Your Favorite Band Sucks

When I first heard this little piece of philosophy it seemed trivial and I laughed it off but after a while it started to sink in and the real power showed through as I realized the various subtleties of the phrase as it lingered in the back of my mind. It reminded me of one of those perfect bombs that kills all the people but doesn't destroy any houses.

Imagine an archaeologist deciphering ancient writings and they come across this quote saying that their favorite band sucks, what a slap in the face from across the eons of time. How could they know our favorite band sucks unless they had the same power of Nostradamus to predict the future.

Let's face it, sooner or later every band sucks...at some bad concert, or after their tabloid scandal or just plain human beings getting older. It is impossible to maintain that peak performance and that always makes the star appear to be burned out when it is still shining as bright as the others.

Everyone knows if you listen to a favorite song one too many times it somehow looses that special factor and then it is just another ex-favorite. This is a variation on the theme called, "Your Favorite Song Sucks". From there it is a short path to your favorite celebrity, favorite movie, favorite sport…. by golly every thing sucks if you look close enough.

The only safe thing is to have no favorite. And if you accidentally break your own rule and find yourself with a favorite for goodness sake don't tell anyone. Keep your favorites secret and then only you will know when they start to suck.

Don't let someone else tell you when your favorites are no longer yours anymore. Beat them to the punch and stop liking stuff in advance before they ever become favorite in the first place. That will solve the problem once and for all.

Spacebird and Astrowhale

Spacebird started out different from all the other birds in his flock and while they were all famous for flying high, he was always flying higher than the rest and higher still building up the resistance needed to go further and further out there even though there was no compelling reason. That is until he got there.

Astrowhale started life as a freak among freaks who could dive deeper than any of the others in his pod and they were the deepest of all the deep diving whales. After a while he could stay down longer than ever and started mapping out places no living whale had ever gone before and he had no obvious reason for going there. But then again, in the end it turns out that it is worth the trip.

After years of reaching their respective extremes these two unique individuals represented the two limits of the bandwidth of life on earth and the same dumb luck that led to their mutual existence also somehow managed to align the moon and the stars just right and the two animals achieved a geosynchronous orbit at just the right latitude and longitude to create a harmonic resonance between Spacebird, Astrowhale and the nearest satellite. Dish Network specifically half way between channel 9646 and 9647, you can Google on how to tune it in.

So eventually Astrowhale had to come up for air and even Spacebird comes down to fish once in a while so it was inevitable that they should meet in person, face to face, beak to beak so to speak, as it were. After that it was only a matter of time before they developed a symbiosis that miraculously increased the abilities of each other by virtue of their mutual pre-existing satellite hookup.

Next thing you know the internet got ahold of the data feed showing the travels of our heroes and that led to the first major discoveries of the unknown at the edges of our world. This was the turning point when folks got their first glimpse of the Trench Slugs and Plasma Plankton.

Trench slugs are 400 foot long monsters at the bottom of the ocean that won't register on visual or temperature scanning but there they are and Astrowhale just loves provoking them into casting off their supply of purified proteins. The baby slugs are the size of a school bus but only 6 inches tall due to the high pressure.

Plasma plankton is nearly invisible and uses direct heat from the sun along with the ambient friction at the outermost layers of the atmosphere to grow microscopic animals that need neither air nor water to complete photosynthesis around the smallest dust particles. No one ever bothered to look there yet let alone capture a sample. But good old Spacebird could collect them until they became visible glowing on the video feed the same way Astrowhale was able to generate light at depth by using the local ambient florescence.

Next Chapter in the Adventures of Spacebird and Astrowhale; Gamma Ray Light Worms and Sea-Floor Super Smelters.

Pieces of Fight

No two fights are ever exactly alike but they all have certain things in common. These then are the various parts and pieces necessary to carry on a decent fight. Whether it be the Worlds Nations at war or a married couple at the dinner table every fight will always contain some of these required components.

The sequence is not absolute but generally follows the usual pattern. Some contestants will always jump straight to their favorite device and stick with it to the bitter end while others think the secret is covering as many of the steps as possible. Some fights go straight to the end and some get stuck in the middle in a repeating circle. Once the gloves come off all bets are equally off along with the rules.

The understanding...
They say you only hurt the one you love and so you can only fight with someone with whom you have an understanding of some sort from which there can be an event that will lead to the fight.

The misunderstanding...
The fight begins with one party acting as the victim of some wrong to which they must respond. Even if both parties already know in advance what the other will do it still feels good to act all insulted and surprised.

The mistake…
In every argument there is always something said that is soon regretted but instead of stopping to apologize we invariably ratchet up the heat with another shot across the bow. The mistake and the misunderstanding are often the same thing.

