Poets Dying Young
A while back we reported that amongst writers, poets die the youngest. Here is more evidence to the affirmative.

Back To The Moocher
I'm back at my old workplace today to help out with some crud. It doth sucketh like no other thynge has sucked before. Macca's Lunch was even worse tragedy inflicted on my body system. Gack!

- Art Neuro

Ain't That The Way?
They aborted the scheduled spacewalk today, thanks to a stuck switch. I guess it's better to be safe than sorry. However this looks bad:

American astronaut Michael Fincke, making his first spacewalk on Thursday, was outside the airlock for less than two minutes before Russian ground controllers ordered him to return, along with Russian colleague Gennady Padalka.

Mission Control in Moscow detected a drop in pressure from Fincke's primary oxygen tank, which might have indicated a dangerous leak.

But NASA said on Friday that an auxiliary switch for feeding oxygen to the Russian suit had been left in an "on" position, even though an indicator showed it was "off."

Mission managers a re meeting on Tuesday to reschedule the space walk.

They Say 'Better Late than Never', But There Is Such A Thing As Too Late, No?
NASA is considering offering cash prizes to offer cash prizes to milestones reached by private concerns. now this is a good idea if it wasn't for the fact that it comes in the wake of the SpaceShipOne achievement of Monday. Should NASA be in a positon to be handing out such prizes? Why didn't they think of it until now? Ddin't they thik that the Ansari X Prize might produce serious contenders? All in all, quite bizarre that this news comes to light now.

Meanwhile in the Land of Free Enterprise
The Scalar group has published details of the flight record for SpaceShipOne's historic Journey. It is interesting to note that the trip was not trouble free, as a key system did fail, but a backup system carried the day. In order to claim the Ansari X Prize, SpaceShipOne must still do the trip with 3 people, and do it again within 2 weeks. The Challenge is still on.

- Art Neuro

Tax Department Sux
It just does. They do maths in a way that is totally nonsensical and then have the gall to tell you to learn maths. How Fucking Dare They? HOW FUCKING DARE THEY? Christ-all-mighty. The moment I'm rich, I'm moving to a tax haven. Barbados, here I come. Fuck this sad little country and its tax office. Income Tax is Immoral. HECS is a joke.

- Art Neuro

Glory To The World
SpaceShipOne made her maiden Voyage into 'outerspace'. Soaring to the height of 62.2 miles (99.52km). The man they picked to fly SpaceShipOne was Michael Melvill.

"The sky was jet black above, and it got very blue above the horizon," said pilot Michael Melvill, 63, who earned his wings as an astronaut and was greeted by Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men to walk on the moon.

"The earth is so beautiful," added Melvill in describing the planet's vast curvature and the Southern California coast he saw during a brief three and half minutes just beyond the atmosphere.

So the era of private space exploration officially started, as of Monday 21 June 2004.
It's a bit like a dream, really. I can't gush enough.

Doctor Gets Jailed For Charging for Sex
A Doctor charged the US Medicare system for time he spent having sex with his patient. 
For more details...

While it is a fine line between Prostitution and Medicine, I knew there was a reason I shouldn't have left Med School. :)

- Art Neuro

Sorry for the lack of posts
It's been a busy week in the space frontier.

John Kerry Has A Blast At Bush's Space Policy; Shoots Himself In The Foot
First cab off the rank for a mention should be this article where John Kerry has a a go at Dubbya over the space program.

Kerry said that the most immediate impact of the Bush plan is that NASA's resources are being stretched even further than they were before the Columbia tragedy, forcing NASA to make unpopular choices like canceling a space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites). NASA is currently seeking industry proposals for servicing Hubble robotically, but space agency officials have made clear that the highest priority of such a mission is attaching a module to Hubble that can be used to guide the space telescope safely into the ocean at the end of its life.

Kerry also criticized the Bush Administration for abandoning the hunt for low cost space transportation, a central goal of NASA during the 1990s.

The most critical element of our space program should be reducing the costs and increasing the reliability of space transportation to and from low Earth orbit, Kerry wrote. This is just one of the many critical areas lost in the Bush initiative.

