Okay, so, did the Reporter ask if the "radio frequencies" generated by whatever means cost as much as the potential energy of the hydrogen released?
I'll wager there is no perpetual energy system here, it costs to create enough energy to "weaken the bonds" of the water molecules at least as much as the hydrogen's energy can release.
There are HUGE inefficiencies here, converting electricity to radio waves and then releasing the heat of the hydrogen into water, a nice insulator, and a good conductor of heat energy too...still, if they can get 25-50 percent efficiency in creating electricity they'd be way short of enough (and they can't!). However, this is going to get some main stream media play until the truth comes out several years from now. This ain't no panacea!
Radio Frequencies Help Burn Salt Water
By David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tue, 11 Sep 2007, 11:41AM
ERIE, Pa. - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Roy said. "Seeing it burn gives me the chills."
Roy will meet this week with officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to try to obtain research funding.
The scientists want to find out whether the energy output from the burning hydrogen — which reached a heat of more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — would be enough to power a car or other heavy machinery.
"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Roy said. "The potential is huge."
The potential for bogus is huge.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Some people are definitely luckier than others.
Man who lost pants and $41k gets it all back
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — It was embarrassing enough that Mark Stahnke woke up in a neighbor's yard without his pants. Then he remembered they contained a cashier's check for $41,093, meant for his son, and several hundred dollars in cash.
But he got it all back Friday, including the pants, thanks to a man and his dog.
Stahnke said he doesn't know what happened between when he left the bar and when he woke up the next morning, and police were skeptical when he filed a report on Monday.
"We're used to hearing weird stories, but with his intoxication we figured this one would be different, that the amount of money wouldn't be exact," Police Lt. William Graham said. "How do you get so intoxicated that you lose your pants?"
Stahnke said he had met his son at a bar and doesn't remember much afterward.
"I woke up cold not knowing where the heck I was, and I didn't realize it at first because I still had my shoes and socks on," he said. "When I got up, I realized, my God, I don't have any pants."
Tim Curzan's dog, Joe, found the pants at an intersection, according to a police report. He found the cashier's check and tried twice, unsuccessfully, to deliver it and the cash to where he thought the owner lived.
On Wednesday, the pants were still at the intersection, so Curzan took them to the police, who contacted Stahnke to claim his belongings.
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — It was embarrassing enough that Mark Stahnke woke up in a neighbor's yard without his pants. Then he remembered they contained a cashier's check for $41,093, meant for his son, and several hundred dollars in cash.
But he got it all back Friday, including the pants, thanks to a man and his dog.
Stahnke said he doesn't know what happened between when he left the bar and when he woke up the next morning, and police were skeptical when he filed a report on Monday.
"We're used to hearing weird stories, but with his intoxication we figured this one would be different, that the amount of money wouldn't be exact," Police Lt. William Graham said. "How do you get so intoxicated that you lose your pants?"
Stahnke said he had met his son at a bar and doesn't remember much afterward.
"I woke up cold not knowing where the heck I was, and I didn't realize it at first because I still had my shoes and socks on," he said. "When I got up, I realized, my God, I don't have any pants."
Tim Curzan's dog, Joe, found the pants at an intersection, according to a police report. He found the cashier's check and tried twice, unsuccessfully, to deliver it and the cash to where he thought the owner lived.
On Wednesday, the pants were still at the intersection, so Curzan took them to the police, who contacted Stahnke to claim his belongings.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
GITMO News, oh, they are reviewing and it is confusing!
Gitmo panels struggle to assess facts
By ANDREW O. SELSKY and BEN FOX, Associated Press Writers 25 minutes ago
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - After years of indefinite confinement, many detainees at Guantanamo Bay say they feel they may never receive justice, according to transcripts of hearings obtained by The Associated Press. Fewer than one in five of detainees allowed a hearing last year even bothered to show up for it.
The frustrated words of men, some of whom admit to fighting with the Taliban but swear they would go peacefully home if released, illustrate the seething tension at a prison where hundreds are held without charges. The transcripts also underscore that the U.S. allegations against the men are often as difficult to substantiate as they are for the detainees to refute.
Sometimes the allegations alarmed even the panels of military officers charged with determining whether a detainee should be freed.
Rahmatullah Sangaryar stood accused of "planning biological and poison attacks on United States and coalition forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan" and of possessing anthrax powder and a liquid poison.
The Afghan detainee said he was captured only with muddy clothes, possessed no anthrax and never planned such an attack. The officer in charge of the panel seemed to grope for a response.
"Do you know of anyone who would accuse you of such an act? This is so serious," the unidentified officer exclaimed. "I am trying to understand why it is here in front of me, this allegation against you."
The military has released a greater number of detainees from Guantanamo Bay than the roughly 340 men who are there today. As of Sept. 6, the U.S. had transferred or released about 435 prisoners from Guantanamo to more than two dozen nations since the detention center opened in January 2002. Most were subsequently released by their home countries.
But last year, the Administrative Review Board panels determined that 83 percent of the detainees whose cases they deliberated were too dangerous to be sent away, and authorized only 17 percent for transfer to other countries.
After AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the Pentagon on Friday handed over transcripts of 64 hearings in which the detainees appeared in 2006. In a letter to the AP, the government said it was withholding three transcripts because they would undermine
"particularly strong privacy interests."
The transcripts provide a rare opportunity to hear from the detainees themselves, and show increasing despair and frustration.
"It appears that our lives don't mean anything to the Americans ... I have a feeling that I might be here until my death," Mohammed Nasir Khusruf, a 60-year-old detainee from Yemen, told the ARB — the second to hear his case.
At the ARBs, conducted in a trailer inside the Guantanamo detention center, detainees are unable to confront those who have made statements against them. They are not provided with attorneys. The Bush administration has denied the Guantanamo detainees access to civilian courts and only three are charged with war crimes under a new military commissions system that has already run into a legal snarl.
"I am entering the fifth year," detainee Hamoud Abdullah Hamoud Hassan al-Wady of Yemen told his panel. "I want to see American justice. Where is it?"
The unidentified military officer heading the panel told al-Wady that this was his opportunity to "clear up some of the allegations that have been presented to us."
Yet in case after case, the source of often very serious accusations against the men is unclear, hamstringing detainees' efforts to contest the allegations.
In a case that illustrates the frustration, a military panelist told Mohammed Ali Salem al-Zarnuki that "a senior al-Qaida operative" had claimed he was seen in Kabul "at the front lines." Al-Zarnuki, a Yemeni who was arrested in Pakistan, had repeatedly denied ever being in Afghanistan.
"As I had said before, I don't know Afghanistan," al-Zarnuki insisted to his military panel. "I wish you would bring that guy so I can talk to him. Maybe I look like someone he knows."
Sometimes the frustration seemed to come from the other direction, as in the case of an Afghan detainee who insisted he was a simple merchant.
"I am very curious as to why a shopkeeper would be here. I find it very puzzling," a panel member said. It was impossible to gauge from the transcript whether the officer was salting his remarks with irony.
Only about 18 percent of detainees showed up for the ARBs out of the 330 cases considered last year, the military said. It was the second round of panels which determine whether a prisoner should continue to be held or be transferred from the base in southeast Cuba. Most of the first round of ARBs was held in 2005.
The detainees who chose to participate, for the most part, were cooperative and polite, at times admitting they attended combat training camps in Afghanistan or fighting for the Taliban against the rival Afghan Northern Alliance.
Some said they were simply farmers or shopkeepers swept up by U.S. or allied forces in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. None acknowledged any major role in international terrorism.
Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a doctor from Yemen, acknowledged treating wounded al-Qaida fighters at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, but said he was forced to do so. He said he wasn't a terrorist.
"I deny these allegations against me," Batarfi said. "It is the same information used against me last year. ... I don't want to be back to the same point again next year."
Some detainees, explaining how an innocent man could wind up at Guantanamo, said they had been captured in Pakistan and sold for bounties to U.S. forces — a practice that has been denounced by Amnesty International.
"You did not catch us in Pakistan — we were sold in Pakistan," said Abdennour Sameur, an Algerian. "The Pakistani army was very poor, that's why they were selling us to you."
Al-Zarnuki said he was also sold for a bounty, and added that his own money went missing during his arrest in Pakistan.
"So the Pakistani government made money twice, from our pocket and from your pocket," he told the military panel.
In contrast to the others, one Yemeni detainee proudly proclaimed himself a holy warrior and "an enemy of the United States."
Abdul al Rahman al Zahri praised the Sept. 11 attacks and other terrorist strikes and said they were retaliation "for your criminal acts and your military invasion (of) the Islamic countries."
(This version CORRECTS SUBS 13th graf to correct nationality of detainee al-Wady to Yemeni sted Afghan; Multimedia: A pdf document is located in yemeni_guantanamo in _documents.)
By ANDREW O. SELSKY and BEN FOX, Associated Press Writers 25 minutes ago
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - After years of indefinite confinement, many detainees at Guantanamo Bay say they feel they may never receive justice, according to transcripts of hearings obtained by The Associated Press. Fewer than one in five of detainees allowed a hearing last year even bothered to show up for it.
The frustrated words of men, some of whom admit to fighting with the Taliban but swear they would go peacefully home if released, illustrate the seething tension at a prison where hundreds are held without charges. The transcripts also underscore that the U.S. allegations against the men are often as difficult to substantiate as they are for the detainees to refute.
Sometimes the allegations alarmed even the panels of military officers charged with determining whether a detainee should be freed.
Rahmatullah Sangaryar stood accused of "planning biological and poison attacks on United States and coalition forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan" and of possessing anthrax powder and a liquid poison.
The Afghan detainee said he was captured only with muddy clothes, possessed no anthrax and never planned such an attack. The officer in charge of the panel seemed to grope for a response.
"Do you know of anyone who would accuse you of such an act? This is so serious," the unidentified officer exclaimed. "I am trying to understand why it is here in front of me, this allegation against you."
The military has released a greater number of detainees from Guantanamo Bay than the roughly 340 men who are there today. As of Sept. 6, the U.S. had transferred or released about 435 prisoners from Guantanamo to more than two dozen nations since the detention center opened in January 2002. Most were subsequently released by their home countries.
But last year, the Administrative Review Board panels determined that 83 percent of the detainees whose cases they deliberated were too dangerous to be sent away, and authorized only 17 percent for transfer to other countries.
After AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the Pentagon on Friday handed over transcripts of 64 hearings in which the detainees appeared in 2006. In a letter to the AP, the government said it was withholding three transcripts because they would undermine
"particularly strong privacy interests."
The transcripts provide a rare opportunity to hear from the detainees themselves, and show increasing despair and frustration.
"It appears that our lives don't mean anything to the Americans ... I have a feeling that I might be here until my death," Mohammed Nasir Khusruf, a 60-year-old detainee from Yemen, told the ARB — the second to hear his case.
At the ARBs, conducted in a trailer inside the Guantanamo detention center, detainees are unable to confront those who have made statements against them. They are not provided with attorneys. The Bush administration has denied the Guantanamo detainees access to civilian courts and only three are charged with war crimes under a new military commissions system that has already run into a legal snarl.
"I am entering the fifth year," detainee Hamoud Abdullah Hamoud Hassan al-Wady of Yemen told his panel. "I want to see American justice. Where is it?"
The unidentified military officer heading the panel told al-Wady that this was his opportunity to "clear up some of the allegations that have been presented to us."
Yet in case after case, the source of often very serious accusations against the men is unclear, hamstringing detainees' efforts to contest the allegations.
In a case that illustrates the frustration, a military panelist told Mohammed Ali Salem al-Zarnuki that "a senior al-Qaida operative" had claimed he was seen in Kabul "at the front lines." Al-Zarnuki, a Yemeni who was arrested in Pakistan, had repeatedly denied ever being in Afghanistan.
"As I had said before, I don't know Afghanistan," al-Zarnuki insisted to his military panel. "I wish you would bring that guy so I can talk to him. Maybe I look like someone he knows."
Sometimes the frustration seemed to come from the other direction, as in the case of an Afghan detainee who insisted he was a simple merchant.
"I am very curious as to why a shopkeeper would be here. I find it very puzzling," a panel member said. It was impossible to gauge from the transcript whether the officer was salting his remarks with irony.
Only about 18 percent of detainees showed up for the ARBs out of the 330 cases considered last year, the military said. It was the second round of panels which determine whether a prisoner should continue to be held or be transferred from the base in southeast Cuba. Most of the first round of ARBs was held in 2005.
The detainees who chose to participate, for the most part, were cooperative and polite, at times admitting they attended combat training camps in Afghanistan or fighting for the Taliban against the rival Afghan Northern Alliance.
Some said they were simply farmers or shopkeepers swept up by U.S. or allied forces in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. None acknowledged any major role in international terrorism.
Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a doctor from Yemen, acknowledged treating wounded al-Qaida fighters at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, but said he was forced to do so. He said he wasn't a terrorist.
"I deny these allegations against me," Batarfi said. "It is the same information used against me last year. ... I don't want to be back to the same point again next year."
Some detainees, explaining how an innocent man could wind up at Guantanamo, said they had been captured in Pakistan and sold for bounties to U.S. forces — a practice that has been denounced by Amnesty International.
"You did not catch us in Pakistan — we were sold in Pakistan," said Abdennour Sameur, an Algerian. "The Pakistani army was very poor, that's why they were selling us to you."
Al-Zarnuki said he was also sold for a bounty, and added that his own money went missing during his arrest in Pakistan.
"So the Pakistani government made money twice, from our pocket and from your pocket," he told the military panel.
In contrast to the others, one Yemeni detainee proudly proclaimed himself a holy warrior and "an enemy of the United States."
Abdul al Rahman al Zahri praised the Sept. 11 attacks and other terrorist strikes and said they were retaliation "for your criminal acts and your military invasion (of) the Islamic countries."
(This version CORRECTS SUBS 13th graf to correct nationality of detainee al-Wady to Yemeni sted Afghan; Multimedia: A pdf document is located in yemeni_guantanamo in _documents.)
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Psycho Songs - Room Full Of Mirrors Jimi Hendrix
I USED TO LIVE IN A ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS
ALL I COULD SEE WAS ME
WELL I TAKE MY SPIRIT AND I SMASH MY MIRRORS
NOW THE WHOLE WORLD IS HERE FOR ME TO SEE
I SAID THE WHOLE WORLD IS HERE FOR ME TO SEE
NOW I'M SEARCHIN' FOR MY LOVE TO BE
HEY!!YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!
BROKEN GLASS WAS ALL IN MY BRAIN
CUTTIN' SCREAMIN' CRYING IN MY HEAD
BROKEN GLASS WAS ALL IN MY BRAIN
FALL IN MY DREAMS CUT ME IN MY BED
FALL IN MY DREAMS CUT ME IN MY BED
I SAID A MAKIN' LOVE WAS STRANGE IN MY BED
YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!
ALL RIGHT
OOO OOO
YEAH YEAH YEAH
YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH
NO PLACE TO STUMBLE
NO PLACE TO FALL
CAN'T FIND WAR
NO WHERE AT ALL
SEE NOTHING BUT SUNSHINE
ALL AROUND
LOVE COMES SHININ' OVER THE MOUNTAINS
LOVE COMES SHININ' OVER THE SEA
LOVE WILL SHINE ON MY BABY
THEN I'LL KNOW WHO'S EXACTLY FOR ME
LORD, I'LL KNOW WHO'LL BE FOR ME
IN THE MEANTIME, WHICH IS A GROOVY TIME
ALL I COULD SEE WAS ME
WELL I TAKE MY SPIRIT AND I SMASH MY MIRRORS
NOW THE WHOLE WORLD IS HERE FOR ME TO SEE
I SAID THE WHOLE WORLD IS HERE FOR ME TO SEE
NOW I'M SEARCHIN' FOR MY LOVE TO BE
HEY!!YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!
