The idea of Nibiru is pretty silly. There are three types of dis-info pattern which I tend to group ideas into;
1. Cult thinking. (Including Scientology and Heaven's Gate stuff.)
2. Religious dogmatic thinking. (Christianity and church based uniformity of thought. Similar to Cult thinking, in that it is false knowledge designed to control people, but accepted by the masses.)
3. Pulp Science Fiction, Mad Scientist thinking. --This would include things like the Hollow Earth theory, Nibiru, Cthulu, etc. Ideas which never quite spawned religious movements because they were just a bit too insane-sounding.
All three categories, however, seem to be constructed in the same way; you take a bit of truth and warp it so that it has a ring of authenticity which serves to mislead people and keep them bogged down. For instance, the Hollow Earth theory, I susect, might be based on a warped understanding of the extensive underground tunnels and bases which the U.S. has been digging, as well as similar structures constructed by past civilizations. Basically there are a lot of people living underground with a lot of technology, and even the most innocent of their activities are draped in deep secrecy.
Nibiru, similarly, seems to me a concept based on the idea of the alien reality combined with the Nemesis theory, (the Nemasis theory being that irregularities in the orbits of the planets are due to a brown dwarf companion star with an elliptical orbit and a period of some 300,000 years or so which upon its nearest passing knocks a cloud of matter from the Kuiper belt into a lower orbit. This cloud of rocks has an approximate 3600 year period which coincides with cyclical disasters appearing on Earth, and which generally peppers the inner planets with debris to catastrophic effect.)
Very nice. Where did you get this Rumi poem, if you don't mind me asking? I haven't seen this one before.
It was drawn in crayon on a piece of brown paper and given to me by an amazing girl who is now traveling all over the world. I keep it hanging on my wall to remind me of several things. I don't know where she got it from.
Though, I was looking it up on the web to check the spelling of Rumi's last name, and came across this site with another poem, (the last four lines of my previous post). It was posted right after the, "Don't go back to sleep," poem and I liked how it resonated, so included it as an afterthought.
There is no pain, you are receding. A distant ship's smoke on the horizon. You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse, Out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown, the dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb.
For the most part, I think these things are beneficial and can be used to catch bad guys. Crime costs all of us money. Shoplifting and other crimes against business help drive up costs and if a shopkeeper wants to install a camera to help stop some of it good for him.
Catch Bad Guys?
You've been watching too much TV. The idea of there being 'Bad Guys' is a heavily marketed idea. "Crime costs all of us money", is an endlessly repeated piece of dogmatic social programming designed to make you frightened enough to allow the Government to put you under constant observation without complaint. This allows them to know when you and others like you might fall out of your little boxes and see things for what they are, and thus pre-emptively correct the parameters of your cage so that you don't ever wake up.
"Bad Guys".
You are repeating the excuses fed to you by the abuser. --Not your fault; this is the standard human response to the constant flow of social programming through the media and having only a severely limited flow of real information to work with.
"Bad Guys" are largely a myth perpetuated by the media and defined and enforced by an economic and legal system designed to create 'criminals', (ie, poor people).
You are being made a fool of. You do not need cameras surrounding you all of the time. Or any of the time. You are being manipulated. You are a prisoner. The good part is that you can wake up any time you want. It's your choice. That's the big secret which the Authorities are terrified of people realizing. It's your choice.
You were one of the ones who scoffed at the idea of global warming, (as well as the general concept that the use of all that fun technology might be environmentally irresponsible), for years until finally evidence from the tree-hugging contingent eroded your position to the point of your either having to bail or look silly.
There is particular stubborn genius in your, "Well, consumerism and technology are still the solution and the tree-huggers are still wrong", position.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but if there is something you wish to say with regard to my little post, then I'd be happy to your see your views posted, (as opposed to your knee jerking).
1. On the Fear side. . , people who rebel are among the first to be recorded as rebels and then collected when the hammer falls. It will fall.
2. On the Light side. . , taxation is THE common denominator; it is the common woe and injustice felt across all racial and political/idealogical boundaries. Even Pro-Life and Abortionists both hate paying taxes to a corrupt government. This is one major spot where the mighty will begin to topple. --The growth of healthy community is where the elite begin to lose control.
Without interference, people can quite easily build and maintain healthy community. I've witnessed it. Politics and divisive issues, media and the highly manipulative/manipulated economic forces are primarily designed and maintained to keep people disconnected. --To keep them in tightly controlled boxes so that they don't do exactly what the elite fear; come together to communicate rather than yell at each other, to solve problems and grow in body, mind and spirit. This kind of growth leads to real freedom, and real freedom leads to the elite loses their slave nation and status as the 'popular kids'. (Hm. It occurs to me that the elite really are like the popular kids in high school; they like the artificial environment where they 'rule', and they want to maintain it. It has always amused me how most popular kids are really upset when they graduate to discover their artificial power status dropped to zero and having to work on themselves in real ways like everybody else. --Usually several steps behind the curve because of the wasted years riding egotism bourn on their parent's money rather than working to actually improve themselves and learn skills beyond fashion sense and one-upmanship through gossip.)
Anyway. . . taxes are the one area where the elite will simply not be able to let up, and it is the one area which hurts unilaterally across the board, and where people from all the different boxes can truly come together to form real community.
The WORLD is going on outside, and if you don't make a few informed choices, it is going to roll over top of you.
Stop watching TV.
On Bush's say so, you can be hauled away as a 'terrorist' without anybody being informed. Today, you can now be, legally, 'Disappeared', and Battlestar Galactica isn't going to help you.
So get off your bums, inform yourselves, place yourselves appropriately and get your acts together. Watching TeeVee is only going to keep you in stasis while the reaper approaches. There is a lot of work which needs to be done. For instance. . .
