What's Been and What's Ben

I recently speed reread Plague Time – a book about evolutionary biology applied to infectious disease. The Tennesse Valley Authority (TVA) was responsible in the words of George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou to “hydroelectric up the whole darn state”, but really they did so much more. It is a lesson of what could come with the recent economic stimulus package. After creating a series of dams to “hydroelectric up” the South there was a lot of stagnant water. This ended with almost half of the inhabitants of these nearby watersheds infected with malaria. Oops. So they mosquito-netted up the whole place at great expense and protest. Malaria has had and probably will have a long story with humanity. It actually reproduces in a sexual manner inside of mosquitoes and thus mutates like it were one of us – the nerve! The best solution is still gin and tonics. But the malaria rate dropped to the point that it is not an issue anymore. No vaccine was required – just prevention measures. We all hope and pray for magic bullets, pills, and syringes, but it is not always a reality in a world that will change to exploit us. Sometimes we must embrace change and understand it instead of blindly fighting against it only to create strains that overcome our anti-biotics and incite an arms race. New antibiotics are rare and tend to be increasingly harmful to the billions and billions of good bacteria that are keeping us alive. I am convinced that homo sapiens pose the only threat to our existence – if only because “sapiens” gets flagged by spellcheck.

Ben, the futurist, reporting for duty! I was rereading the book plague time: the new germ theory of disease that I apparently finished reading on the 8th of June 2002. It offered inspiration for another of my entries, but this is about futurists getting it right. By the 1960 sci-fi writers go the portable handheld computer thing down – but they used punch cards. I will not get this correct, but I think I am walking down the right path.

People will have implants that allow them to interface with digital logic (computers), other people, and generally the world around us. Imagine this ideal, build little radios into our skin comprised of magnets implanted in the inside edge of the end of our ring fingers – an area with unusual nerve density, give it a feel. This is part 1 and has already been done. The second part involves an area of anatomy that I have no idea about. My goal would be part 2, the implantation of a transmitter of magnetic waves in the form of a coil and a permanent magnet that when contracted by a vestigial muscle we no longer use. Imagine the potential for the non-verbal communication that aliens always use in movies. It will bring evesdropping and other problems, but so does speaking/listening. I have mentioned this general idea years before, but feel it worth of mentioning again.

Here are some things you should think about when thinking about human advancements like this:

• communication requires at least two people (so many need to sign up for implants)
• language techniques are learned best from a young age
• languages naturally evolve and should be allowed to so we don’t have “double U” and numbers taking more than one syllable to say
• nature vs. nuture will never be resolved, but humans are more blank slates than any other thing
• humans can read before talking
• monkeys can control a robot arm with brain electrodes before walking
• we know of nothing we can’t teach people

I remember two summers ago spending every day after a long day of work unwinding to Thriller by Michael Jackson. It is was introduced me fully to the wonder of vinyl records – a medium that is seeing a major resurgence in recent years.

I am on the corner of 5th St. and 15th Ave. SE on the U campus and can hear cars going by disproportionately tblaring MJ over the past day. I have to agree with Dave Chappelle, I don’t care what he may of may not have done; Thriller, case closed.

I could have been a stand-up comedian if I hated myself more. I could have been a farmer if I liked sunlight more. I could have been an astronaut if I’d not had asthma. The astronaut thing is more about we watching Apollo 13 and realizing that they would never let me fly. Part of me would like to get into science/engineering public policy if I were not good at technical things. I could have gone into liberal arts if I were more sure of myself. I need the safety net of equations to back me up. Today KAUST sent out my preliminary schedule of classes for the fall. It had me as a communication and signal processing electrical engineer – the furthest thing in EE (electrical engineering) from what I do. I make things.

In my room I have up on my wall a calendar of the rest of summer that is similar to all of the previous calendars that I have made. It is a way of taking a non-literal step back and seeing what is left. So far I have almost finished LOST again through season 4. It goes faster as the episode count per season goes down. Season 2 is much more solid in hindsight. But enough LOST. That is my reward. The ability to do nothing is a great sign in my mind of personal wealth. Time is really what we spend. recently I went to the Electric Fetus – a record shop – to get a damn peace sign sticker – which as far as I have found no longer exists – and got a a moleskin watercolor because I like paying too much for things. It is nice, as expected. I have yet to cut off my ear, but also have not gotten on to oil-based paint…yet.♦

There are a few things I don’t tow the democratic-farmer-labor party line. Crime is crime. Hate is inevitable in a situation involving assault, murder, and rape. It is also trying to look inside the head of somebody – which is impossible. You can’t raise the river and lower the bridge. It lessens the importance for non-hate-based crimes. I am fully behind having harsher penalties for killing cops because a cop is a symbol of law enforcement. We are not going to police thought – evil or good – because it is a sippery slope. Where do we draw the line?

There is a psychological factor behind this that I understand. If you kill somebody for who they are then you are not killing somebody for any personal benefit and would do it again with all things being equal. Perhaps this is about being a heterosexual ambulatory white male.

Here is something to think about, are not all killings in war considered hate crimes?

