AfterLife

When you die...

you will go to heaven...

we all go to heaven...

there is no hell...

The Politics of the Absurd

I would like to preface this discussion with the idea that we, as a nation, live in exceedingly dangerous times. The most compelling evidence for me is the results of the recent mid-term elections. So many of the candidates, chosen for office by their electorate, have taken positions on critical issues that are rife with anti-intellectual and anti-science rhetoric. Their sense of implacable self-righteousness seems to dominate their thinking. They are apparently devoid of even the barest hint of humility. In my thinking, humility is the capacity to acknowledge that one can be mistaken, and it is an absolutely essential characteristic for those who assume positions of leadership. Without humility, we position ourselves, as a people, to a frightful future, for there can be no collective sanity without embracing our failings and our mistakes. To be devoid of humility is to welcome disaster.

Demagogues are often appealing during frightening times, for their madness entices those who are desperate for clarity, purpose and straightforward solutions no matter how absurd the answers might be in the light of critical thinking. Self righteousness can brook no compromise, for ideology is sustained and propelled by myopic vision. It proclaims clarity where there is none; it takes ownership of moral certitude where uncertainty abounds; it takes on the guise of salvation in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

If the nation is determined to choose leaders that cloak themselves in the guise of such righteousness at the ultimate expense of the common good, then we are a nation in serious trouble. This is the politics of the absurd and the dangerous.

If we are a nation in crisis, as all the evidence suggests, the answer does not lie in absurd and extreme notions, but rather through the use of reason and rational judgment in the true spirit of peace and humility.

9/11

Never in the history

of steel frame buildings has one ever "collapsed"...

withstanding fires for 24 hours

none has ever "collapsed"...

but on september 11th, 2001

three steel frame buildings "collapsed"...

what are the odds ?...

investigate 9/11

silence

"The Eye of Silence"
Max Ernst 1943-44

Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976)
was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet.
A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the
primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.
(read more)

Can't kill the Spirit.

Whispering Grass 2

"Nothing Lives Long Only The Earth and The Mountains"

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Native American saying

ufo: seeing is believing

de.lude \di-lud\vb deluded; deluding:
MISLEAD, DECEIVE, TRICK

...who is being tricked ?...

the word of god ?

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pick one

Buffalo Soldier ! - Bob Marley.

Quality of understanding

“The meaning of a sentence is derived from the original words by an active, interpretive process. The original sentence that is perceived is rapidly forgotten and memory is for the information (meaning) contained in the sentence.” [Link]

For years, neuro-linguists have studied what remains after we hear somebody speak. What they’ve come up with is something that resembles a three-dimensional network inside of our head. The network is made up of propositions (coded events), scripts (a sequence of coded events) and associated images and feelings. Although part of the network is constructed from the original sentences ..most of it is supplied from the past experience of the listener. What we come away with is a feeling of resonance and familiarity, based largely on our own beliefs and experience ..and not necessarily the meaning intended by the speaker. These finding are consistent with the construction-integration model for narrative comprehension proposed by psychologist Walter Kintsch [Link]

Home

"Home"...is a small blue marble...

that orbits a sun...

that orbits the galaxy...

that is our little blue lifeboat...

that is our "Home"

well, fair, productive

My values are at variance with many that society takes for granted.
Maybe society has created a compliant insanity by majority rules.
There are many indicators that we don't live in a well or fair state.
Could responsibility address the fear of a Welfare State?

There are conceptual properties that are interfering with original rights to own material properties. Our Founding Fathers came from the era when monarchs owned all the property of a country (and it's empire) so They were attempting to design a proper property for individuals to manage. The ultimate private interest was confronted to create the best republic they could. This was a social movement as the first paragraph of Common Sense clearly implies. Protection of property is how government earns confidence. Does it seem like a majority of Americans would vote no-confidence in their government? How much should we think that is insane?

Their agrarian economy was at a pace with natural progression that was distorted by concepts allowed by an industrial revolution. Profit worked great when measured by production values. What seems to distort economic integrity is how information and service is sold for profit.

My parents were social workers who were pioneers of a social service era. The entitlement of a stable government inspired the creation of assurances like Social Security according to their standards.

The wealthy interpretation was to create an insurance market that is based on gambling. The perpetrators are proving the imbalance of values that became pervasive with the acceptance of governmental lotteries. So many pay every week with hope for something they will never experience. Insurance makes us pay every month for something we never hope to use. How rational is that?