What are you going to eat when the food runs out at your local grocery store? The average store has a 3-day supply of food for the community it serves. If there are no trucks running due to fuel shortages or a military lock-down due to a 'terrorist' attack, then there is no resupply. FEMA is then in charge of controlling the food distribution system, and we all saw how well that worked after Katrina hit. How much food and fresh water do you have in stock? The people in New Orleans had none, and so they left their neighborhoods for the promise of shelter and government rations.
What answer are you going to have ready when the mercenary troops arrive at your door to re-locate you to the local sports-dome? Or to inoculate you with something against your will? Or seize your property for the state?
What are you going to do when the really cold weather rolls in and your home, which was designed to leak heat everywhere in order to keep the payments to the oil-industry going, can't keep you warm because there's no longer a surplus of electricity and oil? Extensive insulation is the least expensive way to stay warm. Warm clothing is also a good idea. . .
Do you have a car? Do you have a full tank of gas? Do you have friends who are prepared? Do you have somewhere to hide/retreat to? Do you have a supply of real cash on hand for when the card readers stop working?
Have you read how things were in occupied France during WWII? Have you read up on how things were during the Napoleonic wars in siege situations? --It's a good idea to acquaint yourself with how people managed during such times, because when the power stops flowing, all your technology won't put you in a much better place than all the millions of people affected by strife throughout history. --Except that now the troops keeping 'order' will have better hardware, and you probably won't even have decent footwear. I am not fear-mongering here. I'm just fed up with frivolity surrounding TeeVee when there is so much currently at stake. This is just good sense! Get good boots and extra blankets now. Get some good tools now. Get some food put away, and do it now. History is GOING to repeat itself, and it is going to do so quite soon.
There is no longer an out. All the windows of opportunity were passed several years ago and now all the pieces are in place. Some people are already getting whacked by it, and it's not going to bypass you just because you happen to be a good little TeeVee viewing consumer with the latest DVD drive and a skimpy faith that it's all going to be okay.
There is a little time left. Make good use of it and you can make the coming years a lot less miserable. Stop screwing around.
None of those things affect very many people here. We're mostly well educated, comfortably well off people far from any front lines, eating reasonably good food, taking reasonably good medicine on those few ocassions we need it.
Entertainment though, now that we *do* need. Not as in "we can't survive without it", but as in "life would be that bit less rich, that bit less worthwhile without it".
Well educated? I'd say, 'Selectively Educated'. Most Americans don't have a clue about how their country really works or why they are 'comfortably well off'. As for reasonably good food. . . The last time I walked through a grocery store, I figured that about 5% of the goods on the shelves were things I'd be willing to eat. The rest appeared designed to make people fat, tired, slow and dim-witted. Wheat, Soy, Sugar, grocery store meats and many of the additives in foods are BAD for you. Few, however, are educated well enough to recognize this, and so they continue to limit their abilities by eating crap which makes them slow and permanently fuzzy around the edges. --And ripe for all manner of illnesses, including the common cold. --I've only had one cold in nearly 5 years, and that was only because I was on a road trip and went without enough sleep for about a month while eating regular muggle food.
As for 'needing entertainment'. I agree! Except I choose to find my happiness in living rooms filled with friends sharing their lives, playing musical instruments or writing/drawing/painting together. Television is a cheep and disgusting imitation of the real thing.
That's not "but you must have your entertainment drip feed!", that's "you don't have cable? Please, spend your money with us! Please!". I have Sky satellite TV. I get one or two mailshots each week from NTL, trying to convince me to switch to their service. They don't want to make sure I get my TV, they just want my money.
Same difference. --Nobody is going to tell you that they want you mind-drugged. Even the low-end operators aren't aware of why they do what they do. But it is no accident that television happens to have the specific effects it does.
In any case, I'm not just talking about cable companies trying to make you buy their services. I'm talking about people showing up at your door bearing free televisions. About cable companies coming to cut the cable, but leaving the set mysteriously still hooked up with fifty channels now piping to your living room free of charge. --Or people constantly entering your life trying to get you to watch their favorite shows. This stuff happens all the time. The social pressure to have a television installed in your home is enormous, and it takes a constant effort to prevent yourself from being plugged back in. But it doesn't sound like you've made the effort. You should try it for a year just to see how the 'matrix' tries to keep you plugged in.
Yeah, totally. I mean, everyone's been totally cool with George Bush and Iraq, right? I sure haven't heard any complaints...
The majority certainly were when they had a chance to stop him. Do you remember the Rah Rah posts on Slashdot back in the beginning of the Iraq war? --The visions of Command & Conquer dancing before their eyes? Nearly everybody fell for the con hook, line and sinker. So yes, while there were whimpers and noises and grumblings from some people, the bulk of the populace, rather than pull psycho-Bush from office and lock him up in an asylum, went along with the plan.
By contrast, there were no Rah Rah posts on this story about taking away our precious TV. And that was my point.
All ideas which do not bear the authoritarian stamp of approval are to be avoided and laughed at. --You don't want to be laughed at, do you? Well, stop looking at 'Myths' without that pre-scripted bias which comes from deep within the gut or, (horrors!) using your own faculties to test their validity. You don't want the group to leave you standing alone while all the pretty kids have fun at their parties, do you?
Myth Busters is about maintaining the status quo, that is, belief in the TV version of accepted reality. --All using a half-assed version of science masquerading as objectivity.
Just a bunch of excuses to put you in jail and thus threaten you into obedience. This is why the proposal exists. Though, I suspect it'll remain a proposal.
As the New Fascism steadily materializes into reality, even when Shirow-style Orcs with machine guns stalk the streets, television and movie content aren't going to vanish. Heck no! Look around you. Look at the intensity of the posts just in this article; The unanimous outcry, (on Slashdot??) is evidence of something. . .
--You can start up fake wars which starve, burn and shred thousands of little kids, you can steal entire elections, and you can poison everybody with bad medicine and bad food, and the populace will take it all without much more than a whimper. But if you try to take away their picture shows. . ? Man, watch out!