Defending the mistake…
So we defend the mistake no matter how ridiculous and that leads us down a pitiful path on the way to the next steps on the list. Normally we would not defend such a silly mistake but that would be a normal conversation. During a fight we are required to defend any mistake, that's what makes it a fight.

Shifting the blame…
It starts with denial and then gets worse through the series of sub-distractions that make up the blame shifting category including the top two; sarcasm and insult. Admit it, you know we all do it. Telling an even bigger lie is an excellent way to change the subject.

Loud Voice…
Each person has their quiet mean voice followed by their Loud Voice. Usually that's enough because no one wants to resort to the dreaded Louder Voice which leaves no other choice but the Loudest Voice and after that there are no more weapon left in the arsenal and that means:

The Blowout…
Sooner or later one or both parties give up and move on. There needs to be a dramatic end or else it feels like there never really was a fight, so this is one of the required steps. Once the dust settles from the blowout it’s time for:

Licking wounds…
Which tastes bad so we rush to:

Reconciliation…
If there is no makeup then there will be no more fights. Most fighters would rather keep their option for another engagement down the road.

Unfortunately, having this parts list doesn't make you any better at fighting but at least it gives you a program guide so you can tell where you are if you get lost during your next fight.

The Expanding Innerverse

By now most everyone has heard the theory of the expanding universe and while that is a good start toward finally understanding how things work, it turns out the poor scientists are missing the rest of the story and thankfully they have yours truly to reveal the truth at last. Fortunately I am not restrained by the scientific method and am free to use science fiction in proving my theories. Hollywood notwithstanding, here is my latest discovery. It's not just the universe that is expanding but also everything in it, including us human beings right on down to the distance between the electrons and the protons in all our various atoms.

Pause to think; of course it must be true everywhere, how can it only be true in outer space? If we were to stay the same size here on Earth while the rest of the cosmos continues to grow then the distant stars would disappear in a day or two. The fact is we are almost keeping up with the rest of the universe in the expansion process, they just got a big head start on the project.

It is also quaint for us to think we are in charge of everything and that we are somehow exempt from the laws that apply to all the rest of the particles. Just as we once thought our planet was the center of our solar system we are just as naïve to think we can see our expanding universe all the way back to the beginning of time. The further out in space we look is supposed to be further back in time until we finally see the big bang but then wouldn’t things be getting closer together instead of further apart? The only way to see the big bang is by looking inward, not outward, so what we think is looking back in time out in deep space is actually looking ahead.

There never was a big bang in the past, that is just an optical illusion of what is yet to come. It’s quite a shame we don't understand our own inner universe as well as we do the outer one. If there really is a bang that big it would obviously represent the END of the universe not the beginning. We are spinning headlong into space toward the breaking point where our molecules are finally stretched to the limit and we all snap apart into our individual bits and pieces which will look exactly like the beginning of something big and bangy. So we have that to look forward to, unless of course, once again; I could be wrong.

Off to work I go

Every morning before I head out the door on my way to work I have to sing a little song to make sure I remember all my required accoutrements. It goes like this: “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Work-ID, Cell Phone, Blue-tooth, Glasses and Briefcase”. There is no specific tune for the song other than a monotonous la-dee-da-dee-daw… the whole point being to mark the items off the checklist.

This habit came about as the result of many years of forgetfulness and even though I live only a few minutes away from work it still ruins the day when I forget. Every time I ever start to fall out of the habit of singing this little reminder I find myself at work without one of the listed items and soon enough I am singing that same old tune again.

I must have always had a bad memory because I have always had a checklist before I left the house. As a kid all I needed was my pocket knife. Later I got a wallet and that started the first simple list: “Knife and Wallet”. When I got a car I added keys to the list. Then my first day on the Railroad I had to add a hard hat and lunch box: “Keys, Wallet, Knife, Hardhat and Lunchbox.”

When I first started working on the Railroad life was simple but every time I got promoted I had to add more stuff to the list. After I got to be a machine operator I had to get special Railroad approved watch and there was punishment for not having the watch. When I became a Foreman I had to carry a Timebox, a big heavy metal suitcase for protecting important papers along with the two-way Radio for calling the dispatcher. So then the song went: “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Lunchbox, Pocket Knife, Timebox, Hardhat, Radio.”

As the years went by the number of keys kept going up, the wallet got thicker with IOU’s instead of cash and the pocket knife kept getting upgraded every year to the latest Swiss Army version so even though I wasn’t adding any more items to the list, the list of items was still getting bigger none the less. Then I switched over to the Hi-Tech career path and the list started changing again. Here was the longest list of all back in the ‘90’s. “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Glasses, Work-ID, Doorcard, Radio, Pager, Pocket Knife, Cell Phone, Blue Tooth, Brief Case, Lunchbox.”

