This evening I watched President Obama address the nation with regards to the debt ceiling controversy that has been raging in DC and beyond for a few months now.  I also watched Speaker Boehner’s response to President.  Both men made it clear that it’s the opposing party’s inability to compromise that is “holding the economy hostage”.  Both men asked God to bless America, reminded American’s that we are the greatest country that has ever existed in the entire universe, and spoke of the need to grow our economy and put American’s back to work.  It wasn’t so much what they said that I found lacking in understanding of the issues at hand – it was what they and nearly every politician has neglected to say for months if not years now.  No, I’m not referring to the fact that we’ve been in multi-billion dollar wars with third-world countries for nearly a decade now – nor how morally corrupt it is to continue to provide multi-millionaires and billion dollar corporations with amazing tax breaks and incentives to hide their wealth and transfer their workforces overseas.  The 800 pound gorilla in the room that either nobody sees, or nobody wants to confront, is that the world has changed and the cause is not politics, religion or immigration policies – it is the conflict between our rapidly growing technology and our archaic economic system.

Our current economic system, which finds its roots as far back as medieval times, is based on a simple principle that every third grader knows – Supply and Demand.  The concept is simple – there is a finite supply of everything, and prices are set by the demand for that item versus its relative supply in the marketplace.  For the past few centuries, this system in its various incarnations, generally worked.  A community could only produce so much product, that product would then be divided based on the needs of that community and how the members of that community decided to spend their earnings relative to their station in life.  While there was certainly trade, for the most part, a community’s resources was limited by its geographical area and the skills of its people.  Over time, with advancements in transportation and communication, the scope of what a community could source grew.  Even so, no one would have imagined in 1900 that the majority of the products people in the United States would be using a hundred years later would be coming from China and other foreign nations.  The notion that someone in New York would be eating a tomato grown in Mexico would have seemed ridiculous.  Yet, as transportation costs and low-cost labor benefits stacked up, suddenly American’s were importing the majority of their goods rather than producing them.  Today it’s estimated that only 2% of clothing purchased in the US is actually produced here.¹

Now we mustn’t get nostalgic about the glory years of NYC’s garment district – those were never the most desirable jobs available, and most went to first generation immigrants who worked painfully hard in less than ideal situations.  My point is not that we need to look for the “Made In The USA” label – it’s to highlight how the technology of the 20th century, which primarily focused on greater industrialization and massively improved transportion, radically transformed the world we lived in.  A century that started with the horse and buggy ended with satellites and airplanes circling the globe.  All the while we patch-worked our economic system, supported struggling industries, lamented the closing of America’s industrial strongholds, and continued to ask our politicians where the jobs were.

Now, in the 21st century, technology is racing at a far greater pace, and still we seem incapable of recognizing the radical shift that is occurring all around us.  The simple fact is that technology is created by technology.  There could not have been televisions, until Edison spread the understanding of electricity.  There could not have been computers had there not been the invention of the television, and the various technologies discovered in its development.  With each breakthrough in understanding, the capacity for greater breakthroughs arise.  Many are familiar with the observations of Intel’s co-founder Gordon E. Moore, referred to as Moore’s Law, that processor speeds for computers double every two years.  This is the result of the fact that the technology itself creates its own improvements, and thus “the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.” ²

This phenomenon helps explain why the rotary phone in the house I grew up in was not particularly dissimilar to the phone my parents used when they were a child, and yet I’ve upgraded from a flip phone, to an iPhone, to an iPhone 3G, to an iPhone4, all in the scope of five years.  The fact is, our technology is growing at an exponential rate, and thus each next iteration is greater than the past version by greater and greater measures, in less and less time. And, what applies to circuit boards applies to almost every facet of our lives.

The consequences of that are far-reaching, and yet seemingly ignored.  Several times this year I’ve had conversations with friends or colleagues in which I’ve stated the next industry to disappear is the publishing industry.  I’m not referring to books or authors, just the printing of text on paper, and primarily the stores and distribution methods setup to support this industry.  One only has to download one free Public Domain book on their iPad to suddenly realize they will never purchase a paperback copy of Plato, Thoreau or Shakespeare at a bookstore again.  In fact, I can’t really imagine why I would purchase a new book in its traditional form ever.  Arguments to the contrary typically state, “oh, but I love the feel of holding a book in my hand” or “I love the smell of ink on paper” or my favorite, “I like to be able to give my books to someone else when I’m done” (a wonderfully altruistic argument, I must admit). I typically just smile and shake my head, as I imagine folks in the last century century must have done when friends argued how much they’d miss their daily conversations with the milk man.  Yet, just last week it was announced that Borders, one of the largest bookstore chains in the US,  will be closing all 500+ of its stores.  The company had not made a profit since 2005.

So what does the closure of Borders have to do with the global economy?  Ask the 19,500 employees of Borders who are now looking for a job.  If you can’t reach them, perhaps ask one of the 60,000 individuals that Blockbuster employed in 2009.  You might still find a few of them if you look hard enough, but you better act quickly… what few shops remain will be closing soon, and no amount of political magic will bring them back.  You won’t find any employees from its major competitor Hollywood Video either, they closed the doors of their 2000+ stores in May of 2010.

Why have all these videos stores and the thousands of jobs they created disappeared?  Those damn Democrats?  Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy?  No… Technology.  Very few folks are interested in jumping into their cars and driving to the local video store to rent a movie they can either have delivered to their home or streamed over the internet thanks to Netflix or iTunes.  The only problem is that Netflix doesn’t need to employ nearly as many people to manage their supply chain as a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video (not to mention all the contractors and constructions crews, electricians and custodians needed to build and maintain physical stores).  In fact, I would argue the recent Netflix price increase is nothing but their less than subtle attempt to ween folks off of mailed DVDs, and force them to watch streaming only videos.  Why?  Less folks to employ.  Whether one copy of “Mad Men” has to go out, or ten thousand, when you do it digitally online, it takes no more effort and no more human interaction to make it happen.  No envelope stuffers to hire, no mail sorters to pay, nobody to scan this or mail that. Beyond that, it’s far more advantageous for the customer to just download a digital copy, than hope there is a physical copy at the local store.  I remember when Batman came to video when I was a kid.  Our local Blockbuster had 100 copies, that took up nearly three floor-to-ceiling shelves.  But each time for the first few weeks I ran to the the New Release section in hopes of getting a copy, not a single one was to be found.  There just wasn’t enough to go around.

And thus we come full circle to the original thought that triggered this post – welcome to the age of limitless supply.

We are only just entering what will be the most radical shift in human culture since the advent of the written language – the age of plenty.  Whether its books, music, clothing, food, medicine, or just about anything else one can imagine, there is either now, or in the very near future, going to be an unlimited supply available to us.  ”BUT GREG, OUR NATURAL RESOURCES ARE SO SCARCE… WE WON’T EVEN HAVE ENOUGH WATER FOR EVERYONE IN TWENTY YEARS.”   First, stop using the caps-lock, that’s annoying. Second, you’re forgetting Moore’s Law.  You’re trying to solve future problems with today’s technology.  That’s like trying to get to the moon in 1900.  You need the Wright Brothers before you can have a Neil Armstrong.  The problems of our future will be solved by our unbelievable technology – devices and sciences that are unimaginable today, but will be reality in a mere decade.  Then those technologies will rapidly develop even more profound technologies.