The opiate of the masses is only truly beyond necessity when societal control has been utterly locked into place; when all the gates have fallen and most everyone has been safely processed into tasty meat products.
So don't worry about your little television picture shows. They'll be around for a while yet. Heck, if you try to turn them off, the most surprising people will expend great effort in trying to sign you up again for free. No joke! Just try canceling your cable and watch what happens. It's truly amazing.
So this legislation is just a small twist on a much longer road. A dumb distraction. One way or another, you will be force-fed media unless you very actively close your ears and eyes.
So the story ran twice. Big fat deal. We all slip from time to time. Big Media papers print retractions all the time; (the ones they catch, at any rate).
Slashdot is SOOOOO much better than almost any Big Media news outlet you might point to; their agenda and editorial biases aren't designed to suck up to their ad clients or to advance the forces of evil through the spread of government and corporate propaganda. Yeah, they make mistakes from time to time, and they avoid touching directly the really hot issues, but they do a good job of walking a fine and dangerous line; they allow for open and honest discussion among their readers where the editors themselves would be hog-tied for even suggesting an opinion.
Heck, I'm a head taller than the average, and so about half the seats I park my behind in are uncomfortable because there's nowhere for my knees to fit properly. Using a sink or countertop means leaning over in a back straining manner for the duration. I complain about designers pandering to the lowest common denominator every time I straighten up and find myself wincing. When I build my own house, it's going to use a system of tiered countertops and higher clearances on stairwells, etc.
Luckily, the world has enough tall people that some manufacturers are willing to make adjustable seats. --If I sit in a car and can't make myself feel comfortable, I'd write off a possible purchase immediately. So the automotive design departments write the extra paychecks to make their damned seats accommodating to people who are not clones. Aw, poor babies. . .
As for the video game market and disabled people. . .
People complaining about, "That's just how it is. Get used to it," are not being very clever. . .
The whole point of Personal Computing as I understood it when the movement launched a couple of decades ago, was that the Personal Computer would be a multi-purpose tool which could be programmed to the precise needs of its user.
Please consider that.
And guess what?
Despite the mountains of general annoyances and oversights and thoughtless designs, the PC is STILL a multi-purpose tool which can be programmed to the precise needs of its user. Thank heavens!
You can get keyboards and mouse inputs which are highly programmable. In the case of this particular piece of software, however, it sounds to me as though the game itself really needs to be changed. (Actually, it almost sounds as though the new interface was deliberately made to be annoying and very difficult to get around with hardware solutions. So who knows what new madness is going around the Ranch?)
In any case, I'd pen a letter to the guys at Lucasarts asking them politely to spend a couple of days coding some work-around into their interface. Make their interface as highly programmable as possible. (I'd make this standard practice from the drawing board up in all my PC games, but then nobody is asking my opinion.)
Heck, with enough emailing around, you could probably find some hacker interested enough to do it for you for free. Or learn how to hack it yourself.
It's just software after all. It'd be more doable than taking a hatchet to that two inches of thoughtless engineering which cracks my head every time I forget to duck under the doorframe to my back room.
Just my two cents. --And for a third penny. . . What's up with geeks not leaping to solve this problem? Come on, you guys! You get excited about designing a robot which can carry a ping pong ball upstairs, but you're willing to penalize a fellow for presenting an engineering problem which is both interesting and directly applicable to the real world? What's up with that?
The problem is that the booked laws and what actually happens in the real world have exactly zero bearing on one another. For instance, where does Echelon figure in? The point is that there is always SOMEBODY willing and able to keep an eye on you and they don't care what the law happens to say. This is because the laws were made for us chumps in the civilian stage-production of the world while the people with real power created the law to keep us distracted and controlled, so why should they care if something is 'legal' or not? The concept of 'legal' is a sham sold to us. Sheesh. So I don't really care what publicity-face label, (FBI, CIA, NSA, ETC.), happens to be quoted. The agencies which hold all the strings don't have names you or I have ever heard of.
Armchair theorists seem to consistently trip over this little aspect of reality. In their dear little heads, everything works according to the instruction manuals and the news casts. Because there's no power to be had in, oh, LYING to people, is there?
Let me get this straight...the president of the United States of America approved security agencies to eavesdrop on suspected terrorist communications in a period of time when we were at war against an enemy that refused to identify itself and chose to attack civilians. Said enemy also had obviously been communicating covertly in order to coordinate their surprise attacks.
Let me get this straight. . .
You actually believe that the powers that be weren't lying through their teeth about how the whole 9/11 thing went down? The President is a confirmed manipulative liar. Anybody who hasn't figured that one out is being deliberately dense. Heck, there's a Slashdot article to that effect in today's edition.
9/11 was committed under the sanction and direction of U.S. powers so as to forward the current war and social control agendas. Again, anybody who hasn't figured that one out is being deliberately ignorant.
The woman writing for cassiopaea.org is clueless and in way over her head. She understands virtually nothing about the subject at hand. For instance, Hebrew practice when relating genealogies does not require giving every single person or every single generation. It is perfectly valid to say that x is the father of y, when he is in fact is grandfather.
I'm not sure what point of reference you are contesting here. --In any case, I was not talking about Laura Knight's views on the subject; I was talking about the channeled info itself, which she admittedly uses only as one source for her own investigations into bible history. I am not familiar enough with her studies into that area to know how much credence to give them. I will say that I do find her work fascinating. The sheer amount of research and writing she has done on the subject is absolutely enormous. Where her personal exploration leads her is not really my concern.
In fact, a few moments on Google shows her organisation to be a cult. I'd much rather make decisions about the historicity of something using actual historical evidence, rather than the musings of people who say 'I wish that one day the project will bring us closer to an understanding of our hidden powers that can make rocks float in mid-air.'
