Re: Whose Ox is Gored?
On Sep 20, 2006, at 9:02 PM, jdiebremse wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
My problem with this particular situation is a serious lack of
evenhandedness shows deepening flaws. For almost two decades I've
watched conservative politicians court and skirt this set of rules -
especially in the South - and more recently listening to my California
mother in-law recount her pastor advocating first Bob Dole and then
the
GwB tickets with strong admonitions to his flock against the other
candidates {with an amazing amount of vitriol towards Kerry}...
On the other hand, there seems to be a much stronger tradition of
Democratic candidates actually campaigning in Churches, than of
Republicans. Of course, these are in historically African-American
Churches, and for whatever reason it doesn't seem to generate much
outrage every four years.
JDG
Sure. Pot calling the kettle black, heh?
Do the ends really justify the means for so-called Conservatives?
As I stated, both situations are worthy of critical review.
In this particular, as I recall, a huge swath of that ONE B-B-B-BILION
PUBLIC DOLLARS went to black churches. Out of, or into, this mulligan
stew of faith-based emotions, gyrating prejudices, and
our-side-can't-be-wrong... came such lovely testaments to brotherly
love as graphic flyers of a black man on his knees to a white man with
messages about gay marriage - just the thing for retrograde southern
demographics whichever color the audience skin!
Karl Rove was humming over that one.
What has changed over the last few decades is the wholesale intermixing
of the tax-free religious machinery with the monster money raising
juggernauts that stalk the landscape now. The scale alone ought to
give one pause. Not content to rig markets, now the monied are fixing
religion firmly to the civic processes directly - to short-circuit the
basic notion of democratic rule. Churches have had a sheltered tax
life under certain constrictions they are ever-more willing to
transgress. They appear just as power-crazed as the political
operatives they champion. Some would call this tax evasion {what's Pat
Robertson worth now, a $ billion?}, while some call it politics. How
about calling it bankrupt morally and fraud prone?
What we see in this Republican-Christian axis is a fine-tuned
demographic slicing machine geared to shave a few points off my
demographic here, add a few more to yours there, playing into their 50%
+1 vote methodology for winning. In fact, I think if Democrats don't
get off their asses soonest, the Republican savants will win again this
fall. Forget actually governing - it's all about winning. And
carrying big sticks. And don't bother us with the facts because our
minds are made up. One wonders just what contextual frame Rove's gay
father puts all this. Supposedly they get along well - belying his own
church propaganda that gay-ness is incompatible with family. That
"moral" leaders are so willing to glad-hand Karl Rove and the tactics
he embodies makes a mockery of rose-tinted claims to superiority these
churches espouse - and those people outside the stained glass see this
clearly for what it is.
We all lose when a minority rules a majority through chicanery and this
hardly makes for a stable structure.
A big wag of the finger at Americans for sitting still for all this so
long.
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
___
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Re: Brin: basic is evil, why it must be eradicated
Although number one, M$oft, could be done with some public pressure - or Apple doing it first - my vote is Four: 4) In order to keep using those textbooks (like my son’s) that still have TRY IT IN BASIC exercises, one reader had a fantastically simple suggestion. A turn-key web site! “For easy to use BASIC, it occurred to me that someone could set up a web site consisting of a single big BASIC window. Use Ajax to connect it to a server running one of the free BASICs to do the computation. Retain the BASIC session between visits using cookies. This isn't too hard, it could be whipped up in a week or two.” My first experience was editing a lunar lander game running in BASIC on a Commodore PET w/cassette tapes for off-line storage. This small beginning lead me to ever greater systems and although I rarely code much beyond CSS anymore it has been an invaluable stepping stone and gave me early insight into this industry. As an under-employed designer I'd be more than happy to begin developing this with a small team. Any takers or interested parties please GOTO [EMAIL PROTECTED] and I can at least coordinate. END - Jonathan Gibson - On Sep 22, 2006, at 8:22 AM, David Brin wrote: Hi brinellers! Glad to see you still in business! I am very sorry to have neglected you in favor of that darned, time-consuming blog. http://www.davidbrin.blogspot.com/ In part because the political issues are so important/urgent right now that I'll grab any influence where I can get it. Of course see news at http://www.davidbrin.com and watch out for my new History Channel show in November. As for the article that just appeared in Salon, whew! Let me append below my "canned response" after receiving HUNDREDS of emails (not including more hundreds that came into Salon & Slashdot!) Thrive all! With cordial regards, David Brin http://www.davidbrin.com = Yes, I got a LOT of mail about the Salon article. and that doesn’t count the letters to both my blog and Salon itself! What shocked me was the degree of passion... no, bilious RAGE that my effrontery provoked. In comparison, mere politics and religion seem to have mild effects! Only a small minority seemed at all interested in even looking at my core idea, which was how to create a nice, comfortable starting point for millions of kids, so they could use their computers to do a little COMPUTING for mild classroom assignments, and so get a taste of this way of looking at the world. Indeed, the tiniest fraction seemed to grasp how valuable it once was (but no longer) for ALL kids to be able to easily type in little illustrative examples at the end of each math or physics chapters. Everyone seemed to think it could still be done. But it cannot. I repeat that. It cannot AND it simply, simply cannot be done. It does no good to preach what languages kids SHOULD have. Most don’t. Period. Three solutions were offered that might plausibly address the problem in a practical way. 1) Somehow persuade Microsoft to care. In which case, with a fingernail’s effort, they could offer micro-implementations of Basic, python, scratch, etc in versions tuned precisely to be usable as classroom and homework demos, with “launchpads” to download expanded versions if the kids’ interest is sparked. 2) Some place with an historical interest in Basic (like Dartmouth) could create a slimmed version, along with maybe a hundred little 12-line programs that illustrate everything from statistics to galilean laws of motion to PONG, and offer this “perfect turnkey download” for text publishers to link to. (BTW, did you know that TrueBasic http://www.truebasic.com/ is still being offered? I didn't know myself until 30 seconds ago. 40 bucks for the dumbed down version. Includes some demo programs, apparently. Sounds like no solution, alas.) 3) Many readers are so enthusiastic for PYTHON... and I admit it seems to be the logical successor to BASIC. It allows simple syntax and direct expression of the algorith in sequential lines of code -- which would be highly compatible with the notion of collaborating with schools and textbook publishers. Indeed, an effort along these lines can be seen at: http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e/ Indeed, Python is so widely available, that the goal might be achieved simply via some kind of DECLARATION... say by a prominent education association... declaring support for a Python-based universal entry-level environment. If well-publicized, that may be all that’s needed for everyone from Microsoft and Apple to textbook publishers to lift their pinkies (a minimal twitch) and make this happen. 4) In order to keep using those textbooks (like my son’s) that still have TRY IT IN BASIC exercises, one reader had a fantastically simple suggestion. A turn-key web site! “For easy to use BASIC, it occurred to me that someone could set up a web site consisting of a single big BASIC window. Use Ajax to connect it to a server running one of
Re: Whose Ox is Gored?
On Sep 23, 2006, at 6:05 AM, jdiebremse wrote: ... With that being said, I don't understand how the pastor can imagine Jesus saying that the State has no right to impose its view of when human life begins on other people, that there "can never be a just law requiring uniformity of behavior on the abortion issue," but that the State has a moral imperative to take other people's property and give it to others. It seems to be that that is getting it exactly backwards - surely if the State can intervene on behalf of property it can intervene on human life. ... JDG Would that be an equation of property to life, then? - Jonathan - ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Fables of the Deconstruction
Friends, Lurkers, misguided Conservatives,
This Oregon boy lived and loved New Orleans for all it's aging
trollops, dirt-poor Gospel huggers and Byzantine graft. The bad dreams
are ebbing, at last, but I've woken many nights sweating and anxious
with trapped/drowning dreams of retreating to dark attics with water
rising and no way out for my wee family.
Watching our "Devil Take The Hindmost" neoFEMA leave yet more po' folk
"Left Behinders" stuck in Houston bus terminals & streets brings all
this into focus - and adds an exclamation point to the stories below.
Now, the cold calculated {dare we call it sociopathic?} reality this
mercenary administration exudes is brilliantly illuminated in a few
articles and news stories you won't find on CNN, but continue to seep
out of the proto Paid Avoidance Zone {Shockwave Rider anyone?}. If
ever there was question about the relevance of GwB's war of choice
affecting us here and now in realtime, here it is. Think of it:
Houston, energy capital of the US, the most-feared superpower in the
world, has run out of gas.
These problems are systemic.
Transcripts and streaming details can be found here for Friday, Sept
23, 2005 show:
http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20050923
Naomi "no logo" Klein's related article describes Catastrophe
Capitalism and the naked merging of business and government while
excluding the dispossessed. Remember the armed guards, endless
frisking and curfews around evacuation camps as compared to the Baton
Rouge embrace of commercial interests in daily planning sessions.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/klein
The metal fist dispenses with velvet gloves in Jeremy Scahill's scary
plumbing the awfulness of overwhelming muscle that New "Might Makes
Property Rights" Orleans has become and details the blatant lawlessness
the wealthy exhibit under the guise of re-engineering the social strata
of one of America's oldest cultures.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/scahill
And finally Pratap Chatterjee's Corpwatch analysis describes how the
very same people who failed to reconstruct Iraq {at great off-ledger
expense} are now geared up for "rebuilding" the Gulf Coast. Failed
principles and awful management could be made fuzzy and distant in
Iraq, but they are now applied domestically.
When will RICO be applied?
http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12647
- Jonathan Gibson -
www.formandfunction.com/word
On Sep 22, 2005, at 9:47 PM, Dave Land wrote:
Folks,
Don't know if you've seen the latest ad from MoveOn.org, but it's very
well done.
https://political.moveon.org/donate/nosafer-QT.html
Dave
Thanks, I'd heard rumbles of this effort but too busy to chase it down.
___
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Re: Action Alert: Ensure Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims!
Mr Bos,
Apologies up front everyone for my surly nature, but I'm in a foul mood
these days. To coin a term w/o casting aspersions, I do not suffer
fools gladly.
Politics is too important to be left to politicians - else we are ruled
by our lessors. What could be more "political" than GwB removing wage
standards for the poorest people blown over and flooded out? This
Grover Norquest initiated dollar-vacuum is nothing but a valentine for
the corporate bottom line... exemplified by the no-bid contracts this
administration extends to their friends {but that's not political,
r-i-g-h-t}.
Answer this: would our Dear Leader decree executives take pay cuts?
Hmmm?
On Sep 30, 2005, at 11:41 PM, Matthew and Julie Bos wrote:
On 9/30/05 10:16 AM, "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Today I wrote a letter urging my member of Congress to sign on
to legislation reinstating the wage protections enshrined in the
Davis-Bacon Act. Two hundred representatives and 30 senators
have already signed on. These numbers are encouraging, but they
are not enough. Please join me by calling on your member of
Congress to support the "Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act."
The people of the Gulf Coast are counting on us.
Why is it so important to keep this piece of racist depression-era
crap on
the books? Enshrined? Don't make me puke. Thanks for taking the
party
line and avoiding any rational thought on this issue.
Excuse me, but what about this Davis Bacon wage act is racist?
Just what is your definition of racism?
The American middle class didn't grow large until wage/union rules were
enacted under the New Deal. In case you haven't paid attention there
are a heck-o-lot more po' white folk in America than po' black folk
affected by this law - and all of them need to work.
H-e-l-l-o, consumer confidence at 15-yr low now and societal leadership
is rudderless.
Have you ever lived in New Orleans? How about Europe? Try comparing
and contrasting the difference in living in these two places and it
becomes all-too clear what Truman's Marshall Plan did for a broken WWII
Europe... full medical, six-week paid vacations, strong union laws,
proportional democracy rather than winner-takes-all... -vs- what the
rump Hoover Republicans {who had brought us the Great Depression} did
to hold off such protections here in America - and what Busheviks have
done these last few years to obscure these benefits further. It's only
since Reagan-era dismantling of what little protections FDR did bring
about that we've seen a steady decline in the 50's Cleaver model
one-income household ... until now two parents working is the NORM as
we try to maintain the fiction we are still The Greatest Nation and it
can't be improved: family values, really?
Did you dismiss {or even notice} that last month the US saw another 1.1
million people added to the poor house and in this same week the
minimum wage {not even a Mr Cleaver living wage} celebrated 8 years w/o
change? BTW - that's four years of poverty increases in a row for GwB
policies = 8 million people. Can your wage-cut respond to the
ever-increasing numbers of citizens here who don't have health
insurance anymore - even as America pays more than any other per
capita?
Damn right it's political - so what!?! It's how we resolve issues.
I'm a self-employed software entrepreneur {when we have a functional
economy} and I am all-too aware of what a molasses-factor Europe's
full-employment approach can do to productivity, but overall their
methods are proving a happy scared-less and satisfied populace is
actually better than the industrial feudalism Banana Republicans drive
us towards.
Here, start educating yourself:
http://www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/
Global+Competitiveness+Programme%5CGlobal+Competitiveness+Report
... and this begs the question, if "terrorists" hate us for our freedom
and way of life, then why aren't they attacking Finland?
How does reducing wages on the hardest hit get them rebuilding lives
faster?
After all the volunteers go home, and they will, you will still have
two to
three years of rebuilding to do. How are you going to get all the
skilled
workers down there? I'm sure IBEW workers from NYC are just jumping
at the
chance to earn 9 bucks an hour. Do you have any kind of evidence of
these
5.15 jobs? An ad in the paper to prove me wrong?
Your comparing apples and oranges as each discipline and sector of the
building process has it's own wage standards and quality regiments.
But, OK, how about those news reports of flatbeds full of mexican
workers driving by black evacuees to do cleanup work around hotels that
_somehow_ couldn't be used to house evacuees? What? Oh, sorry, those
stories don't make it to Fox News, so you might not have looked around
and seen the suffering.
Speak no Evil, See no Evil, Hear no Evil...
This isn't about wages an
Re: Action Alert: Ensure Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims!
Mathew,
Given the topics covered I'm going on my merry way knowing you disputed
very little of what I put forth. As I find my morning unexpectedly
free of responsibility I can turn some attention to this and I'll
respond to what you deemed worthy.
On Oct 2, 2005, at 11:22 AM, Matthew and Julie Bos wrote:
On 10/2/05 2:46 AM, "Gibson Jonathan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Excuse me, but what about this Davis Bacon wage act is racist?
Just what is your definition of racism?
The American middle class didn't grow large until wage/union rules
were
enacted under the New Deal. In case you haven't paid attention there
are a heck-o-lot more po' white folk in America than po' black folk
affected by this law - and all of them need to work.
Why don't you ask the people who live in the areas affected in the
last LA
riots? You could have helped out a lot of unemployed people out by
paying
them 8 bucks an hour to learn how to frame a wall or run wire. They
might
even learn a trade. Making people pay somebody 23 bucks to figure out
if he
can use a hammer doesn't make much sense either.
Are you just trying to change the subject?
Paying those people to learn a craft would have ben a nice thing - but
Bush Sr wasn't so concerned about job training, was he? His wife's
recent comments about black refugees having it so much better in the
Houston Astrodome than leaving behind their families and community in a
catastrophe is but another exclamation point on the topic.
"The hand that rocks the cradle..."
A Page From The Republican Book Of Virtues:
Yeah, learn something... as in Minister w/o Portfolio Bennet should
have said EDUCATION last week where he said ABORTION, thusly:
"...But, I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce
crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could EDUCATE
every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."
The truth is there is more white crime than black, but blacks ARE
sentenced much more often and harshly than whites for the SAME crimes
for lots of reasons I don't need to go into here - or do I?
Maybe 23 dollars an hour is a living wage our so-called Free Market
advocates are unwilling to allow. The hidden hand of the market works
in wondrous ways, heh?
H-e-l-l-o, consumer confidence at 15-yr low now and societal
leadership
is rudderless.
I don't look to Government for societal leadership. And thanks for the
useless factiod.
Well, I don't expect much out of this bunch either.
As a weather vane of political thinking it IS instructive and the
closest thing Consumer/Citizen {I get them so-o-o confused around
Bushies} can do to vote No Confidence until elections roll around.
As the collective embodiment of America - assuming a good clear day
with the precepts of our Constitution and Bill of Rights in mind - our
government IS us. For good and often bad.
You came on strong all full of opinion, so I don't mind rolling up my
sleeves here and entering this swinging. I call a spade a spade when
I
see it, and sorry, you are wrong on a number of fronts. You appear
ready to drag America back to some Dickens' world of Have Nots -v-
Have
Lots, as though the work of the Greatest Generation should be
dismantled as the oldest of them watch. There's a way to show honor
to
those who "saved the world" from Nazi's, heh?
Have Republicans no shame?
I have never let this so-called conservative noise-making go
unanswered
when I'm out and about and I see no reason to let such sociopathic
philosophy spread further unchecked. Please reconsider your stance
and
evaluate the RESULTANTS of what you see around you instead of the
slogans people SAY - we may have more common ground than first
appearance.
You are nothing more than slogan. Do a five minute google search on
the
history of DBA and how it came into existence. If I want to hear more
useless crap I will read Free Republic or Democratic Underground.
Slogans... hmmm. The pot calling the kettle black here. Still beating
your wife?
I worked these thoughts up myself by using a study of history, my own
experience and rubbing brain cells together. Your the one with
flippant short non-answers on this. Care to elaborate?
BTW - I only peer into those Left & Right public stoning jamborees on
occasion and unlike the hyperbole you try painting me with I have facts
behind conviction and not just hot air.
We need more skilled labor in this country, but I don't know the best
way to
get it. We need to make things in this country again, and keep the
knowledge here. It takes generations to build up the knowledge base
required for innovation and leadership. We are gladly pissing it away
for
some reason. There is more than enough blame to go around.
Let me guess: you're one of those
'pull-yersel
Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples
As for the pilots and training...
It's gets kinda thick, but if you can spell PATSY your journey has
already begun.
As I understand from a conservative investigator {who I think is} named
Lomas {apologies as my memory is fuzzy here, but I see him on C-SPAN
several times a year} he's located next to CenCom with personal ties to
the officer corps nearby - as well as Sander Hicks "The Big Wedding" -
it appears Atta was a clandestine drug-runner/intel-operator trained at
a former MILSPEC airbase run out of Florida by ex-intelligence
officers. What was once the Marines 59th Airborne division base is now
the small municipal airfield in Venice, FL, and lo-o-o-ong rumored to
be a drug import point due to the intel operations that were ostensibly
run out of it.
ASIDE: This field was 'privatized' with one main building sold to an
operative named James Bath & biz partner Salim bin Laden {ring a bell?}
where Bath ran his "law offices" out of. This was long before both of
these figures go on to invest in a failing little oil company called
Arbusto Oil ... benefiting a certain GwB as he built up a resume that
allows him to now hunker down with the rest of the Republican Guard
dead-enders in DC.
So, when Atta needed training on the bigger planes he went to school of
course, but would anyone venture a guess where this school was located?
By an AMAZING co-inky-dink this flight school is the
_very_same_building_ that James Bath and Salim bin Laden previously
owned.
[insert: hair-raising backside of neck effect]
I've known a number of right-wing so-called Conservatives and so-called
Republicans who took absolute delight digging into Clinton shadows and
unearthing CIA networks running drugs and arms in-out of Mena, Arkansas
- but who have been UTTERLY disinterested in exploring where those
links lead to and who set them up LONG before those youngish Little
Rock politicians pushed Poppy Bush out of the White House. This
Terrorism-era counterpunch to the end of the Cold War is perfectly
illustrated by the PNAC NeoCon screed calling for a New Pearl Harbour
to both rally their faithful and cow critiques by short-circuiting
logical thinking with blunt emotional trauma. It would appear to this
writer that our bloated Irresistible Military Force needs an Immovable
Enemy Object to bill mega-PO's against. Is it OK yet to mention GwB's
g'pappy, a certain Prescott Bush, was censured by Congress for NAZI
financing & supply {both sides} during WWII? Just wondering.
The lies are unravelling with every scandal laying bare the craven
crass cruelty of a House, Senate, Justice and White House all run by
so-called Republican politicos who were sore losers in the 90's and
poor winners here in the XXIst.
Loyalty is a two-edged sword and as awareness grows of this betrayal I
fear for the wholeness of this country. As cynical as all this can
make one, I remain hopeful. Let me tell you about my Rapture-Ready
religious neighbor. This man with a W bumper-sticker surprised me by
offering to lend {unbidden} his own DVD's on the topic of controlled
demolition of WTC on 911 - after he saw me display my anti-Iraq
occupation paintings in the kitchen window {BTW available on tees and
mugs, http://www.cafepress.com/agit-pop}. Like the three blind men, we
are all feeling different aspects of this Elephant in the room and our
descriptions may not initially match, but still seem to describe the
same underlaying truths.
