Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Bohemian Manifesto

Preface


I was born on March 19, 1972, or at least that’s what they told me. Anyway, the official documentation tends to corroborate this but I really don’t remember. The significance of this, for the purposes of this book anyway, lies in my alleged astrological designation which is of course Pisces, the fish, also known as the dreamer. As you are going to read, this concept, the dreamer, could not possibly be more appropriate.

First of all, let me explain that I do not claim to have all of the answers to all of the problems plaguing mankind. The most that I can hope to accomplish with this would be to offer up some suggestions which may or may not be of some benefit to our world. After all, that’s what a manifesto is fundamentally, a series of suggestions…or something…right?

So that you can be assured that my intentions are not at all sinister, let me tell you a little bit about who I am, and where I came from. I grew up in a little town called Delray Beach, in the southern end of Palm Beach County, Florida.

Even though we (my friends and I) referred to it as “Fogey-ville” when we were growing up, I came to love the quiet, sunny, peaceful nature of it. I would really hate to see it wind up a favorite spot for cave divers in the future.

I didn’t have any brothers or sisters so I spent a lot of time alone with my thoughts. In fact, I spent a lot of my life keeping myself entertained with the stories, ideas, movies, songs, and just shear fantasies that I created in my head.

I remember that I used to joke with my parents about loving nightmares because they were exciting. Yeah sure, I loved them just as long as I wasn’t having one. When I was about seven years old I had a recurring nightmare which used to bring me out of a deep sleep, sweating profusely and absolutely drenched with fear. Have you ever been so scared that you can’t even scream?

I’m looking out of my second floor window onto the court yard of a medieval era village. The sun is still up and I’m watching as little Ms. Chicken (a standard looking chicken with a blue bonnet on its head {just like Fog-horn Leg-horn’s girlfriend or something}) walks into town with her little bag, just as she does every night for as long as I can remember. And just as she has always done, for whatever reason I don’t know, she checks into the village Inn to spend the night.

“Never go out to my house after midnight…” she said as she would pass little children on her way to the door. But she never said why, and we, being of course very good little children, always just listened. On this night however, my curiosity gets the better of me, compelling me to find out why Ms. Chicken never sleeps in her own house. She has the cutest little ginger bread looking house way out in the middle of a beautiful forest, but for some reason she prefers to stay in our crappy little town every night. I must know why. So I wait until after midnight, when everybody else is sleeping, sneak out of my home and start off into the woods.

It’s night time, and the woods are naturally creepy after dark so I’m already a little bit scared, but I keep looking over my shoulder to see the village, about every twenty feet or so, to grant me some confidence. The further I go, the harder my heart beats as I can sense that something is just not right. Suddenly, I notice the dead stillness in the air, amplified by the complete absence of any sound whatsoever. Where is the constant chirping of crickets, why are there no insects of any kind present? Just when I can start to see the outline of Ms. Chicken’s house, way off in the distance, I look over my shoulder to view my safe, beloved, now cherished little village when what I see, or rather what I don’t see, sends my heart into my throat. Where is the village? It was just there a second ago! It cannot have just vanished. I know I didn’t walk that far since the last time I looked, but it’s like it disappeared!! By now my heart is beating out of my chest.

Then, I turn to look for the cute little ginger bread looking house and the entire forest ahead of me is gone, replaced by the charred remains of a thousand burned up trees that resemble burnt match sticks just sticking out of the ground. With no leaves or branches the moonlight eerily streams onto a dilapidated old wooden structure that looks just like a text book style haunted house. Even though I have not moved, I am now standing just a few feet from the front door. I can’t move, I can’t scream, I’m now frozen with fear, virtually catatonic as I feel the long boney fingers from a pair of invisible hands reaching around my waste, pulling me into the door when… "Michael, wake up!" My dad exclaims, "Wake up Michael! It’s just a dream…"

Now, I know that doesn’t sound like much but when you’re only seven years old it was a whole lot. After that dream stopped happening, my nightmares turned into real life scenarios. They were always the same concept, but always with different characters (except me of course) and situations. They always wound up with me doing something terrible to someone, and then realizing that my life is over. I don’t know whether I was more scared of what I did, or what was going to happen to me because of what I did, but waking up was always the best feeling of relief that I have ever felt. Just knowing that it wasn’t true, that I didn’t drop the cinderblock on that guy’s head, or drive a car full of friends drunk into a family driving down the highway, killing everybody except me was like being reborn, but with a much greater appreciation for life and how truly precious and fragile it is. I guess it’s impossible to replicate what it feels like to go from absolute terror to the feeling of having it all just wash right off of you in the length of time that it takes to open your eyes. The realization that I didn’t actually hurt anyone was like the feeling of getting everything I wanted for Christmas all wrapped up into a split second.

I suppose this had some effect on my outward person in the real world because no matter how angry I ever got, I could never bring myself to even punch anybody. Even though I wanted to, it felt like some invisible force was always holding my arm back. I knew that my mind was talking to me saying "if you do that you will seriously hurt this person and you will have to live with that for the rest of your life." So, with that said, I hope that you can take from this whatever you feel is useful, and with the knowledge that it is here because I want to help, not hurt.

As for me, I have lead a remarkably uneventful life until now. I have always felt that my ideas may be worth trying, but a divine fear of failure, coupled with profound laziness sprinkled with an infinite supply of excuses (such as; no money) kept me from applying myself to any of them.

Now I am at the point where it is becoming increasingly clear that if I don’t at least try to do something, then it will soon be too late. Ultimately I figure that it should be much less expensive to try to illustrate some of my ideas verbally, but what I’d really like is to be the only person on Earth who could say “see, if I hadn’t won the lottery you people would have been screwed!” So, until that happens…




















Chapter 1 – Making Money

Hello, my name is Michael D. Michaud and I'm here to answer the question that has been burning on the minds of everyone since the beginning of time and that is: just how does one go from being a third rate car salesman to all supreme ruler of the known universe?

I wrote this because I believe that the good in this world far out weighs the bad and, unfortunately, I believe that we have come to a precipice where in the next ten to twenty years are going to dictate the final outcome of the human race, and every other creature on planet Earth for that matter.

