Bonfires of The Universe

On the surface of the planet Earth, in the 5 billionth year of the existence of its parent star, the Sun, on the edge of a continent near a vast ocean of saltwater, in a little house upon a hill, a man sits in a little room rattling the keys on a computer. In this man's head are trillions of little fibers, little organic wires, that interconnect all the billions of neurons and myriad worker cells. Collectively, these fibers and cells are called the brain. The man does not concern himself so much for this brain, except that it provides for his experience of life.

Inside the computer he clatters upon are thousands of little parts, and within the parts are thousands of other parts, and thousands more within those, until there are billions of little bits of dirty sand which bounce quadrillions of electrons back and forth to create the illusion of mathematical precision required to induce the colored surface before his eyes to display an image. That image is the picture of these very words.

Within the man's brain, somehow encoded by all those trillions of tiny fibers, there is also an illusion upon which the display of imagination is played. That illusion is the same whether the man is asleep or awake, and it is sometimes difficult to know whether the dream is real or reality is real, or if neither is real. The fleeting bits of light in our imagination combine into a picture of the world so realistic as to compete with the actual world itself for the label of reality.

Only a few fleeting lifetimes before his, there was no knowledge of this thing called the brain. Certainly it was known to be connected to life somehow, and in some ways it was thought to be a place where devils might reside, whispering evil deeds to the witless owner. Conversely, it was a place where God might whisper holy commands to counter the evil spells. Yet, more weight was given to the heart as the seat of consciousness, of life, of emotion and thought.

In truth, there can be no life without both the heart and brain. And even with both intact, life can be hard to maintain – there must also be blood and stomachs and all manner of bones and complicated devices, all working in concert to provide for our lives. Life is the unification of all the cells and mineral deposits within our bodies, and all the electrical signals which operate them, and all the conceptualizations we perceive in our spirits. There are only very tiny differences between the body of a healthy conscious man and that of a dying man in a coma.

Although many wish to deny the fact, we are a kind of animal. The concept of animal is often limited to beasts, such as dogs or cows. No one likes to think of themselves as a kind of ape. But there is no denying that we share nearly every aspect of our lives, our bodies and our minds, in one manner or another, with the other animals on this planet. We have blood, we have cells, we have molecules of DNA, we have pains and pleasures, we have hunger and fear. We share all those things and more with the other living creatures, and moreover we share many of them with plants and even microbes.

Then, to dispel the unpleasant concept that we are merely animals, we try to distinguish ourselves by the differences. Primarily, above all else, it is said, we have souls. Animals do not. We alone in the world gathered our souls around bonfires to celebrate and wonder of the mysterious facets of life.

I cannot prove whether or not other living things have souls. But, to avoid needless argument, I will just concede that a soul is unique to mankind. Surely there are qualitatively superior methods to our survival that no other living things seem to master. We can build cities and machines, alter the climate, repair our bodies with medicine and surgery. We certainly are a clever kind of animal, no doubt. The vast complexity inherent in being a human is certainly beyond casual comprehension. We seemed blessed by God, indeed.

But termites and ants can build cities. They, as well as mere microbes and plants, alter the climate. Our bodies and theirs have always been able to repair themselves within limits, or to supplement themselves with herbs and minerals to aid in healing. The main difference is that we can be aware that we are doing those things, rather than just accidentally doing them as a result of the trial and error of cellular evolution over billions of years. Instead, we can pass our observations directly to our children in the form of codes and signals, such as the words in this document.

That mere collisions of quadrillions of quadrillions of atoms accidentally clumped into something like ourselves is difficult for some to grasp. However, we are quick to attribute that effect to bacteria or viruses – mainly because we can watch it happen. It is too slow to watch it happen in more complex creatures. Yet, there is no line which absolutely, neatly divides the continuum from organic molecules to astronauts. The line seems to exist between living things and machines, although machines are merely an extension of our human bodies, like our bones and muscles are extensions of our nerves and organs.

