Tag Archives: space

Seven Billion People and Countless Other Beings to Talk About

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

What is Julia the Thanksgiving Girl or Jenn the rocket propulsion specialist doing right now?

What about John in the checkout line or Michelle in the deli at Publix?

Terrence or Mildred of Comcast, what does either one do on the weekend?

Or KK at Carson’s Grille?

Imagine a small fleet of crafts heading toward a distant habitable planet, sending and receiving reports along the journey, landing 1,000 years from now, funded by private individuals and companies on Earth that no longer exist in 3011.

What if government as we know it anywhere on Earth right now is no longer tenable in the near or distant future?

Would you trust the backers of a privately-funded, online voting or vote-matching system?

Shouldn’t our new system of cooperating with one another (what we commonly call politics or government) be more, not less, transparent?

Many business people are used to meeting in private, negotiating and signing nondisclosure agreements or other documents that prevent the average person on the street from seeing the details of average business transactions.

We call it competition, trade secrets, intellectual property and similar terms that ensure protection of privacy.

Government is that odd amalgam of public and private interfaces, where sole-source contracts and competing bids go up against marketing and advertisement campaigns.

If two ideas are competing against one another for limited resources, which of the ideas’ weak points or strengths is more important than the other’s?

I can talk about free, live, open source software (FLOSS) because there’s enough profitmaking available and excess resources for such a concept in small to medium markets.

What about on a global scale?

After all, a gaboodle of mobile phones contain Android, which contains a core, or kernel, of Linux code.

In our newly-connected global economy, which operates by and large as a supergossip network, where much of what we say to each other is superfluous but informational, we have created a citizenry that lives and loves outside the bounds of geographically-based political entities.

[Cue several paragraphs of historical comparisons to previous interconnected civilisations]

Are you interested in the status quo — government as it is and has been — or something new, something that develops from grassroot efforts, where we seamlessly become part of the Internet of Things, and transparency is commonplace but there’s room to respect the needs of profitmaking and intellectual/personal property rights?

I grew up playing board games called “Monopoly,” “Risk,” “Life,” and other cultural teaching tools centered on competition.  I didn’t play boards games that directly taught cooperation.  Instead, collusion of players ganging up on another was the indirect lesson I learned when one player was dominating and the others didn’t want that player to win.

It was in team sports and partner-based card games that I learned to cooperate with others in order to win against a respected opponent.

What are we teaching each other and our children about the future?

Six Hundred Light Years, Plus or Minus

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , • Leave a comment

When was the last time you traversed the galaxy?

Did you use conventional propulsion or laser-guided self-organising transfer bots to reconstruct your presence at the end of your travels?

How close to the speed of light can your bit stream fly?

Did you use quantum entanglement to create a sympathetic version of yourself, or simply discover the same?

Do you understand your states of energy as intersecting waveforms?

Does it matter if your replicated self is merely a collection of parts rather than the original whole, missing some of the synaesthesia with which you recognise your current place in space and time?

No one has the exact same pattern of freckles on skin that I do but does the exact pattern really matter in getting my representative from one part of the galaxy to another?

While our species jostles and tussles, our planet’s climactic changes change our future choices.

Will some of us escape on a millennial long journey before it’s too late?

Will global riots become a new norm or a passing fad?

We have the resources to separate our eggs into different baskets.

The escape hatch hasn’t closed.

What are you preparing your kids, or some of them, for?

= = =

Thanks to Talin Orfali, Deidra Alexander, Alpha Miguel-Sanford, Jessica Ward and others who freely share their thoughts online.

Take nothing for granted, granite included

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

If I knew that our solar system was packed with living things (at least in the way we choose to define the term “living”), would I feel as compelled as I do to encourage us to devote xx.xx% of our resources toward populating the cosmos with living things from Earth?

The WordPress front page displayed a link to a blog entry titled, “Off the Couch and Into the Streets.”  Rarely do I feel compelled to comment on a blog entry but I added one to Coleen’s:

Your blog entry popped up on the front page of WordPress, and the title “Off the couch and into the streets” caught my attention because I’m looking for a fun way to lose some extra weight. Thus, my expectations were different than you might have expected when you wrote this blog entry.

