Just a quick rant about India’s long-range missile test, global nuclear weapons proliferation, and our impending doom.
Archive for the 'In the News' Category
There was a jailbreak in a neighboring community today. Four inmates overpowered their handlers using improvised weapons and escaped. One deputy was seriously injured. Two of the four were quickly recaptured, but the more dangerous pair are sill on the run. If I remember correctly, one of the thugs was convicted of double homicide and the other is a convicted kidnapper. The incident has sparked a local debate here on the need for more prisons. Adding fuel to the fire, the two thugs were moved from a high-security facility due to overcrowding, into the lesser-security county jail were they escaped.
The United States of America has the highest prison population of all the industrialized nations, bar none. Most of the prisons are at or exceeding their capacity. You would think that in such a dire situation there would be an outcry to study and determine exactly why there seem to be so many more criminals in this country, and then maybe figure out a way to remove the conditions that are responsible for creating such depraved individuals. No, that’s not how we roll here in the good old USA. If there are more thugs, rapists, and drug dealers… then the obvious answer is to build bigger and better prisons. Is this honestly the best answer to the problem that we can come up with? That’s sort of like letting the trash pile up in your home, and then when the flies get to numerous to handle… you go and invest is a box of fly-swatters.
When human beings have access to the necessities of life, they seldom engage in such violent and destructive activities. Only when people are under the stress of poverty and lack do they become violent, and only then does that violence breed fear and violence in others.
Maybe instead of locking some more people up (because that has worked so well), we should perhaps take out the trash. I think we will find that if we do so, the flies will take care of themselves.
I was discussing the recent incident of the US Marines urinating on the dead Taliban fighters with Denice. The video was very shocking to her. The bad thing is that it should have been shocking to me, but it wasn’t. Unfortunately, my eyes have seen this and much, much worse. For the life of me, I don’t know why soldiers love to film their exploits. I’ve seen video of soldiers hurling puppies off of cliffs, shooting random pedestrians, sexually abusing prisoners of war, torturing, raping, and killing… all for simple amusement. The amazing thing is that most of these people started out as normal, well-adjusted individuals. It takes a lot of training to make a good soldier, but just one good taste of the horrors of war to turn that soldier into a sub-human killing machine. It is a hard thing indeed for a good person to hold on to their humanity when they are injected into a situation where they are forced to kill, and often kill on a regular basis.
At a point in the conversation we got to talking about the trouble that is brewing with Iran. I personally think it is only a matter of time before the U.S. ends up in a major conflict with Iran. A war with Iran would be bad, no so much because Iran is a capable military opponent, but more because it could end up dragging China, Russia, and Israel into the insanity. China and Russia are heavily dependent on Iran for oil, and Israel has been frothing at the mouth to get at Iran for a long time. The U.S., China, and Russia all have nuclear weapons technology. What I see forming is the perfect storm of human stupidity that could very well usher in a Mad Max, Hell on Earth apocalypse.
If the wort case scenarios come to fruition, it is a certainty that the U.S. government will re-institute the draft. Technically, I have exceeded draftable age, but I’m sure if things got bad enough that wouldn’t matter. If the proverbial ‘shit’ hits the proverbial ‘fan’ then I’m afraid anyone who can walk and pull a trigger would be fair game. I want to make my position known right now on this. I am not going to play this game, period. I am not going to go kill people to protect corporate interests, or to satisfy the egos of government and military douche bags. I am not a coward, and have no problem using deadly force to protect what I hold dear, but I do not believe that this is the case. When things are escalating out of control, someone has to draw a line in the sand. If enough of us refuse to become instruments of death… then the insanity will come to an end. Enough is enough. War ends with me!
Texting while driving… yes, it’s a problem. It’s something I have done, and I’d be willing to bet that you’ve probably done. We know it’s dangerous, but we do it anyway. This is one of the big weaknesses of mankind. We tend to overestimate our abilities, and sometimes with lethal consequences. Of course, instead of admitting our weaknesses and making common sense accommodations for them, we pretend we don’t have them, and then enact laws to punish ourselves for doing things that we really can’t help.
