Never Say Never!

I confess to having an in-your-face attitude sometimes.  It's not my best feature, but it's better to be pissed off than pissed on, if you know what I mean.  Anyway.... One of my least favorite sub-species has always been the Cigarette Nazis, the dreaded Ex-Smokers and everyone who rides with them, telling me about my addiction.  I have COPD and I did it to myself.  But I'll die with a pack in my pocket before I roll over for these  clowns!

Well, guess what?  I'm writing this on cigarette-free Day 11 of my little detox program.  I spent 5 of those last 11 days in the hospital.   I've gone through this before, and usually I'm having a cigarette about an hour after I'm discharged, while telling myself fairy tales about quitting.  But this time it's different.  I'm done smoking, or I'm done living very soon.  So okay....I've quit. I still won't live forever, but my gig here on earth looks a lot more open-ended this way.  And I do enjoy it here, despite everything.

As for the quitting....  I should be clear of nicotine now....no chemical withdrawal stuff going on. I'm eating like a pig, but my sense of taste and smell hasn't really started to come back yet. But my breathing is a lot better.  Still, I've lost a good friend, and I miss her quite often.  

KHI-540 Internet Radio Will Cease Broadcasting

Sadly, our internet radio station, KHI-540, will go dark in a few days, on  or about February 10th, 2014.  This move was spurred by the closing of Loudcity.com, which was handling our royalty reporting requirements and payments.  While there are alternative services available, costs and other considerations make closing the station the best option.  If you've listened to and supported the station, my sincere thanks.  It was fun while it lasted!  We are considering extended broadcast hours within Second Life.  If you're an SL resident, please contact me in SL for more information.  Meanwhile, I recommend Radio Paradise (http://www.radioparadise.com) as an alternative.  Be well and keep your bedroll dry. Remember, we're all in this together.

If the universe is a hologram...

Okay, this is for real, whatever that really means.

There's an instrument under construction now at Fermilab which will, among other things, look for evidence that the universe (Yes, the one we live in.) is a holographic projection of data encoded on its 2-dimensional “surface”. Theoretically, it's a sound idea that could help explain some very basic problems in physics.

If it's true, there should be some measurable “jitter” to reality; the holographic equivalent of the pixelation you see if you enlarge a digital photo too much. That's what the “holometer” under construction now will look for; jitter. If the universe is a hologram, it'll be there. The holometer should be operational in 2012. This story itself isn't breaking news, but we might have some actual data a year from now.

See The Femilab Holometer for more.

If there universe is holographic, it means there's a fixed amount of information in it, and a maximum bandwidth.  Exactly how our holographic universe might get projected is a pretty interesting question, to say the least. And if there are parallel universes and extra dimensions, this gets even better. “The Holographic Principle and M-Theory”

I've been doing a lot of thinking the past few months about “real” vs. “virtual” relationships and experiences, and what “real” means. For example, is there a qualitative difference between a “real” friend and and friend in virtual space, or is there only a difference in quantity of information?  And one can ask the same question about every virtual experience, cyber-sex being the one that probably gets discussed most often.  But how about virtual artists, who create art entirely within a virtual space?  If a Second Life artist creates a stainless steel sculpture, what medium is he working in? 

See what I mean?  The idea of “real” gets blurry (or jittery?) pretty quickly.

And now, we may find out that all this nice “real” reality is just a hologram. If I were paranoid, I'd think the universe was poking me with a stick, just for fun. I don't believe that, but this question of what's  “real” gets more interesting all the time.

Another Decaying Orbit?

I was at the Cafe Wellstone in Second Life last night when the Occupation went bad in Oakland and the police attacked, so like just about everyone else there, I pulled up the live feed and tweet channel. The following is what I personally saw.

 The tweets were talking about flash-bangs, rubber bullets, and a sound cannon.  The live feed from ABC was cut.  Howls went up on twitter. The story was that two news choppers were being refueled.  Ten minutes later the live feed came back.  The cops were lined up in a double phalanx, clearly getting ready to move against the protesters.  Then the live feed went down and didn't come back.  The TV news channels and networks were showing nothing of any of this.  Normal moronic programming.   This morning it's obvious that things went from bad to worse last night after the feed was cut. 

I have a few thoughts.

I saw this before with the antiwar movement in the late 60's. It didn't take long for some to become radicalized and start blowing things up. The Occupation threatens the status quo far more than the antiwar movement did.   Look to the early history of the labor movement for a better parallel. 

In the 60's we all saw blood.  We saw war footage every night, we saw the bodies at Kent State, and we saw the police brutality in Chicago.  When's the last time you saw footage or photos from the war in Afghanistan? 

