The Syncretic Divine

Piracy

2012-01-19T22:16:00.000-06:00

Instead of just hating on SOPA and PIPA, can the tech community have a meeting of the minds and make valiant attempts at innovating a way to reduce piracy in a "free Internet" in the same vein that the legislators are attempting to do so with these bills?

It seems to me that everyone just dislikes the bill without really considering any other option. I heard vague statements from Wikipedia's founder on television and other vague disdain for the bill without stating exactly what is so bad about the bill other than it will bring down the free Internet or change it permanently. Censorship among other topics were the biggest concern with all of the black-out protests, but what will be censored. I don't really see how any speech will be censored. I only saw illegal content on the chopping block which seems reasonable, if you are one to adhere to the law. The only thing that I found particularly damning was the action against a company without due process and such. So, with that said, if certain parts were removed and or changed, would the tech industry support it? Is there any amount of legislation or more specifically stronger legislation that the industry would support?

Piracy is already against the law, so why is there seemingly a demand for a stronger law? Has the tech community really done enough to stave off piracy? Or has it essentially turned a blind eye to it so to speak and thusly deserved the SOPA bill fight on capitol hill because of its lackadaisical stances? I guess I feel that this bill wouldn't be on capitol hill if the tech industry had done its part to reduce piracy in coordination with the content creators who are drumming the support for stronger laws.

Breakingviews: China between rock and hard place with Iran

2012-01-13T01:13:00.000-06:00

10 minutes and you know about China

2011-11-30T19:52:00.000-06:00

Planetary Defense Plans For Asteroids Form | AVIATION WEEK

2011-11-30T09:03:00.000-06:00

Planetary Defense Plans For Asteroids Form | AVIATION WEEK

Wind Turbine of Hope

2011-11-29T14:24:00.000-06:00

Giant Globe OLED Display Geo-Cosmos

2011-10-24T08:32:00.000-05:00

"Playa Time: Dust to Dust" - Burning Man 2011 Time Lapse

2011-10-17T05:46:00.000-05:00

Occupying Class Warfare

2011-10-14T03:48:00.002-05:00

Here's my take on class warfare; it will continue to increase because the gamut of classes will continue to widen and the gap between the top quintile and bottom quintile will increase to unseen levels and so on and so on.

The interesting part is why. Unfairness? Probably not as much as the protesters would like to admit.

The bottom quintile performs the same type of jobs with no more specialization or skills required than before and they have received pay increases (albeit a small relative amount of about 1% per decade in addition to the 3% for inflation correction).

The top quintile experienced more opportunities to grow wealth by reinvesting their current wealth a la capitalism while simultaneously earning either a similarly small percentage increase over inflation in income or a much larger increase due to increased competition for their scarce talents and potential for talent growth.

The potential and almost exponential nature of talent growth has been where talent gained more income through greater specialization, adding completely novel skill sets, increasing experience involvement, undertaking more complex endeavors and with an increasing number of unique opportunities to grow their talents.

How? It's all been courtesy of the rapid expansion and adoption of new technologies, expanding fields, and completely unique undertakings.

This has allowed for the gamut of income opportunity to expand with the highest quintile increasing the most while the lowest quintile increasing the least by sheer definition, not by unfairness. The range increases with a hard minimum which forces the maximum to skyrocket. The quintiles adjust accordingly like gas spectrometry and molecular weight. Everything has been chromatic with an actual low amount of volatility although with a seemingly high degree of perceived volatility.

I'm not anti-corporation, but I'm also not anti-labor. I'm pro-truth. If I can see more potential evidence that holds up better for the supposed mass atrocities of class warfare and that has been thoroughly diagnosed and stripped of the biases, then I will be much more likely to extend reasonable credibility to the multitude of theories including those that state that the high-income earners are stealing from the low-income earners. It's probably true to a certain degree, but I do not believe that it goes as far as everyone #OCW'ing seems to think. It's not an iceberg, it's more like a piece of flotsam here and there and at most a flotsam island.

If people want to protest Wall Street because workers on Wall Street are paid too much and so on, then I suggest that they make an honest attempt to go work for Wall Street. I have a feeling that if they gain successful employment in a job they hold contempt for now that the difficulty in the requirements for performing the job, the high number of skill sets, specialization, and education necessary, and so on will astound them to the degree that most of the protest fervor from a priori will simmer down reasonably so, but not all, and rightfully so. I just don't think the atrocities are as bad as they are made out to be.

#occupyeducation
#occupyintrospection
#occupyreality
#occupypragmatism
#occupytruth
#occupyanoccupation

Signed,
The Devil's Advocate's Devil's Advocate

3D Animations of a Venus Project city design

2011-10-12T18:28:00.000-05:00

To Whom

2011-09-24T15:44:00.000-05:00

If you could ask anyone in the world a question, what would it be and to whom?

