real world use for our thought experimenting exercises

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I give you this link because I think the guy is good at giving visuals that help people get an idea of what might actually be taking place while confronted with information we know is bogus. He seems to be downplaying it all, but not in the same way as most of the liars and instapundits. He seems to be addressing the seriousness of it. He discusses some of the mechanisms of the plutonium popping up in soil samples, and why monitors can't monitor it. He does NOT, so far as I have seen here yet, mention the Sacred MOX. He's used by the Maddow fascist on MSNBC, and that would be because he won't step over the line. So you MUST bear in mind the guy isn't telling the whole truth, is steering clear of it, or you will be fooled by him. The one good reason to risk tainting your understanding is the chance to enhance it, and if you've been practicing that special kind of attention I keep mentioning around here, maybe you can do this.

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I mean, how long can you read shit like this:

Fukushima nuclear complex has been found to have radioactive water leaking into the sea from a cracked concrete pit.

In a discovery regulators said might explain the radioactive water that has hobbled efforts to quell Japan's nuclear crisis, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said the radiation in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour.

"With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

He cautioned, however, "We can't really say for certain until we've studied the results."

TEPCO is preparing to pour concrete into the pit to stop the leak, added Nishiyama.

before you start tearing your hair out in clumps in advance of the radiation doing it for you? Monster quake? Cracked cement? Who knew?

Maybe that soft-pedaling engineer isn't mentioning there is no pool to cool at Unit 3 because that's obvious, or mentioning that the MOX in it has anything to do with the plutonium readings in the soil because that too is obvious, and maybe he's not mentioning the decimated reactor and cement under it because that, too, is obvious. That might be stuff he covered before I bothered to listen to some of his explaining on his website. It seems to me they've all been threatened with death if they speak of Unit 3. Say what you will about any other reactor, but mention Number 3 and you're a dead person.

The AP, however, the one that gets everyone by one means or another, says they've discovered a crack in the cement under Unit 4... three weeks into the meltdown. Oh, oh! No wonder all these half-assed measures have only let the problem worsen. The concrete is cracked! So, darn, all that work that would have been righteous has been foiled by this entirely unforeseeable nuance... that now must be studied.

I think, possibly, the power companies have fired all their scientists and engineers in favor of minimum wage workers, and the management of all of them couldn't add up to one brain between them. All that operates at any of them are the receivables departments and the stockholders' automatic deposits. Anyone who would know what to do has been paid not to even think it, and deaf, dumb and blind capitalism will out.

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And Fascists Love Ineffective Protest....

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love, 99
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last night in out there

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I am listening later, rather than sooner, because of the commercials problem.

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If you prefer to stick to more sober issues, perhaps you would like to go back and meditate on the anthrax attacks travesties. I am wanting to post this for everyone here, not because of the subject as much as the man's horror at our national volitional blindness. That part has been getting on my nerves something awful lately and my pressure of speech would be at least as high as his if given the opportunity to hold forth on it in public.

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love, 99
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oh, oh, right, by all means, yes, let's keep gossiping about this shit

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I mean, heaven forfend we should ever DO something about it.

FUCK.

STOP BEING IDIOTS!

No. No. Really. What the hell is the sense in posting about the feds thwarting their own terrorist plots, over and over and over again? It's not STOPPING it! Nobody's DOING anything about it. We all just keep letting them run their numbers on the numbskulled hordes. So do we think we're clever or something? Whut? WTF are you thinking? You're not still making up track lists for the Duped Muslims... ARE you? This has been done and again so many times that bringing it up really IS just frickin' GOSSIPING by now.

SNAP OUT OF IT!

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love, 99
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we're shocked

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Not.

I don't really understand why it isn't apparent to people that none of these creeps are doing their jobs, doing a goddam thing more than they are told. Nobody does more than that at work anymore. I've wondered for long why everything has not simply collapsed, but see the power of belief really does enable pigs to fly. But especially with this global economics gig. There isn't any solving it that doesn't get you serious grief from bad, bad criminals. I guess maybe the power of denial enters into this too. It might be proof positive that the alternative researchers are RIGHT about what powerful beings we are.

Still, the splat we are landing with seems to vindicate the power of ignoring above all....

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love, 99
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let me splain something to you

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Why, you might ask, do I refuse to participate on blogs that make you log in? The big excuse for this, of course, was for the ability to better manage trolls and spammers and hackers. This is bullshit, on crack, on its face. It hardly slows any of those things. It has been about demographics, and especially about squeezing more ad revenue out of those who keep their cookie folders resolutely shut.

It gives an edge to "search engine optimization". You know what buzz words to put in your post titles. You know what labels or tags get you the most traffic. You allow your advertisers to know all about your visitors' online activities. You provide the controllers with ever-improving mechanisms to control us and you. All this on top of just giving the individuals who use this feature a vastly better idea of what subjects to stay off and which subjects to hype more heavily in their quests for popularity.

