Happy 100th, BSA! May a Boy Scout lead the charge to the first 100-year trailblazing adventure on Mars!
As an Eagle Scout, I know what it's all about. Always be prepared.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Imminent. Fiscal. Free. Osmosis
Two activities my grandmother frowned upon - dancing and card playing.
Her second husband, my "real" but nonbiological grandfather had a vice - he smoked until emphysema attached oxygen feeding tubes to him for the rest of his life.
Do you ever see a vice squad go after smokers?
I'm not a health nut but I watch what I eat, smoking fewer cigars every year (don't have the nicotine addiction gene, I guess).
Doesn't mean I'm healthy but I do dance. Don't play cards much, though.
Last night, after the usual great service by Noina, Gift, Eric and Rainy at Thai Garden, the missus and I wandered into Lowe Mill in our minimalist dance costumes.
There, we learned about a subculture called the steampunk/zombie apocalypse epitomised by Cherie Priest's book, "Boneshaker."
Goggles, leather and gears. Worn by a young woman dressed up for the Halloween contest tied to the dancing.
Our musical guests, the Rocket City Jazz Orchestra, played a few sessions of big band sound - Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Mack the Knife, etc. The perfomers were all middle-aged guys like me, with the exception of the lovely singer who bewitched us with her sweet voice, one part Deborah Kerr and one part Doris Day.
Spellbound, I remembered my days with the Georgia Tech Navy ROTC jazz band, marching in Georgian smalltown parades and the Nawlins Mardi Gras festival.
As my wife noticed after prying me out of seat to have a clumsy good time on the dance floor, we spent all of our childhood and I a good bit of my early adulthood performing on stage, not thrashing around with the sweaty throngs.
We enjoyed seeing the dozens of young people jiving and swinging, keeping the music of the '20s, '30s and '40s alive and doing well under the shadow of cotton mill water towers and moonshot rockets.
Here in the Heart of Dixie. The lottery-free trophy buckle of the Bible Belt.
What would my Southern Baptist mission-founding grandmother say about that? "God works in mysterious ways. There's a purpose for everything. That orchid you and yo wife have is pretty enough to be in a Federated Garden Club show."
And my grandfather? "Did you have a good time? Did you stay out of trouble? Would you like to hear a story about any of my 29 years in the Navy between 1929 and 1959?"
It's Halloween, as much a part of our culture as religion and jazz.
Pirates, jellyfish, Rafael, tomb raiders, flappers, ninjas, Rainbow Brite, phantom of the opera, Lady Luck, dragonfly lady, angels and Antoine Dodson. Outfits befitting the times.
What pilgrims could have imagined the local natives introducing them to a grain that would grow into a maize maze? Amazing!
How do we let politics and influence peddling get out of control? Have we? Should we? Should we not? Simple. Never trust accounts receivable and accounts payable to the same person(s).
Her second husband, my "real" but nonbiological grandfather had a vice - he smoked until emphysema attached oxygen feeding tubes to him for the rest of his life.
Do you ever see a vice squad go after smokers?
I'm not a health nut but I watch what I eat, smoking fewer cigars every year (don't have the nicotine addiction gene, I guess).
Doesn't mean I'm healthy but I do dance. Don't play cards much, though.
Last night, after the usual great service by Noina, Gift, Eric and Rainy at Thai Garden, the missus and I wandered into Lowe Mill in our minimalist dance costumes.
There, we learned about a subculture called the steampunk/zombie apocalypse epitomised by Cherie Priest's book, "Boneshaker."
Goggles, leather and gears. Worn by a young woman dressed up for the Halloween contest tied to the dancing.
Our musical guests, the Rocket City Jazz Orchestra, played a few sessions of big band sound - Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Mack the Knife, etc. The perfomers were all middle-aged guys like me, with the exception of the lovely singer who bewitched us with her sweet voice, one part Deborah Kerr and one part Doris Day.
Spellbound, I remembered my days with the Georgia Tech Navy ROTC jazz band, marching in Georgian smalltown parades and the Nawlins Mardi Gras festival.
As my wife noticed after prying me out of seat to have a clumsy good time on the dance floor, we spent all of our childhood and I a good bit of my early adulthood performing on stage, not thrashing around with the sweaty throngs.
We enjoyed seeing the dozens of young people jiving and swinging, keeping the music of the '20s, '30s and '40s alive and doing well under the shadow of cotton mill water towers and moonshot rockets.
Here in the Heart of Dixie. The lottery-free trophy buckle of the Bible Belt.
What would my Southern Baptist mission-founding grandmother say about that? "God works in mysterious ways. There's a purpose for everything. That orchid you and yo wife have is pretty enough to be in a Federated Garden Club show."
And my grandfather? "Did you have a good time? Did you stay out of trouble? Would you like to hear a story about any of my 29 years in the Navy between 1929 and 1959?"
It's Halloween, as much a part of our culture as religion and jazz.
Pirates, jellyfish, Rafael, tomb raiders, flappers, ninjas, Rainbow Brite, phantom of the opera, Lady Luck, dragonfly lady, angels and Antoine Dodson. Outfits befitting the times.
What pilgrims could have imagined the local natives introducing them to a grain that would grow into a maize maze? Amazing!
How do we let politics and influence peddling get out of control? Have we? Should we? Should we not? Simple. Never trust accounts receivable and accounts payable to the same person(s).
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Wiki Word of the Day
How you interpret is not necessarily how you interpret what you interpret:
Any suggestions?
Can I put the rest of this year in fast-forward?
Thanks to all of those I haven't given my thanks. You know who you are even if you don't know how to interpret what I'm thanking you for.
HermeneuticsI'm trying to figure if voting in my local district on Tuesday is worth the effort and how to get a leader on the field to assess and decide in two seconds when last week's running recordbreaker isn't working again.
Any suggestions?
Can I put the rest of this year in fast-forward?
Thanks to all of those I haven't given my thanks. You know who you are even if you don't know how to interpret what I'm thanking you for.
Your #1 Fan - The Man From Mississippi
I don't often take cases pro Bono. After all, since Sonny died, it hasn't been as much fun, seein' as Cher won't sing Half Breed anymore like she used ta.
But me bein' a boy from Tennessee, I figured it didn't matter much if'n I worked a case or two without benefit of overchargin' my clients for thinkin' about their case while out chasin' golf balls and killin' trees when I miss those 205-point bucks accidentally wanderin' around my pile of shucked corn inconvenientliated sittin' underneath a one-man treehouse I built in the woods behind my forest mansion.
So anyways, here I is. I ain't got the larnin' that them citified lawyers have, what with their fancy accounts that lets 'em search their Lexus for the nexus or the willynilly what-fers.
Instead, it's just me and my cousin Clem and my uncles Gordo and Maximilian.
They say this here case is a whopper.
It involves one of them womenfolks who don't have no shame sheddin' her clothes fer magazine charity work fer them men who wants for a woman of their own at home, which kinda...no, not kinda, it DOES make her famous.
I dun looked over the paperwork. The whytofore and the hereintheafter don't mean much to me.
All I sees is this: if'n you's a famous person, you's gonna attract attention, both that which you wanted and that which you wouldn't want if'n you was begging for attention.
Now, as I sees it, if'n you's famous, it don't matter what kinda fans you attract, whether they be just as famous or infamous as you is.
And if'n you's ever had your own fan club, you knows the kinda fan mail you gets. As Clem says, it's more often lewd, crude and social un'ceptable or more so than it is an invitation to potluck Wens'dy night prayer meetin' at the Creek River Holiness Praise Church.
And that's too bad 'cause I love that homefried chicken and lumpy mashed potatoes that Earline makes for them Sunday after church suppers.
So's if'n you's famous and you gets the fan mail - and these days, fan mail ain't just a fancy posted letter with one of them fer'n Par Avion stamps on it - why, it could be got outta one of them e-lectronic portable handheld typewriters Uncle Gordo's been ravin' about that he seen at the Radio Shack.
Well, anyhoot, it don't metter where them fans' love letters come from. And I reckon it don't matter none about the content, 'ceptin' if it's threatenin' yours or your loved ones' life.
If you's famous in any way, you just caint sue or blackmail through the press your fans for any monetarily summatiouslike settlement, no matter how famous your fans think they is, real or imagined or in their own minds.
It ain't kosher in the lawbooks, is what it is. In fact, dependin' on what you says in public about the matter or your rep-presentatives say on your behalf, you's might be liable for libel or slander. I caint never remember which one.
I reckon that's all I gots to say on the matter. It's gettin' light out and ain't no deer comin' be here this mornin' so's I better go back to the cabin, cleans off my warpaint face, take off my deer scented camo overhauls and get ready for some good old-fashioned smashmouth football.
Who knows, one of them boys might take the other boy's head off and make my fantasy football team worth sump'n this year.
That, or start me a lawsuit on behalf of them zebraheads who fear for their lives after ruinin' a perfect season for the home crowd - you oughta see the "fan" mail they get! If I could bottle up some of them hateful words them fans say to them zebrastripes, we might have enough energy to put a woman on Mars.
Or is that Venus? I caint never remember. But I'm sure my wife'll remind me if she's Venus and I'm Mars or the other way around. Without her reminderin' me, I'd be a plain, dumb ol' boy from the backwoods drivin' a 4x4 with chicken wire and duct tape holdin' the ATV in place.
See you'ns later. Happy fall, y'all!
But me bein' a boy from Tennessee, I figured it didn't matter much if'n I worked a case or two without benefit of overchargin' my clients for thinkin' about their case while out chasin' golf balls and killin' trees when I miss those 205-point bucks accidentally wanderin' around my pile of shucked corn inconvenientliated sittin' underneath a one-man treehouse I built in the woods behind my forest mansion.
So anyways, here I is. I ain't got the larnin' that them citified lawyers have, what with their fancy accounts that lets 'em search their Lexus for the nexus or the willynilly what-fers.
Instead, it's just me and my cousin Clem and my uncles Gordo and Maximilian.
They say this here case is a whopper.
It involves one of them womenfolks who don't have no shame sheddin' her clothes fer magazine charity work fer them men who wants for a woman of their own at home, which kinda...no, not kinda, it DOES make her famous.
I dun looked over the paperwork. The whytofore and the hereintheafter don't mean much to me.
All I sees is this: if'n you's a famous person, you's gonna attract attention, both that which you wanted and that which you wouldn't want if'n you was begging for attention.
Now, as I sees it, if'n you's famous, it don't matter what kinda fans you attract, whether they be just as famous or infamous as you is.
And if'n you's ever had your own fan club, you knows the kinda fan mail you gets. As Clem says, it's more often lewd, crude and social un'ceptable or more so than it is an invitation to potluck Wens'dy night prayer meetin' at the Creek River Holiness Praise Church.
And that's too bad 'cause I love that homefried chicken and lumpy mashed potatoes that Earline makes for them Sunday after church suppers.
So's if'n you's famous and you gets the fan mail - and these days, fan mail ain't just a fancy posted letter with one of them fer'n Par Avion stamps on it - why, it could be got outta one of them e-lectronic portable handheld typewriters Uncle Gordo's been ravin' about that he seen at the Radio Shack.
Well, anyhoot, it don't metter where them fans' love letters come from. And I reckon it don't matter none about the content, 'ceptin' if it's threatenin' yours or your loved ones' life.
If you's famous in any way, you just caint sue or blackmail through the press your fans for any monetarily summatiouslike settlement, no matter how famous your fans think they is, real or imagined or in their own minds.
It ain't kosher in the lawbooks, is what it is. In fact, dependin' on what you says in public about the matter or your rep-presentatives say on your behalf, you's might be liable for libel or slander. I caint never remember which one.
I reckon that's all I gots to say on the matter. It's gettin' light out and ain't no deer comin' be here this mornin' so's I better go back to the cabin, cleans off my warpaint face, take off my deer scented camo overhauls and get ready for some good old-fashioned smashmouth football.
Who knows, one of them boys might take the other boy's head off and make my fantasy football team worth sump'n this year.
That, or start me a lawsuit on behalf of them zebraheads who fear for their lives after ruinin' a perfect season for the home crowd - you oughta see the "fan" mail they get! If I could bottle up some of them hateful words them fans say to them zebrastripes, we might have enough energy to put a woman on Mars.
Or is that Venus? I caint never remember. But I'm sure my wife'll remind me if she's Venus and I'm Mars or the other way around. Without her reminderin' me, I'd be a plain, dumb ol' boy from the backwoods drivin' a 4x4 with chicken wire and duct tape holdin' the ATV in place.
See you'ns later. Happy fall, y'all!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Woodcut
I looked across the restaurant and was shocked to see an older image of myself.
I grew angry, afraid, both certain and uncertain of myself.
There, before me, was my future staring back at me out of the past.
I watched myself hurriedly finish my meal and take my wife with me quickly out of the place.
I am not a meadowlark but I watch one cleaning its feathers on a birdfeeder in the woods. It flies away.
I sit here, exchanging sunlight reflections with birds and other living things tuned to states of energy flowing from a glowing, hot ball of fire.
My species is clamouring for my attention in more ways and manners (and unmannerly ways) than I care to count.
Thela hun ginjeet, I say, or some such. They repeat themselves when under stress - they repeat.
Few people know what I've done and what I'm capable of. It's what it is. I repeat.
When an overzealous reporter makes news out of nothing, I've concluded I have nothing to say.
That's the problem with having been a reporter, having had your own fan club and having negotiated backroom deals ...
... once you've done most of what your species is capable of, including ruling your species, and you're not changing into an entity with more choices ...
... sigh ... taking long naps and meditating are about all you've got left to entertain yourself.
That's the secret of the guru life.
Staying hidden in plain view.
Kind of like the ETSU football program - undefeated and unscored upon since 2003.
My ego has gotten the better part of me lately and I publicly apologise to myself one more time for my arrogance. I'm not here to sell myself or anything to do with discrete personalities.
All is all.
I have nothing worthwhile to say about what I know is really what life is all about. It would fill a dot at the end of this sentence. What I don't know is the rest of what we call life.
Today, I'm tired of reacting to other people's agendas. The real story of the universe is not for sale or designed for our consumption. Time for me to disappear temporarily. Time for a nap.
I grew angry, afraid, both certain and uncertain of myself.
There, before me, was my future staring back at me out of the past.
I watched myself hurriedly finish my meal and take my wife with me quickly out of the place.
I am not a meadowlark but I watch one cleaning its feathers on a birdfeeder in the woods. It flies away.
I sit here, exchanging sunlight reflections with birds and other living things tuned to states of energy flowing from a glowing, hot ball of fire.
My species is clamouring for my attention in more ways and manners (and unmannerly ways) than I care to count.
Thela hun ginjeet, I say, or some such. They repeat themselves when under stress - they repeat.
Few people know what I've done and what I'm capable of. It's what it is. I repeat.
When an overzealous reporter makes news out of nothing, I've concluded I have nothing to say.
That's the problem with having been a reporter, having had your own fan club and having negotiated backroom deals ...
... once you've done most of what your species is capable of, including ruling your species, and you're not changing into an entity with more choices ...
... sigh ... taking long naps and meditating are about all you've got left to entertain yourself.
That's the secret of the guru life.
Staying hidden in plain view.
Kind of like the ETSU football program - undefeated and unscored upon since 2003.
My ego has gotten the better part of me lately and I publicly apologise to myself one more time for my arrogance. I'm not here to sell myself or anything to do with discrete personalities.
All is all.
I have nothing worthwhile to say about what I know is really what life is all about. It would fill a dot at the end of this sentence. What I don't know is the rest of what we call life.
Today, I'm tired of reacting to other people's agendas. The real story of the universe is not for sale or designed for our consumption. Time for me to disappear temporarily. Time for a nap.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
And Now, Back To The Finance Folks...
Important thoughts for entrepreneurs? Probably so:
Innovation, Risk, Taxes
The Canary In The Dairy
Read this nontweet about tweeting:
CIO Magazine - The Four Biggest Mistakes Businesses Make on Twitter
Wild Orchids
Ever had a ganglion cyst? I've had two - one on each wrist.
Broke the first one when I tried to jump over a barbed wire fence, caught a shoe, fell over and smashed the bones in my left hand. I was ten years old.
The second one's been around for a few years, hanging out between the bones of my right hand. It sort of tells me the weather.
It's about to get cold again.
Reminds me I'm gettin' lazy in my writin', too.
All the brainpower on this planet and we still spend most of our time looking for food and other survival necessities.
Technology wizards will regale you with the PopSci promises of tomorrow. I can't seem to stop 'em.
Business gurus will continue to win friends and influence people.
Tower builders will build taller and taller towers.
Is there an echo in here?
The fellow down the road at the post office showed me how to cut my shipping costs in two.
What exactly is a sport bean?
Julia in Moscow said I wander from subject to subject and asked me why. I asked her why she was Russian. No difference.
The thought process is the thought process, is it not?
Why would Spiegel article [and translation] end this way:
This is my life, where comedy and tragedy continue their ageless witticisms from the balcony to the balustrades to the benchwarmers and first string players.
Broke the first one when I tried to jump over a barbed wire fence, caught a shoe, fell over and smashed the bones in my left hand. I was ten years old.
The second one's been around for a few years, hanging out between the bones of my right hand. It sort of tells me the weather.
It's about to get cold again.
Reminds me I'm gettin' lazy in my writin', too.
All the brainpower on this planet and we still spend most of our time looking for food and other survival necessities.