Still, no other animal other than mankind (and whatever little critters hitchhiked with us,) has been able to travel across the deadly radiation and void of space to the moon and back, alive. That is something, certainly, that widely separates us from the other animals and plants of Earth. It is a grand accomplishment that no dinosaur or whale or tree had ever done in the billions of years of ever changing lifeforms before us.

Yet, with all our intelligence and curiosity, perhaps unique amongst the vast expanses of our galaxy, (or perhaps not,) we might be snuffed out in an instant by the random passage of some leftover rock careening about the local star system. Or we might snuff ourselves out in millions of degrees gamma ray bursts with our nuclear weapons. Or we might just starve to death by poisoning the world with garbage. I hope not, of course.

Beyond those possibilities, every day another star snuffs out somewhere amongst the heavens. Perhaps another is born from the vast clouds and ashes of other snuffed out stars to take its place. But whatever lifeforms, similar to ourselves or not, which may have called that dead star their Home, will have been snuffed out as well. All their art and history and cities will have vanished, completely erased from reality, just as mysteriously and completely as before they were ever created.

Unless we can reach into the heavens, and spread our fragile thread of life amongst the galaxies, amongst the life-giving and life-destroying bonfires of the Universe, our future in life is doomed as certainly as the day turns to night. This may be God's will or not, I don't know. Yet so far, though it seems very, very difficult, God has not prevented us from at least trying.

Stock Markets and Pigs in Pokes

The American people never cease to amaze me. After centuries of the patricians shitting on the plebians, they sit there and wait for more. 

I am not a Democrat, only an Independent. However, I think there has been a definite negative impact on America -- not only by terrorists, not only by Wall Street thieves and stingy tax avoiders and religious nut flakes. But by the entire populace of every place in America that makes up the Republican base. 

There has been a take over by the stupid. The pigs have taken over the farmer's house. There are lunatics in power, voted there by even stupider lunatics that have no common sense, no ability to imagine the future, and no ability to learn from the past.

They have been sold a pig in a poke. And they want to blame someone, anyone, but themselves.

Well, I won't be voting for a single, solitary Republican -- not even  a local yokel with no one else on the ticket.  This time I am an extremely angry voter, but I will not let my anger color my thinking -- and I know who was in power for the last decade, and who could have run the country in a far better way. I will vote out all the boogers.

9/11 To Me

Today is the 8th 9-11 counting that fateful day.

I have been affected deeply by the event, almost as if I had been there, yet I lived almost as far from NYC as possible in the US, in northern San Diego. I did not see the early stages of the events of that day, live. However, I woke up around 8 or so, and by habit I turned on CNN to help wake me up for the day. I can't remember the exact times of anything, only that from that moment on my life was changed.

I turned on the TV just in time to see one of the towers coming down. I was still blinking and trying to wake up, not quite understanding what I was seeing. I didn't realize that it really was the WTC, or even that it was NYC, only that it was some building coming down in a cloud of debris as if it had been demolished by explosives. I didn't realize, at first, that it was because of jet airliners ramming the buildings.

But as my consciousness took in the sight and I realized what I was looking at I began to fear that I might have a heart attack. My heart was pounding as if a bear was attacking me. But it was only just the sight of this event on TV. And it was not until the news reporters tried to explain what was going on that I realized we were being attacked by terrorists. The same, raving lunatic terrorists that do every despicable act -- mad men.

Of course, what followed, the 2nd tower coming down, the wrenching agonized faces of people who crawled through the rubble covered with powdered concrete, steel, carpets, furniture and people -- this nightmarish scene burned itself into my soul. It has never left, and probably never will.

The sight of people jumping to their deaths a thousand feet below was horrifying beyond description. To have to make this choice -- burn to death or jump to death -- utterly horrible.

I knew immediately that it was Arabs. I didn't know who, I didn't yet know about the Pentagon, or about Flight 93, and didn't know that much about Osama Bin Laden or his terrorist organization. But I knew immediately, from the choice of weapon, who it was. It was Arabs. Only they, of all the people on the Earth, would do something like this, to kill innocent people for their stupid, fucking Islam religion.

