Home… yuppers, I really love this place.
Let me count the ways.
I love having DakotaDawg back with me even if she seems to love someone else even better. I love her even after I bathe her and walk her and then bring her home to play in the yard… then she decides that something on the ground has a better scent than DawgieShampoo.
I love that after her third bath in two days she is somewhat improved in the DawgieOdor category and no longer smells like what a little kid’s ‘mell my finger does.
I love waking in the morning to coffee that I make that actually tastes like cawfee.
I love the 2% milk much more than vacation 1% milk. I thought if people wanted milk that did not taste like milk or coffee that did not taste like cawfee that maybe they should add the water for themselves to thin it.
I love drinking cawfee out of my special cup made especially for that purpose. I especially love that it tastes like cawfee.
I love my kitties even the LittleOrangeTalkingKitty despite the fact that he is indeed a BedHawg and two of them are not the Purrfect Kitty and can’t seem to keep their food down. I love especially the PurrfectKitty even though she has no faults except too much white hair that she likes to decorate the floor and furniture with.
I love being able to watch the US Open Tennis on my own TV.
I love sleeping in my own bed AND on my side of my bed.
I love that when I wake up in the middle of the nite and have to go to the bathroom that the bathroom is where it has been for the last 23 years.
I love that the bathroom is not across the hall and all the doors don’t stick, groan and squeak when I open them.
I love that Jaws, Hoover, Roomba, Moby Dick, Spot and all the other little fishies are still in the same school in my fishpond and that they still remember what to do when I put KittieKibbles in the pond for them.
I love that I have hummingbirds finally coming to the hummingbird feeder.
I love living somewhere where my friends can be bribed by fresh homemade bread to drop us at the airport and pick us up when we finally get home with Organic 2% milk for my cawfee.
I love that Charlene still remembers that I like the fresh fish and how much of it I want when I go grocery shopping.
I love that Tallahassee is home and no one keeps changing my towels in the bathroom leaving fewer and fewer everyday.
I love my OLD Toyota Land Cruiser and it starts when I turn the key.
Did I mention that I love being home and the fact that if we go to the beach it is not going to cost us $15 or $21 a day to park the car?
And, did I mention how much I love DakotaDawg in her bed near my recliner right next to that lamp that has so much character that I love so much?
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 08/30/2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Party's Over!
Posted on 08/28/2010 by srplus
" The Party’s Over:
Turn out the lights
The party’s over
They say that
All good things must end
Call it tonight
The party’s over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again"
Yes, Yes it is.
Cause I’m leavin’ on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again
Cape Cod, I hate to go.
Cape Cod, I hardly knew ye.
We went for a hike on the bay side and it reminded me of Alligator Point… all muddy and calm. There were even scallop shells on the beach. Main difference was the sand was really sand on Cape Cod and not like billions of pieces of broken up shells. And, on Cape Cod there were real rocks on the beach. And, you couldn’t get to the beach unless you paid $15 a day to the Feds to park along the National Seashore or $21 to some township for the right to park to walk to the beach. The only place to see the ocean or the bay was if you paid for the right to park. It was very strange and very touristy.
I think we had a revolution over this kind of thing. I can’t wait to get home to see DakotaDawg and I hope she still loves and remembers me as much as I do her.
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 08/27/2010
" The Party’s Over:
Turn out the lights
The party’s over
They say that
All good things must end
Call it tonight
The party’s over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again"
Yes, Yes it is.
Cause I’m leavin’ on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again
Cape Cod, I hate to go.
Cape Cod, I hardly knew ye.
We went for a hike on the bay side and it reminded me of Alligator Point… all muddy and calm. There were even scallop shells on the beach. Main difference was the sand was really sand on Cape Cod and not like billions of pieces of broken up shells. And, on Cape Cod there were real rocks on the beach. And, you couldn’t get to the beach unless you paid $15 a day to the Feds to park along the National Seashore or $21 to some township for the right to park to walk to the beach. The only place to see the ocean or the bay was if you paid for the right to park. It was very strange and very touristy.
I think we had a revolution over this kind of thing. I can’t wait to get home to see DakotaDawg and I hope she still loves and remembers me as much as I do her.
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 08/27/2010
Here comes the sun!
Here comes the sun!
Posted on 08/27/2010 by srplus
“Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
And I say
It’s alright
Little darling
The smile’s returning to the faces
Little darling
It seems like years since it’s been here”
As I look at the outside brightness I remember back to that dark nite standing on the sidewalk outside of the gym at college. The concert was about to start but I could not afford admission to listen to the Savant. I was given front row seats by the pot smoking roadie and sat in the front row as my auditory reception system was assaulted into complete deafness. The oh so best rendition of this song was sung right in front of me by that toothless wonder Richie Havens.
Havens led off for GRR – Grand Funk Railroad. My submission was complete. I lived in a world of silence for almost a week. The only exception was the constant ringing that I still hear in my old age.
As that warm sunglow floods Cape Cod I am anxious to go watch the surfers that will be sitting beyond the break, hopefully catching the occasional wave. The surfers compete with the seals who never miss a wave. The storm that has finally passed left the aftermath of still visible large waves. This storm’s passing is reinforced by all the small black locus leaves that are stuck to everything making even our rental Hyundai camouflage. If the humidity continues to drop the towels may dry on the towel racks in the bathroom instead of in the whirling dryer.
Greg our resident bike rider is climbing into his Canadian Blazer and headed out to meet his wife after her workshop morning is completed. I think they will go eat lunch at the Deli where they will baffle these local folks with the funny accents with their “Eh?”after every statement or question.
Lori’s mom has climbed the stairs to their sequestered cocoon above Mary’s room. Mary is down from the Down East and is down the hall east from us. Both her and our small downstairs rooms with each of our ‘private bathroom across the hall’ surround the dominating stairwell to the Lori’s aerie.
The gravel drive announces the arrival of all vehicles and walkers as they near the combo garage ‘living and breakfast room’ of our cape guesthouse. The basement trolls should briefly make their presence known by the creaking of the door at the bottom of their stairway to race by and get some lunch. They are the only ones who have not joined the comrades of the garage clique.
I have started calling our small guesthouse the Bates Motel. I keep expecting Anthony Perkins to slip into the garage with another load of towels to throw into the hungry dryer. Instead it is always Linda.
The shock inducing free bathrobes so courteously provided by our hostess are scrambling my brain cells when the static electricity straightens my hair. Next time I put that spun plastic next to my skin I am going to keep a close eye peeled… If I hear the screech, screech, screech of that music I certainly am not getting into that shower.
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 08/26/2010
Posted on 08/27/2010 by srplus
“Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
And I say
It’s alright
Little darling
The smile’s returning to the faces
Little darling
It seems like years since it’s been here”
As I look at the outside brightness I remember back to that dark nite standing on the sidewalk outside of the gym at college. The concert was about to start but I could not afford admission to listen to the Savant. I was given front row seats by the pot smoking roadie and sat in the front row as my auditory reception system was assaulted into complete deafness. The oh so best rendition of this song was sung right in front of me by that toothless wonder Richie Havens.
Havens led off for GRR – Grand Funk Railroad. My submission was complete. I lived in a world of silence for almost a week. The only exception was the constant ringing that I still hear in my old age.
As that warm sunglow floods Cape Cod I am anxious to go watch the surfers that will be sitting beyond the break, hopefully catching the occasional wave. The surfers compete with the seals who never miss a wave. The storm that has finally passed left the aftermath of still visible large waves. This storm’s passing is reinforced by all the small black locus leaves that are stuck to everything making even our rental Hyundai camouflage. If the humidity continues to drop the towels may dry on the towel racks in the bathroom instead of in the whirling dryer.
Greg our resident bike rider is climbing into his Canadian Blazer and headed out to meet his wife after her workshop morning is completed. I think they will go eat lunch at the Deli where they will baffle these local folks with the funny accents with their “Eh?”after every statement or question.
Lori’s mom has climbed the stairs to their sequestered cocoon above Mary’s room. Mary is down from the Down East and is down the hall east from us. Both her and our small downstairs rooms with each of our ‘private bathroom across the hall’ surround the dominating stairwell to the Lori’s aerie.
The gravel drive announces the arrival of all vehicles and walkers as they near the combo garage ‘living and breakfast room’ of our cape guesthouse. The basement trolls should briefly make their presence known by the creaking of the door at the bottom of their stairway to race by and get some lunch. They are the only ones who have not joined the comrades of the garage clique.
I have started calling our small guesthouse the Bates Motel. I keep expecting Anthony Perkins to slip into the garage with another load of towels to throw into the hungry dryer. Instead it is always Linda.
The shock inducing free bathrobes so courteously provided by our hostess are scrambling my brain cells when the static electricity straightens my hair. Next time I put that spun plastic next to my skin I am going to keep a close eye peeled… If I hear the screech, screech, screech of that music I certainly am not getting into that shower.
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 08/26/2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
My Vacation = Your Vacation... Not So Much!
Still Raining. I suppose that means there is little to do. Oh so wrong Obi-Wan…
(Continued)
Yup. And it is still raining on and off. I am hoping this works and this continuation posts as a new blog entry because I am not wanting to cut and paste what was already entered.
Yesterday was a continuance of the Great Cape Cod Pottery Studio Tour. On Monday we visited some of the local potters’ studios. It was quite edifying. We met The Nasty Potter at his studio but did not let him deter us from our quest. Customer service was not his strong point and the idea of tact completely escaped him.
We then visited Kemp Pottery Studio in downtown (if you could call it that) Orleans. This was enlightening and it was great to see a potter who enjoyed talking to people even if they were not customers. Talent and creativity surrounded those who stopped in to see what he had done and what he was capable of.
Then, after rocketing past two potters who had their studio poorly marked and on the wrong side of the road we managed a turnaround and got back to meet Drunk Potter. He was quite a strange duck and wanted to share all of his experiences in pottery, building construction and his recent divorce. It is always so much fun having a conversation with one so anxious for company but so unable to cope with standing upright.
The next studio was the home of a very nice man who also had his studio at his house. He worked and interacted and took time out to share his point of view. We soon left and visited Heart Pottery, home of a talented escapee production potter who talked of working piecework for $.25/cup and managed to achieve an incredible 60 cups an hour on someone else’s wheel before she gave it up and went into business for herself. She was the only potter on the cape that we visited that did some Raku. There is a loosely knit organization of potters here who have formed almost a Co-op and buy and advertise together. Diane showed off her $20K kiln that was as big as a small city apartment. She is hosting a workshop in the winter for the Cape Cod Potters and hopefully will videotape it and publish it to a DVD for sale per my recommendation. She was enthusiastic about the idea and I will be in touch with her electronically to see if she follows through.
The next stop was Scargo Pottery & Art Gallery – home of a long time going concern of five production potters and their wares. Scargo is in the small town of Dennis and it is a place not to miss whether you are a potter or not and visit the cape.
Last studio of the day was of an art teacher who abandoned her steady job with benefits to open her studio. Mill Stone Pottery was the home of Gail Turner and was also in Dennis which was voted as the most charming town on the cape of the towns visited.
We took the long way ‘home’ if you can call the guesthouse from hell that. At first glance it appears to be a B&B but do not be mislead in Massachusetts a ‘guesthouse’ is equivalent to the eighth or ninth level of hell. I think Dante is the only guest I have not met and he is one level below us in the basement.
Despite the weather, The Nasty Potter, Drunk Potter and our hostess we are having a wonderful time.
© steven d philbrick 08/24/2010 sr+ DakotaDawg
(Continued)
Yup. And it is still raining on and off. I am hoping this works and this continuation posts as a new blog entry because I am not wanting to cut and paste what was already entered.
Yesterday was a continuance of the Great Cape Cod Pottery Studio Tour. On Monday we visited some of the local potters’ studios. It was quite edifying. We met The Nasty Potter at his studio but did not let him deter us from our quest. Customer service was not his strong point and the idea of tact completely escaped him.
We then visited Kemp Pottery Studio in downtown (if you could call it that) Orleans. This was enlightening and it was great to see a potter who enjoyed talking to people even if they were not customers. Talent and creativity surrounded those who stopped in to see what he had done and what he was capable of.
Then, after rocketing past two potters who had their studio poorly marked and on the wrong side of the road we managed a turnaround and got back to meet Drunk Potter. He was quite a strange duck and wanted to share all of his experiences in pottery, building construction and his recent divorce. It is always so much fun having a conversation with one so anxious for company but so unable to cope with standing upright.
The next studio was the home of a very nice man who also had his studio at his house. He worked and interacted and took time out to share his point of view. We soon left and visited Heart Pottery, home of a talented escapee production potter who talked of working piecework for $.25/cup and managed to achieve an incredible 60 cups an hour on someone else’s wheel before she gave it up and went into business for herself. She was the only potter on the cape that we visited that did some Raku. There is a loosely knit organization of potters here who have formed almost a Co-op and buy and advertise together. Diane showed off her $20K kiln that was as big as a small city apartment. She is hosting a workshop in the winter for the Cape Cod Potters and hopefully will videotape it and publish it to a DVD for sale per my recommendation. She was enthusiastic about the idea and I will be in touch with her electronically to see if she follows through.
The next stop was Scargo Pottery & Art Gallery – home of a long time going concern of five production potters and their wares. Scargo is in the small town of Dennis and it is a place not to miss whether you are a potter or not and visit the cape.
Last studio of the day was of an art teacher who abandoned her steady job with benefits to open her studio. Mill Stone Pottery was the home of Gail Turner and was also in Dennis which was voted as the most charming town on the cape of the towns visited.
We took the long way ‘home’ if you can call the guesthouse from hell that. At first glance it appears to be a B&B but do not be mislead in Massachusetts a ‘guesthouse’ is equivalent to the eighth or ninth level of hell. I think Dante is the only guest I have not met and he is one level below us in the basement.
Despite the weather, The Nasty Potter, Drunk Potter and our hostess we are having a wonderful time.
© steven d philbrick 08/24/2010 sr+ DakotaDawg
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
My Vacation = Your Vacation?
Still Raining. I suppose that means there is little to do. Oh so wrong Obi-Wan.
Today was a very busy day for the old man on the Cape. It is always most dangerous to start the day with a trip to a Federal anything let alone a museum dedicated to the Cape Cod National Seashore. What ever one needs to know from whatever went on since the Pilgrims skipped town in Plymouth to whaling or sailing ships, quahog clams, codfish and modern tourism can be found in some diorama with a full written description in Arial Regular silkscreened on a display board. Some of the fake stuff even looks real while much of the real stuff looks faked.
I have become expert in flora and fauna of the salt marsh and even know when and where I can drive the Land Cruiser on the beach that I forgot to pack. It is the one thing I really miss almost as much as my lovely DakotaDawg. It pained me to see pictures of other families enjoying the company of their dogs on the sunny beaches with plastic bags in hand. I have none of the above.
(to be continued)
© steven d philbrick 08/24/2010 sr+ DakotaDawg
Today was a very busy day for the old man on the Cape. It is always most dangerous to start the day with a trip to a Federal anything let alone a museum dedicated to the Cape Cod National Seashore. What ever one needs to know from whatever went on since the Pilgrims skipped town in Plymouth to whaling or sailing ships, quahog clams, codfish and modern tourism can be found in some diorama with a full written description in Arial Regular silkscreened on a display board. Some of the fake stuff even looks real while much of the real stuff looks faked.
I have become expert in flora and fauna of the salt marsh and even know when and where I can drive the Land Cruiser on the beach that I forgot to pack. It is the one thing I really miss almost as much as my lovely DakotaDawg. It pained me to see pictures of other families enjoying the company of their dogs on the sunny beaches with plastic bags in hand. I have none of the above.
(to be continued)
© steven d philbrick 08/24/2010 sr+ DakotaDawg
Monday, August 23, 2010
Drought Problems?
Drought Problems? Got the solution for you, hire me to vacation there. Second straight day of rain for New England and it is forecast to turn into the third and fourth in a row in a summer where it hasn’t rained in months… pretty much all summer.
Of course we are here on Cape Cod on vacation. Go figger.
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 08/23/2010
Of course we are here on Cape Cod on vacation. Go figger.
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 08/23/2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
It’s Those questions you don’t ask…
.
From yesterday: “There are absolutely no Pauses or “holds” in this countdown to allow the launch team at this household to have a cushion of time for certain tasks and procedures to be completed without affecting the launch window. ”
So much for all of that nonsense. As I sit at the airport with connection to a public network that has no access to the interweb, understanding that the plane is at a minimum forty minutes late I am hoping we are still good on making connections and won’t have to spit up blood running to the gate to catch the next flight out. There usually is some leeway in transferring planes but I doubt there are many folks that are taking our plane into Hotlanta to catch a plane to New Hampshire. Actually we are flying into Providence which is almost an alternate Logan.
We made it in plenty of time but I was greatly disappointed that the train in Hartsfield International has a new official greater and the Max Headroom mechanically generated voice has been replaced by that demon woman that gives you all the options when she answers the phone. “Press 0 if you really called to attempt to speak to a human. Press 1 if you agree that is unlikely to happen in the next half hour. Press 5 to hear these options again. Your call will be answered in the order it was received. ”
DakotaDawg got checked into the DawgJail and was not too happy about her accommodations. For what we are paying for her visit she could almost have stayed at the Hampton and chowed down on free breakfast pastries and scrambled eggs.
I didn’t even think to ask her if she knew she was going. I just hugged her goodbye at the front door of the house and someone else delivered her to her fate.
It was not like the questions that shouldn’t have been asked and are rarely answered… like the 6 year old that shouts out in church: “Who farted?”. Or, the four year old who asks if you want to ‘mell her finger. It’s those questions that you don’t ask because you already know the answer. Will my dog wish we could find someone to take care of her in her own home with her own kitties where she could sleep on the bed in our absence?
Should I have made a better effort to find a DakotaDawgSitter? Will the guilt of my failure leave me when she barks and jumps for joy to see me when I pick her up?
I sure hope so.
© steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg 08/19/2010 written at 30,000 feet but posted at sea level because airline and airport Wi-Fi is too expensive!
From yesterday: “There are absolutely no Pauses or “holds” in this countdown to allow the launch team at this household to have a cushion of time for certain tasks and procedures to be completed without affecting the launch window. ”
So much for all of that nonsense. As I sit at the airport with connection to a public network that has no access to the interweb, understanding that the plane is at a minimum forty minutes late I am hoping we are still good on making connections and won’t have to spit up blood running to the gate to catch the next flight out. There usually is some leeway in transferring planes but I doubt there are many folks that are taking our plane into Hotlanta to catch a plane to New Hampshire. Actually we are flying into Providence which is almost an alternate Logan.
