Mossad

Beware of men with tennis racquets.

Mossad has often come under criticism for perceived excessive actions against Israel's enemies. It has been criticized for carrying out assassinations, abductions and torture. It has also been accused of violating international law. (read more)

Liar Paradox

"Every

thing

I

say

is

a

lie"

(link)

On closer inspection

“The meaning of a sentence is derived from the original words by an active, interpretive process. The original sentence which is perceived is rapidly forgotten and the memory is then for the information (meaning) contained in the sentence.” ~ J. Sachs, 1967.

In the 1960’s, psychologists broke away from the long-standing traditions of behaviorism, and the field of cognitive psychology emerged. This act of secession was inspired by advances in fields such as neuroscience, cybernetics and linguistics. In the area of language development, psychologists adopted linguistic principles, introduced by Noam Chomsky, as a method for measuring verbal learning and behavior. These principles were more consistent with natural observations of language development. Chomsky’s model recognizes that language is expressed on at least two different levels ~ a ‘surface structure’, representing the audible/visible properties of a sentence (i.e. morphemes and syntax) ~ and a ‘deep structure’, representing the underlying semantic relationships conveyed by a sentence.

What they found is that the deep structure of a sentence is what people retain. Surface-structure is purged within milliseconds and no longer available for recall. The resulting memory is not a literal transcript of written or spoken language. It is more like a coded network of related concepts and ideas derived from the original sentence, as well as from the past experience of the listener. What we come away with is a feeling of resonance and familiarity, based largely on beliefs and experience ..and not necessarily the meaning intended by the speaker.

Tattoo Detective

Where is Osama bin Laden?

The Taliban are retreating in Afghanistan

Alexander the Great fought there

Alexander is no more

The Afghans are there

Where is Osama bin Laden?

From the Mexico US Border

I have a dream and you have a dream and everybody

has a dream something no no no that is the worst

thing to do write something beautiful beautiful

another lie on the border another beautiful lie

that will help us forget Juárez is alive and well

and living in El Paso.

Written by:

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

A poet living in El Paso.

Circus Maximus

"The Society of the Spectacle"
by Guy Debord

The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism. Before the term "globalization" was popularized, Debord was arguing about issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenization, and the mass media.

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: "All that was once directly lived has become mere representation." Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." This condition, according to Debord, is the "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life."

With the term spectacle, Debord defines the system that is a confluence of advanced capitalism, the mass media, and the types of governments who favor those phenomena. "... the spectacle, taken in the limited sense of "mass media" which are its most glaring superficial manifestation...". The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity. "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord writes. "rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."

In his analysis of the spectacular society, Debord notes that quality of life is impoverished, with such lack of authenticity, human perceptions are affected, and there's also a degradation of knowledge, with the hindering of critical thought. Debord analyzes the use of knowledge to assuage reality: the spectacle obfuscates the past, imploding it with the future into an undifferentiated mass, a type of never ending present; in this way the spectacle prevents individuals from realizing that the society of spectacle is only a moment in history (time), one that can be overturned through revolution.

Debord's aim and proposal, is "to wake up the spectator who has been drugged by spectacular images, through radical action in the form of the construction of situations, situations that bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art". In the situationist view, situations are actively created moments characterized by "a sense of self-consciousness of existence within a particular environment or ambience".

Debord encouraged the use of détournement, "which involves using spectacular images and language to disrupt the flow of the spectacle."

When Debord says that, "All that was once directly lived has become mere representation," he is referring to central importance of the image in contemporary society. Images, Debord says, have supplanted genuine human interaction.

Thus, Debord’s fourth thesis is "The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."

In a consumer society, social life is not about living but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have. Consequently, social life moves further, leaving a state of "having" and proceeding into a state of "appearing;" namely the appearance of the image.

"In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false."

(read more)

No more Bread and Circus

Young people do not want Winter Olympics

They want housing and jobs

Vancouver now, Seattle yesterday

Another world is possible

Happy Love Day

"Venus disarming Cupid"

François Boucher

1751

The Need

(click title)

MacPhisto!

watch candy

Why Darkness

There has to be evil

so that good can prove

its purity above it.

Buddha

mirror mirror

Oberon enters this story on page 194...
BEAUTY is the 5th Sherri Tepper book I've read, mostly projecting future adaptation of humankind..

