It took me a long time to figure out that I never learned how to actually read. I'd read (forming mental pictures from the descriptions in the words) if I could. But I can't, so I scan when I can, and put the book down when it gets to be too much (ala LOTR:FOTR, Harry Potter 2, etc).
I say that I 'scanned' Harry Potter 1 because I forced my eyes over each of the words on the pages without really extracting the meaning therefrom. It has nothing to do with the speed at which I take in the words - 10 minutes a page, or 10 pages a minute, I wouldn't be able to 'get the picture' anyways.
It was a number of years after I realized that humans normally have this function called 'mental imagery' that I realized that mental imagery was intrinsic to being able to successfully read. The author 'paints a picture' with his/her chosen words, I just haven't been able to form the picture they're painting. At least I finally figured out that there was a problem.
Thanks for your response. You might also read my other replies in this thread.
My problem, which took me at least 5 years to figure out, is that my 'visualizer' is disfunctional. Books on tape wouldn't be of much help, because I'd still get bogged down in the description without much of a 'visual overview' to keep track of things.
Also see my other replies in this thread. I'm very close to being able to read for real, so I'm pretty excited. Things are looking up, as they say.:)
Thanks for taking the time to make the suggestion.
My visualizer is mostly disabled... Not totally, but "mostly" - I've used the analogy of a gnome who looks in a little viewer box & tells me what it sees - like a filter to process my memories through. I've seen flashes of this fabled 'mental imagery', so I have a good idea of what I'm missing. The 'textual' discription is as good a label as any, though I believe the technical term is 'digital'. (Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic are the three main representational systems - some people will 'see' what you're saying, others will 'hear' what you're talking about or 'get a handle' on what you're communicating. I'm quite visual, but it's all unconcious, or 'digital'. I think.)
I met a martial artist who offers trainings in the mental arts some years back, and he says I fit the description of a 'dissociated psychopath', who missed his true calling as a hitman.:)
I can't relax my physical body either - this is due to a chronic autonomous nervous system imbalance, and is closely related to my disfunctional visualizer. If Dr. Andrew Taylor Still (founder of Osteopathy) was still alive, I'd go visit him for a proper 'relaxing treatment', but none of the current Osteopaths or Cranio-Sacral Therapists I've been to (more than a dozen) have known about this particular aspect of Still's legacy. I'll figure it out eventually - I've found the person who's going to do it for me, she just doesn't know how yet.
Haha, Lord of the Flies. I seem to remember scanning that book for my 11th grade 'honors english' class. Don't remember anything about it.
It took me a long time to figure out what a 'mental picture' is, and that I should be able to get them regularly. I'm close to having it all figured out, no thanks to the education system.
More Americans need to be taught to read this way. To visualize what is happening.
Agreed, but then the schools would be serving the public, and not the government (aka The Complex, The Elite, etc).
I can't imagine how dry your life must be. But, unless you truly have an organic brain disorder (not your fault, in the least) you can change this. You should - your life will never be the same.
Yes, I suppose things are rather dry. The disabled visualizer stems from a chronic autonomic nervous system imbalance - a 'diagnosis' which took nearly 8 years for me to figure out.
I'm almost better - the first step in fixing a problem is recognizing that you have one. I've since moved through defining the problem, and searching for a solution. The last step is implementation, which is when I find someone to give me a proper 'relaxing treatment' (referenced in another reply in this thread).
Thanks for responding.
P.S. Ingo Swann has some interesting insights on Telepathy, and the human capability thereof... fyi.:)
I know that the Federal Government doesn't directly run teh schools, but I'm of the opinion that government on all levels has gone 'feral'.:) -that, and the Feral Federal Government hands down any number of mandates to the state level...
I wish I could have dropped out of school, but my grades were too good for that - straight A's until I transfered to a private school for my last two years of High School. I have no memories of ever being able to 'paint pictures in my head', and it wasn't until I was a senior in highschool that I realized that my life experience was deficient. I've spent the last 9 years defining the problem, and finding the solution. Very nearly there...
You might be interested in Gatto's works - search for 'the seven lesson schoolteacher' to get you started, and his Underground History of American Education is available for free in its entirety at his website (previously linked).
I picked up a copy of the first Harry Potter sometime before the first movie was released - I had the idea that I was going to read the book first. Somehow I managed to scan my eyes over all the pages of text. Something about a boy and his broom. The movie had been released on DVD by that point, and I eventually rented it.
I also picked up a copy of the second book before the movie was released. I was only able to get 50 or so pages into it before I was lost. Didn't bother to rent the movie.
Tried to read Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring before the movie came out. I was lost in the first chapter.
I do alright with non-fiction books that I've an interest in, and was reading John Taylor Gatto'sA Different Kind of Teacher the summer after I finished teh college, and all my reading troubles suddenly made sense. Mr. Gatto realized over the course of his 30-year teaching career that most of his 7th-graders were incapable of reading beyond the level required for a standardized test. To prove this for his readers, he suggested going to the library and borrowing a copy of the classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, read the first 20 pages, and return for a question on the text.
I went to the library, checked out the book, and scanned the first 20 pages as best I could. I saw the answer to Mr. Gatto's question, but only because I'd read the question before going to the library. But he did have a follow up question too, and I had no idea whatsoever what was going on in this particular book.
