The American Taxpayer

The American Taxpayer

The American Taxpayer is quite simply the dumbest representation of humanity on the face of the earth. He works hard day in day out at a job, perhaps several jobs, that pay very little; he pays into his health insurance, his car insurance, and all many things that he has to pay in living in the world he lives in today. Yet it is his taxes that he pays attention to, that he truly reserves his ire for; not the fact that he isn’t paid enough to even live on, not the fact that his health insurance takes so much from him, not the other things that take and take and take all his hard earned money from him, no it is his taxes that are the worst thing about his life. The politicians, of course, push this stupid human being into that direction, I mean why not its better than having to talk about what funds them, no it’s the taxes that are making your life so miserable, it’s the taxes that make life so hard to live in. Those huge exorbitant taxes that prevent you from rising high enough;  no it’s not that company not paying you enough, nor the health care industry charging too much, no it’s the government taking away your hard earned money that is at fault. Why the American Taxpayer is so easily led, why is it taxes that he focuses on, and not the obvious things that really do influence how sucky his life is? It is because the American taxpayer is the most productive person on Earth, but also the most scared. Despite the talk about the U.S. being a nation of the brave, it is truly a nation of the frightened. Frightened of losing their jobs, so they don’t complain about how much they are paid, nor how much their health insurance is taking from them. Frightened of losing their homes, so they don’t pay attention to how much their electricity costs, nor how the bank might be screwing them with their loans, frightened of not being educated, so they don’t complain about the exorbitant costs of education nor about how the loan companies are screwing them. The American taxpayer is quite simply scared stupid, and the stupid scared can be very easily led around by anyone willing too. It is very easy to point the American taxpayer away from the source of their problems to what is not even close to being the source, i.e. taxes or the debt, or foreign aid, or NASA. When the stupid person comes home, tired from a long day of work, he turns on the T.V. and he is told it is these things that are making your life hell. When he gets his paycheck, and looks at it, it is not at how much he was actually paid, but he looks where the politicians tell his stupid cow like mind to look, at the taxes which are taken away from the paycheck. It is so much easier to think about the taxes, which is not in his immediate view to be at fault; rather than blame what is at fault because his stupid fear prevents him from seeing.

The American Taxpayer is a short term thinker, a idiot living in the now, paycheck to paycheck, only looking  at how much is taken away vs. how much he worked right now. He is too retarded to understand where his roads come from, nor what happens with the police (they pull him over for speeding tickets, so why should he care), if he farms he likely doesn’t think all the much about farming subsidies, and he certainly doesn’t care about the environment, polluted water doesn’t kill him now, nor does polluted air.  If it is later that it kills him, he does not think about it, all that matters is what delays or takes away from his  paycheck, what keeps his immediate now needs from working for any regularity. So pity the American Taxpayer, a creature so stupid that he can’t see what is truly killing him right now.

 

Development of a civilization on a young world

Development of a civilization on a young world

Our civilization is on a relatively old world, a world which has gone through many epochs, and many events. We forget how much of our world is based on the fact that it is fairly old. This oldness is important for many different reasons. The first and most important is that our civilization feeds on fossil fuels and various metals; however at one period in our planet’s history there was not quite as much of these as they are now.  There had not passed enough time for the fossil fuels to accumulate to the point where we could use them with a relatively high frequency. This is also true with regard to various metals and also various minerals. All of these things are the result of millions of years of geological action, and climatic shifts, all producing the fossil fuels, the salty oceans, and the metals.  Most just shrug their shoulders and accept all of it as a fact of our current world. But it is useful to think of a what if, a what if where our civilization had to develop in a much younger world, or alternatively a alien civilization. In this world there are no coal deposits, no oil, no metals produced through millions of years of action, and no abundance of other materials. If our species could survive at all on this world, it certainly would not have been able to develop a civilization such as our current one. In this world the only source of high energy fuel is perhaps wood (if it evolved yet), and since that is only available in certain quantities the energy required to be create a civilization would not likely be made.

This would also be a problem if our civilization tries to colonize another  younger world, same problem, even if  it is as habitable as our own Earth,  you  can see it requires also the combination materials and fuels which our own has, and this likely means that colonizing a world would have to take into account its relative age. It has to be at not just the right habitability, but also the right time in the habitability or would likely be of little use to our high tech civilization.

