DENVER – Ski resorts are bustling with activity. A key highway into Yellowstone is closed because parts of the road have seen more than 25 feet of snow. And campgrounds are feverishly removing snow from campsites to clear the way for visitors.
Welcome to Memorial Day weekend in much of the West.
The traditional kickoff of the summer season will have a decidedly wintry feel in the Rocky Mountains, as well as California's Sierra Nevada, because of a lingering record snowfall.
Epic snowpack in parts of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California is forcing many tourists to abandon the annual rites of launching their summer holidays with a camping trip. Others plan to take advantage of prolonged skiing and snowshoeing this strange spring. end quote.
I called my friend who lives in Mt. Shasta. I said, "Are you still skiing?" And he said, "Oh Yeah. I skied up on the mountain two days ago." (Though the ski lift has closed there he is talking about skiing with Mountaineering Cross Country metal edged skis). This is the kind of year we are having in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, The Cascade Mountain and places like Lake Tahoe on the California- Nevada Border. In fact on a case by case basis I hear several ski lifts are open various places or are set to reopen around the 4th of July because of 12 to 20 feet of snow being there even then. So, it is also likely like it says in the above quotes that many campgrounds in snow country might never open this year in National and State parks and many trails and roads may not be passable in the summer time like they usually are throughout the western States. So, if you are traveling be sure to call ahead regarding snow conditions for wherever you want to go to this summer in the western states from Yellowstone to Lake Tahoe to Mt. Whitney to Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier on the west coast of the U.S. I just looked at a weather report for Mt. Shasta and they expect the snow level to drop to 3500 feet to 4000 feet by Saturday night. That is an exceptionally low altitude for for snow falling this time of year.
To the best of my ability I write about my experience of the Universe Past, Present and Future
Top 10 Posts This Month
- Here Are the New Members of Donald Trump’s Administration So Far
- Trump and Musk unleash a new kind of chaos on Washington
- Crowdsourcing - Wikipedia
- The state of the Arctic: High temperatures, melting ice, fires and unprecedented emissions
- The AI Translated this about Drone Sightings in Europe from German to English for me
- reprint of: Friday, March 18, 2016 More regarding "As Drones Evolve"
- More regarding "As Drones Evolve"
- "There is nothing so good that no bad may come of it and nothing so bad that no good may come of it": Descartes
- The Future of Climate Action Is Trade Policy
- I tried to get a copy from France from French Wikipedia but it just took me back to English Wikipedia:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Conversations with God
I was having a conversation with God today. It went something like this, "God, I really can't deal with the problems of all the people I have been talking to lately." God said something like, "It's fine. Let me deal with these problems. They are all adults anyway. It's not like any of them are under 18." I felt very relieved with this response from God as I really didn't see what I could do to help any of these people other than just being a good friend or relative to them. Sometimes life is like that. Even if we are gifted there is just so much we can do and then we have to say, "God. Here you go this is yours. I really can't do anything with this except pray for these people."
Empaths
An Empath is someone who can experience exactly what you are experiencing. The problem with this is that this can have all sorts of effects on everyone around them. My primary gift is different than being an Empath. Mine is primarily a survival tool (individual and group) called being a Precognitive psychic. This means that I often know things before they happen and the real effects of this often are kind of awesome in regard to being able to save one's own life or the lives of those others who take the time to listen.
Having these things is a good thing for everyone when that person's motivation is to help themselves and others in a positive way. However, as we know this is not always the case. I knew someone years ago that would (as an empath) pretend to be God. In other words she would when someone around her was talking to God she would intercept this telepathic conversation and pretend to be God because she could. Likely she started doing this as a child with her parents or brothers and sisters to get them to do what she wanted. But doing this as an adult is kind of scary. So whenever she would do this I would call her on this and she sometimes would laugh. I would tell her that it was really bad karma to manipulate people in this way but she would even do this to her children to direct their actions and behaviors and I always thought it was wrong. I'm a firm believer in Free Will because without it I think most of us would just prefer to go jump off a cliff. At least that's the way I feel. Without Freedom why live?
So, I had another experience recently with her doing this (because I was within about 40 miles of her) and because this to her is her special practical joke of how she can control others around her. I wasn't amused by this when I realized what she was doing. And she isn't the only person that does this. Often ministers of Church's are empaths and this is how they get their church members to give money by telling their members (as God) to give large amounts of money to their church.
Though I was raised to be a minister by my parents this is one of many reasons why I chose not to become a minister too as an adult. I could not ethically condone becoming a used car salesman to make sure a church got repaired in a telepathic way. Also, I believe God isn't in any church necessarily but usually mostly in nature. So I see churches mostly as a way to make people give money to buildings. I guess some people need this but if I want to meet God I go someplace like Yosemite or Mt. Shasta or the Tetons of Wyoming. I don't really experience God in most churches just a lot of really sad confused and many times dying people. Everyone must have their own experience but this is mine.
Having these things is a good thing for everyone when that person's motivation is to help themselves and others in a positive way. However, as we know this is not always the case. I knew someone years ago that would (as an empath) pretend to be God. In other words she would when someone around her was talking to God she would intercept this telepathic conversation and pretend to be God because she could. Likely she started doing this as a child with her parents or brothers and sisters to get them to do what she wanted. But doing this as an adult is kind of scary. So whenever she would do this I would call her on this and she sometimes would laugh. I would tell her that it was really bad karma to manipulate people in this way but she would even do this to her children to direct their actions and behaviors and I always thought it was wrong. I'm a firm believer in Free Will because without it I think most of us would just prefer to go jump off a cliff. At least that's the way I feel. Without Freedom why live?
So, I had another experience recently with her doing this (because I was within about 40 miles of her) and because this to her is her special practical joke of how she can control others around her. I wasn't amused by this when I realized what she was doing. And she isn't the only person that does this. Often ministers of Church's are empaths and this is how they get their church members to give money by telling their members (as God) to give large amounts of money to their church.
Though I was raised to be a minister by my parents this is one of many reasons why I chose not to become a minister too as an adult. I could not ethically condone becoming a used car salesman to make sure a church got repaired in a telepathic way. Also, I believe God isn't in any church necessarily but usually mostly in nature. So I see churches mostly as a way to make people give money to buildings. I guess some people need this but if I want to meet God I go someplace like Yosemite or Mt. Shasta or the Tetons of Wyoming. I don't really experience God in most churches just a lot of really sad confused and many times dying people. Everyone must have their own experience but this is mine.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Germany becomes Renewable Energy Trailblazer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13597627
Germany is the biggest industrial power to renounce nuclear energy, in a policy reversal for the governing centre-right coalition.
Mrs Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the crisis at Fukushima in Japan.
The crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami in March, led to mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany. end quote.
This is a giant step forward I believe. It will make every country that uses nuclear power for generating electricity think of the actual costs of nuclear generated electricity that Japan and Russia are now paying ongoing. And in the future it is inevitable that there will be more nuclear accidents. How many people near nuclear power plants will die next time or lose their family lands forever? or (30, 60 or 90 or even 21,000 years depending upon the half life of whatever nuclear elements that got loose into the atmosphere, land or water or into people's lungs or bodies through breathing or eating?
Nuclear phase-out can make Germany trailblazer - Merkel
Continue reading the main story
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said a decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022 can make her country a trailblazer in renewable energy.
Ms Merkel said Germany would reap economic benefits from the move.Germany is the biggest industrial power to renounce nuclear energy, in a policy reversal for the governing centre-right coalition.
Mrs Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the crisis at Fukushima in Japan.
The crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami in March, led to mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany. end quote.
This is a giant step forward I believe. It will make every country that uses nuclear power for generating electricity think of the actual costs of nuclear generated electricity that Japan and Russia are now paying ongoing. And in the future it is inevitable that there will be more nuclear accidents. How many people near nuclear power plants will die next time or lose their family lands forever? or (30, 60 or 90 or even 21,000 years depending upon the half life of whatever nuclear elements that got loose into the atmosphere, land or water or into people's lungs or bodies through breathing or eating?
What Intuitives are Saying regarding what is happening to us and the Earth
The Good news is that all seem to agree that "The Rapture" or whatever you want to call it is in progress now on earth and in the souls, hearts and minds of all humans and likely all lifeforms in and around Earth. There appears to be agreement that the heaven realms have interfaced with Earth and that this "Joining" continues to go on and to become more solidly permanent with Earth every day and will continue like this for several years likely in increments. Every intuitive that I have met on purpose or by "Accident" appears to share this experience without exception. The youngest is my 22 year old daughter but most are between the ages of 40 up into their 80s. So all these 40 and older intuitives have had plenty of time to hone their skills and to become proficient at "Seeing" what is really going on all the time.
I was skiing with friends recently and one of us asked, "What about those who live in 3 dimensions?" I said to him, "That depends upon your relationship with yourself and all life." I understood what he was asking but how beings individually relate to all this is a very personal and specific experience. So, this was the best answer I could truthfully give.
Earlier in the morning I had spoken with my daughter and she also had been meeting with intuitives and they also agreed with all of this. She added that, "All past karma appears to be forgiven and everything seems to be starting over." I also had confirmation of this when I was trying to write down an address in my Iphone notepad when the entire page disappeared and I realized that it was a sign that "The renewal" of everything or that the "Starting over from Scratch" was beginning for all life on earth. Some parts of all this take my breath away too.
To the man who had asked the question, "What about those who live in 3 dimensions?" and others I also said, " There is this spriitual Heaven realm going on and taking beings to immortal states and then there is also the 2045 Singularity that is also taking people scientifically and medically into immortal states and these two types (and more) of immortality all seem to be converging rather quickly over the next 20 to 50 years here on earth. So what this means to any and all of you likely will be very individualistic and very specific. However, it all means many different things to all people.
What does it all mean? If you pray then pray and ask what it means for you, your family and all life on earth? If you are scientific by nature consider the possibility that something unique is going on now and over the next few years and beyond here on earth that likely hasn't happened before in anyone's lifetime that is now alive at the very least. This is the best way that I can convey it.
I was skiing with friends recently and one of us asked, "What about those who live in 3 dimensions?" I said to him, "That depends upon your relationship with yourself and all life." I understood what he was asking but how beings individually relate to all this is a very personal and specific experience. So, this was the best answer I could truthfully give.
Earlier in the morning I had spoken with my daughter and she also had been meeting with intuitives and they also agreed with all of this. She added that, "All past karma appears to be forgiven and everything seems to be starting over." I also had confirmation of this when I was trying to write down an address in my Iphone notepad when the entire page disappeared and I realized that it was a sign that "The renewal" of everything or that the "Starting over from Scratch" was beginning for all life on earth. Some parts of all this take my breath away too.
To the man who had asked the question, "What about those who live in 3 dimensions?" and others I also said, " There is this spriitual Heaven realm going on and taking beings to immortal states and then there is also the 2045 Singularity that is also taking people scientifically and medically into immortal states and these two types (and more) of immortality all seem to be converging rather quickly over the next 20 to 50 years here on earth. So what this means to any and all of you likely will be very individualistic and very specific. However, it all means many different things to all people.
What does it all mean? If you pray then pray and ask what it means for you, your family and all life on earth? If you are scientific by nature consider the possibility that something unique is going on now and over the next few years and beyond here on earth that likely hasn't happened before in anyone's lifetime that is now alive at the very least. This is the best way that I can convey it.
Create a Reality you can stand to live
Most of us start out in life as victims of the reality around us. However, at some point (usually between about 15 and 30) we decide to create a life we can stand to live and decide it isn't worth living anymore as the victim we were as children of our parents, relatives, friends, religion and the world.
I had to start to move away from experiencing life as a victim pretty young just to stay alive. Between ages 10 and 15 because of childhood epilepsy (blunt trauma induced epilepsy) I had to perceive reality as a full adult by age 14 or 15 to survive. However, one can actually become an adult that chooses to create ones own reality at any age. I have looked into the eyes of children who were adults. And I have looked into the eyes of those 40 to 60 and seen children that never grew up and are still victims of the world around them.
So, it is always a choice to be free and to create one's own reality.
For some, it is just too terrifying a thing to actually do so they stay children forever until they die. For me, I had no real other choice. It was become a full adult creating your own universe every moment or die. So for me everywhere I looked was absolute terror and all I could do was to choose to live and create a life I could stand to live. So I did. But that doesn't mean it was easy for me.
Even after I made this conscious choice it was difficult during my 20s. And then again it was difficult through my 40s (I almost died of a heart virus at age 50). But I'm witnessing here it can be done. One can actually create their own reality, interface it with all the billions of other realities around them and learn to empower oneself as well as to assist all other beings to creating their own desirable realities as well. And might I say, "As God intended". Whether you believe in God you not you must agree that it is very comforting to experience life "As a perfected and perfect thing" and to assist all other beings that you can to creating their own "perfect life".
It's sort of funny to me that many people will get angry with you if you try to help them at all. They just want to keep suffering. I just consider this a form of masochism common among humans that sort of follows the old adage "Misery loves company". So people who enjoy their suffering align with other people who enjoy their suffering and criticize anyone who isn't suffering too. However, this just becomes an ongoing "Pity Party" and doesn't take anyone anywhere useful at all.
So, to move beyond the "Pity Party" one must make conscious choices in their lives. The first choice is to decide that one will no longer make themselves suffer by continuing to do things that are harmful to themselves. It takes a while to retrain yourself but it is possible. Once you stop doing all the things that contribute to your suffering and an early awful death in life, you begin to see all the many possibilities for you to live a really amazing life. And so one by one you do all these many many amazing things that create a wonderful life for both you, your family and all beings who will listen to you.
Create your own heaven here on earth. It is possible. I have.
Don't get me wrong. I'm still a human being. I still have to go to the doctor and take care of myself. But life is good. By being kind to myself and all others I have become wise and kind and useful to all beings that will listen to me. You can do that too!
I had to start to move away from experiencing life as a victim pretty young just to stay alive. Between ages 10 and 15 because of childhood epilepsy (blunt trauma induced epilepsy) I had to perceive reality as a full adult by age 14 or 15 to survive. However, one can actually become an adult that chooses to create ones own reality at any age. I have looked into the eyes of children who were adults. And I have looked into the eyes of those 40 to 60 and seen children that never grew up and are still victims of the world around them.
So, it is always a choice to be free and to create one's own reality.
For some, it is just too terrifying a thing to actually do so they stay children forever until they die. For me, I had no real other choice. It was become a full adult creating your own universe every moment or die. So for me everywhere I looked was absolute terror and all I could do was to choose to live and create a life I could stand to live. So I did. But that doesn't mean it was easy for me.
Even after I made this conscious choice it was difficult during my 20s. And then again it was difficult through my 40s (I almost died of a heart virus at age 50). But I'm witnessing here it can be done. One can actually create their own reality, interface it with all the billions of other realities around them and learn to empower oneself as well as to assist all other beings to creating their own desirable realities as well. And might I say, "As God intended". Whether you believe in God you not you must agree that it is very comforting to experience life "As a perfected and perfect thing" and to assist all other beings that you can to creating their own "perfect life".
It's sort of funny to me that many people will get angry with you if you try to help them at all. They just want to keep suffering. I just consider this a form of masochism common among humans that sort of follows the old adage "Misery loves company". So people who enjoy their suffering align with other people who enjoy their suffering and criticize anyone who isn't suffering too. However, this just becomes an ongoing "Pity Party" and doesn't take anyone anywhere useful at all.
