BigThoughts

Development of Tiny Thorium Reactors Could Wean the World Off Oil In Just Five

2010-10-08T07:47:00.000-07:00

An abundant metal with vast energy potential could quickly wean the world off oil, if only Western political leaders would muster the will to do it, a UK newspaper says today. The Telegraph makes the case for thorium reactors as the key to a fossil-fuel-free world within five years, and puts the ball firmly in President Barack Obama’s court.

Thorium, named for the Norse god of thunder, is much more abundant than uranium and has 200 times that metal’s energy potential. Thorium is also a more efficient fuel source — unlike natural uranium, which must be highly refined before it can be used in nuclear reactors, all thorium is potentially usable as fuel.

The Telegraph says thorium could be used as an energy amplifier in next-generation nuclear power plants, an idea conceived by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia, former director of CERN.

Known as an accelerator-driven system, it would use a particle accelerator to produce a proton beam and aim it at lump of heavy metal, producing excess neutrons. Thorium is a good choice because it has a high neutron yield per neutron absorbed.

Thorium nuclei would absorb the excess neutrons, resulting in uranium-233, a fissile isotope that is not found in nature. Moderated neutrons would produce fissioned U-233, which releases enough energy to power the particle accelerator, plus an excess that can drive a power plant. Rubbia says a fistful of thorium could light up London for a week.

The idea needs refining, but is so promising that at least one private firm is getting involved. The Norwegian firm Aker Solutions bought Rubbia’s patent for this thorium fuel cycle, and is working on his design for a proton accelerator.

The Telegraph says this $1.8 billion (£1.2 billion) project could lead to a network of tiny underground nuclear reactors, producing about 600 MW each. Their wee size would negate the enormous security apparatus required of full-size nuclear power plants.

After a three-decade lull, nuclear power is enjoying a slow renaissance in the U.S. The 2005 energy bill included $2 billion for six new nuclear power plants, and this past February, Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear plants.

But nuclear plants need fuel, which means building controversial uranium mines. Thorium, on the other hand, is so abundant that it’s almost an annoyance. It’s considered a waste product when mining for rare-earth metals.

Thorium also solves the non-proliferation problem. Nuclear non-proliferation treaties (NPT) prohibit processes that can yield atomic bomb ingredients, making it difficult to refine highly radioactive isotopes. But thorium-based accelerator-driven plants only produce a small amount of plutonium, which could allow the U.S. and other nations to skirt NPT.

The Telegraph says Obama needs a Roosevelt moment, recalling the famous breakfast meeting when Albert Einstein convinced the president to start the Manhattan Project. A thorium stimulus could be just what the lagging economy needs.

Originally posted here:

The Pope

2010-09-26T22:29:00.001-07:00

The Pope says that atheists pick and choose their morals. He right. Today I will be frowning on child abuse and not having a problem with homosexuality.

50 Dumb Conservative Quotes

2010-09-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

"When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal." ~ Richard M. Nixon
"We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." ~ President George W. Bush
"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them." ~ Rush Limbaugh
''My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.'' ~ South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, arguing against government food assistance for poor residents.
"The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews." ~ Jerry Falwell
''Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you.'' ~ Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina)
''We need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets." ~ Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.
"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." ~ George W. Bush
''Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.'' ~ Rush Limbaugh
"I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Chanukah." ~ President George W. Bush
"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.'' ~ Rep. Michelle Bachmann
''The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.'' ~ Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)
"He is purple - the gay-pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle - the gay pride symbol." ~ Jerry Falwell's warning to parents that "Tinky Winky," a character on Teletubbies, may be gay
"Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts." ~ Dan Quayle
''The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.'' ~ Pat Robertson
"Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate." ~ Sarah Palin
"'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'" ~ Sarah Palin
"Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant -- they're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the Ten Commandments." ~ Sarah Palin
"What I don't know is what the unexpected might be." ~ John McCain
"We have a lot of work to do. It's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." ~ John McCain (the countries share no common border)
"I love California; I practically grew up in Phoenix." ~ Dan Quayle
"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.'' ~ Ann Coulter
''I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.'' ~ Rep. Michele Bachmann
"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say." ~ Ann Coulter
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." ~ George W. Bush
"Do you have blacks, too?" ~ George W. Bush
''We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals.'' ~ Ann Coulter
"When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining." ~ Glenn Beck
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." ~ George W. Bush
"Well, I learned a lot....I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries" ~ Ronald Reagan
''I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.'' ~ Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" ~ George W. Bush
"Exercise freaks ... are the ones putting stress on the health care system." ~ Rush Limbaugh
"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured." ~ George W. Bush
"Good Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions." ~ Jerry Falwell
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." ~ George W. Bush
"I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself." ~ Ronald Reagan
"Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them." ~ Jerry Falwell
''It may be a blessing in disguise. ... Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Haitians were originally under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.'' ~ Pat Robertson
"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." ~Jerry Falwell
"Facts are stupid things." ~ Ronald Reagan
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." ~ George W. Bush
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on --shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." ~ George W. Bush
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." ~ George W. Bush
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles." ~ Ronald Reagan
"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." ~ George W. Bush
"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started." ~ Donald Rumsfeld
"She wears little eye-patch underwear. So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And so, we had made love Wednesday--a lot! And so she'll, she's all, 'I am going up and down the stairs, and you're dripping out of me!' So messy!" ~ State Rep. Mike Duvall (R-Calif.) on a live mic referring to an affair with a lobbyist
"I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." ~ George W. Bush
"I think I was unprepared for war." ~ George W. Bush

Original Source: TheStir

"Criminals With Badges": Denver's Militarized Police

2010-09-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

"I been forced to write my own laws, and you violated one in there. I just have to find you guilty of contempt of cop."

Bumper Morgan, Joseph Wambaugh's eponymous Blue Knight, justifying his brutal assault on a young man who had casually insulted him.

Jared Lunn, a 21-year-old volunteer firefighter from Brighton, Colorado, visited Denver's LoDo district to celebrate a friend's birthday. The evening was quite pleasant until Jared, who was carrying a pizza and minding his own business, was suddenly punched in the face and knocked flat by someone he had never met.

Shortly after the assailant scurried away the police arrived, and Jared's night took a pronounced turn for the worse.

Perhaps Jared was unaware of the axiom that it is never a good idea to ask the police for help.
Perhaps the fact that he is involved in a "public safety" role led Jared to assume that the police would treat him with courtesy and professionalism. In any case, Jared told Officer Eric Sellers that he had just been assaulted and that he wanted to press charges. Sellers told the victim to go home, and he wasn't impressed when Jared appealed to him as a fellow "public servant."

"Way to `protect and serve,'" muttered Jared in disgust as he walked away.

A violent assault on a mere Mundane is a trivial matter -- but this was a clear-cut case of "contempt of cop," and it could not go unpunished.

Sellers seized Jared and threw him to the ground. While screaming a steady stream of profanities at the terrified young man, Sellers beat him and applied a vicious choke hold. After Jared's body went limp, Sellers wrenched his hands behind his back and handcuffed him with such violence that the victim wouldn't have full use of his hands for a week.

This felonious assault took place in the presence of two other police officers who, in keeping with the oath-bound discipline of their brotherhood, refused to intervene.

"This guy [Sellers] does this all the time," one of the bully's comrades told Chris Fuchs, an eyewitness to the November 23, 2008 assault, after Jared was released. "We don't know how he gets away with it." The obvious reply would be: "He gets away with it because of the guilty collaboration of `good cops' like you."

"Street justice" in Denver's LoDo district. Two months later, Sellers became annoyed with a young man named John Crespin,whose behavior struck the officer as "nosy." Sellers pulled up into the driveway of John's home and ordered the young man out of the car.

As John complied, his shoulder brushed lightly against Sellers's arm. Infuriated that a Mundane had defiled his sanctified personage through incidental contact, Sellers inflicted a dose of summary "street justice" as an act of ritual purification.

Just as he did to Jared Lunn, Sellers put John in a chokehold while spitting obscenities in his face. After handcuffing the victim, Sellers used his police baton to lift the young man a couple of feet from the ground, then dropped him face-first into the driveway. The representative of the Denver city government's punitive priesthood dragged the bloodied man off the pavement, draped him over the hood of his police car, and administered the laying on of hands.

"He started punching me in the sides while I was already handcuffed," Crespin later told the local NBC affiliate. "I told him to quit, quit, and he wouldn't quit. He did it one more time and he grabbed my face and said, `Who the f*** do you think you are?'"

After being beaten into a lumpy mess, John Crespin -- despite the absence of a criminal history -- was charged with "felony menacing." Terrified and worried about being separated from his newborn child, Crespin accepted a plea bargain agreement that resulted in probation.

Sellers was later found to have used "inappropriate force" against Jared Lunn. The same review found that the officer had compounded that offense through the "commission of a deceptive act" -- that is, lying to internal affairs investigators. According to the Denver PD's existing disciplinary guidelines, this is cause for "presumptive termination." Yet Sellers continues to draw a paycheck as a member of the police force afflicting Denver.

In fact, Sellers -- who, according to his colleagues, commits criminal assaults against innocent people "all the time" -- complained in a court filing that the disciplinary action against him was "excessive," because it specified that another episode of that kind would result in immediate termination.

Denver's Citizen Oversight Board insists, correctly, that Sellers should have been fired already (and prosecuted as well). The Denver Police Protective Association -- that is, local armed tax-feeder union -- has Sellers's back, of course.

This isn't surprising, given that in September 2008 -- just weeks before Sellers assaulted Jared Lunn -- the Denver police union distributed t-shirts to its members depicting a baton-wielding riot cop rising ominously about the city's skyline.

"We get up early, to BEAT the crowds," gloated the inscription. Each member of the Denver PD received one of the commemorative t-shirts, which were created in anticipation of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Sellers apparently perceived that ill-advised pun as a directive and took it to what passes for his heart. Interestingly, Sellers owes his continued employment to a figure who played a critical role in the militarized security preparations for the 2008 convention: Ron Perea, who until recently was Manager of Safety for the City of Denver.

Perea was the Secret Service Special Agent in Charge during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. His previous experience included a stint as head of the Denver Field Office for the Secret Service, a position on the executive board of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Los Angeles, and five years on the Albuquerque Police Department.

It's difficult to imagine someone whose career offers a better core sample of contemporary law enforcement at all levels. So it's quite significant that Perea, as Safety Manager, defined his job in terms of protecting the career prospects of abusive police, rather than protecting the public. As Safety Manager, Perea had the final say regarding complaints of excessive force. His decisions reflected an obvious desire to placate the demands of the police union, rather than holding abusive cops accountable for their offenses.

Perea resigned his post on August 31, barely three months into his $152,000-a-year job, because of rising public disgust over his handling of several recent episodes of criminal violence by the Denver PD. In addition to the leniency he had displayed toward Sellers, Perea refused to discipline Officer Devin Sparks, who severely beat Michael DeHerrera on a LoDo street corner in April 2009.

DeHerrera's friend, Shawn Johnson, had been ejected from a local club after an altercation with a bouncer. When the police arrived, they "arrested" Johnson so violently that DeHerrera made a frantic phone call to his father, Pueblo County Sheriff's Deputy Anthony DeHerrera.

"They're beating up Shawn -- what do I do?" a panicked Herrera asked his father. This apparently is what provoked Sparks to blind-side Herrera, slamming him to the sidewalk and repeatedly beating him with a leather-shrouded metal club called a "sap."

This much is captured by one of the Panopticon-style High Activity Location Observation (HALO) cameras scattered throughout that section of Denver. However, just as Sparks lays into Hererra, the camera -- which was operated by a Denver PD officer in real time -- suddenly pans up and away from the scene.

Detective John White, a spokesman for the Denver PD, insists that this wasn't an Orwellian "rectification" in real time, but rather a result of a camera following a pre-set program. Whether or not this is true, there is compelling evidence that Sparks and his partner, Corporal Randy Murr, took immediate action to cover up the crime. That evidence, interestingly, comes from an unimpeachable law enforcement source -- Deputy Anthony DeHerrera, who overheard the officers via his son's still-active cell phone.

"The last thing we [the elder DeHerrera and his wife] heard was, `We've got to get rid of the phone, they're recording us.'" The phone went dead -- leaving Michael's parents to wonder if the same was true of their son.

After being beaten unconscious, DeHerrera was charged with "resisting" and "interfering" with the officers, but those charges were eventually dismissed.

The official report filed by Sparks claimed that as Corporal Murr was detaining Shawn Johnson, DeHerrera "was about 1 ft. away and began yelling and screaming at the officers. I advised him numerous times to get back and he refused. I then attempted to detain the defendant at which time he tensed up, made a fist and bladed his body. He then spun to his left attempting to strike me in the face with a closed right fist. I then took him to the ground where he attempted to strike me again...."

In his analysis of the video and other evidence, Richard Rosenthal, Denver's Independent Police Monitor,concluded that the beating was an unwarranted act of violence and that the report filed by Sparks and Murr was "pure fiction."

"In fact, the video shows that the complainant [DeHerrera] did not make any aggressive moves toward [Sparks]," wrote Rosenthal in his review of the case. "Although the complainant was not complying with [Sparks's] orders to get on the ground, the complainant did not make any attempt to strike [Sparks], either before being taken to the ground or upon being taken to the ground." In fact, as Rosenthal observes, the reports filed by Sparks and Murr were completely untainted by the truth.

Perea, claiming that unspecified "witness testimony" substantiated the claim that DeHerrera had threatened the officers, insisted that the "totality" of circumstances justified the beating.
Despite finding Sparks and Murr guilty of falsifying official reports, Perea claimed that they were guilty of "inconsistencies" and "misperceptions," rather than "`willful, intentional, or knowing deception,'" and thus weren't subject to summary termination.

Rather than cashiering the perjurious police officers, Perea merely suspended them three days and "fined" one of them the equivalent of three days' pay. In a footnote to his summary, Rosenthal notes that one of the officers (most likely Sparks) "received more serious discipline because that officer had a prior disciplinary history."

In other words, he was a recidivist and proven perjurer. Nonetheless, Perea perversely insisted that he was still qualified to prowl the streets of Denver armed with various implements of violence and clothed in the supposed authority to inflict lethal violence on anyone who refused to comply with his whims.

