Visualride

We all remember being in writing class class at some point in school with the teacher explaining in depth the true, underlying, meaning of some story as most of us scratched our heads, strongly suspecting that the teacher was full of shit. I’m reminded of this as I read a book about a piano player describing how the left and right hands contribute to the story, portraying full ranges of emotion and every other element that makes a story great. There must be high points, recovery time from those highs, humorous parts, chase scenes, and resolution. Similarly with an artist. How the blank space belittles the subject, how the bold reds and subtly painted eye direction let the viewer in on the subjects true intentions. In performances of all kinds. Motion telling a compelling story, balanced in rhythm, contrasting sections to shock the audience, or flowing, breezy lines of motion pulling at the heart strings. The best teachers always emphasize this adherence to story. Most of us inward

Here’s what I don’t get. Most republicans are still standing behind Trump and Trump is standing behind Putin. The American flag has become a Republican flag as represented flagging behind dumb ass trucks. How can they say that they represent America more than Democrats and support, by proxy at least, Russia??

  So, just to rub it in a bit, here’s the price that I pay at the pump. While I would much prefer to be going completely clean with electric, natural gas is much cleaner than regular gas. And, as you see, much cheaper. $8 bucks will get me down the road a couple hundred miles. So why don’t we all have natural gas cars you ask? You would have to contact your local government official to ask that question. No one has an answer but them. If you want to talk about conspiracies, there you go.

After reading an article the other day describing a new theory that time may be symmetrical, running backwards at the end of the universe, I began to contemplate that reverse universe. The opposite of entropy and everything that ever happened going backwards. The universe would be devoid of consciousness, or would it? You may remember some records created to play back spoken words when played backwards. Sure, not too hard, but consciousness? Perhaps this will remain in the realm of fantasy till the day that we create our post life consciousness that will have virtually limitless intelligence. Perhaps, if they find that time is symmetrical, they will then endeavor to create such a consciousness. I’m fascinated by this reversible consciousness idea. It’s kind of nice to have Dark Matter and Dark Energy as unknowns to mentally see if what we know about it would fill in the missing puzzle piece of some grand conjecture. Perhaps this one?

  We are all probably living in a simulator. If you extrapolate the ever increasing realism of the “metaverse” over the next hundred years, considering that the largest companies are now dumping tens of billions of dollars into it, you will come to realize that we will reach total realism in this virtual world, not being about to tell real from fake. The next mental leap, easy enough taken, allows you to realize that if we can achieve it, then it probably has already been achieved before somewhere in the universe. Whoever achieves this ability will be able to make unlimited virtual versions of this universe in simulations. Therefore, there is a good chance, or actually almost definite chance that we are living inside of a simulation as in the Matrix. Ok, many of you have already taken this in. Now, I have to ponder another inevitability that I alone seem to ponder. The reason for life. If all life tends to evolve toward complexity in the long run, then the end goal will be to evo

All around us, day in and day out we are suffused with messaging to be our best selves. As Henry Rollins sang “Do it, don’t think about it, do it!” (which Nike immediately stole and turned into their own “Just Do It” ad campaign). Self help books instruct us in a miriad of ways about how to visualize our goals and how to achieve them, despite the odds. After being dragged to church the preacher has us pray as a way to reach our goals, no matter what. I remember thinking at this time that I guess that I should leave my wife and kids to reach my goals, unachievable otherwise. This “Achieve your goals, no matter what” mantra that life gives us causes tension and is probably the root cause for many broken homes. Many of you have endured from me over the years an expression of this tension. My massive mental bag of goals, such as having hours a day to play my piano, ride every skatepark in the world, yada yada, have given me nothing but grief. I have great kids and a hard ass May as

  A few years ago I mentioned that I noticed that the local grocery store scanner beep sounds were a B flat note. Aaron Seeman kindly pointed out that it was because the beeps are based upon the 60 cycle hum of our alternating current. Last night I noticed that Albertson’s grocery store uses an A flat note. My conclusion is that some person somewhere at their HQ made the decision that an A flat note would be the best note to be heard over and over. To beat this monotony, I pull up a piano app and riff off the note. I can’t help makings up music every time I hear a chime sound. Sorry to all of those around me who have to endure the whistling or piano riffs.

