You are presenting a caricature with a big target painted on your chest.
But if you come by your lousy spelling honestly, then I certainly applaud your scholastic efforts, and would only add that it takes all types to turn the world --and that none of the types you mention need to be labeled with antagonism. Why on earth should there by any kind of war between the various classes of passion in the halls of learning?
I've heard that the whole 2012 thing is a bit of a bugaboo, that nothing is quite so clockwork; that time is somewhat squishy. --Or as the Doctor put it, "Timey-Whymie".
Still. . , as looming and catastrophic endings/beginnings go, the milestones keep piling up, don't they? --And they have an interesting story to tell to anybody who is paying attention.
The U.S. goose is cooked, and there doesn't seem to be anything anybody can do to stop it. People are too far gone and the lunatics are running the show. So what do you do?
--It's important to remember that the real battle is the inner one. Your perceptions and personal alignment are what count. You have to pick a side; service to self or service to others. Sitting on the fence now means another trip on the merry-go-round, and a new dark age is where it all begins again on this big blue marble; huddling in a cave while the cold wind whistles under red skies. There are other places to be if you can keep it together. Dissolve the ego, integrate your shadow self, (we all have stuff we don't want to face or deal with, which we all just want to go away; integrate it and accept it and it will stop be the monster in the closet). So do not judge and be open to transformation.
Do the best you can. Love yourself. Follow that inner guidance system in your belly, follow your real passions, treat people with love and respect and don't let the fear get to you. It's going to get more 'interesting' before the dust settles. Remember; you signed up for this amusement park attraction because this hot spot in the galaxy is the place to be. You're lucky to be here, so pay attention and have fun with your time on this world. And remember, as Bill Hicks put it, "It's all just a ride".
BTW, does any one know what Acesulfame Potassium is?
It's an artificial sweetener. --Usually used in conjunction with aspartame or sucralose in order to mask its somewhat bitter aftertaste. The general consensus is that it is safe to use, although, the studies that purport to show safety have been challenged by a number of individuals and organizations, most notably the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in the USA. Their concerns have been countered by the EU's Scientific Committee which conducted a re-evaluation based on the CSPI's charges.
Unlike aspartame, acesulfame K is known to result in heightened insulin levels in the subject. This can lead to an artificially increased appetite.
Based on the available data, aseculfame K sounds like a minimal risk item to me, but my thinking has always been, "Why drink chemicals when you don't have to? There are just so many reasons to be skeptical about corporate and government claims of any kind." (Especially given the debacle surrounding the improprieties in the FDA with regard to aspartame; falsified safety reports for which Searle, aspartame's patent holder, was facing criminal indictments until Donald Rumsfeld's slick maneuvering around the matter during his time as CEO at Searle, --before the company was bought by Monsanto.) But you drinks your drink and you takes your chances. --My favored sweetener is maple syrup, (in coffee.) I love the taste and I trust the source, but each to his own, right? I totally agree with you in that the customer should be allowed to choose, but reliable information is the key. Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers.
Hollywood knows perfectly well how to make a good movie.
My thinking is that for the most part, the film industry is allowed to screw around making whatever junk it wants, with many of its workers (from the key grip to the production heads) believing that they really are doing what they can with the philosophies they personally generate. But if the top dogs decide that it is time for society to jump in a specific direction, then there are ways to ensure that the message is effective and powerful and respected. If, for instance, you want to sell torture to a populace, then you can do it easily enough; just pull together the known elements needed to connect with the people, (including good scripts), and out of five project, you're pretty much guaranteed to have three or four of them hit home. It isn't rocket science, but it is a science.
It's just as easy to kill a project which some upstart producer with the know-how is making which will spread the 'wrong' message.
It's no mystery to me why shows like "Firefly" with it's anti-government message bit the dust, and pro-torture brain candy like "Alias" went for six seasons. Hollywood has perfected the science Goebbels first labeled. There's a huge essay here which offers an array of information on this subject.
Saying "something is running out" never seems to take price into consideration. Same issue with oil. There is PLENTY of oil on the earth. The question is: how valuable is it to you (the consumer) to extract and use it? I guaran-damn-tee you that if Helium sold for $5000/cu ft -- we'd have PLENTY of helium. And most likely, I'd be in the helium sales business tomorrow. That's how capitalism works. If demand is out of whack with supply, then the price goes up and more suppliers come online to provide that product. If supply is out of whack with demand, then prices go down and fewer and fewer suppliers stay in that business.
And yet, even if Helium were available at $5000/cu ft to fuel some kind of snazzy super-reactor or whatever, it wouldn't mean you'd ever see balloons at your next door neighbor's kid's birthday party again.
Capitalism is just a force. Many mistakenly believe that it is a philosophy, but 'supply and demand' is the social equivalent of the wind or the tides. Humans, however, are capable of recognizing and manipulating the various forces of nature so that we don't have to live in caves and trees. I've never understood why people think that just because they recognize a given pattern of nature that they should suddenly play 'hands off'. People don't do that with fire, because if they just let fire have its way, the painful results are quite immediate. It's harder to see the dangers of doing nothing but praying to a deity while the slower moving forces do their thing.
Capitalism has no soul, and I always walk around with the sneaking impression that even while it shines its plastic smile down upon me, that those cold eyes are thinking how it would slap me in chains and sell my liver the instant it became profitable and risk-free to do so. I don't understand why people worship capitalism like some kind of religion. Capitalism is a force of nature which should damned well be watched and regulated, because it would happily turn against us at the first opportunity. I strongly suspect that it already has.
Not all, but some people who embrace Capitalism as a way of life have been convinced that it is a good idea to live in gated communities, and to think that people who don't earn enough to make sure that they don't end up unwilling Indian liver donors, somehow deserve to be miserable. This is the result of psychopathic patterning, which is another force of nature; the psychopath wants the world to be divided into slaves and masters simply because it feeds on pain. It cloaks itself in whatever other reigning doctrine happens to be prevalent and it perverts it in order to advance its own ends, and those ends are always the establishment of fear and suffering. There are always enough people who are so wound up in their favorite doctrine to be led blindly down the garden path. Currently the garden path happens to be lined with Democracy and Capitalism, and we need only stop and look around at our present world to see where that has led us. Torture openly argued for on national news channels.