Then things started to reduce when the Doorcard got integrated into the Work-ID, the Pager went obsolete, the pocket knife morphed into a Penknife, the Radio was replaced by a cell-phone, the Timebox turned into a Briefcase and the watch was no longer needed with a smartphone around. The number of keys on the ring is going down and the wallet is lighter than ever these days.

Someday in my future the list will evolve back into a simple few things; wake up, look down, zip-up. In the end there will be nothing left on the list and no way to know if I forgot something.

Life Analogies

Forrest Gump's Mom says life is like a box of chocolates and that is a great analogy for a while but after a while a person gets tired of chocolates and yet life still goes on so we have to find something else to compare with life.

There are many existing cliché's where life is like an elevator always going up and down or like a roller coaster and we can’t wait to get off. Life is like a coin, don’t spend it flipping out. Life is like a bad movie, or a good movie whichever fits the situation. Life is just an excuse for paying taxes. Life is like a cakewalk, or a grindstone depending on our mood or the weather.

Life could be like a reality show on TV called Needle In A Haystack. Each contestant will approach the problem with a different strategy and energy level. Some would use the Gorilla logic where they roll around until they get poked while the magnet men will fish for success and the less energetic will whittle away by nibbling one straw at a time.

My favorite analogy for life is a sandcastle building contest. A sandcastle requires constant attention and even then it will fall apart at the slightest whim of the elements. The wind, the high tide and even time alone will tear down the strongest sandcastle and the players must rebuild and refine their skill in the process.

Each person’s sand castle represents their philosophy in life. Some people just turn the bucket over and wait to see how long it takes to turn flat again. Others go for height at any cost and end up wasting their efforts with inevitable avalanches. Then there are those who build in the ranch style and want to overtake as much beach as they can reach.

In the end it is not the castle that matters, it’s the not the actual structure that we remember as much as the fun we had building it and the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day that tells the story of how we feel about life.

Even if we are sick and tired of building castles in the sand we must still find a way to make life fun. Of course real life is not always like a day at the beach, that's why we need handy life analogies so we can compare the bad times to something better.

Where's My Stuff?

This is the introduction to a new series called Where's my stuff? As I get older it gets harder and harder to find things and not just my keys or watch but also my things that were once easy to keep track of, like memories and marbles.

Admittedly part of the problem is that I am getting older and there are more memories to dig through in order to remember things so my searches take longer and longer. It's not just my old age, though that is Chapter 13 - Where's My Brain?, this series intends to prove there is a worldwide conspiracy to make things harder to find.

It used to be easy to keep track of stuff but now we can never find anything. Life is deliberately complicated with too much activity and too many distractions. Chapter 1: Where's my Stuff?

Telephones were once big and clunky and locked down on every street corner and on every kitchen wall but now the darn thing is ringing right there in front of us and we can't even find the little bugger in our purse or pocket. They are always ringing but never getting answered. Chapter 2: Where's the Phone?

The fast paced world makes it hard to keep track of traveling co-workers let alone the moving targets that are customers and contacts. We need a global clock to know who is gone to lunch at the various offices. Macroeconomics force the micro family to spread out in space and time and people can’t remember where to find their loved ones. Chapter 3: Where's my People?

Facebook and all the other semi-social tools for the internet only make it harder to find the actual people in our lives. How can we know what is safe to say, will the boss find out, which picture to show and who to befriend? Reality is such an easier game to play and not as many sand traps. Chapter 4: Where's my me?

Having multiple responsibilities at work means there is always a missing box. It could be from shipping and receiving or from storage or even from lost and found but there is always a missing box. The cubicle is a box and while it may not be missing you still have to find out which one contains the ever moving user. The server is a box that can't be found when the lab is constantly changing forests of racks full of units and not one with a label. Chapter 5: Where's the Box?

It used to be easy to go unplug the network cable to fix a bad box but now it would mean unplugging the entire rack enclosure which holds all the servers. When you travel you may think you are on the hotel network when you are really on the restaurant or worse yet some other guests wireless access point. Chapter 6: Where's the Network.

When there were 57 channels on TV we could still keep up but it takes 20 minutes to go through all the channels now, by then we fall asleep. Concerts are too expensive, movies are too numerous, and stage theaters are fading fast like the already extinct Drive-in. Chapter 7: Where's the show?

The last straw and the last chapter would be, Chapter Last: Where's My Job? Followed by, Chapter Infinity: Where's my Life?

