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One phrase I’m seriously sick of reading is “I don’t care if it was photoshopped.  It was funny.”  I wouldn’t care so much if this was part of the original post.  “I came across this and I know it’s fake but, bearing that in mind, you may still find it amusing.”  That’s honest.

But they never do that.  They post stuff as if it is real, sometimes just to make a joke but sometimes to make a point (it’s better to have a point when you’re making a joke than to get poked when you’re in the joint, I suppose), and then when somebody calls them on it, they come up with this lame “I don’t care” response.

Just admit it.  You got burned.  It happens to everybody.  More and more, actually.  On the great human trek from apelike savagery to intergalactic enlightenment, we are deep in the tall grass of the uncanny valley right about now.  We have the rudiments of the hive mind that will be able to analyze all of the resources on Earth and construct a paradise like the Eloi lived in in The Time Machine, cure all the diseases , send robots and human micro-societies out on ark ships to explore the universe, and spot the difference between a real  video and a fake.

How can you tell?  The one with the flying bed is definitely fake, for instance.  Stuff with people dressing up their dogs as ballerinas is undoubtedly real.  I don’t know.  I don’t have a foolproof method, and I get it wrong all the time.

The point is to be honest about it.  Because maybe  it still would be funny.  Just not if people are expecting us to think it’s real.  That’s not funny.

I don’t know any better that anybody else what’s going to happen when the grand jury issues its statement in Ferguson, as to whether Darren Wilson should stand  trial for the murder of Michael Brown.  This is not even the trial.  This is the secret trial to decide if there  should be a trial.

To me, it’s a no brainer.  He killed him.  There should be a trial.  He can try to persuade a jury of this ‘feared for his life’ nonsense.

But, that’s not what I expect to happen.  I saw an article today  about how protesters in Ferguson are getting arrested, and I suspect this is pre-emptive.  If a lot of the protesters are already in jail when the news comes down, and the grand jury says “Nah, we don’t need to bother with a trial”  it will be easier for the police to maintain order.  So, I suspect that the Ferguson police already know that that’s what the grand jury will say, and  that means the fix is in.

It figures.  Police all across the U.S. are killing people without any fear of repercussion.  None have been charged.  None have had a trial.

Some people just never give up.  For over 70 years, they have propagandized about marijuana’s entirely imaginary negative effects.  They said it was fatal, they said it would make you crazy, they said it would cause  birth defects, they said  it was as  addictive as heroin and while they were saying this, they tried desperately to find  some scientific evidence, some shred of a whisper of evidence, that there was something harmful about it.

Now, it’s  completely legal in two U.S. States, and Uruguay.  Also, its medicinal uses are finally starting to be  realized.  It should be overwhelmingly obvious to everybody that the original claims were wrong.

But, some people just never give up.  Every couple of weeks you hear news of some recent government study which proves, absolutely, that marijuana is the devil’s rose.  This latest one says that long term, heavy use will make a certain part of the brain shrink. (although it simultaneously increases the connectivity of neurons in that section, so it seems like it should be a draw.)

The headlines screamed “Marijuana May Cause Brain Abnormalities.”  Well, to be fair, they did say ‘may.’  But, the long  and short of it is, they’ve got nothing and, even if they had something, they’d have nothing.  Back when we were hippies, back when smoking pot was a social statement, and not just a pleasant after-dinner ritual, brain abnormalities was kind of  what we were looking  for.  We’d seen normal and we were not impressed.  The  goal was to open the Doors of Perception, to Break on Through to the Other Side, to reach Nirvana, to alter our minds.

That isn’t even  a negative.

I suppose I’ll stop writing about Philae and Rosetta and comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko eventually, probably even soon.  The mission is done (except it’s not – Philae may well rise from the dead as Churyumov-Gerasimenko gets closer to the Sun – but that won’t be for a while).  Other space feats will happen and the news will fade..

But…Philae is  phoning it in posthumously, and ‘it’ is absolutely amazing.  They’ve discovered carbon on the comet.  This is major.  The old Drake equation keeps  getting  pushed back and back and  back.

We now know there are planets  around other suns -lots and lots of them.  We know that water is not just  an earthly phenomenon.  Now, we know that you can find carbons, maybe even carbon compounds, on comets.

Not only is it looking like life in the galaxy is common but even life that’s more or less as we know it.  Of course, this does not mean there won’t also be Silicon monsters like the Horta, and intelligent energy clouds, and green-skinned women in 60s hairdos and antennae.  There is  room for a lot of diversity, but life as we know it is what we’d like to find.

I believe it was Carl Sagan who said that probably the first extraterrestrial life we’d discover would be a bacteria, or something like that.  The small stuff first.  Well, this is one step before that.

Time flies, I suppose, at the speed of light, but time flies, relatively, because it flies when you’re having fun, it flies when you’re occupied, but that’s really just our perception of time, because we have  forgotten about time for a period of time which, since it was preoccupied by other  thoughts, might as well not  have counted, in time.

I really had no idea it  was so late, I’d just smoked a 2nd joint and felt like it was about 9 o’clock, but Sam didn’t  even  get home until 9:30, we shouldn’t have let him be out that late, but all’s well that  ends well, he  went  to see a floorball game with friends from school.

He got a 3- on a math test, and the teacher told  him he could  bring his grade up if he redid all of the questions he got wrong by Thursday, and so I took a look at it intending to help, and the math was way over my head.  Lots of geometry.

Still, he has  to redo it.

I’m going  to finish this  blog now.