And here's a question:  Is there a difference in kind--a qualitative difference--between governments here in the US and those anywhere else, like Egypt, Israel, or Syria?  I don't know.

You can be sure of one thing, at least.  Your TV is spewing kool-aid.  Turn it off.  Better yet, kill it and toss the corpse into the street.  Look elsewhere to find out what's going on.  Good luck!

Pottery Shards

Chasing a tangent of a conversation this morning, I dug out my dusty copy of The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell  with Bill Moyers.  I spotted something I'd highlighted years ago. Moyers noted that Campbell saw judges in mythological terms. They wear black robes instead of suits.  Why? 

Campbell believed religion and culture and language transmit myths to us, even though we usually don't realize it. Those bits of myth "line the walls of our interior systems of belief, like shards of broken pottery in an archaeological site." But those broken shards aren't just junk. Campbell believed they could be energized through ritual, as for instance in the rituals of a courtroom.

"For the law to hold authority beyond mere coercion, the power of the judge must be ritualized, mythologized.  So must much of life today...from religion and war to love and death."

Campbell died in 1987.  I wonder what he'd make of things today; the greed, partisanship, and deepening poverty in the U.S. and much of the world. 

Love is ritualized in marriage. But half those marriages end in divorce. 

How about death?  We have rituals, but compared to what's practiced in much of the world they aren't much.  Ours take a few hours and we pay contractors to do most of the work.  Compared to the way our great-grandparents buried their dead, we've pretty much skipped out on the whole thing. 

War?  Well, the US is at war right now.  But most of us don't give a rat's ass. Most of us don't know anyone who has anything to do with that.  Our wars are handled by a small underclass who ultimately get thrown under the bus when they're done fighting. 

Religion?  Our religions have become mostly politics. 

Does the law have any power today beyond coercion?  You tell me, but it doesn't seem like it. Our behavior, especially at the top of the pile, seems limited only by what we think we can get away with. 

I'm just making observations.  I have no prescription in mind.  Maybe there isn't any for a culture amputated from its own roots and left to find meaning or purpose in nothing more than digital networking and credit ratings.  Our ancestors left the trees so we could invent Facebook.  Great...

Ooooo! Pretty lights!

The subject of "automation addiction" among airline pilots is all over the news suddenly, again.  New report comes out, the media runs with it, and lots of us will care for a few minutes, until our iPhones go off again.  Well, kids, we ought to stop and think about this a little longer. 

Once your next flight leaves the runway, those two pilots in front may only spend about 3 minutes  actually flying that plane.  The rest of the time they'll be "managing" the flight.  Here's one summary of the issue and you can search that subject for yourself and pull up a whole bunch more. 

Just to be clear, here's what those kids in front are "managing."  This is the cockpit of an Airbus A320. The newer Boeing airliners look about the same to those of us who don't actually sit in them for a living.

Cool, huh?  I think so. Ahead warp 6.  Engage, and all that.  I can well imagine how a couple of guys could snuggle up in there, hit the Wild Blue for Minneapolis, put er on "auto", get the laptops out, turn the radios down, and fly right past the whole damn city by a couple of hundred miles. Hell, that could happen to anybody. Perfectly understandable.

That incident had a happy ending.  The aircraft was never out of control, just the crew. Everybody lived.  If you were on Air France 447 you didn't.  Same basic problem, though.  It's all those pretty lights and what they do to us.

The Air France 447 plane (the plane, not the crew) got confused about how fast it was going.  That confusion lasted less than a minute, but the plane shut off its own autopilot and said to the crew, "You drive."  The pilot was clearly confused.  He did exactly the wrong things.  The plane stopped flying and hit the Atlantic at over 10,000 feet per minute.  That wounded duck death plunge from 38,000 feet lasted roughly as long as a top 40 song on the radio.  Find something on your iPod that's 3 min 30 seconds long, and scream through the whole thing.  I picked an old song, "I'll Be Seeing You" by Sinatra. 

What's my point? 

I used to have a head full of phone numbers. If you're old enough, you probably did, too.  But right now, if Peaches the pit bull eats my cell phone, I'll have to dial 411 to get the numbers for my own children.  This isn't funny. Peaches has already chowed down 4 TV remotes in her short life. 

There was a story a few years ago about a group of people who jumped off a perfectly seaworthy yacht in the Atlantic, in good weather, got into a raft, and set off their emergency locator thingy, while the yacht sailed away.  Why?  The GPS quit!  The boat made it home.

Urban legend? Maybe.  But don't be too sure. 

