Juiced Wisdom

Buying a wedding dress online - Peridress review

2011-11-26T22:41:00.006+01:00

For my wedding this year I bought a wedding dress off the internet from a Chinese company called Peridress.com

I paid 200 bucks at the beginning of August, and 7 weeks later I was sent this beautiful dress. I felt BAD having paid such little money - the details on the dress were amazing, it was made exactly to my measurements, and while I didn't know it at the time I received it, the dress would come out beautifully in the photos on the big day.

My only problem is the amount of slack Peridress has to cop online. There are a lot of people writing negative reviews about Peridress, mostly penned, I imagine, by two kinds of women:

- The one with a princess complex who thinks it's her god-given right to have a $5000 wedding dress
- And the one with shitty time management.

Anyway, all I can do is post the photos of my dress and have you decide for yourself.

Thank you Peridress!

No other deaths to report

2011-09-30T00:41:00.003+02:00

Timmy Scott 2002-2011

2011-09-08T05:54:00.015+02:00

Well Timmy, trust you to die the very week the cat gets her eulogy written - you could always be trusted to take the spotlight and your death is no different.

As soon as Dad green-lighted getting a puppy in the middle of summer of 2002, I insisted we adopt one straight away - I had just picked up one of your siblings and was about to take her home when you were brought out, a fawn-coloured pup who looked like she was wearing perfectly-applied black liner round her eyes. You were on another level of cute altogether and we knew we had lucked out.

After a couple of days of living with us you were duly named 'Timmy!' after the South Park character. Nan put it much more mildly, 'Any other family would have that dog shot,' but you seemed to fit right in regardless.

On the first day in your new home when Uncle Jacky popped in for a visit, you made as much noise as a 5-week old puppy could muster, literally barking yourself out of balance, 'That dog's got good instincts,' he said, and this never changed - you protected our house from day one. The second day you waddled into the center of the living room, paused, and spewed out intestinal worms like the little girl off The Exorcist. I didn't like you quite as much suddenly, but no matter how much you cocked it all up, whether it was smashing through a glass window (and being diagnosed with Separation Anxiety Disorder), pronounced the first dog to have ever successfully escaped puppy preschool, crapping and pissing over my school books, or humping my leg as I tried to sleep ('Maybe Timmy won't have puppies because she's a hermaphrodite'), you would always hang out and want nothing more but to share our company. You were so easily loved.

You liked to attack fire, water, newspapers, possums and hedgehogs, liked to spaz your way up trees, and liked to sleep on my bed. When anyone asked you to leave a room, except for me and Dad, you'd simply ignore them (and you were never really on Ainara's good-side because of it). Louis knew he was taking up your side of the bed after you leapt on his balls. But in reality, you didn't really listen to anyone, and you were always happiest running away and doing whatever you wanted, especially if someone was running behind you getting angrier by the second, preferably waving something menacingly. You made pissing Dad off an art-form. Like the time you peed all over his bare-feet when he greeted you at the door, or when he was trying to sell a table to Ellie and you bit her Border Collie that was infinitely more expensive than you because you cost $0 to buy (your mouth full of incriminating black and white hair), or when you tried to take on a cow, or when you'd determinedly charge into the telephone wires and disconnect calls ('Oh, here comes Timmy-' *click* beep, beep, beep), or when you had 9-puppies underneath the house, or when you'd run away when your flea-treatment was due, or when you'd channel the fury of Hell when the meter reader happened to walk up to the house or a four-year-old child on a tricycle pushed itself down the footpath.

You were as good a dog as I was an owner - I spewed up on you the first time you had puppies, I did a quick U-turn when you were in the passenger seat and you crashed into the dashboard, I fed you too much Weet-bix that one time, and I would throw lemons for you to fetch. I designed the blueprints for a wooden go-kart named the 'Timmy Mobile' which you would exclusively power, but fortunately for you, it only went as far as having two pieces of wood nailed to each other and the project was soon abandoned.

You were the best dog. You knew when I was sad to stick by my side and you would even try and console me with a lick to the hand or two; when Dad took you to the workshop with him, you would spend half the trip to Kingseat thanking him, getting in the way of the stick shift as you groveled; you would wink at just the right times and have the oddest human mannerisms. You were everything I ever wanted in a dog and your lasting legacy will be that every dog I have in the future is going to be fucking lame compared to you.

There are just too many stories to tell. Knowing you, you'll probably reincarnate into a rock star creating another legend, making heaps of noise and being destructive and entertaining simultaneously. I love you Dog.

Sarabi Scott Loinaz 1995-2011

2011-09-04T18:46:00.005+02:00

The year was 1995 and my sister and I, five and eight years-old respectively, were squarely in Disney's target market for their next cult product: The Lion King. We made dance routines to Hakuna Matata, named the family cat Nala, and my sister even went as far as roaring when she was angry at whatever things five-year-olds get angry about. At the height of this lion-mania our cat Nala gave birth to kittens - I was present when the last kitten of the litter, Sarabi, was born and watched her take her first strained breaths as she writhed around looking like chunky animated vomit. Needless to say, my sister and I were spewing rainbows for weeks.

A month or so later Nala disappeared, and the day before we were supposed to hand Sarabi over to some family member, my mother decided we should keep Sarabi instead. She was now officially known as Sarabi Scott Loinaz.

She accompanied our family through two mid-life crises, a divorce, our mini-adoption of Taiwanese triplets, several home changes in South Auckland, and endured our new additions to the family, namely, our retarded dogs Timmy and Zeus. Fed up with the dogs' bullshit she even moved out and lived with the neighbours for awhile.

She would turn her nose up at food if it wasn't to her liking, liked to sleep underneath the covers with a warm human, and could still run up to the top of trees like she was 1/16th her age. It's sad that she ran away to die, but I think she knew that dying in our backyard would have given her canine rivals a free lunch.

Wisdom Memes

2011-08-29T23:41:00.005+02:00

Memes: Me gusta. I had a go creating a new Q&A meme.

Iboobinati Doctrine

2011-08-11T13:54:00.002+02:00

As the third apostle of Iboobinati it is my duty to pass on this important message:

London Riot Poem - E. Scott

2011-08-09T16:29:00.003+02:00

there's still daylight
grabbing chips and drink at the off-licence
like the end of world fantasies
where you get anything you want
except you're not alone
people are looking at you
from their windows
your face framed by a hoodie.

and people will talk about why,
why you're doing what you're doing,
but we both know how you feel,
smashing and stomping and throwing
in its unconscious freedom.
we know how good it feels to destroy
the shops that will give you minimum wage,
the corner shops that make you pay for
the necessities of life,
so they can pay for theirs,
an order to go with the flow.

And people will say is it racial,
and make it racial,
not knowing that humans share a mouth,
and the man with his fridge full
is a dangerous thief.
They'll say black,
and black people will say black,
and i ask,
the black that makes you proud
for having endured,
the black that's known slavery,
that wakes up and realizes
it has to pay to be alive?
i'm the black that's just as hungry
for change.

And we need more batons
and violence.
We need hot lava pouring down
from helicopters,
creating sculptures of deviants.
We need more police
and more control,
and bigger locks on our doors.
And we both know what we need,
and a lock wont fix how hungry someone's feeling.

So separated from oneself,
the pieces become unrecognizable from the original whole.
Listen to the window smash,
why does the sound excite you so much?

(Nearly) a year has come and gone...

2011-07-30T17:17:00.007+02:00

And I'm back to using my little blog/pseudo-tumblr. One year older I've realized that:

(a) There is a way to influence the world economy from the bottom-up, building local economies and transforming houses to centers of production. Unconditional basic income is the step forward. Doing away with money suddenly would be disastrous, let's concentrate on the next step: guaranteed necessities for every human on earth.

(b) Interesting jobs for 20-somethings like myself are usually unpaid apprenticeships. Of course, I could go into PR/Marketing/Advertising/Sucking Satan's Cock where every creative nowadays makes his bread and butter, but I don't want to help continue lower the standards of humanity.

(c) Happiness for me is sharing my life with someone else and having a project in common to tweak reality.

(d) London is the most amazing city and I'm happy to have finally found home.

I miss Donna though.

ETA declares ceasefire

2010-09-06T13:43:00.000+02:00

Much has happened since, in the face of a strategy of denial and savage annihilation of the Basque country, Eta, organising the people and taking up arms, began the struggle for freedom.

Men and women who have given their best, their hopes and aspiration... ordinary citizens of different origins who have come together in the struggle.

In the face of the political reform of the Franco era, bent on the denial and annihilation of the Basque country, while some decided to enter into the framework of what they call "autonomism", Eta acted responsibly, first proposing a clean democratic break and then resisting attempts at assimilation and attacks.

Eta, and then the Basque left, have continued in the struggle. And the recompense has not been negligible. We are paying for this dearly: torture, prison, exile and also death.

But the prize for our difficult struggle has been the survival of the Basque country and for the door to a free future to be open.

We have shown that the autonomy framework is not the way to satisfy the wishes of the Basque people; it is nothing but a tool for bringing about the division and dismemberment of the Basque country.

And we have overcome one by one the measures taken to neutralise the struggle for freedom.

One way may be the continuation of new scenarios in the fight for Basque freedom. Therefore Eta has contributed to proposals for cooperative actions and resolutions of the conflict.

In recent times, the Basque country has been at an important crossroads. The political struggle has opened up new conditions.

The autonomy framework has been exhausted and the time has come for political change. The time has come to build a democratic framework for the Basque country respecting the wishes of the majority of the Basque people.

The Spanish state is aware that the Basque country is at a crossroads. That the Basque country can now take the road of independence.

They want to create conditions in which everything is blocked, to avoid political dialogue and to drown out the aspirations of the people in the state of exception.

Basque activists and Basque citizens need to respond to this responsibly and urgently.

It is time to take responsibility and take firm measures... in the articulation of the independence project, in the process of creating democratic conditions, to respond to repression and the firm defence of civil and political liberties.

Political change is possible. But there is no shortcut along the way.

The road to freedom must be walked a step at a time, perhaps flexibly, but the effort and struggle towards this goal is necessary.

Without confrontation, it is impossible to overcome denial and stubbornness. In that direction, Eta's hand is held out always.

Eta confirms its commitment to finding a democratic solution to the conflict. In its commitment to a democratic process to decide freely and democratically our future, through dialogue and negotiations, Eta is prepared today as yesterday to agree to the minimum democratic conditions necessary to put in motion a democratic process, if the Spanish government is willing.

