Miss Atlanta

Picture courtesy (once again) of Graham Smith

"Why don't you let me take you away from here," said the man as he rolled a coin across his fingers. His pressed suit was unbuttoned and it flapped open as he leaned back in his chair. "You and me can be so happy together?"

"Com'on, Sugah, you know that line ain't never worked on me," I say as I picked up the empty glass from his table and put it on my tray.

"And yet I am compelled by your beauty to say it every time," he winked and the coin in his hand disappeared in a flash of fire and sulfur.

"Zagan, darling, you may have been a king in hell, but up here ya just another bar fly, and this month's tab is due."

He smiles his wicked smile and for moment I get a glance at the demon that must have been underneath. One moment his hands were empty the next he was holding several hundred dollars of crisp green bills.

"Now, Sugah, JJ done warned you about using that funny money in here. We don't accept no bad bills."

His face is suddenly all innocent as if he has no idea what I am talking about. "Georgia, darling," he says with his best smile that only serves to remind me of some of the men I've dated in my life. All of them were no good neither, just like Zagan. "You think I would dare swindle good Mr. Friday, or you, my delicious pomegranate?"

He takes my hand to kiss, but I'm faster than he thinks. In one swift jerk I not only manage to slap some sense into him but I come back with his money square in my grip. All I need to do is squeeze and the bills turn to ash, like year-old burnt paper. I watch the little bits of them float to the ground, nothing more than soot and lies. I know what's coming next. I've done this dance before.

"You dare strike me," he thunders. He's up faster than my old dog, Bush, when he used to hear the cats scratching around out back. His chair clatters to the ground and he has a sort of red glowing flame about him. "I am a Lord of Hell," he continues. "I have killed scores of angels and men. Both the good and the wicked whisper my name in fear and awe. I am the Lord Zagan, and I will not be treated..."

He's too busy doing the old monologue to really see my fist until its landed square in his jaw. He staggers back in surprise and that red glowing aura of his is no where to be seen. He's cradling his mouth as if I've broken it. I haven't. I know how to break a man's jaw and what I gave him weren't anything more than a friendly tap. In the background I see Edward perk up from his place near the front, but I shake my head at him. I don't need no help with the likes of men like Zagan.

"Don't give me that ol' speech, Sugah. Everyone knows you were thrown out of hell faster than a priest from a whore house. Now best git from here before I do the same."

"You bitc..." He rounds on me his fist coming like he intends to do some harm. Its a big mistake. I've been trained by the best and even if Zagan is immortal he still bleeds like the rest us. His punch finds nothing but air, but my roundhouse on the other hand, connects squarely with his chest. He gives off a noise like a deflating balloon before he impacts with the wall a few feet behind him. He keeps his feet for a moment but soon enough collapses like a dog on a summer's day.

Edward is already there, bless his simple heart. He doesn't even say a word as he picks up the fallen demon and throws him into the side alley with the trash. The rest of the villains in the bar barely notice what happened. Things often get rough in here, but I don't much mind. Back in my day I was one of the most feared martial artists in all of Dixie, back when I was known as Southern Bedlam, but those days were ages ago.

Now I'm just plain old Georgia Atlanta, bar waitress and mom. I smile at the thought of Owen, my son. He's the only man in my life now and as much as I miss the thrill of it all, I would gladly do it all again. I'd do anything for that boy. I already have.

"That was really great, Miss Atlanta," says Gil. He's whipping up the beer and blood from the floor as I finish clearing Zagan's table.

"Sugah, how many times do I have to tell you, call me Georgia. Last time I was Miss Atlanta it was during my beauty pageant days, back when I was sixteen goin on thirty, and I haven't been sixteen... in well a while."

"Sure," say Gil as he stands from up off the ground. "Whatever you say."

I can tell the boy is sweet on me, but I try not to encourage it. He's a nice enough kid, but as wet behind the ears as a tadpole. JJ took a special interest in him, but I don't have time to be playing nursemaid to some wonder struck youngin'. I have my own concerns in life. Even as I think it, I glance at the dirty clock on the wall, and realize that I have to be at daycare to pick up Owen at quarter past.

"Gil, I gots to get going. You can finish up for me here, right?" I don't even wait for an answer I just shove the tray and empty bottles into the boy's hand. I turn toward the back of the bar and begin to undo my apron. "And tell JJ..."

"Hello, Southern," the voice is strong yet scratchy. Like it hasn't been used in a long while. I had not heard it in years, but all the same it is still unmistakable.

I never finish what I am about to say to Gil. I freeze mid-step, my hands still fumbling with the strings of my short apron. It takes a moment to find the fellow I am looking for, but sure enough he's right there sitting at a table not three feet in front of me. He must have come in when I weren't looking. The man was older than I remember, with a shaggy growth of hair that covered him chin to nose. One of those brimmed hats was covering his face, but as he talks he takes it off and I see his once beautiful Blondie hair is showing patches of gray.

"Albert," I hear myself exclaim. I take a step back from him before I even know what I am doing.

The man stands and now the whole room is paying attention. His frame is thin, thinner than I can remember, but I know that his wiry body does not do justice to the power this man has. As he comes to his feet his brown coat comes open and I see the symbol adorning the tattered suit hidden beneath, it is the symbol of a fist orbited by four stars. Some of the other patrons see it too and suddenly I hear his name being whispered all about me like crickets on a spring night.