The Antikythera mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator (also described as the first known mechanical computer) designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–01 from the Antikythera wreck, but its complexity and significance were not understood until decades later. It is now thought to have been built about 150–100 BC. Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks appeared in Europe.

Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University who led the most recent study of the mechanism said: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully...in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa." (read more)

Ancestry

HOMAGE TO THE
TREE SHREW

It is interesting for me to learn how much the tree shrew can tell us about human nature. They were one of the first primates on the evolutionary branch leading to humans. Neuro-anatomical studies reveal that they were also the first primate to evolve a highly elaborate and differentiated visual system. Psychological tests show that this development gave rise to the ability to perform two tasks with equal skill: 1) focusing attention on interesting features (while filtering out irrelevant information) and 2) swiftly shifting attention to other interesting (or alarming) features in the environment.

We take these contributions for granted now, but both abilities were not equally present in mammals before the tree shrew. It is an adaptation that had survival value, allowing them to track prey without losing sight of their predators – a trick of nature that makes them equally suited to act as hunters, as well as survive being hunted as prey. We appreciate these contributions when something goes wrong, resulting in one form of attention deficit or another. I think we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to these little beings. They mark the beginning of neocortical evolution in man.

Fire Officer's Guide to Disaster Control

"Chapter 13"

Don't be a sinner

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

-Albert Camus

How Three Firms Came To Rule The World

"One often hears the statement that agriculture is changing and we must adapt to the changes", says William Heffernan, a professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri. "Few persons who repeat the statement really understand the magnitude of the changes and the implications of them for agriculture and for the long-term sustainability of the food system. It is almost heresy to ask if these changes are what the people of our country really want or, if they are not what is desired, how we might redirect the change. These changes are the result of notoriously short-sighted market forces and not the result of public dialogue, the foundation of a democracy. Neither are the changes the result of some mystical figure or an 'invisible hand'."

Earlier this year the Farmers' Union hired Heffernan to undertake a study on consolidation in agricultural trade. Heffernan concluded that once you disentangle a web of subsidiaries, mergers, joint ventures, parternships, side agreements, marketing arrangements and alliances you find that "three food chains dominate the global food production system". These chains are: Cargill/Monsanto; ConAgra and Novartis/ADM. Even so, Heffernan notes that because of lax reporting requirements it's difficult to get a fix on precisely what these companies own and how they go about doing business. "Cargill has operations in 70 countries and it's a privately held firm. How do we get all of the necessary information? We've exposed the tip of the iceberg, but exposure only indicates the type of information needed to understand the global food system."

Heffernan points to the Cargill/Monsanto cluster as one of the most dangerous of the new alliances. In 1998 Monsanto and Cargill announced that Cargill had sold its vast seed operation to Monsanto (the world's leading biotech outfit) and entered into an agreement with the chemical company to develop new kinds of crop biotechnology. This alliance presents distinct benefits to both companies but dangers to consumers, farmers and the environment. A case in point is the alliances' so-called terminator gene. "No longer will Monsanto have to depend on access to farmers' fields for collection of tissue samples to make sure farmers do not keep seed from one year's crop to plant the following year", Heffernan warns. "Use of the terminator gene will mean that all crop farmers must return each year to obtain their seed from seed firms, just as corn producers have had to do for the past half-century."

If the press, which rarely mentions agricultural issues anymore, doesn't take this turn of events seriously, the corporate leaders of the agri-conglomerates certainly do. And they are not the least bit bashful about what's at stake. Dwayne Andreas is the politically wired former CEO of Archer Daniels Midland. He recently boasted to Reuters that he wanted to make ADM the world's dominant agriculture firm because, to his way of thinking, there's simply nothing more powerful than controlling the world's food supply. He said agribusiness is more powerful than the oil industry.

"The food business is far and away the most important business in the world," Andreas said. "Everything else is a luxury. Food is what you need to sustain life every day. Food is fuel. You can't run a tractor without fuel and you can't run a human being without it either. Food is the absolute beginning." (read more)

Danger if she gets to the White House

I Can Imagine a War with Sarah Palin in Power

It's Just A Plant

Hello

I browsed around this blog, and the one with pictures by Oberon.

I hope I don't disappoint my host.

Nudity! Oh my, oh my.

