commies from mars

we know now that in the early years of the twenty-first century this world was being watched closely by socialists browner than we real americans and far less moral than our own. terrorists lusty, stoned and sociopathic, regarded the land of the free and the suburbs of the brave with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. in the twentieth year of the twenty-first century came the great awakening.

it was near the end of may. stocks were better. the covid scare was over. more men were back at work. cities were re-opening. on this particular evening, may 31, internet world stats estimated that 4.65 billion people were cruising the internet ...

donald j. trump @realDonaldTrump, may 31

the united states of america will be designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization.

anonymous, may 31

i am not one to spread false information, i have been informed by numerous realizable resources. the protest planned for tonight at 8:30 in downtown klamath falls, IS GOING TO BE DANGEROUS. there are two buses heading this way from portland, full of ANTIFA members and loaded with bricks. their intentions are to come to klamath falls, destroy it, and murder police officers. there have been rumors of the ANTIFA going into residential areas to 'fuck up the white hoods'.

do not get me wrong. i am all for peaceful protesting. infact i was going to attend the protest tonight believing it was going to be peaceful.

the real 3%ers idaho, may 31

ATTN ada county BUSINESS OWNERS in boise and surrounding areas:

we have credible intel tonight that antifa and other groups are planning a riot tonight in the boise area. their plan is to destroy private property in the city and continue to residential areas. we are calling on all business owners to contact us if you are concerned for your business and your private property immediately. we are here to protect you, your private business, and have teams on the ground standing by.

ghost 117 @ThomasMerrick16, jun 1

Antifa is now in klamath falls Oregon my home town we the people of klamath falls #Patriotsforlife let's get these terrorists out of our town

cory johnson @cjohnsondubai, jun 1

time to lock and load to protect our home. two buses of antifa showed up in klamath falls and with in an hour the citizens were on the street heavily armed.

pacificriver @pacificedge541, jun 1

3 buses of BLM/antifa dropped off in klamath falls oregon. residents out too protect thier town.

i climbed a small hill above the pond at sixtieth street. i looked in vain for the monsters or the buses that reportedly had brought them.

it was later found that they were killed by the disinfecting agents against which their systems were unprepared. slain, after all man's defenses had failed, by the two humblest things that god in his wisdom put upon this earth: time ... and the cold hard light of reality.

(apologies to h.g. wells)

[nbc news]
in klamath falls, oregon, victory declared over antifa, which never showed up

...still others remain convinced that antifa had been there that night, run off by the sight of hundreds of armed patriots.

and that’s the story spreading online.

"antifa retreats from suburb after business owner and neighborhood show up with guns," stated the headline on the website newspunch, one of the internet’s most notorious fake news destinations. the article quotes a facebook post by dan kline, the owner of a local billiards bar.

"i have never felt a threat to my business as i did last night," kline wrote in his post. "antifa didn’t make it to the courthouse and my bar had no incidents. antifa walked into a hornet’s nest. it was like a sixth grade football team walking into the oakland coliseum to take on the raiders."

if only the shadow knew ...

... a little more about physics. can you spot the errors?

(story and art by howard chaykin, colors by jesus aburto)

where lamont cranston a.k.a the shadow a.k.a. author/artist howard chaykin talks about density, he clearly should be referring to mass. shrinking an object in the manner deduced by the shadow would actually increase its density, since the same number of atoms would now occupy a smaller volume. what would remain unchanged is the object's mass and gravity's effect on it. the ingots would weight exactly the same as they always have, which means the shadow and his cohorts shouldn't be able to handle them with just their fingers and pass them around like peanuts.

on the other hand, the shrinking machine has yet to be revealed. it's possible back in 1949 some fugitive evil nazi genius actually discovered how to warp space itself, which would allow him to shrink an object by shrinking the space between its atoms, instead of merely moving them closer together in normal space. voila! smaller ingots, same density. (same mass and weight, however.)

in any case, one wouldn't use a spectrometer to measure density. (but one can use a mass spectrometer to analyze an object's mass.) in order to measure density, one need only weight it on a scale and divide by its total volume.

from the shadow: midnight in moscow #1, may 2014.

the plague

a tale set in the far-flung year 2000 from marvel comics' tales to astonish #44, june 1963:

(story by stan lee & art by steve ditko)

*** warning: spoiler alert below ***

for some historical perspective, in 1964 guns killed 5,473 victims, a homicide rate of 2.9 per 100,000. by 2010 guns killed twice as many: 11,078 at a rate of 3.6. a decade and a half past the once-imaginary future, the "plague" is thriving. that open-carry is at least starting to look like a disease may be one prediction marvel got right.

stan "the man" lee, never one for subtlety in storytelling, seems to have pulled his punch in this twilight zone inspired tale; his unnamed "plague-carrier" not once inflicted his disease upon his apparently defenseless pursuers. while shooting unarmed police would have effectively demonstrated the terror of firearms, it's clear lee didn't want to give up any element of surprise before the final panel.

certainly the terror of firearms has been long self-evident, making demonstrations unnecessary, but perhaps the sacrifice of some drama was also unnecessary, since the reader, already inured to countless gun chases, would be unlikely to guess too soon that the gun itself was this parable's "mcguffin" and not merely the protagonist's means of escape.

quote of the day

isn't it curious that despite the fact that virtually every sentient being on the planet these days is now carrying around a hand-held device that can instantly record at least a few minutes of video, we haven't seen a single second of persuasive evidence that alien beings are zipping around the atmosphere in their jazzy, souped-up, silent-as-midnight "flying saucers"?

