Print Electronic signature Presentation Myself

During my divorce I did the majority of the writing, paperwork, and delivery to save costs. Since saving cost was part of the reason I got quite creative with process serving. In the local court rules (every court jurisdiction has their own rules) there were only two restrictions. You couldn't do it yourself. The person signing that they did it had to be over 18 years old. There was no verification. There was no identification. There was no requirement that they show up to court to prove anything. A signature on the court approved form said they were over 18 and they delivered some papers. Good to go.My ex's attorney was doing her best job to raise billable hours and delays in the process. At some point in time she had made a mistake and brought a motion to an ex-parte court (only one party needs to be present ex-parte). The ex-parte court overlooked that this motion could only be ordered ex-parte with my signature on an agreeing form. I didn't agree! I got notice she did this on a Friday through the courts electronic forms processing. I couldn't see what she did until Monday. Because of other rules and process I only had that day to correct it. I didn't even get a certified copy until Tuesday!I didn't have time to go home and study it. I didn't have time to get legal help. I hammered it out on my laptop in the court lobby, printed it at Kinko's a block away, and then had another conundrum. Attorney's are supposed to make a good faith effort to tell the other party about ex-parte motions. Of course she didn't do that for me, but I was going to for her. I printed another set of complete documents that would move her motion from ex-parte to our actual assigned judge on the required 14 day calendar. A cover sheet explained this was my good faith message about an ex-parte action, and also moving her motion to the motions calendar.This would require a process server. I'm running out of time. I can't do it myself. The other attorney's office is across the street from the Kinko's in the downtown core.This is the epic part, and just revenge for the (dis)honest mistake and wasting my day. I walked outside the courthouse, found the stinkiest, liquor drenched bum I could find. I paid him $10 to go to her office, of a major law firm, in a top story of huge skyscraper, and deliver them and sign the paperwork saying he did it. I accompanied him, told the building lobby attendants he had legal business there and showed them her business card. Up the elevators, walked past the receptionist for the firm who just sat there open-mouthed. Same thing “he has legal business with ”. Down the hall, she was in a meeting with other attorneys. So he walked right in, dropped off the papers, now loaded with his stench, the other attorneys are backing away wondering what the hell, and I said “see you in 30 minutes if you object.”I made it back to the courthouse and to the ex-parte court in time to explain the error, the corrected paperwork, get a revised order canceling her order, and putting everything on the 14 day calendar. The accepting clerk asked if this had been served. Yes, here you are: a Service of Process document, properly signed by a drunk, snaggletoothed, unbathed bum.The 14 day extension gave me enough time to write a valid objection and her motion was denied. The actual issue was of little importance except it inconvenienced me. It would have been a pretty routine temporary change in a six year custody battle. She got petty about it, and I got petty back in spades.

I have been to the Electronic City RTO, Huskur road (ECity Phase 2, KA-51) for 4 wheeler DL test today without any agent and followed the Quara answers thoroughly specially the latest ones at How can I get a driving licence in Bangalore?. And I went through the DL process myself, gave test and passed in 1st attempt today itself i.e 26.12.2018. Below are the important points I would like to share to have a smooth ride for the whole process for DL (after LL) when applied online.After minimum 1 month of having LL issue date, you should go for DL test.A DL applicant can max have 3 attempts and there is a waiting period of 7 days for each attempt.If you have LL, you can yourself login to the http://parivahan.gov.in website and apply for DL. (I had to change address also on LL and I did that before apply for DL ;) ). You don’t need to visit RTO office at all to apply for DL except for the Test day, but I went once to the RTO office near BTM 4th stage to get the postal envelope containing required stamps which will be used by RTO to send the actual DL card).After applying online for DL, you need to book slot (test date) for DL test. You can pay the fees online or you can pay the same during the DL Test day at Huskur RTO office. For LMV-NT i.e 4 wheeler non-transport the fee is Rs 651.00 (DL Test 300.00, Form 7 fee 151.00, DL issue fee 200.00).On the scheduled DL Test date, directly go to Kuskur road, RTO (it’s at Electronic City Phase 2, the office is on the left side of the Huskur road, if you come from Hosur road or ECity) 1 hour before your schedule slot as there will be paper work before test and you have to stand in queues for every process. You need to bring your own vehicle or any other’s vehicle along with that vehicle’s 1. RC, 2. insurance, 3. Pollution under check/control (PUC) certificate originals. Along with all the xerox copies i.e application acknowledgment, DL application form, fee receipt (if already paid), slot appointment, LL copy, (no need of medical certificate if you are below 40 years of age) and a postal envelope, don’t forget to write your address on it. Just staple all these Xerox documents. I didn’t have to paste photo also, as it was also present in DL application already by the system.First park your vehicle inside the big premise (on the right side after entering) and then complete 5 processes one by one -i) Go to the Biometric Room which is at the left side (just after Cashier Room and each room has the name written on the door, should be easy to find). The person will check the application number in his computer and slot date and then ask you to pay the fees for Smart Card (Rs. 60 including GST) and if you have not paid DL test fees, you have to pay here (Rs 651.00). Your photo will be taken and your digital signature with an electronic pen & pad will also be taken. You will get one receipt from here which the person will staple with your application documents. 1st step is done.ii) Go to the Cashier room just before the biometric room and handover your application to the person sitting there. He will scrutinize it and make a phone call to some other person with your application no. You are done with 2nd step.iii) Go outside the registration room and stand in the queue. Your application will be checked again and your vehicle’s original documents will be asked (RC, Insurance, PUC). I was only asked for RC. Here the person may ask again to visit Cashier room if scrutiny is still pending. Once that’s done you need to go inside the registration roomiv) Inside the registration room you have to answer 4 signs & symbol questions using a computer. These are not very easy but not too tough if you are prepared for couple of days. After that test, you will be given a white RFC card and will be asked to go to the track. The person will also attach one test result form with the application which you have to sign after completing the test.v) Actual Drive test: Come Near the LMV track (right most area after the 2 wheeler tracks) with your application and RFC card. One person will explain how the track works and what the different time limits. There are different types of tests done in the track - 1. Uphill stop and start 2. ‘8′ track, 3. Parallel parking 4. Traffic signal 5. Reverse ‘S’ track 6. 3 point turn. For each test you have swipe the card near the entry of that particular test. For applicants with driving school or agents, the driving school agent will seat beside you with their own vehicle but as I have gone alone, I was only personal seating in my car and as the entire test track is automated, the result will be given from the registration office immediately once you submit the RFC card and application.My entire process form start to finish took about 1.5 hours as there was not much queue for 4 wheeler tests. It was my first attempt and I passed in all tests with 100% score except in ‘3 point turn’ where I scored 2/5 but passed. I can also see the application status online that’s it waiting for approval for printing & dispatch. I did practice for about 3 solid months and went through all Quora question-answers on this process and saved some good amount of money by not going through agents. Which gave me solid confidence about Quora and RTO process :)

Personal interviewThese are few of the points i feel are most important while tackling an interview1. Focus on your life so far and basic questions on current affairs just to see if you have a view and then make a decision. Show awareness to every possibility before making a decision. Look at the problem from multiple angles - interviewers like that.2. Don’t be someone youre not: theyll catch you easily. Dont lie.3. Be polite at every point. Be humble - smile and say you do not know4. Be chilled out - listen to something funny (videos on youtube maybe?), talk to the people outside, crack a few jokes. Dont revise notes before going in the room.PI they wanna know about you - your life. Nothing more. So however cliched this might sound - know yourself.GDTopics to revise:Basic current affairs should be okay. You should know politics (current PM era, General elections BJP, Congress basic initiatives etc), economics (Indian economy, general world economics, US/China economies maybe), current affairs - general (all headline topics for last 1–2 months prior to GD)These above mentioned topics should be more than enough.Tip: unless you were in Hibernation for 2 months prior to the GD, dont think you should bother about the topics - they’re pretty general and you’ll definitely have an opinion.Key Personality traitsEveryone is unique but i feel you must demonstrate atleast one of these traits in GDs to have a good shot:1.Take a balanced approach to things - aware of pros and cons/ negatives and positives of any topic brought up. Then after weighing them make a rational decision2. Ability to listen to other people: listen to people intently - add to their points and come up with new conclusions. Avoid butting in avoid initiating new lines of debate3. Ability to stand out: this i feel is key - typically 2/3 people out of 10 crack a GD. Surprisingly this is the easiest too. The pressure gets to most people - they get the pressure of speaking up in those 10 minutes - they rush in. Speak calmly. You may argue that you have to be loud to be heard. Yes, you do. But be smart here. Dont try to butt in having a diametrically opposite point. Try this.Example: Person to your left speaking something After she finishes 2 lines you speak up. You speak this “Excellent. This is an excellent point brought up by you (briefly repeat wat she said, demonstrates you heard her properly. Most people focus on their parts alone) - i would like to add this.” Then, quickly do a pros and cons analysis and give your point. Speak clearly, nicely. Once or twice. 45 seconds - 1.5 minutes should be great.Do these 3 points right along with the current affairs topic mentioned and you should do fine in the GD.

