Dude. It's not about people wanting to avoid the glorification of mean-spirited, exclusionary, Jr. High editorializing. It's about lamenting the slide of Slashdot into the same gutter which swallowed television with it's 'reality' TV, day time talk shows, and people who cry 'whiner' because they don't/can't understand the issues at hand but still want to impose their ignorance on the rest of humanity. If you don't want to hear people complain about this slide into check-out counter journalism, then you might be best suited to hang out with Fox & Friends. You'd get along well with those. . , 'pinheads'.
Slashdot is full of trip, flame wars, script kiddies, all flavor of zealot, intolerance.[...]
Yes, and until now the editors maintained a level of professional distance and restraint, which must have been supremely difficult to do and for which I have always had the highest respect. I've heard a lot of ill-considered gripes about Slashdot over the years, and I've rebuked them because I held the editorial staff in such high regard for exactly the reasons mentioned. This new direction feels lousy. It looks like a somewhat desperate attempt to maintain market share in a universe filling up with an increasingly ignorant population of web-users. Dumbing down to stay relevant? That sucks and I find it depressing, and I bet you anything that several of the editors are probably having a hard time living with it.
"Proof that the stated reason for needing to invade Iran is a hoax and that the Western Media and Government are lying, blood-thirsty, psychotic tools. I'll sell the info to the highest bidder."
On the surface, such a statement appears disgusting.
The ONLY logic I can see here, (assuming that the Wikileaks guys aren't a bunch of sell-outs which seems inconsistent with their sole reason for existing), is that Wikileaks is gaming the system for mind-share.
It will be interesting to see how this move affects awareness of Venezuela on the global chess board. --Um, no. Correction. The world is too brain-damaged at this point for chess. At this point, it's just the global checker board. South America is next in line to be 'jumped' by the Empire.
This is a multi-billion dollar company. They, along with all the other banks, own Everything. --Correction; they lent the money needed to purchase Everything, and now are owed it all back with interest. God couldn't even pay that bill!
So, poor, poor Lloyds can't handle it when the slaves mutter amongst themselves? Geez! And that's it right there; the same petty fear of Everything (including the most harmless of school-yard slurs), drives their desire to control Everything. Pathetic.
As has been pointed out by many helpful Slashdotters, there are plenty of other cigarette pack-sized computers which have come before this one, but I would ask, "How many of those were built to meet space-travel specifications?"
I believe the idea behind this one, (assuming my cursory read-through of the article is correct), is that it's guaranteed to survive and perform perfectly after being blasted into space in the nosecone of a bloody-great controlled bomb. I rather doubt my monster desktop computer could manage that even under the best of circumstances. 1,500 quid is a bargain.
-your first thought when seeing the title is, "Well, of course. Gaming the system is always done for profit motives." And on good days, you also say, "But selfish systems always collapse from corruption-rot in the end." And on not-so-good days you add, "Of course, they'll take the rest of us down with them when they go."
If I was an evil enforcer faced with lazy minions claiming that the boss was tasking them with the impossible, I'd just just say, "You can tell him yourself when the Emperor arrives...."
I still had pictures and other junk in the closet of my old bedroom from 25 years ago. I WISH it would have degraded so I didn't have to go through the emotional strain of finally throwing it all out when my parents sold the house. It would have saved me the travel expenses, too.
But if you don't have a handy closet, then you can make prints on archival-quality paper with archival-quality inks and seal it all in a case filled with inert gas. Archivists have whole catalogs of products which are designed specifically for this kind of project, their clients include libraries and such. Most cities have an archive department; they'd probably be willing to have you visit for a Q&A. (In fact, thinking back to an old school trip I once went on, it struck me that the head archivist was overjoyed to have anybody come by expressing an interest in his work.)
While hard copies are probably the most reliable way to go, the question of long-term digital storage is certainly an interesting one. I know I used to be able to get gold-substrate non-recordable CDs made, and while others have said the components will probably be fused and useless in a couple of decades of zero-use, I'd include not just a CD player, but a whole computer system. You never know. Voyager lasted well-beyond its projected service life, though I suspect NASA was using the highest quality of parts available at the time. Maybe you could find some old mechanical floppy disk players; the kind with big clunky parts. I suspect that big and clunky will have a longer shelf-life than cheap, tiny and designed to break down after a three year product cycle.
Maybe you could print out a roll of paper tape in bar-code format and include a bar-code reader with schematics so the future people can build one themselves if they felt so motivated. Heck, punch cards and an old reader might stand the test of time. Paper seems to do well. I wonder if they still make papyrus products.
Oooh. You could store data on DNA strings and then leave it in the form of sea-monkey eggs! (Kinda makes you wonder if we're not all walking around with somebody's snap shots in our genes right now.)
You have a massive budget for this, no doubt, so just for fun, duplicate the set-up a few times and bury each for a different duration; 25 years, 50 years, 100, etc.
Otherwise, I'd just ask one of your students to leave it in his or her closet and bring the package to the school reunion. (Assuming you're a teacher. Who else gets to do this kind of cool project?)
Why? I am not a very nice person. I don't like nice people. In short, I am a prick and I don't want or need to change.
Then you have a long, long way to go, my friend. True happiness waits patiently for pricks to stop being pricks, and wisdom is tied to happiness far more tightly than most realize. I'd wish you good luck, but that would defeat the lesson. Bye now.
Thanks for the links, but I will say that you would benefit from adjusting your attitude. Ego games are selfish and people will refuse to accept what they are offered if the person offering is trying to 'win'; all progress slows to a painful crawl.
Anyway, plane wreckage photos I've seen plenty of, and I do recall now seeing one or two of the burned body images some years ago, but they clearly didn't leave much impact.
I don't see any of the bodies strapped into airplane seats. I see a couple of bodies at odd angles, not in rows, their clothes sort of fossilized, but no evidence of seat belt straps or buckles, --or airplane seats for that matter. One of the men looks rather like he is wearing work coveralls; possibly a maintenance staff member or contractor working in the building, which would be a reasonable thing to expect given the state of the section under construction at the time. The other burned fragments say little about where they came from. This doesn't really help illustrate anything about whether or not the government's story can be believed.
