July 15, 2013

If there are any interstellar civilizations...

... individual beings are reproducible and no larger than particles of dust.

If they even bother with ordinary matter and energy at all. Maybe all that "dark" matter and energy in the universe is intelligent life. We wouldn't know.

The inter-stellar civilizations are probably too busy creating new and innovative universes to pay any attention to our human so-called "intelligence."

Maybe we humans will get our act together, progress, and create a truly intelligent species that will join the teams creating these new universes...

...but probably not. We humans will live a short time and then become extinct like most other species of life on this earth. Best outcome we are happy Bonobos who created a form of life that is actually intelligent. We will be respected by our intellectual descendants. Worst outcome we are gone and forgotten forever, known only as yet another suicidal species that trashed their home planet and died.

July 14, 2013

Hot piss on the gun culture and their guns.

Asparagus piss.

Piss on Zimmerman.

NRA goons and all you other cowardly, fearful weenies: YOU OWN THIS.

Thanks for starting this thread DainBramaged.

My anger is incandescent.

July 8, 2013

There are three solutions to this: Meaningful Work, War, or Revolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

Meaningful work and peaceful revolution are the only acceptable solutions.

These lost kids in the USA, Europe, Japan and elsewhere are a standing army that will eventually be rallied as a force for good, or a force for evil.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done to make this world a better place.

We can do that work, or we can rot away in corruption.

June 22, 2013

Pay attention, activists...

... it's not simply the police, it's giant corporations too and in many cases they are one and the same.

That doesn't mean you should allow your activist group to lose focus in a fog of suspicion, just be careful.

Every time I get involved in edgy stuff I have experiences that are not quite right. Part of it is me, my "real world" self is somewhere on the autistic spectrum and a bit paranoid, but I've often been surprised when dynamic members of an activist group get absorbed into the system they were fighting. I don't think it's "selling out" as is often claimed, or people lying to themselves caught up in the romance of their activism. I think many were always on the other side but profiting somehow from their participation in the activist group.

My first experiences were with peace groups, environmental groups, and anti-nuclear groups. It is a little unsettling to see some of the same people I knew back then working for defense contractors, fossil fuel companies, so-called "mainstream media," real estate developers, and yes, in a few cases, law enforcement.

Sure. people "grow up" and join the "real world," but I think that concept is in itself propaganda fed to us by the oligarchs and plutocrats controlling this society. Our society is a very sophisticated kind of feudalism and this becomes more and more apparent as we run up against the limits of the earth's natural environment and our own human nature.

The yokes we serfs wear did not chafe so badly when fossil fuels were cheap and nature absorbed our environmental assaults without pushing back. But now nature is pushing back and we are about to suffer the same consequences any innovative species that experiences exponential growth does. We might avoid the worst of the storm by voluntarily limiting our growth, by voluntarily limiting our use of natural resources, but we won't. Nature is going to smack us down the old fashioned way and humans will accelerate this process of population collapse by tribalistic wars and oppression.

That's what all this stuff is about; the NSA stuff, the infiltration of activist groups, the absurd levels of "defense" spending. The people in control now want to be in control when the dust of the collapse settles. They won't be, of course, because they have no fundamental understanding of the problem, they think they "know" people, they are masters at manipulating people, but they don't understand the natural environment, they don't understand that we all live and die by the same rules of life that are as old as life itself.

June 16, 2013

The patent and copyright system is broken.

There are so many bogus patents and copyrights, and so many well-financed trolls, that the progress of arts and sciences in the USA is significantly impeded.

Cleaning up the mess will not be easy.

I've no objection to the concept of patents or copyrights themselves, I do not begrudge an author like J.K. Rowling a single penny of her wealth, but for every author or innovator like her making the world a brighter place there are dozens of intellectual property trolls trying to drag us back into the darkness.

June 9, 2013

My own speculation would be that there are possible pasts, just as there are possible futures.

The past is not set in stone, neither is the future.

The photons are not so much "entangled" as they simply don't bother to have any state until they are held to one in the present. From our biologically evolved and prejudiced perspective, the "past" is set in stone and immutable, so it appears the photons are "entangled." What's actually happening is that in the present where this experiment exists, there is only one past that "explains" the results. But there is also a time-distance where the results of the experiment are lost and the photons are disentangled.

There is no solid past or solid future. A "present" perspective shapes it all.

