Society to Inform a Far Future

Announcing my creation of the "Society to Inform a Far Future" aka STIFF.

The objective of this society is to develope ways to inform some future sentient beings of the mistakes that lead to the extinction of the current so-called dominant sentient being - the human race - in the hope that they will not repeat these mistakes.

Assuming the current human culture messes up the biosphere - Gaia - to the point where humans become extinct, I predict it will take at least two million years before another sentient species arises to a similar level of debatable intellignce as humans are now.

Gaia is currently collapsing as a result of human activity and will return to a state of not much more than simple bacteria.

I also assume evolution will once again result in a sentient species, but this will not occur until Gaia has once again reached a suitable state.

It is one task of STIFF to develope ways to leave behind information in some form that will deteriorate only a little over the next two million years to tell the new sentients, or even visitors from another planet, what happened to us, why it happened, and how they can avoid the same mistakes and repeat the same successes.
My ideas include such things as embedding part of the human genome in bacterial cultures, carving messages inside mountains - since the current mountains will erode, the messages need to be buried where they will be exposed in two million years, and sending radio waves off to an object one million light years away where they will bounce back and return to earth two million years from now.
The other task of STIFF is, of course, to decide what messages to leave behind. Please post in the comments your ideas on how to accomplish these task and indicate whether you would like to join this society.
Á Gaia

An Actually Important Moments (Topics) Database

How about a website (let me know if there is one already) set up like that I M D B dot com of actually important topics and the people involved.

Yes, instrad of a movie as the main grouping for a cast of charaters, it could be an important topic, like Conservation, say, for example; or climate change, or civil rights.  And the list of characters would be populated by the individuals (or groups, or critters, or what have you) who had a major influence on that topic and the year(s) of their involvement.

"Conservation" starring so-and-so, directed by you-know-who, music by that-group-that-wrote-a-song-about it, and so on. Set up with links and bios, photos and trivia, and major quotes just like the movie database.

I mean, wikipedia is great but the layout is too textbookish to make it truly browsable.  Topics set up like the movie database would be more fun to click around.  The fun things about the movie database are seeing what else that actor has been in, seeing who they worked with, and maybe a bit of gossip in their bios.

So, really important stuff - a different format for history subjects and current issues, and the history of thise issues.

After A While by VS

"After A While"     © 1971 Veronica A. Shoffstall

( Author's note:  This poem has been plagiarized, bastardized, renamed, reworded, redesigned, expanded and reduced.  But it is my work, which I wrote at the age of 19 and had published in my college yearbook.  Why anyone would want to claim it is beyond me, but for what it's worth, I wrote it, and if I'd known it was going to be this popular, I'd have done a better job of it. - V.S. ) 

Her website:  Her Link appears no longer functional.

---

"After a While"

After a while you learn

the subtle difference between

holding a hand and chaining a soul

and you learn

that love doesn't mean leaning

and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn

that kisses aren't contracts

and presents aren't promises

and you begin to accept your defeats

with your head up and your eyes ahead

with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child

and you learn

to build all your roads on today

because tomorrow's ground is

too uncertain for plans

and futures have a way of falling down

in mid-flight.

After a while you learn

that even sunshine burns

if you get too much

so you plant your own garden

and decorate your own soul

instead of waiting for someone

to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure

you really are strong

you really do have worth

and you learn

and you learn

with every goodbye, you learn...

© 1971 Veronica A. Shoffstall

And so the dream continues

And so the dream continues

All awareness comes to this

All is distraction, all is dreaming.

A special insanity, some would say.

A day, a day, a day.

Hold the valley

Hold the valley inside you

Awash between your bits, strobed by memories flowing

Hold the fragrance of orange mandarin honeysuckle and red ripe strawberries

     The gently-piercing buzz of clay-coloured sparrows

          drawing attention to the trembling air

For the dark winter

Hold the smell of wet, fresh, early-winter snow

          Ozone mixed with seeped iron

     The sparkle of cold snowflakes

     The muffled world-sounds after a heavy snow

          Together alone, this city

For the hot summer

Hold the bright mountain storms of high clouds and fine rain

For blinding August afternoons

Hold the comforting cup of Steeples and Fisher

     Nigh and Teepee and Lakit, and Bootleg

     and Puddingburn

For thick forest and other places

Of the valley and clay grasslands

For, whenever hidden, to call forth, to bide
In dusk and dawn and mid, and other vicinities

Hold these always

Every day is a beautiful day

Turtles in the Universe

old friends, the universe,

          and I

talk walk exclaim at

turtles in the ditch beside the dike

          yet you

walk talk exclaim you haven't

noticed them before

continue on with inside your brain

I leave

You leave

Moi Quotes Public

As sentience increases, so does ambiguity.

All is better when we sing together. 

My 'eventually' has finity.

In growing old gracefully, humility and self-forgiveness are indispensible. 

It is in the denial of the inevitable that the individual maintains and asserts at least a perception of control. Often, acceptance never comes but ends up being what the individual fights rather than the denial.

Being the creatures that we are, tending to rely on intuition when facts evade our understanding (since there is never a new discovery, only a truth not previously known), I believe in a strong genetic component [in one's being and 'fate'], modified or filtered by our environment.