This is very disappointing coming from the alternative administration, not so much for what they are saying, but what they haven't sorted through in their heads. Just because the shuttle program is popular doesn't make it a priority. The point of NASA is not, and we can't be more categorical about this, to fly space shuttles. Well, I guess it goes with the terrain that a Democrat candidate only seems to see the Aerospace industry as the classic job-provider. As for what he considers the most critical element of the space program, I'm a little aghast at how pedestrian that assessment stands. What kind of space program would it be if the critical elements were not to reduce costs and increase reliability? Well, D'uh, Mr. Kerry. We might all argue and bicker about the policy on Iraq, but it has to be said based on this account that the Democrats do not have a vision worth voting for when it comes to space; and more's the pity.

Robots are Go
There is a new plan to get a robotic probe out to Uranus (hold the anus jokes, thanks). The craft would get out to Uranus around 2014, and continue out to the Kuiper Belt. The project is dubbed New Horizons II after the New Horizons project with a similar profile headed out for Pluto.

The (probe) would use a gravity assist from Jupiter, then slip by Uranus en route to multiple Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), said Alan Stern, Principal Investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute here.

"We have an opportunity to study building a New Horizons II. The science looks very good and a second mission would yield a much larger sample of KBOs," Stern told SPACE.com.

The New Horizons 2 idea will be showcased June 21, Stern said, at a Uranus System Encounter with New Horizons II Workshop, prior to a Forum on Outer Planetary Exploration being held in Pasadena, Calif. that begins June 22.

Stern said conducting a second New Horizons mission is the same concept used for numerous other dual missions over the last three decades, such as Voyager, Pioneer, and the twin Mars rovers now busy at work on the red planet.

The Kuiper Belt with its 100,000 objects is ripe for a survey and a robot probe in the mold of New Horizons.

Competition is a Good Thing
So far, the front-runner in the Ansari X Prize seems to be SpaceShipOne, but now there's a serious competitor, contending. The Armadillo Aerospace group has announced its craft successfully launched a testflight of its craft.

Leading Armadillo's bid to snag the X Prize is John Carmack, co-founder and chief technical engineer of id Software. He admits to being a long-time rocketry enthusiast, anxious to send civilians into space.

"The flight was perfect. It went 131 feet high, and landed less than one foot from the launch point," Carmack reported on his publicly accessible web site. "It can easily do flights three times as long, which may show up some problems before we hit them with the big vehicle."

Armadillo's rocket concept makes use of a hydrogen peroxide monopropellant.

Carmack said the vehicle's auto-land system worked perfectly, softly settling down on its tail section. "I had tried several algorithms on the simulator before settling on this one, and it behaved exactly the same in reality, which is always a pleasant surprise," he noted.

So the private sector is moving ahead greatly in the race to space. And so it should. Meanwhile, speculation is mounting on who the first private astronaut into orbit is going to be aboard the SpaceShipOne project. There was also a survey about people's attitudes about the project. It seems people are interested after all.

- Art Neuro

Dinosaur Day, Part 1
Dinosaur bones are going on auction at Guernsey's.

Guernsey's will be the first "major, full-blown auction focusing on prehistoric creatures," Ettinger said. Among the featured pieces is a nearly complete, 40-foot skeleton of an anatotitan duck-billed dinosaur.

"It is very rare to have a dinosaur skeleton in one piece," Ettinger said. As a result, it is difficult to estimate the selling price, although he said it could go into the high six figures to potentially millions.

I guess it beats seeing them on e-bay. If you're interested in bidding...

Dinosaur Day, Part 2
Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney is about to notch his 3000th show. Says the man with the lefty bass:

"I never keep count on the statistics, so I was amazed when people told me I'll do my 3,000th gig on this tour," McCartney said in a statement. "That's an awful lot of late nights."

Well, when you count in 1,2,3,4, the world counts along with you, Sir Paul. However, he's got nothing on the Godfather of Soul James Brown.

Dinosaur Day, Part 3
An old Apollo Rocket that never got off the ground, so to speak, is getting a 'facelift', according to this article.

Workers will construct a shelter for the Saturn V rocket and give it the equivalent of a "blow dry" in the first steps to preserve the relic of NASA (news - web sites)'s golden age, said Allan Needell, Apollo program curator for the Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites)'s National Air and Space Museum.

The 363-foot-long behemoth has lain on its side in front of JSC since 1977, a favorite sight of tourists, but also a victim of the elements.