Some things to h{URL} at you as the last posting I did {via Seeberger}
broke the longer URL link-strings, here are a few jumps to review. If
you have trouble clicking, just copy the multi-line string of text and
paste that into your browser Location field:
911 Myth & Reality w/Rev. David Ray Gritffith via Guns and Butter {pts
1 & 2, hour long each}
http://157.22.130.4:80//data/20060405-Wed1300.mp3
http://157.22.130.4:80//data/20060412-Wed1300.mp3
This is a recent interview.
911 Research & "NIST opportunities"
www.wtc7.net {DVD just released last night}
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html
{BTW - the NIST gov-response engineering report on WTC was secretly
written by Chertoff's cousin - no conflict there, heh?}
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime {large movie downloads available}
http://www.911podcasts.com/display.php?
cat=9997&med=0&ord=Name&strt=0&vid=92&epi=0&typ=0
The Big Wedding {interview rebroadcast just last week} via Guns and
Butter
http://www.kpfa.org/cgi-bin/gen-mpegurl.m3u?
server=157.22.130.4&port=80&file=dummy.m3u&mount=/data/20060621-
Wed1300.mp3
Loose Change is often cited, and well crafted, but ultimately flawed
movie to the point of tarnishing the real jewels within. It's worth
watching, but realize it's become a handy cudgel for the debunkers to
distract from the truths within.
http://www.loosechange911.com/ {complete movie downloadable}
http://911research.wtc7.ne
Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples
Lucky you!
I have too much free time just now and can reply at length, and will.
On Jun 28, 2006, at 11:18 AM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
I'm with Dan on this one (!). That a fully-loaded 737 can cause, after
impact, buildings to fall down is not even remotely shocking.
This is an aircraft that carries enough jet fuel to cover a football
field to the depth of one foot with highly combustible fluid (do the
math; check me -- this is what I recall from working out the figs
myself about four years ago). What's amazing, in this light, is that
the buildings didn't fall before they did.
I'll call your bull-shite and raise you a sobering reality check.
I suggest you follow the writings/speeches of one Kevin Ryan, formerly
of Underwriters Labs who did the testing first on original steel 40
years ago and then the debris brought them by our betters in GovCo.
Not only was the building overbuilt - it one industry awrds at the time
for superior construction by the structural engineer, John Skilling.
To the point, this steel was simply NOT heated to the point of
deformity. Most of this fuel was ejected out the other side of WTC2,
yet it fell first!?!
What's more, the paint samples provided to prove this case simply could
not do so: they did not even make 500° - which is consistent with the
paper and furniture burning scenarios that had nearly burned themselves
out when the buildings collapsed. In fact, firemen who had climbed all
those stairs had even called down saying they could easily get them
{can't recall which building this was} under control! Steel buildings
have raged with larger infernos and burned 24 hours - yet no
collapse... again, this is apparently the ONLY time in recorded history
such a fire-collapse occurred.
One by one, this Kevin Ryan began to see rationale after hypothesis
after implausible assertions promulgated only to fall over in the light
of scientific investigation. To the point where John Skilling, the
structural engineer who designed this building, was demoted to
"anonymous" commentor on how the structure should not have fallen -
hardly the respect, or authority, one should afford such a prominant
figure in this project. Mr Ryan was fired from his leadership position
at safety-centric Underwriters Labs for simply raising questions about
the anomalies.
Here's the internal memo he sent to the CEO and got him fired:
http://www.rense.com/general59/ul.htm
Here's an hour long interview that highlights some interesting events
and results:
http://www.kpfa.org/cgi-bin/gen-mpegurl.m3u?
server=157.22.130.4&port=80&file=dummy.m3u&mount=/data/20060614-
Wed1300.mp3
As to the "thermate" idea: Sorry. Bullshit. If there were explosives
in the WTC, they were probably there illicitly, not planted as part of
a larger plot. Recall these were buildings housing hundreds of
businesses, not all of them necessarily wholly legit. (And, frankly,
the words of "a BYU scientist" are not enough to sway me. It was "a
BYU scientist" who claimed cold fusion was a reality back in the 80s.)
And even if there were explosives strapped to the structure, so what?
All that would show is that the conspiracy *among the Islamic
fundamentalists* was well-developed, to the point they were willing to
plant charges to ensure destruction. We knew they were
well-coordinated already. So what's the rhetorical point?
(Sorry, Rob.)
Excuse me while your statement peaks the ridicul-o-meter - a device to
measure things of a ridiculous nature. I understand the resistance to
face these facts, but sticking ones' head in the sand leaves one's
posterior rather exposed.
Pray tell, just how would *islamic terrorists* get routine access for
the extended periods needed to plant such charges? Did these crafty
fanatics really orchestrate the unusual and multi-week safety "drills"
that emptied out sections of the buildings leading up to the event?
Are you claiming that multiple business fronts were there to allow
access to detonators and these offices were neatly spaced such that
these explosions left steel beams no longer than 30ft - just the size
to be relatively quickly carted off by long-haul rigs? And somehow the
ownership, management, finances of these business could then not be
traced by this NSA-centric administration? Or, maybe you would be less
certain and downright uncomfortable knowing GwB's cousin was running
the security of those buildings - a tenure that ended days before this
event occurred?
Granted, this Brin-list is drawn from people with a stronger than usual
interest in fantastic leaps of imagination, but it appears we are
actually firmly in the reality-based community and hold scientific
rigor with more value than other quarters. If your not comfy with
BYU-centric scientists, perhaps a wider net of logical, questioning,
intelligent minds from the 911 Scholars for Truth might not be as
dismiss
Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples
Sigh,
Sharpen your pencil Warren and follow along as best you can.
On Jun 28, 2006, at 11:33 AM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
Hyperbole, lots thereof -- but where are the facts, the figures, etc.?
Just one example:
"Molten steel unearthed six months after the collapse displays energy
levels simple kinetic forces cannot foster."
Quantify, please.
Free-falling from WTC heights
The towers were 1350 and 1360 feet tall. So let's start by using our
trusty free-fall equation to see how long it should take an object to
free-fall from the towers' former height.
Distance = 1/2 x Gravity x Time(squared)
or
Time(squared) = (2 x Distance) / Gravity
Time(squared) = 2710 / 32 = 84.7
Time = 9.2
So our equation tells us that it will take 9.2 seconds to free-fall to
the ground from the towers' former height. Using the simple equation,
V = GT, we can see that at 9.2 seconds, in order to reach the ground in
9.2 seconds, the free-falling object's velocity must be about 295
ft/sec, which is just over 200 mph.
But that can only occur in a vacuum.
Did the floors below use pixie-dust to magically slide out of the way
of the ones above them, taking internal sea-level air resistance within
them for a joy ride? BTW - leaving a residue of space-vacuum so as not
to impede the collapsing upper stories. Since the overbuilt steel
structures that had held for almost 40 years were suddenly NO {as in
none, nil, nada} impediment we can only assume the internal structure
was abnormally affected throughout the building.
On Jun 27, 2006, at 4:09 PM, Robert Seeberger wrote:
On the behalf of Mr Gibson:
Greetings,
Embrace the horror. Face our fears.
[bla bla bla]
Wonderfully insightful {incite-full?} commentary, a tactic which adds
so-o-o much to a conversation one doesn't wish to have. Why bother
responding to me at all?
Where are your figures to back up the grand sweeps of certainty you
dispense?
Where's the money-quote from the designer - or even original owners -
that stated this was a disposable building & their biz plan anticipated
the investment would be past it's shelf-life by the beginning of this
millennia?
Neener-neener,
- Jonathan Gibson -
www.formandfunction.com/word
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Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples
Sigh. I'm not your walking stick just because you can't walk on your own to the school. Start doing your own hard work. You don't even answer direct questions. Do you think I like being right about this? On Jun 28, 2006, at 1:17 PM, Warren Ockrassa wrote: Okay -- so where are the "energy levels simple kinetic forces cannot foster"? And where are these "molten steel" artifacts you lay claim to? And can you show that the "molten steel" wasn't due to the fire's heat? You've stacked a lot of numbers, which is good -- but you haven't really shown anything. If you have a point, try to get to it. Here's molten steel pulled out early-on 9/27/01. http://www.911blogger.com/files/images/Molten-metal-Sillechia_fixed.jpg I regret I can't find the URL for one with construction workers in front of red pools deeper down and later. It's on a drive somewhere, but out of reach just now. Look at this construction photo and tell all of us just how all that offers less resistance than butter the entire length down: http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/9-11%20Picture6.jpg "Of the more than 170 areas examined on 16 perimeter column panels, only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250ºC… Only two core column specimens had sufficient paint remaining to make such an analysis, and their temperatures did not reach 250 ºC. ... Using metallographic analysis, NIST determined that there was no evidence that any of the samples had reached temperatures above 600 ºC" - NIST, 2005, pp. 176-177 Here's what a steel frame modern structural failure looks like, every time until this most-special day of Coincidences Grande. http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7_files/image010.jpg It's only under controlled demolition that symmetry occurs. Only. Ever. Where's the money-quote from the designer - or even original owners - that stated this was a disposable building & their biz plan anticipated the investment would be past it's shelf-life by the beginning of this millennia? Have you paid no attention at all to architectural design in the last half century? Pick up a magazine on the topic. I'll not burden myself with trying to educate you further. Warren, we haven't met, but I feel sure I've seen your silhouette shaking fists at yungin's from the porch. If you did know me you would have known I sent away for my college transcripts from the Tulane School of Architecture just yesterday. LoL. If you want to talk about then life-cycle of suburban housing, well... I was complaining about that fact when I was in high school. Commercial grade skyscrapers are a whole order of magnitude upgrade over the razors+blades model the contractor-builder offers. You've got yourself a big mouth, but it don't seem to really say much. Follow the links I've traced and maybe you'll have something to say next time. - Jonathan - www.formandfunction.com/word ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples
On Jun 28, 2006, at 10:55 PM, Charlie Bell wrote: On 29/06/2006, at 4:06 AM, Dave Land wrote: Fuel that, when burning, generates less than 800 degrees C, about a third of the temperature needed to melt the steel used in the WTC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phase_diag_iron_carbon- color_temp.png You will see that iron undergoes a phase change at 600C, becoming soft and pliable. It is this phase change that allows farriers and swordsmiths to shape iron in a controlled manner. Steel changes from the solid metal it is at room temperature, to a material with a consistency and structural integrity about the same as well-chewed gum. And, of course, it doesn't matter how much fuel there was. They could have FILLED every floor of building with a couple of feet of Jet A and replaced the air with pure oxygen, and it still couldn't possibly burn hot enough to bring the buildings down. If you accept that the fuel burns above 600C as you have above, you *have* to accept that the structural integrity of the floors where the fuel fires were was fatally compromised by the heat, as the Fe phase diagram shows. I do believe the soft-butter theory could have some merit and look forward to real studies we can sink teeth into and chew properly. As I understand it Underwriters Labs put the original steel, and debris samples, under 2,000° for several hours without deformity - which strikes a pretty notable blow to the theories as promulgated. It's described as 'sailing through' the tests. Perhaps this will change, but it still appears dubious given the paint chips another UL lab examined reveal less than 500° maximum heat and a mere 2% of these samples came close to this temperature. I have yet to see a model - or even discussion - on how such metal is a renowned heat wick and just how this would have mitigated total systemic collapse... unless the argument is that this apparently minimal heat was X-ferred down the entire skeleton structure... leading to the "Soft Butter" support member lack of resistance that allowed the entire building to fall at damn-near free-fall speeds - all at once. Seems a stretch. I don't come to my conclusions easily, nor with any comfort. And I can certainly eat some nourishing helpings of crow when appropriate. I've found it chock-full of wholesome psychic vitamins good for one's moral constitution as well - but I'm leaving the stewing pot on the shelf for now. - Jonathan - ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples
On Jun 28, 2006, at 2:33 PM, Warren Ockrassa wrote: Whatever, honey. On Jun 28, 2006, at 2:04 PM, Gibson Jonathan wrote: Sigh. [etc.] Look at my dialogue with Nick to understand how adults behave. If you had extended actual dialog you might have a point. Make me care. - J - ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples
Ahoy all, I trust we are enjoying our long weekend.
I've just done some quick updating the conversation these last few days
and have some additional thoughts.
On Jun 30, 2006, at 8:01 PM, Julia Thompson wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The History Channel occasionally runs its 9/11 special. IIRC their
conclusion was that the heat caused the structural beams to sag,
pulling away from the anchors and thus causing the floors to pancake
on top of each other. At a sufficient weight the lower floors were no
longer able to support the weight...
Is that the one where they have some footage with the architect?
Julia
"Why the Towers Fell" aired on PBS, proposing the FEMA theory {via the
American Society of Civil Engineers - ASCE} about the floor trusses
growing hot and the sagging to the breaking point. That show ends on
the sorrowful figure of a junior architect {name escapes me} and leaves
the audience wondering if he designed poorly and bearing great remorse.
It also incorrectly fingers him as the keystone designer, but in
reality he was an underling for senior partner John Kittling who did
the actual designs, had the experience, and states that this building
was over-built. I've also noticed a number of diagrams from news
stories at the time which vastly under represent the strength of the
exterior column walls. This building was designed to withstand
hurricanes as well as plane impacts and as Kittling still says, it
should no have failed as it did.
This documentary rang true enough the first time I saw this, but when
it came around again I started doubting. The NIST {National Institute
for Standards and Technology} report abandons this theory and in fact
states these trusses would have been drawn to the core structure and
and this caused the break - kinda-sorta opposite theories, but the
"story" has lodged in the public's mind - I dare say as it was intended
to.
How the debris we see falling {I would point out it's much more akin to
exploding outward and then down} exterior to the building can match an
interior descent flies in the face of logic. I simply cannot accept
that the core structure, a thick _lattice_ of crossing steel, would
offer the same resistance as the air outside slowing the debris.
Recap, to believe this theory one has to accept that the interior steel
structure has to completely and utterly fail up and down the entire
length and I just don't see how a shock-wave from one collapsing floor
can do this: the building has give and sway precisely to bend to
hurricane winds, earthquakes, let alone the 100+ MPH winds skyscrapers
routinely handles during their lifetime.To believe this you need to
accept a brittleness to these structures that defies their original
program.
Collapsing steel buildings tip in one direction - the area of failure -
with the remaining building falling {damn near} intact on top of the
failed section... examples include earthquakes {Iran}, terrorists
{Russia - bombs placed in parking area collapsed apartment building}
poor construction {Turkey} all demonstrate this. For structures that
do start falling down initially they invariably begin tipping one
direction once the floors below bunch up - inevitably collecting in one
area over another because nature does not operate symmetrically on a
failing structure - unless coerced. I had already considered the
collapses mentioned in previous posts, but put them aside because they
always seem to occur during construction - obviously as this is the
most dangerous and fragile period of a building's life when it's
integrity has not been finalized and loads are shifting dramatically.
The only way symmetry in a collapse occurs is when its made to collapse
- when thought and energy has gone into weakening critical points.
It's why crews that perform such demolition are considered elite
specialists.
I am not convinced the discussion of heat-softened steel justifies
extrapolating complete failure. I can find no study in their report
about the wicking nature of steel and how this offsets a {potential}
high-temp fire in one locale _not_ being distributed away. Rio de
Janeiro had a steel skyscraper burn for 24+ hours over multiple floors
yet it had no such catastrophic collapse, was reconditioned and in use
today {with upgraded fire suppression}. Those fires on the South Tower
had burned less than an hour, were in fact almost out {watch the smoke
volume decrease dramatically by end of sequence} and firemen had
reached the scene & said they could handle it - yet that building falls
first.
It's up to the government to explain this event and they have offered a
very faulty proposition obscured with copious preliminary detail around
the plane crash, engines, fire, wing members, down to the damn
turban-fans ... with but a few pages explaining events AFTER the
building BEGINS to collapse. The narrative doesn't even match the
illustrations. The onl
Star Trek - To Boldly Bid @ Christies
A quick note,
My once-upon-a-time almost sister in-law works at Christies auction
house and gets to fondle many and assorted wonders from the Known
Universe - she passes this announcement along. Paramount is
liquidating memorabilia {matter transferring?} items from it's 40 year
archives. Particulars are sparse, but they'll publish a color catalog
{for a few replicator chits} and as well as a boxed set {steeper, say a
couple of gold-pressed bars of latinum?}. Doors won't snick open with
the smug satisfaction of a job well-done without an admission fee and
so, as they say, if you have to ask how much it costs...
http://www.christies.com/special_sites/startrek/overview.asp
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
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Re: Introductions
Hello all, I am glad to make this belated introduction. I have to disclaim any sort of regular status, but that is not for lack of desire. My schedule is too often committed and I have rarely found/made windows of opportunity to jump back in. It's often months between even checking the mailbox I have setup for this group and I have some 7,923 unread group messages. I've been arranging my life anew and believe I'll have more cycles to devote to this. However, I'm hip-deep into writing my own sci-fi novel so when I find such time+space+energy I don't even flip a coin to decide where I'll put my resources: I role loaded dice. But your still all winners to me - really... Let's do lunch! I'm 43, self-employed software designer, married with one kindergarten aged boy. My wife is VP of Las Olas, an adventure travel company that caters exclusively to women who wish to learn surfing, art, fashion, golfing, "we make girls out of women" ... Check out http://www.surflasolas.com/ if you gals think this is of interest. Guys, this fills my life with lovely curves and giggles and is the closest thing to living on a campus again. I was not born a poor black child, but I did grow up in a cabin with dirt floors on the Little Sandy river near Portland, Oregon. I come from a multi-generation science-fiction clan and clearly remember my first book in third grade was my mother's hard-bound "I, Robot," by Asimov telling little Robbie's sad adventure. After High School I painted some overlarge murals in downtown Portland before heading to New Orleans to study painting and architecture. By the time this was ending I was thoroughly disgusted with the intellectual fashion show architecture really is, but I had already been bitten by the computer system design bug and quickly turned a hobby into a Silicon Valley career. I've run my own software development company since 1988 working on the bleeding edge of multimedia, publishing CD-ROM libraries of seamless, tile-able, textures for 3D rendering, games - but mostly user interface design. My last salary gig was running a development team working on interactive TV in Amsterdam before the dot-com crash sent me and my fledgling family back to the San Francisco Bay Area. We live on the Monterey Bay these days and as I am severely under-employed in these gloomy neo-Depression days, I am wondering if I should have followed through on my architectural inclination. It's certainly hard to believe I am part of a vital American high-tech industry any more. Jack o' many trades, master of some. On the silver-lining side, I can see a clear path to completing my long-dusty story by end of this year. My novel, Starswept, has some intersections with Brin's uplift framework and this is what drew me to the group initially. This was a bit more long-winded than expected, but writing is a real passion now and I find it easy to let the words dribble off my fingertips to spill across the keyboard. Mostly I make sense, but no guarantees. Bear with, or ignore my messages, as you see fit. Ciao, dah-links, - JG - BTW - I maintain an on-line presence via iChat/AOL that you are all free to intrude upon: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jonathan Gibson www.formandfunction.com/word ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Introductions
On Jul 11, 2006, at 7:25 AM, Julia Thompson wrote:
Have you considered trying to get a job with a company that writes
architectural software? Seems like that might be a decent fit. But I
understand the appeal of self-employment.
Julia
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Well, thank you for your concern.
I do keep my eye open to these developments and have no great desire to
remain independent, especially now that I have a family to provide for
- but the industry has changed. I have sought roles like this many
times over the years, but truth be known there is not that much
software being developed and few leaders take risks exploring new
products. My own experience of late demonstrates executives all-too
ready to shaft a local team once the design & art spec reaches working
prototype and localization issues established - shipping the package
overseas for completion wins our flag-pin wearing neo-nobility {guess
my bias} Brownie points while leaving citizens staring at a cut-short
project at only 1/3 the budget expected. It's a real, recurring,
problem.
Also, there have been a whole heap of us refugees from the
building/product design world in this sector. The fine technical line
and creative product design aspects of the field made for easy
transitions for many into the computer industry. I don't feel there is
great competition from this quarter, per se, because I always welcome
these kindred spirits. Many prefer the information architect path &
milk big corps for an IT living - there just isn't that much design
software being created as the industry ossifies and consolidates around
fewer products. The whole high-tech consumer field has shrunk and what
little growth that has occurred is off-shored to India. I was a
defense contractor working on security simulations when 9-11 occurred,
but that turmoil froze every budget {even security-oriented!} until
teams simply had to disband ... and my politics makes for uncomfortable
uniformed bosses now in charge ready to frown on semi-shaved "creative"
types. I've weathered several recessions with ease, but I never
thought I should leave the field until just recently.
I'm more interested in applying myself to niche markets that simply
don't show up on most corporate marketing radar... Games would be my
first choice as this relates to the IP I've been nursing for my novel,
but everything from hobby groups, religious accounting or retirement
home software all can target significant populations, but fall through
mass-market cracks as CEO's keep their eyes on horizon-sized pieces of
pie. I also like this because it keeps things much more intimately
local.
Mostly, we just need the economy to function properly again.
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
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Re: Hey, I know you! (was Re: Introductions)
Wow,
Get in the way-back machine, Mr Peabody.
