Our Pale Blue Dot…

Dear Friends,

See if you can detect the pale blue dot in a sunbeam. There is in this image our Earth seen from 6 billion miles away by a robot, Voyager 1, that was launched from Earth in 1977. Our home world is only one pixel in the image. Those of you with still keen eyes might discern a spot, a dust mote, a piece of cosmic lint stuck in the middle of the orange band of Sol's light beaming across the right of the frame. That is us and all we have ever known, both our cradle and perhaps our grave as a species.

This link will take you to a fine summary of the situation that is our present, past and future. It is recited in eloquent terms and precise cadence by a clever fellow by the name of Sagan.

Please do pass this on. Encourage your friends and neighbors to look to the stars and into each others' faces, to look down at the ground beneath their feet. You might suggest that we all put what we can see ALL together and arrange our affairs with a little more kindness as we circle 'round the sky.

Thank you, Dr. Sagan, Ad Astra

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Waiting for Mr. Death…

Broke Down Palace

Dear Friends,

I was just talking to a former colleague from the street. I asked how he was doing and he said that he just came out of the hospital and learned that he was going to die soon. "I'm dying", he said. I admitted that I was also, but likely not going to beat him to the door when the bell rang to let us out of school early. He chuckled and admitted that he'd heard that this Death Thing was going around.

My friend stands a head taller than I. He looked down at me with watery, yellowed eyes. He winked and said, "Yeah, drugs and alcohol might have been involved." We both laughed in a way that let us both catch our breath and step back from the abyss of Hard Facts were his liver was ground into paste and his brain hammered full of soggy holes.

A moment later we fell into talking about our shared but separate, now long ago, travels in The Grateful Dead Show. I was happy to tell him about something that I recently learned.

There is among the Shinto of Japan a legend quite like that of the old Celtic and European stories of the Grateful Dead that one might meet on lonesome highways through the dark forest. The Road can be long or too short, but it connects us all in our solitary traverse of this Life and that mystical path spans our terran orb.

Anyhow, my down on his luck buddy pledged to stick around until I could write him a proper elegy. I am a writer and unfortunately too expert and experienced in hashing out such material. I’ll do my friend proud, but I'm in no hurry for the occasion.

Hic Finis Est

SCS

Your Correspondent

An Election Autopsy…

Willard "Mitt" Romney

Dear Friends,

It’s been a few weeks since the recent Presidential election. Now that we’ve had a chance to observe the aftermath, it is time to perform the autopsy on the Romney/Ryan/Rove campaign. What have we learned?

Well, most obviously, the GOP gets its revenge in losing by eating its own. Sure, they gave old Dick Nixon another shot at the prize, but we saw how that turned out in the blaze of deliberate, plain stupid and public self immolation of his career and reputation. They shan't repeat that sort of error. Yes, no sooner was Mittens sent to rut in humiliating defeat by a skinny black guy with bigs ear and a funny name, a lousy economy limping too slowly into recovery, the longest war in our nation’s history wheezing to an indecisive end at the hands of folks who make bombs out of camel dung and kerosene, Romney started to plead that he was just misunderstood and Obama outbid him for the approval of Americans. Then the PigFest® began.

Swiftly his own people were upon him, gnawing at his skull, shredding his carcass with their angry beaks until his viscera lay in the hot sun hanging over the merciless, dusty Desert of Losers. The flesh between his ribs has become dried jerky and the vultures plucked his pearly whites from slack jaws. His eyeballs and liver, of course, were saved as appetizers for the Big Donors, but more on that in a moment.

As to Ryan? He is finished. This freakish product of a Star Trek transporter accident that melded the corporeal forms of Eddie Munster, Eddie Haskell and the pathological, wounded mind of a child terrified by the knowledge of his own mortality while loathing all of those who represent the prospect of Birth that inevitably begets Death, everyone his senior or possessing a vagina. Paul knows that he is on The List. He’s lying low in his secret bunker. He’s reading comic books with a flash light under the bed covers. He is fervently praying that Mother, the Great Teat of The Grand Old Party, will not crash his own party and grind his flesh to paste under her elephantine hooves for his very poor grades in civics class and A.P. Pandering to numb skulls.

Paul "Puppy" Ryan

Then there is the matter of Karl Rove. I will now join with my good friends on the other side of the aisle and help toss the fat punk's carcass into the frier before throwing the bones boiled and shorn of flesh into the dumpster. The most admirable and reliable behavior amongst these thugs is how they detest the aroma of a loser, the stink of defeat, and will swiftly abandon their own after getting nothing but derision for the three billion spent trying unsuccessfully to buy a nation.

Karl "Porky" Rove

Qui Fueunt Sed Nunc Ad Astra, G.O.P.

SCS

Thoughts on Secession in 2012

Dear Mr. President,

I understand that a number of folks in several states in our union are unhappy that you won reelection to the Presidency. These states have citizens who have signed petitions to secede from our nation’s union. I’d like to help you out here. The following is a suggestion for an address that you might offer to our nation on this topic. By all means, do feel free to have the folks in the black suits airdropped from black helicopters seize all television, cable, radio and Internet operating centers to ensure that each citizen in our citadel of freedom has the opportunity to watch, listen to and digest this message.

With Warm Regards and Unflinching Support,

Steven C. Solomon

To: President Barack Obama

Fr: SCS

Re: Go F^*k Off Texas

Dt: 11/15/2012

Please pass this on to your staff, Mr. President. I believe it is a dandy concept, at least a sketch of a speech that needs to be made.

