All they need are dilithium crystals and Starflee... I mean Air Force will be in business

Interesting science being reported in the San Francisco Chronicle: the U.S. Air Force is looking into harnessing antimatter for wartime use...

Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons

Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer

Monday, October 4, 2004

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.

The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction films and TV shows, whose heroes fly "antimatter-powered spaceships" and do battle with "antimatter guns."

But antimatter itself isn't fiction; it actually exists and has been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military uses -- for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one's hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft.

More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super weapons -- either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered nuclear weapons; the former wouldn't emit radioactive fallout. Another possibility is antimatter- powered "electromagnetic pulse" weapons that could fry an enemy's electric power grid and communications networks, leaving him literally in the dark and unable to operate his society and armed forces.

Following an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. Still, details on the program appear in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet prior to the ban.

These include an outline of a March 2004 speech by an Air Force official who, in effect, spilled the beans about the Air Force's high hopes for antimatter weapons. On March 24, Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) conference in Arlington, Va.

Ooh-boy... this can't possibly be a good thing. I mean, the scientists working on something like this are just as likely (more?) to blow themselves to Kingdom Come before any weapons even reach the battlefield! Mash here for the rest of the story.

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Rodney Dangerfield has passed away

Just now hitting the wires...


I don't care about the Vice-Presidential Debate anymore. I'm going to go to my bed and cry.

Godspeed, Rodney. You may have never known it, but you always had our respect.

EDIT 10/5/2004 09:12 PM EST: No comment necessary. From Rodney Dangerfield's official website. No notice of his passing yet but there is today's "Joke of the Day":

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Promise to vote and Michael Moore might give you clean underwear

Parse this as you will...

State GOP says Michael Moore illegally offered underwear in exchange for voting

October 5, 2004, 6:19 PM

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- The Michigan Republican Party is asking four county prosecutors to file charges against filmmaker Michael Moore, charging that he illegally offered underwear, noodles and snacks to college students in exchange for their promise to vote.

"We want everyone to participate in this year's election, but not because they were bribed or coerced by the likes of Michael Moore," said Greg McNeilly, executive director of the state Republican Party.

The GOP said it asked prosecutors in Wayne, Ingham, Antrim and Isabella counties to charge Moore with violating Michigan's election law. The law prohibits a person from contracting with another for something of value in exchange for agreeing to vote.

Moore, a native of Flint, is touring the country and imploring "slackers" who usually don't vote to head to the polls this year, saying they could make the difference in the presidential race.

Hit here for the rest.

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"Team America: World Police"... rudest movie ever? Kewl!!

Seems like only yesterday that "The Spirit of Christmas" was still just an underground video we were downloading in those pre-Kazaa college days. Before "South Park" was even a glint in the eyes of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The boys have come a long way since then and with "Team America: World Police" it's sounding like they're gonna cement themselves as THE premiere satirists of these United States.

In all honesty, I never "got" the whole "South Park" craze. It was vulgar, but it could also be very funny and pointed at things that needed some jabbing anyway. But when your religion professor walks into the classroom one day and screams "BEEFCAKE!!" well... it all seemed a little nutty. To this day a Cartman t-shirt has never seen the inside of my closet. But I do still have my Bart Simpson shirt circa 1990: now THERE was a rebel that a guy could emulate!

Anyhoo, Stone and Parker are still working on it before the October 15th release date but I've heard enough good things about "Team America: World Police" already that I'm planning to catch it opening day next weekend. Take a gander at the trailer here but what REALLY sold me is the review on Ain't It Cool News by Moriarty, one of the movie authorities that I most respect. He's echoing what everyone else is saying: that "Team America" might be the crudest, rudest, most disgusting and offensive movie in the history of anything! F'rinstance, how does this sound as the refrain of a song:

"The gays and the straights/The whites and the spades/Everyone... has AIDS!"

Make of that what you will (and remember this movie is from the same two guys who used the word "sh-t" one hundred and sixty-two times during one 22-minute long episode of "South Park"). But if they're offensive, Stone and Parker are at least equal-opportunity offenders and will put the screws to anyone - be they Democrat, Republican or dumb animal - for sake of the high-brow/low-bar laugh.

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Remember John Wayne Bobbit? Well...

...I never thought that a real-life story involving the penis could be any weirder. Leave it to our friends in Eastern Europe to prove us wrong. From IOL:

Dog has feast with owner's penis

October 04 2004 at 04:41PM

Bucharest - A elderly Romanian man mistook his penis for a chicken's neck, cut it off and his dog rushed up and ate it, the state Rompres news agency said on Monday.