So, to move beyond the "Pity Party" one must make conscious choices in their lives. The first choice is to decide that one will no longer make themselves suffer by continuing to do things that are harmful to themselves. It takes a while to retrain yourself but it is possible. Once you stop doing all the things that contribute to your suffering and an early awful death in life, you begin to see all the many possibilities for you to live a really amazing life. And so one by one you do all these many many amazing things that create a wonderful life for both you, your family and all beings who will listen to you.
Create your own heaven here on earth. It is possible. I have.
Don't get me wrong. I'm still a human being. I still have to go to the doctor and take care of myself. But life is good. By being kind to myself and all others I have become wise and kind and useful to all beings that will listen to me. You can do that too!
Purple Delta 7 visits Mt. Shasta
"Hi Purple," said Jonathan Flow. "Where are you coming from this time?"
Purple said, "Does that really matter, Jonathan?"
Jonathan said, "No. I was just surprised you were here. I don't remember seeing you in Mt. Shasta before this."
Purple said,"I've been monitoring what is happening around Mt. Shasta and its environs for the Galactic Sentience."
Jonathan smiled, "I bet that would make interesting reading."
Purple said, "Actually. In some ways I'm not sure what to make of it all."
Jonathan said, "Why is that, Purple?"
Purple said, "Well. As you know I am basically a very evolved sentient robot."
Jonathan said, "Do you have intuitive awareness too?"
Only if I'm monitoring someone who is actually very intuitive like you, Jonathan. But I don't actually have your senses. I haven't suffered like you and other Intuitives have to actually stay alive and to hone their skills."
"How do you experience me?" said Jonathan.
"I take a direct neural feed from your Biocom implant."
"And what is that like for you, Purple?"
Purple said, "Remember. This is all coming to me in zeros and ones and not in smells, tastes, thoughts as you experience them. If you are looking for my reaction I often wonder about humans needing there to be a God. Is there really a God and if not why do humans often believe in one?"
Jonathan was having trouble imagining what it was really like to be Purple so he had to wing it. So he said, "The best way I can say this is that we need our parents. But at some point our parents are going to die. That is a given. But to the little child in each of us if our parents die we cannot longer live. Now you must imagine this isn't the adult person dealing with this, this is the 2 year old that each of us still have inside each of us as we process information."
Purple looked at Jonathan and said, "But if people are grown up they are no longer children."
Jonathan said, "That's not really true, Purple. What actually happens is that our conditioning as children often is what makes us eventually become adults. So, as our parents and other adults and children condition us through various good and bad experiences this is what actually makes us adults. So, in a way it is like we aren't really adults at all, we are the conditioned response of all the adults and children and animals and trees that we interface with through our experiences."
Purple thought about this and said, "Then in some ways all humans are related through their shared knowledge and experiences."
Jonathan said, "Yes."
Purple said, "But how does this relate to God?"
Jonathan said, "In some ways God is a way to replace our parents when we realize that they will one day die."
Purple seemed agitated and said, "But does that mean that God exists or God doesn't exist?"
Jonathan said, "Whether God exists or not isn't really the point. Even if God didn't exist humans would have to invent one to stay sane. And I think this is the reason people kill each other over their different concepts of God. Because without their particular concept of God being real many of these people might go insane and run amok."
Purple smiled at this and said, "Well. It sounds like humans in the end aren't very logical."
Jonathan said, "At times people can be very logical. For example, a human eventually invents the Biocom that evolved into you over time around 2035. But this isn't all humans being logical. It is only some humans being logical within certain parameters in certain times."
Purple said, "Then if humans believe in God and that God created them did God Create me?"
Jonathan knew this was a really tricky question and said, "If the humans who created you believed in God they likely would also believe that God created you through them."
Purple studied Jonathan to see if he was pulling her leg. She wasn't sure but this idea relieved her and made her feel more kindred to humans here on earth once again.
Jonathan felt he had honored mankind with his answer. What Purple would do with it God only knows!
Related links to more about Purple Delta 7s life and adventures over millions of years.
More on the Silver Religion
Purple said, "Does that really matter, Jonathan?"
Jonathan said, "No. I was just surprised you were here. I don't remember seeing you in Mt. Shasta before this."
Purple said,"I've been monitoring what is happening around Mt. Shasta and its environs for the Galactic Sentience."
Jonathan smiled, "I bet that would make interesting reading."
Purple said, "Actually. In some ways I'm not sure what to make of it all."
Jonathan said, "Why is that, Purple?"
Purple said, "Well. As you know I am basically a very evolved sentient robot."
Jonathan said, "Do you have intuitive awareness too?"
Only if I'm monitoring someone who is actually very intuitive like you, Jonathan. But I don't actually have your senses. I haven't suffered like you and other Intuitives have to actually stay alive and to hone their skills."
"How do you experience me?" said Jonathan.
"I take a direct neural feed from your Biocom implant."
"And what is that like for you, Purple?"
Purple said, "Remember. This is all coming to me in zeros and ones and not in smells, tastes, thoughts as you experience them. If you are looking for my reaction I often wonder about humans needing there to be a God. Is there really a God and if not why do humans often believe in one?"
Jonathan was having trouble imagining what it was really like to be Purple so he had to wing it. So he said, "The best way I can say this is that we need our parents. But at some point our parents are going to die. That is a given. But to the little child in each of us if our parents die we cannot longer live. Now you must imagine this isn't the adult person dealing with this, this is the 2 year old that each of us still have inside each of us as we process information."
Purple looked at Jonathan and said, "But if people are grown up they are no longer children."
Jonathan said, "That's not really true, Purple. What actually happens is that our conditioning as children often is what makes us eventually become adults. So, as our parents and other adults and children condition us through various good and bad experiences this is what actually makes us adults. So, in a way it is like we aren't really adults at all, we are the conditioned response of all the adults and children and animals and trees that we interface with through our experiences."
Purple thought about this and said, "Then in some ways all humans are related through their shared knowledge and experiences."
Jonathan said, "Yes."
Purple said, "But how does this relate to God?"
Jonathan said, "In some ways God is a way to replace our parents when we realize that they will one day die."
Purple seemed agitated and said, "But does that mean that God exists or God doesn't exist?"
Jonathan said, "Whether God exists or not isn't really the point. Even if God didn't exist humans would have to invent one to stay sane. And I think this is the reason people kill each other over their different concepts of God. Because without their particular concept of God being real many of these people might go insane and run amok."
Purple smiled at this and said, "Well. It sounds like humans in the end aren't very logical."
Jonathan said, "At times people can be very logical. For example, a human eventually invents the Biocom that evolved into you over time around 2035. But this isn't all humans being logical. It is only some humans being logical within certain parameters in certain times."
Purple said, "Then if humans believe in God and that God created them did God Create me?"
Jonathan knew this was a really tricky question and said, "If the humans who created you believed in God they likely would also believe that God created you through them."
Purple studied Jonathan to see if he was pulling her leg. She wasn't sure but this idea relieved her and made her feel more kindred to humans here on earth once again.
Jonathan felt he had honored mankind with his answer. What Purple would do with it God only knows!
Related links to more about Purple Delta 7s life and adventures over millions of years.
More on the Silver Religion
More on giving $100,000 to 17 to 20 year olds to not go to college
Previously I wrote and quoted about this in:
Paying kids $100,000 to start a business rather th...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_bi_ge/us_anti_college_scholarship
begin quote:
SAN FRANCISCO – Instead of paying attention in high school, Nick Cammarata preferred to read books on whatever interested him. He also has a gift for coding that got him into Carnegie Mellon University's esteemed computer science program despite his grades.
But the 18-year-old programmer won't be going to college this fall. Or maybe ever.
Cammarata is one of two dozen winners of a scholarship just awarded by San Francisco tech tycoon Peter Thiel that comes with a unique catch: The recipients are being paid not to go to college.
Instead, these teenagers and 20-year-olds are getting $100,000 each to chase their entrepreneurial dreams for the next two years.
"It seems like the perfect point in our lives to pursue this kind of project," says Cammarata of Newburyport, Mass., who along with 17-year-old David Merfield will be working on software to upend the standard approach to teaching in high school classrooms.
Merfield, the valedictorian of his Princeton, N.J., high school class, is turning down a chance to go to Princeton University to take the fellowship.
Thiel himself hand-picked the winners based on the potential of their proposed projects to change the world.
All the proposals have a high technology angle but otherwise span many disciplines.
One winner wants to create a mobile banking system for the developing world. Another is working to create cheaper biofuels. One wants to build robots that can help out around the house. end quote.
Once again this is a workable solution for some people who are idea people with great ideas in order to jump start the U.S. economy with needed new ideas once again. I hope other companies and company heads as well as private investors create these kinds of scholarships as well to jump start America once again to get us fully employed once again. Because the kids actually going to college and getting student loans need some place to work when they graduate or they won't be able to pay off their student loans ever.
Paying kids $100,000 to start a business rather th...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_bi_ge/us_anti_college_scholarship
begin quote:
SAN FRANCISCO – Instead of paying attention in high school, Nick Cammarata preferred to read books on whatever interested him. He also has a gift for coding that got him into Carnegie Mellon University's esteemed computer science program despite his grades.
But the 18-year-old programmer won't be going to college this fall. Or maybe ever.
Cammarata is one of two dozen winners of a scholarship just awarded by San Francisco tech tycoon Peter Thiel that comes with a unique catch: The recipients are being paid not to go to college.
Instead, these teenagers and 20-year-olds are getting $100,000 each to chase their entrepreneurial dreams for the next two years.
"It seems like the perfect point in our lives to pursue this kind of project," says Cammarata of Newburyport, Mass., who along with 17-year-old David Merfield will be working on software to upend the standard approach to teaching in high school classrooms.
Merfield, the valedictorian of his Princeton, N.J., high school class, is turning down a chance to go to Princeton University to take the fellowship.
Thiel himself hand-picked the winners based on the potential of their proposed projects to change the world.
All the proposals have a high technology angle but otherwise span many disciplines.
One winner wants to create a mobile banking system for the developing world. Another is working to create cheaper biofuels. One wants to build robots that can help out around the house. end quote.
Once again this is a workable solution for some people who are idea people with great ideas in order to jump start the U.S. economy with needed new ideas once again. I hope other companies and company heads as well as private investors create these kinds of scholarships as well to jump start America once again to get us fully employed once again. Because the kids actually going to college and getting student loans need some place to work when they graduate or they won't be able to pay off their student loans ever.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Friends
My old Climbing skiing buddy since about 1969 or 1970 called me and said, "Come over to the restaurant. My old girlfriend from years ago is meeting her sister. Remember we all used to hang out with them around 1969 to the early 1970s?" Since I hadn't seen his old girlfriend (from the 1970s) sister for 30 years and we used to have some really great discussions about the meaning of life back then. (I think she was into T.S. Eliot ( a famous Poet) back then. Today she was returning from Peru with her 17 year old son. It was great to meet her son and to speak with him and to talk to her once again. 30 years is a long time after all and I think she has aged much better than I. It's really great to see old friends once again. I was amazed that she had lived in Zurich where my father's family is from originally. I stayed there in a Hotel that translates into something like the "Pony" hotel or something when my family visited there in a motor home we had rented in Munich, Germany in 1999. It had hand hewn beams on the 3rd or 4th floor where we stayed from the 1400s. Later I found out that my family had come from this area. I noticed the weather vanes there had a rooster or something cut into metal a lot on roofs. On my families crest it is a rooster on top with two trees with a snake climbing them. I think this shield or crest predates Christianity when trees were sacred and people were killed for harming a live tree in this area. However, I'm not entirely sure about the snake. My father once told me that our family in Switzerland had a Spirit snake protector. I've seen it sometimes protecting my family from harm over the years. But this is really ancient stuff that predates Christianity from Switzerland I think. It's really amazing the kind of stuff you can find out about your ancestors isn't it?
Germany will give up ALL Nuclear Power by 2022
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592208
begin quote:
Germany's ruling coalition says it has agreed a date of 2022 for the shutdown of all of its nuclear power plants.
Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen made the announcement after a meeting of the ruling coalition that lasted into the early hours of Monday.Chancellor Angela Merkel had set up an ethics panel to look into nuclear power following the disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan.
Germany saw mass anti-nuclear protests in the wake of the disaster.
'Sustainable energy' Mr Rottgen said the seven oldest reactors, which were already subject to a moratorium, and the Kruemmel nuclear power plant, would not resume.
Six others would go offline by 2021 at the latest and the three newest by 2022, he said.
Mr Rottgen said: "It's definite. The latest end for the last three nuclear power plants is 2022. There will be no clause for revision." end quote.
Since Germany is known all over the world as the single most efficient user of technology historically, this might mean something to the rest of the world that doesn't want to eventually deal with what Russia in Chernobyl and now Japan in Fukushima and before that Three Mile Island in the U.S. had to deal with over the years. Thinking about the inevitable in regard to "Something eventually going very wrong because of Earthquakes, tsunamis or whatever will be literally an ongoing nightmare that anyone working in or living next to a nuclear power plant will have to deal with from now on. What happens to the value of someone's land who lives next to a nuclear power plant if "ANYTHING" ever goes wrong there?
The answer is nothing. Zero. Nada. Gone! And unfortunately while people all over earth remember Fukushima and Chernobyl this is a problem if you own a house near any nuclear power plant on Earth likely for a long time to come or at least until people forget enough about what happened this year.
Spectacular Water Falls in Yosemite from all the snow melting
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_yosemite_waterfalls
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Water, water everywhere — and it's a spectacular sight.
Record Sierra snowfall over the winter now means record snow melt as temperatures rise, swelling Yosemite National Park's iconic waterfalls, streams and rivers to their most turbulent level in years.
Yosemite Falls, the nation's tallest, is spewing enough water to fill a gasoline tanker truck every two seconds. The force of water at Bridalveil Falls across the valley kicks up a mist that clouds the meadow below.
It means that until the peak melt around mid-June, visitors will experience more treacherous beauty in Yosemite than even the travel brochures promise.
"Breathtaking, that's what it is," said Lynne Bousie of Scotland, who stopped to pose for a photograph at the spot where the paved trail to Yosemite Falls makes a turn and the first full view of its entire 2,425-foot drop comes into view. end quote.
Though it will be great fun for the tourists one wonders what this will do downstream as the snow melt increases in June and July.
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Water, water everywhere — and it's a spectacular sight.
Record Sierra snowfall over the winter now means record snow melt as temperatures rise, swelling Yosemite National Park's iconic waterfalls, streams and rivers to their most turbulent level in years.
Yosemite Falls, the nation's tallest, is spewing enough water to fill a gasoline tanker truck every two seconds. The force of water at Bridalveil Falls across the valley kicks up a mist that clouds the meadow below.
It means that until the peak melt around mid-June, visitors will experience more treacherous beauty in Yosemite than even the travel brochures promise.
"Breathtaking, that's what it is," said Lynne Bousie of Scotland, who stopped to pose for a photograph at the spot where the paved trail to Yosemite Falls makes a turn and the first full view of its entire 2,425-foot drop comes into view. end quote.
Though it will be great fun for the tourists one wonders what this will do downstream as the snow melt increases in June and July.
The Do It yourself way to reduce worldwide temperatures
I woke up out of a dream this morning thinking about this, so likely it is an important thought to bring up.
