I know several people who have met their partners using these dating sites. So it works. Connections happen in many, many ways.
But. . .
There's a sub-system running beneath all of the various ways to meet people. It works like this. . .
When you are ready to enter a time of your life where a relationship is the best suited thing to teach you more about yourself and life in general, you'll know it. Then, all you do is put your intention out there; "I want to meet somebody!"
And then make yourself open to scenarios where there are other people. Listen to the inner pull. If it tells you to travel, then travel. If it tells you to move, then move. --And remember, do not judge the person by the package they happen to inhabit. Bodies are far less important than souls. --Also, remember that the patterns which put two people together do not necessarily have to culminate in classic sexual adventures or the official 'relationship' for them to be powerful and valuable.
I like to cut out digital step and cut right to the face to face element. If two people are really following their intuition, and are brave enough to do the sometimes seeming illogical things they are being directed to do by that inner force, then they'll meet. --After that, it's up to them as to whether or not they'll act on what has been given to them.
I don't like the on-line dating thing. It seems set up to create sadness and frustration. --Here's a story. . .
I was minding my own business, and then I get this email out of the blue from some girl who had been cruising through Facebook. (I'd set up an account on that damned site just to make all my friends stop pestering me. I almost never check the thing; I find Facebook irritating for a variety of reasons.) This girl said she was intrigued by yours truly and gave me a link to a profile she'd posted on some dating site. She seemed fairly normal and interesting, and she asked me to get in touch with her.
Okay. That's nice. So what the heck? I'd not been in the head space of looking for a relationship, and was enjoying a period of being very solitary. It's nice to take time off from the rest of the world for a while and just do some reading and thinking and creative stuff, but when somebody goes out of their way to connect with you, that is, when the world knocks on your door, it's an open invitation to an adventure which can often be a good thing. So I wrote her back, anticipating an interesting conversation, but heard nothing back.
And I'll be damned if I didn't start thinking, "Huh? Was it something I said? Why doesn't she want to talk with me? Wow. I feel bad."
Then I shook my head and remembered, "Oh yeah! I forgot. There's a reason I can't stand internet dating." --And promptly let it go.
The real world works better. If you meet a person in the flesh, within a very short time you know whether or not they're for real, and vice-versa, and you know whether or not you can expect and benefit from further contact. --And if you have your senses running effectively, then you'll also know WHY. All of that is lacking in the digital realm, and people, (meaning primarily women), seem to play it in a manner where fishing for and then ignoring most contacts is standard practice. Credit card companies do the same thing, begging you to apply and then turning you down at their leisure if they find you wanting. --And I'm not saying that people who behave in this way are bad people who need to learn courtesy. It's more that the medium itself is at fault; breaking off contact by sending a message to say you're not interested is just clumsy and painful, so just ignoring somebody actually seems like the better idea, even though it sucks too. --In the real world, though, this is not a problem, since these decisions can be easily and instantly communicated through simple body language.
The answer? Get out there and meet real people. It's way more fun, and you're involved in life in a much more direct way, and whether or not you end up with a girl/boyfriend, you'll at least have the benefit of having collected a variety of real experiences.
I ran across a rumor about the Gates Foundation using its muscle to persuade a private investor to make that $100 million dollar bailout to SCO, and that it was linked to some Saudi Prince.
But I can't find a single reference to it anywhere. Was I just dreaming? Does anybody have anything on this?
Although I did run across this item while searching. ..
Everyone and his dog knows that corporate philanthropy is PR, but what is not understood very well in the US is that there should be a certain decency about how it is done. Not so with the Gates Foundation. It uses plenty of professional PR to milk the donations, and the timing certainly correlates with Microsoft's desire to influence public opinion. Microsoft is after all only partly playing to Judge Jackson, where what is in effect special pleading ("we've been naughty, but we've given wagon loads of money to charity by way of a penance" ) is unlikely to prove helpful. Much more important to Microsoft at the moment is a hearts-and-minds campaign and to use the charity card to lull a gullible public into thinking that at heart Microsoft is OK. Former Novell boss Ray Noorda scotched that one when he observed (paraphrasing) that to have a heart-to-heart, you had to have two hearts. Looking at the Foundation's actions over the last six months, and analysing press releases announcing donations, we see that when nothing was happening publicly in April, there were three releases. In May, as things were warming up for the June rebuttal hearings, there were 12 releases. In June, the number shot up to 20, but immediately dropped down to just four in July, when the trial was quiet again. August saw 12 and there were 13 in September, in honour of the findings of fact and the oral hearing. A recent move is an invitation by Craig McCaw of Teledesic (in which Gates and Microsoft have invested significantly) for Nelson Mandela and his new wife to visit Seattle from 7-9 December "to raise awareness of issues in Africa". The press release was jointly issued by Teledesic and the Gates Foundation. You can bet that Mandela will be given a large cheque. This looks like a PR blocking move in case Judge Jackson's Opinion is handed down around that time. As has been said before, charity begins in the home PC. Several hundred million PC users around the world have been a victim of Microsoft's monopoly exploitation, pricing policies and software quality. This charity money comes from these users - us - yet we have no say in what happens to it. Microsoft is indeed a world leader -- in exploiting philanthropy.
If you're silly enough to think that money is god, then you're silly enough to try to attack information on the internet.
Psychopaths live in utterly false realities where their idea of how things work totally overshadows how things actually work. --But it does make them dangerous and tiresome, because they just keep trying to kill and destroy things and they never stop. It's like having somebody constantly trying to break down your Leggo structure while you're trying to build it. --And they'll also go running to the teacher to try to get you in trouble for the shit they're pulling.
--And information does vanish if you don't work to keep tabs on it. --The prime minister of Canada was caught trying to hide his millions worth of personal wealth from taxation in such an off-shore scheme, but it's very hard to find that info now.
One of the most effective ways for information to get lost is when the key word for the issue happens to be the same as for some other totally unrelated item which happens to be many times more current and popular. That one is frustrating.
-FL
Re:Doesn't necessarily have to be big business/ go
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WikiLeaks Under Fire
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Sure it does...
Oh my. The disappointing part of that collection of videos is that Balmer didn't give himself a heart attack. --In any case, it was nice to note that even though the apocalypse arrived and nobody thought to wake me up, I was still able to catch it on Youtube.
When people are ready to be free of slavery, they will and must act on their own impulses.
But that doesn't mean you stop offering knowledge.
I remember many times in school and work places where an insulting psychological ploy was dumped upon everybody designed to make the herd run in one direction or another, and each time I'd laugh aloud at the crass obviousness of it. --And I'd immediately look left and right to make eye contact with the people around me and share the joke, only to see people running in exactly the direction they were told to run.
I also learned that when you point out the manipulation, the herd's reaction is to get angry with you or laugh at you even as they run over the cliff.
