You, (the elite managerial over-seer), wants all the little people to toil in order to provide you with food, shelter, safety, power and luxury. It takes back-breaking effort to provide these things to you and there is no good reason to do it. As with most people of your sort, you live with a constant shadow on your shoulder; you harbor a morbid fear that one day the flow of wealth and abundant resources (which you don't work for) will cease. Because you have never really worked at anything, you fear work; nothing is more terrifying than the thought of being reduced to the status of a common peon. And so in fear, you cast about with great concern! How is your fear most likely to manifest? Why a popular uprising! Any moment now, you will be discovered and the slaves will take back what they have given you and which you do not deserve to have.
Thus, population management becomes a great concern to you. An obsession.
So how do you make sure that the slaves never have enough energy or awareness to see who is making their lives miserable and come together to do something about it? Why you make damned sure they are stupid and distracted and constantly fighting amongst one another!
Thus enters the Paradox! --To have the most fashionable elitist lifestyle, you need to employ the Wonders of Science! However, to employ the Wonders of Science, you need thinking men and women capable of sharp awareness and bright imagination. --And yet thinking men and women of awareness and imagination are exactly the kind of people who are most likely to realize that they are slaves and that you are their bitter enemy. They are the ones you fear most!
If only there was some way. . . --A method to mind-program people so that they retain the brain power necessary to engage in research and experimentation and other skills required by the Wonders of Science, while ALSO being remaining stupid and distracted. Is such a thing possible?
Fortunately for you, the answer is YES!
Among the maneuvers used to create the perfect army of mindless scientists and engineers are. ..
-Age segregation in schools. (Humans are pack animals; in healthy communities children of many ages play together, and the older and more experienced ones naturally take on leader/protector roles. In the school system, there are no clear leaders established through age, leading to endless, un-resolvable competition, generally resulting in the most base physical attributes becoming the dominant deciding factors. Say hello to "Jocks v.s. Geeks" --Those who are strong thinkers tend to seek love and approval from the only authority figures who appear to value such attributes, the teachers. All you have to do is program the teachers according to your system and they will make sure that the students are similarly programmed.
-Media! --Children who have survived the school system are shell-shocked by that war zone social structure. Their brains have developed strong wiring as they grew up, programed to have low self-esteem, to fear above all things, ridicule. So all you have to do is create a popular media which tells the population what is being laughed at this week, and you can rest assured that even the most progressive thinkers will shudder and cringe as their deep-programming kicks in.
-Meaningless debate! --It is important to maintain and nourish two opposing camps of thought on any number of emotionally evocative subjects. The population will self-divide and spend all their free energy fighting and arguing and hating one-another, while you rest safely up in your ivory tower and collect taxes.
-False Money and False Economic Theory. My typing muscles are getting tired, so I won't bother going into this. Any smart person, (who hasn't been laughed at recently), is capable of working out how money and debt keeps everybody in check.
-War. Again, no real need to explain this one.
There are, of course, many other techniques available, but these three are the work-h
Colbert has a worthy point and some charisma; you have neither. Hint: Aping pop culture speaks of a mind which is a little too open and a heart which is a little too empty. Get some experience and form a personality of your very own. It'll take you far.
Critical thinkers do not run on automatic. And they do not hide from questions.
Mercola is a sensationalist. But his critics, (judging by the guys on that linked de-bunk site you provided), are pathetic. I counted two arguments used by that idiot were such that any garden variety Slashdotter would roll eyes at. If you want me to point them out for you, please ask. Clearly you missed them on your first reading, (if in fact you bothered to read it).
I'm sorry. I just got woken up by a guy with construction boots who needed to fix the walls outside my apartment window. I can't tell if you're trying to be ironic or if you really honestly for-real think you're safe in the warm arms of your loving government and the non-greedy corporate fathers who will be selling you those wonderful drugs. Did you read those two linked articles?
I was at my bank a few days ago, and there was this silly person spouting on about the terrible, awful, no-good, very-bad Swine Flu! --Bearing a little bottle of disinfectant and a handiwipe, this fool was wiping down pens and surfaces before touching them, lecturing with a dire tone of self-importance that everybody INFORM themselves!
There was an obvious gleam of joy in this moron's eyes; some people just love to run around and shout about the apocalypse. It makes them feel special or something. Anyway, after this idiot left the establishment, the bank teller looked up, clearly quite upset. --As were a handful of other people who had been within earshot of the loud conversation. Me and another fellow in the line up who had actually gone to the effort of informing ourselves took a few minutes to explain to everybody what was really going on and why there was no reason to be afraid.
There are things we DO need to be concerned about in this world of ours, and right near the top of the list are governments and news media which promotes stupid bullshit like this swine flu nonsense. And why would they promote such a thing. . ?
Here's some interesting reading on the subject. . .
1. Far more delicate and breakable inside than he realizes. The right person could turn him into a whimpering jelly of a man, and if he's lucky, he'll make contact with that person. He's got a LOT to learn, and in the darkest nights he might just get a glimpse of how true that is.
2. In the case of this incredibly stupid swine flu nonsense, he also happens to be entirely Correct.
It's social engineering and it's painfully, shamefully obvious. --The "Evil Terrorist Under The Bed" is no longer doing the trick. So now you need to fear the sniffles. --Those un-insightful hacks over at Penny Arcade have just lost what few atoms of respect I had for them by trumpeting this stupidity. If I were feeling more annoyed with humanity than normal, I'd be very rude right about now to everybody who takes this swine-flu nonsense seriously. But then, I HAVE been turned into a jelly of a man by the right people a couple of times, so I know when to take a deep breath and remember that asking a three year-old to explain higher math is just as unreasonable as expecting people to not fall for monumentally stupid shit just because authority figures on TV tell them to do so.
First though, I want to point out that I intend no offense; as it happens, I've had several people in my life who are very dear to me who have experienced or who currently experience chronic illnesses which are poorly understood by medicine but the symptoms of which are clearly real. But I do have some observations which you may well find to be upsetting. They are, however, based on long observation and maybe they could be useful to you. Maybe not.
