BMW Night Vision video city scene

What's a three letter word for "electric motorized unicycle"?

Originally posted at The Examiner on June 15, 2009

A couple of years ago a young man from just outside of Toronto, Canada went on a trip to China, and what he saw there inspired the coolest, greenest motorcycle yet to be invented. Ben J. Poss Gulak observed congested urban streets, where thousands of small vehicles filled the air with smog.

“The entire time I was there, I didn’t see the sun once; the skies were perpetually covered in smog,” he recalls. “Looking back,” he adds, “I guess I’ve always had an interest in eco-minded transportation technology.”

Gulak’s Uno was designed on the idea that one wheel would be easier to maneuver through crowded streets than two, but what he eventually went with is more comparable to a Segway than a unicycle: two tandem wheels provide more stability, creating a dicycle, which allows riders to intuitively navigate left and right as each of the two wheels adjust to compensate for the shift in weight.

The Uno has two microgyros (the Segway only utilizes one), one for front and back stability, the other for side to side. The only instrument on the machine is the on/off switch; everything else is controlled by the rider’s movement, which makes for an interesting first ride, to say the least (Gulak’s first spin ended in a serious crash). Not to worry, though: the Uno has since been made safer and easier to control.

The technique is simple enough – lean forward to accelerate, lean back to slow down. By sitting upright a rider can easily balance in one spot. But, as utilitarian as it is, it has the look of a crotch rocket, and, if the prototype wasn’t orange, it could easily be something driven by the Green Goblin.

Gulak has already demonstrated the Uno on Tonight Show with Jay Leno, who is also a cycle enthusiast. He also won the “most marketable award” at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and made the number one spot in Popular Science Magazine’s “Top Ten Inventions,” which included a cover photo. In an ironic twist, Gulak invented the Uno while being waitlisted for MIT. He has since enrolled, however, and is expected to graduate in 2012.

The young entrepreneur was heavily influenced by his grandfather, “Opa” Werner Poss, an inventor himself with a complete machine shop in his house. When Poss died, he left his entire workshop to Gulak, which has facilitated the younger inventor’s work and ambition.

The Uno runs on wheelchair motors, and is entirely electric. Gulak had some trouble with the electrical aspects, resulting in a few fires, and elicited help from Veltronics, Ltd., an electrical engineering company in Brampton, Ontario, on the circuitry. He also received some assistance from Trevor Blackwell, inventor of the Eunicycle, which incorporates a gyro control system to stay upright.

One of the key values of the Uno is its virtue of extreme accomodation. Weighing a mere 120 lbs, it can be carried indoors, and even into elevators. It can even be charged from a regular plug-in outlet.

As urban areas like San Francisco, where scooters are already a hugely popular substitute for cars and public transportation, become more and more densely populated, it’s safe to say alternative vehicles like the Uno will become more and more common in the metropolitan landscape.

So, where can you get one? Nowhere just yet, sadly. Gulak is focusing on his school work at MIT, and who can blame him? The fundamental tech is figured out." he says. "It just needs the right people to tweak it." It's clear that the young talent prefers to focus on increasing his knowledge of the mechanics, and let someone else worry about sales and distribution. Good for him.

Still, I want my Uno ASAP, and will follow up as soon as the Uno has been made accesible to the public.

For more info: Watch this YouTube video

Death After Life: Perspectives on Dying and Reckonings with Mortality

When bearing down on a topic as deep and broad as Death Itself, and even when sifting through the peculiar particularities of the infinite human reckonings therewith, questions naturally emerge about where or how to even begin, or which of Its ugly faces to deal with first. Among our human legion of earthbound cultures we see that there are numberless demurring intellections of Death, Its significance and meaning, and of the Afterlife, as the religious beliefs of this or that Non-dead demographic defines these ubiquitous psychotic notions.

It is not my purpose to analyze the various Death-concepts posed by the world’s religions, any more than to point out that each belief system, with behavioral virtue on the part of the individual as a condition for its acquisition, provides a potentially positive, even joyful, interpretation of the Afterlife, thereby attempting to bequeath Death an inviting air, and quell the natural fear we have of It.

Nor is it my concern to reveal any ultimately new information, though dredging up forgotten knowledge often imbues old wisdom with new vigor, nor will I attempt to devise a strategy for proactive living by which we may overcome our innate fear of Death and/or live more enriched lives, although such a tactic is for most of us obligatory for the simple purpose of getting out of bed.