BROKEN GLASS WAS ALL IN MY BRAIN
CUTTIN' SCREAMIN' CRYING IN MY HEAD
BROKEN GLASS WAS ALL IN MY BRAIN
FALL IN MY DREAMS CUT ME IN MY BED
FALL IN MY DREAMS CUT ME IN MY BED
I SAID A MAKIN' LOVE WAS STRANGE IN MY BED
YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!
ALL RIGHT
OOO OOO
YEAH YEAH YEAH
YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH
NO PLACE TO STUMBLE
NO PLACE TO FALL
CAN'T FIND WAR
NO WHERE AT ALL
SEE NOTHING BUT SUNSHINE
ALL AROUND
LOVE COMES SHININ' OVER THE MOUNTAINS
LOVE COMES SHININ' OVER THE SEA
LOVE WILL SHINE ON MY BABY
THEN I'LL KNOW WHO'S EXACTLY FOR ME
LORD, I'LL KNOW WHO'LL BE FOR ME
IN THE MEANTIME, WHICH IS A GROOVY TIME
Expressions from the Online Dating Scene
I'm on a particular dating site.
While reviewing various profiles I found the following gems, tonight:
can except me for who I am
I am multi dimentional in many ways.
love the beach at 5:30am but can dance until 3am.
Im a young, vibrant 45 yr. old
A job is a good thing for him to have.
Most importantly, he doesn't have to look as good in jeans as in an evening gown.
I love my work (and my days off), getting together with friends and family, love my kids and dog (not necessarily always in that order) do things I enjoy.
Interested in traveling, quite times at home and "exploring" the city!
He should also have a social conscious (believes in helping others) and is kind to animals!
is open to the fact that I do not eat meat (I eat fish)... But... I don't mind if he does!
I have had the good fortune of exploring the world we live in
not intimidated by a woman who is self assured and passionate.
i want someone who enjoys spending time together, but who can have a life of there own.
While reviewing various profiles I found the following gems, tonight:
can except me for who I am
I am multi dimentional in many ways.
love the beach at 5:30am but can dance until 3am.
Im a young, vibrant 45 yr. old
A job is a good thing for him to have.
Most importantly, he doesn't have to look as good in jeans as in an evening gown.
I love my work (and my days off), getting together with friends and family, love my kids and dog (not necessarily always in that order) do things I enjoy.
Interested in traveling, quite times at home and "exploring" the city!
He should also have a social conscious (believes in helping others) and is kind to animals!
is open to the fact that I do not eat meat (I eat fish)... But... I don't mind if he does!
I have had the good fortune of exploring the world we live in
not intimidated by a woman who is self assured and passionate.
i want someone who enjoys spending time together, but who can have a life of there own.
Friday, September 7, 2007
ATHEISTS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON!
I
)PRESERVE
)RESERVE
)DESERVE
) ALL OF THE ABOVE AND MORE...
THE RIGHT
TO NOT BELIEVE
ANYTHING
I HAVE TO TAKE SOLELY ON FAITH.
ATHEISTS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON.
THERE WERE 358 HITS FOR THAT PARTICULAR EXPRESSION, BUT NONE WERE SENTENCES, ALL WERE PHRASES AS FAR AS I COULD SEE. THEREFORE, I'M COPYRIGHTING THAT EXPRESSION AS OF THIS DATE AND TIME.
)PRESERVE
)RESERVE
)DESERVE
) ALL OF THE ABOVE AND MORE...
THE RIGHT
TO NOT BELIEVE
ANYTHING
I HAVE TO TAKE SOLELY ON FAITH.
ATHEISTS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON.
THERE WERE 358 HITS FOR THAT PARTICULAR EXPRESSION, BUT NONE WERE SENTENCES, ALL WERE PHRASES AS FAR AS I COULD SEE. THEREFORE, I'M COPYRIGHTING THAT EXPRESSION AS OF THIS DATE AND TIME.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Monday, September 3, 2007
"Do you no Hindi?"
Chat ID: 4cd127-1a42-43cd71d2182
Problem : priority code 4344889765 Someone said they'd call us back in 2 minutes, 20 minutes ago. Your download failed midstream. therefore we have NO ANTI-VIRUS on our system. Help Rafraff : Hello Frish. My name is Rafraff .
Rafraff : Welcome to Symantec Customer Service
Rafraff : Hello Sue, How are you doing today?
Frish: don't even ask that. I've been hassling your software for 4 hours now, and your promises are useless
Rafraff : Sue, May I please confirm that the issue you have described is that you need help in downloading the product. Is that correct?
Frish: yes
Frish: download failed, and so, now what?
Rafraff : What is the exact error message that appears on your screen?
Frish: the download simply stopped, the button said resume so we did...it stopped again, then eventually, it said that our run.exe or some such was corrupt and that was it.
Frish: downloaded about 52MB when it eventually totally failed.
Rafraff : I really apolozies for the inconvenience caused.
Frish: just fix it
Rafraff : May I know the operating system you are using?
Frish: xp
Rafraff : Is your internet connection a high speed DSL/ cable or dial up?
Frish: dsl
Rafraff : May I know whether it is Xp sp1 or Xp sp2?
Frish: sp2
Rafraff : Thank you for confirming your details. Please make a note of this case no. 3714392755 for your future reference.
Rafraff : May I know whether you have disabled the firewall and tried to download the product?
Frish: by the way, I've done this already today with someone elwse. and I have a case number and a priority number that I typed in. I also used to work down the hall from John Thompson, the CEO of Symantec...lol
Frish: 3714392734
Frish: was my other number
Rafraff : Okay.
Rafraff : Please follow steps..........
Rafraff : Please log on to the www.symantecstore.com/trialware and select Norton Internet Security 2008 - 15 Day Trialware
Rafraff : 1.Please download the 15 days trial ware from the link.
Rafraff : 2. After 15 days, Norton product will prompt you with three options. Check mark the option "I have already purchased a product and have a product key"
Rafraff : 3. You can enter the product key JQ7JPYRUUDYYTTBCJPDJCIIYEMMMS999#
Frish: fascinating.
Rafraff : It is a trailware product. You can use the product for 15 days and at the end of the 15 day it will ask the product key to enter, then please enter the product key you have and activate it ..
Rafraff : Please download the product on your computer and save it on your desktop.
Rafraff : And after downloading it you will get a Norton Icon tab on your desktop.
Rafraff : Please double click on it.
Rafraff : You will get the option Run.
Rafraff : Please click on it.
Rafraff : The product will be installed on your computer.
Rafraff : Once the product is installed on your computer the older products on your computer will be uninstalled automatically.
Rafraff : And then activate your product.
Rafraff : Please try with the steps and if you have any issues please contact us again with the above case ID.
Frish: ok
Frish: I'll try it
Frish: ciao
Frish: namaste
Rafraff : Do you no Hindi?
Problem : priority code 4344889765 Someone said they'd call us back in 2 minutes, 20 minutes ago. Your download failed midstream. therefore we have NO ANTI-VIRUS on our system. Help Rafraff : Hello Frish. My name is Rafraff .
Rafraff : Welcome to Symantec Customer Service
Rafraff : Hello Sue, How are you doing today?
Frish: don't even ask that. I've been hassling your software for 4 hours now, and your promises are useless
Rafraff : Sue, May I please confirm that the issue you have described is that you need help in downloading the product. Is that correct?
Frish: yes
Frish: download failed, and so, now what?
Rafraff : What is the exact error message that appears on your screen?
Frish: the download simply stopped, the button said resume so we did...it stopped again, then eventually, it said that our run.exe or some such was corrupt and that was it.
Frish: downloaded about 52MB when it eventually totally failed.
Rafraff : I really apolozies for the inconvenience caused.
Frish: just fix it
Rafraff : May I know the operating system you are using?
Frish: xp
Rafraff : Is your internet connection a high speed DSL/ cable or dial up?
Frish: dsl
Rafraff : May I know whether it is Xp sp1 or Xp sp2?
Frish: sp2
Rafraff : Thank you for confirming your details. Please make a note of this case no. 3714392755 for your future reference.
Rafraff : May I know whether you have disabled the firewall and tried to download the product?
Frish: by the way, I've done this already today with someone elwse. and I have a case number and a priority number that I typed in. I also used to work down the hall from John Thompson, the CEO of Symantec...lol
Frish: 3714392734
Frish: was my other number
Rafraff : Okay.
Rafraff : Please follow steps..........
Rafraff : Please log on to the www.symantecstore.com/trialware and select Norton Internet Security 2008 - 15 Day Trialware
Rafraff : 1.Please download the 15 days trial ware from the link.
Rafraff : 2. After 15 days, Norton product will prompt you with three options. Check mark the option "I have already purchased a product and have a product key"
Rafraff : 3. You can enter the product key JQ7JPYRUUDYYTTBCJPDJCIIYEMMMS999#
Frish: fascinating.
Rafraff : It is a trailware product. You can use the product for 15 days and at the end of the 15 day it will ask the product key to enter, then please enter the product key you have and activate it ..
Rafraff : Please download the product on your computer and save it on your desktop.
Rafraff : And after downloading it you will get a Norton Icon tab on your desktop.
Rafraff : Please double click on it.
Rafraff : You will get the option Run.
Rafraff : Please click on it.
Rafraff : The product will be installed on your computer.
Rafraff : Once the product is installed on your computer the older products on your computer will be uninstalled automatically.
Rafraff : And then activate your product.
Rafraff : Please try with the steps and if you have any issues please contact us again with the above case ID.
Frish: ok
Frish: I'll try it
Frish: ciao
Frish: namaste
Rafraff : Do you no Hindi?
Thanks for your evenhanded article
Josh:
I believe you are correct in your assessment, as far as it goes. And, atheists are hard to corral into a group, no question, since all we have in common is a non-belief! We come from all backgrounds, religions, races, heights, ages and fitness...literally we have NOTHING in common!
Yes, those amongst us who are not superstitious, who do not rely on myth and legend for our world view, are becoming more politicized, and outspoken. Partly this is in reaction to the theocratization (actually Evangelical Christianization) of various parts of our government and political lives. (Partly it is because we feel we can, and must, before our very low social status (least desirable to date your child: an atheist!) causes reactionaries to react!)
It is also clear to me anyway, that a rational, non-faith-based view of the natural condition must be undertaken if we are to avoid (or quiesce) the chaos we've created in the biosphere and therefore simply survive the next 150 years.
Those who are "faithful" are also potentially very dangerous, if their faith causes them to make irrational decisions concerning global warming, Islam, Israel, and other important issues.
However, there is another part of the story. We know much more know than we ever have about how the universe works, and we're learning more every day. (And, not just the Universe, but how our own brains function is finally beginning to be described.)
So, the interesting question of our age:
Will science develop enough of the answers in time to convince enough voters to ensure further progress in knowledge and application of science, or will the faithful win enough governmental clout to foil those efforts (stem cells for example!)?
Either way, it is a toss up as to whether humankind can survive the chaos we've created in the biosphere. Simply by having the atheists/deist debate is a waste of very precious time that ought be spent solving how humanity will survive into the year 2150.
(I often have wondered when the atheists and theists team up to help the Earth survive! Where are those Christians who feel they are not Dominionists, but Shepard's of the Earth?)
Your article follows, as I've copied some interested parties, thanks! I also have a final comment below, thanks again:
I believe you are correct in your assessment, as far as it goes. And, atheists are hard to corral into a group, no question, since all we have in common is a non-belief! We come from all backgrounds, religions, races, heights, ages and fitness...literally we have NOTHING in common!
Yes, those amongst us who are not superstitious, who do not rely on myth and legend for our world view, are becoming more politicized, and outspoken. Partly this is in reaction to the theocratization (actually Evangelical Christianization) of various parts of our government and political lives. (Partly it is because we feel we can, and must, before our very low social status (least desirable to date your child: an atheist!) causes reactionaries to react!)
It is also clear to me anyway, that a rational, non-faith-based view of the natural condition must be undertaken if we are to avoid (or quiesce) the chaos we've created in the biosphere and therefore simply survive the next 150 years.
Those who are "faithful" are also potentially very dangerous, if their faith causes them to make irrational decisions concerning global warming, Islam, Israel, and other important issues.
However, there is another part of the story. We know much more know than we ever have about how the universe works, and we're learning more every day. (And, not just the Universe, but how our own brains function is finally beginning to be described.)
So, the interesting question of our age:
Will science develop enough of the answers in time to convince enough voters to ensure further progress in knowledge and application of science, or will the faithful win enough governmental clout to foil those efforts (stem cells for example!)?
Either way, it is a toss up as to whether humankind can survive the chaos we've created in the biosphere. Simply by having the atheists/deist debate is a waste of very precious time that ought be spent solving how humanity will survive into the year 2150.
(I often have wondered when the atheists and theists team up to help the Earth survive! Where are those Christians who feel they are not Dominionists, but Shepard's of the Earth?)
Your article follows, as I've copied some interested parties, thanks! I also have a final comment below, thanks again:
Faith & Values
Tired of faith-based politics, atheists push to be heard, too
Friday, August 31, 2007 3:33 AM
When Friedrich Nietzsche dared pen the words "God is dead" in 1881, some crickets chirped. A critic yawned.
Despite his later influence, scholars say, Nietzsche was not highly regarded before his death in 1890. But nowadays, critiques of religion, his specialty, are popular.
Just check out the New York Times bestseller list.
Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great spent the past 16 weeks in the top five of the list after making its debut in the top spot. Still ranked among best sellers, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is holding out in the top 30 despite being published last September. Other prominent authors include Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
According to activists, this band of atheist authors heralds a turning point in American society -- when the irreligious stand up and take their place at the table of political power.
The success of these authors is directly proportional to the dramatic rise in religious conservatism and public piety in national politics, said Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry, a magazine published by the Council for Secular Humanism.
"With (President) Bush trumpeting his faith-based initiatives in the face of the separation of church and state, you have a lot of those in the nonbelieving community who feel their civil liberties are in danger," Flynn said.
Add that to the growing number of American atheists and you have a recipe for political activism, he added.
Record numbers of people are living without God, according to a Pew Charitable Trust study conducted by researchers at the University of Akron for the 2004 presidential race.
The study found the highest share of people yet, 16 percent, who said they had no religious affiliation. Some of those were actually nonspecific spiritual seekers or people between denominations, but almost 11 percent of the respondents said they were atheist or secular.
"And if you know anything about minority politics, 10 percent is the magic number," Flynn said. "All of a sudden, you have a place at the table. I think that has a lot to do with the sudden popularity of atheism and these books."
But the Rev. Martin Marty, an author, Lutheran minister and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said just because the books reveal a cultural current in America, don't expect a march on Washington.
The history of the various agnostic and atheist movements in this country, he said, is one of a failure to organize.
"Religions have the power to form groups," Marty said. "When you look at the intellectual expression of atheism, it is very individualistic."
The run-of-the-mill atheist is less concerned with the trappings of religion than its political influence, said Marilyn Westfall, a lecturer and board member of the American Humanist Association.
