More like 1000 times more. Minimum investment for a human expedition would be > $1 trillion USD.
Great! At least that money doesn't end up in smoking piles of Afghan/Iraqi debris and Halliburton's cost-plus "Burn Pits".
Instead, that trillion+ dollars would be used to invest in sciences, useful industry and tons of honest employment. Basically, it's the same as plowing cash into R&D, investing in the country. You know the drill; going to the moon didn't bankrupt anybody. In fact, it served to propel America to world leadership in technology and a robust economy.
But instead, we're today giving that cash to war profiteers, psychopathic bank CEOs and corrupt pharmaceutical companies, all while using propaganda to sell the population on these scams.
I'd MUCH rather spend that money on exploration and expansion of human awareness.
I don't know if NASA is the right agency for the job, but in theory, it's a much better way to spend our money than on killing, ripping off and poisoning people, don't you think?
Agreed. --However, the truly psychopathic types don't believe that laws apply to them. This Hippo company is a good example. I doubt that the company leadership is actually neurologically capable of believing they will be stopped or punished, or that they won't be able to fast talk their way out of their troubles. Those dots simply don't register for them to connect.
And sadly, the bigger a company one has, the higher up the political ladder, the more true this becomes. The entire Bush team, for instance, should be in jail forever, but instead they're playing golf and sipping beers. This is why psychopaths are determined to turn the entire world population into psychopaths.
We need a better system. Interestingly, we have the reliable technology and knowledge to determine psychopath from normal human; their brains look a LOT different. We should be using that technology. Heck, even basic questionnaire tests can be used to raise red flags and point out subjects requiring further testing. Presidents of both countries and companies should be required to pass a mental fitness test. It seems pretty obvious to me.
No judgment here, but I am certainly awed. Do you by any chance live in South Korea? I hear Starcraft has taken on a sort of national sport status over there, and your depth of knowledge reminds me of hockey fans I've known in Canada.
1. England has been in the Empire Game longer than America.
2. It's original primary communications system, the Royal Postal Service, kicked ass. It was brought to the height of its power and reach during the construction of the Proud British Empire. When building proud empires, proud people tend to build awesome systems which work well and which are affordable for most people. (It wouldn't be much of a proud empire if some of the people were miserable.)
3. When the British Empire began to rot and crumble and lose self-esteem, the new systems it built reflected this. The land line phone system in England SUCKS. --You pay by the minute. (Or is it, by the second?) I don't know if it's still that way, but it was for a long while.
4. Now on the other side of the ocean. . , when the American Empire was under construction, the Land Line Phone System was the pride of the empire! Awesome, reliable, and generally affordable.
5. But then, as always seems to happen, when the Empire began to rot and crumble and lose self-esteem and thus require fascist attitudes to keep the corrupt in their cushy positions, the new systems being built reflected this new attitude. And thus it is that the American Cell Phone system Completely Sucks. -It penalizes the user, robbing them by the second.
I don't know if this pattern means anything, but it stands out for me.
Careful there. You might alarm one of the resident bleeding hearts who gets all upset when someone suggests they'd like to see something bad happen to someone bad.
You just don't understand how people with properly formed frontal lobes actually work. -That is, compassion is extended to people who need it, and those who are abusive are seen as needing discipline. The frontal lobe is the organ which helps us determine who is who. The conservatives who are conservative because of mal-formed or damaged brains, simply mis-read evil because they aren't smart enough to know when they are being manipulated. They also tend to act in selfish ways, punishing because they are bullies who automatically strive to harm that which is different from themselves without any form of compassion. They derive pleasure and satisfaction from tormenting others.
Such a person, for instance, in my liberal bleeding heart view, ought to be tagged and prevented from participating in culture. It's not cool to be cruel to animals, but I that doesn't mean I want to let the pets vote or run companies. But participation is how a soul learns to become a full soul. We're all at some point on that learning curve. Luckily, the true objective of our reality is not to make it run efficiently but rather to provide a playground in which people learn how to improve themselves.
When I was a kid, I put enormous energy into similar projects. It was totally fun, but I knew of course at the time it was not terribly practical. I mean, how often does one need to deploy a genuine super-gadget? Somewhere close to, "Never". And anyway, you can't keep that sort of thing secret, because half the fun is showing it off to people.
I put it down to not having a girlfriend during high school.;-)
Either way, that's a pretty awesome flame thrower. I like how the flame's strength is based on how far away from it your fingers are. A nice control 'GUI' and a safety measure all in one. That's both elegant and smart!
I also like how it auto-ignites. Even in high wind or rain it would have a fair chance at keeping alight. Have you tried it outdoors in the elements?
Anyway, a tip of the hat to you. --Also, creative guys who fearlessly put their imaginations to use in fun ways while being nice, upbeat guys inevitably end up with the most awesome girlfriends later on in life. (I speak from experience on that. Heck, you might already have a sweetie pie around.)
So every cold you've had in your life included at least two and possibly more of the following; fever over 100 F, chills, severe aches, significant nausea, with possible vomiting and diarrhea? Those are the symptoms used by the CDC to define H1N1. Granted even the CDC admits that they are similar to seasonal flu symptoms but could be worse in severity. However, if these are the symptoms for all your "colds" it appears you've never really had a cold in your life. Instead you must have contracted various flu strains both inside and outside of the normal flu season.
Those are not ALL of the symptoms listed by the CDC, now are they? No, they are not. I know this because I did like twenty seconds of web-searching. This is the list of symptoms listed by the CDC. . .
Fever, Cough, Shortness of breath, Fatigue/Weakness, Chills, Myalgias, Rhinorrhea, Sore Throat, Headache, Vomiting, Wheezing and Diarrhea.
Note that these symptoms are not experienced in all cases, and yes, EVERY cold I've ever has included two or more of them. Stop playing into the hands of alarmists. This is a fraudulent piece of social engineering, like terrorists and WMDs and West Nile, and Bird Flu, and nuclear brinksmanship and every other damned bit of crap governments and corporations use to keep us scared and stupid. Why on earth would you be offended to think that maybe you might just possibly be waking up from their control? Why defend your abusers? Is your ego so fragile that you'd rather defend an abusive authority rather than face the fact that you've been lied to? You're only weak and stupid if you go along with the lie after being shown better because you don't want to feel bad about having been fooled. You're strong and brave if you are able to stand up tell them "No".
Your choice. Slaves too scared to oppose their masters deserve slavery. Period.
I have a mile of stupid passwords. And a couple of weeks ago, because I'm a giant dork, I infected my system with a rootkit through a daring act of extreme idiocy. So I had to go and change all of those stupid passwords to new stupid passwords because I had no idea what the heck that rootkit was looking for or was capable of doing. It's like losing your wallet and having to cancel your credit cards. Fun times. I flushed a lot of old favorite memorized passwords down the drain. -Which, all things considered, is probably a pretty smart thing to do periodically anyway.