Procrastinator's fear: If I did everything I said I would / needs to be done, I'd having nothing left to do!

Quotes about wisdom and whatnot

• 

  Added 2024

  
  

  As long as you live, shine,

  Let nothing grieve you beyond measure.

  
  

  [Let every joy infuse your heart forever]

  
  

  For your life is short,

  and time will claim its toll.

  
  

  ...The Seikilos epitaph

  
  

  is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The epitaph has been variously dated, but seems to be either from the 1st or the 2nd century AD. 

  
  

  
  

  Added after Nov 2019
  
  "An adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived." UKL in The Language of the Night 1979 printed in 1982, pg 34.
  
  Added after 4 Feb 2017
  
  

  Build Me a Boat
  by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  in "Citadelle"

  If I communicate to my men
  the love of sailing on the sea,
  you will soon see them specializing
  according to their thousand particular qualities:
  that one will weave the canvas,
  another will fell the tree in the forest,
  another still will forge nails
  and there will be some who observe the
  stars to learn to steer,
  and yet all will be as one.
  To create the ship
  is not to weave the canvas,
  to forge the nails,
  to read the stars,
  but rather to convey the taste of the sea.

  
  In other words: to motivate people, help them yearn for something in their imagination.
  
  Et par contre, si je communique à mes hommes l’amour de la marche sur la mer, et que chacun d’eux soit ainsi en pente à cause d’un poids dans le cœur, alors tu les verras bientôt se diversifier selon leurs mille qualités particulières. Celui-là tissera des toiles, l’autre dans la forêt par l’éclair de sa hache couchera l’arbre. L’autre, encore, forgera des clous, et il en sera quelque part qui observeront les étoiles afin d’apprendre à gouverner. Et tous cependant ne seront qu’un. Créer le navire ce n’est point tisser les toiles, forger les clous, lire les astres, mais bien donner le goût de la mer qui est un, et à la lumière duquel il n’est plus rien qui soit contradictoire mais communauté dans l’amour.
  
  Google translation:
  And on the other hand, if I communicate to my men the love of walking on the sea, and each of them be so inclined because of a weight in the heart, then you will soon see them diversify according to their thousand spacial qualities.  This one will weave canvases, the other in the forest by the lightning of his ax will put down the tree.  The other, again, will forge nails and some will be some who will observe the stars in order to learn to govern.  And yet all will be one.  To create the ship is not to weave the canvases, to forge nails, to read the stars, but to give taste to the sea which is one, and in the light of which there is nothing that is contradictory but community in the love.
  
  More direct translation:
   'but good to give the taste of the sea who is one, and to the light of which there is not more nothing that is contradictory but community in the love'
  
  Most translations try to give an idea of what is said when, if you look word for word, you are more able to hear the metaphors of that language; to translate more accurately would likely involve 5 paragraphs of the above sentence
  
  hmm. A community of love. ... the sea, which is composed of all one element, water, compared to a community working together but each according to their interest and skills.  Yes there is nothing more contradictory than that.
  
  
   Added before:
  
  Dianne Cooper "Compromise may work, politically, but it rarely works biologically."
  
  
  
  

The more you sweat in practice the less you bleed in battle.

Dick Marcinko

Encouragement is oxygen to the soul.

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” 

― Albert Einstein

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live." — Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide, #5))

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." 

— Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt)

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" 

— George Carlin

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." 

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” 

― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ― Aristotle, Metaphysics

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” 

― Isaac Asimov

“Never laugh at live dragons.” 

― J.R.R. Tolkien

“I don't understand people who say they need more "Me Time." What other time is there? Do these people spend part of their day in someone else's body?” 

― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale

He consulted a piece of paper which he found in the back pocket of his Judicial jeans.

They believe in `peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms'.” 

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase

Quotes about Logic and whatnot

“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor — not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies “out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.” 

― Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History

“I am a master of logic and a powerfully convincing debater. In fact, against my better judgment, I can talk myself out of doing anything.” 

― Jarod Kintz, $3.33

“When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.” 

― René Descartes

“At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you.” 

― Criss Jami

“His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.” 

― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Logic is immaturity weaving its nets of gossamer wherewith it aims to catch the behemoth of knowledge. Logic is a crutch for the cripple, but a burden for the swift of foot and a greater burden still for the wise.” 

― Mikhail Naimy, The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called the Ark

“A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.

Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend.” 

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.” 

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Trilogy

“The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.” 

― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked” 

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” 

― Joseph Joubert

“Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore-

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.

This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.” 

― Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Intellectualise

Dictionary dot com definition of "intellectualise"

-verb (used with object)
1. To seek or consider the rational content or form of.

4. To ignore the emotional or psychological significance of (an action, feeling, dream, etc) by an excessively intellectual or abstract explanation

-verb (used without object)
6. To talk or write intellectually; reason; philosophize; "to intellectualise about world problems"

Seeking a reality check on my understanding of this word: So, intellectualising can help a rational discussion by attempting to strip away irrational emotional responses but doing it excessively is not a good thing, yes?

So, questions I have about this are:
Are all emotions irrational?
Is there such thing as a rational emotion?
Or are all emotions irrational by definition because they cannot contribute rationally to a discussion or decision?

Droopy snow, droopy day

Kimberley Bird Count scene