I know these things seem routine, but they are not. Today is a great day during which inshallah three souls (who - yes! - are old hands at this kind of mission) will approach the International Space Station in a Soyuz capsule around 1500 [ed. corrected from "1600," brain fart] Beale/Vandenberg. Pray to your god(s) to hold them safe, keep your fingers crossed, whatever. The future of the species is intimately tied to what the men and women of NASA and the space program are doing...
I'm very into various space programs and corporations, and have devoted virtually all of my twitter feed to it: twitter.com/williamrway - be sure to check me out!
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So my thoughts on colonizing Mars: really, using Phobos and Deimos as raw materials for orbiting habitats (in situ resource usage/utilization; @ Planetary Resources) makes much more sense, and that's where the greatest population of people would be... Sure enough, the Mars regolith is far too toxic to use as a growth medium or to sustain life -- terraforming with carefully aimed fragments Kuiper Belt objects or icy asteroid belt bodies is an idea, but really... Still, the heavy metals in the regolith are still useful, and people will need to be on the surface to extract and refine them, and to use them for sciency, interstellary stuff....
The award is given biennially to recognize a young neuroscience investigator for significant contributions to the scientific community through collaboration, creativity, and curiosity-driven research.
Fringe? Paranoid? A seemingly schizo delusion? Too many episodes of the X-Files? Perhaps. But would it be surprising if true? I mean, this is the same agency that attempted mind control experiments on U.S. civilians culminating in the defenestration of some poor soul who was tripping on LSD in the 60s, much to the chagrin and schadenfreude of the hippies. Can you really put anything past them? Even if this Disclose.tv story is so much conspiracy theorist confabulation, utterly bunk in it's details, my familiarity with history compels me to explore what could be a kernel of truth in many people's ideas of what the government may plausibly be up to...
It jibes with what we know of the mindset of certain subcultures within the intelligence community. Of course, most people when considering a secret time travel program the CIA might attempt to implement, they'll assume the worst: weaponization, overreach, unethical applications, et cetera. But even if their intentions are benign, it's still somewhat sad and pathetic. (When will the intelligence community and the military-industrial complex ever come to terms with the inarguable fact that every concrete application of scientific exploration and research inevitably improves and diminishes the human condition at the same time, and that scientific visionaries are not resources to be exploited by those whose intelligence is inferior, and whose responsibilities do not really exceed national security and petty scheming, no matter how large the scale of that scheming? But I digress...) Humanity isn't at its best when impotently yearning for what it cannot but misremember, and for what never was as we think today it used to be, or when it spins its wheels fantasizing about what could have been and what ought to be yet isn't.
Who among us hasn't at times longed to go back and choose differently if we could only have known then what we know now? Even I have (I hope harmlessly) frittered away time in such a way in my youth. But the hours and energy spent doing so in my humble opinion would be better and more effectively harnessed in pursuit of making whatever use of what we can remember and do no more than remember about the past for the sake of what could be the optimal future an accurate assessment of now can help us work towards. If life hands you lemons, is it really worthwhile to strive for some pie-in-the-sky plan to go back in time and refuse them in favor of some unknowable options (while, as such scenarios inevitably have it, ignoring the law of unintended consequences), or do we just make lemonade in the here and now?
As I understand it, there are as often put forth by physicists (with plenty of heated argument) three theoretical ways in which time travel could be accomplished, but I see no point in exploring them or possible scenarios in which they could be realized. The power in going back in order to choose differently is an illusion, a mirage, a pipe dream. The real, attainable power, mastered by so many individuals every day around the world, lies in coming to terms with what is so as to arrive at what we hope can be and what ought to be -- what cannot but be. But of course, this wouldn't be the first time humanity, particularly the federal government, has wasted untold millions or billions, has taken so much time -- years -- that could be better spent, and crushed its own feelings and others' lives, to attempt and predictably fail, when it could have much more cheaply and quickly simply practiced acceptance.
Oh, well. If the poor timing and outlandish expenditures are good enough for government work...
