Of the original Seven Wonders of the World, all but one are gone forever - the only remaining participants are the great Egyptian Pyramids. The rest, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, or the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, have all been washed away by the hands of time.
But now you have a chance to PERSONALLY be involved in the naming of the NEXT Seven Wonders of the World! How cool is that? A global initiative is underway, where anyone from around the world can vote for seven new WOTW, from a list of 21 candidates, including Chichen Itza, the Eiffel Tower, Easter Island statues, Angor Wat in Cambodia, and Petra in Jordan.
I think this is a wonderful idea, and to have a chance to have a personal voice in the next list seems uber-geeky and cool. So whatcha waitin' for? Get out and Rock the Vote! Here's the website: http://www.new7wonders.com
Friday, January 12, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Hydrogen-Peroxide Martians From Space!
Recently in the news, a sexily named scientist by the moniker Dirk Schulze-Makuch has begun to attract the interest of a National Research Council panel (self-nicknamed the "Weird Life" council) with his theory that there may have been, and may still be, hydrogen-peroxide life existing on Mars. In a word: COOL!
Back in the 1970's, when the US-launched "Viking" missions landed probes on Mars, its directive was to seek out Earthlike life, in which saltwater would be an internal key component of cellular structure. However, with Mars' cold, dry atmosphere, the existence of a water and hydroden-peroxide cellular organism would be a much more likely candidate, since this structure stays liquid even at very low temperatures, doesn't destroy cells when it freezes, and can gather water vapor out of the thin atmosphere there. If this is true, the Viking probe would've destroyed any such life it came in contact with of this nature by its pre-programmed responses to both flood areas of land with water, and to bake the land with overheating.
Based on this new theory, NASA might begin a new search for a different form of life when the new "Phoenix" mission to Mars launches this summer.
So, the only question that remains now is: How big will the microbes' Ray Gun be, and will they be benevolent Overlords, or shall we break under the iron boot of our new-found minuscule rulers? Oh, the humanity!
Back in the 1970's, when the US-launched "Viking" missions landed probes on Mars, its directive was to seek out Earthlike life, in which saltwater would be an internal key component of cellular structure. However, with Mars' cold, dry atmosphere, the existence of a water and hydroden-peroxide cellular organism would be a much more likely candidate, since this structure stays liquid even at very low temperatures, doesn't destroy cells when it freezes, and can gather water vapor out of the thin atmosphere there. If this is true, the Viking probe would've destroyed any such life it came in contact with of this nature by its pre-programmed responses to both flood areas of land with water, and to bake the land with overheating.
Based on this new theory, NASA might begin a new search for a different form of life when the new "Phoenix" mission to Mars launches this summer.
So, the only question that remains now is: How big will the microbes' Ray Gun be, and will they be benevolent Overlords, or shall we break under the iron boot of our new-found minuscule rulers? Oh, the humanity!
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Growing Technology, Increasing Connectivity:
TIME magazine (loved by some, loathed by others) recently named its "Person of the Year" as - you. That's correct, YOU. On the cover of their current issue rests a flat-screened monitor and "not-unlike-a-Mac" keyboard, with the monitor's screen a shiny coat of reflective material; if one picks up the mag and stares into it, one should see his or her reflection in it, thus fulfilling the "Person of the Year" nomination.
Before your ego swells to global proportions, or we poke fun at this obvious tongue-in-cheek gag, consider the tagline also on the cover: "You are in charge of the Information Age." Each of us have become the "Person of the Year" because we are all currently living in the exploding, ever increasing "Information Age", with almost anything we want to read or know within a "Google" search. This has me thinking - where will it lead?
Peter Russell has wrote a book a few years ago (of which I've yet to read, I say with much chagrin) entitled "The Global Brain Awakens". This book discusses the phenomenon of global connectivity, where our world, due to the advent and increasing technology of the World Wide Web, cell technology, and increasingly more powerful and smaller personal computers and data pads, becomes "connected" like one giant brain, with us as individuals (and our handy-dandy pocket pc's, etc.) acting like connected neurons. Considering the current breadth of gadgets on the market today, such as MP3 players, PDA's, laptops, cameras, cell phones, tablet PC's, and their ability to have or use Web connectivity, this makes sense - we can now communicate with ease, audibly and visually, with anyone on the other side of the planet who has a similar technological connection. And event that transpires in your local town, say of someone winning the lottery, or a tragedy where a small child becomes wedged in a well, can now become common knowledge in India, Thailand, or New Zealand.
