Technophilia

THE IPHONE: A USER'S GUIDE

(courtesy of McSweeney's)

Congratulations on your purchase of the 8-gigabyte iPhone from Apple Inc.! For the first time, you will be able to engage in all the varieties of human interaction through a single device. Please consult the table of contents below for an in-depth look at your iPhone experience.

I. Introduction

II. Turning on the iPhone

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IX. Using the iPhone to solve disputes between Moqtada al-Sadr and certain Sunni elements within Iraq without causing an escalation of hostilities, or the development of closer ties between Iran and Shiite militias

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XIII. Using the iPhone to take pictures of celebrities without underpants

XIV. Using the iPhone to become governor of an oil-rich former Soviet republic where the temperature often drops to 76 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), and then buy an English Premier League soccer team

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XIX. Using the iPhone to learn whether Ehud Barak ever considered adopting Barack Obama and changing the Illinois junior senator's name to Barack Barak

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XXIV. How to change the iPhone's battery

Dead Birds

Only in Austin.



Scenes from a Snuff(leupagus) Film



Perhaps a connection to this semiotic mystery of 2001?

Gospels of an uncommon vintage

I've long had an interest in things Biblical--to me, honestly, the Bible reads like a really long, convoluted fantasy novel (which probably explains why I got such a kick out of The Silmarillion) and I've always approached it from that literary perspective. I took some classes on it in college, and learned about the different authors and the mysterious "Q" document. The mythology of Christianity fascinates me as does Mayan or Norse or Chinese, the only difference being that this particular mythology defines and affects my worldview.

With the recent conclusion of the Christmas season with the Epiphany, I felt it apropos to share some recent revelations of a personal nature--nothing life-changing to be sure, but fascinating from my point of view. You see, during the recent holidays, I heard reference more than once to the Nativity taking place in a cave. Now I make no claims of being a Biblical scholar, but I've read the narratives of Matthew and Luke, and while Luke references the famous manger, neither of them mention a cave. But I've seen and heard occasional cave references for years, and it's always struck me as somewhat odd, in an out-of-left-field sort of way.

Another detail that struck me a curious came during mass a couple of weeks ago, during the priest's homily. Mentioning that Joseph and Jesus were carpenters by trade, the priest saw fit to go into detail to emphasize Jesus' humble origins. "Now they weren't carpenters who made fine cabinetry or nice furniture. They made plows and yokes for oxen--they were more like the equivalent of construction workers." Again, that came off as curiously out-of-left-field. That's not in the Bible. Where are these facts coming from?

Enter Bart D. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at North Carolina-Chapel Hill. My wife got me a copy of his book Misquoting Jesus a year or so back, and while I found it frustratingly superficial overall, I was also impressed with his concise analysis of Biblical scholarship--enough so that I recently picked up his book Lost Scriptures. The latter book contains a wide array of Gospels and letter and other assorted writings that did not make it into Biblical canon for one reason or another. Quite a few are Gnostic, which explains their omission from modern Christian Bibles, but while others are apparently "orthodox" they don't quite rise to the standards necessary for inclusion in the book. The situation evokes images of a divine anthology with various pope, patriarchs and bishops sifting through a theological slush pile, sending out various rejection letters:

Dear contributor,

Thank you for your recent submission of "The Apocalypse of Peter." Your evocative descriptions of Heaven and Hell are impressive, but this is the third "Apocalypse of Peter" we've received this week, alas. Best of luck with it elsewhere.

Many of these non-canon, orthodox and quasi-orthodox works were well-known in medieval times and treated as if they did have Biblical authority, or at least something approaching authority. Among those was the Gospel of James, supposedly written by Jesus' brother (and that's a theological debate for another time). This one's referred to as "The Proto-Gospel of James" because it doesn't deal much with Jesus at all, but rather concerns itself with the Virgin Mary up through the Nativity. It is quite interesting reading if you've never encountered it before. Mary goes into labor during the journey to Jerusalem, but does so in the wilderness before they actually reach Bethlehem. I have to say I sat up and took notice when I came to James 18:1, which reads:

He found a cave there and took her into it. Then he gave his sons to her and went out to find a Hebrew midwife in the region of Bethlehem.

