...the other day in the united states house of representatives speaker boehner stood up, spread his hands far apart in exasperation, and exclaimed "do we have to fight over everything?!"
Good question, I thought. I was asking it years ago. what took you so long?
surely everybody in america has noticed the constant bickering, and is tired of it. we argue all the time here, because we are, after all, a democracy, and because we have forgotton how to listen, and how to be open minded and non confrontational.
...wouldn't it be marvelous to turn on conservative talk radio and hear somebody talking about conservatism?
what would it be like to have a telephone conversation in which the participants took turns talking?
Does anybody in this country ever talk about anything other than themselves?
the united states of alpha males is a culture in which everyone feels empowered, and perhaps, a bit arrogant. we all have to be right, all the time. this is human nature as much as american nature...we all wish to impose our beliefs on others, whether we admit it ot not.
that's human nature, and human nature should not always be left alone, and allowed to flourish as is. humans are capable of using their big brains to change their very nature, and some of it needs to be changed. maybe our descendants will have no inclination towards violence. the violence gene might be nudged aside through high tech organic chemistry.
for now, though, if we humans aren't actually killing each other, we're yelling at each other, in america, and probably everywhere else. we're still primitive, and fear and anger arise from our medula oblongata lizard brain stem. deep down, we are lizards, and we act like it.
...but give us a little more time, and we're likely to change all that...
Bb
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Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
SEDUCTION
As this man zimmerman goes on trial for second degree hoodie murder,will we all be expected by our coroprate masters to dutifully attend every riveting shuffle of paper and sip of bottled water?
More cheap seductive entertainment to quieten the masses, lest they become restless.
we don't want the masses thinking about widening economic inequality, or the military-industrial establishment domination of the american people, or the utterly unworkable american empire, a bankrupt empire, rotten to the core, in need of vast self repair, and the necessity of dismantling it..no, we would rather argue about and obsess on george zimmerman. ready your popcorn poppers...
My friends, we are being seduced and mesmerized by our own corporate media! Why don't we all revolt, and refuse to be used? If this murder trial is indeed televised minute by minute, why indeed don't we all turn off our television sets, cancel our cable or satellite service, shop only at locally owned businesses, and entertain ourselves by educating ourselves at the public library?
Perhaps read voltaire, goethe, and bertrand russell. read about resisting tyranny of all kinds. WE could all be reading voltaire, rather than watching the family of a murder victim stare balefully at the defendant. Thus we strike a blow against the subtle seductive tyranny of corporate capitalism, and we support local business people, and public libraries.
Our world is a wonderous place, and the "fortune 500" is part of the wonder. There is, however, a fairly large number of obviously highly intelligent writers who convincingly demonstrate that to a large degree big corporations are in control of our lives, all of our lives.
This has to do with the fact, presumably, that high political offices in america are paid for with corporate money, used to buy corporate advertising. Just remember this: if some network tries to shove the hoodie murder trial down our throats, you are being seduced by corporations hoping to profit at your expense.
Bb
...please scroll down for more of The Truthless Reconciler! thanks!
More cheap seductive entertainment to quieten the masses, lest they become restless.
we don't want the masses thinking about widening economic inequality, or the military-industrial establishment domination of the american people, or the utterly unworkable american empire, a bankrupt empire, rotten to the core, in need of vast self repair, and the necessity of dismantling it..no, we would rather argue about and obsess on george zimmerman. ready your popcorn poppers...
My friends, we are being seduced and mesmerized by our own corporate media! Why don't we all revolt, and refuse to be used? If this murder trial is indeed televised minute by minute, why indeed don't we all turn off our television sets, cancel our cable or satellite service, shop only at locally owned businesses, and entertain ourselves by educating ourselves at the public library?
Perhaps read voltaire, goethe, and bertrand russell. read about resisting tyranny of all kinds. WE could all be reading voltaire, rather than watching the family of a murder victim stare balefully at the defendant. Thus we strike a blow against the subtle seductive tyranny of corporate capitalism, and we support local business people, and public libraries.
Our world is a wonderous place, and the "fortune 500" is part of the wonder. There is, however, a fairly large number of obviously highly intelligent writers who convincingly demonstrate that to a large degree big corporations are in control of our lives, all of our lives.
This has to do with the fact, presumably, that high political offices in america are paid for with corporate money, used to buy corporate advertising. Just remember this: if some network tries to shove the hoodie murder trial down our throats, you are being seduced by corporations hoping to profit at your expense.
Bb
...please scroll down for more of The Truthless Reconciler! thanks!
Friday, April 27, 2012
A PEACEFUL TRANSIENT WORLD
And so, since the mexicans have finally figured out that there's nothing here (in america) for them, and are going home,what's to become of the rest of us? Who's going to do the work we euro-americans simply won't do?
The united states and mexcio are so intertwined historically, ans so intertiwned today, ever more so, that they might as well unite, and get it over with.
in northwest arkansas corporate answering machines are bilingual. mexican culture, moving up north. The insular nation state is evolving out of existence, and being replaced by international cartels, and new political and financial institutions. (united nations, IMF, World Bank).
The german goethe (1749-1832) suggested it would be a better world if the germans were scattered over all of it. He could apparently discern the potential power of germans acting in unison, even before germany existed. Frederick the Great must have strongly impacted goethe. goethe should've seen what happened a hundred years later.
At any given time several million americans are traveling abroad, and living abroad. if energy ever becomes cheap enough, there might emerge a Global culture of traveling vacationers, millions of industrious affluent folks, logging those frequent flier miles, naking it almost impossible to drop bombs without hitting friends.
Bb
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The united states and mexcio are so intertwined historically, ans so intertiwned today, ever more so, that they might as well unite, and get it over with.
in northwest arkansas corporate answering machines are bilingual. mexican culture, moving up north. The insular nation state is evolving out of existence, and being replaced by international cartels, and new political and financial institutions. (united nations, IMF, World Bank).
The german goethe (1749-1832) suggested it would be a better world if the germans were scattered over all of it. He could apparently discern the potential power of germans acting in unison, even before germany existed. Frederick the Great must have strongly impacted goethe. goethe should've seen what happened a hundred years later.
At any given time several million americans are traveling abroad, and living abroad. if energy ever becomes cheap enough, there might emerge a Global culture of traveling vacationers, millions of industrious affluent folks, logging those frequent flier miles, naking it almost impossible to drop bombs without hitting friends.
Bb
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Occupy Wall Street and We are the 99% Update
Round two.
Spring 2012 has arrived . America has waited all winter to see what happens next. Both Occupy Wall Street and We are the 99% have new plans, new supporters and enough new money to make a difference in this presidential election.
Here are sites you can visit to learn more about the largest social movement since the 1970’s and how they have evolved into a voice that is changing America.
http://occupywallst.org/article/while-we-watch-new-documentary-occupied-media-stre/
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/occupywallstreet?gclid=CO3q_bye0a8CFSFgTAodmVt1Og
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2012/02/13/what%E2%80%99s-next-for-occupy-wall-street/
http://www.facebook.com/Gilded.Age
http://www.facebook.com/Occupy.Wall.St.99.Percent
Happy Birthday Bob
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Petty Pugnacity
and so here we go again, with this president, and this great thirteen percent popularity american congress... right now college students are "only" paying about 4% interest on student loans, evidently as part of some temporary government give away. hell, that's actually pretty high interest, considering that the federal reserve (that evil entity) is only getting about zero interest lending to banks in the pitifully sick economy of the vastly superior private sector.
now the give away is about to expire, and america's college students will soon suddenly be saddled with an 8% pay back. That'll force 'em to add a little more spam to their daily ramen noodles.
everybody in the country (america) agrees that the lower interest rate needs to be extended, in order to avoid driving america's young scholars into even deeper poverty and debt. There the agreement ends, and the usual squabbling begins.
Democrats want to "pay for" this perk by raising taxes on the wealthy, as usual, and the republicans prefer taking money out of one of the "slush funds" associated with obamacare. That's an ingenious plan; it would simultaneously pander to young obama adults while striking a blow against obamacare.
for me, a "slush fund" is the loose change in my car's ashtray set aside for happy hour icy drinks at sonic; for the gov, the term means a general purposes rainy day monetary fund. who knows how many slush funds there are, where they come from, and what eventually happens to them. doubtless, corruption of some sort is involved, after all, this is america.
American historians repeatedly point out that compromise is the secret of american political success.
...the constitution, the very structure of the united states is compromise, a compormise of power between local, state, and federal government..and for most of their history, americans have proven quite accomplished at compromise. maybe we've forgotten how, and should learn it anew.
couldn't these jokers (overly stubborn and ideomatic adults) reach a compromise of some sort? Like, say, using both revenue sources, equally? would this be entirely unthinkable, in our era of stare till they blink all or nothing poison political environment?
wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all come together as one great nation, and work together to solve......nah...
Bb
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now the give away is about to expire, and america's college students will soon suddenly be saddled with an 8% pay back. That'll force 'em to add a little more spam to their daily ramen noodles.
everybody in the country (america) agrees that the lower interest rate needs to be extended, in order to avoid driving america's young scholars into even deeper poverty and debt. There the agreement ends, and the usual squabbling begins.
Democrats want to "pay for" this perk by raising taxes on the wealthy, as usual, and the republicans prefer taking money out of one of the "slush funds" associated with obamacare. That's an ingenious plan; it would simultaneously pander to young obama adults while striking a blow against obamacare.
for me, a "slush fund" is the loose change in my car's ashtray set aside for happy hour icy drinks at sonic; for the gov, the term means a general purposes rainy day monetary fund. who knows how many slush funds there are, where they come from, and what eventually happens to them. doubtless, corruption of some sort is involved, after all, this is america.
American historians repeatedly point out that compromise is the secret of american political success.
...the constitution, the very structure of the united states is compromise, a compormise of power between local, state, and federal government..and for most of their history, americans have proven quite accomplished at compromise. maybe we've forgotten how, and should learn it anew.
couldn't these jokers (overly stubborn and ideomatic adults) reach a compromise of some sort? Like, say, using both revenue sources, equally? would this be entirely unthinkable, in our era of stare till they blink all or nothing poison political environment?
wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all come together as one great nation, and work together to solve......nah...
Bb
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
MITT VS BARRACK
The Romney Obama matchup up is interesting, because on the surface you have ostensible opposites: someone who was born wealthy and became a conservative republican, against someone who was born poor and became a liberal democrat.
The actual difference is not all that great. Both candidates are owned and controlled by the corporate oligarchy, bought and paid for, thanks to our corrupt pay for power political system.
mitt will ceaselessly rant that the economy has been horrible, and therefore mismanaged under obama, while the president will , as always, remind us how horrible it was when he took office, and how much better it is now.
Both of them are correct, to a point. As usual, it depends on how you look at it. mitt will say that the recovery has not proceeded with nearly enough speed. The democrats will point to the current good health of general motors and other big companies obama saved, using taxpayer money.
obama seems to have a big advantage with women, young adults, blacks, and hispanics, while mitt carries the day among white men. mitt will move to the middle; its his only choice, his only hope.
america is a nation of many moderates, thank the lord; the extreme liberals and conservatives are enough to drive us all crazy, with their constant bickering. let the moderates decide our fate!
Bb
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The actual difference is not all that great. Both candidates are owned and controlled by the corporate oligarchy, bought and paid for, thanks to our corrupt pay for power political system.
mitt will ceaselessly rant that the economy has been horrible, and therefore mismanaged under obama, while the president will , as always, remind us how horrible it was when he took office, and how much better it is now.
Both of them are correct, to a point. As usual, it depends on how you look at it. mitt will say that the recovery has not proceeded with nearly enough speed. The democrats will point to the current good health of general motors and other big companies obama saved, using taxpayer money.
obama seems to have a big advantage with women, young adults, blacks, and hispanics, while mitt carries the day among white men. mitt will move to the middle; its his only choice, his only hope.
america is a nation of many moderates, thank the lord; the extreme liberals and conservatives are enough to drive us all crazy, with their constant bickering. let the moderates decide our fate!