I thought about how it is relatively easy to buy weather balloons which can then be filled with either helium or hydrogen for lift. What if people added some volcanic dust for ballast so when the balloon reached 20,000 to 30,000 feet or more when the balloon burst the volcanic dust could help to reduce worldwide temperatures? Yes. It is true that it would only move downwind at that altitude of wherever you release this weather balloon but if many people did this worldwide when temperatures were out of control upward this could reduce temperatures worldwide and save lives. Volcanic activity the last few years in places like Iceland and other places have drastically altered temperatures downward already by putting pyroclastic glass particles up above 20,000 feet in the atmosphere. For example, in the Western United States snow levels at altitude are still above 12 to 20 feet in most mountain ranges from the Rockies to the Sierras and Cascades on the West Coast of the U.S. With all the trouble of flooding already in the Mississippi River Regions reaching record levels still I was thinking what a nightmare it would be for all midwestern and western states if suddenly we had temperatures this summer above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and all this snow melted at once within a week or two. This could be much worse than the flooding and tornadoes of this spring so far for all western and Midwestern states with rivers.
For example, many roads and trails and campgrounds in Yellowstone are still closed as I write this there this Memorial Day Weekend. And as I write this at around 8 am Sunday morning Pacific Time there is snow falling right now in parts of the Sierras here in California on Sunday May 29th 2011.
I thought about how it is relatively easy to buy weather balloons which can then be filled with either helium or hydrogen for lift. What if people added some volcanic dust for ballast so when the balloon reached 20,000 to 30,000 feet or more when the balloon burst the volcanic dust could help to reduce worldwide temperatures? Yes. It is true that it would only move downwind at that altitude of wherever you release this weather balloon but if many people did this worldwide when temperatures were out of control upward this could reduce temperatures worldwide and save lives. Volcanic activity the last few years in places like Iceland and other places have drastically altered temperatures downward already by putting pyroclastic glass particles up above 20,000 feet in the atmosphere. For example, in the Western United States snow levels at altitude are still above 12 to 20 feet in most mountain ranges from the Rockies to the Sierras and Cascades on the West Coast of the U.S. With all the trouble of flooding already in the Mississippi River Regions reaching record levels still I was thinking what a nightmare it would be for all midwestern and western states if suddenly we had temperatures this summer above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and all this snow melted at once within a week or two. This could be much worse than the flooding and tornadoes of this spring so far for all western and Midwestern states with rivers.
For example, many roads and trails and campgrounds in Yellowstone are still closed as I write this there this Memorial Day Weekend. And as I write this at around 8 am Sunday morning Pacific Time there is snow falling right now in parts of the Sierras here in California on Sunday May 29th 2011.
Ally McBeal 1997-2002: comedy TV Series
I had been married a few years to my present wife and our new daughter was a toddler then in 1997 when this series first began. I was a fan from the first moment. Somehow it encapsulated the pain I felt then from my divorce in 1994 and 5 and not being able to get full custody of my then in 1994 5 year old daughter. I found myself lost in the honesty and yet humor of this series which dealt with the pain of loss of the loves of our life. Ally McBeal finds herself in a Law Practice as a lawyer alongside the love of her life who is now married to someone else. She doesn't know he has married until she joins the firm and considers quitting the firm. She meets the new wife and becomes best friends with her(strange bedfellows) in this very funny in terms of visions and dreams and feelings all over the place. In other words things all askew in our emotions just like in real life but shown in a really funny way. This series was just so artfully and yet realistically done in other ways that I think I will always be a fan of it. I started re-watching it tonight on Netflix. What Fun!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Funniest Signs (Photos) from Rally to restore sanity
http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/4e561641f4/the-funniest-signs-from-the-rally-to-restore-sanity-and-or-fear
I think if you paste in this address you will love these (protest) signs like my family did. They are just all so very ambiguous.
My favorite is held up by a World War II Veteran that reads:
"I fought Nazis and they don't look like Obama"
Here's another:
"If it weren't for CNN I wouldn't know what is happening on Twitter"
or "My comedy Channel- Fox News"
"My News Channel-Comedy Central"
I think if you paste in this address you will love these (protest) signs like my family did. They are just all so very ambiguous.
My favorite is held up by a World War II Veteran that reads:
"I fought Nazis and they don't look like Obama"
Here's another:
"If it weren't for CNN I wouldn't know what is happening on Twitter"
or "My comedy Channel- Fox News"
"My News Channel-Comedy Central"
Experiencing 4 days of no water no food
The blog article "native american vision quest" internet word button below outlines what happened when I did a 4 day vision quest under the supervision (4 miles away) by a Native American Medicine man. But this article was after I thought about how empowering it might be for people to know that they could survive this whether or not they were searching for visions from God to Guide them in their lives. I was incredibly empowered by this experience and it made me much more fearless and strong in that I knew I could survive almost anything after this experience of learning I could go 96 hours without putting anything in my mouth (not water not food not anything). I wrote the Vision Quest article before this one you are presently reading.
A Native American Vision Quest
I was thinking about how it might be important for people who haven't done something like this in regard to "What happens to me if I don't have water or food for 4 days?"
Answer: This greatly depends upon your mental and physical state and whether or not you are alone and what the weather is during this time and whether or not you are in any kind of physical danger at all. It also depends upon whether you have spent much time out of doors or wherever you happen to be where there is no water or food.
So, the first thing you need to do is to use your emotions if you start to freak out when you find yourself in this kind of state by using your terror to focus your attention upon what you do have, what shelter is available, what water in whatever condition is available and what kind of living things might be there for you to eat in an emergency like plants, worms, birds, or animals. But staying calm and focused through all this tends to keep you alive. Just exploding your mind over and over in terror because you aren't used to this situation will only lessen your chances of surviving the situation if you continue this freak out for more than a few seconds. Your freaking out is a natural reflex to focus your mind on ascertaining what is actually going on. If instead, you just keep cycling in paranoia you will just eventually wear yourself out and possibly do something stupid and die.
For example, My wife when I first met her was a really good person on a camping or hiking trip as long as the person who was injured or frightened wasn't her. So, one day we were very remote and she was wearing beach walker sandals and a hornet got somehow between her toes and the sandals and kept stinging her again and again. Since she was on the edge of a cliff right then and I knew she might get hysterical and fall off of the cliff I quickly climbed up the cliff and grabbed her foot and lifted it into the air so she wouldn't accidentally jump or fall off of the cliff in her hysteria. I then proceeded to suck out the hornet venom from between her toes and though it made my tongue numb from the poison so I couldn't talk right I just kept her foot up in the air so she couldn't go anywhere and kept sucking out and spitting out the venom.
One of the reasons that I did this is that when I was 8 or 10 years old my father also saved my life in a stituation something like this. My Dad and I were in an old fashioned attic in our house that opened to the outside with louvres and to a ladder up to the second story that my father and I had climbed into the attic to fix the electrical lighting for the house in our ceiling inside the house. So a hornet got under my t-shirt and began to sting me about 20 times. So, I began to scream and run for the 2 story exit. My father knew this likely to kill or maim me and grabbed me by the t-shirt and squeezed the hornet to death with his bare hands through the t-shirt. Otherwise I would have run outside at the 2nd story level and died. Since I couldn't run with him holding my t-shirt and squeezing the hornet to death between his fingers I was saved even though I needed a lot of baking soda and water to pull out the venom. Sometimes, people used baking soda (thick) with water or sometimes bread with water to soak out the venom.
But for my wife I sucked out the venom like you suck out snake venom in an emergency like rattlesnake venom. However, if you do this be sure you have water to rinse out your mouth or it could be serious for you even if you spit it out because it could have already coated the inside of your mouth.
Sucking hornet venom out from between my wife's toes just numbed my tongue. I don't really want to find out what sucking snake venom out of a wound would do. You know what I mean?
So to return to the no water no food scenario the more experience you have had out of doors and knowing the weather in the area you are in the better. The less you know the more psychological and physical problems you will tend to encounter. And they might not be anything like you would expect.
For example, the problems I thought I would have during 4 days(96 hours) were mostly not the problems I expected at all. First of all I thought I would be hungry. Most of the time this wasn't my problem. I never really got hungry. However, I did get quite thirsty after not drinking water for 4 days. What really amazed me is that I was still urinating during the whole 4 days. I was surprised by this a lot. The most medicinal time to drink your own Urine (if you have no other choice) would be the first time you go in the morning. Many people around the world do this as a matter of choice as a "natural medicine" because it has many many immunological properties that will tend to build up your immune system. So, if you have no other choice this would be the best one to keep your immune system working well during this time.
The next thing that I thought was that it was going to be a different experience entirely. The best way I can explain it was being simultaneously one of the most boring and amazing experiences I have ever had. When I was in "Normal" human consciousness where I was used to reading books, watching TV and talking to people I found it boring. But simultaneously it was also one of the single most amazing four days in my life. As I "Slowed down" I became one with all of nature. And all the birds and insects and animals sensed that I was a part of them because of having "slowed down" to their telepathic communication level. So, in some ways it was as amazing as when in Walt Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" where all the animals and birds and mice came and talked and danced with her. Unless you have actually experienced this at onement you can not imagine just how amazing this can be.
The following might horrify some of you but this is an example of just how different one can get during this time. At this point I was at least 2 to 3 days in with no water or food. I was really tired of hornets trying to fly up my nose. They seemed to want to get at dust and mucous up there. I got tired of shoeing them away and decided that I should be more masterful at this. So, I centered myself and talked to them in my mind and said, "Hey. If you want to clean my nose I will let you. But if you sting me even once I will kill you. Do you understand?" They seemed to understand and were grateful that I helped them in this way. So I let the hornets climb up my nose and spend about 5 minutes each cleaning out both my nostrils one in each. I was pretty amazed that this could happen and just remained still and calmed them with my mind and by my being centered. Hornets smell fear or hate and when they sense either it is then that they tend to sting the most. When we are afraid or angry we emit pheromones which trigger their actions. So this is a good thing to know about many stinging insects. So, unless you are around one of their nests they likely won't sting you as long as you aren't afraid or angry. (similar pheromones) Since I was no longer afraid they finished and politely they left happy. I was just very very amazed at this whole experience.
Over and over again for 4 days I had experiences that I never would have believed could ever be possible for me or anyone else I knew. It taught me most that when we slow down we are accepted completely as forest wildlife by all creatures of earth. This kindredness I can never properly convey because it can only really be experienced. In a sense there is no real difference between us and them in their minds (except) when we run neurotic city energy and then this makes them think we are crazy and dangerous (which also might be true for many people).
So, if you can let yourself slow down and really experience what is happening to you when there is no water or food for awhile you will much more likely to survive the whole situation. Staying calm, you begin to access your (Primordial senses) that were developed by our ancestors for exactly these kinds of situations. Remember, your genetics and mine survived Through the Cave Man and Cave Woman days. So both our DNA is really powerful to not have died out back then. In order for ANY of us to be here now there is an unbroken line of people who lived long enough to breed and then find someone to raise them and so on and so on. So in each of us there are completely unbelievable capabilities and senses you may have never thought were even there. And you only discover them when you absolutely need them to survive. That is what is really amazing about the whole thing.
A Native American Vision Quest
I was thinking about how it might be important for people who haven't done something like this in regard to "What happens to me if I don't have water or food for 4 days?"
Answer: This greatly depends upon your mental and physical state and whether or not you are alone and what the weather is during this time and whether or not you are in any kind of physical danger at all. It also depends upon whether you have spent much time out of doors or wherever you happen to be where there is no water or food.
So, the first thing you need to do is to use your emotions if you start to freak out when you find yourself in this kind of state by using your terror to focus your attention upon what you do have, what shelter is available, what water in whatever condition is available and what kind of living things might be there for you to eat in an emergency like plants, worms, birds, or animals. But staying calm and focused through all this tends to keep you alive. Just exploding your mind over and over in terror because you aren't used to this situation will only lessen your chances of surviving the situation if you continue this freak out for more than a few seconds. Your freaking out is a natural reflex to focus your mind on ascertaining what is actually going on. If instead, you just keep cycling in paranoia you will just eventually wear yourself out and possibly do something stupid and die.
For example, My wife when I first met her was a really good person on a camping or hiking trip as long as the person who was injured or frightened wasn't her. So, one day we were very remote and she was wearing beach walker sandals and a hornet got somehow between her toes and the sandals and kept stinging her again and again. Since she was on the edge of a cliff right then and I knew she might get hysterical and fall off of the cliff I quickly climbed up the cliff and grabbed her foot and lifted it into the air so she wouldn't accidentally jump or fall off of the cliff in her hysteria. I then proceeded to suck out the hornet venom from between her toes and though it made my tongue numb from the poison so I couldn't talk right I just kept her foot up in the air so she couldn't go anywhere and kept sucking out and spitting out the venom.
One of the reasons that I did this is that when I was 8 or 10 years old my father also saved my life in a stituation something like this. My Dad and I were in an old fashioned attic in our house that opened to the outside with louvres and to a ladder up to the second story that my father and I had climbed into the attic to fix the electrical lighting for the house in our ceiling inside the house. So a hornet got under my t-shirt and began to sting me about 20 times. So, I began to scream and run for the 2 story exit. My father knew this likely to kill or maim me and grabbed me by the t-shirt and squeezed the hornet to death with his bare hands through the t-shirt. Otherwise I would have run outside at the 2nd story level and died. Since I couldn't run with him holding my t-shirt and squeezing the hornet to death between his fingers I was saved even though I needed a lot of baking soda and water to pull out the venom. Sometimes, people used baking soda (thick) with water or sometimes bread with water to soak out the venom.
But for my wife I sucked out the venom like you suck out snake venom in an emergency like rattlesnake venom. However, if you do this be sure you have water to rinse out your mouth or it could be serious for you even if you spit it out because it could have already coated the inside of your mouth.
Sucking hornet venom out from between my wife's toes just numbed my tongue. I don't really want to find out what sucking snake venom out of a wound would do. You know what I mean?
So to return to the no water no food scenario the more experience you have had out of doors and knowing the weather in the area you are in the better. The less you know the more psychological and physical problems you will tend to encounter. And they might not be anything like you would expect.
For example, the problems I thought I would have during 4 days(96 hours) were mostly not the problems I expected at all. First of all I thought I would be hungry. Most of the time this wasn't my problem. I never really got hungry. However, I did get quite thirsty after not drinking water for 4 days. What really amazed me is that I was still urinating during the whole 4 days. I was surprised by this a lot. The most medicinal time to drink your own Urine (if you have no other choice) would be the first time you go in the morning. Many people around the world do this as a matter of choice as a "natural medicine" because it has many many immunological properties that will tend to build up your immune system. So, if you have no other choice this would be the best one to keep your immune system working well during this time.
The next thing that I thought was that it was going to be a different experience entirely. The best way I can explain it was being simultaneously one of the most boring and amazing experiences I have ever had. When I was in "Normal" human consciousness where I was used to reading books, watching TV and talking to people I found it boring. But simultaneously it was also one of the single most amazing four days in my life. As I "Slowed down" I became one with all of nature. And all the birds and insects and animals sensed that I was a part of them because of having "slowed down" to their telepathic communication level. So, in some ways it was as amazing as when in Walt Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" where all the animals and birds and mice came and talked and danced with her. Unless you have actually experienced this at onement you can not imagine just how amazing this can be.