IMO

It all started when I was 7 years old and I found a piece of solid metal in the shape of a house that became my favorite toy for the summer. Even though I soon lost it, none of my other toys were as good and that only made me miss my lost object all the more. I could never forget how good it felt in my hand and in my pocket and that was the beginning of my lifelong search for a collection of Interesting Metal Objects, aka: IMO.

That original IMO was not meant to be a house, it reminded me of a house, but it was probably just a piece of junk furniture or maybe a piece of machinery but it was the memory more than the actual item that stuck with me then and still today. I would try to get a copyright on the phrase ‘Interesting Metal Objects’ or the Anagram IMO, but they already got corrupted by the stupid internet when they came up with IMHO which now makes me look like someone who has no humble when it comes to “In My Humble Opinion”.

Working on the Railroad led me to a treasure trove of IMO and that was when I really came into the habit. Working along the tracks there were all the bits and pieces of broken bolts, bent spikes and chipped rails not to mention the multitude of stuff that falls off trains. The motherload of IMO came from the open top gondola cars that were overfull of scrap metal from all around the country. Sometimes I was lucky enough to climb aboard one of those gondolas when the trains were stopped and I was like a kid in a candy shop.

The Hi-Tech industry is also a bountiful source of interesting objects many of which are also metal. Building chip cubes is the latest craze, you need 6 of the same size and then figure how to glue them together without gluing your fingers all together but in the end it gets lots of positive comments from the passersby who can’t resist grabbing them from the shelf in my cube.

One of the primary collection methods for IMO’s is using the Take-Apart skill set. I was always good at taking things apart. But not so much when it comes to putting things back together again. To this day I will scour the flea markets and junk yards in search of potential sources. While other old men are famous for sitting around and whittling their time away I am always happy to spend a few hours taking apart old hard drives and such for a few magnets and other Interesting Metal Objects. Magnets are the ultimate interesting metal objects.

I have since expanded my collective interests to include interesting objects that are not metal, glass being my next favorite followed by wood and paper. There is no better glass collectible than marbles and I had accumulated an amazing collection at one time but then I lost all my good marbles somewhere along the way in life. I still have enough marbles to get by and am always on the lookout for more. In fact that is a whole other chapter in my Book of Me Series: Looking for My Lost Marbles.

New Year’s Resolutions

It’s good to make resolutions even if we don’t keep them. At least we care enough to try and then when we feel bad for not following through we are motivated to try harder or at least make more resolutions. If we didn’t feel guilty we wouldn’t have to make them in the first place. Back when we still smoked cigarettes we quit every New Year only to start again in a few days or a week at the most. Then in 2000 we finally did quit but it was in March and not related to a New Year promise. There is a good chance that all those false starts were good practice and helped reach the final success.

Every day we make a list of things to do yet we rarely finish, that is a miniature version of the annual resolution process. There is a list for the week ahead and another for this Month and even one for the next. All those lists are full of things that got rolled over from the previous list so it is standard procedure to not get everything done. The same thing that happens in our personal life shows up at work where we make promises that will not be fulfilled. Why do we play the game when we know it will never be finished? It must be fun for some unreason.

Two years ago I made a new year’s resolution to not make any more new year resolutions but I failed to keep it and accidentally made another one last year that I also failed to honor. So I figured if all resolutions fail anyway, then the real solution is to make a resolution not to keep any resolutions. So now if I fail, it will be OK and if I succeed that will be OK too. It's a guaranteed win\win even if I lose\lose.

Most resolutions are based on regrets from last year. Some resolutions are promises to stop doing something bad like smoking while other resolutions are promises to start doing something good like losing weight but if they were such good Ideas why would we wait and only want to do it once a year? We say we are making a promise for the next year but what we really want to do is erase the past so we can feel good again. Instead we should erase the future so we won’t keep repeating mistakes like making resolutions that can’t be kept.

Pitfalls of the Poor and Anonymous

There was an old TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous where we got all the inside scoop on that group, but why has there has never been a show about the Poor and Anonymous? It’s about time they got some representation so I am here to speak for those who didn’t get a reality show.

The basic difference between the lower class and the upper class is how they deal with ownership. Poor people don’t own much so they keep what they have while the well-off turn over their property so fast they never get attached. That sense of ownership is just enough satisfaction to keep folks from complaining. A wealthy family can own several houses but they never move all the way in while single home families take full ownership and are in no hurry to move.

The next most common pitfall for the poor people has to do with entitlement. We all see the wealthy acting entitled to the good life but we rarely notice when the poor person exercise their right to lose. The scam is getting some of the people to believe they are entitled to be poor. We don’t just accept our poverty, we embrace it and actually learn to love it. That is why there is no revolution today. We have been programmed to love the life of disadvantage we live.