Gatto says that he found that most his students didn't 'make pictures' to go along with the words comprising book's stories. Not because they can't, but because the way reading is taught in the Feral Government's schools trains children not to make pictures, but to read for the (multiple-choice) test.
Finally - why I couldn't (and still can't) read fiction. I've been spending these last few years trying to get my mental-picture-maker working, and when I succeed someday, then I'll pick up the Harry Potter books again. Until then, I'm not going to frustrate myself with fiction anymore.
.... because they don't have GPS. I tried to swap my LG-VX1 for an LG-VX10 I got from my mother, and they wouldn't let me because it doesn't have e-911/GPS (where your phone can give its location to a 911 operator).
diary here - iirc, it was earlier that summer (2005) that the ruling came down from the FCC.
They can't defend against their invaders with roadside bombs or anything. There, fixed that for you.
I would guess that this would really put some terror into the enemy because their attacker can't die, while they can. Wife: "What'd you do today, honey" Robotic Drone Pilot (based in Nevada): "Killed a bunch of towelhead terrorists. Just another day at the office."
There is a moral problem here, I think. What'd the people on the screen ever do to the operator back in Nevada? I knew our 'war' was lost when I watched the murder of some rebellion fighters broadcast on the National Geographic channel (? - perhaps it was History Channel, or Discovery Channel, or one of the others). They were showcasing modern weapon systems, and had night-vision video of some guys with guns trying to hide from their enemy. The operator casually picked two off, and found the third one trying to hide in a truck. So he turned the machine gun on the truck, which promptly exploded. I seem to recall that they were showing off the Predator drone, but wikipedia says that it doesn't have a machine gun. ?
Really - "terrorists" aren't so different from you & I, and if I had been born where they were I'd probably become a 'terrorist' too.
. I just started with a therapist and I am trying to find a good relaxation/mediation CD. Do you know of any good CD's for meditaiton/relaxation?
Silva Method's 'Long Relaxation Exercise' or the Silva Ultramind 'Centering Exercise' both teach the same method of relaxation: relax the body, relax the mind, and how to enter a state of inner-focused awareness. It's a training program, and if you train properly (that is, at least once a day at the start), after a month you won't need to listen to the tract at all.
Get sessions #1 and #2 (or the whole 8-cd package, for sure) or the Silva Method 'Choose Success' course, or find a download of the Centering Exercise (it's relatively easy to find).
Jose Silva cared more about 'how' to teach enhanced mental functioning than the 'whys' of why his method worked. If you have to know why something works, get a copy of Anna Wise's The High Performance Mind.
Robert Monroe's hemi-sync system (for hemispherical-synchronization - basically getting the two halves of the brain working together in sync) also has some good programs, though that might not be exactly what you're looking for.
The BrainWave Generator used to be available as a free download, but I haven't looked at that site in a couple years...
Hope this helps. Be sure to follow up on my other reply too.:)
I am open to try anything. Emotional Freedom Technique, and other energy psychology therapies, work real well for many people. David Feinstein's Energy Psychology Interactive is a solid introduction (though perhaps it's geared more for professionals than self help - perhaps one of the others would be better for someone stuyding on their own. The free EFT manual is good too, though it barely even scratches the surface of the field). David is married to Donna Eden, a modern-day mystic of a sort, who can literally 'see' how people's energy systems respond to a session with EFT. Feinstein's Energy Psychology books & videos also incorporate Donna's exercises to really supercharge the basic EFT protocol.
Something else that helps a lot of people are nutritional supplements.
Vitamin Cure
When Pigs are penned in close quarters, some become so irritable they savage their pen mates' ears and tails, a problem farmers call ear-and-tail-biting syndrome. David Hardy, a Canadian hog-feed salesman from the farmlands of northern Alberta, knew that behavior well. Years of experience had taught him something else: All it takes to calm disturbed pigs down is a good dose of vitamins and minerals in their feed.
That came to Hardy's mind one November evening in 1995 when an acquaintance, Tony Stephan, began confiding his troubles. His wife, Deborah, had killed herself the year before after struggling with manic depression and losing her father to suicide. Now two of his 10 children seemed headed down the same road: Twenty-two-year-old Autumn was in a psychiatric hospital and 15-year-old Joseph had become angry and aggressive. He had been diagnosed as bipolar, a term for manic depression, but even with medication he was prone to outbursts so violent that the rest of the family feared for their lives.
The boy's irritability sounded familiar to Hardy. I don't know a whole lot about mental illness, Hardy told Stephan, but I've seen similar behavior in the hog barn, and it's easy to cure.
So the two men set out to create a human version of Hardy's pig formula. They bought bottles of vitamins and minerals from local health-food stores, and spent nights at Stephan's kitchen concocting a mixture. On January 20, 1996, they gave Joseph the first bitter-tasting dose. Within a few days, Joseph felt better than he had in months. After 30 days, all the symptoms of his illness were gone.
...
-Vitamin Cure, Discover Magazine, May 2005
(my scans of the article. True Hope sells the vitamin/mineral product. I did find a copy of this article on the interweb somewhere once; if you need a cut-and-paste version you might try searching.)
Many people really benefit from Omega 3 supplementation too (box titled 'fish therapy' on the fifth page of above-linked article, for example). I don't have any experience with Nutru's brain-pak, but I have been taking different supplement with the same DHA (Omega Three) algae-derived oil (from Martek Biosciences), and my lips & hands aren't nearly as dry as they were...