— "john"

the birther era

... cliff notes version:

as is man, so is god

(story and art by reuben bolling)

the akin defense

senate hopeful and gynecological expert todd akin (r-mo) certainly sounds like a another tea party twit today, but tomorrow, who knows?

because akin sounds like he's been reading the jane's defense weekly for female sexual self-defense — "aeon flux: the herodotus file" (1995):

(story by mark mars and eric singer, art by eric canete and peter chung)

waiting for OMGodot

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dedicated to "squeeky":

i listened to the interview and it was certainly interesting. but i am starting to get that feeling i get when i watch destination truth or ghost hunter on TV. you know when they are out looking for werewolves in minnesota and right before the commercial somebody hollers OH MY GOD!!!

then you stick around through the commercial to see if they found the werewolf or big foot or whatever they are hunting for and when it comes back on, somebody tripped over a log or something or there was raccoon in the bush.

or if it’s ghost hunter the "spirit orbs" turns out to be dust reflecting lights. sooo, i hope if corsi* has something good, he gets it out in a hurry and doesn’t make this last through another few books or something. because i am not sure my heart can take all this.

* jerome corsi, shameless peddler of stillborn expose where's the birth certificate?

and acknowledgments to ray bradbury, whose title i stole from his 1951 short story about existential doubt — an astronaut loses his confidence in evidence or memory, his sense of object permanence, his belief in his own existence and, ultimately, his life:

i don't believe in anything i can't see or hear or touch. i can't see earth, so why should i believe in it?

... when i'm in boston, new york is dead. when i'm in new york, boston is dead. when i don't see a man for a day, he's dead. when he comes walking down the street, my god, it's a resurrection. i do a dance, almost, i'm so glad to see him. i used to, anyway. i don't dance any more.

... you have no mental evidence. that's what i want, a mental evidence i can feel. i don't want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. i want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. but there's no way to do that. in order to believe in a thing you've got to carry it with you. you can't carry the earth. or a man, in your pocket. i want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so i can believe in them.

... there was always that gap of proof. that gap between doing and having done. what is done is dead and is not proof, for it is not an action. only actions are important. and pieces of paper were remains of actions done and over and now unseen. the proof of doing was over and done. nothing but memory remained, and i didn't trust my memory. could i actually prove i'd written these stories? no. can any author?

however, unlike the doomed astronaut, birthers aren't actually sincere in their endless demands for "evidence"; they simply hide behind such claims in order to deny the results of the 2008 election.

a day in june

as enjoyed by howard cruse in the june 1984 edition of heavy metal magazine:

at the movies

speaking strictly for myself, i know, upon seeing a madman charging headlong at me with teeth grit, nostrils flared and extreme prejudice in his eye, that my first impulse wouldn't be ... to charge headlong at him.

which is probably why i'm not an action hero:

on the other hand, who hasn't savored all the little emotions flitting across your opponent's face, as he slowly comes to the cold realization that you've just defaced him — literally:

who wants to live forever?

while i for one have no hesitation in answering that question with an "ooh-ooh-ooooh! me, me, me! pick me!" and an enthusiasm that would embarrass arnold horshack, quite a number of people roll their eyes and "pshaw!" the very notion, as if their contemptuous dismissal of the question were based on principle rather than sour grapes. truthfully, as long as the fantasy lies far beyond the furthest demonstrated capabilities of our best doctors and scientists, it's a sane response. still, one need only pick up the news on any given day to conclude that the instinct for self-preservation handily trumps the instinct for sanity-preservation and i would even argue that the will to survive — or more fundamentally, resistance to entropy — is intrinsic to the very nature of life itself.

immortality through licensing: not everyone's first choice.curiously though, many of the same folks who look down their wrinkled nostrils at what appears to be a selfish and unseemly desire also fail to see the hypocrisy in adopting a religion, every example of which, without exception, dangles the promise of everlasting life as the ultimate door prize for membership. immortality of course resurfaces again and again as a favorite literary trope in science fiction and fantasy, and would merit inclusion among my "great fictions of science fiction" were even the most credulous trekwars fanboy actually taken in by any of sci-fi's most seductive claims. clearly, religion continues to win this contest.

