Timur's Body

Some people are so evil that not even death can stop them.






Fig. 1: Amir Timur statue, Uzbekistan



Timur was the son of some middle class dude in Transoxiana (modern day Uzbekistan, home of what used to be the Aral Sea, the Sogdian Rock, magnificent architecture, and Khiva, one of the last independent kingdoms of the 20th century to be battled over between the British and Russians in the Great Game. You also can't read the Bible, use the Internet, and prisoners are frequently tortured to death). He had ambitions. Unsatisfied with his prospects, Timur became a warrior and decided to conquer the Mongol empire like his hero Chingis Khan. To achieve this goal he invented a fake geneology linking him to the great Khan and married the Khan's granddaughter.



Timur then conquered the Persian Il-Khanate ("little" Khanate), and half of the Chagatai Khanate. He punished the Golden Horde for overstepping their boundaries as tributary state, permanantly destroying their economy. His greatest passtime during this period was abducting scholars and artists and transporting them to Samarkand, which they were to make into the most magnificent city in the world. He also liked to slaughter tens of thousands of people and make towers out of their heads for no other purpose than because it looked cool.



Timur's next venture was to prove that he is "not a man of blood" and that "God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity." He looked to the Quran for advice whether to slaughter every single person in India or every single person in China for being infidels and India turned out to be closer. He went there with his army and destroyed the Delhi Sultanate because they were the wrong kind of Muslims. He proceededt o ravage India, slaughtering more than a million people and making towers out of their heads. Every time his men would slaughter 20,000 Indians in a single afternoon he would throw a massive two day long feast so they could revel in their own crapulence.



Satisfied that it would take over a century for the subcontinent to repopulate he went West to slaughter the Ottomans for being the wrong kind of Muslim. In a bloody battle, Timur killed the Ottoman sultan and threw the empire into chaos. He also depopulated nearby Christian kingdoms for being infidels as well as other Muslim kingdoms for being the wrong kind of Muslims.





Fig. 2: Timur's Empire at the time of his death in 1405.



Something was still eating away at Timur. He was getting old and he hadn't slaughtered everyone in China yet, nor had he conquered the entire Mongol empire. He saddled up his army and went to China, but the weather was bad and he died. His body was placed in a lavish tomb in Samarkand with a curse: should anyone remove his body a fate more terrible will befall them than if Timur himself would ravish their country. Like the curse of King Tut, Timur's curse had real power to it. Unlike Tut's curse, which only claimed the lives around 20 people (and a dog and a bird), Timur's curse claimed the lives of millions.



Soviet archaeologists/tomb raiders broke into Timur's tomb in June 1941. Two days later Hitler broke the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, launching Operation Barbarosa, the largest single military campaign ever. Eastern Europe would be devastated, millions would die both soldiers and civilians, and the Nazis would take control of an additional 13% of the continent, creating the largest empire in European history. One million people would die in Leningrad, another million in Stalingrad, three million Soviet soldiers would die as Nazi prisoners, and millions of Slavs and other unwanted would be sent to die in the death camps.



Realising the gravity of the situation the Soviets reintered Timur's body in November 1942. A few days later they launched Operation Uranus, the decisive counteroffensive that would push the Nazis back from Stalingrad and pave the way for the fall of the Third Reich.



Some might scoff and say that it is merely coincidence that within days of Timur's tomb being disturbed the largest military operation ever was launched and laid waste to the Soviet Union. They will say it is mere coincidence that within days of his body being put back the tide of the war turned and the Soviets were able to gain an iron grip on Eastern Europe for the next half century. I ask, "what is the measure of coincidence?" In the scientific method you make an injunction, follow it through to collect data, and check it against the results of others who have done 1 and 2. Timur's curse is the same. There's an injunction: "remove my body and your country will be devastated." Performing the injunction leads to the data: what he said would happen happened. The experiment was done in reverse with the reverse results: Timur's body was put back and the enemies of the Soviet Union were devastated and the Soviet Union grew in power undreamed of previously. The only thing missing is step three, repeating the experiment, which is a very bad idea in this case as the intended result is millions of people dying.



What we're left with is a mystery. Timur's curse did exactly what it said it would when it said it would, which is strong evidence in its favour. Unfortunately morality prevents us from testing his curse again so we can't be 100% certain. Still, for what it's worth, it's made a believer out of me.

A Tale of Two Cities

There are two towns named Bethlehem in the Holy Land.



Tradition places the site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem near Jerusalem, which currently sits in the Palestinian territory. A journey here from Nazareth would have taken weeks; not the kind of trip for a woman about to give birth to take.



There is another town named Bethlehem right next to Nazareth, about two days journey to the Northwest. It is more likely that it was this Bethlehem, not the more famous one to the South, where Jesus was born.



This map was made in 2009 and shows some well known sites in the Holy Land.

Christopher Hitchens In Memoriam

Christopher Hitchens has died 15 December 2011 from pneumonia at the age of 62. The famous outspoken atheist intellectual, author of many articles and the book God Is Not Great, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer last year. Many will remember him as the atheist who was not a liberal (though, as he said many times, he was not conservative either). He attacked Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal for saying that US foreign policy created al Qaeda and that 9/11 was due punishment for American imperialism. He defended the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of the Second World War, and called out Hitler and Stalin as the two evilest people ever. While an outspoken atheist, Hitchens extended his gratitude toward those who prayed for him during his time of need.



Here is David Berlinski's eulogy.

The Fear of Enlightenment

Alan Watts explains the fear of finding out you are already enlightened. What is the solution? The guru gives you work to do to wear down your barriers.

Runs 9:08

Affluence And Apathy, or Why I Love Rarity

I can say with the utmost confidence that, while other ponies and all their special episodes may disappoint, without any question, there has never been nor will there likely ever be a disappointing episode focusing on Rarity. Consistently she remains top notch, above and beyond others in excellence and grace. She stands as a beacon overlooking all the pageantry, bizarre little oddities (Over A Barrel), and endless parades of Dash getting away with absolutely everything like some grand scale karma Houdini. Unlike all the others, who may at times descend into madness (or "go cupcakes"), Rarity manages to hold onto her poise and grace while always finding it in herself to give to her fullest ability to anypony in need.



One need no other example than Sisterhooves Social where she put aside all comfort for the sake of her sister, going so far as to disguise herself as Applejack and get as dirty as possible. She did it all gladly for Sweetie Belle, who was an obnoxious, selfish jackass (like all, or certainly most, little kids). She was able to maintain her grace even among the diamond dogs worst attempts at breaking her. She never lost her head, she never sank to their level, she just bit her lip, bore the discomfort of their imprisonment, and used her wits to extricate herself from captivity.



Time and again Rarity reveals to us that she is no one trick pony like so many others. AJ is still the rough and tumble farmer's daughter, Twi is still the anal nerd, Dash is still the asshole Mary Sue, Pinkie Pie still teeters on the brink of cupcakes, and Fluttershy still warns us to beware the quiet ones. Contrasted against the others Rarity has a depth of personality that is unrivaled by the rest of the mane six put together. She has beauty, brains, and heart, sense and style, cleverness, compassion, and propriety all rolled into one fabulous package. I dare say Rarity is everything anypony could ever want in a girl. She'll go on a quest to slay the dragon and look stunning doing it. She'll work herself to exhaustion for her friends. She'll put others before herself and bear the slings required of the peace keeper. She may go overboard at times, but everypony does and Rarity is certainly not above apologising for her wrongs.



