An Urban Window

So we have arrived in Northern Virginia. The first thing we noticed about the surrounding area was the hills. I didn’t remember the hills as vividly as we have been driving up and down them the past few days. There are no hills in Florida, particularly when you live on a barrier island on the coast. Our town was as flat as the granite countertops lacking in our Florida home--one of the criticism of a prospective buyer who didn’t buy. And when we left Virginia I didn’t drive a car with a standard transmission. I do now. There is nothing more exciting then stopping at traffic lights while pointing straight up a hill. As my daughter continues to point out the surrounding hills I explain to her about using the emergency brake to hold the car as you slip the clutch and step on the gas. She will be negotiating these hills in about 2 ½ years. For now she just gets to enjoy them, and in particular the hills on Hunter’s Mill Road, that is if you hit them just right. If you do you can produce that momentary glimpse of weightlessness. Just like jumping in an elevator.

And speaking of elevators…we have one in the apartment we are renting until we find our new home. As it turns out the elevator is right across the hall. I’ve always thought it would be neat to have an elevator that opens right into your apartment…we don’t have that but it is right across from our front door. We get to meet all the neighbors’ right in the hall. And our dog gets to tell us about them as well. It all feels very urban. I’ve never really lived in quite this urban setting. I’ve worked in the city but never lived so close to all these people. And it’s not just the hall way and the elevator and the parking garage. We have an urban window…or a series of windows and a porch. It all over looks the town center and all the activities that take place below. We see the hordes of people and hear their voices as well as the screams of their children playing in the fountain. We smell the food being prepared in the numerous restaurants that surround us and we’ve got balcony seats to hear the music from the bands that frequently play in the square. This is the square that the average person gets to see from ground level. We have an urban window into so much more. It’s a reality television show that’s always on and doesn’t cost us a dime. All you have to do is look through. And, from the moment she walked into her room, that is what my daughter has chosen to do.

Her bed is pushed up against the urban window in her room. We are on the third floor so I am more worried about her jumping on the bed than a drive by shooting. As such she has been outlawed from even thinking about jumping it if she wants to keep her room in that configuration. But with her bed in place and the blinds pulled up she can sit in front of the window for hours. She likes to draw. She does it there. She likes to listen to her iPod, she doesn’t have to move. See likes to open the window and listen to the sounds coming through. And she can gaze out the window and make observations about the life that passes her by…some of it late at night. I told her to enjoy the window because when we move she may never have a window quite like this one.

My wife and I also get to enjoy the urban environment. Some of it can be fun. Some of it is just people watching. We already know the schedules and shifts of all the restaurants as we see the workers on their way in to prepare for the lunch crowd. Some of it’s not so fun. Like when the pre-screening of the new release of the movie “Transformers” was shown at midnight the day of its release. It must have been screened to a full house because at approximately 2:37 am the parking lot erupted. The first people to leave the movie must have been full of adrenaline. Their cars screamed out of the parking lot. It sounded like a high speed chase. When we awoke and gazed out the window our first thoughts were of Armageddon. When you see several hundred cars exiting a parking lot at the same time, in the middle of the night, it makes you wonder if you should also be getting in your car and heading towards the mountains or some underground shelter. It didn’t take us too long to figure it out…but it made us wonder.

A few days later we were awoken on the morning of the Fourth of July. It was the National Anthem playing loudly in our room. I stared at the clock trying to figure out who set it and why it was playing, it didn’t even look like a clock radio. I stood up and walked around the room. My wife was yelling at me and calling me a dumb-ass for setting the alarm on a holiday and I was trying to figure out if I should be standing at attention as the National Anthem played. It was an awkward moment. Then I realized the music was coming from outside the urban window. I looked through the shades and sure enough, hundreds of people were gathered. Oddly they were all dressed in running shorts and tee-shirts. It was the beginning of the Fire-Cracker Five Mile Run—an annual foot race hosted by the town center.

There’s more…much much more…all in the last two weeks. The people, the cars, the dogs, the police, the sounds, the smells, the sights…all to be experienced over the length of our stay. And then we will move into a residential suburb and leave our urban window behind…I will keep you posted.

Where There's Smoke There's Fire

On the eve of making our big decision to move back to the Northern Virginia area I read a story in the Washington Post by Donna St. George on the controversy over the disciplinary action taken by the Fairfax County school system against a student at W.T. Woodson High School. (School Superintendent Jack D. Dale Defended Fairfax County’s Discipline Policies, 11 Feb 2011) This was of particular interest to me because W.T. Woodson is one of the high schools my wife and I have been discussing as a potential for our daughter to attend if we decide to relocate. Of course I was horrified to discover the reason for the controversy stems from the connection drawn between the Fairfax County disciplinary policies and the suicide of a student from W.T. Woodson. Tragically 15 year old Nick Stuban took his own life on Jan 20, 2011. This connection was made by two school board supervisors. However, the School Superintendent, Jack D. Dale, disagreed and is quoted as having said the link is, “…unconscionable and a blow to those who have already suffered great pain" and “that it would be most constructive to focus on the incidence of depression among youths in Fairfax County”.

