Ego-Enclosed Micro-Societies

Image Source: Time via Flavorwire.

By now, anyone who follows generational issues will have heard about Joel Stein's Time cover article (here) on how the Millennials will save the world. Joel Stein is a Gen Xer, and he should know better than to indulge in the same generational stereotyping that Time magazine used to condemn his own age group. Did his bosses put him up to it? For an overview of how Time cover articles have perpetuated  generational myths, see JenX67's response to Stein here. This is the worst kind of social propaganda and it deserves full condemnation.

If Stein had made broad generalizations about races instead of age groups in his Time article, there would be outcry across the MSM. Even when the message is positive, age stereotyping is no different than racism. Stein's article depends on two Boomer-generated narratives which depend on one another: 'Gen X is the anti-Boomer generation that failed'; 'Gen Y is the generation that will bear the Boomer mantle and save us.' This shows that Boomers, in their quest to build an immortal legacy, made age stereotyping and discrimination socially and professionally acceptable. The fact that Boomers now suffer from age discrimination themselves does not change the origin of the labels and their negative effects.

We need a new language to discuss generational matters and a new way to understand society that bridges age differences. Mr. Stein's unfortunate example aside, Generation X has become known (or rather: not known) for communicating about social experience in non-collective way. As a result, Boomers and Millennials often seem to think that Generation X has not accomplished, and is not accomplishing, anything. Where are Gen Xers, anyway? Why can't you google 'generation X' and come across ten national and international lobby groups and central hubs belching forth Propaganda on the Generation X Self? Where are the trumpeted announcements? Where are the big high profile articles in national magazines? Where are the Gurus and Big Leaders who associate themselves publicly with Gen X? Have you seen a Gen-X-labeled TV show lately? Where are the signposts which point to what Jeff Gordinier called the generational "kitsch" known as 'GENERATION X'? Gen X does not often speak the same language that Boomers and Millennials do. Like the so-called 'Silent Generation,' Gen Xers do not associate their successes with their generational identity. But that does not mean their successes do not exist.

Boomers and Gen Y cannot and will not 'change the world' until they abandon the mass-marketed illusions of ego-enclosed micro-societies and consider the behaviour of the Silent Generation and of Generation X. There are ways of functioning in society other than through self-definition and advancement at the expense of other age groups. The problems we face require consensus, cooperation, mutual respect and humility - and the smashing of generational stereotypes. We must abandon the promotion of the 'ego' as the ultimate source of virtue, power, strength, prosperity and success.

Consider what Millennials would be 'expecting' now, what they would be saying about themselves, and how they would be behaving, if they had been fed a different story from birth, a story that did not involve a grand manifest destiny for their collective Self. What if that story had simply said that they are all different, even though they share some cultural experiences with others their age? What if it had said that they have something to contribute, just as other people of other age groups do. Nor will their contributions constitute the sum total of success or accomplishment of civilization. It will be just another brick in the wall, another drop in the bucket. And yes, they have to defer to those with greater knowledge and experience, usually (but not always) a function of age. Similarly, those who follow them will have to defer to them, because in time, Millennials will know more than their successors.

For decades, youth-oriented marketing has peddled the idea that an explosive, 'fresh outlook' is the silver bullet in every circumstance, that brand new approaches are the best way to solve age-old problems. Usually, technology is mentioned as the game-changer. High tech has transformed age old problems into completely different issues, and Millennial brains are needed to grasp uniquely novel circumstances. It simply is not true.

Millennials who cling to the myths they were sold as children and teens in the 1990s will discover that they have been duped into supporting a very old school power structure. In that structure, the will not only not be leaders, they will be at the bottom of the pile. This Boomer-led establishment will tell Millennials any flattering lie about Gen Y's identity in order to retain power. If members of Gen Y continue to believe mistakenly in the marketing labels they are fed - and even if they believe anti-marketing which is supposed to be more credible but delivers the same myth in different packaging - they will find that their real world circumstances continually and increasingly do not match the world they were told they would find. That discrepancy should be their biggest warning sign to wake up. The last thing in the world they should do is get on that train, and start labeling others and themselves.