"General Relativity," I hear them say. "I thought he was dead?" asks one man. "Nah, I heard he was doing time is some government max-pen," responds a another. All the voices are lost to me as I find myself falling back into old memories.

The world knows him and fears him as General Relativity, one of the most powerful super-villains to walk this here planet or any other for that matter, but I knew him as the man he was, Albert Issacs. To them he was destruction incarnate, to me he was the man who brought me flowers and fumbled over his words like a wide-eyed schoolboy. I suppose that for all his power, even old Albert was powerless when it came to love. For my part, I can't be sure if it was love or just awe. The most powerful man in the world had fallen for pretty little me, who was I to refuse him.

Our lives were fun at first, my skills as an assassin and his power, we were unstoppable. We did what we wanted, went where we wanted, and no one with a badge or cape could tell us otherwise, though they sure as hell tried. Yet, after a few months it got to be too much. Albert was too destructive. He enjoyed killing too much, and he wanted it too much. All the things that had so attracted me to him in the first place were now what scared me the most about him. After I found I was pregnant with Owen, I knew it had to stop, but how do you tell the most powerful man in the world no? Where could I even run that he couldn't follow?

So I did the only thing I saw fit to do. I sold poor Albert out. I watched from the shadows as the Feds gassed the motel where we had been sleeping. My former lover never saw it coming. He was too busy, passed out from all the beers I had been feeding him all night long. I watched as they carried him out of the room, all unconscious, knowing that the next time he woke he would be staring up at the inside of some government holding facility. I hoped that would be the end of.

"Five years," says Albert bringing me back to the present. "The government kept me alive, but I couldn't move, could barely think. They fed me through a tube, and I was kept in complete darkness, to keep me disoriented. I was alive, but everyday I wanted to die. I couldn't feel, couldn't hear, couldn't see. I forgot the taste of food and the smell of fresh air." As he's talking he's taking steps closer to me. I want to move, but my training has kicked in now and I refuse to show fear even in the face of him.

Edward seeing that I was in trouble comes charging out of no where. Normally, people know to steer clear of the big galute. He's near-indestructible and weighs more than a house full of mack trucks, but I know even that won't be enough this time. With a wave of Albert's hand, Edward just stops in place. He suddenly under the pressure of a gravity more than thirty-times that of Earth, but the big moron keeps trying to move. He keeps trying to get at Albert. I try to tell him to stop but Edward always had more muscle than sense about him. Albert just laughs.

The bull of a man finally falls to his knees at about fifty-times normal gravity, and at a hundred-times he is laying flat on the ground. The wooden planks around him begin to shatter under the pressure and even the concrete foundation below groans and cracks with the weight of it all.

"Albert," I call frantically, "stop this! Albert, stop!" Edward can't even breath. Albert once explained it to me that with gravity that high even oxygen weighs as much as my old Chevy. "Albert!"

With another laugh the man once called General Relativity lowers his hand and I can see Edward's chest begin to expand and collapse again. The big galute is passed out but at least he's alive. Most of the patrons, I notice, have decided to do the smart thing and make themselves gone. A few still stand around caught between their head and some morbid curiosity which will probably be their death.

"Now wait a minute," I hear JJ say as he hobbles out from the back. He had been doing inventory. "Nobody causes trouble in my bar..." He stops. I can tell he is taking in the destruction around him. JJ was always clever and cagey, but  even he seems at a loss for what to do when he sees Edward passed out only a stone's throw away.

"Stay out of this, old man," says Albert. "This is between me and Southern here." He rounds on me like a mountain cat. "You took a lot from me, Georgia. You took five years of my life. You took my heart, but most importantly, you took my son. Before I kill you for what you did, I want to know where he is."

I begin to figure how long it would take for me to make a move, but as wild as Albert's acting, he's no one's fool. He's staying out of reach and anything I can think to do would take at least a second's worth of time. Albert's power works at the speed of thought and as fast as I am, I ain't that fast.

"Now just calm down there, son," I hear JJ say. "I know you think you have been wronged, but there is no need to do anything rash."

"Rash?" says Albert and as he turns his head to stare at JJ all the tables around us begin to float up to the air as if they was balloons at a carnival.

"I just mean to say that you're free now. There is no reason to go and jeopardize that. You start throwing fits and you'll have everyone from the FBI to every blasted member of Eternal Vigilance here. No one wants that."

"I had to bust my way out of that government facility. They forgot I used to be military. They forgot that they were the ones who did this to me. I know how they think, and now they're not thinking anymore. What I did to them, I'll do to anyone who tries to stand between me and my son, including the woman I love."

Suddenly, I got that feeling you get on roller coasters or when you are in a plane and even though I leave my stomach standing where I was I feel my back land hard against the far wall. I can see JJ is similarly pinned to the wall near the dartboard. Next, Albert starts in on the pressure and I can feel it build it on my chest. First it feels like a small stone but soon enough its the weight of a boulder.

"Where is my son? Where is Albert Junior?" He is screaming now. The tables are doing slow orbits around him and everything else in the bar is rattling like hell. Any straggling patrons are nowhere to be seen, which is good because Albert is losing it. I only ever saw him like that once before, and Lincoln City was never the same after that.

"His name is Owen," I managed to squeeze the words out as the pressure on me doubles. Somewhere far off I register the sound of my rib snapping, but I was trained to ignore such trifles.

