After watching everything Star Trek, I have decided if I ever get sucked into a temporal vortex and have the misfortune of ending up on a starship, I have a plan to survive.

1. Wardrobe: Remove all red shirts from the closet. Never put one on. Except for Scotty, the red shirt will always doom its owner.

2. Install seat belts at work stations: Every time the inertial dampners fail 24th century orthodontia is required and spinal surgeons have to get called.

3. Install seat belts on the captain’s chair, and move it out of the way. It is right in the center of a circular area and a sitting duck for flying objects when the shields fail.

4. Take valium regularly. Clearly the ship is full of drama queens and dangerously available high energy weaponry. The only way to avoid a nervous breakdowns when surrounded by such a volatile mixture is valium.

5. Go to sick bay immediately whenever you have a nightmare upon arrival in a new star system, meeting a new species, interfacing with an alien computer (avoid this if you can), participating in a vulcan mind meld, or sharing some rack time with green women. These headaches are usually a precurser to something much more sinister and can result in something like SARS mixed with PCP rage. Not good.

6. Send unmanned probes AHEAD when approachin an unknown star systems. Why fly into a trap at faster than the speed of bad news when a probe will do just fine?

7. Never use the transporter if the chief engineer is mad at you.

8. Never leave the ship. The captain is fond of taking previously inexperienced people with him so that they will get killed before he and the important people do.

There is no 9 and 10. If 1 thru 8 don’t work. You’re dead.

Read the most fascinating explanation of Deja Vu as I was cruising the web trying to figure out what to right for my next article in Valley Trends Magazine. Check this out:
1. The area of your brain responsible for long term memory carries with it all those feelings of familiarity with the memory itself. That’s why when you recall the memory it is familiar, and not a surprise each time you retrieve it. It’s “familiarity” is actually a by-product of the act of recalling information from that part of the brain.
2. Short term memory (the only memory I seem to still possess these days) is responsible for holding onto to stuff (but not grudges, that’s long term memory…hey maybe I do have some of that capability still) in near real time and is the buffer between the consciousness / awareness experience and what is happening from moment to moment out in the real world.
3. Sometimes the brain uses the long term memory nodes for short term memory functions. Nobody is sure if this is a malfunction or a “waking memory dump”….because long term memory commits happen mostly when we sleep. Perhaps this is some sort of glitch where the brain decides to empty out some of the short term memory temporarily and so long term memory is used for extra space while the short term memory is “cleaned up” and prepped for continued use.  In either case, when this happens you are experiencing in real time the retrieval of events from long term memory that are happening now. The “familiar” feeling which comes during long term memory access follows along and presto, “I’ve experienced this before.” Yes, you did, about 1/1000 of a second ago.

But then things can get a bit sinister. Imagine if it were possible to artificially induce this process, and even extend the time Deja Vu lasts. This might be one stepping stone on the way to figuring out how to implant false memories.

Lunchtime musings of a post-burrito experience here. If there were advanced alien civilizations in our small corner of the galaxy (say within 3,000 light years) then IMHO they would have introduced themselves by now. As of today they might have stone tools and the equivalent of an English pub, but they don’t have much else (really, what more do you need besides rocks and beer anyway?). Here’s how I figure it.

1. We lost a LOT of ancient knowledge when the Library at Alexandria was burned to the ground. Hundreds, if not a thousand years, of knowledge went up in smoke. I’ve read claims of even more.
2. Science pushed down in the name of religion has by my estimation retarded our scientific growth by 1500 years. By the same token, the correct implementation of God’s wisdom would have saved us thousands of years of destructive behavior. We have so far blown it on both sides of that fence.
3. We use the greatest knowledge sharing tool ever created mostly to watch things that don’t require too much knowledge to understand.
4. Life on this planet expends a LOT of energy on eating other life, attacking other life, and defending itself from both of these. Imagine if all that energy were spent in more productive ways.

