Never work for free. There’s a near 100% chance the recipient will be ungrateful… and you know how I know they won’t be grateful? Because if they cared about your work, they wouldn’t have asked you to do it for free in the first place.

          

Late last summer, the last week of August IIRC, a young woman who at the time I thought was a friend, asked me “Where is your money, Fred?”  I gave her an answer that is literally true with respect to the money I’ve gotten in the past:  I told her it’s tied up in various projects.  The question, however, is more than that, it would be better taken as “Where’s my real money?” i.e., the wealth that will let me live a truly independent life doing the things that are important to me?  That answer is just as brief, but much more complex:  It’s in the future.

I’ve had various levels of “success” over the course of my life’s experiences, but every one of them has been short-lived, ultimately for the same reason:  When it’s been time to celebrate some measure of success, to experience the joy of achievement that inspires moving on to the next level, I’ve been alone.  A “celebration” without the depth of sharing it with someone special is merely a hollow facade, a staged play that fails to uphold the illusion as soon as you look behind the scenes.

Try celebrating by yourself all the time.  During the first round or two, or perhaps a few, you’ll be able to convince yourself you are having fun.  There will be, however, a feeling that something is missing.  That feeling will grow with every passing event.  Left unchecked, it will become a disillusionment that sees every celebration as nothing more than a charade.

When Michael Collins was orbiting the Moon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on its surface, he was described as “the loneliest man in the universe.”  That characterization isn’t really accurate:  He was the most isolated man in the universe, but the one who is most lonely is one who is alone in the middle of a crowd of people.

I told her it was going to take a miracle for me to pull it off.  What I didn’t say, which perhaps I should have, was that the miracle I needed was to find that I had someone with whom to build our future, someone to share real celebrations and bring the joie de vie into my world that has been horribly missing for so long.  Just as Neo needed Trinity’s kiss to start his new life, I need to find a spark.  It’s not (strictly) necessary for me to find someone who is going to be a development partner in one, many or all of my efforts:  The missing critical part of the picture is a catalyst, someone who makes it possible to see and believe in the next step down the road to success.

Until I find and connect with my key partner, my real wealth is going to remain in the future.  It disturbs me when I consider the possibility that could end up being the net result of my life.  I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen.

          

At 05:40:56 GMT on 14 December, 1972, Apollo 17 Mission Commander Gene Cernan returned to the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) Challenger, ending the last Extravehicular Activity (EVA) of what would prove to be the final expedition of the Apollo program. To date, no other humans have yet returned to set foot on the Lunar surface, foisting on Captain Cernan the dubious honor and title of being “The Last Man on the Moon.”

Gene Cernan, along with the rest of us who were space enthusiasts in that era, expected our off-planet explorations would continue, expanding our knowledge and reach across the cosmos at the same time.  Long before he passed away on  16 January 2017, Captain Cernan wrote “Too many years have passed for me to still be the last man to have left his footprints on the Moon. I believe with all my heart that somewhere out there is a young boy or girl with indomitable will and courage who will lift that dubious distinction from my shoulders and take us back where we belong. Let us give that dream a chance.”

It’s now fifty (50) years later, and still no one has set foot on soil beyond this globe we call Earth.  It’s time to go back, to the Moon and beyond, because there’s not enough room or resources here for the 8+ billion people living on our planet.  We need SPACE to grow, and a frontier where society can let off steam.  Government funded space programs are floundering in politics, and the only way commercial space will work is if investors can be shown a profit at the bottom line.  That’s a reasonable expectation on their part, and I believe I can make it happen.  Please see Race To Space, Space Power Now, L5 Condos, and some of the other projects I’ve got cooking to wake this up.

Given sufficient interest, I’ll reissue the Last Man on the Moon t-shirt.  Note that the shopping cart on L5Development.com isn’t working at this point (bit rot due to lack of time for attention), so you’ll have to email me or contact me on LinkedIn to let me know you’re interested.