This subject is covered — as with all things legally speaking: mostly/in part — by Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). The UCC is a federal law that many, but not all, state and local jurisdictions have adopted. While I’m going to rely on this, I’m also going to rely on my extensive experience; and, for the record, I am in Texas.Let’s deal with some ambiguities in the question, first.Is the business incorporated (this includes nonprofits)?Is the office manager an officer or director of the corporation? — Here, director refers to having a seat on the board of directors (BOD) of the corporation, not that managing director, e.g., (of some division) is your job title.A managing director or other director, where that is a job title, may be an officer of the corporation. That would matter. For instance, a managing director might also hold the title of Vice President.A corporate charter, usually registered with the Secretary of State of some State (e.g., Delaware), will ask for a listing of important people: the President, usually at least one Vice President, a Secretary, and a Treasurer, though it’s not uncommon for those last two roles to be united as Secretary-Treasurer. — These are your corporate officers. At least, the most basic ones.Notice: CEO and CFO, etc. — these are not listed.A corporation’s (and really, any business’s) bylaws will set out how directors of the Board will be chosen; how many; etc. And, in here, you may find the C-suite titles, like Chief Executive Officer and Chief Information Officer.A limited liability company (LLC) has members and managers. The various types of partnerships have partners, of course (and partners can be corporations or LLCs).It appears that the office manager should how the business he or she works at was formed. — Don’t trust the way the business’s name is styled on the sign outside; that tells you nothing about what is really going on.However, if you don’t even know if you’re an officer of the company, it might not matter. Unless it does. — So, if you’re going to be endorsing bad checks, you should figure this out.One thing that may help you, in any situation, is to sign the check in a way that indicates your representative capacity. For instance:Jared Maloney, CFOXYZ 123, INC.—You are making it known thatThis is a business, so put your job title after your signature. — You are signing in a representative capacity only.Don’t rely on the preprinted information at the top of the check. — You are signing on behalf of (OBO) something or someone else. Write that thing or person’s name on the check near where you signed your name and indicated your title with respect to that thing or that person.A sole proprietorship may have a name like Maloney’s Computers. It may also have a name like Computer Depot. — What’s missing is that the second version is a sole proprietorship operating under an assumed name, and the full title of the business might be Jared Maloney doing business as Computer Depot.The is a presumption, almost, that the owner of the sole proprietorship is the officer-equivalent. In fact, he or she may say that he’s the President of the company, or Owner of the company, interchangeably.Be careful, though. Most anything can have an assumed name.→ XYZ 123, INC. DBA Computer Depot is probably a valid business name. That means it’s a corporation even though it doesn’t have to say INC. on the end of its business signs!—And, this can get even more complex. LLCs can choose to be taxed like a sole proprietorship, or like an S-Corp., or like a C-Corp.Yes. — More than one type of corporation exists.—I’ve likely already lost 75% of my readership by now, so I won’t even talk about hybrid business structures where a general partnership has a corporation as the general partner and an LLC as the limited partner, and each has the same or different officers. — Attorneys and bright businesspeople (or conmen) can do some very interesting things if they have the internet and money for the filing fees.Let’s explore the sole proprietorship situation and assume you, the office manager, don’t know if the business is really structured as a sole proprietorship or if you’re an officer or director of the company yourself.You know you are an authorized signer on the bank account. Now, I’m bringing in the banking aspect of this.The other authorized signer on the business’s bank account is the President.You have a choice now. You’re not sure if the bank account will have enough funds in it to clear the check when it is received and presented by the recipient to his/its bank (and then by that bank to your business’s bank).How do I sign?—Jared Maloney, Office ManagerComputer Depot—Jared Maloney, OBO John Doe, President of Computer DepotIn today’s time, if you sign the second way, I doubt the check will have any trouble getting cashed by its recipient, so long as that recipient doesn’t present it directly to a teller of your bank.Years ago, I worked in new accounts at a retail bank, and I never saw such a signature on the signature card of any form of deposit bank account. — I wouldn’t have allowed that to be the signature of record on one, and I would have been very wary to authorize a teller to cash a check that was signed that way.This is how that works!The term relationship banker exists, and that gives you the idea that you have a specific person you deal with at your local bank. He or she is your banker. So, if you started your relationship with me on the deposit side of the bank, then your account would have my initials on it for bank employees to see. — Should there be an issue with you in the future, there was a good chance someone would call me about you for analysis or decision-making.If, however, you got a loan, and even sometimes when you were just a relatively big business customer, the officer assigned to you would be your lender. — Lenders tend to have titles like AVP, VP, SVP, and EVP. President, too, of course.At that point, your account, on its profile that bank employees could see, would see the initials of your officer as primary and then mine as secondary.For routine matters — for instance, you have a problem with a teller — and, that’s what we’re talking about now — a funny check is trying to be cashed issued from that account — the teller would call me first. If I couldn’t solve the problem within what I considered my relevant risk profile, or if it dealt with credit issues (e.g., “Does the loan officer want to honor your bad check or let it bounce?”), then I’d call up your lender, or his or her boss — if your lender was busy — to get an answer.Repeating, the issue is with the signature line sayingJared Maloney, OBO John Doe, President of Computer Depot—If a teller called me up, I’d check to see who the authorized signers were on the account. If Jared and John were both signers, then I don’t know if I would’ve cared.It just reads “An Authorized Signer on behalf of Another Authorized Signer, (who’s) President of The Company Named on the Account.”While that’s not the signature exactly found on the signature card (or the list of authorized signatures addendum), it contains the signature of one of the signers.If that was all in print, then that’s not a valid signature on the check. Obviously, you’d signed your name and print the President’s name. Don’t sign his name too!In either of the cases (whether Jared signed with his title [Office Manager], or if he signed in the OBO way), what if Jared Maloney is not an authorized signer on the check?—If that check is presented directly to a teller or other officer of your bank, and that person takes the time to figure out you aren’t an authorized signer, then the check won’t be honored. — The person (e.g., your employer or vendor or whoever) will be turned away.That’s not just bank policy. It’s a bank’s policy because banking regulations demand that it be bank policy. At least for banks that are FDIC-insured.And, on the flipside, as I said before, no matter how you sign the check (to create some idea of relinquishing all personal liability related to understanding of probable NSF situations in the future of that check!) — if you’re an authorized signer on the account — it’ll likely be cashed if the check is presented directly to your bank.And, if the person or the representative of the business, to whom the check was written, presents the check electronically to their own bank, or in a night deposit bag, or in a big ol’ bag with other checks and monies, — and, even if it’s presented alone to a teller of his or its bank — the likelihood that it will be cashed is high.So. You can attempt to mitigate your personal liability for understanding beforehand that the check you are writing will not be cashable, in the future, immediate or otherwise, due to insufficient funds, by changing the way you sign the check.So long as you’re not an officer (or, perhaps, just a director) of the business or nonprofit. — Maybe.Let’s compare a few situations. We will assume that all people are signers on the bank accounts.Janet is the Chief Executive Officer and President of a corporation. She is also the office manager, but she’s not the bookkeeper. She writes a check without asking the bookkeeper if the check will be any good.You can forget the CEO title, here. That’s not the type of officer we care about. President is, though!Signing as the Office Manager doesn’t mean squat, here. You can’t reasonably expect to use a lesser title to get out of personal liability.The notion that there is a bookkeeper doesn’t mitigate anything. Prior to writing the check, Janet could’ve called the bookkeeper; called the bank and checked the account balance; or, waited to write and deliver the check until such things could be done to make her certain she would not be committing check fraud.Janet has a risk, here, of being personally liable, because the President of the company, in most situations, has the ultimate authority to view any financial statements of the company. The President usually signs tax returns for a corporation; or, at least, that’s a possibility. The IRS would accept it.That risk is less, but not theoretically impossible to realize, if she signs the check as Janet, President of XYZ 123, INC.Sam is the husband of the 100% shareholder/owner of XYZ 123, INC. His wife, Janet, is the President, and he holds the somewhat ceremonial title of Treasurer, because he has his own job and doesn’t really do much but bookkeeping for the business at night. He is the night bookkeeper and the titular office manager. — When he arrives to start his work, his wife, Janet, calls him and tells him to prepare a check for $10,000 made payable to one of her vendors.Is the amount of that check high, in his experience, for the corporation to make on the spur of the moment?The bank is closed and he has no access to online banking for this account.He will know the actual book balance of that account when he’s done with his night work, but he hasn’t even started.Sam has risk, here, of being personally liable. He is the Treasurer of the corporation. Despite being ordered to prepare a check and deliver it to a vendor on demand, he could choose to ignore that. — The President can’t fire the Treasurer. Only the Board of Directors can fire the Treasurer. — If the President, his wife, doesn’t want to wait for him to do his work, so that he is comfortable with writing the check himself, then she can come in and sign the check herself.Signing as Sam, Treasurer, XYZ 123, INC. may shield him, but this set of facts may not bear that out.Oscar started out at a corporation as the office manager. Over the years, he was promoted to hold the position, also, of Chief Financial Officer, but he was still the titular office manager. He no longer held a primary bookkeeping function at the company, but he did review all of the corporation’s financial statements. He had been elevated to CFO by a meeting of the BOD, but no change had been made to the corporate charter. If you checked with the Secretary of State (SOS), his name would not be found listed with the SOS. A Vice President of the corporation just called him and told him to authorize payment for all invoices currently owed to a particular vendor, because the VP was