Bb
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Walmex and Walusa
I just found out that the walmart subsidiary in mexico is called "walmex", believe it or not. I don't know how I missed it before; its almost too good to be true. What is it in japan, "waljap"? What about in Russia? "walruss"? How about ghana: "walghan"? In argentina? "walarge"? In the U.S.A., it must be "walusa". Well, maybe you get the idea. Enough, bob.
walmex is almost as large as walusa, which is doubtless highly beneficial to the mexican economy, such as it is. the paradox of walmart is that it provides a lot of employment and generates a lot of economic activity, while contributing to the great global economic divide by nurturing a very small elite wealthy executive class, while paying the working masses peanuts.
presumably everyone who works at walmex or walusa is free to join facebook; you'd think by now there'd be a labor union, notwithstanding the prohibitions of the master executive class.
wal mart stock hasn't moved much in years; the time to invest was fifty years ago, and its hard to imagine why anyone would buy walmart stock at this late date. on the surface, publicly owned corporations appear to be the very model of inclusive democracy; then we discover that at least eighty percent of all corporate stock shares are owned by no more than one percent of the general population, just like everything else.
there are people far smarter than i, among them sam harris, chris hedges, and gore vidal, who write convincingly that there is no salvation for our modern corporate economy, except destruction and complete restructuring, that our great economic ills, including pervasive poverty and national economic collapse, are inevitable consequences of our current system.
harris, hedges, and vidal should be more widely read; they provide great insight. but maybe they aren't entirely correct in their negative economic and social prognosis. maybe, just maybe, there is hope: hope that someday the global economy will behave sanely, that extreme conditions, such as poverty and all manner of economic excess, will be beaten into plowshares..and things will improve.
somehow, i just don't reckon that boycotting walmart is the best answer...
Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER. THANKS!
walmex is almost as large as walusa, which is doubtless highly beneficial to the mexican economy, such as it is. the paradox of walmart is that it provides a lot of employment and generates a lot of economic activity, while contributing to the great global economic divide by nurturing a very small elite wealthy executive class, while paying the working masses peanuts.
presumably everyone who works at walmex or walusa is free to join facebook; you'd think by now there'd be a labor union, notwithstanding the prohibitions of the master executive class.
wal mart stock hasn't moved much in years; the time to invest was fifty years ago, and its hard to imagine why anyone would buy walmart stock at this late date. on the surface, publicly owned corporations appear to be the very model of inclusive democracy; then we discover that at least eighty percent of all corporate stock shares are owned by no more than one percent of the general population, just like everything else.
there are people far smarter than i, among them sam harris, chris hedges, and gore vidal, who write convincingly that there is no salvation for our modern corporate economy, except destruction and complete restructuring, that our great economic ills, including pervasive poverty and national economic collapse, are inevitable consequences of our current system.
harris, hedges, and vidal should be more widely read; they provide great insight. but maybe they aren't entirely correct in their negative economic and social prognosis. maybe, just maybe, there is hope: hope that someday the global economy will behave sanely, that extreme conditions, such as poverty and all manner of economic excess, will be beaten into plowshares..and things will improve.
somehow, i just don't reckon that boycotting walmart is the best answer...
Bb
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Human economic and population growth
The ninety nine percent shouldn't try to destroy the one percent. they should try to imitate them.
conservatives often make that argument, and there's a great deal of truth to it. successful people tend to work hard, make good decisions, become educated.
If everybody did this, all the time, it would doubtless be a better world, with much more prosperity, and much less poverty. Every successful/wealthy person you talk to is gonna tell you the same thing; they did nothing other than work hard and make smart decisions, and so can anybody else.
And true enough; this is what they did, and so can anybody else. But how many else.? And how much wealth? And what kind of wealth?
Money, of course, merely serves to symbolize material wealth, physical property; money always translates into food, clothing, and shelter, as it must, on earth.
it turns out that if all seven billion of us began working hard and making smart decisions, and thus became financially successful, there would be seven billion large houses on seven billion large estates, seven billion expensive cars in seven billion garages, with the number of all the above growing daily.
Is this what we really want? A world of rapidly increasing population where everybody lives like an upper middle class suburban american? How long can this continue? How long could this continue before all the land is front yards and back yards, growing smaller and smaller..
....something has to give. earth can't forever be a planet of ever increasing material prosperity for an ever increasing number of people. it just won't work. we'll have to limit personal material wealth, especially land, and colonize space. when the human species learns how to colonize space, look out, here we come. we know how to multiply..
Bb
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conservatives often make that argument, and there's a great deal of truth to it. successful people tend to work hard, make good decisions, become educated.
If everybody did this, all the time, it would doubtless be a better world, with much more prosperity, and much less poverty. Every successful/wealthy person you talk to is gonna tell you the same thing; they did nothing other than work hard and make smart decisions, and so can anybody else.
And true enough; this is what they did, and so can anybody else. But how many else.? And how much wealth? And what kind of wealth?
Money, of course, merely serves to symbolize material wealth, physical property; money always translates into food, clothing, and shelter, as it must, on earth.
it turns out that if all seven billion of us began working hard and making smart decisions, and thus became financially successful, there would be seven billion large houses on seven billion large estates, seven billion expensive cars in seven billion garages, with the number of all the above growing daily.
Is this what we really want? A world of rapidly increasing population where everybody lives like an upper middle class suburban american? How long can this continue? How long could this continue before all the land is front yards and back yards, growing smaller and smaller..
....something has to give. earth can't forever be a planet of ever increasing material prosperity for an ever increasing number of people. it just won't work. we'll have to limit personal material wealth, especially land, and colonize space. when the human species learns how to colonize space, look out, here we come. we know how to multiply..
Bb
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Leaving America
According to the U.S. census bureau, over the past five years the number of people entering the united states illegally from mexico has been dropping steadily, and is now almost at a standstill.
Even more amazingly, over the past two years the number of people leaving america and going to mexcico has grown larger than the number of people entering the u.s. from mexico! The illegal immigration problem has now become a legal emigration phenomenon!
Thus, one of the greatest problems, one of the greatest issues facing the united states has vanished naturally. Its almost as if the environment inexplicably cleaned itself up, or the entire world disarmed spontaneously. One of the most prickly and divisive issues facing modern america has simply vanished into thin air!
Whatever will we argue about now??? It turns out that the magic allure of america has limitations, after all. There is a limit to which people will come from mexico, and therefore from anywhere, to reap the blessings of america!
Can it be that the blessings of america are not quite as great as we americans might have imagined and feared? Perish the thought that we might have a somewhat excessive sense of our own appeal to foreigners.
Those who have migrated here have in fact been largely motivated by desperation or hedonism, rather than any sense of impending entrance into heaven. And those who sought golden roads invariably found disillusionment.
Maybe the america first folks who voluntarily guard the border because the government won't can now pack up their RVs, grills, and shotguns and go on back home, leaving the Rio Grande unguarded. Looks like there isn't really anything to guard against.
Bb
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Even more amazingly, over the past two years the number of people leaving america and going to mexcico has grown larger than the number of people entering the u.s. from mexico! The illegal immigration problem has now become a legal emigration phenomenon!
Thus, one of the greatest problems, one of the greatest issues facing the united states has vanished naturally. Its almost as if the environment inexplicably cleaned itself up, or the entire world disarmed spontaneously. One of the most prickly and divisive issues facing modern america has simply vanished into thin air!
Whatever will we argue about now??? It turns out that the magic allure of america has limitations, after all. There is a limit to which people will come from mexico, and therefore from anywhere, to reap the blessings of america!
Can it be that the blessings of america are not quite as great as we americans might have imagined and feared? Perish the thought that we might have a somewhat excessive sense of our own appeal to foreigners.
Those who have migrated here have in fact been largely motivated by desperation or hedonism, rather than any sense of impending entrance into heaven. And those who sought golden roads invariably found disillusionment.
Maybe the america first folks who voluntarily guard the border because the government won't can now pack up their RVs, grills, and shotguns and go on back home, leaving the Rio Grande unguarded. Looks like there isn't really anything to guard against.
Bb
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The Abuse of Money
Whatever else we might like to believe about money, money is, before all else, a tool. Money is joy, money is pride, money is security. But first, it is a tool, like a hammer, or a saw. A tool with which humanity operates a large cooperative economy, cooperating in sharing and using a common tool, a medium of exchange.
It is perhaps the most remarkable and wonderful tool ever invented by mankind. Liberated from sluggish, cumbersome bartering, we can transfer payments, assets, goods and services all over the world at the click of a mouse, or in a dollar store by inserting a piece of plastic in a machine. You can give somebody a piece of paper or plastic and suddenly become the owner of a beautiful car or house.
People who use tools like hammers and saws always talk about respecting their tools, using them properly, using them with respect, taking good care of them. These people understand the value of tools, of work, and of money. As a culture, as a nation we abuse our greatest tool so unmercifually that it is a wonder it still functions at all. Indeed, anymore it barely does.
When people or groups of people become singlemindedly devoted to an abstract dogma like capitalism or socialism, monetary abuse is imminent. The unnecessary or unproductive use of any tool is abuse of that tool.
A frind of mine named Steve once owned a small construction company, which he named "HASCO". (half assed steve company). Steve was a fun guy, and he built houses. Once we were walking around a construction site whereat the house had just finished being framed. Steve had a nail gun in his hand, and every few steps he would playfully fire a gun into a random two by four. I tried it; it was fun. Sometimes its fun to misuse a tool.
By creating a society in which the distribution of money is so grotesquely unequal that distinct rich and poor classes replace the middle class, a society in which a few have all the hammers and the many have none; we are, all of us together, abusing our best tool. In a society where the government steals from the trust funds entrusted to it by the poor working masses, unchecked monetary abuse proceeds without a whimper from the millions of theft victims.
The creation and production of adequate material wealth for all, and the reasonable distribution of that wealth using money as a method of transaction and transfer, should result in a society of unprecedented health and happiness. That it does not, or has not yet in human history, is the most glaring proof of the never ending forms of abuse to which we subject our most useful tool.
Bb
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It is perhaps the most remarkable and wonderful tool ever invented by mankind. Liberated from sluggish, cumbersome bartering, we can transfer payments, assets, goods and services all over the world at the click of a mouse, or in a dollar store by inserting a piece of plastic in a machine. You can give somebody a piece of paper or plastic and suddenly become the owner of a beautiful car or house.
People who use tools like hammers and saws always talk about respecting their tools, using them properly, using them with respect, taking good care of them. These people understand the value of tools, of work, and of money. As a culture, as a nation we abuse our greatest tool so unmercifually that it is a wonder it still functions at all. Indeed, anymore it barely does.
When people or groups of people become singlemindedly devoted to an abstract dogma like capitalism or socialism, monetary abuse is imminent. The unnecessary or unproductive use of any tool is abuse of that tool.
A frind of mine named Steve once owned a small construction company, which he named "HASCO". (half assed steve company). Steve was a fun guy, and he built houses. Once we were walking around a construction site whereat the house had just finished being framed. Steve had a nail gun in his hand, and every few steps he would playfully fire a gun into a random two by four. I tried it; it was fun. Sometimes its fun to misuse a tool.
By creating a society in which the distribution of money is so grotesquely unequal that distinct rich and poor classes replace the middle class, a society in which a few have all the hammers and the many have none; we are, all of us together, abusing our best tool. In a society where the government steals from the trust funds entrusted to it by the poor working masses, unchecked monetary abuse proceeds without a whimper from the millions of theft victims.
The creation and production of adequate material wealth for all, and the reasonable distribution of that wealth using money as a method of transaction and transfer, should result in a society of unprecedented health and happiness. That it does not, or has not yet in human history, is the most glaring proof of the never ending forms of abuse to which we subject our most useful tool.
Bb
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Monday, April 23, 2012
Social Security Collapse
Today we were told that the social security trust fund will run out of money in 2033. They keep moving it up. The date used to be 2042. This is getting serious, because its getting to the point where its gonna effect almost everyone alive now. And it will probably keep moving forward, closer to the present, as the present advances into the future.
In order to save the desperate financial situation the United States is in, and to save the value of the currency, drastic cuts in spending will have to occur, and revenues will have to be increased. To avoid a financial collapse the united states must drastically reduce military expenditures, and liquidate its global empire, which includes nearly a thousand military bases in roughly one hundred countries. the empire must end.
Amidst all this, it is the young who are getting cheated; everybody in america under the age of forty should start a social security revolt; refuse to pay into it further unless the situation is rectified. as it is now, everyone who is young in america will never receive any social security pay outs, even though they will have paid into it all their lives. this is enough to make anyone want to rise up and rebel.
medicare is in even worse condition. it will expire within a few years. by then there will be a huge number of senior citizens, a powerful AARP, and a whole lot of anger. get ready for civil unrest, as americans fight among themselves for what scraps are left of a crumbling economy.
Bb
please scroll down for more....
In order to save the desperate financial situation the United States is in, and to save the value of the currency, drastic cuts in spending will have to occur, and revenues will have to be increased. To avoid a financial collapse the united states must drastically reduce military expenditures, and liquidate its global empire, which includes nearly a thousand military bases in roughly one hundred countries. the empire must end.
