Stephen Hawking Warns Over Making Contact with Aliens

by Jonathan Leake for The Sunday Times

Sunday, April 25, 2010

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist - but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world's leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe's greatest mysteries. Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the center of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking's logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said. "The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like." The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals - the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history. One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity. He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach." He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is "a little too risky". He said: "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."

The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralyzed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming. John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: "He wanted to make a program that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that's a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved." Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon. So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances. Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonize its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds. Hawking's belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look. Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding. "I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can't conceive," he said. "Just as a chimpanzee can't understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains."

[I think that the odds against the non-existence of alien life anywhere else in this Galaxy – never mind the entire Universe – is mind-staggeringly huge. With so much time and so many potential places to evolve it’s pretty certain that we are not alone in the Universe. Whether or not intelligence is rare is a whole other question. Although intelligence seems to be a winning evolutionary strategy it’s also a very dangerous bargain – as we clearly see with the only intelligent species we are aware of – us. However, maybe not all intelligence is the same. It’s difficult, to say the least, to extrapolate from a single example but I think that the odds in favour of intelligent life ‘out there’ are good. Not every species will end up killing itself off (even if we do). Some at least will grow, prosper and leave their home worlds making them much more difficult to kill off. Numbers wise its impossible to guess how many intelligent species we share this Galaxy with. The odds of actually meeting one – given the light-speed restrictions are pretty slim though. The possibility of them arriving in orbit in order to asset strip the planet is a little far fetched I think. But if they did at least we’d have our proof that we’re not alone!]

Just Finished Reading: Indian Philosophy – A Very Short Introduction by Sue Hamilton

Despite having a general (and genuine) interest in this area as well as reading several books on Buddhism over the past year or so, I honestly struggled with this small volume. Part of the issue was that it attempted to cover a very wide area of study in a mere 139 pages. Another issue was probably that I found the writing quite dry and overly academic. I also found myself becoming confused by the number of unfamiliar terms and unknown authors presented throughout the book. Despite all of this I did come away from reading it with a somewhat better understanding of the history of Indian Philosophy and an appreciation of how it all hangs together. I expect, or at least hope, that this will help me to put further future planned readings – again largely in the area of Buddhism – into some kind of coherent context. I think that this book was on reflection aimed too high for the general reader coming to this subject (as I did) with little background knowledge or preparation. There was a lot to take in and little space to cover all the necessary bases. Not my favourite VSI book to date.

Cartoon Time.

Thinking About: Food

It is often said, with a great deal of evidence, that we in the West have a problematic relationship with the food we eat. This is clearly seen both in the obesity ‘epidemic’ and in stark contrast the numbers of women (and increasingly men) who are virtually starving themselves to death seemingly in the hope of looking good or dying trying. Whilst I am in neither of these opposing groups I am not completely immune from having food ‘issues’.

I am, for one thing, in the rather odd position of being a vegetarian who is not a fan of either fruit or vegetables. You can see from the outset that this is going to cause me problems. Needless to say, the idea of a ‘balanced diet’ is somewhat alien to me. Actually I’m pretty sure that if I didn’t take the variety (and amount) of vitamins I do that I’d probably be suffering from various probably nasty deficiencies. I am also, on top of this, a rather faddish eater. Once I find something I like, be it food or drink, I will then eat or drink it repeatedly for months or even years at a time. Equally strangely I can stop eating or drinking this particular item if something ‘disturbs’ me about it – like getting a bad example of it (maybe it’d gone off before its use-by date or something). Two elements of my personality are at war where my eating habits are concerned. One side wants to try out new things whilst the other knows exactly what it likes and is quite happy, thank you very much, eating or drinking the same kind of thing since childhood. One way I do get introduced to new edible things is eating at friends houses. Inevitably they will have something on the menu that I haven’t had before. To be polite I’ll give it a go – not meat products of course – and sometimes I’ll adopt things into my own diet in future.

I’m definitely eating too much at the moment. In the summer months I usually eat less than normal because of the heat. Heat puts me off eating lots of things. However, I’m making an exception these days because I’m clearly comfort eating. Not that it’s bringing me a great deal of comfort. But such is the way of things. Despite being more active than I have been for a while – my job means I’m often away from my desk for a good part of the day – I’m still slowly gaining weight. I’m not happy with it but it seems that I’m less than fully motivated to do anything about it. I tried the gym for a while many years ago but found it incredibly boring. Physical activity has never really been my thing. It’s one of those things that I never really understood (like Religion, Jazz and Women). So, inevitably the pounds creep on and stay on. I am, I’m afraid to say, developing a noticeable middle-age spread. What I need to do is simply cut back on my snacks. Most of what I eat/drink tends to be diet this or low-fat that. Not my snacks however. Sometimes I like just to have them in the house so that I know I can have one whenever I really want one. Then, of course, I get peckish and before you know it the whole packet has gone. I need to develop the will-power to simply stop eating like that. It is, I think becoming more of a habit. I’ll be eating all three courses of a meal next. That’ll be it – the point of no return. For most of my adult life I’ve been a thinny and I really don’t want to be a fatty as I get older. But it’s a slippery slope. Maybe I can find something else to replace my comfort eating….. I’m going to have to give that some thought and put the biscuits back in the fridge.

In The Beginning:

“My good sir, I wonder if I might venture to offer you some help? Otherwise, I’m afraid you may not be able to make yourself understood by the worthy gorilla who presides over the comings and goings of this establishment: he only speaks Dutch. Unless you allow me to plead your case, he won’t guess that you want some gin. There: I dare to hope that he has got the message. That nod of the head should mean that my argument has won his ear. He’s off, look: making haste slowly, the clever chap. You’re lucky: he didn’t complain. When he refuses to serve you, he just grunts. No one argues with that. It’s the privilege of these big beasts to be moody when they like. I’m off, Monsieur, and glad to have been of service. Thank you; I’d accept if I were sure that I should not be imposing on you. You’re too kind. I’ll put my glass here, then, at your table.”

From: The Fall by Albert Camus.

Cartoon Time.