Whatever. Eventually their laughter and abuse ceases to have any effect, and you decide that it's your job to continue to point out the ploys and to not fall for them yourself, and to generally just get on with your day. The hardest part is to be patient and caring in spite of everything, and to remember above all that the right to run over a cliff through ignorance is a highly valuable commodity, and that repeated pain is a very necessary component in the learning process. --Without the experience of pain, an offered solution looks like nonsense.
Heck, I get nearly all my news over the internet. Slashdot is a huge part of this. We do it here all the time.
Pattern:
A news item is posted on Slashdot. You read that.
Then you skim the comments, and that's where the real story is revealed. --People chiming in with many different views and arguments, sometimes with a couple of people who are personally connected to some aspect of the information in a way the rest of us are not. The extra links provided by people who are curious or who want to argue the point brings the vast information available on the web into focus.
For instance, when a new computer virus is spotted in the wild, I just skim through the comments here, and within a few minutes, I have a ridiculously solid idea as to what systems are affected, how to protect against it, where it came from, how it will affect the world and generally what is worth paying attention to. People deride Slashdot all the time, but one or two hundred people all networking on an issue is an amazingly powerful force for assimilating and understanding information.
Another example is that undersea cable-cutting story. I know a ton more about what was, and was not going on than I ever would have learned by simply tuning into CNN. The future of journalism isn't about listening to one reporter agency, but rather by participating in a community which collectively draws into itself and cross analyzes all aspects of the available information.
I don't see the big news agencies vanishing any time soon, but the shape of news awareness is seriously changing. --It's happening now, all the time, and anybody who doesn't pay attention is missing out in a big, big way.
1) The reason for your inability to see 4 leafed clovers is overall irrelevant, although a bit amusing:) Yes the mind can filter out a lot, and does so on a regular basis, but this does not have any link to energy beings beyond being one of many possible excuses for why everyone can't see such things.
Yeah. This wasn't meant to illustrate an energy thing, just a psychological glitch in the human make-up. --Although, my girlfriend, (no longer), was a very powerful person with regard to energy. And in fact, the way she found four leafed clovers was related to energy in an odd way, though it's one of those stories which I couldn't use for my purposes of exacting useful proof since it didn't have the right components for testing, although by that time I was convinced of the existence of this other spectrum of 'physics' as it were, so my explorations had moved beyond simple "is it real" and more into "how can it be applied?"
She could find four-leaf clovers with her eyes shut, and this was a new discovery for her. --I'd asked her how she found four-leaf clovers so easily, what her process was, and how I could do it too. She hadn't thought about it much, just that as a kid she really, really wanted to be able to find them, since she had been faced with the puzzle the same as everybody else. She said that she sort of just 'knew' where one could be found; that it felt different when she was near one. She could hold her hand over a patch of clover and feel a sort of warmth. I asked her if she could do it with her eyes shut, and she tried, and found a couple that way. (Though, I didn't have the wherewithal to do a proper test at the time; she might have seen one beforehand and remembered where it was, and it was a romantic day on a walk through an orchard where proper scientific methodology would have been intrusive.) Anyway, after a while when I was around her, I discovered that I could do it as well, but only once without looking. I don't know if I was fooling myself, but I did sort of 'feel' something too.
Oddly enough, it wouldn't work when I was on my own. --Though, one time I was by myself and really fed up with not having the kind of abilities that several of these odd people I knew seemed to have and so I spent an afternoon struggling to find four-leaf clovers. I figured that if, as I believed, you get what you ask for in life, then I should be able to access this property of the universe if I asked for it with enough diligence and the right kind of intent. I was really frustrated and didn't find anything for an hour or so, (a long time to be squating on the front lawn with neighbors wondering what the heck I was doing). --I began to get really upset and felt that life was unfair and that I was somehow not worthy. Silly. --Anyway, at the height of my desperation, I got this sudden impulse and I moved over to a patch of grass near the driveway, and found right away almost a dozen or so. --In fact, the patch of clover was just filled with them, along with many which had odd growths and mutations. I figured it was a patch which had been made toxic by oil run-off from the cars which had been parked there over the years. --I went back to the middle of the lawn and found none. --So it seemed that I got what I wanted, but only where they'd been poisoned and where anybody could have found them, and I didn't feel particularly satisfied. Still, in a manner of speaking, I had gotten what I asked for.
Like I said, interesting, but not really useful for proving anything.
2) You said "If you want to live in a universe which doesn't include 'magic' (for lack of a better term), then the Universe accommodates. The reverse is also true."
You didn't define universe. However, I will say that I agree if you mean your universe as in how you see the world. I disagree if you mean the physical universe.
The universe is the word I use instead of 'god'. --The universe contains everything we know and don't know, including w
Heck, I'm wondering why they don't ban Hong Kong popstars.
Man, after this next Olympics, the world is SO in for the new Reich/Cold War/Terror State/Humans V.S. Humans deluxe stage production of "Humanity Gets Screwed Yet Again", this time Made in China.
And all I can think is, "Will somebody please stop this fucking thing. I would like to get off now."
I agree. --And the whole process would be sped along if somebody were to write a game about an old ship captain obsessed with killing a whale which plays like a collection of the most pedantic, un-passionate and lifeless drudge-work parts of every video game ever played, but which scores high on presenting reams of encyclopedic data and so-called psychological exploration, all of which somehow spins it into being a 'very smart' work which is then forced upon every American school kid in a thinly veiled attempt to make the entire population hate video games and become wrestling fans.
When there is a legal suit in effect, it ties up a lot of money and can create doubt in the public, having the effect of scaring both investors and adopters away from fully embracing the company or product. It's a way of slowing down the process of Linux adoption by keeping the waters muddy.
Or at least, that's the theory.
In Starcraft terms, this feels more like an 11th hour act of desperately throwing troops and equipment at a bug infestation which you know you have no hope of winning.
Oh, and the Bush family having had sitting members on the Carlyle board for several years. All the evil-doers of the world are linked up in a 3 degrees of separation kind of deal.
Well! Thank-you first off for offering such a well-reasoned and cordial response.
Secondly, a word about words. ..
The internet, and indeed books and conversations, being what they are, can do nothing more than convey stories and ideas. Seeking actual evidence for such claims is, as I am sure you recognize, an intensely personal matter. I always recommend to people when they ask about the kinds of things I am about to describe, is that they get out into the world and do some of their own seeking. This is true for all worthwhile experiences, but it is especially so for the sort which live in the fringes of our modern Western world and which tend to require a deliberate decision on the part of the perceiver in order to see. The cognitive machine which is the human mind is entirely capable of editing out or simply not seeing certain phenomenon. A small case in point before I go further. ..