I wanted an immediate response. This was war. I was in the US Navy during Vietnam and knew what war was all about. I wanted more than that -- not just a few bombs falling on Hanoi, or in the jungles of Vietnam. I wanted Mecca to be melted into a glass pool. I wanted a nuclear weapon to destroy their entire worthless "civilization", if you could call primitive morons such a thing.

All my humanity had left me. There was nothing called mercy, nothing called understanding, nothing. There was nothing but the need to wipe out the assholes that did this. I didn't care if it left a hole the size of the moon in Mecca, I wanted those sick assholes to die at the hands of the USA, using our most powerful weapons. Maybe this is what the idiots expected. Maybe it was in their plan. I don't know. But, to this day, I am sorry we did not do it.

We are in 2 wars. We haven't got but a handful of the cockroaches that did this. We haven't gotten Osama Bin Laden, and we killed Saddam instead, who was not part of the plot. Maybe he needed to go, too. I don't know. But that is not what I wanted. I wanted Osama Bin Laden's head on a stick. We have nearly bankrupted our country. We have idiots running our government, wasting the lives of our military personnel. And they will spend whatever deep pocket money they gotta spend to get re-elected, so they can keep on fucking this thing up.

Yes, I am angry today. I was reminded of the events of that day and I am fucking angry. No doubt about it. Tomorrow I may calm down again. The next day I may just do my work like every other day. But today I am fucking angry. I want the Islamic bastards that did this -- disemboweled with their heads on sticks -- at Ground Zero.

Why Blog?

A few years ago, as an out branching of technical capability and enormous increases in storage and processing capacity, the “blog” was developed.

"Web logging" or "blogging" is merely writing things down on a web page in a more or less regular fashion and perhaps linking to other sites that seem relevant or interesting.

My blog(s) are not all that interesting. I know this is true. I could purposely make them more interesting, certainly, such as by filling them with slander and obscenities, or posting gruesome images, or simply telling lies. I could write stories, post pictures of horribly mutilated bodies, or just babble on about programming futuristic computers, or write something else that would attract a specific category of person to this website.

But I am not a journalist, nor a novelist, nor a teenage boy filled with angst or a need to express gutter talk or whatever jargon of the hideous is in vogue. I am not looking for love, nor looking for hate – I really don't care all that much for emotional tripe and drama. I'm too old to get into flame wars and too young to just stop all this writing to just watch the grass grow.

I am a scientist, but I reserve true scientific journaling to another set of documents, or inside computer software, or recordings of the drawings on white boards, that sort of thing. I don't want to take the painstaking care to write symbols and taxonomies and attributions in such intricate detail when I write in a blog. Whatever readers this blog might have are most likely not very interested in such pedantic detail, although I can't ever be completely certain.

I still like to write about scientific things, or at least about technical things. I don't want to just lie about stuff, so I never claim to invent things I never invented. At the same time I don't want to simply give away the things I really have invented, so I won't write so much about such things in this blog.

But I would write about things in which simple opinion might be more fitting than pedantic obsessions. Such things as Global Warming fit that bill, of which I have some interest but have no academic degrees in those specific branches of study. So far as the climate is concerned, I don't think there is any question that pollution is a problem, and that mankind has done a terrible thing to our home planet.

Some may argue whether CO2 or Methane will accumulate to a catastrophic level, or whether simply driving too many gasoline engine vehicles is causing global warming, or any kind of change in the weather. Perhaps the central star in our system is the “guilty party” if the climate changes, or perhaps the climate just changes all the time for myriad complicated reasons having nothing to do with mankind. Certainly, the climate has changed many, many times before, and without humans to blame.

But arguing about those things is merely politics. Republicans tend to believe that oil is good and CO2 is not a problem. Democrats tend to believe the opposite. After all, the Bible does not talk about oil, or the climate, so it must not be important.

