Terrorists have been at war with America for over 30 years. Who started the war?
Better question: Who put the media spin on the concept of 'terrorism' so that terms like, "Terrorists have been at war with America", can be said with a straight face?
Only in India are the members of government so brazen in their theft of the public purse.
Here in the West, our members of government know that they first must own stock in or make friends in the weapons and oil biz, then start stupid wars which will give them a good reason to jack up oil prices and sell lots of bullets. --Direct theft of the public purse is not tolerated; it must be masked it under one or two layers of wool.
Of course, the people in the West would be too smart to fall for such cheep tricks if their brains had not first been fermented into head-cheese through the slow-cook process of being plugged more or less permanently into television sets, cell-phones, ipods and video-game boxes.
Given that the U.S. is such a major center of power on the Earth's surface, attempting to dictate reality for much of the globe, doesn't it alarm anybody that more than a third of its population lives such a large portion of their waking hours in deliberately false realities?
--Which doesn't necessarily say much for everybody who isn't a gamer, given that something like 95% of the population are also TV addicts.
the fact that a bunch of ex and not-so-ex secret service spooks were in charge of Commodore during its marketing self-destruction.
Interesting, that.
I mean, who needs a computer system which was as stable, affordable and advanced as the Amiga when you could have the piece of gosa PC system which confuses and frustrates the hell out of everybody, wastes time and money, and which is now the de-facto norm in computing?
I dunno. The Amiga had that Open Source, non-corporate, power to the people feeling. I wonder what the world would look like today if Amigas had proliferated. --I mean, Bill Gates is greedy and manipulative. Steve Jobs insults users by assuming they are all pod-people who need computers to look and act like baby toys. The Amiga, by contrast, was functional, powerful, sensible and accessible; it even had a sense of humor. Remember the message you got when things crashed? Humor versus FUD.
The proper definition of a scientific theory is hardly a meme, new or old. If you think its less than a year old, then I can only assume you just had your first Internet connection installed.
Bzzt. Wrong. When random people I meet on-line and off who would not otherwise care one way or the other all suddenly start simultaneously lecturing each other on the proper definition of the word, "theory", (as has been the case over the last couple of months, but not during ANY time before that), it's a popular meme.
And if you think Occam wasn't popularized by the film, 'Contact' to a bunch of people who prior had no idea that the man had ever even existed, you are in error. Simple as that.
I appologize if my tone annoyed you, but guess what? I'm annoyed by the mis-use of otherwise good ideas.
Among the latest crop of geek memes is the weird desire to get all politcally correct about what and what is and is not a 'theory'.
A year ago, nobody would force this nonsense to the table.
I can't stand popular memes! Occam started making the rounds after Jodi Foster popularized him in Contact. Ugh. The number of dumb and dumber arguments resulting from a little mis-applied knowledge was astronomical. Bubbo's Ridiculous Law, (Or whatever his name is) which states that the well-accessorized geek must close his ears upon hearing the word, "Nazi" is another.
While not quite as destructive to a healthy mental process, this cross-culture, (geek culture, that is) sudden need to lecture other geeks left and right upon the proper use of the word, "Theory", is just as annoying.
You watch. It will be mis-applied by geeks trying to knock the wind out of interesting, new ideas by declaring the ideas to be beneath even the rank of theory and therefore somehow worthy of contempt. I've seen so many people who are scared to think for themselves that unless all the ideas in their heads have been validated by somebody else, (TV or other annoying geeks with name tags), then they will shie away from them at all cost.
It's the old jr. high programming. If you are different, you will be punished through ostricization.
The problem with your argument, the basic premise of which I agree with for the most part, is that the West has worked unceasingly to deliberately destabilize the target nations, thus causing the very conditions you advise sending in troops to rectify.
Further, your argument which attempts to dress up the made-in-China Walmart phenomenon into a formulated act of benevolent mercy rather than a display of rampant greed is faulty for exactly that reason.
As well, to say that the nations the U.S. has made into enemies du jour are engaged in a world-wide propaganda campaign but that the West, with its billion televisions, news papers and movie screens is not. . , this is a viewpoint resulting from severe tunnel vision.
The basic notion that "There Are Bad Guys We Need To Defend Ourselves Against" is a very well promoted concept which is reinforced with false-flag maneuvers. Now that is propaganda. Police do appear to be necessary in our day-to-day lives, but deliberately creating criminals and crimes in order to divert unnecessary wealth and power to those enforcers is foolish.
No, not all Americans are evil. But the ones in charge of dispensing the marching orders and writing checks on the public purse are.
The notion that problems can be solved by bombing cities and killing civilians is broken.