The following might horrify some of you but this is an example of just how different one can get during this time. At this point I was at least 2 to 3 days in with no water or food. I was really tired of hornets trying to fly up my nose. They seemed to want to get at dust and mucous up there. I got tired of shoeing them away and decided that I should be more masterful at this. So, I centered myself and talked to them in my mind and said, "Hey. If you want to clean my nose I will let you. But if you sting me even once I will kill you. Do you understand?" They seemed to understand and were grateful that I helped them in this way. So I let the hornets climb up my nose and spend about 5 minutes each cleaning out both my nostrils one in each. I was pretty amazed that this could happen and just remained still and calmed them with my mind and by my being centered. Hornets smell fear or hate and when they sense either it is then that they tend to sting the most. When we are afraid or angry we emit pheromones which trigger their actions. So this is a good thing to know about many stinging insects. So, unless you are around one of their nests they likely won't sting you as long as you aren't afraid or angry. (similar pheromones) Since I was no longer afraid they finished and politely they left happy. I was just very very amazed at this whole experience.
Over and over again for 4 days I had experiences that I never would have believed could ever be possible for me or anyone else I knew. It taught me most that when we slow down we are accepted completely as forest wildlife by all creatures of earth. This kindredness I can never properly convey because it can only really be experienced. In a sense there is no real difference between us and them in their minds (except) when we run neurotic city energy and then this makes them think we are crazy and dangerous (which also might be true for many people).
So, if you can let yourself slow down and really experience what is happening to you when there is no water or food for awhile you will much more likely to survive the whole situation. Staying calm, you begin to access your (Primordial senses) that were developed by our ancestors for exactly these kinds of situations. Remember, your genetics and mine survived Through the Cave Man and Cave Woman days. So both our DNA is really powerful to not have died out back then. In order for ANY of us to be here now there is an unbroken line of people who lived long enough to breed and then find someone to raise them and so on and so on. So in each of us there are completely unbelievable capabilities and senses you may have never thought were even there. And you only discover them when you absolutely need them to survive. That is what is really amazing about the whole thing.
Beating Currency Devaluation in your investments
Though to many of you this would be a no brainer, I'm not a professional investor. But I have a friend who is. He mentioned that one of the reasons to own blue chip U.S. stocks right now is that because people buy these stocks from all over the world. Because of this as the value of the dollar goes down, your blue chip stocks tend to go upward because as the value of the dollar decreases U.S. stocks become more reasonable to buy with other currencies. This drives the stocks up to their "actual" value in relation to all currencies and all other investments worldwide. So, in this way U.S. Blue chip stocks are a hedge against dollar currency devaluation. However, it must also be said nothing will protect you from dips in stock values from unexpected or even terrible expected occurrences worldwide. For example, if the Euro or European Stock markets go down because of debt problems with Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain or France or some or even all of them it naturally will affect all markets worldwide to a greater or lesser degree depending upon their location and their investments in European markets. Likewise, if there is a severe increase in oil prices, this could also affect markets around the world. Or if food riots became a problem in China or something like that because of inferior or poisonous food this could also roil world markets as well. But just in regard to only the Devaluation of the U.S. dollar, U.S. blue chip stocks are a hedge against dollar devaluation as such. I believe in only investing in dividend bearing stocks also to lessen risk if you are a long term investor. The Dividends tend to be another insurance against the risks incurred by long term investing.
Depending upon the laws and what is happening to the currency in your country around the world it might also be a hedge for you to be invested in the U.S. Stocks as well during these times of wildly fluctuating currencies worldwide. But before investing be sure to do enough research to find out if this would be true for you where you live as well.
Depending upon the laws and what is happening to the currency in your country around the world it might also be a hedge for you to be invested in the U.S. Stocks as well during these times of wildly fluctuating currencies worldwide. But before investing be sure to do enough research to find out if this would be true for you where you live as well.
2045 and Star Trek motion picture 1979
This morning I got up and my wife was watching an old Star Trek Movie that came out in 1979. So I DVRed it so I could watch it later. As I watched the end of it I was thinking about the 2045 Singularity event and realized that if you watch the end of this movie this is one potential type of result of the 2045 Singularity where a human and technology might join, become immortal together and turn into light. Though this might not be a desirable outcome for some people, for others the idea of becoming immortal without any more physical pain might be something that they would want to pursue. The interesting thing about this type of concept is that it wouldn't matter if someone believed in God or not for them to become immortal in this way (theoretically speaking of course).
I think it is very important for people to begin to deal with the ethics of what is coming towards us very fast now over the next 20 to 50 years. It will all be upon us before we know it and it might be important to get prepared in order to prevent people from freaking out so much or jumping off of cliffs or worse. If you can see the future as I can it is coming. The only question is: What are you going to do about it?
I think it is very important for people to begin to deal with the ethics of what is coming towards us very fast now over the next 20 to 50 years. It will all be upon us before we know it and it might be important to get prepared in order to prevent people from freaking out so much or jumping off of cliffs or worse. If you can see the future as I can it is coming. The only question is: What are you going to do about it?
A Native American Vision Quest
Though this kind of thing has taken place for thousands of years throughout the North and South American Continents by people wishing visions to guide their lives, the following was the one I did specific to the Native American Teacher that I was studying with at the time in 1983. I was then about 35 years of age so I was very healthy and sound in both mind and spirit so I felt that I had a lot to gain from this experience. If someone was going to attempt this it is very important to think about their mental and physical and spiritual health at the time they are going to do this. Knowing what the weather is going to be like where you intend to do this is also important because if it is too hot or is going to snow and you aren't prepared for that could cost you your life. So that is something to think about beforehand because during, since you won't be eating or drinking ANYTHING for 96 hours. So, since you obviously will be in a very different or alternate way of looking at things at that time (at the end of this) you want good weather for this type of event and you likely want to be so remote that no one will bother you except birds and animals if possible. For me, I chose a bear wallow next to the TRinity River in Northern California near where a Medicine Man and his family lived that I was studying with at the time.
So, I walked upstream for about 4 miles to the Bear Wallow I had chosen. I only brought a sleeping bag and a ground cloth and warm clothes and shorts so I was ready for any weather but I brought no food or water of any kind with me.
The first two days I found to be extremely difficult in a psychological way as I was supposed to be praying only and meditating on my surroundings so I brought no reading material of any kind, nor radio nor anything else. But that wasn't my problem. The problem I was having was that my mind kept screaming to me, "You're going to die! You can't do this! This is crazy!" And stuff like this. So I had to be very disciplined to carry this through. The most difficult part of this for me, though was at night and when at one point it rained one night so I climbed under a fallen Cedar tree about 6 to 7 feet through and used it as a watershed to keep dry with my sleeping bag and ground cloth.
The other thing that was hard was that because this was a bear wallow I would imagine (hallucinate because of no water or food) that one or more bears were coming into the wallow at night. This I found particularly difficult to deal with.
On the night of the second day of no water or food my very intense visions began (like all native Americans I had spoken with who had been doing this in their families for thousands of years told me about). So, on one level I was amazed and surprised and on another level I was grateful to be a part of discovering more about what it was to be human.
The best way that I can put this is that we are much much more than most people think as humans. We have abilities and senses that are mostly untapped in modern civilization. But those abilities are still their waiting for us should we want to tap into them and use them to survive or to help our families survive one day. I think this experience more than any other convinced me in my life just how strong and resilient (both potentially and actual) all humans potentially are.
So, as my extremely profound visions occurred in my life I found myself mostly overwhelmed by these visions in every way. They took me to profound places that I'm not really sure it would be useful in the spoken word to try to even explain. Many of these awarenesses cannot be talked about at all usefully. They have to be experienced firsthand. Just like making and having a baby with someone or driving a car or flying a plane or getting on your own motorcycle and riding it cannot really be explained. It has to be experienced. There is just no other way to understand.
So, After these four days of no water or food I found myself to be more FEARLESS in a real way than ever before in my life. On one level if I ever had no food or water I would know I might survive even without water for 4 days. On another level my visions both enlightened me and scared the living hell out of me simultaneously. So, I found myself to be a profoundly different person than I had thought myself to be before this experience. I'm still processing now here in 2011 all the changes this experience put me through.
For one thing I was trying to choose my path forward in life at that time and one of my visions was of becoming a literal "Dragon of Compassion" , a really beautiful and powerful dragon about 50 feet tall that breathed out fire on everyone(on thousands of people). But the fire didn't burn them to a crisp. It enlightened them instead and they smiled as they understood the truth about life and themselves. So, to my way of thinking my writing now is one of the ways I share the FIRE of enlightenment with others. It does not burn them it only makes them smile and makes them Free and this is only a good thing for both them and all they hold near and dear and all who come to know them or pass by them.
So, I walked upstream for about 4 miles to the Bear Wallow I had chosen. I only brought a sleeping bag and a ground cloth and warm clothes and shorts so I was ready for any weather but I brought no food or water of any kind with me.
The first two days I found to be extremely difficult in a psychological way as I was supposed to be praying only and meditating on my surroundings so I brought no reading material of any kind, nor radio nor anything else. But that wasn't my problem. The problem I was having was that my mind kept screaming to me, "You're going to die! You can't do this! This is crazy!" And stuff like this. So I had to be very disciplined to carry this through. The most difficult part of this for me, though was at night and when at one point it rained one night so I climbed under a fallen Cedar tree about 6 to 7 feet through and used it as a watershed to keep dry with my sleeping bag and ground cloth.
The other thing that was hard was that because this was a bear wallow I would imagine (hallucinate because of no water or food) that one or more bears were coming into the wallow at night. This I found particularly difficult to deal with.
On the night of the second day of no water or food my very intense visions began (like all native Americans I had spoken with who had been doing this in their families for thousands of years told me about). So, on one level I was amazed and surprised and on another level I was grateful to be a part of discovering more about what it was to be human.
The best way that I can put this is that we are much much more than most people think as humans. We have abilities and senses that are mostly untapped in modern civilization. But those abilities are still their waiting for us should we want to tap into them and use them to survive or to help our families survive one day. I think this experience more than any other convinced me in my life just how strong and resilient (both potentially and actual) all humans potentially are.
So, as my extremely profound visions occurred in my life I found myself mostly overwhelmed by these visions in every way. They took me to profound places that I'm not really sure it would be useful in the spoken word to try to even explain. Many of these awarenesses cannot be talked about at all usefully. They have to be experienced firsthand. Just like making and having a baby with someone or driving a car or flying a plane or getting on your own motorcycle and riding it cannot really be explained. It has to be experienced. There is just no other way to understand.
So, After these four days of no water or food I found myself to be more FEARLESS in a real way than ever before in my life. On one level if I ever had no food or water I would know I might survive even without water for 4 days. On another level my visions both enlightened me and scared the living hell out of me simultaneously. So, I found myself to be a profoundly different person than I had thought myself to be before this experience. I'm still processing now here in 2011 all the changes this experience put me through.
For one thing I was trying to choose my path forward in life at that time and one of my visions was of becoming a literal "Dragon of Compassion" , a really beautiful and powerful dragon about 50 feet tall that breathed out fire on everyone(on thousands of people). But the fire didn't burn them to a crisp. It enlightened them instead and they smiled as they understood the truth about life and themselves. So, to my way of thinking my writing now is one of the ways I share the FIRE of enlightenment with others. It does not burn them it only makes them smile and makes them Free and this is only a good thing for both them and all they hold near and dear and all who come to know them or pass by them.
The Difference Between Men and Women
Most women expect men to think and feel in their image of men. So men that want to be with a woman (temporarily or permanently) pretend to think and feel like women want them to. The only real exception to this is a Gay man and even then a Gay man does not think entirely like a woman. It just appears that way sometimes.
I was talking to my physical trainer who is a beautiful blond lady. She was expecting her relatively new and young man to think and feel in a certain way. And I said to her, "That will never happen. Men will think and feel whatever they want always. The most any woman can expect is that this man be physically true to them. Any more than that will always be a lie. Men will tell women anything to be with them, and this is even more true if they actually love that woman enough to stay with them and be true to them. But, don't think that means that in their minds and hearts they won't be influenced by the next beautiful girl or woman that they see. That just means they are still alive and virile. It doesn't necessarily mean that they will pursue a relationship with that woman. It just might mean they might think about her later. And this is pretty normal for being a man." So, to expect a man to be true to you ladies might happen if the man really loves and respects you. But don't expect to control his mind or feelings in any actual real way. Because that will only happen if or when he lets you for his own purposes. Men and women have always been very different than each other. To not understand this is to be a fool.
I was talking to my physical trainer who is a beautiful blond lady. She was expecting her relatively new and young man to think and feel in a certain way. And I said to her, "That will never happen. Men will think and feel whatever they want always. The most any woman can expect is that this man be physically true to them. Any more than that will always be a lie. Men will tell women anything to be with them, and this is even more true if they actually love that woman enough to stay with them and be true to them. But, don't think that means that in their minds and hearts they won't be influenced by the next beautiful girl or woman that they see. That just means they are still alive and virile. It doesn't necessarily mean that they will pursue a relationship with that woman. It just might mean they might think about her later. And this is pretty normal for being a man." So, to expect a man to be true to you ladies might happen if the man really loves and respects you. But don't expect to control his mind or feelings in any actual real way. Because that will only happen if or when he lets you for his own purposes. Men and women have always been very different than each other. To not understand this is to be a fool.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Bridesmaids: The Movie Again
Bridesmaids: The Movie
My God Daughter is getting married this summer so I thought it would be fun to take her to the Movie because she hadn't seen it yet. She thought it was really funny especially the part in and around the dress shop and outside and at the bridal shower. The movie is pretty deadly in a hysterically funny way. I think the writing was both insightful as well as hysterically funny. Just what people need to see to lift their spirits after the last few years here in the U.S. and on earth for that matter.
My God Daughter is getting married this summer so I thought it would be fun to take her to the Movie because she hadn't seen it yet. She thought it was really funny especially the part in and around the dress shop and outside and at the bridal shower. The movie is pretty deadly in a hysterically funny way. I think the writing was both insightful as well as hysterically funny. Just what people need to see to lift their spirits after the last few years here in the U.S. and on earth for that matter.
Heavy Snows in Western U.S.
The Future
The Cirrus Clouds are different than ever before
I wrote the above article while sitting in my Hot Tub and became alarmed at the extremely different and chaotic cirrus clouds coming across the Pacific Ocean. It was no surprise at all to me that people were dying in places like Joplin and others with these strange happenings above 20,000 feet in our atmosphere.
When I look forward now into the future about 500 years things keep changing. If you were not a precognitive psychic you might think the future would be static like what most people think that the past is static (unchanging). However, neither is true scientifically speaking. Because of a variety of factors most people are not aware of both the past and the future (and to some degree therefore the present) keep changing. But to someone who is an intuitive like myself one of the ways I protect myself, my family, my friends and people and life in general is to be aware of these changes to the best of my abilities and to share them whenever necessary with all those who will read and think about what I'm writing or talking about.
Since 1999 I have been blogging at various sites about this problem for life on earth(this one since 2007). For example, right now(all this is subject to changes on earth now and in the future). However, for now, given no other major changes to earth and its environment, this is what will happen. (Since it is impossible that no other changes will occur this then becomes theoretical). So, by writing about this I'm giving all people and scientists and spiritually based people on earth a chance to try to change Earth to what they want rather than to what they most fear. So, whenever I write it helps more to create a future that people want.
When I look 500 years forward I see less than 4 billion people on earth. The rest who didn't die from pollution in the water are mostly killed by either starvation from increasing winds, droughts, extreme driving rain, hail, or snow or from other extreme problems caused by living on the earth during these present and future extreme weather event times.