Amidst all this, it is the young who are getting cheated; everybody in america under the age of forty should start a social security revolt; refuse to pay into it further unless the situation is rectified. as it is now, everyone who is young in america will never receive any social security pay outs, even though they will have paid into it all their lives. this is enough to make anyone want to rise up and rebel.
medicare is in even worse condition. it will expire within a few years. by then there will be a huge number of senior citizens, a powerful AARP, and a whole lot of anger. get ready for civil unrest, as americans fight among themselves for what scraps are left of a crumbling economy.
Bb
please scroll down for more....
The "Natural" state and the KKK
I moved from Minnesota to Arkansas for the weather and family. So far I really like both but I may move away in protest.
A week or so ago I learned about Harrison Arkansas, the home of the KKK. The thought turned my stomach.
I understand Freedom of Speech but also please understand and bare with me, that as an American, I don't have to stand for this kind of behavior. The fools wear sheets over their heads and hurt people because they think they are superior in some way.
BOLOGNA
If you think you are superior to any one because of age, race, creed, gender, religion, wealth or past achievements, YOU ARE WRONG and should be stopped.
What happened to these people?
(It gives prudence to why some species eat their young.)
Think about what we did to the American Indians and the Blacks, to the Hispanic, the Jews, the Irish, the Italians.
It makes me wonder if America is the "Land of the Free".
If I move, it won't be because of the weather or family, it'll be my way of protesting against a State that allows racism.
I won't pay a penny in taxes to this State as long as the KKK is located here. I feel ashamed that I live here knowing about Harrison, AR.
Harrison, Arkansas is not open minded enough for me.
by JEH
A week or so ago I learned about Harrison Arkansas, the home of the KKK. The thought turned my stomach.
I understand Freedom of Speech but also please understand and bare with me, that as an American, I don't have to stand for this kind of behavior. The fools wear sheets over their heads and hurt people because they think they are superior in some way.
BOLOGNA
If you think you are superior to any one because of age, race, creed, gender, religion, wealth or past achievements, YOU ARE WRONG and should be stopped.
What happened to these people?
(It gives prudence to why some species eat their young.)
Think about what we did to the American Indians and the Blacks, to the Hispanic, the Jews, the Irish, the Italians.
It makes me wonder if America is the "Land of the Free".
If I move, it won't be because of the weather or family, it'll be my way of protesting against a State that allows racism.
I won't pay a penny in taxes to this State as long as the KKK is located here. I feel ashamed that I live here knowing about Harrison, AR.
Harrison, Arkansas is not open minded enough for me.
by JEH
The John Edwards Marital - Political Mess
Former presidential candidate and dashing senator john edwards goes on trial today for, what was it, concealing an extra - marital affair, and illigally transferring campaign contributions..presumably, to the affairee. he could get, what, 30 years? two consecutive lifetimes? heaven only knows, in america, the land of punishment.
who in their right mind wouldn't conceal an extra marital affair? and why should it be illegal to conceal one from the government? wife, yes, but government??? why should the government care?
all this fuss about campaingncontributions and the legal way to handle them is made necessary by our insane systems of constantly purchasing political office. it cost one to two million to become a house of representative, there to five mil to join the senate, and, thanks to obama, a cool billion to become president.
obama is of course as much the property of the corporate oligarchy as any other president.
people can vote for whomever they want to. but they're gonna vote fot the candidates who advertise the most, are we the sheeple, and the ones selected for big corporate money are gonna be the ones most pleasing to the big corporations who fund the candidates.
john edwards may have no business being in a marriage, or in politics... but prison? we could end this mess by encouraging more flexible, open marriage contracts, and prohibiting the purchase of political advertising. otherwise, you and i might end up having to pay for john edward's room and board for decades.
Bb
please scroll down for other articles....
who in their right mind wouldn't conceal an extra marital affair? and why should it be illegal to conceal one from the government? wife, yes, but government??? why should the government care?
all this fuss about campaingncontributions and the legal way to handle them is made necessary by our insane systems of constantly purchasing political office. it cost one to two million to become a house of representative, there to five mil to join the senate, and, thanks to obama, a cool billion to become president.
obama is of course as much the property of the corporate oligarchy as any other president.
people can vote for whomever they want to. but they're gonna vote fot the candidates who advertise the most, are we the sheeple, and the ones selected for big corporate money are gonna be the ones most pleasing to the big corporations who fund the candidates.
john edwards may have no business being in a marriage, or in politics... but prison? we could end this mess by encouraging more flexible, open marriage contracts, and prohibiting the purchase of political advertising. otherwise, you and i might end up having to pay for john edward's room and board for decades.
Bb
please scroll down for other articles....
Sunday, April 22, 2012
The Next Revolution
Last September 17, the Occupy Wall Street movement began spontaneously in New York City, and then spread to other american cities, and other places on the planet, particularly europe. It grew for weeks, became huge, then, as winter set in, grew fragmented, scattered, at times violent, and eventually withered away.
Then the question became, and remains: will it return? Not this spring evidently, though for a time it seemed that it might. But it will return. In some form or other, the occupy wall street movement, the revolt of the 99% agains the 1%, shall return, and it may be the beginning of a war of the rich versus the poor.
Gore Vidal remembers as a seven year old in 1932, riding in the back of a limo with his grandfather, senator Gore of Oklahoma, a progressive democrat who nonetheless was not inclined towards socialism, the first senator in the hisotry of the new state, who, according to Gore Vidal, "didn't believe in giving anything to anybody."
The limo was being pelted by rocks thrown by "bonus marchers", in the great bonus army uprising in Washington D.C., that so few americans today seem to remember or know about. Vidal says that even at that young age, he realized that the unthinkable was indeed possible in america; a war between the rich and the poor.
And its still possible, maybe more so than ever, and if the possibility of an event remains above zero long enough, it will occur. In some way, shape, and form, the occupy wall street movement will rebirth, because the circumstances which prompted it in the first place have not changed.
The rich get richer, the poor become more numerous, and the number and percentage of americans, and indeed earthlings in general, oppressed by financial collapse and poverty is increasing. The lid will finally blow, as it nearly did last fall.
The symbolism of the 99% vs. the 1% is pure theatre; it may be more like 99.6% vs the .04%. Then too, far more than 1% support the policies and control of the 1%, if only by default, by being sheepish and inattentive. But the symbolic theatre serves the purpose well; the purpose of protesting, opposing, and perhaps eventually overthrowing the corporate oligarchy which has absolute power over us, and which fosters exploitation of labor, grotesaue economic inequality, and militarism.
"If the people become inattentive to the affairs of government, the legislators and magistrates shall divide society into two classes: wolves, and sheep", said Jefferson. and he was right, except he couldn't foresee the corporate precipitation of the process.
Unless the trend of increasing political and economic inequality is reversed, which it won't be, the people's protest will come again, and this time, it might stay around.
Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
Then the question became, and remains: will it return? Not this spring evidently, though for a time it seemed that it might. But it will return. In some form or other, the occupy wall street movement, the revolt of the 99% agains the 1%, shall return, and it may be the beginning of a war of the rich versus the poor.
Gore Vidal remembers as a seven year old in 1932, riding in the back of a limo with his grandfather, senator Gore of Oklahoma, a progressive democrat who nonetheless was not inclined towards socialism, the first senator in the hisotry of the new state, who, according to Gore Vidal, "didn't believe in giving anything to anybody."
The limo was being pelted by rocks thrown by "bonus marchers", in the great bonus army uprising in Washington D.C., that so few americans today seem to remember or know about. Vidal says that even at that young age, he realized that the unthinkable was indeed possible in america; a war between the rich and the poor.
And its still possible, maybe more so than ever, and if the possibility of an event remains above zero long enough, it will occur. In some way, shape, and form, the occupy wall street movement will rebirth, because the circumstances which prompted it in the first place have not changed.
The rich get richer, the poor become more numerous, and the number and percentage of americans, and indeed earthlings in general, oppressed by financial collapse and poverty is increasing. The lid will finally blow, as it nearly did last fall.
The symbolism of the 99% vs. the 1% is pure theatre; it may be more like 99.6% vs the .04%. Then too, far more than 1% support the policies and control of the 1%, if only by default, by being sheepish and inattentive. But the symbolic theatre serves the purpose well; the purpose of protesting, opposing, and perhaps eventually overthrowing the corporate oligarchy which has absolute power over us, and which fosters exploitation of labor, grotesaue economic inequality, and militarism.
"If the people become inattentive to the affairs of government, the legislators and magistrates shall divide society into two classes: wolves, and sheep", said Jefferson. and he was right, except he couldn't foresee the corporate precipitation of the process.
Unless the trend of increasing political and economic inequality is reversed, which it won't be, the people's protest will come again, and this time, it might stay around.
Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
Imprisonment
Americans may be fat, greedy, poorly educated, and self centered, but give credit where credit is due; we know how to kill. Our military history, and military present, clearly demonstrate this. Another thing we know how to do is lock people up. WE (americans) know better than anybody, we know as well as Stalinist Russia or communist China.
The United States has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any country. One reason is that america puts people in prison who have no business being there. Was it really necessary to put martha stewart in prison for 6 months for insider trading and lying to the feds about it?
Definitely a crime, but let the punishment fit the crime. Make the punishment financial. Take away all of martha's money, which is condiderable; for heavens sakes don't lock her up like an animal in a cage.There are now suspicions that people are starting to be sent to prison for debt, in effect recreating debtors prisons, which were abolished in america in the eighteen thirties.
People who buy and sell mind altering drugs should be considered business people and customers, not criminals.The customers are self medicating. we (america) has hundreds of thousands of people in prison for drug crimes; should be add alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine to the list? Hell, we'd all be in prison.drug problems are medical problems, not legal or criminal.
Abraham Lincoln said: "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it makes a crime out of things that are not crimes, and attempts to control a man's appetites by legislation. Prohibition strikes a blow against the very principles upon which this great nation was founded."
And we keep building more prisons, and locking up people who could be working, supporting themselves. There will come a time when our descendants will regard us as barbaric savages for having imprisoned so many people.Fundamentally, the america people are fair minded and reasonable. They won't tolerate this forever.
The United States has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any country. One reason is that america puts people in prison who have no business being there. Was it really necessary to put martha stewart in prison for 6 months for insider trading and lying to the feds about it?
Definitely a crime, but let the punishment fit the crime. Make the punishment financial. Take away all of martha's money, which is condiderable; for heavens sakes don't lock her up like an animal in a cage.There are now suspicions that people are starting to be sent to prison for debt, in effect recreating debtors prisons, which were abolished in america in the eighteen thirties.
People who buy and sell mind altering drugs should be considered business people and customers, not criminals.The customers are self medicating. we (america) has hundreds of thousands of people in prison for drug crimes; should be add alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine to the list? Hell, we'd all be in prison.drug problems are medical problems, not legal or criminal.
Abraham Lincoln said: "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it makes a crime out of things that are not crimes, and attempts to control a man's appetites by legislation. Prohibition strikes a blow against the very principles upon which this great nation was founded."
And we keep building more prisons, and locking up people who could be working, supporting themselves. There will come a time when our descendants will regard us as barbaric savages for having imprisoned so many people.Fundamentally, the america people are fair minded and reasonable. They won't tolerate this forever.
Where Do WE Belong?
Have you ever had the feeling of not belonging? Or the feeling of where exactly, if anywhere, do I belong? If not, give it a try, it enhances one's ultimate appreciation of life.
I used to wonder if I belonged on this planet. Now I wonder if any of us do. We like to think of the human species as so perfectly adopted to this planet, as if humanity and planet earth were made for each other. It comforts us.
But just think about it. The gravity on this planet is far too great for the human body; it results in short lives, flat feet, heart trouble, and a buncha broken bones. Normal daily sunlight will kill any unprotected human remarkably rapidly; we have to constantly protect ourselves from "our own" sun.
There is no other life form which has to artificially protect itself (clothing) from its own natural environment just to stay alive. A safe temperature range is rarely available on this planet; its always either too hot or too cold for us.
It almost seems as if humans could not possibly have originated on earth from natural, evolutionary processes. Only when we consider the salt content of sea water and human blood (they are the same) do we begin to find a match; but isn't it strange that water with the same salt content as blood is poisonous to us?
Among the alternative cosmic paradigm people are those who insist that the human species originated on mars, developed space travel, and removed itself to earth as mars died, then, once on earth, lost its technological capabilities due to lack of physical infrastructure, and resorted to more primitive technologies, and began the long clinb back to where we are today.
Well, we'll see. I just wish we could use sea water, jump reasonably high, and look at our own blazing sun.
Bb
Please scroll down for the other articles in today's issue of The Truthless Reconciler.Thanks!
