It has been exactly one week since the horrible news of a gas and oil spill into the San Francisco Bay. The media tells us that 58 thousand gallons poured out of a fully loaded container ship bound for Korea when it clipped the middle tower of the western Bay Bridge span. We've all heard the finger pointing of blame in the news. We've all seen the impact on wildlife, especially seabirds. We all know that oil and water don't mix. It only took a day before the oil slick contaminated the shoreline around the middle of the bay, and then seeped out to the beaches on the Pacific coast.

Those who know me in San Francisco know how much I like to spend my afternoons down at the beach when itís a sunny "Baker Day". We get about 80 per year. Baker Beach is located only 20 short city blocks away from my home / office. I ride my bike down there 95% of the time. Being down on Baker can be a vibrant social scene; a gymnasium; a place to relax, be creative or read. Most days it resembles a fun vacation day, like at Club Med. It is also a wildlife refuge. Naturally, this catastrophe became an issue dear to my heart. Being so near the impact zone, I had to go down there myself and see the damage.

On Friday, I arrived solo and stepped under the yellow "CAUTION!" tape onto an empty beach. It was bizarre to walk completely alone to the north Baker hangout spot. As soon as I reached the surf I saw small globules of oil collected at the high tide mark. The oil balls were thick, chunky and shiny. Some seabirds were floating near the wave break or running around on the beach looking for food. I saw a few oil blemishes on their feathers. The scene - all alone in a toxic zone on a hot day - was very apocalyptical. It only took 10 minutes until I was spotted laying low at our duney site. Fellow beach pal Heinz met me at the steps to the bike rack just as I was being escorted out by a national park security guard. We sat above the beach closure sign on a beach dune overlook. From our perch we could see the full length of the beach both ways. We watched as the guard swooped out in his ATV to intercept other trespassers. With a heavy heart we spotted three bottlenose dolphins languishing about 20 meters offshore, as a slick of oil sludge drifted by on calm seas. They seemed to be resting, or perhaps recovering. The toxic shock must be a tremendous strain on all the wildlife of the Bay Area.

Today was another return day, except there was fog lingering on the coast, the kind you donít see until you are just about to drop the hill down to Baker. I decided to ride on because I told Meg and Heinz I'd meet them at our beach spot if we could get in, or at our Friday beach dune overlook. When I got there I saw the beach was still closed so I went to the overlook. Instead of a security guard patrolling the beach, two lines of a dozen white-suited toxic clean up crews slowly combed the beach. Meg and Heinz arrived with Tom, another fellow Baker aficionado. As we watched the clean up crew scour the beach a sea gull landed near us, hoping for a handout. The gull had oil splotches all over its body, with sizeable amounts on its head and webbed feet. We fed the hungry victim. The sight of the workers and the grimy bird set off an impassioned discussion between the four of us.

Heinz thought if a dolphin washed ashore dead, the authorities would try to get it out unseen without unwanted attention. Tom lamented on the breakdown of communications and the late containment response. He also pointed out that our spill was small compared to yesterdayís spill in the Black Sea, or the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, 200 times bigger. Meg cried at the thought of all the suffering animals. For whatever it was worth, I apologized to the tainted gull below my breath.

If there can be any positive outcome to the 2007 oil spill, maybe the people of the Bay Area will become horrified enough to demand change. Perhaps as outraged and conscious people we can visualize phasing out oil and gas ASAP. In my opinion, the oil companies need to go. Battling them is David vs. Goliath. They are dangerous, unnecessary, and make profit-minded decisions without public oversight. They have been buying up alternative energy patents for decades. They quashed Tesla's free energy technology a century ago. They are also the largest corporations on the planet, some even rivaling the domestic economies of small countries (Exxon/Mobil passed Uruguay early in 2007). Then there is the damage done to the atmosphere by allowing these companies to direct our energy policies by prioritizing carbon-emitting fuels. I place my blame on the oil companies, more than the reckless sea captain or the late cleanup responders. Shame on you oil executives (and your lawyers) for polluting our world, for lobbying politicians to promote your agenda, all in the name of profit. You've not only taken away my favorite place, but much worse, you poisoned the bay.

At one of our How Weird Street Faire wrap-up meetings we discussed the idea of adding a comedy stage for the next How Weird. All humor. All the time. For the whole day. The SF-based comedy group "Killing My Lobster" has tentatively agreed to be a part of it.

It is my belief, along with some of the directors of WPTTO, that indeed, laughter can inspire peace. It should be a part of our educational charter to inspire laughter. Like technology, the moods of people can determine their outlook on life. After all, going to war is no laughing matter. In fact, all wars were created in very serious and somber moods.

