Three reasons the world isn't as bad as I sometimes think it is.

1. I am Alive.

Twenty-eight years ago, the scientific and medical estimate for life-span of people with cystic fibrosis was age 12. A couple years later it was upped to 16. Then a few years after that, age 21. I spent the majority of my time growing up under the assumption that I was going to depart this mortal coil not long after I was legally allowed to drink. Needless to say, this impacted my psyche and life outlook a bit.

BUT, also obvious, that has not come to pass. I am seven years pass the deadline established then, as medical science has progressed to the point that a large portion of people with CF live full lives (some are in their 50's now). There is no longer a hard cap on lifespan. Every day and month and year is amazing to me, as I honestly never expected to be here experiencing them. The fact that I even HAVE a future to look forward to is spectacular. Which leads to:

2. We Live in The Future.

When I was growing up, the most amazing piece of technology to me was the Commodore 64. MY PHONE IS NOW MORE POWERFUL THAN THAT. Where I can say (all the time, in fact), "We didn't get the future we were promised," (no jet packs, flying cars, laser pistols, etc.), we in fact got a completely different one. Slightly more mundane and low-key, yes, but if you said to your parents in the past, "When I am your age, everyone in the world will be able to instantaneously communicate with each other on devices about the size of a baseball card," they would have scoffed at you in disbelief as a lunatic. Music, film, art, communications; all these areas are so far advanced in this time, and so quickly and subtly, that I suppose it's easy for us to overlook the amazing things we have at our command. The internet, iPods, hybrid/electric cars, cell phone, nanotechnology. Awesome. Which leads to:

3. Tomorrow is Unknown.

There is a definite undercurrent of cynicality in much of what I write here, I know. And it's hard to not be sometimes. The political climate is muddled at best, the dearth of truly INSPIRING media is disheartening, and while we make the best with what we have, the economy is, to put it plainly, shit. But it's easy to forget that it's not always going to be so. We don't know what's coming. The future is not yet written, and while, yes, it could most definitely be worse, there's just as good a chance that it will be BETTER.

And that's something we can't, we shouldn't, we MUSTN'T forget. Because to forget that is to descend into pessimism and cynicism and despair, and maybe I'm in the slowly shrinking minority here, but I can't be that way. I can't not believe in the future. I can't not see the best of what we could be, the best of what could be coming. I can't believe that this is all there is to us. Not in a strict religious way, because I am openly faithless, but definitely in a spiritual way. I have to believe that humanity is more than what we are now, that we are more than the sum of the past whatever-thousand years, that there is better things coming. And I guess that makes me more of an anachronism every day. But I have to believe in something.

And the future is what I choose to believe in.

Da Vinci's Robot.

Around 1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed a humanoid automaton. The design notes for the robot appear in sketchbooks that were rediscovered in the 1950s. It is not known whether or not an attempt was made to build the device.

The robot is a knight, clad in German-Italian medieval armor, that is apparently able to make several human-like motions. These motions included sitting up, moving its arms, neck, and an anatomically correct jaw. It is partially the fruit of Leonardo's anatomical research in the Canon of Proportions as described in the Vitruvian Man.

core-collapse supernova

The core collapse of sufficiently massive stars may not be halted. Degeneracy pressure and repulsive neutron-neutron interactions can only support a neutron star whose mass does not exceed the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit of very roughly 4 solar masses. Above this limit, the core collapses to directly form a black hole, perhaps producing a (still theoretical) hypernova explosion. In the proposed hypernova mechanism (known as a collapsar) two extremely energetic jets of plasma are emitted from the star's rotational poles at nearly light speed. These jets emit intense gamma rays, and are one of many candidate explanations for gamma ray bursts.

Crab Nebula

A significant problem in studies of the Crab Nebula is that the combined mass of the nebula and the pulsar add up to considerably less than the predicted mass of the progenitor star, and the question of where the 'missing mass' is remains unresolved.

Mister Miracle.

As the God of Escaping, Mister Miracle (alias Scott Free) is the master of Escapology bar none, aided by vastly superior technology, including the sentient computer Motherbox. He is the keeper of the Anti-Life Equation, and possesses the will power not to use it.

Soyuz.

About five percent of the people that have been launched have died doing so (because astronauts often launch more than once). As of November 2004, 439 individuals have flown on spaceflights: Russia/Soviet Union (96), USA (277), others (66). Twenty-two have died while in a spacecraft: three on Apollo 1, one on Soyuz 1, one on X-15-3, three on Soyuz 11, seven on Challenger, and seven on Columbia. By space program, 18 NASA astronauts (4.1%) and four Russian cosmonauts (0.9% of all the people launched) died while in a spacecraft.

schematics.

This is Nikola Tesla's generation system using AC circuits to transport energy across great distances.