Phoenix Has Landed. World Gets Smaller.

The Phoenix Mars lander landed successfully today. I was glued to NASA TV online live during the whole event. There's nothing like watching the event unfold live. I remember [barely] watching the first moon landing on a big black and white TV. I watched the progress of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Then, to see the pictures come back. I don't know how to describe it. Here we are, on a world we often take for granted, staring at pictures taken from the ground on an entirely different world. An empty, barren world, yet one with many mysteries locked away inside.

Perhaps we'll find some.

Anyway, my mom is visiting from Tucson - the home town of the Phoenix mission to Mars (and also where I happened to grow up) - and she was talking about "six word stories." Apparently, Hemmingway wrote a six-word story: For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

So much can be read into so little. And I love the concept. So, I am going to try my hand at coming up with some six-word stories of my own. Feel free to contribute yours! :)

Here goes...


#1: Still awaiting delivery. Never placed order.

#2: Once in a lifetime. No film.

#3: Fight it. Beat it. Poster child.

#4: What does a rose smell like?

#5: Did my job. Missed my friends.

#6: Lost: broken heart. Last seen naked.

I think I'll stop at six, six-word stories. For now.

UPDATE: Or, maybe not. One more for the road.

#7: Last flight home. I just waved.

UPDATE: I can't help myself...

#8: I'm addicted to six word stories.

#9: Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, boom!

#10: Sold my house. Playing the lottery.

#11: See you in the obituaries. Bang!

#12: Got what I asked for. Shit.

#13: Learn to swim now - ship's sinking!

#14: She never called. My number changed.

#15: Realized dream. Personal note: wake up.

#16: Stepped off the path. So beautiful.

#17: Life is short. Smile. The end.

Fight Back Against Terrorism - Their Way!

We're fighting terrorism the wrong way. We have to beat them at their own game, by defeating them their way. They are closer to defeating us (or, rather, getting into a position of significant control of us) than most people dare to believe or admit - and they are not defeating us through brute force, or by crashing airplanes into buildings. No, they're smarter than that, and it would be a major embarrassment if we allow them to continue to have the upper hand in this game.

What is they're upper hand? Well, if you don't know, then you haven't been paying attention. It's oil. Or, more specifically, our dependence on it.

Check this out. This is the first real solution I have heard that makes any real sense - AND IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE - especially when you finally see the big picture: Energy Victory

Get it. Read it. I'm going to. I just heard the author speak for a couple hours on a radio show last night. A bill will be coming to congress, soon, regarding "flex fuel" automobile manufacturing requirements. Learn about it. Educate yourself about this Energy Victory plan. And do whatever you can to encourage your representatives get this bill approved. Bush plans to veto it if he sees it - but he's an idiot who would rather play right into the hands of his rich Saudi friends while the terrorists and related greedy bastards buy the country out from under us and truly put themselves in control, than fight this great and glorious fight to which he gives so much lip service.

You're right, Mr. Bush: you're either with us, or against us. It's obvious where you stand...even if you can't see it.

I'm Speechless

Remember the Cube

Remember the Rubik's cube? I used to be able to solve it pretty quickly, though not as fast as the master speed solvers (I think my best time was somewhere in the 30-second range). Now I can't even remember how I did it. I solved the 4x4x4 cube without a tutorial, but I just found mine in a box the other day, and I have spent a few hours with it, cheating off the web, and I can't figure the damn thing out.

My brain is shot. Neurons are missing. Memories are gone.

Apparently, the cube is still going strong. There are plans for releasing an 11x11x11 cube this year! Anyway, I doubt I'll be getting one.

But check this guy out - just one example of someone who can do it well:

Also Cooooool

And then there's this.



Ahhhh. If only driving could be this peaceful.

New Kind of Robot

This is one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. Yes, it is real. Festo was one of our sponsors for BattleBots in - what was it - 2000? 2001? And I was just thinking about contacting them again!

All In Perspective

I have come to the conclusion that people, in general, love black and white. They love to categorize things, as if it helps facilitate an understanding of them. Perhaps, in some cases, it does. But it has been my observation that this practice mostly serves to divide people.

Take politics for example. You can't talk about politics these days without falling into one of two camps, either "liberal" or "conservative". And God (if there is one) forbid you get labelled as one or the other, for then you can no longer express (or be seen to express) anything to the contrary. And be taken seriously, anyway.

