Author Archives: Merlin Silk

Google, the new McDonald – Responsible for Many Big Butts

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Stumbling over the new Google Maps ‘MapsGL’ feature I was sent around the planet. First I went to the Westminster Abbey in England to check out – no, not Westminster Abbey, but – how 3D buildings look in the new Google maps.

After that I went to Rome, Italy to look at the Colosseum, first from the satellite view and then I admired Google’s switching over to a 45 degree view when zooming in.

OK, that’s what Google wanted me to do, but I am not the person to just follow what somebody tells me to – I want to explore! So, I tried Stonehenge, England. No 3D building or 45 degree views there but I was still amazed that this little spot on our planet gets so much attention from all over the world.

As I had never been to Stonehenge I now wanted to try a spot that I knew from a personal encounter to compare notes. The first that came to mind was the monastery of Montserrat in Spain, close to Barcelona. After just a minute with the help from my friends at Google I was there:

Click to go to the Google Local Page

That sure brought back memories. I had been there twice, once during a long stay in Spain with two buddies, and once later with a date. The interesting bit about the second visit was that then and there I decided to not do vacations any more. That was some thirty years ago and I have pretty much kept that promise to myself. Did not really miss anything, but made up for it by doing things a bit more radical. For example, instead of vacationing in California, I just moved there.

But when visiting there virtually after so many years I also realized how easy that trip had become – just a few mouse clicks and I was half around the world. When I was there the first times, I first had to get my body into Spain, then driving up that winding road, buying a ticket for the aerial tram and getting up to that summit.

Sure was good exercise and I was slim and trim (not that I am fat now!) But now makes me wonder how many big butts Google might be responsible for by just getting people to places virtually.

Google could be the next McDonald!

Tim Hawkins tells it how it is

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There is plenty of good information out there on the vast reaches of the internet promoting a society based on voluntary interaction – such a society would not have any room for a government, which is based on the initiation of force.

One of the biggest and most successful sites of this genre is Stefan Molyneux’s site Freedomain Radio. To my dismay, great talks from Stefan on Youtube get – maybe – a few thousand views, when I wished that millions of people would get this information.

Now, how happy was I when Nicole (thank you so much) told me about Tim Hawkins. He is a comedian, a co-home-schooler and, apparently, somebody with an anarchistic streak. What made me so happy was that his parody of The Candy Man Can – The Government Can – got nearly five million (in words 5,000,000) views.

That’s the exposure people who still think voting is a good thing need. Don’t misunderstand, I am not against voting. I am just against having to choose from the (slightly) lesser evil. I am all for the voting with you wallet, in that you only pay for what you really want. Could not imagine that you would really voluntarily pay for the war on drugs, the war on Irak, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. – or the health benefits of somebody you don’t even know.

You know I am talking about taxes, right? Extortion, that the nice politician that you just voted into office, extracts from you at gun-point, yes?

So, when you start voting with your wallet and don’t pay those politicians any more, then Mr. Hawkins will have to make some new song soon – but I am sure he would like that very much.

Without further ado, here is The Government Can…

And to help you sing along, here are the lyrics:

(Hey everybody! Gather ’round! I’m here to give you
anything you like! You want free college, money,
mortgages?! Whatever you like! You have come to the
right place! Why? I’ll tell you why!)

Who can take your money?
With a twinkle in their eye?
Take it all away and
Give it to some other guy

[Chorus]
The Government
The Government can!

Who can tax the Sun rise?
Who can tax the trees?
Let you run a business and
Collect up all the fees

[Chorus]

The Government can ’cause
They mix it up with lies and
Make it all taste good!

The Government takes
Everything we make
To pay for all of their “solutions”
Healthcare, Climate Change, Pollution
(Throw away the Constitution)

Who can give a bailout?
Tell us to behave?
Make the Founding Fathers
Roll over in their graves

[Chorus]

The Government takes
Everything we make
They’re power hungry
And malicious

The economics are fictitious
Soon we’ll have to eat our dishes
Mmm! Delicious!

Who can be a failure?
In so many ways?
Instead of getting fired, HEY!
We’ll give ourselves a raise!

[Chorus]

The Government can ’cause
They mix it up with lies and
Make it all taste good!
And your government can ’cause
they mix it with lies and
Makes it all taste good!

And I feel so good
Because the Government
Says I should! Oh!…

Being an American depends on the little word WE

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Interesting video that explains how using the little word ‘we’ instead of ‘us’ and ‘they’ has made it possible that one whole country can see itself as enemy of another, when most persons in either country would get along  just beautifully with any other person in the other country.

So, next time you notice a crook trying to make you an accomplice to his crimes by speaking of you and him as ‘we’ – be weary! I mean, if you get half of the loot, that might be OK, but if you are also the victim, it might be prudent to look if the little word ‘we’ is indeed correctly applied.

Story from a Minnesota State Trooper

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The following story came across my desk today:

I made a traffic stop on an elderly lady the other day for speeding on MN State Hightway 210 just East of McGregor, MN.

I asked for driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.

The lady took out the required information and handed it to me. In with the cards I was somewhat surprised (due to her advanced age) to see she had a Conceal Carry Permit. I looked at her and asked if she had a weapon in her possession at this time.

She responded that she indeed had a .45 automatic in her glove box. Something – body language, or the way she said it – made me want to ask if she had any other firearms.

