America - the land of "Get Rich Quick" ...

(Disclaimer: if you are hoping to learn something in this article, you are probably going to be disappointed. It's kind of full of useless facts)

America - the land of "Get Rich Quick" ... e)

Ah, America. The land of the American dream, billionaires, technology innovation and free bathrooms. It's the country where you can make a fortune in Silicon Valley or spend your whole life toiling away at everyone's favorite employer – Walmart (or McDonalds, depending on your preference).

Who doesn't enjoy metaphors? They help explain complex things by comparing them to something easy. So I often think about them (not in a weird or creepy way). I've come up with a grand total of two metaphors to describe America as a country. I know you might have been expecting three or four, but not today. Be happy I have two. I could have had none. And you would be doing something else right now besides reading this. Probably something more productive. Or not. Let's face it, probably not.

Metaphor number One (or numero Uno ? … for the Spanish speakers):

1) America attracts people on a principle of the Gold Rush – it's the land of promises of “Get Rich Quick”

Ok, you say, tell me how it's like the Gold Rush? Here are some of the characteristics of the Gold Rush.

It attracted people who like gold … duuh. Or, in other words, it attracted people who like to get rich quick. To any intelligent person, it was sort of obvious that your chances of striking gold there were little. And that the place would be quite dangerous: teeming with criminals, shady people/etc. So, to even undertake that journey to California to look for gold, one had to be a little nuts and unrealistically optimistic.

However, who really got rich during the Gold Rush? Hint: not the gold diggers … (whose reputation has sort of gotten worse in the last 200 years). The people that got rich were the ones offering ancillary services: maker of Lee Jeans, operators of stores/etc, real estate owners who rented their properties.

This is very similar to America of today and of Silicon Valley, in particular. It attracts a lot of people who are hoping to get rich (ie economic migrants), but in fact, they are the ones who OTHER people are getting rich OFF OF. Western Europe has figured this fact out, and that's why migration from that region became almost non-existent after 1930's. However, other regions of the world still come to US in great numbers. And a lot of them experience tremendous and unexpected hardship, both culturally and economically.

Metaphor #2:

2) American economic system has a lot of elements of a lottery

The basis of the lottery is that 1) everyone is hoping to get rich by playing it 2) the awards it gives out are very significant and random. It doesn't have any system of giving out awards to those who deserve them, those who win are simply lucky – they are in the right place at the right time.

Economic success in US is often given out on a somewhat random basis. American CEOs are given huge salaries, as if they … you guessed it – won the lottery. There is nothing significantly special about what they do – you probably can pick out a high schooler working at Best Buy who could do a better job.

Some other segments of rich people include tech company founders, movie and music stars. What's disturbing is not even the … fact that some of them are successful … and deserve it, but the margin of the divide. Silicon Valley is divided into a very small number of VERY lucky and VERY rich and the overwhelming majority of “have nothings”. And it's not that the lucky ones are so significantly smarter than the rest, it's just that they were at the right time and place and under a system that awards wealth on a “lottery” basis. This system also does not believe in sharing this success, instead, the “haves” squeeze every last dollar of profit, even if it means its employees live in vans (I am looking at you, Google).

Movie / Story Script about Time Travel

I am a huge fan of Back to the Future and Indiana Jones. I wrote this last night, sort of a beginning to a story. Wanted to get some reaction on whether this could be a good movie:

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In the dark California desert 60 miles east of Barstow, an older bearded man leaves a trail of footsteps, lighting his way ahead with a flashlight. He has a lab coat on and a low brimmed hat, to keep the desert sand out of his face. His 1957 Chevy Truck is parked at a distance. The truck has a small but sturdy trailer attached to it. It's a cold February night, with temperatures dipping below 50 degrees.
“About 200 feet more” mumbles the man, moving forward. He glances at an old-school compass as he continues. He looks up as a faint glow up appears up ahead.
A muffled beep comes from the man's pants. Still walking, he takes out a small radiation meter and looks at its small led screen. The meter shows a raised radiation level.
“Just as expected” … the old man continues, with the faint glow appearing larger, until he finally comes up to something.
The object towers over the man, as he comes up next to it. It's a rock …
The man's trembling hands come out of the pocket as he placed them lightly on the rocky surface.
“It's here …. the R27D meteorite … and it's just where they told me it would be … “ he whispered under his breath.

