Divining The Future: The Patron Saint Of Nanomachines?

The hard part of being a futurist is in seeing angles to the future that have not already been explored. For instance, take nanomachines. Everyone by now basically knows about nanomachines. There's been all sorts of uses and mentions in popular culture, in speculative fiction, and so forth. At this point, just about every angle of nanomachines has been covered. Possible beneficial uses. Possible harmful or detrimental uses. Use in space travel. Use in medicine. Use in warfare. Use in sex. The ever-looming possibility of the Gray Goo Apocalypse. Every angle is covered.

Except... who will be the patron saint of nanomachines? Think about it. The Catholic Church has a patron saint for EVERYTHING. Not just the obvious stuff like lovers and doctors and lost causes and children and so forth, but crazy modern-era stuff as well. There's a patron saint of the automobile. A patron saint of the Internet. A patron saint of environmentalism. No, I didn't make that up. There's even a patron saint of astronauts. Seems like every time some new thing comes along, before long those kooky Catholics are making some poor dead bastard the patron saint of it. So who will be the patron saint of nanomachines? Inquiring minds want to know. Here's a few possibilities I've narrowed it down to:

1. Saint Albertus Magnus
   Albertus Magnus, or Albert The Great for those who fell asleep in Latin class, is the patron saint of science, which makes him a fairly plausible contender for patron saint of the future science of nanotechnology. He is also the patron saint of philosophers, schoolchildren, and apparently, Cincinnati, Ohio. I wish I could have rewritten that last sentence with less commas.
2. Saint Isidore of Seville
   Isidore is the patron saint of the Internet, which is a pretty neat trick as he only died about 1300 years before Al Gore invented it. But I suppose it's just that kind of transcendent and miraculous behavior that gets you made a saint in the first place. More to the point, he is also the patron saint of technology, which is definitely the last four syllables of "nanotechnology."
3. Saint Thomas the Apostle
   Also known as Thomas Didymus or Doubting Thomas, St. Thomas is the patron saint of building and architecture, which definitely describes the actions of nanomachines. They build stuff, on a molecular scale. It's a plausible argument, but feel free to doubt it.
4. Saint Patrick
   Seems I can't write a piece about Catholicism without mentioning Saint Patrick. This time it's because he's the patron saint of engineers, not because of his lame holiday. Moving on...
5. Rebekah
   This is super sketchy. First, Rebekah is one of those Old Testament characters that was ret-conned into being a saint ex post facto by the Catholic Church. Second, while Wikipedia mentions her as the patron saint of physicists, I can find absolutely zero confirmation of this. She's just on here so the list isn't another sausage fest.
6. Saint Luke the Evangelist
   Only the second guy on this list to have a gospel named after him, Luke is the patron saint of sculptors and surgeons. Somewhere in between those two is nanotech. Also, it says here he's the patron saint of artists, bookbinders, and unmarried men as well. That has no bearing on anything, but I feel better now that I know it.
7. Saint Pantaleone
   Pantaleone is the patron saint of physicians. I just like his name.
8. A saint to be announced at a later date
   Obviously, nanomachines are still something that people are talking about, something that's supposed to happen some day, but not something that has happened yet. Could be the person who will eventually be made the patron saint of nanotechnology hasn't been canonized, beatified or even born yet.

Of course, I suppose there is also an outside chance that by the time we are advanced enough to have invented nanotechnology, we would also be advanced enough that we would no longer rely on organized religions as a structure to keep society together and people would no longer be so irrationally accepting of ancient superstitions. Hahaha, cough cough spit, but seriously folks.

Hypocrisy Is A Necessary Step

In the beginning... well, in the beginning there was no morality, of course. Right and wrong are judgments of a conscious and aware mind, and without any of those around there was no morality. But skip past that. It's not the point.

The point is, that in the beginning there was the path of right action and the path of wrong action. Right is more difficult and less immediately rewarding. Wrong has clear advantages, but it is wrong. In the beginning though we clearly didn't care about the morality of wrong action. Study human history and you will see that it is drenched in blood. Ours, mostly.

Somewhere along the way the predominance of wrong action gives way to the predominance of right action. A necessary step in this transition, this raising of hell into heaven, is the trait where one proclaims the value of right behavior while in fact engaging in wrong behavior. This is hypocrisy. That's another word for this behavior.

