I Swear I Stepped on a Mountain

There once was a mountain, bigger and taller than any other mountain that has ever been or ever will be, and this mountain had a name, he was called Ryan.

Now, Ryan did not start out tall. Indeed, in the beginning he was only as tall as every other mountain, which in mountain terms is to say not very tall. But Ryan hungered to be taller, he hungered in fact to be the tallest of any mountain anywhere. To be so tall that he could reach the very stars in the heavens. 

And so everyday he stretched and he strained in his rocky bed, and everyday he grew just a few centimeters taller. After a while even the other mountains who, like Ryan, wanted to be taller stopped growing, contenting themselves with their new found altitudes.

I am tall enough, they would think. Why grow any farther?

Finally Ryan was the tallest of all the mountains, yet still he kept going.  Gripped by his obsession to pursue ever loftier heights up and up and up he went.  Until at last Ryan stretched so high that his base could no longer support his and with a mighty CRACK!  the stone giant came tumbling and crumbling down to ruin. Boulders the size of sky scrapers ricocheting about like a stampede.

When the dust settled All that was left of Ryan was a single stone no bigger than the size of a fingernail. From there Ryan slipped into depression and spent his days weeping over all that he had lost and dreaming of the time when he was the tallest mountain in the world.  Many an eon did he pass in this way though to him it seemed like the blink of an eye.

One day there happened to be a runner.  This runner had run a couple marathons but now he was reading a whole bunch of stories about how you shouldn't actually wear shoes when you run, you should run barefoot.  Now this runner wasn't very bright, and thought to himself 'Huh, maybe I should try running barefoot.'

And off he went, running barefoot in the streets.  Streets which, while they appeared quite smooth from a distance, and felt smooth when you were wearing shoes, were in reality so coarse as to be only a step above gravel.

Ignoring the pitiful complaints of his poor abused feets, the runner continued until that black and accursed day when his path crossed that of Ryan.

Ryan was stone drunk that day, sprawled face up in the gutter of the inner city Baltimore street. Deciding to take it easy that day since he feet were still getting used to going barefoot the runner decided he would go to the local park and come back.  So he set off never thinking that he was about to have an unpleasant encounter with a mountain.

The run had been going fine until that fateful step, it was a bit cold and wet true, and his feet were giving him their usual complaints, but it was nothing out of the ordinary.  When suddenly he landed on Ryan.

Ryan, awaking with a start from his drunken stupor was caught entirely off guard by the sudden assault of the foot above him.  In his confusion he lashed out.  Pouring all his bitter depression, his bile, burning woe of centuries into the strike he bit deep into the half hardened flesh, giving cry to a tiny shriek as he smote his vengeance.

When the runner got home he knew immediately that something was amiss.  Examining his foot he found the wound, a bruise already forming, looking as if his foot had been struck by some tortured soul.

No mere pebble, nor stick did this he knew.  This is the work of some hidden might which will cause he to walk with a slight limp for at least the next couple of days.

The Vaccine Saga Part II: Bill Gates and his Super Secret Sneaky Agenda to Gleefully Devour Murdered Babies

So it was that when last we left our hero he was sorely beset all round.  Haughtily had he stridden taken the field thinking to glory himself battling in the name of truth and justice, the bright blade of discernment in hand.  But no contest of arms was there to be had.  For his foe met him not with rational argument, but with righteous indignation and smarmy condescension.  Armored thus the keen edge of rational thought could find no chink, and our hero did not stand long before this fell tide.

The brave boy was forced to flee.  Gravely wounded was his pride and some there were that believed it would prove mortal, yet glad were all when he proved master to the injury and this is the tale I shall tell you now.

It irked me for a long time after that my dad had won that argument. Well, not won so much as I let him win. I lacked the evidence to contradict him directly and with my dad as worked up as he was, pounding the theory that Bill Gates was not so secretly pushing vaccine use to euthanize untold millions of people, it was going to take nothing short video evidence to prove to him that this was not in fact the case.