Aside from snapping me completely out of my self-centered focus on events in my own life I was shattered by the news of this teen suicide. A well regarded student with a bright future caught up in a horribly unforgiving bureaucracy who believed ending his life was his only recourse. I read further and discovered that this is actually the second suicide of a student linked to a perceived “zero tolerance” policy in the Fairfax County School System disciplinary process. The first was in March 2009, less than two years previously. Tragically Josh Anderson, a 17 year old student at South Lakes High School, took his own life on March 18, 2009.

Teen depression and teen suicide are vastly complex subjects and Superintendent Dale is partially correct when he says it would be constructive to focus, “…on the incidence of depression among youths…” This is always a good thing. So why not address some of the causes of depression. That would be just as good as any other area to focus on. Yet the man in charge immediately jumped on the defensive and said that the link is “unconscionable” and “a blow to those who have already suffered”. Turns out the two families involved, who have suffered the most, are standing with the board members as they make this indictment of the “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies. You can read more at the blog, “Remembering Josh”, posted by one of the families. They made this link in 2009.

Of course it’s not even clear that the mental illness known as “depression” played any role in these two incidents. Superintendent Dale is making an incredibly superficial judgment of causation. It is more likely that “Anxiety Disorders” stemming from the disciplinary circumstances have played a much larger role in these two cases. These of course would be coupled with other factors in the student’s environment. With any suicide there is rarely a single cause. But we shouldn’t ignore any cause when our children’s lives are at stake. A school suicide affects every student, profoundly, and for the rest of their lives. A single incident is one too many and well worth the cost of investigation.

Last Thursday, Donna St. George again reported in the Washington Post that, “The Maryland Board of Education asked for a review of policies in the state's 24 school systems, expressing concern about any existing "zero tolerance" practices and a need for support services for suspended students.” What does it hurt to review the policies? I applaud Maryland for taking this prompt action. Of course, as it turns out Jack D. Dale was the Superintendent of Frederick County Maryland Public Schools before taking his high paying job in Fairfax County back in 2004.

In other recent news, Superintendent Dale has been quoted as saying, ““Schools can’t be expected to solve all of society’s problems,” this while he lobbied against legislation to require Physical Education classes in Fairfax County elementary and middle schools to be increased to 150 minutes a week.

And also in recent news, Fairfax County schools will no longer charge students to take Advanced Placement exams. The Virginia Attorney General ruled that these fees were, in fact, illegal. It turns out Superintendent Dale announced last year that Fairfax would charge students $75 each, as a cost-saving measure during difficult financial times. Not to pile on but since taking this high paying job in Virginia where he signed on for $237,000 per year his salary has been increased to $292,469 during these “difficult financial times”. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Since we are currently living well away from all this turmoil but might, before summer’s end, join the fray, I am now aware of these mounting concerns with regard to Superintendent Dale and the Fairfax, County School disciplinary policies. I am glad I have been awakened to this controversy. My heart goes out to the families of Josh and Nick and I stand-by your belief that there is something wrong with the system. If Superintendent Dale isn’t willing to make a change, or at least investigate, it’s time for Fairfax to make a change.

You Never Had a Camera in My Head

The medium is the message, the medium is the message, the medium is the message. I can say it over and over again and painstakingly meditate on its meaning. I always get confused even though I’ve been studying this vague yet powerful construct of Marshall McLuhan’s for many years.

Enter Wafaa Bilal. Have you heard of him? He’s an Iraqi American artist who has made waves in recent years by producing art forms that have blurred the line between media stunt, public protest, and the boundary of art and real life.

He’s the guy who wrote the book, “Shoot an Iraqi”. This book is about a living art exhibit in which he confined himself at the Flatfile Gallery in Chicago. The exhibit was called “Domestic Tension” and it was Wafaa home for one month. Living art has been done this way before but he added a twist. If you visited him on-line not only could you video chat  he gave you ability to fire a yellow paint ball at him at 300 feet per second, all day, every day. I don’t know if that’s really domestic but it’s certainly qualifies as tension as over 60,000 paint balls were fired at him during his month long ordeal.

He’s also the guy who asked for people to vote for whom they would prefer to see water-boarded. An Iraqi citizen or a dog named Buddy. Wafaa received the most votes. It is rumored that he actually got the treatment.

