So here’s a weird thought…

Oculus rift insideOne of my coworkers was showing me some stuff in augmented reality. This led to a discussion about virtual reality. 

We were watching a Microsoft demonstration video about VR and there was this person who’d entered a VR version of their own apartment. On it’s surface, cool but then as I was watching this person hang virtual pictures on a virtual wall this thought popped into my head.Virtual Reality Age

“What if VR becomes so much the norm, that people simply become unaware of their homes and apartments falling down around them. What happens when the VR construct is so lifelike and interactive that people no longer see the dirt or the broken windows? More and more of our written documents exist in digital format only, what happens when we become fully invested in a VR world? What would our civilization look like in 5 or 10 thousand years?” What would be remembered and how?

Puma punku ruinsThen I thought about all the ancient civilizations scattered around the world. Broken stones standing in mute testament to a people who were gone. Our archeologists trying to piece together a civilization from fragments left behind. What would they think of our civilization after it passed?

Excerpt from last Journal entry of Lin Jon, Archeologist of the Draco-Tang Consortium

These people appear to have made large monuments and dwellings, they had a written language but only seem to have used it to engrave names and dates on some of their most important buildings. In virtually all other cases this civilization did not use written language, we find little evidence of books, or libraries and those we have found appear to have been reserved for only the wealthiest of the population.

Each person carried a totem that had great significance. These totems are typically smooth rectangular wafers of varying sizes. Totems are always found within arms reach of their owner.

The totems all contain a complex array of delicate gold wires embossed on an unknown laminated material. The wire patterns fall into predictable patterns, however their meaning is as yet unknown.

We surmise these may have been significant of religious practice or religious sects. All the totems have a container of poisonous chemicals in a desiccated state, Perhaps at the end of an individual’s life they were expected to break the totem open and consume the chemicals?

We have found huge numbers of bodies. Many of them in repose inside what appear to be individual dwellings. We believe these were dwellings, not tombs. Our theory is grounded in the variety and quantity of serving & eating utensils with organic residue.

Legends of Puma Punku in TiahuanacoWhat we do not understand is why each dwelling has only one or two individuals. In many cases the individuals seem to have died at different times. We can deduce this because in some cases of two individuals being present, we have found that one of the individuals was encased in a large sack. Often the second individual was discovered in a reclining position in close proximity on a piece of furniture specifically built to maintain this Skyward looking pose. Our testing on the material of the various sacks, suggest that an intact sack would have been air and water tight.

We do not know what happened to this civilization, the first assessments that these civilizations were ravaged by some kind of disease are called into question by some of our findings. (See previous reports attached)

On the one hand these people appear to have been civilized and lived in a social hierarchy. On the other hand, they don’t have art, music, or literature, all of which are precursors to civilization. It is almost as if there was some other “ruling class” who suddenly left, and the remaining population, without guidance couldn’t take care of themselves anymore.

This new find on the Southwest coast of the continent is in a remarkable state of preservation. No doubt owing to the arid climate and little rainfall. This site will keep archeologists busy for decades as we try to understand what happened here.

Clearly, this may be one of the civilizations of legend. Let us hope we can find out what happened here so that we may avoid the same mistake.

Addendum: Send more fuel. Our explorations are taking us deeper into tunnels under the city and we’re using lanterns more than expected.

2nd Addendum: Dr. Gravo just brought three artifacts to me. One looks like a ceremonial mask but there is no way to see through it when wearing it. The other two artifacts are small curved domes of glasslike material. Dr. Gravo found these in the eyesockets of one of the bodies. He began rechecking and has since found each body has a set, always found in the eyes.

Dr. Gravo has suggested cleaning and sanitizing a set then trying them on to see what function they may have served. He surmises that these are corrective lenses of some kind.

We’re going to work through the night so we can allow the entire research team to try these little domes on.

I’m very excited to see the world as the ancients did, more tomorrow.

PinoutWhat if Atlantis was a High Technology Civilization surpassing our own? What if they actually did destroy themselves with that technology. What if the legends we have of magic are actually descriptions of technology that have been watered down through the ages?

What if we’re on a similar path?

Yeah, I sound like Ancient Aliens. But I have to say all of the stuff above crashed into my head in about 10 seconds. It’s not like I’m dwelling on it. 

It was just one of those weird trains of thought.

IurIt’s possible that artifacts in museums around the world are not what the arbitrary placards say they are. What if the oddball items are in fact technology that we don’t recognize as technology because it’s beyond our understanding.

After all would you recognize a memory chip if it was mounted in an amulet? Do you know what’s actually inside your TV, Phone, Computer, or Tablet? Would you know how to activate any of those components outside their user friendly boxes?

Pga pWithout a schematic or pin out description of a particular chip, I couldn’t even apply power to most of the chips used in our technology today. That’s coming from a guy who’s been working in technology for over 30 years.

Sure, I could figure it out with the right tools, but it’s not like those tools are just laying around and you’d have to understand that the tool… was a tool in the first place.

As I’ve said in the past… Be grateful that you don’t live in my head.