Technology wizards will regale you with the PopSci promises of tomorrow. I can't seem to stop 'em.
Business gurus will continue to win friends and influence people.
Tower builders will build taller and taller towers.
Is there an echo in here?
The fellow down the road at the post office showed me how to cut my shipping costs in two.
What exactly is a sport bean?
Julia in Moscow said I wander from subject to subject and asked me why. I asked her why she was Russian. No difference.
The thought process is the thought process, is it not?
Why would Spiegel article [and translation] end this way:
Die "trivialen Medienauftritte" des Präsidenten, lästert Joshua Greenman in der "Daily News", "haben die Marke Obama herabgewürdigt". Es ist eine uralte Kritik, aber genau das Gegenteil ist jetzt der Fall: Nur so kann Obama sich selbst und die Nation dem düsteren Bann der humorlosen Tea-Party-Antihelden entziehen.
Doch die lustigste Sequenz der "Daily Show" stirbt am Ende sowieso am Schneidetisch. Es ist Stewarts bissiger Begrüßungsmonolog, in dem er Obama auf die Schippe nimmt, der tatenlos hinter der Kulisse warten muss. Der Einstieg wird aber für die später ausgestrahlte Version gestrichen - aus Zeitgründen.
[The "trivial media appearances" of the president, Joshua Greenman blasphemes in the "Daily News", "have degraded the brand Obama". It is an ancient criticism, but the opposite is the case now: the only way Obama himself and deprive the nation of the dark spell of the humorless Tea Party anti-heroes.
But the funniest sequence of the "Daily Show" dies in the end anyway at the editing table. It is Stewart's sarcastic greeting monologue in which he takes the mickey out of Obama, who must wait passively behind the scenes. The entry is deleted but for later broadcast version - lack of time.]
From: Von Pomp zu Pappmaché, Von Marc Pitzke, New York, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,725769,00.html, accessed 28th October 2010 [Translation via http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,725769,00.html&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhjrNUM92nFBgIQ7KXCwT2pPA1-p0A]
This is my life, where comedy and tragedy continue their ageless witticisms from the balcony to the balustrades to the benchwarmers and first string players.
Meanwhile, I have to figure out how to connect all the world's supercomputers to regenerate the Book of the Future that I sold to a homeless person who wanted the pencil shavings to start a fire under the downtown river bridge. What was I sinking?
Police and Investigators Baffled
Famed botnet not stealing your secrets or credit card numbers!
Authorities planned to tie the recent bust of an international botnet ring to a global organised crime unit, claiming the ring leaders were stealing government secrets, private IDs, and bank/credit card account information.
However, upon further research of the data secretly stolen from the botnets, analysts have revealed that the botnets are in fact inserting people's lives into the lives of others - falsifying backgrounds in private company personnel files, putting people's faces in other people's holiday photos, creating completely cross-referenced wikipedia entries with corresponding websites and news wire stories...essentially rewriting the Internet, codenamed Operation "John Malkovich in 'Being Tom Hanks'".
Breaking down the details of the illegal operation was going to be the success story of the government announced just prior to upcoming elections that pundits have predicted will sweep out the old and bring in the new.
Government consultants and PAC contributors secretly hoped the operation breakup would put a halt to the country's conservative reaction to bank lenders' predatory lending practices in response to newly rich stockholders looking for a sure bet that caused the collapse of the global economy and an increase in volatile investment trends like making cow patties more precious than gold.
A cow farting next to a lantern in a barn full of kerosene and dry hay couldn't have caused a more bitter tasting sweet mint in the mouth of a gifted sawhorse.
Now that the truth has been discovered, analysts are pouring over the wikileaks website to determine how much the wikileaks creators have themselves been duped by a group of teenagers determined to turn the e-world into a parody of itself by putting into the hands of "insiders" documents that were forged at the beginning.
NEWS FLASH! Whole floors of rooms of people being hypnotised to believe the documentation, including photographs and videos, that shows them performing acts in which they never participated! Debutantes caught shopping at discount stores! Queen Elizabeth funneling beer at a punk biker bar!
In archaeology news, scientists have released a report claiming that sacrificial wells in Central America contain the remains of alien creatures. Speculation and rumours say that the aliens may have been trying to hide from tribes wanting to turn the aliens into gods while they were merely picnicking on Earth before continuing their weekend tour of this spiral arm of the galaxy, their prescient spaceships taking off on autopilot and leaving the aliens behind.
Authorities planned to tie the recent bust of an international botnet ring to a global organised crime unit, claiming the ring leaders were stealing government secrets, private IDs, and bank/credit card account information.
However, upon further research of the data secretly stolen from the botnets, analysts have revealed that the botnets are in fact inserting people's lives into the lives of others - falsifying backgrounds in private company personnel files, putting people's faces in other people's holiday photos, creating completely cross-referenced wikipedia entries with corresponding websites and news wire stories...essentially rewriting the Internet, codenamed Operation "John Malkovich in 'Being Tom Hanks'".
Breaking down the details of the illegal operation was going to be the success story of the government announced just prior to upcoming elections that pundits have predicted will sweep out the old and bring in the new.
Government consultants and PAC contributors secretly hoped the operation breakup would put a halt to the country's conservative reaction to bank lenders' predatory lending practices in response to newly rich stockholders looking for a sure bet that caused the collapse of the global economy and an increase in volatile investment trends like making cow patties more precious than gold.
A cow farting next to a lantern in a barn full of kerosene and dry hay couldn't have caused a more bitter tasting sweet mint in the mouth of a gifted sawhorse.
Now that the truth has been discovered, analysts are pouring over the wikileaks website to determine how much the wikileaks creators have themselves been duped by a group of teenagers determined to turn the e-world into a parody of itself by putting into the hands of "insiders" documents that were forged at the beginning.
NEWS FLASH! Whole floors of rooms of people being hypnotised to believe the documentation, including photographs and videos, that shows them performing acts in which they never participated! Debutantes caught shopping at discount stores! Queen Elizabeth funneling beer at a punk biker bar!
In archaeology news, scientists have released a report claiming that sacrificial wells in Central America contain the remains of alien creatures. Speculation and rumours say that the aliens may have been trying to hide from tribes wanting to turn the aliens into gods while they were merely picnicking on Earth before continuing their weekend tour of this spiral arm of the galaxy, their prescient spaceships taking off on autopilot and leaving the aliens behind.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Avatars in Avatars
Talked with a friend who bought one of those airport body scanners for personal use. The friend is working on installing the device at a theatre entrance, scanning those who pay a special entrance fee (read: more expensive) and having their bodies inserted into minor character roles in the digital screen projection of upcoming flicks.
The audience members won't know the change for sure unless they've seen the film more than once and/or they see fellow patrons at the cinema before the film showing stepping off to the side into the room where the body scanner will be discreetly located.
Given the fast pace of change, the friend expects hackers, once they learn of this public film role switching technique, to use homemade 3D body scanners to allow anyone to insert whomever they wish into any role in their digital film collection.
My friend is consulting with me about the best method for voice range/style retranslation. Anyone I know who's played with voice insertion/deletion is up for a future Academy Award in the near future!
Imagine your favorite flick with all the famous actors replaced by friends and family with the flip of a switch and a little bit of moviemaking magic.
Where fantasy ends, reality begins. Makes the average home theatre look as ancient as a dilapidated local opera house. Are you the first on the block with the new technology? As far as the rest of us go, how much is the transition worth to the typical Redbox movie renter?
The audience members won't know the change for sure unless they've seen the film more than once and/or they see fellow patrons at the cinema before the film showing stepping off to the side into the room where the body scanner will be discreetly located.
Given the fast pace of change, the friend expects hackers, once they learn of this public film role switching technique, to use homemade 3D body scanners to allow anyone to insert whomever they wish into any role in their digital film collection.
My friend is consulting with me about the best method for voice range/style retranslation. Anyone I know who's played with voice insertion/deletion is up for a future Academy Award in the near future!
Imagine your favorite flick with all the famous actors replaced by friends and family with the flip of a switch and a little bit of moviemaking magic.
Where fantasy ends, reality begins. Makes the average home theatre look as ancient as a dilapidated local opera house. Are you the first on the block with the new technology? As far as the rest of us go, how much is the transition worth to the typical Redbox movie renter?
Adequate Aqueduct
Inactual fact. Factual in act. Inexact expostfacto.
The storyline wants to say that next the invading Mexican gangs will kidnap children of poor Hispanic-Americans and train them to be assassins; kidnap children of wealthy Hispanic-Americans and hold them for ransom - no ransom, then the assassins get to work in their invisible job roles.
But that's just the storyline talking.
You know that storylines have their own invisible lives, of course.
UFOs are just as convenient as deities to explain disjointed time sequences.
Conspiracies are easy to concoct on a slow news day.
Keep the masses entertained, distracted, focused on substantial inconsequentialities.
Make believe that votes matter in well-entrenched political policies.
Hidden piles of cash and liquid assets somewhere close.
What do you do with a leaf pile?
Surprise 'em with sudden plot twists, thoughtful questions, quick view of the Sun on a cloudy day, charitably generous villains, imperfect heroes, complex simpletons, and hints/clues that you know more about every individual reader than any author before you.
The ideal e-story changes with real life circumstances surrounding the reader. Product placement is replaced with family/friends/colleagues/associates inserted into the romance/war/spy/comic book that borders on roleplaying game scenario setups.
We read the same story that's not the same.
The life of "The Game" is the game of life. Our spouses and significant others are instantly more intriguing than we ever could imagine.
It started with the first leather sinew, flint tool, clay pot, abacus and cloth weave.
Racks of relays and breadboarded garage designs.
Prosthetic limbs and augmented reality.
The mental companion called self.
Maples and aspens.
Volcano guardians and grainkeepers.
It - this neverendingmomentofselfdiscovery - continues unabated.
You are no longer you (you never were but we've covered that issue already). You are the green screen actor of your filmed-in-real-time life.
Background check company competitors are scrambling to accommodate new legal definitions of multifaceted lives living at the same time in one sane (not clinically insane borderline/multipersonality*) person, because our online personae with online personae [repeat ad naseum] make us as much if not more money than the offline one(s).
*Functional ones of these - your gardenvariety ego/megalomaniacs - don't need background checks to succeed.
So you can see more closely that all is no longer what it seems.
Writing the epic that is your life of one in seven billion changes the rules as it changes the rules as it goes along trying to write itself before it never existed afterward.
All in the attempt to create the universal interface/parameters/hooks/strings/molecules/states of energy to connect with any and all entities/beings/crafts/cultures/states of energy unimaginable.
If I can explain to a tapeworm living in the balmy water next to a deepwater underground steam vent the purpose of the glass-and-metal structure that I call a patio furniture set under a pile of freshly-fallen leaves on the back deck in front of me right now, then I might, as a comparatively-similar tapeworm, understand more advanced/complicated forms of living elsewhere, and vice versa.
Make people think and they might change their insane ways of living.
Might is right.
Ri-i-i-ight!!!
The storyline wants to say that next the invading Mexican gangs will kidnap children of poor Hispanic-Americans and train them to be assassins; kidnap children of wealthy Hispanic-Americans and hold them for ransom - no ransom, then the assassins get to work in their invisible job roles.
But that's just the storyline talking.
You know that storylines have their own invisible lives, of course.
UFOs are just as convenient as deities to explain disjointed time sequences.
Conspiracies are easy to concoct on a slow news day.
Keep the masses entertained, distracted, focused on substantial inconsequentialities.
Make believe that votes matter in well-entrenched political policies.
Hidden piles of cash and liquid assets somewhere close.
What do you do with a leaf pile?
Surprise 'em with sudden plot twists, thoughtful questions, quick view of the Sun on a cloudy day, charitably generous villains, imperfect heroes, complex simpletons, and hints/clues that you know more about every individual reader than any author before you.
The ideal e-story changes with real life circumstances surrounding the reader. Product placement is replaced with family/friends/colleagues/associates inserted into the romance/war/spy/comic book that borders on roleplaying game scenario setups.
We read the same story that's not the same.
The life of "The Game" is the game of life. Our spouses and significant others are instantly more intriguing than we ever could imagine.
It started with the first leather sinew, flint tool, clay pot, abacus and cloth weave.
Racks of relays and breadboarded garage designs.
Prosthetic limbs and augmented reality.
The mental companion called self.
Maples and aspens.
Volcano guardians and grainkeepers.
It - this neverendingmomentofselfdiscovery - continues unabated.
You are no longer you (you never were but we've covered that issue already). You are the green screen actor of your filmed-in-real-time life.
Background check company competitors are scrambling to accommodate new legal definitions of multifaceted lives living at the same time in one sane (not clinically insane borderline/multipersonality*) person, because our online personae with online personae [repeat ad naseum] make us as much if not more money than the offline one(s).
*Functional ones of these - your gardenvariety ego/megalomaniacs - don't need background checks to succeed.
So you can see more closely that all is no longer what it seems.
Writing the epic that is your life of one in seven billion changes the rules as it changes the rules as it goes along trying to write itself before it never existed afterward.
All in the attempt to create the universal interface/parameters/hooks/strings/molecules/states of energy to connect with any and all entities/beings/crafts/cultures/states of energy unimaginable.
If I can explain to a tapeworm living in the balmy water next to a deepwater underground steam vent the purpose of the glass-and-metal structure that I call a patio furniture set under a pile of freshly-fallen leaves on the back deck in front of me right now, then I might, as a comparatively-similar tapeworm, understand more advanced/complicated forms of living elsewhere, and vice versa.
Make people think and they might change their insane ways of living.
Might is right.
Ri-i-i-ight!!!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
St. Peter im Hochschwarzwald
Detached and depressed today.
No more Bill Hicks, Lewis Grizzard or David Foster Wallace. More dead white guys littering the literary sheets.
Left with the real world, the Book of the Future sold page by impossible page.
No longer entertained by compromising individuals.
Not comfortable comforting the feel-good middle masses.
Lost in the labels I make about not existing.
A yellow butterfly like a fall leaf defying gravity in a late October wind storm.
I have no power, no name, no fame, no place in history to call mine.
Faceless, blameless, hopelessly hopeful (or hopefully hopeless?), hopping along on legs burdened with 70 lbs of excess fat I can only call mine.
Chronicling is not living. Living is not journalism but journeying on travails.
This day, like many, too many, before, this day that shrinkwraps itself around me, getting tighter until I can hardly breathe, the cliched life choking off words, when I can find no yesterday, today or tomorrow with my mark scratched onto its hardcore surface...
I know what it's like to be dead already.
I am the water vapour with no thoughts that we think we call clouds.
I never existed in the first place. I had no need of black velvet paintings or similar nouveau riche luxury expenditures. My fits of consumption have always been modest.
And yet here is the luxury of "I" in plain view.
Comparisons get me nowhere. I have no one to impress but my self-delusional vain self.
Eat and be eaten. The essence of essen.
Maybe being hungry is all I've got to say for myself, and food, not visions, usually suffices.
No more Bill Hicks, Lewis Grizzard or David Foster Wallace. More dead white guys littering the literary sheets.
Left with the real world, the Book of the Future sold page by impossible page.
No longer entertained by compromising individuals.
Not comfortable comforting the feel-good middle masses.
Lost in the labels I make about not existing.
A yellow butterfly like a fall leaf defying gravity in a late October wind storm.
I have no power, no name, no fame, no place in history to call mine.
Faceless, blameless, hopelessly hopeful (or hopefully hopeless?), hopping along on legs burdened with 70 lbs of excess fat I can only call mine.
Chronicling is not living. Living is not journalism but journeying on travails.
This day, like many, too many, before, this day that shrinkwraps itself around me, getting tighter until I can hardly breathe, the cliched life choking off words, when I can find no yesterday, today or tomorrow with my mark scratched onto its hardcore surface...
I know what it's like to be dead already.
I am the water vapour with no thoughts that we think we call clouds.
I never existed in the first place. I had no need of black velvet paintings or similar nouveau riche luxury expenditures. My fits of consumption have always been modest.
And yet here is the luxury of "I" in plain view.
Comparisons get me nowhere. I have no one to impress but my self-delusional vain self.
Eat and be eaten. The essence of essen.
Maybe being hungry is all I've got to say for myself, and food, not visions, usually suffices.
Monday, October 25, 2010
And if you met Ron P. on the trail, then what?
Looking at CDs by Chuck Mangione, Weather Report, Pink Floyd, Dolly Parton, Kronos Quartet, IIIrd Tyme Out, Bill Hicks, The Seldom Scene, Tangerine Dream, Claire Lynch, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, Tomita, Rampal, nine inch nails, Keith & Rusty McNeil; books by William Faulkner, Lu Hsun, Brendan Gill, Michael Belfiore, Wayne Biddle, Augusten Burroughs, Ken Tanner, Stephen and Robin Larsen.
Thinking again about the Korean movie "Shadows in the Palace."
Many the words unknown, from chemical engineering solutions to sewing machine parts.
Many the explanations for not advancing, progressing, interloping or eloping.
Every utterance a technical manual of Germanwordsstrungtogether.
Thinking ahead to washable, social fabric wrapping our bodies.
How does a humble life go with luxury goods?
How many people buy a vehicle and practice changing a tyre along the roadside before a blowout occurs?
What is a modern library?
What does 1ERECT2 mean when two people are sitting with the doors of their one lorry open?
How many pretend to have mysterious lives?
Why be inquisitive in polite company? When is saying "need to know only" ignored by the unnaturally curious?
