story time! story time!!! (face plant into carpet)

 

Gather round young ones for I will tell you a tale.

It has nothing to do with band camp no no… this is a story of old yet it so seems
to apply to modernity. Way back in oh 1999 (where many of you may have still
been in the upper levels of elementary school) times were simpler cigarettes
still killed you but cost a lot less and jeans were so big you could almost
literally fit a small village under each leg. Yes my young ones these were the
days and then the world went to hell… and sparkly vampires were found to be
actual reality. the end!

But that’s not the end now is it, otherwise this would be a horrible story. no no
this is the story of my highly interesting former roommate hanna and her summer
of mad science, I say mad because she was a little less than sane in all
reality. Hanna was fascinated with everything she didn’t know about and her
latest interest had fallen on this new think called biotech.

I am still unaware of what happened in those 8 hours I was slaving away out on
the flight line that day but when I came home she was raging about conspiracy of
the government to keep us all from knowing the simplest scientific knowledge. “They
are hording all the discoveries, giving them only to the rich I tell you. I bet
we would have a cure for everything if we just gave it to bill gates. One week!
That’s all it would take!” 

I’m sure you could imagine my concern for my personal safety at this point. 

This went on for about an hour before I informed her that I was going to lay down
and walked (ran) to my room locking the door behind me. When I woke hours later
hoping that it was a dream I discovered that it wasn’t that while I was
blissfully slumbering she had been busy researching and then shopping. Our living
room had been transformed into a makeshift laboratory, looking around with my
mouth hanging open I managed to stutter out that this is not ok… mostly because
I wanted to play video games for a while.

“Not ok!!! This is more than ok we are going to discover… crack codes! What if we
find the answer to the questions that scientist have been struggling to answer
for decades?” As she rambled on I did a hasty calculation of how long it would
take me to pack and move out of the apartment without her noticing; only
problem was that she did work down the hall from me. “what about the possibility
of the government busting in one of these days in the middle of one of your experiments
frau Frankenstein and taking our asses to prison? I don’t know about you but I really
don’t feel like going to jail because you believe you can save mankind with a
can of spam, a toothpick and well basically you’re not MacGyver.” 

She looked at me with some form of disbelief, like I had just put the cats paws in jello cups. After a moment of silence I sighed and said alright whats the plan. She laid out what she wanted to do, order DNA from a lab do the fun investigative stuff and I got to be the trusty side kick. Basically she called me robin. I couldn’t resist asking where she put my tights.

The days became weeks, weeks, months, into years deployments came and went and
before we knew it, it was June 2001. I was less optimistic than she who kept
saying science takes time; Rome wasn’t built in a day and all the other cliché things
that could fill the space. I was coming up on another deployment and excused
myself from her mad science for a few days and left a week later. In September before
I returned home I got an email from her saying she had done it but wouldn’t go
into detail and would tell me when I got home. Back in country on the 10th
waking on the 11th the next call I got from her was more panic than
anything else partially due to the events the rest with what she was going to
do “we have to get rid of this stuff”. 

She found a way in the next 24 hours and by the time I got home the living room
resembled a living space again; she had collected her notes and put them
somewhere safe. Less than a week later we were both gone, when I got back I told
her I was moving out and a couple weeks later we parted ways. About a year ago I
heard from her, she had moved south where people didn’t seem to care what you
did they minded their own business there but she was still very active in her
work and had gone to school for it. She had made quite a few advances too. We had
a good talk, before saying our goodbyes an hour or so later. And I haven’t
heard from her since.

And then buffy stalked edward.... the end.

well kats and kit’ns its that time again.

Another week another day spent daydreaming about how life could or should be…. Oh how we could go on for hours on this subject but that my darlings will be another post entirely for now lets talk of one of my favorite things….. sci-fi. No im not talking about the channel that has all the cool shows like BSG, being human and ghost hunters though in a way they are still relevant no im talking about science fiction, the stuff that has managed to cause havoc in society for decades (yes Mr.Wells im talking about you). And while sci-fi is amazing modern society has always seemed to have a fascination with magic and fantasy that seems to be stronger than its obsession with sci-fi… why is this?

