Tunguska centennial

Got a big interest in the famed Tunguska event? Got any plans for June 26-28? Hankerin' for a trip to Moscow? If so, then I've got the event for you:

"100 years since Tunguska phenomenon: Past, present and future"

June 26-28, 2008.
Moscow, Russia

The Conference is organized by

* Russian Academy of Sciences - Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres
* Lomonosov Moscow State University - Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Institute of Mechanics
* Meteorite Committee of Russian Academy of Sciences

Purposes

The Conference is devoted to the 100-year anniversary of the Tunguska
phenomenon. The purpose of the conference is to integrate the efforts of
inter-disciplinary experts in understanding the Tunguska event and
similar impact phenomena.

Problems for discussion

1. Mathematical modeling of trajectory, dynamics and explosion of Tunguska cosmic object
2. Search of material of Tunguska object
2.1. Analysis of particles in soil, tree trunks and resin
2.2. Separation of cosmic dust input and aerosol sources from the background
3. Effects of global scale
3.1. Light nights
3.2. Ionosphere perturbations
3.3. Search of anomalies in Arctic and Antarctic
4. Regional and local effects
4.1. Analysis of eyewitness reports
4.2. Study of tree fall and state of forest after the Tunguska event
4.3. Investigation of magnetic properties and thermoluminescense of soil and rocks at the site
5. Ecological consequences of the Tunguska event. Genetic aspect of the problem
6. Historical, ethnographic and sociological issues connected with the Tunguska catastrophe

Exploration of asteroids and comets

1. Significance of exploration of asteroids and comets for understanding of evolution of the Solar System and exoplanetary systems
2. Problems of origin and evolution of comets and asteroids
3. Studies of minor bodies of the Solar System (asteroids, comets, meteoroids) by means of spacecrafts

Hazards due to comets and asteroids

1. The role of the Tunguska event in the problem of asteroidal and cometary hazards
2. Investigation of impact craters on the Earth and other bodies of the Solar System
3. Means of mitigation of asteroidal and cometary hazards

If you go, be sure and tell them I sent you.

The Historical Documents

While recovering from Christmas, I decided to watch the classic Trek episode 'Bread and Circuses', in which the Enterprise visits an Earthlike world where the Roman Empire survived into the 20th Century - complete with television (including executions televised live), internal combustion engines (and the resultant smog), gladiatorial games, sub-machine guns, and slavery.

What astonished me about the episode, this time around, was a throw-away line delivered by runaway slave Flavius Maximus. He explains to Kirk that slave revolts had been quelled by giving slaves more rights, including government-paid old-age benefits and medicine. It would seem that when this was first aired in 1968 (appropriately enough, on the Ides of March), Americans considered medical care a right.

How times have changed. Happy New Year to all our readers.

Tunguska revisited

Uh-oh. A new study suggests that the asteroid/comet that caused the infamous devastation at Tunguska in Siberia a century ago may not have been as large as previously thought. There are a lot more small rocks floating around out there than there are big ones...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction as large as previously published estimates, Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulations suggest.

"The asteroid that caused the extensive damage was much smaller than we had thought," says Sandia principal investigator Mark Boslough of the impact that occurred June 30, 1908. "That such a small object can do this kind of destruction suggests that smaller asteroids are something to consider. Their smaller size indicates such collisions are not as improbable as we had believed."

Because smaller asteroids approach Earth statistically more frequently than larger ones, he says, "We should be making more efforts at detecting the smaller ones than we have till now."

The new simulation - which more closely matches the widely known facts of destruction than earlier models - shows that the center of mass of an asteroid exploding above the ground is transported downward at speeds faster than sound. It takes the form of a high-temperature jet of expanding gas called a fireball.

This causes stronger blast waves and thermal radiation pulses at the surface than would be predicted by an explosion limited to the height at which the blast was initiated.

"Our understanding was oversimplified,' says Boslough, "We no longer have to make the same simplifying assumptions, because present-day supercomputers allow us to do things with high resolution in 3-D. Everything gets clearer as you look at things with more refined tools."

There's a good bit more at the other end of the link. As if global warming wasn't enough to worry about.

Lost Books, Part V: a ripper of a vampire novel

If you ever see a Kim Newman book for sale, buy it - before it softly and suddenly vanishes away.

Newman may well be the living lord of the literary landscape of lost books. Perhaps in some parallel universe, his books stay in print for as long as they deserve, but I had a difficult time choosing which undeservedly out-of-print Newman novel to enthuse about. I considered Back in the USSA (co-written with Eugene Byrne), which only appeared in hardcover (though in the aforementioned parallel universe, it was probably a bestselling paperback in the USSA… sorry about that). And The Quorum, which is not only a writers’ nightmare comparable to Stephen King’s Misery, but probably the scariest novel ever based on a Shakespearean comedy. In the end, I opted for the first in his amazing Anno Dracula series.

