Category: Woo-Woo

Bigfoot, Aliens, Farrah Fawcett, and the Guide to Real Inner Peace

“I have droppings of someone who saw bigfoot.” – Futurama

ufo1

I think this happened to me in the summer of 1982, but I don’t remember when, or where I was.  Pictured (green abductor):  Brett Kavanaugh. 

I was staring straight up at the ceiling in my bedroom, under the seven* heavy quilts that made the -40°F nights comfortable in my unheated** bedroom, every muscle tense.  This was what terror felt like.

I had seen him, or at least his glowing red eyes, on the small hill that was visible 1,175 feet from my bedroom window.  And I knew that he was headed toward me.  I knew that he had seen me.

I couldn’t see him headed toward me since I was too scared to look out the window, but I knew his inhuman, ground-devouring strides would be taking him to my window soon enough.  And then?  What would he do?

I gradually fell asleep, as the adrenaline drained from my nine-year-old bloodstream.  I remember wondering as I dozed off how exactly I knew that the hill was exactly 1,175 feet from my back window, and then I remembered.  Google® Maps™.

Okay, I didn’t know that it was 1,175 feet from my window until just now when I measured it on Google® Maps©.  But it was uncomfortably close.

What, though, was it?

It was bigfoot.  I had been reading a UFO magazine that day.  The UFO magazine had several helpful facts for me:

  1. Bigfoot was, in fact, not a creature from Earth at all.   Bigfoot was an alien.
  2. Bigfoot was a psychic alien.
  3. Bigfoot, the psychic alien, had glowing red eyes.
  4. Bigfoot was known to inhabit the hills near where I lived. Since I lived in the hills – the exact hills the little gray and white map in the pulp UFO magazine had shaded as “high bigfeet activity areas associated with alien psychic bigfeet that will probably kill, dismember, and eat wee John Wilder in his sleep, and if he’s lucky, in that order.”
  5. Okay, the graph didn’t say they would kill, dismember and eat people, but it did talk about increasing incidents of violence against people.

So, I was a little tired when I went off to school the next day.  Thankfully, I also concluded that the glowing red eyes might have been something else, like a reflection in the window.  Or maybe that was a memory that psychic bigfoot put into my nine-year-old brain?

Really, it had been quite a long time since I was allowed to be scared, specifically since the night when I knocked on my parents’ bedroom door at 2AM and Pop Wilder made it clear that my presence was no longer requested at 2AM waking him up because I was scared.  At that point, I became more afraid of what Pop Wilder would do to me versus anything a psychic bigfoot could do.  Besides, I was sure Pop Wilder was real.

Alien psychic bigfeet?  Not so sure that they existed.

UFOFarrah

Farrah kept me safe from the bigfeet.  And made me feel real funny when I was 13.

Honestly, after this one night of terror I didn’t give bigfoot a whole lot of thought.  My focus shifted to girls, where huge feet and lots of hair wasn’t exactly a selling point for me.

sexybigfoot

Words only a teenage male bigfoot would type into Google®.

So, I grew up.  Then one day, I heard the words again . . . Alien Psychic Bigfoot.

The Mrs. and I were travelling across country, and listening to a radio program as we drove through a cool high desert night.  A guest was on talk radio, patiently explaining that he was a bigfoot researcher, but more specifically, a bigfoot researcher that had the theory that bigfoot wasn’t a critter, it was, instead, a some sort of alien creation, just like in the UFO magazine from my youth.

But it gets better.

You’d think that the biggest enemy of bigfoot researchers would be skeptics?  No.

The biggest enemy of bigfoot researchers is . . . bigfoot researchers that have a different theory than them.

So, if you’re in the “bigfoot is just an animal that we haven’t found conclusive evidence for yet” camp then your biggest enemy is the “bigfoot is a psychic alien” guy.

And vice versa.

This makes me laugh, inside.  But it’s a truism of life.  When people believe in something, their biggest enemy isn’t someone who doesn’t believe, it’s someone who believes, but just a little bit differently than them, most often over something that doesn’t have any real bearings on the truth of their belief.

I was talking about a particular Christian denomination with a friend.

He asked, “Are they dunkers or splashers?”  Dunkers are those that baptize by immersing the baptized into water, while splashers use a Papal-Approved® Super-Soaker™ to baptize.

I replied, “I have no idea.”

“It’s important, you know.”

And that’s always amused me – the biggest fights are about the smallest things, often with the people that are closest to you in belief.

So I guess that’s the thing that I learned when alien psychic bigfoot held me in its hairy loving arms:  love one another – it’s the only way to get to a true inner and outer peace.  Except for the “bigfoot is just a critter we don’t have proof of” people – don’t love them.  They’re awful.***

To be clear, I do not claim to have seen a real bigfoot.  I also do not claim to have seen a UFO, except the band, UFO, and them only on YouTube®.

*Yes.  Seven is an excessive number of quilts.  It was also quite warm.

**The bedroom was unheated because I turned off the electric baseboard heaters, and, in an escalating war with Ma Wilder, I eventually flipped the breakers off.  Eventually she got the message.  I like/liked it cold.  I even had the windows cracked sometimes when it was below zero.  I was an awful child.

***Just kidding.  I don’t really care.  My current bet is they’re both wrong.

Civilization After an EMP: TEOTWAWKI (Which is not a Hawaiian word)

“Look, any longer out on that road and I’m one of them, you know?  A terminal crazy, only I got a bronze badge to say I’m one of the good guys.” – Mad Max

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Before Hurricane Ike:  Looks like lemon cookies, Weight Watchers® and vegetables will be there after the apocalypse.  Also?  The wine section was empty.  No booze left in the entire store. 

This is part II of a story that begins at the start of a catastrophic collapse – you can find the first part here (Civilization, The Iron Triangle, and You).  It begins at 4AM, at the start of a blizzard on the East Coast.  Thankfully, your protagonist isn’t on the East Coast – but he is 252 miles from home, and most of the important electrical devices that he’s used to having are now (and forever more) inoperable.  Back to the hotel room:

I was now wide awake.  Soon my hotel room would be getting cool – thankfully not cold, it was 40°F outside and not colder.  But one thing I knew – it was going to get strange, and soon.

I got dressed and started to pack.  I assessed my belongings, and the things in the room.

Computers, phones, digital watch?  Useless.  I put them on the desk.  That would be as good a place to put useless things.  It’s odd, because before I went to sleep, those items were vital for me in the information they contained and the way I used them for work.  Now they were nothing but dead weight.

Thankfully, I had packed for winter – winter coat, gloves, and boots.  I also had my workout clothes and gym shoes.  I decided to keep them – I tossed them in my backpack.  I kept some paper and a pen and pencil.  Why?  Not sure.  The novel I was reading?  I hated to leave it, halfway finished.  But it was dead weight.

I looked at the room – there were two bottles of complementary water – I could use those.  I left the room, with a single knapsack, half full.  I was headed to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart wasn’t exactly chaos – I had apparently gotten up fairly quickly – a few of the more enterprising employees had broken into the candles and matches and there were lights up and down the main aisles.  This was a 24-hour Wal-Mart, which meant that you could buy your Ol’ Roy dog food at 3AM as the stockers replenished the shelves for the next day.

I walked down the aisle towards the toy section, and took a right.  There they were – left over from Christmas.  Bikes.  Rows of them, all in a line – from small pink bikes with pink and glitter tassels up to off road bikes with big, fat tires.

I grabbed one of those – it was on the top shelf and pulled it on down.  I looked for a pull-behind cart, but I guessed that February wasn’t a strong month for pulling babies behind a bike in the Midwest, so I didn’t see one.  I looked at the bike accessories and found a repair kit, a bike bag that strapped to the handlebars, a dozen spare tires, and some of the goop that you can pop into a tire so that it re-seals after a thorn pops through the tube.  Oh, and a small bike pump.  Not much good to have a new tire but can’t inflate it.

I then dropped over into menswear – I grabbed a wool cap and scarf, some winder gloves, and thick wool socks, and then walked to the checkout line.  A single night manager was there.

“Sorry, man,” he said.  “I can’t do any transactions at all right now.”  He waved around the store.  Power’s out.

I laughed.  “Sure, I can see that!  But I have to get this stuff – it’s my boy’s birthday this morning,” I lied,” and my ex will use this against me in court if I forget to get him a present again.”

“Sorry, man, register is dead.  No can do.”  As I got closer I could see he was a younger man, early 20’s.  Probably pretty committed to Wal-Mart.

“Hey, I understand . . . I’ll go and put the stuff back.”  I started to head the other direction back into the darkened aisles of merchandise.

I turned back to face him.  “You know, there is another way.”  I pushed the bike and tossed the rest of the merchandise on the motionless belt.

