Year 2006 CE is winding down but hopefully we aren't. Just a dash of snow in November, none since, but still we gaze longingly southward. Will we be here much longer? NOTE: This is not a bLog so you don't have to read it upside down, except for the CONTENTS list, unless you really want to.

A soft day, as they say in Ireland. That means rain: more-or-less contin­uous rain; more-or-less light rain. More cleanup and cooking; we'll be ready for the Xmas feed. I still can't get Linux to treat the screen right. Then to Chateau Sharon&Fred for their first guests-invited dinner since moving in. Still too wet for UFOs but deer litter the roadways like vagrant morons.

Culture War:   Meanwhile, Joe Bageant writes convincingly that USA Funda­men­talism is a blood religion of frightened fockwit illiterates. But a brilliant reader response points out that schooling is a political activity.

# Soviet Russia taught Lamarckian science, where evolution is driven by striving; a mindset that produces nice little Communists.

# Secular America teaches Darwinian science, where evolution is driven by competition; a mindset that produces nice little Capitalists.

# Fundamentalism teaches Creation science, where everything is set in place by God. Individuals are small and powerless; the rich and powerful are blessed, annointed by God; the current world and environment don't matter. This mindset produces nice little Royal Subjects.

There IS a culture war, and it's about re-instituting feudalism. If the Fundy Jeezoids win, same as when Fundy Islamists win, you can kiss democracy and diversity bye-bye. Will you miss them?

More cleaning and cooking and house-arranging. Maureen has fun deco­rating. I try installing Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 on both the Sony PCG-SR27 and the Mindset 7366 (roughly equivalent Win95-era machines), and can configure video adequately on neither. I'm frustrated. Hey, I was a DOS Guru, not a Penguin Head. All command-line prompts are NOT the same. Bother. Then I spend an hour squeezing limes and slicing onions. It's all enough to make me cry.

Meanwhile, did you know that you are not an individual, but a community of diverse organisms? All those intestinal bacteria and skin mites and other parasites and symbiotes — you are a collective. Your biota form an aura that surrounds you in a cloud of life and chemistry. This cloud mediates all your inter­personal inter­actions. Think about it.

Singularity:   Futurist-inventor Ray Kurzweil reasonably projects that rapidly-developing technologies will soon lead to a singularity of human existence, a point where we'll exercise nearly unlimited control over our internal and external environments. An example: nanobots coursing through our bloodstreams will repair our bodies (including our brains), giving us effective immortality. We will be as gods. At that point, traditional religion becomes irrelevant.

How do we get there? Information processing power doubles every year. Scientific knowledge (including what we know of mental functions and biology) more than doubles every year. Doubling increments VERY fast. In 20 years, the increase is over a million-fold. In 30 years, it's over a billion-fold. And it doubles AGAIN every year. Somewhere between 10 and 30 years from now, we should know enough to live forever.

So let's get trans-human. Will the human situation improve? Life for most people gets better all the time. But every new technology provides for weapons as well as tools, with opportunities for shitheads as well as saints. SciFi writer John Varley's fiction forecasts our descendent super-people as being the usual petty grubs. Whatever. Prepare for exciting (if incomprehensible) times.

Yet more cleaning and organizing for tomorrow's shindig. Almost ready. I'm playing Shostakovich string quartets to set that old Xmas mood. Right. I install FIREFOX and see just how shitty my webpages look there — I'll have to rebuild EVERYTHING! Yow. Then we're back over to Chateau Sharon&Fred for Xmas Eve buffet and gifting with Las Abuelitas and ALL the cousins (almost). A superb evening. Holiday bloat is setting in. Yow.

Meanwhile, consider our personal places in history and the future. Any single event-point in space-time results from the sum-over-history of ALL previous events. And ALL events occuring in the NOW, determine the course of the future. We build the future as we go along. Everything we do is more-or-less important in defining what happens next. Wow.

The CDs played: Polish and Hungarian and Gregorian Xmas music, Chiapan marimbas, PDQ Bach. Our efforts redouble, reach fruition. Much scurrying about the kitchen, lagging around the living room, concentrating in front of the computer (cocerned over sports' pools, game scores — but not me).

Despite the activity we have pnly 14 for the fantastic Frida Kahlo dinner; outside, blinding rain. Leftovers for a week or three. Convivial company. I collapse early again. Merry Xmas.

Meanwhile, consider applying menus to different areas. A menu of food or TV or toy choices, sure. Now try menu-driven politics, religion, economics. Try to make them work. The solution is left as an exercise for the reader.

