Visual advertising is one thing, audio is another. I find dripping faucets and humming computers hard to tune out. Having a voice directly inside my head deliberately trying to make me listen would take a lot of focused attention and energy to ignore. I'd just as soon walk along a different street. Or pour a soft drink into the speaker. --But then they'd be mounted up where people can't get at them, and there will be cameras to catch on film people who vandalize such devices. What a horrible way to have to live.
It reminds me of that Bill Hicks routine. . .
"How many of you out there work in advertising? Do me a favor. Kill yourself. [laughter] No, seriously. Kill yourself. You all think there's a joke coming. There's not. Kill yourself."
-FL
Re:Wow. Things really are falling apart.
on
NYSE Moves to Linux
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So how would a return to a gold standard work with international trade? The amount of currency is fixed, so paying off our national debt would lead to massive deflation, leading to a recession and a general economic fuckup.
Yeah. I think that trying to fix a single element of the existing system would be like trying to re-structure a house of cards.
But systems tend to automatically correct themselves given enough time. A bit of mass-chaos and starvation will lead us to an answer as to how things might better work. It's that uncomfortable period of dark-age in between which nobody likes. --And which explains all the crazy stories of underground bases and general end-of-times preparations which the super-wealthy are running around hoping will save their spotted rear-ends. Until greed and psychopathy are removed from the equation, even a system founded on sense and rationality will break down.
I was going to type some glib comment like, "So Gates has finally been rejected by the economic system," and then was struck by something a little more profound. . .
The money system is an insane illusion which either by mistake or design, keeps people enslaved. It has been falling apart of late. (Like a pyramid scheme run by lunatics, it cannot persist).
I've always thought of Linux as being aligned with truth and light, etc., When you shine that flashlight into a corrupt system, things realign to match reality, which in this case, first means total collapse.
It's all metaphoric, of course, but in a universe made out of energy infused with consciousness, it could be argued that this whole world is just a collection of metaphors for various thought patterns. Whatever the case, it's not a bad idea to have a bit of extra food packed away. . .
That 48 tons of mercury per year isn't from accidents, it's just normal operational pollution. The article you reference discusses tritium pollution. I'm not sure about others, but pretty happily trade mercury emissions for tritium ones any day.
I think I might be with you there on the mercury thing. I remember seeing a National Geographic article on a mercury mine. They had a little sweat lodge built into the facility to try to sweat the stuff out of miners who got poisoned by the stuff. Didn't seem like a fun way to earn a paycheck!
Well, for one, the system which uses Carbon-14 only works if one assumes that Carbon-14 levels do not fluctuate in the biosphere over time or location. There is some debate as to whether or not this is so.
Also, here's an interesting quote, (though, I just know you'll choke on the source. ..)
(A) Carbon dating. Is it incorrect by a factor of two prior to 10,000 years as L has suggested? We observe a factor of 2 variation in the scientific dating versus your dating. This is a repeating phenomenon on nearly all dates you have given. A: "They" fail to take into effect the influence of magnetic aberrations caused by ancient cataclysms. Q: (L) How can these magnetic aberrations affect radiocarbon dating? A: By altering the isotopal imprints of matter. Q: So, the cataclysm of about 1500 B.C.... A: All of them scramble the radiological data because of magnetic surges.
I've always wondered, based on this, if magnetic shifts or surges can have such an impact. Be a neat thing to test.
Okay. Now you can go ahead and type one of your childish and mean-spirited comments.
You ignored the following challenge in your reply:
If you want me to care about a specific instance of mis-management, I'm going to have to see some numbers first. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the total radioactive "contamination" was still less than that of a typical coal burning plant.
Well, I ignored it because it struck me as being a somewhat snotty counter to a challenge I didn't even think I'd made. But I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is all just another artifact of that weird internet filter which makes everything anybody ever types seem snottier than ever intended.
The plant was the Pickering Nuclear plant. I did a quick Google, and there is no specific mention of the press conference I recall, but there are dozens of references to the problems in question. I ran across these figures, but I don't know how accurate they are. . . "In 1997 Ontario Hydro revealed that it had failed to report tritium contamination of ground water at the Pickering nuclear generating station for the last twenty years (in 1979 it found 2,150,000 becquerels per litre (Bq/L) of tritium in ground water, and in 1994 it found 700,000 Bq/L)."
This report seems to have a lot of harder data, but I don't know anything about the author.
If you can put any new information on the table and put it into perspective, especially with regard to coal-fired stations, I would be very interested in seeing your results.
I mis-read some info when I said that the Chalk River reactor supplies energy to the power grid. There was another reactor built near the Chalk River site which was used to demonstrate CANDU's abilities, and I was getting things confused.
And when was the last time you heard the big, scandalous story about the radiative particles that coal burning plants dump into the air supply? Oh, right, there never was one, because people don't care about radiation unless it's coming from a nuclear power plant. Nevermind that coal burning plants release much more radiation than nuclear plants. Nevermind that the total yearly release is greater than that of Three Mile Island.