Shortly before Perea's resignation, video footage surfaced of another police beat-down as summary punishment for "interference and resistance," this one involving a hapless pedestrian named Mark Ashford.

A Denver cop strikes a pose after he and a boyfriend beat up pedestrian Mark Ashford.

While walking his dogs in downtown Denver last March 16, Ashford saw an officer pull over a motorist for supposedly running a stop sign.

Acting out of a commendable civic concern, Ashford tapped on the windshield and told the driver he'd be willing to testify that the motorist had actually come to a full stop. This provoked the officer to demand that Ashford provide ID -- a spurious, vindictive, and unwarranted order.

Ashford complied, and then quite sensibly began to record the incident with his cellphone camera. This prompted the heroic officer to call for backup. The two tax-fattened bullies -- later identified as Officers John Diaz and Jeff Cook -- then shoved the slightly built pedestrian up against a bridge railing, repeatedly punching him and trying to steal the camera.

After beating Ashford into submission, the officers left him handcuffed in a crumpled heap. After being booked on spurious charges -- which were immediately dropped -- Ashford was hospitalized with a concussion and a cut over his right eye.

Seeking to placate growing public concern regarding criminal assaults by Denver police, Chief Gerald Whitman told the local NBC affiliate that "the police department is under control" and that it actually receives fewer use-of-force complaints than departments in most other major cities.

Jared Lunn, who eventually settled his lawsuit against the department, offers a different view.

"Denver police, to me, are basically criminals with badges," he told the Denver Post. "I have no respect for them [and] I somewhat fear them...."

Oddly enough, both Whitman and Lunn are correct: The militarized criminal syndicate called the Denver Police Department is not measurably worse than its counterparts in most major U.S. cities.

Source: Pro Libertate

Debt Slavery

2010-08-22T09:25:00.000-07:00

Life in the industrialized world is predicated on debt. We buy our homes, our cars, our toys with money we do not have. Virtually everyone is in debt to one degree or another.

In poor area's of our communities we see all sorts of "lending institutions", all competing with each other for a slice of some poor schmoes debt. We have entire sectors of our economy built upon collecting debt from people, from Repo men, lawyers to the most hated of all debt collectors who literally drive people to suicide with their constant harassment.

Don't kid yourself and think that is where the problem of debt ends. Every middle class neighbourhood you see, or upper class area is full of debt. Those million dollar homes, giant SUV's pools etc, they don't pay for the themselves!

So we are all in debt, so what?!?! Debt robs the people of their power, you can't afford to take action, to protest, to be active in your community for fear of losing what little we actually own! Debt is fear, debt is what keeps the masses down, debt is the new opiate of the masses. Where religion was once the tool to keep the people passive, it is now debt.

We can't afford to do anything to fix our societies, we can't afford to stand up and say enough is enough, because we are all scared.

Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth

2010-08-19T12:48:00.001-07:00

Earth has done an ecological about-face: Global plant productivity that once flourished under warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline, struck by the stress of drought.

NASA-funded researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running, of the University of Montana in Missoula, discovered the global shift during an analysis of NASA satellite data. Compared with a six-percent increase spanning two earlier decades, the recent ten-year decline is slight -- just one percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels, and the global carbon cycle.

"We see this as a bit of a surprise, and potentially significant on a policy level because previous interpretations suggested that global warming might actually help plant growth around the world," Running said.

"These results are extraordinarily significant because they show that the global net effect of climatic warming on the productivity of terrestrial vegetation need not be positive -- as was documented for the 1980’s and 1990’s," said Diane Wickland, of NASA Headquarters and manager of NASA's Terrestrial Ecology research program.

Conventional wisdom based on previous research held that land plant productivity was on the rise. A 2003 paper in Science led by then University of Montana scientist Ramakrishna Nemani (now at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.) showed that global terrestrial plant productivity increased as much as six percent between 1982 and 1999. That's because for nearly two decades, temperature, solar radiation and water availability -- influenced by climate change -- were favorable for growth.

Setting out to update that analysis, Zhao and Running expected to see similar results as global average temperatures have continued to climb. Instead, they found that the impact of regional drought overwhelmed the positive influence of a longer growing season, driving down global plant productivity between 2000 and 2009. The team published their findings Aug. 20 in Science.

"This is a pretty serious warning that warmer temperatures are not going to endlessly improve plant growth," Running said.

The discovery comes from an analysis of plant productivity data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite, combined with growing season climate variables including temperature, solar radiation and water. The plant and climate data are factored into an algorithm that describes constraints on plant growth at different geographical locations.

For example, growth is generally limited in high latitudes by temperature and in deserts by water. But regional limitations can very in their degree of impact on growth throughout the growing season.

Zhao and Running's analysis showed that since 2000, high-latitude northern hemisphere ecosystems have continued to benefit from warmer temperatures and a longer growing season. But that effect was offset by warming-associated drought that limited growth in the southern hemisphere, resulting in a net global loss of land productivity.

"This past decade’s net decline in terrestrial productivity illustrates that a complex interplay between temperature, rainfall, cloudiness, and carbon dioxide, probably in combination with other factors such as nutrients and land management, will determine future patterns and trends in productivity," Wickland said.

Researchers are keen on maintaining a record of the trends into the future. For one reason, plants act as a carbon dioxide "sink," and shifting plant productivity is linked to shifting levels of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Also, stresses on plant growth could challenge food production.

"The potential that future warming would cause additional declines does not bode well for the ability of the biosphere to support multiple societal demands for agricultural production, fiber needs, and increasingly, biofuel production," Zhao said.

"Even if the declining trend of the past decade does not continue, managing forests and croplands for multiple benefits to include food production, biofuel harvest, and carbon storage may become exceedingly challenging in light of the possible impacts of such decadal-scale changes," Wickland said.

Originally posted by NASA

Man Arrested for Yard Sign

2010-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

This is so retarded, I'm just going to post the story as is, free speech anyone!?

A Valley Center, Kansas man was arrested and charged with “criminal defamation” for placing a sign in his own front yard that was critical of the city and specifically the city administrator Joel Pile.

He was cuffed, fingerprinted, booked into the Sedgwick County Jail and released on bail. His crime: putting up a yard sign critical of the Valley Center city administrator.

Jarrod West is out on bail, facing criminal defamation charges for a sign he put in his front yard about persistent flooding issues he says cost him over $50,000 over the last three years. The sign says, “Dear Valley Center, I did not buy Lake Front Property! Fix this problem. This is what I pay taxes for. PS. Joel this means you!” Joel being City Administrator Joel Pile.

“They want me to shut up and go away,” said West. “I’ve got a home to protect. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s mine.”

When City Administrator Joel Pile saw the sign, West was arrested and booked into the Sedgwick County Jail on a criminal charge of defamation. He spent the night behind bars and is now free on a $10,000 bond.

When asked about the arrest, Joel Pile said, “People and individuals have an absolute right to free speech. “But however, when they do it and continue to do it within the realms of what we believe is actual malice for the purpose of holding me accountable to the public, we believe that crosses a line (emphasis added).”

While Mr. Pile is obviously a thin-skinned bureaucrat who dispatched the guns of local government to kidnap someone whose opinions differed from his, it is the officers who carried out the arrest that should feel the full weight of our rebuke. It takes a special kind of thug to carry out violence against someone simply because he wrote words on a sign that he himself owned. The foot soldiers of tyranny can easily put down their weapons and refuse to participate in the caging of innocent people, but they choose not to. Disgusting authoritarians such as Joel Pile would loose all their power if their thugs refused to do the dirty work.

by: Paula Parmeley Carter From this site http://www.copblock.org/744/man-arrested-for-yard-sign/

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR A GLOBAL HUMANISM

2010-08-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

1- Proclaim the natural dignity and inherent worth of all human beings.

2- Respect the life and property of others.

3- Practice tolerance and open-mindedness towards the choices and life styles of others.

4- Share with those who are less fortunate and mutually assist those who are in need of help.

5- Use neither lies, nor spiritual doctrine, nor temporal power to dominate and exploit others.

6- Rely on reason, logic and science to understand the Universe and to solve life's problems.

7- Conserve and improve the Earth's natural environment—land, soil, water, air and space—as humankind's common heritage.

8- Resolve differences and conflicts cooperatively without resorting to violence or to wars.

9- Organize public affairs according to individual freedom and responsibility, through political and economic democracy.

10- Develop one's intelligence and talents through education and effort.

The Con of the Decade

2010-08-13T13:04:00.001-07:00

This is how it all works, laid out by Charles Hugh Smith and Alan Dover, Charles site can be found here: http://www.oftwominds.com/

1. Enable trillions of dollars in mortgages guaranteed to default by packaging unlimited quantities of them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), creating umlimited demand for fraudulently originated loans.

2. Sell these MBS as "safe" to credulous investors, institutions, town councils in Norway, etc., i.e. "the bezzle" on a global scale.

3. Make huge "side bets" against these doomed mortgages so when they default then the short-side bets generate billions in profits.

4. Leverage each $1 of actual capital into $100 of high-risk bets.

5. Hide the utterly fraudulent bets offshore and/or off-balance sheet (not that the regulators you had muzzled would have noticed anyway).

6. When the longside bets go bad, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal guarantees, bailouts and backstops into the private hands which made the risky bets, either via direct payments or via proxies like AIG. Enable these private Power Elites to borrow hundreds of billions more from the Treasury/Fed at zero interest.

7. Deposit these funds at the Federal Reserve, where they earn 3-4%. Reap billions in guaranteed income by borrowing Federal money for free and getting paid interest by the Fed.

8. As profits pile up, start buying boatloads of short-term U.S. Treasuries. Now the taxpayers who absorbed the trillions in private losses and who transferred trillions in subsidies, backstops, guarantees, bailouts and loans to private banks and corporations, are now paying interest on the Treasuries their own money purchased for the banks/corporations.

9. Slowly acquire trillions of dollars in Treasuries--not difficult to do as the Federal government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year.

10. Stop buying Treasuries and dump a boatload onto the market, forcing interest rates to rise as supply of new T-Bills exceeds demand (at least temporarily). Repeat as necessary to double and then triple interest rates paid on Treasuries.

11. Buy hundreds of billions in long-term Treasuries at high rates of interest. As interest rates rise, interest payments dwarf all other Federal spending, forcing extreme cuts in all other government spending.

12. Enjoy the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments being paid by taxpayers on Treasuries that were purchased with their money but which are safely in private hands.

Since the Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out.

The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer. Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.

In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better.

The Execution of Mata Hari

2010-08-13T07:50:00.001-07:00

I have been reading about Mata Hari, who was a very interesting person who was probably wrongly executed. I wanted to post the account of the day of her execution as told by Henry Wales a British reporter.

"The first intimation she received that her plea had been denied was when she was led at daybreak from her cell in the Saint-Lazare prison to a waiting automobile and then rushed to the barracks where the firing squad awaited her.

Never once had the iron will of the beautiful woman failed her. Father Arbaux, accompanied by two sisters of charity, Captain Bouchardon, and Maitre Clunet, her lawyer, entered her cell, where she was still sleeping - a calm, untroubled sleep, it was remarked by the turnkeys and trusties.

The sisters gently shook her. She arose and was told that her hour had come.

'May I write two letters?' was all she asked.

Consent was given immediately by Captain Bouchardon, and pen, ink, paper, and envelopes were given to her.

She seated herself at the edge of the bed and wrote the letters with feverish haste. She handed them over to the custody of her lawyer.

Then she drew on her stockings, black, silken, filmy things, grotesque in the circumstances. She placed her high-heeled slippers on her feet and tied the silken ribbons over her insteps.

She arose and took the long black velvet cloak, edged around the bottom with fur and with a huge square fur collar hanging down the back, from a hook over the head of her bed. She placed this cloak over the heavy silk kimono which she had been wearing over her nightdress.

Her wealth of black hair was still coiled about her head in braids. She put on a large, flapping black felt hat with a black silk ribbon and bow. Slowly and indifferently, it seemed, she pulled on a pair of black kid gloves. Then she said calmly:

'I am ready.'

The party slowly filed out of her cell to the waiting automobile.

The car sped through the heart of the sleeping city. It was scarcely half-past five in the morning and the sun was not yet fully up.

Clear across Paris the car whirled to the Caserne de Vincennes, the barracks of the old fort which the Germans stormed in 1870.

The troops were already drawn up for the execution. The twelve Zouaves, forming the firing squad, stood in line, their rifles at ease. A subofficer stood behind them, sword drawn.

The automobile stopped, and the party descended, Mata Hari last. The party walked straight to the spot, where a little hummock of earth reared itself seven or eight feet high and afforded a background for such bullets as might miss the human target.

As Father Arbaux spoke with the condemned woman, a French officer approached, carrying a white cloth.

'The blindfold,' he whispered to the nuns who stood there and handed it to them.

'Must I wear that?' asked Mata Hari, turning to her lawyer, as her eyes glimpsed the blindfold.

Maitre Clunet turned interrogatively to the French officer.

'If Madame prefers not, it makes no difference,' replied the officer, hurriedly turning away. .

Mata Hari was not bound and she was not blindfolded. She stood gazing steadfastly at her executioners, when the priest, the nuns, and her lawyer stepped away from her.

The officer in command of the firing squad, who had been watching his men like a hawk that none might examine his rifle and try to find out whether he was destined to fire the blank cartridge which was in the breech of one rifle, seemed relieved that the business would soon be over.

A sharp, crackling command and the file of twelve men assumed rigid positions at attention. Another command, and their rifles were at their shoulders; each man gazed down his barrel at the breast of the women which was the target.

She did not move a muscle.

The underofficer in charge had moved to a position where from the corners of their eyes they could see him. His sword was extended in the air.

It dropped. The sun - by this time up - flashed on the burnished blade as it described an arc in falling. Simultaneously the sound of the volley rang out. Flame and a tiny puff of greyish smoke issued from the muzzle of each rifle. Automatically the men dropped their arms.

At the report Mata Hari fell. She did not die as actors and moving picture stars would have us believe that people die when they are shot. She did not throw up her hands nor did she plunge straight forward or straight back.

Instead she seemed to collapse. Slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face. For the fraction of a second it seemed she tottered there, on her knees, gazing directly at those who had taken her life. Then she fell backward, bending at the waist, with her legs doubled up beneath her. She lay prone, motionless, with her face turned towards the sky.