So that's where all the cave references came from. Apparently, the Gospel of James was quite popular during the middle ages, and influenced a lot of traditions to come later. It's a pretty cool narrative at that--while Joseph is searching for the midwife, time stops at the moment of Christ's birth. That's a pretty cool special effect, any way you slice it.

But what of the carpenter reference I mentioned earlier? Is there a textual basis for that as well? I'd like to say I went looking for one and found it, but that wouldn't be true. I blundered into it while reading the Gospel of Thomas, one of the so-called "infancy gospels" that were also popular during the middle ages which dealt with Christ as a child. Here, the key passage comes at Thomas 13:1, when Jesus is eight years old:

Now his father was a carpenter, and at that time he used to make plows and yokes. He received an order from a certain rich man to make a bed. But when the measurement for one of the beautiful crossbeams came out too short, he did not know what to do. The child Jesus said to his father Joseph, "Place the two pieces of wood on the floor and line them up from the middle to one end."

Jesus then proceeds to stretch the shorter of the two beams to the proper length. Speaking as one who is currently enclosing the loft in our house to make a bedroom from my almost one-year-old son, having a kid around to fix my measuring mistakes would be quite convenient. The fact that Jesus in this gospel is pretty much a normal kid with super-powers and prone to killing his playmates when he's angry and only grudgingly resurrecting them... that's not really sweetening the deal. He's also a terror at school as well. I remember some teachers who got quite frustrated with me back in the day, to whom I now say, "You don't know how lucky you had it."

I've only read a handful of the texts collected thus far, but already it's been a fascinating experience. Lots of ideas floating around there. It seems a shame that there's not a Great Big Book of Christian Mythology out there, because golly gee wow, that's one cool reference book I'd love to have on my shelf.

A Secret History of 1975

Memories of the Ford Administration



The years of the Ford Administration, from late summer 1974 through the end of the Bicentennial, lurk in my memory as cultural interstitia. A minor Midwestern limbo between "the Sixties" and "the Seventies" during which nothing appeared to happen, but powerful memes of future change were cryogenically sealed in the sub-basement with the remains of Walt Disney.



During those years, they renovated the old mall in my hometown (which had originally been built on the site of a monastery much older than the surrounding suburb) to double its size. The central feature of the new wing was a rounded bi-level courtyard anchored by such mid-70s retail landmarks as a Spencer's Gifts, a leather clothing store, a Biorhythm reading machine, a pet store specializing in hamsters, gerbils and Habitrails, a magic supply store, and a B. Dalton bookstore.



On the ground floor, the developers installed a larger-than-life bronze sculpture of a nude and anatomically correct man with a handlebar moustache riding a gigantic tricycle. No explanation was provided.

I seriously doubt such an aesthetic enigma would have been viable in any other period than the Ford Administration. After the Sixties had blown gaping holes in all of the cultural conformities of the Fifties, and before the consequent opportunities for hedonism morphed into the coked out Seventies.

In that B. Dalton, you could still find fresh how-to books of American insurrection, from The Anarchist's Cookbook to The Monkey Wrench Gang. If you were the sort of kid who frequented the science fiction shelves, amid the Bama bronzes and the Frazetta cheescake, you might discover the featured new Bantam paperback of 1975: Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. A Frederik Pohl selection!



The cover offered your average pre-adolescent nerd a familiar fantasy of wandering the post-apocalyptic landscape, a power meme drilled in by a steady stream of Charlton Heston cozy catastrophes. The interior was something much more, its tale of a mysterious Midwestern city cut off from the rest of civilization by an unknown catastrophe serving as the narrative vessel for an experimental novel of consciousness. The inhabitants of the book willingly linger in their meandering dystopia, wallowing in the implosion of conventional social structure. A prescient masterpiece, but not exactly mainstream commercially accessible fare. Only during the Ford Administration would such a work sell a million copies.

For me, Dhalgren tunes the existential frequency of that peculiar period as well as any other contemporary work. A crackled transmission from a mirror reality, accidentally tuned in on translator channel 72.