Death By Drone: CIA's Hitlist is Murder

by William Fisher for the Inter Press Service

NEW YORK - As the Barack Obama administration continues to roll out justifications for its policy of targeting U.S. citizens and others thought to be attacking U.S. troops, legal and national security experts are pondering a central question: What if there's a mistake and the wrong person gets killed? There are no do-overs. It is a death sentence. That, in fact, has already happened. A Reuters cameraman was killed by a U.S. drone strike when the operator mistook his camera's long-range lens for a rocket-propelled grenade. Nevertheless, a top Obama counter-terrorism official is defending the government's right to target U.S. citizens perceived as terror threats for capture or killing, citing the example of the renegade al Qaeda-linked cleric Anwar al- Awlaki. Al-Awlaki, 39, was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is an Islamic lecturer who is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen. He is a spiritual leader and former imam who has purportedly inspired Islamic terrorists. His sermons are said to have been attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers. Michael Leiter, director of the National Counter-terrorism Center, does not say whether al-Awlaki is on a U.S. target list, but a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official has previously confirmed that the cleric is among terror targets sought to be captured or killed.

What does the law say about targeting and killing people? Much of the discussion thus far has been about the constitutionality of such killings. But, counter- intuitively, the constitution is not the primary engine. It is largely the laws of war that are in play here. Except for those who do not believe the U.S. is at war. Among these is Marjorie Cohn, immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild, who tells IPS: "Targeted or political assassinations - sometimes called extrajudicial executions - are carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework." She cited a 1998 report from the United Nations Special Rapporteur that noted, "extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war. Wilful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, punishable as a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act." And "This is not a war," she adds.

On the issue of killing citizens vs. non-citizens, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First (HRF), explains to IPS, "Whether the target is a citizen isn't so important, because he's targetable if he's an enemy belligerent or civilian who's directly participating in hostilities against the United States." She adds, "The problem with the government's drone program is that it hasn't provided the public with enough information to determine whether the government is complying with those legal requirements. The fact that someone is suspected of having ties to al Qaeda or even supporting al Qaeda does not make them a member of a foreign force fighting the United States, or someone directly participating in hostilities against the United States." "Until the U.S. starts providing information about not only who they're targeting but what evidence exists that this person is a legitimate target, then we can't know if what they're doing is legal," she says. Prof. Peter Shane of Ohio State University law school agrees. He tells IPS, "So long as the executive branch engages in reasonable processes to distinguish persons who are combatants from those who are not, I do not think that the use of force against them is ...unconstitutional. Whether any specific targeted killing is or is not a good idea, of course, is a completely different question," he says.

Scott Horton, a constitutional lawyer and contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, tells IPS, "There are two ways the government can justify the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen: one is when the person is in the act of a crime that threatens the lives of others, or serious injury to them, and no other means exists to stop him. The other is in the context of a war. The Obama administration appears to think that the second case is applicable with respect to Al-Awlaki, but if they have evidence to prove it, they certainly haven't advanced it to the public," he says. And even if they have such evidence, he adds, "They haven't explained why they don't simply have him arrested and brought back to stand charges based on the crimes they believe he has committed, which appear to include terrorist activities and perhaps treason. They obviously need to explain why that approach won't work before they go dropping bombs in circumstances that might kill large numbers of innocent civilians in addition to killing Al-Awlaki," Horton said. Col. Morris Davis, the Defense Department's former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases who argued on behalf of a terrorism suspect that the military justice system has been corrupted by politics and inappropriate influence from senior Pentagon officials, tells IPS: "The fifth amendment says U.S. citizens can't be 'deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.' If the constitution prohibits the government from taking your house without giving you a hearing and the opportunity to defend yourself, it seems rather ironic that they might take your life with even less formality and less process."

Prof. Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois shares serious reservations about how the government is conducting its targeting program. He tells IPS, "What is being proposed here with respect to al-Awlaki and other United States citizens on the CIA's now publicly admitted 'hit list' is murder, assassination, extrajudicial execution, a grave violation of their right to life and human rights law, and of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution." Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer and contributor to Salon.com, is similarly troubled by the targeting policy. He asks: "Could the individuals who trust the U.S government to essentially convict people of terrorism and impose a death penalty through imperial decree - i.e., without any trials or judicial review, and based solely on the unchecked say-so of the Executive Branch - please identify themselves, and particularly explain the basis for that trust in light of this disgraceful and error-plagued record?" Greenwald concludes: "We really are talking about a president who believes he has the right to send the CIA to murder American citizens based purely on allegations and suspicions of wrongdoing."

Bruce Fein, a conservative legal expert who served in the Justice Department during the Ronald Reagan administration, proffers another idea. He tells IPS, "Congress should enact a companion law to FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.) The president should be required to obtain a judicial warrant based on probable cause to believe the suspected American is currently actively involved in seeking to kill United States citizens. The warrant should authorize capture of the American suspect for trial in the U.S., or, a targeted killing if capture is infeasible or would raise a grave risk of death or serious bodily injury to the U.S. authorities pursuing the capture," he says.

[What a wonderful world we are creating – where we can smite our enemies wherever they are in the world at the touch of a button. What could our enemies possibly do in response to that sort of power….? I’m sure that they are all so shocked and awed by it all they hardly know what to do……. Yeah, right.]

Only in Japan......

Just Finished Reading: Magic Street by Orson Scott Card

When an abandoned infant is discovered in a plastic bag near a black neighbourhood in Los Angeles he is adopted by the whole community. But from the very start of his life people who come into contact with him realise that he is unusual. Some people feel an almost uncontrollable urge to do him harm whilst others go out of their way to protect and nurture him. As Mack Street, as he’s named, grows up he wonders who his parents are and why they abandoned him. He also starts having ‘cold’ dreams that seem to come true in twisted evil ways. As he approaches puberty Mack begins to notice things that pass most people by. But it’s only when he discovers a doorway into another realm that he begins to understand both who and what he is – and the danger he represents to everyone he knows.

This is a delightful book full of interesting characters only some of which are human (despite outward appearances). The dialogue between them is often snappy and has a realistic feel. The storyline, whilst rather far fetched – this is fantasy after all – has an nicely dark edge to it and in places is moderately scary (or at least creepy). Card has created a very believable ‘real’ world underpinned by a fantasy realm that is interestingly different and suitably strange. The main character Mack is fully formed, full of doubts and natural hero material. The supporting cast are far from disposable (except for some very minor characters) and their reactions to what is going on around them feel real enough. This is a solid adult oriented urban fantasy with a difference and with some bite to it. It is also a good way to end my batch of fantasy novels that I’ve been working through over the past few months. Now back to Science Fiction!