Given that age is likely a determinate for use in our civilization, older worlds than Earth’s might be useful, but bear in mind this offers a different set of problems.  Older worlds will likely have their own sets of life on them, perhaps intelligence have consumed their own  resources, meaning that the ecology is destroyed, and materials that our civilization needs to survive would likely be rare as well. In this scenario wood would likely also is the only high energy fuel available. Hypothetically though, without a civilization it is the older worlds that would contain the most resources, and thus be most useful to colonize. But and there is a caveat, older worlds would also have the problem of having a limited lifetime of habitability, and given the trends of increased solar activity perhaps a much simpler ecology.

Humanity without a moon

Humanity without a moon

I was reading a old Asimov nonfiction science book on extraterrestrial civilizations, and in it he described the development of human farming methods with particular reference to the moon, and the cycles that it corresponded to. He described the development of astronomy as a way of knowing the seasons so that farmers could know when to plant and when to farm. Now this wasn’t anything I didn’t already know, I knew even about the idea that he described about Stonehenge being a way to measure the star’s for seasons. No what I found myself asking when reading this was what would happen to a civilization’s development ,assuming they were roughly comparable to ours and assuming they evolved roughly similar to ours as well, if they had no moon, and also a second question what if they had no seasons? In the first scenario, we have I think the answer in Stonehenge, in which the tracks of stars were measured to determine the seasons, however it would not be as easy or accurate as using the moon as a useful  determinate of seasons. This translates into our hypothetical civilization starving as its agriculture at times not syncing up with the seasons means that not enough food is grown at times. This might have led to even more exact astronomy, because the measurements would have been the difference between life and death. So I think a world without a moon, might have developed astronomy even more than ours did, and have even more exact measurements of stars then ours ever did. So what about a world without a moon and no measurable seasonal difference? This is a world which is very predictable, and requires very little knowledge about when to plant and when to harvest; it is a world in which I think that there would be little reason to develop astronomy at all. It is a world in which astronomy is not important to growing the food, and if it is developed would be developed much, much later. What this means to the hypothetical human or alien civilization that develops on this world is that their knowledge of the stars would at best be confined to the religious and at worst be nonexistent.  It is a world where perhaps religion would not be as powerful because it never attained the preeminence it gained in our world due to predicting the times to harvest. Would this be the same as saying it never developed at all, or that it did not eventually attain the same amount of power as it did in our world? I don’t think so, mainly because religion didn’t get created just because of that, but it would certainly have to follow a different path then it did in our world.

I do think that a lack of seasons and a moon, combined with some temperate conditions, mean that the hypothetical alien or human civilization on this world would not be as advanced as ours has been. This is mainly because developing the higher arts would not have been as critical to survival. This world would not likely have a space program, nor much knowledge at all of the heavens. Would they be as high technology as us, not sure, I specified temperate regimes as the requirement for temperature, but I suspect that even if it was not temperate, the predictability of the temperature regime would still lend itself to not developing too much technology at all. I make a lot of assumptions of course, there could be modifications to this, say the world was as I described but had fairly unstable volcanic emissions, or had a nearby planet which altered the tides, all these could contribute to enough variability at times to conditions for a higher tech civilization to develop, but if not it makes you think doesn’t it? Think about how important the moon and the seasons were to our development as a species, and you can realize from this that perhaps it would not have been around if not for those two important factors.

Growing to the sun, drifting on the wind

Growing to the sun, drifting on the wind

Somewhat poetic title, but nothing all that much about what I felt like talking about. I’ve always felt two ways about humanity, on the one hand there is this desire to go away, to go so far into the depths of the universe that I never see another human face, and the other part that actually desires contact with human being. Both are part of the same continuum, and for the same reason I think, the first is the desire to run away, to make the reason for the pain no longer be there. This is also why sometimes there is a part of me that wouldn’t fear the end of humanity. Then there is the other part that so wants to be part of the group, and yet is continually hurt by lack of not being there. The hurt drives a desire to leave and never come back, but the hurt comes from being lonely in a crowd. Being alone in a crowd is so much worse than just being alone, because being alone in crowd you are being constantly reminded of what you do not have. Every child laughing, ever lover’s kiss,  and every drunken night out with friends is yet another spike in the wall of my mind, driving home the hurt, telling me what I do not have. What I do not have, and pain from not having is one reason I would not shed a tear at humanity being lost to time or distance, nor to me just leaving altogether. People I have observed have things they would miss If they left, there is always something to tie them down; yet I do not, I could go anywhere in the world anywhere in the universe and I would not miss a thing. It is though not because I am so strong, but because I truly have no connection to anyone, and yet every day I find myself needing it; how I wish I could eradicate that desire, at least I wouldn’t be always so needlessly in pain. No connection is part of the reason why peer pressure does not affect me, you actually have to care about what somebody thinks for the peer pressure to even work, I never cared. But not because I have no feelings or empathy, but because as long as I can remember I have felt alone,  if you do not feel connections to people  you do not care, or at least you do not care in the emotional way, there is a general caring I have in a cool sort of intellectual way. What I feel is dangerous though, because I  want  to not be alone so badly I would probably literally sell my soul for chance at companionship, and readily do whatever other’s would tell me if it meant they were my genuine friend. You see what I am, a slave to pain, a servant to anyone who would throw me a life vest to my drowning self. I think if it weren’t for myself getting in the way, I would not feel this pain, my flaw I feel is in never being  able to live beyond what I am. A catch 22 which I made and built myself, and in which I am caught in a inexorable current away from humanity, and yet always thirsting for the smallest droplet.

