Thursday, August 29, 2013
Each of Us is Our Own Big Bang
The "big bang" theory basically says that everything came from nothing. Consciousness is sort of like that, I mean we all woke up one day and from then on have continued changing. What a love analogy if I may so myself. I do hope I get some comments and questions about this one.
Lazy Mainstream Media
KFOR - Strange monument mysteriously shows up in front of Paseo area restaurant
. Basically a concrete monument was placed in front of a restaurant in the arts district. The Creer Pipi claims the land in 2012 in the name of Azazoth The report is another example of poor journalism. A quick search on the internet would have explained that the monument referenced two things. "Creer Pipi" is French for "create piss" or pee. "Azathoth" is the name of a fictional a demon god and was created by H.P. Lovecraft.
. Basically a concrete monument was placed in front of a restaurant in the arts district. The Creer Pipi claims the land in 2012 in the name of Azazoth The report is another example of poor journalism. A quick search on the internet would have explained that the monument referenced two things. "Creer Pipi" is French for "create piss" or pee. "Azathoth" is the name of a fictional a demon god and was created by H.P. Lovecraft.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Yahoo - Reuters - Corporate breaks at risk in U.S. plans to cut tax rates. Companies want to be treated as people (I am okay with that); but, want to have more deductions than people would be given. As a capitalist, for me, it is simple. If you want to treat corporations as people then tax them just like any other person. I personally am not in favor of tax deductions for any reason. Tax deductions are by definition anti-capitalist.
I have to interrupt myself. I received a lot of hits on this blog from people looking up Pastor Carol Daniels. It is the most read of any of my threads or posts. I have been blessed to have received correspondence from her family and other people who wanted me to know that they appreciated that I wrote about her. It is just past the anniversary of when she died and there does not appear that the police are any closer to finding her killer; but, we would never know if there was unless it was really clear information or there was an arrest. I sort of feel really bad that this blog is not about her, it was started before I even knew about what happened. This blog is really about economics and lies and fraud and destroying ourselves.
Sometimes I worry that people come here because of a particular issue (like Stephen Hawkings being a douche) and discover that there is no single topic and that the topic they came about is a rarity on this site. However you may have gotten here, don't expect consistency.
YouTube - Keiser Report: The Killing of Tony Blair (E489) (ft. George Galloway)
OffTheGridNews - Power Grid Down Drill To Be Conducted By US Government.
BBC - Miniature 'human brain' grown in lab. What a horrible idea, the idea of creating human brains, claiming they have no consciousness (as if we could define it) and then killing it. I know something that goes along with this idea.
A friend sent me a book. It is called "How the Irish Saved Civilization". I am Irish and like the title. In the book it talks about how the Irish were viewed by the English. I offer a quote from the book of an English historian"
"I am daunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country. I don't believe they are our fault (referencing the way in which the English were allowing 1/4 of the population of Ireland to starve to death. I believer that there are not only many more of them than of old, but that they are happier, better and more comfortably fed and loddged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours"
What is human? I was taught science. The species is defined by the genetics. You can get a sex change operation; but, you either have an x and y chormosome or you do not. Neither a sperm nor an egg are human until they unite and there genes are complete. If you create a being that has half of it's genes from a human and half from a pig, it is not a human. That does not mean that it is undeserving of being treated with respect. It also does not mean it has the same rights. The question is where the line is and the more important one is why would we try and blur that line by playing God with living beings genetics?
Obscure talk to be sure; but, let me try and get you closer. We can now take stem cells of cows and create hamburger. How would you know and would it matter if they had used human stem cells to create meant? They sold horse meat as cow meat in England. We should never think of another human as less than human and we should not believe animals are as important as humans and we should always remember that harming anything for the sake of harming it is wrong.
I have to interrupt myself. I received a lot of hits on this blog from people looking up Pastor Carol Daniels. It is the most read of any of my threads or posts. I have been blessed to have received correspondence from her family and other people who wanted me to know that they appreciated that I wrote about her. It is just past the anniversary of when she died and there does not appear that the police are any closer to finding her killer; but, we would never know if there was unless it was really clear information or there was an arrest. I sort of feel really bad that this blog is not about her, it was started before I even knew about what happened. This blog is really about economics and lies and fraud and destroying ourselves.
Sometimes I worry that people come here because of a particular issue (like Stephen Hawkings being a douche) and discover that there is no single topic and that the topic they came about is a rarity on this site. However you may have gotten here, don't expect consistency.
YouTube - Keiser Report: The Killing of Tony Blair (E489) (ft. George Galloway)
OffTheGridNews - Power Grid Down Drill To Be Conducted By US Government.
BBC - Miniature 'human brain' grown in lab. What a horrible idea, the idea of creating human brains, claiming they have no consciousness (as if we could define it) and then killing it. I know something that goes along with this idea.
A friend sent me a book. It is called "How the Irish Saved Civilization". I am Irish and like the title. In the book it talks about how the Irish were viewed by the English. I offer a quote from the book of an English historian"
"I am daunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country. I don't believe they are our fault (referencing the way in which the English were allowing 1/4 of the population of Ireland to starve to death. I believer that there are not only many more of them than of old, but that they are happier, better and more comfortably fed and loddged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours"
What is human? I was taught science. The species is defined by the genetics. You can get a sex change operation; but, you either have an x and y chormosome or you do not. Neither a sperm nor an egg are human until they unite and there genes are complete. If you create a being that has half of it's genes from a human and half from a pig, it is not a human. That does not mean that it is undeserving of being treated with respect. It also does not mean it has the same rights. The question is where the line is and the more important one is why would we try and blur that line by playing God with living beings genetics?
Obscure talk to be sure; but, let me try and get you closer. We can now take stem cells of cows and create hamburger. How would you know and would it matter if they had used human stem cells to create meant? They sold horse meat as cow meat in England. We should never think of another human as less than human and we should not believe animals are as important as humans and we should always remember that harming anything for the sake of harming it is wrong.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Distractions and Economics
The war machine is ramping up and for what real reason is unclear. Can you imagine Greece deciding to go to war with Syria out of humanitarian concern at this time. Lets face it, America is in just as much economic trouble. There is one difference, we make money by selling weapons. Currently, we are experiencing a weapons bubble. It is no different than the housing bubble or the stock bubbles and will end the same, it will burst. In fact, in the same way that the housing bubble was planned for, including its bursting, this bubble is planned for too.
It has been published that the President plans on removing our troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan next year. I bet that you also see us close more oversees bases. Civil wars will be good for business, we can sell to both sides in all the region. Remember that picture of McCain with the guy from Al-Qaeda?
Today the stock market dived and the pundits blamed it on the possible attack by us on Syria, heck, it should have gone up if that was the reason. In either case, this is a great time for Wall Street and others to steal you blind. Heck between Miley Cyrus grabbing other peoples private parts on national television and a possible Syrian war, there is more than enough entertainment in the news to get people to ignore the much more complex and impactful things going on.
Yahoo - AP - Calif city looks to seize loans to ease mortgages. Think about this article, cities that are having a hard time paying their bills are considering buying up mortgages through eminent domain. The claim is that these cities will buy homes that have $300,000 mortgages and are worth $200,000 will buy the properties for $150,000 and then sell them to the people living in them for $190,000. The same logic would allow cities to buy homes that have mortgages of $150,000 for $250,000 and then sell them back to the people living in them for $300,000. It is simply more accounting games.
Computerworld - Are Smartphones On Their Way Out?
Yahoo - Daily Ticker - The Trillion Dollar Crisis Facing the U.S.. I went to a seminar once, after the seminar I went to the hotel bar, there was a group of young turks that were there working on setting up a scheme for carbon trading. In Wall Street they talk about creating markets, that is basically finding a way to make money off what is already being sold. A good example is the aluminum market that is 80% controlled by JP Morgan, so the result is that the cost of aluminum goes up and it takes longer to get deliveries. The carbon trading market will basically tax every living thing, just for living. Carbon dioxide is not killing the planet, it is simply a lie.
Bloomberg - Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Ignoring Write-Offs, Report Says. Lets see if I have this right. Big banks gave out lots of bad loans and during the crisis and since, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were instructed, by the government, to buy the bad mortgages. Of course both Fannie and Freddie are government owned so the taxpayer bought the bad loans. Now, Fannie and Freddie are being asked to show their losses. What happens next? I know, I know, Fannie and Freddie will be privatized for their real value and the tax payer eats the losses while turning over all the assets to private banks that will reap the benefits as the properties appreciate.
Don't you find it funny that now that the housing market appears to have bottomed out (there will be another drop) suddenly everyone wants to buy up the properties.
It has been published that the President plans on removing our troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan next year. I bet that you also see us close more oversees bases. Civil wars will be good for business, we can sell to both sides in all the region. Remember that picture of McCain with the guy from Al-Qaeda?
Today the stock market dived and the pundits blamed it on the possible attack by us on Syria, heck, it should have gone up if that was the reason. In either case, this is a great time for Wall Street and others to steal you blind. Heck between Miley Cyrus grabbing other peoples private parts on national television and a possible Syrian war, there is more than enough entertainment in the news to get people to ignore the much more complex and impactful things going on.
Yahoo - AP - Calif city looks to seize loans to ease mortgages. Think about this article, cities that are having a hard time paying their bills are considering buying up mortgages through eminent domain. The claim is that these cities will buy homes that have $300,000 mortgages and are worth $200,000 will buy the properties for $150,000 and then sell them to the people living in them for $190,000. The same logic would allow cities to buy homes that have mortgages of $150,000 for $250,000 and then sell them back to the people living in them for $300,000. It is simply more accounting games.
Computerworld - Are Smartphones On Their Way Out?
Yahoo - Daily Ticker - The Trillion Dollar Crisis Facing the U.S.. I went to a seminar once, after the seminar I went to the hotel bar, there was a group of young turks that were there working on setting up a scheme for carbon trading. In Wall Street they talk about creating markets, that is basically finding a way to make money off what is already being sold. A good example is the aluminum market that is 80% controlled by JP Morgan, so the result is that the cost of aluminum goes up and it takes longer to get deliveries. The carbon trading market will basically tax every living thing, just for living. Carbon dioxide is not killing the planet, it is simply a lie.
Bloomberg - Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Ignoring Write-Offs, Report Says. Lets see if I have this right. Big banks gave out lots of bad loans and during the crisis and since, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were instructed, by the government, to buy the bad mortgages. Of course both Fannie and Freddie are government owned so the taxpayer bought the bad loans. Now, Fannie and Freddie are being asked to show their losses. What happens next? I know, I know, Fannie and Freddie will be privatized for their real value and the tax payer eats the losses while turning over all the assets to private banks that will reap the benefits as the properties appreciate.
Don't you find it funny that now that the housing market appears to have bottomed out (there will be another drop) suddenly everyone wants to buy up the properties.
NYSE and Nasdaq and Garbage
Recently, the NASDAQ lost it's computers for three hours. Oddly enough, later trades by the big boys were given a do over. Bad bets were not counted against them. But, nothing to fear, the SEC is getting involved and wants to know what happened. LOL.
Yahoo - Reuters - Exclusive: Nasdaq, NYSE at odds on outage cause as SEC seeks facts.
NYSE Euronext which is investigating what happened and is about to take over the setting of international interest rates (they are taking over LIBOR rate settings) cannot agree with NASDAQ over what caused the problems. I won't go into great detail over what happened, you can look it all up by researching the LIBOR scandal.
Yahoo - Reuters - Exclusive: Nasdaq, NYSE at odds on outage cause as SEC seeks facts.
NYSE Euronext which is investigating what happened and is about to take over the setting of international interest rates (they are taking over LIBOR rate settings) cannot agree with NASDAQ over what caused the problems. I won't go into great detail over what happened, you can look it all up by researching the LIBOR scandal.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Have a Great Week and News (very little news)
Linda Ronstadt has stated she has Parkinson's and will never sing again. One of her first songs. YouTube - Linda Ronstadt - Long Long Time. I had always hoped to hear her sing torch songs again.
Yahoo - Reuters - Emerging market slump highlights Fed's global reach. The question is not if there is going to be a international financial crisis, there will be. The question is who will recover. My answer is bet on places that have something to sell. The emerging markets may take a short term hit; but, have something to allow them to recover. The United States makes nothing, we are going down.
Yahoo - AP - Churches changing bylaws after gay marriage ruling. This is stupidity being scared of stupidity that people agree with and none of it has anything to do with marriage. I could apply to the state to get a license to marry people. I will not do such a thing. I have been preaching for about 3 years now and do not intend to do any ceremonies. Marriage is not a ceremony. You do not need the governments permission or a preachers permission to be married and that is not the job of either. It is the misunderstanding of what marriage really is that is fooling these churches.
For the Christians out there, I have a simple question. What is marriage, not what is it not, what is it? Is marriage a government enforced contract, is it only a marriage if someone who claims to believe in God says it is? Pastors and churches do not authorize marriage and were never meant to. The ceremony was a statement before the community that one lived in that two people had chosen and agreed to live their lives together and take care of one another no matter what. That is marriage. These churches have a simple issue, they want to decide if someone is married or not and be the final arbitrator on government contracts regarding the issue. I have no such wish. They don't need to change their bylaws, stop telling people that they need your ceremony and approval to be considered married.
Yahoo - Daily Ticker - China Will Invest $1 Trillion Globally; How Much Will U.S. Get? I like my readers and try and get them to think beyond what we are told. We have a GDP of about 15 to 16 trillion a year. Basically, our net worth. We owe other countries about half of that, half of all we own and make. Think about that. Now what if they decide to spend those promises, those dollars, buying our hard assets, our land and our minerals? This article seems to imply that having the Chinese buy 1/16th of all our land and business is a good thing. They are concerned that the Chinese might spend our dollars in other countries. Truth is that in the end those other countries eventually end up buying our resources. The question is, who do we want to own us, the Chinese or Europe or Russian or whoever, we already sold our future.
Activist Post - DARPA Wants Portable Brain Recorders "In Every Classroom in America" by Julie Beal. They cannot read people's minds; but, if they can convince you that they can, would you allow them to arrest people for pre-crimes?
BBC - Exploring Los Angeles' forgotten stairways to the stars. Just for fun.
Rense - Jesse Marcel, Jr...Rest In Peace. Mr. Marcel's father worked at the Roswell airforce base. His father told the story of the Roswell "UFO". You can believe the story or not; but, his son was a veteran and never wavered in what he claimed to be the truth.
Yahoo - KFSN - Virtual reality treatment for autism. I want you to read the article and watch the video and think about what we are being told. Then scroll down till you see words again.
Okay, what did the last article and video really say. They said that autistic kids need to be able to read facial expressions better. What if people just told the truth, wouldn't that help the autistic? If people told the truth, their facial expressions would be meaningless. Blind people cannot respond to facial expressions, how is it that they are more worried about autistic people not recognizing when you lie with your expressions?
Yahoo - Reuters - Emerging market slump highlights Fed's global reach. The question is not if there is going to be a international financial crisis, there will be. The question is who will recover. My answer is bet on places that have something to sell. The emerging markets may take a short term hit; but, have something to allow them to recover. The United States makes nothing, we are going down.
Yahoo - AP - Churches changing bylaws after gay marriage ruling. This is stupidity being scared of stupidity that people agree with and none of it has anything to do with marriage. I could apply to the state to get a license to marry people. I will not do such a thing. I have been preaching for about 3 years now and do not intend to do any ceremonies. Marriage is not a ceremony. You do not need the governments permission or a preachers permission to be married and that is not the job of either. It is the misunderstanding of what marriage really is that is fooling these churches.