A girlfriend of mine was very good at finding four-leaf clovers. She could walk through a field and come out again with half a dozen or more, some even with five and six leaves. --And strain as I might to find some as well, I would be unable to find any at all. This was true of everybody else who knew of this odd talent of hers. Now perhaps she was just more observant than others, (well, clearly she was in this regard), but it confused me; I wasn't blind and it wasn't that difficult a task. I could find Waldo, so why not an extra leaf? It's not like they weren't there to find; my girlfriend regularly proved this beyond any doubt.
Matters came to a head when one day, we were in a used book shop. I'd taken a book from one of the racks and was flipping through it, reading at random, and I stopped on one page with a baffling paragraph. I tried to read through the thing a couple of times, but was unable to make heads or tales of what it was trying to say. So I turned to show her the book, (I like to write and find that bad writing is enjoyable to pull apart and discuss), and just as I was going to say to her, "Hey, check out this weird writing," she interrupted me and said, "Hey, a four-leafed clover!"
I blinked and looked down, and sure enough, sitting right on the page in front of me was an old four-leafed clover which had presumably been found by the previous owner of the book and put between the pages to be pressed and saved, and then forgotten about until the book had found its way to the shop. The reason I'd not been able to figure out the paragraph was saying was due to the fact that some of the words had been hidden by the little pressed plant sitting on top of them. And amazingly, I had very literally still been entirely blind to the four leaf clover sitting right in front of my nose.
Now maybe I was just being daft that day, but it struck me that this was perhaps as an object lesson in how the mind works. --As a culture, we are told from a very young age that four leaf clovers are hard to find, and while they are certainly far more rare than their three-leafed cousins, perhaps people are doing a little something extra to make that belief even more true than it really is.
Okay. ..
You described coming from an engineering background. --I'm the same. My father was a high-ranking Northern Telecom engineer; he'd spent nearly all his working life solving the problems presented by communications technology, working to take the world from mechanical into the new era of digital switching. --Such a life had been fruitful, and he taught his kids how to also find fulfillment through the study of and respect for science and technology. I was always, and still am, a lover of computers and tools and all such things. I learned a lot from watching my dad build additions and install walls and wiring and fixing stuff around the house. So I have a lot of respect for the physical, material universe.
However, the most important thing I learned from my parents was that direct experience was the best teacher, and that judging something before experiencing it wa
You're right. --Although, I would suggest that at least Christopher Tolkien was fairly involved in the original creative process. He and his father, as I understand it, would discuss at length Hobbit culture and spent years involved in this way as the story developed. --I wouldn't want to get legal about it, but this kind of collaboration can be important for a creator.
I met the fellow who created the original Men in Black comic book series. He was similarly paid an appallingly small amount for his efforts by the movie studios. What I find astonishing is that SO much money is made; how painful, really, would it be to share it with the right people?
This is why I think either the corporations or the executives or both are psychopathic. No real human agency would behave so poorly.
Tom cruise is looking sick because he has a parasitic energy being bonded with him that's using his energy and invading his thoughts? That's like a bad horror movie pitch. If you honestly believe something so irrational, I think you need help. Look to your family for some guidance.
Well, I spelled 'Leeches' incorrectly, and I would fix a couple of other points of grammar, and moreover I would have posted in the thread I'd originally intended to post in rather that this one. It's been a day of mishaps at my keyboard. --But other than that stuff, the content is fairly spot-on. If it seems irrational to you, then I think this might be because you assume I am using the same information set that you have (or one very similar), from which it would be impossible to make such statements as those I have done without indeed being irrational. However, I am not you, and I have a fairly wide sampling of knowledge in these areas, based of a lot of research and enough direct experience to validate much of that research. I don't mean to use the word 'ignorant' in a negative context, but you might do well to ask if perhaps I know something you do not rather than assume otherwise.
Telling me to get help because I happen to be talking about things you do not understand is both rude and, sadly, typical of human history.
Yeah, I know. --There are several similar problems with my post, the worst of which was that I had intended it as a response to another thread. I typed too quickly. It's been one of those days.
Some, if not all, religions are templates for 'how to live'.
But life doesn't work that way. Every life is unique and the path you are on is your own. There is no template which can serve more than one person. No book or preacher can tell you how to live and thus give you an easy way through life. You have to learn how to think and experience life on your own terms.
One problem I have with religions, and Scientology in particular, is that the template has a second function; that is, to channel energy and resources, etc., to the controllers at the top. Most people who observe religion objectively understand this.
But, okay. Fair enough. People have to learn the hard way not to follow anything but their own instincts and to trust in their own experience. Wasting your life and energy following some false path is a good way to learn what NOT to do.
But where it gets REALLY gross is that many of these cults do actually have some understanding of the powers which exist beyond science. --There are definitely forces and beings which do indeed exist around us which are not recognized by today's basic sciences. --And many of these organizations can tap into this realm and thereby offer experiences to the uninitiated which they use to 'prove' the authenticity of their system. --But that doesn't mean their interpretation is correct. In fact, I would venture to say that they ALL get it wrong; you can't get it right if you're trying to cram reality into a centralist template which tries to take people's individual choice and free will away from them. Doing this automatically makes your system screwy.
And then, as a natural result, it tends to get creepy and disgusting; there are positive and negative forces in effect, and when you choose to work in a self-serving manner, (i.e., promoting religion), you align yourself with the nasty forces. --At the higher levels of Scientology, they're involved with some REALLY messed up energy work. The Fulan Gong guys are similar in this regard. --Deliberately bonding parasitic energy beings to their favored members as though having a big leach attached to your brain, feeding on you and invading your mind with its own thoughts and desires, is some kind of reward. Take a close look at Tom Cruise. There's a reason he's so off-putting and disturbing to look at these days, and there's a reason for it. It first became really evident around the time of that first Mission Impossible film.
Holtzbrinck was a Nazi. He published propaganda. He was allowed to survive in business as a direct result. I wonder what kind of books will be published by his companies if Bush/Cheney manage to impose their world view upon the rest of us. . .
Interestingly enough, all the biggest book and magazine publishers in the West, when you trace back their ownership flow charts, have prominent Nazi family names sitting squarely in the commanding boxes at the top. Holtzbrinck is actually one of the smaller players.
Is this the United States or some banana republic?
Being that the term 'banana republic' came into existence as a direct result of U.S. foreign policy and illegal wars, it should come as no surprise that one would find the parent specimens of such abusive practices in the land which created them.
The U.S. used its foreign policy and semi-secret operations to crush budding democratic nations in order to reward American business, in this case, sugar and banana plantation owners, who basically wanted to use slave labor rather than pay fair wages to the locals. It still happens today. Venezuela is currently undergoing the same treatment where the U.S. government, big business and the CIA are doing everything in their power to cast Chavez as a villain and install a pro-American business military government. They're probably going to get away with it, too. The media in Venezuela are all pro-evil, big media owners being what they are. Chavez wanted the peasantry to own their own land and have a say in politics, have access to decent schooling and medical care and generally get out from under the boot heel of slavery. The horror! It's bad for business when your peasants are educated and strong. --Research the story, but stay away from the big American news outlets to do it; they're all a bunch of whores.
