It had to happen at some point… My sister and her loud, obnoxious friend were watching “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” one night. My friend’s sister saw a unicorn and remarked on how “cool” it was, and proceeded to ask a stupid question. To her defense, she preceded the question with the admission that it was a stupid question. She asked if unicorns were real, bear in mind this woman is a grown adult, and a college graduate. To my surprise and dismay, I was the only one who laughed, apparently she was serious, and no one slapped her for me. And then my sister, the erudite intellectual that she is, shrugged and said “well, they are in the Bible”. I stopped laughing at that point. My sister is also a non-pork eating Muslim convert who used to be a non-beef eating Krishna before she became a born-again Christian after leaving the Catholic faith. At one point I think she was entertaining becoming a Mormon, at least she had a book of Mormon on her and was hanging out with their ‘elders’ an awful lot. Basically, she hasn’t met a religion she didn’t like. She is also an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist with a constantly coughing daughter and all-around airhead, but enough of that (Did I mention that she works in a school, as a teacher’s assistant? Shudder). I had to pipe in at that point and assure them both that unicorns were not real and never were. She retorted that I didn’t know that. I said it was very unlikely, and if it was, where was the evidence? She remarked that they could all be dead, like the Dodo bird. I pointed out that we have good evidence that the Dodo bird existed, we have none for the unicorn. Again, she said, they’re in the Bible. At that point I should have said “So what? There’s a lot of silly stuff in the Bible.” It has a talking Donkey in Numbers for crying out loud. But even assuming that the Bible was not meant to be taken literally(it wasn’t), Kosher laws are equally silly because bats are not birds (Leviticus) and their laws are barbaric by modern standards because it says if you want to make a slave yours for life to put their head against a door and drive an awl through their ear (Exodus). Anyway, she kind of dared me to look for myself, and I’m not afraid of a debate so I did. With Google as my friend I quickly found some of the supposed entries and took it upon myself to look them up. In certain translations of the Bible it is rendered as Unicorn, but even in all the cases where it’s mentioned it is never described in good detail. Usually it is mentioned in the context of real animals, often beasts of labor like Oxen and other livestock. When I pointed out that in the NIV the unicorn is rendered as things like “wild Ox” she just countered that “the white man changed the translation”. I think she was trying to be funny but I wasn’t laughing. A little history lesson might help… In the ancient near east, perhaps a few centuries (maybe even millennia) before the Hebrews of Israel became a major power in the middle east there were a people called the Assyrians. They were like the Romans of the ancient near east; they laid siege to cities, they had an empire, and they admired strength. Some of the earliest depictions and descriptions of what might be called a unicorn were found carved on Emperor Ashurnasirpal II’s palace and Esarhaddon’s stone prism. The animal was called by them a Rimu and thought to be an Aurox (a now extinct species of bull with long, symmetrical horns, often appearing as a single horn in profile. The Rimu was the perfect symbol of unbridled strength, and became a sort of mascot for Assyrian nobles. Enter the Hebrews who, like the Assyrians, spoke a Semitic language. The Hebrews, like the Assyrians, spent time living in the near east both before and after the Babylonian exile and no doubt either came contact with either Assyrian architecture or Rimus or both. The Hebrews, like the Assyrians, respected the strength of the Rimu (whatever it was), and used it as a symbol for unbridled power. Amazingly the authors had a word linguistically related to the Rimu and an animal that sounds similar, the ‘re’em’. No English translations will say Re’em, because it’s a foreign word, in an archaic form of a foreign language, and no one honestly knows what the hell it was. Similar words, found in other languages of people living in the same region (like the Akkadians, also a Semitic people) are often translated as “wild oxen”. When books like Numbers or Psalms were translated first from Aramaic, the gentiles (the Greeks in the case of the Septuagint, one of the first canonical biblical texts) encountered words like Re’em, they had to find something analogous that would not completely throw off the readers. It just happens that at the time Hellenic people had an animal like a unicorn in mind, which was also, like the Aurox, famed for strength and defiance. Strabo (63/64 BC – ca. AD 24), a Greek historian, mentions "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits in length." The animal Strabo was describing was no doubt a Rhinoceros, a creature that most Europeans would have marveled at, because they only live in Asia and Africa. To say that such an animal was a unicorn is taking a mythical creature and bending an historical narrative to give it merit. It presupposes that unicorns were real and looks for something to substantiate it. It is intellectually dishonest because it has a bias for the conclusions regardless of the facts. There is no evidence that unicorns were ever real, on the other hand all evidence suggests that the myth of the unicorn began as ignorant people misunderstood descriptions of real animals. It’s actually much worse than all this though, and my sister’s assertion that unicorns are in the Bible is laughable for more reasons than the ones I gave. The reason why arguments from the Bible are notoriously weak is much more than just because the Bible is notoriously wrong about a lot of things. It is more than the fact that it is filled with a good deal of unsupported episodes indistinguishable from fairy tales. It is a bad place to find evidence, but any argument from the Bible is a circular one. I have a book, it says that I am the king of the universe. How do I know it’s right? Because---it says so. That’s what the Bible does. When you look at it that way you realize that a single book is insufficient evidence. You may say that it’s old, that it was written by enlightened scholars, or by god himself. I will counter that just because something is old does not make it true, that a sole testimony is not enough, and that to use the Bible for proof of the Bible is circular. More evidence is needed. It is seriously frustrating to have to use so much reason and analysis to refute something as ridiculous and concluding that a mythical creature was real if a fiction book claims it. I should not have to waste up my time looking up something so silly and turning it into a research project. We should simply know that we live in the real world, a world with material truth and evidence. We should recognize and respect that. Until then, people like me have to put people like my sister in her place by actually using our brains and not buying into a past generation's fancy. I refuse to live in a world where ignorance abounds, it will be a world filled with willing idiots unless we make an effort to correct it.
