Wrong Questions

Some guy thinks he is a hot shot and can tell us why ghosts don't exist.

Using science and math, Efthimiou explains why it is ghosts can't walk among us while also gliding through walls, like Patrick Swayze in the movie "Ghost." That violates Newton's law of action and reaction. If ghosts walk, their feet apply force to the floor, but if they go through walls they are without substance, the professor says.

But seeing as how even the most solid of walls actually consists of more space than matter I always find myself wondering why I can't walk through walls. There is plenty of speculation on the material nature of matter with great leanings towards the idea that it does not exist, per se, but is just represented by probability fields. As for walking, it's probably just an old habit. How long has it been since I biologically needed to suck on a boob? Hasn't stopped me from trying at every opportunity. So how do we explain this paradox of a universe consisting of nothing much at all that can really hurt when you run head first into it? I know it has to do with repulsive fields, but I shower every day.

Newton's 'laws' are theories and have their limits. CSICON!

Demonology/Headology

For those looking to conjure some demons this Halloween (it is traditional), here's a good primer.

Something Scary

I wanted to post something on the scary side of things for Halloween. This was the scariest thing I could think of (outside of the obvious realms of religion and politics).

Year of the Penguin

How succesful was The March of the Penguins?







I'm glad the big studio folks have a lot of imagination.

AWPC: Keeping Up Appearances

One of the machinists was commenting on my appearance.

Machinist: Do you ever get tired of all the old folks staring at you in shock and horror?

Jake: Nope. In fact, it keeps getting better the older I get. I'm past the stage where it's just a phase I'm going through and old enough to know better.

Killer Idea

Modern day remake of Easy Rider but starring myself and Marilyn Manson. Gives it a bit of a Priscilla, Queen of the Desert feel. He'd be a great Wyatt and I can play Billy, out there in the wilderness fighting cowboys and indians at every side. Maybe Christopher Walken as George Hansen, the alcoholic ACLU lawyer.

Closer

Looks like we're getting closer to my idea for quantum teleportation machining. Scientists teleport two different objects.

"Creating entanglement is a very important step, but there are two more steps at least to perform teleportation. We have succeeded in making all three steps -- that is entanglement, quantum measurement and quantum feedback."

Marilyn Manson

When I see a bunch of Christian rock kids singing, "Marilyn Manson Ate My Girlfriend," I have two thoughts;

1. Probably because you wouldn't.
2. I'm sure she enjoyed it.

I like Marilyn Manson. He just seems so much more human than most rock stars I haven't met.

Entertain Me!

Since my friends have been doing a piss poor job of entertaining me as of late (I can't be expected to do nothing ALL of the time), here's a news story about sexsomnia.

Researchers are struggling to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep...

As yet there is no cure for the condition,

Her: Before we spend the night together, you should know that I'm a sexsomniac.

Him: Okay. I'm just an insatiably horny bastard.

Audio Consciousness Control

Haven't driven the truck in a while. I've been too busy proving my status as a hard core chopper fiend by getting an ice cold lap full of water on my way to work. But I needed to pick up dog food today, and those 50 lb. bags don't strap down to the chop very well.

The radio had been left on Air America. I tried to listen for amusement's sake. Within 1 minute I hadn't heard anything that resembled information. Not that I disagreed with Big Ed, he was just hurling cliches left and right. I know that's what most people need. They don't hear words, just sound bites. Why is that? Don't know, don't care right now. My head couldn't handle it anymore, so I punched the button to switch over to FM. Portland's alternative station. Having surface in the late 80's to early 90's, the alternative scene is in its teens. Worse yet, it is a whiny, clueless, suburbanite teen. No wonder I forgo commercial radio. What kind of culture are they trying to cram down our necks? Or are they clutching at straws to maintain some sort of relevance? Regardless, I am far happier scouring the web for obscure media that doesn't make my brain hemorrhage. Punch in the tape!

