Professor Bob

No wind will take you there 

If you don’t know which port you want to reach, no wind will take you there. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Yahh, OK, so what? Let me introduce a character out Larry Niven’s book, “The Mote in God’s Eye.” As Niven says, he is more of a state of mind, a way of seeing the world, than a real person. Call him, ”Crazy Eddie.”

Crazy Eddie begins with him Identifying a desirable future, a change in the arc of history, that would make the world a “better” place. Others may agree that if that change were to happen, the world would be a better place, but may doubt that the change is possible. 

Crazy Eddie may know, in some part of his brain, that what he wishes for is not possible, but he will start to think, in the rest of his brain, that the desirable change can be achieved. He will start to do things to bring about that impossible change, such as collect money for the construction of a perpetual motion machine, in order to end humanity’s reliance on nuclear reactors or fossil fuels.

It is an admirable goal, truly a port that we all want to reach. We would all want a perpetual motion machine under the hood. No fuel to buy and burn, no batteries to build and charge, just build one machine and use it to build another machine, and so on. If science says such a machine is not possible, it is such a desirable goal that that Crazy Eddie will forge ahead, collect money and begin construction of his machine. 

Upon completion, the machine will not work as promised. Perhaps Crazy Eddie will identify a flaw in the design, collect some more money and rebuild the machine. Perhaps he will begin to design a wireless light bulb that requires no wires, no external source of energy, using the principles of perpetual motion. He may even collect money and build a factory in Ottawa to produce the light bulbs. 

Ottawa is the right place for that sort of thing. Crazy Eddie will be right at home. 

Professor Bob