Title: "Why Justin can't get any work done tonight"

Dockweiler state beach, looking west-southwest-ish. Left low: Rotting old pier. High center: Plane just having taken off from LAX (Dockweiler is just under the takeoff path).

Dockweiler state beach, looking south-ish along the coast. Standing on a bike trail.

Del Rey Lagoon, looking north-northwest...ish.

Oh, and join my Google group to get updates in your email. If you like that sort of thing.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Joshuas-Brain-Dump-Mailing-List?hl=en

Playa del Rey, looking almost straight north.The corner of Pershing and Sunridge, I think.

Tried to fix the Google group settings. Maybe it will accept the group submissions from my email address now.

Downtown LA in foreground. Photo was taken while looking northeast-ish from Playa del Rey cliffs, seen through a chain link fence.

Durrr...actually adding the photo to the post, now.

Hmm...random photo time. This was taken sometime around 06-03-2005 at a nice little park on Lincoln Ave. About a 20 minute walk from the house, and well worth it. The local library is just next to the park, also. Enjoy.

OK, I updated.

Look what I found under the Blogger.com options! Now all of my link-a-licious posts can have a quick and easy "link" field at the top. Just a single textbox I fill out, too. So...this counts as an update, right?

I need to start getting paid by the word for this...

I just started re-reading Transmetropolitan today. For those not in the know, it is a graphic novel (the west’s answer to manga). Written by Warren Ellis, it focuses on the character of Spider Jerusalem, a rude, obscene, non-conformist journalist in a wild and super-futuristic Earth.

To give an idea of the tech level, included are stories involving: brain uploading, nano-swarm intelligences, static nanotech construction (build almost anything from almost anything), almost free power, crowded cities that show no signs of collapse – that in fact continue to grow, ubiquitous wireless networking, 2000 channel “basic TV” service, paid and free news services available everywhere, advertisements in the form of memetic “ad bombs” that force there way into your dreams. And that is just what I can remember in a couple of minutes after reading the first two volumes.

But get this: it was written in 1998. Yeah. So I guess not all of the wild stuff Ellis wrote looks quite as impossible as it once did. It looks to me like Ellis tried for the “upper curve” of Heinlein’s breakdown of “future history” trends (the one that shows exploding exponential growth). Heinlein himself claimed to use the middle curve most of the time (continued linear growth), but looking at his writings now, it looks a lot more like his lowest curve, or decreasing technological rates of change over time.

Reading Transmet now, though, it looks much more like a “middle curve” prediction set - almost within reach, and therefore most likely too conservative in nature. One thing that Heinlein emphasized was that, most likely, the real world’s technological development would be best represented by the exponential curve, not the more conservative ones. But most people can’t handle that kind of speculation.

Imagine trying to explain American Airlines to someone from the 1300s. Now imagine someone 40 years from now having the same problem explaining something as simple to them as a major airline. And you just can’t get it. Future shock is likely too conservative a term, also.

p.s.

I intentionally included no links this time. Just use Wikipedia and Google if you are actually interested. I used the correct terms (most of the time, I think) and they should be directly searchable. Oh, except for the hard-to-find Heinlein thing (unless you own the book) – that was from "Where to?", an essay collected in Expanded Universe.

This isn't a drug joke

I'll try to recover from my rant-filled angst (angst-filled rant?) with a cool link.

Every wonder what those floating things you sometimes see that look like bugs or threads crawling on your eyeballs are? Here is the explanation.

Anyone got a time-machine and a notepad?

Wow. I just talked to my brother (chatted, IM-ed for all you pedantic freaks out there) and he mentioned meeting someone who knew me about 3 years ago. Someone I tutored in English at college and on whom I must have left an impression. Glad that I could make a difference and all. He wanted my brother to pass on best wishes, etc.

Thing is, I can’t remember the guy. Must have meet him a couple of dozen times over the course of a year or so, but I can’t even remember WHEN I met him.

OK, that isn’t so unusual. But I realized that I don’t remember much of ANYTHING from around the period of time. [insert joke about forgetting stuff I learned in college here].

Maybe I’m not making this clear, because reading over the above, it still feels a little weak. Let me try again.

I. Do not. Remember. Day by day. Week by week. Month by month. YEAR TO YEAR. What I did/thought/saw, who I knew casually/in passing/from class. The only thing I know is where I was, and that BECAUSE IT WAS THE SAME SHITTY COUPLE OF ACRES FOR 2 YEARS.

Yeah. That looks about right. Makes me mad as hell-spawn, too. I value knowledge. A lot. And it looks like anything that wasn’t in a goddamn book went in one pissing ear and out the other. GAH! [sounds of testosterone-induced primal range].

So, anyone I knew back then – I’m sorry. I don’t remember a fucking thing about you – who you were, what you want in life, what you did, what you had done. Unless you practically hit me with a fucking BRICK, it doesn’t look like I have much hope of recalling your general height, let alone your name or anything important about you.

So, Mr. Guy-Who-I-Tutored, I apologize. The near-useless knowledge I was (ineffectually) cramming into my brain at the time must have damaged the non-studying, non-test-taking parts so fucking badly that I couldn’t remember the first thing about you.

And to everyone else. Sorry. I think I might have made a very, very bad decision in putting priority on getting another “A”, as opposed to actually using my eyes, ears, and brain in seeing what was going on around me. And it wasn’t a lot of fun, most of the time. Good thing I got over that.

HERE’S TO HAVING FUN!