An advanced alien civilization could, if it avoided these pitfalls, be 3,000 years ahead of us in the game, and could have started transmitting lotto ticket numbers to us 3,000 years ago, which means that by now if they were within 3,000 light years we would be hearing from them, and someone would be collecting their millions…of three eyed flying fish or whatever.

In Reno at Circus Circus hotel to give a marketing presentation to ACTR A.org’s board of directors in the morning on how to monetize their website. These are some really great people and I love working with them. Took 12 hours to get here due to weather, a horrible accident (not me, someone else), and a fiasco with snow chains! Left at 10a.m., got in at 10:15p.m.

The accident on the I-80 closed down the highway. After sitting in traffic for 2.5 hours we were all allowed to pass through, but the car in front of me didn’t move. The car stayed still, lights off, and people were honking and being very rude. It started snowing pretty hard and wind got to blowing (I-80 in January on Donner’s Pass can be a bummer, and we all know what happened to the Donners). I got out of my car and walked up to the passenger side of the car and saw a stressed out woman on a cell phone with a big friendly lab in the car with her. Turns out she had forgotten to turn off her headlights during the 2.5 hours we sat there and her battery was dead. I told her not to worry and that I’d park behind her (we were in the right lane on the highway…no shoulder available) with my hazards flashing so people would go around and stop driving up behind her and being very rude…not to mention the danger of people coming up on an unlighted vehicle in a pitch black snowstorm. She got out briefly to thank me and then started looking for jumper cables in the back of her SUV, but had none. Neither did I (DOH!). I told her it was safer for us  each to get back into our vehicles and wait for help to show up. Eventually I saw a CalTrans truck coming our way, I got out and flagged it down (with my bright new shiny MagLight I got for Christmas!). Shortly after the CHP arrived. She was soon on her way. That was another hour later, but I just could not leave her sitting there on the road by herself.

No good deed goes unpunished. After we got going, the weather turned even worse. My SAAB (I LOVE that car) told me the temp outside was 23 degrees. I got stuck behind some semi trucks and they kicked up a lot of mud and snow onto my car. Clearing my windshield was getting difficult, so I hit my wipers and my washer fluid…BIG MISTAKE. Never use wiper fluid in ice cold weather. It leaves a white frozen film behind. I managed to get off the road (dark and it has no line markers on it at all) and clean my windshield off, but I had to actually lean over to the passenger side of my car to see out. That worked because the passenger side wiper fluid nozzles had frozen up and no fluid got on to that side of the windshield.

Then they made us put on chains. I paid a guy 30 bucks to do it and was on my way. After 40 miles we were allowed to take the chains off. I figured I could do that myself. I figured wrong.. I got the passenger side front wheel chains off no problem, but the driver’s side I slipped up and the chains got wrapped around my axle and into my wheel well. I sat in the shoulder of the road and tried to pry it out for about 20 minutes before my back told me it was done. Fortunately a guy pulled up and got it out for me. I gave him 20 bucks. AAA would have cost a lot more.

UPDATE: Just got back. It went really well! And I got home in 5 hours.

I couldn’t go out in public for the last 6 months as I developed a deathly fear of germs (I was sick for 8 months with something that they never could figure out) and the crowds in stores and restaurants that carry them. But I figured something out. It’s amazing how fast people get out of your way when you spray them with Lysol. I’m good to go.

What people think about me when I’m in a room was bothering me. But since they put me on these new meds to take away my paranoia my telepathic abilities have disappeared too and so everything’s fine now.

Instead of making a New Year’s resolution, I think I’ll make a bucket list. If 2009 taught me anything it’s the reality of close an imminent mortality. As a friend of mine says, “One breath from eternity” is all we ever are.

12. Swim 5,000 yards without stopping.
11. Run 3 miles without stopping.
10. Finish an invention I’ve been working on that will entertain and delight every garden in the world.
9. Find a literary agent I can trust.
8. Go skydiving with my wife.
7. Slam down my agoraphobia in style at Magic Mountain, and find rides even my wife won’t go on (wish me luck).
6. Take my wife to a taping of the Craig Ferguson Show.
5. Learn to kite surf.
4. Lose 30 pounds.
3. Help my brother’s new website I built generate a steady income for him.
2. Have dinner with all my friends at least once to remind myself what’s really important. (Pre-requisite: Conquer my panic attacks / fear of germs in public places. I’m already almost there.)
1. Lead at least one person to God, including myself.