The origins of our own biological perspective, the perspective that makes it so difficult for us to understand this universe, the perspective that makes subjects like quantum physics, time, or relativity seem so alien and perverse, are pretty clear. Each and every one of us have ancestors "all the way back" to the "beginning of life" who somehow managed to survive and reproduce. What are the "odds" of that, that you would be reading this looking at a picture that "demonstrates" "entanglement" ??? It is clearly a meaningless question.

It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less.

June 9, 2013

No, and same for time travel too. Sorry.

I don't think this universe is built that way.

Everything is speeding along at the "speed of light" and there is no way to go "faster" or "slower." Everyone reading this post is zipping along at the "speed of light," none of us are anything more than shifting, shimmering patterns in the light.

We still live in a universe of near-infinite possibilities however. I think intelligent beings of the "free will" variety are able to create any kind of community they wish, becoming essentially immortal (if that is even important to them), essentially creating their own neighborhood realities of increasing sophistication.

(Maybe some of those UFOs are the creation of intelligent dinosaurs who evolved here on earth. Distant relatives of a sort.)

That our species has any future as intelligent beings is still undetermined. The odds seem to be against us. We are still flying blind. A future where we are extinct or much less "intelligent" and similar to our ancestors of 4 million years past seems very likely.

May 27, 2013

I think it might be possible to bring this civilization in for a soft landing...

... but our current economic theory and practice has us in a graveyard spiral.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_spiral

We've probably got the instruments we need to successfully bring this airplane safely down on the river, but the cornucopian and anthropocentric faithful are paying no attention to the ecologists. They are flying by the seat of their pants and mocking those who have seen these curves before.

The concept that humans are nothing more than an innovative eukaryotic life form just like all the other eukaryotic life forms who have profoundly disrupted existing environments throughout earth's history is anathema to them. Mankind is the center of their universe. Unseen godly powers created this garden for us to exploit and it's inconceivable that we would be "allowed" to die like ordinary animals in the ordinary fashion, exponential growth followed by collapse.

At the last second, seeing the ground or ocean expanding rapidly in front of the windshield, they do not accept reality and will simply die for their faith.

It's a morbidly fascinating thing to watch... who needs horror films when we've got this reality?

May 21, 2013

It's funny how people will eat fish contaminated with mercury...

... but a little bit of tritium freaks them out.

Mercury has a half life of just about forever, and it comes from coal fired power plants, mine waste drainage, and other industrial sources. Look at the warning labels of certain fish species in the supermarket. That's a problem far worse than any tritium dumped at Fukushima. And frankly, I think commercial fishing ought to be outlawed, just as commercial hunting was outlawed in the USA.

The world could suffer a Fukushima sort of accident every year, and it still wouldn't be as hideous as the environmental damage done by the ordinary operations of coal fired plants.

Do I think we should "replace" coal with nuclear? No. I think we should shut down 90% of the industrial economy, sit back, and watch the flowers grow.

No cars, no wars, no airlines, and plenty of time to read a book, grow a garden, chat with neighbors, go to school, or take a hike. Like to travel? Walk, bicycle, take a slow train or sailboat to anywhere at all. No hurry.

Things we must do as humans are few. Feed everyone, shelter everyone in safe environments, teach our children, limit our population, and provide appropriate health care. Everything beyond that is optional and ought to be avoided if it is harmful to other people or the earth's environment.

We could have a twenty hour work week, long vacations and retirements, universal health care, housing and education for all, but instead we turn our lives into a meaningless race to nowhere, destroying ourselves and our world.

May 8, 2013

I didn't say the pledge when I was in school, adding to my well earned reputation as a freak.

My mom was Jehovah's Witness until they booted her out of their church. And then we were Quakers. The Quakers were the only religion that accepted my mom's particular brand of talking-dirctly-to-God-and-He-answers crazy. Catholics and JWs not so much. Short-circuiting the hierarchy by asking God directly and hearing the answer is not allowed in many religions. The Quakers are okay with that. Say what you will, they nod their heads respectfully and move on.

When I was teaching in public school not many teachers were leading the pledge in homeroom so the principal decided to do it over the intercom with a few volunteer students (set up by patriotic parents) to lead. Great honor to speak into the microphone.

In my classroom it was a moment of respect. About a third of the students participated, the others were quiet. Probably a third of my classes had parents who were not US citizens, a third were afraid I'd call their parents if they disrupted my class, and the rest were patriots like their own parents, terrified I might call home if they disrupted the ceremony. Your kid disrupted the pledge. Horrors!

It was in my contract that I should lead the pledge but nobody ever said anything about participating myself. The "under God" part still irks me. According to my upbringing a guy could go to hell for that.