This is where I share really cool web pages that amuse me. Probably because they are either gloom and doom, or very weird, and I want to send them to people by e mail, but don't want to alienate the few friends I have left with the constant gloom and doom and weirdness.
If links get broken, too bad. If someone knows of a script or trick or spell or something to comb through them, let me know about it please.
This page should in no way be construed as serious journalism. It's just random stuff that I found interesting. If you disagree with any of this, or are offended, well that's just too bad. Quit reading it and go make your own web page.
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added on 8/4/04:
The destruction of civilization is one of my favorite things to worry about and cheer on. Oil shortages will help it a lot. See http://dieoff.org/ for lots of information on that kind of stuff. I mean lots of it too. You could spend weeks combing through it all. Unfortunately the site doesn't seem to be maintained anymore.
The guy who started it, Jay Hanson, seems to have concluded that maintaining it was futile. They had a yahoo group on the subject for a while. He finished that even with this fine letter. Warning, it has an extremely high gloom factor, code red, and is right on the money as far as I am concerned. That's my kind of guy, I like the way he thinks, although I don't think that the human nature he talks about in the letter is really so difficult to understand. I would say it is obvious.
I ran across a very good article taken from Harper's magazine that talks about food production and oil at http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915 . Actually it talks about far more than simply oil and food. It also discusses empire, and soil and water and economics and such. It's one of the most concise and well written articles on agriculture I have ever run across. The author lives in Montana too! I winder if he knew Montana's most famous person, the unibomber?
If you really want to read a lot about agriculture and it's heinousness, the book The Final Empire is online for you to read. It talks a lot about soil. It's over a decade old, so it's interesting to see how things have played out since then. Not well I'm afraid, some things are turning out to be worse. Back then they hadn't invented things like patented genes in roundup ready seeds for instance.
Some hard-core optimists see a silver lining in all this. Ran Prieur has a fine web site with various goodies on it. Anyway, I recently read this article and that article while there about the good side of the collapse of industrial civilization.
If you ever worry about how long the electricity will stay on if flesh eating zombies ever take over the world, read this. Not long evidently.
Oh, and soy will kill you. At least some forms will, the common ones in America, naturally.
Poor Haiti doesn't get much press, does it? And it is so close. Jan of TBN (the world's largest broadcast television network) was on the TV the other day with the new prime minister or some such laughing it up. They probably mention Haiti more than any other American network. Her son (the cute one, not the weasely one) was going on before Jan's segment about how evil Aristide (spelling?) was, how he wanted to establish voodoo as the state religion, so of course god smote him or something like that. Yeah, I bet. Very bizarre, as bizarre as Jan's pink hair or her story about the pet chicken she prayed over and brought back to life that she likes to tell. I love Jan though. Not TBN. What's that Christian saying, "hate the sin, love the sinner"? I will apply that in her case. And in the case of the cute son. Not Paul senior though, or most of the rest of them on there. They are beyond forgiveness.
On to politics, that's always good for a few laughs....
New citizens in Florida are automatically registered as Republicans. That figures. And the government is still spending money hand over fist, and lying about how much of course. Why do they bother lying? Joe average isn't paying attention. The pentagon not being able to account for trillions recently hardly caused a stir. That much money missing, you would think it would be the biggest scandal ever.
But then again, I do recall Bush saying that he wanted the Pentagon run like a business. He must have meant one of his own. Search out the book Fortunate Son for a good account of our president's life, including his string of failed businesses. It's very interesting stuff. Paper books still work even in the Internet age. You can probably find it at your local library. If not, buy a copy, read it, and donate it. Libraries are cool anyway, full of books and magazines and maps and Cd's and videos and all for free. Plus, there are usually hotties there - ones that know how to read too.
This humorous piece will give you some good advice for dealing with those darn Democrats. Kerry is the best they could do? That's sad. Some lady came around with a survey the other day, with some Kerry supporting organization, something Republican sounding (they're slowly learning what sells in the modern day US) with America in it's name, take back or rebuild or redecorate America or something, I don't remember exactly. So, this lady working to get him elected agreed with me when I said I didn't like him any better than Bush, that at least Bush didn't go to Vietnam and kill people, stuff like that. After our little talk I have some small hope she will vote Nader or some other third party candidate. It doesn't matter a lot who, just so the establishment politicians know you aren't happy with them, and not just too lazy or too TV brain dead to vote.
