Slow Going...

So once again I have been seeing many things about space and space travel and aliens. Maybe the universe is creating more of a focus on aliens and space travel because there will soon be an official "first contact" made public ... but that is yet to remain.

But so, the other day I was at dinner with my friend and his Dad and we were talking about all sorts of things about like society and differnet cultures and the universe and alien life and stuff. And as we were talking, I was thinking about how maybe on reason space travel has been so slow going for us, is because there's not much incentive to go out and explore. It seems to only real incentive there is ... is for the sake of exploring.

However, if say Mars did have life on it, intelligent or not, would we not have already gone there decades ago? I mean.. we've gone to the Moon, we've sent robots to Mars, and sure it's new and different and can be viewed as beautiful, but as one of the Apollo astronauts put it when they landed on the Moon... it's a beautiful desolation. And that's just it.. we've gone out and we've sent probes and satellites to most of the planets, and there's nothing really there.

Our moon is a dead moon, Mars is basically a dead planet, the only things that are really interesting are stuff about geology, which most people don't care about.

But imagine if the Moon had an atmosphere, or if Mars hadn't gotten hit by a large meteor, and if there were still water and possibly plants/animals on it? If this were the case, we would definitely have not just small bases, but full thriving colonies on both the Moon and Mars by now. And this would have caused unknown scientific advances which might have given us the ability to travel between stars by now. I mean, we have physicists working on way trying to to that right now, and in some ways they have figured them out, but only on the nano scale. Teleportation for example... scientists have figured out teleportation, but the have only figured out how to teleport photons one at a time. But if we were already living on 3 different celestial bodies by now, there would definitely be many more people interested in physics and science, and there would be a much larger incentive to develop a transporter ... if not for people ... then to be able to almost instantly transport food and supplies back and forth from Earth, the Moon, and Mars for the people living and working there. And we would definitely have had space stations and maybe even entire hotels in space by now.

So when contemplating alien life, perhaps they are not thousands or millions of years ahead of us in their evolution. Perhaps maybe they are only a century or so ahead of us, but unlike us, there were other moons or planets in their own solar system which had life on them, intelligent or otherwise. I mean, if Mars had forests on it, that's one thing .. and if it had animals on it, that would be even more amazing and a bigger incentive to go and explore and live on the planet ... but if by the time we were able to send robots to Mars, we found there were intelligent beings with language and a society of some sort, that would have been revolutionary! If that were true, you can bet that the entire world would unite together to explore Mars and the rest of the solar system and to look for other planets outside our star with new life.

So maybe that is one reason we are not as advanced in space travel, while with all these UFO's and things, there appear to be other civilizations who are. Maybe when they were at our stage, they looked to their moons and planets, and found water and plants and life, which spurred on a revolution in space exploration, that maybe in just a generation or two, brought them to the point of being able to travel between stars with relative ease. And the reason we haven't done something like that yet, is because all we have found outside our planet, are dead, unlivable, barren planets and moons.

We can all say "What If", but that won't do much .. so hopefully despite not having a reason to explore like finding life on the Moon or Mars, we will soon have humans living on the Moon and Mars, and beyond...

Energy

I've been having lots of ideas and hearing and seeing very interesting things since my last post, but haven't written on here ... mainly because I'm pretty sure no one knows this blog exists. But I'm in a "mood" right now, and no one is up for me to talk about it to, so I'm turning to the blogging world.

So today I heard an ad for a solar installer trying to encourage people to install solar panels and I just commented on a YouTube video, talking about Solar and Wind Power. In the commercial, the guy mentioned how Los Angeles has some of the best exposure to sunlight than most places on the planet, and also how we have more rooftops than probably any city in the country. I thought about this, and this may actually be one incredible advantage for Los Angeles County that most people sometimes consider a disadvantage. That is, that unlike most other major cities in the country and the world ... Los Angeles is just a big sprawl. There's the handful of skyscrapers in downtown, a few, much smaller buildings in West L.A. and places, but for the most part it's the huge suburban sprawl going way North into the Santa Clarita Valley, all the way West along the coast, all the way South down to the tip of Orange County, and all the way East until it turns into open desert. It is an incredibly massive area, and nearly all of it is covered with rooftops. Rooftops which can be fitted with solar panels, especially since by the end of this year/beginning of next year there should be thin film, so-called Power Plastic solar cells that are as efficient or better than current solar panels, but 1/10 the cost or less, making solar panels an economically feasible option for the majority of Americans and businesses. And with that.. every house and every business could install enough solar cells to cover their entire power needs with plenty of excess which they could sell back to the grid and get paid for.

