cevans
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"We are one planet. We know who speaks for the nations, but who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?"
-- Carl Sagan
Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with my tenderness for the Unarians, a UFO cult-cum-Renaissance science foundation that has been based in El Cajon, California since the 1960s. In 2006 I made something of a pilgrimage to their compound and left with a profound sense of mystified pity…
I once said that 2007 on Universe would include many new features, one being an occasional review of a work of science fiction. Hello!
The Black Cloud is a 1957 science-fiction novel written by British astronomer Fred Hoyle. Like the novels of Carl Sagan, and, often, Arthur C. Clarke, it's…
Few things get me as riled up as the human being's lack of perspective: about our place in the "grand scheme of things," about our longevity, or about the kinds of impact -- damaging and otherwise -- that we have on our planet. We seem terrified of massive perspectival shifts, threatened by our own…
Every year, a few people decide to have their bodies frozen after death, in the hopes that the future will cure all that ails them. It's called cryonic preservation. You forgot it existed, right? So did I, but like all interesting things, cryonics is something that continues to exist, completely…
Occasionally, a friend or associate tips me off to a particularly interesting manifestation of the word "Universe." Some are more interesting than others; some are really in line with what this manifestation of Universe is all about, and those blow me away the most. This one -- all shadowy…
I never cease to wonder about the vast amount of futures we have in store. While there is only one past, albeit an eternally contested and subjective one, the future is manifold and unfuckwithable. Recent pulpy science fiction binges and forays into blockbuster cinematic media have proven this…
I've been thinking a lot about über-couple Charles and Ray Eames recently; those of you who attended last week's Urho Talks will know the territory I'm about to shlep into.
If you don't know, Charles and Ray were designers, architects and filmmakers who are responsible for many classic, iconic…
I've been working, somewhat shambolically I must admit, on organizing a first-ever, hopefully-inaugural Urban Honking lecture and reading event. This is something I have been wanting to do ever since I gave a Universe Power Point (on Unarius) at the "Talk Talk Talk" night that the L.A. Historical…
Based on the theory of General Relativity, Albert Einstein knew that a man hurtling through the emptiness of space wouldn't be able to detect whether or not he was falling; he called this "a happy idea.â Of course, not enough people are experienced in the field of free-fall space-floating to…
Of course, you've already heard.
A team of European astronomers have discovered a planet five times as massive as the Earth orbiting a distant, dim red star known as Gliese 581. I've already started lamenting the proto-future, the first contact with extraterrestrial life, that I imagine my…
1. Because I love to share my human and technological developments with you, readers, I proudly present, in the unabashed tradition of the Uniarian Brotherhood (incidentally, my latest Unarius E-Flash informs me that they've digitally remastered "Infinite Perspectus"), my Very First Flash Animation…
James Gardner is part of a new breed of complexity theorists: an armchair philosopher that goes beyond the epistemological, who posits broad, celebratory theories about the nature of the future of the universe. His first book, Biocosm, proposed the "Selfish Biocosm" hypothesis, which suggests that…
Welcome to the second in an ongoing series of Interviews with authors of Science Fiction. I'm lucky to have had a chance, recently, to review Portland local Thomas A. Day's A Grey Moon Over China, a totally postapocalyptic epic that takes the ongoing cultural fear of an energy crisis to a…
Here's a beautifully esoteric piece of math news: a team of mathematicians has meticulously explored and completely mapped a hitherto-unknown 248-dimensional structure, called E8. The E8 is an example of a Lie Group, which represent the best developed theory of continuous symmetry of mathematical…
Followers of this web-rag know well that Universe was once a bi-weekly print column in the now-defunct LA Alternative. The intertextuality of it all -- blog, paper, and the interactions between the both -- was a lot of fun, brought readers in from all over, and smeared Web 2.0 all over the place.…
Did you know that the geodesic dome is the only man-made structure (apart from, maybe, a "spirit vibe") that gets proportionally stronger as it increases in size? Truth: of all known structures made out of linear elements, a geodesic dome has the highest enclosed volume to weight ratio. It is no…
The French have a Internet neologism that I particularly like, "Internautes," which of course is a sort of digital traveler, an Astronaut of the web. If any word is more fitting for this blog's readership, I don't what it is.
Welcome, Internauts, to this new version of Universe. We were long…
Following the runaway success of the first Universe podcast, I have decided to make this -- so to speak -- a running thing. This one is less "vibes" and more "ambiance," and includes some human voices reading texts, so if that kind of thing upsets you, steer clear.
Some highlights, which might…
The most recent issue of Cabinet Magazine has a really good article by artist and CIA expert Trevor Paglen about the iconography of military insignia, particularly of those branches of the military that "don't exist." How do you celebrate your work with traditional military regalia, Paglen asks,…
If we're going to make it in this future of ours, we've got to stop thinking that our planet hangs in some kind of splendid isolation in the dead vapor of empty space. We're part and parcel of a dynamic system, a vast cosmos of activity and, probably, intelligence; though our home planet's life…
Three incredible, little-known things about the Apollo 11 mission:
1. Although everyone knows what Neil Armstrong said as he hopped out of the landing module, I've always preferred Buzz Aldrin's elegiac phrase, "Beautiful. Beautiful. Magnificent desolation." This leads me to the next point.
2.…
Psychic Phenomena on Vimeo
I've been spending a lot of time lately with a late-70's interview with Buckminster Fuller, conducted at the end-range of his life and career by a really inspiring Los Angeles public-access television figure called Damien Simpson, who apparently died shortly after the…
NOBODY.
Yes, you read that correctly. Of the 57 entries submitted to the inaugural Universe/TOMS contest, not a single one was completely correct. I feel partially responsible for this! Probably it was too hard!
Before I announce the compromise, let's reveal what the damn things were. The first…
The final day of the TOMS contest is upon us, and what a time it's been. I've had highlights (when Josh guessed "baleen"), low-lights; we've gotten a little press. There have been moments of great tension, too, as I wondered when and where the correct guess would appear. Although I can't reveal if…
Day two of the TOMS contest. Many good -- nay, great -- guesses have been made. According to the rules, I can't tell you if anyone has guessed correctly yet, but this will all be revealed in due time. Maybe these pictures, at a reduced magnification of 10x, might help.
Best of luck!
Urban Honking community, 2007 is the year of the co-brand, the year of the collaborative promotional effort. This is why Universe, the Urban Honking overlords, and (unwittingly) TOMS shoes are pooling together to present to you this shoe-giveaway contest! Why? Because we respect the mission of this…
Sometimes fractured energies in our planet's noosphere can throw people together who, logically, should never meet. There's no rational reason I should count among my friends the particularly reclusive, Cologne-based science fiction writer and critic Mark von Schlegell; but, lo, kismet, I do.…
Happy human holidays, readers. Like everyone else around this time of year, we here at Universe HQ have been spending our long winter nights by the hearth's side, our bifocals pushed far down our noses, all the better to look fondly back on the restless year that was 2006. What a stormy 12 months…
I've been thinking a lot about Explorers since my last post. Certainly exploration is intimate with extremism: extreme temperature, extreme height, extreme speed, extreme isolation. It is also a practice of firsts. After all, it matters little who the second man to climb Everest was or who made…