A whole lotta things here

Space, Antero Alli, health, and more

Jan 30, 2023

On the reading front, I had to give up on Mining the Sky about a third of the way through - far too technical a book and bit outdated (1997), it was just too much of a slog for me, and my mind needs something with a bit more flow as I reacclimate to regularly reading books.

A bit of background on why I choose this in the first place: after quite a bit of ambivalence around choosing a major, my son, a freshman at U of Arizona, Tucson, came back from a career fair put on by the various departments at the college, and he was very excited about space exploration and colonizing the Moon, and majoring in engineering. This led me to dig a bit deeper into the current state of space exploration.

I scheduled a coffee meeting with an old classmate from undergrad who was pursuing his PhD in Space Resources at our alma matter, The Colorado School of Mines. What he had to say blew me away. Space exploration is happening now, and apparently Denver is a pretty big hotspot of activity with several “old guard” aerospace companies located here (Lockheed, Ball, Martin Marietta, and Raytheon) as well as too many startup companies to count. While my friend believed it would be tough for my son to find a space internship after only one year of college, he thought my son would have no problem finding a internship after next year. (mind blown) Things are happening very fast.

Beyond putting more space stations and satellites and such in orbit around the earth, and working to colonize the moon, there are, apparently, a whole bunch of NEAs, near earth asteroids, just waiting to be captured and mined for iron, nickel, and other metals. (mind blown again) Mining the Sky goes into this in a fair bit of detail. Some of these asteroids are so close that they pass between Earth and the Moon… Throw in zero gravity manufacturing for things like fiber optic cables, which is highly restricted by gravitational forces, and the future is far closer than I realized. Once again, as William Gibson said a long time ago, “The future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.”

I was recounting the story of my son’s new found path to my neighbor as we chipped away at the ice on her sidewalks a couple weeks ago, when she quite appropriately remarked, “Can’t we take care of our own planet, first.” Having been working with a client interested in both space resources (pursuing her masters as Mines) and climate change where she’s currently employed, I had an answer. Space exploration demands maximal utilization of resources - zero waste, in effect. And thus by developing our capability for space travel, we learn and develop zero waste technology, which will go a long way to our climate change efforts as well. (Technological development in one area feeds many other areas.) As Bucky Fuller noted, “Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting.”

I tend to see Zero Waste as a short to medium term solution to our current problem of decarbonization, while non-carbon sources of energy, such as nuclear fusion, will provide the energy abundance we need for the next evolutionary jump as a species, but that’s a story for another day.

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So in search of something easier to read, I picked up Antero Alli’s latest and final book, Last Words. When he said his final book, he wasn’t kidding. Within the introduction, I was shocked to learn that Antero was recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, and had refused chemo, opting for quality of life over quantity, thus having months, not years left.

In a recent podcast on his latest film, Tracer, he didn’t sound 100% to me and this offered a bit of an explanation. Although I haven’t been as close in recent years, I consider Antero a friend and mentor. His work has had a huge impact on my life, including but certainly not limited to his heavy emphasis on embodiment. I got to spend a few days with him in January 2007 leading up to the cast and crew screening of his then latest film, The Invisible Forest, and my memories are largely of long walks around North Berkeley and a man 100% committed to his own personal integrity. You can find my 2006 interview with Antero in his book, The Eight Circuit Brain, as well as a more recent interview I had with him last year for the Hilaritas Podcast. He’s currently releasing interviews on his YouTube channel, largely focused on his paratheatre work.

May your final days be minimal in pain and suffering, Antero. I know you will face death as you face life, as a warrior, full of acceptance of what is.

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On the subject of quality of life, and health and wellness, I believe that sleep sits at the top of the list. (I like to say to start with sleep, diet, and exercise, while sometimes throwing meditation in at the end of that list) Dr. Matthew Walker seems to sit at the forefront of the subject of sleep. I haven’t read his book, but I’ve heard more than a few podcasts with him. This one with Dr. Peter Attia might be the best one out there, while you can find him discussing THC and sleep on this YouTube clip of his podcast with Tim Ferris.

While I’m on the subject of health and wellness, I’d have to say there’s a lot of crap out there, particularly in the area of nutrition. I’ve come to greatly appreciate podcasts of Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman, while Dr. Rhonda Patrick deserves mention as well. I received a preorder of Attia’s book for Christmas, and really look forward to it.

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And on the subject of podcasts, the most interesting podcast for me so far this year has to be Tim Ferris’s interview with the man my son’s friend aptly named the real Most Interesting Man in the World,” National Geographic’s Explorer in Residence, Wade Davis - author of The Serpent and the Rainbow, as well as many other books.

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My personal productivity was not what I hoped for lately, largely due to complications from a now six year struggle with Lyme disease and it’s current manifestation, candida, coupled with stubborn refusal to stop drinking a nice double IPA or three every now and again, but I did manage to write up the next segment on my Hero’s Journey thesis that you can find on LinkedIn.

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And finally, I’ve been fascinated with space, our planet, and natural history, so here’s a link dump (if nothing else, check out some of the photos of the green comet):

Exotic green comet not seen since stone age returns to skies above Earth | Astronomy | The Guardian

Some photos from Reddit:

More reddit:

Inside NASA’s Voyage to an Asteroid Worth 70K Times the Global Economy

Kevin Kelly’s 12 Assumptions for Extraterrestrial Life

Pentagon finally admits recovering wreckage from UFO crashes.

Asteroid 2023 BU Will Brush The Earth's Atmosphere Tomorrow (Jan 26th)

New minerals discovered in massive meteorite may reveal clues to asteroid formation

Earth’s Core Has Stopped and May Be Reversing Direction, Study Says

Mercury Helps to Detail Earth’s Most Massive Extinction Event

Archaeologists discovered a new papyrus of Egyptian Book of the Dead

Obsidian handaxe-making workshop from 1.2 million years ago discovered in Ethiopia