Some pictures of my daughter Angela and my wife Ajchara (means "angel" in Thai)
In brief, I was born in the USA (Little Rock, Arkansas) in 1959 and grew up in the borderline countryside, in the then-pristine foothills of the Ouachita Mountains around the western border of Little Rock ... As a legal adult I meandered around my state's main university until finally formalizing a B.Sc. in physics with lots of classes outside the curriculum that counted ... Left for Washington DC where I worked briefly for the US Patent Office and then for advanced planning in the Pentagon's space program ... Opted out of the 8-to-5 routine at the ripe old age of 27 to become a freelance computer consultant doing communications, PC software and PC hardware ... Set up one of the first private public-access Internet service providers in the Washington DC area (many lines coming into my home) ... Wrote on philosophy with my free time (occasionally taking breaks by getting back in touch with the world by making money) ... Pushed the empowerment of the individual by decentralized Internet communications (down with the centralized power of paper-press journalists on the leash of their valuable and manipulative "intelligence" informants) ... And when the web finally arose as a powerful world medium I felt lucky at the opportunity to make the most of the decentralization of power in my generation and, well, took a break to diversify new ventures which I hope will take a life of their own, with good will.
In 1994 I settled down on the other side of the planet from Washington, D.C., exactly 12 time zones different. Where? Where else -- Thailand, the only country in southern Asia never colonized by a western power, a Buddhist place, and one of the most laid back and civil civilizations on the planet. Very safe, beautiful and refreshingly different in a root natural way ... while its culture lasts.. (Don't get me wrong, I believe in most American values far more than in most but not all alternative values. But I wanted to get far away from Washington, and by serendipity via a State Dept. related situation I got an opportunity to go to Bangkok, the city of the Asia Regional Office of the US govt. After 4 months of things and consulting, I decided to stay here on my own and headed out solo into pure Thai culture, Internet linked but way out physically.)
Since my break, I wrote a book (see "PERMANENT" below), travelled, and in my spare time have consulted to the engineering and construction industry in Thailand (often remote places depending upon intricate one-dimensional hi-tech supply lines), which keep me afloat in style. I now have a daughter (Angela) with my Thai wife (Achara, which I later learned means "angel" in Thai by pure chance). I speak Thai pretty well and can read road signs and some things OK in Thai sanskrit.
Actually, I live on the Internet.
PERMANENT - the main project in my life. Commercial (private sector) space development using materials already in space, including colonization self-sufficiently. PERMANENT is an acronym for Projects to Employ Resources of the Moon and Asteroids Near Earth in the Near Term. I also have self-published a book titled PERMANENT, as offered on the home page. It is my goal in life to help lead our species and life from Earth off of our planet, privately, sustainably, and self-sufficiently, in our key generation. This is something I vow repeatedly not to fumble the ball over, and to implement to success with my life.
Cryonics - a brief page on freezing your body when you die so that future technology can bring you back to life in a future world, including my own commentary regarding the way these services are marketed vs. what I think will be the reality of the future -- we will become memory museums on a future bio-Internet. Preserve the intangible experiences of history -- have your brain frozen when you die! As a second priority to #1 above, I'd like to facilitate the freezing of brains of people from diverse cultures, especially those which have been relatively isolated and native.
Environmental preservation is another issue that's critically important in our generation, such as preservation of the rain forests, saving wolves, elephants tigers, whales, and other unique, valuable and beautiful forms of life. There is no other planet like Earth, and we are destroying most of the species which evolved over millions of years ... in just a few generations. Of course, we will eventually destroy ourselves and potentially the Earth's environment by biotechnology and/or nanotechnology. Hopefully, if we destroy ourselves by biotech, we won't decimate the environment, too, so that another advanced technological species may evolve on this planet sometime in the next hundred million years or so. If we are to survive as a species, and preserve life from Earth, then we will need to have space colonies stocked with animals and plants, item #1 above, and real soon now.
As an American based in Thailand, I founded, own and manage the company Complete Quality Systems Co., Ltd. This company does business in three areas:
Business inquiries can be e-mailed to mark@permanent.com
Some pictures of my daughter Angela and my wife Ajchara (means "angel" in Thai)
My life in Thailand. This is a wonderful page of mine that I add things to occasionally, but there are a lot of broken links and it's way out of date. I'll update it soon. Many more pictures are here.
Some pictures of me at ..., a business social.
Trip experiences in Japan, August 1998.