My humble yet self-indulgent aim is to obsess a bit within the following paragraphs on the ironic position in which we find ourselves as human beings, at once moved to action and dream under the pressure of Inevitable Mortality as well as petrified by the apparent meaninglessness It would seem to exacerbate in our existence. The Reality of Death is the major motivator, indirectly, for nearly our every attempt at meaningfulness, for all of our efforts to find some level of success in life. But, antithetically, Death casts a shadow of futility over anything we may accomplish, depreciating the certainty of our very daily experience. We are subliminally aware that what we experience, what we do, what we are, just will not matter in a hundred years. This sort of temporality is both a blessing and a curse.

In fixating on the Reality of Death, for us all as well as for the hopeless individual, and in convening on the implications involved in coming to terms with the Juggernaut, unstoppable and nonnegotiable, my only hope is to highlight that most evocative of element within the human psyche that is most cast into shadow. The Inevitable End is at the core of that which we most often and determinedly attempt to ignore and forget, and at the same time our very incentive for endeavoring to live well, to acquire prosperity, to obtain that to which we attribute value, and to create meaning.

It should also be noted that in referring to Death I am focusing largely on the Western, even American, experience, where our technocratic society conventionally circumvents prolonged candid concentration on the topic of Death, outside of the ever-popular suspense story about a killer, or the always-attractive dramatic death scene in movies. There is a sweetness to the sad, bitter Tragedy we all appreciate, at least a little.

There is a strong correlation between the high value that we as modern world citizens claim to place on life and the equally high value we place on the individual. Often, we indulge in a love affair with ourselves, and cannot bear the idea of one day letting oneself go forever.

I suppose as good a place as any to begin would logically be the theoretical opposite of Death: Birth. Rationally as well as ecclesiastically, Birth is at the same time diametrically opposed to Death in conception as well as nearly synonymously linked. We know as little about the Before as we do the After.

Evidently unique to the human experience as opposed to that of other species is the cognizance of our own eventual Demise. We know It is coming, but we do not know what It is. And, although science can for the most part explain the physical aspects of It, and religion makes innumerable faith-based claims, there are only vague clues as to what lies beyond the initial Darkness the moment the lights go out (occasional near-Death experiences as related by random, often religiously-charged 'witnesses' notwithstanding, who are only slightly more believable than alien-abducted, anally-probed 'innocent bystanders').

This lack of hard data concerning the spiritual realm beyond things has been called in philosophy the “Problem of the Soul.” Are there two realities coexisting in the same place at the same time, the physical and the spiritual? Or are the physical and the spiritual dichotomous aspects of the same cosmos and it's contents? Regardless of one’s personal answers to these questions (and these answers do remain individually-generated; in the swirling masses of human memory, there has never been empirical information sufficient for one person to share with another; only testimonial, sentiment, and the universality of the human experience to allow one person’s experience to influence another person’s beliefs), homo-sapiens are born into a complex system of natural and fabricated corporealities and real and imagined socio-psychologies.

We don’t know why or how we are how we are. We didn’t choose the environment into which we were Born. We begin adapting to our earthly world even before we are born, but we cannot say with any legitimacy that we know from what or whence we have come. The Void, unknown and unknowable.

Edvard Munch, the painter responsible for the now-more-famous-than-ever The Scream (which was stolen a few years ago, btw), dwelt on Death, his interest in the subject probably ignited by the Tragic Losses of his mother and sister to tuberculosis, and later by the Deaths of his father, brother, other sister, and aunt. He had way too many deaths to deal with, for being just one man.

Munch's paintings depict the debacle with Death which he had undergone; he posed little or no affirmative reference to the Afterlife. Rather, he portrayed the angst, fear, trepidation and confusion that comes with Dying, in dealing with the Death of a loved one, or the wrapping of one’s mind around the eventuality of the Ultimate Cessation. In life, Munch engaged Death, conceptually and emotively, until his own Death at the age of eighty. He exposed Death’s cruel irony by juxtaposing near-sacred symbols of life’s sanctity with shadowy, chilling elements in his paintings:

In Puberty a skinny young girl meditates, sitting naked on her bed beneath the threatening form of her own shadow, while in The Voice a young woman, alone in the woods, attends to some inner whisper; these are the

most sensitive representations of woman in Munch's work.