It would be bad enough if the gripes I had with the show were just limited to this show, but the same techniques and tendencies I’ve noticed are being used on shows like Caprica and Stargate: Universe. I know I’m going to take flak from the resident SF fan community here, so I’ll put on my flak jacket in advance now. I stand by my statements and opinions though. I never liked the new Battlestar and never can, I tried and failed to get through an episode let alone a season. Let’s see if I can make some sense here… 1)Spastic zoom-ins, shaky cameras, and poor lighting - I don’t know if the directors are doing it for dramatic effect or just to be annoying, but it annoys the heck out of me. I want the camera people to invest in a tripod, and the epic zoom-ins limited to a hundred per episode. While they’re at it, invest in lights and pay for better looking actors. I’m not the most artificial person in the world, but seriously, there must be better looking people in the future piloting starships. 2)Doom and gloom, fatalistic melancholy, wrist slitting imminent - It turns out it’s very easy to tell when the cast and crew are a bunch of sad puppies. It’s not even the look on their face or the stuff they talk about, it’s the music. There is none, except for maybe a few militaristic trumpeting chords during their idea of an action scene or some archetypal sad notes for an apparently sad scene, it is a silent show. It does not communicate with my soul, and certainly does not engage my mind. It doesn’t surprise me that the characters never smile, crack jokes, dance, sing, or show any emotion other than anger, anxiety, and more anger. These people need to hear some music, either that or shove these bastards out of an airlock and put them out of their miseries. 3)This is intense drama, intense drama here! - The show tries way to hard to be a hard core drama. It had tense characters in crowded ships giving each other sideways glances and talking behind each others’ backs. It’s just like my grandma’s soaps but without the good looking women and sex. As it turns out, even with all the sound and fury, very little is actually happening on the show. There is a lot of bark, but little bite. Some shows have mastered the art of drama, they have not, I don’t care about their characters at all and wouldn’t mind seeing them all blown up. If they’re all that represents the remains of the human race we have obviously reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac. 4)Yawn - The show is advertised as an action-packed, space battle filled saga. The show just drags on forever without any action, and when it does, the scenes are depicted poorly and are short or just lame. A show doesn’t need to have action to be good, but a show like Battlestar Galactica, which is meant to be an epic space opera, needs more pew pew and less yap yap. 5)Is this a reboot, a continuation, or what the frak? - I’m all about continuing or resurrecting a series that has been forgotten, but I generally don’t like reboots. As far as I can tell the new Battlestar has diverged considerably from the canon of the original. Because I was never a huge fan of the original it’s a minor issue for me, but it’s an insult to SF fans to just revamp an old series, put a pretty bow on the top, and poop it out for the masses to lap up. The way they advertise the show it’s like “here, here, you love this show, you love this show, it gets great reviews!” I don’t give a frak, and the word frak, by the way, is also lame. 6)Plot? Who needs a plot? - As far as I can tell, each episode is a tightly wrapped little ball of random events, random quotes, and intense close ups on ugly actors and actresses. There should be something intrinsic to each episode, something to tie them together, something central and underpinning. This is why I can’t watch shows like Battlestar and Lost. Their writing plain sucks. From what I hear their executive producer Ron Moore is against the idea of plots and instead cares about characters. I care about characters too, just not his… I think that six reasons are sufficient, although if I really think hard about it I’m sure I can come up with more reasons why I can’t stand the show. Something very afoul is afoot, and I can only hope and pray that the producers etc. stinking up classic SF shows cease lest they make all speculative prime time programs as disappointing. Let the hate mail come.
Part 1 First encounters with aliens is a common motif in Science Fiction, and yet they always leave me feeling bitter. I often ask myself "why did they do that, why not this and that?" "They just met an advanced alien civilization, of all the things they could have and should have done, why that?" Often examined in these stories are the psychological impacts, or the political concerns, or the military anxieties. Often overlooked is the immense opportunity. Any civilization capable of bridging the stars will be significantly more advaced than ours, make no mistake of that. Imagine all the ideas that would pour out of their brains if we cracked them open like a golden egg. I would ask them questions until I turned blue in the face and my tongue fell out, I would, otherwise I would regret not having done so for the rest of my Earthbound life. In "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan, we examine pseudosciences and conspiracies with the same kind of skeptical lens. We look at UFO claims. Doctor Sagan was a well known and vocal skeptic, so he never received a shortage of mail from UFO "experts" trying to convince him and set him straight, "ask me anything" they would say. And so, clever Dr. Sagan would try to think of questions that any sophisticated civilization (a civilization, say, capable of bridging the stars) may find as simple as a word puzzle. Questions such as Fermat's Last Theorem, or a cure for all known Earthly diseases, or a renewable source of energy. Of course, no one on Earth can asnwer those questions, so Dr. Sagan never got an answer. If you asked them something esoteric or generic, like "is there life after death" they would not be hesitant in reassuring us that there is. One of the underpinning themes of the book is that there is never a shortage of snake oil salemen selling us fabrications that makes us feel happy, such as our dead loved ones still being with us. We readily buy into the lies because we secretly want to be placated, but just because something makes us feel good does not make it true. Dr. Sagan's thought experiment was just a bit of playful juxtaposition, executed with a charm and wit typical of all of his musings. But let us, for now, conduct a different thought experiment. In a footnote Dr. Sagan remarks that "It's a stimulating excercise to think of questions to which no human today knows the answers, but where a correct answer would immediately be recognized as such." I'm inclined to agree. Furthermore, it serves a psychological need. A favorite pastime of children is asking questions, and they are joyous when receiving an answer. There is an immediate gratification when being answered, but that is a dangerous habit. Sometimes, absurdities and dogmas are often heralded as truth, a conspiracy theory is favored over no theory. That is not progress, selling untruth as truth is a disaster waiting to happen. The process of asking the question itself may however satisfy some small intellectual need, and to the extent that we are inquisitive primates, there is no harm in generating playful thinking as long as we do not act irrationally on it. Therefore, as the title posits, if we were to have the opportunity or privelege to ask an alien civilization no more or less than 10 questions, what could or should we ask them? This is not a new game, this is a very old game. It has the same familiarity as games like "what would you wish for if you had a genie or a fairy in front of you?". It is a game that will end with about the same results. Many magazines and periodicals have columns with all kinds of experts; relationship advice, sexual suggestions, astrology, business. People are curious, they have questions to ask and lives to base their answers on. However, this is a game that is not merely limited to the fantastic. There very well might be an alien civilization somewhere in any one of the hundred billion suns of our galaxy, or in one of any of the many other countless galaxies. We may, perhaps, one day, find them, or become engaged in dialougues of some type with them. When the time comes we may be able to ask our silly questions, and based on the answers we receive, we may take the next step beyond a race of primates clinging to our rock on the edge of a vast nowhere. Any answers to these questions(if there are any), would be a gift to our race, and change our planet forever.