This explains why your name has been ringing tiny little Pavlov bells
for some time.
As I recall you were working for Tim Bajarin along with John Sculleys'
son{?}, or something.
Yeah, I did the interface on Bob Abel's project. That was a real
ground breaker. The first real PIP computer interface that showed
creative and educational promise. Held together with the software
equiv of bobby-pins and hairspray. Morgan Newman and I had met at
Tulane Archt where we shared a mutual fascination with the Mac system
architecture and the intersection of the new-fangled bit-mapped
aesthetic with all things art. We even wrote up some art grant's
together trying to do an interactive salon we called Astro's Cafe {a la
Jetsons}.
In fact, I introduced Bob & Allen to Morgan and count that as my first
lost chance to make serious money. Morgan did well and moved back to
New Orleans just in time to build a house for Katrina to destroy. He's
OK and as cheerily up-beat as ever. I miss his lumpy grin and way of
turning lemons into lemonade.
I'm swinging through San Jose this Sunday evening after a biz meeting
in Benicia... care for a bite & a beer? Call my social secretary,
415-305-7699.
- Jonathan -
On Jul 11, 2006, at 11:28 AM, Nick Arnett wrote:
On 7/11/06, Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
You didn't mention the magic word, "Guernica," or I'd have realized
why your name sounded so familiar to me!
Nick
--
Nick Arnett
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Messages: 408-904-7198
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Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
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Capitalism for Tots [was Introductions]
On Jul 12, 2006, at 12:53 AM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
Hi, Jonathat. Welcome to the list!
[please scroll down . . . ]
Mostly, we just need the economy to function properly again.
Define "function[ing] properly" . . .
-- Ronn! :)
OK,
Yes, let's re-organize society before breakfast.
My goals are modest: forestall the industrial feudalist model.
Here's a few talking points:
- Strive to see wages & pay enough that a one parent can support a
whole family with a single job.
- Executive pay shouldn't increase by factors of ten over their lowest
paid members of their team, who rarely see any increase in good times
or bad.
- Leading to productivity gains never reaching working folk, but
siphoned off to "performance" benefits to executives, and sometimes
shareholders. How many years since there was even a modest minimum
wage increase whereas congress builds-in $3K/yr average during this
entire time?
- I want more money in people's pocket to buy the goods I would like to
create and sell.
- I'd like to revoke recent congressional changes to copyright law on
behalf of Disney, etc, that makes it impossible for creative works
adopted by society from entering the public commons... as our Founders
expected.
- Stop military boondoggle projects {white-collar welfare spread around
congressional districts} and fully fund a space program that embraces &
enables entrepreneurship and experimentation.
- Direct the moribund high-tech sector into a rejuvenated energy
decentralization and cleaner generation system{s} and sell these goods
to a world desperate for an upgrade: this would make the dot-com boom
look like a fire-cracker.
Since I'm playing Chief Bottlewasher this AM I'd also break the
thug/lawman dynamic around drug wars which costs society huge amounts
of prison & court funds while health issues take a back seat. America
used to spell this P-r-o-h-i-b-i-t-i-o-n. I've lived in Amsterdam and
seen first-hand what happens when you remove the mafia/gangs incentives
{gangs have no profits and lawmen no vested interest in asset
forfeiture & aggrandizing personal power} to push the sane, rational
and entirely civilized health-services approach. Our DA's and Sheriffs
are now as addicted to the drug economy as many gangs and those white
collar figures who too-often fund illicit imports. Better to regulate
it like states already do with alcohol and assist the illness that do
develop, but stop criminalizing morality.
As Bill Murray said in Meatballs {roughly}, "It doesn't matter how
well we play - and even if we win - because the guys across the lake
will still get the all girls because they have the money!" Any fool
can have money, and often does, but that doesn't mean they are doing
anything but leaching off others. Paris Hilton is an excellent
poster-girl for this foppishness: when hunger, poverty, homelessness
are all on the rise Congress wants to enshrine the No Heir Left Behind
tax-gratis act. She's a relatively harmless figure compared to, say,
Ken Lay and the harm he did - although the rolling blackouts were
really lovely that time of year.
I treasure initiative and creative development all too often stifled by
cartels and rigged monetary systems. This has left me quite sour on
the notion of Capitalism and I question the notion of profit itself. I
understand a service and product, but how can the goal be profit?
Treasury functions are the mechanism to fund the creation of worthy
goods/services that receive feedback from the marketplace {you and I}
which justifies, enables, and {hopefully} modifies the continuation of
such organizations to meet further needs and wants. We've put too much
stock in this notion of profit as the end-all. No wonder the
hind-brained rail against government services that see non profit - yet
must be done to keep civ going enough for commerce to thrive: it's
beyond there ken.
I don't have a replacement worked out, but this last decade {even the
dot-com boom tail-end} has left me searching for something with heart.
I think the Corporate model is pathological and I agree with our
Founders that such enterprises must be very short-lived {human lifetime
scales} and be stripped of "personhood". They behave as sociopaths far
too readily as constructed and there simply must be a social-feedback
mechanism because right now they are an immortal form of life with
thousands of stomachs, myopic vision and questionable brains -
certainly no empathic system. Our current model has recently been
called a tapeworm economy, or Ponse-type scheme, modeled along the
lines of Enron... and I don't see _that_ collapse having changed much.
We need to embed self-sufficiency deeply in our psyche and actions: if
you can't do with what you have regionally, then the model must take
from somewhere else and is therefor unsustainable. With the numbers of
people on this planet and brittle institutions we've built to sustain
us {health
Re: WTC Redux
Excellent.
I welcome this opportunity.
Apologies for my own intermittent involvement on this. I don't mean to
throw argument bombs into the room and then exit - I just don't have
the spare cycles to weigh in as often as I would like, yet.
Mr Bell, if selective bloviating was enough then this would be resolved
already. Your growling impatient diatribe doesn't appear to add
anything and I certainly resist bully-boy tactics even if only verbal.
There are real anomalies throughout this topic that we are all
interested in sorting through - or I thought we were.
Someone once put forth that perhaps conspiracy theorists around this
issue suffer a form of delayed Post Traumatic Stress. Perhaps this is
true although I rather doubt it, but I could say in return that
adherence to the official explanation may be akin to Stockholm
Syndrome.
So. Besides the other questions posed around this opportunity I have a
few I'll try to boil down for brevity:
- In the interest of scientific open-source inquiries, why are the
models and initial data and data sets generated kept secret?
- Why does the NIST report essentially stop at the point of Collapse
Initiation without delving into any of the mechanism postulated to
cause successive failure across the entire structure{s}?
- Related: why was the "Piston Mechanism" never modeled and only made
mention of in passing at the end of the report?
- What causes steel members to fall apart throughout and across the
entire building systemically such that a straight vertical moment of
inertia is maintained even as ton after ton of steel and concrete
should offer significant compressive resistance and start moving such a
mass off-center? WTC1+2 are the exception to history at this point.
- What of the Underwriters Labs studies of paint chips showing very low
temperatures were actually demonstrable on the South Tower, and only
some exceedingly small amount was exposed to even this temperature?
- Why was NIST selected when it has no regulatory or enforcement power
that other governmental and civil bodies must thus pay attention to &
alter codes and procedures to accommodate any revealed structural
flaws?
- What is the timeline for the WTC7 report and why was this selectively
delayed in the first place - resources were apparently plentiful as
compared with the FEMA report so decisions on where and how to spend
this should be in the realm of Gautam to explain.
On the topic of weariness, I am sorry your friend has grown tiresome on
the subject. I applaud her going at this with us. Perhaps if the
report was more complete these gaping holes in the presentation would
not beg such questions. The public contracted for an explanation and
it has been found wanting.
My own further thoughts do not need to be sent along to our weary
contactee:
There are amazingly detailed presentations from fires spreading to
people dying to airplane impact down to turbofan blades, yet nothing
about the structural integrity of this massive building failing. At a
very basic common-sense level of civil & structural engineering such a
failure requires serious review for possible retrofit action across the
entire built world - I have heard nothing of such thinking nor warnings
to come from government agencies that set such standards. All of us
here are throwing our own 2¢ in trying to understand what should have
been made clear by such a report. This double-failure is unprecedented
in history and flies in the face of multiple documented firestorms
raging for days w/o steel failure in modern construction.
The volume and detail we see up to the Collapse Initiation is
overwhelming, but paltry and notably sparse {I'm being generous here:
sentances/paragraphs -vs- whole chapters} as compared with the money
spent staging our understanding of events.
Pardon my beating a dead horse, but the estimates of of slightly over
one second per floor requires a significantly longer period than a free
fall. The calculated estimate for a crushing floor to have upon the
one below it has been apx 1 second, which would then start the clock
again for that floor to begin to the next buckle... and then start the
clock again... granted it could reduce the time per floor when enough
momentum {TBD} is generated, but this still runs up against the growing
body of steel and concrete piling up below. Only human demo-squad
intervention causes this vertical alignment to my knowledge and as
mentioned, if it was thus easily done then landlords would loosen bolts
and spread kerosene for the insurance all the time. I'm still waiting
for examples of sturdy time-tested buildings suffering progressive
collapse that mimic what we see w/o human attention. NIST side-steps
this conundrum without offering anything plausible.
I'd be glad to revise this opinion. For instance, I take those of us
who have direct metal working knowledge seriously as my own training
was more high-falutin' and
The Paracast
www.theparacast.com
If it's Thursday, your already late downloading the latest podcast.
I've enjoyed this weekly podcast centered around the scientifically
weird and mystically rational constructs we encounter trying to sort
out the awkwardly tangible from the merely impossible. Launched about
half a year ago most of the discussions hover around UFO's and psychic
phenom. Hosts Gene Steinberg & David Biedny are a thoughtful duo
intent on divining the Truth {I know, I know, it's Out There -
somewhere} by inspecting odd reports, the folklore & stories we pass
around and the often dubious evidence presented to the public. One is
a believer in UFO's, but hasn't seen one, while the other had a clear
childhood experience, but remains the hard-boiled skeptic.
This is a show for Those Who Want To Believe - but Can't.
I've found the shows interesting and some of them more than intriguing
with aspects that intrude into daily life unbidden. The shows are
usually 90 minutes long with a goodly hour for their guest of the week
sandwiched between prolog and debriefing. Have you wondered if the new
DVD "Dan Akroyd Unplugged on UFO's" was worth the rental fee and your
evening of time? I found the recent Mexican Air Force FLIR footage
alone of value. Take a few minutes to look over Paracast topics and
download a few to scratch-n-sniff. The only irksome production issue I
have is the advertising placement easy-slides into the conversation
without bumper music or announcement making for some mental
frame-shifting, but the ads are minimal and over quickly.
This weeks show is with www.DisclosureProject.org founder Dr Steven
Greer http://theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_060725.mp3. I caught
the National Press Club briefing he gave a few years ago via C-SPAN
where he announced and presented credible witness testimony that the US
Gov is concealing detailed knowledge of UFO's - which I hadn't thought
about much for many years. In this Paracast interview he presents a
fascinating poli-sci milspec take on the nebulous forces of our
most-uppercrusted of society and why they are not keen to find clean
new power generation technologies the admission of UFO's would ipso
facto. Dr Greer asserts a relatively few controlling families & groups
seek to thwart contact with industry-shaking aliens who could easily
upset such dino-fart peddling apple carts as the petroleum & auto
industries - for example. These global would-be kings certainly have
the vast means and motivation to keep people in the dark and the
parallels with my own discoveries about WTC/9-11 conspiracy forces
prompted me to add this to our Brin-L conversation as a worthy tangent.
Dr Greer's expanding list of military servicemen and cultivation of
ex-government witnesses and informants is remarkable for the
notoriously tight-lipped and toe-the-line crew-cut crowd not known for
"crazy talk." For those who enjoy the Brin-L discussion group for the
political side & plausible musings on where humanity is going should
find this an interesting interview.If some significant portion of
this comes true it would surely shake up Brin's galactic Uplift
scenario, but wouldn't shut it down - unlike a huge swath of the sci-fi
genre that would need major rewriting.
I particularly enjoyed:
- The interview with physicist Stanton Friedman,
http://theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_060711.mp3.
- Host David and his brother Barry relay their childhood encounter in
downtown Caracas, Venezuela,
http://theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_060328.mp3.
- If you relish a good debate and thorough trouncing of hoaxers, then
dial back a few weeks
http://theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_060627.mp3 and follow the
debunking of the Billy Miers' cult and the rather vicious attacks by
their "official spokesman," which followed. I immediately found this
fellow, Michael Horn, suspicious based on his speaking tactics and
overt topic misdirections and over the following weeks the discussion
board and follow up counter-interview
http://theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_060711.mp3 confirmed these
feelings. For the scientific minded David provides a lucid explanation
{if short} of some photo fakery Miers' promulgates as well as the
images and the artifacts that give away their falsehood.
But you decide. I thought it all worth passing along.
Caveat: David is an old and dear friend who used his early sighting to
explore photography and visual effects to the point where he became a
world-class adept sought after by LucasArts and Industrial Light &
Magic. For many years he wrote books on Adobe Photoshop / After
Effects and ran image manipulation training seminars with illustrator
Burt Monroy. The dot-gone ebb tide has left many talented folk unable
to find a purchase on the barren rocky shores of our neo-Dickens
economy and now even luminaries like David turn from the anemic
computer sector to see if data-casting media can net the gol
Re: RFK Jr. interview
Ahoy,
I'm here late for this conversation.
Pardon me.
On Jul 23, 2006, at 4:00 PM, jdiebremse wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
only the party in
power has been this corrupt and this cynical.
Where have you gone Dan Rostenkowski?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you!
;-)
I do hope your not equating Rostenkowski kiting postage in the same
realm of nastiness as these Abramoff/Reed/Delay/Republican
mega-kleptos?
Really?!?
Those staunch defenders of Family and American Way were eager to hide
slavery and prostitution in the Marrianis {sp?} Islands for big bucks
to turn tariff inspectors' eyes away even as Made In America was
stamped on tainted goods unduty-bound for the States.
Remember when a blue collar manufacturing job could support a family?
Sure, both parties have corruption. Big discovery, Perry Mason defense
for the bleeding obvious offers Exhibit A. What's truly graph-able now
is the 10x rate so-called Republicans plunder our public "common"
resources for their privateer gigs. By my thumbnail guesstimate
they've done as much in this last 10 years as Democrats did in three
decades... not adjusting for inflation. This administration used up
the Clinton-Gore "surplus" cash they came in with and have gone on to
use the family credit card to dig this country deeper into debt than
all previous leadership combined - that's all our presidents, all our
wars, all our debts from two hundred plus years ago to now, surpassed
in a few short no-bid tax-haven years.
Seen the wreckage over at "die Heimat-Sicherheit" yesterday? According
to a bipartisan congressional investigation some $34.3 b-b-billion in
contract spending alone is missing, misspent & boondoggled ... with
over half those Homeland Security contracts no-bid. Amazing what the
hidden hand of the un-Free Market hath wrought. Productivity is
absolutely smokin' {up in a puff} as privatization fever grips the body
politic - feel safer America?
Nick Arnett:
Our leaders are responsible to tell us the truth about all things,
but most of all when they're putting our troops in harm's way,
visiting death and destruction on another people. It doesn't
matter if their intent was the very best, there's
nothing "complex" about making statements that turn out to be
wrong. Call it an exaggeration,but it's not just a different
point of view, it's wrong.
False. Untrue.
For all your posturing, the word "mistake" somehow never entered
your lexicon. Or are you seriously suggesting that Bush, Rice,
Rumsfeld, Blair, Aznar, et al. honestly believed that Iraq did not
have WMD's?
I will.
It's one important reason our "betters" felt OK attacking Iraq, but not
North Korea, or Iran.
As a layman taking in the international news over the years I
distinctly recall the same Saddam son in-law defector that neo-con
Richard Pearle, etc, oft-quoted for WMD voracity had {in the very same
debrief} insisted Hussien had systemically destroyed all those weapons
to prevent an American pretext for trouble. This was not the only
report by any measure and corroborates what the UN inspectors relayed
before Bush had them running for cover from his impending Schlock &
Offal campaign. What we've seen is a fine example of feeding emotional
beasts red meat while we were already worried about Anthrax {wherever
did...} and shoe-bombers {LoL}.
> head shaking<
And so-called conservatives were so full of disdain when Clinton parsed
what "is" is.
I was a Defense Contractor when 9-11 occurred and by November 2001 I
had army officers telling me they were going to Iraq. Not Afghanistan.
Two months from WTC and these guys were overjoyed at the opps for rank
advancement and anxious to "stick it to anybody" ass-kicking with
occasional mention of warming up those '91 Gulf War leftovers to finish
them off. This Bush cabal had an overarching Iraq plan going into the
GwB's initial election and let Afghanistan fall over in a heap chasing
their dystopian wet-dreams of oil-igarchy. 9-11 was an emotional
cudgel they adroitly, repeatedly, consciously, delightfully whacked us
with as their buddies pick the pockets of the crowd - to this day.
Unlike Nick, I cannot extend these traitorous shadowmen the courtesy of
a benefit of doubt.
They have known all-too-well what they were doing and mesmerized by
their own echo-chamber chanting were certain that a few decade-old
stockpiles of "ponies" just HAD to be in there somewhere, if they just
kept digging... and killing.
Well, "we're waist-deep in the big muddy and the damn fool sez, 'Press
on'."
And, um, if you agree that they had disarmed, though not in
public, then
don't you agree that our leaders told us things that weren't true
in order to justify this war?
And I suppose that John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore *also* told
us those thing in order to justify the war too, huh Nick?
Wow, there's a real unique fall-back position: blame Clinton.
Isn't that hairshi
Re: RFK Jr. interview
On Jul 22, 2006, at 3:51 PM, Charlie Bell wrote: On 23/07/2006, at 2:50 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RFK Jr's statement didn't adress this at all. I'd argue that both Democrats and Republicans give half truths that favor their position. It's not that RFK Jr. is a champion of truth against those lying Republicans. He certainly isn't. His recent pieces on Thisemero/autisml and on Bush stealing the election both contained so many factual and analytical errors that I have to doubt a lot of what he says. "Stay off my side", in other words. Charlie, I've read over RFK's piece in Rolling Stone, " Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/ was_the_2004_election_stolen and it seems pretty damning against an honest election this last go around. I'd be curious what factual errors you cite to cast doubt on his thesis. I went through the exhaustive footnotes as well and it looks damning. For instance, how can 98% of these various and many "errors" benefit one candidate over another w/o someone's hand on the scale? More significantly are the exit polls which indicate Kerry actually one the popular vote as well as the electoral college. I know counting votes can quickly enter the nether nuanced regions where law & database jargon overlap, but I've been following this topic for some time and it seems very clear we are being hoaxed. Your a fan of numbers, can you explain to us your issues with his piece? I've also heard him speak at length about the lawsuit they are bringing against the e-voting machine manufacturers. He has spoken several times, and in depth, on his weekend show Ring of Fire and I've have found the legal case quite compelling. Here are two of the main shows available - and with the commercials edited out! - as MP3 download as well as on iTunes. http://www.ringoffireradio.com/show.asp?jid=121 http://www.ringoffireradio.com/show.asp?jid=122 Give them a listen, but I'd be covering my ass damn quick if I was one of those 'xecs. His tenacious partner Papantonio was David-like in assaulting the Goliath tobacco companies - and the little guy with the sling won for all of us. I think privatizing the vote is a crime, certainly as implemented. The polling system is _supposed_ to be under suspicion, to prove it's accurate, not for us to investigate unless our public masters, er servants, fail us as dramatically as they have. It's why the Bush administration touts exit polls in Ukraine and encouraged crowds to protest. My favorite quote on this is attributed to Joseph Stalin, "'It's Not the People Who Vote that Count; It's the People Who Count the Votes." It is entirely justified to rigorously question the ownership of these voting machine companies by Republican operatives and general supporters - particularly as they claim the computer code is deemed proprietary and not available for any public scrutiny under any condition. This, one of the cornerstones of our democracy, must not be allowed to stand. For those feeling smug that "their" guys may have pulled a fast-one, because the conservative-ends-justify-any-means, should consider just who hacks most of the machines on this planet: nerdy misfits with bad grooming and a penchant for privacy and challenges... not the sort likely to sign up for Chamber of Commerce work groups and overwhelmingly liberal, or libertarian. So, if you think your safe because "your" crooks are doing it now, just wait until a plethora of new e-virus seep into our various systems. Need I go into detail about the very-very serious problem of concerted attention by foreign powers with an interest in meddling in our elections? This should be beyond political side-swiping and treated seriously. To thwart the corruption of private money counting our votes I would like to take the cash away from them. Short of the RFK lawsuit succeeding I would like to see low/no-cost alternatives take the wind out of these privateer sails. I've been working up a business plan to develop open-source voting machines as a viable public service. Anybody interested? - JG - Jonathan Gibson www.formandfunction.com/word ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
My Wraptures-ready Sunday
Greetings Tribe of Brin,
For those of you who use graphics in your work and play I have a small
treat.
