Offloading trouble.

In the final days leading up to the election, I heard several things that upon reflection made me think of the famous story by Ursula K. Le Guin called "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." The imaginative premise of the story, in brief, is that there is a city of perpetual happiness and peace called Omelas, but its happy state rests entirely on a dark secret -- that one child be held in perpetual misery and darkness. Everyone else is joyful and free, but that child must remain in a state of sheer horror or the whole thing collapses. 

What brought it to mind was that, over and over again, I would hear from citizens of this free country demanding that the government guarantee so-called positive rights -- a right to food, education, health care, housing -- rather than the negative rights of just staying out of our faces -- not interfering with speech, religion, person freedom, etc. The more I heard this, the more I got to wonder why supposed adults would expect that someone else must always be required to foot the bill for them, and in many or even most cases even to free them from the bare requirements of survival, or even the consequences of their own actions. 

For example, no authority stops someone from being irresponsible over sex. They are free to do as they like. But they also want to be free from the consequences of the behavior. Someone else must pay for the health care, the drugs, the abortion, the child care and all that entails (if they keep the baby). If not, it is unfair and shows the system is corrupt and evil. 

I've heard of no-fault divorces, no-fault insurance, and no-fault claims, but what they want are no-fault lives.

In a way, though, all of us are citizens of Omelas, in the sense that the bulk of our own citizens benefit from the work of other citizens in jobs we would never want to do. Cops, prison guards, firemen, stool sample examiners, high-rise window washers, sewer workers, nurses in Alzheimer's patient wards, teachers in bad neighborhoods, and so on. We'd rather not think about them. We worry more about the garbage than the garbagemen.  

In one way most of are and really can't help but be citizens of Omelas. That is, the reason we are free and at liberty to fight one another rather than fight other nations is because, for all its faults, we still have the finest military in the world. Most of are too old or too young or just not physically capable of going to war. Whether we like to think about it or not, our active military and our veterans have made our largely pleasant lives possible. 

They have also made us proud. They have endured and suffered, in some cases beyond most of our understanding, so that we may have a chance to be happy and free -- even free to ignore who they are and what they have given for us. 

So I want to thank our veterans on this post on this Veterans Day. They really have secured the blessings of our liberty. May God bless them and may our nation be grateful to them. 

Scary time.

For little American kids, the journey from the start of school in the fall to the next big event, Halloween, takes approximately eight years. Not so for adults. 

Hallowhine

As wise person once noted that life is like a roll of toilet paper; the further into it you are, the faster it goes. There's no better example than seeing how quickly life moves for adults than children. As I've noted here before, how could it be otherwise? For a man of fifty, one year is 1/50th of his entire life; for a kid of four, it's an entire quarter, and he doesn't even remember the first half. The kid would have no way to understand the internal reference of time's passage that an older man has. 

That's the scary thing about time -- you don't have to be Einstein to see that it's a relative phenomenon. No wonder even the ancients tried to invent timepieces. No one could agree on how long anything took. 

"You said this would be over in a short time!"  

"It was! Wasn't it great?"

"It sucked! And it lasted for ... a very LONG time!"

"If only we had some means of knowing how long things took, we could see who's right."

"There's the passage of the sun."

"It's cloudy."

"Well -- I'm right and you're wrong and it lasted a WHOLE LOT of time!"

I was thinking about relativity recently, Einstein's little killjoy for universal exploration. Before he got all smarty-pants about the speed of light and everything, we could think that if we only could make something fast enough, we could get to other stars in no time. Then Albie is like, "Wait, there's a speed limit! No going past C." And we were like, "Oh, man! At that speed, the next galaxy is more than two million years away!" And he's like "Sorry, dude. Better pack a lunch."

But it gets worse. Now we know that time would pass differently for the people moving near that speed than for us on Earth, moving at Earth speed. What kind of craziness does that lead us to? It's why space-faring capitalist companies like in the Alien movies would never work. You'd launch from Earth as an employee of Earthy McEarth Enterprises (EME), and by the time you got to your destination, EME had merged, failed, the pieces bought up, a new company planned, created to fanfare with various funding rounds, had an IPO, got absorbed in an LBO, the main company failed, tried to get a government handout, crashed, and everyone is dead because the sun went nova. 

Don't be fooled by so-called Universal Time. It doesn't apply to the universe. Is it ever the same time all at the same time throughout the universe? If at my house it's Monday, August 15, 2033, 8:09:12 a.m., is it something different all over the place? I can't understand it. 

Well, one thing young and old can both agree on with time, and that's when it's something fun, it's over too soon. And that's true on whatever planet you happen to be on. 

We Print the Truth.

When I was a youth I read a lot of science fiction short stories, and fantasy too, some dating back to the earliest days of the genres. One of my all-time favorite stories is Anthony Boucher's novella "We Print the Truth," published in 1944.

It has an absolutely terrific setup and really works the premise out well. In the story, John McVeagh, the editor of a small city paper, is granted one wish -- and his wish is that his newspaper live up to its proud and lofty slogan, "We Print the Truth." Back in those days, children, newspapers really prided themselves for genuine (not pretend) objectivity, desiring to actually tell the public the facts. Our hero's wish reflects well on his character and dedication.

That's how the trouble starts. 

He envisions the wish being a preventive against the paper printing anything false, but it doesn't work out that way. When a 77-year-old resident passes away, a typo in the obituary lists the man's age as 17. Thus, the coroner and McVeagh are shocked to find in the casket the body of a teenager. 

As he begin to realize what this magic power means for the paper, McVeagh decides to change the world. He goes for broke and runs a story that World War II is over! The Allies have won! And the whole town reads the news with great joy.

Except the war is not over. Everyone within the paper's circulation district believes the war is over, but it's true nowhere else. When the FBI sends a man to find out why the factory has stopped fulfilling munitions orders and the draft board stopped sending men, he too believes the war is over when he enters the town. All over the world, however, the war continues. 

And that's just one crazy issue caused by the power of this particular press. 

I've given away enough of the plot; you can read the story at the Internet Archive. Just look for the collection of Boucher stories entitled The Compleat Werewolf, and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It's worth the time. 

I guess I was thinking of it because, while few journalists really seem to care about the truth today, they sure want to change the world. But, as with McVeagh, they really have far less power over the world than they think, even if they're willing to run the truth into the ground and spit on it to make it what they want. Of late we've been given a very good look at what they mean by "truth," and whatever they mean by it, it sure isn't true. 