          

I just started a new job, and the employee benefits program is administered through an outfit called Employee Navigator from Bethesda, Maryland.  The first thing I noticed is their site is seriously broken if Javascript isn’t enabled, and they don’t bother to say anything about it.  When creating an account in their system, they’ve got a ludicrious requirement that usernames must be at least 8 characters long – so I can’t use “wfredk” as I do everywhere else – and they don’t bother to announce the limitation until after you’ve submitted the form with your username and password selection (which resets your password entry).  Oh, by the way, they don’t have a password confirmation field, either – they have a button to show what you’ve entered in the password field – which only works if Javascript is enabled.

Once you’ve logged in, the sheer incomptence of this bunch of amateurs starts to reveal itself:  Instead of having pages formatted using HTML, the documents a new employee are supposed to sign have the HTML code embedded into them – and much of the HTML is actually defective.  It looks to me as if someone pasted HTML into a text-only field of a CMS and didn’t bother to check if the result was correct.  (I’ve included the actual contents of the pages in question below.)  Since I’ve got extensive experience as a Web developer, I was able to sift through the HTML and figure out what I was supposed to be signing up for.

The first page, Electronic Signature and Consent, wasn’t too bad:

In spite of my reservations, I “signed” the Electronic Signature and Consent page, and continued on to the Premium Only Plan page – which, again, was obfuscated with inline HTML code.  Here is where I was really horrified, and decided I couldn’t continue the process:

At the bottom of the page, I found this paragraph prompting me to “sign” the document.

The problem here is that this does NOT say that it’s NOT an agreement to the terms and conditions described on the page.  Because that clause is missing, a “signature” here (again, without any real proof of who signed the page because of the previous document) could be interpreted as acceptance of the terms and conditions as described.  That would be rather like signing a blank check and passing it to someone you really don’t know.  To me, it looks like they’re asking for a license to commit fraud.  There is no way I would voluntarily and consciously do such a thing.

Furthermore, because of second thoughts, and of observation of other business practices of this company, I am revoking the authority and consent I hesitantly made on the first page, by sending an email notification to mybenefits@bks-partners.com and several people at the agency I’m working through, with CC’s to a couple of my own email addresses as supporting documentation.

Take another look at the problems I marked in red on the Premium Only Plan page.  It’s precisely this sort of behaviour that got the credit industry slapped on the wrist with a sledge hammer.  If the “employee benefits” companies don’t clean up their act pretty quickly, perhaps it’s time for a Congressional inspection of their practices as well…

As promised, here are the “as presented” contents of the pages mentioned in this post:

          

These “products” are simply rebranded copies of Blender – a free and open source 3D creation suite that you can download and use for free.  3DMagix, 3DMagixPro and IllusionMage are scams because they are selling you software that don’t have to pay for.  They advertise heavily via email, and get away with their scam only because people don’t know any better.

If you want to do 3D animation, do yourself a favor – go to Blender.org and download the software for free and help put the scammers out of business.

For more information, see the page about the 3DMagix, 3DMagixPro and IllusionMage scam on the Blender Web site.

To support my work, please buy a pre-publication copy of  Race To Space.  For more info about the project, see the Race To Space site, subscribe there to be kept abreast of its progress.

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

          

Everything.

How does this happen?  A buyer and seller come to agreement on the cost of something.  The buyer gets out his money to pay for it, and the seller says “Wait, I have to add the sales tax.”

How much is the sales tax?  Depending on where the transaction is taking place, the state, county, town, city, and who knows what other government, wants “their” percentage added on.  What percentage?  Well, that depends on where you are – and how many of those governments are reaching into your wallet to take your money, and how much each of them thinks it can get away with.  For example, in New York City, the rate is 8.875% – 4% going to New York state, 4.5% to the city, and 0.375% for the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District – and that’s not the highest rate in the country:  According to the Tax Foundation, that ignoble title falls on Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, each with a 10% tax rate.

We now return to our regularly scheduled transaction, already in progress.  The seller announces a new price, not the one that had previously been agreed on, but a higher one that the buyer has to cover.  The hapless buyer pays the new price, feeling shafted, and the seller, if he has any morals at all, feels guilty about taking more than they’d agreed on in the first place.

Admittedly, the seller doesn’t get to keep any of the additional money he collected as sales tax, he just has to hold onto it, keep track of it, and at the end of the month, or quarter, or whatever the local rules say, promptly send it off to the government(s) in whose name he collected the tax.