But man! What a world, eh?
I did a bunch of reading on how rootkits and viruses work, and the amazing thing is that it's pretty much impossible to have a world where there won't be enough jack-asses to fill the available space with toxins and general bullshit. It's just the way things are. There will always be a jerk out there trying to screw you over; a humanoid extension of a disease vector. When I take several steps back, the internet really is looking more and more like robust biological environment with diseases and antibodies acting one another, where evolutionary forces are playing at full tilt.
I wonder how long it will take at the rate we're going for somebody's computer to sprout limbs and crawl from the seamy depths of the web.
I keep my passwords in an encrypted container/folder which I keep redundant copies of in various places and only open up when I forget how to log in to something, which since a couple of weeks ago, is bloody frequently.
Admit it. When you hit, "Submit", you felt just a tiny bit like it might not be such a good idea to tempt fate. Then you shook your head and got on with your day. But Outer Space does not so easily forget an insult or a dare. . .
Would you still think it was funny if it was Linus Torvalds?
The Rightwing are showing the cracks in their logic by asking this same question in so many varying ways. "How would you feel if this was your Mother, or your Child or YOU?"
Linus Torvalds and my mother, etc., don't richly deserve the ironic statement being made through such a gag. It's called, "Getting a taste of your own medicine." If we wanted to give Linus Torvalds a taste of his own medicine, we'd have to write some revolutionary software and give it away to him for free. If we wanted to give my mother a taste of her own medicine, we'd have to give her some delicious home-made chocolate chip cookies.
Do you see how this works?
No. You don't. And there's a reason for that. People who support the likes of Glenn Beck are missing certain brain functions which the rest of the human race comes equipped with. They're not as evolved. Their frontal lobes are damaged or mal-formed or just didn't quite grow enough. You could no more expect a monkey or a dog to understand these principles.
Sorry. Now stop talking. You're showing your evolutionary disadvantage to the humans.
-One punk with a gun decides to piss on everybody's day.
-Even if you manage to deal with the weight of snow issue, how does everybody feel about living under artificial lighting for a couple of months each year?
-The expenses of building such a thing would be astronomical. Before even taking into account the dome itself, just building an air-tight wall around the city would pose ridiculously complex (and expensive) engineering challenges. Just managing water, waste and air control for an entire square mile contained environment would require exotic technologies, or billions of dollars worth of scaled up existing technologies. I've seen cities fly billions of dollars over budget trying to do relatively simple things like bury an ugly highway running through the city, or prepare to host the Olympic games. (Or *cough* build domed stadiums.) And then you've got your yearly maintenance costs. Parts wear out and you'd need a dedicated staff whose job it is to manage this thing. I wonder if that would be comparable to a heating bill?
-And in the Summer time. . . Well, guess what? That nice greenhouse effect (if you solved the snow cover problem) which kept you warm all Winter doesn't go away. How did the inventors plan on keeping all the residents from baking?
No doubt, it's a super-awesome idea and every single one of these problems could be cleverly solved and even turned to advantage with brilliant engineering. But it wouldn't be cheap, and frankly, unless the exterior environment was downright toxic or otherwise horrible, it doesn't seem like a particularly necessary idea. If all you're worried about is the cold, then that can be dealt with by spending a fraction of the same budget on the admittedly un-sexy idea of retrofitting buildings with improved insulation and more efficient heating solutions.
And don't forget. . . With the state of corruption in the country, if the energy companies felt that a source of revenue was threatened, domed cities would be, if not outlawed, killed with red tape and bought-off votes. You know it's true.
But I have to admit, the child sci-fi geek in me would certainly love to see at least one domed city of Utopian wonder constructed in my lifetime!
Furthermore, there's plenty of areas where "Customers Are Forced To Adapt" and groups that work to "Make Customers Change Rather Than Change Themselves". There's groups that aren't happy about popular sentiment being against gay marriage, doesn't accept that, and work to change it. There's groups that aren't happy about people wanting to buy guns, and wants to change that. In fact, the existence of laws in itself could be seen as "Not Getting It", because if law X that prevents behaviour Y is needed it means that people would undertake action Y, and hence by forcing customers to act differently, they "Aren't Getting It". The proponents of a Dutch weed policy could use exactly the same arguments for legalization of weed as Slashdot Editors use for legalization of downloading, claiming that the illegalizers "Just Don't Get It". A meaningless and ignorant phrase.
I don't get it.
--That is, upon my third attempt to read the above paragraph, I realized that it wasn't my ability to comprehend which was at fault, but rather your ability to communicate.
But your point is valid. Sort of. --That is, TV is the opiate of the masses and addicts always want free drugs. But in the same stroke, this definition makes the cable companies into seedy drug dealers with no ethical standards. (Have you seen the shit aired on television these days?) So really, I just don't care what happens either way.
It seems that Gnostics vary in their belief from individual to individual. The lack of consensus on what Gnosticism is leads me to believe that people are making it up as they go along.
Unification of theory is simply not going to happen when the primary teachings have been lost. However, there are many concepts which can be reassembled and expanded upon through dedicated searching and thinking. It's not easy but judging an idea based on a small handful of confused seekers is hardly something I'd recommend. That forum is a doorway only. But you have to be seeking on-going knowledge rather than structures you can drop into place and forget about.
I didn't choose to be a Christian because it made sense to me or seemed like the best choice among other religions. I chose Christianity because I recognized a number of divine interventions in my life that led me to the Christian church. Even though I don't agree 100% with any pastor, I believe that people that have "given their lives to Jesus" share a common bond with myself. I believe that God communicates with me through the Holy Spirit and the bible has given me a baseline that allows me differentiate the Holy Spirit from other voices.
This seems like a fairly healthy approach with a few exceptions. The problem is that a common tactic is that negative forces often mask themselves in very positive masks and can make people have 'spiritual epiphanies' which are quite false. Just because a burning bush happens to speak doesn't mean it is telling the truth. Observation of words versus actions is absolutely essential, and this requires a great deal of critical analysis. I doubt, based on everything I've learned, that Jesus would ever ask that people "give their lives to him". That sounds like creepy control-freak stuff and an abandonment of free will. Free Will, which I have come to regard as a very high universal law. Christ's words have been corrupted, and study of religion and biblical history show us this quite clearly, but you have to be willing to do the research. Propaganda and social control was as active when the bible was first put together as it is today.
There's a forum here where these ideas are explored at length, with lots of reference material noted in case you are truly interested.