Doesn't this sound sort of like part of an old Adam West script?
And on a side-note which is probably more relevant. . .
Since the Hindenburg went up in flames because it had been painted with thermite and not because of the gas it had been filled with, perhaps our airships should be using hydrogen which has more lifting power than helium anyway.
I've always felt slightly gyped by not getting to live in that reality where we had regular airship traffic and where classy chicks all smoked from foot-long cigarette holders. I want to wear a waxed mustache and say things like, "Now see here, what?" and not sound like an idiot like I currently do when I speak that way. -FL
Perhaps if the various reasons for rejection are understood and categorized, a society could set up a DNA bank of sorts so that there would be a choice of a thousand slightly different hearts which would provide enough choice to satisfy even the most intolerant immune system.
Whatever. I think I'll just take care of the one I've got. "Rib Cage Separator" is a term I never want to have a doctor need to use while I lie unconscious on a table.
People are willing to base entire economic/philosophical believe systems on sensationalist hypothetical problems. When was the last time you needed a replacement heart? Okay. Now when was the last time you needed stitches or a bone set? My ex-girlfriend, (who remains an excellent friend of mine), cut the end of her finger off while working at her restaurant job. Because she lives in Canada, she had the end of her finger put back on that day for zero dollars. --On her income, having to foot a couple thousand dollar hospital bill would have been a major problem. She's quite young, but I can see her having some real income potential down the road at which point her taxes will help pay for others who are in need. Power doesn't come into the picture here at all. I point to her case only because it was the most recent, but I can point to a dozen others, one of them including open-heart surgery and another an MRI scan, all of which indicate that despite the nonsense claims by American politicos to the contrary, Canada's health care system not only works, but kicks serious ass.
These artificial sensationalist questions about replacement hearts used to sell greed-bases systems sound to me a lot like the artificial sensationalist questions about ticking-bomb scenarios designed to sell state-sanctioned torture.
It's all a lie designed by psychopathic leadership to turn the populace into monsters.
You just added a fourth slice from the wiki-pie chart, a non-medical related one, (Unemployment insurance and welfare) to come up with your total.
To be fair, though, your point about the percentage spent on NASA being comparatively small is quite valid. I'd rather see it come off defense spending, though. (Which is not accurately represented as the Wiki article points out).
The 16 Billion NASA gets is.01% of the 1.6 Trillion that goes into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid every year. Funding space exploration at this bargain-basement budget level should be a no brainer
Where did you get that number? 1.6 trillion? I find that a little hard to believe. Actually, after Googling around to find out the U.S. budget figures, I find it impossible to believe. --You're not one of those irrational, "I hate spending money to help folks other than myself" people, are you?
All true. --But since it is well known by the power brokers of the world just how easy it is to manipulate the public, one might wonder, (one being 'me'), if these disincentives were random nuggets in the bag of feed, or sprinkled deliberately into the trough. They say nothing in politics happens by accident, and the more I learn about the world, the more evident this appears to be. NASA is politics.
Heck, if the American beef and wheat industries can invert the food pyramid, and if the CIA and military can have such close ties with the film and television industries, then if the people with the pull (Rothschildes and similar; people with gobs of power and no public personas to protect), really wanted Americans living in big vacuum cleaner attachments on other worlds, then they could sell it incredibly easily. Heck, I don't think it would even need selling; all it would need is a very little bit of money, (comparatively speaking), and an open casting call to the Slashdot types of the world. --Which leads me to think that space exploration is simply not on the agenda. I have to wonder what their disincentives are.
Actually, I know the answer to that. . .
Space exploration leads to excitement and creation for the joy it rather than for that bone-headed 'competition' thing they keep selling kids in ass-hat colleges. Learning, and opening and growing. These kinds of activities which are the heart and soul of exploration lead to states of mind in entire populations which Empower. --Empowered people cannot be controlled so easily, and the rich psychotic bastards of the world know this and fear this with gothic morbidity.
Is it any wonder that the space program blossomed under Kennedy? We have to remember the rich psychopathic bastards who ordered his death did so exactly because he was all about empowering the people. After all is said and done, that's the core reason those bullets flew. Everything ever since has been a stage production to trick us all into thinking that Bad Things Happen For No Reason. Bullshit. The slavemasters of the world want us stupid and fighting against each other in the mud so that nobody ever gets the idea of perhaps fighting them.
When I was a kid, video games were in their toddlership; the Apple ][ and the C64 were big when I was 'Stand By Me' age. --And I played a LOT of them. And I read tons of books. And watched too much TV, and was engaged in a bunch of other quiet desk-y activities which included things like dice and soldering irons. But I also liked to climb trees and ride my bike all over creation, and play the odd sports and even cross a suicidal train bridge with by friends now and again. --And in gym class, we had to run around the school yard perimeter three times every school day. That's about a mile! Every day. Running. What the heck? We were all in pretty great shape!
Life hasn't changed that much for kids except that the TV and video game quotient has crept up, (but not by so much), and McFries along with much of our food supply now uses GM vegetable oil. (McFries used to be cooked with animal fat back in the good old days when the oils wouldn't break down under heating into toxins; but that's another story. . ).
And yet there has been a distinct change, and I don't think it is linked to any one thing; not to video games or TV or our diets. I think it's a collective build-up of unhealthy and limiting forces, no one of which is going to tip the scales on its own. But it's there. People today are in general, less interesting. I'm sorry, you youngsters our there, but it's true. There's a curve of sorts going on. Want to test it? Do the following. ..
Sit down with a sampling of regular burger-eating, TV-watching twenty-year-olds, (I should note that this does not apply to people who have disengaged from all the normal culprit lifestyles), and ask about their lives and their childhoods. Listen to their stories. Then do the same thing with a bunch of people in their late thirties and early forties. Move through the decades. --You'll begin to really notice the trend with people who were born in the fifties and sixties.
