Entries from July 2008 ↓

First off, I wish I had an Evil League of Evil. I would hire laser robots (thanks for the thought, Jim Dowd) and Andy Samberg’s Laser Cats to patrol our fortress. Although I favor Andy’s digital short with Natalie Portman over Laser Cats. But she is too busy to patrol my fortress. It’s too bad – Natalie Portman with lasers is awe-inspiring.

What is the Evil League of Evil? Apparently, they’re a committee of mad-scientist, aspiring world-dominator-types.

I’m watching Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, writer & producer Joss Whedon’s internet video series, starring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible. It’s funny and entertaining in a Flight of the Conchords kind of way, although Neil Patrick Harris will always be Doogie Howser M.D. in my book. Even as I type this, I have the theme playing in my head.

In FACT, here it is, everyone.

I’m really sorry, Neil Patrick Harris. I’m compelled.

Anyway, Dr. Horrible is a videoblogging not-quite supervillain, intent on foiling superhero Nathan Fillion, from Firefly.

Dr. Horrible wants to rule the world, but can’t quite pull of the required caper. I feel like he and I would really connect on a visceral level.

Even supervillains are blogging these days. Social media has arrived.

…Oh, hell, let’s all listen to it one more time.

Watch Dr. Horrible

Read Wikipedia’s summary of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

Image Credit: Natalie Portman, Neal Patrick Harris & Nathan Fillion.

I’m watching Rescue Dawn, the part where they’re all working together to light a fire with brush, sticks & elbow grease. This is right before they tie Christian Bale to a tree and start firing pot shots at him. Waste of ammo. Christian Bale is BATMAN, and cannot be stopped with mere bullets.

So, maybe I’m confusing movies.

In any case, lighting that fire sure looks like a lot of effort. And what does fire get you? Light and warmth. When I come home, I turn on the lights, and adjust the temperature to a comfortable level. Yes, this is decadent. (It would be MORE decadent if Christian Bale was still involved, but you can’t have everything.) But it’s also easy.

Climate control and electricity came with the house. They come with a lot of houses these days. I don’t even have a gas stove anymore (which is good, because when I did, the cats turned it on at night because when you’re a cat, homicide is fun).

The only interaction with fire that I have these days (knock wood) is when I want to make the air more fragrant with a Yankee Candle, or in case there are some secret intelligence reports that need to be destroyed.

You might know about Prometheus. He was a Titan, and apparently an old softie, because in the Greek myths he defied the gods and gave fire to mankind. He was given two punishments: a sister-in-law and he had to have his liver ripped out painfully each night, after which it would regenerate, for the next night.

We’ve come a long way from the days were having fire was worth risking torture or in-laws. Fire is not the only amenity we’ve grown used to.

I’m not advocating that we go back to the drawing board. We’ve made advances in civilization that I would not give up willingly. I’m typing this entry on one of them.

But have we taken things too far? If we were suddenly blasted back to the start, maybe through warfare, or continued environmental devastation, could we rise to the occasion? Who would survive? Who would you want to survive? Could you?

Image Credit: Batman, cat, Prometheus, & Thomas Cole’s Desolation, from the Course of Empire series.

Music Credit: REM’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Play this song while you read this blog:

Garbage tells it truly. The world is not enough. But, it is such a perfect place to start.

Okay, all you over-achievers out there. Time to step it up.

The world is not enough. This guide is meant to help you world dominatrices everywhere increase your bases of power, until you can chuckle softly into the night, secure in the knowledge that you have created an Unconquerable Empire.

But why stop at that? There are entire galaxies to explore.

What? You say. There aren’t any other planets with sentient life. What’s the point in taking over empty galaxies?

You are looking in the wrong place for your real estate, my friend.

Take a look at Second Life. People are spending real money on virtual real estate. They can’t ever go there in physical form. They can’t ever vacation there, or house their family there.

They can, however, turn a profit.

People are buying real estate in Second Life, breaking it up into parcels of land, and then selling it for a profit. So, not only do we have people buying something that isn’t there, but we have people reselling it to other people, thus giving it value.

This is not an uncommon system. Take a look at the stock market.

Semi-accurate crash course in the stock market according to Leanne Heller: Company A is worth a bundle. But Company A’s stock is worth MORE than a bundle. This is because the stock’s worth is based on what people are willing to pay, or what they THINK the company is worth. So, people are constantly inflating (or deflating) a company’s stock based on the value that others assign to it, based on the expectation of profitability.

If people find value in real estate on Second Life, it has a value. If you think about it, the actual world’s real estate system is almost as absurd as Second Life’s virtual system.

If people say it has value, should you own it? Is it worth jumping on the bandwagon and purchasing imaginary real estate because other people are willing to buy it? Millions of investors say yes.