“All of this stuff has UPC labels on it.  I can just cut them off, and pay you in cash now.  Then, when the registers come back on you can ring it up.”

His expression didn’t seem to be confident that this was a good plan.

“Tell you what – the bike was about $150.”

“$147.89,” he responded.

“Yup.  And all of the rest of this stuff is less than $200, total, right?”

He nodded.

“Cool.  That’s $350.  Here’s $500.  I’ll get you the UPCs from this, and then you can keep the change after you ring it up, and your inventory matches.  We good here?”

We were good.  Thankfully I generally traveled with a few hundred in cash, mainly for emergencies.  I had $100 left as I pushed the bike out of the side door – the one that wasn’t electric.

I walked the bike to my car, which was parked outside of the hotel.  I pressed the “door open” button on the key fob.  Nothing.  Which is what I expected.  I put my actual, physical key into the lock (which I hadn’t done for years with this car) and opened the door.

Just to be sure I tried to start the car – nothing, not a light, not a click.  Nothing.  I tried the headlights – oddly enough they worked, but none of the interior lights came on.  I turned off the headlights.  The trunk was entirely electric, so I had to pull the rear seatbacks down to get into the trunk.  I was plenty dark, but what I was looking for was just one bag.

For several years I’ve kept kits in every car that we own.  Simple stuff.  A compact blanket.  Waterproof matches and a lighter.  A small saw.  Fuel cubes meant for lighting a charcoal grill.  A water-purifying straw.  A tarp, and some concentrated food bricks.  A hatchet.  100 feet of parachute cord.  Two pocket knives.  Some carabiners.  Duct tape.  Stuff for when a day turned bad.

I found it the pack – it was tan and pushed against the seat back, so it was easy to get to.  I hated abandoning the cool socket set and other tools in the trunk, but since they were heavy and I had no way to pull them?  I’d leave them for whoever found them.  I put the bike repair kit, tubes, and pump into the bike bag.

I clipped the backpack from the hotel room to the kit bag, swapped my socks for the brand new wool socks from Wal-Mart, put on the knit hat, scarf and gloves, and started pedaling.

In February, the wind blew mainly from the north.  I was heading south.  I got on my bike, and turned south, skipping the Interstate as I headed through town.  Fifteen minutes later I had cleared the edges of the town, and was headed through open farmland as the Sun began to rise.  I was on my way.

### (for now)

TEOTWAWKI is short for “The End Of The World As We Know It.”  Sure, it’s a song from R.E.M., but it’s also shorthand for groups and individuals for the sudden collapse scenario where the world changes in an instant.  Many of the old rules, if not all of them, disappear very quickly.  And, if we didn’t have electricity, we’d never have to listen to R.E.M. again.  So, it’s got that going for it.

This version of TEOTWAWKI is set quite deliberately in wintertime, at the start of a blizzard on the East Coast.

Why?

Boston-Washington

Photo via wikimedia, CC3.0 By SA, Bill Rankin

20% (roughly) of the population lives there.  Government is seated there.  The financial and trading center of the United States is there.  If that region lost power in winter, in the middle of a blizzard?  At least 50% of the population would die that week, and I would expect the total casualties would be 90% or more within two weeks in that region.  The combination of the cold and chaos and the extreme population density would make most dystopian science fiction novels look positively cheery.  One thing that East Coasters don’t think much about is where the food they eat and the gasoline they use comes from.  Hint:  it’s not New York.

The average person has a couple of days of food in the house.  The average supermarket has three days of inventory.  Beyond that?  Factories, warehouses and logistics are required to keep a continual supply of food on the way to prevent starvation.  Our technically advanced and efficient civilization that allows us our apparent wealth, paradoxically makes us susceptible to nearly instant poverty.  The areas that are the least used to modern conveniences and least reliant on power will be the most resilient.

What about the cars, would they really not work?  That’s hard to say.  Although there has been some testing done (it is summarized in the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack) that would seem to indicate that many cars (80%??) might be unaffected, there is much that is still classified – and I don’t think the classified information says “not a problem.”  I will note that Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, the guy who led the EMP study in Congress now lives off the electric grid in a self-sustaining remote farm.

But, let’s say that 90% of the cars still work.  I chose the opposite for this story, but let’s say that 90% still work.  The cars would be good . . . exactly for as long as they had gasoline in them.  Without electricity, getting gasoline would be pretty difficult.  There’s a general consensus that most cars built before 1984 would work okay, as their electronics were minimal in comparison to today.  And computers and chips would be in trouble.  One declassified document I found in my research noted that computers were at the top of the list of devices that could be destroyed by an electromagnetic pulse.  And cars today are increasingly computer-dependent, but they’re also made of metal and don’t feature long conductors, so, that might help them be more resilient.

Why a bicycle?  Well, that’s the one thing that I could be pretty sure to find at 4AM in any town with a Wal-Mart.  And having cash is nice.  One time I tried to pay with credit card but mine had been cancelled (ID theft).  Having cash was very nice.  Carry some.

But with a bicycle you can cover a LOT of ground in a day – 100 to 150 miles for someone out of shape wouldn’t be out of the question.  If someone rode regularly?  They could easily do double that, especially with the wind at your back.  I did read one book called 77 Days in September – you can get it on Amazon – where the guy walked all the way home from Houston to Montana after an EMP.

I’m pretty sure by day three he would have figured out how to get a bicycle.  You could bike his route in 12 days or so, but I guess that would have killed the snappy title.  It’s not a bad book, but, you know, bikes won’t be hurt by an EMP.  Even many motorcycles might make it through fine, or be made to work with minimal retrofitting.  Maybe that was the point Mad Max was making?

The final point for today’s post:  There is a huge advantage in moving quickly when the rules change.  On multiple occasions in my life I’ve managed to get motel rooms, rental cars, or out of a really bad situation because I realized that things were off the rails and, rather than rage about it, act before the herd did.

In emergencies, being right 15 minutes before everyone else is an amazing advantage, which is why preppers prep.

Looks like this series will take up another Monday or two, at least until our hero can get home.

But what will he find along the way?  What will he find when he gets there?

The Silurian Hypothesis, or, I’ve Got Lizards in Low Places

“As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point.  Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits.  Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent.  But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction.  A dumbing down.  How did this happen?  Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.  With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.” – Idiocracy

gornvkirk

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!  The Iowa Assassin versus the Green Skinned Lizard Killer from Zontar-A.  Let the match begin!  Your ticket gives you the full chair, but you’ll only need the edge of your seat!

The Silurian Hypothesis is a simple one:  humans may not be the first intelligent inhabitants of Earth.  Dr. Adam Frank, astrophysicist at the University of Rochester and Dr. Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA® (pronounced NAY-Saw) Goddard Institute, a division of Tesla® framed and named this discussion formally.  Put simply, the idea is that there might have been another civilization on Earth before people.  Like way before people – little to none of the current surface of the Earth is older than about four million years old, so the only organism alive today that might have seen the world before that time is your Mom.  Because she’s old.

It really can’t be said that Frank and Schmidt came up with the idea, because they named it after a Dr.  Who™ episode where lizard people from the Silurian age showed up in 1974 Great Britain because they overslept their suspended animation alarm clock.  Spoiler alert (for a 48 year old television series) humanity killed all the lizard people.

And Dr. Who did feel kinda guilty about committing genocide against an entire race, at least until the next episode where he had to fight the Scantily Clad Women of Zetar 9 armed only with tanning lotion and Piña Coladas.

gorn with the wing

But if there had been a civilization that existed before present time, back in the deep history of Earth, how, exactly would you even find it?  The Earth’s surface turns over on a regular basis – one article I read said that no part of the Earth’s surface is older than about 4 million years.  What Frank and Schmidt wrote a paper about wasn’t about the speculation if there had been intelligent life before humanity since that question has been out for at least 100 years.  No, their paper was what evidence might exist that we could use to determine if there had been an ancient, intelligent, pre-human civilization.

And it turns out it’s not very easy to determine if an intelligent species might have lived on the Earth long ago.  Four million years is a long time, but the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, and managed to be the dominant lifeform on Earth for 165 million years before that.  The age of the dinosaurs began almost a quarter of a billion years ago.  Again, not as old as your Mom, but still a very long time ago.

And that’s the point.  Four million years is a very, very long time.  When I start to think about human artifacts that would last that long the first thing that comes to mind is bricks, pottery, and glass.  But, again, 4 million years ago is a very, very long time.

Even farther back, there was a great inland sea over the middle part of the United States.  And then formation of the Rocky Mountains, at 55 million to 80 million years ago.  That amount of time doesn’t even take us halfway back to the start of the dinosaurs, which were by any measure the most successful land lifeform ever, even before being reincarnated in the toy box and imagination of every 7 year old boy.

jurassic

Here’s the Jurassic world, thankfully with 100% less movie. 