Over the years I have learned much about myself. But, mainly, I have learned that I am many things...depending on who is observing me. Some people think I am a genius, and others think I am an idiot. And there's a whole slew of opinions in there in between. And the interesting thing to me is, they're all right. Or, they're valid, anyway. It all depends on the context within which I am being observed.

As for the liberal vs. conservative categorization, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon, at least in regards to myself. I have had friends and other people comment about how conservative I am. I have also had friends and other people comment about how liberal I am. And the more liberal they are, the more conservative I appear to be. And visa versa.

Funny, but I thought I was just being me. I never labelled myself one way or the other. I don't like labels. And it seems, from my perspective, that people are hard-pressed to change their opinions once they are established. I think the people who think I am a conservative still think I am a conservative, and I think the people who think I am a liberal still think I am a liberal. And I don't know that there is anything I can do or say to change those opinions - primarily, because they are not mine. I can only change in the eyes of someone else when their perception of me changes.

It seems this can be extrapolated to a larger scale. People form opinions of things, events, issues, other people, etc., and then that's it. As soon as something happens where we have that moment of, "that makes sense" or "that seems right," suddenly it's golden, and for many people, it becomes an unshakable truth and they will seek - knowingly or unconsciously - for everything that supports that idea.

What gets me the most is that people these days seem to feel that there is nothing in between. No gray area. No variance. You either fit into one category, or you fit into another. There is no fluidity - you are either round or you are square, and there is no adapting you to any other shape. But the reality is, I think, that everything is a spectrum, and real problems begin the moment you try to quantify things. And, in the end, so much complexity emerges in the process of trying to define what is observed that we forget what we're looking at and simultaneously proclaim that we know and understand it. Meanwhile, whatever "it" is simply continues to be, and simply is, and in the end, perhaps, suffers (or benefits) from the effects of what others THINK it is.

I think there is an innate need within most people to hang on to something. To have some foundation to stand on, something absolute and unshakable. And when it comes to perspective and perception, people REALLY don't like it when they feel a personal belief (or something they proclaim to "know" or "understand") is somehow threatened in some way.

I have had my world rocked a few times, having moments of revelation in my life where I realized things were not as I believed. As a result, I have become malleable. I do not hold so strongly to the understandings that I have of things, since I know they can change as I learn more about them. I do not purport to know anything with absolute certainty, except for such tenants as "nothing in life is certain."

All that we know about life, the universe, and everything, is perceived. We develop familiarity with our surroundings in an ever-widenening scope as we grow older, and -at least this is true for me - the more we learn, the more we realize how much we do not yet know. And, as a friend of mine once said, "you'll never know how stupid you are." His point being that, as soon as you learn what you did not know, you're not so stupid anymore. :)

I grew up an optimist, and have grown pessimistic and cynical in my later years, but am finding myself wanting to be hopeful. I typically feel that hope is a four-letter word that leaves you stuck in a mindset, perhaps living in the past, but one thing about hope is that is can motivate. And I want to be motivated. I want to believe that this world, and the people in it, can change for the good - can learn and grow and become malleable. I want to believe that this is not an idealistic hope. Unfortunately, my observations tell me that people are stubborn, and I see this perpetuating and expanding trend of people grabbing on to ideas about how things are, believing that this and that work a certain way without exception, or think that certain things are true just because so many people say so, and I struggle to believe that there is hope to be found and wonder if I am simply wasting my time with such notions.

People have not really changed at all in the course of thousands of years, and overall, unless something fundamentally changes in our intrinsic and/or genetic nature that allows us to advance to a "better" stage on the evolutionary scale, we probably never will. People will continue to rigidly believe what they believe, people of different beliefs will continue to wage war against each other, and so few standing back to observe and ask, "why are they doing that to each other?" and even fewer, perhaps, taking a step back to ask, "why are we doing this?"

And how few take the time to question their own beliefs, knowledge, understanding, or whatever it is they proclaim to comprehend? Does change start, first, with a moment of questioning, or does it begin with a willingness to question?

Who knows? But one thing that seems to ring true for me, is that, in the end, there is no such thing as right or wrong; only thinking makes it so.