Christmas Gifts -- call of the wild!

It has been a very nice holiday for my family and I. My wife bought me two books that I have been wanting for a long time. They are both by Tom Brown Jr. AKA "The Tracker". I have bought and read both books before (more than once) and liked them so much I "loaned" them to other people. Of course when you give books away they never return. C'est la vie. Well the problem in this case was that these books went out of print. To make matters worse all of the used copies to be had online were exorbitantly priced. I'm talking ~$50 for a paperback. Yeah, he's a popular author.

Anyway my thoughtful wife got them both for me, and for a decent price. This probable because Tom Brown has bought the rights to both books and has published one of them himself just recently. This one is called "The Journey" and the other is called "The Quest". Along with "The Vision" these three books make somewhat of a spiritual trilogy, although all of his books have spiritual themes.

Anyway I love these books and am already half way through "The Quest". Of course that got me thinking about getting outdoors again and resuming my nature studies. I still have Kamana 2 ready to go on the shelf. Kamana is a great program and if you are interested in Tom Brown Jr.'s stuff it is like having a Tom Brown Jr. home study course. It was originally created by Tom's first student Jon Young.

* * * * * *

Happy New Year All!

Nanosolar, FISA, Dodd and Democrats

A press release from Nanosolar, makers of one of the most promising new solar technologies. You'll probably be hearing a lot more about them in the near future:

"After five years of product development – including aggressively pipelined science, research and development, manufacturing process development, product testing, manufacturing engineering and tool development, and factory construction – we now have shipped first product and received our first check of product revenue.
We are grateful to everyone who supported us through all these years and the many occasions where there appeared to be mile-high concrete walls in our path; the unusual intensity and creativity of our team deserves all the credit for achieving this major milestone today.
Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:
- the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;
- the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;
- the world’s lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;
- the world’s highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;
- an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.
Today we are announcing that we have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany and that the first Megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there.
As far as the first three of our commercial panels are concerned:
Panel #1 will remain at Nanosolar for exhibit.
Panel #2 can be purchased by you in an auction on eBay starting today.
Panel #3 has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose.
[These are obviously not the first three we ever produced – we have produced loads for testing – but these are the first three of what we consider our commercial panels.]"

* * * *

Also a great article over on Harper's magazine's website about the ominous implications of the FISA bill. Fortunately, thanks to the outstanding courage and vision of Senator Chris Dodd the FISA bill was defeated yesterday. Thank you Senator! It has been over a year since the Democrats gained control of both Houses and only now does it feel as if the first step has been taken to fight the criminal actions of the Bush Administration.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

* * * * * * *

Now some advice for the other Democratic contenders: emulate Chris Dodd. Chris Dodd just did what the American public (or at least ~70% of us) have been looking for someone, anyone, to do. He led the fight against the Shrub regime. He played to win. He didn't play "not to lose" as so many Democrats have done since being elected. We know the MO: complain about the war and the terrible Shrub but when the time comes rubber stamp the money for his wars, make his crimes legal after the fact, and sell our republic down the river and into the gaping maw of an ever encroaching fascist state.

Play to win. If they accuse you of playing politics you just tell them that you will do whatever it takes to preserve this republic. If that means playing politics then you tell them you will be the most ruthless, hard-nosed politician in history.

Clinton, Obama, and Biden all missed the boat on this one. They are seriously misjudging the mood of the populace if they could not see that defeating this legislation was not only a partisan political victory but would have been a huge victory for them on the campaign trail.

America wants a leader not a politician with their wetted finger in the air and their nose shoved firmly up the arse of big business. Chris Dodd may not be that leader, but he sure acted like it yesterday.

Over and out!

Morgan Spurlock Found Osama Bin Laden

Believe it or not this could be a future headline in the New York Times. Morgan Spurlock's forthcoming documentary is called "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden" and the initial reports seem to indicate that he actually found him!

You can read the story here. I found it on WhatReallyHappened.com

Information Security -- a friendly message

A lot of us are updating our Operating Systems regularly with the latest security patches. Unfortunately we are not as vigilant about the applications that have become such an integral part of our experience of the internet. Many of these applications have had critical security flaws exposed in recent months and new flaws are revealed regularly. With this in mind here is an "off the cuff" list of applications that you should update if you haven't done so recently:

- Apple's Quicktime
- RealPlayer
- Flash Player
- Java Virtual Machine

If I get really motivated I might post some links for you. Most of the updates are pretty easy and can usually been done through the browser if you go to the company's page for the software. Also some of this software includes settings that can prompt you when updates are available. In the past I considered these upgrade prompts as annoyances and the memory resident programs running them as nothing more than performance killers. To a certain extent that remains true but I believe the value of the little pop up reminder when upgrades are available now outweighs the performance hit that your system will take if you leave the program running in the background.