Early morning thunderstorm, heavy with hail and nearby lightning; a power outage. My big Toshiba 'laptop' seems to die. Shit shit shit. What *else* will happen today? Later, the Toshiba revives. Whew. For now.

Rain falls all day. We rest all day. I sleep, and sleep again. Tomorrow will be busy. Are we missing post-Xmas sales? Too bad. We're too exhausted and too broke to drive'n'shop now.

Meanwhile, consider that capitalism is built upon failure. Every business venture eventually fails. Most die young; some continue for a number of years; a tiny percentage survive their founders. Should government be run like a business? Do you want your government to last longer than the average corporation?

Yes, today is the day to start putting everything away, back into boxes. But not us, oh no. That's for everyone else. We get to drive down the ridge and across the foothills to Copperopolis, to pick up the repaired RV. Pick up a few supplies en route, roll back home.

Rain rain rain. Maybe we needn't worry about a drought after all. It's almost a good day for a long scenic drive through the lower Gold Rush country. The problem with this sort of long scenic drive is that we must return home afterwards.

We're scheduled for a goback to Chateau Fred&Sharon for yet another fest. Tonight, the first-ever Cousins' Dinner, with the pairings of ALL the get of Las Abuelitas. Except I'm exhausted and skip the fun. What a wimp.

Meanwhile, the online and radio news sources I heed emit gloomy retro­spec­tives of the past year. Indian Ocean tsunami, Kashmir earthquake, Caribbean hurricanes. Major slaughters in Congo and Sudan, minor geno­cides else­where, the ongoing Iraq disaster, the ongoing demise of US demo­cracy. We skim past these in daily life: just vicarious displeasures.

Distortion:   Last night I assembled a simple photo apparatus: a sawed-off ruler with a clamp-on magnifying lens at one end and a camera clamp towards the other. Aim the camera through that lens and I have a rough simulation of a Holga etc toy camera, with its asymmetrical plastic lens and light leaks and focus problems. I can adjust the lens for all sorts of distor­tions and vignetting. I shot around the house, at the Copperopolis lunch­room, etc. Close-ups look best; I'll practice and learn about distance shots. I'll have to try it around town, if I ever get back to town.

A few days ago I tried to mod an old Logitech WebCam, tried to pull out the IR filter to allow for wider-spectrum image captures. But I couldn't get the lens off without probable damage. Bother. The basic disassembly allows for a stretched focus, for ultra-macro imaging. But it's pretty fuzzy, being around 352x480 resolution. Another possibility: remove that lens and replace it with a pinhole. But will the sensor respond to such minimal light? Also, try performing similar surgery on my cheap 480x640 Vivitar ViviCam 3350. Maybe next time we're in Sacratomato, stop at HSC and look for cheap webcams to dissect.

Get up early. Work some, but only on the newer Sony [Gazelle], as the big Toshiba [Goliath] is dead, and the older Sony [Ginome] and even older MindSet [Ganesa] are currently braindead. Sleep more, arise around noon. Rain pours down. Leftovers are eaten. Tomorrow will be different.

Did I mention that Santa brought me a 20 Questions cybergame called 20Q? [And see 20Q.Net] It figured out Xmas Tree and commo radio but failed on my camera, my Native American flute, and penis. It's good that cybergames don't win all the time, like chess.

Yuppie Culture:   On the drive to Copperopolis yesterday, we tuned to a radio talkshow with an author flogging his book on the Yuppie Cultural Heritage. [See and hear it here.] He made many vapid generalizations about 78 million people. Lotsa luck there.

Pop-Talk about culture seems to focus mainly on what music and TV and movies someone consumes. But in anthropology, culture is what people do: behaviors and technologies. So, what did/does this generation do that previous generations did not? The author asserted that Yuppies are very materialistic and spend lots of money. But it happens that credit cards were invented in 1952. Postwar generations had more money to spend because easy credit was available, unlike earlier times.

Another difference: earlier generations made a lot of stuff themselves. Pre-WWI it was mostly from scratch: tools, clothes, contrivances. Later came kits. But post-WWII sees lots of goodies fabricated very cheaply overseas, so we no longer have as much in the way of home-brew or kit-built models and electronics and furniture and entertainments. Why stitch your own clothes when Ross or Goodwill are around the corner? Yuppies may be the last US generation to avail themselves of kits.

Or maybe I'm wrong there. The next installment of that radio show deals with DIY (Do It Yourself) culture. [See and hear it here.] Maybe it's just that the range of what's available cheap has changed and expanded, and we still like making other stuff. But what part of this is a Yuppie thing?

I think with Yuppies we can observe an expansion of artistic expression. Related to more leisure time? Less making of necessities, more craft and art. And more people playing portable musical instruments, swapping pianos for guitars etc. Or maybe that's just me.