You might forgive them for wanting to be popular. Some of them have important things to say. Well, their importance diminishes when they start tailoring what they say to what you like the most, and when they finally start getting into the really successful zone, they learn very quickly to make sure what they say can give less offense and preserves their popularity. It just flows into packing another once-outside-the-box site into the box we must escape to save ourselves, to save the world.

This also relates to the sites that encourage you to have your own blog on their site, that let you hold forth at any length and attract commentary from the greater community at that site.

And, the social media sites? They don't even bother to be subtle about it.

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I forgot to mention that this includes sites that use the various free commenting platforms available out there. Some sites that use this cookie and flash cookie and other means of identifying your online behavior do allow you to participate without logging in, and content themselves with the basic information about their commenters they can glean from their admin pages for these systems... and, I'm sure, with paid arrangements with those providers.

The same thing is true, not to a personal advancement extent, with Blogger. Google gets yer demographics and shares them with you if you are so crass as to put their ads on your blog, but otherwise, it all really just goes into Google's ocean. So, I also took Google Analytics off my blog. It won't keep them from putting cookies on your machines, but it keeps them somewhat aback from hassling ME to put their ads here and obviates any occasional urge I have to look and see how I'm doing now as compared with then, any trends. I can't care about that and it slows things here and ONLY helps THEM.

Be assured I will get my own page with its own commenting system with all speed the very moment enough manna drops into my lap.

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nobody thinks we've left iraq, do they?

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I mean, c'mon, this is lame....

Your starving kids will be scrambling for jobs with these contractors.

Unless, of course, you stand up.

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oh, no

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Oh, no, no, no.

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the coldblooded need a warmer planet

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BB2 wants to know if I can swim. I am a great swimmer... except I don't float right. Most people bob straight up to the surface when they just let themselves go limp. I, on the other hand bob straight up to a foot or two below the surface and stay there unless I thrash and kick. My father has the same problem.

It's probably wrong of me to share these links with you. This may be the change Dear Leader was mentioning on the stump all the time, but it has been made clear he's not about to deal with it and neither is congress and neither are millions of people who have been driven to the depths of psychosis in their extreme aversion to the notion of oligarchs taking over the world and making us pay carbon taxes. No amount of reminding them that the oligarchs already have control of the world and we are already paying the most outrageous carbon taxes imaginable seems to settle them into any mode of planning to undo these brute facts. Hell, ANY brute facts. Nossir. It's easier to scream at those of us who wish to face facts and do whatever it takes... scream until we are ready to die of frustration.

Don't stand up. Continue to pick on people and concepts more your size. Pay no attention to that space lizard behind the curtain. Get mad at all the wrong people and maybe you can pick some of them off for the rulers of the world who don't want them here anyway. Much more doable plan. Don't stand up. Sleep walking is dangerous.

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pardon me

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This is just so stupid and pathetic that it made me start bawling my eyes out right here in front of the tubes. My Mac is drenched. I am drenched. I have not the strength to shoot myself.

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as daft as the olympus business

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Swinging from one dominant paradigm to the next might be evidence of great thinking, but not of an ability to discern truth.

The two most surprising ideas in Plato's hidden philosophy may be explained simply. First, the musical and mathematical structures he hid in his writings show that he was committed to the radical idea that the universe is controlled not by the gods on Olympus but by mathematical and scientific law. Today we take it for granted that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, but it was a dangerous and heretical idea when it struggled for acceptance in the Scientific Revolution of the 1600s. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake and Galileo was condemned and imprisoned. After Socrates was executed for sowing doubts about Greek religion, Plato had every reason to hide his commitment to a scientific view of the cosmos. But we now know that Plato anticipated the key idea of the Scientific Revolution by some 2000 years.

It is the better part of valor to nest it inside your work such that it is difficult or impossible for succeeding generations to ruin, but it needs to be real—as contrasted with the human attraction to elegant symbolism and beauty—to make it worth the effort... on either end.

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did any of us ever doubt this?

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Is this some kind of surprise? Did ANYONE, anywhere, let alone the United States, actually think an invading army paying big money for "bad guys" was doing anything more than rounding up punching bags for our terror campaign? Wasn't that EVIDENT on its face? WHO in the whole world honestly doubted this was bogus, was anything more worthy than a thug showing off his superior capacity to frighten everyone into submission to his will?

I'd call Wilkerson a Boy Scout, but I think Boy Scouts are generally less credulous, harder to fool.

