Coffee Injustice

I've had a major epiphany and I'm gonna need good, stout-hearted folk to rise up with me against this tyranny I've seen. Did you ever read The Flying Inn? Well it's going to be like that...only not so important. But it'll be important enough I tell you!!

When your friendly barista says to you, "is that for here?" and you of course say, "Yes," do you know what you just ordered? You just asked for your coffee to be placed in a container designed to extract heat from liquids at a remarkable rate. It seems that I get my coffee, and before you know it, it's cold!! What gives? I may like to drink my coffee rather fast, but this stuff cools it off too fast, leaving me with a cold coffee experience.

Good people, we must rise up against this. It's exactly the same situation as the Big Oil companies, hoarding the remarkable technology of gas-free cars and trucks. Big Coffee has a thermally insulating cup that cost the same as their regular 'for-here' cups. Why don't they employ it? Money, of course. But if we strike back now, while they think we're ignorant, we'll have gained an upper hand and possibly changed the course of lives everywhere, or at the very least, of coffee drinkers lives everywhere.

I don't blame the baristas. I blame their ethereal and slightly non-corporeal unknown superiors 60 times removed from them who sit in some plush chair in some plush office in some plush city, drinking their lattes in 'for-here' cups that are thermally insulated. I'll be sitting outside a random coffee shop, protesting, starting on the next day that doesn't end in 'y.' Join me.

The Mars Projects

It all started about eight months ago. The summit for International Peace had just concluded their fifth session and a treaty between all the countries of the world was about to be signed. It was the Mars Projects that had caused all the nations to come together. When New Montreal on the Moon had been hit by the stray asteroid and a second and third had wiped out Sydney and Moscow back here on Earth, petty differences were, for a time, forgotten, and the Coalition for Planetary Unity had finally been listened to.

The Mars Projects had been an attempt by the alliance of the United States of North America and the Islands of Britain to create, maintain, and direct gravity fields in the late 21^st century. To what end, they never have said exactly. Both the Earth and the Moon were, in the opinion of the Alliance (as they were so called), too close to the Euro-Asian Commonwealth and therefore wouldn't make for good research sites. The recent Alliance colony on the fourth planet from the Sun was an ideal testing facility. The researchers were extremely successful with the field manipulations and were on the verge of perfecting a mobilized gravity generator unit when the accident took place.

Some people will tell you that it was sabotage while others will say it was an accident, but whatever the cause, three generators were simultaneously activated by an intense power surge: cause still unknown. All three generators were suspiciously directed towards the asteroid belt beyond Mars orbit. Before the auto-cutoff systems could activate or the researchers react, several asteroids were rapidly accelerated towards the facility. In the few minutes it took them to reach Mars’ orbit, the planet had moved on, paving the way for their unrestricted access to the inner solar system. The power surge had destroyed most of the facilities primary systems, and communications were not possible with Earth or any of the colonies on the Moon until it was too late.

The first asteroid impacted the Moon near the terminator, creating a shockwave that wiped New Montreal off the map. There had been no warning, as Earth based problems had all of the colonies’ equipment trained back on the homeworld. After New Montreal, though, air to space fighters were launched from seven different platforms in a matter of seconds, but, it was too late. A second and third asteroid came down on Moscow and Sydney, killing millions. The fighters managed to destroy a fourth and then turned towards each other. Three of the squadrons were from the Alliance and the other four were from the Commonwealth and they no doubt thought the cause was the other side.

Dozens of lives were lost and war was certainly imminent, but the Mars colony was able to contact the Alliance in time and the truth became known. The Unity Coalition stepped in almost immediately and the rest is where we were a little under eight months ago. The Projects are shut down, Mars has been expatriated, global peace and unity will be ratified into a treaty, and we’ll begin to repair the damage – to the colonies and to the world. That, at least, was what was supposed to happen. That was the end goal by which the nations were planning our future. That was before Jupiter.

Four-cast

When you come into a new year, it's typical for people to make resolutions that apply to yourself. The intention being, usually, to become a better "you" over the course of the new year. I on the other hand have made a list of inventions, technologies, or ideas that I would like to see come about in this grand ol' leap year of 2008. The idea here being to make a better world. I think at least four hopes are reasonable, especially since it allowed me to create a cool title.

1. Presence Dampener: You know when you're walking in a parking lot at night and you 'feel' as if somebody is behind you? And then there's your friend! Or when you're in a room all alone and you can just 'tell' when somebody has entered the room? Well never fear you pranksters! The Presence Dampener is a hand-held device that will actually cause your presence to disappear when activated! Studies show that the device works by phasing only your mass into a parallel dimension. Gravity will still act on you though, because this other dimension also has gravity, so don't fear. People will no longer 'sense' you without seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, or tasting you directly!

2. Abolition of Daylight Saving Time: I believe it no longer serves a purpose and should be banned from ever happening again. It was a good idea at the time, don't get me wrong. Farmers and the like needed more daylight during particular seasons, so let's shift the clock so that normal working hours are more in sync with daytime. Fantastic. Now we have floodlights, and less people are farmers or the like. I'm pretty sure we're done with Daylight Saving Time.

3. Conversion of English to Newspeak: If you've never read 1984 by George Orwell, I suggest you try. Now. In the book, the English Socialist party had created a new language that cut out tons of superfluous words. E.g. good, great, fantastic, and incredibly phenomenal became good, plusgood, doubleplusgood, and double-doubleplusgood. See how much easier that is than having all those other words? Simplicity is elegance. (1984 fans would be chuckling because of that sentence).

4. Discovery of alien life: I'm pretty sure I'd crap my pants twice if we finally found evidence of alien life, even if it's a fossil on Mars. It doesn't have to be alive, it just has to have been alive at some time. People talk about it all the time, but if it actually happened, can you imagine the mayhem? Maybe mayhem is the wrong word, but really, if you think about it, it'd be a double-doubleplusgood event! Wow.