“My fellow Americans, I interrupt this baseball game (Kathy Lee and Hoda, soap opera, idiots yammering on Fox News, etc and whatever) to bring you an important message. It has come to my attention that a number of folks in several states of America are sore about the fact that a guy with a funny name and is supposedly black or not and born in America or Kenya, is an atheist and Islamic, a transexual married to a man and a woman, and is a communist who wants to kill your grandmother is still President. Okay. That makes total sense. Nobody likes to lose a race of any kind. Now you want to secede from the United States of America

In any case, I will focus my remarks today on the state of Texas for the sake of simplicity. I understand that you folks in the red states require any help that I can provide in terms of focus and keeping things simple. I am, after all, the Chief Executive of Helping Explain the Obvious to Cranky Idiots. So, here goes!

Now, Texas, you can petition the Congress to secede. I’ll begin with the upsides of letting you do just that. Then I will move on to the counter argument.

Well, first, please write Uncle Sam a check for your portion of the national debt. We’d also like the roads, bridges, ports and airports we built back. Pack up the military bases and all the folks that work at and for them. You have an outstanding account regarding your citizens’ payments to Social Security, FICA and Medicare/Medicaid since the date of your declaration of secession. You need to settle up on that. Oh, and what about the bills due on support for your substandard and ill administrated systems of higher and K-12 education. Also, we want all the food back that we bought for your poor, as well as the medication for the disabled since you decided to break up our relationship.

Then there is the matter of subsidies to your oil and chemical industries. They might prefer to move their operations elsewhere in a more profitable economic climate. Mexico might look good. On the other hand, maybe Mexico would prefer to just buy the infrastructure and move their workers up your way. Yes, we know how much you’ve enjoyed that cheap labor, but now those guys will be your bosses.

Oh, you do get to keep the Alamo in this deal. Well, unless the new landlords tear it down to build condos for drug kingpins and former Latin American dictators. That will be your problem and the rest of your former nation will see about a trillion dollars returned to the Federal government. Yes, we downsized as you wished and are financially better for it.

Now, there is another way to scratch this itch that you have, this desire to reinstate the failed Republic of Texas. Let’s look to history as the issue presently on the table is not new. Indeed, it was settled by Congress, the Supreme Court, another tall, skinny guy with big ears in the Oval Office, and the most horrific war up to its point in history. Remember the Civil War? I’m a professor by training, so I’m going to give you a history lesson in terms that even folks challenged by a public system of education that teaches that Jesus rode around on dinosaurs and that the world is 6,659 years old can understand it.

So, forget about Honest Abe as the President. He’s a short order cook in this presentation. Picture old Gus at the Mope On Inn Diner. He knows how to whip up an omelet in a jiffy; a three egg omelet. He knows that you got to break the eggs to make that omelet.

The first egg is a vision that dates to the founders of this nation, The United States. Those folks back in 1776 had a concept for a nation that would be a democratic republic and span the entire continent to serve as a beacon of freedom for the entire globe. They saw the resurrection of an ideal not executed in two thousand years: free people sharing their commonwealth (think about that word) and collectively executing the will of the majority without trampling on the wishes of a minority.

The second egg is the notion that what this nation is about will never be altogether achieved but always strived for. We will always work toward that more perfect union that remains forever on the horizon as a goal. The nation had to be united and the our states indivisible lest we might as well have just thrown away that first egg.

The third egg was delivering the People’s franchise in those first two efforts. Everybody, every man and woman of whatever race, religion or no religion, wherever they came from on this planet or in this land had to have skin in the game. Else wise, those first two eggs got busted for nothing. Half a million folks would die in bloodshed beyond what any in Lincoln’s time could have yet imagined and half the nation would lay in utter ruin for no purpose. Thankfully, Lincoln was a fine short order cook.

So, Texas, here’s your omelet. Don’t worry about splashing it with pepper sauce. You can have extra onions if that pleases. Some folks like their’s with beans and tangy cheese. You can have it any way you want it, but you do have to sit with the other folks that amble into The Mope On Inn and abide by their chatter.

Thank you and good tidings to all in our United States.”

The Future is Now!

Dear Friends,

I present to you at no charge an exclusive look into the recent past, our present and near future as it may be. I am no mind reader nor savant of any kind. I cannot reliably prognosticate nor see into the future. I just read the writing writ upon the mists of Time as the river flows by.

Since the simultaneous rise of electronic computing, advances in modern prosthetics, medicine, surgery and brain science it has been a recently realizable dream to meld Human with machine. You encounter the present result each day when you notice an individual with a small neural implant on the back of his skull attached to a microphone in his ear. That part looks like a hearing aid. The implant’s interface to his brain looks like he’s pasted a quarter-sized piece of Silly Putty® to the left rear of his head, just above the hairline. He is a deaf person given the chosen gift of hearing by technology. He is a Cyborg; a Man Machine.

He is not alone. Today you are starting to see folks with funny looking glasses. They are blind but they can see by means of machine vision that communicates through digital to analog pulses to their Visual Cortex. It doesn’t work all that well yet, but it hold the promise of much better performance. Why settle for normal Human vision when you could toggle a switch to see like a butterfly or bee, see into the radio spectrum or perceive a night sky full of Gamma Ray Bursters making the best fireworks you could hope for?