I used to wonder if I belonged on this planet. Now I wonder if any of us do. We like to think of the human species as so perfectly adopted to this planet, as if humanity and planet earth were made for each other. It comforts us.
But just think about it. The gravity on this planet is far too great for the human body; it results in short lives, flat feet, heart trouble, and a buncha broken bones. Normal daily sunlight will kill any unprotected human remarkably rapidly; we have to constantly protect ourselves from "our own" sun.
There is no other life form which has to artificially protect itself (clothing) from its own natural environment just to stay alive. A safe temperature range is rarely available on this planet; its always either too hot or too cold for us.
It almost seems as if humans could not possibly have originated on earth from natural, evolutionary processes. Only when we consider the salt content of sea water and human blood (they are the same) do we begin to find a match; but isn't it strange that water with the same salt content as blood is poisonous to us?
Among the alternative cosmic paradigm people are those who insist that the human species originated on mars, developed space travel, and removed itself to earth as mars died, then, once on earth, lost its technological capabilities due to lack of physical infrastructure, and resorted to more primitive technologies, and began the long clinb back to where we are today.
Well, we'll see. I just wish we could use sea water, jump reasonably high, and look at our own blazing sun.
Bb
Please scroll down for the other articles in today's issue of The Truthless Reconciler.Thanks!
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Conservatism Liberalism Reconciliation
...conservatism, liberalism, reconciliation...
let us come together for the good of this great nation.
LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM may be seen as the two fundamental philosophies of life which eternally compete with and compliment each other. And truly, there's a time and place for each. In current america we liberals and conservatives fight like cats and dogs, and there is no reason for this much vitriole..we can find common ground, and unite...
...in america there is a long tradition of spirited, patriotic democratic debate. this aspect of america is good, world; you'll have to trust me..yet may we never again become divisively angry, as in the "civil war"..in fact, not only america, but all the world must unite, at least to a degree, for our very survival - liberals and conservatives need not be enemies, anywhere.
In essence, liberalism means change, and conservatism means less change, or the lack of change. Any person can be liberal in some areas, and conservative in others. We tend to be more conservative about those things which are dear to us, and the more liberal one is, the more one dislikes the status quo.
In a sense, liberals have it made, for verily change seems to be the way of nature, including humanity. Yesterday's liberalism is today's consrvatism. Thus it must be stipulated that conservatives are not always opposed to change; they merely tend to want les of it, at a slower rate.
Few among us are sufficiently open minded, or saintly, or schizophrenic, to simultaneously employ and embrace both modes of thought; although it is quite possible to do so, by regarding both as true, but neither as absolutely or always true, by truthless reconciliation.
The more truthless reconciliation we have, the more peace, happiness, and harmony, and the less anger. With an intelligent and mature attitude, turmoil and confusion need not intercede. Actually, the ability to simultaneously embrace two seemingly contradictory concepts has been described as a form of sainthood. May we awaken the saintliness within us all!
Bb
Please scroll down for the other articles in today's issue of The Volatile Times. Thanks!
let us come together for the good of this great nation.
LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM may be seen as the two fundamental philosophies of life which eternally compete with and compliment each other. And truly, there's a time and place for each. In current america we liberals and conservatives fight like cats and dogs, and there is no reason for this much vitriole..we can find common ground, and unite...
...in america there is a long tradition of spirited, patriotic democratic debate. this aspect of america is good, world; you'll have to trust me..yet may we never again become divisively angry, as in the "civil war"..in fact, not only america, but all the world must unite, at least to a degree, for our very survival - liberals and conservatives need not be enemies, anywhere.
In essence, liberalism means change, and conservatism means less change, or the lack of change. Any person can be liberal in some areas, and conservative in others. We tend to be more conservative about those things which are dear to us, and the more liberal one is, the more one dislikes the status quo.
In a sense, liberals have it made, for verily change seems to be the way of nature, including humanity. Yesterday's liberalism is today's consrvatism. Thus it must be stipulated that conservatives are not always opposed to change; they merely tend to want les of it, at a slower rate.
Few among us are sufficiently open minded, or saintly, or schizophrenic, to simultaneously employ and embrace both modes of thought; although it is quite possible to do so, by regarding both as true, but neither as absolutely or always true, by truthless reconciliation.
The more truthless reconciliation we have, the more peace, happiness, and harmony, and the less anger. With an intelligent and mature attitude, turmoil and confusion need not intercede. Actually, the ability to simultaneously embrace two seemingly contradictory concepts has been described as a form of sainthood. May we awaken the saintliness within us all!
Bb
Please scroll down for the other articles in today's issue of The Volatile Times. Thanks!
Sacred Books and Sacred Knowledge
Our ability to conceive of the future tempts us to try to predict it, to believe, despite the lack of good evidence, that we are capable of doing so. Nowadays we seem to have a bit more modest attitude about it; we are more inclinded to regard our futuristic speculations as speculation.
Our ancestors were a bit more devout about the issue. Prophecy is a primary feature of many ancient texts and religious scriptures. The Bible speaks about the future with absolute certainty, so certain that the only possible explanation is that it was divinely inspired. But if anyone were actually able to predict the future, you would think that the predictions would be very specific and accurate.
The Bible, like Nostradamus, is couched in vague phrases, subject to a wide variety of interpretations. There is nothing in the Bible about the internet, space travel, or specific military and political events. In fact, everything in the Bible could have been written by a first century person with no knowledge of the future, except speculation.
Presumably the Bible could have given enormous assistance to its future readers; knowledge about medical science and agriculture, for instance, that could have spared humanity the terrible suffering which ensued.
The bible gives the value of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter - a fundamental mathematical truth available to all - incorrectly. It says the ratio is three to one. Centuries before the Bible was written the Babylonians and Egyptians gave the correct value as 3.14 to one.
Thus the Bible not only fails to provide menaingful scientific, medical, and mathematical information; what it does provide is incorrect. Archimedes could have done much better, had he participated in the writing of the scripture; but he lived too soon.
God deemed it appropiate to provide information about how to buy and sell slaves and sacrifce animals in religious services, but not a word about how to cure cancer.The eventual cure will be generally explainable in a few pages.
Neither God nor Jesus Christ ever uttered a word opposed to slavery. The fact is, there is no sacred scripture on earth which was obviously written by anyone other than ancient human beings,, with, by our standards, very limited understanding of the world.
Thomas Jefferson was particularly unimpressed with the Bible. He described the book of revelation as "the rantings of a lunatic." At the time of america's founding, rejection of religion was commonplace among intelletcuals.
"It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books, and stories. If the world does not directly reveal itself to us, and if our hearts do not tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we will most assuredly not learn it from books, which at best are designed only to give names to our errors." (Goethe)
Bb
Please scroll down for the other articles in this issue of The Truthless Reconciler. Thanks!
Our ancestors were a bit more devout about the issue. Prophecy is a primary feature of many ancient texts and religious scriptures. The Bible speaks about the future with absolute certainty, so certain that the only possible explanation is that it was divinely inspired. But if anyone were actually able to predict the future, you would think that the predictions would be very specific and accurate.
The Bible, like Nostradamus, is couched in vague phrases, subject to a wide variety of interpretations. There is nothing in the Bible about the internet, space travel, or specific military and political events. In fact, everything in the Bible could have been written by a first century person with no knowledge of the future, except speculation.
Presumably the Bible could have given enormous assistance to its future readers; knowledge about medical science and agriculture, for instance, that could have spared humanity the terrible suffering which ensued.
The bible gives the value of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter - a fundamental mathematical truth available to all - incorrectly. It says the ratio is three to one. Centuries before the Bible was written the Babylonians and Egyptians gave the correct value as 3.14 to one.
Thus the Bible not only fails to provide menaingful scientific, medical, and mathematical information; what it does provide is incorrect. Archimedes could have done much better, had he participated in the writing of the scripture; but he lived too soon.
God deemed it appropiate to provide information about how to buy and sell slaves and sacrifce animals in religious services, but not a word about how to cure cancer.The eventual cure will be generally explainable in a few pages.
Neither God nor Jesus Christ ever uttered a word opposed to slavery. The fact is, there is no sacred scripture on earth which was obviously written by anyone other than ancient human beings,, with, by our standards, very limited understanding of the world.
Thomas Jefferson was particularly unimpressed with the Bible. He described the book of revelation as "the rantings of a lunatic." At the time of america's founding, rejection of religion was commonplace among intelletcuals.
"It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books, and stories. If the world does not directly reveal itself to us, and if our hearts do not tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we will most assuredly not learn it from books, which at best are designed only to give names to our errors." (Goethe)
Bb
Please scroll down for the other articles in this issue of The Truthless Reconciler. Thanks!
Friday, April 20, 2012
Green Oil
Green Oil is the development that will utterly change the world, and it will arrive in the next few decades. Oil that we take out of the ground and burn is going to be replaced by oil that we grow.
Biofuels based on corn are our first effort to grow green oil, but they have clearly not succeeded. Current biofuels take too much land and too much energy to grow, and too much of that energy goes into building parts of a plant that we can't easily convert into fuel. the answer will come from simple engineered organisms that can soak up energy in a vat in any sunny spot and turn that sunlight into a precursor for oil, preferrably a precursor that can go straight into an existing oil refinery.
The impacts of such a development are staggering. the power balance of the world will be completely changed. Petro-dictatorships, where an endless flow of oil money keeps the population quiet, will no longer be able to look forward to oil at $50, $100, $150, and so on a barrel as oil supplies tighten. Power will be back in the hands of innovators rather then resource owners.
The quest for dirty oil in expensive and remote parts of the world, whether the Arctic or the Alberta tar sands, will not make economic sense, and the environment will gain. The burning of gasoline in automobiles will no longer add much to the amount of carbon dioxide while it was being grown.The existing networks for delivering fuel to transportation (the hundred thousand gas stations in the United States, for example) won't become redundant (as they would if we switched to electric autos), making plans for cutting emissions much less difficult.
Will the green oil come from algae, bacteria, archaea, or something else? I don't know. Oil is a natural product arising from the transformation of plant material created by the capture of light. As it is a transformation in nature, we can replicat it - not necessarily directly, but to arrive at a similar result. It is not majic.
Scientists around the world have seen the prize, and hundreds of millions are going into start up companies. There is a nice twist to this line of investment. Despite the ups and downs, the long term trend for the price of oil is up. That means the size of the prize for replacing oil is going up, while the size of the challenge is going down. Replacing $20 - a - barrel oil would be difficult, but replacing $100 - a - barrel oil is much easier.
There is an old saying: "The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stone. Someone came up with a better idea." the better idea is coming.
by Alun Anderson
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Biofuels based on corn are our first effort to grow green oil, but they have clearly not succeeded. Current biofuels take too much land and too much energy to grow, and too much of that energy goes into building parts of a plant that we can't easily convert into fuel. the answer will come from simple engineered organisms that can soak up energy in a vat in any sunny spot and turn that sunlight into a precursor for oil, preferrably a precursor that can go straight into an existing oil refinery.
The impacts of such a development are staggering. the power balance of the world will be completely changed. Petro-dictatorships, where an endless flow of oil money keeps the population quiet, will no longer be able to look forward to oil at $50, $100, $150, and so on a barrel as oil supplies tighten. Power will be back in the hands of innovators rather then resource owners.
The quest for dirty oil in expensive and remote parts of the world, whether the Arctic or the Alberta tar sands, will not make economic sense, and the environment will gain. The burning of gasoline in automobiles will no longer add much to the amount of carbon dioxide while it was being grown.The existing networks for delivering fuel to transportation (the hundred thousand gas stations in the United States, for example) won't become redundant (as they would if we switched to electric autos), making plans for cutting emissions much less difficult.
Will the green oil come from algae, bacteria, archaea, or something else? I don't know. Oil is a natural product arising from the transformation of plant material created by the capture of light. As it is a transformation in nature, we can replicat it - not necessarily directly, but to arrive at a similar result. It is not majic.
Scientists around the world have seen the prize, and hundreds of millions are going into start up companies. There is a nice twist to this line of investment. Despite the ups and downs, the long term trend for the price of oil is up. That means the size of the prize for replacing oil is going up, while the size of the challenge is going down. Replacing $20 - a - barrel oil would be difficult, but replacing $100 - a - barrel oil is much easier.
There is an old saying: "The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stone. Someone came up with a better idea." the better idea is coming.
by Alun Anderson
Please scroll down for the other articles in this issue of The Truthless Reconciler! Thanks!