This I did not have, and since discretion is the greater part of valor and good dinner table manners I had to set it aside.  Additionally I am a practical man, and at just that moment it happened that I was a hungry practical man. I decided with little regret that I would rather content my belly than my reason.

Days passed, each day bringing with it the nagging thought that I should look up that video my dad was going on and on about.  The one where Bill Gates admits to crimes against humanity. For one reason or another I did not look it up, lack of time, lethargy, and a pernicious disinterest making the call to look the video up a little fainter each day.

Until I confess, it was all but forgotten.

Call it divine inspiration, call it a lark, call it a prickly sense of justice, one day I awoke to find that I had decided I was going to prove my father wrong and it was going to glut myself on sweet, savory, victory.

TO THE YOUTUBES!

The first part was easy to find.  Just typing in Bill Gates Vaccine the helpful algorithms is already suggesting I complete my search terms with 'Depopulation'.  Those clever conspiracy types with their euphemisms for 'super villainous death monger'.

If you have the time and find a bracing dose of crazy amusing I quite recommend watching some of them. Clearly I had found the very font of journalistic excellence and was about to be provided with first rate balanced coverage of the issue.  Renowned authors TheTrutherGirls, EyezOpenWide2, Seattle4Truth, and ScreamingStoic all weighed in with their videos, keeping company with other videos under such even handed titles as:

Bill Gates EXPOSED! Wants Depopulation Through Vaccines

Bill Gates: Depopulation, Vaccines, & Dead Babies

Bill Gates wants Major Depopulation though vaccines

and just in case you had any doubts

Bill Gates admits that Vaccines are used for DEPOPULATION, Not For Making People Healthy

Clearly, my father is not alone.

I sigh.  It is the drawn out sigh of a long sufferer. Of a man about to engage a task he know will be difficult, who knows he will relish the conquest, when he stands atop the mountain a conqueror, but knows also that the climb will fray his resolve, the kind of sigh full of secret relish.

Weathered of feature and grim of countenance. Our boy hero goes to the fray silent as stalking death. His sword raised he is ready to cut down this ancillary host of the enemy.  The sun above favors him with special beams whose light glimmers and slides about his well polished mental mail of sound judgement. The foes are many and he will not be able to raise his sword arm for weariness by the time night has come, but stalwart of conviction he remains, come what may.

Dreams

I just dreamed that I was running for the republican nomination.  It was against a different field of candidates and we were herded together into some stale little room that looked like it was furnished by a bunch of college stoners on a budget.  We were there to wait for a toad faced tv anchor who was going to ask us some questions for a quick profile and TV interview she was doing (think more something you would see on Face the Nation, than a debate).

It was a pretty loose affair once she started asking questions it was a race for the most outrageous and provocative answer that would get the speaker camera time.  I remember that as it was finally my turn to speak on the issue, and I got ready to deliver my well thought through answer, which I was not so secretly pleased to give as it was going to cut my rivals positions ribbons, I was outshouted by one of the practiced blowhards around me.

After the cameras where capped and the lights were shut off, gathering her bag my eyes met the tv anchor's.  She gave me a shrug as she fastened her coat and left.

Later I went to the Blair house, the Vice President's residence where I tracked water and mud onto the nice hardwood floor.  Sharing a cold deli pickle with a Secret Security coworker we lamented my poor performance in the interview and how I wasn't actually old enough to run for president anyway.

The Vaccine Saga, Part I: Bill Gates and the Beginning

I shall tell you now a tale of adventure and perseverance against impossible odds. Of a brave and righteous boy battling and his malign and exasperating father.

Our tale begins as most such tales do, with my father claiming a truth so outrageous as one could scarcely believe it could be uttered with a straight face. Alone is our hero the boy to give combat in the name of truth and justice, with only wit and grit to gird him against the follies of his villainous father.  Standing solitary with the hosts of his foe arrayed before him the battle is joined with these words:

"Bill Gates, you know head of the Gates Foundation, which has untold amounts of money behind it, has even said he is supporting the use of vaccines around the world for depopulation."

