This is the year of Blade Runner

Figured I needed to get this Blade Runner post in while there's still a week left in the month.

November, 2019. As depicted above, that was temporal setting for one of my favorite films of all time, Blade Runner, based on the novella "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick. Thus, the movie is now about the present.

Maybe it always was.

So strange to think it is now November 2019, particularly when I remember my first viewing of Blade Runner sometime circa 1984. My young eyes and mind could not appreciate the depth and grandeur at the time. I thought it slow, boring, and most obtuse, but visually captivating. Oddly, my love for the movie grew in a snowball effect only after it was viewed in connection to multiple other texts (Derrida, I hope you're reading, because you were right...of course I would never argue otherwise).

A couple years after seeing the movie for the first time, I became a devotee of the short-lived ABC TV series, Max Headroom.

The show took place in a dystopian future where TV networks ruled the world. The character of "Max", while omnipresent in the series was also somewhat peripheral, allowing interesting plotlines to arise from supporting characters. I loved the show (still do) and began to recognize that I had seen a few of its aspects before. Like Blade Runner, the sun never seemed to shine in Max and everyone and everything operated under this oppressive atmosphere of weight. In my first months of undergrad, I would learn that this atmosphere and its accompanying generic motifs had a name.

Cyberpunk.

At my friend Chris' blog, Dorkland!, he does a fine job of explaining what that genre means, so I'll leave you to read it at the link. It was through Chris and the role-playing game, Cyberpunk 2020 (odd yet again that next year will be the projected setting for that game) that I would be introduced to the wide range of books and films that fall under this umbrella category. Chris, in what he will no doubt eternally lord over me, introduced me to my most favorite writer, William Gibson. "If you want cyberpunk, you need to read its foremost author," Chris said, or something to that effect. I read Neuromancer and then Count Zero and the rest, as they say, is history.

Art by Liang Mark

Throughout my early 20-something deep dive into cyberpunk, I kept seeing the obvious connections to Blade Runner. In fact, William Gibson is said to have left a showing of the movie in deep distress. So much of what he portrayed in his book Neuromancer he saw depicted on the screen. He thought Hollywood had beaten him to the punch. But Gibson went on to do just fine, publishing numerous short stories in Omni and long line of books. It was Blade Runner, though, that took its time cultivating an audience. It was something a box office flop, but people like me gathered as a cult following and the film eventually came to be regarded as a classic.

Here in the actual November 2019, many are publishing articles of what the film got wrong and got right. Those "gotcha" pieces seem to satisfy a pesky need for people to crow, "Ha ha! Science fiction doesn't get it all right!" Of course it doesn't. Gibson said as much when I heard him speak in 2010.

"I'm surprised how often we [science fiction writers] get it wrong. There were no cellphones in Neuromancer," he said.

There weren't any in Blade Runner either. Neither Philip K. Dick, nor Ridley Scott, nor most anyone else involved foresaw the omnipresent connection of technology in the way we would have now. We also don't have Replicants, artificial constructs that mimic humans in most every way and only an empathy test can help tell the difference. This of course is probably the biggest disparity between real life and the 2019 of Blade Runner, but give it time as we're getting close. Still waiting on the flying car, but we're getting there as well.

So what did it "get right"? Well, voice-responsive technology is one check mark in the "got it" column. Image scanning and manipulation is another, even if it's not quite to the degree shown in Deckard's apartment. I'm going to guess going by the incessant rainfall in the film that there was a serious climate shift. The warmer air holds more moisture and the rain just keeps coming. It's also probably an acid rain, given the sheer amount of pollutants belched into the air by stacks in the film. We've taken steps to curb acid rain, but there is no doubt that our climate is changing in real life.

Corporations also dominate the world of Blade Runner. The Tyrell Corporation, manufacturer of Replicants and no doubt many other "must-have" products, operates above and outside the law, wielding influence over much and greeted with shrugs of "that's the free market." It's a paradise for Libertarians and a dystopia for everyone else. The gulf between the haves and the have nots is both wide and deep. Need I really draw any overt parallels between the two 2019s? When almighty business sits so high upon its lofty perch?

There is one other aspect of the movie that I believe stands out far and above all the others when compared to our 2019: people want to live authentic lives.

That sounds like a no-brainer, but I urge you to really think about it as you watch the film. The environment of Blade Runner is downright oppressive in economic, environmental, spiritual, atmospheric, and in many other senses. Yet people persist. They eke out livings using what is available to them, usually technology. J.F. Sebastian builds his own "family" using his skills in robotics and biotech. Scan the street scenes and pause from time to time, inferring the different ways people of the city find to survive.

In yet another connection to Gibson, this practice is evocative of one his better known quotes: "The street finds its own use for things." This is seen our time as protesters in Chile use inexpensive laser pointers to confuse police drones and cameras.

Photo from The Atlantic.


What is amazing to me is that the people of Blade Runner still want to survive despite all reasons not to. I see little quality of life for the common person, I see little chance of them surmounting the draconian mechanisms which confine them to their stations, I see no room for avocations apart from vices, and yet...and yet...through either fear or courage, they persist. Perhaps as Camus suggests, they imagine Sisyphus as happy.

All of this, one may argue, is neatly encapsulated in the film's final scene. Why does Roy spare Deckard? The viewer is left only to speculate. That speculation is percolated (or spoon-fed, depending on your ethos) by Harrison Ford's noirish voiceover. Maybe in his final moments, Roy wanted life so much that he could not bear to take it from Deckard or anything else. Why am I here? How long do I have? Or as Roy perhaps less eloquently puts it to Tyrell in an earlier scene, "I want more life, fucker."

Speculation. Not all the blanks get filled. That is often the mark of great art. More to the pity of Blade Runner 2049, where I begged for them not to answer the questions. Unfortunately, that was but the least of the sequel's problems.

We live in uncertain times. File that under Understatement for $100, Alex. Often I and others of a similar mind find ourselves asking just how do we continue during such an era of political and economic oppression? I don't just mean that in regard to myself, but more specifically to many others, such as the protesters in Chile...and if you don't understand why we should care about others then we really have nothing left to say to each other. Additionally, I question my own future vis-a-vis what I value and what I do. What place is there for someone of the mind in a "go into the trades" world? How do I have? How can I keep going?