A non-commissioned officer, who accompanied a lieutenant, drew his revolver from the big, black holster strapped about his waist. Bending over, he placed the muzzle of the revolver almost - but not quite - against the left temple of the spy. He pulled the trigger, and the bullet tore into the brain of the woman.

Mata Hari was surely dead."

Ash celebrates Fumito Ueada's contributions to feminism.

2010-08-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Video Games | HAWP | Ico

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

How to remove ads from MSN

2010-08-11T13:47:00.001-07:00

Notice anything about my MSN contacts list?

No ads!

I find the ads at the bottom of my MSN window to be really irritating, so I wanted to get rid of them, turns out there are plenty of programs you can download to stop these ads. I really don't feel like downloading a program which could contain viruses or trojans just to stop these ads, so I haven't bothered.

It turns out there is a quick and simple way to stop these ads from appearing. This is a trick which does not involve hacking MSN at all.

Add the following two lines to your host file (host file can be found here c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\host), you can edit this file with notepad:

127.0.0.1 rad.msn.com
127.0.0.1 rad.live.com

The two names listed above are the ad servers for MSN, so all you are doing is pointing that address at your own computer, so MSN doesnt pull any ads from the remote server!

iphone or ispy!

2010-08-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

"The iPhone logs everything that you type in to learn autocorrect"

The iphone, people love it, so do the police!

From Amber Hunt,

A burgeoning field of forensic study deals with iPhones specifically because of their popularity, the demographics of those who own them and what the phone's technology records during its use.

Law-enforcement experts said iPhone technology records a wealth of information that can be tapped more easily than BlackBerry and Droid devices to help police learn where you've been, what you were doing there and whether you've got something to hide.

"Very, very few people have any idea how to actually remove data from their phone," said Sam Brothers, a cell-phone forensic researcher with U.S. Customs and Border Protection who teaches law-enforcement agents how to retrieve information from iPhones in criminal cases.

"It may look like everything's gone," he said. "But for anybody who's got a clue, retrieving that information is easy."

Clues lurk in deleted bins, screenshots

Two years ago, as iPhone sales skyrocketed, former hacker Jonathan Zdziarski decided law-enforcement agencies might need help retrieving data from the devices.

So he set out to write a 15-page, how-to manual that turned into a 144-page book ("iPhone Forensics," O'Reilly Media). That, in turn, led to Zdziarski being tapped by law-enforcement agencies nationwide to teach them just how much information is stored in iPhones - and how that data can be gathered for evidence in criminal cases.

"These devices are people's companions today," said Zdziarski, 34, who lives in Maine. "They're not mobile phones anymore. They organize people's lives. And if you're doing something criminal, something about it is probably going to go through that phone."

It's an area of forensic science that's just beginning to explode, law-enforcement and cell phone experts said. Zdziarski said the focus of forensics recovery has been on the iPhone over other smartphones in large part because of its popularity.

An estimated 1.7 million people rushed to buy the latest iPhone version released last month. Before that, Apple had sold more than 50 million iPhones, according to company figures.

Although some high-stakes criminal cases have used cell phone towers to estimate a suspect or victim's whereabouts, few have laid out the information that iPhones have to offer. For example:

- Every time an iPhone user closes out of the built-in mapping application, the phone snaps a screenshot and stores it. Savvy law-enforcement agents armed with search warrants could use those snapshots to see if a suspect is lying about whereabouts during a crime.

- iPhone photos are embedded with GEO tags and identifying information, meaning that photos posted online might not only include GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken, but also the serial number of the phone that took it.

- Even more information is stored by the applications themselves, including the user's browser history. That data is meant in part to direct custom-tailored advertisements to the user, but experts said that some of it could prove useful to police.

Clearing out user histories isn't enough to clean the device of that data, said John B. Minor, a communications expert and member of the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners who has written articles for law enforcement about iPhone evidence.

"With the iPhone, even if it's in the deleted bin, it may still be in the database," Minor said. "Much is contained deep within the phone."

What users don't know

Some of that usable data is in screenshots.

Just as users can take and store a picture of their iPhone's screen, the phone itself automatically shoots and stores hundreds of such images as people close out one application to use another.

"Those screen snapshots can contain images of e-mails or proof of activities that might be inculpatory, or exculpatory," Minor said.

Most iPhone users agree to let the device locate them so they can use fully the phone's mapping functions, as well as various global positioning system applications.

The free application Urbanspoon is primarily designed to help users locate nearby restaurants. Yet the data stored there might not only help police pinpoint where a victim was shortly before dying, but it also might lead to the restaurant that served the victim's last meal.

"Most people enable the location services because they want the benefits of the applications," Minor said. "What they don't know is that it's recording your GPS coordinates."

A tremendous source

Bill Cataldo, an assistant Macomb County prosecutor who heads the office's homicide unit, said iPhones are treated more like small computers than mobile phones.

"People are keeping a tremendous amount of information on there," he said.

Cataldo said he has found phone call histories and text messages most useful in homicide cases. But Zdziarski, who has helped federal and state law-enforcement agencies gather evidence, said those elements are just scratching the surface when it comes to the information police and prosecutors soon will start pulling from iPhones.

"There are some terrorists out there who obtained some information about a network from an iPhone," he said.

Sam Brothers, who works for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and helps train law-enforcement agencies about cell phone forensics, said he also has testified in state and federal cases about data he has retrieved from iPhones.

Although he can't comment about specific cases, he provided a hypothetical:

"Let's say you have a gang and somebody's killed a gang member on the street," he said. "The killer takes a picture on his iPhone. . . . We as law enforcement may retrieve that image and might have proof not only of the death, but the time of death."

Even people who don't take pictures or leave GPS coordinates behind often unwittingly leave other trails, Zdziarski said.

"Like the keyboard cache," he said. "The iPhone logs everything that you type in to learn autocorrect" so that it can correct a user's typing mistakes.

Apple doesn't store that cache very securely, Zdziarski contended, so someone with know-how could recover months of typing in the order in which it was typed, even if the e-mail or text it was part of has long since been deleted.

Apple did not return phone calls or an e-mail seeking comment for this story.

Concerns about privacy

Adam Gershowitz, who teaches criminal procedure at the University of Houston Law Center, said the new technology brings with it concerns about privacy - especially when it comes to whether investigators have the right to search someone's iPhone after an arrest.

So far, the courts have treated mobile phones like a within-reach container that police can search the same way they can check items in a glove box or cigarette pack, Gershowitz said, though the Ohio Supreme Court in 2009 ruled to bar warrantless searches of cell phone data.

That case is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Phones are regular tools of the drug trade," Gershowitz said. As police become more familiar with iPhones, they become more adept at flipping through photos, map searches and text messages as they look for evidence.

Zdziarski said some examiners are afraid to touch iPhones because of privacy concerns.

"I personally will never work on civil cases," he said, adding that when he advises law-enforcement agencies about obtaining search warrants for iPhones, he instructs them to add iPhone-specific language to the warrant.

But, he said, as iPhones appear to keep selling in record numbers, law enforcement appears poised to keep up.

"It's no longer about a list of phone numbers and maybe a couple of pictures," Zdziarski said. "You're talking about data that can travel back a year or longer. That's useful to law enforcement."

Tribal girl stripped over 'affair', molested by hundreds in Bengal

2010-08-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

What the hell is wrong with people?

SURI: A 17-year-old tribal girl was stripped, beaten and forced to walk nude for 8km across three villages with hundreds of men molesting her all the way and taking videos on their mobiles. It was a shocking reminder of the Guwahati incident in November 2007 when a teenager was stripped and molested by a mob during an ethnic clash. An MMS clipping of the Birbhum girls ordeal is now doing the rounds under the name 'Adibasi girl'. And it is this footage that is finally getting the victim some justice.

According to sources, the girls fault was that she loved a boy from another community. Police were shocked to learn that the panchayats and other local bodies knew of the incident but hadn't bothered to inform the administration. The incident happened four months ago but the girl was too traumatized to go to the authorities. It is only when the administration came to know of the MMS that police swung into action on their own and arrested five of the culprits on Sunday.

Some frames in the video are, too, horrific to watch. The girl has a dazed, dead look on her face as she staggers along dusty dirt tracks. A jeering crowd of tribals follows her, beating drums and thrashing her with sticks whenever she stops. Little boys throw stones at her. She takes the blows, defenceless, as she uses her arms in a futile attempt to protect her honour. Men pounce on her, pull her arms apart and molest her amid laughter as the drums beat up a frenzy.

This torture went on for hours in broad daylight, in the scorching heat of April. The footage shows just 11 minutes of it. On Saturday, some journalists showed the clipping to SP Humayun Kabir and DM Saumitra Mohan demanding why they were not taking any action.

Source: http://tiny.cc/y3xbc

The Big Bust?

2010-08-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

Modern physics has always told us that the universe began with a bang! The idea of the universe starting with a giant explosion explained the red and blue shift we see when we look at the stars in our night sky. That is we see that many objects in space are moving away from us at an extremely high speed which causes light to change frequencies, ie. Red Shifting.

The other thing that the Big Bang explains is the microwave background noise we measure when looking to the sky. Scientists have always said this is residue (or an echo) of the Big Bang.

The one giant glaring problem with the Big Bang theory is that we need to do some mathematical gymnastics to make it work. You are asking, what do I mean? Well, have you heard of Dark Matter or Dark Energy? These are both tricks of the trade that physicists have used to make the Big Bang model work, and depending on the model this Dark Matter is supposed to make up as much as 75% of the universe.

Its kind of funny when you think about it, that serious scientists rely on something they have no proof of to explain the universe. The only proof that Dark Matter exists is that it helps make the theory work. This sounds as bad as religious folks pointing to the bible as proof of god.

Physicist Wun-Yi Shu of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan has a theory which explains the universe without a Big Bang, which has no need for "Dark Matter/Dark Energy" to explain our observations.

Shu's theory is essentially that time and space are not independent entities, rather they can be converted back and forth between each other. With the speed of light being the conversion factor between the two. Couple to this, mass and length are interchangeable in a relationship in which the conversion factor depends on both the gravitational constant and the speed of light (neither of which need be constant).

According to Shu, as the Universe expands, mass and time are converted to length and space and vice versa as it contracts. This leads to the conclusion that the universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction.

You can download his full paper here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.1750

From that page:

In the late 1990s, observations of Type Ia supernovae led to the astounding discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The explanation of this anomalous acceleration has been one of the great problems in physics since that discovery. In this article we propose cosmological models that can explain the cosmic acceleration without introducing a cosmological constant into the standard Einstein field equation, negating the necessity for the existence of dark energy. There are four distinguishing features of these models: 1) the speed of light and the gravitational "constant" are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe, 2) time has no beginning and no end, 3) the spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere, and 4) the universe experiences phases of both acceleration and deceleration. One of these models is selected and tested against current cosmological observations of Type Ia supernovae, and is found to fit the redshift-luminosity distance data quite well.

I have always hated the notion of Dark Matter, anytime someone needs to pull a number out of the air to make their science work, I am very suspect. While Shu's theory may not be the last word on our model of the universe, I for one am thrilled that physicists are looking for new theories to explain the universe that don't rely on voodoo numbers to make them work.

The Egg

2010-08-05T08:01:00.001-07:00

This is such a great short story, I thought I would share...why can't I write like this?!!

The Egg
By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

Originally posted here: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

Heavy Metal Baby

2010-08-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Reminds me of my son at that age, he use to rock out to Ozzy and Iron Maiden!

Facebook becoming Lamebook?

2010-07-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

Facebook is losing popularity with the young and the hip. Call me surprised that teens and young people, you know the demographic that makes the world go around (18-35 year olds) are actually leaving facebook. That is in July Facebook had "negative growth" in this key demographic.

Really, you mean young people dont want their aunts, uncles, parents and grandparents spying, errr "sharing" their lives in painful detail??? Wow...totally shocked, that people are realizing that this technology is made for people who like to snoop...

I'll post more about the sickness that is Facebook later, I just thought this trend for July was awesome...

Dr Quantum - Double Slit Experiment

2010-07-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

The Quantum world is a complete and total mystery to me, the more I learn, the less I know. Really great summation of the double slit experiment below.

What it comes down to.

2010-07-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

Q: What is christianity?

A: It is the belief that a two thousand year old jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master; so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat an apple off a magical tree in a wonderland.

Hail The Villain - Take Back The Fear

2010-07-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Great tune, stunning video!

Crisis of Confidence

2010-07-22T10:08:00.001-07:00

July 15, 1979 Jimmy Carter gave his infamous speech (later known as the Crisis of Confidence) which clearly lead to his losing the election to the super positive and completely deluded Ronald Reagan.

Carter clearly believed that the American people should face the truth, the truth of where America was, and what they were doing to themselves. This was of course in stark contrast to Reagan and his head in the sand approach to the world.

I believe strongly that history will judge Carter very well for trying to tell the American population the truth, and try to maybe suggest we cannot just take and take and take and not expect their to be negative repercussions. Lets look at some specific things Carter said.

"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns."

"The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual."

"What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests."

"You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure."

Which route did the American people overwhelmingly choose??? Carters words were right back in 1979 and they are more so true now in 2010. How anyone can deny the logical end result of endless consumption and growth is beyond me.

Full transcript of the speech here:

Good Evening:

This a special night for me. Exactly three years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams, and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you.

During the past three years I’ve spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the government, our nation’s economy, and issues of war and especially peace. But over those years the subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the press conferences have become increasingly narrow, focused more and more on what the isolated world of Washington thinks is important. Gradually, you’ve heard more and more about what the government thinks or what the government should be doing and less and less about our nation’s hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future.

Ten days ago, I had planned to speak to you again about a very important subject -- energy. For the fifth time I would have described the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you: Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper -- deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to reach out and to listen to the voices of America.

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society -- business and labor, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you. It has been an extraordinary ten days, and I want to share with you what I’ve heard.

First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down.

This from a southern governor: “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation -- you’re just managing the government.”

“You don’t see the people enough anymore.”

“Some of your Cabinet members don’t seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples.”

“Don’t talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good.”

“Mr. President, we’re in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears.”

“If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow.”