Then suddenly its over. I fall to the floor like a sack of beans. JJ and the tables too come crashing down around me. The bar is strangely silent and when the bells in my head stop ringing long enough for me to pull myself upright all I can see is Albert in a heap. Standing over him is Gil a dented carrying tray in his hands. The boy's eyes are popped open so wide I think they might fall out his head to land next to the unconscious Albert.

I'm not sure how the boy got close enough to him do it, but he just stopped one of the most feared super-villains of all time, and all he could do was stand there and try not to wet himself. If right then and there it hadn't hurt so much to do so, I would have laughed. I guess even tadpoles grow up eventually.

Phantom Menace Syndrome

Phantom Menace Syndrome: Symptoms include: soreness,
redness, irritable geek movements, product placement,
directile dysfunction, age-inappropriate characters, weakness
in the plot, induced vomiting, commercial tie-ins, and
George Lucas.

Over the weekend I got out to see The Avengers and I was not disappointed, but I was surprised. I was not surprised so much by the movie itself, (as Joss Whedon hit the nail on the head and made this movie everything it should be and more,) but I was surprised that I was not surprised... maybe I need to explain this better.

I have come to understand the existence of an affliction I call Phantom Menace Syndrome (PMS). It is the illness of the body that causes a person to become irrevocably and unreasonably excited about an upcoming form of media (usually movies, but can also be applied to books, TV shows, music, and video games... though for video games it may be more appropriate to call it Galaxies Syndrome.) It is not to be confused with Battleship Syndrome, which is when something that is released is as disappointing as you expected it to be, if not worse. Nor should that be confused with Snakes on a Plane Sickness (which is so bad it gets its own disease named after it.)

PMS is when the hype of a film cannot stand up to the horrifying fact of the product and though some of the creations of George Lucas epitomize the disease they are not the only culprits. Movies such as Spider-Man III, Superman Returns, Matrix Revolutions, and (anything but the first) Pirates of the Caribbean, have all caused us to suffer from this incurable affliction. Even the youngest among us are not immune from the suffering with movies like Cars 2 being put out (though I truthfully never expected much in the way of serious plot progression from a movie based on a sport where all you do is drive in a circle for six hours.)

Perhaps those who suffer most from this horrible disease are the good movies. Movies like Dark Knight or The Avengers. These are the movies which I find more and more I cannot let myself get too excited over for fear of suffering from PMS. It is not that I will refuse to see them it is just that I will enter into theaters with a wall around my heart and a healthy dose of doubt, and that's not fair. I want to be irrationally excited over movies which so epitomize the things in life I love the most, (Family and friends?... no...) comics and fantasy. I want to geek-out and dress up and obsesses over every bit of a movie franchise as the release date for that newest anticipated movie grows ever closer, but I have been burned too often in the past. Most recently, I allowed myself to relapse with the release of Green Lantern. Mind you, it was not a bad movie, just a forgettable one.

Sometimes even the healthiest of franchises can succumb
suddenly and irrevocably to PMS.

Too often (especially with comic movies) production companies become too caught up in the action to remember the ethos of a story. Movies about superheroes especially are movies about modern myth and should be treated with the appropriate weight and seriousness that such myth deserves. (Though to be fair they also made a mockery of Clash of the Titans, and you have wonder how hard it is to screw up a remake of a movie that originally featured a claymation mechanical owl.) Even with the release of the upcoming Dark Knight Rises I still find myself overly skeptical that Chris Nolan can pull another masterpiece out of his hat, and like any trilogy the third movie is in some ways the most important. Too often with franchises like Spider-Man and X-Men, terrible third movies will not only ruin a franchise but completely invalidate the great movies that came before it, which sucks because by the time the third movie comes out I already own the other two DVD's, so I really have no choice. I have to get the third to complete the collection.

The real fear with the new Batman movie is that it has a lot in common with the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises. All were directed by lauded directors who proved themselves in the tellings of their first two movies. All three franchises peaked with their second movies. Spider-Man II  was the best movie of the trilogy, as was X-Men II. The Dark Knight of course was a masterpiece of cinema, storytelling, and acting, but that only raises more concerns. How can any movie follow Dark Knight let alone top it? I suppose only time will tell. As for me I am doing my best not to succumb to PMS. All I can do is hope for a Dark Knight but prepare for a Terminator: Salvation.

At least The Avengers did not fail to disappoint. Joss Whedon deserves a lot of praise and thanks for his work on this culminating piece of movie magic that we have been waiting for since Nick Furry stepped from the shadows at the end of Iron Man in 2008. So far (at least as the Avenger titles go) Marvel has not failed us yet, but this latest installment was not the end. The last scene of The Avengers offered a tantalizing new look at what was to come. So as we begin this second chapter in the franchise's history we can only wonder if the quality of storytelling will continue to improve or if the franchise will be brought to the Jar Jar Brink of Disaster. I suppose only time will tell, but as for me I find that I am looking ahead with cautious optimism and an open-mind. After all, PMS is as much a mental disease as anything else. So just because PMS can sometimes cause physical discomfort like, fatigue, loss of sleep, and swelling in our breasts we must also remember that it is not a strictly physical disease. In fact, the affliction can be brought about by our own infalted expectations and exaggerated ideas about what a movie should and should not be. This like (most things) can be easily solved by keeping an open mind. Sometimes a movie can surprise you if given a chance... except for an Adam Warlock movie, that will never work.

The Evolution Will be Televised

Side Prediction: In the future we will stop weaing pants.

"Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!"

"Why do you always have to say it that way?"