I have never seen Neil Armstrong, neither have I seen Pluto. Doubting that Pluto exists and that Armstrong walked the moon is somewhat retarded though.
I take your point, however, to be very blunt, the Pentagon is not on the Moon, and manipulating the American public into a war-for-profit doesn't hinge on the existence of Pluto. Indeed, there is plenty of excellent, peer-reviewed evidence for the existence of both Neil Armstrong's exploits and for Pluto; untold mountains of it all available for public review with no weird secrecy attached to it. The same cannot be said of the incidents which took place on 9-11. This is why people are asking questions and projecting theories. --You have expressed your frustration with the fact that the public seems to support GWB, so you probably already have some idea how reliable and honest a government he runs. Is it beyond question that he and his staff should perhaps not be considered honest and reliable in this case?
Hearing requires listening. Given the enormous amount of noise in our current information society, it also means filtering. Your problem is that your filters are failing and you are listening to what is just random bullshit noise and you think it is communication.
Ha ha. You are in a very poor position be making such bold assumptions about me. --In any case, as a point of note on filtering. . . While you have expressed disinterest in this subject, if for some reason you do decide to continue digging, I would suggest you do some research on that link to [rense.com] you provided. --The man behind that site is a liar, (claims a long career as a respected television journalist where there isn't one), he and those in alliance with him are confessed Christian apocalypse cultists and he has done some very strange and reprehensible things which lead many to consider him a COINTEL tool. I eventually found his site too much bother to pick through; it's hard enough to work out truth from fiction without there being agendas running in the background and deliberately misleading information sown into the product.
I haven't been "focused" on this at all. The case as such doesn't interest me all that much.
I am sure you have your reasons, but I always ask: "Why not?" --If the results of that case are not currently shaping your life, they will be soon enough. For my part, I like to know the 'what' and 'why' behind the 'is'.
Then I have a simple question for you. The entire inside of the Pentagon was littered with airplane debris, including burned and charred bodies strapped in airplane seats.
Airplane parts I can understand since I think an airplane of some kind struck the building. But the weird thing is that I've never seen any evidence of passenger's bodies at the Pentagon. I've barely even heard of any evidence of passenger's bodies at the Pentagon, and what I have heard is really thin. --Until, that is, the information stream resurfaces at the military DNA lab, where there are no pictures, but only official reporting. I know there is a level of respect which fire fighters show for the dead, but it still seems curious that we should have heard nothing at all.
I do know there is at least one photo of charred remains floating around, but a cursory look hasn't turned it up again. In any case, I don't recall it being strapped into an airplane seat, so it is just as likely to have been one of the 125 office workers. . , (almost twice as likely actually, given the supposed jet carried 64 passengers and crew plus 5 supposed terrorists). Now, to be fair, I've not spent as much time focusing on the question of bodies as perhaps you have, so maybe my whole theory will fall apart with a simple link, but after nearly seven years of looking through stuff of this sort, it seems odd that so little should have surfaced. Do you have any useful links or pictures?
I wholeheartedly agree with every point but #4. Either the plane crashed or they had to stash some people somewhere. Nobody is gonna waste the time to kill them on the ground and burn the bodies. Explain where they went.
The Pentagon took a fair bit of energy to really work my mind around. At first I was astounded that anybody could claim that anything but the airliner struck the building. It was clear that there were impact marks on the walls from wings. But witness testimony is inconsistent on the subject, and malleable given that in a state of shock, it is possible given the right cues to tell people what they saw and have it stick in the form of memory. One of the big items for me was that a pair of big jet engines would have made a pair of big holes, but there was only the single hole. There were many other weird bits and pieces surrounding that incident, flight recorders out of sync with the event, missing video, etc. Unlike with the WTC attacks, the explanations given for the significant questions I take seriously are, I found, nowhere nearly as sound or convincing.
I don't see why it is unreasonable to think that in a plan to crash airliners and launch a war, there would be any hesitance in killing a few dozen passengers on the ground. It should be noted concerning any bodies recovered at the Pentagon, about which there is precious little information available, the DNA testing itself was done on a military base rather than in the public domain. I don't feel comfortable taking the military's word for what they found given that were there a deliberate attempt to stage the attacks, the military would have had a hand in it in the first place and therefore could not be trusted to be honest after the fact about any crimes they may have committed. We really have no idea what happens inside a military operation, and making sure people do not talk is much easier to achieve within such a system than it is in the public realm.
When it comes to the plane parts pictured in the aftermath, it always struck me as odd that nobody has yet considered the possibility that pieces might have been loaded on to whatever craft was crashed into the Pentagon. --Assuming that the parts didn't come from the craft itself. Were I in charge of planning the incident, this would have been a fairly obvious ploy and would have certainly been on my list of preparations. --As would have been painting the appropriate colors and even false windows on the stage aircraft in order to create an effective illusion.
From the get go, the controlled demolition idea struck me as 'off' somehow. If the goal was to persuade the country into war, then a single airplane crashing into a single building would have been plenty of motivation. Heck, the sinking of one passenger ship, (the Lusitania) was enough to inspire the national outrage required to get the U.S. into WWI. A couple of gun boat attacks on American destroyers in the "Gulph of Tonkin incident", (half of which turned out to be a mistaken report which nobody denies) was enough to get the U.S. to jump into Vietnam. Coupled with the right level of media encouragement, a medium-sized disaster is all that is required. Four crashing airliners on 9-11 was more than spectacular enough to launch a war.
So why go on to massively complicate things by planning a demolition of the three towers? The only two answers I've seen which suggest motive were the Silverstein profit gamble and the fact that WC7 housed a bunch of incriminating paperwork. But motive does not prove anything by itself; it has to be supported by evidence. --I've seen the Loose Change video and others, I've read all the arguments, and many of them raise clear and logical concerns. And I have gone over all the other evidence from the debunking side. They pretty much cancel one another out on the Twin Towers issue. --This is not to say that the debunkers are entirely rational. (The Popular Mechanics version of reality was perhaps one of the most arrogant, simple-minded and unconvincing.) Rather, it is the work of private individuals who put together the more rational arguments on the "natural collapse due to fire" side. (A good example of this is here.) --Though, even they offer up some pretty thinly-stretched and in my view, totally unnecessary ideas in their attempts to explain certain details. Indeed, everybody, on both sides, sport some pretty poor arguments. --But that's not a problem! All ideas, all questions and the attempts to answer them, the dialogue is entirely valid as people explore what happened on that day. All in all, it has been a spirited and very thoughtful debate with a lot of smart people contributing on both sides.