It said 67 year-old Constantin Mocanu, from a village near the southeastern town of Galati, rushed out into his yard in his underwear to kill a noisy chicken keeping him awake at night.

"I confused it with the chicken's neck," Mocanu, who was admitted to the emergency hospital in Galati, was quoted as saying.

"I cut it... and the dog rushed and ate it."

Doctors said the man, who was brought in by an ambulance bleeding heavily, was now out of danger.

Look at the bright side: at least the chicken was spared.

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"Don't Vote"? Might as well...

An associate sends along this from Daily Kos:

Mysterious ad campaign: "DON'T VOTE"
by kos
Mon Oct 4th, 2004 at 06:15:45 GMT

This is weird.

A series of billboards around the Twin Cities that brazenly declare "DON'T VOTE" have angered civil rights activists.

Fifteen of the billboards have sprung up in Minneapolis, St. Paul and its suburbs in the last few days. Several are in areas with large minority populations, including the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis, leading the NAACP and other groups to criticize even the suggestion that citizens shouldn't exercise the right to vote [...]

The billboards are owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc. Lee Ann Muller, the company's general manager for outdoor advertising in Minnesota, wouldn't say who is paying for the billboards, but said it's a "teaser" campaign and its full meaning would become clear soon.

"I made the judgment call that the end of the campaign has value and a positive message, positive benefits for the community," Muller said.

Kos is tending to think it's either a liberal or a conservative plot. I'm wondering if it's either: it sounds more like a stunt to pitch something (although Clear Channel has said that it's not for a product). Maybe it's for a new t.v. show: THAT has certainly been done before. When the original miniseries V ran back in 1983 NBC hired guys to put up "Visitors are your friends" posters then a few days before broadcast spray-paint the blood-red "V" all over 'em. More recently the marketing guys for the X-Men movie got a mob waving anti-mutant signs outside the Today Show window. What I'm trying to say is, I seriously doubt this is a legitimate thing to discourage some people from voting. It's more likely than not a clever marketing scheme, nothing more.

Although if there has been any election where "Don't Vote" is not only a viable choice but an attractive one, this year's is it.

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WOO-HOO!!! NASA's monopoly broken! Private spaceflight begins TODAY!

368,000 feet straight to the bank. To the tune of $10 million.

A little while ago SpaceShipOne landed in Mojave, California. Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites has now won the Ansari X Prize, barely two months before the deadline. After more than forty years, manned spaceflight is no longer the sole province of major governments: anyone with a lil' creativity and the backing of a few investors can now soar past the atmosphere.

Congrats to Rutan and his entire team! They not only achieved all the goals of the Ansari X Prize, they also shattered the high-altitude record for an airplane. Now to break the next flight barrier: when individuals can hack out their own spaceships in their garages. Maybe this guy'll be the next pioneer.

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It's not called the ASS-imilator for nothing

Spent the past few days since Saturday morning out of town, which included spending part of the day yesterday at Paramount Carowinds on the NC/SC border near Charlotte. We rode just about all the big rides 'cept the Vortex (the very first looping coaster that I ever rode) because it started raining. There's one I WON'T be riding again anytime soon: the new Borg Assimilator. Sorta like the Superman coaster at Six Flags in Atlanta, but you tilt backward instead of forward. This thing is scary as hell. I think it almost gave Lisa's Dad a cardiac infarction. Probably the first time in over ten years that something of Star Trek seriously frightened me.

And at the encouraging good word of a friend that I highly trust, I have started reading a new book: Black by Ted Dekker. I started reading the first 2 chapters Saturday night and had to give up 'cuz of drowsiness... which didn't help that in those first two chapters I wound up with no idea what this is supposed to be about. Still, it's part 1 of a trilogy that someone said was much like The Matrix saga, so my curiosity is piqued. I'll post a review later.

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So how come Charles Manson doesn't get to be a Supreme Court Justice?

Antonin Scalia. Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Probably THE most powerful conservative-leaning jurist (along with Clarence Thomas) on the bench anywhere in America.

He said the following earlier this week while speaking at a forum at his alma mater, Harvard University:

"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged," Scalia said.

As noted by Vincent Bugliosi in his book Helter Skelter, encouraging orgies was one of the primary methods that Charles Manson used to re-program his disciples, even to the point that some of them would kill at his command. If I recall correctly, witness (and former Family member) Paul Watkins testified that Manson would get an orgy going and pass out LSD for everyone to use... except for Manson. He used a far less amount of acid so that he could maintain his faculties while controlling the orgy.