Who hires and trains soldiers/guards to torture captors?
Who stops perpetuating perspiration?
What does it feel like not to be superficial?
How to deprogram a fear of being obscure?
Where?
Why?
To what extent?
Isn't meteorology the study of the sky falling? Is it the study of meteors? Why not?
Thinking again about the Korean movie "Shadows in the Palace."
Many the words unknown, from chemical engineering solutions to sewing machine parts.
Many the explanations for not advancing, progressing, interloping or eloping.
Every utterance a technical manual of Germanwordsstrungtogether.
Thinking ahead to washable, social fabric wrapping our bodies.
How does a humble life go with luxury goods?
How many people buy a vehicle and practice changing a tyre along the roadside before a blowout occurs?
What is a modern library?
What does 1ERECT2 mean when two people are sitting with the doors of their one lorry open?
How many pretend to have mysterious lives?
Why be inquisitive in polite company? When is saying "need to know only" ignored by the unnaturally curious?
Who hires and trains soldiers/guards to torture captors?
Who stops perpetuating perspiration?
What does it feel like not to be superficial?
How to deprogram a fear of being obscure?
Where?
Why?
To what extent?
Isn't meteorology the study of the sky falling? Is it the study of meteors? Why not?
How Does That Apply To You/Me/Us?
Just how social are you? Are they?:
Can just anyone get to space? Can he?:
Would a country and its companions encourage a continued devaluation of its currency to decrease a foreign entity's holdings? Would I?
Best purchase in a long time: "The Four Antiphonal Organs of the Cathedral of Freiberg Played Simultaneously By E. Power Biggs, Bach/The Four "Great" Toccatas and Fugues" for $.95 on LP by Columbia Masterworks at McKay's.
Some days, questions are all there are to ask, wrapped in colloquial colonialistic antipathy, neither for nor against anything in particular.
Kleiner Perkins: Get Social, or Get Left BehindIf you're going to promote the viability of your city, do you and 150 of your best friends buy a Mercedes-Benz? Do you?:
India's smaller cities show off growing wealth
Can just anyone get to space? Can he?:
"To the moon with yourself"
Would a country and its companions encourage a continued devaluation of its currency to decrease a foreign entity's holdings? Would I?
Best purchase in a long time: "The Four Antiphonal Organs of the Cathedral of Freiberg Played Simultaneously By E. Power Biggs, Bach/The Four "Great" Toccatas and Fugues" for $.95 on LP by Columbia Masterworks at McKay's.
Some days, questions are all there are to ask, wrapped in colloquial colonialistic antipathy, neither for nor against anything in particular.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Tarmac and a shot of Jack
1995. Peyton Manning at the helm. Final score: 41-14. Knoxville News-Sentinel headline the next day: "VOLS CRUSH BAMA".
Fifteen years of student-athletes wandering hallways that perpetually reconstruct themselves.
We watch WWF become WWE. We watch DTD lose its campus privileges. Victorian beauties give way to big block monstrosities full of modern conveniences.
Children grow up. Some die in random street violence. Others in hunting accidents while stalking deer or slaying enemies.
The song remains the same.
The visiting team making last-day game preparations while the faint noise of jets and props gun up and gear down.
A solitary crow on a carpark pole adjusts its feathers and launches confidently into the warm October air.
A Texas' boy's son and a backup launching missiles to find weaknesses in the opponents' defensive wall.
In the crowd, cheerleaders try to fire up the 13th man (never exactly sure if the coach(es) has/ve placed 10 or 12 on the field).
Fifteen years and the score flipflops, 10-41.
No excuses.
Sure, three years and three coaching systems give the upperclassmen sleeping fits.
But that ne'er promised rose garden sprouts up anyway, briery and prickly long afore appears the scenty blooms a winning gentleman gives his lady in a promising proposal.
The eternal seeds of hope hibernate.
Boys grow into players, coaches, cheerleaders, administrators, valets, band directors, baritone horn players and warriors.
We know the cycle's not always in our favour so we keep rolling the big ring along.
In that big picture we don't want to see, we all benefit.
A Star Trek fanatic, who wore Star Trek themed underwear to school, becomes a football fan because of his brother, yelling for the opponent in a stadium full of 102k+ mainly yelling for the hometown team.
Makes you wonder why a futuristic, peaceloving society is always going to battle stations. Maybe - TV/film ratings are not the same as a pure futurist's dreams.
Of course the future does not exist. That is, we play the game of life, to find out who's willing to give up life, liberty, limbs and roses for a cause bigger than one of us.
That's why I say thanks to Tiffini, the valet, room cleaners and gift shop operator at Airport Hilton; Michael at Pizza Hut; the hostess, server, cook and manager at Zachary's Steakhouse; Double J Whitetails of Alabama; Gigi's; the circle drill and Come Sail Away; Rocky Top Buses; Bridgeport Fire&Rescue, "We Care Enough To Wear Pink"; Charlotte, Jasmine and Damien at Old Time Pottery; those who give thanklessly.
Fifteen years of student-athletes wandering hallways that perpetually reconstruct themselves.
We watch WWF become WWE. We watch DTD lose its campus privileges. Victorian beauties give way to big block monstrosities full of modern conveniences.
Children grow up. Some die in random street violence. Others in hunting accidents while stalking deer or slaying enemies.
The song remains the same.
The visiting team making last-day game preparations while the faint noise of jets and props gun up and gear down.
A solitary crow on a carpark pole adjusts its feathers and launches confidently into the warm October air.
A Texas' boy's son and a backup launching missiles to find weaknesses in the opponents' defensive wall.
In the crowd, cheerleaders try to fire up the 13th man (never exactly sure if the coach(es) has/ve placed 10 or 12 on the field).
Fifteen years and the score flipflops, 10-41.
No excuses.
Sure, three years and three coaching systems give the upperclassmen sleeping fits.
But that ne'er promised rose garden sprouts up anyway, briery and prickly long afore appears the scenty blooms a winning gentleman gives his lady in a promising proposal.
The eternal seeds of hope hibernate.
Boys grow into players, coaches, cheerleaders, administrators, valets, band directors, baritone horn players and warriors.
We know the cycle's not always in our favour so we keep rolling the big ring along.
In that big picture we don't want to see, we all benefit.
A Star Trek fanatic, who wore Star Trek themed underwear to school, becomes a football fan because of his brother, yelling for the opponent in a stadium full of 102k+ mainly yelling for the hometown team.
Makes you wonder why a futuristic, peaceloving society is always going to battle stations. Maybe - TV/film ratings are not the same as a pure futurist's dreams.
Of course the future does not exist. That is, we play the game of life, to find out who's willing to give up life, liberty, limbs and roses for a cause bigger than one of us.
That's why I say thanks to Tiffini, the valet, room cleaners and gift shop operator at Airport Hilton; Michael at Pizza Hut; the hostess, server, cook and manager at Zachary's Steakhouse; Double J Whitetails of Alabama; Gigi's; the circle drill and Come Sail Away; Rocky Top Buses; Bridgeport Fire&Rescue, "We Care Enough To Wear Pink"; Charlotte, Jasmine and Damien at Old Time Pottery; those who give thanklessly.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Metropolis Restored
If you want to know what one species can accomplish during its reign of/over/above the environment, read. For instance:
1. Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson, (c) 1973 Grand Central Publishing
2. Stones into Schools: promoting peace with books, not bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Greg Mortenson, (c) 2009 Viking Penguin
3. The Imperial Cruise: a secret history of empire and war by James Bradley, (c) 2009 Little, Brown and Company
Thanks to: UBC: Samantha, Shirley, Brittany, Becka, Dana, Pat, etc.; Bubba's; Timmy at Hardee's; Sonic; HSV Int'l Airport
It's so easy to manipulate the general populace's subcultural ignorances that I'm embarrrrrrassed for my species. Should I be? Ten thousand years one way or the other reveals few significant changes at larger scales. So little to show, so much to talk about.
I'll talk about local timescale events we easily understand.
Glad Nicholas is doing well, Chestney is on schedule to set a family first and Maggie juggles her work/school/play schedule like a pro.
If you're going to compose an epic for all ages, it won't translate into any one language specificationalleyway well. Like trying to understand the mindset of a socially maladjusted psychopath (the way John Curran and Casey Affleck met in a director's vision in "The Killer In Me").
Why did Gates go to China? Why did another meeting take place that was agreed not to be published or journalised in real time?
Business is business. How many contracts never reach a newspaper, blog or tweet? Almost all of them.
I don't worry about the regular flow of money. I concern myself with where we need to anticipate the logjams in the spring a decade from now and which wooden houses will survive a thousand years. Ten thousand years later, it'll be hard to see anything of concern today anyway.
Rewrite the past all we want but call it entertainment, not history.
Write the future and only call it happiness and hope. Apocalypse and fear are for our animal ancestry.
Or are they?
Are we but social animals, clever with vocalisation manipulations backed by thought accumulations?
If only I could translate the future into the social framework of today...
We'll see.
It's Saturday. Let the games begin. Play ball!
1. Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson, (c) 1973 Grand Central Publishing
2. Stones into Schools: promoting peace with books, not bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Greg Mortenson, (c) 2009 Viking Penguin
3. The Imperial Cruise: a secret history of empire and war by James Bradley, (c) 2009 Little, Brown and Company
Thanks to: UBC: Samantha, Shirley, Brittany, Becka, Dana, Pat, etc.; Bubba's; Timmy at Hardee's; Sonic; HSV Int'l Airport
It's so easy to manipulate the general populace's subcultural ignorances that I'm embarrrrrrassed for my species. Should I be? Ten thousand years one way or the other reveals few significant changes at larger scales. So little to show, so much to talk about.
I'll talk about local timescale events we easily understand.
Glad Nicholas is doing well, Chestney is on schedule to set a family first and Maggie juggles her work/school/play schedule like a pro.
If you're going to compose an epic for all ages, it won't translate into any one language specificationalleyway well. Like trying to understand the mindset of a socially maladjusted psychopath (the way John Curran and Casey Affleck met in a director's vision in "The Killer In Me").
Why did Gates go to China? Why did another meeting take place that was agreed not to be published or journalised in real time?
Business is business. How many contracts never reach a newspaper, blog or tweet? Almost all of them.
I don't worry about the regular flow of money. I concern myself with where we need to anticipate the logjams in the spring a decade from now and which wooden houses will survive a thousand years. Ten thousand years later, it'll be hard to see anything of concern today anyway.
Rewrite the past all we want but call it entertainment, not history.
Write the future and only call it happiness and hope. Apocalypse and fear are for our animal ancestry.
Or are they?
Are we but social animals, clever with vocalisation manipulations backed by thought accumulations?
If only I could translate the future into the social framework of today...
We'll see.
It's Saturday. Let the games begin. Play ball!
Friday, October 22, 2010
On The Hunt For Good Pepper
Why is it, when I think of Cameron or Clegg, I automatically think "keg"?
Have you ever monitored the output of the professors at Woodrow Wilson College?
Last night, I sat and listened to a typical academician's report on an ongoing report about academic issues - the intersection of scientists and entrepreneurship presented by David Audretsch, Ph.D., on the campus of UAHuntsville. I stuck it out for 30 minutes before I figured I had better things to do, like finding scientifically-minded entrepreneurs instead of hearing about digging some out of a statistically-significant pile.
Despite contrariness on my part, happiness is my only act of sacredness. Otherwise, nothing is sacred to me - all subjects are not off-limits or off-subject.
Labels are labels - if, for instance, a person says s/he is for limited government but works for a government contractor or an entity that receives government funding, I ask myself if anything that person says is supposed to make just as much sense.
It's easier to turn a blind sow's ear than to make pearls out of evergreen trees.
So it's facts I deal with and let people throw out all the labels they choose to use to support whatever tautology they wish to call their own.
A simple fact. I heard Soos Weber give a presentation on why it's important to preserve acreage in the state of Alabama to ensure we have clean drinking water, places for huntable/fishable wildlife to spawn/reproduce, and recreational areas for us people to get away from it all every now and then. Especially when the funding comes from offshore drilling and not from the state's coffers.
Nowadays, anyone with a computer, a projector and a laser pointer can give a powerful slideshow presentation.
Thus, as much as I know Soos and trust that the board of trustees of Forever Wild have my best interests (as a general citizen) at heart, I had to find out for myself if their intentions lined up with reality.
Yesterday, I jumped on the computer, looked up a nearby wildlife management area called The Walls of Jericho, packed a shoulder bag with water, dried almonds/cranberries, apple, water and first aid kit, slipped on a pair of sneakers under my dress pants and drove an hour or so to a gravel parking lot.
On the way there, I realized there was a public outdoor shooting range and a local road called Highway 65 that any God-rearing hogriding member of the NRA would love to travel and get to.
Imagine the perfect family vacation. Dad and son like the bikes and the guns. Mom and daughter like horse riding and stirring up some victuals. They load up their horses, picnic gear and motorbikes, pull off on Highway 65, let momma drive the truck on to The Walls of Jericho horse trail in the Skyline Management Area while the boys take off on their bikes to get to the shooting range before they stop at the The Walls of Jericho hiking trail. They all meet up at the Walls of Jericho picnic/camping area hungry as a bunch of hibernating bears in spring.
But I digress. After I shouldered my pack, put on my NASCAR cap, and grabbed my handmade walking stick out of the trunk of the car at 10:30, an hour and a half later I stood inside the natural amphitheater called The Walls of Jericho. Imagine, if you can, seeing Niagara Falls without water rushing over the precipice. That's The Walls of Jericho, walls of jericho, walls of... [simulating echo effect].
To get there you zigzag through switchbacks, walk across two log footbridges and see lots of wooded hillsides. Tread quietly and you'll observe the natural setting for great barred owls, minnows, cardinals and other creatures I won't mention because you have to be there to appreciate them.
When I got there at noon, two young persons were rolling up their campsite where they had slept under the stars on the edge of The Walls of Jericho the night before.
I ate my apples, almonds and cranberries, downed half a liter of water, snapped a few photos with my pocket-sized cannon (make that a Canon SD1200 Elph) and within 15 minutes I was on the trail again, returning along the edges of cliffs and dropoffs, passing other solitary hikers making their way into the "Grand Canyon of the South."
By 13:45 I was back at the car - sweaty, happy and talkative - describing to some hesitant folks in the carpark exactly how strenuous the 5-mile hike was in dress pants and sneakers. I convinced one couple to find an easier trail and another couple to take the challenge.
By 15:00 I was home, taking a shower (and then later a nap) before getting ready to hear Paul A. flip electronic charts about milking academic scientists for money.
I am a happy man. Although I live in a state that has the lowest number of publicly accessible lands to enjoy, there are still many choices for outdoor hiking/camping (as opposed to mall walking and hotel sleepovers) within a drive of an hour or so.
This in a metropolitan area that some joke has the highest number of Ph.D.s per square inch.
What more can a good ol' boy like me, with the intelligence my parents gave and nurtured in me, ask for?
Have you ever monitored the output of the professors at Woodrow Wilson College?
Last night, I sat and listened to a typical academician's report on an ongoing report about academic issues - the intersection of scientists and entrepreneurship presented by David Audretsch, Ph.D., on the campus of UAHuntsville. I stuck it out for 30 minutes before I figured I had better things to do, like finding scientifically-minded entrepreneurs instead of hearing about digging some out of a statistically-significant pile.
Despite contrariness on my part, happiness is my only act of sacredness. Otherwise, nothing is sacred to me - all subjects are not off-limits or off-subject.
Labels are labels - if, for instance, a person says s/he is for limited government but works for a government contractor or an entity that receives government funding, I ask myself if anything that person says is supposed to make just as much sense.
It's easier to turn a blind sow's ear than to make pearls out of evergreen trees.
So it's facts I deal with and let people throw out all the labels they choose to use to support whatever tautology they wish to call their own.
A simple fact. I heard Soos Weber give a presentation on why it's important to preserve acreage in the state of Alabama to ensure we have clean drinking water, places for huntable/fishable wildlife to spawn/reproduce, and recreational areas for us people to get away from it all every now and then. Especially when the funding comes from offshore drilling and not from the state's coffers.
Nowadays, anyone with a computer, a projector and a laser pointer can give a powerful slideshow presentation.
Thus, as much as I know Soos and trust that the board of trustees of Forever Wild have my best interests (as a general citizen) at heart, I had to find out for myself if their intentions lined up with reality.
Yesterday, I jumped on the computer, looked up a nearby wildlife management area called The Walls of Jericho, packed a shoulder bag with water, dried almonds/cranberries, apple, water and first aid kit, slipped on a pair of sneakers under my dress pants and drove an hour or so to a gravel parking lot.
On the way there, I realized there was a public outdoor shooting range and a local road called Highway 65 that any God-rearing hogriding member of the NRA would love to travel and get to.
Imagine the perfect family vacation. Dad and son like the bikes and the guns. Mom and daughter like horse riding and stirring up some victuals. They load up their horses, picnic gear and motorbikes, pull off on Highway 65, let momma drive the truck on to The Walls of Jericho horse trail in the Skyline Management Area while the boys take off on their bikes to get to the shooting range before they stop at the The Walls of Jericho hiking trail. They all meet up at the Walls of Jericho picnic/camping area hungry as a bunch of hibernating bears in spring.