It is rather embarassing to live in the only country of the industrialized world, the richest nation in terms of gross national produce, without free health care. One of the biggest obstacles in organizing some kind of government run health care system, let's be honest here, has always been the conservative right. Ironically many government run institutions like the military, NASA, and the IRS, despite their shortcomings, still manage to accomplish far reaching and complicated goals. I can understand the fear of big government, and the annoyance with beurocracy, but not everything run by the government has to be evil and corrupt. Rather, it's the very same corrupt, inept, incompetent, insanely rich, reactionary old conservative farts in Congress who are too greedy to pay their lion's share of taxes. The commercial health care system has been cleaning house, health premiums have gone sky high over the years and CEOs have gotten so filthy rich from the enterprise that they are able to lobby congress and buy senators. And that is why this health care bill will fail. Some of the anti-health care guys don't know what Obama was trying to extend to us. Some don't even know what the difference is between Maoism/Socialism/Communism/Marxism. They actually think that all the terms are mutual and synonymous. What Obama wanted to give us was exactly what the right wing is always complaining about. They say that they love capitalism and a free market. Obama was gonna give them competition, a public alternative to the ridiculous, pathetic excuse that we have for health care now. The Republican party decided to kill the bill before it even took off, no matter what they would vote NO as a matter of stubborn hard-headed die hard party alliances, even though Obama was reaching out his hand to them. They made all kinds of back alley deals with the Democrats, paid off Obama, and got him to change the bill, so that now it resembles nothing of the original bill. This may be a step in the right direction, but it's a stutter step and it will cost us dearly. Too little, too late. The democratic party is being too weak, Obama went way too soft. The only good thing about this is that less people will be paying to live out of the pocket, but there will still be unhealthy Americans. Eat healthy, excercise, and still die a few years before a Canadian or an Englishman or a Frenchman. Thank your state senators for that too. ...end of rant
... et idem indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus... Horace I I spent less than half of my life as a Roman Catholic, and while I look back on those years, I can only do so from an admittedly biased point of view. The whole experience was not terribly unpleasant, I rather miss some of the artwork and the sense of community. Some of the priests were very well educated, and charming, and friendly; I even still remember (and miss) some of the hymns. While I regret that I cannot relive those years, I am not so much sure that I would like to now, with the experiences that I have today I cannot go back and re-convert as it were, it is too late. There is perhaps at least some small compensation in the fact that by my formally abandoning religion it was one of the most singularly liberating and enjoyable experiences of my life, and while I was once a hypocritical follower of a system I fundamentally did not believe in I am now no longer under such...persuasions. Most of my education was spent attending private Catholic schools (grades second to twelve), I was to later find out that the main reason behind the decision to send me to parochial school was not for reasons of religious observation but because they were thought to be superior to the public schools in the area in which we were residing (in that regard I agree wholeheartedly and feel very privileged for the opportunity). By that time of course I was far from devout, and just about everyone around me seemed to regard all of religiosity with the same air of suspicion, or at least a dull and almost stoic lack of enthusiasm (which was by High School of course, teenagers are rebellious by nature). That realization was accompanied, in my adolescence, by a number of epiphanies; some small and some significantly large. These realizations shattered my faith or as I prefer to think of it, my nearly lifelong pedagogical indoctrination) and ultimately lead to my abandonment of adherence not only to Roman Catholicism, but any organized religion and indeed any notion of any god. The epiphanies and resulting deductions lead me to assume skeptical standpoints of most matters, including the occult, pseudosciences, and UFO-ology among other things. As some would say, I can be open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brain should fall out of my head. In that sense I am no more biased against religion and God than I am to the Sasquatch, the Yeti, and the Abominable snowman, although I can agree that those are two arguments of a slightly different nature, in the case of Bigfoot most claimants at least display hoaky evidence, most people of faith resign their beliefs to faith and not evidence. I regard them all as somewhat charming, often entertaining, but approach them all with what I believe to be a very well warranted sense of cautious skepticism. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. With that lengthy background and introduction behind me I can address the topic mentioned in the title. As you can imagine; when it comes up, or it is determined, or when I freely admit that I am an atheist a number of things might occur. In a group it may acquire a queer look or two, or an approving nod or grunt, but far too often I'm afraid, there is also a kind of gasp and physical withdrawal, usually accompanied with a frown or a shake of the head, as if I had just admitted to being the son of Satan himself. I can attribute this apprehension primarily to misinformation (sometimes deliberately circulated, such sophistry in my opinion qualifies as defamatory hate speech, in this case a discriminatory targetting of atheists by theists) of the atheist position or misconceptions of what being an atheist means. As a definition, it can vary from person to person and dictionary to dictionary, however among the more progressive of descriptions I agree wholeheartedly with and now use for myself: "someone who lacks a belief in a god or gods". Rather than attempting to describe atheism as a belief or a philosophy I belief that it is prudent and intellectually honest to instead treat it as an absence of a very particular kind of belief. As far as viewpoints go it is hardly a controversial issue, although some people treat it as such. In the long history of debatable topics and philosophies I can certainly think of things much more divisive and controversial. There is, I suspect, a very long list of grievances and offenses that most people would find highly objectionable to say the least, and to me atheism does not and should not belong among them. For one, no atheist has ever advocated setting themselves on fire for an atheist based anti-war demonstration, nor do we promote corporal mortification to simulate the pain felt by Isaac Newton when an apple fell on his head. We generally do not advocate the mutilation of an infant's genitalia, or the trial, torture, and murder of unbelievers in the laws of gravity. However, I digress. Much of the misconceptions arrive from the erroneous perception that atheists are godless sinning heathens, hedonists, lustful malcontents intent on perverting societies and overthrowing religions. While there are, to be sure, some atheists who are very much against religion, outspoken in that respect, and opposed to all organized religions (I was once among them), that is not a valid representation of all atheists. In the same sense that not all religious people are zealots and extremists, the average atheist is probably not only non-militant in their lack of belief but reserved for fear of persecution (most Americans when polled freely admit that they would not vote for a presidential candidate who happened to be an atheist - for a secular nation where church and state is separated by law that is a stunning revelation). Interestingly, atheists are the fastest growing minority in the United States, ahead of Jews and homosexuals, and at around 10%, close to African-Americans. Far from a fringe group we total more people than the populations of dozens of European countries, and in the case of the smallest among them, more than their total populations combined. Whenever my dirty secret is revealed, usually in groups of three or more where I have taken the position of defending the atheist position ( I half-jokingly say with my back against the wall) the others often either because of the peer pressure of the cultural norm or curiosity probe my intents and rationale, a number of questions come up. They all dig down at the matter of why I do not belief in a god, but they often can and do take different approaches. As a method of critically analyzing a topic that is an area of debate as old as civilization itself, and one of the gravest of imports to many people of all proclivities, I assume the apologetic standpoint and use Socratic questioning to soften up the blows of the questions. I prefer, whenever possible, to address the questions one by one because there are actually many clarifications that need to be made and many misconceptions to address along the way. The many layered onion of theist conceits (not used as a pejorative in this context I assure you, conceit is simply a word to denote a hardened position in this usage) go to the heart of modern culture. Among the most persistent of these misconceptions is the idea that without a God there can be no morality and no reason to do good. I always find that as ironic because some of the greatest moral and ethical teachers, champions of the very idea of human goodness itself, made their cases for secular reasons and in the absence of a requirement for a belief in a god (but we shall cross that bridge when we come to it).
