It’s the End of the World As We Know It

Then a horrible thought struck me.  It’s about the Drake Equation, which is usually thought of, incorrectly, as the Sagan Equation, because people attribute all sorts of stuff to Sagan,  Einstein, Shakespeare,  Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde that they never said, just because they are people who are famous for saying stuff.

The Drake equation is:

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);

and

R^* = the average number of star formation per year in our galaxy

f_p = the fraction of those stars that have planets

n_e = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets

f_l = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point

f_i = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)

f_c = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space

L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space

Anyway, my thought was that  there needs to be another number in there, somewhere betwen fi  and L, probably  just after fc,  which is, coincidentally, where we find ourselves today.  That number would be fcnsfs , and fcnsfs = fraction of civilizations that are not so fucking stupid they blow themselves to smithereens or poison their atmosphere because once technology has been invented, it invariably reaches a point where it is beyond the control of the species which invented it.

Maybe that’s why we have no real evidence of any extraterrestrials visiting Earth.  Maybe it’s just really, really rare to survive this stage, or maybe it never, ever happens, it would be like exceeding the speed of light or something. 

Maybe we are doomed after all.

Manzarek in the 60s

Not so much for Ray Manzarek’s death.  I am saddened by that, he was a great musician.  The Doors were a powerful band, and his keyboard playing was a big part of that.  I enjoyed his post-Doors stuff, too.  It was like coming from the darkness into the light.  But he was 74 years old, he had some kind of cancer, it’s more or less in the natural order of things.  And we will always have his music.  Condolences to friends and family.

The really sad thing today is, of course, the tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma and killed over 20 people (original reports said over 50 – I was really glad to see the initial reports were wrong).  Some of the dead were children in an elementary school.

The really tragic thing is that the weather really is getting worse, and nothing’s being done about it.

Of course, there have always been tornadoes, but this tornado was 3 kilometers wide.  That’s not a tornado, that’s a concentrated Hurricane.  That is a storm that deserves a name, and a place in history.  Locals will come to measure time in terms of “before the tornado” and “since the tornado.”

No meteorologists are saying officially that anthropogenic climate change (you didn’t like the phrase global warming, this is the phrase you get) is definitely the cause of this specific tornado, because they are scientists and don’t make rash statements like that, at least not  in public.

As a blogger, I am under no such restriction.

3 kilometers across is a freakishly huge twister.  If that’s not a sign of climate change, I don’t know what would be.  This is a new, and dangerous thing.  We have changed the sky, and  we can expect more of these.

The issue is the legalization of hemp.  It is a substance traditionally used in the making of rope and canvas, for sails and tents and stuff.  As a cloth, it’s kind of like a softer denim, or a sturdier cotton.  Very comfortable.  It has a lot of other uses too.

Hemp – It’s Like Marijuana’s More Respectable Older Brother

It is absolutely not a drug and does not get you high, no matter how much you smoke it.

I can vouch for that.  Once, when I was about 17 I think, me and a friend were out walking beans on his cousin’s farm, to get some spare spending cash, when we spied a row of plants along the roadside.  Well, the whole reason hemp is illegal is because it looks just like marijuana, so we were fooled.  Filled a couple of garbage bags full, and thought we were going to be the most popular kids in school.  Got it back to his basement and smoked about a dozen joints – big, fat ones – with a growing sense of frustration and dread, until eventually we had to admit it – it was worthless.

Let me just repeat one line out of the last paragraph: The whole reason  hemp is illegal is because it looks like marijuana.  It’s as if they made laundry detergent, or sugar, illegal because they  look so much like cocaine.  It’s as if they made aspirin illegal because it looks almost exactly like LSD.

It doesn’t even make any sense for marijuana to be illegal, so the prohibition against hemp is just piling stupid on top of stupid.  I’m sorry it took a couple of right wing nutjobs to get the ball rolling but – at least on this – they deserve support.

Except that the dial on his personal approval ratings-ometer hasn’t moved a single percentage point.  It keeps pointing to the same 53% as always, like it was stuck there or something.  That’s because the only people get outraged over these scandals are the same people who are enraged that Obama uses a teleprompter and who thought  he was born in Kenya or someplace.

And also because all of the scandals together don’t  amount to diddly-squat.

We can scratch umbrellagate off the list of things that matter.  There was this photo of a Marine holding an umbrella for President Obama and the right-wing, write-stupid-comments-on-the-internet-and-send-them-to-your-equally-clueless-friends brigade flipped out.  A quick search, of course, revealed that every president since people have started taking photos of presidents has had his photo taken with a Marine holding an umbrella over his head, it’s just part of normal protocol and a presidential tradition that probably dates back to the president following William Henry Harrison,  the only U.S. president to receive a Darwin Award.

Then there’s Ben Ghazi.   Basically, the U.S. embassy in Libya was attacked and 4 Americans, including the ambassador, were killed.  The  Republicans are mad about Obama not saying “terrorism” more often in regard to this, even though he actually did.  Anyway, it happened, like, months ago.

Then there is the IRS scandal, in which the IRS investigated a lot of Tea Party Groups.  It makes sense to me.  A political group entirely made up of people who are passionate about not paying any taxes might tend to set off an alarm to the trained ear.  Anyway, Obama said he didn’t know anything about it

Then there’s the AP scandal, in with the Justice Department subpoenaed AP’s phone records.  Legally, you know, and I’m sure they had their reasons.  A big company like AP can take it.

It didn’t grab me at first the way the Harry Potter books did, but that’s probably just down to the different genres – I’m a sucker for kid’s books.  Sure, shame about Barry Fairbrother dropping dead like that (and Rowling is a master of death in the 1st chapter – my favorite opening chapter in the Harry Potter series, I forget which book, Order of the Phoenix, maybe?-was the one where the old caretaker wanders in on a secret meeting of Voldemort and is killed by Nagini, the serpent), but at first I found the introductions of the cast of characters to be a bit tedious, and I didn’t really know where it was going.  In short, the Magic wasn’t there.

Pagford- everybody ‘ere is effin’ mental

So, I was reading it when I was on the metro or the tram, but after I was halfway through it, the story had started to get interesting and this afternoon I  sat down and finished it, totally forgetting where I was and somewhat surprised and a bit empty when it suddenly ended.

Rowling is good at creating worlds.  Pagford is her next Hogwarts.

She is good at creating huge casts of characters and making them believable.  Even some of the truly despicable characters, like Howard and Shirley Mollison, or Terri Weedon, I wound up sympathizing with on some level. (Not Simon Price, though.  He was just a shit.)

So, in answer to the question “Will J.K. Rowling make the transition to writing books for adults” (I don’t want to say “adult books” because you might get the wrong idea), the answer is “Yes, yes she will.”

She’ll always be most famous for Harry Potter, but I look forward to seeing more books from her.