But I wouldn't really worry about Scalia's comments. At least, not until he starts playing the White Album over and over while claiming that the Beatles are sending him "vibes".

Mash here for more about Scalia at Harvard.

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"It's made out of PEOPLE!!"

So, earlier tonight AMC was showing Escape from New York.

Then the tube was dominated by the Presidential Debate.

And now, right this moment, Turner South is running something I never thought that network would even know existed: Soylent Green.

There's a pattern at work here, I'm sure of it...

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Kyle 'n Chris weigh in on the Presidential Deba... thing.

Oh geez... where to begin?

I logged into AOL Instant Messenger just before 9 p.m. EST and hooked up with my main man Kyle Williams, America's youngest political pundit and columnist with World Net Daily. He's also a really good friend and someone I can trust to lay out the truth, no matter how much I may not want to hear the truth sometimes. The kid's got wisdom beyond his ears. He's the coolest cat you can have in a virtual living room while playing armchair political analyst. We spent the better part of two hours doing a lot of play-by-play commentary on this thing.

Bottom line: Bush bombed. Bigtime.

There's no way this can be spun into anything good: a pile of doggy-doo is STILL going to be a pile of doggy-doo regardless of how many times someone claims that it's a gold nugget. Tonight's debacle makes Michael Dukakis look positively Churchillian. No one can ever again say that the '88 debates were the worst for any candidate ever. I mean... sheesh, if I didn't know any better I would have sworn that Jimmy Carter had all the eloquence of Saint Anthony of Padua.

Whenever a politician is talking on television, like giving a speech or doing a debate like tonight, I don't watch it. For the last hour and a half my back has been turned to the screen, so that I could only hear it. That's a conscientious choice that I make, because I want to hear the person out without the visual distractions. Try it sometime: whenever a political ad starts on the t.v., close your eyes or turn your back or whatever and don't look but only LISTEN to what's being said. When you do that, you realize that 99.99% of these guys... aren't saying a bloody substantive thing at all!! They have NO ideas, no grasp of reality, only soundbites and cheap shots.

So it was with tonight's debate: I wanted to listen to the arguments, and not be wooed by Bush's necktie or Kerry's hand gestures. Kyle watched it on his end, he told me some things about what was happening on-screen (like when Kerry laughed at Bush's joke, I couldn't see that). He also sent me some choice comments that the folks at Free Republic had to say: they ain't happy campers tonight, to put it mildly.

I thought that Bush sounded absolutely apoplectic. He was EXTREMELY flustered, even sounded perilously close to losing his temper a few times. I can't really remember anything that he said that weren't a variation of his usual soundbites and mottos.

Kerry was wildly different. Kerry SOUNDED presidential. He definitely came across as the more confident and assured of the two, despite Bush stating more than once that he was sure he would win re-election. Kerry seemed more of a gentleman in his countering Bush's policies. Bush was too defensive when he shouldn't have been, and too aggressive when a calmer tone was called for.

Truth be known... Bush sounded like a kid throwing a temper tantrum to an adult.

After it ended I asked Kyle what he thought about it. His reaction:

"Kerry won.

"Let me elaborate. Bush regularly talks about vision with optimism in his eye. This is how has captured the hopes of Americans. But tonight, he tried to force it. He talked about vision, but fumbled about. He didn't come across as confident and he didn't come across as peaceful. Kerry on the other hand, did better than usual. He had specifics and facts on his side, talking about vision, but more about reality."

Kyle's spot-on in his thinking, and at the risk of seeming biased I can't help but agree with him. I have never seen anything so lopsided in an election year in all my life. Somewhere in America tonight, Karl Rove is sweating bullets over this thing. There was nothing salvagable in this evening at all for the Bush camp, and they know it.

Bush has a little over one week to get his act together. He'd better hit the books and lay off the caffeine in the meantime.

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Pre-Presidential Debate Predictions

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

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One more sign that the end of the world is upon us...

Hurricanes raging.

Volcanoes erupting.

Earthquakes trembling.

Tornadoes blowing.

Conflicts escalating.

Resources depleting.

Cultures stagnating.

And now... this. What may be the surest indication yet that the Four Horsemen are mounting their saddles:

Kevin Smith may be running Star Wars after George Lucas.

I'm gonna go get good and liquored up now.

