Science News

A New Year's Brewer's Ale Tale

New Year's Eve, 2007

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Dear readers, I hope and pray we all have a very happy new year and we can hope that rather than do stupid things, we all do smart things and failing that, we should get sloshed or stoned or pig out or whatever we can do to drown our woes or fly as high as a kite. To celebrate this, I bring here a story about the earliest brew in the Emerald Isle: prehistoric beer breweries discovered by archeologists.

Beer From the Bronze Age

Two Irish archaeologists have tried to brew beer like their ancestors used to make -- 3,000 years ago -- in an effort to uncover the purpose of common, ancient stone mounds.

It was a rough morning. Hung over after a night out in Galway, archaeologist Billy Quinn was nursing a headache over a hearty Irish breakfast, pondering the mysteries of his excavation site and thinking with a measure of self interest about mankind's age-old quest for mind-altering substances.

Then it hit him: His excavation site was a brewery.

My husband and I have used several ancient ways of cooking and brewing over the years. For a decade, my only way to bake things like bread, was to either make a kiln outside and feed it with fire or later, a Victorian wood burning stove. We also used a pit in the ground next to a spring as a summer refrigerator and the back door snowbank as the winter freezer.

One memorable New Year's party, we put two bottles of champagne which one of our guests brought up the mountain to our tent complex, in the snow to chill. Only, we all got rather drunk on the homemade brew from the cask and the temperature outside fell to -5 degrees below zero. I suddenly remembered, at midnight, where it was stowed. I ran outside and fetched the bottles which looked more like something from Siberia rather than France.

My husband popped it open and out poured frothy ice! 'New Year's snow cones!' I announced. Well, we ate the champagne. I even briefly thought of selling Champagne Icies from a cart in summer but that was too illegal since we found out , we could get drunk on this glace vino.

Another New Years, Chips, one of our oxen, fell and lay in the field under the old oak tree. His brother ox stood over him as he slowly died. I sat on the ground and held his huge head and he looked at me with his big brown eyes and tried to lick me in a last show of affection. That same night, Putin pushed Yelsin out of his office with little ceremony. It seemed somehow fitting that this would be the final act of the millennium.

This year, due to the snow storms up here, everyone came yesterday for sampling of homebrew and fun. One of our dogs snitched a slice of ham from the kitchen and caused an uproar as she tried to run out with it. I learn to keep on my toes, trying to outsmart or outrun various wild and domestic creatures.

Today, I had to go off and do some emergency repairs on the in-law's house and on the way there, an owl swooped down and nearly hit my truck as we drove through a deep, dark, forest. Then, on the way home, deer kept running in front of me. Finally, we came back to the mountain. On the road up, yet more deer came bounding over the snow drifts. nearly crashing into me. If nothing else, this place has plenty of Bambi in the hoof [hint-hint].

The story about how some scientists recreated ancient beers shows us an important lesson: the people who first figured out these beers were creative. They figured out how to have fun in between fighting each other, raiding cattle, seducing comely young women, raising hellish children and singing long ballads about the adventures of heroes and gods. They lived and had a lot of fun and hard times but the main thing is, they lived!

As someone who has lived in a very primitive life for many years, not for a week or a summer but years and years, I assure everyone, doing these things such as brewing a beer based on harvesting wild herbs and flowers and the satisfaction and joy one gets from all this is indescribable. My children and I have collected wild strawberries or puff mushrooms the size of a loaf of bread or wild black berries and used them in various brews and breads. We used these things with the honey from our bees who moved into our hive from the wild, to make mead, the drought of Valhalla. With virtually no money, we lived very full and even charming lives. We had sheep and oxen, a crazy war horse named Sparky, dogs, chickens, ducks, turkeys and bees. And the cats, of course, to keep the mice at bay.

As we herded our domestic bronze turkeys around, wild turkeys would come out of the woods, heads craned as high as possible, to see these birds following me about, as I did my chores After discussing this strange affair, the wild turkeys noted that I would often throw food to the domestic turkeys. Soon, they joined in and began to follow me about, too.

One day, I was pushing a wheel barrel across the hillside. The turkeys, wild and domestic, were following me, making happy peep-teep sounds. A herd of deer were browsing under the old apple tree. They watched as I came closer and closer. Normally, if the wild turkeys make their danger sound which is like a trill, the deer bolt. But the turkeys were making happy noises. So the deer stood still as I got closer and closer. Soon, I was pushing this big wheel barrel right into them. So they backed off and still watched me. At this point, Fluff, my cat, came meowing out of the woods, looking to be carried in my arms. This scared the deer off.