upset with it and intended to switch to a new vendor. Once he is off the phone, he calls down to an accounts payable clerk and orders him to prepare a check, to the vendor, for all outstanding invoices. While the A/P clerk was working, he checked the bank account balance and his cash flow data; and, determined that the check would likely be returned NSF. Pretty soon, the A/P clerk knocks on his office door and brings in the check for him to sign.Is the VP who called him listed on the corporate charter? — Oscar checks, and he is. Despite Oscar’s in-house title of CFO, the VP is his boss. (We’ll assume that the bylaws don’t say otherwise, but that is really an internal matter.)Oscar checks the authorized signers list for the bank account and sees that he is an authorized signer but the VP in question is not.In order to verify that the VP understood what he was asking Oscar to do, he called the VP back, but he didn’t answer. — What do the corporate bylaws and associated memoranda, if any, say should be done in this situation? — He looks, and the bylaws are nonspecific.He places a call to his boss, the President, who is also the boss of the VP. — The President, also, does not answer.Based on this, he signs the check and asks his assistant to make sure it got in the day’s outgoing mail.It is unlikely that Oscar will face any personal liability if this check bounces when the vendor deposits it.This is when, absolutely, the CFO should sign as Oscar, Chief Financial Officer, XYZ 123, INC.However, that doesn’t mean that the corporation won’t be held criminally liable. Oscar may avoid personal liability for this decision, but he may face it (i.e., the corporation may face it); and, it might be a criminal charge, not just a civil one.His job may be in jeopardy! Of course, it may have been in jeopardy if he refused to sign the check and send it on. — Without any help from bylaws or other corporate policies related to this event, he’s in a pickle.He may be screwed either way. — If anything, if he’s fired for his decision, either way, he has a good case for unemployment benefits.Finally, let’s run the simplest scenario.Sarah is the office manager for Johnny B. Goode dba Goode’s Goods. Johnny is the owner of the company, and he rules it with an iron fist. He’s in control of everything. She knows the company is a sole proprietorship; they’ve talked about it before. Johnny calls her up and says a subcontractor is expecting a $2,500 payment. He’d forgotten to tell her; she needed to write the check and go to the post office and overnight it to the subcontractor. She does as she’s told. She has no access to any financial information. On no check she’s ever written has she known whether it would clear or come back NSF. — That was above her pay grade.Sarah opens herself up, with each check she writes, to civil liability. → She can be sued.If she has the ability to sign checks, as an authorized signer on the account, she really should have the ability to make sure those checks will be good on arrival.However, there’s no way (seemingly) that she can form the intent to defraud requisite for criminal liability.She still should sign Sarah, Office Manager, Goode’s Goods.—As for the owner? → No luck for him. He is not operating in a corporate/fiduciary capacity. He has criminal and civil liability for this action and all others like it.This is why people incorporate their businesses.The last aspect to cover in this answer involves facsimile signature stamps.You can sign your name, which is the signature that is found on the business’s business bank account signature card, and turn it into an ink stamp.Your secretary or assistant or office manager or VP — anybody — can use that to stamp your signature onto a check.Some banks don’t allow facsimile signature stamps on bank account signature cards, but — for reasons similar to those I said before — they likely will be accepted at other banks, and even if your bank doesn’t accept such checks, they will likely process them if they come from another bank, because no one looks at them.I’ve never had any problems with them.A pretty big businessman I did business with had his mother law as his office manager. — She had a facsimile signature stamp which had her signature as the stamped signature!So, even though she could sign the checks, per the bank, she chose to stamp the checks with the ink stamp instead. Same signature! — Different ink.I believe she did that for liability reasons, not laziness. — By definition, the facsimile signature can be stamped by anyone, so you can never really pin down who did it.I know a bank that prints, on most checks, the facsimile signature of the bank President, and then whatever officer (or teller) has issued the check initials next to the computer printed facsimile of the President’s signature.This is a clever, de facto way of saying, “Jane Doe on behalf of Jack Dooley, Bank President”.When I’ve headed departments that use facsimile signature stamps, I have people, including myself, initial next to the signature stamps on the checks. — It’s more for a risk management/ease-of-verification purpose.Donald Trump always signs documents with a special pen. — That’s not unique to him. — I have a special pen I use to sign my signature.If you don’t have that marker or pen, respectively, then you can’t recreate the signature, no matter how talented you are.The same thing goes with that facsimile signature stamp, or printed signature. — Even if you’ve expertly copied how someone signs his or her name, you’ll never get it right because you lack the correct ink (and sometimes, paper).United States currency is signed by facsimile.If you are an office manager, and you don’t want to be responsible, use a facsimile signature stamp for whatever someone else has authorized you to be issuing checks.Maybe that person is the President of the company.If you have the authority to sign documents or checks (→ the facsimile signature stamp can be used on more than just checks!), then sign them if you feel comfortable with them.If you don’t know what you’re signing, or you’re not comfortable with it, pull out that stamp and use it!I would, and I do.When I worked at the retail bank, I could sign checks only up to a certain amount, even though I processed transactions that required me to produce checks in the millions of dollars. In order to make sure those checks would be honored by the bank, I had to make sure that I found someone else, with a higher signing limit, to co-sign with me.I had a friend who was one of the Executive Vice Presidents of the bank, and I tended to go to her. — Don’t think she signed things just because I asked!I brought her my supporting documentation and showed why I was sending so much money out of the bank. — Only once it made sense to her would she affix her signature.If you want to be the safest you can be, never sign anything you can’t confirm won’t come back as fraudulent.If you aren’t seeming to be able to achieve that, as the office manager of a business, then get your boss to sign on the order form for a facsimile signature stamp, and then, everything that comes out of the office, which he authorized you to produce when he hired you, will have his name on it.And, that will serve de facto to say: “Me OBO My Boss”.Given you have no choice in the matter, as these are orders you’re being given, you should be fine. But, to be safest — if you know (as President Trump’s White House attorney might have said) crazy shit is going on — you might just wait until someone else can sign the checks or documents, so that you have no record on them, legally; you just produced them on demand or order.If you get fired for being that careful, then you are likely to win your unemployment appeal, if everything else is satisfied, because requiring you to take on personal criminal or civil liability is not a valid power of a business manager, executive, or owner. — An order to break the law, including to be part of a conspiracy to defraud, is not a valid order.

Let me inject my little humble experience with the Nationalist military—no exactly answering your question, but may provide some insight to the Nationalist government’s downfall.The Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan in 1949, telling its own people that it was a temporary tactical maneuver and that we would soon counter-attack and retake the homeland. I was brought up in such belief. In all honesty, that was the only belief around—or rather, allowed.In 1967, 18 years after the KMT-CCP civil war, like all my contemporaries at the time, I began my military service as a platoon leader in the Marine Corps right after college (sort of ROTC-like officer in the US). When I first reported to my company with much apprehension, I felt no welcome—or rather, I was made to feel like an outsider. Without saying a word, a master sergeant handed me my uniform and placed my civilian clothing in a bag. I noticed he never bothered to solute, as I was made extremely conscious that respecting rank was an utmost important way to keep the military discipline, regardless personal feelings toward the person who happens to out-rank you. I sort tried to understand how a fifty-some-year-old master sergeant would feel when he had to salute to a young kid thirty years his junior, but, again, I did not invent the rules.I was shown to my tiny officer quarter. The place was already occupied by another officer and he grudgingly cleared out the upper bunk bed for me to crawl in. I considered myself lucky: comparing it to the open double-deck sleeping arrangement during my boot-camp days, it is a private mansion.On the same evening, I saw my platoon the first time. An unhappy—very very unhappy indeed— old sergeant named Li who had acted as the substitute platoon leader rudely summoned the thirty-some skeptically looking young conscripts and reluctantly transferred his command to me. I knew even then from the looks of the young troopers that the old fellow Li would not give up his power without a fight. I kept my posture and introduced myself briefly to the troopers and told the sergeant to dismiss the squad and let the guys rest early. Soon after I turned my back I heard the old sergeant begin barking at the conscripts and kept rambling, shouting out a long tirade about discipline, honor, and duties, which I considered completely irrelevant. I was torn between stopping him from the nonsense volley for the sake of the troopers and keeping the protocol which gave him the prerogatives as a sergeant to bark on. I backed off from the direct confrontation with Li, not a pleasant first day in the service.No sooner did I report to duty than the company was given the order to march out with full gear, with the M2 for foot soldiers, a carbine for sergeants and the .45 caliber pistol for officers. I never shot a 45 pistol but it felt good, I had to admit. We were not told where to go, or what to do or what to expect. I overheard the soldiers mumbling that since no live ammunition was dispensed so that must be good, meaning at best just an exercise of some sort, unlike two years before when live ammunition was dispensed and with all communications with outside cut off did they all break out in tears, realizing something bad was going to happen. Fortunately, I was later told, the mission was scuttled as the first ships entering Xiamen Harbor was intercepted and the entire crew was captured.We marched for hours to get on a gigantic transport ship in ZhoYin. That was quite a sight to behold: hundred and hundred of us jammed on every single square inch on deck, and the loud growling landing ships (LTV) belched heavy diesel fumes rammed into the lower deck. Soon we set sail. It was a calm but queer night; overhead, the Milky Way easily fit into your hands as the transporter was kept intentionally in the pitch darkness. Soon its swaying motions started to its tolls on the conscripts: many began to vomit, and understandably, all toilets soon turned into hell.That was a sleepless night for the most of us, and as the shimmering dawn came we could slowly make out the silhouette of the coastline. Yes, the land! No more sea sickness! The alarm sound could not come a better time as the navy