Comcast Shennanigans

The Electronic Freedom Foundation has reported the results of their testing of problems experienced with Comcast's internet service particularly by users of P2P/BitTorrent software. The summary of the report is here. I found the story on WhatReallyHappened.com

This has gotten me thinking about some of the e-mails I haven't received that were related to BitTorrent services. Also, I wonder if this explains why my profile picture never shows up. Of course if blogger simply let you upload a picture into your profile instead of pointing to a URL it would really be a non-issue. But maybe I am missing something.

Cute Kids!

A good podcast

Here's one that didn't make it into my feed because the feed link is broken. It is the Phoenixfire podcast of John Anthony West. If you are not familiar with him he is the "rogue egyptologist" driving the effort to explain the water weathering on the Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure in Egypt. His first six podcasts covered the history of his work in this regard as well as the response from the scientific and Egyptological community. I find his theories interesting and he is fun to listen to besides.

His latest podcast is "Atlantis here, Atlantis there, Atlantis Damn Near Everywhere!".

Enjoy!

Fun with RSS!

In case you didn't notice I got my news feed working again. For some reason the site that was hosting the feed for me deleted it (?) I went back and signed up again after getting no response to an e-mail requesting support. After I set it back up it worked like gangbusters. The site I use to generate my consolidated news feed is WebRSS. It is a bit klugey and the support seems non-existent but it served its purpose.

The reason I went looking for it in the first place was because of the (are you listening Google?) crappy RSS module in Blogger. The main problem is that it only allows you to display the top 5 items from the feed. That's OK if it is just a single feed with just a few items daily but I was trying to feed the contents of my Google Reader Shared Items into a module. The Blogger module was just not going to do the trick. I looked around on the internet for a way to generate some javascript to display more of the feed, because Blogger does let you plug in JS modules from third parties. I found several that worked, but only partially. WebRSS was the only one that worked for me fully at the time. I will keep an eye on it because I don't trust it completely.

The good news is I found another site that will probably do just as well. I found it while I was trying to figure out how to do a consolidated feed of the podcasts I like. The problem I had was that Google reader was allowing me to consolidate my news into a single feed based on the items I selected to share, which (are you listening Google?) is an AWESOME feature of Google Reader. I found the FeedDigest site which is just what the Doctor ordered. It allows you (after a free sign up) to consolidate multiple feeds into one and will also generate the Javascript (or other methods) needed to embed the consolidated feed into your blog or web page. The only thing that the Google Reader feed has over it is that with Reader you can control your feed manually. With the Podcasts it's not a big deal since there are so much fewer of them.

So as you can see, I love RSS! If you aren't all that familiar with RSS you really should take a look at it. Most sites have RSS feeds nowadays and when you get them all consolidated in a reader like Google's you can check out a lot of your favorite blogs and news sites without as much time spent surfing around. I know there are other online readers besides Google's as well as stand alone (downloadable) RSS readers. I have personally used the Snarfer reader, and although it had some bugs it was generally OK -- and free. I was forced by circumstances beyond my control to migrate to an online reader and picked Google because I already had the blog here. The features of Reader have been a pleasant surprise and have inspired me to inflict this RSS madness (look to the right) on everyone who comes into contact with the Bloggy here.

FEED ME!

Some light holiday music

The good folks at the HP Lovecraft Historical Society have released their second album of soul shattering holiday favorites entitled "An Even Scarier Solstice". Just remember, when you listen to the void the void also listens to you!

Here is a sample:

BLUE SOLSTICE . . .


* * * * * * * * ** * * * * ** *

I was also thinking about good HP Lovecraft style horror movies. There aren't too many of them, but when I really thought about it there were more than I at first realized. Granted none of these movies is "authentic" HP Lovecraft but all of them seem to be heavily inspired by his work.

The Mist -- the Stephen King story turned into a movie just recently

Hellboy -- not strictly a horror movie but the horror elements are definitely Lovecraftian. I liked this movie as much for its humor. The dialogue between Hellboy and the kid on the roof is great. It also has this great one liner: after Hellboy slays a demon from hell (by electrocuting him) he says "I'm fireproof, you're not"

In the Mouth of Madness -- a book that drives people insane

Event Horizon -- a spaceship and its crew are sent to recover a ship, the Event Horizon, lost at the edge of space for years. The ship was a prototype with a special warp drive that would open a hole in space. If you know Lovecraft you know this is something you don't want to be doing. Sam Neill who was the lead for In the Mouth of Madness also plays in this one.


Also IMDB has a tag for HP Lovecraft , not sure how accurate the ratings are but some of them look interesting.

