I For One Welcome Our New Chinese Space Lords…

The Chinese say they’re building a propulsion system that could take a crew to Mars in 40 days with no fuel.

It’s called the electromagnetic drive, “emdrive” for short, and it’s the brainchild of British scientist Roger Shawyer (sorry, no link. Hmm,) who was laughed off the island and into the arms of Xi’an’s Northwestern Polytechnical Univeristy.

The theory is based off, as best I can tell, an electromagnetic wave being run through a canonical chamber to create thrust without fuel, simply electricity. I’m still trying to work it out myself, it’s all technical and therefore kind of a stretch for my layman’s understanding. Check it out for yourself.

So, cool theory, neat tech, you say. Here’s the kicker:

The possibilities are phenomenal: Instead of going out of service when they run out of fuel, satellites would have greatly extended endurance and be able to move around at will. (We wouldn’t have to shoot them down because of the risk from toxic fuel either.) Deep space probes could go further, faster –- and stop when they arrive. Shawyer calculates that a solar-powered Emdrive could take a manned mission to Mars in 41 days. Provided it works, of course.

To give you a bit of perspective, with current explosive fuel drives it would take humans nine months (270 days.) Of course the 41 days is probably a blue-sky figure factoring a favorable orbital proximity, but even so if he’s right that’s ridiculously short.

The implication: we could see the start of a new space race for redevelopment of this so-called Emdrive if it works. Apparently the Americans are involved at some level, according to Wired, but c’mon. Like the Chinese are really going to let us just walk in and have their blueprints.

It could be just another scientific crock, like when the Koreans said they cloned a person. Or it could be the most radical change in human travel since we started making mechanical engines. For one thing, if Shawyer can produce anything viable, even theory that could be independently reviewed and duplicated, why did the Brits let him loose long enough to get scooped by the Chinese? That’s, like, on the front page of the book Bad Things We Don’t Want To Happen. “CHAPTER ONE: Smart people – do not get to go China and sell all of our shit.” Also, our electromagnetic technology has reached a point where we can do pretty powerful shit with nanofibers…So why can’t they produce something really tiny with this theory? Like one of those Boy Scout derby cars you carve outta wood with one of these things attached to it. Fuck, even if you need an engine the size of a city to move a thimble with some buttons I’ll be dancing in the street. I know, I know, funding, whatever, but still…it’s fishy. Mighty fishy.

I’m willing to give them enough rope to hang themselves by, at least. If it’s true, I’m going to learn as much Mandarin as I can and sign up for the first colony ship. No, I don’t care that it’ll only be Chinese nationals and I’ll be 70. I’m gonna be a fucking Martian.

Vertical Farming, African Shantytowns and Social Movements

Another piece inspired by an io9 wire.

A couple of days ago I read a piece on some residents of Kibera, which is a Nairobi slum/shantytown, who took it upon themselves to clear a small dump and use the waste and garbage to start a farming project. The biological garbage was used as fertilizer, and PVC piping was used to drill seed-holes. The folks were helped out by an organization called Green Dreams, Ltd., an organic farming company in East Africa. I shared this stuff with social anthropologist Dr. Carolyn Nordstrom at a UT Knoxville lecture and she just loved the concept. Hopefully it’ll make it into a paper!

This all gave me an idea. For a while now I’ve been hearing about this new tech called Vertical Farming, which would allow hydroponic farms to be placed in dense urban environments, taking pressure off the highway-seaway supply line and lowering prices for produce.

So, my idea was this: vertical farming is a great concept, no doubt, but it needs capital to get started, capital that is not likely to be invested anytime soon. Why? Because of prevailing social and political attitudes.

One of the things I’m always struggling with in my ruminations is how to spark this kind of social change. After all, Margaret Mead once said “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

I was thinking, why not try something like the Kibera farms here in America and Canada? Think of how many vacant lots there are all across those two countries, in cities and rural towns alike, that could be utilized in the same way. Obviously the major hurdle for this is the fact that in a Nairobi shantytown the peasantry have so thoroughly reclaimed the land they essentially own it – nobody can tell them to leave or how to use it. Here in North America though we have large government mechanisms to mete out and inforce the ownership of land by private interest and the state. In a place like, say, the Bronx, even the scuzziest plot of undeveloped land is owned by someone and worth millions probably.