Farming for Future Space Colonists

"Future astronauts may grow some of their meals inside greenhouses, such as this Martian growth chamber, where fruits and vegetables could be grown hydroponically, without soil." Image Source: Yahoo.

Yahoo News reports that NASA is exploring ways in which food could be grown on spaceships and on Mars, thus ensuring the survival of astronauts and space colonists:

The first humans to live on Mars might not identify as astronauts, but farmers. To establish a sustainable settlement on Earth's solar system neighbor, space travelers will have to learn how to grow food on Mars — a job that could turn out to be one of the most vital, challenging and labor-intensive tasks at hand, experts say.

"One of the things that every gardener on the planet will know is producing food is hard — it is a non-trivial thing," Penelope Boston, director of the Cave and Karst Studies program at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said yesterday (May 7) at the Humans 2 Mars Summit here at George Washington University. "Up until several hundred years ago it occupied most of us for most of the time."

Early Mars colonists may have to revert to this mode of life to ensure their own survival, she suggested.

NASA is actively engaged in researching how to farm on Mars and in space, as the agency is targeting its first manned Mars landing in the mid-2030s. And some NASA officials are wondering if that mission ought to be of long duration, rather than a short visit, given the difficulty of getting there and the possible benefits of an extended stay. "Sustained human presence — should that be our goal? I think that's a good discussion," Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said here Monday (May 6).

Yet growing food on Mars presents several significant challenges. While research on the International Space Station suggests plants can grow in microgravity, scientists don't know how the reduced gravity on Mars might affect different Earth crops. Mars' surface receives about half the sunlight Earth does, and any pressurized greenhouse enclosure will further block the light reaching plants, so supplemental light will be needed. Supplying that light requires a significant amount of power.

"In terms of the systems engineering required, it's not an insignificant challenge," said D. Marshall Porterfield, Life and Physical Sciences division director at NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. NASA has been studying using LED lighting to give plants only the wavelengths of light they need to boost efficiency, he said.

Researchers are also studying whether plants can survive under lower pressures than on Earth, because the more pressure inside a greenhouse, the more massive that greenhouse must be to contain it.

"You don't have to inflate that greenhouse to Earth-normal pressure in order for plants to grow," said Robert Ferl, director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research at the University of Florida. "Maintaining a full atmosphere of pressure is difficult on a planetary surface. You can take plants down to a tenth of an atmosphere and they'll still function."

However, then, the greenhouse must be sealed off from the crew's living quarters.

"Gardening in a pressure suit is going to be a real trick," said Taber MacCallum, chief executive officer of Paragon Space Development Corp.

Radiation danger

Martian farmers must also contend with the issue of radiation. Mars lacks Earth's thick protective atmosphere, so particles from space reach its surface that would be damaging to both people and plants. Thus, some kind of shielding or mitigation will be necessary.

Pyramid Demolished in Belize

"In this image released by Jaime Awe, head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology on Monday May 13, 2013, a backhoe claws away at the sloping sides of the Nohmul complex, one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids on May 10, 2013 in northern Belize. A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday. (AP Photo/Jaime Awe)" Image Source: J. Awe via Yahoo.

From Yahoo News, there is a report that a construction company in Belize has destroyed a Mayan pyramid for road fill:

BELIZE CITY (AP) — A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

"It's a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous."

Nohmul sat in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 100 feet tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well-known and the landscape there is naturally flat.

"These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It's just bloody laziness", Awe said.

Photos from the scene showed backhoes clawing away at the pyramid's sloping sides, leaving an isolated core of limestone cobbles at the center, with what appears to be a narrow Mayan chamber dangling above one clawed-out section.

"Just to realize that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines," said Awe. "To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can't these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It's mind-boggling."

Belizean police said they are conducting an investigation and criminal charges are possible. The Nohmul complex sits on private land, but Belizean law says that any pre-Hispanic ruins are under government protection.

The Belize community-action group Citizens Organized for Liberty Through Action called the destruction of the archaeological site "an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and history."