We also convey this to the international community and call on it to respond to Eta's will and commitment in order to participate in the building of a durable, just and democratic resolution to the centuries-long political struggle.

Eta announces that it took the decision several months ago not to carry out armed actions.

Eta wishes to reiterate to Basque political, social and trade union activists its call to act responsibly; that it is necessary to take firm steps as a people in order to reach a scenario for a democratic process; to establish a way to give the people a voice. Because the door to a real solution of the conflict will be opened when the rights of the Basque country are recognised and ratified.

To conclude: We call on all Basque citizens to continue in the struggle, each in their own field, with whatever degree of commitment they have, so that we can all cast down the wall of denial and make irreversible moves forward on the road to freedom.

The Quake - 4 September

2010-09-04T17:32:00.004+02:00

Gallery: Herald

Prayopavesa

2010-08-27T14:24:00.002+02:00

Prayopavesa (Resolving to die through fasting in Sanskrit) is a practice in Hinduism that denotes the voluntary fasting to death of a person, who has no desire or ambition left, and no responsibilities remaining in life. It is also allowed in cases of terminal disease or great disability.

Prayopavesa differs from suicide as such, as it exclusively non-violent and uses only natural means. Prayopavesa is only used when it is the right time for this life to end - when this body has served its purpose and become a burden. Unlike the suddenness of suicide, Prayopavesa is a gradual process, giving ample time for the patient to prepare himself and those around him for his/her death. While suicide is often associated with feelings of frustration, depression, or anger, Prayopavesa is associated with feelings of serenity.

In November 2001, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, a Hindu leader born in California took his own life by prayopavesa. He discovered he had contracted untreatable intestinal cancer, and he subsequently meditated for days before announcing he would accept pain-killing treatment only and would undertake prayopavesa. The Satguru later died on the 32nd day of his fast.

The Wild Things are in the Metro

2010-08-24T15:30:00.001+02:00

Coolest parents ever.

Oh university- you're so funny!

2010-08-21T23:52:00.010+02:00

Give me a moment to laugh at myself and marvel at the evil structure that are universities- namely, a Bachelor of Arts.

You go in, you study four years, and after you've paid thousands upon thousands of dollars, you get a piece of paper. OH HOW PROUD I AM OF MY DEGREE. How proud everyone else is too! Your grandma standing next to you with a photo of your graduation gown, photo in the album.

But really as you sit there in your great, shiny new job at NINE O'CLOCK IN THE FUCKING MORNING, you know deep down inside, oh deeeeeeep down motherfucker, THAT YOU'RE STILL AS FUCKING DUMB AS THE DAY YOU STARTED!

You're no closer to fixing up the world, having a harmonious relationship with your boyfriend, or sorting out the inner FAAAACKING DEMONS- BUT, you know the whole of Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. And now you can CHANGE shit from the inside MAN.

Woah, that's DEEP dude.

You've gotten duped, and if you say so, you lose the investment you made on that paper of yours.

Guys running this uni biz man- laughing all the way to the bank, and then as some undergrad blows their little piddly-widdly EDUCATION ADMINISTRATOR cocks, and then at night still brushing their teeth, a ha ha ha choke, mint.

"Pfffft, I bet you never even went to uni," those of you who happen to not be my family or friends say to yourselves. All three of you.

Well, I've gone to one of the best universities in the world, and graduated with the highest GPA that year in my field. In your world, that not only means I'm smart, but I'm smarter than everyone else.

AHAHAHAHA.

We've all been DUPED. We've all been duped.

P.S. If you haven't got a degree and you're feeling all self-superior right now, sorry: the majority of you are still really fucking stupid.

--

Special Ainara postscript:

This is an Art rant. Science is cool, except when it begins to rape STUDENTS IN THE EXACT SAME WAY as the arts- anyone, um, want $1 million to prove with SCIENCE that carbon isn't ruining the atmosphere- any takers? $100 million? Thank you, will be nice working with you Mr. Scientist.

The Letter D - Nate Marsh

2010-08-18T21:57:00.003+02:00

The Obscure Animal for more letters.

How to cure a liar - Alejandro Jodorowsky

2010-08-07T13:09:00.003+02:00

We live in a society that lies. Politicians lie with their promises, retailers lie with their products that can cause injury, the industries lie to ransack the planet and enslave the workers, lawyers lie to liberate bandits and assassins, doctors lie making us swallow down pills recommended by the pharmaceutical tycoons, wars lie passing themselves off as patriotism when they are just a pretext to acquire natural resources and treasures, religion lies recommending poverty as it becomes ever-richer, money lies converting something abstract without real value into wealth, the universities lie by turning sublime intellectuals into cynical technicians, sport lies with its drugs and make-shift sponsoring deals, museums lie turning themselves into snobby cabarets, sexualized publicity lies, the media and other mass-mediums of communication lie, the cops that are accomplices to drug-smugglers lie- who doesn't lie?

To cure a liar you must first cure his or her parents (a lot of marriages are just slow-evolving hell), cure society, culture, human history, all which are constructed on top of cons, crimes, injustice, and fanaticism. What can really be done for the liar? They must start on themselves first, detecting what their lies are, in what way they fool others, how they sell themselves, what characters they act, who they take advantage of... And later, the most important moment, realize how they have lied to themselves. To cure oneself one must one want to be cured. One must want not to be a liar the same way a person dying of thirst reaches out for water. When we are able to stop lying to ourselves, that is, when we are able to become who we are instead of what our family, society and culture wants us to be, we can start to cure the liar. For this to be achievable a long-term goal is needed, not individually but for humanity as a whole.

Translated from: Plano Creativo

All is one EXPERIMENT

2010-08-05T13:37:00.007+02:00

Steve Pavlina is currently doing a 30-day test on living life with the belief in mind that we are all one. I thought it was an amazing experiment so I decided to do the same test to try it out too.

To begin with, what does it mean that 'we are all one'? I remember mentioning this theory to a friend at a coffee store who was quick to laugh and point to an old woman walking down the road:

- So I'm her?

- Well, yeah. And the air she's breathing in, and the pebbles she's walking on, and her children's children too.

- You're fucking bonkers Edurne.

I wasn't at a stage where I could explain it any better and, of course, everything new sounds nuts (parallel dimensions and string theory anyone?). I feel like I'm prepared for another round of explain-the-theory though, so here I go:

I want to start with Pavlina's explanation first.

"We’re all projections of the same dreamer in a dream world ... There’s no separation at all. We aren’t just individual parts of the same whole — we’re just different windows into the same being.

Now when I see another person, I don’t think that we’re two cells in the same body. I see us as different viewports into the same being. In fact, we are the same being. You are me, and I am you."

So, away from the statements, start on some examples, and then onto an explanation:

One way to see that we all are one is when we're in conflict. My sister and I recently had an argument over Skype where she told me that she doesn't think I really care about anyone anymore and that I haven't cared about anyone for a long time. Of course, my automatic reaction was to tell the cheeky little bitch to go fuck herself. INSTEAD, the situation gave me the perfect opportunity to test out the all is one theory. If my sister is me, she is basically my own self-criticism, and therefore my own fear that I can't love other people. And if I am her, that is OUR fear, not hers or mine, but a shared fear that we are unable to give unconditional love to anyone but ourselves (and when everything is one, that fear is quite right). My sister wasn't criticizing me, she was criticizing herself, and in that way criticizing OUR shared 'self'. I couldn't be angry with her if she was just myself talking about my concerns, which is what happened to Pavlina with his partner too:

"I stopped seeing Rachelle as a separate individual, and I began to interact with her as a dream character, a projection of the dreamer’s subconscious. This had the effect of allowing me to release all judgments and expectations of her. I began to see her through different eyes, with a sense of child-like wonder, amazement, and curiosity.

When I communicate with her, I do my best to interpret what she says much like it’s a part of my own subconscious talking to me. It’s impossible for me to disagree with her about anything in that state, so I have to “yes, and” everything she says. After all, it’s coming from me."

Next example:

The other day I was in my room practicing my bass (sorry, ego defining itself) when my flatmate came from work and rushed into her room to meet her girlfriend. Something funny had happened during the day and she had practically ran home to share it. As they were cracking up I realized that it was my laughter too. I was every single person my flatmate met during the day to give her such a happy moment upon returning home. I felt so much happiness that it surprised me.

Next example:

Yesterday I went to buy Krispy Kremes and saw a homeless person shivering next to the ATM machine at the Angel Tesco, a plastic cup in his hands. That's me, I thought- man did I fuck that one up. It made me think of what Bill Hicks once said:

"Anybody can be a bum; all it takes is the right girl, the right bar and the right friends... your buddies will see you off. They'll christen your dumpster for you."

'Why don't I help him' quickly turned into 'Why don't I help myself'? WHY the fuck AM I HOMELESS? Because you hate yourself, I realized. And I do, hate myself I mean- if that man is there I still do. He was a reflection of my self-hate.

Next example:

Say, someone were to stab me- if we are all one I would be stabbing myself. It would be just another form of self-hate, similar to cutting oneself or being in a relationship that hurts you. Murder is suicide. Some people believe they don't deserve love and go out into the world looking to punish themselves.

Explanation:

What this experiment has let me discover is that all conflict originally stems from self-hate. Any racist, murderous, vicious, thieving, evil person is all the parts of me I repress and don't want to associate with, and that thrive as a result. I wrote my biography the other day for my poetry about to be published:

Edurne is an Anglo-Basque poet who has realized the entire world is her creation- she is responsible for the economic crisis, world hunger, global warming, and greedy pharmaceutical companies, to name just a few of her fuck-ups. She was born in the 80s.

The editor of the magazine replied, "Thanks for the poem and for completely destroying the planet in such a short space of time."

En fin.

So why the over share this fine Thursday? Because I'm just telling things to myself after all, there's no over share within a dream world. And the one's that think I'm crazy are, ha, my own struggle with insanity. Good luck with that.

I LOVE YOU!

If you try the experiment, or have already tried it, please share.

BBC - The War Game

2010-08-05T13:03:00.003+02:00

By order of the British government, this 1965 BBC docudrama, depicting a Soviet nuclear attack on England, was eventually banned from broadcast for 20 years. The bomb hits in part 3.

Here's to Defcon 2 only existing as a cheesy Spanish rap band as long as this planet exists.