The Occupy [your locale] movement, Arab Spring, and any/all protestations against the common/established social structure are perennial, which usually fall under the label “counterculture.” I encourage you to feel and act differently, supporting your subcultural beliefs no matter how much you may feel crushed/oppressed by the common culture under which you live and socialise.

Having grown up during the 1960s global counterculture movement, my perspective, as a child at the tailend of the Baby Boomer generation, has taught and continues to teach me that those who protest will encourage others to act in less obvious, newsworthy manners, to effect longterm change.

I’m glad you have a job which gave you the flexibility and courage to join those who wanted to voice their displeasure with the current state of our common culture [one] day on the streets of Denver. Hopefully, through your job and with your friends, you can be the change you want to see today and into the future.

How do we express ourselves daily?  In other words, do we carefully consider the words we use in social exchanges?

Saying I am the “99%” or I am the “1%” or any other label automatically establishes an artificial barrier.

Reminds me of taking the Myers-Briggs personality profile test as a requirement of working in a certain department at a company full of a variety of personality types, including conformists and nonconformists.  After taking the test and, with another person who had gotten the same personality profile, saying that the test results were bogus, was informed that those who received that particular personality profile were prone to say the test results were bogus.

I feel the same way about the Occupy movement.  The participants brag about how diverse and unlabelable they are — yet, they quickly chant about the “99%” and the “1%” without blinking a self-conscious inner eye.

Another commenter said, “It’s like telling a child “You just like to argue” and the child keeps saying “Nuh uh!”.”  The same goes for those who are being labeled by the diverse Occupy movement participants.

To be frank, when I hear the Occupy movement chants through mass media soundbites, all I can think is, “Well, what if I’m one of the 1%?  So what?  Didn’t I earn my place in this financial position by saving (using the old adage of “pay yourself first”) and spending wisely?  Sure, some of my Nike shoes or my wife’s Kathy Lee Gifford designer clothes were made using kids paid ‘slave wages’ but I stopped buying those items after I found out about their manufacturing sources.  The University of Oregon and Stanford University, home to some students who have protested, didn’t refuse Phil Knight’s donations nor did the students refuse to attend those universities.  Regis Philbin, a person apparently beloved by many, didn’t stop being Kathy Lee Gifford’s friend.  I don’t have all the time in the world to investigate the raw material source and manufacturing location of every item I buy but will make reasonable changes when I find out.  Some parts of me are just as susceptible to instant gratification and buyer remorse as anyone else in the 1% or 99% (i.e., all seven billion of us).”

That’s why using or not using labels is important to me.  Also why I lump us all together into the label of “seven billion of us.”  We’re in this thing as one.  One planet, one global infrastructure, one solar ecosystem.

How do we train ourselves and one another to seek rewarding goals that limit destructive and detrimental effects on others, regardless of our entrenched differences?

This time of year, I look out the window and bare trees expose the view of row after row of shingled suburban rooftops.

The mortgage on my house has been paid off.  The majority of mortgages for the rooftops out there are probably still being paid for.

Shall I blame or thank the finance/banking industry for suburban sprawl that makes my skin crawl?

Shall I adjust my view to show myself the people occupying those suburban boxes are paying taxes that support the roads that allow me to drive to unoccupied parks and forests set aside for my enjoyment via local/state/national proclamation and financial support?

If, as one person said, the rich have enough money to pay for half the population to control/kill the other half, where does that put me?

Well, I know where it puts where I want to be.  I want to be one of the rich and when I get there, I don’t want to have to redistribute my wealth unnecessarily.  I admit I like having the total population of my species at my control.  I want to be Phil Knight and say, “Yeah, so what if my products have been made in sweat shops?  My personally-directed donations are creating a whole new crop of those who will rule from the top”.  If I’m going to be labeled as part of the 1%, I want to be Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Pierre Omidyar or Vladimir Putin, not a homeless person as part of the poorest 1%.

Tiny leaves float through the air outside the window.  A woodpecker hops up and down tree limbs, presumably looking for hidden insects to munch upon.

Both public and private money has given me the time to sit here and make these comments.  It’ll take 100% of us to improve our conditions, if we so choose.

Yes, our global economy is not perfect and never will be perfect.  It displays characteristics of both an open and a closed-loop system, subject to the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Can we show how unselfish we are and share our wealth, of knowledge and financial gains, accordingly, while some of us compete against each other in the chess game of life to make things better for our descendants?