It is for all that that I hold Rarity up as an example for us all, especially in these troubled times.



The problem of the world today is the disease of Affluenza, which isn't really a disease, but neither is ADHD or depression, even though drug companies make billions off of both, so why not add one more, and one that is so troubling to so many millions?



First permit me to clarify. I'm not saying that there are not people who actually have ADHD or depression, just that they are not diseases and cannot be cured (or treated, since nothing in psychiatry is ever cured) like diseases with drugs. The psychiatry disease angle is a scam.



Depression is a mental condition in which anger is repressed and turned inward toward one's self. It is overcome by introspecting to uproot the anger (best when done under the auspices of a qualified therapist), not by blocking dopamine or seratonin. Taking drugs to fix depression is like taking drugs to fix an amputated arm. The best course of action for dealing with depression is a combination of cognitive behaviour therapy and lots of physical exercise (one British study showed that walking more than 30 minutes a day was several times more effective than any available drug at fixing depression, and walking alone was more effective than walking while taking drugs, indicating that the drugs actually worsen the symptoms of depression!).



ADHD and all its various permutations (the more types of disorder the psychiatric community can create the more money they can make selling people drugs) are just names for being a boy and not having parents who do their job. The first undeniable truth about the universe everyone learns is that boys and girls are different. It has always been for hundreds of thousands of years that boys and girls think and learn differently, and within the larger categories of boys and girls are a whole spectrum of sub-types. None are wrong or defective or diseased, just different.



Unfortunately, the pussification of America threw that undeniable fact out and replaced it with the idea that everyone is the same and has to be taught the same and if anyone doesn't fit into that narrow mold they must be diseased. Since America was pussified and only girls have pussies, that means that girls are normal. If girls are normal then, by definition, boys must be defective. No longer do boys and girls think differently, needing different modes of learning and discipline. Nope, everyone must be taught the same and they must be taught like girls. Since boys don't learn like girls, since they want to run around and rough house and compete and follow rules and have winners and losers*, then boys must be defective. If boys are no longer allowed to win and lose, if they can't run and shout and mes around then of course they'll look for outlets to their masculinity where it is deemed inappropriate. They don't need drugs, they just need proper masculine discipline and training so they can grow up into proper men. They need parents who get off their fat asses and tell them to sit down and shut up when in public (behavioural training). They need to be told to follow rules begrudgingly and most of all they need a chance to rough house with one another outside and express their natural masculine violent proclivities.



Getting back to the topic at hand, or society is afflicted by the dreaded disease of Affluenza and it is Rarity who can show us the way to overcome this plague.



In the past century, more so the past 50 years, mores the past generation, and the past decade, Western society has become more affluent. We don't have to worry about working for our food, the government gives it to us and the grocery store is always fully stocked. We don't have to have twelve children because eight of them won't die from measles or whooping cough. We don't have to write letters or look for pay phones or wait to see our friends, they are always at hand. Our lives in the West have become so easy that we have become bored and must now look or excuses to complain about things. We have to work to find a reason to bitch and moan about how "unfair" our lives are. Our blessings are so many that we must focus on the few areas of our lives that contain lack for fear of being overwhelmed with gratitude. We are the 1% in all of human history, holding ore wealth and opulence than kings and emperors of years gone by could ever dream of. This is Affluenza.



The problem stems from two unhealthy byproducts of extreme affluence: narcissism and apathy. We literally throw away enough food to feed the entire world many times over. No one ever need go hungry, just kill the warlords and give the starving refugees the garbage we won't eat.



In Sweet and Elite we see Rarity, an affluent pony, stand in stark contrast with a rather uppity fellow from Canterlot, Jet Set, along with his wife Upper Crust. Jet Set and Upper Crust exemplify Affluenza. Against them is Rarity and her new friend (and mentor?) Fancy Pants, both of whom can keep their heads despite their success (though Fancy Pants plays coy to get Rarity to display her good nature, almost as a master would his apprentice). Fancy Pants urges Rarity on to defend her friends at the Canterlot Garden Party, however uncouth, or downright destructive, they may be. Jet Set and Upper Crust, stricken with Affluenza, are appalled at Rarity's display of her loyalty but they are quickly shot down by Fancy Pants coming to her aid.



Rarity exemplifies how to be good affluent. She shows us the way out of Affluenza, minus the occasional theatrics if we may be so inclined. I would advise all of you, myself included, and especially the occupy pussies, to look to Rarity as the inoculation against the dreaded disease of Affluenza. She just may be the one to save our world from self-destruction.










*My friends and I would play space marines and fight aliens with sticks and books, not like we were visiting neighbours, and we accepted the rules of the tames as rules, sucking it up when we lost even if we didn't like it. We didn't demand do overs to boost our self esteem. We ran around and made lots of noise and fell down and got hurt. We may have cried but we knew we were supposed to be men so we got over it.

Unemployed And Not A Pot To Piss In

The new unemployment numbers are in, and, surprise surprise, Rush* was right again. The official unemployment numbers puts unemployment at 8.6%, down from 9% last month. Zero and his cronies were willing to do anything to get it below 8%, because no president has ever won reelection with 9% unemployment. They got it to 8.6% and the .6 is never read aloud by the media so now everyone thinks unemployment is 8% and Zero is electable again.



Unfortunately, it's all bullshit math.



125,000 (seasonal) jobs were added, as happens every year late November until January when they're laid off again. However, to get the numbers to drop 0.4% close to half a million jobs would need to be created. How to solve this quandry? Fudge the numbers. You see, the official unemployment rate is what is called U3. It tallies people who have been looking for jobs for four weeks. What it doesn't count is people who have been receiving unemployment benefits so long that they expire after the 99 weeks, or people who give up looking for jobs. This number is called U6 and it is the true number of people who don't have jobs. The additional thousands came from the 315,000 people who are no longer receiving benefits because they have stopped looking for work. This 315,000 who are no longer officially unemployed according to the U3 definition is added to the 125,000 temp jobs that were created to give a total of 440,000 jobs created by Zero for the past month. That is how the number went down to 8.6%.



The real unemployment stats, the U6, is closer to 17%, which is nowhere near as bad as African brutal military coup nations, but it is still extreme for a highly developed, post-industrial nation. Since Zero has taken the oaf of office he has destroyed over 2.5 million jobs. That's Zero alone, not counting the jobs lost under Capital Bush. Still, think about it: one out of every six able bodied Americans doesn't have a job. This should be unexceptable. We need to stop hemorrhaging money. We need to cut everything in government. We need to vote Zero out of office and put anyone in his place, whether it be Newt Ingrinch, that guy with the hair, or whoever. Anyone is better.







*Not THAT Rush.

We're All Soft Once

Alexander Tsiaras presents in under ten minutes the development of everyone from conception to birth using the latest imaging technology. Even though you were there when this happened you probably don't remember it (although Stan Groff has produced some evidence for his birth memory trauma theory, but that's a different story). Enjoy.

Buddha Loves That Mean Green

By which I mean money, not weed (although Shiva would care to disagree).




At current gold prices Buddha's net worth is estimated at $30,4367,085 - not bad for a guy who lived as a wandering ascetic for 51 years.




Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to Think Big and Kick Ass at $2.7 billion.



Up at UD is a story about the difference between Buddhist meditators (yo) and ordinary mortals. Whereas an ordinary mortal would only accept a crappy gift from a rich friend 25% of the time, a Buddhist meditator would accept the same crappy gift 50% of the time. The reason, according to the article, is that meditation changes the way the brain works so people use reason instead of emotion. A reasonable person would think "hey, better than nothing," whereas an emotional person would think "son of a bitch could afford more, screw their gift!"