Cartoon Time.

20 Things that make my Atheist Life worth living.

I was on a Blog recently where they were discussing the Meaning of Life mainly from a theistic point of view. One of the commenter’s (who I think I’ve crossed swords with before) said that Atheists had no reason to live – and should reasonably commit suicide on the spot – because they did not believe in God who is the source of all meaning. Without God, therefore, there is no possible meaning to life hence the tempting long walk off a short pier. I, of course, replied that this position was abject nonsense. To which he issued me what he undoubtedly considered to be a challenge – presumably one he didn’t think I could answer. His challenge was to produce something that made my life worth living. So I posted back a single word: Brunettes.

What I’d like to do is to expand that a bit here and list 20 things I consider it worth living for.

Books
Movies
Music
Friends
Lovers
Chocolate
Ice cream
Surprises
Sex
Computer Games
Discoveries and the expansion of human knowledge
All of the possibilities encapsulated in the word Tomorrow
The ever changing world around us
New Technology
Travel
The Natural world
Art
Laughter
The Internet

…….. and Brunettes.

In The Beginning

“Almost three centuries have passed since a curious rash of hysterical vampire epidemics at the fringes of the Habsburg Empire first brought this type of oral folklore from the mysterious Balkans and the Transylvanian region into Western consciousness. Although there had previously been no precisely equivalent folklore about the ambulatory dead in the Roman Catholic and Protestant countries of Western Europe, the Inquisition’s prosecutions of people denounced as witches were still fresh in the public memory. In fact it was the possible recrudescence of such intolerable social injustice that prompted Empress Maria Theresa to send a noted scientist to a Slavic region on the north-eastern frontier to learn what these epidemics were all about and then to advise her on how to prevent a new round of witch hunts from emerging.”

From: Slayers and their Vampires – A Cultural History of Killing the Dead by Bruce A McClelland

Cartoon Time.

Giant ice flows bolster case for volcanoes on Titan

by David Shiga for New Scientist

28 March 2009

SLUSHY water from a hidden ocean may be pooling onto the icy surface of Saturn's moon Titan. Titan's exterior, where the temperature is around -180 °C, is thought to be mostly water-ice, but it may be a different story deep down. Variations in the moon's rate of rotation suggest an ocean could lurk below. An area of Titan called Hotei Arcus appears to fluctuate in brightness on timescales of several months, and in 2005 Robert Nelson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues, suggested this might be the result of "cryovolcanic" eruptions of water from below. Others argued that the flickers were caused by the moon's hazy atmosphere.

The cryovolcanism idea was bolstered in 2008, when observations of Hotei Arcus by a radar instrument aboard NASA's Cassini probe revealed structures that resembled lava flows. Some opponents of the idea still argued these might be deposits of sediment, carried by a flow of methane in the past. Now radar images from Cassini have allowed scientists led by Randolph Kirk of the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, to create a 3D view of the area, which he presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on 24 March. It turns out that the sinuous structures tower 200 metres above their surroundings. They say that this is consistent with the structures having formed when slushy water and ammonia squirted onto the surface and froze - but that they could not have been produced by a flood of liquid methane depositing sediment. The structures may have formed when slushy water and ammonia squirted onto the surface and froze

If slush volcanoes have been erupting recently, Titan would join a select group of solar system objects - Earth and Io - known to be volcanic at present. The idea of any life surviving in the erupted water is "pretty much out of the question", Kirk says, as it would freeze. As for the ocean below: "Who knows?" he says. "It's conceivable life could be going on down there." Jeff Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, says it's still not obvious that the structures flowed. "We haven't seen any unambiguous evidence [of volcanism] yet."

[Titan appears to be a good candidate for extraterrestrial life. It seems that the more we discover about this odd little moon the more likely it seems that life may have evolved their independently. I would really like it to be that case that Titan and other locations in our Solar System evolved life on their own. It would strongly indicate that the rest of the Galaxy would be teeming with life. I have a feeling that Earth is far from unique and that it is only our ignorance of other worlds and other star systems that makes us see our home world as particularly special. I look forward to confirmation of life on other worlds. Maybe such a finding will give us the much needed motivation to get some boots on alien ground.]

Just Finished Reading: The Cathars – The most successful Heresy of the Middle Ages by Sean Martin

Early in the 13th Century the Catholic Church had finally had enough. On 22nd July 1209 forces loyal to the Vatican surrounded the French town of Beziers and demanded that they hand over 222 Cathar believers or face the consequences. They said no. In the ensuing bloodbath between 10,000 and 20,000 men women and children in the town were massacred all in the name of eliminating a growing heresy in the very heart of Christendom. The Cathars believed that the world had not been created by God but be an equal and opposite evil force and that the only way to escape from it was a life of poverty and contemplation. They considered the Catholic Church the very spawn of Satan and opposed it at every turn. The corrupt church which was hated throughout Europe, had been shocked to discover that not only had this particular heresy existed under their noses for decades but that it was spreading at an alarming rate. When circumstances allowed – crusades against Islam permitting – they fully intended to crush it and, in the century that followed they did just that. The Crusades against Catharism (and other heretical sects that cropped up during this period) do not exactly reflect well on the Catholic Church at that time. More than anything else they saw such groups as a direct threat to their hegemony on the Truth. In a time of political and religious turmoil this could not be allowed to stand. The ferocity of the response shocked even contemporary chroniclers and are certainly shocking looking back with more tolerant eyes.