Today, as in the Blade Runner version of 2019, there may be no way to win. But people keep going.

"It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?"

I leave you with an instrumental piece by Nine Inch Nails which to me sounds most Blade Runner-esque.








 Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

Hike for Hesed

In two weeks, I will be participating in the Hike for Hesed. This is a five mile walk to raise funds for Hesed House, the second largest homeless shelter in Illinois.

Why am I doing this? It all starts ten years ago with a man named Gordon.

It was a chance meeting in the food court of Chicago Union Station. I was in the city, killing time before meeting my adviser at DePaul University. While in the Metra station, I saw CPD hustle out two homeless men. 

“They do it to me, too,” someone to the right of me said.

He sat reading a discarded newspaper. He wore a 49ers sweatshirt that had seen the better of days. I saw weathered skin on his face, teeth a deep shade of yellow in his mouth, and detected the slightest scent which indicated an absence of soap and deodorant. We started talking. He told me his name was Gordon. In 2001, his wife contracted cancer. They found it harder and harder to cover the innumerable bills that came their way, despite their having insurance. They wiped out his 401k. They took out a second mortgage on their house. Then the other shoe dropped.

Gordon worked as a machinist at a Chicago factory. The CEO of the business decided he could make a greater profit if he moved the plant to Mexico. Gordon lost his job. He and his wife soon depleted their savings. She died. He lost the house. With no other family to speak of, Gordon went to the streets.

I never forgot that chance meeting. For the ten years since I have reflected on how we are all, in the end, subject to the capricious whims of chance. You never, ever know how someone came into their situation, whatever it is. I am certain there are those who would greet this account with counterclaims, such as, “He should have worked harder and saved more” or “Why didn’t he just get another job?” To those claims, I offer yet another question.

Would you say that to me?

If you are reading this, then chances are you know me, either informally through the ether of cyberspace, or as an intimate friend. You might even be an extended family member. My point being, seriously, would you say those things to me if I were homeless?

Because I easily could have been.

When Saint Josephs’ College closed in May of 2017, I lost my job. As my wife has serious health conditions, I was the sole provider for my family. I sent out hundreds of job applications and went on numerous interviews. I ended up getting two part-time jobs, which still did not come close to covering monthly costs of living. How did we make it?

Pure accident of birth. I am blessed and grateful beyond belief to have been born to parents with both the love and the means to help my family survive…and I do mean basic survival…for that year before I was again blessed and acquired a wonderful, full time faculty position. If not for my parents, my family would have been homeless. Every day I reflect on how few people have such a safety net. I also believe that to whom much is given, much is expected. 

Therefore, I must act.

There are unique pathologies within our society. One of them, I believe, stems from our pioneer times, times which disappeared well over 150 years ago. This thinking goes: “As long as you work hard, you will make it.” Another is a reductive equation which states wealth=virtue. If you don’t have money, then you must be poor in character and morality as well as finances. Thus, I concede the fact that someone out there would still have belittled me for my situation or worse, belittled someone like Gordon for his, with “You should have worked harder” or “it’s your problem.” I posit that those harboring such an ethos are susceptible to the many myths surrounding the human tragedy that is homelessness in America.

“Homeless people just don’t want to work, or if they just got a job, they’d be fine.”

A 2013 study from the Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment found that 55% of homeless had worked in the previous year. Gordon had worked the year before I spoke to him. I worked in the first half of 2017. I then worked two part-time jobs, just as many housing insecure people do. A minimum wage worker needs to work between 69 and 174 hours a week in order to afford a two-bedroom rental.

“Fighting homelessness is too expensive.”

A study from the Central Florida Commission onHomelessness determined that subsidizing housing for people costs $10,000 per person, per year. If left homeless, then people can cause a strain on jails, law enforcement, hospitals, and other community services that amount to $31,000 per person, per year. If one cannot see assisting the homeless as a moral imperative, then perhaps one might yield to the logic of numbers and finance.

I am also struck by how many young people are homeless. Last March, a student confessed to me that they were living out of their car and were running out of cash for food. I connected this student with campus services in order to change that situation post haste. But this student was symptomatic of a larger and systemic plight. Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune reported that 16,000 public school students qualify as homeless. “I felt very embarrassed to tell people”, was a common comment from those students.

Nationwide, one may see the scope, namely a 70% increase, of homelessness among school-aged children in this chart:

Something must be done.

That is why I like the simply stated mission of Hesed House: “Because everyone deserves dignity.” Every human deserves the dignity of a roof, heating or cooling, and food in their stomach.

Consider the many victories won by Hesed House:

-Over 200,000 warm meals were served to people in need.

-80,766 Warm, safe nights of restful sleep were provided.

-120 children were served over the course of the past year.

-So many people who now have jobs and their own housing via Hesed House training and assistance programs.

You may read of more successes at this link.

So that is why I am participating in Hike for Hesed. Several of my fine colleagues at the college, along with a few of their family members, will be joining me. Our team name is “Waubonsee Walkers.” I assure you none of us are Walking Dead fans, but rather the name comes from my being unimaginative at the time of registration. Because we’re from Waubonsee and we’re…well…walking. If, however, you are a zombie fan and that motivates you to help, then by all means.

I ask that you please consider sponsoring my team in this walk by making a donation of whatever you can afford. In doing so, you will be helping so many people to change their lives. Yes, it is the moral thing to do, but it also just makes good sense.

Everyone deserves dignity.

Everyone deserves to feel like they matter.

Everyone.

I’m going to do what I can to help make that happen.

Thank you all so much and take care.

Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

RIP Stanton Friedman

Breaking my “blog fast” for what I consider to be another significant news item.

Stanton Friedman died on May 13^th. I know it’s one month since then, but end of semester grading and seemingly endless amounts distractions at home have kept me from marking this sad passing on the blog. That is to my own shame and disappointment, but I hope to make up for it now.

Who was Stanton Friedman? He was someone who spent his life, in one manner or another, investigating. I once latched on to the conclusions of his investigations with a wholehearted embrace. Then I came to disagree with him. But I never once lost respect or admiration for him.