...because they defame true military members, insult the intelligence of anyone who knows about it, and make us all look stupid. From the point of view of a vet, someone who has been in the military, its a little upsetting. I have tough skin so it doesnt bother me too much, but military cliches are like sterotypoes and can be very damaging. Its the reason why the defamation league is so against negative type casting of minorities in movies where the black or hispanic guy is often a mugger or rapist. Even positive stereotypes can be damaging ('all Asians are good at math' sets the civil rights movement back fifty years because it reduces all individual Asians down to 'that guy who is good at math'. Its the old stereotypes that takes individuals and lumps thme all together as a group that is dmaging. Not all Asians are the same, and its the same way in the military. It would not bother me so much if negative sterotypes would not hinder me from getting hired from a potential employer who thinks he knows everything about former Marines because of what he saw on TV, but some people out there actually ARE that ignorant. Because of movies like Full Metal Jacket and A Few Good Men, some people think that all Marines are squared away jarhead robots who get a hard on from killing and blood. Maybe its good that some people (like out enemies) are convinced that we will eat their babies (yes, some people overseas actually think that we eat their children, its stupid but true), then maybe a potential enemy may become less likely to attack us or our allies in the future. Unfortunatey, in the meantime, we get singled out by the enemy and our own people alike. (A Marine barracks was blown up in Lebanon and there was a night club in North Carolina that denied Marine visitors because they believed us to be too rowdy. Let me dispel some myths. 1)Not all Marines are infantry. Despite horrible movies like John Cena's 'Marine' we are not all juiced hyper-steroid supermen who are bullet/fire-proof commandos. There are over three hundred professions in the Corps, ranging from admin clerk to avionics technician(which is what I was). There are only six or maybe seven warfighting MOS's, and thats a very significant ratio. Yes, ALL Marines are riflemen, and yes, we are all heavily instilled with the Corp's old philosophy of killing America's enemies. However, just keep in mind, that we don't all spend every day of the week drinking the blood of brown babies. Even most infantry guys spend most of their time drilling, in classes, in the field training, or out in the track physical training, or cleaning rifles, etc. 2)Not all Marines are crazy. We are not brainwashed zombies, we are not even all homogenized government issued retards, we are individulas with families and friends, and some of us have remarkable reasoning powers and opinions. We may not always get the freedom to voice our opinions, but we still have brains and hearts. 3)We hae not all been overseas, had sex with Phillipine prostitues, and covered with STD sores. Seriously, some of us (unfortunately) have never even been overseas, as much as they might have wanted to (sigh). Some of us have only banged prostitutes on one continent, if any, and are completely free of STD sores(dang). 4)We have not all been in the field for three tours, lost a friend named Charlie, suffering from PTSD, and dress up in utilities on the weekend to impress chicks. Again, even if some do, not all, a stereotype is a sterotype is a sterotype. 5)We do not see red when we get angry and start murdering people senslessly, as much as I might want to, I love you civilians, as much as they completely dont understand what being a Marine even means, I dont. If you want to know what its like, enlist or get a commission. If not, stop pretending that you know everything about us, cos you DONT. Stop spreading lies, try to keep an open mind. Im not asking you to kiss our ass, if you hate us, fine, we will still defend you when the times comes for it, just dont deny us any freedoms or rights (like being able to go into a bar unharassed) just because of what we do. Please. And that is the end of my rant
This was an actual question posted on 'Yahoo Answers' "True or False: According to Frederic Jameson, postmodern intellectuals are? far more successful at discovering truths about society and social life than were intellectuals of earlier modern times because the new postmodern intellectuals have more advanced research tools to work with." If false, why? (an answer came, was voted upon, and decided upon. Deemed most approriate as an answer, I present...) "true but society / social life have grown more complex hence more things to discover. go to a primitive society - what is there to discover? nothing much - eat sleep, look for food, kill animal eat and sleep. our modern society is too complex hence a bounty for intellectuals" I had to create an account just so that I could make a rebuttal, I waved my BS flag and gave my answer... "technology wont help if the individual doesnt use it for the right reason (ie, internet animal porn) We have, in the modern age, many 'false intellectuals' and people who believe in anything they see on youtube, without ability or will to research and btw, we learn a great deal from 'PRIMITIVES'" I wasn't as eloquent as I wanted to be because there was a word and character limit, but I stand by my answer. Firstly, what good does a book do someone who is illiterate? What good is a million books or the Library of Alexandria to someone who can't read? I agree, it's not fair to call someone who's intellectually dead illiterate, and the internet is not quite the Library of Alexandria(but it's close). The problem is that an intellectual is not spontaneously created despite how much data is thrown at it. You wouldn't believe how many google a picture of the world's tallest woman and then point at a photo-shopped picture of a tall blonde woman. When I tell them that the picture is a fake, and tell them that the site that provides the image EXPLAINS that, they still doubt me. That is ignorance. If it's on TV and the internet, or a muckrakers' newspaper column, then it must be true, right? If my daddy or priest or best friend for the summer said it, it must be gospel. It's not so bad when we make mistakes, humans do that, but being disingenuous and passing off falsehood for enlightenment is worse than bad, it should be a sin. As Joseph Cambell said, the best things are the things that can't be explained, because they are transcendental and go beyond reason. The second best are the things that are misinterpreted, because even they shoot close to the truth. The third best thing is the stuff we talk about! What I have experienced recently is a surge of anti-intellectual 'false intellectualism'. Not to be confused with the Karl Marx conception, which he saw as the acquisition of belongings being associated with improvement (but I see a great deal of that as well). You would not believe how many times someone will watch an internet documentary and then, after freaking out, because their brain is starting to work, try to educate me. They will paraphrase, invariably distorting elements (unless you have pentium chip memory, every time you tell a story it changes), and paying close attention to all the denotations while missing all of the important connotations. I'll give my new perfect example of how the internet can RUIN your mind while pretending to teach you. Its the free internet film called Zeitgeist. After watching the film I wanted to review the reactions to see how people felt, many became angry, for different reasons. Essentially the first part claims that the divinity of Christ was fabricated, that the Federal governemnt has ruined our economy, and that the 9/11 terrorist attack has a government cover-up tie. The first was anti-theist propaganda, the second is anti-government propagand, and the third is just paranoid conspiracy theorism! I admired their delivery and candor, but if half of the film wasn't made up then surely all of it helps create misconceptions by skewing the facts. Example, Jesus was born on December 25th, (three wise men followed a star). He was crucified, died, and was buried. He rose three days later, in accordance to scriptures. An