where is the fire

fire requires oxygen and fuel to continue.

what originally burned cannot continue without renewed material to feed the fire.

once what originally burned is consumed, there's no sense looking for the fire to return to that which was previously the source.

we must look to a new source for a new flame. it will burn different, look different, smell different, have a different temperature.

so collect some material together, give it some space, and get a flame.

welcome the new fire...

taste of bitterness

well my cynical, post-apostolic, neo-narcissistic (i just like to use the words neo and narcissistic, even if it's not appropriate), funk is the fault of our country's leadership.

i suggest incarceration for all those in leadership, president, congresspeople, senators, including all aides. they have exhibited extreme dereliction of duty. they have negatively affected the future of this and coming generations. they look no further than the immediate needs of their re-election.

just kidding.

i think we are at the cusp of greatness.

no where is creativity more evident.

no where is creativity more embraced.

no where do people want to come more than america.

why?

cuz we the best.

try russia. ever seen the godfather? well, dey do it on a national scale.

try china. you no like what dey do? no prollem, 1.5 billion others will do your job. they just copy what we do, and then we buy their crap.

europe? sure, if you say so. let's see, ireland, greece, italy, france. yeah, they got it together.

middle east? you can't really be serious. nuf said.

africa? what???

south america? nice place to never visit.

india? worlds largest democracy, and proof that our founding fathers had it right. constitutional republic, not democracy is a good plan.

so, don't fret. we'll rebound and make folks shake their heads in wonder.

WE’RE SAFE

DON’T SWEAT THAT SOLAR FLARE

SOMEBODY ELSE IS TOAST SO WHO CARES

OUR CORE KEEPS A TWISTING

MOLTEN NICKEL-IRON SWISHING

GET’S A MAGNET-AH FIELD SPIKIN’

KEEPS THEM SPEEDING PARTICLES A HIKIN’

YEAH THAT MOLTEN CORES A MOVING

MAKES THE CRUST START SLIPPING

SOME SINGLE MOM’S WORKIN’ FOR TIPS

NEXT THING SHE’S CRUSHED BY MARBLE CHIPS

WALKING DOWN THE STREET ON A SUNNY DAY

LOVING THE WARM SUNNY RAYS

SOMEBODY I NEVER MET WHO HATES ME

FLIPS A SWITCH AND MAKES US BLEED

VIRUS, BACILLUS, FUNGUS, SPORES

THERE’S NOT ENOUGH SO WE GOTTA MAKE SOMEMORE

THE BOYS TELL US WE’RE JUST FINE

THEY GOT A HOLD OF THE BUGS REIGNS

SOMEBODY FORGOT HOW MUCH MONEY THEY HAVE

SO THEY’RE SHAKIN ME DOWN FOR A HAND

THERE’S SO MANY HANDS WITH NEEDS

IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU HAVEN’T GOT FEED

YOU KNOW THEY’RE MAKIN’ A FIX FOR US

IT’S A STRETCHY AND A PLASTIC CRUST

GONNA TASTE SMELLS AND SEE SOUNDS

GONNA FEEL WHAT COULDN’T BE FOUND

NOT GOOD ENOUGH WHAT WE NATURALLY HAVE

GOTTA MAKE A NEED FOR A NEW FAVE

WHAT WE SENSE MIGHT BE A FAKE

THEY’RE TAKEN CARE OF US FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE

THE LEADERS HAVE GOT A PLAN TO HELP US

THE LEADERS HAVE GOT A QUESTION FOR US

THE LEADERS HAVE ANSWER TO QUELL OUR TIRADES

THEY MOUTH WORDS LIKE AS PUPPETS OF UNELECTED AIDES

IT’S ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL SUNNY DAY

THERE HASN’T BEEN A BUMP ALONG YOUR WAY

YOU’VE DODGED NEUTRINOS AND GAMMA RAYS

AND LIVED TO HEAR ANOTHER’S ENDED DAY

© SHRUNKEN FRONTAL LOBE, FEBRUARY 24, 2011

Compound Vision

MULTI-SPECTRAL LIGHT FROM DISTANT GLOBE

WHOSE PATH FROM DEEP WITHIN EXPOSE

ITS’ SCHISM BOTH AS PARTICLE AND WAVE

DOES DAMAGE TO ONE’S SUBSTANCE OR SAVE?