When politicians speak about what things will be like in 2040, they always seem to imagine that 2040 will have all the same technologies and scientific understandings we have today.  That is beyond ignorant.  Just as profound as the technological advances from 1980 to 2000 were, the advances from 2000 to 2020 will be exponentially greater.  Not twice as much… exponentially greater.  As there was no internet in 1980, there will be new technologies and improvements to transportation, medicine and communication 20 years from now that not even someone who daydreams about technology as much as I do can foresee.  When you consider how disconnected and fragmented our education and scientific communities were a mere decade ago before the rise of the internet, one can hardly imagine the impact that this technology is and will continue to have on the future of those professions.  The amount of information being shared and thus learned today overshadows even the greatest libraries and universities of the 20th century.

The consequence however, is that our economic system and our culture as a whole is not setup for this.  It is setup for a world in which there is a ton of work that needs to be done, monstrous sums of production required to create the goods we need, and thus anyone willing to work can certainly find employment, get paid, and acquire the goods they desire.  But as population continues to grow alongside technology, we will soon, if we have not already, surpass the need for our available workforce.  We will either have to force industries to deprecate the technologies available to them, or find alternative means to determine an individual’s worth.  We either ban digital copies of music, videos, books and applications, or we accept that fact that the millions of jobs those various industries created in their 20th century manually distributed means are gone.  As each new industry begins to defend itself from technology in a desperate struggle to save jobs, whether it be teachers, nurses, customer service reps, oil rig workers, cashiers, mailmen, gas station attendants, realtors, travel agents, lawn care professionals or  Yellow Page salesman (yes, my good friend Gary sold ads for Yellow Pages until a year ago) – more and more folks will find themselves replaced by technology, and politicians will offer more promises of a better tomorrow, and blame the other guy for the lack of jobs.

Certainly, in a perfect world, there could never be enough doctors and scientists and artists – individuals living to full potential, sharing their gifts and passions with the world.  Sadly, while our technology continues to double, our compassion for our fellow man and our understanding that we are all in this together does not.  We point fingers and long for better days long gone, instead of recognizing how amazing the time we live in is and will be.  How profound a time we are soon approaching, when man struggles for nothing.  Where man can dedicate his time not to labor, but to family and community.  That his value will not be measured by his paycheck or his hours worked, but the happiness and fulfillment he finds in each limitless day.  That instead of fighting for scarce resources, he shares in the abundance of the good life with friends, family and neighbors alike.

BUT GREG, THIS SOUNDS LIKE COMMUNISM, AND COMMUNISM HAS ALREADY FAILED.  Again, stop with the caps-lock.  Technology does not lean to a particular political ideology, and neither do I.  Any attempts to share in the bounty life provides in the past would have no doubt been crushed by the reality that there truly was a limited supply and a great demand.  Class systems inevitably form when demand outweighs supply, and thus any attempt to share the wealth is pointless when there are limits to that wealth.  My point is simply that those limits are coming to an end – and not 100 years from now, or 50 years from now.  They are ending now.  Our economic system is crumbling not because of politics or greed, but because it is archaic, outdated, and if one spends a few moments trying to figure out where money comes from, completely illusory. (hint: it’s not gold… and even if it were, that’s just a mineral we’ll most likely be able to replicate in a decade or so, the way we do with diamonds today).

On New Years Eve in the year 2000 I sat in a room with several friends and I suggested a scenario.  Imagine you woke-up tomorrow morning and opened the Best Buy circular (I believe I said Circuit City at the time, but they closed their 567 stores in 2009), and they announced that all television sets were free that day.  How many would you get?  Some folks said two, a few others were greedy and said five.  I decided to be the most greedy and I said I’d probably get at least 10.  I’m not sure what I would do with 10 tvs, but if they’re free, why not?   Most everyone then agreed that they would probably carry out as many TVs as they could fit into their car.  I then said, what would happen the next morning when you woke-up and Best Buy announced again, that today, all television sets were free.  How many would you get then?  The room fell silent. When you have everything you need, you long for nothing. In a world of limitless supply, there is zero demand.

Just imagine.

There’s been a case of the break-ups going around lately, although when you’re lucky enough to have as many friends as I do, somebody is always on their way into a relationship, somebody is always on their way out – and those in the middle are typically wishing they were experiencing one or the other.

I was discussing this phenomenon, along with the emotions that attach themselves to relationships or anything that someone takes seriously, with friends the other night.  During the conversation, I began poorly paraphrasing the Roman philosopher Seneca, and his views on the topic of emotions, typically associated with Stoicism.

Seneca felt that all emotion – jealously, fear, anger, frustration, love, happiness – stemmed from the subconscious recognition of the separation between how we wish the world was, and how it truly is.  This false judgement existed in our mind, and the further from our conceptualized ideal we found the events in our life to be, the more pain we experienced.  The closer actual events came to this ideal in our mind, the happier we were.

Some of the gap between our hopes and our reality most certainly stems from outside forces – which explains why it’s easier to find inner-peace walking through the woods absent the calamity of others, then say riding in the back of a Tri-Met bus at rush hour.  Some of it stems from unfortunate situations in our lives – job loss, car accidents, theft – and some from our own shortcomings or mistakes.  Regardless the cause however, Seneca said the problem was not reality.  Reality was truth.  The problem was, and our emotions were triggered by, our misconceptions of the truth.

This is a pretty profound concept – that our happiness or unhappiness is not caused by the event itself, but the separation between that event, and how you imagined it would be.  A frustration that your calculations were incorrect.  Or in the sense of happiness or love, just how correct you were.  In love, you find someone special, and low-and-behold, they think you’re special too (which you always sorta figured).  Talk about confirmation of your ideal!

If actual events determined how you felt, study after study wouldn’t prove that those living in what we consider poverty conditions in 3rd world countries often have more happiness and lower rates of depression than American’s experiencing poverty.  Individuals with far worse conditions but lower expectations are less effected emotionally than those in America, who by our very culture believe life should provide greater opportunity and experiences.  It’s why you often hear that the wealthy aren’t happy.  As Seneca put it, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

Beyond being a purely philosophical difference between how we look at emotion and the events in our lives, it points towards how our minds interpret reality and the bigger question of why we interpret reality or have emotions in the first place.  It’s helpful always to keep in mind that we are made of matter – the same building blocks of everything we see around us.  This matter is primarily made of open space and depending on which scientists you ask, unfolds into smaller and still smaller entities that are primarily filled with empty space as well.  The various particles arrange themselves into infinite combinations that produce everything from a meteorite to a tree, from penguins to clouds, us and that table in the corner.