I did that for a while without particularly planning to measure anything; I was just in a phase where I was meeting lots of people, and was stunned by just how much more alive people seemed who had been born in the earlier decades. --I knew this one girl who must be in her late forties by now, who when she was a kid burned down a garage in the middle of one of her adventures. She and her gang also used to hike through the city ravine system which back then could take you from one end of the city to the other without needing to abandon the tree line, and they knew when all their various abusive parents would be away so that they could raid their separate kitchens en masse for lunch without being spotted. They'd take in fifty-cent films down at the Kingsway with the gang sitting along the entire front row passing roaches made from wild marijuana they'd picked in the forest and rolled into joints the size of 12 gage cigars. --One time they went to their favorite baseball field only to find that the Toronto chapter of the Hell's Angels had settled in for the day. --So they challenged them to a baseball game, and everybody ended up having one of the most exciting days of their lives.
Shit. I was born in the early Seventies, and my stories weren't nearly so bloody or amazing. --I did a few cool things; I burned down a fence one time trying to reverse-engineer fireworks, and I stole a shipment of wonderbread from a grocery store with my friends one night on a whim.
But I know a guy who was born in the fifties who has stories like Indiana Jones. And a thirteen year-old today whose big adventure was that she lost her cell phone and had to go looking for it in the woods.
--Now, I know this is not the norm. There are placid people in all times. --And adventurous ones, too. But it's the style and depth of adventure which I notice seems to have diminished over the decades. George Lucas used to be into street racing and hot rods; American Graffiti was drawn from his own teen years. Most of the young wannabe directors I meet today just watch movies. And
Everyone makes that promise and everyone breaks it.
Not only did I not make that promise, but I didn't do it because I'd lost touch and knew it back when I was in my late twenties. Heck, I have a strong suspicion that I wasn't even in touch during high school. Had no idea what was in with regard to fashion, music, popular kids, etc. And somehow all through it and to this day I have managed to maintain deep and friendly ties with representatives of every age group, gender, and social class imaginable. I think being hopelessly out of touch (Facebook bores me to death) makes you less threatening and more successful in life somehow. Beats me. So when is this graduation dance thing? Last week? Oh.
Our brains are much more complex than silicone computers. What if imagination and creative passion are all that are needed to breathe life into other realities? I know that my dreams have far better resolution and detail than most FPS's. And we all know that our subconsciouses are far more powerful awareness machines than our conscious selves. --You see evidence of this leaking out in individuals who can perform complex maths normally considered impossible for regular people, or memorize phone books. --I knew one guy with photographic memory who could flip quickly through a book taking 'snap shots' of the pages and then shut his eyes and read the text later. He used this with D&D rule books, saying it was easier than carting around stacks of square-bounds, but said that on the conscious layer it wasn't terribly useful since just because the images were contained in his head, to understand the images, (of the pages), it still took him a normal length of reading time to process it with his eyes shut. In any case, my point is that the human brain is a power-house which remains largely untapped. --Or IS it?
And what about parallel computing? If everybody in the West is thinking intensely about Star Wars, does that generate enough MIPS, (or the equivalent), to generate a few lightsabers and people to wield them?
And who says we even need a top layer reality running the simulation? Why not just have that layer be a product of one of the lower layers? Why not have all universes cross dependent on each other? Sure this raises the chicken or the egg problem, but that would be there even if there was a top layer reality.
Just think. If you are the product of an imaginative force in another universe, then shouldn't you return the favor by imagining a nice reality for others to inhabit?
When you said that, was it with a faux Patrick Stewart accent? (I know whenever I pretend to talk to a Star Trek computer, I find I say it like Picard would. --You know; "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."
To say that we are not living in a closed system because "there are a LOT of outside forces at work " sounds very illogical. I mean, if there are forces outside of your first system boundary, please extend the boundary to include these outside forces (why shouldn't you?). Keep doing this until there are no outside forces. There, then, you have the correct system boundary. And you will see that we do live in a closed system.
Of course, you are entirely right.
The problem is that I believe, for instance, that there is an alien interest in the affairs of humanity and that our genetic sequences have been tampered with on a regular basis. And sure, even a densely populated and socially active galaxy must fit within the rules of Natural Selection, (which is actually a very gentle, inoffensive term), but if one accepts something like alien influence as a fundamental element of our reality, then it kind of throws a wrench in the orthodox mechanics of Darwin's evolutionary theory.
P.S. I was curious enough to do a Google search on the term "Socratic nonsense logic". It came back with zero pages.
That's probably because I made the term up. But, 'Socratic Logic' pertains, as you may well be aware, to Plato's infamous Socratic dialogs. These were fundamentally nonsensical as Socrates could prove or disprove any darned thing he felt like depending entirely, it seemed, on how irritating he felt like being in a given day, and vapid Plato wrote his audience as being.
I find this very overbearing. You're just listing vague claims and attacking people with them, using Ericssonian language tricks to bring about a hypnotic trance and a vague sense of agreement because you allow people to fill in meaning for themselves.
Hypnotic trance??? Who the heck is Ericsson?
I have a healthy degree of respect for questioning motives, but I've never understood why science geeks are so often prepared to aim their suspicious squints at the people standing next to them rather than at real targets which actually matter; you know; the ones who have been whispering in their ears since birth; the education system and their beloved TV sets. NLP training??? I mean, for goodness sake! I talk honestly and I think out loud in ways which are designed to challenge lazy status quo thinking, and so naturally, I've been accused of a lot of things, (one loony Christian even called me the devil himself!), but I must say that I've never been accused of being a hypnotist! That's a new one, and you're paranoid.
And what do you know about 'alternative groups', exactly? You sound like an evangelical concerned wives group from the 1950's who has heard some disturbing things about juvenile delinquency and the evils of comic books. I'm so totally under-impressed with people who lack the spine to explore the world directly if their TV sets tell them to be afraid. I've seen far too much of this kind of cowardice, and it really breaks my heart. Courage is the watchword, and trust in the self is the practice. You might be surprised at just how far afield one can travel and come back home from again not only intact, but stronger than when one left.
So I don't know, maybe you really are one of those people who would fall under a 'trance' if you weren't permanently in paranoia mode. Maybe your brain and spine are so weak you'd crumble into cultist mush if you didn't keep up a front of suspicion and fear. Exploring new ways of thinking really isn't so dangerous; it only appears that way to people around you, because when you learn new things you naturally start altering the way you live based on new knowledge. Many people find this threatening. People usually want their friends and family to stay predictable, and their projected fears can cause enormous tension. But strong and wise friends and family know that exploration is part of growth, and such people encourage and make the process of personal growth wonderful by removing crippling fear and judgment from the arrangement and instead give their friends and children what is craved; love, trust and support. If people want safety, then that is where to base it; not in suspicion and fear.