Our cellphone technology is at a place where they could easily be reprogrammed to simply not work, or at least not text when they are traveling faster than a certain speed. The GPS technology that can allow a phone or other mobile device to know exactly how fast it is moving is already there. All it would take is a download of a modified firmware, and wallah… your phone won’t send or received texts while you are driving. If you want to use it, then you will have to pull over. Or, even better, cars could be engineered to drive themselves, then you could talk or text all you wanted. If you take the human being out of the equation, then you take human error out of the equation.
People are going to keep texting while drive regardless of how many laws are passed against the practice. Laws get broken. This problem could be completely eliminated overnight with the intelligent application of existing technology. But, I know you’re probably thing, “That sound Orwellian. What about freedom!” Ah, freedom… I love it. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but like all good things it has a dark side. If freedom is absolute, then your neighbor has the freedom to not properly maintain his vehicle. One day he’s out driving his beater and the brakes fail. Guess what… his freedom to not maintain his shit mean you die. Does that sound like freedom? It sounds like stupidity to me. Let’s face it, there are some things that we suck at, and following vital safety practices is one of them. If we engineer our machines so that it is impossible to abuse them and endanger ourselves, then things will be better, not worse.
Ideally, I would love to live in a world where personal vehicle travel would be greatly reduced. Having machines cart us around everywhere is not healthy. It’s one of the big reasons why so many people are out of shape and unhealthy. You have two legs, use them every once in a while. Trust me, you’ll feel better.
I just got through watching this ten minute video of Peter Joseph being interviewed on Russia Today about the current social and economic problems that we are all facing. As always, Peter cuts straight through to the root of the problem – the inherent flaws in our social and economic systems. As I always say, when the rules of the game are screwed up, no one wins.
Peter Joseph is the creator of the Zeitgeist film series and the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement. The goal of the Zeitgeist Movement is to bring awareness to the fundamental flaws in our thinking that have brought us to the bleak place that we now find ourselves in. Most people just live in the paradigm that we are in and seldom think about the possibility of a better way. Like in the movie The Matrix: we get up, go to work, pay our taxes, buy lots of junk, and repeat the process tomorrow. The only problem is that this system has brought us to the point that we are about to run out of ‘tomorrows.’ The economic paradigm of infinite growth is on a collision course with reality and the very finite natural resources that make our existence possible.
Another interesting thing in the video is when Peter talks about the “1 percenters,” you know… those we call wealth – the ones who push the buttons. Peter says that it is a mistake to demonize them. They are basically just the best players in a twisted game that was already here. Everyone knows you don’t hate the player… you hate the game. I think that is important to understand. It doesn’t really matter how the game got here, it simply needs to be fixed. People can get along, and work together to solve our common problems. We must. Like it or not, we are at a crossroads. Change is coming regardless. We will evolve our culture or we will suffer the consequences.
I grew up in the backwoods of Tennessee, smack dab in the middle of the Bible-Belt, where beating your kids is as normal as getting greeted by elderly people as you enter a Walmart, but the beating in this video nearly brought me to tears.
Texas Judge William Adams has now admitted that he is indeed the person in the viral Youtube video of a father and mother savagely beating their sixteen year-old, disabled daughter. In the video, Judge Adams curses at and beats his daughter for nearly seven minutes with a belt, for file sharing on her computer. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill spanking either. He tears into her with a furry and savagery that I have never witnessed in a parent disciplining their child. At one point he even uses the phrase, “I’m gonna beat you into submission!”
Apparently, this fellow has some severe aggression problems. I would be willing to bet that he was abused as a child himself. You mix that with a little bit of the book of Proverbs from the Bible (“spare the rod and spoil the child”), and you have yourself a perfect storm of sadistic furry. This man should have no place in a position of authority. The video is bellow. Be warned, it is bad.
