Why Humans Never Want To Contact Aliens

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Imagine sometime in the far future we pick up some type of signal from an alien civilization.  Since we mastered harnessing an infinite amount of energy using our perpetual motion engines, it’s pretty easy for us to hop in our spaceships and break the speed of light.

Once there we scan for life and find none.  Puzzled, we instead find that the entire planet is in a constant state of creation and destruction due to out of control chemical chain reactions.  In addition, the harmful radiation from the nearby star, and the corrosive gases in the atmosphere would make life as we know it impossible.  And yet, we are still receiving crude repetitive transmissions from this planet.

The captain orders a team sent to the surface to ascertain the planet from the ground.  Our anti-matter suits should be effective at reflecting any sort of hostile matter or radiation that would kill us outright.  We beam down to the planet, and what we find is horrendous:

Everything on the planet is hostile.  From the tiniest groups of molecules to the largest object, anything that moves on the planet will chemically assimilate anything else.  Though we are repulsed, we are vaguely curious.  From razor sharp blades, to pointed objects, to poisons, to lethal traps and exothermic reactions, everything has a way to consume energy. 

Fearing for our lives, we beam back to our ship, carefully decontaminate the team, then place a warning force field around the entire solar system.  We build a science station with a nova bomb on a nearby planet in case the contagion spreads, and then hastily head back home.

What would have happened had this planet been exposed to infinite energy?  It’s only logical that the chain reaction would have spread infinitely, consuming the entire universe.  Photosynthesis and cellular respiration must be quarantined for the safety of the universe.

That’s why this is called, oh wait, I wrote the wrong title.  This should be: “Why Aliens Never Want to Contact Humans.”


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Get Your Damn T.V.s Off My Pump

There's a Shell station near here, and some genius thought it would be a super idea to stick televisions on the pump. I mean, in the three minutes I'm getting gas, I doubt I'll have time watch an entire episode of anything interesting, so I'm guessing these are designed to fill up my head with advertising.

That's a brilliant thought, Mr. Executive! Buy televisions, spend money on installing them, powering them, and upkeeping them, then overcharge my gas, and tick me off in the process, so I'm less likely to want to visit your establishment!

Since you are too dumb to realize what you are really selling, let me explain it to you: The entire point of getting gas is to encounter a small slice of time, a meditative bubble, where we have nowhere to go, and nothing to do, where we wait for a number to magically count up from zero gallons to our personal capacity for enlightenment.

After I've slid the card, stuck the nozzle in the tank, and picked 87 cause I'm cheap, I'm in charge. Let me say that again: I'm in charge. I want to lean up against my car and do nothing. I want to check my windshield. I want to look over my car for dents. I want to clean off the birdshit. I get to pick, because I'm in freaking charge, and your T.V.s are getting in the freaking way.

We need moments of respite in this crazy world, and pumping gas is one of those few islands in the storm. If you fill it up with inane babble about your stupid credit card, then you have ruined the experience. You have annihilated a section of my life that I appreciate, and you need to know that there will be a natural consequence for your disregard of our merchant/customer relationship--

I see that Chevron across the street has no televisions.

The Outdoor Contradiction

The back of the photo says September 2003, so I'm assuming this date is accurate.

It's difficult for me to incorporate the various aspects of myself, and my feelings about the outdoors are no exception. I have no desire to live in nature. We always looked down on kids that lived in the "boonies" because they couldn't hang out with us unless some parent wanted to drive, and we all knew that adults were lazy.

On the other hand, I feel that places like the beach and the park add something intangible to my life. (Not to mention that the wiggle demons that live in my kids are exorcised, if not pleasant, when outside. Justin told me, "Light melts monsters".)

The easy answer is to live in civilization and visit the outdoors, but this has its own disconnect, because I'm driving for an hour or more, belching toxic fumes out of my tailpipe as I incinerate my own allotment of dead dinosaurs.

Also, whenever I travel I'm frequently aware of the parasitic nature of tourism, and the locals all have the same bleak countenance that says, "If you stop coming here, we won't survive." Yosemite, and all of the hooplah that goes along with it, would disappear tomorrow if rubberneckers in khakis, carrying disposable cameras, decided that big freaking rocks are lame.

I have no illusion that the park I take the kids to was constructed by people with heavy machinery, that every inch of dirt was leveled to some landscaper's vision of nature. Similarly, the beach is a bunch of crunched up rocks, and yet, when I turn around 180 degrees from the ocean, I see millions of dollars worth of mansions hanging off the cliffs, out of place, like penguins in the sky.

