Naming a Spirit

Despite my skepticism, it pleases me to experiment with Tyson's as yet unproven hypothesises. Skepticism seems wholesome, robust and right. Morally, I think we should be skeptics about everything, save goodness and love, in which we should be true believers. Credulity is a big problem in H. Sapiens. We must question, or we seem like ants. People will vote for Trump only because they lack skepticism. He is confident, sure. He is more confident than he really should be. Is he right? Is he good? People don't bother to look past the bravado. They want their tribe, Republicanus, to win, and "Trump=Win" seems to be the thought behind all the brouhaha. Well, Hillary is a known quantity and, I suppose, predictable. Boring, I think, is better than Bad. Perhaps people have forgotten. History provides us with many examples. But I digress.

Skepticism seems a tedious pose to maintain long-term among believers, and I feel swamped by believers in various things that don't make much logical or physical sense, and there seems no real harm in indulging in a bit of magic, whereas there would be real harm in supporting a bad politician. So, although I don't believe very much, I suppose I can manage to pretend just a little bit, sure. Perhaps pretending is what this thing is all about.

I shall attempt to take notes of my ongoing experiments. Based upon my reading, I believe imagination may be the best interpretation of what magic is to the believer. Whatever one thinks of, if it seems to arrive from an external source, might be, instead, a communication of sorts or even a divination. Intentions, motivations and environment seem to be relevant. Good attracts good, evil attracts evil, and so on.

Unlike Wiccans, I do not place much stock in rituals, spells or suchlike, which strike me as silly and ridiculous, especially in this modern age. It seems like so much nonsense and rather debasing and primitive. If Tyson felt free to deviate from tradition, then why not deviate further, and dispense with much of the nonsense, forging one's own way, provided it seems right or makes sense to the user. One seeks a dignified and original approach. After all, languages and cultures vary, and so too will words, inflections and practices, so I don't think any of that matters very much. Thoughts matter, if anything, but not specific formulas of words or marks. Tyson's treatise on sigils gave the game away. None of that really matters. The sole purpose is to inculcate patterns of thought in the user. That can be done with or without sigils, and the shape of the marks clearly is irrelevant.

I have thought about certain words that seem interesting or meaningful. The first name that occurred to me was Fra. It is convenient to have a monosyllabic handle, no? This is in accord with Tyson's recommendation to have a name for one's familiar. Apparently, it is possible to manufacture one.

A second word, Mishante, occurred to me whilst walking in the rain, and may or may not be a name. I think, rather than a name, it may be a subject and an action verb, as in, "I sing," or "Me chantez," which is poor French grammar. It could also be méchant, or wicked, but that is a depressing and paranoid thought and not at all what I felt when the word occurred to me, for I felt good then, even though it was raining. The rain does not bother me. I like walking, and I did have an umbrella after all. I prefer the "Me chantez" interpretation, because rain is the way that water "sings", and presumably Fra is of water, so there is a bit of poetry from Brother Fra.

Veneration for Things Ancient

I'm dismayed by a certain writer's reverence for the ancientry, their practices and beliefs. We moderns have, most of us, concluded that our ancestors were wrong about a great many things. And in any event, whether they were correct in any specific instance, there is no question but that modern, Western societies are nicer places to live than ancient kingdoms. I would not want to go back two thousand years. Ancient people hurt others for little or no reason and waged war as a regular profession. Cruelty was commonplace. Everything was the fault of invisible demons or gods or spirits, and people were afraid of the dark and did not understand anything about science. Ignorance was rampant, reason in short supply, and people died for stupid reasons.

Also, our ancients were not that old, in the cosmic sense. Ten thousand years is not really all that much compared to the age of the planet we live on. What reason have we to suppose that there was anything the ancients knew that we do not? What sort of advantage accrued to the practitioners of magic? We do not today see any on the public stage. Why should they hide, and why should they be in the minority, if their practices work, even in some small way? These questions should occur to anyone that reads about magic. If magic were a really useful thing, would we not learn about in school?

Donald Tyson's Sexual Alchemy

I suspect people dabble in magic to horrify the orthodoxy. Christians seem upset by mentions of witchcraft, fearing it comes from the Devil. The Islamists behead people for witchery, along with a thousand other supposed crimes. The Jews, who knows? They invented the Kaballah back in the day. But most modern Jews are probably amused by witchcraft and don't take it seriously. There really is not a clear Jewish position on magic.

I think witchcraft comes from foolishness, not the Devil. I don't believe in the Devil, but if he does exist, then he is a rather weak and unimpressive bogey. I quit believing in the Devil around the age of thirteen. It is an easy matter to establish whether the Devil or any other entity has real power and authority in the world. Invoke the thing by name, and if it does not appear, insult it. Nothing happen? Fine, then you know the thing is the fantasy of shaman from long ago.

I've been browsing Donald Tyson's book on sexual alchemy, in which he discusses how to attract and recruit a spirit lover, presumably, one that has no material existence in the world as we know it. One never really knows what is meant by the word "spirit" or "spiritual" when it is bandied about by those who really believe. I am not sure Tyson knows what is meant by the word "spirit," either. He seems unperturbed by pesky logic.

Tyson lays out an intricate system for harnessing magic. He is rather vague on material results, but who cares about the material world, anyway? He does not promise material results--a wise and prudent move on his part as a writer, because in my opinion, there will be none. Instead, he talks about communing with spiritual entities and traveling through the astral plane, which is a more achievable goal for the self-deluded. For me, airplanes are more effective than the astral plane. Magic seems like a mind-trip people indulge for pleasure and amusement. If it were effective, then we would all use it, not only lonely dabblers in the dark. It is not prejudice or close-mindedness that keeps us from magic. Magic does not work. Even if magic worked a little bit, people would use it. People use software all the time that doesn't work that great. We don't expect miracles, but need to see a little bit of benefit in this world, not the imaginary world.

As for Tyson, I can't help but feel like he is in magic for profit. People want to achieve power beyond the human capability, so they buy his books, because he promises that the process is easy and just requires certain rituals and a lot of patience, I assume a lifetime of patience, because nothing will happen in a whole lifetime spent dabbling in magic. He explains a complicated system, which fills up hundreds of pages to the end of his book, and then counsels patience. Clever, no? He regurgitates a mixed salad of superstition from the ages: astrology, mythology, the Kaballah, and who knows what else, flaunting his knowledge to establish himself as an authority on magic. I suppose this is pointed at other magicians, who might dismiss Tyson if he didn't know all of the lore they knew, but might accept him if he reveals things they did not know. If someone believes all of that and takes it seriously, then by the time they reach his book's end, they will have invested a lot of time learning and constructing their own reality with his ideas. I think magic only works when people believe in it. Thus, it is the same as any other delusion, such as religion. I do not think that Tyson can achieve power or knowledge over me or anyone else by using only magic. If only the world were that simple, then life would be easy indeed. The Tysons of the world are these romantics that hope human beings are more powerful, and human life more meaningful, than it really is. In reality, we are numbers generated by other numbers, and math is at the heart of the cosmos and explains everything. Magic appeals to those befuddled by arid, difficult math, like Tyson, because it is easier and more accessible.

Magical practice can transform the self, like any other exercise that people do, but whether for good or ill depends upon the nature of the practice. I do think there are odd things in life that beg explanation. We do not understand them yet, but magic is not an optimal hypothesis. Old gods and demons are not the answer. The lore of the ancients can be discarded. Direct experience and experimentation is the way. That which is called a goddess, what is it really but a facet of ourselves, and why should we not call it by another name?

Hadrian

This prediction concerns not the future, but what remains unknown in the past. After watching a BBC documentary of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, I have the uneasy feeling that he slew his beloved Antinuous. The Emperor Hadrian's ego was out-sized and improper, smacking of hubris. His innumerable statues and monuments give testimony that their patron valued himself too highly. Towards life's end, he became increasingly paranoid. And he was terrible toward the Jews, making their rebellion inevitable. I believe he certainly had to have been capable of fratricide. Perhaps he was one of the so-called good emperors, if "good" means nothing more than effective. He was not a very good man, though. What emperor was?

Donald Tyson

Donald Tyson has written two books based upon the mythology invented by the old, dead pioneer of horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Given the derivative nature of Tyson's work, one might assume it pales before the stories of the original creator, Lovecraft. Yes and no. Lovecraft is good, sometimes very good, but uneven. There are flaws in Lovecraft's writing that put me off. I really enjoy Tyson's Necronomicon and Alhazred. Tyson's style is crisper. He is an economical writer that does not waste my time telling me that the horrible horror was horribly horrible. Lovecraft blathers with a hundred words to convey an idea that Tyson can convey with twenty. Tyson is sparse even to a fault. I sometimes have to go back and re-read paragraphs to remind myself of what he assumes I already know. He does not paint pictures with very much detail, but is more of a sketch-artist. He also takes a lot of shortcuts as a writer and cheats when it suits him. In that respect, he reminds me of my own style. I find his stories endlessly fascinating and better for being built upon the solid, well-thought out foundation of Lovecraft's universe. There's no harm using a popular author's creations if they are excellent.

