Separate, But Not Equal

Last night the U.S. presidential delegates failed to impress. Sure, there weren't necessarily speaking to people like me or you, but rather, to people like our parents. People like our white parents. You know, the ones that put Bush in power for 8 years? Those folks.

Both said outright that they did not support gay marriage. McCain of course, would probably require a big pink "G" on all of the LGBT communities' garments, but Barrack went as far to say that he would not support the ridiculous notion that our revered constitution should be stained with this power-hungry generation's intolerance. Of course, that doesn't mean he supports gay rights: "let the states decide" is utterly deceptive swaddle-speak for, "I'm not going to support them, AND I'm not going to get in the way of others who want to oppress them."

Shame on you, Obama! One can only hope that you are masking your true colors to this group simply to get elected, when you will then turn the country on it's ear and promote equality among the genders, races, and religions.

Now, I do not consider myself gay, though I have been trying! I also do not consider myself straight, though I have tried that too. However, I simply cannot understand why straight people are so afraid/upset/angry at the idea of two men (or women) entering into marriage. At best, it's bigotry to think - for whatever reason - that you are somehow more privileged than others, and if that reason is religion, then you have a lot more in common with Hitler or the Taliban than you'd like to believe!

Obama noted that the Bible had quoted Jesus as saying: "Whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me." He said the maxim should apply to victims of poverty, sexism and racism. So Mr. Obama is saying that based on our history, we're telling Jesus, "Sorry, you can't get married. But you can ride on a different bus and get paid less for the same work."

Mr McCain said he supported preserving "the unique status of marriage between a man and a woman" and that he was against the decision taken in some states to allow same-sex marriages. "That doesn't mean people can't enter into legal agreements. That doesn't mean that they don't have the right of all citizens," he said.

Um, that's exactly what it means, Mr. McCain! You are saying that gays do not have the right to get married, that is discrimination! I would buy your argument if Christians were the only set of people who got married... they aren't. Marriage is a commitment, recognized by the government, between two consenting adults irrespective of religion.

McCain also stressed that he was pro-life, as long as that life wasn't gay, bi, lesbian, transgendered, or queer. His belief on marriage ultimately says, "Marriage is only for us because we are different; we are special."
You know what it also says? "We are homophobic!

We are hear!
We have fear!
We are queer!

Go ahead McCain, hug it out. It's okay to cry. We know daddy didn't hug you enough. And try to relax Obama, don't look so tense... you're about to have all kinds of attention from older white men!

Duhbate

Regarding the democratic debate, I agree with Jon Stewart's summary:

The first hour of last night's debates was a 60-minute master class in how to elevate out-of-context remarks and trivial insipid miscues into topics of national discourse.

So I wonder... are Americans too dense to understand a detailed, 500-page essay from each presidential candidate on what they intend to do and how they intend to do it? What about a 5-hour power-point presentation? Is that too much to ask from them? I don't think so, many Ph.D. candidates have to do this in order to graduate, so using that as a prerequistite to running the country leading the free world doesn't seem like too much to me.

But then again, I think rain is wet, so what do I know?

"Thomas Jefferson"-type Shit

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson! You wrote many a parchment extolling revolutionary ideas of your time, not the least of which was "The Declaration of Independence" and with it, you helped launch the first country in history based on the principle that every individual possesses certain "unalienable" rights.

Well done!

My friends have big ideas too. One of them wants to revolutionize democracy in this country... by creating a new political party that has at its root, a completely democratic, objective, and measurable process. With it, the people would be assured of having an equal voice, and the government would then have metrics for establishing progress.

His idea, but he wants me to build the thing. I always said I would either be the first to leave this country or the one to lead the revolution... I'll probably do it!

Look for http://3rdParty.org if not this next presidential election, then soon thereafter!

Rise Above Your Troubles

Rev Jeremiah Wright really pissed off a lot of people today for stuff he said five years ago. I'm going to defend him because it's revolting how the media has taken his words out of context.

He said that said that blacks should condemn the US for it's past actions toward Africans.

"God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human!"

I would hope Mr. Wright would preach forgiveness, but if you disagree about America's treatment toward blacks, what about native Americans? Now there's an interesting history. We took a page from the Europeans colonizing Latin America on that one.