She did admit to also having a 9mm Glock in her center console. Now I had to ask one more time if that was all.

She responded once again that she did have just one more, a .38 special in her purse. I then asked her what she was so afraid of.

She looked mew right in the eye and said, “Not a f—ing thing!”

On first sight, this looks like a funny story. But in my eyes there is some much wrong with it that we can really learn a lot from it.

The first, and most obvious is the elderly lady’s willingness to submit unquestioning to those she claims not to be afraid of. Why doesn’t she just use all that hardware on the person who stopped her with the intention to extort some money from her.

I don’t know if she was actually driving recklessly, endangering others so that the trooper had to intervene to save life and property of others, or if he was enforcing some random rules made by some men in black robes. Looking at the alleged location of this story…

… the second reason seems more likely.

Examining our own reaction this story allows us to learn to understand the real problem. We find this story funny but only because we all agree with the idea that what the trooper did was correct. Beside stopping her with the intend of robbing her for some made-up reason (speed limit), we are also not appalled by his inquiry into her exercising her rights that are already confirmed by the troopers superiors. She has a carry permit, so she can carry whatever she wants and does not have to answer to any lowly enforcer’s questions.

The only reasonable answer to the enforcer’s very first question should have been “None of your f—ing business!” But she probably knew that the only reaction to that answer would have been to be dragged out of the car and her acting upon her later statement of not being afraid of nobody. And that would have been the end of that trooper and we would have never heard of that story.

We might have heard it in a different way, as, for example, that a vicious female in Minnesota had murdered a trooper just doing his duty and the swat team that had been called in to hunt down this murderous beast had shot her 86 times – and only because the avengers ran out of bullets.

One question to leave you with – did you stumble over the trooper’s wording of “She did admit to also having…” or did you just read over this? If you did read over this without a serious growl in your throat then I have to sadly give it to you that you also consider yourself chattel of the ruling class.

A new look for Universal Serenity

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I love a good challenge.

And one of those was a few years back to build my new site Universal Serenity with Joomla. It was a whole new set of design principles and admin tool to learn but I did manage and managed to customized the template.

I learned about Joomla when it was just coming out with version 1.5 and initially many of the extensions were not available for this version, some are not tested well, and that made for a fast update cycle.

Early on I had decided that this site was to be very user interactive and so I invested into the extension JomSocial which adds facebook-like functionality to the site. Now I had to deal with two different update cycles and that turned out to take quite a bit of time.

Maybe this was one of the reasons that I did not work too much on the site to build it up to the point where I could really start to promote it. One other reason was that I had some nasty server crash – with insufficient backups – and I had to partially rebuild the site.

Reaching today – there was another big update necessary as the version 1.5 is coming to its end-of-life soon. I had skipped 1.6 but now it was time for 1.7, soon to be followed 2.5 (which was previously planned to be 1.8). This transition was more of a migration than an update as many internals had changed. But I got this handled in a day and that included scrapping the theme and starting with another, more modern, one.

I had run into a photo that I liked a lot and so that became the new face of the site. I also started now to work on blog posts within this site, and I called this part of the site Merlin’s Notes.

So far, Google does not come by enough to notice new post quickly, and one of the reasons for the post you are reading now is to change that, simply because Google appreciates MerlinSilk.com more and comes by way more often.

Let me know what you think of the new look and feel.

Claiming this Blog on Technorati

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This blog, the Magic of Life – A7KF79FFCMW3 – is not my first blog, but it is by far the one with the most posts and actually has developed from the very first blog, published on the New Civilization Network as Zensory.com.

Today I noticed that I had not claimed this blog as my own on Technorati. I remedied this situation and the process of claiming a blog requires me to post a blog post that contains a code that technorati assigned to me.

The purpose of this post is to tell technorati – yes – this is my blog – and my claim token is the beautiful

A7KF79FFCMW3

Now I stand back and see how long it will take – technorati already told me that they have a backlog and it might take a while – just have no idea how many seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years “a while” actually is.

The Idea of Freedom is definitely not new

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I always equated Charlie Chaplin with comedy, but when I look back, the most memorable scene I remember, is a bitter-sweet scene from City Lights. In fact, beside some shorter clips on TV I did not actually see much of his work.

But after seeing his speech in The Great Dictator I have to change that. I was surprised that this movie is actually not available on Netflix.

Proof of Presidency

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The following true story is told about Mr. Obama, but I believe it applies to each and every (career-) politician out there:

President Obama walks into the Bank of America to cash a check. As he approaches the cashier he says, “Good morning Ma’am, could you please cash this check for me?”

Cashier: “It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?”

Obama: “Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn’t think there was any need to. I am President Barack Obama, the president of the United States of AMERICA!!!!”

Cashier: “Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the regulations and monitoring of the banks because of impostors and forgers and requirements of the Dodd/Frank legislation, etc., I must insist on seeing ID.”

Obama: “Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am.”

Cashier: “I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I must follow them.”

Obama: “I am urging you, please, to cash this check.”

Cashier: “Look Mr. President this is what we can do: One day, Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putter and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed his check.”

“Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot whereas the tennis ball landed in my cup. With that shot we cashed his check.”

“So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the President of the United States?”

Obama stood there thinking, and thinking and finally says: “Honestly, my mind is a total blank… there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can’t think of a single thing. I have absolutely no idea what to do.”

Cashier: “Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?”