Emergence

EMERGENCE

I’ve been struck by a couple of exposures to emergence this week, a newish field that explores how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, it’s bottom-up organization of large systems as opposed to the top-down systems that we humans have preferred during most of our existence. First I saw this:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0707/feature5/

Thanks to Cory Doctorow’s blog entry on Boingboing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/10/swarm_intelligence_a.html

Then I saw this on Nova scienceNow the other night:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3410/03.html

This is fascinating stuff and I’ve thought for years that we’re not ever going to create real robotic intelligence from programming it into a central brain with a bazillion lines of code, but from simple responses tied into sensory input. That’s how little bug-like bots work, your sensors bump into something, you move around it, that’s it. On a more complex scale (helluva lot more sensors and responses), we could achieve something that mimics intelligence very well, if it’s not actual intelligence (but it might be).

Maybe sometime in the next hundred years, when we’ve mastered the complexities, we can institute human emergent systems. Imagine a modern industrialized nation running smoothly without the need for leaders. An anarchist’s dream.

Sugar, Sugar

SUGAR, SUGAR

My daughter had yet another birthday the other day. She wanted one of those super cookie things instead of a birthday cake. Mrs. Fields(among other places) makes this thing that consists of a sixteen inch chocolate chip cookie stacked upon another sixteen inch chocolate chip cookie with a layer of buttercream frosting between them and more buttercream frosting on top. Now, those who know me know that my body consists primarily of fat, flour and sugar, but I have to say, maybe this cookie is a little too sweet. The good people in the Mrs. Fields labs have seem to have discovered a way to gain access to the space in between the cookie’s sugar molecules and somehow stick more sugar in there. I’m saying that eating a pound of confectioner’s sugar straight might seem kind of bland after you’ve had a piece of this cookie. For those of you who don’t know me, this is a recommendation.

A Little Known Medical Fact

A LITTLE KNOWN MEDICAL FACT
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

Babies have about three-hundred bones when they pop out. Adults have about two-hundred and six. The obvious question, and the one I’m most often asked (Even though I’m a plumber and not a boneologist, but, hey, life is funny sometimes) is, “What becomes of all those excess bones?” The truth is, a variety of things.

Firstly, the two big stomach bones are vomited up within the first three months. It’s not widely known, because when people see two big bile-soaked bones on the floor near the crib, the last thing anyone thinks is, “That must have come from the baby.”

Bone pickers come at night, creeping in through bedroom windows across America to remove the ear bones while our babies are sleeping. They then sell them to restaurants which use them for soup. This explains the redness in the morning and why foreigners have such bony ears.

The nostril bones are generally sneezed out by the end of the first year and often find a second life as fairy anklets. The brain bones dissolve in the elementary years, when cursive writing is learned. This extra space is needed though, for driver’s education. It is a documented fact that no human being was able to drive a car before cursive writing was invented.

The liver bone never goes anywhere special, a fact her husband is reminded of on a weekly basis. She’s simply forgotten. Ask your doctor if he’s ever checked a liver for a bone. See if you don’t get a funny look.

I’m sure you think I’m making this up, but let me ask you, how could your heart break if there wasn’t a bone in it? I’m sorry I had to bring that up, I know you don’t like to talk about it. You wouldn’t be able to cry like that either, if the doctor hadn’t shattered your eye bones with the first slap. You bawled them out and there was so much general muck coming off of you at the time, no one noticed a little more. Stop it already. Come here.

Give me a hug.

A Diet that Works!

A DIET THAT WORKS!
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

We all lost weight together. It was a backlash against America Twenty-One, when the average weight was six-hundred and thirty-seven pounds and everyone ate Cambodian babies for breakfast. That crisis spurred the eventual embrace of the metric system in the United States. Mildly disgusted with themselves, what Unistatesian didn’t want to tell his friends, “I’m down to two-hundred and ninety kilograms, fatties! What have you done lately?”

After that victory, I’m afraid, real work had to be done. Not exercise, though. Are you kidding? Everyone knew they weren’t fat, they were all just big-boned. Mother had told them as much. Although the ass-bone was never discovered, bone reduction surgeries became the rage. However, as people began inexplicably breaking their bones (and why should that happen? Everyone was much lighter now, weren’t they?), the option of bone replacement became the new fad.

Gross-out, yuchy, organic bones were replaced by carbon fiber tubes. They made bicycle frames out of that stuff and bicycles were light, weren’t they? Well, no one knew for sure because no one had ever been in the physical presence of a real bicycle, but man, it sounded like something someone would say, didn’t it? That was good enough for everyone who couldn’t be bothered to look up such a thing (i.e., everyone).