Politics, whichever side you are on, is the most certain evil. It creates bad blood and hostility between groups of people. That is what is certain and what is deadly, and no one can deny it.

It is also true that pollution is bad and that mankind is polluting everything in a destructive, suicidal manner -- regardless of its effect on the climate. It doesn't matter what happens to the weather, hot or cold, if we poison the entire world, kill all the fish, burn all the forests, reduce everything to a mass of decomposing goop – all in the name of rampant consumer capitalism and rich oil companies.

Communism is really no better than capitalism. Socialism (a more generic form of Communism) is no better than Tribalism or Militarism. All these belief systems do is temporarily change the behavior of vast numbers of people, and then return to the old habits that humans have always had, regardless of the good or the bad.

When we were just small tribes it was OK to burn stuff and move on, since we were too few to hurt the whole world. But even small tribes, over time, could kill off all the mastodons and woolly mammoths -- therefore we have always altered the world in some way. The problem is not a philosophy of good or bad – it is about survival. It is evolution, and about whether or not our species, or any species at all, can keep surviving.

Many people have been murdered in the name of one "ism" or another. Religion is famously guilty of hypocrisy, and many wars, executions, tortures and imprisonments have been performed in the name of some mental concept that really has no bearing on physical survival. When the whim of a sadistic king or the ravings of a maniacal holy man can result in the disemboweling of young children, then there are problems the the setup.

Making sense out of the world is a very difficult exercise. Elephants and lions and crocodiles also have to make some sense out of their respective points of view, and man is merely another sort of animal. Man does have a far more complex point of view, however, given the recursive effects of technology upon our impact on the world, so there is no pretending that we can just live our lives with the same disregard as sparrows and be able to survive fat and sassy. For that matter, even sparrows must obey the rules of flight and select just the right objects to eat, or they will not survive, either. They must also figure out how to adapt to a world that we have altered.

But the world is so incredibly complex that it seems to disobey the laws of entropy. Entropy does cause things to become disordered, or mixed together in hopelessly inseparable jumbles. So in that sense, entropy causes complexity. Yet this kind of complexity is mostly useless (but not entirely, as I will write of...), since the usual value in something, say gold, is because it has been refined and concentrated. I can give you an ounce of gold by giving you billions of gallons of seawater, but you would not be happy with that gold (and nearly every other element) since it is hopelessly mixed together with useless salts and slag and huge amounts of H20.

How could a machine sort gold from seawater? The act of sorting is a non-entropy function. The goal is to create order out of disorder. Not to mention the desire and mechanical intelligence humans have to sit there and sort things, it takes energy to sort things.

Heat can be used to melt things, and thereby separate heavier, denser materials like gold from lighter things like water, salts and other grime. The water would evaporate when hot enough to melt gold, so that problem would be easy – the vapor floats up into the clouds. Other things, like salts, might not melt easily, although they might be washed away with hot water, but not so much with gold.

So nature already has such means to separate gold from seawater. The underground geothermal cauldron mixes hot magma with wet sea floor and produces all kinds of metal precipitants, as well as minerals and other valuable materials, in addition to gold. However, there are also other complexities involved, such as the way volcanoes form, the releases of gases at different temperatures and pressures, and from the way solid rock cracks and fissures from the forces of tectonics.

Man is able to mechanically re-create these forces in miniature, sometimes, and thereby synthesize the formation of gold. Yet, even today, there is much more cost involved to chemically process huge masses of seawater compared to just digging a hole and finding solid lumps and veins of gold. Similarly, it is much simpler for me to just walk by the sea shore and pickup various seashells and stones than it would be for me to re-create such things with machines.

As time goes on, however, and all the easy places to find gold are completely panned out, then it may indeed be easier to chemically process seawater to obtain gold.

Food is considerably more valuable than gold. It is sometimes hard to believe, since any given weight of food is probably worth less than the same weight in gold, that is only an economic issue. An animal could be surrounded by pure gold and starve to death, so the animal sees no value whatsoever in gold.