I took two lessons from the story of the Cathars. First, that no organisation driven by a dogmatic ideology should ever again be given the political (and hence military) power to impose its will on the general population. If such a state of affairs was frightening enough 800 years ago it is truly terrifying today. Second, that things could have been very different. It was not a foregone conclusion that the Catholic Church would arise victorious from this conflict. There were times when things could have gone against them. It is entirely conceivable that the schism that later split the Church into Catholic and Protestant could have, in the 13th Century, split it into Cathar and Catholic. If that was the case it is conceivable that Catholicism could have entered a long phase of retreat and withdrawal leaving Catharism in the ascendant. Those who now strongly profess the Protestant faith would then, just as loudly, be professing the Cathar faith. Ideology of all shades is, by its very nature, dependent on historical accident. Things could always have been different, yet adherents would still have honestly believed that they had access to universal and irrefutable truths. Truth claims not backed by empirical evidence are inherently suspect and should be treated with the greatest scepticism. Their beliefs are based on historical events and are guided by historical figures that could have acted differently. This means that any claims that they have been given or have discovered THE answer are deeply flawed. If history could be run again then things might well have been rather different yet they would still profess that the new ‘truth’ is still THE truth. The Cathars are indeed a lesson from history, a lesson in the evils of dogma and ideology as well as the status of unsupported truth claims. They are valuable lessons to be learned by anyone.

Cartoon Time (click to enlarge for easy reading).

Thinking About: Sleep

My bed is probably one of my favourite places to be. I feel at home there and look forward to sleeping in my own bed whenever I’m away for too long. Buying my present double bed and orthopaedic mattress turned out to be one of my better decisions – prompted as it was by my then girlfriend’s criticism of my futon (which I loved for different reasons).

Getting my sleep is very important to me. I do not function at all well if I don’t get my sleep and believe that it would be a fair defence in any future murder trial that the deceased had stopped me from sleeping enough. That’s something I’m not doing at the moment – sleeping enough. I’m tired pretty much all of the time which isn’t doing me any good at all. It got so bad about 18 months ago that I was almost hallucinating. Being me I was actually fascinated by the whole thing. It was a time when about half of my project team left within a matter of weeks of each other. The show had to go on regardless so for about 3 months or so we had three people doing seven peoples jobs. You can imagine what that was like. All of the day-to-day ‘donkey’ work was being done by just two of us. It was relentless. Near the end, just before we got some new people who fortunately hit the ground running (I shudder to think what state we would have been in if we’d had have to train them as well), I remember being in the Mall on my way to having a pizza with the guys prior to seeing a film. I was feeling pretty punch drunk – missing too many lunches probably not helping my blood sugar levels – and I could actually feel parts of my brain shutting down to rest themselves as best they could. It was the weirdest feeling. I couldn’t help comparing it to whales and dolphins who do something similar so that they can ‘sleep’ and still keep from drowning. It must also be something similar to the experiences of combat troops who need to stay alert for extended periods of time and basically rest when they can. It’s certainly something that I don’t want to repeat.

I much prefer sleeping on my own. It took me the best part of three months to get used to sleeping with my girlfriend. One reason is that is, from the evidence of my covers in the morning, I tend to move around a lot in my sleep. With someone else there a small part of my consciousness is obviously ‘on guard’ so that I don’t push them out or sock them in the mouth with a flaying arm and this inevitably cuts down on the deep sleep we all need to function. I also like to stretch out and use far more of my ‘fair share’ of the mattress which I can only do on my own. I’m just too conscious with someone else there. If I was living with someone permanently I’d probably give serious thoughts to separate beds in separate rooms. I hear it’s the way for relationship bliss.

I have slept in the nude since I was about 10 years old and intend to continue doing so until I die. I can’t stand wearing clothes in bed. I quickly overheat and feel constrained if I’m wearing much of anything. If it gets really cold I might wear a T-shirt until the bed warms up sufficiently but then it’s whipped off and my own body heat can do its thing care of a decent duvet. One of the things I like about the summer is that, for three or four days of the year on average, it’s warm enough to sleep on top of the duvet. It has to be my idea of Heaven. Maybe it shows that I’m just in touch with my animal nature but I think of it as a real treat. Anyway, all this talk of beds is starting to make me feel sleepy. So goodnight everyone!

Cartoon Time.

Picking our brains: Can we make a conscious machine?

by Celeste Biever for New Scientist

06 April 2010

CHALLENGES don't get much bigger than trying to create artificial consciousness. Some doubt if it can be done - or if it ever should. Bolder researchers are not put off, though. "We have to consider machine consciousness as a grand challenge, like putting a man on the moon," says Antonio Chella at the University of Palermo in Italy and editor of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness. The journal was launched last year, a sign of the field's growing momentum. Another landmark is the recently developed "Conscale", developed by Raúl Arrabales of the Carlos III University of Madrid in Spain to compare the intelligence of various software agents - and biological ones too.

Perhaps the closest a software bot has come so far is IDA, the Intelligent Distribution Agent built in 2003 by Stan Franklin at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. IDA assigns sailors in the US navy to new jobs when they finish a tour of duty and has to juggle naval policies, job requirements, changing costs and sailors' needs. Like people, IDA has "conscious" and "unconscious" levels of processing. At the unconscious level she deploys software agents to gather data and process information. These agents compete to enter IDA's "conscious" workspace, where they interact with each other and decisions get made. The updated Learning IDA, or LIDA, was completed this year. She learns from what reaches her consciousness and uses this to guide future decisions. LIDA also has the benefit of "emotions" - high-level goals that guide her decision-making. Another advance emerged from designing robots able to maintain their function after being damaged. In 2006, Josh Bongard at the University of Vermont in Burlington designed a walking robot with a continuously updated internal model of itself. If damaged, this self-knowledge allows it to devise an alternative gait using its remaining abilities. Having an internal "imagined" model of ourselves is considered a key part of human sentience, taking the robot closer to self-awareness.

Along with an internal model, the robot developed by Owen Holland's team at the University of Sussex, UK, is also anatomically human-like. "A robot with a body that is very close to a human's will develop cognition that is closer to the human variety," Owen claims. None of these approaches solve what many consider to be the "hard problem" of consciousness: subjective awareness. No one yet knows how to design the software for that. But as machines grow in sophistication, the hard problem may simply evaporate - either because awareness emerges spontaneously or because we will simply assume it has emerged without knowing for sure. After all, when it comes to other humans, we can only assume they have subjective awareness too. We have no way of proving we are not the only self-aware individual in a world of unaware "zombies". You cannot prove that you're not the only self-aware person in a world of unaware zombies. While we may never know for sure if a machine is experiencing consciousness or only appears to, building such a machine would revolutionise our understanding of the brain. "My real goal is to figure out how minds work," says Franklin. "You really don't know how something works until you can build it."

