Sailing the Noosphere

1. I'm talking about traffic density with one of my brother's classmates, Sam S. We have a nice visual aid as we discuss, a projected map of Earth with different traffic patterns as different colors. There are black/white and red/blue modes that show routes of transit quite clearly. Sam gives the example of dogsled races as an unforseen variable that brings lots of traffic to untraveled areas, and illustrates this with the map. The display changes to a 3-D view, showing the swath of tree destruction caused by tourists to the races. Obviously I'm disturbed by this, so I get my family to travel to Alaska to check it out.

Transition to outside the home of one of Alaska's most prominent breeders. We talk about the science of breeding; for whatever reason my parents call heritable traits "actions." Conveniently, the breeder has a poster that's basically an illustrated Punnet square for nose shape, with each genotype's phenotype shown and discussed. My dad talks about technique, and speaks of backcrossing by "taking the best female dog and getting offspring with her son."

We continue to walk to the breeder's backyard; I feel a cool breeze quite vividly. Finally we see the breeder, who is on a deck high above us. He pays us no notice, as he's managing an owl on his shoulder with an unusually big head. He releases the bird, and as it flies down to earth it seems to grow larger. It's practically human sized as it hits the ground in the neighboring yard. This belongs to an apartment complex, and two pretty girls clad only in towels giggle (and maybe flash us) as we look up at them. I comment to myself that it must be cold up there, but the owl has my attention. I marvel at the breeder and say "I want to be the guy!" My dad smirks and says, "You probably already are." Dream ends, but that's probably the best dialogue recall I've had in a long time.

2. I'm playing a Terminator 3 arcade game. It's quite high-tech, with Kinect type technology, but it keeps glitching and showing the body recognition data instead of the game proper.