This is how everything will happen in the future, once the cost gets down. Long time readers may remember that I once predicted that on-demand manufacturing is the next logical leap for us. Now some architects have found a way to make a giant abstact thingy they could have made otherwise. I think the future will be more about lego/ikea construction where you go to walmart and print out a PCB, rapidly form a plastic case, attach some stock components together (like batteries, connectors, and microchips), and there you go with your new laptop or dvd player or remote control or keyboard or anything else like it. You can customize things to your liking on-site or before going in.

It is hotter here than in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. I have spent the day on acedemicearth.org watching lectures from Yale on game theory. I read a few books about it, but never went to far into it. I never spent time working out the math. It is so hot I don’t want to do anything. Tomorrow I am going to uptown and out to ax-man surplus. I have a few projects I want to get started so I might actually get through one. They mostly focus on making LEDs blink. Ax-man will provide inspiration and supplies.

At some points I felt like I was leading an insurrection.  In reality it was just a warming and a stirring of the pot. KAUST has asked me to fill out all sorts of wierd forms and surveys about learning styles and watersport preference. Then a week ago or so we were asked to authorize a background check for the sole purpose of confirming our degrees and looking into our police record. The police record search was redundant since we were already sending in state police records. I try to read what I sign, so I read what I was giving them access to “information as to my character, general reputation, personal characteristic, mode of living, and work habits.” I thought this was a bit much and asked for an alternative way to confirm things. They sent me back an email within a day (prompt for KAUST)  saying they got a new form made, but will not give them to us, maybe. They have yet to get back to me. I sent a KAUSTbook message to all the US students going first year.

I was in car 22 to get into the music, art, comedy, and glow stick festival last Wednesday. I went with Ramzi and got to. I traveled 1000 miles according to google maps each way. I got to sleep in my old bed and recover my old space foam pad the night before heading down. We all had a great time.

Andrew Bird and Portugal, the Man were the best acts. The Daily Show gang was hilarious.

I went to in chronological order: White Rabbits, Portugal, the Man, People Under the Stairs, Gomez, Animal Collective, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Moe, TV on the Radio, Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Phish, Girl Talk, Bon Iver, Of Montreal, the Decemberists, MGMT, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Andrew Bird, Snoop Dogg, Neko Case, Phish, and Bruce Springsteen. In addition I went to two comedy shows with Christian Finnegan, Janeane Garofalo, Nick Thune, Arj Barker, and Pete Holmes and Rory Albanese, Kristen Schaal, Wyatt Cenac, Rob Riggle, and John Oliver.

For one week I only showered by rain, a dirty water fountain, and a shamwow – which does live up to its name. I don’t like Phish phanatics because many of them booed Bruce when it came out to perform with Phish at the last show of the festival. What the hell? Chill out. Phish went over that the best concert they ever went to was Springsteen, and then they boo the idol of their idol. There was also fog machines everywhere in the audience for the Snoop Dogg show. Neko Case did a duo with Triump the insult comic dog. Andrew Bird screwed up his loop machine four times in a row. Dosh was with him. I missed missing Elvis Costello and the E street band.

Oh, and I got to eat at a Jack In The Box on the way back up.

I moved into my apartment a few days ago. This is the first time I have lived in a dense urban atmosphere. I am within a block of McDonald’s, subway, pizza hut, a liquor store, and the dinkytowner – which Jason says is getting closed down. It is mind blowing. I wanted microwave popcorn, so I went and got it…ON FOOT!!! I am also two blocks from MESA PIZZA, the best pizza ever. After living in Terre Haute it seems strange to live in this environment. I am a stranger in a strange land where I actually have spent most of my life! It is strange since I don’t actually know too many people here. But I have too much to do in a summer of nothing that will be anything but. I try to have a good attitude. Part of it is experiencing the splendor of America before going to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

KAUST: they want a police record report and a full physical.

Pacific Crest Trail: I plan to hike it in August with Nathan and Max.

Bonnaroo: excited to go. I am visiting Brandon afterwards in KY.

Driving: my test is on the 10th of July! fingers crossed!

A friend at Northwestern told me about these birds that were trained to collect coins to receive a food reward. The idea being that we could eventually train them to clean up trash or do other tasks we don’t want to. These birds would fly beyond the test site and collect coins and coin-like objects for a reward. I wonder if this is what god is doing. Tricking us to do his bidding. Although I like what is says about humanity that we have created just and well-intentioned god. If we are created in his image then he is probably lazy.

Birds do have the freedom to fly, but to fly your brain must be so small and light-weight that you would not be able to comprehend how fun it would be. The world is not a perfect place.

I thought of a good premise for a movie. It would feature many contradictory life lessons with the goal of teaching moderation and the need to live with paradoxes. This comes from me and Max trying to analyze the film The Song of Sparrows, an Iranian film, that we saw last night for a deeper meaning. The hearing aid is clearly about the struggle to teach younger generations who have problems hearing. The bicycle symbolizes his body as they both begin to break down under the strain of city living. The blue door is about communicating with neighbors – which the main character rejects until they help him later. The antenna is about ties to the urban city life over local ostrich life. Why the damn bird comes back makes no sense to me. The film is partially I think about laughing about how horrible life can be and about scavenging what remains to build something greater without hording. It was a film that could not have been made by/in America.