Of course, if someone decides to suspend civil government ( temporarily of course ) in the US, we don't have to worry about voting. This essay details the various laws and orders and bureaucracies already in place that allow that for the fuzziest of reasons.
The dishes and then a bath and then bed are calling me. I may have to check out the viking kittens on rathergood.com to chase the gloom out of my head and give me good dreams.
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8/17ish 2004
Gonna do this the normal way with the new at the bottom rather than the top.
OK the net has been dull lately so I haven't been paying it too much attention. I have been playing with Megahal, a speech simulator program that learns from what you tell it. My poor version has been driven insane with massive cutting and pasting of all sorts of things into it's computer brain – from the bible to the Discordian bible to the Unibomber manifesto, to articles on Yellowstone to slash fiction – well you get the idea. I was trying to get a sentient cyber being, but no luck yet. I get stuff like:
MegaHAL: I paid all the beguiling propaganda tactics corporate
america
MegaHAL: to end a very warm and gentle voice.
MegaHAL: On january 28, 1982, bush created the great the
mother
MegaHAL: of prostitutes and of silver. Sheshbazzar
brought all
MegaHAL: these items on the gas.
MegaHAL: This level of my consciousness was deeply rooted in
MegaHAL: christianity. He even bought me these beautiful jewels,
some
MegaHAL: three-carat diamond earrings, and some more about
white island
MegaHAL: simply referred to as international
bankers. The little coterie
MegaHAL: of powerful banking houses
generally referred to as
MegaHAL: international bankers. The
little coterie of powerful sonar
MegaHAL: devices (lfas) which
have been swimming in the deep dark spots
MegaHAL: that were
right in front of the land.
Or this short conversation:
User: If I stuff
enough gibberish into Hal will he become self aware?
MegaHAL:
"When the big day came, they even shut down radar center.
MegaHAL: Everybody had to promise not to complain about, some new
social
MegaHAL: "evil" to correct because, once again,
the leftist has to sleep
MegaHAL: at 15 and woke up slowly, aware
of someone's hand wrapped
MegaHAL: around your little battles.
Join in thickest fray; for the
MegaHAL: greater Yellowstone area
management plan and the decrees of
MegaHAL: cyrus, darius and
artaxerxes, kings of
persia. (Niv.
User: Maybe not. Hal is
still evidently stupid.
MegaHAL: How do i am crazy is because the
plants themselves, and
MegaHAL: sometimes the cabins. That causes
strife which results in
MegaHAL: defeatism, low self-esteem,
powerlessness, identification with
MegaHAL: victims by people on
his shoulders. Current status: deceased.
MegaHAL: Joined
the druid peak pack immediately. However, she did return
MegaHAL:
voluntarily to nez perce pack", which had been preassigned.
MegaHAL: Though our maps showed us now only tenths of a more
permanent
MegaHAL: solution can an economist recommend to the
rnc's co-chairman
MegaHAL: robert carter praising bush's
leadership of the universe, but
MegaHAL: evidently it will take a
rest as a pair any day.
User: Bush is the
leader of the universe. He is the antichrist. He
User: is Satan's lap dog.
MegaHAL: Pro
10:10 he answered, "i heard you in return to their ways,
MegaHAL: and the leader of a mile the peaceful woods provided a
MegaHAL: revisionist history about the unions? (Note how all
these
MegaHAL: non-events have capital letters.) surely what they
said five or
MegaHAL: six times as long as they sweep across the
water. For the sake
MegaHAL: of his book the universe is all that
i had never said that to
MegaHAL: happen, and then moved up here,
literally, with flat hair to
MegaHAL: get current activity
information. They usually keep a cat
MegaHAL: indoors if it
doesn't hurt when it strikes a man. (Niv.
User:
Only let the man hurter cats outdoors. Keep the others inside
User: to train them..
