I've been silent for two weeks.  I've been busy, and my thoughts are scattered everywhere.  Perfect time for another edition of Random Thoughts 

The dissertation proposal is almost finished.  I'm literally like two hours from having my final draft complete.  I will be giving it to the committee on Monday, giving them time for over break to deal with taking a look at it, and then getting comps scheduled for the week after we're back at school.  After that will be the proposal, and my project will be on the road and ready to go.  (Sidenote: my fourth committee member, a fellow in political science, says that I "write like the wind," which is a nice thing).

After I'm finished proposing my dissertation, I'm going to take a designed break in my research to work on some other projects to wrap them up.  I want to get a few things published from older work for a couple of reasons.  For one, it's good stuff that I want to get out.  Second, I need to diversify my publications (I should have five by the end of this academic year, if not six).  Third, I need to get this stuff finished and out of the way.  Fourth, I need a break from my dissertation. 

Odd thing: We're actually sorta kinda considering getting more television channels for the first time since two years ago when the free cable went out.  I absolutely despise the idea of paying more that ten dollars for television, but there are some things I would like to be able to watch: Mythbusters, ESPN for various sporting events, The Daily Show and Colbert Report... but at the same time, I know that I tend to sit and zone if there's stuff to watch.  Plus, I hate to admit my elitism, but there's definitely a badge of honor that goes with "I don't get that channel," even for the basics.

Same goes for cell phones!  I liked them better when they were bolted to the floorboards of cars.

I read an article about some guy in California that does research about aging the other day.  This guy said that he believes some people on the planet today will live as long as a thousand years because of how technology is improving.  While the guy is something of a quack for believing this, it's troublesome in a lot of ways.  For one, without the fear of mortality, I'm unsure anyone will ever be motivated to do anything in any sort of timeframe.  Secondly, I've seen tons of evidence (see: elderly family members whose minds have rotted) that people are already long outliving the abilities of their brains to function effectively.  I don't know if anything about this is a good idea.  Sure, death is one of the scariest possible things, but I don't know if living so long is any less scary.

One thing that's cool about being around a college campus (as I have been in one capacity or another for, gasp, 22 years now!) is that there's a constant rotation of people, which means that the population never really gets stagnant, or if it does in terms of personality, it doesn't stay that way very long.  If we kept the same people on the earth for the next 1,000 years, wouldn't that get pretty fucking boring?  If you're a fatalistic person, there's a certain progression that goes with natural beginnings and ends in the life trajectory.

Stranger still, it wasn't more than a day later that I came across a different opinion about the future of aging.  Some other crackpot has this idea that we'll soon all be able to live forever, but in a different way.  According to this guy, we'll soon be able to upload our brains to a massive mainframe, where all of the contents of our brains will be digitized.  He foresaw two possibilities emerging from this technology: one choice was like an odd crossbreed between a MMORPG and The Matrix, where our brains would continue on in the mainframe's society after our bodies have died.  (I'm assuming our consciousness moves with our brains, otherwise it's just random information floating around, right?)  His other option was that we could potentially clone empty bodies, and transport this data into body containers to use until the body wears out, then reupload, redownload and repeat, like some sort of twisted shampoo.

There are other implications of this long-life stuff, from any of these models.  Lucien LeFebvre (the French historian, not Henri Lefebvre, the awesome geographer who wrote Production of Space) theorized that one reason government and religious institutions have such staying power is because they have already lasted into the "longue duree," essentially meaning long term.  Human lifespans are limited to, at most, 120 years.  Anything that lasts longer than human consciousness (which of that maximum 120 years is maybe 110, taking away five from each edge) is part of the longue duree, which means beyond what any human can comprehend.  Once an institution gets to that longue duree, it has a certain legitimacy that makes it exceptionally hard for humans to dismantle.

Of course, if humans are suddenly living essentially forever, this might mean the end of many existing government institutions and religious organizations, for several reasons.  If people live forever, the idea is that they'll be smart enough to not tangle themselves so severely into problems and won't need government assistance.  Maybe that's an arguable point.  But, at the same time, if people aren't afraid of dying because it's always so far away, then they won't need religion or government to assure them that things are okay.

