Time Travel is Way Cooler in a DeLorean

This morning on the bus, the electric banner that scrolls the time and date for the passengers read February 21, 2026. For a minute I thought I might have woken up on the wrong side of the Twilight Zone. Then I realized my bus wasn't flying and my iPod was still a separate entity from my body, so I figured some drunken MBTA worker must have programed the bus this morning. That made me feel a whole lot better.

To get my mind off of drunken bus operators, I was pondering what the year 2026 might be like. I will be 44, which is the worst thing I've ever heard. And that's about all I can really say about the 2-6er (what I think we should call the years by then). So, I decided that if there's anything out there that I think could look into the future 19 years and bring me back a glimpse of the world it would have to be Google. Surely the omnipotent master of the cyber-universe would find me the answers.

Turns out Google is just the pimp and Wikipedia is its bitch. The first page on my Google search was for the Wiki, which already has a page solely for the year 2026. Talk about being on top of your shit. Here's what it tells us about the future (insert Wayne's World sound effects and motions here).

In the year 2026:

• New Year's Day will be on a Thursday. Yesssss! Thursdays rock!
• The Aurora Programme will send a mission to Mars. Really? Mars? That's original. Won't we be living on Mars by then? That's not going to be a very exciting mission.
• The U.S. will celebrate its 250th anniversary as an independent country. Par-tay!! Maybe by then we can clone the fore-fathers and get our groove on. I call dibbsies on John Adams!
• The southern section of the BART will connect the East Bay of California to Silicon Valley. It will make it a much easier commute for the AIs to come kill off the humans every morning. They will be very appreciative and might spare people who look like Will Smith or Tom Cruise.
• According to the TV section of 2026, if we were in an episode of SeaQuest DSV this would happen - "An economic summit takes place that places hundreds of thousands of undeveloped basins back on the market." I have no idea what the means, but if I can have a talking dolphin, I don't really care either.
• And according to Star Trek: Enterprise, World War III will begin in 2026. A date they must have gotten from Ms. Cleo, since all signs point to that shit storm starting much earlier.

Lastly, my favorite event of 2026 will be the actualization of Heinz von Foerster's "Doomsday Equation". In 1960, Foerster published an article in which he divulged a formula for future population growth. "The formula gave 2.7 billion as the 1960 world population and predicted that population growth would become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026. " Happy Birthday to me! Awww, the end of the world! You shouldn't have!

So in pre-celebration of the apocalypse and my 45th birthday, which I will be spending on Mars with my talking pet dolphin Darwin, an AI ass-kicking Will Smith and my John Adams clone, here is a video of how I think the world will actually end. Enjoy.

Hello, Dolly

The FDA recently made the decision that food products which come from cloned animals do not need special labels at the supermarket. They say there is no difference at all between the original cow/sheep/pig than its clone, and there are no health risks associated with eating these animals. You can read the whole CNN article here.

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this. My first reaction is to be creeped out. It has been over 10 years since Dolly the sheep showed up in the news, and that is a lot of time for cloning technologies to evolve and become more widespread. However, to me it still sounds like
something from a sci-fi movie, and a horrible made-for-tv one by the Sci-Fi channel at that. I don't understand the science behind it and therefore I fear it and its possibilities.

I also wonder about the safety of eating so much food that comes from a science lab. And I'm not just talking clones here. Almost all of our meats are genetically altered in some way - to make the cows produce more milk, pigs be meatier and chickens create more and larger eggs. None of this food is labeled either. Your bacon does not have a warning on it that says - "From a genetically enhanced pig." and your milk doesn't say "Now with more bovine growth hormones!". So I guess if that is the standard they've set, why would they start with labeling cloned food?

Cloned. Food. Just let that sink in. If the idea of eating an exact genetic copy of another animal made by scientists in a test tube does not creep you out even a little bit and make you seriously consider being a vegetarian, then you should just sign up for Fear Factor right now, because you would win.

I have never tried to be a vegetarian before. I know those little piggies and moo moos are cute, and I have heard the many horror stories about how they are raised, but I have decided that 1) I am not selfish about much in my life, so I can have a clear conscious about being selfish about my place on the food chain (and anyone with a problem with it can choke on a big fat carrot stick); and 2) those animals are mighty tasty! Mmmm boy!

I am, however, getting increasingly concerned about the safety of many foods (even fruits and vegetables with all their pesticidal goodness), and see that even being a vegetarian may not even be the way to solve this problem. The only hope is that someday soon my financial situation will allow me to buy all organics, and that eventually they will be affordable for everyone.

Until then I guess it's going to be:

Hello, Dolly
Well hello, Dolly
It's so nice to have you back where you belong
You're lookin' swell, Dolly
We can tell, Dolly
You're still glowin', you'rs still crowin'
You're still goin' strong.


Picture of Dolly taken from Wikipedia, click on the image to see full credits.