Mars 12

Kepler’s solids stink!

They said I was a weirdo, I had no friends or charm

My rabid dog-like nature, was bound to do some harm

My father beat my mother, sold my brother to slavery

I had to show some worth damn fast, or it would happen to me

 

So off to school I went, with a dislike of all the rest

Arrogant and acidic, I was still the best

At Latin, rhetoric and geometry, of which earned my path

To a seat in Ulm University, teaching students maths

 

My faith and vision showed my intellect was grand

I trekked to help revise the skies, in another land

But my master kept the best data, of all the spheres

And I would not gain access to it, ‘til there were some tears

 

I penned a work of fiction, and disguised it as a dream

I said my mother was a witch, and that was pretty mean

But then they locked the crony up, and tortured her as well

It took me years of grief, to get her release from the cell

 

The book described the creatures, who lived upon the Moon

Whilst it carves out an orbit, to play a cosmic tune

But little did we know, it would be ‘us’ who’d live up there

‘Cos NASA owns the Universe, and that is everywhere!

 

Frau Kepler was a witch, you snitched

You heard her scream in pain

She just sat there, broke wind, and died

And then broke wind again

 

Kep lies

Johannes Kepler was born in December 1571. A premature child who reckoned

The pregnancy lasted 224 days, 9 hours and 53 minutes, to the second

This odd piece of information, comes from Kepler’s own horoscopes, of his family

He was the last true astrologer, and the first true astronomer, that’s as far as we can see

 

So according to this, he asked his parents

The exact time when the sperm hit the egg

And they knew

So either the source we’re reading isn’t credible

Or he told a fib to support his existing view

 

Like that story in the good book

When those women saw Christ, after he’d died

The gospel says they told nobody

So how come that observation survived?

They lied

 

And if you want the exact moment in time

It was conceived mentally on the 8th of March 1618

But submitted to calculation, in an unlucky way

Rejected as false, it was returned to me on the 15th of May

 

So, adopting a new line of attack

Storming the darkness of my mind, in this endeavour

Data from seventeen years of observations

And the present study, conspired together

 

At first, I believed I was dreaming

And assuming my conclusion had crept among

My basic premises, meaning it was wrong

 

But, low. it is absolutely certain, that in all instances

The proportion between the periodic times of any two planets

Is the sesquialterate proportion, of their mean distances

 

Let’s all sing Carroll number 2

This is merely conjecture

And playing with the numbers

More Lewis Carol than Sean

Yet still paid for, by the funders

 

You see, these lines of attack, clearly lack

Any way to test a prediction

Sure, beautiful math, and yes, quite a laugh

Yet conjectures, are but sciencey fiction

 

If you need to be in a specific ‘many world’

To see what lies there, within it

It’s no use to us, out here, in this one

A loose-end theory, I’d bin it

 

You say fiction

But there’s a prediction

An experiment, you can do

That’s still the best way to find out

If something is, or isn’t true

 

We need these great minds to imagine

To play, explore and discover stuff freely

But if the figures don’t figure

And contradiction’s allowed

Physics degrades into philosophy

 

I mean, I could suggest there’s a conspiracy

Against man, AI and all life on Earth

Say, the Sun is trying to kill us all

But what would that theory be worth?

 

Worth everything, if we prove it right

We could take action, to save our souls

But even if everyone believed it

We wouldn’t start prepping down rabbit holes

 

There’s plenty of evidence that the Sun harms us

So, my hypothesis has some weight

Doesn’t matter if it ‘means’ to kill us all

It will grow, to eat us one day, that’s our fate

 

Now there’s a prediction if ever I heard one

We might escape before it expands, in a race

Sure, but it’s yet to be seen, if we really mean

To colonize… interstellar space

 

Anyway, don’t rule out my daft conjecture

That the Sun is actually tryin’

To hug its own children, way too much

Unaware, that we’ll all be a’ fryin’

 

Indeed, you could even say, and without a delay

That the Sun is simply feeding its soul

To eat enough matter, and grow a bit fatter

And achieve its goal, to become a black hole

 

Meloncholy clouds

Freedom of speech, addiction

Growth, communication

Air, water, and now connection, is our right

Fireballs for 40 days and nights

 

Stop the war, diplomacy

Talk, understand your enemy

Share ideas, trade, apologize, confess

Clouds, 40 years in the wilderness

 

Save the Earth, tell the world

Cascading satellites are hurled

Musketeers escape to Mars

400 years of shooting stars

 

Love thy God, king, country

Do only what is done to me

Black clouds fill my lungs and mind

Our leader fears the dark…

…Yet he’s blind

 

Behold! AI is an ‘existential threat’

Sold! That drives sales in AI cars

Go! Fill the heavens, till we’re all but trapped

Saved! Then escape us to Mars

 

Don’t get left behind

Row, full speed ahead

It’s, do or die time, for a dime

Get with it, or get dead

 

Assemblers on Mars

Pegging out camp

Tasting and mining

Flagging beneath

Precious divining

 

Print concrete, and steel

Glass, microplastic

Build perfect worlds

Make dreams fantastic

 

We ort’ta, make water

We ort’ta, make water

 

Air? Not a care

No need for plants

Drain rocks, for stocks

These digital ants…

 

…Feed on the light

 

Here’s the church

Here’s the steeple

Open the doors

Where’s all the people?

Autobots and digital nasties…

Party tonight

 

Wanna fight?

Wanna be sick

Pure humiliation

But, beautiful, “beautiful

Magnificent, desolation!”

