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 24 May 2003 @ 14:53, by quidnovi. Internet
"A bamboo forest stands next to the property. It is a wonderful world...
Yesterday's dinner was enjoyed at Lake Mitchell's gourmet cafe. The special dessert was Georgia peach crème brulée. Someone wanted me to translate "beurre blanc." I translated, but I did not consume.
The docks at the lake restaurant stretch out over green waters, rippled by geese and baby geese, pontoon boats and gentle southern breezes. A couple of children sit on the dock on the other side of the river, fishing. You stare at them for several minutes before you realize they are carved of wood."
---i2i [Floating Bridges] More >
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21 May 2003 @ 22:27, by raypows. Space Exploration
Credit and Copyright: Sebastien Gauthier
Explanation: After watching this month's lunar eclipse, amateur astronomer Sebastien Gauthier carefully composed this montage of telescopic images of the Moon sliding through planet Earth's shadow. While the deepest part of the total eclipse corresponds to the central exposure, the play of light across the lunar surface nicely demonstrates that the planet's shadow is not uniformly dark as it extends into space. In fact, lunar maria and montes are still visible in the dimmed, reddened sunlight scattered into the cone-shaped shadow region, or umbra, by Earth's atmosphere. For this eclipse, the Moon's trajectory took it North of the umbra's darker core, seen here cast over the Moon's cratered southern highlands. Gauthier's telescope and camera equipment were set up near the Trois-Rivieres College Champlain Observatory in Quebec, Canada. More >
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 21 May 2003 @ 11:45, by raypows. Politics
The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
Free Inquiry
Spring 2003
5-11-3
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of
prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause -The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military
service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the
family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposedto the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with
virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes
for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
They Thought They Were Free
By Milton Mayer
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945",
University of Chicago Press. Reissued in paperback, April, 1981.
As Harpers Magazine noted when the book was published in 1955 (U. of Chicago), Milton Mayerâsextraordinarily far-sighted book on the Germans is more timely today than ever•
This crucial book tells how and why 'decent men' became Nazis through short biographies of 10 law-abiding citizens. An American journalist of German/Jewish descent, Mr. Mayer provides a fascinating window into the lives, thoughts and emotions of a people caught up in the rush of the Nazi movement. It is a book that should make people pause and think -- not only about the Germans, but also about themselves. More >
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14 May 2003 @ 18:11, by newdawn. Activism
The start of Global Gratitude program in Australia is on this Friday, 16 May. It would be wonderful if you are able to join us.
Just find a place where you can be quiet for 7 minutes (more if you wish).
Read the first inspirational message in the Global Gratitude book, read it out aloud, feeling it and then close your eyes and feel the meaning of your words. Feel them for yourself, your children and future generations. Then focus on the family you have chosen.
Go to [link] to select a family and feel the message for that mother and child/ren and send them love. That's all.
When you have finished, tick the box and go on with your day.
More >
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14 May 2003 @ 15:01, by ming. Internet
There's a buzz about social software, software for better connecting people together, facilitating that they find like-minded people, work more closely together, etc. Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes and now Groove, says:"What's incredibly exciting to me is that a confluence of factors e.g. ubiquitous computing, networking, web and RAD technologies, the state of the job market - in essence, loosely coupled systems and loosely coupled minds - have created what amounts to a petri dish for experimentation in systems for social network formation, management and interpersonal interaction. An exciting time to be exploring what may happen to social structures, to organizations and to society when the friction between our minds can be reduced to zero ... to the point where we can truly have superconductive relationships." Superconductive Relationships! Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. But, if you follow the link to Don Park's Blog to "Misgivings about Social Software", you'll see that there are also potentially negative sides to examine."Korea is emerging as one of the most advanced Internet nation in the world. Young Koreans, in particular, live and breath Internet, each belonging to large number of online communities. One would expect them to be well informed and objective, yet they are not. Their views are warped and often radical. While all the world's information is at their fingertip, they consume information subjectively and produce misinformation biased by their views. Adding highly effective social software to this is frightening to me.
When I was last in Korea, a close friend of mine told me he was thinking about sending his six-year old daughter to schools in the US. I was shocked. How could he think this way? He said he initially thought the idea ridiculous, but he changed his mind after talking with people he knew, people who are just as well-to-do as his family. Apparently, they are all thinking the same thing and this warped his common sense." There's a point there. Sufficiently pervasive and effective social software might allow groups of people to walk around in a completely different reality, and have it be continuously reinforced by people you're connected with. I suppose we're for example talking about players of online multi-player virtual reality games. And I do notice that for my 16 year old son, his social relationships within Asheron's Call, or whatever he's playing right now, often are more real than then ones in this world. And if we make the software better and better? Hmmm. More >
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 13 May 2003 @ 17:17, by ming. Entrepreneurs, Money Making
For a while I figured I would change my business card to read something like this:
Flemming Funch
Looking for signs of life
Well, in part because I tend to put cool but puzzling titles and bylines on my business card. Puzzling because some people (practical people) have a hard time figuring out how I possibly could make any kind of a living on that. Right now my business card says "Connecting the people who change the world". I don't know if that's something I do, but it sounds like a good thing. And, yes, nobody's paying me for doing that.