This blog entry was inspired today when I visited the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, NY whose mission "is to preserve and celebrate the legacy of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and enrich the world through the healing powers of love and laughter."

One venture of the center is a program called the "Legacy of Laughter" seminars, or LOLs: panel discussions, with audience interaction, that explore and celebrate the inestimable value of laughter. These are moderated by Lucie Arnaz, and panelists include those who create or perform comedy, who use it in their work, or who have been healed by it. One benifactor of the center claims she was cured of cancer by watching "I Love Lucy" reruns!

Hey, if it's possible to laugh our way out of a serious illness, why don't we try it for other things that have gone wrong in the world? As they say, laughter is the best medicine!

  My Hunch about Free Energy A WPTTO director stopped by my flat just now to pick up some "How Weird" postcards and we began talking about benevolent technologies. We were in agreement that the current model of oil / coal / nuclear is woefully outmoded in creating a sustainable energy model for our future. We must consider all the living people, animals, plants and general health of the planet co-existing in a harmonious state, but this is simply not happening. Let's face it, humans are the parasite -- truly messing up nearly all eco-systems on planet earth. There has to be a better way! We've put a man on the moon, created the microchip, and we can communicate or travel globally. But the 19th century invention of an internal combustion engine based on gasoline is the best we can do for personal transportation? It is this technology block that is choking the planet and all its inhabitants. Big Oil / special interests are to blame. Long story short, while all WPTTO Directors very much applaud the prospects of hydrogen energy moving us into the 21st century, there is one festering problem. The nonpolluting aspect of hydrogen is encouraging, but how to create the energy to create the energy? Every scientist would point out the many laws of thermodynamics. I too believe in science, but ...

Last night I heard a lecture in San Francisco by the famed technologist Ray Kurzweil, who is the author of Kurzweil’s Law which explores “the exponential trend of accelerating returns governing life and technology.” Similar in scope to Moore’s Law, which dictates that technology will expand exponentially every 18 months, Kurzweil’s Law factors in social and cultural trends. As the Executive Director of the World Peace Through Technology Organization I feel it important to share some of the insights I learned from the lecture.

Mr. Kurzweil spoke primarily about broad trends with long-term implications leading to a “singularity” which will happen sometime around the year 2042. This singularity will be a point when Artificial Intelligence (AI) will overtake the human brain in intelligence and complexity, among other things. First, it is apparent that technology is growing exponentially and will soon encompass all important aspects of our life. This is evident with a profound paradigm shift every decade. Some trends facilitating this shift include:
1.    From the earliest times the evolution of the human species has accelerated quite predictably along a linear graph.
2.    In this Modern Age information technology (of all kinds) double their power (price performance, capacity, bandwidth) every year.
3.    Instead of a depression due to plummeting prices, instead we are seeing an increase in consumption as price performance increases.
4.    We are now seeing a doubling of the amount of genetic information produced every year.
5.    3D molecular computing will be the next big trend in information technology.
6.    The intersection of biology and technology – the biotech revolution – will soon produce major breakthroughs in better health and longevity.
7.    Designer gene technology through DNA manipulation will soon produce RNA Interference, the ability to switch off genes that do the body harm. This therapy could soon mean the end of cancer, asthma, allergies and many other diseases caused by the body’s overreaction.
8.    Programmed bio medicines will keep pace with gene research growth.

In short, every form of communication, biology and computer technology are doubling every year (x 1000), and we are now in the exciting second phase of exponential growth. We are now seeing the advent of miniaturized mechanical systems called “nanobots,” some as small as blood cells which can explore all aspects of the body, report back on problems or actually fix them. Scientists are doing reverse engineering biology with robotic devices, along with the mapping of the brain – the ultimate source of the new templates of intelligence (AI). If we can just take care of ourselves for the next 10 years, Kurzweil argues, biotech will take care of us after that.

Some final trends that were presented (in no particular order): models for understanding future trends often get simpler over time. Kurzweil showed the beautiful and complex Mandelbrot fractal and said it was only six lines of code to produce. The cost of information creates deflation, but this is what drives the explosive growth. Intelligence can be created through database patterns, including the advent of effective language interpretation technology. Tiny electronics will soon be embedded in the environment, eyeglasses and clothing. Full immersion of visual-auditory virtual reality is just around the corner. Interaction with virtual personalities as a primary interface, along with augmented real reality, is here to stay. Human intelligence will outpace biology, but what are the drawbacks? Namely protection from pathological AI! Indeed, the future appears to be a vastly different world than the one we now know. Let’s hope we don’t forget that we are still human beings …

Those interested in furthering their understand of the above concepts should acquire a copy of Ray Kurzweil’s new book entitled The Singularity is Near