The one thing that gave them legitimacy, honesty, is the currency they paid for power, and now they find themselves with much less of both. 

P.S.: My favorite science fiction short story is “Happy Ending“ by Henry Kuttner, if you’re curious. There are spoilers, so don’t look for plot summaries.

Assault on batteries.

I have to say, I have been very let down by batteries. The limits of battery capacity have completely upended any hopes of getting away from fossil fuels. No one seems to want to talk about this in the press, but it's true. 

After 9/11, many people (including me) wondered if we could get rid of our reliance on fossil fuels quickly. Nothing to do with the climate -- this was about starving the petrogarchs who sponsor terrorism. Ruining the garbage nations that only had oil to sell and only hatred to manufacture. It has not worked out. 

Even if we lived in a fantasy world where windmills and solar panels were not a useless boondoggle of limited and ecology-flattening waste, and where environmentalists would let us dam rivers and burn garbage and split atoms for electricity instead of suing and sabotaging to demand the end of these facilities, and where all minerals needed for batteries were plentiful and cheap, batteries would still suck compared to gasoline. 

In 2009, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted that "The maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven’t yet been demonstrated to work is still only about 6 percent of crude oil." Which sucks, because "Renewable energy–unlike fossil carbon–is harnessed dynamically from the environment. Therefore, it won’t be as useful as fossil carbon until it can be stored and transported with similar ease." To carry the magically-generated electricity I mentioned above, cars and other vehicles would have to have a far, far better ability to hold power, resist power loss, and not explode into flames than anything we have currently. So far, no battery like this that I've heard of has even been proposed as plausible. 

We figure that at some point, maybe not for five hundred years but at some point, we're going to run out of petroleum. Assuming Mr. Fusion is not available, what then? All the optimistic science fiction stories tended to have things run on batteries, but it may be as likely as having things run on unicorn farts after all. It may be physically impossible to make the kind of batteries we need for the modern world to rely on them. 

I don't have any answers. I'm just disappointed. You're never going to get a podracer to fly on methane, let alone an Odyssey-class Federation starship. I just don't think the future is working out. Thanks a lot, you dumb ol' batteries.  

Whole lotta love?

How well we remember the words of the Impressive Clergyman on that grand and popular topic, marriage:

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder today. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam... And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva... So tweasure your wuv.

But what is true love, anyway? 

I ask because the question has been lingering in the air since the push began for same-sex marriage throughout the West. Years ago Canadian genius Mark Steyn predicted that this would lead to successful pushes for marriages among multiple partners, as once you start redefining that holy state, there's no natural stopping point. That no argument for same-sex marriage could not also be made also for bigamy, incest, and other such things.

I expected Steyn was right, but the push in the United States for bigamy has kind of stalled. Sure, there's been some desensitization going on -- favorable press for its practitioners ("thruples" and the like), stupid shows like Sister Wives on the Freak Channel TLC -- but it just doesn't seem to be catching on. I think it's more of an issue in Steyn's other home of England, where more of the hordes spilling over the border are Muslims. And the reason that's a big issue is that families with a dad and thirteen moms can apply for vast welfare benefits. Dad is, after all, unlikely to make enough money to pay for his brood of thirty-four children on his own, so the British taxpayer must step in.  

At least that's the state of play these days, and I wonder if bigamy will really be the bridge too far, or at least the bridge too far for now. After all, science fiction writers like Robert Heinlein had predicted future states with marriages among multitudes decades ago. Then again, the more Heinlein I read in my youth, the more I got to think that he'd want any kind of future that would assure him a constant supply of broads for his boudoir. 

On the other hand, long before Heinlein, science fiction writer Jules Verne had something to say about bigamy, although not in one of his futuristic novels. Around the World in Eighty Days is a great book, fast-paced and fun. We in America tend to forget that what made the improbable wager of Phileas Fogg possible when the book saw print in 1872 was the completion of many great railroads -- including the completion in the United States of the Transcontinental Railroad just three years earlier. Because of that, Fogg was able to board a train in San Francisco and cross the continent (with some adventures along the way) to New York City in a week.

The reason I bring up that particular book is a scene that's always stuck with me, when Fogg and his French manservant Passepartout arrive in Utah. Following a short note on the polygamous rules among the Mormons of the time, our heroes pop into Salt Lake City to take in the sights: 

Passepartout could not behold without a certain fright these women, charged, in groups, with conferring happiness on a single Mormon. His common sense pitied, above all, the husband. It seemed to him a terrible thing to have to guide so many wives at once across the vicissitudes of life, and to conduct them, as it were, in a body to the Mormon paradise with the prospect of seeing them in the company of the glorious Smith, who doubtless was the chief ornament of that delightful place, to all eternity. He felt decidedly repelled from such a vocation, and he imagined—perhaps he was mistaken—that the fair ones of Salt Lake City cast rather alarming glances on his person.

Surprising that a Frenchman would be so frightened of the idea of multiple ladies at his beck and call? But Passepartout, like Sancho Panza, is a most levelheaded sidekick, and aware of the many possible downsides of a family with that many wives. 

Then, this:

At four the party found themselves again at the station, took their places in the train, and the whistle sounded for starting. Just at the moment, however, that the locomotive wheels began to move, cries of “Stop! stop!” were heard.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one. The gentleman who uttered the cries was evidently a belated Mormon. He was breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped on the rear platform of the train, and fell, exhausted, into one of the seats.

Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast, approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight after an unpleasant domestic scene.

When the Mormon had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured to ask him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner in which he had decamped, it might be thought that he had twenty at least.

“One, sir,” replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward—“one, and that was enough!”

Ah, mawage! A dweam wifin a dweam. 

Stafford's Last Book.

Stafford’s Last Book

 By Frederick Key

Gerry wasn’t overly fond of neckties, but he wanted to select just the right one to make the proper impression. Everyone wore them—all the men at the university, the club, the computational society—and Jack had said that this would be an important occasion, although not formal.

He never liked the feel of things around his neck, though, and felt like a man choosing the noose for his hanging. Ultimately Gerry selected his gold bow tie, one that would go nicely with his pale blue checked suit on a summer afternoon. If in fact it turned out to be less formal an occasion, more like one of his and Jack’s Science Fiction League meetings, he could always remove the tie and slip it into his pocket.