Do you see something else wrong with this picture?  How much does the seller get paid for collecting, keeping track of, and sending the sales tax to the government(s)?

Zero.

That’s right, the seller is an unpaid tax collector, extorting (tax) money from the buying public without receiving anything in return.  Why, then, would anyone commit such a crime?  Because if they don’t, the government(s) will confiscate their business, impose fines, or send the merchant to jail:  The seller, under duress, is paying protection money to the government(s) to keep them off his back.

Now we have states arguing that because a buyer is in their state, that gives them jurisdiction over an Internet seller who is not in their state:  They are trying to forcibly deputize every merchant in the country as their tax collectors – without pay.  Instead of being a non-consensual unpaid worker (i.e., slave) for one, two or three jurisdictions as they are now, they want to have every business in the country collecting, counting and sending money to any jurisdiction a buyer happens to come from.  That would be like saying if someone from Omaha got off a cruise ship and walked into a shop in Key West to buy something, the Florida merchant would have to collect and manage Nebraska sales tax.  In addition to being a bookkeeping nightmare for American merchants, it will turn buyers to overseas sellers who don’t have these ludicrious rules to follow.  This has to be stopped, or it’s going to destroy the American economy.

As of today, May 8, 2018, eBay has a petition they are circulating to gather voices against states being able to impose taxes on Internet merchants who are not physically located within their jurisdiction.  Please go to https://t.co/JMhYbuZvlV to add your signature, it will only take a minute.  The money you save will be your own!

How did this all get started?

Some time in the early 1930’s, during the USA’s Great Depression, many state governments were in danger of going bankrupt.  In order to avoid such a failure, they would either have to cut expenses to stay within a balanced budget as a business would (heaven forbid!), or raise taxes.  Raising existing taxes could only be done on a limited basis before a tax revolt took place, what they were looking for was something with a broad base, so lots of people could be taxed “just a little bit” but they’d make up for it in volume.  A direct tax on labor didn’t seem like a good idea because it was feared it would endanger productivity.  Instead, some genius in West Virginia or Kentucky came up with the idea of a tax on the sale of goods where every merchant in the state was deputized as a tax collector, whether they wanted to be or not.  For the states, it was a win-win situation:  They got lots of money so they didn’t have to worry about nuisances like balancing a budget, and they didn’t have to pay anybody to collect it.  Once the pioneering states pulled it off, and got away with it, the idea spread like wildfire until nearly every state in the union has a sales tax.  And if the state can get away with it, why not the county, or the city, or some other synthetic jurisdiction?  After all, once the merchants had been convinced they had to collect the sales tax for the state, how could they object to collecting taxes for more localized governments?

It all stems from the “divine right of kings” (assumed by any government in power) to impose whatever laws and taxes on their subjects that they feel are appropriate.  The fact it was elected officials who enacted sales tax laws does not make it a voluntary choice of the populace:  It was the government adding a new cost onto the public without their consent:  Did anyone vote for a legislator whose platform included adding a new type of tax on their life?  No, it is, in fact, taxation without representation – it was an act undertaken by the government, for the government’s sole benefit, without asking for agreement from the governed.

Taxes, per se, are a crime against the populace, committed by the government imposing them:  Without a prior agreement, stating what was being purchased, for how much, and under what terms, the government presents a demand for money to the subject being taxed.  That person may decline to pay the demand on the grounds that they never agreed to it in the first place.  However, the government will impose whatever sanctions it feels are necessary to collect the money until, under duress, the subject pays.  This is a classic case of one entity initiating the use of force to cause another to do something against their will, or otherwise deprive them of their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  That is the fundamental definition of the commission of a crime.  I cannot imagine a rational argument wherein the mere fact that the action is undertaken by a government makes it not a crime:  It may be lawful – conveniently, since the government wrote the law – but it is still a crime.

But, you say, the government has to have money to pay for essential services!