"The past is a place of reference, not of residence." - Willie Jolley
"What a blessing it is not to know the future." - Me
A candle doesn't lose its flame by lighting another candle. Aw, isn't that heartwarming and inspiring? It really does speak to the indomitable beauty of the human spirit, to its innate nobility and dignity. Really, if one could ignore all the death, emotional trauma, ugly (and sometimes criminal) behavior, and sci-fi/fantasy weirdness the experiment engendered among so many over the years, one could see thrown into sharp relief all that is good and worthy about humanity. It is at first blush an epic waste of everyone's time that I, and not just I, turned into something useful, educational and edifying. Thank you to whoever had the bright idea of squishing together the noggins of a not-terribly-apt sociopath and a batshit insane fag on meth who has a high IQ and a great deal of empathy. I'd like to think when this whole production finally wraps up, we'll all be better for it.
(While I have yet to be actually, concretely dealt with in reality -- "reality" being program's synonym for meatspace -- and should therefore worry about my own hide, I can't help but feel pity for Frank H. If what I suspect is true, his is going to be a sad denouement. My heart goes out to him. I hope he finds a good place where he's cared for and loved as best as the principals in the situation can demonstrate love. Maybe you could "Area 51 his ass." All he needs is food, water, and protection from anything with which he might accidentally injure himself. And last I heard, he loves to play Cocaine and Dollhouses.)
P.S. Was that program really a refinement of and capitalization on those early MKUltra experiments that were such a scandal back in the day? I'm literally dying to know. (God, my intellectual curiosity will be the death of me...)
My friend Aric once told me, "Will, most people are stupid scum who are not worth your time." I didn't argue with that, but I never took it to heart. I believe most people are inherently good, or at least they try to be good, and I believe humanity is worth preserving. I'm all for the continued survival of the species.
The best strategy to ensure the continued survival of the species is the colonization of space. While NASA and other countries' space agencies are doing fine, solid groundwork, these are a list of my favorite private and non-profit ventures that are pointing humanity in the right direction -- the direction of the stars:
...to "prove" anything, but I think when I get paid next month I'm just going to go ahead and buy an otoscope, and post a picture of my outer ear canal and eardrum. Then we can all agree for once and for all whether or not I do have some kind of hardware in my skull (I don't see how it's possible, because I don't recall any recovery time being necessary after the procedure was allegedly performed in 2009. Weird shit.)
It should at least put to rest any debate that's going on out there among those schizophrenics, tweakers, and other undiagnosed individuals as to whether or not I personally have a government implant. I mean, I could just be as crazy as everybody else. That is a possibility...
ABIs, brain implants, and cochlear implants. I love Wikipedia as a jumping off point for solid research into certain technologies and phenomena. Did you know, for instance, that cochlear implants of a certain kind can induce psychosis? Fascinating stuff.
I feel like Jaime Sommers crossed with Sylvia Brown.
"I hope Jon's still tooling around in that godawful silver Prius (Jeez, even my brother has a Volt these days.) He probably is, isn't he, asking for directions from his GPS in a town of 810,000 people that's laid out like a grid along the directions of the compass. Thank God, because otherwise he would have seen those ads all over the MUNI metro system promoting Dignity Health. Could you imagine? The man would have kittens, I tell you, kittens! His little slave boy would start throwing rocks at him instead of at me... By the way, I wonder if that lovely man Dan finally dropped Jon because Jon would call him stupid all the time..."
...This story cinches it. I told you drug-testing welfare applicants was impractical, unworkable, and insensible, not to mention demeaning to those already going through the undignified and stigmatized process of getting on welfare. Shame on Arizona -- the money spent on drug-testing people who are in crisis could have been spent on those people, instead of spent insulting everybody.
(And to those who would say the welfare application process cannot take away one's dignity or be demeaning unless one chooses it to be, all I can say is that I envy that person's self-awareness and self-mastery. I myself used to think I knew my own heart pretty well, but looking back over it all, I'm not so sure I'm as familiar with my emotional landscape and all the feelings that such a situation can bring about as I thought I was.)
Reprinted from the Fall 2014 issue of CALIFORNIA (print edition -- unavailable online.)
In 1943, during a stint in the Navy in World War II, a young Alexander Shulgin -- who would later be dubbed "Dr. Ecstasy" -- was hospitalized for a bone infection in his thumb. A nurse offered him a glass of orange juice. As he knocked back the glass, Shulgin noticed a thin film of undissolved white crystals at the bottom. He struggled to stay awake for his surgery despite what he thought was a sedative, just to see if he could. To his surprise, he later found out the the "sedative" that put him to sleep was in fact just sugar.