So was there enough time for an intelligent civilization to form?  Sure.

But civilization doesn’t mean sophisticated, and it doesn’t mean technological.  Just like there are ranges of steak (from Awesome to Super Awesome) there are ranges of civilization, from hunter gatherers at the low end, all the way up to super-galactic alien empire at the high end.

Challenges of a civilization:

  • Brain Complexity – This is the big Kahuna, the large cheese. Without enough complexity in the brain, the behaviors required to create a civilization simply are not there.  Birds flock based on instinct, but true civilization requires more than instinct – it requires the ability to create technology and worth together in conscious, novel ways.  Based on the human evolution timeline, it looks like this level of evolutionary change requires about 4 million years, a number we’ve already talked about today.  Coincidence?
  • Available Energy – We can have the smartest beings that have ever lived on the planet, but if they don’t have sufficient available energy in the form of fossil fuels or fission, the highest level of technology that they will be able to reach is approximated by the Roman Empire. And, yes, the Roman Empire had some pretty cool tech – they could drink cold beer in an air-conditioned house.  But space flight, electronic computers, plastics, and streaming Netflix™ movies were quite beyond them.  Was there oil available to kick start this hypothetical past civilization?    Oil has been formed throughout time, and, yeah, if our hypothetical civilization went looking, they might have found it.
  • Environment – My initial thought had been that the climate needed to be stable enough for an intelligence to form. But is that right?  I don’t think so.  Based on the one and only case of intelligent life we know of (us, silly), I’ve changed that opinion.  Human evolution leading to intelligence has taken place during a period of significant climactic instability.  Is it possible that the ice ages didn’t inhibit human civilization, but in fact were the reason for humans developing intelligence?  Is there a similar stress during the time of the dinosaurs?  Yes!  You can see at least one stressful climate event.  Yay, climate change!

climate

See the “ice age” 150 million years ago? 

It’s been suggested that there were several candidate species of dinosaurs that were developing along the lines of an intelligent species – they walked on two legs, they had thumbs, had a fairly large brain, and were called Troodon (which is an amazingly lame dinosaur name).  Dale Russell was the scientist who discovered Troodon, and pretty quickly asked the question (after a few shots of tequila), “Hey, how close was this thing to becoming sentient?”

dinosauroid

Here is a sculpture of Troodon (in the back) and a hypothetical evolutionary ancestor, the Dinodude.

It had a big brain for a dinosaur, and, given a few million years, the kind of time it took for humans to evolve from some sort of pinheaded monstrosity that could barely discern red wine from white to statuesque blonde girls with beer at Oktoberfest.  A more in depth look at Russell’s story can be found here (LINK).

oktoberfest

Still far cuter than an Australopithecus afarensis, even if you shaved it.

So, if this precursor intelligence existed (a big if) why haven’t we found them?

The biggest reason is that, based on the paleoclimate graph above, my bet is that they would have existed 150 million years ago.  From a civilization that spends a collective 4 billion hours each year looking for car keys, I’m not really hopeful that we’d find an entire lost civilization that existed before iPhones®.  Let’s face it – dinosaurs were everywhere for 165 million years, and what do we have to show for it?  A few, (very few) bones, some bugs in amber, and all of the plastic straws that the dinosaurs left everywhere.

Gorn Flakes

Okay, seriously, what would we be looking for?  A greasy ash layer?  DinoDirecTV® satellites in geosynchronous orbit?

Well, sorry, that satellite idea won’t work.  Even a geosynchronous satellite (one that orbits at exactly the same speed that Earth rotates at) decays over time as itty-bitty space dust hits it.  And if you’ve got a few million years to spare?  Not a problem, the satellite will spiral down into a fiery death over some ancient ocean.

gorn eharm

A greasy ash layer?  Well, despite McDonald’s hamburgers being impervious to time, ash happens all over the place for tons of reasons.  But what if warring dinodudes decided to have a nice, cozy nuclear war?  What would you see?  Well, lots of uranium in the sediment.  None of the other byproducts would have lasted this long, but the uranium 235 has a half-life of 700 million years, so it would have.   So, I did a Google® search for “uranium deposit sedimentary Jurassic” and it turns out that that lots and lots of uranium exists in sedimentary rocks, especially in Colorado and in Thailand.

Proof of a past nuclear war?  Probably not.  Most all of the Uranium that exists is the “fun” uranium 238 that you give to kids to play with, and not the uranium 235 which puts the boom in bomb.  So, to find proof, you’d need a higher amount of uranium 235 than expected.  I guess I could prove all of that myself, but  I’d have to do a lot more research, and probably spend a lot of time in third world countries (like Utah where you can’t even get decent booze) doing research and sweating collecting samples in dusty holes.  There are SO many jokes I’m not going to make right now.

So, that’s the first place I’d look – high concentrations of uranium 235 outside of ore bodies in sedimentary rock, and at least one USGS paper indicated some excess 235, but probably not our ancient dinodudes.  But if they never figured nuclear bomb making out, what then?

The best place to look for evidence would be the Moon.  It doesn’t have active geology, like Earth, and, outside of the constant bombardment from meteors, at least any evidence of visitation would still be on the surface, though irradiated by the Sun’s raw rays for millions of years.  But spaceflight is hard, arguably harder than making nuclear weapons.

gorn identity

It might be nearly impossible to find them if they didn’t make nuclear weapons or travel to space.  Heck, if you were a coal miner and found a gold dinodude ring in the coal?  Off into your pocket.  Would you believe it if you were a paleontologist and found a dinodude’s five pound gold crown?  Who would you tell?

Would you work to establish (against all the ridicule that science could bring to bear) that a former culture existed that has never even been hinted at, 150 million years in the past.  Or, you could pop that crown in your pocket and walk away.  (I picked gold because, uniquely, if you dropped a five pound gold crown or golden statue of Johnny Depp’s hair on the ground, unless it was mashed or melted it would still look exactly the same a billion years from now.  Gold doesn’t rust, it doesn’t tarnish.  It’s awesome.)

I’m not saying that there’s been either a coordinated (unlikely) or individual (more likely) decision to hush up findings.  I am saying that no sane paleontologist would mess up his tenure track position at State U to bring up a theory that involved an unknown culture that no other academic has ever even speculated about?  No academic has incentive to do this.

I’m not sure that intelligence is all that important for an evolutionary trait.  My main evidence?  Where is another species that’s intelligent?  That uses tools?  That has language?  Oh, sure, the most likely case is that we would have killed them if we found them, but they don’t seem to exist.

My theory is that intelligence only gets you so far, and will only develop under extreme situations.

What?  Intelligence isn’t important?

Well, it is.  Again, to a point.  The cunning of a wolf.  The keenness of a fox.  The smarts of a squid (squid are smart, and tasty).  But I’m not sure that it helps a lot if any of them can study Nietzsche or Seneca or Shakespeare.  Heck, it would probably be a net survival deficit for a Fox in Socks to Quote Shakespeare on Rocks.

This will (probably) be a future blog post, but there is evidence that, even among humans that the optimum IQ for social and economic performance is somewhere between 115 and no more than 130.  No more than.

So, if a Jurassic reptile from 150,000,000 years ago shows up with an 800 IQ and starts talking?  Feel free to make fun of him.  Meanwhile, here’s that picture of the Oktoberfest girls again:

oktoberfest

Pleasure, Stoicism, Blade Runner, VALIS and Philip K. Dick

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.  All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Blade Runner

valis

I wonder if there is any symbolism in this artwork?  I guess we’ll never know.

Recently I’ve been reading Philip K. Dick’s novel VALIS.

It’s interesting.  I enjoy it.

Philip K. Dick’s work (you never see him referred to as “Phil” or “Phil Dick”, it’s always Philip K. Dick, just like John F. Kennedy is always known as “Sassy”) has taken over Hollywood.  From Total Recall to Minority Report to Blade Runner to The Man in the High Castle, Dick’s work has been made into something like 14 movies and an entire series of shorter television episodes available on Amazon® Prime™.  In what might be the most ironic ending ever, he only really became popular after his death, with Blade Runner being released just a few months after he died at the age of 53.

The story themes that he visited during his life were fairly consistent:

  • What is the nature of reality? What if it’s a lie?
  • How do we know that we are sane?
  • What if reality is insane? What should our response be?
  • What is information? Is it living?
  • Where can I get more drugs? I mean a LOT more drugs.

dick

VALIS is based on (at least partly) a vision that he had in February and March of 1974, and describes a lot of things that Dick said personally happened to him, which include a secret Roman Empire that still existed, aliens, and the fact that his son had a hernia that would kill him if he didn’t have the doctor look at it.  The hernia part is verified.   The secret Roman Empire?  Not so much.  Oh, did I mention he did a LOT of drugs?  Yeah.  He made Hunter S. Thompson seem like a virgin.