Friedman was a nuclear physicist who at one point worked on projects like nuclear-powered aircraft and rockets. He left all that behind in the early 1970s to pursue full-time his own research into alleged UFO cases, particularly Roswell. In undertaking what would end up becoming a lifetime endeavor, Friedman approached ufology, it seems to me anyway, in three ways. First, he wanted to lift what he called “the laughter curtain” from the subject, so that UFOs might be openly discussed without fear of ridicule. Second, if the taint of automatic ridicule could be removed, Friedman made the modest proposal that each case could then be fairly evaluated on its own merits or lack thereof. Third, inquiries into these cases should by conducted according to the scientific method (would you expect anything less from a physicist?)

All of this I saw in Friedman when he first came to my notice on a program about UFOs back in my teens. He was not a hippy-dippy New Ager sleeping in a crystal pyramid, and any certainly was not like any of the “Rockstar Ufologists” we have today, bringing us nothing but
"UFOtainment” on the History Channel. No. Friedman was scientist. He was level-headed, thoughtful, articulate, and while he did believe that extraterrestrial beings were visiting Earth, he believed they accounted for only a small percentage of UFO sightings while the remainder were mis-identifications and mundanity. He was, however, something of a conspiracy theorist. Often Friedman would use the phrase “cosmic Watergate” to describe what he believed to be the government’s concealment of alien contact. The first book of his that I read, Top Secret/MAJIC, was a deep dive into and a thoroughly-reasoned examination of this cover-up conducted by the shadowy figures known as “Majestic 12.” You can read my review of it here from wayyyyyyy back when I first started ESE. The book even included the infamous “SOM01-01” manual, an apparent field guide for covert operatives handling UFO crashes.

Since then I’ve read much that strongly suggests these documents leaked to Don Berliner, one of Friedman’s writing and research partners, were fakes. Friedman continued to hold to his argument that true UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin and they are in fact “nuts and bolts” spacecraft. As you dear readers know, I can’t accept that and I’ve only grown more and more skeptical of UFO claims. I am certainly not a believer in the so-called “Deep State” and many other conspiracy theories or that “disclosure” is on the way.

And despite my disagreements, I still held nothing but respect for Friedman. He was no “true believer” and would call out cases he thought were weak and people he thought were questionable (I’m thinking of his take on Bob Lazar.) He possessed a keen insight on the effect UFO phenomena was having on society and media, an effect that remains real and palpable regardless of the nature of the phenomena. More than anything, I think Friedman just wanted the truth. As the field (if you can call it that) of ufology grows more and more overrun by YouTubers, rock stars, and glitzy reality TV personalities, the more difficult it will be to arrive at that truth.

If there does happen to be any scrap of validity in UFO phenomena…and there just might be…it will take people like Stanton Friedman to find it. Sadly, he is gone.

And he will be missed.

Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

Our first look at a black hole

Image from the National Science Foundation.


So I said I would break my blogging sabbatical if something big happened.

Well, it has.

Yesterday, in a series of press conferences around the world, astronomers and other space scientists announced that we at last have an image of an actual black hole. The image was obtained by specifically linking together a series radio telescopes located around the Earth, an effort called Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The black hole pictured is located in the M87 galaxy near the Virgo galaxy cluster, about 55 million light-years from Earth. As predicted by Einstein's general relativity theory, the picture depicts a dark, empty region in the center and a glow of superheated gas and matter being drawn in by the hole's immense gravity.

I honestly didn't think I would see this in my lifetime. When I heard last week that this news would be released, yesterday morning had a certain "Christmas morning" feeling to it.

There's something very human about this news. For a long while now, black holes were something astronomer's believed in, but never saw. Now when I say "believed in," I don't mean that in necessarily a "leap of faith" sense. The mathematics were there, the gravitational effects on nearby stars were there, but we just didn't have the means to see a black hole with our eyes. To see what we always sensed was there, to view it in the most tangible means available, answers so many questions for us. While at the same time, it raises just as many others. Ain't that existence, though?

Additionally, as we go through a time of what looks like great division, it's nice to remember that humans of many nations can still do great things when we work together. One motivation for such behavior is studying the universe...something that is certainly bigger than any of us or all of us put together.

So, yeah. I'm loving this.

By the by, if you're loving it too, then thank Dr. Katie Bouman for the discovery. Her keen mathematical alacrity came up with the algorithm that helped make the EHT possible. Let's hear it for more women in STEM making great contributions to humanity.

Sure wish Stephen Hawking had been here to see this picture. Well, I like to think he saw it before any of the rest of us did.



Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

So my Ancestry DNA results are in...

Always living so close to Chicago, I would marvel at the wild revelries of Irish descendants on St. Patrick's Day. In the city one April, I stood in curious wonder at a parade celebrating Polish pride.

I say "marvel" and "wonder" because I've never had a really good sense of my ancestors' origins. Truth to tell, it never made that much difference in my family and for most of my life, I didn't see it as significant. I would look at the above mentioned groups of people and think, "I wonder what it's like to have such a large portion of your identity immersed in origins?" Marrying a woman who is half Greek only furthered this mixture of bewilderment and detached rumination.

Then last Christmas, my wife got me and her parents Ancestry DNA kits. For the uninitiated, it involves spitting into a vial which is then filled with a purple, preservative fluid. You mail off the tube, the folks at corporate process it, and then they send a full report to your Ancestry DNA app (or email, if that's more your speed.) Two weeks ago or so, I received my results, my "DNA story" as it were. My reaction to it was...unexpected.

Here's the breakdown:

-46% of me is from England, Wales, and Scotland.
-40% of me is from Ireland (specifically Connacht) and the western section of Scotland.
-12% of me is from "Germanic Europe".

Based on that DNA "map", the assessment painted a fairly accurate physical portrait of myself without ever having seen me. The report stated, and rightly so, that I have pale skin, blue eyes, and thick, wavy hair. The only part it was askance on was that my hair color was likely light, whereas it's actually a dark brown. Good news? I am unlikely to ever go bald. It also said that I like cilantro...which I do.

Now if you've done the math, you'll notice that 2% still remains in my DNA makeup. That remainder ended up being something of a shock to me.

-2% Viking.

Now anyone who knows me in real life would look at my slender hips, thin wrists, and ant-like arms and think, "Viking. Sure. First thing I think of." That is a point of view I can certainly understand. Just the same however, I have gotten a particular kick out of proclaiming...and I apologize...
"I'm a fucking VIKING!"

