Moonlapse

It was the twilight zone between my little scope of reality and reality.

I understand Celtic as relating primarily to the language followed by culture, since not all Celts shared the same culture. Linguistic and cultural change tend to spread more pervasively than genetics. This seems silly, it's all centered on the various subjective definitions of 'Celtic'.

Congratulations! Your blog sucked me in for a good while. Coincidentally, I happened to have stumbled on these earlier this morning... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO1ghQFSXro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr6bKNtp8Rs

I think RDRAM was only used with Pentium 4 chipsets. You could always go for a quad-core Mac Pro with the 30-inch Cinematic HD display, then for Christmas you can upgrade to 16 GB of RAM, 2 TB of storage, and an additional NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with a second 30-inch HD display. lol

In the current circumstances, yes... monolopies can become too powerful. This wasn't the case prior to the dissolution of independent agrarian families. The current system can't exist without fine tuned centralized controls, otherwise it would fall apart. Its a matter of being the master of your existence along with all the risks and hardships, or forfieting your mastery for the comfort of a utopian ideal. If there had been no controls on oil companies up until now, do you think so many people would be hopelessly dependent on cheap oil? How many independent innovators would develop homegrown alternatives? The fact that the government regulates before the citizenry take serious action reinforces the corporate state. Do you think that ethanol is really the answer to oil, or does this sudden push for this particular solution have more to do with ADM... ever wonder why corn syrup is in everything instead of cane sugar? Ethanol absorbs water into fuel, is much more inefficient than gasoline and currently uses as much - if not more - fossil fuel energy to produce than the energy it creates. True, war may accelerate invention, but the modern 'mother' is probably the positivist method. You don't necessarily need genius when you have a proven method. I tend to think that if the purposeful effort to bypass democracy in order to organize and control society as a whole in the nineteenth century has not happened, progress would necessarily have been made on a more individual level and at a more even pace. What I mean is that when society is readjusted to corporate methodology for the sake of progressive efficiency - factory schools, factory jobs, cubicles, mass media - then capital gets far more concentrated, increasing its widespread effectiveness - good or bad. If you support social insurance, you necessarily support the corporate state - they are part of the same system and always will be. That is the utopian system where the eventual goal is to eliminate any real hardship from life. If you support self-sufficient family units, you necessarily support the complete disintegration of the economic-social-state bond and the idea that surviving, overcoming challenge and passing real knowledge and tradition to the next generation is one of the fundamental meanings in life. Unless I'm mistaken, this is the essence of the lives of our founding fathers. Would you rather be the wild animal or the one in the zoo? Not everyone will answer this the same way.

Aye aye, Capt'n!!

At work today, my boss called a meeting of all the employees and surpised us with the news that the business was being shut down immediately. Apparently, the business had not been turning a profit for a while and it was time for him to cut the losses. Coincidentally, I had been half-heartedly job-seeking prior to this, with no result. Time to step up to the challenge, so I may be M.I.A. for a time as I find a new source of funding.

First of all, I am very critical of state empowered capitalism. My view points are laissez-faire in the sense that capital should not influence state function and state function should not influence capital. My specific views on specific topics tend to be a long time in the making since I really need some sort of concrete affirmation which is time consuming. Anyways, here are some of my extremely generalized thoughts: The Civil War essentially started a homogenization process. Coal, the steam engine, new methods of steel production, and an influx of migrants were ideal for the spread of railroads. Railroads really progressed the homogenization. Before, trusts were mainly localized due to the logistical limitations of horse travel. The potential of capital spread with the railroads. Another key element here is the popularization of the idea of purposefully structured, mechanical society a la Prussia. Much of this ideology finds its way into the legislative process and it remains there to this day. Why does the social structure of the pre-Civil War days, a purposeful departure from the English class system, morph into a pseudo English class system? The point is, the corporate methods of management infiltrated society by way of government. Society is actually much more efficiently used and predicted when it is homogenized and stratified into different functional parts. Think about school, think about work, think about government, think about society. There's a common thread that was introduced in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Anyways... this shift, by design, allowed a previously unseen concentration of wealth to be efficiently used to make progress, to make newer product. The way I see it, the people themselves would have eliminated the monopolies eventually, either through violence or coordinated non-violent efforts, or whatever. This would basically undo the 'progress' made since the Civil War. However, if the state assumes the role of overseer and manager of economic and social aspects, this dilemma is diffused. This is actually to the advantage of corporations. The social transformation, by joint effort of state and corporation, continues and we all go through school, segregated by age and social group, managed by an authority figure who tells us the information we should know and has us answer the questions we are supposed to ask. If we want to succeed in life, we need to succeed in this psychological factory and assimilate. We become excellent consumers, bits of predictable and easily influenced machinery in the regulated whole. We contribute to the concentration of capital instead of the diffusion, in order to make more innovative progress. We have a fundamentally unjust welfare system because the state has replaced the function of the family prior to the Industrial Revolution. So essentially, I think anti-trust is less about equality and more about the transformation of early America into the wanna-be utopia of modern America. The casualties of this process were not Rockefeller, Carnegie or Morgan. Capitalism is fine, it works. Just don't mix it with authority.