Lets look at some of the big hits that have dominated theaters across the country harry potter, twilight, avatar (yes there is a little magic in this one as well ppl) if you take them at face value one could say there is little to no science in these films what so ever. But I disagree… honestly that’s part of the draw for all things magic the subtle insertion of science into the plot or story. sci-fi and fantasy are connected because the science aspect is so subtle that we can easily miss it if we aren’t looking for it.

Think of the old stories of merlin and the great times of old, when men were men and lizards were dragons…. And the witches oh the witches. But what do you always have in these and in fairy tales, that’s right potions, and what does that involve? Chemistry or alchemy whatever point is there is a combination of things that bubble and boil and go poof then suddenly you have david hasselhoff standing there.

But I digress

I cant say that fantasy is the literature of our age, while its great to daydream of a world where magic can fix your problems we have to remember that its science and the curiosity of what can be that has gotten us where we are today. Sci-fi is the reason that we have come of the greatest inventions of our time the possibility of other worlds, space travel, and yes living on the moon would we have these ideas if it were not for science better would be be actively trying to do most of them without it? Sci-fi is the continuation of all those fantasy daydreams that filled some of our youths in a way.

But I guess there is a little magic in science, because our imaginations allow it to be. One day we will bring the dinosaurs back, we will have our dragon’s then im sure. Genetically modified im sure but we will have them all the same.

 

 

Mork calling orson… come in orson…. you stole my jet pack punk!

Well ladies and gents young and old big and small, lets again take a look back into our past as they try to predict our future. And there are so many things to choose from thanks to the brilliant folks over at Popular Mechanics and this little work of fiction the wonderful future that never was… things that im pretty sure without this book would be forever forgotten to history and we would not have the fortune to ask one very important question….. What the hell were we thinking?!?!
From flying cars, to jet packs, extra light weight housing, cities covered by a massive dome to the skyscraper and faster automobiles one has to admit that our ancestors were definitely creative. So what goodies have I chosen to look at today im sure we are all dying to know. So class please open your text to chapter two, we will be looking at the following pages 54, 62, and 66 and yes there will be a pop quiz at the end of today lesson.

Yes im looking at two of our favorite things food and clothing. The predictions on pg. 54 are mostly focused on clothing made from everything including asbestos that can be cleaned by fire, aluminum that will provide added durability, and last but not least clothing made from petroleum as we will have so much of it available. Page 62 offers us the idea that our milk and butter will one day be made from kerosene and …AND! Will be served in either a pill or concentrated form. And finally pg. 66 brings an idea to combat the possible future food shortage of the future by creating synthetic foods from coal and fats from petroleum.

 

Now when we look at these wonderfully imaginative idea’s does anyone else sit and ask themselves if our ancestors were just a little bit suicidal. Now im not being negative or saying that these were bad ideas but I have a little issue with wearing and eating things that burn. I am also not saying that they were unaware of the use for these items to produce heat and fire, but I think the logic was a little off somewhere. But what these things do tell us is that they were looking for ways to make our lives that much easier, it would be fantastic not to have to wash clothing but to run it through the fire just as it would be to not have to slave over a hot stove/oven in order to put a meal on the table or churn butter (if anyone was still doing that).

 

But then again lets think about this are we not too doing the same thing? Looking for ways to make our lives that much easier…. I mean we still think its possible to live on other planets who’s to say that 100 years from now we might be looked at just as crazy for this thought or the constant push to go faster than ever before. However the one thing that we haven’t quite gotten (that other countries seem to) is the idea to build UP instead of out. We did have this idea once I think we called it New York but I really don’t know what happened after that. So in short in the past there were the excitement of possibility and now its more or less the recognition of it all… and the betterment of man in there somewhere. 

Here endeth the lesson (just because i kinda love Sean Connery)

 

No such thing as aliens, that was a weather balloon... a very oddly shaped weather balloon....