Meanwhile, a lady in a wheelchair, a paraplegic, took the first sip of orange juice she’d had in thirty years without the help of an aide whom she communicated with only by blinking her eyes. She recently simply thought about having that beverage and a computer wired into her head told a disembodied robotic arm on a rolling table by her bed to give her some refreshment. It obeyed. She controlled a machine that, albeit temporarily, was part of her. She did it by wishing for a drink. That simple.

Well, it wasn’t really that simple. To get to this point of modest Human/Machine integration, a code had to be cracked. It’s the toughest code we know of this side of >Why and How Does Anything Exist?<. The code I refer to is the code of our most basic cerebral and sub-cerebral nervous functioning. It is the code clacking, gurgling and ticking behind our every physical and verbal expression, our very thoughts, both conscious and unconscious. A machine with such capacity would truly be a Mind Reader. Such machines have already been demonstrated in prototype to construct the words that a person is thinking and shine digital images of their visual imagination on fluorescing screens.

Flash forward to 2016. The United States unveils the federally mandated Mind Meters® to be installed in every airport, every ATM, every 7-11 and intersection where there is a stop light. Citizens can no longer get to the curb from the cab without having their minds scanned.

What sort of problems will pop up when brain scanners are perfected and installed on every corner. How will my nation’s economy and social fabric be ravaged as millions of folks from all walks of life leave their jobs to take online courses so that they might qualify as a Homeland Security Mind Readers and thus be able read the rampant pornographic thoughts of airline passengers and all the folks at banks or just walking down Main Street during lunch hour?

Surgeons will leave anesthetized patients in mid-appendectomy on the operating table. Lawyers and real estate speculators will leave money on the proverbial table to lunge at this new opportunity. The food service industry will become bereft of illegal immigrants working the dish washers as they flock toward the opportunity to find out what other illegal immigrants are really thinking about that skinny girl in the summer dress. “Is it what am I thinking or even dirtier?” Grandmothers will abandon their charges in bassinets to examine the secret thoughts of those swarthy fellows with their Mind Meters® as they also mine the imaginations of the very proper business man visualizing a lady’s underwear as she in turn tunes in a “suspect” for a reading of his response to another’s response to the response of another grooving to the spike heels of that “looker” as he ponders what’s on top of those long legs and her girlfriend monitors the entire situation. Teachers will ignore their classes while staring out the window to relentlessly scan the visual imaginations of folks on the town’s streets for signs of secret assignations underway while the kiddies are doodling on the margins of forty year old text books.

The economy will collapse, as will our culture, in a heaving sigh of an infinite loop consuming its own tail. No real work will get done. Children will be left unfed, ill educated and unattended. Every aspect of our civic life will be corroded. Commerce will sputter and belch and eventually swoon in a faint like a Victorian lady mortified that her bloomers were showing at the grand ball.

Oh, that has already happened. We don’t have to wait for 2016 and the perfection of Mind Meters®.

Hic Finis Est,

SCS

Remember Richard Noble, Our Veterans, Wars Well Over…

Dear Friends,

Remembrance Day in England and Canada is on November 11^th. It’s like what we in the USA used to call Armistice Day and, after the Second World War, Veterans Day. Most of my country’s citizens have no idea where Flanders Field is or that it was the battleground for one of the lousiest and most brutal battles of World War One. It is the site commemorated by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae in his poem “In Flanders Field” that bestowed upon us the tradition of old veterans handing out red paper poppies on a day that honors their service and the sacrifice that they, their comrades and friends and their families have made.

It is said that the broad territory of Flanders, fought over tooth and nail with every weapon from the newfangled tank to bayonets and bare hands, sprouted in an abundance of tiny crimson flowers as the soldiers’ last blood had seeped into the soil and silence fell. There was no sound but the wailing of the wounded and the far away weeping of mothers and lovers.

Reminded of this story, I have to mention Richard Noble. I met him when I was about thirty years old. He was then over ninety. He was the first American pilot to fly into that terrible rain of shit called World War One. He had to learn French before leaving the family farm in Hadley, Mass. He then had to spend his past few month's savings to take a boat to France and talk his way into getting a pilot's license. The USA did not issue them as it had no military air force nor commercial air. Then he had to talk the freshly minted RAF into giving him a Sopwith Camel from which he could drop grenades from the open cockpit of his rickety and infernal beast made of cloth and slats of wood with a load of sputtering steel weighing down its barely controllable craziness in flight. He tossed those little bombs down on guys close enough to rip up his flying machine with large caliber rifles and gatling guns and thus kill him after first inflicting a lot of bloody hurt. 

I was privileged to meet this guy. Even as he neared the century mark, he was ram rod straight and brighter than a full Moon on a still, clear night. I do not recommend war, I argue against most, but there are occasions when I get reminded not to confuse the war with the warrior. If you got folks coming home from war, I recommend just thanking them for their service and seeing where the conversation might lead, if anywhere. You both might learn something that was unexpected.

Hic Finis Est,

SCS

Surviving Sandy…

Dear Friends,

I am writing to let you all know that I have survived Hurricane Sandy. Despite reports in the region’s papers and other media, I have not perished in a flood such as we have not seen in Western Mass in half a millennium. Indeed, it was touch and go with the unseasonably warm evenings and a slight drizzle. But, the full Moon peeking through the hazy clouds offered reassurance that the Universe had not ceased to exist and I still survived to ponder and distress at the dreadful news floating through the wires and air waves that still worked with the electricity that continued to surge miraculously to power my computers, cell phones and television sets proclaiming the horribility and certain doom that had beset me.

