Humans and Our Origins

Interestingly, to me, there is more and more about how Neanderthal's were more inteligent and sophisticated than originally thought.

Getty Images - got it on Google

It used to be thought that they were in the lineage and went away as we became more developed and evolved. Back about 36 years ago I was having a conversation with a friend who was studying anthropology at SIU and we were talking about prehistoric humans. I suggested that the entire concept of apes to proto-humans to hominids to homosapiens was questionable.

My theory was that there were many varieties of humans and the more adaptive and smart ones continued to evolve. The others simply became extinct. Just an application of Natural Selection. It seems that now this concept is becoming the new idea of human history. Anthropologists have discovered that Neanderthal's were much smarter, sophisticated and social than previously thought. They have discovered remnants of vegetable and grains in the plaque scraped from the teeth of Neanderthals. This clearly demonstrates they used fire and ate not only meat. In Bob's opinion Neanderthals were a completely different family/species of humans and they simply weren't successful in evolving their lineage. Died out and were gone.

Modern Tech - A Brief Trip Down Memory Lane

Every once in a while I actually remember things. Recently the Apple iPad rang a bell for me. It brought back memories of the old William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy days of StarTrek. They had computer tablets that they used for everything.

Just like an iPad.

Browser Wars

After over 30 years of using computers and working in the IT (Information Technology) Industry I am a little confused about why all the Tech websites seem to participate in what I refer to as the Marketing wars. I will occasionally comment on these things since I am only interested in what works well and makes using various things simpler.

All the browsers have their respective strengths and weaknesses. I have used Netscape (yeah the really old beginning days of the Internet one) and  Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox and Opera and Chrome. They all have their features you love or don't love so much.

The speed of the browser is not really very important. The slowest one vs. the quickest one is a small period of time that most people won't even perceive. If various folks actually "test" the speed of pages loading in a browser window the results are more related to the server the page is coming from and the huge variability of the network speed. It changes constantly. That is why when you might be up at 4:00 in the morning and log into email and open up your home page it seem like everything goes so much faster then normal. That's because everyone else is sleeping and the network (yes, the Internet) is less saturated with everyone watching You-Tube and everything else.

The real issue to be focused on is the user interface. IE is pretty basic and works well for me. I like Opera as well. Lot's of features that you won't find anywhere else. Chrome is nice. Firefox is too. But, I have several plug-ins that I need and IE wins for me.

Observational Abilities

For some strange reason I have always been able to understand how optical illusions work, spot hidden objects and find the patterns in images. Somehow this morning I got the notion that perhaps the reason for that is because I have never had binocular vision. I switch from eye to eye. I imagine that is because I had what is referred to colloquially as crossed-eyes as a young child. The Opthamologist had me wear a patch over my left eye to try to strengthen the muscles that aim the crossed eye and get it to center up. So, maybe that is how my mind changed to monocular vision.

I do the optical thing quite a bit since I find it interesting. So go to http://games.yahoo.com/braingames/brain-teasers and play around a little.

TV the Vast Wasteland

Interesting that as I get older I am in fact getting cranky. One thing that is on my list of annoyances is television. After watching TV for 58 years I am at a point where I won't watch it much anymore. TV has always been referred to as "Commercial Television". To me that is a differentiator from free TV.

It used to be that a 30 minute TV show would have a commercial break at the 15 minute mark. Of course there would be commercials after the end, which was just before the beginning of the next show. Now, to me at least, Commercial Television is all commercials occasionally interrupted by a few minutes of the program I can't often keep my interest in. I actually timed things and there were 6 minutes of show and 3 to 5 minutes of commercials. So, the content is about 30-40% commercials. Groan. . .

One other example is when I am trying to watch a NASCAR race. I can't even watch 2 complete laps before they go to commercial. At the end we get to see that last few but I have to admit that when it is so interrupted all the time it isn't watching a race. It is, watching commercials for 4 hours. Bye Bye NASCAR and TV.

So then, not that you care, I just get frustrated and off I go into a rant. Feeling a bit mad at myself but it is not something I tolerate very well. TV is truly a vast wasteland. A good example of what I am ranting about is try watching anything in the morning. All commercials. They even come back from commercials and tell you what is coming up and go back to more commercials. So, sit around and enjoy them, I won't.

Earth, are we alone???

Just reading a little and apparently scientists are revising their thoughts on how many stars are in the universe. Apparently they now think there are 300 sextillion of them. That's 3 with 23 zeros. Also, the belief about the structure of galaxies being like the Milky Way are changing as well. Lots of things are different. Not going into all that since it isn't too interesting for most folks. How many dwarf stars vs. giants and gas giant planets etc. etc. etc.

