The National Socialist party didn’t spring full-grown from the head of Zeus. The groundwork for the Night of the Long Knives was laid years before it happened.
There are a lot of parallels between the increasing curtailment of freedom in the US and the laws in post-WWI Germany. We have not yet been punished by the international community for our aggression the way Germany was after WWI. That action destroyed Germany’s economy and seriously damaged its national pride.
It remains to be seen whether measures will be taken against the United States, and whether how we will respond. It remains to be seen whether international censure will inspire the party to scapegoat somebody in order to save face.
It remains to be seen whether calls to
patriotism will become something ugly.
Didn’t someone say, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it?”
Oh, yes, there are parallels. We haven’t plumbed the depths yet.
Into the Void
Back off, man, I'm co-creating my reality.
Night of the Long Knives
The structure of snowflakes
The Hidden Messages in Water by Dr. Masaru Emoto, scientific researcher, healer, and popular lecturer.
Masaru Emoto: Miraculous Messages from Water contains some beautiful photos of these snowflakes.
For the engineers in the audience, perhaps you remember the discovery in the 1980’s of the Josephson Junction. The Josephson Junction is a silicon device that is so sensitive to electromagnetic waves that it can detect the small EM waves emanating from a person’s brain. In fact, it has been tested in mice as a brain-machine interface.
I submit that water crystals may be a natural manifestation of the Josephson Effect.
Linux laptop
Update: The laptop arrived and it knows both that it is a Compaq and that it currently is running Windows 98. I’ll spend a bit of time documenting the hardware configuration and obtaining drivers before starting the conversion to Linux.
To reiterate, I bought an ancient laptop from Bob Johnson.com – a Compaq Presario 1235 laptop – for $199. It’s old and slow, but I ran servers on a 486DX2/66 in 1999-2000 so I don’t think it will be a problem. The tricky part will be getting a network card to work.
I found a site with instructions on installing Red Hat and getting drivers for this model laptop. I may have an old 5.2 install CD around somewhere. I also have 8.something, but that’s 5 CDs and cutting it kind of close for a laptop that only has a 4G hard drive.
Anyway, here are the details:
Compaq Presario 1235
AMD K6 – a blistering 266Mhz Processor. 12 inch Dual Scan display. Whopping 4 Gig hard drive. 96 meg of memory. 24x CDROM. Floppy. PCMCIA Slot. Built in sound and speakers. TrackPad – good I can’t stand those little clit mice. Parallel, Serial, and USB ports. Ultra-fast 56k Modem. Includes the AC adapter and an unwarranted battery. Featherweight 7 lbs. Windows 98
Warranty: Lifetime Limited Warranty
Compaq brings you the future of Internet notebook PC technology for an unbeatable value with the Presario 1235 Internet PC. Everything is built right into its easy-to-use, intuitive design – including a fast AMD-K6 MMX Enhanced Processor, 24X CD-ROM drive.
Are Animals Patentable?
34. lae Apr 25 1988, 4:03 pm
From: l…@pedsga.UUCP – Find messages by this author
Date: 25 Apr 88 20:03:56 GMT
Local: Mon, Apr 25 1988 4:03 pm
Subject: Re: Are Animals Patentable?
in article <1…@qiclab.UUCP> leon…@qiclab.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) writes:
[It will be found] that there are some “humans” who don’t fit the definition … unless the definition is such that some creatures considered “non-human” now will be “human” under it. Both outcomes will cause great outcry. … (… I’;d be surprised if it happened in 5 years, and even more surprised if it *didn’t* happen in 25!)
I believe that the answer is to treat all animals as humans and to provide vocational rehab for those who have trouble functioning in human society.
Leslie
Driving and Cell Phones
Drivers using cell phones more likely to crash – Wireless World – MSNBC.com.
I don’t think I need to comment on the content of this article. It sure took MSNBC a long time to figure it out.
driving + using cellphone = menace
Heart of the Beholder
Just found the web page for a new movie, Heart of the Beholder. It’s about a family-owned video store chain that is targeted by a religious cult for offering – supposedly – obscene videos. The story is true.
The main video they objected to was Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ“, a movie that was attacked by religious fanatics from the first day of filming. As I recall, the author of the original book was excommunicated for writing it.
But the cult also objected to some movies that I thought were pretty innocuous. Was there really beastiality in Tom Hanks’ Splash“? I must have accidentally rented the PG version.
I don’t need anyone to tell me what movies I can and can’t see, much less someone from a completely different culture.
It’s rare that the powerless can beat the odds, but this film is Rocky versus the Religious Right, and the fight isn’t over till it’s over.
Sounds like a must-see.
Update: The movie played in St. Louis last month. Attendees included old Video Library employees and some of the folks involved in the original boycott. It seems that some of them have seen the error in their hurtful actions against the Tiptons.
Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind
My response to The Molecular Biology of Emotion.
Just listened to Dr. Candace Pert’s new audiobook, “Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind.” Dr. Pert is the scientist who discovered the opiate receptors in the brain. She was prominently featured in the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?.” If you haven’t seen it yet, you must turn off your computer right this instant and go rent a copy.
Very kewl stuff. I knew that the R-complex, the hindbrain, took care of autonomic functions. I never considered that the hindbrain was also the interface between the body and the brain as far as integrating the physical experience of a neurotransmitter with the emotional response to that neurotransmitter. And vice-versa.
What we do, then, is to rationalize our gut-level reactions and emotions and then either repress, modify, or act upon them.
Wow.
I definitely want to check out another of Ms. Pert’s books, “Molecules of Emotion.”
The Thousand Names of the New God
I have chosen to step out of the darkness and into the cold light of day. I am bipolar. Accept me or fade away. I don’t have time for shadows.
I wonder about the wisdom of this decision, to embrace the bipolar disorder as part of who I am. Not to fight it, but to soothe it with the bare minimum of meds.
I have turned my back on the old sacraments, and have embraced the New God. I have recited the Thousand Names: Prozac, Lamictal, Ativan.
I have traded the hypomanias away for the illusion of safety from the depressions. And I wonder whether I am a coward.
Keeping Groundhogs out of the Garden
How to keep the groundhogs out of the garden:
Stake a cat to the tomatoes.
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