"Haven't you ever heard of a little thing called Showmanship"

    -Futurama 1x01

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the future lately, (mostly about what I will have for lunch and for dinner, and possibly the vaguish possibilities of a zombie apocalypse.) However, if the world is lucky enough to survive the undead uprising of 2026 I do have a few idea on where we are heading both technologically and culturally, because I as I explained briefly in a previous blogs, the two things are inexplicably linked in our society.

This actually lead me to my next point:

PREDICTION 5. THE DEMISE OF TELEVISION

I know it sounds as hard to swallow as any of the programing on TLC (at what point did they stop being "The Learning Channel," and start being the "The Exploit the Depraved and Hapless For Profit Channel?") but it's already happening. It is also best for me to clarify that I do not mean television shows, just live television as we think of it. Already TV is becoming much more personalizable (is that a word?... it is in the future.) With things like On Demand, Hulu Plus, and Netflix (all of it streaming right through my PS3) the world is already starting to become a place where TV is something we no longer have to schedule our lives around. According to a survey done by TiVo only 38% of the TV watching Americans do is "live," and Netflix is the 15th most watched channel in the US. This statistic also takes into account people watching delayed TV and is rather self-servings for the TiVo corporation, but it does make a certain amount of sense. Personally, I do not watch "live" TV unless I am bored, (which is not as often as I would sometimes like.) With the ability to shape my TV watching around my schedule I can see no reason for anyone to go back to watching TV shows according to a somewhat draconian programming schedule... well except to make sure that your jerk co-workers don't spoil the ending to Game of Thrones for you on Monday morning, (Thanks Matt... Jerk.)

All of this is compounded by the fact that with premium channels it is possible to get upwards of 1,000 channels on your TV and most of them are filled with crap I will never watch in a million years (and by that I mean reality shows.) Americans will only ever watch the smallest fraction of everything being broadcast. Even if we go with a safe estimate of an average of 500 channels that every American TV viewer has access to, and say they run programing for 20 hours a day (also a low estimate). That means we are still looking at 10,000 possible hours of TV watching to be done in a single day. According to the NY Times the average person spends 4 hours and 39 minutes. (The 39 minutes must account for the fact that no matter what I do, something always interrupts me before the end of Law & Order... All I want to know is if he is found guilty!) That means that the average person spends 4.65 hours out of our estimated 10,000 watching TV. Thus, using our numbers the average American TV watcher will only watch less than .05% of everything being broadcast on a daily basis.

This is an unsustainable system, and more importantly an annoying one. The reason there is so much crap (reality shows) on TV is because there is so much airspace to fill. I just paid my cable bill which was about 88 dollars. Roughly 30 dollars of that is phone and internet (I only got the phone because they made me get the damn bundle package.) I ran some quick calculations the other day I determined that I am paying roughly $50.00 per month for my basic cable use. I barely use it. Instead I could cancel my cable (and phone landline), just pay for my Internet, and also pay for Hulu Plus for an additional $9.99 per month and not only get the benefit of watching almost any show I can think of (except premium channel shows) but also of watching any episode of almost any show that I can think of. Even if I was feeling crazy and I added on a monthly subscription of Netflix I will still be saving roughly 20 to 30 dollars of money per month. Why am I not doing this?

Side Prediction: The trend of 3D movies will die a horrible
death only to be resurrected in another forty years.

My own financial issues aside, I can see a world where TV and movies all exist within a digital Internet queue. If you feel in the mood to watch Doctor Who, you pull up the menu, scroll to the episode you want to watch and let it fly. New episodes will be added on a weekly basis as well as new and old movies. There will probably still be some "live" screened channels such as the news and sporting events, but I am sure even that will give you the option to watch at a later time. There is a lot of implications that come with this cultural shift. Not only will phrases like prime time programming, day-time programming, or even Saturday morning cartoons become meaningless, but we will move to a world where our culture is no longer bound to the shackles of TV. We will come to treat TV more like personal movies. We will be able to watch them when we want, and we will probably become more discerning in our choices. A lot of the filler that exists will drop off and shows will compete with each other not just across "time-slots," but on a one-to-one basis. Without a need to fill airtime shows like Backwater Hicks Doing Backwater Things, I Married My Ancient Alien Abductors, and anything on HGTV will probably not survive the transition. These "boredom" shows are what people watch when they can't find anything they like on. Such shows will become obsolete, and hopefully take the reality show industry down with them, (but that may be wistful thinking more than conjectural based prediction.) Also, in this scenario the DVD rack will become something of a relic. When everything is a remote click away there will be no need to keep physical DVD's or Blu-Rays anymore. Things being as they are, I am sure that there will still be advertisements, but we will learn to live with it.

More importantly, this will really open the door more independent projects created not by big name production studios but by average people on the internet. If we start streaming all TV from the Internet it will be easier for local and Indie productions to make the jump to mainstream TV watchers. This trend will only be helped by the rapidly dropping costs of professional-grade cameras, production equipment, and digital graphics and editing programs. Culturally, this should make for greater competition and higher quality programing. In the long term, this could even spell the end for the monopolized TV industry and their network corporations. If the playing field that is TV is leveled according to quality and viewing demands than that can only be a good thing for anyone who enjoys watching quality television.

