Category Archives: Philosophical

Cat Videos Can Make up to 30 Percent of Internet Traffic

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This is a number that nearly blew my mind but after serious consideration and a bit of research and good old fashioned investigation I have come to the conclusion that this number is not an understatement: 30% of internet traffic IS cat videos!

After finding the main source of all this traffic through this ground breaking documentary…

… I now believe that this is actually a great justification for the existence of the internet at large.

We have heard rumors that porn is driving innovations like home movies in the 50s and 60s and the VHS tape in the 70s and 80s, followed by the internet – but this smut can not stand up to the clean enjoyment of cat videos reaching each and every house on this PLANET. I am convinced that we would also find cat videos behind the wide spread of the VHS tape in the 70s and beyond, and not the porn!

Without doubt, cat videos are even the main trust behind bringing the internet into 3rd world countries.

I want to be like everybody else

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Today I started reading the book “The Art of Non-Conformity” and right there on the first page. Not that I wanted to stand out! – No Way!

But reading a book on how to do things are often a good source of ‘How to do the opposite.’

And right there on the first few pages I find invaluable information, that I just had to share.

11 Ways to be Unremarkably Average

  1. Accept what people toll you at face value.
  2. Don’t question authority.
  3. Go to college because you’re supposed to, not because you wont to learn something.
  4. Go overseas once or twice In your life, to somewhere safe like England.
  5. Don’t try to learn another language; everyone else will eventually learn English.
  6. Think about starting your own business, but never do it.
  7. Think about writing a book, but never do it.
  8. Get the largest mortgage you qualify for and spend 30 years paying for it.
  9. Sit at a desk 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work.
  10. Don’t stand out or draw attention to yourself.
  11. Jump through hoops, Check off boxes.

There you have it!

Obsolete Technology – yesterday – today – tomorrow

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I ran into this video teaching us  how to use a dial telephone…

… and that got me to think.

From today’s point of view, this is obviously funny; but I tried to imagine what things that we consider high-tech today will look really funny to my son when he is my age.

Speaking of my son – I have noticed one piece of technology that I grew up which he already has no personal experience with: the tick-tock of a clock. He might still know that a clock in the distant past did make such sounds but he has never heard that himself.

Or the first super-high-tech wrist watch I had – with red LED segmented numbers. These LEDs used so much power that I switch had to be pressed to turn then on – and off right away – to see the time. Very inconvenient at a party where you were fondling a glass of whiskey on the rocks trying to look as cool as your watch. Very uncool to put the glass down to be able to push the little button on your other wrist to realize that after two hours of looking cool you still did not have the nerve to talk to the cute brunette.

So, what’s the item with the biggest cool factor today? Maybe tablets like the iPad. I believe this is a good candidate to look ridiculous in 20 or 30 years. Imagine you lugging around a book sized slate – just like Moses did when he came down the mountain – just to access some information, or look up an address, while today (tomorrow) you just say your search term into the ether and the information materializes right in front of your eyes, or even better, you just pose the question in your mind and the answer is directly delivered to your own synapses via a synaptic interface – – who needs eyes – – maybe we have them closed at all times as all the experiences we have are virtual anyway. While we experience a rich virtual world our bodies are securely stored and fed through some tubes while at the same time acting as a power source for the computer system that runs the whole virtual world, and ….  hold on, doesn’t that sound somehow familiar?

Making yourself a slave

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I went to college in Germany (there called Universität) and the semester fees were about 23 Marks – maybe 10 Dollars. I lived with my parents but was registered at a friends house so that I could draw state funded study support, part of which was a loan. (I still owe some of that today, by the way.)

So, I have to say, my college education was pretty – – inexpensive. At least for me personally, maybe not so for the rest of the population. But my justification was always that later in my professional life I will earn well and pay lots of taxes.

OK, the latter did not really happen. First, I was self employed most of the time and I first saw my money in my account and then had to write a check (instead of it being collected before the wage earner even sees it), and that created a rather intense resistance, so I did everything possible to avoid writing big numbers on those checks.

And second, I left Germany after just about six or seven years.

At one point it becomes acute to think about those things for my son. He is still a few years away from any college thoughts, but eventually it will be something to consider.

Now I ran into this video that paints a bleak picture of the current college situation here in the old US of A…

There is not that much to add in terms of the facts, that it really does not seem to be worth to go to college any more, but what I do want to add is the following from my very own experiences.

I studied physics and got up to the equivalent of a masters degree – 6 years. It was fun to a bigger degree, especially my little stints down at CERN, to mingle with world class scientists – for example the internet was born down there (no, it was not Al Gore!)