I've met more hippies who are aware of and upset by coal burning than I have who are against nuclear reactors, though it always has to do with general pollution and how the coal is obtained in third world nations, and rarely about radioactive particles in coal smoke. That's not a well-advertised item.
I think the basic issues, fear of pollution and mis-management, are why people who are learned about such things get excited about alternative schemes which involve lowering energy use and using demonstrably cheap and clean energy sources which have no danger of directly resulting in pollution while generating power. I find it interesting that people get so emotional in their support of nuclear energy. It's not as if the Chalk Rivers of the world are going to vanish if not popularly supported. There are a variety of very powerful industries beyond power generation which rely on nuclear by-products.
Yes, there is some fear associated with nuclear plants based on a couple of the more spectacular disasters over the last half century, but I honestly don't see it as something to get bent out of shape over. The proliferation of coal-burning plants has more to do with profit than to do with leaders bending to environmentalist concerns. Nuclear power is pretty expensive, whereas digging coal out of the governor's rich buddie's land and burning it without all those expensive safety regs in place makes for a short trip to the bank. --Corruption is the key problem; not the hippies. The environmentalists are just an easy target.
It seems to me that the real source of friction comes from something different altogether; it's as though the pro-nuke people are more likely venting their frustrations over all things similar to religion-based ignorance as well as championing a technology which is associated with the sci-fi futuristic realities that warmed their cockles when they were kids. Criticize somebody's milk and cookies, and you're always in for a fight. Ignorance is certainly worth pushing back against, but it can't be done very well when there are sacred cows in the mix. I think the big problem is corruption, greed and psychopathy in power structures. If we could do away with those problems, we'd probably have colonies in space without having to damage or disrespect the Earth and its people.
Did you even read the article? The isotopes this reactor produces are for medical purposes.
The Chalk River reactor does supply energy to the power grid. It also makes money from the sale of isotopes; government or not, money matters. The reactor is also 50 years old.
During a routine 5-day maintenance shut-down, it was decided that the reactor needed some new safety features installed designed to protect during natural disasters. It doesn't sound as though there was a fundamental problem of immediate concern. Here is a better article on the subject.
Who are these anti-nuclear hippies, anyway? I've never met one.
I have however, lived two hours away from a Canadian reactor which was mis-managed and unmaintained to the point where the thing was leaking radioactive water into the landscape. This was discovered in a big-scandal-stink, and the power company shortly after held a big public press-conference apologizing for their mistakes and promised transparency and honest ties to the community. Then a week later they were caught hiding another giant fault. The offending reactor went off-line shortly after.
I can't speak for the (imaginary?) anti-nuclear hippies, but can certainly say that while I don't mis-trust the technology, I certainly mistrust the government and corporations responsible for handling it.
Fossil dating based on half-life measurement has some fascinating problems.
If you love knowledge and truth, then you must honor it. Not exploring or publishing certain ideas out of spite is no less anti-science and anti-reason than any creationist notion. --The only difference is that creationists champion ignorance out of foolishness. You are suggesting we do it out of fear and anger. I'm not sure which is worse.
maybe nothing happened, after all, you named 1966 as the year of the 6 day war, when it was 1967.
I think you might be mistaking me for a previous poster. In any case, your assembled points are interesting, though I have certainly heard a other viewpoints over the years from a variety of other sources, including Jews and representatives from numerous faiths and non-faiths. I don't waste time collecting info from people and sources whose intent is hate and fear-based.
My son turns 3 on Thursday. And under the Christmas tree, he's going to have his first-ever FischerTechnik toy waiting for him, courtesy of his Dad and his Dad's Dad.
Ahh. That sounds really nice. It's good to have these little traditions. Best holiday wishes to you!
I was pondering my previous post and realized that it went against my recent decision examine issues more thoroughly rather than fall into the trap of dirty snowball fights which do nothing but divide. When this settled into my head, I stumbled upon an insight. Maybe this is old news to people, but it struck me as useful so I thought I'd update my previous post. It's about the whole oft-argued competition thing which I've seen beaten to death but never fully resolved to anybody's satisfaction. . .
The argument is that competition is a good thing because it breeds excellence. My knee-jerk reaction is that, Passion breeds excellence, whereas Competition breeds fear.
--And that Fear can certainly be a great motivator if you happen to be Darth Vader. (yadda yadda yadda)
But of course, that's only half the story; it's a little more complicated than that. . .
Companies like Google and Mozilla didn't come from a desire to grab everybody's money. They came from a desire to do something cool because that was the exciting thing to do. And they did so in the competitive spirit; the question being asked was, "Can we do something better than the last thing which was done?" --There is competition against existing standards. Healthy competition arguably led to NASA putting men on the Moon. That's human drive at its most positive, and it's exciting. It's passion. Competing against the blank page to create something, or competing against others to see who can make the coolest advances; it's a form of measurement.