Of course, there's little profit in these things for the Corporations which currently have a stranglehold on American life. EFT is little more than knowledge - where and how to tap which accupuncture points. Omega Three oils can't be pattented and sold at $10/pill - my bottle of DHA sold for something like $20 for 60 gelcaps; NuTru's liquid DHA formula is probably half as much for the same dose. We don't hear about these things from the corporate media because when the truth about pharmaceuticals becomes widely known & accepted, who would bother treating the symptoms with Prozac/et al, when the causes of emotional distress can quickly & easily be permanently resolved?
I hate bloodthirsty health professionals... The healthcare professionals aren't the bad guys - they're just doing the best they know how for their clients (patients). What most don't realize is how their medical education has been coopted by pharmaceutical companies. In the early 1900's, the Carnegie foundation financed the Flexner Report, which was used to start shutting down about 1/2 of the country's medical schools. Closures fell disproportionately on for-profit schools, because the curiculum at schools which operated on grants could be influenced easier. I have a 1965 book which talked about a coming doctor shortage, which is an obvious consequence of closing so many of the country's medical schools... 100 Years of Medical Robbery is a good piece on the medical scam, as is the followup, "Real Medical Freedom".
Insurance Companies are Evil. Pharmaceutical Companies are Evil. Medical Professionals do the best they can in a system which is rigged against them.
The only way you can really do this is crippling tax rates on the super rich, One thing that gets glossed over in SiCKO is how much profiteering there is in the U.S. healthcare system. For example, when my Grandmother was in the final months of her conventional treatment for Multiple Myeloma (sp?), her doctor perscribed Thalidomide. Cost for a one month supply (30 pills, iirc) was $2309.99. Cost in Brazil: $0.09/pill. Thalidomide's patent has long-since expired, but the U.S. distribution company has patented a method that's supposed to keep the pill away from pregnant women (Thalidomide was banned because it causes birth defects).
Oil is not 'pumped out'. You drill a hole in a promising location, and if you're lucky (or have planned well), the oil spurts out under pressure. Incidentally, this is what makes oil fires so hard to fight (recall the fires in Kuwait after Gulf War I).
Westerners believe that the amount of oil recovered declines because the field runs out of oil. The russians are operating with the theory that the oil production declines because the pores in the rock have gotten clogged with silt. So they go down and widen the hole at the bottom, and *poof*, prior production level restored.
Westerners believe that oil is 'dino-juice' or 'fossil fuel', from ancient swamps & the like. Russians believe that oil is abiogenic in origin. Russian oil producers are printing money for themselves, whereas western oil producer's wells are running dry. Take that to mean what you will.
Now don't get me wrong, overreliance on hydrocarbons for energy is a very bad thing, because the CO2 generated eventually ends up in the oceans, causing them to become more acidic, which is a especially hard on fish stocks & other marine life...
Oil is certainly going to be replaced with other energy sources (Cold Fusion, etc) in the coming decades - so the present gouging is just a last-gasp measure before Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP, etc, become irrelevant.
The area is supposed to have a reserve of 10 billion tons of natural gas and oil
Oil is everywhere on our small planet. Back in the 70's, Alaska's north slope underwent extensive exploration (search for 'Gull Island')- but the oil companies capped all their exploratory wells, never built the second Oil Pipeline, and just kept the wells at Prudhoe Bay flowing. Then they put forth the 'peak oil' theory, which holds that teh oil is going to run out. Now production at Prudhoe Bay is starting to decline, and they're saying, "see! we told you so - we're running out of oil. Simple supply & demand, that's all. Pay up, bitches."
Meanwhile, the Russians are operating with a different guiding philosophy. They found ways to restore the production of their old wells (the fields are being recharged from deeper in the earth), and are making lots of money on the world oil markets.
The inevitable result of this is that over time, the initial production rate of the well will slowly decline, a hard fact known to every exploration oilman in the business. However, this is certainly not an indication that the oil field itself is becoming depleted, proved thousands of times by offset wells drilled later into the same reservoir. Any new well comes on stream at the original production rate of its older cousins, because it has not yet had time to build up a thin layer of contaminates across the open hole. Though as we shall see it is possible to "do an oil change" on a producing well and bring it back to full production, this is extremely expensive, and rarely used in the west.
Look at a simple example: Say we have a small oil field in Iraq with ten wells that each started out in life producing 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Fine, for a known investment we are producing 100,000 barrels of oil per day from our small field, at least for a while. Five years later contamination may have slowed our overall production down by ten percent to 90,000 barrels per day. So we are now faced with a choice: either "do an oil change" on all ten existing wells at vast expense and down time, or simply drill one additional well into the same reservoir, thereby restoring our daily production to 100,000 barrels with the minimum of fuss. Take my word for it, ninety-nine percent of onshore producers will simply drill the extra well.
Naturally there are times and places where this simple process is not an option, for example on a huge and very expensive offshore platform, which may have only 24 drilling 'slots', all of which have been used up. To restore your overall production after five years you can either build another giant platform next door for two billion dollars, or "do an oil change" on each of your existing 24 wells, one at a time. Clearly this time you are forced to carry out the time consuming business of restoring the open hole section at the bottom of the well to its old pristine condition, before various contaminates started to slow down your production rate.