Nose Buried in His Phone

I vaguely remember an attractive young man, a friend of a friend, who introduced himself to me and several other people, then sat down at a table with us. After a few words, he buried his nose in his phone, surfing the web or whatever it was he was doing, and that was the end of him. I had been preparing polite questions in my mind, but discarded them and decided instead to forget his name, and to this day I don't remember it. That's okay, because he had no relevance. His phone indeed is more interesting than he is, as his behavior implied. He had fought traffic to meet us, but then blown any chance of making a positive impression. I do remember that he was an actor, and I found it amusing that here was a presumably social person, whose career depends upon interaction with others, and his nose is buried in his phone, and he has nothing remotely interesting to say. I learned later that his career went bust, he lost his job and had to move back in with his parents. I guess there isn't a big market for actors that stand on the stage silently fiddling with their phones.

Optimal Configuration of Smplayer for Intel-based Video in Linux

And here are the PPA's I have installed in Software Sources:

My Review of GalliumOS v1.0

When Google first released the Chromebook, my interest was piqued, because here was a laptop designed from the ground up, hardware and all, with Linux in mind, albeit Google's stripped-down, mutilated monster, rather than the full-fledged penguin we know and love. Still and all, the hardware is good, good with Linux, which is the real pull, and cheap, too. Ever priced Acer's refurbs on E-bay? Do so today. You might be in for an eye-opener. Google gives Chromebooks away, but makes bank in their ChromeOS, because the business user has to pay to play. The App Store is what the Chromebook is all about. Understand the business model? Even so, Google left a little backdoor open for all the poor hackers of the world.

I have nothing to do with GalliumOS's developers and, indeed, have no idea who they are. I found GalliumOS through Googling for a fix for my Chromebook. My Chromebook is a cute little web kiosk, but what if I want to FTP, RDP, run LibreOffice, and do all of the other nifty things that Linux can do? I don't like being prevented from doing things. I despise ChromeOS. It's wonderful if you don't understand computers. It protects the user from himself. But if you need to actually get things done, then ChromeOS is terribly limiting. Goodbye, ChromeOS. Enter GalliumOS.

As always, I highly recommend torrenting the .iso for GalliumOS, because by doing so, you are assured an error-free copy, besides saving the developers bandwidth. I did so and then followed very carefully and very slowly--the only way to ride on a new pony--the instructions for installing. Yes, the instructions are a wee bit more involved than a veteran Linux user might be accustomed to, but that is not the fault of GalliumOS developers. Whose fault is it? Why, the manufacturer, Google, of course. Google does not necessarily want you to be ridding yourself of their ever-loving, money-making ChromeOS. For my part, I could not wait to be shod of the thing, and my feelings were, if I brick my computer, then so be it. As a matter of fact, you must feel this way in order to install GalliumOS. You will be required to type a similar phrase in order to install. Otherwise, GalliumOS will not install. There is a risk. You could make a typo or something else could happen. Be at peace with your decision before proceeding.

All went well for me, and I had GalliumOS installed in less than half an hour. Not much sorcery is required and little in the way of prayers. Fear not. If you read the instructions very carefully, and then go back and read them again, and don't rush off in an all-fired hurry, then you should be okay. Just slow down, sip your coffee, rub your beard, ponder the situation, and get things done. Trust me, it's easy. I can't really improve upon the wiki's installation instructions. The GalliumOS wiki is your friend, and you should read everything there that might assist you.

The wiki has instructions for making a backup of your ChromeOS, in case you suffer a knock on the head and decide to go back to ChromeOS just because it's easier. I went ahead and backed up my ChromeOS to a flash drive, but I will probably delete the backup, because I'd rather have the flash drive for other purposes. You can optionally create a multi-boot system with both ChromeOS and GalliumOS or even something more exotic. I went the nuclear route. Out with ChromeOS, in with GalliumOS. Whole disk, baby! I don't ever want to see ChromeOS again, seriously.

The Chromebook is "prepared" by running a special script that wipes out ChromeOS and hacks the BIOS to allow the booting of a nonstandard operating system. This is a script made by John Lewis, and it worked flawlessly on my Acer ChromeBook running an Intel Broadwell cpu.

In the end, I am presented with the following screen when I boot my Chromebook. GalliumOS calls this the "scary screen," but I guess I don't scare easily. I just think it's an ugly BIOS-type screen with some misinformation thrown in by Google.



At this screen, we must press Alt-L. If we neglect to press Alt-L, eventually our Chromebook will play the nanny and suggest reinstalling the ChromeOS, which we don't really want to do. Unfortunately, a hack has not appeared to bypass this screen. It is merely a minor annoyance, courtesy of Google, again to protect the clueless business suit from himself. Remember, the suits have more money than we do, and almost everything is designed for them, not us. But that's okay, because we can fix the Chromebook to do what we want it to do, and I'm at least grateful for that.

After Alt-L, we enter hackland:



All we do here is press Esc, followed by 1 to boot the system, and that's it. We enter the familiar territory of good old Linux.




You will notice I encrypted my entire disk. I think this option is a no-brainer. A laptop can get stolen, duh. I chose a very difficult password and wrote it down in a secret place. I then configured the system to log in automatically, because there's not much of a case for requiring a log in, if the encryption itself requires a password. I really don't understand why everyone does not use full-disk encryption. It is like they are not living in 2016, with all the identity theft, password theft, fraud, hacking, and so on.

GalliumOS is based upon Xubuntu, which I am familiar with, but lacks Xubuntu's Software Manager. Instead, it has Synaptic Package Manager. Otherwise, it's pretty similar to Xubuntu, with additional optimizations to ensure a smooth experience on the Chromebook. My hardware, consisting of the Chromebook itself, a USB drive and a USB-connected Ethernet cable, all worked OK. I installed Qbittorent, Remmina (an RDP client), Filezilla, Firefox as my default browser, and Gcolor, and now feel like my Chromebook is actually worth something to me.

The desktop comes with a picture of a high-rise building as seen from the ground. I suppose that is an allusion to the idea that they intend to be moving up, going places, improving, since they are on version one right now. I replaced it with solid black, as I always do.

Other than the missing Software Manager, I did not see much difference between GalliumOS and Xubuntu, which is intended. This OS boots fast, is responsive, and I feel like I can actually get things done, as opposed to ChromeOS, which was great as long as all I wanted to do was surf the web.

The one thing that bothers me about GalliumOS has nothing to do with the technical side. I want to know who the hell they are. Just a name, a location, a picture, and a little bio, you know? In fact, post a life story, with twenty-nine chapters, a thousand pages. Knock yourself out. That may seem hypocritical coming from me, mystery man that I am, but then again, I'm installing their code on my machine. I am giving them root access. It would be nice to learn that the developers aren't actually the Russian mafia, the NSA, the Chinese Red Army, Iran, or North Korea. Just post a dozen or so pictures of the developers strolling through a garden sipping tea, holding hands and singing or dancing or vaporizing. That would be nice. Seriously. It might also jumpstart the donations, so the public knows the money isn't going to ISIS or something. I don't get why there are no names at all on the GalliumOS web site. It's not like they are discussing anything controversial. Perhaps they are in fear of getting sued by Google. Is that even possible? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. Is it legal and okay to hack a device that one owns? I think it is. But again, I'm not a lawyer.

The next version of GalliumOS will be based upon the next LTS of Xubuntu and should be coming out this year, 2016. I'm looking forward to it.

Step-by-step instructions that are easy to follow, a distribution that just works right out of the box, and a distribution optimized and customized specifically for my machine. I'm gushing with gratitude for the perceived added value to my Chromebook. I award GalliumOS a 10 out of 10. It converted my Chromebook from a fairly useless hunk of junk to something I actually will use. I feel like Distrowatch should definitely add this to their list of distributions, because it is extremely useful to owners of Chromebooks.

Reinvention

A good skill I developed is reinvention. I have the capability of reinventing myself. I can reduce this trait, increase that trait, in order to cope more effectively with my environment. Some have less of this capability, and I pity them.

Why persist in behavior that produces results contrary to one's interests?

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." I think Emerson wrote that, although Longfellow also may have. I first saw the quote not in a book or classroom, but in a ward. A counselor that I liked, a fine physical specimen who was the most effective counselor, the most perceptive, and one that gave me good advice, had written the phrase on a marker board. I doubt any of the others understood. But I place great stock in the written word, in ideas. I remember the ideas, when I have forgotten the names of every person in that strange place, even the ones that liked me, or that I liked, or that hated me, or that I hated. The only name I remember is that of a doctor. He was strange, alien, cold. I have no use for such doctors. I think the process of getting the doctorate annihilates competence. Perhaps the doctorate programs are wrongheaded and rife with corruption. But he didn't matter. None of the stupid doctors mattered. The only reason I remember his name is because I wrote a story about him. I deleted it decades later, because I felt like he didn't matter and the story didn't matter. The memory had no basis for surviving. One day, it will be gone.

One adapts. Already I am getting close to what is needed in the role I find myself in. There are just some tweaks that need to be made. Silence, patience, watchfulness, preparation, and deliberateness. These are the traits I need most.

Mr. Robot

I've been watching Mr. Robot lately. Everyone on that show seems slimy in one way or the other. I suppose this is the modern method of scriptwriting--no heroes. I don't like that. I like there to be a hero or, at least, someone that has a reasonable proximity to good. Modern writers seem to have a lot of difficulty with good. Is no one good? Come on. Surely there are some good folk left.