Instead of launching astronauts to the moon as it was built to do, it has become a slowly fading hulk of peeling paint and corroded metal where birds live and plants sprout, Needell said on Wednesday during a visit to the rocket.

"There's a lot of biology growing on there," he said, pointing out streaks of algae staining the rocket's white skin.

I guess it's just been that kind of day.

- Art Neuro

Pulling Up Lame
Less than half a day after my last post I disocver that Spirit has developed a problem with one of its wheels. The boffins say Spirit can work around the problem; I guess it's no big deal. So much for that.

Hurling Fastballs
Here's an interesting article about the history of the Fastball.
If nothing else, it's a jolly good read.

- Art Neuro

Cassini Update
The Cassini Huygens probe moved in on Staurn's moon Phoebe. Phobe turned out to be quite pock-marked with craters, which has sent the experts asking questions.

"What spectacular images," Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "So sharp and clear and showing a great many geological features, large and small. It's obvious a lot of new insights into the origin of this strange body will come as a result of all this."

Wow. You can just feel that excitement! :)
Phoebe has not been aprroached since Voyager 2 did a flyby in 1981, but it went by at 1000times the distance.

Mars Rover Update
Both Spirit and Opportunity have reached their destinations. Spirit is at the bottom of the Columbia Hills. The good news is it's looking uphill, not down hill (b'boom). Opportunity is heading down into Endurance Crater located in the Meridiani PLanum.

Moneyball Update
A great article on the boys of Moneyball, the famous Top 7 Oakland Athletics' first round draft picks of 2004. If you've read the book, you'll know why this is exciting.

Key Psycho Update
I'm cuttin' I'm Cuttin'...

Knee Update
Getting Better All the Time. Went to baseball practice for the first time in 7 weeks. Threw the ball, fielded some grounders, made my crow-hops and throws to 1B, hit some balls too. Felt GOOD. Still hobbling, though.

- Art Neuro

This Has Gotta Hurt
A Presidential Commission is recommending the de-bureaucratisation of NASA. Cutting to the chase, the salient points of the recommendation are:

1. NASA centers be spun off as Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC). The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., commonly misidentified as a NASA field center, is actually an FFRDC managed by the California Institute of Technology.

2. NASA allow the private industry "to assume the primary role of providing services to NASA, and most immediately in accessing low-Earth orbit."

3. NASA and Congress work together to create three new organizations within the space agency: a technical advisory board, a independent cost estimating organization, and a research and technology organization that sponsors high risk technology development efforts.

It's not a bad thing. Yet, the problem will be how willing NASA would be to crawl out of the 'Aerospace is the big work-for-the-dole scheme for us all' mentality as observed by Susan Faludi in her book, 'Stiffed'.

- Art Neuro

Sad Relics on Sale
The NY Daily News reports that the late Thurman Munson's pilot's licence will be auctioned off as memorabilia. It's one of those things that irks people.

Munson, the Yankees' first captain since Lou Gehrig, brought pride and swagger back to a franchise that fell on hard times by the early '70s. He was the American League MVP in 1976 when the Yankees won their first pennant in 12 years. Munson, an enthusiastic amateur pilot, died on August 2, 1979 while practicing takeoffs and landings at Akron-Canton Regional Airport.

Diana Munson said it's not easy to part with her husband's belongings. "I thought it would be a great way to share pieces of his story. Each piece is a piece of Thurman," she said. "But the pilot's license does not bring happy memories. It's nothing that brings me joy."

My heart keeps aching over Thurman's death on 2nd August 1979. One of the saddest days in my sad old childhood. All the kids in the nieghbourhood were speechless on the street where we were playing stick ball. People talk about where they were when JFK got whacked. I remember where I was when a little old lady came rushing out to tell us Thurman Munson was gone. I guess she cared too.

