Living in the Digital Age

Make yourself feel better & save $200,000 to boot

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We’re afflicted, here in Bangkok, by an atmosphere of foreboding. The messy events of April-May might appear to be behind us. But this surface calm, in some ways, resembles a moonlit pool on a still night. You’d never suspect this pool is full of big sharks just waiting to erupt in a frenzy. All they need is for someone to toss them a nice chunk of something bloody. Yesterday’s bomb was the mere slice of a dorsal fin, a wee … Read more

How to live a long time

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Leary here… Darn it, these last few days we’ve gone from spinning in our pre-graves to pre-obits to being pre-dead.

Whatever. Like some wise man once said, not me: Getting old is the only way there is of living a long time. And I want to live a long time. Gosh. The things that go on in this life, you just don’t want to miss what’s gonna happen next.

And here I am, coming to you from some time after … Read more

Something fishy at the basis of being

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Hey, and that’s just one island. The basis of the whole world is probably even weirder.

(There’s a PowerPoint selection of more surreal photos by Erik Johansson afloat in cyberspace, but I can’t seem to establish a link here. Ask me, and I’ll e-mail it to you.)… Read more

Digital dementia rools, OK!

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Last night at a Japanese restaurant, here in Bangkok, where you place order on an elaborate digital tablet at your table and wait to be served by giant robots. As though this weren’t enough, already, once in a while sprightly music breaks out and these outlandish machines dance furiously up and down the aisles getting in the way if you have to go for a piss. Dementia rools, OK!


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Apocalypses on all sides

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Me again. It seems Thailand is having its own little Apocalypse, back there where you folks are now. What with the Red Shirts, and the Yellow Shirts and the Multi-colors and one thing and another. The past few days have seen the hopes of all right-thinking people taking a roller-coaster ride. Meanwhile, it’s plain to see some other people believe it’s to their advantage to have civil society explode into real strife, and to heck with the good of the … Read more

Beepification

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Leary here. I see Collin is worried about where this world is headed. And well he might be. Much of what he says about the iPad is true, but he doesn’t foresee the half of it, or the other snazzy devices coming just around the corner.

Anyway, I was reading some old notes the other day, stuff from way back at the start of my second half-century. I see that one day in Bangkok in 2010 I was riding the … Read more

More universes

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I see Jack is touting Bill Page’s book The Nirvana Experiments (which is in a state of suspension, publication-wise, prospective publishers please note).

Coincidentally, given my last post regarding this universe, possible other ones, and connections between them, Bill reviewed Dawkins’ The God Delusion recently, and I’ve abstracted the following passage:  

[T]o his credit, Dawkins defines his terms clearly. He is attacking what he calls the God Hypothesis: The belief that “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed
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Russian doll universes/where does it stop?

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If you were thinking our world seemed a tad out of whack at times, it could be you were right. But all is now clear (“Our universe at home within a larger universe?” Science News), and we can carry on in face of any outofwhackishness, knowing what’s what and why. (Wait. No, we don’t know why; not yet. Possibly because God wanted it so.)

 I may have to revise the third book in my futuristic trilogy, as … Read more