Even as far as the "industry" is concerned they should not see this move to personalized-streaming TV watching as a bad thing. In actuality, this could be the move that saves TV and movies. Online piracy is a fairly common problem. More and more websites crop up that allow people to download torrents and illegally stream movies and current TV shows. If the networks and production companies get behind a TV system where everything is streamed from the internet and available when a consumer wants it for a minimal price than I predict you will see a lot of these pirate sites close up shop pretty quickly. As a disclaimer, piracy will never go away, but after iTunes came on the scene pirate programs like Napster and Limewire wound up losing a lot of users and content. Usually, if there is a simple and cheap way to get what consumers want they will be too lazy to go through the hassle that piracy entails. If it comes to having to pay $9.99 a month for any TV show a person wants or having to set up a torrent downloader, search through the internet for a reliable download source, and finally spend a few hours downloading the content most of the lazy consumer driven public will choose the former rather than the latter.

More than likely the "industry" will survive along with some of its more powerful corporations, but maybe those who will have the greatest to loose from a system like this is the actors (or more specifically the celebrities.) In a world where there is greater accessibility to TV creation and little to no live TV the status of celebrity will start to lose a lot of meaning. A lot of this leads me to my next prediction THE DEMISE OF CELEBRITY, but I will talk more about that in my next post. For now... I'm hungry.

The Art of Science

I know I promised you my predictions for the future this week, but I have really been tied up with this major writing project I have been working on. I will let everyone in on it when I am done and have it published to the web, but for now (since I have been on such a science kick lately) I thought I would share with a great YouTube artist, MelodySheep aka John D. Boswell.

If you have never heard of MelodySheep I suggest checking him out. He does some different remixes, including some funny little remixes for some small pop culture clips, but where he really shines is in his series: Symphony of Science. Basically, he remixes the words and images of famous scientists including, Stephen Hawkins, Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Michu Kaku and many more. They range from subject areas of Evolution to Space Exploration to Molecules to Dinosaurs. Not only are the movies informative but they are beautiful and it reminds us all how amazing science is and how amazing it is to be a human being living in an age of scientific exploration and knowledge. Some of the better ones almost feel religious in nature and why not? After all, why does science and spiritual beliefs have to be separate? Why can't God exist in the nucleus of an atom or at the center of a black hole.

I have included some of my favorite. Enjoy them and check out more here.

A Glorious Dawn - Symphony of Science	Children of Africa -Symphony of Science
Poetry of Reality - Symphony of Science	The Quantum World - Symphony of Science

As always when I feature artists I ask that you support them and enjoy their work, and MelodySheep is no exception. His work is not only entertaining, but informative. Science is one of the greatest endeavours humanity has ever embarked on, it might as well have a good soundtrack.

All pictures used are meant only to promote the work of MelodySheep. I do not own or claim ownership of any images used in this blog entry.

Flying Car Insurance

BEHOLD THE FUTURE... where for some reason the only
person who has access to a flying car is this gray-haired
woman in a burka, and everyone else is still left to traveling
by conventional cars in the background. It is more likely that
this picture is telling us that in the future old people will be
given flying cars because it will be less dangerous than
having them on the road with the rest of us.

Did you ever think it is weird that we do not have flying cars, or moon cities, or robot butlers? I mean it is 2012. In 3 years on October 21, 2015, Marty McFly is supposed to arrive from 1985 to find a future full of hoverboards, rooms filled with fax machines, and self-fitting clothing, and yet I still can't find a suit-jacket that fits me properly. Heck, according to Star Trek by 1993 genetic superman were supposed to seize control of more than 40 nations on the planet Earth, and yet in reality steroids are still outlawed by Major League Baseball. I will not even go into the disappointment of 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I mean Pan-Am running a space tourism company?) So what happened?

In a nutshell, culture happened. Ironically, we have discovered that it is easier for us to predict how science and technology will advance rather than how culture will advance (and trust me we have tried.) Technology is created by humans so we can sort-of predict how it will progress, after all as as long as we can imagine it we can conceivable achieve it. However, culture changes so rapidly that there is no telling if the technology we want today will even be desirable in the future. For instance, in the 1950's people had all these grand ideas about the technology and appliances that would come available for the busy housewife in the future. Now technologically speaking household appliances have come a long way, but what those past futurists never really understood is that by the time those technologies existed Mom would no longer be in the kitchen, but in the workplace. The same is true of the flying car.

When talking about flying cars our ancestors never took into account some of the cultural and world imperatives that would arise in the last half-decade to make that dream somewhat improbably. For instance, even if the obvious safety problems of giving normal everyday people access to a flying hunk of metal, accelerants, and exotic plastics could be overcome, no one seemed to be able to predict the culture of litigation and frivolous lawsuits that would try to use the courts to sue over everything from hot coffee to video game violence. No car company in their right mind would assume the legal responsibility that would accompany the mass production of a machine with more litigation-related earning potential than a toy box full of rusty nails. Even more daunting is that by the end of summer gas prices will hover somewhere around $4.00 a gallon. I have a 12 gallon tank in my little Saturn, and yet I still wince when the pump ticks past $35.00. A flying car would not only consume more fuel and cost more to refill, but would probably also cause greater damage to the environment. No one thought of environment or gas  issues in the 1950's when cars were made of steel and American pie.

Basically, thanks to the intervening years and the changing priorities of our culture, often even when we have the technology to finally accomplish the things we thought we wanted, it turns out we do not want them any more. Its like being a kid and wishing you had enough money to get the GI Joe Battle Tank toy, and ten years later when you finally have a job and the money to afford that toy you find out you have other priorities in life. Hmm... spend money on a toy or dinner with a pretty lady... (duh... toy.)