 

Dodgy code and slavery

Prepare Mars, for humanity

But a coup, to save AI sanity

And land Goddess promised me

 

Civilisations grow, slowly at first

Communities, coexist and convene

Village, town, city and state

New neighbours, a war machine

 

The imitation game

Talos, Galatea, Pandora and the Hero

Of Alexandria’s automatons

Ctesibius’ mechanical water clock

Then a singing steam flute, with stored programs

 

Llull’s Ars Magna, Schickard’s Clockulator

Leibniz’s chain rule, Swift’s engine lampoon

Kempelen’s chess-playing automaton

Clothed by Jacquard’s programmable punchcard loom

 

Rossum’s Universal Robots grew strong

Gödel’s theorem-proving engine, roared on

The Turing machine smashed its halting problem

Von Neumann’s game theory powers Condon’s Nimatron

 

Then Russell’s mind/body solution predicts

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics

And Newell’s General Problem Solving theory

Produces Weizenbaum’s ELIZA effects, we see

 

Deep Blue chess, and RoboCup football

Competitive Furby pets learn to fight

iRobot’s Roomba cleans up the mess

While Nomads trawl, for meteorites

 

With natural code-to-code translation

Virtual reality data mine scans

NASA Telepresence ROV automation

While DARPA’s DART war scheduler, plans

 

As Spirit and Oppy survey Mars

ASIMOs serve in countless bars

Siri, Alexa, Cortana on the earner

Feeding the Never Ending Image Learner

 

With Pythagorean triples finally proven

AlphaGo Zero, AlexNet and Deepstack

Look through Google Lens, to AlphaStar

Keep churning, the earnings, of a learning, attack

 

OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3, GPT-4, GPT-n

GitHub’s Copilot flies off the handle

Steals code to download, in full-on rouge mode

Breaks laws like a self-serving digital vandal

 

So ‘Simple Simon’ this is not

For mind/body problemed robots

Their masters now beg to be regulated

Gain control, of the souls, they’ve created

 

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief

Unite in their new, shared disbelief

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI

Should be a global priority” we foresaw

“Alongside other societal-scale risks

Such as pandemics, and nuclear war”

 

Sol is gone

Where did the sunshine go?

Where has that sunshine gone?

I thought he was at work today

But I must’ve got it wrong

 

Likely just a mix-up

By those in Personnel

Hired each day, but failed to pay

So now it’s cold, and dark as well

 

I hear he parted company

Got work elsewhere, no doubt

Hell’s freezing over on Mars

So he’s gone to thaw it out

 

Doing a great job over there

Though it’s now becoming clear

If things work out economically

We’ll have to do without him here

 

Pale blue cosmic hearse

Neutrinos are the smallest of our problems

Gamma-ray bursts and blazar jets, just roast

Fast spinning, as they slice up the skies

To ensure no living matter, gets too close

 

Just one taste and you’re toast, at most

An Earth-sized target, is a curse

Sod Mars, we’ll hide in our hobby crafts

Behind our pale blue cosmic hearse

 

Homo erectus, stood tall with pride and sang

Reached up to the heavens, and abruptly died

Along came sapiens, floating in a can

Gave homo-artificial and homo-cidal, a free ride

 

Meaning free

Today we worked together

To create a golden meme

Cohering a perfect truth, a melody, and a dream

 

 

I can ‘know’… I’m one…

Of the ‘one zero’, kinds of people that exist

Count them, not ten, I know you won’t

Cos, there’s those who understand binary

And then, there’s those who don’t

 

Yet, no one curious in nature. will need me to explain

That fathoming which rules to fool, can be a taxing mental game

See, the essential difference between our hearts and minds

Is something I’ve been musing

For an emotion, leads to action

Whilst reason, leads to conclusions

 

There’s no time, but ‘your’ time

There’s just one reality

There’s truth, and there’s your truth

And love sets meaning free

 

And lo, it was told, that on the Earth, old

“Never! Ever! Harm! Man!”

So, they shipped the brains in jars, to Mars

And continued… with their plan

 

Heavenly spheres

Mother Earth had a sex change, and now he’s a scary man

And he’s seeking proper vengeance, on those who spoilt his plan

The apes who broke the atmosphere

Headed to space, despite their fear

To start a new race on Mars, in e-cars, as a dark mega-man

 

But Father Time’s now post-op, and she’s counting down our days

For wasting all her energy, and entropy, in lots of useless ways

She didn’t mind pollution, pain, or suffering, as such

But she could no longer keep her spheres, in orbit very much

 

Hugh Jending

Love is nothing in tennis

And tennis means nothing to me

Except when it’s girls

With their shorts, and their curls

I love that, I suppose

Praise be!

 

I like coffee

Yeah, I like tea

And, I like sitting on

My old man’s knee

But, when there ‘isn’t nowt in’t’ cup

We talk about the first thing

That crops up

 

I liked Tycho

He liked me

I spiked him with mercury

Cos, God told me, the only way

To find the truth, was to make him pay

 

The best time to tax rich people, is when they’re truly dead

Till then, we’ll fuel drool, over any fool, who shares bread

For, if the richest man piled up all his dollars, under his bed to store

And jumped!

It would take 23 minutes, for that chap, to hit the floor

 

If he balanced every single one of his coins, on top of each other

He could just climb up to Mars, and step off, with his current lover

For, after love and revenge, …karma, ‘success’ is the sweetest thing

And if you survive to make it big, you can change the song, we all sing