Before he left his apartment, Gerry gave another flip through the manuscript sitting on his desk. He had been quite honored that Jack had asked him to read it, being that Jack was a successful literary agent and Gerry just an amateur, not even in the publishing field -- although his League newsletter, The Rocket, was complimented in fan groups across the country. Still, he was under a vow of secrecy about the manuscript. It was the last book by Stafford L. Grimes, his final novel before his death, and Jack had wanted Gerry’s opinion.

“When you come to the party,” Jack told him over lunch, “you may meet some people from the publishing house. I’m not sure why, but they have some concerns about this book. They’ll want your opinion.”

“I’m surprised,” said Gerry. “Grimes was a meticulous writer, not one to dash things off. I can’t imagine it is sloppy. Is it controversial?”

Cola... of the Future!

Okay, so what the hell is Coke up to now?

Y3000 Coca-Cola is literally being sold as the Coke of AD 3000, "Created to show us an optimistic vision of what’s to come, where humanity and technology are more connected than ever." Personally I think a lot of the problems we have right now can be traced to humanity and technology being over-connected, and I'm not just being an old fart about this. In the eighties no one was addicted to smartphones, no one talked about an epidemic of loneliness, obesity rates were much lower, psychosis did not spread like the cold or flu, kids had better ambitions than to become "influencers," and the United States had a lot more good-paying jobs that weren't all about servicing the computers. 

But what the ever-loving heck does any of this have to do with soda pop?

Supposedly the formula of this stuff is "the taste of the future," but what that future is supposed to taste like, no one knows. If you listen to the World Economic Forum, it's crickets, at least if you're not part of the nomenklatura. 

Well -- spoiler alert! -- this stuff does not seem to taste like crickets to me. I thought it was all right, a nice change from other soft drinks, but it did taste familiar. After a few sips I realized that it reminded me of tea. Orange pekoe, perhaps blended with some Earl Grey. This is my opinion, but it is completely honest. In other words, I'm not being purposely weird in saying that the "taste of the future" actually tastes like cola mixed with the same soft drink we've been consuming for almost five thousand years. 

I think they should have introduced it as Multiverse Coke, or Coca-Cola if we'd lost the Revolutionary War. "This Iced Tea Pop is quite refreshing, old man! Dare I say — it is the Real Thing!"

How did Coke come to decide that this was FutureTaste? They say artificial intelligence was involved, but in what way? "Hey, AI, give us the formula for the new Coke!" You'd think they'd be touting the details, at least whatever they could divulge without exposing Coke's super secret formula that no one will ever discover. But they are mum.

I have my doubts that artificial intelligence was involved in any serious manner. As an example of AI's current state, I asked an AI image generator to give me a future man drinking soda. Here's a couple of images. 

The future is ugly, as well as stupid. 

One last note: I didn’t find this Coke in the supermarket, but rather in the dollar store, where brand ideas go to die. I thought it tasted interesting, but my wife thought it an unpleasant combination of cinnamon and other spices that didn’t go with cold soda. Maybe it would be better served hot.

AI yi yi yi yi.

Movie plots are strange, sad beasts. 

When films were more formulaic, they were sad because they were predictable. Like: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Murder is discovered and clues are unearthed to solve the mystery. Bad boy meets good girl and reforms. Party sets out and overcomes deadly obstacles to achieve goal. 

Then the plots got tortured to upend the expectations of the viewers. The cop is bad! The father is bad! The mother is bad! The bum is good! And eventually you'd know that the cop was the bad guy and the useless bum the good guy within five minutes, because the upended expectation was the new norm.

Then they got mangled because filmmakers were so in love with visuals that they threw the plot into the toilet and flushed and plunged until it went away. "We need a volcano to erupt here!" "Everyone should fall out the twelfth-story window and punch on the way down and survive!" "Wouldn't it be awesome if the moon exploded?" 

If that isn't enough, test audiences were brought in to torture the plot some more. Don't let the couple break up! Don't kill the boy! Don't kill the dog! Don't let the bad guy get away! Don't let baby Ashton strangle himself to death in the womb! (Hey, I didn't say the test audiences were all wrong.)

But why screw these things up on our own, when we can get technology to do it for us? 

If you look at startups these days, it's all AI, all the time. But I was still surprised when a friend pointed out a company called StoryFit, a Texas-based (do I have to say Austin?) company that aims to take your script and use artificial intelligence to make it awesome. 

"StoryFit's AI technology platform helps you understand the true value of your story and how to best reach your audience."

"StoryFit brings together insightful perspectives, industry expertise, and content analytics from our team of thought leaders to help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of storytelling."

"Learn how StoryFit champions creatives by helping them uncover white spaces for creative development, understand story elements that make their content special, and position their stories in the best places to succeed. By measuring thousands of story elements across thousands of stories, StoryFit expands creativity into new dimensions."

“We created 100s of proprietary models to measure 100,000+ story components matched against millions of audience data points to create the best possible opportunity for success.”

So, this is kind of depressing. 

First off, stories are human things if they're any good. Who needs artificial intelligence monkeying around with human storytelling? If we can't think up decent stories on our own (and, Hollywood aside, I think we still can), then can we even enjoy good stories anymore? Are we eager to kick experience and inspiration to the curb in exchange for machine learning?

In some golden age science fiction worlds, people were freed from drudgery by Science! and allowed to devote themselves to arts and other creative endeavors. So now the computers have to take that away too? Aren't professional writers already panicking enough about losing their jobs to AI? Yes, the stuff produced by computers is lousy so far, but thanks to companies like StoryFit it's going to get better. Will it matter that the Writers' Guild settled its strike if the writers will be erased anyway?

It’s depressing, therefore, because it reminds us how much our popular culture sucks, how much intellectual space we're giving over to computers, and how quickly we're racing to make our species obsolete. 

The people at StoryFit seem nice enough, but I really can't wish them well. If we can't tell good stories without computer aid, we ought to stop entirely. If we're that creatively bankrupt, we're done. 

Swords and heroes.

This year I reread one of my favorite trilogies in the world of fantastic fiction -- the Swords series by the late and prolific fellow Fred, Fred Saberhagen. I had been meaning to do so for years, but couldn't find my copies. (I think a relative absconded with them.) So I bought them again and I'm glad I did. 

