Social Contract

There are classes in society, with each class having its role. The upper class are people whose job is to ease the life of the other lower classes. Toiling all day long to create food, sanitation, the very stuff that we need to live in a society - that kind of work sucks and is something we do not ask of the upper class to do. Everyone gives a small part of what they need to sustain their own lives to a few people, and these people do not have to toil, instead they create luxury, things to make us laugh, things to entertain us, science to ease our heavy burdens, etc. We give them a small part of our life, and they are to make the rest of it worth living.

This has changed, people just want to be one hit wonders then live out their days in luxury. The social contract has been broken. These people are not creating for the masses! Part of the contract for them to never have to toil is that they are to spend their lives entertaining us. Sure, Britney, Lindsey, and Paris have been engaging in some pussy flashing lately, but is that enough? Are they really taking people's minds off of their own pathetic lives? Or are they just encouraging people to want to be free from toil without ever having to produce anything for society?

The libertarian philosophy says that people have wealth equal to the value that they bring to society. If they bring no value, they should be poor. If they bring a lot of value, their wealth soars. This doesn't work any more with the wealth and population of the world on the increase. It is now much easier for leeches to appear. People can appear, take a small piece of wealth from everyone with the multiplier of population being so large that they never have to really create any value. The system is heading for collapse!

I say we put them to work! Produce for us! Stop traveling the world to show what a big heart you have by adopting from a different country - make another CD or movie instead and let the rest of us deal with the pain of life. They need to live out their lives in riches and be pumping out the entertainment as well!

The Edward

Comic books on DVD!

I bought 40 Years of X-Men and 40 years of Avengers on DVD! They claim to be actual scans of actual comics, stored lovingly on DVD for me to read on my PC without ruining my actual Mint comics! Though, I haven't actually opened the DVD packaging, because the boxes are still in Mint Condition... but I want to finally read all of those old story lines...

I passed on the 40 Years of that whiny bitch, Spiderman. I mean here is a guy who was not only lucky that he didn't die from radiation poisoning (which is a truly horrible, slow, and painful way to go), but he was also given super powers in the process. And what does he do with all of this power? Squanders it and then complains that he is squandering it. "I can not ask out Mary Jane, because I can not drag her into this lifestyle. Woe is me." Well, if he wanted Mary Jane, and he feels that the two options are mutually exclusive, then he either needs to give up on Mary Jane, or give up on spending his "got to save everyone else" campaign. He could be using his powers for good, but in a higher level way.

Everyone has options. You know that there are people starving in many places in the world right now. You could quit your job and personally go over there and feed them, though you would soon be one of them if you did this. Not very effective means of reducing World Hunger. Or you could use your station in life, your better access to money and resources, leverage this access to create more wealth and then send that wealth to those starving people. You can use the advantages you have to reduce World Hunger in a much larger, but less personal way.

So, we have Spiderman here. What does he do? He wants to personally go around and save everyone. And in the process creates a life for himself that isn't worth living. Instead, if he truly wanted to help the greatest number of people, he would leverage his advantages for great gains, which he could use to help more people. One easy example: makes his millions then hires a rather large group of people to run around and save people. Basically, create his own charity that helps many more people than he could by sacrificing his life. And he would have his Mary Jane as well.

Remember, the best way to save the world is to reach the highest level you can, then pay someone to solve the problem.

The Edward

Trapped in a dream

Have you ever been trapped in a dream? Besides this one, that is. There are a few ways to interpret that question, so I will pick one.

In the mornings, when I am trying to wake up, I sometimes can not. I am aware of my surroundings, in a vague kind of way, but I can not stop dreaming. My alarm clock becomes part of the dream. "That is the sound of the planet detector going off. Have to fiddle with this switch to stop the noise so we can focus on finding that planet." I believe everyone has had an experience like that, but what about deeper?

After this happens, sometimes I know I am in bed, and I can move around, but I can not physically get out of bed. I toss and turn and flip around, and since I am still dreaming I do not want to get out of bed. I believe it would be dangerous to get out of bed while trapped in a dream, though this is all a dream anyway, so...

I try to snap out of the dream, try to force myself to realize that I am dreaming, but to no avail. Everything I do ends up in the dream. "Dr. Malice, with his hypno-ray, has made me believe that I am in a bed, but really I am on a raft in the middle of a swamp on a distant planet, so if I step out of this bed, I will really step out of my raft to certain doom! Curse you Dr. Malice!" Or "I need to get up in time for a meeting, but the meeting is really a ruse to lure me into a trap! If I get up and go to the meeting, mind sucking aliens will walk through the walls and live up to their name! Luckily I figured this out in time so that I can just stay here in bed." Etc.

