I just happened across some new information for the case I had discussed last week regarding a young teen girl that committed suicide based because of a series of events in which the mother, her daughter and an employee of the mother pretended to be a young boy and "trick" the teen into revealing information pertaining to the woman's daughter.
The update is that Lori Drew (the mother) is near verdict for conspiracy and three counts of computer-fraud charges that pertain to Megan Meier's (the deceased) subsequent death due to the online bullying (cyberbullying). I'm interested to see how they plan on using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to prosecute this... Seeing as it's primary source and cause is for computer hacking. It seems that as our society becomes more and more entwined with the Internet in general we are going to have to incorporate some sort of "policing" on the Internet. This is going to be a difficult task, for sure, and much of the anonymous freedom that we enjoy now will still remain as a whole; however, the IT industry has one thing going for it that will allow this anonymous freedom (which I support with every fiber of my being) to remain. There are very few of us that can REALLY say we are anonymous while on the Internet. And there is hardly a trail of proxies that can TRULY hide who you are.
Here's to justice: I hope she gets convicted on all four cases simply due to the fact that she must pay her dues for the injustice she caused by pushing the girl to the edge and then poking and prodding her until she jumped. In most cases (as mentioned in my previous blog), I would pass this up as a poor story of a girl who didn't deserve it. It grabbed my attention due to the blatant disregard of responsibility of what the woman did. The lawyers pointed fingers at the mother of the deceased as well as Lori Drew deciding to tell the young girl "The world would be a better place without you."
I guess the true moral to this story is that although you think you know someone you meet on the internet and you talk to them on the phone, you don't know who the hell they are. Wait. No. That's not it... How about this one: Don't treat others like crap on the internet simply because you are hiding behind a false veil of anonymity. Too many "Internet Tough Guys" and "Internet Geniuses" exist on the Internet nowadays.
Take care.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
[Environment] Carrotmob - Potential to change the world as we know it?
A friend found this and sent it to me today. It's 7 months old, but it's never too late to spread the word about the ideology behind the technique. I think that this was a wonderful experiment.
They doubled the prediction of the store manager, and tripled the normal income for an entire weekend in just 3 hours. Incentive for businesses to change the way they do business as a whole. Great idea. Great information. Spread the wealth of knowledge!
If you are interested in Carrotmob and what they do, visit carrotmob.org.
I'll hopefully be posting another regular entry within the week (holidays!) on both of the blogs.
Take care.
They doubled the prediction of the store manager, and tripled the normal income for an entire weekend in just 3 hours. Incentive for businesses to change the way they do business as a whole. Great idea. Great information. Spread the wealth of knowledge!
If you are interested in Carrotmob and what they do, visit carrotmob.org.
I'll hopefully be posting another regular entry within the week (holidays!) on both of the blogs.
Take care.
Friday, November 21, 2008
[News] Teen Suicide, Microsoft's Zune Pass and PsWhat?
Alrighty, so basically what I'm going to do is do a quick "summary rundown" of the news for the last couple of days on topics that stuck out to me and seemed important (to me, that is).
Suicidal Tendencies?
The first topic at hand is regarding this poor 13 year old girl who committed suicide after being lead along through a fake MySpace profile that was created by an adult woman who worked for a schoolmate's mother. I know, sounds like drama, right? Well, the mother of the schoolmate is being prosecuted in the case as per the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I say, GOOD. It's ridiculous to think that when they didn't get what they wanted (a self-induced guilty admission of "spreading lies" about the schoolmate) that they went on to humiliate the young girl out of spite of the fact that the girl DIDN'T give them the information they wanted (they wanted her to talk shit about the schoolmate, then they were going to take that information to her mother and get her into trouble.).
Now, most people would say "Dude, I know you... Why do you give a shit?" Truth is, the woman posed as "a cute teenage boy [sic] " to trap this poor girl. Does this sound like anything else? Perhaps an older man posing as a young girl to trick young boys into meeting them, then bashing their heads in after raping the child? Perhaps this should be taken very seriously. Both instances result in the loss of human life. This woman should be made an example of. The worker who was coerced into creating the profile is apparently not part of the procedings (unless I missed something) but the mother of the schoolmate is and for good reason. Commiting identity fraud is serious business. Legally, a fraud is "a deception made for personal gain (perhaps but not necessarily at the expense of other parties)." I'd venture to guess that gathering incriminating evidence to use on the now dead girl is definitely personal gain.
We'll see how this plays out, I'm sure. I hope they don't let her off easy. The prosecution of the girl's death should be pushed as far as it can due to the fact that more and more youth are killing themselves over internet bullying (which this clearly turned into) and it's discusting to think that society wouldn't want to deal with that before it becomes even more of a problem.
