Gold is only valuable when there's something protecting you from people who want to steal it from you.
Very true. But since this is an engineered economic collapse, I think we can expect it to be severe, but not so severe that government or monetary systems would be truly threatened. The super-wealthy and the Shadow Government just wants to hurt the people in order to increase their degree of control over them.
Now, I am doubtful that fascist military rule will rise directly from a depression, but it is certainly a step in that direction, and it is also an intended goal. I strongly suspect that we will see concentration camps before this decade is out. (Though, people will certainly be able to turn blind eyes towards them, or justify them. But concentration camps are concentration camps no matter how you label them. Semites be warned!)
As for gold. . . I don't care about prices. I just want something which will be stable when all my $20 bills are worth $5, my job vanishes and the banks come calling to get back the wealth they loaned me. Gold will increase in value, and when I cash out, I'll hopefully be able to pay off my debts and keep myself housed and fed for the year or so it will take before things start to normalize.
I'm not interested in speading fear. With knowledge, this sort of situation can be managed with far less trauma.
This guy's a know freak...I wouldn't bother trying to reason with him until get starts taking his prozac again.
Ah, sorry. I validated a previous post made by this guy by offering an actual answer.
In reading this latest post of his, I realized my error. --In a single sentence he demonstrated both a total lack of grammatical ability as well as a nodding approval for anti-depressants. I wouldn't have wasted my breath on him had I known earlier that he was just another mud-head. Sorry for any confusion.
remember when everyone thought the world would end because of the y2k bug?
Yeah. They were over-reacting, and I wasn't among them. --But you're also incorrect, if I'm reading your post right. --Y2K was a real problem and it was only solved because people were aware of its implications in advance, and because they spent millions on updating their code.
I knew a guy who had been working non-stop with a programming team for about two years de-bugging code for a large bank. They got the job done in time.
In the case of our current situation, however, people have done nothing to prepare for the problem. We don't even have people over-reacting, buying generators and such. There isn't even mis-information. There is NO information. That's where the problem lies.
But I'm sure if you keep telling yourself pretty lies, you'll sleep well tonight, and who am I to snatch that comfort zone away from you?
I post in more than one place, and horrors, I use the same name wherever I go, unlike the above coward. And yes, I always post loud, and I am of course, liable to make mistakes and assumptions from time to time being human as I am. I'm not always right, and I freely admit this, though in this case, as it turns out, while talking in broad strokes I was not entirely off base either. But discussion boards are self correcting in this manner. I learn as much as others do, and probably more because I like to venture new ideas while remaining open to more informed people. The web is full of informed people; people with direct experience in a million different areas. I mean, look at what happened here; somebody who had actually worked in China offered up his knowledge! How cool is that? Now we all know more. This is the magic of the web! It's not about king of the mountain; about being right or wrong. About snivelling in order to be accepted by the popular kids under threat of being labeled a 'Freak troll'. That's all bullshit.
At the time I scanned the 300 or so posts in this story thread, outside of the general griping and worrying and comiserating, I was the only one with an actual new *IDEA* to offer. Think about that. If this makes me a 'freak troll,' well, I'm terribly sorry to have caused alarm.
As for our coward here, perhaps he shouldn't be on the web at all if unconventional ideas and debate are disturbing to him. I think he will find that his computer can also run nice, safe video games which do not require one to expand one's awareness.
While all your points are well taken, they have nothing to do with what I was talking about.
When America truly was a land of opportunity, there were periods where it was legal to shoot a guy so long as he drew first. --It was perfectly legal to employ people in life threatening job situations; (a life lost for every mile of railroad laid), murder and mayhem ensued just to get unions into being, the Hoover Dam would have been impossible to build without cheap, disposable labor, etc., etc. This was part of what it meant to live in America.
Human rights have nothing to do with lands of opportunity. That stuff comes later.
As for pendulum swings. . . I think you're going to be upset with how things continue to disintegrate in the West. There is no return from where we're heading. Sorry. Face the truth and get yourself well placed, or continue to dream. Only one method will ensure survival.
A shitty job market is nothing compared to what's just around the corner.
Buy gold while you can. The yeller stuff is quietly creeping up. Gained $30 since this time last month, thanks to war worries and people waking up to the fact that whole star-destroyer of the economy is going bye-bye in a few short months. --You can gauge how close the world is to disaster by watching how reliably gold gains, how shakey the dollar gets, and how many Britney clones are flashing their skin at us. The water's boiling, kids!
--And when the bubble bursts and all the poor to middle income people are bankrupt when the banks foreclose on all the debt they addicted the populace to, you'll sure be glad to own something a little harder than the soon-to-be tanked American dollar!
Some of the most powerful American banks got that way by foreclosing on mountains of mortgaged property during and after the Great Depression. Depressions allow the rich to consolidate wealth and the poor to become slave labor.
You think this stuff isn't planned? Don't be stupid. Bush isn't stupid; He's a raving psychopath, but he isn't stupid. (Easy mistake to make, mind you. Stupidity and psychosis sort of look the same at a distance.) --In any case, that loon is deliberately crashing the economy for several nasty reasons. Just watch. But don't waste any time getting to your seats; Estimates put the big kablooie sometime within the next six months, with the smart money on mid to late February.
Don't say you weren't warned; a few of the more aware ones out here in cyber space have been screaming and yelling about this stuff for a couple of years now. It's late in the game, kids and kittens! Make yer hay while you can.
Invest somehow in Food, Gold or unmortgaged Land ownership. --And military/biomedical interests for those of you with no morals. That shit always does well during Hell years. (Daddy Warbucks.) Canned goods might not be a bad idea either. I can't remember; did they issue food stamps during the Great Depression?
