The Moon!

Today is Moon Landing Day-- 40 years ago today, humans landed on the moon. And then a few more did, and then nothing happened.

See, here's where I have a problem with it. All that money was spent, several lives were lost, huge risks were taken, lots of veryusual spin-off tech was created, the world's view of space and human capability was changed forever, and then we did nothing? What happened to space colonies and the first man on Mars by the end of the seventies? Worse yet, there's a need for a human footprint in space.

As far as we know, we're the only life in the galaxy, maybe the only life in the universe. One plague, one asteroid, one massive ecological disaster, one climate shit, one war with the right (or very wrong) weapons, and we could very well die off-- which would leave the universe without life. If we're all there is, then the ecological mindset means we have to protect ourselves as much as we try to protect our ecologies, and it's not that big a leap, really. We move animals around to open up genepools, we preserve areas and breed species to re-release, so why can't we build safety nets for ourselves throughout the solar system? If something happens to the Earth, if humanity is wiped out here or the world is rendered unlivable, then we can survive on the moon, on Mars, on the moons of Jupter and in the Asteroid belt, on Titan and in orbit and in the spaces between planets were we can spread out.

Even more pressing, there will soon be more people than we can make food for, more than there is space for, and more than there is water for-- and space opens up that constraint, too. Space is called space because there's space. It'd be almost impossible to overpopulate the openness of other worlds, of colonies in orbit. We could build arcs and preserve species and ecosystems as well as people, we could manufacture as much water as we need from the raw ingredients of the cosmos, we could grow food for everyone. As the world gets too full, people can move to the moon and on to other homes, founding new colonies, new cultures, adding to our diversity and our chance of survival, bringing life to the universe and greening up what's currently, as far as we know, kind of a collection of pretty dead rocks. If there's no other life out there, who's going to complain? If there is, we can share information with them if they're sentient, increasing our knowledge and worth that way, building the next sort of human culture in tandem with a galactic community, and if they're not sentient, we can study them, understand the universe and leave them alone to become what they need to become.

So why did we leave the moon alone? Why did we let the governement and the world tell us it wasn't important anymore? Because now, as things look more and more dire, it is important, and we should have had that release valve up and running thirty years ago, that safety net in place and waiting a whole generation before now.

So today, on Moon Landing Day, think about the future of the human race: isn't it better to spread out as we always have, then to burn up or starve as we seem to think is the way to go now?

Alternatives alternatives alternatives

I was channel surfing the other day, and I got distracted by part of Whale Wars. Here's these very young and idealistic looking Greenpeace and the like people trying to stop ships from harvesting whales. Which is probably a good idea, what with them getting scarce-- but these kids aren't offering any sort of alternative to these people. As long as the demand is up and the pay is good, they're going to hunt whales, and that's really all there is to it. I mean, it's happening with rhinos and pangolins, too right now: big money always trumps environmentalism, and as long as the hunters don't have anything else that pays as well, they're going to keep doing it. So why isn't there are show about that? About building an alternative that makes the hunting look bad? Why isn't there a show about environmental groups that go out and teach people other ways to feed their families, other sources of the sorts of products they get from these endangered animals that are endangered in part because of unsustainable harvesting, dangerous folk medicine beliefs, and a taste for the exotic? I think it would be more interesting to see real change happening, not just hippies getting hosed down and whaling ships getting accosted and this so-called war that can't really ever change things. It could maybe hold things up, but that'll just make the ships go somewhere else, hunt some other whale population. It isn't stopping the source of the problem, or even really acknowleging that there is one. The hunters are just doing what they know will make money; I doubt many of them are pathologically opposed to whales. I doubt there's that many Ahabs out there, willing to kill them all to get payback on one of them. Mostly, it's just fishermen who know that this'll pay the bills and feed the family and offers the least amount of work for the most amount of income. So why not find them another source of income that is sustainable, responsible, useful and better advised?

emma peel's shoes

We've been watching old episodes of the Avengers lately, and every time they show Emma wearing something green, I want to lose fifty pounds so I can dress like that. But mostly, it's giving me a vintage show fetish. I have no idea what size shoe I'd wear in vintage sizes, but they're all so cute! The maryjane styles are my special favorite, and I can't seem to find any pictures of them-- but she wore green ones in one ep, and a pink and yellow pair in another, and sweet little slides, and some really kick-ass pumps...