Next thing I knew I was in bloody Australia, far, far away from the Yankees. :)

- Art Neuro

Jai and Darren on set, discussing Life, the Universe and Everything.
- Art Neuro

DOP Peter Beeh shoots in the shower while Producer Benden Dannaher squirts some fake blood onto the shower curtain in our attempt to parody the famous 'Psycho' shower-murder-scene-montage.
- Art Neuro

Bernadette Marr relaxes during rehearsals, also 6th May 2004.
- Art Neuro

Darren Schnase on 6th May rehearsing his Johnny Rocco lines for Scene 21 of 'Key Psycho. I know this because after this scene, I had bugger-all time to take photos.
- Art Neuro

Warwick Poulsen on set of 'Key Psycho' 7th May 2004. Obviously having a wonderful time playing the character of Curtly Primrose. I found this photo in my production folder today so I thought I'd share it with you all.
- Art Neuro

Move Over Jimi, Let Rover Take Over
Here's more new from the Mars Rover missions.

Regarding the overall health of the twin vessels of Mars exploration, both robots continue to perform well.

Several things could kill the rovers, such as a key electronic part failure or the wearing down of a critical mechanical piece of equipment. To date it has been so far, so good as the robots continue to march their way across the Martian landscape.

"If both of those things hold out, then what is probably going to get us is dust build-up on the solar arrays," Squyres said. "Right now, we're seeing a pretty sharp drop off in solar power on both vehicles. That's a consequence of both the onset of winter and declining solar power because of the dust build-up."

Despite this issue, Squyres said rover engineers think the two robots will survive through the winter and to the next spring on Mars.

They think the Robots might make it to the next Martian winter if they can survive this winter. That's nearly another 2 Standard Earth Years of operability, is it not?
Woohoo!

- Art Neuro

Die Hard Conservatives of the Ancien Regime
This is sad, but funny. French Royalists have determined that a relic of a heart was indeed that of Louis XVII, so of Louis XVI and Marie "Let-them-Eat-Cake" Antoinette. So they have pressed their case with the Republic to hold a funeral for the late King. A little late, but better late than never, I guess.

Historian Philippe Delorme, who wrote a book about Louis XVII and organized the genetic tests, lists the facts of the boy's brief but grim life as follows:

Louis XVII lost his parents to the guillotine in 1793. He was locked in Paris' Temple prison for three years. The boy was brainwashed, with captors forcing him to sing revolutionary songs and curse his mother's memory. He also spent months alone in a dark tower, with nobody to wash him or clean his cell.

Then they go on to draw a long bow comparing the late heir to the throne to present day victims of child abuse. Excuse me, but the Bourbons did preside over a France that produces Giles DeRay and the Marquis DeSade. 'One Hundred Days of Sodom' wasn't a fantasy, it was a catalogue of evil-ass-mother-f*cker-shit aristocrats used to get up to in France. However, that is beside the point.

What's truly funny is that there is some guy who claims descent through the House of Anjou which disputed the throne with the Bourbons, and he was there. This is plain silly. If you don't think the Bourbons are the rightful Kings, then why turn up to the funeral? Oh well, so much for the logic of it all. A few weeks back, Tony Robinson (a.k.a. Bladrick) appeared in an interesting documentary that disputed the right of succession to the Windsors. In that documentary, Robinson found out that there was a much better claimant to the throne than Henry VII (no big surprise there), and followed that family to the present, only to find out the man (Michael Hastings) lived in Australia and voted for a Republic. It was a corker of a programme and threw a dirty big rock at the House of Windsor. So much for succession and the 'Divine Right of Kings'.

- Art Neuro

The Old School Way
I remember Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk playing catcher for the Red Sox. I remember those heady September clashes; the knockdowns; the so-called rivalry (it's more one-sided than the word rivalry implies); the Boston Massacre; the Bucky "F." Dent homer. I remember it all so dearly, but I never saw 'Neion Deion' Sanders.

This is a true-to-the-bone Old School rant by Carton Fisk. :)
This bit cracked me up:

I said, "There's a right way and a wrong way to play the game, and you're playing it wrong. And guess what? It offends guys like me. So if you don't play this friggin' game right, I'm going to kick your (butt) right here at home plate of Yankee Stadium."

And why I would say that to a guy wearing the Yankee uniform, after wearing the Red Sox uniform all the time, I don't know. But there's a certain respect for the game, the Yankees, Yankee Stadium, the tradition.

LOL.

- Art Neuro

Busy, Busy, Busy
This is probably a good thing that I have so much to get through. I'm learning Final Cut Pro; I've started cutting 'Key Psycho'; I have to check the script again for publication; I still have to search for a job; I'm really snowed under here.
So apologies to our regular readers if I haven't written regular in the past week. This situation will continue for some more weeks as I get my head around Final Cut Pro AND my film.