We made it in plenty of time but I was greatly disappointed that the train in Hartsfield International has a new official greater and the Max Headroom mechanically generated voice has been replaced by that demon woman that gives you all the options when she answers the phone. “Press 0 if you really called to attempt to speak to a human. Press 1 if you agree that is unlikely to happen in the next half hour. Press 5 to hear these options again. Your call will be answered in the order it was received. ”
DakotaDawg got checked into the DawgJail and was not too happy about her accommodations. For what we are paying for her visit she could almost have stayed at the Hampton and chowed down on free breakfast pastries and scrambled eggs.
I didn’t even think to ask her if she knew she was going. I just hugged her goodbye at the front door of the house and someone else delivered her to her fate.
It was not like the questions that shouldn’t have been asked and are rarely answered… like the 6 year old that shouts out in church: “Who farted?”. Or, the four year old who asks if you want to ‘mell her finger. It’s those questions that you don’t ask because you already know the answer. Will my dog wish we could find someone to take care of her in her own home with her own kitties where she could sleep on the bed in our absence?
Should I have made a better effort to find a DakotaDawgSitter? Will the guilt of my failure leave me when she barks and jumps for joy to see me when I pick her up?
I sure hope so.
© steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg 08/19/2010 written at 30,000 feet but posted at sea level because airline and airport Wi-Fi is too expensive!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
23 Hours and counting.
.
When I started this little blurb (hopefully) that was where it stood. As usual whenever I am leaving Tallahassee it seems that there is more to be done than can be done in the time remaining before launch.
There are absolutely no Pauses or “holds” in this countdown to allow the launch team at this household to have a cushion of time for certain tasks and procedures to be completed without affecting the launch window. DakotaDawg has to go to the DawgieHotel because she did not have enough frequent flier miles to come along. In and of itself that is sad for both of us.
The concept of a countdown and the procedure itself was in a Sci-Fi movie made in 1929 courtesy of the Germans and Fritz Lang in particular and was dramatized in “Die Frau im Mond”. I asked DakotaDawg what that meant and she translated the HochDeutsch to “The Woman in the Moon”. The only thing that can interrupt our countdown is severe weather at the airport which might temporarily ground the plane so we miss our connecting flight. Tallahassee is one of those places that you have to fly somewhere to fly somewhere.
Since we have a late afternoon flight there is more than a 50% chance of thunderstorm striking precisely after we have boarded the plane and are waiting for clearance to go out on the runway and have the pilot lift that aluminum baby with the floppy wings off the ground. I am hoping that after we do get off that we find out that the pilot is like my brother in laws who both were Air Force pilots. If he is a Navy Jet Jock there is a chance of spinal cord readjustment as the plane contacts the runway and he drops the tail hook.
DakotaDawg told me she doesn’t really care who the pilot is as long as he brings her wet dog food out of the can while she is visiting with him and his crew. She expects to fly in the cockpit but I have some disappointing news for her. After tomorrow morning’s walk it is off to DawgJail. I don’t care what you call it after the life she has led I am sure the novelty of being in a Kennel wears off after that first can of wet food.
No Kitties to herd. No laying on the rug like a Zombie or buddying up if there is a thunderstorm anywhere within fifty miles of the house. There will be no cozying up to try to get a snacklet or an opportunity to do the dinner dishes although we all know that is strictly forbidden. There will be no snoring next to the bed or naps in her comfortable bed or in the ‘Kitty Control Areas’ or doorways. Her daily walks will cease and there will be no escape from the constant barking of the other tenants.
The way I am feeling right now I wish I had brought trip insurance and staying home to be with the dog would qualify for reimbursement. It is not like I don’t want to go away for a vacation or that mentally I don’t really need one. It is more like I wish DakotaDawg was a little more friendly to house guests or one of the ones she is so fond of was available to DawgSit her while we rollicked in the Atlantic breakers on Cape Cod.
I have a couple nieces who might in the future with some training be able to keep the BrownBeauty company. I am going to talk to my sister and see what she thinks about it. Certainly it would be an improvement on a hotel that had a chain link gate for a front door and a chain link fence around the recreation area. This may not work out because neither of my nieces is a dawg person that I know of since their dad never let them have a dawg.
Possibly after the vacation we can begin training either the nieces or some other poor unsuspecting soul who has no idea how much love you can give a dawg or how much love they can return.
Gosh, I am really gonna miss my DakotaDawg. The little orange talking kitty maybe not so much. Maybe the DawgieHotel can install some SpyCam so I can at least check in on how my dawg is doing. I wonder if I bring an old love seat up there if they would put it in her room.
I guess it is time to decide which shoes would like to travel and start shoving some of those things scattered all over the back room into the luggage.
Twenty-two hours and counting.
Seventeen hours and counting… Everything is in its bag and the zipper is closed except the computer and mouse and of course that one thing that I am not sure what it is that I am certain I am forgetting.
Sweet Dreams.
© 08.19.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
When I started this little blurb (hopefully) that was where it stood. As usual whenever I am leaving Tallahassee it seems that there is more to be done than can be done in the time remaining before launch.
There are absolutely no Pauses or “holds” in this countdown to allow the launch team at this household to have a cushion of time for certain tasks and procedures to be completed without affecting the launch window. DakotaDawg has to go to the DawgieHotel because she did not have enough frequent flier miles to come along. In and of itself that is sad for both of us.
The concept of a countdown and the procedure itself was in a Sci-Fi movie made in 1929 courtesy of the Germans and Fritz Lang in particular and was dramatized in “Die Frau im Mond”. I asked DakotaDawg what that meant and she translated the HochDeutsch to “The Woman in the Moon”. The only thing that can interrupt our countdown is severe weather at the airport which might temporarily ground the plane so we miss our connecting flight. Tallahassee is one of those places that you have to fly somewhere to fly somewhere.
Since we have a late afternoon flight there is more than a 50% chance of thunderstorm striking precisely after we have boarded the plane and are waiting for clearance to go out on the runway and have the pilot lift that aluminum baby with the floppy wings off the ground. I am hoping that after we do get off that we find out that the pilot is like my brother in laws who both were Air Force pilots. If he is a Navy Jet Jock there is a chance of spinal cord readjustment as the plane contacts the runway and he drops the tail hook.
DakotaDawg told me she doesn’t really care who the pilot is as long as he brings her wet dog food out of the can while she is visiting with him and his crew. She expects to fly in the cockpit but I have some disappointing news for her. After tomorrow morning’s walk it is off to DawgJail. I don’t care what you call it after the life she has led I am sure the novelty of being in a Kennel wears off after that first can of wet food.
No Kitties to herd. No laying on the rug like a Zombie or buddying up if there is a thunderstorm anywhere within fifty miles of the house. There will be no cozying up to try to get a snacklet or an opportunity to do the dinner dishes although we all know that is strictly forbidden. There will be no snoring next to the bed or naps in her comfortable bed or in the ‘Kitty Control Areas’ or doorways. Her daily walks will cease and there will be no escape from the constant barking of the other tenants.
The way I am feeling right now I wish I had brought trip insurance and staying home to be with the dog would qualify for reimbursement. It is not like I don’t want to go away for a vacation or that mentally I don’t really need one. It is more like I wish DakotaDawg was a little more friendly to house guests or one of the ones she is so fond of was available to DawgSit her while we rollicked in the Atlantic breakers on Cape Cod.
I have a couple nieces who might in the future with some training be able to keep the BrownBeauty company. I am going to talk to my sister and see what she thinks about it. Certainly it would be an improvement on a hotel that had a chain link gate for a front door and a chain link fence around the recreation area. This may not work out because neither of my nieces is a dawg person that I know of since their dad never let them have a dawg.
Possibly after the vacation we can begin training either the nieces or some other poor unsuspecting soul who has no idea how much love you can give a dawg or how much love they can return.
Gosh, I am really gonna miss my DakotaDawg. The little orange talking kitty maybe not so much. Maybe the DawgieHotel can install some SpyCam so I can at least check in on how my dawg is doing. I wonder if I bring an old love seat up there if they would put it in her room.
I guess it is time to decide which shoes would like to travel and start shoving some of those things scattered all over the back room into the luggage.
Twenty-two hours and counting.
Seventeen hours and counting… Everything is in its bag and the zipper is closed except the computer and mouse and of course that one thing that I am not sure what it is that I am certain I am forgetting.
Sweet Dreams.
© 08.19.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Monday, August 16, 2010
Put in Another’s Shoes.
.
Possibly all this talking about packing for a trip has put me into some kind of shoe funk so I absolutely must not forget mom’s advice to pack my shoes in plastic bags so the rest of the contents of the suitcase don’t start smelling like two day old roadkill. Change that from two day old roadkill to ShoeGoo®… I am still trying to remove some paint and glue soles back on with ShoeGoo® as a fallback position.
Google put me in an unusual place. It was not where I was going yesterday but I figure it might be worth a short commitment today since I am still working over my shoe issues. The place that Google recommended on a search for “shoe Thesaurus” (since it gets kind of boring reading the word shoe two or thee times in one sentence) was Thesaurus.com’s thoughts on “put in anothers shoes”. See what I mean? This was the second recommended result and incorrectly punctuated at that.
Before I even checked for the synonyms or clicked the link I immediately thought empathy and how much I felt this emotion over the years. As I started to check what WAS recommended I saw that empathize was all the way up there in the third slot. Ally and associate preceded it as recommended synonyms. No way! I thought. I also thought it quite peculiar that one synonym for the incorrect no possessive form was “put oneself in another's shoes”. Obviously, adding oneself moves this interchangeable meaning down to number six on list of possible substitutions and correctly identifies the phrase as possessive. How odd.
I then clicked the link to ally to find all of the possible words and phrases that could be used in its place and was astounded not to find a single one referring to put in another’s shoes. When checking associate I also could find not a single instance of yellow or blue blocked text for a search for shoes on that page. Apparently, it is much more popular substituting these two words for the phrase than going back the other way.
Bingo. When I checked empathize there were three references in Thesaurus.com to someone else’s shoes. To me that sounds like a synonym. When I skipped through the original recommendations I saw that sympathize was lower on the list than empathize and unlike previous proofs had only one reference to wearing someone else’s footwear.
I began to wonder if I truly knew the difference between empathize and sympathize and started to feel sorry for myself for ever going down this road in the first place. I decided to leave Thesaurus.com behind and move on to Freedictionary.com for the definitive answer. I have found that website to be especially helpful in finding what things mean or good synonyms for things like shoes.
First I entered shoe in the search box and found a wealth of English idioms containing the word. I opened a second tab in Freedictionary.com and went to sympathize and changed the shoe tab to empathize. The first rule of defining a word was broken on ‘empathize’ with:
em•pa•thize ( m p -th z )
intr.v. em•pa•thized, em•pa•thiz•ing, em•pa•thiz•es
To feel or experience empathy: empathized with the striking miners.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved… Was credited with this lousy job of a define FAIL.
Sympathize was redirected to sympathy and this showed up:
extend one's sympathy (to someone) to express sympathy to someone.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc… Was credited with this lousy job of a define FAIL.
I am way too lazy to pull out the night stand that is in front of the bookcase where the HUGE unabridged dictionary is stored and find the dolly to load it on to take to my recliner for review. I hit the interwebs again. I started typing in my trusty Google searchbox sympathiz and before I could enter the e Google had the common sense to know precisely what I was looking for and offered with a deft left click the option sympathize vs empathize - About 295,000 results (0.19 seconds). As usual I was amazed.
It was looking like many of the 295,000 results were where someone asked some forum somewhere... then some ‘Expert’ weighed in on the matter. I would rather have asked my sister the high school English teacher because at least I knew how expert she was and that my mother’s good grammar genes were at least part of her constitution if not mine.
I dove in anyway and looked for the most authoritative description of the link for help. I decided to avoid Wiki, Answers.com, answers.Yahoo.com and any others where all you needed to be was breathing to voice an opinion. I chose Google’s first choice hoping they would do a little better than Thesaurus.com: Grammar Mishaps: Sympathy vs. Empathy I recently received a hub request to write an article on the difference between sympathy and empathy. Receiving my undergrad in Psychology, I had my own ... hubpages.com/hub/Sympathy_vs_Empathy - http://hubpages.com/hub/Sympathy_vs_Empathy
Apparently Robin, the author of what appears to be an income producing blog had obtained her undergraduate degree in Psychology just like me. I knew I should have stopped when I realized I was getting grammar advice from a graduate who messed with white rats and Skinner Boxes… how does that possibly qualify anyone as an expert on these matters? At least she appears to have already completed more research on the topic than I am willing to do. Her link is shown above if you are just that curious or want to help Robin net a nickel for your visit. My very brief summary of what I suspected follows and is made up of two quotes from Merriam-Webster that Robin was kind enough to type so I won’t have to.
Merriam-Webster definition of sympathy: the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another b : the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity
Merriam-Webster's definition of empathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
I take this as sympathy – I feel like you do or feel sorry for you. Empathy would be: Been there, done that so I think I understand how I think you must feel.
I am empathizing with myself right now and sympathizing at the same time. This is exactly where I have been so many times before… in Another’s Shoes. If I don’t find the right two pair to pack I may end up exactly that way. I won’t have to worry who my allies are or about removing my or somebody else's shoes for the preflight bomb inspection. Or, what airport the second pair has been sent to after it has been checked but decided on its own destination.
Possibly all this talking about packing for a trip has put me into some kind of shoe funk so I absolutely must not forget mom’s advice to pack my shoes in plastic bags so the rest of the contents of the suitcase don’t start smelling like two day old roadkill. Change that from two day old roadkill to ShoeGoo®… I am still trying to remove some paint and glue soles back on with ShoeGoo® as a fallback position.
Google put me in an unusual place. It was not where I was going yesterday but I figure it might be worth a short commitment today since I am still working over my shoe issues. The place that Google recommended on a search for “shoe Thesaurus” (since it gets kind of boring reading the word shoe two or thee times in one sentence) was Thesaurus.com’s thoughts on “put in anothers shoes”. See what I mean? This was the second recommended result and incorrectly punctuated at that.
Before I even checked for the synonyms or clicked the link I immediately thought empathy and how much I felt this emotion over the years. As I started to check what WAS recommended I saw that empathize was all the way up there in the third slot. Ally and associate preceded it as recommended synonyms. No way! I thought. I also thought it quite peculiar that one synonym for the incorrect no possessive form was “put oneself in another's shoes”. Obviously, adding oneself moves this interchangeable meaning down to number six on list of possible substitutions and correctly identifies the phrase as possessive. How odd.
I then clicked the link to ally to find all of the possible words and phrases that could be used in its place and was astounded not to find a single one referring to put in another’s shoes. When checking associate I also could find not a single instance of yellow or blue blocked text for a search for shoes on that page. Apparently, it is much more popular substituting these two words for the phrase than going back the other way.
Bingo. When I checked empathize there were three references in Thesaurus.com to someone else’s shoes. To me that sounds like a synonym. When I skipped through the original recommendations I saw that sympathize was lower on the list than empathize and unlike previous proofs had only one reference to wearing someone else’s footwear.
I began to wonder if I truly knew the difference between empathize and sympathize and started to feel sorry for myself for ever going down this road in the first place. I decided to leave Thesaurus.com behind and move on to Freedictionary.com for the definitive answer. I have found that website to be especially helpful in finding what things mean or good synonyms for things like shoes.
First I entered shoe in the search box and found a wealth of English idioms containing the word. I opened a second tab in Freedictionary.com and went to sympathize and changed the shoe tab to empathize. The first rule of defining a word was broken on ‘empathize’ with:
em•pa•thize ( m p -th z )
intr.v. em•pa•thized, em•pa•thiz•ing, em•pa•thiz•es
To feel or experience empathy: empathized with the striking miners.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved… Was credited with this lousy job of a define FAIL.
Sympathize was redirected to sympathy and this showed up:
extend one's sympathy (to someone) to express sympathy to someone.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc… Was credited with this lousy job of a define FAIL.
I am way too lazy to pull out the night stand that is in front of the bookcase where the HUGE unabridged dictionary is stored and find the dolly to load it on to take to my recliner for review. I hit the interwebs again. I started typing in my trusty Google searchbox sympathiz and before I could enter the e Google had the common sense to know precisely what I was looking for and offered with a deft left click the option sympathize vs empathize - About 295,000 results (0.19 seconds). As usual I was amazed.
It was looking like many of the 295,000 results were where someone asked some forum somewhere... then some ‘Expert’ weighed in on the matter. I would rather have asked my sister the high school English teacher because at least I knew how expert she was and that my mother’s good grammar genes were at least part of her constitution if not mine.
I dove in anyway and looked for the most authoritative description of the link for help. I decided to avoid Wiki, Answers.com, answers.Yahoo.com and any others where all you needed to be was breathing to voice an opinion. I chose Google’s first choice hoping they would do a little better than Thesaurus.com: Grammar Mishaps: Sympathy vs. Empathy I recently received a hub request to write an article on the difference between sympathy and empathy. Receiving my undergrad in Psychology, I had my own ... hubpages.com/hub/Sympathy_vs_Empathy - http://hubpages.com/hub/Sympathy_vs_Empathy
Apparently Robin, the author of what appears to be an income producing blog had obtained her undergraduate degree in Psychology just like me. I knew I should have stopped when I realized I was getting grammar advice from a graduate who messed with white rats and Skinner Boxes… how does that possibly qualify anyone as an expert on these matters? At least she appears to have already completed more research on the topic than I am willing to do. Her link is shown above if you are just that curious or want to help Robin net a nickel for your visit. My very brief summary of what I suspected follows and is made up of two quotes from Merriam-Webster that Robin was kind enough to type so I won’t have to.
Merriam-Webster definition of sympathy: the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another b : the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity
Merriam-Webster's definition of empathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
I take this as sympathy – I feel like you do or feel sorry for you. Empathy would be: Been there, done that so I think I understand how I think you must feel.
I am empathizing with myself right now and sympathizing at the same time. This is exactly where I have been so many times before… in Another’s Shoes. If I don’t find the right two pair to pack I may end up exactly that way. I won’t have to worry who my allies are or about removing my or somebody else's shoes for the preflight bomb inspection. Or, what airport the second pair has been sent to after it has been checked but decided on its own destination.
May as well go put on another few pairs of shoes and see if I can break the record still standing at two and a half hours…That or start scraping paint again.
© 08.16.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Creatively Wandering Feet.
.
A creatively wandering mind is on vacation today… not really since its vacation is being spent packing for a trip. It is filling up my time and worrying me to death. It must be the ADHD because I have been trying on shoes for two days now to narrow it down to the two pair I will bring for more than a week away from home base. The record for the longest I have been able to wear any of those is about two and a half hours.