Magic has its price

Magic has its price

In the world today there is the belief in magic, in power without price, and this is a unique belief. Sure in ancient times there was such a thing as magic, but that magic always came with a price, whether  it be from gods, demons, or something else it always involved a sacrifice of some sort. Probably because at heart the ancients knew what reality was, a give and take, action and consequence; essentially tradeoffs for everything. In the modern day world we don’t think of magic this way, we think of magic as  somehow power without consequence, looking at the tales of now vs. the tales of then, and that is the essential difference. The world is full of examples just like that, of magical thinking, of thinking that this political system, or this technology, or this way of life always comes without any consequence, that there never will be price to be paid for it. The capitalist system is a perfect example of magical thinking also, in that it subscribes to the idea that there will never be a price for certain actions and deeds, that there will never be a reckoning, that my riches are good because they benefit me; but never is there a thought of what the price will be for said riches. Our society has as its credo, the stupidly optimistic belief of no consequence, of all gain and no loss. It can think of this because of the way it is organized, as it is organized around deferred cost, specifically deferred cost into the future, or  transferral  of cost elsewhere. We have grown so used to doing this, that we have even bought into the idea that there is no cost, that there is only benefit and no loss. The ancients understood the futility of doing this, they couched it in language of hubris, of retribution from the gods; but there was always the idea that there would come a day of reckoning for the benefit, this was why many of them sacrificed, to pay for that benefit. We are no less superstitious then what the ancients were, but the difference is that we have grown rather fond of never paying for what we gain. The fondness is a danger, because it blinds us to the reality, and the reality is that there is always a cost for everything. It is not necessarily what the ancients thought it was, but it is still there; and just because we believe that it is not there, does not deny the facts of the cost existing. The danger lies in letting the cost build up, and build and build, until it overwhelms the blinders we have put on our reality; and at last the gods, in a way, finally come calling to punish us for our hubris; and destroy the stupid conceit on which our society is based upon. For the costs perhaps can be deferred, but not forever,  and perhaps deferring it made it much worse than if  we  had faced it head on.

Fighting Nanobugs

Fighting Nanobugs, or defeating the grey goo scenario

In scifi and also in some of the more enthusiastic of tech lovers will make nanomachines to be the ultimate of all weapons, things capable of turning all matter everywhere into copies of themselves. Perhaps they could if they were the fantasy convert all matter into themselves type, but you see nanomachines in the real world would not function that way. Nanomachines are their heart machines in the physical universe and as such must act as all machines of their size must act in the physical universe. Unless they are a order of technology beyond our comprehension, nanomachines are would be capable of making use of existing resources, and not all resources are created equal, and of utilizing energy, to make use of those resources; they must make use of only what is available, which means they cannot make elements over into something else, in addition they cannot replicate using energy they do not have. However they like all machines, would have prices extracted upon what they do, and unique  constraints given the specific environment they are in, and the unique resources they use. A useful way of looking at fighting them would employ methods already used to fight the small, i.e. bacteria and viruses, and ways biology already operates in the realm of the small.

So anyway with that longwinded explanation out of the way, on to fighting nanobugs if they get out of control. Note this would a discussion about real nanobugs, not the fantasy ones in fiction. So the first way you fight a nanobug is the method of essentially draining the swamp, or depriving the nanobug of the resources it needs to replicate. If a nanobug operates in the real world, it will be dependent on specific combinations of materials to function and replicate. This is not out of the air guess work, it is extrapolation both from current created machines and life in general, both of which require the same principle to keep going. So to fight a nanobug, you burn through the resources it needs to replicate, and in so doing possibly kill it or at the least confine it to a specific area. An addendum making the nanobugs deliberately out of the most exotic materials would also serve to help limit their spreading in a worst case scenario.