If the services are essential, people will pay for them when they use them if they are not already being subsidized, and therefore expected to be “free.”  (Maybe railroads would still be viable if “free” roads weren’t sucking all of the traffic off them.)  There are plenty of (business) models that can be used as templates for how to do this, even within the governmental system itself:  Every toll road in the country adds more to the government coffers than it takes out.  Water and sewer services are metered and paid for proportional to use.  Similarly, if people bought police and fire department insurance, the cost of calamities could be spread across the populace without the imposition of taxes.  Even national defense could be handled the same way:  The government could offer broad-based “defense insurance” with a mix of services, or people could selectively buy “army insurance” or “navy insurance” or “air force insurance” depending on who they think is going to provide the best defense for the country.  (I suspect the real “danger” with such a plan – from a government perspective – is that with such an option, people might not buy military insurance at all, and then we’d have to all just get along instead of parading our weapons systems all over the globe.)

Governments should be providing their services within a balanced budget just as any other corporate entity is required to.  If a government wants to provide an unprofitable service, such as underwriting the cost of housing for disadvantaged families, it should be providing that service from the profits it makes on the other services it provides.  Using taxes to arbitrarily pay for programs leads to spending without contemplation of the cost or consequences:  It’s really easy to spend money when it’s not yours and you have a blank check in hand.

So, what’s wrong with sales tax? Everything.

If you’d like to support my work, please buy a pre-publication copy of the Race To Space book.

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

          

One of the SPAM messages I looked at today claimed to be from Fairfax Finance Limited, offering business loans and startup capital.  I was suspicious if for no other reason than because the “fairfax.finance.limited@europe.com” email address looked bogus.  (It turns out europe.com is a parked domain, so how would legitimate mail go through it?)

In my research to see if Fairfax Finance Limited is a real company (which it apparently is, but not related to the email), one of the links Google provided led to a page on ZoomInfo.com that appeared to have some information in an expanded view.  I enabled Javascript for the page, and clicked the “more…” link to see what they had – and got a pop-up window that was trying to get me to install an executable program!  Of course, I shut the window and did NOT install the program, but instead started doing some research on ZoomInfo.com itself, especially after reading the terms and conditions in the popup window that included “… in exchange for downloading and installing the ZoomInfo Contact Contributor utility which, among other features, involves sharing my business contacts as well as headers and signature blocks from emails that I receive.” (emphasis mine)

There’s a Wikipedia page about the company, saying it’s a subscription-based SaaS site that “sells access to its database of information about business people and companies to sales, marketing and recruiting professionals.”  The Wikipedia page also says “Part of the company’s business model involves copying contents of web pages and storing them on its servers, and according to patent attorney Gene Quinn who runs the IPwatchdog intellectual property blog, this activity violates copyright law.”

So, from what I can see, this company builds its database by scraping public info off the Web, and by reading emails its users receive to collect contact information through software the user is expected to install and run on their system – for the sole benefit of ZoomInfo.com!  Then, ZoomInfo turns around and sells that information back to those same users, and to anybody else they can get to buy it – and people pay for this??!??!??  Apparently so, since the company has been in business since 2000 and has 100-200 employees.

… and we wonder why we have so much SPAM …

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

          

In today’s Space History Newsletter, you will find this information:

Program information, NASA manned space flight after 1969

Two major directions were identified for NASA’s manned space flight in the next decade on 11 September 1969. These were further exploration of the Moon, with possibly the establishment of a permanent Lunar surface base, and the continued development of manned flight in Earth orbit, leading to a permanent manned space station supported by a low-cost shuttle system. To maintain direction, the following key milestones were proposed:

• 1972 AAP operations using a Saturn V launched Workshop
• 1973 Start of post-Apollo lunar exploration
• 1974 Start of suborbital flight tests of Earth to orbit shuttle
•   Launch of a second Saturn V Workshop
• 1975 Initial space station operations
•   Orbital shuttle flights
• 1976 Lunar orbit station
•   Full shuttle operations
• 1977 Nuclear stage flight test
• 1978 Nuclear shuttle operations-orbit to orbit
• 1979 Space station in synchronous orbit

By 1990

•   Earth orbit space base
•   Lunar surface base
•   Possible Mars landing

(The acronym “AAP” stands for the “Apollo Applications Program” established by NASA headquarters in 1968 to develop science-based manned space missions using surplus material from the Apollo program.)

