Seen this way makes things a bit more obvious, right?
FDA Recalls Pot Pies
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Category Archives: Video
G-Male – that’s how it’s spelled correctly
If you are a gamer you know Donkey Kong. It was actually the first game my son ever had. I just learned that when I asked him how it’s spelled.
Spelling! This brings us close to the crux of this little article. The name is a translation error, a spelling error between languages, so to speak. Have you ever wondered why a game about a monkey is called DONKEY Kong? Rumor has it that it’s simply a translation error – the Japanese translator just mistook the D for an M and now we are stuck with a Monkey called Donkey. Other data suggests that the Japanese character creator used Donkey as a representation for stubbornness and Kong to indicate the monkey-ness (King Kong is a apparently a term for the generic big ape.)
Whatever is right – I like the first explanation better and stick with it, especially as it allows for a much better transition to the following video that shows that Gmail has been spelled incorrectly from the very beginning.
Here is the correct version – G-Male – and what it really means…
The Logic of Logic
I am sometimes torn between my scientific and spiritual side. Educated in the sciences I appreciate cold pure logic. So, when I run into a lecture likes this by Peter Boghossian…
…I might have my spiritual world shaken up.
When Dr. Boghossian explains that faith-based processes are not reliable, I have to admit that he is right. When he shows us that homeopathy does not work, I am tempted to laugh with him about the ridiculousness of faith in a remedy that does not contain anything (but water). According to homeopaths, the remedy does contain the ‘essence’ of the substance. But ‘essence’ is not something than can be measured, so it really IS only water.
What do I do to get back to my spiritual base?
First of all I have to allow myself to be exposed to ridicule for believing in something that science can’t see. But then I also have to make real to me that there was a time, not very long ago, at that, when we could not measure radioactivity. If somebody at that time postulated something that could kill you within the shortest time without being felt, smelled, or seen, this person would have been certainly ridiculed. I make it clear to me that we cannot measure the ‘essence’ of a substance – yet!
Beyond that argument I try to wrap my mind around the question if we are possibly only looking into a self-fulfilling closed system. Results of religious believes are often explained as self-fulfilling situations – if I believe in the resurrection of Jesus with all my heart and don’t allow any other possibility, I might actually have an apparition that is as real as the cop handing out a ticket for kneeling in the middle of the street.
If this works for a single person, then a group of people can certainly increase the effect and we have those events where blind start seeing and lames start walking. Science has looked at those events with double-blind studies and found that they are all humbug. Yet, they cannot duplicate a parameter they are completely unaware off, so the double blind study might miss essential parameters.
Thus I clarify for myself that science itself is in no way different than the faith they investigate. It is just a different faith – a faith that requires a multitude of observers that all observe the same.
Comparing this with a vivid dream might make this more obvious. Imagine a dream in which you can fly. And also make this a dream where you have a sweetheart that can fly with you (yes, I am thinking of Douglas Adams.) Then add another element that there is a big crowd that cheers you on as you swoop through double barrels and looks deeply embraced with your sweetheart. Would any member in this dream doubt that you two fly?
But, but, but … that’s a dream, that is different!
To which I have to answer: Says who?
Just as I could imagine that in my dream I introduce a scientist that does not believe and demands double-blind studies, so can I imagine that in ‘real life’ I introduced those scientists that tell me that homeopathy is humbug and that they have proven it beyond any reasonable doubt.
For me it boils down to the question if the ‘real life’ is any more real than my dream. And I have to admit total inability to answer that question. Simply from the fact that while I am in the middle of my lucid dream I don’t know that I am dreaming.
Maybe I am dreaming now – I would not be able to tell until I wake up – until then the question has to remain unanswered.
Up to that point any logic is self-contained logic, conclusive within itself, and the logic of science has no more relevance than the logic of astrology or reading tea-leaves. I might have preferences, but that is solely my own, personal decision.