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Fame, Tweets, and One Way Streets
When Einstein fled nazi germany for america, he was soon amazed at the extent to which the american people treated him like a celebrity, while in europe he had simply been a prominent scientist. After a few thousand autographs and as many unwanted photo opps, he exclaimed; "I have changed my profession from theoretical physicist to model." Einstein never got used to america. He really was more a supermodel than a model; assuming that the difference is degree of professional success (isn't it?).
Bar Refaeli is a genuine modern day super model, blonde, curvy, gorgeous, who used to date Leonardo Dicaprio, so they say. The other day she was fixin' to board an airplane, and like the rest of us, went through the "patting down" process. After the female employee finished the tactile inspection, Bar was not at all happy. She felt it had been a tad too personal. She tweeted something to the effect "there was no doubt at all about that woman's sexual orientation."
Nothing sensational about this, except that; one hundred and seventy two thousand people received the tweet on their twittering cell phones. All these people are "followers" of Bar Refaeli. "Followers" ! This means, one might deduce, that you can sign up to be a follower of Bar Refaeli, and she will, presumably at her leisure, send out "tweets', or messages to the members of the following.
By logical extension it can be assumed that famous people, celebrities, often do this; accumulate followers to whom they send messages, at their leisure. One can probably further assume that the sundry celebrities with followings usually arrange it so that none of the followers can message the celebrity; that would become chaotic. It must be a one way tweet - street.
Somehow one suspects that entertainers are most likely to do this; its a good way to enhance one's celebrity status, it adds a little PR value. Further proof that our modern american gods are the celebrity class, up to whom we look reverently, seeking messages from on high.
...one fearfully suspects that all these celebrity followers are not children or teen agers.
...how much more bizarre can american culture become...wait, don't answer that...
Bb
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Bar Refaeli is a genuine modern day super model, blonde, curvy, gorgeous, who used to date Leonardo Dicaprio, so they say. The other day she was fixin' to board an airplane, and like the rest of us, went through the "patting down" process. After the female employee finished the tactile inspection, Bar was not at all happy. She felt it had been a tad too personal. She tweeted something to the effect "there was no doubt at all about that woman's sexual orientation."
Nothing sensational about this, except that; one hundred and seventy two thousand people received the tweet on their twittering cell phones. All these people are "followers" of Bar Refaeli. "Followers" ! This means, one might deduce, that you can sign up to be a follower of Bar Refaeli, and she will, presumably at her leisure, send out "tweets', or messages to the members of the following.
By logical extension it can be assumed that famous people, celebrities, often do this; accumulate followers to whom they send messages, at their leisure. One can probably further assume that the sundry celebrities with followings usually arrange it so that none of the followers can message the celebrity; that would become chaotic. It must be a one way tweet - street.
Somehow one suspects that entertainers are most likely to do this; its a good way to enhance one's celebrity status, it adds a little PR value. Further proof that our modern american gods are the celebrity class, up to whom we look reverently, seeking messages from on high.
...one fearfully suspects that all these celebrity followers are not children or teen agers.
...how much more bizarre can american culture become...wait, don't answer that...
Bb
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How Old Do WE Want to Live To Be?
Flash bulletin from mount olymous heart disease apparantly not related to gum disease after all, brushing and flossing most likely do not reduce risk of heart disease.
Seems like we've been warned about the definite connection between oral health and heart disease for at least a decade now, maybe two or more. And, truth be told, it always did sound a bit strange and questionable. But we bought into it, hook, line, and sinker, because all proclamations from on high are to be taken as gospel.
...standing over the lavatory, telling myself, day after fay, year after year, over and over again, "brush those gums! floss! floss! you don't wanna have a heart attack, do ya?
...we need to remind ourselves that we are no less prone than our superstitious ancestors to embrace false belief, no less vulnerable to being led astray. our miraculous modern medical science is certainly not immune to error, great error.
I keep thinking I'll spend the next thirty years desperately battling high cholestoral and blood pressure, only to be told, at long last, that they are not necessarily harmful. Don't totally discount the possibility.
We now seem to be engaged in a frantic search for life extension. More than one hundred thousand people in america are over one hundred years old, and american life expectancy is not even highly ranked among nations.
The book "Life Extension" by Durk Peasron appeared almost forty years ago, and its about a foot thick. Is Dirk still around? He said he planned to live to be a hundred and fifty. Maybe we should hold our horses a bit with regard to living longer.
If humanity in general starts living much longer, the birth rate will have to decline to prevent over population, and the world will fill up with old folks. That's already happening, to an extent, particularly europe and north america.
the only ultimate solution to planetary over population is colonizing space, which, considering the numbr of "new" planets being discovered, seems ever more possible. The big question is: what is the best population level for earth? More than the current seven billion? How much more?
that question is worth thinking about, and agreeing on...
P.S. we have just learned that Durk Pearson is evidently doing quite well. he even has his own website, selling life- extending books and products. maybe i should try some...
Bb
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Seems like we've been warned about the definite connection between oral health and heart disease for at least a decade now, maybe two or more. And, truth be told, it always did sound a bit strange and questionable. But we bought into it, hook, line, and sinker, because all proclamations from on high are to be taken as gospel.
...standing over the lavatory, telling myself, day after fay, year after year, over and over again, "brush those gums! floss! floss! you don't wanna have a heart attack, do ya?
...we need to remind ourselves that we are no less prone than our superstitious ancestors to embrace false belief, no less vulnerable to being led astray. our miraculous modern medical science is certainly not immune to error, great error.
I keep thinking I'll spend the next thirty years desperately battling high cholestoral and blood pressure, only to be told, at long last, that they are not necessarily harmful. Don't totally discount the possibility.
We now seem to be engaged in a frantic search for life extension. More than one hundred thousand people in america are over one hundred years old, and american life expectancy is not even highly ranked among nations.
The book "Life Extension" by Durk Peasron appeared almost forty years ago, and its about a foot thick. Is Dirk still around? He said he planned to live to be a hundred and fifty. Maybe we should hold our horses a bit with regard to living longer.
If humanity in general starts living much longer, the birth rate will have to decline to prevent over population, and the world will fill up with old folks. That's already happening, to an extent, particularly europe and north america.
the only ultimate solution to planetary over population is colonizing space, which, considering the numbr of "new" planets being discovered, seems ever more possible. The big question is: what is the best population level for earth? More than the current seven billion? How much more?
that question is worth thinking about, and agreeing on...
P.S. we have just learned that Durk Pearson is evidently doing quite well. he even has his own website, selling life- extending books and products. maybe i should try some...
Bb
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Wednesday, April 18, 2012
I love Russia!
For whatever reason, about a third of the people who read The Truthless Reconciler are russian. At least, so my computer tells me. Every day, a fair number of americans, a german or two, coupla brits, then maybe some folks from latin america, here and there. never anyone from china or japan. at least, not yet. But, for whatever reason, a whole lotta russians.
...and so therefore i wanted to devote this article to just saying "thanks" to my russian friends!
when i was a little kid i was trained to hate and be terrified of the russians, during the "cold war" of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, like everyone else in my generation. hiding underneath my wooden desk at school, while my 30 classmates did the same, i used to wonder exactly who the russians were, what made them so bad, and how in the hell a small wooden desk would protect me from an atomic bomb...
..why were the russians the enemy? by high school i hadn't found answers to my questions, but i thought the russians were kinda cool, and i understood something about socialism and communism.
I began faintly to understand that we americans were required to hate the russians because their government refused to accept american corporate capitalism exploiting their country.(that's what "freedom " is in america, corporate control)... in tenth grade i started trying to learn russian. it didn't last long, i was in a sampling phase.
all through school i was taught that the "cold war" was america's valiant attempt to resist the evil of communism. only within the past ten years or so have i finally arrived at the truth; the cold war was the invention of the american military-industrial complex used to justify the conversion of the american republic into the american security state empire, with a permanent war time military and economy, and a global empire just for grins.
at the end of world war two, and for a very very long time thereafter, the unwieldy entity called the "soviet union" had absolutely no ability or intent to make war against or do harm to the united states. when twenty million of your people and most of your cities are destroyed by war, you're ready for peace.
and the russians were ready for peace, even as the american - generated cold war raged. their posture towards the united states was always defensive, and still is. pearl harbor was the reason america needed to stay eternally prepared for war, and ever since, america has so stayed.
the united states of america owes an apology to many groups of people, including african - americans, mexicans, homosexuals....and america is delivering.
if we (americans) don't feel as though we owe any apologies to the russians, let's at least admit that we owe them the chance to be friends... a russian-american alliance, in fact, makes perfect sense. the chinese are coming.
Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
...and so therefore i wanted to devote this article to just saying "thanks" to my russian friends!
when i was a little kid i was trained to hate and be terrified of the russians, during the "cold war" of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, like everyone else in my generation. hiding underneath my wooden desk at school, while my 30 classmates did the same, i used to wonder exactly who the russians were, what made them so bad, and how in the hell a small wooden desk would protect me from an atomic bomb...
..why were the russians the enemy? by high school i hadn't found answers to my questions, but i thought the russians were kinda cool, and i understood something about socialism and communism.
I began faintly to understand that we americans were required to hate the russians because their government refused to accept american corporate capitalism exploiting their country.(that's what "freedom " is in america, corporate control)... in tenth grade i started trying to learn russian. it didn't last long, i was in a sampling phase.
all through school i was taught that the "cold war" was america's valiant attempt to resist the evil of communism. only within the past ten years or so have i finally arrived at the truth; the cold war was the invention of the american military-industrial complex used to justify the conversion of the american republic into the american security state empire, with a permanent war time military and economy, and a global empire just for grins.
at the end of world war two, and for a very very long time thereafter, the unwieldy entity called the "soviet union" had absolutely no ability or intent to make war against or do harm to the united states. when twenty million of your people and most of your cities are destroyed by war, you're ready for peace.
and the russians were ready for peace, even as the american - generated cold war raged. their posture towards the united states was always defensive, and still is. pearl harbor was the reason america needed to stay eternally prepared for war, and ever since, america has so stayed.
the united states of america owes an apology to many groups of people, including african - americans, mexicans, homosexuals....and america is delivering.
if we (americans) don't feel as though we owe any apologies to the russians, let's at least admit that we owe them the chance to be friends... a russian-american alliance, in fact, makes perfect sense. the chinese are coming.
Bb
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No More Time Decay
The biggest game changer looming in your future, if not mine, is life prolongation. It works for mice and worms,and surely one of these days it will work for the rest of us.
The current price for life prolongation seems to be semi-starvation; the people who try it wear loose clothes to hide their ribs and intentions. There's something desperate and shameful about starving yourself in order to live longer. But right now, biologists are tinkering with Resveratrol and Sirtuins, trying to get you the benefit of life prolongation without cutting back on calories.
Life and love get their edge from the possibility of their ending. What will life be like when we live forever? Nothing will be the same.
The study of financial options shows that there is no free lunch. What you lose on the swings, you gain on the round-abouts. If you want optionality, you have to pay a price, and part of that price is that the value of your option erodes every day. That's time decay. If you achieve a world where nothing fades away with time anymore, it will be because there's nothing to fade away.
No one dies. No one gets older. No one gets sick. You can't tell how old someone is by looking at them or touching them. No May - September romances. No room for new people. Everyone's an american car in Havana, endlessly repaired and maintained long after its original manufacturere is defunct. No breeding. No one born. No more evolution. NO sex. No need to hurry. No need to console anyone. If you want something done, give it to a busy man, but no one need be busy when you have forever. Life without death changes absolutely everything.
If everyone is an extended LP, the turntable has to turn very slowly.
Who's going to do the real work, then? Chosen people who will volunteer or be volunteered to be mortal.
"If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." (Giuseppe di Lampedusa in "The Leopard")
by Emanuel Derman
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The current price for life prolongation seems to be semi-starvation; the people who try it wear loose clothes to hide their ribs and intentions. There's something desperate and shameful about starving yourself in order to live longer. But right now, biologists are tinkering with Resveratrol and Sirtuins, trying to get you the benefit of life prolongation without cutting back on calories.
Life and love get their edge from the possibility of their ending. What will life be like when we live forever? Nothing will be the same.
The study of financial options shows that there is no free lunch. What you lose on the swings, you gain on the round-abouts. If you want optionality, you have to pay a price, and part of that price is that the value of your option erodes every day. That's time decay. If you achieve a world where nothing fades away with time anymore, it will be because there's nothing to fade away.
No one dies. No one gets older. No one gets sick. You can't tell how old someone is by looking at them or touching them. No May - September romances. No room for new people. Everyone's an american car in Havana, endlessly repaired and maintained long after its original manufacturere is defunct. No breeding. No one born. No more evolution. NO sex. No need to hurry. No need to console anyone. If you want something done, give it to a busy man, but no one need be busy when you have forever. Life without death changes absolutely everything.
