Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.
The language used by this ABC staffer seems soft to me. --A repair job doesn't necessarily mean a cut cable or a complete loss of service. A subsea internet cable is packed not only with glass fiber, but also with a high-voltage electrical line used to power the numerous optical repeaters needed to keep a signal strong. Such units, I would would imagine, are subject to failure from time to time, necessitating irregular maintenance. But whatever the case. . .
I remain in two minds about whether or not some of these latest breaks were deliberate. It would appear that there is enough regular repair necessary to keep more than one company busy. --600 employees just for Global Marine Systems. (Who also lays cable as well as providing a variety of subsea cable services.) The Japanese also host a subsea cable company which was sent out to perform repair work on a 2001 break in a U.S.-China cable, (the cause of which, according to the article I found, was unclear at the time). Now, I have mentioned, (much to the distress of many Slashdotters), that we're currently in the middle of a Mercury retrograde, during which we can expect to see all kinds of communication slow-downs and tangles in ways which might otherwise appear too coincidental for comfort. These things happen, and it can look at the time as though some not-so-benevolent god is on your case, though I tend to think of it more as just bad weather in the probability spectrum.
However, people have also pointed out several reasons to squint suspiciously and pay closer attention to these cable-breakage events. There is no doubt that governments do indeed have the ability to play spy versus spy with cables, and it would be foolish to suggest that the idea of tactical cable breaking had never crossed their minds. (As such, I must disagree with the parent poster's snide position with regard to conspiracy theory, despite the fact that many do tend to engage in such thoughts with a measure of over-eagerness). --We are all well aware of the high pressure politics in the Middle East and the volatility of the U.S. incumbent leadership. Also, there is also the uncomfortable item pointed out by the Egyptian government that at least two of the breaks happened under monitored tracts of sea, and that there had been no ships in those waters during the times of the breaks, suggesting something else. Maybe a submarine? Or maybe just a repeater on the fritz.
Who knows? The ocean is a harsh place and any number of possibilities come to mind. Perhaps an old WWII depth charge finally decided to pop. Whatever the case, I think this is one of those times when it will pay to watch and see what unfolds before jumping to political conclusions.
It's not as though we can really do anything else. I'm sort of holding my breath to see if there will be a sixth breakage before the weekend.
Why? Because I was pro-Jew, or because I was pro-Iranian, or because I say that violence is not Christian?
No, I think you were so accused because the typical knee-jerk responder only has so many labels as his disposal and as none of them is logically sound anyway, it hardly matters which one is used to patch the leak you poked in in his bubble reality. When one is hissing 'delirium gas', the sticky back of the label is more important than whatever happens to be printed on the front.
As it happens, I started reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon last week. Aside from enjoying the heck out of it, (which was rather a surprise to me as I'd found the only other book of his I'd read, Snowcrash kind of annoying), my experience of this, as with virtually every book which practically launches itself at me in a used book store and which I find myself absolutely HAVING to read, links up in some grand way with the immediate events going on in my life, or in this case, the world at large.
For those of you who have not read this tome, one of the major themes revolves around the politics and power struggles of moving data through undersea internet cables. I found this interesting enough, but then about twenty minutes ago I just finished reading the following passage where two of the main characters are discussing the vulnerability of undersea cables to sabotage. ..
[. ..] Avi continues, "And as we've talked about many times, there are many reasons why different governments might want to control the flow of information. China might want to institute political censorship, whereas the U.S. might want to regulate electronic cash transfers so that they can keep collecting taxes. In the old days they could ultimately do this insofar as they owned the cables." "But now they can't," Randy says. "Now they can't, and this change happened very fast, or at least it looked fast to government with it retarded intellectual metabolism, and now they are way behind the curve, and scared and pissed off, and started to lash out." "They are?" "They are." "In what way are they lashing out?" [...] "Do you have any idea what down time on a state-of-the-art cable costs nowadays?" "Of course I do," Randy says. "It can be hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute." "That's right. And it takes at least a couple of days to repair a broken cable. A couple of days. A single break in a cable can cost the companies that own it tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue." "But that hasn't been much of an issue," Randy says. "The cables are plowed in so deeply now. They're only exposed in the deep ocean." "Yes--where only an entity with the naval resources of a major government could sever them." "Oh, shit!" "This is the new balance of power, Randy." "You can't seriously be telling me that governments are threatening to--" "The Chinese have already done it. They cut an older cable--first-generation optical fiber--joining Korea to Nippon. The cable wasn't that important--they only did it as a warning shot. And what's the rule of thumb about governments cutting submarine cables?" "That it's like nuclear war," Randy says. "Easy to start. Devastating in its results. So no one does it." "But if the Chinese have cut a cable, then other governments with a vested interest in throttling information flow can say, 'Hey, the Chinese did it, we need to show taht we can retaliate in kind.'" "Is that actually happening?" "No, no, no!" Avi says. They've stopped in front of the largest display of needlenose pliers Randy has ever seen. "It's all posturing. It's not aimed at other governments so much as at the entrepreneurs who own and operate the new cables." Light dawns in Randy's mind. "Such as the Dentist." "The Dentist has put more money into privately funded submarine cables than just about anyone. He has a minority stake in that cable that the Chinese cut between Korea and Nippon. So he's trapped like a rat. He has no choice--no choice at all--other than to do as he's told." "And who's giving the orders?" "I'm sure that the Chinese are very big in this--they don't have any internal checks and balances in their government, so they are more prone to do something that is grossly irregular like this." "And they obviously have the most to lose from unfettered information flow." "Yeah. But I'm just cynical enough to suspect that a whole lot of other governments are right behin
These tap into the love of geeks for sci-fi and ideals about freedom in a manner which must have been fun for the guys making these ads. --Which goes to show that having a huge ad budget means you can do some cool stuff from time to time.
Why on earth have the american public - one which is so proud of its supposed ability to take down a corrupt government - not executed this man yet?