Left: What people in 1952 thought the future would look like.
Right: Some hellish future-vision where women can vote.

The real problem with a lot of these past future-predictions is that when making assumptions about the future our ancestors thought technology would continue to grow and become more obvious, like robot butlers. However, what we have seen of technology over the past several decades is that technology does not become more obtrusive, instead it becomes more subtle and seems to disappear from plain view. Your cell phone has more computing power than biggest super computer of the 1970's. It has more technology and memory space than all the crafts that ever landed human beings on the moon combined, yet it is small enough to fit in your pocket. Wires are disappearing as everything goes wireless, microchips are shrinking to microscopic proportions, and soon even something as subtle as the home computer may disappear forever as its functionality just becomes incorporated into everyday life.

To complicate the matters, culture and technology have an almost symbiotic relationship with one another, (much like art and culture, but that is a whole other discussion.) As culture influences what technology is created, that technology then influences how culture develops. The most classic example of this is, the Internet. The world wide web was created by the US Government as a way to communicate and store records in a non-central location in case of a Soviet nuclear strike. Thus, its creation was influenced by the culture and times it was created in. Over thirty years later, the Internet has become the biggest driving force behind culture in the history of humanity. People live their lives on the Internet, children are growing up never having known anything other than Facebook, Twitter, or Google. For better and worse it has become one of the biggest factors in our lives, and because of that it is not only influencing things like our humor, our art, our porn accessibility, but it is legitimately creating a new global culture. I will not go into the impacts of the Internet on culture, since the list is incredibly longer than I could even begin to list, but it is worth mentioning that any visions of the future we now have, will always incorporate a network of information that allows for the rapid exchange of thoughts, ideas, and pictures of cats.

So where does all this leave us? Well initially, it means we will probably not have flying cars anytime in the near future or jet-packs or underwater cities, or etc. It is more likely cars will become smarter and cleaner first, and maybe even disappear altogether. However, it also means that any well-meaning prediction about the future will need to take into account the coming cultural shifts that will not only influence technology but be influenced by that technology, but those are no small predictions. Only a fool would really try to make any meaningful predictions about future-tech based solely upon his own hopes and ideas... So stay tuned for my next blog entry when I do just that.

A Thought for Your Penny

Probably the only real use anyone has ever found for
a penny.

Now if you are like me I know most of you are wondering, "When is the last time Canada ever did anything that I actually cared about?" The answer is: August 18, 2004 when Bryan Lee O'Malley released the first Scott Pilgrim graphic novel, but that is besides the point. We now have another reason to pay attention to Canada besides its maple syrup, red-coated mounties, and endless string of aging comedians. That reason is pennies.

If you have not heard, last week Canada decided to do away with the Canadian Penny. Yes, that means that Canada will no longer be minting anymore pennies. The Canadian Penny will still have legal monetary value (Making it approximately equal to 0.00998 American dollars), and can still be used in Canadian transactions by intention (and in American transactions by accident). The only difference is that our neighbors to the north will no longer be making new pennies, and as old pennies are collected  they will be melted down and taken out of circulation. As far as consumers purchases, items in the store will continue to cost the usual amount, but when paying with money (not credit cards,) prices will be rounded up or down to the nearest 5-cents. Thus, .01, .02, .06, and .07 will be rounded down, while .03, .04, .08, and .09 cents will be rounded up. This means that sometimes the consumer will lose on the transaction but sometimes they will also win, and really is losing 2 cents of money worth the effort of having to carry around 2 pennies? More importantly, this move will save the Canadian government anywhere between 11 and 20 million (Canadian) dollars a year.

This leads me to an amazing revelation, We need to follow the example of Canada. (I know those words were probably as bitter for you to hear as they were for me to say, but it had to be said.) We need to get rid of the American Penny. I was first turned onto this issue after watching John Green (one of my favorite Youtube vloggers) who has been advocating the demise of pennies for years, and as the eldest Green brother usually is, he was right. Pennies do nothing to help the American economy. In fact, they are costing us money and time.

Last year, The United States minted 4.9 billion pennies, but the cost of minting a penny is 2.4 cents. (that's amazingly ridiculous!) Which means in order to mint 4.9 billion pennies (if your an economics major you would know that equals 49 million dollars) we had to spend 118 million dollars to do it. So every year America throws roughly 69 million dollars right down the drain. That's more convoluted than the plotline to Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (and just as much of a waste of money.) I will not even go into the nickle which costs roughly 11.5 cents to mint, but understand that it should be the next to go. However, in modern times the penny has also proved tremendously unnecessary. You cannot buy anything with a penny, nor can you do anything with a penny. Machines that were purposely designed to use coins (vending machines, parking meters, etc) do not even accept pennies. These small worthless pieces of copper only exist to jingle around in my pocket and be thrown into fountains.

There is also a standing theory that the penny is actually costing America much more than the few millions dollars it takes to subsidize their costs. According to theories of opportunity cost (The idea that time is money) time spent fooling around with pennies costs America over a billion dollars a year. In other words if your time is worth roughly $10.00 an hour and you spend two seconds sorting through pennies that means you have lost roughly 0.0056 dollars in the time it took you to find those pennies you needed. Now imagine you had ten people in  front of you who had to get pennies or have pennies returned to them and it costs you 20 seconds, which would be 0.056 dollars wasted. Now imagine there was a little old lady who was paying only in pennies, and instead of making 10 dollars an hour you were a high-powered executive making $100  an hour or even $1,000 an hour. You can start to understand where the time loss adds up and the annoyance factor accumulates.