The basic idea is that Christ was teaching a philosophy wherein, "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within" (or to that effect) meant to be interpreted as the work required to grow and purify the soul is done through critical self-examination, looking at hard truths and then working to confront and understand those automatic aspects of ourselves. The idea is linked to the notion of alchemy, except that making gold from base metals through the continual application of heating and cooling is a metaphor for the purification of the soul through repeated heatings and coolings; --The heat coming from the 'friction' of exposing oneself to life and truth without any buffers of self-calming lies about what we truly are.
The Gnostic movement and all its texts were destroyed early on in the development of the church, most likely because it encouraged individuals to become self-aware by looking inward and doing the hard work of self-refinement. It's very difficult to control people who are self-aware rather than dreamers who look outward and place their wishful thinking with an external god and an external 'savior'.
All in all, this approach to reaching 'heaven' is 180 degrees different from that sold to the masses through the formal religion which was locked into place back in the early days of Christian monotheism.
And, no, I strongly doubt any Jesuit would sign off on such a scheme. He'd lose his pay check and benefits, after all.
This video is broken into 6 parts. The first looked fairly reasonable, but in the second she brought up an item which seemed kind of silly to me. Unless I am mistaken, she was suggesting that if you put two live viruses into a test tube that they will somehow mix and turn into one super-virus with the qualities of the two former. Was I hearing that correctly? --Because she went off on that tangent with great energy and I'm fairly certain that this is an entirely false proposition. Especially weird since she said she was a doctor. But then, she's also a hard-core catholic, so she's obviously got some blind spots.
Still, accidentally shipping a vaccine in such huge quantities which happens to include live samples of the Bird Flu is certainly a vast screw-up which could have killed millions of people. But I don't see how it could have morphed into a super-virus simply by Bird Flu being present in the drug. Viruses, if I understand them correctly, just don't work that way.
This video strikes me as being a little COINTELPRO; bent truths being used to muddy the issue beyond comprehension for the average person.
Though, I certainly wouldn't rule out malice these days when it comes to population control. Deliberately distributing selected quantities of Bird Flu through a wide-scale vaccination policy would have been en effective way to kick the knees out from under a population.
What I've heard from doctors and nurses around the DC area is that if you have flu-like symptoms outside of the flu season (which starts week 40), then they can be reasonably certain (99%) that it is H1N1.
Gimme a break. EVERY cold I've ever had in my life matched the symptoms of H1N1. The symptoms we are told to look for are so vague and all-inclusive that they would fit nicely into the newspaper astrology section. --And guess what? I've had plenty of colds which hit me before "week 40".
No, genetic testing of the virus is EXPENSIVE and generally not needed at this point as we are so early in the normal flu season that it is obvious on the face that the majority of cases are related to H1N1.
I've decided that anybody who prefaces some idiotic statement with the word, "Obviously" is more than likely an ignoramus trying to sound more informed and intelligent than they really are.
Please do some research before you open your mouth and advance the agenda of planned hysteria.
On the contrary, that was merely an example of general kindness. The wife of the used car dealer was being generally kind. She wasn't being all that kind, since she recovered all of her costs. To be only mildly cynical, I'll go so far as to say she probably sold you a car at a profit to the dealership, albeit possibly a small one. She IS the wife of a used car dealer, after all. You were told it was "at their cost" but you didn't see their books, so you don't know. If you believed it, well, I've got this fine used car to sell you, it's a great deal, I'll even let you have it at cost...
You're making assumptions. Questions are better. Like, "How do you know the car was sold at cost?"
To be fair, I don't know because we didn't actually discuss it. I was generalizing for the sake of simplicity. Having bought a used car only two years earlier, (the one which died), and having done the research and lots of looking under hoods and kicking of tires, and even having spent time considering buying and selling cars myself as a side project with my girlfriend who was a bit of a horse trader, (we never did), I was as a result very well informed at the time as to the going prices. They could have sold that same model and year for approximately $4000 at the time. If there was any profiteering going on, it was poorly done because the used car market at that time was quite hot, with everybody trading in their big cars for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. And in any case, I wouldn't have wanted the couple to lose money, and I sincerely hope they were not hurt in their dealing with us. Being kind and sharing energy when done right needn't cause undue hardship. Those with excess share, and when it is your turn, you share as well. I only hope I have done my part as well as they did theirs when it counted.
As for being scammed. . . Sure, it's always possible, but it seems unlikely that this was the case. --I've got a fairly good bullshit detector built in, and while it isn't perfect, I've already learned for instance that you're the sort of person who makes false assumptions and leans toward irrational cynicism which is probably based on a fear of being exploited, which is generally linked to other character flaws which suggest that you are in fact wide to unwitting observation as well as numerous types of exploitation you would miss by default. --Not that I'd do that to you, but it is something to be aware of. Opportunists are a dime a dozen and they give themselves away through a host of unconscious cues. Where it gets difficult is when you're dealing with psychopathic individuals. They are capable of fabricating false cues at the conscious level, so it takes a more demanding kind of observation to suss them out. But using instinct and plugging yourself into the subconscious non-linear information system offers a great leg up on the predators.
Anyway. . , that route my GF drove along was certainly one she's used before, but having never met the couple before and not knowing that they were used car dealers, (the car dealership itself was back in town; her car died in front of an average-looking house), I would say that it was not conscious knowledge. --Though, the subconscious is certainly capable of recording data in amazing albeit non-mystical ways. --If you happen to see a name and address on a piece of paper, then that information goes in and is stored somewhere whether you were paying conscious attention or not. The subconscious is capable of working with that kind of data. I should mention that I consider "mystical" to be entirely relative. I believe that there are forces at work which conform to rules, but that we simply have not yet documented all of those systems in a precise manner. Just because we haven't labeled a thing does not mean that it doesn't exist or that it should be shunned and feared.
You offer a couple of good insights and couple of really bad ones. I think your bible might be an example of the Garbage In concept. God's world view, according to the bible I read, was that of a narcissistic monster. Seems to me that the people who crashed the economy were perhaps simply reading from some of the earlier chapters than where you did your cherry picking.
Seriously; you're right. Garbage in, Garbage out. You sound like a smart guy. Have you looked into the Gnostic approach? Seems far less evil and manipulative than the standard bollocks.
Sounds like a very complex (and rather peculiar) way of explaining off the phenomenon that people who like you are often nice to you.
In a nutshell, yes. But I find the added complexity, (and from your perspective, the peculiarity), is required to explain many of the non-linear aspects of reality I regularly see in action. There are an endless number of examples I've lived through, but one of my favorites was how my girlfriend lost ten bucks one day.
It fell out of her pocket when she was going for the car keys, and she felt an instinctive imperative to leave it on the ground. She loves her money, and so it was very difficult. She said she sat in the car seat staring at the bill on the ground for a whole minute before finally deciding to listen to instinct and close the car door. Then upon pulling out of the parking lot, she realized she needed gas and didn't have her bank card, and that she'd just left her last ten bucks in a parking lot. So she had to turn around and drive home to get more money instead of finishing her morning errands which would have put her on the highway.