Copper is another metal that is easier to get than gold, as well as being more common in seawater and other mixtures. For one thing, copper is able to recombine with other elements to form other chemicals and minerals. Gold is not so easily combined. Gold does have oxides, but the chemical bonds are so weak that the oxygen can be sucked away by static in the air. Conversely, copper sulfate is so tightly bound as copper and sulfur that only great effort and energy would be able to unbind them (yet, not so difficult as separating silicon and oxygen.)

Gold is better than copper for many reasons. Gold is heavier, it is less corrosive, it carries an electrical current with much less resistance and it is generally a prettier color (to human eyes.) Yet, so far as history is concerned, copper – in the form of bronze – was a more useful tool than gold. Many arrow heads, knives, swords, spears, shields and machine parts were constructed using the copper and tin mixtures called bronze.

Gold is also better than steel or even silver and most of the same things. Steel can be made as an alloy that is “stainless” similar to gold, however the main element iron is found almost everywhere on earth in large quantities, and almost no gold can be found by comparison. Iron is in our blood, in many stones, in dust and soil, and is mostly known as rust or reddish colored soil.

Iron is also at the heart of our planet in the form of a massive molten core (or at least very very hot, but at the pressure found there it may be nearly solid). Iron gives us the magnetic fields and protection from certain amounts of radiation. Yet, the radiation at the center of the Earth is probably very high too, in the form of nuclear fission by uranium and other radioactive elements. This radioactive stuff is thought to be running down, leaving our planet both somewhat cooler and without a protective radiation shield at some point in the relatively near future. Don't count on that to save us from “global warming”.

Yet, there will always be some convection currents of melted rock mixed with molten iron around the core for millions of years to come, so I think the effects will be very gradual, and probable that the sun will have come to a bad state before then. We will be dead long before then, though. Extinction of all life will eventually come, like a battery that runs down, without able to be recharged, no matter what we do.

Killing People

I have never killed anyone, never in Vietnam, never in an automobile accident, never in any place. I never (knowingly) killed anyone.

On the other hand, as a country, we have killed people. Lots of people. Millions of them. I am not exactly happy about it. It certainly is not something to brag about, especially since a lot of those people were Americans. They were killed by other people, other Americans -- either in wars, medical accidents, automobile, train or airplane accidents, or in myriad crimes, blunders, and corporate monetary decisions.

The Civil War alone killed about 600,000 Americans. Whether they were Union or Rebel soldiers, they were still Americans, and we killed them -- we killed our family members over belief systems and basically over the right to own slaves -- which we also killed, although they were not "considered Americans" by those who did the killing.

Medical experiments, hospital errors, doctor blunders, pharmacy mistakes, etc, etc, have killed millions of people over the years. Some might have died of disease or pre-existing injury anyway, eventually. Yet that isn't much to brag about.

Cigarette companies have truly murdered hundreds of thousands of Americans, millions of people worldwide, every year for decades. They don't call it murder, of course -- its business. So many people made so much money from killing so many people, they just couldn't help themselves.

Conversely, even trying to kill people in Japan during WWII, we were only able to kill a couple hundred thousand using our atomic bombs, counting those who died over the years from complications of radiation poisoning. I'm sure we could do better today. Our nuclear warheads are thousands of times more powerful and cities are many times more closely packed with people.

In Vietnam we suffered almost 60,000 dead. They suffered at least 4 million, however Americans were not the only ones doing all the killing. We tried real hard, but the Vietnamese themselves proved to be the winners of the killing contests. I think we might have killed close to 1 million, but it's hard to be certain.

The Nazis, the Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese, the Cambodians, and lately, the Muslims, have killed uncountable millions of people in the name of war, politics or religion. For the Nazis it was just "technically necessary" to kill all those who opposed them, including some 6 million Jews who just happened to be the scapegoat for all Nazi problems. The other warmongers and ideologically driven madmen like Stalin and Mao had to kill off all the "intellectuals and deviants" for the sake of the state. The Muslims have Jihad -- the holy necessity to kill everyone who believes differently than them.