The entire Greater Los Angeles Area would become 100% energy independent on its own, every single house and buiding would be a mini power plant, the monthly or yearly paychecks that home owners and business owners would get would be like a permanent stimulus check, as well, the $100, $200, $300 or more monthly electricity bill would be eliminated, which would be just that much more money every month that people have to help pay down debt, add to savings, use for vacations, presents, whatever. Blackouts would be a thing of the past. And if this is all done in addition to the massive solar plants that the city is building on it's own, then those plants could become sources of free money for the city, as they would have massive excesses because the city's buildings would provide energy themselves, meaning the city would really have no other option but to sell their excess energy to other cities, states, or even neighboring countries.

This would mean that perhaps things like parking meters could be eliminated throughout the Greater Los Angeles Area. Or perhaps the savings would mean property taxes could be lowered. Or perhaps these savings would mean that Los Angeles City as well as all the smaller suburb cities would have more money to spend on our public schools or on paying our teachers more or on improving our health facilities. Perhaps if similar things were done throughout California, there would be enough savings and enough new revenue generated to completely fund a comprehensive universal healthcare system for the State of California, meaning any new Federal health system would have much more money to give to other states ... not in California's unique situation ... to spend on providing all of their citizens comprehensive healthcare coverage.

The potential longterm benefits are amazing. Something seemingly as simple as homeowners putting solar panels on their roofs to help lower or eliminate their energy bill and to "do their part" to save the environment ... could radically change the way we live our lives in this city, this country, and this planet. Aside from things like phone bills and possibly water bills (though a rain water trapment system could eliminate or at least dramatically reduce water bills) that people would still have to pay ... if you switched to energy efficient washer/dryers & refrigerators, and switched from gas burning stoves to electric or magnetic induction stovetops as well as electric/induction ovens and solar water heating systems with electric water heaters as a backup ... you could eliminate virtually every major bill you have on your house, except the rent/mortgage or course, and be able to save several hundred dollars a month and several thousand dollars a year. So you could pay off your house that much quicker or travel the world in a little bit nicer fashion or take vacations more often than you could before. I mean... think about it... our children who are alive today and for every subsequent generation after theirs... could never have to pay an "electric bill" their entire life. In a generation, the entire idea of an "electric bill" could be a forgotten thing of the past; looked on as one of the hardships previous generations had to endure before the Clean Energy Revolution.

I could go on of course, but since it's late and since no one is probably reading this... I'll stop.

But if you are reading this... think about it, learn about it, buy and install solar panels, tell your friends and families to install solar panels or wind turbines.

The "Clean Energy Revolution" is not some natural cycle like the leaves falling or bears going into hibernation. It, like everything in life, is not some inevitability that is simply going to happen because you hear (a few) powerful people talking about it. The Clean Energy Revolution will only happen if we make it happen by doing things like this and how long it takes to happen depends solely on how quickly well all get off our asses and start buying solar panels or wind turbines.. even if you can only afford one or two a year, by the time Obama is running for re relection you could have an energy independent home that is generating free money for you. It will only happen when we make it happen, so let's make it happen now, today. Enough talking, we need more doing. The materials are here, they have been here for decades, we just need the will to do it. We were able to put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth in less than 8 years and when we started on that journey, most of the technology we used didn't even exist yet! We have the technology, we simply need the collective will to do it. And if we do, then assuming President Obama serves two terms... by the time Obama leaves office, The United States could be 100% energy independent. Not to mention the millions and millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other harmful gasses we would no longer be sending into the atmosphere every year.

Viva la Revolucion!