As a result, when the car's frame failed ten minutes later, and the car ceased to be a car and turned instead into a lump of sparking metal with no steering or power flying at 80 Km/hour, it did so on a quiet stretch of empty country road rather than on a rush hour freeway. The car ground harmlessly to a halt directly in front of a house from which a woman emerged in alarm at the sound. She ran out and collected my shuddering girlfriend from the corpse of our car. As it happened, the woman was the wife of a used car dealer, and she proceeded to give my girlfriend an excellent replacement vehicle at their cost. --So within mere hours after our last car died, she drove away in a really good fresh new car for several thousand dollars less than we would have paid for it had we been customers walking into the dealership. It was about $900 total after transfer taxes and such. --Which just happened to be the same amount as an unexpected bonus check she'd received a couple of days earlier. She didn't ask me to pay anything for my half of the car since she'd always driven the other one more often and had done a fair bit of damage to it, having bounced it through farmer's fields and over parking lot dividers and such. I gave her a couple hundred for my share anyway.
So yes, as you say, people who like you will be often be nice to you, but there is also very often a non-linear quantity in evidence which general kindness alone cannot account for.
Any other corporate owners around here to debate this from another perspective? Someone who actually has intellectual property to protect?
I am very liberal in the manner in which my work is distributed. I've discovered that the community which values me will find non-specific ways in which to support me. I've been living this way for many years. --The trick is to trust this non-specific, non-linear system even when it doesn't make immediate rational sense. It's always there, but you can't see it, you can't tag and document it and you can't slap it down on a desk to prove its viability to others. It also won't make you a millionaire, but amazingly, if you ever need any kind of resource, bang, it's always there. --And if I ever genuinely needed to be a millionaire in order to fulfill some required service, then I'd be a millionaire. That opportunity has in fact come up a couple of times, but I got a bit freaked out by the responsibilities which would have been attached and backed off.
But this system requires a strong faith (there's a dirty word for the average Slashdotter!) in the mechanics of a conscious universe. If you don't have that, then sure, increasingly draconian attempts to control the natural behavior of reality are required to force the various flows of energy to conform to our highly limited human perception of reality. Think of it this way; if everybody is on some deep level, in unconscious communication with everybody else, even you and me right now, then we would be capable of setting up some astonishing coincidences, feeding each other's needs as required by mutual consent, all the while being mindful to not over-step the boundaries of our conscious awareness. --That is, we try not to break the illusion of being separate because that is where we learn the most basic human values. (Or that's my theory behind why my system apparently works so well).
I know this is waaaay beyond most people, and fear usually wins the day, but since you asked, this is indeed how I manage my life and it works very well. And interestingly, even Slashdotters are taking tentative steps toward recognizing the true nature of reality. But the terminology has to be wrapped up just right. Heck, there's a story in today's feed about the Placebo Effect. --Which is essentially recognizing the validity of "Mind over Matter", (to use a dippy phrase from the sixties), albeit in a very limited form. But that's a big step for a lot of people around here.
When they feel safe enough to recognize that the brain does indeed do most of its work on the quantum level, and then connects the placebo effect with the idea of "spooky communication" at a distance, then they'll be another couple of steps closer to where I am. But that's a bit much to ask at the moment. Doesn't change the way reality works, though.
I'll conclude with a silly phrase which I'm sure somebody else must have thought up before. . . "Freedom of thought? Not if THEY can prevent it!"
This is the real fight today. The fight for our own minds. It's time to pick sides.
Oh dear, did I fail to live down to your expectations?
Dude. You subscribe not just to a monotheistic religion, but a branch of conservative Judaism. You did *more* than live down to my expectations. If you don't think you're running a plethora of ego-protection programs in mad, tight circles, then you're fooling only yourself. And barely that, I'd guess, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to comment at all let alone even notice my post.
Television is not just a tool of message and propaganda delivery, but the CRT flicker demonstrably alters your brain wave patterns as measured with EEG equipment. It essentially puts viewers into a mild state of hypnosis. This is why it's so hard for people to remember the commercial they watched ten seconds ago. Though the message goes right on in and does its magic. --But don't bother researching that. Your head would explode from all the compressed masses of cultural mind-game horseshit programming you've undergone since birth.
I'd feel sorry for you, but you'd probably just piss me off first. I have little patience for head-cases when I have to deal with them directly. From a distance they do get my sympathy, though.
Please don't expect a committed response from me. Your brand of insanity is usually just too toxic and intractable to deal with effectively. Too much work.
Good luck. You'll need every ounce of it you can get.
Unless you mean that elite only corresponds to the evil people that make lots of money instead of the good people that make lots of money, then yeah, you were advocating Batman essentially destroying society.
It always comes down to definitions, doesn't it?
When I say, "Elite", I'm not talking about your run of the mill Enron manager, (though we could certainly benefit from fewer of those sorts of psychopaths). Rather, I'm talking about the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and the coterie of power brokers who attend Bilderberg meetings and such.
As for Batman destroying society. . , that's a complex question. Aside from the fact that the lunatics mentioned above are doing an excellent job of turning the world into a psychopath's garden on their own, what do we mean by, 'society'? --I know what I mean. --I mean, human society, where people treat each other with respect and decency and always strive to help each other to become the best versions of themselves without attempting to harm others for personal gain. Currently, there are two societies. There is that which the evil people want to bring into being, where slavery is the norm. --And there is the society which is predominantly filled with and directed by good people who want to serve others. These two societies are at war, and Batman clearly DOES want to destroy one of them. But the comics Batman is confused; he is obviously working from a positive intention yet he doesn't have enough insight to know how to do it or even understand the nature of the basic battle. Same with Superman. The writers are simply ignorant and they have been effectively programmed. They believed, as you seem to, that 'society' is only one thing and that if we do away with the psychopaths, we will be left with nothing, when in fact the opposite is true.
But this is a key point, and thus it has been one of the top priorities of the cultural programming machine, and so many people will find that they reflexively fight against the idea without even comprehending that they are essentially abuse victims, fighting to defend their abuser. Stockholm Syndrome writ large.
Yes, because society would be SO much better if anyone who became successful would get assassinated by Batman.
Uh huh. Is that REALLY what you think I am suggesting? Read once more, but this time use your thinking cap, (if you have one). Because if you honestly think that success = oppressing/enslaving those beneath you, then the world probably would benefit from your assassination.
Slashdot Mirror
More like 1000 times more. Minimum investment for a human expedition would be > $1 trillion USD.
Great! At least that money doesn't end up in smoking piles of Afghan/Iraqi debris and Halliburton's cost-plus "Burn Pits".
