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Sunday, November 15th, 2009
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Friday, November 13th, 2009
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For as long as recorded history, the human condition has been frought with discord, strife and suffering. The basic reasons behind this are anybody's guess. Some might blame the development of the neocortex. Some blame the emergence of language. Some believe argiculture was humanity's biggest mistake. I've even heard the theory that species who live on planets far away from their galactic cores that become intelligent tend to go apeshit in general. Even syllogistic logic has been indicted. And of course, the Scientologists have their own theories..;P
Of course, the above considerations are pretty abstract in comparison to the nature of this strife and the suffering that we experience in our own personal lives. And that's what I want to focus on here. You can take war, for example - it's more symptomatic of course than the general problem in-itself, but it's certainly paramount. I think war shows a lack an understanding of unity and brotherhood...it's hard to wage war on one's blood brothers. Obviously not everybody in the world is your physical brother, but on a global scale, the 'blood' there is our sprit. Yes, it would be somewhat naive just to blame it all on lack of brotherhood and leave it at that. It's a complex scenario, and there are other factors at play here.
Humans have been suppressing themselves and oppressing each other for literally ages. We suppress ourselves for fear of judgement, hatred, or not being loved; while meanwhile we issue the same judgement to other people - judgement about different issues that *someone else* lives through and that *you* don't understand. We oppress others for fear...we fear they might rob us, we make laws and the penal system and incarceration. We fear someone might expose us for our insecurities, we ridicule or silence them. Some beaurocrats fear liability, they issue building codes and don't let you live in anything that doesn't cost you a lifetime's amount of work - before you've even lived long enough to earn it. People fear others won't allow them to do what they want with property, so all property is legally allocated and monetarily exchanged, and none is left over for anybody who just wants to Live Simply; not even being homeless and starving is legal - there's nowhere you're allowed to sleep.
It seems a lot of people take suffering to be a permanent fact of life - just the way things are in the universe. Yet I don't think this is the case -- just look at the broader field of nature on Earth..it's a fairly different animal.
Now I think the *proof* of something being seriously wrong with the way we're doing things is our systematically progressive devastation of the environment. That just isn't the way an animal behaves - except for human beings of course. This has been going on since the industrial revolution, if not for longer. The thing is, you and I both participate in the systematic destruction of the environment. Every time you buy something that's not decomposable, every time you put gas in your car, every time you turn on the light switch, and truthfully any time you buy anything at all that takes the consumption of resources, the dispelling of waste, the using of electricity and the issuing of carbon dioxide in its making -- which is just about anything you buy. The companies that provide these things are satisfying a need in the market; we make up the market, and hence we are not without responsibility.
My point is that suffering indicates something is wrong, the proof of something being seriously wrong is our devastation of the environment, and you and I are responsible for the devastation of the environment; this seems to indicate that the afflictions we face in life are due to things reflected in every individual, and are hence primary to anything circumstantial such as large corporations, the government, the "new world order," the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group, the GOP or the dems, for the most part. Governments themselves arise naturally in a vacuum; that's why they exist in every nation in the world, and it takes more than just a few people to run a government. They're hence created by The People.)
So if one feels the need to change things, I think things can be changed, but I would implore one not to look up to mysterious vague notions such as the "NWO," or even the evil, sinister, conspiring government that we all learned about through watching X-Files. Even large corporations, which I do believe are basically sociopathic and rather cancerous to society, are not the fundamental causes of society's oppression in the way that people seem to be starting to almost paranoically take them to be. Instead I would implore that people "look down" and delve deeply into their emotions, qua the emotions of humanity, and into the historical and developing nature of the human condition. This is all dark territory since it borders on the subconscious and we're largely unconscious of these behaviors and emotions. So what we're fundamentally dealing with here are endemic beliefs and unconscious societal behavior patterns, and I really don't think they're majorly deliberately conscious evils like this nebulous notion of an NWO. I think going down such an ideological path would only serve to *divide* us and make us fight maniacally against things we don't even understand, somewhat like in the L.A. riots of 1992. Even the CEOs of large corporations principally want *money* more than anything else, and in all likelihood have some fucktarded philosophy on life to justify their actions; altogether they exhibit an aspect of humanity and they're a reflection of you.