It's a short story and that's pretty much all it says.

The Games We Play

When I was a kid I often thought life was like a video game. Everything seemed contrived and I set out to have fun playing it. Now I spend less time focusing on what, in 2006, I called "The Game of Life," but the thought does periodically come to mind, as it has at this 3 AM listening to the rain outside my window. Now, while I am not suggesting that the purpose of life is a game, that we are here to play, the case can be made that, fundamentally, that statement is accurate. It seems to me that there are many, many levels to the Game of Life.



In 2008 I was drawn to the notion that, like it or not, and most of the time it is not, we are always playing and never living from a position of authenticity. We are never living from a position of the true self, but instead are always putting on masks and hiding from the truth.



We are always lying, all the time, even, and I would say especially, with ourselves about who we are. We create a series of intersubjective rules where certain actions, behaviours, mannerisms, appearances, styles of dress, professions, and patterns of consumption will define us as a "winner" and other actions etc., will define us as a "loser." We are always trying to win this game we are playing with other people and with ourself. It may get us somewhere and there may be some temporary benefits to playing this game, but the real effect is seen in the anxiety it creates; the sense of shame and inadequacy we feel, the depression, the anger, the confusion all from this drive toward inauthenticity. It is no surprise that we are the most heavily medicated people in all of history. We damage ourselves psychologically so much and we are taken to believe, through clever advertising, that the cause to our problems are external to our own minds (be they society, our brain, the 1%, etc.) that we become drug addicts and shell out loads of money to either the cartels or the government's favourite pharmaceutical companies, who are deeply in bed together and working to create a drugged society.



As a result of this game you do not have one self. You create a new persona for every person you interact with. There is the self you present to yourself, the self you present to me, the self you present to persons X, Y, and Z, etc. All of this is a fiction. It is a mechanism of avoiding the truth. Maybe we cannot cope with who we are, cannot accept who we are. We are too damaged and so we play hide and seek with ourself. We erect boundaries and hide everything we cannot stand about who we are and it is this lie that is fundamentally the source of our problems. We invest so heavily in maintaining the lie that the lie consumes us.



Life is a game and it is one that we play to avoid ourself. Now there are some people who have uprooted this lie and are living from authenticity and there are more who have tricked themselves into believing that they are being authentic, but this is just the smallest percentage of the population. Most people will never even become aware of the lie. They cannot handle the psychological shock. For those of us who are aware that we are playing there is a long road ahead to get out of the game. Meditation cannot free us because it ignores the lie completely. In samadhi there is nothing arising, including the lie, but once we come out we are right back in the same pattern of self-deception (which is why so many great Eastern masters came to the West and became entangled in problems with drugs, money, or sex: they were fine in the ashram where no temptation existed, but back in society where temptation abounds they have no psychological mechanism for dealing with it. It's a lot like the alcoholic who doesn't deal with alcohol, he just avoids it. Avoiding temptation is not the same as overcoming it.). We have a Shadow, and that is what Western psychotherapy works on. We must integrate East and West to uproot the lie and start living from authenticity.

11.11.11

It comes once every century (twice if you're using a 12 hour clock!): 11:11:11 on 11/11/11. In under 5 minutes I talk about the end of the First World War, the experience and value of the soldier, and what we can learn from them and from history.





P.S. The video was shot on 11 November, and posted here on the 12 @ 1:31 AM, but the time stamp has been changed to reflect the theme of the post.

Europe Dies

Like the Oracle says in the last Matrix film "everything that has a beginning has an end." Seems as if the end has come for the Eurozone (I'm on the record as of May 2008 saying that the Euro sucks and that the success of the Eurozone is a fiction that is artificially propped up by government intervention). Greece, the very place where all this started in 2010 when the world went mad, has crystalised into a stone that is dragging the entire Eurozone with it into destruction.



The very government of Greece is teetering on the edge, their military being decapitated for unknown reasons. Billions around the world were wiped out in the markets as fears of a coup arose. According to the story one Greek official (unnamed) is on the record as saying "It’s all over. The government is about to collapse."



German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pissed at how Germany is carrying the weight of the Eurozone and its endemic bailouts of all the failed countries. Pussies in Greece (which used to be the toughest bunch of people on the planet, producing the Spartans, Socrates, Alexander the Great, and Plotinus, all while wearing skirts no less, before turning into the biggest welfare state on the planet) have made Merkel as Hitler posters because she is the only sane leader in the EU and realises that this whole EU experiment in keeping something huge and complicated going as long as possible for no other reason that to justify the fact that it is very expensive and has been going on for a long time.



From The Independent: "The international economy is on the brink of a deep new economic crisis that could cost millions of jobs around the globe and trigger mass social unrest.... The UN agency warned that it could take until 2016 for global employment to return to the levels of three years ago – and that anger could erupt on the streets of Europe and other continents as a result."



If the Greeks were right (the classical Greeks, not the modern ones) and madness is contagious, and 2011 has been very good evidence that it is, we could be looking at something much worse than the end of the Eurozone. I don't like speculating about these sorts of things, but maybe the Mayans were right and the world will end in 2012. Not from some natural cataclysm, but from humanity's own hubris.

This Is A Story About A Whale

Darwinists say that the whale is the best example of evolution in action. The whale started out as a bear, or cat, or hyena, or hippo, depending on who you ask. Over time fossils were found and the people who run the museums drew flippers and flukes where none were discovered, and added arrows that were never found to demonstrate how whales evolved from creatures that are now acknowledged to not be whale ancestors. This makes you think, if the whale is the BEST example of evolution how did the idea ever get off the drawing board and into the outdated highschool text books?



Video runs 9 min.

Whale Evolution vs. The Actual Fossil Evidence from Philip Cunningham on Vimeo.

Why Dawkins Doesn't Debate Craig

Dick-to-the-Dawk-to-the-PhD won't debate William Lane Craig because he's scared there's a huge likelihood that he'll lose, but instead makes up fake reasons like: "I'll only debate members of the Church establishment and not professional debaters," and "Craig believes in genocide because he's a Christian." Other atheists are calling Dawk out on being a pussy. This guy (don't know who) posted two videos showing Craig destroy Dawk's fellow nay-theists Peter Atkins and Sam Harris with the remark "I think the real reason for Dawkins’s refusal to debate Craig is plain enough to see."



Here are the videos below:





Atkins





Harris

The Pussification of America

George Carlin did a routine on what he called "the pussification of America," a condition brought on by too much politically correct BS. I got to thinking in the shower, where I do most of my thinking. It started with the obvious paradox: nearly everyone in the country is on some diet all of the time and is more "health-conscious" than ever, yet a full third of all our citizens are obese. Never have I seen this many fat people in my life, and this is in spite of the fact that no one is allowed to eat salt or trans fats, or carbs, or meat, or whole milk. How the hell are they getting that fat then? Do people assume that since food is now low fat that they can eat ten times more?



This reminded me of something in the book Generation Kill. One of the Marines was a Mexican who liked to go off about how he disliked white people even though all his friends were white. He made a good point when he said that being poor in America was different than being poor elsewhere. Poor people in America have a house, or at least an apartment, a car or two, plasma TV, high-speed Internet, iPhone, iPod, i-whatever else, HD digital camera, etc. Also, poor people in America are obese. Poor people elsewhere are walking skeletons, like in Ethiopia on those Feed the Children commercials, but poor people in America are obese! How does that happen?