I guess the reason why it even became important enough for me to talk about was because the defense attorney decided to take it upon himself to slide on down into the scum with the ambulance chasers and this is what followed:
"Ms. Drew’s defense lawyer, Dean Steward, carefully tried to unravel the credibility of Ms. Grills and others witnesses, including Megan’s mother, Christina Meier, whose testimony continued from Wednesday.
“Don’t you kind of have to say stuff they want to hear?” he said to Ms. Grills, motioning to prosecutors in a reference to her immunity agreement.
Mr. Steward suggested that Ms. Meier ought to have known better than to leave her daughter alone in her room after a nasty exchange of e-mail banter left the girl distraught. He said the antidepressant drugs her daughter had been taking were known to cause suicidal thoughts in teenagers.
“You let her run upstairs to the room alone,” Mr. Steward said to Ms. Meier." (NYTimes)
Dean Steward, you make me sick. I understand you are supposed to defend your client; however, putting the undue stress upon the grieving mother by trying to blame her for the death of her child when the negligence was CLEARLY with your client is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself. Your professionalism is lacking and I honestly think you should be blacklisted.
If you'd like to read more on the story, click here.
Zune, Zune, Zune
Do you even know what a Zune is? Most of you probably don't unless you've seen their very odd, very questionable commercials. Humorous yet slightly dirty/gritty/interesting? So Zune was a product put out by Microsoft as a response to Apple's iPod. Well, that's great and all; however, the works put up on the marketplace were riddled with DRM (digital rights management) that allows the company/companies to control when, where and how you can listen to the music you have gained access to. Now, this may sound like a bunch of crap. You might be saying "Look, I bought it and want to listen to it whenever I want." In a sense, you are both right and wrong. Without understanding how the subscription service with the Zune and its marketplace work, that would be a logical explanation. The twist comes with the fact that your $15 subscription fee gives you access to the music. It doesn't give you rights. Thus, you are basically paying to have access to the library and listen to it. Cancel your sub, you lose your access and thus the songs you thought you had "purchased" are no longer available to you. Standard subscription style services.
Now, the cool thing is with how they are making a modification to the Zune Pass. Apparently they are changing it to basically allow you to keep 10 songs a month for your 15 bucks. Pretty cool if you ask me. The twist is that you aren't really "buying" the tracks. You are pretty much renting them (This is something I thought of, and then apparently after doing more research was confirmed by Gizmodo.com).
Now, all of that is pointless information right? Nah, not really. The real trick is the hinting of Microsoft working with the production houses of the music and arranging to provide a majority of their content in DRM-free MP3 format. What does that mean? It means that if it's successful, and Microsoft sets up a "Napster-like" download system (i.e. You can download a single song or a whole album for a set fee. Sound familiar? Yeah. Apple borrowed this idea and implemented their own version of it for iTunes).
What to read more in-depth on the Zune or the changes being made? Here are a couple of links:
Zune Pass on Arstechnica.com
Zune Pass on Gizmodo.com
PsTools
PsWhat? Yes, PsTools. To those of you who don't know what it is, hopefully I'll educate you. For those of you who do, rejoice in the glory that is remote administration. For those of you who aren't really into "tech" the least you can do is stick around for the rest of the blog after getting this far, right? :) Plus, I'll put some notes after specifics to keep you in-the-know enough to understand. I love teaching people new things and technology just happens to be my line of work.
Ok, so PsTools is a group of command line (remember the ugly, black & white window with nothing but text? Yeah, that thing) tools that allow you to do a myriad of administration functions. And guess what? I don't have to run around to each of the machines in order to do it! Now, to those of you who aren't admins this may seem a bit "lazy"; however, if you really stop to think about it and put it into context with your own work you can see how useful this is. This is what technology is all about, right? Efficiency.
What kinds of things can they do? Well, this is where the neatness comes in. Now, for an example, I did a google search for "random list of jobs" which came up with a neat little page that does exactly that... Pops up a single, random job that I could use as comparison for these features. The job that popped up for me was "baker."
So some of the features are things such as shutting down / executing processes (Think turning off/on the oven from the other side of the bakery), list detailed information about running processes (Imagine being able to walk into the bakery and immediately being able to tell that there are 15 loaves of white, 12 loaves of wheat and 10 loaves of sour-dough baking right now in the ovens as well as the ingredients that were put into the dough. All without having to go and open each of the oven doors and looking), viewing and controlling the services on the remote machine (similar to being able to adjust the ovens in question according to temperature, moisture, ingredients, etc.).