Everything in its rightful place..
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
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'— Obama says that “instead of claiming God for our side, we remember Lincoln’s words, and always pray to be on the side of God."'
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, November 5th, 2009
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Here is the latest discussion activity from your Shelfari groups:Josiah L said: First, an apology for taking so long to accept the invitation to this group! I haven't been to active on Shelfari in a while and had overlooked my invite for a long, long time. That said, on to the response: Sadly, it seems just as important to discuss what anarchism is not as what it is. I think most people in America just equate it with breaking windows and destroying things, and insist that anarchists just want a world with no rules where they can do whatever they want. This world, of course, is envisioned as a violent, dystopian nightmare. People can't be blamed for this view, as this is what we have been taught to believe, and all we hear of anarchists in the media is when they (and others claiming to be anarchists) break stuff at WTO protests. Well, it's not about breaking stuff--it's about building stuff. It's not about hurting people, it's about people working together to achieve their collective potential, without someone making them do it. It is not about a lack of rules, but the absence of rulers. Anarchists believe that the natural state of human society is to be working together for the mutual benefit of all involved, not one group working against another or one group working so that another group can profit. With this in mind, anarchists are generally against wars and bosses. Anarchism is also not about a lack of organization. Anarchists choose to organize themselves as they see fit to achieve their goals. While many anarchists do talk about "the revolution", overthrowing the government is not the prime goal of anarchists as a whole. Many feel that any violent revolution is in and of itself coercive and therefore un-anarchist. It is much more common to see anarchists feeding the homeless, sharing their personal skills without asking for payment, supporting prisoners, growing food, and discussing books. I have a lot of other thoughts on the subject but there's a start.
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Friday, October 30th, 2009
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"If a friend or relative makes a racist or homophobic remark, do you tend to confront them or let it slide? Are you more likely to confront them if it offends you directly or someone else who seems reluctant to speak up?"
It doesn't have to be confrontation per se. There are other ways of .. i don't know.. enlightening the person (i know, it's really convenient to assume you're the enlightener and the one who says something you disagree with is in the relative dark, but I'm not making any assumptions here that the original question isn't.) For example, the native americans have been known to coach by teasing. not mocking teasing, loving teasing. of course this teasing can be subtle.. it doesn't have to be semantically direct. it doesn't even have to be teasing per se. just the right grunt or whatever can often be one's way of getting across their perspective. if there is such a thing as general objective truth (this assumption being implied by the fact that it's what we're trying to bring the racist toward by by confronting them with our superior ideology) , then it shouldn't take much to impress someone with it.. as it would necessarily be something we're all already immersed in. i guess it seems that just by exchanging impressions and grunts it can take anywhere between slow and forever to change one's behavior. but you can't always change someone. and if you really love them, you don't need to.
i think if you're "confronting" them, you're taknig the wrong approach. that's antagonistic or oppositional. if they're a friend, and not an enemy, then why be antagonistic? perhaps you could just say what they mean or feel about the issue, and leave it at that? but I suppose this begs the question of what the word "confronting" really means. 99% of relationships are immersed in superficiality and niceties.. it's like you break the ice once to start a conversation, but if you want to say anything real then you have to break the ice again on a second level. But still, the point I wanted to make is that you should be clear why you're doing it -- because you find it distasteful and you want them to behave in ways that are more pleasing to you or that agree with what you believe to be "right", or *primarily* because you feel that it would benefit *them* to gain perspective and love for humanity and hence to adjust their racist attitude. it may seem like a subtle difference, but I think the approaches and results that they respectively engender are likely very, very different.
then of course when it comes to how we might act differently if it's offending someone else at the time, the question gets a little more complicated because it involves the best thing for two or more people. i would guess that if your behaviour wouldn't be any different those two cases then you're acting more on the "i'm going to confront you because you're *wrong* and I find that irritating" level of interaction.
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Friday, October 23rd, 2009
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Thursday, October 15th, 2009
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Damn, this is a great article. It's only one random article I just now picked from this site -- i already knew this site has great articles from years ago -- so the rest of the articles on this site, of which there are many, are likely just as good.