[I am not one of those people who believe that there is something unique or special about biological consciousness that cannot be replicated in a machine. If it can be done, and I can’t see why not, then it will be done – and along the way we might finally get a handle on our own consciousness. It’s a fascinating (and somewhat scary) idea - that we can create conscious beings like ourselves. It may feel like science-fiction today but I doubt that it will remain so for long.]

In The Beginning:

“Heinrich Gimpel glanced at the report on his desk to make sure how many Reichsmarks the United States was being assessed for the Wehrmacht bases by New York, Chicago, and St Louis. As he thought, the numbers were up from those of 2009. Well, the Americans might grumble, but they’d cough up what they owed – and in hard currency, too; none of their own inflated dollars. If they didn’t, the panzer divisions might rollout of those bases and take what was owed the Germanic Empire this year. And if they collected some blood along with their pound of flesh, the USA might complain, but it was hardly in a position to fight back.”

From: In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove.

Just Finished Reading: The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove

Lt David Westwynter, squad leader of a special forces unit in His Pharaonic Majesty’s Second Parachute Regiment, is on a mission for his Lord God Osiris. Unfortunately for him and his men the mission has plausible deniability. When they’re ambushed in the desert and captured by forces loyal to the God Horus, bombers are sent to erase all evidence of the covert insertion including the men under David’s command. As the only survivor, David makes his way across the border to neutral territory – Freegypt where, by agreement, no Gods rule. Captured again he falls into the hands of the Lightbringer, a charismatic leader of a revolutionary group dedicated to overthrowing the Gods themselves. With his military experience David is more than aware of the difficulties ahead for this rag-tag force of badly armed zealots. For how exactly do you fight the Gods and hope to survive?

I picked this book up on ‘spec thinking that it sounded like a reasonable knock-off of a rejected Stargate SG-1 script. Although there were a few similarities (including the use of ‘staff’ weapons) this was a mostly original idea. The background was an interesting one. It appeared that all of the Ancient Gods actually existed and, for millennia, had been fighting it out in the spiritual realm for domination. In this book/world the Egyptian Gods have successfully eliminated the competition and now rule the planet. Earth is divided into power blocks, not unlike our world, and a God (or husband/wife team) rule in their name and fight with the other Gods on a fairly permanent basis. I didn’t have a great deal of issue with the idea – which was rather interesting - but did find it difficult to grasp any great distinction between our world and the God filled one. I mean, these people knew beyond doubt that the Gods existed. Yet this fact seemed to have precious little impact on their lives. Whatever changes the author did show were minor ones – name changes, family cartouches, pyramidic architecture, that sort of trivial thing. I would have thought that there would have been a radical shift in the way people thought and lived their lives. One thing that did surprise me, and I thought immediately eliminated any great tension, was the apparent rapid decline in the numbers of both Christians and Muslims. I doubt very much if the faith of billions of people would collapse very soon even in the circumstances portrayed in this novel.

Overall the storyline was reasonable and actually had me completely misdirected for a while. It did however have rather clunky sections amongst the Gods that interrupted the flow of the narrative more than necessary to tell the story. The dialogue often sucked and was, from time to time, as bad as Star Wars – yes, that bad! The battles were reasonably handled and the Gods had introduced some fascinating armaments including an interesting variation on binary weapons which made me smile. Overall, despite its many problems this turned out to be an interesting idea reasonably well done. I doubt if I shall be seeking out the next two books in the series (The Age of Zeus and The Age of Odin) despite finding the first book rather entertaining at times. An interesting oddity that could have been much better.

Cartoon Time.

Thinking About: Attraction

I have a somewhat deserved reputation of being picky, indeed overly picky, when it comes to potential partners. My reply to this is that I have standards and that my standards are more important than the possibility of a quick grope or an orgasm with someone I neither know nor even like. Contrary to my pickiness is that fact that I don’t believe that I have a definite ‘type’ that I prefer over all others. OK, I have a strange ‘thing’ about red-heads, but I wouldn’t call that an actual type. To be honest the lack of type is probably to do with the fact that I’m far more interested in the person themselves rather than the body they happen to occupy. I am attracted to, and fall in love with, personalities not bodies. What I have found, and I’m sure that I’m not alone in this, is that a person becomes more physically attractive the more you become emotionally attached to them. It’s certainly true for me. No doubt we’ve all known someone with a partner we can’t understand them being with. Love, or at least a healthy dose of affection, is the reason. Love isn’t exactly blind but it does alter reality around the lovers. When you fall out of love (or lust which is a close relative thereof) you exclaim “What did I possibly see in that person?” It’s because you’re no seeing them at ‘reality warp 5’. When a friend says to you in all honesty that someone is bad for you or just not for you it’s because they are literally not ‘seeing’ the same person that you are.

Of course even the fact that I know what’s going on in my head doesn’t stop me being attracted to unsuitable or unobtainable people. Been there, done that, bought several T-shirts. My much valued rationality doesn’t even get a look in when I go over the deep end about someone. Luckily though, I have, through repeated painful experiences as well as just a hint of maturity, stopped following the object of my affection around like a lost puppy. I’ve also managed to cut down on the sighing and the pointless romantic gestures. These days if my attraction is reciprocated I virtually need to be hit over the head by a prospective partner to make any kind of move. I am, all too often, the last to know that I’m about the get lucky.

Being the person that I am, I have a natural tendency to talk during sex. I don’t mean anything as crass as talking ‘dirty’ but actual conversations which, I have been told, is highly amusing if somewhat irritating from time to time. Rather inevitably I was explaining my thinking on the subject with my ex. I explained that I was making love to her, handily (lightly) tapping her on the forehead with my free hand, only I was doing so through her body. She seemed to get the idea and, as far as I could tell, appreciate the fact. Short of being telepathic it’s probably the closest we get to the merging of two personalities. It’s just a pity sometimes (from my perspective at least) that there’s flesh getting in the way. I don’t think that I’m particularly odd in being more attracted to minds than I am to bodies, though it does seem that bodies are a much higher priority to most people. When a friend points out a particularly attractive woman I might not even raise my head and look (which sometimes results in some rather strange criticisms and might be a component in some people thinking that I’m gay) but generally I can’t see the point. Beautiful women are everywhere. If I want to see an endless parade of them all that I need to do is turn on my television. What interests me are beautiful minds which are rather harder to see and consequently harder to find.

