Thursday, June 3, 2010

Suckers and phones and freedom

People are so selfish, they always miss the real issue. People were excited that the I-Phone can now use skype, that means you don't have to pay for the call, it uses the internet rather than your phone carrier. This is just days after AT&T announced they were going to limit data plans for the I-Phone.

Now just in case you don't get it, skype (free phone calls) uses the data plan not the cell plan. If you use skype you use up time in the data plan. I do hope you understand. You might assume that AT&T is charging more for the data plan because they want the cell phone charges. Assume that if it pleases you.

On the other hand, the federal government is making universal wi-fi a priority. Once completed you can access the net using your cell phone for free. Will you pay AT&T if you can get the same service for free? I doubt it.

Of God and Consciousness

I read a lot of articles, I mean a lot. I don't watch television and spend most of my down time either working on stuff around the house, visiting family and friends or reading news and other articles. I read a lot of news, op-eds and conceptual articles. I attempt to watch the trends in the news, it is easier when you read news sources from across the world.

Current trends that I am watching include restrictions on travel, the stock market, transportation accidents, animal anomalies (the grasshoppers of the west in particular), stupid terrorists (the underwear and shoe bombers for instance), 2012 and the "awakening", secret societies, closed door meeting of public officials (Bilderberg is coming up), articles related to illegal aliens, pension abuse by the pension boards, budgetary woes for government and their solutions and finally peoples attitude towards God and the cookies of this world. I read other things, I know who Lady Gaga is.

There is a new commercial in France for McDonald's. The focus of the story is a young gay man. He is hiding his homosexuality from his father. I know many gays, I have had gay friends and still do. I don't have a problem with them and am more than happy to spend time with them. In fact, one helped me get a great price on a cruise ship. Having said that, what the heck does being gay have to do with getting a hamburger in France?

I just don't get it. Obviously the commercial, I will not post the link, is trying to tell gays that McDonald's likes them. Why should sexuality be associated with getting a hamburger. I don't see how a commercial about heterosexual practices has anything to do with getting a hamburger either. What if, instead, they talked about how much salt and fat was in their food? That would be useful.

In case you haven't figured it out, this isn't about being gay, it is about media exploitation of personal beliefs in order to sell you stuff. One fast food company used a video of Paris Hilton being "sexy" to sell burgers, it was equally nonsense. The problem is their attempt to associate sex with products. It has an effect on children and shows a complete disregard for it's twisting of associated content.

I recommend a book, two in fact. No, three. The first book is called "The Hidden Persuaders", the next is called "Subliminal Seduction" and finally "Media Sexploitation".

I wish to point out that I absolutely have never received any money for anything that I have linked to, so there to the Fed. I provide links to amazon for the books because I have bought books from Amazon, I do not get one cent for any link. I recommend the books because they show the history of manipulative advertising. I believe it was Freud's nephew who helped the government use psychology for propaganda and later went to contract with advertising houses to use the same techniques, it may have been Jung's relative.

All of these books point out the same thing, the media uses manipulation, seen and unseen, to convince you to buy garbage that you do not need, to impress people you do not know, with money you do not have (I paraphrase someone else). Unless you have a food fetish, sex has little to do with buying a hamburger at a fast food restaurant.

The Nazis used propaganda quite well and even talked about it's use. The intent was clear, associations and repetition. The use of association is simple, if you see two things that do not belong together, your mind will attempt to find a connection. In film making we call this juxtaposition. Because people are lazy, they look for shortcuts to understand things, this is relying on experts and official repetition. People seek the answers that cause them the least effort and satisfy their need to feel safe.

One of the first problems I have with new assistants is teaching them to prove things for themselves and not listen to experts. The problem occurs because I deal with problems, anomalies, things that the system could not fix. By definition, any problem brought to me has already failed to be solved by the established process. A trouble shooter.

New assistants always do the same thing. They will be asked to investigate and will return to me to tell me what other people said. I ask if the others fixed the problem, I get strange looks. I tell them that I don't care what they were told, I want them to investigate, look at the source documents and determine if what they were told was accurate. It never is and the assistants begin to learn.

What any of this has to do with God and consciousness is beyond me. I will try and find a way to blend the two for the sake of inconsistency. Oh yeah, trends. I keep reading these articles about how we die and stop existing. They never bother talking about consciousness, awareness as a real thing. How odd, the one thing we do know is that we are aware and it seems to escape notice by scientists. I have more regard intellectually for a solipsist than a scientist in this matter.

Scientific process requires that a thing, theory, whatever, be able to be duplicated or it cannot be trusted as true. I challenge scientists to prove they exist, that they prove that they are real, to me. If scientists cannot replicate in an observable manner that consciousness is real than how can they "prove" anything? The scientists came to this conclusion and created "quantum" physics.

Science existed after philosophy, it is it's child not it's nemesis and cannot exist without the philosophical underpinnings. All we "know" is that we exist. That is the only thing that we personally can prove and duplicate. The rest is assumption, not a bad thing; but, assumption. As a consequence, science frequently misses the context of what it questions.

The choices are limited, I exist as a conscious being and the experience I am having is real or it is not. The only think I can be sure of is that I am. I can believe I am all there is and that this is just a dream or I can believe that there are others. Either is defensible. Having said that, I cannot know that science or what I see, hear, smell, or feel is real.

It is quite amusing to watch scientists attempt to prove that near death experiences are not "real" when they cannot duplicate consciousness or prove that anything outside of me exists without resorting to philosophy. Philosophy puts them at a disadvantage as the starting point is always that I exist.

Now we have the issue of God. All I can "know" is that I exist, it is all of my experience that cannot be denied. Don't get me wrong, I like science. I like it when it works within it's realm, physical movements and interactions. When it overreaches to achieve a goal, it fails. It always will, its rules prevent it from proving that we exist on a conscious level. LOL.

If science cannot prove that I am a conscious being, how can it prove or disprove God?

To the readers

Thanks for the kind words. I will continue to look for articles that deserve attention or amuse.

An article on government restrictions on "news"

On a completely unrelated note, New York plans on increasing fees for people driving in the State. Hmmmm. Could be a problem there. I recommend that people across the nation watch out for such foolishness.

Here is the information. Fees must be related to the service or product received. Taxes are monies taken that can be used for anything. The difference is that taxes must be voted on.

An example would be trash pick up. The City can only charge what it costs them to pick up the trash. They cannot increase the fee and use the overage to fund the police unless voted on. The rules for taxes and fees are different. One can require that a legislature prove that the funds are used only for the purpose they were intended. New York has plenty of lawyers, we may just see the suit.