The web reference you provided links to a person who can't even use grammar correctly, (ahem), let alone think rationally. She comes off sounding quite rabid. Moreover she has no direct knowledge of Laura Knight's group, except via contact with members who were deliberate saboteurs and who proffered up a good deal of false dirt. --I was following and reading accounts on all sides as the various dramas this woman comments on unfolded, and I must say that her take is waaay off, as is the validity of her accusations. Irrational angry writers of poor grammar are not what I'd call good sources. But that's what you get for doing, "a few moments on Google."
--Among many areas of interest in the world, I have followed closely the evolution of Laura's efforts over the years, and while I have had my own reservations about Laura's approach and ego, as well as certain conclusions she has toyed with, overall, I have concluded that she is just human with human strengths and weaknesses, but overall, she has some very good thinking on her side and access to a fascinating source of information via the Casseopean channel. I would classify her group as being far less 'cultic' in nature than any number of other organizations, including most businesses, research groups, and nearly all diety-based religious groups. Microsoft, the U.S. military, and Christianity are far more cultic in nature if you use the dictionary definitions.
Let's think logically about this for a moment. He was crucified by people who had extensive experience of executing people by this method. People don't survive crucifixion. And they certainly don't survive being crucified than duped in a tomb for several days. And they most certinaly wouldn't be able to roll away a massive boulder covering the entrance. Historical sources verify this. No-one at the time disputed it. The gospel writers record it and died for it.
See, now this calls to my main problem with your thinking; You talk about all of this stuff as though the basic facts were non-contestable and then you go ahead to use those 'facts' to form the basis of your argument. Look, I'm saying that that Christ was not even crucified. Telling me that gospel writers died writing that 'fact' down doesn't mean it really happened.
Seriously. EVERY time I've asked a biblical scholar about the information upon which they are basing their claims, what their 'historical sources' were, the answers are really very flakey. Try it sometime. I've asked divinity college profs. I've asked serious students of this stuff, and it all comes out the same. Flakey evidence. It seems to me that unless you are using the bible as your primary reference, and unless you are working outward from
What accounts have you studied that lead you to believe otherwise?
Try asking Christ the question yourself.
Also, the channeled source, the 'Cassiopeans', offers a different story.
Dying on a cross certainly seems reasonable, but the supporting evidence is pretty weak. --A small number of corruptible men, (as most men are), writing about an 'event' years after the fact doesn't compel me very much.
Heck, most people today believe that there were cheering crowds of Iraqis watching as an American task force toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein when really that singular event at the outset of hostilities in Iraq was scripted and deliberately set up and shot by CNN to look like something much more than it really was. Heck, most people believe that the U.S. government actually has Saddam Hussein in custody today when this is also not true. Governments generate all kinds of fabricated nonsense to create certain impressions in the public in order to manipulate their collective energies. --Consider just how incredibly easy it would have been for similar agencies to add nonsense to the pile of writings we call the Bible? Some of the gospels were written many decades after the event. It seems entirely plausible to me that writers were hired to produce false accounts with specific 'facts' and spin. Nobody checks up on the credibility of those people with the question of deliberate disinfo in mind, but such things happen in the news and media today all the time, with much the same popular effect. Despite how people feel and react and all of the silly walls they throw up around their sacred beliefs, the possibility of the bible being deliberate disinformation is a very obvious one, but one which everybody remains utterly blind to. --And this in itself is instructive.
Rising from the dead is the thing people get upset or evangelical about. --When the manner of his so-called death and his approach to it in the first place have far more impact in the long run on people's behavior. "Oh, well, Christ allowed himself to die in disgrace on the cross at the hands of his abusers rather than fight for himself. I must do the same, allowing bosses and enemies and detractors and even the basic runs of luck in my life to harm and torment me. The meek inherit the earth and all that!" I've seen this kind of self-destructive behavior time and time again in Christians, who take an unhealthy kind of pride in this kind of self-flagellation. I can't stand watching it because it's pointless and icky. People trashing their lives and pretending that they're not doing it deliberately, all the while thinking that this will somehow make them more eligable for a nice after-life. Ugh. It makes me ill whenever I see it.
--Whereas at the governmental level, Christians can be whipped up into a war frenzy with very little effort. "Those who don't believe that Christ died on a cross are less than human and it's okay to napalm them from orbit!" --Talk about a flexible social program! Very, very effective stuff. And the social engineers who introduced the story of Christ's death knew it.
Maybe we just don't see anything just or right about sacrificing the innocent to save the guilty.
Heck, by the accounts I've studied, Christ certainly wasn't that dumb. The whole, 'dying on the cross' thing was most likely a fabrication created by the Powers That Were at the time to con the masses into being more easily enslaved and abused. "Turn that other cheek, Christian Dog! There's a beautiful afterlife waiting for you, but only if you shovel my shit with grace. --Oh, and if you fail to love those who hate you, God will dump you in a lake of fire for all eternity."
Con job, all the way. A rancid, albeit clever, twist on a good man's work.
And C.S. Lewis fell for it. He was a weak and frightened man; Watch 'Shadowlands' to get an idea of just how lost he was. It took an American woman to crack his shell and teach him a little about love and intimacy. Too bad it happened after the Narnia books were written. . .
and I paid about double the current going price for it.
However, as with most pieces of consumer-level computer technology, the first few production runs of a product will often use well-designed parts and be made to last. It seems to me that the manufacturers aim to create excellent products for the initial 'settling in' period of a new technology, which results in favorable industry reviews and higher placements of a given company in the competition for market share. Then, after the technology is well in place and people are addicted, the quality can be safely dropped and the money-grab of planned obsolescence and super-cheap parts usage in manufacture can begin.
My little 15" LCD from Samsung is an old model, but it runs like a trooper. Like a venerable old HP Laserjet II, I expect it will run tirelessly for years to come. And luckily, unlike the Laserjet II, there's nothing a new, up to date model LCD screen can do which is so spectacular and so necessary that I'd consider re-investing in the same technology. An old screen which displays bright and clear and accurately, is a screen which has pretty much hit the upward limit of my requirements.
where everybody is regularly reminded by every speaker and monitor in ear and eyeshot that we must live in an eternal state of fear. . .