Some of these combinations of particles develop an additional quality we call life.  We typically reserve this for the various species we see in our physical plane, and for the moment, on our planet.  We don’t typically suggest the Earth is living, or that the atoms in our bodies are “alive”.  Cells to some degree we see as living, although because  we see ourselves as a whole, they don’t get the level of individual identity of, say, an earthworm.

In the realm of the living, there is an additional quality matter can acquire, which we might call consciousness.  Some might argue all living things possess consciousness – but tree-huggers aside – this characteristic, on a sliding scale, is primarily reserved for animals, and for the most part, at its highest form in mammals.  As we all evolved from one source, it’s safe to say somewhere along the line this consciousness began to develop and over time improved, with humans of course reigning supreme for the moment.

If matter can take any form, one could suggest being a table would be an easier form than being a human.  A table requires no consciousness, and it requires no state of living.  However, a table can not exist without human intervention, and more importantly, human imagination.  And it’s here where I begin to see the source of our emotions.  For matter could have created the human form, as certainly it did, but humans would have created nothing if not for their imaginations.  And if those imaginations did not create better spaces and greater scenarios and happier days, we would never have had ideals to strive for.  Worse, if we didn’t receive a legitimate consequence (albeit entirely emotional) when that idealized perfection was missed or achieved, we’d have no will to push ourselves.  Emotions, moreso then the events in our lives, determine our reality.

We can not separate ourselves from our emotions, nor would we want to.  But we can acknowledge that what is happening is a re-alignment, whether good or bad, of how we imagine the world to be, and the reality that actually exists.  We can take it as a sign that we are doing well, or missing the mark, but perhaps not suffer nearly as much if we recognize the true source of those feelings and detach them from the event, which is truth. If the event is perceived as bad, and brings forth anger or jealousy, is there no comfort in the knowledge that at least in our minds things were better?  That we have the capacity to imagine something grander than reality?

We can also marvel that there is some force that, whether intentionally or randomly, compels matter to take its various forms, and in doing so, created a species so complex that it imagines even greater forms of matter, and brings those thoughts into reality.  Whatever that force may be, we are certainly an instrument and a product of it. Everything that has ever existed brought you into being and carried you to this moment – with neither good nor bad intentions. And that’s the truth.

There are three forms of knowledge in this world.  That which we know, that which we realize we don’t know, and that which we don’t even know we don’t know.  It is the third realm, that which we don’t know we don’t know that is the largest of the three. For all the information we acquire on this journey, and all the information we put off acquiring is ultimately eclipsed by all the knowledge we’re not even aware we’re missing out on.

The goals projects I started at the beginning of this year was my attempt to explore the second realm of knowledge – that which I realize I don’t know.  I made a list of all the things I wanted to learn that up until that point had eluded me.  New meals to cook, new bands to discover, new locations to visit.  I knew I didn’t know how to make Pad Thai… now I do.  Listing out various areas of knowledge or expertise that I lacked gave me a solid road-map to learning new things.  I’ve spent the majority of my weekends and free time the past three months teaching myself new ideas – and it’s been beyond rewarding.

However, in pursuing these various new skills and tasks, I learned a handful of things I hadn’t expected to discover.  In reading the autobiography of Ben Franklin for example, I discovered numerous authors and books he mentions throughout, that previously I’d never heard of.  With the help of the iPad’s super easy capacity to find public-domain texts, I could easily acquire books and articles he mentions, and learn more about the era and the man himself.

Cooking ten new meals taught me all sorts of things I hadn’t previously considered.  I especially took the time to learn some of my favorite ethnic foods – various chinese stir-fries and lebanese dishes.  Discovering how meals like Won Ton soup or Grape Leaves are prepared gave me such a new appreciation for foods I’d enjoyed my whole life, but never took the time to ponder what was in them.

While doing research on how to store various vegetables to avoid wilting, I discovered a YouTube video in which someone explained that green onions would regenerate themselves if you replanted the white base in some soil.  This seemed almost too good to be true as an obsessed lover of green onions.  How could it be that all these years, I had thrown out the root of the vegetable, when I could have simply re-grown the entire plant.  Sure enough, I planted a few roots, and in a week’s time I had a complete green onion.

Three months ago I knew I didn’t know how to make pork fried rice.  But I had no idea that one of the key ingredients could re-grow itself with ease.  One discovery often leads to many others, and that process of learning what is actually going on in the world around us is somehow the point of this aimless journey.  While it’s clear I wont’ accomplish all 50 of my goals, pushing myself to learn new things has been a great step forward in my life, and figuring out how to maintain this drive and focus the energy even greater is the goal for phase 2.

At the start of the new year, I discovered I had a cavity in one of my wisdom teeth, and after meeting with an oral surgeon, decided it was best to have all four of my wisdom teeth removed.  As luck would have it, they had an opening two days later and so before I knew it, I was preparing to have my first surgery.   Yup, that’s correct – up until this point my body had been in mint condition.  Okay, well I guess my eyes aren’t 100% functional, and I’d broke a collar bone back in high school, but I’d never had to work with someone referred to as a surgeon before.  More importantly, I had never been put under before.

I’m not sure I had a clear vision of what would happen when I went under, but I assume I thought it was like sleeping.  The night before the dental operation, my friend Rachel informed me that things were a little different than I supposed. That I wouldn’t be dreaming – and that I wouldn’t even notice the passage of time.  I had no idea what she was talking about.

The next morning I showed up at the oral surgeon’s bright and early.  Jessica was kind enough to be my co-pilot, because as I would soon discover, I would be in no condition to take care of myself, let alone get myself home from Milwaukie, Oregon.  My name was called and I was led back to one of the patient rooms, where I took my seat, and began getting covered and strapped with all sorts of straps and devices.  Apparently this particular office only hires very attractive, female nurses – as the room was stuffed with them.  One was setting up a tray with various dental tools – another fiddling with the computer and pulling up x-rays they’d taken of my jaw – another strapping those suction-cup devises that track your heartbeat, which of course had risen by that point. Suddenly my heartbeat was playing out over the room, a surreal experience to say the least – a high-pitched alarm-clock sounding rendition of my living, breathing self.

“Roxy is my dog,” the girl removing the sanitary wrapping from various tools said to me in an explanatory tone.

“I figured as much,” I replied, having no idea what she was talking about.

As she continued with her story, I began to imagine what it would be like if I heard my heartbeat all the time, or worse, if others could.  I mean, here I was, hanging out with four very attractive gals – educated nurses at that – and each one of them could literally hear me getting more nervous as the moments crept closer to the operation.  I calmed myself down for a second.  “Whoa” – I suddenly realized I could increase or decrease my heart rate.  This was pretty fascinating stuff and I was taking great interest in the fluctuation of my heart monitor when just then the doctor showed up. He sat down beside me, and began preparing a needle to stick into my arm.  “This is it,” I thought.  He said some typical “are you ready” type things, but my mind was so focused on the needle, and the sound of my own heartbeat, and this wildly bizarre moment that I can’t recall what I replied, if anything.  “Okay, we’ll see you in a bit,” I believe he said – and there were some other final statements from the gals – and I thought, “I wonder how long…” and I felt myself slip away.