But I digress. After I shouldered my pack, put on my NASCAR cap, and grabbed my handmade walking stick out of the trunk of the car at 10:30, an hour and a half later I stood inside the natural amphitheater called The Walls of Jericho. Imagine, if you can, seeing Niagara Falls without water rushing over the precipice. That's The Walls of Jericho, walls of jericho, walls of... [simulating echo effect].
To get there you zigzag through switchbacks, walk across two log footbridges and see lots of wooded hillsides. Tread quietly and you'll observe the natural setting for great barred owls, minnows, cardinals and other creatures I won't mention because you have to be there to appreciate them.
When I got there at noon, two young persons were rolling up their campsite where they had slept under the stars on the edge of The Walls of Jericho the night before.
I ate my apples, almonds and cranberries, downed half a liter of water, snapped a few photos with my pocket-sized cannon (make that a Canon SD1200 Elph) and within 15 minutes I was on the trail again, returning along the edges of cliffs and dropoffs, passing other solitary hikers making their way into the "Grand Canyon of the South."
By 13:45 I was back at the car - sweaty, happy and talkative - describing to some hesitant folks in the carpark exactly how strenuous the 5-mile hike was in dress pants and sneakers. I convinced one couple to find an easier trail and another couple to take the challenge.
By 15:00 I was home, taking a shower (and then later a nap) before getting ready to hear Paul A. flip electronic charts about milking academic scientists for money.
I am a happy man. Although I live in a state that has the lowest number of publicly accessible lands to enjoy, there are still many choices for outdoor hiking/camping (as opposed to mall walking and hotel sleepovers) within a drive of an hour or so.
This in a metropolitan area that some joke has the highest number of Ph.D.s per square inch.
What more can a good ol' boy like me, with the intelligence my parents gave and nurtured in me, ask for?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Science
I'm waiting on some upcoming news in regards to international cooperation in the next leap forward into space. As soon as the news is released, I'll also share in the excitement of all the incremental advances we've made lately.
Stuff like greenhouses on the Moon and asteroid/comet exploration.
When will the first space junk collector/dealer make a fortune?
Stuff like greenhouses on the Moon and asteroid/comet exploration.
When will the first space junk collector/dealer make a fortune?
From the News Desk of Our Caracas / Karachi / Tehran Bureaus
So often I've been told that one group of people is tired of all the flood of noise coming from another group.
"We're tired of the Western influence on the world."
"One more elevator piping Muzak and I'm going to explode!"
Having seen from another country the local reporting of international headlines filled with important "news" from my country, I understand only one thing: squeaky wheels.
There are more Chinese Internet users than there are people in the U.S. so why are non-U.S. countries entertaining us with U.S. news rather than news about internal Chinese events?
I say we experiment by only publishing the usual sensational/shocking/negative news about China rather than the U.S. and make the Venezuelas and Irans of the world happy.
Better yet, let's publish the same news about Venezuela and Iran in international headlines all the time - the 24/7 shocking accusations and innuendos about their politicians, athletes and film stars; tantalising hints about debauchery in business deals; "on the street" reports about the hidden poverty, crime and general malaise.
Oh, and occasional "feel good" stories to change the tone/pace of news and keep citizens glued to their TVs, radios, computers, and mobile phones.
After years of hearing how excitingly decadent these countries are, we'll run some polls to determine what global citizens think are the countries with the most ruinous children of Satan.
Or we can agree that news proliferation is proportional to the number of people free to file reports, positive and negative, about countries and events.
Is it a fair system? Certainly not. After all, news sells advertising. Advertisers like news that sells their company image in a positive light.
"A family of eight, after just filling their petrol tank with refined Iranian fuel, wiped out in fiery head-on collision on crowded Venezuelan motorway. More news at 11. Have you considered buying a new automobile lately? Then, Brand X, with its slew of family-friendly safety features, is the way to go. Now, back to your regular programming."
"We're tired of the Western influence on the world."
"One more elevator piping Muzak and I'm going to explode!"
Having seen from another country the local reporting of international headlines filled with important "news" from my country, I understand only one thing: squeaky wheels.
There are more Chinese Internet users than there are people in the U.S. so why are non-U.S. countries entertaining us with U.S. news rather than news about internal Chinese events?
I say we experiment by only publishing the usual sensational/shocking/negative news about China rather than the U.S. and make the Venezuelas and Irans of the world happy.
Better yet, let's publish the same news about Venezuela and Iran in international headlines all the time - the 24/7 shocking accusations and innuendos about their politicians, athletes and film stars; tantalising hints about debauchery in business deals; "on the street" reports about the hidden poverty, crime and general malaise.
Oh, and occasional "feel good" stories to change the tone/pace of news and keep citizens glued to their TVs, radios, computers, and mobile phones.
After years of hearing how excitingly decadent these countries are, we'll run some polls to determine what global citizens think are the countries with the most ruinous children of Satan.
Or we can agree that news proliferation is proportional to the number of people free to file reports, positive and negative, about countries and events.
Is it a fair system? Certainly not. After all, news sells advertising. Advertisers like news that sells their company image in a positive light.
"A family of eight, after just filling their petrol tank with refined Iranian fuel, wiped out in fiery head-on collision on crowded Venezuelan motorway. More news at 11. Have you considered buying a new automobile lately? Then, Brand X, with its slew of family-friendly safety features, is the way to go. Now, back to your regular programming."
Advanced Holiday Privileges
What is your stance and/or contribution philanthropically speaking? Are you a rising billionaire? Do you feel you should have to or should want to share your wealth?
Ask them:
Ask them:
Highest number of billionaires in the world
Revestimento
Dusty. Fly eggs. Yard cart.
Redheaded woodpecker. Thrush. Wren.
Dried ironweed stalks.
Life is humour. Take your humour seriously.
Rewind and replay occasionally.
Reanalyse recursively.
Observe the qigong on the runway.
Pit the pits.
Spot the top.
Or stipulate.
Who is the biggest stakeholder - the player endangering his personal marketing value or the owner losing his team's value on the market? Whose agent gains/loses the most - the coach's or the player's? Do officially licensed merchandisers have a say in the penalty process?
Do you know the worth of one CPU cycle? Do you optimise or are you an optimist?
In this political boundary, a need for wiser/assertive environmental conservation in the form of the Forever Wild renewal. A nobrainer but still a use of brain cycles, nonetheless.
A request to find a "cure" for leukemia. Can't get my 10-year old friend back but might save others the pain and anguish of medical procedures and loss.
I assume I am ignorant and try to disprove my assumptions. All I can do is test theories, never completely sure that water freezes at the same temperature every time I want to chill out.
Stacked chairs. Paper racks. Motorcycle trailers. Short socks. Propane lighter. Battery charger. Virginia creeper. Beekeeping.
Eco's lists and grandparents. Waiting lists and grand staircases.
I sold the future I had so I could develop an alternate future. What the buyers do with the future they think they own is out of my hands (and out of their reach, but they'll find that out soon enough, my having warned any potential buyers here for a long time that knowing the future buys you nothing).
Some knowledge is interesting but not useful to me. The narrative of this solar system contains the movement and recombination of states of energy - the fluid, dynamic interchange of sunlight reflecting off a canvas carryall, for instance. Should I spend time describing the many possibilities such a scene means?
I am a storyteller. I listen to other life tales and look for significance - nothing is simple because everything is connected.
This is my world, my home, my people, my storyboard.
I don't need statements or facts. The absence of meaning tells me more than I need to know.
The new future is here before us, like a mountain covered by a forest.
I held back the future to watch the reactions of a few. Now that I know their true intentions, I'm letting the future jump forward a little faster.
Hang on to your seats. The ride's bumpy for a while but don't worry - the future's right there waiting for us like always.
In the big picture, there are no surprises. Every action has an explanation that makes sense to someone. Randomness is a luxury illusion.
Are you prepared for a future with no labels?
If you can't take a lighthearted approach, I can't help you pass on by.
Redheaded woodpecker. Thrush. Wren.
Dried ironweed stalks.
Life is humour. Take your humour seriously.
Rewind and replay occasionally.
Reanalyse recursively.
Observe the qigong on the runway.
Pit the pits.
Spot the top.
Or stipulate.
Who is the biggest stakeholder - the player endangering his personal marketing value or the owner losing his team's value on the market? Whose agent gains/loses the most - the coach's or the player's? Do officially licensed merchandisers have a say in the penalty process?
Do you know the worth of one CPU cycle? Do you optimise or are you an optimist?
In this political boundary, a need for wiser/assertive environmental conservation in the form of the Forever Wild renewal. A nobrainer but still a use of brain cycles, nonetheless.
A request to find a "cure" for leukemia. Can't get my 10-year old friend back but might save others the pain and anguish of medical procedures and loss.
I assume I am ignorant and try to disprove my assumptions. All I can do is test theories, never completely sure that water freezes at the same temperature every time I want to chill out.
Stacked chairs. Paper racks. Motorcycle trailers. Short socks. Propane lighter. Battery charger. Virginia creeper. Beekeeping.
Eco's lists and grandparents. Waiting lists and grand staircases.
I sold the future I had so I could develop an alternate future. What the buyers do with the future they think they own is out of my hands (and out of their reach, but they'll find that out soon enough, my having warned any potential buyers here for a long time that knowing the future buys you nothing).
Some knowledge is interesting but not useful to me. The narrative of this solar system contains the movement and recombination of states of energy - the fluid, dynamic interchange of sunlight reflecting off a canvas carryall, for instance. Should I spend time describing the many possibilities such a scene means?
I am a storyteller. I listen to other life tales and look for significance - nothing is simple because everything is connected.
This is my world, my home, my people, my storyboard.
I don't need statements or facts. The absence of meaning tells me more than I need to know.
The new future is here before us, like a mountain covered by a forest.
I held back the future to watch the reactions of a few. Now that I know their true intentions, I'm letting the future jump forward a little faster.
Hang on to your seats. The ride's bumpy for a while but don't worry - the future's right there waiting for us like always.
In the big picture, there are no surprises. Every action has an explanation that makes sense to someone. Randomness is a luxury illusion.
Are you prepared for a future with no labels?
If you can't take a lighthearted approach, I can't help you pass on by.
Batteries of the Same Kind
More books:
- Bulletin Catalog Issue 1980-82 Undergraduate, Tennessee Tech University
- Memoir for Mrs. Sullivan by Bryna Ivens Untermeyer, Simon and Schuster (c) 1966, "Janeil Berry/ Best wishes to Janeil and Allan Berry - Christmas 1968 - The Beals"
- Tennessee Genealogical Records & Abstracts, Volume I: 1787-1839 by Sherida K. Eddlemon, Heritage Books, Inc. (c) 1998
- Counties of Tennessee, A Reference of Historical and Statistical Facts for Each of Tennessee's Counties by Austin P. Foster, A.M., The Overmountain Press (c) 1923
- Blount County, Tennessee Marriages 1795-1865 by Will E. Parham, Southern Historical Press (c) 1982
- In The Tennessee Mountains by Charles Egbert Craddock, pseud. [Mary N. Murfree], Thirteenth Edition, Houghton, Mifflin and Company (c) 1886
- The Ancient World of the Celts by Peter Berresford Ellis, Barnes & Noble Books (c) 1998
- Executive Orders by Tom Clancy, G. P. Putnam's Sons (c) 1996
- Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life & Times by James Finn Garner, MacMillan Publishing Company (c) 1994
- The Cat and the Curmudgeon by Cleveland Amory, Little, Brown and Company (c) 1990
- Simon & Schuster's Guide to Cats (c) 1983
- Mysterious Cat Stories, edited by John Richard Stephens & Kim Smith, Galahad Books (c) 1993
- Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee and Fain's Index, The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century comprising its settlement, as The Watauga Association, from 1769 to 1777; A Part of North-Carolina, from 1777 to 1784; The State of Franklin, from 1784 to 1788; A Part of North-Carolina, from 1788 to 1790; The Territory of the U. States, South of the Ohio, from 1790 to 1796; The State of Tennessee, from 1796 to 1800. By J.G.M. Ramsey, A.M., M.D., Kingsport Press, reprint 1926
- Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chicago: M.A. Donohue & Co., " Eliz To William/not taken from Eliz/ William Harmon, Rogersville, Tennessee, Elizabeth Harmon, William Harmon, Rober Smith"
- 1995 Directory, Covenant Presbyterian Church, 301 Drake Avenue SE, Huntsville, AL 35802
- An Irish Century, 1845-1945, From the Famine to World War II by Stephen Small, Barnes & Noble Books (c)1998
- Reader's Digest See the USA the Easy Way: 136 Loop Tours to 1200 Great Places, The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (c) 1996
- The Hymnbook, Rogersville Presbyterian Church, Published by Presbyterian Church in the United States / The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. / Reformed Church in America, (c) MCMLV by John Ribble, Seventh Printing, "This Hymn Book has been placed in the Rogersville Presbyterian Church in Memory of Rev. Robt. Dabney Carson, D.D. and Mrs. Julia Kyle Carson by Mr. and Mrs. R.D. Carson, Jr."
- Life and Service Hymns, compiled by R. E. Magill, published by Onward Press, Presbyterian Committee of Publication, Richmond, Va. (c) 1917
- The Hymnal, Published in 1895 and Revised in 1911 by Authority of The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Philadelphia, The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1917, "Property of the Rogersville Presbyterian Church / Do not carry away from the Church"
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
the rains fall soft
a couple of days ago i thought back to the evenings when i joined other future engineers and scientists to practice tossing scarves cigar boxes and balls as part of juggle tech at north avenue trade school
now i toss words around and wonder about time
choices
a bridge too far
the bridge over the river kwai
the bridges of madison county
bridget jones diary
the idea that identifies delivers empowers and amplifies
reducing states of energy to incomprehensibility
turning a moment inside out
juggling the wind
letting go of the future
dropping the hero herding mentality
poof
silence
and then there were seven
feel for the fluttering the irregular heartbeat
and then there were six
what is humourous about posthumous hummus
can u hum a tune from cabaret
is there a song in the way you pray
how did you ride a lightwave and get here so fast
fractions and fractals refracting reflections flecked fractured and flaked
were they five or eight next
itlxlr8
every one of us an analytical analog analogous to catalogues
use dual use duly duty dually noted
connecting to all the wavelengths around us and understanding every scent
can you see what is missing and know what is going on thirteen light years away
you can if you are willing to try your will willfully wistfully in your wishing well will
suppress and become not to become one
few know that any jargon will do as long as they keep coming back to the jargon that does
now i toss words around and wonder about time
choices
a bridge too far
the bridge over the river kwai
the bridges of madison county
bridget jones diary
the idea that identifies delivers empowers and amplifies
reducing states of energy to incomprehensibility
turning a moment inside out
juggling the wind
letting go of the future
dropping the hero herding mentality
poof
silence
and then there were seven
feel for the fluttering the irregular heartbeat
and then there were six
what is humourous about posthumous hummus
can u hum a tune from cabaret
is there a song in the way you pray
how did you ride a lightwave and get here so fast
fractions and fractals refracting reflections flecked fractured and flaked
were they five or eight next
itlxlr8
every one of us an analytical analog analogous to catalogues
use dual use duly duty dually noted
connecting to all the wavelengths around us and understanding every scent
can you see what is missing and know what is going on thirteen light years away
you can if you are willing to try your will willfully wistfully in your wishing well will
suppress and become not to become one
few know that any jargon will do as long as they keep coming back to the jargon that does
Where Are You In The Circle?
The circle of life. We've all heard the phrase.
Where do you find yourself, if you find yourself, in the new circle?:
Where do you find yourself, if you find yourself, in the new circle?:
Your Online Life: Spokes On The Hub
Monday, October 18, 2010
I'd Rather Be Wrong Than Dead
Watching the Titans win tonight with only a minor slate of injuries reported, basking in Munster's victory this weekend, and wondering about the upsets in top 25 college football, I pause to consider Jupiter and the Moon.
No special reason. Just 'cause I can.
See what I'm saying?
I don't have to be right. I only want to learn from you, my fellow members of what we call our species, what we consider worth considering.
If you say you're practicing the commandments and following the tenets of a religion, I'll believe you and will want to read the primary documents that teach you what you're supposed to be doing when you practice and follow.
I can't read your mind. I'm a behaviourist at heart - I read your intent through your actions, including the emotions you express that you say you feel.
We're one big family so I react according to family-style training - respect the learned opinions of your elders, support the sick, and teach the young.
In the meantime, I'm composing the story that tells the history of this planet, all our civilisations a tiny dot along the timeline, the mere start of the Anthrocene (or Anthropocene) period.
How do you tell an Earth-sized story without using the communication method, the language, of a newcomer species?
How do you explain religion in terms that universally speaks to all living, feeling beings?
It's twisting my poor ol' brain into a pretzel, that's what all this rewriting of the act of communicating is doing to me.
And I'm supposed to compose five of these epic tales?
Glad I have the assistance of all seven billion of us.
Like this opinion about morals without an omniscient head of religion. Is fairness universal? Is it coded in our combination of states of energy? Why do some animals care for their young? Why do any creatures reproduce?
Je ne sais pas. Je ne connais pas.
I will complete at least one of my books about this small part of the solar system, even if it depletes my whole thinking/feeling process to do so, knowing that the act of communicating itself is not universal, let alone the style/format.
Look at the known states of what we call the universe and tell me if knowledge is more important than action. Now tell me how I'm supposed to express your opinion universally.
See what I'm saying?
No special reason. Just 'cause I can.
See what I'm saying?