My goal here is to present an outline where by we can preserve this precious yet fragile celestial habitat and set the stage for a future that enables all of its inhabitants to coexist in a manner that equals its potential. I have envisioned a world where multiple Earth like planets revolve around the same sun, in the same orbit, each with man made, artificial rings racing around the planets in a perpetual orbit, providing homes for all of man kinds manufacturing needs and dirty work, but we'll get to that later.

I think that if you have an idea that could benefit mankind, then you have a responsibility, a moral imperative if you will, to make this idea known (or, at least it shouldn’t hurt to…). It just so happens that I have several such ideas, some of which could begin to benefit mankind immediately but first we're going to need some money.

Unfortunately, money is necessary if you are going to be able to get anybody to listen to you (lobbying, hob-knobbing, etc.). If you are fortunate enough to have access to billions and billions of dollars then you could, as our illustrious grand old party has demonstrated, purchase this power. But this leads to questions of morality and ultimately I believe that if you don't actually earn the rite to this power then you probably don't have the capacity to wield it in a manner befitting the greater good of mankind (once again as demonstrated by the leadership of the greatest country in the history of mankind around the beginning of the twenty-first century).

So what does one do? An endeavor such as complete universal domination will require some financial backing so the first question would be, how one goes from nothing to something. The ultimate conundrum for any true capitalist is how do you make money without having any to start with?

What I would do would be to establish a business that provides a true service, one that puts an actual product in its consumer’s hands, with virtually no overhead or a minimum of operating costs. Sound too good to be true?

I did some research online one day and found that there are, I believe, over fourteen billion credit and debit cards that are active around the world (this was about 4½ years ago). The one thing that is in common with almost all of them is that they are provided free of charge by the credit grantors and in some cases you can choose from a stock selection of graphics or images.

Well, imagine if you could go online to a website, upload your personal image: maybe your wife or girlfriend, grandkids, whatever. Then, using simple software they can edit their image against a template that bares the dimensions of the credit or debit card for which they are replacing (do you see where I'm going with this?). Upon approval the consumer then just clicks ok, and a fee of $10.00 (plus $3.95 for shipping and handling) is charged to that account and within four to six weeks they get their own personalized charge plate that bares their own specific image, just like a personalized t-shirt or coffee mug.

I've even gone so far as to imagine a television advertising campaign where a little old lady is sitting on a park bench conversing with the young lady sitting next to her. "Would you like to see a picture of my grand children?" the little old lady asks. "No thank you, I have to get to work" replies the young lady sitting next to her. The next scene shows the little old lady at the check out counter of a grocery store when, low and behold, the same young lady from the park is ringing up her groceries. "That’ll be forty two dollars and fifteen cents" says the young lady. "Here you go" returns the old lady as she hands her a debit card "and here are my two grandchildren". The shot switches to a close up of the debit card which shows two lovely children playing on a swing set or something.

Now think about this, all you need is a web site and advertising and you have a service that results in an actual product that anybody with a credit or debit card with $13.95 available balance on it, an image that is accessible through a computer and access to the internet can use.

Even if only one percent of the cards in circulation 4½ years ago ever utilize this service then that would amount to revenues in excess of... well, let’s see, what’s one percent of fourteen billion... I don't know, my calculator doesn't allow that many zeros. Anyway, let’s just say its around fourteen million dollars, sound good? How much do you suppose it ultimately cost to make that fourteen million? Even if fifty percent of everything you earned was consumed in the process of arriving at that figure that would still leave you with around seven million dollars. I could be very happy with seven million dollars, but that’s not where I intend to wind up. I literally have hundreds of potential business ideas run through my head almost every day, but for now this should get us started.







Chapter 2 – Saving the World

Now that we have some money, we've done some good hob-knobbing, its time to take care of business.

In February of 2007 my wife and I watched a film by a former vice president of the United Sates in which the issue of global warming was discussed in great detail. No solutions to the problem were proposed and there was no discussion of any notable consequence regarding ideas on how to resolve the issue (buy a hybrid car is not a solution). But I still found the film to be very eye opening, and at least well made. Prior to watching this film I was under the impression that the changes we are experiencing with respect to our environment were simply just a part of the natural evolution of our planet.

In other words, regardless of the intervention of mankind, every ten thousand years or so the Earth freezes over, effectively killing off every form of life on it (except for the cockroaches of course) and then a million years later it thaws out so that life can begin anew. That being the case then there truly is nothing that we can do to stop it.

Ok fine, if that’s the way it is then who am I to question the functionality and the inner workings of Mother Nature. But this film opened up my eyes to what I now believe is the truth about our situation. This is ultimately what led to me writing this book. This, to me, was good news! Knowing that mankind is ultimately responsible for the problem, having become a force of nature so to speak, then it makes sense to me that we should have the power to fix it. If we made the mess, then we certainly should be able to clean it up right?

As a result of seeing this film, I can't help but to see the clues presented by Mother Nature everywhere I look, a lot of these clues were made evident by the testimonies of the film, not the least of which was a simple red graph which illustrated the carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere. This graph demonstrated that carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere fluctuate but the trend is perpetually upward due to excessive carbon dioxide outputs from the devices of mankind. The reason these levels go down at all was explained that the Earths vegetation, relative to its proximity to the sun's energy, enables the processes by which greater amounts of carbon dioxide are consumed.

Now, I am no scientist, I’m not even a formally educated man, in fact after four years of attending various community colleges part time and working full time throughout I’m still eleven credits short of an associates degree. But I still remember learning in grade school that plants consume carbon dioxide and convert it into oxygen. How then, is it so hard to figure out that if you provide the Earth with the necessary levels of vegetation that it will naturally reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere? I'm not talking about planting a tree in your back yard; I'm talking about transforming continents.

It is my belief that the desert regions of Earth should be made to serve as carburetors by being turned into massive tracts of new agriculture. This enhanced volume of surface vegetation is essential, I believe, for regulating the amounts of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere so as to enable our planet to dissipate heat efficiently and ultimately perpetuate life for God's sake.