Where will this all lead? The boundaries of nations, and the doors of privacy, are disappearing almost overnight. Not just in a business sense, but also with the rise and popularity of web blogs (such as this one), live camera feeds, and constant uploading, people from around the globe are morphing our world from one of distant and seperate nations and cultures to one large, open arena of awareness. I'm not implying that this will erase local customs or cultures, but what it will do is, for better or worse, increase peoples awareness of anything and everything happening around the globe. If I want to read the news about happenings in New Delhi, I can.
On the positive side, this can help out individuals, as well as nations, by bringing into the limelight such tragedies as genocide, occuring right now in Darfur, Sudan. With this kind of situation, the connectiviy of the Information Age is a perfect vehicle to grab people's and government's attention for extremely important situations such as Darfur, and organize worldwide aid and support to educate about the situation, and to bring support to end such a travesty. On the negative side, however, we are being forced to adjust to a different world altogether, whether we want to or not. The concept of "Big Brother" aside, we are now living in a world where ANYTHING we do could end up on the web, and in people's consciousness, and puplic discourse. Regardless of the fact that we aren't celebrities, we have the potential to become one overnight, and not always in a postive fashion. Consider the boy who was simply recording himself in his garage in front of a rented video camera, acting out a part of a "Star Wars", using a golf club as a home-made lightsaber. His embarrassing antics ended up on the web, where he was accosted with unending ridicule. Fortunatley, this story ended happily, landing him a spot on "The Tonight Show" w/Jay Leno - but couldn't it also have turned quite sour, ending instead with massive psychological damage, or even suicide? This was a few years ago, too - with today's cell phones and other electronic device's ability to take photos and video, and with site like "You Tube" or "My Space" allowing anyone to post content to the web, the next time you act like a drunken idiot and pull your pants down, you just might find yourself a hit on the Internet.
One question remains - with technology ever increasing, and becoming available to more and more people due to falling prices and faster hardware, will this new world of a "global connected brain" fuel our creativity and increase cultural awareness, and aid us in solving crisis, finding others, and building upon our learned mistakes for a better future, or will it have instead an unforseen negative effect, curtailing any risk-taking due to fear of ridicule and mockery, and send us sprinting away from any sort of artistic expression, or even simply BBQ-ing with the neighbors, for fear of a public eye gazing down upon our existence?
Before your ego swells to global proportions, or we poke fun at this obvious tongue-in-cheek gag, consider the tagline also on the cover: "You are in charge of the Information Age." Each of us have become the "Person of the Year" because we are all currently living in the exploding, ever increasing "Information Age", with almost anything we want to read or know within a "Google" search. This has me thinking - where will it lead?
Peter Russell has wrote a book a few years ago (of which I've yet to read, I say with much chagrin) entitled "The Global Brain Awakens". This book discusses the phenomenon of global connectivity, where our world, due to the advent and increasing technology of the World Wide Web, cell technology, and increasingly more powerful and smaller personal computers and data pads, becomes "connected" like one giant brain, with us as individuals (and our handy-dandy pocket pc's, etc.) acting like connected neurons. Considering the current breadth of gadgets on the market today, such as MP3 players, PDA's, laptops, cameras, cell phones, tablet PC's, and their ability to have or use Web connectivity, this makes sense - we can now communicate with ease, audibly and visually, with anyone on the other side of the planet who has a similar technological connection. And event that transpires in your local town, say of someone winning the lottery, or a tragedy where a small child becomes wedged in a well, can now become common knowledge in India, Thailand, or New Zealand.
