House of cards

In previous posts, I have brought up a few concepts of the destruction of civilization, such as space phenomena or epidemics.

Now it's time to get serious.

I happen to subscribe to the view that the greatest existential threat to civilized life as we know it in these United States is fiscal.  That is to say, our national debt in excess of $16 trillion is analogous to a person being morbidly obese.  It is simply a catastrophe waiting to happen.  Perhaps December is when the government defaults, and EOTW gets underway...

But can't you and I help this situation?

So far this year donors have gifted 7.7 million dollars toward payment of the national debt, and today I gave a dollar through Pay.gov.

But let's get serious again.  The U.S. National Debt is accruing about $10,000 per second at the pace of the this debt clock.  That's $1 million dollars in 100 seconds, or $7.7 million dollars in 13 minutes.

In case you don't get what I am trying to say, let me be blunt.  Your money gifted to the Treasury for debt reduction is wasted money.  Don't throw your money on a debt that has an upward trajectory of $10,000 per second.  Clearly, something much bigger needs to happen to slow and eventually reverse that trajectory.

The hard truth is that our federal taxes have no where to go but up, probably significantly up.  And "our" taxes means all of us, not just the richest, and not just the dummies who voluntarily give gifts to the Treasury though the internet.  Tax increases are how the government is going to eventually collect your payment toward the debt.  It won't be very long now; my guess is within 2 decades.

My advice to anyone out there who cares:  here is what you should do while you are waiting for your tax burden to increase.

• Watch films such as I.O.U.S.A.
• Read books such as Endgame
• Become a voice for federal fiscal responsibility
• Most importantly:  pay off your own personal debts

On that last point, I am quite pleased to announce that I have accomplished the elimination of my credit card balance, per the terms of my original debt mission.  I promised that when this mission was complete I would reveal the numbers behind the mission, so here they are.

$19,800 debt / 11 months = $1,800 per month.

$1,800 is more than my monthly mortgage payment.  That I paid more than double my mortgage each month should say something about the tight finances I dealt with this year.  It is good to be finished with this.

Melancholia

(April 20)

In the realm of planetary demises, impact with a large object from space is always high on the list.  Do you remember the year when the movie talk was Deep Impact vs. Armageddon?

Today I watched Melancholia, another entry in this series, but definitely an art film as opposed to a scientific presentation; a drama as opposed to an action blockbuster; a Wagneresque opera of a film (and you'll understand my blatant reference right from the first few seconds, if you recognize the score).  The visual imagery was lush and appealing while the human characters were intentionally flawed.  If I need to condense the message of the film down to one statement it might be this:  melancholic people have a better grip on EOTW than we "normal" folks.

Now, I do not have a sustained interest for the opus of Lars von Trier, or for Mr. von Trier himself, but I consider my life richer for having watched Melancholia once before the end.  While I don't echo Justine's worldview that humanity deserves to meet its end (or that we are alone in the universe), I do recognize how the Justines of the world might come to that conclusion.

Per the scientific backdrop of the film, the rogue planet Melancholia has approached Earth on a trajectory that kept it hidden behind the Sun until that last days or weeks, and hence was not detected early.  Based on a bonus material interview on the DVD, in reality, such a space object would be detected later than an object that was not obscured by the Sun, but we on Earth would still have years of notice, not weeks.  (Actually, the amount of time passage in the film is not clear to me, or I do not recall it being overt.  It's pretty short.)

I'm not completely discounting a space object collision as the cause of our EOTW, though.  Let's check our data twice!


Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Apr. 20, 245 days remaining


Where No One Has Gone Before  (Journey to the intersection of space, time and mind.)
Lonely Among Us  (Indubitably, Data Holmes!)

Video Mission Update: 109 / 728 hours = 15.0%

Solar Storm

(March 8)

When I learned of today's solar storm, I just knew what today's blog topic would have to be.  So I spent a few hours studying up on solar activity.  The Earth is always being pelted by particles from the Sun; the so-called "solar wind."  Our atmosphere is able to protect us from this normal activity, and even from the increase in radiation due to the occasional solar flare or coronal mass ejection.

So which outcome do you believe, the version shown in the film Knowing?  Or this public service announcement by NASA?

