Wednesday 04 June 2008 at 6:14 pm
Here I sit, in front of the Balboa IMAX Theater, having just bought my ticket to see the Mummies show. It looks like a very interesting program. The interesting thing about this situation is that, right after I bought my ticket, a long line of school children and their chaperones formed right behind me. I assume, since it happens to be the very next movie showing, that they are all going to be in there too. Why is it that these programs appear to be exclusively attended to by elementary school children? I know many, many adults who would benefit from something like this. The curiosity that most people have as children is marginalized during their adolescence, only to be forgotten about entirely by the time they become adults. This curiosity never goes away. People I know, who are my age (plus or minus a few years), seem to seriously enjoy discussing these things. Their eyes light up when an incident of historical significance comes up and is applied to our current state of affairs. People really do love to think, but, for some reason or another, they stopped doing so.
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Tuesday 27 May 2008 at 10:28 pm
I have recently come to the realization that there is something in the works called the "singularity." All of my past writing on this blog seems to be pointing to a very similar, if not the same, concept. A book called "The Singularity is Near," by Ray Kurzweil, gives an incredible amount of insight into this very possible future. We are on our way to the next phase of cultural evolution; hopefully it comes before we annihlate ourselves with the technology that makes the singularity possible. Indeed, the most fragile point of our entire existence is going to be the time right before the singularity. The human race is so flawed, at a fundamental level, that we don't know how to use technology in a manner consistent with our long-term survival.
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Sunday 30 December 2007 at 02:36 am
There is a school of thought that believes that global warming should be considered to be one of the lesser issues that our society needs to deal with in our current time. This idea is totally wrong.
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Friday 26 October 2007 at 5:16 pm
I believe that we should - and might possibly - be able to live forever. Not in a physical sense, but rather in a mental one.
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Sunday 07 October 2007 at 10:06 pm
I admit it: I love Taco Bell. I live in San Diego, where the "best" Mexican food supposedly is (it isn't). But it really doesn't get better than a Mexican pizza, chicken ranchero soft taco, and chicken grilled "stufd" burrito. Seriously.
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Monday 09 July 2007 at 12:11 pm
There is something peculiar about all of the reports I have read regarding our plight with global warming: none mention the fact that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people will die due to starvation. This amazes me. The reports tell about rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, desertification, expanding tropical zones and disease. There are implications of famine when they talk about how agriculture will be negatively impacted by increasing global temperature, but no messages beyond this are conveyed.
Tuesday 29 May 2007 at 2:14 pm
Robots would be more morally pure and loyal to their species than humans can ever hope to be. They would also probably be a lot more intelligent than us and a lot less self-destructive. For some reason, we cannot fathom our symbiotic relationship with the environment (not "our" environment, as that terminology implies ownership); I cannot imagine a robot being so ignorant (unless, of course, the robots are dumbed down to human standards).
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