For example, one of the causes of the extreme weather we are experiencing is just the impact of so many people living on the earth at one time. So, since the Earth ecosystem has a way of balancing itself much like a human body does to eliminate viruses or lice or anything else, the Earth's ecosystem will throw off excess humanity beyond it's balance point. So, only the most extremely resourceful people worldwide will survive what is coming. So, expect people who generally aren't resourceful to be gone from the earth over the next 500 years.
A good example of this would be a culture like the Eskimoes or the Tibetans living in harsh climates yet finding ways to survive them. Though these kinds of climates might reduce populations by 90% or more still some people through toughness, resourcefulness and mindset find ways to survive and even prosper even though in smaller numbers despite any or all weather events.
Even in places like the Pacific Ocean as the seas rise in Level most people will choose to move to higher ground. It is obvious that those who don't will drown or die. So, being resourceful enough to survive for all species on earth including humans is necessary for survival under any and all conditions and changes arriving now or in the future.
So, mostly now as well as in the future it is mostly it is about being adaptable enough to respond to changes before they kill you and members of your families.
I wrote the above article while sitting in my Hot Tub and became alarmed at the extremely different and chaotic cirrus clouds coming across the Pacific Ocean. It was no surprise at all to me that people were dying in places like Joplin and others with these strange happenings above 20,000 feet in our atmosphere.
When I look forward now into the future about 500 years things keep changing. If you were not a precognitive psychic you might think the future would be static like what most people think that the past is static (unchanging). However, neither is true scientifically speaking. Because of a variety of factors most people are not aware of both the past and the future (and to some degree therefore the present) keep changing. But to someone who is an intuitive like myself one of the ways I protect myself, my family, my friends and people and life in general is to be aware of these changes to the best of my abilities and to share them whenever necessary with all those who will read and think about what I'm writing or talking about.
Since 1999 I have been blogging at various sites about this problem for life on earth(this one since 2007). For example, right now(all this is subject to changes on earth now and in the future). However, for now, given no other major changes to earth and its environment, this is what will happen. (Since it is impossible that no other changes will occur this then becomes theoretical). So, by writing about this I'm giving all people and scientists and spiritually based people on earth a chance to try to change Earth to what they want rather than to what they most fear. So, whenever I write it helps more to create a future that people want.
When I look 500 years forward I see less than 4 billion people on earth. The rest who didn't die from pollution in the water are mostly killed by either starvation from increasing winds, droughts, extreme driving rain, hail, or snow or from other extreme problems caused by living on the earth during these present and future extreme weather event times.
For example, one of the causes of the extreme weather we are experiencing is just the impact of so many people living on the earth at one time. So, since the Earth ecosystem has a way of balancing itself much like a human body does to eliminate viruses or lice or anything else, the Earth's ecosystem will throw off excess humanity beyond it's balance point. So, only the most extremely resourceful people worldwide will survive what is coming. So, expect people who generally aren't resourceful to be gone from the earth over the next 500 years.
A good example of this would be a culture like the Eskimoes or the Tibetans living in harsh climates yet finding ways to survive them. Though these kinds of climates might reduce populations by 90% or more still some people through toughness, resourcefulness and mindset find ways to survive and even prosper even though in smaller numbers despite any or all weather events.
Even in places like the Pacific Ocean as the seas rise in Level most people will choose to move to higher ground. It is obvious that those who don't will drown or die. So, being resourceful enough to survive for all species on earth including humans is necessary for survival under any and all conditions and changes arriving now or in the future.
So, mostly now as well as in the future it is mostly it is about being adaptable enough to respond to changes before they kill you and members of your families.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
midnight deadline on anti-terror bill
Congress has midnight deadline on anti-terror bill
Though Government en masse might be able to be trusted with this kind of surveillance, Individuals composing the government cannot be trusted not to use this information against some of our good law abiding citizens and use this information to destroy lives for whatever their individual selfish purpose might be. This is inevitable and is just human nature. Therefore these kinds of anti-terror infringements on U.S. Citizens rights and liberties and privacy cannot be granted without undermining the very fabric of our country and eventually turn the United States into something as bad or worse than North Korea or China as far as human rights and individual privacy goes. It is a slippery slope that will eventually lead to the end of our democratic form of government and our founding fathers are turning over in their graves right now because of it.
Though Government en masse might be able to be trusted with this kind of surveillance, Individuals composing the government cannot be trusted not to use this information against some of our good law abiding citizens and use this information to destroy lives for whatever their individual selfish purpose might be. This is inevitable and is just human nature. Therefore these kinds of anti-terror infringements on U.S. Citizens rights and liberties and privacy cannot be granted without undermining the very fabric of our country and eventually turn the United States into something as bad or worse than North Korea or China as far as human rights and individual privacy goes. It is a slippery slope that will eventually lead to the end of our democratic form of government and our founding fathers are turning over in their graves right now because of it.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The Cirrus Clouds are different than ever before
I was sitting tonight before sunset and looking up at the cirrus clouds (above 20,000 feet) and thought to myself that I had never seen cirrus clouds before ever that looked like this in my whole life and I wondered why they were so chopped up and spinning in very small circles.Usually there are large sections that hold together whereas now it is just small chopped up sections doing all sorts of weird things I haven't seen before in cirrus clouds. I wondered if there are new substances or just more of whatever substances were in the air before coming across the ocean and off the Pacific Ocean at much higher and more erratic speeds than before and thought to myself maybe this has something to do with the extreme tornadoes that we are seeing in the heartland of America that are killing so many this year that are often now above 150 to 200 mph which strips a home down to the foundation and basically kills anyone not underground at this point. So despite the technology that we have developed this likely is going to be the highest year for deaths from tornadoes in a very long time. For example, the Joplin Tornado has now killed more people than any other single tornado in history. And whatever is causing the cirrus clouds to be abnormal and aberrant likely is at the very least part of the cause of these deaths.
Paying kids $100,000 to start a business rather than going to college
I was listening to NPR radio today and heard that the founder of PAYPAL is now paying kids 18 to become entrepreneurs rather than to go to college. Having been an entrepreneur wishing someone would do that for me in my 20s I can appreciate this idea. It wasn't that I didn't want to go to college it was that I knew I wanted to own my own businesses. So, for millions of young people who could save our country once again by starting amazing businesses I think this is a really great idea (if they have the option of going back to school by their early to late 20s as well if their ideas don't pan out for them.)
The main problem with college is that although it teaches critical thinking it also stifles creativity (unless partying with a bong is your idea of creativity). So, we now need people who have had 18 years to think about what this country needs. If they are partnered with more experienced business men and women you might have not only a winning combination but also a hiring engine that would put all the people back to work once again in this country.
Though it is true those ideas would be stolen and sent overseas this likely would take a few years and by then the new companies might get entrenched enough in the U.S. to withstand this. So, just like the draft into the military when I was growing up, having kids volunteer their time and ideas for $100,000 might just be what the country needs right now so those ideas can employ the 8,000,000 that lost their jobs in the last 3 to 4 years here in the U.S.
The easiest way to set something up like this would be companies paying kids to do this. I think some of the most innovative would be kids that were home schooled and self starters who have been all over the world and so have international points of view to begin with. This kind of kid who might also have good technical knowledge of computers, internet, social media and worldwide internet habits might be very useful to large companies looking for entrepreneurs to invest in. As long as the 18 year olds (16 to 20 year olds were partnered with experienced business people to help them navigate the treacherous waters of starting a business, patents, etc. which includes for example obtaining State or Federal mandated DBAs (doing business as) and all that this interface of money and ideas could be successful for everyone.
A natural entrepreneur is an idea person but that person also has to be practical enough to know that they need to study about what they are trying to do enough to accomplish their goals and to ally themselves with people 1 to 5 to 10 years or more older than them that have already made some of their ideas successful. This could be a win Win combination not only for the U.S. but for the whole world.
Some of the useful directions of businesses would be around "How do we grow more food cheaply so so many people around the world don't starve?", and "How do we replace oil and still make it useful for someone to make a profit doing that?" and "How do we protect ourselves from our loss of privacy worldwide?" This last one I personally would pay about $1000 a year for just all by myself if it really was proven to work in all ways ongoing. There are countless other ideas like: "How can I never die?" as in 2045?" then the following thing might be important (How can we colonize and mine other moons and planets?" By the way one 18 year old right now is trying to set up a business to mine the moon. You see, right there. And older person would say, "That's impossible!" But a younger person will say, "Let's give it a try and half the time they will succeed!" That is why 16 to 20 year olds would be the best at giving us new ideas to change the world. Those 21 and older would be best to facilitate it actually happening.
Remember, these kids have been thinking about everything and being exposed to the latest stuff for those 18 years. They are now in the best seat to see the "Synthesis" from all angles and to come up with the revolutionary ideas to change the world. Let's give them a chance to save the U.S. economy. Okay? And if they save the U.S. Economy then maybe they can work on the world economy too.
The people who save us will ALWAYS be people that think outside the box. People that think inside the box can then take those ideas and reproduce them by the millions. And the people with college degrees tend to think inside the box more because of the kind of mental discipline that college brings to minds. It's not that college students can't also think outside the box it's just that they have been messed with by so much school. So, you have to get kids while they still have originality so amazing things can still happen for this country and hopefully the whole world!
The main problem with college is that although it teaches critical thinking it also stifles creativity (unless partying with a bong is your idea of creativity). So, we now need people who have had 18 years to think about what this country needs. If they are partnered with more experienced business men and women you might have not only a winning combination but also a hiring engine that would put all the people back to work once again in this country.
Though it is true those ideas would be stolen and sent overseas this likely would take a few years and by then the new companies might get entrenched enough in the U.S. to withstand this. So, just like the draft into the military when I was growing up, having kids volunteer their time and ideas for $100,000 might just be what the country needs right now so those ideas can employ the 8,000,000 that lost their jobs in the last 3 to 4 years here in the U.S.
The easiest way to set something up like this would be companies paying kids to do this. I think some of the most innovative would be kids that were home schooled and self starters who have been all over the world and so have international points of view to begin with. This kind of kid who might also have good technical knowledge of computers, internet, social media and worldwide internet habits might be very useful to large companies looking for entrepreneurs to invest in. As long as the 18 year olds (16 to 20 year olds were partnered with experienced business people to help them navigate the treacherous waters of starting a business, patents, etc. which includes for example obtaining State or Federal mandated DBAs (doing business as) and all that this interface of money and ideas could be successful for everyone.
A natural entrepreneur is an idea person but that person also has to be practical enough to know that they need to study about what they are trying to do enough to accomplish their goals and to ally themselves with people 1 to 5 to 10 years or more older than them that have already made some of their ideas successful. This could be a win Win combination not only for the U.S. but for the whole world.
Some of the useful directions of businesses would be around "How do we grow more food cheaply so so many people around the world don't starve?", and "How do we replace oil and still make it useful for someone to make a profit doing that?" and "How do we protect ourselves from our loss of privacy worldwide?" This last one I personally would pay about $1000 a year for just all by myself if it really was proven to work in all ways ongoing. There are countless other ideas like: "How can I never die?" as in 2045?" then the following thing might be important (How can we colonize and mine other moons and planets?" By the way one 18 year old right now is trying to set up a business to mine the moon. You see, right there. And older person would say, "That's impossible!" But a younger person will say, "Let's give it a try and half the time they will succeed!" That is why 16 to 20 year olds would be the best at giving us new ideas to change the world. Those 21 and older would be best to facilitate it actually happening.
Remember, these kids have been thinking about everything and being exposed to the latest stuff for those 18 years. They are now in the best seat to see the "Synthesis" from all angles and to come up with the revolutionary ideas to change the world. Let's give them a chance to save the U.S. economy. Okay? And if they save the U.S. Economy then maybe they can work on the world economy too.
The people who save us will ALWAYS be people that think outside the box. People that think inside the box can then take those ideas and reproduce them by the millions. And the people with college degrees tend to think inside the box more because of the kind of mental discipline that college brings to minds. It's not that college students can't also think outside the box it's just that they have been messed with by so much school. So, you have to get kids while they still have originality so amazing things can still happen for this country and hopefully the whole world!
What Planet are you on or from ?
I had an unusual experience this morning that sort of once again took me down this way of thinking. I was just trying to wake up slowly as I prefer to do and so reached over to see if my wife was still there or had gotten up and headed out somewhere for a few hours or the day. So, I reached over and she was gone. Then about an hour later I reached over and she was still gone. And then another half and hour I reached over and she was there. So, I asked her where she had been and if she had been sleeping in the guest room because sometimes I snore and she does this. And she said, "I've been here the whole time." And I said, "But I reached over twice and you were gone." And she said, "I didn't even get up to go to the bathroom." And my response was, "Well. Maybe you were just bi-locating and took your body with you?" And she said, "I don't know."
This sort of took me back to all the many miracles I have witnessed during my long life that aren't really scientifically explainable. I thought about all the many different worldviews of reality that abound around the world from the most extreme materialistic that one finds often in big cities in the Eastern United States and in Europe to the more open ended experiences of reality that one might find in the western United States, South America, Africa and Asia and the Oceanic region of the Pacific Ocean. So, having been a world traveler for sometime now, I have learned to be open minded about what is going on in any particular situation wherever I am and I have found one can better survive in all ways by doing this wherever one is on earth. Sometimes people who have only lived one place around the same type of people as them think everything is the same everywhere on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Thinking that everything is the same everywhere is the easiest way to die, get kidnapped, shot or anything else bad happening to you as you travel. Being aware of subtle changes in dress, consciousness and actions of all animals and people around you all the time when traveling allows one to survive the best anywhere you go on earth.
I can remember one time even in Nice, France when we had rented a Diesel Mercedes to drive from Nice to Monaco. My youngest daughter was only about 13 or 14 at the time and it was on a Friday night when a lot of people are intoxicated on the roads especially on motorcycles. Since there are a lot of Vespa and bigger motorcycles everywhere much more than here in the United States there one must constantly be on the watch for them. So we drove up to a stop light and the young man driving his motorcycle was just so very drunk that he kept letting off the brake with the clutch squeezed open so his motorcycle kept dropping back and bumping into the Mercedes front bumper many times. My 13 year old daughter said, "Why don't you bump him or yell at him, Dad?" and I said, "He's just too drunk to do that, Dear." Because she couldn't grasp the full situation because she was only 13. But many people as they travel the world often for the first time become "Ugly Americans" who are boorish fools to the locals wherever they travel. So, I was grateful in that moment to actually grasp the situation and to avoid a full altercation there. Besides, this was a rental car. I didn't own it. And Afterwards there was no damage whatsoever to the car. I only hoped this young man didn't die on his motorcycle that night. But he was in no condition for anyone to get through to him at that point and I could see that.
It also sort of took me back to 1964 to about 1974 which was my first 10 years of driving my own cars and motorcycles. During this time I often picked up hitchhikers because I was single and always enjoyed meeting people and because I was 6 foot 5 inches tall I wasn't usually worried about getting hurt or injured if I made a mistake and picked up the wrong person. But it must also be understood that people just weren't as crazy in general as they tend to be now, then. My wife says that I should say that many less people carried weapons as a matter of course than now like knives, guns, clubs etc. In fact, there used to be a bumper sticker that you saw a lot then that went, "Ass, Grass or cash nobody rides for Free". So even though this wasn't my demand from my riders this was the thought of that moment in time for a lot of people both who picked up hitchhikers and those hitchhiking during through those years.