I'll keep you up to date on this.

silkies enriche ageless moisturizer

While I've been out of work, I've been trying to make a little money through those websites that have you sign up for samples and things to get a few cents of pay, and one of them was for Silkies Enriche.

It's a pretty good lotion, thich, but not too thick, and it smooths in with almost no trouble at all. It smooths really quickly and makes my face feel a little firmer just on the one use, but on my face, it's almost a little oily-- on my neck, it works perfectly, and my collarbones still feet really soft, even after going out to watch the fireworks in the heat last night and not reapplying this morning.

I don't know if I'd buy it again-- I still like my Avon Liiv Botanicals better, mostly because it at least tries to be all-natural-- but I think if I find it again (I don't remember where I got it), I'll probably use it in the winter, when my skin is drier and less oily.

Some Beautiful Things

linky links: anthropology edition wk26

I did kind of alot of Anth research this past week, and here's all the most interesting stuff I turned up:

The Open Anthropology CoOp.

The first human fossil dredged out of the North Sea. I was just saying to my fiend the other day, how I never could understand why no one was looking underwater in places they thought ancient camp sites might be-- sea level was much lower then, everyone agrees, but they thought ancient peoples would stay only up where we live now? So I'm super-glad that someone looked and found something, and maybe other people will do the same in places other than, say, Egypt and Greece.

The Archaeology Channel. Video clips from all across the field.

Organized mammoth barbecue pits have been found. I lvoe learning about how ancient people ate.

A list of universities offering Linguistic Anth degrees. It's on the list of degrees to get, after writing, then comes LibSci / Archiving, then I want to do anthropology, either Linguistics or Nutritional.

Ancient beads and behavioral modernity. I love the idea that it happened slowly. I love that we can tell that fact now.

National Archives up on YouTube. An awesome resource for historical anthropology.

Ancient flutes. It pushes back the use of music, and that means maybe people were people further back then we thought-- or maybe scientists were unfairly harsh about what defines modernity-- or maybe we're less special then we thought.

Prehistoric cannibalism: The article says they were eating kids and treating them like food animals. It says they were probably enemies. It doesn't say anything about what this means philosophically-- did they see these other people as something else, as animals, the way whites once viewed their slaves? Did they eat their own, too, or only outsiders? What did it mean? Or did people just taste good?

Apparently, the things used to identify mummy gender aren't infallible. The article says they misinterpreted the gender; I want to know if this was an egyptian transvestite, a man living and dying as a woman, and if that's normal, part of a religious sect, a choice or a secret or what.

Apparently, most cave artists-- at least the ones leaving hand stencils-- were women, if teh hand-shapes can be trusted. I don't know if I trust the measurement hypothesis, as they're basing it on modern hands and there's no concurrent male hands to compare them to if these are all female, but I love the idea. If they are ritual sites, it lends credence to the idea that women were the spiritual leaders, and I know of a few feminist scholars who will be super-thrilled.

Earliest known human family: Genetic testing verifys that they're all related, and their placement may help scientists decode other graves, as well as adding another layer to the metaphysics of prehistoric burrial.

Speaking of, facedown burrial seems to be a universal way to shame people in death.

A group of scientists are claiming that orangutans have a closer link to humans based on physical traits than chimps do. But they don't have genetic evidence to back this up, and it sounds like they're actually trying to refute DNA analysis, which is kind of backward and old-fashioned. Stricly bone analysis is flawed and has been replaced.

linky links: green edition wk26

Make your own Deoderant: All natural! No aluminum! They say that the link between Alzheimer's and aluminum is not proven, but they also admit that Alz patients do have alot of aluminum in their brains, and I know that lymphnodes are the sorts of places where things can sink into your body, so as soon as I'm out of what I have, I'm all over this recipe.

Solid Perfume: I love the idea that I could smell like anything I wanted. I think I'm going to search out a really good rose-scent and dose myself in rosegarden florals. And then I'll find weird things to try out.

Control fleas naturally: Not as easy as bombing the place, but less likely to destroy your whole family.

The Garbage Enzyme from before.

