Robert Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, George Orwell, and many others who saw the future either as one of unbounded opportunity, or as confining as one's secret fears.
*** Currently reading *** :, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia by Gregory Benford, "The Five Thousand Year Leap - a Miracle that Changed the World" - Principles of Freedom 101, *** Favorites ***:, "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age" by Maggie Jackson, "When Technology Fails - A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency by Matthew Stein, "Welcome to Obamaland: I have Seen the Future and It Doesn't Work" by James Delingpole, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." by Dr. Lyle Rossite, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality: Jerome R Corsi, Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders by James D. Scurlock, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosake, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 by Dinesh D'Souza, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity by John Stossel, State of Fear by Michael Crichton, Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Life After Doomsday by Bruce Clayton, Earth Abides by George R Stewart, 1984 by George Orwell, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman, Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years by Rich Lowry, Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter, The Fuel Alcohol Distiller's Handbook, The ARRL Handbook, The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations? by Tony Blankley, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America -Bernard Goldberg, Do As I Say (Not As I Do)Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy -Peter Schweizer
QST CQ QEX Nasa Tech Briefs Popular Science Popular Mechanics Astronomy Discover Scientific American Readers' Digest The Limbaugh Letter And there's probably others in the stack of stuff
Dilbert, BC, Wizard of Id, Mallard Filmore, Shoe, Luann, Blondie, and many from the past: Peanuts, Steve Canyon, Dick Tracy, Lil Abner, many of which will likely never have any new material, and are sorely missed along with the era they came from.
Stargate: Continuum Stargate: Ark of Truth Maxed Out, The Great Global Warming Swindle, Star Trek (all), James Bond (all), Star Wars (all), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 2001 a Space Odyssey, Apollo 13, The Right Stuff, Independence Day. There haven't been any decent movies that got Oscars or anything in the past 20 years - well, maybe an exception or two, but Hollywood seems more intent on political indoctrination than entertainment, and don't even care if they lose money with that stuff. So they don't get my hard-earned dollars since supporting them is like giving aid and comfort to an enemy in time of war.
Falling Skies, Stargate Universe, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, The Unit, Jericho, Flashpoint, The Mentalist, CSI Miami / NY / Vegas, Numb3rs, Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, Cold Case, Bones, Nightline, Good Morning America. And now that a buddy of mine has cable and a TiVO and tools to edit out commercials and burn a bunch of History Channel and National Geographic and Discovery Channel stuff to DVDs, I'll have more ways to waste time. Kids spend way too much time in front of the TV and too little time getting outside these days, which is why 14 year olds are developing Type 2 diabetes and 17 year olds are having heart attacks from arterial plaques.
Charlton Heston, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn and a bunch of others that are mostly dead now. Those they have now are too young cause they were in diapers back when I used to watch a lot of movies.
Do they still have music? Well, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is awesome around Christmas time. The good old heavy metal rock from the 70s and Woodstock classics from the 60s has been replaced with that stuff teenagers listen to these days and thought fingernails on a chalkboard sound better. But then most kids today have probably never seen a chalkboard because it was made obsolete by desktop computers before they were even born, just like 12 inch vinyl records that REAL music is recorded on, not stored in an Ipod where the evil recording labels can make it quit working and make you buy another one when the Ipod becomes obsolete in a couple of months. And back when there was real music, some people worried about backwards masked subliminal stuff on some records. But the Sony / BMG rootkit virus / spyware infection they put on their newer music CDs is pure evil. Vinyl records didn't infect your other albums and tattle on what other music you had or make it quit working. Doesn't stuff get obsolete real fast these days where whatever you paid good money for just quits working even though the hardware ought to last for another 100 years?
Most of the good bands and artists have gotten old and white haired and a bunch of them either died or ended up in nursing homes. It is a shock to see that old man playing that electric guitar at the Super Bowl. They say it's Mick Jagger with the Rolling Stones, but this fellow is older than I remember Grandpa. He was a young fella at Woodstock way back when there was real music. Maybe the place to hear real music in a few years will be in the nursing homes, jamming down and cranking it way up while the nurses bring em lots of pills.
Geocaching! I guess that's a sport that gets you outdoors into a few parks and pastures and sometimes remote corners of the desert to locate camouflaged film canisters and ammo cans using a GPS to find 50 cent toys that come with Happy Meals or Wal-Mart and sign a log sheet to say "Kilroy was Here". Yeah, it's the hunt that is the fun, and the toys are to keep kids interested when the grownups go 60 miles out in the middle of nowhere burning $3 a gallon gas. I think I've found close to 100 or so geocaches so far, and another 50 or so new ones beckon in the immediate area. NASCAR is a sport, too. So is high powered rocketry competition. There is something awesome about pushing a button and with a roar of fire and smoke, something you built leaps into the air and shrinks to a tiny speck at the end of a long vertical contrail, and you hear this distinctive sonic boom as it passes 1, 100 feet per second and keeps on accelerating. Oh, you have to get FAA clearance to launch the big stuff, and after 9/11 have to get a background check and fingerprinted by the BATF to get the bigger engines, because they are scared to death that Ahmed will get hold of a bigger rocket motor and build something to shoot down an airliner. Obviously the government paranoia sufferers have never done the total impulse and delta-V calculations or tried to design flight avionics to get a big payload to that kind of speed and altitude. It just has about killed the hobby, however, and deprived a whole new generation of the wonders of "October Sky". Curling in the winter Olympics, which is sliding 42 pound stones down a wide frozen shuffleboard and using brooms to guide them is another cool sport - literally 0ºC cool. Now skeleton would be fun, sliding head first down a chute of ice at 80 mph 2 inches above the ice on a cookie sheet. But we don't get ice and snow down here unless it's indoors with a huge air conditioning bill. We have a hockey team. People go to the games when it's 110 degrees F outside because they refrigerate the heck out of the arena to make ice in the rink. But the meat packing plant where the freeze whole beef carcases is a good place to cool off, as long as you get used to all the sweat that is pouring out from the 115 degrees outside start freezing on your forehead and back when you step into the -30 degree freezer and go "aaaahhh that feels good" until you start shivering because 30 below zero while shirtless and sweating cools you off really fast and you're ready to get out of there.
Dallas Cowboys of course. But I bet Permian High School's football team can beat them these days. If Permian or Midland Lee were to play the Cowboys, there would be a point spread of maybe 20. I can see that score in the paper, now: Midland Lee Rebels 48 Dallas Cowboys 8. That's two field goals and a safety. Those Cowboys would punt on 4th down and 32. Maybe in another decade they will end up in the Super Bowl again. It seems to run in 11 to 13 year cycles like the sunspots. Someone ought to correlate the sunspot cycles and peak flare intensities with Cowboys Super Bowls. Next solar maximum is around 2011 or 2012.
Vacation? What's that? You mean people really take vacations? They spend their own money to go places that aren't work related? Oh I guess HamCom in Dallas isn't really work related although I try to sell some of my boat anchors to pay for the gas and eat Ramen noodles on the trip and bring someone to drive us back so I can sleep unless there's rare DX on 20 meters.
I'll try anything at least once. I say I'm on the "seafood diet". I see food, I eat it.