Pick up a copy of the two or three free weekly computer papers distributed all over the city. These papers have a handful of articles on PC related stuff. Ignore those. The meat of the paper lies in the 150 or so adverts placed by small mom and pop computer stores all over the city. They list in 4-point fonts all the components they sell and their current prices for that week.
Go through the papers, price compare, get a feel for where the technology is at, and figure out what you want to build. You can do this either at home, or sitting in a donut or noodle shop at the corner of College and Spadina, THE major intersection for PC parts-buying, a two minute walk from about 15 different computer stores.
Go for a two minute walk. --Some of the shops don't even bother advertising, and most of them are hallway-sized stores with a glass counter, boxes and bags of OEM components, and a couple of asian guys in the back with soldering irons and half a dozen monitors and half-built machines. --Like a scene out of some dorky spy film where the everyman hero knows an ace-in-the-hole guy who can help give him an edge, --or who will look up and say something moronic like, "Whoa, Man! No, you don't get it man! This thing is so far advanced it shouldn't even exist for another two decades! Where did you get this thing, man!?"
Buy your parts. Go home. Build. --All the major parts come with their own manufacturer's warrantees, so if something stops working, get on the web, get on the phone, get your parts replaced. It works, buy one or two generations behind the technology curve and you'll spend about $550 (Canadian dollars) for a kick-ass system. --And be shaking your head at the guy who spent $3000 on a cutting edge Dell package that he'll still be making payments on when you're upgrading a year later to something faster than what he just bought.
But that's Toronto. If you don't live there, you have to work a bit harder. The downside is that you have to live in fucking Toronto.
Your post is a demonstration that when crazy people drink, they should refrain from posting to Slashdot.
Well now. . . I don't think I've ever drunk and posted in my life, and crazy is a very relative term. --That is, everyone in the history of this world who has decided not to walk in time with the masses has been called crazy by boring people who were little thought-of during their lives and quickly forgotten afterwards. Congratulations. Let's not trade places, 'kay?
This is the sort of thing which people must be very careful to think through. Claims of this sort need to be thoroughly investigated before people over-react, because this is exactly how propaganda wars are waged.
What better way to rile up Americans into an invasion mood than to tell everybody stories about how country 'X' is being unfairly ruled? Just read some of the reactions below.
Information about this censorship issue is pretty sketchy at the moment.
But when it comes right down to it. ..
The trouble is that it may well be true, but that the directives would appear to stem from the ultra right-wing end of the Iranian political spectrum, and that end of the scale is controlled by others with an agenda. --Saddam had been installed by the US specifically to be a target when it became necessary to take Iraq, and Bush was similarly installed by the Neocon cabal, and the Neocon cabal are a bunch of rag dolls in the hands of still other groups.
The interesting truth of the matter is that no country is independent of the larger ruling class; public display politics are designed simply to channel the masses and sculpt emotional states and activities with the final goals being understood by only a very few, but which can be hunted down with a bit of work.
The agenda is secret, but secrets leak. -Which, paradoxically enough, is the very reason many people say, "I don't believe in Conspiracies! It's impossible to keep a secret!"
Ahh. There's straight forward logic, and the circular kind. Take your pick. But don't dawdle; Iran is edging toward the abyss. ..
So does this mean the debate is finally over as to whether or not global warming is a reality?
--Actually, I'd be curious to know the ratio of Internet Explorer users to people who spent the last ten years in environmental denial. --As well as to people who think torture in Iraq is no worse than college 'hazing'. And to those who bought into the whole WMD thing. Indeed, I wonder how many common threads there are among people who still have their heads plugged into the Matrix.
The concerns pointed out are extremely minor ones which will be gone soon enough. --And from reading the posts here, it seems that a couple of them may already be history. (I've not checked this though, and probably won't since I never use Newsgroups, do not have multiple users on my system and don't download things unless I know what the heck they are. Frankly, I probably won't bother patching any of these problems, and will just wait around until the next version of Mozilla comes along.)
So wake me up when by connecting to the web or checking my email somebody can enslave my entire OS or download all my passwords or delete my hard drive or hit me with any one of a couple dozen nightmare scenarios IE users have had to face in the past.