BPAL has some new Gaiman scents: I love Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs. They're all natural, stunningly scented, only moderately expensive, and they feed directly into the Steampunk and Victoriana parts of my personality. Plus, they make special edition scents every time Neil Gaiman published a new book. I'd be so honored if they did that for my books.

More on the oceans in generating the EMF for the planet: I collect natural disasters, but this one could get really scary.

A fairly easy way to make your own rainbarrel: This is on my list of things to do. Florida gets so much rain and has such an abused watertable. There's no reason why I can't gather the rain to water my plants... as soon as I can get such a big barrel.

A quick little discussion of edible landscaping: I am all for this idea. Always have been. Plants are alot of trouble, and if I can't eat them afterward, why am I bothering? Plus, there's so many former food plants that are used in landscaping anyway-- and so many food plants that aren't available anywhere if you don't grow them yourself.

Ancient People fished sustainably: Okay, if people with only the most basic understanding of science could get this idea, why can't we? Really, man.

Yay linkies!

Here's Why We Should Be Concerned About The Earth

Here's the thing: even if we are just in an interglacial warming period, shouldn't we be doing the best that we can to mitigate our human impact thereon? I mean, it's a delicate system that hasn't had long enough to adapt to our outsized effect on it, and if we just blythely assume that there's nothing we can do about warming, and extrapolate that into the idea that it's not our fault, we run the risk of cannonballing what's maybe a natural trend, turning the curve way up, and making our planet into Venus and killing us all off. Sure, the world will still be here, and maybe the massive heatdeath will balance out millions of years later, but nothing even remotely like our world will remain, and it will be our fault.

Here's where I stand on the issue: if there's anything we can do to avoid that, we should do it. Regardless of whether it's a losing battle, whether we caused it or we're just victims of it, whether we're really got a chance or not, we should do it. If we do nothing, it's like standing by while someone gets raped or killed, but if we DO something, even if we all die anyway, at least we tried, at least we did everything we could, at least we learned and fought and acted and improved our chances and won a few generations and DID SOMETHING. It's what humans do: we act. We change what we can. We do everything we can to increase our evolutionary chances of survival. We behave in a humane manner. And even if we can't save the Earth, maybe we can find a way to terraform other planets, or to build bubble-colonies on the moon, unerwater, on the land that's gone, but will be safe inside, and maybe we won't all die off, leaving the universe alone. If we really are the only life in the whole universe, it's our responsibility to keep it going, to colonize new worlds, to breed and create new species, to adapt and spread and green up everything. This one planet is too precarious, too easily damaged-- like all those single-valley ecosystems scientists keep finding by destroying them.

Living green isn't just a choice: it's the only choice. There needs to be something for our decendants-- for everyone and everything's descendents. We're the only life there is. We have no right to let it die, and even less right to go and kill it off ourselves.

Green Experiment: Update 1

Here's this month's Green Experiemnt: Garbage Enzyme. The info on it claims it can be used to keep piles clean, to digest compost faster, to purify lakes and ponds, to clean the air like Febreeze or Lysol, to generate ozone, to disinfect surfaces, to stop toxins in cosmetics and soaps from getting into your skin, as a fertilizer for plants of all sorts... and on and on. And it's easy to make: 1 part sugar, preferably molasses or dark brown sugar, three parts foodscraps (plant-based, like you'd put in the compost), and ten parts water. Seal up in a jar or bottle, put in a dark place, and ferment for three months, venting the gasses every few days for the first month or so. In the end, you've got a liquid with a blob of bacteria like the kind that makes vinegar or kombu, only the anaerobic kind, floating in it, and it shouldn't smell bad anymore. So I'm going to test this. I'm going to mix some up today and put it under the porch and see how it goes. If it can function through a Florida summer and gives me a nice fetlizer alone come fall, I'll consider it worthwhile; if it does better than that, I'm totally going to make a batch every month and use it for everything.

This is update 1. In a week or two, I'll update again, and so on until the end of three months, when we'll see if anything has come of it. If not, we'll trash it and find something else to clean the planet with.

linky links

This week's link list is getting a little out of hand, so we're going to post it now, and then add to it later.