I usually wear only one pair at a time, rarely two. To be covered for all possibilities including going out to a nice restaurant; I will need at least two pairs and perish the additional charge for airline luggage, possibly three. This entire deal about shoes is messed up as far as I am concerned.
For over five years I only wore one pair of shoes. They were ecru colored Gor-Tex© and leather Vibram soled Rockport Walkers. I was like the state worker in the ‘60’s with my white belt that went with everything except these were shoes of mesh and leather, one size too big, according to the shoe salesman. I told him that if he was going to wear them than a pair the size he recommended was just perfect. If I was going to wear them then as far as I was concerned; I wanted the ones that left room for growth.
I went into a profound depression the day the shoe repairman at long last told me there was no more hope left for them. They had visited him many times and lived a good life but they would have to be retired. They were too beaten and bruised for rejuvenation or renovation. He figured four times around was more than sufficient. They probably just stunk too much for him to touch; possibly he is a Germaphobe.
Rockport still makes that style but somehow or the other the oversized Gor-Tex© option is no longer available despite some crank letters to the CEO of the company. I am holding out hope that the shoe outlet store (that offers even greater coupon discounts two days a month) is going to get a pair of ‘Rockport Hydroplex Mens’ in one size too large that I can add to my collection soon to see if they might replace those long dead but semiprecious Walkers that are now no where here on earth. The one thing about that I am certain of is if and when the ‘Rockport Hydroplex Mens’ show up it will not be before I hand the ticket agent my over sized duffel bag headed to Cape Cod.
After I got the unfortunate news from the shoe repairman, for a long time I went into an Imelda phase… hoping there was still that perfect pair out there and maybe if I bought enough shoes they would somehow magically appear in my closet. It didn’t happen. The Gor-tex© mesh spoiled me on leather or vinyl shoes and I had to let my feet breathe even if everyone else in the neighborhood did not appreciate the fact as much as I did.
Then I found that one particular pair of mesh Merrell running shoes with the elastic laces… those babies were more comfortable than slippers. I knew that there was no hope that the magic shoe repairman could do anything if they bit the dust so I bought a second pair before they were discontinued. Unfortunately I was not intelligent enough to order the third, fourth, fifth and sixth replacement pair at the time because when the first pair went south I started wearing the ‘dress pair’ I had kept in reserve. These beauties that I treasured and had fondled my feet only on those special occasions became my everyday shoe. The old everyday shoe became the not to be seen in public footwear.
Those now everyday shoes were shoe gooed and resewn by my loving hands until they began looking worse than the first pair that remain hidden deep in my closet and taken out and worn only on moonless nites. Somehow the newer more despicable one of those beloved pairs disappeared from the house. I don’t think DakotaDawg threw them away and I know it wasn’t me or the cats.
Merrell makes lots of styles of mesh shoes. Unfortunately none of the six replacement pairs of mesh running shoes are of the cherished style. All are now manufactured by robots or Asian children wanting to exact revenge by foot torment for having to make odd gray mesh shoes with capital M’s on the outboard sides.
So now I am left with the problem of what to wear outta town and what to pack in the ever growing duffel bag. Self imposed limit is two pairs of shoes and one pair of sandals. The ungainly Teva’s® get more uncomfortable the longer the Velcro keeps them strapped to my feet. Rather than having a smooth insole they have some logo or the other engraved into them. This is almost as annoying as when my socks get scrunched up in my shoes.
So one of the three allotted pair of footwear is those torturous Teva’s®
I started looking at the shoes I wear everyday. This is pretty much down to two pairs except for really special occasions like job interviews or fancy dinners. So I hardly ever wear anything but the scuffs or the not quite as comfortable Merrell replacements.
I start the day with my scuffs which I wear to let the DakotaDawg out for her morning constitutional. Sometimes these get a real workout if it is the weekend and I have to walk around front to get our weekend delivery only newspaper. They are really comfortable except for the raised pimples all over the insoles. Even with the thickest socks this Euro torture device becomes a more distracting nuisance the longer I wear the shoes. So these shoes are slipped on only briefly and removed immediately when we come back inside. At this rate of wear I figure to have to replace them in about 2045. I tried putting liners inside them but it was a FAIL… huge annoying raised pimples cannot be defeated. I parked them next to the back door for the morning.
I looked exceedingly carefully at the second pair of shoes I wear everyday. These are the pair I change into when walking DakotaDawg or leaving the house. They really deserve a vacation since they are the third most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever owned in my life. Technically, they are the fourth most comfortable because of the replacement Merrells that disappeared but that should not disqualify them from consideration. They have just gotten a little too ratty. It is not so much all of the paint on them. It isn’t that the soles are not as effectively attached to the shoes as they were when new. It is more like they look like shoes that would be rejected by even the most desperate shoeless homeless person in America. I spent a little time trying to scrape some paint off of them but decided they will not make the trip.
So today I have the eight pair of shoes I have worn all lined up in front of the duffel bag. None has distinguished itself as Frank Devasky’s Olympia Report Deluxe Electric with the exception of one pair in the amount of pain they could generate.
So I am going to bed thinking I will be digging through the other closet tomorrow and that .333 might be a great batting average but when applied to picking out shoes it really is not gonna cut it… especially when the .333 is pretty uncomfortable to wear.
Maybe I can glue a shoe liner on those Teva© logos and wear thick socks. At least I can’t hide any explosives in my sandals. Maybe I will see if I can hide the painted marvels somewhere in my carry on.
© 08.15.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
A creatively wandering mind is on vacation today… not really since its vacation is being spent packing for a trip. It is filling up my time and worrying me to death. It must be the ADHD because I have been trying on shoes for two days now to narrow it down to the two pair I will bring for more than a week away from home base. The record for the longest I have been able to wear any of those is about two and a half hours.
I usually wear only one pair at a time, rarely two. To be covered for all possibilities including going out to a nice restaurant; I will need at least two pairs and perish the additional charge for airline luggage, possibly three. This entire deal about shoes is messed up as far as I am concerned.
For over five years I only wore one pair of shoes. They were ecru colored Gor-Tex© and leather Vibram soled Rockport Walkers. I was like the state worker in the ‘60’s with my white belt that went with everything except these were shoes of mesh and leather, one size too big, according to the shoe salesman. I told him that if he was going to wear them than a pair the size he recommended was just perfect. If I was going to wear them then as far as I was concerned; I wanted the ones that left room for growth.
I went into a profound depression the day the shoe repairman at long last told me there was no more hope left for them. They had visited him many times and lived a good life but they would have to be retired. They were too beaten and bruised for rejuvenation or renovation. He figured four times around was more than sufficient. They probably just stunk too much for him to touch; possibly he is a Germaphobe.
Rockport still makes that style but somehow or the other the oversized Gor-Tex© option is no longer available despite some crank letters to the CEO of the company. I am holding out hope that the shoe outlet store (that offers even greater coupon discounts two days a month) is going to get a pair of ‘Rockport Hydroplex Mens’ in one size too large that I can add to my collection soon to see if they might replace those long dead but semiprecious Walkers that are now no where here on earth. The one thing about that I am certain of is if and when the ‘Rockport Hydroplex Mens’ show up it will not be before I hand the ticket agent my over sized duffel bag headed to Cape Cod.
After I got the unfortunate news from the shoe repairman, for a long time I went into an Imelda phase… hoping there was still that perfect pair out there and maybe if I bought enough shoes they would somehow magically appear in my closet. It didn’t happen. The Gor-tex© mesh spoiled me on leather or vinyl shoes and I had to let my feet breathe even if everyone else in the neighborhood did not appreciate the fact as much as I did.
Then I found that one particular pair of mesh Merrell running shoes with the elastic laces… those babies were more comfortable than slippers. I knew that there was no hope that the magic shoe repairman could do anything if they bit the dust so I bought a second pair before they were discontinued. Unfortunately I was not intelligent enough to order the third, fourth, fifth and sixth replacement pair at the time because when the first pair went south I started wearing the ‘dress pair’ I had kept in reserve. These beauties that I treasured and had fondled my feet only on those special occasions became my everyday shoe. The old everyday shoe became the not to be seen in public footwear.
Those now everyday shoes were shoe gooed and resewn by my loving hands until they began looking worse than the first pair that remain hidden deep in my closet and taken out and worn only on moonless nites. Somehow the newer more despicable one of those beloved pairs disappeared from the house. I don’t think DakotaDawg threw them away and I know it wasn’t me or the cats.
Merrell makes lots of styles of mesh shoes. Unfortunately none of the six replacement pairs of mesh running shoes are of the cherished style. All are now manufactured by robots or Asian children wanting to exact revenge by foot torment for having to make odd gray mesh shoes with capital M’s on the outboard sides.
So now I am left with the problem of what to wear outta town and what to pack in the ever growing duffel bag. Self imposed limit is two pairs of shoes and one pair of sandals. The ungainly Teva’s® get more uncomfortable the longer the Velcro keeps them strapped to my feet. Rather than having a smooth insole they have some logo or the other engraved into them. This is almost as annoying as when my socks get scrunched up in my shoes.
So one of the three allotted pair of footwear is those torturous Teva’s®
I started looking at the shoes I wear everyday. This is pretty much down to two pairs except for really special occasions like job interviews or fancy dinners. So I hardly ever wear anything but the scuffs or the not quite as comfortable Merrell replacements.
I start the day with my scuffs which I wear to let the DakotaDawg out for her morning constitutional. Sometimes these get a real workout if it is the weekend and I have to walk around front to get our weekend delivery only newspaper. They are really comfortable except for the raised pimples all over the insoles. Even with the thickest socks this Euro torture device becomes a more distracting nuisance the longer I wear the shoes. So these shoes are slipped on only briefly and removed immediately when we come back inside. At this rate of wear I figure to have to replace them in about 2045. I tried putting liners inside them but it was a FAIL… huge annoying raised pimples cannot be defeated. I parked them next to the back door for the morning.
I looked exceedingly carefully at the second pair of shoes I wear everyday. These are the pair I change into when walking DakotaDawg or leaving the house. They really deserve a vacation since they are the third most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever owned in my life. Technically, they are the fourth most comfortable because of the replacement Merrells that disappeared but that should not disqualify them from consideration. They have just gotten a little too ratty. It is not so much all of the paint on them. It isn’t that the soles are not as effectively attached to the shoes as they were when new. It is more like they look like shoes that would be rejected by even the most desperate shoeless homeless person in America. I spent a little time trying to scrape some paint off of them but decided they will not make the trip.
So today I have the eight pair of shoes I have worn all lined up in front of the duffel bag. None has distinguished itself as Frank Devasky’s Olympia Report Deluxe Electric with the exception of one pair in the amount of pain they could generate.
So I am going to bed thinking I will be digging through the other closet tomorrow and that .333 might be a great batting average but when applied to picking out shoes it really is not gonna cut it… especially when the .333 is pretty uncomfortable to wear.
Maybe I can glue a shoe liner on those Teva© logos and wear thick socks. At least I can’t hide any explosives in my sandals. Maybe I will see if I can hide the painted marvels somewhere in my carry on.
© 08.15.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Daydreaming or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: My Point Exactly!
.
Daydreaming should be an integral part of every scholastic curriculum. A minimum of 10% of every class instructional time should be spent in ‘free thought’. This is how I feel and I believe additional student sanctioned daydreaming will increase student performance and help lower the incidence of ‘problem children’ in the educational setting.
I will try not to get too technical but feel a few references to set the stage are mandatory…
Daydreaming research cited at http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/05/daydreams_1.php -
“...In addition to default network activation, mind wandering was associated with executive network recruitment, a finding predicted by behavioral theories of off-task thought and its relation to executive resources. Finally, neural recruitment in both default and executive network regions was strongest when subjects were unaware of their own mind wandering, suggesting that mind wandering is most pronounced when it lacks meta-awareness. The observed parallel recruitment of executive and default network regions--two brain systems that so far have been assumed to work in opposition--suggests that mind wandering may evoke a unique mental state that may allow otherwise opposing networks to work in cooperation.”
And: “In recent years, however, scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming very differently. They've demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings - such as the message of a church sermon - the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings. As a result, we're able to imagine things that don't actually exist.
‘If your mind didn't wander, then you'd be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now," says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But instead you can engage in mental time travel and other kinds of simulation. During a daydream, your thoughts are really unbounded.’
The ability to think abstractly that flourishes during daydreams also has important social benefits. Mostly, what we daydream about is each other, as the mind retrieves memories, contemplates "what if" scenarios, and thinks about how it should behave in the future. In this sense, the content of daydreams often resembles a soap opera, with people reflecting on social interactions both real and make-believe. We can leave behind the world as it is and start imagining the world as it might be, if only we hadn't lost our temper, or had superpowers, or were sipping a daiquiri on a Caribbean beach. It is this ability to tune out the present moment and contemplate the make-believe that separates the human mind from every other.
… A daydream is that "fountain spurting," as the brain mixes together ideas, memories and concepts that are normally filed away in discrete mental folders.”
From http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/124858/daydreaming_a_good_tool_for_life.html:
“From the time we were young children we've been told that we should stay on task rather than daydream. However, recent research has suggested that there may be some benefits in daydreaming. These benefits include greater concentration, greater stress management, and greater motivation for taking on all those insurmountable jobs and goals that we sometimes set for ourselves. This article highlights four ways in which daydreaming can actually help you.
Daydreaming has been shown to be a great way to stay calm in an intense situation. Experts suggest taking a five minute breather from stressful situations and picture yourself relaxing or picture an event in your life that was particularly positive or enjoyable. Doing this and then coming back to the reality of the situation can help you to better confront and deal with the situation head on.
Earlier I said that we've all been told not to daydream. From the time we all started school, we were told that by daydreaming, we weren't staying on task and weren't using our time wisely. Statistics have shown that becoming side-tracked with your favorite daydream can greatly improve your productivity. As we become involved in difficult tasks, our brain loses some of its reasoning and concentrating abilities. Daydreaming is a great way to mentally recharge so that we can focus on tasks and get them done in a timely manner.
Daydreaming is shown to build determination. Often when we daydream, we daydream of becoming a singer or entertainer, of re-designing our house, or taking on some other seemingly insurmountable task. Sometimes in our daydreams we begin to visualize how we should go about doing all those things we always talked about doing but never followed through. We may consult with a local band or community theater group or we may consult with local construction workers or interior decorators about re-designing our house. All of this happened because we had a little daydream.”
At least one invention that is now an integral part of almost every office in America can be attributed to daydreaming in church instead of listening to the sermon. Granted it is not the most important invention ever but the 3M Post-It Note was thought up by Arthur Fry, a 3M engineer, when he thought about how to temporarily mark his hymnal rater than attend to his pastor. 3M has made a lot of money on this daydreamer. Einstein, renowned for his wandering mind, Newton and Leonardo probably spent a lot of time daydreaming between spurts of on task behavior.
In The Coincidence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Creativity - Bonnie Cramond, Ph.D., The University of Georgia, March 1995: “…we can see how the concentration, high energy, and unique ways of thinking and behaving that were exemplified by Robert Frost, Frank Lloyd Wright, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla resulted in school problems, dark diagnoses, or worse. These are examples of creative individuals whose behavior could also be interpreted as the inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
… In some cases the very qualities that cause creative individuals to have problems are the same ones that may facilitate in their creative accomplishments. Edison's energy, the vivid imagery in the daydreams of Frost and Wright, and Einstein's alternative mode of thinking created problems for them in school, but were undoubtedly invaluable in their creative endeavors.
… The issue of the relationship of creativity to psychopathology is a mare's-nest of cases and attributions. It is not the purpose of this work to attempt to resolve these issues. Rather, it is to look at the particular problems that can beset creative children in today's schools when their behaviors are mistaken for one of the most frequently diagnosed psychoeducational conditions, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
This is not only possible, but likely, because ADHD has been listed as the most common reason for referral and diagnosis in children seen in psychological clinics (Frick & Lahey, 1991). Yet, few schools, psychologists, or pediatricians test or diagnose creativity in children who are having problems in school, in spite of the fact that Wallach and Kogan (1965) found that highly creative children engage in "disruptive, attention-seeking behavior" in the classroom (p. 294-295). Similarly, Getzels and Jackson (1962) found that they are not valued by their teachers as much as more conforming, less creative students.”
Much of this thinking is anecdotal but more and more researchers are coming onboard. Possibly a lot of ADHD cases are kids who just don’t have enough time to dream. More research needs to be done on providing children designated time slots in each class to let their mind run free and their developing brains start hitting on all cylinders. If daydreaming is indeed the "default" mode of thought (as noted by much current scientific research) why is education trying so hard to keep it from happening? Students should be encouraged to use both halves of their brain AT THE SAME TIME and to document for themselves and others what they are thinking about while this is happening. It could be the subject for essays and even help English Composition. It probably will never to be able to be measured on a multiple choice test.
Cheer up, Sleepy Jean.
Oh, what can it mean
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen.
Did the nerd get the homecoming queen? Maybe he or she was too ADHD to realize they even had a chance.
Thanx to encouragement from my friends I will continue to try to nourish the creative sides of my brain. Now what was I thinking a minute ago… Oh yes, some research tends to indicate that too much daydreaming can contribute to Alzheimer’s… better start cleaning the house or something.
© 08.14.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Daydreaming should be an integral part of every scholastic curriculum. A minimum of 10% of every class instructional time should be spent in ‘free thought’. This is how I feel and I believe additional student sanctioned daydreaming will increase student performance and help lower the incidence of ‘problem children’ in the educational setting.
I will try not to get too technical but feel a few references to set the stage are mandatory…
Daydreaming research cited at http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/05/daydreams_1.php -
“...In addition to default network activation, mind wandering was associated with executive network recruitment, a finding predicted by behavioral theories of off-task thought and its relation to executive resources. Finally, neural recruitment in both default and executive network regions was strongest when subjects were unaware of their own mind wandering, suggesting that mind wandering is most pronounced when it lacks meta-awareness. The observed parallel recruitment of executive and default network regions--two brain systems that so far have been assumed to work in opposition--suggests that mind wandering may evoke a unique mental state that may allow otherwise opposing networks to work in cooperation.”
And: “In recent years, however, scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming very differently. They've demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings - such as the message of a church sermon - the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings. As a result, we're able to imagine things that don't actually exist.
‘If your mind didn't wander, then you'd be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now," says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But instead you can engage in mental time travel and other kinds of simulation. During a daydream, your thoughts are really unbounded.’
The ability to think abstractly that flourishes during daydreams also has important social benefits. Mostly, what we daydream about is each other, as the mind retrieves memories, contemplates "what if" scenarios, and thinks about how it should behave in the future. In this sense, the content of daydreams often resembles a soap opera, with people reflecting on social interactions both real and make-believe. We can leave behind the world as it is and start imagining the world as it might be, if only we hadn't lost our temper, or had superpowers, or were sipping a daiquiri on a Caribbean beach. It is this ability to tune out the present moment and contemplate the make-believe that separates the human mind from every other.