The only reason I can think that people who know better still continue support their broken Microsoft products is that they happened to be using them when it was pointed out that those products were for chumps. --Jeez. Just change products. Don't play at denial crying, "NO! IE is a good product! I define myself through the products I use! So you MUST be wrong, otherwise I'll feel bad! I'm not a chump! I'm NOT! --And I'm going to keep on using my broken software just to prove it to you! Mozila sucks! I LIKE having zero control over the images displayed on my browser! If it weren't for pop-up ads, how would I know which things I'm supposed to buy?"
Low self-esteem makes people pick the dumbest and most un-worthy battles to fight.
And I like how you use the word torture. The goings on in Abu Garab was embarassment, humiliation, and hazing. It was hardly torture. And during war, I think anything up to serious/permanent injury or death is justified in order to get information.
If you want to live in the comfy Rush Limbaugh version of the world, then that's your choice, but it seems a touch cowardly to me when one can't look reality in the face.
Amnesty International investigates. "Whenever interrogators brought in a new prisoner, they would always bring in a block of ice. She did not know why they brought the ice or how they used it during interrogation. But the interrogation sessions always included the ice block and were followed, a few hours later, by a visit to the prisoner, who by then would be unconscious, by two doctors, an American and an Iraqi. The prisoners were invariably taken out of the interrogation room unconscious."
The Red Cross Report on US torture of Iraqi prisoners tells us that, "[. ..] "during arrest, internment and interrogation." The document details gross violations of numerous articles of the Geneva Conventions by US and British forces and paints a picture of widespread and systemic abuse of prisoners[. ..]"
""Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house.... They arrested suspects, tying their hands in the back with flexi-cuffs, hooding them, and taking them away. Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people. Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles. Individuals were often led away in whatever they happened to be wearing at the time of arrest--sometimes in pyjamas or underwear--and were denied the opportunity to gather a few essential belongings, such as clothing, hygiene items, medicine or eyeglasses."
Furthermore, "certain CF military intelligence officers" told the ICRC they estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of those rounded up in these terror raids were arrested by mistake.
--Now consider that the people who are taken prisoner are generally treated to conditions you call, 'hazing'. --These are the people who the U.S. supposedly went to Iraq to 'rescue'.
This is not about 'getting information' which they teach as being a necessary evil on dumb-ass propaganda shows like 'Alias'. This is about needless, wide-spread brutality.
Because, you know, it's such a hotly pursued statistic.
Anyway. . . The RIAA, it just struck me, isn't about what they say they are about. --They may THINK they are what they say they are, but I say they aren't and that what they think they are and what they really are, are different, see?
Just keeping people stressed out. Like having a nice big tap stuck in a maple tree, drawing off the sweeeeeet sugar water of low-level human misery.
It seems to me from reading the various stories available on this item that it is already illegal to opperate a laser device above 3000 feet near an airport. Just the same way you can fire a model rocket near an airport.
Cooler heads and existing laws should be able deal with this one without all the added drama.
Note: I am NOT concerned about the $15 consumer lasers mentioned in the USA Today article but about the much stronger lab types, so please don't waste your time explaining to me why I shouldn't be at all worried about this.
Okay. Thank-you for posting, "uberskyjock". I'll try not to waste your time.
Your notes, while fascinating and informative, have little bearing on the fact that somebody has been arrested and threatened with 25 years imprisonment for posing a non-threat.
Everybody is needlessly scared, the media is doing an irresponsible over-hype job and the authorities are over-reacting. --Yes, playing with lasers and airplanes is rationally arguable as being similar to joking about bombs in an airport, but that has little to do with what this is really all about. . . That is, the maintaining and increasing of the fear levels across the U.S. populace.
It should be remembered that movements toward stricter laws are always rationally arguable, but the laws once made are nearly always irreversible.
Anyway, since then it HAS indeed been examined, and you'll pardon me if I don't share your rosy assessment.
As for being easy to read. . . The USA PATRIOT Act may indeed be written in "clear and concise English", but it is nonetheless damned hard to work through as it constantly references other laws and statutes to which it makes dozens of wording changes and amendments. --And you'll pardon me again if I don't share your feeling that "small modifications" to existing laws are no big deal. In law, it's all about the wording; the difference between words can kill a man or set him free.
--Indeed, in order to make sense of the PATRIOT Act, one has to have numerous other legal documents available, and more importantly, understand in context those other laws which are being altered. Reading the Act is by no means an easy task, and that you describe it as such is just plain baffling.
--And beyond all of that, one of my favorite parts is how the Sunset clause (section 224) includes a whole string of exceptions which leave a variety of those amendments snuggly in place after the December 2005 cancel date.