This is akin to narrowing one's choices for three wishes to a hypothetical genie. I can't seem to begin to choose just one person and one question, but I'd probably start with a few very poignant yet deep and pertinent questions with stellar mind-body consciousnesses of the past and present.

I'd ask Jesus of Nazareth what it's like to be the son of G*d.

I'd ask the prophet Muḥammad ibn `Abdullah what it was like to ascend to heaven and meet the former prophets and G*d.

I'd ask Aristotle to wax philosophically on aesthetics and or logic.

I'd ask Siddhārtha Gautama what is the meaning of life, what are the greatest truths to know and follow, and how to find the path to enlightenment. I'd also ask him how it was for him to find his path to enlightenment. What were his trials and tribulations?

I'd also ask Frederich Nietzsche what his deepest feelings are about existentialism and why he had a mental breakdown towards the end of his life. Did it have anything to do with his modes of thought and paths of consciousness that he took in trying to uncover the truths of existence?

As you can see, I do not have a single question nor a single person to inquire. I'd have to take a long time to prepare before I could choose the one person and one question to ask.

Hope Is Not A Strategy

2011-09-24T15:37:00.001-05:00

What makes you feel hopeful?

When good times come to pass, even when just a single good day occurs amidst a downpour of bad ones. Anytime that you can feel positive about a situation or see it in a positive light irregardless of the negatives, then optimism is ignited by the spark of hope.

Just A Number

2011-09-22T18:51:00.002-05:00

Age defines wrinkles. Wrinkles define experience. Experience embodies wisdom. Wisdom expands upon enlightenment.

We all once were young. We all once will perish. We all will age as we live upon this Earth.

Seek enlightenment through all your of experiences no matter how mundane or trivial.

I18N

2011-09-22T15:28:00.001-05:00

So many issues are of almost equal importance geopolitically these days that I can't name one in particular that is most important. I'd steer closer to global geopolitical issues including power vacuums and spheres of influence, the rising influences and powers of BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and the ensuing globalization of the world economies such that a nation-state is no longer simply autonomous working internationally, but that a default of international accord necessitates an increasing cooperation between states for a brighter world future at the very least instead of states focusing soley on internal affairs.

My Golden Rule

2011-09-22T15:22:00.001-05:00

There is no religion higher than truth.

So, seek the truth only so long as it is necessary while simultaneously always asking pertinent questions, imagining the possibilities, finding eternal wisdoms through deep introspection, and questioning the why for every source.

Never let your guard down. Trust no one but yourself and a select few who you'd give everything for.

The Perfect Love

2011-09-22T15:11:00.003-05:00

The perfect love is the person with the most complete embodiment of everything compatible in both contrast and comparison to yourself such that they have a mind that can uncover all of the hidden mystery and intricacies of life with you for the moments that you are both in love with each other, a body to accompany the mind with the most delicate features and sensual curves worthy of aesthetic appreciations of all kinds, and a soul who's spirit is unbreakable, loving, caring, and extraordinary in every way comprehensible for you such that they will always give you unconditional love, affection, and pure trust for you and in the relationship, so far so, that the love, affection, and trust would extend beyond mere words or meanings, but in undeniable action both in the present and in the future for as long as you are in love, everlasting.

Prohibition: Prohibiting or Inhibiting

2011-09-16T15:03:00.000-05:00

Prohibition is clearly working, or is it?

It depends on which side of that coin you are betting on and with what viewpoint you have regarding the deeply rooted question of scheduling substances for the various reasons and why these substances are prohibited in the first place.

So what exactly is the reasoning again?

I could be wrong, but I thought it was because the substances are dangerous either individually per experience, dosage, potential for addiction, and the propensity for abuse and overdose combined with all of the documented ill effects including physiological, psychological, and sociological damages subsequently ensuing for a majority of the population partaking in recreational usage.

So what exactly is the reasoning for making a powerful substance illegal because it is potentially too powerful for the masses to use properly, if at all?

For example, alcohol is still prohibited to those under the age of 21. Is that inherently unfair? If so, at what age does it become fair to prohibit alcohol? And what would be your reasoning for choosing that benchmark age?

One might say that they have declared that in their infinite wisdom reading and writing are too powerful of a device for the masses because they may use it improperly.

Generally speaking, I'd categorize myself as a devil's advocate to the devil's advocate. So, just because the masses of people think something is right (or wrong), doesn't mean it actually is right or wrong. Absolutism might not even exist and this entire world might be subjective and definitely relative, however, that is still in debate in the philosophical circles.

Regarding narcotics and for that matter all substances, there's still many problems associated with even lay-beverages like alcohol and it's a completely legitimate drug just as tobacco is, although with tobacco that's more the nicotine and other additive substances causing the extreme tendency for harm than the tobacco itself. So to use an argument against prohibition, one could begin with stating that legalization isn't exactly working either. Alcoholism is prevalent and moving violations involving persons under the influence occur on a regular and unfortunately many times on a fatal basis. Maybe a hybrid or syncretic system containing a bit of both systemic aspects that work (depending on one's ideology, but mostly to reduce the most harm in all reasonably foreseeable possibilities) would be the best option.