I don't have to be right. I only want to learn from you, my fellow members of what we call our species, what we consider worth considering.
If you say you're practicing the commandments and following the tenets of a religion, I'll believe you and will want to read the primary documents that teach you what you're supposed to be doing when you practice and follow.
I can't read your mind. I'm a behaviourist at heart - I read your intent through your actions, including the emotions you express that you say you feel.
We're one big family so I react according to family-style training - respect the learned opinions of your elders, support the sick, and teach the young.
In the meantime, I'm composing the story that tells the history of this planet, all our civilisations a tiny dot along the timeline, the mere start of the Anthrocene (or Anthropocene) period.
How do you tell an Earth-sized story without using the communication method, the language, of a newcomer species?
How do you explain religion in terms that universally speaks to all living, feeling beings?
It's twisting my poor ol' brain into a pretzel, that's what all this rewriting of the act of communicating is doing to me.
And I'm supposed to compose five of these epic tales?
Glad I have the assistance of all seven billion of us.
Like this opinion about morals without an omniscient head of religion. Is fairness universal? Is it coded in our combination of states of energy? Why do some animals care for their young? Why do any creatures reproduce?
Je ne sais pas. Je ne connais pas.
I will complete at least one of my books about this small part of the solar system, even if it depletes my whole thinking/feeling process to do so, knowing that the act of communicating itself is not universal, let alone the style/format.
Look at the known states of what we call the universe and tell me if knowledge is more important than action. Now tell me how I'm supposed to express your opinion universally.
See what I'm saying?
Freedom? 1984? Totalitarianism?
Have they locked up all the treehugging, grizzly bear loving, bald eagle saving hippies in Alaska and replaced them with...? Well, I'm not sure. I think maybe some of the KGB tactics slipped across the Aleutian chain and practitioners are confusing American conservatism (which, by the way, includes environmental conservatism - where else can we hold an Iditarod if all the land is developed?) with goosestepping fascist statism.
Or maybe I don't have all the facts?
You decide: Handcuffed reporter explains
Anyone running for public office is responsible for talking to the public, ALL the public. Otherwise, they're private individuals like the rest of us NOT running for public office.
I love this planet, not just because I have nowhere else to go right now, but because I believe in our future when we'll have choices about which spheroid to call home.
If all we're going to do is turn into a cybersecurity-fearing, jackbooted society, then...
Time to check my network of futurists to see what their latest plots are showing. Maybe it's not too late to buy the Book of the Future back and see what I've been missing these last few weeks.
Maybe...
Maybe it's time to look at the hard data surrounding a plane crash.
Maybe...
Or maybe I don't have all the facts?
You decide: Handcuffed reporter explains
Anyone running for public office is responsible for talking to the public, ALL the public. Otherwise, they're private individuals like the rest of us NOT running for public office.
I love this planet, not just because I have nowhere else to go right now, but because I believe in our future when we'll have choices about which spheroid to call home.
If all we're going to do is turn into a cybersecurity-fearing, jackbooted society, then...
Time to check my network of futurists to see what their latest plots are showing. Maybe it's not too late to buy the Book of the Future back and see what I've been missing these last few weeks.
Maybe...
Maybe it's time to look at the hard data surrounding a plane crash.
Maybe...
How Successful Are Your Responses To Changing Market Conditions?
Reading and listening. Basic functions of many of our lives.
How we read and listen has changed quite a bit in the last 50 years.
For thousands of years, we shared our stories and songs in person. Then recorded music and books came along.
Now the digital world has flattened the hierarchies associated with delivery of music and reading material. This blog, for instance - a combination of "letter to the editor," opinion column, short story and personal diary, any one of which would have been used to make money - is available to the public essentially for free.
What about those who deliver your news and music?
One man, Mr. Anderson, offers his take on the business. He feels like he's up against the "nearly-free content for our hardware platform" model sold by Steve Jobs and the "nearly-free hardware platform for our content" model sold by Jeff Bezos.
Another comments on the demise of a local bookseller, ending with a timeless quote from John Donne's work.
So, no matter whether you make your money as a street vendor or as owner of all products supplied to street vendors, you've got to keep up with what your customers want that'll also help you stay in business.
Thanks to the Internet, I found an interesting article breaking down a report by Credit Suisse about distribution of wealth around this planet.
Being part of the top 1% of the world's wealthiest might seem like a life of jetsetting from one pleasure spot to another but it's not. At least not for those who like to put themselves to others' use - keeping their employees happily well-fed, funding parts of society that aren't easily able to see how they can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and generally staying busily engaged in the businesses that brought you to the Top 1% Table.
I'm tired of all the negative news headlines trying to sell you advertising. Not that I'm against advertising. I mean, how else can we compete for your attention and get you interested in a product you may have never known you wanted or needed? Seriously.
Therefore, I'm not going to compete against the headlines for your attention. Instead, I'm focused on getting you focused on caring for one another again.
No more petty arguments about who's got the best idea about [fill in the blank]. Let's try all the ideas and keep moving along until one idea or a few of the ideas bubble to the surface with success for those whom the idea(s) best serves.
Reiteration, reiteration, reiteration.
If distribution doesn't work, then try another business. If construction engineering is petering out, try pollution engineering. If pollution engineering isn't profitable for you, try biomedical engineering.
Hire a bunch of enterprising young people to become your farm of apps for the iPads, Droids and Google TVs of the world.
Hire farmers to host a server farm in a corner of their property to cover costs when times are bad because of weather, precipitous produce price drops, etc.
You don't have to think outside the box. You can reinvent the use of the box and stay firmly planted in it!
How we read and listen has changed quite a bit in the last 50 years.
For thousands of years, we shared our stories and songs in person. Then recorded music and books came along.
Now the digital world has flattened the hierarchies associated with delivery of music and reading material. This blog, for instance - a combination of "letter to the editor," opinion column, short story and personal diary, any one of which would have been used to make money - is available to the public essentially for free.
What about those who deliver your news and music?
One man, Mr. Anderson, offers his take on the business. He feels like he's up against the "nearly-free content for our hardware platform" model sold by Steve Jobs and the "nearly-free hardware platform for our content" model sold by Jeff Bezos.
Another comments on the demise of a local bookseller, ending with a timeless quote from John Donne's work.
So, no matter whether you make your money as a street vendor or as owner of all products supplied to street vendors, you've got to keep up with what your customers want that'll also help you stay in business.
Thanks to the Internet, I found an interesting article breaking down a report by Credit Suisse about distribution of wealth around this planet.
Being part of the top 1% of the world's wealthiest might seem like a life of jetsetting from one pleasure spot to another but it's not. At least not for those who like to put themselves to others' use - keeping their employees happily well-fed, funding parts of society that aren't easily able to see how they can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and generally staying busily engaged in the businesses that brought you to the Top 1% Table.
I'm tired of all the negative news headlines trying to sell you advertising. Not that I'm against advertising. I mean, how else can we compete for your attention and get you interested in a product you may have never known you wanted or needed? Seriously.
Therefore, I'm not going to compete against the headlines for your attention. Instead, I'm focused on getting you focused on caring for one another again.
No more petty arguments about who's got the best idea about [fill in the blank]. Let's try all the ideas and keep moving along until one idea or a few of the ideas bubble to the surface with success for those whom the idea(s) best serves.
Reiteration, reiteration, reiteration.
If distribution doesn't work, then try another business. If construction engineering is petering out, try pollution engineering. If pollution engineering isn't profitable for you, try biomedical engineering.
Hire a bunch of enterprising young people to become your farm of apps for the iPads, Droids and Google TVs of the world.
Hire farmers to host a server farm in a corner of their property to cover costs when times are bad because of weather, precipitous produce price drops, etc.
You don't have to think outside the box. You can reinvent the use of the box and stay firmly planted in it!
Happiness Is...
Got my eyes checked today by Dr. S and his staff, including Amanda and Mary.
Seven years after LASIK surgery, I still have ~20/20 vision, uncorrected. No signs of eye disease.
Today is a good day.
Thanks to Reliance and Reichert for their product sales to my eye doctor.
I am a happy man, content and proud to be of modest, modern/past heritage and modest means, a suburbanised country boy who fits in with city folk, too.
But is it time to shed my "aw shucks" background and seek something else?
I don't know.
Perennial question.
Success has made me conceited this past week, gloating in my personal reverie of which I can say nothing (except that I can say nothing), secrets burning holes in my pockets and leaving cyberdust trails all over the place, if you know what you're looking for.
How can I show you that which exists without labels if labels are all we have to communicate with?
If only I could tell you what we already know but can't tell ourselves because we took that wrong turn so many moons ago.
...sigh...
Which genetic trait do you have - milk drinker or lactose intolerant?
Can you speak to a group that's 1000 years behind you in social development?
How do you speak to a group that's 1000 years behind you in social development?
Imagine your skin having characteristics of "thin film solar cells" and chlorophyll factories, able to repair itself from damage due to radiation it couldn't use.
Wear your energy production, your "food" processor, your battery, on the outside.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Some still want to pursue nuclear power packs and ion drives.
Others are looking for the perpetual motion machine.
But there's something some of you are overlooking.
Instead of a self-contained system, why aren't you taking the lifecycle with you while redefining what you/me/us is?
The successful lives of conjoined twins can teach us a lot about the future, if you're willing to change the definition of autonomy.
Most of us won't. Those who do will define the future, just as milk drinkers changed civilisation, or so we've been led to believe.
Now, I've got to convince myself that my writing isn't all that. Some days, I'm as far from humble as a hidden puppet master can get.
Humour, Rick, humour. That's the only reason you're here. Everything else - the past, the future, the politics, the sports, the entertainment, the nature - is just fodder to feed the punchline.
Life is full of chameleons and parasites. Nature is full of mimicry. What is it that we call life that we won't find somewhere else?
Don't fall for the ruse. If only I could say more...
Seven years after LASIK surgery, I still have ~20/20 vision, uncorrected. No signs of eye disease.
Today is a good day.
Thanks to Reliance and Reichert for their product sales to my eye doctor.
I am a happy man, content and proud to be of modest, modern/past heritage and modest means, a suburbanised country boy who fits in with city folk, too.
But is it time to shed my "aw shucks" background and seek something else?
I don't know.
Perennial question.
Success has made me conceited this past week, gloating in my personal reverie of which I can say nothing (except that I can say nothing), secrets burning holes in my pockets and leaving cyberdust trails all over the place, if you know what you're looking for.
How can I show you that which exists without labels if labels are all we have to communicate with?
If only I could tell you what we already know but can't tell ourselves because we took that wrong turn so many moons ago.
...sigh...
Which genetic trait do you have - milk drinker or lactose intolerant?
Can you speak to a group that's 1000 years behind you in social development?
How do you speak to a group that's 1000 years behind you in social development?
Imagine your skin having characteristics of "thin film solar cells" and chlorophyll factories, able to repair itself from damage due to radiation it couldn't use.
Wear your energy production, your "food" processor, your battery, on the outside.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Some still want to pursue nuclear power packs and ion drives.
Others are looking for the perpetual motion machine.
But there's something some of you are overlooking.
Instead of a self-contained system, why aren't you taking the lifecycle with you while redefining what you/me/us is?
The successful lives of conjoined twins can teach us a lot about the future, if you're willing to change the definition of autonomy.
Most of us won't. Those who do will define the future, just as milk drinkers changed civilisation, or so we've been led to believe.
Now, I've got to convince myself that my writing isn't all that. Some days, I'm as far from humble as a hidden puppet master can get.
Humour, Rick, humour. That's the only reason you're here. Everything else - the past, the future, the politics, the sports, the entertainment, the nature - is just fodder to feed the punchline.
Life is full of chameleons and parasites. Nature is full of mimicry. What is it that we call life that we won't find somewhere else?
Don't fall for the ruse. If only I could say more...
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Wheat Brew
"Me brain is full t'day, I say."
"'Tis?"
"Yah. 'Tis."
"Full o'...?"
"Ain't sure, I reckon."
"Ain't sure yuh ain't sure or ain't sure wut yuh brain is full o'?"
"Yah."
"Uh-huh."
"Yep."
The two of them sat on the porch looking out over the ridge. A bunch of buzzards floated on a ridge riser.
"Any rain in the prospect?"
"My joints ain't achin' none. You?"
"Nope. Hungry?"
"Nah."
They both took a couple of gulps of homemade hooch stored in a 3-liter soda bottle.
"Gonna make any deer jerky this year?"
"Nah. You?"
"Nah. Got enough guv'mint cheese to last me through the winter. You?"
"Yep. And food stamps, too. You?"
"Yah. Gotta cut som firewood, tho'."
"Yep. Got your whetstone handy?"
"Here."
"T'anks. Whittlin' blade's a bit dull."
A jet airplane left a contrail in the sky above them.
"Yuh ever know'd anyone t'uv ever flown on one of them?"
"Nah. You?"
"A cousin down south said he did."
"Anything come of it?"
"Reckon not. He got hisself a dee-vorce later on."
"Figures him right. Them newfangled contraptions ain't good fer nothin', nohow."
"Reckon you's right."
"I finished eighth grade, din't I?"
"You're the smartest one on this here mountain, is what you is."
"Reckon so."
"Think them bulldozers'll be up here by the end o' the month?"
They took another swig of the hooch.
"Could be. Could be."
"Reckon we otter buy up some mo' land?"
"Ain' got the dough."
"Maybe we otter go back on the road?"
"I sho hate givin' up this peace and quiet."
"But thuh crowd sho love them Siamese Twins o' thuh South."
"We IS famous."
"Ay'uh. That we are. What are we carvin'?"
"Since they say we hexed, how 'bout a little mountain witch?"
"With a switch?"
"And a big ol' itch..."
"...For a sandwich or sich!"
The conjoined pair looked down at the piece of tree branch they were whittling. They knew their manager would use the finished creation to cast a line of trinkets to sell. They heard the trinkets brought in big money overseas where things were sold through telephone wires and floating spaceships.
"Reckon we otter get sump'n t'eat?"
"Reckon so. It's gettin' dark. 'Sides, I'm hongry."
"Me, too."
"Let's go inside, then."
"Reckon we will."
"'Tis?"
"Yah. 'Tis."
"Full o'...?"
"Ain't sure, I reckon."
"Ain't sure yuh ain't sure or ain't sure wut yuh brain is full o'?"
"Yah."
"Uh-huh."
"Yep."
The two of them sat on the porch looking out over the ridge. A bunch of buzzards floated on a ridge riser.
"Any rain in the prospect?"
"My joints ain't achin' none. You?"
"Nope. Hungry?"
"Nah."
They both took a couple of gulps of homemade hooch stored in a 3-liter soda bottle.
"Gonna make any deer jerky this year?"
"Nah. You?"
"Nah. Got enough guv'mint cheese to last me through the winter. You?"
"Yep. And food stamps, too. You?"
"Yah. Gotta cut som firewood, tho'."
"Yep. Got your whetstone handy?"
"Here."
"T'anks. Whittlin' blade's a bit dull."
A jet airplane left a contrail in the sky above them.
"Yuh ever know'd anyone t'uv ever flown on one of them?"
"Nah. You?"
"A cousin down south said he did."
"Anything come of it?"
"Reckon not. He got hisself a dee-vorce later on."
"Figures him right. Them newfangled contraptions ain't good fer nothin', nohow."
"Reckon you's right."
"I finished eighth grade, din't I?"
"You're the smartest one on this here mountain, is what you is."
"Reckon so."
"Think them bulldozers'll be up here by the end o' the month?"
They took another swig of the hooch.
"Could be. Could be."
"Reckon we otter buy up some mo' land?"
"Ain' got the dough."
"Maybe we otter go back on the road?"
"I sho hate givin' up this peace and quiet."
"But thuh crowd sho love them Siamese Twins o' thuh South."
"We IS famous."
"Ay'uh. That we are. What are we carvin'?"
"Since they say we hexed, how 'bout a little mountain witch?"
"With a switch?"
"And a big ol' itch..."
"...For a sandwich or sich!"
The conjoined pair looked down at the piece of tree branch they were whittling. They knew their manager would use the finished creation to cast a line of trinkets to sell. They heard the trinkets brought in big money overseas where things were sold through telephone wires and floating spaceships.
"Reckon we otter get sump'n t'eat?"
"Reckon so. It's gettin' dark. 'Sides, I'm hongry."
"Me, too."
"Let's go inside, then."
"Reckon we will."
Chasing Rocks
A lot to think about today but not a lot to say.
Walked through the Lowe Mill outdoor festival this morning and listened to a few minutes of live staged music while looking at the works for sale by local artists.
Drove home, turned on the water sprinkler for the birds hanging out in the yard, this drought seasonal and selectively effective.
Watched a few minutes of NFL football on TV.
Surfed the Net for showtimes for the movie "Red."
A house full of unread books and not a thing to read.
How often do I get to admit to myself that I like to contemplate, compose sentences, and read my own writing, which often discusses the actions of other members of my species?
What if it's not the candidates but the offices themselves I don't want to vote for, thinking we have too many political positions? Should there be a checkbox that states, "I think this position should be eliminated"?
Is a crippled body the only way some people become rich (professional athletes, personal injury lawyers, cosmetic surgeons, office workers, etc.)?
If I have nothing new to say, why do I keep pretending that I'm original/unique?
Ergo: The more my cat gets to know me, the more it likes other people.
Maybe my momma was right - guess I think too much for my own good.
