Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

this story isn’t really all that exciting by itself.  The printer on the  International Space Station works.  That’s great.  The International Space Station has been in space for quite a while.  People are living and working and getting things done every day.  Ditto 3-D printing.  It’s not that new any more even though it’s not all that widespread.  I’ve never seen one, for instance.

Still, it’s an example of the convergence of streams of science and invention.  We’ve got 3-D printing, we’ve got space, we’ve got 3-D printing in space.  We’ve got computers, we’ve got space, we’ve got computers in space.  It’s kind of amazing when you realize that the first humans in space did not have computers on board.  We’ve come a long way, baby.

Think of all the different branches of science.  Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Electronics, Astronomy, Cybernetics, Medicine, Robotics, and so much more.  Any advance in one of them helps to push the others forward, either directly or indirectly.  The knowledge keeps accumulating, it never goes away.

This is the saving grace.  This is the one thing I cling to, that I think will save us from ourselves, from the greediest and most rapacious amongst our number, who would destroy the entire human race and the planet we live in for a greater profit, a fourth home, a few more bars of gold for the vault.

Someday, and I hope it will be soon, we will reach a tipping point.  Energy will become so cheap and so plentiful that we can have all the power and  fresh water that we need.  Cities will become gardens.  Poverty will be eliminated.  No one on Earth will want, and plenty of people will be moving out into space.

Once the knowledge is great enough, the rich people won’t be able to stop it.  Although you can be damned sure they will keep trying.

 

You learn  something new every day.  Today’s lesson came early in the morning.  I have an 8 o’clock class in Vršovice, which would actually be a lovely  neighborhood except for the fact that you have  to go  uphill in any direction to get out of it and that’s depressing.  It takes me about 40 minutes to get there – two stops by Metro, and then  about 15-20 minutes by bus.  When I get off the Metro, I always pick up a copy of Metro magazine because I like to do the Sudoku puzzle, and it’s free.

The challenge, any more, is not just to finish the puzzle.  It’s to finish it within that 15 minute bus ride.  Today I was successful, with minutes to spare, so I took a glance at the 5 trivia questions at the side of the page.  I don’t usually do so well on these.  A lot of the questions are about obscure Czech stuff (How old was our oldest Olympic competitor at the  1924 Olympics?  What year was Krkonoše national park established?)  Still, it’s multiple choice so I just go ahead and give it my best shot.  I consider it a win when  I actually understand the question.

One of the questions this morning was  ‘Who is the patron saint of musicians?’  One of the possibilities was Cecilia and I chose that because I like the Simon and Garfunkel song (Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily…) and it was the right answer and I realized the song might  be about something entirely different than I thought it was.

They were singing about the muse leaving them, they were singing  about writer’s block.  I suppose it’s still  possible they were singing about some girl named Cecilia, who changes boyfriends rather quickly, but I like  my new interpretation better.

Unless I hear from either Mr. Simon  or Mr. Garfunkel that I am wrong, I am going to assume I am right.  You learn something new every day.

I don’t  really want to write my blog about Ferguson tonight, because I’ve been arguing about it all day on facebook, and I’ve become certain of one thing.  That no one who holds an opinion on this is likely to be convinced of the contrary opinion.  And also, it’s done.  There will be no trial.  Even if Darren Wilson gets sued in civil court, even if the  protests continue for another month or two, it is over.  Once again, justice was not done.

O.K., that’s two things.

But, since we were talking about race (and we were.  it is all about race.), this is a good excuse  for me to present my theory of why racism will eventually become extinct.

1.  There are approximately 7 billion people on Earth.

2.  Let’s say 1% are of mixed race.  I’m pretty sure it’s way higher than that, but it’s hard to estimate.  The world is a big place and some  are ethnically blended and some places, like Iceland and Japan, are extremely homogenous.  I choose the 1% figure for ease of calculation.  Read on.

3.  1% is 70 million people.

4.  Let’s say 25% of those 70 million are part of couples of child-bearing age and gender combination.  That’s about 17.5 million people.

5.  We’re going to work with an arbitrary number again at this point, one to one, replacement ration.  What can be assumed is that the ration of procreation among this segment of the population should be the same as the  single-race breeders.

6.  Children of mixed race couples have 3 possibilities.  They can breed with a member of one race, the other race, or another mixed race person.

