Now tried and true tradition clashes with technology. Americans are upset because President Obama, when he signed the patriot act was in Europe at the time but used an automatic signature generator to sign the Patriot Act extension remotely. Personally I’d demand that he travel across the Atlantic to sign it the old fashioned way. So we lose a few days when we aren’t “covered”. Hell, it isn’t some freaking collision insurance policy or something. We’ve gotten used to the concept of the Patriot Act and all its “big brother” implications. But remember what Thom Hartmann said about the Third Reich, “If the last steps had been taken at the very beginning there would have been an uproar. But since each step was not really that much worse than the last one, the people accepted it. Rather than growing in certainty that a certain Course is wrong, the people actually grew in uncertainty about their own moral standards government should be held to. Newt Gingrich, who lies about anything involving economics, says that in his health plan it would be just that: a plan ti insure that people don’t get sick to begin with by mandating certain lies styles as opposed to other ones. So you could have the plot of “Quitters” becoming a reality in our lives. People should have the right to either have or not have medical insurance. But for Newt’s plan to work, you would have to employ a whole new layer of government beaurocracy to enforce his ideals.
Some may say this anti circumcision law they are trying to get passed in Santa Monica is some kind a joke. But don’t laugh too loudly because fifty or a hundred years ago we may have laws that infringe on certain religious groups’ rights to practice their faith. Personally I think they should legalize peyote. I don’t like these laws in France where Moslem women can’t walk around in traditional veils because they are some kind of a security risk. I know in Santa Monica they tried the experiment of Rent Controls. Those always end up in disaster. And there was some wheel chair ordenance debated on John and Ken over ten years ago where every single home had to be handicapped equipped, or else the government would come in and start tearing out walls. I’m really not big on these anti fur orddenances either. I believe these impinge on property rights of rich people, not to mention the all cherished “freedom of expression”. We are all concerned about “registered sex offenders” but nowadays this includes horney women in their thirties who have sex with fifteen year old boys. Every few months they pass laws narrowing the limits of where sex offenders can go. Of course you know my feelings about smoking bans. But I was just thinking that Jack Kavorkian oughta come out of retirement and service sex offenders who just served a 25 year prison sentence, only to discover that life on the outside was actually worse than when they were in prison.
They are now worried about the California snow pack in the Sierras because it is 192% of normal. It was only a few months ago that they finally came around to saying that we were no longer in a drought, so make up your minds. With geography in California and a high slant to rivers- - the probability of flooding is way lass than in places like North Dakoda, where the rivers actually flow backwards. But all over the West they are getting late snowfalls. I don’t see how this can be anything but a good thing. They complained for so long that extended drought was killing our evergreens. But some people just won’t be happy.
The future is upon us. I remember when “The New Leaf” came out forty years ago and they had this beeping heart monitor thing for an expensive sports car. Now it seems there is no grease monkey popping the hook and poking around your engine but rather you just hook the car up to a fancy computer and it gives you an instant diagnosis of everything that’s wrong with your car. Dr. Levy says cars are so complicated you can’t even change the oil by yourself now. Dr. Levy talked about his experience ad a college in Torrance where he steped out of the building during a night class break and couldn’t get back inside. The building had been locked down by computer at six and he had to contact some head hauncho in another city who then contacted the security guard on the eighth floor or something and he came down to let Dr. Levy in. But he couldn’t use the elevator without more help, and if it’s like a lot of “modern buildings” the stairways are locked, just in case a couple of generates make their way in there doing unseemly things, I suppose. Of course this whole idea of automated customer service is what I call self-defeating. Sure you save money on a couple of phone employees at ten dollars an hour, but you’ll lose a lot more than that in customer good will. Apparently they believe if people have some complaint they’ll just give up, but somehow continue doing business. And there are these cars now that not only automatically parrellel park, but also you don’t even need a driver according to Dr. Levy. A blind person could give a destination and the car would take them there, somehow timing with all the traffic laws. Of course they do have cards coordinated with lane sensors, and also that keep you a safe distance from the car in front, or can even sense when the driver has become drowsy and slow down and stop. Of course Leo Le Port was saying they don’t sell that many stand alone GPS devices any more because they are a part of your I phone. And of course if you just want a P D A, you can get an I pod and avoid the monthly $120.00 phone charge. Leo says they don’t sell that many cameras now because all Smart Phones have cameras. I find that a little hard to believe. Leo even believes the DVD will become obsolete as people more and more get their movies on-line. That’s an assanine inefficienty because you just clog up your computer with a ton of data it was never meant to handle. Sometimes I think we lean on technology more than is good for us, or society. I’m kind of in the Thom Hartman school of thought that what we lose in inefficiency we more than make up for by a healthier society and get real people involved in our commerce. I don’t want to go to a doctor and have it turn out to be an automated computer like on Jeopardy. I want to have contact with a real human being. That’s why people go to the doctor. Of course it was stated in “The Third Wave” thirty years ago that people would run business out of their house and not even have to commute. Judging on how freeway traffic is, that one is slow in coming true even with the virtual office and things like “Go To Meeting”. Although there may come a time in our future when young people behave more like 75 year old shut-ins and never go out anywhere but get all their “stimulation” electronically. Like my parents after a certain point they will reason “why go through the hassle of a vacation when I can just turn on the TV and watch a travelogue?” Dr. Levy talked about these automated supermarket lines where they don’t have cashiers but an automated nobody handles the bill. I don’t know what they do about produce. Of course even I have said I can get a computer to generate an image that were it painted by an actual artist working in paint and canvas- - would have been heralded as a freaking genious a hundred & fifty years ago. There is always the danger that we will lose something vital in all this mechanization that makes us unique as human beings.