I've spent years watching people I love dearly live in torment and not address really obvious issues which I can't help but think are related, or at least worthy of attention when they seem willing to try absolutely everything else which is safe while avoiding like mad the truly scary things. One had chronic fatigue to the point where she couldn't walk. Another who could never get a full breath of air and who had to pee pretty much every half hour, leading to sleep problems. Another friend hasn't had more than an hour of REM sleep in about twenty-five years. Another could do nothing BUT sleep for about two years, and missed a lot of school because of it; I have two close friends like that, actually. One of them was hospitalized for several months because of it when she was a teenager. That's quite the handful of people, and traditional medicine has been pretty much at a loss in each of their cases.
Three of them recovered, others continue to suffer. The interesting thing I have noted is that each of these people had at least one massive and over-arching emotional/psychological challenge in their lives. I am not at liberty to go into details except to say that these challenges are and have been very difficult, particularly given each person involved. It is as if somebody tailored the perfect nemesis for each individual, some being subtle but cancerous problems related to self-confidence, while others are much more overt. All of the problems are/were persistent, years-long situations. Anyway, the curious fact of the matter is that those friends of mine who stepped up and faced those challenges, fought their fears, and who consequently won, (they are all entirely powerful people more than capable of winning given the application of effort), have also stopped being sick. The chronic illnesses which dominated their lives and saw them in hospitals, etc., are now only odd memories which seemed to have happened to other people. Meanwhile, those friends of mine who choose to continue to hide from their challenges remain in chronic suffering.
And since you asked: I hit the gym at least three times a week. There has been some evidence that exercising your legs at night helps them relax. In addition to weights, I make sure I get in my time on the elliptical machines. I get plenty of thigh and calf exercise. It still doesn't completely resolve the limb movement issue. I have also tried "supplements" like magnesium which are supposed to help muscles relax. Nothing really does the trick for me.
It has been my observation that the body and the mind and the spirit are not separated.
For some reason, in our culture we like to put our body in the gym and our minds in school and our spirits in churches and think that we can live effectively with this total disunion. Many people fail to pay attention to all three areas of their lives, (and I'm not recommending church by any stretch, but spiritual awareness of some kind is pretty much vital), and those who do manage to work with all three often fail to recognize that they are not supposed to be observed in isolation, but that they inform and in fact require each other. Another observation I have made is that those of my friends who have defeated their nemeses and recovered their health have also figured out how to put their mind, body and spirits into balance. In fact, I suspect that these challenges might be formed specifically as a means to coerce the individual toward discovering that union.
Maybe this means something useful to you. Maybe not. Either way, I do wish you the best of luck in facing your RLS issues.
This is one of the most offensive questions I have read in a long time. Wow. Have you considered what it must be like to live with a terrible illness?
It's only offensive to you because you are reacting without understanding. The question was blunt and it is a difficult one to answer, granted, but it is also very relevant and I was not intending any offense.
I've known several people with chronic 'mystery' conditions whose lives are demonstrably miserable as a result. But guess what? Every last one of them has spent years seeking safe answers while avoiding like crazy dealing with the towering and obvious psychological/emotional blockages in their lives, who persist in eating terrible food, and who are generally too scared or knotted up inside or confused to know how to face their real issues. It's all connected. --The right pill never seems to come along, and meanwhile they remain in abusive relationships, or refuse to admit that they're gay, or remain too scared to seize their place in the world, or whatever it happens to be. I've seen numerous crippling variations, and I can tell you that with the people I've known like this, some would rather suffer from a mystery illness than deal with their own lives despite what they might claim to the contrary, --while others simply haven't connected the dots yet.
I'm not saying that legitimate, purely medical conditions don't exist. But I do think this kind of thing is worth considering, which is why I asked the question. --That, and because I'm curious to expand my understanding of this sort of thing. If he wants to get angry with me then he may feel free to do so, and I will understand. But I think your indignation is both misplaced and not terribly useful.
When looking over all the responses to your post, I am reminded that there are certain buttons you can push in a geek which make them jump like the floor was electrified. Rushing to split a hair they bloody well know doesn't need splitting is a classic response in the attention-starved smart-kid. "Look at me! I'm still the smartest kid in the room! Love MEEEE!"
--Tends to happen when you take a smart kid who traded on brain power to win easy love as a child, but who then got dumped into one of those special "gifted" programs where all the other little Einsteins went to engage in the perpetual IQ cage-match with the teacher's "love" being the prize.
I *knew* some asshole in this discussion would have to mention Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). No, RLS is not a "designer disease" made-up by drug companies to sell more Requip.
Maybe not, but it sure as hell gave wet dreams to the marketing people over at "Drugs Are Us". --Take an existing condition, blow it all out of whack and convince the easily convinced that they've 'got' it, (whatever 'it' is, which they clearly don't have a hard bead on since none of their drugs have apparently worked for you.) Heck, when I focus my attention on my own legs, they also start to tingle in an irritating way until I move them.
--I met a copy editor who works in the pharmaceutical industry, and she explained to me that everybody in her line of work is desperate right now because there's nothing to sell; not like the good old days when that penis-hardening medication came out. With house payments to make and a family to care for, she'd sell any kind of snake oil to get by. I have no doubt whatsoever that RLS is mostly bullshit pushed by non-believers even by the guys selling the drugs.
Still, I wish you good luck in solving your problem. I don't mean to seem disrespectful, but I am curious. . . Have you looked at the obvious stuff? --Like getting a job which you love, doing lots of exercise outdoors for the fun of it, eating properly and generally diving into the work of cleaning out all the false automatic crap from the machine of your mind?
Frankly, I wish everybody carried a handgun, so people would stop overreacting about them. It would also completely change the dynamic of a crazed gun-toting maniac threatening a crowd of people when the whole crowd responds by pulling out their own pistols. "Oh shit" would be the most common response, I imagine.
I've heard this argument and it's faulty. You're assuming that everybody carries the same level of personal responsibility.