But I did not go into a career in science, but moved into the computer field which was just then starting to be something to be reckoned with. What later became computer science was, in the beginning, manned by physicists and mathematicians.

So, after college I never did anything much of physics. I did practice forcing my will onto computers during my college days, but this was more or less a side effect because the experiments I conducted produced lots of data and we happened to have PDP 11 at the physics chair where I did my work. My first contacts with computers, a little bit before that, I had in my spare time when I taught myself to program a big IBM mainframe (I think it was an IBM 360) through the use of punch cards. I did this just because I was fascinated by these machines not because of any career goal.

All this happened during a time when in most cases you could still do the job you trained for, for the rest of your life. With the accelerated development in technology and science that is definitely not true any more. Sure, programming the PDP 11 in assembler gave me some basis but certainly did not prepare me for optimizing web sites and writing that occasional php application. All what I do now is self-taught and did not require me to sit in some auditorium and listen to a professor who has given the same lecture for the last 20 year, who can not be replaces by something younger and more up-to-date because he has tenure.

This is why I have to wholeheartedly agree with the implied conclusions in the above video that going to college at this time is a waste of time and money, and at these costs would just make you a slave for the rest of your life. It was scary for me to learn that not even a bankruptcy can get you out of these student loans – do I see debtor’s prisons on the horizon?

Maybe my son is really smart that at his young age he is really embracing the digital world, because that might be the area that we will be living in in 10 – 15 years. You better learn how to become an entrepreneur in Second Life.

Government is not Real

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This year all things seem to come together right on this one weekend

  • Memorial Weekend
  • School’s out
  • Summer weather

and particularly the first point makes me ponder the eternal question of ‘what is real’. It helped a bit that I also listen to a talk by Larken Rose, one of my favorite anarchists.

Let us look at my spiritual path for a moment and see if we can somehow apply this to my pondering.

On this path, I have now reached a point where I believe that I create my own world. This is often expressed as “The world IS as I see it” and not the other way around, something that I did subscribe to at some point on my path.

However, I have to admit that this is still, to some degree, a belief and not a certainty, as sometimes doubt creeps in. Occasionaly I wish for just one very good and solid experience to show me that something that I had just created in my inner world, was also visible to my physical eyes – that would be a nice thing to have and would remove all uncertainty, right? To give a rude example – I create a Ferrari in my inner world, go out the door – and there it is – in RED!

Unfortunately, these examples work both ways, so every time I create something in my own universe, and it does not show up in the one that I share with other, or believe to share with others, is like a punch in the teeth of my certainty.

If I could only find one (oh so) little example where it really worked – creating in my own world and finding it manifested in the ‘real’ world!

Today I understood that I’d better not look for little things only – I have a really big one right in front of me and after being able to see it – it’s undeniable.

“So, what is it?” you might now ask.

I was tempted to write some more sentences in order to build tension before I tell you, but I can’t stand this excitement myself any more – so here it is:

Memorial Day!

Huh – that makes no sense, this is something everybody knows and agrees upon – we honor our fallen heroes and celebrate that they are dead!

Maybe that did not come out right – ‘celebrate’ might not be the right word. Let me try it a bit differently and start at the beginning.

  1. We, as a group, came over here from Europe, mostly to escape slavery from the kings and the nobility that owned us.
  2. We made the mistake of bringing with us the conviction that others can own us – we did not leave this behind. Could have – but did not.
  3. With this emptiness inside, of a leader telling us what to do, we quickly got us a new set of rulers. We got us better ones that did not milk us as much as the old ones, but we allowed them to take rights that we ourselves don’t have.
  4. The first few waves of leaders were very gentle with these rights but slowly but surely the thumb screws were tightened, not in the arrogant ways of the rulers we had left behind, but instead with delicate psychology telling us “You are free” while putting the chains on.
  5. And we did not notice because we were still feeling the old chains, and their weight might have actually felt good because it was so familiar – and the new ones were a bit lighter, so all was good.
  6. Leaders, like every other group of people, do not always agree, but they never had the need to work out their differences themselves because they had us to go into battle for them, to find out who’s view was the right one.
  7. Smart as they were, they did not tell the families left behind something like “Oops, George did not make it – maybe in the future you next son has more luck – but don’t worry, everything went fine and I got what I wanted.” Instead they said the same thing but with words like “George put his life on the line for a [insert noble cause here] and in doing so, he became a hero. You should be proud!” And then they handed the happy wife/mother a shard of metal with ‘George – Hero’ scratched into it.
  8. As the years went on the reason for George’s demise was quickly forgotten but everybody remembered that he was a hero.
  9. All this because we forgot to leave behind in Europe the conviction that somebody can (and should) own us.