The dream of revolution becomes a non-sequitur, running out of gas. Enjoy the laser show and pass the spliff.



Presidential assassins become openly surreal. Only during the Ford Administration could one of Charlie [Manson]'s Angels emerge as a risible self-parody of political violence (check out RU Sirius' awesome post this week at 10 Zen Monkeys on"The Chicks Who Tried to Shoot Gerald Ford").



Urban legends trump real news in the aftermath of Nixon and the War. Rumors abound, spread by boys as their neighborhood matinee houses are repurposed as grindhouse pornos. The secret post-history of the cast of Leave it to Beaver: Wally was a cop, Eddie Haskell was Alice Cooper, and the Beav got fragged in Nam.



Somebody's dad's friend who worked at the hospital told astonishing tales of the midnight emergency room visit of a famous rock star when he played his recent show at Veteran's Auditorium (see Number 6). Put your finger on the turntable and turn it counterclockwise for the real story.



The 20th century utopian dream of radical change was definitively snuffed by the masterful anti-climax of President Ford's primary executive act, the anthems of the earnest replaced with self-amused irony stoned on pop culture junk food.

At my elementary school, designed on an experimental open plan, we buried a Bicentennial time capsule. Therein, we hermetically sealed a variety of artifacts of the end of the jet age, the clandestine history of that eighteen-month epoch backmasked onto forgotten vinyl LPs in the voices of children possessed by the frequency modulated spirits of the cathode ray, the sound of an Emergency Broadcast System test played backwards. The capsule is not to be opened until 2076, but on some days it seems the secrets are already seeping out, deep sleeper culture agents lurking among us, awaiting activation orders from headquarters.

Spaceship Earth implodes

Ga. artwork of 'fragile' Earth collapses
Associated Press
Jan. 04, 2007
ATLANTA - A million-dollar stone sculpture, intended to remind future generations of the Earth's fragility, made its point a bit early, just three months after its unveiling, it collapsed. The 175-ton "Spaceship Earth" lay in ruins at Kennesaw State University after mysteriously falling to pieces last week.

The engraved phrase "our fragile craft" was still visible amid the debris.

"Kind of ironic," said Mary-Elizabeth Watson, a university employee. "I had no idea it was made up of so many pieces."

University officials say they suspect water damage or glue failure, but agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are also looking into the possibility of vandalism, said Frances Weyand, a spokeswoman for Kennesaw State. However, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said Thursday that the agency had not been asked to look into the situation.

The Finnish-born sculptor, who goes by the name Eino, had called the work "Spaceship Earth" to honor environmentalist David Brower, a leader of the Sierra Club. It depicted a bronze figure of Brower standing atop the globe. The founders of California-based PowerBar had paid for the $1 million sculpture.

"How can stone collapse by itself?" Eino asked. "I'm devastated."

He said he used a resin made specially for stone, worked with an engineer and was assured that the globe would stay in one piece.

Eino, who lived in Georgia in the late 1990s and now lives outside Las Vegas, vowed to restore "Spaceship Earth" to its former glory, with structural modifications. Rebuilding will start as early as next month, he said.

"I want to rebuild it and build it stronger than ever," Eino said. "It has to be made safe."

Surf Titan! (no, seriously)

I know the Planetary Society has been selling those cool Surf Titan shirts for years, but a new study out in Nature confirms that Cassini has detected liquid lakes on the Saturnian moon:

Scientists report definitive evidence of the presence of lakes filled with liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan in this week's journal Nature cover story.

Radar imaging data from a July 22, 2006, flyby provide convincing evidence for large bodies of liquid on Titan today. A new false-color radar view gives a taste of what Cassini saw. Some highlights of the article follow below.

Lake Characteristics:

• Radar-dark patches are interpreted as lakes based on their very low radar reflectivity and morphological similarities to lakes, including associated channels and location in topographic depressions.
  
  
• Radar-dark surfaces are smooth and most likely liquid, rock, ice or organics. More than 75 radar-dark patches or lakes were seen, ranging from 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to more than 70 kilometers (43 miles) across.
  