But taken out of context, the words are shocking... but more so than what passes for entertainment these days on TV or Radio or in video games? Not really. I'm not going to vote for Obama for other reasons, but this seems to me like a tactic to play on the fears of the white man.

His comments from seven years ago, the Sunday after 9/11, if poorly timed, seem to echo my own which is this: You can be shocked, you can be angry, you can be afraid... but you can't be surprised. Here's how he said it:

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards.

"America's chickens are coming home to roost."

That's the whole quote, again, being taken out of context today. Lest you think I'm anti-Israel, I'm sure Jesus (and Mr. Wright) would have wanted Israel to exist from peaceful origins, even if it would have taken longer than our lifetimes to do that. Instead we created it from force so that we could have it in our lifetime... but wouldn't it be more likely to exist in the future if it was created from peace?

Finally, not everything Mr. Wright says is controversial. Some of it is downright uplifting and inspiring! Have a listen to this excerpt of his from a song I heard while clubbing in London. Give it a minute (literally) before the speech begins!

Riiiiise, above your troubles! Do I have a witness?

Statistical Abuse

What's wrong with this picture?

Amazingly, Obama has 54% of the Texas vote... amazing because just 2% of the vote has been cast! In the picture above, he has 54% of 2% of the vote, which is just over 1%. Clinton has 45% of 2%, or just under 1%. It should read 1% to 1%, but that's not dramatic! That's not exciting! No, what we want to see a fierce competitive battle, with swings and come-from-behind, against-all-odds wins!

Not fair, you say, the 54%-45% is merely to show what percent of votes already cast are for whom. Okay, but that's useless information; it's not a sporting event, the only thing that matters is the percentages when all the votes are in; how they are counted makes no difference, so why create drama out of nothing? And, if that's the goal, why not count all the votes for one person first... now THAT would be drama!

With 45% of the votes counted, Obama leads leads Clinton 100% to 0%!!!

Imagine the water cooler surprise the next morning! Did you hear about Clinton's victory? She won the last 10 million votes in a row!

If showing the truth (1% to 1% just wouldn't do), let's at least have some fun with it!

See anything else? How about McCain being projected as the winner, with just 2% of the precincts reporting? Seems to me there's 20 million more votes to count, more or less, but McCain only leads by 100,000 votes.

I'm tired of (news) media deliberately misleading viewers just for the sake of drama.

In the news...

Italy's highest court of appeals rules women can lie about their infidelity. Even from the police, even under oath in a court of law! The ruling was passed down in an effort to allow dis-honorable women to maintain their honor in the face of legal investigations.

Previously, the same court ruled that women in tight jeans - by definition - can't be raped, because it would require their acceptance to remove them. After outcries by women everywhere, the court later rescinded the ruling, but said in their defense, we were talking about tight fitting, button-fly jeans!

Meanwhile, Russia's old president, Vladimir Putin, maintains that Russia's new president, Dmitry Medvedev will continue to give the West a hard time. In a similar story, US President Bush reaffirmed that he would continue to have a hard time locating Russia on a map.

Speaking of places he can't find on a map, Serbia's Prime Minister Kostunica is calling it quits after failing to get his cabinet to pick a fight with the EU over Kosovo's recent declaration of independence, a move backed by EU and America, but declared illegal by Serbia (who is in turn, backed by, you guessed it... Russia.)

The former Yugoslavia has been in a state of civil unrest ever since the dismal performance by their namesake car, the Yugo. By declaring independence, the mostly Albanian population hope to redeem themselves with the production of the Kosovolvo.

The Grand Canyon was recently flooded in an attempt to help restore the ecosystem. Perhaps they read our earlier report? Maybe someone was listening after all!

Europe is launching the stellar equivalent of a semi-truck, a space ship designed to haul up to nearly 8 tonnes of supplies to the International Space Station. It can even drive and park itself, with no human intervention, but you still have to get out and pay the meter.

