Concord Party

These people are trying to create a new political party. I'm interested enough to watch it and see where they go with certain issues, because while they're still debating their platforms, I can understand their initial reason for trying it - that they're fed up with both current parties.

Likely their positions on major issues will not be close enough to mine to matter in that way, but while they're still fleshing it out, it does lead me to wonder. How difficult would it be to actually start another party, once that would stand more chance than any current third party of your choice? I've long held that we need more than the two options we currently have (because until any third party candidate does well, we really only have two options). This could partly be changed by the way many people vote, but while we're at it, why not have at least one more major party?

The problem here - and anyone who has every talked to me about trying to make some sort of nation-wide change in any form knows what I am about to say - is the number of obstacles involved in getting real change in a nation this size. Money aside (and that's a big aside, but let's assume that if everything else works out, the people involved can pool together the money to fund it), I'd have to find enough people who agreed with me on the major positions. Enough people that the whole rest of the nation would take notice. There could be some leeway for debate on minor issues, if we all agreed they were minor issues, where I could live with the outcome either way. But life issues, environment issues, others that other people would consider larger items, would all have to meet with enough widespread agreement to become an actual competitor against the Republicans and Democrats. At this point we can come back to the problem of money, but let's just say that we'd need a lot of it and it isn't easy to get. The harder part would be the money involved in actually getting the idea out there to begin with, unless you count on word of mouth instead of any sort of advertising. It's easier with the internet but, with the number of sites out there, still involves "word of mouth" online. A continous series of people caring enough to link to it, agreeing with it, and caring enough to be informed about the matters and help in small or greater ways. I think I might be just insane enough to try someday, if I decided I needed to - but could I really make it work, or could anyone else? Will these people manage? Whether or not I end up agreeing with the positions they take, it is an interesting test to see if this can indeed be done. And if it can, who knows.. perhaps I'll make my bid next.

Now if they would just listen to my ideas on how the whole system should change to stop giving preference to the main party candidates, the whole issue could be avoided.. but that's a matter for a different time.

You Look Like I Love You

Proof that love at first sight does exist: Women Get Paternal Clues in Men's Faces.

Then again, that would be taking the wrong understanding of love.

This does explain a few things, of course. Such as why so many women are attracted to certain men I know.

It also proves something else - women do know everything.

Sweet Dreams

I was looking at bits of writing last night, things that I created years ago, and came across many items that I either can't or just probably won't ever do anything with. Even the original creations would need to be improved in order to stick into a newer (read: better) story. However, after digging these out of the woodwork, I thought to myself, well, might as well post bits of them and see what sort of reaction I get. So to begin with - this is half of a short story that I wrote for an RPG character (my first character on Ansible MOO, an RPG based on the book Ender's Game). Criticism welcome (if anyone is actually reading this yet), but remember - I was in my mid-teens at the time I wrote this. Be nice.

Sweet Dreams

It was dark. So dark. In the pitch blackness of the area, Myth could see nothing. She didn’t know how she had gotten here, or where she was. Just that it was dark, stretching forever in every direction, no boundaries, no stopping.. and something was wrong. She could feel it hanging in the air, she could taste the wrongness on her tongue, a sharp bitter taste that was like nothing else. Silence draped the night…she assumed it was night.. like a thick curtain, shutting out all else.

Myth crouched down and squinted into the blackness, trying to see anything at all, but not even the tiniest hint of light existed. Her hand hit the floor as she reached down to steady herself and found it cold, hard. Cement, or tile, she didn’t care which and it didn’t tell her where she was. Myth lowered her other hand, felt it come in contact with the same surface. She stood up quickly, eyes straining for the briefest glimpse of anything. She was inside, she was sure of that now, but where? It didn’t seem like anywhere she knew.. if she had to guess, there was nothing alive anywhere around her. There was an inhuman air to the place, contributing to the awful feeling it gave her.

Myth took an uneasy step forward, then another, each foot following the other slowly and testing the ground before she put any weight on it. Her arms were raised, held out in front of her to keep from bumping into anything. Though there certainly didn’t seem to be anything except open space. She walked like this, kept walking, for what seemed like forever.

And then her hands hit something solid in front of her. It hadn’t been forever, after all. Just seemed like it. This whatever-it-was had been rather close to her. She examined it, ran her hands over the surface cautiously. There was a crack, then it continued, and another on the other side of it.. a door. This was a door, and a wall. Which meant she was in a room. And if the wall was that close, however long it had taken her to actually get to it, then all the others might be that close, as well... She’d never been claustrophobic, but suddenly the room seemed to press in on her, suffocating her as the walls and ceiling approached out of the dreadful darkness. She pushed once against the door, then again, harder. It wouldn’t open, and her hands found no knob to turn and no keyhole.

Myth took a deep breath and turned around. With no pause for caution this time, she jogged in the opposite direction, searching for the back wall. Though she could feel her feet pounding the hard ground, the steps made no sound. She didn’t consciously realize the lack of sound, she hadn’t heard a single sound yet since she found herself here, but it still added to the eerieness of the situation. Myth stumbled into another surface and stopped, fingers examining the details of the wall, searching desperately for an opening. There was none. She turned to her right, running her hand along the wall as she walked in that direction. All to quickly she came to a third wall, still finding nothing. After a brief search of that wall - still nothing! - she turned yet again, went back to the wall opposite the door, then felt her way to the final wall. Nothing anywhere. She was trapped.