I enjoyed a cold seltzer from the fridge that amazingly still had a light on inside it. Between commercials on the cable news, I repeatedly checked on the status of that light. I finished the chicken salad and sat in the bath tub with a door torn from its hinges for some hope of safety in the ongoing apocalypse. Then it stopped drizzling and my wife knocked on the busted door and asked me to go to the store for some ice cream. I brazed the nonexistent storm to find a young lady from Pakistan tending the counter at the 7/11. She surely is made of sterner stuff than I. Yes, those people know the difference between drizzle and a monsoon.

Of course, I understand that folks just to the south of my home got a bit of a whacking from Mother Nature. I’m sorry for your troubles. I must, however, point out that if you live in a place with Ocean or Beach in it’s name, or if you are on an island in the middle of the second largest body of water on the planet, you will get wet and inconvenienced when a hurricane blows in. Oh, and try not to put your trains in tunnels next to rivers adjoining the 17,543,940,979,332,434 gallons of water weighing 170,543,940,,979,332,434 pounds (give or take an ounce or two). Don’t expect your power to stay on when your power stations are down by those rivers and in bunkers below sea level. If at all possible, try not to drive down a darkened street flowing with a torrent of waist high water as fallen electric lines spark and arc across the hood of your car. If you are in a basement apartment and tidal waves are crashing against your windows, pray later and run away immediately. These are just a few suggestions that I can offer in service to public safety.

Thirty-five folks perished as Sandy loped with predictable and lazy determination to expend her surfeit of global warming energy upon the East Coast. Meanwhile in the time she took to do her work, about a thousand folks died in America from less foreseeable circumstances; car and industrial accidents.

In conclusion, I will implore my many concerned friends across the globe to relax. I am safely ensconced in my lair one-hundred-thirty-eight feet above sea level and a good piece from the river. What we just experienced with this hurricane was not the worst storm in my own short memory of fifty-seven years on the planet. It was not even close. It was more an amalgam of poor engineering, poor preparedness and plain old dumbosity. Oh, and thank you to our regional and national media for killing millions of dollars in business and ruining the education of our kids for two days while you sold hemorrhoid medications and comfy soft toilet tissues every seven minutes between blasting the networks with made up news.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Ad Astra George McGovern

Dear Friends,

We lost George McGovern last night. The guy was a true hero in war and for peace. Like so many of his comrades, he did not speak much about what he did to earn his medals of valor in WW2. He did not, however. discount the record that he once brought home in one piece the crew of the B-24 Liberator bomber that he piloted with one engine shot off and another aflame, 110 bullet holes drilled through the craft. But, he did not make much of that.

He did describe his time in war a hell, and by his subsequent devotion to peace and giving food and care to those that suffered in war, in poverty, in hunger, I surmise that he was conscious of not only the hell he endured, but those caught up in all the world's wars.

He went on to endure a second hell, going toe to toe with the most ruthless President our nation has yet known. He dared a man with atom bombs and the world's biggest secret police to an honest fight. His opponent was so cowered by McGovern's courage that he resorted to dirty tricks and thievery to win the battle and thus ultimately lost everything. In the course of this domestic battle, of course, Nixon plunged an entire region of Asia into war and killed more than 4 million innocents. Nixon delivered the very hell that McGovern had warned of and knew too well.

But, George never expressed bitterness about that defeat. As in WW2, possibly the only war that we might generously call a good war in our recent history as a nation, McGovern was clad in the armor of humility and a good sense of humor as he returned from the battlefield. This guy George was, indeed, a hero and he dared against all odds. We lost a good one last night. I'm very grateful to have been around in his time.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Senator and Hero George McGovern

Kindness and Attention…

Dear Friends,

This has been a sort of heavy day. See, I've had a few folks pass on in the recent months; down and outers and bounders and such sort that I know perhaps too well. 

Anyhow, if you got some time, take a walk down the street and toss 

a dime or two to folks that might be asking. Maybe drop them a loaf of bread or candy bar. It doesn't matter if they are really vets or not, if they claim to be pregnant and are likely not or if they are how they got into such a fix. Whatever. If you live in a town with a Ferry Street (most do), head down to the river or the shore.

You'll see tents and sleeping bags in the scruff of the woods. Throw some more bread around if you got it to spare. Maybe give one of those folks down by the water some due; just a hello. That will matter even more than a quarter or a piece of bread. You likely won't get hurt and it will be the best thing you can do for yourself all day.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Spiritual and Cranky!

Dear Friends,

I got pretty cranky yesterday morning when I encountered a commentary by this yutz, Alan Miller, on CNN calling folks who were "spiritual but not religious" lazy and timid. Hey, boss, you take a look at a Universe that stretches from before the beginning of time and all the way to the end of time. See a universe that is one of an infinite variety and multitude but has perfected itself to create Human eyes and Human minds that seek to comprehend it and all the other possible creations in every possible dimension within and without time. Look into the near emptiness of space and see Reality being born out of that emptiness adjacent to dark stars that drink up even the aether of light born out of nothingness.

In this Universe matter is mostly unseen and most light dark, most truth must left be unspoken about the hidden mysteries on worlds beyond our dreams begging to be revealed in a place where Space and Light bend and few so-called facts can be trusted from our vantage. We cannot know where and how fast It becomes new or old or not at all; no more than that cat in a box that has puzzled us since those cats Heisenberg and Schroeder dreamt it up or not. The end of the story of that cat does or does not forever live in a book that has no beginning nor end.