I have to say, it takes a lot to make me angry at the faceless machines that are our corporations. It’s kind of pointless, like getting mad at a Tacobell burrito for giving you the runs – it’s just what it does. This case in Hawaii, with the Safeway supermarket calling the cops on a pregnant lady and her little girl for forgetting to pay for a sandwich has genuinely infuriated me. If you haven’t read the story, go read it: Pregnant mom says sandwich arrest was ‘horrifying.’
Safeway has gone the path of all big corporations… they have gotten so big that they have allowed their corporate policies to override their brains. Take a look at the picture here of Nicole Leszczynski and her little girl. There isn’t a mom-and-pop store out there that would think these two were criminals, especially after they just purchased $50 in groceries from them. This whole situation is over the top insane, and Safeway needs to do a little more than “review the incident.” They need to start letting their employees THINK before they mechanically follow a policy and scare a little kid and family half to death.
I know I shouldn’t get mad, but I am. This is ridiculous. If this had been Denice, I promise you, I would have someone’s ass.
Well, this is the third time now that I have been ‘left behind’ by Jesus. Harold Camping, the founder of the Family Radio Network, predicted the Rapture to take place in 1994. I was around 16 at the time, and let’s just say… an expert at the game ‘Whack a Mole.’ Yeah, not exactly in a good position to meet Jesus Christ. Luckily for me though, the good reverend made a mathematical error in his prediction, and revised the Rapture date to May 21st, 2011. I’m telling you, I was really sweating this one. I knew I wasn’t ready, and was not looking forward to the torments and plagues of the coming tribulation. Well, it turns out that Rev. Camping forgot to carry the decimal point, and my hide was saved… for another five months anyway. This past Friday was Camping’s latest prediction for the date of the Rapture. As you already know, no one was teleported away to heaven, and the world was not plunged into chaos – no more than usual anyway.
All joking aside, I remember once believing in the Rapture so strong that I considered making accommodations for my pets with Earth-Bound Pets, a company ran by atheists that for a fee will come pick up and take care of your pets for the remainder of their lives in the event that you are raptured away. It was a very real thing for me, and I don’t consider myself a gullible person. I think the key to understanding how intelligent people can be suckered into believing in something as ridiculous as the Rapture goes back to the way our young minds imprint information, and the powerful influence of our surrounding culture.
When I was young, along with believing in Jesus Christ, I also believed in an a morbidly obese fellow called Santa Clause, who would bring me gifts for no apparent reason once a year. My belief in Santa was so strong that I would actually help my grandmother bake cookies, which we would leave out for him on a coffee table next to the chimney. On Christmas morning I would awake to a boatload of presents and some half-eaten chocolate chip cookies. I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that this guy squeezed his jolly fat ass down our chimney in the middle of the night to deposit a cache of toys, and to scarf down some cookies. How gullible could I have been? Well, completely, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.
The human mind has a few built-in algorithms that we affectionately call ‘instinct.’ One of these instincts says that when you are young, any information that you are fed by adults is automatically accepted as truth, and cannot be easily challenged by the far weaker instinct of reason. This instinctive credulity has meant our survival as a species. It is important for our young to accept everything we tell them because usually the important stuff like ‘fire will burn you,’ and ‘don’t play in the street,’ is accurate and will save their lives. A child doesn’t have time to apply linear reasoning and the scientific method to everything they pick up from their culture. Survival’s a big plus, but the down side is that all this imprinted information, whether true or false, gets carried over into adulthood.
I really feel sorry for Rev. Camping’s followers. I’ve heard that a lot of them had maxed out their credit cards and did a lot of other foolish things because they believed the Rapture was imminent. I know what it’s like to believe in this stuff. I could have easily been one of them. We all live and learn I suppose. Life can really dish out some painful lessons.