In much of his work, Munch, the Poe of painting, reminds us that Death is still there, lurking in the shadows of our subconscious, contaminating every positive thought and pleasant sensation with dark ephemerality. He emphasizes the irony of life in the face of Death, with paintings like Starry Night, largely devoid of stars and replete with shadows, and Spring, wherein two widow-looking women seem unmoved by the fresh air blowing in the window.

His angst-ridden pièce de résistance comes with a short explanation by the artist himself:

"I was walking along the road with two friends.
The sun was setting.
I felt a breath of melancholy -
Suddenly the sky turned blood-red.
I stopped, and leaned against the railing, deathly tired -
looking out across the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword
over the blue-black fjord and town.
My friends walked on - I stood there, trembling with fear.
And I sensed a great, infinite scream pass through nature."

How can the birds continue to sing and the flowers continue to blossom under the overhanging, ever-looming Promise of Death?

There are many in the world who view Death as but a part of the cycle of life, like the familiar diagram of the cycle of water, where we see raindrops turn to rivers turn to steam turn to clouds, etc. The Evaporation of the Consciousness, however, is something that people have also always tried to capture, whether visualized through meditation, drugs, theology or thrill-seeking.

Spiritualists would make the claim that Death ought to be embraced as a sort of graduation to the next level of consciousness. They focus on the apparent relationship between the dreaming mind of the sleeper and the idea of the soul. They may suggest astral projection or out-of-body possibilities. They sometimes imply that all aspects of our individual human lives were chosen by each one of us before Birth, that we, as higher versions of ourselves, somehow had grasped that there were lessons that we needed to learn, and had devised the manner in which we would teach them to ourselves.

This conundrum of enlightened ignorance alone fills me with disdain – that we would know that we need to know what it is that we don’t know, so we therefore might design our lives in such a way that, once our term is over and we are again returned to that Obscure Place between Death and Rebirth, we will have acquired the arcane knowledge which we lacked before we Began. Herein lay layers upon ridiculous layers of insipid delusions, exposed to even the most blinded eyeballs, beginning with the presumption that there is meaning behind our inconveniences, and ending with the vainglorious attempt to somehow give ourselves partial credit for the universe in which we find ourselves living.

It is generally accepted among followers of all faiths that there are spiritual guidelines in place, whether subtle or spectacular, to help us to teach ourselves these all-important lessons. The exact nature of these lessons, apparently, unfortunately, remains too mysterious for our pragmatic brains to analyze, being so connected to concepts of God and eternal Truth and all. And of course everything that is thusly connected must remain masked by ghostly fog.

The themes they have in common seem to be those of self-improvement and fulfillment, acceptance, happiness and inner peace. Good for them.

Coincidentally, hoaxes, lies, cons and magic tricks are also similarly coated in obscurity, and often equally entertaining as well.

Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, author of Living Meaningfully, Dying Joyfully, says:

"Dying with regrets is not at all unusual. To avoid a sad and meaningless end to our life we need to remember continually that we too must die. Contemplating our own death will inspire us to use our life wisely by developing the inner refuge of spiritual realizations; otherwise we shall have no ability to protect ourself from the sufferings of death and what lies beyond."

There is a vague allusion that living and Dying badly is something to be fearful of, because it is "sad and meaningless." Suspicious rhetoric in guise of metaphysical insight, but at least he, in classic Eastern religion style, put a noble and positive spin on it. Regardless, his recurring point is that the acceptance of one’s Inevitable Destruction and one’s wisdom to participate in only positive actions go hand in hand. He implies he lives well and so intends to Die well, and that you can too if only you adopt his religious beliefs. It's less of a high road than he thinks, and I don't want what he is offering.

Also, Gyatso uses poor grammar, refusing to use plural possessives: “our life,” “our own death,” “ourself.” Is something lost in translation, or did the writer’s highly specialized training in spiritual and religious atonement leave little room for grammatical aptitude? All kidding aside, the writer, of course, wishes to impart the view that we all share the same existence, i.e. the presence of the Oversoul. I am satisfied saying we all go through the same thing: living as well as we can under the Penumbra of Doom.

Then again, I suppose rejecting religion is my way of pushing atheism, or rather, the agnostic truth. Touché, holy man. Hypocrisy is part of the human condition.