The things you find in your garden these days...... Must be the heat.......

Cartoon Time.

Games 'permit' virtual war crimes

From The BBC

Monday, 23 November 2009

Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts. Human rights groups played various games to see if any broke humanitarian laws that govern what is a war crime. The study condemned the games for violating laws by letting players kill civilians, torture captives and wantonly destroy homes and buildings. It said game makers should work harder to remind players about the real world limits on their actions.

The study was carried out by two Swiss human rights organisations - Trial and Pro Juventute. Staff played the games in the presence of lawyers skilled in the interpretation of humanitarian laws. Twenty games were scrutinised to see if the conflicts they portrayed and what players can do in the virtual theatres of war were subject to the same limits as in the real world. "The practically complete absence of rules or sanctions is... astonishing," said the study. Army of Two, Call of Duty 5, Far Cry 2 and Conflict Desert Storm were among the games examined.

The games were analysed to see "whether certain scenes and acts committed by players would constitute violations of international law if they were real, rather than virtual". The group chose games, rather than films, because of their interactivity. "Thus," said the report, "the line between the virtual and real experience becomes blurred and the game becomes a simulation of real-life situations on the battlefield." The testers looked for violations of the Geneva Conventions and its Additional Protocols which cover how war should be waged. In particular, the testers looked for how combatants who surrendered were treated, what happened to citizens caught up in war zones and whether damage to buildings was proportionate. Some games did punish the killing of civilians and reward strategies that tried to limit the damage done by the conflict, said the study.

However, it said, many others allowed "protected objects" such as churches and mosques to be attacked; some depicted interrogations that involved torture or degradation and a few permitted summary executions. The authors acknowledged that the project was hard because it was not clear from many of the games the scale of the conflict being depicted. This made it hard to definitively determine which humanitarian laws should be enforced. It also said that the games were so complex that it was difficult to be confident that its testers had seen all possible violations or, in games in which they found none, that no violations were possible.

It noted that, even though most players would never become real world combatants, the games could influence what people believe war is like and how soldiers conduct themselves in the real world. It said games were sending an "erroneous" message that conflicts were waged without limits or that anything was acceptable in counter-terrorism operations. "This is especially problematic in view of today's reality," said the study. In particular, it said, few games it studied reflected the fact that those who "violate international humanitarian law end up as war criminals, not as winners". The authors said they did not wish to make games less violent, instead, they wrote: "[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games." John Walker, one of the writers on the Rock, Paper, Shotgun games blog, said: "Games really are treated in a peculiar way." He doubted that anyone would campaign for books to follow humanitarian laws or for James Bond to be denounced for machine-gunning his way through a supervillain's underground complex.

He said the authors did not understand that gamers could distinguish between fantasy and reality. Said Mr Walker: "For all those who mowed down citizens in Modern Warfare 2's controversial airport level, I have the sneaking suspicion that not a great deal of them think this is lawful, nor appropriate, behaviour." Jim Rossignol, who also writes on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, said there was scope to mix real-world rules of war into games. "Whether or not the rules of war are included in the game should be based entirely on whether that improves the experience for the player," he said. Mr Rossignol said there was plenty of evidence that gaming violence is "fully processed" as fantasy by gamers. Studies of soldiers on the front line in Iraq showed that being a gamer did not desensitise them to what they witnessed. He added: "Perhaps what this research demonstrates is that the researchers misunderstand what games are, and how they are treated, intellectually, by the people who play them."

[Computer games are treated quite oddly in our society. They are vilified in the press and talked about in Government. Many now have a certificate rating similar to movies. But books, as John Walker mentions above, have portrayed much worse than any video game for much longer. The pouring out of sadistic murder book after serial killer book hardly raises a note of protest. There has been no call to certificate books or to have them teach moral tales of appropriate behaviour. I doubt very much if playing violent video games desensitises people to violence that where not already desensitised. Most computer games contain violence of one sort or another. Some are very violent indeed as they deal with men and women in combat. I suppose that it would be relatively easy to eliminate any civilians from the warzones these virtual conflicts take place in but how realistic would that be? If everyone not in an American uniform was an enemy unit where would the challenge be? Wouldn’t that send a much more questionable message – that anyone not ‘us’ can be killed on sight? Innocent people are killed in all modern conflicts as they tend to take place in built up areas. The risk of killing non-combatants is a very real one as our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq know only too well. To eliminate this risk from a game is, I think, a backward step. As to the infamous airport mission in Modern Warfare 2, for one thing it’s purely optional. I’ve played it (once). The completeness of the mission is not dependent on the player killing innocents. You can play the mission, if you want, and kill no one. It’s your choice. Taking away such choices limits the kind of moral questions people can ask themselves. Having combat games that only operate within International Law is ridiculous when such laws are broken on the real battlefields every day. We cannot produce a more moral generation by denying them the opportunity to make virtual moral choices.]

Just Finished Reading: Consciousness – A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore

Consciousness is a very strange beast indeed. In this slim and fascinating volume the author attempts to discover just what kind of beast it is by examining our own beliefs about it and looking at ways to distinguish unfounded beliefs from actual knowledge.

The odd thing about consciousness is that although we all seem to understand that we have it, it has proven very difficult to actually pin down. Once questions relating consciousness to brain function are asked we starting hitting what has been called ‘the hard problem’. It seems clear that brain activity has something to do with it and that brain damage can result in consciousness issues. But there does not appear to be anywhere in the brain that is in control of things. There is no core where consciousness lives. There is no physical inner ‘self’ that is consciousness itself. The idea of an ‘inner theatre’ watched by a single self is untenable. No part of the brain corresponds to that ideal. Blackmore very successfully calls into question the standard model of the Self and undermines it to the extent that I have moved further along the road to being sceptical about its existence (already being on that road probably helped).