Now the idea is that there could be as many as a trillion Earth-like planets out there. That immediately got me thinking that if there are some number of them that they are orbiting a star similar to ours at the same distance as we are from our star, that we refer to as the Sun and with the same tilt (axis of rotation) and other coincidental similarities that there might be lots more life out there. The next thing that I thought of is that given the formation of chemicals in the seas on them that perhaps there are other coincidental similarities. Amino acids, single cell micro-organisms (yeah, microbes). Then they evolve into proto life-forms. I am guessing that there are lots of dinosaur worlds out there. We would be really different if the dinosaur apocolypse hadn't occurred on Earth.

Not so sure that the mammals would've been able to become the dominant life form. With the meteor strike ending the dinos the surviving mammals got to develop and here we are. If we are lucky to have that in our history and they don't it would be really interesting to see one of those dino worlds. Evolution would have them evolved to some pretty amazing and dangerous (for us) efficiencies which would make them a seriously interesting subject for a Hollywood movie.

Lunch!

Went to lunch with my brother Rick today at a restaurant he likes. It is a Thai restaurant and it is the most amazing place I can imagine. The food is insanely delicious and the service was fantastic. I had the Panang Curry with Pork. It was the best curry I have ever eaten. I want to go there every day for the rest of my life. So, you should go there as well if you are within driving distance. It is named Thai Town. The address is:

574 Randall Road
South Elgin, IL. 60177

They have a website as well: http://www.thaitownelgin.com/

Airport Security

Getting another dose of the aggravation that is caused by the "Lame-Stream Media" (Thanks Sarah Palin) raising public outrage over the TSA increasing security. Making a big deal about the pat downs and body scans. In my opinion, yeah I almost always have one, this is improving security for air travellers. There have been an increase in the number of onboard events and the terrorists (yes they are even if they are American WASPs) are becoming more and more methodical and trickier in getting explosives onboard.

Do you recall the Lockerbie tragedy? The shoe bomber? The underwear bomber? The laser toner cartridge bomb? They're the ones you hear about and that is most likely only a fraction of the number of times weapons and illegal devices are getting on planes.

The TSA folks are doing their jobs and flying is safer because of that. If some deluded suicide bomber gets a device onboard and takes down another plane the LSM (Lame-Stream Media) will have a field day raking the TSA over the coals. That is what they want and how they operate. If they can raise public outrage and get the TSA to back down there is a better chance that a bomber will take a plane full of innocent people down and then they have a really big news event and will hammer the TSA mercilessly for not being effective in preventing it from having happened. They want that, not just quiet day to day life.

If they reported on all the good things that are happening and other non-negative news we would be happier and life would be smarter and better. They never will. They want big events.

So, in conclusion, keep it up TSA, don't back down. Make it safe. And I would like for the LSM stop doing newscasts of total chowder-heads whining about being patted down. Interview me so I can complement the TSA for doing a more effective job of making air travel safer.

Also, do a nice segment on something like how St.Jude is helping so many children fight serious illnesses and keeping them alive and getting them well. Also, go to a rural church social in the Mid-West somewhere and have a nice big meal while chatting with the folks and show everyone that there is a solid middle America out there not just constantly on the cell-phone, SUV (or BMW or whatever Daddy bought them) driving brain-dead Princesses and male chowder-heads. I am so sick and tired of the "Dumbing-Down" of America thing that is going on. That is the end of our social value system and you kids are on the way to a very different lifestyle.

That is what we need.

I Write Like

A good friend sent me a link to a website that can analyze your writing style and I did it. If you want to try it for yourself, take a trip to : http://iwl.me

I took three different posts from my Blog (yeah, this one) and each had a different result. I write like Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft and also Gertrude Stein. I never would've guessed I am that kind of writer.

So then, now that I know I have some actual talent lurking somewhere in my ever deteriorating brain it may be time to actually write something. A book. Stay tuned for more.

Game Changing Ideas

I was thinking about things I have thought of over the years and a couple of interesting ones come to mind. Back about 38 years ago I gave a guy an idea that changed drag racing in a really serious way. I was a motorcycle mechanic and a guy came into the shop one evening and it turned out he was the owner of the funny car "Chi-town Hustler". I talked with him and suggested that he could be really competitive if he tried slipping the clutch instead of 'lighting up" the tires all the way down the strip. I said we did that coming off the corners racing motorcycles to get a better drive off the corner and he did it. Hence, the "slipper" clutch was invented and developed which revolutionized drag racing completely. Yeah, I did it.