I opened my eyes and everyone was gone.

“Welcome back,” I heard from behind me.  I attempted to speak but realized my mouth was stuffed with gauze and my jaw completely numb.  In hindsight, there were probably a dozen other critical requirements for a solid conversation I wouldn’t have met at that particular moment.  I was helped to a wheel-chair, wheeled down a hallway, and helped into Jess’ car.

I estimate that I was under for approximately an hour, and as my friend suggested, it did not feel like a nap.  There were no dreams inside this state – nor seemingly the passage of time.  While I may occasionally be surprised how late I have slept in on a Saturday morning – I am never incredulous to the fact that time has passed.  This experience was quite the opposite – no sooner had the doctor pricked my arm and my eyes had closed – then I was waking up and the operation was complete.  I wonder if they could replicate this service for air travel.

What is most peculiar about this experience is that I state without question that “I was out”.  Yet, I imagine if a certain beeping machine had decided to quit beeping, there would have been a room full of very panicked, albeit still attractive, female nurses.  Clearly only a portion of the physical form of “Greg” was gone. It is remarkable to think that this ship can still float, even when the captain is not present.  That I need not tell my heart to beat, nor lungs to breath – they continue on without me, perhaps awaiting my return, or perhaps completely unaware that I left in the first place.  All the billions of cells, doing their own thing, perhaps unaware that the boss is away.  Perhaps unaware that there even is a boss.  Perhaps correct in their assumption?

And what of this consciousness?  What of this dialogue inside my head – the writer typing these words – the voice and the one that hears the voice?  Not today, but in rapidly approaching future, one might find a regatta of options in which to implant oneself – hybrid biological systems, grown with the specific purpose of transplanting ones consciousness into another life-form.  While such propositions no doubt conjure up Terminator style dystopian visions of a world filled with mutant humans – I always prefer to think of best-case scenarios for the inevitable technological breakthroughs we are to experience during my lifetime.  If a clearer understanding of what consciousness is can be discovered, a whole new world of exploration becomes possible. How would our attachment to our physical selves change if we were no longer bound to the limits of our human form?  Does the human form have limits if the capacity for biological modifications are part of its survival toolkit? How will the concept of strength and beauty modify as bio-geneticists tinker with the very building blocks that produce life? How long before improved hearing or sight are not just life-changing solutions for the blind and deaf, but upgrades beyond the visible spectrum and audio ranges currently experienced by humans? At first we will modify ourselves, but eventually, if for nothing else than the survival of our consciousness, we will create a better form.  How marvelous is evolution, that eventually a creature if formed that can not only grasp the complexity of how life is developed – but can take it upon itself to create new forms that suit specific needs? If life is truly survival of the fittest, then one can hardly imagine a creature more fit, than one that strategically designs its own form.

On our second to last day in Ireland, my father and I negotiated the Ireland busing system, and purchased two tickets to Ardee,  a small village about an hour and a half north of Dublin. The bus would apparently stop a five minute walk outside of the main town – and another bus would be returning to the same location at 6pm. We nervously boarded the bus out of Dublin.

Ardee, Ireland was where my great, great, great grandfather John Malone lived before leaving for America. The namesake of the Malone family, my Father’s Mother’s family – and the eldest relative I have any knowledge of. And I know little more than that he came from Ardee. According to my father, he came to the States, fought in the Civil War and earned enough funds to have his wife join him. How much of that story is true, and how much are details from novels that got wrapped up in truth I have no idea – but in town we discovered two Malone’s – including a business with the name – so it’s safe to say that there’s some truth to the story.

In Ardee there are two 13th Century castles that greet you at either end of the main street. Walking up and examining those castles and the grounds surrounding them – I felt as if I were looking through a telescope into space, gazing at star light from a distant past. There is no doubt that John Malone – my Father’s Mother’s Father’s Father’s Father looked upon those very same walls – and walked those very same grounds. Beyond him though – I can see no further.

In fact, it’s funny how little we know about where we come from.  When a child is born, we often say “he has his mother’s nose” or “she looks just like her dad” – and that’s understandable.  The two parent represent the DNA mixture that produced this child.  Everything this child is, has come from them.  But that doesn’t really tell us much – seeing as how the child’s parents are results of the same process via their parents.  Suddenly you have four grandparents that are the DNA culprits behind this new-born.  However, right behind them are eight great-grandparents who might have something to do with this as well.

Sadly, this is where the “you know whose eyes those are” game wears off.  Humans simply don’t live to a point where we get many great-great-great anythings.  But if we did – and I could look all the way back to John Malone in Ardee, Ireland – there are 31 other individuals, including his wife (my great-great-great grandmother) where my DNA directly comes from.

I can account for two of those 32 great-great-great grandparents – and I know for a fact the Spies branch was not in Ardee, Ireland.  The rest are a mystery – as are their 64 parents who also hold the answers to my DNA riddle – albeit the waters are getting a bit muddied.

In fact, the only thing I really know about most of the people that came before me was that they were healthy enough, smart enough, and lucky enough to reach the age of procreation, and at least one of the children they created was capable of doing the same.  If any of them were unable to perform this task, I simply would never have existed.  Seriously though – what are the odds that around 1850, sixty-four unique individuals, in at least three different countries, would survive long enough to meet and produce children capable of doing the same so that I could carry those same genetic codes some century and a half later.  The numbers begin to grow exponentially beyond there.  If we say the average age of procreation for a male is 25 (and this would vary wildly in different cultures, but even so, I’m still seven years late), we can estimate that while America was declaring its independence in 1776, there were approximately 248 people walking around with all the ingredients that make up me.

As Louis XIV reigned supreme from the Palace at Versailles in the 1680’s, nearly 4000 individuals with a part of me walked the Earth.  And in 1492, as Columbus set foot in the Americas, over half a million of my direct ancestors, awaited his discovery. As did their million parents… and possibly two million grand-parents.

When those castles were put up in the 13th Century in Ardee Ireland, over 520 million individuals, and their billion-plus parents walked the Earth.

NOW WAIT A SECOND… were there even a billion people alive in the 13th Century?  No… no there weren’t.  So what happened?  Well… the lines cross.  Where, we have no idea, but no doubt they must – in fact they do for everyone.  They simply have to.  If you think it’s sticky in the 13th Century?  By 1100 there would be over 33 Billion ancestors walking the planet at the same moment if our family tree didn’t start reconnecting some of its limbs.  I’m not talking about kissing cousins – it’s quite possible many of these re-connections occurred without knowledge.  After a few centuries, the chances of finding a mate who DID NOT have shared DNA traits would be nearly impossible, especially when considering how little people traveled up until a century ago.

I recall my mother telling a story of how her parents were forbidden to marry, because one was Catholic and one was Protestant – a scenario played out many times for Irish immigrants in NY, some of which were from Northern Ireland, some from the southern region.  Rather than looking towards their parents for identity, had they only seen their true heritage, looked a few centuries more back – clearly their bloodlines ran parallel – clearly they already shared not so distant relatives.