Many people talked about themselves and about the condition of our nation. This from a young woman in Pennsylvania: “I feel so far from government. I feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power.”

And this from a young Chicano: “Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives.”

“Some people have wasted energy, but others haven’t had anything to waste.”

And this from a religious leader: “No material shortage can touch the important things like God’s love for us or our love for one another.”

And I like this one particularly from a black woman who happens to be the mayor of a small Mississippi town: “The big shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can’t sell anything on Wall Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first.”

This kind of summarized a lot of other statements: “Mr. President, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis.”

Several of our discussions were on energy, and I have a notebook full of comments and advice. I’ll read just a few.

“We can’t go on consuming forty percent more energy then we produce. When we import oil we are also importing inflation plus unemployment.”

“We’ve got to use what we have. The Middle East has only five percent of the world’s energy, but the United States has twenty-four percent.”

And this is one of the most vivid statements: “Our neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has a knife.”

“There will be other cartels and other shortages. American wisdom and courage right now can set a path to follow in the future.”

This was a good one: “Be bold, Mr. President. We may make mistakes, but we are ready to experiment.”

And this one from a labor leader got to the heart of it: “The real issue is freedom. We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing.”

And the last that I’ll read: “When we enter the moral equivalent of war, Mr. President, don’t issue us BB guns.”

These ten days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the American people, but it also bore out some of my longstanding concerns about our nation’s underlying problems.

I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That’s why I’ve worked hard to put my campaign promises into law, and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people, I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.

It is a crisis of confidence.

It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom; and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

We remember when the phrase “sound as a dollar” was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation’s resources were limitless until 1973 when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests.

You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don’t like it, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: “We’ve got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America.”

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves are the same Americans who just ten years ago put a man on the moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process, rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path -- the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

In little more than two decades we’ve gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It’s a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation.

The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977-- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over four and a half million barrels of imported oil per day.

Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas. I’m announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit.

Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation’s history to develop America’s own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun.

I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace two and a half million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to five billion dollars in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security.

Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation’s first solar bank which will help us achieve the crucial goal of twenty percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans, to Americans. These will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment.

Point four: I’m asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our nation’s utility companies cut their massive use of oil by fifty percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source.

Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.

We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

Point six: I’m proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford.

I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I’m proposing tonight an extra ten billion dollars over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I’m asking you for your good and for your nation’s security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense, I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Our nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate ways of rebuilding our nation’s strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives.

So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose.

You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on earth. We have the world’s highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.

I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation’s problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act.

We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively, and we will; but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.

Twelve hours from now I will speak again in Kansas City, to expand and to explain further our energy program. Just as the search for solutions to our energy shortages has now led us to a new awareness of our nation’s deeper problems, so our willingness to work for those solutions in energy can strengthen us to attack those deeper problems.

I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of America. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 1980s. I will listen; and I will act. We will act together.

These were the promises I made three years ago, and I intend to keep them.

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America’s people, America’s values, and America’s confidence.

I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy-secure nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God’s help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and good night.

Words from the Wise

2010-07-21T10:38:00.001-07:00

Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
— Bob Marley

An Unexpected Kiss

2010-07-19T19:58:00.001-07:00

An unexpected kiss
left my words dancing
without a care of finding one another,
and the interstices of my heart
gave way to your radiance…
taken with deep reds,
ensconced in your refulgence,
fingers running through
one another,
light passing through light…
and so an unexpected kiss
whispered silent beauty
through my body.

-By Ryan Oelke

Im Surprised: Higher intelligence associated with liberalism, atheism

2010-07-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

A study published in the March 2010 issue of the scientific journal "Social Psychology Quarterly" reports that intelligent people are significantly more likely to be social liberals and atheists. The report in a nutshell explains that those with higher intelligence are able to actually think and reason which leads them to logical conclusions.

Yes, they basically have stated that being an atheist and a social liberal is logical. In terms of being liberal they have said "General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions...as a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."

When it comes to religion, the paper basically argues that people use to need religion to explain the world around us. That is that it was innate in us as a people to believe in religion, that is it appealed to us because it answered so many questions (poorly of course, but a poor answer is better than no answer, right?). They conclude that "So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists."

Little Smirk - Theory of a Deadman. (With Lyrics.)

2010-07-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

Somehow this song, these lyrics....ya...
:)

All the World’s a Stage

2010-07-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

As I get older, it seems that I finally am able to truly appreciate authors of the past in more than a superficial way. Im not sure if that is because of age, or experience, or maybe I am finally starting to mature. This famous poem by Shakespeare, upon a second look, with my now old and mature eyes really left me speechless (which is saying something).

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
-William Shakespeare

Police Brutality in Canda

2010-07-16T07:47:00.001-07:00

We Canadians love to raise our noses at how awesome and great we are, so civil and polite...well, to be honest its complete bullshit, especially if you ever have to deal with our legal system. We do not have a strong Bill of Rights like our southern cousins. Here is a tale of how wonderful our police are...originally from this site.

On the evening of June 23, 2010, 4 friends and myself attended the Toronto Blue Jays game at the Rogers Centre. On our way to the game, we spoke to many transplanted RCMP officers, asking them where they were from, what they thought about the fence and the weekend to come. All of our discussions were in camaraderie and in support of them. Following the game, my group split up as everyone had to be up early for work, however, I made plans to take a cab and go and see a girlfriend. While to hailing a taxi, I asked two female RCMP officers what part of Canada they were from. They were unresponsive, and in passing I stated "Good luck with Saturday".

I hailed a taxi, which was stopped by a Toronto police cruiser about 2 minutes into the ride. I was forcefully removed from the taxicab a Toronto police officer to be questioned about G20 (protest?) activity. This steamed from wishing the RCMP officers good luck, which was apparently taken as a threat. I was asked what "labour group" I belonged to, and what I meant by "good luck". I was also asked about what I was doing in the area, and was cooperative. I was asked if I had been drinking and explained that I had a total for 4 beers during an approximate span of 5 hours prior to, during and following a baseball game that I attended with friends. I was not intoxicated as per the standard definition "To cause stupefaction, stimulation, or excitement by or as if by use of a chemical substance".

Upon being questioned about G20 protest activity and not having the correct answers as I am not involved in protest activity nor have PREVIOUSLY HAD any interest, I was advised that I was being arrested for being intoxicated in a public place (a taxi) and placed in hand cuffs. I had to ask 4 times to loosen the hand cuffs, which went unanswered until one officer finally noticed that I had lost circulation in my hands which had become quite red and swollen. I had rings around my writs for approximately 5 days following the incident, and still have numbing in my right hand in the thumb. Approximately 20-25 RCMP and Toronto Police officers arrived at the scene. Passerby individuals could see that something was not right and asked if they could assist me. When I attempted to communicate with them by asking for help, I was taken by the neck and placed in a police car and taken to Toronto's 52 division, with my hands behind my back, making the hand cuff situation worse. At no time, not withstanding my request for same, was I advised of my rights, or why I was being arrested, only what I was being arrested for.

Upon arriving at the station, we sat in the parking lot while officers discussed issues outside for about 15 minutes before bringing me inside. I was asked to stand in front of a camera and answer questions. Having become increasingly angry at this situation and wanting answers regarding the validity of my arrest, I refused to answer any more questions and stated to the booking video that I wished to remain silent until I had the opportunity to speak with duty counsel, and notwithstanding my repeated requests to speak to duty counsel, I was never offered an opportunity to do so throughout my 10 hour detainment. I also requested a breathalyzer test to verify my blood alcohol level, which was not provided.

Do to my non-cooperation in answering the questions of the officers for the camera without having an opportunity to speak with counsel first, an officer of the booking staff stated "subject unresponsive", and I assume at that point, the camera was turned off. The booking sergeant then immediately came from around the desk and grabbed me by the neck while officers 8830 & 8659 held me by the arms. I was dragged into an interrogation room with the door shut to be held by officer 8830 & 8659, while the booking sergeant began to beat me in the face, body and kick my legs. I was never asked to remove my clothing nor would I have objected if a strip search was what they were attempting to do - but my clothing was forcibly removed in way as to flip myself around like a rag doll on the concrete floor. The buttons of my shirt were ripped open. At this point I was completely naked and the beating continued. At no time did I resist or fight back, nor did they perform a search of my areas. I had defensive bruising to my foreams and many welts, burns from being dragged along concrete which I have documented with a physician and taken pictures of. The booking sergeant advised that he was going to rip out a nipple ring that I had (which was not returned to me) and made an attempt to pull it out, however, either officer 8830 or 8659 advised him not to. This was torture. It was removed in such a forceable way that it was swollen and painful for days following the assault. I did not resist and would have removed it myself if I was asked to. I was taken through the booking hallway completely naked in front of female officers and forced to sit in a holding cell for approximately 4 hours - completely naked.

I would like to know why I was stripped naked and forced to sit naked. I find this cruel and unusual and unnecessary. This is how I was treated for attempting to exercise my right to counsel upon detainment, just to know what was going on and the validity of my arrest.

Approximately 4 hours into my stay, I was greeted by 8830 and told to stand. He kicked my underwear through the bottom of the cell and told me to "get decent". He advised me that some "people" were coming to speak to me about what I said regarding Saturday and the G20 summit, so I should cover up. When the two people arrived to question me they were in plain clothes and would not identify themselves as officers or provide (real) names, one stated "I'm officer C and this is officer SIS". They asked me about what I "allegedly said to the officers on Front Street", and if I was a part of any "labour group". I advised them that I wished to speak with counsel, which was ignored. I asked them for a glass of water, which was ignored. I did not have any information to share with them as I didn't even know what the G20 was, and I was placed back in my cell to await release, however this time - I was allowed to take my clothing into the cell with me.

In the morning when I asked for information relating to the booking sergeant and to provide the ID's of who interviewed me, I was advised that no information would be provided as to who the booking sergeant was, and even more shockingly - that no one came to interview me during my detainment - that it simply did not happen. I was detained for a 10 hour period and not provided with any opportunity to speak with counsel, nor provided with any water as the facilities in the cell for water did not work, despite my repeated requests for same. I was unlawfully detained - charged with being intoxicated in a public place only to hold me and interrogate me for saying "good luck with Saturday", assaulted, humiliated and denied my basic freedoms under the Charter - being a Paralegal licensed under the Law Society of Upper Canada, I want to know how and why this was allowed to happen in a province that I wasted my time and money to pledge an oath to serve.

As NWA once said so eloquently, Fuck The Police.

Studs Terkel - Working

2010-07-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that we as a society are losing touch with each other, people are hiding behind their fences, living life on the internet...and all the while losing our connection to other people.

Facebook is the perfect example of what the fuck is wrong with society, we have gone from real interactions, real conflicts, real connections, real life, to this absurdly antiseptic way of dealing with those of us around us.

This plus the entire anti-intellectual movement we are seeing in the west makes me despair for what lies ahead for mankind.

The fear that I have, and I express now in 2010, is something that Studs Terk wrote of in his monumental book, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. This book at its core is about human connection...to understand what others experience every day. Not what actors, politicians, or other so called important people are up to...but what normal people experience. What its like to drive a cab, or wait tables etc. I think its time for people to rediscover this classic, as we need it now more than we have ever needed it.

Go to your library, take it out and have a read!

And seriously...fuck facebook...

Ever have a really bad idea?

2010-07-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

Ever get the urge to stick your finger in a fan as it spins?
Perhaps put your tongue on a lightpost when its -40C to see if your tongue will stick?

Why do we get such stupid urges?
When I keep myself really busy, I tend to not be as stupid as when I have a few spare hours to fill. Since I stopped wasting away behind the computer, I do tend to have some down time where the dumb side of me wrestles for control...which may explain why my rotator cuff seems to be torn, but that is another story entirely of self injury...its a good thing I stay away from Facebook though, or Id end up chatting with all kinds of people from my past whenever I was idle...which is a recipe for disaster given how things were back in the day...

Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps plays at the Secret Garden

2009-11-06T16:54:00.000-08:00

Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps plays the Secret Garden from hoovesontheturf on Vimeo.

I love this, so Im reposting it!

Story is:

Before playing their Spike Hill show in Williamsburg, Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps were to perform a few songs in the ever-so-mobile Secret Garden. Their bright-eyed bassist Jesse Schuster had wanted to play an upright bass, but when we couldn’t find a spot that housed one we could borrow, we thought a well-lit patch of a quiet-ish sidewalk, by which their van was parked close to the venue, suited us just fine. Drummer Arlen Peiffer grabbed a glockenspiel and a shaker, and the other three—Alex Ramsey-Blood, Caroline Smith and Jesse—fared well amongst a guitar, a banjo and some finger-snapping. Their sweet songs reigned on the sidewalk, turned a few heads, and evoked kind words from a passing stranger. We topped it all off with a cover of a pretty filthy song, though. All three originals heard here are from Backyard Tent Set.

Smile

2009-10-22T13:02:00.001-07:00

Do you smile at strangers? Do the children you encounter cause you to stop and smile? Do you smile are the opposite sex?

Play a great game with yourself, spend a day and predict who will share a smile with you. You might be surprised at what you discover about people.

I think I can pretty guarantee people who don't smile at children are selfish pricks who would make shitty parents and probably shitty friends. I mean who can come across a toddler in the store full of wonder and excitement and not smile as your eyes connect. Ok the exception to my rule about being selfish pricks are teenagers...because most of them are by their very nature selfish pricks. However an adult who can come across a small child and not smile is someone I don't want to have anything to do with.

Old people are pretty much always willing to give you a smile, so I make sure to give them my best dumb grin, cause frankly I look like a bit of a goober when I smile.

A smile costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give. ~Author Unknown

So dont be a prick, go out and smile at people! :)

I've learned - Omer B. Washington

2009-09-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

I really liked this work, and was humbled to see how my lifes experience doesnt appear to be very unique, as I have learned most of these lessons as well...