Back home, despite the mortgage crisis, record oil prices, the weakest dollar in history, and new figures showing the highest number of layoffs in five years, Bush insisted the US is not in a recession. He said he hoped consumer spending would "spur job creation." I hope to wake up tomorrow looking like Angelina Jolie, but that ain't gonna happen either!

In celebrity news, comedian Bill Maher continues to whore himself out to HBO, seeking ratings, money, and fame over the chance to do some good and make a difference. Hey Bill, c'mon, you're smarter than that! Quit taking the easy road bitching about what everyone already knows and pretending to be brainwashed by the media like everyone else. Instead, why not bring to light the significant issues facing Americans today?

Such as the fact that the fall of American empire has started! With more and more Americans walking away from their inverted home loans, who owns the land/home? The bank. Who owns the bank? 'nuff said. Divide and conquer; it works for armies, computer science algorithms, and it will work on America too. Immigration from the south, foreign ownership from within, all on top of a complete collapse of the social structure because of 200 years of insular thinking, celebrity worship, and the exclusion of rational things like preservation and sustainability for abstract, meaningless concepts like money and the economy.

Look at pictures of Muncie from the 1800s and compare them to now: decline. You can do that for pretty much every city, except those bolstered by foreign money, and even there, no wealth is created; we build only to tear down, resettle, and build again. Like ants with no purpose, busily going through the motions. Most people are so out of touch with real life, they are out of balance with even the most basic of human needs.

Little wonder then, the family social structure has all but disintegrated. After so many generations of bad parents, we no longer seem to remember how to raise a family. Men refuse to pay child support and women are choosing to be uneducated, stay at home mothers because they can earn more from the government for having unprotected sex than they can from working at McDonald's. The government, admitting defeat in its public schools routinely allows for children to be home-schooled by these same uneducated parents. Like Keanu Reeves said in Ron Howard's film, "You have to have a license to drive a car or own a dog, you have to have a permit to catch a fish, but they'll let any old asshole be a father [parent]."

Meanwhile, the smartest citizens are fleeing the country like rats on a sinking ship while being replaced by our friends (perhaps smarter than us) from the south who promise to put the "Americas" back in "America." Brain drain aside, with no manufacturing base, and companies lured by billions of cheap labor working elsewhere, how can wealth be created? (I guess it doesn't matter because getting $600 each from Bush will create jobs.)

America was once alone as a (super)power, but she is about to be eclipsed- if not by technology or industry, then by the sheer volumes of people from the East, and her people are too fat, lazy, and uneducated to do a damn thing about it. (Pardon my French!) And the ones who are capable, who by some miracle haven't left, will be micro-managed by idiots who don't know the first thing about what it is they are managing. Maybe you've already noticed?

True, we are still before the rapid decline phase. Although children are routinely massacred while learning in school, we have not yet started the era of random McVey- and Madrid-style bombings, and even that will seem like a blessing when the suicide attacks start on random street corners. And in the land where anything is possible, who knows what some sick mind will dream up, only to be copied, improved, refined, and perfected by our discontented masses?

The good news is that by then, most people won't notice! Because of media conditioning, the average attention span will be little more than a goldfish. Shows like American Idol will have a presidential edition, and you will be able to bet on candidates and vote tallies while watching them 24/7 on Big Brother.

By then senseless violence mixed with misogynist sex will have permeated down to the very youngest media consumers (babies smacking moms saying, "Gimme that milk, beeotch!")... all in the name of free speech and artistic expression. Meanwhile, the government's ability to monitor every public and private communication channel for its citizens will grow, stifling free expression, but giving the illusion of having more. People will believe everything their puppet president says, despite being suffocated, face down in evidence to the contrary.

I love America, but her citizens smashed my rose-colored glasses when kicking me in the face for being different. I see my country through bloody eyes now, and though the hue is still red, the glitter has all but gone. What remains for me is to find a place in this world that will still be habitable in 50 years and move there to heal. What remains for America might be waiting on the moon, where we can build America 2.0. Still, one can't help but wonder if Douglas Adams had it right on that one too... build three ships, send the first two...

Tell me Fergie, where is the Love?