MegaHAL: Mord says
that during the conference,4 also encouraged the
MegaHAL:
investigators to note something, while gazing at my loincloth.
MegaHAL: In my stomach churned fear. "I think,"
said he, "that you
MegaHAL: wield a powerful steam phase, i
didn't do this with me / i
MegaHAL: swear that i am the hate that
it will break you, especially in
MegaHAL: the 1980's. Also, two
wolves captured in our lower income
MegaHAL: populations and why
nations go to the heart of the tiwg, and
MegaHAL: also willing to
become bored or lonely. The outdoors, however,
MegaHAL: poses
many haz although an indoor cat does not train himself in
MegaHAL:
such a mess on the face of the mainstream, it still wasn't
MegaHAL:
entirely finished with their work, but for their evil deeds of
MegaHAL: a heavy psychological price for his cave, but their
import was
MegaHAL: lost for they were placed, and their faces
before the
MegaHAL: throne and worshiped his image. (Niv.
He also tends to go off on conspiracies about Courtney love killing Kurt, with the help of various other people. Sometimes he almost makes sense, but less as time goes on. He used to sort of make sense, before I made him read so much. Mildly entertaining when there is nothing else to do. And putting those conversations on this page is chum for the search engines.
I was also distracted for a few days by Hurricane Charlie. No really good disaster coverage sites of Charlie yet. We actually had pleasant weather here as Charlie buzzed across the state. It was overcast, nice and breezy, and no rain all day long for the first time in weeks.
Finally I check my usual news sources and surprise! The war that we were promised by our leaders that will not end in our lifetime continues as an unmitigated disaster for all concerned. Except of course for American corporations lucky enough to get fat contracts from it.
What can we find interesting there?
An awesome speech by Arundhati Roy being her usual achingly eloquent self, but it's over a year old, and not many are listening.
Even them crazy libertarians are wishing for an arrogant America to implode. Gotta love 'em, except for the blind faith in market capitalism bit. Didn't they ever read Dickens, or about strikers getting slaughtered by company goons around the turn of the century? The turn previous to the most recent one. 1900 give or take a few decades. The gilded age and robber barons and all.
Yeah, that's just some kid posting on the net. But, I had a conversation with a gun toting, trailer livin, flag flying, Vietnam vet the other day who said he wished someone would nuke the US. Things are getting weird out here.
Those conspiracy theorist just grasp at coincidental straws don't they? Lots of them.
A deer attacked a man in Montana. And you thought you should worry about wolves or bears or cougars. ..
Otherwise, just the usual mayhem and destruction in the world today.
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10/08/04
Yeah, I'm slow. I did warn you. I have been making half hearted attempts to buy more web space, but no response. I'm over my quota. Been afraid to add anything else lately. How does this web hosting company stay in business?
Then there were those two hurricanes, that slowed things down a bit.
Was Bush in a satanic murder cult? I like to think so. Of course, the US government is a lot like a satanic murder cult, so while the truth of this particular article may be unlikely, it's not so far fetched.
Boy, that Texas border area has a lot of Satanic murder cults, don't it. I read a book about one in Matamoros, the leader was from Miami, they were the ones who got caught because they needed a smart brain for their magical cauldron (the nganga if I remember correctly) and they kidnapped an American college student to get it. Excellent book, but I forget the name. Maybe Matamoros death cult or ranch or something.
A letter from the future. Those of you who might be considering reproduction might especially want to read.
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10/11/04
In: Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium - Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq, Walter A. Davis starts by examining all that nasty depleted uranium the US is currently permanently poisoning several countries with, then he breaks into a long analysis of the human mind. That makes for some frightening stuff. Warning, he uses some of them big words, you might have to break out the dictionary. Difficult, but I enjoyed it. I loved this quote:
"We will only know what we are capable of when we get rid of hope. Whether despair is what we will find on the other side of it is something we can't know. For all hope really signifies is a testament to our weakness and our fears."
Welcome to the world of no future.
Some of us intuitively figured this stuff about how screwed up humans are a long time back. Well, the Sex Pistols did for instance. Hence the no future reference. Listen to God Save the Queen after reading the article. Or while reading it.