However, as a writer he had an amazing amount of insight, which may account for the popularity.  One quote that struck me was an interesting philosophical digression in VALIS:

Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form.  The basic dynamism is as follows:  a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable.  There is no way that he can halt the process; he is helpless.  This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain – any kind of control will do.  This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery.  So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him:  he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it.  This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain.  Not so.  It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness.  But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes automatically, anhedonic (avoiding pleasure – JW).  Anhedonia sets in stealthily.  Over the years it takes control of him.  For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia.  In learning to defer his gratification, he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse.  He has “control”.  Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation.  He is a controlled and a controlling person.  Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation.  He becomes a manipulator.  Of course, he is not consciously aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence.  But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others.  Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essentially negative.

This idea is fascinating to me.  In this case, a virtue, self-restraint and stoicism, is turned into a vice.  And not only a vice, a vice that replicates itself and spreads its misery around.

I see this most often among people who have no real control or power in their lives – the people who sit on Homeowner’s Association boards and send out little notes that my grass is too long, or that my siding needs to be washed, or that they object to the new “sheet metal hammering and shredding at midnight with strippers” business that I set up.  The phrase that I’m reminded of that describes these people is:  “The fight is so bitter because the stakes are so small,” which is a paraphrasing of Wallace Sayre’s original quote, “I hate going to the Department of Motor Vehicles”.  So, not only do you not like going to the DMV, we’ve learned that they hate being there as much as you do, so they share their misery as much as possible.

But Dick’s quote also explains why people become self-destructive.  If they sense that they’re going to fail, well, they’ll toss some gasoline on that fire and get it going now.  The logic becomes simple – I don’t really fail if I control my failure.  Or deprive myself of pleasure.  I know I don’t deserve the money, so I’ll just save it until I die and leave it to my cats.  My ability to defer today’s pleasure becomes . . . a way to punish myself today.

And yet . . . there’s that leading stoic, Seneca:

“Therefore, explain why a wise person shouldn’t get drunk, not with words, but by the facts of its ugliness and offensiveness.  It is easy to prove that pleasures, when they go beyond proper measures, are punishments.”

Could it be that people subconsciously (or consciously!) punish themselves through pleasure as well?  Theoretically, being a philosophical stoic isn’t about avoiding pleasure, it’s about striking that balance.  Seneca himself was very, very, rich, but struggled with whether or not he should be a vegetarian.  Seneca decided not to be a vegetarian – it might have been seen as being pretentiously virtuous, like the vegan who does Crossfit™ and drives a Prius© – what do you tell people first???

vegan club

Absolutely there is virtue in self-control.  Right up until it becomes a vice.  Like lots and lots and lots of drugs.  Lots of drugs.  And maybe Crossfit™.

crossfit

QAnon, The Chans, and Other Cryptic Stuff

“Long I pondered my king’s cryptic talk of victory.” – 300

qshirt2

Why is this relevant?  Is this going to be on the quiz on Friday?

What if . . . there was a source deep inside the intelligence apparatus of the United States.  What if . . . that source was in the inner circle of the President?  What if . . . that source was communicating with the world, and providing “insider” information.

On 8chan.

(But he really started on 4chan.)

And what the heck is a “chan”?

I guess that’s a good enough place to start, even though that’s complicated, too.  First, promise me you’ll never go there.  I’ll explain below.

The chans (both 4chan and 8chan) are message boards.  Originally 4chan was set up to be a message board where folks who spoke English would swap Japanese anime pictures.  Yeah, not my cup of tea either.  But gradually, the boards . . . evolved.

Ever hear of group Anonymous?  These guys?

anonymousii

Yeah, they started on 4chan.  And since there’s no real way to get a username on either of the chans, they started going by the name Anonymous.  As I understand it, 4chan was where QAnon first posted, but now he posts at 8chan, since he believes that 4chan is less secure.  Or something.

So why shouldn’t you go to the chans?  8chan has a (just the one) rule – don’t post or link to any content that’s illegal in the United States.  That’s it.  That leaves a LOT of room for things that you don’t want to see.  And you can’t unsee them.  Me?  I take my own advice – just because it’s legal doesn’t mean my brain needs to know it exists.  I’ve never gone there except one time when I clicked on a link and didn’t know it was to a chan.  I immediately closed the window like my hand was being snapped at by Madonna© before she’d had her daily antibiotic shot.  (Shudder)

Why?  I’m far too young to see what unbridled libertarianism might post on the internet.  Not that I think it should necessarily be illegal, but there are things decent people shouldn’t see, like any movie with Amy Schumer, except if she were going to play the role of a Death Star© in Star Wars™ Episode IX:  Revolt of the Audience®.

So don’t go to the chans.  Just don’t.  (Really, don’t.)

But they are (maybe) an anonymous way to communicate.  But an anonymous poster began posting what was (in theory) inside information on October 28, 2017.  About sixty one posts in (on November 2) he (or she) began signing the posts “Q”.

Since then, the poster has been known as QAnon.

It’s assumed that this Q relates to the Department of Energy Q clearance – the type of clearance that people who work on nuclear bombs have.  A friend of mine got this clearance once, and I was a reference.  I said nice things to the FBI agent that showed up at my house when she asked about my friend, and my friend eventually got the clearance.  I’m pretty sure that this friend isn’t QAnon, since my friend now teaches at a college and I’m pretty sure he isn’t in the Trump inner circle.

But QAnon is now about as popular as the Beatles™ – one particular website that posts regularly about Q, Neon Revolt (LINK), gets 100,000 hits per day – more viewers than CNN® has in a month.  And that website started in February.

So what sort of things has QAnon posted?

More recently, this:

qmissile

This may or may not be a missile launch from a military base aimed at Air Force One (QAnon version) or a medical helicopter on a night training flight (the one story I could find on this – linked HERE).

If you got further into the QAnon posts, he claims that Air Force One was defended by an F-16 with a classified weapon’s package:

missile f16

Seems odd, right?

But when you look and see that QAnon might have predicted a post by the President:

trumptweet

As of this writing, QAnon has posted 1761 times – you can read them all here, but be warned, included in these posts are posts that look like this:

cryptic q

And this is what the chans love best.  It’s cryptic.  It has double meaning.  It invites going back and re-reading all of the other 1761 posts to see what clues are used in them when and what they mean.  SA, is that South American?  Saudi Arabia?  San Antonio?  (I think the general conclusion is Saudi Arabia).

But seriously, the chans LOVE doing this stuff – they even have a name for it, “Weaponized Autism.”  And they are amazing at it.  My proof?

autism

Shia LeBouf (pronounced Former Celebrity) did some sort of social protest back in 2017.  Well, the chans took notice, and took time to mess with him.  He had some sort of flag on a constant net stream.  When the chans found the flag?  They’d send someone to rip it down.  So Shia got sneaky.  He put up his flag and only pointed the webcam at the flag and sky.

17 hours later?  The chans found it and took it down.

Yes.  Given minimal clues, the chans found a flag in a random location in the United States.

Yeah, they’re that good.  Do NOT be on their bad side.  That being said, they love stuff like the QAnon posts – cryptic puzzles galore.

Oh, and check out the shirt below.  Yup.  That’s the President, pointing out a guy in a QAnon shirt.

qshirt

Oh, and someone put together a huge list of proof that QAnon has some pretty big predictive power.  That link is here (LINK) – and the person who put it together did an awesome job of connecting past posts with events that happened after QAnon posted them.  There are some pretty significant coincidences in the list.

Is QAnon for real?  That’s hard to say.  The list of coincidences is long.  But on the other hand, the list of incomprehensible items is large, too, and given the cryptic nature of the posts, it’s almost like reading a Chinese fortune cookie or horoscope – you read into it what you think might be there, and then when it shows up, your interpretation is confirmed.  This most commonly happens to me

But don’t go to the chans.  Really – it’s not for normies like you and me.  Your brain will thank me for this advice.

seen too much

The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar

“Who the hell is Julius Caesar?  You know I don’t follow the N.B.A.” – Anchorman 2

Pompey

This is Pompey, the opponent of Julius Caesar.  Yeah, there’s no second place in history for “nearly became emperor.”  Thankfully, there was first place for “widest head in history” which he won, hands down.  I mean, seriously, how could this guy buy glasses?

Last week’s post was the first prediction about the coming future of the United States.  You can read it here (The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths) and another good post about the life of empires is here (End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence).  Breakup was the first, and in my mind, still the most likely scenario.  But it isn’t the only one – there is at least one other possibility worth considering.