My personal conclusions?
1. Secretive portions of more than one government not only had foreknowledge, but actively strained against the well-intentioned systems in order to allow the attacks to take place, and indeed worked at certain levels to set various elements of it in place.
2. There is plenty of photographic/video evidence of the steel structure deforming and falling down as a result of fire. The big argument against this is that jet fuel cannot create enough heat. However, there were plenty of other combustibles in the fire, not the least of which being the several dozen oxygen generator canisters the planes were equipped with. I've worked with an iron forge, and simple bio-carbons, like coal in a forge, or in the case of the buildings, furniture and paper and plastics, etc., when subject to a steady airflow like a bellows or high-altitude winds, is sufficient to create high enough temperatures to take steel past the point of structural integrity and even melt it. The "Never Before Has This Happened to a Steel Building" arguments are faulty on a number of levels, not the least of which being that it's not even properly accurate. There are however, as far as I have seen, a couple of unanswered questions remaining; the claims of mysterious construction being done and the removal of bomb-sniffing dogs and the shut-off of security systems in the week leading up to the event is curious to say the least. I wonder if perhaps there might not have been more than one effort involved in the events of 9-11 rather than that of a single unified group.
3. WC7 is different question and it is less clear cut, but my impression after going over the many, once again valid questions raised by those suggesting that the building was
So there we were, in 2001...minding our own business, in the middle of the dot-com bubble burst, and something happened. I don't remember what. Something in September? Oh! it's because we invaded Iraq?
You are assuming that the action was not stage-managed to the hilt precisely so that you would adopt the very thinking you currently hold. I have waded through mountains of the information surrounding that day, I've seen both the silly as well as the excellent, thoughtful arguments from smart people arguing both for and against the various interpretations of what happened. At the end of it all I have concluded that the official story is filled with contradictions, blank spots, damning testimony and outright examples of manipulation all of which, taken together, paints a very clear picture of very deliberate wrong-doing on the part of the U.S. government.
I recommend that everybody take the time to really research this stuff and to hold off on making any assumptions until they have looked at the whole picture. There have been some documentaries made quite recently which are the result of similar careful siftings through the information; these are simple but effective ways to present the best thinking of dedicated researchers, and while they cannot take the place of one's own explorations, they are a quick way to get up to speed on the present state of knowledge on the subject. When a documentary is made years after an event, the forensic thinking is able to reach a high level of competence and precision. Take another look.
Bush will be out of the office in 5 months. How is he going to set the world on fire in five years? Especially if you think Obama is going to win the election?
Bush is just a piece of the psychopathic machine. He is replaceable, because the preparations are all in place. The institutions have been created, the legal bodies have been re-worked, the prison camps have been built, and the presence of mercenary armies with no national loyalty has been established, all culminating under the Bush regime.
Obama getting into office is far from certain. Aside from the increasingly effective fear-campaigning being done by the Republicans, there is still the looming issue of voting machine scandal. If Obama does manage to take office, that would be the best case scenario, but Obama is far from perfect. He's still a religious man who supports Israel, (big problem there, since Israel is one of the big engines driving war in the Middle East). And he's stated more than once that war with Pakistan might be inevitable. He has done little if anything to oppose to the whole idea that Iran is a major threat. I don't really know which way Obama would jump if the economy collapsed and there was a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. It's somewhat comforting to think that he's the 'good cop', but still. . .
The second worse case scenario would be if McCain gets into office. That way, the current course of decay and war-mongering will continue with the probable result being nuclear exchanges in the Middle East and some sort of retaliation on U.S. soil which would be the excuse needed to impose martial law. The economy is currently being held in check from sliding completely into disaster as the elections approach, which suggests that a continuation of the stage production of political stability is desired at some level.
The worst case scenario is that 'something' will happen between now and January, in which case all bets are off.
Current trends suggest that we are entering a re-energized version of the cold war with Russia as the lead player. Bush is pressing for a continuation of the European missile shield, and Russia has angrily responded that this will require re-arming on their side of the line. That also suggests that there is a desire for a kind of stability of sorts, if the old rules of nuclear brinkmanship are revisited.
The patterns are all converging, but I don't know what shape they will take. The destruction on 95% of the world's population is the goal of the dark side. There are some hopeful claims that the big bad plan is doomed to fail, so I kind of clutch to that, but one of the ways to avoid it as I see it, is to stay aware and keep an eye out for all the negative possibilities, which once recognized have a way of being defused.
You've changed my mind. I'm voting for McCain simply to piss you off.
What an odd reaction. Rather like a five-year old, don't you think? What is it exactly that you found so upsetting in what I said? Was it the idea that you were made a fool of when you were tricked by the Bush administration during the lead-up to the Iraq war? Or is it the idea that your reality might become very, very scary in the near future and you find the idea so repulsive that irrational reaction against me personally is preferable to looking at such uncomfortable and very likely possibilities?
Sadly, your childish reaction is a common one. --And it is for this reason that the world is burning now. People get what they deserve and what they are ready for. If everybody was too enlightened to be so easily duped into making illogical, fear and ego-based choices in their lives, then the world could make the transition into the future with a great deal less blood and fear.
I hope people don't forget, (I'm talking to YOU Slashdot), how everybody bought into the whole propaganda push to invade Iraq. "Cakewalk" "War over in Ten Weeks" "WMD's"
People around here were salivating with images of Command & Conquer tanks dancing in their heads and I got slammed for saying, "Uh, this is going to be a quagmire, it's going to be incredibly expensive and the justification for this war is thin to the point of not even being there." --And that was before all the lies and manipulations became public.
