A BRIEF SUMMARY OF HOW IMAGINATION LED TO WHAT I AM TODAY

First, from the Sunday New York Times: The Sunday Question: How long will McCarthy last as speaker? McCarthy's concession to win the job made it easier for hard-right lawmakers to oust him, so his tenure could be short. But Democrats looking to cut deals with McCarthy could supply votes to save him if conservatives revolt.

Also, tomorrow night, TCU vs Georgia for the NCAA football championship, and on Tuesday, the release of Prince Harry's memoir, Spare.

I yesterday watched on my local PBS channel, First Contact: An Alien Encounter, a British program dramatizing what would happen if we encountered an incoming alien signal and/or artifact. While this Guardian review did not take the effort too seriously, I did agree that it was mostly boring.

Yet, triggered was my posting of today on this subject, and the subject of the day...imagination. Oh, here is a list of 655 films featuring extraterrestrials, so my wild dabblings are sometimes popular.

Sunday is a spiritual day for many. Me? I like to imagine things. But I can't say I've always had much imagination. In fact, I was only an above average student until my junior year of high school, when something inexplicable happened, or maybe delusional is more accurate, and I decided that I wouldn't even bother to apply to the University of Hawaii, and only seek admission to Stanford and Cal Tech. Incredibly enough, I did get accepted to both and selected Stanford because they offered a lot more money. Click on this for just one story about how this happened, or another.

Filled with some enthusiasm and confidence after those years, my mind has wandered and wondered at will, and in the mid-1970s I segued into another direction fueled by my imagination to work for the NASA Ames Research Center on a subject dealing with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The hope was to extract from the sky The Encyclopedia Galactica providing clues on how humanity can attain world peace, and other useful hints from a civilization a billion years more mature.

Then a few years later, I joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to solve the enigma of laser fusion, as all stars use this process for energy. In 1979, straight from LLNL, I joined the staff of U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga and helped draft the first bill for hydrogen and OTEC. Someday, the Hydrogen Society will feature laser fusion and hydrogen-powered aircraft. The OTEC link led me to the Blue Revolution, where I'm with a group attempting to secure $150 million for the Pacific International Ocean Station, leading we hope to a $150 billion Ocean City to host the 2050 World Ocean Expo. Watch my recent TEDx talk.

There have been other forays, as best, perhaps, summarized in my MENSA talk of five years ago, where I went into my attempts at World Peace, Geoengineering Solutions for Global Warming, Rainbow Pearls International, Hawaiian Geo-Spas and the Ultimate Ocean Ranch. My imagination had no boundaries.

However, you ask, have I accomplished anything? Well, I'm a Johnny Appleseed planter of ideas, so, someday maybe one or more of the above could bloom into reality.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

THE FIRST 84 YEARS OF MY LIFE

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years. This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition. I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts. The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an 8-iron cover. That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday. I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84. As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....

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