Voodoo Time Dot Com

Back in March our astronauts replaced and upgraded several key pieces of the Hubble Space Telescope, including, most spectacularly, the main camera. Now we have the first pictures from Hubble since the upgrade. Now, I don’t want to toot our own horn here, but damn our universe is beautiful. I think it’s by far the most beautiful universe I’ve ever seen.

The universe is a really amazing place. I mean like really amazingly amazing. And talk about big! Well, the closest star to our solar system is Proxima Centauri - some four light years away in the Alpha Centauri system (which is actually three stars orbitting each other). Four light years is a pretty short distance in the cosmic sense, a mere 23,462,784,000,000 miles away. In contrast, Voyager I, the furthest man-made object from earth is about 7.8 billion miles away. This is a measly 11 light hours and 39 light minutes away!

Here’s some more stuff that’s just way too big to wrap my head around:

* The universe is flat. Even with billions of galaxies, trillions of miles away from ours in all directions, the universe still ends up being more or less on a flat plane.

* A teaspoon full of matter from a neutron star would weigh a billion tons on Earth. If all the Earth’s mass was squeezed into this density, it would fit inside of a large sports stadium.

* String Theory, a popular scientific theory that seems to reconcile the previously contradictory fields of Quantum Physics and Relativity, requires that there be some ten dimensions of space-time. We can move freely in three of them, and in only one direction in the fourth (time).

Faced with the enormity of the things I cannot ever change, I often feel very calmed when I think about this stuff. All the things that happen here on Earth - no matter how joyful, devastating, amazing, or mysterious - mean nothing to the rest of the universe. If we all disappeared tomorrow, and the Earth shattered into tiny pieces, the universe would hardly notice. We just go on living and dying, and the universe keeps expanding into an infinity we can never comprehend.

How beautifully tragic.

Bye for now.

Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.

Such are the words of Lao-tzu, a sixth century B.C. philosopher and father of Taoism. This is stuff that is expressed in many of the world’s popular religions, but rarely practiced by their adherents. It is with an apartment full of boxes that I reflect on this idea. I have too much junk.

A little over a month ago, we moved to a new apartment, comparable in square-footage to our previous place. The main difference being the storage closet on the patio. At our last place it was stuffed full of junk. At this place, it houses a washing machine, dryer, and water heater. I lost my junk room. Now I have to find creative places to hide all the junk that used to sit outside and out of the way.

I know I’m not alone in this. People who have homes don’t park their cars in their garages anymore because the garage is filled with all the junk that won’t fit in the attic and/or basement. So, now I sit in the midst of stuff that I haven’t thought about in ages, but just can’t seem to throw away.

Here’s a sample of my junk:
* A huge pile of old computer game boxes - Hey, it’s nostalgic!
* Various computer parts - You never know when you’ll need a PII-300 CPU or 70-nanosecond RAM.
* Boxes for various big-ticket items - because they always ask you to send it in the original box if you have to get it fixed. Plus, the original box could get me another $10 on eBay someday.
* Old college textbooks - I paid like $100 a piece for them. There has got to be some other use for them! I just haven’t found it yet.
* Action figures, comic books, and baseball cards - When I’m 70 I’ll be able to sell them all to collectors and buy a brand new 2048 Corvette.

My closets are so full of junk, that all my skeletons have to hide under the bed! Ha! Get it? No..? Okay…

Anyway, the big question is, how on earth do I extricate myself from our western consumer culture long enough to objectively determine what I can get rid of? And how do I keep from absorbing more useless junk in the future? More realistically, does anyone have garage space I can rent cheap?

Well, here I am watching… (wait for it)… The Bachelor - America’s newest voyeurism fix. As I write this sentence, the show is not yet over, but I already know who he chose because of an article that I read online a few minutes ago from another timezone. Wow, chesty and 8 years his junior. Who’d have guessed?

Why am I watching this? Well, because I don’t have cable in the new apartment, and the only channel I get through the set-top antenna is ABC (and only just barely). So now that I’m stuck with this, I just have to see it all the way to the stupid end. So here I am, sucked into some dumb reality TV show. And even though this particular show was presented a lot better than most, I still feel like I got caught with the hook in my mouth.

What’s the deal with this? Are we just that concerned for each other? I doubt it. Are we looking for little bits of joy in others’ happiness? Or maybe we’re all just measuring ourselves against these people. Do we watch in order to feel better about the crappy things we do to each other? Do we watch to reassure ourselves that maybe our lives aren’t as miserable as we think?

Here’s what I think. I think people are so used to plugging into the TV every night that they can’t be bothered to live anymore. But the urge to live is still there, so they put a pretty darn cool life on TV for us. Ahhh… suddenly I’m feeling love, and excitement and emotion again! Bring in the guitars so I know when to be happy, and then the violins so I know when to be sad. Take me somewhere else so I can forget I’m working my life away at a job I hate, just so I can make payments on things I’ll never own.

Ugh… I don’t want to think about this anymore. I wonder if there’s anything on TV.

Bye for now.