The first necessity, when it comes to transforming a desert into a rain forest is water. Remember when I said that I see clues everywhere I look now? Are you near a window? Take a look outside, up at the sky. If you're on Earth then you should see a cloud, maybe two or three. What I see is desalination, the process by which the salt content of water is reduced or altered.

Think about it, every second of every minute of every hour of every day, millions of gallons of water are evaporating off of the surfaces of the oceans all around the world, all the time. This water vapor rises up into the atmosphere where it cools and condenses back into a fluid state. When this water falls back to Earth it is fresh, clean and ready to get put into little plastic bottles and sold for seven dollars and fifty cents at a theme park in Florida and do you know why? Because, and this is the most fascinating thing about water to me, only water evaporates, everything else is left behind. It is the perfect process for creating fresh clean water and it has been happening all around us, all the time, for free, since forever.

The trick then is to harness this process, to be able to keep the water from disbursing into the air and be able to collect it for future use. Desalination through evaporation equals salvation for every nation (including Appalachians, Malaysians, Haitians, Croatians, etc.). So what you do is take a cylinder, leave the top completely open. This cylinder is filled from the bottom with sea water and is housed inside a larger cylinder with a concaved, sealed top. The top is contacted on the outside by a refrigeration coil so that when the water vapor hits it from the inside it is able to condense back to a fluid state so it can run down the sides where it is then pumped into a collection unit. I call this a desalination cell.

Once you have a couple of hundred million of these cells operating around the perimeters of the Sahara, Outback, Gobi, etcetera, then you will have a permanent source of fresh water for irrigation or whatever other purposes are necessary. The way I see it, it all comes down to surface area. The more area you have covered with water, the more water is going to evaporate. The trick then is to create a sufficient surface area and be able to contain it with as little contamination as possible.

I've seen where swamp land has been reclaimed for housing and suburban sprawl so don't try to tell me that enough developers can't figure out how to process a barren landscape into real estate for agriculture. As long as there is fresh water, which I have provided, the rest is up to the men with the shovels (and a whole lot of Miracle Grow!).

Man, it sure is hot out there... Oh yeah, I almost forgot. A battery operated cooling system contained in a back pack and worn underneath a sealed environmental suit should provide a way for men and women to be able to work in these harsh environments without getting sick. I figure it shouldn't take more than a year to come up with the appropriate configuration for this, as well as for bioengineering scientists to (hopefully) come up with a bunch of plants and trees that are able to thrive in these hot environments.

I could go into infinitely more detail on how to reverse the effects of global warming but the point is, I don't see why we can't have our cake and eat it too. If there is one message that I think Mother Nature is trying to get through to us it is that we can have our cars, and our factories, and or six billion plus populations as long as we provide her with the tools that she needs to keep the Earths atmosphere in balance. Again, according to the data that I have had access to, this means add vegetation.

By the way, what do you suppose a couple hundred thousand acres of new agriculture would do for a continent that is virtually flooded with famine? Honestly, to think that in this day and age, half the world can sit and watch television from their air conditioned homes and see some guy telling you that the only way to help starving people in Africa is to send him some of your money is down right despicable in my opinion. The only reason most people send them money is so that they can feel better about themselves. This person doesn't actually want the problem to be solved because then he would be out of a job.

They say that when a child dies, a universe of possibilities dies with them. How do we know that the kid that was going to grow up and cure cancer didn’t just die of starvation right now? We, as Americans, are visited upon by fifty or more suggestions each day on where to buy car insurance while innocent little children are left to starve to death by the thousands. Oh sure, maybe thirty cents out of each dollar you give ends up as food for these kids, but what happens when that food runs out?

If you give a man a fish then he eats for today, teach a man to fish then he eats for a life time. An infrastructure based on agriculture is, in my opinion, the best way to help the poor and impoverished populations residing on the continent of Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. At the very least they'll have food! That is, until the ice breaks off and plunges sea levels upwards of twenty feet or more.






Chapter 3 – Preempting Rising Sea Waters

If you watch the evening news, from time to time it is demonstrated how the ice sheets in Antarctica and the glaciers in Greenland are melting at a rate such that within the next few decades we will loose a significant portion of our coastlines. Oh yeah, I've got a plan for that too.

Even I don't believe that there is enough time to provide the planet with enough vegetation so as to bring carbon dioxide levels down to where we can bring the Earth's average temperature back down and prevent Greenland's glaciers and Antarctica's ice from causing a major global catastrophe. We would have had to start fifty years ago to prevent that, but I digress.

If you haven't already noticed, my favorite form of entertainment is documentary television. I've seen plenty of documentaries about corral reefs and the one thing in common with all of them is what a catastrophe it would be for all life on Earth if we were to suddenly loose the corral. I’m not even talking about the Crown of Thorns issue. I would attempt to capitalize on the potential for sporting tourist ventures to deal with those (you know, organize underwater scuba hunts for tourists from Europe, the United States, Alabama, etc.).

Knowing that corral is inherently dependant on sunlight for survival, what do you suppose is going to happen when that corral is suddenly plunged into darkness by a twenty foot rise in sea levels? Sort of diminishes the loss felt by beach front property owners doesn't it?

I'll tell you what would happen if I were Mother Nature. You see, life is funny. It's tenacious. It is also very fickle and having Mother Nature as its matriarch it is best, in my opinion, to work with Mother Nature rather than try to create devices to defeat or conquer her. Life has a way of thinking of things that we would have never thought of and it will ultimately figure out a way to perpetuate itself regardless of what we think is best.

If I were Mother Nature and all of a sudden all of the life in the oceans were faced with extinction then I would start with sharks. Sharks tend to be at the top of the aquatic food chain I believe. Turn their tails into legs with feet so that they can walk, and give them arms and hands with opposable thumbs so that they can hold a gun or grab a banana, and give them wings so that they can swoop down out of the sky blast bananas right out of the trees and behold, the new top of the food chain for planet Earth (or whatever it is that they want to call it).

Now how is that for irony, we kill off the corral so that the sharks can't eat, so Mother Nature makes it so that the sharks can eat us. Then a hundred million years later they will be dealing with their own issues resulting from the burning of fossil fuels that used to be you and me.

