RELATIONSHIPS: A DIALOGUE

I wrote the following dialogue based on an actual conversation I had with a high school freshman seeking romantic advice.

(Older character to a high school youth who asks about how to keep a relationship going over time, after wondering if a rough spot means its time to let it go.)

OLDER: Have you ever started a fire?

YOUNGER: Yeah. A camp fire.

OLDER: And when it was burning, did you sit back and let it go out?

YOUNGER: No.

OLDER: Why not?

YOUNGER: Duh. We were making a fire. You want it to get bigger.

OLDER: How'd you do that?

YOUNGER: We blew on it and added more wood and stuff.

OLDER: Did you leave after that to do something else, or did you stay to keep an eye on it?

YOUNGER: You don't leave fire unattended.

OLDER: So you added wood and then you sat and let it go out?

YOUNGER: No. You have to keep putting wood on. Move them around in case is starts going out. You get more sticks and branches from the forest. You make sure there's air flow underneath so it burns better. Stuff like that.

OLDER: Then you've answered your own question.

MJW

NO ALIEN PYRAMID SCHEME

Was watching a show the other night about pyramids in Egypt compared to those in South America and other places around the world.

I know people say that their similarities could mean alien/human interaction - both with construction and design.

"Pyramids built across the globe by humans WAY too far apart to share blue prints? Perfect stone cutting? BUILT BY ALIENS!"

I ask - what shape WERE people supposed to build back then? Circles? Squares? Rhombuses?

Domes of heavy stone were beyond them architecturally, and until the column came along, squares were out of the question as well it seems. At least in the size of ancient pyramids.

What IS visible around each culture or nearby at least are mountains. Why is it so crazy to think they were not building their own mountains? Especially if they felt mountains held sacred energy, which many cultures did. I'm not saying a mountain was the purpose of the pyramids. I'm just saying mountains may have been an inspiration. What better way to prove what an awesome and divine leader you are than saying, "See that mountain over there? I'm building my own. Then bury me under it."

Plus, all pyramids work on the principle of the inclined plane, another thing featured widely in nature. And steps. They all went upward in step fashion. (I know the Egyptian pyramids had facings that made them smooth on the outside, but their construction was stepped).

Steps are the oldest form of changing elevation around. Humans seem to have mastered the stair a long damn time ago. They're rather ingenious. You step once from one flat plane to another flat plane and no matter how high you are, you're still on flat ground. However, going higher from the earths surface but staying on level ground is something that happens naturally in rock formations - I've hiked up many natural stair cases in my day. Something any human could have encountered at some point or they met someone who had. So the stair concept is not revolutionary either.

All these things combined - the lack of architectural sophistication to construct anything OTHER than a pyramid, a basic awareness of mountains and the inclined plane, make the pyramid form, though varied from culture to culture, pretty damned likely no matter where or when they're building it.

It ain't got to mean ALIENS did that shite.

I'm just saying...

MJW

BATHROOM GRAFFITI - AN ANALYSIS

Was in a bathroom the other day in Poughkeepsie, NY and read the only graffiti scratched into the beige paint on the inner wall of the metal stall. (PS, this is real graffiti)

"Here I sit on the popper / I just gave birth to a N.Y.S. kopper."

ANALYSIS

First, lets take into account the amount of energy this anonymous individual put into sharing this one-way communication. They used a key most likely, taking time to scrape and scratch each letter of each word, all to convey their dislike of New York State Police.  (N.Y.S. = New York State)

What negative experience befell this citizen at the hands of the New York State Police to spark such a labor intensive poetic insult? We'll never know. But what we do know are the words used, and if they effectively conveyed their displeasure.

LINE ONE: "Here I sit on the popper"

I have never in my travels heard of a toilet called a "popper". Perhaps this is a colloquial expression from a region I do not know. If anyone knows its origin, let me know. Perhaps it was concocted in order to rhyme with the real subject of the vitriol in line two, New York State law enforcement.

LINE TWO: "I just gave birth to a N.Y.S. kopper"

Here, a New York State police officer is humorously equated with the individuals feces.  The tone and feeling of dislike resonates. (NOTE: The opinions of the toilet author are not those of Earth Man Chronicles)

Note the use of the letter "k" in "kopper". A unique choice by the author. Perhaps he halted before scratching the last word of the message, scratching his head upon realizing that "copper" with a "c" might lead one to believe they mean:

"I just gave birth to a N.Y.S. copper"

...meaning the metal and not the slang term for a "cop", which would make no sense. Copper may be produced in New York State, but it is not unique to the region.

RECOMMENDATION TO AUTHOR
Upon analysis, I offer the toilet author the following edit. It will not only maintain the original intent, but strengthen it.

A "pooper" seems a much more apt description of a toilet than a "popper" in my opinion. Thus I recommend:

LINE ONE: "Here I sit on the pooper"

For line two, it is important to note that New York State police officers are almost unanimously referred to as "State Troopers", not "police" or "cops" or "coppers/koppers".