What's wrong with the world mama?
People living like aint got no mamas
I think the whole worlds addicted to the drama
Only attracted to the things that bring you trauma
Overseas yeah we tryin to stop terrorism
But we still got terrorists here livin
In the USA the big CIA the Bloodz and the Crips and the KKK
But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And if you hatin you're bound to get irate
Yeah madness is what you demonstrate
And that's exactly how anger works and operates
You gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can you practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father Father Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?

It just ain't the same all ways have changed
New days are strange is the world the insane?
If love and peace so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don't belong
Nations dropping bombs
Chemical gases filling lungs of little ones
With ongoing suffering
As the youth die young
So ask yourself is the loving really strong?
So I can ask myself really what is going wrong
With this world that we living in
People keep on giving in
Makin wrong decisions
Only visions of them livin and
Not respecting each other
Deny thy brother
The wars' going on but the reasons' undercover
The truth is kept secret
Swept under the rug
If you never know truth
Then you never know love
Where's the love y'all?(I don't know)
Where's the truth y'all?(I don't know)
Where's the love y'all?

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father father father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I'm getting older y'all people get colder
Most of us only care about money makin
Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction
Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting their young minds faster than bacteria
Kids wanna act like what the see in the cinema
Whatever happened to the values of humanity
Whatever happened to the fairness and equality
Instead of spreading love, we're spreading animosity
Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling under
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling down
It's no wonder why sometimes I'm feeling under
I gotta keep my faith alive, until love is found

Cassandra out.

Gets My Goat!

I'm disgusted to even show this. In fact, I'm not... you're just going to have to click to see this photo of Afghans playing Buzkashi in Kabul.

Buzkashi... doesn't sound that offensive...

Buzkashi, or "goat dragging", is played with two teams of horsemen competing to throw a decapitated goat into a scoring circle.

Wha-wha-what?

Get these people some Polo equipment, or at least a soccer ball! Good god, throwing headless goats... as a game?

I don't get American rodeo sport events either. In fact, I don't really get men at all. This is what too much testosterone will do! An otherwise sensible human being throwing dead goats for fun.

I suppose if you're a rancher this might be a useful skill... for those times when you have to gather and burn the dead from a nearby village slain by your local Taliban... oh, did I just say that out loud?

Short Attention Span Theatre

I'm a bit shocked at the quickness in which Americans tend to forget, and at the same time (and for the same reasons), concerned about this election turning into Political Pop Idol.

Possible causes?

• Too much media prevents long term retention of any of it.
• The media is hyped (and hyping) uncontrollably
• Americans are so numb, they need actually need the hype to notice/care
• Americans are so hooked on drama, they need to interject it into everyday life

Well, don't forget, you are what you eat!

My First Day In London; My First Protest

This day in herstory...
My first sightseeing day in London, February 15, 2003. I take the tube from the Queensbury area and alight at the Westminster exit and find myself immersed in the above... and below!

You remember the "Million Man" march on Washington? This was 5 times larger, and I unwittingly popped up from underground right in the middle of it!

My first day outside America, and already I'm an activist!

Jahiliyya - being ignorant of guidance from God

The last few days have been filled hosting for my Kuwaiti family. Yes... my Arab, Muslim family is now in the Midwest America... I felt obligated to show them a little culture while they visit the place furthest from.

If you ever read the 9/11 Commission Report (google "9/11 pdf"), it says that the roots of the fundamental Islamic movement can be traced to one man, Sayyid Qutb, sent by Egypt to study in the US during the 1940s (p.51). He was appalled by Western culture, saying we were affected by barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition known by Muslims as jahiliyya).

This was fine until he observed that jahiliyya was spreading, not just through the Western world, but also penetrating into Islam lands, thereby posing as a direct threat to Islam and her culture, caused by Western culture.

... there's more, but 60 years later, here we are, and simplistically, that's why 'they' hate 'us'... because our culture promotes god-lessness by worshiping money and actors, we advocate freedom but lack within ourselves the restraint needed to responsibly wield it, and we are barbaric; we don't care for our citizens and in some cases, even kill them, so how can we be civil to others?

Knowing that... I was in Kuwait 20 years ago and then, it looked like a middle-eastern city. Now they tell me with all of the corporations and media, it looks like an adjunct of America. Advertisements for Western companies are now peppered through the city. Western fashion with its emphasis on sexually evocative models line the store fronts. Etc., etc.