The deficit is a result of gambling attitudes. But how can the future be held responsible for the behavior of the past, monetarily? How can the nonexistent account for a conceptual derivative? Maybe it doesn't exist!Doesn't it seem more like an admission of borrowing in order to gamble? This could be a value of (and owed to) those who were used.

Wealth seems to be a style of compulsive obsessive hoarding. The more I have (of anything powerful) the more I am removed from a balanced reality and the more defensive I become. Those with the most have the most to lose. Money has become a harsh demanding master monarch.

The new confidence could come from a credit game that doesn't create debt. Overthrow the monarch money with three branches of economy. Divide the deficit into potential credit that can be accessible by staying well and fairly well-balanced. Every patient is important for the practice of medicine so they should get paid to submit to compliant health goals. This credits care for our bodies as a national interest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of contentment.

The best liberty we have now is to indulge in education. Does the entitlement of education lack the values of observation and or recognition? Universities should financially credit students for completing stages of research and development. This could be the redistribution of interest to recreate the best American production behavior that proper investment deserves. If students came into society with credits to invest, those in the profit branch of economy could make products beyond reproach.

If the fastest growing job is collection agent, it is a symptom of inappropriate use of energy. I have implied that the insurance job market created a parasite that is a tumor in the system of banking that has derived the most harm to our well-being. It is easier to just live with a parasite than to treat it. The immediate problem with jobs is what limitations they have forced humanity to accept.

The job of regulator is a type of mediation that needs to relax the punishment of judgment and expedite educational and healthy observations as trustworthy. This could be the role of government if economics were removed, The Founding Fathers had the hint that lawmaking and enforcement was the cause of taxation. Regulate that burden by repealing the mistakes of the past. Forgive so we don't have to forget the lessons of mistakes. The deficit is a symptom that reparations are deserved if relative to three respectful styles of coexistence. Production, thought development, and health care.

Narrative space

Proceedings from the Symposium on Extraterrestrial Psychology

Dr. Latimer: Language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that signify nothing until we recognize something we might have either seen or heard before, and look up it's meaning in our mental dictionary. In a plurality of worlds, without a common store of experience that comes from shared culture, efforts at communication may be an exercise in incomprehensible gestures. Verbal communication is the manipulation of symbols to which meaning is assigned by culture. An important point to keep in mind my friends is that the events experienced by members of a culture over time are what make up the narrative thread of that culture.

Dr. Zhavern: When we look into space, we don’t see things as they are. What we see is a single narrative thread winding it’s way through the cosmos ..a cosmos that may be shared by narratives other than our own. However, to it’s participants ..each narrative looks like the only cosmic game in town. Like language, we skew space to resemble something we’ve either seen, or heard before. It’s the only way we can come to grips with it.

Dr. Orloff: I think human consciousness is a fragmented and unstable process. It creates rapid models of counterfactual worlds inside the brain for things it cannot observe ..but only infer. The brain keeps track of these different versions until only those that contribute to narrative coherence receive sufficient signal strength to survive while those leading nowhere dissolve into noise ..and disappear into non-narrative space .. in an instant.

Dr. Pangloss: I think consciousness is made up of searchlights, projected from different mental versions of the world we create. They eventually converge to form concentric circles in the brain that illuminate the focal points that contribute most to narrative events, and fade rapidly at the periphery with fewer contributing points until things go black somewhere around the edges of non-narrative space.

My feeble brain ( hasn’t got a clue ): Are you saying that the narrative threads of extraterrestrials aren’t likely to uncoil very closely to ours ..(?)

What my eyes can't see

the clash - london calling

London calling to the faraway towns
Now war is declared - and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard,you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look to us
Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing

CHORUS
The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
Cause London is drowning and I, live by the river

London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, you can go at it alone
London calling to the zombies of death
Quit holding out - and draw another breath
London calling - and I don't wanna shout
But while we were talking I saw you *running out
London calling, see we ain't got no high
Except for that one with the yellowy eyes


The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
Cause London is drowning and I, I live by the river

Now get this
London calling, yes, I was there, too
An' you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!
London calling at the top of the dial
And after all this, won't you give me a smile?
London Calling

I never felt so much alive, alive, alive...

Communion

Louis Whitley Strieber (born June 13, 1945) is an American writer best known for his horror novels The Wolfen and The Hunger and for Communion, a non-fiction account of his perceived experiences with non-human entities. Strieber also co-authored The Coming Global Superstorm with Art Bell, which inspired the film about sudden climate change, The Day After Tomorrow. He has persisted as a supporter of alternative concept advocates through the Unknown Country website.