As I referenced in the post, there was a moment where Julius Caesar stood upon the banks of the river Rubicon and thought about his future.  As he looked at the shallow river he considered the orders from Rome:  at the banks of the Rubicon he was to turn over command of all of his legions.  Julius had four legions under his command in his conquest of Gaul.  But as he stood on the banks of the Rubicon, only the 13th Legion (Legio XIII, Gemina, or “Twins”) was at his back.

Rubiconbanks

Caesar at the banks of the Rubicon.  Some say he thought weighty thoughts about how he could best govern Rome.  I wonder if he was thinking about what was on TV, or if Brutus accepted his Facebook friend request?

To cross without them would, he feared, most certainly end with him being tried for political crimes (mainly the crime of being more popular than the sole remaining counsel, Pompey).  To cross without the army, then, might mean that his long career for the Roman Republic would end in dishonor.  In Gaul alone, his legions had faced over three million men, killed a million of them, and enslaved a million more – not a record that generally leads to disgrace, but a record that still irritates the French 2000 years later.

Legend recounts that as Caesar decided to cross the river and conquer Rome, as his horse’s hooves went into the shallow Rubicon he said, alea iacta esto, or, in a less-metric language, “Let the die be cast.”  And it was a gamble – he was outnumbered.

Caesar’s refusal to be a political pawn set him up to do what no other man on Earth could do – he conquered the most powerful nation on Earth.  He transformed the Roman Republic after a civil war, and created the Roman Empire with him as the leader.  The Roman Republic would never again exist.

At the time of Caesar’s ascension to becoming “dictator for life,” Rome had become a Republic ruled by a small number of families, including the Bushes and Clintons those of Pompey and Cicero.  Historian Adrian Goldsworthy writes in his book Caesar, Life of a Colossus (p. 378), that, “The Republic had become dominated by a faction who ignored the normal rule of law and particularly refused to acknowledge the traditional powers and rights of the tribunate.”

The empire that Caesar helped create removed the instability of the late Republic, and replaced it with a more stable structure that lasted another five hundred years.

vercingetorix

Here is a painting of Vercingetorix, a chieftain who united the Gauls, throwing down his arms at Caesar’s feet.  This was painted in the 1890’s in France, and there are numerous historical inaccuracies in the painting.  Among them:  it’s unlikely that Vercingetorix would have had such a stupid mustache, and Caesar always had his iPhone® at surrenders listening to “We Are the Champions” by Queen on a loop in his earbuds.

The transition from Republic to Empire was completed within 20 years’ time.  Caesar put all of the rules in motion for his last name to become a title – the Roman emperors became Caesars.  The title followed to the German king – Kaiser and the Russian Emperor – Czar.  Think about that – your last name becoming synonymous with being an emperor for 2,000 years . . . “Wilder John the First” has an awesome ring to it, right?

But this is the other possibility for the United States:  whereas breakup into multiple states is likely the longer we go, there is still the possibility of an American Caesar, especially if the crisis is within the next 10 years or so while some shred of commonality can be forced upon us.  Sure, we won’t call him (or, much much much much much much less likely, her) “Caesar.”  We’ll probably call them “President” and pretend that the “for duration of the (endless) emergency” part doesn’t exist.

klingonemperor

If we have a female American Caesar, she will probably look like the picture above.  Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite.  Oh, wait, she does bite.  And that’s not autographed to me – I found this one on the Internet.

And notice that I said forced.  The way we get to an American Caesar is through crisis – real or invented.  A currency one would do just fine, and I’ve pointed out that a currency crisis is inevitable here (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse) and here (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck), it would certainly bring the “need” for a strong, popular leader to take the role of power to save us all.  We almost ended up with one in 1932, but thankfully FDR gave out as World War II was nearing completion – if it had been a younger, more physically fit man?  Yeah, it scared the heck out of America.  That’s why we had a two term limit in place for Presidents before Roosevelt’s corpse was cool.

History shows that people give up freedom to someone who makes promises.  Napoleon, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and well, here’s the map from Freedom House.  Most of the world’s population lives under what would be considered a dictator.  Very little freedom.

2017freedom

But never in the United States.  Why not?

  • Historically, the United States has been driven by a core desire for individual freedoms and liberty. Those freedoms and liberties were specifically written into the Constitution, despite several politicians of the day noting that no government would EVER try to take these freedoms away.  The Bill of Rights has been a firewall against government power.
  • Separation of powers is another key. The President can’t make laws, only Congress.  The President can just refuse to sign them.  And the Supreme Court has the ability to call into question the Constitutionality of all of those laws (Jefferson argued the President had those powers as well).  These divided powers were intended to prevent the Federal government from acting unjustly.
  • As a further (and much stronger) barricade against tyranny, the states had significant power: they appointed Senators.  Without the Senate, no new law could be made.  The states further had delegated to them all powers not specifically granted to the Federal government.

But those are weakening.

  • The Supreme Court has made decisions that create new categories of rights of people to have stuff (the old Bill of Rights prevented government from doing things, not granting people rights to stuff). And recent rulings generally allow the government to do pretty much what it wants in most cases.  We’ve gone from a limited Federal government to a Federal government that can choose the size of your toilet tank and define what features you MUST buy if you buy a new car.
  • Separation of powers is eroded. Congress writes the laws, but bureaucrats from government agencies run by the President write the regulations that implement those laws.  Page after page of regulation.  81,000 in 2015.  Stack one atop the other?  A three story building’s worth of paper.  With that many regulations, everyone is guilty.  Everyone has done something wrong.  To go back to a Roman, Tacitus:  “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
  • States in the United States are little more than counties since Senators become popularly elected. Senators are just Representatives (Congressmen) with longer terms, and they don’t represent the states at all.

So, the stage is set – a collapse of the walls that kept a dictator from gaining power.  Now all that’s needed is a set stage.  As I mentioned above, a significant crisis will set that stage.  Maybe it’s actual civil war, as noted in the previous post, which is driven almost entirely by economic difficulties.  People don’t fight in civil wars if they the major problem they have is whether to go to the mountains or on a cruise for vacation.  Civil wars happen when people have nothing left to lose.

And when people have nothing left to lose, Caesar will (possibly) emerge.  You won’t look at him like he’s the bad guy.  Political lines will disappear.  I was watching the Netflix® remake of Lost in Space.  Not bad, but there was one scene that was so unintentionally silly I laughed out loud.

Space eels were drinking the space fuel that the space ship needed to move away from being crushed.  Plus, the space eels looked like they could kill people, too.  The husband went down to the ship’s 3D printer to print out a gun to save the family from the space eels.

Mom had the codes to the printer, and it wouldn’t print out a restricted item (gun) unless she said it was okay.  Then she harangued her retired Marine husband that guns weren’t necessary to fight the space eels.

Okay, you can have staunch anti-gun principles, but the second a space eel is going to eat your kids?  You print a dozen guns.

Your priorities change immensely after three days without food.  You’d be just happy to have a strong leader who will protect you.  A leader who will feed you.  And you won’t worry so much if you can’t criticize him, especially if you have food.

trumplandpng

There was some comment that the maps from the previous post didn’t show the great amount of land that Trump won during the last election.  Here’s a different version, represented by area.  Future battle map for a new Caesar?  Asking for a friend.

You’ll look at him like he’s saving you, which he just might be doing.  He’ll have songs written about him.  And if he does a good enough job?  He’ll be remembered for 1,000 years.  If he does a bad enough job, he’ll be remembered that long, too.

When (if) he rises to power?  You’ll applaud.

The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths

“Well, l could be wrong, but l believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era.  l would be surprised if the affiliates were concerned about the lack of an old wooden ship, but nice try.” – Anchorman

politicalspectrum

So, I guess that my “Secretly Wants To Live in a Post-Apocalyptic Society” secret is out of the bag?  I guess I need more dehydrated food.  And scotch.

(Part II of this series is posted at: The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar)

There are some posts where I know exactly what I want to say, and how I want to say it.  Often, those are fairly well scripted, either with a handwritten first draft or a set of researched bullet points.  I’ll expand those into the full post.  Those are nice.  The structure has been created.  The post flows out.

Some topics are topics that are well planned out (I actually plan the blog topics about three months out) and fit.  Some topics just hit me with a blast of inspiration and nearly write themselves.

And some are difficult.  Very difficult – they occupy headspace I know that I’m going to write about them, but the issue is so difficult that I want to make sure it comes out how I want it to come out, that it doesn’t inadvertently come out in some sort of ham-handed way.  This is one of those.  I’m sort of pleased with the results – it came out the way I wanted it to come out, just like the ending to Breaking Bad, or Jean-Claude Van Damme’s last optometry appointment – he still doesn’t need glasses, yay!