The Bush gang are sick war-hawks eager to create conditions for a world-wide police state where massive amounts of the world population can be culled, oil profits can be had by a very small few, war profits can be had by a very small few, and opium profits can by maintained. These wars are about greed and control, and they have nothing to do with the stated rationalizations and these stupid stories about, "Oooh, Iran is Sooo ScArY". Don't get fooled again!
But most of you will, and the economy will tank even worse than it already has, and many people will be starving in concentration camps before the next five years are out. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm usually not. Sorry. Bush blew up frogs with firecrackers before going on to become a coke-head. He's a psychopath, and he'll smile and be all cuddly as he continues to set the world on fire.
You think you've seen the story and know the details, but the investigations continue with new data rising to the top. This is one of the latest on 9-11.
All of that could true (i'm not going to get into the details of your delusional post)
Delusional, but it could all be true? Hm. Don't you find that a bit dyslexic? If you are going to toss about a term like, 'Delusional', you'll have to back that up because with the rest of your 'insightful' post, you are playing very strongly into the propaganda in a very predictable way.
We would benefit from paying close attention to our reactions today because you and others are broadcasting exactly the same kinds of patterns we saw in Slashdotters (and most other people in the West), during the lead-up to war in Iraq, which I don't think any rational person can claim has improved the world. The Bill O'Riellys and Joe Scarboroughs of the world are not rational people, in case you are wondering what I use as my benchmark for 'rational'.
If I were a troll, (sorry folks, I'm not. I just speak what I think as honestly as I can), then I guess I found the magic formula for 'piss everybody off'.
You can always tell when you're getting a bit too close to some sensitive mark when all the knee-jerkers jump on you. --Keeping in mind, this isn't about abortion, or religion or privacy, or any such typical and fairly normal subject of rational debate. This is about government corruption and psychopathy, the truths of which are virtually impossible to argue against when the data is presented, which is why, you'll notice, that few of the comments seen thus far have any content except exclamations of ridicule and emotional disagreement with zero content. I've even read a few people trying to claim that tormenting small animals is normal behavior!!
The reactions I got when trying to point out the flaws with the, then-impending war with Iraq were similarly charged and light-weight.
Take note, my friends! Things bode ill if such comments are any indicator of the broad public mind. Watch that film I linked to in the parent post. It's just one film, but it would be constructive if you wish to disagree to comment on actual points made there, as it would give us a common point of reference to work from rather than our having to endure more of this aimless complaining.
I, for one, often used firecrackers to blow up small creatures... though I had to stop when the neighbors complained about missing cats. They thought I was blowing them up (joke's on them, though, I never blew up a cat... I dissected them, just like Tom Daschle).
I hope you are joking. Killing neighborhood pets is one of the top indicators of psychopathy. Boys will certainly be boys, but most of the kids I knew while growing up were conscientious people who would be horrified by the idea. I remember hearing about a couple of fights erupting over the fate of small animals at the hands of one or two of the more twisted kids in my time in elementary and junior high school. What you describe is utterly monstrous and entirely abnormal behavior for most of the population. Of course, the psychotic individual is incapable of registering what the true state of reality or 'normal' is around them. In any case, you are wrong, and like I said, I hope you are joking. If not, I very much hope you find yourself under a bus sometime rather soon. It's that bad.
I was with you for the first couple paragraphs, but that post took a nose-dive into conspiracyland after that. When I got to the 9-11 bit I would have laughed if it all weren't so sad.
This is a very typical reaction which I find common in people who have limited information and who are primarily motivated by the fear of being laughed at. I notice you use the threat of laughter in your criticism of my comments, which strongly suggests that you believe such a threat holds real weight. People generally only seek to press buttons in others which they fear having pressed in themselves. This is a matter of social conditioning and it speaks volumes about one's level of courage and insight. Real skeptics ask questions before attempting to form conclusions, so I will ask mine: Why do you believe the 9-11 notions of possible government corruption are laughable? What information have you seen and measured which leads you to your conclusions?
I know I'd tried it at least once, way way back then. The idea certainly disturbs me now, though. I'm no fan of Shrub, but his mistake there was in admitting it.
Shit. I once dropped a particle of vinegar on a spider and it curled up instantly and died. I felt terrible about it; I didn't realize or intend that it should cause harm, it was just a thoughtless thing done out of curiosity, but it killed the creature and I learned something powerful and awful that day. I was not the kind of kid who would deliberately cause harm to animals and it was my observation that the (few) kids I knew who did enjoy pulling legs off bugs or worse were sort of creepy and disturbing in one way or another. It's undoubtedly healthy that you found yourself repulsed by your own experiences in this area. I wouldn't trust anybody who deliberately tormented animals when they were young, and Bush is a prime example.
I hope people don't forget, (I'm talking to YOU Slashdot), how everybody bought into the whole propaganda push to invade Iraq. "Cakewalk" "War over in Ten Weeks" "WMD's"
People around here were salivating with images of Command & Conquer tanks dancing in their heads and I got slammed for saying, "Uh, this is going to be a quagmire, it's going to be incredibly expensive and the justification for this war is thin to the point of not even being there." --And that was before all the lies and manipulations became public.
The Bush gang are sick war-hawks eager to create conditions for a world-wide police state where massive amounts of the world population can be culled, oil profits can be had by a very small few, war profits can be had by a very small few, and opium profits can by maintained. These wars are about greed and control, and they have nothing to do with the stated rationalizations and these stupid stories about, "Oooh, Iran is Sooo ScArY". Don't get fooled again!
But most of you will, and the economy will tank even worse than it already has, and many of you will be starving in concentration camps before the next five years are out. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm usually not. Sorry. Bush blew up frogs with firecrackers before going on to become a coke-head. He's a psychopath, and he'll smile and be all cuddly as he continues to set the world on fire.
You think you've seen the story and know the details, but the investigations continue with new data rising to the top. Here's one of the latest on 9-11.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude. It's not about people wanting to avoid the glorification of mean-spirited, exclusionary, Jr. High editorializing. It's about lamenting the slide of Slashdot into the same gutter which swallowed television with it's 'reality' TV, day time talk shows, and people who cry 'whiner' because they don't/can't understand the issues at hand but still want to impose their ignorance on the rest of humanity. If you don't want to hear people complain about this slide into check-out counter journalism, then you might be best suited to hang out with Fox & Friends. You'd get along well with those. . , 'pinheads'.