It's given me a sort of odd sense of confidence, even to get through normal, day-to-day challenges. Now that is, of course, purely psychological. I am not any different today than I was the day before I received the results. Yet I cannot help but reflect on that 86% of me that comes from the British Isles, particularly it would seem, Scotland.

Throughout my life, I've been an anglophile. Almost all of my favorite music, writers, and much of the film and television I enjoy come from the many cultures of those lands. In my youth I would see pictures of the English countryside, the Irish coast, and the Scottish Highlands and feel an odd sense of connection, like something was reaching out of the photo and yanking me back...home. Could there be something encoded at the DNA level, embedded deep in me somewhere, that instinctively brought about that connection? Then again, is it just because of what was popular during my "coming of age years"? Both, perhaps?

That Scottish aspect though...it has me thinking...

One of my all-time favorite films is Braveheart. Not only do I own the DVD, if I happen to see it's playing on TV, I will stop and watch it no matter where it happens to be in the narrative.

DIGRESSION-

Let me address two things:

1. I am aware of the derision Mel Gibson has received in recent years, and it is not undeserving. Since I like several of his films, I must now place him with others such as H.P. Lovecraft, Roman Polanski, and Bill Cosby: artists and entertainers who despite having said and done terrible things, I still can't help but enjoy their writing. My relationship with their texts is...problematic to say the least.

2. Were I to be teaching a class on medieval history, the only reason I would ever show Braveheart is so that students could pick out all of the historical inaccuracies. This is fraught with issues for a writer like me who takes the phrase "based on a true story" quite seriously, and that's even with the allowances one must accord an nonfiction writer. In summation, I'm never watching this film as a historical text. As for my views on literary nonfiction, in this case I'm afraid I must exercise my right to hypocritize myself.

That said, allow me to proceed...

Braveheart, even if ficitonalized, is the story of a man and a people who stood up and said "NO" to their oppressors. The clans of the Highlands said to tyrants, "You will take no more. You will grind us down no more. We will fight for our land. We will take back what is ours."

As it is with so much in recent years, I cannot help but think of my experience at Saint Joseph's College. I've even alluded to a few of these thoughts and feelings in last year's post, "Lost Causes."

So often during those final months at SJC, my head overruled my heart. Yes, believe it or not. I wanted to say more. I want to take bold and defiant action. Deep inside I wanted to paint half my face cardinal and the other half purple and lead my army of like-minded Pumas to take a stand and cry out "you will not take this from us!"

But I didn't. I was afraid of damaging my chances at getting another job. I was servile and obsequious to people I now have no respect for, fearing that if I did otherwise I might be dismissed on the spot and lose severance and a few months of remaining insurance.  I kept tergiversating, moving in a frenzied circle of wanting to act but then retreating. I kept thinking an action of the "manning the barricades" sort would surely result in making matters worse.

That was my brain talking. It was similar to the response from Sir Robert the Bruce's father when The Bruce described the leadership and passion of William Wallace.

"And you wish to rush off and fight with him?" the father responds with condescending laughter. "Uncompromising men are easy to admire. But it is the ability to compromise which makes a man great."

It reminds of responses I received to my own expressions of pain and anger in those awful spring months of 2017. "You're being emotional, not rational. Problem solve. Be positive."

How does one compromise on being treated with human dignity? How does one react to an injustice without emotion? At what point do you take the risk, against all reason if need be, and stand up to say "NO MORE." Sometimes the only reasonable choice is the unreasonable choice.

I keep reflecting on Wallace's famous, perhaps now somewhat trite, speech in the film:

“Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live — at least a while. And, dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!! Alba gu bràth!”

Yes. What would I be willing to trade?

I know that I can't help but feel cowardly in retrospect. While I quietly worked to support a resistance, I still wish I would have done more. Much more. What did I learn from it? That may best be expressed by Sir Robert the Bruce in the film: "I will never be on the wrong side of anything ever again."

There may be no scientific evidence for this gut feeling, but I cannot help but feel a deep connection with the Scottish people represented in my DNA mosaic. I know the same can be said of many people and many cultures, but I am the biological product of humans who saw injustice, stood up, and spat back in the faces of their enemy. My physical and emotional reactions in the first half of 2017? They were pre-ordained. They were hard-coded into my biology via the experiences of my Scottish...and maybe even Viking...ancestors, and passed along as epigenetics. They never rolled over and took it. They fought.

Yes, would that I would have done more, but while linked to the past I can only control the now. That brings me to my big announcement.

You no doubt have noticed the decline in the frequency of posts from ESE. That has been due to my teaching five English composition classes, finishing coursework for my terminal degree, and giving my family much-needed attention. If I am to get this SJC book done, I am going to have to knuckle down and just write. After all that's what writers do. They write.

Therefore, we here at ESE have decided to "suspend operations" (heh! Get it?) in order to devote more attention to writing the book. I am not saying I won't pop in now and then for a post if a news development warrants it...you know, aliens land or the Singularity happens...but I really must focus on writing.

So it's goodbye from ESE...for now.

I'm off to buy a Claymore.

Alba gu bràth.


Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

RIP Opportunity

Sad news from Mars today.

An announcement came from NASA. The Opportunity rover has officially been pronounced dead.

Last June, a sandstorm covered the planet Mars. It was thought that the dust covered the solar panels on Opportunity, causing it to power down. Once the storm subsided, Martian winds might blow the panels clean and the rover might once more respond to signals. Nearly 1,000 command signals were sent to Opportunity since last year. No reply ever came. After a last, longshot attempt went unanswered yesterday, NASA announced it was finally cutting off communication and pronounced the Opportunity mission "complete."

Opportunity first arrived on Mars in 2004. Since then, it has not only broadened our understanding of Mars immeasurably, its very engineering and the undertaking of the mission has granted humanity considerable experience with space exploration. Hopefully, we may parlay this experience into future endeavors and build upon it with more extensive Mars missions. And yet I feel uneasy...

I must admit, I'm feeling a bit sad for the inanimate rover. You see, for as dour as I can be about our future or the tendencies of human nature, I cannot ignore achievements such as Opportunity. The mission and the research gleaned from it stand as testament to what we can do when we work together as species, particularly when we have faith in reason, science, and a dash of imagination. As a writer, I tend to sometimes see things romantically, despite my penchant for bitterness. Opportunity represents the spirit of exploration and the acquisition of knowledge about not just another planet, but our universe. "What's over there? Let's find out."