Instead, that trillion+ dollars would be used to invest in sciences, useful industry and tons of honest employment. Basically, it's the same as plowing cash into R&D, investing in the country. You know the drill; going to the moon didn't bankrupt anybody. In fact, it served to propel America to world leadership in technology and a robust economy.
But instead, we're today giving that cash to war profiteers, psychopathic bank CEOs and corrupt pharmaceutical companies, all while using propaganda to sell the population on these scams.
I'd MUCH rather spend that money on exploration and expansion of human awareness.
I don't know if NASA is the right agency for the job, but in theory, it's a much better way to spend our money than on killing, ripping off and poisoning people, don't you think?
-FL
Agreed. --However, the truly psychopathic types don't believe that laws apply to them. This Hippo company is a good example. I doubt that the company leadership is actually neurologically capable of believing they will be stopped or punished, or that they won't be able to fast talk their way out of their troubles. Those dots simply don't register for them to connect.
And sadly, the bigger a company one has, the higher up the political ladder, the more true this becomes. The entire Bush team, for instance, should be in jail forever, but instead they're playing golf and sipping beers. This is why psychopaths are determined to turn the entire world population into psychopaths.
We need a better system. Interestingly, we have the reliable technology and knowledge to determine psychopath from normal human; their brains look a LOT different. We should be using that technology. Heck, even basic questionnaire tests can be used to raise red flags and point out subjects requiring further testing. Presidents of both countries and companies should be required to pass a mental fitness test. It seems pretty obvious to me.
-FL
Holy smokes, dude! You sure know your Starcraft.
No judgment here, but I am certainly awed. Do you by any chance live in South Korea? I hear Starcraft has taken on a sort of national sport status over there, and your depth of knowledge reminds me of hockey fans I've known in Canada.
Just curious.
-FL
Don't have a cell phone.
Problem solved.
Here's an interesting pattern I've noted. . .
1. England has been in the Empire Game longer than America.
2. It's original primary communications system, the Royal Postal Service, kicked ass. It was brought to the height of its power and reach during the construction of the Proud British Empire. When building proud empires, proud people tend to build awesome systems which work well and which are affordable for most people. (It wouldn't be much of a proud empire if some of the people were miserable.)
3. When the British Empire began to rot and crumble and lose self-esteem, the new systems it built reflected this. The land line phone system in England SUCKS. --You pay by the minute. (Or is it, by the second?) I don't know if it's still that way, but it was for a long while.
4. Now on the other side of the ocean. . , when the American Empire was under construction, the Land Line Phone System was the pride of the empire! Awesome, reliable, and generally affordable.
5. But then, as always seems to happen, when the Empire began to rot and crumble and lose self-esteem and thus require fascist attitudes to keep the corrupt in their cushy positions, the new systems being built reflected this new attitude. And thus it is that the American Cell Phone system Completely Sucks. -It penalizes the user, robbing them by the second.
I don't know if this pattern means anything, but it stands out for me.
And my solution is. . .
Don't have a cell phone.
-FL
Careful there. You might alarm one of the resident bleeding hearts who gets all upset when someone suggests they'd like to see something bad happen to someone bad.
You just don't understand how people with properly formed frontal lobes actually work. -That is, compassion is extended to people who need it, and those who are abusive are seen as needing discipline. The frontal lobe is the organ which helps us determine who is who. The conservatives who are conservative because of mal-formed or damaged brains, simply mis-read evil because they aren't smart enough to know when they are being manipulated. They also tend to act in selfish ways, punishing because they are bullies who automatically strive to harm that which is different from themselves without any form of compassion. They derive pleasure and satisfaction from tormenting others.
Such a person, for instance, in my liberal bleeding heart view, ought to be tagged and prevented from participating in culture. It's not cool to be cruel to animals, but I that doesn't mean I want to let the pets vote or run companies. But participation is how a soul learns to become a full soul. We're all at some point on that learning curve. Luckily, the true objective of our reality is not to make it run efficiently but rather to provide a playground in which people learn how to improve themselves.
-FL
When I was a kid, I put enormous energy into similar projects. It was totally fun, but I knew of course at the time it was not terribly practical. I mean, how often does one need to deploy a genuine super-gadget? Somewhere close to, "Never". And anyway, you can't keep that sort of thing secret, because half the fun is showing it off to people.
I put it down to not having a girlfriend during high school. ;-)
Either way, that's a pretty awesome flame thrower. I like how the flame's strength is based on how far away from it your fingers are. A nice control 'GUI' and a safety measure all in one. That's both elegant and smart!
I also like how it auto-ignites. Even in high wind or rain it would have a fair chance at keeping alight. Have you tried it outdoors in the elements?
Anyway, a tip of the hat to you. --Also, creative guys who fearlessly put their imaginations to use in fun ways while being nice, upbeat guys inevitably end up with the most awesome girlfriends later on in life. (I speak from experience on that. Heck, you might already have a sweetie pie around.)
-Cheers!
-FL
So every cold you've had in your life included at least two and possibly more of the following; fever over 100 F, chills, severe aches, significant nausea, with possible vomiting and diarrhea? Those are the symptoms used by the CDC to define H1N1. Granted even the CDC admits that they are similar to seasonal flu symptoms but could be worse in severity. However, if these are the symptoms for all your "colds" it appears you've never really had a cold in your life. Instead you must have contracted various flu strains both inside and outside of the normal flu season.
Those are not ALL of the symptoms listed by the CDC, now are they? No, they are not. I know this because I did like twenty seconds of web-searching. This is the list of symptoms listed by the CDC. . .
Fever, Cough, Shortness of breath, Fatigue/Weakness, Chills, Myalgias, Rhinorrhea, Sore Throat, Headache, Vomiting, Wheezing and Diarrhea.
Note that these symptoms are not experienced in all cases, and yes, EVERY cold I've ever has included two or more of them. Stop playing into the hands of alarmists. This is a fraudulent piece of social engineering, like terrorists and WMDs and West Nile, and Bird Flu, and nuclear brinksmanship and every other damned bit of crap governments and corporations use to keep us scared and stupid. Why on earth would you be offended to think that maybe you might just possibly be waking up from their control? Why defend your abusers? Is your ego so fragile that you'd rather defend an abusive authority rather than face the fact that you've been lied to? You're only weak and stupid if you go along with the lie after being shown better because you don't want to feel bad about having been fooled. You're strong and brave if you are able to stand up tell them "No".
Your choice. Slaves too scared to oppose their masters deserve slavery. Period.
-FL
I have a mile of stupid passwords. And a couple of weeks ago, because I'm a giant dork, I infected my system with a rootkit through a daring act of extreme idiocy. So I had to go and change all of those stupid passwords to new stupid passwords because I had no idea what the heck that rootkit was looking for or was capable of doing. It's like losing your wallet and having to cancel your credit cards. Fun times. I flushed a lot of old favorite memorized passwords down the drain. -Which, all things considered, is probably a pretty smart thing to do periodically anyway.