If everyone is an extended LP, the turntable has to turn very slowly.
Who's going to do the real work, then? Chosen people who will volunteer or be volunteered to be mortal.
"If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." (Giuseppe di Lampedusa in "The Leopard")
by Emanuel Derman
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Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Limbaugh, Oil, and Coal
THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER does not claim to have the truth, only to seek it, and encourages openminded, conciliatory thinking. Part of the game plan is to listen to Rush Limbaugh, openmindedly. If we can do that, we can do anything.
For those readers around the world, rush limbaugh is a very famous american man who talks on the radio (to say the least).
Listening to Rush talk about coal and oil was for me a pleasantly surrealistic experience. I'm sure I correctly understood rush to say that there is no alternative to oil, oil is plentiful for the future, oil is natural, and organic, and therefore environmentally harmless, the free market wants oil and therefore should have an oil based economy, does, and always will. Same with coal.
Incredible as it seems now, he said all that. And it sounded great; I loved it.
Still do. Wish it were true. Can it be? No, of course not. Rush is nuts, right? It almost seems incredible that anyone would continue to have any doubts about climate change caused by human activity. Maybe they don't. Maybe they just pretend to.
The general consensus throughout the community of scientists is that oil is rapidly running out, is rapidly destroying the planetary environment, causing global warming, and we must replace oil with other energy sources, can, and soon will.
But this, according to rush, is hogwash, a liberal hoax, the global warming hoax, a fraud perpetrated by the liberal elite for the purpose of expanding the federal american government and thus reducing the american people to submission to the american government for the purpose of making them dependent on the liberal elite.
I frankly hope rush is right, but strongly doubt that he is. He seems to reside in a perfect world where all is well as long as the free market controls all, and all liberal ideas are ridiculed.
still, I REALLY hope rush is right....
by Bb
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For those readers around the world, rush limbaugh is a very famous american man who talks on the radio (to say the least).
Listening to Rush talk about coal and oil was for me a pleasantly surrealistic experience. I'm sure I correctly understood rush to say that there is no alternative to oil, oil is plentiful for the future, oil is natural, and organic, and therefore environmentally harmless, the free market wants oil and therefore should have an oil based economy, does, and always will. Same with coal.
Incredible as it seems now, he said all that. And it sounded great; I loved it.
Still do. Wish it were true. Can it be? No, of course not. Rush is nuts, right? It almost seems incredible that anyone would continue to have any doubts about climate change caused by human activity. Maybe they don't. Maybe they just pretend to.
The general consensus throughout the community of scientists is that oil is rapidly running out, is rapidly destroying the planetary environment, causing global warming, and we must replace oil with other energy sources, can, and soon will.
But this, according to rush, is hogwash, a liberal hoax, the global warming hoax, a fraud perpetrated by the liberal elite for the purpose of expanding the federal american government and thus reducing the american people to submission to the american government for the purpose of making them dependent on the liberal elite.
I frankly hope rush is right, but strongly doubt that he is. He seems to reside in a perfect world where all is well as long as the free market controls all, and all liberal ideas are ridiculed.
still, I REALLY hope rush is right....
by Bb
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The Breakdown of all Computers
Someday all semiconductors will break down, and therefore all computers, as (with the exception of historical instruments) no computers exist today that are not based on semiconductor technology.
The breakdown will be caused by a giant electromagnetic pulse (EMP) created by a nuclear explosion outside earth's atmosphere. It will cover large areas on earth, up to the size of a continent.
Where it will happen is unpredictable. But it will happen, since it is extremely unlikely that we will be able to get rid of all nuclear weapons, and the probability for it to happen at any given time will never be zero.
The implications of such an event will be enormous. If it happens to one of our technology - based societies, literally everything will break down. You will realize that none of your phones work. There is no way to find out via the internet what happened.
Your car will not start, as it is also controlled by computer chips - unless you are lucky enough to own an antique car. Your local supermarket will be unable to get new supplies. There will be no trucks operating, no trains, no electricity, no water supplies. Society will completely break down.
There will be small exceptions in those countries where military equipment has been hardened against EMPs, making the army available for emergency relief. In some countries, even some emergency civilian infrastructre has been hardened against EMPs. But these are excetpons. Most governments simply ignore the danger.
by Anton Zeilinger
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The breakdown will be caused by a giant electromagnetic pulse (EMP) created by a nuclear explosion outside earth's atmosphere. It will cover large areas on earth, up to the size of a continent.
Where it will happen is unpredictable. But it will happen, since it is extremely unlikely that we will be able to get rid of all nuclear weapons, and the probability for it to happen at any given time will never be zero.
The implications of such an event will be enormous. If it happens to one of our technology - based societies, literally everything will break down. You will realize that none of your phones work. There is no way to find out via the internet what happened.
Your car will not start, as it is also controlled by computer chips - unless you are lucky enough to own an antique car. Your local supermarket will be unable to get new supplies. There will be no trucks operating, no trains, no electricity, no water supplies. Society will completely break down.
There will be small exceptions in those countries where military equipment has been hardened against EMPs, making the army available for emergency relief. In some countries, even some emergency civilian infrastructre has been hardened against EMPs. But these are excetpons. Most governments simply ignore the danger.
by Anton Zeilinger
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SENSATIONAL, SHOCKING, SECRET SERVICE SEX SCANDAL!
Nostradamus probably predicted the shocking sensational secret service sex scandal. I mean, hell, he predicted everything else...and what could be more indicative of the current state of United States of american culture?
This particular shocking sex scandal is the one wherein Secret Service agents, while in Colombia accompanying President Obama on his Latin American trip, received "company" in their hotel rooms, allegedly, ahem, "inappropiate" company. The agents were promptly sent home to Washington and put on leave pending investigation. Oops.
Beware, we'll be hearing about this episode for a long time; longer than Natalie Holloway, longer than our current favorite overly-hyped shocking current event, the "hoodie" shooting, longer, dare we speculate, than O.J.?
We north americans, like our south american cousins, live in a culture in which sex is a sin, thanks to our christian heritage. We also live in a corporate capitalistic culture, in which sex seduces and sells. This combination, christianity and capitalism, causes people to use all kinds of sneaky, creative, amusing strategies to get sex.
Most americans probably don't give a fig what secret service agents do in their free time, as long as they do their job of protecting the president.... we americans are largely a libertarian lot when it comes to sex and other forms of personal pleasure. But leave it to the media to never miss a chance to present us with yet another exciting, sensational, shocking sex scandal. What would we ever do without them?
President Obama, never one to miss a sound bite opportunity, expresses anger, shock, outrage, and whatever else sounds good.
I never got along well with the secret service. Abraham lincoln signed into law the act creating the secret service the very day he was assassinated. My father was asked to keep his hands in plain sight while he dined with president Truman. My brother in law, in full army uniform, was actually tackled by secret service personnel while reaching into his pocket for a camera to photograph president Nixon, as he had been assigned to do.
I recall being observed with binoculars by serious suited SS while attending an anti war rally against one of america's wars, i forget which one, its so easy to get them all confused.
Once, I attended a basketball game at which president Clinton was present, when an S.S. man walked by with a plain looking, but undoubtedly very highly trained german shepherd. I just had to smart off. "you should see MY german shepherd" I yelled at him. He didn't seem to be amused, or impressed. (my german shepherd was in fact far more beautiful than any ever owned by the secret service, but who cares).
So maybe my best strategy is to steer clear of the secret service, especially when they're on the road, and, um "out on the town"...
by Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
This particular shocking sex scandal is the one wherein Secret Service agents, while in Colombia accompanying President Obama on his Latin American trip, received "company" in their hotel rooms, allegedly, ahem, "inappropiate" company. The agents were promptly sent home to Washington and put on leave pending investigation. Oops.
Beware, we'll be hearing about this episode for a long time; longer than Natalie Holloway, longer than our current favorite overly-hyped shocking current event, the "hoodie" shooting, longer, dare we speculate, than O.J.?
We north americans, like our south american cousins, live in a culture in which sex is a sin, thanks to our christian heritage. We also live in a corporate capitalistic culture, in which sex seduces and sells. This combination, christianity and capitalism, causes people to use all kinds of sneaky, creative, amusing strategies to get sex.
Most americans probably don't give a fig what secret service agents do in their free time, as long as they do their job of protecting the president.... we americans are largely a libertarian lot when it comes to sex and other forms of personal pleasure. But leave it to the media to never miss a chance to present us with yet another exciting, sensational, shocking sex scandal. What would we ever do without them?
President Obama, never one to miss a sound bite opportunity, expresses anger, shock, outrage, and whatever else sounds good.
I never got along well with the secret service. Abraham lincoln signed into law the act creating the secret service the very day he was assassinated. My father was asked to keep his hands in plain sight while he dined with president Truman. My brother in law, in full army uniform, was actually tackled by secret service personnel while reaching into his pocket for a camera to photograph president Nixon, as he had been assigned to do.
I recall being observed with binoculars by serious suited SS while attending an anti war rally against one of america's wars, i forget which one, its so easy to get them all confused.
Once, I attended a basketball game at which president Clinton was present, when an S.S. man walked by with a plain looking, but undoubtedly very highly trained german shepherd. I just had to smart off. "you should see MY german shepherd" I yelled at him. He didn't seem to be amused, or impressed. (my german shepherd was in fact far more beautiful than any ever owned by the secret service, but who cares).
So maybe my best strategy is to steer clear of the secret service, especially when they're on the road, and, um "out on the town"...
by Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
Monday, April 16, 2012
Tim Tebow and American Celebrity-Insanity
During my fifty years of rooting fanatically for the New York Yankees, I can scarcely remember ever being disappointed in the Yankee Stadium crowd. But I was last night when they booed Tim Tebow. Oh, I recall during the fourth and final game of the horrible 1976 world series, a few idiots threw some trash at the third base umpire. But that was different (how?). Generally, however, the new york fans are demanding, expressive, but knowldegable and fair minded.
Maybe Tebow is regarded by New Yorkers as an interloper, an intruder into the New York Jets NFL football universe. If he plays well, the boos will turn to cheers, of course. That is not to say that the crowd should have cheered Tebow last night. A faint smattering of formal, polite, unenthusiastic applause would have sufficed. In america, we wayyyy over react to celebrities, who are, in a sense, the modern american version of gods and goddesses.
Note to our Russian friends: Readers around the world are strongly encouraged to consider becoming interested in the american sport of "baseball". It truly is a marvelous game, and tends to represent america at its best. Unlike american football, american baseball is not too violent.
Tim Tebow represents another aspect of america; america's tendency to make way too much fuss over "celebrities", positive fuss and negative fuss. Tebow is by all accounts a good guy, perfectly normal (whatever "normal" is). Evidently he is a devout christian, doesn't drink, smoke, or consort with whores, but prays and goes to church a lot. For all we know he may be a bit smug and arrogant, which is how people often respond to being famous, but, basically, a good, average, normal guy.
Goethe said "Nobody is fortunate enough to escape either praise or blame". Oh, so true. The american media exaggerates the celebrity of people like Tebow, because the american people lap it up, and it generates corporate revenue. Maybe the combination of Tebow's rugged handsome looks and clean lifestyle is just too sexy for our american corporate masters to resist shoving down our willing and craning throats.
A wishful thought just came to mind. Maybe the crowd at Yankees Stadium wasn't really booing Tim Tebow for being a good guy. Maybe they were booing because they were expressing resentment at our corporate masters for having the audacity to shove more american celebrity culture down our throats in the middle of a perfectly good game of baseball.
by Bb
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Maybe Tebow is regarded by New Yorkers as an interloper, an intruder into the New York Jets NFL football universe. If he plays well, the boos will turn to cheers, of course. That is not to say that the crowd should have cheered Tebow last night. A faint smattering of formal, polite, unenthusiastic applause would have sufficed. In america, we wayyyy over react to celebrities, who are, in a sense, the modern american version of gods and goddesses.
Note to our Russian friends: Readers around the world are strongly encouraged to consider becoming interested in the american sport of "baseball". It truly is a marvelous game, and tends to represent america at its best. Unlike american football, american baseball is not too violent.
Tim Tebow represents another aspect of america; america's tendency to make way too much fuss over "celebrities", positive fuss and negative fuss. Tebow is by all accounts a good guy, perfectly normal (whatever "normal" is). Evidently he is a devout christian, doesn't drink, smoke, or consort with whores, but prays and goes to church a lot. For all we know he may be a bit smug and arrogant, which is how people often respond to being famous, but, basically, a good, average, normal guy.