Ministry : Land of Rape and Honey

Heinlein

I don't feel like thinking for myself right now.

From Robert Heinlein's Friday;

"...It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population."

"A very bad sign. Particularism. It was once considered a Spanish vice but any country can fall sick with it."

...

"So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts."

"Elementary. Go on."

"Well . . . high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that's old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way, even though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation... Boss, laws to sweep back the tide never do work... I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort. Riots of course, but I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking away at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. I guess that's all for now. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial, but those things are obvious; all the histories list them."

"Friday, I think you have missed the most alarming symptom of all.

"I have? Are you going to tell me? Or am I going to have to grope around in the dark for it?"

"Mmm. This once I shall tell you. But go back and search for it. Examine it. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named... but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot."

"Really?"

"Pfui. I should have forced you to dig it out for yourself; then you would know it. This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength."

Still Not Voting

I looked over my voter guide and almost decided to vote due to one particular measure. Some puritanical pukes are trying to get a measure passed that requires a doctor to give 48 hours notice to the parents of an unemancipated minor before performing an abortion. Looking over the language I noticed that in no way did it stop the procedure. So even if the damn piece of shit measure passes, it just means that approximately 6 girls a year will have to get enough spine to fess up to their folks. If pops whacks her across face, she needs to get enough spine to either leave and file for emancipation or press charges for assault. But the measure almost got me to vote. All the other measures, if read in full, were meaningless.

While the people offering their arguments against this measure are using the same old annoying gimmicks, the folks arguing in favor of it are so much worse. Page after page of 'personal testimonials' about how having an abortion ruined their lives. Nobody who chose not to have one can say that. Once you've got the kid you are suddenly obligated to love and cherish them no matter what kind of a little shit they become. One of the things I hate about the 'personal testimonial' approach regarding the abortion issue is all the lying.

Let me tell you about a young girl who had an abortion. Blah blah blah. Blood, trauma, regret, abandonment, etc. That girl was me. Boo hoo.

The great majority of the individuals who profess to have had an abortion that destroyed their lives are really poor creative writers who somehow think that their Lord God Jehovah will overlook their lies since they are lying to save a fetus. They pulled a similar tactic on me once. Phone calls telling me to reconsider my position on the issue, someone close to me, blah blah blah. LIES!

I've got a personal testimonial for y'all. Let me tell you about an individual who minded his own business and didn't try to force people to live their lives as he saw fit. He didn't end up with my foot in his ass.

Chaos Magick

As many of you know, one of my interests is magick.


Don't believe anything Grant Morrison says. He is a doper, a comic book writer, and Scottish. In this video he explains a simple system of chaos magick using sigils. Don't believe it. Only 5 out of my 6 attempts at his style of sigil magick have been successful. That is only 5x more successful and 23x easier than other systems of magick I have dabbled with. Don't believe anything Grant Morrison says. But watch the 45 minute video. He has a great voice and beautiful skull.

And don't bother reading anything by Peter Carroll. He is just another simpleton hack like Grant Morrison.

Space/Time

I woke up five minutes before the alarm told me I needed to get up if I didn't want to be late to class. My dreams had been really funky all night, but nothing that eluded to the thought that was now lodged in my head.

It is theorized that sub-atomic particles exist as fields of probability that not only can ignore traditional spatial travel but can also ignore time as we conceive it. For instance, in some circles it is not considered too far fetched to suggest that an electron can leave here and be on the other side of the galaxy before it left. A bit much for your head at 6:40 AM on Saturday before heading off to a community college class on machine tools practices? What about those experiments with light where they were able to get light to appear at the other end of an optic connection before it left the source? Yes, it is all very strange but hints that the concept of time travel is not a total pipe dream.

