Thanksgiving

Not withstanding the soiled nature of the holiday, thanks to small pox blankets and other unimaginable cruelty that goes along with the murder of en entire set of cultures and people.

I’m taking this moment to write about the things I am thankful for.

This is not an exhaustive list, but just to give some idea of what I appreciate in my life.

1. I am thankful that my parents are still alive, together, happy, healthy, and nearby. I know they love me and I they know I love them. This is hands down the one thing I am most thankful for. That I have true parents.

2. That I have a home, enough to eat and drink, clothing, safety, warmth, and shelter. This we ALL deserve. I don’t care, even the most hated among us.

3. That my health, which while less than perfect is FAR and away from truly problematic. I am aware of what I have and don’t have.

4. That my phobias while crippling can be avoided. Some people have no safe places.

5. My real friends. The people that have a vested interest in my happiness. I wish I could do more for theirs.

6. For all the little things that when you really think about it aren’t so little. My computer, my fridge, my knife, my guns, my toys, my pictures, my books, my movies, my games, my everything.

7. My options, not only do I have enough to eat and drink but I have the kinds of things I enjoy eating and drinking.

8. My freedom, I have not been randomly and wrongfully convicted as so many have. For this list I have put aside my anger, and merely note how thankful I am that this has not happened to me or anyone I care about as of this writing.

9. My solitude. I have had my own house since I was 17, and I have spent the majority of my life with roommates, this makes we appreciate having my own space.

10. I am thankful for my readers, for my ability to express myself, and for a reasonable belief that at least a few people see my work.

11. I am thankful that you have have not done the harm you could have, for you self discipline and restraint and ethics.

12. And finally, my hope for the future. Technology. I am thankful that technology is expanding, and growing more accessible by the millisecond. I am so Very thankful that I have a reasonable hope of seeing the true ascendancy and transcendencey of humanity.

If I were a religious man I would thank god for these things, and though I am a deist and believe something enforces the physical constants etc, I do not believe it hears or thinks or is a living thing. So thanking it would be pointless.

So in a way, I am thanking luck, and all of you. Any of you are capable of ruining these things, and yet for whatever reason you haven’t. Bravo, and hold on, it will soon be better for all of us.

John Wayne’s Ghost: The Birth of “Emo”

We’ve moved past fearing Jews in the neighborhood. We’ve moved past tolerance for beating your wife. We’ve moved past thinking blacks in schools with whites as dangerous. We’ve moved past seeing the red threat around every corner. We’ve moved past black and white TV, and father knows best.

But John Wayne’s ghost still lingers. Men are still expected to throw themselves on the grenades of society to protect the women and children. We are still expected to suffer silently, to do as we are told, to kill and die on command, to act is if our very purpose for being is to live up to a woman’s idea of what a man should be.

Nothing has as much power over a John Wayne type than a socially aligned scolding, a questioning of “manhood” which always boils down to rational risk aversion negation, or sublimation of the individual will for the good of the state.

So clear has this trend become in the modern mind that a phrase like “man up” was coined, which means simply “act as your gender stereotype demands over your personal feelings.” Why do we tolerate this shit?

What if I said to a woman… “Woman up, I need this floor scrubbed?” What would happen then? What if I said “Grow a vag and get me a sandwich?” I’d be a sexist misogynistic pig.

If you see a woman crying, and you walk up to her and say “quit being emo.” What’s the first thought? Insensitivity, callous disregard for the suffering of another? You see a man crying and you say “quit being emo” and people laugh. “Oh cry me a river, quit being all emo butthurt, man up and get to work.” What’s the first thought? I’ll bet it something about trying to understand WHY the man is crying, and instantly making a set of value judgments about the validity of his emotional display.

When men cry, they have to have a reason, and not just any reason mind, you a GOOD reason. Men are expected to hide ALL emotional displays. Unless they are violent, in defense of the status quo, anger, or snide gloating, and perhaps lust, so long as its for a socially sanctioned target.

John Wayne’s emotionally crippled sexist legacy lives on.

Entitlement

During this season of healthcare debate the morons incapable of checking the sum of their ideas for logical consistency tended to whine about entitlement, painting an image of lazy greed, a sort of working class fat cat.

I’ll be blunt, I do feel entitled to government healthcare, and indeed a paycheck. Here’s a list of why.

1. They make it illegal to kill myself, which means my living is forced on me by the state, therefore the state is responsible for it.

2. The state of intellectual property law and economic regulation generally makes competition by improvement impossible. Innovation is illegal.