For this task you first pull the production tubing out of the hole, and then run back in with a drill string, to which is attached an underreamer as shown in the pictures above. When the reamer is directly opposite the top of the open hole producing section, the drill string is rotated to the right and the blades fly out under centrifugal force to a distance preset by you before lowering the tool into the hole. The objective is to cut away the contaminated face of the well to a depth you consider will once again expose pristine producing pores. As the spinning underreamer is slowly lowered, it enlarges the size of the hole, with the contaminated debris cut away and flushed back to surface by the drilling fluid. Hey presto, you have a new oil well, and it only cost one or two million do
After having finished teh college, time available to spend on/. has decreased. I've found that most posts that get at least one mod point are probably worth reading. I like the discussion2 system because it allows me to pull out all the posts that got a positive mod point, even those by a 'Coward' that only got a single point.
With that in mind, these are the pertinent Discussion2 settings that I use:
Highlight Threshold: 2: Score +2 (displays all the comments in the thread that are scored 2 or higher) Reason Modifier: +1 for Insightful, Informative, Interesting and Funny Friends & Fans: +1 (want to see who likes what I have to say) Foes & Freaks: +1 (want to see who hates what I have to say) Anonymous modifier: +1 (plenty of good posts by teh Cowards - this gets their posts over my '2' threshold if they get modded up) Karma Bonus: 0 (too many people have the bonus now for it to be meaningful)
Now if I could only get it to automatically collapse all the top-level 1-rated comments in the stories, it'd be perfect.
Thanks for the update, Mr. Taco - it's always nice to hear a bit about what's going on behind the screen.:)
How do you get off making the claim that Clinton was evil and that Nixon wasn't?
My sense is that Richard Nixon was just someone else's tool, but I'm not well acquainted with his presidency. And Vietnam did end on his watch - not as soon as it should have, but end it did. Presidents are mostly figureheads anyways.
Clinton was just a smooth politician. My mom had a Macedonian exchange student in the fall of 1998, and 'Alex' hated Mr. Clinton...
Politics is just a big game of smoke & mirrors, and it's hard to tell who actually did what, who just allowed things to happen, and who was simply naïve to the puppeteers behind the curtains.
The second link mentions how corporate farms have disproportionately benefited from NAFTA. 'Class Warfare', as being waged by global 'elites' against the middle class and the poor, is all about concentrating wealth in their own pockets - 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer'.
Becoming a Maquilladora worker may very well represent an attempt to provide a better future for the farmer's kids.
It's not so much about providing a better future, as providing any future at all. My girlfriend has traveled extensively along the boarder, and was overwhelmed by the region's poverty - the impression I get is that it's a step backwards. NAFTA seriously upended the status quo, and people are still adjusting - like some site said, globalization & "free trade" are about turning millionaires into billionaires, and making everyone else poor.
I'm not feeling all that coherent this morning, so hopefully this makes some sense... I found the two links while searching yesterday; I also recommend Noam Chomsky's Class War talk (I found a torrent a while back).
Clinton was just as much a traitor as was Bush I (evil), Reagan (pawn for Bush I, broke the unions), Bush II (dbl-spr-evil), and Johnson (helped kill JFK?). Perhaps Nixon & Ford were evil too, but nothing specific immediately comes to mind.
Clinton pushed implementation of Papa Bush's NAFTA agreement through the congress. NAFTA is, of course, the treaty that destroyed the economic livelihoods of millions of Mexican peasant farmers, who became Maquilladora workers or Economic Refugees in the U.S. (aka 'illegal immigrants').
Just 'cause the economy didn't collapse on his watch doesn't mean that he doesn't have a share in the slow-motion collapse.
Documentation is nice and all, but The Complex (military-industrial-banking-etc) has been building towards the present scenario for a very long time (since the day the British surrendered way-back-when), and it will take much more than a precise statement of 'facts' to incite revolution.
Something about how The Complex's actions are in the process of cutting America down at the knees. Even though much of the populace seems to be doing okay right now, the entirety of the U.S. population will eventually suffer consequences of the Neo-Con-victs' tyranny:
First they came for the seamstresses and shoe makers, and I did nothing because I was not a seamstress, and clothes sewn by third-world slaves are cheaper for me to buy anyways.
Then they replaced the union butchers with Mexican Slaves, and I didn't care because I've forgotten how meat is supposed to taste, and the migrants' blood doesn't make it through the shrink-wrapped package.
Then they came for the electronics assemblers, and I did nothing because I was not a assembler, and electronics assembled by displaced third-world peasant farmers are cheaper for me to buy anyways.
Then they came for the white-collared workers, and I did nothing because I'm not a white-collared worker, and who cares if a couple overpaid office workers lose out to an Indian fella who's willing to work twice as long for a third the pay?
Then the economy collapsed, and no one had any money to shop at my little store, pay my exorbitant fees for medical services, pay the taxes to support the Imperial War Machine, buy food to put on the table, etc.
-me (feel free to fix & spread the meme)
I wish I could say I've done more to change the system... I've donated a couple bucks to various resistance organizations, but that hardly seems like much. I'm working on a plan to enlist veterans to collect signatures to recall my state's worthless Senators & Congressmen, but this plan is on hold until I figure out 'how to read' (which is, of course, a euphemism for all the things I should've learned in skool but didn't. Soon, very soon indeed, certainly.).