Fred Saberhagen had a number of distinctions in his career. For example: 

⚔ He had multiple well-loved fantasy series, and one well-loved science fiction series (about the Berserkers, exceptionally adaptive robotic enemies of all life in the universe). 

⚔ He wrote a very successful series about Dracula, bringing in Sherlock Holmes for fun.

⚔ When he began the Swords series in the 1980s, he had an eye toward using it for a video game series. He was ahead of his time -- back then, "the project was deemed technologically infeasible" (according to Dr. Wiki), but no question it could be done now. 

⚔ He became a joke for my unappreciative wife; his work on Dracula stories was so well-known that he wrote the book adaptation of the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was sold as Bram Stoker's Dracula by Fred Saberhagen. Which she thought was hilarious, and she has used "by Fred Saberhagen" as a running gag for years. ("Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind by Fred Saberhagen.") Philistine! 

The main conceit in the Swords books is that the gods have, for their own fun, created twelve swords of the most astonishing and varied powers, and tossed them into the (medieval-level) human world for their own amusement. Little did the gods realize that the Swords were so powerful that they themselves could be harmed by them. Each Sword is virtually indestructible, and has its own hilt symbol and its own superpower, as you can see on this li'l chart I drew up: 

Some of them have an instant appeal. Like Doomgiver, for example -- you could travel in safety anywhere, because no matter what an enemy tried on you, from violence to psychological warfare to sorcery to poison to anything else, just carrying the Sword of Justice would leave you unharmed and inflict the damage on your foe. Farslayer is perfect if you want someone dead, because once you send it flying, nothing can stop it from piercing the heart of your enemy. 

Of course, they all have drawbacks of some kind. The perfect good luck of Coinspinner makes it unbeatable, but the Sword up and vanishes without warning. You can literally defeat an army with Townsaver, but the Sword does nothing protect its wielder, and you still take all the hits -- and once the fight is over, so are you. Wayfinder will lead you to anything you want, but doesn't take the safest path. And if you use Farslayer on your enemy, you'd better hope his friends don't know who sent it, because guess who has the Sword now?

 

Of all of them, only Dragonslicer seems out of place in that it has a weirdly specific purpose: to kill dragons. But in Saberhagen's world, dragons are not friendly, not helpful, not very intelligent -- they are enormous and very much akin to natural disasters, wiping out entire towns, destroying flocks and agricultural lands, bringing down castles. The one with the Sword of Heroes is a hero indeed. 

The original trilogy was so much fun that Saberhagen went on to write an eight-book series with further adventures connected to the Swords. There was even a book of stories by other authors with Swords-related adventures. 

The appeal of these books is all about the magic weapons -- what can they do, what will characters do with them, what happens when forces use them against one another -- and Saberhagen's careful plotting never fails to please the reader. His characters are vivid and memorable. If he has a weakness as a writer, it is that sometimes he lets the reader down with emotional payoffs. In one case, family members are violently separated, each believing the other dead, and are reunited years later, and we don't even get to see the reunion. It's just glossed over. It's like the writer was too busy with other stuff to care. 

We cared! We wanted to see it! 

Oh, well. It's a small price to pay for some very exciting and often terrifying action. The third book of the original trilogy has a god-versus-men battle that is simply outstanding. I can't think of any other scene that was more of a page-turner. And that's only one of the climactic confrontations in the novel. 

So, highly recommended. 

At one time I really hoped that someone would make an adaptation of the series. After reading about Amazon TV's revolting and disrespectful Rings of Power series, however, I no longer hope for that. Moviemakers used to ruin book adaptations by limitations in running time and budgets. Now they ruin them by their lack of talent and insertion of ideology. Who needs it? 

Angry young meme.

 Just feeling PO'd today. Gah! Grumble! Grrr! Have some memes. 

This one is not real! That we know of.

Lucky strikes.

There's an old saying in sports, especially baseball, that it's better to be lucky than good. That may seem odd, since you can't even play the game unless you develop some consistency with the needed skills. The point, however, is that even the best skills will fail sometimes, but good luck by definition never does. Although unlike skills, good luck will abandon you without warning.

But what is luck, anyway?

In the Silver Age Justice League of America comic, the League was menaced by a scientist named Amos Fortune, who discovered that humans had a "luck gland" -- yeah, I know, I know -- and that manipulating this very rational, very scientific biological feature could give him unbeatable good luck and the League terrible luck. 

Comics have had a number of other characters whose abilities are luck-based, or to make it more sciencey sounding, they had the ability to influence probabilities. Originally Marvel's Scarlet Witch was not a magician, but rather a mutant with the ability to influence probabilities. Domino is another mutant with luck powers, but since she keeps getting killed, I'm not sure how lucky she actually is. 

Definitely the most interesting use of a fictional lucky character I know was Teela Brown, the luckiest known person in the galaxy, brought along on a very dangerous mission to the Ringworld (in Larry Niven's classic science fiction novel) simply because of her massive good fortune. That was it. She had absolutely no other qualification to be on that mission. It's as if they stuck a lottery winner on Apollo 11, just in case. It's impressive to see the way her suspected good fortune plays out (or does it?) in the course of the story. 

In a rational sense, luck is nothing more than numerical chance coming together in a particular time and place. It feels like a blessing, and one that can be influenced by totems or chants, but it's just the way things shake out. Little about probability feels normal. If probability says I'll get heads 50 coin flips out of 100, and I flip 50 heads in a row, there's still just a 50% chance of tails on the next flip. Tails isn't "due." It doesn't work that way, although it feels like it ought to. 

All the same, is that coin normal? I'd check. 

While the Christian is expected to believe in Providence, and that those of a mathematical bent should study probability, he is not supposed to believe in lucky objects or gods of luck. That's paganism, and it's usually invoked in places like the poker table, and it's right out. Sacramentals (crosses, medals, etc.) are intended as a means of keeping us focused on Him from whom all good things come. They are not lucky charms, even if worn with frosted oat cereal. (It should be noted that there are curses and blessings in disguise in this life, and one needs to exercise the virtues of prudence, temperance, and justice to handle the good and bad that come one's way.)

But if there is really such a thing as luck, I think the best kind has to be dumb luck. Dumb luck is so completely out of the blue, so totally unmerited by the recipient, that he can take no pride in receiving it. A man who has been fortunate in business can thump his chest about his smartness and dedication, but a man who finds a Rembrandt in the attic of an abandoned building cannot. He may pat himself on the back for acting promptly to secure his rights to the property, but he certainly can't puff himself up as being a genius for his investment skills. 

