don't do drugs.

........

I'm off to do a shoot! yay!
And Dylan is helping today so I get to put Dylan Doom in the credits. So good!

I also mentioned wanting to get Daniel Wilson's book How To Survive a Robot Uprising (Tips on Defending Yourself During the Upcoming Rebellion .

Then, the other night, I saw another show on robotics (how in the hell do I keep stumbling across these cool, informative shows? Oh, and to those who say TV is useless - I beg to differ).

On this particular show on robotics, they did mention the future of humanity alongside robots, and they claimed that the humans that wanted to keep up/survive would have to be implemented with artificial parts, something the futurists like to call "transhumanism" - the mixture of biology and machinery.

Some of this is already done, with pacemakers and artificial limbs, and other parts of the body, but what the program was suggesting is much more drastic implementations, such as to the brain, involving silicon chips (such as the infamous RFID chips) and so forth.

Ok, I thought. So it boils down to adding robotic aspects to ourselves in order to best the technology - being like them, but also still having humanity. This is the answer! I thought.

But then today I saw an extremely disturbing episode of the sci-fi show Outer Limits.

Mind you, it is science FICTION.

And it was made in 1997.

But the fact is, it was the best damn episode of Outer Limits I had ever seen. Why?

The episode is called "Stream of Consciousness", and, in a nutshell, humanity is living within a futuristic society where everyone has implements on the side of their heads which interact with their brain in order to acquire all human data instantly, instead of having to read it/learn it.

The main character, however, is a human that had "brain damage" (he doesn't appear less intelligent) - so he wasn't able to have the implant, since he was very young.

But the disturbing part came when the "data stream" that all humans subscribed to started to give random humans a "virus" that caused information to be sought after/downloaded too fast for the brain to process - eventually killing the person.

So finally, the guy without the head implant has to go and find a written book that the data stream/computer had neglected to destroy (although it had neglected to destroy this copy) - in order to have his friend, a girl with an implant, read the book and spread the shutdown code to the whole system.

The problem was that, once all entwined together with this data stream, the stream itself was like a mass consciousness to all the people, and none of them would willfully destroy it (themselves!) Wow.

Basically, the question is this - if humans merge with technology as the transhumanists desire, would we doom ourselves to being vulnerable to something like a computer virus killing us?

A disturbing thought.

I'm just going to buy that fucking book, already.

Who is responsible?

It is one of a man who makes hasty, spur-of-the-moment decisions, based on nothing more than a gut instinct, without gathering the proper information upon which to base that decision. Not the qualities or the temperament we need in the next President, who will be facing so many decisions crucial to the future of our country.

An article in today’s New York Times goes into the details of how and why Gov. Palin was chosen, and how the incomplete, or better said, non-existent vetting process now has the McCain people scrambling to try and cover their tracks.

It seems that up until the middle of last week Sen. McCain wanted either Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge for his VP nominee. But there, he ran into a problem. From the NYT:

“But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.”

So what did the “maverick” do? The man who makes it a point to tell us how he goes against his own party when necessary? He caved, and nominated a person acceptable to those elements of the Republican Party he once called “agents of intolerance.”

McCain then had his first face-to-face interview with Palin on Thursday and immediately offered her the job, after which his advisers claimed that she had been “thoroughly vetted.” Well I guess that depends on your definition of thorough.

More from the Times:

“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said.

Now the McCain campaign people are in Alaska checking on Palin and her background, after all the furor over her past record as Mayor and Governor has erupted. I’m no political consultant, but it seems a bit bass-ackwards to me.

In the parlance of the dice tables that Sen. McCain has been known to frequent in Las Vegas casinos, Johnny, as any experienced gambler knows, sometimes you roll a winner, and sometimes you crap out. Better luck on your next throw. I’m just glad your gamble came as candidate McCain and not as President McCain.

P.S. Starting today there is a zero tolerance policy on comments regarding Gov. Palin’s family. That subject is now off limits, let’s stick to relevant issues, please.

