Separating the amateurs from the pros from the cons

Well, back to the storyline that won’t go away quietly.

Turns out the Committee has issued its final opinion to settle the debate on what separates a professional athlete from an amateur athlete and either one from a convict.

Simple: the best body modification that money can buy.

Therefore, from this day forward, all professional sports association must allow players to use as many chemical concoctions and prosthetic additions as they and/or their sponsors can afford.

Amateur athletes must continue to refrain from enhancing their bodies in any way that requires more than basic nutrition to supplement a hard exercise regimen.

Of course, this puts pressure on the professional spectacle that used to be a competition between amateur athletes called the Olympics.

Because professional athletes can participate in the Olympics, all Olympic athletes may take whatever steps they, their family, their sponsors and/or their country deems necessary to win.

Or, as they like to say in scifi, may the best cyborg crush its opponent in glorious technicolour!

The starving barbarians at the gate will still be barred from entry until such time as they prove themselves civilised enough to behave like a normal doped-up athlete in the Olympic spotlight — sorry, no more grunting in front of a microphone and camera like a tennis player on the court — you must be able to speak in sentences longer than two words, even if your opponent is bleeding to death in the arena from your crushing blow to the head.

What does one do with a 32MB USB flash drive in a TB world?

Got my 100GB camera today — don’t need a zoom lens any longer!

I installed the camera in the front grille of my wife’s Toyota Camry.

Inconspicuous.  Another family car in another family-friendly shopping district.

Let the camera take random photos.

After marveling at the sharp details of carparks and tyres, I set the supercomputer to analyse the photos for trends.

There, before my eyes, were animals adapting to human behaviour, habits that I’d seen a thousand times but never paid attention to.

For years, I’ve observed the ebb and flow of birds as the days get longer and the average ambient temperature rises.

But those were birds foraging in suburban forests.

Rarely do I sit in a carpark for days on end and see birds repeat seasonal patterns.

But a camera and computer can do for me what I wouldn’t do for myself.

This afternoon, I figured out that house sparrows not only scavenge carparks for discarded food, they look for cars dripping water from air conditioner tubing.

They hop from underneath one freshly parked car to another in summer, taking tiny sips of aitchtewoh, flapping their wings, biting and scratching insect infestations in the heat.

Birds breathe through their mouths in extreme heat, just like us.

All this time, I was wondering how to water the hanging baskets and concrete planters full of tropical trees, hostas, roses and annual flowers around our front entrance and there it was staring me in the face for years — the water drainage pipe for our heat pump!

Thank you, little sparrows, for your inspiration.

Now to hook the heat pump drainage pipe to a small reservoir, use a toilet repair kit as a depth sensor that triggers a small waterfall pump to cyclically move the reservoir water from the heat pump to the flower pots.

On/off topic, with this mega-gigapixel camera, my stack of 32-to-256 MB USB flash drives are practically useless to carry photos around.

Time to turn them into mini-OS drives for the picocomputer systems running dedicated, specialised subroutines that I’ll tell you about one day when I’m really bored and want to explain how trees and vines can become memory storage and arithmetic units if you know how to take advantage of their seasonal changes.  Chlorophyll-based batteries are the best for these low-energy, solar-powered minisuperpicocomputers.  Swaying branches generate some power but not consistently enough to keep the battery/capacitor packs charged.

Will your idea rise from the drawing board?

Can a tree leaf charge your spray-on battery?

Five Minutes Until Closing Time

The situation is this: what do you want after the crisis in Syria is less violent in chaotic parts of that geopolitical zone?  How do you want the people suffering the worst economic conditions in the Eurozone to react?  If you don’t have to pay your medical bills, who’s going to determine if you got your money’s worth?

Tuned in to Pandora radio, picked the Soundgarden station and an advert for “Meet Singles in Your Area” popped up.  Switched to the Claire Lynch station and an advert for “Viagra” popped up.  Stayed up when Alison Kraus started playing.  Very punny.

Anyway, so we’ve got supply lines to regional energy sources which we want to stay open.

We’ve got people in the Middle East who claim that civilisation originated there.

We have people in China trying to prove the same thing.

Thing is, does it matter?

What is civilisation?  Violent suppression?  Censorship?  Surveillance?