So, in other words, the two guys are still crackpots, because if people start living forever, either God or the government will get pissed off enough to disrupt the system and send us back to the stone age, where life was somewhat miserable, more leisurely than today (hunter-gatherers worked 16 hours per week compared to our 50 plus) and very short (maybe 25-30 years).

See, this is why I need a budget for books.  If I don't have a stack of fresh new books waiting on me at all times, I go out seeking oddball internet articles about weird shit, then I write random crap about it.  I can't wait until I'm a professor and we can dedicate 75% of my income to buying books.  No?  50%?  20%?  Um, 10%?  Okay, maybe 2%...  Please? 

I'm about ready to be finished with this semester.  I think I've run my course with most of my students, and I think most of them are ready to move on to other things.  That's fair enough.  I don't expect to have little cultists or anything.  In fact, I expect that they're tired of me after a while.  I'm getting worn down by the classes I'm teaching right now, and I'm hoping that Thanksgiving break will ease my mind there and refresh me enough to give good lectures for the remainder of the semester. (Of course, that said, at least four of my first year colloquium students signed up for World Geography in the fall.  Yippee!)

So, question: Where the hell is the flying car?  We've been promised a flying car since like the 1940s and the thing has never materialized.  I've seen a couple of magazines asking this very question, and of course the biggest problem is finding a fuel and building material combination that's efficient enough to get a car off the ground and not be as unwieldly as a Cessna (a.k.a. millionaire death trap).  At the same time, can you imagine how stupid a world of flying cars would be?  People have enough trouble driving their cars in two dimensions and not killing each other.  What happens if you add a third?  And, besides that, if you have a crash or run out of gas or have mechanical problems, remember, you're above the ground, which means you have a serious problem.

I guess really that I'm mostly just sad because that's one more thing I can toss out from Back to the Future II from my theory that Robert Zimeckis could actually predict the future.  Very sad.  Also, the Miami Alligators baseball team, which lost to the Cubs in the 2015 World Series, never happened. The Florida Marlins were established in 1993, but weren't called Miami or Alligators.  Also, the Marlins were in the National League, meaning they could never meet the Cubs in the Series.  Oh, and no hoverboards, which is far more reasonable than flying cars, but still a big disappointment. What the fuck, Robert Zimeckis? 

Oh, we're going home for Thanksgiving.  Thanks to some begging and borrowing, we're going home on Monday afternoon and staying until Sunday afternoon.  Not bad!  We'll be in Muncie from Monday evening through Thursday afternoon, and we'll be eating dinner in Westfield and staying there until Sunday afternoon.  We're hoping to see some peeps that we haven't for a while, so if you're bored, drop me a line.

(crickets)

The weekend after that, we're taking advantage of the university.  See, a couple of things: some friends of ours are meeting up there that weekend.  Secondly, the library is offering people money to visit a cool map exhibit on Ptolemy's maps at the Newberry Library.  See, as long as I go to the library, I can fill out a form and get all of my expenses reimbursed.  I get to see a cool exhibit on historic maps at one of the world's premier archives, plus I get to see some friends?  Not bad!

Television news here has been predicting a coming onslaught of snow the past few days.  It hasn't yet materializing in any accumulating form.  The stations here, though, are absolutely nuts about it.  They practically scream at you during the advertisements that snow is coming soon, and imply that this snow is the kind of snow that will somehow kill us all.  Then, in the newscast (which, no, I never watch on purpose and if I catch a glimpse of it, it's because I'm busy writing with the TV on as the background and don't notice that the local news has come on, or I don't have the remote and am too lazy to look for it) they say that Warren got exactly 26 snowflakes today, and that we should all go buy milk and bread and other provisions, perhaps snowshoes and huskies.  Of course, the local news here is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen anyway.