I've learned

I've learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them.
I've learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don't care back.
I've learned that it takes years to build up trust and only seconds to destroy it.
I've learned that it's not what you have in your live, but who you have in your life that counts.
I've learned that you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes, after that, you'd better know something.
I've learned that you shouldn't compare yourself to the best others can do, but to the best you can do.
I've learned that it's not what happens to people, it's what they do about it.
I've learned that no matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides.
I've learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you'll see them.
I've learned that you can keep going long after you think you can't.
I've learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences.
I've learned that there are people, who love you dearly, but just don't know how to show it.
I've learned that sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.
I've learned that true friendship continues to grow even over the longest distance same goes for true love.
I've learned that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
I've learned that no matter how good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.
I've learned that it isn't always enough to be forgive by others, sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.
I've learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn't stop for your grief.
I've learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.
I've learned that just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other and just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.
I've learned that sometimes you have to put the individual ahead of their actions.
I've learned that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.
I've learned that no matter the consequences, those who are honest with themselves get farther in life.
I've learned that your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don't even know you.
I've learned that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.
I've learned that writing, as well as talking, can ease emotional pains.
I've learned that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon.
I've learned that it's hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice and not hurting people's feelings and standing up for what you believe.
I've learned to love and be loved.
I've learned.

-Omer B. Washington

Lithium

2009-09-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

Interesting version of Nirvana's epic tune.

My life Is Average

2009-09-27T09:56:00.000-07:00

There is this great site where people (mostly teens it seems) post little anecdotes from their day to day lives, some are really cute. The site can be found here.

At my new school I sat with a group of kids during lunch that asked me "twilight or Harry Potter?" I answered Harry Potter and they scoweled at me and made rude remarks. The next table over put a bag over my head and screamed "GRYFFINDOR" then pulled me to their table. I just found my new best friends.
Tonight, after a very romantic dinner, my boyfriend and I walked and sat in a grassy area in the middle of this classy shopping center to look at the stars and be mature adults. Instead, I hit him, yelled YOU'RE IT and ran away. We proceeded to have an intense game of tag in our dress clothes. I have found my soulmate.
Today, my dance partner (who only has my number so he can call/text me if he isn't going to be in class) texted me saying he was bored. After texting each other for half an hour, we now have plans to go to the beach and build a sand castle, then have a sword duel over who rules the castle. I know I chose the right partner.
Today a customer asked where the condoms were. I told him we didn't sell condoms. On his way out he said, "I'll be back in nine months for diapers." I laughed until I cried.
Today, in creative writing, we were told to start writing our short stories and by the end of class, share what we have so far. Everyone had really deep stories about love, loss, or important moral values. Mine was about a spoon named Bobby who went on an adventure to help save the Kettle from being burned by the stove. My teacher asked to see me after class. He gave me candy and asked to keep my story.
Today, I was bored so I called a random number. A girl answered and was silent, then she said "You have reached the Oreo Company. To receive free Oreos, press one. I'm sorry that offer has ended." I then roared into the phone. She then answered with "NO I WILL NOT BATHE YOUR WHALE!" Then hung up. I want to find this girl, and marry her.
Today, during English, someone made a zombie joke. I reached into my backpack to pull out my "Zombie Survival Guide". Just as I set it on my desk, I looked up to see my teacher pulling the same book from his desk. He looked at me and silently nodded.
Today, I was backpacking with some friends of mine, and in the middle of nowhere colorado, on a boulder was painted "Turn me over" This was a large boulder, about 6 feet across, after twenty minutes of intense pushing, we finally got the boulder turned over and painted on the bottom it said "Thanks".
Today, my dog and I were wrestling. He kept trying to lick my face, but I'd push him away every time he got close. Suddenly he stopped and looked out the window with an intense expression on his face, I decided to look too, as soon as I did, he licked my face. I was outsmarted by a dog.
Today I was sitting on the quad reading. Suddenly, a guy walks past me, without looking at me, and says "duh nuh", like from the Jaws theme. This happened a few more times and then stopped for a little while, so I went back to my reading. Out of nowhere, a guy in a shark suit tackled me to the ground and then ran off. By the time I collected myself and sat up, nobody involved in the affair was in sight. I picked the right college.
Today, I came home to my mom scowling, my dad smirking, and my little sister grinning. Apparently, my sister got into a fight with a fellow 5th grader, saying that the Beatles pwned the Jonas Brothers. My sister and the girl argued until my sister tackled her while yelling, "I am the walrus! Goo goo g'joob!" I have never before felt like such a positive influence to my siblings.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

2009-09-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Tu veux, tu veux pas?

2009-09-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

A friend put me onto this french song, it was originally sung by Brigitte Bardo, the version I like is this strange techno/dance version...sounds odd, but I like playing it when Im busy on the computer, lots of energy...but the original version is very cool as well.

*Editted to add links to the song...Original version by Ms.Bardo, here is the version I was talking about, and I apologize for the dancing girl but its the only one I could find! I like both versions though.

Tu veux, tu veux pas?

Tu veux ou tu veux pas
Tu veux c’est bien
Si tu veux pas tant pis
Si tu veux pas
J’en f’rai pas une maladie
Oui mais voilà réponds-moi
Non ou bien oui
C’est comme ci ou comme ça
Ou tu veux ou tu veux pas

Tu veux ou tu veux pas
Toi tu dis noir et après tu dis blanc
C’est noir c’est noir
Oui mais si c’est blanc c’est blanc
C’est noir ou blanc
Mais ce n’est pas noir et blanc
C’est comme ci ou comme ça
Ou tu veux ou tu veux pas

La vie, oui c’est une gymnastique
Et c’est comme la musique
Y a du mauvais et du bon
La vie, pour moi elle est magnifique
Faut pas que tu la compliques
Par tes hésitations
{au Refrain}

La vie, elle peut être très douce
A condition que tu la pousses
Dans la bonne direction
La vie, elle est là elle nous appelle
Avec toi elle sera belle
Si tu viens à la maison

Tu veux ou tu veux pas ? hein !
Quoi ? Ah ! tu dis oui
Ah ! a a a a a a a
Et ben moi j’veux plus !
Ouh ! la la

Barnum Statements

2009-09-25T10:27:00.001-07:00

I had a friend who was one of the brightest people I have ever met who read her horoscope everyday, she claimed they were accurate. I suspect she was having some fun at my expense given how bright she was, I can't believe she really put stock in horoscopes.

Horoscopes like most personality profiles are nothing more than Barnum statements. Which are statements of subjective validation in which a person finds personal meaning although the statements themselves apply to many people. This effect was named after nonother than P. T. Barnum, who of course said "There is a sucker born every minute".

Examples of typical Barnum statements are:

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you
At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
You tend to be too self critical
You’re an independent and creative thinker
You do not accept what others tell you to believe
Some of your goals seem to be a little unrealistic

The list goes on and on and on.

These types of statements apply to most everyone and of course people see themselves within such statements. Barnum statements are used by psychics and astrologers of all creeds to great success, mostly because people want to believe in such rubbish.

Literally astrology can be defined as the system of beliefs in which knowledge of the relative positions of celestial bodies is used to interpret, predict and organize information about personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial matters.

The astrological charts which modern astrologers use are based upon Ptolemaic tables, which is funny, because Ptolemy left out one of the original signs of the Zodiac which the Babylonians orginally included in their charts when they created this bullshit 4300 years ago...the other really funny thing about these tables, is that they are still used today...if the stars really did have magical effects on our lives, the predictors would still be wrong as their charts have not been updated to reflect the 5 days difference between where stars actually are versus where the charts say they are....oh and for those people who love their newspaper/website horoscope you might be shocked to know these are now created by software which uses random Barnum statements.

Megan Fox - The New Angelina?

2009-09-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

I was hanging out with the girls at the spa, when the topic of Megan Fox came up, and one woman commented how everyone thought Megan Fox was the new Angelina Jolie...I normally could give a fuck about such things...but this is so stupid even I need to comment.

Lets compare the two...

Angelina Jolie won a best actress oscar in 2000 and was nominated for another in 2009, shes won 3 Golden Globes, and Megan Fox has...well not...

Angelina Jolie has appeared in over 30 films, several critically acclaimed...Megan Fox was in Transformers.

Megan Fox dated Justin Green...this should pretty much say all that there is. Oh ya, Angelina Jolie hangs out with Brad Pitt...

Angelina also does a little charity work with the UN as a special ambassador...while Megan Fox I hear has seen a globe once.

And really, lets be honest, woman 30+ are way sexier and appealing than 20 somethings...in all cases...

Dreams

2009-09-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.

But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.

-D.H.Lawrence

Regrets

2009-09-12T09:12:00.001-07:00

My son often brings up hard subjects, he asked me the other day if I had any regrets. Pretty hard question coming from a 7 year old!

I think over the last 3 years I have a couple of pretty major regrets, that are related. I regret wasting so much of my life behind the computer. I think its fair to say I developed a pretty bad video game addiction which sucked away years of my life. I of course had a great justification for my addiction, 'escapism'...getting away from lifes very real and very large stresses. Of course, hiding from lifes problems makes the problems worse not better.

I think the allure of game addiction is strong, and in the end it does nothing but damage ones life and relationships. I have blown up thousands of internet spaceships, conquered hundreds of dungeons...and....so fucking what?! All of those victories and losses mean nothing...I can say all of that time was truly wasted, I have not one thing to show for all of the time I spent wasting away behind the computer, not one.

The other real regret I have is that I have been so passive in my life. I have spent years waiting around for life to happen to me rather than working towards the life I want.

I am the king of self justification, always blaming other peoples actions or inactions for me not working towards the life I want. I know alot of people do the same, blaming their own actions or more correctly inactions on what others do or dont do, its always someone elses fault!!! Frankly its bullshit...if you want something out of life, you need to go after it and work on it...

Music

2009-09-08T09:15:00.001-07:00

Remember when bands put out great albums? Like the guys pictures above who put out album after album of awesome tunes. Perhaps Im just getting old, but where are the new epic albums? I hear a new song and think thats's pretty good, then I check out the album and find it has one or two good songs and the rest...well meh!

Its both fun and sad to sit around and chat music with people of my generation, listening to some of those old great bands. I wonder if I am just missing the point with new artists...but I do like specific songs, just not whole albums...well mostly not even 1/2 an album.

I guess I am really showing my age by even calling it an album!! Talking music is still one of my absolulte favorite things.

Brake Lights

2009-09-05T15:23:00.001-07:00

I grew up in the far north in Canada, with the closest town 90 minutes away. We often found ourselves driving on the old mountain road alone, not seeing another car for the entire trip. Late at night when driving, it was always sort of a relief seeing brake lights of a car ahead, knowing that we weren't the only ones out there.

I was driving home late one night last week, and the roads were very quiet, ahead of me I could see the brake lights of another car in the distance. For a brief second a wave of comfort fell over me...I had the same feeling which I had as a child seeing brake lights in the distance. It was a very nice feeling, that safety one feels in childhood...it was a flicker then gone...it put me in a good mood...the speeding ticket I had gotten earlier in the evening entirely forgotten.

The feelings of childhood are so special...its a shame we don't see it until we are so much older.

Raven Hair

2009-09-01T11:52:00.001-07:00

Raven haired beauty
Bright blue eyes, I cannot meet her gaze
Asking hard questions

Play ground at night, posing for a picture
She won't smile
Ever so serious
It turns out better this way
A bottle of wine
Morning caught us unaware

Old wounds still bleed
Trust again?
Those blue eyes make it hard to resist
Her perfume on my clothes
here I go
again...

How one man beat the KKK

2009-08-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

A great story by Johnny Lee Clary about how Reverend Wade Watts, an NAACP leader, disarmed him by being cool, funny and brave.

A Mothers Journey

2009-08-25T08:16:00.001-07:00

See this photo journal only if you feel like having a cry. Turn on the captions, although the pictures speak for themselves...

Rules for life!

2009-08-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this today, taking stuff from various other lists to make my own, I need to jet right away, so I apologize for any spelling mistakes, or errors in grammer.

Life is not fair, get over it.
Life is too short to hang onto hate.
Forgive, but never forget.
Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will. Stay in touch.
Don't worry about winning arguments, worry about finding solutions.
Don't carry a balance on your credit card.
Never let your gas tank run below 1/4.
Be good to your local businesses.
Cry with someone, not alone, and never let a loved one cry alone, share their tears.
Save money every month, no matter how little.
Don't save things for special occassions, live life NOW!
Be strange, life is more interesting once you don't give a shit what people think of you.
You are responsible for your own happiness.
Time heals.
Growing old is better than dying young.
All that truly matter in life, are the ones we love and those who love us, the rest is just stuff.
Accept the past and move on.
Count to 10, once the words are out there, they cannot be taken back.
Day dream.
Dress like today is important, because it is.
Laugh alot, especially at yourself.
Smile.
Give of yourself.
Think!
Be the first to say sorry.
Never stop talking, to all who you love.
Be a good and active friend.
Take pictures.
Travel.
Don't just stand there, don't let life pass you by.
Step outside your comfort zone.
If you lack self confidence, fake it, no one can tell the difference.
Use good manners.
Live up to your word.
Meditate.
Don't lie to yourself.
Reflect on your blessings.
Phone calls or visits > Emails/Text/Instant Messages
Do things with passion.
Read everyday.
Don't be an asshole.
Be original, don't follow the herd.
Learn to cook, much joy can be found in the kitchen, especially with other people.
Life is really about other people, never forget its people who matter, don't be materialistic.
Do as little harm as possible.

Danger of facebook

2009-08-12T07:03:00.000-07:00

I can confirm this is real...LOL!

Issues with Buddhism

2009-08-11T08:12:00.001-07:00

I have at times identified myself as a buddhist, as there are many very positive aspects of this religion. The religion itself is very thoughtful, quiet and compassionate, its leader is very likable and buddhism tends to focus on things most people would agree are laudible.

A central part of buddhism is meditation, which regardless of your religious ilk (or lack there of) is something that is always good for a person. Quiet contemplation is a great way to both deal with lifes stresses as well as come to terms with problems one faces.

The central theme of all flavours of buddhism is the notion of enlightenment. What is enlightenment? As with most religions, it means different things to different people, but it all boils down to a "true" understanding of oneself and of the world around us.

Where buddhism fails in a very real sense is that no one ever becomes enlightened! No one ever transcends into some sort of divine state of existance. It simply doesnt happen, because, well, this is it...life is life, there are no dragons, elves, ghosts nor enlightenment. I say embrace the positive aspects of buddhism, or any religion, but don't ever fall for the bullshit promises.

As the Buddha said so very long ago...