For what it's worth...

Of course, not all Muslims feel Western culture is undesirable, which causes further friction and fragmenting because that would appear to bolster Qutb's claims! (Now because of Westernism, Islam is being attacked from without and from within!)

I'm not sure we're entirely to blame for internal affairs within the Muslim world, but looking around at my America, I don't completely disagree with Qutb. I'm an ex-pat for precisely those reasons; I too feel the American people have lost their way. To me, it's self-evident in our apathy, obesity rates, drug use, materialism-as-substitute-for-love, and anger management issues.

Although I don't hate America for her decadence, it does cause me to blush.

A Pointless Debate...

I don't suffer fools well. I'm not sure if this is a virtue or a vice, but people must think me an opinionated, egotistical arse because of it.

Recently, I poo-pooed a slick-looking, HD-quality YouTube (oh sorry, GoogleTube) video of someone saying that Humans are not causing climate change. I was accused of having a closed, unenlightened mind because I refused to watch an hour+ long video on the grounds that I knew it was based on a scientifically invalid premise, yet it considered itself 'science'.

Here's some raw numbers in order to gain a perspective and to understand why I appear to be so dismissive.

But first, the summary.

=============================================
1- CO2 warms the planet
2- humans produced more CO2 in 50 years than found in the atmosphere over 400,000 years
3- humans are reducing plankton blooms, which 'eat' CO2
4- humans are reducing forests, which 'eat' CO2
=============================================

Humans are not only causing climate change but reducing the Earth's ability to self-regulate!!! Now comes the numbers and refs.

---

**Fact #1: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Uncontroversially, the more of it there is in the atmosphere, the warmer the Earth gets [1].

**Fact #2: There is around 750 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere with 800 billion tons dissolved in the oceans [2].

**Fact #3: The US alone has been putting 5 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere every year since 1990 [3]. That's 50 billion tons per decades, and I remind you, that this is long after America's peak industrial output. Looking at the rest of the world nations, the total annual output has gone from 10 billion tons (1960) to 25 billion tons (2000) PER YEAR [4]!

Very conservatively, that's 600 billions tons of CO2 produced in the past 50 years!!! Did you ever wonder why ice cores show we're at the highest concentrations of CO2 in the past 400,000 years [5]???

Now I'd be inclined to believe that despite this HUMAN influence, NATURE might self-balance, but HUMANS are also destroying the capability of NATURE to do this!

**Fact #4: Plankton convert CO2 from the air into Oxygen (supplying around 50% of the Oxygen in the atmosphere) while storing the CO2 in the ocean, but HUMANS are reducing this effect by destroying the ocean ecosystem by polluting the ocean with chemicals and by damming rivers which reduce sediment flow to the ocean. (Land sediment and the minerals in them are responsible for plankton blooms - it's what they 'eat'. Damn up the rivers, block the source of food for the bottom of the food chain [6] To put pesticides (things that kill living things) in the sediment is to put them in the base of the food chain.

While this seriously threatens our food supply, it is only one way human are causing/inducing/accelerating climate change by reducing the effect of the Earth to stabilize itself.

**Fact #5: Forests also convert C02 into Oxygen, the other major source of Oxygen in our atmosphere. HUMANS are reducing this natural conversion - causing a buildup of CO2 - by destroying forests. (For more forest facts, see [7] and [8])

---

You can come to your own conclusions, but don't think I have a closed mind simply because I won't entertain YouTube/Google videos of professor/skeptics saying that humans are not affecting the environment.

---

References:
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

A Tale Of Two Tutus

In Nigeria, a group of men were arrested for dressing as Women. At first, they were charged with Sodomy, which carries a punishment of death. Yes, death... by stoning! Fortunately, that charge also requires four witnesses, so instead, they have been since been charged with "indecent dressing" and vagrancy. Vagrancy? Vaginacy, maybe...

Two weeks ago they were arrested. Only 5 of the 18 men could pay bail; the other 13 are still in jail.

In Uganda, being gay (which isn't the same as cross-dressing, btw, but try telling them a guy in a dress isn't gay) could get you life in prison.