explanation/rationale given in the film is that the three wise men are actually the three stars in the belt of Orion's constellation. The stars all point to Sirius, the star of the east and brightest star. Also, that they all point to the sun around the winter solstice time. At December 22 the sun's recession visibly seems to stop for three days and then rises again throughout the seasons. The sun is then seen to reside in the vicinity of the constellation known as the southern cross...and AND Jesus died on a cross. At that point I rolled my eyes because while some of the points were interesting and informed me of some things I didnt know they presented it in a way to suggest conspiracy and elicit outrage. I would like to point out to all the youtube commentators that the 'SOUTHERN' Cross is not supposed to be visible from the northern hemisphere. They also claimed that there are parallels between Jesus and a few pagan gods. There are, to be sure, but although Horus was called both a savior and the 'one on high' he was not born of a virgin. He was born of his mother and by his father posthumously, but by single parent is not the same as virgin birth. Also, Dionysus did turn water into wine and was called Lord, but did not exactly travel to teach students. From what I could tell he spent alot of time getting drunk and turning pirates into dolphins. But the staff of Zeitgeist would call those 'miracles'. This kind of fake expose is not uncommon, people have been questioning the divinty of Christ ever since the days of King Herod, and when intellectuals make stuff like this jive in such a way, as they did in the 18th century, it causes people like Napolean to say that when it comes to the question of Christ the 'jury is still out'. I didn't realize how dangerous false intellectualism was until I found people actually suggesting that it is more prevalent today that in any era. If it is, thats only due to a boom in our world population and not a boost in our genes, and CERTAINLY not due to computers. Even more offensive was someone trying to bash PRIMITIVE cultures and call them lazy and uninventive. It's not like doctors studying alternative medicines haven't disovered the nearly miraculous properties of herbs in the deepest jungles with the help of 'witch dodctors'. After all, what do they know, right? Right. As the great Budhha himself once said... "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense" Then again, as Shakespeare once pointed out "Even the devil can cite scripture for a purpose" Knowledge itself, is not wisdom either, information is just information. Knowledge itself (which is intellectual for me) is a gift as much as a tool, and gifts can be misused and lost. But don't take my word for it. According to classical antiquity, the wisest man who lived was King Solomon. Let's see what he had to say “A fool is wise in his eyes.” He also said that 'there is nothing new under the sun', meaning that he had already 'been there and done that' 700 years before Christ. He really was wise, there were saps back then and there still are today. and that is the end of my rant
If you are a writer, write. If you are a Sculptor, sculpt. If you are a juggler, juggle. I know, sometimes, it's hard to get started. Sometimes I stare at a blank piece of paper and sweat, or stare at a blank computer screa and bite my nails as I think of what to write next. It can be hard, but we have to stop making excuses and get off our butts, wothout a product, you have nothing to sell. No more writer's block, no more taking breaks. Bradbury said you can go through a million manuscripts before you find your definitive style. Start hooking and jabbing, start writing, now! Quality over quantity, yes, but if you tell people that you're a writer, and when they ask for a sample you have nothing to produce, you may feel silly. I am NOT a prolific writer, I struggle too, that why I pick up magazines for writers with helpful advice and tips. In one of them, Locus (which is for SF&F writers and aimed for people in the biz) I found an article on how to avoid distractions in the age of distractions (like internet, cable, etc). Written by author 'Cory Doctorow'. Some of the best I ever had so far. I'll try to sum up... 1) Short, regular work schedule. Try to dedicate just twenty minutes a day to writing. That isn't asking for very much, on some days I spend hours. The trick is to do it every day, even weekends, there's the problem. When this guy gets a novel project he usually uses the time to get one or two pages done each day. I think that's a good modest goal and not asking too tooo much. I did the math, if I could get off my butt and do a page a day I would end up with several novels a year. For people like us, who probably cant keep up that kind of pace, maybe we should start at a few paragraphs a day. Oy! 2)When you get to your goal---stop! I know, its will be hard, I will be tempted to go on and on if I'm on a streak. However, he makes good points. Stop, even if you are in the middle of a sentence, that way when you pick it up the next day you have a little kick start and know where to pick it up. 3)No research. I know, me too. But again, he has an excellent point. I dont know how many nights I would stop in the middle of a story to do some research on my favorite gobbler of time and creative energy, Wikipedia, and ended up spending hours looking up pictures of giant squids and circus bears riding unicycles. Why? Easy distractions. Putting a few links and websites in my hands is like putting a mouse directly on TOP of the mouse trap. Whenever you get someplace where you need research data, like the length of the Brooklyn bridge, just type out ' TK '. Whenever you come across it when you proof read that's your way of knowing it needs data. Also, if somehow you miss it and come across it later in the future, or an editor, if they're not assholes, they will point it out for you. Its like secret journalistic lingo or something. The story comes first, then the details. Research is not writing and vice versa. 4)No ceremonies. Some peoples' advice on how to get past writing blocks is to set up a nice atmosphere, lighting candles, incense, mediatating, and other horse crap. No ceremonies, they distract from the writing itself and mentally make you dependent on a certain kind of setting in order to get work done. All you need is your twenty minutes a day and that's it. You should be able to get the work done with a crying baby in the same room. Its just one day, just twenty minutes, no need to rub the Budhha's belly or sitting crosslegged on a bush of four-leaf clovers or anything. No holy cow, no 'special' writing rooms, just you and the paper. Showdown. 5)Kill your word processor. Some word programs have so many features built into them that its impossible to get a sentence done because half the page is red or green, and a little talking dog icon on the side is talking to me. Silence them, the people who made those programs are not authors and dont know any more about writing a book than they probably do about fornicating. No spell check, word check, or anything check until you get your daily goal done, then play cut and paste with your finished product. Without your 'David' there is no sculpture to polish, Michaelangelo. 6)Eliminate pop-ups, screensavers, and notifications that may distract you. Yahoo messenger annoys the hell out of me, so does weatherbug, and AOL mail. That's why when I'm writing I usually have those closed anyway. It's just another disraction, another thing to tempt us to double click on an ad or do some stupid trivia quiz to prove to ourselves that we are not stupid. Aunt Margorine can wait for twenty minutes until you get your work done, I'm sure she'll understand if you cant IM her right back. The most important thing is to keep doing it when you start. It's hard to keep it up, but just remember that every piece won't be perfect right away, even after heavy editing. Don't get bogged down in the most minute detail, start with your framework and then add flesh. And that, my friends, was his advice to me, and my advice to you. I am merely the messenger. Some of it I have been doing, some of it I have yet to try or test out. It is hard to keep up with, but seemes like solid advice.