As if this fact by itself wasn’t bad enough, the sense that there was something terribly wrong was growing stronger. The feeling was increasing rapidly, so rapidly that the sheer mental weight of it pulled the breath from her throat until the air only came to Myth in quick, short gasps. Still silent, of course. She stood in the back left corner, facing the wall, not wanting to look around any more. The room was empty, she knew that now, but there was something...

A creaking noise from behind Myth broke the silence for the first time. Gulping, she reluctantly turned to the sound. The unopenable door was swinging open, almost in slow motion, letting in just barely enough light to outline the two shapes who were revealed behind it. They were both tall, towering over her, and well built. Human-looking, but it was still an inhuman place, their presence felt wrong. Nothing about the feeling indicated that other people were around… only dead, or undead, or some horrible monster trying to pass for a man.

They were standing one next to the other, the second trailing behind the first by a step or two. The door remained open, casting the room into a dim grey light, hardly bright enough to see by. But the two Things showed up clearly as black, faceless shapes slowly advancing.

Myth stepped back, stiffening as her foot encountered only the wall behind her. She leaned back into the corner, willing it to absorb her, cringing as the Two came nearer. The door was still open but it was past them, she’d never make it past them, she knew that even without trying. She pulled back even farther, but there was no more room to do so, she felt her head press against the cool surface behind her and it shook. Shook, except that after a moment she realized the room wasn’t moving, it was her, she was trembling. And the Two kept coming forward, and God wasn’t it taking them a long time, the wait was as agonizing as the fear that boiled within her at their sight.

The first one stopped, suddenly, close enough to reach out and grab her. The second figure came to a halt beside the first, and both stared menacingly down at her. If they’d been tall before, now they stood at a gigantic height, as though they’d grown with each step, and Myth wondered how the ceiling was high enough for them. They way the Two stood was itself a command for respect, but that respect came in the form of another wave of terror, and she sunk to the floor, cowering under them as the first opened his mouth to speak.

"We have come for you, Myth." The voice was low and harsh, grating out each word as if was an effort, yet with a sense of pleasure hiding behind each syllable. An evil sense of pleasure, one that only meant bad things, one that made Myth sink lower yet and whimper softly, not even knowing she was doing it. "You are on your way to a worse place, much worse. We have come to take you there."

The words echoed in the silence after, and the Two both reached out for Myth, reached down to her. She raised her arms in front of her face, shielding herself from them, and squeezed her eyes shut, dreading their touch. There was a cold, tight pressure, their hands like bands of metal encircling her arms...


(As I said, the first half. Of a nightmare. And, yes, this is the character I later took my general online identity from, as evidenced by the name and title on this blog.)

What Aging Means to Me

And a bit of theorizing I'm copying from my other site from about 2.5 months ago, in case I ever need to recover it. It was in response to reading an article discussing anti-aging medicines and having isolated specific causes of aging:

So is anyone else actually scared by talk of anti-aging medicines? I read an article the other day outlining the work already being done, what they've found that causes cell death that seems to cause aging, and suggesting that by the year 2050 people will regularly be living to around age 150. Now looked at one way, slowing that type of cell breakdown would seem to mean we'd be healthier. It would also mean I haven't already lived a whole 4th of my life, and having not spent most of that very well, it might be nice to think there'll be more of it to spend right. However, looked at the other way, I keep thinking about all the sci-fi theories of one day enabling people to live forever. On Earth I mean, in this life. And that there seems to be something wrong with that, trying to cling forever to this and never move on to (hopefully) heaven and a life most completely united with God. Ignoring the fact that such an extreme is probably impossible and would never happen in my lifetime anyway, I wouldn't ever want to be faced with that choice. Nor would I want someone to make if for me, changing things so that I would never be able to die naturally. But what I wonder now, and what's more relevant now, is this: where does prolonging life another fifty years fall into things? What if it was another hundred or two? Another thousand? If the first is becoming possible, aren't they going to work for the others next, and how far could we push it with our own treatments and medications? Is it okay if it isn't forever, or is this something we should leave alone? People lived hundreds of years in early Biblical days. Maybe it's a disease that developed, one of the many things that has kept getting worse since the Fall, like other diseases we've now found cures for. That makes the most sense, to me, perhaps because it also implies a definite ending to the number of possible years.. we could eventually cure the disease that shortens our lives this much, but could never push life to beyond the couple hundred years we originally got after the Fall. After which, having lived a natural lifespan, we would still go to meet God.

Bird! Plane! ...Alien?

Three sites to keep in mind for dealing with UFOs:

To read (and make!) reports.

More reports.

This one's fun. And has a video of boys tormenting guards at Area 51.

My own position on UFOs, I'll leave it up to you to guess for the moment. But hey - all those Top Secret documents have to be about something, right? ;-)

So I Lied

I've changed my mind. After leaving this to sit useless for months, I'm going to start posting items that will probably be of absolutely no interest to anyone but myself. Namely, for writing (if I ever get to the point where I've anything worth posting), random science items, and anything else that catches my interest but that I don't want to flood my other sites with. Mainly, it will allow me to keep track of these items when I want to find them again, as I invariably lose track of where they were and forget my thoughts. I don't exactly expect others to be really interested.. although, if I'm wrong, have fun!

Without posting a long commentary on this article, Research Aims for Lawns That Never Need Mowing, I think we're working towards editing out a few good things that won't be noticed until far, far in the future. Honestly, doesn't anyone else enjoy the smell of cut grass? I can only imagine a place where everything that grows is an exact copy of every other of the same type of plant, everything is always green (oh wait, that's Florida!), no change, no new growth, just green, full grown plants forever. This is not necessarily a comment on genetic modification of plants, which I have no intention of getting into anytime soon, merely an observation about my own "utopian" world.