Most recently he’s the guy that put 105,000 tattoos on his back. A tattoo artist inked a small red dot for each of the 5,000 Americans who have died in Iraq as well as an invisible ultraviolet dot for each of the 100,000 Iraqis who have died as well. Obviously when viewed normally the Iraqi deaths are hidden, and that’s the point. But when viewed under a black-light his tattoo serves as a sobering reminder of the larger cost of that war.

But all of these art forms have a well traveled lineage albeit with slight variations and levels of extreme. His latest artistic endeavor however could be a game changer. It’s called “The 3rd I” and you can find the link to this latest exhibit at http://www.3rdi.me.

Basically Wafaa has surgically imbedded a video camera in the back of his head. Imagines from the camera are sent live at the rate of one frame per minute to produce this art exhibit. Generally speaking, with the exception of the extreme measures he underwent to have the camera imbedded in his head, walking around streaming pictures doesn’t seem like a big deal considering everyone has a camera phone these days as well as the live streaming video that already comes from webcams the world over. How then is this new medium different, vastly different from emerging social norms as I now contend, and what is the message?

First, always remember that McLuhan has stated that content is disconnected from the medium. The content is not important. That’s why streaming pictures as a rate of 1 per minute versus streaming video in HD 1080i in 3-D doesn’t matter. Certainly it’s easy enough to do if he’s already going through the pain of imbedding a camera in his head. But, for the first time, here is a crystal clear example of a medium in which the content is completely unimportant and therefore separated from the medium.

The message however is extreme. Would you invite Wafaa to your house knowing he has a camera imbedded in his head and will be recording and broadcasting his every move… or is it your every move? Privacy issues immediately come to the fore. Wafaa claims to have been disinvited to a few social events and has already offered his employer the concession that he would cover the camera lens while he was at work, on the campus of the New York University, this apparently to protect the privacy of the students. What is so different from his medium than the medium of the same multitude of protected student’s who video text daily from campus?  Or for that matter the casual friend holding up a video phone at a private party to record a rising young pop star taking a bong hit to celebrate her 18th birthday? Of course the agents for Miley Cyrus report that the bong contained salvia and not weed but that’s hard to deduce from the video that’s already all over the internet.

But something more than privacy changes when the camera becomes biologically attached to you. That’s not to say Wafaa’s camera is always on or that there isn’t an off switch on version 1.0.  But the medium is fast approaching when the camera will always be on. Remember the Truman show? Truman (Jim Carey) is debating with God (The Character Christof played by Ed Harris). He says, “You never had a camera in my head”. Meaning that while there were hundreds of cameras capturing his complete life in the ultimate reality show, the cameras could never capture his private thoughts…the cameras were never in his head. Are we now moving one step closer to our private thoughts being netted together in one universal broadcast? Wafaa’s camera is on the back of his head. We will see in his photo exhibit exactly what he is not looking at, which by inversion rules out what he has deemed of interest. But the next imbedded camera easily looks forward and we know where that leads…we can’t hide from the occasional glance in the direction of the jogger in the bikini that shows up on the web. Currently we can still edit the contents of our camera phones before the pictures get home.

We also edit our tweets sufficiently to conceal all but what we want the world to know of our thoughts. I am happy, I am sad, I am tired, I am hungry, I just went through the car wash, My plane leaves in 30 minutes, I just saw Justin Bieber at the airport, I just ran into my friend’s wife at the gate, I just had a carnal thought, I just boarded my flight, I just thought about the plane exploding at 35,000 feet, The guy sitting next to me has an iPad, I am jealous, I want to steal his iPad, I have to quit tweeting the plane is about to take off, there’s something on the wing, I have gas, I love you,…artificial airline induced blackout period..., the plane just landed safely, see you in an hour…

Of course when Wafaa flys the guy sitting directly behind him will be not be able to figure out exactly why there is a robot eye staring straight back at him that keeps winking every minute. Keep your thoughts on the seat back and tray table directly in front of you. Keep your fingers away from your nose.

In March I blogged about our journey to becoming one with the Borg. See “Assimilation Has Begun” . It doesn't help that Wafaa’s camera is distinctly Borgish in style. And I don’t think in general Wafaa’s aim is to promote our general assimilation into a technological collective. He is an artist making political statements through his medium. His message is one of peace and it is achieved by opening our eyes. He has opened our eyes in a multitude of ways with this latest technique simply taking another bold step by physically opening a robotic eye into his world. His message is not contained within the images that will stream back to his art exhibit. His message is contained within the art form itself. And while this medium is certainly effective in leading us towards a greater understanding, it plunges us further into the abyss. We’ve already stepped into it and are falling fast. There’s no turning back. Ironically as Wafaa falls he will capture our images in free fall behind him, at one minute intervals.