Chomsky has some good stuff out. I found a torrent of his Class War CD, and was quite impressed with the argument (he's been ahead of the curve for quite a while, I think)
Detroit and Exxon/Mobil would have a field day lobbying and claiming lost jobs to the politicians that run the government. Ford makes maybe 1-2,000 for each Ford Focus. Meanwhile they make $9,000 for each Ford Explorer sold. Maybe this is why they have been refusing to put fuel cell focuses on the market? Its clear what their financial interests are.
While I agree that the Oil Titans and the Auto Executives are working together to screw working people (I recently aquired a 13 year old Honda that averages 45mpg, and higher on the freeway), Ford is not a good example of how to run an automobile company.
Last September, [Ford CEO] Mulally's underlings told him the Focus loses Ford roughly $3k per sale. "Why haven't you figured out a way to make a profit?" he asked (demanded?). The suits explained that Ford needs to sell lots of Foci to maintain its corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) ratings, AND that the car is made in a high-cost UAW factory. "That's not what I asked," he replied.
They're discovering (surprise!) that Ford wastes an obscene amount of money on unnecessary duplication. For example, The Blue Oval builds its products on no less than 30 engineering platforms. In contrast, Honda has six platforms and Audi has four. Sure, these companies don't manufacture a vast variety of cars. But they make money and Ford doesn't. But wait! There's [lots] more! No two of the vehicles Ford builds upon these 30 platforms share seat rails, springs, hood hinges and God knows what else.
This 'Smart' car should get at least 50mpg. They've probably just geared it for performance, and not fuel economy. Another way to make sure no one can hide from the oil companies' money vacuum.
only use my IPOD when I'm walking around school... Sitting around, channel surfing, is the highlight of my day.
Maybe you should, you know, turn off the 'autopilot' when you're out walking around. Our little world's a pretty magical place, if only you pay attention to it.
I read about treating burns with hot water (as hot as one can stand, 120-140 degrees) in a homeopathic magazine in my Osteopath's office. It follows the homeopathic principle of "like treats like". The allopathic approach is to apply cold water/compresses to a burn - treatment by opposites. That same day I had an opportunity to test the theory, when I burned three of my fingers on an electric burner. Needless to say, I was impressed with the results.
From a story linked to by slashdot some time back:
#4 Belfast homeopathy results
MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.
I've used regular homeopathic remedies too, and sometimes I've noticed an effect. It wasn't exactly the modality I needed, so teh remedies didn't 'fix' me, but I do consider them as a valid medical philosophy, certainly more so than allopathy (a derogatory term, coined by a homeopath to describe his competitors).
One last thing, for your consideration:
...
History
The American Medical Association (AMA) was founded in 1847 around two propositions: one, all doctors should have a "suitable education" and two, a "uniform elevated standard of requirements for the degree of M.D. should be adopted by all medical schools in the U.S." [1] In the days of its founding AMA was much more open--at its conferences and in its publications--about its real goal: building a government-enforced monopoly for the purpose of dramatically increasing physician incomes. It eventually succeeded, becoming the most formidable labor union on the face of the earth.
AMA's initial drive to increase physician incomes was motivated by increasing competition from homeopaths (AMA allopaths use treatments--usually synthetic--that produce effects different from the diseases being treated while homeopaths use treatments--usually natural--that produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated). This competition did serious damage to the incomes of AMA allopaths. In the year before AMA's founding, the New York Journal of Medicine stated that competition with homeopathy caused "a large pecuniary loss" to allopaths. [2] In the same issue, the dean of the school of medicine at the University of Michigan railed against competition because it made treating sickness "arduous and un-remunerative." [3]
Apart from reversing rapidly declining incomes, allopaths also wanted to rescue their public reputations, which quite reasonably suffered given their proficiency in killing patients through such crude practices as bloodletting ("exsanguination") or mercury injections (poisoning). A few allopaths desired adulation normally reserved for star athletes and actors. The Massachusetts Medical Society opined in 1848 that physicians should be "looked upon by the mass of mankind with a veneration almost superstitious." [4]...
a scientific basis for homeopathy, faith healing and qigong, I'm unimpressed--since these things, you know, don't work.
I've had good experiences with the homeopathic approach (hot water on a burned finger -> no blister, and have had positive responses to homeopathic remedies). You may not think much of 'faith healing', but what about the 'placebo effect'? I propose that there's not much of a difference. Donna Eden's system of Energy Medicine has done a lot for me & thousands of others. Mrs. Eden had to move away from Ashland, Oregon because everyone in town knew her & what she could do, and she can't tell someone 'no' when they ask her for help.
So yes, all these things work very well. Unless, of course, you don't even give them a chance. Then you're just the equivalent of a flat-earth society member.
Slashdot Mirror
It took me a long time to figure out that I never learned how to actually read. I'd read (forming mental pictures from the descriptions in the words) if I could. But I can't, so I scan when I can, and put the book down when it gets to be too much (ala LOTR:FOTR, Harry Potter 2, etc).
See my other responses in this thread.
I say that I 'scanned' Harry Potter 1 because I forced my eyes over each of the words on the pages without really extracting the meaning therefrom. It has nothing to do with the speed at which I take in the words - 10 minutes a page, or 10 pages a minute, I wouldn't be able to 'get the picture' anyways.