And I, for one, have denounced hypocrisy all my life. In me, of course, most of all, because to be a human is to be a hypocrite, so to be a hypocrite who hypocritically denounces hypocrisy is, typical of me, one meta too many. Woe unto ye hypocrites, I would often say as I got my inner Jesus on. Then I realized what I outlined in the paragraphs above. If the evils of the past world are to give way to the utopian paradise of the future, a necessary transitional phase is for most everyone to be the most shameless and awful hypocrites imaginable. Which is kinda where we are now, if you look around you'll see what I mean.

So enjoy it while you can, fuckers. The wheel turns slowly but it does turn.

A Riff On Nostradamus

They say Nostradamus was such a great seer because he predicted Hitler and some other shit like that. Yeah, a warlord is going to conquer some shit... THAT's a risky prediction to make. If Nostradamus was really seeing the future he should have predicted the iPod. But he didn't. That's okay, I didn't predict the iPod either and it happened in my lifetime. I'm just saying.

Some Random Jewels

• "The thing is, and I think it is important to hold onto this thought, that humanity is so far away from its ultimate destiny that everything that is happening right now, EVERYTHING, is wholly irrelevant. Think about the trials and tribulations of the early Cro-Magnons and how much of an impact it has on your life. That's how much all the fucked-up shit happening now will matter in the post-human, post-Earth future."


• "People invent governments for the same reason they invent gods -- because they are too lazy and too chickenshit to take responsibility for their own lives and destinies."

If I Wasn't So Lazy

People tell me that I'm lazy. I tell them that they're lucky.

If I wasn't so lazy. With this much hatred towards the world, if I ever got off my ass it would be to tear the whole damned thing down. Or die trying. I joke that I am a bomb-throwing anarchist. The reason that it is a joke, and I am not actually out there throwing bombs, is because I am too lazy. It is easier to get high and play video games, to sit in my bathrobe and catch up on 60 years of comics continuity, to invent schemes and scams I will never actually get around to setting in motion.

People are kept in line, kept from actively attempting to overturn the staus quo, by certain socially-implanted barriers. The fear of ostracism. The fear of punishment. The fear of death. These barriers mean nothing to me. I have been ostracized all my life. There's something missing inside and I ultimately don't really care what happens to me. I have already been willing to risk -- at various times -- jobs, relationships, my freedom, my life, all solely in the pursuit of making trivial and petty points. It gives me satisfaction to make a point. It's pretty easy to imagine how over-the-top I would extend that characterization if I had a cause or a belief that I gave a shit about.

If I could actualize my vision, transform my delusions of grandiosity into just plain grandiosity, I could be a great and terrible monster.

If I wasn't so lazy.

Happy No Presidents Day!

Today is No Presidents Day. Today we commemorate the day 161 years ago that there was no President of the United States for one day.

Sunday, March 4th, 1849. That was the day that James Polk's term as President expired, and his successor Zachary Taylor refused to take the oath of office on a Sunday, the Sabbath. And yes, while you and I know that Sunday is the Lord's Day, not the Sabbath, cast your mind back to the simpler times of 1849. A time when an incoming President would be willing to throw the entire country into anarchy for a day just to be freakishly faithful to an already antiquated religion. One day we'll have a President that isn't a Christian and I will declare that a holiday too.

Anyway. March 4th, 1849. Zachary Taylor, afraid to anger the God that would strike him down a year later anyway, refused to take the oath of office. James Polk's term had expired. Millard Fillmore, his vice-president, likewise didn't take office. So who was President? The legend is that David Rice Atchison, President pro tempore of the Senate, was President for that day, since he was next in line at the time. But. His term had also expired, and he also never took any oath. So if he wasn't President, who was? I am going to argue quite simply that no one was.

For one day the country had no leader. And everything was fine. No cities burned down in mass looting and orgies. The trains still ran, or at least they would have if they had trains in 1849. Not switching over to Wikipedia to research that one, enough is enough. The point is, for one day the government had no head.

We remember this until it becomes the every day reality.

We Are No Threat To The Earth

Get over yourselves. We are not harming the Earth one bit. Let me explain. By "the Earth" you can mean a few things. You might be referring to the actual planet Earth, an astronomical body in orbit around a G-type star. Or you might be referring to the biosphere, that envelops the blue planet like a tapestry of green and red. That line came to me as I was drifting to sleep last night. Regardless, we are no threat to either one.

