Trapped on Earth

Source: XKCD

Sometimes I wonder if in a few million years some advanced alien race will show up at Earth. They had long ago filtered out all of the radio noise in the galaxy, narrowed down the planets likely to hold life, and finally set out to explore the galaxy.
As they neared our star system they would do some scans and find that the third planet from the sun had a good atmosphere, a warm climate that could support liquid water, and even - to their joy - it was surrounded by thousands of tiny bits of metal; manmade satellites.

They would try to hail us, but would receive no reply. They would come closer to our planet and notice a few man-made objects on Mars. Their stomachs [or whatever they have] would twist with excitement at their realization that we too had the power to leave our planet and travel in space.

They would reach earth and scan it. They would only find primitive cities, barbaric savages, and derelict automated machines trying desperately to fulfill their futile mission. These humanoid barbaric savages couldn't be the ones who built the satellites and the man-made objects on mars could they? Something must have happened to them. Who was that once proud race that once beamed messages into space and sent robots all throughout their star system?

I wonder if the human race will really amount to anything other than a fascinating line of rubble in the fossil record. We refuse to seek out alternative sources of energy, we are so territorial that we kill our own species, and people are even suggesting we should abandon sending people into space altogether.

We are overcrowding this planet, we're killing much of the life on it, and no one seems to be getting it through their thick skull that this is the only planet that we have. That's it. We fuck it up and we're dead. There is no escape hatch, no reset switch, no backup planet we can jump to.

We have to work hard to leave this planet and colonize other worlds. We should be treating other planets the way we treat other continents: take it over and breed like mad.

Time Machines

I've been reading about time travel lately. I had forgotten this gem of science fiction/fantasy for awhile and rediscovered it lately when reading about the future of human evolution.

I can't count how many times I watched the old Time Machine from 1960. My parents thought cable TV would rot our brains and we lived in the middle of nowhere. My awesome grandpa recorded some cable TV for us and we had some videos of several hours of nickelodeon, and a few other recorded channels I don't remember.

One of the videos though, happened to have the old 1960 Time Machine on it. I probably watched the movie 100 times or more during my childhood. When the new one came out, I may have been one of the few people in the theater who actually remembered how good the old one was.

This DeLorean kicks ass.

HG Wells didn't have a very glamorous theory on the future of humans. The 2002 version had humans that were sexy, smart, and just like us. They even spoke english. The 1960 version had a bunch of dumb blondes fumbling around eating plastic fruit and watching each other drown.

But the story HG Wells wrote was so dark they actually censored him. After saving Weena [my old friend called her Weiner], in both movies, the protagonist fought the Morlocks, won, and went home. Except in the newest movie where the time machine fucking explodes and wipes out the Morlocks.

Weiner.

In the book, the protagonist doesn't care about Weiner, he wants to know the future. He travels into the future again and -snip-, sorry, the publishers didn't like what happens to humans and made him create a new draft.

In his original version, the protagonist goes into the future and kills some weird animal. Upon further inspection he realizes it was an evolved version of the Weinerhumans he had encountered earlier. They had lost their intelligence, and become mere cattle to the now arachnid-like Morlocks.

Clearly a race of Arachnids.

In the new version HG Wells wrote, he just gets rid of this scene altogether and the world gets dominated by crabs and then the sun starts eating planets. Hardly packs the same punch.

I like this story because it is a punch in the gut. So much sci-fi involves humans conquering the galaxy, evolving into über geniuses, or just becoming gods. And it happened to easily. We kept making our lives easier for ourselves until eventually we just hired an entire underclass to live under our cities helping us live out our awesomely leisure filled lives. We became dumb, weak, and a race of pussy communists. The underclass, apparently became dumb, savage, blood-loving hardcore republicans or something.

Then everybody became animals - there was no longer a drive for intellectual and physical development. It was as if McDonalds and video games took over one half of the world, and the blue collars took steroids and ate everyone.

I can kind of see that happening. People are getting lazier, and physically weaker. However, another trend suggests people are actually getting smarter. I don't exactly see how humans could evolve into a bunch of retards, but we could atrophy. If we don't use our upper brains would they atrophy and become vestigial? Could you imagine some version of humans in the distant future realizing that fat thick stuff in their skulls was for doing stuff with? It'd be like finding out that the appendix actually does shit.


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Superhumans

The Olympics are fascinating. I like to watch not just to cheer for my own country, but also to marvel at the powerful people that compete. It's amazing seeing people with almost perfect bodies flipping and morphing in the air before gracefully sliding into water, or run for two freakin' hours in a race and be nearly a mile ahead of the guy behind you. I can barely run for 15 minutes without coughing up crap and wheezing for air, but they make it look like a brief jog to the supermarket.

Then my mind begins to warp and the little mad scientist deep inside starts to get out his perverted toys.

I begin to wonder... what powerful brutes could we produce if all of these athletes bred? Obviously the athlete's workouts don't mean they've improved their DNA - that's not evolution. But I bet they've got some sort of genetic bias that makes them better than their peers...

Of course, the Olympics aren't just for sweating and showing off how great your are in sports... it's also about sweating and showing off in bed. During the Beijing Olympics, free condoms were given out to the athletes by the handfuls. Nearby markets found themselves completely stripped of condoms - they became the fastest selling product.

Is it wrong for me to hope that every one of those condoms broke or had a leak?

Perhaps in the future most of those competing will be genetic Olympians... those who's ancestors all competed in the Olympics.

Maybe that's not fair, but I still cling to the idea that steroids should be allowed. It'd be awesome watching hulk-like monsters lifting several-ton weights and running for days without a break.

I want the Olympic athletes to look like the guy on the right... and maybe green.

Of course, I don't have to rely on horny athletes to usher in an era of genetically enhanced humans. You can help me too!

Today, you can choose the gender of your child and remove genetic defects. It's also not illegal to... y'know... tell the doctor how much you'd really really like it if the baby had blue eyes.

If another genocidal dictator moves into power in a few years, instead of killing everyone with an undesirable trait, he could simply make it mandatory to remove those traits. It would probably look better if a dictator encouraged breeding instead of slaughtering lesser people. The baby's genes could just be tweaked and voila, blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin born from a family of Hispanics.

Not that I'm saying my superhuman race would have blonde hair and blue eyes (I was actually thinking straight black hair and green eyes?). People are already opting to screen out genetic defects to encourage a healthier child.

We are conquering diseases faster than ever, and humans are even evolving faster than before. There are even rumors that some people in Africa are developing genes that are resistant to HIV.

According to one scientist [and the many that agree with him], we are heading towards becoming Unihumans. Homo Sapien Sapienter, as it's called, is an amalgamation of all the human races on the planet. As time goes on we will evolve into other branches of humans just as our mammalian ancestors evolved into all the branches we see today. Oliver Curry, of the London School of Economics believes we will branch into two different races. A goblin-like underclass and an elven-like graceful upper class. Sound too much like Lord of the Rings? Read the scary scenario for yourself.

Personally I think Mr. Curry has seen the Time Machine one too many times.
...though from the sounds of his description of women he may have just been watching too much anime...

The Women of the Future