"A fraction of a gram of sugar had rendered me unconscious, because I had truly believed that it could do just that," writes Shulgin in his self-published autobiography and MDMA recipe book, PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story. "The mind is the major factor in defining a psychoactive drug's action," explains Shulgin, who passed away in June (see In Memoriam). This revelation paved the way to a prolific career in psychopharmacology.
After obtaining his bachelor's and doctoral degrees at Berkeley, the chemist rediscovered an obscure compound, MDMA, first isolated in 1912. From then on, it was love. Over the course of his lifetime, the "Godfather of Psychedelics" synthesized more than 200 compounds and believed them to be tools for providing insight into the brain.
"Each of us has his own reality, and each of us will construct his own unique drug-person relationship," writes Shulgin. Even if it is with a spoonful of sugar.
...or rather, a free hand, with one trillion dollars, and I could vouchsafe the survival of homo sapiens sapiens for the next ten thousand years. At least.
That turned heads. Probably my bizarre path to a situation that seemed to give the world exactly what it needed from me, when it usually needs things only from the wealthy and famous as individuals... Still, this Shackleton expedition to a reality by way of a rather unexpected route will land me in a singularly informative if unenviable position, with those in nearby having available to them only cruelty directed at me as their last resort for self-preservation. What do I do this for? So anyone witness will realize no one ever needed to think about predestination versus free will, and so I can lose the last laugh, finding in truly painful absurdity that hysterical laughter, the utterly expected and conventional reaction, will be missing, eclipsed by completely useless fear.
- Civilized Cavemen: The Gentle and Peacable Hunter Gatherer
- Consciously Directed Social Partitioning
- Metabeings: Our Institutions and Subcultures and Their Life Cycles
- Externalizers Versus Internalizers
- Psychopaths, Sociopaths and Empaths: The Game of Inverse Narcissism
- Woman King: How Empresses Reign
- Celebrating Laziness: Reasons for Being a Lump on a Log
- Precipitous Action in Governance
- The Sexual Predicate of Tyranny
- The Sadist as Twisted Empath: Arousing Pain
I believe that if a thing is beautiful and valuable, anyone who wants it should be able to have it. I believe the default, basic amount of pain that automatically comes with being human is enough to earn what's worth having. I believe in the inherent good of humanity. I believe it is easier to be good than to be bad. I believe in continuing to take people at face value and giving them the benefit of the doubt, no matter how many times or how awfully I've been screwed over. I believe I should take only what's offered, and give when asked. I believe I should criticize and celebrate what I am, and pride myself in what I've done. I believe I owe it to my fellow humans to live as well and for as long as possible. I believe the four ingredients I need for a happy life are good food, good music, sex, and family. I believe kindness is not an obligation; it is an inclination. I believe in original virtue, not just original sin. I believe in science and magic. I believe compassion is a mark of true genius, and gentleness, an indicator of true strength. I believe all living beings are interconnected. I believe we are our own worst enemies. I believe in falling in love.
I once had an argument with an ancient ex about the Hippocratic Oath, which includes, "Do no harm to anyone." He believed the Physician's Oath of 1948 supercedes it and is superior, which leaves behind the humble, simple ancient Greek wisdom to allow wide latitude to the physician in question's personal feelings, morals, ideology, and political beliefs. It allows him to, for example, prescribe something harmful like pain if he thinks it's healthy. Such a perfect shelter for the closet sadist, IMHO. It's like medicine becomes his little psychosexual playpen, hidden among nice-sounding platitudes that assuage the consciences of any possible onlookers. What do you think? I stick to my guns, and prefer the more restrictive Hippocrates. After all, I found it very telling that the physician, upon observing his patient, just might not trust self-inflicted pain. But of course, it wouldn't be about him or her...
It's ironic, really: the 1948 Physician's Oath was written with Nazi atrocities in mind, yet nothing in its wording precludes their being repeated. What was his point, I wonder?
I realize this is from 2009 (a weird year for yours truly, as well as for many others, I hear tell.) And it's enough to make even me paranoid (would I already have readers were I a center of attention?) Anyway, I wonder how these programs have appeared domestically...
In the latest outgrowth of the debate over military sponsorship of social science, members of the American Anthropological Association have voted to strengthen language in their code of ethics against research conducted in secret.
Among other things, the new amendments declare that clandestine fieldwork constitutes “a clear violation of research ethics” and that anthropologists “should not withhold research results from research participants when those results are shared with others."