At any rate, I don't approve of Elliott's incessant hacking of everyone. I think that sort of thing is below the belt, like reading someone's diary. Not cool. Besides, the only people that tend to get victimized by that sort of thing are the ones that are open, social, merry, and communicative--just the sort one should wish to protect rather than exploit.

Still, I'm hooked, because the show does seem tapped in to the zeitgeist somehow and is technically literate. It reminds me an awful lot of work.

Vampires

Some are vampires, requiring the proximity of others to replenish their ever-diminishing supply of vitality. They drain. It is well to avoid them, when possible.

Others are independent, drawing energy from the earth and the air. These I count among my friends.

Calling the 2016 Election

It is obvious Hillary Clinton will be the next President. I find it so obvious that I don't even feel the need to explain. I'm far from alone in seeing this. Probably everyone with a functioning brain sees the same outcome.

I prefer Bernie Sanders, but perhaps he is too old and obscure. He does not enjoy name recognition, unlike Clinton. I don't think Bernie can beat Clinton at this time. Young voters prefer Bernie, but young people are apathetic and don't tend to vote. I see grayhairs when I go to the polls. Young people stay at home playing video games or whatever. That is why the country is in the jam it is in.

I will vote for Hillary Clinton, because the alternative, Trump, would be unpleasant. I think Trump may even win some televised debates, because he's a seasoned TV personality, and what seems to matter is style rather than substance. Trump has a more flamboyant style than Hillary Clinton. Even if Trump wins all the debates, he will not win the election. I will be surprised if he carries the white vote.

Guns WIll Be Obsolete

By 2100, guns will be obsolete, because the purpose of guns, slaying humans, will no longer serve a purpose.

Humans will cease to inhabit their corporeal forms. They will, instead, exist in data. We are just a series of numbers, like anything else. By digitizing our personalities, we can exist eternally and endlessly replicate through cloning. Thus, slaying a single clone will not have quite the effect that gun violence does today. Not only will guns be obsolete, but all forms of violence, which will be diminished in status from a great evil to an annoying rudeness. Once one body dies, another takes its place.

The great question is who will be cloned, and what sorts of people will they be? If history is any guide, they will probably be a better sort of people.

The physical body is such an obvious horror in so many ways that people will eagerly embrace their liberation from its cruel tyranny. In virtual reality, one can exist in a perfect heaven of one's own construction. This may indeed offer the solution to overpopulation. Given a choice, most people would choose to die immediately, if guaranteed eternal life in virtual reality, because millions of years in virtual Heaven is better than a short span of years in a form subject to pain and suffering. There only need be a few physical avatars tending to the needs of the computer system, ensuring continuous power and smooth operation.

Reality Is What We Make of It

Reality is what we make of it. I feel this is true about everything. My opinions seem like the simple truth to me. Others have contrary opinions and seem to have great conviction that they, instead of me, are right. I am impressed by those with conviction, but also suspicious, because I wonder how quickly they arrived at their opinions, and whether they considered the other sides much at all. Perhaps their opinion was formed long ago on the basis of information that has since been discredited.

Marijuana has had reams of misinformation broadcast about it. So many lies have been cultivated about marijuana, it is a strange wonder that anyone at all likes it. Based upon the lies, you would think every human being on the planet would be actively engaged in eradicating the demon seed. Yet that is not the case. Instead, hundreds of millions of people adore marijuana, and great numbers have done so since ancient times. Why? Who is right? Is marijuana good or bad?

I like to call marijuana "weed," because it is, in fact, a weed, particularly in areas where it is illegal. It grows quickly and spreads on its own in the wild, and humans have declared war on it, for better or worse, ever since the 1930s, although before that time, Americans found marijuana useful. Abe Lincoln liked to smoke it.

Some have the modest and humble opinion that weed is, at the very least, better than alcohol. They are not saying it is good, but only that it is better than alcohol, which is not saying very much at all, because we know alcohol is bad. I have this opinion, and I think it is self-evident, requiring very little in the way of debate, that is, if both sides are being honest and objective. Many believe this based upon direct experimentation with both substances, individually and in combination. Their opinion is, therefore, grounded in direct experience, which is the best manner to form an opinion. Their reality is evidence-based. Bolstering their position is a pretty vast amount of scientific literature. To ignore the science surrounding marijuana is not dishonest, but it is lazy. In summary, alcohol is toxic to the human body, while weed is not. Twenty years of drinking will devastate the body and mind more surely than an entire lifetime of vaporizing. Emphasis must be placed on the verb, vaporizing. One does not smoke in 2016. Smoking is a relic of the past, and anyone who believes that weed is smoked is not living in the modern age. All of the arguments about the negative effects of smoking must be revisited to come to terms with modern methods and to come to terms with legal weed, a product that is pure, unadulterated, unsullied by crime and by criminals, and sold in well-lit and state-sanctioned retail stores.

A diminishing minority of Americans, less than fifty per cent, believe weed is worse than alcohol, and therefore should remain illegal. Within this group, some have never tried it. Their reality is based upon what others have told them. Other people have constructed reality for them, and they have accepted that version of reality, often without question, much as religious zealots do. Others within the group have tried weed, and for whatever reason, have concluded weed is worse. I heard from a man today who once smoked marijuana, but quit. He told me "Dope is wrong," and his reasoning was that weed makes people stupid. Well, it so happens that I agree. Inebriates tend to make people stupid. No one is arguing that weed makes anyone smarter. The effect, however, is short-lived and does not persist. He also said that when he used weed, it gave him the munchies, and he overate, resulting in his obesity. Well, weed varies. Some weed does trigger appetite. This is extremely useful in those suffering from nausea. For an obese person, abstinence may be best. But to conclude from all of that that people should go to jail for possessing weed is ridiculous. Nevertheless, he seemed to think that there is nothing wrong with locking people up for weed. I think that he simply likes the idea of locking people up, and it pleases him so, he does not stop to think about the rightness or wrongness of the law. What profit is there, after all, in debating the merit of things? Why not just accept everything as it is, however bad?

Lovecraft Bubblegum

I want to scrape the bubblegum off my shoe after reading Lovecraft. I'd describe him using a word he frequently deploys, queer. His main characters are always naive, feeble, pretentious intellectuals, and by a story's end, are screaming or fainting at the terrible, horrible horrors of the terrible terror, or whatever. And he really does describe his horrors using the word "horror" or "horrible", and his terrors are "terrors" that are "terrible." Lovecraft is not for subtlety. When Lovecraft struggles with the science of his time, the result is embarrassing. The planet Pluto, uh-huh, the Einstein space-continuum, uh-huh, the vibration rate of electrons, uh-huh. His aliens and gods are all meanies out to get the human race, leaving unexplained why titans would concern themselves with the affairs of fleas.

Looking for Problems Where There Are None

There are two types of troublemakers in the world.

The first are obvious, the ones that start trouble because they delight in it. They are also known as criminals, terrorists or nitwits.

The second are the ones that invent imaginary problems and then go make trouble to try to solve the imaginary problems. These folks don't like trouble and are trying to prevent trouble, and in so doing are targeting what they think is a source of trouble. The trouble with that is, it is just imaginary trouble.

Many problems are imaginary, rather than real. If a problem has not been analyzed exhaustively from every angle, in cold blood, without passion, then it may not be a problem at all, but just a symptom of one of H. Sapien's finer attributes, creativity. We love to create things, and one of the things we create is imaginary problems. Much of what is perceived as reality is in fact imagined, distorted, or misinterpreted. For the same reason, humans have difficulty beating computers at chess. Computers analyze exhaustively, from every angle, in cold blood, without passion. Should we wish to improve ourselves, we should emulate our wondrous machines, without abandoning our good quality of love.

Visitors to North Korea

Any American that visits North Korea has got to have something wrong with them. Their intelligence is clearly sub-par, and their allegiance to this country is at best questionable. The U.S. should not intervene when they are arrested, confess their crimes, talk about how bad the U.S. is and how great North Korea is, and generally play the traitor. Let them serve their sentences. This might put a cap on all the nitwits that decide for whatever reason to ignore the advice of the U.S. State Department and common sense and travel overseas to that blighted nightmare of a country.

If the world were run better, North Korea would not be the tragedy it is today. The only reason North Korea exists at all is because of China. And the only reason that China is a great world power today is because greedy Western businessmen took the jobs away from Westerners and gave them to the Chinese, to save money. Now we have a lot of people in the West without very much to do, and not many good jobs other than of the "Would you like an order of fries with that?" variety. China makes everything, including war material. In the not-so-distant future, Americans will have to learn Chinese just to make a decent living.

Lovecraft

Lovecraft betrayed his secrets with his writing, which mixes autobiography with the supernatural in a sublime way. I do not find his gods appealing, but I am not meant to. His gods are evil, after all, creations of a mind fascinated by evil, but an evil of an altogether higher magnitude than the usual. His gods are transcendental, not of this world and not intended for mankind.

The dark light is not without attraction, though it does not nourish.