Who knows, this may be the actual chain of evolution that our world has been perpetuating throughout. In any event, I really don't want my future generations to wind up as food for angry sharks in jogging suits with automatic weapons that fly out of the sky using the sun as cover.

The way to solve the problem of rapid rising of sea levels is simple really. It all comes down to a simple, yet massive exercise in displacement. What I propose is that we simply arrange to have this water take residence in pre-designated areas around the world. If we start now we can begin digging out channels into massive, man made depressions in the desert regions of the planet so that when the water does begin to rise, we simply open up the channels and let the water flow into these massive man made inland seas.

It may be advantageous to begin strategically positioning Lake Okeechobee sized salt water masses throughout the Sahara and Outback so that we can maybe turn the temperature down a bit. I think it’s possible that once a lot of this former desert land is replaced by sea water that it may actually serve to lower the Earths average temperature (which would you rather have, a handful of sea water or a handful of hot sand from the middle of the Sahara). Perhaps these can be the reservoirs for our desalination stations.

Anyway, I believe that this is how we could save the planet and make it possible for all current life forms to perpetuate their existences. Not that our measly seven million dollars is what did it. These actions would certainly require the cooperative efforts of probably every nation on the planet but the statement we would be making would be resoundingly clear and that statement is: We are man, we are mighty and we are not to be undone by our own devices. We will not be beggars to our own demise and we will take responsibility for the impact that our presence has made on this planet for we understand completely that it is man that this planet truly requires the least.

A man from a town that I read about in an A.P. article actually responded to me one day. The article described how the whole town got together and decided to remove all carbon dioxide outputs from within its city limits by the year two thousand seventeen (that’s funny, what are they exhaling right now?)

Anyway, I thought... "wow, here is a group of people that may actually be interested in what I have to suggest." So I went online and sent an email to every single address available on the town’s website.

One gentleman contacted me, primarily just to find out how I intended to create the septillion gallons of fresh water my plan would need as he put it. I explained to him what I proposed to do about the situation with global warming and the rapid rising of sea levels and he said "but that would cost trillions of dollars..." I said "uhh... yeah." And that was the last time anybody ever responded to any of the hundreds of correspondences that I sent out trying to open up some kind of dialogue about these issues.

So let me get this straight, the message we're supposed to leave to our future generations is... "uh, sorry kids, we could have fixed the problem but we just didn't want to spend the money. You understand right? Now look out, there's a shark behind you!" I know that I have a gift for over simplifying things but is anybody else coming up with any ideas?


















Chapter 4 – Modern Conveniences

So, now that I've saved the world from destruction due to global warming, fixed it so that we don't have to reconfigure all of the maps of the world, and provided and infrastructure based on agriculture so that nobody in Africa, or anywhere else on this planet for that matter, should have to ever go hungry ever again. It should be a walk in the park from here to get my orbital throne so that I may better gaze upon all that I have dominion over, right? Well probably not...

A lot of these solutions that I have conceptualized are merely patches, just temporary fixes. Eventually we are going to have to come up with an energy source that is able to power my computer, and propel me at over a hundred miles per hour down I-95 (just kidding officer...) AND that is environmentally friendly, preferably with zero greenhouse emissions. For this, I have no idea... well, that’s not exactly true.

When I was about eight years old I began playing with my dads power tools. I didn't like to use them much, I just liked to take them apart so that I could figure out how they worked, and see if I could get them to do neat tricks to keep me amused. Well, it wasn't long before I figured out that if you take a drill apart, and spin the motor backwards, you can get an electrical charge out the cord (don't try it kids, its just not worth the hassle you're going to get from your dad. Besides, your dad's drill probably doesn't have a cord now anyway).

Not long after that I learned a little bit about electro-magnetics, more specifically the ability to levitate and even propel objects by applying an electrical charge to a piece of metal. I thought "hmm, wouldn't it be cool if you could place a ring of electro-magnets around a generator so that some of its electricity turns the magnets on and off in succession, thus rotating the copper windings or the magnet in the center and ultimately enabling the generator to power itself?"

So here’s what you do, take a cylinder or a sphere and run a long magnet through the center. The sphere or cylinder has to be able to spin freely because it is packed with copper windings (this is a generator {or an electric motor depending on which way its spinning}). Around the circumference of the sphere or cylinder you place a succession of electro magnets, each able to move the sphere or cylinder a little bit, and designed to make the sphere or cylinder rotate around the magnet in the center with only a little bit of electricity.

Now, my theory is that once you start the sphere or cylinder spinning, it will start to create electricity, some of which will be directed to the electro magnets around the exterior of the sphere or cylinder which, when alternated between on and off in succession, will propel the sphere or cylinder thus perpetuating the creation of electricity without any fuel or any emissions what so ever.

Water heater sized units like this may be able to power a whole house, while micro sized units can power the rest of mans necessities.

Or, and this one gets a little complicated, but who knows, maybe it works, take a bank of about 4 little generators. All of these are powered by a series of gears run from a central drive gear. This drive gear is driven by a small electric motor at the end of a long arm (leverage).

Now, my theory is, when you start to move the arm (with the little electric motor at the end, that turns a small wheel) then it will turn the gears, which will then turn the bank of 4 generators, which will start to create electricity, which is collected and stored in batteries, or perhaps supplying power to a device.

All you need is a little power to run the little electric motor at the end of the lever arm and you’re all set. With 4 generators running there should be enough power for the drive motor as well as surplus energy for whatever your heart desires.

Behold: The Michaud Perpetually Motivated Autonomous Energy Generation Apparatus...or perpetual motion generator if you prefer.

Even better, there are already a couple of people around the planet that have figured out how to make engines that run on nothing more than compressed air. I’ve seen vehicles, able to propel themselves, as well as a man on it, in it, dragging behind it, whatever and they were doing so with a motor that runs on compressed air from a scuba tank basically. Imagine if our perpetual motion thingy worked and all you had to do was add a small electric air compressor to the vehicle.





















Chapter 5 – Racism

So, for the purposes of this book anyway, I have permanently resolved the issue of creating power without the need for fuel and without killing our environment. My world is complete right? Well... As long as there have been people, it seems, there has been war. We think of all kinds of reasons to kill each other and we do it pretty well actually.