And so even though I usually made no demands upon people that I picked up, often one of those three things would be offered to the driver which was one of the reasons that so many young people picked up hitchhikers during those times. So, often very interesting or funny moments ensued when picking up riders, especially if they were females between ages 18 and 30 back then.
But also, you had to usually ascertain what planet they were on. Because a person's state of mind was very important back then as now. You didn't want to pick up someone in a psychotic state whether that was a natural state for them or whether it was just a temporary drug induced one. So, since neither of you knew each other as the driver you would ask where they were going. But if they were scary nuts you just always said you were going somewhere other than where they were going and that was the end of it right there. So, you didn't just pick up hitchhikers like a fool, you picked them up strategically so both of you would survive the situation no matter what. This way both of you survived and got to your destination whatever it was. It was and is just a strategy for survival and also helpfulness for everyone concerned. So whenever you dropped the person off eventually both were happy campers unless it was a girl you hit it off with and starting dating, living together or even eventually marrying depending upon the situation back then.
Often you would learn about free concerts, parties or other events that these people were going to and this might also broaden your horizons in your life as well. It was a relatively safe and easy way to meet new people, find out about interesting stuff and just to be a lot less bored as you traveled all over the U.S. and the world.
I often would keep a box of paperback books of "Autobiography of a Yogi" By Paramahansa Yogananda behind the back seat of my College car which was a 1965 VW bug. I would hand out these books one by one to people who seemed like they could benefit from it or who were suicidal to give them some hope. Most of the people I picked up in that bug or my 1968 Camaro that I bought when I was 20 or a 1966 bug I bought to save money on gas when I was 21. Though I kept the Camaro for about 10 years, 30 mpg in my bugs could take me then from San Diego to Mt. Shasta for around 10 dollars. And when you are a college student and want to travel a lot you want to save gas. However, when I was working full time the cost of gas didn't really matter to me then until the Arab Oil Embargo when it went from 17 cents a gallon up to about 50cents a gallon within about a month. Gas has always been pretty expensive ever since OPEC started.
Since there have been so many miracles in my life that really cannot be defined by science in any way that I could calibrate I tend to see life as an ongoing miracle in which almost anything can and will happen at any time. However, by praying for protection and asking for guidance always I have come through so that even now at age 63 my life is still an ongoing miracle. I was watching CNN yesterday and watched a Tornado hit a Semi Truck and watched the trailer explode and pieces of it go over 1000 feet into the air and worried for anyone on the ground below those pieces of the tractor trailer. But then they said that even though the driver was injured that he survived. Now there's another miracle right there! I bet he was praying while watching that tornado hit his truck.
This sort of took me back to all the many miracles I have witnessed during my long life that aren't really scientifically explainable. I thought about all the many different worldviews of reality that abound around the world from the most extreme materialistic that one finds often in big cities in the Eastern United States and in Europe to the more open ended experiences of reality that one might find in the western United States, South America, Africa and Asia and the Oceanic region of the Pacific Ocean. So, having been a world traveler for sometime now, I have learned to be open minded about what is going on in any particular situation wherever I am and I have found one can better survive in all ways by doing this wherever one is on earth. Sometimes people who have only lived one place around the same type of people as them think everything is the same everywhere on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Thinking that everything is the same everywhere is the easiest way to die, get kidnapped, shot or anything else bad happening to you as you travel. Being aware of subtle changes in dress, consciousness and actions of all animals and people around you all the time when traveling allows one to survive the best anywhere you go on earth.
I can remember one time even in Nice, France when we had rented a Diesel Mercedes to drive from Nice to Monaco. My youngest daughter was only about 13 or 14 at the time and it was on a Friday night when a lot of people are intoxicated on the roads especially on motorcycles. Since there are a lot of Vespa and bigger motorcycles everywhere much more than here in the United States there one must constantly be on the watch for them. So we drove up to a stop light and the young man driving his motorcycle was just so very drunk that he kept letting off the brake with the clutch squeezed open so his motorcycle kept dropping back and bumping into the Mercedes front bumper many times. My 13 year old daughter said, "Why don't you bump him or yell at him, Dad?" and I said, "He's just too drunk to do that, Dear." Because she couldn't grasp the full situation because she was only 13. But many people as they travel the world often for the first time become "Ugly Americans" who are boorish fools to the locals wherever they travel. So, I was grateful in that moment to actually grasp the situation and to avoid a full altercation there. Besides, this was a rental car. I didn't own it. And Afterwards there was no damage whatsoever to the car. I only hoped this young man didn't die on his motorcycle that night. But he was in no condition for anyone to get through to him at that point and I could see that.
It also sort of took me back to 1964 to about 1974 which was my first 10 years of driving my own cars and motorcycles. During this time I often picked up hitchhikers because I was single and always enjoyed meeting people and because I was 6 foot 5 inches tall I wasn't usually worried about getting hurt or injured if I made a mistake and picked up the wrong person. But it must also be understood that people just weren't as crazy in general as they tend to be now, then. My wife says that I should say that many less people carried weapons as a matter of course than now like knives, guns, clubs etc. In fact, there used to be a bumper sticker that you saw a lot then that went, "Ass, Grass or cash nobody rides for Free". So even though this wasn't my demand from my riders this was the thought of that moment in time for a lot of people both who picked up hitchhikers and those hitchhiking during through those years.
And so even though I usually made no demands upon people that I picked up, often one of those three things would be offered to the driver which was one of the reasons that so many young people picked up hitchhikers during those times. So, often very interesting or funny moments ensued when picking up riders, especially if they were females between ages 18 and 30 back then.
But also, you had to usually ascertain what planet they were on. Because a person's state of mind was very important back then as now. You didn't want to pick up someone in a psychotic state whether that was a natural state for them or whether it was just a temporary drug induced one. So, since neither of you knew each other as the driver you would ask where they were going. But if they were scary nuts you just always said you were going somewhere other than where they were going and that was the end of it right there. So, you didn't just pick up hitchhikers like a fool, you picked them up strategically so both of you would survive the situation no matter what. This way both of you survived and got to your destination whatever it was. It was and is just a strategy for survival and also helpfulness for everyone concerned. So whenever you dropped the person off eventually both were happy campers unless it was a girl you hit it off with and starting dating, living together or even eventually marrying depending upon the situation back then.
Often you would learn about free concerts, parties or other events that these people were going to and this might also broaden your horizons in your life as well. It was a relatively safe and easy way to meet new people, find out about interesting stuff and just to be a lot less bored as you traveled all over the U.S. and the world.
I often would keep a box of paperback books of "Autobiography of a Yogi" By Paramahansa Yogananda behind the back seat of my College car which was a 1965 VW bug. I would hand out these books one by one to people who seemed like they could benefit from it or who were suicidal to give them some hope. Most of the people I picked up in that bug or my 1968 Camaro that I bought when I was 20 or a 1966 bug I bought to save money on gas when I was 21. Though I kept the Camaro for about 10 years, 30 mpg in my bugs could take me then from San Diego to Mt. Shasta for around 10 dollars. And when you are a college student and want to travel a lot you want to save gas. However, when I was working full time the cost of gas didn't really matter to me then until the Arab Oil Embargo when it went from 17 cents a gallon up to about 50cents a gallon within about a month. Gas has always been pretty expensive ever since OPEC started.
Since there have been so many miracles in my life that really cannot be defined by science in any way that I could calibrate I tend to see life as an ongoing miracle in which almost anything can and will happen at any time. However, by praying for protection and asking for guidance always I have come through so that even now at age 63 my life is still an ongoing miracle. I was watching CNN yesterday and watched a Tornado hit a Semi Truck and watched the trailer explode and pieces of it go over 1000 feet into the air and worried for anyone on the ground below those pieces of the tractor trailer. But then they said that even though the driver was injured that he survived. Now there's another miracle right there! I bet he was praying while watching that tornado hit his truck.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Winds
I have written about how as an intuitive I experience the winds all around the world to continue to increase on many occasions. Here are some of these articles over the last several years.
The Wind 3-10-08
The Wind in the Future 10-28-10
The Winds 4-19-11
The Winds 1-28-08
The Wind 3-10-08
The Wind in the Future 10-28-10
The Winds 4-19-11
The Winds 1-28-08
Big Brother aspects of evolving technology
My premise here likely is that "Privacy does not exist if you are near (within 10 feet) of any smartphones, most cell phones, in any car made since about the 1990s, in a car with hands free technology, have a land line or cell phone or have an online computer."
So, unless you are someone who has decided not to use cell phones, internet, Cable TV, Land Lines for phones etc. you do NOT have any privacy in your lives. (You remember Osama Bin Laden did not have any of these things and used a thumb drive and couriers to move information.)
But most of us just don't want our business, personal and private information spread all around the world on the internet and most of us are not criminals but law abiding citizens.
So, why have the governments of the world through the companies of the world bugged our phones, cars etc.? There may be terrorists and there may be criminals but does everyone on earth(95% or more law abiding citizens of Earth) have to be enslaved to a complete loss of privacy from here on out?
And even if you live in a third world country without electricity phone lines or even a cell phone, you still can be heard when out in the open through satellite tracking and listening to your conversations from space as well as their capacity to read anything including the date on a dime on the ground from space since the 1970s. How many nude sunbathers of the world who thought that they had privacy in their back yards or out in nature now have pictures or even movies somewhere on someone's wall or computer or smartphone from these satellites? Probably a lot.
Recently I wrote this article because I was installing my smartphone through bluetooth on my new hands free computer system in my truck.
2011 Hands Free Technology
At the time I was really enjoying that I had access to all this voice actuated technology. But then I realized that if this computer could understand my speech without training that it could also understand any other speech in the car without training at any moment. And this made me ask myself a lot of questions regarding this technology especially after I heard today that there are literal "Black Boxes" now inside most cars and trucks made since the 1990s in the U.S. and around the world. And if you have an accident these onboard computers are accessed. And even if you never knew that these things were there my question to you is: "What are they accessing? And who has access to this information? And is every conversation that was ever made in this car recorded on one level or another? And is anything this onboard computer doing actually accurate in regard to the speed you drive your car every moment, the conversations you have, the location of your car in any given moment? In other words is a car now like a smartphone and relaying information through cell phone and smartphone technology to who knows Who? And are law enforcement the only people who can access this information?
Let me explain a nightmare my God Daughter went through and all this will come into focus for you.
In her early 20s my God Daughter made the mistake of dating a man in his early 30s. Just because he was making over 100,000 dollars a year and managing a really fancy restaurant she assumed he would be okay. But he was not okay. He bought her a cell phone and didn't tell her he was tracking her through the internet every moment of the day and night he wasn't with her through the cell phone her bought for her designed for parents tracking their teenagers even after they broke up because he was just too controlling of her every move and behavior. So then, she assumed she was through with the man in his 30s. But he still kept tracking her and once she began dating someone new he tracked her down and beat her up and then he threatened the new boyfriend. But the new boyfriend stood up to him and the police were called in. Then the 30s guy started downloading nasty pictures he had taken of her onto everyone's phone that he could. So, people where she worked got downloads of her in pictures he had taken of her unclothed. Though many people now that knew her wanted to kill him because of doing this to her this actually happened and she had to live through all this. Luckily she had a new boyfriend and myself and my wife who protected her in all ways through all this. But imagine if this happened to a young woman and she didn't have any backup. It could easily have been fatal for one or more people. The story I'm telling you here is just the very tip if the iceberg of this problem worldwide. Think about it.
So, unless you are someone who has decided not to use cell phones, internet, Cable TV, Land Lines for phones etc. you do NOT have any privacy in your lives. (You remember Osama Bin Laden did not have any of these things and used a thumb drive and couriers to move information.)
But most of us just don't want our business, personal and private information spread all around the world on the internet and most of us are not criminals but law abiding citizens.
So, why have the governments of the world through the companies of the world bugged our phones, cars etc.? There may be terrorists and there may be criminals but does everyone on earth(95% or more law abiding citizens of Earth) have to be enslaved to a complete loss of privacy from here on out?
And even if you live in a third world country without electricity phone lines or even a cell phone, you still can be heard when out in the open through satellite tracking and listening to your conversations from space as well as their capacity to read anything including the date on a dime on the ground from space since the 1970s. How many nude sunbathers of the world who thought that they had privacy in their back yards or out in nature now have pictures or even movies somewhere on someone's wall or computer or smartphone from these satellites? Probably a lot.
Recently I wrote this article because I was installing my smartphone through bluetooth on my new hands free computer system in my truck.
2011 Hands Free Technology
At the time I was really enjoying that I had access to all this voice actuated technology. But then I realized that if this computer could understand my speech without training that it could also understand any other speech in the car without training at any moment. And this made me ask myself a lot of questions regarding this technology especially after I heard today that there are literal "Black Boxes" now inside most cars and trucks made since the 1990s in the U.S. and around the world. And if you have an accident these onboard computers are accessed. And even if you never knew that these things were there my question to you is: "What are they accessing? And who has access to this information? And is every conversation that was ever made in this car recorded on one level or another? And is anything this onboard computer doing actually accurate in regard to the speed you drive your car every moment, the conversations you have, the location of your car in any given moment? In other words is a car now like a smartphone and relaying information through cell phone and smartphone technology to who knows Who? And are law enforcement the only people who can access this information?
Let me explain a nightmare my God Daughter went through and all this will come into focus for you.
In her early 20s my God Daughter made the mistake of dating a man in his early 30s. Just because he was making over 100,000 dollars a year and managing a really fancy restaurant she assumed he would be okay. But he was not okay. He bought her a cell phone and didn't tell her he was tracking her through the internet every moment of the day and night he wasn't with her through the cell phone her bought for her designed for parents tracking their teenagers even after they broke up because he was just too controlling of her every move and behavior. So then, she assumed she was through with the man in his 30s. But he still kept tracking her and once she began dating someone new he tracked her down and beat her up and then he threatened the new boyfriend. But the new boyfriend stood up to him and the police were called in. Then the 30s guy started downloading nasty pictures he had taken of her onto everyone's phone that he could. So, people where she worked got downloads of her in pictures he had taken of her unclothed. Though many people now that knew her wanted to kill him because of doing this to her this actually happened and she had to live through all this. Luckily she had a new boyfriend and myself and my wife who protected her in all ways through all this. But imagine if this happened to a young woman and she didn't have any backup. It could easily have been fatal for one or more people. The story I'm telling you here is just the very tip if the iceberg of this problem worldwide. Think about it.
New Driving Technology
next page after 17.
Excerpts from the May 30th, 2011 Time magazine that you can also find at time.com
The article (advertisement) is called "The 2011 Guide to Automotive Advancements and is sponsored by Toyota.
I found some very interesting ideas regarding hybrid and fuel cell technology here so I thought I might share some of it.
For example, in a graph here it shows that a fuel cell car has no emissions at all (unless you consider water vapor an emission). It has a range of 430 miles presently that are being presently tested for manufacture right now by Toyota.
Begin quote:
"The next big thing: Plug-In Hybrid"
---Toyota is launching 11 different hybrid models within 2 years globally, seven of which will be all new, not merely the next generation of an existing model." end quote.
this is a pretty interesting development right there!
next quote: "The Prius Plug-in can operate in all-electric mode at highway speeds of up to 60 mph, producing zero emissions during short commutes."
end quote.
next quote: "The Prius PLug-in Hybrid demonstration vehicle can be fully recharged with a household electric outlet of 110volts in just 3 hours. With a 220 volt outlet, it takes just one and a half hours to fully recharge-"
being quote: By 2035 there will be 1.6 billion cars on the roads of earth and if they all are non-hybrid gas and diesel driven cars the CO2 emissions will reach 8.2 billion metric tons per year.