Actual danger to body and mind? No more than crossing the street. --All you do is read everything, from every point of view you can get your hands on, and then cross analyze. The world is full of liars and fools, but none of them can withstand honest analysis. Yet despite this, many remain too frightened to do anything but trust their TVs and the Official Truth, because those have been around since birth and they seem safe and warm and hey, everybody else believes in them, right? I find it all very frustrating.
Dirty arguing. Make some concrete, testable claims. SAY something, something REAL. Not just something that use language to manipulate. Manipulative language is a dirty game, and some of us happen to know enough to spot it.
How about this: Ask me a question I can answer. --Because I already SAID something; I posted my opinion.
Of course I don't think that science can strip humans of their humanity in the sense you are speaking. True science, which I see simply as the act of exploration while taking honest and regularly cross-analyzed notes, is really a wonderful way to learn. I don't think it's the only to learn, and it's maybe not even the best way, but it certainly ranks up there.
What I DO however see as disempowering is the tendency for people to forget that life is indeed fundamentally mysterious. I don't think there is a single mystery which science has fully plumbed, but I have many, many times seen in Western behavior the tendency for people to accept one explanation for a phenomenon as all-binding, and happily put an otherwise fascinating question on the shelf as 'done!'. --Many decent scientists will never do this; they know the journey is on-going, but many don't and the general population is ever-ready to accept pat answers presented by an authoritative voice rather than engage in the ongoing act of exploration of being alive. This is a kind of 'going to sleep' which makes people dull, grey and dusty, and, in my view, less than human. Humans are supposed to be vital creatures of enormous power which cannot so easily be controlled or enslaved. --And this is why every effort today seems to be made by our keepers to make us dull and sleepy and forgetful of what we really are; eternal creatures, fragments of the infinite.
Now perhaps I was mistaken, and perhaps the intent of the researchers in question was not this, but I could see in the poster's response, (whose comment I was answering), that tendency to put pat answers on the shelf rising once again as a broad possibility for many if such a theory ever became popular. And what a shame that would be! To believe our dream selves are merely a defense mechanism when they are so much more. All it takes is for one's beliefs to embrace such a limited view for it to gradually become a personal reality. How sad and totally unnecessary that would be! One more step into sleep.
Reductionist science? What is that?
Reductionist science is all the best science as we know it. --Science attempts to break down observed patterns into digestible chunks; to reduce them, as it were, preferably into segments which can be mathematically described, and thereby better understand them.
What does state approval have to do with anything?
State approval was my (obviously inadequate) way of summing up the nature of our governments and education systems today. --That is, ideas which are not sanctioned by news casters on television become things which are not considered by the populace to be real. i.e., subjects which we can legitimately think about in our private moments without feeling silly or shameful. This is the internal policeman at work, installed by the state, governing our thoughts, (if we allow it.) UFO's and Crop Circles are examples of such thoughts. The only way for many people to accept that anything is now officially real is if the official organs of 'truth' dissemination declare them so, (or by a similar degree, by neglecting to specifically say that such and such an idea is NOT officially real). --Science and 'expert testimony' are the defacto benchmarks of so-called 'truth' in the media these days, and if science were to declare that dreams are so-and-so and such-and-such, and if this official truth were carried through our schools and popular programming, (the Discovery Channel), and on and on, then that would simply be the end of that for many people. --Especially slashdotters, who I tend to view as both the gatekeepers of reality, since they pay attention to learning and knowledge, and because of this are also subject to the heaviest control measures with regard to what they are allowed to think.
Do you live within an oppressive environment? I mean, North Korea, say?
Evolutionary reason for dreaming, it seems like a silly thing to evolve a period of a beings life where they body goes into paralysis just so they don't kill themselves from acting lucid imagery, the fact the dreams gave us a survival advantage would explain the tradeoff of the paralysis during the night.
This assumes that all elements of life in this reality resolve down to questions of evolutionary theory, which I think is false. --I tend to think that we are not living in a closed system; that there are a LOT of outside forces at work which dramatically affect the human species and which have little to do with natural selection, --that and the rules which govern our reality are infinitely more complex than is currently understood. When people are positing theories based on such enormously limited understandings, then the best they can hope for is to be hopelessly wrong with a chance of nudging themselves in the right direction; IF, that is, they are willing to kill their sacred cows, (or at least allow them to starve to death). As such, this is a stab in the dark at best, and while there is certainly some substance to the idea of solving problems during dream time, I very much doubt these researchers have the chops to know what the heck they're actually playing with. I wonder how they would account for such simple items as lucid dreaming and many of the other odd dream experiences noted by every second person who posted in this thread?
I really don't mean to hammer on you personally, and indeed I hope you will forgive me if it appears I am doing so, but it's just that I find this kind of science quite overbearing in its general conceit and intent. --It's another attempt to shave another strip of humanity from the human being; to reduce us all to less than what we are through the application of Socratic nonsense logic dressed up in lab coats. Ugh. This can be really limiting in that belief and existential reality are linked at the hip. (Believe you are less, and that is what you will become.) The general tone of this kind of work reminds me of reading old science texts which spoke with authority upon subjects which it later turned out they were hopelessly wrong concerning.
The dream realm is one of the few areas which reductionist science hasn't been able to taint. It allows personal freedom even within deliberately oppressive environments. It is just like a fascist regime as ours (where the prisoners are also the proud prison builders and guards), to attempt to convince people that their own dreams are worthless without state approval. The hell with that.
The funny part is that I can easily picture how an army of flamethrower wielding cybernetic Winonas would appear in a dreamscape. This is probably a combination of Tim Burton's and Neil Gaiman's collective efforts.
I think we should expect more from our politicians - like being honest and sane.
