To the Stars

Today's run I intentionally dedicated to thinking about getting off this planet. Shuttles and rocket fuel are nice and pretty but they are hardly efficient. Consuming massive quantities of fuel and releasing huge quantities of exhaust, each launch it's own trial to say that achieving earth orbit could be stream lined a bit is something of an understatement. So I have taken it upon myself to devise a better way, or at least consider alternate ways it might be done.

So first I started off with the idea as it was presented to me in science fiction. An impossibly long metal cable of indeterminate width that stretched from planet surface to orbit. Along this cable I understood there to be a car shaped like a donut wrapped around the cable riding up it by some sort of magnetic propulsion.

With this start I promptly dismissed the cable idea as not feasible. The weight of the cable of structure at that height/length I felt wouldn't have the tensile strength to keep itself together. Like a mooring line stretched between two oil tankers the line snaps before it becomes perfectly taut because its own weight causes sag.

From there I started thinking in the direction of Ender's Game. What if there were a way to reflect gravity? Well, this makes no real sense whatsoever, but lets play with the idea for a bit.

Saying we could reflect gravity would mean we took the gravity from one place and applied it to another area. So this would mean we could maybe make an area of earth have zero gravity while some other part of it experienced double gravity or something.

In this fanciful universe then achieving orbit would be pretty simple. You'd just have to push off the ground with a fair amount of force and before you know it you'd be in orbit. But let us discard this gravity reflection to pursue gravity to its roots.

For a while I was thinking along the lines of a gravitational tractor to get something into orbit. This will quite clearly not work at all, but it is an avenue I pursued briefly. The root of the problem it lead me to was gravity. Now, perhaps discoveries have been made about gravity since my astronomy text book was written but from what I understand gravity isn't all that well understood.

Gravity simply is the force that all matter exerts attracting other matter. Being fundamental the how and why of gravity is unknown or at least unknown to me. Thus the more matter the greater gravity, which means I can figure out how to increase gravity at a certain launch spot, a mascon, but not decrease it.

However at the heart of all this is one basic material. Matter. What if there was something which didn't abide by these laws of matter and gravity? Something like antimatter.

Now my understanding of antimatter is that I do not understand it at all. Whispers and rumors of something I yet to grasp in any meaningful way. Yet, for the purposes of this discussion let us say it is out there. In my understanding of the stuff antimatter and matter have absolutely no interaction. As in interaction is exactly equal to zero. The leap of faith that I made was to consider the possiblity that this understanding was flawed. What if the interaction between matter and antimatter wasn't zero, just really, really, really small? If the interaction were small then we are in business, just gotta figure out a way to harness the antimatter to our ends and whisto presto we have not only orbit but we have a limitless free energy source.

When I say a small interaction above I do not mean small as in the chances of antimatter and matter interacting is 1/10^X, where X is just shy of infinity. That is no good. What I mean by small interaction is that the two interact all the time but exert an incredibly weak, here-to-for undetected amount of force on one another.

At this point, having decided antimatter was the key, I returned to scoff at the idea I started with of using a very large , very long cable. Then I paused and thought, what the hell, I've got a couple more miles left to go in this run so why not see if I can make it work.

So, we start with a long cable, which likely isn't a cable so much as a tower of some sort. Assuming it can keep it's integrity, how do you keep the damn thing up? Well, the earth is spinning right, so centrifugal motion should rule the day here, all you need to do is attach a weight to the end of it, that'll keep it taut. Alright, tether an asteroid to the end of it.

We're probably going to have to have rocket engines at strategic points on the asteroid so that you can keep a constant orbit that is just right. You are also going to have to keep it well outside its roche limit as you don't want the thing falling apart on you.

The problems with the concept are several but interesting to contemplate and listed here in no particular order.

First while we have assumed the tower will be able to keep it's structural integrity against it's own weight and gravity what about meteorological forces like a strong breeze?

Second essentially adding a long string with a weight on the end to a spinning ball is going to do rather interesting things to that balls rotation and orbit. A possible solution to this problem is build two launch sites at exactly opposite sides of the planet. This will negate or mostly negate the orbit altering effects of the weight, etc.

Third, it occured to me that this tower, which I assume to be metal or metalic would almost certainly have a faint but constant stream of electricity going through it from ground to sky for the same reason lightning occurs. Which posses fascinating images of a land surrounding the launch site which became suddenly devoid of ever having lightning, because the energy simply rode up the man made tower.

Alright, that does it for this installment.