It was a number of years after I realized that humans normally have this function called 'mental imagery' that I realized that mental imagery was intrinsic to being able to successfully read. The author 'paints a picture' with his/her chosen words, I just haven't been able to form the picture they're painting. At least I finally figured out that there was a problem.
Thanks for your response. You might also read my other replies in this thread.
My problem, which took me at least 5 years to figure out, is that my 'visualizer' is disfunctional. Books on tape wouldn't be of much help, because I'd still get bogged down in the description without much of a 'visual overview' to keep track of things.
:)
Also see my other replies in this thread. I'm very close to being able to read for real, so I'm pretty excited. Things are looking up, as they say.
Thanks for taking the time to make the suggestion.
My visualizer is mostly disabled... Not totally, but "mostly" - I've used the analogy of a gnome who looks in a little viewer box & tells me what it sees - like a filter to process my memories through. I've seen flashes of this fabled 'mental imagery', so I have a good idea of what I'm missing. The 'textual' discription is as good a label as any, though I believe the technical term is 'digital'. (Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic are the three main representational systems - some people will 'see' what you're saying, others will 'hear' what you're talking about or 'get a handle' on what you're communicating. I'm quite visual, but it's all unconcious, or 'digital'. I think.)
:)
I met a martial artist who offers trainings in the mental arts some years back, and he says I fit the description of a 'dissociated psychopath', who missed his true calling as a hitman.
I can't relax my physical body either - this is due to a chronic autonomous nervous system imbalance, and is closely related to my disfunctional visualizer. If Dr. Andrew Taylor Still (founder of Osteopathy) was still alive, I'd go visit him for a proper 'relaxing treatment', but none of the current Osteopaths or Cranio-Sacral Therapists I've been to (more than a dozen) have known about this particular aspect of Still's legacy. I'll figure it out eventually - I've found the person who's going to do it for me, she just doesn't know how yet.
Thanks for responding.
Haha, Lord of the Flies. I seem to remember scanning that book for my 11th grade 'honors english' class. Don't remember anything about it.
It took me a long time to figure out what a 'mental picture' is, and that I should be able to get them regularly. I'm close to having it all figured out, no thanks to the education system.
More Americans need to be taught to read this way. To visualize what is happening.
Agreed, but then the schools would be serving the public, and not the government (aka The Complex, The Elite, etc).
I can't imagine how dry your life must be. But, unless you truly have an organic brain disorder (not your fault, in the least) you can change this. You should - your life will never be the same.
:)
Yes, I suppose things are rather dry. The disabled visualizer stems from a chronic autonomic nervous system imbalance - a 'diagnosis' which took nearly 8 years for me to figure out.
I'm almost better - the first step in fixing a problem is recognizing that you have one. I've since moved through defining the problem, and searching for a solution. The last step is implementation, which is when I find someone to give me a proper 'relaxing treatment' (referenced in another reply in this thread).
Thanks for responding.
P.S. Ingo Swann has some interesting insights on Telepathy, and the human capability thereof... fyi.
I know that the Federal Government doesn't directly run teh schools, but I'm of the opinion that government on all levels has gone 'feral'. :) -that, and the Feral Federal Government hands down any number of mandates to the state level...
I wish I could have dropped out of school, but my grades were too good for that - straight A's until I transfered to a private school for my last two years of High School. I have no memories of ever being able to 'paint pictures in my head', and it wasn't until I was a senior in highschool that I realized that my life experience was deficient. I've spent the last 9 years defining the problem, and finding the solution. Very nearly there...
You might be interested in Gatto's works - search for 'the seven lesson schoolteacher' to get you started, and his Underground History of American Education is available for free in its entirety at his website (previously linked).
Thanks for responding.
I picked up a copy of the first Harry Potter sometime before the first movie was released - I had the idea that I was going to read the book first. Somehow I managed to scan my eyes over all the pages of text. Something about a boy and his broom. The movie had been released on DVD by that point, and I eventually rented it.
I also picked up a copy of the second book before the movie was released. I was only able to get 50 or so pages into it before I was lost. Didn't bother to rent the movie.
Tried to read Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring before the movie came out. I was lost in the first chapter.
I do alright with non-fiction books that I've an interest in, and was reading John Taylor Gatto's A Different Kind of Teacher the summer after I finished teh college, and all my reading troubles suddenly made sense. Mr. Gatto realized over the course of his 30-year teaching career that most of his 7th-graders were incapable of reading beyond the level required for a standardized test. To prove this for his readers, he suggested going to the library and borrowing a copy of the classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, read the first 20 pages, and return for a question on the text.
I went to the library, checked out the book, and scanned the first 20 pages as best I could. I saw the answer to Mr. Gatto's question, but only because I'd read the question before going to the library. But he did have a follow up question too, and I had no idea whatsoever what was going on in this particular book.
Gatto says that he found that most his students didn't 'make pictures' to go along with the words comprising book's stories. Not because they can't, but because the way reading is taught in the Feral Government's schools trains children not to make pictures, but to read for the (multiple-choice) test.
Finally - why I couldn't (and still can't) read fiction. I've been spending these last few years trying to get my mental-picture-maker working, and when I succeed someday, then I'll pick up the Harry Potter books again. Until then, I'm not going to frustrate myself with fiction anymore.
.... because they don't have GPS. I tried to swap my LG-VX1 for an LG-VX10 I got from my mother, and they wouldn't let me because it doesn't have e-911/GPS (where your phone can give its location to a 911 operator).
diary here - iirc, it was earlier that summer (2005) that the ruling came down from the FCC.