Which brings us to the question posed by the existence of the ethical atheist:

Ought the certain knowledge of the conspicuous absence of any sort of God, Heaven or Afterlife make the enlightened atheist (that is to say, an atheist who somehow learns that his doubts were proven 100% correct over all the religious beliefs against which he has spent a lifetime rebelling) more or less moral in his conduct? Thus assured that there are to be no repercussions, should one be expected to turn to a life of theft and violence, become a marauder, taking what he will, getting what he can while he can? Will he connive and plot to ruthlessly remove his enemies and obstacles in order to expedite the acquisition of heart’s desires? Or will he see the human life experience as being that much more fleeting, and, therefore, that much more valuable? Will he be able to be self-sacrificial, knowing that there is ultimately no reward promised and that he, along with the beneficiaries of his sacrifice, will simply cease to exist one day?

Simon Blackburn, in his little book, Being Good, stoutheartedly engages the constraints of religious beliefs upon the free thinker, and explores the relativist, subjective and dogmatic influences upon our thought processes.

Suppose, for instance, I am minded to do something bad, such as betray someone’s trust. It isn’t good enough if I think: ‘Well, let me see, the gains are such-and-such, but now I have to factor in the chance of God hitting me hard on the ass if I do it. On the other hand, God is forgiving and there is a good chance I can fob him off by confession, or by a deathbed repentance later…’ These are not the thoughts of a good character. The good character is supposed to think: ‘It would be betrayal, so I won’t do it.’ That’s the end of the story.

To go in for a cost-benefit analysis is, in a phrase made famous by the contemporary moral philosopher Bernard Williams, to have "one thought too many."

An interesting question, to say the least. Assuming one can bring himself to resist wholeheartedly any of the religious or spiritual options being proffered from every direction, would one then be able to make a truly honest example of his moral fortitude? Or would he condemn himself to amorality due to lack of code or structure?

Blackburn is quick to point out that, there can be no test a priori of one’s moral position unless he is unfettered by the belief in God or an afterlife, and thusly given to true autonomy without regard for plausible reward for good deeds or punishment for evil ones. Furthermore, Blackburn favors the stance of the Greek Stoics, which insists that Death is nothing to fear, since the self ceases to be and is therefore incapable of suffering, while recognizing that it is the fear of Death that drives people to behave as they do, or generates their desires for glory.

The Stoic would use logic to deduce, ‘it just does not matter that the self Ceases to Exist, because there is no self left to regret, so what does he care.’ He may also reiterate the Symmetry notion that holds that Death returns one to that state or place wherein one may have found oneself before Birth. So how bad could that be?

The trouble with Death, though (resurrection notwithstanding), is that it requires the Cessation of the self. Every sensation, every thought (conscious or subconscious), every change one could possibly have ever experienced, was experienced as oneself, with oneself, through oneself. The idea that you, with the name you know so very well, and the face, the hair, the hands, the body that has continued to change with age before your eyes, the pain and the joy, the hopes, dreams and memories that have always been wholly yours and have amalgamated to form the you you have become, would one day necessarily have to bid yourself adieu forever and all time, is utterly intolerable.

Subjectively, from the control room of your brain, through the windows of your eyes, you have faced the world at large, mano a mano. Meanwhile, behind those closed eyelids, a dreamy infinity has heaved and billowed, intertwining into itself your every moment’s impulse. The analytical mind cannot help but wonder while observing itself, how did this come to be? Why is this happening to me?

Margaret Atwood, in her novel Cat’s Eye, narrates the story of protagonist painter Elaine Risley from a decidedly first person point of view, coaxing readers through her internal self-reflections, inviting them into rooms in her (character’s) mind. Undertones of Death and Dying are abundant:

"I wipe my arm with the coat sleeve across my face, which is wet because I’m crying. This is the kind of thing I should look out for: crying without reason, making a spectacle of myself. I feel it’s a spectacle, even though no one’s watching.

You’re Dead, Cordelia.

No I’m not.

Yes you are. You’re Dead.

Lie down…

…The neatly graveled runner’s path beneath me leads uphill to the distant road and to the cemetery, where the Dead people wait, forgetting themselves atom by atom, melting away like icicles, flowing downhill into the river."

Elaine struggles with the Death’s of her brother and parents, but the Passing of her best friend, Cordelia, has her really reeling. She is haunted by ghosts, but more importantly, she wrestles with the temporal nature of her existence and the bittersweet poetry she discovers in the universe. In the second paragraph above, the author alludes that life is an uphill experience, while Death moves downhill, following the force of gravity and the path of least resistance, returning to some center.