Another mistake the poor people make is delegation. Rich people get others to do all their work, not just the dirty work but even the fun stuff too. Regular people have to do all their own work both at home and on the job. Poor people would rather do it themselves. Even when there is someone that can help, we often prefer to do it ourselves.

Guilt is the best example of how different the classes can be. The well to do have no guilt but everyone else has to feel bad for enjoying some basic luxury such as cable TV or a six pack of beer. Hoarding is another pitfall for the poor. I still have clothes from much too long ago…even after a house fire I still have too much old stuff. Poor people are too busy working, too tired to try harder and just plain out of energy from all that worrying.

So the solution for poor people is to stop settling for less, stop feeling guilty and start delegating your poverty to someone who can better afford to be broke. We do this by making poverty more attractive to the upper class. Somehow, someday we will find a way to make it fashionable to be poor.

Blind Deaf and Happy

It was Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talking on TV recently so I was respectfully listening as she clearly stated that the best advice she ever heard was to sometimes be deaf. I was shocked that she agreed with that philosophy even after I heard it was from her Mother-in-Law on her wedding day and meant as a personal motto not a way to run the Supreme Court. It is true that Justice is blind, we have all seen that Statue, so maybe being deaf is also good.

After a while I cooled off and thought it over and decided she was right. We should filter everything we hear to decide if we should get mad or not. I can tell when my filter is broken and I over-react to little things and other times it is nothing but filter and I end up missing the fire drill. It is good advice with loved ones to let some things go and not hold others accountable for every little outburst. And if it makes sense for our loved ones then maybe it is good practice in general.

This advice is along the lines of turning the other cheek, so now we have to also turn a blind eye and if needed we turn a deaf ear. That’s a lot of turning of the other cheek so to speak and we can even practice turning a tasteless tongue and a numb finger if that will help to keep the peace. That leaves us with nothing but our noses to properly judge the world. There are plenty of stink jokes that will fit nicely here, please fill in the blank with your favorite: ________________________.

If we can learn to selectively turn our senses on and off at will then we should never be offended again. The trouble today is that everyone is too sensitive, always getting their feelings hurt by something that could easily be shrugged off. Come on America, show some backbone and muscle through the insults and ignorance of others. It’s all part of the game, just staple it together and call it bad weather, as Jack Johnson would say.

If someone or something offensive is about to hurt you, don’t let it land. Even if it does land don’t admit it, go blind and deaf. It’s easier than you think.

You Can’t Comprehend One Million

I can’t even remember his name but I sure can remember my high school algebra teacher acting like Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men telling us we couldn’t handle a million. He had a reputation as a “Bonehead Math” expert and his recurring theme said the human brain cannot grasp the number 1,000,000. We were ignorant 10^th graders still stupid enough to fight back with grains of salt on a table, stitches on a tablecloth and stars in the sky, but in all cases he insisted we could not look at them all at once, or count them or ever know them all individually.

That was enough to get us started in an ongoing conversation outside the classroom as each student admitted their personal limit for comprehension, many liking the number 1,000 , some less but none more than 10,000 except the stubborn few who insisted we could make it all the way to the forbidden million mark. That was how I began my journey to prove I could get to one million by first counting up from 1 (always got lost somewhere in the 5,400’s,) then down from 1,000,000 (nightmares with flying 9’s) so I finally switched to writing on a page.

I started with the notion of writing all the numbers clear to a million but it didn’t take long to see that would be too much work. That’s when I realized I only needed a million digits and started over again with just one number repeated over and over again. I first used the number zero but I could only get about 5,000 per page and it is easier to write ones which almost tripled the output to around 12,000 numbers per page but when I went to the period I was able to get 20,000 characters per page which translates to only 50 pages as compared to 80 or 200 for the others. The period is not a technically a number but it is the decimal point so that’s close enough.

I will have to give that teacher credit for making me think big after all these years. but I still won’t admit he was right. We should all be allowed to think to a million and beyond. I can lay out those 50 pages of dots and visualize a million now and am ready to begin on a billion. It will take a while but at least I have something to look forward to.

The Moon in the Man

I started out this article as an indictment against our modern world because we are so lame that we couldn’t keep up the Space Race of the 1960’s but I soon realized we have plenty of good reasons not to spend so much money for so little real value. The truly amazing thing is that we did manage do to it back then. We were different then as we surely are different now but there is still enough of a common thread for us to appreciate each other.

I don’t want to sound like one of those conspiracy theory people who think we never went to the moon and just faked it at Area 51. That would have been harder than the real thing. I do believe we went. I just can’t believe we will ever do it again.