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.

A great myth about fat

2009-08-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much computer time lately, been exploring this strange outside world place! Most blog updates are going to have to happen when I take a break from work. I can't believe I wasted so much time behind the computer over the last 3 years, missed out on alot of living...but that is a story for another blog!

Exercise, losing weight, keeping it off, all things I know alot about...or I thought I did. I recently learned some new things which I would like to share.

The journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University reports that a pound of fat burns 2 calories a day, and a pound of muscle burns a whopping 6 calories a day! Yes, you read the right...6 calories a day for a pound of muscle. That means if you replace 10 pounds of fat with muscle you get to eat 40 calories more a day and not gain weight...40 calories...thats well...not much!

The common wisdom has always been muscle burns alot more than fat at rest, and it does, 3x as much...but both are so low, that just having muscle doesnt really change what you can eat.

Even exercise doesnt burn alot of calories, if you run for 30min, then drink 1 Gatorade you are at a complete wash calorie-wise. Of course exercise has other important benefits besides weight loss, so I am certainly not arguing that its a waste of time. Unless you are doing 90min of exercise every single day, you probably wont lose much weight from exercising is what the latest research shows. The best and most effective way to lose weight is all about the calorie input!

For maximum overall health, a combination of exercise and diet is still the best, but if its just about losing weight, well, you need to do alot more than just exercise. Seriously, 6 calories a day...I almost fell off my chair when I read that.

Greatest Standoff Ever!

2009-08-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe its a guy thing but I love it! It is an excellent illusion to trust and the lack of trust between people...everyone is scared to take the first leap.

10,000 Rockets

2009-01-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

Since Hamas came to power in Gaza they have fired 10,000 rockets and Mortars into Israel. These rockets are known as "dumb weapons", meaning that those who launch them only have a faint idea of where they will land.

We have had years and years of Hamas firing these weapons at basically anyone, since they cannot even begin to target them, and the world says what?! Well nothing, no protests in London nor New York...

If France launched 10,000 rockets into Britain indiscriminately dropping all over the British countryside what do you expect the citizens of Britain would demand of their government? Would they expect their government to pay billions of dollars to supply those shooting the rockets with food, water, clothes, electricity, heating oil and fuel? Oh didn't you know that the vast majority of humanitarian supplies for Gaza and the West bank are paid for by Israel? Did you think Iran or Syria paid for them? Think again, the Israeli tax payer has been paying for these basics of life all the while Hamas has launched 10,000 rockets and mortars into Israel.

Don't get me wrong, I don't approve of the vast numbers of civilians killed by the Israelis during this war. Just as I don't approve of the vast number of murders Hamas has carried out to its own people since they came to power (do some searching, Hamas has killed, kidnapped and tortured more people since they came to power than the Israelis have during this war...funny no marches about that either).

Luckily for Hamas and the Palestinians they are closer to victory than ever before...don't believe me? Well, I didnt say it, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya says "We are closer to victory than ever."
Source CNN

Are these people retarded?! How about this for a concept everyone stop shooting each other. Full stop, no more blame, or tit for tat murders. Figure out a way to let normal people get on with their lives. Israel will not be obliterated regardless of what the Hamas charter says, and Israel can't wipe out the Palestinians either. Both sides need to accept that the other isn't going anywhere, and that every single death on all sides is a complete waste as they will have to come to terms with each other at some point.

The very idea that either side claims god is backing them makes me sick, that nonsense may have worked in the dark fucking ages, but not now. Seriously just stop killing each other.

Im constantly amazed

2008-10-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

I think people really can't be as thick, stupid or hateful as they really are. In Ponce De Leon, a small town in Florida last year a principal was asked for help from one of his students, the girl asking for help is a lesbian, and she was being taunted by some classmates. So...what does the principal do to the girl asking for help?! He told her that being gay is wrong, then outed her to her parents...I guess that is the Christian way!

Some of this girls friends found the treatment outrageous so they wore gay pride t-shirts in support or t-shirts with rainbows. I wonder what happened to them? Well, first there was a witch hunt (the courts words not mine) by the principal to find more gays, then some students were suspended for daring to support their friend (what a terrible personality trait, wanting to stick by and support your friends, better crush that as fast as we can).

"We are a small, rural district in the Bible Belt with strong Christian beliefs and feel like homosexuality is wrong," said Steve Griffin, Holmes County's school superintendent. Interesting isn't it? From the highest authority in the school district we have people who think homosexuality is wrong...fine...but does that mean taking that personal belief and turning that belief into those kinds of hateful actions against children is well...

The principal was demoted but still teaches in the school...and the superintendent still believes they did nothing wrong. Seriously what the fuck is wrong with people!?!? They honestly can't see the effect such actions will have on children, or understand the hateful environment this will create for all of the gay kids who are in the closet. My god, who the fuck would come out there?!?!

I guess I have a totally different understanding of what the Christian ideal is than these types of people...I thought Christians were supposed to be loving, caring and understanding...rather than cruel, mean, harsh and well...fucking evil. Lets crush a young womans spirit, make her life hell, then talk about our great Christian values...well....fuck you...no wonder I am an Atheist!

I also can't understand how these people simply fail to read or understand the fucking law...seriously, how can they think their actions are legal?! Or that any court in the land would think its ok!? Are they so far removed from reality?!!? Can't they put aside their own retarded bias to do what is right for their own students!?!

"I guess I didn't realize we were this bad," Scott said...I guess you fucking didn't...asshole!

People wonder why I am so bitter and cynical...sigh...

أبو العلاء أحمد بن عبد الله بن سليمان التنوخي المعري

2008-10-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

They all err - Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Magicians:
Two make Humanity's universal sect:
One man intelligent without religion,
And, one religious without intellect.
written by: أبو العلاء أحمد بن عبد الله بن سليمان التنوخي المعري

A poet (Al-Ma‘arri ) born in Syria in 973...already calling it as it is, we need to see more of this in the West!!

Swear Words??

2008-10-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought about how strange the very idea of swear words are? Words are used to communicate thoughts plain and simple, so why are we "offended" when people use swear words to communicate thoughts?! For example, I can comfortably say:

I am not happy with this product, it does not meet my needs and is poorly constructed.

But I can't say in polite company:

This is a piece of shit, what the fuck am I supposed to do with it?

Both essentially communicate the same thoughts, but one uses polite words, and one uses swear words.

One legitimate criticism of swear words is that they are very vague and thus they may not be the best words to communicate exactly ones thoughts. That being said, why is the use of swear words so shocking to some people?

When President Bush called a reporter an "Asshole", some people were stunned that the President would use such language. I hate to break it to you, but most everyone (except my mom) swears quite regularly. So why cant we swear in public? Why cant we swear on television? What the hell is so wrong about using some words?

A word is a word is a word...you can use many combinations of the most polite words to hurt or insult someone...so what difference does it make if one uses four letter words, or ones with more syllables to do damage?!

I must admit I have my own funny word bias, I happen to say "fuck" quite often...but only in the context of a general swear...I have never ever been one to say to a woman "Lets fuck", or "fuck me" or anything along those lines...its always been "make love" or "fool around" or "have sex"...don't ask me why, but its something I have never done.

Words...they are funny! So, think about it, what the fuck is so wrong about swearing!?

What happened to Fluffy?!

2008-10-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what happens to all of those pets that euthanized every year? From what I can tell it looks like 6-10 million pets are killed every year in the US & Canada. That is a huge number of dead animals, ever wonder what happens to the dead bodies?

I was shocked to discover that it is very common practice to take the carcasses to a rendering plants and turn them into pet food, or food for livestock. That's right, they pump the animal with enough chemicals to kill them, then turn the chemically filled bodies into food for other animals.

It turns out that the most common chemical used to put down is called "pentobarbital", and a study by the FDA suggest that pentobarbital is capable of surviving the rendering process.

The FDA has found pentobarbital in many pet foods it has tested. Linky

Now let me spell this out clearly, millions of animals are euthanized every year using the chemical pentobarbital. We have many reports of these dead animals being taken to rendering plants. In case you think Im making this up, check out this page and click on "What's Cookin". We have the FDA finding the very chemical used to kill these animals found in many of the pet foods it tested.

The pet food industry as a whole denies that euthanized pets ever become pet food despite the evidence (wonder why?!), the pet food industry claims that FDA studies have shown that they found no Dog or Cat in pet foods...The claim is that pentobarbital is making its way into pet foods via euthanized horses and cows.

...it is assumed that the pentobarbital residues are entering pet foods from euthanized, rendered cattle or even horses. Source

We know for a fact that euthanized pets are being rendered into feed, the question is, is this feed going directly back to pets? Or is it going to Cattle/Horses/Chickens, who then ironically are fed back to pets?! One thing is 100% clear, dead animals are being recycled and fed to other animals, and the process is being repeated.

Isn't this how mad cow was spread?!?!

A British inquiry into BSE concluded that the epidemic was caused by cattle, who are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread. Source

Seriously, how stupid are we?! In order to stop the spread of mad cow, we stop feeding dead cows back to cows...so we feed them to pets, who we then feedback to cows...my lord...its almost comical how fucking stupid people are...

Guide to Metal

2008-10-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

What can I say...this is fucking awesome!!!!

War on Terror

2008-10-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Atheism and Buddhism

2008-10-05T18:41:00.001-07:00

Can you be an Atheist and a Buddhist? Are these approaches to life mutually exclusive? I use to tell people I am a Buddhist then in passing mention I am an Atheist as well, which would confound and confuse, so now I generally just stick to the "I am an Atheist" approach to self labelling.

The famous quote from the Buddha is what empowers me to cover myself in both blankets:

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

While this may seem like a common sense approach to a philosophy to base ones life on, you will find literally no "religion" espouses this view other than Buddhism. Can you imagine Christian or Islamic teachers telling you to use your own reason and accept only that which makes sense to you?!

Why would I call myself a Buddhist? Buddhism when you boil it down, amounts to living ones life by doing as little harm as possible, living with kindness and compassion and trying to be aware of the moment. Buddhism also has a strong sense of a duality of existence, that is we are made up of both the mind and body.

The concept of trying to be aware of the moment, to quiet the mind and not let it race along with thoughts at breakneck speeds is something that very much appeals to me. No matter that I am very bad at quieting my mind!

Meditation is also something I strongly believe in, and was once a great practitioner of, as of late I have rarely made time to meditate. This is something I aim to change in the coming days.

Do I believe in the Buddhist notions of nirvana or reincarnation? No, I do not believe in either of these two tenants of Buddhism. I don't believe that disqualifies me from owning that label and following some Buddhist practises.

One of the major problems I always had with traditional Buddhism was the formal priesthood and temples, both of which are concepts I would argue go against the teachings of Buddha. One of the major reasons I stopped using the label Buddhist for myself was the fact that everyone seemed to associate the temples and monks with Buddhism, and I wanted to distance myself from this. Then I happened upon this quote from the Dali lama:

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Suddenly I feel its safe for me to once again wear the moniker of Buddhism. Now does that mean I believe or support everything that the Dali Lama says? Well, if you have ever read the bullshit that the Dali Lama says about sex, its clear that I can't support all of his views. He also believes in Nirvana and reincarnation, so there is still a huge gap in terms of beliefs between the two of us!

Crazy?!

2008-10-05T15:58:00.001-07:00

Some people seem to have a very lose grasp of reality. I was surfing around the net and came across this site.

This person, Dr. Bruce Goldberg claims that time travel will be invented 3050 by a man named Taatos, he then goes on to give all kinds of details about this...I really can't add much to this discussion as it takes a certain kind of crazy to believe this shit.

Luckily for you and me, this guy offers tapes! For only $75 you too can purchase all 7 cd's worth!!! A time traveling dentist, just what the world needed! For 60 seconds of laughs its worth visiting his site...ok maybe 30 seconds...I laughed!

Financial Melt Down Explained

2008-10-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

My good friend Alan sent me a link to a radio show from National Public Radio in Chicago which delved into the entire financial crisis, it does an excellent job at explaining both the macro and micro issues involved. Its an hour long, but well worth it if you really want to understand what happened.

Link to the radio show.

Free Speech in Canada?!

2008-10-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

We Canadians often carry a quiet arrogance about how civilized and developed we are as a nation, yet we are blind to the very real and very dangerous short comings in our civil society. Most Canadians aren't aware of our collective lack of rights, Canadians wrongly assume our rights mirror those of our American cousins.

I think most young people sleep through the lesson on "Peace Order and Good Government" while in middle school. Unlike Americans, we have an extremely weak constitution whose rules only protect us as long as the government sees fit. There is not one clause in our constitution which cannot be overridden by either the Federal or Provincial governments! When I tell my good American friends, that at any point in our constitution can be thrown out due to the "Not Withstanding Clause" at any time for any reason they are horrified. What is the point of a constitution if it cannot stand up to our government?! The whole point of a constitution is to protect an individual from government.

The federal Parliament or a provincial legislature may declare a law or part of a law to apply temporarily "notwithstanding" countermanding sections of the Charter, thereby nullifying any judicial review by overriding the Charter protections for a limited period of time. This is done by including a section in the law clearly specifying which rights have been overridden. The rights to be overridden, however, must be either a fundamental right (e.g., section 2 freedom of expression, religion, association, etc), a legal right (e.g., liberty, search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, etc), or a section 15 equality right.

Can you imagine the Americans putting up with this?! Ok, so in general this bothers me a great deal, today my specific concern about current Canadian law is free speech. In Canada it ain't so free!

If you want to be shocked, take a look at this, this is a transcript from a Human Rights Tribunal, May 10, 2007.

Q: MS KULASZKA: Mr. Steacy, you were talking before about context and how important it is when you do your investigation. What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?

MR. STEACY: Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.

MS KULASZKA: Okay. That was a clear answer.

MR. STEACY: It's not my job to give value to an American concept.

Mr. Steacy is an investigator with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. That's right!, his job since 1997 has been to investigate human rights complains within Canada for a decade at the point of this exchange. His job is to know the law inside and out, and look for violations, and his conclusion is what?! Let me spell it out again: Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value.

Of course this bullshit position by a Canadian government official barely raised an eyebrow from the Canadian public and media. Once again Canadian apathy strikes! Well fuck that, freedom of speech is not an American concept, its a human concept!