Science

Someone has invented a swine flu vaccine. Excellent news. Now maybe people will stop flipping out over something that's not even as virulent as the normal flu, and has killed way fewer people. Assuming we can get the vaccine made in large enough quantities, of course.

There are now 13 people up on the ISS. Some might get superstitious about that, but I always found 13 to be a good number, and the perfect size for a class or a group. More than that, and you have to break it down into smaller groups to get things done, but at this size, they can be a unified force. And then we can go to Mars.

New ways to database mean meaning can be gathered from the web in realtime. I don't know waht all of this is about, but I picture Ozymandias standing in front of his dozens of tv screens, learning about the world by watching all channels at once. And anything that captures a zeitgeist is alright by me.

Boat-mounted lazers are in the works. How totally cool is that? Well, maybe not if you're on the reciving end, but still. Lay-zars!

An in-browser Jurrasic Fight Club game to promote the show. And to support my current dinosaur obsession.

More lazers! These cook food like in an oven. The future will be made of lazers.

There's a new element! It needs a name before I start making my periodic table quilt, though, because I'll be pissed if I sew it up and then they change it.

Machu Picchu might be a recreation of a creation myth. Instead of the king's holy city, as previously thought, though there was never much in the way of living-detritus to show that people lived there. I think it's a neat idea, but there's really not a reason that people couldn't live there AND it was a holy site. I mean, there's people who live in the Vatican. This may have been mentioned in the article, and if it was, I agree. Anthropologists always want it to be one way and one way only, but there's no reason why things can't have multiple or shifting meanings, and there's no reason why people couldn't have done things in multiple ways.

Double stars have been found with planetary disks. The article isn't really clear about this, but it seems like it's saying one disk for two stars, and that, I think, would make for a very interesting sky for those planets.

New carbon nanotube memory chips. They hold exponentially more in a much smaller space, and they should last for a million years. Awesome. Now lets make it a usable advance in computer science!

Things that look like crop circles from the air help people find missing parts of the Stonehenge complex of sites! Seems the ruins interfere with plant groth, leaving rings and lines where they are, so that they're super-clear from planes. So cool. Aerial archaeology!

Science fiction

Primeval is cancelled! It's been going fine, so of course the announcement that it's cut comes right after I discover it. ::sigh::

A little info on Torchwood S04. Which is good to hear.

Japan builds a life-size Gundam to protect them. How come we can't embrase our scifi like this? But then this guy one ups them by building a real mecha suit in his own garage.

One of the older SciFi series is getting to be a movie! John Carter of Mars, by the dude who directs the Pixar loves, and it sounds like they're keeping it in-time-period, meaning John Carter will be a Civil War vet from 1911. (I keep thinking of it as John Connor of Mars, but that would be a totally different movie...)

Doctor Who after Outpost Gallifrey.

A greener world

Norway deploys a floating wind turbine off the coast. Wonderful! There's nothing to block the wind out on the ocean, and that means there'll be more power available! And if someone can harness a wind turbine to a tidal harness, just think of all the power we could get!

Someone's invented an open-source car. It has a 20 year lease, the cost of gass for the lifetime of the car is included in the price, and all the specs and details are non-proprietary so that people who know what they're doing can modify, upgrade, debug and inprove the design and disseminate the improvements faster than the designers can alone. This is awesome.

Six ways poop of various kinds can be alternative energy. Gross, but pretty interesting.

Alternative living

An all-wood modern home.

Food

French Vanilla Organic Honey Vegan Icecream: Usually, vegan attempts to replace dairy just annoy me-- if you're going to stop eating animal products, just stop eating animal products; the replacement is cheating, like giving up smoking by switching to herbal cigarettes, and not really dealing with the problem-- but this actually sounds really good in it's own right.

There are apparently secret restaurants in Paris. I think it's awesome that there's so much food culture that sixteen-seat restaurants that only seat once can survive and become famous. How awesome would that be?

People are declaring food indipendence. Awesomesauce. There's a petition and a challenge to the 50 first families to go local and sustainable and see who can do it best. If Michelle Obama is any sort of rolemodel to these people, and she should be, then I think they should do it.

Why is IPA called Indian? It's pretty neat. I love food history.