Danny Chivers - M for Magic Bullet

2010-08-04T19:25:00.002+02:00

Understanding climate change with geeky rap. Nice.

In New Zealand right now...

2010-08-03T03:58:00.002+02:00

... readers of the Herald, New Zealand's most popular newspaper (ha, should be 'only') know of the All Blacks line up for the Bledisloe cup, and that Lady Gaga takes cocaine. MEANWHILE, in the real world, the Basque Gara talks about how BARACK OBAMA IS SET TO REMOVE ALL U.S. TROOPS FROM IRAQ BY THE END OF THE MONTH!!!

New Zealand: Fail.

(These shots were taken seconds apart, look at the time on the bar)

Rachel McKibbens and Marty Mcconnell - Erotica Poetry

2010-08-02T20:56:00.003+02:00

--

Now THIS is a love poem.

2010-08-02T17:45:00.005+02:00

Entertained?
Passive?
Confused?
Isolated?

Welcome to the post-modern 21st-century world.

Go and buy something to define yourself now (and feel temporarily better):

- Gibson Les Paul*
- Canon Rebel XTI*
- IKEA yin-yang coffee table*
- Tony & Guy haircut*
- Chanel bag*
- Triumph Scrambler*

(*All items subject to fashion)

Still craving for happiness?

Realize that conformity has replaced consciousness- come and be crazy like the rest of us, there are more than you think.

And with that being said, I <3 conformists- if it weren't for them I wouldn't know who the fuck I didn't want to be. And so day follows night, a bad time follows a good time...

BOING!

Woohoo!! Go decommissioners! Go!

2010-07-30T10:33:00.004+02:00

EDO MBM, makes arms. Some of these arms have their debut on Israeli defence planes.

On January 17th 2009 six people broke into EDO MBM/ITT in Brighton and caused £189 000 worth of damage to computers, servers, lathes and other equipment. The activists, calling themselves the ‘decommissioners’, took their action in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza which had claimed 1400 lives by the 17th. EDO MBM/ITT manufactures the arming unit for the Israeli F16 bombrack.

---

I know it happened a year ago but just found it today thanks to the corporatewatch.org newsletter.

News in Brief:

-UN set to become largest global provider of funds to new coal

-ID cards scrapped, but not for migrants

-New nuclear power boosted by government climate watchdog

-Persecution of Iraqi union leaders over oil sector dissent

-Barclays Bank, British Gas and RBS slammed for carbon trading
activities

-SpinProfiles censored following right-wing think-tank complaint

Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len - The outside is the inside

2010-07-28T17:40:00.006+02:00

Two years ago, a therapist in Hawaii cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. The psychologist would study an inmate's chart and then look within himself to see how he created that person's illness. As he improved himself, the patient improved.

"What were you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?"

"I was simply healing the part of me that created them," he said.

Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life - simply because it is in your life--is your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation- if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life.

This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy--anything you experience and don't like--is up for you to heal. They don't exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside you. The problem isn't with them, it's with you, and to change them, you have to change you.

What where you doing when you looked at those patients' files?

"I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again," he explained.

----

Love.

Original article: Mr. Fire

Martin Strel - Probably the most awesome dude in the world

2010-07-27T13:22:00.001+02:00

I recommend to anybody that hasn't seen this doco yet to watch it- this man is amazing.

Howard Gardner - Multiple Intelligences

2010-07-27T13:01:00.001+02:00

Howard Gardner initially formulated a list of seven intelligences. His listing was provisional. The first two have been typically valued in schools; the next three are usually associated with the arts; and the final two are what Howard Gardner called 'personal intelligences' (Gardner 1999: 41-43).

Linguistic intelligence involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are among those that Howard Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence.

Logical-mathematical intelligence consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. In Howard Gardner's words, it entails the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically. This intelligence is most often associated with scientific and mathematical thinking.

Musical intelligence involves skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. It encompasses the capacity to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. According to Howard Gardner musical intelligence runs in an almost structural parallel to linguistic intelligence.

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails the potential of using one's whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. It is the ability to use mental abilities to coordinate bodily movements. Howard Gardner sees mental and physical activity as related.

Spatial intelligence involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas.

Interpersonal intelligence is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counsellors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.

Intrapersonal intelligence entails the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations. In Howard Gardner's view it involves having an effective working model of ourselves, and to be able to use such information to regulate our lives.

2010-07-25T18:27:00.003+02:00

I've opened up the comments box again. Go on, I dare ya!

Starbucks Boycott

2010-07-25T13:40:00.003+02:00

November 22-28 2010 - seven days of Carnivalesque Rebellion!

2010-07-24T05:16:00.002+02:00

To pull this off, we need to learn from the failures of the recent G8/G20 protests. A few sensational and spectacular acts of violence (police cars on fire, window smashing) will not provoke the kind of global mindshift that our world so desperately needs. And neither will sitting at home yelling at our screens. If our Seven Days of Carnivalesque Rebellion are to succeed we'll need a plethora of actions that cannot be dismissed as petty acts of vandalism, that genuinely challenge the power of megacorporations, that make people think about the climate tipping points now descending upon us and that highlight the perversity of a system that has brought us to the zero point of systemic collapse.

What would you do if you could mobilize thousands of connected protesters in cities all over the world? Send your best ideas for coordinated acts of civil disobedience to memewarriors@adbusters.org and we'll share the most compelling ones in subsequent briefs.

ACTION #1: #NOSTARBUCKS

A worldwide boycott of Starbucks.

In cities everywhere, we walk away from corporate java and into our local indie coffee shops instead.

Tweet #NOSTARBUCKS, Facebook it, email it, shout it from rooftops. Spread the word and send us feedback. Let's start brewing the mood for a worldwide revolution.

TARGET: 1 Million thriving indie coffe houses by November 28

Kenneth O'Keefe - survivor of the Israeli attack on the MV Mavi Marmara

2010-07-24T05:05:00.004+02:00

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Kenneth Nichols O'Keefe (born Kenneth Roy Nichols July 21, 1969) is an American born activist who renounced his US citizenship on March 1, 2001. He has since acquired Irish and Palestinian citizenship and claims Kingdom of Hawaii citizenship. He is a former U.S. Marine who served in the 1991 Gulf War and subsequently spoke out about the use of depleted uranium as a "crime against humanity" and the US military using soldiers as "human guinea pigs" with experimental drugs that were directly linked to Gulf War syndrome. He is also a social entrepreneur utilizing direct action marine conservation, but he is more widely known for leading the human shield action to Iraq and as a survivor of the Israeli attack on the MV Mavi Marmara in which he participated in "defending the ship" and "disarming two Israeli Commandos".

On January 7, 2004, O'Keefe burned his US passport in protest of "American Imperialism" and called for US troops to immediately withdrawal from Iraq. He replaced his US passport with a "World Passport", subsequently proclaiming himself a "Citizen of the World" with “ultimate allegiance to my entire human family and to planet Earth."

American Psychosis - Chris Hedges

2010-07-24T04:33:00.002+02:00

America is sinking under trillions in debt it can never repay and stays afloat by frantically selling about $2 billion in Treasury bonds a day to the Chinese. It saw 2.8 million people lose their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8,000 people a day – and stands idle as they are joined by another 2.4 million people this year. It refuses to prosecute the Bush administration for obvious war crimes, including the use of torture, and sees no reason to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Deficits are pushing individual states to bankruptcy and forcing the closure of everything from schools to parks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have squandered trillions of dollars, appear endless. There are 50 million Americans in real poverty and tens of millions of Americans in a category called “near poverty.” One in eight Americans – and one in four children – depend on food stamps to eat. And yet, in the midst of it all, we continue to be a country consumed by happy talk and happy thoughts. We continue to embrace the illusion of inevitable progress, personal success and rising prosperity. Reality is not considered an impediment to desire.

Original article

Keys to a broken nation - Skylar Fein

2010-07-24T04:12:00.004+02:00

When I was 19 and full of socialist fervor, I went to the Soviet Union to see the workers’ paradise. I spent most of the year on bread lines. And flour lines. And butter lines. My disillusionment was total. The Russian army was withdrawing from a ruinous war in Afghanistan. The economy was nearing collapse. The core beliefs that had served as a foundation for the society were daily being exposed as transparent lies. Drug addiction was rampant, something I couldn’t miss, living as I did across from the city drunk tank; screams filled the Krasnodar night. Bad as it was, no one dared recognize how bad it actually was: The country would shortly cease to exist. It was 1988. Parallels to the US of 2010 are hard to miss. Our economic system has been revealed as a teetering house of cards. We are deepening our commitment to permanent war in the same region, one known as the graveyard of empires. The nation’s debt is now so large it can never be repaid, and a sovereign default, while not imminent, is nevertheless inevitable

...

Some look to electoral politics for a way forward, but there too the leadership is failing. Lost in imagery and the critique of imagery, we have failed to notice that no party has acknowledged the real threats to our security – rising seas, permanent war, depleted resources and a bankrupt central government – let alone put forward any strategy for addressing them. Politics is pretend.

We live in a state of permanent falsification, our starkest fear that we will collectively awaken to reality as it is. To speak the truth is to sound insane. George Orwell once imagined a government that would (ludicrously) claim that ignorance is strength, yet my friends and family now say this to my face.

The truth is that our leaders’ every action worsens these conditions in a mendacious, murderous betrayal of the next generation. They have suggested no end game, leaving it up to the people, specifically to the young, who have one.

When the next generation is handed the keys to a broken, bankrupt nation sinking into a fishless sea, when they realize they’ve been ripped off, when they take to the streets – and they will – they will flood society with a mess of desires that cannot be realized by the current system, and they will call for a revolution in every aspect of human life.

Original article

Ego - Alan Watts

2010-07-23T23:28:00.004+02:00

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. It's like the radar on a ship. The radar on a ship is a troubleshooter. Is there anything in the way? And conscious attention is a designed function of the brain to scan the environment, like a radar does, and note for any troublemaking changes. But if you identify yourself with your troubleshooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety. And the moment we cease to identify with the ego and become aware that we are the whole organism, we realize first thing how harmonious it all is. Because your organism is a miracle of harmony. All these things functioning together. Even those creatures that are fighting each other in the blood stream and eating each other up. If they weren't doing that, you wouldn't be healthy.

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OK- this is my last post of Alan Watts for the day.

Last night I went to a poetry reading, and just like that post-concert high that makes me pick up my bass and practice till my fingers are stumps attached to blisters, I came home and read my poetry and began to write maniacally.