(Actually, Smith would probably do a pretty good job at it... but don't tell THAT to a lot of fans groaning at the prospect right now :-)

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Sound and Fury

Volcanologists (scientists who study volcanos including taking samples from their craters and there'd better be some danger pay involved) are casting all eyes on Mount St. Helens this week. Seven days ago strong tremors started coming from the mountain: as of this writing there are now about three a minute. There's also been a buildup of the lava dome, meaning that fresh magma is coming in from deep underground.

It now looks like there's a 70% chance - up from 30% a few days ago - that Mount St. Helens is going to have an eruption in the next few days. Scientists are saying that it will be "a small one" but what that means exactly, I'm not sure. You can bet the good people of Washington State are praying (and we along with them) that whatever happens won't be a repeat or worse of the May 18th, 1980 eruption (pictured above). That one blanketed hundreds of square miles of surrounding landscape with ash and debris, obliterated the nearby wildlife, and took the lives of 57 people with it. One of them was Harry Truman, the cantakerous octogenerian who lived with his 16 cats in a cabin on Spirit Lake, at the base of Mount St. Helens (and was NOT related to President Truman). Despite weeks of warnings, Truman refused to leave. He was quoted as saying...

"No one knows this mountain better than me. This god-damned mountain doesn't dare do anything to Harry."

A few days later Mount St. Helens erupted. Harry Truman and his 16 cats are now buried somewhere beneath thousands of tons of and ash - averaging 40 to 60 feet deep - at the base of the mountain.

Anyways, keep an eye on St. Helens the next few days: along with everything else happening up and down the West Coast, we may see some neat geological forces at work... provided we stay back a safe ways.

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From the people who brought you fugu, Godzilla and Pokemon...

Years ago for Christmas my sister gave me a cardboard stand-up of Princess Leia from Return Of The Jedi, wearing the infamous "metal bikini". It soon found a place of honor in my bedroom at our apartment. The "slave metal bikini" seems to be most fanboys' dream: I've a friend whose first glimpse of his future wife was when she was wearing one of these things (though he was in Stormtrooper armor at the time. And I heard this getup even made for an episode of Friends) but I never found it all that appealing or even attractive. The "simple, modest look" is what I've always gone for... though that didn't stop my college buddies from coming over to oggle at the carboard idol of their dreams standing next to my closet. Some even tried to buy it. I wouldn't sell because I love my sister and this thing represented her twisted sense of humor: "Now you get to wake up to a beautiful woman in the mornings!" she told me after I got it out of the box she'd wrapped it in.

Funny.

But NOT as funny as THIS thing. Leave it to the Japanese - those wonderful people who take EVERYTHING to the extreme - to come up with something like this. Now a single person doesn't just have to pretend waking up to someone... but can pretend SLEEPING with them too!




The Boyfriend's Arm Pillow! From Kameo Corporation, nestled away somewhere in Fukuoka Prefecture in the southern stretch of the Land of the Rising Sun. For $106 American a girl can have a contoured pillow with artificial man's arm (complete with pajama sleeve) to wrap around her as she sleeps. The Courier-Mail has an article about this lil' gimmick and the people that have come to appreciate it...

For Ms Suzuki, who is estranged from her husband, the pillow has definite advantages: It doesn't squirm or thrash in the night, and you know it'll be there in the morning.

"It keeps holding me all the way through," she said in her home outside of Tokyo. "I think this is great because this does not betray me."

Slam here for the rest of the story. A hundred-plus bucks for a pillow with an arm.. unbelievable. Then again, what else could we expect from a people who regularly spend two hundred bucks to devour narrow slices of a deadly neurotoxic pufferfish? Crazy I tells ya... which may explain why I want to visit there someday :-)

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Ready to wage war for a tank of juice?

An upstanding citizen "sticks it to the man" and gets some gas the old-fashioned way
The price of crude oil hit the $50 mark for the very first time yesterday, no doubt adding to the already outrageously incremental increase in the price of gasoline we've seen during the past few weeks. Average price in this neck of the woods is $1.80 but I guess we should be thankful: in some places around the country the average is already at $2.00 a gallon. Some speculate it could go as high as $3 or $4 if not worse.

As a result, I'm no longer driving as much: if I don't absolutely need to go out for it, I just don't go period. That's not a conservative or liberal choice: it simply makes good sense. It might be something to get used to if, as some legitimate sources are now saying, the point of "Peak Oil" (the midpoint between petroleum demand and supply, where supplies are calculated to diminish greatly per year as population and industries increase) has now been reached. If so, the ramifications are almost too scary to comprehend: the price of EVERYTHING - not just gasoline but raw materials like plastics, and substances like fertilizer and pharmeceuticals - is going to skyrocket. We might do well to all tighten our belts.