I remember being so angry at points when I was 18 years old that had I access to a fire arm, I would have pointed it at people and pulled the trigger. --Specific times like this I remember were not in the heat of the moment. They were after imagining insults which were not intended and working myself up into a homicidal head of steam, seeking out, and then exploding at people and being fully prepared to die in the process. I consider myself today to be one of the more sane people, but I was a pretty hair-trigger teenager at times. In your world, I'd have to walk around in a permanent state of wariness, fearful that some hormonally crazed teen, drunkard, crack-head, mentally challenged person, or any garden-variety idiot was going to go mad and start shooting for no good reason. And honestly, there are far fewer good reasons for shooting at another person than there are shootings. Whereas there are a LOT of fantastically retarded idiots posing as adults out there. Saying that everybody should be armed is very full of bravado, but it hinges on faulty logic and a lack of insight into the human condition.
Where the paradox comes in, (and there's always a paradoxical problem to solve), is that I really don't like the idea of governments disarming people. They don't do it to help the people, but rather because they don't want to have any civilians able to threaten their choke-hold on power. However, I don't think it really matters. The fact that people lived through eight years of Bush rule without deposing the psychotic leadership means that all those guns in the public are in the hands of people who will never do anything anyway about corrupt government anyway, so the point is moot.
Unfortunately, I quite being a girl years ago. But, I still consider myself attractive. At least I'm not fat and bald like a lotta (male) people my age.
I know several Yoga teachers, and one of them is a positively plain looking creature in her late forties. But she glows and moves around town like some sort of Hindu goddess. Awesome. It's all about the soul in the end. --I find that happiness, confidence and a clean mental machine really are the things which make people beautiful. Took a couple of decades to figure that one out. I can't be around angry/sad/fractured personalities for very long no matter what they 'look' like.
Although I've never been able to verify my guess because about then one or all of them will ask the bartender to see me out. I take this as a consensus on their part that if one of them can't have me then, in the name of friendship, they'll jointly and severally forego my company. I usually leave peacefully not wanting to destroy any close friendships.
Reminds me of this football dude I once knew who, stoned on LSD at a party and having achieved a high state of paranoia, picked up the host by his collar, slammed him against a wall and bellowed at him, "I bet you've got hidden cameras trying to film me while I take a piss! You sick fuck!" --Then while telling this story, he turned to me and added, "And when I said that, I could tell he was SCARED. That's how I knew I was right about the cameras!"
I've had the same experience, but that's usually only when I'm having an arrogant day where my patience for humanity is at a low point. --For the record, during such times I find most women are slow to stopped-dead as well. That goes double for the cute ones. Sad but true.
The rarity is the pretty girl who is also brilliant, but she's usually got so many defenses up that you can't have a decent conversation with her regardless. The older I get, the more I think that physical beauty is over-rated. People should go to conferences blind-folded if they really want to 'see' others.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of Hand Bags. . .
"A handbag, it says, is the most massively useful thing an intergalactic hitchhiker can have. [Insert witty Adams-isms about the usefulness of hand bags here.] [. ..] thus leading to The Great Counterfeit Hand Bag Crisis of the early twenty-first century. The judges, lawyers and general rif-raf of the legal profession as it happened all had wives who were partial to their expensive accessories and none too pleased to see cheap knock-offs of their own fashionable handbags being carried about by simply EVERY other woman on the street. As such, the wives exerted their collective will toward the task of making their husbands entirely miserable until something was done about this altogether offensive state of affairs. Now, as is well recognized that the collective might of any large group of truly unhappy women is approximately equal in its force upon a planetary culture as a prolonged, large-scale military engagement, it was not long before the crime of hand bag counterfeiting was elevated to the very top of the list of humanity's most heinous mis-doings, right up there with the really bad stuff, --like listening to music without a license, and forcing children to make handbags and other fashion accessories in musty sweat-shops. Indeed, handbag counterfeiting and listening to music without a license were swiftly and severely punished leading to the establishment of a planet-wide police state. And while sweat-shop labor received somewhat less attention, it was nonetheless strongly frowned upon; people would shuffle while looking at their shoes and utter things like, "Oh, yes, well that's simply terrible, that is! Simple terrible." Indeed, it was considered altogether so terrible that it was often considered wise to simply not mention it at all, particularly when attending those swank gatherings where the finest handbags were on display."
-FL
Oooh! I can smell a "South Park" episdode brewing
on
Disney Buys Marvel For $4B
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Wow. Marvel has sucked at controlling its rights. They fling their lawyers around like idiots with dice. Remember "Marveloution" back when they tried to buy up all the comic book distributors and have their own little "Marvel" stores?
Fail. They were too inept. Bit off more than they could chew. The screwed up the comics industry but good so that it took nearly a decade for everybody to get back on their feet.
Now Disney, on the other hand. . .
They know how to suck the soul out of a property and employ slave labor in China to make toys in a manner only Todd McFarlane could fantasize about! Oh yes indeedy! --The seedy beginnings of Marvel, (Didja know it sprang from the same family publishing um. . , 'empire' from which the classy skin-mag "Hustler" grew? Now you do. You're welcome.), all the way through their never quite taken seriously by 'real' publisher trajectory. . , that's what makes Marvel Marvel.
And that's why Marvel has always felt edgy and honest, (if adolescent and stupid half the time) and all kind of held together with spit and. . , well, staples. It's been run by a long succession of people who don't fit into respectable society and who don't really understand business, --and who had a lot of fun (and a lot of burn-out) as a result. For all its warts, I love Marvel. --While Disney is pretty much an evil entity; It has no character and no soul except the practiced gleaming smile of a charming sociopath. --Hopefully they'll catch whatever Marvel has, get the shakes and die. But I'm not holding my breath on that.
I hope comic shops don't change too much. Comic shops are one of the few paper media outlets which don't feel like they've sold out. (They would have if they could, and heaven knows they've tried, but the truth is, they've never had any capital the rest of the world really wants or understands, and so selling out hasn't been a serious option until these movies started coming out. Until then they had nothing to sell but adolescent power/sex fantasies and the occasional gem tagging along for the ride. If Disney gets its teeth in, do we really think that people like Jeff Smith and Dave Sim could have done their thing?) Hopefully Manga will keep things creepy and weird enough to prevent the grown ups from tidying up.
