The big science news of the week was the probe New Horizons passing by the dwarf planet Pluto. About the most controversial aspect of this mission was whether Pluto should qualify as a planet or needs to be in another category.
Despite all the cheer-leading by NASA and the news media the mission itself doesn’t exactly capture the public imagination. The probe flew by the Pluto. It didn’t orbit it even once. It certainly won’t land on the planet and scoop up Plutonian dirt. Pluto itself hasn’t proven to be a big surprise either. It’s still a giant rock covered by snow and ice in the middle of a dark nowhere. The pictures were nice but again nothing unexpected.
So how is this supposed to affect the average human back here on Earth and what if anything can we hope to gain out of it all?
Well, if you said not a hell of a lot then you’re right. This mission won’t make the price of bread go down or solve the middle east crisis or even get your laundry cleaner.
But what it does do is close the book on the first part of our exploration of this solar system. We have now done the preliminary exploration on all 8 (or 9) planets that we have. A task that has taken nearly 60 years to accomplish has been done. This voyage by itself took nearly a decade and depended largely on precise physics and navigational calculations. We have now proven conclusively that those can work even in deep space and even by a robot working alone.
The mission itself was done on a shoestring budget. I think I saw someone mention that a Hollywood blockbuster had a bigger budget than this mission. The control personnel for the mission came from a University so the experience and know how to do this sort of research is diffusing outside the big government agencies.
No, this was not a big epic mission. Nothing earth-shaking came out of it. But it is a crucial step on a road that will one day make this a space faring species and lead us to the next great moment in human history.
Little tiny victories like this is what leads to great accomplishments down the road.
“When a cat is at the rat hole, ten thousand rats dare not come out” – Master Wang
We all have challenges to deal with in this life. But how much harder do we ourselves make life when we have the wrong attitude? Conversely how much easier does life get when you adopt the right frame of mind?
The cute little video above illustrates this point perfectly. From a small feline full of attitude and just sitting to a nervous dog that looks at only the perils involved in the situation to the conclusion where the dog faces his fear and decides to go ahead and risk the worst possible fate.
But you say that’s just animals. Animals can’t think. They can’t reason and aren’t as advanced as humans.
I say “Aren’t they lucky?” Humans are at least ten times worse at such things. Our psyche tends to warp and tangle up our thought process till we’re left immobile and helpless by our fears. In some ways our supposedly advanced nature is actually a handicap at times. We can be our own worst enemies and our harshest critics. Add in the human imagination and some paranoia and you’ll never set foot outside ever again.
We can however choose the route that we take through life. The above example provides three such paths.
Firstly is the path of the scared dog. We can look at life as a series of insurmountable challenges, and every decision fraught with danger and potential risk everywhere. We can see each step as a potential calamity and always go looking for the easiest and safest path to go through life. You’ll make it but your trip won’t be very long and it won’t be very interesting and you’ll often find yourself stopping and yielding to others.
Secondly is the path of the cat. If you begin with the right attitude you can see life as something that is owed to you. Something that you own and have every right to, then you can enter into any situation and act as if you’re the master of all you see. Now, this path can only get you so far. Bluster and bravado are great but they aren’t substance. However you can get substance along the way to back up that bluster and get really far in life.
Lastly is the path of the brave dog. After seeing all the perils ahead and considering the risks you proceed on anyways. You’ve carefully measured the potential down side of the situation and decide that you could live with the possible disaster. You won’t always be successful and you won’t escape unmarred but you will get through in the end because of your determination.
“He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and the advantages inherent in the danger.” – Ts’ao Ts’ao
Which is the path for you? That I can’t tell you. That depends on your situation just as much as it does on your mental attitude. All I can tell you is that you can’t make a wrong choice or a right choice. But you are free to choose.
Most of the week my food comes from My fit foods. I discovered these prepackaged fresh meals a couple of years ago and they’ve really helped me by preparing fresh and healthy meals without me having to hunt in the supermarket for something to eat or in desperation turning to fast food joints. They’ve really have helped me not only cut calories but also cut the time I waste on preparing food.
Notice I said most of the time. I have to admit that the selection can get a bit monotonous at times. It sometimes gets to be that I’ve memorized the menu by heart and I start pestering the staff as to when the new menu will come out. So sometimes I will take the time to make something at home.