It is not the first time it's happened in Belize, a country of about 350,000 people that is largely covered in jungle and dotted with hundreds of Mayan ruin sites, though few as large as Nohmul.

Norman Hammond, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Boston University who worked in Belizean research projects in the 1980s, wrote in an email that "bulldozing Maya mounds for road fill is an endemic problem in Belize (the whole of the San Estevan center has gone, both of the major pyramids at Louisville, other structures at Nohmul, many smaller sites), but this sounds like the biggest yet."

"In this image released by Jaime Awe, head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology on Monday May 13, 2013, a looks at the damaged sloping sides of the Nohmul complex, one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids on May 10, 2013 in northern Belize. A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday. (AP Photo/Jaime Awe)" Image Source: J. Awe via Yahoo.

Cave Houses: Bridges between Pre-History and the Present

Continuity with the distant past is alive and well in many cave dwellings around the world. I09 has just published a piece on cave houses, some of which have been continuously inhabited for between 2,000 and 9,000 years! They also included the cave houses in the UK which inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's hobbit holes. All of these examples show how different societies carved their civilizations right out of the environment, while living in harmony with it. They also in the most graphic and clearest possible way show the origins of architecture, masonry, and brick-built houses. See more photos, including similar sites in Asia, in the i09 article.

Above: Yunak Evleri Cave Hotel, Urgup, Cappadocia, Turkey: "This hotel is a combination of six cave houses with a total of 39 rooms from the 5th and 6th centuries and a 200-year-old Greek mansion," via Yunak Evleri Press Room.

Above: Cave homes and a chapel in Louresse-Rochemenier, France: via Wikimedia Commons/Pymouss44, Tango7174 and GaMip.

Above: Sassi di Matera, Matera, Italy: "These houses were dug into the rock itself, and it's the only place in the world where people have been continuously inhabiting the sames houses for the last 9,000 years," via  Tango7174.

Plasma Device Could Change Energy Futures

Image Source: redOrbit.

Imagine holding a little sun in the palm of your hand. Plasma, the fourth state of matter, has been harnessed at the University of Missouri, which could revolutionize the generation and storage of energy:

Scientists at the University of Missouri have devised a new way to create and control plasma that could transform American energy generation and storage.

Randy Curry, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri’s College of Engineering, and his team developed a device that launches a ring of plasma at distances of up to two feet. Although the plasma reaches a temperature hotter than the surface of the sun, it doesn’t emit radiation and is completely safe in proximity to humans.

While most of us are familiar with three states of matter – liquid, gas and solid – there is also a fourth state known as plasma, which includes things such as fire and lightning. Life on Earth depends on the energy emitted by plasma produced during fusion reactions within the sun.

The secret to Curry’s success was developing a way to make plasma form its own self-magnetic field, which holds it together as it travels through the air. “Launching plasma in open air is the ‘Holy Grail’ in the field of physics,” said Curry.

“Creating plasma in a vacuum tube surrounded by powerful electromagnets is no big deal; dozens of labs can do that. Our innovation allows the plasma to hold itself together while it travels through regular air without any need for containment.”

The plasma device could also be enlarged to handle much larger amounts of energy, he said.

For the current work, Curry and his team used older technologies to build their prototype of a plasma-generating machine. But a considerably smaller device using newer, miniaturized parts could also be built within three to five years with sufficient funding, Curry said.

See a video about the discovery below the jump.

Future Family Transport

Synergy Illustration:  Nick Kaloterakis. Images Source: PopSci.

PopSci reports on the 2013 Invention Awards; one of the winners was the Family Flier, a family-sized aircraft that will be mainly autopiloted by computer. One commenter on the article complained that the McGinnis plane resembles Charles Ligeti's Stratos, a similar small Australian craft (see here); nevertheless, this looks like an interesting American design:

INVENTOR
John McGinnis
COMPANY
Synergy Aircraft
INVENTION
Synergy
COST TO DEVELOP
Undisclosed

John McGinnis thinks ordinary families would rather skip the airport and fly themselves. So he is trying to reinvent the personal airplane with the help of his father, son, and a rotating crew of about two dozen volunteers. Unlike small aircraft today—which can cost more than a house—McGinnis says Synergy could be cheaper, quieter, and, at more than 40 mpg, three times as fuel-efficient.