If there is one thing that mankind could be proud of, if it were ever faced with having to account for its actions throughout history, it would be its incredible ability to kill itself. So, how do you end all war? We'll get to that in a minute, but first lets take care of some more domestic issues that have been burning on my mind for the past couple of decades. Racism and violence tend to be common place in today’s culture, so much so that we have become desensitized to it to some degree.


I believe that there is a reason why there are different types of human beings: black, white, green, whatever. The same reason there are hundreds of different types of cats in the animal kingdom. This diversity is generally a result of geographical designations and their requirements for evolution and perpetuation.

Ever wonder why there are not hundreds of types of human beings? It’s because of people like Hitler and whoever else got the crazy idea of ethnic purification prior to the recording of history.

I believe that at one time there may have been thousands of different types of human beings roaming freely (in herds) across then plains of a pristine planet. But, because of consciousness, followed by greed and ignorance, a lot of these examples of natural diversity in the human race were literally exterminated. No where else in the animal kingdom is this even a possibility, unless as a result of the intervention (direct or indirect) of man.

You ask a black gang banger from South Central Las Angeles what he thinks of racial diversity and, if he knows what diversity means, he may respond with something that indicates that only his race should be aloud to exist. I realized a long time ago that I didn’t choose to be born white, just as you didn’t choose to be born black, or green or whatever.

So how can anyone hate someone for something that they are not even remotely responsible for? This is the type of ignorance that is manifested in the form of racism, which leads to a myriad of deep social issues.

Even the children in Iran that chant "death to Mickey Mouse" are doing so because of the ignorance that is being forced upon them. This ignorance is the ultimate responsibility of the governing bodies of these people.

I believe that every human being has the capacity to provide the human race with something that is essential to our evolution as a species and therefore every type of human being should be able to perpetuate itself or integrate in accordance with their own individual wants and desires.

Everyone has something to offer whether it is physical attributes or intellectual capabilities, or any combination of the two. To exclude any group of people because of race, religion, or whatever is to ultimately short change the entire human race. We have so much to gain by working together and conversely, so much to loose by being segregated.
















Chapter 6 – School Violence

I personally believe that the presence of fire arms in society is self defeating and ultimately unnecessary.

With that being an overly unpopular view for too many Americans then if we’re not going to take the guns away then we can at least provide our children with the tools necessary to be able to at least try to defend themselves from these inevitabilities rather than just waiting for them to show up on television so we can watch them panic and jump out of windows.

I believe that basic self defense techniques should be a mandatory part of every schools physical fitness curriculum. They’re going to have to run laps anyway right? Why not teach them how to take someone by the arm and fling them over their shoulder onto the ground. This way if you have a class with thirty children in it and one of them decides to pick up a gun then there are twenty nine other kids that would know what to do about it.

I’ll bet that if you have these kids practicing on a dummy every day for twelve years then the ones that have deep emotional issues will be much easier to detect making it possible to provide these individuals with whatever help they need to work out their issues thus preventing them from grabbing a gun in the first place.
















Chapter 7 – Indentured Servitude

As an American, I was taught in history class (my favorite subject) that our fore fathers intended for individual taxation to be a voluntary thing. But I guess as we started having to kill each other and others around the world, it became necessary for all citizens to have to chip in. I believe that, as private citizens, there may be a way for us to keep all of the money we earn. But we’re going to have to figure out how to plug some of the holes in our federal spending habits first. Allow me:

I know that a lot of money is spent on the justice system, more specifically the housing and feeding of criminals. So basically, I have to work and pay taxes so that some jerk can rob a bank, bury the money in a field somewhere, and have me provide him with room and board for a few years.

I'm not saying that the prison system is a network of country clubs for social miscreants (that is, depending on how many people you were able to successfully rob at one time). What I am saying is that if you're going to have a percentage of the population just sitting around doing nothing (but learning how to be more efficient criminals) then put them to work!

So many of the products that we buy in America come from China, why? Because they make them cheaper. Well, if Eddie Criminal were faced with having to assemble twenty thousands widgets before he could be eligible for parole, don't you thing that would have an impact on the importation of manufactured consumer goods?

I know what your saying, how do you motivate someone who is never getting out of prison, like a child molester (that is someone who would never get out of prison in my world). For some individuals, and this is going to get a little graphic, there is no redemption. It is my belief that, through their actions, some individuals have proven that they are just not capable of being allowed to roam freely amongst the "civilized" world.

For these individuals I would first have their limbs removed (surgically of course… Hey, they're not going anywhere anyway). Once they are no longer able to move around on their own then their live torsos can be donated for medical science. This of course would only be an applicable option in cases where an individual's guilt has been clearly proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Think about Ted Bundy, he was convicted of murder in 1980 and sentenced to death. It was almost ten years before that sentence would be carried out and now, after ruining so many lives, he rots in the ground, providing no benefit to anybody (except of course for those he would have killed if were free).

In my scenario his live torso would have been infested with aids or something to provide a real human test bed on which to test drugs and treatments. Who knows, his conviction may have resulted in a cure for acne. The families of his victims would have some other legacy to hold onto along with the memories of their loved ones.

The point is that at least these individuals, having been proven to be unfit for society, will be able to provide a real benefit to somebody. I know that some civil liberties psycho is reading this and hatching a plan to put a bullet in my head for saying that but, what can I do, it's what I think. At the end of the day the deterrent factor alone, having clearly been stepped up a notch, should have an impact on Johnnie Child Molester’s decision to snatch the five year old, or seek medical help.





















Chapter 8 – Meds for All

So, we now have a justice system where the inmates are earning their keep, rather than mooching off of all of us saps, and our medical community has a new medium through which they can actually do the tests that they need to do to find out how to make us all better.

Speaking of the medical community, why is it so outrageous to consider that individual healthcare and the provision there of, should be a function of the federal government? If I'm a doctor, and I know that my ability to progress within my field is dependant on federal review, I'm going to make absolutely sure that all of my patients are cared for to the best of my abilities all of the time.

Currently, its just a matter of "well, I guess I'll see you in court." If medical malpractice was a federal offense then there would be no forum for its victims to attempt to capitalize on it. The offending person(s) would simply receive their punishment and the victims would have to be compensated in accordance with the degree of their individual stigma.