However, in a bold display of juxtapositionalism, Sydney Australia seems to be okay with US Men In Tutus. And thus the phrase, "Toss another one on the Barbie," acquires a whole new meaning.

A Modest Proposal

A very, very, slick electric motor-driven car.

However, I wonder... from a physics standpoint... whether a car is gas or electric driven, it still must perform the same amount of work (W = F*d), right? So, if society driving too much (consuming too much energy) is the problem... would this be a solution, or a device that would keep people mired in their love affairs with driving by hiding the source of the energy? (E.g., burning fossil fuels to make electricity.)

I don't know if we fully understand yet all the implications of Ford's invention.

I do know that if everyone switched to electric cars, electricity costs would go through the roof; most companies already have brown outs in summer... can you imagine what the load would be with 2.4 cars per household charging up?

Hmm... biofuels make food more expensive, batteries make utilities more expensive... I know, let's make cars run on water! Yeah, let's grow food and water for machines while 1/3 of our population starves! Ah, if Jonathan Swift were alive today, instead of eating children, we'd be feeding them to our cars!

Your daily perspective...

I'm thankful for power and water NOT being the kind of election issue that it is in Sierra Leone.

Election business not all man business indeed!

Why I Won't Vote For President

Y'all can vote for bigots... I won't.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a leading US gay rights advocacy group, has just had a political debate on gay issues (broadcast on Logo).

Not one republican even responded!

Don't feel smug, democrats, all the front runners, including Clinton, Obama, and Edwards still believe that they are somehow better than gays by refusing to acknowledge gay marriage. If blacks or Mexicans were denied marriage rights, it would be a racism issue, but evidently, it's okay to be bigoted toward gays. (Yeah, I know, it's better than being put to death over being gay.)

You don't have to be gay to see the bigotry! It's a tiny step to go from thinking gay people don't deserve the same as you to thinking that anyone different from you is inferior - and claiming that God says gays can't be married is bigoted behavior justified by an irrational belief ... religion is not about intolerance!

Mark my words... "Separate but equal" legislation for gays will only be followed by similar legislation for blacks, immigrants, women, and any minority deemed a threat.

Now then, if a political candidate feels that way about their own constituents, how I can trust them to behave as a leader when it comes to international issues? If they can treat gays differently then themselves, it would be foolish for me to think they consider, Jews or Muslims for example, equals. It would be foolish of me to think that they in fact have the best interests - deep down - of anyone (minority or not) over their own. Full stop.

Biofuel Bandaids for Gunshot Wounds

Many of my friends think that I am against bio-fuels because I never say anything positive about them. Typically, when some unsuspecting soul tells me how great it is that Indiana is getting a resurgence from Bush's bio-fuel push, I start down the path of the Earth and Us being a closed environment, just like goldfish in a bowl, with limited Earth resources, and here I'm talking about the nutrients found in our soil that grows plants that feeds Us and everything we eat (except of course, sea-food, but don't get me started on what we're doing to the marine ecology).

I then wonder out loud if it could be considered, morally speaking, a good idea to grow corn for machines when we have two billion people on this planet starving.

Never mind that, I then wonder out loud if it could be considered, logically speaking, a good idea to grow corn for anything other than living creatures. Shrug. Just don't make sense to me.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's great that we might be able to process food-waste as fuel for machines and I think it's great that bio-engines emit less pollution, blah-blah-blah. I don't disagree with any of the positive aspects of bio-industry!

My issue with bio-fuels is that they are not addressing the problem. The problem is not that we need an alternative fuel source, but rather that we are over-consuming. We are treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease! To me then, the use of bio-fuels is a bandage to terminal wound, and one that makes the cut deeper at the same time.

We are over-consuming and we are wasting energy at a shameful rate; but we need not be ignorant... it is by first being conscious of the fact that we need to reduce that we can finally start to reduce! (Talk the talk, walk the walk!)

It's not so hard... the easiest way to reduce is simply not to waste in the first place.

Waste not, want not...

This Day In Herstory... July 7, 2005

It's been a rough year. Personally, I've met with tremendous growth opportunities (read: pain) and my work has been intense, but very productive.