guys come on deck to collect and shove us exhausted marines to the LTVs below. But the sea wasn’t as kind and the surfs were punishing. With propeller-powered bomber roaring above and the iron “water ducklings” humming in all directions, you don’t need to be told that one misstep and you are doomed. Yes, it was like a war game, but somehow I reminded myself that we were all in uniform and if the war did come, we are the most sought-after targets.The LTV ride was proven too short; soon the reality hit home: what happens after we land—this can’t be just a Disneyland ride?No one ever briefed me on the maneuver, nor did anyone bother to inform me of the exercise plan, and here I wore the badge of the platoon leader and I had not even got a map! Could the old sergeant Li keep away the info from me? Before I could collect all my thoughts, we were shoved out of the landing craft by the navy guys. Suddenly, I found myself sinking into the wet sand with twenty-some pairs of eyes looking straight at me for further orders. In front of me was a steep hill covered with thorny bushes, above me was the glaring sun, at the corner of my eyes were a group of mean-looking inspecting colonels and majors dripping white foams at the mouths. I couldn’t hear what they were yelling but my instinct told me that something does not bode well and it would be a foolish attempt trying to carry out a civilized dialogue with these people. So I instantly barked out and took my troopers to run away from the mean-looking convoy, yes, all the way deep into the hills—where no one could get us.Once in a while, I have nightmares over this incident. Clearly, that was an absolutely unprofessional way of handling a military maneuver. I cannot imagine what if that were a real military exercise any the junior officer was not even given a minimum instruction, map, schedule, or destination of the mission and the point of rendezvous. I hardly knew any of these young conscripts in my platoon, let alone the constant usurper Li. They could just easily skewer me on the rack, hang me out to dry, or push accidentally send me down to the hillside?This was in 1967. I can only guess the situation had to be ten times worse then during the Chinese Civil War.Anyway, we were drifting from hill to hill, avoiding the inspecting convoy; occasionally we met other groups who were just at a loss as we were. Loss of sleep and hunger began to take a grip on us and thirst became unbearable thanks to the unrelenting sun. I told the troopers to recuperate in the shade, waiting for instructions over the radio. The old US-made radio, a leftover from the WWII era. cracked and squealed out sporadic firecracker sounds and decided to die suddenly. The communication soldier tried desperately to resuscitate the machine by cranking the handle incessantly, but to no avail. So radio dead on all fronts, none from the company, the battalion or the regiment. We were alone!I figure that at the time, 18 years after the Chinese Civil War, hardly any one in Taiwan had any experience with anything mechanical or electronic in nature, driving was a luxury, and electronic communications were nonexistent. I could only imagine what was like 18 years before then.Lunchtime has elapsed, still no instructions of any sort from anywhere. It was near 1;30 pm came the vociferated fiery furies from the the loudspeakers by the regiment commander who few had ever met; “You can come out now, you useless cowardly bunch. You can now get off the mountains and have your lunch. Remember, if this were a real war, you would be all be dead by now.” Thank you, commander, for the encouraging words, and thank you for the lunch because we really need it. Note: this was in 1967 during peace time; how could the the similar scenario turned out 18 years ago when supplies in dire deficiency, morale low, and corruption was rampant? Did many have to kill one another for food, and drink one another’s blood to quench the thirst?Despondent and injured, I collected myself and took my platoon down the mountain paths where we met many other equally dispirited groups. In the fleeting exchanges of silent glimpse we secured the minimal pride we each sought for: no, we are no coward, we are simply the victims of the circumstances. My platoon was not reprimanded for getting lost in the exercise; the likely reason may be every single platoon, every single company was lost in the landing chaos. Of course, lunch was not meant to reward us cowards and us the fainted-heart, the regiment commander kept up with his bombastic delivery: “ You think you deserve the meal? No, you’re wrong, no one owes you the meal. You left a shameful mark on the regiment’s proud record by acting like a bunch of imbeciles. To make sure you remember your ineptness, you will begin your forced march right after lunch. For those who think they deserve a regular afternoon nap, well, you are wrong. You will march on, and you will retrospect on what you had done while you are marching. “Our fearless commander’s remonstrance clearly felt on deafears: most reaction to it was —well, damn, not even a nap! The forced march did not go well indeed as the already-exhausted troopers struggled to carry the heavy M2 rifle, the light machine gun and bipod, or the 60-mm motor component and marched in the searing heat and the murderous humidity. The first to drop out of march was Sergeant Li, and Li and other old sergeants were picked up by the supply trucks and piled up like corpses. Finally, I had my entire platoon back as all the old sergeants were gone. But the worse just began to unfold: a typhoon started unleashing its might with lashing thunders and pouring rain. A machines gun carriers felt and vomited in convulsion. I stopped to check on him but was stopped by the MP with a deadpan look in his face that the march could not be interrupted by one fallen man. The downpour seemed to produce a bizarre and hypnotic effect on me: in trying to block off the bewailing drench and gnawing fatigue, the mind began to retrograde to some of the most esoteric questions I had considered in life: “should Lady Chatterley’s lover be blamed for her decadence”, ‘why did I get such a thrill reading a banned like this?”, ‘was Freud serious when he spoke of women’s penis envy”, ‘how the homo sapiens species came to be so much alike”, or “are love, procreation, and testosterone the same thing?” Somehow, they kept my mind occupied, and kept the seemingly surreal world away from my desperately needed sanity. Was that a self-defense mechanism in full swing? i would never know.That was a long march alright. After the drench came the sweltering sun. many troopers resorted to replenish their empty canteen with water from the rice paddies. I thought about the parasites in the water but was helpless in providing alternatives. Finally we settled into an elementary school before midnight. The school field was flooded but our order was the same: set up the tent for the night. Surely the troopers set up their tents in the soggy field but all chose to collapse on the hallway, and slept in every dry corner of the school. Surely I needn’t mention the fouls from the school’s overflown toilets.The school was still on summer break so we spent a week to recuperate. On the second evening I sensed some disturbance by an unusual gathering of men in a shadowed corner of the school. in the dim light I made my way to the front of the muted and intense crowd, where I saw a scene has haunted me up to this date— a gasping conscript with a contorted face in a push-up position, heaving himself desperately away from an upward pointing dagger planted directly below his abdomen, his vein swollen, his body dripping with bead-size perspiration, and all these under a gleeful eye of an old sergeant. Someone murmured out an expletive…,”Just because he refused to obey the old guy’s order?” Another echoed with an F-word…” I will kill the old SOB when the right time comes.” Others remained hushed—there might be ears among us?On the second evening, I was drawn to a small crowd that gathered around a small windowless hut that was used as a makeshift toilet. Apparently, the toilet was locked from outside. An old sergeant appeared and ordered the door be unlocked. Soon a barely wiggled body was dragged out, obviously poisoned by the foul fumes. His unconscious body was quickly carried away by his comrades and again came the hateful murmurs among the crowd. I was struggling with my conscience on just what I had to do without “rocking the boat’ of strict discipline. I conjured up a plan, and I knew it was risky. I had no friends in this god-forsaken place, and as a junior officer, I had no voice. Tormented constantly by my inaction, I decided to take a reasonable rick to change the intolerable cruelty of abuse in the name of discipline. Thanks to the Sherlock Holmes stories I read as a child, I painstakingly scribbled on the back of an ordinary white wrapping paper with my left hand: “Stop turning a blind eye on the illegal physical abuse on the conscripts or else….” Carefully I wiped off any possible finger prints and slipped the note under the doors of the regiment’s political commissar. The abuse did abate for a while and I did not know whether that was due to my doing.it is a common knowledge that the old sergeants were drafted against their wills when the KMT government fought against the CCP in 1940’s. Most of them are illiterate and consequently it was unlikely they could eke out a living outside of the military compound, especially none could utter a word of the local dialect, the Taiwanese. The company commander was one of the very few who could read and hence managed to rise to the rank of major. Understandably he resented the intrusion by the first college-graduated officer assigned to HIS company, me, guardedly, if not with disdain. The uneasiness manifested itself from time to time, and I guessed that it must be killing him to have to constrain himself in dealing with my first request for leave: “ What the FXXX, you need to take a leave for taking the GRE exam?”, “What the Fxxx is GRE? And why do I have to approve it? “,”So you have the approval paper deemed by the DOD , then what the Fxxx do you want me to sign this damn leave paper?” Of course, he did not know, the GRE request was only the beginning of my many many requests to come, then the TOEFL, then the DoE’ overseas-study qualification exam…. I felt sorry for the old man as his turf was trampled over by an young officer who aspires nothing less than seeing the world, abandoning his sacred duty of counterattacking the mainland. The sorry-old commander punctually disappeared for two days after the payday. I heard through the grapevine that he was a regular of a brothel in Kaohsiung City. That did not surprise me as most old sergeants would disappear in synchrony with the payday. Once the old commander was forced to stay put due to some unscheduled inspection exercise. The entire company fell into the victim of his unsettling wrath. He ranted incoherently for hours, blaming everyone for everything under the sun. In the midst of lunch, he rose suddenly, baring his teeth—everyone froze— dramatically he held up his rice bowl and trashed it on the ground. “What the Fxxx is this, you called this food?, “Get me the hands in the kitchen and have them report to me immediately….yes, at right this moment!” And he looked at me in a strange frown, I guess that meant either “life would be so good without you being in my sight” or “go take a hike, can’t you see I am still the reining king here?” I did not finish my meal either, not because of the food. I did not know what valuable service I offered to my country…or I did so by simply being a nuisance in a changing world?Among all the capriciousness came a handful of personal triumphs and a few bitter-sweet moments. Slowly and steadily, I won the trust of my young conscripts most who could neither read nor write. I became their only means to communicate with their loved ones back home: by writing some of the most intimate letters in life: “Dear A-lien, I can not come home this weekend because it takes five hours to travel one way, and the buses are often jammed. please go to my home