Having lost so many pounds (metric was somehow forgotten again when measuring weight loss), people found cause for celebration. Finally, they could eat more without all that guilt! With the holidays coming up, they had their brokers double the shipments from Cambodia.

Numero 58

I finished 58 last week. It was called About Face. That is all.

Ifs, Ands or Buts

IFS, ANDS OR BUTS
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

The iGasm had been out for just two months and already it was the best-selling little belt clippy gizmo of all time. I mean, who wouldn’t want one? Its operation was simplicity itself. It only had one button. You’d press that and then have to go home and change your drawers. You didn’t have to cheat on your spouse and you didn’t have to take things into your own hands. Even the people who denounced it on television got their own iGasm through clandestine sources. For research purposes of course. Well, they did an awful lot of research in proportion to the paucity of their findings.

There were imitators, of course. First came the andGasm which allowed the user to sync up with up to three friends for simultaneous enjoyment. This was soon followed by the ifGasm which only worked some of the time and didn’t do very well at all. What knucklehead thought that one up? After that came the orGasm. No, wait, they already had that, I think. Was that the original? I can’t remember but it seems like it had always been around. I hear they’re rolling out the butGasm soon. They haven’t released the specs and no one is sure what it does but everyone agrees that it will certainly merit a great deal of research.

Leonardo Da Countertop

LEONARDO DA COUNTERTOP
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

What you had was a bunch of short people, and when I say short I’m talking a millimeter or so, all living on this kitchen countertop. You’d think it would be a pretty sweet deal, but those ingrates wanted off. They turned to Leonardo, their greatest inventor and said, “Hey, help us out here, will ya?”

“Yes!” he screamed, startling everyone. You know what they say about geniuses: They’re pretty smart.

Leonardo tore a piece of hair from his head and let it drop. “Look at the hair! Look at the hair!”

Everyone looked at the hair. “Maybe this wasn’t the way to go,” Billy Schultz said.

“The hair catches the air, and floats gently to the ground!” Leonardo screamed.

“So?” everyone asked.

“So? We cover ourselves in hair and float from the countertop safely to the ground.”

“Damn, are you sure about this?” Danny asked. “I mean, that’s a long way down, Dude.”

“It’ll be fun, you’ll see,” Leo assured them. He immediately went to work on a hair-growth formula and weeks later, he was covered in hair that was many times the length of his body. The chicks loved it.

“Check it out!” Leonardo screamed. He ran to the edge of the countertop.

Billy said, “Don’t you want to like, test it or something first?”

“Who’s the scientist here?” Leonardo asked, I mean, screamed. He disappeared over the edge. The braver souls ran to the edge to see Leonardo float safely down to the floor below. But then the big lady came, the one who was more than a thousand times their size.

“Goddamned cat,” she muttered. She tore an enormous paper towel from a roll, picked up Leonardo in it and squished him good before throwing him in the garbage can.

“Countertop’s not lookin’ so bad,” Billy said.

“I like the countertop,” Danny said. “Always have. It was my girlfriend who wanted to leave. New coat of paint, it’ll be pretty sharp.”

Everyone wandered home, agreeing to stop at the paint place after lunch and look at colors.

Joe The Larry

JOE THE LARRY
By Matthew Sanborn Smith

His name was Joe the Fox, but people who didn’t know him well just called him Mr. the Fox. When he went water skiing people called him Larry, even people who knew him outside of water skiing. Joe the Fox had no idea why, but he never corrected them (You never know when you might need another identity). He suspected it was a Superman sort of thing. Superman puts on the glasses, he becomes Clark Kent. Joe the Fox puts on the water skis, he becomes Larry.

Here was the problem though: Joe the Fox found his Lois Lane. It didn’t seem like a problem at first. Her name was Irma and she was wonderful. They met on the slopes. Joe took the lift to the top of the water mountain and met her there. She was the lady who rubbed nutrient jelly on the stray skis that had become orphans when their owners had lost their concentration and sunk straight down into the mountain where only the liqui-miners and the aqua-gnomes dwelled. The skis depended on this jelly in order to stay alive as their lines had been domesticated and were no longer able to hunt in the summer or drill down for fish when winter set in and the mountain turned to ice.

To Joe the Fox, she was the whole package, a beautiful young woman who cared for others. Problem was, she only loved Larry. As soon as he took off his water skis, she’d run screaming. But with the skis on, his proposal of marriage was accepted without hesitation.

So Joe the Fox had to leave his water skis on for the rest of his life in order to find true happiness. I mean in the car, on the shitter, everywhere he went.