Damanhur -- Eighth wonder of the World

My dad forwarded me this story about a temple created by a group of dedicated and creative volunteers. The whole work is straight out of the visions of one man. It looks amazing and awe inspiring and is definitely on my list of places to vist should I ever make it to Europe. Here is a sampling stolen from the article above:

See dad, non-Catholics can accomplish great things! :>)

The Mist

My wife and I went to see The Mist over the holiday. I have to say that it was a really good horror movie. There was a definite tension throughout the film as the characters lives were threatened and the bonds of "civilization" were pushed to the breaking point. There was an underlying message that when put in a situation of great fear people will do or believe almost anything to relieve themselves of the responsibility for feeling it. If they feel powerless they will attempt to reassert their power in whatever way they can. Scapegoating provides a convenient outlet for this. The terrible unknown is reduced to something familiar and identifiable.

Overall I really enjoyed this movie. Nowadays a well done horror movie seems to be a rarity. I did have a couple of problems with it. The first complaint I have was the quality of the computer generated graphics. At points they were not that great and took me out of the movie a little bit, at other points they were fine. I couldn't help but thinking they might have done better relying a bit more on animatronics and other low tech for the creatures instead of so much CG.

The bigger complaint I have is with the ending.

BIG SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

Why did they decide to kill themselves after being out of gas for 5 seconds! I mean come on! They worked so hard to survive up to that point, any normal human being is going to hold out as long as they can. I imagined myself in that situation and could easily imagine surviving for several days, and yet they decided to end it after what, maybe, 5 minutes! No, you hold out until you are either eyeing each others ribs hungrily or the monsters are about to break in.

I don't have a problem with the movie ending this way, in fact I liked it, but the context in which it happened kind of soured it for me.

* * * * * * * *

One part I liked was the beginning when you see the main character, an artist, working on the movie posters that are his livelihood. In the background is the movie poster for John Carpenter's "The Thing", a favorite movie of mine in both its version. The poster he is working on as the movie opens is obviously for Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series. HMMM . . .. perhaps a hint of things to come?

The Plan

I grew up in a large family as the middle child. Although I was the middle child I was always lumped in with my younger siblings as one of what my parents called, "the little guys." I remember how unfair this felt even at a very young age. I was about five years old when "The Plan" was first hatched.

My parents went out for the night and left all the kids at home with a babysitter. The babysitter seemed perfectly normal despite having agreed to watch seven unruly children for a whole night. We were all watching television and it was almost bedtime. Or rather, it was almost bedtime for the "little guys". The baby sitter started rounding up my two younger brothers and me. I must not have been very happy about the situation because the babysitter wanted to make a deal. My five year old mind found her deal extremely appealing. The gist of this "Plan" was that I would pretend to go to bed with my brothers as normal, but as soon as they were asleep I would sneak out of bed. Then I could come back and watch television with the "big guys" (my sister was included in this) and the babysitter. Well it worked out marvelously for me and the babysitter. I marched to my room dutifully with the other "little guys", although inside I knew that I was no longer one of them. I fought off the thick gooey sleep that was trying to pin me down and slowly, oh so slowly, slipped out of the queen sized bed I shared with my two brothers. Every squeak sounded like a gunshot as I tried to get out without waking them. I finally succeeded and went back to the living room. I remember how bright the lights were when I came back out. I had a great feeling of freedom right alongside the persistent, hypnotic call of sleep.I sat on the floor in her lap and despite a valiant struggle I fell back to sleep. The babysitter had won and got me to sleep with very little fuss. Little did she know that she had planted a seed in me that would grow and mutate.

It was a couple of years later that The Plan would rise again. The situations were very similar to before. The "little guys" had to go to bed early, even on the weekends. This left the big kids awake to watch scary movies and drink all of the soda pop and eat the treats. I felt outraged by the unfairness of the situation. It was in this outrage that I remembered The Plan. Only this time I felt that I needed to bring the freedom of The Plan to others. I explained The Plan to my two younger brothers and from then on it was a standing order. Despite this fact we would always confirm with each other that The Plan was on:"Are we doing The Plan tonight?""Yeah, The Plan tonight."In most cases we would be unable to stay awake and The Plan would be lost to sleep and dream. With The Plan there was strength in numbers. If one of us managed to stay awake we made a solemn promise to the others to wake them up too. There were times, glorious times, when The Plan was executed to perfection. I remember feasting on chips and Coca-Cola while watching late night sci-fi and horror movies.Now that I'm older I find it interesting that I still do The Plan. I don't call it that any more but the pattern is the same. I wait until everyone else is asleep and then treat myself to whatever goodies are in the house. I watch all of the movies and television that my kids can't (or my wife won't) watch. It still has the sweet taste of a secret shared among a precious few.