She said there is genuine concern about the strength of the religious right in this country.
"It seems that humans have gone through cycles in which religious fervor must be opposed for the sake of ethics," Westfall said.
Amy Birtcher has seen this thought reflected in Columbus. As president of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, she has watched the organization's numbers swell from the historic average of about 40 to almost 100 in the past two years.
She said people are turning to atheist authors' works because they validate what they have been thinking for a long time.
"New members tell us quite regularly that the Bush administration and the current wave of conservative politics brought them out of the closet," Birtcher said.
Still, she said, atheists remain one of the most maligned minority groups in the United States. Political polls reveal that people are less likely to vote for a nonbeliever than for a homosexual, she said.
"A lot of people are afraid," Birtcher said. "They can't tell their families. They can't tell their co-workers because they fear real reprisal."
The Rev. Richard Burnett, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church Downtown, said he can understand how invocations of the divine by public officials can feel alienating to unbelievers, though unintentionally.
Having read Hitchens' book, Burnett said it's a good read for Christians, if only to help reaffirm their belief. He suspects that the book's best-seller status is due in part to the faithful trying to find out "what the devil it's all about."
"When we are honest with each other, I think there's a great potential to find truth," Burnett said about the dialogue the books have created between the faithful and nonbelievers. "When the discourse is mocking or trying to score points for either side, I don't think it is helpful."
He said it's important to remember that God does not need to be defended.
Flynn predicts that the popularity of these books is the first step in a coming wave of atheist activism. "It took a very concentrated effort on behalf of the gay community to make people realize you know a gay person," Flynn said. "People realized, 'Hey, I have a gay co-worker, and they're fine.' We need to do that for the nonreligious."
----------------------------------
The gay analogy is interesting but not quite spot on, since Gays have a natural reason to form a group and atheists don't, except to be defensive of our fragile civil rights to be Free To Believe or Not as we so desire! Seems so simple and nothing to argue about really, I respectfully request the right not to believe anything I have to take solely on faith...
Cheers,
Frish
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Psycho Songs: "I'm happy I live in a split-level head"
I'm Happy I Live In A Split-Level Head lyrics by Napoleon Xiv
I’ve lived in apartments, I’ve lived in a home
I traveled in trailers when I used to roam
But now in these places you won’t have me dead
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
I do what I want to; no worries, no cares
If anyone bugs me I climb little stairs
Way up to a level where I feel no threat
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
The stair climbing's nothing, I couldn’t care less
I don’t rush for busses and trains are a mess
There’s no one to care for, I don’t make a bed
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
I like how I’m living, I’m nobody’s slave
My head’s above water, so don’t make a wave
There's no door to lock and no dog to be fed
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
So why should I move when the neighborhood’s right?
No taxes to pay and no landlord to fight
Now I call this living, what’s more, like I said
‘cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
Now you keep your ulcers, your ills, and what's new
You sure couldn’t have them and live like I do
You think I have problems, but you do instead
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
I live with two people, I like both of them
He likes both of me and I like both of him
They’re my alter-egos and to them I’m wed
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
There’s no civil status in my neighborhood
And its that kind of thinking, that keeps it so good
I don’t take the lead but I like to be led
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
I’ve lived in apartments, I’ve lived in a home
I traveled in trailers when I used to roam
But now in these places you won’t have me dead
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
I do what I want to; no worries, no cares
If anyone bugs me I climb little stairs
Way up to a level where I feel no threat
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
The stair climbing's nothing, I couldn’t care less
I don’t rush for busses and trains are a mess
There’s no one to care for, I don’t make a bed
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
I like how I’m living, I’m nobody’s slave
My head’s above water, so don’t make a wave
There's no door to lock and no dog to be fed
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
So why should I move when the neighborhood’s right?
No taxes to pay and no landlord to fight
Now I call this living, what’s more, like I said
‘cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
Now you keep your ulcers, your ills, and what's new
You sure couldn’t have them and live like I do
You think I have problems, but you do instead
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
I live with two people, I like both of them
He likes both of me and I like both of him
They’re my alter-egos and to them I’m wed
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
There’s no civil status in my neighborhood
And its that kind of thinking, that keeps it so good
I don’t take the lead but I like to be led
‘Cause I’m happy I live in a split-level head
Lenovo, the Chinese Company that owns IBM's PC line has a set of really weird videos...
http://www.lenovovision.com/lv2/mediaplayer.php?fid=water_tank&locale=en-ca
This is one weird video, there are more of them.
They want to be the "Chrysler" of PC's - Best Engineered!
What a losing proposition, ah, the tech marketers of today, making the same mistakes as their forebears, since, history repeats itself, and old men like me are let go from the ivory towers of marketing...
I warned the PC guys they were on the wrong path in 1993, in St. Louis, at an IBM program for field sales reps and techies...
This is one weird video, there are more of them.
They want to be the "Chrysler" of PC's - Best Engineered!
What a losing proposition, ah, the tech marketers of today, making the same mistakes as their forebears, since, history repeats itself, and old men like me are let go from the ivory towers of marketing...
I warned the PC guys they were on the wrong path in 1993, in St. Louis, at an IBM program for field sales reps and techies...
Friday, August 31, 2007
My First Car
My very first car was a 1961 Buick Invicta. My father and I drove up north of Minneapolis somewhere and bought it from some old geezer (summer of 1971) for $125.
It was long and wide. Two full bench seats front and rear, easily sat 6. It was like a living room on wheels, very loose steering, it didn't really drive as much as it floated down the road.
I drove it 2 miles to work and back every day. Mom made me promise I wouldn't drive it anywhere else, since it was a real rust bucket. Body was in PERFECT condition however, it was totally rusty underneath and it wasn't in good shape.
So, of course, Schultz, PugEye, Walleye, Airebabes, and Rich and I went out in my Buick one day. We had a case of bud long necks in the back and were driving and drinking when, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, the universal joint gave way...the transmission literally fell out of the car...the rear drive shaft got stuck in the road, lifting the back of the car about 3 feet in the air. The boys in back weren't too pleased as they compressed their vertebrae when their heads banged the roof and then again when the their butts smashed back down on the seats.
WallEye crept out of the car, and, bent over like an 95 year old arthritis patient he started swearing at me. What the fuck, how was it my fault? I had told these guys I wasn't supposed to drive in the first place.
Anyway, we stood outside the car, and drank the beers as fast as we could, since we figured cops would come by and we were all underage. Got the thing towed back to my place, and it was parked the wrong direction for about 2 weeks.
About that time, my dad had really bad kidney stones, so my having taken the car out on a road trip wasn't a problem...for a while. Then the cops put a ticket on my car since it was facing the wrong way.
Mom called the police and they took away the ticket after she used Dad's kidneys as an excuse.
She made me sell the car, it was an emotional thing. I had only owned it about 6 weeks. Anyway, a junk car dealer came by the house and gave me 25 bucks for it...
It was long and wide. Two full bench seats front and rear, easily sat 6. It was like a living room on wheels, very loose steering, it didn't really drive as much as it floated down the road.
I drove it 2 miles to work and back every day. Mom made me promise I wouldn't drive it anywhere else, since it was a real rust bucket. Body was in PERFECT condition however, it was totally rusty underneath and it wasn't in good shape.
So, of course, Schultz, PugEye, Walleye, Airebabes, and Rich and I went out in my Buick one day. We had a case of bud long necks in the back and were driving and drinking when, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, the universal joint gave way...the transmission literally fell out of the car...the rear drive shaft got stuck in the road, lifting the back of the car about 3 feet in the air. The boys in back weren't too pleased as they compressed their vertebrae when their heads banged the roof and then again when the their butts smashed back down on the seats.
WallEye crept out of the car, and, bent over like an 95 year old arthritis patient he started swearing at me. What the fuck, how was it my fault? I had told these guys I wasn't supposed to drive in the first place.
Anyway, we stood outside the car, and drank the beers as fast as we could, since we figured cops would come by and we were all underage. Got the thing towed back to my place, and it was parked the wrong direction for about 2 weeks.
About that time, my dad had really bad kidney stones, so my having taken the car out on a road trip wasn't a problem...for a while. Then the cops put a ticket on my car since it was facing the wrong way.
Mom called the police and they took away the ticket after she used Dad's kidneys as an excuse.
She made me sell the car, it was an emotional thing. I had only owned it about 6 weeks. Anyway, a junk car dealer came by the house and gave me 25 bucks for it...
Thursday, August 30, 2007
This was a comment on an Alternet article concerning nutrition and depression and violence...and how fishoil seems to help.
The Completely Nutrition less Diet!
Posted by: williameon on Aug 28, 2007 6:31 AM
In this fake society.
Where we let a Cor‘pirates’ ruin everything
They have ruined our diet also.
For Greed!
There is no accountability
They know that poor diet, pollutants and stress causes disease.
What is, is.
That’s the way
That’s the way
On Ha!
They like it.
Sick people make them happy and rich.
Raking in huge profits for theAMAPharmaceuticalsAndFaux Food Companies.
It’s so easy to make and completely nutrition less also!
The Nutrition less diet!
Boxes filled with fullers and poison,
Never meant to be eaten by man!
Read the label!
In this situation less is more.
The shorter the list of ingredients
The better it is!
In fact fresh fruits, vegetables and foods without any labels are best of all!
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Flax Seed Oil.
Brown rice.
Stone Ground Flour
Whole Grains
Rolled oats.
Dried fruits and nuts.
These are all Manna.
Food of the Gods!
The Corpirates want sick ignorant peons.
To pillage and plunder.
Where’s the Information?
Where’s the BEEF?
That:Hydrogenated oils
High Fructose Corn syrup
And
Overly refined White flour
Are
POISON.
Clogging the minds,
bodies and arteries of our friends.
Nobody seems to know why our country
Is being over run with FAT people.
Child hood diabetes is epidemic!
Kindergartens are Fat farms!
People are literally eating themselves to death
Looking for the Nutrients,
For a healthy life.
Inside every fat person is a skinny person,
Starving to death.
Eating garbage!
---------------------------------------------
Wow, what else can one say...
www.vhemt.org
Sure, there are corpirates, but I don't put much "direction" to their actions. It is inevitable, it is greed, we are all driven by our tastes (sugar, fat, alcohol, drugs, whatever), and the marketing crowd take advantage of our weaknesses, while their manufacturing brethern serve us their muck...to make a buck not to keep our class powerlessness from being evident.
Posted by: williameon on Aug 28, 2007 6:31 AM
In this fake society.
Where we let a Cor‘pirates’ ruin everything
They have ruined our diet also.
For Greed!
There is no accountability
They know that poor diet, pollutants and stress causes disease.
What is, is.
That’s the way
That’s the way
On Ha!
They like it.
Sick people make them happy and rich.
Raking in huge profits for theAMAPharmaceuticalsAndFaux Food Companies.
It’s so easy to make and completely nutrition less also!
The Nutrition less diet!
Boxes filled with fullers and poison,
Never meant to be eaten by man!
Read the label!
In this situation less is more.
The shorter the list of ingredients
The better it is!
In fact fresh fruits, vegetables and foods without any labels are best of all!
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Flax Seed Oil.
Brown rice.
Stone Ground Flour
Whole Grains
Rolled oats.
Dried fruits and nuts.
These are all Manna.
Food of the Gods!
The Corpirates want sick ignorant peons.
To pillage and plunder.
Where’s the Information?
Where’s the BEEF?
That:Hydrogenated oils
High Fructose Corn syrup
And
Overly refined White flour
Are
POISON.
Clogging the minds,
bodies and arteries of our friends.
Nobody seems to know why our country
Is being over run with FAT people.
Child hood diabetes is epidemic!
Kindergartens are Fat farms!
People are literally eating themselves to death
Looking for the Nutrients,
For a healthy life.
Inside every fat person is a skinny person,
Starving to death.
Eating garbage!
---------------------------------------------
Wow, what else can one say...
www.vhemt.org
Sure, there are corpirates, but I don't put much "direction" to their actions. It is inevitable, it is greed, we are all driven by our tastes (sugar, fat, alcohol, drugs, whatever), and the marketing crowd take advantage of our weaknesses, while their manufacturing brethern serve us their muck...to make a buck not to keep our class powerlessness from being evident.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Football or Frisbee - Competition, Cooperation, and Management Style!
Football or Frisbee - Competition, Cooperation and Management Exercises
By Frish 2007 (and prior, as this was published in SURVIVE! Magazine several years ago, the BC/DRM group, not the Scientologists!)
Competition is a healthy thing. In nature, competition is the driving force behind continued existence. In everyday life it keeps things interesting. It provides healthy stress that keeps people interested in getting up in the morning to strive in the workplace. For organizations, competition also keeps things lively.
American football is one game that relies on competition at its core. It is actually an analogy for war. Two “platoons” battle over territory. There is an offense and a defense. Football’s jargon comes straight from the military - linebackers “blitz,” the game was won “in the trenches,” they threw “the bomb” etc. It’s purely an “Us” versus “Them” philosophy.
Frisbee is a game of catch, where players succeed through cooperation. Players must respond to the wind direction and speed, obstacles, the other players’ skill in catching and running, the location of the sun and other distractions. One measure of success is consecutive number of catches without the Frisbee touching the ground. To achieve success requires both good throwing and good catching with players being totally aware of the environmental conditions. Furthermore, while players may “compete” by displaying graceful skill in their catches and throws, if the goal is consecutive catches then cooperation between players is crucial.
Much management practice from the 1950's through the 1980's was based on a competitive, football type of philosophy. It was Our “smoke filled rooms” vs. Theirs. Competitors were considered threats to be crushed. Bigger was considered better. There was a bunker mentality, with “Not Invented Here” a good enough reason to decline the use of a new technique. Companies tried to be all things to all customers. Vertical integration, in development, production, marketing and service, was the norm, indeed the standard by which organizations were judged.
Government, especially the Federal government, also had this warlike management philosophy. The “War on Drugs”, the “War on Poverty”, not to mention the “Cold War”, are dramatic indications that “football” was being played. There was an attitude within government that nothing was out of reach (the moon, for example) given enough resource and the proper attitude.
Beginning in the early 80's, and accelerating since then, this author maintains that football has given way to Frisbee as management philosophy. Today organizations are downsizing and outsourcing personnel while re-engineering processes to take advantage of synergy within and outside an organization. Competitors still exist, but they also frequently act as a distributor or supplier as well. Team building, matrix management, and out-sourcing are recognition that no one organization can be all things to all customers (or citizens, in the case of government) and that cooperation within the organization is also a requirement for success.
Emergency management may be unique among management disciplines in the degree of dependence it has on others to get the job accomplished. The emergency management plan must respond, cooperatively, to threats in the environment. One could say there are no competitors in an emergency. Banks share check sorting services, cities have mutual aid pacts, brewers move their production to another’s facility etc.
Emergency managers most readily recognize the “Frisbee” management style. When disaster strikes they must “play Frisbee” rather than football. No agency can be self-sufficient when it comes to disaster recovery. Even the Incident Command System, the management system of choice for fire departments, is more Frisbee than football, as new participants arrive they (optimally) are inserted into the most appropriate part of the operation. The emergency services required by customers (or the public) are simply too vast for any single organization to supply.
Something else distinguishes emergency plans (safety, environmental, security, info-systems recovery, military, medical and many others) from other, everyday management plans. That is the concept of a management plan exercise. These plans must be exercised; otherwise there is no way to know they will work when they are (infrequently) called upon. There are lots of regulatory reasons to practice these plans through exercising, but one cannot assure an emergency plan’s operational readiness without exercising.
