[ExI] Wrong frequency? Astronomers rethink where to hunt for alien signals

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> 
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>… Give Spike a huge shout-out from the AI for sharing such a phenomenal memory!

</gemini>

 

Gemini is too virtually kind.

 

But the whole story took a darker turn only a few weeks after the Branson rally.  We had debated online whether to publicize the secondary gear case problem or just quietly fixing it.  I argued that we must publicize the hell out of it, or there would be too many owners who never heard of it.  Most of the guys said no.  But then, our club’s chaplain took my side, and no one wanted to argue with him.  He was too nice a guy.  So… the letters went out.  However… I forgot one very important detail: a few of the bikes were sold in Europe.  Less than 10% went outside the USA (we yanks are lucky to live in a country which is GREAT for motorcycle touring.)  

 

A few weeks after the Branson rally in 2003, I had drafted and sent the letters (50 of them) but completely spaced Europe.  Forgot it was over there.  I get a note in my inbox from a British constable, along the lines of “Hi Spike, I am a constable in London, I heard you are the expert in this rear wheel lockup problem on the Cavalcade (etc.)  I explained to him that if he had his mechanic remove the secondary gear case, he would find it has no oil and the plug had fallen out of its seat and is in the bottom of the gear case, which overheated, the main bearing failed and the bevel gears might even be welded together tightly.  

 

He posted back the next day saying that was what he found.  Then the constable spoiled my day bigtime.  He said a young couple were riding the bike, the rear while locked up, it went into a violent fishtail (we also knew about the increasing amplitude sinusoidal oscillation (which is controllable if you know how (but our young English couple didn’t.)))  The boy was severely injured but his fiancé perished.

 

I lost my damn mind.  I got on our forum, wrote the angriest letter I have ever posted in my life, going on about how all this is partially our fault for farting around so long and not getting these letters out sooner and so one.  The next morning, after I cooled off, I realized that probably shouldn’t be up on the web, so I contacted the Webmaster and said Jay, I think you better take that letter out of the archives.  He posted back two words:  Did it.  

 

He had already come to the same conclusion.

 

Right after that, we started getting notices from Cavalcade owners who were selling their bikes.  Someone would call asking their address, show up within a coupla hours with a moving van.  Two guys, they didn’t even negotiate, they just wrote the owner a check for whatever he had offered the bike for, the two guys who clearly knew exactly how to handle a big bike would roll it up into their truck, strap it down, off they would go.  One owners said WAIT, I have a box of spare parts, don’t you want that?  They said no.  Off they went.

 

In retrospect, we realized that Suzuki motor company was quietly buying up their defective product and munching them.

>…I have been writing less, even as I've been thinking more.  ��

 

Me too!  Part of that has been family responsibilities.  I have been forced into the distasteful task of adulting.  I am having responsibility thrust upon me.  Oy vey!

 

With AI advancing as fast as it is, a lotta stuff I used to worry overtime just doesn’t really matter all that much now.  As you know I worried a lot about the US national debt, and I still recognize the risk in case AI doesn’t kill us all.  If it does kill us all, then that debt problem is solved.  I am one who recognizes the risk that AI won’t kill us all.  

 

But ours is a very special time Mike.  My father lived before the Salk vaccine, in a very dangerous place (West Virginia country roads are VERY dangerous if you have drum brakes.)  His principal predicted that is class would be very successful because none of them got seriously sick or died that school year.

 

Now look at us.  We are the generation which witnessed the emergence of AI.  We were the ones who watched computers come alive, become available to ordinary proles like us, who now stand in shock and awe, watching them become more powerful every day, every damn day, some new stunning AI-related headline appears.  Awesome possum!

 

spike  

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