The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. Don't be fooled by how pretty it is, study how it actually works. The biosphere has stood up to asteroid impact, terrible ice ages, biological plagues, it has taken them and laughed. AND evolved intelligent beings, some of them smug, one of them me typing right now. Yes, it's that kind of piece. The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. It's really a kind of awful game, but it was around long before us, and hopefully in time it will escape planetary confinement and spread. Hopefully in time it won't be such an awful game. But until then, we are no threat to it.

The actual planet itself is a big rock. It doesn't even know we're here. One day the Sun will have heated up to the point where all the liquid on the planet boils off and whatever life is still here will die badly. And then some time after that the Earth's orbit will decay and it will collapse into the red, giant sun. That's the only threat to the Earth. And maybe an impact with a body large enough to crack it in two. When the Earth dies it will die without having had any clue it had intelligent life on it at one point. We are no threat to it.

We will live and die on the Earth, or we will leave the Earth and live forever. Given enough time, we could conceivably develop to the point where our technology has hit the Clarke's Law threshold and we can harness unfathomable power and move planets around at whim. By this point we would definitely be a threat to the Earth, since it would finally be within our power to destroy it. But why would we? That's dumb.

I've slipped around a lot from the rant I heard in my head as I was drifting to sleep. It was in my voice and I'm pretty sure it was me, but I kept trying to sleep and not listen to it, and it kept shouting "Two spheres! There are two spheres!" So this is only the ghost of a rant, and I guess what I am trying to say is this: Screw you, hippies. The Earth is doing fine.

The Life Cycle Of The God-Mind (Made Simple)

The mind of the universe, and how it is experienced, can be broken down as such:

1. The Void
In the beginning there was nothing. A period of darkness and sleep. On a universal scale, this refers to the time before the universe had manifested, or at least before it had manifested consciousness. On a personal scale this refers to the time before you were born, or more accurately, the time before "I" was born.

2. Yin & Yang
The current phase, a period of alternating sleep and wake. Universally this can be interpreted as the imperfect and incomplete manifestation of conscious will over the blind and impersonal forces of random chance. Personally this can be read quite literally: your entire life is periods alternating wake and sleep.

3. The Eye
The Omega Point. The period of pure and total consciousness, the entire universe awake and aware as a single all powerful entity. Waking into this from your life is probably analogous to waking from a dream. For all intents and purposes, this is God. The personal and universal scales are the same.

Except breaking it down into a three-step process implies the existence of time. Problem is, time doesn't really exist, at least not the way we understand it. This leads to the tricky and ineffable part -- somehow step three IS step one, or leads to it, or causes it. Better prophets than I will hopefully explain further.

a quick argument against intelligent design

Let's talk for a minute about the maxillary sinuses. Like the rest of the paranasal sinuses, they are hollow areas in the bones of your face. The maxillary in particular are these arrow-head looking hollows behind your cheeks on each side of the nose. These sinuses are lined with mucosa that produce mucus for whatever reason which I am too lazy to look up. The sinuses drain this mucus out of these small passages in the bone called ostia. If for some reason these ostia become inflamed, proper drainage can become blocked and the buildup leads to sinus headaches. Now the maxillary sinuses in particular don't drain right under the best of circumstances, since they only have a single ostium for each, called the "maxillary hiatus," and they are located near the top of the sinuses, as opposed to the bottom where any competent engineer would tell you is the best place to put the drainage pipe. You know, because of gravity. And so forth. So under the best of circumstances they don't drain right, under bad circumstances they don't drain at all. These holes in the cheekbones collect with mucus which in turn collects bacteria or viruses, better known as an infection, which finally leads to a really bad sinus headache. Sort of like the electric agony of a toothache mixed with getting kicked in the balls, except if your balls were behind your nose.

Intelligent design my ass. If sinuses are intelligent design, I'm Leonardo da Vinci.

post-addendum footnote disclaimer: Yes, true believers, I already understand that my scope and vision is too limited to truly understand how the crap design of the maxillary sinuses is completely crucial and consistent with blah blah blah blah blah. You don't need to tell me.

post-post-blah-blah-blah: Also I already know there are plenty of things that post-technological humans can do to alleviate this crap design, from decongestants to irrigation of the nasal canal with that weird teapot looking thing to balloon sinuplasty, and seriously look this last one up if you haven't heard of it. That's not the point.