-FL
Slashdot is full of trip, flame wars, script kiddies, all flavor of zealot, intolerance.[...]
Yes, and until now the editors maintained a level of professional distance and restraint, which must have been supremely difficult to do and for which I have always had the highest respect. I've heard a lot of ill-considered gripes about Slashdot over the years, and I've rebuked them because I held the editorial staff in such high regard for exactly the reasons mentioned. This new direction feels lousy. It looks like a somewhat desperate attempt to maintain market share in a universe filling up with an increasingly ignorant population of web-users. Dumbing down to stay relevant? That sucks and I find it depressing, and I bet you anything that several of the editors are probably having a hard time living with it.
-FL
So go to Cafepress or Zazzle and put it on one!
I didn't say I wanted it on mine. I'm happy with, "The Angels have the Phone Box." All the rage in the egg forums.
-FL
"Proof that the stated reason for needing to invade Iran is a hoax and that the Western Media and Government are lying, blood-thirsty, psychotic tools. I'll sell the info to the highest bidder."
On the surface, such a statement appears disgusting.
The ONLY logic I can see here, (assuming that the Wikileaks guys aren't a bunch of sell-outs which seems inconsistent with their sole reason for existing), is that Wikileaks is gaming the system for mind-share.
It will be interesting to see how this move affects awareness of Venezuela on the global chess board. --Um, no. Correction. The world is too brain-damaged at this point for chess. At this point, it's just the global checker board. South America is next in line to be 'jumped' by the Empire.
-FL
The power of Ego!
This is a multi-billion dollar company. They, along with all the other banks, own Everything. --Correction; they lent the money needed to purchase Everything, and now are owed it all back with interest. God couldn't even pay that bill!
So, poor, poor Lloyds can't handle it when the slaves mutter amongst themselves? Geez! And that's it right there; the same petty fear of Everything (including the most harmless of school-yard slurs), drives their desire to control Everything. Pathetic.
-FL
"I hope my cookies never expire."
That should be on a Tee-Shirt.
-FL
As has been pointed out by many helpful Slashdotters, there are plenty of other cigarette pack-sized computers which have come before this one, but I would ask, "How many of those were built to meet space-travel specifications?"
I believe the idea behind this one, (assuming my cursory read-through of the article is correct), is that it's guaranteed to survive and perform perfectly after being blasted into space in the nosecone of a bloody-great controlled bomb. I rather doubt my monster desktop computer could manage that even under the best of circumstances. 1,500 quid is a bargain.
-FL
-your first thought when seeing the title is, "Well, of course. Gaming the system is always done for profit motives." And on good days, you also say, "But selfish systems always collapse from corruption-rot in the end." And on not-so-good days you add, "Of course, they'll take the rest of us down with them when they go."
-FL
If I was an evil enforcer faced with lazy minions claiming that the boss was tasking them with the impossible, I'd just just say, "You can tell him yourself when the Emperor arrives...."
-FL
I still had pictures and other junk in the closet of my old bedroom from 25 years ago. I WISH it would have degraded so I didn't have to go through the emotional strain of finally throwing it all out when my parents sold the house. It would have saved me the travel expenses, too.
But if you don't have a handy closet, then you can make prints on archival-quality paper with archival-quality inks and seal it all in a case filled with inert gas. Archivists have whole catalogs of products which are designed specifically for this kind of project, their clients include libraries and such. Most cities have an archive department; they'd probably be willing to have you visit for a Q&A. (In fact, thinking back to an old school trip I once went on, it struck me that the head archivist was overjoyed to have anybody come by expressing an interest in his work.)
While hard copies are probably the most reliable way to go, the question of long-term digital storage is certainly an interesting one. I know I used to be able to get gold-substrate non-recordable CDs made, and while others have said the components will probably be fused and useless in a couple of decades of zero-use, I'd include not just a CD player, but a whole computer system. You never know. Voyager lasted well-beyond its projected service life, though I suspect NASA was using the highest quality of parts available at the time. Maybe you could find some old mechanical floppy disk players; the kind with big clunky parts. I suspect that big and clunky will have a longer shelf-life than cheap, tiny and designed to break down after a three year product cycle.
Maybe you could print out a roll of paper tape in bar-code format and include a bar-code reader with schematics so the future people can build one themselves if they felt so motivated. Heck, punch cards and an old reader might stand the test of time. Paper seems to do well. I wonder if they still make papyrus products.
Oooh. You could store data on DNA strings and then leave it in the form of sea-monkey eggs! (Kinda makes you wonder if we're not all walking around with somebody's snap shots in our genes right now.)
You have a massive budget for this, no doubt, so just for fun, duplicate the set-up a few times and bury each for a different duration; 25 years, 50 years, 100, etc.
Otherwise, I'd just ask one of your students to leave it in his or her closet and bring the package to the school reunion. (Assuming you're a teacher. Who else gets to do this kind of cool project?)
Anyway, it sounds like fun! Enjoy!
-FL
Why? I am not a very nice person. I don't like nice people. In short, I am a prick and I don't want or need to change.
Then you have a long, long way to go, my friend. True happiness waits patiently for pricks to stop being pricks, and wisdom is tied to happiness far more tightly than most realize. I'd wish you good luck, but that would defeat the lesson. Bye now.
-FL
Thanks for the links, but I will say that you would benefit from adjusting your attitude. Ego games are selfish and people will refuse to accept what they are offered if the person offering is trying to 'win'; all progress slows to a painful crawl.
Anyway, plane wreckage photos I've seen plenty of, and I do recall now seeing one or two of the burned body images some years ago, but they clearly didn't leave much impact.
I don't see any of the bodies strapped into airplane seats. I see a couple of bodies at odd angles, not in rows, their clothes sort of fossilized, but no evidence of seat belt straps or buckles, --or airplane seats for that matter. One of the men looks rather like he is wearing work coveralls; possibly a maintenance staff member or contractor working in the building, which would be a reasonable thing to expect given the state of the section under construction at the time. The other burned fragments say little about where they came from. This doesn't really help illustrate anything about whether or not the government's story can be believed.