Cyber Amputee Syndrome

As you may have noticed when I get to running I tend to be hit with these awesome world transforming ideas. Today's Awesome Running Idea #2 ( the first one was the terraforming idea) is: Cyber Amputee Syndrome

In the future people are going to be commanding their computers with their mind. Already there are examples of our playing around with this technology of controlling computers with their thought, which I am too lazy to find and link to right now, but take my word for it, it's out there. I'm pretty sure they even demoed it at some big tech gathering for bigwigs like Steve Jobs.

Just think of it, in the future you'll never have to reach for the mouse because mouses will be hopelessly outdated. You'll simply think left and your cursor will move left.

Now I am no techy so I can't tell you exactly how this is going to work or when it is going to come about or anything like that. What I am able to tell you is what it is going to lead to.

In the future children will learn to control the computer with their mind much like today's children learn to ride bikes, something they learn young, master, and never have to really think about again. The noticeable difference here however is that tomorrow's children will likely learn this computer interaction much earlier than modern children learn to ride bikes, ingraining this behavior far deeper in them than bike riding today.

I am going to distinguish this post from those that will follow it and suspend judgment of this eventuality. Good or bad is irrelevant here. However, as a consequence of learning to use computers at a young age much like one moves one's arm, if these children come to be stranded on a desert island they will suffer from Cyber Amputee Syndrome.

Used to constantly controlling machines with their thoughts the absence of machines will have the same effect on these children as losing an arm or a leg.

As an offshoot of this thought I began to contemplate the effect of computers being so pervasive in our lives. I started thinking that mankind, will become increasingly like an ant colony or a beehive or some other colony organism. Individuals will increasingly diminish in importance and give rise to a hive mind or collective.

It is only a small step from controlling computers with our mind to putting computers into our mind, and with technological advances I can only imagine what we now know as internet will only become more widespread to the level that there is virtually nowhere you can't be in constant wireless connection with everyone else.

With these advances how can one really say what one person knows? It would be pointless to ask a student to give a presentation of Oppenheimer because the student will have instant access to the best papers written on Oppenheimer by the best and brightest minds in the world. Indeed they will even have access to the papers Oppenheimer himself wrote (I assume they should be declassified by then). Super smart search programs, Google 5,000, will be able to give the student a summary of the relevant information as it will have been digested and culled by so many others before that it will have been broken down in manageable bits even a grade schooler could understand.

Teraforming

Everybody knows that the first person to discover extraterrestrial life is going to go down in the history books forever. Maybe it is shaking hands with ET or maybe it is simply taking a meteorite fragment and putting it under a microscope and exclaiming "BY JOVE! This bit of something isn't from around here and it's alive!"

This is all well and good and as it should be. But while it is a certainty there is other life forms in the infinite vastness of space none of them seem to be anywhere near here. Thus for the present we've only got ourselves to play with.

That in mind, when we think of space what should we be thinking of?

Funny you should ask because I was contemplating this while jogging the other day (don't ask me how this popped into my head, as I have utterly no idea) and happen to now have the perfect answer.

Terra-forming.

Those familiar with science fiction may be familiar with this term but for those that aren't terraforming is the process of taking an uninhabitable environment, think Venus or Mercury or Mars here, and turning it into a place people and other Earth life can live freely in.

Normally this process is depicted by using huge machines. Picture an air-conditioner the size of a large city, except instead of cooling the air, it would take in available resources from the planet and turn it into air and perhaps water.

Now first of all we must here limit out discussion to planets that are first terrestrial, setting foot on a gas giant just isn't a happening thing, and second of sufficient mass hold an atmosphere of breathable air to it's surface and not simply vent it off into space.

Past these two initial requirements all other considerations are secondary and can be thought through and conquered with human ingenuity. However, back to the original premise of using ultra massive machinery to turn a planet habitable to humanity, I find this idea to have crippling and ultimately insurmountable problems.

The idea is fine for science fiction, but in reality not only do you have to keep all of these machines repaired and in working order but you also have to power them in some way shape of form. In either case this would be not only hugely expensive, but more importantly, on the scale that would be required completley unfeasible.

Honestly, I love to believe that we as people could do it but the fact is it isn't possible, or if we ignore this objection and assume that it could be done it would require such resources of man power, energy, and materials as to beggar the imagination.

Yet behold! The dream of terraforming can still be accomplished. It can even be accomplished by man, we're just going to need a bit of help. From what immensely powerful ally can mankind hope to draw aid you ask?

Bacteria.

Yes, bacteria, those wee little things that make you sick that you can't even see without the help of a microscope. Those things which live in the most severe, the most varied habitats in the world.