My last name is Prado. You probably heard of the Toyota Prado land cruiser. Prado is a Spanish name. When I was young, a Spanish friend told me that "a prado" is a ranch of lush vegetation continuously fed by springs from mountains or hills, prime real estate in the old days. Another strained to think, and told me it was like a meadow. Well, in 1998, I finally got to see for myself. I travelled to Taos, New Mexico, the oldest capital city in the United States, an outpost established by the Spanish in the early 1500's, though after Indian attacks the main outpost retreated to Santa Fe. Anyway, just a mile or two down the road from Taos is another old town called El Prado. Yes, there it was, a prado, a ranch town fed by bordering mountains with snow-capped tops in the month of May. Click here for a view of the beautiful cowboy town of El Prado, New Mexico, USA.
My first name is Mark, which comes from the Roman god of war, Mars. (Too bad it didn't mean asteroid or moon). My middle name, Evan, is a shortened form of Evangel. While my father's side of the family immigrated from Spain, my mother's side is a combination of English and French, with last names of King, Langford, Avery ... and Falwell. The latter had moved south from Lynchburg, Virginia. Someone told me that Jerry Falwell may be a distant cousin, which would be remarkable since I disagree with so much of what he preaches (and attacks), the outdated primitive dogma. I'd say, "sorry but my karma ran over your dogma". Anyway, perhaps Evan is fitting in that sense.
My daughter is named Angela. When I first suggested that name, my wife was surprised, because my wife's name, Ajchara (romanized), means Angel in sanskrit (the written Thai language). Notably, since the "r" is often pronounced as an "l" in Thai, it sounds even more similar than the spelling. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, albeit at the eastern edge, so maybe they're related.
The country England and the language English also come from the word Angel, in turn from the Anglo-Saxon heritage. Here's how that happened:
English is actually a new written language, compared to others around the world. The oldest written English comes from around the 7th century A.D., and is mostly imported Roman alphabetic letters applied to the sounds of the language spoken in England. Back then, the people who inhabit what is now England were considered primitive by the people from the Mediterranean. They were often brought back to Rome to work as slaves. The Romans thought they were beautiful, with their blonde hair, blue eyes and fine features, and said they were like "angels". From that time onward, they were referred to as Angels from a place called the land of the angels, or Angel Land (EngLand). It's also spelled Angles (like centre vs. center). This is similar to Filipinos being so named due to the spanish colonization of that large island archipelago and naming it after the spanish king of that time, King Philippe. (Imagine naming a whole people after your king...) The Philippines... and Angle-Land / England.
While English is a European language, it was of a different branch than Roman (and Spanish). Because there was no writing, the origin of English is derived by comparisons of words and grammar to other languages, to which it is clearly closest to German (Deutsch) and Dutch, and then with added Norse (Viking/Norwegian) -- the "Germanic" branch. Systematically, it was not like Roman/Latin or Greek. In subsequent centuries, it has transformed so much with borrowed words and stories (e.g., the spread of Christianity) that now it has a lot in common with Spanish, French and Italian (the latter three of the "Italic" branch of the European language). Notably, besides the Germanic and Italic branches, the third branch of European language is Celtic. Though on the same island archipelago, English is different from native Irish, Welsh and Scottish. (But in America, we call them all WASPS -- White Anglo-Saxon Protestants -- many of whom came to America because they protested European Christianity. But that's another blur.)
The English didn't start making colonies until a couple of hundred years after the Portuguese (Port) and Spanish, who in turn had succeeded Rome after a long Dark Ages in European history. The Portuguese and Spanish had already gone around the horn of Africa, as well as westward to the Americas (after Columbus discovered America in 1492). But after the English saw the Spanish Armada and survived a Spanish attack by a lot of good luck such as the weather (otherwise we'd probably be speaking Spanish today), England realized that it needed big ships to survive. That was the arms race of the times.
English is the predominant international language today, but the writing is Roman. Other countries outside of Europe have also "romanized" their language, e.g., Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, i.e., using only Roman-derived alphabetic characters and no indigenous writing.
Words are concepts of consciousness, and communications is a key to the evolution of human consciousness.
Now that we have the Internet and the English language is becoming even more predominant (and thank Hollywood and World War 2 for some of that, too), it looks like the future is destined to be most descended from the Romans and their beautiful Germanic slaves from Aengeland.
When I design my own wheel space colony and get an artist to touch up the 3D architectural model, and after I think it looks just right with all its terraced little water steps and vegetation everywhere, I'll call it "el Prado" and start looking for engineering contractors.