Global Warming, a Horse’s Ass, and the Preservation of Our Species

There’s a good piece of internet lore that makes the circle every few years. It’s the story of how the width of common railroad tracks came to be. The distance between the common rails (or gauge) is 4 feet 8-1/2 inches. Depending on which version of the story you read you get various details about British trams, wagon wheels, ruts, and Roman chariots. Finally, and the reason for these stories, is that everything is then reduced to the width of two horse butts. Whenever you can reduce anything to a horse’s ass there is a bit of comedy in it. Yes it’s funny and it might very well be true, but if this story is true, its implications are far greater than simply laughing at the legions of engineers who based their transportation designs for the past several millennia on the width of a horse’s ass. It would seem that the decisions were deliberate and therefore locked in time, rather than optimal and based on a comprehensive search of the available decision space, which indicates that an evolutionary algorithm is, or in this case is not, at work.

My thesis here is simple. If we as human’s, with our free will and ability to choose options, choose paths forward in the development of our technologies that lock us into certain standards, we may miss the powerful ability of evolution to keep us viable as a species. The ability to move, or migrate, has always been a fairly important trait of many species that has kept them alive. Legs allowed us migrate but trains allowed us to conquer the land masses. Yes we can swim and stay afloat, but boats allowed us to conquer the island nations. Many other species have used their ability to move about, and in some cases travel great distances, in order to survive. They physically adapt or die. Ours is the first species that because of our technology do not have to physically adapt in order to survive. Harnessing electricity tops the list. This is where global warming creeps in.

Freeman Dyson contends that we will adapt to changes in our environment with technology. If we really begin to destroy our environment, sooner or later, since we are smart innovators, we will invent the technology that saves us from ourselves. Not the least example of which has been our ability to invent the nuclear bomb but then not to use it to our own demise…at least not yet. We have been seeing the signs and hearing the warnings associated with the destruction of our planet for several decades now. So the innovation and technological need has been surfacing. We are forced to decide between paper or plastic, and now the reusable lead laced shopping bags made in China. The problem, if we choose to face it, is big…very big. This month’s Atlantic reports that to stabilize the carbon in our atmosphere the “entire world would have to reduce its per capita emissions to the level of Kenya.” That’s stepping back a few years. Certainly since before we harnessed electricity. And this is where decisions and the standards that we choose become so crucial to our survival.

In his book “Collapse”, Jared Diamond explains to us what happens to a civilization that has a tree based economy that happens to live on an island. What happens when all the trees are gone? When eco-systems are in balance the evidence of evolutionary adaptations are amazing…witness the foraging patterns of the army ant. Over a 20 day bivouac a colony of army ants systematically forages 360 degrees around their mobile colony in 14 raids, each raid separated by 123 degrees of separation before the next raid. This search algorithm naturally developed over millions of years of evolution. At the end of 20 days the entire colony picks up and moves. What if one of those ants felt tired and decided they didn’t want to move this month? Well we can speculate on how the colony handles dissidents and I can guarantee you their constitutional rights are not being protected. In an ant colony the “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one”, as Spock would say. The same is not true in our society. This whole business of standards in transportation has never been based on the needs of the many; it has always been based on the needs of the few. And that’s the problem. Transportation must serve the evolutionary needs of the species, not the commercial needs of those with intent to exploit the species the cheapest way possible. This is not an essay to describe all the various times in our transportation history that bad decisions were made that changed the direction of our country…but we continue to witness more of them every day. The point of this essay is to make clear that we might have unwittingly broke the evolutionary algorithm with regard to human transportation.

If we believe the internet lore that the standards that have emerged for rail transportation have locked us into a rut, no pun intended, we have a problem. The version of the story I read recently carried the 4 foot 8-1/2 inch standard even further. It seems distance between rails also restricted the final size of the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) for the space shuttle. As we so painfully know down here on the Space Coast, the shuttle program is over. Would larger SRBs on the space shuttle have saved the program? Hard to say…the cost to weight ratio would have been significantly improved with more initial boost…would this have allowed us to do more and to have demonstrated far more value to the Country with regard to our manned space program? I don’t know but the point here is evolution. If the restricted size of the SRBs can be traced to the design specifications for Roman Chariots we are broken as an evolutionary species.

If this is true then Freeman Dyson’s belief that we will be able to overcome our own environmental disasters through innovation and technology and that one day, if necessary, we will escape to other planets to preserve our species has suffered a serious set-back. We have created an island in space from which we cannot escape. And one day, when all the trees are gone, we will not be able to carve a wooden raft upon which we can float to the natural preserving resources of another island within our galactic chain.

