Word: planetful
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This biophilic notion of a living planet--of Gaia--partly converges, oddly enough, with a kind of technophilia that is indigenous to the Internet. The central notion of techno- sophy--that life is a technology--has as its flip side the idea that technology is a form of life. Strange as this sounds, it is an increasingly common refrain in cyberculture. If the idea is valid--if indeed fiber optics are living tissue--then it is easier to think of Earth in the Age of Internet as a coherent living system, a giant organism complete with a giant brain. Gaia...
...earth, circulating in underground caverns and emerging as geysers and mountain springs, and infusing all of life--an idea he often incorporated in his art by painting curls of hair as if they were twirls of a whirlpool. In a premonition of the Gaia hypothesis, which compares the planet to a living organism, he writes poetically, "We may say that the earth has a spirit of growth, and that its flesh is the soil; its bones are the successive strata of the rocks...its cartilage is the tufa stone; its blood the veins of its waters...
...SuperSonic Ear $20; Wild Planet Toys; ages 5 and up The idea is for kids to use this groovy parabolic-dish gun and headset to listen in on sounds of nature--caterpillars munching, woodland creatures scuttling--they wouldn't normally be able to hear. Neat concept. There's potential for danger--like accidentally pointing the dish at speakers while big brother is playing Metallica. But used sensibly (on nature--Yeah, right!), it could be lots...
CAPE CANAVERAL: Mars Pathfinder's long journey to the red planet must begin, like any other, with a single step. For NASA scientists, that first step was delayed again early Tuesday morning as Pathfinder's scheduled launch was scrubbed again for the second time in as many days. The weather, Monday's culprit, was near-perfect; this time a computer on the ground was to blame, failing with just over a minute remaining in the countdown. A backup computer also would not work, leading officials to suspect a software problem. NASA scientists say they must launch the $196M Pathfinder...
...fallen too, with slashed budgets leading to fewer launches and worried whispers in the international community that even those missions were dangerously underfinanced. Lately, however, Russia has been funneling all its space resources into the launch of its Mars '96 probe, an unmanned spacecraft designed to orbit the Red Planet, dispatch a quartet of landers to the surface and, perhaps most important, return the country to the spacefaring pre-eminence it once enjoyed...