So, stand there at the edge of a sky with new stars birthing new planets and look at them. Stand alone without some old man in a throne above the clouds of our piece of lint in the Cosmos, this pale blue dot, our home world circling an unremarkable star at the tenuous fringe of one galaxy swirling amongst a trillion others. Now, tell me that I am lazy and timid. Brother, what I just described is where I live and it is not a place for the timid. To you I say, welcome home.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Tasting Comets…

Comet Kohoutek Seen from Earth in CE 1973

Dear Friends,

Have you every tasted a comet? I bet you have. When you were a little kid, did you ever stick your tongue out as a snowflake fell in a blizzard? That tiny bit of water melting in an instant upon your tongue was from a comet. Have you ever mopped your brow after an afternoon of playing in the sun? That salty and sweet flavor of sweat came from a comet. Have you been to the sea? All those gazillions of tons and 1.3 sextillion liters of water and much of the stuff of our own beings and every living thing we know came from countless comets falling through ancient winds in an orange sky of nitrogen and methane and ammonia to deliver us water and the chemistry of life. When you inhale that breeze on the surf, you are breathing a comet.

That surf you feel vibrating at about one and a half cycles per second is the vibration of our Home World’s Moon bouncing around Terra as it wobbles about old Sol. It is also a cerebral sound; it is the frequency of our Human minds at rest and in meditation. It is no wonder that we can sit for hours or lie with our eyes closed under the Sun listening to that beat. Listen long enough without distraction and your own pulse cleaves to that rhythm. It slows. You are at Home under the arc of a heaven that once rained down comets.

Hic Finis Est,

SCS

Paul Ryan's Mind…

Dear Friends,

I am not a mental health professional, but I am a writer. Thus I know and can explain the narrative of this sick punk's story clearly. He's a hurt little puppy who has seen all of the older men in his family, including his dad, die in their mid-fifties. He resents his mother who had to adopt the role of authority in his life as he was tutored by priests on the inferiority of women.

He deeply fears growing old and thus perversely worships his own male body by torturing it to excess. In the disguise of perfecting it, he self-flagellates like the celibate monk that he is not and can never be given his obsession with sex and the unknowable power in a woman's womb that he strives unsuccessfully to control. He is hiding behind the smile of a man terrified of his mortality as he bargains with the very devil of his imagining that he seeks to defeat. He is doomed and lashing out against the unstoppable future. This dude's way in life makes the deal that Faust struck look like a good bet.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Neil Armstrong, Ad Astra

Neil Armstrong, Ad Astra

Dear Friends,

One of my heroes died yesterday afternoon. You might have heard of him. He might be one of your heroes, as well. That is likely if you were a thirteen year old boy on July 20, 1969. His name was Neil Armstrong. He was the steely eyed missile man who flew a space ship clear to the Moon and was the first Human to touch its face, to trod its dust under his boot heels and come back home with a trove of dumb old, very old rocks.

Armstrong had previously shown his mettle flying fighter planes over Korea, blasting toward the edge of space in rocket planes that nobody was sure would real work, and safely landing a crazy contraption called the Gemini 8 that spun out of control one hundred and four miles from Terra Firma. It was spinning at one revolution per second while coupled to another craft. He and his crew mate could barely see straight, their eyeballs bulging and heads swimming from the force of the gyrations. Armstrong could hardly lift his right hand and hit the small button to turn the damned machine off. He worried that he might vomit into his space helmet and thus suffocate, but did manage to do what a real test pilot always wishes to do. He got himself and his partner back down on the ground in one piece.

About three years later on Armstrong faced a couple of other challenges not anticipated in his training to make a landing on Luna. First off, there were then no really good maps of their intended place of touch down. As they, he, the Commander, and Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong’s pilot, descended to the surface they found that the supposedly safe terrain was littered with boulders and craters. They had overshot their place of supposed safety and were running low on fuel. Neil and Buzz, saying not a word to each other as they kept mission control a quarter of a million miles away apprised of the mess, morphed into a four armed, quadruple-eyed single pilot. One took control of the altitude of their little craft, and the other manned the joystick controlling its forward motion. With less than half a minute of fuel left, they made a safe landing. Had they not, their craft made with a skin as thin as a foil wrapper on a piece of chewing gum, would have become their coffin… and not a very fine coffin as expensive as it was.

Anyhow, once down on the surface, they were told to get some sleep. Who can make a perilous journey to land on the friggin’ Moon and then want to take a nap? They refused their orders and got dressed for a little jaunt. Of course, they had to take along that danged American flag to plant and their first problem was getting the thing stuck into the hard lunar soil so goddamn President Nixon could interrupt their work on a useless task for the TV camera for a useless interview with the “boys” to be telecast and recorded on a tape that would be lost in an obscure closet somewhere yet to be discovered in Texas… or maybe California… or maybe Florida. These guys just risked their necks to get to the Moon and they had to stop what they were doing to pose for a dumb ass TV commercial for a crooked politician.

Whatever. The fellahs did get back to work. Buzz spent a good deal of time doing what seemed to be the Bunny Hop as he figured out how to move around in those ridiculous suits that were like balloons you wore. Neil got most of the chores with the digging and laying out experiments as his pilot looked like he was high on nitrous oxide at a Grateful Dead show before that camera. Then they had to go back into their rickety little Moon Ship for that snooze before going back up to the orbiting command capsule… if the rocket in their own ship would light as promised.