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no imagination

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I mean, I don't know for sure because maybe the restroom wasn't anything like we have here, but this was carrying it too far by parsecs... don't you think?
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yes

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I don't want to hear any bitching against the right wingnuts anymore. Wingnuts dissing wingnuts is just too stupid and hypocritical too be endured. I stopped moderating for Brad and stopped searching for anything good at the rest of Groupthink because my purpose is to be a good friend to you... an actually good friend to you. That they didn't even START with Single Payer on the table was bad enough, but what we are left with, and what Rahm assured Cinderella was true has come true... because of wingnuts... because of partisan dupes getting so caught up in theatrics they can't see at all anymore. I may need a guide dog to drive me to town, but I can see reality plain as day.
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a pyromaniac's dream

[click image of methane bubbles, because you can't SEE it when it's being released from thawing permafrost on land]

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Agent BB2 is endeavoring to make clear to you the seriousness of methane being released from thawing permafrost. He provides a short video of the "silver bullet" argument in favor of immediate action against global warming, EVEN if you don't believe the science. That video appalls me because, simple as it is, it is way more complicated than the dirt obvious reasons everyone should get behind all out, no holds barred, global action against climate change... but you should go take it in.

And while we are about pondering the dirt obvious, have a look at methane in action in the science lab... and then, just in case the nomenclature is still too abstract for you, take a look at a dirt simple explanation of exactly WHAT methane is....

They tell you in earthquakes you should immediately turn off the gas main to your house. This is because one of the biggest risks in quake damage is the fires from broken gas lines. Many people who wish to kill themselves simply close their kitchen windows and doors, stuff rags and towels into any other areas that might still let too much airflow pass through and then turn on the burners and oven in their gas stoves, omitting to light them. The kitchen fills with METHANE and they asphyxiate. Ask anyone.

We are turning our planet into Sylvia Plath's kitchen.

Or maybe you'd prefer to wave it off....

not their prezident

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The people of Georgia seem to be about as effective at protest as we are.

Used to be that governments just about everywhere paid attention to protests and made some accommodation to get that blot off their landscapes, but I guess that was just a short window in history or something. And, of course, you have places where mass protest really is more effective because the protesters aren't willing to just go home, denied. They press it until the offenders coöperate, or are ousted, but, well, this involves quite a bit of pain, and not infrequently loss of life, to accomplish. Power does not cede itself unless it is forced, forced as in the use of violence or the strong likelihood of violence being used on it by dint of sheer numbers. It doesn't just go, oh, they don't like what I'm doing, I guess I better stop. That just never is the way it goes. Power wants power over that too.

So even though the evil jackass tool, Saakashvili, is thoroughly reviled in Georgia, and they protest in big numbers all the time, he just says, nope, yer stuck with me till 2013 and, uh, for some completely opaque reason that seems to hold. No, really. So shortly after the huge success of our American-backed Rose Revolution, suddenly the people are completely helpless? Is that right?

sorry, no credit

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China has 'canceled US credit card': lawmaker
Thu Apr 30, 6:11 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – China, wary of the troubled US economy, has already "canceled America's credit card" by cutting down purchases of debt, a US congressman said Thursday.

China has the world's largest foreign reserves, believed to be mostly in dollars, along with around 800 billion dollars in US Treasury bonds, more than any other country.

But Treasury Department data shows that investors in China have sharply curtailed their purchases of bonds in January and February.

Representative Mark Kirk, a member of the House Appropriations Committee and co-chair of a group of lawmakers promoting relations with Beijing, said China had "very legitimate" concerns about its investments.

"It would appear, quietly and with deference and politeness, that China has canceled America's credit card," Kirk told the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American group.

"I'm not sure too many people on Capitol Hill realize that this is now happening," he said.

The Republican lawmaker said that China was justified in concerns about returns from finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were bailed out by the US government due to the financial crisis.

Kirk said he was the first member of Congress to tour the Bureau of Public Debt, which trades bonds, and was alarmed at how much debt was being bought by the US Federal Reserve due to absence of foreign investors.

"There will come a time where the lack of Chinese participation may have a significant impact," Kirk said.

"We should track that, because up until last month they were the number one provider of currency to the United States and now they're gone."

With China's economy also hit by the global economic crisis, Premier Wen Jiabao has openly voiced concern about the status of his country's investments in the United States.

China has also floated replacing the dollar as the key international currency with a basket of units bringing in the euro, sterling and yen.

i respect jeremy scahill's work

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His work on Blackwater/Xe has been outright dazzlingly good, and I recommend that you take seriously anything he puts out for public consumption. Willful ignorance is a sin, and mobs of "liberals" are committing it.

raining cats and dogs

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Since about midnight last night it has been mostly pouring... with some short breaks. Trisha turns on the tv in the kitchen first thing in the morning to catch the news and traffic reports. Waaaaaaay too depressing for persons without coffee in them yet! Between the fatalities on the way to work, there were reports of football players lost at sea, and the odd murder and other items along those lines. All delivered by damnably chipper persons for being dressed and out in that mess, and, of course, for that mess. This rain is supposed to keep up through tomorrow... when I'm wanting to be on the road. I wish Der Governator would have held off declaring this drought emergency until next week so the road wouldn't be such a death trap while I'm on it!