That sounds like an odd thing for me to say, doesn't it? After all, I read a great deal of it, and write quite a bit of it. However, I hate the term ‘sci-Fi‘. Why? There is a very primitive power in being able to name something. There is a great power in language, because (as the comedian George Carlin pointed out) even though thoughts transcend words, we think in language, so the quality of our thoughts is affected by our use of language. Why did African-Americans bristle at the term ‘Negro’, why do ‘midgets’ call themselves ‘Little people’? Why did Hispanics reject that term ‘Hispanic’ and invent ‘Latino’? Well the term ‘negro’ already had many negative connotations associated with it and makes people less human sounding and robs them of dignity. The term ‘midget’ has also become inherently offensive, and that it because the way that we collectively as non-negroes and non-midgets have abused the terms. The term Hispanic was invented by the Census bureau to account for the Spanish-speaking, Spanish surnamed, and nonwhite inhabitants of certain places of the country. Except that not all Hispanics speak Spanish, or have Spanish surnames, or are nonwhite. The term ’Hispanic’, just like the way that the Census Bureau saw them, was completely fabricated and Hispanics saw that. ‘Latin’ culture is a differentiation from the majority of the country, which has Anglo-Saxon culture, despite whatever language they speak, how they pronounce their names, or what their color is. The name ‘Science Fiction’ was made, and agreed upon, and welcomed, and greeted by legions of fans as well as writers. We owe much to Science Fiction, it truly deserves more respect than the way it’s being treated today. However, today Science Fiction is thought of as juvenile and illegitimate as an art form (despite contributions from such literary giants as Verne, Wells, Burroughs, and Bradbury. These are men with such fame all we have to do is say their last names and we know their work. All of have their seminal works in the Science Fiction isles). No respectable book store can leave them out, their work is in such demand that it has been translated in various languages, is circulated worldwide, and remains always constantly in print. Always associated with Fantasy, although the two genres can be described as escapist in nature, technically many romances or even westerns can be considered escapist as well. Having a silly name like ‘sci-fi’ contributes to the persecution against the art form and the reason why Spielberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ got nominated nine times for an academy award before it finally won one…for Cinematography! Usually the people who use the term ‘sci-fi’ are people who are not partial to the genre, or think it sounds cool, or cute, or will sell movie tickets, or magazines. It produces a gag reflex in people like me who prefer the term ‘Science Fiction’ because it sounds like a legitimate literary genre when it’s written like that. If they actually think that ‘sci-fi’ is serious sounding and respectable, they might as well write it in crayon with the ‘f’ backwards. Forrest J. Ackerman used the term "sci-fi" at UCLA in 1954.[12] As science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech "B-movies" and with low-quality pulp science fiction.[13][14][15] By the 1970s, critics within the field such as Terry Carr and Damon Knight were using "sci-fi" to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction,[16] and around 1978, Susan Wood and others introduced the pronunciation "skiffy". Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers".[17] David Langford's monthly fanzine Ansible includes a regular section "As Others See Us" which offers numerous examples of "sci-fi" being used in a pejorative sense by people outside the genre.[18] -Wikipedia Again, when people call my Science Fiction writing ‘sci-fi’ I cringe, but it’s not their fault, because somehow they actually think they are giving me a compliment when they are actually offending me. I blame the morons who popularized the term to sell magazines and books with lavishly drawn covers. It’s no wonder that so many pulp fiction companies of the past targeted juveniles with Science Fiction covers and that Science Fiction writers are paid per word. It is a great example of runaway, corrupting, Capitalistic greed. If you cannot bear or stand to write ‘Science Fiction’, because it is too long and hurts your hand, then please use the actual abbreviation, SF. It’s not unlike YA for Young Adult fiction which, ironically, with titles like ‘Twilight’ and ‘Harry Potter’ is enjoying a Renaissance because of adult readers while Science Fiction is truly in a ‘twilight’. Can we blame the silly term ‘Sci-fi’ for the decline in Science Fiction readership and success in the markets? Is that why the genre is dying, and the Science Fiction isles are being overrun by Star Wars merchandise and video game franchise fiction? It might have something to do with the surge of Fantasy writing, which is in a sort of muted golden age (apparently male readers have declined significantly while female readers have increased, and statistically women read Fantasy more than Science Fiction. I am not a misogynist and did not make that up, Orson Scott Card wrote it in an article about how Science Fiction is dying, so it must be true). With Science Fiction in its death throes, I shall soldier on, and I know that many fans of the genre, many of them writers as well as readers, shall join me. I am prepared for the post-apocalyptic age of Science Fiction, after all, the term ‘Post-Apocalyptic’ itself is a term probably coined and detailed in the pages of some Science Fiction anthology.