Where else in our most immediate corner of the universe has inspired more wonder and attractancy than Mars?

Sure, would have been nice if it had come across definitive evidence of life, either past or present, on Mars. I for one was hoping Opportunity just might come across a rock that was a little more than a rock, and instead an artifact from a lost civilization. I can just hear the conspiracy theorists howling, but for the now...we have no such evidence. Instead, we have piles of data collected over 14 years, that scientists in various disciplines will be chewing over for a long while to come.

You have given us so much, Opportunity. We are forever in your debt. Rest easy, little soldier. Your job is done.

Now, a planet solely populated by robots must decrement its population by one.

Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

I am being haunted by Phil Collins

I play music before class.

Students who have had me before know that I take requests.

"I have a song," one of my guys said yesterday. "'In the Air Tonight' by Phil Collins.

After tossing my pen on the desk and rubbing the bridge of my nose, I played the song.

"Was there something else you wanted?" the student asked, taken aback by my reaction.

"No, no," I assured. "It's not that. It's not you. Let me explain my situation."

I am being haunted by Phil Collins.

It started just less than one year ago. After the collapse of Saint Joseph's College and the loss of my job in 2017, I had to get by with a few part time jobs. One of them was in the Writing Center of a local university. Students would bring in their writing assignments and I would help them either begin or revise drafts as best I could. In April, a student came to me with a dilemma.

She had a paper due for her Art Appreciation class. Page length was a hard maximum of four pages.

This student had close to eight.

Her subject? Phil Collins. Yes, this student was a superfan of the drummer, singer, solo artist, and member of Genesis. Well in order to meet the requirements of the prompt, something we professors are kinda big on, we needed to essentially cut her paper in half.

"How do we do that?" she asked.

"Well, we have to decide on what the most important moments of his life/career are and then ditch the rest," I said.

"Are you kidding me?" she asked, eyes bulging through her glasses. "It's all important."

We talked and wrote for over an hour after that. I argued for the significance of Phil's trans-Atlantic performance at the two Live Aid concerts. She lobbied hard for the inclusion of his starring role in the film, Buster. This was a discussion my grad work in composition/rhetoric did not prepare me for.

Nor was I prepared for what followed my shift in the Writing Center.

I began to hear Phil Collins everywhere. Turn on the radio and I'd hear "Two Hearts" or "Invisible Touch." "Take Me Home" came across the airwaves more than a few times and the lyrics truly resonated with me as I could not help but think of Saint Joe. Everywhere I went, I seemed to hear Phil Collins. I stopped into the vet's office and heard "Billy Don't Lose My Number," which I saw as a somewhat inspired choice by the universe as that's not really one of his go-to hits. Genesis' "Land of Confusion" even made an appearance once. Then came one Sunday when I finally had enough and began to think Phil was coming at me with full force.

On weekends, my wife and I enjoy listening to old Casey Kasem Top 40 countdowns on iHeartRadio. It reminds us of halcyon Sunday mornings of when we, albeit apart and unaware of one another, would listen to these countdowns, anxious to hear the number one song. Last spring, we came across one from May of 1984.

"Oh no, he's still following me," I said.

"Phil?" she asked, for I had told her of my experience.

"Yes," I said. "The number one song will be 'Against All Odds.'"

"How do you know?" she asked.

Sure enough it was. From that point forward, my wife dubbed my recurring quasi-paranormal experience as "The Philnomenon." I started to fall asleep reluctantly, afraid I would jolt awake and just see Phil hovering there next to me in the dark.

There is a concept known as "synchronicity." No, not the album by The Police.

Carl Jung, the famous scholar and psychologist, once described the phenomenon as "meaningful coincidences that occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related." So in a way, like attracts like. So in theory, I spent so much time thinking about Phil Collins one night that I basically drew his music to me. Jung saw this as an explanation for the paranormal, meaning the human mind manifests these odd occurrences. What we are seeing in these sightings are reflections of what we are thinking, even if subconsciously.

Richard Dawkins blows all that up in his book, Unbending the Rainbow. According to Dawkins, these "uncanny coincidences" are woefully mundane, given the sheer amount of observations and encounters someone has during a day. It's only a matter of time before at least a few coincidences happen. Given that humans have this, at times garish, need for wonder, we attach more meaning and significance to these events than is warranted.

For example, it may be that I attach extra significance to any moment I hear a Phil Collins hit (and believe me, he had a lot of them) because he's just a bit outside of my musical wheelhouse. If I hear Duran Duran, U2, The Cure, or Echo and the Bunnymen multiple times in a day between radio and Spotify, that says far more about my tastes than anything synchronous. Then again, as I said, Phil isn't a musician I've listened to with any real frequency, so in that regard it is a bit strange. I'm with Richard Dawkins on many things, but certainly not everything.

What do I think? Is Phil Collins really haunting me? Probably not.

And yet...

And yet...

I have to admit it's weird. Plus, there were, right around the same time as the dawning of the Philnomenon, a good many changes that manifested in my life and every one of them was for the better. I got an amazing new job at a great college with fantastic co-workers. Home life became happier. Was the Philnomenon a side effect or perhaps a symptom of these roborant vibes? Maybe.

The whole thing has also made me consider just what the criteria in order to call oneself a "fan" of an artist. There are songs by Phil Collins that I think are great ("Take Me Home", "Another Day in Paradise", "Against All Odds") and others that I think all right if you're in the mood ("That's All!", "Sussudio"). Does that make me a "fan"? As I said, there are songs I certainly like, but what's the minimum count of "liked" songs before you reach the official level of "fan"? Then again, does the true definition hearken back to that of "fanatic," of which "fan" is a shortened version? I don't know much Phil Collins trivia, so that probably counts me out as a fanatic. I sure as heck couldn't write eight whole pages on him. Not with doing research on him.

It's not so bad being haunted by Phil Collins. Kind of a happy feeling, really. To commemorate the Philnomenon, my wife got me the shirt that's at the top of this post. It's pretty great, but I rather like this one, you'll excuse the profanity. 


   

Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

The Deep State! It was funny for a little while...

That photo above was from when I was a guest on the Three Profs and a Pitcher podcast.