And yet, I don't want to incline my ear so much to the "doom and gloom" soothsayers just yet. There's a growing - albeit controversial - body of knowledge indicating that petroleum may not be the "non-renewable resource" that we've been told for so long that it is. That instead of being the product of organic decomposition over the course of millions of years, it might be the waste product of bacteria many miles below the surface of the Earth. If so, petroleum and its byproducts may be a replenishable resource. And in the past few years experiments with domestic waste products have proven that crude oil can be made from already available materials and technologies. All that's really needed to make it a viable alternative to traditional petroleum sources is an investment of time and money to further research, to bring it to the next level.

Unfortunately, I doubt that the big oil companies (and their friends in the government) are going to be so keen on making the jump to synthetic (and more cheaply available) alternatives. For the time being we are almost at their mercy, and I'm almost tempted to say that it's going to take some outright nasty things happening across the board to bring them to their senses and let people have a real choice as to their energy sources. Barring THAT happening... well, might be a good idea to start watching those "Mad Max" movies for the valuable information they carry on surviving in a post-oil apocalyptic wasteland...

You have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice.

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Jump to Lightspeed... Again! (but who'll be flying the ship?!)

Well, this is turning out to be an interesting morning. Right after posting that Mel Brooks is making "Spaceballs 2", this comes along...

My old stomping grounds at TheForce.net is today reporting that there will be a live-action Star Wars TV series beginning in the fall of 2006. You can bet the farm that this is gonna happen. For one thing, that had to be Josh Griffin posting the story (no one else can type "Awesome!" quite like he ;-) and being his colleague for two and a half years and friend for even longer, I can vouch that he's way more thorough on his sources than a CBS editor. Also, this has been coming out piecemeal for the past several months anyway: the "Clone Wars" microseries on Cartoon Network was a smash hit and George Lucas has been pretty adamant lately about not only not making any more Star Wars movies, but letting the story continue "in other ways" and with other people taking a shot at the saga.

Exactly who those people would be might be quite an item of discussion coming up. No doubt Lucas is going to be executive producer, if at least to make sure "his baby" doesn't stray too far off the path... but someone else is needed to nurture and guide the show's development so that Lucas can have a free hand to do his other film projects.

Someone is going to have to be trusted by Lucas himself to be only the second person ever to have complete control of Star Wars, answerable only to Lucas himself.

That someone had darn well better know the television industry.

That someone should also know how to manage a vast, multi-generational epic spanning thousands of years.

That someone should be able to relay that epic across a wide variety of mediums: not just television, but the ensuing books and videogames, etc.

That someone shouldn't be afraid to take risks, or "play it safe" to appease a demographic: good storytelling comes from conflict, and this person just might have a good track record on that.

That someone had better be a heckuva good writer.

For all of these reasons and more, finding the right person to take over Star Wars is going to be like finding a needle in a field of hay. But is there such a person?

Yes, there is, I find myself believing, especially in light of some interesting conjecture courtesy of CloneCleaner02 on TheForce.net's forums...

There is one... and only one... person who really comes to mind. One person who has worked most of the past 30 years in television and wound up creating one of the most original series ever put to that medium. One person whose writing is as prolific as Isaac Asimov's... coupled with an understanding of human nature on par with Orson Scott Card. One person who has spun a tale that began millions of years ago and ended one million in our future... but mostly concentrated on a mere five somewhere in between. And, it happens to be the person who has been dropping hints like mad that he's been tapped for an executive producer of a new network series "and while I don't usually do that on shows I don't create or develop, when I heard what this project was, I had to get on board." He later added that this new show had "nothing to do with any current series." Not long thereafter he wrote to his fans on Usenet that "Pending contractual negotiations and formal pickup by the networks involved, I've been offered two different series, so we'll see which goes first. They could both be very cool to work on, but one of them could be insanely successful. I should know more about this situation in late October." In his initial post he said that part of the contract was "work out how that will interface with the stuff that'll be going on later in the year, but fortunately the start date for the series should work out, at least at this point."

The "other stuff" could very well be a few novels, a play, and some television work. Not to mention writing "The Amazing Spider-Man" every month. Everything on the timing works out perfectly for a 2006 launch.

Could it be that Star Wars is about to be placed into the capable hands of J. Michael Straczynski? The same "JMS" who brought us "Babylon 5"?

The mind boggles at such a thing...

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