Goethe said "Nobody is fortunate enough to escape either praise or blame". Oh, so true. The american media exaggerates the celebrity of people like Tebow, because the american people lap it up, and it generates corporate revenue. Maybe the combination of Tebow's rugged handsome looks and clean lifestyle is just too sexy for our american corporate masters to resist shoving down our willing and craning throats.
A wishful thought just came to mind. Maybe the crowd at Yankees Stadium wasn't really booing Tim Tebow for being a good guy. Maybe they were booing because they were expressing resentment at our corporate masters for having the audacity to shove more american celebrity culture down our throats in the middle of a perfectly good game of baseball.
by Bb
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SOCIAL MEDIA LITERACY
SOCIAL MEDIA literacy is going to change many games in unforeseeable ways. Since the advent of the telegraph, the infrastructure for global ubiquitous broadband communication media has been laid down, and of course the great power of the Internet is the democracy of access -- in a couple of decades, the number of users has grown from a thousand to a billion.
But the next important breakthroughs won't be in hardware or software, but in know - how, just as the most important after-effects of the printing press were not in improved printing technologies but in widespread literacy.
The Gutenberg press itself was not enough. Mechanical printing had been invented in Korea and China centuries before the european invention.. For a number of reasons, a market for print and the knowledge of how to use the alphabetic code for transmitting knowledge across time and space broke out of the scribal elite that had controlled it for millenia.
From around twenty thousand handwritten books in Guternberg's lifetime, the number of books grew to tens of millions within decades of the invention of movable type. And the rapidly expanding literate population in europe began to create science, democracy, and the foundation of the industrial revolution.
Today, we're seeing the beginnings of scientific, medical, political, and social revolutions -- from the instant epidemiology that broke out online when SARS became known to the world to the use of social media by political campaigns. But we're only in the earliest years of social media literacy.
Whether universal access to many - to - many media will lead to explosive scientific and social change depends more on know - how than on physical infrastructure. Would the early religious petitioners during the english civil war, and the printers who eagerly fed their need to spread their ideas, have been able to predict that within a few generations monarchs would be replaced by constitutions?
Would Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton have dreamed that entire populations, and not just a few privileged geniuses, would aggregate knowledge and turn it into technology? Would those of us who used slow modems to transmit black - and - white text on the early internet fifteen years ago have been able to foresee YouTube?
BY Howard Rheingold
PLEASE CHECK BELOW FOR MORE ARTICLES! THANKS!
But the next important breakthroughs won't be in hardware or software, but in know - how, just as the most important after-effects of the printing press were not in improved printing technologies but in widespread literacy.
The Gutenberg press itself was not enough. Mechanical printing had been invented in Korea and China centuries before the european invention.. For a number of reasons, a market for print and the knowledge of how to use the alphabetic code for transmitting knowledge across time and space broke out of the scribal elite that had controlled it for millenia.
From around twenty thousand handwritten books in Guternberg's lifetime, the number of books grew to tens of millions within decades of the invention of movable type. And the rapidly expanding literate population in europe began to create science, democracy, and the foundation of the industrial revolution.
Today, we're seeing the beginnings of scientific, medical, political, and social revolutions -- from the instant epidemiology that broke out online when SARS became known to the world to the use of social media by political campaigns. But we're only in the earliest years of social media literacy.
Whether universal access to many - to - many media will lead to explosive scientific and social change depends more on know - how than on physical infrastructure. Would the early religious petitioners during the english civil war, and the printers who eagerly fed their need to spread their ideas, have been able to predict that within a few generations monarchs would be replaced by constitutions?
Would Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton have dreamed that entire populations, and not just a few privileged geniuses, would aggregate knowledge and turn it into technology? Would those of us who used slow modems to transmit black - and - white text on the early internet fifteen years ago have been able to foresee YouTube?
BY Howard Rheingold
PLEASE CHECK BELOW FOR MORE ARTICLES! THANKS!
Sunday, April 15, 2012
TORNADOPHOBIA
I have a bad case of "tornadophobia". I don't even know if that's a word, but it sure as hell should be.And I only found out about it today. Now that I've calmed down and started to think about it, I think I know what's going on..
It all started in early childhood.
(If you don't mind, I'll just lie down over here while telling this.)
Every year the tornado scene in "The Wizard of Oz" terrified me. But strangely, year after year, I kept watching it, always making sure I saw the very beginning of the film, so as not to miss the tornado, knowing that I would be horrified when it came on.
I always thought the movie crew went out into the middle of Kansas, and just waited until a twister came along, then filmed it. Somebody told mre recently however that they artificially created their own tornado special effect. I'm still not sure. How could they have done that in 1938?
A little less than a year ago I was in the monster tornado which ripped through and destroyed half of Joplin, Missouri, and for a few weeks after that, I kept my eye on the sky, had dreams about tornados, and feared every passing thunderhead.
I had been out jogging right before the tornado hit Joplin. I saw a big black anvil in the western sky, but thought nothing of it, assumed it was just a rain cloud. Only when golf ball sized hail starting landing at my feet did I begin to grasp the severity of the situation, and head for shelter. My lack of concern nearly cost me my life.
I barely got to the shelter, then watched through a slit-window forty and firty foot trees bending over and touching the ground. After leaving the shelter we slowly began to realize the extent of the devastation, billions of dollars of damage, more than one hundred sixty dead.
So now here we go again. Once again, its tornado season across the midwest and south; hell, its tornado season across america. Readers of The Truthless Reconciler around the world might be a bit uncertain what exactly a tornado is, because other than in the middle part of the United States, they tend to be a rarity. Europe, Africa, and Asia are not tornado prone. The advent of cell phones has enabled a tremendous amount of great tornado video, which can be seen on the internet.
It almost seems like tornado season keeps getting longer, starts earlier every year, and will eventually be year round. Wouldn't that be great, year round tornados? What if it gets to the point where its a rare day when at least one tornado doesn't go buzzing by overhead? They're starting to happen in late Februrary, and that is alarming, in terms of the evident climate change.
Sunday I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, while the sky grew darker and darker, and the wind picked up somethin' awful. The phone rang, and my cousin told me there was a tornado heading straight for my town. I absolutely freaked. My mind blazed with panic, and I ran, jumped in my car, and drove as far and fast away from the approaching twister until I found a good shelter; an underground parking garage.
That's how I know I have tornadophobia. I will never forget that feeling of panicking. It was never like that before. But for now on, it may get worse.
Bb
PLEASE SEE OTHER ARTICLES BELOW! THANKS!
It all started in early childhood.
(If you don't mind, I'll just lie down over here while telling this.)
Every year the tornado scene in "The Wizard of Oz" terrified me. But strangely, year after year, I kept watching it, always making sure I saw the very beginning of the film, so as not to miss the tornado, knowing that I would be horrified when it came on.
I always thought the movie crew went out into the middle of Kansas, and just waited until a twister came along, then filmed it. Somebody told mre recently however that they artificially created their own tornado special effect. I'm still not sure. How could they have done that in 1938?
A little less than a year ago I was in the monster tornado which ripped through and destroyed half of Joplin, Missouri, and for a few weeks after that, I kept my eye on the sky, had dreams about tornados, and feared every passing thunderhead.
I had been out jogging right before the tornado hit Joplin. I saw a big black anvil in the western sky, but thought nothing of it, assumed it was just a rain cloud. Only when golf ball sized hail starting landing at my feet did I begin to grasp the severity of the situation, and head for shelter. My lack of concern nearly cost me my life.
I barely got to the shelter, then watched through a slit-window forty and firty foot trees bending over and touching the ground. After leaving the shelter we slowly began to realize the extent of the devastation, billions of dollars of damage, more than one hundred sixty dead.
So now here we go again. Once again, its tornado season across the midwest and south; hell, its tornado season across america. Readers of The Truthless Reconciler around the world might be a bit uncertain what exactly a tornado is, because other than in the middle part of the United States, they tend to be a rarity. Europe, Africa, and Asia are not tornado prone. The advent of cell phones has enabled a tremendous amount of great tornado video, which can be seen on the internet.
It almost seems like tornado season keeps getting longer, starts earlier every year, and will eventually be year round. Wouldn't that be great, year round tornados? What if it gets to the point where its a rare day when at least one tornado doesn't go buzzing by overhead? They're starting to happen in late Februrary, and that is alarming, in terms of the evident climate change.
Sunday I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, while the sky grew darker and darker, and the wind picked up somethin' awful. The phone rang, and my cousin told me there was a tornado heading straight for my town. I absolutely freaked. My mind blazed with panic, and I ran, jumped in my car, and drove as far and fast away from the approaching twister until I found a good shelter; an underground parking garage.
That's how I know I have tornadophobia. I will never forget that feeling of panicking. It was never like that before. But for now on, it may get worse.
Bb
PLEASE SEE OTHER ARTICLES BELOW! THANKS!
Synthesis, with Analysis
THE IDEA that will change the game of knowledge is the realization that it is more important to understand events, objects, and processes in their relationship with one another than in their singular structure.
Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously. We shall realize that science cannot be value free after all. The Doomsday Clock ticking on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ever closer to midnight is just one reminder that knowledge ignorant of consequences is foolishness.
Chemistry that shrugs at pollution is foolishnesss. Economics that discounts politics and sociologay is just as ignorant as sre politics and sociology that discounts economics.
Unfortunately, it does not seem to be enough to protect the neutral objectivity of each separate science in the hope that the knowledge generated by each will be integrated later, at some higher level, and used wisely. The synthetic principle will have to become a part of the fundamental axioms of each science.
How shall this breakthrough occur? Current systems theories are necessary but not sufficient, as they tend not to take values into account. Perhaps after this realization sets in, we shall have to rewrite science from the ground up.
Einstein said "the world war after the next will be fought with rocks."..... When science and technology are divorced from their potential consequences, future consequences remain unknown, and possibly disastrous.
Einstein also said "morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, rather than for God."
......He understood that the values underlying all science progress are the determining factor as to the eventual consequences of scientific progress.
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Bb
PLEASE SEE THE OTHER ARTICLES BELOW IN THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.
THANKS!
\ /
Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously. We shall realize that science cannot be value free after all. The Doomsday Clock ticking on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ever closer to midnight is just one reminder that knowledge ignorant of consequences is foolishness.
Chemistry that shrugs at pollution is foolishnesss. Economics that discounts politics and sociologay is just as ignorant as sre politics and sociology that discounts economics.
Unfortunately, it does not seem to be enough to protect the neutral objectivity of each separate science in the hope that the knowledge generated by each will be integrated later, at some higher level, and used wisely. The synthetic principle will have to become a part of the fundamental axioms of each science.
How shall this breakthrough occur? Current systems theories are necessary but not sufficient, as they tend not to take values into account. Perhaps after this realization sets in, we shall have to rewrite science from the ground up.
Einstein said "the world war after the next will be fought with rocks."..... When science and technology are divorced from their potential consequences, future consequences remain unknown, and possibly disastrous.
Einstein also said "morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, rather than for God."
......He understood that the values underlying all science progress are the determining factor as to the eventual consequences of scientific progress.
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Bb
PLEASE SEE THE OTHER ARTICLES BELOW IN THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.
THANKS!
\ /
OBAMA'S MADNESS!!!
You can usually find flaws in those people, places, and things that you like and admire overall. President Obama is not loved unconditionally among liberals, because obama has done what all politicians end up doing; he has moved to the middle, trying to be all things to all people, trying to please everyone, and entirely pleasing no one.
Three areas come to mind: education, the space program, and the war on drugs.
The Obama administration has essentiallly embraced the "No Child Left Behind" program of the Bush administration, adding the phrase "Race to the Top". (catchy, isn't it?) It fundamentally involves standardized testing of everyone in america followed by the almighty federal government declaring every student, public, school, and for all we know every U.S. citizen - either a "failure" or a "success".
After nearly a decade of this bureaucratic top heavy nonsense there is no indication that it has any positive benefit. Tx Trumbo, a veteran high school teacher in a large midwestern public school, and author of an insightful book entitled "Who's the Teacher Now?" says he is sick and tired of his healthy, productive students and school constantly being labeled as "failures" by a distant governemnt whose bureaucrats have doubtless never set foot inside a school. Its hard to blame him. Obama should end this nonsense, instead he supports it.
Obama has drastically gutted the space program budget of NASA, particularly all the ambitious and exciting plans we had for exploring and establising a permanent colony on Mars. This is disastrous, because if there is anything humanity should be doing, its exploring and developing space. It may be our only hope of survival.
An enormous, ambitious space program could be funded for only a fraction of the money the United States spends on its military-industrial-corporate-worldwide-empire. With regard to space exploration, Newt Gingrich is the best candidate. Newt promised a base on the moon if elected president, and the other candidates made fun of him. It may be that the american people are not inspired by space exploration, as they were in the nineteen sixties. That's unfortunate.