To this day when I get together with my brother we always end up talking about The Plan. We remember it fondly. We also remember our co-conspirator, our brother, who died too young. Now I am thinking that maybe, somewhere or somewhen, he is doing his own cosmic version of The Plan. I hope he remembers to wake up his brother so that we can enjoy the goodies together.

Drowning or How I Learned to Swim

Growing up I was a timid child. It may have had something to do with having a lot of older brothers. I remember that for a couple of years we lived in a subdivision close to a lake. In the summer we would often go swimming at the public beach there. I was probably 8 years old and didn't yet know how to swim. It was a bit humiliating because even my younger brothers were already playing in the deep water off the end of the dock. I remember watching them play as I played by myself, jumping off the dock again and again into the water where I knew I could touch the bottom.

In the end I had to confront my fear of the deep water, but not by choice. I jumped into the water again for probably the thousandth time. I fully intended to jump into the shallow water, but somehow I misjudged and ended up in water that was above my head. I began to panic because I didn't know how to swim. I came up for air and tried to call for help . .. once, twice, three times. Each time I swallowed more water. I soon realized that no one could see or hear me and that I was about to drown.

I went under again and inside me a commanding voice said "SWIM!". I immediately began to swim under the water and didn't stop until I was laying on my back on the beach.

When you have kids . . .

weird things happen sometimes.

Picture this: you're alone in the house at night. Everyone else is fast asleep. You are dilligently doing whatever it is you're doing. It is calm and relaxed. Then, out of nowhere, you hear something like this:

"Tickle Elmo again!"

The funny thing is that it's not coming from your kid's rooms or from the baby monitor, it is coming from the toybox. For no apparent reason your child's toys have decided to start speaking to you. Elmo wants to be tickled!

Of course you can rationalize it away: the toys were just settling or there's a storm outside or the butterfly effect from a quantum state change bubbled up a level like a meal at White Castle.

But you are never really sure. Usually they don't keep talking . .. usually!

MWAHAHAHA!

Who am I?

When I was much younger, maybe 12 or 13 years old I got very, very sick with mononucleosis. Unfortunately I did not even get it from a girl. My glands swelled up so bad it was really painful even to swallow. As a consequence I became severely dehydrated. At the same time I was feverish and sick to my stomach. I remember sleeping for long stretches and waking up completely disoriented, hardly remembering where I was or how long I had been sleeping.

Once I woke up from just such a period of "rest" and dragged myself into the bathroom. When I looked in the mirror I had one of the strangest feelings I have ever experienced. I saw my reflection and did not recognize it as me. I know I must have looked terrible by that point but this was something completely different. The reflection in the mirror was not me! The feeling was so unusual that I remember it to this day.

News Feed

Well the News Feed has been F!@$&D up for awhile now. Not sure what is going on. Double GRRR!

One of my favorite quotes

"If all fools were to be whipped, then who shouldst 'scape whipping?"

The Fool to King Lear

Joss Whedon returns to TV!

Yes, you read it right. The creator of Buff, Angel, and Firefly is returning with a new TV series. You can read all about it here.

I have to admit that I was not a fan of Buffy or Angel. The writing was fun but the "camp" factor was a bit too much for me. Of course compared to all of the other stuff on TV . .. I digress.

I really enjoyed the movie Serenity. It was my first exposure to his work. Later I sat down with my wife and watched the entire run of the TV series Firefly, on which Serenity is based. What can I say, the show was great! The characters had a texture and their relationships felt genuine. It also had a great sense of humor, and the Jaynestown (or is it Jaynesville?) episode is an all time classic.

I remember when it first came out on TV. At the time I thought that the "space western" thing was a bit too cheesy for my tastes. It was my loss. Firefly is a classic. Only beware, if you go out and rent it be prepared for a few days of grieving because when you are finished watching it, it's over.

Why censorship?

Like a lot of other people I wonder about this censorship. I also notice that the censorship consistently favors the current Administration by suppressing information that might be damaging to them. Why would they do this?

I think part of the answer can be found in the control that the Federal government can exert over the business of the media through the FCC. I also know that war and conflict are good for the business of big media. After all, wasn't it the first Gulf War that really put CNN on the map? Now in the era of embedded reporters it seems like the media has to kiss the ass of the politicians to get access to the "official reports" that they rely on so heavily. In essence I feel that if the big media companies don't play ball with the government, particularly the Administration, they can be squeezed from multiple angles and the viability of their business put in jeopardy.

An interesting case in this regard is the telecommunications company Qwest. Their former CEO claims that Qwest was passed over for lucrative federal contracts because they would not play ball on warrantless wiretapping

A brave new world . . .

of censorship.