After all, there's a dark and a light side to everything. Maybe Disney won't screw it up.
Wonderful (and rather hilarious)! --Somebody actually found a use for the stuff. . .
When "Silly Putty" was first invented, they thought, "Oh please! There has GOT to be something this is useful for!" That was fifty years ago, give or take. They tried fitting the solution to every problem they could think of, but it turned out to an overwhelming task. The best they could come up with was to sell it in plastic eggs.
(I got that little history tidbit from the slightly less abridged version which was printed on the reverse side of a piece of cardboard my Silly Putty egg came packaged in).
Looks like somebody finally managed to work how to sell the stuff for real. They just mixed in some orange dye, changed the name and used the word, "Military" in the ad copy. And they're probably charging hella-serious money for the end result, too. Whatever. That's probably how I'd go about it as well.
--And contrary to what somebody pointed out elsewhere, I suspect that this Orange Goo would lose shape and run if left standing. But the goop as these people are selling it is contained in another fabric of some sort, rather like air is to bubble-wrap. --If the keychain sample pictured in the article is anything to go by, that is.
So. . , cute.
You know it's an interesting day when somebody solves a 50 year-old marketing dilemma with orange dye and a some PVC sheets.
You wouldn't mind answering a simple question, would you? Are you a neocon, or a republican? Wait - scratch that. The question is better phrased as, Are you a rabid neocon, or a foaming at the mouth republican?
Dear sir, while your gentlemanly approach is appreciated by those with fully function brains, I fear your liberal form of criticism is lost on this pug. --As I strongly suspect the man is simply barking mad. Or a mangy troll.
We all read the story just a little while ago about how so-called "multitaskers" are in fact incompetent idiots. And NOW they're dangerous incompetent idiots! The psychological connection is easily made without our realizing it was made for us.
But you're right! There's a problem. While popular opinions agrees that texting while driving is bad, (it kills! It affects everybody who ever needs to cross the street), unlike drunk driving, there's no blood test for blackberry use.
But wait!
--If you had some sort of. . , I don't know. . , say, black-box in the car which recorded everything the car does and when it does it, then you could compare that information with the phone records of the driver's blackberry account, and you could 'prove' that texting was taking place when an accident occurred!
Now, Slashdot is usually a strong holdout for privacy rights, and geeks and engineers are one of the most important driving forces for how societal infrastructure is designed. --If you want to build a prison nation, you first have to convince the engineer geeks that we need such a thing, otherwise there will be all kinds of problems in achieving it. So the question is raised, "how do you convert a bunch of entrenched privacy proponents to accept black boxes in cars? --No, to DEMAND black boxes in cars?"
Why you run a couple of stories with the exact angles as we have seen here, and then you've just manipulated a bunch of geeks into accepting that which they would normally reject on principle.
Simple and effective.
And don't think it doesn't work that way. Slashdot editors are just as prone to mind-control as anybody else. Laugh if you want, but part of you knows you can't write me off entirely. Others know just how close I really am.
I live here, I have suffered this last 10 years just because I decided to have an education and work hard, that makes my an Oligarch, along with all the middle class, go figure, Venezuela is the only country in the world with 4 million oligarchs [. ..] You have no idea, along with all your countrymen posting here, of the kind of monster you are breeding with your oil money.
So let me take a stab at understanding your thinking here. . , oil wealth is BAD because in this case it is not being raped from your country by my country. This means that your government is able to use that money to pour into Venezuela as it sees fit as opposed to how an American corporation would see fit. (And the American corporation would, of course, pour a smaller but more concentrated stream of that wealth into the pockets of the rich parents of your school chums, who in turn would be happy to maintain a national state of serfdom.) Yes, I begin to see the logic behind your comments.
I also feel compelled to point out that in a country of around 26.4 million, your (presumptuous) figure of 4 million people is hardly what a sane person could term a 'middle class'. When one sixth of the population is rich and the rest are essentially serfs, you are looking at what is better understood as, "a well-and-truly fucked up system". When Chavez is working to balance the wealth, it is to be expected that the privileged sons and daughters of the rich claim that they arrived at their positions by "Hard Work" rather than from "benefiting from slavery", and that any change to the system which would prevent their continued exploitation of other humans is naturally going to be contested with asinine examples of the sort you offer. There's nothing wrong with wealth, but preventing others from sharing in it through suppression and subversion is evil.
As propaganda hits hardest at home, and as you sound like the Venezuelan version of a dumb & selfish republican, I suspect you are a poor representative of the truth.
There are plenty of people in the U.S. who think that they know what's going on, and who screech the same kind of bullshit about home-grown politics. And like you, most of them appear to be suffering from a form mental retardation where reality and emotional day-dreams get all mixed up together.
And yes, I am basing my opinions on more than the contents of just one film, thank-you very much.
The other two contained less moral fiber and thus failed to report theirs.
In fact, I think the Dark Lord sent out twelve rings, and five turned theirs in because they got the heebie-jeebies. (Tolkien left that part out because he wasn't Roald Dahl.)
I think you're confusing "literacy" with "knowledgeable".
Being able to "read, write and comprehend a written language" doesn't ensure that one is going to read, write or comprehend anything worthy of attention.
There's a real user going by the name of "clint" with some clout around here.
I wonder if this longteng nitwit is trying to muddy that name because s/he lost a debate with clint and and can't find any decent way of dealing with it?
Interesting. Low, lame, (and rather Republican), but interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you limit your frustration to Democrats?
Republicans are evil also, they're just louder and dumber about it. Democrats are smarter and stealthier.
There's a reason that Vampires infest pop culture when Democrats are in power, and Zombies when Republicans are in office.
Government is the problem. Down with the undead.
-FL
The problem is this. . .