3. Protection from death from outside sources is already an accepted government responsibility, from seat belts, to the FDA, to the Army, regulation and expenditure to protect us from death is everywhere.

4. The state has the authority to kill us if it so chooses, therefore they have the responsibility to keep us alive.

5. They have far more power over me than they have responsibility to me already. From telling me who I can marry, to which plants I can eat, to what color I can paint my house, the state intrudes on virtually every aspect of our lives to the point that it may simply be easier to make a list of legal activities and assume all else is illegal.

6. Our taxes and labor keep the state alive, we deserve a share of the profits.

7. I am prevented from exiting, as Ruby Ridge and Waco and the countless other examples of social abstinence being disallowed demonstrates.

8. I do not actually own my land, my home, or my body. I rent via taxes.

9. Congress and convicts gets free healthcare.

10. And perhaps most importantly, I didn’t break the law today, which serves one and only one purposes, to keep those in power, in power. I didn’t execute a multimillionaire, I didn’t black out the eastern seaboard, I didn’t drive a truck full of explosives into a federal building, in short I didn’t behave just like the government does and help myself at the expense of someone else, just because I can.

They owe us.

The people that whine about entitlement typically are doing so out of fear, insecurity, and callousness coupled with a Horatio Alger self serving mentality that they through pluck and determination earned what they have, which is based on willful ignorance of civics, economics, and sociology, plain and simple.

They are afraid like daffy duck’s rendition of Ali Baba, that some of their precious wealth is going to be taken away to care for the unwashed masses. And so they hoard and block and whine and cry. They also deeply fear the angry lower classes being made healthy, and so they should given their rapacious exploitation.

But ours is a government built on rebellion, and they have made themselves little better than the kings we fought and died to be free of, and now they don’t even have the common decency to protect the peasantry from the plague, unless of course its virulent and lethal enough to begin to temporarily interrupt their gluttonous accumulation of wealth.

Oh then its time for a barely tested vaccine. Because they care about us just so much.

LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What part of “life” is unclear?

If they make it impossible for me to live by “legitimate” means, not even be rich, just live remotely comfortably, I naturally like anyone else will seek other means.

If they are smart, if they want to add a few decades onto the life span of their hold on this rotting corpse of a system, they’ll start handing out medical care.

See also: http://underlore.com/islanders/

The Storms Broken Promise

When the night falls and you hear thunder in the distance do you step outside? If you do then you know what will always await you. That crisp fresh smell of air from a thousand feet up, the sky full of looming voluminous dark clouds whose chaotic forms provide the perfect backdrop for the subconscious, the canvas on which the residue of your hopes, dreams, and fears are painted.

And, if you are like me, there is sometimes something more. The profound sense that this is something special, this one event is a peek into a much more varied and ultimately more hopeful world. The world of magic, where if one pours over enough dusty tomes and concentrates hard enough, they can shape reality to match the will. Where one doesn’t think of it as magic. Better to think of it as technology that resides in the mind. Think of them as tools made from energy instead of matter, tools that fold up and sit in the memory, or the space between neurons like so many ratchets.

I step outside during one of what the weatherman rather blandly calls “scattered showers” and I sit on my porch. I think to myself, not quite in words, that these are anything but scattered. This clearly has order, purpose, this is so obviously meant to fall right here, right now, for me. To usher in the dawn of a new era, the rebirth of magic. If I can only will hard enough, then I can be the starting point, I can be the catalyst and like the eye of a hurricane I will remain calm and collected in the face of such power, that I and I alone am immune to that dreadful pull of power towards paranoia and destruction.
Then, as the storm crests and the sky is full of the low plasma induced rumble, and the rain falls in droplets so large one might think of them as water balloons if one were so inclined, the thought comes riding a wave of hopeful validation, excitement, and optimism. It really is happening, things are going to be different now, I see what they cant, I will take what they wouldn’t understand and turn it into something they can never stop.

I bask in this warm euphoric glow, oblivious to the passage of time, and then, I begin to realize the storm is passing me, and its like a lover lying dead in your arms, and you somehow missed it. The best most violent expressions of this chaotic ripple have moved on or worse yet faded out, replaced by lame versions of themselves over and over until the sky is once again still and the air is filled with the pathetic dripping of run off and the slippery sound of water suction being forced through radial treads as cars pass by oblivious to what almost happened.

