There are still a substantial number of people who believe O.J. Simpson is innocent, just as there are a lot of folks who actually believe our president to be a completely honest individual. They can have it their way. Far be it from me to take it upon myself to change their minds. That's better left to experts.Researchers are discovering that changing someone's mind may simply be a matter of messing with their memory. A subject in a test is asked to repeatedly imagine an incident that did not occur during childhood. A couple of months later the subjects were asked if this incident occurred, and sure enough some "remembered" experiencing the incident. If this theory holds up, it will cast some suspicion on the already dark-art of recovered memory. If what we repeatedly imagine, we in time believe to be true, this phenomenon could be described as the power of positive/negative thinking or the definition of insanity. Either that or the definition of Marketing- I'll get back to you on that.
During a physical examination years ago my doctor said to me, "Has anyone ever told you that you lean to the left?" No, they had not and this recent study out of Seattle saying that people with symmetrical bone structure have better genes puts me on edge. My doctor and I eventually traced my slight list to port to twenty years of wearing a sixteen-pound guitar strapped over my left shoulder.
According to this "research" symmetrical males are preferred by women, but are less faithful (who funds this stuff?). These laboratory folks with their thick glasses, pocket protectors, white coats and presumably asymmetrical features even accused "Symmetrical Males" of being better liars. Stop the presses--these guys get the offers so why shouldn't they be less faithful than us crooked guys who don't get the repeated opprotunities?
Anyway, my shoulders slouch at precisely the same angle as Elvis' smile as far as I'm concerned. Who needs symmetry?
I think my cellular phone is a miracle. Others look a little harder to be humbled, amazed and inspired. Folks in Knoxville Tennessee for example, where 40-foot-high crosses of light were seen hovering around a local church. In another city a large stain on the reflective windows of an office building drew crowds because it resembled the Virgin Mary. And Mary's been busy lately--a 400 year-old statue of Mary is supposedly weeping real tears in Cyprus for record crowds. At the other end of the spectrum, UFOlogists can be just as fanatical as the religious set.
Fans of phenomena, when they aren't watching "Sightings" or "The X-Files" are probably scanning the night skies for signs. These folks say the increasing number of "miracles" lately is a sign something significant (either really really good, or really really bad) is about to happen. I say it's a sign that we're spiritually adrift as a world community. I doubt we're finding any more images of deities on potato chips than we ever did. As for me, the "quickening" has far more to do with my personal financial files than The Apacolypse.
As the Oky Bomb Trial (as it's being called here) and the unfortunate Ramsey murder case focus world-wide attention on the Denver/Boulder area, the Front Range has a sky-based eye on the world. Local high tech firms EarthWatch and Space Imaging see a future in satellite photography of the earth's surface.
I was surprised to learn that only about 10 percent of our globe has been mapped with any degree of detail. Who knows how many good strip mall locations have been overlooked? Rain forests yet to become entertainment centers and end tables! Cold War technology is answering peacetime questions that haven't really been asked: can I get a clear picture of my competitor's parking lot? How about the cars parked outside my wife's house next week?
The late William Colby, erstwhile head of the CIA remarked, "We can spot a grapefruit from space." Some privacy issues come to mind, but I'm not too concerned. Our ever-vigilant government is allowing firms such as EarthWatch and Space Imaging to use resolution power that reveals detail on the ground of only three feet by three feet. No grapefruit focus for the masses. Not only that, even the sharpest satellites shoot pretty much straight down. They can't get an angle into your bedroom window, so we can all relax. A little.
I don't know who thought up the stunt, but as kids we once put a transistor radio in a plastic bag, submerged it in a swimming pool, swam to the other end and listened. It sounded pretty cool. It sounded almost exactly like RealAudio did about a year or so ago. RealAudio has come a long way since then. Progressive Networks has just added RealVideo to their arsenal of audiovisual web enhancements.
But what effect, I always fret, will this have on the already overloaded backbone? I've been assured by tech-types that bandwidth congestion can be solved. Like George Harrison sang, all it's going to take is some precious time and a whole lot of spending money.
Back in Urbana Illinois, where a lot of this kind of stuff was invented (I was a proud user of PLATO in 1977) they are working on something they call VBNS -- "Very High Speed Backbone Network System" which blows the doors off the internet as we know it today. Right now VBNS can move twenty-one thousand times faster. . . dig it: twenty-one thousand times faster!. . .than your modem at home. The engineers are thinking of keeping THIS one in their own court. The general public may never be allowed to access this toboggan run of a pipeline. You'd think that those computer geeks suspect that somebody might put an animated banner ad up or try to stream video on it or something.