There’s been a story going around the various news sources about a Neanderthal skull found in France. What’s special about this particular Neanderthal? Well, this one has a big gaping hole in its skull caused by a heavy sharp object swung at considerable force and velocity.

Seeing as car accidents were rare in those days, one can surmise that this trauma was caused by the actions of another Neanderthal - pissed off and yielding a sharp stone weapon. The plot thickens as we learn that our Neanderthal may have been bashed from behind. This all seems to jive pretty well with what we grew up thinking about “cave people“:

1. Cave man A sees cave woman B.
2. Cave man A beats cave woman B over head with club A and drags her to cave A.
3. Cave man B returns to cave B from hunting trip, and finds cave woman B missing.
4. Cave man B grabs club B and walks to cave A.
5. Cave man B beats cave man A over head with club B, and drags cave woman B back to cave B and cave children B,C,D,E, and F.

But apparently this is very interesting to the archaeolaeolaeological community; primarily because they will learn what types of heavy sharp things were used by Neanderthals to kill other Neanderthals, but also because it appears that some of our Neanderthal’s friends tried to take care of him and nurse him back to health.

36,000 years later, the only things that have really changed are the weapons. People are still hurting people by stealing from them, maiming and killing them, and defacing their websites. Fortunately, the remedies are pretty much the same too. When we get beaten down, we stagger back to our friends and family who, for some reason, like us enough to put us back together again.

Bye for now.

Well, I haven’t written here in a long time so that I could learn Cascading Style Sheets and turn the site into something other than the default Moveable Type page it was. It’s still a work in progress, so no need to tell me that I’m using deprecated tags in my index page.

I have a morning commute that usually takes anywhere between 35 and 45 minutes. This morning was a bit different. It took over an hour to get to work. Needless to say, I was late. But that’s LA right?

When I finally got off the freeway today, there waiting at the offramp was a reporter and camera guy from KTLA (channel 5). So the reporter guy walks up to me (the light was red), and the camera guy starts rolling. So here’s our conversation, kinda:

Reporter Guy (RG): “So how’d you like that traffic today?”

Me (Me): “Well, it sucked!”

RG: “Where’d you start this morning?”

(I told him)

RG: “When did you leave?”

Me: “About 8:15″

RG: “So what were you thinking when you were stuck back there?”

Me: (Nervous laughter) “I guess I was just hoping I’d still get to work on time.”

RG: (Pause) “So it is usually like this?”

(I can tell he’s reaching now, because I guess I just haven’t been the exciting drive-time anchor person that he’d hoped for.)

Me: “Not usually this bad, no.”

At that point, the light turned green and I excused myself from our awkward little interview. How on earth was that news? Traffic sucks in Los Angeles every day! I guess I should be thankful that today was a slow news day. I guess it could be worse - they could be sending all the reporters out to cover some blown-up building or something equally horrible.

So anyway, I probably ended up on TV at some point today. Hopefully they edited me down to a little soundbite, but I won’t know because I don’t have cable at my place. I’m using a set-top antenna that only gets channel 7, and that’s a stretch. But it’s just as well. I don’t think I’m TV material anyway.

Bye for now.

I read a really boring article today about Vioxx and its possible side effects and it got me thinking of those drug commercials we see on television now. I don’t seem to remember those being around much before a few years ago. The weirdest thing is that they hardly ever tell you what the drug is actually for! All you see is people climbing mountains and canoeing and hugging their grandkids. Sign me up! I’d like to climb a mountain and float a canoe down some scenic river. I don’t have any kids (ergo, no grandkids), but heck, I’ll find someone else’s grandkids to hug if that’s what it comes down to.

And is it just me, or are those commercials getting more and more like perfume ads? You know the ones where everything is in black and white except for some little kid holding a flower? And then there’s a bunch of fog and the kid shouts something in italian… and it’s all supposed to be very profound in a way that makes you think that if you buy this perfume the stupid commerical might come together for you. Well now these drug commercials are like this. The most popular one right now has a bunch of middle-aged people in black turtlenecks standing on the edge of weird moving cliffs while they go on about “Today’s Purple Pill.” What’s with the imagery? It’s not even visually exciting! Put them on mountain bikes or something - like in Mountain Dew commercials. I’ve got the whole standing around thing pretty much down; I don’t need a drug to help me do that.

The worst part, hands down, is the side effects. They’re usually the most uncomfortable and embarrassing things that ever happen to our bodies: Diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, no blood pressure, night sweats, lockjaw, sensitivity to light, moderate to severe itching, nose-bleeds, insomnia, narcolepsy, dry mouth, wet nose, spontaneous combustion, and of course the infamous and vague Sexual Side Effects.

The best one was for some drug I can’t remember, and the side effects went something like: “[Insert drug name here] has a low occurrence of side effects which include frequent bowel movements, the strong urge to have them, and the inability to control them.” Wow. So, I’m going to take this drug to “get better”, and in the meantime I’m having to poop all day, and it’s a toss up as to whether I’ll even make it to the bathroom in time.

It’s really bizarre what we’ll live with just so we can keep on living.

Bye for now.