Well cats and kittens it’s that time again… what’s that you say? No it’s not time to go back to the future… well maybe it is. Looking at the displays from the ’39 world’s fair we are again reminded of a simpler time before modern horror films, before reality that the 9-5 was going to be the bane of your existence and no matter what you did you’re still stuck but hey you can always dream right? No this was a time when ‘merica still used its imagination, before we became a bitter world dominating society and strove to be the innovators in technology…. Yes, before the cold war paranoia.

But we can see the beginning of or the infant stages of American infatuation with science fiction in this great exhibition. The thought that by today we would all be living like the jetsons (before the concept of the jetsons was there) going to work in flying cars, having robots ding almost everything for us all to make our lives that much more simple in the end. But one thing that stuck out the most was the power of corporate America at the fair, take a gander around the fair complex the various little mini cities and you will find corporations that are still around today but the most interesting was in the transportation district... And surely a sign of where the country was heading. As you look at the layout map so you don’t get lost you see that the rail industry is represented, as well as the aviation industry but the main centerpiece were the big two Ford and Chevrolet. Right smack in the middle the largest venues in this space. And yes maybe this is because the automobile was taking new forms, getting bigger and better and going faster. Gone were the days of the model T and a max speed of 15 miles an hour, as president van buren one said of the rail system surely humans were not meant to travel as such speeds. But travel we did and faster we went until today we have the bullet train and cars capable of hitting over 200 miles an hour in seconds.

 

But this by no means is the only example I offer you dear reader, in the midst of this wonder land if you look ever so closely you will see almost a mini version of a united world. The UN on created on these fair grounds, many of the prominent countries and even some not so prominent each having a little building in the city, to represent or introduce even their culture their people. Signs of world unification when hostilities in Europe were raging under the Nazi regime here we could at least pretend there was some harmony.

Yes the fair gave us hope that one day we would be living in an easy society where life was easy travel took hours instead of days and clothing was made from something other than wool or cotton (like petroleum or some form of plastic based material that held up better than any natural material in use) we would always have a view of nature because our homes would be made from glass…. But then the concept of there still being nature to admire is one which I personally am highly jealous of as today we have paved over most of the natural beauty that surrounds us.  

At the same time that we are imagining this wonderful harmonious world we were also preparing for one which at any point in time we could be taken over and made into a slave race by those who were far more technologically advanced than we…. Yes my darling followers I am talking about the ever menacing space aliens. Which at the time we had no actual visual concept of what they could possibly look like just that they were most certainly evil.

 

Let’s look at Mr. Wells fantastic story of invasion, the one that caused such a panic… here we have to ask ourselves why this fictional story caused such uproar at the time. Yes it is well known that this was a time of fire side chats with Franklin instead of zoning out to the latest reality TV show but there was a warning.  And yet panic ensured people left their homes to stare at the sky to get a glimpse of the invader ships which never came… because they were not real. By failing to listen to the end they failed to realize that what they were hearing was nothing more than fiction. But yet I cannot fault them totally… as the broadcast was presented as just another regular radio program with music to be enjoyed and news interruptions when necessary.

Nothing in the program was fact as there was no scientific evidence to state that alien life existed, just simple speculation and a great imagination. I mean we could only really assume that the aliens have heat rays of death and can annihilate an entire town in seconds. But then from there let’s look where we went with it, because the idea of invasion didn’t just die off like a bad joke. We took it further until we have the television series V, movies like the cone heads and the alien series but also comedies like Doctor Who and Red Dwarf (thanks England) somehow we found humor, love, and of course fear in our thoughts of alien life even the realization that they could easily look just like us. And I think we are a little more comfortable with that thought than with the giant green monsters with huge eyes and no mouths.

But I’ll leave you with this, as you may have noticed this posting is littered with little lewd images of the future from French artist Jean-Marc Cote from 1900and his ideas of life in the year 2000. As we look at the whole series of work one realized that he really wasn’t that far off on some of his ideas. The one which sticks out most being the idea of video calling which we now know as Skype. So I leave you with those and a link to more of his visual delicacies and i also leave you with this 30 second re-enactent of war of the worlds.... performed by bunnies... That’s all for this week darlings as I have so much time and so little to do…

Wait.