When you think about it, for 99% of human history only the tippity top of society could afford to get obese; less than 1%. The poorest people in America are obese, which puts them at the top richest 1% of all people in all of human history. Think about this: Louis XIV of France, the God-Emperor of all the world who built the largest palace on the continent and bathed in champaign and dressed in solid gold never used a toilet. His entire life, Louis XIV, the richest, most powerful man in all of Europe never used a toilet. He had to shit in a box and have someone dump it out a window. Louis XIV didn't have refrigiration in the summer, he didn't have heat in the winter, he didn't have a cure for measles. He had no electricity or motor vehicles. He had no means of keeping famine or war or plague from devastating his country. Louis XIV, the absolute ruler over millions, didn't live as well as poor people do in 21st Century America!



In spite of all this, the pussies at Occupy Wall Street* are still complaining! They claim to be the voice of the 99% against the top 1%, yet they are the top 1%! The people occupying Wall Street are among the top 1% of richest people in all of human history! They got used to getting a free ride from their bottomless mommy-government and when the tap got turned down slightly they started throwing a tantrum. They all have iPhones and iPads and HD digital cameras. They all have adequate nutrition (weren't they eating smoked salmon in their tents?). They have one of the best sanitation systems in human history, no threat of war now that there's an all volunteer military defending a nation protected on two sides by oceans. They have the best healthcare system on the planet, the one responsible for every last major medical advancement in the past thirty years. Think about it. The OWS pussies have it better than my ancestors did when they came to this country 100 years ago to escape being peasant farmers in Italy. There's child labour laws, civil rights, gay rights, womens' rights, free education till your 18th birthday, food stamps so poor people don't go hungry, indoor flush toilets, vaccines that save millions of children from previously fatal diseases that have vanished in the Western world. Hundreds of pages can be written about all the blessings these pussies have and only a couple on the troubles they face, yet they still are not satisfied! The selfishness of these people, shitting in police cars, mating under tarps, trying to keep a third of all employed New Yorkers from working**, assaulting the police to provoke retaliation and win sympathy like wife-beater Rodney King. The selfishness of the OWS pussies is disgusting.











*A group of activists believing that by yelling loudly enough some slogans they don't fully understand about some economic concepts they don't even begin to comprehend, they can change an economic situation they don't really like into a better one that they haven't quite defined yet.



**A third of all people in NYC are employed in some fashion by Wall Street.

An Incident at a McDonalds

Okay, there's some harpy shouting "STOP!" throughout the video, but ignore her.



Basically a very rowdy customer (a colossal bitch) berrated a McDonalds' cashier for some minor mistake, hit him, jumped the counter and he ran. He returns with a whup-ass stick (it looks like a crowbar) and does something to her her parents forgot to do. Her bitch friend jumps the counter too and she gets what's coming as well. Absolutely, the man was defending himself and the customers got what they deserved. Cashiers take way too much shit from way too many assaholic customers as is. These two bitches went too far and the cashier went Michael Douglass in Falling Down on their asses. Of course the cashier was charged with felony assault. REGARDLESS of his background (he did kill someone once and paid his debt) his actions were self-defense and completely justified. Guaran-damn-tee if the two customers were MEN this wouldn't even be a news story, but because they were women and we live in a gynocracy the big bad man has to be punished. Boo hoo, call the wambulance. Watch the video below and see the whacks of justice being delivered in the name of every cashier who is abused by customers.

Freedom of Smoking

Have you noticed that, for several years, the government has been trying to take away our freedom of smoking? Just because I elect not to exercise this, I'm going to call it a privilege, that does not mean that I am not still irked by the grotesque actions the government is taking with regard to smoking. Cigarette prices grow ever higher - twice, or more, the price of a gallon of gasoline, a far larger quantity of a far more useful commodity. Where before smoking was permitted everywhere, the non-smokers relegated to some paltry, isolated, ill-fashioned areas, now the roles have been reversed. That is not to say I am not happy with the new arrangements at resturants. Putting the non-smoking section in the back, accessible only through the smoking section, seemed to defeat the purpose of having separate sections at all. I'm glad, thrilled even, that I no longer come home having to shower and wash my clothes, but couldn't they just switch the locations and relegate the smokers to the oft forgotten back room, away from the entertainment and exits?



I'm glad for the waiters, already a thankless profession (ruined by Starbucks - whose coffee tastes foul, I might add, and is rather pricey - who ask for tips for their "baristas" when I could just as easily pour my own; now with everyone expecting a gratuity the gesture has forever lost its meaning, a gift for exceptional service, and has become just another bill), who no longer have to breathe the foul clouds of their patrons every day. Still, glad as I may be, this never was about me but about all of us. The problems I had were not with smoking but with courtesy and that is something that cannot be legislated.



You can't smoke in bars, you can't smoke in parks, you can't smoke in cars if children are present - a caveat some try to push on smoking in your own home! More and more there are fewer and fewer places to light up these ever more expensive things. Campaigns are being waged to replace the Surgeon General's warnings (the Surgeon General is technically an admiral) with pictures of dead people. Not just dead people, but putrid, puss oozing, zombie-like dead people, to scare consumers away from cigarettes. I'm pretty sure most smokers know the risks involved with their passtime; you don't have to rub it in.



Some people want to smoke. Some people never have any serious health effects from years of lighting up. Their habit hurts no one and benefits the government millions of dollars in taxes. Why work so hard to kill the golden goose? Why shift from one extreme of everywhere unlimited smoking to the other extreme of no smoking anywhere? Why not, as the Buddha would say, persue the middle way? A way of common sense, common courtesy, and maturity with regard to smoking? $8 per pack is bad enough. Can we at least stop pushing tax payers who already have nowhere to go by letting them enjoy their tax paying hobby without bankrupting them? Can't we have just a little more freedom of smoking?

60 Things I've Learned from the Movie "Megafault"

1. Earthquake killed ten miners instantly but took its time to chase the foreman, even waiting for him to get in his truck

2. An earthquake movie is sponsored by Quaker Oatmeal

3. Earthquake in Kentucky knocked over the Washington Monument but none of the windows in Washington shattered and nothing in the hundreds of miles between the two places were damaged

4. Earthquakes don't "move" and they don't have "paths"

5. When the foreman is rescued from his truck five hours later he can still run faster than anyone else even though he hasn't moved that whole time

6. After the foreman is rescued the earthquake comes back and chases him some more

7. Earthquake tries to suck a helicopter from the sky

8. Only buildings in the "path" of the earthquake get destroyed, all surrounding buildings are spared

9. Earthquake can toss a car like a toy in a wind tunnel but can't even shake the people trying to outrun it on foot

10. Buildings break into large jagged pieces like in children's drawings

11. When planes lose contact with the control tower they immediately crash because they're "flying blind" even on perfectly cloudless days

12. The earthquake is very slowly moving across the United States and will split it in half

13. Earthquakes do not work that way

14. When planes lose contact with the control tower the "transponder" causes the engines to explode, even though they're not connected and a transponder is just a radio transmitter and you can turn it off with no ill effects to the plane

15. A satellite from 1989 has a beam that can instantly freeze the water table of an area, causing an earthquake, somehow

16. "Megafault" is the least accurate movie ever

17. "Megafault" is the most cornball movie ever

18. Earthquakes can chase things with fireballs

19. "Stop the truck!" "I can't there's an earthquake on our tail!"