For the Christians out there, I have a simple question. What is marriage, not what is it not, what is it? Is marriage a government enforced contract, is it only a marriage if someone who claims to believe in God says it is? Pastors and churches do not authorize marriage and were never meant to. The ceremony was a statement before the community that one lived in that two people had chosen and agreed to live their lives together and take care of one another no matter what. That is marriage. These churches have a simple issue, they want to decide if someone is married or not and be the final arbitrator on government contracts regarding the issue. I have no such wish. They don't need to change their bylaws, stop telling people that they need your ceremony and approval to be considered married.
Yahoo - Daily Ticker - China Will Invest $1 Trillion Globally; How Much Will U.S. Get? I like my readers and try and get them to think beyond what we are told. We have a GDP of about 15 to 16 trillion a year. Basically, our net worth. We owe other countries about half of that, half of all we own and make. Think about that. Now what if they decide to spend those promises, those dollars, buying our hard assets, our land and our minerals? This article seems to imply that having the Chinese buy 1/16th of all our land and business is a good thing. They are concerned that the Chinese might spend our dollars in other countries. Truth is that in the end those other countries eventually end up buying our resources. The question is, who do we want to own us, the Chinese or Europe or Russian or whoever, we already sold our future.
Activist Post - DARPA Wants Portable Brain Recorders "In Every Classroom in America" by Julie Beal. They cannot read people's minds; but, if they can convince you that they can, would you allow them to arrest people for pre-crimes?
BBC - Exploring Los Angeles' forgotten stairways to the stars. Just for fun.
Rense - Jesse Marcel, Jr...Rest In Peace. Mr. Marcel's father worked at the Roswell airforce base. His father told the story of the Roswell "UFO". You can believe the story or not; but, his son was a veteran and never wavered in what he claimed to be the truth.
Yahoo - KFSN - Virtual reality treatment for autism. I want you to read the article and watch the video and think about what we are being told. Then scroll down till you see words again.
Okay, what did the last article and video really say. They said that autistic kids need to be able to read facial expressions better. What if people just told the truth, wouldn't that help the autistic? If people told the truth, their facial expressions would be meaningless. Blind people cannot respond to facial expressions, how is it that they are more worried about autistic people not recognizing when you lie with your expressions?
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Pastor Carol Daniels Anniversary and Investigators
There is a lot of outrage and talk about how Manning and Snowden gave away U.S. secrets. As if the Russians and Chinese did not also already tap the internet or know that we did. The government is only now admitting that area 51 exists, yet, the Russians and Chinese have known for years. We keep secrets that are already known by our enemies. In fact, we spend more time keeping things from our own citizens than we do keeping secrets from those who might wish us ill.
Today, the anniversary of Pastor Daniels death, I had lots of hits on the post and did a search to see if there was anything new. I found an article that said the following: "The mother of an Oklahoma pastor who was killed in her church wants to know where her daughter's purse and briefcase have gone as the killing remains unsolved four". That is all I could copy and the article was changed to be a copy of other articles marking the anniversary. The actual article I can no longer access. Lets think about why.
I have never read that there were any missing items and now have reason to believe that she was robbed of both her purse and her briefcase. If true, I am pretty sure that the perpetrators knew what he took. He or she should assume that the police have known that from the beginning. According to the headline I read, Pastor Daniels mother told a reporter that her daughters belongings were taken; but, the article has disappeared.
It has been four years since Pastor Daniels passed away. We have been told there is no DNA evidence, that may or may not be true. I assume it is true for a variety of reasons. We have good reasons to believe that the killer entered and exited through the back door to the church and video evidence that such is true, at least according to news reports. The back door to the church was removed by police while the rest of the church was demolished. Should we assume that the back door had some evidence on it, could it be writing or pictures in blood? The Pastors autopsy is online and shows that she was killed with a sharp instrument, during the day and about 500 feet away from the Police Station. If you use the current Google Earth, you will discover that the back of the church where Pastor Daniels was killed could be seen from the Police Station. If you use it a little more, you can see that the back of the church could be seen from about 6 houses and a gas station, all within 500 feet or so.
Here is what I believe. Firstly, this was not a serial killer, there are no other examples of killings that are sufficiently similar. Secondly, this was not a robbery. Way too much preparation to rob someone who had no money of $20 bucks or whatever she had in her purse. If you are willing to kill someone for money and put in the amount of effort it took to kill Pastor Daniels then you could make a lot more money by killing a McDonalds teller.
Now lets talk about the briefcase. I preach and I never bring a briefcase. I bring my bible, wallet and keys. There are serial killers that keep souvenirs, BTK did as did the Zodiac killer. This is not a serial killer. If this killer kept the purse and briefcase, it was for a different reason, they wanted to see what was inside or have what was inside.
kswo - 4th Anniversary of Pastor Murder
news9 - Case Of Slain Pastor Unsolved After 4 Years.
Apparently, the OSBI has a new man assigned to cold cases. We can only pray that he can see beyond the mistakes that have been made so far. What was in the briefcase. We have been told that Pastor Daniels only had two people coming to her sermons on an irregular basis. Now we know that she helped others, the news report by the man who said she fed seven and got him a room for the nights says she was effecting more than just the two old people that alerted police to her death.
I do not mean to offend Pastor Daniels family ever. I found it odd that the Pastor brought a briefcase, I preach and never bring one. It also said she brought a purse, so what did she keep in the briefcase. I get buy with a wallet and keys and cigarettes. I cannot imagine bringing a backpack to church when I preach. The killer knew what was in the purse and the briefcase, the rest of us can never know the specifics; but, her family may have known what she kept in the briefcase. Again, not the specifics; but, at least why she had a briefcase.
I am quite convinced that the answer to this case is the motive. 6,000 people had the opportunity; but, few had a motive. Whoever had killed Pastor Daniels had been to the church before and knew the layout. It takes a lot of confidence to use a blade to kill someone 500 feet from a Police Station. It takes a lot of confidence to come prepared to leave through the back door of the same church covered in blood or having changed clothes in a car that is local down an alley or through multiple backyards in front of a gas station and police station. What was in the briefcase and why is that only, almost, coming out now. The killer knew what he took and what was on the backdoor.
Today, the anniversary of Pastor Daniels death, I had lots of hits on the post and did a search to see if there was anything new. I found an article that said the following: "The mother of an Oklahoma pastor who was killed in her church wants to know where her daughter's purse and briefcase have gone as the killing remains unsolved four". That is all I could copy and the article was changed to be a copy of other articles marking the anniversary. The actual article I can no longer access. Lets think about why.
I have never read that there were any missing items and now have reason to believe that she was robbed of both her purse and her briefcase. If true, I am pretty sure that the perpetrators knew what he took. He or she should assume that the police have known that from the beginning. According to the headline I read, Pastor Daniels mother told a reporter that her daughters belongings were taken; but, the article has disappeared.
It has been four years since Pastor Daniels passed away. We have been told there is no DNA evidence, that may or may not be true. I assume it is true for a variety of reasons. We have good reasons to believe that the killer entered and exited through the back door to the church and video evidence that such is true, at least according to news reports. The back door to the church was removed by police while the rest of the church was demolished. Should we assume that the back door had some evidence on it, could it be writing or pictures in blood? The Pastors autopsy is online and shows that she was killed with a sharp instrument, during the day and about 500 feet away from the Police Station. If you use the current Google Earth, you will discover that the back of the church where Pastor Daniels was killed could be seen from the Police Station. If you use it a little more, you can see that the back of the church could be seen from about 6 houses and a gas station, all within 500 feet or so.
Here is what I believe. Firstly, this was not a serial killer, there are no other examples of killings that are sufficiently similar. Secondly, this was not a robbery. Way too much preparation to rob someone who had no money of $20 bucks or whatever she had in her purse. If you are willing to kill someone for money and put in the amount of effort it took to kill Pastor Daniels then you could make a lot more money by killing a McDonalds teller.
Now lets talk about the briefcase. I preach and I never bring a briefcase. I bring my bible, wallet and keys. There are serial killers that keep souvenirs, BTK did as did the Zodiac killer. This is not a serial killer. If this killer kept the purse and briefcase, it was for a different reason, they wanted to see what was inside or have what was inside.
kswo - 4th Anniversary of Pastor Murder
news9 - Case Of Slain Pastor Unsolved After 4 Years.
Apparently, the OSBI has a new man assigned to cold cases. We can only pray that he can see beyond the mistakes that have been made so far. What was in the briefcase. We have been told that Pastor Daniels only had two people coming to her sermons on an irregular basis. Now we know that she helped others, the news report by the man who said she fed seven and got him a room for the nights says she was effecting more than just the two old people that alerted police to her death.
I do not mean to offend Pastor Daniels family ever. I found it odd that the Pastor brought a briefcase, I preach and never bring one. It also said she brought a purse, so what did she keep in the briefcase. I get buy with a wallet and keys and cigarettes. I cannot imagine bringing a backpack to church when I preach. The killer knew what was in the purse and the briefcase, the rest of us can never know the specifics; but, her family may have known what she kept in the briefcase. Again, not the specifics; but, at least why she had a briefcase.
I am quite convinced that the answer to this case is the motive. 6,000 people had the opportunity; but, few had a motive. Whoever had killed Pastor Daniels had been to the church before and knew the layout. It takes a lot of confidence to use a blade to kill someone 500 feet from a Police Station. It takes a lot of confidence to come prepared to leave through the back door of the same church covered in blood or having changed clothes in a car that is local down an alley or through multiple backyards in front of a gas station and police station. What was in the briefcase and why is that only, almost, coming out now. The killer knew what he took and what was on the backdoor.
A Restatement of a Sentiment and News Stuff
I recently wrote a post that went way off point and mixed two issues that I did not wish to mix. I deleted the post so you probably never saw it. I want to address the points on their own. This will therefore begin as an official rant.
Two things that really tick me off because they show an ignorance of what is really going on in the world. Firstly, is gay marriage and people believing that somehow the existence of gays living together will bring an end to the world as we know it. This particularly ignorant belief is often held by christians who don't know their bible very well and have never bothered to actually think about it at all. The second is the idea that everything the government does is because of Obama. I am going to compare these things to smoking and climate warming. My; but, won't this be fun?
Lets start with what the bible has to say about homosexuality. Many English translations will use the word "abomination", sounds pretty bad doesn't it? In fact it is the same word that is used for eating shellfish and would be better translated as unappetizing or unpleasant. As I have said before, there is only one unforgivable sin according to the bible and it is generally considered a rejection of the holy spirit or a rejection of love for others. Now, if one has read their bible they might remember that after Paul was told that he could eat any of those things including shellfish. But, wait, if eating shellfish is an abomination in the exact same way that homosexuality is then how does one become the worst thing that can be done and responsible for the end of the world?
Lets move beyond the stupidity to just dumb. Some claim that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the men of the town wanted to have sexual relations with some male visitors. This is dumb because just prior Abram had asked God not to destroy the towns if he could find a ten good people and he could not. Now, it is believed that about 5% of the population has historically been gay. My question is what sin the other 95% were involved in. It does not say that all the women were lesbians and Abraham only needed ten good people. Try this one, many fundamentalists will tell you that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Okay, then can't we still find 10 decent straight people and prevent the end? Will the end come because there are still gays or because we all fail and turn inwards through selfishness?
Here is the real problem with this belief, it causes us to ignore 95% of all sin and focus on perhaps 5%. If we are to believe that God is going to destroy the world because 5% of the population is gay and in a committed relationship then that is not the God I read about. The bible says that in the end times people will be lovers of self, not homosexual. Why does this matter, it matters because it becomes a scapegoat for the sins that we ourselves are committing. There are people cheating on their wives and stealing from their jobs that say the world is going to end because people they don't know in their private bedrooms are doing things that most of us don't find appealing. Good thing they are not eating shellfish while having sex or the world would end today.
Now Obama being blamed for everything. That my friends is also stupid. Congress passes the laws, not Obama. Politics is a show and convincing you that one person is responsible for all the laws is how they keep you from seeing how things are really done. Here is a simple question, which congressmen introduced the Healthcare law? Don't they deserve any credit?
Okay, lets talk about smoking. I smoke. When I see the doctor he always asks how many packs I smoke a day and I tell him two. I then receive my dutiful lecture about the horrors of smoking. Today, I saw took a very long exam where they tested my lungs. Now, I grew up in Los Angeles where kids born in my day all had about 20% less lung capacity because of the smog back in the day. Yeah, my lungs were fine and prior x-rays showed nothing too. In fact, I am doing quite well considering my age in regards to my lungs. Now, something I have to admit. I spend 50% more for my cigarettes because they have almost no tar and nicotine and have a special filter. You see, not all cigarettes are the same. In fact when my brand was first created, the Surgeon General said that people could smoke one pack a day of them without ill effects. He took that back after the political backlash.
After my lung test today, I was talking to the person who gave the test and asked them a question. I asked why if cigarette smoking was going down so much was lung cancer increasing? I should also mention that the person who gave me the test never smoked, had no asthma and I did better on the test than he did and I have been smoking for almost 40 years. I am not saying that smoking is okay, it is not. I am saying that if smoking is going down and lung cancer is going up, maybe there is more than one culprit and maybe we are ignoring the other culprits and just maybe, that benefits someone. You watch, someday someone is going to blame lung cancer on climate warming.
The point is simple, we should not miss the forest for the trees. Look beyond the simple answers we are fed. Answers that are intended to distract us from the things that really cause us harm.
Let me give you a little something to ponder. The people that run this world do not believe in too much democracy. The Trilateral Commission released a report in the 1970s that pretty much summed up what they believed. Crisis of Democracy - The Trilateral Commission. Start at page 113 and finish on page 115. I like the part where they claim that America is at risk of too much democracy because we don't have a traditional aristocracy. Lovely.
Here is another YouTube by Chomsky. Science, Religion & Human Nature - The Chomsky Sessions - (2). Hey kids, if you are ever bored, I have posted stuff that you can spend a day with if you follow the links.
CNBC - Having a kid? You'll need $500,000 for college
. This is just more of the propaganda to get you to accept that there is no need for your kid to go to college unless you are very, very well off. We are creating a nation of uneducated and ignorant peasants and people are more worried about a couple of guys having sex or whether or not I smoke a cigarette that has no tar and nicotine or whether you use paper or plastic.
We, the 99%, can fund anything we want. We fall victims to those who would take advantage of us when we fund stupidity like the overturn of gay marriage rather than put that money into educating our children or feeding others or creating new missions or helping the destitute or giving people homes.
CNBC - Lower student loan rates got you thinking of co-signing? Think again. More of the same propaganda.
CNBC - Sky high university fees: worth it for the salary boost?. They are all saying the same thing, don't put your kids through college. Spend your money fighting gay marriage instead.
WND - How Obama is deliberately crippling U.S. economy. It is hard to even read this drivel without laughing. The article mentions how bad the situation was in 2007 and then blames Obama who didn't become president until 2008.
CNBC - How many 'busted' trades? They don't know!. This is great, you and I buy stock and have to live with the consequences. Goldman Sachs buys stocks and the trades are later ignored because poor old Goldman Sachs made a mistake. Worse yet, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, can void the trades later if they think they were mistakes. LOL. When your pension fund makes a bad bet, you have to live with it, not the insiders like Goldman Sachs; but, worry about gays and smokers.
Yahoo - Breakout - Hindenburg Omen: Very Ominous, Highly Technical Warning Sign. Propaganda so that they can say later that you were warned about the coming collapse.
CBS DFW - School Security Changes Have Parents Dropping Kids At The Curb. I wrote about this coming after Sandy Hook, they are going to film all classes; but, keep the parents out.
Truth Feed - Document from Einstein and Oppenheimer Aliens and UFOs. People from other planets are not visiting here.
Yahoo - Reuters - Emerging markets selloff intensifies after Fed, data lifts Europe shares. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.
CNBC - Cramer: We need a disaster plan!. Even the shill Cramer is saying there is something wrong about NASDAQ saying they have no idea why there computers all went down and trading was stopped. The question is who benefited.