… A daydream is that "fountain spurting," as the brain mixes together ideas, memories and concepts that are normally filed away in discrete mental folders.”
From http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/124858/daydreaming_a_good_tool_for_life.html:
“From the time we were young children we've been told that we should stay on task rather than daydream. However, recent research has suggested that there may be some benefits in daydreaming. These benefits include greater concentration, greater stress management, and greater motivation for taking on all those insurmountable jobs and goals that we sometimes set for ourselves. This article highlights four ways in which daydreaming can actually help you.
Daydreaming has been shown to be a great way to stay calm in an intense situation. Experts suggest taking a five minute breather from stressful situations and picture yourself relaxing or picture an event in your life that was particularly positive or enjoyable. Doing this and then coming back to the reality of the situation can help you to better confront and deal with the situation head on.
Earlier I said that we've all been told not to daydream. From the time we all started school, we were told that by daydreaming, we weren't staying on task and weren't using our time wisely. Statistics have shown that becoming side-tracked with your favorite daydream can greatly improve your productivity. As we become involved in difficult tasks, our brain loses some of its reasoning and concentrating abilities. Daydreaming is a great way to mentally recharge so that we can focus on tasks and get them done in a timely manner.
Daydreaming is shown to build determination. Often when we daydream, we daydream of becoming a singer or entertainer, of re-designing our house, or taking on some other seemingly insurmountable task. Sometimes in our daydreams we begin to visualize how we should go about doing all those things we always talked about doing but never followed through. We may consult with a local band or community theater group or we may consult with local construction workers or interior decorators about re-designing our house. All of this happened because we had a little daydream.”
At least one invention that is now an integral part of almost every office in America can be attributed to daydreaming in church instead of listening to the sermon. Granted it is not the most important invention ever but the 3M Post-It Note was thought up by Arthur Fry, a 3M engineer, when he thought about how to temporarily mark his hymnal rater than attend to his pastor. 3M has made a lot of money on this daydreamer. Einstein, renowned for his wandering mind, Newton and Leonardo probably spent a lot of time daydreaming between spurts of on task behavior.
In The Coincidence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Creativity - Bonnie Cramond, Ph.D., The University of Georgia, March 1995: “…we can see how the concentration, high energy, and unique ways of thinking and behaving that were exemplified by Robert Frost, Frank Lloyd Wright, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla resulted in school problems, dark diagnoses, or worse. These are examples of creative individuals whose behavior could also be interpreted as the inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
… In some cases the very qualities that cause creative individuals to have problems are the same ones that may facilitate in their creative accomplishments. Edison's energy, the vivid imagery in the daydreams of Frost and Wright, and Einstein's alternative mode of thinking created problems for them in school, but were undoubtedly invaluable in their creative endeavors.
… The issue of the relationship of creativity to psychopathology is a mare's-nest of cases and attributions. It is not the purpose of this work to attempt to resolve these issues. Rather, it is to look at the particular problems that can beset creative children in today's schools when their behaviors are mistaken for one of the most frequently diagnosed psychoeducational conditions, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
This is not only possible, but likely, because ADHD has been listed as the most common reason for referral and diagnosis in children seen in psychological clinics (Frick & Lahey, 1991). Yet, few schools, psychologists, or pediatricians test or diagnose creativity in children who are having problems in school, in spite of the fact that Wallach and Kogan (1965) found that highly creative children engage in "disruptive, attention-seeking behavior" in the classroom (p. 294-295). Similarly, Getzels and Jackson (1962) found that they are not valued by their teachers as much as more conforming, less creative students.”
Much of this thinking is anecdotal but more and more researchers are coming onboard. Possibly a lot of ADHD cases are kids who just don’t have enough time to dream. More research needs to be done on providing children designated time slots in each class to let their mind run free and their developing brains start hitting on all cylinders. If daydreaming is indeed the "default" mode of thought (as noted by much current scientific research) why is education trying so hard to keep it from happening? Students should be encouraged to use both halves of their brain AT THE SAME TIME and to document for themselves and others what they are thinking about while this is happening. It could be the subject for essays and even help English Composition. It probably will never to be able to be measured on a multiple choice test.
Cheer up, Sleepy Jean.
Oh, what can it mean
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen.
Did the nerd get the homecoming queen? Maybe he or she was too ADHD to realize they even had a chance.
Thanx to encouragement from my friends I will continue to try to nourish the creative sides of my brain. Now what was I thinking a minute ago… Oh yes, some research tends to indicate that too much daydreaming can contribute to Alzheimer’s… better start cleaning the house or something.
© 08.14.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Friday, August 13, 2010
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th
So I finally finished porting over everything from the misspelled web blog but I have decided for a bit until everyone (who am I kidding here) figures it out and starts going to http://ingeniousvortex.blogspot.com/. In the meantime I will just post twice. The copying and pasting made for a very tedious Friday the 13th and I am hoping I am not too unlucky.
This got me thinking about Friday the 13th (not the movie). Somewhere along the line I got it in my head that one of the reasons it was unlucky was that Good Friday fell on that day… obviously it fell on a Friday but did it really fall on the 13th?
Or maybe not, time for a Google. Because here on a Google blog the html does not work, I will just go type it in.
I started out with “Jesus died” wiki. Why not, we all know how reliable wiki is… “Scholars generally conclude that Jesus was born sometime between 7-2 BC/BCE and died sometime between 26-36 AD/CE.” So if I read this right Jesus was born BC? Talk about miracles!
“According to all four Gospels, Jesus died before late afternoon” and since all four Gospels have him rising from the dead on Sunday (or since they were Jewish, could it have been the Sabbath that was really Saturday, which would have had Jesus dying on a Thursday). In any case according to the Apostles Creed – “He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again.” “Regardless of the year of Jesus' death, most Christians commemorate the crucifixion on Good Friday and celebrate the resurrection on Easter Sunday.” So as usual Wiki is no help since they don’t even know the year he was born or the year he died but only when we commemorate and celebrate.
Matthew 12: “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from You. But He answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth…” So it becomes more confusing the deeper I go into it and to cover the scriptures Christ had to die on Thursday... or, if he was in hell for three nites and he died on Friday then Easter must have occurred on Monday; that or the whole Friday the 13th thing does not work out at all.
So ignoring these inconsistencies and if we say that Jesus did die in the spring and it was on Friday the 13th, I decided to check if any fell in March or April 26-36 AD. Going back to Wiki on the subject of Friday the 13th: “:…occurs when the thirteenth day of a month falls on a Friday, which superstition holds to be a day of bad luck. In the Gregorian calendar, this day occurs at least once, but at most three times a year. Any month's 13th day will fall on a Friday if the month starts on a Sunday.” Since I am not Rainman I had to consult a calendar about what spring months in 26-36 AD started with a Sunday and therefore had a Friday the 13th.
But didn’t Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 really screw things up when he readjusted the calendar to get things right so we wouldn’t end up with December falling in the beginning of the summer or some kind of nonsense? This Friday the 13th research is getting more and more complicated. Let’s ignore all of this and just go back to a calendar like we were going to in the previous paragraph.
From: http://calendarhome.com/tyc/ - where you can make calendars for almost any year AD: Friday the 13th's
26 AD - September & December
27 AD - June
28 AD - February & August
29 AD - May
30 AD - January & October
31 AD - April & July
32 AD - June
33 AD - February, March & November
34 AD - August
35 AD - May
36 AD - January, April & July
If Christ died on the 13th and Easter was in the spring then we have 31 and 33 AD… One of those must have been the year of Jesus’ death.
Don’t take it as Gospel.
© 08.13.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
So I finally finished porting over everything from the misspelled web blog but I have decided for a bit until everyone (who am I kidding here) figures it out and starts going to http://ingeniousvortex.blogspot.com/. In the meantime I will just post twice. The copying and pasting made for a very tedious Friday the 13th and I am hoping I am not too unlucky.
This got me thinking about Friday the 13th (not the movie). Somewhere along the line I got it in my head that one of the reasons it was unlucky was that Good Friday fell on that day… obviously it fell on a Friday but did it really fall on the 13th?
Or maybe not, time for a Google. Because here on a Google blog the html does not work, I will just go type it in.
I started out with “Jesus died” wiki. Why not, we all know how reliable wiki is… “Scholars generally conclude that Jesus was born sometime between 7-2 BC/BCE and died sometime between 26-36 AD/CE.” So if I read this right Jesus was born BC? Talk about miracles!
“According to all four Gospels, Jesus died before late afternoon” and since all four Gospels have him rising from the dead on Sunday (or since they were Jewish, could it have been the Sabbath that was really Saturday, which would have had Jesus dying on a Thursday). In any case according to the Apostles Creed – “He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again.” “Regardless of the year of Jesus' death, most Christians commemorate the crucifixion on Good Friday and celebrate the resurrection on Easter Sunday.” So as usual Wiki is no help since they don’t even know the year he was born or the year he died but only when we commemorate and celebrate.
Matthew 12: “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from You. But He answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth…” So it becomes more confusing the deeper I go into it and to cover the scriptures Christ had to die on Thursday... or, if he was in hell for three nites and he died on Friday then Easter must have occurred on Monday; that or the whole Friday the 13th thing does not work out at all.
So ignoring these inconsistencies and if we say that Jesus did die in the spring and it was on Friday the 13th, I decided to check if any fell in March or April 26-36 AD. Going back to Wiki on the subject of Friday the 13th: “:…occurs when the thirteenth day of a month falls on a Friday, which superstition holds to be a day of bad luck. In the Gregorian calendar, this day occurs at least once, but at most three times a year. Any month's 13th day will fall on a Friday if the month starts on a Sunday.” Since I am not Rainman I had to consult a calendar about what spring months in 26-36 AD started with a Sunday and therefore had a Friday the 13th.
But didn’t Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 really screw things up when he readjusted the calendar to get things right so we wouldn’t end up with December falling in the beginning of the summer or some kind of nonsense? This Friday the 13th research is getting more and more complicated. Let’s ignore all of this and just go back to a calendar like we were going to in the previous paragraph.
From: http://calendarhome.com/tyc/ - where you can make calendars for almost any year AD: Friday the 13th's
26 AD - September & December
27 AD - June
28 AD - February & August
29 AD - May
30 AD - January & October
31 AD - April & July
32 AD - June
33 AD - February, March & November
34 AD - August
35 AD - May
36 AD - January, April & July
If Christ died on the 13th and Easter was in the spring then we have 31 and 33 AD… One of those must have been the year of Jesus’ death.
Don’t take it as Gospel.
© 08.13.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
The End of Daydreaming.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010
The End of Daydreaming.
Education is now the ultimate slayer of daydreams. Teachers have gotten stuck with the notion that daydreaming is somehow a careless inattention that interferes with their classroom objectives. Successful test performance by students has become the didactic imperative. School starts earlier and earlier to get a few more days for training students to successfully answer multiple choice tests.
Instead of mentoring our scholars on how to think, educators concentrate their efforts training children to perform on the ultimate ‘qualitative measurement of knowledge’, the standardized test. Annual assessments begin early in elementary school and continue through graduation from high school. Part of this valuable training includes teaching students how to make a best guess or basically, how to take tests. School day after school day, useless drivel is pounded into cerebral cortexes across America.
Children still want to daydream. The high spirited and rebellious engage in it whenever given the opportunity... unless and until the desire or ability is beaten out of them. It is not the nun or the principal wielding the paddle. Instead this task is delegated to the school counselor. As teachers force ‘on task’ classroom behavior they are smothering creative thought. Children whose minds wander are labeled ADD. One teacher said that she has yet to see a child who has been recommended for evaluation not diagnosed as having ADD. Of course they have ADD! What other result or diagnosis could be expected?
How are we to encourage creative thinking? A rigid curriculum does not foster this most essential aspect of education. Learning must begin to nourish individual thought so that creativity will flourish. Generations of worker bees are spawned and trained to march lock step while at the same time those insurgents industrious enough to attempt to take a different road are alienated, beaten down or drugged into a stupor.
If it is necessary to evaluate student performance using standardized testing is it not just as important to measure the ability to adapt and think creatively? How can this be done?
The arts are taking a real beating in this budget cutting time. The arts, music and even athletics should be mandatory subjects. Daydreaming or creative thinking needs to have curricula developed that encourage new ideas. Reward students that have the capability to generate original thinking. We must find ways to provide opportunity for the attention to wander. Where is there accountability assigned for this?
Daydreaming should be a part of every individual’s school or work day. What if industry gave every worker fifteen minutes daily to spend time just thinking about ways to make their jobs better, easier, more efficient or even more enjoyable? Surely that 3.125% of the work day would come to something besides just wasted time. What if schools did the same thing and engaged the students to become part of their own destiny?
We must not let daydreaming die! It is a frightful thought!
© 08.12.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 2:19 PM
The End of Daydreaming.
Education is now the ultimate slayer of daydreams. Teachers have gotten stuck with the notion that daydreaming is somehow a careless inattention that interferes with their classroom objectives. Successful test performance by students has become the didactic imperative. School starts earlier and earlier to get a few more days for training students to successfully answer multiple choice tests.
Instead of mentoring our scholars on how to think, educators concentrate their efforts training children to perform on the ultimate ‘qualitative measurement of knowledge’, the standardized test. Annual assessments begin early in elementary school and continue through graduation from high school. Part of this valuable training includes teaching students how to make a best guess or basically, how to take tests. School day after school day, useless drivel is pounded into cerebral cortexes across America.
Children still want to daydream. The high spirited and rebellious engage in it whenever given the opportunity... unless and until the desire or ability is beaten out of them. It is not the nun or the principal wielding the paddle. Instead this task is delegated to the school counselor. As teachers force ‘on task’ classroom behavior they are smothering creative thought. Children whose minds wander are labeled ADD. One teacher said that she has yet to see a child who has been recommended for evaluation not diagnosed as having ADD. Of course they have ADD! What other result or diagnosis could be expected?
How are we to encourage creative thinking? A rigid curriculum does not foster this most essential aspect of education. Learning must begin to nourish individual thought so that creativity will flourish. Generations of worker bees are spawned and trained to march lock step while at the same time those insurgents industrious enough to attempt to take a different road are alienated, beaten down or drugged into a stupor.
If it is necessary to evaluate student performance using standardized testing is it not just as important to measure the ability to adapt and think creatively? How can this be done?
The arts are taking a real beating in this budget cutting time. The arts, music and even athletics should be mandatory subjects. Daydreaming or creative thinking needs to have curricula developed that encourage new ideas. Reward students that have the capability to generate original thinking. We must find ways to provide opportunity for the attention to wander. Where is there accountability assigned for this?
Daydreaming should be a part of every individual’s school or work day. What if industry gave every worker fifteen minutes daily to spend time just thinking about ways to make their jobs better, easier, more efficient or even more enjoyable? Surely that 3.125% of the work day would come to something besides just wasted time. What if schools did the same thing and engaged the students to become part of their own destiny?
We must not let daydreaming die! It is a frightful thought!
© 08.12.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 2:19 PM
The Smart Swarm… Present Day Borg.
The Smart Swarm… Present Day Borg.
Not one to miss an opportunity to jump on something with both feet that I know relatively little about; I came across Peter Miller being interviewed on NPR today. I usually flip away from the host. Thankfully, she was away on vacation. I hung around long enough to know that I wanted to find out more on the topic but a little less on the references to hawk the book over the airwaves.
I am sure it is a wonderful read: "The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done” by Peter Miller: [url=http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies-Communicating/dp/1583333908]Let me google that for you![/url]
Listening caused me to decide that I would rather be part of a smart swarm than a stupid one although the entire idea is that natural selection is supposed to make that determination for us. As I was thinking I probably did not really want to be part of the Borg at all; I started to put on my best leather outfit with all the electronic looking gadgets protruding from it and waded in on the interweb.
Lily Sloane: Borg? Sounds Swedish.
[after having seen the Borg]
Lily Sloane: Definitely not Swedish.
Yahoo’s book report can be found at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100805/ap_en_re/us_book_review_the_smart_swarm
“Miller summarizes in two lessons what he has learned from swarms, flocks and colonies of selected insects, birds and animals, whose instinctive processes his book describes in easily understandable detail.
‘The first is that working together in smart groups, we too can learn the impact of uncertainty, complexity and change.
‘The second ... is that, as members of such groups we don't have to surrender our individuality. In nature, good decision-making comes from competition as much as from compromise, from disagreement as much as from consensus.’
Though the lessons aren't new, they do bear some thinking about.”
Cmdr. Deanna Troi: If you're looking for my professional opinion as ship's counselor: he's nuts.
Cmdr. William Riker: I'll be sure to note that in my log.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Reports of my assimilation have been greatly exaggerated.
Cmdr. Deanna Troi: Bridge to Captain Picard.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Go ahead.
Cmdr. Deanna Troi: We've just received word from the Fleet. They've engaged the Borg.
On a daily basis we encounter the Borg or the group mentality that just as easily can be doing us in as revealing our survival. We act like a school of sardines using a group mentality to endeavor to outthink or outmaneuver a more formidable force (like every predator off the African Coast). Usually though we are only searching together to outwit our own lack of common sense.
The entire key to this is that ‘common sense’. It is a Neanderthal kind of thinking… and, look at what having it got them - extinction. Maybe this swarm mentality or thinking is not really what we need. Possibly what is really missing from the equation that will balance it and make it work is the intense individualistic thinking of genius. It might be a good idea for bees to get out of the hive where they are succumbing daily to threats they cannot defeat as a group. It is being part of the swarm that is bringing their downfall.
Man is ready for new leadership. That is what is required to move beyond the morass some of this group thinking has gotten us into. We search for our new Copernicus or Galileo. We need to stop giving in to the group think. We must worship, adore and foster idiosyncratic, even eccentric thoughts and people. It was always that one ‘nut’ that popped off that turned the world in a different direction. Progress does not really happen when everyone goes around agreeing with each other. It takes revolution and revolutionary thought to get things moving.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: It's not too late. Locutus could still be with you. Just in the way you wanted: an equal. Let Data go, and I will take my place at your side. Willingly, without any resistance.
The Borg Queen: Such a noble creature. A quality we sometimes lack. We will add your distinctiveness to our own. Welcome home... Locutus.
The Borg Queen: Locutus...
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile.
Welcome to the Smart Swarm. Where does the Devil’s Advocate fit in?
DakotaDawg, we look pretty stoopid with all this Droid stuff hanging off of us. Besides, it’s hot out and you don’t look so loveable in black leather.
Let’s go for a walk and dream the dream.