When the Fear mechanism is activated, particularly when there is no actual critical event occurring, (like running from a tiger), for which the fear drug pumping through our veins is preparing us to deal with. . , when we buy into the fear and there is no release, we end up in a perpetual state where we are much more open to certain suggestions which lack rational grounding.
"We're going to take your rights away and allow police searches in your living room. Okay? Terrorists! Viruses! Crackheads with guns!"
As has been pointed out, it's interesting that this story comes from MSNBC.
As an aside. . . My computer runs clean and sweet with just a simple little fire-wall. (And what an overly dramatic name is 'Firewall' for a program which asks me if I want to allow things access to my modem). I don't need any of that other junk; Virus scanners are for people who run Windows 2K and up and who open email attachments, which I don't. And Anti-Spyware is for people who run Kazaa and Google tool bars and other nonsense programs.
I mean, come on.
The Voice of Authority telling us that we home users need to run around like panicking headless chickens looking for 'security' on our writing desks?
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of Nibiru is pretty silly. There are three types of dis-info pattern which I tend to group ideas into;
1. Cult thinking. (Including Scientology and Heaven's Gate stuff.)
2. Religious dogmatic thinking. (Christianity and church based uniformity of thought. Similar to Cult thinking, in that it is false knowledge designed to control people, but accepted by the masses.)
3. Pulp Science Fiction, Mad Scientist thinking. --This would include things like the Hollow Earth theory, Nibiru, Cthulu, etc. Ideas which never quite spawned religious movements because they were just a bit too insane-sounding.
All three categories, however, seem to be constructed in the same way; you take a bit of truth and warp it so that it has a ring of authenticity which serves to mislead people and keep them bogged down. For instance, the Hollow Earth theory, I susect, might be based on a warped understanding of the extensive underground tunnels and bases which the U.S. has been digging, as well as similar structures constructed by past civilizations. Basically there are a lot of people living underground with a lot of technology, and even the most innocent of their activities are draped in deep secrecy.
Nibiru, similarly, seems to me a concept based on the idea of the alien reality combined with the Nemesis theory, (the Nemasis theory being that irregularities in the orbits of the planets are due to a brown dwarf companion star with an elliptical orbit and a period of some 300,000 years or so which upon its nearest passing knocks a cloud of matter from the Kuiper belt into a lower orbit. This cloud of rocks has an approximate 3600 year period which coincides with cyclical disasters appearing on Earth, and which generally peppers the inner planets with debris to catastrophic effect.)
-FL
Problem is, maliciousness is often a direct result of stupidity.
-FL
It was drawn in crayon on a piece of brown paper and given to me by an amazing girl who is now traveling all over the world. I keep it hanging on my wall to remind me of several things. I don't know where she got it from.
Though, I was looking it up on the web to check the spelling of Rumi's last name, and came across this site with another poem, (the last four lines of my previous post). It was posted right after the, "Don't go back to sleep," poem and I liked how it resonated, so included it as an afterthought.
-FL
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
-FL
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
-FL
Catch Bad Guys?
You've been watching too much TV. The idea of there being 'Bad Guys' is a heavily marketed idea. "Crime costs all of us money", is an endlessly repeated piece of dogmatic social programming designed to make you frightened enough to allow the Government to put you under constant observation without complaint. This allows them to know when you and others like you might fall out of your little boxes and see things for what they are, and thus pre-emptively correct the parameters of your cage so that you don't ever wake up.
"Bad Guys".
You are repeating the excuses fed to you by the abuser. --Not your fault; this is the standard human response to the constant flow of social programming through the media and having only a severely limited flow of real information to work with.
"Bad Guys" are largely a myth perpetuated by the media and defined and enforced by an economic and legal system designed to create 'criminals', (ie, poor people).
You are being made a fool of. You do not need cameras surrounding you all of the time. Or any of the time. You are being manipulated. You are a prisoner. The good part is that you can wake up any time you want. It's your choice. That's the big secret which the Authorities are terrified of people realizing. It's your choice.
-FL
Let me guess. . .
You were one of the ones who scoffed at the idea of global warming, (as well as the general concept that the use of all that fun technology might be environmentally irresponsible), for years until finally evidence from the tree-hugging contingent eroded your position to the point of your either having to bail or look silly.
There is particular stubborn genius in your, "Well, consumerism and technology are still the solution and the tree-huggers are still wrong", position.
-FL
I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but if there is something you wish to say with regard to my little post, then I'd be happy to your see your views posted, (as opposed to your knee jerking).
-FL
2. On the Light side. . , taxation is THE common denominator; it is the common woe and injustice felt across all racial and political/idealogical boundaries. Even Pro-Life and Abortionists both hate paying taxes to a corrupt government. This is one major spot where the mighty will begin to topple. --The growth of healthy community is where the elite begin to lose control.
Without interference, people can quite easily build and maintain healthy community. I've witnessed it. Politics and divisive issues, media and the highly manipulative/manipulated economic forces are primarily designed and maintained to keep people disconnected. --To keep them in tightly controlled boxes so that they don't do exactly what the elite fear; come together to communicate rather than yell at each other, to solve problems and grow in body, mind and spirit. This kind of growth leads to real freedom, and real freedom leads to the elite loses their slave nation and status as the 'popular kids'. (Hm. It occurs to me that the elite really are like the popular kids in high school; they like the artificial environment where they 'rule', and they want to maintain it. It has always amused me how most popular kids are really upset when they graduate to discover their artificial power status dropped to zero and having to work on themselves in real ways like everybody else. --Usually several steps behind the curve because of the wasted years riding egotism bourn on their parent's money rather than working to actually improve themselves and learn skills beyond fashion sense and one-upmanship through gossip.)
Anyway. . . taxes are the one area where the elite will simply not be able to let up, and it is the one area which hurts unilaterally across the board, and where people from all the different boxes can truly come together to form real community.