I am a poor kid from downtown Mexico City. I never went to any nude anything there. The closest experience is having a free thinking father, that used to take baths with us kids. Two boys and two girls. I forgot when he stopped that, maybe I was six, I really don't remember. But one thing is for sure I was not raised as a prude like some kids in that huge megalopolis.

You may wonder how the city is. Today it is legal to adopt, no matter the sexual orientation of the parents.  The federal government, conservative, is calling that city regulation into question. Two political parties one in the left, and one in the right, are vying for power in the 2012 presidential election.

I went to study at Santa Barbara, California, when I was 23. More Mesa Beach was my introduction to that weird gringo habit of taking your clothes off in front of strangers. I absolutely did not.

Sometime earlier, or after, I forgot by now, a bunch of friends in a lark, male and female went skinny dipping to some swiming pool in campus. Kid stuff, I guess. I was fitting in, or something.

Since then I haven't taken any part in such so.

I respect people that do it, but I am not going to go out of my way to start organizing a group like that here at the edge of the "elites' territory" in Acapulco. I am in Chilpancingo, and I would be "different" if I start to promote such social practices.

I read, going into that photography and poetry site, that some people find it objectionable, to post photographs, like the ones Oberon chose to put there.

I don't. I am more concerned about a possible collapse of civilization, than More Mesa Beach types going around with their sexual organs in display.

I may try my hand on some poetry in English here, though. If you read Spanish, I have a site for that in:

poeciaz.blogspot.com

I already have two followers there!

Secret Space

Not at all

these days my complaint is with

the way the world is going

i don't like what i see at all

no, not at all, not at all

Think

Thank you for inviting me here Oberon.

I hope my thoughts help others.

You can start by checking my Relevant Science blog.

Run Sarah Run

"So you people think

Washington is a zoo now?

Wait till I get there,

here comes the circus!

And wait till you see

who I'm bringing with me".

I love candy

What is the meaning of life?

Candy, candy, candy!

Space is the empty void,

the power of nothing.

From the nothingness,

something is pulled.

...Patience...

Something from nothing,

voila.

From the singularity,

to the multiverse,

all has been given for free,

everything is free because,

"God" is a liberal.

Oh, Squiggly Line

"Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid.

I see you there, lurking on the periphery of my vision.

But when I try to look at you, you scurry away.

Are you shy, squiggly line?

Why only when I ignore you do you return to the center of my eye?

Oh, squiggly line, it's all right. You are forgiven."

..."Stewie"...

Cross-Word Puzzle

Take the phrase, "TWO YEARS"

Now add a "D"

That's a total of nine letters

TWO YEARS + D

Now draw a tic-tac-toe


Place the nine letters

in the nine spaces

to make nine words

Good luck!

(solution)

Fear Factory

"War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength"

George Orwell-1984

------------

Some guy on the news told me I should expect

a "terror attack" to happen anytime soon now.

I was surprised by involuntary spasms of fear,

as if splashed with buckets of ice cold water.

I thought to myself, this is how they do it,

it was beginning to sound like they had it all

planned out like some kind of perverse TV show.

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country...Hermann Goering.

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so...Unknown.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever...George Orwell.

The Whole Earth Catalog

The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds -- anything for a self-sustainable "hippie" lifestyle) the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items. This led to a need for the Catalogs to be frequently updated.

Apple Inc. founder and entrepreneur Steve Jobs has described the Catalog as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web.

The title Whole Earth Catalog came from a previous project of Stewart Brand. In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, the first image of the "Whole Earth." He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford-educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be. (read more)

Whole Earth Catalog

Breeding War

Sri Lankan kids inside the jungle
Taking shelter from the bombs
Stand beside the rebel soldiers
And watch their daddies kill their moms

Haitian children live in huts
Don’t go to school, can’t read a book
Their parents cannot feed them - ever
But we can’t see if we don’t look

In Gaza, secret army soldiers die
For children shot, and killed, and terrified
So posters now display the losses
They’re peppering the countryside

Chinese teens have been detained
For remembering the fight
That failed to bring their honor back
That failed, again, to show what’s right

The Belgian painted killer who
Could hear the voices in his head
Rode his bike into a town
And left a score of toddlers dead

And when their lifeblood jobs were lost
A Californian man and wife
Knew desperation, thought long and hard
And then they took their children’s lives

These are the headlines – all today
Death, destruction, blood, and war
So when these kids grow up to hate
I’ll bet you’ll wish you had done more.