But the weekends come and I find myself getting a little stir crazy. I work at home and I find that I see way too much of the house sometimes. So I go out to do something on the weekends (or sometimes the weeknight, but mostly the weekends). Inevitably this will involve eating at some restaurant at some point.
Deciding where to go becomes a chore. Someone in the group had Thai yesterday so that’s out and someone else hates Italian and someone wants spicy but not too spicy. This turns into a UN treaty session with concessions given here and promises made there until some deadline comes up and everyone decides upon the least favorite but least objectionable choice. We have peace in our times.
After that comes the problem of finding some place to sit. Of course everyone in Houston wants to be out at the same time and wherever we go there’s usually a line or some sort of wait and you usually end up sitting by the kitchen or the bathroom and as it is so popular every other table is a family table with screaming kids.
Then comes the hard part of sorting through the menu. You find yourself with the dilemma of wanting to eat food “A” but it comes with side dish “B” and they absolutely won’t do substitutions or you get a mountain of carbs in every spoonful no matter what you order.
Of course if you plan another activity later on you suddenly find yourself on the clock trying to shovel food in your mouth to make it to the thing (show, play, movie, party) on time.
Oh and if you decide to go out by yourself you get the occasional look from others “Why is he sitting by himself?” Though to be honest that only happened to me once when the hostess, then the waiter, and lastly a manager came over and asked me if I was waiting for someone else to join me and none of them seemed too convinced when I said no.
Doesn’t make for the most pleasant of experiences. But like I said, sometimes you have to break the work cycle monotony and any alteration of the routine is welcome.
My ideal restaurant would be something small, something that not many people knew about and something that prepared the meal the way that I wanted it prepared. Come to think about it the best restaurant is at home.
[Author’s note: Put this in the “I don’t really have a topic even though I thought about this for the longest time so here is some filler material” category. You might also note that I added a #1 to this as I think this may become a series of posts. I don’t know. We’ll see.]
WSHTF of course is the acronym for “When (expletive deleted) hits the fan”. I was on YouTube the other week looking for a link for the Cowboy Bebop post and the search algorithm popped up a series of survival-preparedness videos as something that YouTube thought that I might like. Apparently there is a whole category with this acronym. I don’t know. I guess some people are bored and have nothing to do.
But there’s a writing topic here (for at least one post though I am already regretting this and now I’m unsure if I want to write more than one of these), so let’s plow ahead and see what happens.
For our first WSHTF scenario we will deal with the current flavor of the month, zombies. What will you do when the global zombie apocalypse explodes and your family and friends turn into brain eating ghouls (though that’s disparaging to ghouls as ghouls are much more advanced than zombies and… never mind, another time).
Apparently this topic gets more play than you would imagine as there are various civilian groups of enthusiasts preparing for a zombie apocalypse and even some government agencies and the military use the zombie scenario as a stand in for large-scale civil disasters.
It has been argued that the evolution of civilization can be broken up into five distinct phases: Survival, Building/rebuilding, Expansion, Maturity, Collapse. In this scenario you are either in the collapse or survival phase. With that in mind, you can choose to handle this in distinctly different ways.
You can choose to throw out all the rules of modern society and focus on your own survival because in a society in free fall collapse you will only survive by using your wits and by being willing to throw out altruism (preferably from a tall building) and looting as many pre-disaster goods as possible while kneecapping as many people you come across and insuring that the zombies will go for them rather than you.
Or you can choose to stubbornly cling to a few choice shreds of civilization and try to maintain some semblance of law and order as well as fanning the flames of empathy and humanity to rebuild a shattered world.
I think the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. In a dog eat dog (and dog eat cat and dog eat human and human eat possum and I guess what I’m trying to say is just don’t turn up your nose at it, okay?) world we will have to make some hard choices in order to survive and trying to do the “right thing” may just be one of those hard choices.
Sure, sure it might be easier to hit that guy with a lead pipe and take his box of mac and cheese. But maybe you can share that mac and cheese with your can of tuna and make a tuna casserole bake and maybe it won’t be as gross as that possum fritter you had for breakfast (I’m just saying maybe it won’t, there’s always a chance).
Sooner or later you will have to cooperate with other humans. Why not start as soon as possible?