Seeing Without Your Eyes
I used degrading eye-sight as an excuse to replace my 24 inch monitor with a 32″ TV – and I love it. Now, when I am at the other office with only a 24″ monitor I sometimes have to put reading glasses on to see the smaller part of the photoshop interface.
The idea that, as we get older, our eyes get weaker and we accept to use glasses. There seem to be a strong correlation between the eyes and seeing.
But I have been suspicious for a while that this is not the whole story. Simply because sometimes – and I have not found the pattern – my vision is just perfect. And if it would be weaker eye muscles and less elastic lenses would be the only reason for declining eye-sight, then this would not make sense.
The following video of a painter, born without eyes (!), gives more fuel to that line of reasoning. Now, what really is seeing?
The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels
Did you enjoy your history classes in school?
I believe there is hardly anybody who will answer ‘yes’ to this question, and I believe this to be by design. People at the helm, the so-called ‘leaders’ are usually not the smart and productive ones. Otherwise they would not have to resort to plunder. So we can not expect them to be very creative in inventing new ways of cheating the productive part of the people out of the fruit of their labor.
They have to look at successful actions in the past. But as these actions are always doomed and not very long lasting it would be very bad for business if others would recognize their actions and see where they lead.
Thus history lessons have to be made so boring that nobody wants to even look at them. Trying to actively hide them would not work because a good mystery will always cause interest and that is definitely something that must be avoided.
Making it boring was therefore a very good move. If a noticeable number of people would be interested in history – even the rather recent one like that of the Hitler empire – they would see the plain parallels in today’s events.
Hitler for example used the word Vaterland (fatherland) and the emotionally charged word to rally the people behind his agenda. ‘Homeland’ feels pretty close to that. Both don’t have any real meaning as a farm in Maryland is as little my home, or fatherland as a farm in China. The current owners of both would kick me off if I were to go there and life there now. If something is not mine it is not mine independent of where it is.
But beside making the real history, one that tried to convey reasons behind events and not only the date, a mock-history is sold and promoted by Hollywood. This fake history causes people to believe that they know what went on and so there really no reason any more to do some actual research into cause and effect.
All these ideas are not new and all over the past the few who could look and see realized this reality. One such evidence is the essay “The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels” by Lawrence W. Reed, the director of The Foundation for Economic Education. This was a talk given in 1979 and is read by Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio.
Or see it directly on YouTube.
Aaron Russo – Freedom to Fascism
The very last work of Aaron Russo, a very successful manager and film maker (Bette Midler, Trading Places) was a documentary, that, while in the making, had been seen as the possible end to much of government tyranny. And with what it shows it should be – but apparently there are the powers that like conditions as they are and the movie bogged down in the distribution.
In pre-screenings the movie had received standing ovations but due to the lack of wide distribution into the main stream, the movie had limited impact.
I ran into the following interview in which Mr. Russo, not too long before he succumbed to cancer, told much of his story.
Size Does Matter
Usually ‘size does matter’ has something to do with bigger is better. Here I mean it the other way: smaller is better. At least that’s the idea of the tiny house people. I ran into this idea a few years back and it just fascinated me then and now that I am re-visiting I thought I better put it up on my blog so that I don’t forget.
So, here it is…
If I combine this with my idea to have a property where it takes me half an hour to get from the entrance of the property itself to the door of the house, it becomes even more unusual – have a 20 acre property with a 200 square foot house. Maybe I can have a few houses on the property though.
Anarchy is Old
Discovering and developing the anarchist mindset over the last few years, all these ideas seem to be new and novel to me.
Yet, while researching the history of the concept of voluntary interaction instead of force, I am finding that the ideas I encountered first through modern anarchists like Larken Rose or Stefan Molyneux are not really new, but that these people stand on the shoulders of others that have carried the torch of personal liberty before them.
Just as for me personally the ideas become clearer and more obvious with the time I am exposed to them, so the ideas themselves have become clearer and self-evident through the attention they get from thinkers and philosophers through history, and will, most likely, continue to develop.