MAKING WAY DIRECT, DEFLECT, OR REFRACT

BOUNCE AND BEND AND CATARACT

TO ENDS THAT TAKE THEIR TOLL, A TAX,

YET PAYS RETURN

IN COLOR, TEMPERATURE, AND BURN

BODY, SOUL IN RESPECTIVE TURN

TAKE SOLACE IN THE POWERFUL, TACITURN

NATURE OF SUCH GIVING AND TAKING ARTIFACT

FROM ACTS PERFORMED SO LONG AGO

EXPENDING SUPERNATURAL FORCE TO COME IN

BIOLUMINESCENCE, VAPOR, OR EMISSIVE GLOW

EACH SIMULTANEOUSLY OR IN TURN

TAKES MEASURE FROM DIRECT AND INDIRECT RETURN

THAT SUCH PARTICLE IMPARTS TO ALL IT STRIKES

THE METTLE OF WHAT SUBSTRATE IT WITH FIGHTS

THE REASONING OF BOTH SUBSTANCE AND FORM

IS LEFT TO ORGANIC LIVING SWARMS

THAT LITTLE WONDER AT THE RETURN

OF SUBTLE MEANINGS TO WHAT IS LEARNED

EACH ORGANIC OBJECT THAT REFRACTS

THE ORIGINAL SINEWY OSCILLATING FORM

DOES NOT DO SO IN PERFECT PARALLAX

RATHER LEAVING IT’S PERSONAL METAPHOR

TO WHAT DOES THE ORIGINAL BEAM CONTAIN

AFTER EACH PERSONAL INTERCHANGE

THAT DOES EXPLAIN THE SUBTERRANEAN MEANING

TO WHAT THE HERCULEAN EFFORT OF THE BEAM’ING

CAN AFTER EACH’S SUBTLE DISTORTION

RENDERING INTO PROPER PORTION

THAT TO WHICH THE WAVE WAS WEAVING

WAS IT THE MESSAGE OR THE LEAVING?

THAT MEANT TO EACH PERSON’S REASONING

WAS IN THE ORIGIN OR ENDING

OF THAT FAR-FLUNG QUANTUM BEING

TO TEACH OF POWER OR OF SEEING?

THE PARTICLE OR WAVE

OR BOTH MIXED TOGETHER ARE SLAVE,

SUBSERVIENT TO GREATER POWER.

THE PURPOSE IS ALONE TO OUR

UTILIZATION FOR WHATEVER HOUR

AND TIME SUCH AS WE DEEM

TO DRAW A NEW PERSONAL DREAM

THE MESSAGE COMES BY WISPY TRACKS

ELECTRIC FIRINGS OF SYNAPS

MAKING WAYS ON MICRONIC PATHS

THROUGH MICROVOLTAIC WATERY GAPS

TO SOLITARY YET CLUSTERED HOMES

WHO RECEIVE ALL VISITORS WITH ‘COMES

AND AFTER BRIEF BUT FRUITFUL EXCHANGE

DO SEND THEIR CHARGE RETRAINED

WITH MEANING NE’R BEFORE EN’TAINED

FROM THE ORIGINAL WAVES’ FLIGHT

THAT CAME FROM SUCH DISTANCE WHITE

DIRECTED, BENT, OR REFLECTED MIGHT

BE MET AND CHANGED TO NEWER SIGHT

ONE DIFFERENT FOR EVERY LIVING SOUL

WHILE STARTING AT A COMMON WHOLE

© shrunken frontal lobe - February 20, 2011

finally getting close to being able to communicate

well university of utah bioengineers have developed a microelectrode grid array that if placed onto the surface of the brain can record the waves and translate them.

at last...

all the thoughts i just could not express, being that i'm a man and all. plus the disadvantage that i'm old and my shrontal lobe is frinking makes me, at present, communicate some things that others think i should not communicate.

so with this handy little device i can get the correct story out... unless there isn't really anything else in there that wants out.

oh well, at least i can get the local news, noaa weather, and even pick up seti signals. i might be the first to know when aliens finally contact us. of course no one will listen to me...

get in line for your brain electrode array!

radioactive decay rates are not constant

well....well...well...