Along these same lines, it's pretty apparent to me that "the outdoors" is synonymous with a patch of land that has no use. You can't grow corn on a granite mountainside, and you can't build apartments on the ocean. So humdrum valleys become our living spaces, while we glorify living in a forest.

I don't have an answer either, because of books like this, which made me realize that cities are inherently more environmentally friendly because all of the people are concentrated away from nature. Take man out of nature, and nature is saved. Go figure.

Rage Over a Little Thing

I spent all morning picking up trash at a local park with my son. We volunteered for my church a couple weeks back and I forgot all about it until I got an email on Thursday reminding me to show up at 9am wearing the appropriate attire. (I'm tentatively a Unitarian Universalist, but that's a topic for another post. Let's just stick to the good Samaritan act for the moment.)

I found, that over the course of the three hours that I was picking up debris, in a beautiful location, with my eager son in tow, with wildlife and happiness all around me, when I should have been at most at peace in the world, that I was absolutely angry. I mean, I was fuming vile exhaust out of various orifices. I wanted to stab a puppy with a fork, that's how pissed off I was.

A little history: I'm an Eagle Scout, which means I spent a lot of time camping and hiking, plus doing random service projects. Every one of those campouts we had to leave the campsite in a better condition than we found it, which means all of us would have to sweep the area right before it was time to go home, and pick up not only our refuse, but also the trash of anyone else who had ever pitched a tent there. In addition, many of those projects were things like "Help Joe Brown clean up Random Park so he can Earn His Star Badge."

Thus, I've spent a lot of time picking up other people's waste. And by far, the worst, and I mean most atrocious offender in the garbage world is by far the cruddy cigarette butt. I can without a doubt say, without hesitation, that any smoker who has ever thrown a butt on the ground: I hate you.

I don't hate smoking. Do whatever you want to your person. I don't care. Your body is your temple to desecrate at your discretion. I don't even really care about secondhand smoke in a lot of instances, like if you are outside or in a designated area. (I think being unable to smoke in a bar is idiotic.)

But the moment you throw a cigarette butt on the ground, I despise you. That's not your vice talking, that's your responsibility. That's you directly saying to the rest of the world that you don't give a crap about the ground, the earth, the people around you, everyone else that has to share that space with you, and anyone like me that has to come along and pick up after your substandard life.

Your first instinct might be to dismiss me as being hysterical over nothing. However, let me give an analogy: let's say you picked up some sandwiches, went to the park, and were about to sit down at the table and eat with your family, but lo and behold, you notice a small collection of about fifty hypodermic needles and used condoms spread around in the dirt. Are you going to sit down at that table, let alone let your toddler play in that? Nope, you'd be just as pissed as me, and you wouldn't nonchalantly accept it either. You'd be enraged too.

Now multiply that times the experience of my life, where I haven't just picked up one or three cigarette butts, but maybe in the order of thousands. Then you start to get where my anger leads to the dark side leads to choking people with my thoughts mentality is coming from.

I'm also well aware that I'm contradictory, in that I want the world to be a peaceful place, and I'm violent with my words (and sometimes with my actions). I get that it's confusing. Like anyone else, I'm not Jesus, I'm not Ghandi, I'm not Mother Teresa. So when I say I want people who throw cigarette butts on the ground to die in a fiery blaze, I mean it with all the best intentions.

So maybe certain smokers can choose to be accountable for their actions, and find a way to fix it. Then when my son asks "Why do people throw cigarette butts on the ground?" I don't have to say, "Because they're Meanies," which is three-year-old for saying that they are jackasses.

Top Secret

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a plant, mostly influenced by reading this book.

Like the boy in the story, I wanted to discover a formula that would unlock the key to human photosynthesis, so that no one would ever go hungry again, and so that we would never, ever have to harm any other life form for any reason.

I wanted to stick my feet in the dirt, and share the ground with the worms and bugs, and say, "Hey Mr. Bug, don't worry, I'm not going to harm you. Let's be friends." And the squirrels and birds would live in me and make nests on me and conceive babies in my leaves, and crap on me, but hey man, who cares? I'm a tree.

Someday, will science fulfill my dream, with solar power across the landscape, and stick my brain in a cyborg box, like Nixon on Futurama? Will I live forever as a man/machine symbiote, harnessing nourishment from the sun? Do the prophets and heavens and aliens, the warmongers and peaceniks, the meek and the strong, only have a chance at tranquility when we cast off the shackles of our locomotion and gullet?

Though I'm sick of the cliche, I'm also equally sick of being the scorpion.

Emily's Bakery

This is my favorite place to go in Santa Cruz, so whenever I'm going to the beach, I always make sure I have time to stop there.