  Are you an “Atheist”? As a non-believer in non-sense, you could call me an Atheist, but I would ask you to please not. As one who, growing up in the South, has had the word spat at them multiple times with an accusing finger thrust at them, you can imagine the derogatory nature of that word for many of us. I would propose to turn the tables back against those venomous finger pointers. We, my friends, are normal, and therefore require no name to classify us into an abnormal group. On the other hand, people who subscribe to the non-sense of religion do require such a descriptor. To turn the sound of “atheist” back onto those people, I would suggest the title of “religioust”. If you find yourself being labeled an atheist, just turn it around on them with their own label. See how they like it.

  In the near future AR glasses will become massively popular. I predict: The outer layer of the lens that other people see could be a video screen showing a video of the eyes of the user. This will allow a tracking system to continue to focus the eyeball video to look like it’s looking at the person that they are speaking to at all times while allowing the user to read text displayed to them inside the lenses. This will get rid of distracting eye movements for the other person to see. Horrible to think how we will be tuning out of conversations while looking attentive. Another, more interesting thought: This outer video displays on the lenses could show much more empathy and compassion than the user knows how to show using AI to display the most appropriate eye expressions according to the conversations. Or…show cartoonish eyes or whatever we want to show in place of our eyes.

There is a growing push from my party, the liberal left, to label Elon Musk as the bad guy. He’s now filthy rich, as he deserves to be. I’m not saying that anyone should be allowed to even have more than a billion dollars without being extremely taxed. My point is that oil companies, other car companies, and all the other space industries that have been enjoying fat payouts from the government all have a stake in bringing Elons enterprises down. Oil companies as well as the oil empires in the Middle East can be very underhanded in their fight against destruction of their life blood. Just as Russia screwed up our elections with their Facebook meddling, these tyrants know how to win a media war. When my friends start sharing posts that are severly negative against Elon Musk, other than his stupid twitter posts, belittling the person who has single handedly brought the world electric cars and cheap space flight, there is most likely a sinister person behind the flood of bad press. Do

  When I was 19 I went to an Air Force recruiter to inquire about signing up. One of the first questions that they asked was "Have you ever smoked pot?" Of course I said that I had, since, like everyone else I knew, I had at least tried it before. He told me that I could not join the Air Force for this reason. This led me to the conclusion that being a Trump (a liar), is a necessary requirement to be in the U.S. military. I've held off posting this fact for years because of family in the military. Today, reading about how 12,000 Air Force people are choosing to leave the military rather than taking a life saving vaccine, pushed me over the edge to post this.

  Question: Do people who enjoy being scared more than average enjoy hot sauce more than average? It just occurred to me that they are a similar kind of animal.

People suffering from trauma of all kinds are drawn to the comfort of religion. Trauma leads to religion and religion leads, as a “gateway drug”, toward denialism and conspiracy thinking. Why religion? Religion at its core teaches one to doubt reality to make room for the supernatural. People are taught how to rationalize things taught in the Bible which develops the mental tools necessary to refute all the science that conflicts with the Bible. Example: At a “Flat Earth” convention, the vast majority of attendees are highly religious. Interviews also show a high prevalence of trauma within their past. Religion aligned itself with the Republican Party encouraging them to follow Trump en mass down the dark conspiracy rabbit hole. Conspiracy spreaders of all kinds proliferated: anti-vaxers, 9/11 doubters, contrail conspiracies, etc. To make themselves feel more secure and to give themselves a solid feeling of being able to win the battle against Truth, they bought guns. Lots of gu