Live happily in the fact that today’s 1% will not be tomorrow’s 1% nor will today’s 99% be tomorrow’s.

If you don’t like what’s going on, take the opportunity to change it.  If you don’t like accumulating massive debt to pay for a college education, find a company that’ll hire you for your current skills/talents despite the lack of a diploma.  I did.  But I eventually got around to completing a bachelor’s degree just to prove I can (and got my company to foot the bill – hey, I wasn’t born yesterday – which set me up for a career ladder promotion that wasn’t interesting to me, but that’s another story).

Nothing is set in stone, except perhaps your date of death, and even that fades with time and exposure to the elements.

Think the members of the U.S. Congress who sit on a supercommittee can cut over $1T from the U.S. government budget and make everyone happy?  Wanna make a bet?

If it was me, I’d spread the cuts proportionally to those who are expected NOT to vote in the next election.  Hey, it’s only fair, is it not?  The U.S. is a democratic republic where lawful citizens have the right to participate in electing legislative, executive and some judicial representatives.  Those who choose not to participate, or vote, get less of the government pie to eat – isn’t that one of the tales we learned in kindergarten?

We’ll see what we see when the time comes…

Comments in your spam queue

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

As I settle back down, calm in the knowledge that my mother in-law is no more, I can clear my thoughts and look at the future again.

My network of hackers, business associates, colleagues, and the generally curious are ready for the supercomputer’s next predictions and the Book of the Future’s look back at this time period from a thousand years later.

One colleague wants my assessment of today’s gender/race relations in view of the far[fetched] future.

In some cases, it’s best to look at life from the perspective of smaller units – states of energy – rather than from artificial constructs upon which we perpetuate myths that feed and feed on themselves.

You know, labels.

I am repeating myself again, aren’t I?

Time to let social metaphors flow off me like oily Gulf of Mexico water off a drowning duck’s back.

Sinking, sinking, sinking…meditating…shedding current myths and [sub]urban legends.

Past the readily-available jokes, puns and punchlines that pop up like weeds all over my thought trails.

Does the myth that we descended from hunter-gatherers still hold up?

What is the difference between a person who has to have a unified theory of everything and a person who can live with conflicting theories?

With Berlusconi gone and Assad not too far behind, where will we get the money we need to build off-world way stations on our way into and out of the solar system?

What if someone like Spencer Bacchus had enough voters like him to keep him in office, despite national group efforts to oust him?  When is politics truly local or not?  Does a member of Congress have the right to exercise the freedom to trade on the open stock market, despite negative connotations/appearances?

What is freedom of the individual person and how does it compare to character assassination in the news?

Which is worse to you, the business group trying to badmouth government leaders or government leaders trying to badmouth the business group?

Can we lump the whole mess – business groups and government leaders – into a giant, stinking pile and agree that if it looks like a giant, stinking pile and smells like a giant, stinking pile, then it must be a giant, stinking pile?

Some days, if I could eliminate all seven billion of us and let Earth pick up the pieces, I would.

Instead, I’m determined to find a way for all of us, regardless of perceived social rank/hierarchy, to matter in the course of Earth’s historic move to push life into the cosmos.

In the near term, our species is Earth’s best hope to accomplish that task, despite our many shortcomings.

But first, the small matter of a so-called supercommittee that’s about as useful in cleaning up government waste as letting hungry foxes guard the proverbial henhouse.

Proverbial?  Perhaps?

Let the future begin.

Will the ISS look bigger in your telescope?

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , • Leave a comment

Contracts up for bid: Russian Federal Space Agency opened competition for new module, according to Izvestia:

Federal Space Agency has ordered a new module to the ISS for 3.72 billion rubles

Station itself may be operated up to 2028

Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has opened a competition to create a new module for the Russian segment of International Space Station. The maximum price contract – 3.72 billion rubles.

This amount should include the creation, deployment and operation of a new laboratory module to the ISS. Terms of the contract: November 2011 to July 2013.

The tender documents published on the site office.

On the eve of the chief of manned programs Roskosmos Alexei Krasnov said that the life of the ISS can be further prolonged and the station can provide up to 2028.