Thoughts on Linux Mint Hack

I've always wondered whether somebody may have hacked any of the Linux distros I have used over the years. And now the day has come when I've been informed of precisely that. Well, Windows is not exactly the most secure OS in the world, either, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Anyway, Clem, the founder of Linux Mint, informed everybody almost immediately of the hack, and in my opinion that's best practice. Some people are now saying, oh dear, Linux Mint is horribly insecure, go back to Debian or Ubuntu or Windows, etc. Anyone that uses this occasion to criticize is just a dirty bird. Not fair play. Was the United States government never hacked? If the State gets hacked, then who is safe? Get real, read the news, drink a cup of coffee, whatever it takes to return to the reality that the rest of us are living in. I honestly do not know what planet some of these naysayers live on. Oh, Wordpress is insecure, is it? Well, then how come my WP site never gets hacked? Learn about security, for one thing, and then talk.

The Internet is a Wild, Wild West, always has been, but nevertheless, much progress has been made on the security front. Things are better now, because fences and gates have been invented and refined, and backups, logs and site analysis tools are now routine, although definitely not everyone understands these things. Some shops don't have a proper web site admin, and they tend to be the shops that get hacked.

The downside to all of this is that Clem is being forced to worry over security, and less time will get devoted to the version 18. The other downside is that the forums look very primitive now. It is like a bomb went off on the web site, and it looks worse. As if Clem didn't have his hands full just coping with GNOME's peculiarities, trying to get it incorporated into Cinnamon.

Regets of an Older Person

I have grown old enough to remember times past. Now I regret several trends in the modern world.

First and foremost, I dislike that cold hard cash is going away. I think money is a good thing. It is hard to trace, which is both good and bad, depending on the situation. I like less information in the hands of governments, because I do not trust governments. The American government is one of the better ones, but I still do not trust it completely. That which is mortal is prone to failure--and to corruption. Money is good for human beings, because we evolved along with it for thousands of years, and it has a long history with us. When money is invisible, as in the case of a credit card, then it is hard to fathom. I see young people getting into debt all the time, and not idiots either, but extremely intelligent young people, who should know better, but they have been seduced by the siren call of easy credit and getting things now as opposed to saving up for them. Where is wisdom, forbearance, and delayed gratification? Young people are the ones that will suffer most, because they have been unschooled by money.

And money is a school. I know exactly how much I can spend at any given time, because of the money in my wallet. I can see it. I can feel it. It has a texture. It even has a smell. If it takes a little bit longer to make change at a cash register, then that delay allows time for reflection over my purchase. The easier and the faster that a purchase is, the more likely it will be made upon impulse and not grounded in reason. Credit cards are horrible tools devised by clever marketing specialists. They use psychology, mathematics, and statistics, just like casino owners, to overwhelm the feeble human defences against overspending and impulse purchases. Remember, it was not long ago that there existed no money, no market, no economy. We were hunter-gatherers. Money in itself is a recent and radical innovation. Before money, there was bartering. Credit cards have arisen just within the last hundred years, and the human race is far from ready for them.

I regret that America is less than what it once was, and that no-one seems capable of reversing its decline, while China rises. China will cause many problems in the world, because their leadership is ruthless. America appears to be ruled by crony capitalists who seem only interested in their own affairs rather than those of their country. There is too much corruption and too little efficiency. Much money and time is wasted upon pointless exercises, such as adventures in the Middle East. It would be better to attend to domestic problems than to meddle overseas. Improve infrastructure and invest in scientific research and education is the simple answer and the correct one. But people want to stretch for bloody glory against weak enemies, foes that die easily but reproduce their numbers continually, so that a never-ending quagmire of money-draining goes on. Meanwhile, China improves infrastructure and invests in scientific research. Can anyone read the writing on the wall? Perhaps I will be gone before the fate I see comes to pass.

I am neutral, rather than partisan, on the issue of books and newspapers. They were good and bad. There was a lot of bad. Some people don't remember. They think of Shakespeare when they think of books. I remember bad books, bad newspapers, bad magazines. So now the world derives information online. I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing. I think it may be good, but I reserve judgment. I do like books, too. But most books are probably bad. There are some authors that I really like to escape with and join them in their mental space for hours and days and months at a time. Their books are good. They can be formative, even life-changing. I think books will always be with us. Videos can be tedious, and they are hard to produce, but not only that, some people express themselves best through thought, rather than theatrics, and books are the most efficient medium for thought.

Health care is a big PITA in the U.S.A., and is only getting worse. Nurses and doctors are now expected to be accountants and programmers. Instead of studying medicine, they must study computer programs and insurance plans. Instead of paying attention to the patient, they pay attention to the computer. So health care is terrible. When you go to see a nurse, she has to stare at the computer screen instead of listening to you. Meanwhile, other countries like Canada have health care figured out. Unfortunately, in the USA we have something called the Republican party that opposes anything that might potentially improve the lot of the poor or minorities. If you have insurance, then you have to navigate a maze of different insurance companies, different insurance policies, updates to said policies, HSA debit cards, insurance cards, toll-free numbers with wait times in excess of one hour, and so on, ad nauseum. I am sick to death of insurance companies. I have four different insurance companies for different facets of my health care, four different usernames and passwords, four different phone numbers I need to call, and I had no choice in the matter but was given this by my employer. The Democrats are stupid because they want to make health care more complicated, rather than less. The Republicans are stupid because they don't even want people to have health care in the first place. Both of the stupidities intermingle and combine to create an ever bigger stupidity. And what we are left with is health care in the U.S., which is boneheaded stupid.

I will have to continue this post another time.

I am the Minority Opinion

Mine is always the minority opinion... until it isn't. I'm amused with the world. Oftentimes I've lamented I was the only one to think so-and-so, such as: gays are equal to straights and not worse (!disputed by everyone I knew!); or, marijuana is better than alcohol and should be legal (!disputed by every adult I knew!); or, religion is dangerous and harmful whenever it is dogmatic (disputed by most, though my father agreed). These, my opinions, stirred controversy. Sometimes, I felt alienated to be a member of what seemed, to me many years ago, only a tiny minority.

The succession of years and momentous events in the world proved me wrong, not in what I believed, but in believing that I was the only one. Indeed my ideas have gained mind-shares, and not through advertising or money or power, but because they are right and because their truth can be experienced by everyone. The merit of my opinions has been vindicated. How lucky that so much change should happen in my lifetime for me to witness it. I have been touched upon the forehead, I have been blessed. My wonder is great, because there was a time I wished to leave this world. I am glad that I opted to remain and would recommend a similar course to anyone.

Blogging and the Ban

What's the common denominator between NORML and Linux Mint? Neither site's blog posts comments from yours truly. I suspect it is due to the unwelcome baggage accompanying the innocuous comment, namely this url. The censoring editor, whoever that may have been, took a gander at this web site, grew afeared by the opinions, and decided the safest path was to ban the comment or the commenter. There is a prevalent trend now of avoiding controversy by not posting urls. Urls are distracting, first of all, and there is the danger a visitor could leave the site for the site of the url.

In time, I forget I'm censored, or suppose myself mistaken in my assumption, because I'm never sure about anything, unlike Donald Trump. I like to be fair and give second chances, and besides, there are technical reasons a comment could fail to post. With all of that in mind, I try again, months later, typing from one to three paragraphs in a comment, only to encounter the same result, which is the vaporization of my verbosity. I don't mind that I try and try again, wasted effort though it is, because I like confirmation of my assumptions. On each occasion when my comment fails to post, I perceive a door remaining shut, and that is a good reminder, if nothing else. Of course, as with everything, there are advantages and disadvantages. It is easier to move past a closed door than an open one, where one might feel curious enough to look in on occasion to see what is inside and offer assistance and advice. There are those that I can help and those that don't seem to need help. Through the years, I've gotten better at sorting the types and then moving on.

Dumbed Down OSes

Modern operating systems like Windows 10 and all smart phones have been dumbed down to the point where they work great if you're dumb and terrible if you're not.

My Chromebook won't let me do anything without installing and more likely buying some app from the app store. There is no GUI even for something as mundane as renaming a file. I regard ChromeOS as crippleware, with little more functionality than a browser. Forget about any utilities such as FileZilla that other desktops run. The Chromebook is basically a browser, period. Google has gone to great lengths to cripple their product and "protect the user from himself."

Windows 10 likes to hide things from the user. When I tried to shutdown Windows 10 today, it told me to Please wait and Do Not Turn Off the Computer. Doubtless it was uploading all the spyware-data it stole from me to Microsoft's marketing department, so that Microsoft can sell the data to advertising firms. But there wasn't enough bandwidth available, so the process got stuck and was still going on an hour later. I defied Microsoft and restarted the computer anyway, because I wanted to run Linux, which I like, as opposed to Windows 10, which I distrust and hate. All Windows 10 is, is Spam, Advertising, and Malware all rolled into one big, nasty ball and prettied up to look like a smartphone. However, we have to go with Windows 10, because it will continue to be supported in the future, whereas Windows 7 will not. My plan is to use Windows 10 about 1% of the time, and Linux 99% of the time, until such time that I can dispense with Windows altogether by replacing the few apps that only work on Windows.