20. Government building is built on a "gyroscope" so earthquakes can't get in

21. The people who made "Megafault" (The Asylum) don't know what words mean or how anything works

22. "Megafault" is less accurate than the movie where an electric demon brought a black hole to earth ("The Black Hole" 2006)

23. There's only one seismologist in the world and she's the main character

24. The only things that can stop an earthquake are another earthquake or the Grand Canyon because it's already a hole in the ground so it absorbs earthquakes

25. A helicopter can outrun a laser

26. Earthquakes are only as fast as whoever they chase

27. When a laser shuts off the beam sucks back in

28. Thermodynamics means nothing in the world of "Megafault"

29. "P-waves have dissipated to 40" doesn't mean anything

30. Earthquakes can be frozen

31. A geologist said "mantle, what mantle" even though he's 60 years old and should know the earth has a mantle by now

32. Destabilizing the mantle with an ice laser causes people to spontaneously combust, leaving all their clothes unsinged.

33. An ice laser can set off a volcano

34. SyFy movies are even much worse than SciFi movies

35. "Why can't we move the Grand Canyon?"

36. One miner created an entire series of interconnected coal mines in Wyoming

37. Coal mines do not work that way

38. It is possible for one team, given only two hours, to fill 35 mines with a few crates of explosives and create a canyon

39. Earthquakes like to follow certain people and kill others who just appear in one scene instantly

40. "You can't outrun these explosives" but he can outrun five earthquakes in one day

41. 20 million tons of TNT

42. 20 million tons of TNT looks like a few small crates

43. Earthquakes really hate certain people

44. "Megafault" ends with a satellite image of a hundred mile deep split in the country

45. In movies redemption = death

46. In "Megafault" redemption = death

47. To make up for his crappy life the foreman had to die to save the world

48. The Asylum made "Megafault"

49. The Asylum made "Megafault" so that explains but in no way excuses it

50. "Birdemic"

51. "Birdemic" is a zero-budget 2009 ripoff of "The Birds"

52. "Birdemic" is even worse than "Megafault"

53. The miner foreman is appropriately named Boomer

54. "Megafault" is a mockbuster of a made for TV movie "10.5"

55. Even though "the President" is mentioned throughout the first half of "Megafault" he never makes an apperance in the movie

56. The whole meeting "the President" theme of the first half hour of "Megafault" is mysteriously dropped and never mentioned again

57. The Asylum had to contact NASA to calculate how bad "Megafault" is

58. "Megafault" has more stupid things than "Paycheck"

59. Good actors are willing to perform in crap movies

60.

The Return of Harmony Part 2 (of 3)

Not really, but it should have been. As a five part series finale this could have been the most awesome thing ever, but as a two part season premier, not so much. One hour of material was crammed into 22 minutes of show and with predictable results. The most powerful villain in the world was defeated in a deus ex machina way and turned back into stone as if that were the default setting of the Elements of Harmony.



Luna didn't appear (although Derpy was in the crowd at Canterlot). She was banished for 1000 years, but that wasn't punishment enough, so she was banished for the rest of Season One and the start of Season Two - the most siginficant event in the history of Equestria. Some ponies can't catch a break. She and Celestia just sat by and did nothing while Discord was on the loose? They could have at least helped (in a way other than returning Twi's letters).



If Twi could use her magic to undo Discord's negative effects on her friends why didn't she do so in the beginning? It would have been better if they had to overcome their changes with at least some struggle, if not two additional episodes worth. Part one seemed to be building up for something that never happened.



Now that the Mane 6 defeated Discord who would ever oppose them? They've only saved the very fabric of reality, they should be heaped with praise, their every whim delivered. You want everything for free for the rest of your life? No problem, you only saved reality. How could they possibly get repaid? I'm actually disappointed by this turn of events. Where do you possibly go from here?



The whole Cutie Mark Crusaders subplot was never resolved. It was just dropped like one of Discord's many non sequiturs. Were they there to demonstrait something? Were they there to serve as foreshadowing? Did their petty arguing actually free Discord? The world may never know.



This episode tried to be the greatest thing ever but was left wanting.



That's not to say this episode was bad, merely rushed. I would have to give this episode a comparatively low rating of 9.0 (out of 10.0). Not bad, like Over a Barrel, but not fantastic like Suited for Success or The Cutie Mark Chronicles.



Some very good parts of this episode include:



*Derpy was there, although she wasn't derping

*EVERYTHING about Discord

*Mean Fluttershy standing up to mean Pinkie Pie (at least somepony did it)

*Twi's balloon is back!

*When Discord fills the glass with chocolate milk he fills it from the top down, then drinks the glass and throws the glass-shaped milk away! And it blows up!

*The way Discord sits on his throne (see top picture)

*Twi handing out all the EoH necklaces and when she comes to her own she calls it a "big crown thing"

*Spike is the new Rainbow Dash

*Applejack eating apple cores and they get more complete with every bite

*When the Mane 6 originally attacked Discord with the EoH he puts a bullseye on his chest

*When they attack Discord the second time he says "friend me"

*Discord saying to Twi "Maybe the magic of friendship can help you."

Marine Sergeant - A True Hero

On 15 September the President awarded Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of 36 of his brothers in arms. He disobeyed orders and entered an Afghan kill zone five times to save the lives of 13 Americans and 23 Afghanis, as well as recover the bodies of 4 of his friends. This is truly moving. Words cannot do justice to his brave deeds.

The Return of Harmony

Today was the long awaited premier of season two of FiM, and we got to meet the awesome villain Discord and learn that Equestria follows the same basic rules as most creation myths.



If we recall #69 on the list: Celestia needs the Elements of Harmony to defeat her sister, so even though she's older she's the weaker of the two.



From this we can know the following: (101.) Since both Celestia and Luna together needed the Elements of Harmony to defeat Discord, that makes Discord the de facto most powerful being ever introduced on the show. Not only did he precede the sisters as ruler of the world, he also held that position since deep antiquity and is possibly the oldest being yet introduced.



Next is the issue of the Elements of Harmony themselves. Who or what created them, or have they always existed?



The story presented in today's episode is one with a great deal of staying power. The world exists from an infinite past in chaos; out of the chaos are born the gods, the gods do battle with a great dragon, slay it, and then build the world from its remains. A lot of ancient myths follow this pattern with only slight variation (the Babylonian story of creation with Marduk fighting Tiamat follows it directly; the Greek Theogony details how the gods came from the premordial chaos: Kronos defeated his father Uranus, bringing about a golden age like when Celestia and Luna ruled together, then he overstepped his bounds and Zeus defeated him, like when Luna became Nightmare Moon and had to be defeated by her sister). This chaoskampf (conflict with chaos) appears throughout a very large number of the world's creation stories (including the Bible where, in Job, God tells Job how he fought Behemoth and Leviathan at the time of creation, trapped them, and how they will be destroyed in the eschaton, like how Discord was fought and trapped in stone, though we don't know if there was ever the intent on destroying him at the end of time), and plays out rather nicely in The Return of Harmony.



My only problem with this episode is that it is only a two-parter. I could stand to watch a separate episode dealing with how Discord affects each of the mane six. He is insanely powerful and insanely cool and I don't think two episodes do him much justice.

Asymmetric Warfare, Afghans, and Aliens

People say the Soviet Union and United States lost in Afghanistan and Vietnam, respectively, because of asymmetric warfare. This is not true in either circumstance.



