Hari Seldon's Time Vault

Hari Seldon

note: I used a photo of Asa Kasher to represent Hari Seldon.

The Time Vault opened again yesterday. Most of my friends do not attend, thinking that "time vault" is some sort of hop, skip, and jump Olympic-type sports thing, only in time as well as space, and they are too jaded to care what prognostications come from the Foundation on Terminus anymore. 

In fact, most of them think that Dune's Shaddam IV is no other than a thinly veiled representation of Saddam Hussein, presciently written just before Saddam came to power in a big way. 

They would rather plug into Big Media: turn on, tune in, and really substantially drop out from anything meaningful.

Anyway, so Hari Seldon pops into view, still smoking a cigarette, by the way. These videos were made many years ago. 

So Hari Seldon is there, and he like sez so, meh, so we're well on the way to a police-military-intelligence-weaponized state, and he paints a pretty good description of the good old USA going around killing blokes with "aero-drones" (as he cutely calls them), and how our habit of killing scads of people who happen to be having tea in the same restaurant that the 3rd most important organizer of Al Qa'ida does, sort of comes back to haunt us by making people want to come here and bomb us.

Oh, then some stuff about flash crashes of stock markets and loss of liquidity...

Yadda-yadda-yadda.

So he ends, like, saying he voted fer Romney, ha-ha, hack and cough, ha-ha... just kiddin' ! But seriously, he sez it's like we already should have the answer of what to do. Doh!

Well, if we had any glimmer of what to do, we would not be traipsing to the time vault, would we? I'm just asking.

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Hari Seldon Speaks!

Hari Seldon

note: I used a photo of Asa Kasher to represent Hari Seldon.

Actually, it is Henry Liu, but Professor Seldon would have agreed: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JG22Dj06.html Debt capitalism self-destructs By Henry C K Liu In a period of less than a year, what had been described by US authorities as a temporary financial problem related to the bursting the housing bubble has turned into a fully fledged crisis at the very core of free-market capitalism. A handful of analysts have been warning for years that the wholesale deregulation of financial markets and the wrong-headed privatization of the public sector during the past two decades would threaten the viability of free-market capitalism. Yet ideological neoliberal fixation remain firmly imbedded in US ruling circles, fertilized by irresistible campaign contributions from profiteers on Wall Street, methodically purging regulatory agencies of all who tried to maintain a sense of financial reality. This ideology of "market knows best" has allowed the nation to slip into an unsustainable joyride on massive debt giddily assumed by all market participants, ranging from supposedly conservative banks, investment banks and other non-bank financial institutions, to industrial corporations, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and individuals...

The Seldon Vault Opens: Obama

Hari Seldon

note: I used a photo of Asa Kasher to represent Hari Seldon.

"...at this time, you have most probably received a speech from the first black candidate for US President. The entire country will have embraced the wisdom shown in this speech and the country will renew itself..."

At this point, the dignitaries gathered in the Seldon Vault looked at each other with surprise and dismay, for the speech indeed had been delivered, but the crumby Right could not appreciate it. What would happen now?

"...your course for the future is obvious."

There was pandemonium. The vault room quickly emptied and the people scattered in many directions. Quite alone now, the holographic likeness of Hari Seldon went on, unheeded. "...and most unfortunately, the Tibet people who risked their lives, knowing full well that the Chinese tyrants would kill them, will have died in vain on the altar of Olympic money."

Hari Seldon Speaks

Hari Seldon

note: I used a photo of Asa Kasher to represent Hari Seldon.

Upon reading the Terra Daily article

Shenzhou VII Spaceship Airlock Module, Spacesuit Pass Initial Ground Tests

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Shenzhou_VII_Spaceship_Airlock_Module_Spacesuit_Pass_Initial_Ground_Tests_999.html

we headed right to the Seldon vault where the darkling enery hologram of Hari Seldon was drinking a cup of Earl Grey, hot, thanks to the Grace Tea Company of NY.

We asked him whether, when man returns to the Moon, the flight will be Chinese or American. He picked up his Magic 8 Ball and peered at it. We laughed. It breaks the tension, you know.

Anyway, the odds that it will be a Chinese mission has increased from 33% to 37%.

I am going to call my bookie in Vegas...or Vega.

Hari Seldon Speaks!

Hari Seldon was the father of the mathematical discipline of Psychohistory, as delineated by Isaac Azimov in the Foundation series of books. So, Seldon's vault opens once again and he speaks to us: When man returns to the Moon, the probability of Chinese nationality individuals being among the crew is 60%; the probability that the mission will be a Chinese mission is 33%; the probability that no Americans will be along for the ride is 5%. The 5% probability that no Americans would be on the mission was vanishingly small - about .00007667 % just 5 years ago. Wow!

Hari Seldon

note: I used a photo of Asa Kasher to represent Hari Seldon.