The fact of the matter is that a large amount of American law has been significantly altered without any review. This kind of law-making should never be done without scrutiny or debate. --At least not in a country claiming to be democratic. But instead it was deliberately pulled off during a time of high emotion; deliberately made unavailable for proper readings.
I have a problem with that, and if you don't, then you are the last one who should be calling anybody ignorant.
The plane was only at about 3,000 feet on approach for landing. I'm guessing that the pilot just MIGHT have been looking towards the ground.
There was no mention in the article about altitude. I also did a Google search but found no such details.
Unless the fellow's house was actually built on the runway, I find it rather unlikely that he managed to hit the cockpit at 3000 feet from his backyard.
A New Jersey man was charged Tuesday under federal anti-terrorism laws with shining a laser beam at a charter jet flying over his home, temporarily distracting the pilots.
A plane flying over his house? How did he point the laser through the aircraft window exactly? Unless he was on a mountain top, or a long damned way away from the plane and using a MUCH more powerful laser which would not diminish after 2 miles, the stated claim is not even possible.
And these days, any statements taken from captives mean exactly nothing since the U.S. has demonstrated a willingness to torture prisoners.
This is total propaganda bullshit. The fact that it's suddenly happening all over the country is further evidence of its being a deliberate orchestration of social engineering.
They couldn't come up with something more believable in their quest for domestic 'Terrorist' activities, (read: Excuses to put regular people in prison for no good reason), than laser pointers?
Think about it. ..
The whole sparkly, brand-new Fear is that airplane pilots might be blinded in their cockpits by laser pointers, right?
Okay. Explain this: How exactly does a laser-pointer 'terrorist' go about blinding a pilot from ground level? Those cockpit windows, aside from being quite small, were last time I flew, situated on top of the plane's nose.
Are these domestic laser-pointer 'terrorists' standing on mountain tops? Seriously! The claim isn't even logistically possible!
It seems clear to me that this is simply more horse-hooey. --But, hey, whatever works. People obviously eat this crap up. I even saw one post below where a guy was complaining that 25 years was not enough prison time for an evil laser pointer 'terrorist'! Maybe we need newer, stronger laws! --And think about it. . . The guy arrested by the flying Storm Troopers, if he had done this a year ago, wouldn't have faced any charges at all because it would have been before the stupid fear-hype. --Which just goes to show that television propaganda really does work.
Bit by bit, the anti-terrorist laws will be turned in upon the American citizens. That's how facsism works. Aim out, then control within.
I mean, when it comes down to it, nobody can prove anything one way or the other. It's logically impossible to prove that you even exist unless one makes certain logical concessions.
"Yeah, okay. I can't prove that I am here right now, so let's just assume that we all are, otherwise we'll never get anywhere!"
But where does that leave us?
After that point, anybody who tells me that God's existence can't be proven is just being hypocritical.
There's nothing out there but energy. Atoms are just huge amounts of space with some tiny charges. The whole universe could fit into an infinitely small dot, and perhaps even did at one time. We're nothing but vaugue energy-forms which only seem solid because we all happen to be made out of the same stuff. (Or lack thereof).
Anybody who complains, "Yes, that's all fine and good, but you can't get anywhere if you let your mind sink into metaphysics!"
Such people who complain thusly. . , who cry, "There is no God!" are simply choosing to nestle themselves within the illusion that things are actually real. And that's fine. The whole reason we're here at all, experiencing any of this, is to learn lessons which can only be taught if we take the illusion seriously. Those who start seeking beyond the confines are those who are getting ready to grow beyond. And those who aren't ready, will continue to nail loud-mouth seers to trees.
--Of course, this doesn't mean that Christians aren't a bunch of suckers with a religion based on manipulated falsehoods. But that's also part of the lesson.
This, I think, is definitely a ranking contender for the Top 10 list of Dumb Sayings of the whole last century.
What's wrong with ordinary, 'proof'? Does Extraordinary Proof make something more 'True' than something which is simply 'True'? And who gets to define, 'Extraordinary'?
That a pop-culture 'scientist' came up with this illogical trope says a great deal, I think.
Read simply: "I don't want to look at things if they make me feel uncomfortable. La La La. I can't hear you!"
Okay, I'm a sporting person and highly gullible to boot; so what are these secrets and how did you get around the training of not believing them?