Religious zealots of all persuasion would have you believe some God placed us here with intent – a perfect spot for a perfect species.  I for one find that to be a bit contrary to the facts.  I see a species poorly prepared for this environment, that has some how managed to survive and pass on its code and its knowledge to future generations, time and again.  On a planet that is 70% covered by water we can not breath within or in most cases drink – cut off by distance and the need for oxygen from all other planets – with less hearing capacity than a common hound and lacking the capacity to see the majority of the light spectrum – we seem an unlikely success story.  But I am just that.  As are you.  The DNA prize of countless humans who struggled to survive childhood, found a mate, and were able to produce at least one child capable of doing the same.

I have two wonderful parents who I love – and it’s great when I see a part of me in them.  But it’s also good to remember that I am not just of them – I am of the the same DNA as everyone else.  The same as you – the same as all those who have come before, and that next generation just beginning the journey.  And even this great species we call our own, is merely one branch of an even grander tree.  I guess the question becomes – what aren’t you like?  And if any of those million of connections had never occurred, would you still exist? How radically do you alter the distant future with every choice you make?

After a few hours and a handful of pubs, my father and I made our way out of the town center and back to the main road to wait for the bus.  As promised, at six o’clock it came around the corner and picked us up.  We boarded the bus and left the town of Ardee with far less trepidation than I imagine John Malone had when he set off for American a century and a half ago.  That decision, and the many before and after it are part of an endless list of reasons I exist in the first place.  I for one am glad he made the trip.

When I was a freshman in high school I began making a lot of observations and conjectures about what was actually going on here.  While most boys my age had girls on the mind – I became obsessed with the nature of reality. I had become a devout atheist in middle school, but being unsatisfied with silently disagreeing with those around me – I decided my time was better spent trying to figure out what was actually occurring – why I was here and why thing were the way they appeared.

A particular observation that haunted me occurred one evening at the little league field in my home town.  While I was a right-fielder in every sense of the sport when suited up – and thus have always disliked the game immensely – going to the little league field in Cornwall NY was just about the only fun thing in town – and many summer nights were spent at the complex walking between the various fields.  From certain spots you could witness multiple fields, and multiple games over the complex.  On one particular evening I began taking notice of the separation of time between seeing a batter make contact with the ball and the sound of the crack of the bat.  This was not a new phenomenon, and I knew that light traveled faster than sound. The only problem was that I had no idea what that meant – it was just an expression.  As I sat there, I realized that the time between the sight and the sound was different depending on which field I was looking at.  The further the baseball diamond, the greater the separation in sound.

Suddenly I imagined myself on an endless field.  I put the action of the batter a certain distance away and in my mind recreated the scenario I was witnessing at the complex – filling in the rough data I had regarding distance and the perceived difference in time.  I then began pushing the batter further and further away – to extreme distances not possible in the park – and began to discover larger gaps in time between action and sound.

I had just explored what is often referred to as a “thought experiment”. A famous example being Sir Issaac Newton’s thought experiment in which he imagined a cannon placed on the highest mountain on Earth.  If it shot a cannon ball at a certain speed it would go such a distance and then fall.  Faster speed, further distance.  At what speed would it have to reach to never fall?  Our modern day satellites fly at that speed – Newton was a bit ahead of his time.

In my mind I stood there on the endless plain – with the player still moving further and further away – the time between visual and auditory contact growing further and further apart. Suddenly I began racing away in the opposite direction.  I was now speeding away from the batter just as he was departing from me.  At first both the visual and sound could reach me – but the duration between seeing the swing and hearing it just grew longer and longer.  But as I reached greater speeds I eventually surpassed the speed the sound was traveling at, yet not quite the speed of the visual.  Now here my mind had to consider a few options.  Would all sound cease… as certainly the crack of the bat hitting the ball would now never reach me.  Was it possible I would begin to hear the previous swing?

As I continued to speed up I began to wonder how much faster were the visuals than the sound?  Could I accelerate to the speed of the visual – and if so what would happen?  And if I went beyond? That was about all my mind could ponder at that point – but it kept in the back of my mind for years.

In college I would discover that I hadn’t been pondering these thoughts alone – that others had come before me – and some of the questions I had been asking were answered. It turns out sound travels at a rather leisurely 1,125 feet/second.  What I could only think of as the visuals was actually light – and light travels at an outrageous speed of approximately 983,000,000 feet/second.  So it turns out the light was going about 874,000 times faster than the sound.  No wonder I could notice the change in such a short passage of time at the park.

I learned in college that Albert Einstein had discovered in 1905 that the visuals – light – and the speed at which they approach us as the observer, is the only true constant.  That time was relative.  That one’s experience is relative – and that the duration of the time between two events can be different for two separate observers. Your experience is different from mine.

While this of course took a few weeks to fully settle in – what was even more astounding than Einstein’s theory of special relativity and all the consequences it lay forth – was that this amazing realization was less than 100 year old.  That for all of human history man had lived on this Earth, unaware of such an amazing truth.  That most people still walk around unaware of this amazing fact.

What we label as science, is in fact, the truth.  What is so terrifying about that statement is that we know so little.  The big secret is that we have no idea why we are here, or what is going on.  For most of human history we have made measurements and observations of the world around us – only to discover as time went on that those observations were biased because we are not the focal point – we are not the scientist looking through the telescope – we are not outside the Petri dish.  We are part of the experiment – no matter how much we’d rather play observer. And for all the thousands of years humans have walked on this planet – the millions of minds that have had the capacity to think – we’ve hardly scratched the surface. We have had to fill the void of knowledge with an endless array of stories and myths and faiths, because a believable lie provides more comfort than the fear of the unknown.

But the unknown is a curious thing.  There is room to ponder…  And while deep reflection on complex thoughts might hurt the brain at first, that’s just the warming up of brain cells yet untouched.  There are wonderous things to contemplate.

How small or large can things be? I say infinitely.  At one point it was Atoms – then we found Proton and Neutrons.  Then “whoops” there are some quarks inside of there.  Now scientists postulate a concept called “String Theory” that takes us even smaller.  Wouldn’t it make more sense that you could go infinitely small and infinitely large – or perhaps even better, it loops at some point. Think about it.

Everything Repeats. I would argue that one’s capacity to notice variety is directly related to one’s scale in relation to the object. So things on my scale – people, dogs, buildings, trees – I can tell the difference between them.  Looking at the tree from afar I might think all the leaves are the same.  Upon closer observation I would find they are all unique – but obviously the plant cells are the same.  Under the microscope… no.  If this is the case – and the plant cells replicate with variation, and humans replicate with variation – and clearly planets replicate with variation – at what point would this replication with variation stop?  Why would it suddenly stop?  Would it not make as much sense to have multiple universes with variation?  Or multiple microscopic elements smaller than a quark with variation? Attempts to find a solid state – a final solution provide no real answers.  So you bring me to the big bang…. big deal – I’ll just ask you what was going on shortly before it.