-Fantastic Lad --Fear is stupid and useless. Preparedness is everything.
I'm serious. I have a Chinese friend who reports that the pay over there for Westerners is extremely high, while living costs are almost nothing. The country is throwing billions of dollars trying to ramp up for the new century. --And to host the next Olympics, don't forget. If you're white and you know technology, then you have a job and you'll make a mint. The governments of the West prefer not to advertise this to their citizens for obvious reasons, but the word is real. You want to live well and make a stellar living? Then pack your bags. China is the new America.
But you know what? I'm downloading the first act right now. I'll reserve judgement. . , well indefinitely. Even if it sucks bananas, I love collaborative projects like this. I'm sure everybody involved has learned a mountain of cool new skills, and are richer people because of it.
Simply trying to coordinate a project of this scale represents a spectacular effort!
Kudos, Kudos, Kudos!
Now, (fingers crossed), if the script is any good, the project itself and not just what it represents might just be something special. Perhaps a new force in the galaxy to contend with. . ?
You're not far enough down the plant stalk there. I think the root goes much deeper.
I think it's long past time to push for an end of commercialism and mass manufacturing.
No. Nix that. Mass manufacturing in and of itself is not evil. The problem is something deeper. ..
I think it's long past time to put an end to Greed. Greed is a disease.
Until then, I quite like the SMTP system. The microseconds I spend deleting bullshit mail are a price I am prepared to pay for the conveniences of email. Having my email sent directly to me is cool. Whatever other system people come up with might not be as reliable, whereas any new system WOULD without question be quickly compromised by greed. The enemy you know. ..
-And that was my grumpy side. Normally I don't blast like that, but wrong sides of beds and all. ..
A few points, though. ..
* I don't have a car and I don't want one. Bike, walk, bus, and make the effort to live near your work place. -I recognize that some people don't have that option, but far, far too many do and are simply lazy clouts.
* I can't stand TV, and I don't understand anybody who can, especially these days when the propaganda and social molding isn't even hidden anymore.
* I don't have AC. A fan and a teeshirt are just fine, thanks. AC is a relatively new thing anyway. A luxury, I'd dare to say. Though I would be in a spot without my heat. But I did mention the two matches, didn't I. . ?
* Lighting and indoor plumbing are also things I grew up with and would miss. But then neither of them emit EM in way demonstrated to directly alter brain chemistry.
When I was your age, I managed to survive without a cell phone. In fact, I did more than just survive. I and all the other kids thrived. We were active, healthy, smart and happy. Life was good. In fact, by all indicators, life was a LOT better.
Your technology is your cage. But you are also the keymaster. The crime is that you have been fooled into limiting your own choices.
I think I'd like to spend some time trying to come up with a system designed to fry computers belonging to all the twits who are filling our collective air with their high energy EM pollution.
Directional, non-directional, I don't care too much. I want to be the guy with the portable EM Pulse generator. You like EM? I'll give you EM.
People seem to take pride in saying things like, "I'm useless without my cell phone and PDA!"
And you're pretty useless with it, too, actually. Stick a joker like that in a forest with a knife, two matches and a fishhook and see how long he'd last. Pathetic, or at least the precursor to something terribly Darwinian in scope. ..
-Fantastic Lad "--Look Ma! 5000 fried cell phones and their owners wandering around like so many headless chickens!" "Stop teasing the sheeple, junior."
1. "Seamus Blackley" sounds like the kind of name I'd give to one of the Harry Potter universe's "Slytherin" wizards. --Except that "Seamus" sounds perhaps too suggestive. Anyway, it's no surprise to me that this jerk-off, (ahem), was heading a large Microsoft division. The whole parallel kind of makes you think. ..
2. When the hell did 'Adult themed' come to mean "Killing and Sex-For-Morons"??? I'm an adult, and this is certainly not the theme of my existence. I wish instead they'd say it something like, "This film contains subject matter best suited for horney, blood-thirsty savages. Enjoy your popcorn."
Google is super-fascinating in that it is a front-end of sorts to the soup of knowledge accumulated by humanity, (or at least the small portion of humanity with access to computers and data-lines.) If one accepts that the internet is a naturally forming kind of global 'memory', then search engines like Google become the faces and the top-layer of 'consciousness' for such an entity. --In combination, creating a primal sort of mind., or at least a mirror of the collective mind of the human race.
A mirror. ..
And when you start throwing filters on the front-end, not accepting the dark parts which exist within the mind, denying them. . . Well.
Only until one accepts and fully learns to understand the nature of one's own shadows will one gain control over their darker aspects. Until then, a person will be driven in ways he or she does not understand, caught in the turmoil created by their shadow's desire. Such people hide behind faulty rationalizations and lies in order to keep their inner selves from hurting. -This kind of hurt being an indicator of just how grown up one is. When the ego no longer stings and cringes, then perhaps you are finally mature.
Alan Moore's billionaire genius character, Adrian Veidt from Watchmen, would stand in front of a wall of television monitors playing feeds from stations all over the world. He would stand there and surf across the wavefront of all that information and in this way could see the psyche of humankind.
As with all Alan Moore works, this is a brilliant, yet naive idea. Left out of his Watchmen universe were those people who understand that the Wall of Televisions principal works in both directions. --That if one applies pressure to certain aspects of the message being delivered by that Wall of Noise, then the receiving populace can be 'guided' in how they think. -Or as I tend to think, virtually controled outright.
The need for some parties to control the thoughts of others so that their own self-deceiving world-views are not threatened, is child-like in the extreme; keeping the shadows under lock and key. (And presumably, those which are the shadows to man, are lights to the beast, and vice versa. There are plenty of agencies and individuals which fear truth today! So what is being kept under lock and key becomes a question indeed!) But then plumbing the mind is often difficult. "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight."