But wouldn’t you? What am I saying? Of course not. That’s why you’re miserable

And To Think That I Neglected It

Story 57 was in the can nearly two weeks ago and I forgot to mention it. It's called "Beauty Belongs to the Flowers." You may have heard me mention it on this blog by its working title, "The Way to his Heart." The new title represents a shift in theme as I expanded the story and hopefully deepened it. Anyway, it's been done for so long, it's already been rejected once and is currently meeting its second editorial person far across the Atlantic (I think. Who knows with e-mail? No one is where they're supposed to be anymore.).

Questions arise. I began this blog about a year and a half ago, with the intention of spurring myself on to write 1000 stories ready for editors by the time I was 50 years old. I had to write about one a week in order to do that. Since I began the blog, I've completed a whopping thirteen stories. But am I giving up? Hell no. A lot can happen in the next twelve years. I may become someone with drive. And we may finally get the flying car.

Pain Comes Not To The Bananaman

PAIN COMES NOT TO THE BANANAMAN
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Marco became a bananaman. He hung upside-down with a bunch of other bananamen and made his wife peel him when she wanted to see him. His wife left him about three days into the transformation.

“It’s a transitional period!” He screamed at her shrinking form. “Wait till I’m ripe, I’ll be much easier to peel. And I’ll be much sweeter then too.” but it was no use. She didn’t even turn to look at him.

“It should hurt more, shouldn’t it?” Marco asked Tip, his nearest bunchmate.

“You are growing numb already, my friend,” Tip said. “It would be a cruel thing for God to do, to make the banana feel the mouth that eats it. Would it not?

“I should think so,” Marco agreed.

“That is why the banana feels no pain. The banana wants to be eaten and it brings joy to everyone. It is why we have chosen this path. Don’t worry about your wife. There are plenty of Chiquitas in the trees.”

“You’re right.” He warmed to the sage knowledge of the browning bananaman. Marco was still green and had much to learn.

The days passed and Marco met bananawomen to spare. But none filled the void in heart. His peel was now bright yellow and when he unpeeled himself he found that his own body had become desirable to him. On a lark, he took a bite of himself, felt no pain, and experienced a pleasure like no other. Marco began devouring his own tender, sweet flesh in earnest. He knew that he was good for him. He was rich in potassium.

Tip had long since turned black and had been baked into a loaf of bananaman bread somewhere out there but the words of Tip came back to him now. “The banana wants to be eaten and it brings joy to everyone.”

Marcos found himself in awe of the elder bananaman’s wisdom while he ate himself into Nirvana.

If We All Get Together

IF WE ALL GET TOGETHER
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The old question ran something like, "If all the Chinese got together and jumped at the same time, could they move the Earth? Even half an inch?"

Semantically, the question needed revamping. Their empire stretched around the globe now and the Chinese would all be jumping in different directions, canceling each other out. Nevertheless, the scenario intrigued me. Why hadn’t somebody tested this thing yet? I sent out the call as a young (virile) graduate student, inviting everyone to come around to the Western Hemisphere on August 3rd and have a jump at noon, Pacific Time. The choice of hemisphere was only reasonable, as South America was the poorest continent, we couldn’t expect all of those people to come up with the traveling money. Besides, I lived in North America and since I came up with the idea and got the whole thing moving, why should I have to go anywhere?

My roommate, Joliver sent out the info-virus, raining it down on the anti-inertial hubs in the hope of spreading it far and wide.

Came the day, a good thirty-thousand people joined in for the jump. A respectable amount for a couple of guys sharing a tube in the vast sewers below Washington Pacific University (It was the PU in WPU, we always said), but hardly enough when you consider the twelve-billion Earthlings who were "too busy" to participate.

A lot of those who lent a foot offered to give it another go next year.

"Forget that," I said. "How about next month?" I had to make my mark fast, before I was out in the real world. I didn’t want to work for a living or anything. Less than a thousand people showed up from that other hemisphere so most everybody agreed. They’d be around anyway and the process would be over before it interfered with lunch.

After wrapping up for the day, I pulled dear old Joliver aside.

"We need to punch up our copy for the next info-virus," I said. "And make the thing more contagious!"

"I’m already on it," Joliver said. "I’m working on a test that involves head-scratching so I can get some funding from a shampoo manufacturer."

"Excellent! We need better synchronization as well. I could see just from our little group that those jumps were all over the place. We won’t move a sofa with that."