© 08.11.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Not one to miss an opportunity to jump on something with both feet that I know relatively little about; I came across Peter Miller being interviewed on NPR today. I usually flip away from the host. Thankfully, she was away on vacation. I hung around long enough to know that I wanted to find out more on the topic but a little less on the references to hawk the book over the airwaves.
I am sure it is a wonderful read: "The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done” by Peter Miller: [url=http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies-Communicating/dp/1583333908]Let me google that for you![/url]
Listening caused me to decide that I would rather be part of a smart swarm than a stupid one although the entire idea is that natural selection is supposed to make that determination for us. As I was thinking I probably did not really want to be part of the Borg at all; I started to put on my best leather outfit with all the electronic looking gadgets protruding from it and waded in on the interweb.
Lily Sloane: Borg? Sounds Swedish.
[after having seen the Borg]
Lily Sloane: Definitely not Swedish.
Yahoo’s book report can be found at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100805/ap_en_re/us_book_review_the_smart_swarm
“Miller summarizes in two lessons what he has learned from swarms, flocks and colonies of selected insects, birds and animals, whose instinctive processes his book describes in easily understandable detail.
‘The first is that working together in smart groups, we too can learn the impact of uncertainty, complexity and change.
‘The second ... is that, as members of such groups we don't have to surrender our individuality. In nature, good decision-making comes from competition as much as from compromise, from disagreement as much as from consensus.’
Though the lessons aren't new, they do bear some thinking about.”
Cmdr. Deanna Troi: If you're looking for my professional opinion as ship's counselor: he's nuts.
Cmdr. William Riker: I'll be sure to note that in my log.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Reports of my assimilation have been greatly exaggerated.
Cmdr. Deanna Troi: Bridge to Captain Picard.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Go ahead.
Cmdr. Deanna Troi: We've just received word from the Fleet. They've engaged the Borg.
On a daily basis we encounter the Borg or the group mentality that just as easily can be doing us in as revealing our survival. We act like a school of sardines using a group mentality to endeavor to outthink or outmaneuver a more formidable force (like every predator off the African Coast). Usually though we are only searching together to outwit our own lack of common sense.
The entire key to this is that ‘common sense’. It is a Neanderthal kind of thinking… and, look at what having it got them - extinction. Maybe this swarm mentality or thinking is not really what we need. Possibly what is really missing from the equation that will balance it and make it work is the intense individualistic thinking of genius. It might be a good idea for bees to get out of the hive where they are succumbing daily to threats they cannot defeat as a group. It is being part of the swarm that is bringing their downfall.
Man is ready for new leadership. That is what is required to move beyond the morass some of this group thinking has gotten us into. We search for our new Copernicus or Galileo. We need to stop giving in to the group think. We must worship, adore and foster idiosyncratic, even eccentric thoughts and people. It was always that one ‘nut’ that popped off that turned the world in a different direction. Progress does not really happen when everyone goes around agreeing with each other. It takes revolution and revolutionary thought to get things moving.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: It's not too late. Locutus could still be with you. Just in the way you wanted: an equal. Let Data go, and I will take my place at your side. Willingly, without any resistance.
The Borg Queen: Such a noble creature. A quality we sometimes lack. We will add your distinctiveness to our own. Welcome home... Locutus.
The Borg Queen: Locutus...
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile.
Welcome to the Smart Swarm. Where does the Devil’s Advocate fit in?
DakotaDawg, we look pretty stoopid with all this Droid stuff hanging off of us. Besides, it’s hot out and you don’t look so loveable in black leather.
Let’s go for a walk and dream the dream.
© 08.11.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Brave Cowboy.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2010
Brave Cowboy.
There were drake mallards with some hens. Two kids, dressed a little funny, stood next to the kneeling father in his Sunday best camelhair coat. His receding hairline and widow’s peaks were an integral part of him since he was a young man. It must have been pretty cold because the boys’ matching plaid wool coats went almost to their knees. There was a bag of Wonderbread to lure the waddling ducks from the edge of the pond. The lone connection between Christmas in the fifties and today is Hermie’s birthday.
As I get deeper into the article on “Making Connections – The essence of memory is linking one thought to another” (July/August 2010 issue of: Scientific American MIND”) I realized dad was born today in ’22 or ’23. I have some very vibrant memories of that visit to the pond.
From other things I have read about memories, it is quite possible that many of these recollections of that day might be wrong or an amalgamation of others. Also from a web summary of the article (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=making-connections): “New experiences can lead a network of cells to develop further connections, adding to a memory and helping us learn but sometimes modifying a recollection and creating false memories.”
That day was an especially cold Christmas as my once young brain recalls it. My brother and I got the matching coats and the cowboy outfits. I was a believer and Santa delivered. It is quite possible that other memories from other things have gotten packaged together with that pleasant afternoon. There were cowboy boots.
Mike, keeper of the family archives has a roll of film dedicated to Christmas that year and the visit to the duck pond. The date the film was developed is conveniently printed on the white border of the black and white print. We will have to stroll down Memory Lane the next time I visit him. If some of my memories of that day are a little sketchy at least I am 100% on the roll of film or at least the one single photo of the event. It was a moment captured in time. I remember one other image of mom that dad must have taken and she was very young. We don’t have many pictures of mom since she was more than a bit camera shy of that Kodak Hawkeye Brownie.
Having a copy of those photos would be very helpful for an accuracy that right now is of little concern. The connections as they exist in my mind are fixed and that is what is important. Dad, Mike and I are feeding the ducks. I do remember the cowboy gun and hat but not really in conjunction with the duck feeding without the photographic link. The gun was a pot metal cap pistol that came with a belt and holster. There were quite a few caps shot off with that gun. The caps came on a roll of red paper that was stored where there should have been bullets. The holster and the belt were made of leather because it was before the days of plastic substitutes. My cowboy hat had white applied trim to the red wool with a string keeper that was red. It had a wood slider bead on the string to cinch up under my chin to keep the hat from blowing off. Mike’s outfit was identical except his cowboy hat was black.
Stored somewhere in the ganglia of synapses and neurons is a gigantic white attack swan with a bright orange bill. This swan did not like me but somehow I think the swan might be from another visit to the pond; I can not be sure. I remember begging to wear the cowboy boots to bed and my grandmother’s horrified look when my mother gave in to my whining. I don’t remember waking up with the cowboy boots on but I do know it was in my own bed and not my parents’ where we fell asleep.
What lit the match of nostalgia was a picture from the article of two ducks and a white goose. That was the happenstance that pulled everything together. From that article: “Links between things, events, people and our actions – so-called item associations – are the reason certain objects evoke reminiscence and become keepsakes.”
I probably ran toward the swan, leveled my cap pistol and let him have it. Whether it was on that visit or another I sure remember that swan coming after me as I ran for my life. I was saved by my mom as she swatted at big bird with her huge purse.
I am sure mom had a hat on. Since mom rarely wore a hat, I am guessing that we wore our new outfits to Christmas mass, checked our guns and hats at the door and then put them back on after mass for the visit at the park. It should also be noted that cowboys sometimes need to be defended by women with purses. And the reason I remember the widow’s peaks is because dad hated hats.
Happy Birthday, Dad. If that is not exactly how it happened it is almost too perfect to try to change. I am going to call Mike to remind him.
© 08.10.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 11:44 AM
Brave Cowboy.
There were drake mallards with some hens. Two kids, dressed a little funny, stood next to the kneeling father in his Sunday best camelhair coat. His receding hairline and widow’s peaks were an integral part of him since he was a young man. It must have been pretty cold because the boys’ matching plaid wool coats went almost to their knees. There was a bag of Wonderbread to lure the waddling ducks from the edge of the pond. The lone connection between Christmas in the fifties and today is Hermie’s birthday.
As I get deeper into the article on “Making Connections – The essence of memory is linking one thought to another” (July/August 2010 issue of: Scientific American MIND”) I realized dad was born today in ’22 or ’23. I have some very vibrant memories of that visit to the pond.
From other things I have read about memories, it is quite possible that many of these recollections of that day might be wrong or an amalgamation of others. Also from a web summary of the article (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=making-connections): “New experiences can lead a network of cells to develop further connections, adding to a memory and helping us learn but sometimes modifying a recollection and creating false memories.”
That day was an especially cold Christmas as my once young brain recalls it. My brother and I got the matching coats and the cowboy outfits. I was a believer and Santa delivered. It is quite possible that other memories from other things have gotten packaged together with that pleasant afternoon. There were cowboy boots.
Mike, keeper of the family archives has a roll of film dedicated to Christmas that year and the visit to the duck pond. The date the film was developed is conveniently printed on the white border of the black and white print. We will have to stroll down Memory Lane the next time I visit him. If some of my memories of that day are a little sketchy at least I am 100% on the roll of film or at least the one single photo of the event. It was a moment captured in time. I remember one other image of mom that dad must have taken and she was very young. We don’t have many pictures of mom since she was more than a bit camera shy of that Kodak Hawkeye Brownie.
Having a copy of those photos would be very helpful for an accuracy that right now is of little concern. The connections as they exist in my mind are fixed and that is what is important. Dad, Mike and I are feeding the ducks. I do remember the cowboy gun and hat but not really in conjunction with the duck feeding without the photographic link. The gun was a pot metal cap pistol that came with a belt and holster. There were quite a few caps shot off with that gun. The caps came on a roll of red paper that was stored where there should have been bullets. The holster and the belt were made of leather because it was before the days of plastic substitutes. My cowboy hat had white applied trim to the red wool with a string keeper that was red. It had a wood slider bead on the string to cinch up under my chin to keep the hat from blowing off. Mike’s outfit was identical except his cowboy hat was black.
Stored somewhere in the ganglia of synapses and neurons is a gigantic white attack swan with a bright orange bill. This swan did not like me but somehow I think the swan might be from another visit to the pond; I can not be sure. I remember begging to wear the cowboy boots to bed and my grandmother’s horrified look when my mother gave in to my whining. I don’t remember waking up with the cowboy boots on but I do know it was in my own bed and not my parents’ where we fell asleep.
What lit the match of nostalgia was a picture from the article of two ducks and a white goose. That was the happenstance that pulled everything together. From that article: “Links between things, events, people and our actions – so-called item associations – are the reason certain objects evoke reminiscence and become keepsakes.”
I probably ran toward the swan, leveled my cap pistol and let him have it. Whether it was on that visit or another I sure remember that swan coming after me as I ran for my life. I was saved by my mom as she swatted at big bird with her huge purse.
I am sure mom had a hat on. Since mom rarely wore a hat, I am guessing that we wore our new outfits to Christmas mass, checked our guns and hats at the door and then put them back on after mass for the visit at the park. It should also be noted that cowboys sometimes need to be defended by women with purses. And the reason I remember the widow’s peaks is because dad hated hats.
Happy Birthday, Dad. If that is not exactly how it happened it is almost too perfect to try to change. I am going to call Mike to remind him.
© 08.10.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 11:44 AM
Catchup... three, three, three posts in one.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 2010
Going on a visit.
It is always fun to go on a visit… especially where you are wanted. My brother in law always makes us feel that way. Other people have that same knack.
DakotaDawg said load the car and don’t forget me. We won’t but will have to watch her carefully. At eight she can be a tad too playful for some other dogs especially Cocoa.
Cocoa came with the house when Rick separated from the Air Force and settled down in one location that has turned out to be several. The boys were in grade school then and now one is in college and the other is about to be after just one more year. Cocoa doesn’t do any more laps around the pool and that is not because the latest residence doesn’t have one.
We are going to bring DakotaDawg’s OLD worn out Xmas dog that is about two thirds as old as she is. It is still her favorite toy and it was a gift from Cocoa. Maybe they can share it this weekend.
Short but sweet… just like this weekend. We will get the heck out of there before we wear out our welcome. Maybe DakotaDawg can nab another Cocoa toy. The one certain thing I know about the visit is what ever is Cocoa’s favorite toy will certainly be DakotaDawg’s too. She likes to share… especially Cocoa’s toys.
© 08.06.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 9:01 AM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010
Traveling.
Home, James.
Home again, home again. Jiggety Jig.
Long day on the road. DakotaDawg got to nap when she wanted.
MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2010
Squid and Memory… stay tuned.
.Sleep arrived early last nite before snoring filled the room. My lids fell after I had barely started a magazine article on memory. The last thing I do remember was a brown dog on the floor making snorting sounds. A brief recap of how far my research delved into the subject and what it means is all I offer today.
Recall has more to do with associations than physical storage procedure. It is the interconnection that is significant. It is almost irrelevant whether memory is stored alphabetically in brain cells, file cabinets or sub-directories. The retrieval of memories makes them memorable. I pondered if this was the case especially since it is really not a memory if one cannot locate where it is and what it is related to when it is desired or needed. Organization of relationships is what makes recollection possible.
I remember little else since I was quite tired and did not get very far into the article… more later especially about the squid. What this means is that for me to write more about memory I have to experience more to wrap my tentacles around.
DakotaDawg, can you knock off some of the snoring?
© 08.06.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 9:11
Going on a visit.
It is always fun to go on a visit… especially where you are wanted. My brother in law always makes us feel that way. Other people have that same knack.
DakotaDawg said load the car and don’t forget me. We won’t but will have to watch her carefully. At eight she can be a tad too playful for some other dogs especially Cocoa.
Cocoa came with the house when Rick separated from the Air Force and settled down in one location that has turned out to be several. The boys were in grade school then and now one is in college and the other is about to be after just one more year. Cocoa doesn’t do any more laps around the pool and that is not because the latest residence doesn’t have one.
We are going to bring DakotaDawg’s OLD worn out Xmas dog that is about two thirds as old as she is. It is still her favorite toy and it was a gift from Cocoa. Maybe they can share it this weekend.
Short but sweet… just like this weekend. We will get the heck out of there before we wear out our welcome. Maybe DakotaDawg can nab another Cocoa toy. The one certain thing I know about the visit is what ever is Cocoa’s favorite toy will certainly be DakotaDawg’s too. She likes to share… especially Cocoa’s toys.
© 08.06.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 9:01 AM
SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010
Traveling.
Home, James.
Home again, home again. Jiggety Jig.
Long day on the road. DakotaDawg got to nap when she wanted.
MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2010
Squid and Memory… stay tuned.
.Sleep arrived early last nite before snoring filled the room. My lids fell after I had barely started a magazine article on memory. The last thing I do remember was a brown dog on the floor making snorting sounds. A brief recap of how far my research delved into the subject and what it means is all I offer today.
Recall has more to do with associations than physical storage procedure. It is the interconnection that is significant. It is almost irrelevant whether memory is stored alphabetically in brain cells, file cabinets or sub-directories. The retrieval of memories makes them memorable. I pondered if this was the case especially since it is really not a memory if one cannot locate where it is and what it is related to when it is desired or needed. Organization of relationships is what makes recollection possible.
I remember little else since I was quite tired and did not get very far into the article… more later especially about the squid. What this means is that for me to write more about memory I have to experience more to wrap my tentacles around.
DakotaDawg, can you knock off some of the snoring?
© 08.06.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 9:11
Our present and past are the framework for our future.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2010
Our present and past are the framework for our future.
I have to look to my grandmother that came over from Ireland as steerage on a ship to get a grasp of this concept. Grandmas could not teleport over on a return Marconi transatlantic radio beam or take an airplane flight. She beat both of those things by several years. She was a young girl and depending upon who you ask, she was either six or twelve. Jane went on deck to see the Statue of Liberty before she went to Ellis Island for processing. Then she and her mother, sister and brother joined my great grandfather who took an earlier trip, found a job and was already in Queens.
The "Wizard of Menlo Park" had invented the light bulb but their house was still lit by gas and kerosene lanterns. Electricity really didn’t get down all of the side streets of New York’s boroughs until after the turn of the century. Great Grandpa and Great Grandma’s house had converted fixtures well before my first visit.
Grandma saw major innovation in her years besides the illumination from those Edison patented electric light bulbs. She heard about the Wright brothers and man's first powered flight in the news or possibly on the radio. She saw Lindberg take off from Roosevelt Field for his history making transatlantic flight. Jane had a radio that predated his crossing in her living room near the player piano. That old radio had more bands behind the glass faceplate than marched in the Fourth of July parade down Main Street. I was out of grade school before I was taller than that console.
The oak art deco radio stood right next to the cabinet where the tulip telephone stood on the Irish Lace Doily. It broadcast Roosevelt's December 8th, 1941 speech about "a date which will live in infamy". It told of news about the retribution, the Atomic Bomb and the end of war as we knew it.
Jane stayed up late clutching her rosary in front of an old black and white television in the mahogany cabinet at the other end of the living room watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Unfortunately for Buzz Aldrin, he would have had to climb over Neil to get to the door. Instead of remembering his words we saw him come down the ladder second. Radio beams came from the moon instead of ‘just’ across the ocean. Grandma heard the historic ‘giant leap’ words as fast as they could get home to her Zenith from the Sea of Tranquility. A lot of things during Grandma’s lifetime are part of our present and past. Many things that were being worked on, regrettably, are still a part of our future.
Grandma used to tell us to be careful what we wished for. As far as technology is concerned she could not have been more wrong. I am waiting, albeit not so patiently, for all the promises made in my youth to become the reality of my old age. My Highlight’s magazine made some immense promises, things that were supposed to occur decades ago. I will keep watching Discovery and the Science Channel, National Geographic and the Sci-Fi channels to see what is possible and when we will find some of those promises that still remain Hidden Pictures©.
If we keep looking we might make our present and past the framework for our future. I will ask Michio when it is going to happen. Twenty-five years ago Marty went back to the future; we're still waiting.
Inquiring minds want to know and DakotaDawg is interested too. We have had enough small steps for man. It is time for some giant leaps.
Where is my Mr. Fusion? I’m getting too much garbage to compost all of it.
© 08.05.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 11:20 AM
Our present and past are the framework for our future.
I have to look to my grandmother that came over from Ireland as steerage on a ship to get a grasp of this concept. Grandmas could not teleport over on a return Marconi transatlantic radio beam or take an airplane flight. She beat both of those things by several years. She was a young girl and depending upon who you ask, she was either six or twelve. Jane went on deck to see the Statue of Liberty before she went to Ellis Island for processing. Then she and her mother, sister and brother joined my great grandfather who took an earlier trip, found a job and was already in Queens.
The "Wizard of Menlo Park" had invented the light bulb but their house was still lit by gas and kerosene lanterns. Electricity really didn’t get down all of the side streets of New York’s boroughs until after the turn of the century. Great Grandpa and Great Grandma’s house had converted fixtures well before my first visit.