That was the last time we could do it. We barely had the technology and the money did hurt at the time but we were ready and willing and miraculously able. Today we have too much technology and we can’t even keep the space shuttle going, we could never make it back to the moon let alone beyond. We lost a certain required skill that is missing today and we need to get it back. Let’s go ahead and call it is; crazy. We were all crazy back then but it worked better than this.

Something was different back then…certainly the economy but more than that, we felt empowered to dream big and do great things. It’s not like the world was young and innocent because I was there and it was not. Maybe it was the last time we could comfortably be our selves before we grew up and stopped doing childish things, like flying off to the moon.

How many people are still driving a 1980’s model, only NASA. And no plan for an upgrade… I’m not asking for a billion dollar budget but right now there are back yard enthusiasts sending up more interesting launches than the US Government. So it will have to be private business to push us to the next level. It seems like the Mission to the Moon was the last time the two political parties could agree on anything and maybe it could be the next thing to bring them together again.

Gold Mining in the Year 2050

During the great depression of 2025 the State of California tried in vain to find the mother-lode gold in an effort to restart the economy and finally balance the budget at the same time. They used all the latest technology and mapped out the likely spots but every test came back negative and in the end they admitted they were still no better off than searching for a “needle in a haystack”.

25 years later we are ready to try again and this time the chief engineer on the project promises it will be more like finding a “trombone in a haystack”. My job was to setup super microwave signal sources on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada between Reno and Las Vegas so that we could pick up those signals on the other side of the mountains in the foothills between Sacramento and Fresno. Instead of searching for Gold we soon found ourselves searching for granite outcroppings, underground water and any other source that might act as a good receiver.

Eventually we were able get detailed images at some depth it was never in the places we wanted. Every time we tried to zoom in on our favorite spots we had trouble finding solid rock to bounce our signals off and ended up testing in smaller distances at shallow depth just to get any readings. We were trying every frequency of every spectrum and poking around with every conceivable detection method.

One hot summer day I wiped the sweat from my forehead and then leaned up against a tree and to my surprise I started hearing the sweet music of a positive hit in my headset after nothing for days. Then the signal disappeared when I let go of the tree and even though I could get the signal back by touching the tree again my brain refused to accept to conclusion that a tree could carry my signal better than the ground. Luckily I had a co-worker who specialized in biology and he could explain how the root system was like an upside down antennae positioned perfectly in my ground loop and capable of picking up signals in materials which had been silent for all our attempts.

This was the first real breakthrough and after that we were able to create maps that consistently returned impressive images from %90 of our deep viewing. That was when we started getting a picture of things much deeper than the 1 to 10 miles we had been viewing, now we were seeing down to 100 miles and got the first glimpse if the deep drop-off and the heavy pull on the plates directly below Yosemite valley.

By using the latest Global Positioning Sonar Enhanced Lasers guided by Google Universe Interplanetary Triangulations we were able to pinpoint the mother lode once and for all. That was when we started getting some interesting results from the probes. And that is the next chapter in this series: Gold mining 2050: Chapter Two – Deep Pocket Drones.

Sweet Spots

Life is a series of long boring stretches with brief moments of extreme along the way to help us remember anything at all. In between the sour spots are occasional sweet spots where everything works out right for once. October is the sweet spot in time for yellow leaves on trees. That is also the month when the tarantulas migrate.

The planet Earth certainly sits within the sweet spot zone in the sun’s warmth. Alongside Mother Earth is the Moon which also represents the perfect balance between living too close together and someday collide or too far away so they eventually wander apart. If the moon were too big it would take over more than our tides and if it were too small it would only be a token.

The sweet spot is not always at the middle. Being wealthy or powerful is best savored at the top just as the sweetest golf score is down at the bottom. Like the old joke that goes; “When they called for brains I thought they said pains and I didn’t want any”. When we line up for brains you want to be first and for pains the best place is last.

Carbon owns the sweet spot on the Periodic Table of elements by virtue of being flexible enough to bond with more neighbors than anyone else and in more ways too. All the good stuff is made with carbon and not just living matter. The hydro-carbon bonds cover everything from gasoline to plastic. On our planet in this galaxy with this set of universal physics, there is no better building block than carbon.

The color green sits on the sweet spot of our visual spectrum. There are good arguments that we specialize in green because plant life did it first but in any case there are more shades of green than any other color and it sits right in the middle of visible light between the extremes of infra-red and ultra-violet.

Goldilocks can be the cheerleading mascot of the sweet spot philosophy; finding that best of all worlds, the middle ground between too much and not enough of whatever is under discussion at any given moment. The banana belt is a kind of sweet spot, geographically speaking. Sweet spots are out there, everywhere and anywhere but it’s up to us to find them and I am hoping to find mine on vacation next week.