Is there a spiritual side to things, relatively unseen and intangible, to complement the physical world? After all, the real problem with our definitions of life, Death and the self has to do with the nature of consciousness. The abortion argument sits in the pit of this issue, as do the notions of the soul and god-consciousness, the spirit, and the heart as a place where some sacred portion of our inner selves may be found. What we are acutely aware of is that there exists a world outside oneself, abound with diversity and only partially explored, as well as a world inside, similarly brimming with details and also only partly investigated. Does the mind hold a connection to an omni-worldly spiritual realm? Is the blackness behind our eyelids as infinite as that of outer space, or does it only seem so, like the immeasurable depths of darkness observed by a child in his bedroom with the lights out?

There is, believe it or not, scientific backing to the proposal that there lies before us a world which we are unable to see. The secret to its perception lies in motion.

As we know, the Doppler Effect is when a passing train sounds like ‘heeee’ when it is approaching and ‘haaaw’ as it passes and is moving away from us. It also describes the reason a star moving toward us might appear bluish while a star moving away from us might appear reddish. The energy inherent in said train and star do not change because of our observations; only our perceptions of them are altered.

Nigel Calder’s book Einstein’s Universe is a valiant attempt to sum up the developments in physics since the Theory of Relativity first came into the picture, including the conceivable implications of the infamous equation that was the capstone of the life’s work of the world’s favorite scientist.

Calder writes:

"Now this is a curious state of affairs, because it means that the energy emitted by a star (or any other source of light) depends on who is looking at it, and on how fast he is moving in relation to the star. It leads us directly to what physicists, including Einstein himself, came to regard as the most important single result of relativity theory. It is the idea that mass and energy are equivalent."

Now, it would be a bit of a jump to say that the soul, the carriage of the consciousness which most religions concur exists independent of the flashy brain, is composed of pure energy and is therefore as invisible, potent and real as invisible particles of light, but science has already proven equally hogwash-sounding facts, like, for instance, the fact that we, as physical bodies, are made up of more space than matter. And, in a universe in motion, where the only constant is change, it stands to reason that Death is not the end per se. After all, neither matter nor energy can be destroyed, only changed in form, and the ability to observe one or another form of matter or energy, and the relative manner in which that form of matter or energy is observed, depends directly on the state of matter or energy of the observer. Right?

Since, as Calder says, “Matter is frozen energy,” we need only speak of them in unison as one thing: the physical component our physical reality.

So then, say we have two potential universes: the physical and the metaphysical. We are still working on our comprehension of the first one, so where do we get off pontificating about a metaphysical universe?

Two reasons: a. out of a sense of responsibility, because it is simply not acceptable for those of us who are alive today to leave it up to the generations of the distant future and the distant past to discover the nature of human existence. And b. out of instinct, because we must follow our intuition, which leads us to suspect that the myriad of amazingly complex cosmic elements about which we continue to learn are fundamentally interconnected, forming one holistic universe. And c. out of convenience, because there is not much else to do besides pontificate about the One Sure Thing until it's Arrival, in the meantime taking any attempts at hard answers with a grain of salt because they all lack evidence. And d. out of a desire to entertain ourselves, because it's fun.

So just what does the term metaphysical imply? The prefix is only suggestive, possibly one of the most flexible words ever created. It connotes change, transformation, a higher state of development, including that which is entered at a later time, post-evolutionary, beyond, transcending, comprehensive. Of course, the word in our postmodern culture mainly refers to that which is considered to be spiritual, and even the supernatural. Here is another word that allows room for interpretation: supernatural can be defined as ‘higher than natural’ or ‘comprehensively natural, more inclusive than a specified category.’

So, since even the definitions of the words we use to describe life beyond Mortality cannot differentiate between energy and ghosts, what are we even talking about? Is there such a thing as the megaphysical, or the superphysical?

Thus we have the theosophist, the atheist, the scientist and the spiritualist in agreement with one another on one point: there is more to the story than we can possibly know.

And the winner is… the agnostic, regardless of whatever portion of the truth was guessed by whoever else.

The reality is that people cannot agree as to what the afterlife entails, nor can they agree on the proper social contract for living life on Earth.

This passage was written by R. Buckminster Fuller:

We have two fundamental realities in our universe – the physical and the metaphysical. Physicists identify all physical phenomena as the exclusive manifest of energy: energy associative as matter or disassociative as electromagnetic behavior, radiation (energy). Both of these energy states are reconvertible one into the other. Because there is no experimental evidence of energy being either created or lost, world scientist-philosophers now concede it to be in evidence that the Universe is eternally regenerative.