I could go into the specifics of machete versus katana as the best bladed weapon or 12 gauge shotgun versus AK-47 but really those are details. The important thing in this scenario is your state of mind. Your philosophy and world view is what you will leave behind to future generations. Make it a philosophy that incorporates kindness, caring, and forward thinking leadership.
Or you know….
At least hire a good biographer that can edit out all the bad bits.
I was chatting about work and life the other day over tea at Starbucks. The conversation drifted in the direction of business networking. Not the computer kind of network but the personal type of network. The type that’s hard for me.
Networking really hasn’t changed at all since the first business office was set up. Having a wide circle of friends and acquaintances always pays off. Although we may live in an interconnected world of instantaneous communications we still have to initiate contact with other people in order for it to work.
I don’t mean just send emails back and forth or maybe even have a phone conversation but actually “talk” to the other person. Whether that person is a client, a colleague or even a competitor at another company. Being more than just a contact card in an email directory is important. It means that you’re an actual human being that the other person might think of when it comes time to ask for a job, a business opportunity or an introduction to someone else.
Initiating contact doesn’t have to be a big production involving flowers or lunch or whatever. You can just initiate contact by asking the other person how they’re doing during the course of your regular work exchange. Do some “industry gossip”. Talk about that other third company that has nothing to do with you or speculate on the future of your field. Ask about their goals and plans.
The main thing is that you become a known quantity, that you have a personality, and that you’re a factor in their life. Not a giant factor but a factor. You’ll never expect them to break down and cry on your shoulder and you should not expect them to lend you money but at the very least if things go bad you can send out resumes to them, you can ask them if they know about any open bids, you can query them about some job applicant that they may know.
This is the way that the business world works, folks. It always has and always will be this way.
The humidity sucks the strength out of my body. The miasma of heat and moisture hits me as I open my door and promises a miserable workout. My legs are like two ingots of pig iron this morning and I can barely lift them anymore. I don’t think that I’m making any progress in my fitness regimen or even in my life.
Over four years now and although I made progress at first I don’t see anymore improvement. It’s not just my fitness but my entire life seems to be at a standstill or worse it seems to be regressing. Things are hard. I should just quit and give up.
[begin internal dialogue
so that’s it, is it?
Okay. Slow down, stop, and start walking back home. It’s only a couple of miles and you can get there walking in an hour or so.
You gave it your miserable best and it wasn’t good enough. Everyone knew it wouldn’t be. You knew it wouldn’t be. No one will blame you. They never expected much out of you anyways. All those things that you think people whisper about you behind your back? That you’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re talentless, you’re worthless. They’re all true, aren’t they?
You told yourself long ago that eventually you’d quit. You never had it in you to succeed and you never will. All those plans and ideas you had were pointless fantasies.
Better to have tried and lost and all that nonsense, right?
All those people around you that succeed, that are living their dreams, that actually do something. They’re just better than you are.
No one is going to fault you for quitting. You won’t let them. You’ll cocoon yourself away in a digital shell in your room for the rest of your miserable life and die alone one day and life will be better for everyone else.
Don’t even think about trying anymore. Continuing on is pointless. When you try there will always be pain, there will always be struggle, there will always be exhaustion.
It. Does. Not. End.
So quit now. You’re not making any progress. You’re just wasting everyone’s time. Just stop plodding along like a fool.
[Author’s note: As with any review there will probably be some spoilers below so as always if you don’t want to know then stop reading right now.]
If you’re a fan of any sort of pop culture that came out in the last 15 years then you owe this series big time. I don’t believe this to be an overstatement as you can see stylistic elements from Cowboy Bebop in such series as Firefly, Venture Brothers, parts of the Kill Bill series of movies, and many other TV shows and movies dealing with space, crime, or action.
The series revolves around a spaceship called the Bebop which acts as home and transportation for two interplanetary bounty hunters. Their main preoccupation is securing enough money to live off of and to continue their lifestyle. Along the way they acquire a motley crew of misfits each with their own back story and motivation.
Jet. The captain of the Bebop. Jet is a cynical ex-cop that quit the force due to the greed and corruption that he saw and decided that if he was going to fight crime that he might as well make money off of it.