Our ancestors lived in the midst of wild and some domestic animals. They lived in the wind, rain and snow. They made love, had children and told stories and laughed. The beer they drank probably was inspired by beer created by the Phoenician sailors who went all the way over to the Isles seeking tin for bronze making. For these ancient beer brewing stone remains are from the Bronze Age which was the age of exploration and civilizations such as the glorious Cretan empire or ancient Egypt and the Mesopotamian city-states. Beer brewing is quite ancient and runs alongside the domestication of barely and dates. Wherever the Phoenicians traveled and traded, beer brewing blossomed. For example, I believe that the Norse didn't drink beer but only meade. When beer brewing moved northwards, then they saw the wisdom of this sort of brewing.

When I was a child, the tribes in southern Arizona and northern Mexico would take huge clay pots, fill them with water and parts of yucca plants and then hang the pots in the sun with a wood lid. It would then ferment and this was the beginning of techuila. Like with the Scots and Irish and many others, modern chemistry has been used to distill this early stuff and turn it into gut-burning potency! The tools used for this came out of the alchemist's laboratories of ancient lore. The attempt to turn lead into gold failed but turning mushy mash into a golden liquid, this was the next best thing if not even better than gold! And certainly, it has made a lot of gold for the brewers!

So tonight, let us salute our ancestors who were so clever, they tamed animals [except for cats, they moved in and took over], cultivated the grasses and herbs and learned the lore of the bees in order to bring us modern civilization. We must thank them for all this and strive to honor them all by living our lives in similar fashion. So eat, drink and be merry! Life is granted to us all so we can look at the stars at night and marvel about the gods and in day, go hunting, play with the children and brew more drinks!

I also want to thank all the kind readers who have sent us financial support this last year. I greatly appreciate the consideration and hope I can be of some small use in the new year! We have so many things to discuss! And of course, in may own haphazard way, we will look into the future from our perch on the mountain peak of the past.

The Singularity Paradox

Elaine Meinel Supkis

For some reason, all the guys talking about money are suddenly also talking about 'The Singularity' and there seems to be profound misuderstanding of what a singularity means when talking about technology and humans. Artists, sciencefiction writers and above all, Japanese animators have been speculating about all of this and there are many who can see the really fearful side of all this as well as the blessings. I think the Singularity will not be technology triumphant but rather, WWIII and the destruction of the entire imperial system built up since 1600.

From Market Watch:

The Singularity? Remember Ray Kurzweil? Inventor. Entrepreneur. Artificial Intelligence. Futurist. Author: "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence." New book: "The Singularity is Near." In 2045 the human race "breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress and longevity." Kurzweil's Law of "accelerating returns." Material progress faster than Moore's Law.

But 2045? No, "The Singularity" is already here, now, today. The new Forbes says: "The latest super-computer is way faster than the human brain."

Visionaries like Kurzweil think at hyperspeed. Can you keep up? "See" the rapidly approaching future he sees? Change your investment strategy in time. You better. Why? Guys like Kurzweil are redefining Wall Street, the economy, your retirement. You must speak their language. It's everywhere: Behavioral finance, computer technology, marketing, everywhere. Get it or you're handicapped!

Test yourself, read Richard Thaler's 712-page bible: "Advances in Behavioral Finance, Vol. II." Thaler's a University of Chicago genius, heir apparent to Nobel Economist Daniel Kahneman, who won by disproving Wall Street's silly "rational investor" theory. Behaviorists proved that we're all "irrational investors," even Wall Street insiders.

Mr. Farrell always takes the shallowest and least reflective view of events and situations. He has to, he works for a financial news service that has to trick people, not look cold-blooded at reality. Like any singer of lullaby songs, he has to be the siren sitting on the rocks, la-la-la.

In scientific terms, a 'Singularity' is a point in time when time stops because one is trapped on the wrong side of a black hole, for example. Or it is a one-time event that can't happen again in this universe such as the Big Bang which was an awesome singularity that still is ongoing after billions of years. A similar singularity would be if the universe is curved and not moving outwards forever and instead of moving away, everything circles back into a new anti-singularity, the Implosion. Astronomers argue a lot about this. I am obviously on the side of 'Falling into an Implosion' side of the register.