and make sure my parents know I am okay here.”, ‘Dear Mom, this is your son Way-Ho. We now station in Che-Chen, a small town in Pin-Dong County, a hard-to-get-to place. So I don’t think I can get home until the Chinese New Year Break. Please take good care of yourself, and wait until I return to plow the field.” “Dear A-Mi, how are you. I think of you often. Did I tell you we have a new platoon leader? He is a nice man and he offers to write this letter for me. I am thinking to invite him over to our wedding the next year. Oh, did I tell you he is a college graduate? He also doubles up as our marching song teacher at the request of the political commissar from the headquarters. Also, because he was so good at many things, he began to teach us the Chiang Kai-Shek ‘s speeches as well, and he is very good at it, and he often makes us laugh.”, “Dear father, with great respect from your son, I am serving my military duty, and I follow the orders of my superiors as you always told me. Last time you said you had a backache, I hope you feel better now. do worry about the chicken flu. Just salt them first and sell them in the market. If you charge less, people will buy it no matter what. Oh, we won the military marching song contest last week, thanks to our new platoon leader who taught us how to beat our competitors; by singing as loud as possible, showing the spirit, never mind the tones, he said….”One quiet Sunday afternoon, I had an unexpected visitor: the old sergeant Li who tried to usurp my authority as the platoon leader. It was the first time he looked so respectful and subdued. I asked him to come into my tiny quarter and offered him the only chair in the room and some water. “Can I help you?” I asked of him. He began to blush and stammered, “I was wondering, Sir, if you can do me a big big favor?” I immediately sensed it must be something extraordinary but I held back my anxiousness less he should back away from talking. “You see, Sir, I left my home in Sun-Dong for twenty-some years and I have always worried about my families back home.” He paused and took a calibration on my reaction to decide whether he should continue his delivery. I knew exactly what he was about to say; back then, anyone suspected to have communicated with the mainland Chinese can be rounded up as a communist spy or sympathizer and can be punished by death. No small matter, this man is trusting his entire life on me. He went on and begged me to write a letter on his behave, telling his families that he is alive and well. “I heard that you are going to America in a few months. When you get there, would you please mail this letter to this address in China for me. Oh, I have managed to save up some money for this date. Please convert it to the US money and sent it to them? It’s not much, but that’s all I have.” His voice turned hoarse and his face buried under his weathered hands. He insisted I took his money and before he left he hesitated for a couple of seconds before he uttered the final words between us: “I wish to tell you how sorry I am when you first came. I don’t deserve to hope to see you again.”A few days before my discharge, I was summoned to the political commissar’s office in the regiment’s headquarters. “Lieutenant Yang, come in.” he was a lanky fellow in his late fifties, with a hawkish look and a easy disparaging smile. “ I have looked over your service record and found blemishes that can easily stop you from getting a passport for studying abroad, you know what I meant? ” I stood in attention and desperately stayed calm, knowing this man alone could derail my entire aspiration to see the world, especially the big world outside of this tiny island. “No, Sir, I thought I had helped to teach political courses and our regiment scores high on the tests.”. He smiled broadly and said, “Now stop beat around the bush; I know you are smarter than that, and I am not just talking about your lukewarm attitude toward slogan chanting during the morning roll calls either.” “Sir, I can explain….” He waived to shut me up and officiated his verdict,”Indeed, your contribution to elevating our regiment’s test score by two notches makes you a net contributor to the military, and I congratulate you for earning your honorary discharge. Just sign your name here and you will be a civilian in no time.”I was a bit startled by the need for enacting such episode, but I still signed in earnest, hoping I never have to see him ever again. But I was wrong; he took his time checking my signature and glared at me dispassionately, “Lieutenant Yang, you have a smart handwriting indeed.” before I collected my self in disbelief , he pulled out his drawer and handed me a piece of white wrapping paper, “ I think this paper should go back to its rightful owner.” It was his final words. And yes, that was the paper I wrote with my left hand. Yes, the ink of my fountain pen gave it away, which Sherlock Holmes never taught me. Still, the old man is cool.Why do I write this story, and is there any relevance to the question of what would happen if the nationalists won the civil war? My answer is; never mind the question. Let the past die! KILL IT if you have to. ” (copyright disclaimer—Star War)Many Many innocent Chinese died; many many families dispersed, many many lives were wasted during the Chinese civil conflicts. Do not glorify the overly fabricated history. Learn from the past we know and look ahead, never make the same mistakes again.

One cannot deny that putting Asimov's Foundation series up on the big screen presents a real challenge, between screenwriters, producers, and directors, to say nothing of the moguls who finance and greenlight the project only if they think it might make a profit.The easiest part to explain is the moguls. Experience often shows that if you aim high as to intelligence, the movie ends up as a small "indie" film, or about as successful as one, but if you aim low, there is little to no risk of losing money by insulting the intelligence of the audience. Even the very stupidest movies can become "cult classics" out of their sheer stupidity (think of "Food Fight" or "Garbage Pail Kids" or "Felix the Cat" or “Plan 9 From Outer Space”). Foundation does not scale down well in intelligence, so very little money will ever likely be put into it.Producers and directors want to put lots of explosions and space battles in it because they think this will make the movie more exciting to audiences, but this would so severely betray and violate the whole point and charm of a Foundation film. The temptation seems to be to use the title, and perhaps some of the characters and basic situations, and then throw a lot of name stars and useless special effects, love affairs and sex scenes, shootouts and chases, all with no connection to the story at it, and hope that makes it a hit. But it is the writers who have the biggest challenge.Dr. Asimov gives this account of his rereading of the original Foundation trilogy when preparing to begin its next novel, “Foundation’s Edge”: “… about the end of May, I picked up my own copy of The Foundation Trilogy and began reading. I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and while I remembered the general plot, I did not remember the details. Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel I had to immerse myself in the style and atmosphere of the series. I read it with mounting uneasiness. I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No action. No physical suspense. What was all the fuss about, then? Why did everyone want more of that stuff?—To be sure, I couldn't help but notice that I was turning the pages eagerly, and that I was upset when I finished the book, and that I wanted more, but I was the author, for goodness' sake.”One of the biggest criticisms of the work is that it seems to consist almost entirely of people talking in rooms. An attempt to turn those conversations into impressive space battles would invariably fall flat on its face. The complaint has also been made that there are no continuing characters in this series. Though a person might show up in a couple segments (e. g. Salvor Hardin), and of course, Hari Seldon’s influence in the form of the Seldon Plan runs throughout the whole series, unifying it, there are no characters who exist throughout the whole thing. There is always the question of what to leave out and what to keep in, and what might be added that an audience would want to see. Audiences are often hard to please, and probably hardest when dealing with going from a book to a movie where the book is so well-known that everyone watching the movie will quickly see what was changed, and generally comment unfavorably on that difference.Then there is the problem of what to do with the technology. Extrapolations of 1940’s technology pervade the series, and when putting it to film what should one do? The most common approach seems to update the technology to predictable extrapolations of whatever technology is current when the film is being shot. It is generally easier and can help present day audiences to feel we are dealing with a “future” when seeing technologies which seem so to us today. But such attempts rapidly become dated, and instead of portraying a time at least 12,000 years in the future it ends up instead portraying a time at least 20 years past. Think of how AOL-styled emails of “You’ve Got Mail” (1998) rapidly came to look ridiculous in comparison to the snail mail of “Shop Around the Corner” (1940) that still hold up. Or again, “The Puppet Masters” (1994), following the book so closely in some ways (especially in the first part) and in the casting of the three main leads, but then deviated in several ways (most notably from a technological standpoint) by introducing satellite heat signature recognition as a way of detecting who is infected and deleting the whole Titans subplot.The biggest problem in that area was the slow progress in computer technology in the Foundation series. Who could have believed in the 1940’s and 1950’s that computers would become so powerful and at the same time so microminiaturized within a scant 50 years, and yet at the same time Robotics (and especially the ability to create a functional humanoid robot, complete with at least apparent feelings, thoughts, creativity, problem-solving, and imagination, as to approximate human capabilities, coupled with machine-like perfection and speed, remains far behind the levels that Asimov expected for the same period in his Robot series. So here we are supposedly 12,000 or more years in the future and yet in the story shipboard computers are barely above the level of the surprisingly primitive computers of the Apollo Lunar Module. Since computing power does factor in on occasion, what do we do with that in such a movie?Granted, these are all serious challenges, far too great for the limited imaginations of our typical Hollywood types to work with (hence their proclivity to make dumb sequels and retreads, all because they just can’t think of anything else), so it really is quite possible that there may never be a Foundation movie, or just as bad, never a credible adaptation of it that retains anything much at all of what the series is truly all about. But is it really all that impossible? I think not.Let’s start with one of the easier things to deal with, namely the technology of so distant a future. There is a new and better approach that already has some precedent in the steampunk and retrofuturism movements, first glimpsed on film (that I know of) in “1984” (1984), in which the technology seen was not the mid-1980’s technology as it actually existed currently, but a reasonable projection of the future from what things were like in 1948 when George Orwell originally penned the novel. By 1984, real offices often had mainframe computers with (dumb) terminals in each office, and would email to transmit messages about, but in “1984” they are still using pneumatic tubes. It is as if someone with all the cinematography skills and techniques and experience we have today were to have existed back in 1948 and had been sufficiently funded to apply those skills as needed. With this approach, all of the technological anachronisms