In the beginning the planet earth did not have an atmosphere of oxygen. Oxygen is thought to have come as the byproduct of certain elementary life forms which gave rise to progressively more complex life forms until we get to where we are now. The point being that we need to recreat this process on the planets we hope to live on one day, and if we were smart we'd start today.

I don't know how long it took to convert earth's atmosphere to having a significant portion of oxygen and all those other gases which make air but regardless, by human standards it took a very long time. Thus, if we want to take over a planet we need to begin the terraforming today. We need to round us up some hardy bacteria and shove them on a space pod and launch them into space. The pod should be shot at some planet we hope to inhabit one day and upon arrival disperse the bacteria in as wide an area as possible. The hardy bacteria would flourish converting toxic gases into breathable ones and replicating to make more bacteria to do the same without humanity having to lift a finger. Eventually an uninhabitable world becomes a human paradise and all would live happily ever after frolicking in a man/bacteria made Eden.

A sublimely simple solution if I do say so myself, and I do.

Musing on Vampires

Burger King has come out with a series of ads of late that has two hosts of crazed pre-pubescent girls descending on one of their stores, battling for the allegiance of hapless Burger King customers. Both sides fanatically devoted to Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Series, but one side are ardent supporters of Edward, the other, zealous proponents of Jacob. Edward being the vampire and Jacob being the werewolf.

Now, I love this ad. I love this ad because these girls are so clearly out of their minds. Their passion for their side sweeping through any trace of reason in their not yet fully developed brains in a holocaust of unfamiliar hormones. Add to that the general confusion of the customers who have no idea what the hell these squeaky voiced idiots are talking about or why they seem so desperate to make their case and you have commercial gold. Honestly the commercial should win some sort of award for awesomeness.

Anyway, I was watching this commercial and it got me thinking (who knew a commercial could make you think?) What is it about Edward and Jacob that has these girls so out of their heads?

Perhaps it is just clever marketing with untold millions of dollars behind it that has pushed these characters onto the phsyche of every girl between the ages of 10-15, I am not sure that is true. At one point, before it was a movie Twilight was just a book. Albeit not a very well written book, but a book nonetheless. A book of words and no pictures. And at some point previous to this it wasn't even a book. It was just a manuscript looking to be published.

As I am unaware of any publishing company that lets 12 year old girls give the green light for publication (I have yet to see "Why Betsy Thomas who sits in the Third Row of Mrs. Applebuam's 4th period history Doesn't Deserve the Bead Necklace She Got For Christmas" hit the shelves of my local chain bookstore) I am forced to presume that there was a day where some adult read the story and liked it. If events followed the standard chain this adult then passed it on to the next adult in the chain and next thing you know people all over America are reading this damn thing.

Thus, it seems one cannot wholly attribute this phenomenon to a savvy marketing scheme. Nor, more surprisingly to me, can one chalk it up to girls alone, because as previously mentioned adults read this thing and took it to publishing.

Clearly Stephanie Meyers has tapped into something here. Which brings me back around to the part where the commercial got me thinking, what the hell is it about these vampire and werewolf characters that has girls will to descend on unsuspecting Burger King patrons to sway them in the favor of their choosen good looking monster character?

Now, I have only read the first one, which predates Jacobs entrance onto the scene so I really can not speak to that, and I don't actually own the thing so I'm going to do this analysis completely from memory. This excuse I find sufficiently large as to encompass any faults which may be found with my subsequent argument.

Let us start by stripping Edward of his good looks. Honestly, I would think the movie version would be enough to drive women fleeing from vampires like their was set aflame as the whole emaciated hollow cheeked combined with a paleness that is downright painful to look upon image of the on screen Edward comes off to me as sickly. If I saw a guy looking like that on the street I'd think they were doing some seriously hardcore drugs and were maybe three steps away from hospitalization.



But again, let us set all that aside as I think it accounts for relatively little of Edwards appeal. This is not to say that his looks are irrelevant, it helps to be easy on the eyes even if I can't see what they see, but rather that it is not Edward's looks that inspire his fans loyalty but something about him.

When Bella looks on Edwards her thoughts explode into hot shards of chaste puppy love. It is this that women love about Edward, not his appearance per se. His fans make this mistake of conflating his appearance with the effect of looking upon him has on them. They long for the man who will treat them as the focal point of the world, the sole point upon which the universe turns.

Not only that but Meyer's constructs Edward in such a way as to assure her audience that Edward cannot manifest his devotion to Bella in the traditional physical forms most of us are familiar with. This move has two desire intensifying principles to it.