After a couple of hours secret spotting we began to head back to our cars since we took the long walk. As we are walking down the road I see a car bouncing down the road and finally fly into the ditch. Upon which we hear a thud. We all drove down to where the car was at. The car was smoking and the front end was smashed in. A guy had exited the vehicle and he seemed high/drunk at least. We asked him if he was alright and if there was anyone else in the car. He never really made any coherent responses. He then began to run off not very fast mind you and swaying as he "ran". Mark Jones called the popoes, and they arrived in approximately 2 minutes. 2 patrol cars asked where did he go and flew off. 5 minutes later they returned and had him in the car with them. They took a name and we left. Overall, this was definitely one of the most memorable times we had gone however, there have plenty of memories prior in which we had made.

PeACe

daneK

Modesto man tries to amputate own arm

Police say a man tried to cut off his own arm at a restaurant in Modesto, Calif., because he thought he had injected air into a vein while shooting cocaine and feared he would die unless he took drastic action.

Authorities say 33-year-old Michael Lasiter rushed into the Denny's restaurant late Friday and started stabbing himself in one arm with a butter knife he grabbed from a table.

i'm sorry that my blog has become an obama news center.  i just love him, michelle, joe and my fellow democrats.  crazy, right?  i promise i'll go back to posting random interesting things.  i promise, i promise.

First off, let me just say that I have absolutely no intentions of quoting extensively from the address. I will, rather, use exactly one short paragraph and one short sentence to illustrate the twofold point I want to make about this speech, to whit:

1. While Obama may have intended his speech to project the image of a man interested in the self-sufficiency of the American populace, the irrepressible reality is that he is as stereotypical a Democrat as you are likely to encounter; and

2. Whether it is sincerely held or deliberately feigned, the undeniable mantle of messianism (or maybe, more accurately, antimessianism) with which the campaign has chosen to garb their candidate can serve no other purpose than to desperately fend off any meaningful scrutiny of the utter dearth of accomplishment that heads up the ticket.

Let's just take these two in order, shall we?

Same Old, Same Old

I could go into a lot of detail here, but it's both unnecessary and undesirable. I have, as it happens, one paragraph that blows the mantra of "Change!" out of the water:

Ours -- ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

So you say he's going to enable you? Fine. He's just going to have government there to do "that which we cannot"? Sounds all nice and Federalistic to me - heck, if you reworded it a little, I think you could attribute that sentiment to Ron Paul and get away with it. The list even brings up the first obvious thing we need government to do, collective defense. Great! I'm all ready to hop on this crazy train. Let's see what else is on the list - I expect next will be regulating interstate commerce, currency, etc. "Provide every child a decent education?" Huh? "Keep our water clean and our toys safe?" Pardon? "Invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology?" Uh-oh.

That went downhill fast, eh? If you don't think so, then you should probably navigate away from this post right now before I do something extreme like call you and all other Obama maniacs raging lunatic idiots. For the rest of you, let's take a look at what's wrong in this picture.

The last time I checked, on a fundamental level education is not the responsibility of the Federal government - at any rate, if it is my home state of New Hampshire has been embroiled in a school funding debate that has been a massive waste of everyone's time for the last 10 years. The same goes for the water supplies around the country - they are local or state affairs, predominantly. Yes, there is a Federal EPA and it has its piece to say about how things happen, but they are not implementers. At best they're eco-terroristspolice who swoop in to tell people that "they're doing it wrong," and then swoop away after levying a fine. Roads and such similar infrastructure are also not, nor have they traditionally been, the Federal government's responsibility, and last I checked there's still good roads all around me. And science? I don't want to get too deep into this, because I'm risking a rant of truly epic proportions, so let me just offer a single thought: On the balance of human history, how often have the true groundbreakers, pioneers, and explorers of science been on a government dole?

In the end, though Obama seems to paint a pretty picture of a rejuvenation of American ability and individual accomplishment, he is hampered by a view of government as parent that renders any promise or aspiration he offers to the contrary completely impotent.