Re-read the story about the British group destroying surveillance cameras. Their motives are not privacy related. They are destroying traffic cameras because they believe them to be an unfair form of taxation.
"The more you tighten your grip, they more systems slip through your fingers. .
-FL
Those in power are also amoral psychopathic murderers.
So, putting two and two together. . .
Perhaps 'Vandal' should be worn as a badge of honor.
-FL
The WORLD is going on outside, and if you don't make a few informed choices, it is going to roll over top of you.
Stop watching TV.
On Bush's say so, you can be hauled away as a 'terrorist' without anybody being informed. Today, you can now be, legally, 'Disappeared', and Battlestar Galactica isn't going to help you.
So get off your bums, inform yourselves, place yourselves appropriately and get your acts together. Watching TeeVee is only going to keep you in stasis while the reaper approaches. There is a lot of work which needs to be done. For instance. . .
What are you going to eat when the food runs out at your local grocery store? The average store has a 3-day supply of food for the community it serves. If there are no trucks running due to fuel shortages or a military lock-down due to a 'terrorist' attack, then there is no resupply. FEMA is then in charge of controlling the food distribution system, and we all saw how well that worked after Katrina hit. How much food and fresh water do you have in stock? The people in New Orleans had none, and so they left their neighborhoods for the promise of shelter and government rations.
What answer are you going to have ready when the mercenary troops arrive at your door to re-locate you to the local sports-dome? Or to inoculate you with something against your will? Or seize your property for the state?
What are you going to do when the really cold weather rolls in and your home, which was designed to leak heat everywhere in order to keep the payments to the oil-industry going, can't keep you warm because there's no longer a surplus of electricity and oil? Extensive insulation is the least expensive way to stay warm. Warm clothing is also a good idea. . .
Do you have a car? Do you have a full tank of gas? Do you have friends who are prepared? Do you have somewhere to hide/retreat to? Do you have a supply of real cash on hand for when the card readers stop working?
Have you read how things were in occupied France during WWII? Have you read up on how things were during the Napoleonic wars in siege situations? --It's a good idea to acquaint yourself with how people managed during such times, because when the power stops flowing, all your technology won't put you in a much better place than all the millions of people affected by strife throughout history. --Except that now the troops keeping 'order' will have better hardware, and you probably won't even have decent footwear. I am not fear-mongering here. I'm just fed up with frivolity surrounding TeeVee when there is so much currently at stake. This is just good sense! Get good boots and extra blankets now. Get some good tools now. Get some food put away, and do it now. History is GOING to repeat itself, and it is going to do so quite soon.
There is no longer an out. All the windows of opportunity were passed several years ago and now all the pieces are in place. Some people are already getting whacked by it, and it's not going to bypass you just because you happen to be a good little TeeVee viewing consumer with the latest DVD drive and a skimpy faith that it's all going to be okay.
There is a little time left. Make good use of it and you can make the coming years a lot less miserable. Stop screwing around.
Watching TeeVee is screwing around.
-FL
Well educated? I'd say, 'Selectively Educated'. Most Americans don't have a clue about how their country really works or why they are 'comfortably well off'. As for reasonably good food. . . The last time I walked through a grocery store, I figured that about 5% of the goods on the shelves were things I'd be willing to eat. The rest appeared designed to make people fat, tired, slow and dim-witted. Wheat, Soy, Sugar, grocery store meats and many of the additives in foods are BAD for you. Few, however, are educated well enough to recognize this, and so they continue to limit their abilities by eating crap which makes them slow and permanently fuzzy around the edges. --And ripe for all manner of illnesses, including the common cold. --I've only had one cold in nearly 5 years, and that was only because I was on a road trip and went without enough sleep for about a month while eating regular muggle food.
As for 'needing entertainment'. I agree! Except I choose to find my happiness in living rooms filled with friends sharing their lives, playing musical instruments or writing/drawing/painting together. Television is a cheep and disgusting imitation of the real thing.
Same difference. --Nobody is going to tell you that they want you mind-drugged. Even the low-end operators aren't aware of why they do what they do. But it is no accident that television happens to have the specific effects it does.
In any case, I'm not just talking about cable companies trying to make you buy their services. I'm talking about people showing up at your door bearing free televisions. About cable companies coming to cut the cable, but leaving the set mysteriously still hooked up with fifty channels now piping to your living room free of charge. --Or people constantly entering your life trying to get you to watch their favorite shows. This stuff happens all the time. The social pressure to have a television installed in your home is enormous, and it takes a constant effort to prevent yourself from being plugged back in. But it doesn't sound like you've made the effort. You should try it for a year just to see how the 'matrix' tries to keep you plugged in.
-FL
The majority certainly were when they had a chance to stop him. Do you remember the Rah Rah posts on Slashdot back in the beginning of the Iraq war? --The visions of Command & Conquer dancing before their eyes? Nearly everybody fell for the con hook, line and sinker. So yes, while there were whimpers and noises and grumblings from some people, the bulk of the populace, rather than pull psycho-Bush from office and lock him up in an asylum, went along with the plan.
By contrast, there were no Rah Rah posts on this story about taking away our precious TV. And that was my point.
-FL
All ideas which do not bear the authoritarian stamp of approval are to be avoided and laughed at. --You don't want to be laughed at, do you? Well, stop looking at 'Myths' without that pre-scripted bias which comes from deep within the gut or, (horrors!) using your own faculties to test their validity. You don't want the group to leave you standing alone while all the pretty kids have fun at their parties, do you?
Myth Busters is about maintaining the status quo, that is, belief in the TV version of accepted reality. --All using a half-assed version of science masquerading as objectivity.
Nothing to see here.
-FL
As the New Fascism steadily materializes into reality, even when Shirow-style Orcs with machine guns stalk the streets, television and movie content aren't going to vanish. Heck no! Look around you. Look at the intensity of the posts just in this article; The unanimous outcry, (on Slashdot??) is evidence of something. . .