There's been little exciting news on in the space front as well.
Ronald Reagan passed away at 93. The Yankees are winning, Derek Jeter seems to be out of his slump but has now missed three games with a groin injury (helping my fantasy baseball teams greatly in the fortnight). Some young dufus won the French Open; Harry Potter III is slaying them at the box offices; Brad Fittler may make a return to the NSW Stae of Origin side (does anybody care any more?); They've caught terror suspects in Australia; The Earth spins, the Sun shines... Life goes on. :)

- Art Neuro

Saying Hello to Saturn
The Cassini Huygens craft launched in 1997 is finally arriving in the vicinity of Saturn. The craft is a joint venture between NASA, the ESA and the Italian Space Agency.

Cassini is now steering toward the small Saturnian moon of Phoebe following a flawless six-minute course correction last week. During that short engine burn, Cassini used all the systems it will muster for its orbital approach with Saturn on June 30.

Earl Maize, deputy program manager for the Cassini effort at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told SPACE.com that mission controllers have been practicing operations for that final orbital insertion maneuver, a 96-minute burn that will twice carry the spacecraft through the plane of Saturn's rings. Previously in the mission, spacecraft handlers conducted an eight-day dress rehearsal of Cassini's Saturn approach in which the spacecraft turned and underwent every maneuver but engine firing, he added.

The crucial burn will slow the spacecraft to allow orbital capture. Cassini's main engine will be turned to face the direction of travel during the burn. The thrust will act like a brake.

And Now, For Something Completely Different
A European Company is working on a craft to help satellites that are running short of fuel. ConeXpress is sort of a space tugboat, powered by ion engines, ready to help out the expensive satellites, ready to fall out of the sky.

ConeXpress adopts a slow and steady approach to satellite service calls by using an ion engine to reach ailing spacecraft. The engine uses electricity from tug's solar panels to charge xenon gas, then spits ionized particles through a nozzle to provide thrust.

Once the space tug arrives at a satellite it uses a docking probe to attach itself to the kick motor of the target craft, then it fulfills all the spacecraft's navigation and propulsion needs. Altogether, ConeXpress should be able to increase a single satellite's operational lifetime by up to a decade.

But one the primary challenges facing Orbital Recovery is the need to convince satellite providers that an orbital lift by ConeXpress is more useful and cost effective than launching new spacecraft.

And there's the rub. However, it is good to see private concerns space getting up.

- Art Neuro

Here We Go!
SpaceShipOne is ready for her maiden voyage.

SpaceShipOne will rocket to 62 miles (100 kilometers) into sub-orbital space above the Mojave Civilian Aerospace Test Center, a commercial airport in the California desert. If successful, "it will signal that the space frontier is finally open to private enterprise," explained a Scaled Composites release.

Allen, founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc, is financing the project. Along with Allen, Vulcan's technology research and development team -- which takes the lead in developing high impact science and technology projects for Allen -- has been active in the project's development and management.

I like how they haven't announced who the first non-Government Astronaut is going to be. It's just as momentous a step as when Yuri Gagarin made it to orbit, but we won't know his/her name until it's done. This is one for the Common Man as opposed to one for the Supermen with the Right Stuff. Maybe we should be popping champagne on the 21st?

When You're On To A Good Thing, Keep Going
The two Mars Rover probes have now accomplished what they have been slated to do. This means they are now into bonus time, doing extra bits of roving.

Earlier in their mission, both Spirit and Opportunity found evidence that salty seas once covered parts of the Red Planet.

Opportunity has skirted the rim of a stadium-sized crater nicknamed "Endurance," searching for a way to examine an outcropping of bedrock near the lip.

Scientists said they want to examine the outcrop before a crucial instrument -- the mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer -- begins to malfunction during the subfreezing Martian nights.

The JPL team knew they would eventually lose the mini-TES, which determines rock composition, but a heater malfunction that has sapped the rover's solar power supply has sped the inevitable, mission manager Matt Wallace said.

So it's been a good news day for the spacefreak frontier. :)

- Art Neuro

Saving Telescope Hubble
No, it won't be taking 8 men into a wartorn France, it's going to be a robot-mission according to NASA's chief. Astronomers everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief.