Management exercises can take several forms, from simply talking about what could happen and the appropriate response, to actually simulating the “outside” world and seeing how the management team reacts. Management exercises occur at all levels in an organization: from the shop floor (safety) to the computer room; for building evacuations; weather related threats (to transportation plans, for example); process control (chemical spill response practice); to the board room (product allegedly causes cancer in rats, what response to the media?).
Since emergency management plans are special cases of ordinary management plans whatever works to improve them should work for ordinary management plans as well! It has been discovered that the process whereby “emergency” exercises are produced can be used with equal success to build exercises for ANY MANAGEMENT PLAN!
Since they get used all the time, what “everyday” management plans could benefit from exercising? Exercises are used to train employees in a plan’s procedures. Therefore, new employees may benefit from exercising. Exercises can reveal gaps in personnel and equipment resources. As more management plans rely on outside parties for their fulfillment (i.e. outsourcing, off-shore manufacturing etc.) the more these outside relationships must be tested to ensure hi-quality performance is achieved. Also, the entire realm of Total Quality Management demands that “ordinary” plans get formally tested (ISO 9000, ISO 14000). Exercises also point out a plan’s deficiencies and therefore have been characterized simply as “good business practice!”
Cliffside Software has spent two years researching, designing and developing a product that automates management exercise development tasks. We recognized many needs expressed by “emergency” exercise planners in a variety of public and private organizations and provide libraries of discipline specific knowledge to meet those needs. However, as a result of meeting the needs of emergency management, a general management plan testing tool has been achieved! plan AHEAD - All Hazard Exercise Administration and Development is the product’s name, and there is no other product like it in the world!
Cliffside kept the Frisbee analogy in mind and so provided features that allow sharing of exercise development tasks. Instead of a Frisbee, plan AHEAD lets exercise developers “throw” a diskette, (an electronic file), to others who will “catch” this file and use it for a design or evaluation task, returning the “Frisbee” to the “thrower.” Various organizations in both the private and public sectors can share exercise components, and exercise development workload, without all of them having to own the product! New and existing exercise design team members can work together efficiently and easily using this Frisbee-like approach.
Already in use in Federal, state, and local government agencies, and in industries such as banking, petrochemical, telecommunications, insurance, securities, health care, manufacturing and more, plan AHEAD is quickly becoming the de-facto exercise development standard. Exercises developed with plan AHEAD are being used to evaluate chemical spill plans, rental security officer performance, end-user software application acceptance tests, bomb threat/building evacuation, computer back-up and recovery scenarios, utility outage and recovery, business continuity, crisis management and much more.
If your organization ought to be playing more Frisbee than football, then it is also ready to perform more and better management exercises. Get ready for the toss, the wind’s just right!
Author Bio:
Michael W. Frishberg, President, Cliffside Software, Inc. Michael’s interest in Frisbee is longstanding, but his interest in emergency management plan exercises is purely selfish. He firmly believes better exercises will lead to better trained responders, so he’ll be safer during and after “The Big One!” Contact Cliffside at 1-(888)-PLAN-IT-X or via email:
By Frish 2007 (and prior, as this was published in SURVIVE! Magazine several years ago, the BC/DRM group, not the Scientologists!)
Competition is a healthy thing. In nature, competition is the driving force behind continued existence. In everyday life it keeps things interesting. It provides healthy stress that keeps people interested in getting up in the morning to strive in the workplace. For organizations, competition also keeps things lively.
American football is one game that relies on competition at its core. It is actually an analogy for war. Two “platoons” battle over territory. There is an offense and a defense. Football’s jargon comes straight from the military - linebackers “blitz,” the game was won “in the trenches,” they threw “the bomb” etc. It’s purely an “Us” versus “Them” philosophy.
Frisbee is a game of catch, where players succeed through cooperation. Players must respond to the wind direction and speed, obstacles, the other players’ skill in catching and running, the location of the sun and other distractions. One measure of success is consecutive number of catches without the Frisbee touching the ground. To achieve success requires both good throwing and good catching with players being totally aware of the environmental conditions. Furthermore, while players may “compete” by displaying graceful skill in their catches and throws, if the goal is consecutive catches then cooperation between players is crucial.
Much management practice from the 1950's through the 1980's was based on a competitive, football type of philosophy. It was Our “smoke filled rooms” vs. Theirs. Competitors were considered threats to be crushed. Bigger was considered better. There was a bunker mentality, with “Not Invented Here” a good enough reason to decline the use of a new technique. Companies tried to be all things to all customers. Vertical integration, in development, production, marketing and service, was the norm, indeed the standard by which organizations were judged.
Government, especially the Federal government, also had this warlike management philosophy. The “War on Drugs”, the “War on Poverty”, not to mention the “Cold War”, are dramatic indications that “football” was being played. There was an attitude within government that nothing was out of reach (the moon, for example) given enough resource and the proper attitude.
Beginning in the early 80's, and accelerating since then, this author maintains that football has given way to Frisbee as management philosophy. Today organizations are downsizing and outsourcing personnel while re-engineering processes to take advantage of synergy within and outside an organization. Competitors still exist, but they also frequently act as a distributor or supplier as well. Team building, matrix management, and out-sourcing are recognition that no one organization can be all things to all customers (or citizens, in the case of government) and that cooperation within the organization is also a requirement for success.
Emergency management may be unique among management disciplines in the degree of dependence it has on others to get the job accomplished. The emergency management plan must respond, cooperatively, to threats in the environment. One could say there are no competitors in an emergency. Banks share check sorting services, cities have mutual aid pacts, brewers move their production to another’s facility etc.
Emergency managers most readily recognize the “Frisbee” management style. When disaster strikes they must “play Frisbee” rather than football. No agency can be self-sufficient when it comes to disaster recovery. Even the Incident Command System, the management system of choice for fire departments, is more Frisbee than football, as new participants arrive they (optimally) are inserted into the most appropriate part of the operation. The emergency services required by customers (or the public) are simply too vast for any single organization to supply.
Something else distinguishes emergency plans (safety, environmental, security, info-systems recovery, military, medical and many others) from other, everyday management plans. That is the concept of a management plan exercise. These plans must be exercised; otherwise there is no way to know they will work when they are (infrequently) called upon. There are lots of regulatory reasons to practice these plans through exercising, but one cannot assure an emergency plan’s operational readiness without exercising.
Management exercises can take several forms, from simply talking about what could happen and the appropriate response, to actually simulating the “outside” world and seeing how the management team reacts. Management exercises occur at all levels in an organization: from the shop floor (safety) to the computer room; for building evacuations; weather related threats (to transportation plans, for example); process control (chemical spill response practice); to the board room (product allegedly causes cancer in rats, what response to the media?).
Since emergency management plans are special cases of ordinary management plans whatever works to improve them should work for ordinary management plans as well! It has been discovered that the process whereby “emergency” exercises are produced can be used with equal success to build exercises for ANY MANAGEMENT PLAN!
Since they get used all the time, what “everyday” management plans could benefit from exercising? Exercises are used to train employees in a plan’s procedures. Therefore, new employees may benefit from exercising. Exercises can reveal gaps in personnel and equipment resources. As more management plans rely on outside parties for their fulfillment (i.e. outsourcing, off-shore manufacturing etc.) the more these outside relationships must be tested to ensure hi-quality performance is achieved. Also, the entire realm of Total Quality Management demands that “ordinary” plans get formally tested (ISO 9000, ISO 14000). Exercises also point out a plan’s deficiencies and therefore have been characterized simply as “good business practice!”
Cliffside Software has spent two years researching, designing and developing a product that automates management exercise development tasks. We recognized many needs expressed by “emergency” exercise planners in a variety of public and private organizations and provide libraries of discipline specific knowledge to meet those needs. However, as a result of meeting the needs of emergency management, a general management plan testing tool has been achieved! plan AHEAD - All Hazard Exercise Administration and Development is the product’s name, and there is no other product like it in the world!
Cliffside kept the Frisbee analogy in mind and so provided features that allow sharing of exercise development tasks. Instead of a Frisbee, plan AHEAD lets exercise developers “throw” a diskette, (an electronic file), to others who will “catch” this file and use it for a design or evaluation task, returning the “Frisbee” to the “thrower.” Various organizations in both the private and public sectors can share exercise components, and exercise development workload, without all of them having to own the product! New and existing exercise design team members can work together efficiently and easily using this Frisbee-like approach.
Already in use in Federal, state, and local government agencies, and in industries such as banking, petrochemical, telecommunications, insurance, securities, health care, manufacturing and more, plan AHEAD is quickly becoming the de-facto exercise development standard. Exercises developed with plan AHEAD are being used to evaluate chemical spill plans, rental security officer performance, end-user software application acceptance tests, bomb threat/building evacuation, computer back-up and recovery scenarios, utility outage and recovery, business continuity, crisis management and much more.
If your organization ought to be playing more Frisbee than football, then it is also ready to perform more and better management exercises. Get ready for the toss, the wind’s just right!
Author Bio:
Michael W. Frishberg, President, Cliffside Software, Inc. Michael’s interest in Frisbee is longstanding, but his interest in emergency management plan exercises is purely selfish. He firmly believes better exercises will lead to better trained responders, so he’ll be safer during and after “The Big One!” Contact Cliffside at 1-(888)-PLAN-IT-X or via email:
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Evangelism and The Military - "We are confronting the Christian Taliban, period!"
The U.S. Military has been a place where necessity overcame societal norms. Blacks served, then civil rights happened...currently gays are being examined as the next group to have their pariah status lifted, both recognizing the changes in society, and preceeding them to some degree.
This article details a very very disturbing trend, an evangelistic bent within the U.S. Military.
When a force as unstoppable as the US Military is even potenitally controlled or even influenced by a philosophy that sees the imminent end of the world as a real possibility that is a problem...
Fringe Evangelicals Distort US Military Policy
By Thomas D. Williams and JP Briggs II, Ph.D. t r u t h o u t Special Report
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082407R.shtml
"He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;"
- Micah, Chapter 4, The Bible
"And make not Allah because of your swearing (by Him) an obstacle to your doing good and guarding (against evil) and making peace between men, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing."
- The Koran
For decades, especially since the end of the Vietnam War, the US military has been wrestling with aggressive sects of doomsday Christians demanding control and conversions of those of other faiths as well as nonbelievers within the armed forces.
Even beyond this high-pressure hard sell, those Judgment Day, apocalyptic Christian leaders, with followings estimated at 40 million parishioners, have urged public officials on all levels to wage war with Israel's enemies. Sometimes they and others even send their followers into dangerous war zones to preach their faith and risk lives. In at least one case, the Pentagon is supporting a Christian evangelistic group's efforts to promote itself inside the Muslim-dominated Iraq war zone.
The end-time evangelists' aggressive domestic and foreign relations stances have frequently caught the ears of President George W. Bush and those within his administration, as well as a large cadre of influential congressmen.
"The rise of evangelicalism in today's armed forces can trace its roots to the Viet Nam War," writes US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Millonig. "Public support for the war declined steadily as the years wore on, but evangelical Christians remained generally supportive of the war throughout. Over the course of the war, they found themselves progressively more aligned with the military - a military which increasingly found itself isolated from the general population." Millonig's March 2006 US Army War College piece is titled: "The Impact of Religious and Political Affiliation on Strategic Military Decisions and Policy Recommendations."
Initially willing to be interviewed, Millonig ultimately refused to discuss his article. His refusal came after he spoke with an Air Force superior who said it is inappropriate for Millonig to comment about anything unrelated to his current job, said a US Army War College spokeswoman, Carol Kerr.
"After the Vietnam War, there was disenchantment with military service by the mainline religions, because the war began to look like an unjust war," said retired US Army Chaplain Herman Keizer Jr. "The military chaplains were not talking about that, and the churches thought they should," explained Keizer, chairman of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces. Then, he explained, with the advent of the all-volunteer Army, evangelical military chaplains began to increase, because their faith encouraged young people into the ministry and a vocation like military service to actively proclaim their beliefs to others.
Keizer, however, emphasized that more moderate evangelicals, as represented by the powerful National Evangelical Association, have been an influential voice for wartime justice for enemy prisoners. And, to promote peace, in late July the organization agreed to hold discussions in the nation's capital with Muslim leaders, with 14 evangelical preachers on one side and 12 US-based Arab diplomats on the other, The Washington Post reported. More than a year earlier, the organization called for religious freedom within the military.
On the other hand, the promotion of powerful Christian religious fundamentalist voices and religious conversions within the Armed Forces, especially encouraged and engineered by end-time evangelical Christians, has become a focus of concern among many other religious leaders. That concern heightened particularly after 9/11, when Islamic terrorists attacked New York City's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Less than a month later, on October 7, 2001, President George W. Bush launched the so-called war on terror with attacks on al-Qaeda camps and Taliban installations in Afghanistan. And, as the heated conflict in Afghanistan temporarily subsided, the Bush administration extended the "terror war" by invading Iraq on March 20, 2003.
Since 9/11, US officials, religious leaders, the press and the public have focused a continuous stream of criticism at religious Muslim fundamentalists. But, what has been largely glossed over by some in the public, media and government are the unrelenting cries for aggressive US military attacks by end-time US evangelicals such as Pastor John Hagee, not only against Islamic extremists, but also against Iran, Syria and the Palestinians threatening Israel.
This pressure for warlike behavior comes from two types of end-time Christians. The "dispensationalists" insist that true believers will be "raptured" into heaven just before a catastrophic war between "left behind" believers and the forces of the Antichrist. "Dominionist" end-timers presuppose that the United States, as a Christian nation, will act as a special representative of God in the final battles. The Dominionists forge on toward the construction, or "reconstruction," of an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-time plan. The two brands cross over and blend. Collectively, they call themselves Christian Zionists to affirm their support of Israel's control over the holy lands.
As war cries from Islamic terrorists and end-time Christians create a danger for ever-expanding religious battles in the Middle East, a small cadre of Christian and Muslim leaders has become alarmed.
"The most basic Christian commitment ... is that we say we believe in the Lordship of Jesus. But, if we claim that, how can a Muslim or Jew trust us, if we say Jesus is the Lord of all Lords?" asked Professor Lee Camp, a Lipscomb University theologian, last November at an interfaith gathering in Nashville, Tenn. "We need to forsake the Christendom model," Camp said. In its place, he explained, should be an international ideal, allowing leaders and members of all faiths to live in peace and communicate.
In February, Louis Farrakhan, 73, leader of The Nation of Islam, insisted the world was at war because followers of contrasting faiths did not understand one another. Jesus Christ and Muhammad would embrace with love if they were on the stage behind him today, he exclaimed. "Our lips are full of praise, but our hearts are far removed from the prophets we all claim," Al Jazeera quoted Farrakhan as saying.
Proselytizing by end-time Christians and others within the military has become a crucial issue within the armed forces, especially during the past half decade. And, US military leadership, influenced by war-encouraging, right-wing evangelists, endangers complex Middle East diplomacy efforts.
"To proselytize in this (military) environment is not allowed except as the individual asks (for it), said retired US Navy Chaplain Victor Smith, a Christian Scientist. "For example, the use of the name of Jesus in public prayers with a mixed congregation such as at a command or official function is prohibited," he said. "Most of the chaplains who pray, and rightly so, pray on behalf of the congregation, as well as with the congregation," said Smith. "Every single person in the military should be protected in every way, physically, sexually and spiritually, while they are serving their country. They already put their lives on the line in warfare. The damage from forcing religion on the unwilling is very deep emotionally. Well, have you ever talked to a rape victim? It's not quite that physical, but it sure is spiritually."