Grandma saw major innovation in her years besides the illumination from those Edison patented electric light bulbs. She heard about the Wright brothers and man's first powered flight in the news or possibly on the radio. She saw Lindberg take off from Roosevelt Field for his history making transatlantic flight. Jane had a radio that predated his crossing in her living room near the player piano. That old radio had more bands behind the glass faceplate than marched in the Fourth of July parade down Main Street. I was out of grade school before I was taller than that console.
The oak art deco radio stood right next to the cabinet where the tulip telephone stood on the Irish Lace Doily. It broadcast Roosevelt's December 8th, 1941 speech about "a date which will live in infamy". It told of news about the retribution, the Atomic Bomb and the end of war as we knew it.
Jane stayed up late clutching her rosary in front of an old black and white television in the mahogany cabinet at the other end of the living room watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Unfortunately for Buzz Aldrin, he would have had to climb over Neil to get to the door. Instead of remembering his words we saw him come down the ladder second. Radio beams came from the moon instead of ‘just’ across the ocean. Grandma heard the historic ‘giant leap’ words as fast as they could get home to her Zenith from the Sea of Tranquility. A lot of things during Grandma’s lifetime are part of our present and past. Many things that were being worked on, regrettably, are still a part of our future.
Grandma used to tell us to be careful what we wished for. As far as technology is concerned she could not have been more wrong. I am waiting, albeit not so patiently, for all the promises made in my youth to become the reality of my old age. My Highlight’s magazine made some immense promises, things that were supposed to occur decades ago. I will keep watching Discovery and the Science Channel, National Geographic and the Sci-Fi channels to see what is possible and when we will find some of those promises that still remain Hidden Pictures©.
If we keep looking we might make our present and past the framework for our future. I will ask Michio when it is going to happen. Twenty-five years ago Marty went back to the future; we're still waiting.
Inquiring minds want to know and DakotaDawg is interested too. We have had enough small steps for man. It is time for some giant leaps.
Where is my Mr. Fusion? I’m getting too much garbage to compost all of it.
© 08.05.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 11:20 AM
Where’s the Future?
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2010
Where’s the Future?
This topic is taken up by Wired Magazine’s August 3, 2010 full featured cover story starring Will Ferrell, available on newsstands and the internet now. Many topics I wondered about are covered in a sometimes hilarious way. Some are not as much amusing as realistic.
Will Ferrell appears in this pictorial satire and real life explanation of why some of the things the world expected have never come to pass. “From clean coal to designer babies: Why the marvels we were promised haven’t materialized.” is the theme.
The Future That Never Happened features historical sniglets on topics as varied as (misspelling of Nanontechnology courtesy of Wired):
Automatic Dog Translator
Food in a Pill
Self-Driving Cars
Nuclear Spaceships
Edible Fake Beard Laser Guns
Designer Babies
The Singularity
Flying Cars — That Go 40 Feet WIMAX
Quantum Computing
Nanontechnology
A Birthday Cake With a Burrito Inside
What We’ve Lost
Supersonic Airlines
Ray Gun That Brings Mannequins to Life
Personalized Medications Robot Servants
Vat-Grown Meat
Clear Coal
Chewbacca-Mask Weddings Jetpacks
Fusion Power
Invisibility
Underwater City
In Will Ferrell’s Tour of Tech That Never Took on page 4 (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_future_ferrell/4/)
“WiMax
Still waiting for WiMax — you know, the souped-up, next-gen Wi-Fi that surrounds you at all times and lets you access the Internet via a radio transmitter up to 30 miles away? Then you must reside in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. If you live in most other cities in the US (or the world, for that matter — experts estimate that WiMax will cover 1 billion people by 2011), then you might already have the wireless technology on your smartphone or laptop. You just know it by another name: 4G. — Erin Biba”
Erin Biba describes herself as Reporter and Writer; Science, Technology, Pop Culture;
WIRED Magazine Correspondent and displays some summaries and links to a few of his works at: http://www.erinbiba.com/. She also twitters at http://twitter.com/erinbiba and will be happy to send you “short, timely messages” so you can keep up with everything of import that is going on in her life in case worrying about the future and why past promises have not been delivered is not enough to take up all of your time already.
Ms. Biba’s twitter-Bio says she is a “WIRED Magazine Correspondent. Science, Tech, and Pop Culture writer. Nerd. Fan of pie.” That last piece of information is crucial and explains a lot of things about her outlook on the world. Erin’s point of view might be signigicantly improved by a fantabulous NOM Coconut Cream Pie. If Erin is reading my blog I will certainly get Margarite to bake and send one to her. As far as me subscribing to the twitter to ascertain that… in my best Saturday Night Live Bush voice, “Not gonna happen.” If you want to find out more on Erin you can access Google which listed “About 2,840,000 results (0.52 seconds)” so there is still plenty to find out if you are that curious.
4G is the cell phone provider’s fee based version of what should have been something that everyone would benefit from instead of only those with the financial wherewithal but one of Erin’s observations just should not be glazed over: “Then you must reside in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.” Otherwise if you live anywhere else on Earth you are paying for it through some 3 or 4G and most likely at nowhere near those speeds.
Welcome to the present.
Where’s the Future? Don’t bother looking too far for it unless your aim is to be amused.
“The Future That Never Happened” is coming to a screen near you soon… starring… DOH – Will Ferrell.
BTW: Wired Magazine’s August 3, 2010 issue is worth the read... Lee, are you done with your printed version yet. I am still looking for a job so I can afford to subscribe myself. DakotaDawg is tired of looking over my shoulder at the laptop screen. She has some complaint about the type looking too small.
© 08.04.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Where’s the Future?
This topic is taken up by Wired Magazine’s August 3, 2010 full featured cover story starring Will Ferrell, available on newsstands and the internet now. Many topics I wondered about are covered in a sometimes hilarious way. Some are not as much amusing as realistic.
Will Ferrell appears in this pictorial satire and real life explanation of why some of the things the world expected have never come to pass. “From clean coal to designer babies: Why the marvels we were promised haven’t materialized.” is the theme.
The Future That Never Happened features historical sniglets on topics as varied as (misspelling of Nanontechnology courtesy of Wired):
Automatic Dog Translator
Food in a Pill
Self-Driving Cars
Nuclear Spaceships
Edible Fake Beard Laser Guns
Designer Babies
The Singularity
Flying Cars — That Go 40 Feet WIMAX
Quantum Computing
Nanontechnology
A Birthday Cake With a Burrito Inside
What We’ve Lost
Supersonic Airlines
Ray Gun That Brings Mannequins to Life
Personalized Medications Robot Servants
Vat-Grown Meat
Clear Coal
Chewbacca-Mask Weddings Jetpacks
Fusion Power
Invisibility
Underwater City
In Will Ferrell’s Tour of Tech That Never Took on page 4 (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_future_ferrell/4/)
“WiMax
Still waiting for WiMax — you know, the souped-up, next-gen Wi-Fi that surrounds you at all times and lets you access the Internet via a radio transmitter up to 30 miles away? Then you must reside in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. If you live in most other cities in the US (or the world, for that matter — experts estimate that WiMax will cover 1 billion people by 2011), then you might already have the wireless technology on your smartphone or laptop. You just know it by another name: 4G. — Erin Biba”
Erin Biba describes herself as Reporter and Writer; Science, Technology, Pop Culture;
WIRED Magazine Correspondent and displays some summaries and links to a few of his works at: http://www.erinbiba.com/. She also twitters at http://twitter.com/erinbiba and will be happy to send you “short, timely messages” so you can keep up with everything of import that is going on in her life in case worrying about the future and why past promises have not been delivered is not enough to take up all of your time already.
Ms. Biba’s twitter-Bio says she is a “WIRED Magazine Correspondent. Science, Tech, and Pop Culture writer. Nerd. Fan of pie.” That last piece of information is crucial and explains a lot of things about her outlook on the world. Erin’s point of view might be signigicantly improved by a fantabulous NOM Coconut Cream Pie. If Erin is reading my blog I will certainly get Margarite to bake and send one to her. As far as me subscribing to the twitter to ascertain that… in my best Saturday Night Live Bush voice, “Not gonna happen.” If you want to find out more on Erin you can access Google which listed “About 2,840,000 results (0.52 seconds)” so there is still plenty to find out if you are that curious.
4G is the cell phone provider’s fee based version of what should have been something that everyone would benefit from instead of only those with the financial wherewithal but one of Erin’s observations just should not be glazed over: “Then you must reside in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.” Otherwise if you live anywhere else on Earth you are paying for it through some 3 or 4G and most likely at nowhere near those speeds.
Welcome to the present.
Where’s the Future? Don’t bother looking too far for it unless your aim is to be amused.
“The Future That Never Happened” is coming to a screen near you soon… starring… DOH – Will Ferrell.
BTW: Wired Magazine’s August 3, 2010 issue is worth the read... Lee, are you done with your printed version yet. I am still looking for a job so I can afford to subscribe myself. DakotaDawg is tired of looking over my shoulder at the laptop screen. She has some complaint about the type looking too small.
© 08.04.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Boom!
TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2010
Boom!
After spending days finding out and writing about Tesla and wireless transmission of electrical energy I sit alone in my recliner working on my portable on battery power. The wonderful grid that Tesla figured out how to provide has come down in one big boom. No more electricity to do anything that is not on battery power. Amazing.
Power went out at 4:24 EDT. If I had a battery operated car I could zoom over to somewhere there has a wireless network that still had electricity so my computer could grab a hold of some bandwidth. I can still jump in my gasoline guzzling station wagon to do the same thing. It would be so much easier if a wireless network for electricity and internet access was in place so I did not have to do that.
Since this fragile grid is damaged I must wait for the men in the trucks to come replace the transformer around the block that self destructed.
I am not out of options - Thank you Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, Mr. Guttenberg and Daylight Savings Time.
Maybe God is trying to tell me something… I will call my brother on the cellphone; I am pretty sure I charged the battery last night. After getting on a network that actually works it is time for a nap.
“Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in the Force…”
© 08.03.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Boom!
After spending days finding out and writing about Tesla and wireless transmission of electrical energy I sit alone in my recliner working on my portable on battery power. The wonderful grid that Tesla figured out how to provide has come down in one big boom. No more electricity to do anything that is not on battery power. Amazing.
Power went out at 4:24 EDT. If I had a battery operated car I could zoom over to somewhere there has a wireless network that still had electricity so my computer could grab a hold of some bandwidth. I can still jump in my gasoline guzzling station wagon to do the same thing. It would be so much easier if a wireless network for electricity and internet access was in place so I did not have to do that.
Since this fragile grid is damaged I must wait for the men in the trucks to come replace the transformer around the block that self destructed.
I am not out of options - Thank you Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, Mr. Guttenberg and Daylight Savings Time.
Maybe God is trying to tell me something… I will call my brother on the cellphone; I am pretty sure I charged the battery last night. After getting on a network that actually works it is time for a nap.
“Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in the Force…”
© 08.03.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Back to the Futurist.
(This work is still in progress... Please forgive its length, inaccuracies and grammar.)
“Things that may be impossible today may some day become possible.” Things like creating programmable artificial life that can change the course of the history of Earth are now possible, at least in theory. Dr. Michio Kaku, a pioneering Theoretical Physicist specializing in String Field Theory, is an acute anachronism, simultaneously clairvoyant. With his flowing white mane, Kaku is a media lion, a darling sensation, willing to be interviewed by anybody on virtually any topic as long as he can impart his pet theories and anecdotes during dialogue.
Michio reminds me of a former mentor who said frequently, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.” and wondered if he had already told the story or joke. Actually, I had but I rarely slammed on his brakes. No matter what, this bald wonder always added something new that I had never heard before or since. Kaku is a lot like George except for the hair.
Things may still be impossible to achieve today that may have been possible in the past instead of the future if the right string were plucked or the past was a little different from what is remembered. We stand tapping our foot waiting for some part of the past or the future to become the present as we struggle with the concept of time itself.
Born during an electrical storm July 10th 1856 at the stroke of midnight the ‘mad scientist’ Nikola Tesla would prove to be a phenomenal futurist. By 1882, in his mind and in a dirt schematic, Tesla had already invented the induction electric motor as an employee of Continental Edison Company in Paris. Some say this happened in Belgrade even before he went to Paris but somehow, somewhere he determined Alternating Current and opposing magnetic fields in a whirling unison produced a better way to convert energy into work.
Tesla’s letter of recommendation from his supervisor Charles Batchelor to Edison read: “I know two great men and you are one of them. This young man is the other.” Nikola Tesla, the young electrical engineer and inventor in 1884 crossed the Atlantic to work closer to his nemesis the virtuoso scientific genius Edison. He had just four cents left in his pocket when he saw the Statue of Liberty.
Edison recognized Nikola’s immense faculty and grew to rely on Tesla. Thomas Alva, holder of 1093 patents, although not all truly his own, still more than any other man, offered Tesla $50,000 to do something he himself had been unable or too busy to do… redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators so Edison, the entrepreneur and company could net even vaster profits. When Tesla asked for payment for his work, Edison replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American Humor." It was not unusual for Edison to break his word to those creating ‘his genius’ when he personally profited. General Electric continues this tradition; it gobbles up by purchase or larceny intellectual property of others that it can leverage.
Since Tesla who only made $18 per week working for Edison could do math, he realized it would take 53 years to earn what he had been promised and was not forthcoming. To Tesla there was nothing funny about it. He refused a diminutive raise to $25 per week; instead immediately he resigned.
Edison stole one too many ideas. His greed caused this valuable employee to leave with a chip on his shoulder that would come back to haunt Edison, Edison General Electric and the corporate structure of that time. It would not take long.
In 1886 after digging ditches for his old boss Edison so that he could continue to eat; Tesla founded his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. He was awarded the patents in 1888 for his electric induction motor and worked on his Alternating Current Polyphase System.
In 1892 Tesla’s ‘Shadow graphs’ led the way for X-Ray technology three years before it was ‘rediscovered’ by Willhelm Roentgen. Once again this trend haunted him and continued to recur throughout his life; the logical consequence of Tesla’s thinking became the basis for someone else’s invention. Nikola did not sweat the small stuff.
Tesla’s Polyphase System allowed transmission of alternating current electricity over long distances. With the support of George Westinghouse and his Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company (a direct competitor to Edison) the two began collaborating and in 1893 Tesla and Westinghouse provided AC to power the marvel of lights for the Chicago's World’s Fair Columbian Exposition. Edison forbade the use of his ‘Edison's patented light bulbs’ so Tesla developed a new style of light. The first shots were fired; the war ensued.
Guglielmo Marconi in 1895 transmitted a radio signal outside Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy over a hill the distance of almost a mile. He had beaten Tesla to the punch with the first wireless radio transmission even though Marconi’s triumph was based upon what was later determined to be seventeen Tesla patents and the work of many others. It did not matter; it was Marconi that was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for that first transmission and the one across the Atlantic and he shared it with Karl Ferdinand Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". There was nothing for Tesla but another war.
Marconi’s public demonstration was good enough for the US government to recognize Marconi as the inventor of radio. This is akin to turning in someone else’s homework before they had a chance. Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi) says: “Marconi did not discover any new and revolutionary principle in his wireless-telegraph system, but rather he assembled and improved a number of components, unified and adapted them to his system.” Just like Edison, Marconi made something commercial of something theoretical.
Tesla’s lifetime works were destroyed by fire (also in 1895) when his laboratory burned. Tesla had previously demonstrated a “Wireless Transmitter/Receiver System” in St. Louis TWO YEARS before Marconi had made his transmission. Nikola now not only had to prove his concepts and ownership but all of his documentation and research papers were lost in the inferno, all of them. Tesla was devastated but with a photographic memory he reconstructed and continued on. Tesla filed for the basic Radio Patent in 1897. The controversy over who indeed invented the radio would continue longer than Nikola did.
Niagara Falls was harnessed and its power converted to electricity for the city of Buffalo for northwestern New York industry in 1896. Later it was used for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Tesla’s concepts, in direct opposition to Edison’s effective monopoly of DC power transmission (that required a power generating plant to keep voltage constant on almost every corner or at a minimum every mile), were now used to get electricity from Point A to Point B. Immediately, the ‘War of the Currents’ commenced. This was the beginning of the end for Direct Current as a transportation vehicle for public electricity. No longer would the sun be blocked out by the large size and tremendous number of shielded copper wires; we rewired in AC. The theory of opposites working together in unison within a system for a common end is the basis for much of Tesla’s genius. Obviously, the competitive spirit also fanned his flames.
The sore loser Edison engineered an electric chair, electrocuted animals and persuaded the state of New York to use ‘Sparky’ to execute a prisoner to demonstrate the danger of alternating current. Edison dubbed the use of AC for electrocutions “Westinghousing” after Tesla’s primary accomplice and collaborator. Although they won the war, both Westinghouse and Tesla were almost broke.
Tesla gave Westinghouse a break and released the company from contract forfeiting some AC motor royalties in 1897. This saved Westinghouse from the threat of bankruptcy that was partly due to his backing the installation of ‘The Grid’ using Alternating Current to transmit electricity. Later in the financial panic of 1907, Tesla again saved Westinghouse. Tesla gave up his Westinghouse royalties on every induction motor, valued at over $12,000,000 and any future share of the certain continuing fortune to insure that mankind would benefit. He wrote: “Money does not represent such a value as men before placed on it. All my money has been invested in experiments which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.” Nikola bet his money on the future and his ability to generate new and more imperative discoveries. These grandiose financial blunders further indeed characterize Tesla’s mad scientist legacy.
It is because of Westinghouse but more particularly Tesla that we don’t have more huge wires crisscrossing America carrying electrical current than we already do. Tesla’s wisdom and inventive spirit might have insured that we would need none of those towers and wires today. In his lab he proved the viability of wireless transmission of electricity but never had a chance to work out all of the bugs. Far back in 1894 (before the fire) using the Tesla Coil, Nikola generated 1,000,000 volts and achieved 16 foot discharges in his New York City lab.
In 1899 he headed toward the mountains to Colorado Springs to continue research on the wireless transmission of messages and also electrical power. He investigated the earth’s ‘telluric currents’ via transverse and longitudinal waves (from the Latin tellūs, "earth", telluric current is an electric current moving underground or through the sea, caused by human activity and natural causes; these currents are extremely low frequency travelling large areas near the surface of Earth). The Earth itself is the conductor. Nikola sent millions of volts as far away as 135 feet with no conductor like copper wire. Tesla wrote, "the inferiority of the induction method would appear immense as compared with the disturbed charge of ground and air method."