I am pleased to announce to this small group the imminent public
offering of my multi-CD image libraries. Not a must-buy Wall Street
deal to buy stock in an image company, but a gift to the world open
source-ish. I'm hoping to generate good ju-ju releasing this
intellectual property after many years under moth-ball, The hope is
traffic flocks, leaves a gratuity, and {ideally} purchases the newer,
snappier, yet-more clever HD-sized textures vastly better suited to
this XXIst century. You folks are invited to scratch-n-sniff the
original collection as I prepare for a fall-winter launch of my
high-def Pro line. I'm only telling a handful of friends and you folk
as I am not terribly interested in generating publicity - yet. I'm
eager for technical & business feedback and of course curious where the
low-key viral marketing leads. If I suddenly end up with a tiger by
the tail, then all the better.
http://www.formandfunction.com/wraptures/index.html
Way back in the early days of multimedia I had heady sand castle dreams
of ROM baronies built on a foundation of seamless, tile-able, textures.
Walking around the first MicroSoft CD ROM conference {hard to imagine
hosting one today} I was enthused about converting my lifelong penchant
for visual patterns with recent eye-candy three-d work I'd been doing
and determined to expand & refine the growing tool chest for sale to
other graphic professionals.
After a hyped-up evening of endorphins, coffee, and ice-cream, I dubbed
these Wraptures: as in wrapping-textures. We were early out the gate
and did very well over the next years & I pumped out several high
resolution and animated full-frame digital video collections. All was
good.
Alas, I was under the mistaken impression a garage startup could make
it just fine against the larger stock photo companies which had not yet
made the leap to digital distribution ... and I declined investors -
I'm sure you can hear the money train departing without me already. I
might have rescued this effort and made a comeback, or been bought out,
but as the Corbus and PhotoDisc tested market waters I was distracted
by game development opportunities and my window closed shut under the
weight of their multimillion dollar ad campaigns. I still did fine by
them overall, but soon enough the sales dried up. Later, when my
partner and I split the assets I kept the company I had started and my
image libraries. Unfortunately, an under-handed licensing deal
orchestrated by my partner was hard to back out of and revealed she was
determined to retain some form of return no matter what. I vowed never
again.
So I buried them and burned that bridge behind me until recently when
some determined graphic artists tracked me down with beseeching demands
I sell them old stock piled up in a corner. This got me thinking about
my old pique -vs- new open-source models and how to turn this fallow
asset evergreen.
I've tinkered out a way to keep making these clever images that I love
w/o generating income from the older IP. My poor choice in business
partners would demand a portion of any measurable income & her
litigious parents would back any struggle even if I have a clear case
in my own mind. I'm still sorting this out, but expect to use a
subscription model of $24/year {2$/month for a new HD image every week,
or a mere ¢50 for a new one each week} access to the full Pro line, or
buy a set of my old stock for lifetime access to the all these new ones
I make. I offer a $5/year PayPal button up now for you early adopters
that I'll honor through the years. As I said, I'm still sorting this
out and welcome feedback.
Today I resolved technical issues with a recent server migration and by
the wee hours of this very night the high resolution files should be
available. Fingers crossed.
Gigabytes of fun. Enjoy!
- Jonathan -
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
Wow, where to start?
I can't tell if I agree or not with Brother John, but it prompts me to
write.
On Jul 29, 2006, at 7:30 PM, Brother John wrote:
jdiebremse wrote:
Harder than the decision to carry the child to birth? Harder than
the decision to give up the child for adoption? Harder than the
decision to raise the child?
I don't like the way "Brother John" attempts to villify those who
choose abortion. I think those that choose abortion are far, far,
far more often victims than villains. At the same time, however, I
am not comfortable with the characterization of choosing to have an
abortion as being "the hardest decision." The other possible
decisions are almost certainly equally hard, if not harder.
I'm sorry I come across as "vilifying" those who choose abortion. I
would much rather come across as someone who finds it lamentable that
so many pregnancies are unwanted. We move heaven and earth to
preserve and protect endangered species. Look how highly we value
such great art works as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the
treasure in the Louvre and other museums around the world. Would all
these abortions take place if we valued children as highly? I don't
think so, and that says something about us as a people. Why do we
value children so little? There was a time, earlier in our history as
a nation, when a pregnancy was a cause for great rejoicing, not only
for the mother and father-to-be, but for all of the neighbors, and for
the community. There was a great stigma to having children out of
wedlock, and married women who were unable to conceive and have
children were objects of pity. Children were considered great
treasures. Women died in childbirth, and families had many children
because there was no assurance that more than half of them would live
to adulthood. Today we treat pregnancies as a great inconvenience in
many cases, and an utter disaster in others. Of all the children that
are actually born, how many are thought of as the great treasures that
they are? I don't mean to vilify those who get abortions. I feel
sorry for them because they didn't want the child. I don't think that
"murder" is taking place, but I consider it one of life's greatest
tragedies that so many children are unwanted even to the point of
putting an end to the pregnancies that do occur. A pregnancy should
almost always be a cause for great rejoicing by the mother, the
father, the grandparents, and the whole community.
The expectation of a child is certainly celebrated wherever I go. Of
course, nobody sends out termination announcements on embossed
letterhead, so this is hard to really measure. It's clear Americans
and most educated peoples of this planet do accept abortion as a needed
procedure for many reasons and most societies rarely consider a child
"real" until it's has survived gestation {what's the rate of natural
spontaneous abortion, some 30%?} and is gurgling and squirming in
someone's arms.
As I understand it those pioneering days of yore both valued and
dreaded having to birth so many off-spring because vast numbers died
before adulthood. Note that falling birth rates in safer "modern"
societies appears across the board as populations become more educated
- and the cost of each child goes up.
As for societal priorities, if we really valued children our military
budgets would be dramatically lower with currently squandered funds
able to advance medical technologies & make health care much more
available, we'd have vastly cheaper child care and educational options,
and I believe a proper space exploration development plan. Imagine how
much better we may live if decade-long black-budget boondoggles had
been funding human longevity instead of premature termination on
battlefields. But peace isn't admirable, not macho, it doesn't "sell,"
or our executive branch would have portfolio devoted to conflict
resolution.
I'll consider serious discussion of making abortion illegal only after
the last orphanage is closed due to a lack of interest as anti-abortion
zealots who protest clinics actually embrace the living: fat chance.
They are terminally distracted tilting at windmills & chasing abstract
arguments about when life began & "every sperm is sacred," in a manner
to remind one of arguments about how many angels can dance on the head
of a pin.
And it is a fact that there are many women who are emotionally unable
to abort their children. The maternal love they feel for the unborn
child is so great that they simply cannot do it. It is too bad that
all women are not like that. If they were, there would not be nearly
as many women who value their "right to choose" above the life of an
unborn child in any stage of its development. Even if abortion is not
murder, and I do not think it is, it is a terrible comment on the kind
of people we are and the kind of nation we have become.
There is more than the instinc
Re: Prehistory
On Jul 30, 2006, at 11:33 PM, Brother John wrote: Charlie Bell wrote: Your lack of imagination is unsurprising. Recently, a cat baiting exercise near my old house resulted in the poisoning of many pet and stray cats. Including all three of mine. This was done for "pest control" reasons by some locals. 3 months later, there is a serious rat and cockroach problem in the area. If rats and mice are your reason for having a pet, then keep a snake. They do a much better job than any cat. We have three cats who have made a serious dent in the gopher population in our neighborhood - without poisons. Playful ribbing aside, they have been much more patient and ardent hunters than the dogs around here. It's also quite a sight to see our smallish felines carry a struggling rat almost as large as themselves over for approval. I love cats and dogs, but for different reasons. Dogs are great chums and loyal "friends" beyond any reason. They appear to have been bred to fit human needs far more than cats, who obviously understand power politics better than canines. Where Douglas Adams' white mice come in I'm still puzzling out... - Jonathan - Jonathan Gibson www.formandfunction.com/word ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Abortion
On Jul 31, 2006, at 9:23 AM, Horn, John wrote: On Behalf Of Nick Arnett On 7/29/06, Brother John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: We ourselves used to be an enormously fertile and prolific people. Our ascendancy over the Native Americans who were here before us is as much a factor of the difference in our relative birthrates as anything else. Cite, please. Seems to me that the death rate among the indigenous people had a whole lot more to do with it. Jared Diamond talks about this in _Guns, Germs and Steal_. A more agricultural society can sustain a higher birthrate than a nomadic one. Also, Western European crops had many more calories per pound than those the Native Americans gathered/cultivated. - jmh One aside, not all natives were wandering hunters. Where I grew up in the Northwest fishing along rivers was a permanent feature of the landscape and I grew up learning about the fields locals had been harvesting for generations untold - and this grooming and brush clearing made the fertile Willamette Valley incredibly easy for my own pioneering Scottish ancestors to convert to family farming. And the local Nez Perce natives were much more eager to assist, adopt and interbreed with strangers than was typical in the East and Midwest. - Jonathan - Jonathan Gibson www.formandfunction.com/word ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: My Wraptures-ready Sunday
Hullo maru dubshinki,
Sorry, I almost missed your notice, but a quick peek into my mail
directory & I just had to open up yours and Dave's thread. My ISP is
on holiday and this left my domain server down a few hours this AM.
It's all up and dandy now. Try again.
I said, 'Enjoy' and I mean it, dammit!
- Jonathan -
PS - once again, staging via
http://www.formandfunction.com/wraptures/index.html
Final domain will simply be www.wraptures.com, but will auto-magically
redirect once this is all public.
Dave,
Thanks for the kind words.
I enjoy the gift society model wherever I can apply it and I am hopeful
this catalyzes positive changes in my recent {lack of} career.
I'm counting on the panache associated with this long-gone resource
being on tap will stir the hearts of graphic professionals enough to
throw a few nickels in the tip jar out of teary nostalgia & loosen
billfolds {ever so gently} for the stimulating new stuff. Back in the
day these were considered overkill and I often heard their 1024x512
pixel resolution called "monsters", but they seem almost quaint now. I
aim for my new ones to get as many rave reviews and to be even longer
lived.
Addendum: for those familiar with Wraptures I'll note that not all from
the original collections are available - yet. I'm simply not sure what
would happen to my old school chum running the server {gratis} if some
sunny morning a sizable portion of DTP shops in Asia start downloading
them when some notable blog makes mention. Almost all the 512x512 are
up, but time+space+ISP costs are yet to be determined & I am a tad more
tentative about all the 1024x512 as planned at the outset. I will get
there eventually, however. I went ahead and bit the bullet by putting
the high-res ones up to measure demand.
- JG -
Aside: Just between you, me, Killer B's, and the NSA, I worry my son
will have no college fund. This was tough though doable when I went to
school {$11K/yr Tulane 1986}, but costs are so vastly more expensive
now {$43K Tulane 2006} that I worry how any of our off-spring will
finance upper education in the coming decades. Immigration to Europe
-or- Australia is a serious consideration for us.
On Aug 1, 2006, at 10:48 AM, Dave Land wrote:
On Jul 30, 2006, at 8:31 PM, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
http://www.formandfunction.com/wraptures/index.html
Way back in the early days of multimedia I had heady sand castle
dreams
of ROM baronies built on a foundation of seamless, tile-able,
textures.
Walking around the first MicroSoft CD ROM conference {hard to imagine
hosting one today} I was enthused about converting my lifelong
penchant
for visual patterns with recent eye-candy three-d work I'd been doing
and determined to expand & refine the growing tool chest for sale to
other graphic professionals.
Those of us who either (a) worked at or around Apple in the early 90s
or
(b) toiled at multimedia in the halcyon days of HyperCard remember
Wraptures well.
When it became clear that the Jonathan Gibson of Brin-L was /that/
Jonathan Gibson, smiles spread across the faces of those of us who (c)
both worked at Apple in the early 90s /and/ toiled at multimedia in the
halcyon days of Hypercard.
Thank you for your gift, Jonathan!
Dave
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
On Aug 1, 2006, at 9:38 AM, maru dubshinki wrote:
http://www.formandfunction.com/wraptures/index.html
...
Gigabytes of fun. Enjoy!
- Jonathan -
For what it is worth, your link is down for me.
~maru
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Once more into the 9-11 breach
worked there for a decade. For years he
cleaned the stairwells starting from the top floors working down and
was intimately familiar with the structure and procedures which helped
him assist firemen and save many lives. What he describes is
hair-raising: explosions in the basement that had wounded people piling
up in the broken lobby interior even before the firemen arrived
{corroborating testimony I have previously heard from the first firemen
to arrive}, and odd goings on just up to the few days before it all
happened. The sequence of multiple explosions he describes also jibe
with the testimony of firemen who survived. It's riveting.
http://www.kpfa.org/cgi-bin/gen-mpegurl.m3u?
server=157.22.130.4&port=80&file=dummy.m3u&mount=/data/20060726-
Wed1300.mp3
And Dr Jones talks in depth about the metal analysis he's done. This
covers the chemical composition of samples and peculiar angled slicing
of steel supports that weakened structure. It's nuanced beyond my
familiarity, but perhaps our crew can shed light?
http://www.kpfa.org/cgi-bin/gen-mpegurl.m3u?
server=157.22.130.4&port=80&file=dummy.m3u&mount=/data/20060802-
Wed1300.mp3
He mentions URLs for pix and papers, but I didn't note them down.
Then there is the Scripps survey out this AM describing 1/3 of
Americans now believe something much more odd was going on that day
than the official story would have it. Granted this is a measure of
the rumor mill and other factors, but consistent with the growing
concerns ordinary people are having with this issue.
http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll
See you on the other side!
- Jonathan "Love Puppies Eat From My Bowl" Gibson -
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Once more into the 9-11 breach
Hello,
I see we are going to focus on the mechanical rather than political
here.
On Aug 2, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Robert Seeberger wrote:
I think I can explain explosions in the basement, though I would need
the electrical plans to the building to verify this but.
When the plane crashes into the building it is quite possible that
electrical mains on the affected floors and electrical mains feeding
floors higher in the building could be severed.
Generally, in a tall building such as the WTC buildings, the main
electrical feed (Service Entrance or Service Lateral) and switchgear
is located in the basement. When several lines are cut (and shorted
certainly), it is quite possible that rather than simply tripping, the
breakers exploded and started a fire in the basement.
Such an explosion would and could be quite energetic and extremely
loud.
I've been in a room when a main breaker suffered a direct short, and I
can tell you it is like a gunshot going off next to your head. You can
feel the shockwave internally and your hearing will be impaired for a
couple of hours. (After the TS Allison flood we had a problem with a
tripping breaker similarly where this occurred several times over 2
hours. When we were ready to try to energize the breaker for the third
time, the General Contractors people were running for the door. It is
*that* loud and *that* scary.)
Now this is all strictly conjecture, but I can envision that after the
impact, the main for the entire building might have tripped, and
panicked maintenance people might have tried to re-energize the
building quickly. In such a situation the breaker might have exploded
spewing molten copper and plastic over the people in the area with a
plasma fireball possibly 15 to 20 feet in diameter. This would cause
very serious injuries if not death. If the voltages were in the medium
to high voltage range (4160V to 20,000 V or so) the temperature of the
plasma would be as hot as the surface of the sun. A bad situation to
find yourself in and many people have died under just such
circumstances.
OK, what you've said is reasonable except for the timing and extent of
damage to those lower levels. As I mentioned this is a witness telling
how it went down as he saw it and you really ought to give it a listen.
He explains much of the structure he was intimately familiar with and
you can infer more from this than many of the reports one might have
heard. Frankly, it wasn't until I heard firsthand testimony {firemen}
that I began to feel my half-hidden questions about the physics should
be re-examined. I'd note he was lauded in a ceremony by GwB and
beseeched by numerous Republicans to run for office - except he's a
democratic sort and declined. It's when he actually started telling
this tale widely that FBI types began flanking and preceding his
appearances to intimidate event personnel - at least that's what he has
relayed in various talks.
Here's a written account for the auditory handicapped.
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=401
As relayed by Rodriguez he arrived late for work or he'd have been on
the top floor. He was at the top level of six the basement floors had
where the maintenance offices were when he felt the explosion about
8:46 and heard a massive boom and felt an upwelling force move him and
his co-workers who had been chit-chatting. Walls crack, ceiling fell
on top of them and THEN they heard the distant pop and tremble from the
plane hitting above. The skin was hanging off of someone emerging from
the lower sub-levels that made up the basement levels calling out
"bomb". This sounds seriously larger than an electrical condenser
exploding. It took out entire floors filled with tons of heavy HVAC
gear and presses and metal shops all gone... somewhere. I've tried to
reconcile the above impact maybe vibrating the base enough to destroy
the lobby, but something also burst elevator doors out and upward, few
pieces of the lobby's marble wall cladding remained attached, it
doesn't add up - to me.
After many travails and rescuing scores of people unfamiliar with the
building Rodriguez finally hid under a fire truck when the buildings
fell.
One thing nobody in this conversation has taken up is the amazing
amount of damage to the interior lobby area. Firemen teams who arrived
found scores of injured in the ruined lobby {not dead smooshed people
having jumped to their death outside}. Here's some oral histories by
the firemen and others as MP3:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2006/911-WTC-Twin-Towers26jan06.htm
- Jonathan -
___
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Re: Once more into the 9-11 breach
Greetings,
What a week for this topic!
This entry is big, so brace for impact.
- JG -
On Aug 3, 2006, at 3:37 PM, Brother John wrote:
Of course, everyone knows that I am just a right-wing crackpot and
conspiracy nut, so no one has to pay any attention to me. But my son
and I knew that 9-11 was an inside job as we watched the towers fall
on live TV on 9-11. GW and his neocon friends in the oil business
obviously needed some pretext for starting an ongoing, never ending,
perpetual war for perpetual peace. Most wars are started by wicked men
in high places for similar reasons. All of the reasons given are just
propaganda to get the masses to go along with them. If those who
actually run America, and I'm not talking about Congress and the White
House, really wanted to secure this country against terrorism, what
would be the first thing they would do? Yep, screen everyone who comes
and goes just as carefully as they currently screen grandmothers in
our nation's airports. Is that being done? Is it even being attempted?
No, of course not. If containers coming into our ports are not
inspected and screened, and if our borders are not secure so that
everyone coming in has to go through a proper screening, then we
haven't got the slightest idea who or what is coming and going. *The
fact that we still have virtually unlimited entry into the country
through our ports and across our borders is proof positive that the
government isn't honest when it talks about fighting terrorism.
*And if the government isn't serious about terrorism, then what was
9-11 all about? What is the Iraq war all about? What was the
Afghanistan war all about? The American people are obviously being
played for complete suckers, and nearly all of them are blindly going
along with it. It is hard to imagine how intelligent and educated
people can be so gullible, but there is the proof, right before our
eyes.
I agree with you to a very large degree.
What I've been trying to divine from all these entrails is the big
picture, nay grand design, to explain the some of the oddities of GwB
that day and other mysteries. Watching the 9-11 Truth Symposium is
useful, but mostly a recap for those of us digging into this with any
vigor while trying to keep a level head above murky waters. Last night
I heard Webster Tarpley speak in depth and great length about this and
it is stunning. I find myself speaking in the present because it has
been reverberating in my head ever since. His delivery is thankfully
clear and relatively simple although the topic convoluted. This
probably saved me getting apoplectic or going ballistic with agitation.
He ends with a real note of hopeful optimism I resonate with and hope
all of you will too. I've been feeling this must transcend political
flavors if we are going to resolve what has been done to us. I feel
certain some important ground was shifted this week.
But first, I spent some unexpected idle moments yesterday to going over
the just-revealed NORAD clips and transcripts from Vanity Fair. This
is significant as it dents a number of assertions this administration
has put forth with vigor. Give it a read/listen.
http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01
As an invaluable aid, check out the Cooperative Research
minute-by-minute timeline as you work through the Vanity Fair piece.
http://complete911timeline.org/timeline.jsp?
timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911
Since I don't have Webster Tarpey's book to quote, here's the White
Rose Society clip of the interview {skip 1st 1/2 of three-hour show}
http://server4.WhiteRoseSociety.org/content/malloy/MalloyShow-(03-08
-2006).mp3
and my own snipped version w/o commercials {down to 1 1/2 hours}
http://www.formandfunction.com/word/wordbits/MalloyShow-(03-08-2006).mov
I can't listen to Mike Malloy every day, nor for long, as he has a
rather strong, shall we call it "Altoid," flavor that takes getting
used to, but he's in restrained mode in this lengthy interview.
Webster claims this organization has been around since Grover Cleveland
& JP Morgan tracing its use of the USS Maine explosion as pretext to
launch the Great White Fleet in America's first imperialist power play,
behind a fascist march to take over DC in 1933, to Gulf of Tonkin, JFK
assassination, Iran-Contra... and now 9-11.