The first of these is that it assures the audience that Edward is not simply captivated by Bella's appearance. Bella is the center of Edward's universe regardless of her looks. She could get acid thrown in her face and it wouldn't matter a bit to Edward. Bella feels truly seen by Edward for what she is, and what she wishes to be, for every facet of her personality. Honestly, who wouldn't be swayed by that kind of attention?

Secondly the chastity of Edward coupled with his metaphorical need and desire to suck the blood out of Bella's veins sets up that sweet tension of lovers parted. Romeo and Juliet wouldn't really be a story were it not for the fact that they were kept separated. The lust to be together present, Meyer's erects seemingly un-scalable walls to keep them apart. After that all Meyer's has to do is sit back and watch the tension and frustration build. Like sealing a lid to the top of a pot of water and then putting it on the stove and cranking up the heat, eventually there is an explosion. In essence it all boils down to we want what we can't have. Edward repeatedly telling Bella how much they can't be together only serves to make Bella want him all the more.

Of course Bella is described by Meyer's so vaguely that she could be anyone and is, in the minds of her readers. Where Meyer's has written Bella, Meyer's readers insert their own name, confused by how the story could be written any other way.

And now the world cup game is about to start so I am going to have to bring this musing to a close for now. Who knows, maybe someday I'll read the other books and be able to contrast Jacob and Edward and their relative merits. Though I wouldn't count on it.

Baltimore Marathon

So one of my roommates is apparently a very serious runner. He is doing some traveling for work right now but soon after he returns from that he is spending something like a month up in Alaska to run a marathon there.

Thus it comes as no real surprise that he would get a pamphlet for the Baltimore Marathon in the mail yesterday. However owing to the fact that he was out of town and apparently so were all my other roommates that day as I was the one to get the mail at 10:30pm. Anyway I saw the Baltimore Marathon pamphlet and was instantly curious.

It said the marathon was being held on October 16th, which isn't so close that it would be full and that I actually had a chance to enter. I had been seeing Baltimore marathon jerseys around in the jogging I've been doing and I readily admit, they are pretty sweet. I was covetous, I wanted one.

Then I went online and looked at the race map. My reaction is more or less the transcript that follows.
Me: Alright, lets just have a look.

HOLY FUCKING JESUS!

A marathon. You literally run forever.

This got me wondering, if, despite my enthusiasm, I was anywhere near in shape to run that kind of distance. So I decided the next day I was going to test out doing some serious distance.

I decided to double the distance I had worked up to on my own thus far 10k in that 20k is roughly half a marathon. A marathon being 26.2 miles and the actual course they have set being 26.7 miles (43.02km) .

I left my house without my customary ipod (the website says music devises are allowed but strongly discouraged) or even shades which I had left in my car and was too lazy to go get which I rationalized as my saving weight at around 6:30am. I returned at exactly 8:00am. Looking up my route I fell a touch short of my goal of a half marathon covering approx. 19.6052 km (12.1821 miles) .

I want to do this. My finish will likely be pretty ugly, but so long as I can manage to keep myself jogging and not walk I think I can do it.

An interesting note aside: Google pedometer from which I am getting the distance estimates that I did today estimates the number of calories I burned based on my weight (170lbs) as 1,566.2

My Promise To You

So while I have somehow become what I would describe as a reasonably rabid follower of politics, which is to say I like to think that I am generally politically aware I find Politicians to be intensely frustrating at times.

Indeed times are when I think I should just run for office and show those assholes how to get things done.

With this in mind I present to you my basic platform.
Premises 1 and 2:
Republicans: Assholish fucks bent on selling America to Big Corporations for personal profit.
Deomcrats: Good intentioned fucks who refuse to accomplish things for fear it would hurt their popularity.

Promises:
In the Event of an affair:
1) I promise that she was either really hot or I was really drunk.
2) I promise that I will not drag my wife and/or kids on the stage to apologize to the nation, and I additionally promise that I shall take full responsiblity for my actions without seeking to mitigate the blame with excuses.

I promise that, owing to my actually doing the work for which I was elected I will be unable to raise enough money to run for a second term and that I will have pissed so many powerful interests off that no one will vote for my second term anyway.

I promise that I will not stop drinking and swearing once in office, nor will I attempt to pretend that I have.

I promise that I will not pretend I am a religious man. Karma is about the extent of my religious beliefs.

Platform:
There are only two primary areas government should be spending real money on.
1) Education
2) Infrastructure

Education: Make our childrens learning. Best books, best teachers, best tools. It'll pay untold rewards in the future.