Russia succeeded in its goals in Afghanistan and left the country because they had more pressing concerns elsewhere. The pro-Soviet Afghan government faired very well for several years after the Soviet withdrawl in 1989, the Mujahideen had largely been crushed by 1986 when the Soviets began to leave, allowing the Mujahideen to return from Pakistan, and the Soviets learned valuable lessons from testing new field tactics. 1 million Afghans were killed, 2 million internally displaced, and 5 million fled to Pakistan and Persia, and all at the cost of 15,000 Soviet troops.



The United States never set out to win the war in Vietnam in the traditional sense. US goals involved defending the South from communist invasion. US forces could have invaded Hanoi, destroyed the DVR and left the VC to wither away after having the support kicked from under them, but Washington saw the risk of escalation with China as too great and decided to play small ball and eventually pull out, never having been defeated on the field.



The lessons learned from the Soviet-Afghan War and the Vietnam War can be applied to an hypothetical alien invasion of the earth to understand why asymmetrical warfare against extaterrestrials is doomed to fail.



Runs 12:30

Exploring the Near Death Experience

Someone called TheSurvivalIndex has put out a 15 minute video detailing the cultural phenomena associated with the NDE. He says three main groups of people form the bulk of the popular presentation on the NDE:
1. Fundamentalist Christians,
2. New Age Haberdashers, and
3. Fundamaterialist Skep-Dicks.
Group 1 latches on to the pro-Fundamentalist Christian NDEs as proof of their beliefs and ignores or even denigrates NDEs that are favourable to other religions or to no religions at all (like atheists who have NDEs that tell them part of their life's mission is to be an atheist). Group 2 extrapolates from the NDE to believe all sorts of stuff that most likely is untrue (Loch Ness Monster, Fairies, Vampires, etc.*) and often tries to profit large offering spurious services to unknowledgable people. Group 3 likes to come up with bullshit just-so stories to explain away the NDE because they are committed to materialism, even when those stories blatantly ignore real facts, are based on illogic, and other fundamaterialists disagree and tear apart opposing stories. All three groups are able to thrive because the general populous doesn't actually read the primary material - actual NDE accounts and the reports of NDE investigators. Even though all three groups are contradicted by the evidence that doesn't bother them because as long as the vast majority of people are ignorant of that evidence they can still come off looking like authority figures.










*I'm not necessarily saying things like the Loch Ness Monster and fairies are not real - they may be - but I have looked into the topics and can't really find any good evidence for them. Loch Ness almost certainly can't support a single large creature, let alone a breeding population. There were biosonar signals detected in Lake Champlain though, indicating that, while not a "monster" there has to be a freshwater equivalent of a cetacean, something that has never before been seen. Things like fairies, gnomes, and other little people stretch my credulity a might, but they may have something to do with some spiritual force, I don't know and am open to the possibility. Vampires, either corpses reanimated by evil spirits (as the original vampires were), people infected with a virus that compells them to drink blood, or these psychic vampires who are real people who claim to drain people's energy in some way they never quite explain, are probably one of the least likely of these "paranormal" phenomena. If vampires reproduce like zombies there should have been a "vampire" apocalypse by now. The vampires in the Blade movies kept changing to suit the story and the Underworld vampires were never really explained very well, so I don't know how they stayed in hiding all these centuries. Psychic vampirism appears to be a lifestyle choice, like hippies or bikers other such groups, and probably aren't vampires at all, although they get happiness from playing a role. There are people who are difficult or depressed or assaholic and drain your energy that way, but there's nothing "paranormal" about that.

9/11: Ten Years Later

9/11 remains one of the four most significant days in my life (and the only one that didn't happen in a short period between 2005-6). I remember exactly where I was ten years ago. I remember the innocence of the age and the girl at school I paid more attention to than the lessons. I remember the palpable dread that hung over everything. I remember the conversations, the denial, the grim disbelief. I remember having to learn to draw a new New York skyline. I remember how everyone was drawn into patriotism and brotherhood then quickly sunk back into the tick-tock of everyday life. I remember all the freedom I've had to give up. I remember the conversations with "truthers" and all their dreck, listening to people balancing between green and red reproach Capital Bush with the obsession of an alcoholic, ruining even what should have been their own dining experiences (I did attend university once). I remember the scenes of people jumping from buildings, now forever burned into my memory. I remember anger, confusion, sadness, government ineptitude at finding a single man, who was eventually caught and killed and dumped at sea with no proof given to the people who waited a decade for that day and to the country's enemies to serve as a warning.
Damn.
What a decade.

Swami Kriyananda on the Economic Collapse

Recall earlier how I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Paramhansa Yogananda's disciple Kriyananda's world brotherhood colonies, dubbed "Ananda Villiages", were neither hippie nor communist. Everyone must be fiscially responsible and contribute financially to the community. Now Swami Kriyananda gives an hour talk on the global economic collapse. In summary:



*Using creative energy to help others is like a muscle - it gets stronger the more you use it - and not like a fixed quantity like gold that diminshes the more you use it



*A lot of people care only for money, not for people, and they often play the stock market



*Government is too damn big (though he doesn't say "damn")



*Welfare helps government orders of magnitude more than it helps the needy



*...And it's FDR's fault!



*Deficite spending doesn't work and is killing the world economy



*"Legalise pot and maybe hard drugs so criminals can't make profits off of it and addicts can be given help, not rectal exams



*(Interestingly) Rock music (especially metal) is the vibration of negative dimensions and can cause natural disasters!



*Kindness and generosity can shelter you from economic hardship, though not always immediately, and, consequently, if you apply for enough jobs you'll eventually get one



*The Dollar will collapse, leading to world-wide hyperinflation



*The Euro sucks (too)



*Gold coins are very good to survive the economic apocalypse, but good farm land is the best investment



*Starting small communities in the country with similar minded individuals is the key to saving humanity, because cities will explode with apocalyptic crime

The Son I Should Have Had

The following is intended to become an episode of The Urban Mystic Show (episode 302):



Twenty-six minutes into the movie Gladiator, the emperor Marcus Aurelius asks his general, Maximus, to become emperor following his death; to fulfill the one thing that he was unable to do. Marcus Aurelius says: "I will empower you to one end alone: to give power back to the people of Rome, and end the corruption that has crippled it." This request is problematic for several reasons, least of all having to do with the structure of the Roman senate itself.



First of all, to get the pesky problem with the senate out of the way as quick as possible, it should be noted that the senate of Rome did not function the way it is portrayed by the filmmakers. Senators were never elected by the people at all, they were appointed, and one had to be fairly wealthy in order to even be considered eligible for appointment. The senators did not represent the people of Rome at all, but a very minute group of elites at he very pinnacle of Roman society. Aside from having to endure the foul smell and terrible racket of chariot wheels on cobblestone streets of the city itself, senators really had nothing in common with the people. Returning the empire of Rome to a republic would not end the corruption – senators were always corrupt and looked out for their own potential benefit from political dealings – and it would certainly not give power back to the people because power never rested in the hands of the people to begin with.



More importantly, the very idea of handing power over to the people of Rome would be a profoundly stupid idea with extraordinarily disastrous results. One would expect Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosopher whose Meditations are still quoted today, would have realized this. Of course, one cannot fault the emperor for this error; Ridley Scott appears to be crafting a vision of "Rome" that will appeal to the great idea of American of a government of the people, by the people, for the people, instead of creating something accurate that would be completely alien to a modern audience.