Mel Brooks' brand of dumb humor only works with live action. Humor in animation relies much more on charisma and human reactions to impossible things. Rick Moranis in a big helmet is funny. An animated Rick Moranis in a big helmet is not. --95% of animated characters are mis-proportioned, so where's the joke?
Humor in animation stems from entirely different sources, and a team of writers trying to ape Mel Brooks isn't one of those sources.
The only value I can see in this project is in that it further solidifies a valuable cultural mythology by lampooning it. (You don't lampoon that which is not deeply rooted in society). Star Wars and the messages explored within are good; things our culture needs. It's too bad the last three films were wounded, but the idea of Jedi is still here.
My current favorite find were a series of books by Scholasitc; the Jedi Apprentice series. --The edges are rounded down for young readers, but the books are otherwise very insightfully written.
While this movie had one of the funniest moments I've seen in film, featuring Rick Moranis acting dazed after flying across the deck of a star destroyer, the rest I found dumb and highly forgettable.
I certainly wouldn't waste time watching it again.
Until you can show me and the rest of the world verifiable proof that someone hacked a voting machine while actually voting, this is no more cause for concern than kids having fun with electronics kits at home.
So what are you saying? You think Bush won the White House on his sound policies, razor sharp intellect and good looks?
Who is going to present your verifiable proof? The media? Get real. The idea of "Give me verifiable proof or I'll deliberately refuse to trust my own senses" is one of the biggest control mechanisms currently in the employ of the dark side.
They taught people that truth is a rarified substance which only ever issues through schools, TV sets, radios and newspaper headlines. Then they bought all the broadcasters and publishers, and control the school curriculums.
Truth and Proof are never served free of charge to the lazy and ignorant. You have to go find it yourself and form your own opinions yourself without a mob around you to help boost your courage.
I've always loved breaking and taking advantage of systems. I think all geeks do.
The world is the real game, and all other 'games' are just subsets which exist within that main system, and are therefore subject to whatever forces can be applied against them.
It's fun to learn how to manipulate reality, and closed 'locked off' systems present a wonderful opportunity to test your abilities.
But when people have collectively agreed to put all of that fun stuff on hold in order to enjoy a game together, it's really annoying when somebody comes along intent on ruining things. It's about learning appropriate behavior. The kid in the article is annoying, to be certain. His real lesson will be one of how to fit socially with the rest of the world. The impulses within him which cause him to annoy people through his approach to gaming are going to naturally map on to the rest of his life patterns. He was probably the kid with no friends in school. A girlfriend? Forget it.
Guys like that have a long, long way to go in the game of life. Wish him luck. He'll need all he can get.
Use EM weapons to make people crazy and angry so that you can easily incite and direct a riot, then use EM weapons of another variety to reduce the masses into shuddering balls of pain.
Why does everybody assume that the trigeminal nerve (or this newly discovered molecule) in homing pigeons is used for navigation?
Is it because we have learned how to use magnetics for navigation, so we therefore assume that animals capable of sensing magnetic fields must use it for navigation as well? The problem is that this is a false assumption.
--Birds can sense magnetic information. However, when the olfactory nerve is cut, they get lost even when the trigeminal nerve remains intact. Birds which have had the trigeminal nerve cut but which had the olfactory nerve left intact could find their way home. So the claim is that being able to sense magentic fields was not required for homing pigeons.
Still, it is generally accepted that homing pigeions have the wetwork required to sense magnetic fields. And if not used for navigation, then what? Why did such a sense develop?
Put another way, what other perceptive planes of information exist which might make being able to sense EM fields useful?
Everybody has been exposed to the data. EM radiation is bad for you. It makes you stupid, stressed and generally zoned out.
So now it's a matter of simply consolidating your position. You can live in denial and go along as though nothing is wrong (and mod posters like me into dust to make the bad thinkings go away), or accept the fact that our governments and corporations very deliberately work to make us stupid and easily controlled, and then react to that knowledge in an appropriate manner.
I'm glad I moved out of that concrete & steel hell-on-earth. It was one of the best things I ever did for myself; I feel many times healthier and happier.
I wonder how many children have been hurt over the years attempting the crap that Steve Irwin would pull in the name of entertainment. I rarely allowed my children to watch him and when I did I followed up with a talk about how dangerous and stupid it was to play with wiled animals.
Interestingly, he was not killed doing anything you might consider 'stupid', other than perhaps swimming in the ocean. --Which is probably why it happened. The only times I've ever been hurt while doing anything is when my attention wanders because I think I'm in a safe zone. When I engage in a risky activity, my attention is fully on and everything works out fine. Steve Irwin's accident sounds like the sort of thing which could have happened to anybody.