The fact is, we’ll never know everything – but we live in a time where we know far more than ever before – and the more minds focused on answering bigger questions – the better. Never forget this is actually occurring – and that we don’t know why. Religion is a simple way out, but what fun is that? Science isn’t the job of scientists – it’s the truth about the nature of reality – and every intelligent person should have an interest in that. Last year for my birthday I purchased a gyroscope after watching a lecture regarding some of their unique properties.  The questions that bizarre device has provided me have been endless – but so has the fun in discovery. While friends that stopped by probably thought I was crazy – some things are too interesting to just let the “scientists” play with them.

Don’t just memorize the facts – contemplate the unknowns. Wonder why things are they way they appear – find out if your observations are even correct in the first place. When was the last time you did some science? Life is more fun when you realize it’s happening.

Be curious.

This week Apple announced their highly anticipated iPad – a revolutionary new device that creates an entirely new category someplace between the laptop and smart-phone. While the media and pundits may have been more focused on the name – my mind has been on fire the past three days thinking of nothing but the potential. I have never been more convinced that The Interactive Dept. and it’s partners of creative designers and developers – as well as photographers, videographers and writers, have a long and exciting career ahead of them. I have also never been more convinced that now is the time to work for yourself or with a small collective of creative types – because the publishing revolution has begun!

The title of this blog post comes from the title of a book by Bill Gates, written in 1995. I was a senior in high school at the time – and Bill Gates was the richest man in the world. It seemed unlikely that a dork such as this would be the richest man in the world, so a dork such as I was quite fascinated, and ran out to purchase this book the moment it hit the shelves. In it, Bill Gates explained his vision of the content revolution – of an internet that everyone participated in – video cameras and interactive touch-screens allowing for instant access to knowledge from anywhere and instantly.

“For more than 500 years, the bulk of human knowledge and information has been stored as paper documents. On the information highway, rich electronic documents will be able to do things no piece of paper can. The highway’s powerful database technology will allow them to be indexed and retrieved using interactive exploration. It will be extremely cheap and easy to distribute them. In short, these new digital documents will replace many printed paper ones because they will be able to help us in new ways.”

While a statement like this seems trite today – one has to remember that 15 years ago, the declaration that paper documents would be replaced was almost ridiculous.  Let’s recap technology for just a second:

1995 I use my parents IBM Aptiva Desktop with a 386processor, a 4800-baud modem and a dot-matrix printer and I go online for the first time with 5-hours of overpriced internet via AOL.
1996 I go to college and get a Gateway Desktop with a ginormous monitor, a bubble-jet color printer and a T-1 line
1997 I buy my first scanner – a giant flat-bed that takes up my whole desk.
1998 I buy my first digital camera.  Under 3-megapixel and a battery life of about 5 minutes it seemed.
2000 I purchase my first cell phone that just makes calls, sometimes…
2002 I get my first laptop – where I can take my computer with me. A giant, heavy Dell.
2007 I get my first smart-phone, the iPhone.
2008 I replace my broken iPhone with a new iPhone.

When Bill Gates declared I wouldn’t need paper anymore – if I had wanted to bring a map with directions on a drive, I had to go down to the basement of my house, fire up the Aptiva – connect via the phone line to Poughkeepsie ($0.35/minute at the time) – wait for Webcrawler to load up – find a mapping service via the search engine – and then try to print the map on my crappy dot-matrix printer. Today I would simply turn on my iPhone, pull up the map, and have it find me or any other location in the world and easily map the route. No need to print it either, as I can simply bookmark it and take it with me.  I haven’t had a printer setup in my apartment in 5 years. Bill was correct.

Along the way Bill obviously got side-tracked, because Microsoft certainly hasn’t been on the cutting edge of this revolution.  I like to think Bill’s philanthropic desires overshadowed his otherwise prophetic business mind – but regardless, it has been Apple that has carried the torch of this great evolution in information to our current moment.

It was Apple that changed the music industry forever – by allowing me to put every song I could have ever wanted to hear in a device I can carry along anywhere.  While Sony Executives were bragging about the endless bounds of their CD-Discman’s Skip-Protection capacity (”We’re up to two whole minutes of shaking!“) – Apple realized folks might wish to carry more than a single CD’s worth of music with them.  Oh – and while we’re at it – why not create a marketplace that makes the purchasing of music a gazillion times easier. I can now listen to music from bands who have never stepped into a corporate recording studio, whom I have never seen live.  The transaction, if any, can be conducted between us.

It was Apple that changed the telephone forever – by creating an entirely new interface and experience with a phone that for the first-time ever made having a cell phone truly useful. I could now listen (or not) to voice messages in the order I wanted to, with actual useful controls that didn’t require me to remember bizarre number combinations.  They created a phone that could be used for all the things you never imagined a phone could be used for.  And again they created a marketplace where I could easily purchase or download thousands and thousands of applications to make my life easier or more fun.

With the iPad – I truly believe Apple has created a device that will change the way we interact with tons of things we take for granted today – especially all those documents that still require paper.  For example, I still bring a notepad and pen into meetings. I don’t like the sound of typing or looking at my screen when I’m trying to discuss a project with my client so the laptop doesn’t work for me.  I would however take digital notes, or even record the audio of the meeting with a device like the iPad.   It would result in less scraps of paper around the office – I could immediately sync it with the clients files – and the ability to pull up samples of work or other websites right there in the meeting would be huge.

At home – I can finally see myself using an eReader.

I’m sorry Kindle fans, but when I look at one compared to the iPad, I think “how 90s.” I’m psyched that Amazon has had so much success, but the market for a solid eReader was WIDE-OPEN, and I think Apple has just taken over. Not only does the color screen allow for supplementary photography, video and audio – but once again they have created a solid marketplace for purchasing and downloading books from the comfort of your bed – and I’m particularly interested to see what happens to the publishing industry, as lessons from the music industry are learned, and new under-discovered writing talents begin creating their own marketplaces for selling their writings directly to the public. There is no art-form that requires so little to produce, but so much to share, as writing – and a solid eReader has been the last hurdle for unleashing the full potential of the publishing revolution.

Imagine students no longer having to lug around text-books. Think of a world where you can search for thoughts or ideas through endless epochs of written word, find something of interest, and begin reading it in its entirety – all while sitting on the train during the morning commute. Imagine a world where our need for paper is diminished, and our forests flourish.

The way scientists perform research, students study, academics write papers or even simply how a child writes a book report is going to change gradually but profoundly. Upon completion of a book, rather then a written page of “other books by the author” – those will be links – and those links will have links – and a new type of dewey-decimal system will develop of its own design based on our informational needs as knowledge is reorganized and rediscovered.

I look forward to playing video games in my hands – watching movies from my bed – and showing large and gorgeous photos and home movies to my parents.  I look forward to the next round of devices that will expand upon what Apple delivers.  I anticipate shared touch-screen applications in all sorts of places and locations we don’t experience them now. I look forward to seeing the ways we replace old technologies and concepts with touch-screen applications.

