Category - Digest

Some of you know that for the past couple of months I have been ‘laser focused’ (I actually hate that expression, but it does seem to express the ADHD way I go at some things) on the presentation I delivered to The Cosmic Summit on Saturday June 15.

I have to admit that being part of something called “The Cosmic Summit” seemed a bit… daunting? … but in fact it was a very successful and engaging weekend.  I met a lot of interesting people and felt at times like I’d found my tribe.

There were also times I was glad I was wearing my ‘tin foil hat.’

The entire conference was live streamed.  I recorded the live stream and did some editorial work before uploading the result to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.  I may have jumped the gun with all that, because I’m told now that eventually I will get a higher-resolution recording for my own use, in which case I’ll probably have to do all the editing again, but in the meantime I am sharing this with my inner circles.

The biggest wrinkle in the actual presentation was the set up on stage.

I ran through the whole thing like 20 or 30 times in order to commit as much of it as possible to memory.  When I did those rehearsals, for some reason (probably a photo I saw of last year’s conference) I thought I’d have a laptop on the lectern in front of me.

So when I practiced,  I had everything on the one screen:  the presentation on one side of the screen, the script on the other side.  That’s how I practiced, imagining a laptop on the lectern and the audience just above-and-beyond, so that it would be easy to glance at the screen and continue directly eyeball-to-eyeball with the audience.

Alas.

I discovered the night before the presentation that the stage was about three feet high – and my reference monitor was on the floor below and at the foot of the stage!  Who thought that was a good idea?!?

So that’s why I’m ‘looking down’ a lot – and why I did all the editing I did – to hide all the looking at the floor.

Where I am reading from the monitor (on the fucking floor eight feet below my eye level!) I edited the frame to fill the screen with the  slides themselves rather than the two panel view –with the slide on one side and the idiot looking at the floor on the other side.

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Despite line-of-sight challenges, the whole thing went about as well as it possibly could. I didn’t see all the other presentations, but those that I did see were mostly “put up a slide, talk about it, put up another slide, talk about that, rinse and repeat for an hour.”  This one has an actual story… the proverbial beginning, middle and end (#NotSoHumbleBrag).

I’ll admit, there were moments while I was putting this together where I thought it just wasn’t gonna happen, that I was going to have to call the promoter for the conference and back out.

Eventually it dawned on me what I needed to do: take a very personal approach to all this science and history and what drew me into it in the first place.  Once I dropped in this slide:

…then  all the work, stories, ideas, theories and conclusions started falling together.

This is what all I have been ruminating on for the entirety of my adult life.

Judges, y’all let me know if I stuck the landing…

And, now that I’ve ‘got my act together’, I’d like to take it on the road….

As  Philo-The-Third told me, his father – Philo T. Farnsworth The Second – had ‘two major cases in his life.

The first was electronic video.  You wouldn’t be looking at this if he hadn’t cracked that one back in the 1920s.

Over the course of the next thirty-plus years, Farnsworth gained as much first-hand knowledge about the practical workings of the quantum realm as anybody who worked at Los Alamos.  In fact, he was invited to participate in The Manhattan Project, but declined the invitation, telling his wife “I want nothing to do with building an atomic bomb.”

Instead, in the 1950s and 60s, he used his experience and singular insight to conceive and build something not even the assembled wizards at Los Alamos could fathom: a controlled nuclear fusion device, a ‘start in a jar.

This second preview from The Boy Who Invented Television recounts the moment he figured it out:

The audiobook edition is now available on Amazon or Audible.

Y’all get yer ears on!

Once again, on the subject of why we can’t have the keys to the Cosmic Ferrari…

I am preparing a presentation for a conference in North Carolina in June.

Consider this the ‘trailer’ for that presentation:

As you all know by now, it has been my privilege to be interviewed on several podcasts over the past few months, finally fulfilling my lifelong delusion that someday, somebody might think I have something interesting to say.

Well, now I am pleased to say that I have finally been featured on a podcast for reasons entirely other than my vast education, training, or experience.

This one I’m entirely qualified to be on this one just because of what it’s called:

My Family Thinks I’m Crazy. 

Here’s a link to listen via Apple Podcasts:

And here’s a link to Spotify:

This is a long one – more than two hours!  But it’s one of my favorites so far, because we cut straight to some of the broad themes that tie these mysteries together. Here’s a summary of some of the ground we covered:

Paul Schatzkin, Author and Researcher, joins me to discuss the amazing breakthroughs achieved by the Inventor of the electronic television, Philo T. Farnsworth, The Mysterious T. Townsend Brown and his revolutionary discoveries in the realm of electro-gravitics, space travel and even time travel, Paul reveals how the movie Back To The Future was directly inspired by T. Townsend Brown, with Oppenheimer doing so well in the box offices this conversation echoes Einstein’s remorse, and draws forth the possibility of dozens of other unsung marvels of technological innovation that have never had the chance to develop within our inherently destructive scientific culture of industry.

As long as I’m here, I may as well post the video clip that offers up the connections between these stories and the Back to the Future movies.  This is the very last scene in the first of the trilogy:

There are at least three elements of this scene that connect to the books I’ve written:

1. “Mr. Fusion” – Philo Farnsworth spend the last half of his life developing a nuclear fusion process;
2. The ‘flux capacitor’ that makes time travel possible: Townsend Brown’s ‘gravitator‘ devices were all based on capacitor technology;
3. The ‘Doc Brown’ in the films… his full name is…. EmeTT Brown.

I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence.

Finally, if you have any lingering doubt that we are all living in the wrong timeline, consider this: Bob Gale, the screenwriter of all the Back to the Future movies, has gone on the record saying that the villain in the films, Biff Tanner, is actually based on…. Donald F’ing Trump.

Now all we have to do is figure out how to get ourselves jiggered into the correct timeline, where we get the keys to the Cosmic Ferrari.

Well kids, I’m at it again.

It’s actually been a couple of months since I recorded this.  The producers took their time adding some visual effects to the YouTube version above, and it was finally unleashed on the world today (Thurs Jan 18 ’24).

FWIW, I’m working on with a ‘virtual assistant’ – would you believed based in Pakistan? – who is pitching me for more podcast conversations like this.  If you care to read the pitch, find it here.

Better yet, if you host a podcast, contact us here. 

And if you just want to listen to the audio-only version of the podcast, you can find that here:

Thank you for your time and attention.