I think it says much about the success of the social conditioning of the American people. After all else is said and done, one can measure the effects of mind control simply by looking at the end results. I think this was even noted somewhere in the bible using an agriculture analogy concerning fruit.
Am I to understand that you believe that the apparent motion of Mercury has some causal relationship to the functioning of electronics? Not the real motion of Mercury, which is unchanged, or the real motion of Earth, which is likewise unchanged, but the appearance of moving in the opposite direction?
I have several views on this.
One of which is that perhaps it is not Mercury per se that is causing the effects noted, but that the system we live within is fractal in nature. Events reflected in the small are reflected in the very big. Both Mercury and terrestrial electronics devices inhabit the same system.
When one considers that matter is an apparent illusion, being rather more akin to an expression of something far more ephemeral, our universe can be recognized as little more than a holographic projection. There is no sound reason not to believe that there are patterns and systems in effect which do not behave according to physics as currently recognized by orthodox science, which is, as everybody knows, limited.
How about you don't force me to wade through an entire astrology site and just give me a thumbnail explanation of how an issue of relative perception can have an effect on my computer?
What I am suggesting is that people take some time to evaluate the forces at work, which can be done easily enough by reading through a horoscope such as the ones I linked to previously, and performing their own measurements. If there is something there which tweaks at your mind, then curiosity should demand further investigation to determine whether or not there are real patterns unfolding or if it is merely the mind trying to invent patterns where none exist. It is far more valuable to look at what is going on in the world rather than pretend that previously unrecognized forces don't exist based on current (incomplete) knowledge structures. I find it odd that this is not something which is instantly recognized more often. If you are curious about the universe at all, then you should need no prompting. The need for prompting implies previous conditioning, and such conditioning serves those who condition, i.e, not you.
I am normally one of those conspiracy guys, but not with regard to this.
I am also an astrology guy. --Which I realize anybody who is in the tech field or sciences tends to put zero stock in, which is fair enough, (though, almost always people do this without first having tried it out, or if they have, only in as much as they looked briefly and only at the nonsense stuff in order to say that they have.) But whatever the case. . .
Mercury just went retrograde at the end of January, and will remain so until February 19th. Mercury is an indicator of all things related to communication and moving parts, etc., and when it retrogrades, everything tends to stop working properly. Don't ink deals, don't buy new equipment, don't agree to anything because there's always some piece of vital data you're not aware of and when it comes to light later on, you will wish you had waited a couple of weeks.
I've seen, several times, computer systems (my own and those of other people) which even though they had been working reliably for years, blow many unrelated components all within a matter of days or hours during a retrograde period. (And always during mission critical tasks). When you are trying to make information or systems run smoothly, that's when the universe will put up a wall of mud, telling you to slow down and take on a different style of awareness and living for that period; it's good to stop and put your brain into low gear during these times; that's how best to use the 'flavour' of energy available. --And if you don't, the harder you push, the more stuff will blow up in your face. So it can seem in a high tech world which never wants to stop that it's a, "When it rains, it pours" kind of deal.
--And in the same way that I doubt the NSA was trying to sabotage my personal computer, (and printer. And scanner. And digital camera. And bank card. And car. Ugh. What a shitty time that was!), I doubt that there was any intent to deliberately knock out undersea communications cables.
I have my own theories for how and why the universe works in this manner, but I won't get into them here, as I somehow doubt this post will survive the knee-jerk modding I imagine it will be subject to. If it does, however, stay above the zero mark, interested people might want to check out Susan Miller's astrology site to learn more. (It's free and she puts a lot of energy into it.)
Remember, knee-jerking is not scientific. Real skeptics study something with an open mind, listening to the arguments of both sides and then doing their own evaluation and research before submitting their comments. I have met maybe ten people in my life who call themselves skeptics who function in this manner.
I'm not sure if this is so much about email accounts and ad dollars. It might be about Microsoft panicking over Google's growth into the bandwidth providing market. . .
Both ATT and Yahoo are experts in IT technology and telecommunications. ATT Yahoo is the largest telecommunications company in the United s serving the internet access for about 7.8 million DSL subscribers. The company is the number 1 provider of local and long-distance calls in the U.S. together with extensive WI-FI network throughout the United States. It was also ranked as #1 company on the Fortune 500 list which names world's most admired and successful companies.
With its one of the most advanced global backbone networks transferring up to 5.4 petabytes of traffic on a daily basis ATT Yahoo is sure to provide the most reliable DSL Internet service to its customers together with Yahoo!
It's funny. The evolution of the computer started out with contestants trying to see who would sell the most units of hardware. Chips and keyboards and power supplies. Gates realized early on that the hardware wars going to end up being fought on the nickel and dime table, thanks to overseas slave labor and the way retail works. It was inevitable that the software that makes a computer 'think' would become the factor which gave a computer its real power. Taking the example of the living computer, the ape, the software sits upon the computer, making it the mind to the body's brain. But, to follow that analogy, with just basic mind and brain, all you really have is a monkey. --A pretty successful creature in its own right, but without the ability to communicate complicated thoughts quickly and effectively with its neighbors, then the next step up on the evolutionary chain, that of the development of advanced societies, isn't going to happen in a significant way.
Each step up the chain seems to command geometric growth in terms power and wealth. --To look at the silly analogy in another way; Microsoft is the king of the Reptilian and perhaps the Limbic brain of your computer. But the Neo Cortex. . . Well now!
The battle has moved on into the jungles of communication as represented by bandwidth and networking, where the broad powers of civilization come into flower. With Google buying up all the dark fiber in the world, owning dozens of huge data centers in many countries, and bidding now for a slice of the radio broadcast spectrum. . , MS must see that their position in the hierarchy of the computer universe being overshadowed by something new and greater.
I realize that this analogy with the human brain and mind is somewhat abstract and kind of silly, but I find it interesting that the Neocortex and Frontal Lobe is where higher concepts of Morality exist. . .
I'm English and living in China. I can't say I've noticed...