why most popular conceptions of technology-conferred immortality remain so wanting was recently summarized by commenter cerberus at pz myers' science blog pharyngula, in a conversation originally catapulted from futurist ray kurzweil's claim that within ten years we could "reverse-engineer" the human brain, which would allow us, in myers' words, "to write software that simulates all the functions of the human brain":

creating a robotic brain to "download your consciousnes" into or the "i'll make a clone version of myself with all my memories" sci-fi fiction immortality ideas are kinda false immortalities. it's at best, assuming a complete successful procedure a process of ending one's consciousness so that a puppet version of yourself can emulate your life possibly for all eternity. great, but what does that do for [the] real you? real you is just as dead and gone and unable to be a part of and appreciate what your puppet is doing in its absence. i'm sure this has been repeatedly addressed in the various thread wars during my absence, but it seems kind of stupid. i'd love to extend lifespans, i'd love to live forever if that was possible, but as long as we're talking fantasies, asking for the power to fart sparkly flying unicorns seems less stupid than asking for a robot facsimile to live forever on your behalf. i mean, if you're going to be all cult about this, pick something that wouldn't be completely contrary to your intended desire if you got it.

the problem is that neither of these techniques provides any continuity between the real, original you — the unique, dynamic but amorphous energy pattern that emerges as a product of your brain activity — and whatever it is that will emerge from your shiny new robot body or your baby-fresh clone body, even if it seems identical. this is the component that must be bodily transferred (pun intended), and not merely copied or "downloaded", to its new host, in order for the real you to live past your expiration date. otherwise, if all you're accomplishing is creating a vanity being as a monument to yourself, there's still nothing more simple, more efficient, more tried and tested, more mundane and less controversial than finding a partner and just having a child.

however ... since we're already vacationing here on futurist fantasy island with a white-suited ray kurzweil, where we already have his schematics for building an entire artificial brain right in front of us, it's suddenly possible to provide the continuity we need in order to engineer our transference into everlasting life. the means is in fact quite simple: by replacing the brain, in a series of discrete, stepwise procedures, with kurzweil's robot circuitry, we can preserve the continuity of consciousness by progressively swapping out sections of the original organic substrate (ie, the gray matter) with new artificial upgrades until we've completely replaced it, right from under the still actively running pattern! by conducting each procedure without rendering the subject unconscious for even a moment, but instead continuously maintaining communication with and monitoring feedback from the subject and assessing our progress after each procedure, we can assure ourselves that the same person who laid down on our operating table is the same person getting back up.

let's say that kurzweil's brain can be broken down into 100 discrete modules, and let's say that the first step is replacing the area that processes smell. so we open up our patient, reroute her smell center to the new robot smell module, turn it on, then shut down the corresponding area of her gray matter, excise it, and pop the module into place, all the while maintaining a continuous stream of realtime communication with her. now, if we were to end the operation right here with just this one module, with our patient's brain now 1% artificial and sporting a new (and perhaps even improved) smell center, no one would credibly question whether she was in fact still the same person who woke up that morning instead of some soulless android changeling. she'd certainly be no more android than anyone else who's ever received any other kind of artificial limb or organ.

and if we fast-forward to the end of the hundredth and final procedure, in which, let's say, we've replaced her libido, making her brain now 100% artificial, could anyone credibly argue that this individual was not the same person who successfully emerged from the 99th procedure, and who successfully emerged from the 98 procedures before it? it would be very difficult to make that argument without being able to pinpoint any moment or period when our patient, or more precisely, when her uninterrupted brain pattern changed in such a way that would no longer allow us to still call it "the real her". it is precisely because that pattern was not allowed to be interrupted that "the real her" was preserved as we built its new chassis under it. so, in geekspeak, instead of attempting to "download" our nebulous and intangible consciousness into a new machine, we've merely installed a live upgrade or "sidegrade" of its existing hardware and firmware as a series of modular patches, without turning off or rebooting the system. voilà — immortality v1.0! or at the very least a new lease on life until her android body is finished, but considering what we've already accomplished, the rest is just child's play.

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afterword: of course, immortality does become somewhat problematic in about five billion years from now, when our friend the sun finally implodes. we'd most certainly want a ticket out of town, preferably on a ship capable of faster-than-light travel (not bloody likely) with lots of dvds on board for the tens — perhaps hundreds — of thousands of years ahead of us in the tractless void before we arrive anywhere interesting. of course, we need not be awake for the whole adventure: i know my android body will definitely have a "sleep" mode installed.

bp 2050

the ongoing wake-up call ringing itself off the hook in the mexican gulf brings to mind 1980's "solar plexus", a cautionary bit of science fantasy by rick veitch, which originally appeared in the fourth issue of marvel comics' first color magazine epic illustrated:

(story and art by rick veitch)

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hate to nitpick, but veitch does make some stereotypical comic book science blunders and his most glaring one is off by an order of magnitude: the sun's radius is almost 700,000km, so a mere 50,000km tap would hardly come close to "penetrating deep into the sun's meaty guts ..." as veitch describes.

but editor archie goodwin committed a far more serious error: he ran veitch's story with pages 6 and 7 out of order — an unpardonable sin about which i'm sure goodwin thinks he's already heard enough.