Any way you look at this beast, it is frightful. When I was a child and hit directly by lightning, I entered into a state of Singularity and looked into the vast darkness of death and realized this was, after a point, inescapable. Somehow, I survived this glancing blow, this near-death experience (no, there was no glowing light, I saw a flash of other lightning, everything was reversed and opposites were the same).

And this is what the Singularity is: a paradox. People have a lot of emotional trouble with paradoxes. Just like everyone likes to imagine they can avoid fate. Technology follows the same laws of Evolution and Nature as all living and non-living things. Singularities are when Nature Evolves to a point where all things are the same: there are no opposites or rather, the opposites can inhabit the same space as positives. Namely, everything is everything all the time, suddenly.

The thing about Singularities is they are explosive. They blow up. Invariably. Even if they are black holes, they have explosions as they assemble more and more other things within themselves. Black holes are not stable at all, they spin at a high rate and deform space and the bigger they are, the more they deform space and the more they drag in other elements of the universe and this is a basic instability. Like all natural systems, they are ruled by the Laws of Nature and Evolution which means, there is an upper limit to their size. We can't see the results of this law because if we did, we would not exist anymore.

On a much smaller scale, science fiction writers have decided there is a time when machines like computers and robots, will rule us. Forbes has an article about this matter this month too. Seems there is something bugging these guys. They are, of course, hoping they will become gods! Masters of the Universe! If only they can figure out how to make a killing off of the robot/computer Singularity.

From Forbes:

And bring on modern supercomputers. I am a director of a scientific supercomputer firm, SiCortex, in Maynard, Mass. Chief scientist Jud Leonard told me about his latest transistors and the cluster supercomputer these transistors are networked to produce. The SC5832 will cost less than $3 million and promises to increase scientific computation by factors of ten, per dollar, watt and foot. Its transistors are networked to form 64-bit arithmetic processors, six of which are fit on a "multicore" chip containing, thanks to Moore's Law, 10 8 transistors. An SC5832 cabinet consumes only 20 kilowatts but holds 972 of Leonard's multicore chips, or a total of 5,832 processors (hence the name), or 10 11 transistors. Each of Leonard's transistors can turn on or off 10 10 times per second, but they are clocked at 500 megahertz to deliver, say, a mere billion computations per second.

Now, let's turn to the brain's "transistors." It's been a while since I studied neurons for my MIT undergraduate thesis in 1968 (fortunately we can't find copies of that anymore), and so I consulted with Raymond Kurzweil, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, Tomaso Poggio, a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and with Chris Diorio, a professor of computing at the University of Washington.

In his latest book, The Singularity Is Near (Viking Adult, 2005), Kurzweil shows that transistors have come quite a long way since 1968. Neurons, on the other hand, are still pretty much the same. Intelligent design is way faster than evolution. Poggio and his students are now successfully using transistors to emulate neuron networks, in particular those in the visual cortex of the brain. His computer software is beginning to approach the performance of the brain in picking out objects in a simple scene. Diorio studies how nervous tissues (i.e., brains) work in order to improve designs for computers. His research has resulted in some early "synaptic transistors" that learn from their inputs.

If Mother Nature were a computer/robot that creates and runs the universe and all the parts therein, we would call her 'God'. But what runs things is not an entity but rather, Forces that are inherent within the existence of matter, antimatter and the void between them. The weight of a ton of iron can equal the weigh of the space between electrons within a Singularity. When I was a child, I saw with clarity that the scales Libra holds at the Gates of Death are really the same: the feather and the lead brick are the same.

Mother Nature's Laws have certain properties. One is, all things must eventually balance each other or they must consolidate or blow up and the process of balancing leads to destruction of one half while the other half grows. Whatever 'halves' we are talking about. Lopsided situations always move towards consolidation and integration. This is why there is no infinity within the orb of Mother Nature's rule.

Her rule was launched with the Big Bang Singularity and it will end in the Big Consolidation.

The Singularity that we all hope will happen, whereby we get to live forever as semi-hyper robots run by super-powerful computers is the non-singularity, meaning, it can't happen and won't happen because we will blow up long before it happens.

From SF writer/scientist Vinge:

1. What Is The Singularity?

The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater-than-human intelligence. Science may achieve this breakthrough by several means (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur):

Computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent may be developed. (To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we can create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes," then there is little doubt that more intelligent beings can be constructed shortly thereafter.)

Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as superhumanly intelligent entities.

Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.

Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.

The problem with any system using computers to run humans is, humans exist in this vast dimension which I call 'the Dream World' and within this is 'The Outer Darkness' which is where our souls meet our brains and there are some unpleasant repercussions. Namely, the Freudian 'Id' is very much still here despite people pretending there is no such thing. I like to give this place various names and such just to make it easier to talk about. One good name is 'Hell' but there is another opposite involved since everything in this place is melded so I call this place 'Heaven' or perhaps better, 'Pegasus' pasture on Mt. Olympus where the Graces and other female goddesses in charge of culture, art and learning hang out with the satyrs and get drunk.'

Science fiction writers amuse themselves wandering about this space which is why so many of their stories are disutopian. Namely, they recognize the need for passion, blood, death, sex, hysteria and other basic human emotions. Robots and computers don't have these things. In the famous movie, '2001', the computer cold-bloodedly decides, based on its own data, humans must be eliminated. It views the elimination of humans as disposal and not death.

This attitude is always within the laws of Nature: everything is disposable and through death, life springs. Humans kill all the time, this is how we live. Awareness of this is dealt with by burying this reality into rationalizations and simply not paying attention to it. But the brain is like a computer: it keeps all the data and if the soul sector which is the part we emotionally attach ourselves to, ignores deaths the organism causes, the brain doesn't ignore this but stores it away in the darker, lower reaches which are the Dream World's Empire.

The Dream World rules the Waking World, in other words, our brain/computers are not allowed to give us raw data, it all transits first through the Dream World which then colors it or alters it or totally, radically deforms it and then the Waking Brain is allowed to let it into the outer world. Computers don't have this process.

For example, if I fed into a super-computer all the economic data I collect and ask it to project into the future, it would happily tell me all about the coming economic Singularity when the USA goes bankrupt and the entire world economic system collapses and WWIII happens. It might even give me an exact date.

From Vinge:

What about the coming decades, as we slide toward the edge? How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view? For a while yet, the general critics of machine sapience will have good press. After all, until we have hardware as powerful as a human brain it is probably foolish to think we'll be able to create human-equivalent (or greater) intelligence. (There is the farfetched possibility that we could make a human equivalent out of less powerful hardware -- if we were willing to give up speed, if we were willing to settle for an artificial being that was literally slow. But it's much more likely that devising the software will be a tricky process, involving lots of false starts and experimentation. If so, then the arrival of self-aware machines will not happen until after the development of hardware that is substantially more powerful than humans' natural equipment.)

But as time passes, we should see more symptoms. The dilemma felt by science-fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors. (I have heard thoughtful comicbook writers worry about how to create spectacular effects when everything visible can be produced by the technologically commonplace.) We will see automation replacing higher- and higher-level jobs. We have tools right now (symbolic math programs, cad/cam) that release us from most low-level drudgery. Put another way: the work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity. In the coming of the Singularity, we will see the predictions of true technological unemployment finally come true.

There are billions of people fighting this technological Singularity. Our Pentagon is spending billions of dollars to develop the Total Power Fighting Death Machine, aka, the Death Star or Darth' Vader's Rule. They dream day and night of this creation. The USA is going bankrupt fighting peasants all over the planet. These pesky people who use ancient technology and older belief systems, who insist on living in ancient times with ancient cultures and feelings, are driving the USA into the Singularity which I call, 'WWIII': our only way of stopping these pesky anti-tech peasants is to destroy the entire planet earth.

The only way to fix our greed is to destroy everything so no one can have it, not even the cockroaches and vultures.

And this is the paradox: protecting our empire, extending our technological controls and reaches, we have to dehumanize ourselves and surrender to our robots and machines and unleash their power upon the organic, old-type humans who insist on living in a pre-industrial age technology and culture and when we do this, we all die. And if we succeed in killing off or enslaving within the Machine, all those difficult, pesky old-technology people, we are STILL destroyed utterly by our machines because running them eats up the entire evironment of the earth and destabilizes space and time in this sector and it will then blow up or implode.

Either case, this means we all die.

I was once told by the Physics Today staff, my stories about the End of Eternity was too depressing and therefore, not worth airing because it would depress scientists and cause them to question what they are doing.