Here's an interesting exercise for you:

Make a list of things you can do well, or subjects you know well, without the help of electronic gadgets, talking robots, wifi hotspots, Blackberrys, or instructions of any kind.  What can you cook without your recipe file?  Could you find the Grand Canyon or Detroit on a paper map, and actually get there without a GPS?   Think you could build a fire in the woods on a rainy day with a pocket knife and three matches?

Science fiction author Robert Heinlein wrote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
 
How we doing, do you think?  It's a noble goal, at least.

Peaches is a bit bigger now. This was January 2011. She had Parvo and was left to die in a vacant apartment.

 
Be well.  Work for peace. Learn something new everyday. Watch your back-trail.  Let's be careful out there. 

Identity: Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?

Yup. Eric Shcmidt, heads up, buddy!  I'm outing myself.

Unless Google changes its hive-mind policy on identity, I'll be moving shortly. Google chairman Eric Schmidt thinks I'm a fraud.  I think he knows better, but he chooses to peddle his snake oil anyway.  He's right about one thing, though:  Google, Google+, Blogspot... these are optional. 

Yesterday in the Guardian there's a good essay on what's wrong with the Google identity policy, and I'm not going to rehash it.  Go read, if you like.  Watch out, though.  It was written by "Cory Doctorow" and I have to wonder about a famous last name like that.  In my youth I sometimes signed unimportant stuff with famous names, just to see if anyone noticed.  (Nobody did.)  Pen names and stage names have been around forever, and I'm not worried about Cory. I don't care what name is on his passport. He wrote a good piece. Mark Twain wrote good pieces, too, but that wasn't the name on his steamboat license.

At least until the Department of Homeland Security came along, there has never been anything illegal about using any name you choose.  Not in the U.S., anyway.  It's done all the time, and has been for centuries. Silence Dogood showed up in 1722 from soon-to-be   notorious bad boy and traitor to his king Ben Franklin.  A pseudonym only becomes an "alias" if you do something illegal.

Okay, as much as I may be a legend in my own mind, especially if drinking heavily, I agree with you.  I'm not Ben Franklin, or even Cory Doctorow.  Not Mark Twain, not Joseph Conrad, not William Shakespeare.  I blog a little bit.  I was in the newspaper business once, long ago.  I could blog under "Wilma Flintstone" and it would make no difference to anyone but me. 

I set this blog up under "Red Sparrow" because I wanted something that sounded vaguely partisan. My mission, after all, and insofar as I have one, is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus by comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.  I'm much better at the second part. What's a poor girl to do? Answer: Play to your strong suit, even if it's only clubs.

It's not too hard to figure out that my "real" identity is Sparrow Letov.  But hold on.  Don't call 411 just yet. Sparrow Letov was born 13 Novemeber 2007, courtesy of Linden Labs and Second Life. At that time, when you created an SL account, you had to pick a last name from a list of a few dozen options.  I picked "Letov" because it's short, easy to remember, has a good beat and it's easy to dance to, and because Russian writers and poets are so wonderfully tragic and romantic.  Or as we used to say back in the day, they're kozmic. 

"Sparrow" has nothing to do with the moronic pirate movies.  That comes from an excellent novel, Bone Dance, by Emma Bull, now sadly out of print. 

If the DHS or the NSA or the FBI want the name printed on my driver's license, that's easy. Linden Labs has that information, and so does Comcast, my ISP for many years.  A few folks in my Google+ circle have it, though very few and only in cases where (a) there's a reason, and (b) trust is pretty damn total.  Of course, the name on my driver's license isn't the same as the ones on either of my two very valid birth certificates.  And those two documents show different names. My old-old passport shows a different name than my old passport. So all you identity wankers who agree with Eric Schmidt, tell me:  What's my real name?  Must be the one on my credit card, huh?

If you've entrusted a bunch of computer geeks and corporate buccaneers at Google and Facebook with your personal information, or hung it out there in public, I think you're a fool, frankly. You've made yourself part of a target-rich environment for every sociopath and evil-doer on the planet.  Good luck. My friends and my family have my phone number and address.  They're free to use them anytime.  And that works both ways. If I went to high school with you in 1963 and we haven't seen each other since, don't expect me to be very interested in what's gone on in your life.  I'm not.  And I'm not interested in telling you about mine.  You're not an "old friend" I can "reconnect" with, you're merely another stranger in this strange land. That's not a bad thing, it's just the way it is.  The past exists only in our minds, and very imperfectly. 

Safety on in the Internet?  Not likely.  Careful as I try to be, anyone who hacks any one of several databases can clean out my debit account.  They could come knocking on my door anytime. So be it.  I'll take those risks.  At least they won't know who's going to answer the door, and they might be surprised. 

Be safe.  Work for peace. Be careful.  It's dangerous out there.