There are other search engines out there. All Theweb is pretty good alternative search service. Pages missing from Google can still be found with this engine. (They've removed a helluva lot more than just drug and hate messages from Google, and not just in Europe and Asia!)
Don't like advertisements dancing on your free will? Dare I say it, perhaps one should exercise a little, oh what's that word...WILL POWER?
The belief that one is not affected by advertising is one of the single most effective bits of mind control currently in play.
Society and culture have been largely defined by media and advertisers, perhaps unwittingly, though in some of the darker ways, I tend to think it is entirely intentional.
Example. ..
The Shaving Razor. Razor blade companies were selling to Men who shaved the hair from their faces. They sold many razors and all was good. Until one day some bright spark realized, "You know. . . Our market share appears to be limited to exactly half the population. But if we could somehow get women to shave as well, then we might effectively double our income! Now how can we go about doing this. . ?"
It started with leg hair, and then over the years it progressed to hair under the arms. --When I was small, I remember that my mother and her friends had hairy under-arms and nobody batted an eyelid. It was normal. This, of course, is no longer the case. The psychology used was that of body hair being, "Dirty". This message was directed at both men and women.
The move was very, very effective, and it took less than 100 years to fully implement. (Shaving genital hair is now becoming normal.) The linking of sexual desirability to hairlessness was not an essential, natural & biological foregone conclusion. (Please forgive me for quoting Desmond "the Conceited Hack Blo-Hard" Morris), but in some cultures, female facial hair is actually a turn-on. While certain aspects of physicality are universally appealing; symmetry, healthy skin, etc., the desirability of how hairy one is, is very much a manipulable one, and the top ad people know this.
Partly through this progressive altering of culture and the resulting sales of thousands of stupid grooming products, certain generalities were discovered. ..
It was learned that reinforcing negative self-image in the public was both easy to do and highly effective in turning people into good consumers. By association, it was learned that creating rifts between the sexes and between friends, by nurturing impossible 'ideals' which we all have been told to want in our friends and lovers, and by reinforcing our belief that Consumer Products will not fail us when our friends and loved ones do. . . our entire society, the way we think, the way we teach our kids, the way we address all kinds of critical issues, has been invisibly altered in enormous, fundamental ways.
They are now selling anti-depressants in women's magazines! --Prozac, among others, is now available in a variety of forms, even mixed with birth control pills. "Nobody wants a grouchy girl friend!"
Don't think Anti-depressants are so bad? (They're just pills, after all; everybody is taking them.) Well, where do you think that idea came from?
It's unacceptable for kids to 'misbehave', (act like kids). --That is, when you try to make kids sit in rows for hours on end, they naturally go loopy. And this is now also controlled with drugs, and considered normal! How? Why, you popularize 'diseases' like 'Attention Deficit Disorder'. Different kids are going to have shorter or longer attention spans, and some are going to be downright hard to deal with, and some may even have real psychological anomalies, but this represented a very small slice of the population only fifty years ago; why is it that today we are mass-drugging millions of kids? One out of every three people I know today has been on, or is currently addicted to anti-depressants!
Social programming, with the result of million dollar profits for the food and drug companies.
And this is just one of an endless number of examples.
--Another of my current favorite examples of an ad which people don't see the full darkness of is a recent IKEA commercial. --Perhaps you've seen it: "Mom, Dad, I'm pregnant." -To which the father explodes in a rage and accuses the mother of being a bad influence, "I'm not the one who smoked dope in college!" A fucked up, stressed out scene of family strife. Then an IKEA sales appears in the scene and in a warm manner asks the couple if they'll be taking the living room set, to which the couple warmly accept.
I've seen this style used in a number of places. It works like this:
The upsetting emotional scene acts as a psychological opener on the viewer, setting up a variety of conditions in the brain. When this state is at its height, the scene shifts abruptly to one with a warm and genial message, effectively solving and soothing the alarmed state in the viewer.
And this is not merely intellectual in nature. Brain chemistry changes and the way stimulus responses as recorded by evolving synaptic pathways are all understood in exacting detail by science.
The end result? --The brain associates IKEA with something which can instantly remove stress and alarmed states. Further, it plays on the, "You Can't Depend On People," lie with which we are hammered daily.
It extends far beyond advertising. Either by design or by default, it extends to popular programming. Shows like the aptly named, "Friends," displays both impossible standards as 'normal' as well as the 'appropriate' role model reactions we should have when those impossible standards are not met. Look at all television shows. These attitudes, the dispicable people on Seinfeld, were not normal, but they are becoming so! It's all part of the same game.
And I'm sorry, but 'Will Power' alone will not protect you from these sorts of psyche manipulations. --Though the ad industry likes to quietly promote that "Advertising doesn't really affect you," so as to ensure that people don't know that they need to put up their guard in certain ways. --And this in itself, the belief that "Ads don't affect me," is a perfect example of successful advertising.
The only defense is Knowledge. Knowledge Protects. If you know about this stuff, if you can see this stuff, then it becomes much, much, much easier to block it. To keep yourself off mind-numbing drugs, to keep yourself away from toxic foods, to keep yourself out of dangerous, draining work places and to treat your friends and loved ones with the enormous respect and care they deserve.
Don't be fooled. Don't be used. There is a full psy-war being waged out there every day against you and me, and while it is being driven by greed, its effects reach far, far beyond the simple question of whether or not you will buy Brand X beer or Brand N shoes.
Very simply, if you don't learn how the war is fought, you are lunch.
I was beginning to wonder if her name would come up. The Vorkosigan series, particularly the Miles Naismith story line, contains some of the most amazing stuff I've ever read in this medium. A little hack-ish around the edges, but fantastically engaging and enjoyable.
