A different future, a different past

You ever get the feeling the past, your past, was just a dream, or a story you told yourself, or some gossip you overheard.... and then when considering the future, it seems equally unlikely?

Yeah, me neither.

Never Mean Any Harm

Regardless of intent, harm is often caused. Thus, one must find a different foundation to judge one's actions - fer instance, it would be hard to justify the Duke Boy's behavior from most perspectives, other than the Duke Boys and extended Clan.

Ancient J-Lo

Hubba hubba! But seriously, amazing artwork from circa 4050 BC - long time ago. It always inspires me, for some reason, to reflect on the people alive back then, and even in far more ancient times. They were just like you and me, not some savage cave beasts. Yes, they were probably missing a lot of teeth, and their hygiene would be considered poor by today's standards, but heck -- have you been to rural America? We're not that far removed. 

But more to the point, these folks in our very brief species' history - 200,000 years or so - were just like you and me. Same bodies, same minds, same souls. They just did not have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips.

Also interesting to note that our modern human societies are even much, much younger. I consider the dawn of writing to also be the dawn of modern mankind - and as such, this statue is right from that time frame. So, consider this for a moment: It has only been in the last 6000 years or so that humans have developed everything you see around you. Before that, we really we're not that different than other human species, or frankly, even monkeys. Writing, or, more specifically, the ability to store information outside of our bodies, was the key to everything. And we are still in the ever evolving wave of this major development.

420 Feet High

Behold the tallest statue in the world - a 420 foot high Buddha, located in Henan, China. I was pleased, and surprised, to learn recently that the Chinese have been on a giant Buddha building kick since the ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban back in 2001. Good for them - the world needs more giant Buddhas.

Big in Japan

Er, actually, Norway. But really, the entire world - how awesome that the American President is far, far more popular in basically every other country in the world, save the one he's the President of. Thanks Repugs!

Two Nerds and the Hardest Working Actor in the Cons

One of the few redeeming qualities of the mostly awful Star Trek:Voyager, was the character of the holographic doctor, played by Robert Picardo, pictured above, with two nerds. Also, Boba Fett is shooting him.

You know you've made it when.....

Someone asks you to autograph their chest. More points for the closer to the cleavage you get. So congrats, Sarah Palin: You've made it!

Wingnut Baiting

Look! The Chosen One, in Child Form! The wise folks of Indonesia jumped to the head of the Obama appreciation society by putting up the first official statue of him. Nice work, Java Men!

I enjoy, vicariously, the discomfort this statue will cause the "real merikans" here. 

Congrats, also, Obama, for giving a speech about war while receiving the peace prize. Delish!

Also! That swirl in Norway, listed below, appeared in the region just before Obama arrived - coincidence? There are no coincidences!

-Gate

So I was reading yesterday - somewhere! - that the ever increasing use of the suffix -gate is an intentional device used by Repuglicans since the 70's as a FUD technique. Specifically, to conflate any and all scandals or alleged scandals to Watergate, and, of course and as usual, to confuse and muddy the waters of real scandals. I mean, that "crook" Hillary actually got caught in Travelgate (an actual point I heard raised at T-giving dinner by a Palin suppporter), and ain't they all crooks anyways? 

The gestalt of what we're dealing with here is becoming clearer to me: Everything that is happening today can trace directly back to the 60's and 70's - civil rights and the hippies, precisely. Both these movements caused white crackers to shit their pants; it caused the wholesale re-alignment of the political parties (the Dems used to control the South, and the Repugs the northeast, not so long ago); the hippies successful demonization of the war in Vietnam led to a wholesale re-selling of the military, nicely setting us up for our current Imperial ways -- SUPPORT THE TROOPS  can now be shouted at anyone who would dare question any aspect of military policy; Lee Atwater and the Silent Majority introduced our current political operative handbooks, and we've been following them since; mass media, specifically TV, made Nixon look like a chump, so the large scale take over of the media by conservative forces has utterly and completely removed the media as an objective force - also the Pentagon Papers. For a good example, see the Washington Post, then and now; the rise of the Religious Right, in direct response to the secular humanism and dare I say, paganism of the Hippies.

I could go on - it's a fertile topic and would make for a wonderful book or thesis. 

It gives me some hope too, that once these old farts die, they'll take their wars with them, and we can have a go at a fresher outlook, more in line with the realities of the 21st century.

Form equals function

The function is to inspire awe and wonder. Also will work well for Hollywood Pew-Pew Movie.

Not a UFO

I don't know what it is. No one does, yet. I'm sure it's not a UFO - well, actually, it technically is an Unidentified Flying Object, I suppose, but not of the Li'l Green Man variety. 