I suggest you go early (as in before 10am) and get a cup of coffee and a muffin, and then sit outside next to the creek. You can't really go wrong with what you order there, though I'm especially fond of the blueberry, coconut, and pumpkin. On your way in, you can't miss the giant sign that says "Relax...you have plenty of time." Please be aware that this is as true of advice as you can possibly get, so please follow it.

Do not, I repeat, do not take the muffins to go. You will have lost one of the many things that makes this place special. So find a table, sit down, and eat. I guarantee your life will be better off because of it.

Afterward, if you feel adventurous, drive over to one of Santa Cruz's many state beaches. My favorites are Natural Bridges (if I'm feeling cheap and don't mind parking on the street and walking) or New Brighton if I want to make a day of it (watch out for poison oak on the hillside!) I can't really recommend the Beach Boardwalk, since there isn't much to think about there, and it's diametrically at odds with the calming atmosphere at Emily's, but hey, some people like it.

Though I must admit I like the Sky Glider, but only because I can float along fifty feet in the air and gossip with my wife about the people below.

So if you want to take some time out of your busy lives to do something special for yourself, please get something good to eat, and relax, if only for a moment.

Endless Wave

Here is my second music video, I hope you like it:

A Dividing Debate

I recently got in a debate with a global warming skeptic, and neither one of us could convince the other about anything. I linked various sources from Wikipedia, related the knowledge from the upper division class on climate change I took in college, showed that people who can put other people in space believe in it, and refuted every one of his accusations.

Still, nothing happened. It was as if there was a canyon between us and neither one of us had a rope, and even if we had, we wouldn't have used it. I am convinced that global warming exists. He doesn't. It's that simple.

Does it matter to him that there is a consensus among the leaders of the world that global warming is a real problem? Nope. It's a giant conspiracy by left wing liberals and greenies who want to line their pockets with cash. Apparently every scientific institution that matters is out to screw us over.

It must be that I have been brainwashed by liberals, and if I would only "think for myself" I should doubt every scientific paper in all the peer-reviewed journals that say global warming is real. I guess thinking for myself means I can't trust any scientist, politician, industry leader, environmentalist, or pretty much anyone.

In this crazy weird upside-down world it amazes me that I, as a proponent of the scientific method, would be advocating trust in people and institutions, and that the conservative Republican, whose ideals go hand in hand with dogmatic religion and unwavering support of the nation, would be advocating skepticism.

We are through the looking glass, and neither side can reach the other through the mirror.

Can Trees Suffer?

Maybe it's my constant proximity to a three year old that forces me to reevaluate long held truths, and when my kid rips the bark off the tree I yell at him, "Stop hurting the tree!"

Obviously, I'm using the word "hurt" in a physical sense. Obviously, trees don't have feelings, since they lack the complex nervous systems that we possess, and so lack the capacity for self-awareness. Or do they necessarily need a knowledge of themselves to feel pain? Does an ant feel pain when I step on it? Does a bacterium feel bad when I kill it using an antibiotic?

Or do these creatures have a basic understanding of logic as well? Doesn't a microbe put one and one together, and alter its course toward a food source? Is that not A leads to B thinking, were B makes it happy?

Let's not stop there: didn't single cell organisms start off as a chain of molecules? Didn't they have a basic level of logic and feelings in order to shift their motion in such a way as to create life? Didn't their components, atoms, have some say in this? Do electrons and protons, hell, take it all the way to elementary particles like quarks, leptons, and bosons, do they all have a minute amount of logic and feeling, insignificant compared to us, and yet when added together, become meaningful?

Do the three quarks that make up a proton feel content together? Does light emitted from the sun have a logical track that it follows, sparkling radiant happiness all the while, then is bummed out when it hits my skin? (At least until it's emitted as heat energy.)

What if ripping the bark off a tree is the equivalent of picking on a deaf, blind, mute quadriplegic? We farm trees and cut down legions of blades of grass. We unthinkingly consume animals and plant matter alike, and divert nature to our whims.

To a certain extent, we are forced to do this. Actions that entirely negate our capacity for harm are unattainable.

My issue, I suppose, is not that we must compete with other lifeforms to survive. The problem is that I have a haphazard collection of experiences and half-truths, and nothing solid to explain to a kid. These values are vapor.

Inevitably the kid asks, "Why can't we hurt the tree?" and I don't have an answer.

Overpopulation

Such a loaded topic, I know. It's difficult to separate personal convictions from public policy from hard science, since all are inevitably intertwined. Instead of advocating a heavy-handed dictum for how everyone "should" act, I'll instead loosely brainstorm seemingly disparate themes. And so on.