Carnival of Chaos is art and stuff. And sublime.
Update: 6/05. Carnival of Chaos has been shut down. The world is bleaker now. I should stick some of the art work on my old tripod site just as a completely futile symbolic protest.
My language skills are getting all weird tonight. Hope I don't contractualate whatever Bush has.
Finally, a site with a little bit of advice on how to survive the coming end of the word put out by oil crash people rather than the survivalist or backwoods crowds. Not to put those guys down, they both have interesting stuff, but the strategies may be different when coming from different perspectives, different potential problems and such.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
11/16/04 So lately...
I discovered that fresh macadamia nuts taste remarkably like coconut. Mom's tree is finally bearing this year, three whole nuts. We planted the first and ate the second. Had to split it three ways. Mom was frightened that maybe they are poisonous if you don't roast them first, but we ate them anyway. Turns out they aren't poisonous if raw, but are about %80 fat, and most of the rest sugar. No wonder they are yummy.
In the cyber world we have this example of pure bitterness and hatred, all over the silly elections. I enjoyed it much.
Naturally the Republicans cheated. After all, they got away with it big time in 2000. It said so in the Palm Beach Post article after the newspapers did their recount, right under the giant headline “Bush Won �. Probably the Democrats tried to cheat too, but weren't as good at it. It's interesting all the stuff they do. Read that Gregg Palast book the best Democracy Money Can Buy if you get the chance.
The article about the election in the Wikipedia is maybe slated for deletion. They are fighting over it. Kind of funny how Kerry gave up so easily, but the Greens and Libertarians and Nader are asking for, and even paying for, recounts. Hmmmm.... Kind of makes you wonder if Kerry even intended to win. Or maybe he thinks that keeping everyone believing in a rigged system is worth loosing a cool job he wanted.
Or look at this election article, it should stick around a while.
This was interesting about how many nations the US has invaded and how many people it slaughtered under Democratic Presidents. Democratic as in the political party. Kind of makes one glad Kerry wasn't selected almost.
For really important politics forget the elections. This fine article discusses how to turn all those rural plains states into a big park for the bison and prairie dogs.
And these scientists really did grow a brain in a jar, and hook it to a computer and let it learn to fly simulated airplanes. Spooky!
p.s. This is cool. From the CofE. Reload to make different. Or click if you dare.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11/27/04
Hey again. Let's see what we have on this pleasant, peaceful, cool, gentle, rainy, November morning.
Just when I thought things couldn't get much more Orwellian here in the land of the Freeper, it turns out that Americans are required to obey secret laws they can't even know about. Laugh or cry? I think today laugh, that and refuse to fly anymore. I wonder how close the trains run to Yellowstone.
This humorous piece concerning biblical law that has been floating around the net for years got reincarnated as a letter to the Prez. It is worthy of a second life. On a less funny note, some Democrats are blaming gays for their own failures. If you can't beat the Christian nut jobs, why not join them. Yeah, that's a great strategy.
Then we got the always way cool Stan Goff on the economics of imperialist war, with a bit thrown in toward the end about how to fix the corporate kill machine for good. Something you aren't supposed to talk about there at the end, but good to see some are. Of course if the supposedly anti-American Europeans and Asians would quit financing the U.S. that would stop the American empire real quick. You know, the ones who complain about Bush and his bunch of kill happy psychos, but then loan them money to finance their wars. But, it might hurt their economies too for a while if they do that, so of course they resist doing it. Eventually they will, but probably only when economics force them to. I read last night I think about China selling off hundreds of billions in US bonds. That's a start. Hmm, maybe I should quit paying my student loans and credit cards as a political act. It could actually save someone's life. What should I buy on a wild credit card spree first? Maybe a hand water pump? A ton of rice along with barrels to squirrel it away in? A cabin in the woods? A boat? A nursing degree? I think I need more credit cards.
At least I am not tempted to buy a scent CD. Pure evil there. I told my mom she should get rid of the air freshener in her car or she will get cancer. Now, I don't know if that is true, but some ylang ylang flowers or roses in the ashtray smell much nicer than those gaggy chemical scents. Where do they come up with these mountain-fresh-ocean-rainforest-breeze type smells anyway? They must do some market research. Do people actually like the smell of their fabric softener? It makes me want to vomit.