If U.S. business and government are going to use such practices abroad, then you'd better believe that they're going to try to get away with as much of the same thing at home as they possibly can.
So yes, the U.S. IS some banana republic. It's the mother ship of banana republics. Don't let all the shiny formed plastic fool you.
And yet again you make a post which contains no substance at all.
Nonsense. You are deliberately choosing not to see the substance. But closing your ears and eyes and singing, "La La La, I Can't Hear You" doesn't make it go away. I can only speculate as to why you are acting this way, and I suspect it has a great deal to do with an attempt on your part to continue living in an elaborate state of denial, which becomes difficult to do when somebody is pointing out the flaws in such a thought pattern. I have found that it is nearly impossible to conduct a rational discussion with somebody of that ilk; denial is at its core an irrational state of mind, and people who choose to live in that manner must by definition be practiced in ignoring logic, i.e., substance. This is probably why you can't 'see' it.
My original post was the comparison of Muslims and Christians to resort to violence. I cannot see how you can say that the death count has nothing to do with it.
Your original post said, "The difference being with Christians is that it's only figuratively speaking when you say 'up in arms'."
Which, correct me if I am wrong, means to suggest that Christians are predominantly non-violent beings who don't actually take up arms.
This is false. Period. End of story.
Everything you have said since then is just an attempt to feel good about living in a culture of war monger Christians who have have been virtually non-stop shooting and bombing every racial group on the planet for the better part of two centuries. --And that's just the Americans. If you want to feed yourself placating rationalisms, ("Well, other people are bad! So that makes it okay when we kill and plunder and rape! We're special! All we have to do is pretend that the people we're tormenting are worse than us.") then that's your business, but you can rest assured that there is at least one person out here in the world, (me), knows that you are singing, "La La La".
Murderers are all the same. When the blood is on the battle ground, you are a killer. Offering excuses, and bar graphs doesn't wash the blood off. It's an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for your own actions. It's cowardly, and if you can't see why, then no 'Substance' in the world is going to help. --I could play dueling bar-graphs with you if I wanted to, but this would be a sick distraction. There's a reason Moses didn't write, "Thou Shalt Not Kill More Than N People".
Your only two options at this point are, 1. Admit that you are wrong and fix your belief system accordingly, or 2. Continue sputtering until you are blue in the face and I have gone away, and then afterwards tell yourself repeatedly that you were right until you actually believe it again.
However on the larger scale, the number of muslims killed by soliders in iraq is pretty small compared to the muslim-on-muslim deaths in the last 50 years.
I backed this up with a link, showing the number of deaths. You, of course, ignored the link while offering no evidence at all that it was wrong.
If you want to argue that Christians have killed, in recent years, as many (or even close tO) Muslims for religious reasons, than Muslims have done so to other Muslims, then try to do so with actual facts.
Spending most of your post just insulting doesn't really get your point across.
I think this can be broken into three parts, which I will do now:
1. Death Count was never even on the table until you put it there. You did this thinking that this disproved my point, (which you described as "seriously skewed"). But you cannot disprove my point with such figures, because I never made the claim in the first place. --If you will read my actual posts, which I am now totally convinced you are not even attempting to do, you would recognize this. Why on earth should I bend over backwards to offer counter-evidence to a claim I never had any argument with?
2. Do NOT make the assumption, however, that the above means that I think your argument is valid. I think even bringing up Death Counts is a terrible idea for reasons which I have now outlined twice.
3. I am not insulting you. I am annoyed with you, and my tone does suggest this, and I probably would be a better person if I was not annoyed. I will have to work on that, but I have said nothing unfair thus far.
Well at least I gave a link to back up what I said. If you feel that it is wrong, please back up your statement.
First of all, your link didn't do anything but illustrate that you didn't understand the post of mine you were objecting to. --Secondly, my post contained three links all placed in an effort to help put my points within, (what I had hoped was), easy grasp. But I am getting the impression that you're not actually reading what I write.
And now you are saying my most recent post needs to be backed with further examples. The problem is that I would in fact have used the very link you provided, or one a lot like it, to offer an example of exactly the kind of apologist behavior I was describing. So maybe you should read your own link once more, but rather than simply nodding along with that particular blogger's opinion, use instead some of your own rational abilities to measure what he was saying. --To help with this, I suppose I could link to the writings of some respected journalist who explains why killing lots of people is bad and that it does not deserve sympathy regardless of the nasty things other unrelated nations were doing back in the 1940's. --But you know, there are some fundamental concepts of human decency I expect people to have figured out for themselves without the need for further supporting evidence. Your kindergarten teacher probably summed it up thusly: "If little Jimmy jumped over a cliff, would you do it also?"
--Or was it my comment about psychopaths which you want corroboration on via a few "href"'s? Very well. Here and here.
Google appears to play at this game in varying degrees. One of the better alternative news sites, (with a ladle in the conspiracy and new-age stew pots) found Google's non-linking treatment of their address to be systemic. It's hard to tell if this is the result of a glitch or somebody with a personal bias over at Mountain View or what, but this story isn't unique.
Now, I like a great deal of what Google does. I find their Google Talks series to be an especially wonderful resource. --But it's important to realize that nobody is perfect and to remain aware of such problem patterns when they arise. You can't step around obstacles unless you keep an eye on the path.
Your ideas are seriously skewed. The vast vast majority of violent deaths of Muslims is from other Muslims.
I read your link. It was Zionist apologia of the most cowardly and disgusting variety, the argument being that because other people have committed war crimes in the past that it is somehow forgivable to commit your own, (especially when one couches one's thoughts in the comforting falsehood that one's situation is somehow 'different' and 'special' and therefor deserving of sympathy. It should be noted that it is typical for the psychopathic abuser to blame the victim for his/her crimes.). --Further, nothing in that article offered anything of substance which demonstrated that my ideas are 'seriously skewed'. --Or even a little bit skewed; my main point being that I strongly disagreed with the parent poster's position that Christians somehow restrict their violence to bland metaphors rather than engage in actual blood letting. If you read my post again carefully, you should be able to recognize this.
The difference being with Christians is that it's only figuratively speaking when you say 'up in arms'.
Having mod points today, I was torn over whether to mod you down or tell you directly that you're wrong. (I don't know if you realize this or not, but your half-baked one-liner managed to find its way onto Slashdot's front page via their new 'post the top rated comments on the index page' experiment.)