Besides, with the government providing healthcare to all citizens, as it should be, then there would be no monetary basis for people to bring suit against the medical community, except in cases where a persons ability to maintain their individual life styles, or the provisions for their families is demonstrated to be clearly adversely affected.

In any event there would be no "Oh, he left a scar on my abdomen so I need fifty million dollars for pain and suffering" because the federal regulations governing these provisions would be clear and would have to be enforced (you know how politicians hate inquires).

Not that eliminating frivolous law suits is the primary motivation for federalizing individual healthcare, it's just that for those of us who can't afford health insurance because of the rising cost of malpractice insurance premiums paid by hospitals, we have to choose between going to the doctor and eating. That, to me, is just wrong.

It makes sense to me that a healthy population should be more productive than one that is not healthy. With that in mind, imagine the potential for the creation of government jobs related to public healthcare. Of course, not everybody is going to work with a scalpel, but just to maintain, and keep track of the healthcare of all people sounds like a pretty big undertaking.

There will still be private healthcare practitioners for those who can afford it, and for those of us who can't, at least we would be able to get the help that we need. And there will be a structure of support devoted to maintaining the good healthcare of everybody from cradle to grave.




















Chapter 9 – Opportunities Abroad

The funniest thing to me, growing up in South Florida, is the seemingly never ending flow of people who come to America because "there’s so much more opportunity here." The story is the same almost every time, after they’ve been here for just a few weeks their like "oh man, this really sucks, at least where I came from I could go to a doctor if I needed to… I could wash dishes there too…"

I believe that the lack of opportunity abroad is the direct result of a combination of faulty leadership coupled with a divine lacking of imagination. I don’t care where you are in this world, there should always be opportunities available in agriculture or healthcare at least. If I had my way, this world would have never been more green and healthy.

But that’s not all we can do, just look at the problem we are faced with regarding the proper removal of solid wastes like styrafoam and dead batteries and stuff. I don’t remember when was the first time I thought "well, why don’t we load this stuff into rockets and launch it into the sun?" I mean after all, its never going to get there anyway, it will be burned up years before it ever gets close, and be permanently out of our hair.

Somebody once said to me "well, its too dangerous to launch hazardous materials into the air, what if something happened?" Uh, well… hmmm… We do launch people.

Anyway, here is an opportunity for countries like Haiti, for instance, to capitalize on a service that is badly needed by most countries. “Send your trash to Haiti, we’ll launch it into the sun for you!” If the government there doesn’t want to play ball then we’ll just go W.M.D. on them, right?

Talk about opportunities, how many people do you think go to the Sahara desert for vacation? If you refer back to chapter 2 you may see an opportunity where a virtual Garden of Eden may be a draw for tourists from all over the world. View the Sphinx from under a tree or something.

The point is, where ever you have people you have resources. The individual human being itself is the most resourceful creature in existence as far as we know. There is no reason, at this day and age, for anybody to have to go without the basic necessities for preservation and dignity.























Chapter 10 - War

It is staggering when you think of how much money just the government of the United States spends on its military. I don't even want to think about how much has been spent in just the last few years in Iraq. It may cost a few trillion dollars to save the planet but our government doesn't think twice about spending that much to provide Al Quaeda with a steady stream of American service men and women to inflict their stupid jihad upon.

Holy war… why am I the only one who thinks that using God as an excuse to kill people is the same thing as saying "the devil made me do it."? Organized religion, as a whole, is more directly responsible for genocide throughout history than any other source, but we'll get into that a bit later.

It does make me wonder though, what were the true motivations of the terrorists when they dialed 911? I think that, having realized that they could never wage a successful campaign on our soil, they figured out how to provoke us into sending thousands of our fellow Americans directly to them so that they could kill them. After all, that’s what terrorists love to do: kill Americans.

Having a shoot first, ask questions later mentality in the executive branch of our leadership is like a terrorist’s wet dream if you subscribe to this point of view. Imagine how excited Bin Laden must have been when he found out that we were going into Iraq. Now, instead of having to hide out in caves, they have whole cities where they can take a shower, watch a movie maybe, have a bite to eat, and kill Americans at their discretion.

I think that we owe it to the people of Iraq to put their country back together and get out of there as quickly as possible. It makes me sick to see the death toll on the evening news, almost a daily occurrence, with American service men and women having been served up like lambs to the slaughter. Things could not have gone any better for the terrorists thanks to Mr. Bring It On.

I'm not going to rant about weapons of mass distraction or any of that garbage; the evidence is all to clear for anybody to draw the correct conclusion. If you don't then go ahead and close this book now, I'll give you your money back (let me preface that, if you think that we were justified in going into Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction then I don't want your money. Please take it and put it towards a vasectomy).

So what to do, what to do... I'll tell you what to do, you start with a blimp. Imagine a blimp, yeah, just like the Goodyear blimp, very good! Only, make this one about three hundred feet long. This is a ballast system and in this ballast system there are separate individual ballasts, each one individually engineered to provide lighter than air buoyancy for specific aspects of the whole system.

Some of these individual pockets contain helium, these are the static ballasts as they are intended to provide the lift for the components that do not fluctuate in weight (platforms, computers, power systems, etc.). The other pockets are computer controlled and can inflate or deflate with hot air to provide the necessary lift for the variable components of the system.
Some space will have to be left available for future growth.

Now, place two of these completed ballast systems along side each other with about seventy five to one hundred feet of space between them.

This is where you hang the nuclear powered, satellite guided, high altitude weapons and fighter/escort launch and retrieval platform. Yes, I said nuclear powered, satellite guided, high altitude weapons and fighter/escort launch and retrieval platform. Imagine, you have a weapons station that operates from altitudes in excess of five miles, from which you have access to an array of weapons batteries at all four corners ranging from twenty two caliber bullets to ten inch, high explosive shell firing howitzers, all precisely calibrated and coordinated through onboard surveillance capabilities coupled with ground based intelligence gathering and, of course, sat-com.

Imagine not needing to spend millions of dollars on a single missile system, my munitions are just simple bullets and cannon shells because they’re ranges are greatly exaggerated by the altitude from which it operates. The guidance systems that aim them remain on the platform so that they can be used as much as necessary.