And anti-over-eating food additive. It's supposed to help your brain know that you're full better, and is tasteless. It looks great on it's own site, but that doesn't really mean anything, except that maybe it's better at looking realistic and scientific. I might get some, though, when I have money...

Michael Pollan has a blog on the NY Times.

Apricot tartlets. They look amazing.

Blueberries in a wine reduction. I think this would be awesome as a topping on a really fancy icecream, or as part of a trifle or something. And it should be loaded with antioxidants, so it'll healthify dessert! Plus, I think the idea would work well with lots of different berries, making it something extremely versatile to have around.

Salted Butter Caramel Icecream. All the more reason to get my own icecream maker.

Fun things

More info on Natal. Which is looking cooler all the time. It brings us that much closer to the scifi world I want to live in.

Six gross ways animals inprove health. No kidding on the gross part, but it all sounds very promising.

A DIY LCD card.

A solar-powered portable office. It all fits inside a vintage steamer trunk and is super-cool. We've already establushed how much I love the idea of fully mobile societies.

A dress where you can design your own color pattern. Works by letting markers bleed into the fabric, so you've got to time it and plan a little, but it's fully customizable each time you wear it.

A knife designed so you can't stab people. Is this really necessary?

How to make tetris dirty.

A Mary Poppins dance mix that is actually really freaking cool, and a little spooky.

Art:

Jen Corace. Pretty little vintage-clothed people on all sorts of useful things.

Nick Dewar. A Scottish illustrator that has really neat and weird little designs.

About sixty working cats patrol a Russian art gallery to preserve the art from rats. This is a great, low-tech way to save art, and it serves as an incentive to take care of cats, to find good homes, and offers a little pride in the culture.

Crafts

Knit in Public Days.

Birch-log tables. 85$ for a designer piece, and I get to saw things with a saw?? I'm there!

Home-made shampoo. With variations for what ails ya. I haven't tried them yet, but if it's SLS-free, and if it works as well, I'm so there.

Fandom

Twilight only gets worse from here. I read the first book and that was really enough for me, but this article is hilarious, and the crazy fans at the comments are just too much.

If Twilight were 10x shorter and 100x more honest.

Ten ways to start a geek-fight. My fav is second to last: "Joss Whedon is a hack."

Magnum meets Star Wars. Very strange, but remarkably consistent.

Last week, Betty White played beer pong with Jimmy Fallon. I love Betty White. She's my favorite feisty old lady,and I want to be just like her when I'm 87.

Bones is still on Thurs, Sept 17 @8. Other return dates are mentioned, too.

Gardening

Build your own vermicomposter. I'm so tempted to try this. Worms enrich soil and break down compost in much less time than the much smaller bacteria do. And it's cool.

Literacy

How to write like Twilight. All the rules you should not follow to write a decent book.

Disasters

There might be a supervolcano under Mt St Helens. We all know how I love to know all the ways I might be killed off by a planet, and this one seems close to my heart; MSH blew about a week before I was born, and that's waht all the news was about as I came into the world. This is like a smaller version of Yellowstone, but it might also just be a sandy aquifer. I think they need to test this.

A new theory says that maye our magnetic field comes from moving ocean currents, not from moving magma in a spinning core. I do love me a new theory, but if this one turns out to be true, then global warming is more terrifying than it already was, like so: the plant heats up --> the ice caps melt, water down the ocean with fresh water and changing the densities --> the currents stop flowing --> the em field drops --> everything on the surface is fried by solar and galactic radiation. Bad news, man. We need to invenst in building fallout shelters under water, in case we can't stop it before it comes to this. Or, at least, hope that the theory doesn't lead to this conclusion.

Weird News

A 14 year old was hit by a spacerock. Which, though it probably sucks to be his hand, is really pretty neat. You've got more chance of winning the lottery more than once than you have of being clipped by a meterorite.

Someone invented a limp remote. Very strange.

Cities Still Don't Get It:

The story of the South Central Farm. It was once the biggest urban farm in the US, run almost entirely by volunteers and people who needed the food, and now it's been cold to be a warehouse. There's a documentary about it. Why can't cities see that they're supposed to take care of their people, not starve them?

More reasons to love Sweden

The Pirate Party! It's about copyright law and such, but still.