In this new world, a screen on the wall could be my light-switch, my music remote, my phone, my weather, my recipe, my security, my door bell or my art work. Apple has made the first step, with an earnest attempt to remove the keyboard and mouse. How will we develop products and interfaces that have no bounds?  That first digital camera I bought in 1998 looked like it still had film inside of it. They wanted it to feel like a camera still.  Now most digital cameras are slim and have redefined how a camera should look and work.  With the iPhone – the camera took on a whole new shape.  So many other devices still cling to their industrial heritage – but as the iPad begins to acquire their tasks, new applications and interfaces will be devised to create efficiencies that were impossible in a physical world.

Steve Jobs said in his speech this week that there will be a new gold-rush.  While I agree that there will be plenty to be made producing applications and tools for these devices – I disagree with the terminology of a Gold Rush.  Yes, there will be some wave of success at first – but this isn’t some new patch of territory that is going to be quickly discovered, claimed and cleared.  Rather – this is a new economic era.  For thousands of years, man has traded goods and services.  These primarily have been tactile items – foods, clothes, tools, etc.  Over time, things like education and knowledge became prized.  The arts flourished, and someone could be paid for their creativity.  However, there could only be so many books published, so many painting painted, so many students taught.  With the publishing revolution – that changes.  Suddenly there is an endless supply of a whole new world of products never before imagined.  I can design and build a game of my own imagination – produce it myself – sell it on the App Store – and make a full-time living having never left my home or created anything tactile.  The more our money chases virtual products of the imagination – the quicker our economy will have to evolve.

The solution to unemployment isn’t getting the old jobs back – it’s awakening to the new economy.  It’s acknowledging the publishing revolution has begun.  It’s educating the next generation of children not simply how to memorize, but to learn. I was lucky that Bill showed me the Road Ahead when I was 17. It shaped my path through college, it gave me focus in my 20s as I bounced from various start-ups.  It gave me the confidence to start The Interactive Dept – and it fills me with overwhelming excitement when I see a product that will transform the way we communicate and share ideas.

I have seen the road ahead – and it is beyond exciting.

On Christmas morning I saw a Facebook post from my cousin regarding a video game called Braid. As it is rare to see any female make a post about a fun video game – I decided to check it out.  The write-up seemed interesting and the graphics beautiful – so I dropped the $10 and purchased it for the Mac.  For the next few days I played an absolutely brilliant game – that was like many classic games I had played – but yet completely different then anything I had ever seen before.

The game focuses on time.  The main character, Tim, has the unique ability to control time, forward or backwards.  I first discovered this on the second level when I accidentally fell into a pit and died.  Rather than the typical fade-out, and starting the board again – I simply pressed the SHIFT key, time began to rewind, and I was back alive as if nothing had ever happened.

However – something had happened.  I had a memory of an incident occurring that no other creatures in the game did.  I now knew what was about to happen, and nobody else did.  What a spectacular power!  But the brilliance of Braid is that as the game unfolds – you begin to look at time entirely different – and both the positive and negative consequences of your actions.

The main storyline follows Tim’s quest to reclaim his princess who was taken away by an evil knight.  There are 6 chapters – each with it’s own unique take on time.  At the start of each chapter there are a series of books that provide insight not only into Tim, but also the characteristics of the world you are about to enter.  As the boards progress, your interaction with time become more and more profound and required.  Some solutions can only occur in reverse, or when time is manipulated entirely.  By the final boards, the natural pace of time is in reverse – and you must anticipate how things began in order to move forward.

However, this post is not a game review – this is a discussion on time.

As humans, we are 3-dimensional creatures witnessing glimpses of our 4th dimensional-self.¹ We experience time as a linear path completely out of our control.  Whereas we have full control over the dimensions beneath us (I can walk forward/backwards, left/right, can go up and down) and have almost no observations of the dimensions above us (a topic for another blog post) – we remain trapped in the 3rd, aware of time (4th), but unable to move back and forth within it.

However – human beings have this amazing gift of being able to predict and conjure up scenarios in our brains.  No other species known to man can project plausible outcomes the way humans can.  Nor does any creature have the ability to reflect on the past and re-associate past experiences the way humans can.  You will never meet a dog with long-held regrets, or a fish with long-term goals. Our species alone has the capacity to explore beyond the moment. One has to begin to wonder – is it possible we have some mild control over this 4th dimension?  That time is not the master.  Or rather, that our minds can see the fringes of the 5th dimension where all those possible realities exist?

Regardless of your views on Quantum Physics, it is quite easy to see that one’s actions have consequences, positive or negative.  Two years ago, before I was getting ready to move to Spain for two months, I decided to sell my car.  The money would be helpful for the trip I felt, but more importantly, I began to believe it would have positive consequences for me in the future.  Sure enough – upon my return to the States, I began walking to work every day.  More amazing moments and coincidences have occurred during these walks to and from work then I could have ever experienced before.  I’ve discovered a grocery store I never would have stopped in while driving, that has changed my diet and the foods I cook.  Then there are the realities that never occurred that I might be unaware of.  Car accidents on the negative, perhaps unexplored road-trips on the positive.  Regardless, the trajectory of life was changed drastically, as it almost always is by our decisions and many of the positive elements that have occurred I was able to foresee before I sold the car. That realization that I can make sweeping changes for the future with simple actions in the present has become a major force in my life.

It is safe to infer then, that actions in the present will create new realities in the future.  Unfortunately though – the implication here is that everything that is occurring in your current moment, is the direct result of your past actions.  Most would prefer to think otherwise – that the moment is the moment – and the past is memories, the future unforeseen.  This is where I disagree entirely.  The future is quite foreseeable, the past quite easy to manipulate – and the current moment is nothing but an opportunity to explore time and create reality.

So how do you begin to control time?  First off, as almost every guru/preacher/life-coach/grandmother will tell you, you need plans.  You need to know what it is you want to do – how you want to live – where you want to be – with whom you want to be with – and all the other details of the life you desire.  There are plenty of other blog posts that can explain the importance of knowing yourself at the core, and the pitfalls of the unexamined life – hopefully you have already begun this process. If not, turn off Mad Men and begin exploring.

With a plan in mind – the next step is to truly envision that life.  Not in the abstract – not just the feeling – or some photos from a magazine – it needs to be as clear as the memories in your past.  You need to be able to call on it at any point, explore it, and connect it to other memories. Don’t just focus on the goal of that memory – look around.  Seriously, turn around and see what is on the wall behind you in this fantasy.  If you’re envisioning a person, what types of socks are they wearing?  Force your mind (especially if you’ve let it sleep most your life) to begin working its magic.  All the details are there.  Put down the iPhone – the greatest piece of technology you own is your mind.

Do you have it?  Can you feel it?  Your brain is touching the 5th dimension – and you are now moving within the 4th.  Here comes the tricky part – working your way backwards through time.  With a clear vision in mind, press the SHIFT key and rewind your life from this future point back to your present.  Go as slowly or fast as you need to, and as often as you need to.  Just make sure your mind is doing the work and the details are showing up.  Your mind will produce the details – and more of them the more often you review these future memories.  Take note of the actions, and patterns that exist in these conjured scenarios. You will have a less challenging time jumping the pits and dodging the fireballs of life when you know they are coming, and how you defeated them.