Poetry will help the reEvolution on its way.

Bliss - Alan Watts

2010-07-23T17:03:00.002+02:00

If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death--or shall I say, death implies life--you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but FEEL yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. So, say in Hindu mythology, they say that the world is the drama of God. God is not something in Hindu mythology with a white beard that sits on a throne, that has royal perogatives. God in Indian mythology is the self, 'Satchitananda.' Which means 'sat,' that which is, 'chit,' that which is consciousness; that which is 'ananda' is bliss. In other words, what exists, reality itself is gorgeous, it is the fullness of total joy. Wowee! And all those stars, if you look out in the sky, is a firework display like you see on the fourth of July, which is a great occasion for celebration; the universe is a celebration, it is a fireworks show to celebrate that existence is. Wowee.

And then they say, 'But, however, there's no point in just sustaining bliss.' Let's suppose you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power to dream in one night 75 years worth of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say 'Well, that was pretty great. But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control, where something is going to happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be.' And you would dig that, and come out of it and say 'That was a close shave, now wasn't it?' Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further gambles as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of the choices you would have. Of playing that you weren't God. Because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he's not. The first thing that he says to himself is 'Man, get lost,' because he gives himself away. The nature of love is self-abandonment, not clinging to oneself.

H-Bomb - Alan Watts

2010-07-23T16:20:00.002+02:00

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it--aliens. And we are, I think, quite urgently in need of coming to feel that we ARE the eternal universe, each one of us. Otherwise we're going to go out of our heads. We're going to commit suicide, collectively, courtesy of H-bombs. And, all right, supposing we do, well that will be that, then there will be life making experiments on other galaxies. Maybe they'll find a better game.

Believe you should believe - Alan Watts

2010-07-23T16:01:00.002+02:00

This is what people really believe today. You may go to church, you may say you believe in this, that, and the other, but you don't. Even Jehovah's Witnesses, who are the most fundamental of fundamentalists, they are polite when they come around and knock on the door. But if you REALLY believed in Christianity, you would be screaming in the streets. But nobody does. You would be taking full- page ads in the paper every day. You would be the most terrifying television programs. The churches would be going out of their minds if they really believed what they teach. But they don't. They think they ought to believe what they teach. They believe they should believe, but they don't really believe it, because what we REALLY believe is the fully automatic model. And that is our basic, plausible common sense. You are a fluke. You are a separate event. And you run from the maternity ward to the crematorium, and that's it, baby. That's it.

Some grim Japanese art

2010-07-19T21:25:00.003+02:00

A Right-Winger’s Guide To Life’s Value - Ampersand

2010-07-15T15:03:00.002+02:00

Can't stop reading Barry Deutsch's Lefty Cartoons site. So, so good.

I’ll Be Post-Feminist In The Post-Patriarchy - Ampersand

2010-07-15T13:21:00.006+02:00

I'm a feminist.

Whiny voice: But why?

Well, as I see it, at the start of life men and women are all the same in the workforce- pimply teenagers working weekends and afternoons to buy takeaway food, then beer, then petrol. And as the years add up and the 20s roll around, suddenly more doors start opening, and with all the available options offered to them we, women, don't realize how MANY MORE opportunities are offered to our vagina-less counterparts. Then bonuses roll in, old positions are filled by new people, and the reality takes awhile to hit you in the face, but one day its there, oh its there: men in power. The sausage-fest hegemony be it in the workforce, in politics, in science, in the arts- welcome to the patriarchy in other words.

And yet most chicks I talk to give me a similar answer: "Aww Edurne, stop complaining, we're fine. In fact, ladies were a lot smarter before us- imagine if we could have just stayed at home and done nothing all day!"

Oh joy! The pleasure of doing NOTHING with my life! (a.k.a. running a household, popping kid after kid out of my minge, raising kids into happy and healthy human beings, cleaning everyday, making my husband happy- oh, look here, out pops another little miracle) Where's a time machine so I can go do NOTHING?

Of course if a woman PRETENDS to be a man (that is, represses all her feminine characteristics, does not have children, and takes on the physical appearance and attitude of a man) yeah, she can be payed like a man too. So all we have is a penis-less man in other words. Why repress the feminine to get ahead in life? Because being feminine is considered weak by a masculine hierarchy who think they're STRONG, being feminine is considered negative by a masculine hierarchy who thinks they're POSITIVE, being feminine is considered irrational by a masculine hierarchy who thinks they're RATIONAL.

Yeah, I'm a feminist- it's a nice little label so we can identify each other, re-group, and incite change.

Change being this:

Women and men make up a whole- every classroom needs both a male and female teacher, every country needs both a male and female prime minister, and every child needs both a male and female parent (or in a homosexual relationship, both masculine and feminine role models). Men and women are simply two parts of a whole- there's stupid women in the world just like there's stupid men, intelligent women for intelligent men, sexist men like there is sexist women etc fucking etc.

This patriarchy is a hernia.

A Brief History of Corporate Whining - Ampersand

2010-07-15T11:34:00.002+02:00

Fertilizer - Abbie Hoffman

2010-07-15T10:43:00.004+02:00

When we grow tired of war as a species there will be a great surplus of explosives and gunpowder, consult a soil chemist as to which powders and explosives can be safely turned into valuable nontoxic nitrogen fertilizer.

Some crops like wheat will remove nitrogen and nutrients from the soil, while others actually increase available nutrients. It is important to remember that one crop crown continually will burn out a field and will attract pest infestation. Some examples of good rotations to improve overall soil nutrition are alternating rice then cotton, or soybeans then maize, old Europe farmers planted rye the first year, oats or barley the next year and nothing the third year.

The Irish potato famine could possibly have been prevented had crop rotation been used. Sweet-clover is a great fallow cover crop with very high nitrogen fixation but be careful as it can cause bloat in some animals if they get into it. Use all available compost and green manure to improve soil nutrition. Chemical herbicides and pesticides can kill the nitrate fixing bacteria in the roots of your plants.

Steal This Book

Hiatus

2010-05-24T16:00:00.002+02:00

I'm going to take a 2-3 month hiatus from updating. I'm saving up money for the move to Paris so I canceled my phone line.

Keep it real!

Fuck Designer Labels

2010-05-19T03:56:00.002+02:00

A Question:

2010-05-18T17:27:00.004+02:00

What's worse than being in a relationship where you fight all day, have make-up sex, and go back to fighting?

Answer: Having them as your neighbours living on the floor above you.

Here comes Captain Obvious:

YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T WORK ALBEIT IN THE BEDROOM. THAT DOESN'T MAKE FOR A GOOD RELATIONSHIP YOU SEXED UP FUCKING MORONS.

We're all in this together, fuck you all

2010-05-17T00:40:00.004+02:00

This is a poem I wrote for my friend.

I started messing around with the bertsulari form, the zortziko handia.

Ma-nex gaz-te-a / ler-den e-de-rra / es-ku-an miz-pir ma-ki-la
1 2 3 4 5 / 6 7 8 9 10 / 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

You can hear it in two verses of the poem, not the whole thing of course. I can't really get into rhyming patterns- they just block me and I eventually leave the poem die a slow and horrible death. The fact that the Basques do this improvised is fucking amazing though.

Emoticon Philosophy

2010-05-12T11:08:00.001+02:00

you :^|^: me

The Wacky Tabacci's Top 5 Distortions of Reality

2010-05-09T13:42:00.003+02:00

Bill Murray - Reading poetry to the builders constructing NYC's Poets House

2010-05-05T13:02:00.002+02:00

This is really cool- shame Bill Murray had to act like a power-tripping high school English teacher, but hey, the sentiment is there.

CNN - Govt. Military Officials Share UFO Sightings

2010-05-05T03:10:00.002+02:00

Hehehe, can't wait till Barack Obama gets up on his podium and tells us all about aliens.

If the existence of E.Ts can't unify humanity, nothing will.

Joan Margarit - Interview With Poet About Poetry

2010-05-04T02:04:00.004+02:00

May I call you a poet?

What else could you call me?

What is a poet?

Someone who is searching for truth.

Like a philosopher then.

The philosopher senses truth. The poet hunts it down with words as a revolver, six bullets always in the magazine.

What type of truth does it hunt?

Universal truth, the type that everybody everywhere recognizes. No poem exists without a reader to understand it!

And if the reader doesn't understand it, what then?

Then it's the poet's fault.

Is that why there are so little readers of poetry?

Yes, and also because poetry does not give anything away: it asks of the reader a certain disposition, a minimal training of the instrument. If read correctly, each poem is a score that is interpreted by each reader: there will always be poetry!

What does poetry serve for?

To be happier. Mysteriously. Poetry imparts knowledge and comfort. It is the last place that will grant us mercy.

How so?

One enters a poem with a problem... and they leave a poem less miserable. You enter with a level of disorder and leave a little more fixed up. What happened in there? It's a mystery. No one knows, but poetry happened!

Does something exist that poetry cannot comfort?

No. A good poem, however beautiful it may be, will be cruel. Life is hard... but it's even harder without poetry!

There's death...

Life- poetry imposes order on the disorder that is death. While my daughter Joana agonized, I wrote.

Can you write well without distance?

The rule is that you cannot... but I broke it. "If I write that I'm crying, I'm not crying" taught Voltaire. But every rule has its exception.

When did you know you'd be a poet?

Around when I was 18 years old. "You could make a mistake and waste your life!" I was about to turn...,until I understood: not writing in my mother tongue made it impossible to write a good poem. But I already had my first book published ... which I hate now.

Why?

I thought poetry was a cathedral. Now I know it's a crypt.

What makes a poem a good poem?

A good poem is one that you can read again and again and not tire of, always leaving from it better than you came into it. Why? I don't have a fucking clue! You leave, mysteriously, happier. I can't say happy now without adding mysteriously.

Is the antithesis of happiness suffering?

No! Suffering can make a hole ... and you can continue digging away happy, or even happier still!: from a hole you can see the sky. The enemy of happiness is mud, having your foot stuck in the mud of jealousy and fear.

When is poetry the most necessary?

When the moment is at its most intolerable.

What golden advice would you give to young poets?

Don't forget you're stepping on dangerous territory (even though it doesn't seem like it). A good poem makes the world a better place, a bad poem makes it worse, it jeopardizes everybody: be careful!

Where does poetry come from?

The world is full of poems and you continually discover them: being a poet is a way of life.