I have never seen Neil Armstrong, neither have I seen Pluto. Doubting that Pluto exists and that Armstrong walked the moon is somewhat retarded though.
I take your point, however, to be very blunt, the Pentagon is not on the Moon, and manipulating the American public into a war-for-profit doesn't hinge on the existence of Pluto. Indeed, there is plenty of excellent, peer-reviewed evidence for the existence of both Neil Armstrong's exploits and for Pluto; untold mountains of it all available for public review with no weird secrecy attached to it. The same cannot be said of the incidents which took place on 9-11. This is why people are asking questions and projecting theories. --You have expressed your frustration with the fact that the public seems to support GWB, so you probably already have some idea how reliable and honest a government he runs. Is it beyond question that he and his staff should perhaps not be considered honest and reliable in this case?
Hearing requires listening. Given the enormous amount of noise in our current information society, it also means filtering. Your problem is that your filters are failing and you are listening to what is just random bullshit noise and you think it is communication.
Ha ha. You are in a very poor position be making such bold assumptions about me. --In any case, as a point of note on filtering. . . While you have expressed disinterest in this subject, if for some reason you do decide to continue digging, I would suggest you do some research on that link to [rense.com] you provided. --The man behind that site is a liar, (claims a long career as a respected television journalist where there isn't one), he and those in alliance with him are confessed Christian apocalypse cultists and he has done some very strange and reprehensible things which lead many to consider him a COINTEL tool. I eventually found his site too much bother to pick through; it's hard enough to work out truth from fiction without there being agendas running in the background and deliberately misleading information sown into the product.
I haven't been "focused" on this at all. The case as such doesn't interest me all that much.
I am sure you have your reasons, but I always ask: "Why not?" --If the results of that case are not currently shaping your life, they will be soon enough. For my part, I like to know the 'what' and 'why' behind the 'is'.
-FL
Then I have a simple question for you. The entire inside of the Pentagon was littered with airplane debris, including burned and charred bodies strapped in airplane seats.
Airplane parts I can understand since I think an airplane of some kind struck the building. But the weird thing is that I've never seen any evidence of passenger's bodies at the Pentagon. I've barely even heard of any evidence of passenger's bodies at the Pentagon, and what I have heard is really thin. --Until, that is, the information stream resurfaces at the military DNA lab, where there are no pictures, but only official reporting. I know there is a level of respect which fire fighters show for the dead, but it still seems curious that we should have heard nothing at all.
I do know there is at least one photo of charred remains floating around, but a cursory look hasn't turned it up again. In any case, I don't recall it being strapped into an airplane seat, so it is just as likely to have been one of the 125 office workers. . , (almost twice as likely actually, given the supposed jet carried 64 passengers and crew plus 5 supposed terrorists). Now, to be fair, I've not spent as much time focusing on the question of bodies as perhaps you have, so maybe my whole theory will fall apart with a simple link, but after nearly seven years of looking through stuff of this sort, it seems odd that so little should have surfaced. Do you have any useful links or pictures?
-FL
I wholeheartedly agree with every point but #4. Either the plane crashed or they had to stash some people somewhere. Nobody is gonna waste the time to kill them on the ground and burn the bodies. Explain where they went.
The Pentagon took a fair bit of energy to really work my mind around. At first I was astounded that anybody could claim that anything but the airliner struck the building. It was clear that there were impact marks on the walls from wings. But witness testimony is inconsistent on the subject, and malleable given that in a state of shock, it is possible given the right cues to tell people what they saw and have it stick in the form of memory. One of the big items for me was that a pair of big jet engines would have made a pair of big holes, but there was only the single hole. There were many other weird bits and pieces surrounding that incident, flight recorders out of sync with the event, missing video, etc. Unlike with the WTC attacks, the explanations given for the significant questions I take seriously are, I found, nowhere nearly as sound or convincing.
I don't see why it is unreasonable to think that in a plan to crash airliners and launch a war, there would be any hesitance in killing a few dozen passengers on the ground. It should be noted concerning any bodies recovered at the Pentagon, about which there is precious little information available, the DNA testing itself was done on a military base rather than in the public domain. I don't feel comfortable taking the military's word for what they found given that were there a deliberate attempt to stage the attacks, the military would have had a hand in it in the first place and therefore could not be trusted to be honest after the fact about any crimes they may have committed. We really have no idea what happens inside a military operation, and making sure people do not talk is much easier to achieve within such a system than it is in the public realm.
When it comes to the plane parts pictured in the aftermath, it always struck me as odd that nobody has yet considered the possibility that pieces might have been loaded on to whatever craft was crashed into the Pentagon. --Assuming that the parts didn't come from the craft itself. Were I in charge of planning the incident, this would have been a fairly obvious ploy and would have certainly been on my list of preparations. --As would have been painting the appropriate colors and even false windows on the stage aircraft in order to create an effective illusion.
-FL
Governments lie, but this. . ?
From the get go, the controlled demolition idea struck me as 'off' somehow. If the goal was to persuade the country into war, then a single airplane crashing into a single building would have been plenty of motivation. Heck, the sinking of one passenger ship, (the Lusitania) was enough to inspire the national outrage required to get the U.S. into WWI. A couple of gun boat attacks on American destroyers in the "Gulph of Tonkin incident", (half of which turned out to be a mistaken report which nobody denies) was enough to get the U.S. to jump into Vietnam. Coupled with the right level of media encouragement, a medium-sized disaster is all that is required. Four crashing airliners on 9-11 was more than spectacular enough to launch a war.