I think the current, worldwide issues like religion, oil or water resources, food and living space -- all contribute to an increase in the number of people being killed. There might be lulls in the killing in some years compared to others. There may be actual ends of wars, agreements over resources, decisions to decrease the killing, and even accidental failures to kill people, that keep the population climbing. Yet, the more people that are born, the more people that are killed.

What do I want? I certainly don't want more killing. I don't want to be killed, nor do I want my children and grandchildren to die before their natural time. I just want peace and quiet. Why do so many people feel that killing others is the only solution to problems? I have no idea.

Am I a Pollyanna? Nope. I'm smart, cynical, skeptical, suspicious -- and I'm a good shot, I can use a gun, knife or even my bare hands if I ever have to. I look at the news and see stories about madmen in other countries trying to kill us all, and imagine that someday, somehow it may come to the necessity of self-defense. We may be forced to, once again, kill millions of people to keep them from killing us.

I am especially troubled by Muslims and countries with nuclear weapons (or both combined, especially...)

I imagine some great horde of Muslims, whipped into a frenzy by hate speech spewing zealots, trying to kill every non-Muslim in the world. It is part of their religion, part of their history, e. g. the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire. They want to conquer the entire Earth and convert or kill everyone who stands against them.

Likewise, there are those with very powerful weapons, including ourselves, who feel that the solution to every problem is to turn some city into a pool of melted slag. I'm not sure that it is even possible to end a war completely using such a method, but certainly it is possible to ignite a conflagration which could destroy most of the life on this planet. I think the resulting deaths of billions of people and trillions of plants and other animals would not be the desired end.

Yet, when I think of the current problem between "us and them", namely between the Western Civilization and the Islamic Theocracy, I am not on the Islamic side. I am on the side of Western Civilization, nothing less. So, if it comes down to them killing billions of us, or for us to kill billions of them, I am for the latter.

In other words, I see a future where conflicting belief systems, similar to those of the Civil War, the various world wars, and endless conflicts throughout history, will result in killing a very large number of people. Necessary? I don't know. Inevitable? Maybe. Horrible? Certainly. Stupid? Of course. That is what people are all about.

The TRUTH about UFOs

The simple fact is -- that there are no UFOs, at least that is the fact as dictated by many government agencies and understandably skeptical technical people. Many blue collar beer barrels simply assume the whole subject is just so much "[expletive deleted], as well."

But these are not the people who have seen them. Surely, a person might still perceive a mystery craft in the sky where there is nothing. The mind may construct optical illusions or hallucinate things and the person does not need to be mad or flawed in any way. Just looking at the sky can cause the eye to reveal all kinds of little things that go unnoticed during normal daily viewing.

But the devices may actually be real. Then one of the mystery things can be either some normal device that is mistaken as to shape or purpose, including those famous "Venus as a flying saucer" sightings. The Moon has also caused many people to be convinced that a machine of some kind was following them.

The parallax effect of vision is obvious to some people but not necessarily to everyone. Any bright star or planet in the sky can then be mistaken to possess a "following" motion. This is simply the effect of far distant objects having less apparent motion than closer objects. The bushes beside the highway seem to rush by whereas the distant mountains pass much more slowly.

There may be, however, actual devices in the sky other than objects in space that cause the sightings, whether flying saucers, airplanes or helicopters.

There are also experimental military machines, or at least test machines of SOME kind. Even unclassified industrial experiments might be held in secret in order to lessen the knowledge gained by competitors. The military is more secretive, of course, and once things sink into the military industrial complex they become mired in thick layers of obfuscation. Even unnecessary things become covered up by military personnel simply to avoid responsibility for anything whatsoever that might go wrong. Order too many boxes of toilet paper? Cover it up.

Now there still exist the possibility of exotic machines that lie outside all the above attempts at explaining them. But since there is always the probability of error in every report of such machines (unless they just stop and allow people to crawl all over them, taking copious pictures), there can never be absolute scientific proof. It might be 50% true, or even 90% true, but never 100% true. This is often the case in legal cases, both criminal and civil, although it would seem that 100% truth would be preferable in death penalty cases.

