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