So why go on to massively complicate things by planning a demolition of the three towers? The only two answers I've seen which suggest motive were the Silverstein profit gamble and the fact that WC7 housed a bunch of incriminating paperwork. But motive does not prove anything by itself; it has to be supported by evidence. --I've seen the Loose Change video and others, I've read all the arguments, and many of them raise clear and logical concerns. And I have gone over all the other evidence from the debunking side. They pretty much cancel one another out on the Twin Towers issue. --This is not to say that the debunkers are entirely rational. (The Popular Mechanics version of reality was perhaps one of the most arrogant, simple-minded and unconvincing.) Rather, it is the work of private individuals who put together the more rational arguments on the "natural collapse due to fire" side. (A good example of this is here.) --Though, even they offer up some pretty thinly-stretched and in my view, totally unnecessary ideas in their attempts to explain certain details. Indeed, everybody, on both sides, sport some pretty poor arguments. --But that's not a problem! All ideas, all questions and the attempts to answer them, the dialogue is entirely valid as people explore what happened on that day. All in all, it has been a spirited and very thoughtful debate with a lot of smart people contributing on both sides.
My personal conclusions?
1. Secretive portions of more than one government not only had foreknowledge, but actively strained against the well-intentioned systems in order to allow the attacks to take place, and indeed worked at certain levels to set various elements of it in place.
2. There is plenty of photographic/video evidence of the steel structure deforming and falling down as a result of fire. The big argument against this is that jet fuel cannot create enough heat. However, there were plenty of other combustibles in the fire, not the least of which being the several dozen oxygen generator canisters the planes were equipped with. I've worked with an iron forge, and simple bio-carbons, like coal in a forge, or in the case of the buildings, furniture and paper and plastics, etc., when subject to a steady airflow like a bellows or high-altitude winds, is sufficient to create high enough temperatures to take steel past the point of structural integrity and even melt it. The "Never Before Has This Happened to a Steel Building" arguments are faulty on a number of levels, not the least of which being that it's not even properly accurate. There are however, as far as I have seen, a couple of unanswered questions remaining; the claims of mysterious construction being done and the removal of bomb-sniffing dogs and the shut-off of security systems in the week leading up to the event is curious to say the least. I wonder if perhaps there might not have been more than one effort involved in the events of 9-11 rather than that of a single unified group.
3. WC7 is different question and it is less clear cut, but my impression after going over the many, once again valid questions raised by those suggesting that the building was
So there we were, in 2001...minding our own business, in the middle of the dot-com bubble burst, and something happened. I don't remember what. Something in September? Oh! it's because we invaded Iraq?
You are assuming that the action was not stage-managed to the hilt precisely so that you would adopt the very thinking you currently hold. I have waded through mountains of the information surrounding that day, I've seen both the silly as well as the excellent, thoughtful arguments from smart people arguing both for and against the various interpretations of what happened. At the end of it all I have concluded that the official story is filled with contradictions, blank spots, damning testimony and outright examples of manipulation all of which, taken together, paints a very clear picture of very deliberate wrong-doing on the part of the U.S. government.
I recommend that everybody take the time to really research this stuff and to hold off on making any assumptions until they have looked at the whole picture. There have been some documentaries made quite recently which are the result of similar careful siftings through the information; these are simple but effective ways to present the best thinking of dedicated researchers, and while they cannot take the place of one's own explorations, they are a quick way to get up to speed on the present state of knowledge on the subject. When a documentary is made years after an event, the forensic thinking is able to reach a high level of competence and precision. Take another look.
-FL
Bush will be out of the office in 5 months. How is he going to set the world on fire in five years? Especially if you think Obama is going to win the election?
Bush is just a piece of the psychopathic machine. He is replaceable, because the preparations are all in place. The institutions have been created, the legal bodies have been re-worked, the prison camps have been built, and the presence of mercenary armies with no national loyalty has been established, all culminating under the Bush regime.
Obama getting into office is far from certain. Aside from the increasingly effective fear-campaigning being done by the Republicans, there is still the looming issue of voting machine scandal. If Obama does manage to take office, that would be the best case scenario, but Obama is far from perfect. He's still a religious man who supports Israel, (big problem there, since Israel is one of the big engines driving war in the Middle East). And he's stated more than once that war with Pakistan might be inevitable. He has done little if anything to oppose to the whole idea that Iran is a major threat. I don't really know which way Obama would jump if the economy collapsed and there was a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. It's somewhat comforting to think that he's the 'good cop', but still. . .
The second worse case scenario would be if McCain gets into office. That way, the current course of decay and war-mongering will continue with the probable result being nuclear exchanges in the Middle East and some sort of retaliation on U.S. soil which would be the excuse needed to impose martial law. The economy is currently being held in check from sliding completely into disaster as the elections approach, which suggests that a continuation of the stage production of political stability is desired at some level.
The worst case scenario is that 'something' will happen between now and January, in which case all bets are off.
Current trends suggest that we are entering a re-energized version of the cold war with Russia as the lead player. Bush is pressing for a continuation of the European missile shield, and Russia has angrily responded that this will require re-arming on their side of the line. That also suggests that there is a desire for a kind of stability of sorts, if the old rules of nuclear brinkmanship are revisited.
The patterns are all converging, but I don't know what shape they will take. The destruction on 95% of the world's population is the goal of the dark side. There are some hopeful claims that the big bad plan is doomed to fail, so I kind of clutch to that, but one of the ways to avoid it as I see it, is to stay aware and keep an eye out for all the negative possibilities, which once recognized have a way of being defused.
-FL
You've changed my mind. I'm voting for McCain simply to piss you off.
What an odd reaction. Rather like a five-year old, don't you think? What is it exactly that you found so upsetting in what I said? Was it the idea that you were made a fool of when you were tricked by the Bush administration during the lead-up to the Iraq war? Or is it the idea that your reality might become very, very scary in the near future and you find the idea so repulsive that irrational reaction against me personally is preferable to looking at such uncomfortable and very likely possibilities?
Sadly, your childish reaction is a common one. --And it is for this reason that the world is burning now. People get what they deserve and what they are ready for. If everybody was too enlightened to be so easily duped into making illogical, fear and ego-based choices in their lives, then the world could make the transition into the future with a great deal less blood and fear.
-FL
I hope people don't forget, (I'm talking to YOU Slashdot), how everybody bought into the whole propaganda push to invade Iraq. "Cakewalk" "War over in Ten Weeks" "WMD's"
People around here were salivating with images of Command & Conquer tanks dancing in their heads and I got slammed for saying, "Uh, this is going to be a quagmire, it's going to be incredibly expensive and the justification for this war is thin to the point of not even being there." --And that was before all the lies and manipulations became public.
