Deep Space, Fire and Ice

Seems like Old Fermi and his Paradox are making the rounds again. But this time the extra-terrestials are waiting on us. And I hope they aren't expecting us to bring the beer.

According to Stephen Webb's new book, If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens… Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life it is the aliens who have come to the conclusion that it is natural, logical and right for other life forms to colonize deep space.


It would appear that everybody is waiting on someone else to make the first move.

And from the Crazy Occidents file we have this.

According to this story, the infamous Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru is smoldering off the coast of New Zealand. The apparent cause of the fire has (ironically) something to do with Whale Oil.

This particular vessel is a bit different then the whaling boats used by Norway and Greenland.

The 8,000 ton "research" vessel not only has a crew of 149 and water cannons for protection, it also has an on board meat processing plant to expedite the whole business of canning whale. It is usually accompanied by several smaller whaling ships of which it uploads their cargo.

This is not the first time that the Japanese Whaling industry has found itself the object of derision. In 1986 several years after the World put a moratoriaum on whale hunting, Japan resumed its ancient practice under the guise of Research.

Greenpeace and other Eco-Activist have repeatedly harassed the Japanese Whaling Industry going as far as ramming one of their ships a few years ago. The Esperanza, Greenpeace's reconfiged tug boat that is well known for shadowing the whaling vessels, received the Nisshin Maru distress call, but the admiral of the ship chose not to receive their help and instead unloaded its crew to one of the additonal whaling vessels traveling with the hunting fleet.

Now the Nisshin Maru smolders in the icy seas of the Antarctic, awaiting for to be swallowed by the mighty leviathan.

You may also remember the Nisshin Maru from Matthew Barney's tedious and lethargic crapterpiece Drawing Restraint no 9.

Incoming Manchu

I often hear the question, Hey Steven Vogeler, proprietor of this here SvenBlog, what makes you think you have what it takes to blog? And when I tell them that I, Steven Vogeler, proprietor of this here Svenblog only does it for the glory, they look at me as if I may have somehow shamelessly duped them into assisting me with obtaining data on how my blog shows up in search queries. And they may be right.

Remember how the Svenblog contingent was all ready to cancel their subscriptions to Asian Thumbs after China fragged their own Satellite? Well it seems the rest of the world has finally stopped applauding now that they realize all of their precious satellites are now in danger of colliding with some of that yellow tech debris speeding about in loopy orbits at speed upto 10,000 miles per hour.

Long gone are the days when space junk was little more than Monkey parts and the Norton Belt.Today that empty space is a wasteland of blindsiding projectiles. Every thing from Gemini 4 astronaut Edward Whites lost glove to the Vanguard I, launched in 1958 are careening about, destined for re-entry, the Mir or some poor cosmonaut's double wrapped meat sack.

And since we here at Steven Vogeler's Svenblog are big fans of all things cartographical, I now provide you with an approximate map of all the space junk orbiting this mortal coil.

And also for contrast, I give you this rather uncomplicated yet simple cartographical view of something a bit closer to home, Earth junk just doesn't do it justice one would think.


And finally I bring us around to that junk that really sends us for a loop the junk in our trunk that is our DNA. Watch this hypnotic video and forget about all the moon dust and paint flakes that behead future escapees and groove on the almost absolute density of the subject matter and the jabborwockian narration of the seemingly disembodied speaker.

Listen closely as I did and it sounds like some permutation of Latin, now long dead, yet still trying to communicate from deep within. A language not so much lost as absorbed. To consider how these ancient and microscopic systems demand new nomenclature is to consider new worlds, new life.

Amongst the phantasmic jargon and recombinant suffixes, the only verbs I recognized from the narration were secrete, diffuse, activate, trigger, cluster, immobilize, reorganize, migrate, insert.
Sounds like an average day on any scale.

Rubberbands to the future

Im so so sorry all you nano-fans , it has been a long time since I posted, so long in fact that according to this page, and thinking gestational, which we do here at svenblog, it has been 14,984 days give or take about ten days.


But I hear you and you are probably saying something like"- but what is up with the past and the future and the hey hey uh here and now, what with the comets and the dinosaurs and the comical yet insightful speculations to the demise of our brothers the Neanderthal"?


I won't lie, I wasn't eating sushi, and that got me thinking.

Well not really but here is what I got.

The Japanese seem exceedingly capable of not only finding ancient sea monsters, and catching them on film, yet cannot control physically catching them and thus killing them.

And now that I have your paleo-archeaolgical attention, it looks like that little man from the Flores islands (Homo floresiensis) is up for re-appropriation. He's probably shaken in his yet undiscovered reptilian boots after the shameful bitch slap that Pluto recently took when the Astro's from the planet naming commission downgraded his ass. Now ain't nobody gonna name their child Pluto

And at the other end of the scale is the fascinating concept of Horizontal Gene Transfer. HGT as the lab boys call it, is another spike in that identity crisis I suffer when it comes to contemplating the super-organism that is me.


Basically it is the concept that successful gene combos can cross species by inserting their DNA into another species' DNA by way of bacteria, thus uploading genetic sequences to be uniquely adopted and later grow more adapted.

Kinda like Avian Flu.