Oddly enough, numerous of my favorite sci-fi/fantasty books were written by women. I find the way women think through fiction to be slightly different from the male perspective in ways which I can't put my finger on, but which remain endlessly fascinating nonetheless. Welcome to the human race, I suppose.
Though, I'd have asked Lewis to perhaps ease up a bit on those writers he was clearly so weary of. Every writer is seeking something a little different when they create. I found Lewis's own work in sci-fi, while definitely imaginative and interesting, was void enough of those more 'mundane' human elements that it made me want to stay at home. And that ain't escapism and day-dreaming! --A certain brand of which is a exactly what many people seek in their sci-fi fiction. Lewis's work, it seemed to me, stemmed from an entirely different source, one which was obviously near and dear to whatever he was experiencing at the time.
Not that there weren't any hack sci-fi writers in his time. But I wonder if that was precisely what he was talking about. ..
"I don't think it's had the effect that a lot of people have argued it would have -- with a single criminal case in four years." Who obviously (purposefully?) misses the point: it's about intimidation rather than litigation."
Here's another way of looking at it. ..
If people were not bitching & complaining and being wheels in need of grease about this whole trend toward the curtailing and controling (for profit) the natural human capacity to absorb information, then I bet there would have been more criminal cases, and indeed, more 'criminals'.
But that's typical. When the good-fight is working, the other side often tries to spin the inertia. --How many school yard bullies when successfully opposed back off with a smarmy, "Hey, Can'tcha take a joke?" --Which of course is just an attempt to make it your fault that there was ever a conflict.
But it's only as good as the scripting. And because this is a less important project than the big films, perhaps, PERHAPS, a good writer or two will sneak in under the radar and do something which has apparently become of late truly offensive; A good bit of story telling.
I hope they go for high-end dramatic realism with proper pacing; for all those kids who haven't burned out their attention spans on video games, MTV and E. --The last couple of Harry Potter films, though by no means land-mark works, were still pretty damned good considering. And they were both LONG! --Which just goes to show that slowing things down will not annoy the younger set, and certainly won't annoy the older viewers.
My recommendation to the studio: "You have an opportunity to make good. Please don't blow it."
About those mammoths- go back to the original articles and books, like you're planning with that one. I've seen too many theories put forth on the web where quotes out of context seem to support what they actually don't.
Indeed. The problem is that while there has certainly been a lot of inflated nonsense, (Planet X, Hollow Earth, Faked Moon Landing, 1000's of U.S. boxcars fitted with shackles, etc.), I've time and again run across the, 'Grain of Truth' phenomenon. (Dark star theory, Underground military bases, Preparedness for a Faked Moon Landing just in case the 10 years of massive competition with the Soviets didn't go quite as planned, and FEMA's maintaining of unused emergency detention and/or refugee camps in the U.S.)
As always, dissemination of over-exaggerated information is very effective at destroying credibility.
And then there's the stuff which actually turns out to be more significant than originally thought, but which the public still struggles to not think about too much; (Egyptologists willfully ignoring the data presented by geology & astronomy, The effects of the electromagnetic spectrum on the human body/nervous system, the problem of sociopaths holding high positions in corporate & political America, Israel becoming that which it most despises, to name a few items).
There are a vast number of extremely odd things out there in the wide, wide world. I think it's foolish to close oneself off to new thinking in any way; so long as you don't mind the three steps forward, two steps back approach, you are guaranteed to come out the other end knowing a great deal more than those who refuse to examine anything out of favor with the main stream. As such, I keep putting forth items like this one in the conventional forums like Slashdot. --I really don't mind knee-jerk ridicule from the Muggles, ("So, has God been speaking to you, or is that just the crack talking?!"), because every now and then I run into a guy like you who knows how to challenge an argument properly. Hence, the crucible of truth. It's proven in the past to be an excellent aide in trying to work out what is real and what is not. The only real crime, I think, is in being too intimidated to think outside the peer-pressure enforced parameters. Small minds are doomed to think only small thoughts.
Quoting from your quoted..."the evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across the land...".
Ahh, I see where you came from. --I tend to categorize tsunami among flash in the pan events like hurricanes and earthquakes as opposed to '40 days and 40 nights with no land in sight' stuff, so I just assumed it was a case of idle wording on the author's part rather than Biblical posturing about submerged land masses. Japan experiences its share of tsunami and much of the argument you put forth against biblical flooding would, I suspect, would still hold true in Tokyo. --Though, I'll grant you the author did make it sound bigger than the average 15 meter harbor wave!
Anecdotally: my great-grandfather, a paleontologist, was one of the first Europeans to eat frozen mammoth (well, first for 7,000 years or whenever mammoths went extinct). Badly freezer burned, but not inedible.
I just read that one fellow made an, "heroic attempt to eat a bite of of the mammoth meat, but despite cooking and lots of spicing, was just unable to keep it down." --I'd be willing to bet that this is a popular game among researchers! To be one of the few people on the planet to eat mammoth meat would be a total gas. (Probably in more ways than one!)
So the world's going to end, huh? In six years? Have you been talking to "God"? Have you been listening to Art Bell? Or is it just the crack?
The funny part is that people like you said similar things only a couple of years ago whenever I told them that the U.S. was due to turn, practically over night, into a fascist state.
And when the comets, (and other things), start blasting holes in your cozy little illusion of reality, I wouldn't be surprised if you just dove a little deeper into that ever-popular Egyptian river.
Terribly sorry it offends. Now be off with you. You AC's are like damned fruit flies; harmless, weightless, but somehow indicitive of something rotten.
Hm. Perhaps that's why they always seem to show up whenever my mood happens to spoil. ..