= = =

Meanwhile, Bigelow worries about “ownership” of the Moon and Branson helps dedicate the space terminal in New Mexico.

Mr. Slim Weighs In

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Toward what or whom do you gravitate?

I, too, don’t want emotion to cloud my judgment but shouldn’t emotion be involved if I’m truly human?

How well do you cover your tracks?

Can you tell which secret projects the Rocket City Rednecks have worked on by watching their skill sets in action on an edited-for-TV show?

Do you have the sensitivity to hear the voices of others synchronised into the one talking in front of you?

Are you a true believer in the pebble-in-the-pond theory of reverse engineering current states of energy?

Do you understand how time travel really works?

Can you detach yourself from everything, including yourself, in order to hear the silent rhythms of the universe?

Is KISS your guiding principle?

It’s nice to keep the self feeling important just enough to know the self is truly unimportant but ego (i.e., the recognition of oneself in the social web) is a vital part of being human so you balance the best you can, tipping the scales in the wrong direction many a time, refining the finetuning of holding the balance as you go along.

Letting go, letting go, letting go – what am I missing this time?  What have I added?  The “I,” of course!

Every subculture deserves its positive, life-affirming attitude [“as long as it doesn’t interfere with mine,” right?] as long as or even if it doesn’t know it is part of a larger set of abutting and intersecting subsets/subcultures.

What happens if we directly bail out the consumer?  Other than the perception (certainly from my point) that the underwater/indebted/bankrupt consumer should not be freed from irresponsible personal financial management (and while we’re at this blame game, that person is just as likely to be an uninformed voter and maybe a bad parent), what is the reality?

If stockbrokers supposedly vetted by respectable financial companies’ HR departments are acting like psychopaths in their trading habits, some of them taking down whole companies or causing CEOs like the one at UBS to quit, meaning that internal company controls are no better there than internal thought patterns/controls of individual consumers, then why are we reluctant to forgive mortgages, credit card debt, etc., of individuals but readily willing to bail out badly managed financial institutes and political entities like Greece?

What is wrong with the balance of power?

The peasantry have little effect on overall purchasing power, that’s why.

This parroting parrot has squawked about the emperour’s new clothes until it’s hoarse but the observation is still true.

We, the people, no longer matter.

We’re back to the days when only the landed gentry had a say in the law of the land.

That’s why I’m thinking about not voting in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election for the first time in my life.

I just can’t see where any of what I say or do as a broke, out-of-work individual fits into a single vote, especially in a political entity (in this case, a state) that’ll most likely vote the way it has recently voted for U.S. Presidents, regardless of which way I’ll cast my vote.

Even in so-called swing states, if I lived there, my vote would still be just one vote, putting in office a person who is just as purple as Bush or Obama, a surfer riding the waves of aggressive military-industrial corporate policies.

Don’t get me wrong.  I personally benefit from aggressive military-industrial corporate policies.

In fact, I’m a strong proponent of the global corporatising that sits over the imaginary structures we call political entities/national governments.

Take this storyline that you can’t tell if it’s real or imaginary – me in charge of the Committee that runs the show.  It’s a lot easier to rule seven billion when they all are connected through the same macrocultural interests.

But there’s a difference between my being able to destroy people, businesses and rockets at the snap of my finger and my being an individual in plain sight, sitting here – or being served a chopped chicken stuffed baked potato by Mary at Gibson’s BBQ – who has to find a simple place in society despite severe social anxiety and situational depression.

And, then, erasing all thoughts of self to live invisibly as just another set of states of energy in this section of the universe that is shifting like a bubble within a bubble or a bouncy ball floating and banging around within a bigger bouncy ball at the five-and-dime store.  A fake snowflake shaken around in a souvenir snow globe by a bored tourist trapped in a gift shoppe after a speedy haute couture “adventure in an exotic foreign land.”

We forget what’s been said before so we can say it again as if we’re the first on the edge of terra incognito.

I do not exist.

And yet, I do.

The paradox is not supposed to resolve itself.

It is.

That’s all that matters.

I write this while sitting on my posteriour and wearing bedroom slippers.

I am.

And yet, I am not.