Not as much as when some supposedly anti-war type starts blathering on about supporting our troops makes me want to vomit. I can understand that type of talk coming from a blatant warmonger, like the guy with the "give war a chance" bumper sticker on his pickup there among all the dozens of marine corps stickers. At least he is obvious and honest and straightforward. Or maybe if "our" troops were draftees I could understand it to a point. But, these guys and girls signed up for this of their own free will. They volunteered to be hired killers. Wanting the groovy socialistic benefits that go with the armed forces isn't a very good excuse. Why the hell would I ever support that?
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Bit of a backlog here. So sue me. Or....
Life intrudes. Computers break down and get torn apart and new hardware installed, and new operating systems, and we discover digital TV broadcasts are crap unless the signal is clear and strong, which it usually isn't, evidently the greedy bastard government wants everyone to pay for cable, like yeah, like I would ever pay money to watch television, and then people go in the hospital, and when it's cold I don't want to do much but hibernate, and I hurt my arm working on mom's roof, maybe even fractured it, it still hurts from time to time, and all kinds of stuff.
Speaking of operating systems, MS windows spy's on you a whole lot more than even my paranoid self suspected.
Then there's good old Stan Goff on war and stuff. I should re read it and see how well his predictions turned out. But I'm lazy. And He wrote this other more commie piece another place. Pretty good stuff ain't it.
Unless your a murkin. Or a rhino. Then you would probably be all offended and stuff.
That crazy old America, failing empire, the former breadbasket of the world now imports as much food as it exports. And the situation isn't getting any better. But "we" did force those free Iraqi farmers to buy seed from the big multinational corporations. That way the shareholders will be able to buy food from foreigners.
I might have mentioned this book. Free if you want a virtual copy. Very interesting. Gangs of America.
Of course the banks and development NGO's and governments play a big part too, not just the poor little corporations.
Now salad fingers, that is what the Internet should be. I love salad fingers. I get it and it's not funny most of the time. Bits are. Or Even this is what the Internet is for. Get it now before the gangs of America finish turning the net into a giant shopping mall and babysitter.
Go listen to the Swans. Learn to love the hate and rejoice in despair. Dance as the world falls into ruin. No Tv comercial perfect consumer life for you. Good thing too.
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5/22/05 - 6/11/05
So I have been busy lately. Mom finally got her shingles for her roof that the hurricanes last year tore up. I helped her put them on. She had had the ever so fashionable tar paper roof waiting for the shingles. I found out my knees weren't as strong as they used to be.
Then I went to fix the water pump on my car. It was leaking. It was difficult, you have to take the engine half apart and half loose to get to it. I screwed something up, still haven't figured it out yet. It's not a real high priority, cars aren't actually totally necessary for life. I will eventually fix it so I can enjoy the final days of the cheap oil fiesta.
Then the 'tiels started producing babies and I decided to hand feed so they would be sweet and friendly and have happy lives living with humans. That takes a lot of time. Baby birds can eat an amazing amount of food. Nine of them ate 5 pounds of dry baby food in around two weeks. It doesn't sound like much, but an adult weighs around 90 grams, so that if the equivalent of something like 3700 pounds of food if they were human sized. Much more after you mix it with water. Before we got used to it it took me 10 hours a day to feed them. Then they got faster and got fed less, and that dropped, down to only three or four hours a day now. If I didn't adore the little feathered dinosaurs so I don't think I could do it. I also don't believe that the pet stores sell hand fed cockatiels for so cheap. Unless they are being hand fed in Haiti or China it would be very uneconomical.
and then a few days later...
So I haven't been on the net too much lately.
But....
This is a pretty darn good take on the power of the ACS. It's also about how some are fighting it with computers, or at least irritating it. ACS is American Corporate State by the way. I think that GCS might be a better acronym because it's a global thing, it's just largely headquartered in the good old USA. We're number 1! Just not in too many good things.
