Alien Game Plan

After seeing the pile of dog poo that was the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still", I was thinking about what would happen if Earth's major powers had to interact with aliens and whether they have thought out how to act in such a scenario.

In countless B movies and tv shows, an alien species decides to come to Earth for a purpose that is as of yet unknown. The powers that be debate about the aliens intentions and whether humans should blow up any incoming spacecraft or aliens that are headed our way. Or as Independence day (a Smith in each stinker), after aliens start invading, humans fight back and win.

What any character on these shows fail to think about is that any civilization advanced enough to get here can almost certainly travel at some level that is at least a fraction of the speed of light which puts them WAY ahead of anything we can comprehend. The nearest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away from Earth.

The fastest humans have ever sent any object is (the Galileo probe) about 100,000 miles per hour. At that speed, it would end up in Proxima Centauri in about 20,000 years.

Considering there is no advanced life forms in Proxima Centauri, the distances would be much much MUCH further. So whatever alien life form that wanted to travel here would have to either travel faster or more efficiently than the speed of light (if its possible), travel close to the speed of light for possibly hundereds of years, or travel much slower than the speed of light and have enough technology, resources, and patience to make a trip that lasts millennia. Either way, such a species could do whatever it wanted to humans as its technology would seem like magic to us.

Thus, the best course to follow if aliens come to Earth, would be to assume (and hope) they're benevolent. You're dependent on their mercy.

AIG Comedy/Tragedy

AIG: We made stupid financial deals, Congress please give me taxpayer money or the world will end.

Congress: We can't have AIG go bankrupt, the world will end. Here, take this check for 100 billion dollars and do what you want with it.

AIG: Thank you for the check. Now that we deposited it, we promised to give millions to our employees in bonuses.

Congress: You can't do that, that's rewarding people for bad decisions.

AIG: Sorry, the contract was already made when you gave us money. The only way you can change that is if you let us go bankrupt. You would have noticed that if you actually looked at what you were doing.

Congress: It's AIG's fault. We are blameless.

AIG: By the way, we need more money or the world will end.

Stimulated

California's new budget has been passed. The Democrats got enough Republicans to sell out and now we have double the vehicle license fee, a higher income tax and a higher sales tax.

Bravo California on choosing one of the worst economic climates in my lifetime to raise taxes. That should fix everything.

Growing up in California, there has always been some emergency: earthquakes, not enough police, not enough education, that has caused the government, in its infinite wisdom, to raise taxes yet again. It's all horsepoop.

It only goes one way. More rules, more regulations, more taxes. Where is the tipping point? When is it too much? Why don't I ever remember California taxes going down?

I don't have these answers and not paying any taxes gets me in jail. I've had enough though. I'm buying whatever I can over the internet to minimize sales tax (I don't care if it costs me more to ship a product, Fed Ex is more deserving of my money). Additionally, I've recently changed my business structure as to pay a negligible amount of income tax. From now on, I'm never paying California a cent more than I have to. Good luck, California, finding some other sucker to pay your tithe.

Reunion Tour

Perhaps in parallel honor of the Murder City Devils reunion show that I will be attending tonight, I've decided to resurrect Grokwire from its liberal tomb.

There are a lot of new happenings to address. We've seen a dramatic election season come to a rather lackluser close. I've also been getting pretty into Los Tucanes de Tijuana, as cheesy as they are. Perhaps its just because I'm exceedingly frustrated these days and just want to unload 30-some-odd rounds.

We've also seen bailout after bailout. Where's my bailout, you ask? Oh, its comin', alright. It's coming in the form of more draconian government of the individual's life. So, suddenly, I have well-connected heavy industry representatives deciding what it is that I eat, smoke and drive.

No one has been reading the bailout bills that have been careening through the legislatures, aside from a few try-hard, low-level poli-sci interns. They keep passing. They're tens of thousands of pages in length, and their full of P.O.R.K. Ay, que rica es esta barbacoa!

Before I write a Kerouac novel in my blog, I'll compartmentalize this entry and save some ideas for tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a handy calculator for your share of the bill you're fronting for our corporatist amigos. In case you didn't already know, there's a difference between "capitalist" and "corporatist." I emphasize that because I feel like me and B Grok are the only ones that are aware of the rather glaring distinction.