Contrails, Missile Plumes, and the Birth of Conspiracies

It’s been a few days since a KCBS News Helicopter in Los Angeles caught the spectacular rising plume of a missile launch thirty-five miles off the OC coastline. Looking at a still photo of the column of smoke it’s hard to believe that the image is not exactly what we are told we are looking at...the exhaust plume of a very big missile launched off the California coast. If you read the reports what we have is primarily a series of self proclaimed experts weighing in on the video. In one sad case, KCBS dug up retired Ambassador Robert Ellsworth and showed him the video clip of the launch …not only did Ellsworth confirm the footage as the “spectacular” and “breath taking” launch of a “very large” missile he offered his expert testimony that it could have come from a submarine and that it could be an ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile).

When you watch this news report not only does the station offer no explanation for the launch other than that of a missile they lend credence to the theory by showing a video clip of a real missile launch for the viewer to compare for themselves. If you even realize that the video clip of the real missile is not the same footage you might take the time to make this comparison and see the distinct differences. If you don’t, witness the birth of a conspiracy.

As the days go by and the official response from the Government does not adequately explain where the missile came from…the conspiracy grows. Since it’s already been ruled a missile launch anything less than a full disclosure confirming what we have already been told is a massive government cover-up. 48 hours later the Pentagon denied the event as a missile launch and explained that it was an aircraft contrail. That was too late.

Spectacular video and immediate expert testimony that gets picked up and reported by the news service is a strong medium for the message. I’ve looked at the video over and over again and I agree it’s pretty amazing. It’s hard not to believe the story unfolding before my eyes as true. So we wait patiently for the government to tell us it’s a Navy missile test gone awry or another Country is putting us on warning, or the best yet…another quip coming from Ambassador Ellsworth, the US is conducting a show of force pointed at Asia (at this point Ellsworth’s reliability as a witness get’s called into serious question). We are seeking explanations for that which we know to be true, a missile launch. Not explanations for that which might be deceiving our eyes…that something other than a missile launch caused this phenomenon.

When I studied the JFK assassination a number of years ago I became interested in conspiracy theory and what it takes for a conspiracy theory to really take root in the psyche of a population. It’s actually fairly simple. If the magnitude of the underlying cause of the occurrence is out of balance with the magnitude of what has actually occurred, conspiracy theories spring forth to fill the gap. It’s that simple. JFK was the President of the United States, well loved by many he represented a great future, “Ask not what your Country can do for you, ask what you can do for your Country”, and all the symbolic rhetoric. Balance that with the actions of a lone gunman. A single deranged individual who changed the course of the world history. It can’t be that simple. It’s totally out of balance. But it actually is that simple. The same thing holds true with the conspiracies surrounding 9/11. The magnitude of that one cannot be balanced out even with the colossal evil that is Al Qaida bursting into the public awareness.

Now we have the pretty simple and extremely common occurrence of a jet aircraft generating a vapor contrail at cruise altitude while being viewed head-on against the bright pallet of a California sunset. The contrail is so spectacular in appearance but from such a marginal a source, water vapor, we have a mental disconnect. Further, the image it paints is so similar to a missile launch it appears Southern California must be under attack. That presents an even greater disconnect. Known experts weighed in early, John Pike, always looking for quick paycheck tried to dispel the growing myth early on, but slanted his opinion with his typical shot at the Federal Government’s inability to respond with the truth early enough. (This is another topic altogether but I’m not sure which Federal agency he thinks is responsible for responding to vapor trails – it’s not NORAD, it’s not NASA nor is it the Navy or the USAF at Vandenberg, AFB. No one seems to have asked the Federal Aviation Administration).

The next day a web site known as ContrailScience.com did a pretty rigorous debunking of the missile launch theory with a lot of technical detail and evidence of another contrail that looked very similar to a missile plume that happened last December. It’s a very common occurrence. Yet the missile theory continued to grow along with the conspiracies and the wishful thinking that we are once again witness to a large Government cover-up. Let’s pin this one on Obama is perhaps the unconscious theme.

Perhaps the balance is upset by an incessant search for the guilty as if someone is to blame for acts of nature and their inability or unwillingness to respond quickly enough to quell our anxieties. George W. Bush, in his new memoir, Decision Points, regrets the photo of himself taken on Air Force One looking out over the New Orleans flooding in the wake of Katrina with what has been interpreted as an unconcerned and detached expression on his face. We have to believe that although he might have been slow to react, the expression on his face could not possibly have been detachment, yet that’s what we are told and or lead to believe. Another conspiracy is born.

