Amazon.com has done something incredible, unbelievably stupid, unethical, in violation of the spirit of human privacy, freedom and the right to freely access information, and has shown itself to be about as boorishly unctuous not to mention fascistically dangerous as a company can be.
That’s saying a lot in the age of Halliburton and Enron. We live in a time of glorified thievery, a time of high decadence and lack of spiritual integrity to rival our worst nightmares of the middle-ages, which we know little about but of which we have frightful imaginings like thugs roaming the streets with clubs, kinda like the American army roaming the streets of Iraq.
Amazon has an electronic ebook reader called Kindle. You can use it to download and carry books around in digital format, which means you can carry a library in your pocket. Pretty cool. Amazon brags that, “Kindle’s screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper”, which is of course nonsense, but it makes for good reading.
The other amazing thing Amazon says about Kindle is that it is made for “lefties” as well as “righties”, meaning you can hold the device in either your left or your [...]
In Beyond Medicine: Exploring a New Way of Thinking, Dr. Richard A. Dicenso attempts to integrate a new age spiritual awareness with medical science. Whereas traditional medicine only focuses on the physical realm of the body and confuses symptoms with disease, new age thinking aligns the mind, feelings and intentionality with health and the very creation of one’s reality.
He begins the book distinguishing between “physical”, “biochemical” and “virtual” modes of being. The virtual world stands opposite the physical realm, conjoined by biochemical processes that allows them to communicate and interact. Ignoring any individual realm will lead to health problems as they interact with each other on all levels.
Dicenso distinguishes 7 of what he calls “caveats.”
1) Anything can cause anything. The law of cause and effect exists only in the physical realm, not the virtual or biochemical, but symptoms can originate from any realm [ed: not very clear about this point - why no cause/effect in the biochemical realm? And if disease is "caused" by problems and imbalances in the "virtual" realm?].
2) For every action there is a reaction, but it is very difficult to determine the particulars of the reaction.
3) Everything works in a unique [...]
A happy shout out to economic historian Price Fishback for reminding us in a piece published in the New York Times that, as bad as things may now seem in the economy, they are nowhere near as bad as during the great depression of the 1930′s in the US.
He begins by saying that economic cycles and downturns are a natural part of the economic cycle [and "nature's" cycle], but that we may be more sensitive to them now because the big downturns have been coming less frequently since the 1980′s. In other words, we may have gotten a little spoiled and less used to the hardships of the normal business cycle [this lag in business cycles may have something to do with the increasingly loose monetary policy of the last several decades, which climaxed during the reign of "Bubbles" Greenspan].
And according to the theories of Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev on the nature of economic supercycles, we are basically due for another big downturn in the world economy. In other words, this is all part of the divine plan and this too shall pass.
But comparison with the Great Depression just doesn’t hold up. Yes the stock market is [...]
The world’s most powerful medicines, the foundation and fabric of your body, reside in nature, in the food you eat. “You are what you eat” is the fundamental commandment of optimal health and well-being.
Paramount health and the healing of disease doesn’t require artificial, pharmaceutical drugs or medical “experts,” as the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies would like you to believe. The wisdom of the universe resides in nature and natural foods, and all the nourishment your body needs to heal itself can be found there. Give the body what it needs and it will heal itself: your immune system is the product of hundreds of millions of years of biological evolution – the evolution of natural intelligence.
If everyone consumed the proper amount of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, green superfoods like chlorella and spirulina, and got enough excercise, 90% or more of all disease would be eliminated within a few years from the face of the earth. Lifespans would increase, youthful health and vitality restored to the elderly, and cutting -edge, natural anti-aging science would become mainstream. One day in the not too distant future it will be.
Will you and your family still be alive to enjoy it? I [...]
In a stunning example of the plight of the world economy, the Toyota Motor Company – which passed General Motors in 2008 for the record of most vehicles sold worldwide – posted an annual loss of 436.9 billion yen, or $4.4 billion dollars for the fiscal year ending March 2009. This was Toyota’s first annual net loss since the good old days of 1950.
How much did things cost in 1950? According to http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1950.html,
The yearly inflation rate in the USA was 1.09% A new house averaged $8,450.00 Average wages per year: $3,210.00 Cost of a gallon of Gas: 18 cents Average Cost of a new car: $1,510.00 Stromburg black and white television: $249.95 Ball point pen: $0.25 Samsonite case: $25.00 Clock radio: $59.95
To make matters worse, Toyota is predicting it will lose another 550 billion yen or $5.5 billion dollars for the fiscal year ending March 2010, while global sales drop by almost 15%.
It’s interesting to note that in 1950 the average cost of a new house in the US was about 2 1/2 times the average wage. In 2007, the average wage in the US was about $40,000 and the average cost of a new house [...]
In the article Panel Warns U.S. on Cyberwar Plans in the April 29th edition of The New York Times, John Markoff and Thom Shanker reveal that a report recently issued by the National Academy of Sciences is “the first major effort to look at the military use of computer technologies as weapons.” This despite the fact that “The potential use of such technologies offensively has been widely discussed in recent years, and disruptions of communications systems and Web sites have become a standard occurrence in both political and military conflicts since 2000.”
If cyberwar has been a major issue and regularly occuring threat to the US for about 20 years, why are our non-military government agencies responsible for oversight only now getting around to studying it? Isn’t 20 years a little late? Shouldn’t we have been conducting major studies on this issue for, say, at least 15 years, give or take a decade?
And when our government does finally get around to analyzing this issue – better late than never – is it too much to expect that they discuss it with some intelligence, not to mention imagination? For example, The Times reports the study as concluding that “The United [...]
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Amazon.com: George Orwell’s 1984 is Here, or Did Someone Steal it?
Amazon.com has done something incredible, unbelievably stupid, unethical, in violation of the spirit of human privacy, freedom and the right to freely access information, and has shown itself to be about as boorishly unctuous not to mention fascistically dangerous as a company can be.
That’s saying a lot in the age of Halliburton and Enron. We live in a time of glorified thievery, a time of high decadence and lack of spiritual integrity to rival our worst nightmares of the middle-ages, which we know little about but of which we have frightful imaginings like thugs roaming the streets with clubs, kinda like the American army roaming the streets of Iraq.
Amazon has an electronic ebook reader called Kindle. You can use it to download and carry books around in digital format, which means you can carry a library in your pocket. Pretty cool. Amazon brags that, “Kindle’s screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper”, which is of course nonsense, but it makes for good reading.
The other amazing thing Amazon says about Kindle is that it is made for “lefties” as well as “righties”, meaning you can hold the device in either your left or your [...]