Speculations About Kepler-22b

Could it have aliens? And what would they be like?
NASA has discovered the most Earth-like planet found to date, some 600 light-years away. Kepler-22b is two and a half times larger than Earth, and orbits a star very much like our own sun. It has an average temperature of 72 degrees, warmer than that of our own planet's, which is about 60 degrees.
 
Kepler-22b was spotted by the Kepler space telescope, which is not able to tell us whether or not the planet has an atmosphere, or what the planet's mass might be. It is a slight red flag that Kepler-22b is twice the size of Earth. This means that it may turn out to be a gas giant, a planet like Neptune or Jupiter with a small rocky core surrounded by gases. But in the best-case scenario, it could turn out to be a high-gravity ocean planet.

 
(One interesting consequence of having spotted Kepler-22b is that SETI is back, because the U.S. Air Force is paying to have it scan Kepler-22b for aliens! The University of California had to cut SETI's funding earlier this year, due to budgetary problems. But in the wake of donations from an online fundraiser as well as a significant grant from the US Air Force, SETI is back up and running. And thanks to the Kepler project, SETI now has some solid targets for study.)
 
From a strictly science-fiction-y perspective, Kepler-22b is probably too far away to visit, barring the existence of a significantly faster-than-light drive. Its distance means that even if you could travel at the speed of light, you would reach the planet in 600 years. Double the speed of light, and you're talking 300 years. 
 
This is within potential range of a Generation Ship, of course: a ship whose centuries-long destiny is to travel to a new planet. A ship that could travel at twice the speed of light would reach Kepler-22b within 100 generations, roughly the difference between us and the first working steam engine.
 
As for the residents of Kepler-22b, assuming it is an ocean planet with a high gravity, they might not be too different from the middle range of Earth's ocean life. Friction is a much more meaningful force than gravity, for life forms which have the advantage of the buoyancy of water. 
 
Anthropologically speaking, it has largely been assumed that a technological culture is unlikely to develop from an aquatic species. The environment isn't as rich in tools or varied in challenges as a terrestrial environment, and it lacks permanence. It's hard to develop stone age technology if you have nowhere to put your stones when you aren't using them.

New Exhibition Details The Exploitation of Human Zoos

Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage, reveals the lives behind the sideshow attractions and human exhibits.

The Quai Branly Museum in Paris, France, a museum opened by Jacques Chirac dedicated to once-colonized cultures, has now come full-circle. Last week, a brand new gallery entitled Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage opened, detailing the degrading practice of exploitation of colonial cultures for entertainment. The gallery traces the lives of 35,000 individuals that were displayed as freaks, novelties and savages in various sideshows, museums, and zoos around the world. Illustrating the divide between science and voyeurism, the museum highlights a phenomenon in our society that has perpetuated as long as there has been a society.

In 1906 a Mbuti pygmy (pictured above) from the Congo was put on display in the New York Bronx Zoo. The pygmy, Ota Benga, was a petite man with a kind face and, a particular trademark of his “character”, a mouth full of sharpened teeth. Ota Benga had been promised repatriation to his native country but, having proven such a popular attraction, was denied. As a result he committed suicide. Ota Benga is just one example of the people behind the stories that these museums created around their displays.

Former French football start Lilian Thurman is the curator of this new gallery, using the stories of these people to campaign against racism and intolerance. Furthermore, Thurman has his own connection to this type of human degradation. His World Cup team-mate Christian Karembeu’s great grand-parents were brought to Paris from New Caledonia as ambassadors. However, upon arriving they were placed in a cage and displayed in Paris and in Germany as “cannibals”.

These kinds of displays, human zoos, “living” museums, circuses and mock villages were highly popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The novelty appealed to people’s innate tendency toward voyeurism, while curators often used them for highly politicized purposes. Some justified imperial colonialism by displaying the very “savages” that the nations were attempting to civilize. Others, toward the end of the 19th century, used these kinds of displays to promote a kind of racial hierarchy, branding the “specimens” as lower on the path of human evolution and justifying a host of discriminatory practices, from Christian missions to eugenics.