But they don't write themselves.

That's true: Once you isolate that which moves you and that which you believe will move other people, you have to choose the words that will represent it concisely and exactly. Once the poem is finished in this way, if you were to add or subtract something to it... it might melt in your hands.

What feeds more, bread or poetry?

Don't separate the two: be sensible. Everything that passes through the mind leaves a footprint on the body, and viceversa: to say soul is to say body. That's right, I knew what the bread was when I viewed "Basket of Bread" by Dali: It's the reason that painting is poetry!

Original interview in Spanish: La Vanguardia

Al Jazerra - American Soldiers Killing People

2010-05-02T13:18:00.006+02:00

Eating lunch with my family in the vieja Iruña the other day, I began my overly-intellectualized and frequently repeated spiel that no human is good or evil. I said that the labels themselves are dangerous and create the very dichotomy which the U.S. uses to justify their wars,

"We're good so we're not evil, let's go drop some bombs on the bad guys y'all!"

My uncle used U.S. soldiers killing Iraqis as an example of 'evil' in the world and left it at that. Today after watching this video I couldn't help but agree with him- these men are EVIL. But that evil is a part of our world and therefore a part of us; the way a man laughs as another human being gets run over, or justifies having shot at children- that is our human nature laughing and killing with no remorse.

Yet, how do we change? There's no point changing one politician for another every few years, or changing the political structure as a whole ala Soviet Russia. We need to change. If our understanding of who we are stays the same, what's the point of ANOTHER FUCKING REVOLUTION? Now more than ever humanity's survival depends on a change of consciousness:

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. " (Albert Einstein, 1954)

We are being told time and time again that WE ARE ONE, that we need to expand our sense of SELF, that everything we do to one another, be it positive or negative, WE DO TO OURSELVES.
Does all of humanity need to hit rock bottom before we learn to see ourselves in other people?

Put drug-induced epiphanies on the 6:00 news, see how fast the world's collective conscious does a 180, "Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather." (Bill Hicks)

Lorraine Hansby- Universality

2010-05-01T20:43:00.002+02:00

"One of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific"

Jim Carrey - Cyclops

2010-04-30T00:22:00.004+02:00

#BOING WORLD! I'm so grateful 2 u who bounce the big blue ball with me but I've had it with u who need 2 chalk me up as crazy.

The truth is I'm an intuitive,creative,and spiritual person.I'm healthier,smarter,and YES much more sane than u who say I'm crazy.

I'm so sane in fact,that I have managed to transcend the pettiness of your kind my whole life! U suppressive types who r so afraid…

that some1 might create something with lasting impact in this world, something u cannot find the faith or the courage to dream of…

…and so you serve no purpose except to get in the way of those who bounce this big blue ball. I call you CYCLOPS because…

…the narrow vision of a CYCLOPS can perceive no depth. If any1 wants to cover one eye they can view the world as the CYCLOPS do…

…#BOING Mother F%*kers #BOING Mother F%*kers #BOING!!!#BOING #BOING#BOING#BOING#BOING#BOING#BOING#BOING#BOING!!! {B^P

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FUCK YEAH!!!!! BOING BOING

Jim Carrey es la ostia

Ken Meyering - Unconditional Basic Income Gurantee For Every Person In The World

2010-04-29T09:39:00.003+02:00

The Problems

Over 25,000 human beings die each and every day as the result of poverty and starvation. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US $1/day. Moderate poverty is defined as living on less than US $2/day. There are currently over 1.1 billion people living below the extreme poverty level, and 2.7 billion people living below the moderate poverty level. For most of these people, jobs are scarce or pay only what amounts to slave wages. For them, a very substantial living income would be only $10/day. That would be enough to pay for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, water, and education. Just raising their income to this modest level would begin transforming theirs from undeveloped nations into developing ones. A large number of social scientists and economists, including multiple Nobel Prize-winners, have analysed the issue of poverty and unemployment at great depth and have concluded that the simplest and most efficient solution is to completely replace the existing hodgepodge of international aid programs, domestic welfare programs, and paltry voluntary poverty relief efforts with an Unconditional Basic Income to be provided directly to the poor, without intermediaries. This obvious solution has not been achieved because there have never before been sufficient resources or infrastructure to facilitate it, and there has been a strong lack of political will to provide those two ingredients. Fiscally conservative Americans are particularly unwilling to redistribute wealth in this way. But times change. If current economic and technological trends continue, those same Americans may eventually be forced to require just such a redistribution of wealth for their own self-interest and welfare. Soon there may be an opportunity to reconsider the whole issue of resolving poverty and unemployment on a global scale. In the end, its our game. We can change the rules any time we want if most of us can come together and agree on a better way.

Possible Scenarios

World War II and the Cold War left Americans with a strong visceral hatred of Communism and Socialism as practiced in Germany, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and elsewhere. These nations included totalitarian leadership and little freedom and democracy for the citizens and their markets. America's leaders have been fervent champions of Capitalism and more recently unfettered free trade. Ideas and policies considered to be too "socialist" have been met with fear and loathing as an automatic reflexive response to years of conditioning. However, capitalism as practiced today in the United States is beginning to fail the middle class as a result of globalization and corporate consolidation. The great masses of middle class capitalists are finally running out of capital. This is evidenced by America's $12 trillion national debt, massive growing budget deficits, rising unemployment and recent near catastrophic banking crisis. This is not due to a lack of initiative, entrepreneurial spirit and creativity, but instead is the result of many entrepreneurs outsourcing their manufacturing to other nations rather than paying the much higher middle class wages in America. If they hired Americans and paid middle class wages, their products would be too expensive to compete globally and with foreign imports. There is nothing morally wrong, unpatriotic or illogical here from a common sense business perspective, as consumers clearly prefer lower prices over "Made in the USA." However, over the long haul it has finally become apparent that this globalization could spell the end of the quality of life to which Americans have become accustomed in recent history. The U.S. is quite literally running out of productive jobs, money and credit in spite of much cheaper consumer goods. While it was once highly improbable that America would see massive widespread unemployment, that stark scenario is becoming more likely. In the event that this economic collapse occurs, we will need to embrace some economic policies more similar to democratic socialism than most conservative Americans are comfortable considering at this time.

The fact that the U.S. economy is still functioning today is largely a result of the help of China, a Communist state with 1.3 billion people. But that source of seemingly endless support is drying up. A complete economic collapse is being averted only by the private and secretive Federal Reserve Banks printing unimaginable amounts of currency, which they are lending to the government with interest, which is then lending it nearly interest-free to some of the nation's most mismanaged and greedy corporations, with no formal strings attached and little accountability. Much of this bail-out money is now unaccounted for and lost to history. The too-big-to-fail banks in turn lend it at usurious rates back to the citizens so they can stay trapped in credit card debt that pays for goods and services mostly imported from other nations. So most of the money ultimately leaves the United States, but the citizens and their future offspring are then held responsible for paying back the private Federal Reserve Banks that printed it out of thin air in the first place. Do the math. Follow the money. Something is very wrong with this picture.

More and More Automation, Fewer and Fewer Productive Jobs

Automation is a good thing. But it eliminates jobs. In the near future, if we do the right things, our machines and computers will have biological precision, and we will finally achieve the science fiction dream of having our creations perform our work. However, our economies are not prepared for such widespread unemployment. Throughout history, our lives have revolved around us working hard just to survive. Those who didn't have jobs were left to fend for themselves. But what do you do in an age of material abundance when all practical needs can be satisfied but earnings are so scarce that only a few can share this abundance? It may be time for the U.S. to begin considering alternatives to pure capitalism. We may need to embrace an economic system that includes an unconditional Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) to all citizens regardless of employment status, so that everyone can participate. In this new way of doing things, we will need to create our identities based on something other than our value as productive workers.

Figure 3 (Exponential Rate of Growth in Computing Power. Source: http://singularity.com/charts/page70.html)

This paper proposes that instead of waiting for the level of automation that nanotechnology will bring which will force us to create this social safety net during a state of panic and upheaval, we should address these issues wholistically as soon as possible on a global scale, by starting with the poorest populations, as it will have immediate benefits to all of humanity. The root causes of many of Our World's most urgent problems (overpopulation, widespread disease in undeveloped nations, mass starvation, and violent religious extremism) are poverty and ignorance. Both of these core causal factors can be addressed most efficiently by providing the poor and unemployed with unconditional incomes. Literally, money for nothing (except maintaining existing markets and consumers, creating new markets and consumers, and providing a much needed humanitarian solution to the most serious and urgent problems).

Why Now, When Never Before?

In the past, before the world was so connected, Americans didn't need to worry themselves with the plight of the poor on the other sides of the planet. The tragedies occurring in distant lands were not issues of immediate importance. However, with modern travel and electronic communication, and the globalization of markets, we are all interlinked now as never before. This reality hit home harder than ever when foreign nationals committed acts of terrorism in the U.S. that were so devastating that they significantly changed the course of history and will be impossible to forget. The American public has been led to believe through government propaganda that this terrorism is the result of religious extremism and the cultural differences between Christianity and Islam. This may be partially true, but is not the whole truth. There is a deeper reason that so many young Muslim men are turning to fundamentalist hatred, and that is the financial inequality between America and the rest of the world. In the final analysis, the real root cause of terrorism is poverty and political policies that reinforce economic injustice (and outdated belief systems).

Americans will spend an estimated $1.5 trillion dollars fighting the "war on terror" and the war in Iraq, which were wars of choice launched hastily in the name of "national security" with little forethought in response to the murder of 3000 Americans. This amount of dollars is on such a large scale that it is difficult to fathom. To make it more comprehensible and concrete, imagine that same amount of money being used to provide a $10/day Basic Income Guarantee for over 400 million people for a full year. Clearly, if the battle really is for hearts and minds, this sort of expenditure to help the poor would have won more good will around the world than have these destructive wars and subsequent failed attempts at nation building. It would also create new emerging markets and consumers. But most Americans would never even consider contributing to a Basic Income Guarantee for others until they themselves are forced into poverty by circumstances of history. That time may come sooner than later.

The Historical Debate over Solutions to Poverty

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. devoted an entire chapter to the subject of a basic income guarantee in his final book, "Where do we go from here?" (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). He was working to convince the establishment of his time that the issue of poverty is not a racial one, but is universal, and that the public values towards the poor were misguided. He wrote, "I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective--the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

Reverend King was a very practical man. He explained the problem in simple terms:

"We have come to the point where we must make the non-producer a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution. Though there have been increases in purchasing power, they have lagged behind increases in production. Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white and Negro, the aged and chronically ill, are traditionally unorganized and therefore have little ability to force the necessary growth in their income. They stagnate or become even poorer in relation to the larger society."

