210820, The Sentinel, Movies, Cycles, Galley

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Movies

Many movies come from author’s books and it astounds me on how authors can predict future events. Way back in the thirties there was a series with Buck Rogers and he was traveling to the moon in a hokey looking space ship and 4 decades later we went to the moon. Late 1940s George Orwell wrote a book titled “1984” with surveillance cameras everywhere and there were constant wars and now we are watched and monitored everywhere we go today. Also in Orwell’s book, the ministry of truth’s main job was to rewrite history. That is what has been done here for at least 50 years. Arthur C. Clark wrote 100 books; his best seller was “2001 a Space Odyssey.” In his book, the artificially intelligent computer “Hal” helping control systems on the space ship decided it would take over the ship and wrest control from the human pilot. Today our latest generation fighter aircraft are controlled by computer systems that do 90% of flight and threat protection because humans cannot react fast enough and artificial intelligence will soon control everything. Movie watchers may have noticed how many movies today have artificially intelligent robots in concert with humans and in some cases they are fighting rouge artificially intelligent robots that are killing humans.

Cycles

We live in a world of cycles. There are 4 seasons we go through every year. Crops have cycles that follow the sun. Every 24 hours day gives in to night and then night gives in to day again. Fashions cycle every year. What’s new this year is old next year and at some point old becomes new again. Empires rise and then fall all through history. We humans are born clueless, helpless and unable to function without someone’s help. We begin to grow, gain intelligence, get stronger and capable of taking care of ourselves for a long time and then, we get very old, feeble, sometimes clueless and unable to survive without someone else’s help, thereby completing the cycle.

Recurring Thoughts

Every time Joyce cooks eggs for a meal, I think back to my 94 days working in the Naval Air Station galley. I started scraping uneaten food off steel trays and dumping garbage for 12 hours a day. Later I was put on the night 12 hour shift. There I had the pleasure of scraping out steel serving pans and huge cooking pots for a few hours before making box lunches for outgoing flights the next day. I didn’t mind making sandwiches, but what I didn’t like was having to put and spread butter on the bread. That seemed wrong. Then as morning approached, I was placed at the big iron grill cooking bacon, sausage and eggs. I had never cooked anything in my life before then and I couldn’t crack an egg without breaking the yoke and leaving egg shell in the egg. I was a fast learner though. Before long I could handle bacon, sausage and crack eggs in both hands at a time and float them perfectly onto the iron grill. The only hitch then was the eggs themselves. Back then eggs were purchased by the navy, transported to a cold storage facility in California, then loaded on a naval supply ship and then on a slow trek to Guam. Those eggs were months old by the time they got to Guam, so old that when I would crack and place them on the grill they would be green and black and want to dance across the grill. I had to catch them, scrape them into the side tray and continue on like nothing happened. It turned out I actually enjoyed running the grill.