The Cult of Barry

I don't really care that much about the pseudo-religious fervor that seems to dominate the minds of Obama supporters. I'll be honest, I find it hilarious, in the same way that I find old footage of women screaming and hurling their lingerie at Elvis or the Beatles - or a drunk monkey. Basically, as long as they're not rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem as a fitting domicile for the guy, I don't feel overly threatened.

The one real problem with Obama being a quasi-messiah is that it makes people less inclined to look at him with an appropriately critical eye. Where there a critical eye in play, then the following line would be both seen as both telling and concerning:

If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

Last time I checked, the Republican criticism of Obama had nothing to do with either "temperament" or "judgment," but rather about experience. I'm not arguing that temperament and judgment are not important aspects of a presidential candidate's character, simply that to begin talking about the debate in such a way is to quite blatantly attempt a shift away from the actual focus - a focus that is in no way helpful to the Obama campaign. It's not a masterful maneuver, except that it exploits the aforementioned pseudo-messianism that swirls around the person of Obama to make it work. Were he anybody else, the ruse would fail.

So, there you have it. I don't know that I would say that there is some core of triple-distilled evil in the heart of the speech and the speechmaker. Nevertheless, I think that there is at least one malum seminale visible in this affair - viz., that somehow it speaks to a mindset that, shallow though it be, might actually propel Obama into the presidency.

Who cares why she was blocked from Facebook. What I want to know is:

Who in their right mind would name their child Yoda in the first place?!

Hiroko Yoda says she made several attempts to sign up to the popular social networking site but her applications were always met with an error message.

The Japanese author suspected that her distinctive surname – which she shares with the wise, green Jedi Master of the Star Wars film series – may be at the root of her problem.

Her suspicions were confirmed when her attempts to sign up using other anglicised versions of her surname, including Youda and Yohda, proved successful.

After contacting Facebook she claims she was told that Yoda had been placed on a name blacklist because so many members pretended to be the fictional three-fingered seer. The website only allows people to join under their real names. <MORE>

HOSCHTON, Ga. (AP) -- This small northeastern Georgia town's population boom is frightening. In a bid to break a world record for scarecrows and scare up some fun for the fall season, thousands of straw-stuffed newcomers are creeping across town.

There's a scuba diver, the Georgia Bulldogs football team and - of course - the cast of the Wizard of Oz. Even likenesses of Jesus and Elvis popped up.

I just really didn't like it.

About two weeks ago, Basil (the Cat) was rattling away excitedly near the front door (and our piles of shoes). I moved shoes away and her away to discover that she was beating on a tiny little snake. She was positively whaling on the the little thing, and those of you who have cats can imagine... cat's can swat several times a second with their paws when they get upset.

I got her in my arms and handed the wriggling mass of fury to Bekah, while I tried to capture the snake. It escaped under the battery compartment, not to be seen again... we thought. Basil camped out most of the night in the area, looking to finish the job. We hoped that she would have scared it back outside at least.

Last week, it came back. We came into our house, and Basil was pouncing around the shoes near the door again. This time, she got the snake into her little mouth and went trotting across the house with it, dropping it under the table. I suppose that she had been playing with it.

I got her away enough to grab the little snake behind the head, and I took it outside and across the pasture to the forest there and released it. It didn't seem too healthy, but at least it wasn't in the house.

End of The Story of Snake Number One.

The Story of Snake Number Two:

Well, three really.

On Sunday morning we went down into the Catskills to visit some friends (thanks, friends!). We returned last night, pretty much went right to bed. This morning, Bekah made a little exasperated sound and said "oh, there's a bitten-in-half snake in a pile of puke and blood all over the floor".

Yep. Pretty nasty. This was about 2-ft long, somewhat chewed up, and of course, on our nice new hand-made Mexican wool rug. Cats just can't puke or make messes on the tile or hardwood floor -- it's gotta be on the rug.

Bekah cleaned up the floor and I took the rug out to wash with some of the collected rainwater. Yuck.