But man! What a world, eh?
I did a bunch of reading on how rootkits and viruses work, and the amazing thing is that it's pretty much impossible to have a world where there won't be enough jack-asses to fill the available space with toxins and general bullshit. It's just the way things are. There will always be a jerk out there trying to screw you over; a humanoid extension of a disease vector. When I take several steps back, the internet really is looking more and more like robust biological environment with diseases and antibodies acting one another, where evolutionary forces are playing at full tilt.
I wonder how long it will take at the rate we're going for somebody's computer to sprout limbs and crawl from the seamy depths of the web.
I keep my passwords in an encrypted container/folder which I keep redundant copies of in various places and only open up when I forget how to log in to something, which since a couple of weeks ago, is bloody frequently.
It's flu season? No shit.
-FL
Admit it. When you hit, "Submit", you felt just a tiny bit like it might not be such a good idea to tempt fate. Then you shook your head and got on with your day. But Outer Space does not so easily forget an insult or a dare. . .
What kind of insurance does your house carry?
Just askin'.
-FL
Would you still think it was funny if it was Linus Torvalds?
The Rightwing are showing the cracks in their logic by asking this same question in so many varying ways. "How would you feel if this was your Mother, or your Child or YOU?"
Linus Torvalds and my mother, etc., don't richly deserve the ironic statement being made through such a gag. It's called, "Getting a taste of your own medicine." If we wanted to give Linus Torvalds a taste of his own medicine, we'd have to write some revolutionary software and give it away to him for free. If we wanted to give my mother a taste of her own medicine, we'd have to give her some delicious home-made chocolate chip cookies.
Do you see how this works?
No. You don't. And there's a reason for that. People who support the likes of Glenn Beck are missing certain brain functions which the rest of the human race comes equipped with. They're not as evolved. Their frontal lobes are damaged or mal-formed or just didn't quite grow enough. You could no more expect a monkey or a dog to understand these principles.
Sorry. Now stop talking. You're showing your evolutionary disadvantage to the humans.
-FL
Careful. I'm about two steps away from wanting to build my own dome. Don't tantalize me with your superior reasoning!
-FL
-One punk with a gun decides to piss on everybody's day.
-Even if you manage to deal with the weight of snow issue, how does everybody feel about living under artificial lighting for a couple of months each year?
-The expenses of building such a thing would be astronomical. Before even taking into account the dome itself, just building an air-tight wall around the city would pose ridiculously complex (and expensive) engineering challenges. Just managing water, waste and air control for an entire square mile contained environment would require exotic technologies, or billions of dollars worth of scaled up existing technologies. I've seen cities fly billions of dollars over budget trying to do relatively simple things like bury an ugly highway running through the city, or prepare to host the Olympic games. (Or *cough* build domed stadiums.) And then you've got your yearly maintenance costs. Parts wear out and you'd need a dedicated staff whose job it is to manage this thing. I wonder if that would be comparable to a heating bill?
-And in the Summer time. . . Well, guess what? That nice greenhouse effect (if you solved the snow cover problem) which kept you warm all Winter doesn't go away. How did the inventors plan on keeping all the residents from baking?
No doubt, it's a super-awesome idea and every single one of these problems could be cleverly solved and even turned to advantage with brilliant engineering. But it wouldn't be cheap, and frankly, unless the exterior environment was downright toxic or otherwise horrible, it doesn't seem like a particularly necessary idea. If all you're worried about is the cold, then that can be dealt with by spending a fraction of the same budget on the admittedly un-sexy idea of retrofitting buildings with improved insulation and more efficient heating solutions.
And don't forget. . . With the state of corruption in the country, if the energy companies felt that a source of revenue was threatened, domed cities would be, if not outlawed, killed with red tape and bought-off votes. You know it's true.
But I have to admit, the child sci-fi geek in me would certainly love to see at least one domed city of Utopian wonder constructed in my lifetime!
-FL
Furthermore, there's plenty of areas where "Customers Are Forced To Adapt" and groups that work to "Make Customers Change Rather Than Change Themselves". There's groups that aren't happy about popular sentiment being against gay marriage, doesn't accept that, and work to change it. There's groups that aren't happy about people wanting to buy guns, and wants to change that. In fact, the existence of laws in itself could be seen as "Not Getting It", because if law X that prevents behaviour Y is needed it means that people would undertake action Y, and hence by forcing customers to act differently, they "Aren't Getting It". The proponents of a Dutch weed policy could use exactly the same arguments for legalization of weed as Slashdot Editors use for legalization of downloading, claiming that the illegalizers "Just Don't Get It". A meaningless and ignorant phrase.
I don't get it.
--That is, upon my third attempt to read the above paragraph, I realized that it wasn't my ability to comprehend which was at fault, but rather your ability to communicate.
But your point is valid. Sort of. --That is, TV is the opiate of the masses and addicts always want free drugs. But in the same stroke, this definition makes the cable companies into seedy drug dealers with no ethical standards. (Have you seen the shit aired on television these days?) So really, I just don't care what happens either way.
-FL
It seems that Gnostics vary in their belief from individual to individual. The lack of consensus on what Gnosticism is leads me to believe that people are making it up as they go along.
Unification of theory is simply not going to happen when the primary teachings have been lost. However, there are many concepts which can be reassembled and expanded upon through dedicated searching and thinking. It's not easy but judging an idea based on a small handful of confused seekers is hardly something I'd recommend. That forum is a doorway only. But you have to be seeking on-going knowledge rather than structures you can drop into place and forget about.
I didn't choose to be a Christian because it made sense to me or seemed like the best choice among other religions. I chose Christianity because I recognized a number of divine interventions in my life that led me to the Christian church. Even though I don't agree 100% with any pastor, I believe that people that have "given their lives to Jesus" share a common bond with myself. I believe that God communicates with me through the Holy Spirit and the bible has given me a baseline that allows me differentiate the Holy Spirit from other voices.
This seems like a fairly healthy approach with a few exceptions. The problem is that a common tactic is that negative forces often mask themselves in very positive masks and can make people have 'spiritual epiphanies' which are quite false. Just because a burning bush happens to speak doesn't mean it is telling the truth. Observation of words versus actions is absolutely essential, and this requires a great deal of critical analysis. I doubt, based on everything I've learned, that Jesus would ever ask that people "give their lives to him". That sounds like creepy control-freak stuff and an abandonment of free will. Free Will, which I have come to regard as a very high universal law. Christ's words have been corrupted, and study of religion and biblical history show us this quite clearly, but you have to be willing to do the research. Propaganda and social control was as active when the bible was first put together as it is today.
-FL
There's a forum here where these ideas are explored at length, with lots of reference material noted in case you are truly interested.