You, (the elite managerial over-seer), wants all the little people to toil in order to provide you with food, shelter, safety, power and luxury. It takes back-breaking effort to provide these things to you and there is no good reason to do it. As with most people of your sort, you live with a constant shadow on your shoulder; you harbor a morbid fear that one day the flow of wealth and abundant resources (which you don't work for) will cease. Because you have never really worked at anything, you fear work; nothing is more terrifying than the thought of being reduced to the status of a common peon. And so in fear, you cast about with great concern! How is your fear most likely to manifest? Why a popular uprising! Any moment now, you will be discovered and the slaves will take back what they have given you and which you do not deserve to have.
Thus, population management becomes a great concern to you. An obsession.
So how do you make sure that the slaves never have enough energy or awareness to see who is making their lives miserable and come together to do something about it? Why you make damned sure they are stupid and distracted and constantly fighting amongst one another!
Thus enters the Paradox! --To have the most fashionable elitist lifestyle, you need to employ the Wonders of Science! However, to employ the Wonders of Science, you need thinking men and women capable of sharp awareness and bright imagination. --And yet thinking men and women of awareness and imagination are exactly the kind of people who are most likely to realize that they are slaves and that you are their bitter enemy. They are the ones you fear most!
If only there was some way. . . --A method to mind-program people so that they retain the brain power necessary to engage in research and experimentation and other skills required by the Wonders of Science, while ALSO being remaining stupid and distracted. Is such a thing possible?
Fortunately for you, the answer is YES!
Among the maneuvers used to create the perfect army of mindless scientists and engineers are. . .
-Age segregation in schools. (Humans are pack animals; in healthy communities children of many ages play together, and the older and more experienced ones naturally take on leader/protector roles. In the school system, there are no clear leaders established through age, leading to endless, un-resolvable competition, generally resulting in the most base physical attributes becoming the dominant deciding factors. Say hello to "Jocks v.s. Geeks" --Those who are strong thinkers tend to seek love and approval from the only authority figures who appear to value such attributes, the teachers. All you have to do is program the teachers according to your system and they will make sure that the students are similarly programmed.
-Media! --Children who have survived the school system are shell-shocked by that war zone social structure. Their brains have developed strong wiring as they grew up, programed to have low self-esteem, to fear above all things, ridicule. So all you have to do is create a popular media which tells the population what is being laughed at this week, and you can rest assured that even the most progressive thinkers will shudder and cringe as their deep-programming kicks in.
-Meaningless debate! --It is important to maintain and nourish two opposing camps of thought on any number of emotionally evocative subjects. The population will self-divide and spend all their free energy fighting and arguing and hating one-another, while you rest safely up in your ivory tower and collect taxes.
-False Money and False Economic Theory. My typing muscles are getting tired, so I won't bother going into this. Any smart person, (who hasn't been laughed at recently), is capable of working out how money and debt keeps everybody in check.
-War. Again, no real need to explain this one.
There are, of course, many other techniques available, but these three are the work-h
Colbert has a worthy point and some charisma; you have neither. Hint: Aping pop culture speaks of a mind which is a little too open and a heart which is a little too empty. Get some experience and form a personality of your very own. It'll take you far.
Critical thinkers do not run on automatic. And they do not hide from questions.
Bye now.
-FL
Ah. You're a true-believer.
Mercola is a sensationalist. But his critics, (judging by the guys on that linked de-bunk site you provided), are pathetic. I counted two arguments used by that idiot were such that any garden variety Slashdotter would roll eyes at. If you want me to point them out for you, please ask. Clearly you missed them on your first reading, (if in fact you bothered to read it).
-FL
I'm sorry. I just got woken up by a guy with construction boots who needed to fix the walls outside my apartment window. I can't tell if you're trying to be ironic or if you really honestly for-real think you're safe in the warm arms of your loving government and the non-greedy corporate fathers who will be selling you those wonderful drugs. Did you read those two linked articles?
I'm going to go get some coffee now.
Now THAT's a drug I can get behind!
'Gmrning
-FL
Not all of us. Some of us are telling people "STFU YOU'RE WRONG" :0)
Which makes one wonder how the heck he rationalizes his implied claim of superiority in statistical analysis.
-FL
I was at my bank a few days ago, and there was this silly person spouting on about the terrible, awful, no-good, very-bad Swine Flu! --Bearing a little bottle of disinfectant and a handiwipe, this fool was wiping down pens and surfaces before touching them, lecturing with a dire tone of self-importance that everybody INFORM themselves!
There was an obvious gleam of joy in this moron's eyes; some people just love to run around and shout about the apocalypse. It makes them feel special or something. Anyway, after this idiot left the establishment, the bank teller looked up, clearly quite upset. --As were a handful of other people who had been within earshot of the loud conversation. Me and another fellow in the line up who had actually gone to the effort of informing ourselves took a few minutes to explain to everybody what was really going on and why there was no reason to be afraid.
There are things we DO need to be concerned about in this world of ours, and right near the top of the list are governments and news media which promotes stupid bullshit like this swine flu nonsense. And why would they promote such a thing. . ?
Here's some interesting reading on the subject. . .
WHO Admits to Releasing Pandemic Virus into Population via 'Mock-Up' Vaccines and Swine Flu Shot Linked to Killer Nerve Disease
-FL
That dude is two things;
1. Far more delicate and breakable inside than he realizes. The right person could turn him into a whimpering jelly of a man, and if he's lucky, he'll make contact with that person. He's got a LOT to learn, and in the darkest nights he might just get a glimpse of how true that is.
2. In the case of this incredibly stupid swine flu nonsense, he also happens to be entirely Correct.
It's social engineering and it's painfully, shamefully obvious. --The "Evil Terrorist Under The Bed" is no longer doing the trick. So now you need to fear the sniffles. --Those un-insightful hacks over at Penny Arcade have just lost what few atoms of respect I had for them by trumpeting this stupidity. If I were feeling more annoyed with humanity than normal, I'd be very rude right about now to everybody who takes this swine-flu nonsense seriously. But then, I HAVE been turned into a jelly of a man by the right people a couple of times, so I know when to take a deep breath and remember that asking a three year-old to explain higher math is just as unreasonable as expecting people to not fall for monumentally stupid shit just because authority figures on TV tell them to do so.