Spike. He comes from the other end of the equation. Spike was an enforcer for the mob till he was forced out by his ex-partner and rival. His main motivation in life is to get enough to eat and occasionally he will go looking for his former lover, Julia, who he lost contact with.
Faye Valentine. She was from the 20th century but was cryogenically frozen and woke up in the future with no memory of her past. Her motivations are best described as mercenary. She will often go off on her own looking for bounties but will always return to the Bebop.
Radical Edward. For unknown reasons her father named her Edward. Edward walks round barefoot in bicycle shorts and t-shirts often carrying her laptop. Although she is a genius hacker and can break into any system she seems mentally unhinged at times and quite often talks to herself. She takes a liking to the crew of the Bebop and decides to hang out with them.
Ein. A welsh Corgy dog that has been surgically and genetically modified to interface with the internet. Called a data dog, it is hinted that he has near human intelligence. Although he is very valuable the crew either doesn’t know this or seems to care. Often it seems that Ein is more aware of what’s going on than the rest of the crew but they don’t pay attention to him.
The characters are complex and driven by aspects from their past which they tend to hold close and rarely share with the other crew members unless forced by outside circumstance. Somehow the crew manages to pull together during times of crisis but they never seem able to pull off the big score that they so desperately crave.
So what sets this apart from various other anime series? The series was structured as one long story arc of 26 episodes (called sessions). Each session being one chapter of the same book and building on the former chapters. For the most part anime series in the 80s and 90s tended to focus on action and violence and fantasy themes. The visuals were stunning of course and the action was constant but the stories tended to lack depth, specially in the character development aspect. You went from one unrelated situation to another (Record of the Lodoss Wars being an exception). Over the course of the Bebop series the crew opens up more and more to each other and eventually begins to gel together till…well. Save that for you to find out.
The other thing that sets it apart is that for the most part the series tended to de-emphasize the sci-fi aspects. Other than the fact that the characters ply their trade in space the series could just as well have been set in any contemporary Earth city. The big cities are as grimy and dark as any to be found in a hard-boiled detective novel. To be blunt it’s a noir detective story set in space but space isn’t the main point. There are no aliens, no robots, no fantastical super powers, just people.
The visuals are just breathtakingly stunning and they’re more than matched by a soundtrack that is bluesy and jazzy and tragically hip.
If you get a chance I highly recommend finding this series online and devouring bit by bit like a matcha flavored kit kat bar. You’ll be tempted to scarf down the entire series in one sitting but you’ll really enjoy it if you pace yourself.
We celebrated America’s 239th birthday yesterday. To most people it’s a chance to get off work and relax. Most of the population doesn’t sit back to consider the declaration of independence or the revolutionary war or the impact and meaning of these to their lives.
The few people who are paid to do this, social commenters, political writers, and those that make a living speculating about such things will usually crank out the same series of articles every year. Either the founding fathers were God-fearing capitalist patriots trying to forge a new form of government in a howling wilderness or they were atheist, proto-marxists throwing off the shackles of oppression and creating universal suffrage for all. Most of the written pieces fall somewhere along this continuum with some detours delving into the issues of women’s suffrage or slavery. Depending on what websites you visit you will see one opinion voiced more than the other.
Of course not one of these views is wholly correct. The founding fathers were a mixed lot of idealists and scoundrels, laissez faire capitalists and anarchists, land owning gentry and yeoman farmers, church elders and worldly men. Each group had its own agenda and reasons as to why they wanted to break away from London’s control and the only thing they had in common was a realization that they would need each other’s support to achieve independence.
One thing that they all recognized however was the need to do something new and radical. To post a logical declaration of grievances against their existing government and provide a sort of logical proof for the need to break away and to form a new government of their own.
I think that has been a vital part of the American character since before the start. The urge and ability to try something new and not shy away from it just because it wasn’t something that had been done before. Of course innovation and new thinking can occur anywhere in the world and at any time in history but I think it’s rare that it has ever been so widely accepted as it was in the early American era by such a large population.
I think it was a side effect of the excitement of being part of a new nation in a new land that allowed people the freedom and flexibility to think about new forms of government, the willingness to gamble on new ventures, the acceptance of new technologies, that sense that over time the nation would “improve” itself and that technology would leverage us all into a new golden age.
