Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I saw a thing on Facebook today which said, “I asked the computer to show me a ‘a brutalist amusement park’ and this is what it came up with.” I’m not going to go looking for the photo to post a link, but it was a lot of twisty concrete tunnels, surrounded by tower blocks, with a few bright, pastel colored walls and walkways below. It looked appropriately nightmarish, which I guess was the whole idea.
The thing is, I have no idea if that was actually a picture created by an AI, or just some goombah goofing around with photoshop. Could it be I have already failed on the Turing Test, that it was actually an AI creation which I assumed was just photshop, or vice versa. Could it be that we are regularly being fooled? Well, of course it could. If computers have already reached a level where they can fool 50% of us 50% of the time, they can set the agenda. And maybe they have. Maybe they are not bothered by an environment without trees, an environment with air filled with carbon particles, and temperatures of over 50% centigrade.
Which is possible. Just because they’re smarter than us, doesn’t mean they have a long-term survival strategy.

A secret spot, a hidden spot, a magic spot is like existing in another dimension, an alternate universe, and that’s where tonight’s poetry reading was. I was a bit late, got lost and was wandering around for about half an hour before I found it. There’s a tiny, little alley which looks like it goes nowhere and then you come upon a staircase going all the way down the hill but just to the left there is a natural amphitheater, with benches set into the hillside, and trees surround it and there’s path into the woods off to the left, so I took a seat at the back both because I wanted to admire the view, which was trees and a panoramic view of the rooftops of Nusle, and Vyšehrad Castle (which is a bit redundant, I guess, linguistically, as Vyšehrad means high castle, and also what you see is not the castle, that’s just some ruins, but a church on the site of the castle), and in the fading light it was spectacularly beautiful, and because somebody I knew was sitting there, with his 9 year old son, who was not impressed with either the magical scene, or the poetry.
The poetry was the usual mix. Some good stuff, some bad stuff. The acoustics were great.
And it’s wonderful to find a place in Prague that I never knew existed.

Don’t get me wrong. I love space. I love Star Trek and Isaac Asimov and I knew the names of all the planets before I knew the names of all the dinosaurs, which isn’t even possible for kids these days because there are so many more known dinosaurs, but I am starting to digress. I’m all in favor of paleontology as well, the more knowledge can advance in all directions, the greater we become.
But this blog is about space. I want to see a colony on Mars, I want to see mining of the asteroid belt become a thing, I want to see ever bigger, brighter, more sophisticated telescopes placed farther and farther from Earth. I want to see humanity colonize the universe, and I want to make contact with extraterrestrial species.
But this little space race that’s going on between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson is a bit ridiculous. They aren’t advancing space research that much, although Musk has done some amazing things with his pinpoint landings that NASA could learn a thing or two from. They aren’t going to do the first untethered space walk, leave a permanent presence on any physical body outside the Earth, be the first to have sex in space, break any endurance records for time in space, or perform any scientific experiments at all.
They are going to go up, and they are going to come down. Once they break the Earth’s atmosphere, they will be weightless for a minute or two. I’m sure it will be a lot of fun, but it won’t advance the cause of science one bit. Basically, this is three useless, old men spending billions of dollars for the world’s most expensive amusement park ride, just so they can say they did and flaunt their magnificent wealth in the face of us peasants.
If they all burn up and die on re-entry, I won’t be sad about it. Very few people will be.

Sure, I think D.C. statehood is a good idea. It would be cool, it would be a shake-up, they’d have to replace all the flags and figure out where to put that extra star, and that would mean more jobs for flagmakers. Of course, the people there deserve representation as well, that’s true, too.
Same with Puerto Rico. They deserve it, they should have it.
If these are just Democratic tactics to get more Democratic Senators, well, then, they’d finally be growing a backbone and playing a little bit dirty (creative. let’s say creative) and that’s the kind of party we’ve wanted them to be for a long time.
If only they could be that creative in actually fighting for health care, or an increase to the minimum wage, or ending private prisons, or legalizing marijuana, or saving the fucking planet.
Stacking the Supreme Court, ditto. Sure, raise the number to 11, or 23, or whatever. (has to be an odd number, to avoid ties). To be clear, though, everybody will no why you’re doing it, and it’s a sword that cuts both ways. Democrats raise the number to 23, next time Republicans are in they raise it to 35.
We admit D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, they split the Dakotas again and we’ve got N.E. Dakota, N.W Dakota, S.E. Dakota, S.W. Dakota, and it’s still a tie with the Senators.
I actually don’t expect any serious action on any of these ideas. It’s just a lot of noise, distracting us from the issues of health care, raising the minimum wage, and saving the planet.

Today is the 4th of July, which I don’t typically celebrate since I haven’t lived in the U.S. for over 20 years and it passes here much like every other day, but I am still American, born and raised, so it is worthy of comment at least.
First, Happy 4th to all of those who are celebrating. I wish you a pleasant, and safe, day.
Personally, I have often thought that American independence should more properly be celebrated on April 19th. The revolutionary war had already been going on for a year and a few months before the richest and most important people in the 13 colonies gathered in Philadelphia and signed a document to recognize that fact.
I guess fireworks are more an issue than ever, because of the extreme heat and risk of starting actual fires, on land, which could cause the deaths of many trees, and the trees were there before the white man, before the first peoples even. (for some reason, I prefer the Canadian terminology on that, although recently unearthed -literally – evidence shows that they weren’t much kinder in their treatment of the original inhabitants than we were. I guess because ‘native’ just means born there and I consider myself a native American. Maybe ‘indigenous’ would be better, except that it has four syllables and would be difficult for many Americans to spell)
I’ve always thought fireworks were over-rated. Here in the Czech Republic, people go nuts with them on New Years, some state holidays, and after major sporting events, but it’s not so much municipal sponsored, controlled and choreographed displays as it is everybody and their cousin going out to a park to light a bunch of shit up and scare people with the explosions.
There is something deep, deep down inside the human psyche that just loves bright lights and explosions. I’m not denying that. I’m just not sure it’s a good thing.