So, as to the 'signs of life'. Well, most things I'm interested in concern making life more full and interesting. More life. And I'm interested in understanding better how life works. What is life? Is the universe alive? I think so, but I'd like to understand it better.
You can also say I'm looking for the signal. In most any kind of communication, the information is found in those parts that stand out from the background. If I say:0000000000000000000000000100000000000000 then the information is found in the different part. The 1 in this case. That's the signal.
Likewise in life. If you're just doing the same thing as everybody else, you're not providing any signal. You're not showing signs of being alive. You're wasting God's time, if you want to put it that way.
I'm interested in the stuff that's different and alive with energy. The people who start a green hair culture when everybody else thinks one has to have black hair. The people who think up something entirely different that actually works. The people who feel a different beat and who actually dance to it. I'm interested in patterns that hadn't been noticed before. And the meeting of different patterns. Life is diverse.
There's something free about life, so I'm looking for freedom. People who manage to tap into something fundamental, but yet express it in ways that aren't restrained by old patterns of thinking or unnecessary norms for behavior. Changing the rules. Exploring your range of motion.
And then I'm interested in how it all fits together. Ecosystems are diverse and synergetic. Diversity is life. Monoculture is death. But it is not that simple. It is not enough to just make things different. It is not enough to just break the rules. The magic is in the synergy. How different things work together, and support each other, in sometimes surprising ways. Finding patterns that make diversity work. Self-regenerating systems that thrive on diversified experimentation. Autopoiesis. Self-creation. Life.
I'm looking for small signs, and I'm looking for some bigger signs. Signs that humanity is alive and becoming more alive. More >
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 13 May 2003 @ 15:50, by quidnovi. Recreation, Fun
This egoMETER is a device for measuring a test subjects ratio of self-indulgence to communitarian altruism. Clinical trials were conducted by the Significant Ego Litmus Foundation (S.E.L.F.) of Geneva, Switzerland over a two-year period to establish the raw technology used in creating this proto-type device.
The egoMETER was developed with a generous foundation grant from S.E.L.F. to Tesla Neon (Chico) and AXO Design (San Francisco) in an effort to establish an international technical protocol for ego assessment.
The S.E.L.F. foundation works tirelessly to develop worldwide awareness of rampant self grandiosement of modern society leading humanity down a course of cultural and environmental destruction. The egoMETER is critical as a diagnostic tool to identify a test subjects latent tendency toward narcissistic ego development and give a sound diagnosis so they can seek immediate treatment from a qualified ego conselor. Inflated ego is a treatable disease, if it is diagnosed early. Tesla Neon encourages everyone to have their ego tested so they can get on a path of balanced ego development. Save human culture and the environment, get tested today.
This device met all conditions and standards established The International Center for Standards in Psychological Test Apparatus (ICSPTA) Patent Pending Kolorbar.com More >
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 13 May 2003 @ 14:08, by spectragon. Technology
Several years ago, projections based on then current computing industry growth rate indicated that computers would soon approach the eight terabyte (8 trillion byte) storage capacity of the human brain. There are now computers that possess this capacity but at that time, it got me to consider what attribute might enable man’s creation to qualify as sentient. Having been raised Catholic, the concept of free will came to mind as the quality in which we were ” created in the image and likeness of our creator”. So I started with a flow chart of free will, in attempt to understand the underlying algorithm. The backbone of that flow chart looked something like this:
[Diagram was aparently not formated in way that could be viewed as an embeded image.]
Next I had to develop a fractal pattern generating equation that would enable the unit cell of this flow chart to dynamically self propagate. The result was a model that, when initial values were assigned to the variables, exhibited the potential to develop the diversity of wills displayed in the general populace.
A colleague commented that computers would not be on par with man until they possessed the capacity to experience pleasure. Desire for pleasure is, after all, the engine that drives free will.
A response to this line of reasoning might be that computers will never rise to the stature of man because we are more than mechanisms, we are spiritual entities. I acknowledge the spiritual perspective to existence. The documentation of near death experiences, remote viewing etc. provide irrefutable evidence that the mind of an individual continues to function when the brain waves have “flat-lined”, however the brain, itself is none the less the organic computer whose soft ware provides the model of reality presented during our normal daily experience. That being the case, if man were to construct the appropriate architecture would a spiritual entity in the market for that sort of real estate take up residence? More >
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 10 May 2003 @ 05:49, by shawa. Ideas, Creativity
reflets de lune
nocturne ressac
courbée sous les ombres
de vibrante douleur
je connais la cause... More >
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 9 May 2003 @ 19:43, by quidnovi. Communities
The Musing Muse
A collective production of THE MUSE, a room of/for/about Creative Writing open to all
1. ENQUIRING MUSE WANTS TO KNOW, a free-style, free-play bit of a reporting on and about NCN and its
members.
2. A CREATIVE GAZETTE about Creative Writing
More >
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