Feeding fear to your children is an effective way to limit their potential and give them an excuse to resent you for it should they ever wake up to the fact. I've seen that happen. I find it is better to say things like, "Hammers can easily crush things," rather than, "Hammers are dangerous and only stupid rednecks use them!"
It's best to encourage kids to believe in themselves, and to provide them with knowledge rather than dire warnings. --Knowledge is formed from love and awareness, dire warnings are made from fear and doubt.
Ahh the Hitler argument and conspiracies theories. Well I prefer Occam's Razor and Darwin myself, just makes more sense.
What on earth does Occam have to do with anything?
Please help me understand how an 11th century monk who 'proved' the existence of god with his oft mis-applied (and highly flexible) logical razor has anything to do with what we're talking about.
And just because you happen to be part of the crowd who has decided that for whatever reason it is popular to ignore any historical evidence or patterns which reference World War II, (an insane and totally irrational trend IMHO), doesn't by any means render the argument invalid.
And what conspiracy theory are you talking about? The history about how economics is taught is straight-forward and available to anybody who takes a moment to do some research. You clearly haven't done that. Deliberate ignorance and lazy arguments are no substitute for informed, rational thought.
Someone has to take charge, be responsible, you need a mix in a team, leaders, grunts, visonaries etc. We are not all made equal.
You can achieve all of these things without a top-down system. A mix of visionaries, leaders and grunts can all fit into a cell-based system. If everybody in the system is aware and well-educated, isn't a lazy and easily manipulated thinker, then the moment leadership begins to falter, the focus can easily and naturally slide to the next most able for that role. I've worked in systems like this, and they function wonderfully. Leadership is exhausting at times, and visions of great ideas don't just come through single channels. Why not move responsibilities around to maximize efficiency?
labeling successful businessmen as psychopaths is a tad dramatic. Or is "guilty by association" an acceptable form of sentencing?
I didn't label successful business men as psychopaths or say that anybody was guilty by association. However, the top-down power structure does make things like Enron and the Bush government possible. Cell based systems would have prevented these kinds of problem. Why is that a problem?
You make an interesting point, though why is business dominated by the hierachial model? Is it perhaps the survival of the fittest amongst many models? Surely if a Cell-based structure was more efficient in the marketplace it would flourish and hence we would see evidence of it.
Darwinian theory has IMHO been much over-applied, initially being misused by certain notable German dictators to justify morally broken acts. I find it interesting that those who promote the Darwinian model tend to be those who are eager to find an excuse for nasty behavior.
The course followed by business models in today's world has been determined not so much by naturally success rates as it has by brute force application of one type of model which results in an environment most amenable to psychopathic personalities.
Here's a really neat site which details how different approaches to economics theory have been deliberately barred from entering schools of thought, who did the barring, why they did the barring, and how students are petitioning to change things.
Ubuntu seems like a good idea, but for one item. . .
It's organized using the pyramid-power design. --That is, one all powerful individual at the top, and then cascading levels of management beneath. This is, of course, the standard model for most large organizations in the world, including business, military, government, religion, etc.
The problem is that such systems lend themselves to easy corruption by the forces of greed and self-service.
There is an alternative system for organizing, and it uses a cell-based power distribution system with no one individual at the top and no downward cascading power structure. Organic systems throughout the biosphere use the cell-based method of organization to great effect. --And many open source projects seem to work this way as well.
One of the noteworthy factors about Cell-Based systems is that they are far less easily corrupted by greed and self-serving individuals because everybody has the power to call attention to all manner of problems without the threat of recrimination or dismissal; without having their complaints arbitrarily over-turned by individuals who might be driven by ego and emotional concerns. Psychopaths are well suited to successfully infesting and rising through the ranks of pyramidally based power structures, because they are drawn to power. But when power is evenly distributed as it is in Cell-Based structures, where are they drawn to? --And how much more easily are problem individuals such as the psychpathic or sociopathic personality noticed and weeded out?
--It seems to me that the idea of being of non-self-service, but rather other-serving in orientation, (no multi-million dollar salaries for CEO's), is directly related to an entire pattern of thinking and awareness, part of which is intrinsically linked to the decisions for how the power and 'command' structure of the organization is laid out, either Cell-Based, or Pyramidal.
I think it serves well to be attentive of these two patterns and how they affect our world.
does anyone have more info on how television causes social disengagement and bad moods? Are there conclusive studies of this? I'd be interested in reading about that, but TFA doesn't touch that issue. I kind of like how this statement was thrown out there in the story like it's some universal truth that everyone holds to be obvious.
For my part, when I stopped watching television I was very surprised at just how little time I had in my day for all the activities I was involved with. I can't believe I used to pour hours into gazing at a cathode ray tube! I wish I had those thousands of hours back.