Just to be clear, I was speaking about English in the nationalistic sense rather than the linguistic.
The guy I was talking to was chock-full of horrible stories about British imperial officers razing and plundering national monuments, summary executions of civilians, etc., and he was bristling with anger while describing it to me. Hopefully, he represents a minority.
I don't like to rustle up fear where none is needed, but you can start wars with that kind of imperial over-confidence.
Seriously. After having had a long discussion with a very propagandized Chinese student who was filled to the brim with all kinds of English-hating, One-China, Taiwan-is-ours, imperialistic lunacy which is being fed wholesale to the half billion horney and doomed-never-to-have-wives young male population, I got a bunch of the bad chills and had to change my prosaic views on what China was all about.
This weather manipulation thing is almost certainly propaganda for its own people designed to instill even further levels of insane national pride.
. . . my hopes flared, thinking that the police chief meant that everybody should quit going on and on about this tiresome 'Terror Threat' we all supposedly face and that the media should stop broadcasting fear to the public.
But then I realized that he fully bought into the fairy tale and just wanted to make sure that the people nabbed and tazered while waiting to board their flights are prosecuted in star chambers.
This may sound dumb, given that there are people who strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up in crowded places. Despite the false flag maneuvers, (Israeli rockets bombing Israeli targets), one of the best ways to advance your agenda, assuming that you are a villainous leader of a 'victim' nation, is to convince ignorant fools to shoot at the targets which will most effectively keep the general population fearful and willing to support your leadership.
Terrorists are simply goons who have been subject to cultist, (religious) brainwashing. They come from all religions. --Terrorism is just another stupid label which simply means, "People who have been conned into acting out the wishes of their controllers through violence." Ignorant, flag waving or religious killers whose hearts swell with feelings of patriotic duty or religious fervor have been around forever. They are chumps, every last one of them. "Terrorism" is just the latest way to sell a very old product. The last time, the villains in charge packaged it in a brightly colored box labeled, "Communism".
Sure, there were communists who were aiming guns at the West, just as there are dumb grunts strapping bombs to their vests. But it's all the same old story; the powers that be have just rearranged the chess board so that they can keep people locked into easily controlled patterns of fear. It's all about control and greed, which is why I say that this latest 'Threat' is a falsehood. It's really our leaders using dumb tricks to keep us under thumb. I know I am repeating what may sound to many an old and oft heard song, but that's the problem; people who think in reasonable terms tend to believe that stating the obvious once should be enough, whereas the Dark Side cleaves to the knowledge that repeating a lie often enough causes even smart people believe it.
And they do! People fall for it, over and over again. Two dolts actually felt the need to pen, edit and publish a paper saying, essentially, that engineers are terrorists. These two people, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, both hail from Oxford University for goodness sake! A respected hall of learning which, one would think, might weed out ignorance rather than cultivate it. Some days when I thumb through the news, I just want to yell at the sky. "HOW CAN ANYBODY BE SO BLIND?!?!?"
Devise a means to navigate it successfully. OMG. LOL. ROFL. I am laughing so hard right now I am crying. Inside I really am crying. "Navigate" implies there is a place to go from A to B and an obstacle in your path. "Successfully" also implies you accomplished an objective.
The objective is to experience the experience of experiencing. If you live in awareness, then you are doing your job, and may do so with a sense of purpose and joy. That's Red Pill thinking, at any rate. Living in denial makes the road. . , longer.
When the soul is indestructible except through the long process of undoing oneself by seeking through successive lives to return to primal matter, then one can take heart in knowing that this is just another valuable experience along the way. --And with untainted knowledge and the guts to look at it straight on, you can avoid some of the more unpleasant experiences with somewhat more skill. That's what I meant. It's all a lesson; nothing to fear.
Also. . , and this is a big one, so long as one lives in true accordance with the inner guide; if you can find positive passion in your efforts on this Earth even while living in as full an awareness of reality as possible, then the effects you have upon those around you and the eventual outcome of our current path through history is a rather large factor which should not be underestimated. Butterfly wings, and all that. In spite of everything, I remain optimistic. --And I say this while having a reasonably advanced idea of what we're up against.
The short distances discussed in this and other articles, as I understand things, are reserved for the devices which send out energy to charge RFID chips, thus giving them the ability to transmit their information. Reading this subsequent RFID signal would then logically be limited in distance and resolution only by the sensitivity of the reader. We have had for some time now satellites that we know about which can from orbit pick up small and discrete packages of information, such as license plate numbers and people's faces. And that's just using optics.
I would be very, very surprised if one could not make a satellites capable of tracking RFID tags. --And I would be only somewhat less surprised to learn that there were not such detectors already commissioned and in orbit.
These kinds of patterns, including all types of social control and plans for the human population, have progressed much, much further along than most realize. The public is scurrying about all akimbo worrying about elections, when to actually undo the web of control and general darkness would require a fight of monumental proportions against entrenched and corrupt forces of industry and military powers, staffed by countless thousands of people who not only like the power and money proffered by the current system, but who fear with Gothic instinct any movements which they feel would bring them even one step closer to having that perceived security removed from their lives. People would and do kill to maintain a distance from the things they fear most; Poverty and powerlessness in a world filled with sharks. And as erroneous as this fear is, they will kill you rather than face it. This is why I don't think anybody really has the wherewithal to win against the forces which Bush and those like him represent. --Most of the manipulation which keeps the slaves enslaved is subtle and unseen, but if people step up and rock the boat beyond a certain threshold, then the beast will not refrain from working in the open. Kennedy and MLK were examples of this, and one can see from evidence all around us that the dark forces have only become more powerfully entrenched since the Sixties.
I don't mean to destroy morale among people, but it is important to recognize the reality of the situation before one can hope to devise a means to navigate it successfully.
Why?, well, because he is known to copy from other books and use that in his own work. Some years ago a female spanish autor realized that Coelho was copying from her work (whole chapters) and started legal measures against Paulo.