Now, if you're on the ground, you have to shoot up at this thing to try and put a dent in it. That sort of makes it difficult when you’re fighting against gravity, that and the whole system orbits around its target area at high altitudes and at speeds of up to seventy five miles per hour.

From up here, I can reach out and touch someone from miles away because I'm working with the pull of gravity and from a great height. The only real threat would be from an airborne assault and or a breach of proximity by an errant flying aircraft which is why it would be necessary to be able to drop fighter/escort aircraft out of the bottom of the platform (significantly reduces fuel costs by not having to launch from the ground) and have them land on the flight deck up top in between the three hundred foot long, forty foot thick ballasts.

It might be surreal to see these sleek looking fighters coming in at around a hundred miles per hour to land on a landing strip that is moving through the air at seventy five miles per hour.
Being nuclear powered the only other power requirements are for the aircraft that it deploys and food for the crew.

Ok, so we’ve got what amounts to an airborne fortress with precision guided guns and a nearly infinite capacity to reconnoiter. So now what? Here’s a scenario, I know that my enemy is planning on launching an attack against one of my cities. So, I fly my airborne weapons platform over to the conflict area, locate where my enemy is sleeping (via satellite or whatever) and go ahead and shoot all of the tires on all of their vehicles while they sleep.

They never hear the shots, probably most of them would never know they've been defeated until the next morning when they wake up to find out that they're not going anywhere. Oh, and by the way, I found out where they keep their guns and ammunition and put about a dozen ten inch high explosive shells right through the roof so now they have no guns either.

Well, this is a determined enemy, and it just so happens that they have launched their entire navy to try and blast me out of the sky. What they forgot to realize is that I can put twenty two caliber bullets down the barrels of their battleship's main guns before they even get within striking distance. Phalanx gatling guns are already effective enough at knocking missiles out of the sky.

In the event of a total loss situation then the nuclear power plant, which happens to be installed on top of a solid rocket motor, is launched directly into space, towards the sun, and everybody on board probably has a minute or so to decide what color parachute they want to use to get the heck out of there.

Once we have about forty or fifty of these airborne weapons platforms operating throughout the Middle East then it will no longer be possible for anyone to conduct any kind of hostile action against anyone else on the surface of the Earth. I would love to be onboard the one that is operating over Afghanistan when they find Bin Laden... "ooh ooh, let me pull the trigger... watch him dance! woo hoo!" SPLAT! Basically, if you want to hurt people you're going to have to do it underground from now on. But don't let any of our intelligence officers find out where you are or you will never be able to poke your head above ground again.

Imagine how our troops in Iraq would feel when they drive past the remains of a couple of idiots that were caught trying to bury a bomb next to the road the night before. Oh, and by the way, we rewound the tape and saw where they came from and blew up the house that they were operating from. Pretty neat huh?

Ultimately these platforms will wind up as airborne watch dogs, recording everything that happens on the ground so that... Oh, they robbed the bank? Well, let’s back the tape up. Ok, here they are, driving a nineteen seventy nine Camaro (we probably wont be able to see the license plate), and they came from this address, and they ate at this restaurant last night... Oh, and they ran a red light the night before... get the picture?

This raises a pretty big issue, in my opinion, and that is trust. Obviously, having no feasible means of being defeated, it is going to be imperative that there be complete trust between the operators of these platforms and the people that they are intended to protect. At this point there could be no greater threat to mankind other than the possibility of some psychopath having his foot on the gas of one of these things. Therefore, it may be necessary to have the governing bodies of the regions that they are patrolling have the capability to disable these platforms remotely.



















Chapter 11 - Taxation

Now that the concept of war is discussed only in history books, how much money do you suppose that would free up out of just the federal budget for the United States? With inmates paying their keep, and civil defense budgets slashed by (hopefully) up to eighty percent, there should be no reason for individual or private taxation.

Ask any tax paying American what he or she could do if they were able to retain one hundred percent of what they earned. After all, you earned the money, you should be allowed to use it at your discretion rather than having to watch twenty five percent of it get consumed by people you don't know, for things that you may or may not agree with.

Social security should be the complete responsibility of both the federal government and the state that you spent your last years (at least three) working in. If you think about it, it is so disheartening to think about how much of your hard earned money is squandered on killing people and accommodating criminals.

Of course there will always need to be taxation at some degree, but with so many people having their own businesses, it makes sense to me that raising and or federalizing sales or service taxes would be more than sufficient to finance the government. With private citizens having more cash in their pockets it makes further sense that they will be able to spend more money, which leads to a society that is perpetually advancing itself as more businesses open, employing more people, who spend more money, and so on, and so on.

I know that a lot of people make pretty good livings off of civil defense contracts and the manufacturing of highly expensive implementations of destruction but I guess it comes down to assembling an omelet, eggs will need to crack.









Chapter 12 – Organized Religion

I know that you probably think that I’m crazy at this point and I don't blame you at all. Its not that I believe that any of these ideas can actually work, rather my hope is that some fifteen or sixteen year old, whom is planning on going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will derive some inspiration from some of this and come up with a real solution to some of our Earthly problems. What bothers me the most at this point is how complacent we have all become as a race. We think that we are so smart that surely the inner workings of Mother Nature can provide no benefit to us.

I think that if we could ever find the balance between mankind’s thirst for technology and the necessity for Mother Nature to run the planet in her way that we could have the closest thing to a utopian society worldwide.

Oh right, I forgot, my god is better than your god. Ok, I’m going to spend as little time as possible on the concept of organized religion and the folly there in. I am a catholic. I was educated in a catholic school for nine years so I have enough guilt installed in me to last a life time. That being said, I figured out when I was about ten years old that my friends who go to other churches are being taught that the only way to get to heaven is to follow their religions way of thinking.

What an amazing coincidence, my church was saying the same thing. So which religion is the correct religion? I really felt like I was choosing between curtain number one, two, or three, only there were no brand new cars behind any of them. How then, is it possible that so many people, whom seem to me to be living their lives well enough, could be on the wrong path to ultimate salvation. And that was when I decided for myself, you know, this religion thing is all just a big crock. This was further substantiated as a grew older and learned of other religions around the world, and the persecutions felt by so many from these religions, including of course, roman Catholics.