And that’s just in the UK.

When is a revolution acceptable?

Who gets to choose when to participate in an uprising?

Is every wealthy person an “alpha?”

Is every person in a position of authority — in charge of military forces, that is — an “alpha” or a “beta?”

[Cue references to “Brave New World”]

What does it mean to be an American or a world citizen?

Can you claim membership in both groups?

I’m blending in with my surroundings, the chameleon nearly invisible, a reflection of the intersecting waves of social [in]justice, letting words, images, labels and such flow through and around me.

Some call it happiness.

I call it being me/not-me.

On Canada Day, I consider a visit to the country via Alaska, wondering if I should move to the land of depleting boreal forests, oil shale field fracking and old gold rushes.

I trust our species to use as much fossil fuel as is in-the-slightest-bit feasible to extract because alternative energy sources are expensive in comparison to…well, pick your chart, select your argument and present to a skeptical public the why’s and wherefore’s of the social/economic/ecological cost of running a modern-day civilisation.

Meanwhile, I’m slapping some money down on a trip to the land of Molson, moose and moist towelettes.

Trekking over tourist traps and snow country.

Working my network of associates and colleagues.

Wondering if monsters sleep under rusted truck cabs in desert conditions near tundras.

Or was that a deserted Tundra truck under seeping monster cabs in rusty conditions?

Maybe ol’ Dusty Rhodes’ll be singing a sad song on the way to the next WWE Hall of Fame induction.

Time for another hand-drawn animated satirical cartoon disguised as what?  The last time, a horror novel.  The next time…?

Stay tuned!

Alone on this lonesome highway, the Wandering Wonderer meditates on the universe that revolves around him solely for his lifetime entertainment, the illusions enjoyable, if tragic or funny in forgotten moments of timeless navelgazing.

This is my dream, my illusion — getting our states of energy, our living, breath bodies in one form or another, out into the solar system, not just our electronic, robotic companions escaping the heliosphere — carrying on the work of our species for millennia, using stories, humour and Earth’s resources to make my [adopted] dream a reality worth living for.

Everything else is just a game in your dreams and illusions.  I’ll play your games sometimes but I promise I soon get bored.  If the alphas and betas want to fight each other to the death, go for it — don’t let me stop your madness, battling over the same ground your ancestors wasted their time killing each other to claim again for the very first time.  If those kinds of games of yours are all there is to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then end mine here.

No?  I’m still alive?  Good!  Time to explore new fields where resources and repurposed technology may make my dream come true…

The water sprinkler in the woods

Yes, the new leader of the Committee is right.  I moved part of the supercomputer out of the sub-sub-subbasement and into the cave network stretched across parts of north Alabama, north Georgia, southeastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

Some of my colleagues are investigating the feasibility of extending the network to subnetworks our subcommittees set up in Kentucky and Virginia centuries ago.

Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I’m retired.  Although I am tired and losing my ability to maintain an understanding of this symbol set — the communication method you call the language of [American] English — to record these thoughts in the second decade of the 21st century.

I still keep in touch with my associates, of course.  After all, I have to eat and feed my family.

This very morning, I looked over some data analysis reports and found this tidbit of the future interesting.

A young boy, while watching “Real Steel,” came up with the idea of merging NASCAR, “The Last Starfighter,” “Real Steel,” and Google autonomous vehicles to give underutilised racetrack owners a way to make money when they aren’t hosting main events.

Without the need for human drivers and protective cages, racecars have taken on new shapes, much more interesting than the “win on Sunday, drive on Monday” models that have dominated the sport since its infancy.

Much more fun to watch, what with people sitting at home getting their fifteen seconds of driving their favourite car around the track, randomly picked throughout the race so that no viewer with special gaming equipment at home purchased just for this type of sport can leave the screen because anyone at any time can be picked to take over his or her (or its!) favourite car.

No one knows when other popular racecars have been taken over by autonomous software routines.

Seems like we have been here before, doesn’t it?

Didn’t Formula 1 already patent the invention of the robot driver called Michael Schumacher, discovering that even automatons like Mike deteriorate when pushed to the limit race after race, becoming less efficient, less successful, eventually?