Where will this all lead? The boundaries of nations, and the doors of privacy, are disappearing almost overnight. Not just in a business sense, but also with the rise and popularity of web blogs (such as this one), live camera feeds, and constant uploading, people from around the globe are morphing our world from one of distant and seperate nations and cultures to one large, open arena of awareness. I'm not implying that this will erase local customs or cultures, but what it will do is, for better or worse, increase peoples awareness of anything and everything happening around the globe. If I want to read the news about happenings in New Delhi, I can.
On the positive side, this can help out individuals, as well as nations, by bringing into the limelight such tragedies as genocide, occuring right now in Darfur, Sudan. With this kind of situation, the connectiviy of the Information Age is a perfect vehicle to grab people's and government's attention for extremely important situations such as Darfur, and organize worldwide aid and support to educate about the situation, and to bring support to end such a travesty. On the negative side, however, we are being forced to adjust to a different world altogether, whether we want to or not. The concept of "Big Brother" aside, we are now living in a world where ANYTHING we do could end up on the web, and in people's consciousness, and puplic discourse. Regardless of the fact that we aren't celebrities, we have the potential to become one overnight, and not always in a postive fashion. Consider the boy who was simply recording himself in his garage in front of a rented video camera, acting out a part of a "Star Wars", using a golf club as a home-made lightsaber. His embarrassing antics ended up on the web, where he was accosted with unending ridicule. Fortunatley, this story ended happily, landing him a spot on "The Tonight Show" w/Jay Leno - but couldn't it also have turned quite sour, ending instead with massive psychological damage, or even suicide? This was a few years ago, too - with today's cell phones and other electronic device's ability to take photos and video, and with site like "You Tube" or "My Space" allowing anyone to post content to the web, the next time you act like a drunken idiot and pull your pants down, you just might find yourself a hit on the Internet.
One question remains - with technology ever increasing, and becoming available to more and more people due to falling prices and faster hardware, will this new world of a "global connected brain" fuel our creativity and increase cultural awareness, and aid us in solving crisis, finding others, and building upon our learned mistakes for a better future, or will it have instead an unforseen negative effect, curtailing any risk-taking due to fear of ridicule and mockery, and send us sprinting away from any sort of artistic expression, or even simply BBQ-ing with the neighbors, for fear of a public eye gazing down upon our existence?
Is it just me, or is it HOT?
"Experts say this will cause melting at the polar ice caps, sea levels to rise and weather patterns to change, bringing floods, famines and violent storms — and putting millions of lives at risk."
Um - does anyone else feel a bit apprehensive about this comment? This is taken from a UN report from 2001, conducted by hundreds of experts who study weather patterns, and concluded that global temperatures will (it didn't say "may", which s even more astonishing) rise between 2.5 - 10 degrees F this century, leading to the description above. And according to a new report from The Meteorological Office in London just issued, 2007 is set to be the hottest year ON RECORD, ever. Part is certainly due to the natural cyclical existence of "El Nino", a general fluxation of weather temperatures globally every few years, but the rest is undoubtedly due to the continued increase of greenhouse gases and carbon emmissions around the globe. What's more, the world's 10 hottest years ever recorded have been since 1994, and the effects are noticable in places such as Austrailia, which is experiencing its longest dry spell in recorded history.
Regardless of whether you believe in or deny humanity has a hand in global warming, for whatever reason it IS happening. What's more, we can predict with almost certain accuracy the alarming outcome to this world and our global society if this in fact reaches a temperature "past the point of no return". Massive animal extinctions, world-wide flooding, changes in weather patterns, increased droughts, floods, and more intensive hurricanes. These things have been, are, and will continue to happen, with the potential to only increase in numbers and intensities. I find it quite fascinating then, that we as a knowledgable, "aware" society, spend so much time focusing on bipartisan arguing, gay marriage, or preparing for another defense against a terrorist attack, instead of what I feel is a lack-luster approach against something that seems to be deemed a "may or may not" happen.