In my book, a massive solar storm bringing about EOTW cannot be excluded!  And in that case, sorry folks, your SPF 1,000,000 lotion will be ineffective.

Androids

(February 10)

I sit down to reflect on the clear, warm weather we're having and decide to break out a bottle of Sam Adams Alpine Spring beer.  Let's stick a fork in this (non)winter!

I feel a bit reassured that robots and androids will not be the cause of EOTW; at least not androids of human making.  There just isn't time to invent them, unless some Japanese company has been holding out on us all and has a giant, secret warehouse of ready-to-ship androids.

Don't get me wrong, I love stories and movies about robots -- they're right up near the top of my list.  And I would support the development of androids -- ethical androids, of course.  We humans get closer to completing this quest each year.  It's too bad we are simply out of time.

This leads to our next classic Trek episode, "I, Mudd."  Harry Mudd returns from Season 1, and this time he is the "ruler" of a planet occupied by thousands of androids who originate from the Andromeda Galaxy and are keen on studying human beings and to serving them -- although the androids' notion of "service" includes keeping the humans confined to the planet.  This is tough on Harry, since on the one hand he especially enjoys the female models (technically 'gynoids,' but when's the last time you heard that word?), he also yearns for his freedom and tries to trap Kirk and gang into taking his place.

This episode was clearly comic in nature and I found myself hooked and LOL.  Perhaps one of the most hilarious (and bizarre) segments of any episode so far is in the last portion of this one:  the Enterprise crew really get to step out of their characters and act out nonsensical sketches in front of their robot captors in a coordinated effort to disrupt their logic circuits.  Kirk has an uncanny ability to set logic traps for artificial thinkers; a ploy he has used numerous times to date.

Oh, before I forget, I watched the pilot episode of NBC's The Firm yesterday, where I spotted Cylon "Number Six" (Tricia Helfer) in a new role.  Here's an interesting question:  is a cyborg a type of android?  Does it make a difference if the cyborg is predominantly machine, like The Terminator, which can function even if it sheds its organic exterior, or predominantly organic, like I, Robot's Del Spooner?

And, was Deckard a replicant?

Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 10, 315 days remaining

I, Mudd  (500 Stellas...)
Metamorphosis  (When an energy being loves a man...)
Journey to Babel  (Aliens of all colors assemble!)

Video Mission Update: 40 / 728 hours = 5.5%

Contagion

(February 4)

There are many forms of destruction that may account for the EOTW, and over the course of the year, I'll take potshots at them all.  At least the ones I can think of!  (Use the comments to offer your own suggestions on how we meet our collective demise!)

Let's start with infectious disease.  Now, I'm probably more familiar with this fictional list than the mechanics of real epidemics.  I've read some solid books featuring epidemics:  The Stand, White Plague, The Andromeda Strain; and I've watched some scary movies: Outbreak, and today, Contagion.   Contagion did a pretty decent job depicting the challenges that would face our government, our medical establishment, and society itself in the face of a fast-moving epidemic.  We get a glimpse of how a random virus might transmit animal-to-human, and in this global community how easy it is to lose containment of an epidemic.  We learn about the term, 'R-nought', which describes the number of additional persons one infected individual will likely infect in turn.  The higher this number, the more virulent the strain and the more difficult to contain the epidemic.

Human history is marked with significant outbreaks of lethal diseases, such as the Black Death of the Middle Ages, or the H1N1 influenza epidemic of 1918-1920 that killed conservatively 3% of the world's population.  Yet, in the final analysis, and based upon my extremely limited knowledge of this subject, it seems to me that epidemics are all about percentages.  Yes, we could have a major outbreak, perhaps even this year, and such an outbreak would devastate many families and probably drastically change many entire communities forever; however, the percentages game favors our survival from one of these events in the long run.

In short, I'm not buying a pandemic as the final cause of EOTW.  Don't sleep any better, though, there are plenty of other catastrophes to discover!

I sign off with this fabulous quote from Contagion:  "Blogging is not writing; it's graffiti with punctuation."

Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 4, 321 days remaining

Mirror, Mirror  (Parallel universe with pirate version of Enterprise!)
The Apple  (Yup, they're going to find out what kids are soon enough.)
The Doomsday Machine  (Planet destroyer ... hey, this could be EOTW!)

Video Mission Update: 36 / 728 hours = 4.9%