Dumb luck is as rare as red diamonds, and should always be appreciated with humility, even if it's just a trick of probability. Now, is that a two-headed penny, or what?

News of... the Future!

Friends, I have seen the future and am here to tell you all about it! 

Last night I dreamed I went to the office -- although I haven't been to an office in years -- and by the time I got there I realized that I was now a thousand years in the future! How did it happen? How did I even know it had happened? Beats me. All I knew was that I was in the 3020's. So I decided to continue to the office and see how things had changed. Maybe I still had my job! 

It didn't look like this at all, FYI.

Here's what I found in the far-future city of New York:

1) Everything is bigger. The long-prophesied mile-high skyscrapers apparently came to pass, but I can't say for sure because I could only see them at the bottom levels. They had exceptionally large lower floors to support all the weight, though. So I guess maybe. 

2) Everything still sucks. The old company was still in the same spot. I didn't know how to get in, so I went in the service entrance. The corridors were dirty and the wallpaper was water-stained and peeling. The future is filthy. 

3) The bathrooms are stupid. Apparently our preposterous bathroom issues have metastasized. I asked someone where the can was and was sent into a large room that had merchandise all over, like the floor of a cheap department store. The urinals and whatnot were against the walls in the rear, but good luck finding them. Also, there was no separation of the sexes, but that hadn't become a casual thing -- people seemed annoyed by it and the women were trying to stake out their own territory. Of course some fellow in a dress wanted to use the plumbing on their side even thought his own, er, plumbing was presumably different. I just left.

4) Vending machines are a big deal. But also stupid. I left the building through the front entrance, which was below sidewalk level. There was an enormous spiral walkway that led up to the street. Along that were large vending machines with all kinds of stuff sold in little boxes, but I couldn't read the names on the packages. Maybe the written language had changed that much -- or more likely it is because you can't read in dreams. I thought about getting something to eat, but I had no money -- then realized the thing was busted and I could just take something. Some guy in a suit reached in and grabbed merchandise that had fallen to the bottom. I did too, and I still couldn't figure out what I had. So I put it back.

And that was about when I woke up, because indeed, I had to use the can. 

So, as you can see, my dream visit to the future was kind of a waste of time. Pretty typical for my forays while slumbering -- I never get anywhere and I just get stressed out. 

I'm basically an idiot in my dreams. Maybe even in real life! 

Lack of chemistry.

Today we take a moment to remember a superhero with a genuinely unique superpower, one I believe led to his undoing, and not in the canonical way. I refer to Chemical King, a youngster associated with DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes, whose adventures take place a thousand years in Earth's future. 

Poor Chemical King was doomed before he even first appeared. 

When readers first met the Legion in 1958, it was because Superboy (Superman in his youth) met them on a time-traveling trip. There were only three members in the so-called Legion at first, but since readers liked these teenage heroes of the future, more adventures were written and more members joined. 

Then Superman made a trip further into the future in 1967 and met members of the Legion when they too were grown up. He found some sad memorials to members of the Legion who had died in action, including some that readers had not yet seen, including Chemical King. We would not meet the character until a teen Legion story more than a year later, in 1968. Confused yet?

The point is, readers at the time had not even met the character but knew he was fated to die in battle. Whatever else they were told in that 1967 story, they knew he would not make it to adulthood. 

But I think there was another reason he got bumped off. 

When we finally got to know CK, we learned he had the truly unusual power to control chemical reactions. He could speed them up, slow them down, and make them pause. And at this juncture I would like to remind readers that in those days the editors of DC Comics liked to slip educational facts into their books (especially legendary editor Julius Schwartz), either in the stories or in little did-you-know type features. A superhero whose usefulness depended on the writer's knowledge of chemistry would definitely fit that description, even if the means by which the powers worked were pure fantasy. 

Alas, there's the rub. For I think Chemical King was doomed anyway. Because who wants to do homework? 

Green for chemistry!

Other members of the Legion were generally straightforward. Colossal Boy: Gets big. Shrinking Violet: Gets small. Sun Boy: Gets hot. Brianiac 5: Super smart. Lightning Lad: Shoots lightning. Karate Kid*: Martial arts expert. And so on. Not too hard to knock off a scene for any of these characters to take on their adversaries. But control over chemical reactions? This is homework! 

As silly as comics of the Golden and Silver Age could be, they were largely written by guys who also wrote science fiction stories in that industry's Golden Age, so they were interested in science. Starting in the seventies you had comics writers who were more often interested in comics themselves than science, which could bring a new depth to storytelling but were not always great at dealing with sci-fi concepts. And in 1968, Jim Shooter, a young writer himself at the time, dumped this chem-homework-laden superhero on the team.

I used to collect comics from the Silver and Bronze ages quite a bit, and as I recall, Chemical King was rarely seen in Legion stories. Back then he might pop up and rust some iron or make a guy pass out from indeterminate biochemical process fiddling, but that was about it. It would be easier to deal with the character now, I think. You just hit the Googs for "chemical reactions" and you learn in a flash that there are six main types and what they are, and suddenly you can make a big list of things CK can do. But back in 1978, when Paul Levitz was the editor and writer for the Legion's series, the Internet was itself barely more than science fiction. So Levitz brought Chemical King's career and life to a close, the hero sacrificing himself to save others.** 

Did Levitz decide it was time to kill off the character because his powers were too annoying to write about? I was discussing this with a friend of mine who reached out to the comic book legend via social media and got a response -- Paul remembered bumping off Chemical King soon after being assigned to write for the Legion, but did not mention why. All I can say is: If Paul did kill the King because his powers were annoying, I would not blame him. 

I've written before about a character who was a pain in the butt to draw, so now you have one who was a pain to write. But Chemical King did get a good honorable death, and for the most part -- through reboots, threeboots, and noncanonical adventures -- writers have let him rest in peace through the forty-five years since. That's a rare thing in comics. 

🦸💀

* No connection with The Karate Kid movie, except that the producers did reach out to DC Comics to clear the use of the name. 

**I would never badmouth Paul Levitz, mind you, whose Great Darkness Saga was not only the best Legion story I ever read but also among the very best comics stories I ever read. 

Mystopia.