Space Stage

So I've been playing this game Spore lately. I've played it before and basically beat it, but I for whatever reason got the urge to play it again. In the game you evolve from a simple single celled organism, through all the steps of evolution from Cell Stage to Creature Stage to Tribal Stage to Civilization Stage to Space Stage. Once you get to the Space Stage, it's pretty amazing how big it is. The creators created I think somewhere around a million or more individual stars in the galaxy for you to explore, each with one to several planets to inhabit, and there are hundreds if not thousands of different species, created both by the creators and by players, who you interact with. 

Anyway... all this playing a space game got me to thinking about space and how we are just barely hardly even scratching the surface of space travel and the "final frontier", which I think is a misnomer, but that's for another topic. Like, comparing it to other civilizations in the past.... in terms of space, we're lower than the south pacific islanders riding around in little canoes. No, we have just come up with the idea for a canoe have have only recently started to try to make canoes and test them  like 10 feet off the coast. That's basically how far we are in space travel and technology. 

Though I did some research and one thing about our development, when compared to the rest of human history, is absolutely amazing. That is that ever since around 1971, human beings have been living consistently in space. Right now, as I'm writing this, and every day of your life when you're going to school and work and hanging out with friends, etc. there are a handful of men and women living and working in space, circling the Earth I think about 15 times every 24 hours. It's amazing ... if someone asked you to name all the types of environments people live in, you'd have to say ... deserts, mountains, forests, plains ... and space.

We may only be in a canoe ten feet off the coast, but damn it all if that still isn't amazing.

Some thoughts on alien life...

Our galaxy, which we call the Milky Way Galaxy has approximately 400 billion stars it. Currently after only viewing less than 10% of the visible universe, we have identified about 3,000 galaxies. Estimates are that in the entire universe there are around 125 billion galaxies.So, averaging 400 billion stars per galaxy, at 125 billion galaxies, that means we can estimate there are 50,000 billion billion or 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the entire universe. To say we are anywhere near alone in the universe is probably the absolute dumbest thing anyone could ever say.

As for alien life that's intelligent and can navigate the stars and galaxy and universe, well let's think here...
Aside from the millions of UFO sightings worldwide and the fact that people from military grunts to PhD's to world leaders have admitted to either seeing or working with UFO's and aliens.... we can make an educated guess as to whether or not there are aliens at our level or higher out there. Scientists used to say that it's impossible for aliens to visit us because stars are just too far apart. Now they admit there are ways to get around that, but that we don't have the ability to do so yet. However, our star is young compared to others. The binary stars Zeta Reticuli 1 & 2 for example are about twice the age of Sun. Assuming there is life in that system as well and it followed a similar developmental path to ours, do the math and you can guess that they have been around for 500,000 years to our 300,000, do the math again and you can figure their move from nomadic tribal peoples without language, science, etc. to a "civilzation" began 10,000 years ago to our 6,000. Meaning they have about a 4,000 year head start on us. Imagine our world in the year 6009 instead of 2009. Wouldn't you expect us to have the ability to travel to other planets, have anti gravity, all the star trek/star wars thing and more by then? If so, then why think others, who have been around longer can't already?

Worldwide Union

I recently saw this map that shows the GDP of every state and gives the name of the country for which their GDP is comparable to the state's GDP. It's pretty amazing how our one country's GDP is equal to 50 other country's GDP's combined. For example, the State of California alone is equal to the country of France and the GDP of Texas is equal to the GDP of Canada.

This is pretty interesting, but what it really made me think of and realize is that we are really just a union of states. States in the sense of the greek city-states of Athens and Sparta or the Italian city-states of Florence and Vienna. Granted we're states and not city states, but it makes me think differently about the term "state". Usually we talk and think of the different states as more province like than as sovereign states. For instance, Canada has provinces, which are more like areas divided up by the main government. However looking back on the history of the Unites States, which started simply as 13 states and grew to 50 today, it's really not much different than the European Union. People criticize the EU today and worry about a similar American Union joining together USA, Canada, and Mexico. While I'm not neccesarily a supporter of an American Union, this picture has made me rethink the whole idea of country's uniting under a common currency and government.