McGinnis, a 47-year-old composite manufacturer, flew his first airplane in second grade. Perplexed by the inefficiencies of personal aircraft, he taught himself aeronautical engineering and fluid dynamics over two decades. One day, while perusing scientific studies at a desk in his daughters’ bedroom, he read a NASA researcher’s paper challenging a classic aerodynamic drag equation. McGinnis could see the possibilities. “I came out of the girls’ bedroom ranting like a madman to my wife,” he says. “‘Honey, you’re never going to believe this. I think I just solved a problem I’ve been working on since I was a little kid.’”

Synergy’s wings bend upward and into a box shape for minimum drag and maximum efficiency. The top half of each wing swoops behind the body to function as a tail while providing greater in-flight stability. The double-box tail design also makes gliding easier by counteracting tornado-like vortices at the wings’ tips. And instead of a front-mounted propeller, an impeller placed behind the bullet-shaped body quiets noise while adding thrust.

1) A 200hp turbodiesel engine expels heat below the impeller, adding thrust.

2) Large wings allow slower takeoffs and landings.

3) Box tails create airflow patterns that reduce drag and increase flight stability.

4) An autopilot computer can land Synergy at a nearby runway during an emergency; a ballistic parachute can also be deployed.

McGinnis works on Synergy in his father’s garage, where he uses CNC machines and custom molds to fabricate components and 3-D software to rapidly model new ideas. Family members serve among the core build crew, with McGinnis’s son, Kyle, second-in-command. A quarter-scale prototype made from fiberglass, carbon fiber, and Kevlar suggests that both the team’s manufacturing process and unusual wing configuration work. Using about $80,000 in crowdfunded cash, they hope to finish a full-scale, five-person aircraft this year. “I work on it 90 hours a week, with a few hours of sleep,” McGinnis says. “What drives me to do it is that no one else will.”

Scale Models: The McGinnis family—Pat, John, and Kyle—and pilot John Paul Noyes [front to back] stand in their Kalispell, Montana, workshop.  Photo by Kali McGinnis.

One commenter on the PopSci article remarks that there are non-technological reasons why we do not all have small personal aircraft or flying cars:

[T]he flying car isn't new. There have been many models of flying car and many developers of them. Why, you ask, haven't big companies like Boieng or Lockheed taken up the easy challenge? Because there is no way that your government is going to allow a flying population right now. The system is setup to charge you tax for roads and has spent a great deal of money on traffic lights. They also like to know that you can't just pile in your aircraft and fly to Cuba, Mexico or Canada. If the flying car materialized today, with full ability to hover without propellars, and was completely safe... they would never allow it. The biggest oponenets of this technology would be car companies as well. What happens to their normal car stock once the flying car is here? 100's of millions of four wheeled vehicles now useless.

To prepare for the flying car is nothing short of a transportation overhaul of FAA regulations and laws, state infrastructure on tracking flying vehicles, amd much, much more. Nothing in our lives is pointing to the fact that the government is going to allow us all to have personal flying aircraft or flying cars. Cops would all instantly have to switch to the same flying vehicles as well.

Flying car creators are going to be stuck in their garages, right where theyve been, for years to come. There is a reason that the big car companies and aeronatuics companies aren't developing personal flying vehicles, in spite of the fact that there is a TON of money in them from your average consumers. Deal with the poilitics people. At least acknowledge they exist. Fine line between naivety and paranoia but the laws behind flying, and airspace to fly in, are strictly governed right now and have no intention of making room for the flying car or cheap personal aircraft.

I will say that getting a cheap aircraft into the hands of the masses, will be key if it is ever to move in that direction. Licensing will be a force used to limit such personal aircraft growth, however

[- Commenter's typos left in in the quotation.]

Mauritia: Lost Continent beneath the Indian Ocean

Image Source: i09.