He started on this trail when the Red Brigade kidnapped the Italian
Foreign Minister in the 70's and his body was found a few blocks from
where he was working - the Italian government asked him to investigate
and he found the actual backers of this group were NATO intelligence
gone bad... the Red Brigade and other shadowy groups, like P2 Lodge &
Gladio, set up as fall-back terrorist harassment networks in case the
Soviets rolled through Europe, but they took matters into their own
hands early.
Why was Able Danger set up? This was apparen
Re: unholy OS wars
Hullo,
So many missives to catch up on. I've been busy.
As an artist hovering around the computer industry since High School I
find it amazing that AndrewC initially claims to be a non-expert, yet
sells computers he regularly builds. Andrew, you undercut yourself on
the credibility factor with a statement like that while admitting this
an ongoing business... I don't know too many in this area of commerce
who are not labeled "technical" by the majority of people and certainly
not ANY providers who survive long w/o leaning towards the technical -
how else does one troubleshoot? I do not understand what is gained
from such a pre-loaded frame on the conversation. That you bluster
with rudeness and intended insults reveals an arrogance I find
irresistible - where's my pile of throwing rocks and favorite sling?
As someone who took up the daunting challenge of hand soldering a Timex
Sinclair 1000, circa 1982, I allowed myself a wry grin and followed
this thread belatedly, with interest. I'll hold back my razor sharp
tongue and be positive in the face of gross ignorance and in the
interest of propelling the conversation forward.
Yes, if you're a blithering retard, as apparently you are. There are
no other words for it.
Let's see, on one hand you're comparing the length a machine can run
without breaking down, which is based largely on build quality.
Moreover, that mac largely is a sealed box, and you can't upgrade
parts, etc.
On the other hand, you're comparing the time a computer can be
connected to the internet, entire unprotected, before it picks up
nastyware. Which a variety of free firewalls and virus scanners
protect against.
Blithering. Retard.
It's not even elephant vs mouse. It's a piece of paper vs the
transdimensional ghost who inhabits your frontal lobes.
My initial emotions fade into bemused humor and assume you simply had
too much caffeine - or too many pints - at the time this was written
since your tone has moderated over time. Others have rebutted this
enough in detail, so I'll try keeping mine somewhere around the 50,000
ft altitude.
I am a confirmed Mac-centric developer who is ambidextrous enough to
know & appreciate the differences. Been there, done both. For reasons
of aesthetics {from OS architecture to casing product design} I've been
much more interested in the Apple-thang than anything else I've come
across from the very beginning. The Mac literally drew me away from a
career in architecture. Technically, the Mac has always been ahead of
most competitors {'cept for CPU wars of late} and one reason they could
get away with a closed box - it was always the market model and price
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a tad
like the original Mac profile {and I think they missed an intro PR
opportunity by not building on that Susan Kare iconography}.
Products overseas were routinely 2x what they are here in America -
this has more to do with where the goods originated and the early days
of the industry than now where manufacturing & development is dispersed
wider and larger. Things are much better now and this is reflected in
how much cheaper even Macs have become around the world. I never
agreed with the initial $2400 retail price point Apple staked out for
the first few years they shipped Macs and as time has shown, a lower
price spreads the goodness much farther than something only the "Be$t
of Us" can afford - especially when the product is superior. Ask your
mother writing letters, sister ripping CD's, or cousin working at the
car repair what machine perks their interest and more often than not
they point at a Mac {OK, an iPod with Mac dangling behind} and there is
no doubt your grandfather will get more done with a Macintosh unless
your camped out at his house to nurse him through Bill's glitchware.
Gates lacks panache and real vision and only his immense wealth {buying
time and space to refine} raised the Windows UI to a notable level of
mimicry and smoothed over its ad-hoc internal architecture - and we
still see that legacy dragging it down the security bung-hole. Face
it: Gates has always been looking over his shoulder and paying off
spies to find out what Apple is cooking up. I'd call him more clever
{conniving} than smart {brilliant}: remember their workgroup chant,
"Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run"? I'll grant Bill certain
redeeming features now that he's giving away vast sums to real-world
causes, it's just too bad he had to chew up so many people under cruel
& degrading work environments and BORG-like/pedophile-style raids on
small companies to become such a wealthy respected elder gentlemen.
In reality you, Andrew, are heir to the mainframe and mini support
class of technicians who migrated out of the air conditioned
institutional monsters that required heavy technical support to a
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
Hi! Hello, HELLO... earth calling ethereal c On Sep 7, 2006, at 10:00 PM, John W Redelfs wrote: On 9/7/06, Richard Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: And there in fact is a rational argument in favour of vegetarianism, because a given area of land can feed more vegetarians than meat eaters essentially because of thermodynamics. More solar energy gets into plants used as human food than into plant-eating animals used as human food. So what? In the USA people need to eat less anyway. And globally, there needs to be a reduction in population that could most easily be effected by widespread starvation. People extol the virtues of abortion and birth control, but doesn't starvation, disease and war control over population just as well? I fail to see the advantages of birth control and abortion. That is, I would if I did not believe that every human being on this earth is a child of the same Heavenly Father and hence truly brothers and sisters. John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** What an amazingly callous thing for a proponent of sartorial living. That you can equate the death of a newly gelling organiform - not even a fetus - with a child suffering war and disease is amazing. On a simple neuron-count alone wouldn't the grown and raised child have a lot more pain to feel than the empty vessel just starting in a womb? What is this, if God won't smite them, I will?!? Such family values! Can you please rethink and restate this? - Jonathan - ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
Warren,
Brilliant rebuttal. Your examples and premise work for me!
{no further comment below}
-Jonathan-
On Sep 7, 2006, at 9:16 PM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
There's a bit of convolution here; before a meaningful discussion can
happen in some areas I think some of it has to be untangled.
On Sep 6, 2006, at 4:58 AM, John W Redelfs wrote:
My atheist father used to tell me that "might makes right" is a bad
philosophy? Why?
Succinctly, if it were a valid philosophy, there would have been
nothing wrong, ethically or morally, had the Nazis won WWII. Whether
one is an atheist, agnostic or theist, I think we can agree that
"might makes right" is not de facto true.
Unless there is a God who is against it, why would that
philosophy be any better or worse than any other?
Why would any philosophy that creates suffering be worse than a
philosophy that reduces it, whether there is a god or not? Put another
way, do we (does anyone) need a deity to tell us that beating a child
is reprehensible?
Upon what do atheists base
their morality? I've never been able to understand this.
Probably you haven't asked the right person. I base my ethical
decisions on my ability to empathize. If I know a given action would
cause me misery, I know that it's an action I shouldn't perpetrate
upon another. (I believe there's a Christian analogue to this
referring to auriferous yardsticks or some such.)
Hopefully this clarifies things.
If selection of
the species is determined by survival of the fittest, isn't "might"
the
ultimate good, biologically speaking?
This is where we're getting into convolutions. You seem to have the
impression that survival fitness is equal to battle/struggle/fighting,
but that's a very narrowly-applicable view. Fitness has more to do
with propagation than it does with a battle to survive; a celibate
organism will not pass on its genes regardless of how successful it is
in a field of combat. *Any* field of combat, including not drowning in
a pool of water or surviving a drought or being fortunate enough not
to live on the side of an active volcano.
There's a tremendous amount of contingency brought about by
environmental and population factors that profoundly affects
probability of yielding offspring. The "nature red in tooth and claw"
idea is a vast -- and largely inaccurate -- oversimplification.
The strong are just doing nature a
favor by rubbing out the weak, preferably before they have a chance to
reproduce.
You're again seeing things narrowly. Is the bird flu virus "stronger"
than the birds it's killing? On one level, you could argue the answer
is yes; however, birds that survive the virus are actually doing the
reverse of your conclusion (being weak, therefore rubbed out) and are
in fact having the tables turned -- it's the virus that gets
eliminated, not the bird. (I know this isn't wholly accurate, but I
couldn't think of a bacterial analogue off the top of my head.)
Following this line of reasoning, would not killing babies be
one of the "moral" things a person could do? That way only the
babies of
the strongest parents would be able to survive, and that would
improve the
bloodline, isn't that so?
In some species this appears to happen, at least to some extent. When
a lion takes over a pride, for instance, it kills the cubs that were
spawned by its predecessor. This forces the females into heat, which
allows the lion to mate with them and ensure his own genes' supremacy
in the pride.
(I see The Fool mentioned this as well!)
Of course, there are other species which show strong in-group
altruism; for instance, you won't find that behavior in chimpanzee
society except in cases of extreme aberration (turns out chimps can
suffer from some of the same mental sicknesses that we can). We're
much more genetically aligned with chimps than lions, so from even a
strictly biological viewpoint it shouldn't be too surprising that we
don't put much effort into killing off the weak within our own groups.
Of course, *outside* our groups, anything goes, and has for a long,
long time indeed:
8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!
(Psalms 137:8-9)
Thus we can find support for virtually every conceivable atrocity,
even in Holy Writ, provided that atrocity is committed against those
who are not part of our group.
Put another way, there's no rational way to argue that religion or
faith in a deity automatically places one in a position to "know" what
is moral or not relative to someone who does not believe in a deity.
Might does not make right; a holy book doesn't either; and neither
does eschewing scripture.
What makes right is understanding:
1. "Right" is a very plastic term that is subject to interpretation on
the individual, family, group and societal/na
Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 8, 2006, at 7:44 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Nick Arnett quoted:
(...) researchers will inevitably say that the body count
has crossed 100,000.
All of this madness to stop a madman, Saddam Hussein.
I think it's a small price to pay for the removal of a tyrant.
What is the body count of a tyranny? Argentina's military
dictatorship of the 70s had a body count like that.
Brazilian's current drug civil war may have a body count of
this magnitude. If there was a way to trade 100,000 and solve
the drug problem, I think I would accept this price.
Alberto Monteiro
Alberto,
I assume you'll toss your own family into the furnace first just to be
sure we have enough to cover your ethically challenged accounting
methods. What if this nice round conceptually dead-simple number of
100K isn't enough dead and the battles continue decades, and numbers
reach millions? When is enough dead enough? When all you and yours
lay at your feet? Are you prepared for that, because this is a logical
{and time-tested!} course of action your apparently willing to embrace.
Having lived in Holland I've seen what happens when you remove the
profit from drug-running: the mafioso go away. The guns go away.
Petty crime goes down as junkies don't need expensive per-diem fixes.
Same thing with prostitution.
Ghandi said something appropriate {roughly}:
" War will not stop war until darkness makes darkness go away"
- Jonathan -
___
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Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 8, 2006, at 9:52 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Jonathan Gibson wrote:
I assume you'll toss your own family into the furnace first
just to be sure we have enough to cover your ethically
challenged accounting methods.
The problem is that my own family _is_ into the furnace right
now. And probably yours too - but a difference furnace, one
powered by fissionable nuclei.
The world is a dangerous place, and absolute pacifism sounds
like unconditional surrender.
Who's arguing absolute pacifism?
I operate on the Fight end of the Spectrum and not Fear, but that
doesn't mean I need to reduce everything to fisticuffs. I simply face
my fears head on. It's the only way that works for me.
I don't understand your ref to atomic material... do you still believe
Saddam had nukes or even anywhere near to this?!? You are foolishly
mistaken if you do, because this has been disproven six-ways to Sunday.
BushCo would be touting the rad-counts and beakers-residues high and
low if they could find any. Apparently, your willing to throw your
own family {maybe a better way to phrase this is, you are willing to
sacrifice Somebody Else's family} on a sacrificial alter at the mere
mention of skeery-monster boogeyman of nuclear fire without rationally
assessing facts. I don't even have to raise this issue since you think
a Drug War is justification enough to lose your family to local
crossfire.
Life is cheap{er}, for some, apparently.
What if this nice round conceptually dead-simple number of
100K isn't enough dead and the battles continue decades,
and numbers reach millions? When is enough dead enough?
When all you and yours lay at your feet? Are you prepared
for that, because this is a logical {and time-tested!}
course of action your apparently willing to embrace.
Obviously, there's a limit to how many people should die
to prevent a tyrant to have his wishes. It would be wrong
to start a nuclear war to prevent a nuclear war.
So, still no quantification? What exactly is your measure for success
of this effort?
Having lived in Holland I've seen what happens when you
remove the profit from drug-running: the mafioso go away.
The guns go away. Petty crime goes down as junkies don't
need expensive per-diem fixes. Same thing with prostitution.
Ok, but that happened because the drug dealers could easily
cross the borders and continue their trade elsewhere. If
we wanted to have this solution for all western nations, there
would be an enormous increase in crime - because criminals
would find more violent ways to compensate their losses.
Your ignoring my point. There are ways to diffuse a conflict that do
not require more fists and blood. Sun Tzu in the Art of War often
describes the very best way to outwit your enemy is have them lose
heart and disband - giving one victory w/o conflict. The drug laws in
The Netherlands do just that... Now, if their neighbors wish to pursue
a Prohibition-style then they will maintain the mafia they deserve - at
a cost.
I fail to see why the criminal elements would pursue ever-more violent
crimes in the face of these profit drains... seems like it's when the
profits soar that they break out weapons.
Is there some study of the Dutch aftermath you are aware of and can
share?
Ghandi said something appropriate {roughly}:
" War will not stop war until darkness makes darkness go away"
Yes, but India's independence only succeeded after England
had suffered a lot in WW2. As much as I admire Ghandi's pacifism,
it could only work in those special circumstances. It would
not be possible, for example, for iraqi citizens to depose
Saddam with hunger strikes.
Alberto Monteiro
Um, I understood there was some 17 million Iraqis before we invaded.
Should they all pick and collectively decide to march on his palaces he
would be history. Unlikely, but then I never bought the line he had
nukes this time around. I did my background homework.
- Jonathan -
___
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The coming Singularitarian
Witty Transhumanist Riff-Off of The Pirates Of Penzance
I found this lively show-tune parody while perusing the
Singularity-related section of Ray "mathematica" Kurzweil's nexus. Ray
has got a wide assortment of items to check out including a recent one
by our man, Brin -
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0656.html?
m%3D1
Written and performed by Charlie Kam:
Windows Media {author provided}
http://mfile-dca.akamai.com/12032/mp3/kurzweil.download.akamai.com/
12032/kain/CharlieKam_Singularitarian.asx
Translated to MP3
http://formandfunction.com/word/wordbits/CharlieKam_Singularitarian.mp3
... I am the very model of a Singularitarian
I'm combination Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian,
Aggressively I’m changing all my body’s biochemistry
Because my body's heritage is obsolete genetically,
Replacing all the cells each month it's here just temporarily
The pattern of my brain and body’s where there's continuity,
I'll try to improve these patterns with optimal biology,
(“But how will I do that? I need to be smarter. Ah, yes…”)
I’ll expand my mental faculties by merging with technology,
Expand his mental faculties by merging with technology,
Expand his mental faculties by merging with technology
Expand his mental faculties by merging with technology
And with our new technology, renewable clean energy,
Remove our pathogens and overcome hunger and poverty
In short I am a Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian
I am the very model of a Singularitarian
In short he is a Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian
He is the very model of a Singularitarian
Knowledge in all forms music, art, science and technology,
Our brains and bodies all precious and any loss a tragedy
Important recognitions and insights are what we should retain
While we destroy all of the useless information that remains
And when a person dies we lose a profound pattern tragically,
And the part of ourselves that interacted with them lit’rally
Religious folks may rationalize that death is really something good
(“Something Good? Something GOOD? Eh?)
I think they’d change their minds if Singularity were understood
I think they’d change their minds if Singularity were understood
I think they’d change their minds if Singularity were understood
I think they’d change their minds if Singularity were understood
I create and appreciate all of the knowledge that I know
Toward greater order even though complexity I know may grow
In short I am Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian
I am the very model of a Singularitarian
In short he is a Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian
He is the very model of a Singularitarian
The purpose of the universe is that of all our human lives
Since no aliens have come forth this much we can now rationalize
We’ll spread our thoughts with nanobots that know how to
self-replicate
Through solar system, Milky Way or anywhere we designate
Ideas are our products that will solve the problems of our fate
And new ideas for the problems we can’t yet articulate
Let’s leverage all our knowledge from the returns that accelerate
(Returns that accelerate? Sounds familiar. Ah yes, the law of
accelerating returns by Ray Kurzweil, of course, OF COURSE!)
So the outcome of universe is something we can contemplate
The outcome of universe is something we can contemplate
The outcome of universe is something we can contemplate
The outcome of universe is something we can contemplate
The singularity is near but I won’t be indifferent
In case something should go awry I’ll do my bestest to prevent
Because I am a Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian
I am the very model of a Singularitarian
Because he is a Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian
He is the very model of a Singularitarian
Brilliant, and I intend to teach my boy these stanzas for upcoming
talent shows.
So, what is to come of us when we simplify our needs, maintain clearer
priorities, have vast material wealth and dirt-cheap manufacturing
available with lots of technology to expand the limits of our brain and
bone?
Enter professor and sci-fi writer Verner Vinge's notion of a
Singularity - Like the computer power increasing 2x every 18 months, he
pictures a multi-planet transcendent event brought about by humanities
accelerating information and physical mastery of material and energy
beyond our {human} ken, such that people become more than human and
leave this plane of existence for greater pursuits. Short audio
interview and overview here.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5576503
I highly recommend Vinge's "Bobble" series, "The Peace War" & "Marooned
in Realtime" {where he explicitly looks into Singularities of society
-vs- in physics}.
I've just got around to reading Ken Macleod's "Cassini Division" where
he further explores an out of control AI-human hybrid
Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 8, 2006, at 2:50 PM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote:
Jonathan Gibson wrote:
Who's arguing absolute pacifism?
I operate on the Fight end of the Spectrum and not Fear, but that
doesn't mean I need to reduce everything to fisticuffs. I simply face
my fears head on. It's the only way that works for me.
I don't understand your ref to atomic material...
Because the USA may be the target of nuclear terrorism. OTOH,
nuclear terrorists might explode a bomb anywhere they can, just
to show they have it.
OK.
How does this make any difference? We faced nuclear megadeath of
enormous proportions for decades w/o erosion of our rights - well,
actually we have, but that's another topic - or, at least the ones we
curtailed are a "comfortable pain" we are already long familiar with.
I fail to see what scale of boogeyman is acceptable when North Korea
has become a growing and real nuclear threat, while GwB and that crowd
chase snipes they damn well knew weren't real. I followed the debriefs
of Saddam's defecting in-laws and follow-on UN reports which all track
a reality that BushCo denied in order to make a case for their
pet-projects. This was a world-class canard although I did expect to
find a few nerve and gas casings as we went in. I never thought Saddam
would deploy them on our troops as our retribution would have been
mighty & righteous.
do you still believe
Saddam had nukes or even anywhere near to this?!?
I believe that this is irrelevant. We _know_ now that Saddam had no
nukes _then_. We know that Saddam wanted to have nukes - he
would buy nuclear stuff from anyone.
As would others, but this was true BEFORE the fall of the Soviets.
Following more than Fox News and AEI/Heritage flacks will remove a lot
of the mystery from world politics.
I fail to see how "everything changed" as people like to proffer as
some sort of newthink incantation. This is just cage-rattling to keep
our emotions on edge and our frontal lobes from operating at
full-speed.
BushCo would be touting the rad-counts and beakers-residues high and
low if they could find any. Apparently, your willing to throw your
own family {maybe a better way to phrase this is, you are willing to
sacrifice Somebody Else's family} on a sacrificial alter at the mere
mention of skeery-monster boogeyman of nuclear fire without rationally
assessing facts. I don't even have to raise this issue since you
think
a Drug War is justification enough to lose your family to local
crossfire.
Life is cheap{er}, for some, apparently.
I didn't say that - I said that my family _is right now_ in the
crossfire
of a drug war. I also said that your family is right now in the
crossfire
of another war.
I'd call it something other than a war.
To me it looks more like a provocative set of actions to make
mountains out of mole-hills. It's designed to make our defense
industry an Immovable Object to bill against the Irresistible Force of
the brownskins, well, everywhere... These hind-brain dinosaurs we call
a defense industry need to lean against something or they can't stand
up and w/o a Cold War, etc, they seek justification for the megabucks
they seek.
I've been a US Defense Contractor and know what I speak of.
What if this nice round conceptually dead-simple number of
100K isn't enough dead and the battles continue decades,
and numbers reach millions? When is enough dead enough?
When all you and yours lay at your feet? Are you prepared
for that, because this is a logical {and time-tested!}
course of action your apparently willing to embrace.
Obviously, there's a limit to how many people should die
to prevent a tyrant to have his wishes. It would be wrong
to start a nuclear war to prevent a nuclear war.
So, still no quantification? What exactly is your measure for success
of this effort?
Ok, you want numbers. How many people could die to prevent how
many deaths? How many (precious-to-me) lives could die to
prevent (not-precious-to-me) deaths?
On a first estimation, I don't care how many supporters-of-a-tyranny
die if their deaths prevent just a single innocent death. Call me
callous, but people who chose to support a tyrant have no sympathy.
OTOH, if once far-away innocent person must die to prevent one
friendly person, I will accept this equation - I am no hypocrite that
will say that "all lives are equally precious to me".