That proved to be a problem. The rocket was actually in fine shape, but Buzz bumped into the switch that turned it on when he was getting back into the Lunar Module. It broke off. Fortunately, he had a Bic pen. He took off the cap and jammed it into the switch. They were on their way back home. Buzz is still both proud and abashed by this episode, forty-three years later.

So, the guys, Armstrong and Aldrin and the command module pilot, Mike Collins, head back home in what had become at this point, well, essentially a flying outhouse. After six days with about as much personal space as a phone booth provides… things were getting a little stinky. When the recovery crew opened the hatch to the Apollo 11 capsule, they almost lost their lunch. No portion of a trip to the Moon and back, including prying three adventurers out of their tiny space craft is for sissies.

Next came the quarantine in a little trailer home. The astronauts needed to be isolated to protect the crew of the aircraft carrier that had picked them up from imaginary space bugs. The thing was hermetically sealed but fitted with a large picture window so Nixon, yes him again, could drop on by to have the plucky boys make another TV ad for him. He took a short break from compiling lists of Jews and other enemies, plotting burglaries and assassinations to say how proud he was of the brave Americans confined to a silver tube on wheels after spending seven days at the edge of Death at every moment, with each flip of a switch, with every move in a terribly confined space with no escape. Now, they were trapped yet again having to put up with Nixon.

Of course, Nixon had almost nothing to do with the guys triumphant and daring trip to the surface of the Moon and back. The men who actually engineered the politics and economics required to perform such a feat, JFK and LBJ, were either murdered or banished in disgrace. Nixon’s joy at this reality was barely concealed behind his smug and clueless pronouncement of the achievement that he shared with the brave explorers. They put up with his nonsense and went back to their jobs, now essentially working as lab rats being examined to see if they would die some hideous death from an alien microbial beasty.  The boys were good natured about living in their terrarium like some exhibit at a zoo. They played a lot of cards and gave interviews over the phone and did their best to explain what they had done and experienced to the folks back at NASA and JPL, and to the world.

After being let out of the big test tube, the guys were sent to perform in parades and publicity functions. They pretty much hated that. When the hoopla was done, they each went their own ways. Buzz had a hard time for a while: depression and much booze. He eventually rebounded to become the preeminent Celestial Mechanic of our age. His ideas might finally get us to Mars. Collins went on to a life of public service and as a business leader in the private sector. Armstrong took a path rather different than his two colleagues who sailed with him to the Moon and back.

He moved back to his home in Ohio and became an engineering professor at a little state college. He seldom made public appearances but for showing up in class on time. He taught young people about the practical matters of solving little problems or hard problems for folks; making devices that might just become pieces of the next great space ship or a washing machine.

Armstrong could have cashed in his golden ticket of fame. He did not. He chose to make a modest living as a teacher and tend to his family and community. He touched the face of the Moon, but he chose to be firmly planted and steady to his principles right here on Earth. He humbly demonstrated to us all how to be Human when an entire planet assumes that you are more than Human. A little light went out of the world with the departure of a modest, brave and hard working man. Tonight or any night, if it is clear and the Moon is high, give that piece of rock and dust a wink and nod. One of our kind dared go there first and stomp gentle on its rough hide.

Hic Finis Est

SCS

Coming Soon…

Dear Friends,

Coming soon to an electronic bookshelf near you…

©SCS

Talk nice-like. At least be clever…

Dear Friends,

Willard "Mitt" Romney

A couple of days ago an old friend of mine posted a question on Facebook. It read…

Why in the world would white working class people support Mitt Romney? Besides any echoes of racism I mean.

I replied…

See, what'cha got here is the basic crisis in American public education. About half the folks in this great country presently suffering the Mystery that is Democracy thinking that it is a dandy idea to give a filthy rich criminal all of their money and turn over to him the keys to a nuclear arsenal so he can realize his avowed dream of ushering in a New Kingdom of Zion ruled by a worldwide Mormon theocracy as outlined by the lunatic Joe Smith while camping in upstate NY in the 1860s where an angel named Maroni from a secret planet gave him super-double secret tablets of gold that he could not show to anybody else but had instructions for making magical underpants and how to take a bath before praying and stealing the souls of dead Jews. It all makes total sense in this context.

To this a friend we have in common commented in no uncertain terms…

Romney’s a total fake-poser-moron. A fat-ass phony piece of shit garbage asshole. Thanks for reading. PEACE.

After some thought, I replied again… 

I'm thinking of your last post, my friend, and how we use words. I trade in words. That's my business. I like to toss them like the anvils that fall out of the sky on Wily Coyote or the pianos that tumble from skyscrapers to ring with a crash and a thud unheard in an old Buster Keaton movie as he walks blissfully down the street.

For me, some precision is needed in aiming these weapons of literary destruction and obstruction. Simply name calling and cussing will persuade nobody and reduce we of good heart to the level that thugs like Romney and Gingrich and their ilk live in; a scummy pool of vitriol. When you hurl those words, please gloss them with some wit. Be as bad ass mean as you intend, but keep your wits about you. Drench those words in a syrup so sweet that those that torment us, steal from us, cheat and lie can’t help but be embarrassed by the truer than true reality of your words and the fact that they liked them because they just felt right and true.

Those bastards know what is true; most of them do. They know that their own parents would be ashamed of their foul behavior. So, don’t give those creeps a break. Don’t lose discipline. Work hard with every word you utter and keep it out of the gutter no matter how pissed off you get… even if you are as angry as I am tonight.