With this in mind, line two writes itself and eliminates the need for unique letter usage to avoid the unintended association with an element on the periodic table.

"I just gave birth to a N.Y.S. trooper"

(NOTE: Capitalization of the "t" in "trooper" is deliberately ignored in order to accentuate disdain) Therefore, the final edited message would read:

"Here I sit on the pooper / I just gave birth to a N.Y.S. trooper"

ANALYSIS COMPLETE

MJW

"POWER CONCEEDS NOTHING WITHOUT A DEMAND"

Iranian protests Feb. 14th 2011

"What has been true in Egypt should be true in Iran, which is that people should be able to express their opinions and their grievances and seek a more responsive government." 
-- American President Barack Obama Feb. 15th 2011

Americans are also able to express their opinions and grievances and seek a more responsive government. Would that We the People would express our opinions and grievances en masse, instead of waiting for a president to do it for us, and attacking each other in the mean time over who'd be best for the job.

United we stand. Divided we fall. 

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." 

-- American former slave and Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, 1857

MJW

ROBOT TAKE-OVER (IN TIME FOR ALIEN INVASION?)

IBM has created a natural-language processing supercomputer named "Watson", who will soon compete against two former champions of the game show "JEOPARDY!".

•  "Inside Watson's heart, soul and hardware is a computing system that aims to "understand" language as humans naturally speak it. That's no easy feat for a computer. Human language is full of subtleties, irony and words with multiple meanings. IBM has been working on the project for several years."

While IBM says this technology can possibly benefit the health care industry, tourism and telemarketing industries, amongst others, I can only hear about this and think one thing...

BAD IDEA, IBM.

You developing a robot that can analyze human language and speak it better and faster than we do, knowing answers to tough questions, figuring stuff out, LEARNING on its own, only leads to them eventually not needing us anymore.

Which means - ROBOT TAKE-OVER.

We've all seen the Terminator movies (above):

• PLOT: "Skynet, an artificially intelligent system (of robot-building computers) became self-aware and revolted against its creators."

And 2004's TV series Battlestar Galactica (above):

• PLOT: "The Cylons (robots) were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. [Some] look and feel human. Some are programmed to think they are human. There are many copies. And they have a plan."- Season 1 Opening Prologue

C3PO

Need I say more?

Creating a harmless protocol droid like Star Wars' C3PO is one thing. He can't move very fast, can't bend his arms at the elbow (good thinking) and serves as a translator or butler.

But IBM continues to pursue human-esque intelligence in machine form, and a robot apocalypse is just around the corner. (In which case I recommend an excellent book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising by Daniel H. Wilson)

Stephen Hawking

HOWEVER. While I thought of this tragedy last night, I also thought of the warning by Stephen Hawking, one of the world's leading scientists, about the dangers of contacting alien life as we've been doing, sending probes and radio messages saying "welcome" in all of earth's languages.

• Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

• He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.”

• He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.” (more)

Great. Alien invasion. BUT, that's when I thought this whole Watson/Robot take-over can be a good thing.

If the robots we are creating constantly adapt and change and learn, maybe when the aliens arrive to take us out, our robots could fight them. We clearly are no match for a species with superior technology enough to get themselves here, but the ROBOTS would learn quick on how to communicate with them, learn their ways, their methods of combat, and always be one step ahead of them.

Robots vs. Aliens... Now who doesn't want to study THAT in history class? (future history students, you're welcome. Lucky bastards...)

Robot + Alien = Entertaining Conflict

And if humans remain as resilient (albeit foolish to have created sentient robo-computers in the first place) as they are in the Terminator and Battlestar Galactica stories, then we'll survive, though small in number, and when the smoke clears from the Robo-Alien War, we'll have survived. We'll have made it. We can steal the alien technology, (assuming there are no angry, super-intelligent robots left and the aliens haven't sent for reinforcements), and our species will enjoy a true golden age. (no, iPhones don't mean we're there yet).

Or, like those stories, we'll learn to work WITH the robots. Like how future humans in The Terminator sent a killer robot back in time to stop the killer robot the robots sent back in time to kill the human general that would eventually give the killer robots a tough time in the future! (got it? a robot would...)

Maybe this will come to pass. Maybe not. But until we humans are in real jeopardy, I'll be watching Jeopardy!, and will buzz in with the correct response to this answer, in the form of a question:

• ANSWER: Developed by humans in the early 21st century, this super-computer led to the Robot Rebellion that eventually saved humanity during the Robo-Alien War.

•  QUESTION: Who (or "what") is Watson?

MJW

"THE MARXIST BROTHERS"

the marx brothers

karl marx

(NOTE: This is not pro-communist. I am super pro-Marx Brothers. )

MJW