Folks,

Forty-three years ago, a then young Mick Jagger, just sprung from being hooked on a charge of smoking flowers with his buddy Keith Richards, was invited to talk on the BBC TV with the muckity-mucks of the British establishment class; all lawyers, priests, government ministers. They wanted him to explain why their children seemed to be possessed by the swagger in the boys in the band, the jacked up speed applied to American blues, and naughty words. Those fellows appeared to have never have been young men.

In his turn, Jagger seemed to be perplexed that such questions had to be asked by old men that had to have been teenagers years earlier. Alas, not included in the following clips is a most precise answer, delivered to the priest. "Why are adults afraid of letting their children see you play your music?"

Exasperated, Jagger replies, "They are afraid that their daughters will come home as Negroes!"

More interesting, tho, is what Jagger offered in his less smart ass answers. Judge the meaning as you will, but all that he is really promoting, as I hear it, is that we should all think for ourselves.

S

Jagger on World in Action: PT 1

Jagger on World in Action: PT 2

Kick the dirt. Life grows…

Folks,

We may at last have some confirmation that Life is something that the Universe simply does. It's part of the program? More research is required, but now we have hard evidence that it can happen across the vasty deep of cold space and time unimaginable to us critters.

S

Thank You Universe…

Fly Me to the Moons…

Dear Friends,

Why not try this… we Earthlings have a little space station in orbit above our heads. Six folks work there every day. Why not strap an ion or fusion rocket on the thing and send it off to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Those giant gas bags are sort of in our own backyard, and they have "almost planets" in their gravitational embrace. Under their surface grit and ice are oceans that may contain life. Shall we go, you and I?

With the right rocketry, already invented and tested, the trip would take just a few months. We could stop along the way to take some snapshots on Mars, leave a post card to the future on an asteroid or two or a few, and then, perhaps meet our interplanetary kin.

Jeez… we have spent enough American money in just the time that it took for this amateur to research this topic for my so-called leaders to bomb the hell out of poor folks in places most of my fellows can't locate on a map. Let us pursue this more worthy enterprise.

S 

A Place to Visit?

Imagining the past to invent the future…

Folks,

Would like a tech that you could stuff in your pocket, one that carried ideas and information that you could share with anyone that could read? I'm not talking about an iPhone, but a pamphlet or newspaper, a phone book or an entire library. Well, we are on the verge of creating an infinite book to include every newspaper ever published, every book, every indent on a clay tablet ever scribed, every painting ever scrawled on a cave wall, and all of Humanities' art… all on something that you can keep in your pocket.

S

In the Pocket

The First Newspaper

Watson, Come Now!

Folks,

If you've got a credit card and the ability to write or steal a few million lines of code, the time to scan several terabytes of data into a database, you can have your own SotA AI rig on the end of your modem. Follow the link below to find out how it works.

S

Watson, Come Now!

The Cogs and Cams of Babbage's Difference Engine

A Memo to America

Folks,

Below is a link to a plain spoken, common sense commentary on the situation in Bahrain and elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East. It seems to me, that it is time for my nation to come clean and stand unmistakably for our supposed values as a democracy. No more fooling around. Freedom requires risk; just that simple. Having a convenient base for our navy in the Middle East is no excuse to allow a King to kill and enslave the citizens of Bahrain. Freedom is a necessity, not a convenience. By no means should my nation be sending the money, tear gas, and bullets that enforce the immorality that is now going on.

We once fired our own king. Two centuries later, we fired two depressive lunatics with atom bombs and stopped an unjust, stupid war. Americans know how to do these things. We should show clear support for folks standing up to tyrants. Merely as a practical matter, it is the best way to undercut those that would become the new tyrants.

Common Sense

When I Was a Boy…

Folks,

There was a day when I was young, when spaceships were so tiny that they were correctly termed capsules. You pretty much wore them, and the rockets that they flew on blew up as often as they worked to blast the brave idiot  that volunteered to sling his hide inside that barrel barely bigger than his own skinny frame. The idea of living and working in space was still science fiction. Going to space, venturing to look down on our Home World, that was the most risky business that could undertaken by a Human.

Now, this one Human, John Glenn plopped his rear end into the saddle of a little spaceship that sat atop a kind of rocket that had blown up the previous three times they tried to launch it. It did work for this particular ride, but once Glenn got past the top of our sky, things went horribly awry. As he was orbiting the Earth, he noticed these things that he called "jitter bugs" glowing outside the small porthole in his capsule. What he was seeing, but did not know, were bits of the glue that held on the heat shield that would keep him safe when he plunged back into the soup of our planet's atmosphere. If that heat shield came loose, John Glenn would be the first man to get turned to less than ash in outer space.

After much discussion, the guys on the ground, including Glenn's fellow pilots decided to tell him what the score was. The folks on the ground had a possible solution, but it might not work. Glenn had a choice. He could take another chance and maybe make it home, or he could end his life in the cold vacuum of space. The dude decided to take a chance. Back on Earth was his beloved Annie. So the steely eyed missile man took a chance on love. He made it back A-OK.

S

John Glenn Riding His Rocket