When Gandhi, who Winston Churchill termed a little man in diapers, took down the British Lion and unlocked the chains on the territories of the empire, he did it without firing a gun nor throwing a single punch with anything other than well chosen, often clever words delivered with an unfailing smile. He embarrassed the mightiest nation on the planet into just going home to lick their wounds. In the little dust up we got with global commercial enterprises, the same tactics can work if we keep our wits about us and lend our queer shoulders to the wheel.

Thanks to Allen Ginsberg for the purloined line. Words are fun!

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Attention: Voters in the United States of America!

Dear Friends,

This man is a dangerous, unprincipled, compulsive liar and a religious fanatic He believes that it is his destiny to usher in a "New Jerusalem on Earth" to create a global theocracy administered by the priests of The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). This mission will be accomplished following an apocalypse in the ancient Holy Land. Thus it was foretold to crazy Joe Smith by an angel named Maroni and supposedly from another planet while the extraterrestrial angel was vacationing in the woods of upstate New York.

Willard "Mitt" Romney

We cannot allow this lunatic have his hands on nuclear weapons. Let me make it really plain: we do not want this bozo to have his finger on the button that will provide him with what he believes are God given tools to invoke Armageddon. If you doubt this, do your own research on The Church o' LDS.

I should finally add, I don't personally give a damn what anybody believes. I'm an atheist and all religions seem pretty whacky to me. From animists to onion heads in saffron robes, any stripe of Christian, the several of Islam, folks that pray to elephant headed fat guys, the several flavors of Jews that I grew up with… the entire spectrum. All I'm saying is that it is not a good idea to give a deceitful yokel who is looking forward to the end of The World the means to pull off such a stunt.  

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS 

A Little Tidbit From the Archives…

Dear Friends,

Below is a little piece of work from ages ago, put on this digital mantlepiece for safe keeping. See if you can tell what it is about…

Hint! Think Greek ;-)

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

The Crisis in America

Dear Friends,

There’s been a lot of talk, gnashing of teeth, sympathy expressed, and just plain foolishness spewed after the shootings in Colorado. I’d like to make a few points from my own perspective as clear as possible.

Hand guns and assault weapons are horribly imprecise weapons. Assault weapons, semi-automatic rifles of large caliber, make up for the deficiency in their accuracy by spewing a large number of lethal projectiles in a big hurry. Pistols are good for making hamburger out of human flesh at close range.


At long range, except in the hands of a well trained shooter with good vision, time on his hands and a clean shot at a well lit enemy; well? They are not reliable at hitting the intended target. This ain’t like it seems watching western movies.

I can tell you this most assuredly, as I have had the opportunity to train on hand guns. I’ve also had the stimulating experience of being fired upon. I am grateful that pistols make very poor weapons at any range aside from those circumstances found on a target field.  Else wise, I would not presently have a head on my shoulders to make this report.

In any case, the idea of arming ordinary citizens without real training, I mean REAL TRAINING as a deterrent to psychopathic criminals or even just plain thugs is absurd. First, a nut case who is intent on spraying a crowd with bullets, tear gas, and is wearing a flak jacket, helmet and a gas mask, is likely not afraid of seeing his corpse on the evening news. He’s wagering that he won’t be around to see that news and/or is so far gone that he really hasn’t thought things out all too well.

Second, letting loose more lead flying in a darkened theater full of panicked and wounded people is only likely to cause more carnage. Even in simple situations, a home burglary, a bored perimeter guard on duty at a Marine base in Guam, a kid trying out his new BB gun, whatever, four out of five gun shots are taken in accidents. It is seldom the intended target that gets the bullet. More often it is either the baby sleeping in the room next door or the terrified homeowner plugging his own foot.

So, let’s please get a grip. More weapons of carnage, good for nothing but making holes in people and most likely to kill the innocent, are not going to make anybody more safe. We can honor the spirit of the 2^nd Amendment in such a way as we do the 4^th (we do allow folks to have their car registration and driver’s licenses revoked) and stop this homicidal nonsense.

Oh, one last thing! This guy Holmes, this mutant freak, this damaged child managed to get thrown out of one gun shop while trying to buy weapons acting “weird and making monkey noises”, got thrown off a rifle range for the same sort of simian gesticulations and behaving like a “frightened animal” in the weeks before his attack. Nobody called the cops. No. The gun shop owner referred him to a web site to get his six thousand rounds of ammo. His neighbors watched him tote in enough explosives and grenades and weapons to blow up the entire building and kill hundreds of people. Nobody called the cops.

I’m no fan of the cops where it concerns my own ill behavior, but they are there for a reason. Next time you see a kid toting heavy weapons, an old guy taking a little kid into the shower, don’t keep quiet. Don’t call the guy’s boss, a football coach. Screw your head on and don’t wait for a neighbor to make the call. You are the neighbor or the friend or the coach. It will be less embarrassing to be wrong, if your judgement is not right, than see a little girl shot or another ten year old boy raped in the shower.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

A Furthur Experiment?

Dear Friends,

Well, I'm still noodling about with Flying Meat's Acorn image editing toy with my Mac's iSight Camera. I'm getting a grip on the palette of filters and controls. I might actually know how to do something on purpose in the next few days, but I think that I'll take a break to do some writing. Hopefully my fingers, eyes and what constitutes my still existing cerebrum will retain what I've learned in this digital finger painting. Anyhow, I recommend Acorn to anybody who doesn't always need the full features of PhotoShop, and will be happy for a lightweight and easy to learn editor.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

More Nonsense with Digital Photos…

Dear Friends,

I am slowly getting a grasp of this excellent, cheap piece of imaging software; Acorn from Flying Meat, a purveyor of excellent and cheap software… um, that is redundant and superfluous and hence required no repeating again over again. Whatever.