Anno Dracula is a parallel world story which combines Victorian-era fictional and historical characters, somewhat a la George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman saga or Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen… but rather more so. The basic premise is that, Lord Godalming fails to destroy the boxes of Transylvanian soil that Dracula retreats to, enabling the count to remain in London, marry the widowed Queen Victoria, and turn her.

Vampirism becomes fashionable in England as Dracula places his distant undead relatives in positions of power. Lord Ruthven becomes Prime Minister, Varney the Vampire governs British India, the nosferatu Graf Orlok is appointed as warden of the Tower of London. Others allow themselves to be bitten so they can claim to belong to the Dracula bloodline, from the aristocratic Godalming down to streetwalkers such as Catherine Eddowes and Lulu Schon. Those who resist are either consigned to concentration camps such as Devil’s Dike, or executed by impaling. Sherlock Holmes and Bram Stoker have disappeared, while Van Helsing’s skull rests on a pike outside the palace. Quincy Morris has been killed by Dracula (his last words a quote from The Wild Bunch); Jack Seward survives, but has been driven mad; when not working in a Spitalfields refuge with Montague Druitt and vampire Genevieve Dieudonne, he prowls Whitechapel disemboweling vampire prostitutes with a silvered scalpel.

Among those investigating the murders are Inspector Lestrade, Inspector Abberline, and an agent of the Diogenes Club, Charles Beauregard. Doctors Jekyll and Moreau theorize about the killer's nature, while London’s crimelords also attempt to catch the man who has brought so much police attention to Whitechapel. Things become even more heated – and complicated – after a news agency receives a letter signed “Jack the Ripper”.

The cast of characters also includes the Elephant Man, Mina Harker, Dr Griffin, Raffles, Oscar Wilde, Danny Dravot, Count Iorga, Algernon Swinburne, and enough Ripper suspects (Druitt, David Cohen, John Netley) and possible or fictitious victims to delight any Ripperologist. Even if you're not a lover of fantastic Victoriana, read it once for the plot and don’t worry if you think you’ve missed any of the references: you’ll enjoy reading it again. (Assuming, of course, that you can find a copy in the first place.)

Anno Dracula would be an excellent thriller even without the mélange of literary, historical and horror movie in-jokes: with its twisted conspiratorial plot, cinematic fight scenes, gore, transformations, gaslit setting, goth (sorry, Murgatroyd) fashions, and other delights, it would make a wonderful movie – unless, of course, it was made by the people responsible for LXG.

In which Michael Jackson demonstrates the proper method to purchase science fiction paperbacks

The Daily Mail reports on a recent sighting of the pop star on a late night bookstore run in Las Vegas. He apparently purchased a large quantity of SF. Begging the important question: what is Michael Jackson's favorite literary science fiction? I'll bet you dinner at Picasso that right now he's curled up in the overstuffed armchair of his penthouse suite at the Bellagio, giggling at The Atrocity Exhibition.

Who knew such an activity could be subtly transformed into a bit of media jamming performance art? MJ's continued pushing of the boundaries of the new weird, straddling some unexplored territory between late Marlon Brando and The Man Who Fell to Earth, is appreciated. Can you think of a more science fictional figure in the contemporary celebrity landscape?

"My evolution has reached the stage where I must now modify my physical body in order to maintain its harmony with my spiritual self. It took me ten years to achieve racelessness through a combination of skin peels, hair removals, and treatment with pigmentary dyes, but I am confident that I have attained a truly neutral form, simultaneously presenting in all aspects of my anatomy the vestiges of all races and the protean form of a human without race.

"More difficult has been the process of achieving sexlessness. Only six months ago did I recover from Dr. Chandra’s last procedure, which eliminated my masculine and feminine sex characteristics. This has obviated the necessity of clothing, and I have begun to make occasional public performances via audio-visual transmission in my natural form.



"This state of permanent, hairless naturalism requires a certain regimen that is entirely suited to my purposes. A quarter of my day is spent in meditation in the flotation tank conceiving the evolution of my projects. The furniture must all be covered in fine silks or other non-abrasive materials. The doctors, working with my designers, have developed a wonderful cloak of carefully tanned seal skin for my nightly ramblings in the desert. They have also concocted an aromatic balm for my rubdowns by the staff. These aggressive massages are enhanced by the alteration of my nerves, which allows me to feel pleasure but not pain.

