It has been a long time since really watching Stargate: SG-1, going through the better part of my college life (whereas Star Trek was when I was before high school), and I have definitely missed watching the show. This is not to say that Stargate: Atlantis is not any good, just that Stargate: SG-1 truly was a great show.

Oh, and before beginning into Stargate: The Ark of Truth, I also have to say that it was definitely sad to see the Asgard go.

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Couldn’t help but laugh seeing the History Channel now buying PPC ads after the fact of their great special that I blogged about on Life After People and also my thoughts on Life After People (not to mention creating the pages all after they ran the ads on TV).

Too little, too late, perhaps?

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In the off-chance that one has yet to watch History Channel’s Life After People yet, please note that below will have spoilers on the show and my thoughts on it as well.

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For those of you with the long MLK weekend, just sending out a reminder about Life After People being shown on the History Channel on January 21st from 9PM to 11PM.

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A wonderful article in the Cosmos Magazine (not Cosmo) about archaeologists using Google Earth to help find lost cities around the globe shows just how in-depth satellite mapping has become:

Within a few hours on Google Earth, Madry was able to locate 101 features in an area covering 1,440 square kilometres in Central France. These features represented Iron Age, Medieval and Gallo-Roman sites.

“I have found a very large number of sites using Google Earth from my office here in the U.S.. I was quite surprised at this, and have now given many different short courses in the U.S. and Europe for archaeologists on how to use Google Earth in their work,” Madry said.

“Now, with the commercial ultra-high resolution satellite imagery and especially with Google Earth, archaeologists can conduct regional site surveys from their own offices,” Madry said. “This is something we would have only dreamed of before.”

Although I think Cosmos is a little off on calling for the end of Indiana Jones’s style archeology; I think that going off randomly searching for lost cities is probably over now. Yet, those using Google Earth can now help their archeology and treasure seeking by finding areas that are still uncovered and following up by actually traveling there via GPS.

This all goes to show how using technology, knowledge, and curiosity can truly be a positive benefit when used properly. Not only that, but even with cities entirely gone, archeology can be used to find civilizations thousands of years erased, pushing forward how long our own civilizations would be findable if we all suddenly disappeared.

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I wanted to follow-up on my previous post about Life After People by the History Channel as I ran across an article online by the Discover Magazine called “Earth Without People.” Essentially it has the same fundamental concepts as what the History Channel will show on January 21st, but it was written back in 2005:

Given the mounting toll of fouled oceans, overheated air, missing topsoil, and mass extinctions, we might sometimes wonder what our planet would be like if humans suddenly disappeared. Would Superfund sites revert to Gardens of Eden? Would the seas again fill with fish? Would our concrete cities crumble to dust from the force of tree roots, water, and weeds? How long would it take for our traces to vanish? And if we could answer such questions, would we be more in awe of the changes we have wrought, or of nature’s resilience?

It was a great read and now the only thing I hope is that I didn’t ruin watching the Life After People special if it takes the same stuff from that. (more…)

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Bump and Update on 1/29/2007:

Please go here if you are looking for my thoughts on Life After People.

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What looks to be a fascinating TV special by the History Channel coming up on January 21st called “Life After People“:

The human species appeared on Earth about two million years ago and has been changing it ever since. What will Earth look like in the days, weeks, months, years and millennia after humans are gone? How long would it take for our edifices to crumble–all traces of us gone, to be replaced by primordial forests, wild boar, rare cranes in pristine marshes? The clues to the future are right here in the present but are illuminated when we look through the lens of history. Experts from all fields of science will paint the picture, and the destructions and resurrections will all be animated by the magic of George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic. (Genres: Science & Technology, Special)

Even David Brin is will be getting into it as he notes on Daily Kos:

Watch your favorite Brin put down his pundit thing on the History Channel (again) on January 21, in a docu-future bit called Life After People… a fun look at what could happen to our cities… and animals… if humanity suddenly disappeared.

Would like to put a note via an RSS feed or something, but its unfortunately too far out on the History Channel’s website at this point, but so it goes.

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