Robotic Drone Pilot (based in Nevada): "Killed a bunch of towelhead terrorists. Just another day at the office."
There is a moral problem here, I think. What'd the people on the screen ever do to the operator back in Nevada? I knew our 'war' was lost when I watched the murder of some rebellion fighters broadcast on the National Geographic channel (? - perhaps it was History Channel, or Discovery Channel, or one of the others). They were showcasing modern weapon systems, and had night-vision video of some guys with guns trying to hide from their enemy. The operator casually picked two off, and found the third one trying to hide in a truck. So he turned the machine gun on the truck, which promptly exploded. I seem to recall that they were showing off the Predator drone, but wikipedia says that it doesn't have a machine gun. ?
Really - "terrorists" aren't so different from you & I, and if I had been born where they were I'd probably become a 'terrorist' too.
. I just started with a therapist and I am trying to find a good relaxation/mediation CD. Do you know of any good CD's for meditaiton/relaxation?
:)
Silva Method's 'Long Relaxation Exercise' or the Silva Ultramind 'Centering Exercise' both teach the same method of relaxation: relax the body, relax the mind, and how to enter a state of inner-focused awareness. It's a training program, and if you train properly (that is, at least once a day at the start), after a month you won't need to listen to the tract at all.
Get sessions #1 and #2 (or the whole 8-cd package, for sure) or the Silva Method 'Choose Success' course, or find a download of the Centering Exercise (it's relatively easy to find).
Jose Silva cared more about 'how' to teach enhanced mental functioning than the 'whys' of why his method worked. If you have to know why something works, get a copy of Anna Wise's The High Performance Mind.
Robert Monroe's hemi-sync system (for hemispherical-synchronization - basically getting the two halves of the brain working together in sync) also has some good programs, though that might not be exactly what you're looking for.
The BrainWave Generator used to be available as a free download, but I haven't looked at that site in a couple years...
Hope this helps. Be sure to follow up on my other reply too.
Something else that helps a lot of people are nutritional supplements.
(my scans of the article. True Hope sells the vitamin/mineral product. I did find a copy of this article on the interweb somewhere once; if you need a cut-and-paste version you might try searching.)
Many people really benefit from Omega 3 supplementation too (box titled 'fish therapy' on the fifth page of above-linked article, for example). I don't have any experience with Nutru's brain-pak, but I have been taking different supplement with the same DHA (Omega Three) algae-derived oil (from Martek Biosciences), and my lips & hands aren't nearly as dry as they were...
Of course, there's little profit in these things for the Corporations which currently have a stranglehold on American life. EFT is little more than knowledge - where and how to tap which accupuncture points. Omega Three oils can't be pattented and sold at $10/pill - my bottle of DHA sold for something like $20 for 60 gelcaps; NuTru's liquid DHA formula is probably half as much for the same dose. We don't hear about these things from the corporate media because when the truth about pharmaceuticals becomes widely known & accepted, who would bother treating the symptoms with Prozac/et al, when the causes of emotional distress can quickly & easily be permanently resolved?
Insurance Companies are Evil.
Pharmaceutical Companies are Evil.
Medical Professionals do the best they can in a system which is rigged against them.
Just one example - there are countless others.
Oil is not 'pumped out'. You drill a hole in a promising location, and if you're lucky (or have planned well), the oil spurts out under pressure. Incidentally, this is what makes oil fires so hard to fight (recall the fires in Kuwait after Gulf War I).
Westerners believe that the amount of oil recovered declines because the field runs out of oil. The russians are operating with the theory that the oil production declines because the pores in the rock have gotten clogged with silt. So they go down and widen the hole at the bottom, and *poof*, prior production level restored.
Westerners believe that oil is 'dino-juice' or 'fossil fuel', from ancient swamps & the like.
Russians believe that oil is abiogenic in origin. Russian oil producers are printing money for themselves, whereas western oil producer's wells are running dry. Take that to mean what you will.
Now don't get me wrong, overreliance on hydrocarbons for energy is a very bad thing, because the CO2 generated eventually ends up in the oceans, causing them to become more acidic, which is a especially hard on fish stocks & other marine life...
Oil is certainly going to be replaced with other energy sources (Cold Fusion, etc) in the coming decades - so the present gouging is just a last-gasp measure before Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP, etc, become irrelevant.
Oil is everywhere on our small planet. Back in the 70's, Alaska's north slope underwent extensive exploration (search for 'Gull Island')- but the oil companies capped all their exploratory wells, never built the second Oil Pipeline, and just kept the wells at Prudhoe Bay flowing. Then they put forth the 'peak oil' theory, which holds that teh oil is going to run out. Now production at Prudhoe Bay is starting to decline, and they're saying, "see! we told you so - we're running out of oil. Simple supply & demand, that's all. Pay up, bitches."
Meanwhile, the Russians are operating with a different guiding philosophy. They found ways to restore the production of their old wells (the fields are being recharged from deeper in the earth), and are making lots of money on the world oil markets.
After having finished teh college, time available to spend on /. has decreased. I've found that most posts that get at least one mod point are probably worth reading. I like the discussion2 system because it allows me to pull out all the posts that got a positive mod point, even those by a 'Coward' that only got a single point.