It may be the case that global destruction due to changing weather patterns won't happen - I can concede that. But what is the harm in erring on the side of caution? What would be the harm in investing millions, if not billions of dollars and human-hours, into combating the globes rising temperatures? The outcome would be millions of new jobs to be filled; new careers that would be created; new technologies for renewable, clean energy created, removing our crutch for foreign oil and fossil fuels; and a cleaner, healthier environment. Even if it all turned out to be "not true" (the global-warming doom), we'd still come out ahead for the time and money invested in the pursuit of combating a rising global temperature.
But if it turns out that the predictions ARE true, and we do nothing, the results will be world-wide chaos, and we would only have ourselves to blame - could we have such blame on our conscious? The writing is on the wall now for such predictions, and I feel its time to truly accept responsibility and prepare for a very different future. If you think I am overreacting, just look at the ripple-effect from Hurricane Katrina - mob-rule, shootings, lootings, millions of people w/out clean water and living spaces, disease, and a destroyed economy for the area, which affected some parts of the nation in terms of oil-refining, shipping, etc. What would happen if that same level of hurricane hit every year? What about every year, in multiple coasts around the world? How about the flooding of Japan, our east coast, and droughts in Europe and the Middle East?
A new terrorist attack, or a global pandemic of the HV51 bird-flu is not guaranteed, but global warming, whether we have a hand in the cause of it or not, is - how are we preparing for it?
Um - does anyone else feel a bit apprehensive about this comment? This is taken from a UN report from 2001, conducted by hundreds of experts who study weather patterns, and concluded that global temperatures will (it didn't say "may", which s even more astonishing) rise between 2.5 - 10 degrees F this century, leading to the description above. And according to a new report from The Meteorological Office in London just issued, 2007 is set to be the hottest year ON RECORD, ever. Part is certainly due to the natural cyclical existence of "El Nino", a general fluxation of weather temperatures globally every few years, but the rest is undoubtedly due to the continued increase of greenhouse gases and carbon emmissions around the globe. What's more, the world's 10 hottest years ever recorded have been since 1994, and the effects are noticable in places such as Austrailia, which is experiencing its longest dry spell in recorded history.
Regardless of whether you believe in or deny humanity has a hand in global warming, for whatever reason it IS happening. What's more, we can predict with almost certain accuracy the alarming outcome to this world and our global society if this in fact reaches a temperature "past the point of no return". Massive animal extinctions, world-wide flooding, changes in weather patterns, increased droughts, floods, and more intensive hurricanes. These things have been, are, and will continue to happen, with the potential to only increase in numbers and intensities. I find it quite fascinating then, that we as a knowledgable, "aware" society, spend so much time focusing on bipartisan arguing, gay marriage, or preparing for another defense against a terrorist attack, instead of what I feel is a lack-luster approach against something that seems to be deemed a "may or may not" happen.
It may be the case that global destruction due to changing weather patterns won't happen - I can concede that. But what is the harm in erring on the side of caution? What would be the harm in investing millions, if not billions of dollars and human-hours, into combating the globes rising temperatures? The outcome would be millions of new jobs to be filled; new careers that would be created; new technologies for renewable, clean energy created, removing our crutch for foreign oil and fossil fuels; and a cleaner, healthier environment. Even if it all turned out to be "not true" (the global-warming doom), we'd still come out ahead for the time and money invested in the pursuit of combating a rising global temperature.
But if it turns out that the predictions ARE true, and we do nothing, the results will be world-wide chaos, and we would only have ourselves to blame - could we have such blame on our conscious? The writing is on the wall now for such predictions, and I feel its time to truly accept responsibility and prepare for a very different future. If you think I am overreacting, just look at the ripple-effect from Hurricane Katrina - mob-rule, shootings, lootings, millions of people w/out clean water and living spaces, disease, and a destroyed economy for the area, which affected some parts of the nation in terms of oil-refining, shipping, etc. What would happen if that same level of hurricane hit every year? What about every year, in multiple coasts around the world? How about the flooding of Japan, our east coast, and droughts in Europe and the Middle East?
A new terrorist attack, or a global pandemic of the HV51 bird-flu is not guaranteed, but global warming, whether we have a hand in the cause of it or not, is - how are we preparing for it?
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