Bush is a born again Christian; arguably one of the most insane types of Christian available since the the decision to abandon rational thinking takes place in adulthood when one ought to know better. (You can more easily forgive a child brought up in a Christian family and force fed church doctrine, brain-wash victims being what they are).
I would also like to point out that Bush's cabinet is well stocked with Christians. --And collectively, they are responsible for the deaths of far more brown people than brown people are for the killings of white Americans. --And we needn't refer back to old crusades and the like. All we need to do is pick up a newspaper. --I would further argue that the faith of the American leadership is inextricably linked to their political decisions with regard to Middle Eastern affairs. They've crossed every other line, and the one dividing church and state is barely even there as it is, so it's not very likely that Bush and crew have chosen this particular issue to exercise their meager scraps of personal integrity and restraint. --And this thinking is not restricted to the current presidency. There is a reason the U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars every year in military support, and there is no other reason at all except the looming religious one.
--There are several prominent theories about this, not the least of which is that many Christians believe that contributing to a war which brings about the fall of Babylon (A.K.A. Iraq) will speed along Christ's return. (According to the bible, Babylon needs to fall before the Apocalypse can reach fulfillment). --And simply because they happen to have the luxury of commanding brain-washed 18 year-olds into battle, (and into buying a good portion of their own equipment), and because they have the luxury of hiring people like Erik Prince (Christian fundamentalist and owner of Blackwater), rather than having to resort to discount methods of killing people themselves, shouldn't obscure from you the fact that Christians are not only capable of being a bloodthirsty lot, but that a lot of them are indeed bloodthirsty, or as you put it, 'up in arms'.
Even putting aside Bush and the various figures in the Whitehouse, it is a poignant fact that the various armed agencies from the military to so-called 'contractors' (mercenaries) like Blackwater are also crammed with soldiers who have probably read such blockbuster hits as the Left Behind series, which plays heavily on a variety of Christian fear fantasies. These people are carrying automatic weapons around the Middle East.
To suggest that only Muslims are religious killers is evidence of the amazing, frightening ability of those in the West to sleepwalk through their lives without realizing that they are armed to the teeth and totally disconnected and unaware of the powerful forces which drive them. Sleepwalkers with machine guns. I think John Carmack wrote some code which points out the results of this in more visceral tems.
Slashdot Mirror
But. . .
There's a sub-system running beneath all of the various ways to meet people. It works like this. . .
When you are ready to enter a time of your life where a relationship is the best suited thing to teach you more about yourself and life in general, you'll know it. Then, all you do is put your intention out there; "I want to meet somebody!"
And then make yourself open to scenarios where there are other people. Listen to the inner pull. If it tells you to travel, then travel. If it tells you to move, then move. --And remember, do not judge the person by the package they happen to inhabit. Bodies are far less important than souls. --Also, remember that the patterns which put two people together do not necessarily have to culminate in classic sexual adventures or the official 'relationship' for them to be powerful and valuable.
I like to cut out digital step and cut right to the face to face element. If two people are really following their intuition, and are brave enough to do the sometimes seeming illogical things they are being directed to do by that inner force, then they'll meet. --After that, it's up to them as to whether or not they'll act on what has been given to them.
I don't like the on-line dating thing. It seems set up to create sadness and frustration. --Here's a story. . .
I was minding my own business, and then I get this email out of the blue from some girl who had been cruising through Facebook. (I'd set up an account on that damned site just to make all my friends stop pestering me. I almost never check the thing; I find Facebook irritating for a variety of reasons.) This girl said she was intrigued by yours truly and gave me a link to a profile she'd posted on some dating site. She seemed fairly normal and interesting, and she asked me to get in touch with her.
Okay. That's nice. So what the heck? I'd not been in the head space of looking for a relationship, and was enjoying a period of being very solitary. It's nice to take time off from the rest of the world for a while and just do some reading and thinking and creative stuff, but when somebody goes out of their way to connect with you, that is, when the world knocks on your door, it's an open invitation to an adventure which can often be a good thing. So I wrote her back, anticipating an interesting conversation, but heard nothing back.
And I'll be damned if I didn't start thinking, "Huh? Was it something I said? Why doesn't she want to talk with me? Wow. I feel bad."
Then I shook my head and remembered, "Oh yeah! I forgot. There's a reason I can't stand internet dating." --And promptly let it go.
The real world works better. If you meet a person in the flesh, within a very short time you know whether or not they're for real, and vice-versa, and you know whether or not you can expect and benefit from further contact. --And if you have your senses running effectively, then you'll also know WHY. All of that is lacking in the digital realm, and people, (meaning primarily women), seem to play it in a manner where fishing for and then ignoring most contacts is standard practice. Credit card companies do the same thing, begging you to apply and then turning you down at their leisure if they find you wanting. --And I'm not saying that people who behave in this way are bad people who need to learn courtesy. It's more that the medium itself is at fault; breaking off contact by sending a message to say you're not interested is just clumsy and painful, so just ignoring somebody actually seems like the better idea, even though it sucks too. --In the real world, though, this is not a problem, since these decisions can be easily and instantly communicated through simple body language.
The answer? Get out there and meet real people. It's way more fun, and you're involved in life in a much more direct way, and whether or not you end up with a girl/boyfriend, you'll at least have the benefit of having collected a variety of real experiences.
-FL
I ran across a rumor about the Gates Foundation using its muscle to persuade a private investor to make that $100 million dollar bailout to SCO, and that it was linked to some Saudi Prince.
But I can't find a single reference to it anywhere. Was I just dreaming? Does anybody have anything on this?
Although I did run across this item while searching. .
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Psychopaths live in utterly false realities where their idea of how things work totally overshadows how things actually work. --But it does make them dangerous and tiresome, because they just keep trying to kill and destroy things and they never stop. It's like having somebody constantly trying to break down your Leggo structure while you're trying to build it. --And they'll also go running to the teacher to try to get you in trouble for the shit they're pulling.
--And information does vanish if you don't work to keep tabs on it. --The prime minister of Canada was caught trying to hide his millions worth of personal wealth from taxation in such an off-shore scheme, but it's very hard to find that info now.
One of the most effective ways for information to get lost is when the key word for the issue happens to be the same as for some other totally unrelated item which happens to be many times more current and popular. That one is frustrating.
-FL
Oh my. The disappointing part of that collection of videos is that Balmer didn't give himself a heart attack. --In any case, it was nice to note that even though the apocalypse arrived and nobody thought to wake me up, I was still able to catch it on Youtube.
-FL
But that doesn't mean you stop offering knowledge.
I remember many times in school and work places where an insulting psychological ploy was dumped upon everybody designed to make the herd run in one direction or another, and each time I'd laugh aloud at the crass obviousness of it. --And I'd immediately look left and right to make eye contact with the people around me and share the joke, only to see people running in exactly the direction they were told to run.