And even if I don't believe you, what difference does it make?
Most of the things worth talking about are hard to deal with openly. Most of the time it's just a lot of uphill effort with no thanks and a fuck-tonne of abuse from those on whom the training has really taken a deathlock. And then, of course, the world sometimes bites back. I've screwed up and gotten bitten a few times, and it sucks. People are getting killed more frequently these days over this shit.
But getting around the training is the most important trick in the end. Once you stop screwing around and start seeing for yourself, you're a heckuva lot better off. The programming seems to either stick completely or fail completely with people.
On the plus side, when you start seeking, you'll naturally run into people who can offer help. --Or who can hurt you if you're not on your toes. And that's part of the challenge. This whole reality is all about learning, and nothing teaches faster than a frickin' mine-field.
Anything is safer than ignorance, however. No question there.
Pick a direction about which you are most curious and follow it. Stay critical but open. Test things as you go. --Three steps in pretty much any direction and you're down the proverbial rabbit hole. It's all got to do with seeing things as they are rather than seeing what you're told to see. Seems simple enough, but the world is largely blind. Good luck.
Why is it so very hard for people to accept the possibility that 9/11 was deliberately allowed to happen?
I mean, come on! A sociopath doesn't care about the welfare of other people. Killing a few thousand to achieve his/her goals is no different than blowing up frogs during childhood. It's not like the U.S. hasn't recklessly killed innocent people before in the name of weapons sales and big business. Honestly! Why is this such a hard logical step for people to make?
I mean, it's the easiest and most rational solution. It fits all the evidence without requiring any mental gymnastics. And yet, people insist on coming up with laborious and clumsy explanations which all spin around the make-believe center pin wherein Bush and his fellows are not really self-serving, heartless liars. Anything but that!
That, in itself, is evidence enough of an even more important principal at work, I think.
Ah yes, here we go again. I am really tired of people using this argument. What are we to do? Just sit on our hands and hope for the best? Instead of being like the UN which just sits there and hopes for the best, we stepped in. Gee, lets see side with Iran or Iraq. The problem is that ALL governments over there are BRUTAL regimes!!!
The picture is somewhat bigger than that. If you try to piece things together using the puzzle bits provided by orthodox media, you are never going to get beyond the Fischer Price version of reality.
Should we be in Iraq? Jeezuz. That's a useless question designed for the people destined to do the dying. Try asking, "Why are there three slightly different and equally insane religions dominating the world, who put them there and how?"
And yes, it was bloody-well deliberate.
One can't think outside of the box if one refuses to acknowledge boxes.
A more realistic solution to the pirate problem would involve running a Monte Carlo simulation with more realistic payout scenarios given their likelihood to gamble with their lives.
My money is on the pirates. I doubt Monte could handle a cutlas.
Though either way. . , a pirate from the deck of a 1600's galley would probably see more value in a couple of goats than he would a new car.
Slashdot Mirror
The day begins thusly. .
Pick up a copy of the two or three free weekly computer papers distributed all over the city. These papers have a handful of articles on PC related stuff. Ignore those. The meat of the paper lies in the 150 or so adverts placed by small mom and pop computer stores all over the city. They list in 4-point fonts all the components they sell and their current prices for that week.
Go through the papers, price compare, get a feel for where the technology is at, and figure out what you want to build. You can do this either at home, or sitting in a donut or noodle shop at the corner of College and Spadina, THE major intersection for PC parts-buying, a two minute walk from about 15 different computer stores.
Go for a two minute walk. --Some of the shops don't even bother advertising, and most of them are hallway-sized stores with a glass counter, boxes and bags of OEM components, and a couple of asian guys in the back with soldering irons and half a dozen monitors and half-built machines. --Like a scene out of some dorky spy film where the everyman hero knows an ace-in-the-hole guy who can help give him an edge, --or who will look up and say something moronic like, "Whoa, Man! No, you don't get it man! This thing is so far advanced it shouldn't even exist for another two decades! Where did you get this thing, man!?"
Buy your parts. Go home. Build. --All the major parts come with their own manufacturer's warrantees, so if something stops working, get on the web, get on the phone, get your parts replaced. It works, buy one or two generations behind the technology curve and you'll spend about $550 (Canadian dollars) for a kick-ass system. --And be shaking your head at the guy who spent $3000 on a cutting edge Dell package that he'll still be making payments on when you're upgrading a year later to something faster than what he just bought.