Perhaps the biggest objection to the existence of the Christian God for most people is the concept of original sin. It seems grossly unjust and totally characteristic of a vindictive God. Irrational, erratic, and imposing consequences for which he never warned his creation. It should have been enough that he told Adam and Eve, “Don’t do it.” That’s the impression that I get.

If you’ve been reading my blog you know that, ultimately, this is a problem I’m struggling with, though in my mind it does not invalidate the existence of the creator, but it makes it extremely difficult to love him, even for me in these times.

“Guilt by association” is how I’m currently thinking of it, and this concept is everywhere in the Old Testament. But new ideas are beginning to form in my head as I continue to study the Bible. None are based on a literal acceptance of most of the Book of Genesis, so not much of what I’m thinking is going to resonate with some.

Prior to The Fall, were A&E fully aware of the nature of evil, as we are now? Feedback would be truly appreciated.

It’s difficult to describe: believing in God and Christ, but having a difficult time loving them. Believing that it is important to live for others, deny oneself in many ways to keep from letting the world takeover, but also draw close to family and friends and find a lot of joy there. All without truly loving the trinity.

I want to love God and Christ, but it is not, as one good friend has told me, “a choice.” I cannot just wake up one day and force myself to love. Perhaps some people can, but not me. As I told this friend recently it is not a matter of asking God “what have you done for me lately”. It’s a matter of asking “Who are you?” I also told him that I know God has done the heavy lifting and that it is up to me to seek the relationship that He promises already exists.

But I also told him this:

“Thing is, I don’t appreciate being ingratiated to a being for a problem I didn’t cause (original sin) in this manner and then facing his wrath if I don’t accept it. Now if that isn’t a problem I don’t know what is. I continue to read. I continue to act. I continue to “put myself out there” by admitting where I am to you and others. I set my pride aside and not care how this makes me look. I expect no respect from my fellow Christians who see this, and I expect no understanding. It makes me sad but ultimately it’s really not relevant to what I am doing. My only expectation is finding the truth, and I expect to find why I am wrong and I expect to find reasons to Love him. I expect this desert I am in to make me stronger when one day I find others wandering in it and can help them out of it through God’s work and will. This is how it worked with my atheism. If God has a plan, then perhaps my small, bit part in it requires this time of my life to be this way. I don’t know. To in fact assume that I know this would be arrogant in the extreme, and defeat my pursuit. I can make no suppositions, and I can make no progress without drawing closer to Him. “

So I guess my expectations are a duality and contradiction as well. On with it now. There is a lot of work to do.

Only 4 shuttle missions left before we shift to a reliance on the Russians to do the heavy lifting to the Space Station. And only 1 night launch remains. The other 3 will be in broad daylight. The replacement system for the Shuttle is behind schedule and facing funding trouble. I don’t get it. We’ll bale out companies to the tune of over 300 billion bucks, but won’t give NASA a paltry 2 billion dollars over the next 4 years to maintain our lead in space. It costs taxpayers 2% of 1 penny for every tax dollar given to the U.S. Gov’t to run our space program, and NASA is held to extremely high project management standards. They are one of the most efficient agencies we have.  I wonder what it cost to bale out big businesses run by Harvard / Yale / other Ivy league graduates that cannot tie their shoes but count on free market economics with no social responsibility to make their millions at a cost to our billions? I wonder how the Return on Investment from the big bank bale out compares to the spinoff technology that has enhanced the entire world’s quality of life coming out of our participation in the global space effort? Sure, some of this is my sense of national pride, but other part is that we have made commitments to European agencies and others. I don’t like it when my country breaks a promise to its friends, especially on something as noble as the pursuit of pure science.