This may not sound like much at all... but when I have to go through and change the local administrator passwords for all of the systems on my network, and I don't want to have to force people to log off of their machines nor go around to each machine and make sure that I did indeed get to it during the password change, I get pleased. Soon we will all have home networks that run our refridgerators, freezers, thermostat, televisions, stereos and such. We'll all be using a single remote control (or remote control panel on the wall) to control these things. This is much like that but generation 1. :)
Interested in learning more about PsTools? Here's a link to the site that you can download it from. There is really limited information, so go peruse the forums as there are plenty of Qs and As there for more information!
Suicidal Tendencies?
The first topic at hand is regarding this poor 13 year old girl who committed suicide after being lead along through a fake MySpace profile that was created by an adult woman who worked for a schoolmate's mother. I know, sounds like drama, right? Well, the mother of the schoolmate is being prosecuted in the case as per the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I say, GOOD. It's ridiculous to think that when they didn't get what they wanted (a self-induced guilty admission of "spreading lies" about the schoolmate) that they went on to humiliate the young girl out of spite of the fact that the girl DIDN'T give them the information they wanted (they wanted her to talk shit about the schoolmate, then they were going to take that information to her mother and get her into trouble.).
Now, most people would say "Dude, I know you... Why do you give a shit?" Truth is, the woman posed as "a cute teenage boy [sic] " to trap this poor girl. Does this sound like anything else? Perhaps an older man posing as a young girl to trick young boys into meeting them, then bashing their heads in after raping the child? Perhaps this should be taken very seriously. Both instances result in the loss of human life. This woman should be made an example of. The worker who was coerced into creating the profile is apparently not part of the procedings (unless I missed something) but the mother of the schoolmate is and for good reason. Commiting identity fraud is serious business. Legally, a fraud is "a deception made for personal gain (perhaps but not necessarily at the expense of other parties)." I'd venture to guess that gathering incriminating evidence to use on the now dead girl is definitely personal gain.
We'll see how this plays out, I'm sure. I hope they don't let her off easy. The prosecution of the girl's death should be pushed as far as it can due to the fact that more and more youth are killing themselves over internet bullying (which this clearly turned into) and it's discusting to think that society wouldn't want to deal with that before it becomes even more of a problem.
I guess the reason why it even became important enough for me to talk about was because the defense attorney decided to take it upon himself to slide on down into the scum with the ambulance chasers and this is what followed:
"Ms. Drew’s defense lawyer, Dean Steward, carefully tried to unravel the credibility of Ms. Grills and others witnesses, including Megan’s mother, Christina Meier, whose testimony continued from Wednesday.
“Don’t you kind of have to say stuff they want to hear?” he said to Ms. Grills, motioning to prosecutors in a reference to her immunity agreement.
Mr. Steward suggested that Ms. Meier ought to have known better than to leave her daughter alone in her room after a nasty exchange of e-mail banter left the girl distraught. He said the antidepressant drugs her daughter had been taking were known to cause suicidal thoughts in teenagers.
“You let her run upstairs to the room alone,” Mr. Steward said to Ms. Meier." (NYTimes)
Dean Steward, you make me sick. I understand you are supposed to defend your client; however, putting the undue stress upon the grieving mother by trying to blame her for the death of her child when the negligence was CLEARLY with your client is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself. Your professionalism is lacking and I honestly think you should be blacklisted.
If you'd like to read more on the story, click here.
Zune, Zune, Zune
Do you even know what a Zune is? Most of you probably don't unless you've seen their very odd, very questionable commercials. Humorous yet slightly dirty/gritty/interesting? So Zune was a product put out by Microsoft as a response to Apple's iPod. Well, that's great and all; however, the works put up on the marketplace were riddled with DRM (digital rights management) that allows the company/companies to control when, where and how you can listen to the music you have gained access to. Now, this may sound like a bunch of crap. You might be saying "Look, I bought it and want to listen to it whenever I want." In a sense, you are both right and wrong. Without understanding how the subscription service with the Zune and its marketplace work, that would be a logical explanation. The twist comes with the fact that your $15 subscription fee gives you access to the music. It doesn't give you rights. Thus, you are basically paying to have access to the library and listen to it. Cancel your sub, you lose your access and thus the songs you thought you had "purchased" are no longer available to you. Standard subscription style services.
Now, the cool thing is with how they are making a modification to the Zune Pass. Apparently they are changing it to basically allow you to keep 10 songs a month for your 15 bucks. Pretty cool if you ask me. The twist is that you aren't really "buying" the tracks. You are pretty much renting them (This is something I thought of, and then apparently after doing more research was confirmed by Gizmodo.com).
Now, all of that is pointless information right? Nah, not really. The real trick is the hinting of Microsoft working with the production houses of the music and arranging to provide a majority of their content in DRM-free MP3 format. What does that mean? It means that if it's successful, and Microsoft sets up a "Napster-like" download system (i.e. You can download a single song or a whole album for a set fee. Sound familiar? Yeah. Apple borrowed this idea and implemented their own version of it for iTunes).