This fascinates me, but when searching around, I couldn't find anything of substance. What are your sources on this?
You know your manager wants to spy on you, why not spy on your manager if there's no chance of getting caught? Get some nice juicy dirt! Back-room dirty deals among politicians? It's on Youtube now!
We already know who the criminals are. It IS all on Youtube. The sad fact of the matter remains, however, that the bad guys have all the guns and write all the laws and hold all the prison keys.
The criminals are still running the show and the jails are overwhelmingly filled with poor people. And anyway, robot flies are silly when you can listen in on conversations on the other side of the city using the array of other various technologies which have been around for years now.
Sorry. I recognize that your post is meant to be hopeful, but I think the solutions lie in other areas.
Grim economic forecaster predict that the Dow Jones could plummet as much as 1000 points tomorrow, (Tuesday) morning, amidst fears of a full blown recession or even market collapse. This based on the shaky markets around the world over the last couple of days.
I wonder if, when you control the world, you can pull out tricks like this to distract from unwelcome news surfacing? I mean, the people whose names are attached to selling nuke technology have some pretty big pull. . . Yes, they're just managers for the real behind-the-scenes powers that be, but maybe they can't be sacrificed at the moment, given that it would likely unravel the U.S. leadership right up the ladder.
I admit it's a thought with fairly thin connective tissue, but I figured I'd point it out nonetheless.
Except Shoup is now calling itself, "Advanced Voting Solutions" (AVS). You've probably heard of them. --The most astonishing part is that Diebold's, Howard Van Pelt and Larry Ensminger left Diebold and were hired by AVS in late 2004. --And not just a small hire either. Van Pelt and Ensminger are now AVS's President and Vice President!
Dave Sim reincarnated as a woman. I wondered what he would sound like when writing one of his misogynist essays from a female perspective.
Kidding aside, and to be fair, I've met the guy you're describing. For some reason, he's the guy many young women seem to be attracted to. I met one woman who told me that her sexual fantasy was to be raped by a bike gang, (but one in which all the bikers looked like a young James Dean.) We all live lives where we deal with that kind of thinking, and probably a lot more than once. --I've listened to many girls describe hideous relationships with such men, and what can you say? "Don't get into a relationship with a jerk?" Seems obvious, but it goes ignored. You can't really stop people from doing what they do; people need to go through the lessons they need to go through, and they need to deal with their karma, so these experiences will happen again and again, and they will seem to describe the entire world for that person until the patterns are completed. It's not a bad thing, it just is.
In a larger realm of automatic living, where people are managed like cattle, the war of the sexes seems to me a very well crafted conundrum, designed to perpetuate divisiveness and sadness. I've seen the fallout; there's a whole street in a town I once lived where somebody built a co-op housing development designed largely to help out women who have come from bad relationships; single moms and such. I answered an ad for a house to rent and was invited to live in this community. My room mate and I would have been two of the only men in the whole development.
I really like co-op living, having spent a few years in a condo once set up that way, where each participant's "rent" was really a mortgage payment, and where everybody takes on various tasks needed to keep things running. --Sort of like one of those communes you described, but peopled by professionals and built in a rural setting. This particular community had been around for about ten years, and I was looking forward to it, but my room mate backed out at the last minute. I didn't want to carry the rent for a whole house, so I found another arrangement elsewhere in town.
Anyway. . , I was later told by several people that I'd dodged a bullet. --I didn't realize at the time that the co-op had been set up primarily for women. There were apparently horror stories of other men who had lived there briefly. It was a community of B&T's, I was told. That is, "Bitter and Twisted" women who had been hurt and who ate men alive through expressions of anger and manipulation and all kinds of other nasty stuff. I'm generally a trusting person and I like helping people, and I'm good with tools and such and I offered these qualities up when interviewed. "What will you bring to the co-op?" I was told later that I was too nice and naive and that I'd have been eaten for lunch by angry women looking to pass on the abuse to others. --I disagree completely with this; it's absolutely possible to be a giving person who doesn't take abuse; it's a mistake to confuse openness with weakness, but still. . , I could definitely see that there might have been some difficult challenges in living in such a community. But people who have been hurt, male or female, don't need to be judged. ("B&T"?? What a horrible label!)
Anyway, it seems to me that what you are describing is the human who is only half-formed. It happens in female bodies as well, though it manifests differently. People need to develop both sides of themselves; their male and female side, so that they do not need a partner to fill the void, so to speak. Males who think from the reptile brain and have not broken through their automatic thinking, and who have not woken up to their female side often do, in the most negative cases, manifest in the ways you describe. The description for the female version of the same thing is somewhat different, but it is similarly long and discouraging. One of the goals, I think, of the human experience is to achieve
Every second reviewer comments on the bland, flat, two-dimensional character portrayals in this film. Classic Abrams.
You cannot hope to tell a good story unless you have some insight into human nature and behavior rather than just walk around with a handy reference card with a list of expected auto-reactions which have been programmed into brainwashed people. Abrams is a sleepwalker, and it is evident in his work. Cloverfield sounds like a film which was a good idea brought to us by a man who had his soul surgically removed by the CIA, (probably while working on 'Alias').
I remember meeting lots of American kids while traveling as a youngster, and most of them had this pathetic, (and I mean that in the agonizing, "Oh, you poor thing", way) zoned out "I live in the Matrix but haven't figured it out yet" brain-shocked look in their eyes. To be fair, some of the kids I met were very cool and very aware, but most were total and absolute sleep walkers, utterly lost. (Hmm. 'Lost'.) --Otherwise good and well-meaning people born into a highly artificial environment with no real reference points. A world where their souls were drugged into zombiedom by a highly controlled lucid dream culture. Very, very weird. I see it in other cultures, too, but there's a real hold on the minds of the American twenty-something which is very powerful and yet hard to put your finger on.