But competition, like most ideas, also has a dark side; the dark side of competition is greed and the desire to make others fail. --The seductive belief is that it is cheaper to make your competitor fail than it is to achieve great heights yourself. --Or to ride roughshod over people's perceptions to the point where they simply accept poor standards and high prices as normal. Greed-based competition is hopelessly linked to all other greed-based behaviors which ultimately to slavery and total control over the entire world, to make everything serve your ends to feed your greed. --To get as much as you possibly can for as little effort as possible. This is the end goal of greed, and it is a highly destructive competition against everything which isn't you. Make it pay. Make it bleed. Only give something back until you don't have to. In the dark-side mind, this is 'Winning'.
A healthy competition is a completely different thing; it should see tennis players shaking hands at the end of a match. --Or the seasoned figure skater rushing to help the two younger ones who collided on the ice during training.
There rarely seems to be any attempt to distinguish between the two approaches in the business world, and therein lies the problem. As they say, the Devil lies in the details. --It usually does when it comes to culture-shaping concepts. So when politicians sell off public properties because they support 'competition' I think it's a good idea to ask, "Yeah, but what kind of competition? Is it serving them or us?
I should mention that I do draw a distinction between those two groups. Humans v.s. Psychopaths.
Ted Rogers is like a mini-Gates of the Toronto region.
"The little cable company that could." They practically invented negative billing, starting their reign of aggravating barely-legal business practice as far back as the early 80's with the stupid bundling of the new pay-channels. They successfully lobbied to crack open the Bell monopoly so that they could compete on the phone market. Everybody believed their bullshit campaign and as a result, everybody pays many times more for phone service which has fallen from one which was affordable and which worked hard-core in favor of the consumer, (if Bell tried to screw you around, a quick call to the CRTC, and they'd be nodding yes-sir to you. Monopolies are great in this way because the public can very easily punish them through government pressure to do the right thing if they start getting greedy and evil), --phone service through bell and all the competitors has since devolved into a system which is now expensive, punitive, crappy and generally mean-spirited, (all contrary to the whole 'competition breeds excellence' meme which should be obvious for the falsehood that it is to anybody with a brain but which somehow remains an elusive truth; I blame the same American ideological propaganda which has landed us in Iraq and which is responsible for rolling black-outs and for people whose lives suck because they can't afford medical insurance. Thanks, guys! Keep on championing the lie while you take it in the rear.) (Ahem. Did I say all of that out loud? DO pardon me.)
Anyway. . .
Rogers argued that it had the right to use Bell's cable system because it had been built in part with public money, and then they turned around and refused to share its own cable system because they claim to have made it with private money. --All claims which are so riddled with lawyer-logic as to make anybody aware of the situation hopping mad, especially when one considers the huge tax-breaks and government hand-outs Rogers managed to weasel away with; they use the publicly-funded telephone pole system, on public land, to hang its infrastructure, over-charge for their rotten service, don't share and don't pay their taxes. Nice job! --The whole thing reeks, but they got away with it because the public was asleep and easily fooled by promises that, "With competition, your phone bills will go down!" Stupid, stupid Torontonians! Even as a teenager I could see the way the wind was blowing, and yet today few even grasp that they've been screwed. Sigh.
Rogers is one of those companies which has been sneaky and crafty and generally foul from the get-go. This latest move is entire par for their course. I don't own a television and I don't use a cell phone partly because of players like Rogers. Anybody ignorant enough to sign up with Rogers deserves exactly what they get.
The way you write "invaded" makes it sound like "unprovoked invasion" it would be like saying we were unprovoked because we misunderstood the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
I'm sorry, but which particular invasion are you trying to retroactively justify? The level of spin-doctoring flying out of the Israeli government makes me so dizzy sometimes I don't know which way to puke. And I know that I speak for many Jews when I say that.
The Israeli government is run by psychopathic Zionists who hold Jewish lives, (or any lives for that matter), about as dearly as the Nazi's did, and the citizenry of Israel shouldn't be feeling any need to stand up for them when their lunatic policies are criticized. Psychopaths make up about 4-6% of the population, they accrete to positions of power, and they are biologically driven to create fear, pain and chaos without any regard to their own long-term well-being. Governments are not to be trusted.
Did your dad know that the instructions were deliberately limited?
I can see the benefits from such methods. One of which is teaching early on that you can't trust people because they're going to try to manipulate your head through trickery. --I could generally smell that brand of adult nonsense from a mile away as a kid when it was used directly. When it came in the form of television or print media, (like instruction guides), it wasn't until Jr. High that I realized that deliberate manipulation in the form of official communication extended far beyond parents and teachers out into the commercial and official world. --It is this reason that I never swallow the rationality that problems are more likely to be mistakes than deliberate attempts to mislead. People are constantly trying to mess with your perceptions through official means and few see it, whereas people will often see dishonesty where there is none to be found. The world is a baffling place to live until one learns these subtle lessons. While my father believed in "reading the instructions", he also knew how to respect my own learning style.