Now, let's make the inverse count. How many precious-to-me
lives I would sacrifice to save strangers? I don't know, but
here the count is certainly not 1:1!
I fail to see why the criminal elements would pursue ever-more violent
crimes in the face of these profit drains... seems like it's when the
profits soar that they break out weapons.
Is there some study of the Dutch aftermath you are aware of and can
share?
No, there's no such study. I am just extrapolating from the behaviour
of criminals in my home city. When one profitable way is cut down,
they switch to another kind o
Re: FW & RE: Fly The Flag
Robert, I agree whole-heartedly. I'll fly mine in defiance... and upside-down in accordance with a Ship In Distress rules of the open sea. - Jonathan - On Sep 8, 2006, at 7:27 PM, Robert G. Seeberger wrote: Ann Holland wrote: Remember to honor those who have served and this great country we have the privilege to live in!!! God Bless America! Earlier today I was informed that I would be working at Chase Tower on Monday and Tuesday. Later it dawned upon me that on 9/11 (Monday) I would be working in the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Tha..rilling! Ah well...I'm a child of the Cold War, I was well schooled in how to put my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye. We called it "Duck and Cover". It all likelihood 9/11 will pass just like any other day and the only trouble I will find will be for not kissing the boss' ass. (I'm a firm believer that ones own hind end leaves less of a crappy aftertaste and fewer emotional scars) I too recommend flying the flag on 9/11. Not so much for patriotism's sake, but as an act of defiance! I want to tell the world that no matter who the president is, no matter who the enemy is, we will spit in your eye if you think to harm us. You might knock us down, but there is no way you can make us stay down. And our greatest strength, absolutely the source of our greatness, is that while you may be our enemy today, you can be our friend tomorrow. And if you doubt that, then look through the history books at all who were our enemies in the past and see who are our allies today. We are not better than you, we just operate under a better system, and you'd better believe we believe in all those pretty words we repeat with great frequency. Everyone is born equal, with inalienable rights, and you don't kiss the butt of Kings or Dukes because the rich and powerful are an immoral lot, likely to be carriers of STDs and nobody wants to get AIDS. So fly your flag proudly and keep your lips out of dark places (at least until that pharmaceutical breakthrough) and pray that Osama's ilk have not looked west of the Mississippi.at least for my sake. xponent Kissassins Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l Jonathan Gibson www.formandfunction.com/word ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The coming Singularitarian
On Sep 11, 2006, at 4:24 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Jonathan Gibson wrote:
I read Cassini Division over the few quiet times I found
at Burning Man last week (...)
The first time I heard about this "Burning Man" was in
a Malcolm-in-the-Middle episode. It sounds like Brazilian
Carnival, but tamer :-P
Alberto Monteiro
Heya,
Burning Man IS a bit like Carnivale, but is much more freeform. Mucho.
Styles of dress and vehicles can range from wild Brazilian peacocks
strutting up from SF's Castro district to the turgid black tones of the
Mad Max-ish DeathGuild. \Radical self-expression is the rule of thumb.
Most of us regulars out there are very wary of media portrayals as they
almost always put a mocking and derogatory tone to the reports. That
Malcolm-in-the-Middle episode was a touching and funny take on it and I
don't know any Burners who saw it that didn't think highly of it. I'd
even seen a few of the art cars roaming in the background and suspect
their owners are based in the LA area where they film. There was too
much shrubbery in those shots, but that can be forgiven. The hapless
suburban RV chef-grilling father figure as studied art performance was
a potent metaphor and had me in stitches.
I'm back in the desk-saddle and riding hard. I've finally posted my
Burning Man recap late last night, if your interested in following some
of those notions further. It's a remarkable phenomena I am proud to
promote. In fact, I'm coming to the opinion that this eclectic little
gathering just might have an effect on the world. It's running 40K
strong now and regional Burns are planned on a continent near you. I
first went out there when a mere 90 people signed up {friends mostly}
and it's kept that flavor to a remarkable degree in spite of the
scale-up.
Consider yourself invited - maybe we can debate in person!
- Jonathan -
www.formandfunction.com/word
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Re: unholy OS wars
My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you?
You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this
topic.
Expect push-back.
On Sep 8, 2006, at 1:48 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote:
On 7 Sep 2006 at 20:04, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
As an artist hovering around the computer industry since High School I
find it amazing that AndrewC initially claims to be a non-expert, yet
sells computers he regularly builds. Andrew, you undercut yourself on
Go back and actually read it. What I said is I'm not a technophile. I
don't get caught up in the wow factor, the tech for the sake of
itself. What the tech does, the end result, is all I'm interested in.
That I'm fully conversant with how to handle the tech relates to the
fact that it's a useful skill which I've maintained because it's seen
of value - I frequently do simple stuff like driver changes at work
for the less technically inclined when the IT department as too busy.
It's years since I was a professional coomputer tech. I design games
these days.
how else does one troubleshoot? I do not understand what is gained
from such a pre-loaded frame on the conversation. That you bluster
with rudeness and intended insults reveals an arrogance I find
irresistible - where's my pile of throwing rocks and favorite sling?
By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are
a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Your
hip deep in it by Normal standards and I have no reason to retract my
initial call. Your knowledge of arcane digital substrates is huge
compared to most grandmothers and although you may feel you still feel
there are vast technical reaches remain unexplored - you are in fact in
that specialized subspecies known as the Game Developer.
I simply found your claim of ignorance odd and wondered why.
As you couldn't even be bothered to properly read what I wrote, and
have put your own ignorant misunderstandings forwards purely so that
you could bash me, bluntly I'd of prefered it if you'rd of stayed
"busy". And personally I prefer an axe.
And I couldn't care less about the aesthetics of the case, for
example. My current PC's best features are not that it's blue and
grey, but that the power button is on the top front and that it has a
carry handle on top.
Some people think an enormous HVAC system hanging on the outside off
building is an engineering solution whereas I'd call it an eyesore that
reflects poor planning and design.
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a tad
I don't have a MP3 player. There's nothing wrong with my minidisk
recorder (which I was given ages back for recording lectures in
University, since I'm dyslexic) for listening to music on the go.
Tender spot rubbed wrong?
Hey, stop jumping at shadows. I love mini-disc, but you have to admit
No Moving Parts makes more sense long term. Welcome to the new
millennia!
Ask your
mother writing letters, sister ripping CD's, or cousin working at the
car repair what machine perks their interest and more often than not
they point at a Mac
The asethetics have zero to do with function. Sure, most PC cases are
ugly. It's a case. I really could't care less on the topic.
In reality you, Andrew, are heir to the mainframe and mini support
class of technicians who migrated out of the air conditioned
I'm a games designer. To quote an overused phrase, "The medium is not
the message".
You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire "It
looks good so it must be superior" class who are either gamers who go
for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's.
Rubbish. I'll thank you to not project your own shadows upon me. I
save my admiration for those designs that are the best of both worlds.
Anybody can, and they do, design swiss army knife dood-ads hastily
attached to a box trying to grab attention, but getting multiple uses
out of a single feature simplifies the overall design, makes for
greater product longevity, and fewer COG parts or repairs.
You do user testing of that game your working on don't you? Or, do you
let the programmers self-test in a vacuum
employed and users grateful to get them running, again. Macs simply
didn't require such overhead, and still don't - relatively speaking.
'Course not, you can support more 'NIX-based computers than you can
Windows with the same staff. Been known for ages. There's nothing
magical about Apple in that respect.
Even under the old Mac OS it was rare I had to do a fresh install
{even
as a developer} and since the advent of OS X it's even better as I've
only installed from discs when Apple issues
Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 11, 2006, at 9:51 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Jonathan Gibson wrote:
Because the USA may be the target of nuclear terrorism. OTOH,
nuclear terrorists might explode a bomb anywhere they can, just
to show they have it.
OK.
How does this make any difference? We faced nuclear megadeath
of enormous proportions for decades w/o erosion of our rights -
well, actually we have, but that's another topic - or, at least
the ones we curtailed are a "comfortable pain" we are already
long familiar with.
Nuclear Islamic Terrorism is far more dangerous than Nuclear
Communism. They had something to lose, while the islamic fanatics
don't - not even if the retaliation would reduce every sacred
islamic place to radioactive dust.
Nonesense. Why do the puppetmasters pushing suicide bombers have less
to lose than the soviet aparatchniks did? There are any number off
technical, political, cultural, etc, reasons for a ffoolish leadership
to intentionally, or by blender, trigger nuclear bombs. The scale of
mistakes is obviously much worse under the old Cold War than an
isolated nuke going off here or there. Losing Morder, er Washington
DC, to an attack would be bad, but nothing compared to globe-straddling
nuclear winter after a typical US-v-USSR script.
The scale is obvious and one you don't address.
I fail to see what scale of boogeyman is acceptable when
North Korea has become a growing and real nuclear threat,
while GwB and that crowd chase snipes they damn well knew
weren't real.
But what is the solution to North Korea's problem? There's no
simple solution. Not even starving the kp-ians to death does
any good. Maybe offering a huge bribe to kp's dictator, making
sure he will spend the rest of his life in some tropical
paradise and nobody will ever touch him or his fortune could
solve that problem, but this would establish a predecent that
would make every dictator try to get the same "bonus".
Well, invading Iraq certainly didn't slow them down now did it?
Additionally, we now lack a sharp military instrument to enforce our
disagreements with them. Simple solutions sold grandly and to a war
drumbeat rarely work and are never really simple.
Engage them. Infiltrate and subvert with hugs and kisses that win over
their people as you disarm their installations. It's a patience game.
One this administration is congenitally unable to process. It doesn't
fit the branding they've pushed lately as uber-macho.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Thanks, I wanted some thoughts on this to try and get past the handy
labels and notions that get bandied. I don't think there is
anything to resolve here as your opinion rates casual life-taking
too cavalierly for my notions of a stable solution...
I am not _that_ callous about life-taking! It's just that I live
in fear _now_: I change my routine all the time to chose safer
routes, my wife quitted jobs that would expose her when crossing
danger zones, my kids can't get in the streets alone, etc.
This is a warzone, and we are losing it :-/
I feel for you and yours. Your agitation for action is understandable.
I advocate drying up the weaponry funds by taking out the profits.
Clearly the "war on drugs" as it has been waged since... Nixon {!} are
failing whereas Holland has an actual working system that minimizes
harm.
BTW, I didn't have data when I wrote, but this Sunday's newpaper
had a study showing that the drug dealers are losing income from
Coke and Marijuana, and they are compensating it with bank robbery
and flash kidnappings - just as I said.
Well, then the correct procedure is to harden those areas and beef up
enforcement. You can't just shrug and say there is no winning, because
there are victories. You just cited one, but industries like gangs
demand feeding and until the machinery is starved into downscaling it
will grow like a cancer. Marginalizing this crowd is the only way to
make them into mere nuisances instead of dire threats.
Is it starve a cold and feed a fever, or other way around?
- Jonathan -
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Re: unholy OS wars
Yawn, Andrew you are becoming as predictable as a one-note Samba. OK, I have time just now... let's really start to dance and see what moves you got beyond boyish bluster. Clear the floor, everyone. Thermal suits and flame-throwers at the ready? On Sep 11, 2006, at 10:39 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote: On 11 Sep 2006 at 9:49, Gibson Jonathan wrote: My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you? You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this topic. Expect push-back. It's called reason, applied, and a defence of a tolerant view. And Except what I'm getting from you isn't push-back, it's mudslinging. LoL... my, aren't we full of ourselves? Wasn't your first sentence something about "blithering retards"? Your "defense" of "tolerance" is just a silly offensive attempt to distract from a weak position. Charging into the thread with bipolar words of IN-tolerance is a sure way to win an argument - NOT. Your obviously keen to inflame, or is English a second language for you in order to plead ignorance? Explain in your own caustic words just how this approach is reasonable. Mudslinging it might actually be if I'd told everyone something like... PC-minded developers are micro-cephalic cretins who are simply too congenitally scared to venture beyond the safety fencing of the Gates herd... and can you prove you don't have a MicroSoft brand seared on your hindquarters? If I was mudslinging. As much fun a dance partner as you may turn out to be, up to now I've seen little reason to give you much more than a few throw away lines. You're boring me, frankly, but I'm toe-stepping bravely on hoping to salvage a conversation out of this in spite of your two left feet. By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Your Absolute rubbish. A lot of them these days have digital cameras, have digiboxes, have ipods. I don't have any camera, I don't have a TV whatsoever, I don't have a MP3 player. None of these things are USEFUL to me. Tech is a pure tool - that I have kepy skills as a tech is because those skills are purely useful, it gets me cheaper PC's and is considered a useful skill by others. Monkeys can also push colored buttons and make sign language, but they aren't uplifted - yet. Riddle me this: can regular folk program such devices? Do they have a working understand of hardware substrates? Read functional flow diagrams of how it works? Open the instructions and follow along? Face it: If your making games you've forgotten more computer technology than regular folk will ever know exists. Assuming this isn't your first game job. WARNING: You maintain a stale air about you & might want to check your sell-by date because you appear to be peddling old goods. Good thing your proud of being so damn cheap. Tech is a means to an end. I don't care if you paint chapel ceilings with cherubs farting rainbows when your not spouting off about your critically superior abilities: to most people what little you've described of yourself counts as a techie. Too bad if this bursts some thin bubble you hold dear, but its the relative scale I'm talking about that you can't seem to address. Widen the topic if your so offended by the expectation you yourself have created here. It begs the question: Why are you ashamed of having technical knowledge? Isn't it just another hat you can wear? there are vast technical reaches remain unexplored - you are in fact in that specialized subspecies known as the Game Developer. There is no subspecies called Game Developer when it comes to views of technology. The vast majority are technophile, I am not. Games are just ONE medium, and the medium is not the message. I simply found your claim of ignorance odd and wondered why. Interest, not ignorance. Got your Marshall Macluhan memorized yet? I haven't heard anybody spew his good words so much since... college. Put it up there on a shelf next to Edward Tufte when you think you've got it down pat. All you've said about yourself is in tech terms within a tech conversation. You said you where NOT a techie as prelude to a technical explanation. I simply differ on your terms. You were pleading ignorance of the deep technology one COULD be conversant with. You know, there's always someone richer and thinner than oneself. I was pointing out a lack of perspective on where along that tech spectrum you might actually sit. I read your words - the first time. Some people think an enormous HVAC system hanging on the outside off building is an engineering solution whereas I'd call it an eyesore that reflects poor planning and design. That's nice. I don't care - if it wor
Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 12, 2006, at 5:29 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Jonathan Gibson wrote:
Nuclear Islamic Terrorism is far more dangerous than Nuclear
Communism. They had something to lose, while the islamic fanatics
don't - not even if the retaliation would reduce every sacred
islamic place to radioactive dust.
Nonesense. Why do the puppetmasters pushing suicide bombers have
less to lose than the soviet aparatchniks did? There are any number
off technical, political, cultural, etc, reasons for a ffoolish
leadership to intentionally, or by blender, trigger nuclear bombs.
The scale of mistakes is obviously much worse under the old Cold
War than an isolated nuke going off here or there. Losing Morder,
er Washington DC, to an attack would be bad, but nothing compared to
globe-straddling nuclear winter after a typical US-v-USSR script.
The scale is obvious and one you don't address.
Of course it's hard to estimate probabilies of future events,
and even harder to estimate probabilities of alternate-history
events [what was the chance, from 1945-1990, of an all-scale
nuclear war? Of a limited nuclear war? Since it didn't happen,
the probability is zero! :-P], but I was thinking, above, about
a single individual risk.
[OTOH, I don't believe that when the next A-bomb explodes
killing millions of civilians, it will be an act of war by
a nation against another nation. Most likely it will be terrorism,
blackmail by international crime, students playing with
things they don't know, or students doing it for fun].
Y.
It's a minor background condition of the wee novel I hack away at. I
make the point in context of a global defense system in orbit that has
cost America a huge chunk of her treasure and is left impoverished. A
nuke is slipped in by tramp steamer or 18-wheeler {now that the NAFTA
superHWY is being built} and America is left with nobody to exact
revenge against and the high tech crown does no good.
But what is the solution to North Korea's problem? There's no
simple solution. Not even starving the kp-ians to death does
any good. Maybe offering a huge bribe to kp's dictator, making
sure he will spend the rest of his life in some tropical
paradise and nobody will ever touch him or his fortune could
solve that problem, but this would establish a predecent that
would make every dictator try to get the same "bonus".
Well, invading Iraq certainly didn't slow them down now did it?
I don't know. Khaddaffi [whatever its spelling] seems quite tame
now.
That actually begun under Clinton and one of the few negotiated deals
this administration followed through on.
I feel for you and yours. Your agitation for action is
understandable.
I advocate drying up the weaponry funds by taking out the profits.
They lost some drug profits, not because drugs are legal, but because
they don't control the synthetic drug trade - from what I've heard,
we will remember with nostalgia the good old days when teens smoked
marijuana and snorted coke: these new drugs are one level more evil
than MC.
[I think this message has reached the highest Echelon count:
nukes, drugs, terrorism, Iraq, KP... Did we miss anything?]
Hey, I'll take any victory we can.
Clearly the "war on drugs" as it has been waged since... Nixon {!}
are failing whereas Holland has an actual working system that
minimizes harm.
I will do the minimal thing; there's an election in a month, and I
will probably vote for those that have these ideas.
BTW, I didn't have data when I wrote, but this Sunday's newpaper
had a study showing that the drug dealers are losing income from
Coke and Marijuana, and they are compensating it with bank robbery
and flash kidnappings - just as I said.
Well, then the correct procedure is to harden those areas and beef
up enforcement.
Easy to say, hard to implement. The police system takes a huge
share of the drug trade.
My wife brought home Man On Fire with Denzel Washington last night so I
had a vivid reminder of just what you describe. Fantastic movie.
Maddening, all that vice and corruption.
If the poverty was equalled out the crime wouldn't be as harsh and
prevalent. That's the Achilles Heel of Latin America.
Wishing you well,
- Jonathan -
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Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
Hullo,
I sympathize.
As someone with a good nose for bull-shite I tend to side with your POV
on this. What we are all witness to is the old signal to noise ratio.
As the publishing sphincters have been loosened {so to speak} first
with the DTP revolution and now the web allows any & all manner of
voices to be heard. I don't have the time I'd like to explore this
just now, but I think the general idea is to go back to those sources
you've trusted and build a chain of related and trusted outlets from
there.
More later, I'm sure.
- Jonathan -
BTW - Is it impertinent to ask whatever happened to our WTC questions
now?
On Sep 12, 2006, at 4:27 AM, John W Redelfs wrote:
On 9/9/06, Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is a vital point: ABC was _given_ the public airwaves --
a multi-billion dollar gift. People had to decide to drive to the
theater and pay ten bucks to see the Moore film if they chose to.
ABC will air "Path to 9/11" for free for two consecutive nights to
an audience that has a hard time discriminating between reality
and fiction when the fiction is presented as reality.
I think I see a way forward:
ABC can run a crawler under the entire miniseries (giving it
that "breaking news" feel) stating "THIS PART HAPPENED ...
THIS PART IS FICTIONAL ... THIS PART IS PROPAGANDA".
I am deeply puzzled by the events of 9-11. I am a conspiracy theorist
and
have been from my earliest teen years in the 1950s. But I have always
felt
I could tell the likely conspiracy theories from the obvious bunk and
baloney. I have never gone in for UFO testimonials, stories about
pyramids
and so-called Watchers, the hollow earth and other weirdness. I do
find
likely, however, that multibillion dollar banks and other private
financial
institutions have a great deal of influence on governments around the
world
and that they are involved in the financing of our wars throughout
history.
And since corruption in government is so commonplace in countries
around the
world and throughout history, it is reasonable to suppose that these
vast
accumulations of capital in private hands are in some cases involved
in that
corruption and that huge bribes take place that are never detected or
prosecuted, and so forth.
But I am really confused about the 9-11 attacks. What part happened?
What
part is fiction? What part is propaganda? Sure Osama bin Laden may
have
had something to do with it, but how sure are we that he was not
working at
someone's behest? If our government is genuinely concerned about
terrorism,
why do they continue to drag their feet in securing our ports and
borders?
If millions of illegal aliens come into our nation every year, how can
our
government be sure that there are no terrorists coming in and bringing
weapons of mass destruction with them? Were controlled demolitions
involved
in the collapse of the WTC towers? How can we be sure one way or the
other? If the towers were brought down with controlled demolitions,
who
could have done it? Why would they do it? Did not Hitler and his
followers
have something to do with the burning of the Reichstag in Germany
during the
rise to power of the Nazis in that country? Could the attacks on 9-11
have
been something like that?
My access to the Internet has caused me to become increasingly
skeptical
about virtually all information sources. I no longer know how to tell
good
information from bad information, something I used to think I was good
at.
I am now confused to the point where I do not know what to believe
about
anything. It seems like almost everything is smoke and mirrors and
media
hype.
What do you think? Is the official government story about 9-11
accurate?
Or are we being fed an official line that is covering up something far
more
sinister? I just don't know any more.