He walks back to the truck, puts keys in the ignition, and starts the vehicle. The murmur of the engine disturbs the quiet of the desert night. He backs the truck up to the to the meteorite and gets out. He walks around the rock, sizing it up. After a few moments, he puts on construction gloves, comes up to the rock and starts pushing on it in the direction of the truck. Surprisingly light, the rock rolls on to the trailer and rests on one of its flatter facets. The main closes up the tail gate. He steps back to look over things, exhales, then gets back into the truck.

America's Downfall

The chief and main reason America is screwed up as a country is that the Government and its citizens' main agenda is to make MONEY on EVERYTHING. And I mean EVERYTHING.
There are many things you cannot make a business of. Chief examples: basic healthcare and prisons.
But, unfortunately, the type of people that live here are, on average, too greedy and stupid to understand that.

This is a single biggest mistake that is taking America down, this extreme capitalism. It will fail the same way Russian Extreme Socialism failed.

If you take anything to the extreme, it's bad. The way the American government makes money on EVERYTHING is absolutely hurting the country.

It's the WRONG approach.

Solar Sail to Power electricity

Not sure if this is a viable idea, but what if there is a giant sail launched into earth's orbit, connected by a thin cable back to earth. This sail collects electricity from the sun and sends it down to the cable.

The future of internet access is through cell phone networks, not satellites

In 5-10 years, we might see DSL and Cable being replaced by internet through mobile networks - current ones are Verizon/T-Mobile/ATT/Boost/Virgin Mobile.

Elon's Musk's suggestion of covering the planet with wifi through low orbiting satellites is not practical. He suggested launching more than 4,000 satellites (through SpaceX, of course), to cover the planet with wifi signals, especially in hard to reach places.

While this approach would work well for remote locations, it is not practical for areas already covered with cell phone signal and towers (most of the urban areas in the world). The most practical solution is to deliver internet through the same networks our cell phones currently use, and, in fact, this is already happening. The issue is that it's just too expensive at the moment, but eventually, very decent internet speeds will be obtained at fairly cheap prices through cell phone networks.

While they would probably never match the speed of a wired signal, not everyone needs that speed, for most people, the speed achieved through cell phone network will be sufficient. 

Elon Musk pursues personal financial goals when advocating colonizing Mars

Reddit, and especially its Futurology sub, is peppered with articles about Elon Musk. I guess the click bait works well with his name in it.

On the list of the problems United States is facing today, colonizing Mars should really NOT be a priority. This endeavor, if ever undertaken by human kind, should be a JOINT effort by the whole human civilization, not by the US government giving billion dollar contracts to SpaceX, which is what Mr. Musk specifically wants.

The United States currently faces a failing healthcare, education and prison industry. The available money shouldn't be going to SpaceX or NASA, it should be going towards those in need and towards reforms of those industries. Going to Mars should be a joint effort, like the International Space Station, however, I do not see the European, Russian or Chinese space stations advocating colonizing Mars, mainly it's just Mr. Musk

To underline, I do NOT oppose Mr. Musks companies - Tesla and SpaceX. It's great that SpaceX is researching rocket technology and putting people to work. However, Musk's ultimate goal in all this is self-fulfillment and enrichment. He wants to be famous. He wants to be rich. He is now both.

He is advocating things that directly financially benefit him. This must be understood and remembered in relation to all the online PR his team generates daily to prop up Tesla's stock price while it keeps losing money every quarter without fail.

Time Relative to Size - and how it all relates to speed.

Experience of time is definitely relative to size.

If we take an hour of time, to a bigger entity it will seem shorter than to a smaller entity. Bigger animals for the most part live longer than smaller ones as well.

If we take the same amount of time, it will seem longer for something smaller than something bigger. IE, for a fly, living one day is like a lifetime for humans. So if we expand it to the universe, the whole existence of the universe might seem like ONE SECOND for the universe itself. or even, just a blink of an eye. Human life, in universe terms, passes in the blink of an eye. but yet to each human, it's long.

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We all know that time slows down once you get closer to the speed of light. But how's this related to size?? So, if we take someone going on a star journey and coming back, time slowed down for them in comparison to someon on earth.

But could it be that your size EXPANDS once you travel faster, ie you are sort of in TWO PLACES AT ONCE, thus becoming a literally bigger physical entity??