These days, I find myself much healthier and much happier than ever before. When I look at my old friends who are still plugged in, I am stunned at just how dark and sickly and unhappy they appear. I didn't see it before, when I was also a user. The connection between ill-health and dulled senses to television use seems so incredibly obvious now. I find it amazing and horrifying that I used to fit into that mind-space.
I'm sure there are lots of people working on this project who are honest, albeit unwitting gears in the machine, but that doesn't mean somebody at the top wasn't a creep, or wasn't following 'inspiration' based on the whispers from the dark.
Strobing lights lull the brain into a light hypnotic state. This is why activity in your brain drops to a near alpha state when you are watching television which makes it hard to remember what commercial just played ten seconds ago. It's one of the reasons you feel weird and blotchy when in a building lit with fluorescent light. It's deliberate mind-control, plain and simple.
In combination with audio promptings from other devices, people take the suggestions thrown at them and let them sink deep.
Now, why exactly would weapons manufacturer, GE, want to put strobing lights into every household in America?
Walk backwards into the lamp post, and it hurts. Even if youve never seen it before.
If you had bothered to let my post in rather than attack it without understanding it, you would see that you are not saying anything that I don't agree with.
People who speak with your brand of opinion, (and I use the word 'brand' deliberately), have very often never explored beyond that which their television sets and highschool science teachers have told them they are allowed to explore.
In other words, you speak with remarkable conviction considering you have only the flimsiest of experiences with which to support your notions. If you had done any exploration into these matters, you would recognize the possibility of truth in what I describe.
focused attention from enough people into a fictitious world and set of characters, you breathe life into that world, into those people.
The reality we populate today is a collective dream. You walk away from the lamp post, and it stays the same when you come back. That's clarity, that the grand, stupendous trick. The subconscious mind is incredibly aware, of far more than we actively realize. --It knows all of the objects and events of this world backwards and forwards in time. When you dream alone, reality is fluid because it's just you pulling it together. When there are a few billion dreamers, the edges get pretty tight and reliably there.
Everything is just energy after all, and energy is the stuff from which awareness both springs and is self-created. Somewhere out there, there are millions of people envisioning our version of reality with great joy and attention. We are created through this process. Or so I think.
Every story is a mirror of our own collective psyche; So of course You can determine where a society is in terms of spiritual evolution based on the stories it tells. Star Trek is about voyaging into god, trying to solve the great mystery through our collective gathering around the camp fire of humanity to tell stories. Anybody who derides the study of the stories we tell ourselves is missing the meta game by a zillion miles.
-FL
Re:Yes, you do have to speak your mind! So do I.
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Because people like Osama, Saddam, or Hitler can be reasoned with? Information, no matter how pure and distilled it is, or how well communicated, does not change some people's minds. Taking such a stance as to only use mentoring and diplomacy, we are relegated to becoming another victim, albeit an ideal holding Martyr of a victim. Some people are not so selfish as to delegate that choice to the rest of the world, and instead are going to stand up to these people with sick mindsets and beliefs. Use reason on the rest of the world where reason has a chance of working.
With awareness and knowledge, the likes of Hitler and such can't come to power. Power entails being followed, usually by people of good conscience. There are psychopaths and such out there, but they are vastly out-numbered by the rest of humanity. If the rest of humanity is aware, they need not live difficult lives under bad apples.
Mind you, there are lessons to be had through the expression of violence, and they have their place. But they are tough, and they are the kind of thing I think we are trying to grow away from.
-FL
Re:Yes, you do have to speak your mind! So do I.
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The Iraqi's that choose to demonstrate (a small minority) do so all the time. Peaceably even, without any kind of repercussion. Talk to any American soldier who's been there. They'll tell you that its just a few people making the rest of the Iraqis' life hard for them. The rest of them see the necessity for the Coalition's presence and don't want us to go until it's stable there. So to even imply that it's everyone who hates us is absurd.
``But the bulk of the insurgency I faced was primarily the people of Iraq who were attacking us as a reaction to what they felt was an occupation of their country. I was engaged actively in urban combat in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad. Many of the people who were attacking me were the poor people of Iraq. They were definitely not members of al Qaeda, leftover Baath party members, and they were not former members of Saddam's regime. They were just your average Iraqi civilian who wanted us out of their country.
``On October 31, 2003, the people of Abu Ghraib organized a large uprising against us. They launched a massive assault on our compound in the area. We were attacked with AK-47 machine guns, RPGs and mortars. Thousands of people took to the streets to attack us. As the riot unfolded before my eyes, I realized these were just the people who lived there. There were men, women and children participating. Some of the Iraqi protestors were even carrying pictures of Saddam Hussein.