Although the practice waned in the latter half of the 20th century, the last known showing of a “human spectacle” was of Congolese tribesmen in Belgium in 1958. With the advent of cinema and television, and a change in social attitude, society’s need for voyeuristic entertainment seems to be largely satisfied by actual performers. However, reality television has given rise to an entirely new form of human spectacle: people willing to place themselves on a viewing stage (in this case, on camera) in exchange for a degree of fame and popularity. The question remains, with shows like Real Housewives and Celebrity Rehab, we somehow have turned the tables on human exploitation. The “freaks” are now the rich and famous, while colonial cultures in some parts of the world pick up Toddlers and Tiaras on satellite TV.

What Is A Window Area?

And Why?

If you had a huge situation map like in one of those cop dramas, and you used it to map all of the weird phenomena that get reported from time to time, you would find that a lot of the dots were clustered in a few “high strangeness areas,” also known as “window areas”- the Bridgewater Triangle, the Burlington Triangle and others.

 

A lot of people have presented a lot of different explanations for window areas, but here's the problem. It isn't just that one or two phenomena cluster in a particular place, it's that all manner of weird phenomena cluster in the same places. The Bridgewater Triangle, for instance, gets more than its share of cattle mutilations, UFO sightings, black helicopters, Satanic cults, phantom hitch-hikers, thunderbirds and giant black snakes.

Why would UFOs, Bigfeet, Satanists, and giant black snakes all be interested in this one little area south of Boston? None of the standard explanations really seem to make a lot of sense. So here (in the spirit of Charles Fort) is what I propose:

 

Window areas are not really home to unusually large numbers of hairy hominids, nor are they especially attractive to alien visitors. They are simply “fey” places, places that are inherently weird and numinous. In these areas, things get really weird every now and then- weird in ways and on levels we can't even describe- and sometimes someone happens to be there to witness it. Because the human mind cannot directly represent this numinous strangeness, it translates it into whichever culturally appropriate mythological archetype springs up first in the unconscious mind of whoever happens to be there. To a medieval person, it might have been fairies. To a modern person, it could be UFOs instead.

 

This is the only explanation I can think of to account for window areas. Actually, I can think of other explanations but not interesting ones so I won't waste my time with them!

 

Weird Sounds from the Sky

Unfortunately it's impossible to rule out normal causes before we jump to UFOs or HAARP
Sky noises are one of those persistent topics that crop up around the world without any real answer. These noises are often low, loud roars or hums. The noise seems to come from everywhere, with no apparent single source. And the noises often have an oscillating quality reminiscent of a dubstep bass line.
 
These noises are clearly frightening to people who don't know what they are. But so far, the noises are just that - noises, and not precursors to some scarier phenomenon.

Explanations frequently range from "UFOs" to "HAARP experiments." The problem is that there are so many real, known explanations for noises that can seem to come out of the sky. And unfortunately with a sourceless noise like the ones that witnesses report, it can be very difficult to rule out any of the normal causes.
 
I live within the flight zone of a naval air station, and I am quite accustomed to the sound of various fighter jets flying in a variety of altitudes, times, and weather conditions. There are times when the jets can sound pretty weird. The sound often seems to come from nowhere, and can have a strange, broken quality to it. 
 
Think of aircraft noise as being the auditory equivalent of a boat's wake. If you're standing on the shore, you can't always tell that the waves you're seeing are from a wake. A boat may zoom past long before the wake reaches you, or it may get chopped up by the other waves in the water (equivalent to atmospheric disturbances).
 
In other cases, I suspect neighborhood pranksters with a big stereo. It wouldn't take much to cook up a few odd, loud noises, then broadcast them out your window to the neighborhood at large. In fact, some of the sky sounds closely resemble the testing CDs that people use to test the volume and frequency range of their car stereos. Put a booming car two blocks away and stick in one of those CDs and presto!
 