Blackmore also successfully, at least in my largely ignorant opinion, calls into question the major explanations we have to date relating to consciousness and the existence of the Self. One by one she sets up the explanations and one by one she knocks them down. However, although I applaud her conclusion that we don’t really understand consciousness at all (yet) she goes a little too far in her concluding remarks – or at least too far for me at the moment. To get around all of the problems outlined in this book Blackmore proposes something quite radical (IMO) – that conscious itself is a complete illusion. She puts forward the idea that we are not actually conscious beings! The consciousness we apparently feel and live with every day is a fabrication of the brain and, the moment we stop looking for it or at it, it simple vanishes as if it had never existed only to be recreated the next time we ‘look’ in its direction. This idea I will have to give considerably more thought and more book time. The Self being an illusion I can go with. I’m probably already half way there. But Consciousness being an illusion? That I can’t accept, at least not yet.

This was a fascinating read. People at work roll there eyes when they see me reading books like this in my lunch break. What they fail to realise is that such books both expand my mind and engage my emotions. They stimulate my intellect as well as exercise my ability to feel awe at the incredible universe we live in. Knowledge contained in books such as this is the best and only mind expanding drug I’ll ever need. People who can’t see that are missing out on so much. Which is why I’ll continue smiling through their comments and raised eyebrows. If you want to mess with your mind a little then read this book.

Cartoon Time.

My Favourite Movies: Assault on Precinct 13

I watched this movie again this weekend and realised just how much I love it. Am I crazy, I hear you ask? Do I honestly love that dull police ‘thriller’ from some 5 years ago starring Ethan Hawke and Lawrence Fisburne? No, I don’t. I found the less than impressive remake, well, less than impressive.

I am (of course) enthusing over the 1976 John Carpenter original which has since become a well deserved cult classic. The storyline is, on the face of it simple – actually so sparse as to be almost non-existent. After a group of young radicals are gunned down by the police in violence torn LA the survivors of the group vow revenge. So, this being LA, they drive around the city looking for someone to kill. Eventually they succeed but are followed by the father of a murdered young girl who shoots one of them dead. Subsequently chased by other gang members he stumbles into a police station on the verge of shutting down – the eponymous Precinct 13 (keen eyed observers will note that the inscription over the door clearly says Precinct 14). Inside are a selection of admin staff wrapping things up and a few policemen. Moments later a prison bus turns up with one very sick and several very dangerous prisoners. As they arrive all hell breaks loose as the gang pour fire into the building from all directions. The questions are: Can the criminals and police co-operate in the defence of the building and are any of them getting out alive?

This film is wonderfully atmospheric, helped along by a haunting soundtrack also written by John Carpenter. The street gang members responsible for most of the violence are deeply nihilistic motivated by a single desire – revenge against a system and a world that has clearly abandoned them. Hardly saying a word throughout the entire movie they let their actions speak for them. The police Lieutenant is a newly promoted black man who is very conscious of the racism he faces on a daily basis within his own department. Probably my favourite character is the killer on his way to death row – Napoleon Wilson played superbly by Darwin Joston. Despite the fact that he has killed several men for reasons never revealed he is a man of honour which is revealed throughout the hour long siege. Winning the trust of the Lieutenant and the love of the female lead (played by the stunning Laurie Zimmer) he is the lynchpin of the whole movie and emerges as one of the three heroes of the piece. We are left at the end of the film not knowing how his actions inside the Precinct house affected his upcoming execution. This, and many of the other unanswered questions, are one of the things I love about this film. It leaves you wanted to know more and leaves you unable to do so – just like real life. Of course being an early Carpenter movie stocked with unknown actors (many of whom remained largely unknown) it is a bit clunky in places. Some of the dialogue is less than smooth but this is more than made up for by the intensity of the film itself. This is a well deserved classic that really never needed ‘re-imaging’. The original has dated very well indeed. See it and be amazed.

Cartoon Time.

Timing of Leak of Afghan Mineral Wealth Evokes Skepticism

by Jim Lobe for Inter Press Service

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

WASHINGTON - The timing of the publication of a major New York Times story on the vast untapped mineral wealth that lies beneath Afghanistan's soil is raising major questions about the intent of the Pentagon, which released the information.

Afghanistan could be holding $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits including critical industrial metals such as lithium, the New York Times reported on June 14. Given the increasingly negative news that has come out of Afghanistan - and of U.S. strategy there - some analysts believe the front-page article is designed to reverse growing public sentiment that the war is not worth the cost. "What better way to remind people about the country's potential bright future - and by people I mean the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis, and the Americans - than by publicizing or re-publicizing valid (but already public) information about the region's potential wealth?" wrote Marc AmBinder, the political editor of 'The Atlantic' magazine, on his blog. "The way in which the story was presented - with on-the- record quotations from the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM [Gen. David Petraeus], no less - and the weird promotion of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense to Undersecretary of Defense [Paul Brinkley] suggest a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war," he added. The nearly 1,500-word article, based almost entirely on Pentagon sources and featured as the lead story in Monday's 'Early Bird', a compilation of major national security stories that the Pentagon distributes each morning, asserted that Afghanistan may have close to one trillion dollars in untapped mineral deposits. These include "huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and critical industrial metals like lithium", the story said. Afghanistan's total annual gross domestic product (GDP) last year came to about 13 billion dollars.

One "internal Pentagon memo" provided to the Times' author, James Risen predicted that Afghanistan could become "the 'Saudi Arabia of lithium,' a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberrys". "There is stunning potential here," Petraeus told Risen in an interview Saturday. "There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant," he said of the conclusions of a study by a "small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists". The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose recent efforts to begin a reconciliation process with the insurgent Taliban have been criticized by the Pentagon, quickly seized on the report. In a hastily arranged press briefing Monday, Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omar, said the report was "the best news we have had over many years in Afghanistan". Other commentators, however, suggested the news about Afghanistan's underground wealth was not all that new. As noted by Blake Hounshell, managing editor at 'Foreign Policy' magazine, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) already published a comprehensive inventory of Afghanistan's non-oil mineral resources on the internet in 2007, as did the British Geological Survey. Much of their work was based on explorations and surveys undertaken by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980's. The nearly trillion-dollar figure is based on a simple tabulation of the previous estimates for each mineral according to its current market price, according to Hounshell.