The "War on Drugs" is the greatest farce of all, a complete hoax, a pretext, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, hopeless, worthless. It has been useless since Nixon started it 40 years ago, and Nancy Reagan piled on and joined the pious bandwagon a bit later. Obama said "legalization is not the answer". He's dead wrong, as wrong as wrong can be. Wm. F. Buckley, a true conservative, favored legalazation; he was right.
I remember listening to a presentation by NORML in 1975, how much sense they made, and assuming that within a few years marijuana would be legal, and the fuss and mess would end. I never would have dreamed that nearly forty years later the process would be so little advanced. Maybe the next president will see the obvious: prohibition does not work.
According to Abraham Lincoln:
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it attempts to control a man's appetites by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. Prohibition strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our republic was founded."
If Lincoln were still president, we wouldn't have this mess.
by Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
Three areas come to mind: education, the space program, and the war on drugs.
The Obama administration has essentiallly embraced the "No Child Left Behind" program of the Bush administration, adding the phrase "Race to the Top". (catchy, isn't it?) It fundamentally involves standardized testing of everyone in america followed by the almighty federal government declaring every student, public, school, and for all we know every U.S. citizen - either a "failure" or a "success".
After nearly a decade of this bureaucratic top heavy nonsense there is no indication that it has any positive benefit. Tx Trumbo, a veteran high school teacher in a large midwestern public school, and author of an insightful book entitled "Who's the Teacher Now?" says he is sick and tired of his healthy, productive students and school constantly being labeled as "failures" by a distant governemnt whose bureaucrats have doubtless never set foot inside a school. Its hard to blame him. Obama should end this nonsense, instead he supports it.
Obama has drastically gutted the space program budget of NASA, particularly all the ambitious and exciting plans we had for exploring and establising a permanent colony on Mars. This is disastrous, because if there is anything humanity should be doing, its exploring and developing space. It may be our only hope of survival.
An enormous, ambitious space program could be funded for only a fraction of the money the United States spends on its military-industrial-corporate-worldwide-empire. With regard to space exploration, Newt Gingrich is the best candidate. Newt promised a base on the moon if elected president, and the other candidates made fun of him. It may be that the american people are not inspired by space exploration, as they were in the nineteen sixties. That's unfortunate.
The "War on Drugs" is the greatest farce of all, a complete hoax, a pretext, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, hopeless, worthless. It has been useless since Nixon started it 40 years ago, and Nancy Reagan piled on and joined the pious bandwagon a bit later. Obama said "legalization is not the answer". He's dead wrong, as wrong as wrong can be. Wm. F. Buckley, a true conservative, favored legalazation; he was right.
I remember listening to a presentation by NORML in 1975, how much sense they made, and assuming that within a few years marijuana would be legal, and the fuss and mess would end. I never would have dreamed that nearly forty years later the process would be so little advanced. Maybe the next president will see the obvious: prohibition does not work.
According to Abraham Lincoln:
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it attempts to control a man's appetites by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. Prohibition strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our republic was founded."
If Lincoln were still president, we wouldn't have this mess.
by Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
Saturday, April 14, 2012
CARNICULTURE
Nobody eats animals - not the whole things. Most of us eat animal parts, with a few memorable culinary exceptions. And as we become more aware of the cost of meat - to our health, to our environments, and to the lives of the beings we consume - many of us wish to imagine the pieces apart from the wholes.
The meat market obliges. It serves up slices disembodied, drained, and reassembled behind plastic, psychically sealed off from the syringe, saw blade, effluent pool, and all the other instruments of so -called husbandry. But of course this is just a cynical illusion.
Imagine, though, that the illusion could come true. Imagine giving in to the human weakness for flesh, but without the growth hormones, the avain flu, the untold millions tortured and gone; imagine the voluptuous tenderness of muscle, finally freed from brutality. You are thinking of cultured meat, or invitro meat, and already it is becoming technologically feasible.
Research on several promising tissue - engineering techniques led by scientists in the Netherlandsands the United States has been accelerating since 2000, when NASA cultured goldfish meat as possible sustenance on space missions. Soon it will be within our means to stop farming animals and start growing meat. Call it carniculture.
With the coming of carniculture (a term found in science fiction literature, although, etymologically speaking, "carneculture" might be more correct), meat and other products can be made safe, nutritious, economical, energy - efficient, and above all, morally defensible.
While carniculture may not change everything in the same way agriculture changed everything, certainly it will transform our economy and our relationship to animals.
Grains once roamed free on untamed plains, tomatoes were wild berries in the Andes. And meat once grew on animals.
by Austin Dacey
Editor's comment: how will PETA respond to this? Meat without animals! It will remove the reason for PETA's existence, since systematic cruelty to animals will have been eliminated. Of course, there will always be isolated incidents of improper treatment of animals, and PETA, as always, can serve to advocate for the animals.
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
The meat market obliges. It serves up slices disembodied, drained, and reassembled behind plastic, psychically sealed off from the syringe, saw blade, effluent pool, and all the other instruments of so -called husbandry. But of course this is just a cynical illusion.
Imagine, though, that the illusion could come true. Imagine giving in to the human weakness for flesh, but without the growth hormones, the avain flu, the untold millions tortured and gone; imagine the voluptuous tenderness of muscle, finally freed from brutality. You are thinking of cultured meat, or invitro meat, and already it is becoming technologically feasible.
Research on several promising tissue - engineering techniques led by scientists in the Netherlandsands the United States has been accelerating since 2000, when NASA cultured goldfish meat as possible sustenance on space missions. Soon it will be within our means to stop farming animals and start growing meat. Call it carniculture.
With the coming of carniculture (a term found in science fiction literature, although, etymologically speaking, "carneculture" might be more correct), meat and other products can be made safe, nutritious, economical, energy - efficient, and above all, morally defensible.
While carniculture may not change everything in the same way agriculture changed everything, certainly it will transform our economy and our relationship to animals.
Grains once roamed free on untamed plains, tomatoes were wild berries in the Andes. And meat once grew on animals.
by Austin Dacey
Editor's comment: how will PETA respond to this? Meat without animals! It will remove the reason for PETA's existence, since systematic cruelty to animals will have been eliminated. Of course, there will always be isolated incidents of improper treatment of animals, and PETA, as always, can serve to advocate for the animals.
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
Social Change and Religious Compatibility
Science and technology, and human knowledge in general, are expanding explosively, in all areas except moral philosophy and religion. Of course religion, by its very nature, resists change: all religions are perfect already, just ask their adherants. Moral philosophy and religion have neither changed nor advanced in hundreds if not thousands of years. Are they compatible with today's world? Are they true?
For example, if you are a christian today, you believe that christianity is the unrivaled source of human goodness, that jesus taught love and compassion better than anyone else, and that the Bible is the divinely revealed absolutely true Word of God.
In Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13-14, we are told to beat our children with a rod for any misbehavior. Exodus 21:15, Mathew 15:4-7, and a couple other passages tell us that if children talk back to their parents, their parents should kill them. We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, or working on sunday.
Is this the way the lord wants us to discipline our children in today's world? In our hearts, I think we all know. And knowing this, it becomes clearer that a book written two thousand years ago, by a large number of different humans, does not provide a code in keeping with the realities our our modern world. In america, we don't beat or kill our children.
Note that these core values occur in both the old and the new testament. Slavery is of course perfectly alright; the old testament gives instructions on how to sell your daughter into sexual slavery, and jesus never uttered a word against the practice. In fact, jesus emphasized that he was not opposed to any old testament law.
The question is: is this the way God wants us to behave today? Is this book perfectly wise? One wonders whether people in the centuries to come will cling to the notion of holy books, believing that god speaks through books. It is a common human tendency. One suspects that over time, this tendency will vanish .
Goethe said : "It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal itself to us, if our hearts do fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, then we will most assuredly not learn it from books, which at best are designed only to give names to our errors."
...couldn't've said it any better myself....
Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
For example, if you are a christian today, you believe that christianity is the unrivaled source of human goodness, that jesus taught love and compassion better than anyone else, and that the Bible is the divinely revealed absolutely true Word of God.
In Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13-14, we are told to beat our children with a rod for any misbehavior. Exodus 21:15, Mathew 15:4-7, and a couple other passages tell us that if children talk back to their parents, their parents should kill them. We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, or working on sunday.
Is this the way the lord wants us to discipline our children in today's world? In our hearts, I think we all know. And knowing this, it becomes clearer that a book written two thousand years ago, by a large number of different humans, does not provide a code in keeping with the realities our our modern world. In america, we don't beat or kill our children.
Note that these core values occur in both the old and the new testament. Slavery is of course perfectly alright; the old testament gives instructions on how to sell your daughter into sexual slavery, and jesus never uttered a word against the practice. In fact, jesus emphasized that he was not opposed to any old testament law.
The question is: is this the way God wants us to behave today? Is this book perfectly wise? One wonders whether people in the centuries to come will cling to the notion of holy books, believing that god speaks through books. It is a common human tendency. One suspects that over time, this tendency will vanish .
Goethe said : "It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal itself to us, if our hearts do fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, then we will most assuredly not learn it from books, which at best are designed only to give names to our errors."
...couldn't've said it any better myself....
Bb
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER.THANKS!
Massive Technological Failure
THE BIG ONE coming up is going to be massive technological failure, so strong that it will undermine faith in science for a generation or more.
Its going to happen because science is expanding at a fast rate ,and over the past few centuries the more science we've had, then - albeit with some time lags - the more powerful technology we've had.
That's where the problem will arise. With each technology, the amplitude of its effects - both positive and negative - gets greater. Automobiles, for example, are an early twentieth century technology (based on eigtheenth and nineteenth century science) that caused a certain amount of increased mobility as well as a certain number of traffic deaths.
The amount on each side was large, but not so large that the negative effects couldn't be accepted. Even when the negative effects came to be understood to include land - based problems or pollution, those have still generally been considered to be manageable. There's little desire to terminate scientific inquiry because of them.
Nuclear power is a mid twentieth century technology (based on early twentieth century science). Its overall power is greator still, and so is the amplitude of its destructive possibilities. Through good chance, its negative use has so far been restricted to the destruction of two cities. Yet even that led to a great wave of generalized, antiscientific feeling not least from among the many people who had always felt that it was impious to interfere with the plans of God.
The Internet is in many ways an even more powerful technology (based on early twentieth century quantum mechanics and mid twentieth century information theory). So far, its problems have been manageable, be they the surveillance of personal activity or viruslike intrusions that interrupt important services. But the internet will get stronger and more widespread, as will the colllablorative and other tools allowing its misuse: the negative effects will be greater still.
Thus the dynamic we face. Science brings magic from the heavens. In the next few decades, clearly, it will get stronger. Yet just as inevitably, some of its negative amplitudes - be it in harming health or security or something as yet unrecognized - will pass an acceptable threshold. When that happens society is unlikely to respond with calm guidelines. Instead, there will be blind fury against everything science has done.
by David Bodanis
Its going to happen because science is expanding at a fast rate ,and over the past few centuries the more science we've had, then - albeit with some time lags - the more powerful technology we've had.
That's where the problem will arise. With each technology, the amplitude of its effects - both positive and negative - gets greater. Automobiles, for example, are an early twentieth century technology (based on eigtheenth and nineteenth century science) that caused a certain amount of increased mobility as well as a certain number of traffic deaths.
The amount on each side was large, but not so large that the negative effects couldn't be accepted. Even when the negative effects came to be understood to include land - based problems or pollution, those have still generally been considered to be manageable. There's little desire to terminate scientific inquiry because of them.
Nuclear power is a mid twentieth century technology (based on early twentieth century science). Its overall power is greator still, and so is the amplitude of its destructive possibilities. Through good chance, its negative use has so far been restricted to the destruction of two cities. Yet even that led to a great wave of generalized, antiscientific feeling not least from among the many people who had always felt that it was impious to interfere with the plans of God.
The Internet is in many ways an even more powerful technology (based on early twentieth century quantum mechanics and mid twentieth century information theory). So far, its problems have been manageable, be they the surveillance of personal activity or viruslike intrusions that interrupt important services. But the internet will get stronger and more widespread, as will the colllablorative and other tools allowing its misuse: the negative effects will be greater still.
Thus the dynamic we face. Science brings magic from the heavens. In the next few decades, clearly, it will get stronger. Yet just as inevitably, some of its negative amplitudes - be it in harming health or security or something as yet unrecognized - will pass an acceptable threshold. When that happens society is unlikely to respond with calm guidelines. Instead, there will be blind fury against everything science has done.
by David Bodanis
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