Wired - The Banks of Tomorrow: Think Google and Facebook
. Imagine a world where you have no "bank" and instead make investments in things with your savings. What if you could bet your retirement and savings on small investments like crowdsourcing or kickstarter? An all electronic currency changes the landscape for everything.
CNBC - Uh oh. No one is tracking these trading errors
CNBC - Now the NYSE says it is tracking trading errors.
Yeah, don't worry about the fact that the markets are rigged or that they change the rules for some but not you or most of us. Don't worry that they are stealing your savings and retirement, worry about what a couple of guys do in their bedroom. If you haven't figured it out with all of the posts I have done, this blog is primarily (anymore) about how you are being taken advantage of by having your biases used to sway your emotions and blind you to the people who are really doing us in.
Wired - Comment Sections Are Wastelands Ruled by Trolls. Here Are Alternatives. Wired is a shill magazine totally bought and paid for.
Yahoo - Reuters - JPMorgan curbs business with banks to tighten controls. Something is up with this company, something very bad. I am suggesting that whatever investments you have that are somehow reliant on them are dumped as quickly as possible.
YouTube - Kinsey Untold Stories: Talib Kweli/ Family First.
When I was a young man, my father and I sometimes would go out. We might get a cup of coffee or whatever and he would then quiz me on what the people around us were doing and thinking. As he was in law enforcement, I learned a lot. Hope I can teach my grandchildren even more. What do you want to teach your kids and grandkids, to be educated or hate homosexuality? Will you teach them to hate smoking or to ask why lung cancer goes up whiles smoking goes down. Will you teach them to question the garbage we are told or only question it when it does not conform to our expectations?
Two things that really tick me off because they show an ignorance of what is really going on in the world. Firstly, is gay marriage and people believing that somehow the existence of gays living together will bring an end to the world as we know it. This particularly ignorant belief is often held by christians who don't know their bible very well and have never bothered to actually think about it at all. The second is the idea that everything the government does is because of Obama. I am going to compare these things to smoking and climate warming. My; but, won't this be fun?
Lets start with what the bible has to say about homosexuality. Many English translations will use the word "abomination", sounds pretty bad doesn't it? In fact it is the same word that is used for eating shellfish and would be better translated as unappetizing or unpleasant. As I have said before, there is only one unforgivable sin according to the bible and it is generally considered a rejection of the holy spirit or a rejection of love for others. Now, if one has read their bible they might remember that after Paul was told that he could eat any of those things including shellfish. But, wait, if eating shellfish is an abomination in the exact same way that homosexuality is then how does one become the worst thing that can be done and responsible for the end of the world?
Lets move beyond the stupidity to just dumb. Some claim that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the men of the town wanted to have sexual relations with some male visitors. This is dumb because just prior Abram had asked God not to destroy the towns if he could find a ten good people and he could not. Now, it is believed that about 5% of the population has historically been gay. My question is what sin the other 95% were involved in. It does not say that all the women were lesbians and Abraham only needed ten good people. Try this one, many fundamentalists will tell you that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Okay, then can't we still find 10 decent straight people and prevent the end? Will the end come because there are still gays or because we all fail and turn inwards through selfishness?
Here is the real problem with this belief, it causes us to ignore 95% of all sin and focus on perhaps 5%. If we are to believe that God is going to destroy the world because 5% of the population is gay and in a committed relationship then that is not the God I read about. The bible says that in the end times people will be lovers of self, not homosexual. Why does this matter, it matters because it becomes a scapegoat for the sins that we ourselves are committing. There are people cheating on their wives and stealing from their jobs that say the world is going to end because people they don't know in their private bedrooms are doing things that most of us don't find appealing. Good thing they are not eating shellfish while having sex or the world would end today.
Now Obama being blamed for everything. That my friends is also stupid. Congress passes the laws, not Obama. Politics is a show and convincing you that one person is responsible for all the laws is how they keep you from seeing how things are really done. Here is a simple question, which congressmen introduced the Healthcare law? Don't they deserve any credit?
Okay, lets talk about smoking. I smoke. When I see the doctor he always asks how many packs I smoke a day and I tell him two. I then receive my dutiful lecture about the horrors of smoking. Today, I saw took a very long exam where they tested my lungs. Now, I grew up in Los Angeles where kids born in my day all had about 20% less lung capacity because of the smog back in the day. Yeah, my lungs were fine and prior x-rays showed nothing too. In fact, I am doing quite well considering my age in regards to my lungs. Now, something I have to admit. I spend 50% more for my cigarettes because they have almost no tar and nicotine and have a special filter. You see, not all cigarettes are the same. In fact when my brand was first created, the Surgeon General said that people could smoke one pack a day of them without ill effects. He took that back after the political backlash.
After my lung test today, I was talking to the person who gave the test and asked them a question. I asked why if cigarette smoking was going down so much was lung cancer increasing? I should also mention that the person who gave me the test never smoked, had no asthma and I did better on the test than he did and I have been smoking for almost 40 years. I am not saying that smoking is okay, it is not. I am saying that if smoking is going down and lung cancer is going up, maybe there is more than one culprit and maybe we are ignoring the other culprits and just maybe, that benefits someone. You watch, someday someone is going to blame lung cancer on climate warming.
The point is simple, we should not miss the forest for the trees. Look beyond the simple answers we are fed. Answers that are intended to distract us from the things that really cause us harm.
Let me give you a little something to ponder. The people that run this world do not believe in too much democracy. The Trilateral Commission released a report in the 1970s that pretty much summed up what they believed. Crisis of Democracy - The Trilateral Commission. Start at page 113 and finish on page 115. I like the part where they claim that America is at risk of too much democracy because we don't have a traditional aristocracy. Lovely.
Here is another YouTube by Chomsky. Science, Religion & Human Nature - The Chomsky Sessions - (2). Hey kids, if you are ever bored, I have posted stuff that you can spend a day with if you follow the links.
CNBC - Having a kid? You'll need $500,000 for college
. This is just more of the propaganda to get you to accept that there is no need for your kid to go to college unless you are very, very well off. We are creating a nation of uneducated and ignorant peasants and people are more worried about a couple of guys having sex or whether or not I smoke a cigarette that has no tar and nicotine or whether you use paper or plastic.
We, the 99%, can fund anything we want. We fall victims to those who would take advantage of us when we fund stupidity like the overturn of gay marriage rather than put that money into educating our children or feeding others or creating new missions or helping the destitute or giving people homes.
CNBC - Lower student loan rates got you thinking of co-signing? Think again. More of the same propaganda.
CNBC - Sky high university fees: worth it for the salary boost?. They are all saying the same thing, don't put your kids through college. Spend your money fighting gay marriage instead.
WND - How Obama is deliberately crippling U.S. economy. It is hard to even read this drivel without laughing. The article mentions how bad the situation was in 2007 and then blames Obama who didn't become president until 2008.
CNBC - How many 'busted' trades? They don't know!. This is great, you and I buy stock and have to live with the consequences. Goldman Sachs buys stocks and the trades are later ignored because poor old Goldman Sachs made a mistake. Worse yet, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, can void the trades later if they think they were mistakes. LOL. When your pension fund makes a bad bet, you have to live with it, not the insiders like Goldman Sachs; but, worry about gays and smokers.
Yahoo - Breakout - Hindenburg Omen: Very Ominous, Highly Technical Warning Sign. Propaganda so that they can say later that you were warned about the coming collapse.
CBS DFW - School Security Changes Have Parents Dropping Kids At The Curb. I wrote about this coming after Sandy Hook, they are going to film all classes; but, keep the parents out.
Truth Feed - Document from Einstein and Oppenheimer Aliens and UFOs. People from other planets are not visiting here.
Yahoo - Reuters - Emerging markets selloff intensifies after Fed, data lifts Europe shares. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.
CNBC - Cramer: We need a disaster plan!. Even the shill Cramer is saying there is something wrong about NASDAQ saying they have no idea why there computers all went down and trading was stopped. The question is who benefited.
Wired - The Banks of Tomorrow: Think Google and Facebook
. Imagine a world where you have no "bank" and instead make investments in things with your savings. What if you could bet your retirement and savings on small investments like crowdsourcing or kickstarter? An all electronic currency changes the landscape for everything.
CNBC - Uh oh. No one is tracking these trading errors
CNBC - Now the NYSE says it is tracking trading errors.
Yeah, don't worry about the fact that the markets are rigged or that they change the rules for some but not you or most of us. Don't worry that they are stealing your savings and retirement, worry about what a couple of guys do in their bedroom. If you haven't figured it out with all of the posts I have done, this blog is primarily (anymore) about how you are being taken advantage of by having your biases used to sway your emotions and blind you to the people who are really doing us in.
Wired - Comment Sections Are Wastelands Ruled by Trolls. Here Are Alternatives. Wired is a shill magazine totally bought and paid for.
Yahoo - Reuters - JPMorgan curbs business with banks to tighten controls. Something is up with this company, something very bad. I am suggesting that whatever investments you have that are somehow reliant on them are dumped as quickly as possible.
YouTube - Kinsey Untold Stories: Talib Kweli/ Family First.
When I was a young man, my father and I sometimes would go out. We might get a cup of coffee or whatever and he would then quiz me on what the people around us were doing and thinking. As he was in law enforcement, I learned a lot. Hope I can teach my grandchildren even more. What do you want to teach your kids and grandkids, to be educated or hate homosexuality? Will you teach them to hate smoking or to ask why lung cancer goes up whiles smoking goes down. Will you teach them to question the garbage we are told or only question it when it does not conform to our expectations?
Thursday, August 22, 2013
So Blessed and So Loved
Over the years, the Pimpernel has spoke of many things including his health and the challenges he has faced. I am doing better than my medical numbers may imply and in fact and am experiencing so much love an concern. It touches my heart to it's depths to know how many are concerned about me. This is especially true of people that work with me and around me. You cannot imagine how loved this old man feels. I shall post about the news soon enough.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Pimpernel as Grandfather
My oldest has just informed me that I am going to be a grandfather. Wow. Twice before I was going to be; but, not all births come to fruition. Perhaps, the third time is a charm. I saved some news articles; but, I cannot post on them, my mind is busy with other thoughts.
I wonder what things I can teach my grandchild? The difference between a child and a grandchild is that a grandchild will actually listen to you and learn from you. I think I can teach my grandchild lots of things, things that I have not taught others. Please pray that my grandchild is born healthy, I will teach them the rest.
I wonder what things I can teach my grandchild? The difference between a child and a grandchild is that a grandchild will actually listen to you and learn from you. I think I can teach my grandchild lots of things, things that I have not taught others. Please pray that my grandchild is born healthy, I will teach them the rest.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Education, Propaganda and Why We Are Destroying Education
I am going to try something new. I am going to post very long videos which go into great detail about things we should know. I am going to try, once a week, to post something that will take hours to consider and hear. It is Dr. Pimpernel and I have taught. My thinking is that the people who read this blog may be interested in more than simple answers to simple problems, that they might actually want to know what is taught at the higher levels. You see, what you are taught in school is not what the future leaders are taught. They are taught something completely different, they are taught how things work.
The purpose of Political Science is to teach the science of managing people. They do not teach people how to make government work, they teach them how to manipulate the masses to achieve political aims. The ultimate question for all political scientists is how should society be structured to benefit the members. Keeping you from asking that question is what leaders do; but, they have to understand Political Science to do fulfill their perceived role in their minds.
Historically, basic education was taught by one's parents or if you were wealthy, by private tutors. About 200 years ago we began creating public schools that were available for more and more. Public school became mandatory as we became a fully industrialized society. Think about that, when I was growing up school was mandatory and you had to be there for the full day. I found it strange that I could go to jail if I didn't go to school. A prisoner for 8 hours a day and in a prison that had corporal punishment. I myself was paddled more than once (I know, no big surprise).
Up until World War II, college was for the well to do and something that middle class people aspired to. After World War II we needed people who could manage our booming industry so the veterans were given a way to easily go to college. A personal note. My university was unusual. It was created about a hundred years ago to give working people a chance to go to college. It created the work study program which had people work in their industry for six months out of the year and study for six months out of the year. It was created for people like me, it was created so that bright kids that didn't come from money could get a higher education. I am going to go off track for a moment.
My university experience was tough and it was great. I worked, my parents contributed immensely and somehow I got to deal directly with my professors. My Bachelors is in Political Science and I knew every one of my professors personally, I was allowed into the inner circle and as an undergraduate was allowed to be a teaching assistant. Most teaching assistants were usually working on their Phd's, it was considered a huge privilege. I was so respected that I was allowed to grade papers of undergraduates while I was still an undergraduate. You see, they wanted me to become a professor, over 90% of them wanted me to including the chair of Political Science. There were a couple that wanted me gone; but, they never had a chance, God has been good to me in that way.
Back to the story. After World War II we needed lots of educated people to run the ever increasing American industry. In the 60s we had plenty of people in college; but, we knew that technology was going to change our needs. We became the most technologically advanced nation in the world and ceased needing as high a percentage of the population being college educated. The numbers were higher but the percentage began going down. By the 80s we had gotten rid of our industrial base and shipped it out to the east, we also became primarily focused on finances and debt instruments. As we continue to automate we will need fewer and fewer educated people and it will once again be the pleasure of the wealthy.
I am going to post two videos by Noam Chomsky, a famous professor and writer. Mr. Chomsky makes the point that the educational system is being destroyed. In my opinion, the reason we are being told that learning means debt, that college is a bad idea for most people and that we should all be taught the exact same things is simply because there is no longer a perceived need for us to be well informed or educated. They say that knowledge is power. Why would you then tell people that education is too expensive? During the days of slavery it was illegal to teach a slave to read or write, ever wonder why?
YouTube - Education For Whom and For What?
In the video, Mr. Chomsky says many interesting things, one of the things he said was that when the pentagon was funding research at MIT, there was no secrecy in anyplace other than the Political Science department. He also said that when they went to private funding there was plenty of secrecy in the research.
The purpose of Political Science is to teach the science of managing people. They do not teach people how to make government work, they teach them how to manipulate the masses to achieve political aims. The ultimate question for all political scientists is how should society be structured to benefit the members. Keeping you from asking that question is what leaders do; but, they have to understand Political Science to do fulfill their perceived role in their minds.
Historically, basic education was taught by one's parents or if you were wealthy, by private tutors. About 200 years ago we began creating public schools that were available for more and more. Public school became mandatory as we became a fully industrialized society. Think about that, when I was growing up school was mandatory and you had to be there for the full day. I found it strange that I could go to jail if I didn't go to school. A prisoner for 8 hours a day and in a prison that had corporal punishment. I myself was paddled more than once (I know, no big surprise).
Up until World War II, college was for the well to do and something that middle class people aspired to. After World War II we needed people who could manage our booming industry so the veterans were given a way to easily go to college. A personal note. My university was unusual. It was created about a hundred years ago to give working people a chance to go to college. It created the work study program which had people work in their industry for six months out of the year and study for six months out of the year. It was created for people like me, it was created so that bright kids that didn't come from money could get a higher education. I am going to go off track for a moment.
My university experience was tough and it was great. I worked, my parents contributed immensely and somehow I got to deal directly with my professors. My Bachelors is in Political Science and I knew every one of my professors personally, I was allowed into the inner circle and as an undergraduate was allowed to be a teaching assistant. Most teaching assistants were usually working on their Phd's, it was considered a huge privilege. I was so respected that I was allowed to grade papers of undergraduates while I was still an undergraduate. You see, they wanted me to become a professor, over 90% of them wanted me to including the chair of Political Science. There were a couple that wanted me gone; but, they never had a chance, God has been good to me in that way.
Back to the story. After World War II we needed lots of educated people to run the ever increasing American industry. In the 60s we had plenty of people in college; but, we knew that technology was going to change our needs. We became the most technologically advanced nation in the world and ceased needing as high a percentage of the population being college educated. The numbers were higher but the percentage began going down. By the 80s we had gotten rid of our industrial base and shipped it out to the east, we also became primarily focused on finances and debt instruments. As we continue to automate we will need fewer and fewer educated people and it will once again be the pleasure of the wealthy.