In an earlier post, March 2009, I provided a “spectacular” eyewitness testimony of a space shuttle launch at sunset, about the power of God and the power of man. I posted about the launch of STS 119. In this post I describe what a column of rocket smoke looks like as it billows skyward in a vertical column changing colors as it climbs higher and higher into the atmosphere. The same powers of God that paint the unbelievable pallet of pink and orange hues of a California sunset reveal that which separates the horizontal from the vertical. An actual missile would have burst into the white light of the California sunset as it rejoined with the sun on its vertical flight skyward. The same thing happens at sun rise (see photo). This did not happen…nor would it happen with an aircraft traveling west to east in level horizontal flight. The plume remained orange until the contrail ceased to be produced (according to contrailscience.com when UPS Flight 902 entered the drier air mass of the coastline).

Nevertheless the extreme optical illusion presented to us by nature demonstrates that the power of God’s hand trumps the imaginative and perceptive powers of the human mind, every time.  The reporter who captured the spectacular images should not be held responsible for shooting the footage rather the media should continue to remember that they are in possession of a powerful medium, too, but never all the facts. Their cameras are certainly not the watch dog for missile launches. Our Country has spent billions of dollars on knowing when and where a missile launch occurs anywhere in the world.

When NORAD reports that there is no threat or danger, if that message doesn’t get out far and wide, I’m not sure the purpose of a news media anymore. If stirring up conspiracies is their main focus they have ceased to be of any value to the public. They might as well be reporting on crop circles…and of course vapor trails.

Los 33 and Sir Richard's Teeth

Los 33, trapped in the hellish underground deep beneath a mountain in the Atacama Desert. This is not a “Journey to the Center of the Earth” alongside the dapper Brendan Frasier and his hot co-star finding an underground oasis of life abounding within the underground chambers of a sound stage. Shades of the "Genesis Cave" ala Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn without the dramatic discovery that indeed cadet James T. Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario by cheating. For sure Los 33 will cheat death, but they will not have cheated either Ricardo Montalban nor will they ride from their purgatory via a Hollywood lava tube. They will arrive to the surface on Wednesday because a dedicated army of professionals, the best in the business, came to their rescue renewing our belief in technology and the human spirit.

But how did they get there in the first place?

Every country in the world digs holes in planet earth to extract the wealth locked beneath our feet. Whether they be the underground network of caves in Afghanistan used to dig for sapphires, coal mines in Pennsylvania, blood diamonds in Africa, open pit alumina mines in Hungry, or even the drilling for oil in the Gulf. Each is a different industry, each driving a market, each extracting a significant toll on the planet along with the wealth it extracts for its owners. Each brings technology, extreme conditions, and amazing individuals together in a macabre dance of prosperity for society with the risk of damage to the environment, while employing individuals who are doing incredible and dangerous things, for very little compensation.

Aside from the massive spill and deaths of the explorers aboard Deep Water Horizon, based on our love affair with oil, we are seeing the aftermath of our love affair with the aluminum can. As I drink my 23 oz Arizona Tea, which I purchased two for $2 dollars, another levy threatens to break and a sea of red sludge will blanket a few more small cities in Hungry. Apparently 4000 people are on the scene working to build a new retaining wall, the president of the company that owned the red sludge has been arrested and charged with negligence, and Hungarian government has taken over the company. Do a search on Karst collapse...see also man-made collapse...see also sink hole. It seems we have whole cities that are sinking and flooding with red ooze and other types of ooze as a result of mining activities. Yet we bore on...fields of untapped wealth...awaiting discovery and harvest.

So just yesterday Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic smiles into the camera declaring the success and safe glide back to landing of the first commercial spacecraft, “Space Ship Two”, after it's captive release from the carrier ship. Branson emerges as the great explorer. Somewhat fitting in a way since it is Columbus Day here in the United States. Come on people it’s 2010. Even the Hollywood version of Space Exploration, “To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before” hasn’t been achieved by this feat. The Virgin Galactic success comes 48 years after USAF Pilot Robert White did the same thing in the X-15 aircraft...he was the real explorer. I do not remember his flight because I wasn’t born yet. But I do remember the first captive release and glide back of the Shuttle “Enterprise” off the back of a 747 aircraft in 1977; I was thirteen and wrote a report on the Shuttle for my 8th Grade Science class. That was 33 years ago. Now, as I write this and the US emerges from the recession (or so we are told), thousands of NASA workers at Cape Canaveral are being told it’s time to go home, all because there seems to be a myth surrounding what is real engineering and what is Hollywood fantasy.

If the administration believes we can explore space on the shininess of Sir Richard’s teeth we have evidence of the real problem in our Country, which is a total lack of understanding of basic science and engineering principals. What it really takes to go to space. Sir Richard and his followers are capitalizing on 50 year old technology. Their eye is on the potential profit from high dollar thrill rides. If they really have signed up 700 adventures at $200,000 a seat, that’s $140 million dollars, which is incidentally, the cost of about one third of a single space shuttle mission. Why? Because two completely separate things are being achieved but the package is sold together.