Another one of my ideas was in a conversation with a friend during lunch about 6 years ago. He is an amateur astronomer and our discussion was about the fact that astronomers see that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate and can't explain why. I am not an astronomer or theoretical physicist but offered up an idea. I think that, after reading an article on String Theory (which is now called M-Theory) that there are these enormous ultra dense multiple universes called membranes (or colloquially - 'branes') that are next to each other. Large and sort of flat, My theory is that 2 of them adjacent to each other "fluttered" and touched. this created the singularity at the touchpoint and they passed through one another creating a "bubble". The singularity was a form of special energy about the size of a proton (according to another article I read).

As the bubble expanded the intense gravity field of the branes was interacting with the singularity and pulled it apart. Hence the "Big Bang". In my intuitive opinion the bubble is growing and some remnants of the branes are the dark matter we are intermixed with and that intense gravity field is causing the universe to accelerate as it continues to expand. The timeframes are oddly different (since I read that the M-Verse(?) is 11 dimensional and I assume that could mean that the bubble in the branes is a few pico-seconds old in their timeframe and, what, about 14 billion years old in ours. So now you have another blast from the ever curious mind of Bob.

The fun of business travel

After changing positions within my company last year the experience of living on airplanes has ended. The really nice part is I love not travelling. I'm not afraid of flying, I love it. I actually took flying lessons in my younger days and wanted to be a pilot. The part I don't like is all the parking and waiting to get on the plane.

So, in order to ensure I don't have to go back to a life in the air I thought it would be a good idea to see if the Department of Homeland Security would think of offering up a voluntary ability to get on the no-fly list. Then I will happily avoid spending 300 hours a year in airports. Yeah thats an average of 4-6 hours per trip (60 per year or more). I leave for the aiport 3 hours prior to departure and just sit in the boarding area calmly doing email and calls instead of like some of my colleagues crawling through security calling at boarding time begging me to convince the gate agents not to close the door since they are on the way. I actually am tempted to offer the gate agents $20 to close it up so I can be shed of those chowderheads.

So, all in all I love to travel and like I said it is just the whole airport thing. So, enjoy sitting next to the princess with her little barky dog in the dog purse and all the screaming kids. I actually feel so sorry for the parents of those kids that for some reason start screaming their brains out as soon as the plane passes about 10,000 feet. Some of them keep it up all the way and others nicely calm down when Mom or Dad soothes them into the quiet zone.

Appropriate Audiences

I went to see the Leonardo DiCaprio movie Inception yesterday with my lovely wife and my son. Before it started as you all know we watch the trailers of the coming attractions. Each one has a tag stating that the preview is approved for appropriate audiences. I have to admit I am a bit confused by that. How do I know if I am an appropriate audience? Is there some website where you get the jist of what an appropriate audience is? Ha ha ha. . . The movie was pretty good. I give it a thumb up. Not 2.

The Sleeper has Awakened

I think it may have finally happened. I did have an Epiphany a few minutes ago. It is not about me, it is about society. I think I now understand why the Liberal Democrats want to force immigration reform. There is nothing wrong with anyone wanting to come to America to participate in our society and desiring the opportunity for success and a better way of life. I completely respect that. Much of this is focused on Latinos who have illegally crossed the border and have become an enormous burden on our social systems. Yes, they have. They go to the hospitals and have no money to pay or insurance. So, Medicaid picks up the tab and it is a fraction of the cost for the hospital. Because of that hospitals are losing money and descend into the inability to evolve and improve healthcare. They don't have the money to do it.

In spite of that I have met many Mexicans and most of them are good hearted, hard working people that just want to have a better standard of living and enjoy the American Democracy. That is a good thing.

So, with President Obama and the utterly corrupt "Pelosi Gang" on the hill apparently working to move us toward Socialism they need a way to restructure our society. This is really expensive and in spite of all the finger pointing President Obama has done trying to blame the Republicans the hard evidence directly from the Congressional Office of the Budget clearly show this to be completely untrue.



We are on the verge of massive tax increases (go check the Washington Post) which will crush our standard of living. If we allow all the folks that have entered illegally to enjoy citizenship through immigration reform, I think the Democrats believe we will then have a new lower class. Then the existing middle class will be changed to the new upper class. Our existing lower class will be the new middle class and the upper class will have had all their wealth stolen by the government and redistributed. Welcome to the new American Society. Redistribution of wealth, Socialism and sadly a new way of life most of us will not find acceptable. To me, that explains it all.