When I was in college, I took an English class called Utopias and Dystopias. At that time the term dystopia wasn't nearly as well known as it is now; in fact, another English professor I had asked me to define the term when I mentioned the class. Utopia and dystopia as words are not natural antipodes; utopia came from Greek and just means no (ou) place (topos), where dystopia means bad place. 

But we all knew about dystopias, man. Everyone in the liberal arts majors was expecting the world to end, almost certainly in a shootout between the Americans and the Russians. And it'd be America's fault! And those fascists on the right would take over whatever was left! 

I was thinking about that after fellow Bleatnik Mark Ingram posted this meme on the comments of the Great Lileks's site: 

It made me think that sure, if we follow today's wickedness and stupidity to the end of the line, this satirical take is all too likely. But on the other hand, the future, for good or ill, never turns out the way we prophesy. Sometimes the projections even look silly in retrospect. I'm temped to call these miscues mystopias, kind of an eggcorn of a name, but why not.

It was not uncommon, for example, in the eighties to imagine a mallworld, in which all of humanity is reduced to nothing more than consumers and producers, and everyone is glued to the TV. In fact, Somtow Sucharitkul, who wrote a lot for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in those days, did a whole series of stories published as a book called Mallworld. Sucharitkul is a terrific writer and is not to be faulted for failing to foresee that the malls would be closing and retailers panicking. 

This was similar to the consumerist hell future seen in Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! comic books and the short-lived Max Headroom TV series. Fortunately, the future's not what it used to be. However, one common thread is these works is that government and commercial enterprises are constantly conspiring to screw over the people. Maybe that bit isn't so far-fetched.

I think it says something about humanity that we have more fictional dystopias than utopias. It's always easier to imagine hell than heaven. So it's probably good that our predictions don't ever quite hit the coffin nail on the head.

While many fictional dystopias are terrible societies (as in We, 1984, The Man in the High Castle, and so on) some are just dead. Yes, good ol' apocalypse, where straggling humans try to survive in the wasteland of the world. I think of these as thanatopias, or death worlds. Back in the day you could rely on World War III to provide the mass deaths, although alien invasion was a good standby. Artificial intelligence has also moved up the ranks as our computers have gotten smarter. Ecological disaster has marched right up to the front. Disease, especially man-made disease, was another good one. In fact, we have just seen a man-made disease jump the lab and kill millions, so it's hard to not find that as the most plausible means of annihilation going at the moment.

Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the atomic deathwatch clock ten seconds up, closer to the midnight doom time than ever before. Despite Russia's failure in the battlefield and desperation to win at all costs, and the saber-rattling of China, and Iran's desperation to get the bomb, I find it hard to believe that we're closer to nuclear war now than we were at the height of the Cold War. I think the Bulletin is just getting lonely for attention since Chinese Death Virus stole all the headlines. I certainly hope so, anyway.

We shouldn't... right?

Thinking back on the collapse of SFX and the many, many, many other things lately that are running amok (meaning: stupidly) in our society, I am coming to the conclusion that we have lost the voice of the grown-up in the room. That would be the voice of sanity and reason, the one who stops a bad idea in its tracks by saying, "That's a bad idea."

Or maybe even, "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but allow me to explain why that's a bad idea."

That voice seems to have gone silent, or has just been drowned out. 

I'm sure you can think of many examples. I have a dumb example for you, but I think it's pretty on-target. 

Maturity is not something one thinks of when the topic of comic books comes up, but compared to what we see in the comics and their stories in other media now, the past eras of the form show that at least once upon a time there were some adults somewhere along the line. 

Undoubtedly the high-water mark of the Lee-Kirby era in the 1960s at Marvel was the three-part Galactus saga. Galactus the planet-eater was such an awe-inspiring menace, so massive and impersonal, that he isn't even seen on the first issue in which he appears (above; that big guy is the Watcher). They built up to the danger, and did it slowly, When Galactus is seen -- gigantic, brutally powerful, completely uninterested in the planet and its people he intends to consume, and utterly beyond any power even superheroes can muster -- it's a shocking reveal.  

I heard Kirby once at a comic convention -- back when the whole thing fit on one floor of a New York hotel and no one dressed up -- talk about this famous storyline, how he first created the cosmic Silver Surfer, the herald for Galactus (he gave Stan Lee no credit, by the way). Kirby said he realized that if this Silver humanoid was like Gabriel, the herald of God, then he would have to create a god for the Silver Surfer to serve. And that was the unstoppable, unappeasable, implacable Galactus.

I hate to spoil a 50+ year old comic book, but the only way the Fantastic Four can save Earth in this one is by being given a deus ex machina -- the Ultimate Nullifier, a tiny weapon that inspires fear in Galactus himself. It was one of those classic "I swear I'll blow us all to pieces" moments that comic book readers of the era would not have expected. The good guys always outthought or overpowered their enemies, or both, but against Galactus there was nothing that could be done but use a weapon of ghastly power, even if it meant collateral damage of the highest degree. Galactus agrees to leave and not threaten Earth again if the Fantastic Four turn the weapon over to him. And you can trust him, because even Kirby's villains have their own sense of honor that they will not offend ("So swears Doom!"). 

So it probably would have been a good idea to let Galactus be for a decade or so after that. But of course, Marvel couldn't; the trilogy had been too good for sales. Fans wanted more Galactus! So the next thing you know, Galactus was back on Earth looking for his herald, or Thor was off in space looking for Galactus, or Galactus was back for a second bite of the Big Apple, and so on and so forth. And yet for a long time, even while not always the most powerful entity in Marvel's pantheon, Galactus was treated with great awe.

Then the new kids started writing books. Guess who defeated Galactus more recently?

Yep, Squirrel Girl.

Now, I don't want to pick on Squirrel Girl; there's always been room in the comics for lighthearted characters. That's how they got the name "comic" in the first place, as reprints of newspaper comic strips. And SQ has some genuine superpowers -- leaping like a squirrel, climbing like a squirrel, talking squirrel talk, and I guess the proportional strength of a squirrel. 

But you know someone in the edit room one day said, "You know who Squirrel Girl should fight....?"

"Who? Doctor Doom? Ha ha ha ha."

"No... Galactus!"

Much laughter -- then, silence. Then, "Seriously?"

"Yeah... Why not?"

"Nah, we shouldn't."

"Yeah... But why not?"

"Because he wouldn't even notice she was fighting him!"

