One Point Twentyone Jiggawatts

I dreamed that my brother and I had "borrowed" Doc Brown's DeLorean, and were heading off to the future to see how that whole jihad thing had worked out. The flux capacitor was... fluxing, and the speedometer was nearing the critical 88mph mark. I didn't have a radiation suit on, but I had remembered to pack a cooler full of peanut butter sandwiches and strawberry Fanta.

Unfortunately, I woke up before the sparks started to crackle, so I have no idea what my dream self would've found. Would we find a world where each flying car had the GPS factory-preprogrammed to point to Mecca? Or would we just see a bunch of slacker Eloi dweebs playing backgammon. Or would we fall prey to a trio of giant glowing brains betting thousands of quatloos on gladatorial combat among scantily-clad peroxiders.

Who knows? Maybe we'd have wound up in a sequel to Mad Max. It probably depends on who wins the upcoming election.

Whoa. Heavy.

"Gee, Terry," you ask, "do your dreams always have such deep philosophical foundations? We know that you are one of the more profound sociological & political intellects of our time...but we had no idea that you pondered the future course of humanity even within your slumber. It's obvious that compared to you, Plato and Socrates and Vizzini were all morons!"

Well, thank you for your well-deserved faith in me, but the truth is that my dreams more often tend to concern things like bacchanalian pool parties -- and questions pondered therein seem to be less about envisioning the future and more along the lines of "Dude, where's my car?" But every now and then, I remember something that carries the weight of deep philosophical thought, and (despite the Fanta) I think this dream might've been one of them.

I do know what sparked it. Last night was the 2nd running race in the Sheepherder's fall series, and I was supposed to go out to Waterton Canyon after work to participate. In the end, though, I decided not to -- I needed to finish up some stuff and the office and felt that I couldn't run with any fluidity or speed anyway. But my brother participated, so I met up with him afterwards to find out how it went.

Pat did very well, coming in first overall. (That means that under the handicapping system used, he beat his predicted finish time by the largest amount. It also means that his handicap will now get tougher, and it's unlikely that he'll wind up in that position again. I'll have a pretty big headstart on him if I run the next race in the series.) And after the run, he wanted to grab something to eat. Since there's no Fazoli's on the way home from Waterton, we went to Taco Bell.

As we usually do, we chatted about diverse worldly topics including illegal immigration*, the Wall Street hiccup (and associated congressional plans to ensure that free markets continue to function freely by regulating the hell out of them), and whether or not Americans in general are as stupid as political advertisers seem to think they are.

*Is it just me, or is the irony of discussing illegal immigration at a Taco Bell almost as delicious as a Grilled Stuft Burrito?

When he lived in Washington DC, my brother became heavily involved in the "Futures" industry, which means that he made his living by forecasting industrial and political trends and then telling folks what to do to be prepared through the coming decades. Some of their predictions have already come true, such as the need for Diversity Training due to the changing demographics within the workforce. And Pat insists that in the 90s, his research had shown that terrorists would likely use airplanes in attacks on the US, and that the stock market would eventually freak out due to the economy's migration from a production-based to information-based paradigm. (He didn't have any documentation of this with him -- we were at a Taco Bell following a running race, after all -- but I am willing to take his word for it. After all, if you can't trust somebody from Washington, well, who can you trust?)

Anyway, I won't attempt to paraphrase the entire discussion here. But we basically concluded that it really doesn't matter who gets elected or what Congress does about the stock market, because Global Warming* is going to kill us all in a couple of years anyway.

*Oh come on, you didn't really believe that, did you? Ha! Face it, Global Warming is less of a threat than the World Domination plans of Ryan Secrest, or the idea of making a sequel to "Mama Mia". No, the real danger comes from Klaatu, Gort, and various guys named "Darth".

At some point, I'll probably subject you to my ideas about what I think the future might look like, but at this point I'll just remind you that our society does not have a very good track record with long-term forecasts. I recognize that it's far to early to know if "Planet of the Apes" was on target or not, but I can tell you that the world shown in "2001–A Space Odyssey" did not come to pass. In the 1960s, everyone agreed that we'd have colonies on Mars by Y2K at the very least, and would probably have flying cars, silver jumpsuits, and pills that turned into a turkey dinner by popping it into a toaster. Humans would all be anorexically thin, and would have huge bulging craniums to hold telekinetic brains and implanted communication devices. But none of that has happened.

I blame it on Congress's lack of regulatory action. If only they'd have passed laws requiring cars to fly and brains to expand, we'd be living in a Jetson-like utopia now, instead of having to worry about mortgages, terrorists, and inappropriately-compensated CEOs.

Oh well. Perhaps my dream will continue tonight, and I'll then be able to give you a report on future conditions when the DeLorean and I make our lightning-emblazoned return to the present. If there are any sandwiches left at that point, I'll be glad to share. Have a great day!