Which brings us to the Olympics.  The sentient being we created for the U.S. Swim Team, Michael Phelps, is still performing well.  The early prototypes such as Muhammad Ali, Nadia Comăneci, and Lance Armstrong gave us trouble in the long run, but we learn from our construction projects no matter what they look like at the end.

How do we create these superstars of sports?

Easy.  We listen to the ignorance of the crowd.  Where they almost hit genius moments, like this writer, Jenna Wortham, who thinks interfaces with computing devices will only take place via our five senses.

Long ago, we learned how to put enhanced computing devices inside every part of the body, making individual body parts smarter, faster, cheaper.  Chemical, organic, undetectable — microorganisms that release designer molecules (phrases like “human growth hormone” are out of fashion, don’t you know?); microorganisms that clean up waste products such as urine, feces and sweat before they’re released from the body; microorganisms that attach to specific cells of the body (muscle tissue, for instance) without flooding the bloodstream with the appearance of banned substances.

Waiting for the slow feedback loop between our sensory organs and computing devices is just a plain waste of time and effort.

For now, we’ll let the populace believe their antiquated interface devices like mobile phones and tablet PCs are somehow making them more productive busybodies — not much better in retrospective than a group of Neanderthals sitting around the person who discovered fire, asking, “Okay, fine!  But can it cut up the meat for us afterward?” — because we know they don’t know better, and are stuck in this time period.

We’ll let dilettante comedians convince their audiences that they’re one step away from the great breakthrough, as long as you pay for their humour-filled advice.

After all, those who can’t see the future have only this moment in which to live.

Well, yes, I’ve told you you also only have this moment in which to live, but then that’s what I wanted you to believe at the moment I wrote it.

How else am I supposed to show you that every moment matters because no moment matters?

Anyway, I’ve an experiment to check.

If you put a water sprinkler in the woods and nobody noticed, would the birds that sipped water from dripping tree leaves have an effect on your future?

If I don’t humour myself, who will?  If I can’t humour myself, who can?

If a movie like “Into The Wild” is probably a false retelling of history, why tell it?

How can I find out?  Use an upcoming holiday trip to test the theories that supercomputers create to entertain themselves.

Repeating thoughts and news of natural events as a form of long-distance-over-time communication is more tiring than I first thought when I was invited to lead the Committee.  They hinted but didn’t tell me that a leader never stops leading.

Lucky me!

Back to my cup of hot tea on a day when 105 deg F is no big deal, watching a tick crawl up my leg and nestle into a break in my skin, releasing chemicals into my bloodstream that affect my immediate future, much less my future 1000 years from now.

Do you Roku?

While the tech world buzzes about the latest mass media consumption device, I play with a refurbished unit called the “Roku XD 2050X 1080p Streaming Player, 802.11n/g, Ethernet Port, Enhanced Remote with Instant Replay.”

Purchased one at Woot.

Well, I actually made the classic “duh” error when I ordered the box.

I pressed the Big Button (if you’ve wooted, you know) and got an HTTP 404 error that the page I sought no longer exists.

So I pressed the refresh button…

Four times!

Tried to cancel but the Wootiers behind the virtual wall told me, “Sorry!  Our robots are scurrying through the warehouse, happily scooping up four Woot boxes just for you.”

Anyway, the one box that I wanted, I opened.

Within minutes, I was watching a free Amazon On Demand movie on the ol’ 1999 55-inch standard definition projection TV in the comfort of my overcrowded living room.

Letterbox version of a popcorn flick, “Mission Impossible 3: We Suckered You Into Watching This Fluff a THIRD Time!”

Easy as making a pie.

No, easy as pulling a frozen pie out of the freezer, sticking it in the countertop convection oven and cooking it unevenly, burning one side and leaving the other side nice and cold.

As a comedian, I’ve got to find something funny about the inconvenience of convenience foods.

Besides, writing satyrical skits gets old.  And the burlesque dancers even more plastic-looking than Cher singing at a NASCAR race full of robot drivers and their plastic, Valley of the Dolls, Stepford wives!

Enough already.

Let me save the insults for the young kids.

Time to get serious, if not a few Syrians.  Assyrians, you’re time has come and gone.  I’ve got my safari gear on and ready to hunt cougars.