On December 26, 1985, Strieber reportedly was abducted from his cabin in upstate New York by non-human beings. He wrote about these experiences in his first non-fiction book, Communion (1987). Although the book is perceived generally as an account of alien abduction, Strieber admittedly draws no conclusions about his experience. He refers to the beings as "the visitors," a name chosen to be as neutral as possible to entertain the possibility that they are not extraterrestrials and may instead exist in his mind. He has repeatedly expressed his frustration with what he feels are fantastic claims attributed incorrectly to him.

Strieber wrote three additional autobiographies detailing his experiences with the visitors, Transformation (1988), Breakthrough (1995) and The Secret School (1996).

Other visitor-themed books of Strieber's include Majestic (1989), a novel about the Roswell UFO incident and The Communion Letters (1997, reissued in 2003), a collection of letters from readers reporting experiences similar to Strieber's. Confirmation (1998), despite its title does not propose that there has been 'confirmation' of UFOs or abductions. It analyzes the evidence and discusses what would be required to provide 'confirmation'. A 2006 novel, The Grays, presented his impression of alien contact through a fictional narrative.

Strieber wrote the screenplay for the 1989 film Communion, directed by Philippe Mora and starring Christopher Walken as Strieber. The movie covers material from the novel Communion and a sequel Transformation and which has themes not present in the books. (read more)

Whispering Grass 1

“Usually when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In our way the point of the angle is always toward ourselves.”

Shunryu Suzuki

Where is your Line?

~ Blessings of Courage and Clarity ~

This Is Halloween

Halloween (or Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in Canada, Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular celebration. (read more)

"That's All Folks"

Mel Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros. during the "Golden Age of American animation" (and later for Hanna-Barbera television productions) as the voice of such well-known characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote, Woody Woodpecker, Barney Rubble, Mr. Spacely, Speed Buggy, Captain Caveman, Heathcliff, and hundreds of others. Having earned the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Voices," Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice-acting industry. (read more)

Alan Watts - Who Guards the Guards?

Mother Hale

Clara McBride Hale was born on April 1, 1905 in Philadelphia. Hale’s mother had four children and welcomed the children from the neighborhood. She was mulatto and according to her daughter, could have “passed” for white. Hale’s grandmother was a slave and she conceived a child fathered by her master; that child was Hale’s mother.

Hale remembers her mother advising her children, “I want you to hold your head up and be proud of yourself. We were brought over and we were enslaved all this time, but it’s over now. You’re supposed to be free, but you aren’t free. Remember that.” Her mother’s love, generosity and understanding of the African American experience had a profound influence on Hale and the direction her life would eventually take. Her father had died when she was a baby.

Hale had three children, Nathan, Lorraine and Kenneth, who were very young when their father died. As an African American widow her employment options were strictly limited to domestic service; she chose to become a foster parent and to take in other people’s children. Although the arrangement with the parents was to care for the children five days out of the week, many of the children didn’t want to go home. She came to an understanding with the parents of these children; they gave her an additional dollar each week and she kept them with her all the time. She raised forty children in this way. All of these children went on to college and graduated. They all ended up with meaningful careers and led successful lives. Hale was always supportive. As a result, some became singers, dancers, preachers and “…things like that.”

By 1969, at the age of 64, she decided to retire from foster care no longer love and nurture children. That determination would soon change when her daughter sent her the baby of an addict; her name was Amanda. Although she was reluctant, at first, to assume this new responsibility, within two months she had twenty-two babies living in a five room apartment. Hale’s viewpoint can best be described in her own words, “Angels must have him – the baby’s name was Tiny Ty – the night his mother pitched him in the dumpster. It was filled with broken wine bottles and splintered furniture. Yet he fell on the one soft thing in it; a piece of discarded carpet that smelled of wine. Fortunately, only a few mosquitoes and roaches had bothered him…

“It was truly a miracle that he had beaten the odds of dying from exposure those critical first hours of his young life.

“And now he needed us to help him beat a more determined foe: heroin, his birth companion, the monkey on his back.”

It is important to remember that 1969 was a terrible and ominous time in the nation’s history – Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been recently assassinated. To the people of Harlem it was a desperate time in which nascent hope were shattered and that at its nadir resulted in horrific riots that devastated the region.