The Bush gang are sick war-hawks eager to create conditions for a world-wide police state where massive amounts of the world population can be culled, oil profits can be had by a very small few, war profits can be had by a very small few, and opium profits can by maintained. These wars are about greed and control, and they have nothing to do with the stated rationalizations and these stupid stories about, "Oooh, Iran is Sooo ScArY". Don't get fooled again!
But most of you will, and the economy will tank even worse than it already has, and many people will be starving in concentration camps before the next five years are out. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm usually not. Sorry. Bush blew up frogs with firecrackers before going on to become a coke-head. He's a psychopath, and he'll smile and be all cuddly as he continues to set the world on fire.
You think you've seen the story and know the details, but the investigations continue with new data rising to the top. This is one of the latest on 9-11.
-FL
All of that could true (i'm not going to get into the details of your delusional post)
Delusional, but it could all be true? Hm. Don't you find that a bit dyslexic? If you are going to toss about a term like, 'Delusional', you'll have to back that up because with the rest of your 'insightful' post, you are playing very strongly into the propaganda in a very predictable way.
We would benefit from paying close attention to our reactions today because you and others are broadcasting exactly the same kinds of patterns we saw in Slashdotters (and most other people in the West), during the lead-up to war in Iraq, which I don't think any rational person can claim has improved the world. The Bill O'Riellys and Joe Scarboroughs of the world are not rational people, in case you are wondering what I use as my benchmark for 'rational'.
-FL
Wow. Touched a nerve there, didn't I?
If I were a troll, (sorry folks, I'm not. I just speak what I think as honestly as I can), then I guess I found the magic formula for 'piss everybody off'.
You can always tell when you're getting a bit too close to some sensitive mark when all the knee-jerkers jump on you. --Keeping in mind, this isn't about abortion, or religion or privacy, or any such typical and fairly normal subject of rational debate. This is about government corruption and psychopathy, the truths of which are virtually impossible to argue against when the data is presented, which is why, you'll notice, that few of the comments seen thus far have any content except exclamations of ridicule and emotional disagreement with zero content. I've even read a few people trying to claim that tormenting small animals is normal behavior!!
The reactions I got when trying to point out the flaws with the, then-impending war with Iraq were similarly charged and light-weight.
Take note, my friends! Things bode ill if such comments are any indicator of the broad public mind. Watch that film I linked to in the parent post. It's just one film, but it would be constructive if you wish to disagree to comment on actual points made there, as it would give us a common point of reference to work from rather than our having to endure more of this aimless complaining.
-FL
I, for one, often used firecrackers to blow up small creatures... though I had to stop when the neighbors complained about missing cats. They thought I was blowing them up (joke's on them, though, I never blew up a cat... I dissected them, just like Tom Daschle).
I hope you are joking. Killing neighborhood pets is one of the top indicators of psychopathy. Boys will certainly be boys, but most of the kids I knew while growing up were conscientious people who would be horrified by the idea. I remember hearing about a couple of fights erupting over the fate of small animals at the hands of one or two of the more twisted kids in my time in elementary and junior high school. What you describe is utterly monstrous and entirely abnormal behavior for most of the population. Of course, the psychotic individual is incapable of registering what the true state of reality or 'normal' is around them. In any case, you are wrong, and like I said, I hope you are joking. If not, I very much hope you find yourself under a bus sometime rather soon. It's that bad.
-FL
I was with you for the first couple paragraphs, but that post took a nose-dive into conspiracyland after that. When I got to the 9-11 bit I would have laughed if it all weren't so sad.
This is a very typical reaction which I find common in people who have limited information and who are primarily motivated by the fear of being laughed at. I notice you use the threat of laughter in your criticism of my comments, which strongly suggests that you believe such a threat holds real weight. People generally only seek to press buttons in others which they fear having pressed in themselves. This is a matter of social conditioning and it speaks volumes about one's level of courage and insight. Real skeptics ask questions before attempting to form conclusions, so I will ask mine: Why do you believe the 9-11 notions of possible government corruption are laughable? What information have you seen and measured which leads you to your conclusions?
-FL
I know I'd tried it at least once, way way back then. The idea certainly disturbs me now, though. I'm no fan of Shrub, but his mistake there was in admitting it.
Shit. I once dropped a particle of vinegar on a spider and it curled up instantly and died. I felt terrible about it; I didn't realize or intend that it should cause harm, it was just a thoughtless thing done out of curiosity, but it killed the creature and I learned something powerful and awful that day. I was not the kind of kid who would deliberately cause harm to animals and it was my observation that the (few) kids I knew who did enjoy pulling legs off bugs or worse were sort of creepy and disturbing in one way or another. It's undoubtedly healthy that you found yourself repulsed by your own experiences in this area. I wouldn't trust anybody who deliberately tormented animals when they were young, and Bush is a prime example.
-FL
I hope people don't forget, (I'm talking to YOU Slashdot), how everybody bought into the whole propaganda push to invade Iraq. "Cakewalk" "War over in Ten Weeks" "WMD's"
People around here were salivating with images of Command & Conquer tanks dancing in their heads and I got slammed for saying, "Uh, this is going to be a quagmire, it's going to be incredibly expensive and the justification for this war is thin to the point of not even being there." --And that was before all the lies and manipulations became public.
The Bush gang are sick war-hawks eager to create conditions for a world-wide police state where massive amounts of the world population can be culled, oil profits can be had by a very small few, war profits can be had by a very small few, and opium profits can by maintained. These wars are about greed and control, and they have nothing to do with the stated rationalizations and these stupid stories about, "Oooh, Iran is Sooo ScArY". Don't get fooled again!
But most of you will, and the economy will tank even worse than it already has, and many of you will be starving in concentration camps before the next five years are out. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm usually not. Sorry. Bush blew up frogs with firecrackers before going on to become a coke-head. He's a psychopath, and he'll smile and be all cuddly as he continues to set the world on fire.
You think you've seen the story and know the details, but the investigations continue with new data rising to the top. Here's one of the latest on 9-11.
-FL