Wind Farm
Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri

I drive past this wind farm when I visit my folks in Indiana, and every time I see it I get just a little jealous.

There are three separate wind farms in the works around here, but every one of them is under fire from locals who don’t want anything to do with them. I’ve ranted about these people several times in the past so I won’t get into all that, but something I wish they would do is drive out to a wind farm and actually take a look.

Are you seeing a ruined view? I’m not seeing much of a view to ruin, to be honest. Seems to me the turbines are creating a view. One local calls them “monuments to stupidity,” but to me they’re a sign of the future, of an effort to increase our energy capacity and cut costs as well as put less garbage into the atmosphere. Not to mention they bring bucks to the local economy.

Indiana can’t put them up fast enough, and counties around us are also putting them in. Ours has been in limbo for about three years. I just don’t get it.

They can’t hold out forever, though. The farmers are willing to sign over the land, the schools want the money, the county needs the money, and if the utility company doesn’t get it installed now, they’ll come back in a few years when there’s a new county board in place. It’s not like the wind’s going anywhere.

Until then I’ll just have to be patient.

The closest star to our planet is 4.2 light years away. Let’s assume life exists there, and they have ships advanced enough to fly ten times the speed of light. That means it would still take them over five months to get here. Even for a four-man (-being?) crew, you’re looking at stocking lots of food and water (or equivalent sustenance) for such a long trip, meaning the ship is going to need a sizable cargo hold (whether for stored goods or a garden). Then you need more space for propulsion unit.

This rules out the small UFOs most people claim to see as alien in nature. If they traveled through wormholes or jump gates, folded space, or traveled via some other sci-fi cliche, how is it we can spot the energy signatures of gamma-ray bursts in remote galaxies, but not something local to our solar system?

Not to mention the time and energy investment involved. They’re going to come all that way to buzz an airfield, make crop circles, probe a redneck, and fly home?

Yeah. Still not buying it.

“Look, an alien! Let’s kill it, cook it up, and show it off on a dinner plate so his friends get really pissed!”

Thanks, Pakistan! Guess we best start preparing for the invasion.

At least they’re tiny and likely have tiny ships. Maybe we can shoot them all out of the sky with Predator drones.

(Disclaimer: No, I’m not convinced this is the real deal. It’s probably a misunderstanding, a hoax, or part of a movie. It just amuses me that some third world pinheads could conceivably doom the entire planet.)

Turns out the owners can generate the hydrogen in their own home with a natural gas co-generator. Dubbed the Home Energy Station, this cool gizmo will provide heat and power to your home as well as keep you on the road. Not too shabby!

Then I took a closer look at the accompanying illustration, which appears to be some Honda vision for the future. There’s the co-gen station, solar panel roof, the car, and of course an ASIMO robot.

Just when you thought it was safe to leave your daughter alone...

Does nobody else see something sinister afoot? Take a look at Mom and Dad: she’s busy doing the dishes or cooking or something, and Dad’s busy messing with his car. Shouldn’t the robot be handling those tasks? Little Jimmy is busy in the shower. Kinda odd, Honda, but whatever. This means ASIMO has the run of the house…

…and little Jenny.

Yeah, I’ve seen Saturn 3 and I know how this works! ASIMO shirks his duties, creates his opening, and attacks! Little Jenny never knows what hit her, and two hours later she’s showing the social worker where the plastic predator touched her.

No thanks, Honda. You keep your pervy future to yourself.

The video explains how Better Place came to be, the plan for the cars, and the economics behind the Better Place plan versus oil over the next ten years.

Whether you think his plan will work or not, I’m glad to see he’s out there doing it rather than just letting Congress or panels of “experts” debate it until it’s too late. He makes some very compelling points and if I lived in one of the areas these cars were available, I’d be happy to look into owning one.

After reading that the great state of Kentucky is officially relying upon God for their state security, I learned that the group American Atheists is suing to have that portion of the law removed. Normally I hate lawsuits, but this is one I fully support. Not just because I feel it crosses the line of separation of church and state but because I’m not sure where this one ends. Will God protect homosexuals, devotees of other religions, and atheists from terrorists? What happens when similar provisions are written into other laws, and these people are excluded? It’s a dangerous precedent, and allowing these people to write God into the law is taking us one step closer to an American Taliban. I have no problem with people living by their religion, so long as they do not force the rest of us to do it.

On a side note, I found the picture in the insurance ad accompanying the article strangely appropriate:

Next up, hot on the heels of their announcement to build infrastructure in the Bay Area, Better Place announces they’ll be setting up shop in Hawaii. Very, very cool. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this all plays out. The potential is huge if they can pull it off.

Finally, Hollywood is on the remake path again, this time on its way to remaking the Carpenter classic They Live. Now, I do use the term “classic” loosely here, but I’m not seeing any reason to remake a movie featuring a five-minute fight over putting on a pair of sunglasses. Even scarier, however, is the closing line of the article:

Strike is also working on a remake of Carpenter’s “The Thing.”

You’ve got to be kidding. Like 1951’s The Thing from Another World, The Thing is an adaptation of a novella by Joseph W. Campbell called “Who Goes There?”, so some already class it a remake. Some of Carpenter’s flicks are very uneven to me (They Live being a good example), but The Thing is a true classic. It’s scary, it’s suspenseful, it has some great scenes and memorable lines, the effects aren’t half bad, and it’s an improvement upon the ‘51 adaptation of the novella. What are they going to do to improve Carpenter’s film? Cast Shia LaBeouf as MacReady? Write in a sexy love interest for him to protect?