Smith pointed out, "There is a small subset of these faith groups that foster some more extreme views to others and sometimes punish those who don't follow their faith stances." He added, "They include some conservative wings of Baptists and others. These individuals, both lay and apparently some chaplains, say: 'You are not a good soldier unless you believe in my preachings and my faith. '"
While Smith confined religious aggressors to that "small subset," others watching closely for military religious territorial scuffles feel the right-wing evangelical clique is larger and more powerful.
Small or large, officials of the Department of Defense, at least in one telltale instance, are promoting an aggressive Christian group that promises to bring its views in a "crusade" to Iraq. Operation Straight Up "is working to help military children and families become stronger through faith-based entertainment," wrote The American Forces Press Service in April. The story appeared on the America Supports You Internet site sponsored by the Pentagon. It was initially reported in an outside publication by The Nation.
Operation Straight Up is evangelical. Its leaders are former boxer and kick boxer Jonathan Spinks and Hollywood actor Stephen Baldwin.
Here's what Spinks's website said about its potential operations in Iraq: "On the most dangerous soil in our world, we're taking a team of performers, professional athletes, and evangelists on a mission that will be both entertaining, as well as lend tremendous solitude to our men and women stationed in this war-torn country of Iraq. We are most excited about this crusade and yes we are willing to go to the front lines with a very encouraging word straight from God, to our troops. We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war-torn region. We'll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq." The link, describing these "crusade" plans, became difficult to fetch after emails questioning the "crusade" were sent to its advertised contact: admin@jspinks.org and to the Defense Department. The Spinks site, which does not have a telephone contact number, did not answer repeated emails with queries for this article.
Asked if the Pentagon is lending support or security for these crusading efforts, a Defense Department health records public affairs spokesman, who declined to be identified, said: "There are none. OSU has stated its desire to go and we have suggested ways in which they can arrange that for themselves." Asked whether the Defense Department's announced public support for the Christian evangelistic Operation Straight Up in the Defense Department site, in light of its announced "crusade" inside Iraq, is in violation of federal separation of church and state guidelines, he said: "The Department of Defense is committed to upholding the Constitution of the United States. My oath of office swears me to uphold it." Department rules prevent its officials from sanctioning personal participation with a non-governmental organization. They forbid granting a selective benefit or preferential treatment to any organization. Its officials are constrained by federal law from promoting any specific religious group.
The spokesman also explained the department's support for Operation Straight up by saying: "America Supports You connects Americans supportive of our troops with organizations that are devoted to helping the troops and their families, while also providing a one-stop location on the Internet at www.AmericaSupportsYou.mil where our military and their families can find hundreds of support organizations eager to help our heroes when they need it most. More than 250 home front groups, representing communities from coast to coast, have joined the America Supports You team to support the troops in many ways, including writing letters and emails, sending care packages and assisting military families or helping the wounded when they return home."
However, after an ABC segment on Operation Straight Up, the Defense Department prevented the sending of a controversial video game promoted by the evangelical group to service members in Iraq. The game depicts a film about the battle of Armageddon, in which believers of Jesus Christ fight the Antichrist.
Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an Air Force Academy graduate and former assistant general counsel for former President Ronald Reagan, said his organization intends to sue the Defense Department over its support of Operation Straight Up. He is vociferous about what he considers such saturated fundamentalist domination within the military.
"What we are seeing is an imperious, fascistic contagion of unconstitutional religious triumphalism that represents a national security threat internally to this country," he said.
"This is every bit as significant in magnitude as that presented externally by the now resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida. Let's call a spade a spade: We are confronting the Christian Taliban, period!"
Weinstein has worked intensively through his foundation to battle the influential forces of Christian end-timers and other religious zealots. His foundation recently announced it is filing a federal lawsuit challenging alleged US military participation in a three-day evangelical Christian gathering in Georgia. It quotes the organizers, Task Force Patriot USA's Internet web site as saying it exists "for the purpose of sharing the fullness of life in Jesus Christ with all US military, military veterans and families," and exclaiming that "Christ is our Commander-in-Chief."
Jim Freeman, the Task Force's founder, said Weinstein "is driving a 'wedge' within the military ranks that will ultimately weaken the strength of our military forces. If Task Force Patriot set out to do the same things he is doing, he would scream violently and file more complaints. Our organization has done nothing of a clandestine nature. Our web site has been up for nearly nine years, clearly stating our position as a Christian Veteran To Veteran Outreach. My question is simply this: Does Mikey Weinstein have enough troops that support his exemption of Christians in the US military to defend America against her enemies? I think not. My organization is supported by a very large majority of America's 27 million-plus US military veterans, along with their families."
Late last year, Weinstein filed a complaint with the Defense Department's Inspector General, demanding an investigation of the Christian Embassy, whose Internet video showed "senior military officers, dressed in uniform and in their Pentagon offices, openly discussing their religious commitment and their strategy to bring religion into the military." Last month, the Inspector General concluded some high-ranking officers indeed violated military regulations by participating in the Christian promotional video in uniform and within the Pentagon's offices.
The IG recommended that "the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Army consider appropriate corrective action with respect to the military officers concerned; the administrative assistant to the Secretary of the Army and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency initiate inquiries into the manner; and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs review procedures to ensure that film crews operating within the Pentagon are appropriately escorted and monitored."
Other individual outrageous violations of the principles of the separation of church and state within the government, says Weinstein's foundation, include: "blatant displays of religious symbolism on military garb by the 523rd Fighter Squadron; placement of a biblical quotation above the door of the Air and Space Basic Course classroom at Maxwell Air Force Base; illegal use of official military email accounts to send emails containing religious rhetoric, and attempts by missionary organizations such as Force Ministries and the Officers' Christian Fellowship to create 'Christian soldiers' by training active-duty military personnel to evangelize their subordinates and peers."
Asked how strictly the Pentagon controls promotion of religious fundamentalism in the armed forces, Jonathan Withington, a Defense Department spokesman, said: "A basic principle of our nation is free exercise of religion. The Department of Defense places a high value on the rights of members of the armed forces to observe the tenets of their respective religions. It is DOD policy that requests for accommodation of religious practices should be approved by commanders when accommodation will not have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, standards, or discipline."
The concerns of some within the military are that not only do fundamentalist Christian public pronouncements seep into top-ranking military officials, but their beliefs can infect the decision-making of those officials. For instance: evangelical Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin made headlines in 2003 when he said he believed America was engaged in a holy war as a "Christian nation" battling Satan. Adversaries can be defeated, he said, "Only if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
Despite his highly publicized rhetoric, Boykin remains Bush's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Last February, Army Gen. Peter Pace joined with President Bush and the Fellowship Foundation, "a low-profile group that promotes Christian evangelism," to conduct a reading at the Washington, DC prayer breakfast.
With Christian evangelism at this level of the government, some worry about subconscious or even conscious decision making by these leaders at a time when the United States is "at war with Islamic extremists."
"If the armed forces' culture is allowed to stifle creativity and diversity of thought, then the strategic leader's difficult and often time-sensitive decision process may find itself with fewer courses of action from which to choose," wrote Colonel Millonig in discussing public religious proselytizing by military leadership. "Fewer choices are more easily influenced by a select group of individuals and can lead to disastrous consequences in the short term. Left unchecked, the credibility of the military's decision making and policy advice to senior civilians could steadily erode over the long term."
Millonig said his purpose in writing the academic paper "is not to analyze the validity of any individual beliefs, but to show how the rise of conservative Christian and Republican values have affected the military's decision making and policy recommendations. Whether right, wrong or indifferent - the conservative Christian voice has impacted our military. America's strategic thinkers, both military and civilian, must be aware of this trend and its potential implications on policy formulation. The role of intuition on subconscious biases and perceptions can dramatically impact the decision process."
On the other hand, Chaplain Keizer expressed full faith in the military leadership to weed out religious bias in crucial decision making and to prosecute those who force their faith on others.
"In the military, I am not sure the evangelicals pose any more of a danger than any other religion on decision making. It is the political neocons who are pushing the US to become more supportive of Israel. The military leadership appears more pragmatic, while the politicians are more activist than reflective."
He cited what he considered crucial examples of this contrast. In one instance, he said, it was Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, then chief of staff, who went against the grain of former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in suggesting troop strengths should be much higher in the Iraq war than the Bush administration did. He was heavily criticized by the Bush administration and retired. And, during the scandals over US military treatment of Iraqi prisoners, Keizer said, it was those within the military leadership, not US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who insisted prisoners should be treated humanely under the international Geneva Convention. In one instance, a dozen retired generals wrote the US Senate Judicial Committee to oppose torture tactics by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military.
Nevertheless, Colonel Millonig warns that the dangers of religious influences within the military are substantial. "America's military leaders must ensure preconceived notions based on religious or political ideology do not adversely shape the decision-making process, nor can it allow intuition based on 'automated expertise' to override an objective evaluation of relevant possibilities," he wrote. "Failure to do so can lead to an erosion of trust with civilian leadership and degrade national policy decisions."
"One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal," said Bill Moyers, a journalist-commentator for the Public Broadcasting Service in a speech to Harvard Medical School in December 2004. "It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts." Moyers is an ordained Baptist minister.
*************
JP Briggs II, Ph.D. is a Distinguished CSU professor at Western Connecticut State University, specializing in creative process. A former reporter for the Hartford Courant and coordinator of the journalism program at WCSU, he is currently senior editor of the intellectual journal "The Connecticut Review." His books include "Fire in the Crucible" (St. Martins Press); "Fractals, the Patterns of Chaos" Simon and Schuster), and "Trickster Tales" (Fine Tooth Press), among others. Email: profbriggs@comcast.net.
Thomas "Dennie" Williams is a former state and federal court reporter, specializing in investigations, for the Hartford Courant. Since the 1970s, he has written extensively about irregularities in the Connecticut Superior Court, Probate Court systems for disciplining both judges and lawyers for misconduct and the failures of the Pentagon and the VA to assist sick veterans returning from war. He can be reached at denniew@optonline.net.
This article details a very very disturbing trend, an evangelistic bent within the U.S. Military.
When a force as unstoppable as the US Military is even potenitally controlled or even influenced by a philosophy that sees the imminent end of the world as a real possibility that is a problem...
Fringe Evangelicals Distort US Military Policy
By Thomas D. Williams and JP Briggs II, Ph.D. t r u t h o u t Special Report
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082407R.shtml
"He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;"
- Micah, Chapter 4, The Bible
"And make not Allah because of your swearing (by Him) an obstacle to your doing good and guarding (against evil) and making peace between men, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing."
- The Koran
For decades, especially since the end of the Vietnam War, the US military has been wrestling with aggressive sects of doomsday Christians demanding control and conversions of those of other faiths as well as nonbelievers within the armed forces.
Even beyond this high-pressure hard sell, those Judgment Day, apocalyptic Christian leaders, with followings estimated at 40 million parishioners, have urged public officials on all levels to wage war with Israel's enemies. Sometimes they and others even send their followers into dangerous war zones to preach their faith and risk lives. In at least one case, the Pentagon is supporting a Christian evangelistic group's efforts to promote itself inside the Muslim-dominated Iraq war zone.
The end-time evangelists' aggressive domestic and foreign relations stances have frequently caught the ears of President George W. Bush and those within his administration, as well as a large cadre of influential congressmen.
"The rise of evangelicalism in today's armed forces can trace its roots to the Viet Nam War," writes US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Millonig. "Public support for the war declined steadily as the years wore on, but evangelical Christians remained generally supportive of the war throughout. Over the course of the war, they found themselves progressively more aligned with the military - a military which increasingly found itself isolated from the general population." Millonig's March 2006 US Army War College piece is titled: "The Impact of Religious and Political Affiliation on Strategic Military Decisions and Policy Recommendations."
Initially willing to be interviewed, Millonig ultimately refused to discuss his article. His refusal came after he spoke with an Air Force superior who said it is inappropriate for Millonig to comment about anything unrelated to his current job, said a US Army War College spokeswoman, Carol Kerr.
"After the Vietnam War, there was disenchantment with military service by the mainline religions, because the war began to look like an unjust war," said retired US Army Chaplain Herman Keizer Jr. "The military chaplains were not talking about that, and the churches thought they should," explained Keizer, chairman of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces. Then, he explained, with the advent of the all-volunteer Army, evangelical military chaplains began to increase, because their faith encouraged young people into the ministry and a vocation like military service to actively proclaim their beliefs to others.
Keizer, however, emphasized that more moderate evangelicals, as represented by the powerful National Evangelical Association, have been an influential voice for wartime justice for enemy prisoners. And, to promote peace, in late July the organization agreed to hold discussions in the nation's capital with Muslim leaders, with 14 evangelical preachers on one side and 12 US-based Arab diplomats on the other, The Washington Post reported. More than a year earlier, the organization called for religious freedom within the military.
On the other hand, the promotion of powerful Christian religious fundamentalist voices and religious conversions within the Armed Forces, especially encouraged and engineered by end-time evangelical Christians, has become a focus of concern among many other religious leaders. That concern heightened particularly after 9/11, when Islamic terrorists attacked New York City's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Less than a month later, on October 7, 2001, President George W. Bush launched the so-called war on terror with attacks on al-Qaeda camps and Taliban installations in Afghanistan. And, as the heated conflict in Afghanistan temporarily subsided, the Bush administration extended the "terror war" by invading Iraq on March 20, 2003.
Since 9/11, US officials, religious leaders, the press and the public have focused a continuous stream of criticism at religious Muslim fundamentalists. But, what has been largely glossed over by some in the public, media and government are the unrelenting cries for aggressive US military attacks by end-time US evangelicals such as Pastor John Hagee, not only against Islamic extremists, but also against Iran, Syria and the Palestinians threatening Israel.
This pressure for warlike behavior comes from two types of end-time Christians. The "dispensationalists" insist that true believers will be "raptured" into heaven just before a catastrophic war between "left behind" believers and the forces of the Antichrist. "Dominionist" end-timers presuppose that the United States, as a Christian nation, will act as a special representative of God in the final battles. The Dominionists forge on toward the construction, or "reconstruction," of an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-time plan. The two brands cross over and blend. Collectively, they call themselves Christian Zionists to affirm their support of Israel's control over the holy lands.
As war cries from Islamic terrorists and end-time Christians create a danger for ever-expanding religious battles in the Middle East, a small cadre of Christian and Muslim leaders has become alarmed.
"The most basic Christian commitment ... is that we say we believe in the Lordship of Jesus. But, if we claim that, how can a Muslim or Jew trust us, if we say Jesus is the Lord of all Lords?" asked Professor Lee Camp, a Lipscomb University theologian, last November at an interfaith gathering in Nashville, Tenn. "We need to forsake the Christendom model," Camp said. In its place, he explained, should be an international ideal, allowing leaders and members of all faiths to live in peace and communicate.
In February, Louis Farrakhan, 73, leader of The Nation of Islam, insisted the world was at war because followers of contrasting faiths did not understand one another. Jesus Christ and Muhammad would embrace with love if they were on the stage behind him today, he exclaimed. "Our lips are full of praise, but our hearts are far removed from the prophets we all claim," Al Jazeera quoted Farrakhan as saying.