That last line was what the mature -- or mature-adjacent -- person in the room would have said, but these people don't exist anymore. Instead it would be...

"Okay, so how's she gonna beat him?"

"She'll... she'll talk to him. Lookit, he's probably lonely, right? Been around as long as the universe, even longer, actually, and everyone's always mad at him. Wah, you stole my boyfriend to be your new herald. Wah, you ate my home planet. Wah, you parked your humongous ship on my house. He needs a friend!"

So, good-bye awe, hello the first buddy Galactus has had in 14 billion years. The might G-Acty reduced to a 1980s episode of Strawberry Shortcake. 

(And don't even ask about Galactus's daughter....)

The problem is that this kind of thinking doesn't just happen in comic books. It happens everywhere. It's happening in boardrooms and banks, funeral planners and hospitals, palaces and churches. Not one idea however stupid gets defenestrated; instead they get adopted. No one knows how to say no to something that sounds cool, or at least different, no matter how horrible it is. They're afraid of missing out on the next Apple, or Google -- or worse, at the chance to be further out into politically proper insanity so they can look back over their shoulders at their fellows with contempt. 

This is how jaded people who don't believe in anything bigger than themselves behave. It's especially fun for them when they're playing with your investments or your nation or even your faith in God. They aren't at all afraid that someone will say, "That's that idiot who believed in SFX crypto! That kids under 10 should have puberty blockers! That Jesus technically was trans, and that BDM teddy bears with little children should sell clothes! That what people ought to have in the movies is more wokeness, good and hard!" 

And why would they fear it? The others whose opinion they care about are just as idiotic as they are and believe in all the same things. 

Every time you see something like this in the world, you know once upon a time someone would have told them to knock it off long beforehand and explained why. 

My argument today was going to go from the ridiculous to the sublime, but nowadays it's just ridiculous to more ridiculous. For more outrage at the behaviors of our societal titans, you can't do better than Andrew Stiles in the Free Beacon last week. I just wanted to add my two acorns, as Squirrel Girl might say. 

Food pill.

Yesterday I suggested that we might eventually wind up with food pills rather than food, especially if our overlords of the Great Reset have their way. I guess it would be one way for them to realize their dream of getting the peasants to eat bugs. Bugs can be ground up and made into pills, but the ingredients list would not have to say CONTAINS: COCKROACHES -- just the list of proteins and whatnot that go into making cockroaches. 

There was a time when food pills seemed to be the goal of nutritionists, a cure for starvation. If all we needed were X nutrients to survive, why not make a capsule full of X and just swallow that? The Jetsons had a machine that could produce food pills, presumably for when the family was on the go. The Kelvans who took over the Enterprise subsisted on food pills. So it's going to happen one day, right?

NOT SO FAST! says Daniel H. Wilson, Ph.D., in his book Where's My Jetpack?, which I profiled on this site a couple of years ago. He notes that there are useful applications for a minuscule, super-portable source of nutrition, but we're not close to an actual food pill. 

The idea was first seriously proposed in 1893 by suffragette Mary Elizabeth Leese (according to Paleofuture and other sources). No one would have to do the drudgery of cooking in Leese's imagined future of 1993! Pills and potions will handle the lot with fake foods! Huzzah for the freedom of the woman! 

Sounds pretty boring to me. But also, as it turns out, the human body is made to eat actual food. It wants fiber and cells and a balance of solids and liquids to keep running happily. The ideal food pill would still likely leave people as clogged up as toilet full of top soil. I imagine it would have to turn into a bolus of shredded wheat or something in the stomach, like one of those Magic Grow sponge capsules, to give us our daily fiber. 

As usual, this science fiction idea might work fine for some imagined species, but not the human ones. 

So actual food pills look like a pipette dream, so to speak. On the other end of the scale is eating too much, and there we find myself. I have the physique of an athlete. Unfortunately, that athlete is Haystacks Calhoun. 

Maybe some of us could use some food pills instead of eating at Olive Garden, is all I'm saying. But they contain cockroaches, the deal is off. 

Come back Saturday for another take on food intake! 

BS snacks.

I have another healthy snack food to show you, and if history is a guide I won't be belaboring this process much longer. 

Let me explain up front that both my wife and I enjoy Brussels sprouts. Others who eat in our home may disagree, but we like them as is. My wife likes perhaps a little vinegar on them of an evening, but I take my Brussels sprouts the way I take my espresso -- straight, no chaser. So that's why I bought these. 

Vegan Rob's (sheesh, such brand names) is a Long Island-based outfit that makes -- go ahead, guess! --vegan snacks. No cheese or beef in these, by cracky! Unlike Brad's, which I discussed last Saturday, there is actually a Rob at Rob's. That would be Rob Ehrlich, who founded the company nine years ago. I hope he's still there -- "Rob's Blog" on the site hasn't been updated in years, and the company's news site also seems to have become a cobweb.  

The company wants us to love ourselves, love the planet, love all living things. Yay. That's fine. But we don't really love these snacks. 

First off, my wife thought they looked like uncooked fish sticks. 

Second, she didn't notice anything really Brussels sprouty about them. Normally the Belgian beauties have a strong flavor, which is why most kids hate them or disguise them with bacon, but it's scant in these puffs, so I agreed with her assessment. I thought the snacks were okay, though, and worth finishing the bag. But not worth buying another one.

I don't know, man -- I'm starting to think the idea of a healthy chip that tastes good is bogus. These puffs have some saturated fat and sodium, so the American Heart Association would probably scowl at them. Despite that, they still taste just okay. I guess if you want to trick your kids into getting a vegetable, this might work, but the Brussels sprout content comes from powdered Brussels sprouts -- seems like you could just take a multivitamin for the same benefits at that point. 

And that brings us to the classic science fiction idea of food only available in pill form. Maybe that's where we'll wind up in the end after all. 

Baby name or microbe?

Ming the Merciless, Ruler of Planet Mongo, Invites You to Play a Round of ...

Baby Name or Microbe!

Based your performance on his tests for Prescription Drug or Fictional Planet, you had better really ace this one ... or you shall become Patient Zero in the Evil Testing Ward! Get out your pencil and paper!

BABY NAME or MICROBE?