Well, the fact is, the End of Eternity is the Birth of New Life. Namely, once anything becomes 'eternal' it dies. Everlasing life is eternal death. I try to explain this to religious people and they have the same response: they hate me. Hindus don't have a problem with all this which is why the greatest mathematicians and theologists have arisen from their rich soil. Many modern religions born in the last 5.000 years tend very much towards the Singularity: Nirvana, Heaven, Holy Land, Eternal Life, etc. Everything is about being forever, unchanged.

Why has this desire to create a mental system that is DEAD arise? I would say, it is part of technology: the more a culture is capable of technology, the more they want everything spiritual to freeze in time. As they rapidly change the earth and society as well as the ability to kill, the more they desire Oneness with Eternity Forever. This may be a natural artifact of technology.

In that great work, Goethe's Faust, the devil tells the professor, he will die and go to hell only if he says, 'Stop time! This is perfect!' So, after many adventures and loves, Professor Faust is digging this ditch when he suddenly realizes this is the perfect moment in time when all is fulfilled. He shouts the fatal words and dies and falls into the ditch for it is actually only his own grave.

When I studied Faust in College, the professor didn't like it when I treated the end as a humorous affair. He thought Faust fooled the Devil and went to Heaven.

I said, 'Nope. He became part of the Singularity and is now a space between electrons crushed by a black hole.'

Culture of Life News Main Page

Where Is Tarzan? Vines Are Conquering The Earth

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Scientists now are certain vines and poison ivies are growing much faster than other foilage due to the rise in CO2 in our atmosphere. I see it here, even, on my far northern mountain. Also, scientists wonder about physics. They are uneasy due to the rising tide of data that renders a lot of set beliefs inoperative or badly out of whack. And London closes the last planetarium due to lack of interest.

Vines are conquering the earth one tendril at a time.

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 15, 2006; Page A01

Vines -- poison ivy, Japanese honeysuckle, kudzu -- snake through the back yard, girdling trees and strangling shrubs, thriving, scientists say, on the same pollution they blame for global warming.

From backyard gardens to the Amazon rain forest, vines are growing faster, stronger and, in the case of poison ivy, more poisonous on the heavy doses of carbon dioxide that come from burning such fossil fuels as gasoline and coal.

"We're getting more calls from the public," says Mark Smith of Maryland's Agriculture Department, near poison ivy. (By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)

Complaints about vine infestation have increased tenfold in a decade, said Carole Bergmann, forest ecologist for the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission, which serves Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Vines have choked gardens, ruined brickwork, disrupted bird habitat and clogged paths, ponds and air conditioning and electronic equipment.

I remember reading books like the famous Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a kid. We also watched the old Tazan movies on TV. I loved playing Tazan on the playgrounds in the desert. Because it was so hot and dry, it was fun pretending we were in a dense jungle and using ropes in lieu of vines, we would swing wildly about beating our chests and yodelling. Any exuse to be loud. Heh.

One thing is certain: over the last 50 years, I have watched vines take over more and more territory. When one drives south from my farm into NYC, the number of vines covering trees grows greater and greater the further south one drives. They coat everything now when one is south of NYC.

I remember old SF books and movies about Venus that featured deep jungles. My first one was by Heinlein about some drunk law students Shanghaied onto Venus to do manual labor. I loved that story and read others. I was only seven years old back then. It must have been that long drought in the mid fifties that set me to reading about swamps! We used to pray for clouds back then.

Talking about heat and droughts, the devastating fires are raging across southern California today. The desert ecosystem is barely harmed by sweeping fires, indeed, these lightning fires are needed by both grasslands and desert. The plants are very adapted to these events. Preventing fires by dumping chemicals on them is stupid and a waste. Humans want to live in fire-vulnerable buildings in the desert. This is a mistake. One either builds for fires or live with the consequences.

For example, this one woman built a house out of straw, yes, she probably forget all those nursery tales about little piggies, and it burned down. Duh. I lived in adobe walled houses that had walls more than a foot thick. Heck, the cement brick walls of my present home are a foot thick! This conserves the coolness in summer and keeps the warmth of the sun in winter.

Since California is earthquake country, if one builds with adobe, one must build a seperate superstructure inside, namely interior walls of wood and plaster that can hold up the roof if there is an earthquake.

California is a geological/ecological dangerous zone.

Meanwhile, to explain paradoxes while clinging to our present cosmic system, scientists are prepared to think that physics were different long ago. HAHAHAHA. What a joke.