Now let’s see how this would have played out had we actually left that conviction back in the old world.

  1. We had come over here into the new world and had started to interact freely and voluntarily with each other, knowing that I own myself, and you own yourself, and that we have every right to do anything as long as it does not infringe in these very rights of others.
  2. Now a strange group of people might have come along, claiming rights that they themselves did not have, like stealing or making random rules that carried cage time if not followed. That would have been normal, every society breeds some of those crazy individuals but in this hypothetical scenario, where we all know that we own ourselves and can not give what we don’t own, these strange individuals would have just been put into the loony bin where they belonged – Imagine, the idea of ‘I have the right to take your stuff without an exchange and without your consent!’ – They must be surly mad!

Today then, we would not have one hundred million people that give away up to half of their wealth obeying the command of a few hundred (congress, etc.) who back up their ‘power’ with about one hundred thousand enforcers. A nice graphic representation of these ratios can be seen in the ‘The Tiny Dot.’

This article you are reading here right now, also demonstrates the ratio of Us v. Them – taxpayers v. IRS employees: it has about one thousand words. If this article represents Us, then the total of the enforcers is ONE WORD – 100 million v. 100 thousand – and of those latter the bigger part are only pencil pushers and not real ‘enforcers.’

Imagine how strange it is that this whole article is terrified of one word.

The only explanation that would make sense is that this power is a creation of all those one hundred million tax payers. On a logical level the few could not terrorize those many. Only when those many would create the existence of this power, which, in a so-called ‘objective reality’ is just not there, can this government (and any other) exist. Neither does ‘the law’ exist in some kind of ‘objective’ fashion as it was created by the few that we put into existence and which we could just as easily un-create if we so decide.

We only have to answer this one question for ourselves:

Who owns me?

Everything else falls into place automatically – there is no ‘government’ – no ‘authority’ that could possibly make rules which I have to live by.

JD Flora on the RPF

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Flemming’s Facebook wall post about Mr. Hubbard prompted me to dig through the Logs of JD Flora to find that one log that I enjoyed most as it so succinctly describes life on the lowest rungs of the group with the lofty goal to clear the planet. I particularly liked the character Marty – why? – because that is yours truly!

Log #81 – Rehabilitating the Rehabilitating

East Hollywood, July 25th, 1984, 11 pm

Marty claims that he never really was on the RPF’s RPF.

Really, he says, he never was on the RPF in the first place. He simply rejected the RPF assignment from the beginning, wrote an appeal to RTC, and assumed a waiting position.
This created a considerable problem for the RPF leadership. To them, there are just two possible choices once you have been assigned to the RPF: “Bow or Blow”.

When I saw the ethics officer or the Bosun talking to him about the redeeming values of the RPF and how great it would be to do the FPRD, their eyes and gestures expressed yet a different message:

“You got a car outside in the parking lot, more money than the entire staff of the Complex together – so why don’t you just blow the joint. We’re all looking in a different direction, nobody will try to hold you back. Just leave us alone !”

But no, Marty appeared at every muster in bright clothes, a sharp contrast to the dark blue, greasy outfit of the rest of the bunch.

What an embarrassment to the Bosun!

What if some staff watched the muster and discovered this disgrace to the entire RPF? Worse, what if some exec would report her to the RPF I/C ?

It was not that Marty would have tried to interfere with anything that happened on the RPF, nor that he would have spent his time elsewhere (although he was driving around in his huge Ford station wagon and went to the movies every once a while). He was just present, watching the show, often expressing utter amazement.

For example, when I together with some other not-so-tall guys went under the galley. This was a three feet high gallery underneath the galley for the purpose of routing excess water (and other stuff which I don’t want to mention here) into the public water disposal system.
Every once a while, things were getting clogged, and someone, usually from the RPF’s RPF, had to crawl in there through a tiny window in the wall of the floor underneath it. Equipped with rakes, the water and other things were getting moved into the drain openings.

At that occasion, I happened to witness some of the largest cockroaches on this planet. And I overcame the claustrophobia that I had after a while, too. The very special smell that one was taking on after such a mission made people turn around in shock more than a hundred yards away.

It took easily three days with lots of showers to get rid of the worst. Still, many weeks after this, when I was back at my parent’s home, my mother complained about a very strange and peculiar smell on me, and she couldn’t quite figure out what to make of it.