It is said that “He who controls the dissemination of History controles the course a society will take”. That an awful lot of people are ignorant on some basic facts of History is stating the obvious. Taken Newt Gingrich. According to him the reason why people rejected Jimmy Carter in 1980 is because we were in the worst recession since W W II and after Reagan got in in a few months economic statistics began turning around. No wait a minute. That was Obama. The Regan recession didn’t begin until July of 1981. That month is indelibly etched in my mind because I was an avid reader of the business week charts during this time. It was August 5th 1981 I believe when I was at the beach being held down by two big waves in succession that "the whole decade ahead flashed before me", and I sensed that economic times would get much worse, that US society as we knew it in America would be altered, and that my life would take a turn for the worse during the decade. Now if we move to this whole Rapture thing of last weekend and that preacher- - maybe he’s the smartest man in the world, but he happened to overlook one thing. Ask any of “that kind of Christian” when the Rapture will occur and he will say “Right before the Antichrist comes and walks into the Jewish temple and profanes it”. You know, we’ve been debating ten years what to build on the site of Ground Zero. How long do you think it will take the Jews to get plans for a temple going? Also they say the Jews will view the Antichrist as a hero to Israel. So why do people go around calling President Obama the Antichrist? It makes absolutely no sense. Of course after Babylon indaded ancient Israel prophets like Isaiah appeared to speak of a Messiah for the Jews. And Ezekiel said that the temple would be built in his grandiose scheme. In his history of the nation of Israel, Ezekiel makes no mention of either King Solomon or the Temple. It’s as though he were completely unaware of it. If you read the stretch of Scripture where Solomon is mentioned you find some strange stuff. You find Egypt as a viable nation invading Israel, after Moses “utterly destroyed” them and other prophets said Egypt would never again be a great nation. Also you find reference to “Sodomites”, which was a city most people think it was utterly destroyed some seven centuries earlier. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is anything in the Solomon narritive, despite the letergical nature of the text, denoting either the Sabbath or Passover. Obviously history has been subject to a slice and dice campaign. At the time of John the Baptist there were many who distrusted anything associated with King Herod - and Herod built the temple. Jesus again repeats the assertion that “You will know it’s the antichrist because he will profane the temple”. Unless I’m not up on the news, last time I checked there WAS no Temple to profane. Am I wrong?
In my conversation with Stewart Sutcliffe several mornings ago he said that “Sometimes its redundant to speak the obvious”. For one thing people who think they know it all don’t want the obvious thrown up in their face. To say that things like Time and Space are “artifacts of God” is not to say that there is any shortage of either. For all practical purposes of human beings, time and space are unlimited. Some people are too inclined also, to impute “God” like qualities to human beings who have “been around the block” a lot more than they have and can talk and think circles around them. But even a very advanced alien culture that invaded Earth would not be “Gods” and they would not be “Infallible”. Stewart questions the use of that word anyhow saying “The term of too open to people’s own definitions of it”. I asked him “Well, some people don’t believe conversation with the Dead is possible” and Stewart just said “Look around at the world. Are you really going to sit there and tell me that vast numbers of people haven’t gotten inspiration and guidance from those who went before, that may not have been known at the time of their deaths?” As to the whole idea of just what “matter” is “made of” scientists are making discoveries all the time, both the “string” and the “particle” people. Scientists are coming to suspect that the whole concept of “spaciality” breaks down at the sub-micro level. People have a lot of assumptions about the universe, and that includes myself, that may become outmoded in fifty years, should there be any big break through. They say that all the “important” happenings with The Big Bang” occurred in fractions of a second. I find this interesting, and have a few questions of my own about that. In terms of what hits the media for public consumption, we haven’t made that many strides about “The Atom” and smaller in the past seventy years or so. Commercial jet travel is very much as it was fifty years ago (only a less pleasant experience) To the best of my knowledge they haven’t made many advances in solar panels since the 1960’s when they first began putting them on sattalites. This may prompt certain religious people (such as Neil Savedra) to conclude that “we have made all the advances that are Possible in such and such an area- - “ such as exceeding light speed. But if history tells us anything it’s that the world does not stand still, but mankind is always in a state of knowledge evolution. This will be the last posting on this Blog for a while. See us next time on “Marcus in Exile”. By then there will hopefully be fresh news to report on.
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