1. Yersinia

2. Adamaris

3. Wahchinksapa

4. Demodex

5. Walvia

6. Neisseria

7. Helianter

8. Galido

9.  Ibtesam

10. Xalvadora

11. Ascaris

12. Klavdiya

13. Prokaryote

14. Vibrio

15. Quirtsquip

16. Nipah

17. Archaea

18. Spirilla

19. Jyotika

20. Ulises

👶🍼🦠🔬👶🍼🦠🔬

MERCILESS ANSWERS

1. Yersinia: Microbe -- genus of bacteria including Yersinia pestis, the black plague

2. Adamaris: Baby name -- girl's name, means Noble of the Sea per babynames.com (where Ming got all these baby names)

3. Wahchinksapa: Baby name -- Sioux boy's name; means wise

4. Demodex: Microbe -- a microscopic human mite 

5. Walvia: Baby name -- Native American for medicine root

6. Neisseria: Microbe -- genus of bacteria that includes Neisseria meningitidis, which causes (duh) meningitis

7. Helianter: Microbe -- a subgenera of paramecia

8. Galido: Baby name -- Spanish boy's name of unknown origin

9. Ibtesam: Baby name -- Arabic name for girls, meaning smiling

10. Xalvadora: Baby name -- Spanish for Savior (female version)

11. Ascaris: Microbe -- genus of parasite

12. Klavdiya: Baby name -- Russian for lame (girls' name -- even Ming thinks that's cruel)

13. Prokaryote: Microbe -- single-celled organism with no nucleus

14. Vibrio: Microbe -- bacteria in the family Vibrionaceae

15. Quirtsquip: Baby name -- Comanche, meaning chewing elk

16. Nipah: Microbe -- a type of zoonotic virus (from bats), which can cause encephalitis  

17. Archaea: Microbe -- a type of prokaryote

18. Spirilla: Microbe -- bacteria with a spiral shape, found in stagnant water

19. Jyotika: Baby name -- girls' name, Indian for light or flame  

20. Ulises: Baby name -- alternate Latin form of Odysseus (Ulysses); means to hate


MING CALCULATES YOUR SNIVELING SCORE:

20 -- You're either a huge fan of babies or of diseases; either way, wash your hands!

15-19 -- Ming admires your knowledge and offers you a place in his fiendish organization. He offers you a job naming new minions from among the Cave Monsters and testing evil viruses on them.

10-14 -- Ming tells you to study more and has you given a swirlie in the space toilet.

6-9 -- Ming scoffs and tells you to go back to school. He also calls you a double dumbass, which could get him a stern e-mail from HR. Then he has you given a swirlie in the space toilet.

0-5 -- Ming sends you to work in the evil biological warfare lab. You shall have to survive at least five dread diseases to apply for parole, so you had better hope the scientists are doing a poor job. The last guy who got out had permanent barbershop stripes all over him, like a stick of Fruit Stripe Gum. Mwah ah ah! 

Dominant species.

I hate to keep krexing about nature, but I've come to think that the dominant species on Earth ultimately will not be humans nor cockroaches nor mosquitoes nor bacteria. I think it's going to turn out to be crabgrass. 

As far as grass goes, this stuff is mean. You try to pull it, you can't get it all. You try to poison it, and half of it stays green. You put down all kinds of chemicals, and back it comes next year. 

When all of us are gone, and our Kentucky bluegrass, our fescue, our Bahia, our buffalo and Bermuda and creeping bentgrass are toast, the crabgrass will still be here, annoying whatever mammal still lives. 

I can see it becoming an evil species, like the giant carrot man from the vegetable uprising episode of Lost in Space. 

Yeah, that guy.

While retaining its evil crabgrassy ways, it will leave Earth to go pester other life forms throughout the galaxy, impossible to ignore, get rid of, or isolate. It won't take over planets or displace other sentient life; it will just move in and not leave, like the galaxy's unemployed brother-in-law. 

At least that's how it looks to me today. Is there no hope? Why, yes, there might be, thanks to our friend BG Bear, who posted this: 

Kill it with fire! I'm not sure if this little number is available anymore, but flaming weed killers can be bought at large hardware and yard outlets. 

It's either that or we nuke the crabgrass from orbit. Easy choice, you ask me. 

Return of the UFOs.

I'm starting to get a sense that it's time for the UFOs to come back. They have a cultural moment every twenty to twenty-five years, and I think they're due. 

Why do I think so? Oh, they radioed me through my tinfoil hat. You should get one. It blocks the CIA but lets in the aliens alerts. Kind of a police radio for ETs. 

No, it's actually a couple of real things. For one, in the last twelve months I've had assignments for various books centering on space creatures, either nonfiction (such as, about Roswell or Area 51) or fiction (aliens-among-us stuff). Book publishers have their faults -- their many, many, many faults -- but they often are right up front with this stuff. Our cultural vampire phase and zombie phase came out of book series; the apocalypse phase too, and whenever we're in a mood for swashbuckling or historical drama you can bet it started on the bookshelves and went into movies and TV after. And I am seeing a ton of BEMs and LGMs and ETs and UFOs (or UAPs, as the navy calls them now) coming down the cultural chute. 

Don't count me among
the Little Green Men.

Usually there is a real-world prompt that gets things moving. I think the main one now is the Webb Space Telescope, which is getting people who like space stuff excited enough for it to spill over to the rest of us. Less so the talk of Mars missions and new missions to the moon. They are boosted by nationalism again with China and Europe and the US and others wanting a taste of space glory -- and nationalism is the only thing that got humans into space and on the moon, by the way -- but those goals keep being pushed off and seem less concrete. Webb goes live in July and we expect some amazing things.

Culturally, this means more X-Files type shows, maybe some ALFs or Mork and Mindys or My Favorite Martians, although undoubtedly the darker, grittier, versions. Our fictional aliens have been with us for decades, but I predict a strong resurgence of alien-themed cultural artifacts. I think a lot of it died down because the ubiquity of personal cameras in phones meant far fewer UFO sightings for a while, because tales of things that happened would have inevitably meant lots of pictures from various people. However, they're coming back. 

Here's where I would say "Keep watching the skies." Honestly, though, I am not convinced that there's ever going to be a useful workaround to the universal speed limit of light speed, so I think it's very unlikely we'll ever be visited by aliens. So instead I'll say "Keep watching the TV." That's where you'll see most of our visitors from outer space.  

And don't bother with the tinfoil hat. That was a joke. Tinfoil underwear, however, is very useful for stopping the FBI's omega rays that sap one's essence.