--You can start up fake wars which starve, burn and shred thousands of little kids, you can steal entire elections, and you can poison everybody with bad medicine and bad food, and the populace will take it all without much more than a whimper. But if you try to take away their picture shows. . ? Man, watch out!
The opiate of the masses is only truly beyond necessity when societal control has been utterly locked into place; when all the gates have fallen and most everyone has been safely processed into tasty meat products.
So don't worry about your little television picture shows. They'll be around for a while yet. Heck, if you try to turn them off, the most surprising people will expend great effort in trying to sign you up again for free. No joke! Just try canceling your cable and watch what happens. It's truly amazing.
So this legislation is just a small twist on a much longer road. A dumb distraction. One way or another, you will be force-fed media unless you very actively close your ears and eyes.
-FL
So the story ran twice. Big fat deal. We all slip from time to time. Big Media papers print retractions all the time; (the ones they catch, at any rate).
Slashdot is SOOOOO much better than almost any Big Media news outlet you might point to; their agenda and editorial biases aren't designed to suck up to their ad clients or to advance the forces of evil through the spread of government and corporate propaganda. Yeah, they make mistakes from time to time, and they avoid touching directly the really hot issues, but they do a good job of walking a fine and dangerous line; they allow for open and honest discussion among their readers where the editors themselves would be hog-tied for even suggesting an opinion.
So give a little slack, guys.
-FL
Luckily, the world has enough tall people that some manufacturers are willing to make adjustable seats. --If I sit in a car and can't make myself feel comfortable, I'd write off a possible purchase immediately. So the automotive design departments write the extra paychecks to make their damned seats accommodating to people who are not clones. Aw, poor babies. . .
As for the video game market and disabled people. . .
People complaining about, "That's just how it is. Get used to it," are not being very clever. . .
The whole point of Personal Computing as I understood it when the movement launched a couple of decades ago, was that the Personal Computer would be a multi-purpose tool which could be programmed to the precise needs of its user.
Please consider that.
And guess what?
Despite the mountains of general annoyances and oversights and thoughtless designs, the PC is STILL a multi-purpose tool which can be programmed to the precise needs of its user. Thank heavens!
You can get keyboards and mouse inputs which are highly programmable. In the case of this particular piece of software, however, it sounds to me as though the game itself really needs to be changed. (Actually, it almost sounds as though the new interface was deliberately made to be annoying and very difficult to get around with hardware solutions. So who knows what new madness is going around the Ranch?)
In any case, I'd pen a letter to the guys at Lucasarts asking them politely to spend a couple of days coding some work-around into their interface. Make their interface as highly programmable as possible. (I'd make this standard practice from the drawing board up in all my PC games, but then nobody is asking my opinion.)
Heck, with enough emailing around, you could probably find some hacker interested enough to do it for you for free. Or learn how to hack it yourself.
It's just software after all. It'd be more doable than taking a hatchet to that two inches of thoughtless engineering which cracks my head every time I forget to duck under the doorframe to my back room.
Just my two cents. --And for a third penny. . . What's up with geeks not leaping to solve this problem? Come on, you guys! You get excited about designing a robot which can carry a ping pong ball upstairs, but you're willing to penalize a fellow for presenting an engineering problem which is both interesting and directly applicable to the real world? What's up with that?
-FL
Armchair theorists seem to consistently trip over this little aspect of reality. In their dear little heads, everything works according to the instruction manuals and the news casts. Because there's no power to be had in, oh, LYING to people, is there?
-FL
Let me get this straight. . .
You actually believe that the powers that be weren't lying through their teeth about how the whole 9/11 thing went down? The President is a confirmed manipulative liar. Anybody who hasn't figured that one out is being deliberately dense. Heck, there's a Slashdot article to that effect in today's edition.
9/11 was committed under the sanction and direction of U.S. powers so as to forward the current war and social control agendas. Again, anybody who hasn't figured that one out is being deliberately ignorant.
-FL
The woman writing for cassiopaea.org is clueless and in way over her head. She understands virtually nothing about the subject at hand. For instance, Hebrew practice when relating genealogies does not require giving every single person or every single generation. It is perfectly valid to say that x is the father of y, when he is in fact is grandfather.
I'm not sure what point of reference you are contesting here. --In any case, I was not talking about Laura Knight's views on the subject; I was talking about the channeled info itself, which she admittedly uses only as one source for her own investigations into bible history. I am not familiar enough with her studies into that area to know how much credence to give them. I will say that I do find her work fascinating. The sheer amount of research and writing she has done on the subject is absolutely enormous. Where her personal exploration leads her is not really my concern.
In fact, a few moments on Google shows her organisation to be a cult. I'd much rather make decisions about the historicity of something using actual historical evidence, rather than the musings of people who say 'I wish that one day the project will bring us closer to an understanding of our hidden powers that can make rocks float in mid-air.'
The web reference you provided links to a person who can't even use grammar correctly, (ahem), let alone think rationally. She comes off sounding quite rabid. Moreover she has no direct knowledge of Laura Knight's group, except via contact with members who were deliberate saboteurs and who proffered up a good deal of false dirt. --I was following and reading accounts on all sides as the various dramas this woman comments on unfolded, and I must say that her take is waaay off, as is the validity of her accusations. Irrational angry writers of poor grammar are not what I'd call good sources. But that's what you get for doing, "a few moments on Google."
--Among many areas of interest in the world, I have followed closely the evolution of Laura's efforts over the years, and while I have had my own reservations about Laura's approach and ego, as well as certain conclusions she has toyed with, overall, I have concluded that she is just human with human strengths and weaknesses, but overall, she has some very good thinking on her side and access to a fascinating source of information via the Casseopean channel. I would classify her group as being far less 'cultic' in nature than any number of other organizations, including most businesses, research groups, and nearly all diety-based religious groups. Microsoft, the U.S. military, and Christianity are far more cultic in nature if you use the dictionary definitions.
