Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

A few days ago one of my Facebook friends was complaining (and he is not the first I’ve heard with this complaint) that he had to take a time out from Facebook. That is ‘had to’ as in was required to by Facebook. Now, this can happen for a number of reasons. I know some have been accused of ‘violating community standards,’ but seeing on a day to day basis what those standards are, I sometimes wonder how far you have to go to violate them.
In this friend’s case, it was because he was posting too much. Admittedly, this guy post a LOT, but still. Why should Facebook care how often a person posts?
I also wonder why there is a limit on the number of friends you can have. Wouldn’t Zuckerberg be better off, both financially and in the reduced stress department, if he’d just let the big dog off the leash to run free?
But, there seems to be a compulsion to exercise power. If one has the power to make rules, one tends to see the need for rules everywhere. Parents make rules. Teachers make rules. Bosses make rules. Restaurants and Bars make rules. Sometimes, they are pretty basic, common sense things. As a free spirit freedom loving hippie, I have often mocked the phrase “No shirt, No shoes, No service’ but who wants to sit in a restaurant next to some hairy, fat guy with no shirt? I think that restaurants should have the right to allow people to smoke if they want to, but I must admit that my enjoyment of restaurant dining has been increased since they’ve been gone.
So, we don’t complain too much when Mark Zuckerberg gives somebody a time out, sends them to the penalty box, gives them detention hall for a week. But we probably should.

If I just start writing the hope is that somewhere along the way I will think of something to write about which, hopefully, will not be politics, which everyone is well sick of.
The thing is, whatever happens (Hillary Clinton is going to win. I’m voting for Stein and praying for a miracle, which is a strange thing for an atheist to say but it’s a figure of speech, goddamit,)life will go on. Realistically I know she will win, Trump has been trying to lose from the beginning and it seems that the ‘grabbing ’em by the pussy’ comments finally did him in, and the press is obviously on her side (as they were in the primaries and, no doubt, she’s got the whole thing flat out rigged.
Life will go on. As president, she will vote for every oil pipeline, every offshore well, everything the oil companies want that comes across her desk. Still, solar technology and wind technology will continue to advance, and eventually clean energy will win out. The climate is going to change, there will be more hurricanes and floods, and we will learn how to deal with it, and some people will die, more than necessary, but each incident will pass when the next incident comes along. She will, as president, fight hard against the legalization of marijuana, but it’s hard to argue with the Colorado economic miracle, and the fact that it hasn’t exactly destroyed civilization in places where it is legal. State after state is going to want to hop on that gravy train, sooner or later.
Sorry, guess I wrote about politics again.

Of course, it would be unfair of me to offer an over all review of the Signal Fest. There were over twenty sites, and some of them may well have been amazing, but I thought the five or six sites we saw were somewhat less than overwhelming.
My biggest complaint, and really shouldn’t even be complaining, it was a free thing (for the most part, more on that in a sec).
We started in front of Palladium, but the exhibit was in a little box and they could only get a couple of people through at a time and the line was all the way back to the steps coming out of the Metro, so we passed on that but Helena had a second reason for starting there. Perks of the job, she got to pick up a VIP pass. The show at Old Town Square was not bad,colorful, but it had what I think is the biggest flaw with this art form. They didn’t really use the building. It was just a light show on a bumpy surface, would have looked better against a flat, concrete wall. The big, white, tranlucent, man hanging over the Philosophy Building across from the Rudolfinum, was kind of interesting, and there were actually several more of those about town. We got to Kampa Island and there was a whole range of them there.
The one with the windmill/bird/flower. And the big one, which cost 50 crowns, but that’s where the VIp booklet came in handy. They had a bit at the beginning where they appear to bend the building but it soon degenerates into the same old, lame old.
But, a lot of people came out, a lot of projects were realized, andit’s all good.

I am sort of blown away by the news that the good folks who spend their days looking through telescopes have determined that there are approximatly 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, which is about 10 times more than we previously thought.
Helena’s first reaction was “How do they know that?” at which I laughed derisively until I realized that I don’t know, either, I’m just more inclined to believe really smart people on the subject of space, and less inclined to say, as she did “They’re just making it up.”
There are a couple of implications in this vast number. First, it definitely weights the old Drake equation in favor of intelligent life. So many galaxies, so many stars, so many planets, the number of planets in the universe is up in the gazillions or whatever there is beyond trillions. Bad news is, they’re all really, really far away. I am reminded of the opening sequence of Star Wars…a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, so far away the it is completely detached from our reality, and it is entirely conceivable that large numbers of multi-stellar civilizations have come into existence, and flamed or faded out, and we know nothing of them, nor they of each other.
Secondly, the current number of galaxies is so different than it was a week ago, and that in turn is so different than our thinking in 1930, before Edwin Hubble, that maybe the next discovery will be greater still. Who knows? It is my belief (and this is neither a product of scientific knowledge or msystical/religious belief, it is just a little thought experiment and it makes sense. The universe it infinite, both in space, in time, and in complecity.

I’ve got a few thoughts on the reaction to Bob Dylan getting a Nobel Prize for Literature, and yes, you read that right. I don’t have much to say about him getting the Nobel, they certainly weren’t going to give it to me so I don’t care much who they give it to. He’s written some great songs, some poetic songs. My fandom has waxed and waned over the years, but there’s no denying he’s been a huge influence on our culture. I mean, Subterranean Homesick Blues was rap, 20 years before there was rap.
But what’s interesting to me is the reaction. My original reaction to the reaction is “Dayum, people, chill the fuck out. You’re sounding like Kanye West.” I mean, even if you agreed with him that Beyonce deserved the Grammy that year, (which,as with Dylan, is the secondary issue)you had to admit he was being kind of a dick about it. Don’t we have more important things to talk about?
Then,I thought about it a bit more. Why shouldn’t people have strong opinions about who gets the Nobel Prize for Literature? After all, I have gotten involved in Internet arguments over when and whether to use the Oxford comma (I’ll use it if it adds clarity to the sentence, but I prefer to stick to standard American usage whenever possible), whether Janeway was a better captain than Picard (No way! The next generation was the greatest Star Trek, Picard was the greatest captain, and anybody who doesn’t think so is a moron and they can go ahead and unfriend me)and, just yesterday the question, What was the greatest TV show theme song of all time (IMO, Green Acres)
These arguments (or discussions, if you prefer civility) bust out now and again and after a couple of days will be forgotten. (Who won the Nobel prize for literature last year? I know I don’t know.) And they allow everybody a chance to vent and let their opinion, irrelevant though it is, be known.