Diary (May 17, 2020)

Online diary of Karl Jones for Sunday May 17, 2020.

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Diary

Song of the Day for Howard Kranz

Thirteenth in a series of songs for Howard and me to cover, or be inspired by, or something.

Crayon Angels

"Crayon Angels" by Judee Sill

Crayon Angel songs are slightly out of tune
But I'm sure I'm not to blame
Nothing's happened, but I think it will soon
So I sit here waiting for God and a train
To the Astral plane

Magic rings I made have turned my finger green,
And my mystic roses died
Guess reality is not as it seems
So I sit here hoping for truth, and a ride
To the other side

Phony prophets stole the only light I knew
And the darkness softly screamed
Holy visions disappeared from my view,
But the angels come back and laugh in my dreams
I wonder what it means

• Crayon Angels @ YouTube
• Judee Sill @ Wikipedia
• [ Post] @ Facebook

Flying cars

I too was incensed for decades about the lack of flying cars (and jet backpacks).

But I now understand the hidden assumptions which keep us grounded.

We incorrectly assumed that our righteous need for jet backpacks would cause the relevant laws of physics to suspend themselves in recognition of our Destiny in the Sky.

The actual situation is that we have helicopters, which already do everything we want a flying car to do except drive on a road. (Driving a helicopter on the road is just an engineering problem.)

Helicopters are loud, dangerous, and very expensive. Practical helicopter technology began around 1900, and since then titanic amounts of engineering effort have been expended in a effort to make helicopters less deafening, less lethal, and less unaffordable. Chances are they are as quiet, safe, and cheap as they are going to get.

What about parking? You've seen helipads? You see the space requirements for landing and takeoff. Where will we store the tens of millions of helicopters which hurt our ears, charge our fears, and empty our coffers?

Even if we could afford helicopters... would you really want to be *up the sky* in your flying car *with all those other people in their very loud flying cars*?

This is all idle chatter. We can't afford it and short of a world-changing source of cheap energy we're not ever going to afford it, so let's forget about flying cars and instead go hang gliding or hot air ballooning some weekend, get it out of our systems.

(No, I can't lie to you: I will continue to dream about flying.)

"Why There Will Never Be Flying Cars" by Neil degrasse Tyson:

• Joe Rogan Experience #1159 - Neil deGrasse Tyson @ YouTube

• Post @ Facebook

Little food songs

Peter and the Wolf.

• I* make up little food songs. No kidding. I also sometimes sing food hunting songs as I feed Angus, my cat.

But then, I make up little songs, or hum familiar tunes, as I'm working, a lot. Years ago I was a help desk tech at the U of M. I'd go out to fix somebody's PC, and I as got to work on the machine I would hum the Cat theme from Peter and the Wolf ... not consciously, you understand it just came upon me in the course of fixing computers. I think it gave me a kind of focus, an environment in my head where I could better perceive and think about the work at hand; and I know it gave me a sense of sly pleasure ... the Cat theme has a sly pleasure sound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncef_Slaoui

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Karl Jones (nonfiction)