My own lovely ISP has apparently been engaged in both political and technological censorship. Comcast has been caught filtering e-mails that contain the URL http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ In addition they are interfering with a variety of applications such as P2P, FTP, VoIP etc that their customers use. I personally find this highly disturbing.

Recently Truthout.org reported that their e-mails were being blocked by AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft.



But wait, there's more. Apparently Clear Channel stations are being told not to play any songs from Bruce Springsteen's new album Magic. This is the same Clear Channel that dropped Howard Stern for "obscenity" shortly after Stern came out in favor of John Kerry in '04. As if that wasn't bad enough they were also the sponsors of the idiot Glenn Beck when he toured the country drumming up support for the Iraq War.



And who could forget AT&T censoring Pearl Jam's political comments.



What ever happened to freedom of speach?

The Core of Gurdjieff's Teaching

Taken from the website of the Gurdjieff International Review:

"ONE OF MAN’S IMPORTANT MISTAKES, one which must be remembered, is his illusion in regard to his I. Man such as we know him, the ‘man-machine,’ the man who cannot ‘do,’ and with whom and through whom everything ‘happens,’ cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago. Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says ‘I.’ And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs to the Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole. In actual fact there is no foundation whatsoever for this assumption. Man’s every thought and desire appears and lives quite separately and independently of the Whole. And the Whole never expresses itself, for the simple reason that it exists, as such, only physically as a thing, and in the abstract as a concept. Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small I’s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, ‘I.’ And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion."

Fuck the "homeland"!

You know the word, homeland. The Nazis had the "Fatherland", the Soviets had the "Motherland" and now we have the "Homeland". Do you see a pattern here? I still can't help but shudder to hear people use that word and not make these connections each time they do. Perhaps it was done as a sort of litmus test, a brazen trial balloon to see how much "freedom loving" Americans would accept. Would we accept referring to our country in a way that was SO reminiscent of some of the most despotic regimes ever known? If we accept this we are opening ourselves conceptually to the same horrors, or at least signalling our willingness to look away as those horrors are meted out in our name.

There is no "homeland". There is only the United States of America, and the USA is nothing more or less than the Constitution of the United States of America. If you aren't with the Constitution then you are with proto-fascists of "the Homeland".

Turn on the TV right now, I bet you can see one of those screaming little beasties!

Fuck the homeland!

At the End with Mr. Gurdjieff

Just received this brief story via e-mail from the good people at http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/:

"AU REVOIR, TOUT LE MONDE!"

His departure was typical.
The ambulance men brought the stretcher to his room, but he wouldn't have this, and walked out into the hall and got on to the stretcher there, sitting back, saying, "Oy!" as he always does.
He did not dress, but wore pajamas, and his red fez on his head. He sat upright on the stretcher, and was carried away like a royal prince! All the family was clustered at the street door (the crusty old concierge was in tears!) and as they carried him across the pavement he made a little gesture, a sort of wave, with his hand and said, "Au revoir, tout le monde!"
The last sight of him was as he was carried into the ambulance, sitting very upright, with his head up, his fez at a rakish angle and his cigarette between his lips.

Make America Stronger

Coach Scott Sonnon and RMAX Interantional are making one of their foundational (and innovative) training programs available free of charge:



In light of the unprecedented political situation, it's imperative to keep America Strong.
RMAX International has been donating to the US Military and supporting its heroes on active duty as well as veterans.
Today RMAX International is proud to offer the same benefit to EVERY AMERICAN. Its best-seller, the FlowFit fitness and conditioning program, has been used by the US Military, Law Enforcement, Firefighters, government agencies, private organizations, professional coaches, elite athletes, and fitness enthusiasts around the world.
It's time for Americans to lose weight, get in shape, and gain power.
Order Your Free Copy of FlowFit at
http://www.makeamericastronger.us/
Spread the Word while this campaign is still ongoing, and help
MAKE AMERICA STRONGER!

I just ordered a copy. You have to pay $6.95 for shipping but it is still a bargain. Trust me, this guy and his team are at the cutting edge of fitness and conditioning training. Coach Sonnon is also training a UFC fighter and blogging about it here.

Truly fascinating stuff and I am looking forward to getting my own copy of FlowFit soon.

World War 3

President Bush, in a recent speech, said the following: "we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon"

The funny thing is that the leader of Iran never said he wants to destroy Israel. That was a mistranslation. Dr. Juan Cole, professor of History at the University of Michigan, made that point:

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

To me the fact that the President of the United States would make such a provocative statement based on a mistranslation says that he is either an idiot or that he has a hard on for World War III. Knowing what we know about him it is likely that both are true.

The most ironic thing is that the United States is the country claiming the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively. We are also actively supporting nuclear proliferation through our latest deal with India. We must also never forget that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This treaty allows them to develop nuclear energy for peaceful uses under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA has found no evidence of a program to develop nuclear weapons by Iran.