 Strike that, reverse it.
 

Relevent link for this course

So i happened upon this link while searching for this weeks entertainment and thought it was rather relative for this current endeavor we are on in our class. Hope you enjoy it, ill follow up with my post for the week momentarily. covers the 1870's to the 1990's Paleo Future (original site) and also
the new new new site Paleo Future (Smithsonian Blog)

but enough about this sweety darling.

here is a picture of proper use of the Olympic torch according to Absolutely Fabulous

random side note regarding last weeks post

so when i originally posted the title  about doctor who i had not heard that the new season would have an episode involving dinosaurs (in fact this past weekend). needless to say i was thrilled

though i have to ask as i read over the post from last week is anyone else somewhat disappointed that they never rebuilt the crystal palace after the fire in 36? i have always been fascinated by the stories of the structure and wish it was still able to be seen today but then again i have a soft spot for thing of the 19th C especially the Victorians.... (mostly mens clothing styles though and no not in a steam punk way)

oh well thats enough rambling for one night have a good week i leave you with this brilliant it of graffiti art depicting the one and one the amazing Billie Holiday

I bet doctor who knows what the dinosaurs looked like

 

Then: 1850-1950 (ish)

Well kats and kitn’s lets have a talk about those oh so fabulous creatures we have come to know as dinosaurs, or as I like to think those things I am ever so grateful that were not inhabiting the earth at the same time as early man.

One has to try and think what the best way to tell this story would be as where this starts is a fantastic time of discovery especially when it comes to scientific advances. You see not only were we digging up Egypt and claiming all the little countries that “weren’t as advanced” (or as Eddie Izzard likes to say through a cunning use of flags) but also dinosaur bones had been discovered.

What to make of these giant….. things? There was nothing really new about them as bones had been being discovered for centuries but now we were starting to put them together (if scattered) and getting a picture of what was. As we look at the pictures of the representations offered at the crystal palace expo in 1854 we can see the transition away from dragons and into a possible reptile of some kind I mean the term dinosaur was less than 20 years old in terms of use to describe these things. So when it comes to making a visual representation of something that no one understands what do you do?

You make art.

And that’s pretty much the case of what Richard Owen did for the expo, he created an idea based on the bare minimum that was presented to him. But isn’t that how most artistic ideas begin a spark of creativity and free reign to just go with it. I mean its like the cysteine chapel or any religious rendition of biblical figures…. Basically we re-create what we know to be fact. So these creatures came to resemble those that remained in a seriously larger form (dogs, pigs, lizards, snakes, birds). Let’s not forget that that in this time period things advanced and realizations were made (like the originals were a little off) but it wasn’t until the later half of the 20^th century that we began to realize that the dinosaurs we had come to recognize as correct were also still off.

So knowing this why do we still continue to be awed by these things? because they are the originals that started it all.

 

Now: 1951-Present

Even looking at the paintings of Charles Knight we can see how the idea of what these things looked like was changing comparing his earlier portraits to those later in his life. From skin to height to color we were gaining new understandings as more and more information (fossils) were being discovered. The problem however was that sometimes these bones just happen to sorta kinda belong to the wrong creature. And so my fine feathered friends its pretty safe to say that what we grew up with (well more likely myself our instructor and anyone else born before 1985) was also more than likely inaccurate.

Thanks to technology as well as discoveries of fossils in lava or amber we are given a much more realistic glimpse as to what these creatures may have actually looked like. Some may have actually been feathered or covered in a short fur, others may have been smooth skinned. Dinosaurs are like the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box (if they even still do that) you just never know what it is.

We have come to have a love affair with these creatures even to the point of forcing our children to love them by making them toys, cartoons, and insisting that they go on the annual field trip to the museums. We have turned them from something that we know could easily kill us into something that could be a pet and sing us lullabies when we go to sleep. For me personally I have never really been a fan of them, sure they are great and historical but they are dead and while its great to rediscover them its not so great to try and bring them back to life. I don’t know about you but I really don’t want to be dinner or step in the mess one would make in the front yard.