It’s Official, I’ve become my Grandfather

A younger person was complaining about the Microwave ovens down in the lunch room. At first I thought it would be that they’re dirty or too busy or something.

What rebooted my brain was when she said they were too slow.

SLOW?!?!?!

IGen and Phone EtiquetteI guess it’s that I am really old, or that she was really young but I couldn’t help but laugh.

And I did! I laughed hard and loud.

The young lady couldn’t understand what I found so funny, so I explained that when I was growing up There were no microwave ovens and we actually had to do things like boiling water over a FLAME of all things…

One of my coworkers from Trinidad was laughing too. He said that growing up, he had to carry buckets of water for a shower 3 out of 7 days.

She couldn’t believe what we were saying. Her only response was “Ewwww!”

That made me laugh even harder!

One of the other older guys asked what was so funny, we repeated the original assertion about the slowness of the microwave. The other guy busted up laughing!

The young lady was sooo confused. She had absolutely no idea how we “olders” could have a common experience. After all us “olders” don’t even know how to use the internet to stalk each other. She doesn’t get it that we do know how… we just choose not to.

Later on another young colleague says, “I hope people are nice to me when I’m old.”

I said, “They won’t be!”

He looked at me dumbfounded.

“How do you know?”

I told him, “Look around, look at the pussy hat wearing hateful people protesting against everything and everyone. They’re your generation and as far as they’re concerned, everyone before is responsible for all the ills in the world. And they hate and blame everyone before them all the while fanning the flames of division, asserting they have all the answers. They look at us and hate us for just doing the best we could, and trying to live our lives.”

“That’s dark man.”

“And unfortunately true,” I replied.

He shook his head, then went back to work.

It got me to thinking about the snowflake mentality.

So many of these people have no concept of hardship. They have such an easy comfortable life and they freak out when things like the internet is down, or they can’t make a cell phone call.

Main qimg 94166faffa2120a9426974df45288d70 c 901x507They can’t imagine no running water, or the electricity being out. 

I had it a lot easier than my parents. I had it easy because they worked their asses off to make my life better than theirs. Much the same way their parents did for them. I don’t recall a time when the house I lived in didn’t have a telephone or electricity. I do recall that air conditioning wasn’t common except in theaters and business centers. 

I remember wanting to go to the grocery store with my parents during the summertime. Why? Because I could hang out in the frozen food section and it was cool instead of swelteringly hot and humid. 

Movie theaters had great attendance on hot summer nights. Everyone sat quietly in the dark watching a movie because it was better than being outside or at home trying to sleep when the temp was 90 and the humidity was 100%

I remember the novelty of a car with air conditioning. Prior to that, you rolled down the road with all the windows down praying that you made all the traffic lights and didn’t have to stop.

There were no calculators, there were adding machines. They were big, noisy, clunky mechanical things. Rotary telephones were the norm and if it was a multiline phone it was a big deal. Those phones actually used mechanical switches to move between lines.

The first house I recall living in had a party line. If you picked up the phone, you listened for dial tone, if there wasn’t a dial done you heard someone else talking. That was how a lot of the gossip got spread in the neighborhood.  It was impolite to listen in, but sometimes the conversation was just too juicy to ignore.

All of that is gone now, at least in this country. I remember letting the phone ring 10 times and if there was no answer, you called again later. Answering machines were amazing and being able to retrieve your messages remotely, was a big innovation.

I remember the power going off frequently and some people not having a television. It was a big deal when my family got a color TV, and even then lots of shows were only broadcast in black and white, and there were 2 and 1/2 channels depending on the day. Cable was life changing.

All these memories are of a time that the youngsters of today would call hardships. But even as I kid I knew that things were better in my life than they’d been in my parents childhoods. There was an Aunt who had a hand powered water pump built into her kitchen counter. I remember being fascinated with it as a little kid.

My Grandparents used to tell us that we were spoiled. Now that I’ve got a long string of notches on my belt, I see their point. I also begin to understand their dismay when I had trouble with simple things. “No silly, you have to prime the pump. You can’t just keep yanking on that handle and expect water to gush out.”

6a00d8341c630a53ef015435450707970c 640wiLife is change.

I suppose that my concern – and that of my grandparents, is that dashing headlong into a technological future that builds dependency on that technology always working, will lead to a very fragile future.

After all how many people know how to make a fire without a lighter? How many people know what’s actually happening when they spin that little wheel?

What happens when the cellular network goes offline? How many people have candles in their pantry? How will you get news or emergency information if everything is coming from the internet? Does anyone even have a working AM radio anymore?

If all the books are digital what happens when there is no power anymore? 

These are things I never really considered until I saw more and more people living with their faces glued to a cell phone screen, and libraries closing due to lack of use.

As I’ve interacted with more and more young people It’s become clear that they will be utterly lost if our fragile infrastructure is damaged or destroyed. Depending on where they are in the world or even our country, they may not be able to access written texts because there won’t be any. Will any of them be able to fix basic machines, or understand simple irrigation systems? 