In 1973, Mother Hale opened the Hale House and started the Center for the Promotion of Human Potential; it was a brownstone in Harlem with the purpose of providing a safe and nurturing environment for the babies of young drug-addicted mothers. The success of this operation has been spectacular – hundreds of babies have returned to health as a result of their stay in Hale House which is now administered by her daughter, Dr. Lorraine Hale.

According to Mother Hale, “It’s been over six hundred addicted babies. We hold them and rock them. They love you to tell them how great they are, how good they are. Somehow even at a young age, they understand that. They’re happy and they turn out well.”

Her philosophy may best be summarized in her own words, “Being black does not stop you. You can sit out in the world and say, ‘Well, white people kept me back, and I can’t do this.’ Not so. You can have anything you want if you make up your mind and you want it. You don’t have to crack nobody across the head, don’t have to steal or anything. Don’t have to be smart like the men up high stealing all the money. We’re good people and we try.”

She decided to open up a place for children with AIDS in the 1980s when she was in her mid seventies, knowing that these children were destined for an early death. AIDS had a crippling in Harlem, leaving many AIDS-infected children without parents. She hoped that, “… one day there will be no Hale House, that we won’t need anybody to look after these children, that the drugs will be gone. I’m not an American hero. I’m a person that loves children.”

She remained active and involved until her death. Clare McBride Hale died on December 18, 1992 – a remarkable woman. She lived a truly exemplary life filled with an abundance of love for the human kind. She exhibited an extraordinary kind of courage and a generosity of spirit that is difficult to fathom. He Hale House Center is still extant and continues to serve children as it has done for over forty years.

Look Into My Eyes

The Nightmare

The Nightmare - 1781
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825)

Houdini

Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts. Harry Houdini died on Halloween. (read more)

America and Obama Hit Bottom:

Pressuring Child Soldier to Plead Guilty to Murder Violates International Law and Basic Common Decency

Omar Khadr at age 15, the time of his capture by US forces

by:

Dave Lindorff

As the author of The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), I never thought in my lifetime that I would see a president reach the depth of moral decay and depravity of President George W. Bush, but sad to say, our current president, Barack Obama, has managed to do it, and what makes it worse, as a former Constitutional law professor, he knows better.

This president’s moral nadir was hit yesterday, when he allowed a military tribunal based at Guantanamo to pressure Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured, gravely wounded, and arrested at the age of 15 in Afghanistan, and held at at Guantanamo now for nine years, to plead guilty to murder.

Khadr’s crime? He was in a house that was struck by a US air strike and then raided by US special forces during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002. The gravely wounded Khadr was accused of tossing a grenade at advancing US troops, which killed US Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, and caused another soldier to lose an eye

Although Khadr, after nine years of harsh confinement at Guantanamo, and facing a military tribunal, has pleaded guilty in a plea bargain, after insisting for nine years that he did not throw the grenade (there is no living witness to his having done so), one issue here is that even if he did toss it, that action would have been seen as that heroic act of a gravely-wounded young fighter facing a superior enemy force, but for the fact that the US is claiming Khadr was not a legitimate soldier, but rather a “terrorist.”

This is a rather spurious claim, since the US says it went to “war” in Afghanistan to go after Al Qaeda forces there, who had been set up with CIA assistance initially to help the Mujahadeen fight the Soviet occupiers. So the force that Khadr was supposedly fighting with was a legitimate fighting force once, but became not a fighting force when the enemy was the US. Clearly, such fine distinctions would have meant nothing to a 15-year-old boy who had been “drafted” into the war at 14 by his Al Qaeda-member father, who was later killed by US fire. Note too that the US can say its soldiers, who have been killing a prodigious number of civilians in Afghanistan, cannot be charged with murder or manslaughter because they are soldiers, but the enemy they are fighting can be charged with murder if they fight back, because they are supposedly not legitimate soldiers.

But Alice-in-Wonderland semantic games aside, in any case, the biggest outrage in this case is that Khadr was 15 when he was captured. Under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty that was signed by the US and that is thus part of US law, all children under the age of 18 captured while fighting in wars are to be offered “special protection” and treated as victims, not as combatants. (more)

Global Strike - 24th November 2010

Find The Hero Within

Appointment with Death

From the day you are born...

you have an appointment with death

The Fall of Adam and Eve

The Fall (1467-68)
Hugo van der Goes

"You will not surely die,"
the serpent said to the woman.
"For God knows that when you eat
of it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil."

Genesis 3:4-5