What to read more in-depth on the Zune or the changes being made? Here are a couple of links:
Zune Pass on Arstechnica.com
Zune Pass on Gizmodo.com
PsTools
PsWhat? Yes, PsTools. To those of you who don't know what it is, hopefully I'll educate you. For those of you who do, rejoice in the glory that is remote administration. For those of you who aren't really into "tech" the least you can do is stick around for the rest of the blog after getting this far, right? :) Plus, I'll put some notes after specifics to keep you in-the-know enough to understand. I love teaching people new things and technology just happens to be my line of work.
Ok, so PsTools is a group of command line (remember the ugly, black & white window with nothing but text? Yeah, that thing) tools that allow you to do a myriad of administration functions. And guess what? I don't have to run around to each of the machines in order to do it! Now, to those of you who aren't admins this may seem a bit "lazy"; however, if you really stop to think about it and put it into context with your own work you can see how useful this is. This is what technology is all about, right? Efficiency.
What kinds of things can they do? Well, this is where the neatness comes in. Now, for an example, I did a google search for "random list of jobs" which came up with a neat little page that does exactly that... Pops up a single, random job that I could use as comparison for these features. The job that popped up for me was "baker."
So some of the features are things such as shutting down / executing processes (Think turning off/on the oven from the other side of the bakery), list detailed information about running processes (Imagine being able to walk into the bakery and immediately being able to tell that there are 15 loaves of white, 12 loaves of wheat and 10 loaves of sour-dough baking right now in the ovens as well as the ingredients that were put into the dough. All without having to go and open each of the oven doors and looking), viewing and controlling the services on the remote machine (similar to being able to adjust the ovens in question according to temperature, moisture, ingredients, etc.).
This may not sound like much at all... but when I have to go through and change the local administrator passwords for all of the systems on my network, and I don't want to have to force people to log off of their machines nor go around to each machine and make sure that I did indeed get to it during the password change, I get pleased. Soon we will all have home networks that run our refridgerators, freezers, thermostat, televisions, stereos and such. We'll all be using a single remote control (or remote control panel on the wall) to control these things. This is much like that but generation 1. :)
Interested in learning more about PsTools? Here's a link to the site that you can download it from. There is really limited information, so go peruse the forums as there are plenty of Qs and As there for more information!
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
[Society & Politics] Why do people think...
Question:
Why is it that people think that just because we have a new President that he's going to remove our responsibility as a member of society?
My Response:
I absolutely do not know.
There has never been a President in history (regardless of color) that has fixed all problems of the nation nor alleviated our need to work, pay bills, buy gas and be a productive part of society. In fact, EVERY President who has set out to improve our country has attempted the opposite (Note I said attempted. Not all of them acheived their goals.). An increase of the workforce, economy (which includes bills & gas) and productive members of society are what is needed to keep a country's economy out of the garbage.
I want to preface the rest of this blog by noting that I am registered Republican; however, I registered when I was young (and when the Republican party actually meant something... I was actually inspired by Reagan as a youth and saw someone who actually inspired change and safety) and just never changed it. I'm VERY much Indie. I'd rather have someone in our offices that care about our people than someone who is a snake and tells you one thing while wrapping their coils around you to squeeze you for every penny they can shake out of your pockets. Luckily here in WA you aren't forced to vote party lines. If that were the case I'd have had to change my affiliation many times.
No, back to the question... Barrack Obama is not going to bring "change" for all. John McCain wasn't going to bring "change" for all either. Neither one, so why did we pick one over the other? Because as a society we'd rather vote against someone we don't like than to vote for someone who shares our same values. The voting process was put in place for YOU to place YOUR VOTE for YOUR BEST INTEREST. Thus, a TRUE consensus of what people want is visible.
Now, let's break this down:
Voters for BO : 66,882,230 (voters for BO)
Voters for JM : 58,343,671 (voters for JM)
Total voters : 125,225,901
US Able Voters: ~305,684,978 - 74,892,820 (under 18) = 230,792,158
That means that JUST MORE than half the able voters in the country voted. If the rest of the able voters voted for someone who actually gave a shit about them and their well being then maybe real change could have been made.
I am very happy to see that black Americans are feeling more a part of the whole now that Barrack has been elected; however, "History has been made, a black man has been elected President of the United States" carries NO MORE IMPORTANCE than "History has been made, the first Lutheran/Jewish/Mormon man/woman has been elected President of the United States." Percentages are percentages. You don't see white leaders in Africa outside of South Africa, and that country was taken by force (if you don't consider the EITC taking over whatever land they want not brute force, I don't know what is).
