians, like maybe a Pope or something. What does this tell you? It tells you that any “Christian” left behind was a phony. They may have said they believed, blah blah blah, but God knows the heart of men, and He has seen that they are fakes.
It’s like fan fiction, only 1000x more pathological.
(thx Sean)
Wheelchair Meets Escalator
This is both fascinating and horrific. Mostly horrific.
(via Cyn-C)
Update: The World Ends This Friday, June 12
The incredibly normal, down-to-earth man in the video below says the world will end this coming Friday. Then again, he also said the world would end in 2000, and when that didn’t happen he picked 2006.
Anyway, this sorta sucks. The weather is supposed to be nice, too.
(thx Cyn-C)
Everything That Rises Must Converge
okay, the coincidences on the site are starting to freak me out. yesterday I posted about the Temecula chicken right after Sheila posted about Renner driving through Temecula and last night, as I was falling asleep, I was thinking about how Trojan refers to themselves as Trojan Brand, and how odd that was, thinking “can you imagine if it was Coca Cola Brand, or Toyota Brand” and they put it on the packaging? (Deron Bauman)
Okay, and I thought that Deron had posted the Temecula chicken story in response to my own post about being stopped by a trooper in Temecula!
This is yet another example of what Alek Lindus and I term ‘convergences’. And there are an awful lot of them going around lately.
Speaking of which, just after I’d posted the Temecula ‘aliens’ anecdote, I read Jack Lindus’s comment on Alek’s recently posted portrait of him over at enigma janitor.
‘Scuse me while I resume work on my universal field theory. It all fits together.
I think that maybe Alek is orchestrating this from that island of hers. Like Prospero.
She Thought She Won a Toyota
I Am Going to Buy This Book
This has potential to be amazing.
With that simple question and an enormous white suggestion box, the New York City based collaborative Illegal Art canvassed the five boroughs, collecting suggestions from passersby of every stripe the young, the old, the filthy rich, the homeless, the mouthy, and the shy. “Love each other or perish.” “Take breath mints when offered.” “Give me a break!” In true New York style, the suggestions are by turns hilarious, nonsensical, angering, and heartwarming. Some people held the suggestion box prisoner while they wrote suggestion after suggestion; others ignored the box, but then came scrambling back with a sudden idea. One woman scribbled as she walked down Wall Street: “More time in the day.” One man in Harlem, when asked if he would like to make a suggestion, said, “Isn’t it obvious? World peace.” Or at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, a woman sadly wrote her misspelled suggestion and then held it up for all to read: “Never brake up with someone on a bridge.” With over 350 entries and 50 photos of the suggestion box in action, Suggestion is authentic, honest, and totally appealing a testiment to the the public’s innermost desire, whether it’s free beer, free daycare, or free pumpkin pie every Thursday.
(thx Leo)
“He was destined to be an omelette but now he’s an emu.”
“We’ve had chicks, we’ve had lambs, we’ve had all sorts - there was even a duck in the shower once.”
Osborne will grow to over 6ft tall.