So scientists have found that the decay rate of various elemental isotopes is not the unvarying standard we thought...

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html

So the sun itself is likely to be emitting particles that effect the decay rate eh? All our timing devices dependent upon a constant decay rate have errors. Oh, medical diagnostic tracers aren't as accurate? Oh, radioactive dating methods might be erroneous? Hmmmm...... isn't THAT interesting.

maybe we aren't as old as we think. perhaps a great many tightly held beliefs against creation might not be so airtight as we'd like to believe.

let's find the god-particle and perhaps it will assuage our growing, gnawing, unbelief in the constancy of nature.

my ray-gun isn't as powerful as i hoped

well, i'm most seriously displeased! boo-hoo!

scientists have confirmed that there is an upper limit to the power density which a laser beam may possess.

Fedotov et al., (Phys. Rev. Lett), has demonstrated that the upper limit to intensity is ~2.6x10+26 W/cm2, which is dependent upon the residence time of the electrons within the laser beam or the total amount of electromagnetic energy stored in the pulse.

there will be no shooting people and watching them disappear, like in Star Trek.

there will be no shooting rogue asteroids bent upon colliding with the earth, causing a global extinction event.

there will be no salvation from nuclear attack via ICBM's.

no toasting of ants on the sidewalk.

do shooting terrorist-laden planes from the skies.

i am very sad. very sad indeed!

*snif**snif*

well before the superfart gets to us we have this issue

"A large asteroid in space that has a remote chance of slamming into Earth would most likely hit in 2182, if it crashes into our planet at all, a new study suggests.

The asteroid, called 1999 RQ36, has about a 1-in-1,000 chance of actually hitting the Earth, but half of that risk corresponds to potential impacts in the year 2182, said study co-author Mar Eugenia Sansaturio of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain.

Sansaturio and her colleagues used mathematical models to determine the risk of asteroid 1999 RQ36 impacting Earth through the year 2200. They found two potential opportunities for the asteroid to hit Earth in 2182."

...???

the wording of this article confuses me.

first, the asteroid will hit us in 2182, if at all??? no possible chance later?

second, there are two potential opportunities to hit us... unless it hits us the first time of course...

third, they say "there is a 1 in 1000 chance it hits us, but half the risk corresponds to potential impacts in 2182." what the hell does that mean?

this is the worst example of "sensational journalism" meets poorly interpreted science.

jeez, no wonder people don't want to get into science, it sounds like we're all idiots.

who's da man?

read this...

http://failuremag.com/index.php/site/print/to_the_supercave/

it speaks for it's self.

when will we smell it?

well even a black hole needs to relieve itself every now and again.

a black hole has been farting a gas bubble for the last 200,000 years or so....

now that's what i call a real ripper!

it's over 1,000 light years in diameter and growing at 1,000,000 kilometers per hour.

so how long till we get a whiff?

let's see...

the black hole is 12 million light years away.

a light year is how far light travels in a year, which is 9.46e+12 kilometers.

so,

moving at 1e+6 km/hr, it will take 9.46e+6 hrs to travel one light year,

multiply this by the distance of the bubble from us, namely 12e+6 light years, and it will take approximately 1.14e+14 hrs; a 114 trillion hours. a hundred-and-fourteen trillion hours!

if one lives to age 80 years (hopefully no longer since your pretty much just waiting for the end at that point anyways), that is equal to 700,800 hours.

so it will take 162 million lifetimes before we catch a whiff of the universes biggest fart.

to put that into perspective, in the past 5,000 years of recorded history, that equates to roughly 62 80-year lifetimes.

so breath deep, the cool crisp air of earth, before it's spoiled by the biggest fart imaginable.

nothing's working as it should

what's coming to the universe?

can't we depend on anything anymore?

will we start floating tomorrow?

will the sun not rise tomorrow?

speaking of the sun, did you know it's not spotty like it should be?