Back to the RPF. It’s time for ‘success stories’:

Paul waves his hands. He had been in Ethics for three straight weeks because he refused to own up to his own overts as witnessed by his aggravation after getting slapped by DM.
The Bosun points to Paul. “Your turn tonight, Paul!”. She smiles, knowing that his little speech will be an impressive testimony for the effectiveness and righteousness of the RPF, herself, the Church, the Founder, in short all decent people. Screw everybody else, they’re criminal minds anyway.

Paul: “Well, you all know that I’m here on the RPF for what seems a very long time. But one thing I realized after the great sessions I got from my twin Pete and after the excellent ethics handling I received for nearly a month. Actually, I realized so many things, eh, just too many to list.

“Eh. Really, I was so unethical for so many millions of years that it is a true miracle that everything, I mean EVERYTHING, could be cleaned up in just a couple of weeks in Ethics on the RPF!

“I finally as-ised the source of my constant out-ethics completely and I’m ready to go back on post again. It is absolutely amazing how effectively the RPF rehabilitates even the worst out-ethics! I want to thank the Bosun, of course. Without her my rehabilitation would not have been possible. I’m so grateful, I don’t find the words for it really…”

Paul sits down again and all people clap their hands.

The Bosun is flattered and tries to hide it.

“Great success story, Paul. Thanks for sharing! Who else wants to share a success tonight?”

Marty turns around on the chair to pick something up from the table behind him. The Bosun freezes. It looked like Marty would have raised his arm.

In panic, she whirls around and starts staring at the huge blackboard behind her. After being immobilized for a moment, she is shouting: “That’s it. Let’s give the Commodore a hand.” A standing ovation follows. Three hipp-hipp-hurrays. More applause. All for and to a picture at the wall.

Only Marty remains seated reading in a book.

I hear a soft, deep voice behind me. I look around but there is only an empty cabinet.
Something feels strange around and about me. It seems as if time would run slower and then faster again. Like impinged upon by a ripple in the fabric of space and time, my perceptions warped.

Then I heard the voice again.
“How would YOU go about it?”

– End of Log #81 –

In case that awakened your appetite, all three volumes are now for sale on Amazon and I am proud to tell you that I had the honor of editing and applying last touches to volumes II and III.

    

Politicians and Insanity

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Had an email exchange with Donna over the last few days. Thought that the last email I sent is worth being repeated here – putting my soap box outside, so to speak:

There is just some things out there that we can not grasp – like insanity. We can observe and accept, but never really understand.

I once was beaten up by some drunks and the first reaction to the punches were just total disbelieve that this is actually happening, only later did physical pain set in and that was actually not such a big thing as one would suspect.

In a little bit more detached way I can not believe (despite observing it) that there is a group of people who want to rule over others, including me. Just like insanity I can not grasp that, as in “wrapping my mind around it.” And I believe there are many like me, otherwise I can not explain that those people are getting away with that.

(Donna felt guilty about all the atrocities of war that had been committed by our ‘leaders’, so I said…) And I want to to stop blaming yourself for things you have not done – that is a slippery slope actually used by those people. Talking responsibility for what you have actually done is necessary for a sane life, but accepting guilt for things you have not done does the exact opposite.

The thing we do have to blame ourselves for is complacency, but not the killings that was started by those few insanes. It’s just with a broken down car. If the fan belt breaks and you change the tire, nothing will get fixed. So we have to find the right cause for what’s wrong.

And it is getting clearer and clearer to me that trying to argue logically with an insane person will lead to nothing but frustration.

The only way you handle a (known) lunatic, is to not react to what they do and suggest. We have to do the same with the (un-recognized) lunatics, called politicians. Yes, all of them! Because if somebody has the urge to rule others he IS insane. So, sorry, Ron Paul, but you are still supporting a system of insanity. During the last election I actually contributed to your campaign but I have not stopped learning since then. Choosing the smaller evil is still choosing evil.

The only thing that I have control over is myself. This is the only thing that I can change. Thus what I can do is seeing to it that my complacency does not lead to giving power to lunatics. No agreeing and, very similar to George Carlin – not believing anything anybody in Government tells me, especially (!!) if it seems to make sense.