It was a bright moment before the dark times, before the end of SJC. We talked about conspiracy theories and the people who believe in them. I spoke extensively on the subject of Dulce, which was occupying my writing and research time, again before the fall of SJC and my change in thesis direction. In a tongue-in-cheek gesture we donned, as you can see, tinfoil hats to block out the signals supposedly being beamed into our brains by the government or the aliens or whoever. A good time was had by all and as I have for many years, I enjoyed discussing conspiracy theory through the prism of rhetoric and narrative construction.

Lately, I've been thinking about the more dangerous side of conspiracy theories...and I'm troubled.

In recent weeks, more than one person has told me the same story and both did so with all earnestness and sincerity. These were intelligent, decently-educated people. Their vision of the world  goes something like this:

"There is a globalist cabal secretly orchestrating a New World Order. Aiding in these efforts are a 'Deep State'--a US government within the US government--journalists (or the more derisive "MSM"), scientists, and higher education. Along with the Moose Lodge, this vast conspiracy is keeping alien contact a secret from the public at-large. But they can't for much longer. Disclosure is coming..."

Okay, so I made up the part about the Moose Lodge, but there's still so much to unpack in that claim.

Normally, I'd love it. It has all the narrative elements of what makes James Bond and The X-Files so good. It's also understandable why someone might think these otherwise outlandish things. This world is an unfair and unkind place where bad things often happen for no reason. Or there may be a reason, but you are powerless in the face of it. Believing that happenings are secretly organized against you, or even the whole public at-large, begins to make a kind of sense. After a time, one may even feel a sense of comfort in it. It's a form of screaming back into the dark, impenetrable void of the absurdity of existence. Of course things aren't working out. "They" are all against you. There is a populism in such a philosophy.

No one embraces populism more than Donald Trump. He has even openly claimed that there is a "Deep State", mostly composed of the intelligence-gathering apparatuses of the government, working against him. Last year at this time, Senator Ron Johnson, the Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman mind you, went on Fox News and alerted all Americans that a "secret society" that includes the FBI is lurking about.

The problem of course is that this is beyond impractical. Political scientist Joseph Uscinski is an academic (oh no!) who has spent considerable time studying conspiracy theories and why the vast majority are implausible. Here's a mental activity to help illustrate just why that is.

Think of your favorite rock band. Got them in mind? Good.
Now, are they still together? If they are still together, are they still the original line up of members? Unless you are thinking of U2 or another rarity, the answer to one of those questions is very likely "no." That's because people can't seem to work together for extended periods of time. Eventually, differences in philosophy and personality cause paths to diverge. Same goes for government as people regularly leave administrations. The current administration appears to excel at this very phenomenon.

Point being, the so-called "Deep State" would require an enormous amount of people to perpetuate. In time, someone or more likely multiple someones, would walk away and talk. Dr. David Grimes is a physicist at Oxford University (oh no!) who mathematically computed just how long it would take for most conspiracy theories to unravel due to the amount of people involved. For example: Moon landing hoax? 3.7 years. There's secretly a cure for cancer? 3.2 years. 

Despite this reasoning, we have a president and a senior member of the Senate promulgating claims of "secret societies" and "the Deep State", claims few, if any, political leaders would previously have made. When conspiracy theory is passed off as fact by high-ranking officials, I tend to see a problem.

This problem is compounded by the denunciation of journalism, or "the MSM" the conspiracy adherents term it, as "enemies of the people." That's how we end up with people like Robert Chain.

Chain was arrested by the FBI and charged with threatening journalists at The Boston Globe, leaving voicemail messages such as "You're the enemy of the people, and we're going to kill every f-king one of you. Why don't you call Mueller, maybe he can help you out."

Journalists. Scientists. Academics. The FBI. Those who work in those disciplines and organizations are among the most fact-driven people in our society. To be skeptical and look for bias is one thing. Any student of rhetoric will tell you that no writing or communication of any kind is possible without at least the smallest taint of bias. To accuse them of collusion in specious conspiracies and label them as "enemies of the people" however, can obviously have dangerous consequences. While I do try to avoid Godwin's Law and agrumentum ad Hitlerum, I can't help but see parallels between these claims and the "stabbed in the back" myth. Yes, I just linked to Wikipedia, which I also don't like to do, but it has a political cartoon from the 1930s which brings the subject into vivid clarity.

This conspiracy theory stated that Germany lost World War I not because of the Allies' superior military prowess, but because of sabotage at home by Jews and other treasonous undesirables. Nazis were able to implement this falsehood to stir up populist fervor and lead people to do unspeakable things. Bear in mind that Nazi leadership also believed in the Hollow Earth conspiracy. What then was Nazism if not a conspiracy theory run loose to a point where it swept up a nation and millions died?

No, we're not there yet. I think I'd like to avoid it just the same, though.

The milder aspect of the worldview presented to me is that of "alien disclosure."

It's obviously no secret I have a strong interest in UFOs. This interest stems mainly from my fascination with how people construct narratives and rhetorical meaning out of the phenomenon. While I am quite skeptical, I still see a small percentage of cases, maybe around 4%, that have no easy explanation and that may indeed require an answer with extraordinary implications. The extraterrestrial hypothesis is one of those possible implications, but I see it as a remote one.

To paraphrase my would-be television alter-ego: "I want to believe...but hard evidence has proven elusive."

Since life has knocked me from my high horse plenty of times in recent years, I have stopped mocking people if they do happen to be UFO "true believers." You never know what's going on in someone's life and that hobby or interest you find laughable might just be the only thing keeping them glued together. Derision is not only unnecessary, it's just plain unkind.

In fact, it might be something in the same vein as mocking someone's religion. I would be far from the first to compare UFOs with religion. Many who have had sightings or other experiences with UFOs are said to come away with a profound spiritual awakening. This is understandable. Their experience, even if probably explainable through any number of prosaic occurrences, has given them a glimpse of "the other." They received a taste of the ethereal, something fantastic, a connection to something greater than our humdrum lives and something that might just give meaning to our otherwise absurd and random existence.

Doesn't that sound like religion?

For years in Catholic mass, I spoke the words, "And He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His Kingdom shall have no end." Is that or "the rapture" really any different than UFO enthusiasts crying, "One day there will be Disclosure and the 'space people' will show up, twinkle their little almond eyes, and everything will be fine"?

