Ground Control to Major Tom

I'd like to break my week-long silence to share with you the super-special knowledge that, according to a highly reputable source, non-Earth lifeforms have indeed contacted the planet Earth.

And by "highly reputable" I mean NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell, record-holder for the longest moonwalk.

Now, granted, astronauts have a tendency to later devote themselves to careers as alcoholics and artists (and hey, same difference, right?). But still. I consider this to be totally reliable.

My mind is officially blown. For serial.

(Okay, posterity demands the following: I am fairly certain humans are not the only cognizant lifeforms in the universe. However, I am equally certain that given known technological mechanisms — or even edgily and fantastically theorized technological mechansims — it's probably just us. Suck, I know. Captain Picard for President, etc. etc.)

Humanity I Love You

A group of "electro-sensitive" people are taking action against Santa Fe to have WiFi banned in public buildings on the grounds that they are "allergic" to wireless signals. Their argument is that the WiFi banning should be included under Americans with Disabilities Act regulations. One of the plaintiffs asserts that cell and WiFi signals give him chest pains. (I'd see a doctor about that, but I guess the City Attorney works too.)

I'm actually very excited about this bold new legal initiative; I believe this lawsuit will pave the way for the action I plan to bring against the City of San Diego arguing that stupid people should be banned from public buildings on that grounds that I am allergic to them.

Shiny

Today I joined the legions of those whose televisions require not two but four letters to appropriately form their acronyms: HDTV. While the picture is sharper and the channels are more numerous, what I find myself most pleased with is the fact that I was able to hook the thing up to the new DVR cable box, the DVD player and the surround sound system myself.

I think it is also worthy of note that thanks to this new contraption, I have developed a sudden and I suspect intractable fear of sea turtles.

I've Changed My Mind about the Bosons

So regarding that whole god particle machine I was writing about — I would like to hereby issue a retraction regarding its coolness factor. Because apparently while the vaunted atom smasher might indeed open tiny little windows into brave new worlds thereby revolutionizing science and faith as we know it, it may instead give birth to a star-system-gobbling black hole. No joke. According to an article in the New York Times, critics (read: other people with PhD's in astrophysics) assert that the machine may well create a black whole that will instantly suck the Earth, all of its inhabitants, and possibly even Arthur Dent into it.

Um, hello, bad? Not only because I'd rather my skull not be condensed into the size of a nanobot, but also because if that doesn't happen, do you have any idea how many terrible faux-fi movies this will spawn? Seriously, deearthification might actually be preferable.

Retrieved a Nothing

In what I consider to be an unqualified success of a day, I spent the afternoon consuming, cover-to-cover, a full four of the 25 heretofore unread magazines decorating my coffee table. I read one each of Harper's, The Nation, NEA Today and California Educator.

Of the many excellent paragraphs I read today, the most fabulous by far was located in the "Findings" section of Harper's:

"A sex hormone was found in the drinking water of San Francisco, and anti-anxiety medications were found in the drinking water of Southern California. Prozac was revealed not to work, researchers demonstrated that placebos are more effective if the drugs for which they stand in are said to be more expensive, and a Scottish study determined that roughly half of a person's happiness is due to genetics. Physicists stored and retrieved a nothing."

Let There Be Bosons!

Scientists believe they are on the brink of discovering the intriguingly monikered "god particle" through a process of smashing atoms to bits with Mike Tyson's fists a very large machine. While the prospect of finally bringing to light what makes light, well, light, is indeed fascinating, I can't help but wonder if the millions of dollars allocated to the project might not have been better spent creating a machine that would bring to light socks that disappear in the dryer.

I'm just saying.

Gadgetastic

I have a new favorite toy — Google Reader! It's basically a ridiculously easy feed reader type thing with Googly goodness. Today I effectively smooshed The Huffington Post, Go Fug Yourself and my friends' blogs all into one gmail-inspired contraption.

Truly, internet, you are extremely diverting.

We're All Going to Die

A world renowned cancer researcher is in the process of publishing an extensive, independent, peer-reviewed study concluding that cell phones pose a greater public heath threat than cigarettes and asbestos. I guess it takes about a decade of consistent cell phone usage for brain tumors to begin to manifest. And I guess it's been about a decade now.

Yeah, so, we're all totally dead.

Shiny New Toy

What do you get for the political junkie who has everything? His or her very own delegate counter!