Agreed. His up-front position on health care and indeed, his belief in a totally mercantilist approach to running a country is crazy. I've visited a number of states which allow the spirit of competition to dictate even simple things like zoning laws, and I must say having seen chemical factories leaking across the street from kindergartens and gun shops in largely residential areas offered just about the most intensely insane experience I've ever had the misfortune of living through. --And the people living there for the most part didn't even have the perspective to realize that the reason the levels of fear and anxiety, (which were right through the roof by contrast to where I live in the Great White North), were directly related to this sort of misguided belief in some kind of half-baked Darwinism. The reason we don't live in the jungle anymore is that we have evolved the ability to make rational decisions and to set order in places of chaos. If people refuse to use their ability to do this, then maybe they deserve to revert to living like savages in a kill-or-be-killed jungle environment which ruthlessly punishes everybody but that very small percentage occupying the top rung of the food chain. --And people wonder why there are such high rates of violent crime in the U.S. Seemed pretty obvious to me. I was glad to get out of there.
If somebody grafted Ron Paul and Michael Moore into one politician, then maybe there would be some hope for the U.S., but as it stands, it's just heartbreaking to see Ron Paul as the one guy in the running who is sparking real hope in so many people.
Slashdot Mirror
But if you come by your lousy spelling honestly, then I certainly applaud your scholastic efforts, and would only add that it takes all types to turn the world --and that none of the types you mention need to be labeled with antagonism. Why on earth should there by any kind of war between the various classes of passion in the halls of learning?
-FL
I'm not able to follow your question. Could you elaborate and clarify what you are asking me?
-FL
I've heard that the whole 2012 thing is a bit of a bugaboo, that nothing is quite so clockwork; that time is somewhat squishy. --Or as the Doctor put it, "Timey-Whymie".
Still. . , as looming and catastrophic endings/beginnings go, the milestones keep piling up, don't they? --And they have an interesting story to tell to anybody who is paying attention.
The U.S. goose is cooked, and there doesn't seem to be anything anybody can do to stop it. People are too far gone and the lunatics are running the show. So what do you do?
--It's important to remember that the real battle is the inner one. Your perceptions and personal alignment are what count. You have to pick a side; service to self or service to others. Sitting on the fence now means another trip on the merry-go-round, and a new dark age is where it all begins again on this big blue marble; huddling in a cave while the cold wind whistles under red skies. There are other places to be if you can keep it together. Dissolve the ego, integrate your shadow self, (we all have stuff we don't want to face or deal with, which we all just want to go away; integrate it and accept it and it will stop be the monster in the closet). So do not judge and be open to transformation.
Do the best you can. Love yourself. Follow that inner guidance system in your belly, follow your real passions, treat people with love and respect and don't let the fear get to you. It's going to get more 'interesting' before the dust settles. Remember; you signed up for this amusement park attraction because this hot spot in the galaxy is the place to be. You're lucky to be here, so pay attention and have fun with your time on this world. And remember, as Bill Hicks put it, "It's all just a ride".
-FL
It's an artificial sweetener. --Usually used in conjunction with aspartame or sucralose in order to mask its somewhat bitter aftertaste. The general consensus is that it is safe to use, although, the studies that purport to show safety have been challenged by a number of individuals and organizations, most notably the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in the USA. Their concerns have been countered by the EU's Scientific Committee which conducted a re-evaluation based on the CSPI's charges.
Unlike aspartame, acesulfame K is known to result in heightened insulin levels in the subject. This can lead to an artificially increased appetite.
Based on the available data, aseculfame K sounds like a minimal risk item to me, but my thinking has always been, "Why drink chemicals when you don't have to? There are just so many reasons to be skeptical about corporate and government claims of any kind." (Especially given the debacle surrounding the improprieties in the FDA with regard to aspartame; falsified safety reports for which Searle, aspartame's patent holder, was facing criminal indictments until Donald Rumsfeld's slick maneuvering around the matter during his time as CEO at Searle, --before the company was bought by Monsanto.) But you drinks your drink and you takes your chances. --My favored sweetener is maple syrup, (in coffee.) I love the taste and I trust the source, but each to his own, right? I totally agree with you in that the customer should be allowed to choose, but reliable information is the key. Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers.
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My thinking is that for the most part, the film industry is allowed to screw around making whatever junk it wants, with many of its workers (from the key grip to the production heads) believing that they really are doing what they can with the philosophies they personally generate. But if the top dogs decide that it is time for society to jump in a specific direction, then there are ways to ensure that the message is effective and powerful and respected. If, for instance, you want to sell torture to a populace, then you can do it easily enough; just pull together the known elements needed to connect with the people, (including good scripts), and out of five project, you're pretty much guaranteed to have three or four of them hit home. It isn't rocket science, but it is a science.
It's just as easy to kill a project which some upstart producer with the know-how is making which will spread the 'wrong' message.
It's no mystery to me why shows like "Firefly" with it's anti-government message bit the dust, and pro-torture brain candy like "Alias" went for six seasons. Hollywood has perfected the science Goebbels first labeled. There's a huge essay here which offers an array of information on this subject.
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And yet, even if Helium were available at $5000/cu ft to fuel some kind of snazzy super-reactor or whatever, it wouldn't mean you'd ever see balloons at your next door neighbor's kid's birthday party again.
Capitalism is just a force. Many mistakenly believe that it is a philosophy, but 'supply and demand' is the social equivalent of the wind or the tides. Humans, however, are capable of recognizing and manipulating the various forces of nature so that we don't have to live in caves and trees. I've never understood why people think that just because they recognize a given pattern of nature that they should suddenly play 'hands off'. People don't do that with fire, because if they just let fire have its way, the painful results are quite immediate. It's harder to see the dangers of doing nothing but praying to a deity while the slower moving forces do their thing.
Capitalism has no soul, and I always walk around with the sneaking impression that even while it shines its plastic smile down upon me, that those cold eyes are thinking how it would slap me in chains and sell my liver the instant it became profitable and risk-free to do so. I don't understand why people worship capitalism like some kind of religion. Capitalism is a force of nature which should damned well be watched and regulated, because it would happily turn against us at the first opportunity. I strongly suspect that it already has.