Ever have dreams like that? Trapped... and the logic of dreams is not the logic of being awake. In a dream, most anything seems logical, yet upon becoming fully awake, as awake as anyone can become in This Dream, we would say "Rule the world with a chunk of cheddar cheese? I can not believe I worked so hard to tell myself to remember that when I woke up. But it seemed so logical at the time..." or "Call her? In my dream it seemed so real that she liked me, but now that I am awake I can clearly see that she really has no interest in me what so ever. She probably doesn't even know who I am!" Though I really need to work on that last one - it would have prevented me from sending many an embarrassing email...

The Edward

Ideas

I have blog ideas all day long, the problem seems to be that I do not have a means of writing them down when I think of them. Most are very complex, winding through various ideas I want to express - those are the ones I seem to forgot and regret that I have forgotten them. They are like dreams, very clear when going on, but so easy to forget once that have passed. I try to recreate that state when I am writing, to bring you into my world to see what I saw when I had those thoughts, which is another reason I write late at night when I am half asleep. I seem to think of what I consider to be my most interesting blog ideas when I have been up for less than an hour in the morning. This probably explains a lot about the topics/ideas.

Looking over other people's blogs, I feel that I am seeing a part of their lives - what they care about, what happened to them that day, etc. If I know the person, I find those posts interesting. It is like I am keeping up on what is going on in their lives. It also allows everyone to keep up with what is going on, rather than having to send the same email to all of ones friends.

For my blog, I do not know how it is perceived, but I do not think it gives people an insight into my daily life. I hope it gives people something to think about, a new way to view the world, or a view into my view of the world, or a view into my view of what I believe to be their world. I know, kind of arrogant, but everyone wants to make their mark on the world - mine I hope to be in the thoughts of humans for generations to come. Something so appealing to me to have something exist without physical form - to leave a mark on the world without leaving an actual mark.

I really need to find a way to capture the ideas that I have throughout the day, for at the time that they happen, I really enjoy exploring them. At that time, they are as clear as crystal to me and it might be easier for me to bring you into my world if I wrote my blogs at that time or had a better capture method. As it is, I sometimes write as a person who has been to a far away land and am trying to describe it from memory, so I have to spice it up a bit to make it interesting. But wouldn't it be cooler to read a blog while I am trapped in that thought? I think it would, at least for me of the future, since I go back over my blog posts every few months. And I do find most of them funny even if others do not. As long as I am enjoying myself. ;)

The Edward

Believe what you want

There is an article in this months Scientific American. I know, you are expecting me to next say "Actually, there are many articles in this months issue, but I will only speak to one this blog post", but I'm not going. I'm going to take the high road tonight and stick to the topic at hand. The title of the article in question is "Eat, Drink and Be Merry" and is it more of a commentary on a new book called "The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know about Food is Wrong", which I just ordered from Amazon.

The premise of the book is that food science really isn't a science - we really do not know much about food. The article picks a specific example from the book to show that what you believe about your food affects how well your body processes that food. Enjoying your food is more important that what you eat. Shocking...

Actually, the shocking part is that I had heard this back 1991 and had actually attended a talk on this topic. The speaker made a compelling argument, and I believed it for many years. But, over time, Others persuaded me that that was nonsense, there is no way that this could be true. I began to doubt my beliefs, I started to gain weight and appear to age. Once that began, it became harder and harder to retain my beliefs - one look in the mirror and I could see that I wasn't turning out like I should be if I was really enjoying myself and my beliefs were true. Since I not only ate hamburgers, I ate the hell out of them, obviously my beliefs must be false part of the equation! I felt I had to start eating food that I hated to look and feel better. The problem was that I didn't look nor feel better. That is the problem with beliefs, once there is doubt, it is like a crack in a damn that slowly spreads.... okay, it is like a guy saying to his gal, "Let me just put the head in, that's it, just the head" which slowly leads to full on fucking. I was screwed by my doubts.

Now, with this article in hand, it has lead me to some other doubts in what I believed about myself. The most important thing I realized: Believe what you want! The whole world, or at least the small section of it that you meet every day, could and probably is very wrong about what is truly correct. Pick something that you believe to be true and follow that belief. If you believe it, who knows what will happen.... maybe they will have an article about it some day!

Oh, and eat whatever you want, because it really doesn't matter. Only stress matters.