7.  The children of those who breed with one race or another are of mixed race, plus those who breed with other mixed race partners.

8.  Every decade or so, the percentage of mixed race children in the general population will increase by .3.

9.  That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s cumulative.

10. Some day all humans  alive will be so mixed up, and have people with a different ethnic appearance among their close family members, that no one  will be able to ever say or do anything  racist if they ever want to be invited  for Thanksgiving again.

11.  On that day, all the Sneetches will forget about stars.

It hasn’t been a dynamically productive day, I taught two classes, worked a bit on my book, accompanied Isabel to her  ballet lesson, and helped Sam a bit with a homework assignment, but I did get four poems written, so I feel pretty good about  that.

The first two were responses to things on facebook.  Some may  argue that that is an inappropriate usage of  rhyme – certainly, it tends to kill a thread – but I like doing  it, and a rhyming comment can outlast whatever transient conversation it’s in, in the  same way that a single song is often greater than the musical it’s in.

First was a thread about how everybody using social  media to jump on one  person kind of sucks, but the thread had veered off course and become about feminism, and feminist’s well known  lack of a sense of humor, and the original poster was trying to get everybody  back on course, so I wrote this:

Once the so called ‘thread’ gets started
Once the train of thought’s departed
There’s no human way of knowing
Which direction it is going
Once the subject’s in the breeze
It will go where it will please
So, it seems a bit myopic
To shout at people “Stay on topic!”

Then, on a thread about how teardrops are different depending on whether they are tears of joy, sadness, or onions:

There is room in the world for science
There is room in the world for art
Observing drops of water
Is a lovely place to start

The next  two were  written while waiting  for Isabel’s ballet lesson to finish because, seriously, you have to find something to do to kill that  hour, and you have the additional advantage of  a machine that  dispenses coffee for only 10 kc.  So, there’s this  one:

There are  plenty of fish in the ocean

there are plenty of fish  in  the seas

there are infinite words on infinite pages

and billions of birds in the trees

There are infinite  doors to open

with an  infinite  number of keys

there are more movies that have been made

than a person ever  could see

the aspects of our  existence are  more

than raindrops when it rains

than a thousand beaches’ grains of sand

than flowers on  the plain

Everything is infinite

in infinite time and space

but the universe stays  together

because everything’s in  its place

 

and this  one, because they’ve got lots of  kids’ drawings lining the walls:

Kids draw pictures, they’re pretty bad

but, they make their parents glad

they say “Oooh, that’s pretty” and that’s O.K.

but they never throw the damned things away

When kids grow up, and they’re no longer kids

they don’t want to see  everything that they did

 

That’s it for today’s blog.  Good night.

 

Marion “The Bitch set me up” Barry has passed away.  He  was 78, so it was probably just old age.  Not an overdose of crack cocaine.  Not a heart attack from banging too many hookers while  he  was doing the crack cocaine.  He survived all that.  He survived a conviction, and a few years in prison, and served as mayor again.

Much like Rob Ford today, there were a whole lot of people who thought he  was just great,  despite all the corruption, and being a total scofflaw and a party animal.

It seems there will always be people in politics like this.  People with flamboyant personalities who are convinced they can get away with anything.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  One is that politics is the natural domain of narcissistic personalities.  Primary Colors is the film that expressed that  best.  When John Travolta, playing Governor  Jack Stanton, who was obviously supposed to be Bill Clinton,  threw his mobile phone  out of the car window, Emma Thompson, playing  Susan Stanton, who was obviously supposed to be Hillary, shouted  “Stop!,” made the driver back up, and had everybody out beating the bushes in the dark for the missing phone.  After the phone was  found, and they were getting ready to drive off again, Travolta/Stanton/Clinton said “Well, you wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t thrown it there in the first place.”

The second reason is that lots of them do get  away with it, forever.  Most of the people in  Congress today, and at least half of U.S. Governors, are just as corrupt as Barry was, and just as fond of sleeping with people other than the ones they are actually married to.  Probably only a handful of them do as much coke but, seriously, Marion Barry did a superhuman amount of coke.

So, there will be more Marion Barrys, and more Rob Fords.  Because every city has a mayor, and the  mayor’s chair is an absolute magnet for narcissistic personalities, and people with narcissistic personalities think they are so awesome nobody will call them on it if they go nuts.

And sometimes, like Marion Barry or Rob Ford, they get away with it.