Experience counts where experience counts but who’s counting?

I know there’s somebody important in this time period who died I’m supposed to add to the list of celebrity eulogies but I’ve forgotten.

Thanks to Kristyna, Connie, Muriel and others.

Another secret revealed

In the arena where this blog-in-reality meets reality-outside-of-this-blog, we watch the words reveal the past and the future through your present reading.

Turn on the Suite No. 2 for Orchestra, Op. 64, from Romeo and Juliet, by Sergey Prokofiev.

Or the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major by J.S. Bach.

Then, sit back and watch this video…

Before you see the video, I’ll ask you a question.

What is your password, any password?

You see, Rick left the room a few minutes ago and I noticed a Bible askew on the bookshelf nearest the computer terminal.

I thought for a few seconds what he would be doing and then it hit me.

An old world globe on top of the bookshelf fell on my head!

After I replaced the globe, I thought about why the Bible would have moved on its own.

Then I logged onto this network; that is, Itried to log on.

Then it hit me.

The cat perched on the headrest of the chair gave me a whack across the forehead, begging for food.

After I fed the cat, I figured out why Rick had moved the Bible.

He had created a new password for the network.

And what’s one of the best known phrases, or verses, in the Bible?

I typed J3164GSLTW and logged back in.

C’mon, Rick?  John 3:16?  That’s the most difficult password you could come up with, “For God so loved the world…”?

Dude, you’ve got to make it harder than that.  I guess “Jesus wept” was too short, wasn’t it?  I’m sure Genesis 1:1 would have been too easy for me to figure out, wouldn’t it?  I suppose I could have tried the 10 Commandments next.

Oh well, now that I’m back, I wanted to share with you the infographic that summarises the secret code that unlocks the world of Rick’s writing (and thus, mine, the plagiaristic copycat that I am).

Short, but sweet, the secret of storytelling.  Rinse and repeat.

Suite No. 2 for Orchestra, Op. 64 Ter from Romeo and Juliet

Ship’s log

17 June 1987, 17:53

I have entered a new adventure in learning (for which my wife and I have given one hundred and seventy-seven American dollars).  This adventure is entitled Sociology 480 – Society of the Future.  The other members of this adventure will share the ideas we bring to the class and the ideas of the members of the Worldwatch Institute who have issued “A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society,” entitled State of the World 1987.

= = = = = = = = = =

17 June 1987

Dr. Donald Tarter, instructor, Sociology of the Future

  • For the next 25 years, NOBODY CAN PREDICT THE FUTURE!!!
  • Doesn’t stop us from asking, “What if…?”  “What can happen?”
  • Some have made bold predictions in science, literature and behavioural studies:
    • Carl Sagan
    • Arthur Clarke
    • B.F. Skinner
  • For instance, Sagan predicts that survival over the next 100 years for endangered species is less than 10%.

Analyzing the Pressures of Population, especially ours:

  • Population factors such as growth rates, supply and demand for resources
  • Energy alternatives — availability of supplies
  • Mineral resources
  • Agricultural resources — can we grow enough?

= = = = = = = = = =

29 June 1987 20:20

A visit by Dr. Carl Sagan to Huntsville, Alabama, to discuss “Star Wars or Mars.”

Leaving this planet

  • Application of rocketry
    – developed by Chinese
    – developed into instruments of death and destruction by Europeans
    60,000 nuclear weapons
    1 submarine can destroy 192 cities
    “A central exchange” – ~200 million to 2 billion killed on tight nuclear winter — destruction of agriculture; starvation, destruction of ozone layer would bring about equivalent of large-scale AIDS
    You cannot trust estimates of probability of failure when the stakes are high
  • Solutions
    “Star Wars” a/k/a SDI (strategic defense initiative)
    Render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” — President Reagan
    If simultaneous deployment by both sides were possible then the shield would be feasible
  • Cons
    Porosity — one Senate group predicts 16% of Soviet weapons destroy
    10% getting through means 1000 Soviet weapons which would wipe out America
    U.S. is invaded daily by small aircraft carrying the weight but not the density of nuclear weapons
    Decoys and penetration aids, low flying (depressed) flight paths, increased number of warheads built by Soviets
    Computer program “battle management system” to detect and destroy the nuclear warheads would be too complex to design and debug
    If U.S. had first strike then Stars Wars could wipe out remaining Soviet nuclear weapons
    Would cost $2 trillion U.S. dollars
    Some scientists refusing to be involved in SDI — ~10,000 in number
    Estimated that $600M spent on SDI in Huntsville
    Not worth the cost even if money was available
    National security should be measured by wealth of economy, not by money spent on national defense
    Children should look forward to growing up
  • Alternative — bilateral decrease in strategic arms