Well, with the exception of the.22 stinger, that's still not yet true up here. Even the knife, so long as you stay in a certain head-space about it, just isn't an issue. --If you only use it to sharpen those big honking art-class pencils, the teachers don't even notice. I'm a Canadian, eh, and people up here just don't flip out over stuff like that so much.
As Michael Moore put it recently. .,
"Guns don't kill people. Americans kill people."
Mind you, while statistically speaking this may be true, it doesn't seem to apply to any of the many Americans I've met whenever I'm south of the border. I think it might be some sort of demographic sorting. --I tend to gravitate towards people who exude the right brand of 'cool', which is to say, people who don't go wetting their pants over guns and knives like a bunch of easily excited Resevoir Twits.
Slashdot Mirror
Very true. But since this is an engineered economic collapse, I think we can expect it to be severe, but not so severe that government or monetary systems would be truly threatened. The super-wealthy and the Shadow Government just wants to hurt the people in order to increase their degree of control over them.
Now, I am doubtful that fascist military rule will rise directly from a depression, but it is certainly a step in that direction, and it is also an intended goal. I strongly suspect that we will see concentration camps before this decade is out. (Though, people will certainly be able to turn blind eyes towards them, or justify them. But concentration camps are concentration camps no matter how you label them. Semites be warned!)
As for gold. . . I don't care about prices. I just want something which will be stable when all my $20 bills are worth $5, my job vanishes and the banks come calling to get back the wealth they loaned me. Gold will increase in value, and when I cash out, I'll hopefully be able to pay off my debts and keep myself housed and fed for the year or so it will take before things start to normalize.
I'm not interested in speading fear. With knowledge, this sort of situation can be managed with far less trauma.
-Fantastic Lad
Ah, sorry. I validated a previous post made by this guy by offering an actual answer.
In reading this latest post of his, I realized my error. --In a single sentence he demonstrated both a total lack of grammatical ability as well as a nodding approval for anti-depressants. I wouldn't have wasted my breath on him had I known earlier that he was just another mud-head. Sorry for any confusion.
-Fantastic Lad
Yeah. They were over-reacting, and I wasn't among them. --But you're also incorrect, if I'm reading your post right. --Y2K was a real problem and it was only solved because people were aware of its implications in advance, and because they spent millions on updating their code.
I knew a guy who had been working non-stop with a programming team for about two years de-bugging code for a large bank. They got the job done in time.
In the case of our current situation, however, people have done nothing to prepare for the problem. We don't even have people over-reacting, buying generators and such. There isn't even mis-information. There is NO information. That's where the problem lies.
But I'm sure if you keep telling yourself pretty lies, you'll sleep well tonight, and who am I to snatch that comfort zone away from you?
-Fantastic Lad
I post in more than one place, and horrors, I use the same name wherever I go, unlike the above coward. And yes, I always post loud, and I am of course, liable to make mistakes and assumptions from time to time being human as I am. I'm not always right, and I freely admit this, though in this case, as it turns out, while talking in broad strokes I was not entirely off base either. But discussion boards are self correcting in this manner. I learn as much as others do, and probably more because I like to venture new ideas while remaining open to more informed people. The web is full of informed people; people with direct experience in a million different areas. I mean, look at what happened here; somebody who had actually worked in China offered up his knowledge! How cool is that? Now we all know more. This is the magic of the web! It's not about king of the mountain; about being right or wrong. About snivelling in order to be accepted by the popular kids under threat of being labeled a 'Freak troll'. That's all bullshit.
At the time I scanned the 300 or so posts in this story thread, outside of the general griping and worrying and comiserating, I was the only one with an actual new *IDEA* to offer. Think about that. If this makes me a 'freak troll,' well, I'm terribly sorry to have caused alarm.
As for our coward here, perhaps he shouldn't be on the web at all if unconventional ideas and debate are disturbing to him. I think he will find that his computer can also run nice, safe video games which do not require one to expand one's awareness.
-Fantastic Lad
When America truly was a land of opportunity, there were periods where it was legal to shoot a guy so long as he drew first. --It was perfectly legal to employ people in life threatening job situations; (a life lost for every mile of railroad laid), murder and mayhem ensued just to get unions into being, the Hoover Dam would have been impossible to build without cheap, disposable labor, etc., etc. This was part of what it meant to live in America.
Human rights have nothing to do with lands of opportunity. That stuff comes later.
As for pendulum swings. . . I think you're going to be upset with how things continue to disintegrate in the West. There is no return from where we're heading. Sorry. Face the truth and get yourself well placed, or continue to dream. Only one method will ensure survival.
-Fantastic Lad
Buy gold while you can. The yeller stuff is quietly creeping up. Gained $30 since this time last month, thanks to war worries and people waking up to the fact that whole star-destroyer of the economy is going bye-bye in a few short months. --You can gauge how close the world is to disaster by watching how reliably gold gains, how shakey the dollar gets, and how many Britney clones are flashing their skin at us. The water's boiling, kids!
--And when the bubble bursts and all the poor to middle income people are bankrupt when the banks foreclose on all the debt they addicted the populace to, you'll sure be glad to own something a little harder than the soon-to-be tanked American dollar!
Some of the most powerful American banks got that way by foreclosing on mountains of mortgaged property during and after the Great Depression. Depressions allow the rich to consolidate wealth and the poor to become slave labor.
You think this stuff isn't planned? Don't be stupid. Bush isn't stupid; He's a raving psychopath, but he isn't stupid. (Easy mistake to make, mind you. Stupidity and psychosis sort of look the same at a distance.) --In any case, that loon is deliberately crashing the economy for several nasty reasons. Just watch. But don't waste any time getting to your seats; Estimates put the big kablooie sometime within the next six months, with the smart money on mid to late February.