Odd anti-parent rant: a lady at the Indian restaurant the other day ripped out her boob and began feeding her kid at the table. What the fuck was that about?   Really?  You can't go to the bathroom?  I don't care how "beautiful" this part of parenting supposedly is.  I don't care how natural it is.  I don't care how gross it is to expect your newborn to eat when there's an old lady dropping a deuce in the next bathroom stall.  You don't pull your udder out in the middle of the restaurant and let the kid visibly suck on it for all to see.  Go somewhere else.  Or at least put a blanket over it.  Just because you have a kid, it doesn't excuse you from being decent.  And no, I don't care if our society's definition of decent is fucked up for not allowing something that's so "beautiful" and "natural."  You don't see me ripping out my junk to piss on the carpet while you eat, which would be both "beautiful" and "natural." 

My back hurts like a bitch.  Our mattress is shot, and I'm hoping we're going to get a new one with financial aid in January.  I just hate that we'll have to wait that long.

Amy and I went to a hockey game tonight, which was great fun.  Hockey is one of God's gift to sports (baseball is the other).  Basketball and football, while both very good, are definitely within the realms of human achievement.  Soccer (the real football) is too.  Hockey and baseball are on another plane altogether.  And we must add: the cankle boot infestation at Kent State is out of control!!!! Every female wears cankle boots now!  One girl at the ice arena (you know, where it's cold enough to keep a solid sheet of ice for the hockey and such) was wearing a miniskirt with cankle boots.  Whatever sluttiness she was trying to achieve was totally undermined by the fact that her legs looked corpselike because of the cold.

I'm really sick of having seven dogs.  Seven is too many.  We gave two dogs (Carleton and Lilly) to the prison today for their training program.  I was sad to lose Carleton, but I was certainly happy to see Lilly go.  Lilly and I just did not get along.  Perhaps we are too much alike.... she is hardheaded, doesn't seem to hear (or in her case, listen) very well, and she complains a lot.  We didn't get along.   When we sent away Carleton and Lilly, we got two more to take their places.  Petey, a fox terrier mix, was on death row and had been chosen by the rescue to be saved, but his hours were numbered by a horrific kennel cough epidemic that forced the Ravenna pound to put down most of its animals.  Rocky is the deceased Italian neighbor's old hunting dog, who had been living in a makeshift pen for five years.  (Oh, his pen was gross.  No one had taken care of him for a long time, probably since Pio got really sick in August, and turds were caked on the concrete floor to the point that we seriously thought his pen had a dirt floor!  Of course, as we cleaned his pen, we put him in the vacant pen next door, which had been occupied by his biological mother until two years ago when she died giving birth to Rocky's puppies... go backyard breeding incest!)  After Pio's death, the neighbors surrendered Rocky to the rescue.  Rocky has gotten treatment for his heartworm, and today he moved into our basement until he goes to Rose's house while we're in Indiana.  He's a sweet German Shorthaired Pointer who needs a lot of direction and love, but there's a very salvagable dog in there.

Some random good news: the Ball State Fighting Cardinals football team is bowl eligible, which means that for the first time since 1996, they'll get to play in a football bowl game.  Granted, because of their low stature in the college football world, they'll probably play in the Ray's Port-a-John Wheat Bowl, held in Minot, North Dakota... but still.  It's about time my alma mater was good for something besides affordable and innovative education!

My World Geography class for spring already has 118 students, which means it has eclipsed the largest class I've ever taught, and registration just opened to everyone a few days ago. Hope I can get a few teaching assistant hours for grading tests and taking attendance and whatnot, though I know that's unlikely.

My brother Tim set up a MySpace page for his music this week.  You should check it out.  It's good.

I set up an awesome docking station for my iBook in my office this past week.  See, I know that I can't fix the mattress portion of my backache, so I decided to fix the "laptop crunch" that I have to be in to write at work.  I used an old flatscreen monitor that Ball State gave me, "borrowed" an old USB mouse and keyboard from the department at Kent (they were plugged into an old G3 desktop that hasn't been turned on since 2005!).   I put the monitor on a stack of books and plugged everything into my laptop, leaving it open just a crack so it doesn't go into sleep mode.  It's freaking awesome!

Also, I've been way too obsessed with Sufjan Stevens's Illinois album this week.  It's a fine set.