Rocketry

  • Werner von Braun in Germany, Robert Goddard in U.S.
    After WWII in U.S., 1961-1978, the moment the human species (mainly the U.S.) explored all the planets known to the ancients
    Now many other nations have joined the exploration
  • Today, NASA is dis-spirited, in serious trouble
    Principle reason: NO GOAL
    IT NEEDS A GOAL AND ONE EXISTS:
    Systematic robotic exploration of Mars,
    followed by manned exploration of Mars around the turn of the century
  • If one or more nations combined, it could cost less than one strategic weapon
    Exploration could help show why the deterioration of the water on Mars…
    Send robots to Mars if science reason only
  • Should combine/cooperate with Soviets in some project on behalf of human species
    “Existence theorem” – high-tech cooperation is possible

    1. Cooperative unmanned exploration of Mars and its moons; Soviets plan to send six spacecraft to Mars 1988-2000
    2. Cooperate to build space station to build ships in space to make interplanetary travel for 9-month trip or longer
    3. Would capture the imagination of the human species that no other project would do!

    Same technology involved as in military

  • “It is as if God said, ‘Before you I set the tools of immense power to destroy yourselves or carry yourselves to the planets and the cosmos.'”
  • Governments make mistakes, lie, cheat and steal
    All citizens should have minimal understanding of science and engineering
    Reduction of nuclear arms — one problem at a time, other weapons reduced later
  • Reach minimum deterrence, not zero possession
    1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, Article VI, U.S. and USSR pledge to massively reduce their nuclear arsenals
  • “Testosterone poisoning” — men involved together too long in the act of killing
    Men are adapted to hunger-gatherers in East Africa but not to high-tech nuclear arms race today
  • Tortoise (them) and hare (us) effect with regards to space race — our government started out faster but quit…

= = = = = = = = = =

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THESE SHIP’S LOG ENTRIES WERE WRITTEN…

Where are the ideas discussed in today’s “sociology of the future” class going to take us another 25 years hence?

  • Will computer modeling look as quaint as some of Sagan’s ideas look today?
  • Will our integration with electronic technology so blur the line between a body and machine, we stop paying attention to the distinction?
  • Will space exploration and planetary settlement make us no longer an Earth-based lifeform?

Rick wants to come back and share with you the future 1000 years from now but he promised himself he’d retire from active management of our species and fulfill his destiny to become one with nature, whatever that means.  Don’t make him come out of retirement and tell you what he already knows you’re going to do.  Trust that words like “recession” and “depression” are purely labels used to reinforce our species’ overprocessed development of social engagement we call economics and has nothing to do with how well our species will adapt to ecological changes currently in progress, such as planetary warming that goes against what should be a cooling period.  The planet transforms, individual species dying away as species always do, ours doomed to eventually disappear in the grand scale of planetary history — doesn’t matter if it’s in thousands, millions or billions of years, does it?  Keep on keeping on.

Organisational Skill Assessment

Before I compose a hand-drawn animation sequence with the Bamboo Capture graphics tablet and fill my future with out-of-date electronic debris, I finish sorting through the piles of debris that constitute the bulk of written material which emanated from this set of states of energy called me.

Watched a commencement speech by Laurie Anderson [I thought, for a public performance multimedia artist, her acting was rather stilted], which has prompted me to click my way to a website and order a copy of the book, “How to be idle,” which in turn opened my eyes to the reams of office paperwork stacked in boxes around me.

Here’s one from 03/24/98:

Kiersey Temperament Sorter Results

Your Temperament is Idealist: NF
Your variant temperament is Healer: INFP

Any Personality Test, including the Sorter is just a rough indicator of temperament.
You might want to look at different temperament descriptions to verify the results and learn about other types of people for comparison.