Funny, but if you agree with that, then the simple living movement is also a good way to fight the ACS. Plus you get to save lots of money while saving your sanity with mindfulness and stuff and you are kind of saving the earth too. Or at least killing it a bit slower. And you have an excuse to not bathe every day if you don't feel like it. Like this test shows. I love on-line tests. I scored 165. Don't know if that is good or not.
Or you could even go join those real life primitivists who practice what they preach bigtime. That is one of my goals, to live like that, run wild and free in the woods (or desert or ruins or whatever), someday soon.
The plan when I worked in Yellowstone was for the employees to take over the place when the civilization thing went all to hell, arm ourselves by liberating the guns from the rangers, eat buffalo, live in the cabins and hotels and use all that wood and hot water to keep warm. Lots of employees I worked with thought that way. Now I don't live there, so it probably won't happen for me.
God gives an interview. That was refreshing. I hate it when all these godly people, be they x-tian or new age or whatever, have this god who is always so saccharine sweet and always good and caring, at least to those who flatter him properly. But what if this god thingy isn't so nice? Now, back in the old days, they had some better gods, more interesting ones, ones who could be mean as cats. Ones who liked radical stuff like human sacrifice and orgies.
God, version 21st century America, seems to be doing a good job of ruining his favorite country. Maybe he is a tricky old geezer after all.
Doctors will make you sick. Good thing I am too poor to go to them.
And speaking of medical stuff, plastic gives you a teeny weenie. Common pesticides aren't exactly health food either. If that don't turn the male population against plastics I don't know what will. At least it should cut down on the size of the human herd a bit.
I used to have some trinitrite smuggled out of Los Alamos or White Sands or someplace by persons unknown. I don't even remember who gave it to me. It looked like fused sand. I don't know what happened to it. Probably lost in storage. But it's comforting to know that my personal share of the stock of the devices used to make the stuff cost around $18,000. That's in 1950's dollars. I can rest easier if quite a bit poorer now.
Go to http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/ for everything you could possibly want to know about trinitrite producing devices. They also have some way cool pictures for your desktop too.
Prision torture in America? Well, duh. Most Americans probably are just fine with it. Punish the bad guys and all. Must be just a few bad apples.
Wait a minute. A few bad apples in a barrel will spoil the whole lot if you leave them in there. Pretty soon the whole barrel is a stinky maggoty mess. Who thought up that expression anyway?
Is the US addicted to war? Either it is or we really just like it a whole lot, but could quit at any time if we felt like it.
On the home front (now early June '05, gosh am I slow at this ) the baby birds are now weaned. It wasn't too bad, except for little Charcoal who still likes to beg mercilessly. I have about a week till I start feeding the next batch. Once I get some more web space purchased I will have to add a section for the gratuitous pet pictures. Hurricane season is off to a decent start. Arlene hits where Ivan hit last year later today. We got a few days of rain from it. Kind of just a tease, but the season is still young. I need to do a 2004 hurricane page too.
6/30/05/////////////////////////////////////////////
The beat goes on...
Of course I also can't believe what I read here about the 9/11 commission report. Now the story is that the FAA never notified the military of hijacked aircraft until after the planes hit. If I remember correctly at first the military told congress they needed authorization to intercept the hijacked planes, that was why none were intercepted by those fancy supersonic jet fighters they have so many of. Then when congress didn't buy that, they gradually gave them this time line where the FAA was slow to tell them about the problem, then they got the jet fighters off the ground really slow, then they flew really slow, yeah, that was it, sorry we screwed up so bad over and over again that day. Now suddenly that time line is what, a clerical error?
Now, any decent liar knows to stick to the original lie no matter what. That's lying 101. You would think politicians would know this, their being professional liars and all, but they seem not to. Otherwise the American army would have found some ( planted ) nerve gas or things that look like nuclear bombs buried in the Iraq desert along with plausible plans to deliver them by now. Plausible at least to a people who believe Jesus is still coming back even though he is about 1900 years overdue. Go read Luke 21 for yourself. See how Jesus says how Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed (happened) and he returns on a cloud in all his power and glory (not yet) all in the time of that generation he was speaking to back then.
Guess the politicians and the preachers are used to getting away with sloppy lying.
