A Break from the Headaches

A week or so ago I began to get the feeling that I needed to take a break from this blog.  I felt an impulse to do something that went in a bit of a different direction from all these crazy theories and ideas.  Lately, I've been feeling a slight staleness creep in and my interest has been slipping a little.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm sick of doing this.  I'm just saying that I need to take a break before it gets to that point.  If my heart's not into it, then I'm not going to be putting out any kind of quality material.  I won't be doing you guys any favor if I force myself to keep going.  Luckily, I know myself well enough at this point in my life to know that this disenchantment is just a passing phase.  My interest in things goes in cycles and seasons, and when the cycle comes back around I'll return with a fresh enthusiasm for this material.

Meanwhile, I'm not planning to take a break from blogging.  In fact, I've started up a new blog that I plan to work on while I'm on a break from this one.  As I said, I've had an impulse to do something different.  This new blog will be a bit more personal, less about my ideas and interests and more about my life.  I hope that my regular readers here will at least check it out at www.notesowl.blogspot.com  If it's not your cup of tea, I understand.  You can consider yourself well rid of me for a couple of months.  I just hope you'll still be here when I come back, and we can get into more confusing craziness and mushroom cloud migraines.  Consider this, like, the end of season one or something.  I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg.  There's still plenty of stuff to get into.    

Star Trek Slices up the Milky Way

In the mid-nineties there were two spin-offs from the Star Trek the Next Generation series, Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Star Trek Voyager.  Both of these series were somewhat substandard to the series which had spawned them, but being a bit of a science fiction nerd, I watched them anyway.  If you watched them too, you'll recall that Deep Space Nine was about a space station near a worm hole that led to the Gamma quadrant.  The idea was that this was a passage to a distant section of the galaxy that was inaccessible otherwise.  It was really, really far away.  Well, a few years later, Voyager came along, and it involved a star ship stranded in the Delta quadrant, trying to get home.  Whoa, the Delta quadrant, that's one more Greek letter than gamma!  They must have been really, really, really, far away.  Right away this set the precedent for the dumbed-down nature of Voyager, as I'll demonstrate.

Pictured above is the Milky Way.  Well, it's a spiral galaxy, at least.  Anyway, if I've got my math and my Latin correct, then "quadrant" implies something that has been divided into four equal sections, like this:

You begin to see the problem?  This would put the Delta quadrant adjacent to the Alpha quadrant, rather than on the far side of the galaxy from it.  Still, I suppose they could have designated the sections as such:

But this seems a bit convoluted, as it involves zig-zagging around for no reason:

Instead of going in a nice clockwise fashion:

I guess it's possible though.  That being the case, I guess we could map out the Star Trek galaxy as such:

See, we've got everyone nice and separated and remote from each other.  But what about the path that the USS Voyager would take to get home?  I foresee two possibilities.  First, if they had any sense they would cut across the center of the galaxy:

This would have taken them near the super massive black hole at the center of the galaxy.  That would have made for some interesting story possibilities.  I'm not sure if the scientists knew about that yet.  At least they could have stopped on the planet that was in Star Trek V and asked, "Hey, why does God need a star ship?"

Or they could have taken a more circuitous route and passed through the Gamma or Beta quadrants, as pictured above.  Passing through the Gamma quadrant would have taken them through Dominion space, so they'd probably would have wanted to go the other way.  As far as we know, there's nothing in the Beta quadrant except worms and space dust.  It must be pretty boring since they never mention it.  Yet, if that's the way they went, you'd think that at some point in the series they would have crossed the border into one of these quadrants.  They could have at least given the viewers the sense that they were making some progress instead of just jerking around on the holodeck and picking up more Borg orphans.

At any rate, I think I'll shut up now while I can still claim to only be a "little bit" of a nerd.   

I Would Make a G-r-r-reat Tiger

Well, Rachel Hoyt is at it again with her damn sociology studies.  This time she wants to know what animal we'd like to be.  I think I'm on to her game now.  Some shady Illuminati types have run all the numbers, they've figured out all the scenarios, and they've come to the conclusion that the only way to save the planet is to reverse the evolutionary progress of the human race.  It seems that the Earth can no longer support our technological progress, and it just so happens that a Dr. Fictiousname has invented a device that will re-encode our DNA and regress us back to animal form.  They'll just call everyone on the phone and tell them that they've won a free carpet shampooing and then they'll show up and zap them with the Devolver Ray.  Who's gonna turn down a free carpet cleaning?  Rachel's part in this clandestine plan is to collect information.  Under the guise of a "study", she'll get everyone to unwittingly declare what kind of animal they want to be turned into when the zappers come.

So, I guess I better give this matter some serious consideration.  Let's see...well, I definitely want to be some kind of cat.  They're adorable, they don't take any crap from anybody, and they always land on their feet unless you strap a slice of buttered bread to their back, then you risk opening some kind of quantum rift in the fabric of the universe.  There's also the possibility that some Schrodinger guy might stick you in box and declare that you're somewhere between life and death.  Whatever Doc.  Could you at least poke some air holes and drop a can of tuna in here?  Still, I think being a cat is a pretty solid choice.