I+6 N+16 F+12 P+14

David M. Keirsey
keirsey@mail.orci.com

At that time in my life, the department manager was all about fitting us into jobs that matched our personalities.

What she didn’t account for was a chameleon like me, a people pleaser who assesses the wants and desires of the people around him and blends in, hiding his personality behind layers and layers of masks, revealing himself to a select few.

I told the manager I’m not who she thinks I am and she responded that was a normal reaction to the test results from an INFP like me.

Later, I learned that she gave the same response to everyone who questioned the test results.

I wasn’t questioning the test results.  I just wanted her to know that the test results indicated my exteriour in relation to giving her the test results I thought she wanted to see.

For instance, let’s say I find out my college History professor is a dopehead and adherent to the philosophy of Timothy Leary… I make sure my term paper for the class, a review of a book about socialist utopias, contains plenty of illicit drug references and hippy religious conversations.

My goals are not your goals.  My goals are outside of the time and place in which we encounter one another, so it doesn’t matter to me about the profit targets you want to reach or the edifices you want to build in your names.

Ideas and images associated with temporal moral and ethical practices are imaginary, as far as I’m concerned.

We either reproduce our genetic material or we don’t.

Everything else is fiction about how we decide to protect our reproductive organs until we’ve produced progeny that need our protection.

Me, I have only these works of art — the sketches and writings that were birthed by me with your influence, a part of the universe, upon me.

I have no genetically-related or adopted children.  The closest I got were the nieces and nephews who [might have] looked up to me as an adult member of their clan/tribe.

They are adults now.  My influence upon them diminishes as they decide how to protect their reproductive organs until they’ve produced progeny that need their protection.

One of my hidden goals was to live long enough to be a great-uncle.

I held up my step-niece’s little one-month young girl in my arms, making me the great-uncle I wanted to be ever since I was a little boy and looked up to my childless great-uncle and great-aunt who seemed to have extra spending money my parents never had, despite the great-relatives’ middle-class wages as a postman and office secretary, respectively.

I have grown tireder as I’ve aged, exercised less and eaten minimally-nutritious chemically-treated foodstuff.  I no longer want to be a model for others or someone to look up to.

It’s time to slow down and concentrate on the dreams and desires of the personality behind all the masks…

The boy who saw macabre nightmares come to life when his favourite politician of all time, Richard Nixon, resigned.

The boy who looked down at his plate of spaghetti and thought he was eating a dish full of bleached worms covered with red sauce to hide their little heads screaming for mercy.

The boy who heard the grass talk to him.

The boy who sailed the universe at night when no one was looking.

The boy who knew that stone gargoyles and cast-iron mailboxes were like three-dimensional photographs of a reality hidden inside other people’s heads, finding an outlet, me wondering where they came from before they appeared in people’s thoughts.

The boy who earned his Eagle Scout badge and went on into Explorer Scouts, later to become a Unit Commissioner, an adult role in Scouting, because he never thought he had gained his father’s love and trust, constantly seeking, seeking, seeking approval up until he reached his adult age of 18 where he received a full college scholarship via the U.S. Navy ROTC program, accepted at both Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech, but realising he no longer had to seek his father’s approval and flunked out on purpose.

I had become the man I never thought I’d be able to grow up to be.

I never was my father and never will be.

I am me.

My hidden visions, the alternate reality that I carry in my thoughts as I interact with people who seem to like to embrace the inconsistent reality of [sub/ex]urban lifestyles and belief systems, are crawling out of me and into the world in which we meet and greet one another cordially.

They are not perfect.

They are not commercialised, plastic products for mass production and insane profit margins.

I don’t even care if others steal, borrow or marginalise my work.

My work is not me but my work came from me so I associate myself with my work but I do not tie my self-worth to what I’ve written, drawn, danced, sang or sewn.

This is the only moment in which I live and I claim this moment as mine, declaring myself absolutely insane in comparison to the insanity of boxed stuff that we only call food because the pretty picture on the outside tells me it is.

Unlike Madison Avenue marketers, I don’t have to make money from my creative redefinition of ordinary life.