Is this guy misrepresenting his experiences? I don't know, but I've read numerous reports from the front, and it all sounds similar.
You need to let your distate of whatever you believe was the causes for the war (when the reality is that the majority of the countries in the world, through their own respective intelligence services, all came to the same conclusion that Iraq had WMD)
No they did not.
There were weapons inspectors in Iraq for months and they found nothing which could threaten the U.S.. Any missiles which were capable of flying beyond a specific limit were required to be destroyed. Iraq complied. This was actually quite a funny few months; every demand made by Bush was met by Iraq, which meant no reason to invade. And so increasingly ridiculous demands were made. Finally it came down to fabricated evidence.
The CIA declared that they had no evidence and that the White House doctored their reports in order to favor an invasion. --The White House claimed otherwise, saying that the CIA made a blunder by feeding them false positives about WMD's, which the CIA denies. --This bickerfest was all over the papers for months and the one underlying fact was that there were no WMD's. Eventually, the war began in earnest, and bad record keeping and clerical errors were the mumbled excuses. --Which it a lie, of course. --The infamous Downing Street Memos document Tony Blair and Bush conspiring to invade regardless of what the WMD status was. This is all part of the public record. Finally, the semi-official reason for invading was because "Saddam was a really bad guy and the Iraqis needed liberating."
Intresting in that Saddam was armed and installed by the CIA, and given support and weapons from the late Fifties until the mid-Eighties. If you want to start a war, it's convenient to have a fall guy in place who will have exactly the policies you require and who you can turn on in a heartbeat.
It's also important to remember that there isn't ever just one factor in war. It's about confusion and chaos. That's what sells the most weapons. Clear-cut scenarios are easy to solve because they're clear-cut. So the more muddied and confused, the more participants, the more likely that a war will be something which cannot be easily ended. This is what the weapons salesmen want. There are fortunes bein
Re:Yes, you do have to speak your mind! So do I.
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Try asking an Iraqi about that. They'd rather be able to choose to live in an "occupied" country and shoot at each other than have Saddam murder and rape them against their will.
Oh really? And how many Iraqis have you polled recently? Heck, how many Iraqis actually have the 'choice' you speak of. In any case, the kids making road-side bombs seem to think you don't know what you're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Better question: Who put the media spin on the concept of 'terrorism' so that terms like, "Terrorists have been at war with America", can be said with a straight face?
-FL
Here in the West, our members of government know that they first must own stock in or make friends in the weapons and oil biz, then start stupid wars which will give them a good reason to jack up oil prices and sell lots of bullets. --Direct theft of the public purse is not tolerated; it must be masked it under one or two layers of wool.
Of course, the people in the West would be too smart to fall for such cheep tricks if their brains had not first been fermented into head-cheese through the slow-cook process of being plugged more or less permanently into television sets, cell-phones, ipods and video-game boxes.
-FL
--Which doesn't necessarily say much for everybody who isn't a gamer, given that something like 95% of the population are also TV addicts.
Dream on.
-FL
Interesting, that.
I mean, who needs a computer system which was as stable, affordable and advanced as the Amiga when you could have the piece of gosa PC system which confuses and frustrates the hell out of everybody, wastes time and money, and which is now the de-facto norm in computing?
I dunno. The Amiga had that Open Source, non-corporate, power to the people feeling. I wonder what the world would look like today if Amigas had proliferated. --I mean, Bill Gates is greedy and manipulative. Steve Jobs insults users by assuming they are all pod-people who need computers to look and act like baby toys. The Amiga, by contrast, was functional, powerful, sensible and accessible; it even had a sense of humor. Remember the message you got when things crashed? Humor versus FUD.
Imagine. . .
-FL
Bzzt. Wrong. When random people I meet on-line and off who would not otherwise care one way or the other all suddenly start simultaneously lecturing each other on the proper definition of the word, "theory", (as has been the case over the last couple of months, but not during ANY time before that), it's a popular meme.
And if you think Occam wasn't popularized by the film, 'Contact' to a bunch of people who prior had no idea that the man had ever even existed, you are in error. Simple as that.
I appologize if my tone annoyed you, but guess what? I'm annoyed by the mis-use of otherwise good ideas.
-FL
A year ago, nobody would force this nonsense to the table.
I can't stand popular memes! Occam started making the rounds after Jodi Foster popularized him in Contact. Ugh. The number of dumb and dumber arguments resulting from a little mis-applied knowledge was astronomical. Bubbo's Ridiculous Law, (Or whatever his name is) which states that the well-accessorized geek must close his ears upon hearing the word, "Nazi" is another.
While not quite as destructive to a healthy mental process, this cross-culture, (geek culture, that is) sudden need to lecture other geeks left and right upon the proper use of the word, "Theory", is just as annoying.
