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."

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.