"The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available."

In these statements King was directly addressing the counter arguments to his basic income guarantee proposal. The first argument is the well-known Republican and Libertarian anti-taxation stance: coercive taxation by the government for social programs is unfair and unconstitutional, and ineffective. They feel that the private sector is more effective at delivering services. For example, recently the Libertarian U.S. Representative Ron Paul wrote, "no one can deny that welfare programs have undermined America's moral fabric and constitutional system. Therefore, all those concerned with restoring liberty and protecting civil society from the maw of the omnipotent state should support efforts to eliminate the welfare state, or, at the very least, reduce federal control over the provision of social services." The anti-taxation side claims that giving money to the poor is an unfair drain on the productive that rewards the lazy, and that the productive do not receive any benefits in return for their sacrifice. Many religious conservatives argue that from the Christian standpoint, charity is an act of giving that God wants to be of a person's own volition as a measure of their beneficence and determinant factor in the reward or punishment they receive in the afterlife.

King addressed the financial reciprocity issue by pointing out that money provided for the poor was not being thrown away into a bottomless pit, but rather was being immediately channeled back to the producers, since the poor would become new consumers of goods and services. Because the poor need to spend proportionally larger amounts of their money just in order to survive, this money is actually being used very directly and effectively to stimulate the whole economy, and is far from wasted. The irrational conservative Christian belief that God needs charity to be voluntary in order to measure a person's goodness is simply not logical and can't be countered rationally except by using some competing form of dogma that substitutes one set of unknowable conditions with another.

Other arguments implied that the poor were morally inferior to the working class, due to their lack of character. The welfare philosophies of that time, as they are still, were based in a large part on the on belief that the "character" or moral fiber of the poor could be improved, since its absence seemingly results from, as King states, "multiple evils: lack of education restricting job opportunities; poor housing which stultified home life and suppressed initiative; and fragile family relationships which distorted personality development." These different apparent causes were, and are still are, being addressed separately. There are programs to improve housing, programs to improve education facilities, and programs to provide family counseling services. There are unemployment programs that encourage people to regularly seek work in order to continue receiving conditional benefits. The operating theory is that by correcting these contributing factors, the poor will adopt better values, be more motivated to work, and be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become productive members of the society. Unfortunately, by dealing with all of these issues indirectly through a plethora of inefficient bureaucracies, the desired solutions never reach the poorest of the poor, who are the ones most in need. These approaches all end up failing because they are indirect strategies filled with red tape and administrative overhead. On this point, the Libertarians and Republicans are correct, government is horribly wasteful and slow. Modern thinkers with much more training in economics than Rev. King have come to the same conclusions as King. In the final analysis, the best approach is to provide an unconditional direct income payment. They have advanced and extended their theories to include all of humanity, not just the American poor.

The Intelligent Solution (In the past would have been...)

James Meade, a longtime BIG advocate who won the Nobel in 1977, commented on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, the primary architect of the modern Western "Keynesian" economic system. He said we must approach the "economic-social-political-environmental problems of our time" as a whole that involves the entire planet, and not just nations. We need to think on a much larger scale than we are used to. Meade emphasizes that it is absolutely urgent that we push to create a system of global federalism at all levels, from the local on up. He argues that we need a single world currency and a mechanism for worldwide public finance, including the basic income to every man, woman, and child. He says this is absolutely necessary if we are really serious about eliminating poverty, preserving peace, and maintaining a healthy environment. He emphasizes that this task of changing our public discourse is momentous, but necessary. We have all been indoctrinated by our systems to identify first with our nations. We must begin thinking on a higher level and start changing our loyalties. Our planet depends on this, according to Meade.

Perhaps the internet will evolve into such a mechanism for worldwide public finance?

Conclusion

Times have changed a lot since the days of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. We have made tremendous social progress. However, we have not yet found a way to end poverty and starvation that is acceptible to the majority of U.S. citizens. One major obstacle has been the inefficiency and corruption of governments. In America, we have just experienced a near total collapse of the economy, averted only by printing money and giving it directly to the richest of the rich: the largest corporate banks. Many Americans are now questioning the soundness of unfettered capitalism and outrageous executive pay. Millions of people have voted for more progressive policies, including significant increases in public funding of healthcare and education. Yet in spite of what a clear majority of American citizens support, we are seeing the lack of true representation in the U.S. Congress. The fear mongers are making loud cries and protests that "Socialism," the great Cold War Evil, is on the rise. However, if for no other reason than pure self-interest, Americans may soon need to change their attitudes about the distribution of wealth and shared social responsibility. We have a new problem-solving tool at our disposal that the Founding Fathers did not foresee: The Internet. Maybe it's time to begin considering alternative forms of representative democracy, as well as a new more efficient medium of exchange. It's time to Think BIG.

Biography:

Ken Meyering is a 43-year old undergraduate student in the United States. He is currently learning the computer technologies that he will use to develop this website into a large scale cloud computing application which collects and serves multimedia content in most of the Earth's human languages, while providing free web-based "show and tell" language training to help improve the rate at which we communicate across cultures. He can be reached via e-mail at: feedback4 (at) define (dot) com.

Annotated Bibliography:

The World Health Report 2008. Geneva, Switzerland: The World Health Organization, 2008. Print.

This is the annual World Health Report from the World Health Organization. This report contains statistics about world health issues, such as mortality rates and causes of death.

"Factsheet: Global Financial Crisis and Impact on Developing Countries." Global Monitoring Report 2009. 2009. The World Bank. 5 Jun 2009

This is a summary by The World Bank of how the current global financial crisis is affecting the developing nations of the world.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. 1. New York: Viking Press, 2005. Print.

Dr. Kurzweil explorers the historical rates of progress for intelligent life. He shares graphs and statistics showing the timeline of human evolution and human technology, and demonstrates that the progress is exponential. When combining this with Moore's Law, the observation by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that computers double their power every 18 months, Kurzweil hypothesizes that it is very likely that we will have computers with more intelligence than all the people on earth combined within our lifetimes. With this level of artificial intelligence, the machines should be able to solve the engineering problems that are beyond human abilities now, which will ignite an ever accelerating advancement.

"The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: Final Words of Advice. " New Pittsburgh Courier [Pittsburgh, Pa.] 16 Jan. 1999, City Edition: C5. Ethnic New swatch (ENW). ProQuest. HCC Library, Des Moines, WA. 28 Apr. 2009

This article reminds us that in Martin Luther King's final book, "Where do we go from here?" he devotes an entire chapter to the Basic Income Guarantee. He reminds us that there are twice as many poor whites as blacks, so this is not simply a race issue. An income guarantee would be the simplest approach to ending poverty, as efforts to fight it by addressing its many independent contributing causes have been mired in bureaucracy and have been unsuccessful. We have improved education and housing, and provided counseling to the poor, but poverty has not gone away. King was convinced that ultimately, the most direct approach would be the most effective. Turning the nonproductive into consumers by providing them with a guaranteed income would drive demand, which would keep up with high production.

Sean Butler. (2005, July). 'Life, Liberty and a Little Bit of Cash'. Dissent, 52(3), 41-47. Retrieved April 27, 2009, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 873720221).

The author discusses the idea of a basic income guarantee and suggests that it would actually be highly beneficial to capitalism. He mentions the stories of some of the early proponents of the idea, and how Alaskans already receive part of the State's oil wealth through the Alaska Permanent Fund and support the idea. He states that unlike unsuccessful programs in pre-1989 communist states, the income should be guaranteed to all citizens regardless of their wealth.

Karl Widerquist. . "Rereading Keynes: Economic Possibilities of Our Grandparents. " Dissent 1 Jan. 2006: 85-87. Research Library. ProQuest. HCC Library, Des Moines, WA. 28 Apr. 2009

The author explores some of the ideas of the famous economist John Maynard Keynes(father of Keynesian Economics). He mentions how during the depression, it was expected that future generations would need to work less and less, however, it has turned out to be the other way around. Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century, predicted in 1930 that the average living standards in the US and Europe would be 4-8 times greater in a hundred years. He was right. The real income in the US is five times greater now than in the Depression. His theory predicted that economic productivity would continue to rise dramatically, and that humanity would grow beyond the struggle for existence. This would ultimately result in our being devoted to finding ways to spend our abundance of leisure time. He guessed that the little work that was left would be spread out through the whole society, and that the work week would only be 15 hours. However, this turned out to be incorrect.

Rifkin, Jeremy . The End of Work. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995. Print.

This book is reviewed by political activist Roedy Green. The book is based on the simple premise that ultimately machines will replace many human workers, and that the profits will go 100% to the owners of the machines, and none to the workers who have lost the jobs. With nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, this trend will continue for white collar intellectual jobs. The author explores some of the potential social alternatives if this scenario plays out. The short term solution is to reduce the work week from 5 days to 4, thereby increasing the number of people employed. One of the proposed long term solutions is to provide a basic income guarantee to all. Rifkin suggests that the widespread loss of work can spell the end to civilization as we know it, or it can signal the beginning of positive social transformation.

Frankman, Myron J.. . "A Planet-Wide Citizen's Income: An Espousal. " Labour Capital and Society 37.1&2 (2004): 150. Alt-Press Watch (APW). ProQuest. HCC Library, Des Moines, WA. 14 Apr. 2009

Globalization has resulted in the increasing dismantlement of the social safety net in the U.S.. There has been a relentless effort to label the social programs as enabling a "race to the bottom." Frankman believes that we must look at the world problems of poverty as a whole and solve it through a planet-wide Basic Income Guarantee. He also supports a single world currency and a system of public finance. This will be extremely difficult, since we have been systematically conditioned to think nationally rather than globally. We need to have a "Declaration of Interdependence." Statistics show that the ratio of income distribution between the richest 20% of nations and poorest 20% is growing alarmingly. It was 3:1 in 1820, and 74:1 in 1997. For a global BIG to work, we need to begin to think about redirecting trillions of dollars from richer to the poorer nations, rather than billions. Up to $6 trillion could be collected by eliminating international tax havens. We must begin immediately.

Paul, Rep. Ron. "Oppose the Federal Welfare State." LewRockwell.com. 13 Feb 2003. U.S. House of Representatives. 5 Jun 2009 .