You should read an article by Russ Kick, published in the Disinformation book Everything You Know Is Wrong, titled September 11, 2001: No Suprise. It is a meticulous look at all the events and information that were publicly available leading up to 9/11 with complete references. There's about 47 separate incidents detailed, too many to mention here, but its truly a ridiculous read.

I've been writing my first real bottom-up web application for the past few weeks. When things start really falling into place and I can see real interactive results, I become obsessive to the point that everything else is nearly excluded from my thoughts - well, except for my obsession with the American history that was somehow left out of 12+ years of schooling. Lately, I've constantly had dreams where, for whatever ultra-bizarre reason, I'm attempting to grasp some stupendously unfathomable concept.... repeatedly.... and I wake up each time I almost succeed. As soon as I awake, I feel almost panicked and extremely confused. When I try to remember what exactly I was dreaming about, its just a dense haze of absurdity without even a tangible handle or word to apply to it. So, during the day I've been tired and cranky and sometimes even angry and resentful that I can't go home and obsessively program and read. Stupid dreams.

I agree, get something under your belt - it'll probably help you determine what you want to do. If you do find a passion later, at least you'll have the earning potential to fund more education.

Congratulations, sir!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5317942.stm Since I'm on an American history kick at the moment, this makes me ecstatic.

If you're going to talk about Africa you should look at something called the dependency ratio, the number of people who are too young or old to work compared to the number who are able to work. Sub-saharan African countries are typically 1:1, which is incredibly stifling to economic growth. All other setbacks are not realy the source of the problem, but additional aggravations. If you are going to talk about foriegn aid, you might as well consider charitable donations as well and find some real numbers, instead of referencing 'common knowledge'.

Aggg... wisdom teeth. I had all four out when I was 16 and had a prescription of Tylenol with codeine for pain... well codeine makes me vomit violently (twice, because I was a retard and didn't realize I was reacting to medication) and I ended up reopening the sutures. I won't divulge the particulars, but it gives me the willies just thinking about it.

This really inspires confidence in my democratic efficacy. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...oting_here.html Anyways... since Gaius has mentioned Thomas Paine in a few discussions, I nabbed a book on clearance at B&N called 46 Pages by Scott Liell and so far I'm captivated. I'll give some more opinion once I'm finished - which may be a while since I'm usually reading about 4 books simultaneously and randomly for whatever reason that eludes me.

Follow-up #1 It was there to begin with and has been purposely removed... in my opinion, that is.

It's taking me a while to get through it, I like to find additional information on the covered topics as I read.

Agreed, when the sections involved have their own means of homogenization and majority rule. The thing that gets me about representatives, is that people may vote 50% This, 40% That, and 10% Other during election, but the winning representative's actions really only represent half the people in this case. I think this contributes to polarization - us vs them. We have 535 people representing almost 300 million people, based on semi-accurate generalizations. I'd rather have more democracy and less logrolling and lobbying.

I'm talking about when rulings are made that create an entirely new restriction, not just an interpretation. But will Balkanization occur when power is widely distributed and not endowed to few? Of course homogenization has its benefits. It makes all the people predictable and easy to manage.

See now, in the Roman Republic this would be an issue, because these statesmen had so much more power in their offices. In the American Republic however, the checks and balances are quite good, enough such that if a man runs for office and the money teet of outside interests is cut off, he's left with performing the functions of his office with decisions that are the best for his constituency. All officials are still elected. With money you can warp that with countless methods. Without that money, you are left with doing what is right for the people for their support, which is what they are bloody suppose to be doing. Sure, somewhere down the line some shady bastard would thwart this setup, and then some rambunctious bastards like me will whine about it until an equitable balance is found, and the cycle continues. I don't understand exactly how that reply answers what would happen. I tend to think that if authority and responsibility were more localized, and individuals had more opportunity to represent themselves when it comes to decisions that affect them, the notion of 'buying politicians' would be drastically reduced. Sure, you also tend to lose precise standardization and homogenization of society, but I think that would be a good thing. Some people don't want to lose a system where the influence of a few - elected or not - is absolutely widespread, because it's hard to control self-automation. Here's another question... why do we constantly pass more and more laws and regulations? When do we have enough laws? Also, since when did our judicial system (Supreme Court) obtain the power to create law instead of simply interpret law?

I think this is the biggest problem that keeps the US system from being 'perfect.' Our system is bipolar, and in addition to that lobbies have enormous amounts of power. Ultra-capitalists will tell you that is a good thing, they will tell you that going with the money will always in the end benefit all. If that were the case then we'd all be in perfect health while we chain-smoke, eat fast food that we picked up with our hummers. Death to lobbyists. So, what happens when the power that these corrupted politicians hold is transferred closer to the individual?

This is an idea from community members to involve community members in a collaborative effort that can potentially benefit the knowledge of community members. Not only that, but despite (or perhaps because of) any *gasp* disagreements or *gasp* misinformation that will need to be settled, this usually creates a stronger and more enjoyable community. Just try to be a little open minded to trying new activities with everyone at least until its been put to the test.

Doesn't matter as long as you have a beer hat.

Out of curiosity, do Americans here think the 'system' would be better if more control was held on state and local levels, and not so much on the federal level?