Those crazy Democrats! It would be so embarrassing to be one of them! How did they get so over the top wacko? Of course it all started with the 2016 election when Russia won the election for the Democrats with their Facebook meddling . With Leaf, head of Earth First and socialist extraordinaire, elected as President, the Democratic Party fell in line with his extremist views. First, he completely opened up the borders, sending in our troops to help the flood of immigrants in their migration. Leaf then hired a top Green Peace lobbyist to run the military. Nothing but truth! Truth, truth, and more of his damn TRUTH!! With free Medicare for all as well as a $1000 per month of free money to all, it was mayhem. Anyone earning over $200k is now severely taxed as well as all corporations to pay for the new benefits.   Damn wacko Democrats. Now the world is totally screwed up and, because the Dems all stand up for their party, no matter how crazy, our country will have a hard time digging out

At the dentist, my mind goes wild. Todays mental inventions whilst getting fillings replaced: 1. How about an app that replaces sounds such as the drill at the dentist office. The ever changing whine tone could be turned into a melodic tune following the basic “tune” of the drilling. Go to the dentist, plug in your ear buds, turn on the “Alter Audio” app, pick “Dentist drill” from a preset, and that’s it. 2. All graphical window edges are way too computery and harsh. I would suggest an add on to allow all window edges to be organically blended in with the window below. If a grey input window is sitting on a nice scenic background image, the edges should all blend in. No simple fade, but an AI driven, content aware window with perhaps the tree root from the image snaking through the input window. A mouse over would lighten up the area like sunlight, not just a yellow glow, but added and subtracted contrast and saturation of the background image showing through.

I’ve a soapbox. Fits snuggly neath my feet. I stride upon its girth proudly. The anti-evangelist evangelist. A shouter of doubt to all conformers to the narrow path. A shouter to strengthen the contrary voice to bring back what was lost the past four years.

I was thinking about reincarnation, which makes exactly zero sense…unless, I realized, that we are living in a simulation, which is entirely possible. We are all but mere avatars!

My response to having to endure seeing way too many religious bumper stickers. I'm making a bumper sticker. Aaand there goes half my viewers. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Can a single person make the world a better place? I propose a game to fix the world. All it would take is the sacrifice of most of one billionaires wealth. If Jeff Bezos donated 152 billion dollars to the game, he would still have, as of July, 20 billion dollars left to himself. Here’s the game: Announce to the world that those between the ages of 20 and 40 today would have a chance to win 1 million American dollars in 5 years time if they have completed a 4 year college degree, with a greater than a C average, and have less than $50,000 (I’m not sure about this amount…) in total family assets as of today. 150 thousand winners throughout the world would win. The distribution of winners would be completely unbiased and based upon population density as of the current census. Where you are designated as living, as of this past census, is where you would be counted. The only other criteria that would be taken into account would be how good the person is in 5 years. During that time,

  As I sit in front of my computer for my 8:00 work video meeting, my mind wanders somewhat as the meetings drole on.  This creates ample opportunities for my mind to innovate.    First of all, the grid of participants live video images would have to be the same for everyone.  This would allow for a "party", or "group" feature to allow the people closest to your square to hear you better with louder volume. Another feature would be AI driven animated characters of our choosing to be put into our video standing or sitting next to us, the way that augmented reality 3d characters are put in a room.  The characters could be driven partly by the movement of our cursors and what we are looking at.  A mouse movement about to click on the "Mute Button" would elicit the behavior from the character to pull out a roll of duct tape and put a strip of it over our mouth in the live video.  If we are actually watching a funny cat video in a web page, the character would

  Life has a purpose in the universe, and that is to evolve into its next form. Virtually infinite minds or “singularities” born when life on a planet reaches a certain level of technology. This group will speculate on what that form may ultimately be, taking into consideration that our intermediate form will be an intelligence that we will create that will be able to make itself nearly infinitely smart and more capable in a short amount of time once “born”. We have calculated that there must be a vast number of advanced civilizations out in the universe, so…where are the aliens, and why haven’t we come across evidence of them yet? This is known as the Fermi Paradox. Where does all this life go? Given the postulate that all life must evolve into ever higher complexity to compete to win, I’ve simply extrapolated this vector to it’s obvious conclusion. Since life has had billions of years to evolve in the universe already, you would think that some life forms would have figured out how t

I went to an art gallery in La Jolla this past weekend. There were glass scuptures by artist Tom Marosz that I liked. I just decided to try to make one on the computer. Half an hour later, here is what I have. Later I decided to make an animation from several sculpture variations, some of which are my own.  I composed the music as well.

