Parents lie, teachers lie, but Uncle Noelie will never lie to you.

Kids:

Adults will tell you that lying is wrong. They will probably even chastise and/or punish you for lying if you are dumb enough to get caught at it. But, as you may already know, adults lie to you all the time. Ever hear the one about the fat man in the red suit at the North Pole? Or the giant bunny with the basket of chocolate eggs? Odds are, yes. So you might be feeling a bit confused when you realize that adults are lying all the time. You might think that they are awful hypocrites who aren't fit to be the authority figures they have imposed themselves as. The truth is, you'd be right. The truth is, lying isn't wrong. Lying is a crucial part of adult life. They lie to others and they lie to themselves. All the time. The only reason adults don't want you to lie is because allowing that would threaten their monopoly on falsehood.

The Saga Of Forgotten Space Baby

Forgotten Space-Baby was once a baby named Alex. One day his mother took him the Baby Trade Shop and traded him for another baby that was eight feet tall. This baby was also named Alex. His mom liked him because he was eight feet tall and could reach things for her. She forgot all about her original son. The now nameless baby cried and cried and cried, and nobody else wanted to trade him, so finally the Baby Trade Shop launched him into outer space. Up there he gained incredible space powers and became Forgotten Space-Baby, legend of five galaxies. Now he is on a quest to return to Earth, to get back to his family. But first he must defeat nefarious space villains such as the Skeleton Family, or the evil Dr. Trap. Will he ever make it back to Earth? Will he be able to replace the eight-foot baby Alex and regain his mother's love? Will he get assistance along the way from his long lost father, Forgotten Space-Dad?

Independent Of The Facts

Here's something you might not know: In terms of our independence, July 4th is an almost completely meaningless date. It wasn't the day the Declaration of Independence was ratified -- that was July 2nd. It wasn't the day the Declaration of Independence was signed -- that was in August. It certainly wasn't the day this country actually became independent -- we still had to win a war to achieve that. As near as I can tell, the only thing special about July 4th is that it's the day the text of the Declaration was finalized -- which might make it a memorable day for proofreaders and editors but otherwise has little to no bearing on our actual independence.

So.. what's so special about the fourth of July? Why do we celebrate this basically meaningless day? Um. Because we always have? Geez Noel, did you need a better reason than that?

Meditations On A Wound

I recently cut myself. Not in the goth emo teenager way. It was an accident. With a razor blade. An inch-long incision on the side of my thumb in an almost straight line. Oops.

Anyway. I cut myself. It was like a week ago. Since then I have watched it slowly heal, felt the skin itch as it re-knits itself together. And it made me remember something I don't often think about -- that my body is actually an intelligent colony of organic nanotechnology.

Presumably, so is yours -- except for the "intelligent" part.

The Human-Created World

In the beginning we did not live in a world of our own creation. Oh, sure, we were already the masters that made the grass green: we always lived in the world created by our own nervous systems, but the external world was not yet of human creation but the world we inherited from geological and biological development. This seems like it should be obvious but it is worth keeping in mind because today we live in a world that is almost entirely of human creation. This ranges from the obvious, like technology and infrastructure and money and domesticated animals; to the subtler such as the languages that constrain and control our thought processes. And sure, I know that there's still a lot we don't control, like the weather and microbes; and much of the ocean remains a mystery and... uh, that's basically it. For better or worse, we inhabit the world we made for ourselves.

The Realest Shit I Ever Wrote

But I don't mean to play the blues
not complaining
just explaining
how it is I paid my dues
all the years I was in pain, confused
in tears, ashamed
that life's a game
and I'm afraid to lose
so I don't need respect or sympathy
they don't mean shit to me
I'm only here to stay amused...

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."