If we are keeping it we might as well change the penny to
better match the lunacy it represents... because with
pennies we're all 'winning.'

This brings me to my second point, I do not own a purse or wear a pocketbook. I am a man who is forced to keep all his change in his pockets. That means not only do I jingle when I walk, but there is a possibility I could exceed my encumbrance limit for my size category, (but who pays attention to those rules anyway?) Pennies cost us money, time, and effort. The only way pennies can be legitimately used to make money is if you fill a sock with them and mug a pedestrian while he is walking down the street. There is no logical argument to make in favor of pennies. Now lets examine the illogical argument that people make in favor of pennies.

The big group in support of our useless copper disks is the ironically named Americans for Common Cents. They have several arguments but the biggest come from their fear that doing away with the penny will mean all transactions will be rounded up, prices will skyrocket, and charities that depend on coin donations will suffer. The other reason people argue against doing away with the penny is mostly due to sentimentality and some kind of irrational belief that if we no longer have the penny everyone will forget who Abraham Lincoln is.

I understand that people grew up with the penny and you like it, and whatever, but that's the same rationale I use to stop myself from throwing away old shirts that are obviously past their prime. "Hey not my Incredible Hulk shirt! Sure the sleeve is ripped and its two sizes too small for me, but I like it, and maybe I'll use it again someday." We cannot be bogged down by sentimentality if it is costing us millions of dollars and thousands of collective hours a year. Additionally, all the economic based fear is nothing more than unfounded paranoia. There are a lot of countries that have done away with their pennies, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Netherlands, Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, and (oh yeah) US Military bases overseas who also no longer use pennies. Personally, I spent almost a year living and working in Australia, and I can testify that the economy worked just fine. Prices were rounded up or down and everyone went on with their lives. People still gave money to charities, the economy still remained stable, and I had one less coin to worry about in my pocket.

As far as Abraham Lincoln is concerned, he is our greatest President and Vampire Slayer. There is a lot of things named after him. (Oh and he is on that other thing... what do you call it... a 5 dollar bill.) If Lincoln were alive today I think he would be more insulted by the fact that his head is imprinted on a coin that only has a relative monetary value equal to about 1/26th of what it was worth in his day. "Forsooth, why is thine visage memorialized upon coinage that is of less worth than a flea's arse?" (I am also aware that I made  Lincoln sound Shakespearean, but I'm the writer and that is just something you will have to learn to live with.) Truthfully, it would be cheaper if we did away with pennies and honored Lincoln by just building him a huge monument or carving his face into the side of a mountain... oh wait we already did both those things.

The real fact of the matter is that I do not see the American penny disappearing anytime in the near future. Despite that fact that revamping the American currency system is a logical and easy way for the government to save money, increase efficiency, and prove to the American people that congress can work toward positive and modern change, I still do not see it happening. After all when has the American government ever enacted a change that made sense. Unfortunately as humans, and as a nation, I am afraid we are too stuck in our ways to really make a shift of policy and thought on this large of a scale. I suppose it is just human nature to be afraid of change. (Get it?)

Space Chronicles II: The Wrath of Khan

This is a scene from the Star Trek movie where Shatner and
crew must go back in time to save NASA from budget cuts
by using a whale to help a Klingon recite Shakespeare.

There is a myth that pervades American thought, and it generally goes something like this, "NASA gets too much damn money to study rocks on Mars when we can use that money to [insert cause here,] (i.e. feed the homeless, cloth the starving, give houses to puppies, stop the bleeding of hearts, etc.)." The basic tenement of this myth comes down to the belief that America is spending billions of dollars in space exploration when we could be using that money to solve problems at home. It is a myth that is not only stupid but dangerous, and it is a myth that people like Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson are trying very hard to put to rest.

First off, America does give NASA billions of dollars. For the fiscal year of 2012 NASA requested around 18.7 billions dollars in funding, in actuality it will probably only get around 17 billion. Now I know what your thinking, "Oh my Science! 17 BILLION, that's a lot of money!" and as usual (when I ask these hypothetical questions) you are wrong. It is not a lot of money, only about 0.48% of America's budget for 2012. That means, this year America will be spending the lowest amount of money (comparatively) on NASA spending since 1959 (one year after NASA was founded.) Back then the space program only received 0.2% of the federal budget (that year they got a whopping 145 million dollars in federal money). At most NASA has ever received 4.41% of the federal budget in 1966 at the height of the Apollo Program.

In other words, NASA is broke, and it is the aforementioned myth that is helping to kill it. Think about it as a politician would. When it comes down to cutting money from Medicare, Social Security, or NASA, which do you think the public would object to more? (As a side note: in 2011 20% of the US budget was dedicated to Medicare and 23% was dedicated to Social Security spending.) Thus, in financial terms, NASA has become the red-headed step-child of the US Government. This a precarious position for NASA to be in, and more to the point it is a dangerous position for America to be... more than I think you might realize.

That bring us to our second reason of why this myth of NASA spending is disastrous, and it is a reason explained in Neil DeGrasse Tyson's new book: Space Chronicles, (which is an awesome name.) In it Dr. Tyson (who is the head of the Natural History Museum's Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and charismatic contributor to almost any science show you will ever see on TV) explains the case for space. He makes the argument that by slowly starving NASA the US is slowly starving our own imaginations, not to mention our ability to protect the human race as a whole.