yep, the sunspots that normally come predictably every eleven years for over the previous one-hundred years aren't happening. and scientists are baffled. they also don't understand why it's not as turbulent as they think it should be.

maybe we should take things into our own hands and help the sun out a bit. i mean, let's shot some of our trash at it to "fire things up". we've think we have global warming, so we're gonna fix the world, why not do the same with the sun?

the bottom line is we understand a lot less about the universe than we think, and should not be too rash in claiming there is a problem to fix.

hey, buddy, can you spare fifty billion?

well, we have another crisis.

we haven't spent enough money.

we need to spend another fifty billion to save jobs. fifty billion we don't already have.

let's say the average salary (including benefits) is $60,000 per year per employee.

$50,000,000,000 divided by $60,000 = 833,333 jobs.

of course this number would be higher if the fifty billion was used to make up shortfalls rather than support outright. so it's probably double the number who would be "helped" by such a move.

what's a few billion now that our debt is in the tens of trillions, right?

yes, the economy is not as healthy as it might look from the outside.

schools and municipalities have not, or will not, cut spending commensurate with the loss in revenue due to layoffs, job loss, and state economics. so now, since they would not do the tough stuff, they'll send it up the line and cry, "we have an emergency and need money or we'll have to layoff teachers and law enforcement!".

so how about a pay cut, or furloughs? oh no, these folks have powerful unions lobbying for them. they won't take no stinking paycut. not like the 25% pay cut i absorbed last year due to furloughs. my no have any union to fight for me. so tha's out of the question. they just have to be paid.

and the states don't want to do the tough things either. so they pass it up the line.

everyone else is getting bailouts, why shouldn't we?

so now it's the president's problem, and he's gone begging for money from the corrupt den of snakes who care about nothing but themselves. and they are scared they will lose they're comfy little power plays because they have done things without the consent of the people. and the people are angry and voting other long-standing snakes out. so they are not going to give the president his fifty billion. not with elections coming up in november. no, no, no.

so who will flinch first???

nineteen aussie-four

i had this romantic perspective of the australian continent.

you know, the old cliches; rugged, individualistic, wild, untamed...

but they are one of the worst at intruding into the personal lives of their constituency.

they are eyeing further intrusion by considering monitoring and logging all web browsing histories and emails.

what are they going to do with all that crap? sift through it for subversive info? evil patterns of activity? weak-minded fools whom they could extort?

the cost to store, filter, collate, and report would seem to be prohibitive. but hey, it's someone else's money we're using here.

where is the outcry from the media? how about an uprising by the populace?

*sigh*

too hopelessly self-absorbed i guess...

I SPOT YOU

SPOT is an acronym for "screening passengers by observational techniques" developed by the USA. it is inaccurate, based on no science, and now is gaining wider acceptance as the UK is now looking into developing this for their anti-terrorist systems.

SPOT looks for subtle facial cues indicating someone is up to no good. how they can know this from facial expressions is a bit unclear, but hey, it's anti-terrorist so it must be worth pursuing. so, watch what do in airports. don't have a spat with the wife or you'll have a spot with a us marshal. don't get miffed by some goob who just ran over your foot with his roller suitcase or you'll be spot-ted for facial abnormalities and whisked off for interrogation.

so watch your P's and Q's or you'll be s, p, and ot'd...

take quaaludes before every outdoor activity, lest you show any adverse facial expressions. yes, let's all get anesthesized, it's for the best.

when in doubt

an alarming trend is occurring.

every time a boo-boo, (i.e. we killed a bunch of people and it looks kinda iffy that we did it for good reasons), occurs the spectre (i like this word too) of "terrorists" is used. like we can just frost a dead body with the Al Qaeda or Taliban or generic terrorist frosting and everyone will just shrug and go, "oh", turn and walk away. i acknowledge that there are bad people out there who want to blend in until the moment they want to strike. this makes security and investigation extremely challenging. but have we as a society decided that loss of our civil liberties take a secondary position to security? communist russia was "secure" but freedoms were more difficult to find than a loaf of bread at the market.

i don't remember discussing giving my liberties away...

i don't remember debating the value in unwarranted searches and eavesdropping...