My friend Old Uncle Dave calls this "having the power"... Ahnuld's got it.

I swear, it's as if none of these people had Coach Shepherd teach them to drive in high school. You don't drive like a pinhead in the rain! You reserve that for when you're drunk and no one else is on the road. Harebrained SUV drivers acting like they are in Porsches, and pea-brained Porsche drivers acting like they are in space shuttles. It's really quite as though they have no grasp whatever of the most basic laws of physics... except this weird faith in gravity... and... man... it doesn't apply like they think it does, I can tell you that much for dead certain.

dreadful decay of dharma

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You do not burn yourself alive over not being allowed to perform a stupid ceremony. You do not give your life for religion. You give yourself in defense of life, to ease the suffering of sentient beings. That was just stupid, and the whole bit about Buddhism being made into a religion is just stupid. The dharma is there to impart a specific message, it's the key to understanding reality, NOT a fucking religion. Motherfucking stupid willfully ignorant fountains of false piety drove that poor kid to martyr himself for NOTHING, for zero, zilch, nada, bukes!

Fuck!

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And, well, ya know, I have to get up from this cussedly inferior machine betimes, missing out on a lot of my usual rounds, and went off in service to the ever-demanding rulers of this roost... the cats. Doors must be opened, and cans of food. The punishment is dire and unrelenting if you don't perform. So I was out with a cigarette just behind the eaves drips, the cutoff between dry and very wet, thinking about the documentary I watched years ago with the stupid and pathetic Tibetan nuns telling of being outcast and worthless and as good as dead from having been raped by Chinese soldiers in their efforts to obliterate the Tibetan religion. You can't obliterate the dharma. You can rape it ceaselessly and it doesn't lose its adamantine incandescence. If a Buddhist nun could be stripped of her nuntude for having been raped, she was never a Buddhist nun, or those who conferred this distinction on her weren't Buddhists, just bald guys in dresses.

Then my mind traced over what I was trying to say to Trish about homosexuality, about sexuality in general, in America, and never seem to be able to find the right words to express what I mean. I am for human rights and for anyone who wants to get married being able to get married, but I don't exactly approve either. It isn't just homosexuality, it's sexuality in some of the forms it takes. Many homosexuals insist they are only able to emotionally bond with a member of their own sex, and I doubt that is true for some and believe it is true for many. Whatever. It's their right in any case, but I have had too many gay men tell me they chose to be gay because women are just too much work, too demanding of the kind of attention they are unwilling to give. Too many lesbian couples have very frankly confessed to me they are together because men are too brutal or unfeeling and too much work, whereas they can have a fulfilling relationship with each other and just forget all that trouble over men.

And guess what? Lots of heterosexual encounters, of whatever duration, are as bereft of emotional or spiritual attachment as these homosexual unions of convenience. They are all about on a par with rape... minus maybe the hatred and violence of intent.

I say you never have sex with someone you're not willing to be there for until you die... and not the kind where you only think that because you are besotted, but the kind where you know that because you know who you are. This horrifies people. I'm not even talking getting married, before or after. Real love-making is itself marriage. And I'm not even saying it has to be only with one person. But they are still horrified. They think I must not like sex, or I've turned into a censorious old prude. "It's natural. It's a basic animal instinct. It's as much a necessity of living as eating and pooping and breathing. It's beautiful." Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Then when I tell them there is intimacy far more gratifying than sex and more naked without ever disrobing, they really go batshit on me.

I have to say, too, that if you have been raped, get over it. It is one of the most horrible experiences there are on earth. It fills you with shame that seems to bubble up relentlessly from the center of the earth. The nightmares are unspeakably cruel. There really is so little worse than rape, but... GET. OVER. IT. The truth is: nothing has been harmed that you are unable to repair. Do the work. Repair. You hold on to that horrific victimization, all you are doing is violence to everyone in your life by that means... making everyone in your life feel the pain of your rape, and feel the oppression and frustration of dealing with all your excuses based on it. Get over it.

I'm pointing to a world far more lovely and lovable than the one we live in and one where people don't go around raping, with or without mutual concent, each other in the name of natural instincts, a world where young people are not misled to think that the mere means of preparing their minds for an important realization is so sacred in itself that they burn themselves alive, or get shot to death for trying to.

Still... fuck.

[You think my language is coarse? I think your world is coarse.]

mad cows

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I can't describe to you how I revile the ubiquitous "Digg It" icons. All the other such sharing conveniences. Why anyone couldn't postulate before putting up such a piece of shit idea that it would turn into pure groupthink almost immediately eludes me, unless it didn't elude them, and they just don't see anything wrong with it.