And it's not real! That's not what real people are supposed to be, and Abrams hasn't figured this out. He films the sleep-walkers in their little separate soul cages as though that was it. --Wall to wall plastic people living a few inches under the surface at all times. I don't even know how to articulate it other than as I am now doing, but it's totally disturbing and frustrating. People under plastic wrap, guided entirely by the machine mind, acting through life without any connection to their real selves. Ask them what they want, where their passion lives and they look at you, lost and confused. That's not how it should be. The good thing is that if you poke at it a bit, they begin to break through and wake up. What do you WANT?!?! WHO are you?!?! WHY are you doing what you are doing?!?! WHERE IS YOUR FIRE?!?! Do you FEEL it or are you simply going through the motions? It's right there inside; touch it! Connect to it. It's that brilliant white flare in your chest. Listen to your instincts and do whatever it takes to pull out of the luke-warm waters and WAKE UP!!!!!
-FL
Re:Movie watching for those with very young childr
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Cloverfield Discussion
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That's awesome! --Because when you're at the film, being next to a friend or a lover means very little since you're not paying attention to each other. You might as well be alone. --Unless you're sixteen, and throwing popcorn and making out are on the available options list, the fun is generally in the discussion after the fact. Nice ploy!
Live theater and musical events are best enjoyed together, though. They both offer something which can be called a shared experience. --The atmosphere and the uniqueness of a performance in a small club, and the buying drinks for each other and getting cuddly and checking out the other characters and dramas unfolding in the joint and all that. That's when you call a sitter.
The best films I've seen have all be in my local co-op theater, films you will never likely see promoted in your regular cinema chain. They play every Sunday lots of great stuff I've never or barely heard of. --I finally got around to seeing Baraka over the holidays. It was wonderful! --Though, I also watched the latest X-Men film, and even though it was a series of cliches, I enjoyed the heck out of that as well, and I spent an afternoon hashing it out with a bunch of comics geeks.
Though, with regards to movies older than 25 years. . , I also watched "My Dinner with Andre". That was awesome!
As for this Cloverfield thing. . . I love a good monster movie, but Abrams is such a clone, I think I'll go to watch it knowing that half the fun will be in trying afterwards to pin down exactly what it is about his story-telling style which makes me feel as though my brain is being forced to into a lower-functioning state where the panorama of human reactions is reduced to black & white mono with Dolby Noise Reduction. Is he a reflection of the American public today, or is he just a tool being used by the Powers That Be to force everybody's brains to 'think' like a bunch of anti-depressant junkies. 'Lost' and 'Alias' were both so entirely fake and offensive that I think the man might actually benefit from a dose of electroshock therapy in the hopes that it might perhaps jump-start the rest of his cognitive awareness, --if indeed they exist somewhere in his cranium.
Can you imagine living in a world where canned emotional responses are the norm? I'd seriously want to shoot myself, though of course with the mind being what it is, you wouldn't even be aware that your brain was only firing on one cylinder.
But there have certainly been some productions in the last decade which were fantastic. --The animated Miyazaki features have all been well worth the rental price.
Slashdot Mirror
The language used by this ABC staffer seems soft to me. --A repair job doesn't necessarily mean a cut cable or a complete loss of service. A subsea internet cable is packed not only with glass fiber, but also with a high-voltage electrical line used to power the numerous optical repeaters needed to keep a signal strong. Such units, I would would imagine, are subject to failure from time to time, necessitating irregular maintenance. But whatever the case. . .
I remain in two minds about whether or not some of these latest breaks were deliberate. It would appear that there is enough regular repair necessary to keep more than one company busy. --600 employees just for Global Marine Systems. (Who also lays cable as well as providing a variety of subsea cable services.) The Japanese also host a subsea cable company which was sent out to perform repair work on a 2001 break in a U.S.-China cable, (the cause of which, according to the article I found, was unclear at the time). Now, I have mentioned, (much to the distress of many Slashdotters), that we're currently in the middle of a Mercury retrograde, during which we can expect to see all kinds of communication slow-downs and tangles in ways which might otherwise appear too coincidental for comfort. These things happen, and it can look at the time as though some not-so-benevolent god is on your case, though I tend to think of it more as just bad weather in the probability spectrum.
However, people have also pointed out several reasons to squint suspiciously and pay closer attention to these cable-breakage events. There is no doubt that governments do indeed have the ability to play spy versus spy with cables, and it would be foolish to suggest that the idea of tactical cable breaking had never crossed their minds. (As such, I must disagree with the parent poster's snide position with regard to conspiracy theory, despite the fact that many do tend to engage in such thoughts with a measure of over-eagerness). --We are all well aware of the high pressure politics in the Middle East and the volatility of the U.S. incumbent leadership. Also, there is also the uncomfortable item pointed out by the Egyptian government that at least two of the breaks happened under monitored tracts of sea, and that there had been no ships in those waters during the times of the breaks, suggesting something else. Maybe a submarine? Or maybe just a repeater on the fritz.
Who knows? The ocean is a harsh place and any number of possibilities come to mind. Perhaps an old WWII depth charge finally decided to pop. Whatever the case, I think this is one of those times when it will pay to watch and see what unfolds before jumping to political conclusions.
It's not as though we can really do anything else. I'm sort of holding my breath to see if there will be a sixth breakage before the weekend.
-FL
No, I think you were so accused because the typical knee-jerk responder only has so many labels as his disposal and as none of them is logically sound anyway, it hardly matters which one is used to patch the leak you poked in in his bubble reality. When one is hissing 'delirium gas', the sticky back of the label is more important than whatever happens to be printed on the front.
-FL
For those of you who have not read this tome, one of the major themes revolves around the politics and power struggles of moving data through undersea internet cables. I found this interesting enough, but then about twenty minutes ago I just finished reading the following passage where two of the main characters are discussing the vulnerability of undersea cables to sabotage. .
This odd little number which reminds me of THX1138 and 2001
And. . .
Sisko doing Morpheus
These tap into the love of geeks for sci-fi and ideals about freedom in a manner which must have been fun for the guys making these ads. --Which goes to show that having a huge ad budget means you can do some cool stuff from time to time.