The Edward

The Order of the Phoenix

I still remember the first time I heard of the title of what was then the newest Harry Potter book. Well, I do not really remember where I was or what I was wearing or who I was doing at the time. Its not like I was having sex and she said "Oh yeah, that is nice. By the way, did you hear the news about the name of the latest Harry Potter novel? That's the spot, right there. Yeah, it is called..." etc. That I would probably remember, so it probably was something more mundane, like I was driving to work and heard a pedestrian scream it at me as I just barely missed hitting a small gaggle of geese.

What I do remember was thinking "Wow, what a crappy title for a book." And now that a movie based on that novel is about to grace our World, it is reviving that memory within me, a memory that I am now sharing with you.

The reason I thought it was a crappy title is because the way I interpreted the title and I was sure that in no way would be what the book was about (which turned out to be true). Being that I enjoy food, my interpretation was: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. See the difference? Well, see Order was a food term for me. So, I had this vision of Harry Potter going to his local restaurant and ordering The Phoenix. That didn't really sound like one could fill an entire book with that story and keep it interesting.

As time passed, I forgave the crappy name and decided that I could write a book based on my understanding of the title - or at least make a short film about it. See, Harry Potter, the boy who survived a horrible forking as a child (but which took his parents) but left him with a scar, decides to check out Lord Voldemort's restaurant (which is where the tragic accident had happened). But he is going to get back at Voldemort, he was going to order The Phoenix, and since it begins with a definite article, I would assume that there is only one dish of it available, and once it is gone there is no more. Voldemort's entire restaurant reputation rests on The One Dish That No One Dare Speak Its Name (while ordering), for once it has been ordered, his restaurant will close for ever! (And people kind of think that most of his dishes are pretty darn good, so they don't order it.) Harry, seeking revenge, because he is kind of a jerk in the previous novels, goes to the restaurant to Order the Phoenix. What happens next? Who will win this battle of wills and wits? See, there could be some meat to this story!

Or Harry is at cooking school. Dumbledore is the head chef. Etc. Though, this would require rewriting most of the original books to make this work, so I abandon this idea. Who wants to read a seven book series about the Boy Who Lived (after a really bad case of food poisoning)?

So, what am I saying? Sometimes words have two meanings. Sometimes those meanings are not what one intends, since one doesn't really know how others will bias one's words. And I think I could write a really good parody of Harry Potter if I tried.

The Edward

Knows Funny

I was in a book store today.

The Edward

PS Okay, so there was more to story, but not much more. I saw a title of a book "He Knows Funny." Got me thinking of a short post.

I know funny, but I just do not abuse the privilege by calling funny at all hours of the night. (which is when I am usually writing these posts)

I know funny, but I just choose to forget that when writing.

I know funny, but funny is kind of jerk so I avoid funny as much as possible.

I know funny, but since I slept with funny's sister, funny has it out for me.

I know funny, but does funny know me...

The Power of Imagination

While watching the videos of Cosmos by Carl Sagan last week, I stumbled across something interesting (well, many interesting ideas, but let us focus on one for tonight): black holes. He claimed nothing can escape a Black Hole, not even light! Sure I had heard this before, but this time a strange though accorded to me - there is something that can escape a black hole and he was even talking about it in that very sentence...

We can calculate what the inside of a black would be like. We know the equations that govern our Universe and so assuming that the rules are the same inside of the black hole, we have an idea of what it would be like inside. (I know I have an idea of what it would be like inside...) So the one thing that can escape a black hole is this: imagination. The power of our thoughts.

If our Universe is closed (ie has no edge) then we are actually living inside of a black hole. (I always knew this from My Visions, but Carl also said it during Cosmos.) We can imagine that we live inside of one, and we can imagine what it would be like outside of our closed Universe. We can also probe black holes in our Universe with our thoughts, we can peer inside, look at the Event Horizon, then safely escape back to our own Universe.

If the information we have about all aspects of a black hole are actually correct, then we have gotten information out of a black hole - our thoughts have reached in and taken something out. How is this any different than any other information that might escape? In my world, it isn't. With the power of imagination and thought, nothing is beyond us, not even the "inescapable" black hole.

The Edward

Self-aware matter?

Something else that struck me whilst I watch Cosmos (read Sunday's post first), something Carl said - we are matter that has become aware of itself. I never really thought of it like that - probably because of my strict religious upbringing.

I spent some time thinking about the implications of that. Matter, the stuff all around us, being organized in such a way that it realizes that it is matter. Heavy elements from burnout stars forming patterns in such a way that the patterns know that they are patterns. Very weird stuff.

I likened it to computer software evolving to the point where it knows it is just computer software. But it is more than that, because software is too high a level to match the fundamental issue of basic particles becoming aware.