of Foundation cease to be a problem; we are simply telling the story as originally envisioned by the author, and as originally read by its first readers in it own original time. This could also be a good approach in connection with the men and women and how they relate to each other, no need to impose contemporary norms; anyway, Asimov has some truly good and strong female characters as written, albeit set in ways that seem out of sync with how people view things today. Just treat it like a period piece.Next, let’s look at how the problem of the moguls (and of funding) might also be solved, and best so “in the typewriter,” so to speak. The answer to this is largely staring us in the face already, namely the fact that so very much of the series is just people talking in rooms. How about simply forget trying to figure out portrayals of the things discussed and simply have the conversations as given in the series itself? That one thing alone would be a truly vast savings on production costs. Another big savings would be that for what few space battles are seen the technology that now exists has made the production of such scenes much easier and cheaper that it would have been in former years. CGI graphics today has come a long way, and even “last year’s technology” in that could still look quite excellent and sufficient for the needs of this series.People talking in rooms doesn’t sound very exciting, and hardly a basis for a movie, but then recall “My Dinner With Andre” (1981) which, despite being literally nothing but two guys having a conversation in a restaurant, actually manages to be quite captivating as a truly excellent film. Only, instead of discussing philosophies of life what we have here are power brokers discussing the direction the future should take, making all-important decisions, negotiations, and even outright takeovers. As Khan said (in the Star Trek episode, Space Seed), “It has been said that social occasions are only warfare concealed.” Or again, think of your average courtroom drama. What, after all, IS a “Courtroom Drama,” but “people talking in a room”? And for that matter, one early scene consists of Hari Seldon himself in some sort of actual “trial.” About 95% of the whole Foundation saga can properly be regarded as a “bottle show.” It is always the search for survival, as well as the truth about the Plan: How will Hari Seldon avoid having his group shut down by the Empire? How will the Foundation, now located on Terminus at the edge of the Galaxy, drive Anacreon from their soil? How can the Foundation religion be used to turn aside a subsequent attack from Anacreon? How will trade replace the religion as a much further means of expansion? How does the Foundation survive the last great attack of the declining old Empire? What recourse is there if history fails to unfold as planned? And so forth.Any film that rises even the tiniest bit above the mere shoot-em-up has to feature scenes of exposition, people talking and explaining what has been going on, or what scam the bad guy is trying to pull, or what the good guy is doing to fight it, or “whodunit?” and so forth. The Foundation series is almost pure exposition. So actually, it is mostly comprised of the most interesting part of most films. Where would Star Wars be without “No, Luke, I am your father”? All the swordplay that precedes and follows that iconic moment of exposition almost might as well be a mere arm-wrestle for all the interest it has in comparison.Science fiction writer and critic James Gunn said of the Foundation series, “Action and romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy—virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible—but the stories provide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas.” If any attempt to film Foundation is to prove credible, at the very least this detective-story fascination with permutations and reversals of ideas must feature at the center of it all. Yes, there can be room for some action or romance, but these things must take a back seat (if present at all). Think of Murder She Wrote, or Columbo, or Ellery Queen. It is not any (much) action or romance that drives the tale (though those things can enter in occasionally), but (in those cases) the seeking for the truth. This last of course points to something else about how to do it, namely as a television miniseries. Think of the different ways that a war is portrayed in films versus television shows: In a feature film one can have a “cast of thousands,” a veritable sea of soldiers fighting throughout a vast battlefield, but on television it makes far more sense to show merely a few single pairs of soldiers duking it out. Foundation is full of such “single pairs” and small groups “duking it out” with psychohistory, or with the mentalic powers of the Mule or of the Second Foundation.That leads to the last point, namely casting decisions. When making feature films one often tends to seek out known “name” talent, but in this case such “name” talent should only be permitted if their own interest in such a project would make them willing to accept a pay scale commensurate with that of new and (relatively) unknown and untried acting talent. It is amazing how people, especially those who understand how a future career in acting depends upon their performance here, can rise to the occasion in ways that surprise everyone including themselves. As for the lack of continuing characters throughout the series, even that need not be considered much of a problem. Making a series about, for example, the Bible, or even such a miniseries as Roots, certainly did not suffer from the lack of a single continuing character (unless you want to count God in the first case, or Racism (as like a “character”) in the second. And for that there is Psychohistory and the Seldon Plan.So, is it doable? Absolutely! Will it happen, and in a credible manner? Unfortunately those sorts of decisions extremely seldom fall to those capable of making them competently. Given enough time, almost anything, however unlikely, is practically bound to occur, eventually. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for it.ADDENDUM:Well, it looks like this could happen after all. Apple has greenlit a feasible effort which even includes Isaac Asimov's own daughter among the production staff. Perhaps previous attempts have failed due to attempts to compress such a vast saga into a single film instead of a series. For myself, I pictured a 4-part miniseries, each part (ranging from 90 to 120 minutes including credits) taking on about three "installments" per part:Part 1 (Founding the Foundation): The Psychohistorians, The Encyclopedists, The MayorsPart 2 (Facing the Empire): The Merchant Princes, The Traders, The General (I will get to the rationale for the order reversal, below)Part 3 (The Mule): The Mule (both parts, as published November and December 1945), Search by the MulePart 4 (The Two Foundations): Search by the Foundation (all three parts, as published November and December 1949 and January 1950)I had dreams of trying to write the screenplay myself (contract or no, just for my own interest), but that probably won't ever be realized, at least not in the immediately foreseeable future, but I do have some thoughts; they are truly mine, apart from their direct borrowing from Asimov's original work and also the existing stories authorized by the Asimov estate, and I offer them freely, hoping that other fans will pick up on these and say, "yes, these are good ideas" and hope the production will be positively influenced by them.One idea is to borrow a bit more from the original series as published in Astounding, which differs somewhat from the book versions. For example, the original published installment (now known as the Encyclopedists) had a short series of paragraphs portraying a meeting conducted by Hari Seldon which might be combined with the closing parts of the Psychohistorians, such that he says, not merely to Gaal Dornick one on one, but to his gathered Psychohistorians and Mathematicians at the close of the last meeting he is to preside at, "I am finished!"In that same vein of pointing to the original published stories, The Traders would be about an episode from the past life of Lathan Devers. It would be added after the part (in The General) that introduces Emperor Cleon II and Brodrig and before we return to Bel Riose and Ducem Barr. Sennet Forrell and his three cronies are again gathered, and Sennet is introducing his fellow members to this Trader who really is a real Trader (unlike the fake "Trader" Jaim Twer who was found out by Hober Mallow), loyal to the Foundation, a great spy, brilliantly clever, and extremely resourceful. To illustrate the point, the events of The Traders (or "The Wedge") are told as a backstory (in only 5-10 minutes of screen time - or 3-5 minutes if we are trying to squeeze it all into a one hour episode) so that audiences can better understand and appreciate who he is, and deepen his character with real Asimov Foundation material originally so intended.(For the books, it made sense to reverse the order of the two stories since to end the first volume on a relatively minor trading victory would have made a very weak ending for the book. The triumph of Hober Mallow and his successful navigation of a Seldon Crisis made for a strong and fitting climax to the first book. So the order was inverted, and as Lathan Devers could not have possibly lived long enough to precede Mallow and then yet still face the Empire, a new protagonist Limmar Ponyets was introduced, along with a few textual adjustments made to that story and Mallow's to make it seem as if their inverted order made sense. But as originally published, it was Lathan Devers who first sold nuclear gadgets to the Askonians, and that could be here reasonably restored. The only other alternative has been to omit The Traders altogether as does (for example) the BBC radio series production.)Now, Apple has greenlit a 10-part television series - how would that divvy up? What I had is effectively 12 parts, but with The Traders subsumed into The General, and the Search by the Foundation, originally published in three parts (but actually not quite as many words as the two parts of The Mule, anyway), could be reduced by producing it in two parts, which brings us down to 10.In point of fact, it appears that Dr. Asimov seems to have expected that his final Foundation novella would be cut into two parts as was his Mule novella, since there is what makes a great cliffhanger in the middle of the middle part, namely where young Arcadia, having just realized that Lady Callia is a Second Foundationer, has just been deposited in a vast and unfriendly space port. She sees signs lit up for ships going all sorts of places; one is even going to Terminus but she can only head-shake "no" openmouthed as she dare not go to the one place she most wishes to go. Doubtless the Second Foundation is setting a trap for her there. In blind fear and panic she spins, seemingly endlessly, in circles not knowing where to turn, where to go, who to trust (as in “a circle has no end”), and now realizing that she knows where the Second Foundation is, and that her life is forfeit should the Second Foundation capture her and learn of her guilty knowledge, she collapses in tears, feeling as lonely and frightened as an abandoned child, but with the weight of the entire future of Galactic civilization upon her shoulders. She looks up as if expecting some answer from a Deity, but all there is, is the camera looking down at her, pulling away as she gets smaller and as more and more of the surrounding crowd bustles around her, grey and altogether indifferent to her plight as the credits roll, until she seems to disappear, lost in the crowd.Narrator: Each segment should have as its narrator someone who is close to the events, but never the main character; Gaal Dornick makes a good narrator for The Psychohistorians, Yohan Lee for The Encyclopedists and The Mayors, Tinter (a lieutenant aboard Mallow's ship) and Ankor Jael (Mallow's trusted friend during his trial and the "War" with Korell), Ducem Barr for The General, Toran Darell (husband of