Just who is to be included under the banner of "the people of Rome?" Are the people of Mauritania and Moesia to be given equal say in the governing of the empire as the Latins themselves? Or is it just the people inhabiting the city itself that will rule, as a great many-headed tyrant over the vast conquered masses of the empire? At the rate it took to travel the vast spans of the empire anything more than the confines of the city would be too great a territory to permit any governance within a reasonable time frame. Should the Parthians invade it would be suicide to wait for the inhabitants of Britannia to decide whether to go to war or seek diplomatic means of crisis resolution.



The average Roman was preoccupied with more important matters, like securing food, and could not possibly have been educated in the finer points of governance. The average Roman was cold, hungry, illiterate, fearful. They desperately held on to their customs and traditions, their rituals and routines just to carve out mere subsistence. For as bad as the emperors were, as corrupt the senators, it was the people of Rome who were perhaps the worst possible choice as for who should rule. While Marcus Aurelius' vision makes for a wonderful story, and a wonderful picture of 21st century America, for second century Rome the idea would be absolutely nonsensical, and would be the farthest thing from Marcus Aurelius' mind.

The World Gone Mad: REDUX

Remember the map from The World Gone Mad that displayed countries around the world where various social, economic, political, and military turmoil was going on? Well, someone has now made an interactive version of the map here with story and explanation here. The world gone mad map and the world opinion on intervention in Libya map are both interactive and updated since the one posted on The Urban Mystic back in February.

Milton Friedman on Donahue - 1979

Economist Milton Friedman takes down Phil Donahue's appeal to emotion by pointing out that greed is not capitalism's fault but is a basic human condition plaguing all political and economic systems. 9:28

George Gilder Talking Straight

George Gilder talks a whole lot of sense in this twenty minute Reason TV interview. This one is so good I'm actually going to watch it again tomorrow.

Honest Reporting's Life of Brian

Honest Reporting does a two minute video in the style of Monty Python about all the things Israel did for peace that the media ignore. They also have a drawing for a two disc edition of Life of Brian if you're interested (free to enter).

Rumors of War II

The Sequel. An hour long documentary. Between radical Islam, the Chicoms, and global economic collapse, the end of our way of life is near.

Ken Wilber on Ethics and Enlightenment

From the same talk as yesterday's video. Practicing ethics cannot make you enlightened, but you cannot be enlightened without practicing ethics. Runs 9:22.

Ken Wilber on Morality

Ken Wilber talks about morality and why it is the foundation of spiritual development. Runs 9 minutes.

Imagine No Religion

I'm not sure John Lennon meant "no religion" to mean everyone should be an atheist. He was a lot smarter than that. Just looking at the most horrible acts of the twentieth century make the fact clear that atheism in its various guises (social Darwinism, communism, eugenics) caused more human suffering than anything else besides Smallpox. What I think he meant was that shouldn't have the fierce sectarian divisions that often come with religion. We have such gems of quotes from Lennon on religion as:



“People got the image I was anti-Christ or antireligion,” he said. “I’m not at all. I’m a most religious fellow. I’m religious in the sense of admitting there is more to it than meets the eye. I’m certainly not an atheist.”



He also didn't believe in Darwinism:



“Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way,” he insisted. “That’s another piece of garbage. What the hell’s it based on? We couldn’t’ve come from anything—fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don’t believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren’t monkeys changing into men now? It’s absolute garbage.”



Unfortunately people do misappropriate Lennon's music and his image. There are those who claim that religion is the root of all evil while ignoring all the good it does (what Ken Wilber calls the conveyor belt; I've also argued a lot about Christianity's integral role in ending slavery). Well, getting on topic, finally, here is the ultimate outcome of a society that has ditched religion, leveled off on flatland narcissism, and believes in nothing: the UK riots.



A country with cradle to craftmatic adjustable bed handouts, where no one has to work because they get government stipends, where everyone gets free (albeit very shitty) health care, could not help but explode when those handouts are taken away. The UK is broke so they decided to cut back on a pittance of the handouts so know-it-all teenagers dediced to smash stuff for no evident reason. Lots of buildings were destroyed and people killed (there may be racist elements involved). Of course you could say if people were allowed to own guns they could defend themselves, their families, and even total strangers, but the UK is ruled by a king (a queen actually; there won't be a king for a while), and kings love to have a control on the possession of weapons. Absent the ability to own guns, sales of baseball bats rose three hundred percent (my estimate) because everyone over 20 was afraid for their lives as know-it-all teenagers with immortality complexes destroyed everything insane.



The author, A. N. Wilson, has some brilliant points to make:



A Christian woman working for British Airways who wears a cross round her neck is asked to remove it for fear of offending other people. A nurse who prays with a patient in hospital is committing an almost criminal act. Catholic adoption agencies which disapprove of gay adoptive parents on religious grounds have their licences taken away.



And all the while, our governing classes and academics and teachers chip away at the fundamental truths of the great religions — truths that have stood the test of time for thousands of years — in their arrogant certainty that there are no moral absolutes and that the human race can make up the rules as it goes along.



At the nuttier fringes of the chattering classes there are those, like the geneticist Richard Dawkins and the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who actually believe that religion is a mental poison responsible for all the evils in the world.



The misguided and vacuous thinking of these so-called intellectuals is compounded by a sordid celebrity-culture which holds up role models who should be despised rather than admired.



Amy Winehouse, a pathetic drug-infused alcoholic girl of very modest talent, is held up as great diva; and when she died, her house was surrounded by fans, laying empty vodka bottles as a ‘tribute’.



What happens when you imagine a world with no religion? I don't have to imagine, I can just look across the pond to see how a society lacking morality and values is faling apart. How long before the madness comes to America? I don't know, but here's something I wrote a few months ago that may help:



In 2008 I said Obama would be like four more terms of Bush.

In 2009 I said I never imagined things could ever get this bad.

In 2010 I wished I was back in 2009.

In 2011 I said the world had gone mad.

Now I'm saying the world will not last till the end of 2012.



If we ever needed to heed Lennon's advice to "give peace a chance" now is that time.

Five Reasons I Like Rick Perry

And two that don't really do it for me.


Note: my commentary will be in [square brackets]. The rest of the text is directly from the Yahoo News story.



1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.


[Couldn't agree more. Kings serve for life, and we fought two wars to rid ourselves of the yoke of a king (the Revolution and War of 1812, when Britain fought back). By giving the judges lifetime tenure it divorces them from reality and from the people, the concent of whom is from whence they derive their power.]



2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.


[Maybe not a two-thirds vote, maybe something stronger, but nothing in government should be final. Even the Constitution can be amended, so should the Supreme Court, lest they become absolutist.]



3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.


[Last year this was one of two BIG things I said needed to be done to fix the country. If not possible to achieve a repeal I did propose an alternate income tax scheme.]



4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.



Overturning this amendment would restore the original language of the Constitution, which gave state legislators the power to appoint the members of the Senate.



Ratified during the Progressive Era in 1913 , the same year as the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment gives citizens the ability to elect senators on their own. Perry writes that supporters of the amendment at the time were "mistakenly" propelled by "a fit of populist rage."



"The American people mistakenly empowered the federal government during a fit of populist rage in the early twentieth century by giving it an unlimited source of income (the Sixteenth Amendment) and by changing the way senators are elected (the Seventeenth Amendment)," he writes.