I saw this story on the news this morning, and it really touched me. I’m sure just about everyone by now has heard the story of 12 year-old Dale Ostrander, who was pulled into the Pacific Ocean by a powerful riptide this past Friday. This story would have ended in tragedy, except for one thing… a sheepdog.
She didn’t have a jet ski, and she knew how dangerous going into the riptide would be, but she did it anyway. She went in after him, disregarding her own safety and her father’s pleas for her not to do it. Nicole Kissel, as young as she is, is without a doubt a sheepdog.
I don’t really know much about this brave young lady, but in a way – I know everything about her. I know her type. From her actions I know that she has hero written in her DNA. There were a lot of people on that beach and in the water that day, but only one sprung into action. Being a sheepdog is more of a reflex than it is a decision. If she were to think it through, she probably wouldn’t have injected herself into the situation. After all, there were professional rescuers on the way. She could have sat on her boogie board and watched the tragedy unfold like everyone else. She could have just prayed like the church group on the beach, that everything would be okay, but there was something inside her… something that wouldn’t let her sit on the sidelines. A sheepdog has to save the day. It’s not a decision, it’s a need – like breathing.
I’ve been there before. I know what it feels like. When you hear that muffled scream for help, something happens. It’s like your body starts moving on its own. That’s how it was for me that day in the mountains, when I was relaxing on a rock at a popular swimming hole called ‘The Sinks.’ A boy, no older that 10, had wandered into a dangerous section of white water and jagged rocks near by. Several people have perished in that very spot over the years. I remember it like it was yesterday. His scream sent a chill down my spine. I looked up just in time to see his head disappear under the water, and then something amazing happened. My arms and legs pulled me up off that rock, and in an instant I was in the water, racing towards him. It took me a few seconds to find him, but when I did I tried to pull him out of the water. It was useless. His foot was caught in between two jagged rocks. The force of the water was tremendous, and it took everything I had just to keep his head above it and myself from being swept away. I remember thinking, “Holly shit, now I’m going to die.” Luckily for both of us though, another heeded the call for help. A guy named Randy got there and held the kid up long enough for me to go under and free his foot. No one died that day, and I certainly don’t take credit for it. Like I said before, If I had thought it over; the danger of the white-water, what it would feel like to drown, all my loved ones that I would leave behind – I may not have done it. But I really didn’t have a choice in the matter. The reflex takes over before your mind has a chance to analyze things.
So, Nicole Kissel… well done. Like me, your sheepdog tendencies will probably get you killed one day, but this is what you are. We have to be true to what we are.
Denice and I, like most people, have been watching the devastation from the massive earthquake in Japan unfold through the Internet and conventional media outlets. To watch a ten foot high wall of water wash away houses, cars, and people like a garden hose on an ant hill is a very horrific experience. Hundreds have already lost their lives to this event; drowned, crushed, burned alive… so much suffering, so much devastation.
Then there are those who want to throw God into the middle of this. They speak of signs and second comings, but do they really understand what they’re doing with they interject their religious ideas into something as awful as this? Is their God so cruel as to annihilate thousands of lives; men, women, and children, just to send a message? Is their Jesus such a bully that he would drown hundreds of children like rats? You bet. He’s done it before. Have you ever heard of the flood of Noah? It’s in the book of Genesis, look it up.
The screenshot here is from a conversation I saw on Facebook. Notice the comments about the earthquake being “a sign,” and about it being “added unto” all those who don’t believe. Well, let me tell you what I believe: I believe that if there is a God, He, She, or It would have better things to do that drown and crush hundreds of defenseless people in order to scare others into believing. The earth is a dangerous place. It’s crust is in constant motion, and earthquakes are a direct result of it. We don’t need a cruel super-being to explain this. It is what it is, so shut up and try throwing in a helping hand. Remember that whole “love your neighbor” stuff? Well, you’re neighbors over there need you now.