As I said, I'm happy to see that we are coming together more and more as a country; however, I think that the election of a man based on skin color (lots of people out there have stated clearly that they voted for him because he was a black man. If you TRULY agree with his policy, great, but many of you don't even KNOW his policy) is an ignorant failure of the voting process in the first place.
Again, "Obama President NOW!" is not going to pay your bills. Grow up and realize this. You aren't going to get a big chunk of money (unless something amazing happens and he goes against his history AND his political party). Let's hope that Barrack will come through his Presidency with a median of the "he's the savior" and "he's the devil" bullshit.
I'd say God Bless America, but then we'd have to ask "Which God?"
Take care and keep an open point of view.
Why is it that people think that just because we have a new President that he's going to remove our responsibility as a member of society?
My Response:
I absolutely do not know.
There has never been a President in history (regardless of color) that has fixed all problems of the nation nor alleviated our need to work, pay bills, buy gas and be a productive part of society. In fact, EVERY President who has set out to improve our country has attempted the opposite (Note I said attempted. Not all of them acheived their goals.). An increase of the workforce, economy (which includes bills & gas) and productive members of society are what is needed to keep a country's economy out of the garbage.
I want to preface the rest of this blog by noting that I am registered Republican; however, I registered when I was young (and when the Republican party actually meant something... I was actually inspired by Reagan as a youth and saw someone who actually inspired change and safety) and just never changed it. I'm VERY much Indie. I'd rather have someone in our offices that care about our people than someone who is a snake and tells you one thing while wrapping their coils around you to squeeze you for every penny they can shake out of your pockets. Luckily here in WA you aren't forced to vote party lines. If that were the case I'd have had to change my affiliation many times.
No, back to the question... Barrack Obama is not going to bring "change" for all. John McCain wasn't going to bring "change" for all either. Neither one, so why did we pick one over the other? Because as a society we'd rather vote against someone we don't like than to vote for someone who shares our same values. The voting process was put in place for YOU to place YOUR VOTE for YOUR BEST INTEREST. Thus, a TRUE consensus of what people want is visible.
Now, let's break this down:
Voters for BO : 66,882,230 (voters for BO)
Voters for JM : 58,343,671 (voters for JM)
Total voters : 125,225,901
US Able Voters: ~305,684,978 - 74,892,820 (under 18) = 230,792,158
That means that JUST MORE than half the able voters in the country voted. If the rest of the able voters voted for someone who actually gave a shit about them and their well being then maybe real change could have been made.
I am very happy to see that black Americans are feeling more a part of the whole now that Barrack has been elected; however, "History has been made, a black man has been elected President of the United States" carries NO MORE IMPORTANCE than "History has been made, the first Lutheran/Jewish/Mormon man/woman has been elected President of the United States." Percentages are percentages. You don't see white leaders in Africa outside of South Africa, and that country was taken by force (if you don't consider the EITC taking over whatever land they want not brute force, I don't know what is).
As I said, I'm happy to see that we are coming together more and more as a country; however, I think that the election of a man based on skin color (lots of people out there have stated clearly that they voted for him because he was a black man. If you TRULY agree with his policy, great, but many of you don't even KNOW his policy) is an ignorant failure of the voting process in the first place.
Again, "Obama President NOW!" is not going to pay your bills. Grow up and realize this. You aren't going to get a big chunk of money (unless something amazing happens and he goes against his history AND his political party). Let's hope that Barrack will come through his Presidency with a median of the "he's the savior" and "he's the devil" bullshit.
I'd say God Bless America, but then we'd have to ask "Which God?"
Take care and keep an open point of view.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
[Life] Desire & Passion
Ok, so round 3 is here... I got a political in the last one, so I want to talk about something more close to home and interesting to me.
Today the topic is desire and passion. There isn't a difference to me personally. To me, we live to be constantly in desire of something. Now, before you zealots out there start talking about gluttony, greed, lust and coveting hear me out. As a species, the only way we have come as far as we have is through desire for something more and passion in our persuit of the end result. Desire of comfort. Desire of flesh. Desire of power. Desire of life. Passion, be it towards work, love, sex, life or belief, should be relished...
Too long through the last 20 years have I seen the passion that drove us to populate the Earth, to learn to fly, to go to the moon as well as to have open and free love dwindle away. More and more we worry about global warming, garbage and CFCs when we need to realize that this planet has been here billions of years before we existed and will be here billions of years after we're gone (although perhaps it won't be HERE... But that's to be determined, right? :) ).
If we injure this planet, it will injure us back. Stop worrying about it and just prepare to better how we plan for the future (fluid energy sources instead of dependance on one, etc.). Stop worrying about things that are so much bigger than us that we ultimately have no control over the end result and start worrying about what we can do to reignite the passion and desire that we've valued for so long only to shove it into the closet (figuratively, of course) and pretend it didn't exist.