It's the Martian year of NASA space exploration. How are the other space agencies teaming up to complement and build on their work?
Time for a nap. I'm tired of thinking and thinking about thinking this afternoon.
Turn off the water sprinkler first, huh? Reserve water for us people, too!
Walked through the Lowe Mill outdoor festival this morning and listened to a few minutes of live staged music while looking at the works for sale by local artists.
Drove home, turned on the water sprinkler for the birds hanging out in the yard, this drought seasonal and selectively effective.
Watched a few minutes of NFL football on TV.
Surfed the Net for showtimes for the movie "Red."
A house full of unread books and not a thing to read.
How often do I get to admit to myself that I like to contemplate, compose sentences, and read my own writing, which often discusses the actions of other members of my species?
What if it's not the candidates but the offices themselves I don't want to vote for, thinking we have too many political positions? Should there be a checkbox that states, "I think this position should be eliminated"?
Is a crippled body the only way some people become rich (professional athletes, personal injury lawyers, cosmetic surgeons, office workers, etc.)?
If I have nothing new to say, why do I keep pretending that I'm original/unique?
Ergo: The more my cat gets to know me, the more it likes other people.
Maybe my momma was right - guess I think too much for my own good.
It's the Martian year of NASA space exploration. How are the other space agencies teaming up to complement and build on their work?
Time for a nap. I'm tired of thinking and thinking about thinking this afternoon.
Turn off the water sprinkler first, huh? Reserve water for us people, too!
Saturday, October 16, 2010
When Nature Calls, Do Your Duty
Low-key humour of the day - a poke at television shows about movies, nature, military, history, current events, "reality," and what-if scenarios:
Friday, October 15, 2010
Personal Edifying Entertainment Only
Where will E85 and increased fleet fuel mileage requirements meet in the future?
How do we improve the efficiency of the timely effect of crowdsource wisdom on individuals?
If I'm looking back at this antiquated time we're in from 1000 years later, how do I explain what this nearly reinvented language won't be able to?
If you could see how trees "talk"...
How do we get rid of the relativity of timescales?
Of what use am I now if I already know the branched out effects I have made in subtle ways on a future in which I don't exist?
We want to believe we are because we watch each other and ask, "Is that what I'm like or supposed to be?," our imitative behaviour getting the best of us.
How do I justify my existence? How do I explain my place on the path of an endless loop?
I can't, not with these words.
I watched my 10-year old girlfriend die without my support when we were both in fifth grade and I was unable to express my emotions or attempt to visit her in the hospital. I felt completely helpless and a part of me still does.
Thus, I decided not to have children.
I watched and read about the technological achievements that were demonstrated during the battles between the U.S. and the Vietcong. I wondered about the individuals involved in decisionmaking up and down the chain of command, both military and political, within all the parties participating. Thus, I decided that war is a manufactured contrivance by our species and we have many ways to achieve technological advances, including and excluding war.
Thus, I decided to focus my energy on redirecting our aggressive/assertive behaviours toward developments more productive in the longterm.
Genies never seem to fit into the bottles from which we eagerly pulled them. [That is, the military-industrial complex won't disappear so let's work together to create species-level goals worth dying for.]
It's easier for youth to die for a cause than to find a 50-year old with a cause to live for. [That is, the military-industrial complex won't disappear so let's work together to create species-level goals worth living for.]
We're stuck inside our hunter-gatherer bodies with few outlets to actually hunt and gather, penting up frustrations on many levels of behavioural complexity. No matter who we think we are, let's not forget who we really are.
Knowing the future creates a kind of paralysis about the present moment and I don't know why 'cause I know the future is the direct result of what takes place in the only time we really exist, time the illusion we perpetuate to give us the illusion we have a greater influence on life than in just the moment.
Babies and wars are timepieces. So is the squirrel drinking water from the birdbath, its life notched into the trees growing from forgotten nuts.
How do we want to be remembered if we know we're going to be forgotten?
Life on this planet is the only existence I truly know. Despite the infinite possibilities of combinations of states of energy, all probabilities incalculable, it's best for me, as infinitely unique as I am, to forget about me and make sure that impossible future I see us enjoying 1000 years from now is set in motion in this moment and every moment in between.
We can't solve every problem but we can make sure we're still around to try.
People smarter than me have pondered the ways we use one another (i.e., the profit motive), along with the accumulation and redistribution of our labours/investments.
How do I ignore our subcultures without ignoring subcultures in the multipronged approach to keeping individuals and subcultures happy while making sure our species maintains a comfort zone of living within its means in the local/global ecosystem?
Do I have to help the subcultures that haven't the local means to protect, clothe, feed and prepare themselves for better adapting skills in the future? Should our natural predatory practices be punished, no matter how civilised they appear to be?
Should the squirrel be punished for eating a tree's seeds or rewarded for forgetting about the seed that turned into a tree?
Tell me something I don't know.
Some things don't change. I've got to go. Nature calls.
How do we improve the efficiency of the timely effect of crowdsource wisdom on individuals?
If I'm looking back at this antiquated time we're in from 1000 years later, how do I explain what this nearly reinvented language won't be able to?
If you could see how trees "talk"...
How do we get rid of the relativity of timescales?
Of what use am I now if I already know the branched out effects I have made in subtle ways on a future in which I don't exist?
We want to believe we are because we watch each other and ask, "Is that what I'm like or supposed to be?," our imitative behaviour getting the best of us.
How do I justify my existence? How do I explain my place on the path of an endless loop?
I can't, not with these words.
I watched my 10-year old girlfriend die without my support when we were both in fifth grade and I was unable to express my emotions or attempt to visit her in the hospital. I felt completely helpless and a part of me still does.
Thus, I decided not to have children.
I watched and read about the technological achievements that were demonstrated during the battles between the U.S. and the Vietcong. I wondered about the individuals involved in decisionmaking up and down the chain of command, both military and political, within all the parties participating. Thus, I decided that war is a manufactured contrivance by our species and we have many ways to achieve technological advances, including and excluding war.
Thus, I decided to focus my energy on redirecting our aggressive/assertive behaviours toward developments more productive in the longterm.
Genies never seem to fit into the bottles from which we eagerly pulled them. [That is, the military-industrial complex won't disappear so let's work together to create species-level goals worth dying for.]
It's easier for youth to die for a cause than to find a 50-year old with a cause to live for. [That is, the military-industrial complex won't disappear so let's work together to create species-level goals worth living for.]
We're stuck inside our hunter-gatherer bodies with few outlets to actually hunt and gather, penting up frustrations on many levels of behavioural complexity. No matter who we think we are, let's not forget who we really are.
Knowing the future creates a kind of paralysis about the present moment and I don't know why 'cause I know the future is the direct result of what takes place in the only time we really exist, time the illusion we perpetuate to give us the illusion we have a greater influence on life than in just the moment.
Babies and wars are timepieces. So is the squirrel drinking water from the birdbath, its life notched into the trees growing from forgotten nuts.
How do we want to be remembered if we know we're going to be forgotten?
Life on this planet is the only existence I truly know. Despite the infinite possibilities of combinations of states of energy, all probabilities incalculable, it's best for me, as infinitely unique as I am, to forget about me and make sure that impossible future I see us enjoying 1000 years from now is set in motion in this moment and every moment in between.
We can't solve every problem but we can make sure we're still around to try.
People smarter than me have pondered the ways we use one another (i.e., the profit motive), along with the accumulation and redistribution of our labours/investments.
How do I ignore our subcultures without ignoring subcultures in the multipronged approach to keeping individuals and subcultures happy while making sure our species maintains a comfort zone of living within its means in the local/global ecosystem?
Do I have to help the subcultures that haven't the local means to protect, clothe, feed and prepare themselves for better adapting skills in the future? Should our natural predatory practices be punished, no matter how civilised they appear to be?
Should the squirrel be punished for eating a tree's seeds or rewarded for forgetting about the seed that turned into a tree?
Tell me something I don't know.
Some things don't change. I've got to go. Nature calls.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
We've Got 'Em Right Where We Want 'Em
Is it more important to host friends or be a guest at their place?
Is it better to pretend to fall for a hoax or always let others see you know more than they do?
On a cloudy day, the cats sleep on the living room sofa.
Birds drink from the water catch pan beneath a hanging flower pot.
On what sort of idea is your small startup based?
Are you an eager or hesitant person? A people pleaser or a crowd pleaser?
Thanks to Nick at Calhoun's; Ashleigh at P.F. Chang's; the production of "Secretariat" at Monaco; the salesperson at Clarks who put me in a new pair of Italian-made shoes; Main Street Cafe where a group of plumbers was treated to lunch by Kohler's; Dr. Brian M., Shelly and staff at CCI; Delta and United.
Package deals: Would a flight on the VSS Enterprise qualify you for a discount on an overnight stay aboard a Bigelow space hotel?
Would you be the first to fund the whole research and development of a space colony to insure/ensure a future for your family and friends?
If you don't live in this time, where do you live?
Overheard a scifi fan say we're probably spending thousands of years of cilivisation development just to become a watering hole for space-hopping playtoys and their spoilt drivers.
Anything is possible. Let's focus on easier-to-imagine nearterm goals and let the future have its say when it's ready to speak.
Would you be willing to live with a different metabolic rate?
I know I am an illusion and what I see is not what anyone else sees or is anything like what the living objects around me experience but to change my perspective would require a tremendous toll on my set of thoughts.
I'm happy being imperfect me. Able to enjoy the time to myself examining my perspective. Plugging and unplugging my connections with the universe around me like a switchboard operator. I am anybody, everybody and nobody rolled into one body.
I am of my species, adapting better than a chameleon to changing circumstances.
Some days I don't want to be me and some days I want the whole world to know who I am.
I am me. I am you. I am us. Time to transition to more detailed support of our exploring the universe.
Time for me to blend into the background where I am most useful in my quest to help all of us maximise our living in the moment to the benefit of the whole solar system and our individual goals/happinesses.
It has been fun joining the chorus of voices in the online zeitgeist that shrinks and changes faster and faster.
Time for me to move on, where the planet hasn't spun much slower or faster lately, a dependable characteristic (almost a constant) for calculation purposes.
Anonymous blogs achieve their goals through quiet encouragement, avoiding personality cults and other hindrances to subcultural equal opportunities for growth.
A billionaire can't exist in a communist culture. A CEO and a factory worker can't make the same salary in a capitalist culture.
But they can and they do.
I am unimportant. What I do is what I do to keep your connections going.
Pardon me while I disappear to do what I've got to do. I see a clear path ahead for those truly in need. I'm assisting those who are idle and want meaningful work to call their own.
The days of whines and rosy complaints are over.
Is it better to pretend to fall for a hoax or always let others see you know more than they do?
On a cloudy day, the cats sleep on the living room sofa.
Birds drink from the water catch pan beneath a hanging flower pot.
On what sort of idea is your small startup based?
Are you an eager or hesitant person? A people pleaser or a crowd pleaser?
Thanks to Nick at Calhoun's; Ashleigh at P.F. Chang's; the production of "Secretariat" at Monaco; the salesperson at Clarks who put me in a new pair of Italian-made shoes; Main Street Cafe where a group of plumbers was treated to lunch by Kohler's; Dr. Brian M., Shelly and staff at CCI; Delta and United.
Package deals: Would a flight on the VSS Enterprise qualify you for a discount on an overnight stay aboard a Bigelow space hotel?
Would you be the first to fund the whole research and development of a space colony to insure/ensure a future for your family and friends?
If you don't live in this time, where do you live?
Overheard a scifi fan say we're probably spending thousands of years of cilivisation development just to become a watering hole for space-hopping playtoys and their spoilt drivers.
Anything is possible. Let's focus on easier-to-imagine nearterm goals and let the future have its say when it's ready to speak.
Would you be willing to live with a different metabolic rate?
I know I am an illusion and what I see is not what anyone else sees or is anything like what the living objects around me experience but to change my perspective would require a tremendous toll on my set of thoughts.
I'm happy being imperfect me. Able to enjoy the time to myself examining my perspective. Plugging and unplugging my connections with the universe around me like a switchboard operator. I am anybody, everybody and nobody rolled into one body.
I am of my species, adapting better than a chameleon to changing circumstances.
Some days I don't want to be me and some days I want the whole world to know who I am.
I am me. I am you. I am us. Time to transition to more detailed support of our exploring the universe.
Time for me to blend into the background where I am most useful in my quest to help all of us maximise our living in the moment to the benefit of the whole solar system and our individual goals/happinesses.
It has been fun joining the chorus of voices in the online zeitgeist that shrinks and changes faster and faster.
Time for me to move on, where the planet hasn't spun much slower or faster lately, a dependable characteristic (almost a constant) for calculation purposes.
Anonymous blogs achieve their goals through quiet encouragement, avoiding personality cults and other hindrances to subcultural equal opportunities for growth.
A billionaire can't exist in a communist culture. A CEO and a factory worker can't make the same salary in a capitalist culture.
But they can and they do.
I am unimportant. What I do is what I do to keep your connections going.
Pardon me while I disappear to do what I've got to do. I see a clear path ahead for those truly in need. I'm assisting those who are idle and want meaningful work to call their own.
The days of whines and rosy complaints are over.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
FUBU BOGO
When all I held in my hand was seven billion people and their interaction with the ecosystem we call Earth, I felt powerful.
Now I'm so humble I can't put on a shirt in the morning without thanking the operator of the stitching machine that made the label inside the shirt collar.
When you see what's bigger than you, you can go after intolerance with joy and abandon.
I wanted my Me'ican drug cartel friends to put aside violence but they didn't so I get to divert resources from chasing the so-called al qaeda operatives to go after the bandito bad guys.
Have you ever seen a modern, well-trained military take out a village of rebellious criminals and their sympathisers?
I am not happy talking about intolerance, having a solar system to get up and operational as a next step in... well, one step at a time.
However, I need the intelligence and stability of my neighbours to the south to stage that next step.
My military friends will not occupy foreign lands. They will assist those in need, 'foreign' an antiquated word in this one world sociopolitical system we may or may not recognise.
Adios, amigos. I gave you fair warning. Now I won't be able to protect you from any scorched earth policies that modern warfare uses to eliminate intolerance.
Nothing like a little black ops in the backyard for exercise.
Sweet dreams!
Now I'm so humble I can't put on a shirt in the morning without thanking the operator of the stitching machine that made the label inside the shirt collar.
When you see what's bigger than you, you can go after intolerance with joy and abandon.
I wanted my Me'ican drug cartel friends to put aside violence but they didn't so I get to divert resources from chasing the so-called al qaeda operatives to go after the bandito bad guys.
Have you ever seen a modern, well-trained military take out a village of rebellious criminals and their sympathisers?
I am not happy talking about intolerance, having a solar system to get up and operational as a next step in... well, one step at a time.
However, I need the intelligence and stability of my neighbours to the south to stage that next step.
My military friends will not occupy foreign lands. They will assist those in need, 'foreign' an antiquated word in this one world sociopolitical system we may or may not recognise.
Adios, amigos. I gave you fair warning. Now I won't be able to protect you from any scorched earth policies that modern warfare uses to eliminate intolerance.
Nothing like a little black ops in the backyard for exercise.
Sweet dreams!
Meditating In A Car Park
In surprise news today, Microsoft and Apple jointly announced a patent for the windscreen, saying that the next wave in mobile computing will be all the glass surrounding driver and passenger(s) in the automobile.
Augmented reality will follow you everywhere.
Do your children throw objects out of the car when the window is rolled down? Do insects fly in and bug you while you're driving and enjoying the fresh air?
Then get the Johnny Jumpup Window Screen.
Designed to special industry specs, the Johnny Jumpup matches precisely the shape of every window opening in your automobile.
Able to withstand hurricane-force winds, the Johnny Jumpup will keep little Johnny and little Jane safe from the deadly sting of wandering wasps and bees.
You can feel secure that the baby rattle or portable DVD player remote control won't become deadly projectiles on the motorway.
Made of industrial strength vinyl mesh, the Johnny Jumpup is nontoxic and rust-free. Don't trust your family to imitation knockoffs made of inferiour metal mesh that will discolour the luxurious interiour or exteriour of your fine automobile.
Small clips built into the durable frame allow the Johnny Jumpup to snugly fit easily and quickly.
"On mild autumn days, we like to take the family sedan out into the countryside, the windows open so we can smell the fresh farm air. With Johnny Jumpups installed, we feel comfortable letting our two-year old play with toys in the back seat and not having a toy turn into a roadside projectile and thus a personal injury lawsuit."
"Me and the missus like to drink our homemade apple 'cider' while tooling our caravan down the road. Dang if the bees don't like the taste of apples, too. Johnny Jumpups have been a blessing to us, keeping the critters out and the good times in."
The modern engineering of the vinyl mesh makes Johnny Jumpup nearly invisible. Use your Johnny Jumpup to prevent fingerprints from smearing the MicrApple display interface in your new automobile's Side Window Touchscreen Family Fun Command Center HUD, also known as iRide.
Available at local retail outlets, Johnny Jumpup is exclusively available in this "as seen on the tellie" offer that you won't find in stores. If you text "JJup" within the next 30 seconds, you'll receive a special discount code that doubles your order and gives you 10 free apps at the MicrApple iRide store.
Hurry! Be the first on your block to show off your new Johnny Jumpup! While supplies are not limited, the sooner you order, the less chance you'll experience an eight to ten week delay in receiving your Johnny Jumpup.