I say: fuck’m. If you are not going to properly take care of real estate property, than it should revert to neutral ownership. Get in there, start a community farming project. The cops or whoever may come and knock it down, but dammit you’ve got to get back in there and just start it up again. And again. And again and again. Spread the word across your city, across your state, across your nation.

I can see it having one of two effects, maybe both: one is that it’ll spark a widespread move to this kind of behavior and eventual cultural adaptation – after a couple of years/decades it’ll just become normal to pitch into your neighborhood farm. The other is that it could lead to a larger push for Vertical Farming research and implimentation. Either way, it’s something to try and ween this continent off the huge supply lines that currently sustain it, at least when it comes to food.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Brutestag

On io9 tonight there was a hilarious post entitled Best Future Dystopias Where The Liberals Have Won. Funny stuff. It touched on the old classics, Brave New World and Harrison Bergenon. There were also a few weird curveballs too, like Idiocracy, which lead me to believe the list was mostly an excuse to run off another set of dystopias with political/social themes.

There was one that I looked into that blew me the fuck away. It was a book called Fair New World by Lou Tafler (pseudonym of Dr. Lou Marinoff.)

The book, from the description on Tafler’s site, purports to be a satire on politcal correctness and…well, read for yourself:

Fair New World is a political and sexual satire, set in the year 2084. As its title and date imply, it plays changes on both Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Through a series of revealing vignettes, Fair New World portrays three fictitious polities: two dystopias, called Feminania and Bruteland, and a utopia called Melior.

I mean, already we’re in choppy waters when somebody feels they need to decry “politcal correctness”, which is at least fifty percent of the time a smear used by jerks to try and discredit anybody who might have the temirity to be civil. But names like Feminania? Bruteland? Now I’m scared.

Things don’t get better. The teaser goes on to describe each country as run by “militant sexist cows” and “male chauvinist swine,” respectively Oh boy. Now we’re having some real fun.

In the literature available we’re treated to Feminania’s Gequapo (who are of course the Gender Equality Police) with their terrifying Brown Skirts – because we all know that when the fairer sex rises up to throw off the shackles of Men with their Evil Penises of Death, they will totally run around in skirts – and the Feminniny Party’s “shocking biological experiments,” which I’m guessing involve some combination of enemas, industrial milkers and spanking machines.

And then there’s Bruteland, because hey, it’s not like this is some rag against women, and we all know if you present men in awful awful lighting it’ll totally throw the scent off that mysoginy trail. Bruteland gives us such gems as “High Brutish” – a form of pig latin – and my personal favorite bit from the whole deal, the parliamentary body of the Brutestag.

Holy fuckin’ asscrackers.

Now, I haven’t read the book, though I’m thinking about it. I’ll admit my opinion is already kinda skewed in particular direction, especially by the implication that the only thing that  can save us from Onedimensionalcaricatureland is Randian Objectivism (*hurk*, sorry I just threw up in my mouth a little), that’s not what really bothers me.

Patton Oswalt did a bit last year on selling scripts that I love, and now identify with more than ever.

I see it like this: you can spew a lot of crap and get away with it if you’re funny. Look at Bill Maher. He’s a fuck. But he’s a clever, funny fuck, so we give him a little leeway. This guy, though…this guy not only bandies about misusing and abusing philosophy (under the pharsing “philosophical counseling”), but also wrote what seems like a terribly unfunny, unclever book…

And they published it! They publish him! Holy freakin’ jumped up Religious Deity Figure on a funny mode of locomotion!

Tomorrow I am going to open up my laptop and I am going to churn out as much of the Chronicles of Weyard as I can. I’m going to read the ever-loving shit out of The Classical Utilitarians.

Because like Death Bed, this Lou Marinoff guy exists for only two reasons: one is to give me something funny to rant about (seriously, the Feminniny Party?) The other is to drive us on to do something truly great.

I’ll be damned if I let this guy get one up on me.

(Honestly, he called their god “Odgay”! COME ON!)