Wednesday, July 23, 2014

A Little Bit of Every Kind of News

YouTube - British Institute of Posthuman Studies. - PostHumanism An Introduction. PostHumanism, Transhumanism, whatever you wish to call it is the belief that we will not be able to keep up with technology and the technology will exceed our abilities. The movement is funded by some very famous and rich people. In fact one Billionaire from Russia believes that he will be able to transfer his "mind" (which he views as his thoughts and memories) into a android, a robot, within the next 50 years or so. His gruesome utopia would be a computerized "better" (faster, smarter) version or himself. If you want to understand why we are headed in the direction that we are, you better understand what the people leading us believe.

Huffington Post - Weird Al's 'Lame Claim To Fame' Stop Motion Video Name-Drops Celebrities He Almost Knows.  Fortunately for us, Weird Al is still around and giving us a reason to smile. This linked post shows most of his new releases that he has made in the last month. Al himself posted them onto the internet. The first time I heard him was on Dr Demento before most people had heard of either. Al was in college up in Santa Barbara I believe and the good Dr was teaching and going out on college radio, CSUN.

YouTube - Rockford Files S02E09 Chicken Little Is A Little Chicke. James Garner died. I liked him as an actor, hope you did too. Here is something to remind you of him.

Yahoo - Reuters - Iraq Catholic leader says Islamic State worse than Genghis Khan. Saying that ISIS is Muslim is the same as saying the the Westboro Baptist Church represents Christians. Both use the names; but, act and say things that are not in either's bible.

Wired - In 20 Years, Most New Cars Won’t Have Steering Wheels or Pedals. I know, my regulars readers will know that I already wrote about this a couple of times and even posted a video of one of the cars that Google made and is legal in California. The context is diferent here and I believe the article is important to read, it will not take you long and might help you to understand my conclusion at the end of the blog later.

Motley Fool - How to turn $5,000 into $998,000. Financial people who have done well and many smart people who come from middle and upper classes believe that they are better and have worked their way there by themselves and that everyone else could too. Many I know that I have dealt with in business know that I could take their money away and keep as much as I want for myself (their biggest fear is losing their wealth) and they cannot figure out why I don't. LOL. That joke alone makes it worthwhile. Remember when I wrote about the Billionaire who said that if you made a million dollars you should never be required to pay taxes again or the one who said that you should get one vote for every million you had? Oh, and the Constitution only intended to give votes to land owners and freeman originally.

Yahoo - Business Insider - China's Total Debt Surges To 251% Of GDP. More financial lies and meanignless articles by "experts". The difference between China and the US is simple, they manufacture things and we don not; therefore, they can pay back their debts with real assets. The article also points out that our debt to GDP is even higher.

Huffington Post -  We're Heading Into a Jobless Future, No Matter What the Government Does. Vivek Wadhwa,  the author of the article talks about many of the same things that I have discussed over the years regarding automation, self-driving cars and the reduced need for real people to do the actual work. The author is confused by what is going on because he does not understand the intent behind it all. He understand that we won't need any people to work at all; but, cannot understand why the economists and futurists don't see this, he is wrong, the best of them do. The article also points out that because of technology we could easily feed, clothe and improve the lives of everyone, he is surprised that we don't take of this utopia and does not understand that those who run this place have a different agenda and belief, they want a utopia; but, see no need for more people than it would take to achieve such a goal. Start putting all the articles in this post together and you will begin to see what has been discussed for years in certain circles.

Wikipedia - Georgia Guidestones. This stone monolith was placed on a farm in Georgia and states the wishes of someone for the future. Both Yoko Ono and Ted Turner, amongst others, have praised the words on them. Amongst those words it says that the earth's population should stay at 500 million, there is currently 14 times that with roughly 7 billion people on earth.

I wish I could write better fiction; but, all I prefer to write is the truth, reality and let others take it where they will. Let me put it another way. People used to use woodburning stoves to heat their homes and cook their food, they worked fine and we could still use them today; but, there is not need to. We have easier ways with gas and electric stoves. It does not mean the old technology ceased to work, it is merely no longer needed, we don't require it. The same goes for people. There are many things we can do today that are done by computers or automation, it does not mean that we could not make or do the same things using people; but, the cost does not justify it in the eyes of financial people. Efficiency means achieving your goals with the least amount of effort and energy (or capital) expended. If we can automate 90% of all the labor then how many people do we need?

The funniest part of all this is that one of my hero's foresaw the end of society and predicted what would come first. The people who believe the non-sense of efficiency also consider him a hero. They never really understood what he was saying. The first "written historian" was a Greek named Thucydides. He recorded the Pelopenisian Wars. My favorite historian/social student of all time was Arnold Toynbee. He was a professor and wrote a ten volume series entitled "A Study of History". It is Mr. Toynbee of whom I referred. He said that society failed and fell apart when it was the most efficient. It means that a society has no wiggle room, no room for error and there is always an error.