  
• Some lakes appear partly dry, while others seem liquid-filled. Some of the partly filled lakes may never have filled fully, or may have partly evaporated at some point in the past. The dry lakes have margins or rims and a radar brightness similar to the rest of the surrounding terrain, making them appear devoid of liquid.
  
  
• The varying states of how full the lakes are suggest that lakes in this region of Titan might be temporary on some unknown timescale.
  
  
• Approximately 15 of the dark patches seem filled and show no clear evidence of erosion. These dark patches resemble terrestrial lakes confined within impact basins (for example, Clearwater Lakes in Canada) or within volcanic calderas (for example, Crater Lake, Oregon). The nest-like nature of these lakes and their limited range of sizes make it unlikely that they originated from an impact. A volcanic origin for the depressions is possible, given their appearance.
  
  
• Some lakes have steep margins and very distinct edges, suggesting a topographic rim. These lakes are consistent with seepage or groundwater drainage lakes.
  
  
• Other lakes have diffuse, more scalloped edges, with a gradual decrease in radar brightness towards the center of the lake. These lakes are more likely to be associated with channels, and may be either drainage lakes or groundwater drainage lakes.
  
  
• Yet other lakes have curvy channel-like extensions, similar in appearance to terrestrial flooded river valleys (for example Lake Powell).
  
  
• Bright patches near the lake edges could be small islands peeking through the surface. Floating “icebergs” are unlikely because most materials would not float in liquid hydrocarbons.

Other Observations:

• Based on the lake characteristics, Cassini scientists think they are observing liquid-filled lakes on Titan today. Another possibility is that these depressions and channels formed in the past and have now been filled by a low-density deposit that is darker than any observed elsewhere on Titan. However, the absence of wind-blown features in this area makes the low-density hypothesis unlikely.
  
  
• These northern hemisphere lakes are the strongest evidence yet that Titan's surface and atmosphere have an active hydrological cycle, though with a condensable liquid other than water. In this cycle, lakes are filled through methane rainfall or intersect with a subsurface layer saturated with liquid methane.
  
  
• As Titan's seasons progress over the 29-year cycle of Saturn's orbit around the sun, lakes in the winter hemisphere should expand by steady methane rain, while summer hemisphere lakes shrink or dry up entirely.

To read more about the radar imaging data from the July 2006 flyby, go to Cassini Finds Lakes on Titan's Arctic Region.

I'm sure there must be some, but I can't call to mind any fiction set on Titan featuring the dark, thick and frigid seas of scientific speculation. Anyone want to offer up a title or two? It is interesting how Cassini and Huygens have reshaped planetologists' thinking about Titan's climate. Previously, the models were somewhat Earthlike in behavior, with regular hydrocarbon "rainfall" consisting of methane and perhaps ethane, which then collects in rivers, lakes and seas before evaporating and starting the cycle over again. Now, however, it appears that Titan leans toward more of a "deluge" model, in which large bodies of liquid (the lakes in the latest finding) gradually evaporate, leaving the landscape in a somewhat arid condition. Once the atmosphere reaches saturation point, a vast amount of liquid hydrocarbons precipitate, flooding the landscape--a sort of desert monsoon season.

It will be interesting to see how this model is refined as researchers collect more data from Cassini, and even more interesting to see how SF writers take these new wonders from the Saturn system and apply them in a fictional context.

Refinery Flightseeing

For an example of technological wonder alloyed with terrible consequences, consider the refinery. On the one hand, this is the drug lab of the oil addiction of the world. The stuff it makes is bad for the world's health, and the money it makes move around causes hellacious trouble. On the other hand, a refinery takes sticky smelly black crude oil and turns it into the stuff of plastic bags and medicines, pantyhose, gasoline for the infernal combustion engine, Jet-A, brilliant paints and dyes, computer components, cheap toys and cheap furniture, lubricants that keep the moving parts of machines moving…. Note the intricacy of the pipes in the cracking towers. The camera didn't register, but the eye could see, hundreds of lights glinting in the towers. At night from an airplane at low altitude, this thing is a fairy castle of glittering lights, vapors, and fire. What happens in there is genuine magic – not benign white magic. But magic.

Texas City refineries.