The only reason I continue using Windows is ACDSee and Call Clerk. Once those applications support Linux, I'm done with Windows forever. Krita is starting to get pretty good as an image editor, and can do a lot of important things that ACDSee never got around to doing, so perhaps I will not buy any future versions of ACDSee. As for Call Clerk, I might have to discontinue my land line service in order to avoid needing to use it. I doubt Call Clerk will ever be ported to Linux, because landlines are on the wane, and with it the market for Call Clerk.

The Supreme Court

I feel curiously unmoved by reports of Scalia's passing. I have not really kept up with anything involving him in the news. His replacement could be better or worse. He certainly lived a long life.

I haven't followed Supreme Court cases much. Even the gay marriage case I am not adequately familiar with. As for Scalia, sometimes I agreed with him, but more often I think, not. He was a jurist, not a politician or philosopher. His merits can be debated among legal scholars. I do not think he was either the best or the worst. He was not consistent in his philosophy but seemed biased in his interpretations, giving a lot of bend to his principles when it suited his personal beliefs. I prefer other jurists.

I don't really like the idea of a Supreme Court with power to make or reinterpret law. Ideally, that is, in an imaginary perfect world that does not exist, law should be determined by the legislative branch. However, our legislative branch is conservative and slow to act, except in cases of war. They act fast where there is any chance of military action. It seems to me they are hungry for it, because that means lots of extra money for their rich clients. For other things, such as social reform, they are glacial. I think that many reforms should be passed to make our legislative branch better. Then the Supreme Court would not be asked to do those things the legislative branch is too ignorant to do.

However, a thing may be judged on its effects, rather than its appearance. The effects of some Supreme Court rulings have been good in some case, ill in others. On balance, perhaps, good?

There is something to be said for a law issuing forth, not from a group of politicians, but from the ultimate transcultural, material and spiritual symbol of justice and power in the world, the Judge, dressed in his robes, reigning in court, like an ancient king in his awesome dignity. Is it not right that we should do as the kings and queens bid of us, even as our ancestors did far back into time immemorial? Our docile submission is in our blood. Even the wise feel awed by a Supreme Court decision, grounded in reason and invested with all the authority that only a group of judges can give. Much is just show, but how many perceive that, and how many, even perceiving, feel awed all the same?

China

There are folks out there that think China is hunky-dory. I guess because they think General T'zo was a great military leader. Or they discovered green tea in the grocery store.

The reality is that China is a bad actor on the Internet, and here's just a recent example.

American companies that offshore jobs to China should pay a tax for each job they offshore, to reflect the hidden costs such as a more dangerous world, a more dangerous Internet, and a weakening of the U.S. economy. Some CEOs simply have no scruples, no sense of responsibility whatsoever to their country. It is too bad that they get rewarded by Wall Street for reducing the number of jobs in America. There needs to be some accounting for the costs of giving power, money, and jobs to a nation like China that has no ethics, abides by no law and respects only force. A thousand dollars per year per job sent overseas would be a good start on a new and just tax. Apple should be paying the U.S. debt down with all the billions of dollars in fines that they so richly deserve. Steve Jobs had the most ironic name in the history of American business. Apple should rebuild Detroit and other decayed American cities with all the wealth they gathered by short-changing the workers. If the elite do not take care of what is happening in this country and see to it that jobs are there for the workers, then in the not-so-distant future, the U.S. will cease to be a world power at all. There are too many people either unemployed or underemployed.

The Age-old Controversy over Abortion

I never saw a problem with the right to abortion. I'm for a lot of rights, and I think there is a high burden of proof on the side that wants to restrict liberty. "Why you wanna put people in jail?" is the question that comes to my mind. If you want to make something illegal, you had better have a darn good case for jail, or else you're the problem, not the solution.

I have gotten to know a fair number of conservatives and conservative Republicans in my day, and once I asked a friend why he liked the Republican party so much, seeing as how he wasn't rich and couldn't possibly invest that much feeling in the Republican party's fiscal agenda, which is to tax the poor, give welfare to the rich, and spend trillions on foreign wars against third-rate powers. The main issue for him, he said, was abortion. He saw it as wrong, because according to his religion, life began at conception, and therefore any human action to interfere with said life was murder. Drawing the line at conception seemed arbitrary to me, so I asked him how he felt about sperm and egg cells, which we waste on a regular basis, through intentional or biological processes. He was wholly uninterested in gametes, and said conception was different, that it was something spiritual ordained by God, even, he said, in cases of rape or incest.

To me, conception is certainly nothing special. I am not sure where one should draw the line on the sanctity of life, but certainly conception seems far too soon. Wombs abort their contents spontaneously, and clearly the body itself does not hold special what some sentimentalists do regarding the new tissue.

As for that anti-abortion black and white poster showing a fetus within a womb and a autobiography of its development, ending with "my mother murdered me," I always thought, "you fortunate thing, to avoid being mothered by a monster." If the mother would deal death unto her own, then what good is to come by compelling her to give birth? No good can come of that. Unwanted and unloved children remain a problem in the world. Abortion, then, may be a mercy, not a crime. The crime would be to sentence the unborn to being raised by a parent that did not want it.

Men who frown on abortion need to man up. The main reason abortion is needed is because men have done their women wrong through carelessness, incompetence or wickedness. There are men who either won't use or can't figure out a condom. If a woman evaluates the sire and determines the child is better not to be, then it is criminal arrogance and a grave Sin for anyone to countermand her choice, as though they know her situation and are wiser and better to decide for her. They do not know her situation. They are not wiser. They lie, they sin, and theirs is a criminal interference. Mother knows best, in this above all other things, for it is her body and her life. Her designated role is clear to anyone with eyes to see. The mother is the gatekeeper, the final arbiter, as was ordained long ago, from the very beginning. What is not needed are future generations of carelessness, incompetence or wickedness.

People who want to control other people are the main problem with the world today. The same rule we were taught in school applies to the world of adults: Keep your hands to yourself. Leave other people alone.

Yes, I Do Love Bernie

I will vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

And so will my elderly mother. She watched him on television in a Democratic debate. She was a Hillary supporter originally, but now she sides with Bernie, because he is well-spoken, bright, and passionate.

I don't care what his hair looks like.

It is true he is old, but Hillary is no spring chicken either at 68, and Bernie does not appear remiss in his intellectual faculties.

I do not care that he calls himself a Socialist. We are all socialists, whether we know it or not, because we use the interstate highway system, Social Security, and the police and fire department.

He is a good fellow and bright, and that is more than can be said for the others. I think he intends to serve the country and make something of his life through his deeds.

And I say that he will win against any of the Republican candidates and will be our next President, so get used to the hair and the aged face and the socialism.

I don't like that Hillary assumes she is the logical next President. I don't like that Hillary has taken so many short-cuts, wife of a President and all that, to get where she is at. I do not think that she belongs in her position, and I would not elevate her. Why must she continually generate tedious controversies through her mismanagement, thoughtlessness, cluelessness and incompetence?

Exile ISIS

Anybody connected with ISIS should have their citizenship revoked. Tens of thousands of their families and friends would also be good candidates for exile. Is there really a need for millions of angry Muslims in Europe? They are just going to tear Europe down to resemble what they came from, the Middle East. Repatriate these Muslims to Syria. I don't see paying for a ticket on a passenger airliner, however. That's a bit much to ask of hard-working taxpayers. They can be jettisoned out the sewage flap of a cargo plane, one by one, along with similar material unloaded by the crew. (Serve the crew lots of fibre bars.) These ISI-Sissies can learn about the gravity of their actions from ten thousand feet.

Writing

Most dead writers, resurrected into the modern age, would choose not to write, for the obvious reasons. I feel excused, therefore, for not devoting my hours to stories that I could craft. There's no reward, only time-wasting and potential derision. The best thing for a writer born into this world is to publish under a pseudonym. Those stories that just can't be kept down can be regurgitated in harmless anonymity. No one will pay any attention, and the verbose vomit won't excite any criticism, but gather dust in a cyber-dustbin, read by few or none.

Goals

My goals are simple and, I think, humble. I want to live the good life, with a minimum of drama. I had enough drama as a youngster. And when I reach the dregs of the cup of life, and this world please me no more, I wish to fade from it, or rather vanish from it, with silence and dignity, leaving no loose ends, nothing other than this mortal shell. Maybe I will find a way to dispose of that as well with dignity and decorum.

News from Africa is Always Bad

I'm of a generation that remembers the constant barrage of television commercials depicting starving children from Africa and guilting the viewer into signing up to donate money on a monthly basis. "Sponsor a child," they said. A lot of people fell for that. My geometry teacher sent a check for $25 a month to some kind of organization that bought cocaine and whores for the spokesman and every once in a while send a loaf of bread to some little church in Sudan. She used to show pictures of the child she was "saving", someone named Uhl or Og or Yumo. Later on Yumo grew up to be a Somali pirate and raped and killed a bunch of Westerners. Og went on Islamic jihad and burned down a church. Uhl had eleven children and all of them needed sponsoring too. Maybe teach should have stuck with the geometry. Geography didn't suit her at all.