He taught me how to use tools and electronics and such. He gave me my own tool box with a basic compliment of items inside when I was six and gave me full access to his well-equipped work shop so long as I, "put it back in its proper place," when I was done. He taught me the correct use and application of each tool and then simply backed off and let me pound my head against the problems I invented for myself. Like, "How do I make a working pinball machine?" --If I went to him for answers, he would talk it out straight with me, but would only on the very rare occasion take over. He always sighed with disappointment when I gave up on a problem and begged him to do it for me. "You were doing fine. This isn't how you learn."
I didn't go much in for controlled environment learning; even as a child I knew that things with instruction sheets were limiting and taught not only too much respect for authority and controlled processes, but that they also offered a cheap way out from learning to explore the world without instructions.
Of course, there's no real right way. Each kid will know how best they are designed to interact with the world.
is to control our population. Without that, we are just delaying the inevitable catastrophy (be it famine->wars or population+travel+pollution->diseases).
There are certainly people in power who agree with you. In fact, some argue, (including me), that this is one of the primary real driving forces behind the world events unfolding today.
So. . , are you volunteering to step into the, 'population control' machine?
--And garbage on purpose may be art, but when it boils right down to the pan bottom, I'm still consuming garbage. --I felt the same way after watching 'Idiocracy' as I did once after being stuck in the Chicago O'Hare terminal for hours on end watching that gawdawful airport CNN 'news' loop. --And I recognize that this was probably deliberate, but it doesn't change the fact that my body and brain were subjected to 90 minutes of soul-draining sugar-sewage.
And worse, the film was littered with broken insights. --Are we saying that genetics is the beginning and end of intellect and personal human integrity? Sorry, but I have a problem with that notion. It may make for an amusing animated tree diagram, but it's also a patently false idea.
But whatever. It was a cute film which was sort of worth watching. Once and never again. Hmm. --I wonder if that, 'Film Enjoyment Is Contagious' thing is in effect here?
If you researched it with the same integrity and question-asking non-knee-jerk care with which you made your groundless judgment of my character, then I would be very suspicious of your findings.
But that's hardly my problem. Your level of awareness is your own problem. Do carry on.
For what purpose would someone try to limit and diminish their own country? I mean, even for a psychopath it's much more rewarding to empower it and destroy someone else's country. That way you get to eat your cake and have it too!
I mean no disrespect at all, but that is the number one reason psychopaths are so dangerous; normal people assume that the psychopath's mind is like their own. Humans who have compassion try to think from another person's point of view. It's one of our strengths as a species. However, the psychopath does not have a mind like our own. --One of the very things which makes the psychopath, estimated to make up 4-6% of the population, so destructive is that they will actively work towards ends which make no sense in the minds of the normal population. They will destroy their own support systems, they will undermine their own activities right along with everybody else's. People look at them doing this and assume that nobody would ever intentionally work in this manner, and so they project upon the psychopath any kind of rationalization in order to make sense of the destructive behavior. The charming psychopath is more than willing to play along. There is a lot of research available on this subject and it is very much worth reading. It is almost a certainty that everybody has had dealings with humans who have this sort of brain damage at one or more times in their lives, so it is a very good idea to educate yourself on the subject. Once you begin to learn about it, you can move to break patterns which have been harming you.
Throw in the fact that vaccinations are low margin business, there's little incentive for a conspiracy based on financial gain and anything based on making people more "docile" just isn't supported at all by real medicine. So, frankly it looks to me like you're just paranoid.
I wish I was just paranoid. --Look, I really can't talk about some of the things I know because it would affect my sources, but there IS a significant danger here, and if you do enough research in the public realm material, then you will see the evidence yourself. Start by looking into military bio-warfare experiments on the U.S. populace and CIA mind control experiments.
I'm guessing vaccines are some of the safest kinds of injections, since they are pre-measured. They aren't accidently going to give you a 10X dose.
Accidents don't concern me nearly as much as that which is done on purpose. I'm not anti-science and I'm certainly not a religion-follower. I simply do not trust government or corporate intention. --It is my well-considered opinion that any activity designed to affect entire populations, and which has otherwise smart people thoroughly convinced through life times of education, television and public awareness campaigning, is almost 100% for certain to have been designed to limit and diminish humanity rather than to help and elevate it. --Almost nobody with the power to effect massive behavioral shifts in populations is up to any good. It's important to remember that Psychopaths rise to the top of big power structures and that not only do we not have any built-in means of stopping them, but the rules and ideals of our society encourage and reward psychopathic behavior.