I am going to post two videos by Noam Chomsky, a famous professor and writer. Mr. Chomsky makes the point that the educational system is being destroyed. In my opinion, the reason we are being told that learning means debt, that college is a bad idea for most people and that we should all be taught the exact same things is simply because there is no longer a perceived need for us to be well informed or educated. They say that knowledge is power. Why would you then tell people that education is too expensive? During the days of slavery it was illegal to teach a slave to read or write, ever wonder why?
YouTube - Education For Whom and For What?
In the video, Mr. Chomsky says many interesting things, one of the things he said was that when the pentagon was funding research at MIT, there was no secrecy in anyplace other than the Political Science department. He also said that when they went to private funding there was plenty of secrecy in the research.
Medicine, Pensions and Control
NBC News - Could it be a 'cure'? Breakthrough prompts Down syndrome soul-searching. An interesting article about bio-ethics or eugenics depending on how you view it. With the new healthcare laws it becomes even more concerning. Should people be allowed to have babies born with birth defects if we will have to pay for their healthcare? Will it be considered child abuse if you refuse to allow your kid to have gene therapies to "cure" them?
Yahoo - Credit.com - Is Your 401(k) Plan Secure? They want your savings, your retirement and your pension and they will steal it from you.
Military Tech - Superhuman Tech & the Military Mind.
The Street - Why the 30-Year Mortgage Could Be Coming to an End. Basically, there are some senators who want to put an end to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the consequence will be the end of the 30 year mortgage. It may also be the end to private home ownership as is true in much of Europe.
naked capitalism - Municipal Workers in Bankrupt Cities Facing Financial Nightmare.
CNBC - Crowdfunding for medical devices hits Web. Our next big industry will be making medical devices to monitor your health 24/7. This is not a surprise and you watch, if you refuse to wear them, your benefits will get cut or cost more.
Yahoo - Credit.com - Is Your 401(k) Plan Secure? They want your savings, your retirement and your pension and they will steal it from you.
Military Tech - Superhuman Tech & the Military Mind.
The Street - Why the 30-Year Mortgage Could Be Coming to an End. Basically, there are some senators who want to put an end to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the consequence will be the end of the 30 year mortgage. It may also be the end to private home ownership as is true in much of Europe.
naked capitalism - Municipal Workers in Bankrupt Cities Facing Financial Nightmare.
CNBC - Crowdfunding for medical devices hits Web. Our next big industry will be making medical devices to monitor your health 24/7. This is not a surprise and you watch, if you refuse to wear them, your benefits will get cut or cost more.
Heart Attacks and Mortality and Young Professionals
About two weeks ago my doctor notified me that I had experienced a heart attack previously. I had the "event" about 4 or 5 years ago and remember when it happened and how it was in some ways a new beginning. Having the doctor confirm it didn't sink in immediately. At first it was no big deal, I mean I knew it when it happened. Still, there is something about having it confirmed that is on my mind. It is not the idea that I could have died that is interesting to me, I mean we do all die and that should not surprise any of us. What I think is truly interesting is that I didn't die.
So, recently I came across this article. Zen Haven - How Near-Death Experiences Transform People. We all know that a number of people have had Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and I am just one of hundreds of thousands of others. What intrigued me about this article was the statistics of what leads up to them, I had never considered it before.
Here is a quote from the article. "Before such an episode occurs there are stressors, conditions in the experiencer’s life, that point to either unrest or inattention. And these are present universally. What caught my eye with near-death and near-death-like states were episodes that occurred under these conditions". The author then lists a series of "stressors" that are common among people who do have an NDE and going through major life changes is listed. Well, I was in the middle of my divorce and my life was full of stress in every area of my life.
So, untold numbers of people have had NDEs. Many were in a physicians care when they had them and were being monitored. After they had their experience many came back and completely changed their lives. Many report similar things, being above their body, going through a tunnel of light, meeting family and friends who have passed away previously, sensing a higher being... Many, if not most, then report knowing that they had to return to this life and not wanting to. They are very personal experiences and it has always fascinated me that there are those who wish to trivialize them.
Every now and then someone who has had an NDE will come forth and write a book or go on television and discuss their experience. Recently, a doctor named Dr. Eben Alexander wrote a book about his experience. Esquire magazine then published an article attempting to "debunk" his book. The author questioned whether or not Dr. Eben could have been making up a story and what his medical condition was. Pretty sloppy work, either the man was in a medically induced coma or he was not. Either the man had a serious medical condition or he did not. It seems highly unlikely that he intentionally wanted to be in a coma and almost die.
Therein is the problem for debunkers. If we assume that all people reporting NDEs are liars then why do some people who almost die feel a need to lie about it? While I had been told that I was a fantastic candidate for a heart attack, it certainly was not something I sought out just so I could have a good story to tell at parties. In fact, I do not go into detail about my experience online and have really only discussed it with close friends and family when it happened. In response to the Esquire article, another writer corrected the article. Esquire article on Eben Alexander distorts the facts.
Here is what I am attempting to examine. Why should anyone be bothered by the Dr's NDE. Look at it this way, the people who have NDEs are already at extreme stress levels, suddenly have serious physical challenges and come back saying that they had a mental experience while it was all going on. What is there to question? Why not just chalk it up to a heightened dream state? I have often said that an NDE is of value only to the person having it, it is not proof of anything for anyone else. Up until 2 weeks ago, I could not "prove" that I had had a heart attack because I refused to see the doctor after it happened. I told a few people at the time; but, that is circumstantial evidence at best for anyone other than me. So why do so many people feel a need to attack the Dr for telling his story?
In my opinion what many fear is that people who had NDEs are telling the truth. It is easier to believe they are liars or delusional than to accept the possibility that there is more to the human experience than the physical world that we see. Whether one is a believer or not, once they have an NDE, the question of whether or not there is more to the human experience than this present physical existence is no longer an issue in their life. From a control standpoint that is a very scary thing.
This world is managed using a carrot and a stick. Our fears and fetishes are used to control us. People are trained to chase treasures be they physical (money, sex, objects) or mental (ego). All the things used to control us rely upon our believing that you only go around once, that you only have this one existence. Esquire magazine is about the "sophisticated" up and comers. It is a magazine written for young stock brokers and presents them with all the things that they are to seek out, fancy cars, pretty women with class, the newest watch, the place to vacation, the house to own. It is a continual reminder of what their god should be, success in the material world.
One of the things that happens in an NDE is that you recognize you are dying. There is a moment when you know that you have passed some point and accept that you are not coming back, there is a moment of acceptance to the situation. I have almost died more than once; but, only have had one NDE and it was the one time that I knew I had passed that point. It is one thing to know in the abstract that you will die one day and quite another to face that moment whether it be real or imagined. When I was a young teenager another kid attacked me and I ended up choking him. As I regularly tore telephone books in half and was a gymnast, the last thing you wanted was my hands on your neck. As he was passing out and had been denied air for more than a minute, a look passed over his face. I could see the moment he knew there was nothing he could do and that I was not going to stop. We never talked about it after; but, I saw that moment of acceptance in his eyes and he changed after that.
Where am I going with all this. From what I see people fear an afterlife more than death itself. Heck, the fear of death is what is used to motivate us to benefit the economic system in ways that don't make sense for us or society. The people that have cheated the financial system are afraid of death; but, believe in it. They are even more afraid of there being an afterlife so they deny it. What they really fear is that there are consequences for what you do in this life, what they really fear is that the hierarchy in the afterlife doesn't give them an insiders advantage. While most of us hope for an afterlife, these sad people hope there is not.
So, recently I came across this article. Zen Haven - How Near-Death Experiences Transform People. We all know that a number of people have had Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and I am just one of hundreds of thousands of others. What intrigued me about this article was the statistics of what leads up to them, I had never considered it before.
Here is a quote from the article. "Before such an episode occurs there are stressors, conditions in the experiencer’s life, that point to either unrest or inattention. And these are present universally. What caught my eye with near-death and near-death-like states were episodes that occurred under these conditions". The author then lists a series of "stressors" that are common among people who do have an NDE and going through major life changes is listed. Well, I was in the middle of my divorce and my life was full of stress in every area of my life.
So, untold numbers of people have had NDEs. Many were in a physicians care when they had them and were being monitored. After they had their experience many came back and completely changed their lives. Many report similar things, being above their body, going through a tunnel of light, meeting family and friends who have passed away previously, sensing a higher being... Many, if not most, then report knowing that they had to return to this life and not wanting to. They are very personal experiences and it has always fascinated me that there are those who wish to trivialize them.
Every now and then someone who has had an NDE will come forth and write a book or go on television and discuss their experience. Recently, a doctor named Dr. Eben Alexander wrote a book about his experience. Esquire magazine then published an article attempting to "debunk" his book. The author questioned whether or not Dr. Eben could have been making up a story and what his medical condition was. Pretty sloppy work, either the man was in a medically induced coma or he was not. Either the man had a serious medical condition or he did not. It seems highly unlikely that he intentionally wanted to be in a coma and almost die.
Therein is the problem for debunkers. If we assume that all people reporting NDEs are liars then why do some people who almost die feel a need to lie about it? While I had been told that I was a fantastic candidate for a heart attack, it certainly was not something I sought out just so I could have a good story to tell at parties. In fact, I do not go into detail about my experience online and have really only discussed it with close friends and family when it happened. In response to the Esquire article, another writer corrected the article. Esquire article on Eben Alexander distorts the facts.
Here is what I am attempting to examine. Why should anyone be bothered by the Dr's NDE. Look at it this way, the people who have NDEs are already at extreme stress levels, suddenly have serious physical challenges and come back saying that they had a mental experience while it was all going on. What is there to question? Why not just chalk it up to a heightened dream state? I have often said that an NDE is of value only to the person having it, it is not proof of anything for anyone else. Up until 2 weeks ago, I could not "prove" that I had had a heart attack because I refused to see the doctor after it happened. I told a few people at the time; but, that is circumstantial evidence at best for anyone other than me. So why do so many people feel a need to attack the Dr for telling his story?
In my opinion what many fear is that people who had NDEs are telling the truth. It is easier to believe they are liars or delusional than to accept the possibility that there is more to the human experience than the physical world that we see. Whether one is a believer or not, once they have an NDE, the question of whether or not there is more to the human experience than this present physical existence is no longer an issue in their life. From a control standpoint that is a very scary thing.
This world is managed using a carrot and a stick. Our fears and fetishes are used to control us. People are trained to chase treasures be they physical (money, sex, objects) or mental (ego). All the things used to control us rely upon our believing that you only go around once, that you only have this one existence. Esquire magazine is about the "sophisticated" up and comers. It is a magazine written for young stock brokers and presents them with all the things that they are to seek out, fancy cars, pretty women with class, the newest watch, the place to vacation, the house to own. It is a continual reminder of what their god should be, success in the material world.
One of the things that happens in an NDE is that you recognize you are dying. There is a moment when you know that you have passed some point and accept that you are not coming back, there is a moment of acceptance to the situation. I have almost died more than once; but, only have had one NDE and it was the one time that I knew I had passed that point. It is one thing to know in the abstract that you will die one day and quite another to face that moment whether it be real or imagined. When I was a young teenager another kid attacked me and I ended up choking him. As I regularly tore telephone books in half and was a gymnast, the last thing you wanted was my hands on your neck. As he was passing out and had been denied air for more than a minute, a look passed over his face. I could see the moment he knew there was nothing he could do and that I was not going to stop. We never talked about it after; but, I saw that moment of acceptance in his eyes and he changed after that.
Where am I going with all this. From what I see people fear an afterlife more than death itself. Heck, the fear of death is what is used to motivate us to benefit the economic system in ways that don't make sense for us or society. The people that have cheated the financial system are afraid of death; but, believe in it. They are even more afraid of there being an afterlife so they deny it. What they really fear is that there are consequences for what you do in this life, what they really fear is that the hierarchy in the afterlife doesn't give them an insiders advantage. While most of us hope for an afterlife, these sad people hope there is not.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Not a very good post
YouTube - Peter Allen - I Go To Rio.
YouTube - Could It Be Magic _ BARRY MANILOW
YouTube - The Ballad Of Ben Gay
YouTube - The Temptations - Papa Was A Rolling Stone
YouTube - Biff Rose - Buzz the Fuzz
YouTube - The Monkees - "Pleasant Valley Sunday" - ORIGINAL VIDEO - HQ
YouTube - Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows - Theme Song
You figure it all out. LOL. Have a great weekend.
YouTube - Could It Be Magic _ BARRY MANILOW
YouTube - The Ballad Of Ben Gay
YouTube - The Temptations - Papa Was A Rolling Stone
YouTube - Biff Rose - Buzz the Fuzz
YouTube - The Monkees - "Pleasant Valley Sunday" - ORIGINAL VIDEO - HQ
YouTube - Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows - Theme Song
You figure it all out. LOL. Have a great weekend.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Wall Street Versus Capitalism
I like capitalism. I like the idea of choice. I don't believe in free choice. I think choices should be associated with consequences. I think you should learn from your choices, that choices come with responsibilities and consequences. Having said that, I also believe that people should not be given the death penalty for stealing a sandwich when they are going hungry. I also believe that as a nation we should make sure people have certain basic needs even if it means I have to be taxed. I put my money where my mouth is, give to charity and have taken in the homeless. Big banks and Wall Street do not believe in capitalism, they believe in something else. They believe in information manipulation and market manipulation and I want to talk about that.
Wall Street is basically a bunch of ivy league frat boys who have consistently been caught working together to fix rates and markets. Most traders and brokers are just poor dumb fools that either play along to get along or are totally clueless as to how the market is gamed. There is however a group of insiders who get to decide when the game will be played and in what manner. If this were not so then the LIBOR scandal could not have happened. Now I want to explain how they violate the intent of the law.
Lets say I was a purchasing agent for the federal government and I was about to issue a $100 million contract to a defense contractor. Lets say I had my elderly father buy $20,000 in options against the competitors for that contract. In other words I have my father make a bet against all the other competitors for the contract. In this case, once the contract was awarded, my dear old dad is going to make a lot of money. That is insider trading. Even if the contract award was 100% right, the fact that I used that insider information means the playing field was not even. This is exactly what the banks and traders do everyday. They have inside information and use it to their own benefit at the expense of most investors (not their friends of course). That is a form of capitalism; but, it is not the reason that we created capitalism. I thought the PURPOSE of capitalism was to make sure that those who worked hard and made good bets benefited did well.
IF Wall Street doesn't believe in competition then is it capitalistic or criminalistic? If it believes in competition then why is it constantly involved in insider trading? The game is called front trading and I will explain how it works. Lets say you deposit a check at your bank when it opens at 9 in the morning. The money is transferred to your bank at 9:30. Now, at 4 in the afternoon a check you sent to your landlord is deposited and at 4:30 your bank makes the transfer from your account to your landlords. Everything should be fine, you deposited before the withdrawal was made and your bank actually had the funds before the withdrawal was made. Well, your bank will not "post" your deposit until the following day; but, will show the withdrawal the same day. Because of that they can charge you fees for having been overdrawn, it is an accounting trick, it is not the truth and it is not capitalism. That is what is called front loading.
King World News - Madoff Whistleblower Tells KWN Banks Stealing From Pensions
FOR DECADES the banks and Wall Street have been pushing their losses onto public pension funds while giving their personal friends the benefits, they do this by front loading. And we call this capitalism? Now, these same firms are saying that they should be paid before the pensions are paid in Detroit. THINK ABOUT IT.
It should be apparent that I am in fact feeling better.