Michael Schirber
Special to SPACE.com
SPACE.com Tue Jul 11, 12:00 PM ET
Public confidence in the "constants" of nature may be at an all time low. Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the invisible glue that holds nuclei together, may have been different in the past.

"There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant," says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are."

The observed differences are small-roughly a few parts in a million-but the implications are huge: The laws of physics would have to be rewritten, not to mention we might need to make room for six more spatial dimensions than the three that we are used to.

So long as scientists cling to the 'ever expanding universe that is flying apart' model, they will have to have increasingly devious devices to explain the obvious. Mother Nature loves simplicity. Whenever complicated stuff is cooked up in our brains to explain things so they fit in previous mental models, we see more and more elaboration. Nature laughs at our efforts.

And I know some websites think I am stupid. Well, Mother Nature has to be the stupidest woman in creation. Ask her.

In England, the last planetarium closes.

Guardian UK:

Critics of dumbing down who rage at the loss of London's only planetarium, which Madame Tussauds opened on the site of a bombed cinema 48 years ago, are unlikely to be mollified by the educational aspect of the new show.

Beforehand, an actor by the name of Mr Blue teaches toddlers and teenage tourists how to be a celebrity. Today's star-savvy youth appear to know it all already. "Who are paparazzi?" he asked a 10-year-old girl. Without skipping a beat, came the correct answer: "People who invade your privacy."

*snip*

It was hard to find someone in the Stardome who would have preferred to gasp at the wonders of our o'erhanging firmament. "What they've got now is better," said James Coles, visiting with his wife and two children. "There's only so much education you can take. People are here to have fun, not necessarily learn."

Everyone wants to be a celebrity. No brains needed. I watched the Science Fiction scene die. Fewer and fewer 'techie' books being published, diminishing interest in exploring the heavens even as our many satellite observatories in space and multi-mirror arrays on earth open up the entire history of the past of all creation to us.

This quest after brainless impulses are coming at a time when the opposite is needed. Attention must be paid! One never stops learning. What one learns is what matters. And learning nothing is death.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Backwards Light/ Lightning/Time Loops

Elaine Meinel Supkis

What is light? We take it for granted but it isn't just a thing. It is nothing and everything at once and once again, scientists discover the astonishing multi-oness of light, it is everywhere at once and yet nowhere unless we perceive it. It is the paradox. I know this deep inside. I have been one with It.

Physics .org:

"It's weird stuff," says Boyd. "We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses."

So, wouldn't Einstein shake a finger at all these strange goings-on? After all, this seems to violate Einstein's sacred tenet that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

"Einstein said information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light," says Boyd. "The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber."

It sounds weird if one assumes time and space are pretty much flat and moves in only one direction.

Light is a queer thing. It is not like a molecule or element. It isn't solid yet it has something, energy. It comes in many manifestations and what we call "light" is merely a part of the Oneness or this thing that is really what gravity generates when it has enough mass, what can I say?

I have been hit by lightning several times. Not small, stray jolts, the first strike was huge. It tore up the entire side of a huge oak tree and united a branch with myself, sitting in the dark for the power was cut off by the storm, on a Victorian iron bed.

Let me explain what happened: I became part of the Lightning's universe. This terrified me, being only five years old, for up is down, inside is outside, thick is thin, dark is light. Everything is mirror image and time flows in two directions at once. Just as all things generating power have two poles, our earth has poles, invisible currents of magnetism flows through our planet and ourselves. We are caught in a net of magentism, gravity, energy and light. As seemingly solid organisms which are solid only because we see ourselves as solid, cosmic rays pass right through us and where do they come from?

All these queer things wracked my poor brains all my life. I knew that science would catch up with what I thought in that micro eternity when I was One with Lightning. I remember it all very vividly. I could feel it developing. The lightning doesn't "travel" anywhere! One minute, one is sitting there, feeling itchy, feeling as if static electricity is making the hair raise in a soft cloud about the shoulders, it is hard to breathe. I looked out the window and thought, "That tree and I will merge with the sky," and I was very scared but I couldn't move, it was as if this were already happening.

Then it happened. Or rather, to an outside observer, there was a brilliant flash and the air was rent with the explosion of the bolt. From my point of view, I blossomed into a net of pulsing blue/white and pink light, each was distinct.

As an adult, the last time lightning managed to nail me, I knew it was going to happen for an hour. Three bolts nearly hit me, I even screamed each time and lay there, panting, saying to my husband, "It missed! It missed!" But I knew in my heart, it wasn't going to miss in the end. He thought I was being silly, we were married only a short time when this happened.