You watch. It will be mis-applied by geeks trying to knock the wind out of interesting, new ideas by declaring the ideas to be beneath even the rank of theory and therefore somehow worthy of contempt. I've seen so many people who are scared to think for themselves that unless all the ideas in their heads have been validated by somebody else, (TV or other annoying geeks with name tags), then they will shie away from them at all cost.
It's the old jr. high programming. If you are different, you will be punished through ostricization.
A cowardly geek is useless.
-FL
Further, your argument which attempts to dress up the made-in-China Walmart phenomenon into a formulated act of benevolent mercy rather than a display of rampant greed is faulty for exactly that reason.
As well, to say that the nations the U.S. has made into enemies du jour are engaged in a world-wide propaganda campaign but that the West, with its billion televisions, news papers and movie screens is not. . , this is a viewpoint resulting from severe tunnel vision.
The basic notion that "There Are Bad Guys We Need To Defend Ourselves Against" is a very well promoted concept which is reinforced with false-flag maneuvers. Now that is propaganda. Police do appear to be necessary in our day-to-day lives, but deliberately creating criminals and crimes in order to divert unnecessary wealth and power to those enforcers is foolish.
No, not all Americans are evil. But the ones in charge of dispensing the marching orders and writing checks on the public purse are.
The notion that problems can be solved by bombing cities and killing civilians is broken.
-FL
Humor in animation stems from entirely different sources, and a team of writers trying to ape Mel Brooks isn't one of those sources.
The only value I can see in this project is in that it further solidifies a valuable cultural mythology by lampooning it. (You don't lampoon that which is not deeply rooted in society). Star Wars and the messages explored within are good; things our culture needs. It's too bad the last three films were wounded, but the idea of Jedi is still here.
My current favorite find were a series of books by Scholasitc; the Jedi Apprentice series. --The edges are rounded down for young readers, but the books are otherwise very insightfully written.
-FL
I certainly wouldn't waste time watching it again.
-FL
So what are you saying? You think Bush won the White House on his sound policies, razor sharp intellect and good looks?
Who is going to present your verifiable proof? The media? Get real. The idea of "Give me verifiable proof or I'll deliberately refuse to trust my own senses" is one of the biggest control mechanisms currently in the employ of the dark side.
They taught people that truth is a rarified substance which only ever issues through schools, TV sets, radios and newspaper headlines. Then they bought all the broadcasters and publishers, and control the school curriculums.
Truth and Proof are never served free of charge to the lazy and ignorant. You have to go find it yourself and form your own opinions yourself without a mob around you to help boost your courage.
Good luck.
-FL
The world is the real game, and all other 'games' are just subsets which exist within that main system, and are therefore subject to whatever forces can be applied against them.
It's fun to learn how to manipulate reality, and closed 'locked off' systems present a wonderful opportunity to test your abilities.
But when people have collectively agreed to put all of that fun stuff on hold in order to enjoy a game together, it's really annoying when somebody comes along intent on ruining things. It's about learning appropriate behavior. The kid in the article is annoying, to be certain. His real lesson will be one of how to fit socially with the rest of the world. The impulses within him which cause him to annoy people through his approach to gaming are going to naturally map on to the rest of his life patterns. He was probably the kid with no friends in school. A girlfriend? Forget it.
Guys like that have a long, long way to go in the game of life. Wish him luck. He'll need all he can get.
-FL
It's actually getting boring at this point.
Use EM weapons to make people crazy and angry so that you can easily incite and direct a riot, then use EM weapons of another variety to reduce the masses into shuddering balls of pain.
What a great country!
The vampires are in control. Oh, goody!
-FL
Is it because we have learned how to use magnetics for navigation, so we therefore assume that animals capable of sensing magnetic fields must use it for navigation as well? The problem is that this is a false assumption.
--Birds can sense magnetic information. However, when the olfactory nerve is cut, they get lost even when the trigeminal nerve remains intact. Birds which have had the trigeminal nerve cut but which had the olfactory nerve left intact could find their way home. So the claim is that being able to sense magentic fields was not required for homing pigeons.
Still, it is generally accepted that homing pigeions have the wetwork required to sense magnetic fields. And if not used for navigation, then what? Why did such a sense develop?
Put another way, what other perceptive planes of information exist which might make being able to sense EM fields useful?
ALL organisms might have this ability?
Chi-wiz.
-FL
So now it's a matter of simply consolidating your position. You can live in denial and go along as though nothing is wrong (and mod posters like me into dust to make the bad thinkings go away), or accept the fact that our governments and corporations very deliberately work to make us stupid and easily controlled, and then react to that knowledge in an appropriate manner.