Yet it's been estimated that if every one of those cars was powered by hybrid technology, combining a gas engine with an electric motor, those emissions could be cut nearly in half." end quotes.
Excerpts from the May 30th, 2011 Time magazine that you can also find at time.com
The article (advertisement) is called "The 2011 Guide to Automotive Advancements and is sponsored by Toyota.
I found some very interesting ideas regarding hybrid and fuel cell technology here so I thought I might share some of it.
For example, in a graph here it shows that a fuel cell car has no emissions at all (unless you consider water vapor an emission). It has a range of 430 miles presently that are being presently tested for manufacture right now by Toyota.
Begin quote:
"The next big thing: Plug-In Hybrid"
---Toyota is launching 11 different hybrid models within 2 years globally, seven of which will be all new, not merely the next generation of an existing model." end quote.
this is a pretty interesting development right there!
next quote: "The Prius Plug-in can operate in all-electric mode at highway speeds of up to 60 mph, producing zero emissions during short commutes."
end quote.
next quote: "The Prius PLug-in Hybrid demonstration vehicle can be fully recharged with a household electric outlet of 110volts in just 3 hours. With a 220 volt outlet, it takes just one and a half hours to fully recharge-"
being quote: By 2035 there will be 1.6 billion cars on the roads of earth and if they all are non-hybrid gas and diesel driven cars the CO2 emissions will reach 8.2 billion metric tons per year.
Yet it's been estimated that if every one of those cars was powered by hybrid technology, combining a gas engine with an electric motor, those emissions could be cut nearly in half." end quotes.
Pride
"Pride Comes before the Fall"
or
"The bigger they are the harder they fall
Between the ages of 18 and 21 I learned the hard way that "Pride" is only useful in ideal circumstances. On other times it is only a national illusion. For example, he "died" proudly or they "died" proudly covers up a whole lot of other things that also may be true. For example, it might also be useful to say, "His girlfriend married someone else and had a child so he joined the army and died proudly." Or "Our nation is a proud nation." But what does that mean? If it only means that our men after having been spurned by a loved one joined the army and died proudly does it still have the same meaning? Or is it then just an honorable way to commit suicide because all personal meaning has been withdrawn for life from that person. I submit that both can be equally true. That a man (or woman) can die for their country because all real personal meaning has been withdrawn from their lives and simultaneously they could be committing suicide in defense of their country for this kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years already in every country and tribe on earth.
My father was a very proud man and up until about 18 to 21 I followed in his footsteps. But at the same time I noticed that he was a workaholic that would outwork the next 300 men he worked around. He said that his father being Swiss-German demanded this of his 3 boys that they be more proficient and work harder and faster and more efficiently than anyone else. So, starting at age 12 during the summers I learned to be an electrician's helper working in my Dad's Electrical Contracting Business all over Los Angeles County, California and learned to be the quickest, fastest, electrician's helper around just like my Dad. I made him a lot of money through my quickness and efficiency in everything I did. Everything was about efficiency in every way. But he never stopped working ever and the most fun and good times I ever had with my Dad was when I worked with him summers from age 12 to age 17. So I decided I wasn't going to be a workaholic like my Dad. I was going with the "Work smarter Not Harder" philosophy of college. Many of my generation went in this direction because like me they saw the older generation mostly being loyal to their companies for 35 or 40 years or more being given a gold watch and then soon dying either before or after the gold watch. So those of us born during the 1940s thought this level of loyalty and no energy or health or mentality left for retirement as being "sort of stupid". However, we hadn't seen the Great Depression or World War II except maybe as babies under ages 5. (I was born in 1948) so I just watched recreations of all the battles on TV during the 1950s as I grew up along with Disneyland and getting ready for going to the moon.
So, pride was demonstrated to me by many people including my father. Between 18 and 21 it became obvious to me that pride was a weakness and not a strength. Difficulties in my life taught me that "Being a Survivor" was much more important than being a "Prideful Person". I watched many of my most prideful friends die or go crazy from Viet Nam, trying to hard in school, career or even in an impossible marriage. So as I watched the prideful carnage all around me I contemplated suicide myself because of the seemingly irresolvable problems in my own life. But only when I decided that pride itself was not only my enemy but my whole generations enemy did I actually begin to succeed in life.
I began to take the attitude that what I really cared about was important and not what other people were trying to put upon me as being important. So, more and more I went my own way and defined my own reality more and more rather than let anyone define it for me.
I realized that if you let other people define your reality often you won't survive. You will die in a war, die in a bad marriage, die in a hell job, die in a hell place, or just wish you were dead all the time. "NO", I thought, "I'm going to live a life that I can stand to live." And yes I did. But then I had children and all this got much more complicated than I ever expected. I wound up divorcing twice and raising my son alone from my first marriage until I married again 3 years later. I wound up divorcing once more around age 45. I then remarried within 2 years and moved on. Then at 50 I almost died from a heart virus. And then I have been relatively happy since I was 50 years of age. I'm now 63.
But if I now look back some of the most important decisions of my life were: First, go your own way and don't listen to people regarding pride and what you must do with your life because mostly they just want you to suffer in the same ways that they did. (Misery loves company). Second, stand by your children. Without you, they have no hope of a decent future. If someone gave you a good chance for a future make sure your kids have one too. Pass it down the line. Third, if you can find a good mate who is also your best friend that you can trust you just might be able to always stay with them as long as you both will live. I don't find pride that useful but all these things are useful if you want to live a life you will feel good about to the end of your life here on earth.
or
"The bigger they are the harder they fall
Between the ages of 18 and 21 I learned the hard way that "Pride" is only useful in ideal circumstances. On other times it is only a national illusion. For example, he "died" proudly or they "died" proudly covers up a whole lot of other things that also may be true. For example, it might also be useful to say, "His girlfriend married someone else and had a child so he joined the army and died proudly." Or "Our nation is a proud nation." But what does that mean? If it only means that our men after having been spurned by a loved one joined the army and died proudly does it still have the same meaning? Or is it then just an honorable way to commit suicide because all personal meaning has been withdrawn for life from that person. I submit that both can be equally true. That a man (or woman) can die for their country because all real personal meaning has been withdrawn from their lives and simultaneously they could be committing suicide in defense of their country for this kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years already in every country and tribe on earth.
My father was a very proud man and up until about 18 to 21 I followed in his footsteps. But at the same time I noticed that he was a workaholic that would outwork the next 300 men he worked around. He said that his father being Swiss-German demanded this of his 3 boys that they be more proficient and work harder and faster and more efficiently than anyone else. So, starting at age 12 during the summers I learned to be an electrician's helper working in my Dad's Electrical Contracting Business all over Los Angeles County, California and learned to be the quickest, fastest, electrician's helper around just like my Dad. I made him a lot of money through my quickness and efficiency in everything I did. Everything was about efficiency in every way. But he never stopped working ever and the most fun and good times I ever had with my Dad was when I worked with him summers from age 12 to age 17. So I decided I wasn't going to be a workaholic like my Dad. I was going with the "Work smarter Not Harder" philosophy of college. Many of my generation went in this direction because like me they saw the older generation mostly being loyal to their companies for 35 or 40 years or more being given a gold watch and then soon dying either before or after the gold watch. So those of us born during the 1940s thought this level of loyalty and no energy or health or mentality left for retirement as being "sort of stupid". However, we hadn't seen the Great Depression or World War II except maybe as babies under ages 5. (I was born in 1948) so I just watched recreations of all the battles on TV during the 1950s as I grew up along with Disneyland and getting ready for going to the moon.
So, pride was demonstrated to me by many people including my father. Between 18 and 21 it became obvious to me that pride was a weakness and not a strength. Difficulties in my life taught me that "Being a Survivor" was much more important than being a "Prideful Person". I watched many of my most prideful friends die or go crazy from Viet Nam, trying to hard in school, career or even in an impossible marriage. So as I watched the prideful carnage all around me I contemplated suicide myself because of the seemingly irresolvable problems in my own life. But only when I decided that pride itself was not only my enemy but my whole generations enemy did I actually begin to succeed in life.
I began to take the attitude that what I really cared about was important and not what other people were trying to put upon me as being important. So, more and more I went my own way and defined my own reality more and more rather than let anyone define it for me.
I realized that if you let other people define your reality often you won't survive. You will die in a war, die in a bad marriage, die in a hell job, die in a hell place, or just wish you were dead all the time. "NO", I thought, "I'm going to live a life that I can stand to live." And yes I did. But then I had children and all this got much more complicated than I ever expected. I wound up divorcing twice and raising my son alone from my first marriage until I married again 3 years later. I wound up divorcing once more around age 45. I then remarried within 2 years and moved on. Then at 50 I almost died from a heart virus. And then I have been relatively happy since I was 50 years of age. I'm now 63.
But if I now look back some of the most important decisions of my life were: First, go your own way and don't listen to people regarding pride and what you must do with your life because mostly they just want you to suffer in the same ways that they did. (Misery loves company). Second, stand by your children. Without you, they have no hope of a decent future. If someone gave you a good chance for a future make sure your kids have one too. Pass it down the line. Third, if you can find a good mate who is also your best friend that you can trust you just might be able to always stay with them as long as you both will live. I don't find pride that useful but all these things are useful if you want to live a life you will feel good about to the end of your life here on earth.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Writing and Telling the Truth
When I was little I thought everyone had abilities like I did. In some ways they did but they just didn't use them (at least the way I did). Looking back upon these differences between how I used my abilities and how others often seemed like sort of "crazy children" to me while I was growing up made me realize that everyone views reality differently not only by group but also individually as well. People of a similar group tend to communicate in a certain sort of way that brings out their locality or their church or their famous landmarks or their famous people. But what I realized early on is that everyone has their own private reality separate from all of this if they are intelligent enough or sometimes it doesn't matter how intelligent a person is they have their own private reality that they either share or don't share with others.
Then as I moved past the scary times of discovery of realizing just how different everyone was by about age 5, I realized that I couldn't talk about my religion because there were only about 10,000 of us in the U.S. and only about 100,000 in the World. So most people wouldn't even know my religion and would call it a cult. So, as I grew older my biggest fear always became not if someone was going to harm me or kill me (this didn't bother me as much for some reason). But I was worried that people in the 1950s would find out that I was in a religion that believed in Jesus (but also believed in Reincarnation like the early Christians also did the first 300 to 500 years after Jesus before Emperors instituted slave mentality and hell, fire and brimstone as a way to make more money for the church and to enslave the people in Europe so they could more easily be controlled by Higher ups in both Church and State.
Also, I couldn't wear red or black, eat any meat, fowl or fish or onions or garlic. (which because I grew up in Los Angeles meant that I couldn't really enjoy any of the really fine restaurants there growing up during the 1950s except for the then SRF vegetarian Restaurants in Hollywood and in Encinitas, California near San Diego. (both are gone now).
So, as a result of all this my biggest fears always were around being found out that I was somehow different. So only those people and friends that I trusted with my life would I share any of this with.
The point of all this is I believe it is useful for writers to share their personal truths with their audience in their writings whether it is blogging about news events, writing short stories or just philosophically expounding upon whatever topic might interest them. And being a writer is a little different than being a texter. A writer needs to write like mammals need to breathe to live. A writer may or may not get paid for it. But writing comes from a real need to share what is meaningful before they die. And sometimes it doesn't really matter whether everyone reads their stuff or even no one reads their stuff, they just have to get it off their chest and through it they learn about life, themselves, the world. Expressing yourself through writing, music, art, whatever allows one to feel alive and not just dead inside. It allows a person to know through their expression that even if someone picked up what they wrote 100 or 1000 years from now that that person might benefit from it. It might even save their life reading some stuff. So by sharing what is most important one saves lives including their own every time they express themselves. So the more truth a person can share (remember you still have to protect yourself from creeps who might want to harm you so be sort of vague about where you live, who you are etc.) but besides that sharing your truths can save a life, bring a tear to an eye. Help someone who is having the same kinds of problems as you etc. So if it works for you tell the truth as much as it is safe to do for you and your friends and your kids. Sharing the truth saves us all!
So, whenever I write I always try to share the highest level of truth that is safe for me to share. I feel I owe not only myself but all beings in the universe past, present and future this ongoing kindness! And you might think or feel the same way too!
Then as I moved past the scary times of discovery of realizing just how different everyone was by about age 5, I realized that I couldn't talk about my religion because there were only about 10,000 of us in the U.S. and only about 100,000 in the World. So most people wouldn't even know my religion and would call it a cult. So, as I grew older my biggest fear always became not if someone was going to harm me or kill me (this didn't bother me as much for some reason). But I was worried that people in the 1950s would find out that I was in a religion that believed in Jesus (but also believed in Reincarnation like the early Christians also did the first 300 to 500 years after Jesus before Emperors instituted slave mentality and hell, fire and brimstone as a way to make more money for the church and to enslave the people in Europe so they could more easily be controlled by Higher ups in both Church and State.
Also, I couldn't wear red or black, eat any meat, fowl or fish or onions or garlic. (which because I grew up in Los Angeles meant that I couldn't really enjoy any of the really fine restaurants there growing up during the 1950s except for the then SRF vegetarian Restaurants in Hollywood and in Encinitas, California near San Diego. (both are gone now).
So, as a result of all this my biggest fears always were around being found out that I was somehow different. So only those people and friends that I trusted with my life would I share any of this with.
The point of all this is I believe it is useful for writers to share their personal truths with their audience in their writings whether it is blogging about news events, writing short stories or just philosophically expounding upon whatever topic might interest them. And being a writer is a little different than being a texter. A writer needs to write like mammals need to breathe to live. A writer may or may not get paid for it. But writing comes from a real need to share what is meaningful before they die. And sometimes it doesn't really matter whether everyone reads their stuff or even no one reads their stuff, they just have to get it off their chest and through it they learn about life, themselves, the world. Expressing yourself through writing, music, art, whatever allows one to feel alive and not just dead inside. It allows a person to know through their expression that even if someone picked up what they wrote 100 or 1000 years from now that that person might benefit from it. It might even save their life reading some stuff. So by sharing what is most important one saves lives including their own every time they express themselves. So the more truth a person can share (remember you still have to protect yourself from creeps who might want to harm you so be sort of vague about where you live, who you are etc.) but besides that sharing your truths can save a life, bring a tear to an eye. Help someone who is having the same kinds of problems as you etc. So if it works for you tell the truth as much as it is safe to do for you and your friends and your kids. Sharing the truth saves us all!
So, whenever I write I always try to share the highest level of truth that is safe for me to share. I feel I owe not only myself but all beings in the universe past, present and future this ongoing kindness! And you might think or feel the same way too!
