# 19

[Don Stockbauer]

Here we go again.

[Don Stockbauer]

I once got into a discussion, the subject of which was "disruption is good".
I objected , I said disruption is bad. I was told disruption is good because it keeps civilization from stagnating . I replied I think it's a "you don't want too little or too much" thing. Too little and civilization stagnates , too much and you have World War III and a planet in flames within an hour.

[Don Stockbauer]

So I suppose this virus has not caused a few pandemics before to give it some immunity , the reason why we have so little immunity against it.

[Don Stockbauer]

Welpie, Dr. Jackson , you've lived longer than I have , do you remember anything like this in your lifetime ? do you remember any type of virus people have very little immunity to? is it like I said earlier a new virus comes along and it has to go through a few pandemics before it becomes an ordinary problem like the common flu. and you surely can't advocate nowadays letting the disease go uncontrolled, but maybe that's what it takes to get worldwide immunity .
The black death . suppose somebody back then determined it was Carried by fleas on rats. how do you get the news out ?very slowly . no Internet . almost to the point where the Discovery might as well not have been made. suppose they discovered that and they got the information spread around . are those people going to be able to kill all the fleas ond rats ? nope .
here's a story . my father and I went to a ranching meeting , there were top-level veterinarians there .they were worried about foot and mouth disease getting reestablished , a horrible fear , it can be transmitted by you driving through your neighbors pasture, getting mud on your tires and transferring it to your ranch .the veterinarians said if it outbreaks we are going to get the Army out and at the epicenter of the outbreak we're going to kill every cloven footed animal for a large radius of it. clove footed animals include deer, pigs, cows, etc. lot of that land is Brush . you're going to get these army people out there and kill every animal back in this brush ?those veterinarians were Aggies

Whenever there is the outbreak of a disease there are survivors that have immunity.

[Don Stockbauer]

They tell us were supposed to practice "social distancing" to prevent the virus. Hell, I've been practicing that for years. Nobody will have a damn thing to do with me.

[Don Stockbauer]

I was watching a YouTube the other day it was called Mary's room or something like that ,a philosophical discussion and I thought to myself how many other subjects like this could you study , a million , a billion, 1 trillion? so you ask yourself maybe intelligence is not so much knowing subjects as knowing how to choose amongst them.

[Don Stockbauer]

I believe, in Kingdom come.
Then all the colors will bleed into one.
Bleed into one.
But yes, I'm still running…

[Don Stockbauer]

Someone just sent me a message in Spanish. I ran it through a translator and it translated "We are experiencing high-volume right now. Try again later." So was that the translation or was that a message from the translator.

Another one going around Facebook: big come on that says "the question of the day " . you open it and there's no question . so what's the question of the day ? the question of the day is "what is the question of the day.

Listened to Larry King on the radio , some lady phones and said "Larry , the word for today is petunia." Larry said "what do you mean , lady" . she said "the word for today is petunia" Larry says "I don't know what you're getting at lady " She said "well Larry don't all these radio talk shows have a special word of the day ". he said "no we don't lady " and hung up and then said "my God , I hope she isn't a KGB agent!"

[Don Stockbauer]

There are some science fiction stories which describe alien civilizations that are supremely advanced . I wonder if we have that in store for us?

[Don Stockbauer]

We're trained to believe that no one is exceptional.

[Don Stockbauer]

all human interaction is a game.

one , people make moves ;that is, they send messages to each other.

two, they take turns.

and finally , the object of the game is to achieve bragging rights : the winner is more intelligent.

[Don Stockbauer]

Socialism as applied to government is a very different thing than global socialism (the global brain). Global socialism turns the Earth into a single living organism , and that's probably not a bad thing.

[Don Stockbauer]

It all has to do with how the Earth is organized, and you probably don't get much better than the Earth being organized as a single living organism.

[Don Stockbauer]

It's possible that the earth is no longer being governed by politicians. The true governance may be in the person to person , person to machine and machine to machine global interactions.

[Don Stockbauer]

I've been practicing social distancing tor years! No one will have anything to do with me!

[Don Stockbauer]

Gus Richter once showed me how to make toilet paper from a newspaper. You crush it and straighten it over and over until it becomes like cloth.

[Don Stockbauer]

That's a whole lot better than the slick pages from the Sears catalog.

[Don Stockbauer]

Lunatic fringe,
I know you're out there.
You're in hiding,
And you go to your meetings.

[Don Stockbauer]

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius

[Don Stockbauer]

This coronavirus hysteria is beginning to get to me even.

[Don Stockbauer]

Gus Richter used to say when watching television became popular that no useful work was done anymore. Nowadays it's the Internet.

[Don Stockbauer]

She's got better legs than thighs.

[Don Stockbauer]

And you ride yourselves over the fields,
And you make all your animal deals,
And your wise men don't know how it feels,
To be thick,
As a brick.

[Don Stockbauer]

And then this:

There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples. He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies – and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close. A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe. Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.

But he would think of something.

[Don Stockbauer]

What is the Singularity? Could it be the global brain itself , advancing in complexity and power? There are no discontinuities, there's a steady rise in power but the sheer magnitude of the increase seems like a Singularity.

[Don Stockbauer]

And then after he detonated the orbiting nuclear weapons he realized something;
he is but one of 7 billion humans.

[Don Stockbauer]

There's a Jethro Tull song "Aqualung" and in it there's a lyric "and he's stoops to pick a
dogend". I always wondered what it means, I've always assumed it was some sort of flower, it means "the unsmoked end of a cigar or cigarette."

[Don Stockbauer]

Why is the COVID-19 virus further accelerating the formation of the
global brain? People are staying inside, they're getting bored, almost the only thing they have to do is communicate like in the short story " The Machine Stops". Increased communication directly increases the power of the global brain.

[Don Stockbauer]

A phenomenon which is key to the formation of the Technological Singularity is that super-intelligent AIs should self-improve hundreds if not thousands of times. Francis Heylighen has determined that they won't do this, the most they will improve is several times similar to the way the Newton-Raphson method converges in just several iterations .

[Don Stockbauer]

I'm a cowboy,
On a steel horse I ride,
I'm wanted,
Dead or alive.

[Don Stockbauer]

There is one true physical infinity:

debating

[Don Stockbauer]

so we have one virus after another that behaves like this and humanity is shut down back to the Homo erectus level.

[Don Stockbauer]

When I was young, I asked my parents for a bat.

But then it flew away.

- Rodney Dangerfield

[Don Stockbauer]

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup.
They slither while they pass , they make their way across the Universe.

- Why SETI will succeed.

[Don Stockbauer]

A monk hangs by his teeth from a tree limb out over a precipice , his hands hold no branch , his feet touch no soil. He is asked "why did the Buddha go to China?"

[Don Stockbauer]

Lady on the radio: "Keep your family safe. Stay in your home. Don't go to the grocery store."

Don't go to the grocery store? Won't that get you quicker than the virus? I know you're supposed to stock up on food, but why give a death sentence to those who haven't?