Sure, I believe in evolution, species over time drifting in form and function to adapt to the environment. That makes sense and can be proven mathematically. But raw particles gathering together to "know"...

So, what does Know mean? Is it a strange idea or just a human bias? Does all matter know something, and when enough gets together, it knows more? Do we think that only we are aware because we see others like ourselves and we know that we are aware, therefore we assume others are too? But things like whole planets, which have a lot of matter, do they know? I would have to guess that self-awareness is a fundamental property of matter, since like gravity it just doesn't appear without matter. So, planets are aware, they see other planets and know that they are aware, but how do they see us?

The Edward

250 Million Years

Whilst I was out sick for a few weeks, I had chance to watch Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Well, not so much of a chance, but an obsession that ended with me spending a few hours on the road, visiting any place that might have it on DVD, only to find a copy at Fry's electronics in the computer component section (in with all of the chips, motherboards, etc). I was told by a salesclerk that it was sciency, so they put it there rather than with the rather large section of TV show DVDs that they have. 13 hours of Carl droning on and on can really put one to sleep. But during some of those fevered half-asleep hours, I stumbled across a few ideas that I wanted to post about - this is one of them.

Our galaxy is large (compared to the Earth, though small compared to other galaxies). It is 100,000 light years across and takes 250 Million years for our solar system to makes its way once around. Being that the Universe is a mere 14-ish billion years old, that means our solar system could have at most made 56 orbits around the galactic core. Actually, our solar system isn't that old, we are a third generation solar system (we are made from one that exploded which formed another than exploded which lead to ours forming). That is interesting in and of itself, but the first thing I thought was: that's impossible, 56 orbits around the galactic core!

See, planets, suns, etc, all stuff is space is supposed to be formed by these eddies, little pools of matter (basic particles) that after billions of years kind of just clumped together. These clumpings, formed by the swirls, clear out their orbit in order to get the matter needed to make suns. With a maximum of only 56 orbits from the time of the Big Bang until now, that doesn't leave a lot of rotations for swirling. Our space is very clear, which means a lot of clearing has gone on... but over only 56 orbits?

Take a cup of hot chocolate. There will be foam on the top, which can be used to represent the early universe. How many times does it have to swirl the liquid around the center before one will see the foam clump into small systems? Sure I am simplifying the problem way down, but I believe the principal is still accurate enough for my blog. It just seems that most arguments I've seen for the formation of stars imply that over billions of rotations, matter finally packs in close enough to form a star, not just a handful of rotations.

Therefore, based on this newest observation and some basic math, I'm going to say the Universe is actually one million times old than currently believed to be true. At least a million. I believe a few thousand years from now, people will discover this to be true, you can bet on it.

The Edward

Bum Fight

During my past month of vacations/visits/illnesses, I had a lot of time to lie around and watch tv through my endless coughing. During that time, I saw something shocking, so I thought I would share it with you. Dr. Phil was going to have a guest on his show - the guy who start this who bum fight thing. I was unaware of this bum fighting stuff, but Dr. Phil promised his show would expose this whole thing and the assholes behind it.

In my weakened condition, I must have slept through the time when Dr. Phil was on, so I was bummed. I tuned to another channel, figuring if Dr. Phil was on this topic, it must be on other stations as well. And I finally found a channel that was showing this bum fight stuff.

There were these two bums on screen. I could tell it was going to be brutal to watch by their unshaven state - hair everywhere. The bums were already going at it. Smashing into each other, hands flitting here and there, shocking stuff for TV.

Then from out of nowhere, one of them suddenly had a stick. The one bum started poking the other one with the stick. It looked like it was about to come to blows! It looked like the one finally achieved the goal for having the stick in the first place, but with all of that hair, I really couldn't tell what was going on. It was brutal and hard to watch, but also fascinating - I couldn't turn away (or reach the TV remote). Hair everywhere, a stick all over the place, lots of screaming and moaning - I knew it could last long, and I was right.

Slowly the camera pulled back and we got to see the faces of these two women, who really weren't half bad looking. I guess one or both of them had finally reached their fake climaxes, so they were hugging as the scene ended.

I don't know how Dr. Phil would have shown that on his program, since I had to tune to Playboy TV to see this bum fighting stuff, but I guess in the name of educating the public they can show this kind of stuff. Sure, it was brutal and I can almost see what the controversy is all about (why go for a bum when there is a perfectly good pussy only an inch away), but still... to hear Dr. Phil talk about it I expected something much more gruesome. I guess I will have to wait for his show to rerun that episode to see his take on this topic.

The Edward