This strange spiral in the sky appeared in Norway and has a ton of documentation. I'll be interested to hear if they ever determine what it is. My bet: Weather Balloons. Green (AHHHHHHHH!)

2010

I'm going to beat the crowds by a couple of weeks: While we suffer through the vomitous waves of Xmas ads, be prepared for a refreshing break on 12/26, followed swiftly thereafter with the insufferable "Year in Review" filler for the final week of 2009.

What I'm interested in are naming conventions: Are we all going to say "Two Thousand And Ten", or "Twenty Ten"? 

I'm betting the latter, though it will require a break from the last 10 years.

Finally, can you believe it's going to be 2010? Seems crazy.

Green Balloons

If anyone says "Green Balloons" today, be sure to yell -- that's the phrase of the day! And another fun Repuglican Sex scandal, shocking only for the fact a woman was involved.

Giant Finch

Just checking in.

Did you know that birds of the same species that are localized on different continents would not understand each other? Like French and Murkin birds, fer instance. It might be true.

Never Give Up!

Due to comi-tragic circumstances, I'm all philosophical this Monday morning. To wit:


Our spirtual, mystical task on this planet is to simply align our inner states. That's it. Acceptance and adaptation, in other words, to external events. For, external events might be changeable in the small terms, but in the big picture, they are not. The laws of nature over-ride any apparent free will. 

So, accept this reality, and align yourself to it. You'll be better in the long run, by far. More successful too.

But it takes some doing. You have to unlearn so much of what you know. You must give up or never seek so much of what others around you strive for, give their lives up for. Attachments - all of them - must be lost.

It's hard though, make no mistake. So, often, it's good to practice with things that are obviously not that important. Like your Fantasy Football team, like even though it's clearly the best team in the league, and you have WAY more points than any other team in the league, due to nothing more than BAD LUCK, you're not making the playoffs, and there's nothing you can do about it.

WAAAAAH!!!!


(Let it go: learn to love losing)

Crochet Incognito

Just in time for Paganmas!

TFSMIF

You know you're old when.....



sleeping in late is the most exciting part of the weekend.

More Exoplanets!

We'll soon reach the point, if we haven't already, where the discovery of additional exoplanets is ho-hum news. For shame! Since this is a fertile new area of exploration, and I predict there will be big revelations in this field in the next ten years.


Regardless, excitement should pick up with the release of actual pictures. There's actually a few competing claims for the title of "First pic of an exoplanet". This is another contender. B is the definite planet - they think C might be one as well, but not sure. You see part of the problem here -- too close to the star and we are blinded. So we'll have a hard time finding earth like planets in earth like orbits for years to come, other than through indirect means (the gravity wobble detection system that to date has discovered 99% of the exoplanets).


This picture should also give you a sense of how huge space is, how massively gigantic . This planet orbits at about where Neptune orbits in our Solar System - way out. But as this picture makes clear, even solar systems are tiny on an astronomical scale - just atoms floating in the ocean, really.

Waiting for Robot

I would love to see this play! Having no idea what it is about (I'm guessing some domestic-bot morality tale), I'm still certain it would be better than 63% of plays out there, with good odds of being even better. 

I cannot wait for the day to come when we can replace actors with robots. Then we will see true art.

Where we're at

This is a picture from the COBE satellite which shows, roughly, the temperatures of the existing universe shortly after the so called "Big Bang" (which was neither big nor a bang; the term was coined as an insult to the theory). What we're looking at are very, very, very slight temperature differences in the "space-time" of the early universe. The working theory is that these differences provided the framework that galaxies emerged from later -- the existing "mist" of galaxies (don't forget - there are hundreds of billions of galaxies) is arranged along the patterns represented above.

Which is all fine and well. I get it. What I am struggling with lately (and believe it or not, I'm spending a good deal of time these days thinking about these types of things), is the difference between the expansion of "space-time", and the speed of light.

To explain: Consider a quasar. A quasar is not really a "thing", but rather a description of a certain stage of a black hole's existence. To wit, a quasar condition indicates the black hole is actively feeding on matter directly at hand, and usually happens at the early stages of the black hole - later in it's life, it does not have as much matter at hand, so cannot feed as much, thus does not produce much energy as a by product (quasars are defined by this release/"creation" of energy by the black hole).

Still with me? That was the easy part. Anyways, we only see quasars far, far away in the universe. Since space is so big, distance = time. When we look at any star in the sky, we are looking at light that is old - sometimes years old, sometimes hundreds of years old, thousands, millions, and up to billions of years old. We estimate the age of our universe to approximately 14 billion years old. We see quasars in the range of 3 billion years ago and older. That is, we are seeing them as they were a long time ago, since it takes time for light to travel.