And, the first 1000000 texters will get a free upgrade for a personalised etched "skin" on their Johnny Jumpup!
Remember, these make great gifts for expectant (but not expectorant) parents, carpark loitering honey eaters, and roadable aircraft owners.
Legal notice: the Johnny Jumpup window screen system does not substitute for in-car safety features of any kind, past, current, or future. Reverse engineering is unofficially encouraged and the Johnny Jumpup Manufacturing Conglomerate is not responsible for any unexpected unintended use(s) of its products by the DIY cottage industry but JJMC claims all international intellectual property rights to any such use(s) or reinvention(s).
Augmented reality will follow you everywhere.
Do your children throw objects out of the car when the window is rolled down? Do insects fly in and bug you while you're driving and enjoying the fresh air?
Then get the Johnny Jumpup Window Screen.
Designed to special industry specs, the Johnny Jumpup matches precisely the shape of every window opening in your automobile.
Able to withstand hurricane-force winds, the Johnny Jumpup will keep little Johnny and little Jane safe from the deadly sting of wandering wasps and bees.
You can feel secure that the baby rattle or portable DVD player remote control won't become deadly projectiles on the motorway.
Made of industrial strength vinyl mesh, the Johnny Jumpup is nontoxic and rust-free. Don't trust your family to imitation knockoffs made of inferiour metal mesh that will discolour the luxurious interiour or exteriour of your fine automobile.
Small clips built into the durable frame allow the Johnny Jumpup to snugly fit easily and quickly.
"On mild autumn days, we like to take the family sedan out into the countryside, the windows open so we can smell the fresh farm air. With Johnny Jumpups installed, we feel comfortable letting our two-year old play with toys in the back seat and not having a toy turn into a roadside projectile and thus a personal injury lawsuit."
"Me and the missus like to drink our homemade apple 'cider' while tooling our caravan down the road. Dang if the bees don't like the taste of apples, too. Johnny Jumpups have been a blessing to us, keeping the critters out and the good times in."
The modern engineering of the vinyl mesh makes Johnny Jumpup nearly invisible. Use your Johnny Jumpup to prevent fingerprints from smearing the MicrApple display interface in your new automobile's Side Window Touchscreen Family Fun Command Center HUD, also known as iRide.
Available at local retail outlets, Johnny Jumpup is exclusively available in this "as seen on the tellie" offer that you won't find in stores. If you text "JJup" within the next 30 seconds, you'll receive a special discount code that doubles your order and gives you 10 free apps at the MicrApple iRide store.
Hurry! Be the first on your block to show off your new Johnny Jumpup! While supplies are not limited, the sooner you order, the less chance you'll experience an eight to ten week delay in receiving your Johnny Jumpup.
And, the first 1000000 texters will get a free upgrade for a personalised etched "skin" on their Johnny Jumpup!
Remember, these make great gifts for expectant (but not expectorant) parents, carpark loitering honey eaters, and roadable aircraft owners.
Legal notice: the Johnny Jumpup window screen system does not substitute for in-car safety features of any kind, past, current, or future. Reverse engineering is unofficially encouraged and the Johnny Jumpup Manufacturing Conglomerate is not responsible for any unexpected unintended use(s) of its products by the DIY cottage industry but JJMC claims all international intellectual property rights to any such use(s) or reinvention(s).
Monday, October 11, 2010
Who Sings The Old Songs?
Heard a classic video game theme song picked and strummed on classic guitar. Watched a young boy play fiddle on stage. Carol Bart poured her heart into a piano recital. Stopped to chat with George Webb, owner of Tennessee Books and Autographs.
Held a letter signed by John Sevier.
Bought "Kinflicks," a thinly-disguised expo-say that shocked and thrilled many residents of Kingsport decades ago; an inspiration for my next epic tome of navigating the ol' backwaters of Fort Patrick Henry's domain not far from Long Island?
From a copy of "The King's Mountain Men: the story of the battle, with sketches of the American soldiers who took part" by Kathrine Keough White, (c) 1924 Joseph K. Ruebush Company, Dayton, Virginia:
"Sawyers. John was born in Augusta county, Virginia, 1745, and died in Knox county, Tennessee, 1831. He was in Byrd's expedition and other border campaigns, and moved to the Holston about 1768. Sawyers fought in the Point Pleasant, Chickamauga,and King's Mountain campaigns, and was prominent in his adopted state. He was buried at the Washington Pike church. A history of the family has been published by Dr. M. M. Harris."
Received a free copy of the paperback, "The Overmountain Men" by Pat Alderman, (c) 1970, 1986, The Overmountain Press, Johnson City, Tennessee.
Stories of those times, which make historic the lives of people giving up, losing, taking and buying... what do I learn?
Who remembers Nancy Ward, the Cherokee mother and warrior, Ghighau (Beloved Woman), a superiour person on the tribal council?
Or Chief Dragging Canoe?
I have to think about this some more, lost in thought while enjoying the homemade persimmon square and apple stack cake, along with local muscadine grape juice, to consider how I want to present our species' part in the history of this planet to the rest of the galaxy.
We've all descended from someone. What does one someone mean in the grand scheme?
If Sawyers' fort is a memory, what does that mean to me?
Held a letter signed by John Sevier.
Bought "Kinflicks," a thinly-disguised expo-say that shocked and thrilled many residents of Kingsport decades ago; an inspiration for my next epic tome of navigating the ol' backwaters of Fort Patrick Henry's domain not far from Long Island?
From a copy of "The King's Mountain Men: the story of the battle, with sketches of the American soldiers who took part" by Kathrine Keough White, (c) 1924 Joseph K. Ruebush Company, Dayton, Virginia:
"Sawyers. John was born in Augusta county, Virginia, 1745, and died in Knox county, Tennessee, 1831. He was in Byrd's expedition and other border campaigns, and moved to the Holston about 1768. Sawyers fought in the Point Pleasant, Chickamauga,and King's Mountain campaigns, and was prominent in his adopted state. He was buried at the Washington Pike church. A history of the family has been published by Dr. M. M. Harris."
Received a free copy of the paperback, "The Overmountain Men" by Pat Alderman, (c) 1970, 1986, The Overmountain Press, Johnson City, Tennessee.
Stories of those times, which make historic the lives of people giving up, losing, taking and buying... what do I learn?
Who remembers Nancy Ward, the Cherokee mother and warrior, Ghighau (Beloved Woman), a superiour person on the tribal council?
Or Chief Dragging Canoe?
I have to think about this some more, lost in thought while enjoying the homemade persimmon square and apple stack cake, along with local muscadine grape juice, to consider how I want to present our species' part in the history of this planet to the rest of the galaxy.
We've all descended from someone. What does one someone mean in the grand scheme?
If Sawyers' fort is a memory, what does that mean to me?
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Thirty Years Later
Not much time to talk. Managing humour requires concentration and battery life.
Character shows in prosperity and diversity.
Throwback bands have fun even when they're too loud for the middle-aged crowd.
Some people ride horses across Ireland and France.
Others design their own paving equipment.
Social butterflies never lose their wings.
Printers like readers who shop at McKay's.
The 278th loan their drill room for reminiscing.
Out of town or hometown, we're all good.
Data mining or kettle brewing, heritage days or parents' day, and and/or or not.
Filters and sorts. Algorithms and pumpkin rolls. Funnel cakes and secret codes.
Until next time.
Character shows in prosperity and diversity.
Throwback bands have fun even when they're too loud for the middle-aged crowd.
Some people ride horses across Ireland and France.
Others design their own paving equipment.
Social butterflies never lose their wings.
Printers like readers who shop at McKay's.
The 278th loan their drill room for reminiscing.
Out of town or hometown, we're all good.
Data mining or kettle brewing, heritage days or parents' day, and and/or or not.
Filters and sorts. Algorithms and pumpkin rolls. Funnel cakes and secret codes.
Until next time.
Terminus Peace Pipe Smokers
With the rise in MLM activity, how are such local businesses feeding and growing their portions of the global economy?
With the decline in Las Vegas visitors, is there an equal rise in similar gambling ventures elsewhere on the planet?
Can local/state/national government politicians get away from blaming one another for global economic woes and admit this is more complicated than any one government can solve alone, putting aside selfish ambition to reduce CEO-to-average-employee salary inequality while...?
Wait, that future has already been plotted. I can't talk about it right now.
My agent says I should save some surprises to reveal, partially hidden, in my blockbuster bestseller that will incorporate the whole economy as part of its plot twists integrated into the lives of all seven billion of us.
In the new world order, Earth is its own self-promotional product merchandising.
Now that the word is out we're no longer paying and protecting Osama bin Laden to be our official Enemy No. 1, pirates and bandits are competing to take that top job for the next round of "Who are you afraid of when the lights go out in Georgia?"
Can we raise the Love Canals of the neighbourhoods - the places where cancer rates are unusually high - to the level of fear of the power of the unknown enemy, instead?
Ate lunch yesterday at Payne's, a former Rexall drug store, once known as W. H. Payne Drug Company, started in 1869, a place where City of Scottsboro and Hollywood employees sit down to eat such delectables as the Curley burger (topped with pimento cheese).
The proprietor, personally proud of her homemade pies and cakes, if she says so herself how good they are, told me an interesting story.
A visitor from Boston, who shared a good recipe with her, said their family had been part of the original Girl Scout troop in this country. Back in the early days, girls were given recipes to cook cookies at home. Then, the girls were supposed to sell their cookies door to door.
Where would we be without old-fashioned bake sales?
At Payne's, you'll get crisps instead of chips (or chips instead of fries) because the deep fat fryer's popping fuses.
Thanks to Shirley, Samantha, Pat and Joe at UBC; Ryan at Ruby Tuesday in Strawberry Plains; Treece at BP/BR and Edith Carrington. Did I thank Jason at Dreamland BBQ, Michelle at Beauregard's, the kind cashier at HHGregg, the guys at East End, the helpful folks at Owens Cross Roads post office, or Adrienne and Victoria at Cracker Barrel?
In addition to HSO listening, time to go back to Lowe Mill and see the talent hiding out, waiting for the next great rock opera to shake, rattle and roll the world stage.
Are you ready to admit the world's children are getting the same out-of-class education so we adults should better treat how we present ourselves and the global sociopolitical system to ourselves and our future/children?
You are fully/equally part of the natives of our planetary narrative. I need y/our help to tell y/our story well.
Keep in mind the tale of our time on Earth will become a chapter in the history of our exploration and population of the galaxy, names and faces of this sphere, good and bad, largely forgotten.
This is our moment. Let's live it like we're humble guests in each other's homes.
With the decline in Las Vegas visitors, is there an equal rise in similar gambling ventures elsewhere on the planet?
Can local/state/national government politicians get away from blaming one another for global economic woes and admit this is more complicated than any one government can solve alone, putting aside selfish ambition to reduce CEO-to-average-employee salary inequality while...?
Wait, that future has already been plotted. I can't talk about it right now.
My agent says I should save some surprises to reveal, partially hidden, in my blockbuster bestseller that will incorporate the whole economy as part of its plot twists integrated into the lives of all seven billion of us.
In the new world order, Earth is its own self-promotional product merchandising.
Now that the word is out we're no longer paying and protecting Osama bin Laden to be our official Enemy No. 1, pirates and bandits are competing to take that top job for the next round of "Who are you afraid of when the lights go out in Georgia?"
Can we raise the Love Canals of the neighbourhoods - the places where cancer rates are unusually high - to the level of fear of the power of the unknown enemy, instead?
Ate lunch yesterday at Payne's, a former Rexall drug store, once known as W. H. Payne Drug Company, started in 1869, a place where City of Scottsboro and Hollywood employees sit down to eat such delectables as the Curley burger (topped with pimento cheese).
The proprietor, personally proud of her homemade pies and cakes, if she says so herself how good they are, told me an interesting story.
A visitor from Boston, who shared a good recipe with her, said their family had been part of the original Girl Scout troop in this country. Back in the early days, girls were given recipes to cook cookies at home. Then, the girls were supposed to sell their cookies door to door.
Where would we be without old-fashioned bake sales?
At Payne's, you'll get crisps instead of chips (or chips instead of fries) because the deep fat fryer's popping fuses.
Thanks to Shirley, Samantha, Pat and Joe at UBC; Ryan at Ruby Tuesday in Strawberry Plains; Treece at BP/BR and Edith Carrington. Did I thank Jason at Dreamland BBQ, Michelle at Beauregard's, the kind cashier at HHGregg, the guys at East End, the helpful folks at Owens Cross Roads post office, or Adrienne and Victoria at Cracker Barrel?
In addition to HSO listening, time to go back to Lowe Mill and see the talent hiding out, waiting for the next great rock opera to shake, rattle and roll the world stage.
Are you ready to admit the world's children are getting the same out-of-class education so we adults should better treat how we present ourselves and the global sociopolitical system to ourselves and our future/children?
You are fully/equally part of the natives of our planetary narrative. I need y/our help to tell y/our story well.
Keep in mind the tale of our time on Earth will become a chapter in the history of our exploration and population of the galaxy, names and faces of this sphere, good and bad, largely forgotten.
This is our moment. Let's live it like we're humble guests in each other's homes.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Raccoons and Rubber Liners Rue the Roosting Rule
Chalk up another one. Right there in the classroom we see our future - chalk, dry erase markers, electronic slide shows, nourishment, encouragement, discipline, learning.
I thank the folks at Garden Cove for the organic meal I bought - oats, bran, apples, bananas - and other fresh nonorganic goodies - prickly pear fruit, mangoes, persimmons - I didn't pick up on the last trip. I'm behind on my thanks to others and I apologise.
Barry Diller taught me there is no such thing as an unimportant person - every one of us is vital, including the mountain folk and the remote fishing villages. Progress and preservation are one.
Sea monkeys and sugar gliders.
Censorship and freedom.
Skyscrapers and open ranges.
Currency wars and battlefield peace management.
I care about all seven billion of us, even on days when I don't feel like caring about anything except a cold beer and a close football game.
Do you have what it takes to treat us as a whole species, with room for every one of our diverse hobbies? It's far from easy and less complicated than you think.
Redefine labels with laughter and you'll see what I mean. Find a useful outlet for our "fight or flight" emotions and we can get along without resorting to genocide.
Best local joke of the day:
I finally negotiated the five-book deal with the major publisher who is going to combine television soap operas, social media, Internet blogs/news and ebook readers per my suggestion, putting the reader directly into the story. Lose weight and I'll finally have the money and health to meet you on the space cruiser going around the dark side of the Moon!
I thank the folks at Garden Cove for the organic meal I bought - oats, bran, apples, bananas - and other fresh nonorganic goodies - prickly pear fruit, mangoes, persimmons - I didn't pick up on the last trip. I'm behind on my thanks to others and I apologise.
Barry Diller taught me there is no such thing as an unimportant person - every one of us is vital, including the mountain folk and the remote fishing villages. Progress and preservation are one.
Sea monkeys and sugar gliders.
Censorship and freedom.
Skyscrapers and open ranges.
Currency wars and battlefield peace management.
I care about all seven billion of us, even on days when I don't feel like caring about anything except a cold beer and a close football game.
Do you have what it takes to treat us as a whole species, with room for every one of our diverse hobbies? It's far from easy and less complicated than you think.
Redefine labels with laughter and you'll see what I mean. Find a useful outlet for our "fight or flight" emotions and we can get along without resorting to genocide.
Best local joke of the day:
Urban Meyer loves God. God loves Les Miles. Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier aren't sure which one of them is God.
I finally negotiated the five-book deal with the major publisher who is going to combine television soap operas, social media, Internet blogs/news and ebook readers per my suggestion, putting the reader directly into the story. Lose weight and I'll finally have the money and health to meet you on the space cruiser going around the dark side of the Moon!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
What's The Fun In Funding Funds?
Maple leaves, hickory nuts and cedar needles cover the base of the mountain slope this cool autumn morning.
Noble Nobel nobility is crowned. A writer's reality is unreal. Charcoal, thinly sliced, joins a womb with a view in the prize category.
And Pakistani anger gets front page news.
Would John Carroll's face face you at the checkout stand?
Do snails shiver in their shells?
How do you explain to the paranoid that they should want people to talk about and follow them around, crowdsourcing having a healing process if we treat everyone with the respect as people that they earn by reciprocating?
I know I have this meager, short life to observe our species in action. I know originality is a matter of perspective because all ideas build upon one another like piles of leaves drying, decomposing and reemerging as leaves of another kind.
I know nothing. You are my memory, my mental calculator, my solution to problems like the binocular silhouette of my nose I can't see on my face. What is a nose for?
How many times can you have your heart ripped out of you and keep on going? How do you regenerate passion for the game of living when all has been taken away from you over and over again?
One in seven billion. One in trillions. One in infinity.
One more reason to live, one more day, one more perspective to call one's own as an integral part of life in the universe.
I am a member of my species. I am subject to the physical ailments and emotional highs/lows that come with this combination of states of energy.
This is my world, my solar system, my part of the galaxy.
I know we are a young global entity unaware of our big picture potential.
Can we put aside our childlike paranoid fears that others want to control the ballgame we've all agreed to play according to the best set of rules we can devise based on our current understanding of what constitutes a level playing field?
If history is any guide, the answer is rarely yes. We're competitive. Life is not fair. Asteroids, comets and supernovae do not ask our permission to play in the solar system "field."
All we can do is figure out how to help a neighbour truly in need.