-FL
I think it says much about the success of the social conditioning of the American people. After all else is said and done, one can measure the effects of mind control simply by looking at the end results. I think this was even noted somewhere in the bible using an agriculture analogy concerning fruit.
-FL
I have several views on this.
One of which is that perhaps it is not Mercury per se that is causing the effects noted, but that the system we live within is fractal in nature. Events reflected in the small are reflected in the very big. Both Mercury and terrestrial electronics devices inhabit the same system.
When one considers that matter is an apparent illusion, being rather more akin to an expression of something far more ephemeral, our universe can be recognized as little more than a holographic projection. There is no sound reason not to believe that there are patterns and systems in effect which do not behave according to physics as currently recognized by orthodox science, which is, as everybody knows, limited.
How about you don't force me to wade through an entire astrology site and just give me a thumbnail explanation of how an issue of relative perception can have an effect on my computer?
What I am suggesting is that people take some time to evaluate the forces at work, which can be done easily enough by reading through a horoscope such as the ones I linked to previously, and performing their own measurements. If there is something there which tweaks at your mind, then curiosity should demand further investigation to determine whether or not there are real patterns unfolding or if it is merely the mind trying to invent patterns where none exist. It is far more valuable to look at what is going on in the world rather than pretend that previously unrecognized forces don't exist based on current (incomplete) knowledge structures. I find it odd that this is not something which is instantly recognized more often. If you are curious about the universe at all, then you should need no prompting. The need for prompting implies previous conditioning, and such conditioning serves those who condition, i.e, not you.
-FL
I am also an astrology guy. --Which I realize anybody who is in the tech field or sciences tends to put zero stock in, which is fair enough, (though, almost always people do this without first having tried it out, or if they have, only in as much as they looked briefly and only at the nonsense stuff in order to say that they have.) But whatever the case. . .
Mercury just went retrograde at the end of January, and will remain so until February 19th. Mercury is an indicator of all things related to communication and moving parts, etc., and when it retrogrades, everything tends to stop working properly. Don't ink deals, don't buy new equipment, don't agree to anything because there's always some piece of vital data you're not aware of and when it comes to light later on, you will wish you had waited a couple of weeks.
I've seen, several times, computer systems (my own and those of other people) which even though they had been working reliably for years, blow many unrelated components all within a matter of days or hours during a retrograde period. (And always during mission critical tasks). When you are trying to make information or systems run smoothly, that's when the universe will put up a wall of mud, telling you to slow down and take on a different style of awareness and living for that period; it's good to stop and put your brain into low gear during these times; that's how best to use the 'flavour' of energy available. --And if you don't, the harder you push, the more stuff will blow up in your face. So it can seem in a high tech world which never wants to stop that it's a, "When it rains, it pours" kind of deal.
--And in the same way that I doubt the NSA was trying to sabotage my personal computer, (and printer. And scanner. And digital camera. And bank card. And car. Ugh. What a shitty time that was!), I doubt that there was any intent to deliberately knock out undersea communications cables.
I have my own theories for how and why the universe works in this manner, but I won't get into them here, as I somehow doubt this post will survive the knee-jerk modding I imagine it will be subject to. If it does, however, stay above the zero mark, interested people might want to check out Susan Miller's astrology site to learn more. (It's free and she puts a lot of energy into it.)
Remember, knee-jerking is not scientific. Real skeptics study something with an open mind, listening to the arguments of both sides and then doing their own evaluation and research before submitting their comments. I have met maybe ten people in my life who call themselves skeptics who function in this manner.
-FL
It's funny. The evolution of the computer started out with contestants trying to see who would sell the most units of hardware. Chips and keyboards and power supplies. Gates realized early on that the hardware wars going to end up being fought on the nickel and dime table, thanks to overseas slave labor and the way retail works. It was inevitable that the software that makes a computer 'think' would become the factor which gave a computer its real power. Taking the example of the living computer, the ape, the software sits upon the computer, making it the mind to the body's brain. But, to follow that analogy, with just basic mind and brain, all you really have is a monkey. --A pretty successful creature in its own right, but without the ability to communicate complicated thoughts quickly and effectively with its neighbors, then the next step up on the evolutionary chain, that of the development of advanced societies, isn't going to happen in a significant way.
Each step up the chain seems to command geometric growth in terms power and wealth. --To look at the silly analogy in another way; Microsoft is the king of the Reptilian and perhaps the Limbic brain of your computer. But the Neo Cortex. . . Well now!
The battle has moved on into the jungles of communication as represented by bandwidth and networking, where the broad powers of civilization come into flower. With Google buying up all the dark fiber in the world, owning dozens of huge data centers in many countries, and bidding now for a slice of the radio broadcast spectrum. . , MS must see that their position in the hierarchy of the computer universe being overshadowed by something new and greater.
I realize that this analogy with the human brain and mind is somewhat abstract and kind of silly, but I find it interesting that the Neocortex and Frontal Lobe is where higher concepts of Morality exist. . .
-FL
Just to be clear, I was speaking about English in the nationalistic sense rather than the linguistic.
The guy I was talking to was chock-full of horrible stories about British imperial officers razing and plundering national monuments, summary executions of civilians, etc., and he was bristling with anger while describing it to me. Hopefully, he represents a minority.
-FL
Good story
-FL
Seriously. After having had a long discussion with a very propagandized Chinese student who was filled to the brim with all kinds of English-hating, One-China, Taiwan-is-ours, imperialistic lunacy which is being fed wholesale to the half billion horney and doomed-never-to-have-wives young male population, I got a bunch of the bad chills and had to change my prosaic views on what China was all about.
This weather manipulation thing is almost certainly propaganda for its own people designed to instill even further levels of insane national pride.
-FL
But then I realized that he fully bought into the fairy tale and just wanted to make sure that the people nabbed and tazered while waiting to board their flights are prosecuted in star chambers.