News from Africa is always bad. I never hear anything good out of that region of the world. The reason is that Africa is the most ignorant continent in the world. Ignorance has a home, and it is in Africa. Africa takes all the ignorance of the world and holds onto it like a precious treasure. Africans prize ignorance. Either they are killing, torturing or arresting each other, or they are starving due to their own stupidity and ignorance and begging Western countries for more money on top of the billions already given. Either way, Africa is not a place I would want to live in or give money to. I think that Westerners that send money to Africa suffer from self-hate. These same Westerners shrink from giving charity to their family, neighborhood, city, state, or country. They do not give charity to people they know and love, and why? Because they do not love anyone. They hate everyone. If charity moves them at all, they send money over to a strange, barbaric, uncouth, alien place where the money will be siphoned off by corrupt criminals or at best, used to make future generations of unhappy, violent people.

Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon

I like Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon so much that I have replaced Linux Mint 17.2 XFCE with it. Cinnamon just seems a bit more up-to-date and not a throwback to an earlier era. It is prettier, which inspires confidence and promotes harmony. XFCE just seems crude, somehow, in its icons and layout. I also like the ease with which the look and feel of Cinnamon can be customized.

It is a pity that Linux Mint is about the only Linux distribution I have any use for, besides occasional forays into Xubuntu. The other distros just seem, well, primitive or lacking in some way to someone coming from the Ubuntu family of distributions. I wonder why the other distros don't improve their user interface in order to compete with Ubuntu. Perhaps they are bound by tradition and only serve a small group of veteran users or specialized applications. Perhaps Open Suse is the sandbox for Suse Enterprise, while Fedora is the sandbox for Red Hat. PCLinuxOS is missing a lot of software, and one has to make peace with giving up applications forever in order to use it. Debian seems geared for servers. Mageia may be promising but seems not to offer anything special over Ubuntu. I don't know that there is a really strong competitor to Ubuntu and its derivatives at this time. The best that can said about the other distributions is that they are almost as good or comparable with Ubuntu or Linux Mint in one way or another.

ArchLinux and moreover, the M- distro (I forget the name, but apparently it has its own separate repo's) seem tempting from time to time, but I really don't want to spend hours tweaking my OS to get things working, and I do not like the idea of a rolling distribution either, in which things can break. I like the idea of updates that trickle in slowly, after being vetted by the veterans, not updates that can break my printer or cause my computer not to boot at all. I also want access to the Debian world, which Ubuntu provides. It is important for me to have easy access to all available software applications. A distribution that cannot offer that is not one I would consider. I am afraid Open Suse and PCLinuxOS were missing some programs in their repositories during the times I evaluated them.

At this time, I don't know of any compelling reason not to use Ubuntu/Linux Mint. However, I certainly hope the MIR/Wayland brouhaha does not get out of hand, and that Ubuntu is wise enough to offer easy access to Wayland, so that everybody can just get along. What we do not need is a scenario where stuff breaks in Ubuntu because it was made for Wayland.

ArchLinux is a Gift

I don't use it, yet, but I have to say ArchLinux is a gift to the Linux world. The ArchLinux wiki offers far superior documentation on Linux than any other source on the Internet, bar none. If you are a Ubuntu user, you should read the ArchLinux wiki in preference to anything Canonical or any other Ubuntu web site offers. ArchLinux just knows. Whereas Ubuntu is kind of hit or miss and often miss and a lot of obfuscation. I read ArchLinux documentation and then I understand.

New Horizons Mission

I read this article today about NASA's mission to Pluto. !*&^$%#!&#^$, that is the sort of thing I should be reading instead of the stupid newsless "news". I think I'll add this to my lineup.

Sux to be a Spammer Day

Today is Sux to be a Spammer Day at techlorebyigor. I've updated my IP blacklist with all my latest catches from the sea of spambots.

Earnest Student

The best that can be said about me is that I am an earnest student, willing and eager to learn almost anything, and I prize teachers, anyone who knows something I do not and is willing to share their knowledge freely. I value knowledge. But I have no use for those who hoard their secrets and gloat over their protected nuggets of knowledge.

Disconnected

Does anyone else feel disconnected when they read the news? The Pope says blah blah blah, King Saudi Arabia kicked the bucket, and a lethal injection execution went down in Texas. Who gives a flying fly's copulation? I do not know what is wrong with the world that many people apparently care about these things. Tears for a convicted murderer are strange. My conscious would be eased by approaching death, if I had the blood-guilt, and what's so bad about death anyway? I don't really sympathize with the convicted murderers. A hangman's noose would suffice. I don't know why the modern world has to pussy-foot around with drugs. Maybe because America is so schizo about drugs? Maybe to reinforce the idea that drugs are bad? Whatever. As for the Pope, who cares? As for King Saud, who cares? The King and the Pope are no startling original thinkers or inventors. Tell me if a scientist or writer has a cold, but don't inform me about the deaths of monarchs, please.

N. Korean Survivor

So what if a survivor of North Korea's torture camps had a spotty memory? How many of us remember our lives in perfect detail? I suspect none do, and I also affirm that we rearrange our memories without even being aware of doing so on occasion. How likely is it that someone who grew up in a torture camp is going to be completely together upstairs? Give the guy a break. I think most members of the media would be talking to imaginary friends after experiencing even a single day of what this guy went through. North Korea is guilty until proven innocent beyond all shadow of a doubt. A heavy burden of proof must be placed upon the shoulders of any absolute dictator who holds all the keys of power in a State at his disposal, but in particular, a dictator known to be as evil as Kim "Junkhead-Ill," who is ill in the head, having used his own uncle as dog food. The same bar applies to Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, and Syria. I would not trust anything that issues from the lips of the tools of those systems.

Drop Everything

A good life is one where you could drop everything--die--and not leave too much undone, when you feel you're in the bonus round anyway.

France

I'm glad France is coming together after that stupid nonsense with the fanatics.  If Islam could pop a chill pill, all would be cool. Nobody has a problem with Allah, as long as he can take a joke and roll with it instead of bombing and shooting up the place. An Allah or Mohammed with a thin skin that wants to behead everybody just isn't going to fly. Understand? Assimilate or go back to the Middle East and the Middle Ages.

Mohammed the Pig

The so-called prophet Mohammed was a dirty pig, and his fanatics wallow in his hoof-steps. France pays a heavy price for letting a barbarous cult comprise 8% of the population. Is cheap labor really worth the cost in blood?

The Prophet Mohammed, a dirty pig

USA Today also printed a picture of the Prophet Mo - HAM - MAD (Mad Pig). Their normal policy is to not print such pictures in order to avoid offending Muslim readers. I think Muslims need to have these images broadcast twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, until they come to terms with the fact they are living in 2014 and not 1014. They need to learn that any violence will be met with violence. If they want to live in a land of censorship, then just move on back to Iran or Saudi Arabia, but do not come to the West.

Meanwhile, a liberal blogger in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam. Yes, this is happening in 2014, and the reason is Islam and the madmen that call themselves Muslims. The people in Saudi Arabia love torture, hate science and philosophy, hate democracy, love superstition, and worship a mad pig of a demon-god, one that demands blood sacrifice and death. When the Saudis aren't flogging, maiming, or beheading someone, they're denouncing morality, science, or the arts.

The only reason some Westerners defend the Islamists is they are cowed by the numbers and oil wealth of the Muslim world, which is accidental in more ways than one. The cult does not deserve respect, because it embraces death, torture, rape, and other atrocities, and all of this is self-evident to anyone who takes a glance at the news streaming from Muslim nations. That some Westerners pretend ignorance about such matters is curious. There is blood on the ground, and the media spends its time polling whether it is OK to depict the Prophet Mohammed or not, because murder is interesting and generates headlines. There is some kind of sick relationship between the media and terrorists, each feeding off the other.

Apologies to the noble beast, the pig, Sus scrofa domestica, whose flesh I find delicious, whether in the form of bacon, ham, or pork. The pig is actually a fairly intelligent animal and very useful in that one can feed it scraps and harvest wholesome meat. If Mohammed were alive today, he would probably eat pig as well. A case of food poisoning and the runs is the only reason I can think of that Moham banned ham. He heard the Jews thought God was down on pig, and so he tried pig himself and got diarrhea. He didn't understand science and thought Allah was punishing his bowels. Today he might accept modern science and realize the pig he ate was infected. Try a good pig, and there will be no such punishment. Today, we have lots of good pigs to eat, thanks to modern farming methods.

Paris Attack

The Muslim fanatics take advantage of the kindness and justice of Western societies. Mohammed's lies result in yet more human death and suffering.  The Romans dealt with such deeds in another manner than we do. The Romans would have solved the problem one way or the other and not worried too much about the means. The evil fanatics feel safe in the knowledge that France is kind, France is just, France is benevolent, and they take advantage of that, perceiving it as a weakness, rather than a strength. The Romans would have solved the problem forever in a month, and fear would have stayed the hands of any remaining survivors. But in the modern age, we cannot react as the Romans did. I do not understand why Western countries opened their borders to immoral savages and now seem so surprised when savages behave as their nature dictates. Of course, the idle rich classes merely wanted cheap labor and that is the entire reason France invited millions of Muslims, in order to reduce the wages of the native French, but the long-term costs are apparent.