Everything else is semantics. Winning and losing are temporal. Our species is constantly changing, time an illusionist making us think otherwise, our lives too short to want to see what's really going on.
Otherwise, all those trucks/tankers destroyed on the Pakistani border would have been stolen and used to help rebuild Pakistani villages, instead of claiming a selfish guerilla victory to justify more warring in the region.
See how we keep ourselves occupied?
Oh well, as much fun as I have spinning my ATV wheels on the freshly graded dirt of this construction site we call Earth, it's time to get back to motivating us to pull some of our eggs out of this basket and hatched in another coop some of us will gladly, protectively, proactively call home.
Noble Nobel nobility is crowned. A writer's reality is unreal. Charcoal, thinly sliced, joins a womb with a view in the prize category.
And Pakistani anger gets front page news.
Would John Carroll's face face you at the checkout stand?
Do snails shiver in their shells?
How do you explain to the paranoid that they should want people to talk about and follow them around, crowdsourcing having a healing process if we treat everyone with the respect as people that they earn by reciprocating?
I know I have this meager, short life to observe our species in action. I know originality is a matter of perspective because all ideas build upon one another like piles of leaves drying, decomposing and reemerging as leaves of another kind.
I know nothing. You are my memory, my mental calculator, my solution to problems like the binocular silhouette of my nose I can't see on my face. What is a nose for?
How many times can you have your heart ripped out of you and keep on going? How do you regenerate passion for the game of living when all has been taken away from you over and over again?
One in seven billion. One in trillions. One in infinity.
One more reason to live, one more day, one more perspective to call one's own as an integral part of life in the universe.
I am a member of my species. I am subject to the physical ailments and emotional highs/lows that come with this combination of states of energy.
This is my world, my solar system, my part of the galaxy.
I know we are a young global entity unaware of our big picture potential.
Can we put aside our childlike paranoid fears that others want to control the ballgame we've all agreed to play according to the best set of rules we can devise based on our current understanding of what constitutes a level playing field?
If history is any guide, the answer is rarely yes. We're competitive. Life is not fair. Asteroids, comets and supernovae do not ask our permission to play in the solar system "field."
All we can do is figure out how to help a neighbour truly in need.
Everything else is semantics. Winning and losing are temporal. Our species is constantly changing, time an illusionist making us think otherwise, our lives too short to want to see what's really going on.
Otherwise, all those trucks/tankers destroyed on the Pakistani border would have been stolen and used to help rebuild Pakistani villages, instead of claiming a selfish guerilla victory to justify more warring in the region.
See how we keep ourselves occupied?
Oh well, as much fun as I have spinning my ATV wheels on the freshly graded dirt of this construction site we call Earth, it's time to get back to motivating us to pull some of our eggs out of this basket and hatched in another coop some of us will gladly, protectively, proactively call home.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
What is America?
Now that the future has been completely plotted, analysed, condensed, published, proved and debunked, I'm out of a job.
Or, rather, I may or may not have been paid to keep my mouth shut about what's going to happen next.
All of us have a Jonathan Pryce we're willing to accept. Many a Moss has been traded for sports entertainment purposes rather than gather on immovable old Stones.
It takes six to ten years to build a list of anything interesting to the majority of people in a major culture.
While the interplanetary citizen subcommittees met secretly out in the open, I assigned myself the task of figuring out who was farming the people, letting a vast number randomly reproduce while a select few were closely observed and chosen to attempt to create a special group to use as a control against which modified-DNA beings will be compared.
Is a potato really more intelligent than anything on or in Mars? To whom/what are we potatoes? Why do UFOs always have flashing lights?
A secondary schoolmate of mine is a Zionist living in Israeli settlement. A colleague of mine is a Muslim born of a Muslim father and Christian mother, both born and raised in Lebanon. A Chinese friend of mine lived in terror during the Mao revolution because of her parents' school teacher background. Another friend of mine, of Italian heritage, married a woman of Vietnamese heritage. My wife and I have, amongst a lot, little extractions of various European countries in us.
These people are or were American citizens. Thus, they/we are by definition global citizens because the U.S. is a melting pot of players in international business and politics.
We depend not only on each other but also on our planet.
Politics is not local. But it's hard for us to see thousands of languages and subcultures at once.
What, then, is the ideal extraplanetary citizen?
If we are 99.xxx% alike, what is the average .xxx% percent that will represent us in our first attempts at permanent colonisation on an extraterrestrial body?
Recruits are competing across the globe to define the group(s) to eventually live permanently offworld.
Some secret teams are developing the advance robotic group that will build the colony's living quarters and defensive perimeters (can't let just anybody land and live there first!).
Meanwhile, those who are happy to call Earth home but want more exotic travel destinations are filling up the rosters of promising spaceship companies' train-and-fly programs.
Can I trust you with a little more information I gathered from an intimate bedroom conversation between two people in the know about different sets of secrets? Mmm...not yet.
There is no such thing as the ideal interplanetary citizen. Good traits like hard-working, determined, quick-thinking and cooperative will get us through this next stage of our species' expansion.
The stage after that will require quite a bit of imagination on our part. Better start planting the seeds now that'll take six to ten years to mature, one opened secret at a time, vigilantly wary of future shock.
Or, rather, I may or may not have been paid to keep my mouth shut about what's going to happen next.
All of us have a Jonathan Pryce we're willing to accept. Many a Moss has been traded for sports entertainment purposes rather than gather on immovable old Stones.
It takes six to ten years to build a list of anything interesting to the majority of people in a major culture.
While the interplanetary citizen subcommittees met secretly out in the open, I assigned myself the task of figuring out who was farming the people, letting a vast number randomly reproduce while a select few were closely observed and chosen to attempt to create a special group to use as a control against which modified-DNA beings will be compared.
Is a potato really more intelligent than anything on or in Mars? To whom/what are we potatoes? Why do UFOs always have flashing lights?
A secondary schoolmate of mine is a Zionist living in Israeli settlement. A colleague of mine is a Muslim born of a Muslim father and Christian mother, both born and raised in Lebanon. A Chinese friend of mine lived in terror during the Mao revolution because of her parents' school teacher background. Another friend of mine, of Italian heritage, married a woman of Vietnamese heritage. My wife and I have, amongst a lot, little extractions of various European countries in us.
These people are or were American citizens. Thus, they/we are by definition global citizens because the U.S. is a melting pot of players in international business and politics.
We depend not only on each other but also on our planet.
Politics is not local. But it's hard for us to see thousands of languages and subcultures at once.
What, then, is the ideal extraplanetary citizen?
If we are 99.xxx% alike, what is the average .xxx% percent that will represent us in our first attempts at permanent colonisation on an extraterrestrial body?
Recruits are competing across the globe to define the group(s) to eventually live permanently offworld.
Some secret teams are developing the advance robotic group that will build the colony's living quarters and defensive perimeters (can't let just anybody land and live there first!).
Meanwhile, those who are happy to call Earth home but want more exotic travel destinations are filling up the rosters of promising spaceship companies' train-and-fly programs.
Can I trust you with a little more information I gathered from an intimate bedroom conversation between two people in the know about different sets of secrets? Mmm...not yet.
There is no such thing as the ideal interplanetary citizen. Good traits like hard-working, determined, quick-thinking and cooperative will get us through this next stage of our species' expansion.
The stage after that will require quite a bit of imagination on our part. Better start planting the seeds now that'll take six to ten years to mature, one opened secret at a time, vigilantly wary of future shock.
What Would Ponce de Leon Do?
"Carlos, Senor Sanchez is here to see you."
"Send him in."
"Mr. Slim! Thank you for seeing me on such short notice."
"No problemo. What can I do for you?"
"I would like a job."
"Did Fidel not find a place for you in his organisation?"
"No. He said it would look bad, hiring a Cuban-American after letting go so many of his own people."
"In that case, what would you like to do?"
"I would like to be el presidente."
"Rick, I do not think that is possible. I have difficulties enough managing to get my Mexican friends elected. I don't think I can get you the U.S. presidency. At least not in the next election."
"Would you buy CNN and Comedy Central and make me presidente of the combined companies?"
"Hmm...you are smarter than I thought. This might work... A powerful juggernaut to compete with the Murdoch empire."
"I already have a slogan: 'Truth or Dare.'"
"I believe that has already been used. Perhaps 'We Dare To Tell The Whole Truth - Honesty and Humour With Honour.'"
"That is perfect, your excellency."
"Just call me Mr. Slim."
"Yes, Mr. Slim!"
"Consider it done. Ted owes me a favour and this is the sort of deal I was looking for. What do you plan to do first in your big office I will have built for a fellow Hispanic?"
"I will fire Jon Stewart and replace him with..."
"Catherine Zeta-Jones?"
"No. How about that locker room reporter who was in the news recently?"
"Erin Andrews?"
"No. The other one."
"Ah yes, I know who you are talking about. The one who generated news about herself in blatant self-promotion. I like the way you are thinking, very much so."
"We will further polarise the American people!"
"Only if you can increase viewership, of course."
"Of course!"
"Let's get back together in a few days and work out the details of how you will work for me. I sense you will be the catalyst I have been looking for that fires up and unites the Hispanic people in the Western Hemisphere."
"As you command. We will see who has the last laugh now!"
"Soon, yes. But keep quiet about this for now. I have many smaller deals to close to make sure the CNN/CC acquisition goes exactly the way I want it to."
"'Si, Senor.'"
"'Mr. Slim.'"
"Yes, Mr. Slim. I was just joking, sir."
"Very good. You will need a strong sense of humour to be presidente. Some days will seem like a cruel joke but you can't take what you hear personally. You understand?"
"Of course. You don't think what you heard about me in the news was real, do you?"
"No, but they do. And in the end, it is them who pay our bills. The viewers, the advertisers, the bloggers, the tweeters...all the people we will get to watch and talk about you and the new network."
"We will be the voice of the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the unemployed, the forgotten, the untouchables, the migrants and immigrants of the world who are looked at with disgust!"
"Find a funny way to say that and you have a great tagline for your personal show, From The Desk Of El Presidente."
"Today, the network. Tomorrow, the world!"
"That's good. I may want that one for myself."
"Send him in."
"Mr. Slim! Thank you for seeing me on such short notice."
"No problemo. What can I do for you?"
"I would like a job."
"Did Fidel not find a place for you in his organisation?"
"No. He said it would look bad, hiring a Cuban-American after letting go so many of his own people."
"In that case, what would you like to do?"
"I would like to be el presidente."
"Rick, I do not think that is possible. I have difficulties enough managing to get my Mexican friends elected. I don't think I can get you the U.S. presidency. At least not in the next election."
"Would you buy CNN and Comedy Central and make me presidente of the combined companies?"
"Hmm...you are smarter than I thought. This might work... A powerful juggernaut to compete with the Murdoch empire."
"I already have a slogan: 'Truth or Dare.'"
"I believe that has already been used. Perhaps 'We Dare To Tell The Whole Truth - Honesty and Humour With Honour.'"
"That is perfect, your excellency."
"Just call me Mr. Slim."
"Yes, Mr. Slim!"
"Consider it done. Ted owes me a favour and this is the sort of deal I was looking for. What do you plan to do first in your big office I will have built for a fellow Hispanic?"
"I will fire Jon Stewart and replace him with..."
"Catherine Zeta-Jones?"
"No. How about that locker room reporter who was in the news recently?"
"Erin Andrews?"
"No. The other one."
"Ah yes, I know who you are talking about. The one who generated news about herself in blatant self-promotion. I like the way you are thinking, very much so."
"We will further polarise the American people!"
"Only if you can increase viewership, of course."
"Of course!"
"Let's get back together in a few days and work out the details of how you will work for me. I sense you will be the catalyst I have been looking for that fires up and unites the Hispanic people in the Western Hemisphere."
"As you command. We will see who has the last laugh now!"
"Soon, yes. But keep quiet about this for now. I have many smaller deals to close to make sure the CNN/CC acquisition goes exactly the way I want it to."
"'Si, Senor.'"
"'Mr. Slim.'"
"Yes, Mr. Slim. I was just joking, sir."
"Very good. You will need a strong sense of humour to be presidente. Some days will seem like a cruel joke but you can't take what you hear personally. You understand?"
"Of course. You don't think what you heard about me in the news was real, do you?"
"No, but they do. And in the end, it is them who pay our bills. The viewers, the advertisers, the bloggers, the tweeters...all the people we will get to watch and talk about you and the new network."
"We will be the voice of the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the unemployed, the forgotten, the untouchables, the migrants and immigrants of the world who are looked at with disgust!"
"Find a funny way to say that and you have a great tagline for your personal show, From The Desk Of El Presidente."
"Today, the network. Tomorrow, the world!"
"That's good. I may want that one for myself."
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Rick's Risks in Ricks
An ordinary man, watching, waiting.
While rocketeers line up recruits to design, build and launch moon rovers, manifesting the dreams of Verne and others who've marveled at our night sky companion that bashfully hides its face in phases, I stand here wondering.
Birds bathe.
I am an old man who wanders woods thinking.
There's something else out there, something I can only hint about, vaguely reference, use humour to blow smoke around and in front of.
I am an apparition, cells, atoms and states of energy tangled in gravity.
While colleagues and associates see the ordinary me, I work the background scene where the extraordinary happens regularly.
I am a quiet fool, easily recompensed, apt to gape, stepping through back doors to see what's really going on in the cube farms, a reflection of management's management.
I am not what I appear to be. Managing expectations. Making people feel like persons. Empowering.
I am unimportant, embarrassed to talk about my humble accomplishments, having not yet settled a colony of living things off this world.
There's more here than meets the illusion we call the thought process. Time to activate another team and show you what I mean.
So many govermental agencies issuing grants, so few people to make the grants come alive and exponentially grow to the benefit of all the people some of the time (and some of the sum thyme of the time).
Would you see the dual use that supersecret government cybersecurity development gives civilians openly populating another planet?
You will.
While rocketeers line up recruits to design, build and launch moon rovers, manifesting the dreams of Verne and others who've marveled at our night sky companion that bashfully hides its face in phases, I stand here wondering.
Birds bathe.
I am an old man who wanders woods thinking.
There's something else out there, something I can only hint about, vaguely reference, use humour to blow smoke around and in front of.
I am an apparition, cells, atoms and states of energy tangled in gravity.
While colleagues and associates see the ordinary me, I work the background scene where the extraordinary happens regularly.
I am a quiet fool, easily recompensed, apt to gape, stepping through back doors to see what's really going on in the cube farms, a reflection of management's management.
I am not what I appear to be. Managing expectations. Making people feel like persons. Empowering.
I am unimportant, embarrassed to talk about my humble accomplishments, having not yet settled a colony of living things off this world.
There's more here than meets the illusion we call the thought process. Time to activate another team and show you what I mean.
So many govermental agencies issuing grants, so few people to make the grants come alive and exponentially grow to the benefit of all the people some of the time (and some of the sum thyme of the time).
Would you see the dual use that supersecret government cybersecurity development gives civilians openly populating another planet?
You will.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Storming The Weather
Working with my colleagues and associates to take us where we have little hope of surviving but a big chance of trailblazing a path for those who will pave the way with opportunities unimaginable...
But first, like the marathon runner who stepped into a fastfood joint and ate ketchup packets because she'd forgotten her energy gel packs, let's look where the opportunities already abound.
Should we continue to innovate in the field of exoskeletal and other radiation shield development for ourselves in our current form or develop anaerobic beings able to live and grow in near-vacuum conditions? Develop both in parallel?
Is a thinking/conscious/self-aware electromechanical creation the best we can make to represent us off this world?
The scifi and nonfictional science subcultures work hard to create original ideas about what we'll look like and how we'll live elsewhere.
In the meantime, our umbilical connection to Earth is just as important as what and where we'll be.
While the world turns, I challenge my team to dig a little deeper into a few areas of development that don't often see the light of day.
This blog will detail our discoveries, hoping that those working in secret across the globe can communicate openly about our plans to put Earth behind us and make the most of our latest achievements in technical design, business relationship management and resource allocation.
We know that the global economy here will not stop so we have to keep it in our thoughts while negotiating with people from all walks of life to assist our living permanently off the shelf so to speak.
Offworld adventures await us. Are you ready to step on board?
How about you in the Nesquik throwback? Think you can help get advertising to pay for part of our plans?
But first, like the marathon runner who stepped into a fastfood joint and ate ketchup packets because she'd forgotten her energy gel packs, let's look where the opportunities already abound.
Should we continue to innovate in the field of exoskeletal and other radiation shield development for ourselves in our current form or develop anaerobic beings able to live and grow in near-vacuum conditions? Develop both in parallel?
Is a thinking/conscious/self-aware electromechanical creation the best we can make to represent us off this world?
The scifi and nonfictional science subcultures work hard to create original ideas about what we'll look like and how we'll live elsewhere.
In the meantime, our umbilical connection to Earth is just as important as what and where we'll be.
While the world turns, I challenge my team to dig a little deeper into a few areas of development that don't often see the light of day.
This blog will detail our discoveries, hoping that those working in secret across the globe can communicate openly about our plans to put Earth behind us and make the most of our latest achievements in technical design, business relationship management and resource allocation.
We know that the global economy here will not stop so we have to keep it in our thoughts while negotiating with people from all walks of life to assist our living permanently off the shelf so to speak.
Offworld adventures await us. Are you ready to step on board?
How about you in the Nesquik throwback? Think you can help get advertising to pay for part of our plans?
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