 This is what my father told us all at dinner.  My dad and several others I hadn't met had arranged to meet for dinner at a lovely Lebanese restaurant which was bit pricey but, as I came to learn, had quite delectable food. The conversation was going nicely until someone started my dad on vaccines.

My dad is a pretty calm, steady guy.  6'6" with a deep voice, and meticulously combed hair which is graying at the temples he is not the sort given to chattiness.  My dad is one of those types who when you ask them a question will sit and carefully chew over his response, giving it up only with the greatest reluctance some days time later.  When we play chess he broods on the other side of the board silently playing every possible variation of moves before he moves a piece, a process which will take a mere 10-20 minutes if you rush him.

There is one strategy however which instantly draws my father out of his laconic habits.  That is to touch upon one of his pet conspiracy theories.

My dad despises anything which smacks of Big Brother and gleefully revels in accusations of government misconduct while darkly alleging that such claims are but scratching the surface.  One of his favorite such causes, and truth be told my dad treats these matters less like theories and more like causes on which he must educate all those within earshot, is vaccines.

So when he started in on vaccines I must confess I was only half listening. I had heard this routine before and admittedly I found the flat bread and hummus on the table far more interesting and gratifying.  But the line about Bill Gates caught my attention.

"Wait a minute," I interjected. "Are you trying to tell me that Bill Gates not only said, but said publicly, he wants to use vaccines to kill people?"

That is exactly what he is saying, he replies.  It was caught on tape, he saw the video. If I do the research I can watch the video too, it is astonishing.

I frown into the shallow plate of olive oil and spices as I dip a bit of pita into it, contemplating this claim.

"If you do the research.." and "If you look at the studies..." are two of my dad's favorite rejoinders when challenged.  A brilliant tactic when you think about it since I rarely have occasion to wonder if Bill Gates is promoting global vaccine use in a plot to depopulate the world.  I honestly can't imagine why this wasn't my suspicion from the first but it really hadn't occurred to me.

Knowing that pressing the matter was little likely to avail me I chewed over my bread silently.  I had no evidence to refute him with no matter how outrageous his claim was, so for the present I just had to sit back and let it blow over.

The waitress just then appeared with our meals which, from the look and smell of them, seemed every bit as delicious as the appetizers. I consoled myself with the knowledge that no matter how crazy my dad's beliefs were it wouldn't make my dinner any less sumptuous.

And so our hero, recognizing that he cannot win this day, retreats for the moment for a day where he is sure to win.

Existential Crisis 1 of X (Where X = Many, I Am Sure) Written to the Tune of Dvorak's Symphony for the New World

Alternate title: Morose Thoughts on a Rainy Day

If I did not love Jane, then why did I have sex with her?

Did I love her in one of those truths too difficult to countenance? If I didn't, as a masturbatory act or simply an expression of genetic impulses it seems wholly (unacceptable/distasteful/tawdry) given my feelings in retrospect and especially at the time.

This raises the question of how can I judge if I am unsure what exactly the feeling of love is? A cop out I know, so let us assume I am 70% certain to recognize it when I see it.

Is making the realization and accepting that I love someone before having sex with them a standard I can or wish to set? Seems a remarkably high bar. I would not go so far as to say that this standard would apply to those relationships entered into for amusement, only those entered into for . . . Well, what are those other relationships entered into for?

Companionship.

Is the bulk of the wound the fact that I would even entertain the question of love with someone who has already completely rejected these feelings?

Interesting that I am able to speak of love so forcedly casual (granted in a place no one will ever see it) when I yet refuse to speak of it aloud.