Ron Paul is a leading Libertarian politician who opposes all taxation and government programs. He believes that the private sector should be held responsible for everything except for defense. He has consistently opposed all welfare programs, and has fought to eliminate them.

MIA - Born Free

2010-04-26T23:29:00.007+02:00

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

F-U-C-K-I-N-G HELL! In this music video by MIA, ginger people get rounded up on a bus, get sent to the desert, and are executed by American soldiers.

So fucking disturbing on so many levels. But at the same time, if using hyperbole helps to show the world the REALITY OF WAR so be it.

28/4 Edit: This video has just been banned from Youtube.

Oliver Goodman - Applause

2010-04-26T21:08:00.003+02:00

The person who only seeks the applause of others, puts her happiness in other's hands.

Gatas Parlament - The Failed Kill George W. Bush Campaign

2010-04-25T18:58:00.001+02:00

Monty Python - Philosophy World Cup, Anarcho-Syndicalist Peasants, and Bored Pilots

2010-04-23T13:06:00.004+02:00

Monty Python on Greek vs. German Philosophy:

Monty Python on Anarcho-Syndicalism:

Monty Python on Boredom:

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Anime and Existential Musings

2010-04-23T11:53:00.004+02:00

I finally finished watching the whole Neon Genesis Evangelion series yesterday. It was amazing, cry with characters/laugh with characters amazing. I found Shinji's constant stream of self-doubt and hatred more true to life than any character I've found in a book to date- okay, maybe not epic Hamlet angst but he's getting close.

At the same time NGE is not about Shinji, it's about giving the meaning of life to the MASSES through a popular cultural medium: You are shaping your own reality; You are creating your own meaning; You are responsible for constructing your own sense of Self.

Pablo Picasso - Dichotomy

2010-04-17T14:14:00.004+02:00

"Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time."

Jane Elliott- A Class Divided

2010-04-17T12:55:00.002+02:00

This is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE's history. It is about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children - that blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people.

Old & New in Iruña's Casco Viejo

2010-04-17T10:53:00.002+02:00

Felissimo - 500 Colours

2010-04-15T23:05:00.002+02:00

Aretha Franklin - Respect

2010-04-15T16:47:00.001+02:00

Ethel Waters - Prejudice

2010-04-14T08:07:00.001+02:00

"You can read Native Son and there is one statement of the Negro's cause, and you can then read Grapes of Wrath and realize that white holds down white. It's all a struggle for supremacy."

Annie Lealord - Why Cap & Trade is FUCKING DANGEROUS

2010-04-13T13:56:00.001+02:00

NO TO CAP AND TRADE!

David Freeman - A Messy Desk Means Something's Getting Done

2010-04-13T12:54:00.003+02:00

"Moderately messy people don't spend two or more hours a day straightening up, they've got the stuff they like at hand. Messy people let things spread out and stack up in ways that naturally suit the way they work and think. There's evidence that messy people are more improvisational, maintain more impressive workloads than their neatnik colleagues and reap other benefits from their relaxed sense of organization."

LOL, sure thing Freeman.

Xabier Mendoza - Jodorowsky's 'The Mountain'

2010-04-13T01:06:00.004+02:00

I translated Xabier Mendoza's comic from Spanish to English today- just helping plant seeds.

Plano Creativo: Cómic homenage a Alejandro Jodorowsky
Xabier Mendoza: Mendoza's Blog

Poetry on the street

2010-04-12T23:00:00.000+02:00

Salim Lamrani - Cuba

2010-04-12T00:32:00.006+02:00

Who knows that the USA's infant mortality rate is higher than Cuba's? Who knows that there are tens of thousands of doctors and other health professionals trained in Cuba currently working in the poorest regions of the Third World? If you ask a person raised in the West what country has the highest rate of doctors and teachers per capita in the world, the probability that they will correctly answer Cuba is slim to none. Why does our Western political culture allow us to remain ignorant of this reality? The answer is simple- this reality is extremely dangerous for the status-quo and the established order of the West. If a Third World nation can reach such a high level of education and health, how much greater could the possibilities be in a rich country if its money was destined for the majority of the population rather than the rich minority? This dangerous question is the reason why it is so important that the Western population be kept in a state of total ignorance.

Modern Censorship

2010-04-11T23:33:00.006+02:00

The US, EU and Japan control 90% of the world's information. Five agencies in the world's richest countries around the world distribute 96% of the world's news.

There's a certain fixation with the need for 'united thought' by the economic elite and other global powers. Poor countries or those in the Third World suffer an evident paradox: the information that allows them to understand the world around them is fabricated by the very same economic and political powers that are responsible for ransacking their country and making them dependent on outside help.

Six large enterprise groups, four from the US and two from the EU, control the world's television channels, radio frequencies, newspapers, magazines, movie studios, publishing agencies, record labels, and other media agencies. They are the gatekeepers of the world's mass-media- powerful instruments in the hands of an economic elite who are in control of the world's information and therefore the creators of public opinion, means of conduct, values, and certain lifestyles. This select and exclusive group offer the world information with a specific way of viewing and understanding reality that legitimizes their own interests.

Modern Censorship:

1. Property. The mass-media is a concentration of corporations. Their messages they send to the world reflect their own interests regarding class, ideology and values, and they are able to simultaneously censor the opinions of their critics.

2. Publicity. The economic dependency of the mass-media on publicity imposes yet another filter of censorship according to the interests of the powerful advertisers.

3. Sources of Information. The majority of the world's information is created by a small number of agencies owned by private corporations or powerful governments. It is also created by a number of supposed 'experts' who defend the interests and ideologies of the global elite that finance their studies in the first place.

4. Controlled criticism. The mass-media mediums are able to criticize aspects of their own systems if they are trivial or irrelevant; this creates an illusion of plurality.

Punset vs. Sinde - Internet Censorship

2010-04-09T09:33:00.008+02:00

There's two speakers on the video above- the first is the Minister of Culture in Spain, Sinde, giving a spiel about why Spain's Internet requires censorship to fight against PIRATES destroying culture [downloading the SpongeBob Squarepants movie, for example].

Punset, the scientist with the biggest balls in Spain, goes up after her speech and replies, 'First men thought women were their property, then they were taught better; they thought kids were their property and use to beat them, then they were taught better; they thought animals were their property to, then they were taught better; I hope this mistake doesn't happen with the Internet also'

PUNSET FTW!

15th century Health Advice - Theatrum Sanitatis

2010-04-05T14:09:00.003+02:00

Shame
Nature: inner and outer movement of the heart.
Best: when it has no cause.
Beneficial: when hidden.
Detriment: remedy by regulating discretion.

Anger
Nature: blood boiling within the heart.
Best: when it swells and restores the transferred heat.
Beneficial: for paralysis and contortions of the mouth.
Detrimental: to those aware of the illicitness of their will.
Remedy to detriment: Philosophical education.

Drunkenness
Nature: agitation of the organs of the senses.
Best: when it promotes sleep and does not excite.
Beneficial: for severe pain
Detrimental: to procreation and the brain.
Remedy to detriment: with tonics for the brain and then by vomiting.

Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Four Egos

2010-04-03T18:04:00.006+02:00

Our being is animated by four different energies: the corporal, with its necessities; the libido, with its desires; the emotional, with its feelings; the intellectual, with its ideas. Each one of these different energies creates a fragment of what we perceive as ‘I’. Because of a faulty education in childhood, we have not been taught to have a unified being (to unify these four egos): we need something, we desire something else, we love another, and we think about creating another. We are like a chariot trying to advance without a driver, four different horses going four different directions.

So we get stuck or we are unhappy. It is because of this that we become ‘intellectuals’, living only in the mind and forcing the magnitude of reality to be understood in a rigid ‘rational’ mold; or ‘emotional’, allowing the storms of the heart to drown us; or ‘sexual’, making the gratification of one’s genitals a type of cult; or ‘corporal’, thinking money and health are the only acceptable problems in life.

The ‘I’ is created by these four energies, or four egos.

The corporal ego, wishing for immortality, wishes to stay young, not get sick, not die, and not lose money. Before anything else the corporal ego must learn to accept death, making this event the most beautiful moment of its existence.

The libido ego, apart from trying to find happiness in possessing everything, wishes to create. The libido ego must learn to cut down its ambitions, since we never really possess anything (rather we borrow everything). Being able to dominate its possessive nature will allow the ego to work on its capability to receive instead. No real artist creates objects, they borrow them.

The emotional ego wishes to love, but it confuses itself by wishing to be the only one that is loved. It needs to learn to stop asking and be grateful, learn to share and give back what it receives.

The intellectual center wants to be the boss and explain everything. It needs to learn to shut up and be capable of distancing itself from an incessant river of words to find in silence its true essence.

The intellect debilitates sexuality, cools emotions, and cannot value the body. Sexuality converts the intellect into an aggressive weapon; emotion is converted into possession; the material into a means of seduction. The emotions drown the material, sexual and intellectual worlds in an ocean of infancy. Materialism converts sexuality into prostitution; the intellect into a tool of destruction; the heart into a calculating machine.

When the four egos are able to create a relational consciousness-a ‘self’ that has been able to stop seeing itself in opposing elements and unified them all into a superior ‘I’- one finally has their four different energies working on the same project.

Illustration: Jacky Winter Group
I roughly translated this text from Alejandro Jodorowsky's 'Cabaret Místico' (2006).

Berri Txarrak - Jaio. Musika. Hil. (Born. Music. Die) & Berba eta Irudia (Language and Image)

2010-03-29T15:52:00.006+02:00

I was born for this and for this I will die
What is your objective?
What is your opinion?

We have a message to pass on
To lower the smoke of all those up high
With the knife ready to flush out blood from these feelings

You all can keep saving rock and roll
And looking after your image
We'll turn back to mend hearts

We're all sick of these silicon songs
Music's ablation
Damn bastards

Against this fucking non-life
In favour of free expression
We'll empty our souls to fill yours instead

You all can keep saving rock and roll
And looking after your image
We'll turn back to mend hearts
Because we feel like the white sheep in the black flock
Feeling like the black sheep in the white flock

I was born for this and for this I will die
What is your objective damn bastard?
We have a message to pass
To flush out blood from these feelings
With the knife ready to lower the smoke of all those up high

There is no obligation: it's the majority
There is no contamination: it's evolution

Language and image control
This is a new century in an old world
We don't realize
that truth can be deformed
by simply changing words

Interpretation and intention
are interactions

It isn't homophobia: it's family
It isn't torture: it's efficacy

Language and image control
This is a new century in an old world
We don't realize
That truth can be deformed
by simply changing words

Interpretation and intention
are interactions

Language and image
everything that is necessary
Language and image
Our tragicomedy

We don't realize
That truth can be deformed
by simply changing words

Interpretation and intention
are interactions

Your point is irrelephant

2010-03-29T03:14:00.004+02:00

hyottoko1 - Maiden's Phantom of the Opera Cover

2010-03-26T18:26:00.000+01:00

This guy is the man.