Sure, it's a pretty badass thing for a house-cat to do, but I mean, that's nasty!

I'm reading this book about "alternative houses" and it talks about the house as a skin between us and nature. I think our skin is a bit too thin.

I’m back. I thought a little bit more about this unconditional love stuff, and I have to say that I still don’t believe in it.

Even in family ties, I don’t believe in it…Mostly because I have had a family member or two say they would disown me and never talk to me again for whatever reason that they list. Who’s to say I even want their acknowledgement anyway?

We live in a world were nothing but conditions and steps rule, and you can’t do anything without following the conditions and steps. If you don’t, you don’t get what you want, or the things you may need.

In my school, you have to have a pass for everything you do; however….Teachers are not allowed to give out passes…It makes no sense!

In love, you need to have guidelines…You can’t do this, you can only do that, and if you were to do whatever, he/she would leave you in the dust, never to care for you again.

Let’s face it, if someone loves you, and you do something, like…cheating on them..they turn their love to hate, and no longer want you. If they want you, you are a very lucky person and need to stop abusing them that way…

Either way, nothing is unconditional….Not love, friendship, religion, life, or items in a grocery store.

Welcome to the world of selfish population.

--Keri Tomlin

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! SEE FOR YOURSELF!

It occurred to me recently that there is a great significance to the fact there are only three basic colors, from which all others are derived: red, blue, and yellow. Once I realized this, it was immediately clear to me that these correspond to the Id, Ego, and SuperEgo:

The following is Excerpted from Wikipedia's Color Symbolism article:

Red: Passion, strength, energy, fire, love, sex, excitement, speed, heat, arrogance, ambition, leadership, masculinity, power, danger, gaudiness, blood, war, anger, revolution, radicalism, socialism, communism, aggression, summer, autumn.

Blue: Seas, men, productive (interior) skies, peace, unity, harmony, tranquility, calmness, coolness, confidence, conservatism, water, ice, loyalty, dependability, cleanliness, technology, winter, depression, coldness, idealism, obscenity, tackiness, air, wisdom, royalty, nobility, strength, steadfastness, light, friendliness.

Yellow: not included because the symbolism is not relevant to this post.

If you think about it, the symbolism of Red corresponds to Id, and the symbolism of Blue corresponds to the SuperEgo. The level of compatibility is amazing, actually.

Naturally, the Ego corresponds to the color yellow. Both blue and red, as best demonstrated by mixing paints, are very strong colors, are strong colors, although their strengths achieve different effects. Yellow, on the other hand, is a very weak color, and as such is, like "Ego", suitable for control- that is, working out the finer details of the work, be it a painting, or our own life.

One of the core matters that I've been concerned with, is how to get ourselves (i.e. "Ego") in touch with the SuperEgo. See- Id, Ego, and SuperEgo, are our mind's materialization of the past, present, and future- Id=past, Ego= present, SuperEgo= future. By looking in retrospect, one can appreciate both truths- these three elements are, in my opinion, just three different ways of looking at the same thing. We have the past, present, and future, and from our mind's perception of these, are born desire, control, and direction, which in turn correspond to the respective three. But God exists outside time (depending on "who" God is(!) and so to him they are all one

As I have more or less already said, I'm currently setting aside the face-value dogmatic interpretations of the Bible prevalent in Christianity, to determine what the true meaning is, if only for me. The Bible is referred to as "The Living Word of God", and "living" is the key word here. The Bible is the literary personification of God himself, and should be treated as a person when reading it. I think it's very unfortunate that God's word, which not only is essentially a person, but also one of infinite proportions, has been simplified into such a dogmatic, close-minded interpretation.

To put into proportion the gravity of this unfortunate development, here's a good comparison: "All Mexicans feel compelled to have babies" In the United States, the rate of Mexican babies being born versus Caucasian babies being born is 3 to 1, despite the fact Mexicans are a minority. Such a statistic might justify that stereotype then, but it's still a bit harsh, right? The figure can also lead people on about the relation to the other aspects of Mexicans' lives.