John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED]
***
Do you play World of Warcraft? Let me know. Maybe
we can play together.
***
All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR
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Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
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Re: unholy OS wars
Thank you Andrew for a much more reasonable tone.
You have cleared a few items up this time around and I'll respond in
time & kind.
Claws sheathed.
On Sep 12, 2006, at 11:31 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote:
On 12 Sep 2006 at 6:38, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
Face it: If your making games you've forgotten more computer
technology
than regular folk will ever know exists. Assuming this isn't your
first game job.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with the *attitude* a person takes
towards technology!
I'm in games because I'm interested in telling a story, games happen
to be the medium. I also write short stories. (And yes, if you're
interested I would post a spare one to the list).
Technology *itself* has no interest to me, just its uses.
Of course. Wonderful motivation.
Which has nothing to do with how the bus driver or cook would view your
work, which was my own point. Or did you even notice in your haste?
It begs the question: Why are you ashamed of having technical
knowledge?
Isn't it just another hat you can wear?
Why do you have a problem with the fact that some people who can use
technology don't view it as sacred?
What, no answer, again?!?
Anyway, I don't worship at any alter. Why do you insist I do?
I grew up in a dirt floor cabin in the woods. I live exceedingly
simple and spend little - exactly as I did when I was a more
high-flying {so to speak} entrepreneur back when we had a proper
economy. I love tools and can't imagine living without them. It
started with a pencil and paper for drawing and has evolved ever-so
much since then. I guess that makes me a snob all right, because I
don't want to live in a cave.
I do appreciate simpler living and getting things back to basics. I
work hard to remove all EM and RF from my environment as well as the
numerous chemical agents our tech tools are made from and exude
throughout their useful life. I also believe our current
socio-economic-industrial model is congenitally flawed and the cracks
show up more and more. My wife runs a surf camp for women in Mexico
where we spend a great deal of our free time loving the utterly
low-tech fishing villages - where they only recently got more than one
phone line in. I am proud to be a pioneering contributor to Burning
Man from it's inception. I fail to see in what I've written that
dismisses these values.
I simply differ on your terms.
No, you're being rude and insulting because I'm bursting your
preconceptions.
Foolish mortal. I feel no pinprick shattering anything of the sort. I
am confirming a judgment of you as an erstwhile misanthropic sucking at
the tit of the system you clearly despise. You've rarely made any
points at all in your quest to squelch my POV. Lots of heat, not a lot
of light - until lately.
Sure, function is important, but I simply argue it's best to
have both.
Okay, so you care about it. I don't. I don't claim that anyone else
should
share my views, but don't speak for me.
Great. Good for you! Ignore my points and watch the train wreck... I
really don't care if you make the half-assed goods that get left at the
waysides of time - and rather expect it thus far. You want to make an
anti-war game, then what good is your months of toil if nobody plays it
because the christopathic Left Behind game is more usable to the
marketplace? What a foolish enterprise if your truly UN-concerned
about having an impact. If this were so I'd argue your only looking
for a paycheck and you can drop the altruism.
Of course, you may be motivated to see it fail as a chip to place on
your lifelong shoulder, proof of how a cruel world doesn't deserve your
fine works. Another excuse to use caustic words in email discussions,
that sort of thing.
Your arguing it's either-or.
No, that is YOUR argument. What I said was that I don't rate how
something looks in the criteria for if I will find something useful
or not. Sure, once I've decided to get something, if I have 2 items
which do it for the same price I'll pick the prettier. But that's
litterally the last consideration on my list.
interface the iPod success proves Ease Of Use is a term with teeth.
And interface is a pure useability issue. Thing is, my minidisk
recorder is also easy to use. So why should I spend cash on something
else? (the ability to record is, for me, required).
You are dead wrong on usability.
How is usability not in the realm of function?
What good is an el cheap-o product if nobody can figure out how to use
it?
Sure, it could be better, Sure, it could be cheaper. So what? Time
will do that.
Dream on. Future devices will have DRM lockdowns which make them
considerably less useful. Heck, iPod's do for their legal tunes and
its getting more restrictive every other update or so. To me, that's
a pure
Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
Thanks Dan, I guess I missed that message in the bustle of my life. As another after word, every single one of my Archt schoolmates contacted in no way buys the official story. Every one of them cited the pile-up of those vertical support beams should have tipped the building, any building, off to one side or another. None could think of examples of a zero footprint implosion w/o demolition. Confusion over the complete sell-off of all material that could be studied was a mystery that baffles many - as well as no regulatory body issuing upgraded reqs in light of an unprecedented tripple-whammy systemic failure occurring the same day. All believe WTC 7 is the lynchpin that can reveal what/who benefits from this canard. Thought you'd like to know. I'd like to know more about this grad-school gal who thinks she knows more than practicing architects about what should and shouldn't be able to stand. - Jonathan - On Sep 13, 2006, at 12:34 PM, Dan Minette wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave Land Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 1:05 PM To: Killer Bs Discussion Subject: Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information? On Sep 12, 2006, at 10:16 AM, Gibson Jonathan wrote: BTW - Is it impertinent to ask whatever happened to our WTC questions now? Someone, I'm not sure who, but I think it may have been Dan Minette, wrote to the list that Gautam's friend on the 9/11 commission was disinclined to answer further questions at this time. I was the one, indeed, who wrote that. To clarify, though, Gautam's friend was a staffer for the 9/11 commission, not a member of the commission. She is now a fellow grad. student at MIT. As I said, she is a liberal Democrat at a school where even the most conservative people tend to think poorly of the Bush. However, she has become rather vexed with the conspiracy theories that have proliferated. I think she used some four letter words in response to the poll that stated that somewhere about 30% to 35% of Americans believed that the US government was somehow involved in 9-11besides questioning the poll's methodologyshe was rather upset that very many people at all could subscribe to crackpot theories. So, that possible avenue is now closed...sorry. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l Jonathan Gibson www.formandfunction.com/word ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
Yes, our friends and neighbors live an exceptionally rich fantasy life.
On Sep 13, 2006, at 12:38 PM, William T Goodall wrote:
On 13 Sep 2006, at 8:34PM, Dan Minette wrote:
I think she used some four letter words in response to the poll that
stated
that somewhere about 30% to 35% of Americans believed that the US
government
was somehow involved in 9-11besides questioning the poll's
methodologyshe was rather upset that very many people at all could
subscribe to crackpot theories.
Most Americans believe in prophetic dreams; four in 10 say there were
once "ancient advanced civilizations" such as Atlantis. 91.8% say they
believe in God, a higher power or a cosmic force.
Crackpot theories are *very* popular in America.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-09-11-religion-survey_x.htm
--
William T Goodall
Sam Harris had a nice long talk w/Q&A at the Long Now Foundation late
last year that describes the lunacy that afflicts far too many of us -
his quest is to educate around religious tolerance and how much slack
we give people on this topic whereas everywhere else in our lives we
demand proof: legal contracts, structural collapses, scientific
findings, etc. I particularly like his take on religious moderates
giving vast cover to the extremists because they deny those motivations
are really religious and do little to stop them - because they fear
that they themselves are not sufficiently strong in their beliefs as
compared to the zealots, and have little authority to say No.
Some notable items I recall from the talk {apx}:
- Stem Cell Research: Since any cell has the capacity to be developed
into a clone/copy, then every time George Bush scratches his nose there
is holocaust of potential life being destroyed.
- God, after creating all the vast cosmos, galaxies, planets, chose the
land of Palestine for the Jews - acting in his role as an omniscient
real estate broker.
- In the wake of Katrina how absurd it would be for a Senator on the
floor of Congress to say we really need to pray to Poseidon more
because that realm of the sea and storms is his... and he's angry.
- Try to lecture someone suffering from an acute appendicitis rupturing
about "intelligent design"... I'd add the purists should be required to
waive their rights to inoculations for Bird Flu, etc.
- The arithmetic of souls: What happens when a cell divides into
twins... two souls, right? What happens when those cells sometimes
reform back into one living embryo: does this mean that a soul is
merged, or lost again, does it become a super-soul?!? I agree it
doesn't add up.
- None of the absurd Old Testament rules for owning slaves {just don't
beat them so their eyes and teeth fall out}, killing insolent children,
slaying unbelievers you come across {even if there in their own town}
as they worship at their own alters or even in their own homes...
Kill, kill, kill and more killing is justified - even essential - and
none of this {and more} was never repudiated by Jesus and still hold
true for the fanatics.
- He compares Islamic jihadis with Tibetan Buddhists and asks why one
is so ready to suicide-bomb and another is not.
- If Jesus comes back to the Earth and reveals his magic powers then
THAT would be the New Science and that all scientists worth their
weight would have to subscribe to that since demonstrable proof was
finally here - until that time, tho...
He has a number of interesting ideas worth a listen/watch. He's not
all about nay-saying and ridicule. He's interested in the pan-society
and time-honored traditions of mystical experiences, meditation, &
conscious minds looking inward are all valuable and worth pursuing, but
that science has yet to investigate and should w/o the trappings of
religious dogma.
http://longnow.chubbo.net/salt-0200512-harris/salt-0200512-harris.mp3
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3975633975283704512
I particularly enjoyed his analogy of religion to a diamond hunt in the
back yard of a churchgoing family... about how utterly convinced such
citizens are that a huge refrigerator-sized diamond is back there
someplace, what a bonding the experience is for them every weekend to
go digging together, how they don't want to live in a universe without
that diamond in their back yard... you get the idea.
And my own take: to Zues, we are all atheists.
Other notable Long Now Seminars
http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
On Sep 13, 2006, at 4:24 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
At 05:49 PM Wednesday 9/13/2006, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
Yes, our friends and neighbors live an exceptionally rich fantasy
life.
On Sep 13, 2006, at 12:38 PM, William T Goodall wrote:
On 13 Sep 2006, at 8:34PM, Dan Minette wrote:
I think she used some four letter words in response to the poll
that stated
that somewhere about 30% to 35% of Americans believed that the US
government
was somehow involved in 9-11besides questioning the poll's
methodologyshe was rather upset that very many people at all
could
subscribe to crackpot theories.
Most Americans believe in prophetic dreams; four in 10 say there
were once "ancient advanced civilizations" such as Atlantis. 91.8%
say they believe in God, a higher power or a cosmic force.
Crackpot theories are *very* popular in America.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-09-11-religion-
survey_x.htm
--
William T Goodall
Sam Harris had a nice long talk w/Q&A at the Long Now Foundation late
last year that describes the lunacy that afflicts far too many of us
- his quest is to educate around religious tolerance and how much
slack we give people on this topic whereas everywhere else in our
lives we demand proof: legal contracts, structural collapses,
scientific findings, etc. I particularly like his take on religious
moderates giving vast cover to the extremists because they deny those
motivations are really religious and do little to stop them - because
they fear that they themselves are not sufficiently strong in their
beliefs as compared to the zealots, and have little authority to say
No.
Some notable items I recall from the talk {apx}:
"apx?
As in, I was citing from memory.
- Stem Cell Research: Since any
living
Yes, he stretches it to make the guffaw-factor greater - but the point
of where we are going and what can be done is clear enough.
cell has the capacity to be developed into a clone/copy, then every
time George Bush scratches his nose there is holocaust of potential
life being destroyed.
Only if he scratches hard enough to get through the outer layer of
dead epidermal cells which the body constantly sheds one way or
another and gets to the live cells below them.
I heard Harris give a shortened version of this {C-SPAN?} where was a
bit more graphic by making GwB digging in & picking his nose rather
than scratching the exterior. The same issues apply, of course, even
as he moderates his schtick.
- God, after creating all the vast cosmos, galaxies, planets, chose
the land of Palestine for the Jews - acting in his role as an
omniscient real estate broker.
He also allegedly helps people find their lost car keys. Why
shouldn't He be a real estate broker, too.
- In the wake of Katrina how absurd it would be for a Senator on the
floor of Congress to say we really need to pray to Poseidon more
because that realm of the sea and storms is his... and he's angry.
- Try to lecture someone suffering from an acute appendicitis
rupturing about "intelligent design"... I'd add the purists should be
required to waive their rights to inoculations for Bird Flu, etc.
Why?
Oh, to be consistent with the religio-philosophical framework espoused.
Spread a limited resource among those who actually support science,
education, reason, that sort of thing.
K?
- The arithmetic of souls: What happens when a cell
I presume from the context that you mean a fertilized egg cell rather
than just any cell.
Yes.
divides into twins... two souls, right?
Why?
Because my simple napkin calc starts with the two eggs, stir & gestate,
and then bake until brought to term... how can two hot-cross-bun
children share one soul?
I suppose they could be half-souls each, depending if Confucius rules
apply and the difference is split ... ;-)
What happens when those cells sometimes reform back into one living
embryo: does this mean that a soul is merged, or lost again, does it
become a super-soul?!? I agree it doesn't add up.
Only if you ass—u—me that whatever a "soul" is, it is contained within
a fertilized egg cell. All we can say for sure is that if a living
human being requires some sort of spirit or essence or katra or
whatever you call it then at some point prior to a live birth such an
entity must enter or become associated with the unborn child. IIRC
there are some religions which believe that the baby acquires a spirit
or whatever they call it when s/he takes his/her first breath outside
the womb.
I would favor the latter myself - if I had to choose before another
Grand Inquisition.
- None of the absurd Old Testament rules for owning slaves {just
don't beat them so their eyes and teeth fall out}, killing insolent
children, slaying unbelievers you come across {even if there
Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
On Sep 13, 2006, at 7:29 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Gibson Jonathan
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 3:24 PM
To: Killer Bs Discussion
Subject: Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable
information?
Thanks Dan,
I guess I missed that message in the bustle of my life.
As another after word, every single one of my Archt schoolmates
contacted in no way buys the official story. Every one of them cited
the pile-up of those vertical support beams should have tipped the
building, any building, off to one side or another.
OK, then why did all the graduate school studies in structural
engineering
that I referenced get this wrong? Or, are they all part of the
conspiracy?
It would be helpful if one of your buddies did comparablel engineering
analysis...
None could think
of examples of a zero footprint implosion w/o demolition.
But, of course, there wasn't such a minute footprint. Recently, I
posted on
Brin-L a link to pictures that showed a footprint that shows a tower
having
a lateral component to it's footprint covering about 2 blocks.
http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/9-11/default.htm#
Hey, there was a lot of mass and volume to be those structures and it
is little wonder some of it spread out. The point we are all
scratching our heads over is how they didn't topple off to one side.
None of these buildings {though WTC7 was a shorter one} acted as any
other building has. Ever.
I have not looked into the reports themselves, but I have heard and
read that NIST inflated heat ranges and durations playing loose with
the raw inputs even before tweaking the behavior models interactively.
I certainly recall hearing about the paint chips tested showed the heat
was barely hot enough to reach the sagging point of some of the steel
members and that even this was an extremely short duration and nothing
like what would have been needed nor what is declared by the official
stories.
Confusion over the complete sell-off of all material that could be
studied was a mystery that baffles many
I quote from the head of the
There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the
team
has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has
subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The
team
has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been
able to
obtain numerous samples. At this point there is no indication that
having
access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a
significant difference to understanding the performance of the
structures.
I repeatedly hear that investigators NOT sanctioned by the Powers That
Be are refused any such access. You, know, those scientists who are
raising concerns, but have the wherewithal to do serious work on the
debris. Some of them show their request letters and the denials that
return.
Why not clear the air, make a PR showing of handing over verifiable
samples, following up with NOVA, Discovery Channel, CNN, to dispel the
growing clamor?
Or, release anything more than a single blurry digi-chunky frame of the
Pentagon strike either, for that matter. Even that took FOI requests
and was like pulling teeth. There were multiple cameras on that
building. Why not clear this up?
!
- as well as no regulatory body
issuing upgraded reqs in light of an unprecedented tripple-whammy
systemic failure occurring the same day.
Let me quote from the testimony of Dr. W. Gene Corley on behalf of the
American Society of Civil Engineers, before the Subcommittee on
Environment,
Technology and Standards & Subcommittee on Research Committee on
Science
U.S. House of Representatives.
It's available at
http://www.asce.org/pdf/3-6-02wtc_testimony.pdf
BTW, the team assembled to study this looks fairly impressive.
Oh, Corley, the "Cleaner" guy who gets called in when the government
wants to cover up?
Underwriters Labs {former} branch head Dr Ryan mentions meeting him as
part of the NIST process and paints Corley as laying out the scope and
limits of the investigation before it even began - because this is a
the scientific method, right? That man presided over the Oklahoma City
bombing review as well. I'd trust him as far as I could throw him at
this point.
All believe WTC 7 is the lynchpin that can reveal what/who benefits
from this canard.
All conspiracy theorists? I doubt there is such unanimity.
All of the colleagues I spoke with anyway - which is what I said
before. As we know theories ebb and flow in many directions and people
accept various ones or not. These are not residential designers but
commercial building architects. These professionals voiced a similar
feeling about this mystery. Others may not. I'm relaying what I can
as I f
Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 14, 2006, at 8:54 PM, jdiebremse wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
A while ago, somebody said "This country isn't at war, only our
military is at war." I think that was profound. It bugs the heck out
of me, to put it mildly, that our leaders ask no one except the troops
to make sacrifices for the current wars. Although I certainly had
some idea that corporations were making huge profits off the war, this
editorial offers facts... although it's certainly not just the CEOs
who are making all the money.
What is "huge profits"? Is there some level of profits for these
companies that you would accept as not being "huge"? Particularly
after accounting for the fact that companies which provide services to
the military naturally find their services to be in much greater demand
during wartime than in peacetime?
Also, do you have a problem with defense companies making sub-standard
profits during peacetime? Do you believe that defense companies
should
receive profits during wartime that would compensate them in the long
run for the risks they beared while their services were not in much
demand during peacetime?
JDG
Here's some insight from one who ostensibly worked under DoD through
2001.
When I invoiced the Anteon Corporation, they padded their bills to
Rumsfeld shockingly high: For every $10,000 I invoiced they tacked
$7,500 ON TOP of that and sent it along to the Pentagon. Yup, we are
all paying $17,500 for every milestone I made, a 75% "shipping &
handling fee" for them simply accepting my emailed PDF - I never even
met anyone from the company in person and all they did was minor
paperwork - and mailing me a check. This was the pre-9/11, pre-war
levels of bacon and one wonders just what is going on now that
crisis-mode has been in gear, for years. This disturbed me as much
then as it does now. I was glad the job ended.
I see jobs that used to go to Pfc's peeling potatoes now expensively
subcontracted {and farmed out to Philippine, etc, labor brought to
Iraq} in order to keep an American Draft from blowing through the
living rooms of America - kinda makes warfare cleaner and easier and
safely distant, to some. I fully expect the next stage to be Green
Blood ranks as we dangle ever-more US citizenship cards to make up our
military and keep our various wars in motion as cheaply as possible.
Those "services" rendered mean today, as you read this, mercenaries
from around the world are killing and bribing across Iraq with impunity
& in our name since Rummy & Co insist they are beyond even local laws.
Oh, and all these billions {we currently spend 3B/week now} in income
is tax free!
That you can phrase the question as should a defense company be making
sub-standard profits - whatever that means in this realm - is amazing
to read. If you have any direct experience I'd like to hear about it.
They've always been astronomical and almost unendingly open-budgets...
it's how the politicians spread the pork to their districts - calling
it white collar welfare is my take after 1st-hand exposure. How about
corruption of the political process as another cost unseen?
Here's something to consider, nationalize the defense industry:
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/stanton/stanton_bigboardwatch.php
How would you define an appropriate system?
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Nuclear MAD Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 14, 2006, at 9:21 PM, jdiebremse wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Because the USA may be the target of nuclear terrorism. OTOH,
nuclear terrorists might explode a bomb anywhere they can, just
to show they have it.
OK.
How does this make any difference? We faced nuclear megadeath
of enormous proportions for decades w/o erosion of our rights -
well, actually we have, but that's another topic - or, at least
the ones we curtailed are a "comfortable pain" we are already
long familiar with.
Nuclear Islamic Terrorism is far more dangerous than Nuclear
Communism. They had something to lose, while the islamic fanatics
don't - not even if the retaliation would reduce every sacred
islamic place to radioactive dust.
Nonesense. Why do the puppetmasters pushing suicide bombers have less
to lose than the soviet aparatchniks did? There are any number off
technical, political, cultural, etc, reasons for a ffoolish leadership
to intentionally, or by blender, trigger nuclear bombs. The scale of
mistakes is obviously much worse under the old Cold War than an
isolated nuke going off here or there. Losing Morder, er Washington
DC, to an attack would be bad, but nothing compared to
globe-straddling
nuclear winter after a typical US-v-USSR script.
The scale is obvious and one you don't address.
I can think of a number of reasons.
1) In a world with numerous sources of nuclear bombs, it may be
impossible for the victim of nuclear bomb terrorism to identify with
certainty the source of the terrorism.