One of the greatest passions and desires that we've hidden is of the flesh. For a long time society has pushed back physical desire and tainted the image of it in an attempt to keep people in line (through religion). Being told that it was evil and unhealthy, people were ashamed to be open about sex and to admit to having it... like they were being accused of shitting in a toilet in the middle of a baseball field during the World Series. This in my mind damaged much of the passion and desire that we held for other fields of topic. After all, in the end our bodies are made to have sex as well as propagate.
So, as my next piece of work for our species I am encouraging others to embrace their passion and desire. Share their love once again and not be ashamed of it. Sharing it is beautiful and about as close to becoming a spiritual being as is possible from the physical plain (and it's fun!). Sharing your desire and passion doesn't have to be physical (although that seems to be very fun). You can also share your ideas and theories on what you see around you. Don't be afraid to express who you really are because if you don't express who you really are you are lying to yourself and those around you. There are those of us out there that will love you back for being who you are.
Ok, so that seemed like a totally awkward transition of thoughts. I think next time I'm going to have to take notes and put it all together before typing it up. Who knows, perhaps I'll get more attention for being scatterbrained.
Today the topic is desire and passion. There isn't a difference to me personally. To me, we live to be constantly in desire of something. Now, before you zealots out there start talking about gluttony, greed, lust and coveting hear me out. As a species, the only way we have come as far as we have is through desire for something more and passion in our persuit of the end result. Desire of comfort. Desire of flesh. Desire of power. Desire of life. Passion, be it towards work, love, sex, life or belief, should be relished...
Too long through the last 20 years have I seen the passion that drove us to populate the Earth, to learn to fly, to go to the moon as well as to have open and free love dwindle away. More and more we worry about global warming, garbage and CFCs when we need to realize that this planet has been here billions of years before we existed and will be here billions of years after we're gone (although perhaps it won't be HERE... But that's to be determined, right? :) ).
If we injure this planet, it will injure us back. Stop worrying about it and just prepare to better how we plan for the future (fluid energy sources instead of dependance on one, etc.). Stop worrying about things that are so much bigger than us that we ultimately have no control over the end result and start worrying about what we can do to reignite the passion and desire that we've valued for so long only to shove it into the closet (figuratively, of course) and pretend it didn't exist.
One of the greatest passions and desires that we've hidden is of the flesh. For a long time society has pushed back physical desire and tainted the image of it in an attempt to keep people in line (through religion). Being told that it was evil and unhealthy, people were ashamed to be open about sex and to admit to having it... like they were being accused of shitting in a toilet in the middle of a baseball field during the World Series. This in my mind damaged much of the passion and desire that we held for other fields of topic. After all, in the end our bodies are made to have sex as well as propagate.
So, as my next piece of work for our species I am encouraging others to embrace their passion and desire. Share their love once again and not be ashamed of it. Sharing it is beautiful and about as close to becoming a spiritual being as is possible from the physical plain (and it's fun!). Sharing your desire and passion doesn't have to be physical (although that seems to be very fun). You can also share your ideas and theories on what you see around you. Don't be afraid to express who you really are because if you don't express who you really are you are lying to yourself and those around you. There are those of us out there that will love you back for being who you are.
Ok, so that seemed like a totally awkward transition of thoughts. I think next time I'm going to have to take notes and put it all together before typing it up. Who knows, perhaps I'll get more attention for being scatterbrained.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
[Politics] Where's the beef?
Howdy there... Rant time.
So yeah, we have all come to terms with our new President-elect, no? Well, guess what? The people who didn't want him for President then still don't. Big surprise.
Another big surprise is that they are finding all sorts of crap that he was doing that was shady both during his run as senator as well as during the campaign. If you understand what I'm saying, great... If not, read some damned documentation on the people you vote for before voting for them (*clears thoat* Hillary?).
Both of the candidates we were given were sub-par, snakes in the grass. We shouldn't need to settle for "the lesser of two evils." We shouldn't need to vote FOR someone just because we want to vote AGAINST someone.
Society in general has been programmed to trust the bullshit that politicians feed them and to do it all too well. Still love your President-elect? Then you're in love with a liar and someone you can't trust with any piece of information, secret or not. Finding out that there were leaks with regards to ANY President-to-President-Elect conversations that go on in private is discusting... Would you trust a friend who did this? Then why trust him to run your country?
I understand that there are people out there that will likely find this and flame me for the sake of "standing up for the right thing." Bullshit. I don't dislike Barrack because he's black. I dislike him because he's a liar and a silver-tongued snake.
Stop being rubes and take control of your damned country. Neither of these two parties (R/D) want anything to do with helping the lower class. It's all trickery to get people to give them money.