Don't say you weren't warned; a few of the more aware ones out here in cyber space have been screaming and yelling about this stuff for a couple of years now. It's late in the game, kids and kittens! Make yer hay while you can.
Invest somehow in Food, Gold or unmortgaged Land ownership. --And military/biomedical interests for those of you with no morals. That shit always does well during Hell years. (Daddy Warbucks.) Canned goods might not be a bad idea either. I can't remember; did they issue food stamps during the Great Depression?
-Fantastic Lad --Fear is stupid and useless. Preparedness is everything.
I'm serious. I have a Chinese friend who reports that the pay over there for Westerners is extremely high, while living costs are almost nothing. The country is throwing billions of dollars trying to ramp up for the new century. --And to host the next Olympics, don't forget. If you're white and you know technology, then you have a job and you'll make a mint. The governments of the West prefer not to advertise this to their citizens for obvious reasons, but the word is real. You want to live well and make a stellar living? Then pack your bags. China is the new America.
-Fantastic Lad
But you know what? I'm downloading the first act right now. I'll reserve judgement. . , well indefinitely. Even if it sucks bananas, I love collaborative projects like this. I'm sure everybody involved has learned a mountain of cool new skills, and are richer people because of it.
Simply trying to coordinate a project of this scale represents a spectacular effort!
Kudos, Kudos, Kudos!
Now, (fingers crossed), if the script is any good, the project itself and not just what it represents might just be something special. Perhaps a new force in the galaxy to contend with. . ?
Fingers crossed. .
-Fantastic Lad
I think it's long past time to push for an end of commercialism and mass manufacturing.
No. Nix that. Mass manufacturing in and of itself is not evil. The problem is something deeper. .
I think it's long past time to put an end to Greed. Greed is a disease.
Until then, I quite like the SMTP system. The microseconds I spend deleting bullshit mail are a price I am prepared to pay for the conveniences of email. Having my email sent directly to me is cool. Whatever other system people come up with might not be as reliable, whereas any new system WOULD without question be quickly compromised by greed. The enemy you know. .
-Fantastic Lad
-Fantastic Lad
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." -Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A few points, though. .
* I don't have a car and I don't want one. Bike, walk, bus, and make the effort to live near your work place. -I recognize that some people don't have that option, but far, far too many do and are simply lazy clouts.
* I can't stand TV, and I don't understand anybody who can, especially these days when the propaganda and social molding isn't even hidden anymore.
* I don't have AC. A fan and a teeshirt are just fine, thanks. AC is a relatively new thing anyway. A luxury, I'd dare to say. Though I would be in a spot without my heat. But I did mention the two matches, didn't I. . ?
* Lighting and indoor plumbing are also things I grew up with and would miss. But then neither of them emit EM in way demonstrated to directly alter brain chemistry.
When I was your age, I managed to survive without a cell phone. In fact, I did more than just survive. I and all the other kids thrived. We were active, healthy, smart and happy. Life was good. In fact, by all indicators, life was a LOT better.
Your technology is your cage. But you are also the keymaster. The crime is that you have been fooled into limiting your own choices.
-Fantastic Lad
Directional, non-directional, I don't care too much. I want to be the guy with the portable EM Pulse generator. You like EM? I'll give you EM.
People seem to take pride in saying things like, "I'm useless without my cell phone and PDA!"
And you're pretty useless with it, too, actually. Stick a joker like that in a forest with a knife, two matches and a fishhook and see how long he'd last. Pathetic, or at least the precursor to something terribly Darwinian in scope. .
-Fantastic Lad "--Look Ma! 5000 fried cell phones and their owners wandering around like so many headless chickens!" "Stop teasing the sheeple, junior."
2. When the hell did 'Adult themed' come to mean "Killing and Sex-For-Morons"??? I'm an adult, and this is certainly not the theme of my existence. I wish instead they'd say it something like, "This film contains subject matter best suited for horney, blood-thirsty savages. Enjoy your popcorn."
-Fantastic Lad
A mirror. .
And when you start throwing filters on the front-end, not accepting the dark parts which exist within the mind, denying them. . . Well.
Only until one accepts and fully learns to understand the nature of one's own shadows will one gain control over their darker aspects. Until then, a person will be driven in ways he or she does not understand, caught in the turmoil created by their shadow's desire. Such people hide behind faulty rationalizations and lies in order to keep their inner selves from hurting. -This kind of hurt being an indicator of just how grown up one is. When the ego no longer stings and cringes, then perhaps you are finally mature.
Alan Moore's billionaire genius character, Adrian Veidt from Watchmen, would stand in front of a wall of television monitors playing feeds from stations all over the world. He would stand there and surf across the wavefront of all that information and in this way could see the psyche of humankind.
As with all Alan Moore works, this is a brilliant, yet naive idea. Left out of his Watchmen universe were those people who understand that the Wall of Televisions principal works in both directions. --That if one applies pressure to certain aspects of the message being delivered by that Wall of Noise, then the receiving populace can be 'guided' in how they think. -Or as I tend to think, virtually controled outright.
The need for some parties to control the thoughts of others so that their own self-deceiving world-views are not threatened, is child-like in the extreme; keeping the shadows under lock and key. (And presumably, those which are the shadows to man, are lights to the beast, and vice versa. There are plenty of agencies and individuals which fear truth today! So what is being kept under lock and key becomes a question indeed!) But then plumbing the mind is often difficult. "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight."
There are other search engines out there. All Theweb is pretty good alternative search service. Pages missing from Google can still be found with this engine. (They've removed a helluva lot more than just drug and hate messages from Google, and not just in Europe and Asia!)
-Fantastic Lad
The belief that one is not affected by advertising is one of the single most effective bits of mind control currently in play.