The storm moved off over the mountains. Barely heard in the distance, muttering darkly to itself. Everything electrical in our home was smoking, all destroyed by the bolts. My husband handed me a cooked inverter and said, "The storm is over, here, take this out." And as I reached for it, the lighting bolt I knew was going to hit came snaking across the mountains, it hit the telephone pole next to our place, ran into the wiring, shot out of the wall into the inverter and simultaneously shot from the telephone behind me and the wall and the inverter. I was, as always, wearing rubber or I would have been killed. Instead, it kicked me to the ground.

You see, the connection between me and the storm was not broken even when it moved far off. And so it is with these experiments. When the observer sees the light at one end, it can be at the other easily since light isn't like gasses or molecules.

It is a very peculiar state of being/nonbeing. This is why it still astonishes us even as we expand our horizons. Science is a wonderful thing but we can only understand what we experience. And there is something even faster than light, it isn't "information" but rather, the thing that passes through the backwards time of lightning, that which I like to call "the Portals to the Outer Darkness."

Where up is down and slow is fast and the future is the past.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Germans Use Laser Cutters To Manufacture Glasses For Flies

Elaine Meinel Supkis

German technicians used a laser cutter to make microscopic dark glasses for a fly. It is amazing what laser technology can do, my father founded one of the very first scientific institutes devoted only to laser and optic research, the Meinel Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona.

National Geographic:

An entry in a German science-photo competition, this image shows a fly sporting a set of "designer" lenses crafted and set in place with a cutting-edge laser technique. The glasses fit snuggly on the fly's 0.08-inch-wide (2-millimeter-wide) head.

Manufacturing firm Micreon GmbH submitted the insect's picture for the Bilder der Forschung (Photos of Science) 2005 competition. Selected images were on display last week in a Munich shopping center.

Amusing picture at the National Geographic. People don't realize how hairy flies really are. If we could see them this big in reality, we would all carry .45s and blast them with it just so we won't have to see the hairy monsters. And their buzzing would be deafening. Good thing they are very small. They still annoy the hell out of our horse as well as us. The dogs ignore them but snap at the bees.

The bees leave everyone but the dogs alone. For some reason, dogs bother them. Once, Akamaru, our youngest dog, stuck her nose into the entrance of their hive. She avoids them now.

Good thing flies don't sting. But horse flies bite and it hurts, ask Sparky. Flies are useful in nature. They eat smelly dead things. The whole world would smell really rancid if they weren't so busy eating carcasses. One wonders how many flies at dead Brontosaurus? Better not think of these things too much....

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DARPA Wants Insect Borgs To Become Slaves Of Pentagon And DHS

Elaine Meinel Supkis

DARPA is asking for scientists to develop nano tech devices that can be inserted in pupas so the insect's nervous system will grow around these devices turning insects into human-manipulated cyborgs. This technology will end up enslaving humans too.

Courtesy of Daliwood, a faithful reader here--- Space War.com:

Facing problems in its efforts to train insects or build robots that can mimic their flying abilities, the U.S. military now wants to develop "insect cyborgs" that can go where its soldiers cannot.
The Pentagon is seeking applications from researchers to help them develop technology that can be implanted into living insects to control their movement and transmit video or other sensory data back to their handlers.

In an announcement posted on government Web sites last week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says it is seeking "innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect cyborgs," by implanting tiny devices into insect bodies while the animals are in their pupal stage.

Already, we train dogs and dolphins to do dangerous work for us. During Gulf War II, the Return of the Klutz, we used dolphins who nearly all immediately swam away instead of looking for bombs. This frustrates the military which wants mindless slaves who can still think but not have free will.

Nothing pisses off rulers more than free will. Except for maybe, free speech.

Right now, in order to con humans into fighting and dying for the rulers, they use propaganda. This is why an astonishing 82% of the soldiers in Iraq believe that Saddam orchestrated 9/11! The blanket of propaganda that covers the brains of these poor people is stifling enough to cut off all oxygen rendering them into nearly helpless slaves. Except even if they believe the false and deliberate lies the Pentagon force feeds them, they still think we lost the war in Iraq and they still want to come home.