Thoughts On Christmas (And The Holiday Season In General)

WE NEED A HOLIDAY FROM THE HOLIDAY
There's a reason basically every culture and civilization put a big holiday right around the winter solstice. It's because that time of year sucks ass. It is really cold, and it gets dark so soon, and outside everything is death and bone-chilling despair. That's why suicides historically skyrocket this same time of year, because it's an awful, awful time. So they created the Holiday. Call it Christmas, Yule, Hanukah, Kwaanza, Saturnalia, or any of the other names it has gone by in different cultures, the Holiday itself is pretty standard. Today, what was intended to be a joyful celebration to help make bearable the depressing winter has been transformed, become a monster that makes this awful and hateful time of year even worse. It is not only a major Consumer Stress Event, but it also leads to Unavoidable Social Obligations. Everyone is so stressed out about having a good time during this "most wonderful time of the year" that they neglect to have the good time. We need a holiday from the holiday.

CHRISTMAS IS A HOLIDAY FOR WOMEN AND SMALL CHILDREN
Actually, come to think of it, ALL holidays are holidays for women and small children...

CHRISTMAS IS A MODERN AMERICAN POTLATCH
Stop me if you've heard this one. The people are under intense social pressure to BUY, to purchase gifts for one another. Then the holiday comes, and when it passes they all rush back to the stores to return the gifts they just received. What is this immense waste of time and retail man-hours but an ineffective version of potlatch, conspicuous consumption on the tribal scale?

"THE ONE DAY A YEAR I'M SUPPOSED TO NOT BE A DOUCHE"
In older, more religious societies, the paradigm was six days with the Devil and one with God. In other words, for six days you would be concerned with this world and tarnish your soul to grasp onto it, but come Sunday you would be back in the house of the Lord. In modern secular America it is 364 days with the Devil, one with Santa Claus. Christmas is the time when you're not supposed to be a douche, but people spend most of the month or so leading up to it being selfish and lunatic douchebags. Defeats the purpose? Not for me to say.

LYING TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT SANTA CLAUS IS STILL LYING TO YOUR KIDS.
Just a thought.

RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER WAS AN UNCLE TOM
What's the meaning of this story? Kid born with freakish ability. Ostracized for it. Oh, wait, his freakish ability saved the day! THEN how the reindeer loved him... If I was Rudolph, I would have told the reindeer to fuck off. I'm the same reindeer you made fun of yesterday, I want nothing to do with any of you assholes.

WE NEED SOME NEW CHRISTMAS SONGS
Did you ever notice that Christmas songs describe the Christmas experience of the 1940s or the Christmas experience of the 1800s? When was the last time you ate chestnuts roasting on an open fire or rode in a one-horse open sleigh? Christmas songs are totally irrelevant to the modern Christmas experience. They should do a song called "I'm Waiting On Line For Christmas" or "A Prescription For Yuletide Cheer."

SANTA HATS AREN'T FESTIVE
They just make you look like a fucking idiot. Consider this a public service announcement.

THEY SHOULD SELL EGG NOG YEAR ROUND
I mean, they don't just sell turkey around Thanksgiving, or liquor around St. Patrick's Day. Why do they only sell egg nog around the Holiday? It's really delicious!

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ARE TACKY
To be fair, I guess in the right hands they could be a tasteful, even aesthetically interesting medium. Just not the way you're doing them. Especially you lames with the flashing lights. This has been another public service announcement.

PEOPLE WHO SAY KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS ARE DUMB
First off, Jesus wasn't even born in December. He was probably born in March. The reason the festival of the dying-and-returned god was placed in December had a lot more to do with the pre-existing holidays already set for December. Saturnalia ran from the 17th to the 23rd. The Germanic pagan winter festival Yule took place on December 25th. There was the Holiday long before there was Christmas. Christmas itself wasn't celebrated as such until centuries after the death of Christ, when it finally supplanted the pre-existing holidays and assimilated them into itself. (Listen to Christmas carols talk about "yule-logs" and "yule-tide" and see what I mean.) In fairness, I do admit that if you take Christ out of Christmas it's just "mas." That sounds retarded. Maybe we should keep Christ in Christmas after all.