Most of the time it's a harmless enough "religious" belief, except in cases such as the Heaven's Gate cult. I've noticed however, how often UFO enthusiasts are also proponents of New World Order, Illuminati, Deep State conspiracy theories. Michael Barkun of Syracuse University (oh no!) has even likened this substrata of UFO enthusiast to fundamentalist religious zealots. It's a sort of "populist intellectualism." What happens, however, if these beliefs, such as "the Deep State", are granted validation from authority figures? Then the day the UFO devotee wants most, the day of Disclosure, is kept barricaded from them by secret societies, with the "MSM" and science itself complicit in the act. Therefore, shun all "mainstream media" and instead stay informed by some guy blogging out of his basement, with none of the text given peer review or even editorial scrutiny.

(Note: I am fully aware of the irony of my having just written that in a blog post, but I certainly don't try to pass myself off as harboring any "secret truth." No "files on the secret space program" around here.)

That, I believe, is a cocktail for an even deeper populist anti-intellectualism in this nation, a misplaced distrust of several of its most necessary institutions, and perhaps consequences far more horrendous than any of that.

Naturally, the conspiracy counterargument to all I have written might be a derisory cry that I'm "an ivory tower egghead" who has been "brainwashed by the MSM" in a "liberal indoctrination camp" (read "university") and that I'm "just one of the sheeple."

Given the alternative and its dark potential, I can live with that.


Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

Three big stories we're following

Image from the NY Post.


Well, one big story and two pretty interesting ones.

And by "we," I mean the editorial desks here at ESE.

Which pretty much means just me. Anyway, here's what I've found fascinating lately.

The first story comes from the realm of transportation. Hyundai announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the organization is developing a walking car. You read that correctly. Why would anyone ever require such a vehicle? Besides the fact that it would look really cool? Additionally, if "cool" is a deciding factor, wouldn't you much rather have one that flies?

If you can't have flight, then the walking car would still allow you to travel where other cars cannot. Floodwaters? No big deal anymore...not such a bad feature as sea levels rise. Streets strewn with concrete rubble? No problem...again, not such a bad feature as who knows where the hell our current situation is taking us. Plus, Hyundai claims this car will even be able to walk up stairs should you need it to. We'll see where this goes.

Reminds of when my friend George once bought a jeep and he developed a new philosophy of curbs: "F--k 'em."

Our next story is about NASA's new TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) satellite already being hard at work. TESS was launched last April with the mission of taking over for the Kepler space telescope which ran out of fuel in October, 2018. Like Kepler, TESS will search for exoplanets, but with greater ability to measure an exoplanet's mass and the composition of its atmosphere. TESS has already found three exoplanets orbiting a small star about 53 light years away from us. We should be able to study this newfound solar system in greater detail than ever before.

I don't know. While the promise of gaining a greater understanding of exoplanets is most tantalizing, I can't help but feel bad for Kepler. It's out there, 100 million miles from Earth. It's final commands were sent months ago, now it hears nothing more. It found us thousands of exoplanets, but will now forever drift in silence, because it's out of gas and a new and improved model has been found.

Might be a metaphor in that for the American worker.

The biggest story is, well, pretty big.

We have detected repeated radio signals coming from space. The point of origin is a galaxy 1.5 billion light years away, but this is still most encouraging. The radio bursts repeated six times and from the same location. They were "flung out with the same amount of energy the sun takes 12 months to produce," as it says at the link.

This is the second time that repeated radio bursts have been found coming from deep space, leading astronomers to suspect that such repeating radio bursts may be a bit more plentiful than initially thought. Before we get our hopes up about aliens, it would be prudent to check ourselves. These signals could be the product of dying stars, or strange astronomical phenomena we don't yet know.

And yet...

And yet...

It's the "signal from an alien civilization" scenario that is the most enticing, isn't it? This is especially because the fact that they are repeating from a fixed location is rather suspicious. Have we somehow overheard someone else's conversation? Also possible, could it be another civilization similar to our own, one transmitting a signal into the void that asks the question, "Is anyone out there?"

Oh boy, do I want that to be true. To finally have, in my lifetime no less, scientific confirmation that there are alien civilizations...well, I'd be busting. I don't think my college would be very happy about it as I doubt I'd teach classes for a week or more. I'd be continually glued to the news, soaking in all the information I could. I'd pitch myself as pundit. Why not? I'm no less informed than many the cable news channels go to for perspectives. You would get daily, nay, hourly updates from ESE as the biggest story ever unfolded. 

What would this mean to society? What would this mean for science fiction? Would it grow more or less relevant in the face of science fiction becoming fact? I would opt for "more relevant," for if a signal were confirmed, there would only be greater speculation about alien life as we would still likely know precious few details.

This all sounds a blog post in and of itself. More to come and well...let's keep hoping.


Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

David Bowie and UFOs

It was round about this time of year when we lost David Bowie.

I suppose that's why I've plucked this topic from my overflowing "To Blog" folder in Google. It was a "long read" I found in The Independent many months back about music stars who were also connected with UFOs. It contained this little tidbit I had not previously known (where I've added the emphasis):

"But the king of the UFO pop stars has to be David Bowie. If his oeuvre wasn’t enough – “Loving the Alien”, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, “Starman” – the young David Robert Jones not only put out a UFO newsletter with friends when he was a teenager, but spotted his own mysterious skybound object over London in 1967."

Bowie ran a UFO zine? I shouldn't be surprised, but geez, like I needed any more reason to worship the guy.

Of course I did know about his UFO connection. For further reading on the matter of rock musicians and UFOs, I recommend the book, Alien Rock by Michael C. Luckman. Naturally it has an entire chapter devoted to Bowie. Here's a precis of one of my favorite passages (p. 84-85) from that chapter:

It's 1974, and Bowie is on tour in America, making a stop in Detroit. A 6pm news broadcast on one of the local stations said that a UFO had crashed in the area. The downed craft was described as being "six feet wide and 30 feet long."

Just picture that for a moment.

Anyway, the report continued to say, as Bowie later excitedly related to Mirabella magazine, that "three creatures" in the craft were killed on impact. They were taken to a hospital and examined, and found to be human-like but smaller and with more developed brains. More news on the shocking development would come at the 11pm broadcast.