I then stand reluctantly knowing that it is not good to dwell on what was lost. I return to my home and my life, only a few feet behind me, seeing it as just a little bleaker then the world before. I maybe this feeling is the storm sharing with me for a moment the hopes and dreams of all those who stare into its depths feeling the moment of power, and the goal to which power is an end, freedom. It does this in exchange for a tiny part of the soul which will be used to lure other hopeful eyes into its black heart for a time, thus repeating the process till the end of time, when the souls of the hopeful no longer look to the sky, their hopes and dreams forever shattered against the rock of reason, or if we’re lucky, made flesh by that same rock.

New School

Do you agree? School makes a huge mistake in that it attempts to teach all that one needs to know when it needs to teach how to find what one needs to know and how to process what is found.

1. Ethics
2. Reading
3. Logic
4. Research
5. Civics

These subjects would give children the tools they need to develop and discover the tools they need, period.

This course would not take more then two years total. But would be spread out over k12 time frame to give children time to absorb, discover on their own, and most importantly, learn from their parents.

Ethics first for what should be obvious reasons. Being benevolent should be the highest priority.

Reading because it is what connects us to each other and the past and allows us to grow as a species.

Logic so we can process what we read critically and properly incorporate it into what we know.

Research so we can find the answers if we have questions or share the answers we ourselves created, or verify the answers we are given.

Civics so we know how to incorporate ourselves into our society in a way that is mutually beneficial and so that we can understand the purpose of the laws we are subject to and how those laws came about.

Each subject also provides defense against manipulation and exploitation, which will make our children strong, safe, wise, and perhaps most importantly, happy.

A secondary set should be as follows.
6. Psychology
7. Neurology
8. Sociology
9. Economics
10. Philosophy

Psychology so that we can know how we think, and avoid our cognitive blind spots, impact bias, and other inherent mental issues we all can have.

Neurology so we can understand that reality comes to us through the lens of our brain, awareness of the nature of that lens will give us a better actual understanding of the reality outside it.

Sociology so we can understand the societies we choose to live in and or were born in.

Economics so we can understand the nature of resources and how to best distribute them for the common and individual good.

And philosophy so that we can explore the context and meaning of our existence.

In addition I feel that all children should be taught one martial art (minus the philosophy, just the skill) and one artistic technical skill of their choice. So they can be safe, confident, and express themselves fully.

No Math?:
Nope, no 18th century French literature, or quantum mechanics either, math is not fundamental to learning how to learn.

( Update: This would be an acceptable form of math education: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/eng//id/1007 )

Forcing everyone to learn math is like forcing everyone to learn magic the gathering. Basic math like what is +-*/, would be covered by reading, but anything past long division is a specialty and thus not included.

Addendum:

The only thing we have the right to unilaterally insert or remove are cures and pathogens. And even then only with extremely careful consideration of the cost.

We literally steal childhoods. We conflate the indoctrination process with childhood itself to a repulsive disgusting degree.

Children should be treated EXACTLY like adults recovering from a brain injury and determining when they are to be given freedom and rights should be a clinical objectively driven process approached from that perspective.

When someone wakes up from a coma and has to learn to read and speak again do we presume to decide for them all the shit we decide for children? No, because we recognize an adult as a human.

Conversation about education in 99.99% of cases assumes children are not humans without even being aware of that prejudice.

Children are pets and property in our culture and our “education” is inextricably bound to that loathsome truth.

How to use plain text eBooks on the Tracfone LG600G.

TinyBook

Support: [email protected]
Web-site: http://heavy-online.ru/TinyBook/

LG600G plain text ebook reader instructions.

On Computer:
Decompress TinyBook.JAR renaming as a zip file if you have to.

Copy plain text book into folder.

Rename book to “book1.txt” or any number up to 9.

Book must have a blank line as it’s first line.

TinyBook.JAR may contain up to 9 books, maybe ten if you replace book.txt as well.

Recompress folder, rename back to TinyBook.JAR so now your books are inside the zip/jar.

Edit TinyBook.JAD with a text editor.

Look for line “MIDlet-Jar-Size: ######”

Change size to match exactly the newly created jar file.

Copy both files to the phone.

On phone:
Open the “other” folder. (Hit menu, then 7, then 6)

Highlight TinyBook.JAD and hit “ok” (center button of d pad)

It will compile and install.
It will ask about being trusted: allow it to continue.

It will ask you where to put it, games or applications: its up to you. I put mine in apps.

Now go to apps (open phone, left on the dpad, 2)

You should see tinybook as a choice.

Remember to set you bookmark before you close the phone.

Controls:
UP, DOWN – prev page, next page
“*” – set bookmark
“OK” (center d pad) – go to bookmark
“#” – exit


Here is mine with At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft as book1.txt

This works on linux mac or windows.