But that's Toronto. If you don't live there, you have to work a bit harder. The downside is that you have to live in fucking Toronto.
-FL
Details at eleven! (Do not feed the anchor.)
-FL
Well now. . . I don't think I've ever drunk and posted in my life, and crazy is a very relative term. --That is, everyone in the history of this world who has decided not to walk in time with the masses has been called crazy by boring people who were little thought-of during their lives and quickly forgotten afterwards. Congratulations. Let's not trade places, 'kay?
-FL
What better way to rile up Americans into an invasion mood than to tell everybody stories about how country 'X' is being unfairly ruled? Just read some of the reactions below.
Information about this censorship issue is pretty sketchy at the moment.
But when it comes right down to it. .
The trouble is that it may well be true, but that the directives would appear to stem from the ultra right-wing end of the Iranian political spectrum, and that end of the scale is controlled by others with an agenda. --Saddam had been installed by the US specifically to be a target when it became necessary to take Iraq, and Bush was similarly installed by the Neocon cabal, and the Neocon cabal are a bunch of rag dolls in the hands of still other groups.
The interesting truth of the matter is that no country is independent of the larger ruling class; public display politics are designed simply to channel the masses and sculpt emotional states and activities with the final goals being understood by only a very few, but which can be hunted down with a bit of work.
The agenda is secret, but secrets leak. -Which, paradoxically enough, is the very reason many people say, "I don't believe in Conspiracies! It's impossible to keep a secret!"
Ahh. There's straight forward logic, and the circular kind. Take your pick. But don't dawdle; Iran is edging toward the abyss. .
-FL
--Actually, I'd be curious to know the ratio of Internet Explorer users to people who spent the last ten years in environmental denial. --As well as to people who think torture in Iraq is no worse than college 'hazing'. And to those who bought into the whole WMD thing. Indeed, I wonder how many common threads there are among people who still have their heads plugged into the Matrix.
-FL
The concerns pointed out are extremely minor ones which will be gone soon enough. --And from reading the posts here, it seems that a couple of them may already be history. (I've not checked this though, and probably won't since I never use Newsgroups, do not have multiple users on my system and don't download things unless I know what the heck they are. Frankly, I probably won't bother patching any of these problems, and will just wait around until the next version of Mozilla comes along.)
So wake me up when by connecting to the web or checking my email somebody can enslave my entire OS or download all my passwords or delete my hard drive or hit me with any one of a couple dozen nightmare scenarios IE users have had to face in the past.
The only reason I can think that people who know better still continue support their broken Microsoft products is that they happened to be using them when it was pointed out that those products were for chumps. --Jeez. Just change products. Don't play at denial crying, "NO! IE is a good product! I define myself through the products I use! So you MUST be wrong, otherwise I'll feel bad! I'm not a chump! I'm NOT! --And I'm going to keep on using my broken software just to prove it to you! Mozila sucks! I LIKE having zero control over the images displayed on my browser! If it weren't for pop-up ads, how would I know which things I'm supposed to buy?"
Low self-esteem makes people pick the dumbest and most un-worthy battles to fight.
-FL
If you want to live in the comfy Rush Limbaugh version of the world, then that's your choice, but it seems a touch cowardly to me when one can't look reality in the face.
Austrailan Victim
Navy Seal says Iraqi who died at Abu Ghraib was roughed up in CIA's `romper room' "[. .
Amnesty International investigates. "Whenever interrogators brought in a new prisoner, they would always bring in a block of ice. She did not know why they brought the ice or how they used it during interrogation. But the interrogation sessions always included the ice block and were followed, a few hours later, by a visit to the prisoner, who by then would be unconscious, by two doctors, an American and an Iraqi. The prisoners were invariably taken out of the interrogation room unconscious."
The Red Cross Report on US torture of Iraqi prisoners tells us that, "[. .
--Now consider that the people who are taken prisoner are generally treated to conditions you call, 'hazing'. --These are the people who the U.S. supposedly went to Iraq to 'rescue'.
This is not about 'getting information' which they teach as being a necessary evil on dumb-ass propaganda shows like 'Alias'. This is about needless, wide-spread brutality.
-FL
Because, you know, it's such a hotly pursued statistic.
Anyway. . . The RIAA, it just struck me, isn't about what they say they are about. --They may THINK they are what they say they are, but I say they aren't and that what they think they are and what they really are, are different, see?