This awesome little device allows you to create an infinite number of presidential primary result scenarios in the remaining states, and shows exactly how many delegates would be allocated to each candidate under each circumstance. Want to know how many delegates Obama picks up if he wins Mississippi 55-45? He nets three. But what if he wins 70-30? Well then he nets 13.

Mix and match, presto chango, and you can play the same game Clinton's playing — the "there's no damn way to win unless we hold a caucus in Tijuana but shhhh don't tell anyone" game.

Seriously, though, it's an addictive little widget.

While you're at it, check out Newsweek reporter Jonathan Alter's column analyzing what the delegate counter shows. It's pretty compelling stuff. Not to give away the ending, but Clinton would have to win all twelve remaining states with a 62-38 margin to beat Obama in pledged delegates. Here's my official prediction: the day Clinton wins Mississippi 62-38 is the day Bush stops tap dancing on public television and signs the Kyoto protocol.

Fido Forever

I'm not anti-science. I like not dying of strep throat just as much as the next guy. I'm okay with sacrificing a stem cell or three if it means there might be another Back to the Future movie.

But cloning dogs? I think I've read one too many a Harlan Ellison story for this to sit quite right. Loathe though I am to even consider the thought of my beloved Charlotte ceasing to be, the notion of replacing her with... her makes me feel a shuddery kind of nauseous.

Star Wars

This just in: Spy satellite loaded with toxic fuel rushes towards Earth; likely to land in North America! U.S. President orders military to shoot plummeting satellite down from the sky before impact; warns other nations in attempt to avert accidental war!

This would make for a great Bruce Willis film. Just one problem — it's actually happening.

Spidey Senses Tingling

Someone somewhere sat down and thought, what is it that no one has that everyone really needs? And that someone invented the Spiderman Pumpkin Bomb Replica.

Creepy spandex suit not included.

The Panopticon

Social theorist Michel Foucault was fascinated by the idea of the panopticon, an architectural structure for a prison wherein the cells are pin-wheeled around a central watchtower thereby creating the perfect surveillance machine. The watchtower itself is covered by one-way glass, and any given cell at any given time may be under inspection by a prison guard; conversely, at any given time, most cells are under no surveillance at all. The panopticon represents the ultimate utilitarian design. Prisoners internalize the possibility of external regulation and so begin to regulate themselves; the possible prison guard without becomes the eternal prison guard within.

The crux of Foucault's description is this:

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.

This, of course, predated the invention of even more efficient tools of power such as video surveillance and high-powered online search engines, but the implications are even more relevant in the wake of so pervasive a technology. For isn't that the ultimate outcome of new technologies that allow infinite, public access to all information — that we become caught up in a power situation of which we are ourselves the bearers? This is truly a boon for our elected hall monitors. We don't need to be regulated if we regulate ourselves, which is precisely what we begin to do if we may at any moment be the subject of intense external scrutiny. Admit it. You've googled yourself.

To better regulate myself, I have installed Google gadgets on my desktop, allowing me to surveil myself more thoroughly than ever before. Plus, it has a neat Magic 8-Ball feature.

I am such a tool. (Of power.)

Motherless Invention

I love gadgets. I do. Give me a remote control that doubles as a flashlight, checks my email and does the Time Warp and I'm a happy camper.

But air conditioned shoes?

Birds Ate My Face

For years now I've been trying to talk my dentist into foregoing the novocain when she does her slice and dice thing. I've gotten her to switch over to carbocain, which she tells me is a weaker cousin of novocain used on heart patients and doesn't last as long. I've talked her down to half a dose of that, and then today when she did her drill and fill magic, I got her to cut it down to a third. The numbness wore off about halfway through, and it hurt like a mother. I was pretty stoked, actually.

This is not because I enjoy feeling like tiny gnomes are chiseling my teeth away from the inside out. I'm as averse to pain as the next person (and according to my husband, who has born witness more than one post toe-stub meltdown, more so). But the whole numb thing is, in my apparently freakish opinion, monumentally worse. It's like my skin has been replaced by teflon. Like bullets would bounce off of my face. Like I'm being prepped by a serial killer for a slow-moving meat grinder.

Suffice to say, I'll take the excruciating pain any day. Really. I just meditate. It's fine.

So you can imagine my utter and complete horror when I saw this: First Face Transplant Patient Makes Progress. The level of ick is compounded by the fact that her face was chewed off by her pet labrador while she was overdosing. There are literally no words sufficient to portray the extent of my revulsion.

Except, possibly, ew.