I just had the thought that instead of accepting being broken up with I should have simply refused. Use my decisiveness to carry the day over those of weaker will. Immediately I knew it wouldn't work. A woman of such a lack of confidence and force of conviction wouldn't be able to handle dating me. The kind of woman I would date would never let me get away with trying to pull crap like that, not for a second.

Pro-Business Defence of Net Neutrality

The question is not should the net remain neutral but why must the net remain neutral.

In the end it is rather simple. Let us take the example of skype. Now an internet carrier looking at skype might see it and think hmmm, they are making a good deal of money over there I need to buy that. But let us say the skype people are perfectly happy to run skype and keep runnign skype and they don't want to sell. Alright, well the I as the internet carrier don't have to give you the bandwidth on my network to run your service. Not only that, but I am going to tack an internet roaming fee to anything coming to my customer's computers from your site. In addition I am going to launch my own version of skype which customers can use for free, which I am going to give the necessary bandwidth.

The above scenario is bullshit in that I made it up but also in that it is offensive to my sense of justice and fair play. It is however far from bullshit in that it is completely doable should net neutrality end.

Now to be fair, the internet provider is not trying to buy up skype on a whim, because they are evil people. They are simply people with a purpose, and that purpose is profit. If skype provides a service that people want and generates a profit it will necessarily and rightfully attract the interest of other businesses who will want to horn in on these profits.

However to allow the biggest businesses in the game crush any other smaller business they want any time they please to get at the other businesses customers, not by out performing the smaller business in service but by making the other business untenable will have a chilling effect on the creativity and invention of those who wish to provide innovation to the market.

I am no longer convinced that I am saying anything which has not been said thousands of other places before now, but the thoughts are original to me so what the hell.

A Stab at Life

I was running a couple days ago and here is what I came up with. I decided at some point in the course of things that for whatever reason I was going to try and define life, something that still pesters science.

So here goes:
As of this moment my attempt at defining life has two parts.
1) The entity must be able to collect energy is some fashion and store it in a physical structure that can be broken down and released later.
2) The entity must be able to replicate.

Now in the first part of the definition what one must pay attention to is the storing of energy in a physical structure. It is not sufficient for an entity to absorb and re-emit energy, essentially every bit of matter can do this in some capacity, that doesn't mean it is alive. No, to be alive an entity must take energy and convert it into a form that it can not only use for its own ends, but more importantly store for later use. Since the only way we will know that the entity has stored this energy is if it creates some physical structure, a chemical bond of some form or even perhaps more exotically in some mechanical fashion I'll not limit the physical form it takes, that has some energy potential.

One might notice that I do not require that the organism be able to release this energy again once it is stored. I conceive of the possibility of a symbiotic relationship existing between two entities whereby the entity storing the energy is only able to release it with the aid of the second entity.

The second part of the definition is the reason a wind turbine is not alive. A wind turbine can take energy and store it is a physical form, but it is incapable of replication. There is no conceivable scenario in which a wind turbine creates another wind turbine.

Before we move on to the difficulties of this position let me first answer the question which may occur to some: Does an entity need to be able to replicate independent of any other entity? Clearly our experience tells us no, an entity may need another entity (of say, the opposite sex), and expanding past our, or at least my experience, it is also permissible for an entity to require a chemical, or object to replicate.

Now stepping gingerly out into the brush Does an entity need to replicate an exact copy of itself? Again, our experience tells us no, it doesn't. To this point, so long as the product of the replication does itself fulfill the criteria above for being alive it is permissable to call the original entity (entities) alive.

Here we have reached the truly daunting terrain: How does one define an entity? Humans, who are alive, are composed of trillions of live cells. These cells are alive yes, they take energy in and store it in physical structures, and they replicate all the time. However, while they themselves are alive they are alive in service of a greater entity, the person. But what is the difference between the living cells of my lungs which are part of me, and the bacterial cells in my gut which are alive but not a part of me? To this I have no answer which is disappointing since in writing this I had talked myself into really believing this two part definition I had dreamed up.