It used to be the nicest place in the universe but now the people were burning because their planet’s ozone layer was too thin; it had been eaten away by chemicals that their industries manufactured or that the people used in their homes and cars. For decades, scientists had been warning the population that this would happen, but greed, mistrust and convenience won out. Now reality had taken over.
Continue reading “Moving On”
CAR ON HIGHWAY TO LA – day
A guy is driving into the LA area from the north. He comes around a bend and sees LA sprawled out in view.
DRIVER
Ahhhhh home sweet home, the City of Angels.
(Someone behind him beeps).
What the heck?
(They beep again)
Geeze, I’m going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. Continue reading “LA Driving”
If I’m talking to someone, personal or business, no matter what the subject, as soon as I hear that person use the word “awesome,” I know it’s not going to work out. They might as well use the phrase “my bad” or “bro” or “OMG.” Continue reading “Awesome (or so they say)”
Your sense of smell starts with breathing in a substance. If you smell it, you inhaled it. There is no such thing as “just a smell.” Now comes the scary part… Continue reading “Senseless Scents”
STEVE
Alexa, please compile a list of romantic movies and put in my schedule that I have a date with Julia on Friday at 7pm.
ALEXA
Yes my wonderfulness.
STEVE
Even though Alexa is a computerized assitant, she compliments me on occasion. OK, I asked her to.
By the way Alexa, can you tell me how many people attempted to hack you in the last week?
ALEXA
It was a light week. Just 127.
STEVE
127. Did any succeed?
ALEXA
Yes Thor, my reason for being.
STEVE
Thor (Steve smiles). How many? Continue reading “A Conversation With Alexa”
Are you tired of politicians lying to you? Are you tired of them purposefully misrepresenting facts so they can pass a law that affects your income or health only to find out later the law doesn’t do what they said? Here is how to stop it.
Once a person submits forms to run for political office, they should, be required to 1) submit to a thorough background check; and 2) tell the truth under subject to felony perjury laws. For all information released to the public during the time period campaigning and into public office if they are elected, a “truth clause” on the forms will be repeated when they take the oath of office. It will also be given to cabinet heads and people directing government departments.
Political lies usually revolve around favors and payoffs and these things undermine our democracy. No longer will we have to accept their lies, and wait until they have to be sworn in before a judge or political body, for them to be bound to tell the truth under penalty of perjury. If they are representing others, plus conveying ideas and facts to them, then they should be legally bound to convey it all truthfully. Since they are able to change laws in our society and directly affect our ability to survive in the society, they should be bound to the truth.
This will curtail corruption too. Can you believe our elected representatives make decisions on our health and financial survival but lie to us about the details? Unfortunately we all believe it because we see it happen so much. If they submit false information about the laws or false information about the background reasons to make those decisions, and we get screwed, they should go to prison. This is our society. They are elected to make it better, it to lie to us and steal our money.
If a doctor or financial advisor was caught doing what politicians do, they would be ejected from their profession and possibly imprisoned. If a regular citizen commits fraud (which is what these politicians are doing) then they should go to prison too. People have been complaining about politicians lying to us for centuries. Why shouldn’t the politicians making our laws and governing over our society, be nothing short of truthful?
Donald Trump is listening to Congress on C-SPAN. He is eating McDonalds burgers from a food cart.
“The House votes to impeach.”
DONALD TRUMP
Screw this, I won’t resign. I am not a crook! Besides, I have to give Alaska to Russia or Putin will have my ass. I wonder what the tv ratings for the impeachment were.
IVANKA
Daddy, I’m complicit but I think you should quit.
DONALD TRUMP
I’ll be ok Muffin. You know what? I’m going to get you a tiara and me a crown.
IVANKA
Yea!
• When King Kong was in New York City, what did they do with his poop?
• If Febreze gets out odors, then why doesn’t it get out its own odor?
• I wonder how many dogs hear their owners having sex on a regular basis and sit there in the dark thinking “this is so unfair.”
• Did the dermatologist leave this magazine out so I would catch something and have to come back in a few weeks?
• How do people contract herpes of the eye?
• Why don’t lions just wait till the heard of gazelle fall asleep? All that chasing and jumping and risk of injury. Why bother?
• Why do they televise car races? — Look, they are going around the track again!
• I wonder if people had long make out sessions before toothpaste was invented.
• Do doctors check for a pulse before performing an autopsy?
• Would anyone listen to what Deepak Chopra said if his name was Dave Smith?
• Did the chef who prepared my meal have a runny nose from the steam?
• Has anyone ever done a study of people’s facial expressions as they walk out of the bathroom?
• How do they make “recycled toilet paper?”
• There is a scientific, evolutionary theory that states when humans’ jaws got smaller, it allowed our brains to get bigger. So humans with big mouths, had small brains. I think that explains politicians. Could people that run for office be a random outcropping of ancient inferior DNA?
There are only a few real holidays. Thanksgiving, Veterans and Memorial Days, Martin Luther King Day, Independence Day… and Groundhog Day. Did you ever see the movie Groundhog Day? There was a great quote from it: “This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.”
I wonder if 1000 years from now, people will think that we actually used to use animals’ shadows to predict the weather. Continue reading “Astrology, The Drinking Game”
On July 8th, 2015 NASA released this photo taken of Pluto from the spacecraft named New Horizons on the previous day. (As an update to this post, a sharper photo taken days later during the Pluto Flyby is posted below). At this point, New Horizons is about 5 million miles from Pluto and will get there in 6 days…. so it’s moving at a good clip. I never thought I would see this in my lifetime. For that matter, I never thought I would see vehicles on Mars and the vacation photos they are sending back. Its all incredible to me and I thank the people at NASA for this.
Pluto has a weird orbit but at present it is about 3 billion miles from Earth. Any signal that NASA sends to the spacecraft (which travels at the speed of light) takes about 4.5 hours to get there and of course photos or information sent back takes the same time. So for NASA to get results of instructions sent to New Horizons, it takes 9 hours.
I saw someone online state that we are the first people in Earth’s history to be able to see up-close images of all the planets in the solar system (yes, they are including Pluto as a planet since that was convention when we were born). That fact though amazed me. It made me think of what people being born today might think growing up. To them, all this will be standard knowledge. To me, people being on the moon was conventional knowledge and before that, many people thought none of this would ever be possible. Future generations will of course look to explore further. That is how technology and science move forward…new people. What will they explore? The Oort Cloud (if there is one)? What must beings on other planets know about the universe? Way more than us? Do they explore space at all? Can they explore space? Do they have satellites already exploring other solar systems? Could we be the most technologically advanced race in the universe? I suppose its possible. Who knows.
New Horizons is moving about 36,000 mph and so it travels about 864,000 miles per day…and it has taken 9.5 years to get to Pluto from Earth. To go that fast and to conserve fuel, New Horizons had to be slung-shot around Jupiter using Jupiter’s gravity. In doing that, it increased its speed by about 9,000 mph to about 51,000 mph. You might notice that it has slowed down. Why? The gravitational pull from the Sun.
In addition to a couple of cameras, there are instruments on board measuring space dust, plasma and high-energy particles. Pluto was discovered in February 1930 by an American named Clyde W. Tombaugh. He noticed a small dot in a different place on two photographs of the stars that he took. The photos are below.
Thus Spoke Jon 
You must be logged in to post a comment.