I enjoy playing poker and have won a couple of tournaments. Nothing big; but, I have taken out some professionals. I haven't really played much in the past three years; but, I used to play everyday. If I am playing poker and one of the people at the table is marking the deck or palming cards, I would call that cheating and not capitalism. I am more than willing to risk my money in an honest game; but, I hate it when the game is rigged and the games today are rigged. I will explain how.
The terms gambler and gambling are misleading. Gambling means taking a blind risk, gamblers, true professionals always have the advantage and play games where their knowledge of the game will give them an advantage. I spent years playing poker and came away ahead. My game of choice was tournament Texas No Limit Holdem. A great game that rewards skill over the course of time. When I first began playing, you would put in your $100 or whatever and that was all anyone could put in. It was an even playing field, you could be a millionaire; but, the buy in and the amount of chips you got was the same for everyone.
As poker became more popular, the rules for some games started to change. ReBuys became more popular. A Re-buy is where if you lose all your money, you can buy back into the game. We also began to see more and more games that had levels of buy in. You could start with a thousand chips or 2000 chips depending on your initial investment. Let me put this in terms of a running race at the olympics. What if rich countries could pay money to the Olympic committee so that their runners could start 20 feet further in front of the track than the people from poor countries? They actually used to do that in the Olympics, some kings were allowed to compete; but, they had to have an advantage. It reminds me of this scene from a movie.
YouTube - The Dictator Movie - Full 100 Meter Race Extended HD
Capitalism, for me, assumed honesty, it assumes fair dealings. Without enforceable contracts, without some rules, you cannot have capitalism. Instead you have cronyism which is what we currently have. Does capitalism mean that a bank can promise me that I will be able to safely deposit my money with them and that they will give it back to me when I ask for it or that they can make outrageous bets with my money and if they win, they keep the winnings; but, if they lose, I suffer the loss. That is what is going on and has been proven to be going on with public pensions and with most peoples bank accounts.
I voted for Ronald Reagan. I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I am not a libertarian because they don't believe the game should have any rules and for the same reason, I am not an Anarchist. I believe that if we are going to have rules, they should apply to all. I believe that if we are not going to have rules, everybody is free from the rules. That is the problem with the current system, those in charge want the rules to only apply to some of us.
Wall Street is basically a bunch of ivy league frat boys who have consistently been caught working together to fix rates and markets. Most traders and brokers are just poor dumb fools that either play along to get along or are totally clueless as to how the market is gamed. There is however a group of insiders who get to decide when the game will be played and in what manner. If this were not so then the LIBOR scandal could not have happened. Now I want to explain how they violate the intent of the law.
Lets say I was a purchasing agent for the federal government and I was about to issue a $100 million contract to a defense contractor. Lets say I had my elderly father buy $20,000 in options against the competitors for that contract. In other words I have my father make a bet against all the other competitors for the contract. In this case, once the contract was awarded, my dear old dad is going to make a lot of money. That is insider trading. Even if the contract award was 100% right, the fact that I used that insider information means the playing field was not even. This is exactly what the banks and traders do everyday. They have inside information and use it to their own benefit at the expense of most investors (not their friends of course). That is a form of capitalism; but, it is not the reason that we created capitalism. I thought the PURPOSE of capitalism was to make sure that those who worked hard and made good bets benefited did well.
IF Wall Street doesn't believe in competition then is it capitalistic or criminalistic? If it believes in competition then why is it constantly involved in insider trading? The game is called front trading and I will explain how it works. Lets say you deposit a check at your bank when it opens at 9 in the morning. The money is transferred to your bank at 9:30. Now, at 4 in the afternoon a check you sent to your landlord is deposited and at 4:30 your bank makes the transfer from your account to your landlords. Everything should be fine, you deposited before the withdrawal was made and your bank actually had the funds before the withdrawal was made. Well, your bank will not "post" your deposit until the following day; but, will show the withdrawal the same day. Because of that they can charge you fees for having been overdrawn, it is an accounting trick, it is not the truth and it is not capitalism. That is what is called front loading.
King World News - Madoff Whistleblower Tells KWN Banks Stealing From Pensions
FOR DECADES the banks and Wall Street have been pushing their losses onto public pension funds while giving their personal friends the benefits, they do this by front loading. And we call this capitalism? Now, these same firms are saying that they should be paid before the pensions are paid in Detroit. THINK ABOUT IT.
It should be apparent that I am in fact feeling better.
I enjoy playing poker and have won a couple of tournaments. Nothing big; but, I have taken out some professionals. I haven't really played much in the past three years; but, I used to play everyday. If I am playing poker and one of the people at the table is marking the deck or palming cards, I would call that cheating and not capitalism. I am more than willing to risk my money in an honest game; but, I hate it when the game is rigged and the games today are rigged. I will explain how.
The terms gambler and gambling are misleading. Gambling means taking a blind risk, gamblers, true professionals always have the advantage and play games where their knowledge of the game will give them an advantage. I spent years playing poker and came away ahead. My game of choice was tournament Texas No Limit Holdem. A great game that rewards skill over the course of time. When I first began playing, you would put in your $100 or whatever and that was all anyone could put in. It was an even playing field, you could be a millionaire; but, the buy in and the amount of chips you got was the same for everyone.
As poker became more popular, the rules for some games started to change. ReBuys became more popular. A Re-buy is where if you lose all your money, you can buy back into the game. We also began to see more and more games that had levels of buy in. You could start with a thousand chips or 2000 chips depending on your initial investment. Let me put this in terms of a running race at the olympics. What if rich countries could pay money to the Olympic committee so that their runners could start 20 feet further in front of the track than the people from poor countries? They actually used to do that in the Olympics, some kings were allowed to compete; but, they had to have an advantage. It reminds me of this scene from a movie.
YouTube - The Dictator Movie - Full 100 Meter Race Extended HD
Capitalism, for me, assumed honesty, it assumes fair dealings. Without enforceable contracts, without some rules, you cannot have capitalism. Instead you have cronyism which is what we currently have. Does capitalism mean that a bank can promise me that I will be able to safely deposit my money with them and that they will give it back to me when I ask for it or that they can make outrageous bets with my money and if they win, they keep the winnings; but, if they lose, I suffer the loss. That is what is going on and has been proven to be going on with public pensions and with most peoples bank accounts.
I voted for Ronald Reagan. I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I am not a libertarian because they don't believe the game should have any rules and for the same reason, I am not an Anarchist. I believe that if we are going to have rules, they should apply to all. I believe that if we are not going to have rules, everybody is free from the rules. That is the problem with the current system, those in charge want the rules to only apply to some of us.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Needles, the Internet and Maybe Some News
Firstly, to the reader who asked how I was doing and asked not to have their comment published. I am doing better, send me your new e-mail address in a comment.
Today I had another doctors appointment and am being a good little Pimpernel. As with all doctors appointments it ended with me getting blood drawn. I had a lovely young Phlebotomist who did a fine job. I met with a specialist in blood who said they were testing me to see if I had a genetic disease; but, he agreed that I probably do not and just have sleep apnea. He did however make sure to chastise me for smoking and tell me how bad my cholesterol was. I don't believe the two are related.
So, I picked up food, went home and am resting. I decided to read some stuff on the net and for whatever reason began looking up the history of the net. While doing so, it occurred to me that it has now been 20 years since I first got online. I was online before there was America Online and still have a Compuserve Account. I was online as part of the first ten million people in the world, my; but, I am getting old.
I first started using computers in 1972 when I was in Junior High. By the time I was in college I was using a mainframe to write statistical programs. I never sought out these things, wrong place at the wrong time and a passing interest. In 1989 I was one of the first people to use a personal pc in my organization. Again a fluke; but, I decided to be an early adopter and must say it has certainly been a part of my career. In 1992 or early 93, I was asked to investigate this thing called the internet because most of the systems people were not interested and were more focused on mainframe applications. Out of about 1,500 I had the only pc that even had access to the outside and one of about 40 for the whole organization.
I am telling you these things to explain the history of the internet as I saw it. In 1993 I decided to go online from home. I started trying out Prodigy and then Compuserve, AOL didn't come online till the end of the year. I would surf on Internet Bulletin Boards. Basically, you would direct dial into peoples servers that were shared with others. FTP was still primary and the everything was textual unless you downloaded it to your computer. By 1994 I decided to join an independent Internet Service Provider that had just opened locally. It was cheaper to have a local provider because back in the day you paid for long distance and used land lines, local calls were free. The local provider was a startup in a garage by a couple of Nasa employees for them and their friends. I ended up beta testing the original Microsoft Internet Explorer and showed the Nasa guys how to configure it for their server and then teaching some of their friends because everyone else was using Mosaic or Netscape browsers.
As part of my job I ended up learning to make web pages for my organization and was responsible for figuring out where this whole internet thing was going. I would go to seminars that seemed like Amway meetings where people tried to explain why the internet was going to be the next big thing; but, the reality was that nobody really knew what it was going to evolve into. At the time it was more of a social thing for the casual user and an academic and esoteric thing for those who had been involved in it for any real period of time.
In the beginning most web pages were all textual with maybe a picture or two. They looked like my blog but lacked a color background. Once AOL came online and people began using visuals rather than textual links, everything changed. The net became more and more visual and usage blew up. It also became more commercial, slowly at first; but, that grew too. As the internet grew, I did well in my career although I had long since stopped being directly involved in programming for it. I ended up being a high level administrator and managing, amongst many other sections, a systems section.
While I used to teach people how to use computers, it was always an aside and merely because I had been an early implementer that I even knew how to use them. After the internet became common place, I began asking people who owned it and nobody was ever able to tell me. Back in the day most people assumed that it was owned by AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve because they were the face of the internet on television; but, I had attended seminars and knew better. The internet was created and owned by our own Federal government. It was created by the precursor to DARPA and was still controlled by them. Well, the essence of it, the part that makes it function is controlled by them.
We used to call the internet the World Wide Web; but, it wasn't much. Internet usage was pretty much an American thing for it's first few public years. Being the jerk that I am, in 1995 I posted my own web page. It made fun of animal rights groups and I was quickly threatened with death. I kept it up anyways.
I never got into chat rooms; but, watched as they grew more and more popular. I never really used the social aspects of the net and didn't use it for financial transactions. I sort of just watched it change. It wasn't until about 1998 that I started using it for personal business, mostly e-mails because prior I didn't know many people who had e-mail.
Of all the things I have seen in my life, the internet has made the greatest impact. The internet has made bigger changes in this world than the computer did in and of itself. The personal computer gave people abilities that they never had before; but, the internet made people want to use the pc and made it easy. Smart phones are nothing more than small pcs with access to the internet. In the future, everything will be connected to the internet, they call this "the internet of things"; but, what does that really mean?
The internet of things means that everything you do will be monitored, assisted and managed online where it can be seen by anyone who is smart enough to. It means that you will be able to access and control every part of your life using your phone. Pluses and minuses to all technologies.
I had intended to write about ICANN and how 13 servers rule the world. Someone had written about how that is no longer true; but, they were either trying or were too young to really understand. The internet is still controlled by 13 root servers, those root servers now have slave servers; but, the essence remains the same at a time when it does not need to. Of those 13, only a few are truly public. All of them are still under contract with the federal government.
That is my boring history of the internet, now, let me tell you why it matters. Yes, the government can see everything that happens on the internet. When people used to have individually owned servers running bulletin boards that were not connected to the world wide web it was different. Those days are not likely to come back.
YouTube - CBC Archives: The Internet 1993
YouTube - 1993 The Internet The Computer Chronicles
YouTube - The Internet As It Was In 1996
Yahoo - The Internet as seen in 1997
Iana - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority - Root Servers. If you really want to understand the fundamentals of the internet, this is the website. Just go through their links. Look at how boring a page they have visually, just like my blog. As you go through the servers, you will discover one of the thirteen was controlled by Nasa at the Ames Research Center. I wonder if that is where the guys from Nasa that I knew when I got my internet account worked? I will never know as I lost touch with them years ago.
Wikipedia - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
IANA is nothing more than another government contractor, just like the one that Snowden worked for. ICANN is nothing more than another government contractor just like the one Snowden worked for. The internet is controlled by 13 servers and one of them is a secret. Younger systems people that think they get it will tell you that there are more than 13; but, they don't understand how each of those sets is still controlled by the 13. The government can shut down the whole internet and is the only group that can restart it. That mean they have a copy of everything that is and has been on the internet. It was the whole purpose of the thing when it was created.
For anyone who has read my blog for any period of time, it should be apparent that I keep a sharp eye on technology. I am not a systems person officially and gave up on programming a long time ago; but, I understand organization and infrastructure and I understand the internet and computers. One of the most fundamental things that systems people get wrong is that they think in a paradigm that is by definition wrong.
Computers are really just a series of numbers. The numbers are 0 and 1. It is a logical assumption that every choice can be either yes or no; but, that assumes their can be an absolute 0. There cannot be an absolute 0 because there is a 1. If I know for a fact that there is one thing in the universe then there cannot be a nothing in the universe. The act of being aware of this means that there can be more than one thing. This is sort of philosophy 101. All computers assume that there can be an absolute 0 which means their base programming is incomplete and can never be fixed. In simple terms, systems people assume that there is such a thing as an absolute 0 and base all their calculations on that possibility and therefore can and must be flawed in their understanding.
Let me put this in a theological manner. Nonexistence is not a possibility in the universe because you exist. To attempt to prove that you do not would be completely illogical, to try and prove that you could not has the same consequence. The only thing one is left with is to attempt that they can cease to exist; but, it means others could. The same cannot be said of the material world. Quantum physics cannot prove that we live in a material world. Nope, they keep proving that we do not. I can prove that if one exists, two can. I cannot prove that if nothing exists anything can, that is the philosophical problem with the big bang theory.
Today I had another doctors appointment and am being a good little Pimpernel. As with all doctors appointments it ended with me getting blood drawn. I had a lovely young Phlebotomist who did a fine job. I met with a specialist in blood who said they were testing me to see if I had a genetic disease; but, he agreed that I probably do not and just have sleep apnea. He did however make sure to chastise me for smoking and tell me how bad my cholesterol was. I don't believe the two are related.
So, I picked up food, went home and am resting. I decided to read some stuff on the net and for whatever reason began looking up the history of the net. While doing so, it occurred to me that it has now been 20 years since I first got online. I was online before there was America Online and still have a Compuserve Account. I was online as part of the first ten million people in the world, my; but, I am getting old.
I first started using computers in 1972 when I was in Junior High. By the time I was in college I was using a mainframe to write statistical programs. I never sought out these things, wrong place at the wrong time and a passing interest. In 1989 I was one of the first people to use a personal pc in my organization. Again a fluke; but, I decided to be an early adopter and must say it has certainly been a part of my career. In 1992 or early 93, I was asked to investigate this thing called the internet because most of the systems people were not interested and were more focused on mainframe applications. Out of about 1,500 I had the only pc that even had access to the outside and one of about 40 for the whole organization.
I am telling you these things to explain the history of the internet as I saw it. In 1993 I decided to go online from home. I started trying out Prodigy and then Compuserve, AOL didn't come online till the end of the year. I would surf on Internet Bulletin Boards. Basically, you would direct dial into peoples servers that were shared with others. FTP was still primary and the everything was textual unless you downloaded it to your computer. By 1994 I decided to join an independent Internet Service Provider that had just opened locally. It was cheaper to have a local provider because back in the day you paid for long distance and used land lines, local calls were free. The local provider was a startup in a garage by a couple of Nasa employees for them and their friends. I ended up beta testing the original Microsoft Internet Explorer and showed the Nasa guys how to configure it for their server and then teaching some of their friends because everyone else was using Mosaic or Netscape browsers.
As part of my job I ended up learning to make web pages for my organization and was responsible for figuring out where this whole internet thing was going. I would go to seminars that seemed like Amway meetings where people tried to explain why the internet was going to be the next big thing; but, the reality was that nobody really knew what it was going to evolve into. At the time it was more of a social thing for the casual user and an academic and esoteric thing for those who had been involved in it for any real period of time.
