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Some Stuff on Energy.

     Energy, it runs our lives and we're made of it.

Reproduction, Energy and Planetary Annihilation.

     The above title is a play on the pop culture phrase "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll", the three things people commonly associate with life in the fast lane. 

     As far as article starters go what could be better?

    Our planet is currently racing headlong down a similar fast lane as a result of one of it's inhabitant species. No, I'm not referring to the smartest of the bunch that would be the dolphins (Haha, a Hitchhikers reference)

     I'm referring to us human beings and the rate that we are using the resources of currently our only home in the Cosmos. We are now in the process of reworking the environment of planet Earth towards more extreme conditions that have never been seen before on the planet in its entire 4.6 billion year history. 

    We have caused most of that change within the past 100 years resulting in more alterations to the surface our homeworld in less than 0.00000217% of the time that it has ever existed.

    Amongst all that change, human population growth from reproduction is increasing. We're addicted to energy and we still keep those pesky nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, prepared for a war with no possible winners.

    So we really are living in the fast times of "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll".  An exceptional time of living on the edge, except it's our planet that is going to have to deal with the massive hangover.

Sorry Earth, We are never ever ever, going to reverse this.

The Cosmic Afterparty.

     All this talk about drastically changing landscapes, planetary engineering and global catastrophes has got me thinking of the vitality of addressing these challenges for emerging spacefaring civilizations.

     Imagine how across the entire Universe similar dramas are being played out on other planets and in other civilizations.

     I've been reading a lot of Isaac Asimov recently. I find his prose to be far more gripping and imaginative than Arthur C. Clarke. Many of Asimov's stories follow the adventures of spacefaring civilizations that have already made it past the fragile single planet stage. 

Our world, our struggles and the hopes and dreams of our species may be shared by other living things on other worlds as well.

     A common thread that lines Asimov's stories is the setting of a future civilization where all the challenges of today have already been dealt with.

     Asimovs' stories commonly reference the 21st century as the "Time of Troubles" or the "Perilous Days". The idea is that sometime in the future when we finally do solve our energy problems, our population growth problems and the various differences that divide the members of humanity we will look back to today and realize how childish it all was.

    I am an optimist. I look forward to the future and I try the best I can to communicate ideas that can hasten the arrival of that "World of Abundance" that everyone has been talking about. 

     But there is a big problem with this that I find very unsettling. 

    If we do solve today's problems some time in the future wouldn't there be equally greater problems to face once we've done so.

     This is where Sci-Fi stories commonly fall short in the details and leaves me reeling back to discover reality. 

We can imagine getting there, but can we imagine actually living there?

Infinity and Beyond

     Perhaps it is because of a lack of comprehension. We simply do not know where the future may take us and are content with just seeing the good that may come out of Science and Innovation without considering the consistent side effects.

    I think that even if we do solve the problems plaguing the humans of the 21st century, the problems plaguing the humans of the 22nd century would no doubt be 10x greater. Their energy crisis would be far beyond us. The algorithms they use for population control would perplex us to no end. Their ways of solving problems would simply stupefy us.

   All it takes is a little extra wisdom for our heads to catch up with our tails and realize that we are already living in the future and that all of tomorrows stories are written from the adventures of today.

Sincerely,
SonOfTerra92,
31/1/2014

A MALAYSIAN STORY: "ALLAH" in the Bible, A really pointless argument.

So this totally happened in Malaysia.

    Hello Internetland., It's me again SonOfTerra92 that obscure science slinging, bunk bashing,  guy on Science Epic. If you have watched the above video you can tell that I am a Malaysian. In the video I hint at the kind of hijinks we experience here in Malaysia when it comes to the politicization of religion.

     What a way to start the new year. Bravo, Malaysia, bravo. We've have definitely strong this time.

    Just a recap of what happened on the 2nd day of January.  Islamic religious department JAIS (of which is the religious department of my home state, Selangor represent) raided the office of the Bible Society of Malaysia in Damansara and confiscated a couple hundred Malay language bibles that were claimed to use used the word "Allah".

     20 JAIS people and 2 police offices barged into the Bible Society of Malaysia centre making arrests under the suspicion that they were propagating Christianity among Muslims.

     I am a science communicator. As far as these kinds of things go my role in them can usually be stretched so far as to battling creationists ideas, "Young Earthers" and the occasional moon landing conspiracy. You might be wondering why I would soil my hands in the affair of two religions taking stabs at each other? Would not it be better to leave them be? There are after all more experienced people that can comment on these events.

      This issue concerns me because of how it may affect the future of the country that I currently live in and ultimately my life as a bystander in religious debate in Malaysia.

      JAIS conducted the raid (not anything like the 2011 Indonesian action Movie) under the claim of the Selangor Non-Islamic Religions (Control of Propagation Among Muslims) Enactment 1988, a state enactment that prevents the use of Arabic words like Fatwa, Alhamdulillah, Insyaallah and most importantly "Allah"  in non-Islamic religious practice.

     Muslims in Malaysia have been made to think that  think that the word "Allah" is sacred to them and they are willing to legislate laws to rightfully defend it.

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     I am not a big fan of organised religion nor am I religious to begin with but  it doesn't take an expert (Or an ex-Muslim) to realize that a raid by an Islamic religious authority on a non-Islamic organization is a clearly in violation of something. At the very least its violating common sense. When I initially heard of this story that was that came to mindrst. Regardless of whatever law written or unwritten that we have in Malaysia, JAIS clearly has no jurisdiction over the Bible Sociey of Malaysia.

     Their actions were not a not just legally inappropriate but also morally unjustifiable.

    When it comes down to the actual raid I am reminded of the scene with the cops in Project X. In more civilised cases all the Christians had to do was pull off a Costa.

That's how it's done.

     If this raiding attitude persists how much longer before JAIS starts knock knock knocking on peoples homes (parody anyone)?

     What turned this issue from bad to worse was the long running debate of the use of the word "Allah" in non-Muslim religious practice. Which brings me to my next no-brainer. In a freethinking world the words protected by the 1988 state enactment are just that, WORDS.

     The 1988 enactment was put in place to supposedly protect the Muslim majority from potentially negative external influences. It is a clear example of  how far Malaysia still has left to go in its moral and ethical development.

     What we have here is a subtle attempt at thought control via word control. Forget 1984, this is 2014. The scary thing is that people actually buy into it. Most of the Muslim majority here consist of the see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil type. Trust me I've been around enough them.

     Because of  this attitude there exists a generation of Malaysian Muslims who don't care to ask the big questions and to me this represents a challenge in communicating science. The inroads towards sceptical inquiry among Malaysian Muslims are blocked. They can go to school and score straight A's in Astrobilological Nuclear Engineering but at the end of the day the key scientific values of scepticism and scrutiny are hard to communicate.

     That worries me because we still end up with a  people can be manipulated.

Question Everything, even the actions of  elected Leaders.

     Those are just my two cents on the issue. That's all from me. SonOfTerra92 signing off.And I'll see you next time.

10/1/2014