Or will it end up like the tulip crash in Holland? That was when the assigned value of tulips increased exponentially, to the point of ridiculousness, and then the bottom dropped out and tulips (and everyone’s investments) were worthless.

When do other people’s opinions of value matter? How do you know when a world is worth dominating? And is this world enough? Or, is it just another place to start?

How frequently do you interact with Robots?

Do you know when you are interacting with one?

Wikipedia defines a robot as a mechanical or artificial agent, that, among other things:

• is not ‘natural’ i.e. artificially created
• can sense its environment, and manipulate or interact with things in it
• is programmable
• makes dexterous coordinated movements
• appears to have intent or agency

Those sure describe a lot of things that I interact with on a daily basis. More disturbing by far, is when you scroll down the Wikipedia page, there is a section titled, “Robot Fatalities.” In this section, it talks about the first human to be killed by a robot, Robert Williams, and poor Kenji Urada, who was pushed into a grinding machine.

The article claims this was an accident.

The first book that I ever read about robots taking over the world was “The Eternal Enemy,” by Christopher Pike. Here is the basic storyline: Boy makes robot. Robot makes better, smarter robot. Rinse & repeat until humanity is threatened with being replaced entirely. For their own good. It’s always for our own good, which tells me that sci-fi writers have a well-developed sense of irony.

Will Smith’s I, Robot (based on Asimov’s novel) raised my expectations by introducing a noble, human-friendly robot, Sonny, who stands up to the psycho mother robot and all her minions when they decide to take over the world. Great. So, now we have to make robots to fight the robots for us.

Same deal in the bright & splashy 2007 hit Transformers – robots are protecting us from bad robots, and even cell phones are dangerous.

I’m not even going to get into the premise of Battlestar Galactica, except to say that the robots (called Cylons if you’re polite, Toasters if you’re not) are going to kill us all, and you’d better start looking for alternative planets to live on, because Earth is no longer an option.

Guys, my Roomba is looking at me funny.

I’ve got to go…

Cue awesome song “The Humans are Dead” by sassy New Zealand sensation The Flight of the Conchords.

The above graphic, from Rob Cottingham’s incredibly witty and apt blog, Noise to Signal, underlines the importance of politicians’ awareness and use of social media as part of their personal branding.

Similarly, Ed Moltzen’s post, “Give Me Twittering, Or Give Me Death”, raised the interesting point of whether Twitter and other forms of social media will create a conflict between confidentiality and free speech. When I followed up with Ed on Twitter, he noted, and I agree, that “[politicians] who don’t ‘get’ Web 2.0 will be ex-pols sooner than later.”

Ed got me thinking about whether this will also apply to other areas, such as business, education and news. Since the last one irritates me the most, let’s talk about that.

I don’t like to read the newspaper or even watch the news, unless it begins with that catchy Matt Lauer song, when he travels around the world and you have to guess what country he’s in. I like that because it reminds me of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and I can pretend cops are going to show up any minute and throw him in the clink. (Sorry, Matt, it’s just the way my mind works.)

I was brought up in a household that always had 2 or 3 papers delivered daily, and my parents would listen to the nightly news as well. My father-in-law is an extremely intelligent man, and he stays current by reading the Times each morning. I like to be informed, and I appreciate the research and hard work at papers or news stations. My argument is with the sensationalized style of news that seems to relish tragedy.

For example, here are some of the top news stories today:

• Gangs invade Calfornia’s island paradise
• 9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Attack in Afghanistan
• Police launch massive search for missing N.C. mother who disappeared while jogging

There was also a chance to watch a “Bus Brawl” on tape on ABC News, which I declined to view.

Michael Moore and others have gone in-depth on skewed news and fear-mongering, better than ever I could. Suffice it to say that this is why I like social media so much. It’s current, it’s made up of honest opinions for the most part, and while it touches on the darker side of life, it doesn’t rely on disasters to be interesting.

Great examples are Tech Crunch, which constantly reviews new Internet products and companies, Twitter’s MarsPhoenix which reports on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, and Digg, Truemors and Sphinn, which have a “for the people by the people” approach, with rating systems that allow the masses to select which news stories should be read.

So, here is my question. As more and more people want valuable, accurate information, do you think that the news will have to change how it presents itself?

Understanding religion is an important part of conquering the world. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone with a complete understanding of all the religions and belief systems of the world. However, there’s a lot of good stuff out there, and just because you aren’t ready to write a dissertation on it, it doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate it into your own ideas.

In Buddhism, there are Bodhisattvas, who are enlightened beings who choose not to enter Nirvana, so they can stick around and continue to help our world. This has always seemed reasonable enough to me. I’ve never met someone who I could tackle and yell, “This guy’s enlightened!” but I have met many people who seem further along the path to enlightenment than I.