NASA was ready to pull the plug on Hubble. But there was a huge outcry over the loss of the telescope responsible for the most dramatic and colorful pictures from space.

An Internet petition was signed by thousands, O'Keefe's e-mail system was clogged with complaints and members of Congress demanded reviews.

Even John Glenn weighed in, saying another servicing mission was necessary "to get every year's value out of that thing." And other astronauts, including those who had worked on Hubble over the years, wrote O'Keefe arguing that the risk was worth taking.

Yes, John Glenn, the man certified by Tom Wolfe to have 'the Right Stuff' weighed in on this. How cool is that? Astroboy would be proud.

Learning New Things
I'm studying how to work this mysterious thing known as a 'Macintosh' and how to cut pictures using 'Finalcut Pro HD'. Arcane magic. I never thought I'd say this, but the PC format with its nasty little Microsoft OS never looked so comfortable to me. :)

My posts here might be less frequent in the coming days, I don't know. But I'll be back once I conquer the 'Macintosh' thingy.

- Art Neuro0

More Thoughts on Getting 'Stiffed'... Or Is It 'Staffed'?
If so many of the fathers of the babyboomers had cursory jobs, then it is possible we must ask, that some of our fathers had such jobs. What gets outlined in the book is a process whereby so many white-collar fathers found themselves in arbitrary layers of management without something concrete to achieve. In that sense, a job, as they had it contrasts starkly with having a trade.
So Faludi presents us with a scenario whereby white-collar fathers did not discuss the specific nature of their work with their sons, because they themselves knew that it was arbitrary. What wisdom or skills could be passed down from the abstract paper-pushing in these jobs?

My father worked for a trading company for years, until he went independent. Two aspects of this strike out at me. One was the phase in which he was very frustrated by the company he worked for, because the company was always in the red. It didn't seem to matter what he accomplished as a trader, the damn thing was never going to be any good, because it was a subsidiary of a larger stock-broking firm that had interest in racking up red-ink for tax purposes. I wanted to know ho his trading business worked, but he never really sat me down and explained that. Instead, he explained that I should try and become a doctor or a lawyer, and we all know where that ended up.

Now why was he pushing this profession stuff on me? I think he felt he didn't have enough skills to be marketed except for his skills in the market place; and hat he felt a man should have skills he could rely on, and a job with social status to protect him. My response to that was that Medicine was essentially plumbing with humans, and was not some special *thing*. We were both actually very close to the nature of labour in our society, but we could not articulate what Susan Faludi is articulating in her book.

What are the important and necessary skills in our society? Whatever they are, then, they truly deserve the term 'profession'. Let's say this part of our society is not the garbage-in-garbage-out end of the system. Coherent input that is expressed as economic needs is the in and the resulting service it the output. As the grade of the input gets away from needs, the more the output becomes hazy. And so, everything else is just a process of place-holding in jobs. (The recent boom in 'Human resources' is fascinating. It seems to me, it is a situation where a bunch of people got jobs to tell other people where to go get jobs. Isn't that just a meta-job?)

For instance, is journalism a profession? Is it even necessary in our society? While all of us hunger for information, the truth is, our economic need for most information is pretty low. Do we really need to know about the mating habits of Hollywood stars and starlets? Do we really need to know the curious finds scientists make in the universe? What do we really need to know? Perhaps, the most useful function of the Newspaper is the classified section and the advertising it carries?

What about education? What about accounting? What about marketing? What the hell are these jobs? How much do we really need this stuff? And now I can see that there are federal politicians thinking the very same thing: Why don't we just cut the crap out and see what really is required to run a society? And if people fall by the wayside, just institutionalise them; in prisons and mental asylums. Give them names PTSD. ADD. Why did Stalin have gulags? Because if one were rational, there simply weren't enough meaningful jobs to go around, so the excess population had to be culled. It's all perfectly rational, you see? :)

Most of what we do is meaningless. Some of us were born with this meaninglessnes, while others have achieved it, but the truth is most of us had it thrust upon us. The tissue of lies that keeps us separated from the kind of existence we find in 'Grapes of Wrath' or 'the Gulag Archipelagos' and Death Camps are quite thin indeed.

- Art Neuro