Teraforming

Everybody knows that the first person to discover extraterrestrial life is going to go down in the history books forever. Maybe it is shaking hands with ET or maybe it is simply taking a meteorite fragment and putting it under a microscope and exclaiming "BY JOVE! This bit of something isn't from around here and it's alive!"

This is all well and good and as it should be. But while it is a certainty there is other life forms in the infinite vastness of space none of them seem to be anywhere near here. Thus for the present we've only got ourselves to play with.

That in mind, when we think of space what should we be thinking of?

Funny you should ask because I was contemplating this while jogging the other day (don't ask me how this popped into my head, as I have utterly no idea) and happen to now have the perfect answer.

Terra-forming.

Those familiar with science fiction may be familiar with this term but for those that aren't terraforming is the process of taking an uninhabitable environment, think Venus or Mercury or Mars here, and turning it into a place people and other Earth life can live freely in.

Normally this process is depicted by using huge machines. Picture an air-conditioner the size of a large city, except instead of cooling the air, it would take in available resources from the planet and turn it into air and perhaps water.

Now first of all we must here limit out discussion to planets that are first terrestrial, setting foot on a gas giant just isn't a happening thing, and second of sufficient mass hold an atmosphere of breathable air to it's surface and not simply vent it off into space.

Past these two initial requirements all other considerations are secondary and can be thought through and conquered with human ingenuity. However, back to the original premise of using ultra massive machinery to turn a planet habitable to humanity, I find this idea to have crippling and ultimately insurmountable problems.

The idea is fine for science fiction, but in reality not only do you have to keep all of these machines repaired and in working order but you also have to power them in some way shape of form. In either case this would be not only hugely expensive, but more importantly, on the scale that would be required completley unfeasible.

Honestly, I love to believe that we as people could do it but the fact is it isn't possible, or if we ignore this objection and assume that it could be done it would require such resources of man power, energy, and materials as to beggar the imagination.

Yet behold! The dream of terraforming can still be accomplished. It can even be accomplished by man, we're just going to need a bit of help. From what immensely powerful ally can mankind hope to draw aid you ask?

Bacteria.

Yes, bacteria, those wee little things that make you sick that you can't even see without the help of a microscope. Those things which live in the most severe, the most varied habitats in the world.

In the beginning the planet earth did not have an atmosphere of oxygen. Oxygen is thought to have come as the byproduct of certain elementary life forms which gave rise to progressively more complex life forms until we get to where we are now. The point being that we need to recreat this process on the planets we hope to live on one day, and if we were smart we'd start today.

I don't know how long it took to convert earth's atmosphere to having a significant portion of oxygen and all those other gases which make air but regardless, by human standards it took a very long time. Thus, if we want to take over a planet we need to begin the terraforming today. We need to round us up some hardy bacteria and shove them on a space pod and launch them into space. The pod should be shot at some planet we hope to inhabit one day and upon arrival disperse the bacteria in as wide an area as possible. The hardy bacteria would flourish converting toxic gases into breathable ones and replicating to make more bacteria to do the same without humanity having to lift a finger. Eventually an uninhabitable world becomes a human paradise and all would live happily ever after frolicking in a man/bacteria made Eden.

A sublimely simple solution if I do say so myself, and I do.

Musing on Vampires

Burger King has come out with a series of ads of late that has two hosts of crazed pre-pubescent girls descending on one of their stores, battling for the allegiance of hapless Burger King customers. Both sides fanatically devoted to Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Series, but one side are ardent supporters of Edward, the other, zealous proponents of Jacob. Edward being the vampire and Jacob being the werewolf.

Now, I love this ad. I love this ad because these girls are so clearly out of their minds. Their passion for their side sweeping through any trace of reason in their not yet fully developed brains in a holocaust of unfamiliar hormones. Add to that the general confusion of the customers who have no idea what the hell these squeaky voiced idiots are talking about or why they seem so desperate to make their case and you have commercial gold. Honestly the commercial should win some sort of award for awesomeness.

Anyway, I was watching this commercial and it got me thinking (who knew a commercial could make you think?) What is it about Edward and Jacob that has these girls so out of their heads?