 

There is just some things out there that we can not grasp – like insanity. We can observe and accept, but never really understand.
I once have been beaten up by some drunks and the first reaction to the punches were just total disbelieve that this is actually happening.
In a little bit more detached way I can not believe (despite observing it) that there is a group of people who want to rule over others. Just like insanity I can not grasp that, as in wrapping my mind around it. And I believe there are many like me, otherwise I can not explain that those people are getting away with that.
And I want to to stop blaming yourself for things you have not done – that is a slippery slope actually used by those people. Talking responsibility for what you have actually done is necessary for a sane life, but accepting guilt for things you have not done does the exact opposite.
The thing that we have to blame ourselves for is complacency, but not the killings that was started by those few insanes. It’s just with a broken down car. If the fan belt breaks and you change the tire, nothing will get fixed. So we have to find the right cause for what’s wrong.
And this is getting clearer and clearer to me that trying to argue logic with an insane person will lead to nothing but frustration.
The only way you handle a (known) lunatic, is to not react to what they do and suggest. We have to do the same with the (un-recognized) lunatics, called politicians. Yes, all of them! Because if somebody has the urge to rule others he IS insane. So, sorry to Ron Paul, but he still is supporting a system of insanity. During the last election I actually contributed to his campaign but I have not stopped learning since then. Choosing the smaller evil is still choosing evil.
The only thing that I have control over is myself. This is the only thing that I can change. Thus I will just see that my complacency does not lead to giving power to lunatics. No agreeing and, very similar to George Carlin – I don’t believe anything that anybody in Government tells me, especially!! if it seems to make sense. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY&NR=1)

What makes Cool Cool?

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Flemming introduced me to the violin-playing of Vanessa Mae.

Give me a break – the violin must be the most conservative and boring instrument of them all and I get stuck on Youtube watching all kinds of videos about her music?

This is how violin playing is supposed to look…

and not like this…

And then play music like this…

I mean – this IS cool violin playing! Made me think about what makes cool cool?

I told my son, who is now at the age where he thinks that accessorizing with cool things will make him cool, a story from the days when I still tried to find that which would make me be cool…

It were the days of our first cars at the end of high school. I personally certainly had the un-coolest car your could get, but it was all I could afford. In our class we had one guy who was just the coolest, Mike. He had, at that tender age, traveled the world on a shoe-string budget. He was so cool, that he did not even give in to female attempts to reel him him. How cool was that – something I dreamed of  – he just shrugged off!

Once, a few of us planed to go on a social visit to our favorite teacher. Only few of us had cars, my car was too small for all of us, so Mike offered to drive us and got the car from his dad and thus was our designated driver.

You might have to learn a bit about car culture in Germany at that time to grasp the gravity of the following.

For example, you could not drive an automatic – you would be considered a grandpa – but those cars were too expensive anyways so that was never an issue amongst us. At the top of the un-cool list, right after the automatic, was a station wagon with the shift-stick at the steering wheel and a single bench in the front.

And that was exactly the car Mike drove up in to pick us all up that evening to go, visit Hartwig! But believe it or not – that car did not make Mike un-cool, instead his coolness rubbed off on the car and it became totally acceptable to drive a Taunus or Ford station-wagon.

Applying that lesson to myself took many years, so I don’t necessarily expect my son to understand when I told him this story, but for me this example of the violin of Vanessa Mae re-enforced the lesson for me.

She just did not let the un-coolness of the violin rub off on her, instead she made the violin cool.

So, now, how can I apply that right now?

The Money Bag Month

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Calendar for July 2011 (United States)

This year, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years, which means we will most likely not see this again during our life time. It is called the money bag. According to the email that conveyed this information to me I will have to forward this to my friends and money will arrive within 4 days. This is supposed to be based on Chinese Feng Shui. The one who does not forward…..will be without money.

Obviously I could not take this risk – so – there you go…

Teach every child about food

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Just yesterday I ran into an old blog post on this site looking at Michelangelo’s David after a Big Mac Diet. What was most surprising to me was that there were comments that promoted ideas like “I had fast food as a kid and I’m OK!”

Less than a day later a TED talk by Jamie Oliver comes across my desk (email-inbox) addressing the same subject and actually showing how easy it can be to get David into his world known shape again.

There is only one thing where I believe Mr. Oliver goes wrong – and that is that we need the help of any government to handle the situation. While they were in charge the situation deteriorated so badly, how can be assume that they might be of any assistance to fix it? If you and I just do it right and be an example and don’t spread such misinformation as “I ate it and it did not hurt me” then the problem goes out with a whimper.

And if not then the situation also handles itself – in that the generation of low inner strength will die off – leaving the race with only the stronger elements. Guess I’m a bit pragmatic but I believe the wisdom of nature will find the right way to handle this – no need for misplaced emotional involvement.