I also learned that when you point out the manipulation, the herd's reaction is to get angry with you or laugh at you even as they run over the cliff.
Whatever. Eventually their laughter and abuse ceases to have any effect, and you decide that it's your job to continue to point out the ploys and to not fall for them yourself, and to generally just get on with your day. The hardest part is to be patient and caring in spite of everything, and to remember above all that the right to run over a cliff through ignorance is a highly valuable commodity, and that repeated pain is a very necessary component in the learning process. --Without the experience of pain, an offered solution looks like nonsense.
-FL
Pattern:
A news item is posted on Slashdot. You read that.
Then you skim the comments, and that's where the real story is revealed. --People chiming in with many different views and arguments, sometimes with a couple of people who are personally connected to some aspect of the information in a way the rest of us are not. The extra links provided by people who are curious or who want to argue the point brings the vast information available on the web into focus.
For instance, when a new computer virus is spotted in the wild, I just skim through the comments here, and within a few minutes, I have a ridiculously solid idea as to what systems are affected, how to protect against it, where it came from, how it will affect the world and generally what is worth paying attention to. People deride Slashdot all the time, but one or two hundred people all networking on an issue is an amazingly powerful force for assimilating and understanding information.
Another example is that undersea cable-cutting story. I know a ton more about what was, and was not going on than I ever would have learned by simply tuning into CNN. The future of journalism isn't about listening to one reporter agency, but rather by participating in a community which collectively draws into itself and cross analyzes all aspects of the available information.
I don't see the big news agencies vanishing any time soon, but the shape of news awareness is seriously changing. --It's happening now, all the time, and anybody who doesn't pay attention is missing out in a big, big way.
-FL
Hello again!
:) Yes the mind can filter out a lot, and does so on a regular basis, but this does not have any link to energy beings beyond being one of many possible excuses for why everyone can't see such things.
1) The reason for your inability to see 4 leafed clovers is overall irrelevant, although a bit amusing
Yeah. This wasn't meant to illustrate an energy thing, just a psychological glitch in the human make-up. --Although, my girlfriend, (no longer), was a very powerful person with regard to energy. And in fact, the way she found four leafed clovers was related to energy in an odd way, though it's one of those stories which I couldn't use for my purposes of exacting useful proof since it didn't have the right components for testing, although by that time I was convinced of the existence of this other spectrum of 'physics' as it were, so my explorations had moved beyond simple "is it real" and more into "how can it be applied?"
She could find four-leaf clovers with her eyes shut, and this was a new discovery for her. --I'd asked her how she found four-leaf clovers so easily, what her process was, and how I could do it too. She hadn't thought about it much, just that as a kid she really, really wanted to be able to find them, since she had been faced with the puzzle the same as everybody else. She said that she sort of just 'knew' where one could be found; that it felt different when she was near one. She could hold her hand over a patch of clover and feel a sort of warmth. I asked her if she could do it with her eyes shut, and she tried, and found a couple that way. (Though, I didn't have the wherewithal to do a proper test at the time; she might have seen one beforehand and remembered where it was, and it was a romantic day on a walk through an orchard where proper scientific methodology would have been intrusive.) Anyway, after a while when I was around her, I discovered that I could do it as well, but only once without looking. I don't know if I was fooling myself, but I did sort of 'feel' something too.
Oddly enough, it wouldn't work when I was on my own. --Though, one time I was by myself and really fed up with not having the kind of abilities that several of these odd people I knew seemed to have and so I spent an afternoon struggling to find four-leaf clovers. I figured that if, as I believed, you get what you ask for in life, then I should be able to access this property of the universe if I asked for it with enough diligence and the right kind of intent. I was really frustrated and didn't find anything for an hour or so, (a long time to be squating on the front lawn with neighbors wondering what the heck I was doing). --I began to get really upset and felt that life was unfair and that I was somehow not worthy. Silly. --Anyway, at the height of my desperation, I got this sudden impulse and I moved over to a patch of grass near the driveway, and found right away almost a dozen or so. --In fact, the patch of clover was just filled with them, along with many which had odd growths and mutations. I figured it was a patch which had been made toxic by oil run-off from the cars which had been parked there over the years. --I went back to the middle of the lawn and found none. --So it seemed that I got what I wanted, but only where they'd been poisoned and where anybody could have found them, and I didn't feel particularly satisfied. Still, in a manner of speaking, I had gotten what I asked for.
Like I said, interesting, but not really useful for proving anything.
2) You said "If you want to live in a universe which doesn't include 'magic' (for lack of a better term), then the Universe accommodates. The reverse is also true."
You didn't define universe. However, I will say that I agree if you mean your universe as in how you see the world. I disagree if you mean the physical universe.
The universe is the word I use instead of 'god'. --The universe contains everything we know and don't know, including w
Heck, I'm wondering why they don't ban Hong Kong pop stars.
Man, after this next Olympics, the world is SO in for the new Reich/Cold War/Terror State/Humans V.S. Humans deluxe stage production of "Humanity Gets Screwed Yet Again", this time Made in China.
And all I can think is, "Will somebody please stop this fucking thing. I would like to get off now."
Interesting times, indeed.
-FL
I vote 'comics' in the endurance category.
-FL
-FL
Or at least, that's the theory.
In Starcraft terms, this feels more like an 11th hour act of desperately throwing troops and equipment at a bug infestation which you know you have no hope of winning.
Oh, and the Bush family having had sitting members on the Carlyle board for several years. All the evil-doers of the world are linked up in a 3 degrees of separation kind of deal.
-FL
Well! Thank-you first off for offering such a well-reasoned and cordial response.
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Secondly, a word about words. .
The internet, and indeed books and conversations, being what they are, can do nothing more than convey stories and ideas. Seeking actual evidence for such claims is, as I am sure you recognize, an intensely personal matter. I always recommend to people when they ask about the kinds of things I am about to describe, is that they get out into the world and do some of their own seeking. This is true for all worthwhile experiences, but it is especially so for the sort which live in the fringes of our modern Western world and which tend to require a deliberate decision on the part of the perceiver in order to see. The cognitive machine which is the human mind is entirely capable of editing out or simply not seeing certain phenomenon. A small case in point before I go further. .
A girlfriend of mine was very good at finding four-leaf clovers. She could walk through a field and come out again with half a dozen or more, some even with five and six leaves. --And strain as I might to find some as well, I would be unable to find any at all. This was true of everybody else who knew of this odd talent of hers. Now perhaps she was just more observant than others, (well, clearly she was in this regard), but it confused me; I wasn't blind and it wasn't that difficult a task. I could find Waldo, so why not an extra leaf? It's not like they weren't there to find; my girlfriend regularly proved this beyond any doubt.