Obviously, things didn’t work that way – in effect none of those objectives were achieved:

• the Saturn V Workshop was downgraded to Skylab, with only one workshop launched, and which was later abandoned (see 11 July 1979 Skylab fell – and the American public was robbed)
• Lunar exploration stopped after Apollo 17, never mind putting up a Lunar orbit station or surface base, foisting on Gene Cernan the dubious title of being the Last Man on the Moon
• the “low-cost shuttle” turned into the “Space Transportation System” which proved to be one of the most expensive launch options whose first flight didn’t occur until 1982 and never achieved the number of flights per year that was predicted when the project was proposed, and now discontinued, leaving America without a way to send humans to orbit on our own
• the space station in synchronous orbit never happened, and the Earth orbit space base that was supposed to be in place by 1990 devolved into the International Space Station now with a “permanent” crew of 3-6 occupants
• NASA’s initial space station operations didn’t begin until the first ISS resident crew consisting of one American (commander) and two Russians arrived in November 2000 in the Russian Soyuz TM-31 capsule
• the nuclear stage and nuclear shuttle for orbit to orbit operations have been completely abandoned
• the first human Mars landing hadn’t occurred by 1990, current predictions are that the earliest it will happen is in the 2030’s

So, what went wrong? Essentially, it boils down to politics – President Richard Nixon decided that the American public wasn’t interested in space travel, and cut NASA’s budget drastically, putting the money into the military and social welfare programs. Rather than continuing the peaceful development of space exploration and travel which was driving innovation and economic growth at an amazing pace, America was turned to a weapons manufacturer where “need” is given higher precedence than ability or reason. Among other things, that led to the September 11, 2001 attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and the subsequent “war on terror” that has stripped American citizens of so many of their fundamental rights, and to an economy on the brink of collapse due to uncontrolled expansion of the “entitlement” mentality.

Can this be fixed?

I believe it can – but not if space travel and the economy are left in the hands of the government.

Historically, two things have led to growth of the American economy – expansion into new frontiers, and innovation – creation of new industries, and new methods for existing ones. Since there are no longer any frontiers available on the Earth, there’s only one option left: Innovation is what has to drive economic growth. While there have been bursts of development such as introduction of personal computers and the whole set of industries that grew out of that innovation, and there are many fields where incremental innovation can be seen today, the whole-economy blast of innovation painted in broad strokes that led to six pairs of astronauts landing on the Moon hasn’t been seen since the government-funded space program was castrated in the early 1970’s. Developing a strong space exploration and development program, one that can and will achieve the kind of plans laid out in NASA’s 1969 outline, will require a lot of innovation, in nearly every field of endeavor. That is how to solve the economic woes the country now finds itself mired under.

Does that mean the only way we can get back on track is through another expansion of the government-run space program, by pouring more dollars into NASA? No! For example, America’s transcontinental railroad system wasn’t built as a government project – it was built by investors who recognized a tremendous market opportunity and put their money into it. The “advantage” of using tax dollars to put money into space programs is everybody participates – whether they want to or not. Wouldn’t you rather make your own choices about how your money is being invested, and where future growth will come from? I know I would – which is why I think the government needs to get out of the space “business” and let private enterprise take over.

In order for a healthy space exploration and development business to come to reality, funding has to come from everywhere – from kids bagging groceries, from multinational corporations, and everywhere in between. People and institutions that want to invest into the project need to have a mechanism for doing so, with an understandable and believable way to get a return on their investment. The L5 National Bank bonds briefly outlined on the Space Power Now Development Plan page are a system I am trying to build to make that possible: The objective is to provide investors, large and small, with a good way to invest in the future, to build a space program that will open new frontiers, solve the world’s energy problems, and boost the American economy back into high gear. Building the space business will make the military-industrial complex obsolete, creating jobs that will reduce dependency on social welfare programs, the only realistic solution to their cancerous growth.

It’s going to take political action to stop the “war on terror” and its cohorts – unconstitutional domestic surveillance, militarization of police departments, etc., and people will find it a lot easier to focus on those issues if they don’t have a failing economy about to bury them.

Space – the next frontier – the cure for what ails you!

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy, and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

          

At best, SPAM tools in the wrong hands are a nuisance. An example is the user failing to configure their program properly, resulting in noise emails with Subject lines containing strings such as [?var that are easily filtered out.