The Problem of Telling the Truth because of Long Experience
As you age you learn a whole lot but most younger people think they know everything already so they don't want to hear it. They want to have their own experience. I was like this too. I wouldn't listen to anyone either so I made a lot of mistakes during my life. After all, I've been married three times and I only planned once among other things. I remember when my parents told me I couldn't marry my then pregnant girlfriend as they said something like, "Even though she has a 170 IQ she has had a really rough life and we don't think you should marry her." My response then at about age 26 was to throw a chair through a plate glass window that was about 5 feet by 6 feet in size and then my parents realized I wasn't going to let my wife to be waltz off alone pregnant just because they didn't think she was a good permanent life choice. After all, she was going to have my baby (son) who is now by the way 37 years old. And yes, they were right by the way we broke up and divorced when my son was about 3 years old and I got custody. But did that matter to me at the time I broke the window? NO. Not at all. Life doesn't often give us perfect choices. Life just gives us choices and besides I had always wanted to be a father because things had not been going very well for me since I was about 21 (18 was when I really noticed things (because of the Viet Nam War) were not going well for ANY of my generation at that time. So I was just one of millions of my generation both in and out of Viet Nam who were very very upset about the whole thing (50,000 of us died over there and 250,000 of us were wounded). We all took this very personally and felt sort of like the government or police had come into our high schools and colleges and machined gunned some of us to death back then. This was a pretty universal feeling in California where I lived among college students and thinking A and B High School students. So a lot of the craziness back then was from a complete mistrust of our government regarding the draft as a way to kill many of us back then.
So, today I often find myself in the position of my father and mother. Of wanting to tell my kids or God Children or their friends the truth about everything. However, kids between 15 and 30 or so don't usually want to know the truth about what likely will happen given jobs and relationships and the like. As very experienced adults we have often already suffered through many of the kinds of bad decisions that kids (under 30) are making today. And I must tell you it is very hard not to tell them of the kinds of problems they are facing.
For example, my son's girlfriend from Brazil when he was 29 told him that he should marry her. When I had first met her I thought that she might kill him. He was very intelligent with an IQ of 150 or more and so was she but she had a 3rd world ruthlessness about her. And I knew if she had been my girlfriend it was somewhat likely that she would have wanted to kill me so I feared for my son. But luckily my son is not me and was always faithful to her (despite how difficult she was) and it was she after about 5 years that walked out on him. So, even though I was right about everything and even told him of my fears he still married her and everything turned out pretty much exactly as I thought it would. And then he was suicidal because she was incredibly beautiful and he missed her. So then his next girlfriend was 12 years younger than him so this was very disturbing to me in another way. This time the problem was the 12 years difference and another very beautiful and attractive woman who was only about 21 years of age. So, this time he was with someone who if he stayed with her long enough it just might work out. It has now but this is about 4 years later and it was a pretty rough 3 of the 4 years because of just how hard it is for anyone to grow up. So I don't worry so much now as things are going much smoother now.
So now, this time it is my God Daughter that we pretty much raised after age 18 and partly from about age 15. She started out with a scholarship to a very good prep school and graduated with honors there but after her mother became to ill to longer care for her or herself we took care of her as best we could and saw her through good and bad boyfriends (one who beat her up and stalked her that was arrested) and then the one she is with now who stood up to the bad one and whose life was threatened. So anyway the good boyfriend graduated from college and now they want to get married. But everything keeps changing and it is looking more like a career driven marriage (his and hers) and all the pitfalls of two very beautiful and intelligent and well educated people moving down a (two career path) with all its pitfalls. He was going to accept a good position near us here but now he has suddenly decided they don't want to move back here as he wants to be a lawyer. (He's definitely intelligent enough for that). However, like I said before once people move from a very happy relationship driven experience and then go to a twin career kind of experience often they have about 5 years or less as a relationship. And children don't necessarily make things better. (They usually get much better or much worse or sometimes both things happen at the same time until you want to scream) (Uncle!) (Stop the world I want to get off!) And at this point this is where many relationships break down because they prioritized their careers over their relationships and their families. It's a hard road and when you are young you don't know all these things. It's only through hindsight that we all get smart enough to actually understand a lot of this stuff. When you are young everything is just so emotional and intense and often times you think you know everything and older people are just full of it. (Well sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't). So how do you know? That's the 64 million dollar question for people of every age right there!
So, today I often find myself in the position of my father and mother. Of wanting to tell my kids or God Children or their friends the truth about everything. However, kids between 15 and 30 or so don't usually want to know the truth about what likely will happen given jobs and relationships and the like. As very experienced adults we have often already suffered through many of the kinds of bad decisions that kids (under 30) are making today. And I must tell you it is very hard not to tell them of the kinds of problems they are facing.
For example, my son's girlfriend from Brazil when he was 29 told him that he should marry her. When I had first met her I thought that she might kill him. He was very intelligent with an IQ of 150 or more and so was she but she had a 3rd world ruthlessness about her. And I knew if she had been my girlfriend it was somewhat likely that she would have wanted to kill me so I feared for my son. But luckily my son is not me and was always faithful to her (despite how difficult she was) and it was she after about 5 years that walked out on him. So, even though I was right about everything and even told him of my fears he still married her and everything turned out pretty much exactly as I thought it would. And then he was suicidal because she was incredibly beautiful and he missed her. So then his next girlfriend was 12 years younger than him so this was very disturbing to me in another way. This time the problem was the 12 years difference and another very beautiful and attractive woman who was only about 21 years of age. So, this time he was with someone who if he stayed with her long enough it just might work out. It has now but this is about 4 years later and it was a pretty rough 3 of the 4 years because of just how hard it is for anyone to grow up. So I don't worry so much now as things are going much smoother now.
So now, this time it is my God Daughter that we pretty much raised after age 18 and partly from about age 15. She started out with a scholarship to a very good prep school and graduated with honors there but after her mother became to ill to longer care for her or herself we took care of her as best we could and saw her through good and bad boyfriends (one who beat her up and stalked her that was arrested) and then the one she is with now who stood up to the bad one and whose life was threatened. So anyway the good boyfriend graduated from college and now they want to get married. But everything keeps changing and it is looking more like a career driven marriage (his and hers) and all the pitfalls of two very beautiful and intelligent and well educated people moving down a (two career path) with all its pitfalls. He was going to accept a good position near us here but now he has suddenly decided they don't want to move back here as he wants to be a lawyer. (He's definitely intelligent enough for that). However, like I said before once people move from a very happy relationship driven experience and then go to a twin career kind of experience often they have about 5 years or less as a relationship. And children don't necessarily make things better. (They usually get much better or much worse or sometimes both things happen at the same time until you want to scream) (Uncle!) (Stop the world I want to get off!) And at this point this is where many relationships break down because they prioritized their careers over their relationships and their families. It's a hard road and when you are young you don't know all these things. It's only through hindsight that we all get smart enough to actually understand a lot of this stuff. When you are young everything is just so emotional and intense and often times you think you know everything and older people are just full of it. (Well sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't). So how do you know? That's the 64 million dollar question for people of every age right there!
The Career Driven Marriage or Relationship
Note: I'm not someone who studies relationships for a living. I'm just sharing what I have seen during my lifetime of what relationships lasted and those that didn't.
I will state what is to me an obvious truism but likely not obvious to everyone:
Unless a relationship or marriage is driven by the desire of two people to be together, to love each other and to be kind and helpful to each other and to effectively raise their children, the likelihood of the ongoing success of that relationship isn't very high.
So, that is why I decided to write about a "Career driven marriage or relationship" because even this statement appears in many ways to be a non-sequitor or an outright paradox of a statement.
People often think that they can have everything and this is very idealistic but possibly not actually realistic in the end. Everyone wants a big fantastic career AND a wonderful fantastic relationship. But that doesn't really work unless one of the partners attitude is towards the other like the song, "I will follow you wherever you may go, there isn't a mountain so high or an ocean so deep that would keep, keep me away, away from my love."
However, then you have the now very standard two career family. How do you reconcile this two career relationship if one gets a job in Los Angeles and the other gets a career job in New York. Often what happens is that for a while they commute to see each other somewhere in the middle but eventually what often happens is that they meet someone else (or more than one someone else in their work location) and the long distance relationship ends. And this even becomes even more difficult and impossible if children become involved (as in having children or adopting children) in this relationship.
Or there is the proverbial truism of "I worked and paid for my husbands law degree and then he left me for someone else". This is really common too. Maybe he met another lawyer and set up shop with her.
So, even though one may want to have a two career family, be married and have children, in the end what often happens is that the more variables to add to a relationship in this way the more likely the relationship will end sooner or later.
However, as a caveat to all this I have seen people do it all and not worry about whatever other people thought about it and apparently they have succeeded against all the odds.
However, the generally successful relationship and marriage is not career driven at all. It is driven only by two people's love for each other and for whatever kids they have together. And their careers are only secondary to that relationship and that family. This tends to be the basic survival unit that can actually withstand almost anything whether married or not.
So, what do I have to say after a lifetime of watching all kinds of relationships?
Answer: The career driven relationship is the least likely to work right alongside of the relationship that doesn't have enough money to actually continue existing. Though the two relationships tend to be at financial extremes of each other, they are the most likely to fail sooner or later.
I will state what is to me an obvious truism but likely not obvious to everyone:
Unless a relationship or marriage is driven by the desire of two people to be together, to love each other and to be kind and helpful to each other and to effectively raise their children, the likelihood of the ongoing success of that relationship isn't very high.
So, that is why I decided to write about a "Career driven marriage or relationship" because even this statement appears in many ways to be a non-sequitor or an outright paradox of a statement.
People often think that they can have everything and this is very idealistic but possibly not actually realistic in the end. Everyone wants a big fantastic career AND a wonderful fantastic relationship. But that doesn't really work unless one of the partners attitude is towards the other like the song, "I will follow you wherever you may go, there isn't a mountain so high or an ocean so deep that would keep, keep me away, away from my love."
However, then you have the now very standard two career family. How do you reconcile this two career relationship if one gets a job in Los Angeles and the other gets a career job in New York. Often what happens is that for a while they commute to see each other somewhere in the middle but eventually what often happens is that they meet someone else (or more than one someone else in their work location) and the long distance relationship ends. And this even becomes even more difficult and impossible if children become involved (as in having children or adopting children) in this relationship.
Or there is the proverbial truism of "I worked and paid for my husbands law degree and then he left me for someone else". This is really common too. Maybe he met another lawyer and set up shop with her.
So, even though one may want to have a two career family, be married and have children, in the end what often happens is that the more variables to add to a relationship in this way the more likely the relationship will end sooner or later.
However, as a caveat to all this I have seen people do it all and not worry about whatever other people thought about it and apparently they have succeeded against all the odds.
However, the generally successful relationship and marriage is not career driven at all. It is driven only by two people's love for each other and for whatever kids they have together. And their careers are only secondary to that relationship and that family. This tends to be the basic survival unit that can actually withstand almost anything whether married or not.
So, what do I have to say after a lifetime of watching all kinds of relationships?
Answer: The career driven relationship is the least likely to work right alongside of the relationship that doesn't have enough money to actually continue existing. Though the two relationships tend to be at financial extremes of each other, they are the most likely to fail sooner or later.
"To Sleep perchance to Dream"
This is a quote from Shakespeare and I have always thought it would be the right thing to put upon a gravestone marker. I originally wanted to call this blog article "If Death is looking over your shoulder" but decided that would scare to many people away.
Death is much like going to sleep. Pain is different that can be awful. But death in itself is just like going to sleep and is a natural part of life. I have often wondered here in the western world why we tend to be so deathly afraid of death (pun intended). I think is a part of our western way of looking at things which is much more materialist in general than the rest of the world. We tend to view the world as much more permanent than other cultures. It is one reason that we started having high skyscrapers and flew to the moon both very Phallic like endeavors a (very masculine point of view) and materialistic.
So if we equate both sleep and death we can illustrate the problem: I'm using Sleep and Death as interchangeable words in this next writing:
"Oh my God! He just went to sleep. I will never see him again. I'm just so sad she went to sleep. It's the end of us."
Though this might seem crass to a western mind and point of view it just illustrates how ridiculous we are when it comes to death. Many movies like "Death at a Funeral" and others illustrate this paradox of western culture. Where something natural like "Death" which is actually just a natural part of life is seen as the boogey man and something unnatural. Whereas death is a natural occurrence for every living thing on earth and always has been down through history. There are only a few occurrences of people like Jesus who have conquered over death so that they tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule.
When I was traveling in India in 1985 death was accepted much more than we do in our culture. At that time it was not unusual to see people dying or dead in the streets and often carcasses of people would simply be left there to rot with birds eating them. When a government isn't set up for social services to provide that kind of after death care of bodies it just doesn't happen. This likely has all changed now but you can imagine it was quite and eye opener for myself, my wife and our three children ages 10 to 14 at that time as we traveled from Nepal through Bodhgaya to Varanasi to the Taj Mahal to New Delhi and to Dharamshala, India and then two months later we returned to Kathmandu, Nepal by bus and train for our return flight home to San Francisco.
So, having someone dispose of dead bodies is only a luxury that we see in some but not all countries. However, as western medicine and the understanding of how diseases spread combined with increased economic well being this kind of thing tends to be taken care of better and better. But I worry that during these times in much of the world that we will see more disease from less and less dead human and animal bodies disposed of in a way that prevents the spread of disease. So, during these increasingly difficult times economically for most of the world we likely will see an increase of bodies of all kinds piling up along the sides of roads almost everywhere here on earth.
But once again I think that "To Sleep Perchance to Dream" is one of the most eloquent statements regarding death I have ever heard about or contemplated.
Death is much like going to sleep. Pain is different that can be awful. But death in itself is just like going to sleep and is a natural part of life. I have often wondered here in the western world why we tend to be so deathly afraid of death (pun intended). I think is a part of our western way of looking at things which is much more materialist in general than the rest of the world. We tend to view the world as much more permanent than other cultures. It is one reason that we started having high skyscrapers and flew to the moon both very Phallic like endeavors a (very masculine point of view) and materialistic.
So if we equate both sleep and death we can illustrate the problem: I'm using Sleep and Death as interchangeable words in this next writing:
"Oh my God! He just went to sleep. I will never see him again. I'm just so sad she went to sleep. It's the end of us."
Though this might seem crass to a western mind and point of view it just illustrates how ridiculous we are when it comes to death. Many movies like "Death at a Funeral" and others illustrate this paradox of western culture. Where something natural like "Death" which is actually just a natural part of life is seen as the boogey man and something unnatural. Whereas death is a natural occurrence for every living thing on earth and always has been down through history. There are only a few occurrences of people like Jesus who have conquered over death so that they tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule.
When I was traveling in India in 1985 death was accepted much more than we do in our culture. At that time it was not unusual to see people dying or dead in the streets and often carcasses of people would simply be left there to rot with birds eating them. When a government isn't set up for social services to provide that kind of after death care of bodies it just doesn't happen. This likely has all changed now but you can imagine it was quite and eye opener for myself, my wife and our three children ages 10 to 14 at that time as we traveled from Nepal through Bodhgaya to Varanasi to the Taj Mahal to New Delhi and to Dharamshala, India and then two months later we returned to Kathmandu, Nepal by bus and train for our return flight home to San Francisco.
So, having someone dispose of dead bodies is only a luxury that we see in some but not all countries. However, as western medicine and the understanding of how diseases spread combined with increased economic well being this kind of thing tends to be taken care of better and better. But I worry that during these times in much of the world that we will see more disease from less and less dead human and animal bodies disposed of in a way that prevents the spread of disease. So, during these increasingly difficult times economically for most of the world we likely will see an increase of bodies of all kinds piling up along the sides of roads almost everywhere here on earth.
But once again I think that "To Sleep Perchance to Dream" is one of the most eloquent statements regarding death I have ever heard about or contemplated.
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