And so I suppose it's never convenient to get robbed. It just plain sucks. You come home and everything seems normal (because they picked your locks) and the first thing you notice is that your first view into the flat, which is always the same... is somehow different. The room is not like you last left it, which is impossible for someone who lives alone. The you notice your projector is missing. WTF? The mind reels for an explanation and you emotionally attach to the first thing that pops into your head. "Why would my landlord come in here and borrow it without even asking me first? He doesn't even know how to use it!"

Then you notice open drawers in the bedroom and the awful reality begins to sink in... YOU HAVE BEEN ROBBED!

You run to your stash of currencies in five different countries... well hidden, but now... gone. How smart of you to avoid needlessly paying currancy conversion fees by keeping a wad of cash hidden in your bedroom. Yeah, you were ready to fly to any given country on a whim (and you did), but now you're $20K poorer. You've gone from buying gifts for friends 'just because' to not being able to buy groceries in just 3 short hours.

You look around, in shock. What else is gone? Credit cards? A great tinge of panic... no, they left them... they were only looking for things they could sell quickly. My computers!!! My terabytes of data!!! No, they left them... too bulky. The thought of losing so much personal data makes you woosey, you sit on the floor. My jewlery? Gone. Now you realize the memories attached with them are now just that ... memories. Gut-wrentching pangs. Slowly, this turns to anger and action. You rush downstairs to view the CCTV of the shop below you, knowing that the perp would be captured on the screen. After 15 minutes of searching... you've found him. Now you rush out onto the street, frantically searching for that bastard.

Hours later, you come home exhausted, spent, and miserable. But in the end, what's missing? You still have your health, your experience, your friends, you ... it doesn't work. Fact is, your life savings is gone and so is a $4,000 projector, which was also your main source of entertainment, information, and relaxation. Heh, but you can forget about relaxing now. How about getting exponentially more paranoid for every hour you are away from home. How about doing an inventory check everytime you return to your flat? How about going out of your way to hide things you would normally have displayed?

Weeks go by, and then, finally, one day, you find yourself not looking longingly at the blank spaces where your stuff used to live. You find yourself enjoying being out again. You have come to believe that yes, you have passed some cosmic Taoist test about attaching yourself to your material possesions. And then, one ordinary Sunday afternoon, you come home to find your front door in two pieces.

Now add in loads of stress and aggrivation from living and working in a foreign country and being separated from your friends, family, and comforts, put yourself in a competitive publish or perish environment, and throw in, just for fun, a good measure of gender dysphoria. Welcome to my July 5, 2005. It's pretty fuct, I know... and then ... not just two days later...


Bombs in my backyard! I live at the left part of the #4 circle. From my home, I can walk to the bus blast in 4 minutes and the Russell Square blast 6 mins... that should give you an idea of how close I am. What in distance to Americans might just be the width of a mall can cover two small inner London towns here, so while the blasts were physically close to me, they were literally in another city from my eyes… I walk everywhere, my physical world is small.

However, the blasts occurred where many students and locals work and live, right on the fringes of UCL's campus. The bus blast occurred just outside where UCLIC (and my old office) was based.

My first reaction was to phone home and let family know I'm fine. I've never heard my mother in more of a fit of despair, fear, and panic. Somehow, she seemed to know before it happened. Meanwhile, the local reaction was much more of what you'd expect from a people who had World War II on their door step... people in London worked. Most high street stores closed early (because there was not much interest in shopping), but city services were near normal. Kids were not told of the event while at school… at then end of the day, they were told ‘a security event has occurred’ and they left it to the parents to explain what happened. Now that's slick.

For most people, getting OUT of central London was trickier than normal, but not impossible.

I wasn't able to sort my mind before the explosions, but that didn't seem to matter as my mind was focused on the things that really mattered. Since then, I have been helping friends, and also walking around the city, talking to strangers in need, helping them, and taking photos of this beautiful and calm city so you all back home can know I continue to be safe and happy. Many people just need to talk about it, and have someone listen. I guess I'm no different.

I don’t know what the media coverage of this event is like in America… I feel most Americans do not get unbiased news reported to them, even those that think they do.