August 28th was a day where some truly incompetent SPAM wannabe launched their campaign without even bothering to include a “payload” (e.g., a link to a Web site they want you to visit). On that date, I received nearly 400 SPAM messages with unpatterned From addresses and plausible Subject lines, each containing two lines of random text selections, mostly at least semi-complete sentences – and nothing else. It made finding real messages nearly impossible, and setting up an automated filter to block the noise unfeasible.

There were a couple things I noticed in the noise that made me decide I wanted to save the lot for inspection and contemplation, tidbits of at least marginally useful or interesting information, such as “PLANC is a language in the PASCAL family” (a fact I’m sure I knew at one point but had forgotten) and “Therefore, it takes an average worker over one year to make as much money as his boss makes in one day” (I’m curious to know where that conclusion came from.) I copied the messages to a file whose contents you can find here if you’re interested.

By the time I’d gone through the lot, marked them as SPAM, then went through Thunderbird’s Trash folder to delete them again to make sure I hadn’t thrown a baby out with the bath water, I’d lost a couple of hours more than I usually do to the SPAM problem for the day.

All of which begs the question “what are the right hands for SPAM tools to be in?” I had some thoughts on the matter in my previous SPAMmers are *so* stupid – or are they? post…

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.

          

As it circled Mars on the 25th of July 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter photographed the Cydonia region of Mars. One of the frames included an image of a 2 km (1.2 miles) long mesa, situated at 40.75 degrees north latitude and 9.46 degrees west longitude, with the appearance of a humanoid face.

The “Face on Mars” photo captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter on 25 July 1976

When the image was originally acquired, Viking chief scientist Gerry Soffen dismissed the “Face on Mars” in image 035A72 as a “trick of light and shadow.” In a press release issued on 31 July 1976, NASA provided a caption for the picture stating “The picture shows eroded mesa-like landforms. The huge rock formation in the center, which resembles a human head, is formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth. …”

Since it was originally first imaged, the “face” has been nearly universally accepted as an optical illusion. On 8 April 2001 the Mars Global Surveyor turned so it was looking at the “face” 165 km to the side from a distance of about 450 km. The resulting image has a resolution of about 2 meters (6.6 feet) per pixel in its full-resolution (2400 x 2400 pixels) version. As noted on the Malin Space Science Systems page, “If present on Mars, objects the size of typical passenger jet airplanes would be distinguishable in an image of this scale.”

MGS view of the “Face on Mars” mesa, MOC image E03-00824, 8 April 2001
Click the image to see the full-resolution frame (2400 x 2400 pixels)

The region was also studied by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. Combining the MGS and Mars Express data, a three dimensional model of the “Face” was constructed.

3D computer-generated model of the “Face on Mars” mesa

After examining the higher resolution Mars Express and Mars Global Surveyor data NASA stated that “a detailed analysis of multiple images of this feature reveals a natural looking Martian hill whose illusory face-like appearance depends on the viewing angle and angle of illumination.” That certainly seems a plausible conclusion, especially in a universe where humans are the only intelligent species in a solar system which has never been visited by extraterrestrials, and civilization spontaneously appeared in Mesopotamia around 4,000 B.C.

In the high Andes mountains in South America, the Nazca plateau is covered with drawings that are best seen from the air. Popular belief is that they can only be seen from the air, but “more reasoned” analysis asserts they can be seen from the surrounding hills.

Monkey image, part of the Nazca plateau lines, Peru

The designs are shallow lines made by removing reddish pebbles from the surface to uncover the whitish/grayish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than seventy are zoomorphic designs of animals, or human figures. Other designs include phytomorphic shapes such as trees and flowers. The largest figures are over 200 metres (660 ft) across. Who made them, and why? Theories abound, but every one of them is just that – a theory. No one really knows.

How were Egypt’s pyramids built? I don’t know, I wasn’t there at the time. Opinions differ, but I have a hard time swallowing some of the “scientifically acceptable” ones. Those stones are just too big and there are too many of them for the technology level that was supposed to have built the pyramids. There are also assertions that the Sphynx was thousands of years old when the pyramids were built. If that is true, who made the Sphynx? While we’re on it, where did the technology come from that was used to build Machu Picchu, nearly 8000 feet above sea level? A lot of those stones are so big we’d have a hard time moving them today, let alone placing them well enough that you can’t fit a piece of paper between them – yet there they are, built up for us to look at. How did that happen? Again, I wasn’t there at the time, so I can’t express anything more than an opinion on the matter – and my opinion is that we don’t have all of the answers.