Just keeping people stressed out. Like having a nice big tap stuck in a maple tree, drawing off the sweeeeeet sugar water of low-level human misery.
Yes, I am out of coffee filters. Why do you ask?
-FL
Cooler heads and existing laws should be able deal with this one without all the added drama.
-FL
Who said there was a god in 'my' energy universe?
-FL
Okay. Thank-you for posting, "uberskyjock". I'll try not to waste your time.
Your notes, while fascinating and informative, have little bearing on the fact that somebody has been arrested and threatened with 25 years imprisonment for posing a non-threat.
Everybody is needlessly scared, the media is doing an irresponsible over-hype job and the authorities are over-reacting. --Yes, playing with lasers and airplanes is rationally arguable as being similar to joking about bombs in an airport, but that has little to do with what this is really all about. . . That is, the maintaining and increasing of the fear levels across the U.S. populace.
It should be remembered that movements toward stricter laws are always rationally arguable, but the laws once made are nearly always irreversible.
A little care is needed here.
-FL
You have no problem with that?
Anyway, since then it HAS indeed been examined, and you'll pardon me if I don't share your rosy assessment.
As for being easy to read. . . The USA PATRIOT Act may indeed be written in "clear and concise English", but it is nonetheless damned hard to work through as it constantly references other laws and statutes to which it makes dozens of wording changes and amendments. --And you'll pardon me again if I don't share your feeling that "small modifications" to existing laws are no big deal. In law, it's all about the wording; the difference between words can kill a man or set him free.
--Indeed, in order to make sense of the PATRIOT Act, one has to have numerous other legal documents available, and more importantly, understand in context those other laws which are being altered. Reading the Act is by no means an easy task, and that you describe it as such is just plain baffling.
--And beyond all of that, one of my favorite parts is how the Sunset clause (section 224) includes a whole string of exceptions which leave a variety of those amendments snuggly in place after the December 2005 cancel date.
The fact of the matter is that a large amount of American law has been significantly altered without any review. This kind of law-making should never be done without scrutiny or debate. --At least not in a country claiming to be democratic. But instead it was deliberately pulled off during a time of high emotion; deliberately made unavailable for proper readings.
I have a problem with that, and if you don't, then you are the last one who should be calling anybody ignorant.
-FL
-FL
There was no mention in the article about altitude. I also did a Google search but found no such details.
Unless the fellow's house was actually built on the runway, I find it rather unlikely that he managed to hit the cockpit at 3000 feet from his backyard.
-FL
A plane flying over his house? How did he point the laser through the aircraft window exactly? Unless he was on a mountain top, or a long damned way away from the plane and using a MUCH more powerful laser which would not diminish after 2 miles, the stated claim is not even possible.
And these days, any statements taken from captives mean exactly nothing since the U.S. has demonstrated a willingness to torture prisoners.
This is total propaganda bullshit. The fact that it's suddenly happening all over the country is further evidence of its being a deliberate orchestration of social engineering.
And you fell for it. Smooth.
-FL
They couldn't come up with something more believable in their quest for domestic 'Terrorist' activities, (read: Excuses to put regular people in prison for no good reason), than laser pointers?
Think about it. .
The whole sparkly, brand-new Fear is that airplane pilots might be blinded in their cockpits by laser pointers, right?
Okay. Explain this: How exactly does a laser-pointer 'terrorist' go about blinding a pilot from ground level? Those cockpit windows, aside from being quite small, were last time I flew, situated on top of the plane's nose.
Are these domestic laser-pointer 'terrorists' standing on mountain tops? Seriously! The claim isn't even logistically possible!
It seems clear to me that this is simply more horse-hooey. --But, hey, whatever works. People obviously eat this crap up. I even saw one post below where a guy was complaining that 25 years was not enough prison time for an evil laser pointer 'terrorist'! Maybe we need newer, stronger laws! --And think about it. . . The guy arrested by the flying Storm Troopers, if he had done this a year ago, wouldn't have faced any charges at all because it would have been before the stupid fear-hype. --Which just goes to show that television propaganda really does work.
Bit by bit, the anti-terrorist laws will be turned in upon the American citizens. That's how facsism works. Aim out, then control within.
But, laser-pointers? Come on!
-FL
"Yeah, okay. I can't prove that I am here right now, so let's just assume that we all are, otherwise we'll never get anywhere!"
But where does that leave us?