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Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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Friday, September 11th, 2009
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"God sleeps in minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals, and thinks in man."
-ancient sanskrit proverb
http://www.guba.com/watch/2000953776
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Thursday, September 10th, 2009
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"In several medical marijuana cases, the patients' physician has been willing to state to the court that the patient's condition requires this medicine and thus that the Court should not interfere. However, the Supreme Court of United States has outrightly rejected this defense in the landmark case United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, in which the Court ruled that there was no medical necessity exception to drug laws, and federal government is free to raid, arrest, prosecute, and imprison patients who are using medical marijuana no matter if the medicine is crucially necessary to them. On the other hand, in Gonzales v. Raich, the court told a sufferer in extreme pain that they could not rely on state law allowing medical use, but if arrested they could seek to use medical necessity as a defence."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_necessity#Medical_use_of_marijuana
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Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
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Saturday, August 29th, 2009
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If my calculations are correct, I could theoretically build a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse within a dollhouse. The smallest one would be about 29 atoms high.
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Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
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<simulacrum> in our embrace, inner taste, of love and hate, sinner made, pure in a place, you cant, endure.
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one of my good friends and I and his friend went to a Mechanical Engineering/Computer Science orientation once
his friend is ALWAYS smiling
my friend asked his friend, howcome every time I see you, you're always smiling?
"inside joke" was his late friend's response.
just posting this here to remind myself later in case i forget.
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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
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for some reason this channel topic made me feel good when i saw it
'Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.' -Plato
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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
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"
From the design to the features, what should the perfect kid-friendly laptop include? What would you leave out? Sponsored by WePC.com.
You dream it. ASUS builds it. Intel Inside®
"
At the outset I'd say that we can spare on giant harddrives -- what do people us that for? worthless shoot-em-up Games, copying DVD's..? The most important thing we can do with computers is communicate, and just about the minimal computer you'd find suffices for that. Likewise very large monitors *probably* aren't a necessity -- they're just a luxury. I say "probably" because there are some nuisance apps that just won't work right without a full 1024x768 resolution. (But is there no way to provide a virtual desktop that allows you to scroll around on it as if it were a higher resolution, like Windows 95 used to provide?) I'm personally a fan of SSD's. I always feel safer with solid-state devices, and having no seek time is pretty awesome. And they're apparently ideal for econo-laptops that don't need a lot of harddrive space, given their use in netbooks, Eee PC's, etc. For CPUs, I think that any modern CPU is fast enough to do any crucial tasks. Anything faster than that you only need for gaming and such, or perhaps using programs like Visual Studio or Microsoft Web Expression, but how many kids need that? I'd like our kids to stay kids, please. I'd obviously want the processor to be x86 architecture, just so that the vast majority of software already written can run on it. The intel Atom might be enough, for example, and it would of course do wonders for battery life. For the OS, it's nice to provide a free alternative that's Windows-like, but such OS's just aren't as usable and user-friendly as Windows, especially for anything but the most common of tasks. Despite the fact that Microsoft is evil, I'm veering toward providing Windows, but i suppose it would add a lot to the price tag. As for which windows OS, I've used Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and Windows 7 is by far the best. Windows XP is second-best (Vista sucks), *especially* where computing power is limited. As for XP vs. Windows 7 regarding computing power, I'm not sure about Windows 7's memory requirements, but it loads, and runs, much faster on the *same CPU* than XP does, for me. Well, admittedly this is a 64-bit CPU with 4 GB RAM, and the XP is the 32-bit version, so that may be a contributing factor. :P
As for how much RAM and how large an SSD to provide, I think that would depend on what OS is used. For XP, based on personal experience I'd say a *minimum* of 512 MB, and probably a 32-GB SSD. Not sure about Windows 7. For communications, obviously include WiFi capability by default. I would say they don't need anything fancy like wireless G or N support just for a speed boost that's (usually) far beyond WAN network throughput anyway, except that they don't only offer faster connections but longer range--and with a laptop/netbook I would think that mobility/range is pretty damn useful. Ethernet should probably be included too, since i'm assuming basic ethernet support doesn't cost very much. As for bluetooth, eh: I'm not too hot on the whole juvenile cellphone junkie movement, and i don't know of any other very popular uses for it -- in laptops. GPS might be a nice touch, but I think uses are limited, and parents might freak out a bit about the privacy concerns (or on the other hand, maybe they'll want to be able to track where their children are.. beats me.)