In the beginning most web pages were all textual with maybe a picture or two. They looked like my blog but lacked a color background. Once AOL came online and people began using visuals rather than textual links, everything changed. The net became more and more visual and usage blew up. It also became more commercial, slowly at first; but, that grew too. As the internet grew, I did well in my career although I had long since stopped being directly involved in programming for it. I ended up being a high level administrator and managing, amongst many other sections, a systems section.
While I used to teach people how to use computers, it was always an aside and merely because I had been an early implementer that I even knew how to use them. After the internet became common place, I began asking people who owned it and nobody was ever able to tell me. Back in the day most people assumed that it was owned by AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve because they were the face of the internet on television; but, I had attended seminars and knew better. The internet was created and owned by our own Federal government. It was created by the precursor to DARPA and was still controlled by them. Well, the essence of it, the part that makes it function is controlled by them.
We used to call the internet the World Wide Web; but, it wasn't much. Internet usage was pretty much an American thing for it's first few public years. Being the jerk that I am, in 1995 I posted my own web page. It made fun of animal rights groups and I was quickly threatened with death. I kept it up anyways.
I never got into chat rooms; but, watched as they grew more and more popular. I never really used the social aspects of the net and didn't use it for financial transactions. I sort of just watched it change. It wasn't until about 1998 that I started using it for personal business, mostly e-mails because prior I didn't know many people who had e-mail.
Of all the things I have seen in my life, the internet has made the greatest impact. The internet has made bigger changes in this world than the computer did in and of itself. The personal computer gave people abilities that they never had before; but, the internet made people want to use the pc and made it easy. Smart phones are nothing more than small pcs with access to the internet. In the future, everything will be connected to the internet, they call this "the internet of things"; but, what does that really mean?
The internet of things means that everything you do will be monitored, assisted and managed online where it can be seen by anyone who is smart enough to. It means that you will be able to access and control every part of your life using your phone. Pluses and minuses to all technologies.
I had intended to write about ICANN and how 13 servers rule the world. Someone had written about how that is no longer true; but, they were either trying or were too young to really understand. The internet is still controlled by 13 root servers, those root servers now have slave servers; but, the essence remains the same at a time when it does not need to. Of those 13, only a few are truly public. All of them are still under contract with the federal government.
That is my boring history of the internet, now, let me tell you why it matters. Yes, the government can see everything that happens on the internet. When people used to have individually owned servers running bulletin boards that were not connected to the world wide web it was different. Those days are not likely to come back.
YouTube - CBC Archives: The Internet 1993
YouTube - 1993 The Internet The Computer Chronicles
YouTube - The Internet As It Was In 1996
Yahoo - The Internet as seen in 1997
Iana - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority - Root Servers. If you really want to understand the fundamentals of the internet, this is the website. Just go through their links. Look at how boring a page they have visually, just like my blog. As you go through the servers, you will discover one of the thirteen was controlled by Nasa at the Ames Research Center. I wonder if that is where the guys from Nasa that I knew when I got my internet account worked? I will never know as I lost touch with them years ago.
Wikipedia - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
IANA is nothing more than another government contractor, just like the one that Snowden worked for. ICANN is nothing more than another government contractor just like the one Snowden worked for. The internet is controlled by 13 servers and one of them is a secret. Younger systems people that think they get it will tell you that there are more than 13; but, they don't understand how each of those sets is still controlled by the 13. The government can shut down the whole internet and is the only group that can restart it. That mean they have a copy of everything that is and has been on the internet. It was the whole purpose of the thing when it was created.
For anyone who has read my blog for any period of time, it should be apparent that I keep a sharp eye on technology. I am not a systems person officially and gave up on programming a long time ago; but, I understand organization and infrastructure and I understand the internet and computers. One of the most fundamental things that systems people get wrong is that they think in a paradigm that is by definition wrong.
Computers are really just a series of numbers. The numbers are 0 and 1. It is a logical assumption that every choice can be either yes or no; but, that assumes their can be an absolute 0. There cannot be an absolute 0 because there is a 1. If I know for a fact that there is one thing in the universe then there cannot be a nothing in the universe. The act of being aware of this means that there can be more than one thing. This is sort of philosophy 101. All computers assume that there can be an absolute 0 which means their base programming is incomplete and can never be fixed. In simple terms, systems people assume that there is such a thing as an absolute 0 and base all their calculations on that possibility and therefore can and must be flawed in their understanding.
Let me put this in a theological manner. Nonexistence is not a possibility in the universe because you exist. To attempt to prove that you do not would be completely illogical, to try and prove that you could not has the same consequence. The only thing one is left with is to attempt that they can cease to exist; but, it means others could. The same cannot be said of the material world. Quantum physics cannot prove that we live in a material world. Nope, they keep proving that we do not. I can prove that if one exists, two can. I cannot prove that if nothing exists anything can, that is the philosophical problem with the big bang theory.
Must the Mainstream Media Spin Everything
A friend had invited me to dinner. I had accepted; but, after church I was very tired and took a nap. When he got here he said I looked a little pale and maybe we should reschedule; but, I wanted to have dinner with him so we went out. I was so tired that we ended up coming back earlier than intended. I guess I am still adjusting to my new medications.
It is getting harder and harder to find straight news. Every outlet now resorts to spinning every story to some agenda. It used to be that the mainstream media that was worthy of respect tried to be objective. All we see now is a rush to make every story have a morality lesson. That is opinion influencing, not reporting.
CNN - Where Obamacare premiums will soar. Lets start with the title, it says that Obamacare premiums will go up and that is just incorrect. Worse, the author knows better so it is a lie. There is no Obamacare premium, the health law did not set any rate for insurance and it is not government insurance, it is still private insurance companies. What he later explains in the article is that some states allow insurance companies to offer plans with little if any benefits and allow the insurance companies to exclude sick people from getting insurance. Those plans would need to offer more benefits, like hospital stays, and that will increase what they charge.
The article is basically propaganda with a political agenda. Now, you may or may not agree with the agenda; but, the presentation is overly biased for an organization that claims to be a news agency. My blog is not a news agency, it is commentary, it is opinion and that is how I describe it. If the article from CNN had been labeled as opinion that would be one thing; but, is is in the Financial section.
What some states allow is that insurance companies can charge small rates when someone is young and healthy and increase the rate as you get older or sick. In addition they can refuse you insurance as you get older or sick. Basically, it is insurance that only makes economic sense for those who don't need it and is refused to those who will or do. It is like life insurance that costs more as you age and need it less. Eventually you pull out of the plan and never get the benefit of the 30 years that you paid the premium. The article could have been titled, "Under Obamacare some states will be required to let everyone have insurance". In my opinion that title would also have been propaganda; but, at least it would have been an accurate title. An objective title might have been, "The economic costs in different states "under the new healthcare laws". It is okay for reporters to explain the effects of things without taking a position.
CNBC - Spreads show 'big trades' for US, emerging stocks.
Mail Online - Could this be the end of cash-in-hand? New Chip and PIN device for tradesmen is launched (but will anyone actually buy it?). Just another example of how we make all transactions electronic.
The SLOG - GLOBAL LOOTING: The new EU bailin law was passed 8 days ago….did you notice?. I don't follow this blog and know nothing about it. The only point is that the EU has agreed with the IMF, the Eurozone, Canada and the United States, we will have bail ins.
The Telegraph - 56 police hurt in Belfast riots. A number of years ago in Northern Ireland, the Protestant government made a law that allowed the government to keep Catholics in jail without a trial. Some celebrate that change in the law and some do not. Here is the thing that they miss in Northern Ireland, those laws can now be used against all their citizens if they wish to reapply them and they now have a history of allowing such things. In the 1940s we placed the Japanese in "internment" camps. Now, I will make a statement that is both right and wrong. Wrong morally, correct factually.
In the United States, we had legal slavery and it was a horrible and morally wrong thing. What we did to the Japanese-Americans was less morally wrong; but, worse from a legal standpoint. In both cases we took away people's freedoms. The slaves were treated worse; but, in both cases they were prisoners. Slavery was legal under the constitution and the constitution allowed us to change the rules and abolish slavery. The internment of the Japanese was unconstitutional and yet, it was allowed to be done anyways. What if in 1776, the northern states had created a federal government where slavery was illegal and the southern states had created a nation where it was legal. Would we still have slavery in the south today? What if the civil war had never happened because we had never been a United States?
Now, lets get back to the Northern Ireland story. Can you imagine white people marching through little Tokyo to celebrate when we put all the Japanese into internment camps in the west during World War II? Can you imagine people celebrating destroying their own rule of law? What would you think if large groups of young white men attacked black people for celebrating Martin Luther King day? What we allow to be done to others is what we allow the government to do to us all. If you cheat your friends, you are saying it is morally okay for crooks to cheat you.
People - Eydie Gormé Dies, Singing Legend Was 84. Just to show that even in Hollywood, marriages can work.
ABC - Can You Pass This 8th Grade Exam From 1912?. This article has been placed all over the internet and media. What is the point of it because no, most people could not pass the test today because we are not taught the same things today. The article is propaganda for "Common Core", it is aimed at conservatives and appeals to their wish to have education get "back to basics". It all goes back to spin. Spin is appealing to something you know that should be done; but, it appeals to your emotion and ignores the details that are unpleasant.
Let me attempt to make up an example. Can we all agree that every school child should learn their ABC's and that every child should learn to count? Now if I define that as a common core curriculum that should be in every school, who would argue the point? It sounds pretty good when you look at it that way. Now, if I say that every child will be taught the exact same thing and that will include history and sociology and government and other areas where there is not universal agreement, would you feel the same? Now lets look at how this works.
If I am teaching History, there is no one answer. If I teach someone to count to 100, the answer is the same for everyone. When I was growing up, we were taught to count to 100; but, then the new math came in. It sought to make math relative and one of the first things kids learned was number sets that they would never use and didn't help them learn to understand math. They started by teaching kids that we had a base ten number system; but, that we could have a base six, seven, two or any other number system. The problem was that we don't have a base six number system, we have a base ten number system. So, why spend all that time teaching kids that there were alternatives to the numerical system that we used. Well, the intent was to get us to move to the European metric system for everything and the law actually required that we do it. We just refused to learn it. The purpose of having a federal mandate on education is not about making sure that kids learn to read and write and add. It is about being able to control what they learn about history and geography and the social studies. It is about conformity of belief.
We allow our world view to be manipulated when we only listen to what we want to believe. The more we seek answers that fit into our existing world view and the less we consider alternative views, the easier it is to manipulate us. The media is degraded to the point of two people yelling slogans at each other. Now, I want to talk about Trayvon Martin again.
Lets say you are a 15 year old white kid wearing a nice suit while returning from working at a charity for homeless people all day. As you are walking home thinking about how you are going to feed even more people tomorrow, you spot a 22 year old black man following you in his car. You call your friend and she tells you that there has been a rash of older black men catching and raping young white boys. You tell your pursuer to leave you alone and he doesn't. Might you attempt to protect yourself and attack him first. In Florida you have the right to stand your ground.
The media has sought to portray both Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman. They either wish to portray Mr. Martin as just another black kid being abused by a white guy or as a wanna be thug. Mr. Zimmerman is either portrayed as a valiant young man trying to defend others or a hateful bigot. Assume any combination you want and you miss the real point, guilt or innocence. The question is about what someone should be able to do on a neighborhood watch. Should they be allowed to follow people? If you say yes then the next question is should they be allowed to stop people and ask them questions? Should the cops be allowed to stop anyone for no reason and force you to tell them what you are doing? That is wrong thinking. I see people like Mr. Ted Nugent saying that we live in a police state and that our rights are being violated while also saying that Mr. Zimmerman was right to kill Mr. Martin while ignoring the fact that Mr. Zimmerman was doing exactly what Mr. Nugent believes the government should not be allowed to do. The media presents us with the thoughts of a complete idiot (Mr Nugent) while avoiding the bigger issues about how we should treat one another when we don't have prior experience with each other.
Mr. Zimmerman is half Cuban. He is a person of color. Still there are those who portray him as "white" because one of his parents is. The president also has a white parent; but, most would consider him black. Still, there are those who will say the president is black and that Zimmerman is white. While issues of color are still in people's minds, the question we can deal with is how we write our laws and what it means to break them. I cannot look into the soul of another; but, I can question whether or not a person has a right to stop me on the street and demand that I explain myself to them.
Now, lets look at the court case. Mr. Zimmerman was found not guilty. By definition, the jury found that in Florida, you have the right to follow someone and approach them, at night, and demand that they explain themselves to you. They are not entitled to attack you even if they feel threatened. If they do, you can kill them. That is the law that was upheld and that we all get to live under in Florida. The real question was how could this all have been avoided and that if it did occur because one of the parties was a horrible person they would have been prosecuted or let go because they stayed within the law and the law was just. I think the media focused too much on the unknowns and ignored what could have been knows.
Oprah Winfrey compared Trayvon Martin to another case. The other case involved a young black man who flirted with a young girl. Some white guys kidnapped him and killed him. She is as bad as Ted Nugent. Lets assume this young black man was a gang member and a drug dealer and even wanted to take advantage of the young white girl. Would you think it was okay for him to be kidnapped, tortured and killed or could we find a way to outlaw kidnapping, torturing and killing regardless of race or even who?
What if the law in Florida said that it was okay to follow people and even stop them; but, that if you did, they had a right to protect themselves and force you to leave them alone? What if that law said that once you stopped someone, you would go to jail for life or suffer the death penalty if you wrongfully stopped them? Mr. Martin has not once been accused of breaking and entering or committing any crime prior to being stopped.
The reason I took so long to talk about the case is because I wanted everyone to establish their positions first. Now, we can examine how we were manipulated into taking polarizing positions and re-consider the choices that were presented to us. The media has ceased being objective because they are fighting over readers and if we can get the left to follow the Huffington Post and the right to follow Fox News, the two most polarizing media groups both make money. The sides are chosen and the truth becomes spin. If we read everything through our per-conceived and comfortable biases, sometimes we may understand the facts and sometimes we will be wrong; but, our analysis will always be wrong because we based it on our biases.
It is getting harder and harder to find straight news. Every outlet now resorts to spinning every story to some agenda. It used to be that the mainstream media that was worthy of respect tried to be objective. All we see now is a rush to make every story have a morality lesson. That is opinion influencing, not reporting.
CNN - Where Obamacare premiums will soar. Lets start with the title, it says that Obamacare premiums will go up and that is just incorrect. Worse, the author knows better so it is a lie. There is no Obamacare premium, the health law did not set any rate for insurance and it is not government insurance, it is still private insurance companies. What he later explains in the article is that some states allow insurance companies to offer plans with little if any benefits and allow the insurance companies to exclude sick people from getting insurance. Those plans would need to offer more benefits, like hospital stays, and that will increase what they charge.
The article is basically propaganda with a political agenda. Now, you may or may not agree with the agenda; but, the presentation is overly biased for an organization that claims to be a news agency. My blog is not a news agency, it is commentary, it is opinion and that is how I describe it. If the article from CNN had been labeled as opinion that would be one thing; but, is is in the Financial section.
What some states allow is that insurance companies can charge small rates when someone is young and healthy and increase the rate as you get older or sick. In addition they can refuse you insurance as you get older or sick. Basically, it is insurance that only makes economic sense for those who don't need it and is refused to those who will or do. It is like life insurance that costs more as you age and need it less. Eventually you pull out of the plan and never get the benefit of the 30 years that you paid the premium. The article could have been titled, "Under Obamacare some states will be required to let everyone have insurance". In my opinion that title would also have been propaganda; but, at least it would have been an accurate title. An objective title might have been, "The economic costs in different states "under the new healthcare laws". It is okay for reporters to explain the effects of things without taking a position.