Society and culture have been largely defined by media and advertisers, perhaps unwittingly, though in some of the darker ways, I tend to think it is entirely intentional.
Example. .
The Shaving Razor. Razor blade companies were selling to Men who shaved the hair from their faces. They sold many razors and all was good. Until one day some bright spark realized, "You know. . . Our market share appears to be limited to exactly half the population. But if we could somehow get women to shave as well, then we might effectively double our income! Now how can we go about doing this. . ?"
It started with leg hair, and then over the years it progressed to hair under the arms. --When I was small, I remember that my mother and her friends had hairy under-arms and nobody batted an eyelid. It was normal. This, of course, is no longer the case. The psychology used was that of body hair being, "Dirty". This message was directed at both men and women.
The move was very, very effective, and it took less than 100 years to fully implement. (Shaving genital hair is now becoming normal.) The linking of sexual desirability to hairlessness was not an essential, natural & biological foregone conclusion. (Please forgive me for quoting Desmond "the Conceited Hack Blo-Hard" Morris), but in some cultures, female facial hair is actually a turn-on. While certain aspects of physicality are universally appealing; symmetry, healthy skin, etc., the desirability of how hairy one is, is very much a manipulable one, and the top ad people know this.
Partly through this progressive altering of culture and the resulting sales of thousands of stupid grooming products, certain generalities were discovered. .
It was learned that reinforcing negative self-image in the public was both easy to do and highly effective in turning people into good consumers. By association, it was learned that creating rifts between the sexes and between friends, by nurturing impossible 'ideals' which we all have been told to want in our friends and lovers, and by reinforcing our belief that Consumer Products will not fail us when our friends and loved ones do. . . our entire society, the way we think, the way we teach our kids, the way we address all kinds of critical issues, has been invisibly altered in enormous, fundamental ways.
They are now selling anti-depressants in women's magazines! --Prozac, among others, is now available in a variety of forms, even mixed with birth control pills. "Nobody wants a grouchy girl friend!"
Don't think Anti-depressants are so bad? (They're just pills, after all; everybody is taking them.) Well, where do you think that idea came from?
It's unacceptable for kids to 'misbehave', (act like kids). --That is, when you try to make kids sit in rows for hours on end, they naturally go loopy. And this is now also controlled with drugs, and considered normal! How? Why, you popularize 'diseases' like 'Attention Deficit Disorder'. Different kids are going to have shorter or longer attention spans, and some are going to be downright hard to deal with, and some may even have real psychological anomalies, but this represented a very small slice of the population only fifty years ago; why is it that today we are mass-drugging millions of kids? One out of every three people I know today has been on, or is currently addicted to anti-depressants!
Social programming, with the result of million dollar profits for the food and drug companies.
And this is just one of an endless number of examples.
--Another of my current favorite examples of an ad which people don't see the full darkness of is a recent IKEA commercial. --Perhaps you've seen it: "Mom, Dad, I'm pregnant." -To which the father explodes in a rage and accuses the mother of being a bad influence, "I'm not the one who smoked dope in college!" A fucked up, stressed out scene of family strife. Then an IKEA sales appears in the scene and in a warm manner asks the couple if they'll be taking the living room set, to which the couple warmly accept.
I've seen this style used in a number of places. It works like this:
The upsetting emotional scene acts as a psychological opener on the viewer, setting up a variety of conditions in the brain. When this state is at its height, the scene shifts abruptly to one with a warm and genial message, effectively solving and soothing the alarmed state in the viewer.
And this is not merely intellectual in nature. Brain chemistry changes and the way stimulus responses as recorded by evolving synaptic pathways are all understood in exacting detail by science.
The end result? --The brain associates IKEA with something which can instantly remove stress and alarmed states. Further, it plays on the, "You Can't Depend On People," lie with which we are hammered daily.
It extends far beyond advertising. Either by design or by default, it extends to popular programming. Shows like the aptly named, "Friends," displays both impossible standards as 'normal' as well as the 'appropriate' role model reactions we should have when those impossible standards are not met. Look at all television shows. These attitudes, the dispicable people on Seinfeld, were not normal, but they are becoming so! It's all part of the same game.
And I'm sorry, but 'Will Power' alone will not protect you from these sorts of psyche manipulations. --Though the ad industry likes to quietly promote that "Advertising doesn't really affect you," so as to ensure that people don't know that they need to put up their guard in certain ways. --And this in itself, the belief that "Ads don't affect me," is a perfect example of successful advertising.
The only defense is Knowledge. Knowledge Protects. If you know about this stuff, if you can see this stuff, then it becomes much, much, much easier to block it. To keep yourself off mind-numbing drugs, to keep yourself away from toxic foods, to keep yourself out of dangerous, draining work places and to treat your friends and loved ones with the enormous respect and care they deserve.
Don't be fooled. Don't be used. There is a full psy-war being waged out there every day against you and me, and while it is being driven by greed, its effects reach far, far beyond the simple question of whether or not you will buy Brand X beer or Brand N shoes.
Very simply, if you don't learn how the war is fought, you are lunch.
-Fantastic Lad
I was beginning to wonder if her name would come up. The Vorkosigan series, particularly the Miles Naismith story line, contains some of the most amazing stuff I've ever read in this medium. A little hack-ish around the edges, but fantastically engaging and enjoyable.
Oddly enough, numerous of my favorite sci-fi/fantasty books were written by women. I find the way women think through fiction to be slightly different from the male perspective in ways which I can't put my finger on, but which remain endlessly fascinating nonetheless. Welcome to the human race, I suppose.