The Truth

The TRUTH is, I find anti-smoking commercials annoying and paternalistic.

The TRUTH is, I wonder how much those commercials are costing me or anyone else that is forced to pay them.

The TRUTH is, I would rather chat outside with a random smoker than any of the abrasive people armed with megaphones in these commercials.

The TRUTH is, you can go to the TRUTH website at www.whudafxup.com and as they say "Questions, comments, thoughts or maybe just ramblings - we welcome all of it. Whatever's on your mind, send it our way."

Ask and ye shall receive.

Authoritative Thinking

Something that has always bothered me, is that normally intelligent individuals with common sense will just stop thinking on certain subjects and simply follow thier chosen party line. Which party line doesn't matter, the fact is, they gave up thinking for themselves, and replaced someone else's conclusions with their own process of thinking.

This often happens with political or religious thinking, but it isn't limited to that. It can be with something as simple as following sports, fashion, etc.

A person acting in their highest capacity thinks for themselves. Following the herd, or simply taking someone else's judgment can be wise (and even necessary)in certain situations, but for the most part, it is how one can get constantly manipulated their whole life.

That is not to say that one should become an expert in every subject. This is impossible. When bringing you malfunctioning car to an auto mechanic, you pay for the mechanic's expertise. However, giving up on learning the basics of how a car works, and thus having no idea as to what might be wrong, allows you to be manipulated by said car mechanic.

At an early age, we are forced to accept the authority of others to survive. Your parents or guardian, while growing up, seem to know everything about the world and it behooves you to accept their opinion on just about everything. At some point, most people wean themselves of their parent's authority, but then place their deference to authority in other persons or groups (government, politician, teachers, religious books).

This thought process is reinforced in schools. The teacher is the authority figure that has all the answers. Thinking for yourself, and differentiating from the teacher is punished. Being correct, is not a sufficient justification for being different. In my own experience, this continues at least through undergraduate school. Some professors and teachers that are exceptions to this rule, but they are the outliers.

Perhaps, much of this thought process is genetic or came to us as a survival skill, and I am exaggerating the nurture factors that contribute to this "follow the leader and damn the thinking" mentality.

What I find humorous, is that many people see this quite clearly in others, and condemn it, but do not accept that they do this themselves. I've seen many die hard atheists, that come to their conclusions by blindly following scientists, professors or other authorative figures that they trust, while mocking a religious fundamentalist for blindly following their leader. That is not to say that the atheist or religious fundamentalist is necessarily wrong in their belief, (both of these are almost by definition impossible to prove), but they would be deny that they used the same fallacious logic to get to their opposite conclusions.

This same type of thinking is all too prevalent in almost all political discussions. Once my "side" is right, your "side" is wrong. No further thought process is needed. My "side" whether it be pro-Michael Moore, George Bush, abortion, war, etc. has already been chosen by me. I've decided my team, tribe, authority, whatever you want to call it. All that's left for me to do is decide why you're wrong. Usually, even this answer has been chosen by my authority . The deliberation is left out of the argument.

It's time for us as human beings, if it's possible, to go beyond this neo-tribalism. We can, and should, be better than this. But before this is possible, we must accept that we are susceptible to such thinking.

Oil Boycotts

Looking through my myspace bulletins the other day, I ran across one of these beauties....

Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a
gallon by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that keeps circulating. The oil companies just laugh at that because they know we won't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It is more of an inconvenience to
us than a problem for them.

This is a plan that can really work. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.
How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.

THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Normally, I ignore this kind of economic ignorance, but I couldn't let it go today. Just frustrated I suppose. So I answered as short and to the point as possible.

Won't work. Oil is fungible. You stop buying gas from exxon, they sell their oil to other oil companies and those companies will charge you more for higher demand.

To be fair, she actually wrote back and said...

thats weak....thanks for the info. i'll deleted the bulliten

Now, I'm not sure 100% sure what she said, but I think she may have figured out where she was wrong.

I wish people would think about the consequences of their actions before blindly telling other people to do things.