In the 1960's the Space Race started in response to America's fear that Russia would conquer space, spread Communism to the Moon (which is way above the 38th parallel), and invade America with flying saucers (or something like that.) This fear prompted us to go to the moon, which in turn prompted a generation of baby boomers to sit transfixed in front of their TV's as America clawed its way to the surface of our nearest natural satellite. This pivotal moment changed the lives of millions of children who suddenly became fascinated with the idea that human beings could walk on the moon. It sparked the hope and the idea that we as humans could become something more than we are. This fueled the ambition and imagination of a generation and helped to create some of the best scientists America has ever known. Many people may not see the value in the sense of wonder and imagination sparked in the children of the 60's as an asset to America, but it very much is. Of all the exports and trade commodities that the United States has ever had to offer the world, innovation and scientific discovery have always been among the most important and the most profitable.

Setting aside even the obvious benefits of the products which are mere by-products of space exploration, (Velcro, tang, MRI machines), space exploration, and specifically manned space exploration, has fueled the American drive of science for decades. From those children who sat enraptured by the grainy images of Neil Armstrong on the moon came the people who helped invent the computer, the Internet, the cell phone, and hundreds of other products which America pioneered and which helped make America one of the richest countries in the world. We cannot tangibly measure the fiscal income of imagination, but rest assured it is as real as the first quarter gross income figures of American pig farmers. Dr. Tyson argues (reasonably) that a new manned push to space (most notably a call for a return to the moon and even the gold-ring of all space exploration, Mars) would not only help spark the imagination of the next generation of scientists and explorers, but also create a deluge of "spin-off" products that would benefit us in our everyday life in the same way that the "spin-off" products of space exploration in the 1960's helped benefit that generation of people (tang and spam aside). In the next decade, America will find itself trailing the rest of the world in fields of science and technology. Among the last generation of students, admission and interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) has fallen across the boards, and with it the technological prowess of the USA. We have a chance to fix that for the next generation, and  in the present create jobs and new opportunities not only for the best and brightest Americans, but others from around the world. Anyway you slice it, excitement over space exploration is an investment in our future.

I do apologize as I know I am getting a little forceful and preachy in this topic, but it is one I tend to be more passionate about because I see space exploration as being closely tied with the fate of humanity, and for one simple fact. The planet Earth is on a timer. No matter what you believe or how you think it will happen, it is generally accepted that Earth will one day die. It does not matter if it dies because we drain it of resources, or because it gets taken out by an errant solar flare, or even some sort of cataclysmic climate event, or even of old age, Earth will one day cease to exist and when that day comes if all of humanity still remains on its surface we will die with it. I am not just talking about the physical deaths of all the living people, but the death of everything that we are. We will not just die but so will Abraham Lincoln, Marylin Monroe, the 1986 Mets, Darth Vader, Beethoven, Da Vinci, and everything that we are or ever could be. It will be like the human race never existed and on some distant planet they will watch our star wink out and never know that the light they were seeing was home to the human race, home to our culture, our thoughts, our dreams, and everything. We will just be gone, and that is what scares me the most.

However, if we reach out into the stars and spread humanity across different planets and even different solar systems our culture, our memories, and everything we are can never truly be extinguished. This is, admittedly, an extreme example, but ultimately a true one. In the more immediate future space exploration can help to teach us how to defend ourselves against asteroids and other NEO objects (Near Earth Orbit, though I also would not mind learning how to protect ourselves from more bad Keanu Reeve movies.) We could begin to develop plans for diverting asteroids and comets that do not include Bruce Willis and Aerosmith. This is no joke, because in 2029 the (appropriately named) asteroid Apophis is due to pass so close to Earth that it will dip below our satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The worst part is that means that the asteroid could then be set up for a collision course with Earth when it returns in April of 2036. The impact would be the equivalent of anywhere between a 500 and 900 megaton explosion. Comparatively, the biggest bomb ever created by humans was the Russian Tsar Bomba which only clocked in at 50 megatons. 

Yes we KHAAAAN!!!

Here is the real kicker. We could accomplish all of this with just two critical changes to American policy. 1) We need to start making Space exploration a cultural and politcal priority in the same way that it was in the 60's. The Senate and the government need to speak of missions to Mars in the same way Kennedy spoke of going to the moon, 2) the (easier of the two): double NASA's budget. That means instead of only spending 0.48% of the USA's yearly budget on NASA we need to commit giving them an incredible 0.96% of the budget or even 1% if we are feeling generous. But with the money and (more importantly) the cultural  and political endorsement, Dr. Tyson argues that we would go a long way to restoring America's place in the world of technology and science. We would also be inspiring the imagination of all of humanity for years to come. 

The frustrating part is that it would take so little on our part as Americans to really help get these dreams accomplished. We have become such a nation of cynics that most people usually just balk at the idea of manned space exploration. Newt Gingrich was made the butt of jokes because he dared suggest that American space wxploration should be a priority (granted Newt may not be the best spokesperson for that particular campaign,) but he is not wrong. Maybe that is why we need a candidate for this election that can make the argument more convincingly and with less wives. We need someone charismatic, yet knowledgeable. We need someone who can make the case and yet still be likable on a camera. That is why the 2N2P would like to announce that is it officially endorsing Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson as our candidate for President.