  I created this 3d rendering last month.  Inspired by the concept of a "Light Guy" light, I decided to 3d print out the 3d model and install a light into it.   Here is the result:

  I’ve got a concept to augment our free market capitalism society. A few months ago I posted an idea along the lines of the star system for better drivers being given privileges to access the fast lane, where the worst drivers would not be given this privilege at all. I now realize that we could extrapolate this system to greatly improve the equitability of our society. We can balance out and reward those who do good and penalize those who do harm. We could improve general morality by increasing taxes on those caught in a lie on any public media such as TV, social media, podcasts, or YouTube. Those demonstrating goodwill by helping those less fortunate, donating time at shelters, or doing other good deeds will be given a leg up on winning the lottery or getting lower taxes. Politicians would be heavily taxed and loose other benefits if they aren’t being truthful. Any out right lie would get them banned from office. A very honorable politician would be compensated. If you do a go

  I’m reading Tolstoy’s ‘What is Art’. In it he mentions a definition of art as having five parts as the five senses: taste, smell, touch, hearing, and sight. I would further stratify sight into the spatial 3D form of sculpture, and lastly of matter in motion. Now for my insight. The perfect work of art: It would have to waft a heavenly scent, if tasted would have unlimited depth in complex exquisiteness, it’s motion giving to some, boundless erotic appeal, yet to others, give a sense of of hilarious strength and giving. The colors all in perfect complimentation leaving the onlooker the feeling of having the full spectrum of the depth of there soul rendered before them to perfection. As this perfection in creation blows your mind right in front of you, it begins to sing. A full harmony chorus tapering to an incredible single note that breaks your heart, not only for the one note, but the crafted story of its brethren propelling that one note to its immense height.

  While watching my kids pogo stick across my dads back yard last week I realized that pogo sticks would make the perfect tree planter after a fire (not really, …but the idea got me laughing). Just fill the inner columns with seeds, put a hole in the bottom of the pogo stick, and a spring depressed, and presto, we have a fun game of "Plant the Hill".

  I’ve got a concept that I thought up this past weekend to help aleviate the pain of standing in line, wherever they regularly form. Imagine a pop up Starbuck’s like portable shop, complete with good coffee, snacks, wifi, and comfy chairs. It would have to be all about branding, the look, and financial deals with the location property, otherwise it would just be like a walking hotdog stand. It would have to have the appeal that would make people say “Hey let’s go to that restaurant. They have a ‘Star’ there. We can get a coffee and a seat while we wait”. The shop would have to come in multiple configurations such as sidewalk configs and patio configs. They would be battery powered. Perhaps a custom vehicle of some sort with enough extra battery power to power the necessary machines. I’m tired of waiting in senseless lines. Take my money, I want coffee.

For the past couple centuries since the printing press, local and national news sources that people relied on came in the form of a newspaper that most adults read. This relatively uniform media and information gave our societies the freedom to do with the information as we wanted but still retain commonality with one another. Increasingly over the past couple decades these informative news sources have been diminishing while news that arouses and entertains, tailored to the individual reader, has proliferated. The relied upon television news casts have fractured similarly based upon extreme views for entertainment, not reality. As a result we get presidents such as Trump and main stream news touting conspiracy theories making people believe in Qanon and dis-believing in getting life saving vaccines. Trump exponentially sped up the fall of real news by creating the meme “Fake News” and screaming that all real news is fake through his presidential bullhorn. It’s tempting to imagine

  Imagined instruction manual supplied with my phone camera Cleaning instructions: Step 1: Carefully remove camera filter. *See footnote. Step Two: Dispose of refuse caught within filter. Dust may contain: Essence of beauty, subtleties of joy, and That which adds life. *See footnote. Step 3: Re-attach filter. *Danger. Do not inhale dust, as it my cause excess exhilaration and extensive happiness.

 The following posts are my outlines for both an upcoming book on The Reason for Life, and a podcast. Enjoy!