Matters came to a head when one day, we were in a used book shop. I'd taken a book from one of the racks and was flipping through it, reading at random, and I stopped on one page with a baffling paragraph. I tried to read through the thing a couple of times, but was unable to make heads or tales of what it was trying to say. So I turned to show her the book, (I like to write and find that bad writing is enjoyable to pull apart and discuss), and just as I was going to say to her, "Hey, check out this weird writing," she interrupted me and said, "Hey, a four-leafed clover!"
I blinked and looked down, and sure enough, sitting right on the page in front of me was an old four-leafed clover which had presumably been found by the previous owner of the book and put between the pages to be pressed and saved, and then forgotten about until the book had found its way to the shop. The reason I'd not been able to figure out the paragraph was saying was due to the fact that some of the words had been hidden by the little pressed plant sitting on top of them. And amazingly, I had very literally still been entirely blind to the four leaf clover sitting right in front of my nose.
Now maybe I was just being daft that day, but it struck me that this was perhaps as an object lesson in how the mind works. --As a culture, we are told from a very young age that four leaf clovers are hard to find, and while they are certainly far more rare than their three-leafed cousins, perhaps people are doing a little something extra to make that belief even more true than it really is.
Okay. .
You described coming from an engineering background. --I'm the same. My father was a high-ranking Northern Telecom engineer; he'd spent nearly all his working life solving the problems presented by communications technology, working to take the world from mechanical into the new era of digital switching. --Such a life had been fruitful, and he taught his kids how to also find fulfillment through the study of and respect for science and technology. I was always, and still am, a lover of computers and tools and all such things. I learned a lot from watching my dad build additions and install walls and wiring and fixing stuff around the house. So I have a lot of respect for the physical, material universe.
However, the most important thing I learned from my parents was that direct experience was the best teacher, and that judging something before experiencing it wa
I met the fellow who created the original Men in Black comic book series. He was similarly paid an appallingly small amount for his efforts by the movie studios. What I find astonishing is that SO much money is made; how painful, really, would it be to share it with the right people?
This is why I think either the corporations or the executives or both are psychopathic. No real human agency would behave so poorly.
-FL
Well, I spelled 'Leeches' incorrectly, and I would fix a couple of other points of grammar, and moreover I would have posted in the thread I'd originally intended to post in rather that this one. It's been a day of mishaps at my keyboard. --But other than that stuff, the content is fairly spot-on. If it seems irrational to you, then I think this might be because you assume I am using the same information set that you have (or one very similar), from which it would be impossible to make such statements as those I have done without indeed being irrational. However, I am not you, and I have a fairly wide sampling of knowledge in these areas, based of a lot of research and enough direct experience to validate much of that research. I don't mean to use the word 'ignorant' in a negative context, but you might do well to ask if perhaps I know something you do not rather than assume otherwise.
Telling me to get help because I happen to be talking about things you do not understand is both rude and, sadly, typical of human history.
-FL
Yeah, I know. --There are several similar problems with my post, the worst of which was that I had intended it as a response to another thread. I typed too quickly. It's been one of those days.
-FL
But life doesn't work that way. Every life is unique and the path you are on is your own. There is no template which can serve more than one person. No book or preacher can tell you how to live and thus give you an easy way through life. You have to learn how to think and experience life on your own terms.
One problem I have with religions, and Scientology in particular, is that the template has a second function; that is, to channel energy and resources, etc., to the controllers at the top. Most people who observe religion objectively understand this.
But, okay. Fair enough. People have to learn the hard way not to follow anything but their own instincts and to trust in their own experience. Wasting your life and energy following some false path is a good way to learn what NOT to do.
But where it gets REALLY gross is that many of these cults do actually have some understanding of the powers which exist beyond science. --There are definitely forces and beings which do indeed exist around us which are not recognized by today's basic sciences. --And many of these organizations can tap into this realm and thereby offer experiences to the uninitiated which they use to 'prove' the authenticity of their system. --But that doesn't mean their interpretation is correct. In fact, I would venture to say that they ALL get it wrong; you can't get it right if you're trying to cram reality into a centralist template which tries to take people's individual choice and free will away from them. Doing this automatically makes your system screwy.
And then, as a natural result, it tends to get creepy and disgusting; there are positive and negative forces in effect, and when you choose to work in a self-serving manner, (i.e., promoting religion), you align yourself with the nasty forces. --At the higher levels of Scientology, they're involved with some REALLY messed up energy work. The Fulan Gong guys are similar in this regard. --Deliberately bonding parasitic energy beings to their favored members as though having a big leach attached to your brain, feeding on you and invading your mind with its own thoughts and desires, is some kind of reward. Take a close look at Tom Cruise. There's a reason he's so off-putting and disturbing to look at these days, and there's a reason for it. It first became really evident around the time of that first Mission Impossible film.
-FL
Interestingly enough, all the biggest book and magazine publishers in the West, when you trace back their ownership flow charts, have prominent Nazi family names sitting squarely in the commanding boxes at the top. Holtzbrinck is actually one of the smaller players.
And people wonder why I don't trust the media.
-FL
Being that the term 'banana republic' came into existence as a direct result of U.S. foreign policy and illegal wars, it should come as no surprise that one would find the parent specimens of such abusive practices in the land which created them.
The U.S. used its foreign policy and semi-secret operations to crush budding democratic nations in order to reward American business, in this case, sugar and banana plantation owners, who basically wanted to use slave labor rather than pay fair wages to the locals. It still happens today. Venezuela is currently undergoing the same treatment where the U.S. government, big business and the CIA are doing everything in their power to cast Chavez as a villain and install a pro-American business military government. They're probably going to get away with it, too. The media in Venezuela are all pro-evil, big media owners being what they are. Chavez wanted the peasantry to own their own land and have a say in politics, have access to decent schooling and medical care and generally get out from under the boot heel of slavery. The horror! It's bad for business when your peasants are educated and strong. --Research the story, but stay away from the big American news outlets to do it; they're all a bunch of whores.
If U.S. business and government are going to use such practices abroad, then you'd better believe that they're going to try to get away with as much of the same thing at home as they possibly can.
So yes, the U.S. IS some banana republic. It's the mother ship of banana republics. Don't let all the shiny formed plastic fool you.
-FL
Nonsense. You are deliberately choosing not to see the substance. But closing your ears and eyes and singing, "La La La, I Can't Hear You" doesn't make it go away. I can only speculate as to why you are acting this way, and I suspect it has a great deal to do with an attempt on your part to continue living in an elaborate state of denial, which becomes difficult to do when somebody is pointing out the flaws in such a thought pattern. I have found that it is nearly impossible to conduct a rational discussion with somebody of that ilk; denial is at its core an irrational state of mind, and people who choose to live in that manner must by definition be practiced in ignoring logic, i.e., substance. This is probably why you can't 'see' it.