To a person who has seen them (and whom I have talked with directly,) there is none of this wishy-washy explaining away of things. They saw a machine which was obviously metallic, with glass windows or portals, and it was able to hover and move in ways no regular aircraft can move. This does not mean they are "alien space ships" or whatever, only that they are not obviously any known kind of machine within that witness's knowledge base.

The people who claim that the creatures flying these machines are alien might be a bit overreaching or they might actually be telling the truth, although I have no way to prove them wrong, nor are they able to prove themselves right. There are many cases of sightings and they might range from "automatic electronics set on autopilot" to "humanoids from The Xanadu Galaxy." I don't know what is really true about that but I would bet money that it is not the latter.

But I will listen to whoever has anything to say about these things, without jeering, pointing fingers, hurling derision or inflicting humiliation. Nothing of it has been proven conclusively, true or false, although much has certainly been debunked. (Swamp gas IS NOT a substantial substitute for a real explanation!)

The burden of proof is still on the witness in these cases, yes, but one cannot prove a negative, either. It is much like the Atheists versus the Theists. Both are believers in something which cannot be proven. Yet, if God decided to talk to me, I'd listen. Even if it was all in my mind.

The End Of Machinery

This idea, that there would ever be a time when there were no more man-made machines, seems nearly obvious and nearly unthinkable. Man is so completely dependent on technology of one kind or another that to rid the world of machines first depends on ridding the world of us.

It might be harder to get rid of us than to get rid of tyrannosaurus rex, but much easier than getting rid of ants. And ants would be easy to exterminate compared to primitive bacteria. And short of increasing the minimum temperature of Earth from space to 20 miles deep into the crust to 1000 C, I'm not sure there is any way of killing off every sort of life.

However without stone axes and other primitive tools, humans would probably have died out. We are not so tough as other apes, and there are few environments on the Earth where we could run around naked all year round. Surely just a few humans could strip the land bare of edible plants, and indeed our ancestors had to migrate long distances to find or hunt food, even with tools.

But what if no one alive knew how to fix a car? What if no one understood electricity or computers? Would we be able to transport ourselves and feed ourselves if all the special jobs were unmanned? The only way this could work is if machines did all the work. A machine would have to know about fixing machines and how electricity worked and how to get us from point A to point B.

I don't think it is completely out of the question that humans someday forget everything we know, and that some system of machines would survive by providing us with our sustenance. We would kill them all if they were completely useless, which might be true even if they were indispensable. The proof is that no matter how tiresome it might be to manufacture arrowheads and stone axes, we didn't throw away the technology -- we passed it down the generations.

The facts are slightly different with computer technology. For instance I know a great deal about computers, enough to design and program very complex systems, Yet I do not know every aspect of the technology in order to build a Pentium chip from scratch. I would need some chemists, metallurgists, electronic engineers, logic designers and so forth. If my job ever required such knowledge I would have learned it, but it never came up. I could just go buy such chips.

I do not know how to grow coffee, or make leather shoes, or weave cotton into a green shirt, or most of the things I use every day. Certainly I have no idea how to build plastic computer keys or LCD monitors in order to write this message. I could learn most of those skills individually, although some people may have a knack at things I might suck at. In fact I think most people could iron a shirt much more neatly than I could.

I actually have sat around and chipped away at rocks, trying to make arrowheads, mostly just making broken gravel and nicking my fingers until they were too sore to even touch a rock. I guess the ones I made would serve the purpose in a pinch, but I imagine the average cave man would have me beat solid.

I can also kill and skin animals. I don't like to, and I would probably be happier eating more vegetables and less meat if I had to do it more often. Yet I could survive in those conditions. I don't think I could learn all that stuff and be able to write endless amounts of computer programs, too. And I think it gets more and more complex to interact with all the technology we have, until it is hopeless for any one person to ever keep up. At what point do we just give up?