Have you ever been reading the paper or looking at a sign or something, and the words get a little jumbled up in your head and you end up reading it completely different from what it really says? Well I just finished checking out cnn.com and saw these two articles stacked on top of each other:

Kansas woman gives birth to sextuplets
Bush: Saddam Hussein must go

Of course, being the freak that I am, I jumbled it up into a headline which I think would make for much more interesting news. Anyway, it made me giggle and so here’s an excerpt from my own news story:

Saddam Hussein gives birth to sextuplets

Baghdad, Iraq (AP) — Saddam Hussein, Iraqi dictator and fertility patient, gave birth to three boys and three girls in Baghdad’s Ibn Al Khatib Hospital on Saturday. President Hussein’s cesarean section is only the 96th such birth worldwide in the last 100 years.

“Mother is resting, but is otherwise in fine condition,” reports Obstetrician Qusayy al-Hadithi, “especially considering the babies were delivered some nine weeks shy of full term.” Dr. al-Hadithi went on to detail the weights of the infants, ranging from 2 pounds 10 ounces to 3 pounds 11 ounces. Currently four of the six are on respirators, and the other two are on oxygen. Despite these precautions, the children are reportedly doing well.

After several failed attempts to produce another male heir to his empire, Hussein began using fertility drugs to increase his chances of conception. Although multiple births of this magnitude can be risky, Hussein was reportedly “overjoyed” at the news.

The infants will remain in the hospital under observation for another four to six weeks. President Hussein is expected to return to the presidential palace next week.

So I’ve done a bit of reading on Buddhism. Now I realize that’s sort of a trendy thing to do these days, which is why I never bothered to look into it before. But I was given some literature, so I decided to go through it. As I’ve been reading and doing a bit of research, I’ve come across a few concepts that I feel are worth thinking about:

1. Dukkha - Unsatisfactoriness, discontent, stress, suffering. The first “Noble Truth” of Buddhism is “There is suffering.” This suffering comes from attachments. We are all attached to things in this life. We are attached to perceptions of ourselves. We are attached to material things. So what’s the problem?

2. Anatta - Not-self, no self. All that we attribute to ourselves (e.g., “I am a man”, “I am an American”, “I am intelligent”) is only a perception of self. This is not to say that we do not exist, or that these attributes may not describe our physical presence. However, when we misunderstand these attributes as what we are; if we attach ourselves to these perceptions, then we open ourselves up to suffering.

I am a man. If I associate myself too closely with this idea, then I am locked into behaviors that reinforce this view of myself. I am a man, therefore I should not do things that are “unmanly”. That limits a lot of my experience as a person, doesn’t it? If I were inclined to prance about in tights, I would feel very self-conscious about this, due solely to my perception of this behavior being “unmanly”.

I am an American. This means I am not any other nationality. If my country does something I feel is wrong, that becomes my baggage as well. If I feel someone has insulted or wronged my country, then I feel enraged because a part of my self has been wronged.

I am intelligent. But do I always do intelligent things? What about those midterms I failed? What about the time I cut my finger open with the kitchen knife? If I am intelligent, why do I do these unintelligent things? Why do I say foolish things? Why do I sometimes feel that someone near me may be more intelligent than I am? If I identify myself as someone who is intelligent; if I attach myself to that idea, I experience suffering of a sort when that view of myself is challenged.

3. Anicca - Impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. I was born, and I will die. Sometimes pleasant things happen to me and I am happy. Sometimes unpleasant things happen to me, and I am angry or sad. Happiness is impermanent, as is sadness and anger. I have a nice new car, but someone could steal it, or I might get in a wreck. And if I am fortunate enough to avoid those things, eventually it will get worn out anyway and I will have to get rid of it.

This passage sums it all up nicely:

All conditions are transient,
There is no self in the created or the uncreated.
All of us
Are bound by birth, ageing, and death,
By sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair,
Bound by suffering and obstructed by suffering.
Let us all aspire to complete freedom from suffering.

Bye for now.

If you have not seen this yet, I regret to be the bearer of catastrophic news. Know that in scant few days, the planets (specifically our five closest interplanetary neighbors) shall align across the darkened evening sky in such a way as to bring an end to all life on our beloved Earth.

You don’t have to be a prophet to realize that this is bad juju, and yet the world media has all but ignored our imminent demise. If I may quote from a recent BBC article, “astronomers say this year’s planetary show is no cause for concern.” As a herald of truth and lover of humanity, it appears that the onus to inform the world is solely mine. Friends, not only is this astronomical terror a “cause for concern“, but it is also a cause for hysteria, hoarding, rioting, and looting.

Yet there is hope. According to my very careful and exact calculations, all we need to do to keep this planet habitable is to blow up the planet Saturn. Why Saturn? Take a moment to inspect this scientific diagram. We can clearly see that Saturn’s asymmetrical placement relative to its planetary cousins is, if I may speak scientifically for a moment, messing stuff up.

So, to recap:
1. Build planet-destroying laser
2. Aim laser at planet Saturn
3. Blow up planet Saturn
4. All life on Earth breathes sigh of relief

Bye for now.