Not all, but some people who embrace Capitalism as a way of life have been convinced that it is a good idea to live in gated communities, and to think that people who don't earn enough to make sure that they don't end up unwilling Indian liver donors, somehow deserve to be miserable. This is the result of psychopathic patterning, which is another force of nature; the psychopath wants the world to be divided into slaves and masters simply because it feeds on pain. It cloaks itself in whatever other reigning doctrine happens to be prevalent and it perverts it in order to advance its own ends, and those ends are always the establishment of fear and suffering. There are always enough people who are so wound up in their favorite doctrine to be led blindly down the garden path. Currently the garden path happens to be lined with Democracy and Capitalism, and we need only stop and look around at our present world to see where that has led us. Torture openly argued for on national news channels.
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Doesn't this sound sort of like part of an old Adam West script?
And on a side-note which is probably more relevant. . .
Since the Hindenburg went up in flames because it had been painted with thermite and not because of the gas it had been filled with, perhaps our airships should be using hydrogen which has more lifting power than helium anyway.
I've always felt slightly gyped by not getting to live in that reality where we had regular airship traffic and where classy chicks all smoked from foot-long cigarette holders. I want to wear a waxed mustache and say things like, "Now see here, what?" and not sound like an idiot like I currently do when I speak that way.
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Perhaps if the various reasons for rejection are understood and categorized, a society could set up a DNA bank of sorts so that there would be a choice of a thousand slightly different hearts which would provide enough choice to satisfy even the most intolerant immune system.
Whatever. I think I'll just take care of the one I've got. "Rib Cage Separator" is a term I never want to have a doctor need to use while I lie unconscious on a table.
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People are willing to base entire economic/philosophical believe systems on sensationalist hypothetical problems. When was the last time you needed a replacement heart? Okay. Now when was the last time you needed stitches or a bone set? My ex-girlfriend, (who remains an excellent friend of mine), cut the end of her finger off while working at her restaurant job. Because she lives in Canada, she had the end of her finger put back on that day for zero dollars. --On her income, having to foot a couple thousand dollar hospital bill would have been a major problem. She's quite young, but I can see her having some real income potential down the road at which point her taxes will help pay for others who are in need. Power doesn't come into the picture here at all. I point to her case only because it was the most recent, but I can point to a dozen others, one of them including open-heart surgery and another an MRI scan, all of which indicate that despite the nonsense claims by American politicos to the contrary, Canada's health care system not only works, but kicks serious ass.
These artificial sensationalist questions about replacement hearts used to sell greed-bases systems sound to me a lot like the artificial sensationalist questions about ticking-bomb scenarios designed to sell state-sanctioned torture.
It's all a lie designed by psychopathic leadership to turn the populace into monsters.
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To be fair, though, your point about the percentage spent on NASA being comparatively small is quite valid. I'd rather see it come off defense spending, though. (Which is not accurately represented as the Wiki article points out).
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Where did you get that number? 1.6 trillion? I find that a little hard to believe. Actually, after Googling around to find out the U.S. budget figures, I find it impossible to believe. --You're not one of those irrational, "I hate spending money to help folks other than myself" people, are you?
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Heck, if the American beef and wheat industries can invert the food pyramid, and if the CIA and military can have such close ties with the film and television industries, then if the people with the pull (Rothschildes and similar; people with gobs of power and no public personas to protect), really wanted Americans living in big vacuum cleaner attachments on other worlds, then they could sell it incredibly easily. Heck, I don't think it would even need selling; all it would need is a very little bit of money, (comparatively speaking), and an open casting call to the Slashdot types of the world. --Which leads me to think that space exploration is simply not on the agenda. I have to wonder what their disincentives are.
Actually, I know the answer to that. . .
Space exploration leads to excitement and creation for the joy it rather than for that bone-headed 'competition' thing they keep selling kids in ass-hat colleges. Learning, and opening and growing. These kinds of activities which are the heart and soul of exploration lead to states of mind in entire populations which Empower. --Empowered people cannot be controlled so easily, and the rich psychotic bastards of the world know this and fear this with gothic morbidity.
Is it any wonder that the space program blossomed under Kennedy? We have to remember the rich psychopathic bastards who ordered his death did so exactly because he was all about empowering the people. After all is said and done, that's the core reason those bullets flew. Everything ever since has been a stage production to trick us all into thinking that Bad Things Happen For No Reason. Bullshit. The slavemasters of the world want us stupid and fighting against each other in the mud so that nobody ever gets the idea of perhaps fighting them.
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Posting on Slashdot has been easy today! --Everybody else has said it first.
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When I was a kid, video games were in their toddlership; the Apple ][ and the C64 were big when I was 'Stand By Me' age. --And I played a LOT of them. And I read tons of books. And watched too much TV, and was engaged in a bunch of other quiet desk-y activities which included things like dice and soldering irons. But I also liked to climb trees and ride my bike all over creation, and play the odd sports and even cross a suicidal train bridge with by friends now and again. --And in gym class, we had to run around the school yard perimeter three times every school day. That's about a mile! Every day. Running. What the heck? We were all in pretty great shape!
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Life hasn't changed that much for kids except that the TV and video game quotient has crept up, (but not by so much), and McFries along with much of our food supply now uses GM vegetable oil. (McFries used to be cooked with animal fat back in the good old days when the oils wouldn't break down under heating into toxins; but that's another story. . ).
And yet there has been a distinct change, and I don't think it is linked to any one thing; not to video games or TV or our diets. I think it's a collective build-up of unhealthy and limiting forces, no one of which is going to tip the scales on its own. But it's there. People today are in general, less interesting. I'm sorry, you youngsters our there, but it's true. There's a curve of sorts going on. Want to test it? Do the following. .
Sit down with a sampling of regular burger-eating, TV-watching twenty-year-olds, (I should note that this does not apply to people who have disengaged from all the normal culprit lifestyles), and ask about their lives and their childhoods. Listen to their stories. Then do the same thing with a bunch of people in their late thirties and early forties. Move through the decades. --You'll begin to really notice the trend with people who were born in the fifties and sixties.