Speaking of communication, it would be nice to include a webcam and mic built-in, so that children can actually do something social and fulfilling with their laptops. I say scrap the obsolete ports like serial, game, printer, maybe even ps/2 -- just to save space if nothing else!! Fill in that extra space with USB ports. I can never have enough USB ports -- especially when dealing with something like laptops that have *very* limited support for installing peripherals. If you're going to provide a video out, make it DVI, for god's sakes. (Sorry, it's just a pet peeve of mine that nowadays we go through the trouble of converting a signal from digital to analog just to degrade the quality and then convert it back to digital on the other end.. Who still uses CRT? Well other than me, that is.. my LCD broke.:P) One awesome and unique feature i think might be to provide an alternative keyboard layout -- as an option, at least -- like Dvorak or (the perhaps more advanced) Colemak. Might as well get new computer users started out on a keyboard layout that was designed to improve typing speed and accuracy while reducing finger movement and carpel tunnel syndrome, as opposed to, say, to slow you down to prevent typing heads from jamming up in machines that we haven't really used for 30 years. If i remember right, the GParted Live CD comes with a few other weird keyboard layout options that I've never heard of . I can't really think of anything else, at the moment. Except that, while I'm speaking about laptops, I had an idea before that a laptop could come with unobtrusive hookups on the bottom that can be used to attach a second battery that spans the entire bottom of the laptop, for super-long hours of use for anyone who's willing to spend a lot of money on the extra battery.
I've mainly centered around providing an economic laptop, probably just because I unconsciously assumed this would be something in the way of the "one laptop per child" initiative, which I suppose wasn't stated anywhere..
The only other thing I have to say is that technology and especially the information age are a soul-sucking fad and children don't really *need* laptops. I'm sure the big selling point here is education, but current education is even more mind-numbing than complicated electronics. It simply trains children to think like we do, at threat of conditional love and the cost of solid years of unpleasant mental labor. If we sing that children are our future, perhaps we should actually allow that to happen.
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
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Saturday, August 1st, 2009
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So a guy was convicted because his 11-year-old daughter couldn't walk, talk, or eat, and instead of taking her to the hospital, people gathered around her and prayed. You might be expecting that I'm going to start railing against Christianity and religion -- which I'm prone to do --, but no.
This article pisses me off greatly. People have been getting sick and dying throughout the ages, and now that we have all this sophisticated medical technology, people are still getting sick and dying. It's just a matter of later rather than sooner, in many cases. It's a matter of the human condition; it's always been that way, it always will be, and it should be. And yet because of this arbitrary, contemporary ability we have to save people, it's suddenly supposed to change the moral context in regards to whether a person is a *criminal* for acting in full accordance to their honored belief system and worldview. If you don't think in terms of hospitals, your first impulse is not to go to a hospital; and a person -shouldn't- be obligated to think that way just because they live in a culture that idolizes the medical enterprise, even to the degree that we'd rather let a person sit alone and in a sterile hospital bed while dying slowly than to simply go when they're ready.
If he doesn't share our own worldview, that's okay. He's a citizen of the world, not a generic unit of Americo-moral culture. Prayer is a beautiful thing. Community concern in presence is a warm and much needed thing. And home is where the heart is; keeping it at home and in between you and God, and letting the pieces fall as they may in accordance to the natural human condition -- right down to its biological aspect --, in contrast to delegating the whole situation to the corpus of medical processes and manipulation, should be up to our personal discretion -- to say the least.
As far as I'm concerned, the father of the 11-year-old girl is not the criminal here; the only barbaric thing going on here his being thrown in prison for practicing his way of life and doing the right thing for his family as he sees fit.
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Comments: Read 27 or Add Your Own.
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inhahe's journal
annoyed.