The European Union stared with the Euro, a common currency to help boost up poorer countrys and help with trade between nations. Today however, the European Union has an elected commission which serves as the legislative pillar of the Union and has a President and everything. I didn't realize this until talking to a guy I met from Europe recently, this is a pretty big deal, it's one step closer to a united world government. You know, like all those future governments portrayed in films about the future or alien planets in which they have a worldwide or one world government. Which is pretty interesting because there are many people who are against globalization and the idea of a one world government, and yet in all our films and visions of the future and of advanced alien societies, they have all united the earth in peace under a common government. I mean, isn't that the long term goal for our world? Getting to a place where we all have the same laws and rules and limits of government intrusions of our natural rights and everything?

I mean when you really think about it, what the European Union is doing today is exactly what the USA did a couple hundred years ago, over the period of a century or so. People went out and made new towns and cities in the Louisiana territory and Oregon Territory and former Mexican owned land, they got together, mapped out borders, and became their own independent states. Then they all asked to be part of the Union of the United States of America and Congress debated and voted as to whether or not to allow this new state to join. This process actually went on until 1950 when Hawai'i was added as the 50th state. The Europen Union is doing the exact same thing, the only thing is that they united with a common currency first and now have a common government, whereas the U.S. united under a common government first, then created a common currency. But there was an original group of countrys that joined, and others have slowly been added to the union over the years, currently the EU had 27 member states and a GDP of over $19 trillion.

So this both makes me try to think more of every state as it's own country and the federal government as just a common body we have mutually agreed to follow, which.. is what the constituion says we are, but it seems these days that most of us think of the USA just at the federal government and don't pay as much attention to what the state governments do outside of the occasional speech by the governor. But this also kind of makes me rethink the idea of globalization and a common world government. Ultimately this is the goal we want, all nations brought up or lowered down to an equal level. No more allowing some countries to torture or stone women, making sure every citizen of every nation of the world has equal rights. And money wise, being able to combine all the wealth of the nations of the world, uniting some government programs like, say... the space program. Imagine a unified one world government which is able to fund one common space program instead of a handful of space programs almost competing against each other. Currently NASA's budget is around 17 billion, but if we combined the world's programs together, we could boost that to 24 billion, plus we could build things faster and cheaper by have whole countries build only certain aspects of ships or satellites or whatever and be able to build new spaceships and exploration robots and vehicles faster and cheaper. And this is just one example of a benefit of a worldwide government.

Now granted there are many bad things that could come from a one world government, but that's no different than the problems that can come up from governments today. But I'm sure we could do things like we have in America to try to preven as much corruption as possible. The EU for example is a huge union, but the EU commission right now doesn't have more power than the individual country's governments, kind of like the Articles of Confederation in America.

Anyway, this is just the thinking process my mind takes after looking at one little picture, but it is some food for thought.

Is the world getting smaller, or is our reach getting longer?

Everyone always talks about how the world has gotten smaller. How planes are now able to fly nonstop around the world, trip that took months now take hours, and of course how the internet has been able to almost instantly connect us with people around the world. I'm not trying to downplay the significance of this, on the contrary, it is absolutely amazing that I can get on a video chat with a friend down the street, a friend on the other side of the country, and a friend on the other side of the globe all at the same time and have a conversation where we can hear and see eachother... and that it doesn't increae my internet bill a single cent! But I don't think the world has gotten smaller, I think our reach has gotten longer. Maybe it's just semantics, but I like to look at it my way instead. When you say the world has gotten smaller... you're saying that the Earth has done somthing, when it hasn't. The Earth 50 years ago was 85,345,714,285,714,285,714,286 times larger than a human being and today it is still 85,345,714,285,714,285,714,286 times larger than a human being. What's changed is all the amazing things we as human beings have come up with. Granted, I think it would have been better if we were able to focus inward to improve ourselves instead of improving machines so much, but I digress.

I just saw that number on how much larger the Earth is than a human being, and it's pretty much impossible for our minds to really picture how much bigger the Earth is than each and every one of us. But that just made all of what we have accomplished so much more incredible. We haven't shrunken the Earth so that we could travel the country in the same time we could travel between two cities, we were able to make a way for us to travel an incredibly further distance in a shorter amount of time than one used to be able to travel a much much shorter distance. 