I'm glad I moved out of that concrete & steel hell-on-earth. It was one of the best things I ever did for myself; I feel many times healthier and happier.
-FL
Interestingly, he was not killed doing anything you might consider 'stupid', other than perhaps swimming in the ocean. --Which is probably why it happened. The only times I've ever been hurt while doing anything is when my attention wanders because I think I'm in a safe zone. When I engage in a risky activity, my attention is fully on and everything works out fine. Steve Irwin's accident sounds like the sort of thing which could have happened to anybody.
Feeding fear to your children is an effective way to limit their potential and give them an excuse to resent you for it should they ever wake up to the fact. I've seen that happen. I find it is better to say things like, "Hammers can easily crush things," rather than, "Hammers are dangerous and only stupid rednecks use them!"
It's best to encourage kids to believe in themselves, and to provide them with knowledge rather than dire warnings. --Knowledge is formed from love and awareness, dire warnings are made from fear and doubt.
-FL
What on earth does Occam have to do with anything?
Please help me understand how an 11th century monk who 'proved' the existence of god with his oft mis-applied (and highly flexible) logical razor has anything to do with what we're talking about.
And just because you happen to be part of the crowd who has decided that for whatever reason it is popular to ignore any historical evidence or patterns which reference World War II, (an insane and totally irrational trend IMHO), doesn't by any means render the argument invalid.
And what conspiracy theory are you talking about? The history about how economics is taught is straight-forward and available to anybody who takes a moment to do some research. You clearly haven't done that. Deliberate ignorance and lazy arguments are no substitute for informed, rational thought.
Someone has to take charge, be responsible, you need a mix in a team, leaders, grunts, visonaries etc. We are not all made equal.
You can achieve all of these things without a top-down system. A mix of visionaries, leaders and grunts can all fit into a cell-based system. If everybody in the system is aware and well-educated, isn't a lazy and easily manipulated thinker, then the moment leadership begins to falter, the focus can easily and naturally slide to the next most able for that role. I've worked in systems like this, and they function wonderfully. Leadership is exhausting at times, and visions of great ideas don't just come through single channels. Why not move responsibilities around to maximize efficiency?
labeling successful businessmen as psychopaths is a tad dramatic. Or is "guilty by association" an acceptable form of sentencing?
I didn't label successful business men as psychopaths or say that anybody was guilty by association. However, the top-down power structure does make things like Enron and the Bush government possible. Cell based systems would have prevented these kinds of problem. Why is that a problem?
-FL
Darwinian theory has IMHO been much over-applied, initially being misused by certain notable German dictators to justify morally broken acts. I find it interesting that those who promote the Darwinian model tend to be those who are eager to find an excuse for nasty behavior.
The course followed by business models in today's world has been determined not so much by naturally success rates as it has by brute force application of one type of model which results in an environment most amenable to psychopathic personalities.
Here's a really neat site which details how different approaches to economics theory have been deliberately barred from entering schools of thought, who did the barring, why they did the barring, and how students are petitioning to change things.
-FL
It's organized using the pyramid-power design. --That is, one all powerful individual at the top, and then cascading levels of management beneath. This is, of course, the standard model for most large organizations in the world, including business, military, government, religion, etc.
The problem is that such systems lend themselves to easy corruption by the forces of greed and self-service.
There is an alternative system for organizing, and it uses a cell-based power distribution system with no one individual at the top and no downward cascading power structure. Organic systems throughout the biosphere use the cell-based method of organization to great effect. --And many open source projects seem to work this way as well.
One of the noteworthy factors about Cell-Based systems is that they are far less easily corrupted by greed and self-serving individuals because everybody has the power to call attention to all manner of problems without the threat of recrimination or dismissal; without having their complaints arbitrarily over-turned by individuals who might be driven by ego and emotional concerns. Psychopaths are well suited to successfully infesting and rising through the ranks of pyramidally based power structures, because they are drawn to power. But when power is evenly distributed as it is in Cell-Based structures, where are they drawn to? --And how much more easily are problem individuals such as the psychpathic or sociopathic personality noticed and weeded out?
--It seems to me that the idea of being of non-self-service, but rather other-serving in orientation, (no multi-million dollar salaries for CEO's), is directly related to an entire pattern of thinking and awareness, part of which is intrinsically linked to the decisions for how the power and 'command' structure of the organization is laid out, either Cell-Based, or Pyramidal.
I think it serves well to be attentive of these two patterns and how they affect our world.
-FL
here's one page
And here's an essay with some good references.
For my part, when I stopped watching television I was very surprised at just how little time I had in my day for all the activities I was involved with. I can't believe I used to pour hours into gazing at a cathode ray tube! I wish I had those thousands of hours back.