The basic idea is that Christ was teaching a philosophy wherein, "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within" (or to that effect) meant to be interpreted as the work required to grow and purify the soul is done through critical self-examination, looking at hard truths and then working to confront and understand those automatic aspects of ourselves. The idea is linked to the notion of alchemy, except that making gold from base metals through the continual application of heating and cooling is a metaphor for the purification of the soul through repeated heatings and coolings; --The heat coming from the 'friction' of exposing oneself to life and truth without any buffers of self-calming lies about what we truly are.
The Gnostic movement and all its texts were destroyed early on in the development of the church, most likely because it encouraged individuals to become self-aware by looking inward and doing the hard work of self-refinement. It's very difficult to control people who are self-aware rather than dreamers who look outward and place their wishful thinking with an external god and an external 'savior'.
All in all, this approach to reaching 'heaven' is 180 degrees different from that sold to the masses through the formal religion which was locked into place back in the early days of Christian monotheism.
And, no, I strongly doubt any Jesuit would sign off on such a scheme. He'd lose his pay check and benefits, after all.
-FL
This video is broken into 6 parts. The first looked fairly reasonable, but in the second she brought up an item which seemed kind of silly to me. Unless I am mistaken, she was suggesting that if you put two live viruses into a test tube that they will somehow mix and turn into one super-virus with the qualities of the two former. Was I hearing that correctly? --Because she went off on that tangent with great energy and I'm fairly certain that this is an entirely false proposition. Especially weird since she said she was a doctor. But then, she's also a hard-core catholic, so she's obviously got some blind spots.
Still, accidentally shipping a vaccine in such huge quantities which happens to include live samples of the Bird Flu is certainly a vast screw-up which could have killed millions of people. But I don't see how it could have morphed into a super-virus simply by Bird Flu being present in the drug. Viruses, if I understand them correctly, just don't work that way.
This video strikes me as being a little COINTELPRO; bent truths being used to muddy the issue beyond comprehension for the average person.
Though, I certainly wouldn't rule out malice these days when it comes to population control. Deliberately distributing selected quantities of Bird Flu through a wide-scale vaccination policy would have been en effective way to kick the knees out from under a population.
-FL
What I've heard from doctors and nurses around the DC area is that if you have flu-like symptoms outside of the flu season (which starts week 40), then they can be reasonably certain (99%) that it is H1N1.
Gimme a break. EVERY cold I've ever had in my life matched the symptoms of H1N1. The symptoms we are told to look for are so vague and all-inclusive that they would fit nicely into the newspaper astrology section. --And guess what? I've had plenty of colds which hit me before "week 40".
-FL
No, genetic testing of the virus is EXPENSIVE and generally not needed at this point as we are so early in the normal flu season that it is obvious on the face that the majority of cases are related to H1N1.
I've decided that anybody who prefaces some idiotic statement with the word, "Obviously" is more than likely an ignoramus trying to sound more informed and intelligent than they really are.
Please do some research before you open your mouth and advance the agenda of planned hysteria.
H1N1 Cases Overestimated? - CBS
-FL
On the contrary, that was merely an example of general kindness. The wife of the used car dealer was being generally kind. She wasn't being all that kind, since she recovered all of her costs. To be only mildly cynical, I'll go so far as to say she probably sold you a car at a profit to the dealership, albeit possibly a small one. She IS the wife of a used car dealer, after all. You were told it was "at their cost" but you didn't see their books, so you don't know. If you believed it, well, I've got this fine used car to sell you, it's a great deal, I'll even let you have it at cost...
You're making assumptions. Questions are better. Like, "How do you know the car was sold at cost?"
To be fair, I don't know because we didn't actually discuss it. I was generalizing for the sake of simplicity. Having bought a used car only two years earlier, (the one which died), and having done the research and lots of looking under hoods and kicking of tires, and even having spent time considering buying and selling cars myself as a side project with my girlfriend who was a bit of a horse trader, (we never did), I was as a result very well informed at the time as to the going prices. They could have sold that same model and year for approximately $4000 at the time. If there was any profiteering going on, it was poorly done because the used car market at that time was quite hot, with everybody trading in their big cars for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. And in any case, I wouldn't have wanted the couple to lose money, and I sincerely hope they were not hurt in their dealing with us. Being kind and sharing energy when done right needn't cause undue hardship. Those with excess share, and when it is your turn, you share as well. I only hope I have done my part as well as they did theirs when it counted.
As for being scammed. . . Sure, it's always possible, but it seems unlikely that this was the case. --I've got a fairly good bullshit detector built in, and while it isn't perfect, I've already learned for instance that you're the sort of person who makes false assumptions and leans toward irrational cynicism which is probably based on a fear of being exploited, which is generally linked to other character flaws which suggest that you are in fact wide to unwitting observation as well as numerous types of exploitation you would miss by default. --Not that I'd do that to you, but it is something to be aware of. Opportunists are a dime a dozen and they give themselves away through a host of unconscious cues. Where it gets difficult is when you're dealing with psychopathic individuals. They are capable of fabricating false cues at the conscious level, so it takes a more demanding kind of observation to suss them out. But using instinct and plugging yourself into the subconscious non-linear information system offers a great leg up on the predators.
Anyway. . , that route my GF drove along was certainly one she's used before, but having never met the couple before and not knowing that they were used car dealers, (the car dealership itself was back in town; her car died in front of an average-looking house), I would say that it was not conscious knowledge. --Though, the subconscious is certainly capable of recording data in amazing albeit non-mystical ways. --If you happen to see a name and address on a piece of paper, then that information goes in and is stored somewhere whether you were paying conscious attention or not. The subconscious is capable of working with that kind of data. I should mention that I consider "mystical" to be entirely relative. I believe that there are forces at work which conform to rules, but that we simply have not yet documented all of those systems in a precise manner. Just because we haven't labeled a thing does not mean that it doesn't exist or that it should be shunned and feared.
-FL
You offer a couple of good insights and couple of really bad ones. I think your bible might be an example of the Garbage In concept. God's world view, according to the bible I read, was that of a narcissistic monster. Seems to me that the people who crashed the economy were perhaps simply reading from some of the earlier chapters than where you did your cherry picking.
Seriously; you're right. Garbage in, Garbage out. You sound like a smart guy. Have you looked into the Gnostic approach? Seems far less evil and manipulative than the standard bollocks.
-FL
Sounds like a very complex (and rather peculiar) way of explaining off the phenomenon that people who like you are often nice to you.
In a nutshell, yes. But I find the added complexity, (and from your perspective, the peculiarity), is required to explain many of the non-linear aspects of reality I regularly see in action. There are an endless number of examples I've lived through, but one of my favorites was how my girlfriend lost ten bucks one day.