I can, have been and will be me, willing to use the excess capacity of our species’ social structure that produces a buffer zone outside of basic survival to express myself here and elsewhere, on paper, in blogs and wherever I feel I want to breathe what always has to be my last breath because the next one is not guaranteed.

On to the graphics tablet, building upon my first animation!!!

As an independent filmmaker said,

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
—Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming[

Swashbuckler, “the magazine for mad people”

While clearing off my desk to create space for a graphics tablet, I found a stack of some papers of a previous life (before marriage), including a laboratory book from an “Analytical Chemistry” class, notes from a computer programming class, material from a Sociology class and bunches of my writing, including the following copies of one of my underground magazines called Swashbuckler, a spoof of the ETSU college newspaper and poke at the ETSU literary magazine, with devoted fans from whom I accepted guest writing from time to time.

Swashbucker – Volume 2 – Number 1

Foam Bow Tie

Would you wager a bet — your life’s savings — to support a project that produced ten results, only one of which was successful, a 10% success rate?

The ROI for your wager is your name and your family’s names on a plaque.

The plaque is attached to a landing craft.

The adult travelers inside the craft all die.

The eggs and embryos survive, grow and carve out a niche in the new landscape, the mini-ecosystem of the landing craft, unable to decipher, let alone pronounce the names on the plaque.

But former inhabitants of Earth have found a way to live on another celestial sphere.

That, alone, was the accomplishment of this current millennial-long civilisation we propagate and perpetuate.

More than any other civilisation before ours.

More than any other species or ecosystem.

The sole goal of life, to reproduce itself in whatever form the environment will tolerate in the eat-and-be-eaten cycle of life.

What if we sent that one-out-of-ten-success craft in a few decades from now, achieving the goal by slowing down global consumption of raw materials for a short period — several years, a couple of decades — until we jumped back into our fast dash for the latest gizmos, gadgets, family gatherings and after-hours parties?

Sure, pretty much most of us will keep supporting the rise and fall of family fortunes, business empires and geopolitical zones (a/k/a governments), because only a few lucky souls will qualify for climbing aboard the ten launch vehicles and only one craft will carry our species’ passengers all the way to another planetary body, acting as couriers.

The survivors of the craft will exist as if they live in a parallel universe, unaware of our continued great accomplishments on Earth:

  • Our medical breakthroughs, such as the extension of a healthy person’s life into a third century of high-quality daily activities.
  • Our flying cars, floating cities and other dreams of days gone by fully realised.
  • Totally-connected thought patterns via new technology, letting those who want no privacy or have no secrets to hide to join the Hive and move our species forward/backward/sideways as one.

Our civilisation will go on for countless decades, business cycles and climate changes, prospering in the ebb and flow of new ideas that counter prevailing ideas.

Optimists and pessimists will support or deny the direction we take, without fail.

In the interim, our celestial cousins are recreating the paradise of Earth elsewhere.

You and I will never know with certainty whether our actions contribute most to the growth of life off this planet or life on this planet, regardless of the perceived benefit/detriment of our actions in the moment.

We are who we are, doing what we do to enhance our survival within the social net we’ve spread over Earth, extending tiny threads outward into space, just in case this net eventually collapses.

We can be plumbers, fashion designers, mechanics, midlevel managers, lab techs, airplane pilots, business angels or primary school students.

We create futures we see and futures we cannot imagine possible.

We may solve mathematical conundrums at age 15 or not be able to balance a checkbook, or both.

But we will find a way to move Earth-based lifeforms, including synthetic beings designed for harsh conditions on other worlds, into and out of our solar system.

The Voyager spacecraft series is one example.

The Beagle 2 is another.

So, too, Venera 9.

Is one of those or a new craft the single container that harbours beings which will adjust to their new environment and thrive?

Would a recent university graduate with a mathematics major be the one who makes a difference in which craft is the one that represents our achievements up to a point in time on Earth but for millions of years later on a different planet?

There’s only one way to find out — live in the moment with an eye on the future, using the collective wisdom of your [sub]culture as a guide, trusting your instincts to know which elders are the ones with you, your subculture, and the future of your species in their best interests.

Don’t forget to have fun.  Wear a giant foam bow tie to a corporate board meeting, your wedding or your child’s secondary school graduation ceremony.