That's it for today.
So yeah, we have all come to terms with our new President-elect, no? Well, guess what? The people who didn't want him for President then still don't. Big surprise.
Another big surprise is that they are finding all sorts of crap that he was doing that was shady both during his run as senator as well as during the campaign. If you understand what I'm saying, great... If not, read some damned documentation on the people you vote for before voting for them (*clears thoat* Hillary?).
Both of the candidates we were given were sub-par, snakes in the grass. We shouldn't need to settle for "the lesser of two evils." We shouldn't need to vote FOR someone just because we want to vote AGAINST someone.
Society in general has been programmed to trust the bullshit that politicians feed them and to do it all too well. Still love your President-elect? Then you're in love with a liar and someone you can't trust with any piece of information, secret or not. Finding out that there were leaks with regards to ANY President-to-President-Elect conversations that go on in private is discusting... Would you trust a friend who did this? Then why trust him to run your country?
I understand that there are people out there that will likely find this and flame me for the sake of "standing up for the right thing." Bullshit. I don't dislike Barrack because he's black. I dislike him because he's a liar and a silver-tongued snake.
Stop being rubes and take control of your damned country. Neither of these two parties (R/D) want anything to do with helping the lower class. It's all trickery to get people to give them money.
That's it for today.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
[Personal] An Introduction of sorts...
I suppose this post is an introduction of sorts.
Although it doesn't matter who I am, where I'm from or what I do I feel it only fair to expose a little bit of the meat that represents myself before I start to rant, rave or renounce on any particular topic. I also feel it important to express from the beginning that these are my opinions, my topics of discussion and my own perspectives on the world, the happenings in and around it from my own point of view (as described in the title).
I don't expect to get a following. I don't expect to have "regulars" or "trolls who come by to read what I've said just to complain." What I do expect is that somewhere someone will find what I have to say and might just actually agree with it. I've kept my own views to myself for a very long time, and with the enlightenment of people like Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Richard Pryor hope to spread a little bit around to try and find the gold that we're all looking for in our own piles of gritty life.
I mentioned above that I would address the three least important questions in the world: Who am I? Where am I? What do I do (and maybe why)?
Who am I?
I am a person. A person who absolutely loves his family and friends. The only true people who have stuck beside me during my own trials and tribulations that life has brought before me. I'm a person who believes that there is a difference between being spiritually enlightened and faith, morality and religion, what's ok and not ok and accept people for the sides they decide to stand on. I am a person who hates judgement of people for their thoughts... Can you imagine what this world would be like if we as a whole didn't hate eachother simply because of what we thought? Everyone who believes that they are above others simply because they feel they have a higher understanding of a certain topic should be ashamed of themselves. Intead of embracing the other person in an intellectual conversation and sharing that knowledge they prefer to harbor it and use it as a weapon against their fellow man. I am a person who loves debate and conversation on topics that most people try to avoid. Please note, debate doesn't mean fight. Debate to me means an intellectual conversation discussing multiple sides of a topic... and you must always be passionate. Passion behind your argument is important to show the conviction of what you believe. Of course, those are my beliefs.
Where am I?
I'm American. I live in America. I don't believe that it's necessarily important where in America I live, although hiding behind such barriers would negate my intent of sharing who I really am and what I really think about the goings-on around me and my own bubble of life. I live in the great State of Washington. Beautiful and green. Brought here when I was a child and chose to stay as an adult.
What do I do?
I work in the IT field. I guess that's a given seeing as I live in WA, right? Or is it unusual to have people so dedicated to technology in the heart of an agricultural State?
What I really do, or rather what I try to do, is push people's thoughts past the bubbles they have created for themselves. Sometimes passively, most of the time aggressively, but always honestly and without judgement for what the person decides to believe.
Ok, so enough of the boring stuff and onto the specifics!
Whenever I post a blog, I will attempt to keep the type of blog it is in [brackets]. This will help people quickly sort through topics they would be interested in. If someone doesn't want to hear my rants on religion but loves to hear about politics or views on other topics, they can quickly sift through any archives of entries and assertain whether or not they want to read something based on topic.
I will try my hardest to keep my posts to one topic. As anyone who knows me personally knows all too well, I find that my thought process can make a lot of loops... Going out on tangents and looping back to the conversation at hand with pertinance (I try not to take myself off on tangents that do not pertain to the topic at hand... there is usually a reason for the segway!).
I will also be very straight forward as far as my frequency of post is concerned. At this point, it will be whenever I remember to post or if a topic comes into my head that I feel I need to "get out." As it becomes a more regular part of my habitual rituals, perhaps I will set days with which I will post.