So here is how it works. We, as human beings, need purpose in our lives. We can't get out of bed in the morning if we don't have something to do that makes us feel important in some small way (no other creature on Earth has this issue by the way, they just live to eat and procreate {hence the meaning of life}). The very idea that we are simply living creatures that will die and turn back into fertilizer some day is just not a popular notion, historically speaking.

It is because of this mass insecurity that people need religion. It gives them some small, however fleeting, hope that there really is something to look forward too after this world. I know I certainly hope there is, but I don't see how it could be likely. The problem is when people get so hung up on their beliefs that they come to the realization that if other people don't believe the same thing, then they must be destroyed. How stupid is that? I'm all for people holding on to whatever truths they feel makes them whole in their lives but when this leads to the persecution of others who don't believe the same thing then this is just fundamentally wrong.

Now we have to park one of our nuclear powered, satellite guided, high altitude weapons and fighter/escort launch and retrieval platforms over your headquarters until you learn to behave.










Chapter 13 – The Future

So, having rid the world of war and pestilence, my conquest is complete right? Well, I did say ruler of the known universe. Ever wonder if two planets could occupy the same orbit?

I can imagine where materials harvested from the rocks floating around in space are used to create massive structures that stretch all the way around the planet. These structures, amounting to man made artificial rings, would be perfect for keeping environmentally destructive manufacturing processes off of the planets surface, yet still within the reach of the populations that require them.

A large structure, which resembles a brake caliper, would be in a fixed position between the Earth and sun. This structure could contain solar panels to provide a permanent source of power while simultaneously shielding the ring from the sun as it is driven through the structure in a constant rotation around the Earth.

Not long after completion of the second artificial ring around the planet, a flotilla of robotic satellites sets off to the asteroid field between Mars and Saturn. It has long been speculated that this is the remains of a planet that was destroyed millions of years ago (see what happens when you're naughty?).

At the same time a large reflector is being deployed in the same orbit as Earth, only about six months behind it as we all race around the sun. This reflector will focus the suns energy on a specific point where the robotic satellites are programmed to fling the asteroids to.

Bigger and bigger it gets, this molten, gelatinous mass of rock and other trace elements inherent to the asteroid belt. The reflector shinning a concentrated beam of the suns energy on it, keeping it in a liquid state until finally, it is complete.

Behold, Earth two, the sequel. About half of Earths size, it only takes a couple of hundred years to completely cool so that a few captured comets can be smashed into it. Still hot at the center, the comets crush the top layers of freshly solidified rock and turn it back into a liquid state, some of it thrust straight back into space where it comes together and forms a moon.

The rest of the comets melt and form oceans, and ultimately, if we're lucky, the heat from the planets core will turn some of this water into steam so that it will form an atmosphere.

Now here come the engineers, with their massive laser tools and the blue prints for a set of continents that resemble a giant soccer ball with the white parts represented by oceans and the black parts represented by continents.

Behold, the planet Utopia, sister to Earth, and now home to all of Earths overflow. Our poor old Earth and moon, like a set of parents whose last child just went off to college, it breaths a collective sigh of relief.

This is all clearly the product of an active imagination for the immediate future, so what could we do now?

I've always been fascinated with the idea of underwater structures. If you take a glass and plunge it upside down into water, the air in the glass prevents the water from filling it. Multiply the size of this glass by a couple of thousand times and then you have the basic building block of an underwater community.

I don't see why we don't build large structures intended to be bolted into place underwater. There could be a set of stairs or elevators leading from the shore line straight down to the entrance to a vast underwater apartment complex (no smoking, of course).

Undersea water currents such as the Gulf Stream off the east coast of the United States are more than sufficient to turn generators to provide a constant source of power. Solid waste removal would have to be a function of specialized machinery and plumbing.

Continually expanding, these structures could eventually be able to house underwater movie theaters, shopping malls, even swimming pools. Who needs an aquarium right? Yard space may come at a premium but at least it probably won't rain.

The bottom line is that with the complete absence of the requirement for fossil fuel burning energy processes, this is a possibility for our ever expanding populations as well as a potentially lucrative high end real estate venture.

I realize that a lot of these ideas are nothing new but I never the less feel compelled to string them together in this manner to hopefully provide inspiration for those truly intelligent individuals that may actually be able to initiate the processes that will lead to the salvation of our world.

If nothing else, it should be clear that time is not on our side at this point. It may have taken a million years for human beings to be able to walk upright and grow a mullet, but in comparison to the amount of time that we have left before we will have permanently and irreparably destroyed our world it is but the blink of an eye, only speed it up a couple of hundred times.

As far as ruling the universe, I wouldn’t know where to begin and I don't really care. Even if it were possible, I wouldn't want that job for anything. Well, that’s not exactly true... The fact is, I've always been the all supreme ruler of the known universe, it’s just that nobody listens to me. These are just a few of the thoughts that have been bouncing around inside my head until now.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am so proud of you!

Anonymous said...

Awesome. Proud of you Mike.

Unknown said...

Worth the read. Very proud of you Michael. All you readers should get on board and help Michael save the world you intend to live in. Much love...Dad.

Anonymous said...

Great job Mike - this reads fantastic and really interestig. you have talent.
ADrienne (dirty water) Anctil

Anonymous said...

i don't know. i came across your assessment by accident, but i asked my self "why not?". So i went on to read the preface.By the end of that i was deeply addicted to your writing and went to reading the rest. Continue, but write a sci-fi novel...like perhaps about a man who owns a fragrance company. The man suffers from post dramatic stress and has random but terrifying dreams about deaths of people and so on. Due to the problem he finally reaches for help (psychiatrist), but continues to struggle with the dreams. One day he starts to dream and decides to finally take control over them. The dream involves deaths of family members, argument through friends, use of drugs, and in the end he finds himself standing in the edge of a building-in the peak of suicide. A tear runs down his face, and he realizes....it was not a dream.

well...if your interested hit me up, cause if your not....I'de be happy to write it myself

-nicholas salles