He transmitted extremely low frequencies between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere and also through the ground. Tesla engaged in research of long distance power transmission through the ‘Tesla Effect’. Tesla had demonstrated back in 1891 “the transmission of electrical energy without wires”. The ‘Tesla Effect’ (named in honor of Tesla) is a term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter, not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Nikola used longitudinal waves to transfer energy to receiving devices and sent electrostatic forces through natural media across a conductor situated in the changing magnetic flux and transferred power to a conducting receiving device. Very basically he lit up light bulbs that were not screwed into a socket or in a lamp that was plugged in.
Although Tesla claimed in his Colorado Spring Lab he had produced 135,000,000 volts (which would still be the highest voltage ever achieved) and also that he lit 200 incandescent bulbs 26 miles away with wireless power, we are still wired into the grid. If he was able to do this then, more than a century ago; why hasn’t this happened in the developed world or especially in the third world where it could be even more beneficial?
He was getting a little too ‘far out’ when he reported unusual signals that he thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications coming from Mars or Venus. It was a far too much for his neighbors and even the scientific community. By January 1900 he moved out and his lab was torn down. What could be salvaged was sold to pay of his debts.
In 1900 - 1903, Nikola almost ‘bilked’ J. Pierpont Morgan and other investors with his Wardenclyffe “Transmitter” Laboratory out of more than their original $150,000 seed money. Since Morgan was banker for American Telephone & Telegraph, International Telephone & Telegraph, Western Union, United Corp., and many other electrical utilities it is more probable he was putting his money on the horse that could provide radio transmission capabilities not yet discovered or exploited rather than someone who could provide free electricity to the world. Marconi conquered the Atlantic during the construction of Wardenclyffe.
The Wardenclyffe tower topped with a huge metal Tesla Coil, loomed 187 feet tall, with its 68 foot circumference dome. A shaft beneath the tower went 120 feet deep into the ground. Sixteen iron pipes were placed end to end, making another 300 additional feet deep so that the machine as Tesla put it could "have a grip on the earth so the whole of this globe can quiver." Extremely low frequency ‘telluric currents’ of Earth could be transceived at this depth. Atmospheric conditions would not interfere while he still experimented on wireless telecommunications. Wardenclyffe also was intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony and broadcasting including news, music and even pictures.
Whether this facility was for sending and receiving radio messages as its primary mission, or if wireless electrical energy transmission was its real objective remains to be determined. But Morgan thought that one of the primary purposes of Wardenclyffe in fact was the wireless power transmission and that was not what he had signed on for. Marconi had already succeeded so he refused to further bankroll Tesla or his work any longer.
Wireless energy around the world was certainly one of Nikola’s motivations. His Tesla Coil that topped the tower was like a giant electrical pump or heart, a transformer that increased power through a magical conversion and was able to fill entire buildings and for Nikola, hopefully the Earth, with high voltage electricity. He dreamt that people only had to receive the power to utilize it. He started the project to make the whole world a wall plug. It is a shame Eiffel did not build Tesla’s tower so it could remain as an architectural marvel instead of being torn down during World War II because people did not realize the scientific miracle it was.
This became a very bad period for Tesla. He ran out of the money he so disdained and couldn’t pay his workers. He was forced to close this lab. Worse, the U.S. Patent Office decided on some of the patent applications and Guglielmo Marconi was issued the patents for radio! It has been reported (although the names of nominees are never publicly announced) that Tesla refused the Nobel Prize in 1912 because it was to be shared with Edison. The medal and cash prize would have helped his situation at the time. Nikola did ultimately accept the Edison Medal in 1917 but had to be prevailed upon to agree to that.
Tesla was a soothsayer. He, like Kaku was popular with the media because he had as much to say as we have much to hear. Tesla, a lifetime ago wrote a 1931 Article for The New York Times on “Our Future Mode of Power”. As he looked into the future, he penned, “If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations.” This futurist from our past foresaw the exhaustion of our nonrenewable resources and studied, patented and urged the exploitation of the endless sources of power including radiant, cosmic rays and geothermal power. “All that is necessary is to find an economic and speedy way of sinking deep shafts to tap into this enormous geothermal energy.” Tesla was not only defining the path; he attempted to construct it for all. He did much on his own with many successes and failures. One of his greatest catastrophes was his financial ineptitude that caused him to stop and restart so many times.
The same year Tesla began his litigated ‘Patent War’ with Marconi, he signed over the deed to Wardenclyffe to the owner of the Waldorf Astoria to again attempt to pay off his debts. It was no where near enough. In 1916 he filed bankruptcy. The next year, seventeen years before the invention of radar it was Tesla who proposed using the reflection of radio waves bouncing off objects to determine their position and speed if moving. Although municipalities are now thankful for the cash infusion the radar gun generates from speeding tickets, Tesla still did not worship the almighty dollar. He suffered for his naïveté and contempt for money. He continued to let others pirate his smaller ideas while he concentrated on the more substantial ones.
Tesla was fluent in eight languages, a genuine savant suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He had had a nervous breakdown in Serbia even before he began his formal advanced education, his career or emigration to help Edison.
Nikola was obsessed with the trinity of three. He was ecstatic as long as something was divisible by three. Like Howard Hughes, Nikola was also mysophobic and fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene. He used a handkerchief only once. Both exceptionally brilliant men had an irrational fear of germs and constantly washed their hands.
Tesla was exceedingly passionate about pigeons. He fed them in the park; he nursed them back to health in his roll top desk and outside of the hotel room where he lived in his old age. He fed and talked to them; he even called one of them his ‘wife’ and claimed when she died his inventive fortitude left him. He remained celibate preferring to put his energies into research and theory instead of relationships. Not overtly adroit in his people skills he entertained many well heeled friends and rubbed elbows in the highest circles of society, but in his heart he was a loner. He warred with both Edison and Marconi throughout life for their theft of his ideas. Others who did the same thing he disregarded.
Individually, Edison and Marconi had a smaller impact on our future than people credit them with. Granted, both were geniuses; each provided great advances for mankind. They were fabulous inventors, engineers and administrators. However, if they were not able to utilize and capitalize other’s ideas, their contributions would have been far less significant. Many who allied themselves with Edison and Marconi, those who did the grunt work, have been forgotten by history, their patents gobbled up by the masters of industry.
Teleportation was envisioned as a natural extension of Tesla’s labors and fertile mind. Using the Transporter to ‘Beam me up Scottie’ was not only because the shuttlecraft wasn’t ready for prime time. It was the way to keep Star Trek on the air by enabling the crew to visit planets and get home to the Enterprise more cheaply at least as far as television production was concerned. Gene Roddenberry or his assistants might have thought of this on their own but they certainly were not the first to do that either. Tesla posited that if sound and electricity could be transported wirelessly why not matter itself?
Tesla dedicated his life to research and discovery that would improve the life of man. He not only operated on remote control, he in fact actually invented it in 1898. Thanks to Nikola we can now spend nights on the couch arguing over the clicker.
In the Time Magazine article “Science: Damn Good Man” July 25, 1927, Tesla states. ". . . You will be able to go anywhere in the world—to the mountain top over-looking your farm, to the Arctic or to the desert—and set up a little equipment that will give you heat to cook with and light to read by. This will be carried in a satchel not as big as the ordinary suitcase.” Of course we are still waiting. He could conceptualize it and talk about it but doing it was now beyond his grasp.
In 1931, eighteen years before Michio Kaku was born, Tesla was the honored at age 75 by Time Magazine. One week that year, like Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and others, he was on the cover. On his birthday, which the article celebrated, he received kudos from more than 70 colossals of science and engineering including Albert Einstein although Nikola claimed to have done the math to prove Einstein wrong. The full text of the Time article is at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742063,00.html.
It took until 1935 for the Court of Claims to invalidate 15 of 16 of Marconi’s patents. Tesla had already started to move into his future and was becoming a simple curiosity. In 1943 Nikola Tesla was dead of heart failure. He died alone in room 3327 (its number divisible by three) of Manhattan's Hotel Governor Clinton, on January 7th, penniless. That same year the Supreme Court further invalided many of Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi's patents for the radio and radio equipment. It gave credit to Tesla based on the large amount of his work and ideas that predated Marconi’s work; ideas that Marconi used for ‘his invention’. The patents were now Tesla’s and in Tesla’s future, 1944, a future that he could not see beyond his grave, the hammer fell; the case was finally settled in the U.S. Supreme Court, another war that Tesla ultimately won.
His Obituary in the Time Magazine on January 18, 1943 issue expended more copy on his loony eccentric behavior than his immense gifts to the world: “Died. Nikola Tesla, 86, "electrical wizard," inventor of the Tesla transformer, the Tesla induction motor, discoverer of the rotary magnetic field principle; in Manhattan. Croat-born, he came to the U.S. in 1884, worked briefly for Thomas Alva Edison, became a great electrical inventor on his own. In his old age he holed up in hotel rooms, became an urban hermit, taped his doors and windows and tried to keep the room at a 90° temperature, had his vegetables boiled two hours, wiggled his toes several hundred times every night to "tone up." He also announced that he had discovered a death ray capable of killing a million men, had been in touch with Mars. Once he figured he would live to be 135 but changed his mind when Prohibition died, boosted the figure to 150.”
After Nikola’s death the FBI and the Office of Alien Property (even though Tesla was a US citizen since 1891) raided his 3327 hotel room to confiscate his research papers. It was almost a decade later, in 1952 that the United States eventually released them to Tesla’s nephew. Bill Gates does not own them; the majority (if not all) are now housed in a museum in Belgrade, Serbia dedicated to Nikola Tesla’s dream and accomplishments for the sake of mankind. This man shook the Earth with his visions, experiments and partly by his insanity.
The Strategic Defense Initiative (Regan’s ‘Star Wars’) is another logical extension of Tesla’s fertile mind; his death ray in action. Did this idea come from the papers long held and studied by our government? Nikola was not the only one capable of black thoughts. Tesla’s obvious insanity makes him the mad scientist incarnate.
Nikola Tesla’s vision helped create the twentieth century. He is still shaping our future as we know or optimistically, will know how it. We wait to see how much his ideas will affect the twenty-first. Although he accomplished wireless transmission of electrical power long ago, we are still wondering how it can be done and why there are still power poles everywhere we look. Has their removal not happened because our corporate world has not figured how to profit by wireless transmission of electricity?
In 1898, Tesla devised something now used in over 600 million cars, the “electrical Igniter for Gas Engines” – the automobile ignition system. However, Hybrid cars would not even be possible had the idea of induction motors and how opposites work together permeated Tesla’s brain. A bunch of geeks in California are banking with their new best friend Toyota on huge financial success based on some ideas more than a century old that were not theirs. Their ground breaking mode of transportation is powered by an induction motor from electricity stored in batteries fed from the grid Tesla engineered but would have surely replaced by now. The ‘Tesla’ can fly but it is earthbound because it has to stop to plug in and charge the batteries. If Nikola had performed his magic and free electricity was available to the ends of the earth the need for the extra weight of the batteries and nightly charges would be a thing of the past instead of our wonderful future.
Modern scientists are working on engineering artificial or genetically modified life. Introducing new life forms into our environment is responsible for possibilities that maybe should be left undone or impossible. Kaku talks about the disaster of the ‘Killer Bee’ and the many other catastrophic species relocation events. The outcome of genetic tinkering could be even more perilous; copyrighted genetic food could leave more than a bad taste in our mouths. Corporate genetic fiddlers and life engineers have a lot of clout, some with results that won’t be realized for generations. It’s the “Anything for a Buck” theory of the corporate world.
Like the upstart Nikola Tesla against the corporate goliath Edison we need competition and new futuristic innovative ideas to deal with some of our global crises. We will benefit from that as long as time is not wasted in the litigation and dilly-dallying. We need the reason of people like Kaku to put some of these things in perspective for us. As theories become practice we must have theorists to explain some ramifications of our decisions. How these things in the future will affect our future, and even how those things in our present will change our future; these things are complicated.
On a news interview Kaku said something prophetic that portends possible bad result. “You can not recall a life form.” Attempts to gerrymander the environment can have disastrous results. Sitting on our butts can leave us driving around with hundreds of pounds of batteries in our trunk or under our floor.
We might have to stop a blind progression toward Soylent Green. “Why, in my day, you could buy meat anywhere! Eggs they had, real butter! Fresh lettuce in the stores.” People can now accurately say also: real meat, real eggs and real lettuce.
“Det. Thorn: It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!
Hatcher: I promise, Tiger. I promise. I'll tell the exchange.
Det. Thorn: You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You've gotta tell them! Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!”
It’s not just about the food, the global warming or some other potential Earth disasters. Energy and matter might seem simply as different components that magically can convert back and forth by the speed of light squared… E=mc2. The equals sign signifies only a relationship between the two. We do not need the speed of light to convert fuel into a Carbon Dioxide surplus, just a gasoline or diesel auto or a coal powered power plant.
Tesla had his favorite pigeons and talked to the animals… But did Nikola actually listen to or talk with aliens? Nikola really slipped up when he revealed he listened to aliens. He was discredited. This is a concrete example of what Kaku tried to explain in the guillotine joke analogy with the priest, lawyer and finally the theoretical physicist who was stupid enough to point out “the rope is stuck in the pulley.” Know when to keep your mouth shut. We also need to know when to scream bloody murder. It is time to put it in gear.
I have only met one genuine genius futurist in my lifetime. He left Earth a decade ago this month. What is left of FM2030 now lies carefully cryogenically sealed in scaldingly hot Arizona in a liquid nitrogen bath. He trusts that in his future he can return to see what he missed in his past. I’d like to be around to have another vegetarian meal with him with real lettuce.
Michio Kaku, our theoretical physicist futurist also said, ultimately making a connection to terrorists, “And what is the Internet. The Internet is the beginning of a Type 1 telephone system. That is all it is. And so, this transition is perhaps most important transition of all time. Some people don’t want it. They fear this transition because this transition is to a planetary civilization tolerant of many cultures.” Michio is really getting into the future when he starts talking about different stages of planetary civilizations. Others would prefer to keep our future our past.
“The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of its time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.” Nikola Tesla. That applies only if we start playing the game by the rules.
If we had Tesla’s wireless power transmission or maybe even the wireless networks that could span miles and miles through the air or through the Earth (the technology exists to do this) things would certainly be different. Part of our present would already be our past. We could all be futurists.
The time is now. The future is now. We don’t have to be a theoretical Physicist to see this handwriting on the wall. Corporate profits or the manipulation of the application of technology only to insure them cannot prevent what will happen eventually. I’d rather not wait. Populate the goat cells with programmable DNA and turn them loose on the Gulf oil spill if it will help and is not a danger to us. How much worse can that be than millions of gallons of dispersant?
“Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to their work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine." And, "The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead." Nikola Tesla. I wish Tesla was cryogenically sealed and we could crack his vault and let him loose.
For the conspiracy theorists, remember to look up in the sky for a Droid Predator Drone. It is the failure of the future if it forgets its past. “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.”
© 07.29.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Modern Marvels - Mad Electricity
Back to the Futurist.
(This work is still in progress... Please forgive its length, inaccuracies and grammar.)
“Things that may be impossible today may some day become possible.” Things like creating programmable artificial life that can change the course of the history of Earth are now possible, at least in theory. Dr. Michio Kaku, a pioneering Theoretical Physicist specializing in String Field Theory, is an acute anachronism, simultaneously clairvoyant. With his flowing white mane, Kaku is a media lion, a darling sensation, willing to be interviewed by anybody on virtually any topic as long as he can impart his pet theories and anecdotes during dialogue.
Michio reminds me of a former mentor who said frequently, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.” and wondered if he had already told the story or joke. Actually, I had but I rarely slammed on his brakes. No matter what, this bald wonder always added something new that I had never heard before or since. Kaku is a lot like George except for the hair.
Things may still be impossible to achieve today that may have been possible in the past instead of the future if the right string were plucked or the past was a little different from what is remembered. We stand tapping our foot waiting for some part of the past or the future to become the present as we struggle with the concept of time itself.
Born during an electrical storm July 10th 1856 at the stroke of midnight the ‘mad scientist’ Nikola Tesla would prove to be a phenomenal futurist. By 1882, in his mind and in a dirt schematic, Tesla had already invented the induction electric motor as an employee of Continental Edison Company in Paris. Some say this happened in Belgrade even before he went to Paris but somehow, somewhere he determined Alternating Current and opposing magnetic fields in a whirling unison produced a better way to convert energy into work.
Tesla’s letter of recommendation from his supervisor Charles Batchelor to Edison read: “I know two great men and you are one of them. This young man is the other.” Nikola Tesla, the young electrical engineer and inventor in 1884 crossed the Atlantic to work closer to his nemesis the virtuoso scientific genius Edison. He had just four cents left in his pocket when he saw the Statue of Liberty.
Edison recognized Nikola’s immense faculty and grew to rely on Tesla. Thomas Alva, holder of 1093 patents, although not all truly his own, still more than any other man, offered Tesla $50,000 to do something he himself had been unable or too busy to do… redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators so Edison, the entrepreneur and company could net even vaster profits. When Tesla asked for payment for his work, Edison replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American Humor." It was not unusual for Edison to break his word to those creating ‘his genius’ when he personally profited. General Electric continues this tradition; it gobbles up by purchase or larceny intellectual property of others that it can leverage.
Since Tesla who only made $18 per week working for Edison could do math, he realized it would take 53 years to earn what he had been promised and was not forthcoming. To Tesla there was nothing funny about it. He refused a diminutive raise to $25 per week; instead immediately he resigned.
Edison stole one too many ideas. His greed caused this valuable employee to leave with a chip on his shoulder that would come back to haunt Edison, Edison General Electric and the corporate structure of that time. It would not take long.
In 1886 after digging ditches for his old boss Edison so that he could continue to eat; Tesla founded his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. He was awarded the patents in 1888 for his electric induction motor and worked on his Alternating Current Polyphase System.
In 1892 Tesla’s ‘Shadow graphs’ led the way for X-Ray technology three years before it was ‘rediscovered’ by Willhelm Roentgen. Once again this trend haunted him and continued to recur throughout his life; the logical consequence of Tesla’s thinking became the basis for someone else’s invention. Nikola did not sweat the small stuff.
Tesla’s Polyphase System allowed transmission of alternating current electricity over long distances. With the support of George Westinghouse and his Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company (a direct competitor to Edison) the two began collaborating and in 1893 Tesla and Westinghouse provided AC to power the marvel of lights for the Chicago's World’s Fair Columbian Exposition. Edison forbade the use of his ‘Edison's patented light bulbs’ so Tesla developed a new style of light. The first shots were fired; the war ensued.
Guglielmo Marconi in 1895 transmitted a radio signal outside Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy over a hill the distance of almost a mile. He had beaten Tesla to the punch with the first wireless radio transmission even though Marconi’s triumph was based upon what was later determined to be seventeen Tesla patents and the work of many others. It did not matter; it was Marconi that was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for that first transmission and the one across the Atlantic and he shared it with Karl Ferdinand Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". There was nothing for Tesla but another war.