Let's think logically about this for a moment. He was crucified by people who had extensive experience of executing people by this method. People don't survive crucifixion. And they certainly don't survive being crucified than duped in a tomb for several days. And they most certinaly wouldn't be able to roll away a massive boulder covering the entrance. Historical sources verify this. No-one at the time disputed it. The gospel writers record it and died for it.
See, now this calls to my main problem with your thinking; You talk about all of this stuff as though the basic facts were non-contestable and then you go ahead to use those 'facts' to form the basis of your argument. Look, I'm saying that that Christ was not even crucified. Telling me that gospel writers died writing that 'fact' down doesn't mean it really happened.
Seriously. EVERY time I've asked a biblical scholar about the information upon which they are basing their claims, what their 'historical sources' were, the answers are really very flakey. Try it sometime. I've asked divinity college profs. I've asked serious students of this stuff, and it all comes out the same. Flakey evidence. It seems to me that unless you are using the bible as your primary reference, and unless you are working outward from
Try asking Christ the question yourself.
Also, the channeled source, the 'Cassiopeans', offers a different story.
Dying on a cross certainly seems reasonable, but the supporting evidence is pretty weak. --A small number of corruptible men, (as most men are), writing about an 'event' years after the fact doesn't compel me very much.
Heck, most people today believe that there were cheering crowds of Iraqis watching as an American task force toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein when really that singular event at the outset of hostilities in Iraq was scripted and deliberately set up and shot by CNN to look like something much more than it really was. Heck, most people believe that the U.S. government actually has Saddam Hussein in custody today when this is also not true. Governments generate all kinds of fabricated nonsense to create certain impressions in the public in order to manipulate their collective energies. --Consider just how incredibly easy it would have been for similar agencies to add nonsense to the pile of writings we call the Bible? Some of the gospels were written many decades after the event. It seems entirely plausible to me that writers were hired to produce false accounts with specific 'facts' and spin. Nobody checks up on the credibility of those people with the question of deliberate disinfo in mind, but such things happen in the news and media today all the time, with much the same popular effect. Despite how people feel and react and all of the silly walls they throw up around their sacred beliefs, the possibility of the bible being deliberate disinformation is a very obvious one, but one which everybody remains utterly blind to. --And this in itself is instructive.
Rising from the dead is the thing people get upset or evangelical about. --When the manner of his so-called death and his approach to it in the first place have far more impact in the long run on people's behavior. "Oh, well, Christ allowed himself to die in disgrace on the cross at the hands of his abusers rather than fight for himself. I must do the same, allowing bosses and enemies and detractors and even the basic runs of luck in my life to harm and torment me. The meek inherit the earth and all that!" I've seen this kind of self-destructive behavior time and time again in Christians, who take an unhealthy kind of pride in this kind of self-flagellation. I can't stand watching it because it's pointless and icky. People trashing their lives and pretending that they're not doing it deliberately, all the while thinking that this will somehow make them more eligable for a nice after-life. Ugh. It makes me ill whenever I see it.
--Whereas at the governmental level, Christians can be whipped up into a war frenzy with very little effort. "Those who don't believe that Christ died on a cross are less than human and it's okay to napalm them from orbit!" --Talk about a flexible social program! Very, very effective stuff. And the social engineers who introduced the story of Christ's death knew it.
-FL
Heck, by the accounts I've studied, Christ certainly wasn't that dumb. The whole, 'dying on the cross' thing was most likely a fabrication created by the Powers That Were at the time to con the masses into being more easily enslaved and abused. "Turn that other cheek, Christian Dog! There's a beautiful afterlife waiting for you, but only if you shovel my shit with grace. --Oh, and if you fail to love those who hate you, God will dump you in a lake of fire for all eternity."
Con job, all the way. A rancid, albeit clever, twist on a good man's work.
And C.S. Lewis fell for it. He was a weak and frightened man; Watch 'Shadowlands' to get an idea of just how lost he was. It took an American woman to crack his shell and teach him a little about love and intimacy. Too bad it happened after the Narnia books were written. . .
-FL
However, as with most pieces of consumer-level computer technology, the first few production runs of a product will often use well-designed parts and be made to last. It seems to me that the manufacturers aim to create excellent products for the initial 'settling in' period of a new technology, which results in favorable industry reviews and higher placements of a given company in the competition for market share. Then, after the technology is well in place and people are addicted, the quality can be safely dropped and the money-grab of planned obsolescence and super-cheap parts usage in manufacture can begin.
My little 15" LCD from Samsung is an old model, but it runs like a trooper. Like a venerable old HP Laserjet II, I expect it will run tirelessly for years to come. And luckily, unlike the Laserjet II, there's nothing a new, up to date model LCD screen can do which is so spectacular and so necessary that I'd consider re-investing in the same technology. An old screen which displays bright and clear and accurately, is a screen which has pretty much hit the upward limit of my requirements.
-FL
I am curious. . . Why do you mention this?
-FL
When the Fear mechanism is activated, particularly when there is no actual critical event occurring, (like running from a tiger), for which the fear drug pumping through our veins is preparing us to deal with. . , when we buy into the fear and there is no release, we end up in a perpetual state where we are much more open to certain suggestions which lack rational grounding.
"We're going to take your rights away and allow police searches in your living room. Okay? Terrorists! Viruses! Crackheads with guns!"
As has been pointed out, it's interesting that this story comes from MSNBC.
As an aside. . . My computer runs clean and sweet with just a simple little fire-wall. (And what an overly dramatic name is 'Firewall' for a program which asks me if I want to allow things access to my modem). I don't need any of that other junk; Virus scanners are for people who run Windows 2K and up and who open email attachments, which I don't. And Anti-Spyware is for people who run Kazaa and Google tool bars and other nonsense programs.
I mean, come on.
The Voice of Authority telling us that we home users need to run around like panicking headless chickens looking for 'security' on our writing desks?
Silly.
-FL