CNBC - Spreads show 'big trades' for US, emerging stocks.
Mail Online - Could this be the end of cash-in-hand? New Chip and PIN device for tradesmen is launched (but will anyone actually buy it?). Just another example of how we make all transactions electronic.
The SLOG - GLOBAL LOOTING: The new EU bailin law was passed 8 days ago….did you notice?. I don't follow this blog and know nothing about it. The only point is that the EU has agreed with the IMF, the Eurozone, Canada and the United States, we will have bail ins.
The Telegraph - 56 police hurt in Belfast riots. A number of years ago in Northern Ireland, the Protestant government made a law that allowed the government to keep Catholics in jail without a trial. Some celebrate that change in the law and some do not. Here is the thing that they miss in Northern Ireland, those laws can now be used against all their citizens if they wish to reapply them and they now have a history of allowing such things. In the 1940s we placed the Japanese in "internment" camps. Now, I will make a statement that is both right and wrong. Wrong morally, correct factually.
In the United States, we had legal slavery and it was a horrible and morally wrong thing. What we did to the Japanese-Americans was less morally wrong; but, worse from a legal standpoint. In both cases we took away people's freedoms. The slaves were treated worse; but, in both cases they were prisoners. Slavery was legal under the constitution and the constitution allowed us to change the rules and abolish slavery. The internment of the Japanese was unconstitutional and yet, it was allowed to be done anyways. What if in 1776, the northern states had created a federal government where slavery was illegal and the southern states had created a nation where it was legal. Would we still have slavery in the south today? What if the civil war had never happened because we had never been a United States?
Now, lets get back to the Northern Ireland story. Can you imagine white people marching through little Tokyo to celebrate when we put all the Japanese into internment camps in the west during World War II? Can you imagine people celebrating destroying their own rule of law? What would you think if large groups of young white men attacked black people for celebrating Martin Luther King day? What we allow to be done to others is what we allow the government to do to us all. If you cheat your friends, you are saying it is morally okay for crooks to cheat you.
People - Eydie Gormé Dies, Singing Legend Was 84. Just to show that even in Hollywood, marriages can work.
ABC - Can You Pass This 8th Grade Exam From 1912?. This article has been placed all over the internet and media. What is the point of it because no, most people could not pass the test today because we are not taught the same things today. The article is propaganda for "Common Core", it is aimed at conservatives and appeals to their wish to have education get "back to basics". It all goes back to spin. Spin is appealing to something you know that should be done; but, it appeals to your emotion and ignores the details that are unpleasant.
Let me attempt to make up an example. Can we all agree that every school child should learn their ABC's and that every child should learn to count? Now if I define that as a common core curriculum that should be in every school, who would argue the point? It sounds pretty good when you look at it that way. Now, if I say that every child will be taught the exact same thing and that will include history and sociology and government and other areas where there is not universal agreement, would you feel the same? Now lets look at how this works.
If I am teaching History, there is no one answer. If I teach someone to count to 100, the answer is the same for everyone. When I was growing up, we were taught to count to 100; but, then the new math came in. It sought to make math relative and one of the first things kids learned was number sets that they would never use and didn't help them learn to understand math. They started by teaching kids that we had a base ten number system; but, that we could have a base six, seven, two or any other number system. The problem was that we don't have a base six number system, we have a base ten number system. So, why spend all that time teaching kids that there were alternatives to the numerical system that we used. Well, the intent was to get us to move to the European metric system for everything and the law actually required that we do it. We just refused to learn it. The purpose of having a federal mandate on education is not about making sure that kids learn to read and write and add. It is about being able to control what they learn about history and geography and the social studies. It is about conformity of belief.
We allow our world view to be manipulated when we only listen to what we want to believe. The more we seek answers that fit into our existing world view and the less we consider alternative views, the easier it is to manipulate us. The media is degraded to the point of two people yelling slogans at each other. Now, I want to talk about Trayvon Martin again.
Lets say you are a 15 year old white kid wearing a nice suit while returning from working at a charity for homeless people all day. As you are walking home thinking about how you are going to feed even more people tomorrow, you spot a 22 year old black man following you in his car. You call your friend and she tells you that there has been a rash of older black men catching and raping young white boys. You tell your pursuer to leave you alone and he doesn't. Might you attempt to protect yourself and attack him first. In Florida you have the right to stand your ground.
The media has sought to portray both Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman. They either wish to portray Mr. Martin as just another black kid being abused by a white guy or as a wanna be thug. Mr. Zimmerman is either portrayed as a valiant young man trying to defend others or a hateful bigot. Assume any combination you want and you miss the real point, guilt or innocence. The question is about what someone should be able to do on a neighborhood watch. Should they be allowed to follow people? If you say yes then the next question is should they be allowed to stop people and ask them questions? Should the cops be allowed to stop anyone for no reason and force you to tell them what you are doing? That is wrong thinking. I see people like Mr. Ted Nugent saying that we live in a police state and that our rights are being violated while also saying that Mr. Zimmerman was right to kill Mr. Martin while ignoring the fact that Mr. Zimmerman was doing exactly what Mr. Nugent believes the government should not be allowed to do. The media presents us with the thoughts of a complete idiot (Mr Nugent) while avoiding the bigger issues about how we should treat one another when we don't have prior experience with each other.
Mr. Zimmerman is half Cuban. He is a person of color. Still there are those who portray him as "white" because one of his parents is. The president also has a white parent; but, most would consider him black. Still, there are those who will say the president is black and that Zimmerman is white. While issues of color are still in people's minds, the question we can deal with is how we write our laws and what it means to break them. I cannot look into the soul of another; but, I can question whether or not a person has a right to stop me on the street and demand that I explain myself to them.
Now, lets look at the court case. Mr. Zimmerman was found not guilty. By definition, the jury found that in Florida, you have the right to follow someone and approach them, at night, and demand that they explain themselves to you. They are not entitled to attack you even if they feel threatened. If they do, you can kill them. That is the law that was upheld and that we all get to live under in Florida. The real question was how could this all have been avoided and that if it did occur because one of the parties was a horrible person they would have been prosecuted or let go because they stayed within the law and the law was just. I think the media focused too much on the unknowns and ignored what could have been knows.
Oprah Winfrey compared Trayvon Martin to another case. The other case involved a young black man who flirted with a young girl. Some white guys kidnapped him and killed him. She is as bad as Ted Nugent. Lets assume this young black man was a gang member and a drug dealer and even wanted to take advantage of the young white girl. Would you think it was okay for him to be kidnapped, tortured and killed or could we find a way to outlaw kidnapping, torturing and killing regardless of race or even who?
What if the law in Florida said that it was okay to follow people and even stop them; but, that if you did, they had a right to protect themselves and force you to leave them alone? What if that law said that once you stopped someone, you would go to jail for life or suffer the death penalty if you wrongfully stopped them? Mr. Martin has not once been accused of breaking and entering or committing any crime prior to being stopped.
The reason I took so long to talk about the case is because I wanted everyone to establish their positions first. Now, we can examine how we were manipulated into taking polarizing positions and re-consider the choices that were presented to us. The media has ceased being objective because they are fighting over readers and if we can get the left to follow the Huffington Post and the right to follow Fox News, the two most polarizing media groups both make money. The sides are chosen and the truth becomes spin. If we read everything through our per-conceived and comfortable biases, sometimes we may understand the facts and sometimes we will be wrong; but, our analysis will always be wrong because we based it on our biases.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Financial Oddities and Educational Destruction
Yahoo - Reuters - Japan $80 billion public fund may shift funds to stocks from bonds: sources. See, they want to steal pensions worldwide. This will end very badly. Their pension fund has $1.2 trillion in assets mainly in the form of secure government bonds. There is no claim that the fund is in trouble; but, the money is going into their stock market where there is high risk. It is therefore just a matter of time.
Global Research - The Detroit Bail-In Template: Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks. This is one of the few articles I have read that pointed out that bail-ins have already become the chosen method for future bank failures and even discusses the G20s part in the plan.
Bloomberg - NYC’s Good Times May Sour Like Detroit’s, Bloomberg Warns. It doesn't matter where you go all the politicians blame our problems on public pensions. It doesn't matter that people went to jail for taking bribes over the New York pensions. He also wants to change the healthcare plans, here is a line from the article, "“We will seek a data-driven, modern health-care plan that will focus on prevention, provide higher-quality care,” the mayor said. He estimated the savings at $400 million a year." What is a data driven health care plan? It sounds good; but, what does it mean? It means that employees will be required to have their health monitored and participate in mandatory health programs. I cannot believe the people of New York ever voted for Bloomberg.
Yahoo - Sun's magnetic field "is about to flip", warns NASA. It happens regularly; but, there has been more talk about it this time.
Huffington Post - Common Core Standards Already Being Taught Despite Political Controversy, Survey Shows. Common Core is just one more step in destroying the educational system. Here is a quote from the article, "Recently, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) came out against Common Core, saying that "curriculum reform should be done at the state level."". This is basically the same thing I wrote about in my last post. We are nationalizing what kids are taught while also ensuring that fewer and fewer will ever attend college.
Yahoo - Reuters - Nikkei leads Asian stocks lower; dollar dips. To be specific, their stock market just lost 4% in one day. Sounds like the perfect market to invest all those Japanese pensions in.
Global Research - The Detroit Bail-In Template: Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks. This is one of the few articles I have read that pointed out that bail-ins have already become the chosen method for future bank failures and even discusses the G20s part in the plan.
Bloomberg - NYC’s Good Times May Sour Like Detroit’s, Bloomberg Warns. It doesn't matter where you go all the politicians blame our problems on public pensions. It doesn't matter that people went to jail for taking bribes over the New York pensions. He also wants to change the healthcare plans, here is a line from the article, "“We will seek a data-driven, modern health-care plan that will focus on prevention, provide higher-quality care,” the mayor said. He estimated the savings at $400 million a year." What is a data driven health care plan? It sounds good; but, what does it mean? It means that employees will be required to have their health monitored and participate in mandatory health programs. I cannot believe the people of New York ever voted for Bloomberg.
Yahoo - Sun's magnetic field "is about to flip", warns NASA. It happens regularly; but, there has been more talk about it this time.
Huffington Post - Common Core Standards Already Being Taught Despite Political Controversy, Survey Shows. Common Core is just one more step in destroying the educational system. Here is a quote from the article, "Recently, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) came out against Common Core, saying that "curriculum reform should be done at the state level."". This is basically the same thing I wrote about in my last post. We are nationalizing what kids are taught while also ensuring that fewer and fewer will ever attend college.
Yahoo - Reuters - Nikkei leads Asian stocks lower; dollar dips. To be specific, their stock market just lost 4% in one day. Sounds like the perfect market to invest all those Japanese pensions in.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Take Your Time and Watch Some Informational Stuff
CNBC - Bond market takes violent turn, but Fed taper seems on track
New York Times - Health Care Law Raises Pressure on Public Unions. It is sad how gullible the public is. People who believe that Obamacare will be more expensive are also supporting putting all government workers on it. Huh? In either case a bigger trick is being played.
New York Times - A Plan to Avert the Pension Crisis. Municipalities are failing to contribute to their public pensions, that is the bottom line. The real game being played is that civil servants are seeing a better than 10% pay reduction. By having them fully fund their pensions our of their salary, they are constructively seeing a pay cut. We can agree or disagree as to whether or not this is necessary; but, the pension and health care excuse is just that.
NBC News - CNBC - Pandemic of pension woes is plaguing the nation. More of the same.
YouTube - English News Today - Keiser Report: Fake it till you make it or Potemkin Policies.
Now I want to explain how Quantitative Easing works. QE is basically where the Federal Reserve buys up about $85 billion a month in bad mortgage debt. At the same time the Federal Reserve and other central banks throughout the world are also lending money to banks at about 0% interest. The banks take this money and then buy other assets to hold onto that pay 2% interest, for instance. The amount of profit is on the difference between what they borrow the money for and what they either loan it out for or invest it in. The amount made off of the difference is in the hundreds of billions of dollars and is kept by the banks. The Federal Reserve could do the same deal with local municipalities and the profit would then transfer to the municipalities which would then be able to continue services and meet their obligations. That would then increase consumer spending.
This begs the question, why is the Federal Reserve and the federal government failing to help municipalities? In my opinion it is to straighten the power of the Federal government by weakening the strength of states and local governments. Lets look at schools. Schools have traditionally been funded by the local government and were free to set their criteria based on local employment realities. In Detroit all the schools taught auto class. Now schools seek and get federal funding for their programs so long as they follow the federal guidelines. The same thing is now happening with healthcare and you know what, most people will support it. Next up, somehow the federal government is going to take charge of the public pensions, it could happen through bankruptcy proceedings or willingly by offering some sort of guaranteed national pension program insuring all promised benefits that have already vested and putting limitations on future participants. The price tag will be turning over all of the existing assets held by local and state public pensions.
The big move is not about healthcare, it is not about salaries, it is not about public pensions, it is about the federalization of local decision making. That is the real transfer of power. There is and was an alternative. The Federal government "gives" the states money do do what the states should be doing already. If the Federal government taxed less, the states could tax more with no additional burden on the tax payer. If the Federal government charged you 1 cent less on each dollar of income and the states then taxed for just that 1 cent, your total tax is a wash, it is the same; but, the difference is that the control over how the 1 cent was spent would be left up to the states and not the Federal government.
The Federal government now has control over healtcare, water, roads, farming, schooling, the list goes on and on and it is not the way it was 50 years ago. Currently, the biggest bully in the room has been the banks and the game is complete when they get broken up, just like is outlined in the BOE-FDIC paper I previously linked to.
New York Times - Health Care Law Raises Pressure on Public Unions. It is sad how gullible the public is. People who believe that Obamacare will be more expensive are also supporting putting all government workers on it. Huh? In either case a bigger trick is being played.
New York Times - A Plan to Avert the Pension Crisis. Municipalities are failing to contribute to their public pensions, that is the bottom line. The real game being played is that civil servants are seeing a better than 10% pay reduction. By having them fully fund their pensions our of their salary, they are constructively seeing a pay cut. We can agree or disagree as to whether or not this is necessary; but, the pension and health care excuse is just that.
NBC News - CNBC - Pandemic of pension woes is plaguing the nation. More of the same.
YouTube - English News Today - Keiser Report: Fake it till you make it or Potemkin Policies.
Now I want to explain how Quantitative Easing works. QE is basically where the Federal Reserve buys up about $85 billion a month in bad mortgage debt. At the same time the Federal Reserve and other central banks throughout the world are also lending money to banks at about 0% interest. The banks take this money and then buy other assets to hold onto that pay 2% interest, for instance. The amount of profit is on the difference between what they borrow the money for and what they either loan it out for or invest it in. The amount made off of the difference is in the hundreds of billions of dollars and is kept by the banks. The Federal Reserve could do the same deal with local municipalities and the profit would then transfer to the municipalities which would then be able to continue services and meet their obligations. That would then increase consumer spending.
This begs the question, why is the Federal Reserve and the federal government failing to help municipalities? In my opinion it is to straighten the power of the Federal government by weakening the strength of states and local governments. Lets look at schools. Schools have traditionally been funded by the local government and were free to set their criteria based on local employment realities. In Detroit all the schools taught auto class. Now schools seek and get federal funding for their programs so long as they follow the federal guidelines. The same thing is now happening with healthcare and you know what, most people will support it. Next up, somehow the federal government is going to take charge of the public pensions, it could happen through bankruptcy proceedings or willingly by offering some sort of guaranteed national pension program insuring all promised benefits that have already vested and putting limitations on future participants. The price tag will be turning over all of the existing assets held by local and state public pensions.