Hundreds of examples exist of villainy in government and in the medical establishment. I've talked to individuals directly connected to this kind of villainy who verify just how messed up things are. I don't know about you, but I have learned enough to know that I would have to be an utter fool to assume that in this case, this time, they really do care about people and don't think of us as livestock to be managed and experimented upon.
While I don't like the conservative approach, I do like the way Paul appears to be his own man with his own opinions. --Which, incidentally, is why I doubt he has any real chances in the American stage drama of politics. He seems like an idealist who doesn't play well with others. The military industrial complex doesn't want guys like that calling the shots. -Calling the army home from Iraq? No, that's not going to go over well with the Powers That Be, (and I'm not talking about the current administration). Unless the whole system is pulled apart and all the many, many criminals put away, people who work within a belief system which doesn't recognize that the whole game is a sham which lives and breathes on the vapors of corruption are not going to make much head-way. It's a shame. Ron Paul for all the points I don't agree with, looks for all intents and purposes like what a real politician should be. We don't see too many guys like that. --And when we do see them begin to make real progress, they seem to die in small airplane crashes. I wonder if he realizes this.
The element which I find frustrating in all of this is that vaccination science is really clever. Fundamentally, it's a good idea. --But then corporations and governments got involved. A needle bypasses most of the natural defense and filtering systems the body has. I need to be able to trust my health with the people who made the stuff I'm being jabbed with. Can I do that? --Well, nobody can know unless they look into the matter. --And so after lengthy consideration and research, the inescapable conclusion is that, no I cannot trust those people. They are easily corrupted by greed or stupidity, and in some cases even have nasty agendas. Reading about deliberate biological warfare testing conducted by certain elements of the military on population centers is hair raising.
Slashdot Mirror
Visual advertising is one thing, audio is another. I find dripping faucets and humming computers hard to tune out. Having a voice directly inside my head deliberately trying to make me listen would take a lot of focused attention and energy to ignore. I'd just as soon walk along a different street. Or pour a soft drink into the speaker. --But then they'd be mounted up where people can't get at them, and there will be cameras to catch on film people who vandalize such devices. What a horrible way to have to live.
It reminds me of that Bill Hicks routine. . .
"How many of you out there work in advertising? Do me a favor. Kill yourself. [laughter] No, seriously. Kill yourself. You all think there's a joke coming. There's not. Kill yourself."
-FL
Yeah. I think that trying to fix a single element of the existing system would be like trying to re-structure a house of cards.
But systems tend to automatically correct themselves given enough time. A bit of mass-chaos and starvation will lead us to an answer as to how things might better work. It's that uncomfortable period of dark-age in between which nobody likes. --And which explains all the crazy stories of underground bases and general end-of-times preparations which the super-wealthy are running around hoping will save their spotted rear-ends. Until greed and psychopathy are removed from the equation, even a system founded on sense and rationality will break down.
-FL
The money system is an insane illusion which either by mistake or design, keeps people enslaved. It has been falling apart of late. (Like a pyramid scheme run by lunatics, it cannot persist).
I've always thought of Linux as being aligned with truth and light, etc., When you shine that flashlight into a corrupt system, things realign to match reality, which in this case, first means total collapse.
It's all metaphoric, of course, but in a universe made out of energy infused with consciousness, it could be argued that this whole world is just a collection of metaphors for various thought patterns. Whatever the case, it's not a bad idea to have a bit of extra food packed away. . .
-FL
I think I might be with you there on the mercury thing. I remember seeing a National Geographic article on a mercury mine. They had a little sweat lodge built into the facility to try to sweat the stuff out of miners who got poisoned by the stuff. Didn't seem like a fun way to earn a paycheck!
-FL
Well, for one, the system which uses Carbon-14 only works if one assumes that Carbon-14 levels do not fluctuate in the biosphere over time or location. There is some debate as to whether or not this is so.
Also, here's an interesting quote, (though, I just know you'll choke on the source. .
I've always wondered, based on this, if magnetic shifts or surges can have such an impact. Be a neat thing to test.
Okay. Now you can go ahead and type one of your childish and mean-spirited comments.
-FL
If you want me to care about a specific instance of mis-management, I'm going to have to see some numbers first. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the total radioactive "contamination" was still less than that of a typical coal burning plant.
Well, I ignored it because it struck me as being a somewhat snotty counter to a challenge I didn't even think I'd made. But I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is all just another artifact of that weird internet filter which makes everything anybody ever types seem snottier than ever intended.
The plant was the Pickering Nuclear plant. I did a quick Google, and there is no specific mention of the press conference I recall, but there are dozens of references to the problems in question. I ran across these figures, but I don't know how accurate they are. . . "In 1997 Ontario Hydro revealed that it had failed to report tritium contamination of ground water at the Pickering nuclear generating station for the last twenty years (in 1979 it found 2,150,000 becquerels per litre (Bq/L) of tritium in ground water, and in 1994 it found 700,000 Bq/L)."
This report seems to have a lot of harder data, but I don't know anything about the author.
If you can put any new information on the table and put it into perspective, especially with regard to coal-fired stations, I would be very interested in seeing your results.
Cheers!
-FL
-FL
I've met more hippies who are aware of and upset by coal burning than I have who are against nuclear reactors, though it always has to do with general pollution and how the coal is obtained in third world nations, and rarely about radioactive particles in coal smoke. That's not a well-advertised item.
I think the basic issues, fear of pollution and mis-management, are why people who are learned about such things get excited about alternative schemes which involve lowering energy use and using demonstrably cheap and clean energy sources which have no danger of directly resulting in pollution while generating power. I find it interesting that people get so emotional in their support of nuclear energy. It's not as if the Chalk Rivers of the world are going to vanish if not popularly supported. There are a variety of very powerful industries beyond power generation which rely on nuclear by-products.
Yes, there is some fear associated with nuclear plants based on a couple of the more spectacular disasters over the last half century, but I honestly don't see it as something to get bent out of shape over. The proliferation of coal-burning plants has more to do with profit than to do with leaders bending to environmentalist concerns. Nuclear power is pretty expensive, whereas digging coal out of the governor's rich buddie's land and burning it without all those expensive safety regs in place makes for a short trip to the bank. --Corruption is the key problem; not the hippies. The environmentalists are just an easy target.
It seems to me that the real source of friction comes from something different altogether; it's as though the pro-nuke people are more likely venting their frustrations over all things similar to religion-based ignorance as well as championing a technology which is associated with the sci-fi futuristic realities that warmed their cockles when they were kids. Criticize somebody's milk and cookies, and you're always in for a fight. Ignorance is certainly worth pushing back against, but it can't be done very well when there are sacred cows in the mix. I think the big problem is corruption, greed and psychopathy in power structures. If we could do away with those problems, we'd probably have colonies in space without having to damage or disrespect the Earth and its people.
-FL
The Chalk River reactor does supply energy to the power grid. It also makes money from the sale of isotopes; government or not, money matters. The reactor is also 50 years old.
During a routine 5-day maintenance shut-down, it was decided that the reactor needed some new safety features installed designed to protect during natural disasters. It doesn't sound as though there was a fundamental problem of immediate concern. Here is a better article on the subject.
-FL
I have however, lived two hours away from a Canadian reactor which was mis-managed and unmaintained to the point where the thing was leaking radioactive water into the landscape. This was discovered in a big-scandal-stink, and the power company shortly after held a big public press-conference apologizing for their mistakes and promised transparency and honest ties to the community. Then a week later they were caught hiding another giant fault. The offending reactor went off-line shortly after.
I can't speak for the (imaginary?) anti-nuclear hippies, but can certainly say that while I don't mis-trust the technology, I certainly mistrust the government and corporations responsible for handling it.
-FL
If you love knowledge and truth, then you must honor it. Not exploring or publishing certain ideas out of spite is no less anti-science and anti-reason than any creationist notion. --The only difference is that creationists champion ignorance out of foolishness. You are suggesting we do it out of fear and anger. I'm not sure which is worse.
-FL
I think you might be mistaking me for a previous poster. In any case, your assembled points are interesting, though I have certainly heard a other viewpoints over the years from a variety of other sources, including Jews and representatives from numerous faiths and non-faiths. I don't waste time collecting info from people and sources whose intent is hate and fear-based.
-FL
Ahh. That sounds really nice. It's good to have these little traditions. Best holiday wishes to you!
-FL
The argument is that competition is a good thing because it breeds excellence. My knee-jerk reaction is that, Passion breeds excellence, whereas Competition breeds fear.
--And that Fear can certainly be a great motivator if you happen to be Darth Vader. (yadda yadda yadda)
But of course, that's only half the story; it's a little more complicated than that. . .
Companies like Google and Mozilla didn't come from a desire to grab everybody's money. They came from a desire to do something cool because that was the exciting thing to do. And they did so in the competitive spirit; the question being asked was, "Can we do something better than the last thing which was done?" --There is competition against existing standards. Healthy competition arguably led to NASA putting men on the Moon. That's human drive at its most positive, and it's exciting. It's passion. Competing against the blank page to create something, or competing against others to see who can make the coolest advances; it's a form of measurement.
But competition, like most ideas, also has a dark side; the dark side of competition is greed and the desire to make others fail. --The seductive belief is that it is cheaper to make your competitor fail than it is to achieve great heights yourself. --Or to ride roughshod over people's perceptions to the point where they simply accept poor standards and high prices as normal. Greed-based competition is hopelessly linked to all other greed-based behaviors which ultimately to slavery and total control over the entire world, to make everything serve your ends to feed your greed. --To get as much as you possibly can for as little effort as possible. This is the end goal of greed, and it is a highly destructive competition against everything which isn't you. Make it pay. Make it bleed. Only give something back until you don't have to. In the dark-side mind, this is 'Winning'.
A healthy competition is a completely different thing; it should see tennis players shaking hands at the end of a match. --Or the seasoned figure skater rushing to help the two younger ones who collided on the ice during training.
There rarely seems to be any attempt to distinguish between the two approaches in the business world, and therein lies the problem. As they say, the Devil lies in the details. --It usually does when it comes to culture-shaping concepts. So when politicians sell off public properties because they support 'competition' I think it's a good idea to ask, "Yeah, but what kind of competition? Is it serving them or us?
I should mention that I do draw a distinction between those two groups. Humans v.s. Psychopaths.
-FL
"The little cable company that could." They practically invented negative billing, starting their reign of aggravating barely-legal business practice as far back as the early 80's with the stupid bundling of the new pay-channels. They successfully lobbied to crack open the Bell monopoly so that they could compete on the phone market. Everybody believed their bullshit campaign and as a result, everybody pays many times more for phone service which has fallen from one which was affordable and which worked hard-core in favor of the consumer, (if Bell tried to screw you around, a quick call to the CRTC, and they'd be nodding yes-sir to you. Monopolies are great in this way because the public can very easily punish them through government pressure to do the right thing if they start getting greedy and evil), --phone service through bell and all the competitors has since devolved into a system which is now expensive, punitive, crappy and generally mean-spirited, (all contrary to the whole 'competition breeds excellence' meme which should be obvious for the falsehood that it is to anybody with a brain but which somehow remains an elusive truth; I blame the same American ideological propaganda which has landed us in Iraq and which is responsible for rolling black-outs and for people whose lives suck because they can't afford medical insurance. Thanks, guys! Keep on championing the lie while you take it in the rear.) (Ahem. Did I say all of that out loud? DO pardon me.)
Anyway. . .
Rogers argued that it had the right to use Bell's cable system because it had been built in part with public money, and then they turned around and refused to share its own cable system because they claim to have made it with private money. --All claims which are so riddled with lawyer-logic as to make anybody aware of the situation hopping mad, especially when one considers the huge tax-breaks and government hand-outs Rogers managed to weasel away with; they use the publicly-funded telephone pole system, on public land, to hang its infrastructure, over-charge for their rotten service, don't share and don't pay their taxes. Nice job! --The whole thing reeks, but they got away with it because the public was asleep and easily fooled by promises that, "With competition, your phone bills will go down!" Stupid, stupid Torontonians! Even as a teenager I could see the way the wind was blowing, and yet today few even grasp that they've been screwed. Sigh.
Rogers is one of those companies which has been sneaky and crafty and generally foul from the get-go. This latest move is entire par for their course. I don't own a television and I don't use a cell phone partly because of players like Rogers. Anybody ignorant enough to sign up with Rogers deserves exactly what they get.
-FL
I'm sorry, but which particular invasion are you trying to retroactively justify? The level of spin-doctoring flying out of the Israeli government makes me so dizzy sometimes I don't know which way to puke. And I know that I speak for many Jews when I say that.
The Israeli government is run by psychopathic Zionists who hold Jewish lives, (or any lives for that matter), about as dearly as the Nazi's did, and the citizenry of Israel shouldn't be feeling any need to stand up for them when their lunatic policies are criticized. Psychopaths make up about 4-6% of the population, they accrete to positions of power, and they are biologically driven to create fear, pain and chaos without any regard to their own long-term well-being. Governments are not to be trusted.
-FL
I can see the benefits from such methods. One of which is teaching early on that you can't trust people because they're going to try to manipulate your head through trickery. --I could generally smell that brand of adult nonsense from a mile away as a kid when it was used directly. When it came in the form of television or print media, (like instruction guides), it wasn't until Jr. High that I realized that deliberate manipulation in the form of official communication extended far beyond parents and teachers out into the commercial and official world. --It is this reason that I never swallow the rationality that problems are more likely to be mistakes than deliberate attempts to mislead. People are constantly trying to mess with your perceptions through official means and few see it, whereas people will often see dishonesty where there is none to be found. The world is a baffling place to live until one learns these subtle lessons. While my father believed in "reading the instructions", he also knew how to respect my own learning style.
He taught me how to use tools and electronics and such. He gave me my own tool box with a basic compliment of items inside when I was six and gave me full access to his well-equipped work shop so long as I, "put it back in its proper place," when I was done. He taught me the correct use and application of each tool and then simply backed off and let me pound my head against the problems I invented for myself. Like, "How do I make a working pinball machine?" --If I went to him for answers, he would talk it out straight with me, but would only on the very rare occasion take over. He always sighed with disappointment when I gave up on a problem and begged him to do it for me. "You were doing fine. This isn't how you learn."
I didn't go much in for controlled environment learning; even as a child I knew that things with instruction sheets were limiting and taught not only too much respect for authority and controlled processes, but that they also offered a cheap way out from learning to explore the world without instructions.
Of course, there's no real right way. Each kid will know how best they are designed to interact with the world.
-FL
There are certainly people in power who agree with you. In fact, some argue, (including me), that this is one of the primary real driving forces behind the world events unfolding today.
So. . , are you volunteering to step into the, 'population control' machine?
-FL
--And garbage on purpose may be art, but when it boils right down to the pan bottom, I'm still consuming garbage. --I felt the same way after watching 'Idiocracy' as I did once after being stuck in the Chicago O'Hare terminal for hours on end watching that gawdawful airport CNN 'news' loop. --And I recognize that this was probably deliberate, but it doesn't change the fact that my body and brain were subjected to 90 minutes of soul-draining sugar-sewage.
And worse, the film was littered with broken insights. --Are we saying that genetics is the beginning and end of intellect and personal human integrity? Sorry, but I have a problem with that notion. It may make for an amusing animated tree diagram, but it's also a patently false idea.
But whatever. It was a cute film which was sort of worth watching. Once and never again. Hmm. --I wonder if that, 'Film Enjoyment Is Contagious' thing is in effect here?
-FL
WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP! BS alert BS ALert.
You sir, are crap.
And yes, I have researched this issue.
If you researched it with the same integrity and question-asking non-knee-jerk care with which you made your groundless judgment of my character, then I would be very suspicious of your findings.
But that's hardly my problem. Your level of awareness is your own problem. Do carry on.
-FL
In many contests of this nature, I can easily see a player's tinfoil and raise them an ostrich.
-FL
I mean no disrespect at all, but that is the number one reason psychopaths are so dangerous; normal people assume that the psychopath's mind is like their own. Humans who have compassion try to think from another person's point of view. It's one of our strengths as a species. However, the psychopath does not have a mind like our own. --One of the very things which makes the psychopath, estimated to make up 4-6% of the population, so destructive is that they will actively work towards ends which make no sense in the minds of the normal population. They will destroy their own support systems, they will undermine their own activities right along with everybody else's. People look at them doing this and assume that nobody would ever intentionally work in this manner, and so they project upon the psychopath any kind of rationalization in order to make sense of the destructive behavior. The charming psychopath is more than willing to play along. There is a lot of research available on this subject and it is very much worth reading. It is almost a certainty that everybody has had dealings with humans who have this sort of brain damage at one or more times in their lives, so it is a very good idea to educate yourself on the subject. Once you begin to learn about it, you can move to break patterns which have been harming you.
Throw in the fact that vaccinations are low margin business, there's little incentive for a conspiracy based on financial gain and anything based on making people more "docile" just isn't supported at all by real medicine. So, frankly it looks to me like you're just paranoid.
I wish I was just paranoid. --Look, I really can't talk about some of the things I know because it would affect my sources, but there IS a significant danger here, and if you do enough research in the public realm material, then you will see the evidence yourself. Start by looking into military bio-warfare experiments on the U.S. populace and CIA mind control experiments.
-FL
Accidents don't concern me nearly as much as that which is done on purpose. I'm not anti-science and I'm certainly not a religion-follower. I simply do not trust government or corporate intention. --It is my well-considered opinion that any activity designed to affect entire populations, and which has otherwise smart people thoroughly convinced through life times of education, television and public awareness campaigning, is almost 100% for certain to have been designed to limit and diminish humanity rather than to help and elevate it. --Almost nobody with the power to effect massive behavioral shifts in populations is up to any good. It's important to remember that Psychopaths rise to the top of big power structures and that not only do we not have any built-in means of stopping them, but the rules and ideals of our society encourage and reward psychopathic behavior.
Hundreds of examples exist of villainy in government and in the medical establishment. I've talked to individuals directly connected to this kind of villainy who verify just how messed up things are. I don't know about you, but I have learned enough to know that I would have to be an utter fool to assume that in this case, this time, they really do care about people and don't think of us as livestock to be managed and experimented upon.
-FL
While I don't like the conservative approach, I do like the way Paul appears to be his own man with his own opinions. --Which, incidentally, is why I doubt he has any real chances in the American stage drama of politics. He seems like an idealist who doesn't play well with others. The military industrial complex doesn't want guys like that calling the shots. -Calling the army home from Iraq? No, that's not going to go over well with the Powers That Be, (and I'm not talking about the current administration). Unless the whole system is pulled apart and all the many, many criminals put away, people who work within a belief system which doesn't recognize that the whole game is a sham which lives and breathes on the vapors of corruption are not going to make much head-way. It's a shame. Ron Paul for all the points I don't agree with, looks for all intents and purposes like what a real politician should be. We don't see too many guys like that. --And when we do see them begin to make real progress, they seem to die in small airplane crashes. I wonder if he realizes this.
-FL
Like I said; Frustrating.
-FL