So 7/7 is going on, the UK's 9/11... I'm walking around the streets of London just hours after the attacks, and what do I see?

As an American living in the REAL world, I am frequently asked to explain people like this to the rest of people also living in the real the world.

The statement he chose to make…

Why he chose to make it…

The time he chose to make it…

Visions from the Dead

Tomorrow

is
the
anniversary
the
July 7,
2005
terrorist
attacks
on
London.

9/11 occured 1,000 miles from where I lived. 7/7 (and the subsequent failed attack two weeks later) occured just a few blocks from where I lived. The iconic bus explosion - as horrific to England as are to Americans the images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center - occured just one block away from my old office.

My home was at the intersection of the two diagonal red 'blast lines' just below the fourth explosion, and just to the left of the second one.

It's hard not to feel affected by this 'anniversary.' And on the eve of this dreadful day... a video showing London Tube bomber Shehzad Tanweer has been aired on al-Jazeera television. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5154714.stm)

This is the second time one of the suicide bombers from 7/7 has come back from the dead to leave a message. (The first time was Mohammad Sidique Khan -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4206708.stm)

Each time, the message has been simple, clear, and consise, and each time the message has been misunderstood by the West. Put simply, it has always been "leave us alone and we'll leave you alone." Anyone who has read the Koran knows that they are obligated by Allah to follow this rule (they are basically quoting scripture to us). Even Bin Laden says this in his latest message addressed to the US:

“Your salvation will only come in your withdrawal from our land, in stopping the robbing of our oil and resources, and in stopping your support for the corrupt and corrupting leaders.”

Whatever your stance is, I think those are pretty reasonable requests as a first step toward creating a peaceful coexistence through non-violent, diplomatic means, but I do not wish to enter that debate... especially not with Americans. Whatever the consequences to following these actions are, no other actions will bring peace (short of total destruction) until these basic requests are met; it's right there in the Koran, check it out.

The Bigger Picture

What I do want to discuss is the bigger picture of it all... what hath technology enabled?

Just 150 years ago, if a person from the dead had reappeard to a group of people, can you imagine what the reaction would be? Recall that there was no TV, no radio, no recordings, no photos, almost no media as we know it. There was only one way to see and hear a person who was already dead... so I suspect it would be the similar as to what happened 2,000 years ago - that person would have been elevated to the status of a god, prophet, buddha, or super-natural being. Whether or not the 'vision' would have been interactive is beside the point, any message delivered would have been a message that would have been listened to. Q&A afterward optional.

Now, thanks to technology, with $100 and a nearby Wal-Mart, any mere mortal can do the same. Don't have $100? Well, that's just a week of washing dishes to achieve a form of life after death. Hopefully, your message won't start out, "Hi. If you are watching this, then I am dead and I bet you all are pretty bummed."

You are either awed by this revelation, or numb to it, but such is the progress of technology - and just one example at that!

Of course, society has moved on too. It seems we are no longer impressed with messages from the dead, even those who give their lives for the chance to obtain an audience hear it. What technology giveth, society taketh away.

But not quite... now think about what services like tribe allow... think hard about the nature of consciousness and what one can do with the ability to reach and interact with millions of voices. The tower of Babel has been climbed, for sure, but that is just the tip of the iceberg!

Consciousness has been freed from the temporal and spatial limitations of its host body and is free to join and merge with others. The human is no longer what will survive, but instead, the ideas created by them... especially as ideas form that are not of one single mind, but rather are the result of many. We are merely ants moving memes from one format to another; simply instruments of their creation, evolution, and preservation.

Our bodies, our DNA, our history is just one ginormous external memory system, and taken together with all the other life on this planet, represents the sum total of what has been learned over the billions of years of evolution. Kinda cool, huh?

Now consider that technology, first through verbal language, then books, now with computers and media, is enabling us to accelerate the pace of knowledge by storing it outside of our DNA (the domain of instincts). No longer do ideas survive purely by natural selection. Unnatural selection is upon us!

Our ideas survive, but we cannot.

To quote from 'Jerry Springer, The Opera':
"Hopefully, what will survive of us, is love."