Unfortunately, the whole thing was revealed to be a hoax at 11pm and that the news crew who initially reported the matter was summarily fired as no UFO or alien craft whatsoever had crashed, landed, been intercepted, or anything of the sort. It was like the Roswell UFO crash and Orson Welles' War of the Worlds all rolled into one.

David Bowie, however, was undeterred. He had one of his personal assistants go buy him a telescope. He aimed this telescope out the moonroof of his limousine as he traveled to Minneapolis, the next stop on the tour, watching for UFOs the whole way.   

Doesn't it just...make sense?

Bowie's connection to science fiction is obvious, particularly with Ziggy Stardust, and his  breathtaking role in The Man Who Fell to Earth, but it's more than that even. He truly seemed otherworldly to me. It wasn't an act, it wasn't a persona, there was just something that made him seem not of this Earth. I will never forget being in the third row at his concert in 1995 when Nine Inch Nails, honestly the real reason I was there at the time, were finishing up their set and Bowie just strode out in the midst of these sweaty guys who had just finished smashing their instruments, and stood regally at the front of stage. His presence, his voice, his visage, I've never seen any musician with that total package and that "I'm really not from around here" quality.

In addition to the book by Luckman, which I believe must be easily ten years old by now, there is a new text on this subject by Jason Heller called Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded. You can't miss its cover. It has a cartoon rendering of Bowie's face and the title is in the same font as the title for Gold Key's Star Trek comic book. The dust cover description says that the book goes into detail about Bowie sneaking into a movie theater to see 2001 and how much that changed his life. Can't wait to read it all, and fortunately I have easy access to it as I first learned of the book by seeing it in my college library.

That's when you know you teach at a joint that's worthwhile. It orders copies of quality reads like Heller's. I'm serious.

More than anything, I think part of Bowie's creative genius came from this sense he had that there was something far greater that lurked outside of ourselves. By "ourselves" I mean the collective consciousness of humanity. UFOs are a psychological, if not physical, manifestation of that sense.
 
 

Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

Portals

“Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.”

-“New Year’s Day” by U2

It is New Year’s Day. 2019.

Last night I gleefully toggled between marathons of Twilight Zone and Space: 1999. I had a small plate of Pizza Rolls next to me. I have precious few New Year’s Eve traditions, but Pizza Rolls are one. My Dad would make them for my brother and I as kids, part of a small buffet of snack foods. We were too young for champagne, so it was a way of making it feel like a special night. It’s different now, though. I am much older and when I get horizontal and wrapped in a blanket, well, the result is usually assured. Though I fought hard, I fell asleep at about 11pm. I was nudged awake 15 minutes before midnight so that I might witness the arrival of the new year.

Like always, the clock struck midnight and it didn’t feel like much changed.

As is the case with so much else, “New Year’s” is an artificial construct we humans have concocted together. Of course, I’ve blogged bitterly in the past about how much I dislike the concept of this holiday, but my stance has softened quite a bit. I’m still not a fan, but I am left wondering about how much the Eve/Day represent our desires.

I think we want to step through a portal. We want to move through a ring of bluish-white light that washes us clean. Suddenly we find ourselves somewhere new with a fresh start. Last year, I certainly came to understand that desire. I’m going risk sounding grandiose here and not in the way that I usually do. But that’s what happened. The year 2018 represented a portal and I crossed through it into a new world, one I am quite pleased and thankful to inhabit. More on that later.

When I ruminate on these topics, I naturally look around at what else has been written about them, from the neoteric to the arcane. All I can say is my, we do love our portals and “wormholes” in popular culture.

Sometimes it’s the thrilling idea that we’ve found a hidden doorway to someplace else, such as the Hopi legends of people and entities passing between worlds through portals. Other times it’s the utility of being able to bypass vast stretches of time and space, like on Stargate (pictured above). Both are telling about human nature.  

I was disappointed to learn that black holes are not actually portals to a parallel universe. That was the thinking in my youth (see 1979’s The Black Hole, perhaps the best film Disney ever made.) Turns out that, according to the late, great Stephen Hawking, these vortexes formed from collapsed stars draw in matter and energy and then spew it all back out in a sort of cosmological carnage and flotsam. So no traveling through a black hole to a new universe if this one begins to collapse in on itself. Yes, yes, I know it would be quite a feat to survive the crushing gravity and the distortion of all space and time, but I was sort of hoping transhumanism could help us out with that. Then again that’s pretty much my fall back for most things these days.

Guess I’ve been thinking about things in astronomical terms lately. I wrote a “Socratic dialogue” between me and my dogs about the cosmos for a nature writing class. Maybe I’ll post it on here if I can’t find a publisher. Also, the cosmological perspective found its way into my book about the College. I described the closing of Saint Joseph’s College as the center of the universe falling out and a black hole left in its place. I was left adrift to go find an entirely new universe to replace it. In redrafting, I realized that is an imperfect metaphor.

Maybe, in a way, a portal suddenly opened beneath me. I fell through the wormhole into terra incognito, being thrown and tumbled about in all directions as I did. It’s not a ride I can recommend to anyone. It isn’t much fun.

And yet…and yet…

The portal dropped me off in someplace that’s not too bad. In fact, it’s pretty damn great, really. Would I have ever chosen that portal to open beneath me for me to fall through? No. I doubt I ever would have. In fact, I know I wouldn’t have. Somehow though, it might have ended up being exactly what I needed.

That doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop carrying a raging fury for the operators of the portal generator, but that’s an entirely different can of tuna and I’m already meandering into “vague blogging”.

Life is made up of meetings and partings. Or at least that’s what Kermit told me a week ago in A Muppet Christmas Carol. Another way to see it could portals that suddenly open and take us away from somewhere or someone, only to drop us off somewhere else, somewhere else that’s becomes home. If only we could control and stabilize the openings and closings of these portals. But we can’t. Sometimes that’s all right.

So goodnight, America. Good luck nursing your hangover, should you have one.
Wherever the portal of 2019 takes you, I hope it is even better than the world you found yourself in during 2018 and that it will always feel like home. 

POST SCRIPT: The year 2019 is when the movie Blade Runner (one of my favorites) takes place. If you get a Replicant, be nice to him/her and may you always pass your Voight/Kampf test.


Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets