May The Force Be With You...now stop taking it so SERIOUS people!

"How can you be so serious on a film where you are dodging explosions and running away with Sir Alec Guinness on this side and an eight-foot monkey on this side, and the eight-foot monkey is the one flying the spaceship?"

-Mark Hamill commenting on some of the nitpicking fans of
Star Wars have done.


"I think it [A Star Wars Fan Site] was speculating on the administrative cost of the janitorial staff of the Death Star, taking this hard-edged reality to something that's fantasy...But I was that way myself. I remember saying things like, `Well, wait a minute. I just got out of the trash compactor. How come my hair's all perfect?' And Harrison (Ford) would go, `Hey kid ... it ain't that kind of movie.'"

-Mark Hamill


"Before I went off to do the film, [The Empire Strikes Back] I had a talk with George. He said, `I want you to know something. They're going to prepare all these special devices for you but nothing is going to work ...' I thought he was kidding. From the third shot on, it was true."

-Irvin Kershner Director: The Empire Strikes Back


"When it was fashionable to say, 'May the Force be with you,' I always said, 'Force yourself'"..."'The Force is within you, force yourself'"

-Harrison Ford during a Barbara Walters Oscar Special Interview, March 1997

The FUTURE is now

For the longest time, the future to me was always something that came in a single bundled package. It was a place that I would arrive at. And once there I would suddenly have access to all of the things that the future held. The technology, the idealism, you know…Star Trek.

Star Trek has always projected a positive outlook for the future. With its advanced means of transportation (spaceships) and advanced medicine (devices that gave every vital sign needed to diagnose your ills…in a hand held format) and extremely high-tech toys (the holodeck) it was just the place that I always wanted to live in.

Oh, I knew the state of technology in the present was quite removed from the things I saw on the show. But I also knew that the creators and writers of Star Trek made efforts to use a lot of speculative science that wasn’t always that hard to believe. After all, just because we don’t know how to make a phaser today, doesn’t mean that in the future, with advances in lasers and other technologies we wouldn’t be able to figure it out. And THAT was the thing that excited me! What the future will have in store for me! Wow! I couldn’t wait to get there!!

Eventually it occurred to me that the future wasn’t getting here as soon as I hoped. And in thinking about that, it also became apparent that one of the reasons why was that I was traveling to that future by living through the present day by day. Hour by Hour. Minute by minute. I was traveling forward in time, to be sure, but at the same rate as everyone and everything else. A 1:1 ratio if you will. And as a result of this mode of time travel, the inventions I learned of that were pushing the technological edge were not the earth-shattering, time accelerating things that I had always wanted them to be. They were new and they were advanced, but they weren’t the holodeck in my living room that I wanted.

The fact is, these advances were things that I was acclimating to as they happened, and as a result, they became comfortable to me. Like people that experienced the automobile replacing the horse and buggy as the main means of transportation. Sure, there was some resistance and skepticism to it. People never really thought that a car would replace a horse…until they got one themselves and experienced the benefits first hand. The fact that they no longer had to deal with a living animal to transport themselves and their family became such a positive thing, that the negatives were often overlooked. They were completely ignored in many cases. When the dangers of driving a car on the open road were identified, we simply made adjustments to certain things and overcame them. We created a set of rules that all drivers have to abide by. We created better and safer vehicles…and most importantly we adapted to these changes.

Such is the way of the future. It is not ushered in with a flash of the technological magic wand, but with the slow, steady development of new thoughts, new innovations. Ideas that would never have happened, had the changes of the past never happened. After all, would we really need airbags if we were still traveling in a horse drawn carriage?

As these thoughts coalesce in my mind and I sit here wanting the holodeck to be invented, I realize that I am just going to have to wait. One day at a time. Minute by minute. But that’s ok. I know it’s out there. Someday I will wake up and KNOW that the future has arrived.

I just wish it would hurry up!

Makes you feel a bit smarter.... no?

"There are some funny quotes here which I collected from various sources over time. I thought I would share them with you. I am sure you may have seen some or all of these in other places, but that's not gonna stop me!"
Steven Goldstein about this blog entry.

Q: If you could live forever, would you and why?
A: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest.

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
Mariah Carey

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
Brooke Shields, during an interview to become Spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign

"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body,"
Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky, basketball forward

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,"
Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC.

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president."
Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents

"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it."
A congressional candidate in Texas

"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
Bill Clinton, President

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
Al Gore, Vice President

"We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
Al Gore, VP

"I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."
Dan Quayle

"It's no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another"
George Bush, US President

"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
Lee Iacocca

"I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version."
Col. Oliver North, from his Iran-Contra testimony

"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst.

"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people."
Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor.

"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."
Keppel Enderbery

"If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record."
Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman

"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."
Dept. of Soc. Services, Greenville, South Carolina

Great Mambo Chicken!

An amazing thing happened to me yesterday. In my mailbox, I found the strangest thing. A chicken. But that’s not the amazing part. What was amazing was that the chicken talked to me. Really.

More than just the traditional “Bawk!” that most chickens are prone to say, this one started telling me things that were really quite fascinating! Astonishing things about cryogenics, nanotechnology and the ability to transfer the human mind into a computer! All of these things may be a part of the way humans live and evolve in the future. And some of it in the near future! Some day “soon” people may be able to extend our lives - indefinitely!

As a result of the prospect of living forever, we would need to find a way off the planet and start spreading out into the cosmos in order to avoid overcrowding on Mother Earth.

Well…as if all of that weren’t enough, the chicken hinted at more conversations of this type that we will be having soon. Very soon! You see, this is the Great Mambo Chicken, and it’s telling me of the Transhuman Condition. This is sort of a “gray area between overheated imagination and overheated reality”. And since my chicken is really a book, and the conversations are actually just me reading the book, I know that I will be talking to the chicken more since all of the things I mentioned so far are just from the introduction. I still have 300 pages left to read! And I can’t Wait!!

911 Slideshow

wtc-slideshow

I am a little late in posting this...sorry.
I found this incredibly moving. I hope you do as well.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Steven.

Checkbook 

Do you have a Checking Account?

Then you NEED to read this from the Consumers Union. (These are the people who publish the Consumer Reports Magazine.) This is some serious business that will affect you if the banks new process for handling checks is not modified! Take a look. I STRONGLY urge you to sign the petition and spread the word!

Consumers Union: Petition the Banks!