Imagine the possibilities of the Internet of things in just a few months, let alone years, if every kid on the block had easily-programmable Arduino-like devices to connect their imaginations to the Internet.  What if everyone’s heartbeat rate was available for view in realtime – what kind of rhythmic percussive symphony would it compose on the fly?

The average age of gamers is 37, I read.  There’s more than one mobile phone per person in some parts of the world.  What are you doing with your time?

Living A Year Under One Belief System

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

If the paying gig stereotypes your behaviour, do you keep renewing the contract despite personal objections?

Do we reinforce the behaviours of our subculture or spend time putting down the behaviours within other belief systems?

I no longer keep track of the number of times I’ve transferred hypnotising microorganisms in a handshake or hug.

Wavelength synchronisation is such a natural state of existence for me, I stopped counting the people with whom I’ve synchronised and passed along the messages that my subculture wants broadcasted.

Body language.

Does insecurity or overconfidence drive Berlusconi to brag about his sexual encounters?

When despots are no longer in power, does the will of the people exert itself through insecurity or overconfidence?

In which subculture(s) do the people believe and act?

In the Middle East, “Turkey” and “Egypt” are forming a new alliance as if those two words account for every subculture within the two, nearby but distinct, geographic regions. [A side thought asks myself “geographic or geographical?”]

Israel and Palestine are very close to becoming legitimate neighbours, sharing the status of countries and, like many political entities, a brewing mistrust of each other’s true long-term intentions.

What makes one person set up a website like http://www.barrelhouseboys.com to promote a book about historic events and others to turn their lives into a future bestselling autobiography in the making?

Do you remember the first time you told your significant other “I love you”? [What a difference “I love you?” would have made in that sentence.]

= = =

These questions set up situations for colonists – on Mars, the Moon, an asteroid, and/or space schooner – to examine as they take root and spread their branches.

= = =

Meanwhile, back in the R&D lab, my mad scientists have created a monster from microbes found living in the frozen Arctic.

One of the scientists, angry about spoiled food he bought at the supermarket and couldn’t get a refund for, wants to let the microbes loose in the frozen foods department, hoping for devastating economic impact on the supermarket.

Another wants to launch a probe loaded with microbes into near-Earth orbit that’ll circle the planet for a few months and then safely parachute back so she can study the microbes’ ability to survive in space.

I’ve asked my supercomputer programmers to estimate the microbes’ mutation paths over the next thousand or so generations, feeding some of them (the microbes AND the programmers) common material on the Moon and some of them common material on parts of Mars.

= = =

My friends in the “drug lords” business ask me why they get such a bum rap.  They provide protection and a living wage for their growers, processors and distributors.  They’ve killed fewer people than the food manufacturers who’ve turned our species into obese diabetics.  They prey on the weak, eliminating those who probably wouldn’t have contributed much to society, anyway.  They should be rewarded for their efficient operations and beneficial economic impact.  Instead, they’re punished worse than common criminals.

How do you argue with comments like that, especially when the drug lords have deposited large sums of money in anonymous offshore bank accounts to assure me of their legitimate accounting practices, insure my future retirement and ensure my loyalty?

Sure!

What are my seven billion friends for?

I don’t judge where you got or how you made your money, just that you give me enough money (or its purchasing power equivalent) to spread life in appropriate form outward from our home planet, Earth.

= = =

Manage your innersubcultural practices well and leave the intrasubcultural interfacing to the so-called professionals.  Professionals you can fire.  Amateurs, like rowdy family members, are harder to get rid of.

Remember, after the cat’s out of the bag, you have more room in your sack for goods and services to use in the next moment – the cat can fend for itself.

= = =

A friend showed me a line of adhesive bandages he’d invented that use body heat and motion to power a watch and changing colour display.  He’s trying to convince his favourite comic book company’s executives to license their popular characters to appear as moving images on the bandages.  In version 2.0, he hopes he can add sound, with characters speaking multiple languages, saying phrases like “You’re healing well, my friend” and “Your bravery makes you a hero in my book!”

How long before our bandages contain time-released microorganisms and medication, little bots and their tiny toolboxes repairing our bodies, enhancing our “natural” healing, removing scars and fighting off infections that our weak bodies can’t handle, detecting fatal conditions on the micro scale and alerting medical professionals before the fatal conditions become macroscopically pathological (or is that “pathologic”?).