To overcome this, the Pentagon wants to have total control. This way, they will mindlessly march forwards and die. Parasites are great at manipulating the minds and wills of their victims. They will allow the victim to go about its business until the parasite needs to have them self destruct in order to propogate the parasite. Sometimes the parasite even grows appendages that mimic the victim's shape while eating out the victim from the inside.

Sexual diseases spread this way, too. They stimulate the sexual pleasure sectors causing the victim to desire more frequent sex, merely producing itchiness will cause the victim to spread the disease further which is why humans are plagued by many different sexual diseases.

The Pentagon secretly dreams of human cyborgs. Perhaps to do implantations at birth or in utero or even to grow humans outside the female's body. The lust to do this is very intense. Then one can think of the poor cyborg as "nonhuman" like, 3/5ths human. They will look normal and might even be given the right to "vote" which would be meaningless since they will be manipulated from afar. They will be programmed to torture or kill citizens without qualm. They will hail only whoever runs the programming. Perhaps, only cyborgs will be allowed to run the system, too. Indeed, the chances of them taking over is very high, actually.

One paradox of absolute control is the controlling device always takes over, in the end. Especially if it is self-propogating. Many science fiction stories and TV shows are about this, the most well-known are the cyborgs in the Star Trek universe. Before that, Japanese animators did stories about mindless hive aliens controlled by the Queen, of course.

Nano technology holds many promises but many more dangers. I tend to feel that the danger side hugely outweighs the positive side simply because humans are devils and worship destructive gods that demand the death of all living things or at least, the annihilation of will. Since I view the animal world as one which I have to cleverly interact within, persuading animals and plants to cooperate with my various schemes because they benefit both of us, for example, requires cleverness and some plotting on my part but then I get to enjoy the wide variety of personality and the duel of wills makes me a better person since brute force or inattention is exploited or resisted by everything the plant or animal can muster.

To have something bad happen while using Sparky, the horse, for example, and to have him come running back to see if I am OK, nuzzling me, is marvelous. My dogs will fight fiercely for me and even better, will come and stand next to me when called. They can talk to me, for example. Ditto the cats.

Everyone cooperates because they enjoy cooperation. Not because I control them. This makes the household a joint enterprise which is spearheaded by the human. The psychological pleasure this brings can't be estimated. It is extremely high.

Humans manipulating slaves rot from the inside out. It always makes them hearless and psychotic. They end up destroying everything because they are bored and irritated. This is why allowing humans to run things is a dangerous proposition. Asking us to cooperate is good. Cyborgs are uniformly bad. They will end up ruling us because they can be ruled.

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Locusts Love Star Wars Battles

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Volvo commissioned a study of insects watching Star Wars movies to see how they react to the near collisions during the various space battles. Seems the insects are very tuned into colliding with stuff while flying and react chemically to this stimulus. There is no study about if they like Darth Vader but considering their reputation for mercilessly destroying everything in their path, I am betting he is their hero.

From the BBC:

Another star of this year's tour is Claire Rind, of Newcastle University, who won a 2005 Ig Nobel for her work showing edited extracts of Star Wars to insects.

The reason? In research part-funded by car-maker Volvo, Dr Rind was trying to track whether locusts - whose neuro-circuitry have, apparently, been extensively mapped - could detect imminent collisions. What with all the battles between X-wing fighters and Tie fighters, there are lots of those in the original Star Wars.

"We were studying the responses of visual stimuli. We found locusts have dedicated nerve cells specifically to detect collisions," says Dr Rind.

I wonder if they had orgasms watching this stuff. The space craft looked like super bugs to their eyes. Bet even Leila's hairdo was attractive since it looks like bug eyes.

And of course, Darth Vader is totally bug eyed. Pin up material in the bug burrow.

I bet my beehive would like this movie. I just got "Space Balls" on sale. Maybe I should play it for them some rainy day when they can't buzz about the neighorhood stealing pollen and terrorizing people by flying close to their faces.

I will not show any movies to "no see-ums" which are very tiny gnats that like to fly into my eyeballs when I am doing backhoe work. I wear a veil during midge mating season. A really obnoxious insect. They go up the nose and into the eyeballs....heh. Bet I have no more readers here? Hey!

OK, insects are our friends when they are far away. Lady bugs move inside in winter and so do those stupid stink bugs that live in rotting wood and then there was this giant, big black SPIDER I vacuumed up in the kitchen this morning. It was big.

Gah. Hello? Anyone here?

Will locusts learn from spying on Star Wars movies? The world awaits in fear.