Now if only we can figure out how to make ourselves fly on our own without need for planes, then we'd reeaallly be on to something...

"The Ruling Class"

We always hear ourselves or people around us talk about the few people who really rule the world. Whether you think it's just a handful of old white men in Washington or the hidden masterminds of the Illuminati; we all seem to have the idea in our minds that only a few people are in charge, that only a few people are actually in a position to change the world, and the rest of us should just simply try to live a nice, quiet, happy life and hope it all turns out for the best.

This is both theoretically the farthest thing from the truth and realistically they way it is. Though I must always say that anything that is "just the way it is" in no way means that's the way it always has to be, all things change; the question then is who changes them?

There are only two types of people in this world who are able to rule and make changes and get things done: those that pay attention and those that get involved. And nine times out of ten those people in charge are both those things. They are not the ones in the "ruling class" because they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth or because they are just iherently better or more well suited to govern other people or be in charge of a multinational conglomorate. They are in the position they are in because they paid attention to the many aspects of the world around them and because they decided to not just bitch and complain with their buddies over a few beers, but to stop playing Monday Morning Quarterback, get off their ass, and go try to make some changes in the world.

Too many people have been ingrained with the idea that they can't make a difference, they aren't good enough to do something "big", or that it's all pointless anyway because apparently some cosmic force has already decided who will run things and who will be run over. But speaking from experience I can say that there is great virtue in getting off your ass and doing something, you can make a huge difference in the world by doing something so simple as talking to your neighbors and going door to door to meet your fellow human beings and inform them about something you are passionate about. 

So if you're tired of things not being how you want them, then do something about it. Be the change you want to see in the world; it worked for Ghandi, and all he had to do was sit down and not eat anything. Pay attention to what's going on in this huge, incredible, and diverse world. Get involved in your local neighborhood's social networkd, local, state, and federal politics, attend the weekly PTA meetings, read reputible newspapers, listen to NPR on the way to work instead of the oldies station, just focus on what you care about and think is important for the world around you and if you see something wrong, try to fix it, it's actually not that hard!

Conformity and Non... A Fork in the Road of Life.

From the day we are born, we are taught to conform. Sometimes we conform for practical reasons; we all learn the same language, use the same numerals for mathematics, etc. Other times we conform for social reasons; school kids wear the same clothes as their friends, listen to the same type of music, etc. As we get older and our conception of the world grows from the bars of our crib to the eternal expanse of the universe, we find there are seemingly infinite possibilities for us in this life, and the prospect of non-conformity grows deeper in our hearts. Each and every one of us wants to be something special; a superhero, the inventor of a wondrous machine, first man on Mars, President of the United States of America, and so on. With the passage of time, we learn that men cannot fly or see through walls (or at least so we’ve come to believe), only a handful out of the billions of beings every born will be President, only one man can ever be the first man on Mars; so then what for the rest of us? Shall we simply be a worker bee or a soldier ant? Where is our place in this world, what is our destiny for life, what greatness shall we inherit? Perhaps, however, these goals do not lie in the world beyond the barrier of electrons separating our flesh from the air. Perhaps instead, there is greatness in each and every one of us, and the problem is simply that too many of us choose to look outward rather than inward. For it is safer to aspire to be something someone else already has been; knowing it is acceptable and loved, than to look inside and become something unique and untested.

Janurary 20th, 2009

This day is more than once in a lifetime, this day is once in History. We on this Earth and in this country will be forever remembered as the generation that saw the first African American President, beyond there being the first woman or gay or latino President sometime in the future, this is the one that broke the chain and opened the door for all others and that is something that can never be repeated. And it will no doubt be remembered as the day America reclaimed its name, reestablished its purpose, and reignited the torch to pass on to future generations.

Just as I wish with a certain kind of jealousy and envy that I could have been there to see the moon landing or MLK or JFK or FDR or the fall of the Berlin wall, so will my children and grandchildren look to me with awe and jealousy asking me, "What was it like?" And I know even now that there are no words I or anyone else could ever utter that would truly express the grandeur, the pride, the patriotism, the joy, and the overwhelming sense of hope and excitement for the future of this country and the future of our world that I felt this day..