I can remember my childhood. Thankfully, most of it was rather pleasant. Looking back on it, when you take away all the time that was spent in school learning and playing with other children (which was also socially informative) , what is left over? Children do not have complex social lives, they are blessedly innocent. They do not work, because child labor is illegal in the United States and generally considered exploitative. They certainly do not have night lives, they should be in bed before ten and certainly at home by eight, with exceptions for weekends and special occassions. What do children do then? Besides entertaining themselves with television and other technologies (especially video games)? Why, they play, of course. They play with other kids, playing games made by other people or games that they invent, but they play. I remeber playing a game called Skeleton on the asphalt of New York City streets. All it required was a bottle cap, something to weigh it down a bit (usually wax or clay), and enough room to play with other kids (a schoolyard did quite nicely). The object of the game was to hit the other players' cap (called a top) three times for a conventional match, but in a battle royale there could be a dozen players all trying to knock the other caps out of established bounds. We were remarkably liberal and lawful, sometimes we had referees, just like in wrestling or boxing. There were all kinds of nitpicky rules that we would make up to play fair. 'Kissing' is when a cap barely touches another cap, asside from being hard to judge, its very annoying. The opposite of a kiss is a 'blastie', which is when you use excessive force in hitting another cap. A 'skipsy' is when a cap is hit at an angle and flies over another cap, and in the process nicking it ever so slightly (plastic tops are light and tend to glide if hit the wrong way, hence weighing them down). If a top lands upside down a player was normally allowed to right it, and sometimes between matches we were allowed to switch different caps. A bigger cap has a better chance of hitting a smaller one, but makes you a bigger target. I once brought a top from a pickle jar to a game, I happened to win, but I was asked not to use it again. It was retired. Sometimes tops were lost, one fell out of my pocket at the movies and I never saw it again, but they were cheap. All you had to do was get a top from a half gallon milk carton (the ideal size and aerodynamic shape) and you were set. Before there was Skeleton there were marble games, and after Skeleton there were pogs. After pogs came God knows, I was too grown up by then to understand. Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh card games. I am no longer a child, I am no longer a citizen of the younger generation. I am not a welcomed member, and dont particularly care. I have other things to worry about and better toys and grown up games. Yet I would never again get so much joy from so simple a game and the happiness it elicited from the other kids. I believe that imagination and innocence plays an impotant part. When I was a child I used to direct movies. That sounds like a shocking thing to say, but most kids probably did the same thing or something similar. I would get my toys, imagine them as actors, and set them up in various circumstances and settings. My imagination was so good that I didn't need G.I. Joes or man dolls, although I did have a number of those. I could pick up anything and anthropomorphize into a man-shaped actor. I had alot of metal cast Matchbox cars, a few 'Joes, a small army of Transformers, and alot of random miscellaneous toys that I used as props (each Ninja Turtle had an assortment of Ninja weapons). I loved Science Fiction ever since childhood, so the 'plot' of my movies went something like this... A small crew of badasses are on a spaceship , for some reason. They crashland on an alien planet (my bed) for some reason. They encounter an alien of some kind, and fight nobly, but lose the first battle and a few consecutive ones as they lose people one by one. They eventually discover the alien's weakness, through some smarty pants scientists' exposition usually, and have a final showdown where they kill the alien. Happy heroic ending. Its kind of funny that the Sci-Fi channel regularly hosts low budget feature films with similar plots and similar thoughtfullness. Its a slander against the good name of true Science Fiction. If your main attraction can be written by a juvenile it says alot about your quality of production. However, I digress. Its no wonder that as a kid I saw movies like 'Aliens', 'The Thing', and 'Predator' over and over gain. The movies no doubt had a heavy influence on my play, but I was attracted to them because I digged that kind of stuff. Again, how can someone gain so much entertainment and joy from using the same toys and playing out the same adventures over and over again? If at all? Imagination is a powerful tool, it serves not only as an impetus for me to create the stories that I was acting out but also provided me with a means of enjoying it. If you're not a kid you cant see what they see, and boy are you missing out. If only I had half the imagination now that I had then, the things I could imagine. Unfortunately, as adults we are told to stop asking the questions and stop thinking the thoughts. We are encouraged to adopt the simple and the muted and the everyday, and the imagination begins to atrophy. Once it goes away it doesn't come back; I know, I tried.
WARNING: Aimed more or less at Americans (from the USA, American is a broad general term that applies to everyone from farmers in Kansas to Gauchos in Argentina). If you are from another country this may merely amuse you as it may not apply or make much sense to you. My hands and feet are both balled in rage today as on many other days. Why? Why do I feel so much anger and antipathy towards my fellow countrymen and women? Frustration. It’s been festering for a long time, it’s been building up, I bottle it up because destructive emotions really serve no purpose; but the cork has its limits. My qualms are multi-faceted, but I’ve managed to organize some of the free floating hostility into a few paragraphs. This is partly comical as well as topical. I believe in what I say, I say what I mean, and most definitely mean all of it. It may anger some of you, offend, and annoy; but I cannot apologize for who I am or what I believe. If you don’t care much for my opinion it may not concern you much, and if you feel the same way I do I’m preaching to the choir. If all this comes as a shock then I hope my angst, when released like a Jinn from a bottle, strikes a chord of reason in someone else, because I feel there are lessons to be learned from the ‘habits’ of others. If you feel the absolute need to own a firearm, then for Christ’s sake, lock it up or keep the ammo separate or at least out of the reach of a child. In between the intentional violence committed with guns and the unintentional discharges that also kill, we make the global record for the greatest number of firearms-related injuries and deaths. I understand that it’s your constitutional right to own a Rhino-dropping rifle and I’m sure it makes you feel safe from the redcoats, but for Pete’s sake, keep the safety on until after the fourth of July fireworks. It doesn’t surprise me that the average Canadian owns more firearms statistically than the average American and that Canada has minimal gun-related crime. They aren’t inherently wiser or less evil than us, they are simply more responsible. When I was a kid, if I played with my toys recklessly they were taken away from me. I’m just saying. Turn off your stupid home entertainment metroplex when you go to sleep at night. Turn off your TV/computer/DVD player and unplug your dildos from the wall. Every year around summer time, when it’s hot as hell and mosquitoes rule the Earth the power shuts down and then we all bitch that it’s the government’s fault. I used to think it was a combination of poor infrastructure and a last straw (a poorly maintained power grid with chaffed wire bundles, and a rat chewing into a line). And that may happen, but apparently what we’re finding out more and more is that we’re simply consuming too much energy and can’t seem to understand the relation between finite and electricity. You laugh now, but not when you’re lighting candles and going through Google withdrawals. If you don’t believe in abortion, during any trimester, under any condition (incest, rape, etc), then do us all a favor and put on a freaking condom before you bump uglies. Planet Earth is already swarming with a plethora of your slivering brood, Noah’s Ark made it, we can put the baby factory back in neutral now. The same people who can’t fathom the dangers of overpopulation and the fact that the planet’s dimensions are finite are the same people with the super sperm who are rapidly reproducing and passing on the stupid gene. Pulling out does not always work. I don’t care if her insides are lined with silk, it’s not worth what I hear wailing in the seat next to me at the most exciting part of a movie in the theaters. Wash your hands, keep your filthy hands out of your mouth, and cover your disgusting mouth when you sneeze, you pig. The filthiest animal on the planet is not a pig, it is a human, that’s why pigs were kind enough to make us sick to teach us all a lesson. Eating ca-ca is bad, ca-ca is on the floor, the walls, and anything you can touch. Wash your hands before you eat, and before you serve food to me, please. While you’re at it trim your claws, brush your fangs, and scrub your hair if you refuse to get regular haircuts. Eat less, we are an obese nation. Don’t listen to the infomercials, there is no secret fat pill or wonder diet that can magically make you thin. Take the first step and put the cookie down. Try to eat one slice of a pie instead of the entire pie. And then stand up and walk, preferably somewhere outside and not back and forth from the fridge. Recycle. There are a finite amount of trees, you don’t need a receipt for every candy bar you buy, fat-ass. While you’re at it, stop throwing your trash on the ground you filthy litterbugs. Do more for your country and demand less. We invented the airplane, light bulb, open heart surgery, atom bomb, and the lunar lander. Imagine how much we would have got accomplished it Edison was always bitchin about how much the government sucked. Get off your couch you lazy sack and patent something before you start complaining. We got no steel industry left and our automobile industry is the joke of the world economy, but don’t blame the government for that. Blame the CEO’s with billion dollar paychecks who are driving their daddies’ companies into the dirt. America is number thirty something on the list for health care, we’re a nation where a patient may have to pay out of their pocket to get life-saving treatment at a hospital and we’re the richest nation on the planet. The Europeans are making us look stupid and backwards (like usual) because they have things like universal health care, free education, and nude beaches (no, just kidding. I threw in that last one to see if you were paying attention. We can never have nude beaches because we are a nation of puritanical, intellectually backwards children who blush at the mention of sex and point and giggle when we see a penis on a statue.). If you’re pissed because we are missing out on all the great things we could be enjoying like the most of the modern and civilized world then look in the mirror and blame yourself. For years we have allowed the elite, the one percent of the population with all the wealth and power, to lie to us, scare us, and convince us that the government is bad. Because of this we limit the powers of the government, call it evil, and prevent the kind of programs we need to provide affordable pills for the people who need them in order to live. Good job.