By the time September 3rd rolled around, a couple of stories surfaced of people scratching themselves bald and bloody. Joliver already spent the money from Real Poo’s parent company, so we weren’t terribly concerned. Across the Americas, seven point two million people jumped at noon. Seismographs picked us up and so did the newsertainment bots. There would always be those who stood in the way of progress, however. Reports came in of hundreds of thousands of people in the Eastern Hemisphere who’d gotten wind of our noble experiment and jumped right back, dampening our effect. To my chagrin, many of the jumpers resided in China.

I dedicated the next four weeks to refining the message for our next try, while Joliver, at my suggestion, tailored his latest virus to strike deeper in the brain, associating itself with the undeniable appetites for food and sex.

Of course, there hadn’t been an October 3rd for nine and/or forty-two years, when the Time Pirates attacked, so the next big jump occurred on the 4th. With three billion people in on the fun this time, the west coast sort of spilled into the ocean but luckily Joliver and I had jumped in Idaho, anticipating just such an issue.

The next info-virus mainly told people not to call the authorities when they saw us. Just for kicks, it also created a loose confederation of borderless nations under our control that we named The Tomathan/Joliver Empire. Our mission statement read: "To Be Corrupted Absolutely." Funding poured in after that.

November 3rd’s Sun stood high in the sky and we took no chances. The whole of the human race as well as a bunch of chimps (and one Gila monster, don’t ask me how that happened) jumped under our flag and on our side of the world. Everyone kept a decent distance from major fault lines (All those deaths the previous month cost us precious jumping mass) and just to be safe, everyone held something heavy. We also made sure that people dropped lots of stuff from great heights. I really wanted to get it right this time. Who knew science took so long?

We leapt. You know that feeling when you’ve come down a staircase and you think you’re on the floor, but there’s still one more step? Twelve billion people all got that feeling at the same time. We moved the Earth not half an inch, but a full six and a half inches! A deafening cheer went up.

Shortly after we loosened our grips a little on the minds of humanity, a few of our subjects called in to let us know that since the Earth had been jostled from its orbit, we should get some warm coats and head for Brazil where, if mankind huddled around us, Joliver and I might be the last ones to die.

I chewed on that for a moment. Joliver, soaked in champagne, was already shivering.

"In retrospect," I said, scratching my head, "I guess this was kinda stupid."

Mac Daddy

My reader reminds me that I haven’t posted a blog in quite a while. I have not been hit by a bus. What I have been is tied up with domestic bullshit and the story that wouldn’t die. I’ve been messing with a story with a working title of “The Way to his Heart” for months now. Trying to get it right has been driving me insane. I’m nearly there. I’m thinking five more hours of trim and tinker and I’ve got the mother nailed.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ve got a MacBook now. Although it sounds like a Scottish novel, it’s actually a laptop. And it’s way awesome. But don’t ever let those bastards tell you it just works, because it doesn’t always. It doesn’t always get along with non-apple software is what it doesn’t always.

I’ll try to post more, honest. But you keep pestering me if I don’t. If only I had something to say or something going on in my life, this wouldn’t be such a challenge.

Everybody read my story at chizine.com!

I'm 38. Please Don't Hit Me With A Bus.

Today's my 38th birthday. Yay me. When I was a teenager we had a running joke and I have no idea how it came about. We used to joke that I was going to die when I was 38 years old. Cause of death: Hit by a bus. Not that anything else I predicted ever came true, but I've got one of those gnawing feelings. I don't believe that I can see the future or anything. What I do believe is that the more evil parts of my mind may work to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I may be standing on a sidewalk, unsuspecting, when a bus turns onto the street I'm on and my id grabs control of my skull for the second that it would take, and say, "Fuck it, let's show 'em I was right," and I throw myself in front of the bus. The end. For this reason, I'll be trying extra hard to avoid buses over the next twelve months. Most people might not reach the age of 39 with a sense of relief. I certainly will.

I hope.

ICE CREAM!

One of the great things about being an adult is that you can eat ice cream with chocolate syrup for breakfast. Another great thing about being an adult is that you can deny your children the same privilege and then rub it in by eating your ice cream with chocolate syrup right in front of them, all the while telling them how good it tastes (even if it doesn't (but it always does)).

One of the great things about taunting your children in this way is that, to them, you're acting in a perfectly understandable manner. They would do the exact same thing in your position. They might get angry or cry, but it would never occur them to call you immature (unlike your no-fun grump of a wife who is so no-fun that she never eats ice cream with chocolate syrup for breakfast, even though she could (and, let's be honest, has been able to for quite a number of years)), because there is no mature or immature to them, there is only being. There is, however, not eating ice cream with chocolate syrup for breakfast and definitely eating ice cream with chocolate syrup for breakfast and that second one is you, so even if no-fun grumpy-skirt happens to be around, you win.

So there.