What I don't get is this: All energy in our universe was created in the "big bang". This energy expanded at that moment, and continues to expand - this is our current reality. My dilemma is: Since all energy was created at the same time, how can we see something in the past? Should we not all be on the same level of "space-time" expansion? Or, is the speed of this expansion faster than the speed of light (the only explanation I can come up with)?

If you picture the universe as an expanding balloon on which we reside on the surface, you can visualize the expanding universe. How, in this analogy, could you look back into the "center" of the "balloon" and see the past, unless it simply took the light much, much longer to catch up with the expansion of actual space.


Any help?

Tis the Season!

Amusingly, the cake smells better on the inside.

Protip: Don't Let Carl Cut Your Pie

He's not very good at it. If he were still with us, I'm sure he'd readily admit.

Also:

If you're looking for a new guru, you could do far worse than Sagan. If he were still with us, I'm sure he'd disagree. He was that kind of guy.

Unending War

I was a bit taken back last night as to the general response to Obama's speech regarding AfPak. First, I've mostly turned off all forms of MSM since the election (I'm lovin' it!), but tuned in last night to see what they had to say. "EVEN LIBERAL MSNBC" was appalling - Chris Mathews claimed Obama visited "Enemy Camp". WTF? He's freakin' C-i-C.

Second surprise, to me, out of nowhere, are Obama supporters turning on him. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot people? Have you learned nothing over the last 8 years? Are some of you so single issue that you have no vision to the larger picture?

Which is: Like it or not, we have committed to war. We have ruined countries over false dogma and lies. We could simply leave, but this would in fact leave the region, and the world, in chaos. So, what Obama proposed last night was to thread the needle - "surge" of forces (key! Both military and diplomatic) coupled with training, coupled with efforts in Pakistan, and give it 18 months to see what happens. Nothing? Great, time to leave. 

Yes, people will die because of this. But people are dying today, and yesterday, and will die there tomorrow, whether we are there or not.

No, America should not be the world's policeman. But, no one else can come close to fulfilling the role. We broke all the vases, time to fix them as best we can.

Most importantly to me, however, is Obama himself. He's a real leader, sober, wise, intelligent, compassionate. He's been given one of the biggest shit sandwiches any President has had to inherit. There will be lots of tough choices in the days to come. Let us all give thanks we have a wise man in the office to make them.

Man Behind the Mask

Only look through the glasses if you are prepared for what you see.

Your Repuglican Party

Here's what our dear former VP had to say today to the stalwart journalists at "Politico". Yes, you wonder why the VP needs to be interviewed today? Well, it's because tonight President Obama will announce his decision regarding troop levels in our war in Afghanistan. Let's free associate some phrases first: 
War time President
Support our troops
Aid and comfort to the enemy
9/11 changed everything
Making the World safe for Freedom.....


Feelin' it? Here's the quote from Dick, regarding Obama:

“Here’s a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place ... and who now travels around the world apologizing,” Cheney said. “I think our adversaries — especially when that’s preceded by a deep bow ... — see that as a sign of weakness.”

Specifically, Cheney said the Justice Department decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in New York City is “great” for Al Qaeda.

“One of their top people will be given the opportunity — courtesy of the United States government and the Obama administration — to have a platform from which they can espouse this hateful ideology that they adhere to,” he said. “I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid and comfort — to the enemy.”

 Great stuff, right? Think of Al Gore saying these things about W. circa 2005. How do you think Cheney would have responded? Fox News? The rest of the media? Let me answer for you: There would have been a massive freakout and a demand for Gore's head. How do you think Fox News and the rest of our "Objective" media will respond to these quotes? Let me answer for you: Fox News will defend them breathlessly; the non-Murdoch portions of the media will either ignore them, or give Cheney's quotes as the other half of the story in contrast to the President himself.


It's all very worrying, in that if these trends continue and develop, our country will be at risk, and thus the world.

Fear and Loathing at SciFiComCon

Green skin AND red shirt - time to go pro.

History is written by the victors

Fun fact to know and share: There were two versions of the famous Godzilla v. King Kong movie of 1962; one for Japanese distribution, in which Godzilla won; the other for American distribution, in which King Kong does.

I think we can all learn a lesson from this.

Survey Says...!

Chum!

Neopostmodern Meta-Irony, sample

Don't tell Noam what he can't do!

Redshirtmobile

I'd like to paint it red, however.

Gold Man was here

I do not envy Gold Man as he painted that far side.

A Fighting Force of Extraordinary Magnitude

Obama and I now have the same Black Belt. Better all check yourselves. Yo.

Fun fact: In South Korea, you can go to college and major in Tae Kwan Do. Doesn't seem fair to me - they're so much better!

What up, dog?

Just chilling.

By the by, this image is iconic in certain parts of the web.  For  good reason - it's hilarious.

Was Jesus more like a Vampire or a Zombie?

A difficult question with no simple answer. Plenty of work left for future theologians.

Google Maps - Sympathy Killa

This is all Google Map's doing - I was not involved at all.

Be careful what you wish for

Remember that story "The Monkey Paw" or whatever it was called? Yeah.

RONPAUL (CHEWBACCA)

There's a faction of anti-government folks who may seem aligned with the Teabaggers, and may pull common cause for a while with said Teabaggers, but are not Teabaggers. Generally. The Ron Paul Horde. They're all fairly crazy, and are really just against everything. Which I can respect as a cohesive philosophy, but have to chuckle at in practice.

They also had a blimp at one point. Also. 

Concern Troll is Concerned

 

I've said it before, I'll say it plenty of times in the days to come: I loves the interweb! So many fascinating phenomena. Fer instance, The Troll - a person who exists on the internet to get some kind of rise out of a specific audience. 

I only came to realize what a troll was via the interent, but the truth is that Trolls have always existed. It's just much, much harder to pull off that BS in person than anonymously via the intertubes. Example: Socrates is one of the greatest trolls in history.

There are many forms of trolls, and many techniques, but they usually all can be dealt with in one of two ways successfully: Ignore them, or mock them relentlessly. That's it. Any attempt to actually discuss, persuade, or even compel a troll will almost always meet with failure, and it is far, far, far more likely you are simply playing their game -- giving them what they want - by trying. So my very considered and wise advice is: Don't feed the trolls!

The Concern Troll is a type, a very interesting type in our new media age. The Concern Troll has actually gone mainstream and there are many occupying global media positions. Example: Almost anything you read from Karl Rove these days are examples of a Concern Troll in action. He'll write some Op-Ed for the WSJ warning the Democrats not to get caught up in this healthcare debate lest they lose congressional seats in 2010 - HEAVEN FORFEND! You know Karl would hate to see that, right?

Thus, a Concern Troll: A troll who's main technique is to employ insincere concern for the group he's actually targeting. 

Also, this: 

Man saves bear

True tale. They had tranqued her and then she ran in the water, to collapse. Nice man here swam out and dragged the bear back, where she was revived successfully. No word if the man later married the bear, though it might be irresponsible not to speculate.

The Church of 4th and Inches

You're this close to Salvation; are you going to go for it?



Funny note! I tried to start an internet meme way back in 1998 with "The Church of 4th and Inches". I composed a fake funny religion and wrote it up in a concise email. I then got about 300-400 email addresses from various "sources (Thanks!)", and sent out the missive. To little effect. In fact, of the handful of responses I got, this was by far the most common response: "Who are you? How did you get my email address? How dare you email me if I don't know you! Don't ever do it again.", which, fair enough. But hilarious, given the soon to come wave of Spam that would drown everyone.


Anyways, if you're interested in joining the Church of 4th and Inches, enquire within.

Walking on a dream

Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods!

Join The Snuggie Crusade

Oh savage Wolf, humiliated so.

We Would Be Honored If You Would Join Us

The Last Supper was on a Thursday, apparently. From this we get the ancient tradition of "Thirsty Thursdays" with discounted bar snacks.

I'm Gonna Stay Away From You, Suckas

Really - this is an actual photo (false color) of squid suction cups. Taken through a microscope. I know, I know, looks fake. But it's real. And yes, terrifying.


Remember: The Macro is mirrored in the Micro, and vice versa.

Thar's Water In Those Thar Hills!

Well, apparently our WAR ON THE MOOON was more successful than initial - and lame - reports indicated. Apparently, in this close up here, you can see the white poofy cloud in the depths of the shadows. Water, NASA tells us.

There are actually two possible sources of water on the moon - in old craters like the one above, that have not had any direct sunlight for a loooong time; and 2. in the the lunar soil itself, everywhere. It's theorized the water could be mined out of the soil, but that would be a big effort.

So, for whatever it's worth - not much, it seems - yay! Water on the moon, which makes it much more theoretically feasible that we will one day colonize. Maybe in 2212.

Revenge Of The Ice Queen

With the immanent Oprah broadcast and "Goin' Rouge!" book release, it looks to be "Alot of Sarah, alot of the time". Joy! You might want to stay away from tv/interwebs for a week or so.

Personally, I'm with Levi - start dishin' boy!

Let's Check The Bible, Jim

 

Ms. Prejean gave a hard-hitting interview to "Christianity Today" and had this to say about her breast implants:

No, I don't think there's anything wrong with getting breast implants as a Christian. I think it's a personal decision. I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn't get breast implants.

So, now that that matter is settled....

Let Us Beat Deathstars Into Plowshares

You can take the helmet off now, Soldier.