Rich Justice

Rich justice is a whole lot more lenient than poor justice. A rich man took $165,000 in bribes and got two years. Now if I grabbed $165k worth of jewelry from a store, I bet I'd serve more than a measly two years for it. But then there are two justices in the world. One is for rich people, and it uses kid gloves. The other is for poor people, and it uses an iron mallet.

There's something awfully wrong about premeditated corruption among elected officials. It's an entire order of magnitude worse than simple theft. I think China has the right idea about punishment when it comes to graft and corruption among public officials.

Forcible Chemo

I don't believe medicine should be forced on anyone, with the possible exception of the mentally ill, but our government disagrees, even going so far as to imprison and forcibly administer chemotherapy to a 17 year-old, which amounts to torture and is a grave sin. Rather than forcing a poisonous and painful medicine on one, why not use the same resources to offer medicine to another that needs and wants it, for there are many in the world today that go without medicine due to poverty, including here in America. Of course, the State is insane, and prefers to torture one, rather than comfort another. Compassion ain't in it. Scant regard is given to personal liberty when it comes up against the smug self-righteousness of the fascist State and their scientists. Observe the pomposity of those who think they know better than others and use force and violence to get their way. Perhaps if the judge in the case were imprisoned for seventeen years, for kidnapping and torture by proxy, he might come to understand what a very long time seventeen years is and how much can be learned in that length of time.

Like Statues

Some people are like living statues. They no longer have much to say really, though they may have at one time been world-famous writers. Give a pass to them, mindful that such a fate awaits us all, and remember them not as they are now, but as they were, for that is what they, too, prefer.

Golden Age of Cinema

We are living in the true golden age of cinema and television. Shows of the past simply don't compare to what is available now. In particular, this is the golden age of gay cinema. There are more good gay movies now than I ever dared dream possible. Back in the day, movies were always heterosexual whenever love or sex interests were concerned, which limited severely the variety of plots, by about fifty per cent to be precise.

Drugs

I've favored legalization of marijuana for as long as I can remember and never favored Prohibition. Toxic brain-killing alcohol is legal, whereas marijuana, which is less toxic than aspirin, is strictly prohibited. This is a symptom of collective insanity. Human beings require medication in order to correct their psychosis. The medication of choice is, of course, marijuana. Perhaps that would put an end to a lot of other nonsense around the world as well, besides just the drug laws.

I think any amount of marijuana is okay, from a ton to a gram. Creating arbitrary amounts that are illegal is silly and points to the ignorance of politicians. Weed is a plant, and it varies greatly in potency, if potency refers to the inebriating principle, which is what folks get their panties in a knot about. Guess what? It is possible for a gram of marijuana to have higher potency than a ton of marijuana. People suffer from ignorance of the plant, which is the same reason that the plant became illegal in the first place. Learn about the plant, and then form an opinion based upon facts rather than prejudice. The same rule applies to everything else under the sun: sexuality, race, gender, religion, philosophy, and so on. People that don't know anything are the main problem with the world today. Without education on simple matters, people make foolish choices based upon fear and prejudice.

There is really no reason to prohibit the possession of any amount of marijuana. Somehow human society survived without Prohibition for millennia, but suddenly nowadays, we are so feeble that the dreaded weed must be banned or else our brains will explode. Collective hysteria and the craving of drama is the reason for cannabis prohibition. People have such easy lives today, without starvation and disease and constant warfare, that they look around for other things to turn their lives into Hell, such as unnecessary laws and imaginary crimes. People heed Thanatos, want to die and want to suffer. This is a basic human need, stronger in some than others.

Regarding other drugs, I am not as certain whether I oppose prohibition. It is easy to make a case for legal pot, but legal meth is another matter altogether. Meth is clearly harmful to the user, toxic, and dangerous. Of course, soldiers used it in WW2, but war is a different can of beans, and we are considering civilian life, not war.

Philosophically, I'm opposed to prohibition of any kind of substance, even meth, on the grounds that the State has mandated compulsory education of its otherwise free citizens. Very well, then, you educated them for twelve long years, and once they reach the age of majority, they are free. Why should they not be free to make their own choices in regards to what they put into their bodies? That seems a fundamental freedom.

On the other hand, there are addictive personalities that succumb to the siren call of terrible things like meth, even though their rational mind knows better. Our desire for freedom conflicts with the nurturing desire to protect the mentally ill, the substance abusers who will consume poison even unto death. Then there is the public safety issue. People high on meth may indeed be prone to violence, and what about the victims? Haven't they rights too?

I believe some substances are so dangerous they should not be allowed to be sold, but mere possession should not be a felony. Drug laws should be lenient rather than draconian, because harm does not necessarily follow in every case following consumption of an illegal drug. Drug crimes are rather different than other types of crimes that clearly cause harm to others.

For a substance to be illegal, it must meet certain criteria. It must be highly addictive and cause withdrawal symptoms. It must be highly toxic and capable of causing an overdose. And it should be tempting, that is, there must be some basis for thinking the substance will be abused. Obviously, not many people are huffing gasoline, and society is not worried about the possession and distribution of gasoline.

Updates on Terrorists

I don't know why the media sees fit to report on the doings of terrorists and criminals from long ago, known only for their infamous crimes. Whether they die, and at what age they die, and under what circumstances, does not particularly matter to me or anyone I know. Who cares? One might as well report on the fate of bacteria that killed someone a hundred years ago. How many generations has the bacteria reproduced, and has it mutated, and what slime does it feed on now, and so on. Violent men are common and uninteresting. Only a sociologist charged with researching the type would be interested.

God & Sex

How can anyone believe that the architect of the Cosmos concerns himself with a primate's gonadal impulses, whether hetero- or homo- sexuality? The idea tickles my funny bone. Those who believe it earnestly in the modern age must be subnormal in intelligence. Or perhaps they are obsessed with sex.

Just Say No to Suicide

Certainly, young people strike me as silly sometimes. The suicide of young, healthy people seems ridiculous, a ridiculous waste of potential, and I abhor reading about news stories in which a young person has taken their own life, because their motive often seems petty.

What do I know? Was I there? Did I want to die at fifteen? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I did, and it became a favorite fantasy of mine. If you want to know what I was fantasizing about as a teenage boy, it was Death, He was my suitor, and He was Romantic, Charming, and tempting. I saw into the other side and wanted to be there with the others, because They, the dead, seemed just as good, if not better, than the living. But that was then, and this is now.

I think that life is an opportunity, and we are fortunate to have it, and to waste it seems pointless and rather stupid. Why not see what develops? Patience. Wait and see. To end it all precludes all possibility for anything good unfolding. A young person has a long life ahead and has only experienced a tiny fraction of it so far. Why be hasty and judge the rest as worthless? Wait and see. Things do get better.

Grown-ups sometimes just aren't willing to make any effort towards understanding, because they are set in their ways. Grown-ups are not lazy or stupid, by any means, or rather most of them are not. They tend to be hard-working and clever, but they are fixed in their habits of thinking, and somewhere along the way they may have lost a flexibility of mind, an agility that allows one to walk inside the mind of another.

For instance, being gay or transgender should not be a big deal. So what? There have been and there are millions of gay and transgender kids. Nor is smoking marijuana. These are small things that cause people to freak out, because they haven't enough drama in their life and a secret part of them craves the manufacturing of drama, like on TV.

Once one moves past the brouhaha, one finds that, yes, gay people exist and have good lives, and marijuana does not warp the brain for life after all. As a matter of fact, marijuana is benign, compared to alcohol, for alcohol opens a gateway for the forces of evil to enter our world. Mohammed understood this, at least, but then, it was made obvious to him.

Society labors under a number of delusions that cause much grief. I am glad that back in the day, my instinct to survive was stronger than the desire to end all suffering, because now that I am free, I am all right. Young people go crazy due to the conflict of older people trying to control them and shape them into something that they are not. The simple fact is that children have their own DNA and cannot become perfect clones of parents. They are different not only due to genetic differences but due to the different environment, the modern culture in which they live.

If I were to speak to a young person considering suicide, I would tell them that suicide is wrong for a healthy young person. Being gay is OK, there is nothing wrong with that. Being gay, transgender, or different is not a valid reason to either consider suicide or any form of self-harm, whether it be slicing, drug abuse or risky sexual behavior. Those bad choices are the influence of the voices of darkness, dark forces that enter our world and seek to harm, to destroy. One must be strong and resist these negative impulses. In order to be good, one must be strong. Otherwise, evil wins. Do not give in to the forces of darkness. Do not let them win. If one is a good person, and one enjoys good health, then it is a wicked thing to end life. Think instead on the fate of those left behind, who will be deprived of the positive influences of one's presence. Think instead on the tremendous burdens of grief and regret left upon loved ones. It is a wrong act, a grievous Sin, and must not be permitted.

Young people are too hasty in their judgments, to apt to paint the world in black and white, too impatient with the slow crawl of progress and enlightenment. Understanding takes time. It does not happen overnight. Sometimes years or decades are required. I say wait and see. I say let love enter your heart. Resist the siren call of hatred and bitterness. Resist the voice of despair. Understand that we are limited. Human beings are feeble of mind. Yes, we are fallible in many things. Much of what we perceive may be delusion. Most of the world labors under delusions. Few people ever see the world as it is even for a single moment in time. We see as through a glass darkly. So how can we be so sure of ourselves as to make the rash assumption that life is not worth living, even before we have given it half a chance? A suicide at fourteen is not half a chance, when the average human lives to be seventy or eighty. I say wait and see. I did and I am glad I did.