Marconi’s public demonstration was good enough for the US government to recognize Marconi as the inventor of radio. This is akin to turning in someone else’s homework before they had a chance. Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi) says: “Marconi did not discover any new and revolutionary principle in his wireless-telegraph system, but rather he assembled and improved a number of components, unified and adapted them to his system.” Just like Edison, Marconi made something commercial of something theoretical.
Tesla’s lifetime works were destroyed by fire (also in 1895) when his laboratory burned. Tesla had previously demonstrated a “Wireless Transmitter/Receiver System” in St. Louis TWO YEARS before Marconi had made his transmission. Nikola now not only had to prove his concepts and ownership but all of his documentation and research papers were lost in the inferno, all of them. Tesla was devastated but with a photographic memory he reconstructed and continued on. Tesla filed for the basic Radio Patent in 1897. The controversy over who indeed invented the radio would continue longer than Nikola did.
Niagara Falls was harnessed and its power converted to electricity for the city of Buffalo for northwestern New York industry in 1896. Later it was used for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Tesla’s concepts, in direct opposition to Edison’s effective monopoly of DC power transmission (that required a power generating plant to keep voltage constant on almost every corner or at a minimum every mile), were now used to get electricity from Point A to Point B. Immediately, the ‘War of the Currents’ commenced. This was the beginning of the end for Direct Current as a transportation vehicle for public electricity. No longer would the sun be blocked out by the large size and tremendous number of shielded copper wires; we rewired in AC. The theory of opposites working together in unison within a system for a common end is the basis for much of Tesla’s genius. Obviously, the competitive spirit also fanned his flames.
The sore loser Edison engineered an electric chair, electrocuted animals and persuaded the state of New York to use ‘Sparky’ to execute a prisoner to demonstrate the danger of alternating current. Edison dubbed the use of AC for electrocutions “Westinghousing” after Tesla’s primary accomplice and collaborator. Although they won the war, both Westinghouse and Tesla were almost broke.
Tesla gave Westinghouse a break and released the company from contract forfeiting some AC motor royalties in 1897. This saved Westinghouse from the threat of bankruptcy that was partly due to his backing the installation of ‘The Grid’ using Alternating Current to transmit electricity. Later in the financial panic of 1907, Tesla again saved Westinghouse. Tesla gave up his Westinghouse royalties on every induction motor, valued at over $12,000,000 and any future share of the certain continuing fortune to insure that mankind would benefit. He wrote: “Money does not represent such a value as men before placed on it. All my money has been invested in experiments which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.” Nikola bet his money on the future and his ability to generate new and more imperative discoveries. These grandiose financial blunders further indeed characterize Tesla’s mad scientist legacy.
It is because of Westinghouse but more particularly Tesla that we don’t have more huge wires crisscrossing America carrying electrical current than we already do. Tesla’s wisdom and inventive spirit might have insured that we would need none of those towers and wires today. In his lab he proved the viability of wireless transmission of electricity but never had a chance to work out all of the bugs. Far back in 1894 (before the fire) using the Tesla Coil, Nikola generated 1,000,000 volts and achieved 16 foot discharges in his New York City lab.
In 1899 he headed toward the mountains to Colorado Springs to continue research on the wireless transmission of messages and also electrical power. He investigated the earth’s ‘telluric currents’ via transverse and longitudinal waves (from the Latin tellūs, "earth", telluric current is an electric current moving underground or through the sea, caused by human activity and natural causes; these currents are extremely low frequency travelling large areas near the surface of Earth). The Earth itself is the conductor. Nikola sent millions of volts as far away as 135 feet with no conductor like copper wire. Tesla wrote, "the inferiority of the induction method would appear immense as compared with the disturbed charge of ground and air method."
He transmitted extremely low frequencies between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere and also through the ground. Tesla engaged in research of long distance power transmission through the ‘Tesla Effect’. Tesla had demonstrated back in 1891 “the transmission of electrical energy without wires”. The ‘Tesla Effect’ (named in honor of Tesla) is a term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter, not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Nikola used longitudinal waves to transfer energy to receiving devices and sent electrostatic forces through natural media across a conductor situated in the changing magnetic flux and transferred power to a conducting receiving device. Very basically he lit up light bulbs that were not screwed into a socket or in a lamp that was plugged in.
Although Tesla claimed in his Colorado Spring Lab he had produced 135,000,000 volts (which would still be the highest voltage ever achieved) and also that he lit 200 incandescent bulbs 26 miles away with wireless power, we are still wired into the grid. If he was able to do this then, more than a century ago; why hasn’t this happened in the developed world or especially in the third world where it could be even more beneficial?
He was getting a little too ‘far out’ when he reported unusual signals that he thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications coming from Mars or Venus. It was a far too much for his neighbors and even the scientific community. By January 1900 he moved out and his lab was torn down. What could be salvaged was sold to pay of his debts.
In 1900 - 1903, Nikola almost ‘bilked’ J. Pierpont Morgan and other investors with his Wardenclyffe “Transmitter” Laboratory out of more than their original $150,000 seed money. Since Morgan was banker for American Telephone & Telegraph, International Telephone & Telegraph, Western Union, United Corp., and many other electrical utilities it is more probable he was putting his money on the horse that could provide radio transmission capabilities not yet discovered or exploited rather than someone who could provide free electricity to the world. Marconi conquered the Atlantic during the construction of Wardenclyffe.
The Wardenclyffe tower topped with a huge metal Tesla Coil, loomed 187 feet tall, with its 68 foot circumference dome. A shaft beneath the tower went 120 feet deep into the ground. Sixteen iron pipes were placed end to end, making another 300 additional feet deep so that the machine as Tesla put it could "have a grip on the earth so the whole of this globe can quiver." Extremely low frequency ‘telluric currents’ of Earth could be transceived at this depth. Atmospheric conditions would not interfere while he still experimented on wireless telecommunications. Wardenclyffe also was intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony and broadcasting including news, music and even pictures.
Whether this facility was for sending and receiving radio messages as its primary mission, or if wireless electrical energy transmission was its real objective remains to be determined. But Morgan thought that one of the primary purposes of Wardenclyffe in fact was the wireless power transmission and that was not what he had signed on for. Marconi had already succeeded so he refused to further bankroll Tesla or his work any longer.
Wireless energy around the world was certainly one of Nikola’s motivations. His Tesla Coil that topped the tower was like a giant electrical pump or heart, a transformer that increased power through a magical conversion and was able to fill entire buildings and for Nikola, hopefully the Earth, with high voltage electricity. He dreamt that people only had to receive the power to utilize it. He started the project to make the whole world a wall plug. It is a shame Eiffel did not build Tesla’s tower so it could remain as an architectural marvel instead of being torn down during World War II because people did not realize the scientific miracle it was.
This became a very bad period for Tesla. He ran out of the money he so disdained and couldn’t pay his workers. He was forced to close this lab. Worse, the U.S. Patent Office decided on some of the patent applications and Guglielmo Marconi was issued the patents for radio! It has been reported (although the names of nominees are never publicly announced) that Tesla refused the Nobel Prize in 1912 because it was to be shared with Edison. The medal and cash prize would have helped his situation at the time. Nikola did ultimately accept the Edison Medal in 1917 but had to be prevailed upon to agree to that.
Tesla was a soothsayer. He, like Kaku was popular with the media because he had as much to say as we have much to hear. Tesla, a lifetime ago wrote a 1931 Article for The New York Times on “Our Future Mode of Power”. As he looked into the future, he penned, “If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations.” This futurist from our past foresaw the exhaustion of our nonrenewable resources and studied, patented and urged the exploitation of the endless sources of power including radiant, cosmic rays and geothermal power. “All that is necessary is to find an economic and speedy way of sinking deep shafts to tap into this enormous geothermal energy.” Tesla was not only defining the path; he attempted to construct it for all. He did much on his own with many successes and failures. One of his greatest catastrophes was his financial ineptitude that caused him to stop and restart so many times.
The same year Tesla began his litigated ‘Patent War’ with Marconi, he signed over the deed to Wardenclyffe to the owner of the Waldorf Astoria to again attempt to pay off his debts. It was no where near enough. In 1916 he filed bankruptcy. The next year, seventeen years before the invention of radar it was Tesla who proposed using the reflection of radio waves bouncing off objects to determine their position and speed if moving. Although municipalities are now thankful for the cash infusion the radar gun generates from speeding tickets, Tesla still did not worship the almighty dollar. He suffered for his naïveté and contempt for money. He continued to let others pirate his smaller ideas while he concentrated on the more substantial ones.
Tesla was fluent in eight languages, a genuine savant suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He had had a nervous breakdown in Serbia even before he began his formal advanced education, his career or emigration to help Edison.
Nikola was obsessed with the trinity of three. He was ecstatic as long as something was divisible by three. Like Howard Hughes, Nikola was also mysophobic and fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene. He used a handkerchief only once. Both exceptionally brilliant men had an irrational fear of germs and constantly washed their hands.
Tesla was exceedingly passionate about pigeons. He fed them in the park; he nursed them back to health in his roll top desk and outside of the hotel room where he lived in his old age. He fed and talked to them; he even called one of them his ‘wife’ and claimed when she died his inventive fortitude left him. He remained celibate preferring to put his energies into research and theory instead of relationships. Not overtly adroit in his people skills he entertained many well heeled friends and rubbed elbows in the highest circles of society, but in his heart he was a loner. He warred with both Edison and Marconi throughout life for their theft of his ideas. Others who did the same thing he disregarded.
Individually, Edison and Marconi had a smaller impact on our future than people credit them with. Granted, both were geniuses; each provided great advances for mankind. They were fabulous inventors, engineers and administrators. However, if they were not able to utilize and capitalize other’s ideas, their contributions would have been far less significant. Many who allied themselves with Edison and Marconi, those who did the grunt work, have been forgotten by history, their patents gobbled up by the masters of industry.
Teleportation was envisioned as a natural extension of Tesla’s labors and fertile mind. Using the Transporter to ‘Beam me up Scottie’ was not only because the shuttlecraft wasn’t ready for prime time. It was the way to keep Star Trek on the air by enabling the crew to visit planets and get home to the Enterprise more cheaply at least as far as television production was concerned. Gene Roddenberry or his assistants might have thought of this on their own but they certainly were not the first to do that either. Tesla posited that if sound and electricity could be transported wirelessly why not matter itself?
Tesla dedicated his life to research and discovery that would improve the life of man. He not only operated on remote control, he in fact actually invented it in 1898. Thanks to Nikola we can now spend nights on the couch arguing over the clicker.
In the Time Magazine article “Science: Damn Good Man” July 25, 1927, Tesla states. ". . . You will be able to go anywhere in the world—to the mountain top over-looking your farm, to the Arctic or to the desert—and set up a little equipment that will give you heat to cook with and light to read by. This will be carried in a satchel not as big as the ordinary suitcase.” Of course we are still waiting. He could conceptualize it and talk about it but doing it was now beyond his grasp.
In 1931, eighteen years before Michio Kaku was born, Tesla was the honored at age 75 by Time Magazine. One week that year, like Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and others, he was on the cover. On his birthday, which the article celebrated, he received kudos from more than 70 colossals of science and engineering including Albert Einstein although Nikola claimed to have done the math to prove Einstein wrong. The full text of the Time article is at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742063,00.html.
It took until 1935 for the Court of Claims to invalidate 15 of 16 of Marconi’s patents. Tesla had already started to move into his future and was becoming a simple curiosity. In 1943 Nikola Tesla was dead of heart failure. He died alone in room 3327 (its number divisible by three) of Manhattan's Hotel Governor Clinton, on January 7th, penniless. That same year the Supreme Court further invalided many of Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi's patents for the radio and radio equipment. It gave credit to Tesla based on the large amount of his work and ideas that predated Marconi’s work; ideas that Marconi used for ‘his invention’. The patents were now Tesla’s and in Tesla’s future, 1944, a future that he could not see beyond his grave, the hammer fell; the case was finally settled in the U.S. Supreme Court, another war that Tesla ultimately won.
His Obituary in the Time Magazine on January 18, 1943 issue expended more copy on his loony eccentric behavior than his immense gifts to the world: “Died. Nikola Tesla, 86, "electrical wizard," inventor of the Tesla transformer, the Tesla induction motor, discoverer of the rotary magnetic field principle; in Manhattan. Croat-born, he came to the U.S. in 1884, worked briefly for Thomas Alva Edison, became a great electrical inventor on his own. In his old age he holed up in hotel rooms, became an urban hermit, taped his doors and windows and tried to keep the room at a 90° temperature, had his vegetables boiled two hours, wiggled his toes several hundred times every night to "tone up." He also announced that he had discovered a death ray capable of killing a million men, had been in touch with Mars. Once he figured he would live to be 135 but changed his mind when Prohibition died, boosted the figure to 150.”
After Nikola’s death the FBI and the Office of Alien Property (even though Tesla was a US citizen since 1891) raided his 3327 hotel room to confiscate his research papers. It was almost a decade later, in 1952 that the United States eventually released them to Tesla’s nephew. Bill Gates does not own them; the majority (if not all) are now housed in a museum in Belgrade, Serbia dedicated to Nikola Tesla’s dream and accomplishments for the sake of mankind. This man shook the Earth with his visions, experiments and partly by his insanity.
The Strategic Defense Initiative (Regan’s ‘Star Wars’) is another logical extension of Tesla’s fertile mind; his death ray in action. Did this idea come from the papers long held and studied by our government? Nikola was not the only one capable of black thoughts. Tesla’s obvious insanity makes him the mad scientist incarnate.
Nikola Tesla’s vision helped create the twentieth century. He is still shaping our future as we know or optimistically, will know how it. We wait to see how much his ideas will affect the twenty-first. Although he accomplished wireless transmission of electrical power long ago, we are still wondering how it can be done and why there are still power poles everywhere we look. Has their removal not happened because our corporate world has not figured how to profit by wireless transmission of electricity?
In 1898, Tesla devised something now used in over 600 million cars, the “electrical Igniter for Gas Engines” – the automobile ignition system. However, Hybrid cars would not even be possible had the idea of induction motors and how opposites work together permeated Tesla’s brain. A bunch of geeks in California are banking with their new best friend Toyota on huge financial success based on some ideas more than a century old that were not theirs. Their ground breaking mode of transportation is powered by an induction motor from electricity stored in batteries fed from the grid Tesla engineered but would have surely replaced by now. The ‘Tesla’ can fly but it is earthbound because it has to stop to plug in and charge the batteries. If Nikola had performed his magic and free electricity was available to the ends of the earth the need for the extra weight of the batteries and nightly charges would be a thing of the past instead of our wonderful future.
Modern scientists are working on engineering artificial or genetically modified life. Introducing new life forms into our environment is responsible for possibilities that maybe should be left undone or impossible. Kaku talks about the disaster of the ‘Killer Bee’ and the many other catastrophic species relocation events. The outcome of genetic tinkering could be even more perilous; copyrighted genetic food could leave more than a bad taste in our mouths. Corporate genetic fiddlers and life engineers have a lot of clout, some with results that won’t be realized for generations. It’s the “Anything for a Buck” theory of the corporate world.
Like the upstart Nikola Tesla against the corporate goliath Edison we need competition and new futuristic innovative ideas to deal with some of our global crises. We will benefit from that as long as time is not wasted in the litigation and dilly-dallying. We need the reason of people like Kaku to put some of these things in perspective for us. As theories become practice we must have theorists to explain some ramifications of our decisions. How these things in the future will affect our future, and even how those things in our present will change our future; these things are complicated.
On a news interview Kaku said something prophetic that portends possible bad result. “You can not recall a life form.” Attempts to gerrymander the environment can have disastrous results. Sitting on our butts can leave us driving around with hundreds of pounds of batteries in our trunk or under our floor.
We might have to stop a blind progression toward Soylent Green. “Why, in my day, you could buy meat anywhere! Eggs they had, real butter! Fresh lettuce in the stores.” People can now accurately say also: real meat, real eggs and real lettuce.
“Det. Thorn: It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!
Hatcher: I promise, Tiger. I promise. I'll tell the exchange.
Det. Thorn: You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You've gotta tell them! Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!”
It’s not just about the food, the global warming or some other potential Earth disasters. Energy and matter might seem simply as different components that magically can convert back and forth by the speed of light squared… E=mc2. The equals sign signifies only a relationship between the two. We do not need the speed of light to convert fuel into a Carbon Dioxide surplus, just a gasoline or diesel auto or a coal powered power plant.
Tesla had his favorite pigeons and talked to the animals… But did Nikola actually listen to or talk with aliens? Nikola really slipped up when he revealed he listened to aliens. He was discredited. This is a concrete example of what Kaku tried to explain in the guillotine joke analogy with the priest, lawyer and finally the theoretical physicist who was stupid enough to point out “the rope is stuck in the pulley.” Know when to keep your mouth shut. We also need to know when to scream bloody murder. It is time to put it in gear.
I have only met one genuine genius futurist in my lifetime. He left Earth a decade ago this month. What is left of FM2030 now lies carefully cryogenically sealed in scaldingly hot Arizona in a liquid nitrogen bath. He trusts that in his future he can return to see what he missed in his past. I’d like to be around to have another vegetarian meal with him with real lettuce.
Michio Kaku, our theoretical physicist futurist also said, ultimately making a connection to terrorists, “And what is the Internet. The Internet is the beginning of a Type 1 telephone system. That is all it is. And so, this transition is perhaps most important transition of all time. Some people don’t want it. They fear this transition because this transition is to a planetary civilization tolerant of many cultures.” Michio is really getting into the future when he starts talking about different stages of planetary civilizations. Others would prefer to keep our future our past.
“The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of its time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.” Nikola Tesla. That applies only if we start playing the game by the rules.
If we had Tesla’s wireless power transmission or maybe even the wireless networks that could span miles and miles through the air or through the Earth (the technology exists to do this) things would certainly be different. Part of our present would already be our past. We could all be futurists.
The time is now. The future is now. We don’t have to be a theoretical Physicist to see this handwriting on the wall. Corporate profits or the manipulation of the application of technology only to insure them cannot prevent what will happen eventually. I’d rather not wait. Populate the goat cells with programmable DNA and turn them loose on the Gulf oil spill if it will help and is not a danger to us. How much worse can that be than millions of gallons of dispersant?
“Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to their work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine." And, "The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead." Nikola Tesla. I wish Tesla was cryogenically sealed and we could crack his vault and let him loose.
For the conspiracy theorists, remember to look up in the sky for a Droid Predator Drone. It is the failure of the future if it forgets its past. “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.”
© 07.29.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
Modern Marvels - Mad Electricity
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