Do we become energy when we die? It is a question without an answer, an interesting idea at best. Go forth and seek evidence, young philosopher, but be skeptical about it when yo find it.

Bucky Fuller was a philosopher-scientist, and he was credited with the development of the Geodesic Dome, Geoscope, and Dymaxion World Map, and who was also organizer of the 1967 World’s Fair. Though not yet as well known, he may well be the most versatile genius since Leonardo Da Vinci, spreading his talents and ambitions across the board – physics, mathematics, history, biology, engineering, theology, anthropology, sociology. The list goes on.

In fact, trumpeting the virtues of comprehensivity, Fuller argues in Critical Path that specialization is counter-evolutionary, seeing as those species throughout ecological history who failed to adapt to new ecological stresses generally died off. He surreptitiously invokes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “well-rounded man," or maybe Bucky never read The Great Gatsby.

He says:

Nobody is born a specialist. Every child is born with comprehensive interests, asking the most comprehensively logical and relevant questions. Pointing to the logs burning in the fireplace, one child asked me, “What is fire?” I answered, “Fire is the Sun unwinding from the tree’s log. The Earth revolves and the trees revolve as the radiation from the Sun’s flame reaches the revolving planet Earth. By photosynthesis the green buds and leaves of the tree convert that Sun radiation into hydrocarbon molecules, which form into the bio-cells of the green, outer, cambium layer of the tree. The tree is a tetrahedron that makes a cone as it revolves. The tree’s three tetrahedral roots spread out into the ground to anchor the tree and get water. Each year the new, outer-layer, green-tree cone revolves 365 turns, and every year the tree grows its new tender-green, bio-cell cone layer just under the bark and over the accumulating cones of previous years. Each ring of the many rings of the saw-cut log is one year’s Sun-energy impoundment. So the fire is the many- years-of-Sun-flame-winding now unwinding from the tree. When the log fire pop-sparks, it is letting go a very sunny day long ago, and doing so in a hurry.”

Conventionally educated grown- ups rarely know how to answer such questions. They’re all too specialized.

My 9^th-grade biology teacher, when faced with students whose parents refused to let them attend his class for the evolution vs. creationism portion of the semester, which, I believe, occurred about the same time as the frog-dissecting, asked me the honest non-rhetorical question, “Can’t they believe in both?”

The answer, professor, is no, they cannot. As we have observed, specialization is the tool of the confederated amalgam, each unassimilated portion tentacling this way and that for the overall purpose of propelling the whole. Specialization by humans can only be overlooked when looked at whollistically, each member of the entire human race is seen as acting separately and distinctly for the benefit of the species, as well as him or herself. What's more, specialization is both involuntary and self-fulfilling; the more somebody follows a particular vein of thought, the more mastery he attains over it, and the more he associates himself with it, disassociating him or herself from the copllective consciousness. Given time, there is so much room to drift about in the cognitive universe that one human may someday be unable to recognize the ideas of another, yet simultaneaously take credit for those ideas as key to his or her core.

It's a mess any way you look at it.

But the religionist would have us believe the world is merely binary, a set of polarized opposites set against each other in a taut and delicate balance. Good and evil. Heaven and Hell. God and the Devil. Believer and Heretic. They may bend so far as to allow for shades of gray, or a thin line to be walked betwixt this side and the other. Whether persecuting or sacrosanct, their systems and archives date back to when the world was flat, and they will be damned if they let up in their candlelight vigilance long enough to permit the shadows of doubt to enter their hallowed heart. So to speak.

Is one who does not know his history doomed to repeat it? This underlying philosophy behind every religious zealot’s reliance on this or that story of creation, this or that example of God’s wrath exposes that he or she wants to use the 'history' found in his or her holy book, be it the Qur’an, the Bible, whathaveyou, to convince you that his or her interpretation of our purpose on this earth is the closest to correct. He or she has the proof, if only you would heed him or her. That, ironically, is exactly what turns so many people off.

Let us not debate the supposed occurrences of long ago, the agnostic might say in response. Let us seek to establish with scientific methods a relationship with our environment that is at least as productive as it is destructive, and derive from that data only whatever clues we may about that which lies beyond. Some things are, after all, more important than the beliefs of this or that demographic, whatever it's size.

“It’s very easy to be an atheist when you’re successful,” said Dr. Maurice Rawlings in his introduction to “To Hell and Back,” a very Christian documentary film recording “bad” near-death experiences, “but it’s very difficult to be an atheist when you’re laying on your death bed." Touché, Dr. Rawlings. But your dogmatic rhetoric has failed to convert me, and what is more I think your solicitous concept of Death has interfered with my understanding of the real information. Thanks anyway.