I09 reports that geologists have identified tiny bits of the lost continent of Mauritia, in a grain-by-grain analysis of the sand on Mauritius's beaches:

For ages now, Mauritia has been hiding. The small, precambrian continent once resided between Madagascar and India, before splitting off and disappearing beneath the ocean waves in a multi-million-year breakup spurred by tectonic rifts and a yawning sea-floor. But now, volcanic activity has driven remnants of the long-lost continent right through to the Earth's surface. After millions of years, and some incredible geologic sleuthing, it seems Mauritia has been found.

The news comes from a team of researchers led by University of Oslo geologist Bjørn Jamtveit. In the latest issue of Nature Geoscience Jamtveit and his colleagues present the result of a study that examined the beaches of Mauritius, a volcanic island off the coast of Madagascar ... . The lava sands of Mauritius are laced with very interesting particles called ... "zircon xenocrysts."

The vast majority of Mauritius's volcanic lava sands date to around 9 million years ago. But a grain-by-grain analysis revealed the sparsely distributed xenocrysts to be anywhere from 660 million to 1.97 billion years old. A strange find, to be sure, but Jamtveit and his colleagues have a compelling explanation for the anachronistic crystals.

The zircons, write the researchers, likely originated in fragments of ancient continental crust situated beneath Mauritius, and were in fact pushed up through to the planet's surface through volcanic activity. How far were they pushed? Geologist Trond Torsvik, first author on the paper, told the BBC he thinks pieces of long-lost Mauritia are likely situated 10km beneath the island and a chunk of the Indian Ocean. Analyses of Earth's gravitational field corroborate his claims, revealing several regions of the sea floor where the crust is significantly thicker than normal (around 30 kilometers thick, where it should be closer to 5 or 10). ... [A] 2-billion-year old zircon xenocryst on a beach covered in 9-million-year-old volcanic sands is a hell of a geological riddle, and right now, fragments of an ancient precambrian microcontinent, coaxed surfaceward particle-wise by volcanism, seem a rather compelling explanation. [Nature Geoscience via BBC]

 Image Source: i09 via BBC / T. Torsvik.

Wonders of the Millennial World 6: Canadian Astronauts are Cool

Image Source: Healing Ana.

And now for a space first. Someone had to do it: half the world has probably seen Commander Chris Hadfield doing a cover of the 1969 hit Space Oddity by David Bowie on 12 May on the International Space Station. For those of you who haven't seen him, the video is below the jump. My earlier post on Peter Schilling's related 1983 hit, Major Tom is here.

Unlike David Bowie's famous fictional astronaut, Hadfield landed safely in his Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan on 14 May 2013; from the LA Times: "During his sojourn on the station, Hadfield effectively reset the bar for social media with his tweets from space, including the video he posted Sunday. He is the first Canadian to command the station, heading the six-man Expedition 35 crew."

The Problem with Memory 8: Space Museums

"The collection of images included on EchoStar XVI may be easier for any extraterrestrial intelligences to find than the plaques and records flown on the Pioneer and Voyager missions." Image Source: Creative Time via Space Review.

Space, the final archive. Some may remember this post on the Voyager spacecraft time capsules. A commercial communications satellite, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 20 November 2012, continued the tradition and carried a collection of photographs and images of artwork designed to outlast humanity. Objects in geosynchronous orbit (aka the Clarke Belt, named for writer Arthur C. Clarke) could stay in space for over four billion years; the new satellite's payload is meant to survive for this duration, to offer a potential time capsule for alien intelligences to discover.

Generation X Goes Back to the Future 11: Ruins of Star Wars Movie Sets

Gen X photographer Ra di Martino tracked down the abandoned Star Wars sets near Tozeur, Tunisia using Google Earth, traveled there, and took a series of fascinating photos that show decades-old husks of Hollywood sci-fi orientalism. Taxi:

Eroded by 35 years of dust, sand and wind, these sites are known only by a few locals and are hardly ever visited by anyone—di Martino has managed to find them using pictures from Google Earth.