Oh well.
-FL
This may sound dumb, given that there are people who strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up in crowded places. Despite the false flag maneuvers, (Israeli rockets bombing Israeli targets), one of the best ways to advance your agenda, assuming that you are a villainous leader of a 'victim' nation, is to convince ignorant fools to shoot at the targets which will most effectively keep the general population fearful and willing to support your leadership.
Terrorists are simply goons who have been subject to cultist, (religious) brainwashing. They come from all religions. --Terrorism is just another stupid label which simply means, "People who have been conned into acting out the wishes of their controllers through violence." Ignorant, flag waving or religious killers whose hearts swell with feelings of patriotic duty or religious fervor have been around forever. They are chumps, every last one of them. "Terrorism" is just the latest way to sell a very old product. The last time, the villains in charge packaged it in a brightly colored box labeled, "Communism".
Sure, there were communists who were aiming guns at the West, just as there are dumb grunts strapping bombs to their vests. But it's all the same old story; the powers that be have just rearranged the chess board so that they can keep people locked into easily controlled patterns of fear. It's all about control and greed, which is why I say that this latest 'Threat' is a falsehood. It's really our leaders using dumb tricks to keep us under thumb. I know I am repeating what may sound to many an old and oft heard song, but that's the problem; people who think in reasonable terms tend to believe that stating the obvious once should be enough, whereas the Dark Side cleaves to the knowledge that repeating a lie often enough causes even smart people believe it.
And they do! People fall for it, over and over again. Two dolts actually felt the need to pen, edit and publish a paper saying, essentially, that engineers are terrorists. These two people, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, both hail from Oxford University for goodness sake! A respected hall of learning which, one would think, might weed out ignorance rather than cultivate it. Some days when I thumb through the news, I just want to yell at the sky. "HOW CAN ANYBODY BE SO BLIND?!?!?"
I think I'll go do that now. Excuse me.
-FL
The objective is to experience the experience of experiencing. If you live in awareness, then you are doing your job, and may do so with a sense of purpose and joy. That's Red Pill thinking, at any rate. Living in denial makes the road. . , longer.
When the soul is indestructible except through the long process of undoing oneself by seeking through successive lives to return to primal matter, then one can take heart in knowing that this is just another valuable experience along the way. --And with untainted knowledge and the guts to look at it straight on, you can avoid some of the more unpleasant experiences with somewhat more skill. That's what I meant. It's all a lesson; nothing to fear.
Also. . , and this is a big one, so long as one lives in true accordance with the inner guide; if you can find positive passion in your efforts on this Earth even while living in as full an awareness of reality as possible, then the effects you have upon those around you and the eventual outcome of our current path through history is a rather large factor which should not be underestimated. Butterfly wings, and all that. In spite of everything, I remain optimistic. --And I say this while having a reasonably advanced idea of what we're up against.
-FL
I would be very, very surprised if one could not make a satellites capable of tracking RFID tags. --And I would be only somewhat less surprised to learn that there were not such detectors already commissioned and in orbit.
These kinds of patterns, including all types of social control and plans for the human population, have progressed much, much further along than most realize. The public is scurrying about all akimbo worrying about elections, when to actually undo the web of control and general darkness would require a fight of monumental proportions against entrenched and corrupt forces of industry and military powers, staffed by countless thousands of people who not only like the power and money proffered by the current system, but who fear with Gothic instinct any movements which they feel would bring them even one step closer to having that perceived security removed from their lives. People would and do kill to maintain a distance from the things they fear most; Poverty and powerlessness in a world filled with sharks. And as erroneous as this fear is, they will kill you rather than face it. This is why I don't think anybody really has the wherewithal to win against the forces which Bush and those like him represent. --Most of the manipulation which keeps the slaves enslaved is subtle and unseen, but if people step up and rock the boat beyond a certain threshold, then the beast will not refrain from working in the open. Kennedy and MLK were examples of this, and one can see from evidence all around us that the dark forces have only become more powerfully entrenched since the Sixties.
I don't mean to destroy morale among people, but it is important to recognize the reality of the situation before one can hope to devise a means to navigate it successfully.
-FL
Your real Karma goes up when you are honest when in error. One of the hardest things to do! (I know from far too much personal experience.)
Looks like I won't have to write off my Paulo Cohelo readings.
-FL
This fascinates me, but when searching around, I couldn't find anything of substance. What are your sources on this?
Thanks!
-FL
We already know who the criminals are. It IS all on Youtube. The sad fact of the matter remains, however, that the bad guys have all the guns and write all the laws and hold all the prison keys.
The criminals are still running the show and the jails are overwhelmingly filled with poor people. And anyway, robot flies are silly when you can listen in on conversations on the other side of the city using the array of other various technologies which have been around for years now.
Sorry. I recognize that your post is meant to be hopeful, but I think the solutions lie in other areas.
-FL
I wonder if, when you control the world, you can pull out tricks like this to distract from unwelcome news surfacing? I mean, the people whose names are attached to selling nuke technology have some pretty big pull. . . Yes, they're just managers for the real behind-the-scenes powers that be, but maybe they can't be sacrificed at the moment, given that it would likely unravel the U.S. leadership right up the ladder.
I admit it's a thought with fairly thin connective tissue, but I figured I'd point it out nonetheless.
-FL
New words humble me.
-FL
Here's a little of Shoup's history.
It's a big, hairball of a mess and none of the right people are in jail.
-FL
Dave Sim reincarnated as a woman. I wondered what he would sound like when writing one of his misogynist essays from a female perspective.
Kidding aside, and to be fair, I've met the guy you're describing. For some reason, he's the guy many young women seem to be attracted to. I met one woman who told me that her sexual fantasy was to be raped by a bike gang, (but one in which all the bikers looked like a young James Dean.) We all live lives where we deal with that kind of thinking, and probably a lot more than once. --I've listened to many girls describe hideous relationships with such men, and what can you say? "Don't get into a relationship with a jerk?" Seems obvious, but it goes ignored. You can't really stop people from doing what they do; people need to go through the lessons they need to go through, and they need to deal with their karma, so these experiences will happen again and again, and they will seem to describe the entire world for that person until the patterns are completed. It's not a bad thing, it just is.