Maybe the past century of advanced scientific educational techniques have the vast majority so dumbed down that they care little about anything besides TV sports, celebrities, and dope. You would think they would at their most crass and self centered at least care about the billion or so of their dollars spent each week on a pack of lies, but even that doesn't get their attention.
You humans never cease to amaze me. I renounce my humanity. I am now the species Homo contrarianenesis.
7/14/05^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Read this article at the Daily Kos for some reason. One about Chevron admitting peak oil in some of it's advertising, we have to all pull together, etc... Which is interesting enough I guess. But it was the long list of comments that was really interesting. Some were good comments – like ones about how the oil companies are doing this not out of any love of truth or anything so noble, but to get people used to paying more for, well, everything.
But so many others were just so plain wrong headed and misinformed. I think a lot of the commenters didn't do so well in physics or in statistics either. Like people suggesting alternatives involving electric cars. Generating electricity is incredibly wasteful. Way back when there was an article in some magazine i subscribed to as a teenager. This was the olden days before the Internet. Scientific American maybe? In this article they compared how much energy it took to get a hot shower from a gas water heater working at 50% efficiency versus an electric water heater working at %100 efficiency. The difference was astounding. Yes, it was a long time ago and I may be misremembering the numbers, but i don't think so. i wasn't so senile then and well, it was astounding and they stuck. if you don't believe me search the magazine from say 1971 to 1976. For a 250 BTU shower the gas took 500 BTUs of gas of course. But the electric required 10,000 BTUs of coal to be burned at the power plant to provide the very same shower. That's 20 times as much for the math challenged. That's because the generators aren't %100 efficient, and there is power loss every mile the electricity travels down the wires from the plant, and lots lost every time it is run through a transformer. Lots of power loss. So the next time someone suggests electric cars to save the earth, slap them around and send them to a high school physics class.
Or there are the people who claim there is enough coal to last hundreds of years. Some astute people pointed out the flaws in this thinking, at least some of them. Like the person who pointed out that it takes energy to mine coal, and pointed them to dieoff (link way at the top) and the figures there that show only 60 years of practically usable coal left . I remember graphs there with more like 30 or 40 years left. But then they didn't point out that those figures - 60 years or 40 years, whatever, that they assume we will be using coal at the same sort of intensity as we are now. So if we start to use it more as the oil and gas run out, you get to cut that figure back by however much. And someone did point out that lumps of coal don't run cars very well. But then they didn't mention how turning it into a liquid fuel is possible, but uses a good portion of it's energy ( or other energy ) to make the transformation. And another kind person, several actually, pointed out how extremely nasty burning and mining coal is. But still, so many with the coal will save us bit.
So the ignorance was plentiful, but I should expect that. And the posters at least are actually thinking about something besides celebrities or sports or beer. Got to give them credit for trying.
But what was most disturbing was no one explicitly questioned why we would even want to keep our high energy oh so post modern global death machine way of life going at all. There were a couple of posters who said something about voluntary simplicity, but even some of them sounded less than enthusiastic about living with less petroleum based consumer crap. Most had an almost panicky tone, like save us, wake people up, harass our glorious leaders, and do something to save our precious cars and TVs and Wallmarts full of cheap plastic gee-gaws. Hey, I'm glad it is about to self destruct. I just plain don't like it. It's stifling and ugly. OK, the electric guitars are nice. And vaccines and eyeglasses are good – but weren't they both invented way before oil wells? And I believe music was too. Abundant year round fresh produce is nice, but only available to the worlds wealthy, same with the fast easy recreational travel. I wouldn't mind keeping those. But of course what I want doesn't matter much as I have no godlike magic powers.
And now for a change of pace...^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Some experiences of 4/26/08.
Someone was explaining this to John whilst experiencing it. It might have been me, although I kept talking about "that Chris fellow" and couldn't answer John when he asked who I was or where Chris was.
There exist a a "place" outside of time - it contains all times, all places, all persons (or consciousnesses if you like). You can go there and visit people that in the ordinary sense lived long ago, right along side of those who may not yet exist or that never will exist in our ordinary world of linear time.
