Saturday, October 23, 2010

Amazing Fiction

This is an ongoing list, will continue to be updated (I hope) and are in no particular order.

1. Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk (really anything by Palahniuk)
2. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
3. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
4. 1984, Gorge Orwell
5. Neauromancer, William Gibson

Feel free to comment with more!

Friday, October 22, 2010

Life in the Universe

I am fairly certain in my belief that life exists elsewhere in the universe. I would even go so far as to say I am confidant that intelligent life with brainpower similar to that of humans. It is unfortunate though that I feel we will never find it. There are around ~200,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy. Not all of them have solar systems like ours, but a large number have planets in the habitable zone (the sweet spot distance from the sun where you can have liquid and solid water) and statistically very probable that at least a few have a molten core and a bunch of carbon. This means that there is a fairly decent chance that life, even in a single cellular form, exists somewhere within our own galaxy! Then you must realize that there are another 200,000,000,000 galaxies in our universe (some estimates are much higher) so even if only one out of every 200,000,000,000 stars have life on it, there are that many galaxies, all with life (even if only on one planet).

Our own sun is about 2/3rds of the way out on our arm, and the diameter of the milky way galaxy is 100,000 light years. Even if we were lucky and there is life in our own galaxy, at about the same position but on the other side. The fastest man made object traveled 150,000 mph, and assuming we could make this speed safe for humans it would still take 4 billion years to make it to our suns position on the other side of the galaxy. Even if we broke physics and went the speed of light it would take over 60,000 years. And this is only if we are lucky and life exists elsewhere in our own galaxy.

For these reasons I feel confident that life exists on planets other than earth, and that we will sadly never come across it. As Carl Sagan thought; If we are alone in the universe, what a tremendous waste of space. Thoughts? Criticisms? What do you guys think?

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Random Film Idea

Drug use has been on a consistent incline for quite some time. Everything from nicotine and alcohol to cocaine and ecstasy to Prozac and Ambien. Throughout all races, ages, and socioeconomic status' drug use just seems to be up. Many people already live every moment of their life under the influence of very powerful drugs. It seems that along with use, drug strength is way up as well. Because evolution doesnt favor whats best it favors what survives and reproduces, human's tolerance to drugs has been steadily increasing in all this time between now (2010) and when this story takes place. This film opens many years into the future where humans have gotten to the point where they have self medicated themselves into oblivion. A radical group develops an injection that stops peoples bodies from being able to absorb drugs. Even if they continued to take them, they would no longer have an effect on anyone who had previously been injected. I'm thinking there should be huge free will questions in there too. The radical group should originally begin to be painted as heroes, but then seem less and less noble as more and more questions regarding free will expose themselves. I'm not quite sure yet if I want it to end with a revolution (either forced or voluntary) or the rebels eventually get crushed and human society crumbles.