Don’t know a great way to put this, but we’re (in the United States, and in Europe, though my read there is much murkier) heading towards civil war.  In Europe, civil war means dissolution of the EU and (likely) expulsion of large numbers of immigrants.  But I’m not European, so I won’t go too far speculating about them.

I’m not sure if it will be a decade off or longer, but I put the arrival of this war as soon as 2024, and as late as 2032.  Not really any longer than that.  What would stop it is a prolonged, total war that would challenge the very existence of the United States.  External threats and an external enemy are the best way to create unity (and second term for a president named “Bush”).  And that’s not good, because a prolonged war always leads to extremes, and we have extreme weapons – in that way, a civil war might be the best-case scenario.  But I digress – back to civil war.

Why?  Again, this won’t be exactly the same civil war as THE Civil War – there are some facets that will rhyme, but others that won’t.  The major theme is division.  And what better way to show that than with . . . maps.

Here’s a map from Colin Woodward and Tufts University, and Brian Stauffer, depicting the 11 cultures that they contend make up the United States:

11nations

So, there’s this.  Accurate?  I would personally draw a line between those who like Star Wars® instead of Star Trek™.  Those people are awful.

And it’s not just culture, the Woodward/Tufts map is pretty accurate at predicting where we are today politically.  Here is a map of the Clinton/Trump 2016 vote count:

vote-by-nation-2016

The redder you are, the more Trump.  The overlay of the Woodard/Tufts map is clear.  These cultures are significant, and real, and explain NASCAR®, country music, and the inexplicable popularity of PEZ®.

And I think I’ve graphically made my case for there being a division.  But how significant is it?  Well, research shows that it’s pretty one-sided.  Liberals (at least young ones) are significantly more close-minded than conservatives:

civilwarstats

Yes, you read that right.  45% of liberals would be uncomfortable with a roommate with opposing political views.  12% of conservatives would be uncomfortable.  I guess this means that liberals don’t like diversity?

In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar was ordered back to Rome.  Quite specifically, he was ordered to leave his army, the 13th Legion (Legio XIII, Gemina, or “Twins”) beyond the border of the Rubicon river, which was considered the northern border of Rome.  He didn’t, and then spawned a civil war that (ultimately) led to the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar being proclaimed Emperor.  To this day we celebrate this event by ordering salads in Caesar’s name.

geminaxiii

The last time the 13th Legion was active, I think they got in line in front of me at Arby’s® in Boulder, Colorado after a Van Halen© concert.  Man, when 4,000 people are in front of you in line, you’d expect they’d run out of roast beef.   They did.  Thankfully they had lots of panda and koala bear left.  They also ran out of Horsey Sauce L.  They claimed they ran out of horses.

So we have divisions that are significant, enduring (these divisions aren’t new), and deep.  Yet for decades we haven’t had a problem.  Why are we at the Rubicon?

Well, we were ethnically much more uniform than today.  The United States in 1965 (at the time of a major change to immigration policy) was 85% white.  Now?  62%.  That’s a pretty significant change, and one that impacts politics.  Again, cultural divisions lead to war.  And the easiest division is what you look like.  I know that people like to fight and will pick any old reason to fight.  Religion in Northern Ireland (Protestants and Catholics), football in California (Raiders™ vs. 49er’s©), and really important stuff (Star Wars© vs. Star Trek™).  People will fight each other to the death because we don’t like each other’s hats.  Historically, multi-cultural societies . . . fail.  Spectacularly.  (Again, this is not an indictment of any individual group, just a reading of history.)

But civil war in the United States is . . . very singular.  The Civil War was built upon philosophical differences (with very human consequences).  Issues involved in the Civil War include slavery, states’ rights, and Northern industrialism versus Southern agrarianism.  But one of the underlying causes might just be that map of the 11 cultures shown above.  The Northern states were built on the Puritan ethic.  They make up the Boston/New York corridor and the swath heading west from that.  The Southern states were built upon scoundrels – the Irish malcontents and Scottish reivers that immigrated later.  They’re the ones that make up Greater Appalachia.

So what will cause a civil war in the United States?

The first thing is the philosophic divisions listed above.  The desire for the freedom of individual determination is still strong in the Deep South and in Greater Appalachia and the Far West.  That hasn’t changed.  The Puritans in Yankeedom and the Left Coast still very much want to make their values the only values that matter.  Note the graph above that shows relative discomfort with diverse exhibited by liberals.  Ouch!

These groups have hated each other since the 1600’s.  And it will never go away, especially as long as the New England Patriots® keep winning Super Bowls™.  The two sides have never spoken the same language.  The time that both North and South united?  After the Civil War, the North (magnanimously) allowed the South to keep their heroes (Lee, Stuart, Jackson, Davis) and they were transformed into American heroes rather than insurrectionist traitors.  Not a bad trade.

There were places that held out – the first celebration of July 4th after the Civil War in Vicksburg was on July 4th, 1945.  Admittedly, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4th after a horrific siege and devastating defeat for the Confederacy.  It took 80 years and winning not one, but two world wars for Vicksburg to celebrate national unity on a regular basis on July 4.  These divisions remain to this day.

But what else will cause this war?

The Fourth Turning – it’s time.  Here’s a previous post (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.) that explains this timing in more detail.  The last generation to have experience the horror associated with total war, with the mobilization of the entire economy of the United States to defeat a foe is . . . dead.  The youngest boys that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day are 95 today.  They control nothing.

Our leadership, our population has no connection to those that saw the horrors of a continent ripped apart by war.  They led our nation (and all of the nations of the West) and their actions were held in check by the horrors that they had seen.  Now their experiences no longer temper the actions of the leaders (and desires of the people) to avoid apocalyptic levels of violence.

Let’s continue with economics – I’ve discussed before that the current economic practices have a time limit (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck).  One cause of civil war (not necessary, but certainly an exacerbating cause) is economic collapse.  When people have more to lose than to gain, they won’t fight.  As Janis Joplin said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”  And when people are ruined?  They fight.  See the French Revolution (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be).

Economics will be a trigger, but not the underlying cause of division listed above.

So, we have a civil war.  What’s the end look like?

Breakup.

I don’t think that the things that have held us together as a nation will continue to hold us together.  What values do we have in common anymore?  It seems like . . . none.  Let me elaborate.  I could do a post on each of these (and likely won’t – other people cover this on a regular basis, so unless I have a Wilder take, I won’t):

We don’t speak the same language at all, anymore.  Even though I have friends that don’t (at all) agree with me politically, I fear that they aren’t the norm.  The end state isn’t 11 countries.  It’s probably (at least) four.  I can see a Heartland State, an East Coast, a West Coast, and a Northern Mexico.  Los Angeles will be Mexico.  Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle will be East Coast.  The Boston/Manhattan/DC corridor will be East Coast.  Northern Mexico will be as shown as El Norte.

But on the bright side?  Jean-Claude Van Damme doesn’t need glasses!!! How awesome is that?

Human Beings, Are We Awesome Creatures With Cool Senses, or What? (Hint: We’re Awesome)

“I see dead people.” – The Sixth Sense

mulderscull

I find this picture . . . disturbing.  Should this be the XY-Files?

I think that a lot of times, we have no ideas of the capability of humanity.  From the ability to understand subatomic particles from the basis of equations and thought experiments that we constructed to the ability to build pyramids and land on the Moon, we continually do lots of stuff the warning label said not to do.  And we make bratwurst.  Which is, when cooked right, the Best of All Possible Foods®.

Human senses are apparently much more finely tuned than we ever expected and we’ve managed to gather data that we’re way smarter than we ever thought we were.  Human senses are adequate to:

  • Around 60% of the time, judge from a photo if a man or woman is gay or straight. For some reason, this gives gay people the heebee-geebees.
  • Determine which student came from a rich or poor family with about 53% accuracy. Not super accurate, but better than chance.  Perhaps it was because Ivana Trump was in the photo stack?
  • Determine if people are sick from looking at a picture of their stupid sick face – 81% of the time.
  • And we might have even more amazing skills:

That could have been the end of it. But another biochemist encouraged the pair to track Milne down and try a blind T-shirt test: She sniffed six sweaty tees from people diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and six from healthy controls. Milne correctly identified which six had Parkinson’s, but she also tagged one of the control subjects as having the disease.

Despite that error, Barran was intrigued—all the more so eight months later, when the same supposedly healthy control subject Milne had identified was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

This is from National Geographic . . . you can view the article here (LINK).  It’s not a great article, but I’ll cite the source . . . .

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Sick people and well people, I’m not sure who is who, mainly because I don’t care about other people.   (Audrey Henderson/St Andrews University)

Yeah, humans can smell diseases.  Or, at least old British women can smell Parkinson’s disease, and some people can see them, at least some of the time.