did our forefathers fight and die for the mere idea of liberty and the pursuit of happiness only for it to be lost so quickly and without a question or fight by us?

i knew they were bad

punjabi researchers have conducted a very powerful yet simple experiment that confirms the danger of cellphones.

the researchers set cell phones at one hive and none at another. the cell phone hive was activated for two fifteen minute segments per day. measurements suggest hive productivity was off by fitty-percent, the queen laid about half as many eggs, fewer workers returned to the hive, and they ceased producing honey. the other hive performed as a normal hive would, no problems.

so....

perhaps the loss of honeybees has something to do with disruption of the homing and communication processes of honeybees. perhaps we could shift our operating frequencies and give the bees a break.

if not...

have you heard of killer bees???

they'll be baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

saving for a rainy day

WOT and i have an elaborate, well thought out plan to save for our post-work years. we don't want to be a burden to our spawn, we don't want them worrying how they can keep from paying a penny to care for us in our broken-down frunkeness. so we save. we have beautifully crafted auto-updating computer spreadsheets tracking our planned saving to actual levels. monthly shortfalls require detailed explanation, with unacceptable excuses being logged into our permanent records. our little pile o'cash is growing and growing. but what will happen near the end. will a rival club me to death over a mastodon bone? will WOT run off with the pile o'cash and a young up-and-coming tribal leader? will i succumb to a life of harsh weather and malnutrition?

or, will i like so many now reaching the tarnished years, lose all my pile o'cash to a assisted care cave that will treat me poorly, give me nothing, and leave WOT and my spawn with nothing of my hard earned lifetime savings?

is this what i have to look forward to???

i seen how the word, ugh, was invented.

a new dawn

with little or no thought, i've decided to quit my job. i'm going to become an amateur moon scientist, looking at images of the moon on Moon Zoo. they are looking for help due to the overwhelming amount of data streaming in. yes, as is typically the case in science, way too much data is generated with way too little information, understanding, and ultimately knowledge created.

simultaneously i'm going to join the hackathon for humanity, yes there really is such a thing. and commit "random hacks of kindness". hacking for kindness??? isn't that the antithesis of hacking? isn't the point of hacking to cause electronic anarchy. software subterfuge? hard drive explosions?

yes, when bad is good, we truly are in the midst of societal degeneration.

donning my cyber camo's

well the us government has decided that it's time to open the gaily-wrapped package from the pentagon labelled "legal virus". now not only do we get spied on, but if they don't like what we say, they can deem it an "attack", and wage military operations against us. no proof required i suppose. so they'll hack us, super-size virus-size us, and back flush electrons up my ?@#$%^, and smack us around. they'll send some special forces boys carrying sledgehammers to obliterate all things electronic, then shoot them with silenced MP-5's, followed by a hit from their directed laser weapons to frost the cake. then i get two options, immediate termination, or nylon handcuffs followed by "questioning" by "special interrogators". hmmm ......

so i'm donning my cyber camo's for the upcoming battle.

yep, i'm switching off my internet router, never to return to the formerly free and open internet.

good bye

texting while driving

well in the wake of recent information about synthetic life, huge security changes by facebook, google and others, immigration fiasco, and banking reform, it is apparent that our government is too busy saving us from ourselves to recognize the broad changes that are occurring. we, the people, have abdicated our authority over the government and had them severely limit our personal freedoms, all in the name of protecting us. we can be spied on electronically with little recourse, huge electronic companies like google, facebook, and others treat our confidential information like they own it, and sell it to the highest bidder without our permission. the government does nothing. scientists are messing around with the human genomic sequence and the leadership has little to say or do to control it.

it's sorta like the government is texting while driving. we're gonna get in an accident sooner or later, it's just statistics and probability. fortunately they aren't wearing a seatbelt.

synthetic me

well the beginning of synthetic life is dawning. isn't that exciting?

we don't have enough trouble handling natural life, we have to start make synthetic life.

shouldn't we understand natural life and be in control of it before we make something else?

we have no idea what we are doing.

it's sorta like cutting my finger and then thinking i'm a surgeon ready to operate on people.

but we have great ideas about what good we can do for mankind by making little synthetic microbes that will do our every bidding. so compliant, so submissive, so desirous to help. yeah, right...

we will unleash uncontrollable microorganisms into our natural environment and they will run amok. perhaps this is the next evolutionary step. the synthetic microbes will eat up all the natural ones and leave none of us behind.

better do all the things you've wanted to do before the little Langoliers commence to 'a marchin'...

chapter 0

"Hey!" "Hey You!"