I am a big fan of "good-enuf" tech. In most situations a left-handed crowbar will solve whatever problem confronts you. When I have more time I'll tell you about getting my uncle Murray straightened out. We did not need any iPhone crapola and fancy pants waterproof bumpers. Just a crowbar that fit snug in my left dexter which is, to you lay people, sinister. Yeah, that's another story and another topic that entails some lexicography which you don't want… or so I am to presume.

Whatever. In playing around with various filters in this $50 piece of fine  digital junk in my juvenile way, using nothing but the crummy iSight camera on my new MacBook Air and that previously mentioned excellent and cheap software, I have created the following image to annoy my long suffering beloved, a fine art photographer of great repute who remarkably puts up with my infantile verbal and digital antics with or without photographs and pictures nor being redundant again once more again.

She took one look at this and sniffed and walked away all haughty-like, like she knows art when she sees it or makes it with her camera all filmy-like and okay, right, she has more talent in her pinky toe than I do in my whole skull. Whatever. I did manage to turn myself here into an alien feline without actually having to do the genetic transformation after getting probed by those aliens that keep landing in my back yard. I don't believe that they really have any lollipops on that ship and I am not going to follow those big eyed, big headed little silver bastards up that gang plank for an extraterrestrial enema.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Some More Photographic Silliness…

Dear Friends,


In casting about for a cheap or free alternative to Photoshop I've had the chance to "finger paint" with a palette of tools. None on their own really fits the bill, but it's been fun to play with my Mac's FaceTime camera and various digital widgets. I'm still looking forward to Digimage's update to ColorIt. Yes, still waiting for that excellent, reasonably priced and bloatware free software to come to the latest OS X. Yes, I've played around with GIMP. It's excellent, free and overloaded with features that I don't need for my humble purposes.

SCS

© Solomon

Simple Toys for Simple Minds…

Dear Friends,

Finally got around to some goofiness with my MacBook Air's FaceTime camera and Photo Booth. Simple toys for simple minds…

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Thank You, Turing!

Dear Friends,


If the sun rises tomorrow, it will herald what would have been the 100th birthday of Alan Turing. He was a hero and an enigma, a gift to humanity who gave us all of his own gifts, but was scorned and persecuted by the men to whom he gave those treasures in his own brief time. His best efforts were bequeathed to the future.

He saved millions of lives and helped end the most horrible war that our species has ever waged. I could not now be touching so many folks' thoughts nor their hearts with the flicks on the keys of this little computer that has at its basis an invention of his mind. For billions of us, without Turing, we would never know each other through this seemingly magical medium of expanded mind.

Yes, this fellow had a fine mind, strange but a very generous one. I think I'll go buy an apple tomorrow, take one bite out of it and put a little candle by the core, wishing the too long gone hero a happy birthday.


Hic Finis Est,


SS

A Vision?

Dear Friends,

Last evening I could not sleep. I was possessed by a vision. I think it was a vision. I apprehended eleven dimensional space folding upon itself like a crumpled piece of maroon linen to a crux of four dimensions such as the reality that we Humans experience. This fabric drew itself in so that the dimensions beyond our normal "reality" were in such close contact to each other that there was no resistance or "space" as we think of it between them.

In this space, Mind was born. That Mind had something like an intention, although in the friction-free and superconducting environment of unified dimensions, intention was not really required. It just was and was doing It without doing anything but being. It just seemed reasonable to me as I saw this image and it ate my own consciousness, that Mind is what Space/Time does and it folds up all the dimensions that we can see and experience into this "thing" that presents Itself as a Human mind. We, our consciousness, are solid Space/Time.

Now, I'm no physicist. I can even do arithmetic, never mind math. I do have a pretty good grasp of physics for dummies, string theory and such for the garage metaphysician, and I have read a bit of  Sir Roger Penrose's ruminations on his proposed quantum basis for consciousness. I have been reading a bit of more recent writings by Michio Kaku and Brian Greene on current ideas in cosmology and quantum weirdness on the super-duper-itty-microscopic level of the Multiverse. But, I am not equipped to provide a shred of data supporting the veracity, if any exists, behind my gut feeling that consciousness is simply something that The Universe likes to do.

Oh, and I'm not of a religious bent, either. This was not like Our Lady of Fatima came to me and kept me up all night. It might have been fun to tipple a jug of sangria with the old bat, but that was not the nature of this powerful insight. It's odd that the crumpled fabric of dimensions seen and unseen would be dusky. No white light. It was just Isness without ornamentation. It was like a bar napkin you might blow your nose with and throw away and, at the same time, as permanent as the very fabric of Reality, as impossible for me to deny as the Arrow of Time.

Yeah, that's the last thing about this little experience. I felt Time loosed from the other dimensions to help them on their ways, so Everything could happen. Nope, no drugs were involved. I had nothing spicy to eat before retiring to my comfy bed. Whatever the hell happened, I think this experience might be in the category of what old Alduos Huxley termed a gratuitous grace.

I'm a lucky guy. If any of my physics or psych friends want to chime in on this, please have at it. Until then, I will remain yours in profound wonderment.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S