If I must turn to ghost stories in order to navigate my way between this world and the next, then let it be Richard Adam’s Watership Down. The English writer once said, “The thinker Dies, but his thoughts are beyond the Reach of Destruction. Men are Mortal; but ideas are Immortal.” He also said, “The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.”

Thank you!

Watership Down is a rabbit tale. It begins with the rabbit story of Creation. As you might imagine, the rabbits, whose leader was named El-ahrairah, began to multiply.

The Creator warns:

Prince Rabbit, if you cannot control your people, I shall find a way to control them.

El-ahrairah was proud, as were all the rabbits. So the creator blessed each of the princes and princesses other animals with special gifts: the desire and specialized abilites to hunt and Kill the rabbits. And there came the Black Rabbit of Death, to steal the life from those rabbits who were caught in the hunt.

But the Creator blessed the rabbits too:

All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand Enemies. And whenever they catch you, they will kill you…

But first they must catch you.

The protagonist’s name is Hazel. The antagonist, the one-eyed General Woundwort. Hazel has a brother who is a runt, small and weak, but who has the gift of clairvoyance: like Cassandra, he sees doom approaching, but few will believe him. So Hazel takes him and a small band of brothers on an exodus to find a high, grassy place, and along the way they liberate some female rabbits from the oppressive General Woundwort, who meets his well-deserved Bloody End. It is a story of enduring (violence and adversity), faith (in one another), hope (for happiness), and acceptance (of Death).

The end of the story depicts autumn leaves falling from the trees as Hazel looks out across the grass. He had successfully escaped those who would kill him, but still the Black Rabbit of Death came to see him. He beckoned him to follow, gentle and inviting. Hazel, however, looked back at his loved ones with concern, but the Black Rabbit of Death consoled him that they would be fine, and that there would soon be thousands of them.

Then the Black Rabbit of Death said, “If you’ll come along, I’ll show you what I mean.”

TransLink finally coming to Muni passengers

originally posted at The Examiner June 2, 2009

The little green “smart card” designed to make Bay Area commuting easier finally comes to Muni and BART.

If you are a Muni user, you’ll be happy to learn that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is adding Muni to the TransLink travel pass program some time this summer, but you can sign up early to guinea pig it, as long as you are willing to give a little feedback on your experience, so they can work out the kinks.

Since the whole idea of TransLink is to make commuting easier in the Bay Area, you can load an electronic Fast Pass onto your card, or use “e-cash” to power it with an amount of your choice. Any retail location with a green TransLink logo can help you do this (esp. Walgreens), or you can visit one of the TransLink Add Value Machines (AVMs), strategically located in transit stations.

You can also set up your card to “Autoload” from your bank account, which will enable your card to automatically spend a pre-designated amount or the cost of a Fast Pass to your little green commuter companion.

Of course, riders of AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit and the Golden Gate Ferry are already using TransLink. Unfortunately, however, BART, cable car and Caltrain commuters still have to wait for TransLink transferability, and just how long is still unknown. So don’t throw away those paper Fast Passes just yet! But TransLink will eventually be usable Bay Area-wide, even including the following transit agencies:

Alameda/Oakland Ferry
American Canyon Transit
Benicia Breeze
Cloverdale Transit
County Connection
Dixon Transit
Fairfield-Suisun Transit
Healdsburg In-City Transit
Petaluma Transit
Rio Vista Delta Breeze
SamTrans
Santa Clara VTA
Santa Rosa CityBus
Sonoma County Transit
Tri Delta Transit
Union City Transit
Vacaville City Coach
Vallejo Transit
VINE
WestCAT
WHEELS
Yountville Shuttle


For more info: visit www.translink.org

Zipcar steers a transportation trend, keeping urban drivers up to speed

originally posted at The Examiner June 9, 2009

Zipcar is not a car rental company, but rather a green technology that creates "cars on demand,' saving drivers a bundle one hour at a time.

Everything's gone digital, and cars are no exception. But beyond inbuilt computers and GPS, autos are now more than ever accesible from your PDA (there is even a Zipcar iPhone ap due out soon).

It was once Napster's slogan: "Own Nothing, Have Everything," and we've seen that philisophy at work with digital media files replacing books and records. But who would have ever thought people would give up what Americans are reportedly in love with the most: their cars?