I am also in the works of convincing my friends to participate in debates with me on specific topics... This not only will give me something to write about but will allow others to get an idea of where all of my ideas might come from. I promise that if I happen to include a link to audio that it will be short clips. Nothing I hate more than finding a piece of audio and having to sort through 30 minutes of it to find the topic at hand.
So, that's enough of the babbling and explaining for now. Feel free to stick around, speak your mind and have fun. Please remember to be polite. Just because it is the internet doesn't mean that we need to compete for "Internet Asshole of the Day." Hmmm... Perhaps that'd be a nice little addition to the end of my posts. Funny how ideas come at the most odd time, eh? So remember, if you post direct attacks towards another they will be removed. Be polite. Your mother wouldn't be proud of you for being an asshole.
Take care.
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Although it doesn't matter who I am, where I'm from or what I do I feel it only fair to expose a little bit of the meat that represents myself before I start to rant, rave or renounce on any particular topic. I also feel it important to express from the beginning that these are my opinions, my topics of discussion and my own perspectives on the world, the happenings in and around it from my own point of view (as described in the title).
I don't expect to get a following. I don't expect to have "regulars" or "trolls who come by to read what I've said just to complain." What I do expect is that somewhere someone will find what I have to say and might just actually agree with it. I've kept my own views to myself for a very long time, and with the enlightenment of people like Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Richard Pryor hope to spread a little bit around to try and find the gold that we're all looking for in our own piles of gritty life.
I mentioned above that I would address the three least important questions in the world: Who am I? Where am I? What do I do (and maybe why)?
Who am I?
I am a person. A person who absolutely loves his family and friends. The only true people who have stuck beside me during my own trials and tribulations that life has brought before me. I'm a person who believes that there is a difference between being spiritually enlightened and faith, morality and religion, what's ok and not ok and accept people for the sides they decide to stand on. I am a person who hates judgement of people for their thoughts... Can you imagine what this world would be like if we as a whole didn't hate eachother simply because of what we thought? Everyone who believes that they are above others simply because they feel they have a higher understanding of a certain topic should be ashamed of themselves. Intead of embracing the other person in an intellectual conversation and sharing that knowledge they prefer to harbor it and use it as a weapon against their fellow man. I am a person who loves debate and conversation on topics that most people try to avoid. Please note, debate doesn't mean fight. Debate to me means an intellectual conversation discussing multiple sides of a topic... and you must always be passionate. Passion behind your argument is important to show the conviction of what you believe. Of course, those are my beliefs.
Where am I?
I'm American. I live in America. I don't believe that it's necessarily important where in America I live, although hiding behind such barriers would negate my intent of sharing who I really am and what I really think about the goings-on around me and my own bubble of life. I live in the great State of Washington. Beautiful and green. Brought here when I was a child and chose to stay as an adult.
What do I do?
I work in the IT field. I guess that's a given seeing as I live in WA, right? Or is it unusual to have people so dedicated to technology in the heart of an agricultural State?
What I really do, or rather what I try to do, is push people's thoughts past the bubbles they have created for themselves. Sometimes passively, most of the time aggressively, but always honestly and without judgement for what the person decides to believe.
Ok, so enough of the boring stuff and onto the specifics!
Whenever I post a blog, I will attempt to keep the type of blog it is in [brackets]. This will help people quickly sort through topics they would be interested in. If someone doesn't want to hear my rants on religion but loves to hear about politics or views on other topics, they can quickly sift through any archives of entries and assertain whether or not they want to read something based on topic.
I will try my hardest to keep my posts to one topic. As anyone who knows me personally knows all too well, I find that my thought process can make a lot of loops... Going out on tangents and looping back to the conversation at hand with pertinance (I try not to take myself off on tangents that do not pertain to the topic at hand... there is usually a reason for the segway!).
I will also be very straight forward as far as my frequency of post is concerned. At this point, it will be whenever I remember to post or if a topic comes into my head that I feel I need to "get out." As it becomes a more regular part of my habitual rituals, perhaps I will set days with which I will post.
I am also in the works of convincing my friends to participate in debates with me on specific topics... This not only will give me something to write about but will allow others to get an idea of where all of my ideas might come from. I promise that if I happen to include a link to audio that it will be short clips. Nothing I hate more than finding a piece of audio and having to sort through 30 minutes of it to find the topic at hand.
So, that's enough of the babbling and explaining for now. Feel free to stick around, speak your mind and have fun. Please remember to be polite. Just because it is the internet doesn't mean that we need to compete for "Internet Asshole of the Day." Hmmm... Perhaps that'd be a nice little addition to the end of my posts. Funny how ideas come at the most odd time, eh? So remember, if you post direct attacks towards another they will be removed. Be polite. Your mother wouldn't be proud of you for being an asshole.
Take care.
Zip Codes - Free zip code lookup and zip code database download.
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