It may not even be the work of pranksters. It could just be kids doing what kids do, which is "weird stuff for no apparent reason."
 
Mining, drilling, and fracking operations can also cause sounds that resonate strangely for a long distance. Not to mention everyday phenomena like cars with tires that have a weird wear pattern, someone practicing oddball music with their garage band, distant thunder, rescue helicopters passing beyond visual range, and more.

Alien Skull Found in Peru?

Latest find comes from the same region as the Nazca Lines
An unusual archaeological find recently turned up in Peru. The remains were found near Cusco, a region in Peru which is famous in UFOlogy circles as being the home of the Nazca Lines. Peru seems to be a hot spot for UFO and alien activity, so perhaps it isn't so surprising that an alien's remains would turn up there!
 
The skull is almost the same length as the tiny body to which it is supposedly attached. It has a large, triangular shape, and very large eye sockets. It features a soft spot on the top, the fontanel, which is normally only present in very young children. But it also has molars which would only be found on an adult.

And to make it all more strange, it seems to belong to a child's skeleton, which is less than two feet tall.
 
The image being drawn here is of a small creature, about the size of a ten year-old child, with a tiny body, a gigantic head, and very large eyes. This certainly matches the description of the classic "grey" alien. In fact, it matches the description suspiciously well.
 
Birth deformities such as this are rare, but they do happen. The infamous "starchild" skeleton has been conclusively proven to be that of a child with a tragic birth defect. Assuming this skeleton is genuine (i.e. not actually made of plaster), this is almost certainly the case here.
 
Many people are pointing out that some Native American cultures practiced head binding, which deformed the skull in shocking and dramatic directions. (Some of the skulls look exactly like Homer Simpson's head, I kid you not.) But I don't think that is the case here. 
 
The skull clearly has a considerably greater volume than a normal human skull. It isn't just misshapen, it's colossally oversized. And I don't see how you could deform the eye sockets so dramatically, while still keeping their shape. The eye sockets are also deformed vertically, as you would expect from cranial swelling. For a real alien skull, I would expect to see the eye sockets tilted diagonally, in order to give that big "cat's eye" effect to the almond eyes.
 
The Cusco region isn't just rich in UFO lore - it's also rich in uranium. I'm afraid it's a lot more likely that local uranium deposits resulted in an unusual birth defect than it is that someone has uncovered a genuine alien skeleton.
 
Besides, why would an alien skeleton look so darned human, with molars and ribs and a recognizably human pattern of skull sutures, and everything else? 

The Mall Won't Spy On Your Cell Phone - For Now

They will in the future, though.

 

As every good paranoid conspiracy theorist knows, every cell phone is constantly sending out a location signal. For the owner of the phone, this signal allows you to make calls, because it lets your cell phone constantly attach itself to whichever cell phone tower is closest to hand. But for those with the right equipment, this signal allows your location to be pinpointed with an increasingly high degree of accuracy.
 
In most science fiction dystopia movies, this would be a set-up for a story about a totalitarian government controlling its populace with jackbooted thugs. But in our world, the real world, it's a set-up for the mall trying to sell you more stuff. 
 
I'm honestly not sure whether to laugh or cry. 

 
Recently a company called Forest City announced plans to track their customers using the cell phones in their pockets. The mall wants to track your location and movements, so that they know how best to make you buy things. After all, you can't control what you can't see and predict, and being able to pinpoint everyone's location gives the mall an incredible amount of data to crunch.
 
Forest City owns two shopping malls, the Promenade Temecula in Temecula, CA and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, VA. Forest City contracted with a company called Path Intelligence to install the monitoring system and manage the data. And when the news hit the world, Forest City had the gall to act surprised that people might not want them to do this.
 
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer lead the push against Forest City. When he heard about the tracking plans, he contacted Forest City and held a press conference to air his concerns. He has also alerted the FTC, asking if this level of monitoring technology is (or should be) legal in the United States. Schumer insists that "Personal cell phones are just that - personal." 
 