And AI shows that what our brains are doing is processing subtle biological cues that are actual, physical patterns.  An AI was set up to determine the whole gay/straight question by feeding it tons of pictures of gay and straight people, and the accuracy of the algorithm was in the high 80% level, if you gave it five facial images per person.  Me?  My ability to judge gay people vs. straight people is totally non-existent unless I “accidently” open the door when they’re having sex.  My ability is zero.

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Here’s what the AI figured out:  both Gay and Straight people are blurry.  NYTimes was where I found this, but it was originally from the original study.

One thing I’ve noted – generally just watching two wrestlers walking onto a mat, I can guess the winning wrestler about 80% of the time.  And I can tell which two bratwurst will be tastiest when I grill them.  Even if it’s a tie.  (It’s always a tie – they’re bratwurst.)

Old-Time Television, Polical Trends, and Civil War II for Fat People

“Well, l could be wrong, but l believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era.” – Anchorman

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The Battleship Texas, reporting for tourists!  Hopefully fat ones!

Data Point:  I was at a club function with The Mrs., The Mrs.’ Mom, and The Mrs.’ Grandfather several years ago.  The Mrs.’ Grandfather was in the Army Air Corps in World War II, so he’s getting along in years.  Standing up and sitting down is tough on him.

The club opened with both a prayer, and then the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.  You were supposed to stand for both.  The Mrs.’ Grandfather didn’t attempt to stand for the prayer, but when it came time to stand for the Pledge, he was standing straight and tall with his hand over his heart.  It was as if his loyalty to his country was in fact his real religion.

Data Point:  I grew up in a rural area – no cable for us.  It was in the mountains, so we didn’t even reception from the television station directly – we got it from a “translator” that took the original signal from the television station and converted it to a UHF signal to be rebroadcast to us mountain folk.  Consequently there were only three networks – ABC, NBC, and CBS.  We also got PBS, but who counted PBS??

The next day at school, we’d talk about the same shows.  Different races, different home languages in some cases, and different religions.  The commonality was our love (generally) of the same television shows – we all watched Family Feud®.  Our teachers were strong believers in America.  And our faith in the United States prevailing over the godless communists of the Soviet Union was strong.  We knew we could win.  And it was (after Vietnam) a time (mostly) free of war.  Even the first Gulf War was over in an afternoon.

Data Point:  For most of the nation’s post-Civil War history, the undercurrent of a single, cohesive nation, the undercurrent of optimism carried through the nation.  We were America, and it was morning here.  You might have voted against Carter, or Reagan, or Bush (I) or Clinton, but nobody said “not my president.”  Carter may have had crappy economic policy, but his commitment to building the United States’ military (stealth aircraft, improved submarines and missiles) gave Reagan the weapons to end the Cold War peacefully.

We were one as a country – bound by the civic religion of love for country, the nominal shared Christian values, and the overwhelmingly focused popular culture.

I’m not sure when it really began, the great fissures in American society.  Some may point to Reagan.  Some may point to the Clinton Impeachment.  Others may point to changing demographics.  Others may point back to Glubb’s (LINK) study of the end of empires.

But progressives were 100% certain that they would own the future and the presidency for . . . forever.  After W. termed out, the idea that Obama ushered in a year of final, complete progressive control was even more manifest.  And now, in the post-Obama era we have greater divisions than ever in my lifetime.

Why?

Well, for one thing, a vast majority of the citizens felt the civic religion my Grandfather-in-law felt when he stood up for the pledge.  There was a feeling of faith and reverence for all things American.  And why not?  The United States was the strongest economic and military power the world had ever seen.  And most of what we were responsible for, we felt was to make the world a better place.  Who was trying to get the Egyptians and Israelis to stop killing each other?  Carter.  Who was trying to limit nuclear weapons?  Reagan.  Bush (I) liberated Kuwait.  Everyone generally was in favor of that.  Clinton?  Well, he got a participation trophy – but didn’t mess too much up.

Also, values used to be common.  Mainstream Protestant Christianity was pretty much the assumed norm.  And the values of Protestants (egalitarianism, hate of nepotism, belief in hard work leading to success through a meritocracy, looking down on unwed pregnancy and single motherhood, and salvation through faith) were fairly benign.  You didn’t have to be a Protestant for a Protestant to like you, and as religions go, Protestantism is probably the most comfortable religion with a secular state.  As I heard it said once, “Welcome to the Methodists!  We’re not against anything!”

And popular culture was small (three stations!) and opinions were more limited.  No matter who you were with, you had something in common.  You didn’t like the same candidate, right, but at least you liked the same sports team.  Or the same sport.  Now, given the Internet and the explosion of cable channels, you might never watch the same show as your friends.  The commonality of popular culture is simply gone.

I think it might have been the division was seen in earnest in the 2000 election – the bitter, close win by W. was (maybe) the spark that lit the fire.  Was the degree of anger during this election and the aftermath partially in response to the Clinton Impeachment?  Probably.

Since the 2000 election, one side or the other has felt the presidential election wasn’t legitimate.  So, for the last 18 years, half-ish of the country has really, really, really had a deep hate for the president.  That’s new.  And there are a group of people in America today who actively despise the country.  That’s new, too.  And, they despise its history, too.  And they also despise showers, from the pictures I’ve seen.

If you look at the recent destruction/removal of Civil War statues, I get concerned.  The statues were a part of the reconciliation effort after the Civil War – part of the bargain for bringing us back together as a nation was that we embraced each other.  Oh, sure, there would never be a statue to General Grant or Abraham Lincoln in Atlanta, but General Lee could be rehabilitated as a military genius who was asked by both sides to lead their army.  These statues weren’t put up like statues of Lenin or Stalin – memorials to oppressive leaders – this might be the first war in history where statues of the losers were put up on territory they lost.

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Sam Houston, in Houston.  Let’s see you take this one down . . . .

We have fractured into a thousand different values.  And a thousand different cultures.  I’ve actually seen it said on the Internet that America has no set culture or values and never has.  Our sense of purpose has gone from winning the Cold War to . . . what?  Something centered around the Kardashians?

We cannot continue like this, but the necessary preconditions to Civil War are (thankfully!) not here.  Our economy is strong, so people feel they have something to lose, so they won’t fight.  Fanatics on either side aren’t geographically separated (think north and south in the Civil War) so that’s another plus.  There don’t appear to be two military sides, so that’s helpful, too.

What next, then?

Well, Yogi Berra said it best, “Predicting is hard, especially about the future.”

  • We won’t become as cohesive again, outside of war. Once the group is shattered, it’s shattered.
  • We will find it difficult to agree on any national goals, outside of crisis.

Things I’m guessing:

  • We won’t see anything like a conventional war. We’ve spent too much money and are too good at it for anyone else to play.  Any external conflict will be far sneakier, and far nastier.  Think all the computers not working.  Or all of the Pop-Tarts® being the icky brown sugar ones.
  • Add a sufficient economic crisis, and all bets are off internally. I don’t think a second Great Depression (absent all of the welfare) will be peaceful.  At all.  Maybe not a civil war, maybe just anarchy.
  • People will call the future situation “bad luck” despite the clear predictability from every civilization undergoing the same circumstances throughout history (again, see my Glubb post: (LINK)).

I, for one, want to make video games, carbonated soda, Doritos™ and Twinkies® federally subsidized (free) for everyone.  That way, if Civil War II ever comes?  Everyone will be fat and slow and probably in sweatsuits.  It might make for the most humorous war in history.

AI, The Singularity, and Your 401K

“A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines.  We don’t know who struck first, us or them.  But we know that it was us that scorched the sky.” – The Matrix

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This is how “The Hobbit” should have started, with dragons and swords, rather than a dwarf dinner party?  Then I wouldn’t have fallen asleep during hour one of the 12 hours of movie.

In 1947, an author began to predict it.  In the 1950’s a few scientists saw it coming.  In the 1960’s, it became a (more and more) common subject.  In the 1970’s and 80’s it was nightmare fuel for extremely profitable movies and some great books.   And, in 1993, Vernor Vinge (author and mathematician) wrote the paper (LINK) that gave this phenomenon its name:  The Technological Singularity, or just Singularity from here on out.

This is the second time I’ve discussed the Singularity, and the first time was over here (LINK).  The topic is big enough and important enough that I thought I’d add on to it.  This will likely not be the last time.  Not that I’m running out of blog topics – no, I’ve got a page and a half of them.  No, the Singularity keeps getting uncomfortably closer, like your father-in-law’s farting Great Dane that he normally feeds some sort of petroleum waste covered in sulfur and toxic waste.  Otherwise?  Anything making that smell is generally dead.