Molecule Missed

Whatever happened to the lowly molecule. When I was a kid there was plenty of news about molecular studies but then everything moved on to Atomic science and we never looked back. It’s not that we should stop working on the atom but by now we should have completely mapped out the molecule when it turns out that no one knows a thing because they stopped working on it anymore. They all moved on to the more sexy stuff in bigger or smaller fields of study.

Somewhere between the elements and the atom is the Rodney Dangerfield of all Scientific subjects; the molecule. When the scientists who study physics first went in search of how things work, the molecule was their first theory as the chunk of matter that could not be seen but must exist to keep things together. The molecule was soon found boring and they next invented an even smaller bit called the atom which also cannot be seen but must exist in order for molecules to exist. They are driving so fast they have not time to look in the rear view mirror to see what they missed in their blind spot.

And that was the last time anyone gave a darn about the poor maligned molecule. Those scientists were on a mad dash to find even smaller stuff they called sub-atomic and they would be happy if they turn up sub-sub-atomic dinkies but what about the molecule? Does anyone know how it works? No, they are too busy going the other way.

That same thing happens everywhere we look. The computer engineers are trying to make the smallest transistor possible but they still don’t understand the potential of a big one. The Doctors only want to cure obscure corner cases but no one works on the common cold. The weatherman wants to talk about a hundred year flood but can only predict the rain a few days in the future.

It’s like trying to fly to Jupiter without stopping at Mars first. It’s the least we can do on the way out there, for practice at least. And if we ever do get to Mars we would soon lose interest in the moon no doubt as we work our way out to Jupiter and beyond. So we should also find our way around the molecule before we go any further in, as it were.

There is definitely a missing link between what we want to know and what we need to know let alone what we should know. If we are all that smart then we should know more by now.

Get Out of My Road

There is a well worn analogy in general use lately that states that any given amount of energy can be translated into the “Equivalent of taking thousands of cars off the road”. The favorite number for the amount of cars is 280,000 but it can be as much as millions and as little as a few thousand depending on the subject in question, but in all cases the formula is clearly meant get an emotional response. We are either scared of all that pollution if we don’t do something or delighted at the idea of taking all those cars off our road. Who hasn’t been stuck in traffic and wished all the other cars would just go away.

This verbal sleight of hand is an equal opportunity deception used by any speaker from any political party and can be tailor made to fit any scenario. Of course it can be used by the Green Team to make a case for turning off the lights or recycling paper but the other side can use the same logic to prove that we need to drill for more oil or add another nuclear plant. The problem with this line of thinking is that none of those things will actually reduce the number of cars on the road. We can turn off all the lights and build a big new power plant but it won’t take any cars off the road.

The theory states that if everyone would just start to do the right things it will be like taking so many cars off the road, but no one ever bothers to mention what year, make and model of car. Are those Hummers or Fiats? Eight Cylinders or 4? Do all those cars have good tires and a tune-up? What will happen to those cars? The whole idea is based on a ridiculous assumption to begin with and if we try to analyze it logically it only gets more meaningless.

Some of the blame goes to the word “equivalent” because it is so close to the word “equivocate” which means to “ deliberately mislead with the intent to deceive.” That sounds exactly like what is happening when we start out by assuming the positive outcome (fewer cars on the road) but end up with a negative result (fewer lights and more nuclear power plants). Whenever an argument uses an equivalent statement you can start to worry about equivocation.

Why can't paper reduction be compared to trees, lights compared to electricity and plastic bottles compared to…: Plastic. But instead we keep dragging the image of those cars being taken off the road like a tired old movie plot twist that is guaranteed to satisfy the viewing public. Why can't we just take cars off the road if that is the result we crave so much? Because we only want to remove the other cars, not ours.

Mean Time Between Success

It the world of manufacturing hardware there is a rating called Mean Time Between Failure or MTBF. This is a big number that is supposed to represent the length of time before a component will fail but it turns out to represent the lengths they will go to use statistics to confuse the average consumer.

For example, the DVD player I bought a few years ago was rated at 400,000 hours between failures. That means it will last 45 years, but the problem is; there were no DVD players 45 years ago, so how can they honestly make that prediction? Now I have a new Blue-Ray player that is rated for 1.5Million hours, which means I have to wait 171 years to find out if they are lying~! Talk about bogus claims that cannot be proven, that takes the cake.

I wonder why do they call it the “Mean” time between failures? If everything is running well it should be the “Nice” time between disasters. The other point of confusion is the “between” part of the formula which implies that there has to be an original failure before you can measure the time in between failures. That is one too many deaths for most parts.