Infrastructure: In this I blend together several departments under the same heading. Anywhere you go nowadays the roads suck, I want that fixed. Not only do I want high speed rail to every major city in America I want it to be able to travel faster than anywhere else in the world. I want next gen energy, this includes green energy, nuclear, and the long dreamed of and much fabled fusion energy but all of it MUST be Domestic. Dependency on foreign energy is inexcusable.

Naturally there are two secondary funding holes I'd be obliged to pour money into.
1) Deficit reduction
2) Defense

Deficit Reduction: I loathe being in debt so my two pronged primary funding plan should allow the cutting of other programs and free up some cash to pay down debts. We can get more extravagent when we are back to a surplus.

Defense: End the wars, you know the area is going to go to hell as soon as we leave anyway because while the people enjoy their freedom they are unwilling to fight for it and those unwilling to fight for their freedom will always find someone willing to take it away from them. That said the military budget is bloated beyond all recognition and I am going to slash it. We need not be defenseless but we need not wrap the toilet seats on our battle cruisers in gold leaf.

To this I add one personal hobby to fund:
NASA

NASA: It's the final frontier and America is going to be the first one there. I will fund NASA and all its affiliated sciences. America will again see the day when Oppenheimers and Teslas, not Hiltons and Kardashians are celebrities.

Extraneous Philosophies:
-Guns: you have the right to them but unless you are in the military there is no earthly reason you need an assault rifle.
-Abortion: Legal. If you don't like it then don't do it.
-Death Penalty: Legal. Some crimes are beyond forgiving
-Marijuana: Legalize. I am going to tax the shit out of it and you're not going to be allowed to smoke it in public.
-Gay Marriage: Legalize. As if I cared what you did in your bedroom. This is America, so long as you pay your taxes I couldn't care less the gender of the person you go home to.
-Healthcare: For all citizens.
-Tax Code: Simplify. I do not know which model I would pursue at this point but it is so ridiculously cumbersome with so many loopholes for powerful interests not paying their share that it desperately deserves a complete overhaul.
-Money: Modernize. A penny costs two cents to make, a nickle costs six cents. I know it is iconic but it is no longer practical and something must change.

In short, writing this in today's America will ensure that I will never be elected, but I can still dream of an America where I can write my positions honestly and without reservation and still achieve political office.

The Confusing Phone Call

I always believe when I answer the phone after having been woken by that same phone that I do a spectacular job of covering up the fact that I am not operating at full synaptical power. There are however, a number of people I have conversed with in this fashion who beg to differ.

In any event, to understand why the phone call I got was so utterly befuddling one must understand the factors that converged at this moment.

I spent the previous days of this week locked in the windowless basement of a church getting trained as a census worker. In this basement there was a chick who being rather attractive (the shirts she wore were under considerable strain keeping her chest covered) and of a friendly disposition I fancied somewhat. To my detriment, I failed to act and having completed the training who knows if I'll ever see her again.

Last night I got a call from the guy who lead the training class telling me that we were being assigned a leader and that I should expect a call from this person in the next day or so. So I wrote down this persons information, hung up, and continued drinking. Fastforward to this morning where I am happily passed out in bed when I hear my phone go off.

In a flash I am up and leaping like a drunken gazelle across the room to pick up. I notice as I arrive at my phone that I don't know the number. I conclude that this probably the new crew leader calling me.

"Hello?"
A female voice replies "We're meeting at three, can you make that."

Unphased by the abrupt beginning to the conversation my sleep addled mind is on top of this wrinkle in a snap.

"Yes."
"Ok, we're meeting here."
It is somewhere in here that I instantly decided that the woman I am talking to is in fact the hot chick from training.

"...What?"
"We're meeting here."

My brain is forced to confront the fact that maybe I am not as good faking like I am wide awake because there is something going on that I am quite simply failing to understand.

"...What?"
"We're meeting here." she replies slowly.
"The meaning of 'here' changes based on the speaker."
"At my house."

I am blown away by how fast this hot chick is moving though I instantly suspect something is amiss. I talked to the chick a few times but certainly never enough to learn where she lived. Thus knowing that she knows I have no idea where she lives I realize that I am not talking to the hot census chick. By some miracle I mange to instantly figure out that I am in fact talking to my friend Nicole who I am supposed to meet up with later in the day.

Nicole had gotten a new cell phone since last I talked to her and I had forgotten to put the number in my phone. Thus was ended the most confusing phone call in the world.

And just for the record, had it been the hot census chick, you had better believe I would have been at her place in a heartbeat, hang over be damned.