Today I watched a video made in the 80s that I want to share here…
It helped me find another resource that I will now research further – Emma Goldman. Thanks to the internet and mp3 I can now fill my time in the car with the study of a very early anarchist.
Another proponent of the idea of personal liberty who I am still wrapping my mind around, is Richard J. Maybury. (Thank you, Nicole, for introducing me!) He does not call himself an anarchist, even though, judging by his ideas, he probably is one, or at least close to one. It would be hard for me to understand why, if one understands the inherent dangers of governmental powers, one then would continue to support it, even on a very limited level. If rape is bad, then you want to get rid of it and don’t keep a little bit of it, just in case there is a psycho who needs to let off some steam.
So, Richard, I call you as an anarchist, even though it would be nice to have a word for the proponent of a stateless society that is not also a synonym for the initiator of chaos and mayhem. This brings up a point that is also made in the movie above: using the concept (and word) of patriotism as support for one’s country as well as its government, while in fact the two are very different things.
I can certainly love my country and everything it is – thus being patriotic – without also supporting those people who are claiming it – unjustified, I might add – as theirs, including all the workforce in it. Thinking of it, I believe that, in order to be patriotic, I would have to do everything possible to rid a country claiming to be free, of the elements that try to enslave the people living in it.
But back to Richard Maybury. I just finished his book Whatever Happened to Justice, in which he explains the difference between natural (common) law and political law.
One little tidbit jogged my mind. It is an example for the fact that under natural law all people are treated equally, including government officials. I want to quote this here:
The Criminal Justice Museum in Rothenburg, Germany, has a copy of the Sachsenspiegel, the common law of the Saxons, which was used as a top law-book from 1220 until 1900. It explained how to bring suit, inheritances, property rights, guardianships, and so on. So that illiterate persons could read and understand, each law was illustrated with a picture.
Exhibits in the museum show that German law was especially hard on government officials who were caught committing fraud. In Augsburg, Germany, if the head of the government mint were caught debasing and inflating the coinage, the penalty was loss of a hand. If his inflation amounted to more than 60 pfennigs ( 4.8 ounces of silver, about $25 in today’s money) he was burned at the stake.
Consider this in light of our current situation where politicians print money as if there is no tomorrow, thus debasing and inflating our money. I wonder how many of our “elected officials” would run around without hands and char-coaled.
Synergy of Photo and Music
Since the day I understood that taking photos is not something only American tourists in Germany do, but that it can, in fact, be an artistic expression, I have been able to appreciate a good photo.
I learned from the works of great photographers like Henri Catier-Bresson and studied whatever I could from resources like the Time Life Photography book series. During those old days, in order to have total control, you needed to spend time in the dark room – so I have this under my belt as well.
The latest photographer whom I added to my list of people to learn from, is Trey Ratcliff. He is a master of High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) photography. But one of the first thing he did for me was keeping me from finally buying a DSLR camera. Just when I was about ready I read his posts about mirror-less exchangeable lens cameras, and now I don’t know if I should wait a bit until the field of those cameras gets a bit bigger. But I have to admit, right now the brand-new Rebel t4i is a bit tempting.
So, yes, his photos impressed me, but today they climbed another step on my appreciation- ladder when I watched them in form of a slide show with music by Hans Zimmer – somebody I never heard of before but who is apparently one of the big guys in the music business having done things like the sound track of the Lion King.
Here is that slide show, I would recommend switching to HD and watching it full screen…
The synergy is breath-taking: the music wins tremendously by the visuals and the imagery adds much to the sound-scape. It’s a hand-and-glove situation.
Good Public School
After avoiding public school for my son for many years, he is now demanding to attend high school in a ‘real’ school – – as if home schooling is not real!
I certainly will not oppose this, because it is his decision to experience it, but I am allowed to feel reluctant that this is the right course to go.
After seeing the following TED talk by a public school teacher my reluctance has diminished and made way for the feeling that you can actually find good teachers anywhere…