It’s OK to use this method to measure mechanical devices but human beings can’t stand to be measured by their failures alone so we need a better scale that counts how often things go right. After all it seems somewhat negative to only evaluate the frequency of failures when we all want the world to hear about our successes. So let’s invent the new measurement for Mean Time Between Success.

The MTBS is really just another way for people to ask ourselves and each other, “What have you done for me lately”. It all comes down to how we measure success. I say every pay day is fruitful, every Holiday is eventful and every Friday should be fun. So my MTBS is never more than 6 Days.

There is No Such Thing as Zero

There was a time when the number zero was unknown to us. Then we got smart enough to invent the number zero. Everyone agreed we must be smarter now that we have this new number that really isn't a number at all but instead is just a "place holder". The number zero served us well back when we first learned to count but it is now time for us to abandon the zero as a child will abandon the tricycle and then later the training wheels on their bike. The number Zero has had a long and glorious history and we should mark down its place with honor as long as we accept that there must be an end to this nonsense so we can move on to the next level. Along with the Dinosaurs, the Horse Drawn Carriage and the Phone Pager, we can abandon this archaic device. We don't need no zero now. Here are my proofs.

Let's talk dollars: If you have one and then you don't, it doesn't feel like zero dollars, it feels like negative one. There is no such thing as zero.

Let's talk apples. You want some for a pie and you don't have any yet but your dream pie does. You never had zero with all those apples gleaming in your eye.

Let's not talk apples. If you don't have any apples, and we are not talking about apples, it doesn't feel like zero apples because there are no apples to begin with. Zero would be too many apples in this case. As soon as we talk about apples, the very absence or presence makes the total a non-zero number. It is simply not possible to stop in between positive and negative values. There either is, or is not. The existence of a Twilight Zone in the middle requires an alternate universe that none of us have ever or will ever see.

Let's talk people. Can you be zero years old? At birth? At conception? Is there a moment just before or just after that is somehow long enough to allow a third condition? The answer should be no. No matter how we measure, there is only before and after but not even one single instant can exist between or we would all be stuck there forever and beyond.

Why do I berate the poor lowly zero so much? My main complaint is the confusion with the alphabet character with the same visual image we call "Oh". To confuse things further we interchange the "Oh" sound for both the number and the letter. Not only does the number dilute the market price of the letter, but it should have its own icon rather than borrow one already in use. Then to top it off they put these two characters next to each other on the keyboard in order to maximize the possibility that mistakes will be made. How many times has the number not added up due to it being a Capitol OH instead of the number zero. They look the same, why not agree to put a strike through one or the other?

Yes, there was a time when we needed this crutch to prop up our fledgling intellect but now we are ready to think on our own two feet and prepare to run ahead to our next goal in the race for knowledge. What once was our central pivot is now our only anchor and it's time to cut the line and sail away. The real benefit will be in the computer world where we deal exclusively with 1’s and 0’s. Imagine the savings if we can banish half the traffic. We should all tell the internet to, “Stop sending any more zero’s!” Just think how fast the web will be when we only have to send the ones.

Soonest Cheapest Best

These are the three driving forces of the Business World but the concept applies to all facets of human life. Who doesn’t want the all the best things in life, except when it costs too much or takes too long, which turns out to be most of the time. If it wasn't for Soonest and Cheapest, we could go straight to Best. The only reason we aren't Best yet is because Soonest and Cheapest keep taking priority.

How many times have you had someone request to have something done ASAP. If everything needs to be done as soon as possible then why bother making the request. Have you ever been told to take your time, there is no hurry? No, it is always urgent. Even soon is not soon enough, nor is sooner; it has to be soonest. Soonest is another way of saying we are too busy fighting fires to do any long-term projects. In a disaster incident soonest can't be soon enough but even for long term and low priority projects the steps are broken down into what comes next: soonest.

Cheapest is not a goal, it is just a benchmark to see how much money got wasted. No one wants to be a cheapskate, but everyone wants to save money. No one ever got fired for spending too little. The rule of thumb is to find the cheapest item and then buy the next most expensive one above that. Reciprocally you never want to buy the most expensive of anything, instead buy the one just below. The ones on the bottom and top are always exaggerated in actual value.

Best is nice target to shoot for but it won't be cheapest or soonest. Soonest and Cheapest are the compromises we have been making over and over to end up where we are now. Do we really need Best? Maybe settling for second best is just as logical as buying the one just above cheapest. Best might cost too much. Best might be impossible. Turn's out, you can’t get there from here.

So the approach should be a balance between these three opposing forces: Soonest Cheapest and Best. In the end it turns out that getting the best in life either takes too long or costs too much.