(If you love your privacy, hug a Schumer today!)
 
Forest City and Path Intelligence have canceled their current plans to monitor shoppers in the month of December. However, they are only putting their plans on temporary hold, and will be moving forward with this surveillance in the future. 
 
Note: some cell phone models keep giving out this signal when the phone has been turned off. Law enforcement can also eavesdrop on you even when your phone is off, using your phone's built-in microphone. If you want true security and anonymity, I recommend removing the battery as well.
 

Do Plants Feel?

More than you might think - but not as much as some people claim

 

When I was a little kid I stumbled across a book that I read with wide-eyed credulity. It claimed that if you get a monitor that is sensitive enough, and you hook it up to a plant, that you can record the plant's reaction to such diverse activities as being watered, or boiling a pot of shrimp to death in the next room. 
 
This is an excellent example of the worst kind of bad science: it jumbles up truth with untruth, and you end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The truth lies somewhere in the middle ground, but mixing it up with bunk only discredits everything.

 
It turns out that plants do sense and feel and react to their environment in surprisingly animal-like ways. They do react with faint electrical impulses, chemical pathways, which can be invoked if you listen closely enough. An artist named Miya Masaoka created an art installation where she hooked up a bunch of plants to electrodes, and output the sound through a speaker. When you touch or brush the plant, it creates an electrical reaction, which allows you to play the plant like a musical instrument of sorts.
 
But plants can't psychically empathize with a pot of dying shrimp in the kitchen.
 
Part of the problem with relating to plants is that they don't live at the same speed that we do. (A very fine Star Trek Next Generation episode was built around this very idea.) Plants actually react to their environment more than some things we call "animals" do. Jellyfish, for example, are considered animals, but they seem to exert less volition than a group of trees. 
 
When threatened, a tree will push out a chemical warning to the other trees in its stand, warning them of the danger. This gives the other trees a chance to mount a chemical defense against the invader, and to tailor it to the threat. A tree will release certain chemicals in response to a fungal threat, and other chemicals in response to an insect invasion. And it will do so based on the word of a distant tree which is serving as the sentinel.
 
The Jains famously restrict their diet only to vegetable products that won't kill the mother plant. Onions and potatoes are out, because it kills the plant to harvest their roots. Apples and oranges are in, because the trees drop these without consequence. Maybe they are on to something!
 

Werewolves

The Folklore Kind

A werewolf is a man who turns into a furry half-wolf, half-man at the full moon after being bitten by another werewolf, right? According to Hollywood, yes. According to any traditional werewolf folklore, no.

 

In werewolf folklore, a werewolf can be one of a few things. An outlaw or warrior dressed in a wolf's skin, according to the ancient Saxons and Vikings. A serial killer showing “wolfish” qualities- medieval people often interpreted what we would call serial killers as being werewolves. A sorcerer capable of sending his spirit out of his body in the shape of a wolf. A witch who uses an herbal hallucinogenic ointment to induce visions of shapeshifting into wolf form. A sub-type of vampire, according to Eastern European lore. A type of ghoul, feeding on the corpses of the recently dead.

The concept of werewolves and shapeshifters in general is much more fluid and complex in the authentic folklore than it is in the fictional creations of novelists and screenwriters. It includes the idea of physical transformation (into a wolf, not a wolf-man), but it can also refer to possession by a wolf spirit, astral travel, lucid dreaming and psychological identification with the dark, ferocious “animal” aspects of the subconscious.

 

Being folklore, it does not distinguish clearly between these different categories, so that a mad bandit dressed in a wolf's skin is thought of as having “changed into” a wolf, as is a sorcerer or shaman in a trance state who we would say is “only dreaming” of being a wolf. If you want to understand the magical worldview of the ancient world, you have to understand this ambiguity.

 

CDC Offers Preparedness Tips For The Zombie Apocalypse

Not mentioned: FIREPOWER.