When the government tried to do some damage control due to the whisper of discontent about Mr.Steacy's comments, they came out with this gem:

What the fuck?!!? Canadian value of freedom of expression is different from the American value of freedom of speech?! Are you serious!? Well, legally there is some truth to the matter...care to compare how many books are banned in Canada each year compared to the US. Or how many people are prosecuted for so called "hate speech".

This is infact the bullshit which pisses me off so much. Are we that scared of people in Canada that we cannot allow some dipshits to spew hate?! If someone wants to say something about Muslims, or Jews, or Whites, or Blacks etc, they should be allowed to. What are we so scared about?!?!

Should there be limits to speech?! Well of course threats, fraud and criminal conspiracies should be illegal. But peoples opinions, well seriously what is wrong with people being able to spout all kinds of bullshit?! Should my anti-religious tirade be illegal because they offend someone?! In Alberta, if I say something which offends a particular religious group I can be dragged before the Human Rights commission where I could face fines or prison for simply offending someone!!! Think Im kidding?! Canadian journalist and fellow allumni Ezra Levant was dragged before the tribunal for daring to publish the Danish cartoons which offended muslims. He printed a fucking cartoon and that cost him tens of thousands of dollars because some fucking over sensitive douche bags were offended by a cartoon! Here's his take on it.

This is plain wrong. I am ashamed of a country which is so scared that words upset or hurt people, that we are willing to prosecute those who dare say something offensive. Canadians we should all be ashamed, and people should know their rights, or in this case, lack of rights.

Why wont the christians save me!?

2008-10-01T08:31:00.001-07:00

I reject Christ as my savior! The idea that some sort of zombie came back from the dead to save me from the sin of being born is something I cannot and will not accept. Ok, this topic isn't about why I reject all gods (unlike Christians who reject all gods but one), it is about why the Christians don't want to save me!

If I am a Christian who believes most of the bible (as an aside I must note that literally every single Christian who I have had the pleasure of debating picks and chooses parts of the bible and their various religions to believe in, and rejects other parts) then I must believe that someone who thinks and talks like Mr.Big will spend an eternity in hell!

The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.
Psalm 9:17

Im not even a nation, just one annoying arrogant guy! Since I am one man forgetting god, it must be pretty safe to assume it will be the fires of hell for me!

I have challenged a few of my closest christian friends with the question on why they won't save me. The bible is pretty clear that they are walking a dangerous path even associating with me:

"Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?" 2 Corinthians 6:14-17

"I have not sat with idolatrous mortals, Nor will I go in with hypocrites. I have hated the assembly of evildoers, And will not sit with the wicked. I will wash my hands in innocence; So I will go about Your altar, O LORD, That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, And tell of all Your wondrous works."
Psalm 26:4-7

"An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous, And he who is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked."
Proverb 29:27

And my favourite

"Do not be deceived: Evil company corrupts good habits."
1 Corinthians 15:33

I kinda like the idea that just being around me is a threat to someones beliefs, how strong the fear is that people will be easily swayed that the bible goes so far to state its dangerous to spend time in the company of people like me! Ok, I'm off topic...

If someone cares about me and truly believes I will spend FOREVER burning in hell fire why aren't they trying to save me? One would think that hell is the absolute worst place for anyone to be, yet people who laugh and joke with me are simply ok with the idea that I suffer forever in hellfire!

If I truly believed that someone would suffer an eternity in hell, I think I would do everything in my power to save them. Yet all of my Christian friends basically don't even try to save me from an eternity in hellfire! Do these people even like me?!!? Why on earth don't they try to save me!? Why aren't they trying to show me the path to righteousness? Why aren't they appealing to my emotional side? My intellectual side? Why will they let me burn?!

Ok, perhaps they want me to burn for being godless, I guess that is a possibility, but the people I have in mind are really good people, who seem to like me. So I am left wondering, why?!

When push comes to shove, perhaps they don't think I will burn, or that there is no hell, or that maybe not following some arbitrary rules laid down by bronze age sheep herders wont get one eternal damnation.

I think the real reason Christians don't want to save me is that by trying to convince an ardent atheist like myself about the existance of God they need to examine their own faiths critically as I ask some hard questions that aren't easy to answer. That is when talking with a Christian it often comes down to a statement like "You just have to have faith". One of my favourite atheists summed this up best when speaking with believers. as they often respond like this:

"I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do."
Penn Jillette

Enough of the serious talk...this is what I feel like:

The Future

2008-07-15T07:30:00.001-07:00

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain

I wonder if I make more of issues in my life than I should. Humans are really very interesting creatures that we are able to ponder and imagine as much as we do. This is both a gift and a curse of course, depending on your mood and your perspective. You can look at a given situation and imagine how wonderful the future could be or despair at what could go wrong! In my experience things rarely work out like I thought, either for the good or the bad.

I spend a great deal of time thinking about things in my life, and I wonder if much of that effort is wasted time and energy. I do get into the trap of churning over things, which leads literally to nowhere other than to drive me crazy. I know I do this, so when I find myself falling into a trap of churning over a topic I force myself to stop thinking about it.

Acting without any thought doesn't seem like the best approach to life either, I have a very stupid impulsive side that takes hold from time to time, and rarely am I happy with the results although when I am being impulsive at that moment, it does feel very liberating, even when I do something I know is basically stupid. Of course that "high" of doing something impulsive lasts about 10 seconds, while the implications of these impulsive decisions can last a lifetime.

Finding the balance between being thoughtful about life and avoiding mental churn is really the key for me. I tend to fall on the side of over-thinking things for the most part which I know some people don't understand.

I am not surprised people "find" religion in the grand scheme of life. I think those with faith must find a lot of comfort when struggling with the various things that come up, not to mention religion often offers a set of instructions to deal with things.

The theory of just living life, and not stressing too much is something I very much agree with on an intellectual level, but I can't seem to internalize this approach to life. I tend to brood over things, I really wish I could deny this, but its true. In the movies the girls always love the brooding mysterious guy, the reality is the brooding guy isn't really that much fun! Maybe I just need to drink, that seems to eliminate brooding and what could go wrong with that plan?!

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
-Mark Twain

Self Worth

2008-07-14T07:58:00.001-07:00

When we are teenagers a great deal of our feelings of self worth come from what our peers think of us. How we are perceived by the people who count in our lives basically frames what we think of ourselves. As we get older and more mature the opinion of our peers generally matters less as we grow more self confident.

I believe how we think about ourselves is always a mix of our own internal commentary and the opinion of those around us, this mix is often in flux. It takes a very strong person who is really confident in their own skin not to be influenced about what others think of us, especially those whose opinions matter most.

How do we know what others think of us? They often tell us! Words from the people you love are absolutely key...the right words or the wrong words can either build us up or destroy us. I think the basic difference between adults and teenagers in this regards is whose opinion matters. When we are teenagers, we often value peoples opinions who we don't like, let alone that we are close to. As we get older we understand that most peoples opinions don't really matter. We become selective in who we listen to, and who we want to impress. Its part of our hardwiring as social creatures, we want to build bonds with each other and the best way to build bonds is to have others like and love us.

When I was a young buck and had the world by its tail I really didn't care what anyone thought of me. I had many friends in university and I really thought I knew all about the world and how things worked and was extremely confident in my approach. I think this was in part because I was in such great physical shape, not only was I fighting fires in the summer I spent 2 hours a day in the gym. I was pretty selfish and thought I had all the answers, so peoples opinions really didn't matter that much. I didn't really look externally for validation as I believed I knew everything better than anyone else!

Now that I am older, the one thing in life that I know for certain is that I don't know all of the answers. Maybe that is really the key to maturing, that we realize we don't know it all, but it really should go hand-in-hand with not looking that hard for external validation.

I've been going through a number of existential issues as of late, one of which is my own worth...what value do I add to my relationships? What value do I add to work? To life etc? How does my own opinion reflect the reality? Maybe it is a completely futile to even try to define this, but for whatever reason this is something I have been pondering over the last little while. I think it is all part of my effort to take stock of my life, and where I am on this crazy ride. Maybe it is a mid-life crisis!!! I know a little sports car will solve all of these problems!!

I think for awhile I greatly overestimated what value I add to many of the aspects of my life, that is work and relationships etc. Its not a bad thing to have a more realistic view of the world, and realize that I don't add anything particularly special to the mix, we can't all be superstars and that is ok. Maybe being ok with being painfully normal is really a secret to being happy and accepting of life.

I will let you know!

Chiropractors - What you need to know!

2008-07-11T11:14:00.000-07:00

Since I have had so much backpain as of late, many well-meaning but totally misguided friends have suggested I visit a chiropractor. I reject the idea outright, because quite frankly it's for the most part a complete scam and a danger. I thought I would put together a bit of information which better proves my point rather than just sound like an opinionated oaf!

Anyone want to guess who created chiropractic medicine? What kind of medical expert discovered the merits of this "science" through years of painstaking research?! Oh, well it wasn't a doctor, nor a specialist in anatomy, nope it was a grocer...yes that's right, the creator of this wonderful medical procedure was a grocer!!! Daniel David Palmer, not only was a grocer but he also practiced the art of magnetic healing. Don't fear he did read some books on anatomy before he began suggesting that people pull on each others spines. His central theory was that a subluxated vertebra… is the cause of 95 percent of all diseases. …The other five percent is caused by displaced joints other than those of the vertebral. Do you believe that?! All disease is caused by the spine?! seriously what the fuck?! Ok, we know better now right?

The Association of Chiropractic Colleges bolstered support for this theory in 1996 when the presidents of all 16 North American chiropractic colleges reached a consensus and issued a position paper stating that "Chiropractic is concerned with the preservation and restoration of health, and focuses particular attention on the subluxation."
(Association of Chiropractic Colleges. A position paper on chiropractic. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 19:633-637, 1997)

So the question begging to be answered is what is a subluxated vertebra? According to Wikipedia a vertebral subluxation is defined by chiropractors as a relatively common condition in which a spinal vertebra has lost its proper juxtaposition with one or both of its neighboring vertebrae.

Well that is not entirely acurate if you google this subject you will find that some chiropractors argue that subluxation may not only be out of place vertebra but it could also be joints or joint mobility or pinched nerves or...well the list goes on, it turns out that lots of chiropractors have lots of ideas about what subluxation is, but they hold one thing in common...give them money, and dammit they will fix it! And fixing it can cure not only backpain, but also asthma, acne, arthritus, MS, high blod pressure hell...it can even help with cancer! Don't believe me? Google for a chiropractor and see the claims they make.

Listen to how one site explains subluxation

When spinal bones are not in their proper place, the openings between them can narrow. The vertebrae can impinge on the nerves branching out from these spaces. This is commonly, though inaccurately, known as a "pinched nerve."

This interferes with the normal flow of energy along the nerve fibers. Messages traveling along the nerves will be distorted. If the full, normal energy flow cannot pass to and from the brain, some part of the body will be adversely affected

I guess I missed the part where energy passed through nerve endings...love the new age twist to it, very much like the other favorite of mine "Chi". Sorry to break it to the world, our nerves are not like fucking hoses!!! Seriously...people buy this crap!?

From the same site:

Unfortunately, there are many cells and organs in the body that do not send out any alarms to alert us that they are not functioning at 100% capacity. Because of vertebral subluxations, they will not be receiving a normal flow of energy. The instructions from the body's Innate Intelligence will not be getting through properly.

If a subluxation continues undetected, the organ may suffer great damage, yet we won't even be aware of it! Because subluxations can destroy a person's health without any visible signs, they are often called "the silent killer."

Ummmm...wow...

There is evidence that spinal manipulation can help with back pain and neck pain, I will not deny that. By spinal manipulation I mean, stretching, physical therapy, massage etc! According to a study published in the October 8, 1998, New England Journal of Medicine, spinal manipulation done by a chiropractor may be no more effective than physical therapy in the treatment of back pain and only marginally more effective than following a self-help instruction booklet. hmmm stretching yourself maybe as effective as paying thousands of dollars to a chiropractor...interesting!

I will address neck manipulations in another blog...because they are just wow...so bad I cant stand it...

First Time

2008-07-09T07:15:00.001-07:00

I had my first ever massage at the hands of a professional yesterday. I know many people make use of the services of a masseuse, but I never have. I have been having back and chest pain due to stress for the last 8 weeks or so, a friend suggested that I try a massage to see if it would help. The very idea of some stranger touching me has always put me off getting a proper massage, but my back has really been driving me crazy, so I thought why not?! and went for it and booked at 60 minute massage at the spa close to my house.

After I arrived and filled out the forms they make you fill out I was led to a little dark room where there was some new age mellow music playing. The masseuse (Mary) told me to strip down then get under the blanket on the table...I was like "Can I just take my shirt off?" and she said I could do whatever I am comfortable with, but she noted most people stripped to their underwear. This is very weird, getting practically naked so a woman I don't know can oil me down and rub me! Ug, I decided that I better put that thought out of my mind, and just try to relax and go with the flow. So I relented and stripped to my underpants (as my son loves to call them) and climbed on the table.

A minute or so passed and she returned and the massage began. I was still thinking how totally strange it was to have some woman I don't know touch me in such a familiar way. She managed to zero in on the exact spots on my back and shoulders where I hurt. I was literally amazed that she seemed to know exactly where my trouble areas were and work on them. I had to remind myself more than once to just relax and not stress about the experience.

This maybe silly, but I think the physical touch of another human being is something we all need and is something I was missing. My son is very physical with me, that is not only do we play fight all the time, but he likes to sit on me, and hug me, and cuddle with me. He hasn't been around for more than a week and I think I really missed the physical contact. Just being touched was something I guess I was missing, and I didn't realize how much until I was having the massage.

I found the whole thing to be a positive experience, it really helped my back which was the entire point, it pushed me outside of my comfort zone...which is another good thing. I still find the idea of a stranger touching you to be very weird, especially at how close she was, I could literally feel her breath on me a few times. I have booked another massage a week and a half from now, I think since I've been through it once and have an idea of what to expect I should be able to relax more. Overall this is something I would recommend, especially if you can turn off your own internal commentary!!

Days

2008-07-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

Broken Dreams
Days march on
Doors begin to close
Clouds gather on the horizon
Something changes

Hold my breath
Reach out and take a hold
The mist parts

An old man smiles
The sunlight drips though
Azure skies
morning dew between toes
The search
Does it ever end?