If humanity and its civilization were to disappear (e.g., through nuclear war at the end of the oil supply, a disaster I’m trying to avert through Space Power Now), the pyramids would most likely still be there on the Cairo plain, even though effectively all of the other signs of our existence would be gone. The pyramids would probably be eroded, but their form would be easily distinguishable from space if the lighting and viewing angle were right, even in a low resolution image. If, for some reason, Earth’s atmosphere leaked away in the mean time, as has apparently happened to Mars, the recognizable life expectency of the pyramids would grow rapidly.

When a bullet hits a ball, different outcomes will occur, depending on the speed and size of the bullet, and the composition of the ball. A high speed bullet hitting a solid, brittle ball will cause the ball to shatter, for example. A slower projectile, such as a BB, will make a crater and embed itself in a softer ball. Somewhere between those extremes there’s a class of collisions with bizarre results: If a bullet going just the right speed, fast enough to tear through but slow enough to not completely explode it, hits a ball with a relatively soft center and a tough skin (think of an orange), a “mountain” will form at the entry point, and the skin on the opposite site will be torn off. The center of mass will change, conceivably to the point where the now-rough side that lost its skin is farther from the center of mass – at a “higher elevation” even though it just had its face blown off. The surface of Mars is remarkably close to this description: Olympus Mons, the tallest known mountain in the solar system, is in the smooth northern hemisphere, nearly diametrically opposite the giant Hellas crater situated in the southern highlands that have some of the roughest terrain on any planet in orbit around the Sun. I haven’t done an extensive analysis, but I have to wonder – was Mars hit by a cosmic bullet some time in the past that almost destroyed it?

Let’s consider for a moment a situation where our astronomers found a comet whose orbit was going to intersect the Earth’s in, say, ten years, and that the nucleus of the comet was big enough so there’d be no way to divert it: The Earth was going to die in ten years, and there’s nothing we could do about it. What would we do, in that case? I, for one, would be pushing real hard to build spaceships to carry at least some people to another planet. When they got to their destination, it could be thousands of years before the refugees would be able to start exploring out into the universe again: Chances are that something critical would be missing at their new home, and although humanity would survive, civilization would collapse. Recognizing that, what would be the best thing for the rest of us to do, so that once the survivors did get back on their feet, they could find their way home to see if anything was left of the world they came from? Put up a sign they could recognize from a long ways away, something to say “Hey you – come look here!” A face looking out into space would do the trick, I think. If there was uncertainty about which direction the comet was going to hit from, I’d even go as far as building four faces at the apexes of a regular tetrahedron, 120 degrees from each other in any direction, to improve the chances at least one would survive the impact.

It would probably be tens or hundreds of thousands of years, millions even, before the expatriats might come back, looking for something they couldn’t define. Over that time, anything smaller than the great pyramid of Cheops would probably erode away – it would take carving a mountain into the shape of a face to have any real hope of keeping the sign up long enough for it to be found. Before actually landing on the planet, our distant relatives, while initially startled by finding the Face, would probably get a closer look then dismiss it as “a natural looking … hill whose illusory face-like appearance depends on the viewing angle and angle of illumination.”

Wait a minute. What was that the NASA analysis decided?

Maybe it’s time we went and took a closer look – time for humans to go and look, not just our robots.

An interesting coincidence is that in 1958, almost two decades prior to the first images of the Face from the Viking probes, comic book artist Jack Kirby wrote a story entitled “The Face on Mars” for Harvey Comics (Race for the Moon Number 2, September 1958), in which a large face served as a monument to an extinct humanoid race from Mars. While Mr. Kirby’s face was standing vertically, and much smaller than the one found by Viking 1, his tale is eerily prescient of the discovery – something to make you go “hmm…”

We are going to run out of oil. Before that happens, we MUST have a replacement source of energy and feed stock for our civilization that has become so dependent on plastic. The time to act is NOW!! Please visit SpacePowerNow.org to help build a solution.