After that point, anybody who tells me that God's existence can't be proven is just being hypocritical.
There's nothing out there but energy. Atoms are just huge amounts of space with some tiny charges. The whole universe could fit into an infinitely small dot, and perhaps even did at one time. We're nothing but vaugue energy-forms which only seem solid because we all happen to be made out of the same stuff. (Or lack thereof).
Anybody who complains, "Yes, that's all fine and good, but you can't get anywhere if you let your mind sink into metaphysics!"
Such people who complain thusly. . , who cry, "There is no God!" are simply choosing to nestle themselves within the illusion that things are actually real. And that's fine. The whole reason we're here at all, experiencing any of this, is to learn lessons which can only be taught if we take the illusion seriously. Those who start seeking beyond the confines are those who are getting ready to grow beyond. And those who aren't ready, will continue to nail loud-mouth seers to trees.
--Of course, this doesn't mean that Christians aren't a bunch of suckers with a religion based on manipulated falsehoods. But that's also part of the lesson.
-FL
This, I think, is definitely a ranking contender for the Top 10 list of Dumb Sayings of the whole last century.
What's wrong with ordinary, 'proof'? Does Extraordinary Proof make something more 'True' than something which is simply 'True'? And who gets to define, 'Extraordinary'?
That a pop-culture 'scientist' came up with this illogical trope says a great deal, I think.
Read simply: "I don't want to look at things if they make me feel uncomfortable. La La La. I can't hear you!"
-FL
"So what's it been like for you this evening?"
One of them turned to observe me. She glared with that particular flavor of ultra-tough female no-monkey-business copitude we have all seen.
"It's going fine, sir. The Y2K Bug is just a myth."
Okidoke, ma'am. Have a happy.
-FL
And even if I don't believe you, what difference does it make?
Most of the things worth talking about are hard to deal with openly. Most of the time it's just a lot of uphill effort with no thanks and a fuck-tonne of abuse from those on whom the training has really taken a deathlock. And then, of course, the world sometimes bites back. I've screwed up and gotten bitten a few times, and it sucks. People are getting killed more frequently these days over this shit.
But getting around the training is the most important trick in the end. Once you stop screwing around and start seeing for yourself, you're a heckuva lot better off. The programming seems to either stick completely or fail completely with people.
On the plus side, when you start seeking, you'll naturally run into people who can offer help. --Or who can hurt you if you're not on your toes. And that's part of the challenge. This whole reality is all about learning, and nothing teaches faster than a frickin' mine-field.
Anything is safer than ignorance, however. No question there.
Pick a direction about which you are most curious and follow it. Stay critical but open. Test things as you go. --Three steps in pretty much any direction and you're down the proverbial rabbit hole. It's all got to do with seeing things as they are rather than seeing what you're told to see. Seems simple enough, but the world is largely blind. Good luck.
-FL
I mean, come on! A sociopath doesn't care about the welfare of other people. Killing a few thousand to achieve his/her goals is no different than blowing up frogs during childhood. It's not like the U.S. hasn't recklessly killed innocent people before in the name of weapons sales and big business. Honestly! Why is this such a hard logical step for people to make?
I mean, it's the easiest and most rational solution. It fits all the evidence without requiring any mental gymnastics. And yet, people insist on coming up with laborious and clumsy explanations which all spin around the make-believe center pin wherein Bush and his fellows are not really self-serving, heartless liars. Anything but that!
That, in itself, is evidence enough of an even more important principal at work, I think.
-FL
The picture is somewhat bigger than that. If you try to piece things together using the puzzle bits provided by orthodox media, you are never going to get beyond the Fischer Price version of reality.
Should we be in Iraq? Jeezuz. That's a useless question designed for the people destined to do the dying. Try asking, "Why are there three slightly different and equally insane religions dominating the world, who put them there and how?"
And yes, it was bloody-well deliberate.
One can't think outside of the box if one refuses to acknowledge boxes.
-FL
Rats. And I had resolved for 2005 not to make fun of the perceptually disabled.
-FL
My money is on the pirates. I doubt Monte could handle a cutlas.
Though either way. . , a pirate from the deck of a 1600's galley would probably see more value in a couple of goats than he would a new car.
-FL
No 'secret' revealed in the Washington Times or on C-span is worth anything.
The real secrets are the ones people have been trained to not believe in even if they hear them.
How do I know?
You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
-FL