Thanks Stephen Hawking

You know, and I was just about to hang out with some aliens. But after reading this article, I'm starting to have second thoughts:

British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says aliens are out there, but it could be too dangerous for humans to interact with extraterrestrial life. Hawking claims in a new documentary that intelligent alien lifeforms almost certainly exist, but warns that communicating with them could be "too risky."

Damn! There go my plans for the weekend. This is sort of like someone telling you, "Hey, don't catch the flu." I'll see what I can do.

Personally, I don't believe that aliens exist, or at least not creatures with legs and eyes and such. To me it's one of those irrelevant questions. Say that aliens either do, or do not, exist. Am I supposed to do something different with my life? Sometimes I think our fear of "aliens" is really just our own sublimated fear of each other. I know most people find it hard to believe that humans are the only intelligent lifeforms in the entire universe, but I don't. And yes, JFK was assassinated by just some guy with a rifle. Sorry to be a party pooper.

The Future is Now (on CNN)!

So I was watching CNN's election coverage last night. Not sure if you've seen it but they've got the best technology over there in Atlanta. CNN has this 'magic board' they call it, which they unveiled earlier this year, where John King uses his fingers like a mouse to zoom in and out of a map of the U.S., showing us which states are voting for whom. It's like Google Maps to the 10th degree. Then last night they had this gigantic wall where it broke down the vote by demographic, and the host could just tap the needed demographic (say, 'hispanics making more than $100k') and voila! A pie chart would open up with all the needed info.

I'm watching this when my girlfriend comes in and I'm telling her 'Wow, CNN's got all this crazy technology, like holograms and shit. Well, not really holograms'. Oh, but I would be proven wrong within minutes.

We sit down on the couch together to watch the results roll in and then suddenly - POOF! We are transported to a magical future, of maybe it was a long long time ago in a far off galaxy. Why? Because there's Anderson Cooper, I kid you not, conducting an interview via hologram! Mother fuckin' hologram!!! Seriously, I couldn't believe it. He was actually interviewing Will.I.am from Black Eyed Peas (please don't ask) and there's Will standing next to Cooper with a strange purple glow around him, like total Star Wars style. I turned to my girlfriend and said something along the lines of "Uh, I was actually kidding about the hologram", or maybe it was something more like "Holy shit we've been transported to the future!"

Well, after some brief searching on the subject it turns out that it wasn't a true hologram. It was just being projected for the viewer, it didn't exist in real space on the set. Still, if you want your mind blown, or maybe it's just a good laugh, check out the interview here .

Towards a Spotless Mind

Selectively Deleting Memories - Technology Review

"Amping up a chemical in the mouse brain and then triggering the animal's recall can cause erasure of those, and only those, specific memories, according to research in the most recent issue of the journal Neuron."

So when can we expect an existential tunnel into John Malkovich's body?