So what if we end up only harnessing the power to send light or sub-atomic particles backwards and forwards in time? That means we can send information back in time. A very powerful tool. Most banking transactions consist of information. You swipe a debit card and it withdraws funds from your account and deposits them into the vendor's account. Imagine at the height of your earning potential sending funds to yourself just out of high school so you could pay for your education with cash instead of loans that have interest. Or a retro-fund purchase of your dream home so you can buy it when the market is most favorable without having to take out a mortgage. It would destroy our current economic system. But say you could only send information back a few minutes. You could still make a killing on the stock market. At least until once again the practice devastated our linear time dependent market system. You can't have people quintupling their money every few minutes as casual day traders. It's just not sustainable.

Suddenly my idea for matter transmission machining seemed like child's play. But it was time for me to take off for class to learn how to use the old fashioned mills, lathes, and surface grinders to make components for use in old fashioned linear time forward machines; machines that make saw chain that cuts down trees that produce pulp for paper for printing out parts specifications for a space elevator that will take supplies into low orbit for building an array of orbital space colonies that will not only shield the Earth from the Sun, reducing the risk of global warming, but will house researchers performing experiments that will lead to the ability to send information backwards in time thus facilitating the collapse of the current economic and political paradigms. I love my job.

AWPC: A Compliment

I was giving a 21 year old hottie a hard time about going out clubbing. She is a petite Asian gal who in my eyes would have a hard time passing for 18.

Jake: If I were a bouncer I'd be asking, "Don't you have school in the morning, little girl?"
N: Even when I had a fake ID they wouldn't card me. It's all in how you dress and present yourself.
Jake: Then why am I still getting carded at my age?
N: Because you're so cute and nice.

Why do people keep insisting I'm nice?

Space Elevator

A space elevator would be cool.

Arthur C. Clarke once predicted that it would be twenty years after people started taking the idea seriously that we would finally have a space elevator. Three years ago scientists started taking the idea seriously.

I wonder if the Brits would call it a space lift?

New Maintenance Policy

We thought for certain he was joking, but he wasn't. They actually want us to start our shift each day by going around to all of the operators, saying hello, and finding out how they are doing. So of course we went full tilt.

Hi!

How are you today?

That's just super!

Isn't it great to be here?

Can I get you anything? Maybe a cup of coffee or some tea?

No, I can't look at the problem with your machine right now. I have to say hello to all the other operators first. Company policy. But as soon as I'm done doing that you can be certain that I will work on your machine in the order in which we prioritize it.

I'm really glad we had this little chat.

Hey, you have a super day.

Then later the maintenance light would come on and we would go check it out.

I saw your light on and said to myself, "Oh no! (Name) is having a less than super day." Is there anything I can do to make it better?

That's just terrible! Why would a machine be that mean to you?

Do you need a cup of tea or maybe a group hug?

We'll get things back to being super for you.

Within a couple of days the operators are going to be begging their supervisor to make us stop.

Accuracy

After work I stepped outside to a subsiding rain. Of course the roads were still wet and I got soaked with cold water all the way home on the chopper.

The weather report said it wasn't supposed to rain today. Then the connection was made. The rest of the news is about as accurate as that. Strange how everybody views the weather report with suspicion but sucks up the rest of the news as gospel.

Short Term Memory Is Over-Rated

While short term memory is over-rated, Marijuana-like compound may fight Alzheimer's.

Marijuana has strong anti-inflammatory effects. "This is why I believe that people who used marijuana a few decades ago are much less likely to develop any disease, such as Alzheimer's, that relies upon the slow development of brain inflammation," Wenk told Reuters Health.

So while your short term memory may get a little fried, those bits that do stick won't slip away later in life. Besides, short term memory is over-rated.

Now if the Alzheimer's patients could only remember where they hid their stash. But I hear short term memory is over-rated.

Synchronicity?

So I happen upon this goth band called The 69 Eyes out of Finland. Shortly thereafter they announce the release of a new album called Route 69.

Just so happens that I grew up at the Northern most end of U.S. Route 69. I was the town's token punk and one of my few friends was a Fin.

Synchronicity seems inevitable in the information glut of the electronic age.