If there are conflicts prior to your current moment in the 4th dimension, do not be hesitant to go back in time and fix those issues.  While you will fully remember that they occurred, if you go back and fix them, you will find the rest of the world for the most part forgets that they ever occurred (okay, this is more like the game, but in reality nobody really cares that much about anything other than themselves, so if you truly do make amends for past issues, or just face up to problems that have been plaguing you – rather than just ignoring the past – you do change the current moment).

Most importantly – remember that life is occurring… always.  That just like in the game, we don’t know why we’re moving forward in the 4th – or where we are headed in the end – but if we are smart, clever and persistent with our efforts, we will have a wonderful experience.

“Know yourself; And urge yourself ceaselessly.”

SOURCES:

1. Imagining the Tenth Dimension
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA

These are things the elderly woman sitting beside me on my 3.5 hour flight from Houston (a stop-over on my flight from Philadelphia) told me. I won’t bother to detail which points I agree with or disagree with. The point of this exercise is that we are all bat-shit crazy, and should probably just learn to smile more and listen for the sake of the story.

• She was born in Chicago, but moved to Missouri
• She was 1 of 11 children.
• She acquired the job of head editor for her high school newspaper because the girl who had received the position originally was lazy. When a famous riverboat performer came to do an assembly at the school and refused to give interviews because of limitations on her time, she had offered to help the woman pack up her stuff, and in the process recorded short notes. When the performer noticed this, she suggested that because the packing had gone so smooth, she now had time for an interview. With story in hand, she took the position right out from under that other lazy gal.
• She has 3 children. One lives in Portland, one lives in Honduras working as a missionary and the other lives in California.
• There are various types of fish oil vitamins on the market, but only one in the US that uses purely Salmon.
• Her favorite bible passage is Matthew 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
• While she and her husband and two of the kids were stationed in West Germany in the 50s, they took a two week camping trip through 9 countries. They purchased a German VW which they eventually had shipped back to the states when they attempted to homestead in Alaska.
• Cell phone towers only exist in the US. Everywhere else people just use their cell phones and there are no towers. She knows it sounds a bit crazy, but she believes the towers are probably used to track us using those very cell phones.
• She sold the German VW several years later for $500. A local car salesman had offered her only $150, but she felt she could sell as good as him and proved that. She was offered $250… she was offered $400… but she held out till the morning and sure enough got what she wanted.
• When she and one of her sons went to attend her daughter’s wedding in Honduras she had him stay with this older couple and a young man. Unbeknown to her, the young man had a sister, who on the second day stopped by, and though she spoke no English, and apparently he no Spanish, by year’s end and after three trips down, they were engaged.
• She hiked the base of the grand canyon in two days. It was her 3rd attempt. The first time, her group was too large with 28 individuals, so she offered to stay behind. The second time, her knee began to hurt right before the hike, and had to pull-out. The third time was with her brother. He had done it before alone in a single day. She says if she had done it alone, she would still be there.
• As a child, she wrote to the head of the local dentistry school at the haste of her mother, and he was so moved by the letter he allowed her to get braces at the school at no cost, even though she needed stage 3 braces, which the school wasn’t totally qualified for. She couldn’t stand the delay, so when not in the presence of authority figures, she would tie as many as 8 rubber-bands on each of the braces. When the braces came off, the doctor told her to put on some lipstick. “No, more he said. A girl is told she has a nice smile, she starts thinking about her hair – she cares about her hair, suddenly she starts dressing nice. Boys start to pay attention. She went from being on the 5th rung (1st Rung: Popular kids, 2nd Rung: Athletic Kids, 3rd Rung: Kids with money, 4th Rung: Nerds and Bookwords, 5th Rung: Nobodies) to the 1st rung – a real popular girl.
• 98% of women who have abortions are later diagnosed with breast cancer
• Sales runs in the family apparently, because when she posted her truck for sale (now living south of Eugene Oregon) a farmer from outside Portland drove all the way down after talking to her son on the phone, unaware that the voice on the other end was that of a 11 year old. He had to wait around till she got home from work to close the deal.
• People with Vitamin B deficiencies have a long canal running down the middle of their tongue. Upon closer inspection, my tongue suggests I am VERY deficient in Vitamin B and while she’s not saying this about me in particular… people like me are often short-tempered, easily irritated, and while they might be super nice to an old lady they don’t know, such as herself, we can be super cruel to our own mothers and the people who love us. It’s easy to pretend to like a stranger, but when we, the vitamin B deficient, know someone loves us, we can afford to be quick with them and often quite mean, because we know they won’t abandon us.
• By the very fact that President Obama can not produce a birth certificate, he must be a foreigner and untrustworthy.
• She hadn’t been raised religious, that was more her husband’s thing. But he had been attending a church and they asked if they could come over after dinner a few times a week to chat with her about God and her faith. They explained that they wanted her to sign this card to pledge her devotion to God. She said she would probably never do that, but agreed to listen to them, and invited them into her house. The first evening, they chatted a bit about life and family and work, but they spoke a good deal about God. When the meeting concluded, they asked her what she had though – and she said she wished they’d done 80% real issues and 20% faith discussions, and not the other way around. But she agreed to meet again. They did this for three weeks, when she suddenly woke in the middle of the night and knew she had to sign that card. She didn’t know why – she just felt compelled by God to do so.
• In response to an article that downplayed the use of vitamins in curing certain kidney ailments, she wrote an editorial that was read by a deacon in her Church, who apparently was associated with a vitamin company and asked her to become a rep, a job she has till this day.
• Many of our health issues comes from aluminum something both the industry and the government has been suppressing for almost a century now.
• She sold encyclopedias for a brief time, but never had much luck. The crutch of the sales pitch was showing how important it was for children to be able to get information when they are inspired in the moment – a service your local library just can’t provide. She never had a sale, although her husband did sell one set to a co-worker for her, but she doesn’t feel that counts.
• On the prior flight from Honduras to Houston, the gentlemen beside her was an intern for a senator, who had sent him there to monitor the elections. Apparently he was not associated with ACORN.
• She was married to her husband for 27 years, then one day he said he just couldn’t stand to be tied down any more and asked for a divorce. Several years later he came back and admitted he had been foolish and asked her to take him back. She said if he could be faithful and a good husband for a year, she would agree to marry him again. He stayed for five months and then left again. She gets asked out for coffee from time to time by gentlemen, and that’s all well and good. But coffee leads to dinner, and multiple dinners lead to the bedroom, and she has no intention of going there. Sure, she can keep a conversation with a guy like myself, but I’m her youngest son’s age, so the pressure isn’t there (and I shouldn’t be offended by that). If it’s God’s plan for her husband to come back, she doesn’t want to be tied down to someone else when it happens.