"Hey!, I'm talkin' to you, punk." You knew Joe was serious whenever he actually said "you" and not his normal "ya".

Joe Venitto was an old school cop who hadn't kept up with the times. He thought you could just yell and everyone would turn around to see who was yellin'. But with just about everyone wearing earphones and iPods, nobody heard him.

So he actually had to run up and tap the young man on the shoulder to get his attention. The kid turned around in disgust with a look of "who would dare touch me", but upon seeing the blue and gold of Boston's finest his look changed to one of "oh, no, what did I do now".

Joe, huffing and puffing from the hundred foot run, eyes bulged and darting, looked like he was going to have a coronary right in front of the poor kid. "Hey kid, didn't you know there's a city ordanance that you've got to take headphones or earphones out when crossing the street?" Having caught his breath Joe put his best intimidator look back on for the befuddled kid. "What? You gotta' be kiddin', you're kiddin', right?" "Hey, did Tommy set up up to dis?" Joe slowly shook his head side to side. "Look kid, I tell ya what. I'm feelin' good today so I won't write ya up. But if I see ya doin' it again, I'll throw da' book at ya."

So the kid nodded his agreement, said "yes sir", and turned to resume whatever he was doing before Joe injected himself into his life.

Joe turned with a grin feeling like he was one tough dude who was going to teach this younger generation how to respect the system he was dedicated to upholding. He sucked in his substantial gut, or "sixpack" as he liked to brag to his buddies, and started to walk down the street towards his favorite street vendor. The run had gotten him worked up and a nice cold Diet Coke would hit the spot about now.

Professor Norbert Abernathy, or Pro Abe as his grad students affectionately called him, had just finished his lecture and was dealing with the normal student queries and excuses cloaked in sincerely posed questions that only someone as smart as Norb could tell was actually demonstrating how little they knew.

"Pro Abe!" Varodi was Norb's newest Post-Doctoral assistant. Norb looked Varodi's way his eyebrows up noting his attention.

"We've got something you've got to see." Varodi was not prone to such declarations, normally a reserved "super geek" as his other students called him. So Norb knew this was something worthy of walking out right in the middle of the lowly undergrad whining.

Having made it into the hallway, which had mostly cleared of student life and was exceedingly quiet Norbert noted, Norb asked Varodi to explain himself.

"Well Pro Abe, we were running a simple startup test of the bubble chamber for the Lab, and something happended that we could not explain." The Lab was the word his students used as code for upper class particle Physics Lab. Norb's eyebrow went up since Varodi stating there was something that could not be explained was something of a suprise in itself. Varodi was widely regarded as one of the five brightest new PhD's in the world of Particle Physics, coming to Norb straight from Princeton's Applied Physics Lab, so for him to state there was something "we" could not explain was cause for concern.

"Well Varodi we very well can't have mysteries in the Universe can we? Hummmm?" Norb smiled broadly to disarm Varodi's apprehension and insecurity that there was something he did not know. Varodi came from a culture where you were indebted to your seniors, especially one who was clearly your intellectual superior, and to present yourself as weak to your "leader" could lead to your dismissal as an "inferior"; the most ugly of adjectives to be used to a academician-in-training.

As they entered the lab it was dead quiet, all the undergrads had left for "liquid refreshment", so they could review the results in peace and quiet.

"Look here Pro Abe, see this one trace", pointing to the gentle arc of small bubbles produced by the motion of a subatomic particle in water the fragments from a horrendously powerful impact that a proton makes with a nucleus.

"It should be here, but it suddenly disappears. I've checked and rechecked the system. Everything checks out." Varodi, frustrated, declared.

