The DARPA Robotics Challenge Was a Bust

[DFW]

28. Well, everybody got something different out of it so far.

Last edited Sat Jul 4, 2015, 04:17 PM - Edit history (1)

When Thom Hartmann raved about it on his show (a DUer told me about it, I never would have known), I was pretty blown away, but I already had some nice comments from Howard Dean, Adrian Cronauer (the real one from the Good Morning Vietnam story, not Robin Williams), some Amazon readers I don't know and Spider-Man creator Stan Lee. Everybody but some hotshot publisher willing to take a shot LOL!!

To all DUers who posted on Amazon (i have no idea who most of the comments are from, though Norm Ornstein and a couple of DUers I do recognize), THANKS!!

For the rest of you, here are two little passages from the book where the main character, a wine nerd in California in 2010, is talking to a retired president Thomas Jefferson in the year 1818:

Um, right, so here I am, probably about to give Thomas Jefferson a fatal heart attack just by saying howdy. But my history book says he died peacefully in bed on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after his Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia. I really hoped this wasn’t July 3, 1826, but he didn’t look like he was in his early eighties yet. He wore what I assumed to be simple garb for his time, appeared to be taller and a little more gaunt than I expected, but otherwise looked very much like a slightly older version of his portrait on the two dollar bill.

I called over to him, “Mr. President?” He started, saw me through the portal, and dropped his book. He got up from what looked like a revolving chair, slowly crossed over to me. Thomas Jefferson!!!!!

I said, “Mr. President, please don’t be alarmed. I am quite real, and I am communicating to you from the year 2010 by way of a science unknown in your time.” I said "science" instead of "technology, as that was not a term in use in the eighteenth century. He seemd to understand, anyway. Jefferson stared at me and gaped. Then the great man spoke: “Either I’m dreaming or this is one of the most momentous occurrences in the history of the universe. And, by the way, I haven’t been the president for years now.”

He had a slightly lilting, almost Irish-sounding accent. I should have known that, growing up in the eighteenth century, his English would have more in common with the Court of St. James’s than the Grand Ole Opry. I just hadn’t thought about it up to now.

“Yes, sir,” I said, trying to be as respectful as I could. “I believe I am the first one to have done this. In my time, all former presidents are still addressed as Mr. President. You were always one of my favorite people from the early days of the United States.”

“Why, thank you, my boy. That is very flattering. If you live in the year 2010, then to you, I must be history.” Wow, the man didn’t miss a trick. I had deliberately avoided using that expression.

“Well, yes sir, one could look at it that way.”

“No other way to look at it,” Jefferson replied. “Where are you located?”

“I’m in the vicinity of the city of Los Angeles, sir. It’s in the southern part of California.”

“Very impressive!” mused Jefferson—not the reaction I expected.

“How so?” I asked.

"You speak impeccable English for a Mexican."

Oops. Give me a break, I'm not Katie Couric.

“Mr. President, in 1850, California became a part of the United States. My name is Robert Packard.”

“Brilliant!” exclaimed Jefferson. “Your speech pattern is, of course, unknown to me. Obviously, we will have developed a uniquely American sound to our English over the years, presumably with some marked regional differences.”

Oh, more than “marked,” I’d say. Obviously, people in Virginia were not yet saying “y’all,” and people on Long Island were probably not saying “Noo Yawk” yet either, although I would never find out.

Thomas Jefferson continued, “You know, they laughed at me for the Louisiana Purchase, but I knew it would be a move that would prove prescient in the long run. In 1804, I sent Merriwether Lewis out west to find a passage to the Pacific coast. I guess you must know that.”
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Jefferson pondered. “I had only ten years with my Martha. She died before her thirty-fourth birthday. I was devastated. I must have spent three weeks inside a room in utter despair. Much later, I took up with someone that was completely illicit, at least in my day.”

“It’s all right, Mr. President, we all know about Sally Hemings, and don’t consider it a stain on your legacy at all.”

Jefferson looked stunned. “Really? You all know about Sally? Please don’t even tell me how. I don’t want to know. You can’t imagine what a scandalous thing this is in my time. Our country, then, has truly become the beacon of enlightenment we hoped--Franklin, Madison, the others.”

“Well, not entirely, I’m afraid,” I answered. “There are still strong, even violent forces of reaction that would bring the country back to the days when people were burned at the stake for such things. But they are a distinct minority, to be sure.” I didn’t want to get into the Texas School Board. “We even abolished slavery entirely in 1865.”

“It took that long? I failed in my efforts to get slavery abolished over the years, although I still hold some slaves myself to this day. Ironic, isn’t it? Many of us who were part of the beginning of this country envisioned abolishing slavery by 1808. As president, I even signed a law back in 1808 banning the slave trade with Africa. Some of us had hoped to have slavery abolished altogether by then, but we underestimated the resistance from the southern states, whose economies depended upon its continued existence. From what you say, it took far longer than any of us thought it would. I am glad to hear that it was finally done away with, although I imagine it had enormous economic consequences for the southern states. I’m sure some of them must have had a few objections.”

Oh, just a few, yeah. I didn’t comment on that.

He went on, “There will always be a conflict between the forces of free thought and enlightenment against those of glorified ignorance, control and darkness, I suppose,” Jefferson said. “But as long as they are beaten back by the forces of light and truth, they can be a tolerable evil—indeed, perhaps a useful one, so as to point out by example what is not worthy of aspiration and is to be avoided. I gather from what you’re leading up to that you want my opinion as to whether you’re right to consider abandoning your present life for what, to you, would be the more simple life in an era you would find, superficially, at least, to be primitive?”
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The two introductory quotes are these:

“Le secret du bonheur et le comble de l'art, c'est de vivre comme tout le monde, en n'étant comme personne.”

(The secret of happiness, and the pinnacle of art, is to live like everyone else, while not being like anyone else.)
--Simone de Beauvoir


“Most people....fail to realize that style and form are everything,
and substance a passing myth.”

--Rodney Whitaker (“Trevanian,” speaking as Nicholai Hel)

They sort of set the tone for the book, or parts of it, anyway.

Maybe that will whet someone's appetite!