I did that for a while without particularly planning to measure anything; I was just in a phase where I was meeting lots of people, and was stunned by just how much more alive people seemed who had been born in the earlier decades. --I knew this one girl who must be in her late forties by now, who when she was a kid burned down a garage in the middle of one of her adventures. She and her gang also used to hike through the city ravine system which back then could take you from one end of the city to the other without needing to abandon the tree line, and they knew when all their various abusive parents would be away so that they could raid their separate kitchens en masse for lunch without being spotted. They'd take in fifty-cent films down at the Kingsway with the gang sitting along the entire front row passing roaches made from wild marijuana they'd picked in the forest and rolled into joints the size of 12 gage cigars. --One time they went to their favorite baseball field only to find that the Toronto chapter of the Hell's Angels had settled in for the day. --So they challenged them to a baseball game, and everybody ended up having one of the most exciting days of their lives.
Shit. I was born in the early Seventies, and my stories weren't nearly so bloody or amazing. --I did a few cool things; I burned down a fence one time trying to reverse-engineer fireworks, and I stole a shipment of wonderbread from a grocery store with my friends one night on a whim.
But I know a guy who was born in the fifties who has stories like Indiana Jones. And a thirteen year-old today whose big adventure was that she lost her cell phone and had to go looking for it in the woods.
--Now, I know this is not the norm. There are placid people in all times. --And adventurous ones, too. But it's the style and depth of adventure which I notice seems to have diminished over the decades. George Lucas used to be into street racing and hot rods; American Graffiti was drawn from his own teen years. Most of the young wannabe directors I meet today just watch movies. And
"Insightful!"
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Not only did I not make that promise, but I didn't do it because I'd lost touch and knew it back when I was in my late twenties. Heck, I have a strong suspicion that I wasn't even in touch during high school. Had no idea what was in with regard to fashion, music, popular kids, etc. And somehow all through it and to this day I have managed to maintain deep and friendly ties with representatives of every age group, gender, and social class imaginable. I think being hopelessly out of touch (Facebook bores me to death) makes you less threatening and more successful in life somehow. Beats me. So when is this graduation dance thing? Last week? Oh.
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Our brains are much more complex than silicone computers. What if imagination and creative passion are all that are needed to breathe life into other realities? I know that my dreams have far better resolution and detail than most FPS's. And we all know that our subconsciouses are far more powerful awareness machines than our conscious selves. --You see evidence of this leaking out in individuals who can perform complex maths normally considered impossible for regular people, or memorize phone books. --I knew one guy with photographic memory who could flip quickly through a book taking 'snap shots' of the pages and then shut his eyes and read the text later. He used this with D&D rule books, saying it was easier than carting around stacks of square-bounds, but said that on the conscious layer it wasn't terribly useful since just because the images were contained in his head, to understand the images, (of the pages), it still took him a normal length of reading time to process it with his eyes shut. In any case, my point is that the human brain is a power-house which remains largely untapped. --Or IS it?
And what about parallel computing? If everybody in the West is thinking intensely about Star Wars, does that generate enough MIPS, (or the equivalent), to generate a few lightsabers and people to wield them?
And who says we even need a top layer reality running the simulation? Why not just have that layer be a product of one of the lower layers? Why not have all universes cross dependent on each other? Sure this raises the chicken or the egg problem, but that would be there even if there was a top layer reality.
Just think. If you are the product of an imaginative force in another universe, then shouldn't you return the favor by imagining a nice reality for others to inhabit?
As they say. . , "Dream On, dude, Dream On!"
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Of course, you are entirely right.
The problem is that I believe, for instance, that there is an alien interest in the affairs of humanity and that our genetic sequences have been tampered with on a regular basis. And sure, even a densely populated and socially active galaxy must fit within the rules of Natural Selection, (which is actually a very gentle, inoffensive term), but if one accepts something like alien influence as a fundamental element of our reality, then it kind of throws a wrench in the orthodox mechanics of Darwin's evolutionary theory.
P.S. I was curious enough to do a Google search on the term "Socratic nonsense logic". It came back with zero pages.
That's probably because I made the term up. But, 'Socratic Logic' pertains, as you may well be aware, to Plato's infamous Socratic dialogs. These were fundamentally nonsensical as Socrates could prove or disprove any darned thing he felt like depending entirely, it seemed, on how irritating he felt like being in a given day, and vapid Plato wrote his audience as being.
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Hypnotic trance??? Who the heck is Ericsson?
I have a healthy degree of respect for questioning motives, but I've never understood why science geeks are so often prepared to aim their suspicious squints at the people standing next to them rather than at real targets which actually matter; you know; the ones who have been whispering in their ears since birth; the education system and their beloved TV sets. NLP training??? I mean, for goodness sake! I talk honestly and I think out loud in ways which are designed to challenge lazy status quo thinking, and so naturally, I've been accused of a lot of things, (one loony Christian even called me the devil himself!), but I must say that I've never been accused of being a hypnotist! That's a new one, and you're paranoid.
And what do you know about 'alternative groups', exactly? You sound like an evangelical concerned wives group from the 1950's who has heard some disturbing things about juvenile delinquency and the evils of comic books. I'm so totally under-impressed with people who lack the spine to explore the world directly if their TV sets tell them to be afraid. I've seen far too much of this kind of cowardice, and it really breaks my heart. Courage is the watchword, and trust in the self is the practice. You might be surprised at just how far afield one can travel and come back home from again not only intact, but stronger than when one left.
So I don't know, maybe you really are one of those people who would fall under a 'trance' if you weren't permanently in paranoia mode. Maybe your brain and spine are so weak you'd crumble into cultist mush if you didn't keep up a front of suspicion and fear. Exploring new ways of thinking really isn't so dangerous; it only appears that way to people around you, because when you learn new things you naturally start altering the way you live based on new knowledge. Many people find this threatening. People usually want their friends and family to stay predictable, and their projected fears can cause enormous tension. But strong and wise friends and family know that exploration is part of growth, and such people encourage and make the process of personal growth wonderful by removing crippling fear and judgment from the arrangement and instead give their friends and children what is craved; love, trust and support. If people want safety, then that is where to base it; not in suspicion and fear.
Actual danger to body and mind? No more than crossing the street. --All you do is read everything, from every point of view you can get your hands on, and then cross analyze. The world is full of liars and fools, but none of them can withstand honest analysis. Yet despite this, many remain too frightened to do anything but trust their TVs and the Official Truth, because those have been around since birth and they seem safe and warm and hey, everybody else believes in them, right? I find it all very frustrating.