Tears

2008-06-30T18:31:00.001-07:00

My son was crying the other day and I told him it was ok to cry, and he replied that I never cry...how wrong he is. Its funny after my father died (1993) I don't think I cried until until my son was in the hospital with complications after birth, which would mean I basically didn't cry for 9 years. I didn't cry much after that incident with my son either, not for years. I have made up for it over the last year or two.

From Wikipedia "According to a study of over 300 adults, on average men cry once every month, and women cry at least five times per month", so it looks like people cry a lot more than I use to! From the same article "Due to the chemical composition of emotional tears, some scientists have hypothesized that a function of crying is to rid the body of stress hormones. " I totally agree with this, crying tends to make me feel better, while its certainly not the be all ended, it does help take the edge off of emotions for me.

I was kind of happy that my son hadn't been aware of me crying, not that I'm ashamed of it, or because I think it shows a lack of manliness, but more because it shows he hasn't been too aware of the stress between my wife and myself.

My wife and son left today for Israel, and he gave me his stuffed wolf "Arfy" to take care of. I've had this stuffed wolf by my side since he left...I've shed a few tears since then as well...

Attraction

2008-06-29T13:30:00.001-07:00

Wikipedia refers to attraction as "the attraction between people which leads to friendships and romantic relationships...in a colloquial sense, interpersonal attraction is related to how much we like, love, dislike, or hate someone. Interpersonal attraction can be thought of as a force acting between two people tending to draw them together, and resisting their separation...attraction is a person's qualities that tend to attract by appealing to another person's desires."

So what is it that draws us together? How much of what attracts us to other people is instinct and how much is more thoughtful? Does what attracts us change over time? I think the latter question is the easiest to answer, that is yes what we are attracted to over time certainly changes. When we are teenagers and young adults the very things that attract us to some people can be repulsive when we get older. The silly bravado of young men is often appealing to young women (or so it seems to me), yet this quality in an older man looks foolish and pathetic and upon closer inspection speaks to a lack of self confidence rather than an excess of it.

I think there is an element of what is often referred to as animal magnetism between the sexes, where one feels attracted to another for a reason which is difficult to define. As we get older in particular this isn't enough to sustain a relationship. We demand more from a relationship than this purely instinctual attraction, well ok, some people don't demand more...but people who have a clue certainly do.

Can you have a relationship with someone when this instinctual portion of the attraction isn't there? I'm not sure, as it does seem to be a basic or foundational aspect of our human relationships. I would like to be an idealist and say that yes indeed people can overcome a lack of animal magnetism and have a successful relationship, but the realist tells me that may not be the case. Or perhaps the reality is I am not capable of overcoming that type of gap and I really shouldn't speak for everyone else!

So what attracts us to each other? Are there things that we look for in partners? Or do we meet someone and that animal magnetism hits and we just appreciate the qualities of the person we feel the instinctual attraction to? I think the reality is that we do this to a degree, that we meet someone and things click, and we appreciate their qualities. I do think the more mature we are ( I wont say older as I think some people are better at this at younger ages) the more we are able to identify the things we want and need from a person in a relationship. It shouldn't be a surprise that what we want or need changes as we evolve. I guess the hope is to be in a relationship with someone who you grow together with.

What is it that draws us together? I think part of it has to be how the other person makes you feel about yourself. Which is why I can never understand people in abusive relationships, why stay with someone who makes you feel badly about yourself? Why do people stay with someone who calls them "stupid" or "ugly" or tells them their ideas are "stupid" etc? I just don't understand this at all. I have known more than one very intelligent attractive woman who has put up with this kind of treat meant, and I simply don't understand it at all. I wonder if there is an excitement quality that I just don't see. I think a real partner is someone who builds you up, not someone who tears you down.

I am really not an expert on this topic, hell Im not an expert on any topic of the heart...the one thing I have concluded is that human attraction is very complicated and is a moving target which is really not all that rational.

Sex is it serious business?

2008-06-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

"Casual sex " is a term I have never really been able to get my mind around, ok I know what it means! Im not a complete idiot...I mean its something that I have a hard time internalizing. I can't picture myself being able to have sex which is basically devoid of meaning other than the act itself. I will admit that when I was very young I had a few what I would describe as meaningless encounters only because I didn't know what was going on, nor did I really think I would score!

I take sex and the stuff that surrounds it seriously, and have done so for a very long time, and this attitude has certainly caused me to have less sex than I could have had. I can recall several occassions while I was in university where I could have scored but I didnt follow through. I was a health nut in university and a gym freak, so I did get some attention from the fairer sex. I guess it didn't help that I was "scared" of women and didn't know how to speak to them. UG Im getting off topic here, back to sex, or the lack of sex...

My parents were rather puritan in their views, and all they ever said to us kids about sex was "Dont have it until you are married" which equipped all of the kids with great tools to function in the modern world!! I am sure that the serious upbringing from my parents is part of the reason for my attitude on sex.

My real question to myself is has this attitude served me well? Why take sex so seriously? Why not just have fun with it? Does sex have to be serious business? Is it really wrong to just have "fun" sex between consenting adults? I know the way Im wired I doubt I would be able to have casual sex as I would be wracked with guilt...for some reason to me sex is meant to be more than the act itself. Ok, another factor is I doubt I would be able to feel comfortable enough to have sex with someone I don't know or trust. I don't judge those who are having casual sex, I am pretty liberal in my views on sex, so its not a matter of that.

I guess from my last several posts its pretty clear that I am have some existential issues, which is nothing new for me, but given the life changes I am going through I am taking stock of alot of things. I wonder what good times I have deprived myself of, just because I hold such a romantic or sentimental view of sex. Should sex only be an expression of love?!

I guess I have sex on the brain because sex is a good stress reliever and I am going through a bit of stress...so of course because Im a fucktard I don't only think about having sex, but about the meaning behind sex...sigh...

Anger and Conflict

2008-06-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

Conflict, is something I am not good at, at least not with those I care about. I have no problem getting into arguments with strangers or people I don't know that well, in fact when I was a young punk growing up from time to time I would come to blows with people to settle a dispute, thankfully I have grown past that!

Although I have a love of debate, I have a problem expressing my feelings with people I care about if I think that by expressing myself I will hurt their feelings. On the one hand I have this very strong personality, where I engage people in heated debate on all kinds of very sensitive issues all of the time, yet when it comes to my personal life I dare not express my feelings on many subjects for fear of causing hurt.

When I get to a certain point, when I am well and truly angry I can become very blunt and my care for hurting the other person drops dramatically. Even when I am totally pissed off and in the heat of a rage I don't resort to name calling or yelling...its just not what I do. Instances where I get to that level of anger are very rare, but they do happen. My problem, and it is a problem is that I shouldn't wait to get to that level of anger before I am willing to engage in a conflict.

The real problem with my approach is that by saving someones feelings in the short term, I end up doing damage in the long term. I mean, that if you have feelings about something, and you suppress them, or ignore them, you eventually build up resentment. Resentment is a massive threat to a relationship, as it slowly destroys things without you even being aware that its happening.

I use to argue all of the time with my sisters, especially when I was younger, but they would always personalize things and our fights would turn nasty. I found that if I didn't engage, peace would be kept...and somewhere down the line I started to use that strategy in my life with everyone close to me. My wife and I basically never fought until I asked her to leave last year, and that was a huge mistake.

I am now trying to be better at having what I would call healthy conflict, and not letting things build up. It really isn't easy for me, as my emotional tools really aren't that developed. Its fucking stupid that someone who loves to debate as much as I do, and someone who can get into it at the drop of a hat with a stranger, has such a hard time arguing with people I care about. I'm scared of hurting their feelings that is for sure, as I hate hurting people, and I guess that I am also scared that by having a conflict they will just say "fuck it" and be done with me. I know that may sound really stupid, and I hate to admit it...but I think that is really the core problem I have with conflict.

When I use to date, whenever I would have a fight with a girlfriend it would always be the end, it was extremely rare for me to have a fight with a girl and continue to see her. Is that sick or what?! I'm not sure why it always worked out that way, although looking back I bet it was my fault. I didn't really develop the skill to fight with confidence, that I could have a big fight with a woman and know that no matter what we would still be ok when the dust settles. That unspoken fear I guess has been with me for a long time. It sounds a bit drama-queen of me, but whatever its true!

I have been trying to be better, and not let resentment build up, and when I have an issue with someone I care about I am trying to engage. That fear of what the conflict may lead to is still with me, I'm not sure exactly how to make it go away, but I am learning to just push through it. I think its fucking stupid that a man of my age (37) is only now learning this lesson! I have tried very hard to teach my son that its ok to express his opinion and feelings and doing so doesn't mean he will break his relationship with his parents or friends. I have made a point of teaching him this, as he and I share so many personality traits that I don't want him to make the same stupid mistakes I have made in my life.

Another self indulgent post! If you dont like it...dont read it! :P

What does it mean to be happy?

2008-06-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

When we were are all that small happy was a fairly easy concept, as we get older and mature happiness somehow becomes much more complex. How important is it to be happy? We as humans must value it, as the pursuit of happiness is literally written into The Declaration of Independence of the United States. So I know I am not on thin ice to believe that being happy is really important.

Trying to define what is to be happy is difficult, as that word means so much to so many people. In my last post I mentioned that I am unhappy, does that mean that I am doom and gloom all of the time? Do I go out and kick puppies and have a general hate on for the world? Well, ok sometimes I have a general hate on for the world, but that's just me! I most definitely have happy moments in my life. Watching my son sleep, is a feeling I wish I could bottle and feel all of the time it is so wonderful. The feeling I get from conversations I have with an extraordinary friend is also truly awesome, and is something I wish I could feel all of the time. So, I have happy times even while I am unhappy....how weird is that?! Well that is the nature of being an irrational human being!

To further cloud the matters, being aware of my own unhappiness means I am more aware of when I am feeling unhappy or happy and I think I may over-analyze both. Since I am being so self indulgent right now, I might as well go all the way. I wonder why I am wired the way I am, that I even ponder such things, wouldn't life be alot easier on me on those around me if I would just stop struggling with such things and just live life?

This quote sums up my thoughts on this:

“...a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.” — Bernard Shaw

I guess what I am trying to say is I want happiness on my own terms, how selfish is that?! Is that goal even possible, well I do believe it is because most of my life I would say I have been happy, or even very happy. Life has dealt me the normal ups and downs that most people face, but on the whole I would say I have been happy most of my life.

My mom noticed several years ago that I had changed, I just wasn't myself. I was no longer the energetic funny talkative man I had always been. When she first made these comments I thought she was on crack, I was the same guy as always, or so I thought. Its only now, after really reflecting on my feelings that I realize that she was right (god I hate it that my mom is right!), somewhere along the lines the man I was changed. Well we all change as we get older, right?! True, we certainly do change, but this change wasn't a natural evolution or growth, I think it was a response to what life was dealing me at the time, a way to cope.

What did I have to cope with? Well my wife had some mystery illness, and we had a new baby. A baby by itself is rather stressful, but add on it a terrible illness to the woman you love. We didn't know what was wrong with her, but she had no energy for anything. She pushed herself very hard just to take care of my son during the day, so by the time I got home at night she was done. So I took on the majority of the house work, all of the normal household errands and alot of help with the baby. My vision of the future changed from what will life hold for our little family, to how will we make it through today. There was the stress of just getting through the day and the added stress of not knowing what the fuck was wrong with my wife, the stress of the baby (and the lack of sleep which goes along with that) and of course the stress of work.

We had so many stupid suggestions from everyone about how to deal with things, while all of these idea's were meant to help, all they did was piss me off to no end, especially suggestions to do with "alternative medicine" otherwise known as complete and utter bullshit.

My anxiety disorder kicked into high gear during this period, which is not really a surprise as it was a physical manifestation of my stress. When I get stressed my body rebels in those silly ways, even today I get chest/back pain when I am feeling stressed. I am thankful that I seem to have overcome panic attacks, so of course my body decided to fuck me over with all of these pains instead once I was able to deal with the panic attacks!

Where was I? Oh ya, so I had alot of pressure on me, and clearly that much pressure over several years began to just burn me out completely. Part of what burned out of me, it seems was my happiness. I became very aware of my own unhappiness, but I felt really trapped and basically didn't know what to do. For several months I just carried my unhappiness around my neck, it weighed me down and clouded everything. My mom could tell that I was really nearing the end of my rope, I confessed to her that I was just feeling done with everything. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't suicidal or anything, I was just at the snapping point and I knew it. Around that time I finally told my wife I was done simply done. This news hit her out of no where, at the time she said she did not see it coming. Now she argues that she knew I was unhappy, but at the time she says she had no idea.

We separated she went back home to Israel with my son, and by some miracle her illness improved dramatically while she was home. She came back in time for my son to return to school and now we are back to the same situation we were in a year ago.

I am completely disconnected from her which is a very odd sensation for me to be in, while I am this skeptical fuck most of the time, I also have this giant emotional streak which basically drives me...so its a very odd sensation for me to be so completely disconnected from her. Don't ask me where my emotional streak comes from, but its obvious to everyone, in fact two people from work this year have told me that I am the most sensitive man they have ever met (one was a woman and one a man), which means I am far more transparent than I thought I was. So much for being a cool dude I guess! So I am this really sensitive guy who is totally emotionally disconnected from his wife, it is a sensation which I have a hard time describing, other than to say it bothers me greatly. My emotions tend to lead me, I have great faith in them, and to be disconnected tells me something.

Man...reading all I have written, I am pretty self centered...whatever fuck it.

I'm Back!

2008-06-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

Just like the Terminator and General MacArthur, I have returned! Its been more than two years since I last blogged, so I wiped my previous blog completely to start anew.

Where do I begin? A rant about religion, politics, idiots? How about how things are with me?

My life is in the midst of massive change. I wish I could say everything has been roses and cream since I last blogged but that hasn't been the case. In the last incarnation of this blog, I spoke about my anxiety issues, which thankfully have been under control. I understand the root cause of these issues now, which is basically down to me being unhappy. I think I will dig into some of these issues on this blog...ug nothing like a self indulgent blog, like the world needs another one of those!!!

Expect alot more to come in the following days!