-FL
Sleep issues? Hm. That's really interesting.
First though, I want to point out that I intend no offense; as it happens, I've had several people in my life who are very dear to me who have experienced or who currently experience chronic illnesses which are poorly understood by medicine but the symptoms of which are clearly real. But I do have some observations which you may well find to be upsetting. They are, however, based on long observation and maybe they could be useful to you. Maybe not.
I've spent years watching people I love dearly live in torment and not address really obvious issues which I can't help but think are related, or at least worthy of attention when they seem willing to try absolutely everything else which is safe while avoiding like mad the truly scary things. One had chronic fatigue to the point where she couldn't walk. Another who could never get a full breath of air and who had to pee pretty much every half hour, leading to sleep problems. Another friend hasn't had more than an hour of REM sleep in about twenty-five years. Another could do nothing BUT sleep for about two years, and missed a lot of school because of it; I have two close friends like that, actually. One of them was hospitalized for several months because of it when she was a teenager. That's quite the handful of people, and traditional medicine has been pretty much at a loss in each of their cases.
Three of them recovered, others continue to suffer. The interesting thing I have noted is that each of these people had at least one massive and over-arching emotional/psychological challenge in their lives. I am not at liberty to go into details except to say that these challenges are and have been very difficult, particularly given each person involved. It is as if somebody tailored the perfect nemesis for each individual, some being subtle but cancerous problems related to self-confidence, while others are much more overt. All of the problems are/were persistent, years-long situations. Anyway, the curious fact of the matter is that those friends of mine who stepped up and faced those challenges, fought their fears, and who consequently won, (they are all entirely powerful people more than capable of winning given the application of effort), have also stopped being sick. The chronic illnesses which dominated their lives and saw them in hospitals, etc., are now only odd memories which seemed to have happened to other people. Meanwhile, those friends of mine who choose to continue to hide from their challenges remain in chronic suffering.
And since you asked: I hit the gym at least three times a week. There has been some evidence that exercising your legs at night helps them relax. In addition to weights, I make sure I get in my time on the elliptical machines. I get plenty of thigh and calf exercise. It still doesn't completely resolve the limb movement issue. I have also tried "supplements" like magnesium which are supposed to help muscles relax. Nothing really does the trick for me.
It has been my observation that the body and the mind and the spirit are not separated.
For some reason, in our culture we like to put our body in the gym and our minds in school and our spirits in churches and think that we can live effectively with this total disunion. Many people fail to pay attention to all three areas of their lives, (and I'm not recommending church by any stretch, but spiritual awareness of some kind is pretty much vital), and those who do manage to work with all three often fail to recognize that they are not supposed to be observed in isolation, but that they inform and in fact require each other. Another observation I have made is that those of my friends who have defeated their nemeses and recovered their health have also figured out how to put their mind, body and spirits into balance. In fact, I suspect that these challenges might be formed specifically as a means to coerce the individual toward discovering that union.
Maybe this means something useful to you. Maybe not. Either way, I do wish you the best of luck in facing your RLS issues.
-FL
This is one of the most offensive questions I have read in a long time. Wow. Have you considered what it must be like to live with a terrible illness?
It's only offensive to you because you are reacting without understanding. The question was blunt and it is a difficult one to answer, granted, but it is also very relevant and I was not intending any offense.
I've known several people with chronic 'mystery' conditions whose lives are demonstrably miserable as a result. But guess what? Every last one of them has spent years seeking safe answers while avoiding like crazy dealing with the towering and obvious psychological/emotional blockages in their lives, who persist in eating terrible food, and who are generally too scared or knotted up inside or confused to know how to face their real issues. It's all connected. --The right pill never seems to come along, and meanwhile they remain in abusive relationships, or refuse to admit that they're gay, or remain too scared to seize their place in the world, or whatever it happens to be. I've seen numerous crippling variations, and I can tell you that with the people I've known like this, some would rather suffer from a mystery illness than deal with their own lives despite what they might claim to the contrary, --while others simply haven't connected the dots yet.
I'm not saying that legitimate, purely medical conditions don't exist. But I do think this kind of thing is worth considering, which is why I asked the question. --That, and because I'm curious to expand my understanding of this sort of thing. If he wants to get angry with me then he may feel free to do so, and I will understand. But I think your indignation is both misplaced and not terribly useful.
-FL
When looking over all the responses to your post, I am reminded that there are certain buttons you can push in a geek which make them jump like the floor was electrified. Rushing to split a hair they bloody well know doesn't need splitting is a classic response in the attention-starved smart-kid. "Look at me! I'm still the smartest kid in the room! Love MEEEE!"
--Tends to happen when you take a smart kid who traded on brain power to win easy love as a child, but who then got dumped into one of those special "gifted" programs where all the other little Einsteins went to engage in the perpetual IQ cage-match with the teacher's "love" being the prize.
-FL
I *knew* some asshole in this discussion would have to mention Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). No, RLS is not a "designer disease" made-up by drug companies to sell more Requip.
Maybe not, but it sure as hell gave wet dreams to the marketing people over at "Drugs Are Us". --Take an existing condition, blow it all out of whack and convince the easily convinced that they've 'got' it, (whatever 'it' is, which they clearly don't have a hard bead on since none of their drugs have apparently worked for you.) Heck, when I focus my attention on my own legs, they also start to tingle in an irritating way until I move them.
--I met a copy editor who works in the pharmaceutical industry, and she explained to me that everybody in her line of work is desperate right now because there's nothing to sell; not like the good old days when that penis-hardening medication came out. With house payments to make and a family to care for, she'd sell any kind of snake oil to get by. I have no doubt whatsoever that RLS is mostly bullshit pushed by non-believers even by the guys selling the drugs.
Still, I wish you good luck in solving your problem. I don't mean to seem disrespectful, but I am curious. . . Have you looked at the obvious stuff? --Like getting a job which you love, doing lots of exercise outdoors for the fun of it, eating properly and generally diving into the work of cleaning out all the false automatic crap from the machine of your mind?
