It's Breathable

It is said that when asked to define the Golden Age of Science Fiction somebody said, “Twelve.” That’s how old I was when the original Star Trek show made its debut, and I loved everything about it. (Even the Cuban-heeled boots, perfect for space exploration.) Now it mostly looks sort of embarrassing. Even Man from U.N.C.L.E. has aged better. But it won’t die. There have been around a dozen different Star Trek TV series and about the same number of movies. I think they should to stop now, having exhausted every possible shape you can adhere to an actor’s forehead.

Let me clarify.

While reading about Nikodem Poplawski (as one does) I came across the hilariously-named Jagiellonian University which sidetracked me because I have the attention span of a goldfish in a bowlful of benzedrine. Anyway, Poplawski has this hypothesis that the flip side of a black hole is a big bang that creates a whole new universe which in due time expands and produces black holes of its own and that our own universe is the spawn of a black hole in another universe and so on ad infinitum. What if it turns out to really be turtles all the way down?

I am easily tickled

Jagiellonian University is what I’m writing about because the word Jagiellonian looks so dang funny to me although certainly not to Polish people nor actually to any educated person whose sense of humor has evolved beyond the 7th grade level. It (Jagiellonian University) was founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, 600 years before the Beatles made their American television debut on the Ed Sullivan show. That means that by the time John, Paul, George, and Ringo showed up in our living rooms, Jagiellonian University was already one of the world’s oldest continuously operating institutions of higher learning.

Four wheels better

You sometimes hear people say, “It’s 2025 already, where the heck is my flying car?” But flying cars have always been a terrible idea. Look here. In commercials they always are showing a new car speeding unimpeded down a smooth stretch of scenic highway or ravaging some previously pristine chunk of wilderness when really it’s going to be sitting in traffic or parked at Costco. So. Picture us all in the sky on the way to our same stupid jobs. Plus, a disabled jalopy tends to roll to a stop as opposed to crashing through the roof of somebody’s house.

Next week back to funny. I promise.

Try not to panic. Take a few slow deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. There. Feeling better? Of course not. Oxygen isn’t the problem, at least not yet. The problem is the price of eggs, cultural genocide, and the rise to power of a cohort of soulless hyenas whose life strategy is to suck up and kick down, to support the rich against the poor and the strong against the weak. My gut impulse is to escape. I saw an article headlined “Why do women live longer than men?” and my first thought was “male privilege.”

Maybe you too

Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad and worked his way up through the KGB, training at the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute and rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Steve Bannon came from Norfolk, Virginia, went to Virginia Tech, Georgetown, and Harvard, got divorced three times. He’s a convicted conman. Elon Musk went to something called the Waterkloof House Preparatory School, which I have to grudgingly admit is pretty cool. I mean, Waterkloof. He grew up rich and currently is the world’s wealthiest human. So. What do I have in common with these three guys? Contempt for Donald Trump.

This may not apply to you.

If, however, you have a friend who needs to write on a weekly basis 100 words that are maybe a little bit diverting or silly or peculiar and they come to you asking for your input about where to get new ideas for their little essays you could do worse than to advise them to make it a regular habit to read about advances in science which not only will make them a better informed citizen of the world but will expose them to sentences such as “Moroccan fly maggot uses fake face on its butt to infiltrate termite colony.”