"In time, Dr. Chandra believes that, after the dietary transition is complete, I will be able to cease production of bodily waste. This will enable him to begin the next stage of my physical transformation: my ascendance from worldly humanity into a truly universal being. He is already working on the gradual elimination of color and contrast from my eyes, and tapering back my ears and nose. The goal is a complete streamlining of my features — metamorphosing me into an abstract model of molten, Promethean gold, both proto-human and super-human."

-- from "Immaculate Perception," in Argosy # 3, Spring 2005.

Song of the Teakettle

I have a new teakettle. It's the whistling kind. This particular teakettle is an unpredictable singer, often overcome by shyness, laryngitis or an insufficient head of steam. But sometimes it does sing, with a strong sustained tone, not so high as to be shrill; a tone pleasant to the ear. Thanks to teakettle engineering, an inanimate object sings.

You could say that human beings are the way the universe's inanimate matter finds its singing voice, in everything from teakettles to pipe organs. We're also the way the universe marvels at itself. And the way it emotes about itself. That's part of our job description as sentient beings: to inject meaning and song into things, to reflect on the cosmos. To make wonders.

Then there are—especially at this time of year—our holiday lawn ornaments. I suspect that they may be the universe laughing at itself. How else to explain a serried flock of lawn flamingos, each wearing a little red flannel cap trimmed with cotton, in a harness made of colored lights, pulling Santa in a sleigh?

And then, there is a certain small, shiny, orange, gold-capped aerosol can which recently appeared in the Library's basement Ladies' restroom. That restroom is frequented by Library staff. The counter is often graced by surplus hand lotion or other smellgood, unwanted at home but too pricey to toss out. The gold-capped aerosol can is Pumpkin Concentrated Fragrance Spray. It's concentrated, all right. After I made an experimental squirt in the air in front of the sink, the scent clung to my clothing and reeked there. It is the most determinedly cloying fragrance I've ever encountered.

Could this shiny little device be the universe, via human inventiveness, playing a practical joke on itself?

Mr. Speaker, end this discrimination against cyborgs!

I have never been a baseball fan (and not much of a sports fan generally). So maybe that's why, when I read about the findings of the Mitchell report yesterday detailing the pervasive use of performance-enhancing drugs among major league baseball players, I am nonplussed and kind of puzzled.

My reaction is to say, aren't we all pharmaceutically-enhanced, biomechanically assisted, technologically mediated cyborgs anymore? Do the distinctions made by the Powers that Be between certain kinds of medical performance interventions really hold up the the scrutiny of any kind of analytical rigor? If I can have all my joints replaced, and my pain tranquilized, why can't I pump up my hormone levels? Okay, sure, there's a legitimate difference between injury repair that never fully restores function that was once there, and artificial biochemical enhancement using drugs that can kill administered by underground physicians (you've got to admit, there's a kind of compelling narrative zing to the idea of the underground physician that performs medico-scientific sorcery for people outside the law). But at its heart, isn't this all a bunch of nostalgic Field of Dreams fantasy? Don't you suppose that athletes have *always* used whatever was available to help them win? Opportunity is not exculpation, and I'm glad to see a set of rules and ethical principles being enforced at last. But the pervasiveness of the violations shows the extent to which it was implicitly endorsed by the authorities.

And for a professional sport that has so completely whored itself to capital to express shock at the corrupting effect dangling obscene amounts of money in front of athletes has, and to indict the athletes while continuing to tolerate the moral debasement inherent in such a system? The essence of hypocrisy, in my view.



Interestingly, while today's headlines were incubating, I was working on a story for this weekend's Turkey City Writer's Workshop, which postulates in the backstory of one supporting character what I consider a more likely ultimate outcome:

"Crile scratched his silvery buzzcut, flexing a bicep that pulsed with the texture of manufactured tendons and polymerically enhanced blood vessels. He was one of the alpha generation of real celebrity cyborgs, a Texas star college quarterback who was among the first to go straight to the UFL. The Ultimate Football League was the first to abandon professional athletics’ anachronistic insistence on the prohibition of performance enhancements, be they pharmaceutical, bio-mechanical, or genetically engineered. It was a genius stroke by the founders. The audience was far more interested in superhuman performances than fidelity to nature, and the athletes were addicted to the potential of even greater power. Crile hadn’t played in a decade, but was still a public figure, famous for his stamina in withstanding fifteen-plus years of pounding on behalf of the Los Angeles fans, by defensive linemen morphed into raging anthropomorphic hippos and bipedal Mack trucks made of pink flesh and steel bones."

Now *that* might even get a nerd like me to turn on ESPN.