Had you asked me that question even as recently as last year and I would have magnanimously explained the similarity between a person's car and his cell phone or computer. That's a sacred personal item, like Thor's short-handled hammer or Harry Potter's curvy wand.

But low and behold, car-sharing has become a booming business worldwide, especially in urban areas, and the trend has been spearheaded by Zipcar. In late 2007 the fledgling Zipcar, Inc merged with Flexcar, making them easily the biggest car-sharing company around. Their members have been multiplying exponentially, and with good reason. The benefits of membership are are manifold and immediate.

SAVE A LOT OF MONEY

First of all, Zipcar members save a lot of money, because they are only paying for the car when they are actually using it. When you consider how much more time your car spends parked somewhere than en route from A to B, it's clear that what we are paying for when we own a car is somewhat less about possession and more about control. We simply need our cars when we need them, so, within the old car rental scenario, it has been impossible to imagine getting rid of our vehicles, even if it's a piece of junk.

Zipcar's car-sharing plans, however, make accessing a car a smooth ride. Weekday rates in San Francisco, under the "occassional driving plan," are $9.25/hour, or $69/day (weekends are $9.75/hour, or $74/day), and that includes insurance and gas. Even after adding the $50 annual membership fees and the initial $25 application fee, there's a huge gap between that and what it costs to keep (and upkeep) a car of your own.

For people who spend a lot of time in the car, there are the "extra value plans," designed to save you more money the more you drive. You can literally sell the car you currently own and use a portion of that money toward your Zipcar membership. The money left over is yours to spend (or save).

"Forty percent of our customers either sell their car or halt a purchasing decision of a car," says Scott Griffith, Zipcar's CEO.

Which leads to another great benefit:

SUPPORTING GREEN INDUSTRY

The wireless technology (for which Zipcar has been the pace car), when combined with a business model that makes it superconvenient to obtain a car anytime (24/7) and anywhere (28 North American states), adds up to a green technology, for the simple fact that it removes thousands of cars from the road. Once you become a member you get a Zipcar card, which is activated to unlock a designated car (which is always parked in the same spot, another convenience).

Zipcar is also borrowing from the best of business practices, which goes a long way toward acquiring and maintaining satisfied carless clients. They maintain very high customer service standards for members, an will even send a cab if someone has failed to drop off the car you reserved in time. They even donate Zipcar memberships to charity workers.

They do check your driving record (usually done in 24 hours), but once you become a member you can use their website to adjust your account however you like.

One more interesting tidbit: each of the hundreds of new models, hybrids, minis and SUVs has a unique name, like Versa Valedictorian, Fit Foulke, Crathers, and Monty.

For More info: go to Zipcar.com, or watch this clip of CEO Scott Griffith being interviewed on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

poll

Open Source Government and Flights of Apéritifs and Hors d'œuvre

I suggest an open source government. A true democracy that will automatically adhere to the design developed by anyone willing to actually participate. Real time amendments. Laws popularly accepted. Illegitimate choices immediately corrected by multitudinous declaration and reason.
Conflicts between points of view create violent reactions and harmful chasms between people when all that are required, or desired, are really just healthy analyzes of cause, effect and the perspectives of the sum of individuals, in order for society's government and the social contract that government is set up to uphold to continue to function productively.
It's a truly pluralist tack, for a decidedly pluralist populace. And it is potentially very stressful, because of the contradictions, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies that, like foam, rise to the top of every creed and system of beliefs.
So, like a family holiday gathering, where people who didn't necessarily choose to be in one anothers' lives are obliged to spend time together and make the very best of it, let us do it potluck-style. Bring a wine and/or a snack, and let us set them all up together, symbolic of our diversity, but also of how the distinctions, when viewed (and consumed) en todo, create a party. The real kind, not the political kind. Dig in. It's your party.

Video: Virtual Ride-along to Orbit Aboard the SpaceX Falcon 1

Click the link below the pic to watch Pay-Pal's Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket take off from a small island and reach orbit. It's a Falcon's-eye view!



It's the first commercial achievement at this level, and Musk's 4th attempt, but now, especially since NASA plans to discontinue the space shuttle in 2010, and replace it with the moon lander Constellation in 2015, and since there will be a 5 year gap there during which NASA will be obliged to rely on the Russians, Japanese, and other nations and [especially-hopefully] commercial agents to reach the International Space Station folks, Musk hopes to get involved with NASA missions very soon.


Sometimes these things don't go as planned: