All eventualists believe this, because, being eventualists, they unable to not project their eventualism on the behaviours of others. Amazingly, there are creatures in this world who thrive on sloped landscapes without sliding inevitably down hill--at least not until they are dragged into the barren crag below by all the eventualists around them pointing fingers at each other.
I wouldn't call it eventualism because the abuse of government power is with us right now. It has been for ages. There are countless examples of every system ever created by any government anywhere being misused. We know this; humans are imperfect. So typically, in a responsible government, we create counter-systems of oversight and appeal to balance out the human flaws, (of either judgment and morality), which is why systems lacking good error-corrective controls are so worrisome. It's never a matter of, "if it happens"; it's a matter of, "how bad will it be".
The have-nots are growing. Why are they growing? Because the skill set that is necessary to earn a decent living is being deemphasized in a fantasy world of football games and shooting zombies and all that.... Now you have the "knows" and the "know-nots", because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines..... you're not going to know anything.... You're gonna fail.
People here on Slashdot seem to overwhelmingly hate this guy, but the problem is that he's partly right. I live in a small university town, and the number of goo-heads is astonishing. The difference between the people I know who are "plugged in" versus those who are not, is quite pronounced.
I've seen guys who can't even stand properly, but who wobble back and forth like little kids with nervous conditions. --People who can barely make a plate of food for themselves, who have severely limited social skills, (and I'm not talking about getting a girlfriend or boyfriend; I'm talking about people who have a hard time even communicating at all; people who just don't seem to be really there when you look them in the eye.). --I've met videogame/anime/ipod junkies who I would have very honestly mistaken for being mentally disabled if they weren't enrolled in normal university courses. I don't know how the heck any of them are going to get jobs or lives after their parents stop paying their tuition bills.
Compared to those kids who avoid video games and television and ipods and such, the difference is night and day.
This is not to say that electronics are bad. I know a lot of very well socialized people who use Instant Messenger. But the trick is that such people are well-balanced. They don't JUST use computers. They also get outdoors and have real-time, face to face relations with real live people, they are active physically and they enjoy the raw adventure of life. Computers are, as many have pointed out, a part of life in today's culture, but like anything taken in isolation, they can seriously, and I mean seriously mess you up. Anybody who claims differently ought to visit a university campus sometime.
The good news is that it's really just a percentage; not everybody is a drooling pod person. People can choose and they do. Addiction can be actively chosen against.
This guy is SUCH a douche. Why does ANYBODY listen to idiots like this? It just makes me ashamed of our species, and living organisms as a whole perhaps.
I don't know why people listen to such things, but I DO know that when people react so violently to simple words it often indicates a desperate need to ignore a truth hiding within. It's usally beneficial, (if somewhat painful), to explore that stuff.
-FL
Re:Can you tell me the temperature 2 weeks from no
on
An Inconvenient Truth
·
· Score: 1
Biased. End of discussion. Nothing to see here. Move along...
Huh? What on earth did you expect? We are ALL biased. For instance, you are biased against things which appear to be biased.
If he didn't have a viewpoint which was different from others, which he felt was correct when others were wrong, he wouldn't have bothered making a movie. That's how it works.
You said yourself you wanted to know what his viewpoint was. If he wasn't biased, he wouldn't even have a viewpoint. The two go hand in hand.
-FL
Is everybody hankering to exist in such a world..?
on
Gears of War Review
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Seriously?
What are we programming ourselves for with this kind of media?
If your focus determines your reality, then it pays to take care in where you point your eyes, heart and mind.
--Which is not to say that all lessons aren't valuable, but chainsaws on guns? Sheesh. Sounds like a nasty time to me. At least you wouldn't have to spend much time alive in such a world.
I remember a study from a year back which showed that upwards of 90% of 'news' reports from Iraq all came from Pentagon press releases and contained aboslutely no fact checking or anything resembling actual investigative journalism. "Is your war budget justified?" "Oh, yes! Really, it is! Just look at the news."
Unless I'm mistaken, the only way (short of lightning) that EM broadcast/reception works is based on frequency resonance. What kind of system was Tesla trying to employ? --Let's not forget, the man invented the radio. (Marconi just capitalized on it.)
I only know of Tesla due to the mention in the article, and a minute or so on Wiki.
You're not alone. It's amazing how the man who is largely responsible for the use of AC power in our society, (Edison tried to champion DC because AC with all it's complex maths was too difficult to understand!), and the radio, (Marconi basically just used Tesla's insights to deliver a viable product for the war effort in WWI), goes unheralded.
There's a reason for this. Tesla worked in such a way which would have exposed the world to ways of thinking about reality which lead to freedom. --Despite his push for exactly the kind of power distribution system described in this article, such thinking would have eventually led to an understanding that all matter, (including elements of the human nervous system), resonates at specific frequencies. This would have led people to question things like cell phones a little more carefully before accepting them.
I've looked and looked, but I cannot find the reference I originally read many years ago now. . . His discovery of the radio was sparked by an incident where he was instantly aware that his mother who was in another country at the time, had just experienced a severe trauma. This experience is what caused him to think along the lines of sympathetic resonance. The science book people of today don't like guys who talk about such things. Again, it's about withholding freeing knowledge from the populace so that they are more easily controlled.
I am sure the standing army these things are designed to keep out have weaponry which can destroy these things from distances of a mile or more.
The problem is that these things aren't really meant for battlefield use. They're meant to control civilians. That's what the new century is all about; enforced depopulation and control of resources.
At 25 cents a day, you're saving about $75 a year. But if you'd kept the $7K in a bank at 3% interest, you'd have made $210.
And you would be able to buy three times the energy, plus not have the cost of maintaining the system, or the risk of no power after a few cloudy days.
Yep, I've seen those claims of "paying it off after 3 years" too. Totally bogus of course, but it sells solar panels.
It's bogus at all unless you assume no alteration in consumption habit. With many who use solar power, adopting new approaches and behavior patterns is part of the package, and even part of the appeal. Not being beholden to a fickle and unreliable power company is quite enticing.
I think it depends on how adaptable you choose to be. If you feel the need to stick with current practices, then you probably won't be able to find contentment without being connected to the normal system. If, however, you are prepared to try new things, then there are some really cool options available.
I had the opportunity to live for a couple of weeks in an off the grid house and I was impressed with how well it all worked. There were several rainy/cloudy days throughout the time, but the batteries remained at a full charge. (The panels they use are the kind which can gather a charge even on a cloudy day, albeit, at a much lower rate.) The house electrics were monitored on a handy panel. Fascinated, I spent a lot of time watching the needles rise and fall depending on the sunlight. The bank of six huge chemical batteries were monitored on a digital read-out; always hovering around 99% capacity.
Electricity was simply used sparingly as a way of life; instead of regular flood lighting, they opted for spot lighting using 10 watt halogen bulbs; in a washroom, for instance, they'd place one over the toilet and one over the sink. At night the washroom (one of three in an absolutely enormous two-story house) wasn't bathed in light, but there was more than enough to be comfortable and do all your regular washroom stuff. Power-heavy applications could be undertaken when needed because of the huge reservoir of energy in storage.
The family had a small television which they didn't use while I was staying; their kids were out-doors types. Perhaps if you watched a lot of television, you'd need more power, but it was never put to the test to my knowledge. They had a laptop computer capable of playing movies, which by design, was power-efficient as computers go. They didn't have a refrigerator, which at first alarmed me, but I was shown how a simple cooler was good enough to keep milk and cheese and meat for the short time before those items were consumed. Eggs don't need refrigeration, and greens and fruit were eaten shortly after being purchased. The family found over the course of the years that by changing their buying and eating habits, they were easily able to maintain an excellent diet which didn't require a fridge. I was taken aback by just how much our old habits and attitudes contribute to those possessions we think of as essential.
Their choice was an interesting one. When they bought their land, the portion upon which they wanted to place their house was well off the road. The power company would have had to sink a half dozen poles to bring power in from the main lines. For this service, they wanted to charge $8,000 CDN. The family wondered what other options they could invest in for $8,000 and they settled on solar. They bought ten panels at $800 each. Including wiring and batteries and labor and such, the total cost was about $10,000. They seem very happy with their choice and the accompanying lifestyle.
Limits are often self-imposed and can generally be worked around. This family had done so very well, I thought.
Compare with the wholesale value of thwe generated electricity.
You're likely to find the electricity cannot even pay for the interest cost.
This might be true for large scale utilities, (though I suspect such problems can be solved with cleverness). But so what?
I've seen numerous successful of-the-grid houses which use solar electricity solutions with great effect and at $10,000 per installation (in Canadian funds), it only takes about three to five years before you've saved that much through not buying electricity from the power company.
One of the better solutions I've seen used is simply to own equipment which runs on DC. Most of the items I use day to day need rectifiers anyway. The only really difficult items seem to be washer/driers and refrigerators, which in the example house I saw, needed broader thinking to solve, but were solved nonetheless.
One nice thing about being in a house wired for 12 volts DC was the lack of AC 'Humm'. It was really relaxing; like being out in the woods or something. A music prof at the local university nodded and informed me that wall socket power is indeed something you can detect with the normal senses.
I have a friend whose house is run on solar cells which can charge a battery even on cloudy, grey days. The tech is quite advanced these days. --The charge quality is only about 10% of that on a full-on sunshine day, but with judicious use of power, the family never sees their battery charge drop below 98%. More in than out. They planned well and installed an appropriate system.
Which is to say that a cloudy day no longer needs to shut down a solar power plant which uses more expensive cell technology, which the article mentioned it would.
It has been suggested that the globe and the human experience are linked.
There are a lot of people pointing fingers using poor data, and there are an equal number of septics living in states of deep denial. Both are silly positions.
One thing which most people can agree upon is that the environment is changing.
We're all here for the ride regardless of our chosen mental position. Maybe it's best to look around and experience it for all it's worth. That's why we're here after all; to experience life. Keeping your nose to the ground is opting to not do anything daring in your life; to always do the safe thing, to only buy from respectable department stores and only think in terms of the government prescribed Discovery Channel version of reality is to miss out on, well, almost everything unfiltered by those driven by greed and fear and the desire to make you sit quietly in rows.
I'm not saying you are nasty, but the risk/benefit ratio analysis is certainly psychotic. The ultimate example is that of the air plane manufacturer doing a similar study;
1. If we fix a known fault in all our aircraft, it will cost us 1 Billion Dollars. 2. Over the lifetime of the aircraft, lawsuits due to death and injury resulting from the fault will cost us only 500 million. 3. Don't fix the fault; it's less expensive in the long run.
Money isn't everything. Doing the right thing leads to benefits which cannot be calculated.
did they get $50,000,000 to blow on such a weird purchase? --Heck, where did they get the millons it probably cost to finance their general expenses?
I mean, how much income did their web service generate? None, as far as I can make out.
Was this an investment ploy used specifically to fleece Google or some other big buyer? The whole thing was a pump & dump? That was their business plan?
What the heck?
Stuff like this just makes my head spin. At least that big tech bubble of the mid to late nineties made sense in an irrational sort of way. People lost their shirts on a stupid invesetment; it was dumb and giddy, but logical after a fashion. You could see it coming. This kind of scheme is just screwy. I wish I had $100,000,000 to throw around on some half-baked plan contingent on totally random market factors.
Muslims would be treated much better if......they would simply stop following and promoting the belief that killing infidels is condoned.
Been listening to the propaganda again, have you? I don't blame you. It's almost all which IS being broadcast today.
Just happens that I live in a community which includes numerous Muslims. One of my room mates is even Muslim. From everything I've seen and heard discussed, these are people are some of the nicest, least murderous people I've had the pleasure of meeting.
When it comes right down to it, the three major religions are all kind of twisted. I wouldn't waste my time on any one of them. --The Koran has those nasty, "Kill the Infidel" spots. And the Bible is filled with, "And you shall kill your enemies and pull down their cities and carry away their women and children, etc." The Talmudic stuff is even worse. But guess what? Whether you act like a blood-thirsty lunatic or not is entirely up to YOU. Sadly, no one religion has a monopoly on insanity. --A good reason to reject all three. Just look at all the trouble they stir up! We have a lunatic born again president bent on dreams of empire and turning the U.S. into a fascist state, a lunatic Jewish government bent on committing genocide, and lunatic suicide bombers.
And out of the three, I can't help but think that the Christians and Jews have somewhat more to answer for at the moment. Not that that means much. The underdog always turns mean on the rebound. Humans suck.
Israel rocks. I went there on holiday last November and loved it. Great country, great food (which caught me by surprise), great people.
Yeah, great, if you ignore the whole ground-zero of the apocalypse thing.
I'd be getting out of Israel before I'd leave the U.S., and I'd certainly not want to be in the U.S.!
Seriously. Israel is a giant ghetto designed to lure all the Jews into one place for convenient and easy processing. If you are a Jew, Israel is perhaps the least safe country on the planet. Take a moment to note which way the wind is blowing!
Stem Cells are "un-programmed" cells which can become any kind of cell in an organism. They are full of possibility! --As the organism grows, cells branch away (from the stem) to differentiate into eyeball cells, fingernail cells, knee cap or elbow cells. The medical community is excited about them, because you can use stem cells with their vast potential to regrow damaged organs. How wonderful!
The 'Big Problem', as it has been sold by the media and medical P.R. firms works like this. ..
You can only get stem cells from babies or fetuses, where they still exist and have not yet differentiated. Why? Because, we are told, a cell once it has branched off to become an eyeball or an elbow, once it has differentiated, cannot de-differentiate. It's stuck as an eyeball or an elbow cell. Thus doctors and researchers must go to the source. Babies.
Horrors! What an effective way to keep people divided and in a constant state of uproar.
The only trouble is that it's a lie. Eyeball and elbow cells can de-differentiate. You can recreate stem cells.
--Observe the humble salamander which can regrow whole limbs if they are cut off. New cells split from existing ones and are able to grow into new elbows, arms and fingers. How do they do this? There isn't a storehouse of stem cells hiding somewhere in the salamander waiting to be used in an emergency. Nope. What happens is that when the salamander is injured, at the site of the injury the cells regress into a fibroblastic state, and then emerge as stem cells which then proceed to form the new parts required to re-grow the entire limb. Elbow cells, arm and finger cells. No dead babies required. Cool.
Interestingly, it is also observed in salamanders that when you attach electrodes to the creature's nose and tail, a charge can be measured. Apparently the nose is negative and the tail positive. Okay. And when you injure the creature by cutting off one of its legs, that charge reverses for a period of time until the healing process is well underway.
Um. Okay. That's kind of weird.
At the site of the injury itself, the DC electric potentials also do other strange things, and the cells exhibit behaviors directly related to those changes. Curiouser and curiouser.
And guess what? Humans exhibit similar DC electric traits. The currents are extremely small, but they are there. They are not the same as those in salamanders, but then human cells also behave differently. We can't re-grow limbs, for one thing. But at the site of an injury, our cells also go into a fibroblastic state. Cells stop being elblo and toenail cells and become fibroblastic cells which form into scar tissue.
But what happens when you apply DC currents from an external source? Well, it's odd, but the cells react. Human cancer cells, for instance, start to grow much, much faster. Hm. What else can happen? Well, lots of things, apparently. The human body, and in fact, all living tissues in all creatures, react in a variety of ways to micro-electric currents.
Chinese accupuncture, for instance, is almost certainly based on this. --A metal needle is inserted into a key point on the body, it is set to rotating, (cutting through the Earth's magnetic field, thus creating a small current), and the body reacts in some manner. Place the needles correctly and a variety of different healing effects can be obtained by accupuncture doctors.
Cool. What else can be achieved?
Well, human cells in a fibroblast state can be made to de-differentiate. They can be turned into stem cells. Hold on. Say what? That's not supposed to be able to happen! We're supposed to be in an uproar over dead babies. We're supposed to be distracted through a permanent state of in-fighting amongst ourselves so that we don't have the energy to ever be free of the control systems holding us fixed into place.
Has anybody mentioned this to the medical
Killer. . ? Not until we have AI and transporters
on
My Dream App For the Mac
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Let's see now. You need to make a piece of software which will allow people to do what they want to do. So let's list it all. . .
People want to write. So we have word-processors. Check. People want to make pictures, both moving and static. So we have graphics manipulators. People want to make sounds and music. We have software to serve in this capacity. People want to do complex maths and book-keeping. Done. People want to amuse themselves. Games. Done. People want to communicate. Again, done. We call it the 'internet' People want to spend money. Yup. Done that. And people want the construction software to be able to program all of the above. Done, done, done!
So what's left?
People also want to eat, sleep, transport themselves and have sex.
Well, until you can make a food replicator, the eating thing is probably not going to see a revolution any time soon through computers. Sleep is pretty much automatic, (thank-goodness!), I guess there's aviation and transport technologies software already, so that's another done thing, (though GPS was sort of cool). --And I guess you could arguably say that sex has been amply covered by the net already.
So what's left? What need is this new killer app going to fill?
I suppose you could do one of the above things better, more integrated, with prettier colors. The iPod was a good example of re-packaging existing technology. Yay for Jobs.
And realistically, re-packaging existing ideas is all that's left, (until a genius comes along and shows us all wrong, of course.)
Google was one of those. --They gave us a way to effectively search through all the mountains of stuff generated by all the people scurrying to fill all the nooks and crannies created by the main list of things we wanted computers to do.
So what haven't we done yet?
What do we want to do?
AI is a big one. It's not here yet. (Thank goodness!) Mind-reading hardware and software. There could be a future in that, but it's a bit far off, and again, thank-goodness for that!
Thinking more realistically, Video on Demand in whatever form it eventually takes will probably be big. YouTube offered us a glimpse of that, but it wasn't exactly an app. Maybe Apple or somebody will rig a system where all the currents of money and data flow according to the approval of the power-brokers of the media and hardware universe. That's clearly in the works right now.
But really. . . What's left? What do you really wish your computer could do that it can't do already?
Maybe it's like the typewriter. It's done. Anybody can now type. Maybe what it comes down to is people focusing less on the tools themselves and more on their getting down to the hard work of actually using them.
I think it's cool that big companies are trying to ape the Open Source model, (to a limited degree), as it speaks volumes about the power of the sharing approach.
Not that making good software is really the intent here. It seems to me that at least half the push in Apple's case is a public relations scheme to form that feeling of community and sharing and hugs which their ad department has determined is the most effective approach to long term profits. This month, anyway. If it were believed that long term profits could be achieved by drinking the blood of dead babies, you can bet somebody would push to implement that idea as well.
On the other hand, if you are part of the Open Source community and genuinely want to help cool ideas take flight, then you are on the right track and should be supported. Luckily, that's how things seem to be evolving already. For those who seek, anyway.
Are Mac Users Liberal, PC users Conservative, and *nix users Alternative Party types?
Or should that be shuffled differently? Is there a relationship at all?
Perhaps I should re-categorize this. There are those who. . .
A) Build their own computers to their own specs and like having that power of self-determination.
B) Don't know a thing about how to make things go and like having such decisions made for them.
--Ignorance leads to fear. "Viruses are bad. Terrorists are bad. I don't want to know how any of that stuff works, but I know they scare me, so I want somebody to deal with it for me who is strong so I don't have to be." I know lots of PC users who fall into category 'B'.
Although, I'm sure I've met some home-brew self-determination-type PC builders who are also conservative. Perhaps because the building requires rules and specific knowledge, which can be easily learned, nobody will laugh at, and thus keeps one safe so long as the official rules are followed. --Which is based on fear of not fitting in.
Funny. I didn't see it from that angle before. . .
Designers are interested in making things look nice; surface. Developers make stuff work; it's what's inside that counts.
That these two modes of thinking should extend into one's personal life should come as no surprise, but until I saw the relationship, the thought had simply never occurred to me.
I do, however, think there is a place for a healthy balance between the two; paying attention to your surface gives you a certain type of power. People first contact with your surface before any words are exchanged; your surface is in essence your first word, and that word should probably not be a hostile or un-caring one. After that, though, your inner stuff is what determines the quality of the communication.
I think of clothing and hygiene as the Feng-Shui of the body. You don't need $300 dollar jeans to do a good job of it, but creating a well-disposed feeling around yourself can only do good things for your ability to interact with the world; to be taken seriously and to give proper power to all of your resources and works. It's the difference between living in a cluttered, inefficient environment and living in an ordered, healthy environment. --I'm certainly not saying that this is the primary goal of those who spend lots and lots of time worrying over their looks, but perhaps it ought to be.
So when Hezbollah kidnapped Americans and created the "Iran Hostage Crisis" in the 70s, they weren't "terrorists" back then? I knew what terrrorists were in the 70s and their definition has not changed one bit.
What? Hezbollah emerged in Lebanon in the 80's. They had nothing to do with the "Iran Hostage Crisis".
And the Iran Hostage Crisis was hardly the result of a terrorist act. --It came about more through a mob reaction to American villainy. (The CIA regularly interferes with other nations' natural evolution and self-determination, usually with extremely negative results.)
The Iran Hostage Crisis, From Wikipedia. . .
In 1953, emerging democracy led to the election of reformist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh; under Operation Ajax, the CIA helped the Shah and conservative elements in Iran remove Mossadegh in what was widely seen as a coup d'état. Those opposed to the Shah, because he did not grant them freedoms and reforms he promised in the early 1960s, greatly resented this action by the Americans. Moreover, the Shah and his elite supporters were seen as enriching themselves and living an opulent Western lifestyle; this particularly bothered religious conservatives. The social and religious opposition combined to topple the Shah's regime in the Iranian revolution, and the Shah fled the country in January 1979.
The U.S. attempted to mitigate the damage by finding a new relationship with the de facto Iranian government, but in October of 1979, the Shah, ailing from lymphoma, was admitted to the U.S. for medical treatment. This caused widespread Iranian suspicion it was part of a plan to re-enact the 1953 coup, and enraged the revolutionary movement.
On November 1, 1979 Iran's new leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged his people to demonstrate against United States and Israeli interests. Khomeini was anti-American in his rhetoric, denouncing the American government as the "Great Satan" and "Enemies of Islam".
Thousands of people gathered around the U.S. embassy in Tehran, protesting. The embassy grounds had been briefly occupied before, during the revolution, and protest crowds outside the fence were common. Iranian police were less and less helpful. On November 3 Radio Turkey aired an analysis predicting a Coup within weeks, conducted by CIA agents in a similar fashion as Operation Ajax to re-install the Shah. On November 4, amid another chaotic occupation of the grounds, a mob of around 500 Iranian students (although reported numbers vary from 300 to 2000) calling themselves the Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam seized the main embassy building.
Terrorists? Sounds more like an angry and frightened mob to me. The word 'Terrorist' was spun later by the media to create a useful emotional label which is easily applied whenever a Western government wants to create a quick fear reaction and sequester the public from reality.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't call it eventualism because the abuse of government power is with us right now. It has been for ages. There are countless examples of every system ever created by any government anywhere being misused. We know this; humans are imperfect. So typically, in a responsible government, we create counter-systems of oversight and appeal to balance out the human flaws, (of either judgment and morality), which is why systems lacking good error-corrective controls are so worrisome. It's never a matter of, "if it happens"; it's a matter of, "how bad will it be".
-FL
People here on Slashdot seem to overwhelmingly hate this guy, but the problem is that he's partly right. I live in a small university town, and the number of goo-heads is astonishing. The difference between the people I know who are "plugged in" versus those who are not, is quite pronounced.
I've seen guys who can't even stand properly, but who wobble back and forth like little kids with nervous conditions. --People who can barely make a plate of food for themselves, who have severely limited social skills, (and I'm not talking about getting a girlfriend or boyfriend; I'm talking about people who have a hard time even communicating at all; people who just don't seem to be really there when you look them in the eye.). --I've met videogame/anime/ipod junkies who I would have very honestly mistaken for being mentally disabled if they weren't enrolled in normal university courses. I don't know how the heck any of them are going to get jobs or lives after their parents stop paying their tuition bills.
Compared to those kids who avoid video games and television and ipods and such, the difference is night and day.
This is not to say that electronics are bad. I know a lot of very well socialized people who use Instant Messenger. But the trick is that such people are well-balanced. They don't JUST use computers. They also get outdoors and have real-time, face to face relations with real live people, they are active physically and they enjoy the raw adventure of life. Computers are, as many have pointed out, a part of life in today's culture, but like anything taken in isolation, they can seriously, and I mean seriously mess you up. Anybody who claims differently ought to visit a university campus sometime.
The good news is that it's really just a percentage; not everybody is a drooling pod person. People can choose and they do. Addiction can be actively chosen against.
-FL
I don't know why people listen to such things, but I DO know that when people react so violently to simple words it often indicates a desperate need to ignore a truth hiding within. It's usally beneficial, (if somewhat painful), to explore that stuff.
-FL
Huh? What on earth did you expect? We are ALL biased. For instance, you are biased against things which appear to be biased.
If he didn't have a viewpoint which was different from others, which he felt was correct when others were wrong, he wouldn't have bothered making a movie. That's how it works.
You said yourself you wanted to know what his viewpoint was. If he wasn't biased, he wouldn't even have a viewpoint. The two go hand in hand.
-FL
What are we programming ourselves for with this kind of media?
If your focus determines your reality, then it pays to take care in where you point your eyes, heart and mind.
--Which is not to say that all lessons aren't valuable, but chainsaws on guns? Sheesh. Sounds like a nasty time to me. At least you wouldn't have to spend much time alive in such a world.
-FL
-FL
-FL
You're not alone. It's amazing how the man who is largely responsible for the use of AC power in our society, (Edison tried to champion DC because AC with all it's complex maths was too difficult to understand!), and the radio, (Marconi basically just used Tesla's insights to deliver a viable product for the war effort in WWI), goes unheralded.
There's a reason for this. Tesla worked in such a way which would have exposed the world to ways of thinking about reality which lead to freedom. --Despite his push for exactly the kind of power distribution system described in this article, such thinking would have eventually led to an understanding that all matter, (including elements of the human nervous system), resonates at specific frequencies. This would have led people to question things like cell phones a little more carefully before accepting them.
I've looked and looked, but I cannot find the reference I originally read many years ago now. . . His discovery of the radio was sparked by an incident where he was instantly aware that his mother who was in another country at the time, had just experienced a severe trauma. This experience is what caused him to think along the lines of sympathetic resonance. The science book people of today don't like guys who talk about such things. Again, it's about withholding freeing knowledge from the populace so that they are more easily controlled.
-FL
The problem is that these things aren't really meant for battlefield use. They're meant to control civilians. That's what the new century is all about; enforced depopulation and control of resources.
-FL
And you would be able to buy three times the energy, plus not have the cost of maintaining the system, or the risk of no power after a few cloudy days.
Yep, I've seen those claims of "paying it off after 3 years" too. Totally bogus of course, but it sells solar panels.
It's bogus at all unless you assume no alteration in consumption habit. With many who use solar power, adopting new approaches and behavior patterns is part of the package, and even part of the appeal. Not being beholden to a fickle and unreliable power company is quite enticing.
I think it depends on how adaptable you choose to be. If you feel the need to stick with current practices, then you probably won't be able to find contentment without being connected to the normal system. If, however, you are prepared to try new things, then there are some really cool options available.
I had the opportunity to live for a couple of weeks in an off the grid house and I was impressed with how well it all worked. There were several rainy/cloudy days throughout the time, but the batteries remained at a full charge. (The panels they use are the kind which can gather a charge even on a cloudy day, albeit, at a much lower rate.) The house electrics were monitored on a handy panel. Fascinated, I spent a lot of time watching the needles rise and fall depending on the sunlight. The bank of six huge chemical batteries were monitored on a digital read-out; always hovering around 99% capacity.
Electricity was simply used sparingly as a way of life; instead of regular flood lighting, they opted for spot lighting using 10 watt halogen bulbs; in a washroom, for instance, they'd place one over the toilet and one over the sink. At night the washroom (one of three in an absolutely enormous two-story house) wasn't bathed in light, but there was more than enough to be comfortable and do all your regular washroom stuff. Power-heavy applications could be undertaken when needed because of the huge reservoir of energy in storage.
The family had a small television which they didn't use while I was staying; their kids were out-doors types. Perhaps if you watched a lot of television, you'd need more power, but it was never put to the test to my knowledge. They had a laptop computer capable of playing movies, which by design, was power-efficient as computers go. They didn't have a refrigerator, which at first alarmed me, but I was shown how a simple cooler was good enough to keep milk and cheese and meat for the short time before those items were consumed. Eggs don't need refrigeration, and greens and fruit were eaten shortly after being purchased. The family found over the course of the years that by changing their buying and eating habits, they were easily able to maintain an excellent diet which didn't require a fridge. I was taken aback by just how much our old habits and attitudes contribute to those possessions we think of as essential.
Their choice was an interesting one. When they bought their land, the portion upon which they wanted to place their house was well off the road. The power company would have had to sink a half dozen poles to bring power in from the main lines. For this service, they wanted to charge $8,000 CDN. The family wondered what other options they could invest in for $8,000 and they settled on solar. They bought ten panels at $800 each. Including wiring and batteries and labor and such, the total cost was about $10,000. They seem very happy with their choice and the accompanying lifestyle.
Limits are often self-imposed and can generally be worked around. This family had done so very well, I thought.
-FL
You're likely to find the electricity cannot even pay for the interest cost.
This might be true for large scale utilities, (though I suspect such problems can be solved with cleverness). But so what?
I've seen numerous successful of-the-grid houses which use solar electricity solutions with great effect and at $10,000 per installation (in Canadian funds), it only takes about three to five years before you've saved that much through not buying electricity from the power company.
-FL
One of the better solutions I've seen used is simply to own equipment which runs on DC. Most of the items I use day to day need rectifiers anyway. The only really difficult items seem to be washer/driers and refrigerators, which in the example house I saw, needed broader thinking to solve, but were solved nonetheless.
One nice thing about being in a house wired for 12 volts DC was the lack of AC 'Humm'. It was really relaxing; like being out in the woods or something. A music prof at the local university nodded and informed me that wall socket power is indeed something you can detect with the normal senses.
-FL
Which is to say that a cloudy day no longer needs to shut down a solar power plant which uses more expensive cell technology, which the article mentioned it would.
-FL
It has been suggested that the globe and the human experience are linked.
There are a lot of people pointing fingers using poor data, and there are an equal number of septics living in states of deep denial. Both are silly positions.
One thing which most people can agree upon is that the environment is changing.
We're all here for the ride regardless of our chosen mental position. Maybe it's best to look around and experience it for all it's worth. That's why we're here after all; to experience life. Keeping your nose to the ground is opting to not do anything daring in your life; to always do the safe thing, to only buy from respectable department stores and only think in terms of the government prescribed Discovery Channel version of reality is to miss out on, well, almost everything unfiltered by those driven by greed and fear and the desire to make you sit quietly in rows.
-FL
I keep hearing this item, but I've not seen anybody give a decent source.
-FL
I'm not saying you are nasty, but the risk/benefit ratio analysis is certainly psychotic. The ultimate example is that of the air plane manufacturer doing a similar study;
1. If we fix a known fault in all our aircraft, it will cost us 1 Billion Dollars.
2. Over the lifetime of the aircraft, lawsuits due to death and injury resulting from the fault will cost us only 500 million.
3. Don't fix the fault; it's less expensive in the long run.
Money isn't everything. Doing the right thing leads to benefits which cannot be calculated.
-FL
I mean, how much income did their web service generate? None, as far as I can make out.
Was this an investment ploy used specifically to fleece Google or some other big buyer? The whole thing was a pump & dump? That was their business plan?
What the heck?
Stuff like this just makes my head spin. At least that big tech bubble of the mid to late nineties made sense in an irrational sort of way. People lost their shirts on a stupid invesetment; it was dumb and giddy, but logical after a fashion. You could see it coming. This kind of scheme is just screwy. I wish I had $100,000,000 to throw around on some half-baked plan contingent on totally random market factors.
How do you sell an idea like that?
-FL
Been listening to the propaganda again, have you? I don't blame you. It's almost all which IS being broadcast today.
Just happens that I live in a community which includes numerous Muslims. One of my room mates is even Muslim. From everything I've seen and heard discussed, these are people are some of the nicest, least murderous people I've had the pleasure of meeting.
When it comes right down to it, the three major religions are all kind of twisted. I wouldn't waste my time on any one of them. --The Koran has those nasty, "Kill the Infidel" spots. And the Bible is filled with, "And you shall kill your enemies and pull down their cities and carry away their women and children, etc." The Talmudic stuff is even worse. But guess what? Whether you act like a blood-thirsty lunatic or not is entirely up to YOU. Sadly, no one religion has a monopoly on insanity. --A good reason to reject all three. Just look at all the trouble they stir up! We have a lunatic born again president bent on dreams of empire and turning the U.S. into a fascist state, a lunatic Jewish government bent on committing genocide, and lunatic suicide bombers.
And out of the three, I can't help but think that the Christians and Jews have somewhat more to answer for at the moment. Not that that means much. The underdog always turns mean on the rebound. Humans suck.
-FL
Yeah, great, if you ignore the whole ground-zero of the apocalypse thing.
I'd be getting out of Israel before I'd leave the U.S., and I'd certainly not want to be in the U.S.!
Seriously. Israel is a giant ghetto designed to lure all the Jews into one place for convenient and easy processing. If you are a Jew, Israel is perhaps the least safe country on the planet. Take a moment to note which way the wind is blowing!
-FL
Okay. So what exactly are Stem Cells?
.
Stem Cells are "un-programmed" cells which can become any kind of cell in an organism. They are full of possibility! --As the organism grows, cells branch away (from the stem) to differentiate into eyeball cells, fingernail cells, knee cap or elbow cells. The medical community is excited about them, because you can use stem cells with their vast potential to regrow damaged organs. How wonderful!
The 'Big Problem', as it has been sold by the media and medical P.R. firms works like this. .
You can only get stem cells from babies or fetuses, where they still exist and have not yet differentiated. Why? Because, we are told, a cell once it has branched off to become an eyeball or an elbow, once it has differentiated, cannot de-differentiate. It's stuck as an eyeball or an elbow cell. Thus doctors and researchers must go to the source. Babies.
Horrors! What an effective way to keep people divided and in a constant state of uproar.
The only trouble is that it's a lie. Eyeball and elbow cells can de-differentiate. You can recreate stem cells.
--Observe the humble salamander which can regrow whole limbs if they are cut off. New cells split from existing ones and are able to grow into new elbows, arms and fingers. How do they do this? There isn't a storehouse of stem cells hiding somewhere in the salamander waiting to be used in an emergency. Nope. What happens is that when the salamander is injured, at the site of the injury the cells regress into a fibroblastic state, and then emerge as stem cells which then proceed to form the new parts required to re-grow the entire limb. Elbow cells, arm and finger cells. No dead babies required. Cool.
Interestingly, it is also observed in salamanders that when you attach electrodes to the creature's nose and tail, a charge can be measured. Apparently the nose is negative and the tail positive. Okay. And when you injure the creature by cutting off one of its legs, that charge reverses for a period of time until the healing process is well underway.
Um. Okay. That's kind of weird.
At the site of the injury itself, the DC electric potentials also do other strange things, and the cells exhibit behaviors directly related to those changes. Curiouser and curiouser.
And guess what? Humans exhibit similar DC electric traits. The currents are extremely small, but they are there. They are not the same as those in salamanders, but then human cells also behave differently. We can't re-grow limbs, for one thing. But at the site of an injury, our cells also go into a fibroblastic state. Cells stop being elblo and toenail cells and become fibroblastic cells which form into scar tissue.
But what happens when you apply DC currents from an external source? Well, it's odd, but the cells react. Human cancer cells, for instance, start to grow much, much faster. Hm. What else can happen? Well, lots of things, apparently. The human body, and in fact, all living tissues in all creatures, react in a variety of ways to micro-electric currents.
Chinese accupuncture, for instance, is almost certainly based on this. --A metal needle is inserted into a key point on the body, it is set to rotating, (cutting through the Earth's magnetic field, thus creating a small current), and the body reacts in some manner. Place the needles correctly and a variety of different healing effects can be obtained by accupuncture doctors.
Cool. What else can be achieved?
Well, human cells in a fibroblast state can be made to de-differentiate. They can be turned into stem cells. Hold on. Say what? That's not supposed to be able to happen! We're supposed to be in an uproar over dead babies. We're supposed to be distracted through a permanent state of in-fighting amongst ourselves so that we don't have the energy to ever be free of the control systems holding us fixed into place.
Has anybody mentioned this to the medical
People want to write. So we have word-processors. Check.
People want to make pictures, both moving and static. So we have graphics manipulators.
People want to make sounds and music. We have software to serve in this capacity.
People want to do complex maths and book-keeping. Done.
People want to amuse themselves. Games. Done.
People want to communicate. Again, done. We call it the 'internet'
People want to spend money. Yup. Done that.
And people want the construction software to be able to program all of the above. Done, done, done!
So what's left?
People also want to eat, sleep, transport themselves and have sex.
Well, until you can make a food replicator, the eating thing is probably not going to see a revolution any time soon through computers. Sleep is pretty much automatic, (thank-goodness!), I guess there's aviation and transport technologies software already, so that's another done thing, (though GPS was sort of cool). --And I guess you could arguably say that sex has been amply covered by the net already.
So what's left? What need is this new killer app going to fill?
I suppose you could do one of the above things better, more integrated, with prettier colors. The iPod was a good example of re-packaging existing technology. Yay for Jobs.
And realistically, re-packaging existing ideas is all that's left, (until a genius comes along and shows us all wrong, of course.)
Google was one of those. --They gave us a way to effectively search through all the mountains of stuff generated by all the people scurrying to fill all the nooks and crannies created by the main list of things we wanted computers to do.
So what haven't we done yet?
What do we want to do?
AI is a big one. It's not here yet. (Thank goodness!)
Mind-reading hardware and software. There could be a future in that, but it's a bit far off, and again, thank-goodness for that!
Thinking more realistically, Video on Demand in whatever form it eventually takes will probably be big. YouTube offered us a glimpse of that, but it wasn't exactly an app. Maybe Apple or somebody will rig a system where all the currents of money and data flow according to the approval of the power-brokers of the media and hardware universe. That's clearly in the works right now.
But really. . . What's left? What do you really wish your computer could do that it can't do already?
Maybe it's like the typewriter. It's done. Anybody can now type. Maybe what it comes down to is people focusing less on the tools themselves and more on their getting down to the hard work of actually using them.
Just a thought.
-FL
Not that making good software is really the intent here. It seems to me that at least half the push in Apple's case is a public relations scheme to form that feeling of community and sharing and hugs which their ad department has determined is the most effective approach to long term profits. This month, anyway. If it were believed that long term profits could be achieved by drinking the blood of dead babies, you can bet somebody would push to implement that idea as well.
On the other hand, if you are part of the Open Source community and genuinely want to help cool ideas take flight, then you are on the right track and should be supported. Luckily, that's how things seem to be evolving already. For those who seek, anyway.
-FL
Are Mac Users Liberal, PC users Conservative, and *nix users Alternative Party types?
Or should that be shuffled differently? Is there a relationship at all?
Perhaps I should re-categorize this. There are those who. . .
A) Build their own computers to their own specs and like having that power of self-determination.
B) Don't know a thing about how to make things go and like having such decisions made for them.
--Ignorance leads to fear. "Viruses are bad. Terrorists are bad. I don't want to know how any of that stuff works, but I know they scare me, so I want somebody to deal with it for me who is strong so I don't have to be." I know lots of PC users who fall into category 'B'.
Although, I'm sure I've met some home-brew self-determination-type PC builders who are also conservative. Perhaps because the building requires rules and specific knowledge, which can be easily learned, nobody will laugh at, and thus keeps one safe so long as the official rules are followed. --Which is based on fear of not fitting in.
Hm. . . Must ponder this more.
-FL
Designers are interested in making things look nice; surface. Developers make stuff work; it's what's inside that counts.
That these two modes of thinking should extend into one's personal life should come as no surprise, but until I saw the relationship, the thought had simply never occurred to me.
I do, however, think there is a place for a healthy balance between the two; paying attention to your surface gives you a certain type of power. People first contact with your surface before any words are exchanged; your surface is in essence your first word, and that word should probably not be a hostile or un-caring one. After that, though, your inner stuff is what determines the quality of the communication.
I think of clothing and hygiene as the Feng-Shui of the body. You don't need $300 dollar jeans to do a good job of it, but creating a well-disposed feeling around yourself can only do good things for your ability to interact with the world; to be taken seriously and to give proper power to all of your resources and works. It's the difference between living in a cluttered, inefficient environment and living in an ordered, healthy environment. --I'm certainly not saying that this is the primary goal of those who spend lots and lots of time worrying over their looks, but perhaps it ought to be.
-FL
What? Hezbollah emerged in Lebanon in the 80's. They had nothing to do with the "Iran Hostage Crisis".
And the Iran Hostage Crisis was hardly the result of a terrorist act. --It came about more through a mob reaction to American villainy. (The CIA regularly interferes with other nations' natural evolution and self-determination, usually with extremely negative results.)
The Iran Hostage Crisis, From Wikipedia. . .
Terrorists? Sounds more like an angry and frightened mob to me. The word 'Terrorist' was spun later by the media to create a useful emotional label which is easily applied whenever a Western government wants to create a quick fear reaction and sequester the public from reality.
-FL