It boggles the mind.

I’m not yet convinced they’re going to overhaul the auto industry, but I’m certainly not in agreement with the many detractors who dismiss it outright. The key here is they’re actually going out and doing it, not sitting in a board room and kicking around theories of why this will or won’t work. They also have timing in their favor with the oil problem and the major US car manufacturers facing bankruptcy.

Gas prices may be down now, but for how long? Now that people know $4/gallon was outrageous, they’re not going to be eager to pay it again. Truck and SUV sales are in the crapper, and unfortunately for the auto industry, that’s where all the profit is. A friend of mine just purchased a brand new Dodge Ram for $16,000 under sticker, and I just got a letter from my local dealership practically begging me to come in and look at their excessive inventory. They even told me how someone drove off with a brand new Jeep with $14,000 in rebates! A cash hemorrhage combined with the unlikelihood of a government bailout means the competition is going to be lower than ever for companies like Better Place to step in.

So again, good idea? Bad idea? We’re about to find out.

And better we do it now than in 20 years when the oil’s getting scarce and we have to scramble for other options.

The tardigrades that NASA fired into space have now returned, having survived exposure to both the extremes of the stellar vacuum and exposure to cosmic rays. I think that would be a fun job, blasting random critters into space. I can think of several candidates right off the top of my head, unintended consequences be damned.

Does this tardigrade look different to you?

I’d also like to be the guy who gets to push the button on the Large Hadron Collider. They’ve already beamed a few test protons through it, and tomorrow they’re set for the big experiment. Of course, there are several people who think that the experiment will be the end of the world.

Pfft. I say fire it up. These are the same kind of people who thought the Manhattan Project would ignite the atmosphere and kill us all. Or that every electronic device on the planet would shut down on Y2K. They just don’t understand the science behind what they’re talking about.

To that, I say educate yourself:

Now, let’s talk about testing my Large Hardon Collider…

According to an article in the Telegraph, scientists have found a sort of genetic switch that determines whether a person will laugh or squirm when watching a horror flick. Given The Exorcist and Hostel had zero effect on me, and I laughed my ass off at the pseudo-trailer for Thanksgiving during Grindhouse, it’s not hard to figure out which way my copy of the gene is flipped.

I’m curious, then, how the genetic findings might affect a similar study of how the gross-out factor can produce physical effects. This article even features an allegedly disgusting paragraph; like some movies, it didn’t bother me at all. If that weak little vignette about puke made some of the study participants ill, I can’t imagine their reactions were they to sit through a World Horror gross-out contest. Cullen Bunn’s ass-bursting, Lovecraftian sea monkeys and Brian Keene’s worm-eating and spit-swallowing shenanigans would put them off their lunches for a month.

How about bread made to look like human body parts? I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to make a sandwich.

There it is. Next time someone asks you how you can read some of Edward Lee’s more popular works, tell them it’s genetic.

Then read them your favorite passage.

DNA Collection Kit
Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

Our school is distributing DNA collection kids to elementary students.

My son’s will be promptly round-filed.

Like many a well-intentioned-but-flawed process, they’re doing this to protect the children. This kit will supposedly help the police locate your child should he be kidnapped, molested, or otherwise run afoul of some Great Evil.

Mm-hm. And how, exactly, will that work? If my kids are kidnapped but recovered alive, the feds can draw their DNA and run a paternity test. If the kids are murdered and their otherwise-unidentifiable bodies are turned up in a forest somewhere, well… let’s just say it hardly matters at that point. And the odds of the latter scenario taking place approach astronomical, despite what the media would have us believe.

So again, how does having my child’s DNA (or fingerprints, for that matter) on-hand or in a database help protect my child? Is someone developing some DNA sniffer that will take this sample and then roam the populace in search of my child? I doubt it.

Now let’s be paranoid the other way and discuss the potential for abuse. With these convenient packets, there’s now a huge sample of DNA for a given population available to whoever can get their hands on it. Yes, Gattaca was just a movie, but we don’t know where technology is going to take us five, ten, or even twenty years from now when these kids are adults. Abuses could range from discrimination to high-tech identity theft to government monitoring.

“C’mon, Mike, that’s just sci-fi.”

Okay, let’s bring it a little closer to the present and remove the 1984 factor and consider two scenarios:

1) An insurance company gets their hands on the data. They discover a high incidence of a gene related to colon cancer. The bean counters crunch their numbers and boom, premiums for the area go up.

2) A pharmaceutical company uses the genetic data for research. Iceland sold their genetic database, and all of the same concerns for abuse are there. One theft, unscrupulous employee, well-placed bribe, or new law and your DNA is up for grabs. The pharma company probably saves a ton of money, but do you think that savings will be passed on to you when you need the new meds? Hardly.

Still think it’s far-fetched? They’re already halfway to #1:

Some scientists believe that the homogeneity of a population such as Iceland makes the search for genes associated with a disease a simpler task. deCODE has already discovered variations in the Icelander’s genome that may indicate susceptibility to multiple sclerosis, hereditary hand tremors, and osteoarthritis.

And it was all government-mandated:

The government of Iceland has passed a law enacting the creation of a national health database. As first proposed, the bill required only medical and family history records to be included in the database. Opposition to the bill escalated when the government decided to add genetic information.

Given the PATRIOT Act and other overreactions to 9/11, do you really think our government wouldn’t do the same?

Thanks for thinking of us, Knights of Columbus. I’m sure your intentions are pure, but I’m going to take a pass on this one.