5000 years in the future, archeologists may well conclude that we had no written language, or that we had limited written communication via a set of glyphs… what we now call emojis. Will Western Civilization enter the realm of legend like Atlantis?

All this makes me wonder about our species, in general. 

2 queensuniverWe know that asteroid impacts have wrought apocalyptic destruction on our world in the past. It’s reasonable to expect that it could happen again. Would humanity, if it survived, have to start over from the stone age?

I suppose these are some of the things that scientists and futurists ponder. Strip away the technology and what do you end up with? Desperate, scared, hungry humans? A group of animals that are a hairs breadth away from the jungle? 

I wonder if it keeps those scientists up at night?

I wonder if people like me, that know how to make things work would be revered as wise beneficial wizards, or simply put to death for practicing witchcraft.

Things that make me go Huh?

Apparently, we now expect children to adhere to the same rules of sexual harassment conduct as we have in the workplace.

Clearly, another one of those WTF moments.

I was chatting with a friend whose child had been accused of sexual harassment for engaging in normal childhood play. The child is six! The school decided to take normal play that is not about sex but about annoying the girls, and sexualize it.

If you ask me, what the school did is WAY creepier than a little boy trying to gross a girl out.

“EWWWWW Teacher, he gave me cooties!”

Boys love to freak & gross out girls, That’s our only method of interacting before we’re remotely interested in any kind of Physical contact, much less kissing or sexual activity.

Boys love flipping boogers at the girls, we love hiding earthworms in cubbies. We thrill to the squealing EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!!!! of a good plastic spider in the prettiest girl in the class’s desk.

Boys are curious about the different thinking the girls exhibit. Boys are interested in girls noticing them. Girls are after all, typically ahead of boys scholastically, and socially.  In that advancement, for a time, girls are quite alien. So boys test them, annoy them, poke them and in elder times dipped their ponytails in the inkwell.

So why the hell are we treating little boys and little girls like criminals for normal, expected behavior a.k.a. being exactly what they are… Children!

I can’t even begin to imagine what reaction the old “Show me yours & I’ll show you mine” game would incite. Probably a full lock down of the school, letters to parents, and a hazmat crew!


In my childhood, I learned the physics of a catapult, and a lesson in duplicity from a girl named Patrice. She was bigger than I was and I’d been annoying her for many weeks. So one day, she invited me to the see/saw (teeter / totter) out on the playground. You know back int he day when children were allowed to go outside and PLAY.

Patrice started “bumping” the see / saw. She out weighed me by quite a bit, and with each successive “bump” It became harder to hold on to the see / saw handle. Eventually I was flying over her in a nice ballistic arc caused by her lack of braking, the flex of the wood, and the disparity between her weight and mine.

“Ohhh, that’s how a catapult works… and wow hitting the ground with my face kinda hurts.”

I distinctly recall Patrice and all her friends pointing and laughing. “How could he be soo stupid?” They were all asking each other.

Patrice hadn’t really wanted to see / saw with me at all, she was attempting to be mean. And due to my innocence she was successful.

I stopped annoying her, instead sticking close to my buddies as we continued attempting to figure out the mystery that were girls… from a safe distance.

I’d annoyed Patrice. She had enough of my annoyance and she fixed it. Her solution left my buddies and I huddled on the other side of the monkey bars like the primates we were. End of story and end of problem. I left Patrice alone and she left me alone, until Junior High School.

That’s when due to strange happenstance, she and I were paired up for square-dancing and we found that we enjoyed each other’s company. We started partnering up for chemistry, then archery, and we even went to our first school dance together.

I hope she remembers our interactions as fondly as I do.


It sounds like NONE of this kind of thing would be allowed to go on in a school today.

In fact, because of the way I annoyed Patrice I’d most likely have ended up suspended and my parents called into the principals office to discuss what an EVIL, VILE, PERVERT I was.

No doubt there’d have been bunch of questions regarding my home life and where on earth I was getting this horrific and inappropriate sexualized behavior. Perhaps my parents were abusing me or debasing me by forcing my innocent eyes to behold adults having sexual congress.

None of these rules or questions are appropriate for a child in Elementary School.

Children aren’t thinking sex, they’re blissfully ignorant, we should do our best to allow them to remain children, they’ll grow up in due time all on their own.

I don’t believe we’re making better people by isolating them from each other with rules and regulations and threats of suspension or zero tolerance policies. I think we’re creating people with no social skills.

Children explore & interact through experimentation. Sometimes they’re going to do the wrong thing and through the school of hard knocks learn how to avoid that mistake in the future.

I shudder to think what my life would have been like if all my failed experiments in socialization had been taken out of context, sexualized by the adults, or worse yet criminalized.

Oh, he was assaulted by someone who stabbed him with a pencil, so he acted out against a girl he perceived as weaker than him because of his inherent gender bias. He sexually harassed that girl because he was trying to regain some of his white male privilege and since he’s ‘Damaged Goods’ he should be sent to a school for troubled children. Or perhaps placed in remedial classes where he can be with other heavily medicated or violent ADHD children.”

What would I be like today?