When I was a young boy (I can't remeber how old exactly, I was in grade school, perhaps the sixth or seventh grade) I had a class assignment that required Collaboration with several other students. I can remember one of my partners, Victor Sotomayor, but for the life of me I cant remember the other guy's name. Its not important. The project was an interesting one; we had to envison what a future city would look like (no particular date was set, just the 'future') and then create a small scale model with cardboard, glue, paper mache, and whatever else we could get our hands on. This is probably the kind of thing I wouldn't mind doing as an adult, it sounds so cool, and while I dont really think my imagination is any better now than when I was a kid, it has 'matured' a great deal. I wasted a good opportunity to put my soul into my project, but then I had two other partners to negotiate with. Our city turned out to be rather dull, it was powered by water (hydro-electric? Sure, the science behind it was never well explained, all we knew was that coal was too old-fashioned and in the future we would need something cleaner) and the cars used a fuel that made no pollution; childish fantasy, I know. Many of the other models were impressive, but after the first few they became rather repetitive. After all, we grew up in new York city, a very metropolitan city, we had a good idea of what a city should look like. Nine out of ten of the models had enormous skyscrapers, buildings miles high in the air. Nine out of ten had cars that flew. Nine out of ten had some exotic if poorly explained source of energy. In our naivity we assumed humanity would naturally stumble upon the perfect new energy source, (but not nuclear power, we were convinced that anything nuclear was scary and bad) even if we didn't know what it was yet. Some scientist would figure it out some day, not us, it wouldnt matter, when that day came we would give him or her a medal, plug our electric cars into the wall socket, and drone on as if nothing had happened. One of the models was a bit unusual, and because it was, I remembered it slightly stronger if not better than the others. It was an all-girl team, which is not important, nor is the name of the girl who spoke and presented her 'city'. She was a shy and soft-spoken girl, so its no wonder I cant remember her name, and the classes' reaction quickly lent itself to some confusion. Their 'city' was a plain covereed with hundreds of missles all pointed up into the air. Naturally, we laughed. Their city looked like some kind of futuristic missle complex in the deserts of Nevada. In between childish laughter and chiding we asked why, why the missiles. Our teacher regained control of the class and countered "Let her explain, and then maybe it will all make sense" She explained, but she was such a horribly bad speaker and such a bore and I, as a child, had such a horrible attention span. I gather the missiles were there to protect us from some nearby asteroid, or maybe it had some connection with the 'red' threat (I was born in 1980, back when there was still a USSR and the Soviets had nukes pointed at us from every angle). All I know is this, their city was NO city, and that was the whole point. If I had been given access to the knowledge I have now, and given unlimited time, and partners who would agree to my every whim, I would have made an amazing metropolis, a mix between Krypton and San Francisco/Starfleet headquarters in the Star Trek universe, complete with fusion reactor power planets, hover cars, and exotic starships. But I can't help but think of a future with a dark side, a side that was plagued by our faults and weaknesses as a race. I could envision worse than a city leveled to make room for a missle grid. What if our city project had turned out to be a box filled with sand---that's the future, a barren desert! Yesterday someone pointed out that the bee population is in decline, the rationale? Insecticides. We're pumping our chemicals and junk into the air, water, and land and killing the biggest of animals to the smallest. I dont know if I completely agree with it, but I agree with one thing, when the bees go, so do we. The bees pollenate the plants, the plants are eaten by animals, we eat the animals, and so on. If we kill the cycle, we kill ourselves. The orrator (owner of a pizza shop) went on to say that that's plain stupid and like shooting ourselves in the foot. After all, God gave us a gift by putting the fruits here for us to eat, the trees here to make air for us to breath, the fish in the water for us to eat, and so on. I cant help but disagree, strongly. Planet Earth was not put here for us to enjoy, it was here for billions of years and will never know if we were to promptly vanish one day. The first trees are older than us by many millions of years, and so are the first fish and the first plants. If their purpose was to serve us there is a problem with the system, because they existed before us and could easily be said to have had a purpose before we first learned to walk.(how many other animals eat fruit or fish?) The Earth does not revolve about the sun at an ideal distance for water and life to have developed. Its no coincidence that Venus and Mars once had oceans, nor is it mentioned nearly enough that the Earth was not always covered in water. (and I humbly suggest that in the distant future our oceans too, will dry up)At one time the planet was covered in a cloud of volcanic eruptions that would have killed any oxygen-breathing lifeform INSTANTLY. The universe did not conform to suit our needs, rather the Earth came first and life adapted to its environment. The kind of thinking that the Earth needs us or that it was made for us is the same kind of thinking that leads to deforestation, overpopulation, pollution, waste, etc. Humanity, in its infancy, is beginning to figure out some of the ways that the universe works, but the infant can easily choke on the very toy that it plays with. If we still cling to the grossly incorrect, chauvanistic, and egocentric idea that we are at the center of the universe we will not even be able to perceive or cope with our demise as a species when the inevitable day comes. Over 90% of all the things that ever lived on the Earth are extinct, what makes humans special? A soul? Are we smart enough to avoid extinction? We're not even smart enough to realize that we're speeding up the process. There Will Come Soft Rain There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone -Sarah Tisdale