My original post was the comparison of Muslims and Christians to resort to violence. I cannot see how you can say that the death count has nothing to do with it.
Your original post said, "The difference being with Christians is that it's only figuratively speaking when you say 'up in arms'."
Which, correct me if I am wrong, means to suggest that Christians are predominantly non-violent beings who don't actually take up arms.
This is false. Period. End of story.
Everything you have said since then is just an attempt to feel good about living in a culture of war monger Christians who have have been virtually non-stop shooting and bombing every racial group on the planet for the better part of two centuries. --And that's just the Americans. If you want to feed yourself placating rationalisms, ("Well, other people are bad! So that makes it okay when we kill and plunder and rape! We're special! All we have to do is pretend that the people we're tormenting are worse than us.") then that's your business, but you can rest assured that there is at least one person out here in the world, (me), knows that you are singing, "La La La".
Murderers are all the same. When the blood is on the battle ground, you are a killer. Offering excuses, and bar graphs doesn't wash the blood off. It's an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for your own actions. It's cowardly, and if you can't see why, then no 'Substance' in the world is going to help. --I could play dueling bar-graphs with you if I wanted to, but this would be a sick distraction. There's a reason Moses didn't write, "Thou Shalt Not Kill More Than N People".
Your only two options at this point are, 1. Admit that you are wrong and fix your belief system accordingly, or 2. Continue sputtering until you are blue in the face and I have gone away, and then afterwards tell yourself repeatedly that you were right until you actually believe it again.
Red Pill, Blue Pill. Your choice.
-FL
I think this can be broken into three parts, which I will do now:
1. Death Count was never even on the table until you put it there. You did this thinking that this disproved my point, (which you described as "seriously skewed"). But you cannot disprove my point with such figures, because I never made the claim in the first place. --If you will read my actual posts, which I am now totally convinced you are not even attempting to do, you would recognize this. Why on earth should I bend over backwards to offer counter-evidence to a claim I never had any argument with?
2. Do NOT make the assumption, however, that the above means that I think your argument is valid. I think even bringing up Death Counts is a terrible idea for reasons which I have now outlined twice.
3. I am not insulting you. I am annoyed with you, and my tone does suggest this, and I probably would be a better person if I was not annoyed. I will have to work on that, but I have said nothing unfair thus far.
-FL
First of all, your link didn't do anything but illustrate that you didn't understand the post of mine you were objecting to. --Secondly, my post contained three links all placed in an effort to help put my points within, (what I had hoped was), easy grasp. But I am getting the impression that you're not actually reading what I write.
And now you are saying my most recent post needs to be backed with further examples. The problem is that I would in fact have used the very link you provided, or one a lot like it, to offer an example of exactly the kind of apologist behavior I was describing. So maybe you should read your own link once more, but rather than simply nodding along with that particular blogger's opinion, use instead some of your own rational abilities to measure what he was saying. --To help with this, I suppose I could link to the writings of some respected journalist who explains why killing lots of people is bad and that it does not deserve sympathy regardless of the nasty things other unrelated nations were doing back in the 1940's. --But you know, there are some fundamental concepts of human decency I expect people to have figured out for themselves without the need for further supporting evidence. Your kindergarten teacher probably summed it up thusly: "If little Jimmy jumped over a cliff, would you do it also?"
--Or was it my comment about psychopaths which you want corroboration on via a few "href"'s? Very well. Here and here.
-FL
Now, I like a great deal of what Google does. I find their Google Talks series to be an especially wonderful resource. --But it's important to realize that nobody is perfect and to remain aware of such problem patterns when they arise. You can't step around obstacles unless you keep an eye on the path.
-FL
I read your link. It was Zionist apologia of the most cowardly and disgusting variety, the argument being that because other people have committed war crimes in the past that it is somehow forgivable to commit your own, (especially when one couches one's thoughts in the comforting falsehood that one's situation is somehow 'different' and 'special' and therefor deserving of sympathy. It should be noted that it is typical for the psychopathic abuser to blame the victim for his/her crimes.). --Further, nothing in that article offered anything of substance which demonstrated that my ideas are 'seriously skewed'. --Or even a little bit skewed; my main point being that I strongly disagreed with the parent poster's position that Christians somehow restrict their violence to bland metaphors rather than engage in actual blood letting. If you read my post again carefully, you should be able to recognize this.
-FL
Having mod points today, I was torn over whether to mod you down or tell you directly that you're wrong. (I don't know if you realize this or not, but your half-baked one-liner managed to find its way onto Slashdot's front page via their new 'post the top rated comments on the index page' experiment.)
Bush is a born again Christian; arguably one of the most insane types of Christian available since the the decision to abandon rational thinking takes place in adulthood when one ought to know better. (You can more easily forgive a child brought up in a Christian family and force fed church doctrine, brain-wash victims being what they are).
I would also like to point out that Bush's cabinet is well stocked with Christians. --And collectively, they are responsible for the deaths of far more brown people than brown people are for the killings of white Americans. --And we needn't refer back to old crusades and the like. All we need to do is pick up a newspaper. --I would further argue that the faith of the American leadership is inextricably linked to their political decisions with regard to Middle Eastern affairs. They've crossed every other line, and the one dividing church and state is barely even there as it is, so it's not very likely that Bush and crew have chosen this particular issue to exercise their meager scraps of personal integrity and restraint. --And this thinking is not restricted to the current presidency. There is a reason the U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars every year in military support, and there is no other reason at all except the looming religious one.
--There are several prominent theories about this, not the least of which is that many Christians believe that contributing to a war which brings about the fall of Babylon (A.K.A. Iraq) will speed along Christ's return. (According to the bible, Babylon needs to fall before the Apocalypse can reach fulfillment). --And simply because they happen to have the luxury of commanding brain-washed 18 year-olds into battle, (and into buying a good portion of their own equipment), and because they have the luxury of hiring people like Erik Prince (Christian fundamentalist and owner of Blackwater), rather than having to resort to discount methods of killing people themselves, shouldn't obscure from you the fact that Christians are not only capable of being a bloodthirsty lot, but that a lot of them are indeed bloodthirsty, or as you put it, 'up in arms'.
Even putting aside Bush and the various figures in the Whitehouse, it is a poignant fact that the various armed agencies from the military to so-called 'contractors' (mercenaries) like Blackwater are also crammed with soldiers who have probably read such blockbuster hits as the Left Behind series, which plays heavily on a variety of Christian fear fantasies. These people are carrying automatic weapons around the Middle East.
To suggest that only Muslims are religious killers is evidence of the amazing, frightening ability of those in the West to sleepwalk through their lives without realizing that they are armed to the teeth and totally disconnected and unaware of the powerful forces which drive them. Sleepwalkers with machine guns. I think John Carmack wrote some code which points out the results of this in more visceral tems.
-FL
Thank-you.
-FL