-Fantastic Lad
Though, I'd have asked Lewis to perhaps ease up a bit on those writers he was clearly so weary of. Every writer is seeking something a little different when they create. I found Lewis's own work in sci-fi, while definitely imaginative and interesting, was void enough of those more 'mundane' human elements that it made me want to stay at home. And that ain't escapism and day-dreaming! --A certain brand of which is a exactly what many people seek in their sci-fi fiction. Lewis's work, it seemed to me, stemmed from an entirely different source, one which was obviously near and dear to whatever he was experiencing at the time.
Not that there weren't any hack sci-fi writers in his time. But I wonder if that was precisely what he was talking about. .
-Fantastic Lad
Here's another way of looking at it. .
If people were not bitching & complaining and being wheels in need of grease about this whole trend toward the curtailing and controling (for profit) the natural human capacity to absorb information, then I bet there would have been more criminal cases, and indeed, more 'criminals'.
But that's typical. When the good-fight is working, the other side often tries to spin the inertia. --How many school yard bullies when successfully opposed back off with a smarmy, "Hey, Can'tcha take a joke?" --Which of course is just an attempt to make it your fault that there was ever a conflict.
Fuck 'em, I say. And the bullies too.
-Fantastic Lad
Not just buying, but buying things that distract everybody from the real show playing live right outside our 'windows'.
-Fantastic Lad
-Fantastic Lad
But it's only as good as the scripting. And because this is a less important project than the big films, perhaps, PERHAPS, a good writer or two will sneak in under the radar and do something which has apparently become of late truly offensive; A good bit of story telling.
I hope they go for high-end dramatic realism with proper pacing; for all those kids who haven't burned out their attention spans on video games, MTV and E. --The last couple of Harry Potter films, though by no means land-mark works, were still pretty damned good considering. And they were both LONG! --Which just goes to show that slowing things down will not annoy the younger set, and certainly won't annoy the older viewers.
My recommendation to the studio: "You have an opportunity to make good. Please don't blow it."
-Fantastic Lad
Indeed. The problem is that while there has certainly been a lot of inflated nonsense, (Planet X, Hollow Earth, Faked Moon Landing, 1000's of U.S. boxcars fitted with shackles, etc.), I've time and again run across the, 'Grain of Truth' phenomenon. (Dark star theory, Underground military bases, Preparedness for a Faked Moon Landing just in case the 10 years of massive competition with the Soviets didn't go quite as planned, and FEMA's maintaining of unused emergency detention and/or refugee camps in the U.S.)
As always, dissemination of over-exaggerated information is very effective at destroying credibility.
And then there's the stuff which actually turns out to be more significant than originally thought, but which the public still struggles to not think about too much; (Egyptologists willfully ignoring the data presented by geology & astronomy, The effects of the electromagnetic spectrum on the human body/nervous system, the problem of sociopaths holding high positions in corporate & political America, Israel becoming that which it most despises, to name a few items).
There are a vast number of extremely odd things out there in the wide, wide world. I think it's foolish to close oneself off to new thinking in any way; so long as you don't mind the three steps forward, two steps back approach, you are guaranteed to come out the other end knowing a great deal more than those who refuse to examine anything out of favor with the main stream. As such, I keep putting forth items like this one in the conventional forums like Slashdot. --I really don't mind knee-jerk ridicule from the Muggles, ("So, has God been speaking to you, or is that just the crack talking?!"), because every now and then I run into a guy like you who knows how to challenge an argument properly. Hence, the crucible of truth. It's proven in the past to be an excellent aide in trying to work out what is real and what is not. The only real crime, I think, is in being too intimidated to think outside the peer-pressure enforced parameters. Small minds are doomed to think only small thoughts.
Quoting from your quoted..."the evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across the land...".
Ahh, I see where you came from. --I tend to categorize tsunami among flash in the pan events like hurricanes and earthquakes as opposed to '40 days and 40 nights with no land in sight' stuff, so I just assumed it was a case of idle wording on the author's part rather than Biblical posturing about submerged land masses. Japan experiences its share of tsunami and much of the argument you put forth against biblical flooding would, I suspect, would still hold true in Tokyo. --Though, I'll grant you the author did make it sound bigger than the average 15 meter harbor wave!
Anecdotally: my great-grandfather, a paleontologist, was one of the first Europeans to eat frozen mammoth (well, first for 7,000 years or whenever mammoths went extinct). Badly freezer burned, but not inedible.
I just read that one fellow made an, "heroic attempt to eat a bite of of the mammoth meat, but despite cooking and lots of spicing, was just unable to keep it down." --I'd be willing to bet that this is a popular game among researchers! To be one of the few people on the planet to eat mammoth meat would be a total gas. (Probably in more ways than one!)
Take care!
-Fantastic Lad
The funny part is that people like you said similar things only a couple of years ago whenever I told them that the U.S. was due to turn, practically over night, into a fascist state.
And when the comets, (and other things), start blasting holes in your cozy little illusion of reality, I wouldn't be surprised if you just dove a little deeper into that ever-popular Egyptian river.
Do as you will.
-Fantastic Lad
How about, "My Honest Reaction"?
Terribly sorry it offends. Now be off with you. You AC's are like damned fruit flies; harmless, weightless, but somehow indicitive of something rotten.
Hm. Perhaps that's why they always seem to show up whenever my mood happens to spoil. .
-Fantastic Lad --Don't you dare lay those on me!
As Michael Moore put it recently. .
"Guns don't kill people. Americans kill people."
Mind you, while statistically speaking this may be true, it doesn't seem to apply to any of the many Americans I've met whenever I'm south of the border. I think it might be some sort of demographic sorting. --I tend to gravitate towards people who exude the right brand of 'cool', which is to say, people who don't go wetting their pants over guns and knives like a bunch of easily excited Resevoir Twits.
-Fantastic Lad