I've been stewing on this for a decade as a minor plot point in a
story. Certain isotope ratios can help trace the origin, but this may
not always lead to an actual instigator and it would be easily to set
up a third country as the fall guy. Still, it's a risk zealots are
probably willing to make because retribution may be hard to deliver
exactly as well.
I still argue the nuclear winter scenario is much worse - and there are
many nukes still ready to go relatively quickly both in the US and
Russia. We almost went over this brink a number of times for a number
of reasons. We still could.
2) The source of the terrorism may be a non-State actor. For example,
if Osama bin Laden steals a Pakistani nuclear weapon and ships it on a
container ship to Seattle - how does the US retalitate? What does he
have to lose?
Do you think an enraged American electorate will care? Look at the
Depleted Uranium we prodigiously dumped on Iraq already w/o a care. DC
would blanket the entire region with mushroom clouds - certainly if
this administration is still holding the levers. CheneyCo is ready to
act on some 1% likelihood, if what we read in David Siskinds' new book
is accurate.
3) Nuclear weapons are primarily suitable for killing civilians and
destroying infrastructure. Most modern democracies have officially
disavowed the tactic of intentionally killing civilians in warfare and
retaliation. As such, an Islamic terrorist may reasonably conclude
that the US would not retaliate with nuclear weapons to an incident of
nuclear terrorism. Note: *whether* the US would actually retaliate
with nuclear weapons is not of first-order importance. It is only
important, at the first order, that it is possible for an Islamic
terrorist to *believe* that the US would not retaliate with nuclear
weapons.
JDG
Gee, I thought all modern warfare had the aim of reducing populations
instead of battlefield theaters - the civ death rates certainly went up
dramatically once the "modern era" of industrial warfare began last
century.
Look at GwB's Schlock & Offal campaign trying to "decapitate" {Oh, was
it after this the jihadi's decided to behead victims?} the Iraqi
leadership - fecklessly as it happens with some zero for fifty score.
Only civilians died around this "precision" ultra-clean {cough} method.
I was reading yesterday how a senior Israeli commander denounced his
dropping cluster bombs across southern Lebanon villages - bomblettes
manufactured right here in the good ol' USA and now maiming children
daily.
As for nukes, it seems to me that our policy is still pre-emption on
the suspicion that someone has such weapons and might {that slim 1%,
again} do us harm. Certainly was the main skeery-monster pretext for
an invasion of Iraq. As I said, I find it hard to believe that after
our global knee-jerking overreaction to 9-11 that such terrorists would
believe the Republican Guard dug in around DC wouldn't gleefully smite
with righteous vindication anybody who makes a sour face at us - so to
speak.
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
___
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Re: Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
On Sep 15, 2006, at 4:56 AM, jdiebremse wrote: --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: That you can phrase the question as should a defense company be making sub-standard profits - whatever that means in this realm - is amazing to read. If you have any direct experience I'd like to hear about it. They've always been astronomical That's interesting. One way to prove this assertion, would be to examine the profits of defense companies. Perhaps you some evidence then that the stock value of publicly-traded defense companies has historically exceeded those of other industries? My point about sub-standard profits was directly related to the trend in the early 90's when many defense contractors went out-of-business during peacetime. I agree with you, but lack any such study off-hand. I'm a little busy just now, but will keep my eye open in the meantime. I will note that the defense budget didn't dropped under Clinton - it simply didn't grow as it had decade after decade. The stories I recall were more about mergers than belly-ups due to the high expectations these organizations set and the lower profits management was unwilling to accept: hence lots of golden parachutes for those who could no longer fit even as their beat marched onward. By any thumbnail, off-the-cuff, first-person anecdotal definition I can offer up the current model gets the heading "Wretched Excess." One wonders what this minor Clinton adjustment to the budget, social relaxation, economic stimulus & defense companies repurposing their tech to commercial uses might do for us again... our society spends a hug amount of mental energy alone on the topic of security. Additionally, my point was expressly designed to focus the discussion on the quantifiable. The war is an emotional issue, and it is easy to criticize businesses for "excessive profits." By asking what is the difference between "excessive" and "standard profits", it helps to focus the discussion. The US military from the Continetal Army under George Washington to the armed forces of today has *never* been self-sufficient - the military has always depended upon services provided by outsiders. Presumably, those outsiders have provided those services as a profit. Hence my questions. JDG And there I'd like to see the big picture of cost and roles and sheer personnel numbers through the centuries. Somebody must have done such a tooth-to-tail ratio. Anybody know of a Napoleon's 1812 Moscow campaign style histograph of our own numbers? http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters - Jonathan - ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
On Sep 14, 2006, at 3:34 PM, Charlie Bell wrote:
On 14/09/2006, at 7:26 PM, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
Hey, there was a lot of mass and volume to be those structures and it
is little wonder some of it spread out. The point we are all
scratching our heads over is how they didn't topple off to one side.
None of these buildings {though WTC7 was a shorter one} acted as any
other building has. Ever.
Good assertion. So let's see the evidence. Show us please a case study
of a building collapse *of this construction type* that has toppled
further than half its width in a progressive collapse.
If you can show us one that has acted another way, then we have a
comparison line.
I think it's fair to not go line by line through your post before we
have a basic data point.
Charlie
Charlie,
You've turned the whole thing in it's head. Your asking me to prove
support for your position that the official story, du jour, holds true.
There has been no such examples provided that I can find, nor was the
single architect I was able to reach as I reply.
Your task would be to start citing where else this rarified and
extra-ordinary event is not so very exotic. My claim is that it's
unique: guess what, my null search results thus far prove my point.
Can you disprove this
Where's your examples that prove your assumptions?
Jus' wundrin'...
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
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Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
Sorry Charlie,
I have lost the references I have to the side-toppled buildings I speak
of, but will relay them as they turn up. Some of the same ones
appeared in the threads when we first dove into this some months ago,
if that helps.
Ok, let's get into the science a bit more.
This event triggered a number of memories for me as I was almost out of
High School when nearby Mt St Helens blew. Watching the turbulent
cloud motions of WTC has been gnawing at my hind-brain for some time.
I'd not made the connection until I saw this piece. He nails it.
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/09/pyroclastic-flows
-911s-smoking-gun_13.html 22 minutes in length
This piece of video compares pyroclastic flows & a good use of layered
data to see various interactions, physical simulations and the times
they occurred. This example relies on basic newtonian principles to
question the secondary plumes and arcing debris that is seen RISING and
ARCING away from the building AFTER initial shock-waves and debris
fields HAVE PASSED in the collapse wave - what causes material to
exhibit a cannonball trajectory except explosive action? It helps
explain why debris was found farther than expected from the central
core, although I'm still searching for more factoids.
As a paraglider one learns to gauge the elements in a highly tuned way
and in a funny accident of fate I've even launched off Mt St Helens.
Riding thermal updrafts is essential to staying up longer than a few
minutes in the air. Something was making powerfully clear thermals to
my trained eye {simply put your maimed or die if you don't learn these
tricks when flying} and even laymen can appreciate the force we see
once it's pointed out. It also examines the heated dust columns with
some notations under the clip to quantify the needed heat to move these
particles. This motion we see in the central dust/smoke plume bespeaks
of an intense heat source driving everything straight up on a clear
day. I'd like to know if the kinetic release of heat caused by this
mass impacting the ground is anywhere near hot enough to exhibit this.
I doubt it.
Additionally, I refused to watch the agitprop "Paths to 9-11"
dreck-u-mentary on ABC, but instead watched Robert De Niro host a CBS
viewing of a documentary made by the two French brothers, Gedeon &
Jules Naudet, who were filming a rookie firemen's journey at the
closest WTC firehouse that morning. They caught the footage of that
very first plane striking and have come up with an amazingly touching
film. In this film you see the only footage of the interior lobbies
known and at one point we see the elevators finally disgorge hapless
worried riders trapped when event began. This flies in the face of the
'aux-current' official story that lobby destruction was caused by jet
fuel "somehow" coursing all the way down from above through those
shafts to blow marble facades off the walls to explain why firemen
witness burned & broken people in the lobby when they arrived. These
are not the jumpers who come later in horrifying audio crashes. I
never understood how this burning fuel traveling down suddenly turns
into an explosive mechanism only towards the bottom {there were several
more extra large floors below street level} in this fable and now I
feel it is debunked. I've mentioned before those same burned & dazed
people have born witness that something exploded out of the basement.
It was those same firemen's testimony about a series of explosions
"just like a demolition" bringing the buildings down that got me off my
ass to investigate the discomfort I had with the official story{s}.
BTW - I'm done with ABC.
I've V-chipped ABC, ABC family, Disney, Lifetime, A&E, E!, and ESPN
right out off our household and I haven't missed anything yet. My wife
may want to tweak my list but my son will never watch Disney's
Fantasyland {in more ways than one} again and I refuse to purchase
their Pixar DVD's for him. Nyet. Nada. No way. I suggest if your
offended by their blatant coddling to this administration while only
critical of the Clinton-era, then it's time to lance the boil. It's
worse than Fahrenheit 911 because there you knew where the POV of the
director was facing, here they insist it's factual in the face of 9-11
Commission reports, etc.
And tell them, tell them all, as well as the "it wasn't us" ABC News
team of your feelings if you hope to have any near-term effect on their
craven conduct.
- Jonathan -
On Sep 15, 2006, at 2:08 PM, Charlie Bell wrote:
On 15/09/2006, at 11:52 PM, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
Charlie,
You've turned the whole thing in it's head. Your asking me to prove
support for your position t
Re: 9/11 conspiracies
Greetings Gautam,
Thank you for your response. I appreciate the level headed tone and
reasonable queries. And for giving this a much-needed new thread
label.
Conspiracies "theories", are just that until proven and are by
necessity vague to some depth. I am earnestly seeking answers and
clarity. I had trouble with the initial reports about the physical
causes of the collapse and indeed the follow-up NIST report repudiated
what my vague gut or churning subconscious had told me was wrong even
before I got into this in a serious way. So, in this regard I've
already had positive feedback justifying my skeptical line of query and
continue to raise others - particularly around WTC7. I am not alone.
I have no idea if your accomplished friend is in on anything. If I had
I would have directly said so. I wasn't trying to besmirch her, I was
pointing out many people accept a go-along-to-get-along mentality and
yet others find this quite handy for climbing the ladders of power.
It's called suck-up and a common trait across the ages. It was really
meant to highlight the later part of my letter concerning very real &
proven conspiracies our governments have committed against the people.
Although I will reserve final judgment, that statement was clumsily
worded in this regard. My apologies. May the insult never arrive.
Personally, I had never considered massive {in repurcussion} internal
conspiracies from within until I read Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising"
many years ago: facing an internal crisis a central soviet cabal
orchestrates an attack on the schoolchildren by terrorists as pretext
to hide other systemic failures by launching WWIII. Webster Tarply's
role in uncovering NATO intelligence behind the multiple false-flag
machine-gun terror attacks by "Reds" in Italy - and one such kidnapping
which killed a government minister is part of the Italian public
record. General Smedley "war is a racket" Butler was approached by a
cabal of wealthy industrialists who sought to overthrow Roosevelt in
the 1930's, but he refused and exposed them - with no action taken to
imprison them: this ought to inform your opinion of some timeless facts
about American power structures. Operation Northwoods was concocted by
American generals in the early 1960's to hijack planes and kill
Americans as pretext to inciting a Cuban invasion - Kennedy nixed it
and fired the perps.
I'm reminded of a saying Gore Vidal once said describing how things
have long worked in D.C., "I won't rat out your scheme, if you don't
rat out mine." Much mischief gets done all the time by our so-called
protector class. Why insist black hearted and aristo-minded people
could not possibly treat us as expendable chattel? Corporate execs do
it with predictable regularity via known bad products laced with
poisons or faulty designs or poor safety standards, all in the name of
their personal profit and institutional advancement. It's graph-able
by now to anyone working on their graduate thesis and one could almost
say its time-honored.
I am saying it appears very possible that it is indeed a high level
conspiracy. I merely hold the MIT studies mentioned under minor
suspicion in a box labeled To Be Followed Up and raise reasonable
questions a person should consider if their is indeed a cover up of
some nature. It gets placed in this category because of the amazing
number of connections to the hijackers, ObL family, and the finances of
this president, his family & the megabucks those around him garner -
figures who are indeed holding unprecedented power & unheard of levels
of secrecy over the government in this era. I think I'm being
reasonable in this light.
I have no doubt there was a massive explosion at the Pentagon, but what
it was is open to question. I'd like to know if your friend that close
to the impact actually saw the exact airline in question since almost
nothing remained, even a dent where the engines should have impacted -
let alone survived. A simple 3-6 clips showing the impact from
different vantage points would clear up the issue a great deal - the
absurd chunky digital frame or two fobbed off on us last year did
nothing to quiet the concerns and as I recall only raised the
temperature of discussion. Surely, you must wonder why this event is
still shrouded when it could be so easily dispensed with? The public
wonders, like it or not.
Like the three blind men feeling different parts of an elephant, we can
all take different measures of the same item before us. I do not doubt
your impressive credentials. I recognize your name from the NOVA
update to 9-11 last week. I also do not doubt your family pedigree and
the earnest deliberations you've had with them. I do know my own
training as an {admittedly non-practicing} architect and trust my
colleagues who did get their AIA certificates when they raise these
issues themselves, unbidden. Add in the curious
Re: 9/11 conspiracies
I bow to all of your greater intellects & training.
I recognize the need to split the political from the physical on this
topic. My training is insufficient to explore many of the arcane
directions of science this leads and clearly my brain has gelled into
some kind of tapioca over the years. I still get random misfirings
originating from up in there somewhere enough that certain aspects
remain hard to accept, but I am willing to let this go. I'm opening my
mouth wide here for a heaping helping of crow and wonder who wants to
use the spoon & who gets the fork.
On Sep 16, 2006, at 4:19 PM, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
--- Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I have no idea if your accomplished friend is in on
anything. If I had
I would have directly said so. I wasn't trying to
besmirch her, I was
pointing out many people accept a
go-along-to-get-along mentality and
yet others find this quite handy for climbing the
ladders of power.
Greetings John. That _may_ be true. But think about
whta that means in this case. It means that she (and
I, and many other people I know) are so committed to
"climing the ladders of power" that we're willing to
countenance - and in fact, actively cover for - high
treason. Do you really think that's plausible?
No, I didn't. I really thought I stated that clearer.
I was speaking of people's willingness to look the other way when
confronted with something that may shake their world view.
Personally, I had never considered massive {in
repurcussion} internal
conspiracies from within until I read Tom Clancy's
"Red Storm Rising"
many years ago: facing an internal crisis a central
soviet cabal
orchestrates an attack on the schoolchildren by
terrorists as pretext
to hide other systemic failures by launching WWIII.
Yeah, but, that's a _novel_. I'm not saying
conspiracices never happen - they do - but it's a
novel. It's also a novel about the Soviet Union, and
most people would say the old Soviet Union operated a
little differently than the US does.
Of course, it was just to illustrate. It was my intro to a notion I'd
seen before through my love of history, but brought into a modern
context. I will say that human history is ripe with examples of
immense nastiness across cultures and mankind has proven remarkably
resilient to change. Unfortunately.
Webster Tarply's
role in uncovering NATO intelligence behind the
multiple false-flag
machine-gun terror attacks by "Reds" in Italy - and
one such kidnapping
which killed a government minister is part of the
Italian public
record. General Smedley "war is a racket" Butler
was approached by a
cabal of wealthy industrialists who sought to
overthrow Roosevelt in
the 1930's, but he refused and exposed them - with
no action taken to
imprison them: this ought to inform your opinion of
some timeless facts
about American power structures. Operation
Northwoods was concocted by
American generals in the early 1960's to hijack
planes and kill
Americans as pretext to inciting a Cuban invasion -
Kennedy nixed it
and fired the perps.
I'm not going to comment on any of these in particular
- except to point out that even if they occurred, they
all involve a handful of people, and they were all
_discovered_. Any 9/11 conspiracy would involve
thousands of people - it would have to be so large,
remember, that it would probably include someone as
insignificant as me - and _none of them_ would have
ever said a word about it. Don't you think that's an
entirely different kettle of fish?
I'd say it's not beyond the realm to conceal a great deal when
assumptions are accepted and people WANT to move on. As Robert
Heinlein said, "Man is not a rational creature, it is a rationalizing
one." I'll just say their are many things I've heard that the {MIT?
Sorry to be vague!} studies overstate the temperature and even
empirical duration of the heat - but without access to this, and
someone with some training to look into this I will stand aside.
I'm reminded of a saying Gore Vidal once said
describing how things
have long worked in D.C., "I won't rat out your
scheme, if you don't
rat out mine." Much mischief gets done all the time
by our so-called
protector class. Why insist black hearted and
aristo-minded people
could not possibly treat us as expendable chattel?
Well, I met Gore Vidal in June and let's just say, I'm
not impressed by his insight into how the government
works. I'm sure he likes to think that's how it
works, but that doesn't mean that it does.
Perhaps, but I have found a lot of correlation with my own experiences,
observations of humanity at political play, and his parables. This was
but one small anecdote he was told by his grandfather walking the
capital as the St
Re: Whose Ox is Gored?
Hullo Dave, all,
I applaud your gesture of even-handedness as this is a useful reminder
for maintaining a civil tone and maybe, just maybe, getting to root
issues. "A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved," and all. I
just wished our system actually worked as we are sold it does.
My problem with this particular situation is a serious lack of
evenhandedness shows deepening flaws. For almost two decades I've
watched conservative politicians court and skirt this set of rules -
especially in the South - and more recently listening to my California
mother in-law recount her pastor advocating first Bob Dole and then the
GwB tickets with strong admonitions to his flock against the other
candidates {with an amazing amount of vitriol towards Kerry}... all the
while declaring these Abramhoff-Delay empowered figures hold the true
chalice of god in their goals and actions. I've watched the
Republican-Church axis exercise all manner of illegal cross-pollination
from mailing list sharing to clergy passing out Republican flack-sheets
for the faithful to blanket parking lots, to bold political fund
raising in churches w/nary a peep from our bureaucracy.
Given this administrations' proclivity to seek the advocacy of such
imagination-rich organizations and fear-centric groups it's important
to note they've actively been shoveling public cash {$1B last I heard}
into churches sympathetic to administration talking points: and RoveCo
is counting on this to establish a one party state.
It's no accident so many religious ills are associated with
Conservative movements, because the incompatible views of these
religions each demand they are right, they each speak solo God's word -
and when you sprinkle in old paternal cultural excuses for squelching
social dissent it makes for a plethora of handy excuses ripe for
bipolar fanatics and the craven to abuse. This is true here in America
as well as in the Middle-East. Today, it's the swarthy guy with the
funny name getting hauled away in secret for "rendition" like a piece
of slaughterhouse meat, next it's the smart aleck guy who likes boys
who gets a rough version of justice, then it's the nay-sayer who makes
noise about religious paradoxes, etc.
"But we have seperation, he's not going to push them as Christian
values" means nothing when he pushes the same thing with the
religious tag stripped off, with a whole branch of criticism not
avaliable entirely due to the tag stripping.
AndrewC
He's right up to a point. The civil peace he enjoys now is several
centuries from King James personally splitting Presbyterian shins. I
don't know if it's laws or social expectations that keep religion in
check there currently. My knowledge of British law & social customs is
weaker than of American, but I don't see any reason why greater
intolerance couldn't return there too. Get enough Red Bull mixed
drinks into a crowd of skinheads and you have riots, enough skinheads
in the population and all hell breaks loose across the nation.
Our own traditions in America stem from the steady flow of refugees
unable to practice their own flavors of faith. That and the Kings'
East India Company monopolies left a bad taste in our mouths and the
Founders and Framers took pains to exclude the abuses of power. It
worked - mostly, and for a while, but appears to be waning now for lack
of populace support and a concerted effort by the monied. I personally
believe religion is feel-good fantasy, but so is self-medicating with
alcohol & Viagra and I can leave it aside for this discussion.
Both our systems share a common history generally marked by the Magna
Carta with touchstones around the English Revolution that
institutionalized the limits of a King. There is nothing that I am
aware of that would stop this from happening again here in America, or
in England, if the populace became fearful and overly paranoid and the
state became sufficiently overbearing and maniacal.
Madison Avenue as left the Agora and entered the Forum following a
trail of gold spilling from money-changer pockets. Anything can be
sold with enough funds singing carefully scripted topics laid out by
ever-fewer media owners - what's the difference between this and the
old Soviet/Pravda lock on public discussion we used to feel smug
comparing?
Look at how our {mis} leadership under GwB seeks this very week to
remove Habeas Corpus {or, where is the proof} from the American lexicon
- and even the John McCain / Republican rump rebellions fail to include
such terms again showing just how easily "norms" can change when
anxiety and fear-mongering are given loose reins. So much for the
staunch defenders of Liberty - more like wimps knee-jerking at shadowa
- and that Democrats are mute on this topic is a congenital lack of
courage and leadership. Now Busheviks want to codify this so
abduction, abuse, incarceration w/o facing accusers - or even proof, is
legal. T