It is also interesting to note that Israel is widely known to possess nuclear weapons along with the means to deliver them. Israel in not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Russian Martial Arts

I have been studying the Russian martial art known as Systema for a little while now. Apparently the two main instructors are going to give a demonstration at the UN. Here is the info from their e-mail update:

Systema Founders Mikhail Ryabko and Vladimir Vasiliev have been invited to present Russian Martial Art at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007. Celebrating the United Nations’ Commitment to Peace on its 62nd Anniversary, three or four of the world Martial Art have been selected to present their styles to the Untied Nations Assembly.

After the presentation, the Systema masters will be filmed for the new Discovery Channel program. The filming will take place on Thursday October 25th And then… Mikhail Ryabko and Vladimir Vasiliev will stay in Manhattan, New York to teach special workshops at Fighthouse on Friday October 26th from 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm and on Saturday October 27th from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.For more details and to register for the workshops contact Edgar at: 212-807-9202 or systema@fighthouse.com

Scott Sonnon of RMAX International also has some updates. He is an expert in the Russian martial arts (although not the same as Ryabko/Vasiliev above) and is currently involved in training an MMA fighter for the UFC. Anyway it looks like you'll be able to see him on TV soon as well:

If you're waiting for the highly anticipated History Channel's HUMAN WEAPON Episode on Russian Sambo, featuring Scott Sonnon's Coach Alexander Retuinskih, here is the information we've received:

HUMAN WEAPON Episode on Russian Sambo will run on Nov. 9 on the History Channel at 10 p.m. EST.


Meantime please check:

Coach Sonnon's new blog - www.ScottSonnonLive.com
(Follow a UFC Fighter's Weekly Training)

Scientific concensus

Just read an interesting NYT article about the origina of the "fat is bad" school of thought that has been so prevalent in America until recently.

It is interesting not just because of its subject matter but because of the principles of human behavior it discusses. After reading it it makes you wonder about lots of other "facts". The most obvious example of a similar scientific and popular concensus today is global warming.

More on this later . ..

GRRR!

My feed at the right doesn't seem to be updating as it should. Maybe it only updates when I make a new post. I guess I'll find out.

August was really sick over the weekend with an ear infection. He has been better for the last couple of days since we started him on antibiotics.

Anabelle is loving kindergarten. She spent 10 or 15 minutes last night just writing out her letters. We got into numbers somewhat she wrote them out up to 20. I tried to start explaining the decimal system to her but she wasn't having any of that.

Also, our digital camera is broken or else I would have posted some pictures.

Some geopolitical context . . .

A couple of articles I found interesting today. The first gives some insight into what is really happening in Myanmar/Burma. Probably more useful information for understanding the context of this situation than everything else that has been written so far. You can read the article here.

After you read it maybe you should ask yourself why this all of the sudden became a REALLY hot news item, and why our government is so concerned about the dictatorship there.

The other article reports on the meetings between Bob Gates, Condoleeza Rice and Vladimir Putin in regards to the proposed missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. President Vlad is playing hardball but maybe if more of us understood what was really at stake we wouldn't be so surprised, or so susceptible to the propganda of our own homemade Pravdas.

Oh, by the way if you have no idea what the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is this might be a good time to eductate yourself.

Stephen Colbert -- Columnist!?!

The New York Times let Stephen Colbert write an op-ed piece. Read it and bask in its opulent gloriousness:

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
By STEPHEN COLBERT

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(


For the rest click here.

Gotta love that guy. I'd vote for him.

The future of the Middle East?

The above map quite possibly represents the desired outcome of the current Middle East conflict(s), at least from the perspective of the United States.

To quote from the article:

The map of the “New Middle East” was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel’s book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters.5

It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.

It has been written that Ralph Peters’ “four previous books on strategy have been highly influential in government and military circles,” but one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?

It is also interesting to note the extension of the Shia state into territory currently a part of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is my understanding that those particular bits of real estate are heavy with oil.

A taste of Jed McKenna

Here is an article by Jed McKenna. It gives the flavor of his books quite nicely:

The Bottom Line
By Jed McKenna

Cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am.That is all ye know on earth; And all ye need to know.

Whadda ya know?

Seriously. With absolute certainty, what do you know? Put aside all opinions, beliefs and theories for a moment and address this one straight question: What do you know for sure? Or, as Thoreau put it:

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe... through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin...

In other words, let's cut the crap and figure out what's real. The cogito does exactly that, and it's very simple. The question is: What do you know?
The answer is: I Am.
All other so-called facts are really non-facts and belong in the category of consensual reality and relative truth, i.e., unreal reality and untrue truth.