Proselytizing by end-time Christians and others within the military has become a crucial issue within the armed forces, especially during the past half decade. And, US military leadership, influenced by war-encouraging, right-wing evangelists, endangers complex Middle East diplomacy efforts.
"To proselytize in this (military) environment is not allowed except as the individual asks (for it), said retired US Navy Chaplain Victor Smith, a Christian Scientist. "For example, the use of the name of Jesus in public prayers with a mixed congregation such as at a command or official function is prohibited," he said. "Most of the chaplains who pray, and rightly so, pray on behalf of the congregation, as well as with the congregation," said Smith. "Every single person in the military should be protected in every way, physically, sexually and spiritually, while they are serving their country. They already put their lives on the line in warfare. The damage from forcing religion on the unwilling is very deep emotionally. Well, have you ever talked to a rape victim? It's not quite that physical, but it sure is spiritually."
Smith pointed out, "There is a small subset of these faith groups that foster some more extreme views to others and sometimes punish those who don't follow their faith stances." He added, "They include some conservative wings of Baptists and others. These individuals, both lay and apparently some chaplains, say: 'You are not a good soldier unless you believe in my preachings and my faith. '"
While Smith confined religious aggressors to that "small subset," others watching closely for military religious territorial scuffles feel the right-wing evangelical clique is larger and more powerful.
Small or large, officials of the Department of Defense, at least in one telltale instance, are promoting an aggressive Christian group that promises to bring its views in a "crusade" to Iraq. Operation Straight Up "is working to help military children and families become stronger through faith-based entertainment," wrote The American Forces Press Service in April. The story appeared on the America Supports You Internet site sponsored by the Pentagon. It was initially reported in an outside publication by The Nation.
Operation Straight Up is evangelical. Its leaders are former boxer and kick boxer Jonathan Spinks and Hollywood actor Stephen Baldwin.
Here's what Spinks's website said about its potential operations in Iraq: "On the most dangerous soil in our world, we're taking a team of performers, professional athletes, and evangelists on a mission that will be both entertaining, as well as lend tremendous solitude to our men and women stationed in this war-torn country of Iraq. We are most excited about this crusade and yes we are willing to go to the front lines with a very encouraging word straight from God, to our troops. We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war-torn region. We'll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq." The link, describing these "crusade" plans, became difficult to fetch after emails questioning the "crusade" were sent to its advertised contact: admin@jspinks.org and to the Defense Department. The Spinks site, which does not have a telephone contact number, did not answer repeated emails with queries for this article.
Asked if the Pentagon is lending support or security for these crusading efforts, a Defense Department health records public affairs spokesman, who declined to be identified, said: "There are none. OSU has stated its desire to go and we have suggested ways in which they can arrange that for themselves." Asked whether the Defense Department's announced public support for the Christian evangelistic Operation Straight Up in the Defense Department site, in light of its announced "crusade" inside Iraq, is in violation of federal separation of church and state guidelines, he said: "The Department of Defense is committed to upholding the Constitution of the United States. My oath of office swears me to uphold it." Department rules prevent its officials from sanctioning personal participation with a non-governmental organization. They forbid granting a selective benefit or preferential treatment to any organization. Its officials are constrained by federal law from promoting any specific religious group.
The spokesman also explained the department's support for Operation Straight up by saying: "America Supports You connects Americans supportive of our troops with organizations that are devoted to helping the troops and their families, while also providing a one-stop location on the Internet at www.AmericaSupportsYou.mil where our military and their families can find hundreds of support organizations eager to help our heroes when they need it most. More than 250 home front groups, representing communities from coast to coast, have joined the America Supports You team to support the troops in many ways, including writing letters and emails, sending care packages and assisting military families or helping the wounded when they return home."
However, after an ABC segment on Operation Straight Up, the Defense Department prevented the sending of a controversial video game promoted by the evangelical group to service members in Iraq. The game depicts a film about the battle of Armageddon, in which believers of Jesus Christ fight the Antichrist.
Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an Air Force Academy graduate and former assistant general counsel for former President Ronald Reagan, said his organization intends to sue the Defense Department over its support of Operation Straight Up. He is vociferous about what he considers such saturated fundamentalist domination within the military.
"What we are seeing is an imperious, fascistic contagion of unconstitutional religious triumphalism that represents a national security threat internally to this country," he said.
"This is every bit as significant in magnitude as that presented externally by the now resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida. Let's call a spade a spade: We are confronting the Christian Taliban, period!"
Weinstein has worked intensively through his foundation to battle the influential forces of Christian end-timers and other religious zealots. His foundation recently announced it is filing a federal lawsuit challenging alleged US military participation in a three-day evangelical Christian gathering in Georgia. It quotes the organizers, Task Force Patriot USA's Internet web site as saying it exists "for the purpose of sharing the fullness of life in Jesus Christ with all US military, military veterans and families," and exclaiming that "Christ is our Commander-in-Chief."
Jim Freeman, the Task Force's founder, said Weinstein "is driving a 'wedge' within the military ranks that will ultimately weaken the strength of our military forces. If Task Force Patriot set out to do the same things he is doing, he would scream violently and file more complaints. Our organization has done nothing of a clandestine nature. Our web site has been up for nearly nine years, clearly stating our position as a Christian Veteran To Veteran Outreach. My question is simply this: Does Mikey Weinstein have enough troops that support his exemption of Christians in the US military to defend America against her enemies? I think not. My organization is supported by a very large majority of America's 27 million-plus US military veterans, along with their families."
Late last year, Weinstein filed a complaint with the Defense Department's Inspector General, demanding an investigation of the Christian Embassy, whose Internet video showed "senior military officers, dressed in uniform and in their Pentagon offices, openly discussing their religious commitment and their strategy to bring religion into the military." Last month, the Inspector General concluded some high-ranking officers indeed violated military regulations by participating in the Christian promotional video in uniform and within the Pentagon's offices.
The IG recommended that "the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Army consider appropriate corrective action with respect to the military officers concerned; the administrative assistant to the Secretary of the Army and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency initiate inquiries into the manner; and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs review procedures to ensure that film crews operating within the Pentagon are appropriately escorted and monitored."
Other individual outrageous violations of the principles of the separation of church and state within the government, says Weinstein's foundation, include: "blatant displays of religious symbolism on military garb by the 523rd Fighter Squadron; placement of a biblical quotation above the door of the Air and Space Basic Course classroom at Maxwell Air Force Base; illegal use of official military email accounts to send emails containing religious rhetoric, and attempts by missionary organizations such as Force Ministries and the Officers' Christian Fellowship to create 'Christian soldiers' by training active-duty military personnel to evangelize their subordinates and peers."
Asked how strictly the Pentagon controls promotion of religious fundamentalism in the armed forces, Jonathan Withington, a Defense Department spokesman, said: "A basic principle of our nation is free exercise of religion. The Department of Defense places a high value on the rights of members of the armed forces to observe the tenets of their respective religions. It is DOD policy that requests for accommodation of religious practices should be approved by commanders when accommodation will not have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, standards, or discipline."
The concerns of some within the military are that not only do fundamentalist Christian public pronouncements seep into top-ranking military officials, but their beliefs can infect the decision-making of those officials. For instance: evangelical Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin made headlines in 2003 when he said he believed America was engaged in a holy war as a "Christian nation" battling Satan. Adversaries can be defeated, he said, "Only if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
Despite his highly publicized rhetoric, Boykin remains Bush's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Last February, Army Gen. Peter Pace joined with President Bush and the Fellowship Foundation, "a low-profile group that promotes Christian evangelism," to conduct a reading at the Washington, DC prayer breakfast.
With Christian evangelism at this level of the government, some worry about subconscious or even conscious decision making by these leaders at a time when the United States is "at war with Islamic extremists."
"If the armed forces' culture is allowed to stifle creativity and diversity of thought, then the strategic leader's difficult and often time-sensitive decision process may find itself with fewer courses of action from which to choose," wrote Colonel Millonig in discussing public religious proselytizing by military leadership. "Fewer choices are more easily influenced by a select group of individuals and can lead to disastrous consequences in the short term. Left unchecked, the credibility of the military's decision making and policy advice to senior civilians could steadily erode over the long term."
Millonig said his purpose in writing the academic paper "is not to analyze the validity of any individual beliefs, but to show how the rise of conservative Christian and Republican values have affected the military's decision making and policy recommendations. Whether right, wrong or indifferent - the conservative Christian voice has impacted our military. America's strategic thinkers, both military and civilian, must be aware of this trend and its potential implications on policy formulation. The role of intuition on subconscious biases and perceptions can dramatically impact the decision process."
On the other hand, Chaplain Keizer expressed full faith in the military leadership to weed out religious bias in crucial decision making and to prosecute those who force their faith on others.
"In the military, I am not sure the evangelicals pose any more of a danger than any other religion on decision making. It is the political neocons who are pushing the US to become more supportive of Israel. The military leadership appears more pragmatic, while the politicians are more activist than reflective."
He cited what he considered crucial examples of this contrast. In one instance, he said, it was Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, then chief of staff, who went against the grain of former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in suggesting troop strengths should be much higher in the Iraq war than the Bush administration did. He was heavily criticized by the Bush administration and retired. And, during the scandals over US military treatment of Iraqi prisoners, Keizer said, it was those within the military leadership, not US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who insisted prisoners should be treated humanely under the international Geneva Convention. In one instance, a dozen retired generals wrote the US Senate Judicial Committee to oppose torture tactics by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military.
Nevertheless, Colonel Millonig warns that the dangers of religious influences within the military are substantial. "America's military leaders must ensure preconceived notions based on religious or political ideology do not adversely shape the decision-making process, nor can it allow intuition based on 'automated expertise' to override an objective evaluation of relevant possibilities," he wrote. "Failure to do so can lead to an erosion of trust with civilian leadership and degrade national policy decisions."
"One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal," said Bill Moyers, a journalist-commentator for the Public Broadcasting Service in a speech to Harvard Medical School in December 2004. "It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts." Moyers is an ordained Baptist minister.
*************
JP Briggs II, Ph.D. is a Distinguished CSU professor at Western Connecticut State University, specializing in creative process. A former reporter for the Hartford Courant and coordinator of the journalism program at WCSU, he is currently senior editor of the intellectual journal "The Connecticut Review." His books include "Fire in the Crucible" (St. Martins Press); "Fractals, the Patterns of Chaos" Simon and Schuster), and "Trickster Tales" (Fine Tooth Press), among others. Email: profbriggs@comcast.net.
Thomas "Dennie" Williams is a former state and federal court reporter, specializing in investigations, for the Hartford Courant. Since the 1970s, he has written extensively about irregularities in the Connecticut Superior Court, Probate Court systems for disciplining both judges and lawyers for misconduct and the failures of the Pentagon and the VA to assist sick veterans returning from war. He can be reached at denniew@optonline.net.
Frishbergism - a word coined in the late 1940's by MORT
Okay, so there is the idea of "frishbergism" and the experience. I experienced it today.
This may not be the best or most easily understood example, perhaps I'll post more examples as they occur, or you could do the same, should a frishbergism happen in your life.
I'll try to describe/define a frishbergism...
A phenomenom identified by my father, Morton C. Frishberg, a frishbergism has happened when you experience (something) that you have never experienced before, and then, over the course of hours, or at most a couple of days, (something) occurs again.
Perhaps it is most familiarly found with words, that is, you notice a word for the first time, and then hear/see/read it several times in the subsequent days...if you have had this experience, it is a frishbergism...
Today I read about a very interesting observation in this week's issue of The Economist...
Evolutionary psychology
Sex, shopping and thinking pink
Aug 23rd 2007From The Economist print edition
The brains of men and women are, indeed, different
WOMEN really are better than men at shopping. And they really do prefer pink. And, surprisingly, it is possible that these facts are connected. The first conclusion was drawn by Joshua New of Yale University and his colleagues. The second was drawn by Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling of Newcastle University in England. The connecting theme is that in the division of labour that forms the primordial bargain of human hunter-gatherer societies, it is the men who do the hunting and the women who do the gathering.
Blackberry-picking aside, urban humanity does little gathering from the wild these days, so Dr New decided to look at what seemed to him to be the nearest equivalent—shopping at a farmers' market. There is a fair amount of evidence that men are better than women at solving certain sorts of spatial problems, such as remembering the locations of topographical landmarks. Many researchers suggest such skills may have been important in the past for man-the-hunter, who needed to be able to find his way round the landscape. If that is the case, then woman-the-gatherer might have been expected to develop complementary skills not shown by males. And that, as he writes in this week's Proceedings of the Royal Society, is what Dr New found.
Dr New used the market to test two hypotheses. The first was that women remember the locations of food resources more accurately than men do. The second was that the more nutritionally valuable a resource is, the more accurately its location will be remembered.
To prove these conjectures he recruited 41 women and 45 men and led each of them individually on a merry dance around the chosen market. In the course of this peregrination, each participant visited six of the 90 food stalls in the market. At each of those stalls, participants were given a piece of food to eat. They were asked their preference for the taste of the food, how often they ate that food in normal life, how attractive they found the stall and how often they had made purchases from that stall in the past. After visiting all six stalls, they were taken to the centre of the market and asked to point toward those stalls, one at a time, using an arrow on a dial. In addition, they were asked to rate their own sense of direction.
In the pink
On average, women were 9° more accurate than men at pointing to each stall—a significant deviation if you have to walk some distance to get to a place. This was not because those women had more experience of visiting the market than the men had. Nor did the women rate themselves as having a better sense of direction—indeed the men rated their own navigating skills more highly.
Dr New suggests that these results show women are better than men at the particular task of relocating sources of food. That contrasts with the idea that men are better at navigation in general. In other words, women's minds are specialised for their ancestral task of gathering the sort of food that cannot run away.
That such food is in a different mental category from the one occupied by general landmarks was suggested by the answer to the second hypothesis. The higher the calorific value of the food sold by a stall, the more accurately Dr New's volunteers were able to point towards it. And that result applied to both sexes, though women still did better than men.
How much the participants liked the food did not have an effect on this accuracy. Indeed none of the secondary attributes of the food or stall in question (taste preference, the frequency of an item in a volunteer's normal diet, the appearance of the stall and how often a volunteer used that stall in daily life) were found to affect pointing accuracy. Only the calorific value of the item in question was relevant.
For their part Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling, who report their study in Current Biology, used coloured patches flashing on a computer screen to find the preferences of their set of volunteers. These volunteers were men and women of British and Chinese origin who were in their early 20s.
Mostly, the two researchers found that people of different sexes and from different continents did not differ in their colour preferences. But there was one exception. Among both the British and the Chinese, women preferred reddish hues such as pink to greenish-blue ones. Among men it was the other way round.
Moreover, though anatomical sex is binary, mental “gender” is more pliable. To see how masculine or feminine the brains of their participants were, Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling used what is known as the Bem Sex Role Inventory, which asks about personality traits more often associated with one sex than the other. This showed that the more feminine a brain was, regardless of the body it inhabited, the more it liked red and pink.
All this suggests a biological, rather than a cultural, explanation for colour preference. And Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling have produced one. They suggest that their result may be connected with the fact that the colour of many fruits is at the red end of the spectrum. An evolved preference for red, pink and allied shades—particularly in contrast with green—could thus bring advantage to those who gather such things. And if they can also remember which tree (or stall) to go and visit next time, then so much the better.