-FL
Frankly, I wish everybody carried a handgun, so people would stop overreacting about them. It would also completely change the dynamic of a crazed gun-toting maniac threatening a crowd of people when the whole crowd responds by pulling out their own pistols. "Oh shit" would be the most common response, I imagine.
I've heard this argument and it's faulty. You're assuming that everybody carries the same level of personal responsibility.
I remember being so angry at points when I was 18 years old that had I access to a fire arm, I would have pointed it at people and pulled the trigger. --Specific times like this I remember were not in the heat of the moment. They were after imagining insults which were not intended and working myself up into a homicidal head of steam, seeking out, and then exploding at people and being fully prepared to die in the process. I consider myself today to be one of the more sane people, but I was a pretty hair-trigger teenager at times. In your world, I'd have to walk around in a permanent state of wariness, fearful that some hormonally crazed teen, drunkard, crack-head, mentally challenged person, or any garden-variety idiot was going to go mad and start shooting for no good reason. And honestly, there are far fewer good reasons for shooting at another person than there are shootings. Whereas there are a LOT of fantastically retarded idiots posing as adults out there. Saying that everybody should be armed is very full of bravado, but it hinges on faulty logic and a lack of insight into the human condition.
Where the paradox comes in, (and there's always a paradoxical problem to solve), is that I really don't like the idea of governments disarming people. They don't do it to help the people, but rather because they don't want to have any civilians able to threaten their choke-hold on power. However, I don't think it really matters. The fact that people lived through eight years of Bush rule without deposing the psychotic leadership means that all those guns in the public are in the hands of people who will never do anything anyway about corrupt government anyway, so the point is moot.
-FL
Unfortunately, I quite being a girl years ago. But, I still consider myself attractive. At least I'm not fat and bald like a lotta (male) people my age.
I know several Yoga teachers, and one of them is a positively plain looking creature in her late forties. But she glows and moves around town like some sort of Hindu goddess. Awesome. It's all about the soul in the end. --I find that happiness, confidence and a clean mental machine really are the things which make people beautiful. Took a couple of decades to figure that one out. I can't be around angry/sad/fractured personalities for very long no matter what they 'look' like.
-FL
Although I've never been able to verify my guess because about then one or all of them will ask the bartender to see me out. I take this as a consensus on their part that if one of them can't have me then, in the name of friendship, they'll jointly and severally forego my company. I usually leave peacefully not wanting to destroy any close friendships.
Reminds me of this football dude I once knew who, stoned on LSD at a party and having achieved a high state of paranoia, picked up the host by his collar, slammed him against a wall and bellowed at him, "I bet you've got hidden cameras trying to film me while I take a piss! You sick fuck!" --Then while telling this story, he turned to me and added, "And when I said that, I could tell he was SCARED. That's how I knew I was right about the cameras!"
Priceless!
-FL
I've had the same experience, but that's usually only when I'm having an arrogant day where my patience for humanity is at a low point. --For the record, during such times I find most women are slow to stopped-dead as well. That goes double for the cute ones. Sad but true.
The rarity is the pretty girl who is also brilliant, but she's usually got so many defenses up that you can't have a decent conversation with her regardless. The older I get, the more I think that physical beauty is over-rated. People should go to conferences blind-folded if they really want to 'see' others.
-FL
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of Hand Bags. . .
"A handbag, it says, is the most massively useful thing an intergalactic hitchhiker can have. [Insert witty Adams-isms about the usefulness of hand bags here.] [. . .] thus leading to The Great Counterfeit Hand Bag Crisis of the early twenty-first century. The judges, lawyers and general rif-raf of the legal profession as it happened all had wives who were partial to their expensive accessories and none too pleased to see cheap knock-offs of their own fashionable handbags being carried about by simply EVERY other woman on the street. As such, the wives exerted their collective will toward the task of making their husbands entirely miserable until something was done about this altogether offensive state of affairs. Now, as is well recognized that the collective might of any large group of truly unhappy women is approximately equal in its force upon a planetary culture as a prolonged, large-scale military engagement, it was not long before the crime of hand bag counterfeiting was elevated to the very top of the list of humanity's most heinous mis-doings, right up there with the really bad stuff, --like listening to music without a license, and forcing children to make handbags and other fashion accessories in musty sweat-shops. Indeed, handbag counterfeiting and listening to music without a license were swiftly and severely punished leading to the establishment of a planet-wide police state. And while sweat-shop labor received somewhat less attention, it was nonetheless strongly frowned upon; people would shuffle while looking at their shoes and utter things like, "Oh, yes, well that's simply terrible, that is! Simple terrible." Indeed, it was considered altogether so terrible that it was often considered wise to simply not mention it at all, particularly when attending those swank gatherings where the finest handbags were on display."
-FL
Wow. Marvel has sucked at controlling its rights. They fling their lawyers around like idiots with dice. Remember "Marveloution" back when they tried to buy up all the comic book distributors and have their own little "Marvel" stores?
Fail. They were too inept. Bit off more than they could chew. The screwed up the comics industry but good so that it took nearly a decade for everybody to get back on their feet.
Now Disney, on the other hand. . .
They know how to suck the soul out of a property and employ slave labor in China to make toys in a manner only Todd McFarlane could fantasize about! Oh yes indeedy! --The seedy beginnings of Marvel, (Didja know it sprang from the same family publishing um. . , 'empire' from which the classy skin-mag "Hustler" grew? Now you do. You're welcome.), all the way through their never quite taken seriously by 'real' publisher trajectory. . , that's what makes Marvel Marvel.
And that's why Marvel has always felt edgy and honest, (if adolescent and stupid half the time) and all kind of held together with spit and. . , well, staples. It's been run by a long succession of people who don't fit into respectable society and who don't really understand business, --and who had a lot of fun (and a lot of burn-out) as a result. For all its warts, I love Marvel. --While Disney is pretty much an evil entity; It has no character and no soul except the practiced gleaming smile of a charming sociopath. --Hopefully they'll catch whatever Marvel has, get the shakes and die. But I'm not holding my breath on that.