Cogito Ergo Sum

Cogito ergo sum is the equation that proves the fact. But first, before we go on, let's ask what else we know. What else can be said for certain? Nothing. We don't know anything else. And that's the real point of the cogito. The importance of I Am isn't that it's a fact, but that it's the only fact. I Am is the only thing anyone has ever known or will ever know. Everything else, all religion and philosophy and science, is nothing more than dream interpretation. There is no other fact than I Am. The cogito is the seed of the thought that destroys the universe. Beyond the cogito, nothing is known. Beyond the cogito, nothing can be known. Except I Am, no one knows anything. No man or god can claim to know more. No God or array of gods can exist or be imagined that know more than this one thing: I Am.

We can't avoid letting this topic drift briefly into the Christian realm. When Moses asked God His name, God answered, "I am that I am." The name God gives for Himself is I Am.
Note that I Am is unconjugatible. It allows of no variation. God doesn't say, "My name is I Am, but you can call me You Are, or He Is." The cogito, the I Am equation, does not extend beyond one's own subjective knowing. I can say I Am and know it as truth, but I can't say you are, he is, she is, we are, they are, it is, etc. I know I exist and nothing else. Understood thusly, I Am, aka God, truly is the Alpha and the Omega; the entirety of being, of knowledge, of the known universe, of you.

The Line Is Drawn

The cogito is the line between fantasy and reality. On one side of the cogito is a universe of beliefs and ideas and theories. To cross the line is to leave all that behind. No theory, concept, belief, opinion or debate can have any possible basis in reality once the ramifications of the cogito have fully saturated the mind. No dialogue can take place across that line because nothing that makes sense on either side makes sense on the other. We all think we know what the cogito means; this is an invitation to challenge that assumption. If professors of philosophy truly understood it, they wouldn't be professors of philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, but all philosophy, Plato included, is rendered obsolete and irrelevant by Descartes. Nothing but the subjective I Am is true, so what's the point of prattling on?

The cogito isn't a mere thought or an idea, it is an ego-eating virus that, properly incubated and nurtured, will eventually devour all illusion. Once we know the cogito, we can begin systematically unknowing everything we think we know, and unraveling the self we think we are.

Life is but a Dream

There is no such thing as objective reality. Two cannot be proven. Nothing can be shown to exist. Time and space, love and hate, good and evil, cause and effect, are all just ideas. Anyone who says they know anything is really saying they don't know the only thing. The greatest religious and philosophical thoughts and ideas in the history of man contain no more truth than the bleating of sheep. The greatest books are no more authoritative than the greatest luncheon meats.

No one knows anything.
Disprove it for Yourself

Anyone wishing to deny these statements about the meaning of the cogito need merely prove that something, anything, is true. By all means, give it a try, dash your head upon it, but it can't be done. Cogito ergo sum, however, isn't the endpoint of inquiry, it's the starting point; it's a tool that helps us see, without intermediaries, exactly what is true and what isn't, and that puts it right up there with fire and the wheel.

About the Author: Jed McKenna is the author of The Enlightenment Trilogy — Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, and Spiritual Warfare — published by Wisefool Press. Articles, books and more at our website: http://www.WisefoolPress.com

Blog is a funny word

I was just thinking what a funny word "blog" is, as you can see from the new title. Here are some other potential uses for the word blog:

1. Blog off!
2. Blog me!
3. I'll blog you!
4. Thank blog!
5. Blogalicious
6. Blogula
7. Blog it!

The possibilities are truly infinite!

Spiritual Autolysis

Spiritual Autolysis is the name given by Jed McKenna to the process that results in spiritual enlightenment. Autolysis means self digestion, or digesting the self. Pretty apt. The method is simple and he described it as "journalling on steroids". The method is this:

Try to write something true, and keep at it until you can

What I am reading now . ..

The Spiritual Enlightenment Trilogy by Jed McKenna. A good friend was nice enough to give me the first two on audio book.

Here is the publisher's website: http://www.wisefoolpress.com

J

Cloud seeding gone awry in Australia?

The story of the weird foam washing up on a beach in Australia hit the news a month or so ago. Links to the story here and one with a slideshow here.

Now the stories quote experts as saying that this is a natural phenomenon where the sea was turned into a giant espresso machine and frothed the ocean like this. To me it seems more likely that this was the result of cloud seeding gone awry. Take another look at the foamy waves and then compare it with the effect of the cloud seeding chemicals in this video. (Go to 17:20 – 17:30 to view the relevant section)

I think this explanation is a possibility particularly given the extreme drought conditions that have prevailed over Australia for the last year or so.

My mind at work . .. I told you this would be scary!