 

Over the last week as I awaited the traditional annual family doom that is Thanksgiving, I watched the first season of AMC's "The Walking Dead." (I thought it was pretty good stuff, although I wish it had better roles for women than "screaming and crying.")
 
The CDC plays a surprisingly big role in the series. First and most obviously because the CDC is America's primary line of defense against any contagious epidemic. Zombies of course are the pinnacle of contagious epidemics: an epidemic so contagious that it literally walks (or runs, or shambles) around and bites you! And second because the CDC is headquartered in the Atlanta area, which is where the show is set.

 
(Question: does the real CDC headquarters have an impassive voiced computer system which locks down and [spoiler alerts] in case of disaster? Somehow I doubt it. Oh and that reminds me, the CDC sure does stockpile a lot of wine, apparently!)
 
You may not think of the CDC as being a lighthearted government agency with a savvy sense of humor, but apparently you would be wrong, because they have a whole thing about how to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse. 
 
As with most apocalypses (apocalypii?) the same general preparedness rules apply. Stockpile one gallon of water per person per day, shelf-stable foods and canned goods, medications, sanitation and hygiene supplies, etc. The CDC recommends that you stockpile "several days" of supplies, which they judge would be enough to tide your family over until you can "locate a zombie-free refugee camp." 
 
The CDC's Zombie Preparedness article cheerfully points out that "you're a goner if a zombie bites you," which brings to mind one item that they do not have on their preparedness list: firearms. Guns are the primary line of defense against zombies. You have to take out a zombie with a head shot, and it is a lot safer to do it with a gun than to wait until the zombie gets within striking range for a baseball bat, hoe, pickaxe, maul, or other sharp implement.
 
Obviously the CDC isn't going to recommend that people stockpile guns and ammunition. It is after all a government agency. But if zombie movies and TV shows make one thing clear, it's that guns are the only thing that will stand between you and the shuffling, groaning horde.
 
(It makes me wonder when the NRA is going to put out THEIR version of a Zombie Preparedness Manual?)

The Myth of Holiday Suicides

The suicide rate actually peaks at late spring/early summer, not the holidays

 

The idea that there are more suicides over the holiday season is a belief which is as persistent as it is wrong. I think this is one of those beliefs that persists because we WANT it to be true, rather than because we actually think it is. Anyone who has had to drag themselves through a round of holiday shopping or sat through another tense family meal can find it a credible belief, right? 
 
(And of course, the idea of holiday suicide was cemented in Frank Capra's holiday classic, "It's A Wonderful Life.')
 
The truth is that suicide rates increase in the warm weather of summer. And not only do we not understand why, but this has been true for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. A sociologist named Emile Durkheim studied the rate of suicides in Europe in the 1800s and found that they peaked at the height of summer.

 
We often blame the "winter blues" for our belief that suicide increases. The additional darkness, combined with the dreary weather, can make it feel like this would be true. But Durkheim noted that winter is the time when we spend most time with other people (if not always by choice). And one of the leading predictors of suicide is the amount of time the victim spends with other people. The less social contact you have, the more likely you are to commit suicide. (We are social monkeys at heart.)
 
The belief that the stress of the holidays causes suicide is also somewhat due to a lack of understanding about the causes of suicide itself. When people say that "stress leads to suicide," they mean stressors like losing a job, the death of a spouse, divorce, the death of a child, being the victim of sexual abuse, and so forth. You can't really compare these situations to a stressor like "the grocery store was really busy" or "I don't like spending time with Aunt Fran."
 
However, no one is quite sure why suicides peak with the weather. It may be that hot weather makes people more irritable and inclined to fights. Or that nice weather draws people outside, away from each other.
 
That being said, the holidays certainly can be difficult. If you are having a rough time, or have been thinking about suicide lately, please reach out for help. You can speak to a friend, a family member, a therapist, or contact the National Suicide Hotline at 800-273-8255. 
 

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