Yuppies certainly had/have the opportunity to consume audiovisual inputs . Portable radios and TVs, 8-track and cassette players, ubiquitous pop entertainments. And the legacy? Now sounds and images from all times, all over the world, are available for adoration and/or inspiration and/or mashups. Linked to expanded environmental awareness? 'Tis good.

KING KING DAY
Morning: as usual.
Afternoon: Pick up Maureen's mother and sister (Bobbie and Sharon) and drive down to Jackson to see KING KONG.

I haven't been to cimena much lately — sound volumes are usually painful. The previews were loud and annoying, but that's why I bring earplugs. Earplugs weren't necessary during the film despite all the roaring and screaming. Not enough screaming, really; splendid Naomi Watts gazed and gaped meaningfully but oh so quietly. How did she remain conscious whilst being swung around so much? And why didn't Kong undress her, or reach into a skycraper bedroom for her? The only other quibble might be about the giant bugs. Ewww, we HATE those bugs.

Peter Jackson has out-Verhoevened STARSHIP TROOPERS and out-Spiel­berged JURASSIC PARK (I & II) and almost out-Cameroned TITANIC and definitely out-Lucased ILM, somehow outdoing nearly every other film ever made. Three hours seemed like two, and only a couple minutes could have been cut — but I'm not sure which ones.

(How out-of-it am I, cinema-wise? The only actor I recognized was Kong himself, played by Golum. The only name I recognized was the director, Peter Jackson. I think I've heard of Jack Black, or maybe I'm thinking of Joe Black. Whatever. At least I don't have to know How To Watch Revenge Of The Sith.)

We emerged from the theatre into the brisk night and hit some local markets for supplies, most of us making ape noises as we swung down the produce aisles looking for nice bamboo shoots to chew on.

Rain rain go away. Oops, not today, nope. We hear of flooding down­hill, especially around our old Russian River haunts. This morning was as usual; and for the afternoon, we drove uphill briefly, attaining snow but not feeezing air. A good old Pineapple Express is pumping masses of warm wet air at California. Get a raft and some life-jackets. Spread a sail. Let the wet wind, the blowing rain, take you to a far place. Glub.

Meanwhile, this is a computer transition time for me. The big Toshiba [Goliath] won't boot. I suspect the boot ROM. I'll probably have to take it to a local tech. But that costs money. So it'll wait. Trying to install Linux has been a bust. (Maybe I should have read HOW TO INSTALL LINUX ON A DEAD BADGER, eh?) I've reinstalled and updated WinME on the old Sony Vaio [Ginome] with power problems. The oldest MindSet [Ganesa] is due for a reload of Win95/98, but why? It needs a USB adaptor to be able to tie into the local net, and it's really only useful to drive a guitar MIDI device. And I ain't been playing guitar that much lately. So maybe it'll just sit there until we're back here for another few months.

I've said this before of fast-changing technology, I'll say it again: When traveling for longish periods, any device not taken with you goes obsolete quickly. So, only acquire and use small, cutting-edge gizmos. But anything taken on an adventure journey is liable to damage or theft. What a pickle.

Oh yeah: a REMONSTRANCE is not a repeated MONSTRANCE. And 30 December is Gadsden Purchase Day — without it, Bisbee would be in Sonora, so we'd probably have to part-time in Jerome instead.

A nothing day, mostly. A stormy day, pouring rain and a little blasting thunder. The flooding at our old Forestville locale approaches record levels. Maureen goes to the Chateau to watch movies all day and evening; I stay here and keyboard away like a fool, ignoring the eBay TurboListing software. Soon, soon...

Meanwhile, consider 2005. We traveled far. We left goals unreached. We maintained physical-mental health fairly well. We made friends and lost no relatives. We gained a computer and lost another (probably). We only collected a few goodies. This was neither the best nor worst of years.

Of course, calendar years are arbitrary constructs; a better system would use the solstices to delimit years. See How To Create Your Own DATE-TIME SYSTEM and to Hell With Everybody Else for tips on creative calendar engineering. Hey, time has come today.

Resolutions:   Over the holidays, a dKos blogger asks What's Your Fucking Problem? (WYFP) and generates some vague but interesting FP resolutions. I shall adopt those resolutions myself. They are:

• To deal with my FP's gracefully and diligently,
• To help others with their FP's as I am able, and
• Not to be the FP.

Hast thou any resolutions of thine own? Are they any more sensible or attainable than the above? Do they address either escape or involvement, or something else entirely? Are you unresolvable?

Ah well. Happy 2006, everybody.