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I am a science fiction fan. I read a lot of Asimov and Heinlein as a kid, and I watch a lot of Star Trek and any other sci-fi I can find, which is quite a bit, as of late. But, is it all possible? Oh, sure, the holodeck is nothing but virtual reality, we already have the early versions of that, and replicators are just highly developed versions of 3-D printing, their communicators are not a great leap ahead of the mobile phones we all have today, and Sophia is a clear precursor of Data.
But, we still haven’t met any aliens, and have no proof that any of them have ever visited Earth.
It’s the conflict between the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. At the time the Drake equation was formulated, a lot of the variables were truly unknown. Today, we know that lots and lots of other stars, probably most, have planets. We now know that water is abundant throughout the universe. So, it’s a reasonable bet that thousands of planets, even millions of planets, exist within the goldilocks zone, have liquid water on their surface, and have evolved life. It’s also highly likely that some of those species are thousands of years further along in their technological evolution than we are.
The Fermi Paradox says “If there’s so many of them out there, why have none of them visited here.”
Well, there are a few possible explanations, and here’s one: assume for a moment that faster than light travel actually is, as it seems to be, impossible. A cosmic, physical speed limit. That means it would still take over 4 years to get to us from the nearest star system, and that’s just one. For most, it would take thousands. There might be some species out there sending out probes, and trying to find others, but even for them, even if they are millions of light years ahead of us, if FTL travel is impossible, that’s a long damn walk through the deep, deep woods, and the chance of our being discovered any time soon is minimal.

I was wondering at what point American media was going to drop all pretense and straight up start lying openly to their readers, and viewers. I think it has happened.
I saw so many op-eds today about the debate that said things like “Joe Biden did well, because he looked somewhat less like a corpse than at the first debate” and barely mentioned Tulsi Gabbard at all, unless it was to revive the old charges, which have all been answered and do not amount to a hill of beans anyway. Yes, she talked to Assad. And I agree with her that the U.S. should not be involved in Syria. This is a good thing.
They watched the same debate everybody else did. They could not have helped seeing, and hearing, Tulsi Gabbard’s righteous, bullet pointed evisceration of Kamala Harris.
It was a golden moment in the History of American Eloquence, it was a summation worthy of Perry Mason. She spoke calmly, and used her time well. Four hits. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. You sent 1500 people to jail for marijuana and then laughed about smoking it yourself. Boom. You tried to block evidence (a DNA test) which exonerated a death row inmate. Boom. You kept people in prison because prison’s ‘needed the labor force.’ Boom. And you continued the cash bail system, which discriminates against the poor. Boom.
And Kamala answered “I’ve worked really hard and California has 40 million people so we’re the biggest” and a lot of blather like that. Because, what could she say? It’s all true.
Approximately 10 million people saw this happen, live. The press can’t ignore it, and still maintain any credibility at all.

Well, the second Democratic debate is over, and it couldn’t have come out better for a Bernie/Tulsi enthusiast like myself.
Bernie made Tim Ryan look like a sad puppy, confused that anyone would yell at him for shitting on the floor, and exposed John Delaney for the bribe taking toadie he is.
On night two, Tulsi the giant killer gutted Kamala Harris. She talked about how she blocked evidence that would free a man who was condemned to death, how she laughed about smoking marijuana after convicting 1,500 of the same, kept people in jail to use as a labor force, and didn’t try to change the cash bail system, which is quite unfair to the poor.
She didn’t mention that Harris failed to prosecute Steve Mnuchin, that she stopped co-operation with victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, or that she was totally cool with cops turning off their body cams.
Still, four points was enough for a takedown, and so it was done.
Kamala totally failed to respond to the charges, even though she was given a chance.

Taking a step off my partisan podium for a second, I must admit that a couple of other people rose in my estimation a bit. Elizabeth Warren did great, Her “why are you running for president?” line, directed at John Delaney, was totally on point. In fact, if I hadn’t been paying attention over the last 4 years or so and wasn’t therefore inclined to think of her as a backstabbing weasel, I could grow to like her. Pete Buttigieg, while he continued to present nothing at all, did impress me as a good speaker at least. And, Marianne Williamson. Not sure why, but she reminds me a bit of Barbara Walters, the way she talks. Perhaps a bit of a flake, but not stupid. Not presidential material, but someone it’s interesting to have in the debates.
The main thing, though, was Tulsi. If this doesn’t force Harris out of the race, then the press isn’t doing their job.

I haven’t actually sat down and watched the whole debate yet, perhaps I’ll do that tomorrow, but from all I see on the Internet today Bernie kicked butt. He came through the swinging doors of the saloon and wiped out a gang of bad guys. He flew in like a dragon and torched the wicked castle.
But, that’s actually par for the course. Since I am a Bernie supporter, and many of the people I know are Bernie supporters, and I belong to two or three different Bernie groups on Facebook (and about the same number of Tulsi groups), it’s not a surprise that I get the pro-Bernie view.
“I wrote the damn bill” was a pretty good line, but, poor, stupid Tim Ryan just walked right into it. Practically set it up.
I loved it when Hickenlooper said he would just throw his arms up in the air and so he did, because you know when Bernie throws his arms up it’s because somebody like Hickenlooper has just said something so monumentally stupid that there’s no logical way to deal with it, like quibbling over Health Care, and I thought Bernie’s reminding him that he’d been a mayor was kind of classy, and more.
Of course, a lot of the MSM is saying Warren won and, credit where it’s due, she had the best line of the night with her (paraphrasing here) “if all you can say is we can’t do this and we can’t do that, why are you even running for president.” I’m not even sure who it was directed to, but it could have been a half dozen of them, easily.
Tonight, it’s Tulsi’s turn.

I watched a documentary on NetFlix today called The Great Hack, about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and, while it filled me in on a few details, didn’t really tell me much that was new or change my opinion.
That Brittany Kaiser is a major piece of work, though. Trying to portray herself as a remorseful whistleblower. She reminded me of the Ray Liotta character in Goodfellas, who was totally into the wealth and power of belonging to the Mafia, and didn’t actually regret it until he was caught.
She was the same. She’d worked as an intern in Obama’s campaign, but when she was getting champagne lunches and royal treatment working for Trump, and for Brexit, she was happy.
But, in the end, that kind of data collection and use is not going to go away. Progressives (because, really, I’m not even sure the Democrats were ever even trying to win) need to figure out how to do it, and do it better than the Republicans. It should not be that hard. Where they had to resort to fake news and slanderous memes, we’ve actually got truth, and logic, and basic human decency on our side.
As far as the commercial application of targeted advertising, we’ve always suffered from advertising. Is it such a bad thing that it’s targeted? Mostly, with me, it seems to be Facebook wanting to sell me T-Shirts with my last name and birth year on them.
Kind of obnoxious, but not the worst problem facing mankind.