So, that was the first article, then I read, a little later today, about tatoos in Canada, and this doctor who removes tatoos said:
Dr. Rose Genesis believes many of those outlaws and preacher's wives will one day seek out her tattoo removal services.
"The odds are very high that some day you will regret it (getting a tattoo)," said Genesis, a family physician who, eight years ago, opened her full-time cosmetic medicine practice on Eighth Street, Nirvana Laser Hair and Skin Clinic.
She's so confident in a growing need for tattoo removal services that Genesis last year invested more than $100,000 for the latest in tattoo removal technology.
The new machine is a significant improvement over older technology, Genesis said, but it still won't completely remove all tattoos. The laser effectively breaks up tattoo inks of darker shades, but shows less success on shades of red and pink.
"It's still difficult to get all the colours out," she said.
So, you can see the Frishbergism here, the pink and red showed up as significant, in two totally different articles, on the same day!
This may not be the best or most easily understood example, perhaps I'll post more examples as they occur, or you could do the same, should a frishbergism happen in your life.
I'll try to describe/define a frishbergism...
A phenomenom identified by my father, Morton C. Frishberg, a frishbergism has happened when you experience (something) that you have never experienced before, and then, over the course of hours, or at most a couple of days, (something) occurs again.
Perhaps it is most familiarly found with words, that is, you notice a word for the first time, and then hear/see/read it several times in the subsequent days...if you have had this experience, it is a frishbergism...
Today I read about a very interesting observation in this week's issue of The Economist...
Evolutionary psychology
Sex, shopping and thinking pink
Aug 23rd 2007From The Economist print edition
The brains of men and women are, indeed, different
WOMEN really are better than men at shopping. And they really do prefer pink. And, surprisingly, it is possible that these facts are connected. The first conclusion was drawn by Joshua New of Yale University and his colleagues. The second was drawn by Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling of Newcastle University in England. The connecting theme is that in the division of labour that forms the primordial bargain of human hunter-gatherer societies, it is the men who do the hunting and the women who do the gathering.
Blackberry-picking aside, urban humanity does little gathering from the wild these days, so Dr New decided to look at what seemed to him to be the nearest equivalent—shopping at a farmers' market. There is a fair amount of evidence that men are better than women at solving certain sorts of spatial problems, such as remembering the locations of topographical landmarks. Many researchers suggest such skills may have been important in the past for man-the-hunter, who needed to be able to find his way round the landscape. If that is the case, then woman-the-gatherer might have been expected to develop complementary skills not shown by males. And that, as he writes in this week's Proceedings of the Royal Society, is what Dr New found.
Dr New used the market to test two hypotheses. The first was that women remember the locations of food resources more accurately than men do. The second was that the more nutritionally valuable a resource is, the more accurately its location will be remembered.
To prove these conjectures he recruited 41 women and 45 men and led each of them individually on a merry dance around the chosen market. In the course of this peregrination, each participant visited six of the 90 food stalls in the market. At each of those stalls, participants were given a piece of food to eat. They were asked their preference for the taste of the food, how often they ate that food in normal life, how attractive they found the stall and how often they had made purchases from that stall in the past. After visiting all six stalls, they were taken to the centre of the market and asked to point toward those stalls, one at a time, using an arrow on a dial. In addition, they were asked to rate their own sense of direction.
In the pink
On average, women were 9° more accurate than men at pointing to each stall—a significant deviation if you have to walk some distance to get to a place. This was not because those women had more experience of visiting the market than the men had. Nor did the women rate themselves as having a better sense of direction—indeed the men rated their own navigating skills more highly.
Dr New suggests that these results show women are better than men at the particular task of relocating sources of food. That contrasts with the idea that men are better at navigation in general. In other words, women's minds are specialised for their ancestral task of gathering the sort of food that cannot run away.
That such food is in a different mental category from the one occupied by general landmarks was suggested by the answer to the second hypothesis. The higher the calorific value of the food sold by a stall, the more accurately Dr New's volunteers were able to point towards it. And that result applied to both sexes, though women still did better than men.
How much the participants liked the food did not have an effect on this accuracy. Indeed none of the secondary attributes of the food or stall in question (taste preference, the frequency of an item in a volunteer's normal diet, the appearance of the stall and how often a volunteer used that stall in daily life) were found to affect pointing accuracy. Only the calorific value of the item in question was relevant.
For their part Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling, who report their study in Current Biology, used coloured patches flashing on a computer screen to find the preferences of their set of volunteers. These volunteers were men and women of British and Chinese origin who were in their early 20s.
Mostly, the two researchers found that people of different sexes and from different continents did not differ in their colour preferences. But there was one exception. Among both the British and the Chinese, women preferred reddish hues such as pink to greenish-blue ones. Among men it was the other way round.
Moreover, though anatomical sex is binary, mental “gender” is more pliable. To see how masculine or feminine the brains of their participants were, Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling used what is known as the Bem Sex Role Inventory, which asks about personality traits more often associated with one sex than the other. This showed that the more feminine a brain was, regardless of the body it inhabited, the more it liked red and pink.
All this suggests a biological, rather than a cultural, explanation for colour preference. And Dr Hurlbert and Dr Ling have produced one. They suggest that their result may be connected with the fact that the colour of many fruits is at the red end of the spectrum. An evolved preference for red, pink and allied shades—particularly in contrast with green—could thus bring advantage to those who gather such things. And if they can also remember which tree (or stall) to go and visit next time, then so much the better.
So, that was the first article, then I read, a little later today, about tatoos in Canada, and this doctor who removes tatoos said:
Dr. Rose Genesis believes many of those outlaws and preacher's wives will one day seek out her tattoo removal services.
"The odds are very high that some day you will regret it (getting a tattoo)," said Genesis, a family physician who, eight years ago, opened her full-time cosmetic medicine practice on Eighth Street, Nirvana Laser Hair and Skin Clinic.
She's so confident in a growing need for tattoo removal services that Genesis last year invested more than $100,000 for the latest in tattoo removal technology.
The new machine is a significant improvement over older technology, Genesis said, but it still won't completely remove all tattoos. The laser effectively breaks up tattoo inks of darker shades, but shows less success on shades of red and pink.
"It's still difficult to get all the colours out," she said.
So, you can see the Frishbergism here, the pink and red showed up as significant, in two totally different articles, on the same day!
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Mother Theresa - Patron Saint of Skeptics, Atheists, Brights
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE DETAILS MOTHER THRESA'S ADMISSION OF NON-BELIEF.
TIME MAG DID A BIGGER ARTICLE EVEN:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html
WHEN SHE WAS ALIVE I RECALL MANY WHO FELT WHAT SHE WAS DOING WAS MORE SHOW THAN GO...WITH MUCH OF THE MONEY COLLECTED FOR THE POOR GOING TO THE CHURCH...
Struggles of a Pious Leader
Throughout Her Life Mother Teresa Wrote Privately of Struggles With Her Faith
A collection of Mother Teresa's private letters are being published as part of the campaign for her sainthood. (ABCNEWS) From World News with Charles Gibson Aug. 24, 2007
In dozens of letters spanning 66 years, Mother Teresa described the "emptiness" she felt and confessed her struggles with faith and the existence of heaven in pages she had planned to have destroyed.
A decade after her death, they have been published in the book "Come By My Light" as part of the petition for her sainthood.
"The lives of the saints are personal, but they are not private," said The Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, who is publishing the letters. "The documents are really are quite valuable in that they speak of her own holiness and the value … to people who can relate to what she was going through."
They offer surprising revelations, including one instance in which she writes, "no faith -- no love -- no zeal -- [The saving of] souls holds no attraction -- Heaven means nothing … it has been like this more or less from the time I started 'the work.'"
Her work began when she heard God tell her to open a mission in Calcutta. The book includes her Jan. 13, 1947 letter in which she wrote to the Archbishop of Calcutta to request permission to found her own order, the Missionaries of Charity.
Several years later, she composed a letter as an exercise from her spiritual adviser to express her devotion to Jesus and passionately wrote, "I want to satiate your thirst with every single drop of blood that you can find in me. Don't allow me to do you wrong in any way."
To millions her work still shines as the example of Christlike devotion. It brought her the Nobel Peace Prize and beatification by Pope John Paul.
But once she began her work in India she never heard God's voice again. Nine years after she founded her mission in Calcutta she wrote, "What do I labour for? If there be no God -- there can be no soul -- if there is no Soul then Jesus -- You also are not true."
"Even the sisters around her had no idea of the length and the depth," Kolodiejchuk said.
Faith vs. Benevolence
As many Catholics learn how long she suffered this crisis of faith, they are even more awed by her deeds.
"Unlike the other saints, who might have been going through their day with a lot of consolation from their prayer, Mother Teresa was running on empty and doing all these wonderful works," said Father James Martin.
But while the faithful see her struggle as inspirational, some atheists are taking it as confirmation of their own rational doubts and proof that the faithless can display enormous benevolence.
"Of course nonbelievers all over the world display compassion," said Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "She was forced to go through the motions and admitted her own hypocrisy."
TIME MAG DID A BIGGER ARTICLE EVEN:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html
WHEN SHE WAS ALIVE I RECALL MANY WHO FELT WHAT SHE WAS DOING WAS MORE SHOW THAN GO...WITH MUCH OF THE MONEY COLLECTED FOR THE POOR GOING TO THE CHURCH...
Struggles of a Pious Leader
Throughout Her Life Mother Teresa Wrote Privately of Struggles With Her Faith
A collection of Mother Teresa's private letters are being published as part of the campaign for her sainthood. (ABCNEWS) From World News with Charles Gibson Aug. 24, 2007
In dozens of letters spanning 66 years, Mother Teresa described the "emptiness" she felt and confessed her struggles with faith and the existence of heaven in pages she had planned to have destroyed.
A decade after her death, they have been published in the book "Come By My Light" as part of the petition for her sainthood.
"The lives of the saints are personal, but they are not private," said The Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, who is publishing the letters. "The documents are really are quite valuable in that they speak of her own holiness and the value … to people who can relate to what she was going through."
They offer surprising revelations, including one instance in which she writes, "no faith -- no love -- no zeal -- [The saving of] souls holds no attraction -- Heaven means nothing … it has been like this more or less from the time I started 'the work.'"
Her work began when she heard God tell her to open a mission in Calcutta. The book includes her Jan. 13, 1947 letter in which she wrote to the Archbishop of Calcutta to request permission to found her own order, the Missionaries of Charity.
Several years later, she composed a letter as an exercise from her spiritual adviser to express her devotion to Jesus and passionately wrote, "I want to satiate your thirst with every single drop of blood that you can find in me. Don't allow me to do you wrong in any way."
To millions her work still shines as the example of Christlike devotion. It brought her the Nobel Peace Prize and beatification by Pope John Paul.
But once she began her work in India she never heard God's voice again. Nine years after she founded her mission in Calcutta she wrote, "What do I labour for? If there be no God -- there can be no soul -- if there is no Soul then Jesus -- You also are not true."
"Even the sisters around her had no idea of the length and the depth," Kolodiejchuk said.
Faith vs. Benevolence
As many Catholics learn how long she suffered this crisis of faith, they are even more awed by her deeds.
"Unlike the other saints, who might have been going through their day with a lot of consolation from their prayer, Mother Teresa was running on empty and doing all these wonderful works," said Father James Martin.
But while the faithful see her struggle as inspirational, some atheists are taking it as confirmation of their own rational doubts and proof that the faithless can display enormous benevolence.
"Of course nonbelievers all over the world display compassion," said Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "She was forced to go through the motions and admitted her own hypocrisy."
Ten years after her death, her Missionaries of Charity claims to have over a million volunteers comforting the sick and orphaned in 40 countries. This book is certain to stir those who pray the Vatican will canonize the nun from the slums. If it does, Mother Teresa may just be the patron saint of skeptics.
The Donald Blasts Bush
The title on Yahoo Movies for this clip is "Donald Blasts Rosie" but in reality he BLASTS BUSH!
You Go Donald...
Video from Yahoo! - Donald Blasts Rosie
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/237/popup/index.php?cl=3776492
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/237/popup/index.php?cl=3776492
Friday, August 24, 2007
This is one amazing post: Conservative going after Sean Hannity concerning Iraq and it's horrible consequences.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/tonso5.html
This is a longish article, can't believe I was lucky enough to see it at the site posted above...
I'll copy a little part of it here, it's an open letter for god's sake!
An Open Letter to Sean Hannity
by William R. Tonso
Dear Sean:
It really ticks me off royally when you and your allegedly conservative talk-radio colleagues dismiss all critics of the Iraq War as liberals who are interested in nothing more than winning back the presidency and/or who hate America....snip...
For several months, I’ve considered calling you to take you to task for misleading the listeners who consider you to be such a great American. ...snip...
So I decided to cope with my frustration through an open letter to you, as I once did with one to your pompous colleague, Rush Limbaugh. ...snip...
I’m not afraid to argue with you, because I don’t think you’re that sharp. ...snip...
George Will Quote
"The world is full of ordinary people who do not define freedom as we do, who do not value it as we do, who prefer piety, ethnic purity, religious solidarity, military glory, or the security of despotism. There are still all kinds of competing values in the world, and liberty has to be fought for and argued for and defined. It is a learned and acquired taste."...snip....
Pat Bucannan Quoted:
And in a recent issue of The American Conservative, he noted that if we buy Bush’s claim that we’re "fighting for the right of Islamic peoples ‘to speak, and worship, and live in liberty,’" we’re caught in a dilemma. "Devout Muslims in Islamic lands do not believe people should be free to blaspheme or insult the Prophet. They do not believe all religions are equal or should be treated equally. They do not believe Christians should be free to preach in their lands. The punishment for those who do, and for those who convert from Islam in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as Iran, is death." He goes on to note that wherever free elections have been held in the Middle East Islamists have won over Western secularism and asks: "Should U.S. soldiers die for democracy in the Islamic world, when democracy may produce victory for the political progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood? Is that worth the lives of America’s young?" ...snip...
Andrew J. Bacevich, USA Colonel Ret. a professor of international relations and director of Boston University’s Center of International Relations authored The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War.
In this book, Bacevich warns of a new and dangerous obsession that has taken hold of so many Americans, conservatives and liberals alike. It is the marriage of militarism to utopian ideology – of unprecedented military power wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values. ...snip...
The outspoken Colonel David Hackworth (USA deceased) believed that going to war with Iraq had nothing to do with combating terrorism and was a blunder. "So, fighting Iraq bears not the slightest resemblance to our triumphant World War II march across Europe. Almost the entire Arab world views us not as liberators occupying that bludgeoned country solely to pull Iraqis up by their sandal straps, but as Crusaders who’ve returned to finish the dirty work the Christian world started a thousand years ago. Deep in the hearts of most Arabs, we’re just the latest wave of infidels who are into violating their sacred land."
Are you beginning to see a pattern here, Sean? Are George Will, Pat Buchanan, Andrew Bacevich, and the late David Hackworth liberals and/or America haters because they’ve pointed out that other peoples aren’t like us and don’t appreciate the attempts by our government to make them like us? And is former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips a liberal for writing in his American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21 Century that while the attack on Iraq was "at bottom about access to oil and U.S. global supremacy," it also had other intentions. "One was to fold oil objectives into the global war against terror. A second was to cement the U.S. dollar’s hegemonic role in global oil sales – and thus in the world economy. A third was to keep the invasion’s purpose broad enough to allow the biblically minded Christian right to see it, at least partially, as a destruction of the new Babylon, on the road to Armageddon and redemption."