So, the question for many observers was why the article, which dominated much of the foreign news in the network and cable broadcast media during Monday's news cycle, was published now. Risen himself suggested an answer in his story, noting "American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan." Indeed, U.S. and NATO casualties have risen sharply in recent weeks; a four-month-old counterinsurgency offensive to "clear, hold, and build" in the strategic region around Marja in Pashtun-dominated Helmand province appears to have stalled badly; and a planned campaign in and around the critical city of Kandahar has been delayed for at least two months. The latest polling shows a noticeable erosion of support for Washington's commitment to the war compared to eight months ago, when President Barack Obama agreed to the Pentagon's recommendations to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan to bring the total U.S. military presence there to around 100,000 later this summer.

Moreover, what little support for the war remains among the publics of Washington's NATO allies - never as high as in the U.S. in any event - is also fading quickly. NATO and non-NATO countries, excluding the U.S., currently have about 34,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan. On the eve of a NATO ministerial conference in Brussels last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned that Washington and its NATO allies had very little time to convince their publics that their strategy against the Taliban was working - a message that has since been strongly echoed the coalition's commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and by Petraeus himself. Indeed, the administration is committed to a major review of its strategy in Afghanistan at the end of the year, and Obama himself has pledged to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in July 2011.

Obama is already coming under pressure from right-wing and neo-conservative media - some of which have been cultivated by Petraeus, in particular - and Republican lawmakers to delay that date. That view was seconded last week by former Petraeus aide, Lt. Col. John Nagl (ret.), a counterinsurgency specialist who is now president of the influential Center for a New American Security. Nagl worked closely with Petraeus in authoring the much- lauded 2006 U.S. Counter-Insurgency Field Manual, which stressed the importance of efforts to influence media perceptions in any counterinsurgency campaign. "The media directly influence the attitude of key audiences toward counter-insurgents, their operations, and the opposing insurgency," they wrote. "This situation creates a war of perceptions between insurgents and counter-insurgents conducted continuously using the news media." In that respect, the appearance of the Times story Monday looked to many observers like part of an effort to strengthen the case for giving the counterinsurgency effort more time. In an interview with Politico's Laura Rozen Monday, former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani said he had commissioned the assessment of Afghanistan's mineral wealth. "As to why it came out today... I cannot explain," he said.

[…and governments across the Western world wonder why their respective citizens are so political cynical. Go figure.]

Just Finished Reading: Threshold by Caitlin R Kiernan

Chance Matthews is not having a good life. As a teenager her parents are killed in a car crash and she is brought up by her grandparents. Both being geologists they greatly influence her career choice and give her a fascination with anything ancient. For a time at least everything is right with the world. But when her grandmother hangs herself from a tree in the garden Chance realises that all is not well. When her grandfather dies of a heart attack in her twenties she is left all alone and determines to seek out the family secret that has been nagging at her since her childhood. For in the collect of fossils hidden away in a corner room is the impression of an impossible creature that living long before the dawn of man, a creature that still exists and will go to any length to stay out of the daylight.

This book was not at all what I was expecting. For one thing I was expecting a fairly interesting work of urban fantasy. What I was presented with was more gothic horror. Not the kind of horror where creatures jump out of the dark but a story with a overpowering sense of dread and foreboding. Despite the fact that it was well, indeed often beautifully written, this book really failed to engage me and was, because of that, a much heavier read than it should have been. The characters were interesting enough but none of them were exactly lovable – or even that likable. The plot – though often tense – moved at much too slow a pace. Any other book not as well written as this was would have been rejected long before the 300 pages had ended. Speaking of endings….. I still can’t get my head around how the author finished up. The book was moving (slowly) to a natural confrontation and then, very suddenly, it wasn’t. It’s almost as if either she’d realised that she’d painted herself into a corner (which I don’t think she had) or she had no real idea how the bring the whole thing to a conclusion. It was all very strange and very disconcerting. Needless to say I shall not be looking out for more works by Ms Kiernan.

Cartoon Time.

My Favourite Movies: Underworld

I was just dying to see this (no pun intended) from the moment I saw Kate Beckinsale drop 6 stories bounce once to absorb her momentum and then casually keep on walking without any effort at all. That, I said to myself, is how immortal supernatural creatures should be - graceful, unafraid and drop-dead gorgeous. My only fear was that the rest of the movie wouldn’t live up to the preview. Mostly, except for a few wobbles, it actually exceeded my expectations.

The plot is a fairly simple one. It’s a love story as well as an echo of a love story between a vampire (Beckinsale) and a Werewolf (or actually descendent of the original immortal who is later ‘turned’) - played by Scott Speedman - which shadows an earlier love story that started off a 600 year old war between the vampire overlords and the werewolf slave race. It is, in many ways, a long story. Anyway, in the present the war is almost over – or at least that’s how it seems until a traitor is discovered in the vampire coven followed by lots of dead bodies! But it’s not the plot that sold me on this film and it’s not even the lovely Kate. What I liked so much, I could almost say loved, is the whole look and feel of the movie. For one thing both vampires and werewolves use guns against each other – silver bullets on one side (as you might expect) and ‘liquid light’ bullets on the other (as you wouldn’t really expect). One thing that did kind of confuse me however, is why no one wears body armour. Maybe their apparent immortality makes them too arrogant to even consider dying?

The special effects I thought were generally very good – especially the werewolf change process. The many fight scenes were suitably fast, brutal and well choreographed. The acting was largely good except for the suitably named Craven played by Shane Brolly who was actually appalling. I honestly don’t know how he got the job. My favourite actor in this movie was Michael Sheen who played Lucien, the werewolf forced to watch his vampire lover and their unborn child burn to death under the rays of an unforgiving sun and under the orders of an unforgiving father. He was quite simply superb and acted everyone else off the screen by his very presence.

I was honestly less than impressed by both the sequel and the prequel – especially the prequel which I thought was both very boring and completely unnecessary. At least Underworld: Evolution had a few saving graces though none of them come to mind readily! Anyway, if like me you enjoy the whole vampire genre and are looking for something more than the usual garlic and neck biting this could be for you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have on numerous occasions.