For this scenario to be acceptable, it doesn’t matter if you believe in Heaven, or Nirvana, or if you are into slaughter and are hoping to end up in Valhalla. You don’t need to accept reincarnation as a fact- there’s a lot you can learn in one lifetime, and experience plays a significant role in your spiritual growth. You can be a Christian, and believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a Bodhisattva. Any of your typical Biblical prophets could be a Bodhisattva, in any religion with any Bible.

Granted, these are some weird ideas. I’m sure glad they don’t burn people for heresy nowadays. The truth is, I don’t really know how it works. If I did, I would invent an easier to spell word than Bodhisattva (nothing against Sanskrit, it has some very cool words and even cooler concepts) and call myself that. Like Frank. Or Bill.

Anyway, the point is, I’ve never met an enlightened being, but I believe they are somewhere in this world, spreading acts of compassion, and teaching. If they aren’t, it’s a bit depressing, but the rest of us could sure benefit from taking up the slack ourselves. In fact, it might even be better to assume they’re not out there, and to start acting a bit more enlightened right now. It wouldn’t hurt, unless, of course, our egos also increased to the point where we all demanded disciples.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But, there are only so many disciples, so there would have to be some sort of tier-system, & although I like organizing things, it would be a bear to implement. Although, click on the picture on the left to view a pretty awesome chart showing what Jesus’ Social Networking Chart might look like.

The book I’m reading right now, “A Ring of Endless Light” by Madeline L’Engle, who is was an excellent writer, quotes the adage “we should live each day as though we were going to live forever, and as though we were going to die tomorrow.” I’ve never been able to quite master it full time, but in the brief moments that I have, it’s pretty glorious.

Be aware that your time is finite, but be unafraid to live it with joyful intensity. Live how you want to be remembered, but (let’s be trite) remember to live.

Give enlightenment a shot. Let me know how it goes.

Cue Kashmir by Led Zeppelin: (This song always makes be feel badass and fearless of mortality.)

The Invading Army: When my husband and I moved to our new apartment in February, we believed that we had selected an impenetrable fortress, secure and protected. It had an extensive alarm system, it was off the ground floor, and there were paid security archers guarding the building from the roof.

Perhaps that last part is a lie. Anyway, I thought that my castle was closed to usurping invaders. Unfortunately, I underestimated the enemy. This afternoon, I was faced with a disturbing and totally gross situation.

My pepper plants were swarming with teeny little bright green aphids. It was a horde of genuine destruction – they suck the lifeblood out of your citizens (or pepper plants) and spread disease among your people (or tomato plants).

Now, to take a step back, let me say that I’ve always liked aphids. I’ve even felt sorry for them. They know what it’s like to live under a reign of terror – there is a species of ant that makes them their pets and uses them as cattle. How demeaning. One day, you’re a life-sucking monster of epic proportions. The next, you’re a bug-cow.

But, after being seriously creeped out by the hundreds of tiny little moving specks, I quashed my reservations and prepared to fight. In war, you’ve got to be ruthless.

Here is what you should do when you’re faced with an attack.

First, identify your enemy. After Googling in a red haze for about 30 seconds, I identified the menacing (1 to 3 millimeters long) beasts as aphids, or “greenflies.”

Second, find out its weaknesses. Aphids are susceptible to Insecticidal Soap or horticultural oils which essentially cause them to explode. This is only one of the many weaknesses you can exploit. Enemies almost always have a weak point, ideally one that will make them explode.

Third, create a plan of counter-attack. Here are my options:

• Negotiation. Unfortunately, the aphids aren’t responding to my peaceful attempts, and they utterly ignored the goodwill ambassador I sent in to open peace talks. (i.e. my cat.)
• Forcibly remove the enemy. In my case, this involves spraying them with a powerful stream of water much like turning a fire hose on a pack of misbehaving dalmatians.
• As mentioned above, engage in biological warfare. Soap, oils, or pesticides are bad news for these insects.
• Use guerrilla tactics. Decimate the population and kill off its offspring. Aphids are actually born pregnant (I know, I know!) so they breed fast, and mature quickly. This step may involve some sacrifice. I may have to part with a pepper plant or two to contain the infestation. This approach is to be avoided, as it’s kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but it can be necessary.
• And lastly, consider bringing someone in to eat their army. Be prepared to deal with the consequences of this new partnership, though – you may end up with a bigger pest to contend with. For example, aphids have natural predators, Ladybirds, hoverflies or minute pirate bugs. The last seems the most interesting. Should you hire pirates to take care of your dirty work? Is that really ethical? And are they really pirates if they don’t have peg legs and hats?

Pirate	Pirate Bug

Your options will likely be different from these, but in a pinch, these will work for you as well.

The bottom line is, no fortress is impenetrable. Be prepared to react well. When threatened with invaders, check out your options. Don’t lose your head, and don’t despair. Learn from the experience and use this knowledge to protect yourself in the future. At the least, don’t be afraid to put up a good fight.