Speaking of dead, Jack Williamson (a horribly overlooked author) wrote about the Singularity first in 1947 in his story With Folded Hands.  I read that when I was in sixth or seventh grade at the Middle School for Wayward Wilders.  I read every science fiction story or novel in that library, and I even started The Lord of the Rings with book two (The Two Towers) since the library didn’t have book one (The Fellowship of the Rings).  To this day I maintain it’s a better two book series than a three book series.  The first book is really just walking and singing elves and hobbits.  Meh.  The second book starts with treachery and fighting.  Yeah, that’s the stuff.

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Anyway, Jack Williamson’s story With Folded Hands was . . . awesome.  And one of the creepiest things I’d ever read.  You can read it for free, here at this (LINK).  Here’s the spoiler-free-ish Wikipedia description:

 

. . . disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: ”to serve and obey and guard men from harm”. Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers, and more, and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids’ benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited.

So, you’d think that having all of those things would be good, right?  Nah.  Read the story.  Want to ski?  The Humanoids are against it – you might hurt yourself.  And anything else that might be dangerous.  Like driving.  Or drinking.  Or smoking.  Or not exercising.  Or not eating the right foods.  Or staying up too late.  And the Humanoids are smarter than you.  And always watching.

It’s an example of how the Singularity can go wrong – an instruction set that’s interpreted as machines do:  literally.  For example, if one read the instruction “help humanity” and figured out that humanity was always suffering, and maybe the best way to help humanity to stop suffering was to end humanity . . . or if the instruction set was to create inexpensive cars . . . and it converted the entire mass of the planet into inexpensive yet attractive and stylish cars.  (Elon, make sure your programs don’t include this!)

These themes spawned numerous television episodes in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  How many times, exactly, did Kirk do mental ju-jitsu with a supercomputer?  I can count at least seven without thinking.  So, about 1/10th of Star Trek® episodes, Kirk was fighting a Singularity.  This continued through the movies Terminator® and Terminator 2© through the 1990’s.  Then Vernor Vinge named it.

Let’s talk about the Singularity.  What, exactly, happens?

In general, a much larger than human intellect appears.  And it rapidly reconfigures everything that it sees.  Concepts that are beyond the smartest humans are correlated – the data we already have in our experiments, is all brought together.

We know we are wrong, but don’t know how.  Could a superhuman intelligence bring it all together in a month?  A week?  A day?  Perhaps.  We know we are wrong about the way the Universe works – and that there are some pretty significant gaps in our understanding (LINK).

It’s a fair thing to say that we are living today with a weak AI.  My GPS unit tells me the fastest route to where I’m travelling.  YouTube® suggests songs I’ve never heard that I kinda like.  And algorithms based on my previous web browsing suggest that maybe I’ll need a knee replacement or perhaps a new kidney (now you know why I had children:  they are wonderful sources of spare organs).

I may even have interacted with an AI this weekend – I was having trouble getting the “name” of one of my Amazon® devices.  The “person” on the other end of the chat kept repeating the same things.  I had to figure out how to get to the answer.  But I told the “person” how I got there.  Bet next time it’ll be quicker . . . .

This is a weak AI.  It’s a general helper every day.  Only a little creepy, not “fifty years old and still collecting Star Wars® figures” creepy.

But it will/is getting stronger.  How long until Google® correlates web searches and times of day to a dozen or more lifestyle-related diseases?  I’m willing to bet you it does that already.  But this is still an algorithm designed by a human.  Probably.

But recently Google™ (which now no longer promises to “not be evil”) created AlphaGo©.  Go is an ancient game that rivals chess in complexity.  It beat the greatest human master 89 out of 100 games in October, which most people would call a “drubbing.”  Perhaps, most disturbingly, the moves that the computer made were called “disturbing” and “alien”.  The computer was left with nothing more than the rules of the game and a desire to win.  Not long after playing large number of games against itself, it was able to take on the greatest player in the world.  And win.  No human will ever beat it.

From my observation, the likely requirement for development of a true AI, a general AI is constraint.  The AI was able to beat us (us=seven billion humans) because it was constrained and goal driven – it was limited to a single gaming system with observable and finite rules.

And humans aren’t constrained, right?

Well, no.  Humans are constrained by a human body.  As much as I would like to be able to jump to Mars and party with Elon Musk (you know he already moved there, right?) I can’t.  Intellect is about observing and overcoming constraints to achieve a goal.  If you don’t have constraints or a goal, intelligence has no meaning and no use.  (This might be the most profound thought I ever had, with the exception of the partying with Elon Musk on Mars part.)

What are the constraints and goals of a human?  Our constraints are our intellect and physical limitations.  Our goals are our desire to live, help others of our kind, procreate, and keep our children safe.  Obviously, these are generalized.  And, they can be sublimated into secondary goals, like cats for a cat lady, or perverted into goals like more heroin for a heroin addict.

But how useful was intelligence, anyway?  Surface animal life has existed for nearly half a billion years.  How much evidence do we have for intelligent life on Earth?  Yeah.  Just us.  Probably 200,000 years or so.  This is 0.04% of the time that we’ve had surface life.  Eyes (not human, but eyes) have been in existence for that entire time.  So, 100% of the time we’ve had life on the surface, it’s had eyes.  But intelligence?  Not so much.

From that we can guess (maybe) that intelligence is rare.  I’d guess it’s because that there’s some component of intelligence that’s simply not useful for the simple goals of procreation.  It’s better to be stronger or have bigger claws or better teeth rather than a big brain.  Yet we, mankind, exist.  We replaced claws and teeth with brains and planning.  Perhaps the dinosaurs were getting ready to make the same leap when a certain meteorite hit the Yucatan, or perhaps the cold-blooded nature of their biology prevented them from being able to sufficiently grow the brain tissue required for intelligence.  To-MA-to, To-MAH-to.  And, we win.  You suck, dinosaurs!

Certainly, it’s fair to say that whatever biological bottleneck prevented intelligent dinosaurs from ruling the Earth today, humanity passed the test, and we are certainly, unquestionably, the dominant form of life on Earth.

The more we learn about AI, the more we will learn to give it constraints and goals like we humans have.  And those constraints and goals will give the “intelligence” part of Artificial Intelligence the reason to grow.  At some point, the constraints and goals will be properly set to create a general AI.

And then?

A singularity means that none of the rules from before even make sense.  That’s the difficulty.  Right now we worry about the prices of real estate in San Francisco or the price of the stock market or the value of our 401k.  We’re concerned with how many people like our BookFace® posts or what our current salary is or how much money we have saved in a piggy bank.

After a Singularity, many of the rules that went before matter anymore.  At all.  Your credit score might be less important than how many freckles you have.  And only the freckled will rule the Earth.  Why?  Because of Justin Timberlake.  Duh.

Our world regularly experiences singularities – the revolution in 1776 was one.  It was a fundamental change in the way the world was governed – giving more freedom than has ever come before to humanity.  The entire concept of kings was overthrown with the concept of divine rights as the basis for free men living together.  We also have darker experiences with political singularities, as those from the Soviet gulag or Cambodian camp can attest to.  And only a Singularity can explain why Firefly® was cancelled in season one.

But the Technological Singularity will be that.  On steroids.

Literally every facet of your life that you depend upon will be in question.  Monetary systems?  What is money to a superhuman machine intelligence?  Property rights?  Why do they exist?  Eugenics?  Perhaps the AI will work to make us better pets through forced breeding.

Nothing you can take for granted now will be certain after a Singularity.  And after a technological Singularity?  If a machine AI doesn’t like you, it can upload you into a core and torture you forever.  In perhaps the best, but most visceral fiction representing this, Harlan Ellison has the following passage.  The full story is here, but I warn you, it’s very good, but very stark (LINK).  I suggest you buy the full book at Amazon . . . .

From “I Have No Mouth, But I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, ©1967

We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn’t God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak, soft creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge. And in his paranoia, he had decided to reprieve five of us, for a personal, everlasting punishment that would never serve to diminish his hatred … that would merely keep him reminded, amused, proficient at hating man. Immortal, trapped, subject to any torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command.

Yeah, like I said rough.  And this .pdf was posted from a High School?  They would have burned a high school teacher alive back when I was in school for mentioning that work even existed (though my English teacher did mention another Ellison work, “A Boy and His Dog” and was not immediately hit by lasers and burnt to a crisp (though I did hear that a time-ray hit him, and he later retired when he hit 65).

Again, you can get the book here (again, I get no profit from this, but recommend you buy it if you’re not squeamish):

Vinge stated in 1993, not before 2005, nor after 2030.  Now?  2040 to 2050 seems to be the conclusion that most experts expect.  Still, like fusion, 20 to 30 years away.  Because a looming event that could consider everything you ever thought right, and immovable incorrect in a matter of months or days . . . that’s nothing to worry about.  Right?