I find that somewhere along the way we lost that vital spirit. Perhaps as early as the late 19th century but certainly after World War II. We went from being a nation excited and curious about the possibilities and challenges of the future to being a nation in love with a past that for the most part didn’t exist in one way or another. From being excited at the prospect of change and new thinking to being terrified of the idea and demanding that we stay in a social and mental limbo. From pulling together in common cause to blaming each other for past and current woes.
Rather than trying to solve situations to find the maximum benefit for all of us we have balkanized our populations into competing and often hostile camps that could maybe pull together and benefit each other but for the most part practice mutual antagonism as a sport.
If we continue on our current route I am certain that we will not see another 239 years. I don’t see us going past another 100 years. Either our own inertial forces will rip us apart or competing nation states will begin using our confusion against us and will feast on our self-made misery.
We should respect the past and learn from our mistakes and follies if at the very least to honor the sacrifices of those that came before us. But we should also remember that they made those sacrifices not for us to stay in the past but to progress forward and up into a better tomorrow.
You can fill up a notebook with all the tiny side benefits that getting into shape will grant you. Unexpected little things that you never even consider but if you stop and think about it become obvious.
Like?
Well, aches and twinges and spasms that I used to get all the time and I used to take for granted as just a part of life. Where they came from I don’t know. What they were all about I know even less. All I do know is that nowadays they are totally absent from my life.
Clothes fit better. It’s pretty much an open secret that clothes were never designed for those of us that are big and tall. They just aren’t. Designers can work on the lines, and a good tailor can alter the hell out of them but ultimately it’s not the clothes it’s the body that lets us down. One of the first things I noticed when I began losing weight was how suddenly this or that article of clothes started looking….well, better.
But along with the benefits come one or two penalties. I was at a small gathering of writers a few weeks back with some drinks and a couple of rounds in it hits me. They were just beers but they walloped me like hard liquor. I got this dizzy spinning sensation and I didn’t trust myself to stand up let alone drive so I had to wait out the effect.
It wasn’t always this way. Some people don’t handle drinking very well. I don’t mean the dizziness. I mean that they change personalities after drinking and not in a good way. They get mean, they get sullen, they become downright angry.
I wasn’t. I would go through a couple of stages. Firstly I would become (as has been reported to me) very fun. I would be much more outgoing, more flirty, just much better company to be around. After several drinks I would become introspective. I would just sit inside my mind and stare out into nothing but inside my mind is going a mile a minute contemplating whatever it was that caught my fancy that night.
But one thing I never was, was hung over or stumbling drunk. This is a new and I have to say unwelcome phenomena. I put it down to two possible causes or a combination of the two.
Firstly, there is just less of me to handle the same alcohol. Nearly a hundred pounds less. That has to make a difference in the way you handle liquor. Secondly, I’m just older. My body can’t process out the toxins as quickly as it used to.
Luckily I don’t drink anywhere near as much as I once did. On average I will have a drink once every six weeks. This little “binge” I indulged in was in fact my first drinking session this year. I don’t think I will repeat it very soon.
Sometimes people can be so ridiculous. The 4th of July is coming up and people are already plotting and planning on how to get the most of a single day off.
They shuffle extra days off, doctor’s visits, vacations, and any good excuse to stretch out a three-day weekend into five or six days. I’ve already had to reschedule phone conferences, projects, and have had to move quickly to get proposals out to people before they leave.
I have to say that some people really have some gall and don’t really care what this does to co-workers and colleagues that suddenly have their work lives altered to suit their needs.
Things really get bad around the end of the year with Christmas and New Year’s. In these cases I’ve known companies to shutter for up to 2 weeks at a time. Granted, the holiday period is a traditionally dead time of the year business wise. Budgets have already been spent, new budgets don’t kick in till January and there seems to be a collective expectation that no one else is doing anything so why should we?
But wouldn’t it be better if instead of trying to make every short holiday longer why not cancel holidays and just give people more days off during the year. Maybe instead of 2 weeks off during the year, why not 21 days to do with as you want. Break it up into 3 one week vacations. Plan ahead and do all 3 weeks at once. Take the time off when it suits you instead being forced by convention to take certain days off.
I think if you let workers have more control over their time that they will reward you with being more productive during the time that they are there.
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