:)
With that in mind, these are the pertinent Discussion2 settings that I use:
Highlight Threshold: 2: Score +2 (displays all the comments in the thread that are scored 2 or higher)
Reason Modifier: +1 for Insightful, Informative, Interesting and Funny
Friends & Fans: +1 (want to see who likes what I have to say)
Foes & Freaks: +1 (want to see who hates what I have to say)
Anonymous modifier: +1 (plenty of good posts by teh Cowards - this gets their posts over my '2' threshold if they get modded up)
Karma Bonus: 0 (too many people have the bonus now for it to be meaningful)
Now if I could only get it to automatically collapse all the top-level 1-rated comments in the stories, it'd be perfect.
Thanks for the update, Mr. Taco - it's always nice to hear a bit about what's going on behind the screen.
How do you get off making the claim that Clinton was evil and that Nixon wasn't?
My sense is that Richard Nixon was just someone else's tool, but I'm not well acquainted with his presidency. And Vietnam did end on his watch - not as soon as it should have, but end it did. Presidents are mostly figureheads anyways.
Clinton was just a smooth politician. My mom had a Macedonian exchange student in the fall of 1998, and 'Alex' hated Mr. Clinton...
Politics is just a big game of smoke & mirrors, and it's hard to tell who actually did what, who just allowed things to happen, and who was simply naïve to the puppeteers behind the curtains.
... some links I was looking at yesterday:
NAFTA Harms Mexican Farmers and Biodiversity
Family Farmers From Mid-Missouri & Mexico hold Fair Trade Picnic & Roundtable
The second link mentions how corporate farms have disproportionately benefited from NAFTA. 'Class Warfare', as being waged by global 'elites' against the middle class and the poor, is all about concentrating wealth in their own pockets - 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer'.
Becoming a Maquilladora worker may very well represent an attempt to provide a better future for the farmer's kids.
It's not so much about providing a better future, as providing any future at all. My girlfriend has traveled extensively along the boarder, and was overwhelmed by the region's poverty - the impression I get is that it's a step backwards. NAFTA seriously upended the status quo, and people are still adjusting - like some site said, globalization & "free trade" are about turning millionaires into billionaires, and making everyone else poor.
I'm not feeling all that coherent this morning, so hopefully this makes some sense... I found the two links while searching yesterday; I also recommend Noam Chomsky's Class War talk (I found a torrent a while back).
Clinton was just as much a traitor as was Bush I (evil), Reagan (pawn for Bush I, broke the unions), Bush II (dbl-spr-evil), and Johnson (helped kill JFK?). Perhaps Nixon & Ford were evil too, but nothing specific immediately comes to mind.
Clinton pushed implementation of Papa Bush's NAFTA agreement through the congress. NAFTA is, of course, the treaty that destroyed the economic livelihoods of millions of Mexican peasant farmers, who became Maquilladora workers or Economic Refugees in the U.S. (aka 'illegal immigrants').
Just 'cause the economy didn't collapse on his watch doesn't mean that he doesn't have a share in the slow-motion collapse.
Something about how The Complex's actions are in the process of cutting America down at the knees. Even though much of the populace seems to be doing okay right now, the entirety of the U.S. population will eventually suffer consequences of the Neo-Con-victs' tyranny:
I wish I could say I've done more to change the system... I've donated a couple bucks to various resistance organizations, but that hardly seems like much. I'm working on a plan to enlist veterans to collect signatures to recall my state's worthless Senators & Congressmen, but this plan is on hold until I figure out 'how to read' (which is, of course, a euphemism for all the things I should've learned in skool but didn't. Soon, very soon indeed, certainly.).
Chomsky has some good stuff out. I found a torrent of his Class War CD, and was quite impressed with the argument (he's been ahead of the curve for quite a while, I think)
While I agree that the Oil Titans and the Auto Executives are working together to screw working people (I recently aquired a 13 year old Honda that averages 45mpg, and higher on the freeway), Ford is not a good example of how to run an automobile company.
This 'Smart' car should get at least 50mpg. They've probably just geared it for performance, and not fuel economy. Another way to make sure no one can hide from the oil companies' money vacuum.
only use my IPOD when I'm walking around school ... Sitting around, channel surfing, is the highlight of my day.
Maybe you should, you know, turn off the 'autopilot' when you're out walking around. Our little world's a pretty magical place, if only you pay attention to it.
From a story linked to by slashdot some time back:
I've used regular homeopathic remedies too, and sometimes I've noticed an effect. It wasn't exactly the modality I needed, so teh remedies didn't 'fix' me, but I do consider them as a valid medical philosophy, certainly more so than allopathy (a derogatory term, coined by a homeopath to describe his competitors).
One last thing, for your consideration:
a scientific basis for homeopathy, faith healing and qigong, I'm unimpressed--since these things, you know, don't work.
I've had good experiences with the homeopathic approach (hot water on a burned finger -> no blister, and have had positive responses to homeopathic remedies). You may not think much of 'faith healing', but what about the 'placebo effect'? I propose that there's not much of a difference. Donna Eden's system of Energy Medicine has done a lot for me & thousands of others. Mrs. Eden had to move away from Ashland, Oregon because everyone in town knew her & what she could do, and she can't tell someone 'no' when they ask her for help.
So yes, all these things work very well. Unless, of course, you don't even give them a chance. Then you're just the equivalent of a flat-earth society member.