Louis Prima - Basin Street Blues

2010-03-26T00:51:00.003+01:00

I like Prima's version a lot more than Armstrong's

ohohohohohohoho this song just builds up to that little solo after the three minute and 1/4 mark and just grips you, GRIPS YOU BROTHER.

La Plaza Del Castillo on the 26th March in 3 photos

2010-03-26T00:16:00.002+01:00

Old buildings, cigarettes, and protest-rally fliers for the following day.

What's the meaning of life Carlos III trees?

2010-03-25T22:56:00.001+01:00

Well thanks anyway.

Flea -The Bass Poet

2010-03-24T01:59:00.002+01:00

Two minutes into this clip Flea does some bass poems called:

"Rocking Chair Syndrome"
"Dump Truck Driving Down A Road, Loses Its Breaks, Goes Off The Cliff"
"Manic Woman Tripping On The Umbrella" (The best one!!)
"Clara Goes To See The Ducks At The Pond"

Richard C. Robertiello - Simultaneous Orgasms, What To Do If Your Sex Life Is Shit, And Why Women Should Sleep Around More

2010-03-12T00:59:00.002+01:00

I do not think there is an easy answer to the more common situation of a difference in timing. My answer in general is that the degree of sexual mutuality and compatibility between two people is a barometer of their general suitability for one another as people. If their sex life does not work out spontaneously and without a great deal of conscious effort and if orgasm is achieved only at the cost of spontaneity on the part of one or both partners, then the couple should probably not be together in the first place. Their illability to have a mutually enjoyable and spontaneous sexual experience (with or without orgasms) means that they are basically unsuited to one another as people. If this occurs only at one particular point in their relationship, which has generally been a good one, the working out of the immediate problem between them either with or without professional help, will usually restore their emotional as well as sexual compatibility.

One especially important reason for sexual experimentation and a variety of sexual experiences for women as well as men before marriage is to let them get to know and experience what degree of satisfaction is available for them and what kind of partner or which specific partner can best provide it. This way they will not be committed to a marriage or other long-term relationship with a partner who is not optimal for their sexual satisfaction. Men in many areas of the world have had this privilege for a long time. There is certainly no reason at all for society to forbid women from having it. Of course, in recent years there has been a marked increase in women's pre-marital sexual activity but still nowhere near to the degree it should reach. Preventing poor marital sexual adjustments through experimentation before marriage stands a much better chance of success than trying to cure them.

Image: LeLove

Small Spaces

2010-03-09T09:17:00.000+01:00

Pick Two

2010-03-09T00:24:00.005+01:00

Intelligent and good looking with an emotionally stable, good looking, intelligent boyfriend.

Done.

Google Online Library

2010-03-08T02:34:00.003+01:00

Google can do no wrong. This new online library replaces my 'need to read' list:

What novels I'm reading, What I'm yet to read, What I've already read.

E. M. Forster - Howard's End

2010-03-08T01:47:00.005+01:00

Similarity: My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.

Science: He must be one of those men who have reconciled science with religion. They talk of the survival of the fittest, and cut down the salaries of their clerks, and stunt the independence of all who may menace their comfort, but yet they believe that somehow good will be the outcome.

Money: Nothing pays on a small scale.

The Self: He cannot be bored about psychology. He leaves it to the specialist, which is as if he should leave his dinner to be eaten by a steam-engine.

Power of Attraction

2010-03-04T02:18:00.001+01:00

I read the secret,
Universe,
I want a meteorite to hit earth.

Richard Price - You won't write anything that will inspire anyone if you can sleep without writing it

2010-03-03T18:08:00.005+01:00

Writing is finding that urgent spiel inside your soul and trying to explain it, because at the end of the day, whatever happens with your creation-whether you win a Pulitzer or your own mother doesn't even read your story- is only a matter of ego, and you can live perfectly without it; but without writing, without creating -drawing, carving, cooking- without explaining that which does not let you sleep, no one can live in peace.

If you have found that which needs to be urgently told you will not be able to contain it: it will burst out.

When you know what that is - there are those who knew what it was at 14, and there are those who never find it, even though they went through life as a 'writer'- you will know how to explain it, or you will be in such a rush to learn how that you will soon learn the means to explain it. Until you find that in your interior, you will not write.

Source: Plano Creativo

Welcome to the NHK - one of the best anime ever

2010-03-01T20:39:00.009+01:00

Every time I watch anime I'm reminded of Su-Lung Wang:

"When she began to learn English she read that 'the cat can see the rat.' Thinking of her first day in her Chinese family school, where she had learned that 'the nature of man is originally good,' she concluded that education in English seemed less philosophical."

------

Top 5 anime:

1. Mushishi
2. Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuiokuhen (the OVA Trust & Betrayal)
3. Welcome to the NHK
4. Cowboy Bebop
5. Samurai Champloo

Ezra Pound - Vilanelle: The Psychological Hour

2010-03-01T15:43:00.002+01:00

"Their little cosmos is shaken" -
the air is alive with that fact.
In their parts of the city
they are played on by diverse forces.
How do I know?
Oh, I know well enough.
For them there is something afoot.
As for me;
I had over-prepared the event-

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

Tristan Zimmermann - Oblique Clock

2010-03-01T02:35:00.001+01:00

Oblique Clock by Tristan Zimmermann from mocovideo on Vimeo.

Website: Science and Sons

Global Coalition for Peace - What Goes Around Comes Around

2010-02-27T19:00:00.002+01:00

Website: Globalcoalitionforpeace.org

Inner Geek Having a Moment

2010-02-25T23:23:00.005+01:00

Sakura/Sasuke fans! lol

Itay Algam - Lead like the great conductors

2010-02-25T15:36:00.001+01:00

H. D. Thoreau - Life Without Principle

2010-02-25T09:42:00.001+01:00

Don’t cheat people by conspiring with them to protect their comfort zones.
Don’t make religions and other such institutions the sort of intellectual comfort zone that prevents you from entertaining ideas that aren’t to be found there.
Don’t cheat yourself by working primarily for a paycheck. If what you do with your life free-of-charge is so worthless to you that you’d be convinced to do something else in exchange for a little money or fame, you need better hobbies.
Furthermore, don’t hire someone who’s only in it for the money.
Sustain yourself by the life you live, not by exchanging your life for money and living off that.
It is a shame to be living off an inheritance, charity, a government pension, or to gamble your way to prosperity – either through a lottery or by such means as prospecting for gold.
Remember that what is valuable about a thing is not the same as how much money it will fetch on the market.
Don’t waste conversation and attention on the superficial trivialities and gossip of the daily news, but attend to things of more import: “Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.”
Similarly, politics is something that ought to be a minor and discreet part of life, not the grotesque public sport it has become.
Don’t mistake the march of commerce for progress and civilization – especially when that commerce amounts to driving slaves to produce the articles of vice like alcohol and tobacco. There’s no shortage of gold, of tobacco, of alcohol, but there is a short supply of “a high and earnest purpose”.

Hewlett Packard - Technology Evolution

2010-02-24T11:26:00.002+01:00

Museums and Universities are Killing Art

2010-02-23T15:53:00.003+01:00

Alejandro Jodorowsky says:

When art isn't integrated into society, when it doesn't relate with people, it's dead. It isn't organic, it isn't alive, it's just a mask.

We can all see how art has just become a business venture...

Picasso himself said: "Everything I've ever done is for the present, and it was made hoping that it will always stay in the present. When I had something to express I always did it without thinking of the past nor the future"

Or as Bhagavad-gita said, "Think of the artwork, not the fruit it will bring" Even if you think that your art will be negatively received and that it will never be well-known, continue with it- you are simply the type to love without hope.

Nathan Haines - Doot Dude

2010-02-21T21:46:00.003+01:00

One of the coolest Kiwi musicians out there.

Simple Dish - Kiwi

2010-02-19T12:25:00.001+01:00

Robert Wright - Should we bother being optimistic?

2010-02-17T22:14:00.002+01:00

2,500 years ago, members of one Greek city state considered members of another Greek city state subhuman and treated them that way. And then this moral revolution arrived, and they decided that actually, no, Greeks are human beings. It's just the Persians who aren't fully human and don't deserve to be treated very nicely.

But this was progress -- you know, give them credit. And now today, we've seen more progress. I think -- I hope -- most people here would say that all people everywhere are human beings,deserve to be treated decently, unless they do something horrendous, regardless of race or religion. And you have to read your ancient history to realize what a revolution that has been,OK. This was not a prevalent view, few thousand years ago, and I attribute it to this non-zero-sum dynamic ... I think that does lead to a kind of a tolerance to the extent that if you realize that someone else's welfare is positively correlated with yours, y ou're more likely to cut them a break.

Die Antwoord - Zef Side

2010-02-17T01:34:00.001+01:00

Die Antwoord gets interviewed in their hood. They also gooi a quick rap for us. Yo-Landi Vi$$er goois her expensive hair. Ninja goois his piel in all directions within the restrictions of his expensive short pink floyd dark side of the spectrum pant. It all gets out of control. Its too much and you rock yourself to sleep, sucking your thumb.

---

Rap Along!

Totally Psychic, Open Your Mind Quick As The Vibe Kicks
Moederfok It, I Skeem This Vibe’s Rou
Jislaaik Yo
Yo Yo Yo Yo Check Out This Hype Flow
I Go By The Name Of
N-I-N-J To The Motherfuckin A
Straining Your Brain Like Tv Static
Check Out The Phunky 3D Grafix
Rave Visuals, Enter My Digital Zone
As I Recite A Poem On The Microphone
I’m Scoping, 3Rd Eye Strobing, Mind Open, Sweat Streaming
Flesh Gleaming, Best Feeling, High-Energy Peaking, Deep Meanings
Freak When I See Things, Like This Chick In A G-String
Can I Touch You Friend?