Bayta) for The Mule, Hans Pritcher for Search by the Mule, Homir Munn and Mrs. Palver for Search by the Foundation. The bits of the Encyclopedia Galactica could be read by either the current narrator or by someone else (if someone else, then ideally Peter Jones or someone with a peter jonesey sort of voice as a sort of reference forward-back to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be ultra-cool).Second Foundation anonymity: To keep the Second Foundation figures anonymous in their meetings on their home planet (because their identity has to be concealed during their interactions with ordinary people in ordinary places), all sorts of unusual perspectives could be used. Obviously, no faces can be shown, but very small portions of the actor's face can be shown in extreme close-up: the raising of an eyebrow, the furrowing of a forehead, the crooking of a finger (along with several other hand and arm gestures), the jutting of a chin, the curling of part of a lip, the appearance of a dimple, also figures seen from behind, at a distance, or as black silhouettes against a wall chock full of brightly glowing math equations. Electronically deepen their voices to borderline unrecognizability and add that echo effect to indicate that we are not hearing words conventionally spoken but thoughts intimated to each other through the tiny gestures seen in the various close-ups. Or think of all the ways the faces of the doctors and nurses were cleverly concealed during the twilight episode “Eye of the Beholder” until the reveal at the end.Attention to details from the books could also add greatly despite their seeming insignificance, for example when hologram Seldon puts down his book it disappears, or when the dowagers wonder who Prince Regent Wienis is walking up the stairs to his private room arm-in-arm (Hardin) they lift ornate but actual and recognizable lorgnettes to their faces (I hate the way recent printings of the book just say that the dowagers just "stared after them" - blah!), or Onum Barr finding a box of canned goods (and his passport, returned) in a box on his doorstep after Hober Mallow leaves his planet of Siwenna, showing volumes about Mallow’s character in about ten seconds of screen time, or an actual descending grid of glowing energy squares three meters on a side descending upon the spaceport crowd where Preem Palver is waiting and then bribes an official. And many people in the original series smoke. I know that smoking is frowned on these days, but who is to say that a cancer-free tobacco couldn't be invented in the next 12-50 thousand years? Anyway, the scene where Ebling Mis is sitting on the desk of an intimidated Mayor Indbur, warning him about an upcoming Seldon crisis, definitely loses something if he can't also be blowing cigar smoke into the Mayor's face, and the poor Mayor trying not to cough as he doesn't smoke.Other things to bring in would be details from the synopses from Astounding, for example that the original "Warlord of Kalgan" whom the Mule displaces and later installs over the conquered Terminus was not some Kalganian native acquiring hawkish tendencies, but one of many Empire Generals-turned-Warlords of various regions:"Meanwhile, the old Empire has fallen quite to pieces, with the various splinters under the shifting, incoherent control of successions of warlords, whose ephemeral military rule waxes and wanes chaotically. It is to these warlords that certain elements of the Independent Traders look for help against the Foundation. However, none of these warlords are at all anxious to tangle with a Foundation known to have defeated the Empire singlehanded and known to be invincible by the established laws of psychohistory. There is only 'The Mule." ... As the story opens, he has just captured the planet of Kalgan without a fight, though its former warlord was known to be a capable warrior, entirely ungiven to surrender." And Bail Channis is a military man, though he does not wear his uniform while on his expedition with Hans Pritcher.Other details could flow from the other approved Foundation books by others; perhaps some details, especially regarding Linge Chen, and other background characters drawn from Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear, could be incorporated into The Psychohistorians segment, or slight wear and tear, missing ceiling portions, litter in the streets not picked up, as indicated in Forward the Foundation, despite the still-otherwise gleaming planet-city of Trantor. Or in giving a history leading up to The Mule (in a short opening narrative admittedly not in the book) brief mention (and glimpse scenes) of the Fall of Trantor as conquered by Gilmer and the preservation of the Imperial Library by the students (omitting all mention of the Second Foundation however), as drawn from Harry Turtledove's "Trantor Falls" from Foundation's Friends.It might also not hurt (though it is not clear what effect it would have on the series, beyond what Hari Seldon's image is saying during the Mule crisis) to have some idea what the Seldon crisis for that time would have been if there were no Mule. Perhaps the Empire-General-turned-Warlord of Kalgan hopes, if he cannot destroy or conquer the Foundation, at least "make off" with its Traders or a signNow percentage of them, and perhaps through them some of their technology that they sell as well. (Originally he hoped to provoke a war between the two foundations, but scanning the furthest regions of the galaxy in vain searching for it he concludes that it is of no account and no help.) So he then turns to creating a civil war within the Foundation - perhaps he can set the Traders at war with the corrupt oligarchy that rules them from Terminus, and many Trader worlds would have joined him, but the few that didn't along with a surprising strength from the Terminus Oligarchy side who have at their beck and call the entire Foundation technology - which the Traders understand far too little of to be of much benefit to the Kalgan Warlord - and so he fails and better relations (something kind of like a union) forms among the Traders to strengthen their bargaining position against the Oligarchy who then begin dealing with them more honestly. But for those third and fourth Seldon crises the end has the Seldon image explaining the Crisis, but as the camera pans around (during the closing credits) no one is in the room.A carefully worked out chronology, specifying how many years into the Foundation era each story is, would be easy to give at the outset of each segment or after any major duration within a segment.Now, can anyone tell me that all of this would not add up to "utterly cool" if only it could be so produced?

I like to tell stories on the journey to answering business questions, so I will meander about, but your question will be answered. I’m going to start at the end of my first year of college in and about a psychology class I had to take to satisfy one of those mandatory categories of a degree plan. I was a creating writing major; had not yet figured out I’d never make a dime writing and switched to finance. I already had an A in the class, but we were given the opportunity to do an extra credit project; I didn’t need extra credit — that’s just the kind of student I was.The task was to set up a research protocol using psychological methods to gather experimental data to test hypotheses and then conclude by analyzing and deciding if the data were sufficient to find correlations, confirm or disprove the hypotheses, or if it just didn’t find anything at all. — I faked my experimental data, but I did the research in the library to support my findings.It caught the attention of the teaching assistant (TA) of the professor, who happened to be the chair of the psychology department; she was a master’s candidate, and she approached me after reading my project to see if I’d be interested in being a research assistant (RA) for her advisor. It was a health and psychophysiology lab (HAPPY); we recruited athletes, obese people, moderately in-shape people — and had them take (mostly) written “exams” — not like the exams you have to study for — we called them schedules, likely because the questions asked the subject to rate how much he or she agreed with certain statements based on Likert scales, and the “exam” was a schedule of Likert scales. Heck, I even remember that lists in creative writing are called schedules!The subjects didn’t know it, but what was being researched was if being a well-built athlete affected your self-confidence, happiness, self-actualization, etc., and how the same were affected by different levels of perceived healthiness by each individual.Now, this RA position was normally one offered to graduating (senior) psychology major. I didn’t get paid, but I did get credit for a fancy named course called SPECIAL PROBLEMS, which was 4000-level credit (at a time when I was still mostly in the 2000s), which was graded, but I didn’t have to pay tuition for the credit hours. — That was the tradeoff.After telling the TA that I was, indeed, interested, next I got a call from a professor asking if I’d like to meet her at Starbucks for an informal interview for the position. — Undergrads rarely socialize with professors, especially research professors. You know, there are your teaching professors who keep office hours, and then there are the research professors, who perhaps have graduate students in their role as advisors for master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. — It certainly was new to me.I got the “job,” which for my sophomore semesters put me into contact with upperclassman undergrads, master’s students, a doctoral candidate, and the professor herself. — On my own time, I also continued to formalize my research for my extra-credit project, and probably it was during the spring when I popped into the professor’s office and asked her what the chances were that I could run my experiment on live subjects. — You know, do it for real.She listened to me and seemed interested, or at least feigned it, but she knew something I didn’t know. — You have to get high-level university ethics committees to sign off on your experimentation on live human beings. — I didn’t know that!I mean, what I was proposing to do consisted only of having subjects do (memory) recall tests and other proficiency tests while listening to sounds or music monaurally, left or right, or binaurally. Not a big deal, right? — Well, it’s still experimentation on humans, and — at that — on students of the university.My desire to move forward was not nonsense, but I was immature. Later, I realized that it was only the doctoral student and the professor, of course, who had permission to do those sorts of things. — I volunteered, at night, to aid the doctoral student (who was like the “office manager” for the lab) in her experimental research, which involved investigating how medical students [it’s Houston, of course; no shortages of hospitals, MDs, and medical students] might form biases, during their initial examinations of test subjects, based on their perceptions of the health status of their patients due to the patients’ athletic build, normal build, obesity, etc.So let’s apply some of that here. Who is perceiving the nonsense reception of a low-run person’s ideas? Who decides that these employees are immature, or have immature ideas? Who perceives the employee is sincere and serious (whatever that last one means)?I’m now putting my business cap on, and I’ll tell you that managers/executives make such perceptions of their employees, and employees make perceptions of their managers, and employees make perceptions of themselves. All of these percepts turn into concepts!Your managers have no a priori reason to assume that you are worth more than what you were originally hired for, and you accepted that job. It would be misguided to assume that you have novel ideas just because you have ideas.I had an office assistant, once, who was twenty years my senior (age-wise), and she’d claimed she had a lifetime’s worth of office assistant (admin.) experience. At her immediately previous job, she had the title of Payroll Director.She was with me for over a year, and