Dirty arguing. Make some concrete, testable claims. SAY something, something REAL. Not just something that use language to manipulate. Manipulative language is a dirty game, and some of us happen to know enough to spot it.
How about this: Ask me a question I can answer. --Because I already SAID something; I posted my opinion.
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Of course I don't think that science can strip humans of their humanity in the sense you are speaking. True science, which I see simply as the act of exploration while taking honest and regularly cross-analyzed notes, is really a wonderful way to learn. I don't think it's the only to learn, and it's maybe not even the best way, but it certainly ranks up there.
What I DO however see as disempowering is the tendency for people to forget that life is indeed fundamentally mysterious. I don't think there is a single mystery which science has fully plumbed, but I have many, many times seen in Western behavior the tendency for people to accept one explanation for a phenomenon as all-binding, and happily put an otherwise fascinating question on the shelf as 'done!'. --Many decent scientists will never do this; they know the journey is on-going, but many don't and the general population is ever-ready to accept pat answers presented by an authoritative voice rather than engage in the ongoing act of exploration of being alive. This is a kind of 'going to sleep' which makes people dull, grey and dusty, and, in my view, less than human. Humans are supposed to be vital creatures of enormous power which cannot so easily be controlled or enslaved. --And this is why every effort today seems to be made by our keepers to make us dull and sleepy and forgetful of what we really are; eternal creatures, fragments of the infinite.
Now perhaps I was mistaken, and perhaps the intent of the researchers in question was not this, but I could see in the poster's response, (whose comment I was answering), that tendency to put pat answers on the shelf rising once again as a broad possibility for many if such a theory ever became popular. And what a shame that would be! To believe our dream selves are merely a defense mechanism when they are so much more. All it takes is for one's beliefs to embrace such a limited view for it to gradually become a personal reality. How sad and totally unnecessary that would be! One more step into sleep.
Reductionist science? What is that?
Reductionist science is all the best science as we know it. --Science attempts to break down observed patterns into digestible chunks; to reduce them, as it were, preferably into segments which can be mathematically described, and thereby better understand them.
What does state approval have to do with anything?
State approval was my (obviously inadequate) way of summing up the nature of our governments and education systems today. --That is, ideas which are not sanctioned by news casters on television become things which are not considered by the populace to be real. i.e., subjects which we can legitimately think about in our private moments without feeling silly or shameful. This is the internal policeman at work, installed by the state, governing our thoughts, (if we allow it.) UFO's and Crop Circles are examples of such thoughts. The only way for many people to accept that anything is now officially real is if the official organs of 'truth' dissemination declare them so, (or by a similar degree, by neglecting to specifically say that such and such an idea is NOT officially real). --Science and 'expert testimony' are the defacto benchmarks of so-called 'truth' in the media these days, and if science were to declare that dreams are so-and-so and such-and-such, and if this official truth were carried through our schools and popular programming, (the Discovery Channel), and on and on, then that would simply be the end of that for many people. --Especially slashdotters, who I tend to view as both the gatekeepers of reality, since they pay attention to learning and knowledge, and because of this are also subject to the heaviest control measures with regard to what they are allowed to think.
Do you live within an oppressive environment? I mean, North Korea, say?
Yes. We all do. (It's not as if the cur
This assumes that all elements of life in this reality resolve down to questions of evolutionary theory, which I think is false. --I tend to think that we are not living in a closed system; that there are a LOT of outside forces at work which dramatically affect the human species and which have little to do with natural selection, --that and the rules which govern our reality are infinitely more complex than is currently understood. When people are positing theories based on such enormously limited understandings, then the best they can hope for is to be hopelessly wrong with a chance of nudging themselves in the right direction; IF, that is, they are willing to kill their sacred cows, (or at least allow them to starve to death). As such, this is a stab in the dark at best, and while there is certainly some substance to the idea of solving problems during dream time, I very much doubt these researchers have the chops to know what the heck they're actually playing with. I wonder how they would account for such simple items as lucid dreaming and many of the other odd dream experiences noted by every second person who posted in this thread?
I really don't mean to hammer on you personally, and indeed I hope you will forgive me if it appears I am doing so, but it's just that I find this kind of science quite overbearing in its general conceit and intent. --It's another attempt to shave another strip of humanity from the human being; to reduce us all to less than what we are through the application of Socratic nonsense logic dressed up in lab coats. Ugh. This can be really limiting in that belief and existential reality are linked at the hip. (Believe you are less, and that is what you will become.) The general tone of this kind of work reminds me of reading old science texts which spoke with authority upon subjects which it later turned out they were hopelessly wrong concerning.
The dream realm is one of the few areas which reductionist science hasn't been able to taint. It allows personal freedom even within deliberately oppressive environments. It is just like a fascist regime as ours (where the prisoners are also the proud prison builders and guards), to attempt to convince people that their own dreams are worthless without state approval. The hell with that.
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The funny part is that I can easily picture how an army of flamethrower wielding cybernetic Winonas would appear in a dreamscape. This is probably a combination of Tim Burton's and Neil Gaiman's collective efforts.
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Agreed. His up-front position on health care and indeed, his belief in a totally mercantilist approach to running a country is crazy. I've visited a number of states which allow the spirit of competition to dictate even simple things like zoning laws, and I must say having seen chemical factories leaking across the street from kindergartens and gun shops in largely residential areas offered just about the most intensely insane experience I've ever had the misfortune of living through. --And the people living there for the most part didn't even have the perspective to realize that the reason the levels of fear and anxiety, (which were right through the roof by contrast to where I live in the Great White North), were directly related to this sort of misguided belief in some kind of half-baked Darwinism. The reason we don't live in the jungle anymore is that we have evolved the ability to make rational decisions and to set order in places of chaos. If people refuse to use their ability to do this, then maybe they deserve to revert to living like savages in a kill-or-be-killed jungle environment which ruthlessly punishes everybody but that very small percentage occupying the top rung of the food chain. --And people wonder why there are such high rates of violent crime in the U.S. Seemed pretty obvious to me. I was glad to get out of there.
If somebody grafted Ron Paul and Michael Moore into one politician, then maybe there would be some hope for the U.S., but as it stands, it's just heartbreaking to see Ron Paul as the one guy in the running who is sparking real hope in so many people.
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