Perhaps it is just clever marketing with untold millions of dollars behind it that has pushed these characters onto the phsyche of every girl between the ages of 10-15, I am not sure that is true. At one point, before it was a movie Twilight was just a book. Albeit not a very well written book, but a book nonetheless. A book of words and no pictures. And at some point previous to this it wasn't even a book. It was just a manuscript looking to be published.

As I am unaware of any publishing company that lets 12 year old girls give the green light for publication (I have yet to see "Why Betsy Thomas who sits in the Third Row of Mrs. Applebuam's 4th period history Doesn't Deserve the Bead Necklace She Got For Christmas" hit the shelves of my local chain bookstore) I am forced to presume that there was a day where some adult read the story and liked it. If events followed the standard chain this adult then passed it on to the next adult in the chain and next thing you know people all over America are reading this damn thing.

Thus, it seems one cannot wholly attribute this phenomenon to a savvy marketing scheme. Nor, more surprisingly to me, can one chalk it up to girls alone, because as previously mentioned adults read this thing and took it to publishing.

Clearly Stephanie Meyers has tapped into something here. Which brings me back around to the part where the commercial got me thinking, what the hell is it about these vampire and werewolf characters that has girls will to descend on unsuspecting Burger King patrons to sway them in the favor of their choosen good looking monster character?

Now, I have only read the first one, which predates Jacobs entrance onto the scene so I really can not speak to that, and I don't actually own the thing so I'm going to do this analysis completely from memory. This excuse I find sufficiently large as to encompass any faults which may be found with my subsequent argument.

Let us start by stripping Edward of his good looks. Honestly, I would think the movie version would be enough to drive women fleeing from vampires like their was set aflame as the whole emaciated hollow cheeked combined with a paleness that is downright painful to look upon image of the on screen Edward comes off to me as sickly. If I saw a guy looking like that on the street I'd think they were doing some seriously hardcore drugs and were maybe three steps away from hospitalization.



But again, let us set all that aside as I think it accounts for relatively little of Edwards appeal. This is not to say that his looks are irrelevant, it helps to be easy on the eyes even if I can't see what they see, but rather that it is not Edward's looks that inspire his fans loyalty but something about him.

When Bella looks on Edwards her thoughts explode into hot shards of chaste puppy love. It is this that women love about Edward, not his appearance per se. His fans make this mistake of conflating his appearance with the effect of looking upon him has on them. They long for the man who will treat them as the focal point of the world, the sole point upon which the universe turns.

Not only that but Meyer's constructs Edward in such a way as to assure her audience that Edward cannot manifest his devotion to Bella in the traditional physical forms most of us are familiar with. This move has two desire intensifying principles to it.

The first of these is that it assures the audience that Edward is not simply captivated by Bella's appearance. Bella is the center of Edward's universe regardless of her looks. She could get acid thrown in her face and it wouldn't matter a bit to Edward. Bella feels truly seen by Edward for what she is, and what she wishes to be, for every facet of her personality. Honestly, who wouldn't be swayed by that kind of attention?

Secondly the chastity of Edward coupled with his metaphorical need and desire to suck the blood out of Bella's veins sets up that sweet tension of lovers parted. Romeo and Juliet wouldn't really be a story were it not for the fact that they were kept separated. The lust to be together present, Meyer's erects seemingly un-scalable walls to keep them apart. After that all Meyer's has to do is sit back and watch the tension and frustration build. Like sealing a lid to the top of a pot of water and then putting it on the stove and cranking up the heat, eventually there is an explosion. In essence it all boils down to we want what we can't have. Edward repeatedly telling Bella how much they can't be together only serves to make Bella want him all the more.

Of course Bella is described by Meyer's so vaguely that she could be anyone and is, in the minds of her readers. Where Meyer's has written Bella, Meyer's readers insert their own name, confused by how the story could be written any other way.

And now the world cup game is about to start so I am going to have to bring this musing to a close for now. Who knows, maybe someday I'll read the other books and be able to contrast Jacob and Edward and their relative merits. Though I wouldn't count on it.