A Robert Anton Wilson Bibliography

Courtesy of a kind user at Tribe.net:

The Mass Psychology of Fascism, by Wilhelm Reich, M.D.
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
The Cantos of Ezra Pound
Machine Art, by Ezra Pound
Selected Prose, by Ezra Pound
Harlot's Ghost, by Norman Mailer
Go Down, Moses, by William Faukner
The Alpabet vs the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain
The Open Society and its Enemies [2 volumes], by Karl Popper
Confucius:The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects trans. by Ezra Pound
The Anti-Christ, by Friedrich Nietzche
Chaos and Cyberculture, by Timothy Leary, Ph.D.
Critical Path, by R Buckminster Fuller
Instead of a Book, by Benjamin Tucker
Digital McLuhan, by Paul Levinson
Saharasia, by James DeMeo, Ph.D.
Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzybski
Progress and Poverty, by Henry George
The Natural Economic Order, by Silvio Gesell

Note: probably the most influential on his thought was Science and Sanity.

Awakening and Observing

Even if we briefly manage to awaken, our automatic habits and associations will put us back to sleep quickly. In order to be able to awaken for longer periods of time we need to understand how this happens for us. For this we need to observe ourselves. But what to observe and how?

Gurdjieff proposed a system of observation based upon easily defined functions of our organism. He defined thesefunctions, which he called "centers", as follows:
- instinctive: all of the physical functions of our organism thatare involuntary such as heartbeat, breathing, etc
- moving: physical functions that require voluntary effort, prettyself explanatory
- sexual: also pretty self explanatory
- emotional: positive or negative emotions
- intellectual: our thoughts
- higher emotional: visions, powerful dreams, etc.
- higher intellectual: symbols

The higher emotional and intellectual centers are generally not available for observation. In the practice of Gurdjieff's teachings (commonly called the "4th way" or simply "the Work") you first awaken (called self-remembering)and then you observe. Initially the observation consists of labelling the functions as they are observed. This should be transitioned into identifying them by "taste" as soon as possible.The ultimate goal is to be able to see all of your functions at onces o that you can see your own habitual postures which include not only the body but also the thoughts and emotions. Self observation allows us to see ourselves and to identify the obstacles to awakening.

The Oracle(s) comes out of the closet!

There was some discussion on this board recently about the Sufimaster oracle. It seems that the person behind the "Oracle" websites has come out officially: http://www.garychicoine.com/ I have personally found his websites interesting, and in the case of "Take note of Something Different" to be helpful in awakening. I happened to read something about him here: http://www.anthonyblake.co.uk/Meetings.html

To quote from the site above:

"If there is a villain in my story, it is certainly Chicoine. Like any cult leader, he manipulated people and got them to part withtheir cash and hand over control over their sex organs. He ended up a deranged megalomaniac at odds with his children (and some of his wives) and now lives in Sweden with a small group of adherents,regarding himself as above the mechanical masses of humanity. But he is essential to the story. One thing he brought home to me was that spirituality is not identical with morality; but also that individuals who search after greater meaning are especially vulnerable to abuse because they feel themselves to be `unworthy'. `Seekers' are greatly at risk. They look towards unseen worlds without having the confidence of gaining access to them, so that they come to look towards personalities who claim such access to guide them and interpret reality for them. This is of course exactly the same structure which is found in religions, the only difference being one of scale. All the remarkable men I have met who are truly remarkable embody a willingness to speak `on the level' with others and not as authorities."

This is part of a longer account of their relationship but reflects the summation of his judgement.

Caveat Emptor

MST3K Reborn!

I used to absolutely love Mystery Science Theater 3000. Well the guys who made it are back (but without the robots). They are doing their thing here

I have it on good authority that they are in top form. I think I'll rent Road House next weekend!

John

A free market?

Apparently there was some discussion among my family recently about the Federal Reserve and the current economic climate. It certainly appears that the "Plunge Protection Team" is hard at work .


The Federal Reserve and now the European Central Bank are pumping "money" into the markets, apparently to stave off a market collapse

If you understand fractional reserve banking you know that a crash is inevitable sooner or later. If you have no idea what I am talking about then I would suggest reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin. You can also hear a decent interview with him below:


powered by ODEO

More on this later.

John

Freedom Next Time -- John Pilger

Listened to yesterday's podcast of Democracy Now (you can get it here). In addition to their usual news reporting they included a talk by journalist John Pilger. I found it inspiring, enlightening, hopeful, and devastating. I did a little digging and also found the speech on YouTube. Here it is:




John

First Post

"In the beginning was the Word"

Welcome to the first post of my blog! I will be posting about all of the things that interest me. Hopefully you will find something of interest for you as well.

If you are curious about the things that interest me then hold on, it's going to be a wild ride.