"Hummmm... I trust you Varodi, what do you make of it?" Norb probed his junior seriously now. Norb also saw that eveything was in order except for that little disappearing bubble trace.

"Well Pro Abe I've got some experiments I'd like to run to first verify everything's OK in the accelerator and bubble chamber, then I'll do some calc's on the trace and get back to you."

Norb knew this meant unstopped activity from Varodi until everything was completed. Sleep, food, sometimes even excretive functions took a back seat to experiments. Varodi's singular focus was commendable albeit slightly over-the-top in Norb's opinion.

"That's fine Varodi, but don't forget you have a wife and baby who need you more than I need to know the reason for disappearing bubbles. So if it takes a little longer nobody but us will know." Smiling, Norb brought Varodi back to reality as he sheepishly smiled his acknowledgement.

Norb left the lab wondering what Varodi would find...

Late Breaking News! I could be outta here anytime

"Exact teleportation was thought to be impossible," Charles H. Bennett of IBM Research, part of the team that first discovered "quantum teleportation," told CNN. "Now, however, it is known to be possible."

Further, adds Bennett;

"In fact it is simpler than it sounds. What you have to note is that in this sort of experiment the atom itself is not teleported, but rather the delicate quantum information contained in the atom. In effect you are disembodying the complete quantum state of one atom and reincarnating it in another atom of the same sort."

How is this "quantum teleportation" actually achieved? The process relies upon something called "Quantum Entanglement," a fiendishly counter-intuitive phenomenon that Einstein described as "spukhafte Fernwirkung" or "spooky action at a distance." Basically it involves two separate particles behaving as if they were essentially one and the same, even though they are separated by a great distance. Changes to one particle will be mirrored in the other. Using this phenomenon physicists have been able to transfer -- or in effect teleport -- the properties of one particle to another, in the case of atoms over a distance of about half a meter, in the case of photons over tens of kilometers.

Bennett believes that, in principle at least, it is perfectly feasible to teleport humans without violating any of the fundamental laws of physics. Not only that, but, also in principle, it could be done without resorting to the complexities of quantum entanglement. "Quantum entanglement is valuable in transmitting particles such as atoms and photons where the most delicate properties are significant and where simple approximation is not enough," he explains.
"Teleporting a person, on the other hand, would not require reproducing the quantum state anything like as exactly." Everything we know about biology and how molecules fit together to produce a living being, including the brain, indicates that creating some level of approximation would give you a real person who was a serviceable replica of the original in terms of looking the same and thinking the same thoughts, without necessarily being a perfect quantum replica.
"The teleported person would end up slightly different, but not in a biologically important way."
The implication of this is that you could scan a person using some advanced form of the technology used to perform MRI scans, and transmit that scanned information somewhere else -- using normal electrical or sound signals -- where it would then be reassembled into an approximation of the original. "It's the same principle as a fax machine," says Bennett. "When you fax something what comes out the other end obviously looks like the original and contains the same information. It's not the same paper, however, or the same type of ink. "It's the same, but not the same. "We already have three-dimensional fax machines, so the basic theory is there." What actually happens to the original person when their bio-molecular details are "faxed" somewhere else, and whether your average person on the street would be happy to be reassembled as a similar but at the same time slightly different average person on the street, are, thinks Bennett, moot points. With each human being made up of trillions upon trillions of atoms -- 10 to the power of 28 to be precise -- the technology to perform a sufficiently accurate scan to produce even the most basic approximation of a living person does not exist, and probably never will. "What might be possible in theory is, from a technological point of view, blatantly impossible," he says. "If you consider all the atoms in a person, and the fact that in the scan you would have to locate all those atoms to within a nanometer of each other, and then have some machine capable of translating that information into DNA, water, fat, protein etc. -- it's just silly to think about."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, well, well...

I'm giddy over the endless comments on this one.

But where to start?

Any ideas?