The second way would be to infect the nanobug, or in other words make it sick. You can do this through the selected application of a information attack (a computer virus), or a actual physical virus, both would serve to interfere with the nanobugs capacity to replicate. The physical virus would be a fairly simple nanomachine, who’s primary purpose would be to infect other nanomachines.  A real world example of this would be the case of bacteria phages, or viruses which infect and kill bacteria. . In the case of the nanomachines though, the nanovirus and the computer virus too would have to obviously be specifically designed for any specific nanomachine.  Give a nanovirus the capability to mutate fairly quickly and it might mutate quick enough to keep pace with any hypothetical  mutations which the nanomachines themselves might go through.

The third way would be to basically poison the nanomachines, real nanomachines require specific combinations of materials to function, as do many machines, as do many organisms.  You disrupt the balance of those materials, say with a engineered material of a type you can disrupt and perhaps destroy many parts of the nanomachines machinery. It might be incongruous to think of poisoning machines, but it is better to think of the nanomachine as biology vs. machines, and if a analogue is needed think of adding water to the engine of a car, which would effectively poison yes even a machine.  A real world example of this would be antibiotics, which are nothing more than a glorified name for what amounts to bacteria poisons, given bacteria evolved them to  fight other bacteria, we just use them to also fight bacteria

The last way I wish to talk about, obviously there are probably many more just as there are for anything in the real world, but the last I wish to talk about is the destruction of the matter that makes up the nanomachines. This would be the most drastic of control methods, this involves at the lowest energy level, using electromagnetic pulses against the nanomachines control mechanisms, and at the highest some variant on the nuke em options, essentially concentrate enough energy on a small enough space and you can destroy anything.

Lastly with regard to designing a research base for nanomachines, never design nanomachines with materials that are relatively common, rarity is key, and from that design base with materials that are relatively poisonous and in addition of lowerquality then the materials you are designing the nanomachines with.. If placing a base, place it as far as  possible, but also with a suitable combination of materials and environment that would prevent the nanomachines from spreading very far, and also from having the energy to do all that much even if they could.

 

Porn and the gateway method of perversion

Porn and the gateway method of perversion

I will go through stages in which I am really bored of porn, and I will essentially quit any kind of sexual anything for quite a while. But you see the problem is that I will when I come back (and I always come back, I’m a man, I have needs after all, and I totally suck at life and women specifically), I will try and up the ante. By upping the ante, I mean that I need to find something even kinkier to make the porn seem interesting again.  So the result is I started with standard couples male female, now I am into 3d porn, and so forth. You see it’s like how they always talk about the gateway method when it comes to drugs, for me it’s porn. The thing is when I do my business, I usually just end up deleting most of it anyway, I spend ours looking for interesting porn to wank of to, and delete the majority of it. Then after my need for sex is exhausted, I will start the same cycle over again, only this time I will need to get more perverted when it comes to my porn searches. I have no reservations about this being the exactly healthiest thing to do, what is the old saying you repeat something and expect different results and that is the definition of insanity. My habits when it comes to porn, do tend to follow this pattern as well, sometimes I will get so bored of porn that I abandon it then come back to more perverted porn, other times I will do what I call comfort porn, Porn I know very well, and use but abandon even quicker.

So you see the porn tends to drive a positive reinforcing cycle of more fantasy and more perversion.

I know the solution, don’t get me wrong, the key is to anchor myself into reality better, but that would actually require getting a girl, and that is where my catch 22 is. You see I have a great many flaws, and those flaws are what make sex, and girls nigh impossible for me to realistically contemplate. All my contemplation of girls primarily figures into scenario running, or simply I am more comfortable thinking of them in a fantasy way then a real way. This is not a lack of knowledge I am talking about, I have studied people quite well, and understand them very well,  but it is basic thing that is missing  in me, a incomplete circuit somewhere in  brain, that experiences the need but  is unable to prosecute the action to fulfill that need. I am not arrogant about it, once upon a time not knowing what made people tick would  have been my  problem, but I have amassed enough knowledge  to satisfy that problem, now it’s a inability to intuitively recognize and follow through on signals that people take for granted.

Oh well that long talk about the why over, I tend to go through a increasing scale of perversion in proportion to how interesting it is and how bored I am.