The line separating the upper atmosphere from space has been arbitrarily drawn at 50 miles. Perhaps NASA made a mistake when in 2004 they awarded the brave pilots of the X-15 program astronaut wings. The precedent was set. If you venture above 50 miles you join the likes of John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. Other than the fact that White and the others were brave test pilots who will live immortality in the hearts of aircraft and space enthusiasts, they fall short of the reaching an altitude to do much of anything useful in space. It’s practically straight up and straight down on these missions. To do anything useful an orbit must be achieved. Beyond that, one must escape the gravitational pull of the earth. Virgin Galactic will achieve neither so we shouldn’t applaud their successes any more than the success of a new roller coaster at Six Flags. I’m not going to completely bash investment in commercial space. SpaceX, for instance, is moving forward, however that is a longer and much more difficult story, and still includes a large influx of government support.

But doing useful things in space is also somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Some may view the scientific frontiers that have opened up as not useful to those of us who remain on earth. By the way I’m not going to attempt to justify NASA’s budget because they weighed in on the Chilean mining incident, but it is nice that those in the business of the extreme can come together in times of crises.

But space exploration, manned or unmanned, cannot be achieved because there is no profit in it. Not for decades to come…50 years is a nice number because we are on the brink of seeing commercial profit from space tourism 50 years after it was first achieved. This means that even with the technology explosion of the past century we did not improve our ability to move from government sponsored exploration to commercial enterprise by a full order of magnitude. It took 200 years from Columbus setting foot in the New World to the Hudson Bay Company turning a profit from his endeavor. The promise of riches to come took 200 years to generate commercial interest to do something useful.

So space exploration is not ready to turn a profit. Yes we are undergoing a serious explosion in technology, which will help. But more government investment is still necessary. Profits do not materialize in terms of cash. They materialize in the form of new technology and most importantly new maps. That’s what explorers do. They map. In order to map they create new technology. Maps help us explore further. They push us to go beyond the map, to go beyond the world’s end. And they are pushing us higher, faster, farther, and in the case of Deep Water Horizon and the Chilean miners, deeper.

But before the mining machines show up on Pandora and we have to displace the Na’vi people we must explore and draw maps. In the past two years we have witnessed the discovery of huge pockets of ice on the moon. The promise is for the moon to be our first stage into the solar system. By mining the moon we can leave the resources necessary to travel into the solar system here on Earth. The discovery of water was a major first step. Although miners are still many years away, nothing will happen without more government investment. If that investment doesn’t come from us then it will come from other countries vying for a piece of the action and the glory. We will be left on the sidelines.

Not since Apollo 13, during our voyages and conquest of the moon, has the world held its breath as humans now reach down to rescue the miners trapped at 6000 feet. They might as well be on another planet. By most accounts it was easier to bring the crew of Apollo 13 home. At least it didn’t take three months. But indeed we have learned several lessons about the extreme. With technology and the human spirit we can still tame mountains…but not without the maps made by the explorers first.

Meat Bikini's, Russian Torpedo's, and Investment Advice

I write another blog in another forum called "The Medium is the Message" where I try to relate issues back to what Marshall McLuan had said years ago. I'll introduce a blog with a similar theme today. My thoughts tend to wander but I will try to stay focused on the Medium as the Message. Although I may wander, when I finish, I will have you reaching for your check books.

So let's talk about the big five subjects that have been making headlines...namely meat bikini's, burning the Qur'an, ground zero mosques, Russian torpedoes, and the new Google Instant Search algorithm. All of them are to some degree publicity stunts aimed at gaining media coverage. Let's take care of the easy one first--meat bikini's. In case you missed the story Lady Gaga wore a Meat Dress to receive her eighth VMA of the evening at the MTV Awards ceremony. It's not clear whether or not it was an actual meat dress, it sure looks like one. But it didn't look as realistic as the meat bikini she wore on the cover of the Japanese Vogue Magazine a few weeks ago. Clearly a publicity stunt. Whether Lady Gaga thought too deeply about blow back from the revulsion some of us surely feel when we think about what she is actually wearing, or whether she was just trying to obtain more camera clicks than anyone else...the medium by which entertainment and stardom is most surely judged...I doubt we will ever know. There is no deeper meaning here. Content is completely and unequivocally without importance. Lady Gaga wins the picture clicking contest hands down thus the medium is the message...Gaga rules the industry.

