One kin only gasp in amazement at this hyar year, 2008.

We spend our lives bein’ referred t’great years: th’ crash of ‘29, Pearl Harbour ‘42, th’ Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Wal, mah friends, we is retchin’ th’ end of an histo’ic year indeed, an’ one we acshully lived!

This hyar is th’ year wo’ld narrative confess’d th’ devastatin’ truth of climate change an’ peak oil, we endured th’ greatess collapse in financial histo’y, an’ a black man was elecked President of South Car’lina.

Not jest enny black man. An intelleckual, an orato’, a statesman - a an’ a Warshin’ton outsider.

Menny of mah white feller South Car’linans is whisperin’ Obama will deport us t’Guantanamo Bay, o’ wo’se, th’ Ivory Coast.

Mo’e wo’se, he will give th’ rich folks’ hard-won money back t’th’ pore fum whom they fus’t stole it.

They say th’ Presidential cavalcade will sport mo’e bling than a Harlem pimp wif rim-spinnin’ SUVs an’ 20-stone black fro’d bouncers, an’ a Secret Service full of unnercovah brothers.

An’ Paint it Black be th’ noo nashunal anthem, eff’n not th’ fate of th’ White House, which insiders cruelly suggess will soon resemble th’ Soul Plane.

So, yoo want th’ real deal on Bareek Obama, our noo Comman’er in Chief?

Click hyar t’read mah eleckshun roun’up.

Burn, baby, burn!

A reader asks why smart people have not set up an advanced society and created their utopia?

It should take them only a decade to create the most prosperous and smart nation on the planet .. and leave us in their dust. Why are they so dumb that they haven’t done it?

She’s right. What is wrong with these people?

My ex-boss’ IQ well-exceeded 150 and I marvelled at his tolerance, neither hiring more like genii to take some load off,  nor treating me like the lap dog I was. Perhaps those practiced knowing looks and dry sarcasm kept him in check. I had cunning to fall back on, after all.

And precocious kids. No matter how brilliant the student, they aim no higher than military-industrial footsoldier and “hope to be a scientist.” Sigh. Even beauty pageant wannabes set the bar at world peace!

Science fiction authors have long toyed with scenarios of scientists forming communes of intellect.

Howard Fast’s “The First Men” painted an unlikely but ultimate outcome: his advanced society began as a military experiment that isolated itself just in time to survive the predictable reaction of a feeble-minded society - so often portrayed in film and novel - to destroy the advanced or mutated species as a survival threat to resident room-temperature plodders.

Fred Hoyle based Ossian’s Ride on off-planet interlopers sealing off some of Ireland, with much detail on security and organization. Herbie Wells smote us all with a comet to clear the planet of woe, while John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos - though alien and malevolently implanted - showed what a bunch of really smart kids (with supernatural abilities) might do.

But what if the smarties have done it already? Where the heck are they?

Have they created utopia but cunningly present as a failed state, like the rest of us. If so, can someone kindly blow the whistle?

Is it Iceland, New Zealand, Tasmania, Sweden, Monaco, Anguilla, Maui, Liechtenstein? The United States of America?

On that trail, why haven’t the world’s wealthy - who also are typically smarter - purchased, or simply invaded, a big fat tropical island and set up their own bank and government - eliminating taxes and controlling security?

While they like to hole-up in luxurious ghettos in quieter precincts of certain cities, that isn’t a plan, it’s a reflex.

My reader and I again plead:

• - If anyone knows the whereabouts of an advanced collective of altruistic, scientific minds, kindly reveal
  
• - If certain it exists not, explain then why smart people are so dumb .. in terms we, the dumber, might understand. 

Financial Circus Brings in the Clowns

Every facet of our species’ brilliant and ever-advancing career finds us, whichever specialty, not quite in control.

With disorder tamed to an acceptable death rate, expertise is claimed.

When un-garbage in equals un-garbage out, design defers to mass production - with mass recall a hair-breadth off.

As matters progress quite swimmingly we are proud masters of our domain. But humans being people, a train wreck usually looms.

And so, as another paramount year unfurls, the entirety of this planet’s mug punters find their fortunes astride some lurching blindfolded mule, shattered in dismay it’s not the magnificent sure-footed stallion the guy in the suit told them to bet a life’s savings on.

A snowboarder hurled from chopper onto 60 degrees of powdery snow chances life, if not avalanche. Likewise, and with bells, entrusting the world’s inventory of toil, manufacture, plant, and property to a self-serving recursive bubble of avarice begs eversion, if not oblivion.

If democracy is the worst possible system of government, except what follows when it fails, then financial bedlam is the nightmare sequela to a brief flirtation last century with public ownership, to the governance of science and knowledge-based national planning, and even respect (if grudging) for social visionaries and an intellectual elite.

While all stood deluded by concepts of equality, societal perfection, and control of human destiny, economic dogmatists stole the fleeting moment, like the arrogant ignorant greedy thieves they are.

And now these self-congratulating fools, these “Alpha Beings” who would save us from the perils of socialism, nanny states, and utopian pipe-dreamery, stand revealed in their finest moment as masters of .. that train wreck.

But don’t mind too greatly for their well being, as governments across the globe, having privatised profits of social infrastructure, now nationalize the debt of its gutted carcase. Our captains of gluttony stand, as always, to inherit the skimpy surfeits of dullards like you and me, whichever way the wind blows. It’s the natural order of things. Didn’t they explain this at school?

Well, for we bottom-feeders as usual nothing much differs. Still a world of animal indifference and jungle law from which we imagined struggling through endless millennia to emerge in celebration of human intellect. Still sustained by much day dreaming of equality, religious salvation, social justice, or portentous proletariat proselytising.

Parting clouds long ago snapped shut on any chance of an efficient, measured, benevolent, and dare I lament ’spiritual,’ procession to the future. Demented as any religious fundamentalist, free market zealots engendered a tsunami of greed that rolls its selfish deconstruction across the shores of every nation and doorstep of each life, endlessly, mindlessly, and each day more irretrievably.

Ha! Another Utopia rant, you might sneer. And you are right .. except to sneer.

In no corner of science do two eminences agree on nature’s intention, or if it has one. Moving from cold hard yet disputed facts to softer mental pursuits, like economics, finds but an Armageddon of pseudo-intellectual mayhem to rip the heart of hope from any foolish optimist on this craven little mudball.

Turning finally to fellow salts-of-the-earth for inspiration, hope, or salvation, finds in their deluded greed-lit faces only the cause of our eternal distress.

What part of moderation do 6 billion opportunists not understand?

Who will concede “I only need this much to live; others have greater need”?

When does social narrative admit our existence and future is predicated on consumptive madness and blind unsustainable growth?

Almost delicious, watching the world’s economic powerhouse unravel in viral greed and utter stupidity.

Except it’s my house, too.