In addition to the set for Luke Skywalker’s home, the fictional Lars Homestead on Tatooine, the photographer has also located a number of other Star Wars sets, including the abandoned ruins of Mos Espa.

She has documented these sets for posterity with a couple of photographic projects—“No More Stars” and “Every World’s a Stage”.

From di Martino's site:

NO MORE STARS (Abandoned Movie Set, Star Wars) 33°59’42 N 7°51’00 E Chot El-Gharsa, Tunisia 01 September [2010]

This is a series of photographs taken in the abandoned movie sets of the film saga Star Wars, filmed through the years in different locations in the south of Tunisia. Unexpectedly those sets have been left on location, probably because in the middle of nowhere and because no-one from the local authorities complained and therefore after years some of it have now become ruins, almost as some sort strange archeological sites. The particular hot and dry climate has helped mantain intact many parts of the sets, or buried under the sand just sections of it. The sets visited are in four different locations.

All photos are © Ra di Martino. Images are from: PopSci, Taxi, and Ra di Martino's Website (here and here). See more below the jump.

The Disinformation Age

An Einstein misquotation shows how random sayings which fund the 'wisdom' of the Internet should be treated with caution. Image Source: Wiki.

Perhaps the Information Age should be called the Disinformation Age. For decades, celebrities have complained that the media twist their lives and words for the sake of sensational stories. Now, everyone and everything is subject to the same trend. And people compound it by being uncritical and unreflective about their sources of information as they plunge headlong into online discussions. Every day, information is traded anecdotally, with no account of its origins or original context. Take this quotation commonly attributed to Albert Einstein in the weirder corners of the Internet:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives.

It sounds like something that speaks right to us in our time, doesn't it? And that is because ... it does! Einstein never uttered this quotation; it is a paraphrase from a self-help book from the 1970s:

This supposed "quote" seems to be one of many fake quotes attributed to Einstein in which he supposedly says mystical or spiritual things which do not fit with what we know about his beliefs. There are variant forms of this "quote" on the internet, but the most common one found seems to derive from a book called Planetary Survival Manual: A Guide to Living in a World of Diminishing Resources by Matthew Stein (2000). Stein does not give a source for this "quote".

The origin seems to actually be Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness by Bob Samples (1976):

"Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind was a faithful servant. It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine." (p. 26)

Only the first part is what Samples claims is from Einstein, though he gives no source or citation and it fits with nothing that is recorded of Einstein's quotes. The second part is Samples' own observation. The two parts have been conflated into a "quote" of Einstein, when there is actually no evidence he said the first part and the second isn't even attributed to him in the original source.

This tendency of grabbing a famous name in order to legitimize unsourced information is dangerous. The trend is to accept unquestioningly an 'authority,' in order to question another authority, usually one in a recognized position of power. With mounting questions over the place of copyright in the free exchange of information, the need to preserve other lines of cultural provenance grows.

Establishing the truth about events has never been more critical. But the more important finding the truth becomes, the more inclined people are to believe untruths, masquerading as 'real truths.'

This is why it was such incredible folly for Forbes to advise against study in the Humanities. All of the Humanities fields deal with the proper understanding of cultural knowledge; even in the midst of theoretical deconstruction, they preserve a line of memory and verifiable awareness of the origins of ideas and creative expression. And because they have to express that line of provenance and defensible argument or practice, they also deal with language, expressed clearly, in a time when misstatements, misspellings, grammatical messes and misunderstandings of word meanings are common.

Interview: Colin Hall's Real Life X-File

In the past few years of blogging, I have seen some bizarre things on the Internet. Conspiracy theories have always been around, but since the turn of the Millennium, they have proliferated online to create a new kind of post-Postmodern folklore. Along with users' feverish circulation and misalignment of data, the Internet erodes the line between real and virtual, between fact and fiction.