Next award for best publicity stunt of the year goes to Pastor Terry Jones for yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. Shouldn't we be arresting this guy rather than following his every move? Once again the content here is of no importance. There is no content derived message at all. Terry Jones needed a publicity stunt for his wounded ego and chose to insight a riot. If he walked out of his Church wearing a meat bikini nobody would have noticed him. If he would have said his prayers in the privacy of his Church and burned his Qur'an's in the privacy of his Church, nobody would have noticed. We can only hope in our own prayers that had he carried out the planned fire the conflagration would have raged out of control and burned his sanctuary to the ground. Did I say that out loud? That might have made the local headlines in Florida. I doubt it. Florida residences seem to have a fairly high incidence of burning down their own homes... despite the fact that we don't have fire places. It simply isn't news worthy unless the whole family dies...which unfortunately all happens frequently down here. But the medium here isn't the press coverage or the photography. The medium here is the national security incident. It's within all of our potential, free citizen's living in free society, to yell fire in a crowded theater and thus create panic...we don't do it. It's actually easier to pick up the phone and call in a bomb threat...we don't do it. It's not too much more difficult to create an international incident...we don't do it. Choose something controversial, call the news desk, and hope it's a slow day. It works. The only thing left to decide is whether or not this little publicity stunt was a crime. It reminds me of my favorite Nicholas Cage quote from the movie Raising Arizona, "Awh Hi...it's not armed robbery if the gun isn't loaded". The medium is the message...doesn't matter if it's loaded or not.

I could write for days on the Ground Zero Mosque...which isn't at ground zero, and is also not a mosque. The medium here is loud and clear. Fear. Fear based on ignorance primarily with the some bigotry thrown in. Nobody wants to call it by it's real name. There can be no content in this message because the content is wholly fabricated. Then politics took over. Fear is one of our primal mediums...it protects us from the saber tooth in the tall grass. Should we ignore it? No. Should we use it to fan our political aspirations? I can't discuss in this blog without violating one or two of our policies. Shame on us.

Stay with me and keep your checkbooks handy. I will now move on to the subject of Russian torpedoes. Creating an international incident is what Terry Jones would do if he was the dictator of his own Country. KJI has the benefit of his own Country to create these situations. Do we think KJI intentionally wanted to kill 47 South Korean's? I think his little demonstration got out of hand. Had he sunk the ship and all the sailors got off with their lives...you bet he would have stood up for the sovereignty of North Korea. This is like chopping down a tree in the forest and hoping that it doesn't make a sound...or only annoys those living in the tree...only to find out the tree fell over the only creek providing cooling water to a nuclear power plant...BOOM! Once again we have the medium of the international incident. The only question is why doesn't the international community want to recognize it for what it really was and how it happened? Easy. The only sound louder than an international incident is an act of war. Terry Jones can't commit an act of war no matter how hard he tries. KJI can. When he want's to he will. I don't think he was ready to declare war and certainly the international community doesn't want to either. KJI has tried to erase the medium...it's neither an international incident nor act of war if he didn't do it. Too bad they found the torpedo.

So let's talk about one last thing...if you're still with me. Google Instant Search. I loved it from my first two letters typed into the search box. It will easily save me the five plus seconds that Google suggests it will save me per search. And the thought of saving hundreds of hours world wide...that's an incredible feat. Some of what I've read says it's only a gimmick. It's not a gimmick if it works. Google's desire to organize the world's knowledge just took one step closer. Since it's now easier to type in an "a" to bring up "AOL", I never have to book mark my AOL URL again. I only have to type in an "f" to bring up FaceBook. The medium here is one or two letter's leads us to our thoughts or what we were thinking. That's really powerful. And as cool as it is, it will rapidly aide the Assimilation I spoke about in a recent blog. Google has reduced us in their quest to organize the world's knowledge to the 26 letters of our alphabet. Whether we are searching for it or not, "a" now means "AOL", "b" means "Bank of America", "c" means "CraigsList", "d" means "Disney", and so on. Keep going, "e" means "Ebay", "f" means "FaceBook", "g" means "Gmail". Ok you get the point. The problem is clear. In our winner take all world, these winners will simply grow more and there is nothing we can really do about it. Google has given the seat of honor to these websites. It's a brand new medium but this medium unfortunately has room for only 26 entries. Our world is shrinking, it's not growing. Just like our vocabulary is shrinking. LOL, OMG, etc. We should have seen it coming. I use Google for it's simplicity. Simplicity is our enemy. We cannot evolve without diversity. The medium is the message. The message can be found by typing the letter "g" into your search box.

So now grab your check books. Immediately invest in the company's that appear for each letter. If someone hasn't created it yet there should be a mutual fund that only invests in the top company of each letter of the alphabet that shows up in the Google Instant Search. Try it. I went through the alphabet already. Now I wish I had some cash.