In a larger realm of automatic living, where people are managed like cattle, the war of the sexes seems to me a very well crafted conundrum, designed to perpetuate divisiveness and sadness. I've seen the fallout; there's a whole street in a town I once lived where somebody built a co-op housing development designed largely to help out women who have come from bad relationships; single moms and such. I answered an ad for a house to rent and was invited to live in this community. My room mate and I would have been two of the only men in the whole development.
I really like co-op living, having spent a few years in a condo once set up that way, where each participant's "rent" was really a mortgage payment, and where everybody takes on various tasks needed to keep things running. --Sort of like one of those communes you described, but peopled by professionals and built in a rural setting. This particular community had been around for about ten years, and I was looking forward to it, but my room mate backed out at the last minute. I didn't want to carry the rent for a whole house, so I found another arrangement elsewhere in town.
Anyway. . , I was later told by several people that I'd dodged a bullet. --I didn't realize at the time that the co-op had been set up primarily for women. There were apparently horror stories of other men who had lived there briefly. It was a community of B&T's, I was told. That is, "Bitter and Twisted" women who had been hurt and who ate men alive through expressions of anger and manipulation and all kinds of other nasty stuff. I'm generally a trusting person and I like helping people, and I'm good with tools and such and I offered these qualities up when interviewed. "What will you bring to the co-op?" I was told later that I was too nice and naive and that I'd have been eaten for lunch by angry women looking to pass on the abuse to others. --I disagree completely with this; it's absolutely possible to be a giving person who doesn't take abuse; it's a mistake to confuse openness with weakness, but still. . , I could definitely see that there might have been some difficult challenges in living in such a community. But people who have been hurt, male or female, don't need to be judged. ("B&T"?? What a horrible label!)
Anyway, it seems to me that what you are describing is the human who is only half-formed. It happens in female bodies as well, though it manifests differently. People need to develop both sides of themselves; their male and female side, so that they do not need a partner to fill the void, so to speak. Males who think from the reptile brain and have not broken through their automatic thinking, and who have not woken up to their female side often do, in the most negative cases, manifest in the ways you describe. The description for the female version of the same thing is somewhat different, but it is similarly long and discouraging. One of the goals, I think, of the human experience is to achieve
Every second reviewer comments on the bland, flat, two-dimensional character portrayals in this film. Classic Abrams.
You cannot hope to tell a good story unless you have some insight into human nature and behavior rather than just walk around with a handy reference card with a list of expected auto-reactions which have been programmed into brainwashed people. Abrams is a sleepwalker, and it is evident in his work. Cloverfield sounds like a film which was a good idea brought to us by a man who had his soul surgically removed by the CIA, (probably while working on 'Alias').
I remember meeting lots of American kids while traveling as a youngster, and most of them had this pathetic, (and I mean that in the agonizing, "Oh, you poor thing", way) zoned out "I live in the Matrix but haven't figured it out yet" brain-shocked look in their eyes. To be fair, some of the kids I met were very cool and very aware, but most were total and absolute sleep walkers, utterly lost. (Hmm. 'Lost'.) --Otherwise good and well-meaning people born into a highly artificial environment with no real reference points. A world where their souls were drugged into zombiedom by a highly controlled lucid dream culture. Very, very weird. I see it in other cultures, too, but there's a real hold on the minds of the American twenty-something which is very powerful and yet hard to put your finger on.
And it's not real! That's not what real people are supposed to be, and Abrams hasn't figured this out. He films the sleep-walkers in their little separate soul cages as though that was it. --Wall to wall plastic people living a few inches under the surface at all times. I don't even know how to articulate it other than as I am now doing, but it's totally disturbing and frustrating. People under plastic wrap, guided entirely by the machine mind, acting through life without any connection to their real selves. Ask them what they want, where their passion lives and they look at you, lost and confused. That's not how it should be. The good thing is that if you poke at it a bit, they begin to break through and wake up. What do you WANT?!?! WHO are you?!?! WHY are you doing what you are doing?!?! WHERE IS YOUR FIRE?!?! Do you FEEL it or are you simply going through the motions? It's right there inside; touch it! Connect to it. It's that brilliant white flare in your chest. Listen to your instincts and do whatever it takes to pull out of the luke-warm waters and WAKE UP!!!!!
-FL
Live theater and musical events are best enjoyed together, though. They both offer something which can be called a shared experience. --The atmosphere and the uniqueness of a performance in a small club, and the buying drinks for each other and getting cuddly and checking out the other characters and dramas unfolding in the joint and all that. That's when you call a sitter.
-FL
Though, with regards to movies older than 25 years. . , I also watched "My Dinner with Andre". That was awesome!
As for this Cloverfield thing. . . I love a good monster movie, but Abrams is such a clone, I think I'll go to watch it knowing that half the fun will be in trying afterwards to pin down exactly what it is about his story-telling style which makes me feel as though my brain is being forced to into a lower-functioning state where the panorama of human reactions is reduced to black & white mono with Dolby Noise Reduction. Is he a reflection of the American public today, or is he just a tool being used by the Powers That Be to force everybody's brains to 'think' like a bunch of anti-depressant junkies. 'Lost' and 'Alias' were both so entirely fake and offensive that I think the man might actually benefit from a dose of electroshock therapy in the hopes that it might perhaps jump-start the rest of his cognitive awareness, --if indeed they exist somewhere in his cranium.
Can you imagine living in a world where canned emotional responses are the norm? I'd seriously want to shoot myself, though of course with the mind being what it is, you wouldn't even be aware that your brain was only firing on one cylinder.
But there have certainly been some productions in the last decade which were fantastic. --The animated Miyazaki features have all been well worth the rental price.
-FL