Geometric Progression is the path to happiness

Have you heard people state that the world is becoming an increasingly complex place to live? I can unequivocally confirm that people are correct! In the beginning, God only had one rule, ONE Rule! He told Adam, "Yo Adam! you and your girlfriend can do anything you want, just don't eat fruit from one tree." That's it, nothing about maybe they should get some clothes on, or be discreet about what they do all day, or where they do it, nothin'. So what does Adam and his main squeeze do? Exactly what they were just asked not to do of course! So then they get booted out, and the world goes crazy with no rules until they almost get snuffed out completely. So then God tries ten rules, you know, to see how people like the idea. People like the idea so much, they make even more rules, so many so that they then have to make rules to get around all the other rules. This time, instead of creating an ember out of the earth, or sending some fire breathing dragon, or making the earth a snowball, or a giant waterpark, or a black hole, He sends Jesus to 'splain what He was trying to get at with the original ten rules. In fact Jesus dumbs it down for everyone to only two rules, just two; Love God with all you've got, and love everyone else like you take care of yourself. The idea took a little while to catch on, but finally people seemed to like Jesus' idea. In fact, after a while folks thought it might help if they 'splained what Jesus meant, so they kind of embellished and expanded the original two rules; you know, to help people get the drift.

Well, the Founding Fathers of what would come to be known as The United States of America had heard about the original one rule, the ten rules, and also the two rules after that. So, they thought three rules would be a nice compromise. A committee was formed to decide on what three rules to use. Being the forward thinking men they were, they ignored those other rules and made up some new ones they thought would be kinda nifty. You might have heard of these new rules, pursue life, pursue liberty, pursue happiness. Well from there it's been a relatively steady, uwavering course for over two hundred years. However the modern complex times we now live in have required modern complex thinking to address these increasingly complex times of increasingly complex thinking. To corraborate this analysis I have learned, from anonymous company sources close to the situation, that the company I work for (which will remain nameless to protect the innocent, but I will code name GM to assuage your curiosity) is implementing a new performance assessment program to help people navigate through these increasingly complex times of increasingly complex thinking. The new system is clearly an attempt to fix obviously manifested problems of rising morale resulting from a functioning simple performance appraisal system coupled with rumors of a company turnaround. Now it is well understood by HR professionals that the best way to remove your best employees (who also typically have the highest salary and therefore cause excess economic burden to the corporation) is not by direct denegration of their performance but by prolonged illogical actions. So a "new" three-by-three-by-three matrix system has been developed. It is a three square by three square with three colors (creatively colored red, yellow, and green) for each box, thus producing the highly complex cube. What is most encouraging about the potential of this new system to create the desired effect is that no longer are your undefined boxes colored by your supervisor, the one that should actually understand your performance, rather they are to be colored by the group decision of all the managers who you do not report to. A fictitious character named Jack Nicholson was used to help explain to 250 scientists and engineers the subtle nuances of how the new system would be applied to the performance of an Actor.

Being the high performer that I am, I have decided to create a stretch goal for myself to expand the three-by-three-by-three cube to a twenty-seven by twenty-seven matrix using only the colors white and blue to reduce printer costs associated with using the dye-sublimation color printers for three colors. My goal is to thoroughly understand the intricacies of the new personnel system such that one day before I am escorted out of the facility I will have my performance matrix appropriately colored with the letters GM to show my loyalty. Not wanting to be outdone, some Director of VP, will expand my twenty-seven by twenty-seven square matrix to some next logical size, say eighty-one by eighty-one to demonstrate their quest for perfection.

The lesson to be learned from this? It's not how well you perform, but how well you perform in showing how much you will exceed your original performance estimates.

The Big Bang

In the beginning, this blog was formless and void. The mass of my thoughts were the size of a Planck length, 10-35 meters. Then due to a random vacuum fluctuation they began to expand at an exponential rate. Within 1/1032 of a second, they had doubled 100 times. This process of expansion had continued unimpeded until reaching the age of 40. At that point the rate of expanding thought is met by the opposing force of frontal lobe shrinkage. From that point on, the universe of thought has begun the slow but steadily increased acceleration of shrinkage, ultimately leading to total and complete implosion known as the Big Crunch. The precise time of this final implosion is difficult to determine exactly. This blog will chronicle the phenomenological characteristics of this implosion. While nothing can be learned from analyzing this process to benefit anyone, it is entertaining to watch.



So gawk on!