It fell out of her pocket when she was going for the car keys, and she felt an instinctive imperative to leave it on the ground. She loves her money, and so it was very difficult. She said she sat in the car seat staring at the bill on the ground for a whole minute before finally deciding to listen to instinct and close the car door. Then upon pulling out of the parking lot, she realized she needed gas and didn't have her bank card, and that she'd just left her last ten bucks in a parking lot. So she had to turn around and drive home to get more money instead of finishing her morning errands which would have put her on the highway.
As a result, when the car's frame failed ten minutes later, and the car ceased to be a car and turned instead into a lump of sparking metal with no steering or power flying at 80 Km/hour, it did so on a quiet stretch of empty country road rather than on a rush hour freeway. The car ground harmlessly to a halt directly in front of a house from which a woman emerged in alarm at the sound. She ran out and collected my shuddering girlfriend from the corpse of our car. As it happened, the woman was the wife of a used car dealer, and she proceeded to give my girlfriend an excellent replacement vehicle at their cost. --So within mere hours after our last car died, she drove away in a really good fresh new car for several thousand dollars less than we would have paid for it had we been customers walking into the dealership. It was about $900 total after transfer taxes and such. --Which just happened to be the same amount as an unexpected bonus check she'd received a couple of days earlier. She didn't ask me to pay anything for my half of the car since she'd always driven the other one more often and had done a fair bit of damage to it, having bounced it through farmer's fields and over parking lot dividers and such. I gave her a couple hundred for my share anyway.
So yes, as you say, people who like you will be often be nice to you, but there is also very often a non-linear quantity in evidence which general kindness alone cannot account for.
-FL
Any other corporate owners around here to debate this from another perspective? Someone who actually has intellectual property to protect?
I am very liberal in the manner in which my work is distributed. I've discovered that the community which values me will find non-specific ways in which to support me. I've been living this way for many years. --The trick is to trust this non-specific, non-linear system even when it doesn't make immediate rational sense. It's always there, but you can't see it, you can't tag and document it and you can't slap it down on a desk to prove its viability to others. It also won't make you a millionaire, but amazingly, if you ever need any kind of resource, bang, it's always there. --And if I ever genuinely needed to be a millionaire in order to fulfill some required service, then I'd be a millionaire. That opportunity has in fact come up a couple of times, but I got a bit freaked out by the responsibilities which would have been attached and backed off.
But this system requires a strong faith (there's a dirty word for the average Slashdotter!) in the mechanics of a conscious universe. If you don't have that, then sure, increasingly draconian attempts to control the natural behavior of reality are required to force the various flows of energy to conform to our highly limited human perception of reality. Think of it this way; if everybody is on some deep level, in unconscious communication with everybody else, even you and me right now, then we would be capable of setting up some astonishing coincidences, feeding each other's needs as required by mutual consent, all the while being mindful to not over-step the boundaries of our conscious awareness. --That is, we try not to break the illusion of being separate because that is where we learn the most basic human values. (Or that's my theory behind why my system apparently works so well).
I know this is waaaay beyond most people, and fear usually wins the day, but since you asked, this is indeed how I manage my life and it works very well. And interestingly, even Slashdotters are taking tentative steps toward recognizing the true nature of reality. But the terminology has to be wrapped up just right. Heck, there's a story in today's feed about the Placebo Effect. --Which is essentially recognizing the validity of "Mind over Matter", (to use a dippy phrase from the sixties), albeit in a very limited form. But that's a big step for a lot of people around here.
When they feel safe enough to recognize that the brain does indeed do most of its work on the quantum level, and then connects the placebo effect with the idea of "spooky communication" at a distance, then they'll be another couple of steps closer to where I am. But that's a bit much to ask at the moment. Doesn't change the way reality works, though.
I'll conclude with a silly phrase which I'm sure somebody else must have thought up before. . . "Freedom of thought? Not if THEY can prevent it!"
This is the real fight today. The fight for our own minds. It's time to pick sides.
-FL
Oh dear, did I fail to live down to your expectations?
Dude. You subscribe not just to a monotheistic religion, but a branch of conservative Judaism. You did *more* than live down to my expectations. If you don't think you're running a plethora of ego-protection programs in mad, tight circles, then you're fooling only yourself. And barely that, I'd guess, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to comment at all let alone even notice my post.
Television is not just a tool of message and propaganda delivery, but the CRT flicker demonstrably alters your brain wave patterns as measured with EEG equipment. It essentially puts viewers into a mild state of hypnosis. This is why it's so hard for people to remember the commercial they watched ten seconds ago. Though the message goes right on in and does its magic. --But don't bother researching that. Your head would explode from all the compressed masses of cultural mind-game horseshit programming you've undergone since birth.
I'd feel sorry for you, but you'd probably just piss me off first. I have little patience for head-cases when I have to deal with them directly. From a distance they do get my sympathy, though.
Please don't expect a committed response from me. Your brand of insanity is usually just too toxic and intractable to deal with effectively. Too much work.
Good luck. You'll need every ounce of it you can get.
-FL
Unless you mean that elite only corresponds to the evil people that make lots of money instead of the good people that make lots of money, then yeah, you were advocating Batman essentially destroying society.
It always comes down to definitions, doesn't it?
When I say, "Elite", I'm not talking about your run of the mill Enron manager, (though we could certainly benefit from fewer of those sorts of psychopaths). Rather, I'm talking about the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and the coterie of power brokers who attend Bilderberg meetings and such.
As for Batman destroying society. . , that's a complex question. Aside from the fact that the lunatics mentioned above are doing an excellent job of turning the world into a psychopath's garden on their own, what do we mean by, 'society'? --I know what I mean. --I mean, human society, where people treat each other with respect and decency and always strive to help each other to become the best versions of themselves without attempting to harm others for personal gain. Currently, there are two societies. There is that which the evil people want to bring into being, where slavery is the norm. --And there is the society which is predominantly filled with and directed by good people who want to serve others. These two societies are at war, and Batman clearly DOES want to destroy one of them. But the comics Batman is confused; he is obviously working from a positive intention yet he doesn't have enough insight to know how to do it or even understand the nature of the basic battle. Same with Superman. The writers are simply ignorant and they have been effectively programmed. They believed, as you seem to, that 'society' is only one thing and that if we do away with the psychopaths, we will be left with nothing, when in fact the opposite is true.
But this is a key point, and thus it has been one of the top priorities of the cultural programming machine, and so many people will find that they reflexively fight against the idea without even comprehending that they are essentially abuse victims, fighting to defend their abuser. Stockholm Syndrome writ large.
-FL
Yes, because society would be SO much better if anyone who became successful would get assassinated by Batman.
Uh huh. Is that REALLY what you think I am suggesting? Read once more, but this time use your thinking cap, (if you have one). Because if you honestly think that success = oppressing/enslaving those beneath you, then the world probably would benefit from your assassination.
-FL