The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I've come across a few interesting articles lately, thought I might pass them on.

I actually have no idea what this is, but it seems pretty interesting on the first read. (And to be fair I mostly just scanned it, my thoughts were a bit too scattered at the time to really try to understand it.)

Dude versus Dad, or, too much insight into why I take a lot of things too seriously.

Post-Americanism. I don't know about you but I am all for a slice of Humble Pie. You should never get too cocky about yourself, it leads to big disasters. Also? The sense I get from that article is "America no longer holds the records for biggest stuff!" Uh, hello current events, but the world can't go on forever with a My Cock's Bigger contest. We're starting to see the effects of overpopulation and limited resources as it is. I think it's a good thing that we're not at the top anymore and I'm hoping we can use, to put it stereotypically, good old American ingenuity to put us in a new direction for a BETTER planet and not just a BIGGER one.


Oh, and another thing about Iron Man: I guess it's doing pretty damn well this weekend. GOOD FOR IT. I think we need more movies like it, in the "plot is not boringly overdone" genre. Also, I forgot to say when reading the credits, yay Lucasfilm for ILM and Skywalker Sound. I kept thinking those props guys must have been having a field day. ( SPOILER )

also the fact that it's been nearly a decade since 1999 and SEVEN YEARS almost since 9/11 is continuing to blow my mind.

Also I think I posted about this before, but I have a strong desire to build something similar for severely less than $3000. My only problem is my lack of experience in programming and robotics, but honestly, remote control + iPod dock + projector + media system doesn't sound too terribly challenging, unless you're insistent upon a universal remote.

You know, every so often, I get really interesting thoughts and questions. I remember reading something--I think when Ep III came out--about how it was clearly marketing and not precisely storytelling that all the new technology was created for. Obviously, that's one challenge of creating prequels, but SW IV, V, and VI all were in a period where technology had mostly hit its peak and wasn't going anywhere (I believe I've heard the term stagnating somewhere), and it's only 20 or 30 or so years later.*

So all this makes me wonder; when my generation is old, will we have the advantage of growing up with a completely new form of technology, so much so that we don't fall as much victim to advancement as the older generations of today?** I mean, Nana never really understood more than enough to check her email, and Grandma and Grandpa are weary enough of it now (though Gramps uses AutoCAD well at work, and I would presume Grandma uses Office plenty), and it's interesting to watch Dad hook up musical software and a keyboard for Miss Shoup, though she doesn't really like it. Or Father Ken not understanding installing/using iTunes. I mean, the technology we have doesn't seem to be going anywhere other than getting faster, better, or used for new things, but I'm not really sure we have many new places to come up with something revolutionary for (excepting, perhaps, time travel, but that's a whole other matter).

Just a thought.

Funnily enough for Christmas I got one of my favorite books from when I was little, the Time Warp Trio book 2095. I think I read it before second grade, because I remember drawing the Sell-Bots and I'm 99% sure it was in the second-grade classroom. Hmm, I must have read it when it first came out because that would have been some part of 1995, and it was published in '95.

Anyway, it makes me wonder if I'll be alive or what I'll be doing in 2095, and how much life will be different from now, or how close it will be to the book. I mean, it's been about twelve years since that was imagined and though we don't have holograms or anti-grav devices or sell-bots there are those FUCKING ANNOYING video ads at the mall. Which in 88 (!-hee) years will have "matured", as it were.

I hope I'm alive then. If I am I'll be in New York on September 28th. Just so you know. (Under Teddy Roosevelt's statue at the Museum of Natural History. We'll party.)

(Also, this book is THE definitive reason I collect synonyms for puke. I think it was the tomboy lit-nerd in me.)


*Now I suppose I should put some more research into it, but how established was the technology in Ep I, II, and III? I mean... where did podracing go by the time Luke rolled around? Although, to be fair (I suppose), Anakin was obviously some sort of genius and may have completely fucked up all the worlds' technologies with his new stuff, and the war. (As for continuity in the Star Wars universe I don't think I want to touch the books with a ten-foot pole. Except the one I got for my tenth birthday which I wish I hadn't given away...)

**Then again, my generation--which has GROWN UP WITH COMPUTERS, mind you--is none too adept itself. Watching my cousin or my friends try to install something is sad and hilarious at the same time. Though I take pride in not being an idiot computer-wise, nor being socially ignorant like all the newbs online who join communities and have NO CLUE to just sit back and absorb the tone of the place before doing anything. Ugh.