I hope comic shops don't change too much. Comic shops are one of the few paper media outlets which don't feel like they've sold out. (They would have if they could, and heaven knows they've tried, but the truth is, they've never had any capital the rest of the world really wants or understands, and so selling out hasn't been a serious option until these movies started coming out. Until then they had nothing to sell but adolescent power/sex fantasies and the occasional gem tagging along for the ride. If Disney gets its teeth in, do we really think that people like Jeff Smith and Dave Sim could have done their thing?) Hopefully Manga will keep things creepy and weird enough to prevent the grown ups from tidying up.
After all, there's a dark and a light side to everything. Maybe Disney won't screw it up.
Heh. Yeah. . . You gotta have a dream.
-FL
Wonderful (and rather hilarious)! --Somebody actually found a use for the stuff. . .
When "Silly Putty" was first invented, they thought, "Oh please! There has GOT to be something this is useful for!" That was fifty years ago, give or take. They tried fitting the solution to every problem they could think of, but it turned out to an overwhelming task. The best they could come up with was to sell it in plastic eggs.
(I got that little history tidbit from the slightly less abridged version which was printed on the reverse side of a piece of cardboard my Silly Putty egg came packaged in).
Looks like somebody finally managed to work how to sell the stuff for real. They just mixed in some orange dye, changed the name and used the word, "Military" in the ad copy. And they're probably charging hella-serious money for the end result, too. Whatever. That's probably how I'd go about it as well.
--And contrary to what somebody pointed out elsewhere, I suspect that this Orange Goo would lose shape and run if left standing. But the goop as these people are selling it is contained in another fabric of some sort, rather like air is to bubble-wrap. --If the keychain sample pictured in the article is anything to go by, that is.
So. . , cute.
You know it's an interesting day when somebody solves a 50 year-old marketing dilemma with orange dye and a some PVC sheets.
-FL
You wouldn't mind answering a simple question, would you? Are you a neocon, or a republican? Wait - scratch that. The question is better phrased as, Are you a rabid neocon, or a foaming at the mouth republican?
Dear sir, while your gentlemanly approach is appreciated by those with fully function brains, I fear your liberal form of criticism is lost on this pug. --As I strongly suspect the man is simply barking mad. Or a mangy troll.
-FL
I think you've hit on something here.
We all read the story just a little while ago about how so-called "multitaskers" are in fact incompetent idiots. And NOW they're dangerous incompetent idiots! The psychological connection is easily made without our realizing it was made for us.
But you're right! There's a problem. While popular opinions agrees that texting while driving is bad, (it kills! It affects everybody who ever needs to cross the street), unlike drunk driving, there's no blood test for blackberry use.
But wait!
--If you had some sort of. . , I don't know. . , say, black-box in the car which recorded everything the car does and when it does it, then you could compare that information with the phone records of the driver's blackberry account, and you could 'prove' that texting was taking place when an accident occurred!
Now, Slashdot is usually a strong holdout for privacy rights, and geeks and engineers are one of the most important driving forces for how societal infrastructure is designed. --If you want to build a prison nation, you first have to convince the engineer geeks that we need such a thing, otherwise there will be all kinds of problems in achieving it. So the question is raised, "how do you convert a bunch of entrenched privacy proponents to accept black boxes in cars? --No, to DEMAND black boxes in cars?"
Why you run a couple of stories with the exact angles as we have seen here, and then you've just manipulated a bunch of geeks into accepting that which they would normally reject on principle.
Simple and effective.
And don't think it doesn't work that way. Slashdot editors are just as prone to mind-control as anybody else. Laugh if you want, but part of you knows you can't write me off entirely. Others know just how close I really am.
-FL
I live here, I have suffered this last 10 years just because I decided to have an education and work hard, that makes my an Oligarch, along with all the middle class, go figure, Venezuela is the only country in the world with 4 million oligarchs [. . .] You have no idea, along with all your countrymen posting here, of the kind of monster you are breeding with your oil money.
So let me take a stab at understanding your thinking here. . , oil wealth is BAD because in this case it is not being raped from your country by my country. This means that your government is able to use that money to pour into Venezuela as it sees fit as opposed to how an American corporation would see fit. (And the American corporation would, of course, pour a smaller but more concentrated stream of that wealth into the pockets of the rich parents of your school chums, who in turn would be happy to maintain a national state of serfdom.) Yes, I begin to see the logic behind your comments.
I also feel compelled to point out that in a country of around 26.4 million, your (presumptuous) figure of 4 million people is hardly what a sane person could term a 'middle class'. When one sixth of the population is rich and the rest are essentially serfs, you are looking at what is better understood as, "a well-and-truly fucked up system". When Chavez is working to balance the wealth, it is to be expected that the privileged sons and daughters of the rich claim that they arrived at their positions by "Hard Work" rather than from "benefiting from slavery", and that any change to the system which would prevent their continued exploitation of other humans is naturally going to be contested with asinine examples of the sort you offer. There's nothing wrong with wealth, but preventing others from sharing in it through suppression and subversion is evil.
As propaganda hits hardest at home, and as you sound like the Venezuelan version of a dumb & selfish republican, I suspect you are a poor representative of the truth.
There are plenty of people in the U.S. who think that they know what's going on, and who screech the same kind of bullshit about home-grown politics. And like you, most of them appear to be suffering from a form mental retardation where reality and emotional day-dreams get all mixed up together.
And yes, I am basing my opinions on more than the contents of just one film, thank-you very much.
-FL
The other two contained less moral fiber and thus failed to report theirs.
In fact, I think the Dark Lord sent out twelve rings, and five turned theirs in because they got the heebie-jeebies. (Tolkien left that part out because he wasn't Roald Dahl.)
-FL
I think you're confusing "literacy" with "knowledgeable".
Being able to "read, write and comprehend a written language" doesn't ensure that one is going to read, write or comprehend anything worthy of attention.
-FL
Hm. This is weird.
There's a real user going by the name of "clint" with some clout around here.
I wonder if this longteng nitwit is trying to muddy that name because s/he lost a debate with clint and and can't find any decent way of dealing with it?
Interesting. Low, lame, (and rather Republican), but interesting.
-FL