Be aware there is light in the darkness. Even in the utter dark, the void, there is light that the dark cannot overcome, burning with the intensity of creation. Seek it out, draw from its energy to increase your own, and that will be your salvation.

Science News > Mother Jones

I plan to add a science or technology media site to my daily routine in 2015. I have in mind The Register, the Inquisitor, or maybe Wired.

I resolved to quit Mother Jones for 2015, because that magazine has proven to be incurably scatological. A reader cannot avoid headlines on Mother Jones that harp upon a recurring theme, fecal matter, an obsession with Mother Jones writers and editors, who can't find any other words in the English language adequate to express their souls.

I have been informed that I am old-fashioned and out of touch and that my opinion is worthless. I don't really mind any of these accusations. If the literature of this Age has sunk so low as to require the constant, gratuitous use of profanity, then I have no use for it and will tune out. They can preach to their tiny little choir of the profane if they wish, but not to me. They can look to their peer group for validation and scoff at me, but I number on my side all the writers before our Age, a mighty legion that wrote in the correct manner, and I am not the only one to prefer them. They are better than the Mother Jones hacks by any measure that one would care to apply, and this is self-evident to anyone with sense, and an old fogey like me quite literally has no time for those without sense.

Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

The apparent paradox as to why bad things happen to good people puzzled me, coming from a Christian background. Often in the media, one finds this question being posed by traumatized people who have lost a loved one. At an early age, I learned that God runs the Universe, and God is omnipotent and omniscient, and God is Good. Why would such a God allow bad things, such as death and suffering, happen to good people? This does not seem reasonable.

I believe the only way to resolve the paradox is to depart from Christian thinking and to accept that our lives do not have quite as much significance as we think they do. Perhaps they are not altogether meaningless, but we are expendable, and I think that is self-evident, with an overwhelming abundance of evidence. All of us die. Our species could fairly easily be wiped from the planet altogether, perhaps through self-destruction, as seems likely at this point, due to our propensity for tribal warfare and our advanced military technology. Would that we had remained with bows and arrows! Think for a moment about the many species that preceded us. Where are they now? There has been a lot of bloodshed and a lot of death to get to us through the long process of evolution. There were a lot of false starts.

If there is such a thing as God, then he has demonstrated utter indifference to our fate throughout the course of history, and why should he not? Our lifespan is brief, and we are fragile and succumb to a myriad of genetic abnormalities, microbial diseases and accidents that have no relation to our moral conduct. From our design, we are meant to be temporary, disposable, expendable, and readily replaced. Those who do not accept that are thinking in childish and selfish terms and can be excused for doing so, because of course, we all would prefer to live forever without pain and suffering. I don't think that God condones death, pain and suffering. I think instead that he is removed from the equation. Those things are not considered important or are a part of the cycle of life.

The idea of living creatures as temporary avatars of the One Unifying Force appeals to me, although I don't know how it works exactly, but computer games offer a glimpse into the system. To think that all matter, everything we see and everything we are, derived ultimately from stars is a deep thought. What naturally follows from that is the observation that everything has a sameness about it, being constructed of the same material and coming from the same origin. The atoms of my body could have, but for random chance, composed one of the many layers of the Sun or the Moon. In our lives, we express a consciousness that may exist only as a potential, dormant and unexpressed, in inanimate things such as the Sun or the Moon. In time, we too lose our consciousness, and our atoms become like the Sun or the Moon, incapable of giving voice to ideas or thoughts. Our atoms are only capable of consciousness for a very brief amount of time, and for the rest of eternity remain silent as the grave, unless they become absorbed into another living being--much recycling takes place on this Earth. Why should mankind be so different, so divorced from nature, from the cosmos? I think instead we express cosmic forces that already exist in the universe, and that darkness and light, good and evil, destruction and rebirth, are expressions of those cosmic forces.

To speak of things in metaphysical terms is to simplify and concentrate the accumulated hard-won knowledge of science, in all its complexity, but we should always stay grounded in science, lest we stray into error. Scientists such as Feynman scorn philosophers in general but perhaps reserve a special scorn for those that stray far away from physical science. I would not say, for instance, that there is a God that will intervene in human affairs, because I have not witnessed that, and it seems to me if there were such a God, he would have intervened long ago to stop various atrocities and right all of the things that are wrong in the world, from North Korea to Iran to Russia and even here at home in the United States. Surely a just God would not have suffered countless injustices to go unpunished upon this Earth, were he at all concerned with the doings of humankind. There are many paradoxes in the mainstream religions that remain unresolved and point to their falseness. Also, I would not say that we have eternal life in Paradise awaiting us, because I have not seen this Paradise, and all the evidence of science points toward the cessation of consciousness at death; therefore I believe, for now, that my consciousness and individuality will be annihilated at the moment of my demise. Although that is a point of intense regret for many people, I am philosophic, because it cannot be helped, and because everyone else in the same boat, and after all, wasn't I lucky even to exist in the first place and to survive for as long as I did? Isn't it ingratitude and selfishness to demand more from the Universe? Even a moment of consciousness is more than many collections of atoms ever experience. All the atoms of the Sun--when have they possessed a single thought? Yet the atoms of the Sun outnumber the atoms of the Earth, as we have been told by our scientists. Others will inherit the earth, and let us hope that they improve the condition of the ones that follow them, as we have tried in our own ways to improve conditions in our times.

Turkey is a Middle Eastern Country

The idea that Turkey can belong to the European Union is a joke. They even arrested a 16 year-old boy for insulting their President. Turkey looks a lot more like Iran than any European country. Maybe after about a hundred of years of self-improvement and reform, they may be able to join the EU on a probationary basis. They need to learn how to run a republic before pretending they can join the other European nations.

I Want to See "The Interview"

The only movie I'm interested in seeing is "The Interview," because I'll be damned if some two-bit North Korean dictator is going to tell me what I can and cannot watch. You go ahead try and bomb the theaters or whatever, and maybe North Korea will cease being radioactive after a couple hundred years.

Of course Putin ("Putrid") would hate the movie. Dictators gotta stick together, ya know. What that old rotten egg Putrid needs to understand is that Russia would be a lot better off if he had drunk some of that KGB poison, the stuff he uses on his enemies, a long time ago. The reason Russia's economy is going down the tubes is because of Putrid. There is really no other reason. Who invaded Ukraine? Putrid the stinker. Who neglected Russia's economy? Putrid. No other individual. You can't blame the West for everything. The only thing Putrid did during his time in office was eliminate Russia's civil liberties and rape her Republic and install a morally bankrupt dictatorship. He hates Russia with a passion and is fanatically dedicated to the destruction of Russia, and to that end, he seems to be doing a pretty good job. Hey, Putrid! Just because you annoy the other nations around you with your stench doesn't mean Russia is strong. Strong under the arm, maybe, but not strong.

The Scum of Mother Jones

One thing that disenchants me about Mother Jones is that their readers and writers have no manners. Everything to them is bullshik this, motherfuch that. They love profanity and ugliness and vulgarity. They hate refinement and civilization. They want to burn the whole world down. Mother Jones has no soul. It is completely grounded in tribalism. It is really no different from Fox News. Everything to them is us versus them. They hate white people, they hate police, and they hate the United States with a passion bordering on fanaticism. Meanwhile, they love tyranny, anarchy, and chaos. They don't understand science and only interpret issues based upon their own selfish needs. I can't really trust Mother Jones. It really should be renamed. Instead of Mother Jones, how about Mother Fuch? I resolve in 2015 to stop reading that site. I'm removing it from my favorites. I need to read something a little higher-level on the intellectual scale.

I deleted all references to Mother Jones that I made in cyberspace. At least I will not be contributing anything to that entity, and that makes me feel better. I don't like contributing to evil in any way. I'm  glad that I never actually contributed any money, even in the form of a subscription, to MJ over the years, at least that I can remember. I can be forgiven giving them links on a temporary basis, due to my incomplete understanding of their moral alignment. Now that I know they are evil, I have removed all links to their site.

Enthusiasm tends to be a problem. Perhaps objectivity is better in the pursuit of truth. However, we are after all animals, and we are subject to passions. To be passionate about something is not necessarily bad. It is, instead, human. I am lucky in that my passion for what is good exceeds my passion for tribal loyalty to any particular brand.

What Mother Jones really needs is a good trojan horse to permit an inside look at the emails and internal documents revealing where their funding is coming from. Unexplained is how that outfit is able to produce so much reporting without much of a subscriber base. I've never known a single soul that reads MJ, let alone subscribes to it, and I seldom find it in grocery stores. I guess screaming "Bullshi-" every other sentence is a turn-off to more people than just me.

Perhaps the editors of Mother Jones suffer from Asperger Syndrome. They lack essential social skills. They think they're fine, but other people, their potential audience, perceive their lack of civility, their rough manners, their ugliness. And that is why Mother Jones speaks to the few rather than the many, and why this will always be the case, until the management of MJ is replaced by competent management.