Irrationalizations pose as quasi-rationalizations. The ideas which have sprung out of this mindset have become increasingly counter-intuitive and counter-factual: you have, to name a few, 9/11 truthers and associated chatter around Osama bin Laden's death and the purported deaths of the Navy SEAL team members who invaded his compound (this, despite the fact that the man who shot bin Laden was recently interviewed by Esquire); Illuminati New World Order fear mongers; and Bigfoot hunters. There are people who do not believe the moon landings took place, or that there are sinister reasons why we never went back to the moon (besides money and politics?). There are even people who seriously think that Queen Elizabeth II is descended from a race of lizard aliens!

In a way, what Web cultists fear is less important than the fact that their off-kilter belief systems foster new communities online. The Web turns social alienation on its head, so that the marginalized come together in interesting ways, as with the case of Preppers and computer hackers.

At the same time, we would be naive if we did not acknowledge that governments, corporations and practically every major organization have not appreciated the value of the Web for propagandistic, marketing and political purposes over the past fifteen years. The 'Web' might become just that: a tight knot of social control. Part of that control may stem from our willingness to believe the unverifiable, the fantastic, the strange - even though right now, weirder online beliefs are associated with anti-establishment attitudes.

Most outlandish Web myths are just surreal popular entertainment. However, the more unsettling stories occupy grey areas and test our ability to verify fact and fiction.

Home Invasions: The Millennial Crime

Image Source: Tactical Life.

Today's post concerns a very post-Postmodern crime: the home invasion. Like the new, terrifying criminal who is a baffling, brutal and unstoppable force of nature in the Coen Brothers' 2007 film, No Country for Old Men, home invasion crosses lines which criminals of the past would not cross. Home invasion is a new type of ferocious act, committed by a new breed of criminal. It terrifies because it comes rampaging right to the last stronghold of security in a frightening world: the private dwelling, the final sanctum. This is a crime which shatters an already atomized order.

Image Source: Winnipeg Police Services.

Responses to this crime, like other unimaginable violations such as 2012's school or cinema shootings or the 2012 gang rape case in India, are politicized. But are the answers to a widening gap between the rich and the poor, tech-driven brutality, and an increase in savage crime simply political? Questions about these issues, surely, come from problems that are beyond politics.

Who Can Stand and Dare to Dream?

I Dreamed of a Crocodile by Eyes-of-Sol. Image Source: Redbubble.

Check out this teaser for an epic fantasy novel, by writer D. Caldarelli aka Lorronzo. His work touches on the need to weaken ego to cope with changing times:

Challenge of the Seasons by D. Caldarelli

For every season there is a trial, and for every trial a hardship. Many do not pass such times, but many others do. So what is the trick? Do we take like the rocks, both stubborn and strong, and fight the seasons one by one? Do we take to the wisdom of the trees who mould to every change? Or the vast expanses of the timeless rivers? All have survived the age of seasons and are masters in their own ways, but none have truly mastered the might of the seasons. With time even the largest of rocks can crumble and break. A single tongue of flame can consume entire forests. And a dry age can devour the largest of rivers. So what hope do we mere specks of dust have to fight the struggle of the ever changing age of trials?

To survive the test of the seasons you must take to the wisdom of all the masters around you. You must unyielding, stubborn and strong like the rock. You must be wise and as adaptable as the tree. And you must flow as easy as the river. But more than this, you must adopt the greatest lesson life has to teach you, numbers. There is no I, only we. A rock that stands alone, as strong as it may be, will falter and chip away with time until it is but a grain. But together with the help of their brethren one rock can help to form a mountain, vast and immovable to stand against the test of time. Even the countless grains of sand that stand together can hold back the wrath of the thundering sea. A tree that stands alone falls alone to the harsh weather, but together they can form the greatest of forests, stretching as far as the eye can see, protecting each other in many ways. And though a single stream may thin and loose its way, when built with another a river can be forged. An alliance of power and might, standing against even the harshest of heats and strong enough to clear any obstacle that stands in its way. But it doesn't stop there. There are many masters in life that can teach us if we are willing to listen. My heart and ears are open, and my hand is held to you: my ally, my brethren, my friend.

-- © D. Caldarelli

"When Shadows hunt and nightmares scream, who can stand and dare to dream?" © D. Caldarelli

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