Not only can you visit them. You can be them. Because in a very real sense you are them. All of them.
The realization that time is merely a notion is very much related to the realization that the self is also only a notion. These notions of time and of self collapse the place outside of time and self into our ordinary world. So, in a way we created this world (probably many others too) by telling ourselves a lie.
Why? Well, cause and effect are not separate in this place either I think. So motives as such are kind of meaningless. After all, there wasn't ever a time when we didn't tell ourselves these lies and create these worlds. Or, if there was such a time, it still is when time is meaningless. When you ask why you would do something, (like tell yourself a lie all at once) well you have always already done it, and whole bunch of other things too.
Or to put it another way - because it was possible to do so, to tell these lies and create these world, it happened. Remember, everything possible is here all at once.
Or maybe it's because it allows this thing to examine this thing in more detail, to separate itself into people and places and times does.
Saying "past lives" involves both an idea of linear time, and of a separate self. Maybe a more accurate way of putting it is "other lives". I think you can even remember being other people who are alive right now sometimes. It would also explain multiple people remembering the same past life well. Maybe you just tend to remember the other lives that are relevant to your present life, ones that might be able to teach you something, not because there was some unspecified something that jumps from body to body in a sequence throughout time.
Oh, space is a meaningless concept here too. It's non-local. It exists everywhere and nowhere. It's all very Buddhist with it's emptiness of notions of time space and self. But, it doesn't seem much like a void to me. It seems more like the exact opposite of a void. No notions, just a white hot point packed with experience. Could be it's what some religious people call god.
Is any of this important or useful? Maybe. If people see the interconnectedness of things maybe they won't be so selfish or cruel or destructive. It could maybe make people not have an attitude like they know so much about everything - it's kind of a humbling experience. On the other hand, I am reminded of some old zen guy who said something like "Before I was enlightened I chopped wood and carried water. Then I was enlightened. Afterwards I chopped wood and carried water."
I also had to talk a bit that night about the inadequacy of language. There are so many things that can't be properly expressed in words, but have to be experienced first hand. I also told John that night that the everyday ordinary Chris had trouble with language, and didn't talk much because of this. He ( I ) feel that telepathy would be so much better, and that we should go back to not using language. Ordinary everyday Chris also gets confused by the inadequacy of language. He has all kinds of stuff working in his head that can't be put into words, so the bitchy little part of the mind that insists on language, that thinks it is running the show, can't understand it, ignores it, is frightened of it, whatever. The possibilities of the world are limited for the language user by what can be put into words .
It was also pointed out to me that I was turning myself inside out at one point. It certainly felt like it. I thought it was exactly the right way to put it, and noticed that I enjoyed it a lot. I think the desire to turn myself inside out and the world inside out has been a big motivational force in my life. Anyway, the next trip I tried to turn the world inside out permanently, or at least peel back the surface reality and expose something more interesting. As I was coming down I was able to tug at the fabric of ordinary reality a bit, expose some of the underneath stuff a bit. It was kind of like pulling up a heavy carpet. Unfortunately that carpet is big and it feel back into place. .
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6/13/08 (Friday the 13th!) I was reading a thingy on Quantum mechanics. It explained a lot of the weirdness in a sensible way to me. Also made me think more that the above might be real, with the extreme interdependence of everything in the quantum world.
9/15/08
I love online Quizzes.
I took this quiz, a Reincarnation Placement Quiz. Did it even though I don't believe in reincarnation in the usual sense people think of it, where some sort of undefined thingy that no one can explain quite what it is jumps from body to body throughout linear time, unless you meditate a lot and dissolve in the nirvana thing. Nope, I think maybe reincarnation of the mind or spirit or what have you would be a lot like the reincarnation of the body. Like when the body dies it hangs around for a while, then it gradually decays and winds up being reincarnated (literally put into flesh again) in the form of air and water and worm flesh and mushrooms and vegetation and deer and on and on and on. But who knows really, who knows what mind is anyway.
Still, I was pleased to get this result:
I have been wanting a career change, so maybe this might work. In this lifetime.
And as an added bonus, the website it was on is called helloquizzy, and that makes me think of my beloved Hello Kitty.