The big move is not about healthcare, it is not about salaries, it is not about public pensions, it is about the federalization of local decision making. That is the real transfer of power. There is and was an alternative. The Federal government "gives" the states money do do what the states should be doing already. If the Federal government taxed less, the states could tax more with no additional burden on the tax payer. If the Federal government charged you 1 cent less on each dollar of income and the states then taxed for just that 1 cent, your total tax is a wash, it is the same; but, the difference is that the control over how the 1 cent was spent would be left up to the states and not the Federal government.
The Federal government now has control over healtcare, water, roads, farming, schooling, the list goes on and on and it is not the way it was 50 years ago. Currently, the biggest bully in the room has been the banks and the game is complete when they get broken up, just like is outlined in the BOE-FDIC paper I previously linked to.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Terror Threats and the Economy
So here is the headline from Fox News - State Department to keep some embassies closed, as lawmakers say terror threat 'specific’ and ‘serious'
.
The article has this little line within it. "Rooney's comments followed Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press" that the threats are "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11." Apparently, nobody has a memory. After 9-11 we were told that the intelligence agencies had failed because they didn't see anything coming. Now here is an interesting fact, if the President believes their is the possibility of an imminent attack, he gets to activate certain military groups and FEMA. Well friends, we are now on an alert. But, what if the real threat is not an imminent attack; but, was instead an imminent failure of the banking system? The preparations are basically the same.
YouTube - Keiser Report: Financial Tapeworms (E479)
YouTube - Big Bro 'genius' algorithms - Gerald Celente on Keiser Report
Mail Online - Consulates and the Vatican in chaos as HSBC tells them to find another bank. This is very very suspect. Basically, HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world was money laundering for drug cartels in south America and has to pay a $2 billion fine. Their reaction was to tell foreign embassies that they were no longer allowed to be a customer of the bank. How are those two things connected? They are not, we are told they are but it makes no sense. Oh, and they only have 60 days to get their money out.
What if there was something else going on. What if they are preparing for bail ins? Who wants to be the one that has to "bail in" a foreign countries embassy? That my friends would be an act of war. Stealing a nations money is an act of war. Here is something else to consider, this only made the papers today; but, the embassies were notified almost two months ago according to the article which says that the money must be moved by mid-August.
UPDATE:
There is a point to what I wrote above. The LIBOR scandal cost the world hundreds of billions, we don't even have a way to calculate how much was stolen from you and I. The banking system was manipulated in a manner that effected every loan's interest rate. The manipulation of the stock market, the commodities markets, the insurance markets and every other market has cost the world more than all of the wars we are currently engaged in. I want you to think about that. Maybe they should have a threat alert for the financial industry everytime they steal from us.
How many millions of people have lost their homes and jobs because of an economic system that rewards banks for making risky investments with your money and that allows them to keep the profits? The current economic system is un-sustainable (I hate to use that word) and procedures have been put in place for un-winding it, I have published links to those from the IMF, BOE, FDIC and others.
There is both a book and a movie called, "Gone With The Wind". It is about the Civil War; but, it is really about something more. It is about when a society goes through a complete change in power structure and format. We will see that great a change in our lifetime, in many ways we already have. When I was young, the United States was the industrial powerhouse of the world and now it is not. When I was young the United States was the country from which most of the world's new inventions came. The United States was the place to be because if you worked hard, kept your nose clean and acted responsibly, eventually, you could retire, and have your own home while your wife raised your kids in a safe community. That was the dream and that was the deal.
I could not tell my kids with a straight face that they have the opportunity to do as I did. You ever wonder why there are all these news articles about how college doesn't pay for itself lately? At the same time the most expensive colleges are making major outlays for new facilities. In the future we will see more and more colleges go away as fewer and fewer people can afford to go and those that do go will spend more and more for luxury.
We are about to fail and then we will restructure. When we restructure, it will be under a new set of rules. When a society restructures there are new opportunities and to be successful, you have to figure out what those will be. I believe the new "American Dream" will look as follows:
If you are entertaining (sports, art, video) you can live well.
If you can make apps that save people time or money, you can live well.
If you are incredibly brilliant and learn to do something that others cannot, you will live well.
If you are one of the insiders, you will live well.
If you are willing to police others or be in the military, you will get by as long as you continue doing so.
The best that our kids can hope for is to be able to get a 250 square foot apartment from 18 to 30 while being of use. If they continue to be useful, they can move into a 600 square foot apartment with their significant other and maybe even have a kid who is in daycare while the two of you work. The poor will live in the suburbs and the better off will live in the city.
Who is to blame, it is not Muslims. The future of America was caused by those who stopped caring about the country and seeing themselves as citizens of the United States and see themselves as citizens of the world, globalists. It is a mindset and justification for not helping their fellow citizens. Globalism does not believe in nationalism, in community. It is a vague concept that they care about everyone.
I go to this store about once a day, it is always promoting some charity and each time I go I contribute. I don't get a tax receipt for it at the end of the year; but, they know how much I contribute. Instead, the company takes the tax deduction for my contribution. These companies say they are worried that if they pay more than minimum wage or it goes up that they will not be able to hire anyone. Yet, they are willing to pay out money to charities. Have you ever thought about that, you see, they don't give out of concern, they give because they get a tax deduction. Everytime you buy something at certain stores (the one's that say that X percent of every purchase goes to charity), your gift is counted as the stores gift and they get a tax deduction for your gift. It causes the cost of your purchase to go up; but, the people who work for minimum wage don't get a raise.
Lets try this another way. If people who worked at McDonalds in New York got twice what they are now paid, it would make the cost of a burger go up about 7%; but, is not a tax deduction for McDonalds, no benefit to the company. Now if you paid McDonalds an extra 3% for each burger and they gave that money to a charity, they get a deduction. Does that make sense from a societal standpoint. I mean McDonalds could take that extra 3% and spend it on charities in other countries and still get the deduction.
Think about it this way. You pay an extra 3% on each purchase so that the company you buy from can increase their profit by 6% by deducting your charitable contribution from their costs. Would you be willing to pay a 3% increase if it went to McDonalds employees? In the end we all employ each other.
ANOTHER UPDATE:
Please do not assume that every charitable contribution by a company is the same. I recently wrote about a family that gave a multi-million dollar car to be auctioned by charity. They gave the car away, it is not a tax write off in the same way. Their father bought the car with his earnings, he never intended to sell and never did. His family kept the car even after he died, it is not the same as a company structuring itself to benefit from the charitable contributions of it's customers. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates did not have to give a penny to charity, they did not do it from their corporations for tax breaks, they gave their own wealth away.
.
The article has this little line within it. "Rooney's comments followed Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press" that the threats are "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11." Apparently, nobody has a memory. After 9-11 we were told that the intelligence agencies had failed because they didn't see anything coming. Now here is an interesting fact, if the President believes their is the possibility of an imminent attack, he gets to activate certain military groups and FEMA. Well friends, we are now on an alert. But, what if the real threat is not an imminent attack; but, was instead an imminent failure of the banking system? The preparations are basically the same.
YouTube - Keiser Report: Financial Tapeworms (E479)
YouTube - Big Bro 'genius' algorithms - Gerald Celente on Keiser Report
Mail Online - Consulates and the Vatican in chaos as HSBC tells them to find another bank. This is very very suspect. Basically, HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world was money laundering for drug cartels in south America and has to pay a $2 billion fine. Their reaction was to tell foreign embassies that they were no longer allowed to be a customer of the bank. How are those two things connected? They are not, we are told they are but it makes no sense. Oh, and they only have 60 days to get their money out.
What if there was something else going on. What if they are preparing for bail ins? Who wants to be the one that has to "bail in" a foreign countries embassy? That my friends would be an act of war. Stealing a nations money is an act of war. Here is something else to consider, this only made the papers today; but, the embassies were notified almost two months ago according to the article which says that the money must be moved by mid-August.
UPDATE:
There is a point to what I wrote above. The LIBOR scandal cost the world hundreds of billions, we don't even have a way to calculate how much was stolen from you and I. The banking system was manipulated in a manner that effected every loan's interest rate. The manipulation of the stock market, the commodities markets, the insurance markets and every other market has cost the world more than all of the wars we are currently engaged in. I want you to think about that. Maybe they should have a threat alert for the financial industry everytime they steal from us.
How many millions of people have lost their homes and jobs because of an economic system that rewards banks for making risky investments with your money and that allows them to keep the profits? The current economic system is un-sustainable (I hate to use that word) and procedures have been put in place for un-winding it, I have published links to those from the IMF, BOE, FDIC and others.
There is both a book and a movie called, "Gone With The Wind". It is about the Civil War; but, it is really about something more. It is about when a society goes through a complete change in power structure and format. We will see that great a change in our lifetime, in many ways we already have. When I was young, the United States was the industrial powerhouse of the world and now it is not. When I was young the United States was the country from which most of the world's new inventions came. The United States was the place to be because if you worked hard, kept your nose clean and acted responsibly, eventually, you could retire, and have your own home while your wife raised your kids in a safe community. That was the dream and that was the deal.
I could not tell my kids with a straight face that they have the opportunity to do as I did. You ever wonder why there are all these news articles about how college doesn't pay for itself lately? At the same time the most expensive colleges are making major outlays for new facilities. In the future we will see more and more colleges go away as fewer and fewer people can afford to go and those that do go will spend more and more for luxury.
We are about to fail and then we will restructure. When we restructure, it will be under a new set of rules. When a society restructures there are new opportunities and to be successful, you have to figure out what those will be. I believe the new "American Dream" will look as follows:
If you are entertaining (sports, art, video) you can live well.
If you can make apps that save people time or money, you can live well.
If you are incredibly brilliant and learn to do something that others cannot, you will live well.
If you are one of the insiders, you will live well.
If you are willing to police others or be in the military, you will get by as long as you continue doing so.
The best that our kids can hope for is to be able to get a 250 square foot apartment from 18 to 30 while being of use. If they continue to be useful, they can move into a 600 square foot apartment with their significant other and maybe even have a kid who is in daycare while the two of you work. The poor will live in the suburbs and the better off will live in the city.
Who is to blame, it is not Muslims. The future of America was caused by those who stopped caring about the country and seeing themselves as citizens of the United States and see themselves as citizens of the world, globalists. It is a mindset and justification for not helping their fellow citizens. Globalism does not believe in nationalism, in community. It is a vague concept that they care about everyone.
I go to this store about once a day, it is always promoting some charity and each time I go I contribute. I don't get a tax receipt for it at the end of the year; but, they know how much I contribute. Instead, the company takes the tax deduction for my contribution. These companies say they are worried that if they pay more than minimum wage or it goes up that they will not be able to hire anyone. Yet, they are willing to pay out money to charities. Have you ever thought about that, you see, they don't give out of concern, they give because they get a tax deduction. Everytime you buy something at certain stores (the one's that say that X percent of every purchase goes to charity), your gift is counted as the stores gift and they get a tax deduction for your gift. It causes the cost of your purchase to go up; but, the people who work for minimum wage don't get a raise.
Lets try this another way. If people who worked at McDonalds in New York got twice what they are now paid, it would make the cost of a burger go up about 7%; but, is not a tax deduction for McDonalds, no benefit to the company. Now if you paid McDonalds an extra 3% for each burger and they gave that money to a charity, they get a deduction. Does that make sense from a societal standpoint. I mean McDonalds could take that extra 3% and spend it on charities in other countries and still get the deduction.
Think about it this way. You pay an extra 3% on each purchase so that the company you buy from can increase their profit by 6% by deducting your charitable contribution from their costs. Would you be willing to pay a 3% increase if it went to McDonalds employees? In the end we all employ each other.
ANOTHER UPDATE:
Please do not assume that every charitable contribution by a company is the same. I recently wrote about a family that gave a multi-million dollar car to be auctioned by charity. They gave the car away, it is not a tax write off in the same way. Their father bought the car with his earnings, he never intended to sell and never did. His family kept the car even after he died, it is not the same as a company structuring itself to benefit from the charitable contributions of it's customers. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates did not have to give a penny to charity, they did not do it from their corporations for tax breaks, they gave their own wealth away.
Just some stuff
Yahoo - Should apes have legal rights?. This is a trick, it is not my trick; but, I see it for what it is. Scream and yell about how animals should not have the same rights as humans. Or, if you prefer, scream and yell how all animals the same rights. Both sides are wrong. The question is, at what point is something human and deserving of "human rights">
I love my dog and it is still a dog. He will not cure cancer or have the same thoughts or feelings as a human, he is just a dog. Dogs can love and dogs can have pain; but, they cannot have the complexity of choices that we face in our lives. They have less influence over the universe, nature and others as we do. Rights come with responsibilities and dogs just are not that responsible.
So what do you do with a human-dog hybrid? That is the question we will need to address in the future. There was a movie called, "The Fly", good film. It was about a man who ended up being genetically fused with a fly. He ends up being more an more physically like a fly; but, in the end retains his human heart. Is that possible, can we be less human and still human? If you are genetically modified so that you have eagle eyes, are you still "human"? In the end, the question is not what it means to be an animal, the question is what does it mean to be human? If we brought back neanderthal, what rights would we give them?
Lets say that we traveled the universe and came upon a dead planet. On the planet we find lots of skeletons from all kinds of animals. We also find some devices that have gears and movement. The skeletons would not tell us which of the animals made the devices; but, we would know that at least of the animals on that planet had deserved some rights and had something more than just learned responses. At least one of the animals would have to had wisdom and insight.
Yahoo - Reuters - Doctor prescribes healthcare cost savings plans to governors. This is just so predictable. We have an aging population and with it comes increasing costs for healthcare. That should be obvious. The solution is to have the elderly go to the hospital less. The trade off is that the sandwich generation (that includes me) will get their parents home; but, will have to care for their parents and take their kids in too. There are not enough doctors and nurses to go around and trade offs will be made. For me, my parents are dead along with the rest of my elders.
These two articles are about real issues that we will all have to face over the next few years. Think deeply about what they mean rather than being surprised when you have to participate in the decision. Think first. Know what is coming and plan accordingly. The Powers that Be expect us all to be selfish and reactive and many of us are; but, I believe in us, in humanity and I believe we can continue to grow naturally and be better.
I love my dog and it is still a dog. He will not cure cancer or have the same thoughts or feelings as a human, he is just a dog. Dogs can love and dogs can have pain; but, they cannot have the complexity of choices that we face in our lives. They have less influence over the universe, nature and others as we do. Rights come with responsibilities and dogs just are not that responsible.
So what do you do with a human-dog hybrid? That is the question we will need to address in the future. There was a movie called, "The Fly", good film. It was about a man who ended up being genetically fused with a fly. He ends up being more an more physically like a fly; but, in the end retains his human heart. Is that possible, can we be less human and still human? If you are genetically modified so that you have eagle eyes, are you still "human"? In the end, the question is not what it means to be an animal, the question is what does it mean to be human? If we brought back neanderthal, what rights would we give them?
Lets say that we traveled the universe and came upon a dead planet. On the planet we find lots of skeletons from all kinds of animals. We also find some devices that have gears and movement. The skeletons would not tell us which of the animals made the devices; but, we would know that at least of the animals on that planet had deserved some rights and had something more than just learned responses. At least one of the animals would have to had wisdom and insight.
Yahoo - Reuters - Doctor prescribes healthcare cost savings plans to governors. This is just so predictable. We have an aging population and with it comes increasing costs for healthcare. That should be obvious. The solution is to have the elderly go to the hospital less. The trade off is that the sandwich generation (that includes me) will get their parents home; but, will have to care for their parents and take their kids in too. There are not enough doctors and nurses to go around and trade offs will be made. For me, my parents are dead along with the rest of my elders.
These two articles are about real issues that we will all have to face over the next few years. Think deeply about what they mean rather than being surprised when you have to participate in the decision. Think first. Know what is coming and plan accordingly. The Powers that Be expect us all to be selfish and reactive and many of us are; but, I believe in us, in humanity and I believe we can continue to grow naturally and be better.
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