...snip... a lot....
The evil that America has brought to Iraq transcends the tens [more likely hundreds] of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of lives, careers, and families of millions of Iraqis. The violence and killing that Bush brought to Iraq has spread antagonism between Sunni and Shiite throughout the Middle East with potentially draconian consequences. Bush’s war has turned Muslim hearts and minds against America and made terrorism an acceptable means to resist American hegemony. With his mindless war, Bush has created more terrorism than the world has ever seen.
As far as the war and its disastrous impact on our Bill of Rights go, you and your talk-radio so-called conservatives are nothing but useful idiots for the establishment. You all uncritically support wars anyplace the neocons tell the bumbler in the White House to start them, and any police-state method implemented in the name of security, but then you all get upset with that same bumbler when he and many on the Hill, including liberals, refuse to clamp down on illegal immigration and to protect our national sovereignty. Do you ever stop to wonder how the guy you think is so right when it comes to war and measures impacting the rights of ordinary Americans can be so wrong when it comes to protecting our own borders and sovereignty? Might there be some connection between his foreign and domestic policies?
America is actually a carefully concealed oligarchy. A few thousand people, mostly in government, finance, and the military-industrial complex, run this country for their own purposes. By manipulating the two-party system, influencing the mainstream media, and controlling the flow of campaign finance money, this oligarchy works to secure the nomination of its preferred candidates (Democratic and Republican alike), thus giving a ‘choice’ between Puppet A and Marionette B.
...snip
Smedley Darlington Butler a military hero, and became the Corps’ youngest major general when he was 48, retiring at that rank in 1931.
In War is a Racket, his 1935 book, Butler wrote: "For a great many years as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket. Not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it." He defined a racket as "something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
In a 1935 magazine article, Butler wrote:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....snip
As far as the war goes, you and your so-called conservative colleagues are nothing but useful idiots to our own establishment – no faction of which, left or right, could care less about protecting our national sovereignty or the original intent of our Constitution – and that establishment is a far greater threat to us and our remaining freedoms than any Middle Eastern religious/political movement.
Cheers!
William R. Tonso
August 25, 2007
This is a longish article, can't believe I was lucky enough to see it at the site posted above...
I'll copy a little part of it here, it's an open letter for god's sake!
An Open Letter to Sean Hannity
by William R. Tonso
Dear Sean:
It really ticks me off royally when you and your allegedly conservative talk-radio colleagues dismiss all critics of the Iraq War as liberals who are interested in nothing more than winning back the presidency and/or who hate America....snip...
For several months, I’ve considered calling you to take you to task for misleading the listeners who consider you to be such a great American. ...snip...
So I decided to cope with my frustration through an open letter to you, as I once did with one to your pompous colleague, Rush Limbaugh. ...snip...
I’m not afraid to argue with you, because I don’t think you’re that sharp. ...snip...
George Will Quote
"The world is full of ordinary people who do not define freedom as we do, who do not value it as we do, who prefer piety, ethnic purity, religious solidarity, military glory, or the security of despotism. There are still all kinds of competing values in the world, and liberty has to be fought for and argued for and defined. It is a learned and acquired taste."...snip....
Pat Bucannan Quoted:
And in a recent issue of The American Conservative, he noted that if we buy Bush’s claim that we’re "fighting for the right of Islamic peoples ‘to speak, and worship, and live in liberty,’" we’re caught in a dilemma. "Devout Muslims in Islamic lands do not believe people should be free to blaspheme or insult the Prophet. They do not believe all religions are equal or should be treated equally. They do not believe Christians should be free to preach in their lands. The punishment for those who do, and for those who convert from Islam in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as Iran, is death." He goes on to note that wherever free elections have been held in the Middle East Islamists have won over Western secularism and asks: "Should U.S. soldiers die for democracy in the Islamic world, when democracy may produce victory for the political progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood? Is that worth the lives of America’s young?" ...snip...
Andrew J. Bacevich, USA Colonel Ret. a professor of international relations and director of Boston University’s Center of International Relations authored The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War.
In this book, Bacevich warns of a new and dangerous obsession that has taken hold of so many Americans, conservatives and liberals alike. It is the marriage of militarism to utopian ideology – of unprecedented military power wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values. ...snip...
The outspoken Colonel David Hackworth (USA deceased) believed that going to war with Iraq had nothing to do with combating terrorism and was a blunder. "So, fighting Iraq bears not the slightest resemblance to our triumphant World War II march across Europe. Almost the entire Arab world views us not as liberators occupying that bludgeoned country solely to pull Iraqis up by their sandal straps, but as Crusaders who’ve returned to finish the dirty work the Christian world started a thousand years ago. Deep in the hearts of most Arabs, we’re just the latest wave of infidels who are into violating their sacred land."
Are you beginning to see a pattern here, Sean? Are George Will, Pat Buchanan, Andrew Bacevich, and the late David Hackworth liberals and/or America haters because they’ve pointed out that other peoples aren’t like us and don’t appreciate the attempts by our government to make them like us? And is former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips a liberal for writing in his American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21 Century that while the attack on Iraq was "at bottom about access to oil and U.S. global supremacy," it also had other intentions. "One was to fold oil objectives into the global war against terror. A second was to cement the U.S. dollar’s hegemonic role in global oil sales – and thus in the world economy. A third was to keep the invasion’s purpose broad enough to allow the biblically minded Christian right to see it, at least partially, as a destruction of the new Babylon, on the road to Armageddon and redemption."
...snip... a lot....
The evil that America has brought to Iraq transcends the tens [more likely hundreds] of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of lives, careers, and families of millions of Iraqis. The violence and killing that Bush brought to Iraq has spread antagonism between Sunni and Shiite throughout the Middle East with potentially draconian consequences. Bush’s war has turned Muslim hearts and minds against America and made terrorism an acceptable means to resist American hegemony. With his mindless war, Bush has created more terrorism than the world has ever seen.
As far as the war and its disastrous impact on our Bill of Rights go, you and your talk-radio so-called conservatives are nothing but useful idiots for the establishment. You all uncritically support wars anyplace the neocons tell the bumbler in the White House to start them, and any police-state method implemented in the name of security, but then you all get upset with that same bumbler when he and many on the Hill, including liberals, refuse to clamp down on illegal immigration and to protect our national sovereignty. Do you ever stop to wonder how the guy you think is so right when it comes to war and measures impacting the rights of ordinary Americans can be so wrong when it comes to protecting our own borders and sovereignty? Might there be some connection between his foreign and domestic policies?
America is actually a carefully concealed oligarchy. A few thousand people, mostly in government, finance, and the military-industrial complex, run this country for their own purposes. By manipulating the two-party system, influencing the mainstream media, and controlling the flow of campaign finance money, this oligarchy works to secure the nomination of its preferred candidates (Democratic and Republican alike), thus giving a ‘choice’ between Puppet A and Marionette B.
...snip
Smedley Darlington Butler a military hero, and became the Corps’ youngest major general when he was 48, retiring at that rank in 1931.
In War is a Racket, his 1935 book, Butler wrote: "For a great many years as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket. Not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it." He defined a racket as "something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
In a 1935 magazine article, Butler wrote:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....snip
As far as the war goes, you and your so-called conservative colleagues are nothing but useful idiots to our own establishment – no faction of which, left or right, could care less about protecting our national sovereignty or the original intent of our Constitution – and that establishment is a far greater threat to us and our remaining freedoms than any Middle Eastern religious/political movement.
Cheers!
William R. Tonso
August 25, 2007
My Frisbee Game, in Haiku format!
Created new game
Modified frisbee golfing
At a long thin park!
Keep it in the path
Throw it as far as you can
Keep it in the path
Frisbee AMAZING
Must visit football field
See how far I throw!
(My estimate: I threw one today 270 feet, pretty much where I expected it to go, a football field is 300)
Modified frisbee golfing
At a long thin park!
Keep it in the path
Throw it as far as you can
Keep it in the path
Frisbee AMAZING
Must visit football field
See how far I throw!
(My estimate: I threw one today 270 feet, pretty much where I expected it to go, a football field is 300)
The Bible itself espouses Atheism!
bible – Atheistic!
"No other gods before me."
I follow the creed
Proved Atheistic
"No other gods before me"
Says it all, my friend
Have taken to heart
This momentous expression
First...NO OTHER GODS
god's a jealous god
But also strangely humble
None comes before god.
"No other gods before me."
I follow the creed
Proved Atheistic
"No other gods before me"
Says it all, my friend
Have taken to heart
This momentous expression
First...NO OTHER GODS
god's a jealous god
But also strangely humble
None comes before god.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Bushes Should Not Have Children!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20070823/cx_tr_uc/tr20070823
Jenna's kid will be 40 just about the time the world's fisheries totally fail.
He'll make a great president...
Baptist fatwah?
A California minister who used church stationery and an Internet radio
program to endorse former Gov. Mike Huckabee for president is asking his
followers to pray for the deaths of those who filed a complaint against him
with the IRS.
The Rev. Wiley S. Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park,
Calif., called for "imprecatory prayer" targeting Barry W. Lynn, Joe Conn
and Jeremy Leaming of Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
which had asked the IRS to investigate whether it was proper for Drake to
endorse Huckabee. Churches that endorse candidates are subject to losing
their tax-exempt status. 8.17.07
program to endorse former Gov. Mike Huckabee for president is asking his
followers to pray for the deaths of those who filed a complaint against him
with the IRS.
The Rev. Wiley S. Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park,
Calif., called for "imprecatory prayer" targeting Barry W. Lynn, Joe Conn
and Jeremy Leaming of Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
which had asked the IRS to investigate whether it was proper for Drake to
endorse Huckabee. Churches that endorse candidates are subject to losing
their tax-exempt status. 8.17.07
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Surgically alters thumbs to better use iPhone
Frish sez: Human evolution cannot possibly keep up with our technology...love the editors (bottom line) comment...
"Warning satirical social commentary"...
From the North Denver News
Written by James Benfly
Wednesday, 08 August 2007
Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as "whittling."
"From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses," explains Martel. "Sure, the procedure was expensive, but when I think of all the time I save by being able to use modern handhelds so much faster, I really think the surgery will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it's saving me in frustration - that's priceless."
"This is really, on the edge sort of stuff," explains Dr. Robert Fox Spars, who worked on developing the procedure. "We're turning plastic surgery from something that people use in service of vanity, to a real tool for improving workplace efficiency."
The procedure involved making a small incision into both thumbs and shaving down the bones, followed by careful muscular alteration and modification of the fingernails.
While Martel's new thumbs now appear small and effeminate in comparison to his otherwise very large hands, he says he can still lift "pretty much anything I could lift before the surgery - though opening spaghetti sauce jars has been a problem. That was a big surprise."
"Warning satirical social commentary"...
From the North Denver News
Written by James Benfly
Wednesday, 08 August 2007
Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as "whittling."
"From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses," explains Martel. "Sure, the procedure was expensive, but when I think of all the time I save by being able to use modern handhelds so much faster, I really think the surgery will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it's saving me in frustration - that's priceless."
"This is really, on the edge sort of stuff," explains Dr. Robert Fox Spars, who worked on developing the procedure. "We're turning plastic surgery from something that people use in service of vanity, to a real tool for improving workplace efficiency."
The procedure involved making a small incision into both thumbs and shaving down the bones, followed by careful muscular alteration and modification of the fingernails.
While Martel's new thumbs now appear small and effeminate in comparison to his otherwise very large hands, he says he can still lift "pretty much anything I could lift before the surgery - though opening spaghetti sauce jars has been a problem. That was a big surprise."
Monday, August 20, 2007
Chinese Communists to Control Reincarnation!
No Reincarnation without Permission from September 1st
In a move which would be comical if it were not so serious, the Atheist Chinese Communist Party has brought in new rules to apparently "Completely Control" Buddhism in Tibet and keep it under Communist control.The new rules which come into force on September the 1st state that "Lama's are no longer allowed to reincarnate with out first obtaining permission from the communist authorities".
Such permission might be hard to obtain from an atheist official in advance and no doubt what the rules really mean is that all official recognition of a particular incarnation can only be obtained from the communist party.
Obviously the CCP wishes to appoint it's own to every position of authority within Tibetan Buddhism, Just as it has tried to do in the case of the current Panchen Lama, who was abducted 12 years ago at the age of 6 and has not been heard from since.
The Communist Party has already announced that they will select the new Dalai Lama from inside Tibet. However His Holiness has stated on many occasions that his next incarnation will be born outside Tibet , in a free country unless an acceptable resolution to the Tibet Issue has been agreed.
The Web Site of the Chinese Communist Party said on Friday.."If there is any self-claimed Living Buddha without government and religious affairs department approval, this said reincarnation would be illegal and invalid,".
http://www.tibetcustom.com/article.php/20070803133532961
In a move which would be comical if it were not so serious, the Atheist Chinese Communist Party has brought in new rules to apparently "Completely Control" Buddhism in Tibet and keep it under Communist control.The new rules which come into force on September the 1st state that "Lama's are no longer allowed to reincarnate with out first obtaining permission from the communist authorities".
Such permission might be hard to obtain from an atheist official in advance and no doubt what the rules really mean is that all official recognition of a particular incarnation can only be obtained from the communist party.
Obviously the CCP wishes to appoint it's own to every position of authority within Tibetan Buddhism, Just as it has tried to do in the case of the current Panchen Lama, who was abducted 12 years ago at the age of 6 and has not been heard from since.
The Communist Party has already announced that they will select the new Dalai Lama from inside Tibet. However His Holiness has stated on many occasions that his next incarnation will be born outside Tibet , in a free country unless an acceptable resolution to the Tibet Issue has been agreed.
The Web Site of the Chinese Communist Party said on Friday.."If there is any self-claimed Living Buddha without government and religious affairs department approval, this said reincarnation would be illegal and invalid,".
http://www.tibetcustom.com/article.php/20070803133532961
Sunday, August 19, 2007
FREEDOM - BELIEVE IT OR NOT!
Shermer's SciAm article (he writes a skeptics column each month) is dead on the money with the philosophy to espouse. That is: Non-confrontational with Supers, show the good of brightism, don't attack their positions as much as make our positive assertions known...
Rational Atheism
An open letter to Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens
By Michael Shermer
Since the turn of the millennium, a new militancy has arisen among religious skeptics in response to three threats to science and freedom: (1) attacks against evolution education and stem cell research; (2) breaks in the barrier separating church and state leading to political preferences for some faiths over others; and (3) fundamentalist terrorism here and abroad. Among many metrics available to track this skeptical movement is the ascension of four books to the august heights of the New York Times best-seller list—Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great (Hachette Book Group, 2007) and Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)—that together, in Dawkins's always poignant prose, "raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled." Amen, brother.
1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises warned his anti-Communist colleagues in the 1950s: "An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be."
2. Positive assertions are necessary. Champion science and reason, as Charles Darwin suggested: "It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science."
3. Rational is as rational does. If it is our goal to raise people's consciousness to the wonders of science and the power of reason, then we must apply science and reason to our own actions. It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind. As Carl Sagan cautioned in "The Burden of Skepticism," a 1987 lecture, "You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it."
4. The golden rule is symmetrical. In the words of the greatest consciousness raiser of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his epic "I Have a Dream" speech: "In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline." If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.
5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief. A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.
As King, in addition, noted: "The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom."
Rational atheism values the truths of science and the power of reason, but the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion.
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