These days, I find myself much healthier and much happier than ever before. When I look at my old friends who are still plugged in, I am stunned at just how dark and sickly and unhappy they appear. I didn't see it before, when I was also a user. The connection between ill-health and dulled senses to television use seems so incredibly obvious now. I find it amazing and horrifying that I used to fit into that mind-space.
-FL
Strobing lights lull the brain into a light hypnotic state. This is why activity in your brain drops to a near alpha state when you are watching television which makes it hard to remember what commercial just played ten seconds ago. It's one of the reasons you feel weird and blotchy when in a building lit with fluorescent light. It's deliberate mind-control, plain and simple.
In combination with audio promptings from other devices, people take the suggestions thrown at them and let them sink deep.
Now, why exactly would weapons manufacturer, GE, want to put strobing lights into every household in America?
What are they trying to suggest?
-FL
If you had bothered to let my post in rather than attack it without understanding it, you would see that you are not saying anything that I don't agree with.
People who speak with your brand of opinion, (and I use the word 'brand' deliberately), have very often never explored beyond that which their television sets and highschool science teachers have told them they are allowed to explore.
In other words, you speak with remarkable conviction considering you have only the flimsiest of experiences with which to support your notions. If you had done any exploration into these matters, you would recognize the possibility of truth in what I describe.
-FL
The reality we populate today is a collective dream. You walk away from the lamp post, and it stays the same when you come back. That's clarity, that the grand, stupendous trick. The subconscious mind is incredibly aware, of far more than we actively realize. --It knows all of the objects and events of this world backwards and forwards in time. When you dream alone, reality is fluid because it's just you pulling it together. When there are a few billion dreamers, the edges get pretty tight and reliably there.
Everything is just energy after all, and energy is the stuff from which awareness both springs and is self-created. Somewhere out there, there are millions of people envisioning our version of reality with great joy and attention. We are created through this process. Or so I think.
Every story is a mirror of our own collective psyche; So of course You can determine where a society is in terms of spiritual evolution based on the stories it tells. Star Trek is about voyaging into god, trying to solve the great mystery through our collective gathering around the camp fire of humanity to tell stories. Anybody who derides the study of the stories we tell ourselves is missing the meta game by a zillion miles.
-FL
With awareness and knowledge, the likes of Hitler and such can't come to power. Power entails being followed, usually by people of good conscience. There are psychopaths and such out there, but they are vastly out-numbered by the rest of humanity. If the rest of humanity is aware, they need not live difficult lives under bad apples.
Mind you, there are lessons to be had through the expression of violence, and they have their place. But they are tough, and they are the kind of thing I think we are trying to grow away from.
-FL
From a letter entered into the congressional record. .
Is this guy misrepresenting his experiences? I don't know, but I've read numerous reports from the front, and it all sounds similar.
You need to let your distate of whatever you believe was the causes for the war (when the reality is that the majority of the countries in the world, through their own respective intelligence services, all came to the same conclusion that Iraq had WMD)
No they did not.
There were weapons inspectors in Iraq for months and they found nothing which could threaten the U.S.. Any missiles which were capable of flying beyond a specific limit were required to be destroyed. Iraq complied. This was actually quite a funny few months; every demand made by Bush was met by Iraq, which meant no reason to invade. And so increasingly ridiculous demands were made. Finally it came down to fabricated evidence.
The CIA declared that they had no evidence and that the White House doctored their reports in order to favor an invasion. --The White House claimed otherwise, saying that the CIA made a blunder by feeding them false positives about WMD's, which the CIA denies. --This bickerfest was all over the papers for months and the one underlying fact was that there were no WMD's. Eventually, the war began in earnest, and bad record keeping and clerical errors were the mumbled excuses. --Which it a lie, of course. --The infamous Downing Street Memos document Tony Blair and Bush conspiring to invade regardless of what the WMD status was. This is all part of the public record. Finally, the semi-official reason for invading was because "Saddam was a really bad guy and the Iraqis needed liberating."
Intresting in that Saddam was armed and installed by the CIA, and given support and weapons from the late Fifties until the mid-Eighties. If you want to start a war, it's convenient to have a fall guy in place who will have exactly the policies you require and who you can turn on in a heartbeat.
It's also important to remember that there isn't ever just one factor in war. It's about confusion and chaos. That's what sells the most weapons. Clear-cut scenarios are easy to solve because they're clear-cut. So the more muddied and confused, the more participants, the more likely that a war will be something which cannot be easily ended. This is what the weapons salesmen want. There are fortunes bein
Oh really? And how many Iraqis have you polled recently? Heck, how many Iraqis actually have the 'choice' you speak of. In any case, the kids making road-side bombs seem to think you don't know what you're talking about.
-FL