Every environment has a carrying capacity, which is the hard limit that particular space can support life. This is not a dispute. Just as rats in a cage will breed to the limit of their space, food, and water, so too does any organism on the planet. For the large majority of Earth's history, species have been limited to their environments based on their physiology. That is, if a bird had a beak that could break the shell on a specific type of nut, then they could thrive by eating it. This is called adaptation.

Up until humans that is. We bent the rules. We have these brains that let us alter ourselves and our environments faster than evolution would normally allow. Instead of waiting a million years for someone to mutate with a claw that can crack a walnut, some smartypants came up with a nutcracker. Instead of scavenging the land for berries, somebody had the bright idea that if we planted all the berries in one place they could pick them a lot faster.

Humans have the evolutionary ability to increase our carrying capacity. It doesn't mean we don't have one, it just means that every good idea some brainiac comes up with increases this number.

The inverse is also true. Without the technologies that we currently possess, the carrying capacity of humans would plummet. Without nutcrackers and modern agriculture, billions of people would find themselves starving to death.

At this point, I want to take something from religion, without getting too dogmatic. This idea is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'd like to discuss the Famine, War, Pestilence, and Death version. (The older version, in my opinion, was before they had a group consciousness about disease.)

The Four Horsemen seem an awful lot like personified regulating factors. (Just as God and Devil look an awful lot like personified Good and Evil.) That is, whenever humans start overpopulating, people starve, fight wars, get sick, or just plain die in all of the usual random ways. This idea is not new.

There is also the mistaken idea that we can somehow push back these factors forever, and that one day the carrying capacity of humans will be infinite. This ignores a fundamental fact: our ability to adapt is not perfect. There is a certain amount of compromise involved. Every technology we put forth has detriments, as technologies like the internal combustion engine, intensive farming, and nuclear power have shown.

Now it would be easy to say at this point, "Well, let's all just stop overpopulating. Let's use contraception." However, a disturbing popular culture reference to this idea is the movie Idiocracy, in which "smart" people stop breeding, and are overrun by "stupid" people. Or take a government imposed restriction on population like China, where the one-child policy leads to many ethical dilemmas. Even something as gentle as a one point difference in fertility rate has a huge effect on social policy. Check out the U.S. and Mexico on this map. It's no wonder why immigration reform is such a huge fiasco.

The elephant in the room is the uncomfortable idea that any group that applies self-regulation to their breeding will be replaced by those that don't. Which is why I refrain from cheerleading a solution when all of the options are distasteful, some more than others. This is a choice between many evils: allow the Four Horsemen to collapse wayward societies or implement immoral social policies? Do governments have the authority to make this decision? Do people have the rational self-interest needed to regulate their own urges? What about those that don't? Do we have the right to implement limits for "their own good?"

I fear any wellmeaning attempt that leads to a hellish dystopia, while at the same time I foresee a societal collapse on the horizon. Which is why this topic is bigger than any one person, me included.

Lawns are Lame

Lawns and pavement have got to go.

Let's make this clear from the beginning: I am not advocating a government response to suburban sprawl. I think the price of transportation will soon outweigh any benefit living fifty miles away from your job provides. Also, people tend to get rebellious when seemingly trivial details about lifestyle are enforced by government regulations. (It's my land and I'll do what I want!)

We as a society need to shame everyone into change. We need to embarrass the pants off wasteful people. Just as comics mock anyone driving an SUV, we need to make absolutely certain that we get ticked at people (and institutions) that value unsustainable aesthetics. Just like any other fad, lawns and pavement have to fade, and the only way that will happen is if they are made undesirable through societal consensus.

So from now on, anyone with a lawn is a dork.

No Impact Man

Just saw the trailer for an independent eco-documentary called No Impact Man.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/noimpactman/

What interests me about this movie is not the ideology behind what this guy is attempting, but how he has to convince his reluctant wife to go along with his plan. Marriage is all about compromise, and when one of the two people chooses life-changing radical path, the other person has a difficult decision to make: do they follow along?

The more extreme the decision, the harder the choice. It definitely seems like the guy in the trailer didn't fully think about the ramifications of this experiment beforehand, and the wife seems shell-shocked through most of the trailer.

An excerpt:

Wife: "Your project."
Husband: "I thought it was our project."
Wife: "Oh yeah."

Those are fightin' words right there. If he can't convince her to wholeheartedly change, how can he realistically expect anyone else to?

Other documentaries focus on The Man and Big Business as scapegoats for the status quo: No Impact Man focuses on ourselves, which are more difficult opponents to face.