For Always

For Always

Watched the ending parts of A.I. on Channel 5 last night. I just had my bath and was seated in front of my laptop, peering at the TV out of the corner of my eye.

Was not wearing my glasses so I was not getting a sharp image of the screen but I had clear reception of the on-screen conversation.

It was rather interesting when the robot asked for his mum to be resurrected after 2000 years. And the cute little teddy bear came up and produced a strand of "mummy's hair" so that the "creator" could recreate his mum.

Honestly, I am not a Spielberg fan. Never was, still isn't and likely never will be. Nothing tortured me worse than science fiction. I'd fall asleep grading a stack of science fiction compositions. Well, anyone would, since if not for the genre, the poor language would have achieved the same coma-inducing effect(or caused you to put out your own light by testing the hardness of your own head with the wall).

Well, I thought that was interesting since I should start hugging my toy dogs more. Hopefully, 2000 years later, I could come back to this pathetic place called Earth and see if it had become any better or worse. Maybe better. I believe in peaks and troughs. We must bottom out soon; when we stop pretending that global warming is our fault (hey, how much carbon can I produce? A night in Al Gore's mansion would probably produce more carbon than I ever can in my life. Such hypocrisy!) and start living like there is no tomorrow, then we will trough out faster.

As with all systems, there are tipping points. Once we go past the point of no return - event horizon, a series of events will take place. Maybe we will create Shangri La (not the hotel!). What I see now is this: We are on the Titanic with all the floatation chambers breached. Why are we trying to keep the Titanic afloat? Do we think we could keep the Titanic afloat?

We are all born to take the inevitable road to death. Some of us think we will come back to die again. Some of us think we will go to our creators arms. Some of us think we should take some of us together with us on the journey. Some of us like to go up in flames. Some of us like to be flushed apart. Some of us will become the very soil that nourished us when we were alive. But upon conception, our paths have been marked out for us. Every roadsign says "THIS WAY [insert directions] TO DEATH ([insert number] YEARS)".

So while we are living on Earth waiting to die, we think that if we "save" the earth by reducing carbon emissions, the earth can last longer. WRONG. The system called EARTH is in stoichiometry. The number of atoms we started with and the number of atoms we end up with are constant. Think about it. We can't produce any more than we can destroy. And vice versa. What we have done is to change the forms of the compounds. Whereas in the past, carbon was mostly earth-bound, they are now mostly gaseous and freely moving.

Instead of restricting carbon emissions, which is a foregone cause by any measure, why not think of how to harness the free floating carbons and other greenhouses gases by turning them into something useful again? For instance, airplanes that fly through the air suck in carbon compounds and turn them into methane or ethanol and store them somewhere on board. When they reach the ground, they can be burnt again as fuel. Technological advances should be able to achieve this eventually.

Harness rather than reduce because reduction is tough. I mean, if we get the world's population to hold their breaths for 10 seconds every hour, would we drastically reduce carbon emission? Got the picture yet?

Ok, I'm now lost in my greenhouse gases and carbon compounds and forgotten about my initial intent of this blog entry.

So I went back to put on my glasses. Bear looks fake. Robot looks fake. Well, the show is fake. Perhaps that's why it is called A.I. or artificial intelligence. I suspect many people in the world have only A.I., measurable by examinations. Beyond that, there is nothing natural or real about their abilities or intelligence.

But then, as I was about to pour more scorn on the show, a familiar tune came on. Surprisingly, I knew that piece. It was as though I have heard it since the longest time ago.

Curiosity got the better of me. I found out that the familiar tune was "For Always". Josh Groban has sung it. Now I remember. I hear this very very frequently on someone's CD.

Maybe the brain does indeed code sounds and music differently. Perhaps that's why music, unlike movies, have the endearing quality of being remembered "for always". I never remembered most of the movies I've watched but I remember the sound tracks of movies with well-written music. Maybe that's why a band or any musical group can play a theme and people would roughly remember the movie where the song came from.

Now that I figured out that song (and having emitted lots of carbon with my laptop googling for the information and then bitching about it on my blog), I should be able to go back and do the more mundane work.

Oh, before I go - I'll lay a bet here that in 400 million years' time, most of the world's oil deposit would be found in the place where Indonesia used to be now. Whoever's back here or managed to stay on Earth for always, remember to credit me for this discovery!