Of course, I wouldn't have to be a little house cat.  I could be a big cat like a panther or a lion.  If anyone tried to strap buttered bread to me, I could snap their arm off like a twig with my ferocious teeth and then beat them to death with it.  I don't really want to be a lion, though.  They're the king of jungle, and I really don't feel like being the king of anything.  It sounds like too much responsibility.  I don't need a bunch of elephants and wart-hogs coming to me to settle their disputes.  I would probably eat their faces just to shut them up.  I don't think I'd make a very good king.

No, I think I'd rather be a Tiger.  They're just as bad-ass as lions, and they don't have all that king stuff to worry about.  No one comes to a tiger with their problems.  They would just see me over there, sleeping under the tree and they'd know that they'd probably shouldn't mess with me.  If anyone was stupid enough to bother me, it would be like having a pizza delivered.  I wouldn't even have to leave my tree to find dinner.  And I would be serving a valuable purpose.  I would be thinning the population of stupid animals.  I would be like natural selection with teeth.  Plus, I would have those cool stripes.  

So there you go Rachel.  Make sure to tell the zappers to have the gun set for "tiger" when they show up at my door.  It'll be awesome.  I can't wait.  Free Pizza!        

Making Contact

More than once on this blog, I've mentioned the possibility of making contact with an alien race.  I've discussed the unlikelihood of them visiting us, and I've discussed the different methods by which we might cross the unimaginable distances of space to make contact with them.  Part of my fascination with this subject is the common idea of what life from another planet might be like, as well as confirmation that we're not alone in the universe.  Aside from these things, however, I also believe that real, verified contact with intelligent life beyond this planet would have a revolutionary impact on the human race.

We harbor a dream that some day we will put aside our differences with one another, end our senseless wars, and begin working together towards common goals.  Somehow, though, this dream keeps slipping away.  The practical purposes for war became obsolete a long time ago, but yet the fighting continues.  Wars were once fought for the expansion of territory and sometimes even for survival itself.  This is no longer necessary in the way that it once was, but we still find reasons to take up arms again each other.  It's as if we are compelled to keep fighting as an end unto itself and we need to fabricate excuses to perpetually sustain the conflict.  I guess we just like to kill each other.  I believe that contact with an alien race might be the one thing that could finally bring us together.

We seemed to have the concept of "us and them" hardwired into us.  We seem unable to conceive of an "us" without a "them" to contrast it to.  As long as we exist on our little blue island, isolated from the rest of the universe, we focus on the differences between each other.  We gather into a group on this side of the line by virtue of things that set us apart from the people on the other side of the line.  Yet, it's the existence of the line that enables the drawing together of the group.  Without the line, we remain scattered and disconnected, forming smaller groups and engaging in petty conflicts.  A clear, deep line drawn broad enough can bring focus and unity to smaller squabbling groups.

My fellow Americans will remember how September 11th seemed to briefly bring the country together.  Some people thought it was our common grief over the tragedy that united us.  I believe it was something a bit more basic.  That incident drew a deep line, and the terrorists who committed those atrocities were on one side of the line, and the rest of us were on the other.  The minor differences we had focused on between each other suddenly seemed small in the face of this larger divide.  We gathered together against a common enemy.  We nodded to one another.  We were "us"; they were "them."  It seems to be in our nature that we can't have one without the other.

Contact with intelligent extra-terrestrial life would draw a line across the cosmos itself; one deeper than we have ever known.  We wouldn't necessarily have to see them as an enemy, although quite honestly, it would help.  It might be enough just to see them as different.  Only by aliens occupying the role of "them" can there be an "us" that unites all of humanity.  Of course, it would nice to believe that we could reach a level of enlightenment where we could look past the differences of all beings.  One might suggest that such a dichotomy would only expand the same old problems to a higher level.  The yearning for world peace would be superseded by a yearning for galactic peace and then by universal peace.  I agree.  But what are you gonna do?          

My First Attempt at a Kindle Book

So, I've tried my hand at making a Kindle book.  I have to warn you, this is just kind of a trial run, and it's just really one of my longer stories.  It's only about 18 pages; what they call a Kindle "single".  On the plus side, though, I set the price at just $.99 cents, if you're interested.  I had a little trouble with the formatting.  The first time I submitted it, I tried to use normal paragraph indentations, but that didn't come out right, so then I switched it to spaces between the paragraphs.  Then I forgot to fix the paragraphs in the last section, so they're still screwed up. (The first paragraph is very long, and goes on for several pages, so don't let that fool you.) Anyway, I promise that the story is much more interesting than listening to me ramble on like this.  If anyone decides to actually buy this thing, I would certainly appreciate any feedback on how the formatting turned out.  I don't have a Kindle myself, so I'm working almost completely in the dark here.  If any one has some helpful tips for my next attempt, I appreciate hearing about that as well.

I'll hopefully be coming up with something better.