[This is even more important than getting rid of the tax. When the Constitution was written it was decided that the two houses of Congress would be populated in two different ways: Representatives are chosen by the people and Senators are chosen by the state legislatures. This was one of the most brilliant decisions in all of world history. The whole point of the Constitution was to maximise the power of the States, but reign them in just enough so the Union could stick together, which wasn't possible under the Articles of Confederation. Representatives were elected by popular vote and each state got a number of Representatives proportional to total population, this way we the people get our say. Senators were chosen by the state legislatures and each state got two so that the power held by big states and small states would be equal where it really counted. Having Senators chosen by the state legislatures was a guarantee to states' rights. The Senators represented the will of the states whereas the Representatives represented the will of the people. This was a brilliant balancing act to protect everyone from each other. Then along came the populists who wanted to turn the United States into a mobocracy and changed the Constitution to say the Senators are elected by the people too, taking power away from the states and giving it to whoever had the deepest pockets and the Federal government, as the two are one and the same.]



5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.



Of all his proposed ideas, Perry calls this one "the most important," and of all the plans, a balanced budget amendment likely has the best chance of passage.



"The most important thing we could do is amend the Constitution--now--to restrict federal spending," Perry writes in his book. "There are generally thought to be two options: the traditional 'balanced budget amendment' or a straightforward 'spending limit amendment,' either of which would be a significant improvement. I prefer the latter . . . . Let's use the people's document--the Constitution--to put an actual spending limit in place to control the beast in Washington."



A campaign to pass a balanced budget amendment through Congress fell short by just one vote in the Senate in the 1990s.



Last year, House Republicans proposed a spending-limit amendment that would limit federal spending to 20 percent of the economy. According to the amendment's language, the restriction could be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress or by a declaration of war.


[I want to scream in orgasmic delight at the thought of a balanced budget. I even like the provision that special circumstances, like war, can call for extra spending, because Hitler had to die whatever the cost in treasure.]







And the two I'm not too thrilled about:



6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.


[I don't think government has the power to make this decision. The government, including state governments, should stay as far away from marriage as possible.]



7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.


[I lean toward states rights on this one, but not entirely. There are circumstances where I think abortion is justified (e.g. certain congenital abnormalities that are always fatal, often with the baby surviving only a few hours or days), or even required (situations that lead to maternal death). Is Perry saying he would rather have the mother die to preserve "the soul of this country and to the traditional values [of] our founding fathers"?]

Barney Frank

Barney Frank (the guy whose speech no one can understand) is on MSNBC on the Rachel Maddow Show, being watched by all of ten people, when he lifts his cheek and lets out an atomic fart, without excusing himself, without even pausing. Thanks to the video being posted on the Internet something produced by MSNBC is getting more viewers than I have fingers and toes. This made my day. This is easily the funniest thing I have seen in months and probably one of the funniest things ever. In this world gone mad it's nice to have something good like this to report about.

Surgeons and the Soul

Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander talks about his NDE while he had bacterial meningitis (2 videos, 9 minutes total).





Cardiac surgeon Lloyd Rudy tells two stories about his patients NDEs and what they brought back (12 1/2 minutes). One man comes back after twenty minutes with no heart beat with veridical perceptions of the operation.

The One Beyond Duality

Prior to being. Above essence. Here is a thirty minute lecture with Prof. Philip Cary on Plotinus, Neoplatonism, and the unity of all things. First is a diagram I made while listening of Plotinus' cosmology:



In the center is the One, beyond distinctions, the source of all existence, shining like the sun. Around it is the Divine Mind (Nous), which is suffused with the light of the One. It is perfect in its intelligence and is unmoved and unchanging. Beyond this is the Soul. When turned in, to take part in the perfection of the Divine Mind, it is the one World Soul. When turned out it takes on the multiplicity of every individual soul. Beyond this is the world of matter and seperation, suffering, desire, and death. The soul looks out and falsly identifies with images in the physical world. Everything is created as an outflowing of the One, its superabundance, although it is not actually doing anything. The rays of the One become more and more diffuse the farther out one goes, and the more imperfect and fragmented things become.



Here is another 30 minute lecture, also by Prof. Cary, that gets into Plotinus' spirituality. I think it is actually better than the first.

Rumors of War I

An hour long documentary on why a nuclear Iran should scare you.

I Make It Rain

Remy explains why the debt ceiling was raised.







Talking dogs explain quantitative easing.

A Short Quiz on Intelligent Design

VJ Torley at UD posts a ten question quiz for proponents and opponents of ID. Here are the questions and my answers.



1. On a scale of 0 (diehard disbeliever) to 10 (firm believer), how would you rate your level of belief in Intelligent Design? (Minimal Definition of Intelligent Design: The idea that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by an undirected process.)



Update: When I say “certain features”, I mean, “certain generic features of the universe-as-a-whole (e.g. constants of Nature) and of living things in general (e.g. the specified complexity of DNA”. When I say “an undirected process” I mean a process lacking long-range foresight.



10



2. What do you regard as the best argument for Intelligent Design?



I really like cosmological fine-tuning, because I like very large numbers. I also like that there is no mathematical model for “natural selection” (it is such a nebulous concept, existing in whatever form is most convenient at the time, that I doubt it can have a mathematical model or that it even meets the criteria of science). Mutations not producing new genetic information (where did information come from in the first place then?) and life not being able to self-assemble (abiogenesis) are also good ones.



3. What do you regard as the best argument against Intelligent Design?



Suboptimality (the designer either does not no how to, cannot, or will not design an optimal world for what reason(s)?). Actually, this is not an argument against ID, just certain assumptions about the nature of the designer. That said I can’t think of any counter arguments I think are good.



4. I’d like you to think about the arguments for Intelligent Design. Obviously they’re not perfect. Exactly where do you think these arguments need the most work, to make them more effective?



Perform A LOT MORE experiments, which necessarily entails mainstream science opening up to the possibility of ID. I would also like to see more atheist/agnostic ID proponents, or even just more non-Christian ID proponents (or at least Christians who don’t quote the Bible as scientific evidence).



5. Now I’d like you to think about the arguments against Intelligent Design. Obviously they could be improved. Exactly where do you think these arguments need the most work, to make them more effective?



Stop with the snarky cheap shots like talking about ID versus “real” science or claming that it is religion or the “overwhelming evidence” for RM+NS that is genuine evidence but nowhere near “overwhelming”, nor is it “fact” or demonstrated as well as gravity. Either rebut ID on purely scientific grounds or admit you don’t like it for religious reasons and that’s why you attack ID proponents.


Demonstrating that life can self-assemble, or at least that all the proteins needed for life can self-assemble. Demonstrating that random processes can produce completely new information, not just delete or rearrange pre-existing information in a genome.



6. (a) If you’re an ID advocate or supporter, what do you think is the least bad of the various alternatives that have been proposed to Intelligent Design, as explanations for the specified complexity found in living things and in the laws of the cosmos? (e.g. The multiverse [restricted or unrestricted?]; Platonism; the laws of the cosmos hold necessarily, and they necessarily favor life; pure chance; time is an illusion, so CSI doesn’t increase over time.)



(b) If you’re an ID opponent or skeptic, can you name some explanations for life and the cosmos that you would regard as even more irrational than Intelligent Design? (e.g. Everything popped into existence out of absolutely nothing; the future created the past; every logically possible world exists out there somewhere; I am the only being in the cosmos and the external world is an illusion requiring no explanation; only minds are real, so the physical universe is an illusion requiring no explanation.)



(a) I don’t think there are any acceptable alternatives that are purely materialistic. I suppose if I had to choose I would say that the alternative I see as best is that the future act as a teleological attractor to the past, guiding the evolution of forms in the past to a predetermined future (I’ve read this somewhere).