The dogma that Christianity, and other major religions have become, is infinitely worse than the above example, because God is infinite, and thus infinitely more complex. Not only is this insulting to God, but it has produced many misconceptions.

We should try to understand the Bible as we would a person. When getting to know people, there are two key things to consider:

(1) Everyone who knows that person knows them a little bit differently.

(2) The more that we get to know each person, the more that our own understanding of them changes; over time our perception of them is continually clarified, and more beautiful.

When reading the Bible, we should treat it as we would a person, because it is a person, and God himself at that. God does not change, but our perception of him does.

The Id, Ego, and SuperEgo also correspond to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Genesis 1: 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was^[a] on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

In verse 1, God separates the heavens from the other, but IMO, this does not refer to the physical heavens and earth. Those were created in verses 9-10. Christian conspiracy theorists claim that the first creation occurred in verses 1-3, but that Satan and his angels destroyed it, and God recreated it in 7 days (a rush job!), in verses 9-10. I know these claims are just hot-air, but it's interesting that J.R.R. Tolkien materialized (more or less) this theory in the first few chapters of his book The Silmarillion.

Here's the real meaning (IMO): vs1- Time began when God created the first law (as in standard, without which we could not know one thing from another, or ourselves even, it (and we) would all be one big blob without standards.

vs2- It is clarified that everything is just one big blob "without form, and void" notice also that God's Spirit (the Holy Spirit) is hovering over the "blob"- notice the significance in relation to the Id, which is aimless desire.

vs3- "the Father" (or the Ego) began time (and the first law) with the first, and fundamental law, light and dark. Through establishing this standard, God was able to appreciate his work, and this is acknowledged by God, following the creation of light and dark, and in doing so time itself, said it was good.

Throughout the rest of the creation story, God clarifies the previously formless creation, starting with the basic standards of contrast, and with each new standard things become more and more complex; with the increasing complexity and standards, God is able to appreciate his creation more and more- that is why with each standard he says it is good, because the creation is better than it was the day before. The Son, which is referenced in Genesis, and throughout the Old Testament, but not realized (actuality, i.e. incarnation) until the new testament, is the part of God that focuses on the future, and on ideals, expectations, and most of the aspects covered under the symbolism of Blue (above) Through Jesus we can look forward to a future, are given hope- and that is also the purpose of the SuperEgo.

26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all^[b] the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

"Let Us" is key here- it refers to the fact that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- each of these aspects are reflected on us, because we are an image of all of these aspects of God. In other words, the Id, Ego, and SuperEgo are the reflections of God the Holy Spirit, God the Father, and God the Son within us; because God gifted us with his image, we have a past, present, and future; we have desire, direction, and control. We are "Fearfully and Wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14)

Ack!

One of my ex-girlfriends in which I dated for several years began a new job just before I broke up with her a little over 2 years ago?  I don't really remember when. Anyhow, at the point in which we began talking again via myspace only, she had congratulated me on a new job that I had gotten. Also, humorously reminded me I would be working literally next door to her. I did not work at that place very long about 8 months. I found another job soon after leaving that employer. I actually began working full time for another company I had been working for a couple of years for.

There is a church beside the hospital I work at full-time. There is a building that has been being built for several months in front of it. I figured it was part of the church. WRONG. It is the same exact practice my ex-girlfriend works for. They are relocating to here. What are the chances. Seriously, what are the chances?

PeACe

daneK

An amateur veterinarian’s failed attempt to neuter a friend’s schnauzer became a police matter when the owner took the dog in for emergency treatment. MORE

this episode of intervention is beyond disturbing.

allison is a monster. she is a selfish, immature brat.

if any of my siblings would have talked to our parents or each other like that we probably would've gotten our ass beat. hardcore.

had allison been black i HIGHLY doubt the cops would have treated her in such a cordial and passive way; they would've immediately tackled her to the ground for even refusing to speak to them and arrested her.

how privileged is she that for fucking up her life she in return gets to have a luxurious vacation in sunny california.