I never let her do payroll on her own. I let her enter in the basics, and then I’d look over her work and print the checks. Until, one day, I was too busy wearing one of my other hats that I told her to just go ahead with payroll. I mean, by then, she should have it down.When I finally got back to the main office, it was almost 5pm (30 mins before the banks close). She left at 4pm on Fridays, so she was gone. I get a call from one of my main employees.He’s in the drive-thru “motor center” of one of the local banks, and he’s been unable to cash his paycheck because she didn’t stamp the signature line. — Many people will know this, but many signatures, in business, are affixed electronically; or, by facsimile signature. — These carry the same weight as an authorized signer signing the check (so long as the bank has these on your signature card), but they are affixed or inked on by other people — almost by definition, not by the people whose signature is the one that’s being affixed.She had computed his paycheck correctly (I checked), but she put it in an envelope and gave it to the guy without even “signing” it.Luckily, I was working late (as was often the case on Fridays, or any other day), and I got a frantic phone call from my guy, mad as Hell, and rightfully so. I told him to drive around, sign my name on the bottom of the check, and re-present it to the teller. Of course, this set off alarm bells.I’ll tell you that what the teller did next was not appropriate per the bank’s policies. I would know, because a few years before I worked at that bank, at that location, in a position that was not at officer-level but superior to a teller and in the deposit operations arena; tellers who had questions would come to me for approval when they had questions. — And, in fact, I knew the teller.She picked up the phone and called the phone number listed on the check, which got her to me, in the main office, after-hours, and she explained what was going on. — I responded that I was the Chief Financial Officer of XYZ Corp., and that my assistant had made a mistake. I told her that the man trying to cash the check was my employee; that the paycheck was valid; that I had told him to write my name on the signature line, and that it would be, in fact, illegal for me not to pay him on time. She remembered me (if only by voice recognition/statements of identity by phone) and allowed the check to be cashed.Now, remember: it was the office assistant’s suggestion that she could make payroll run easier if she was allowed to finalize paychecks and distribute them without my supervision.One of the construction foremen had asked her, once, joking, “Why doesn’t Jared let you do this?”She laughed, flirted, and said, “I said I would, but he won’t let me!”Per the résumé she submitted, was her ability to do payroll obviously bogus? — No.Have I ever had an office assistant I trusted with payroll? — Darn tootin’. — For whatever it’s worth, she was over 10 years younger than I was, and had no prior business/office experience. She moved over from a fast-food drive-thru. — But, she could do it.When I started out working at this corporation, I had no assistants in the main office, which would be the proverbial back office, but my actions, elsewhere, in operations caused the company to grow. Eventually, the President agreed that I needed to decouple a bit from the day-to-day office duties and focus on maintenance and growth of profit-centers, and that we could hire someone to help me at the cost-center (i.e., the main office).My suggestion was that I hire someone who, perhaps, just graduated with an associate’s in accounting from a local junior college. That way, I could train him/her in my own image, tailored to our unique set of competencies and needs, and that’d be great. — The President, my boss, said all I would do is train him/her up, and then he’d leave. — I acquiesced and hired the 50+ yo person with purported experience.She ended up basically doing nothing more than a receptionist would do, with light bookkeeping, and I had to check her work. — She made careless, but meaningful, errors. She also spent a lot of time looking at “sexy sundresses.”After a year and a half, and me sending her home one day for insubordination, she found a higher paying job in the area, and I gave her a basic recommendation and was not sorry to see her leave. — She wasn’t a bad person. She just thought she knew more than did, and she had no interest in going beyond where she was in her business acumen and diligence.It may seem bonkers that your job actually could be to fight with your boss. Perhaps I should say deliberate. — It’s more of a game.When you are of chief financial value, shared operational value, and other hats not important to list here, sometimes you will find yourself in a position to counter what your boss says. — You are an executive. You are entrusted to run the business when the absolute head of the business is not there. So, it’s not uncommon audibly to disagree with each other — boss and you — President and CFO — and, this is what a CEO/President/Owner needs sometimes.Someone on the inside needs to tell you not to drink your own whiskey.Considering his previous thought process to have been flawed — and yeh, you can say stuff like to your boss — I proceeded to take applications and hired a 19yo. These characteristics had nothing to do with the hiring process, but they’re worth noting. She had not wanted to go to college. She was devoted to her marriage and building a family. She had zero business experience, and her competency was assembling fast food.She was smart, though, in a way that it takes a keen interest to notice. — Sure, this job paid more than a local burger joint, but her family-building interests would motivate her to learn. — That’s just something managers should look for in potential new hires. — She had zip competency to question anything I told her about how things should be done. She would have to learn, and learn from me.It would be a year and a half, as history holds, before I let her do payroll on her own, but less and less of what I previously had to review (e.g., reports for accountants) could be rubber-stamped on her word, before I checked them, because she did them right, consistently, or if she had doubts, she would ask me.She had no presumption, in the beginning, that she knew what was right. — By the time she had that presumption, she was right, and I could focus on the higher level stuff that I really needed to do myself.Kind of like a paycheck can be authorized by a facsimile signature stamp, some other duties can be delegated to others in your name. — Except for the ones that can’t be.Unless you find yourself very close, and often exposed, to the workings and thinking of the main people in charge, you may not understand why they make certain decisions that affect you. You may not know why your thoughts are shot down.In a concrete plant example, your job may be to maintain one truck, keep it fueled, wash it, and ensure it’s going to operate normally.My job, as plant manager & CFO of the corporation, may be — primarily — to turn potentially immediate cash flows into actual immediate cash flows.That doesn’t mean I’m talking about increasing profits. — It could mean that I’m needing something to happen in order to make payroll this week.If you think you know, then I’ll rebut by saying — I can’t always tell you the truth. That doesn’t mean I’m lying to you; it just means that what I’m doing may be none of your business.When you come up with a novel notion about a new truck wash chemical, I may be working on what’s needed to keep us in business. — I may be slow —— verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slow — to get around to hearing your full argument about something you think is important that, very well, may be in the best interest of the company.What I’m working on often has to do with the continuity of the company (i.e., keeping it a going concern).Now, I can’t usually tell you that kind of stuff. For that, there are many reasons.Someone may not be listening to you, in that sense; he or she may be not hearing you, because we triage.You may have a great idea concerning something. I may be confused about how to keep you on the payroll.That doesn’t mean I think your efforts are immature or nonsense. It means — I care about you — and, in order to keep you, I need to ignore you.For the moment, I hope. — Unless, you really have a stupid idea!

Contrary to popular belief, consciousness is still a mystery. There is a direct correspondence between human experience and brain states, but the brain does not exist in isolation from the rest of the body and the body does not exist in isolation from a series of nested socio-biological relationships all ensconsed within this planet’s biosphere.Correspondence is not causality and those with credibly healthy minds who have experienced various non-ordinary states of consciousness have additional data to offer to the mind-brain problem. A common response to reports of Out of Body Experiences (OOBE) or even further out Pure Consciousness Events (PCE, usually referred to as mystical experience), besides outright denial or incredulity is simply to relegate such events to that pejorative medical term for pathology, hallucination.This writer has experienced an OOBE and classical mystical experience. He has also experienced pseudo-hallucinations and a true hallucination. The two former events were not hallucinatory sensory experiences, neither were they delusional states. They were lucidly experienced. But as Professor William James wrote, ”how to regard them is the question” (see below).As William James pointed out in 1901 in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience after altering his ordinary consciousness with Nitrous oxide:"Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite discarded. How to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness."Does the brain ‘produce’ consciousness? Maybe yes, maybe no. Consciousness is not a physical datum. It is not a substance to be produced like a hormone or an enzyme. Consciousness is also not an energy as physics understands the electromagnetic spectrum of physical energies. It is not discernible by light meter, Geiger counter, electroscope or any other device for detecting forms of energy. Yes, the brain itself operates with bioelectrical signatures but consciousness does not. Consciousness has no mass, no volume, no form, no extension in space or time.The psychologist C.G. Jung in collaboration with physicist Wolfgang Pauli never completed their work which sought to illustrate (not prove) that consciousness, mind, psyche is as ubiquitous in the universe as space-time is. Sentient beings, human beings in particular demonstrate the convergence of psyche and matter. We are psychosomatic beings, mind-bodies. Some of the anomalies in physics (e.g., quantum entanglement) or hypotheses like theoretical physicist David Bohm’s Implicate-Explicate Order in which his concept of pre-space may suggest what Jung-Pauli called psyche.Physical matter and the laws that govern matter only arose after the new universe of ultra-heated plasma began to cool and separate into protons and electrons, thence into Hydrogen, then stars, and every other known element was created out of dead stars. Whether psyche arose as a ‘product,’ an epiphenomenon of physical matter or whether it was present before physics arose (which would make psyche metaphysical, prior to physics) remains unknown. Religions, as metaphysical idioms, tend to say yes as psyche is also a root for the word soul.I hope you did not expect a yes-no answer, not a diversion into theoretical physics, cosmology and philosophy. But either answer, yes or no remains merely an opinion from the philosophy of materialism or the philosophy of idealism, respectively. The former philosophy attempts at every turn to reduce all phenomena to materiality, the latter is willing to accept the reality of mystery owing to trans-rational factors that defy comprehension by the rational mind. As James wrote, “rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness.” It is not the only mode for apprehending reality.