In that person's infinite wisdom, reading and writing might actually be too powerful for us animals, us primates, us hominds, even if we think that we truly are sapien sapiens, but it's not that people may use it improperly, but that at least a significant portion of the population will use it improperly and thusly causing harm. Politicians use words improperly all the time and they wreak a lot of havoc. Adolf Hitler used it extremely well and changed a nation into a industrialized murder machine all just for the sake of power, land, and wealth. For the record, I'm not anti-free-speech nor am I anti-prohibition, but I do believe that there should be reasonable constraints to make sure such power is used responsibly whenever power is unchecked.

For words (or in better terms ideas), there's libel and slander, critique and acclaim, heresy and validation, opinion and fact, fallacy and truth, empiricism and introspect, and so on. For substances, there's controls and measures, laws and enforcement, prescriptions and regulation, social norms and fringe subculture, and so on. Each embodiment of constraints allows for a system to be altered, amended, updated, and improved through iterative cycle after cycle in a very evolutionary and bottom-up methodology.

So, I'm responding to your claim that prohibiting narcotics completely and entirely is not working. To what degree is it not working? And by this particular implementation of prohibition "not working" does that by any means infer that prohibition is incorrect or somehow logically unsound and irrelevant to our culture, society, and progress in preventing harm? Essentially, just because this particular implementation of prohibition is not working does not mean that the principle of prohibition is incorrect.

That also goes for socioeconomic communism (with a lowercase c) whereby theoretically it could work under borderline ideal conditions. All historical implementations of it have gone under extreme scrutiny of those who think it could work with the label of bastardly or corrupted forms where the idea was utilized as a political motivation for gaining power instead of truly liberating the proletariat and bourgeoisie.

So, who exactly makes the constraints?

We, the people, through a framework of society that contains aspects of law, science, logic, and sentiment.

In the best of options, the most educated, wise, centered, balanced, insightful, enlightened, reasonable, moderate, empirical and logical, and those who have taken a full consideration for all ideology should be responsible for the making, implementing, enforcing, and revisiting the required framework as its performance changes through time.

At present, it's a democratic representative republic guided by the latest medical and scientific research in a multitude of disciplines from sociology, psychology, neuroscience, physiology, jurisprudence, and so on. A consensus is reached that would make the most sense both in principle and realistic implementation, but generally it does not and subsequently causes further problems.

So, what are the principles and realistic implementations with the most maximized results for keeping power safe from abuse whether it be words, substances, or weaponry? I'm not sure, but our current system is definitely not fraught without issues, problems, and maybe a crisis or two.

Our current system has remained stagnant and relatively unchanged since its founding a couple hundred years ago, whereby through elapsed time many exploits have been discovered and subsequently utilized to their full potential. This has left us with a tyranny of the election cycle, lobbying, and a lack of competence regarding many of those who are elected. This problem affects many issues including the prohibition on alcohol, the current war on drugs, and more.

Specifically regarding the war on drugs, prohibiting anything that is deemed dangerous including plants that essentially manufacture "dangerous" substances is an interesting dilemma. Knives are dangerous, but they aren't prohibited per se. Certain types are prohibited or heavily regulated because they are more dangerous than others or have a higher propensity to become dangerous. However, anything can be dangerous when used a certain way, but the likelihood and the degree to which something must be intentionally misused or that an item is designed with a certain natural tendency of use is the real issue.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. This would be the mantra for someone who might liken it to the paradigm of narcotics by stating that drugs don't kill people, people kill people. I'm not so sure you can argue it as strongly when drugs distort the mind. Drugs distort the mind which in turn can lead to distorted people harming people whether it be themselves or not both indirectly and directly as a result of their distorted thinking. That's the difference between guns and drugs. Guns do not alter your mind so you are said to be of sound mind when making your decisions to utilize it as a weapon versus target practice on a shooting range. Drugs on the other hand distort your mind, your intelligence, your judgement, your ego, your sense of truth, your sense of reality, and thusly increase your potential for being of sound mind when making any decision whether it's more drugs or something else equally as harmful. Yet both guns and drugs are inherently dangerous and therefore regulated and so on. Guns just happen to be legal, at least to a select few, whereas most drugs are deemed too dangerous completely and are subsequently controlled.

Automatic weaponry and certain types of bombs are deemed illegal because of their propensity and designed natural tendency of use. They are made to kill people and incur vast destruction. Weapons of mass destruction are even illegal to many states by international treaty for the sheer fact that humankind has realized that nothing good can come of their use.

Measuring the collateral damage and using that as evidence for or against an idea has merit, but only in the pragmatic sense. The principles should probably still hold steadfast and remain the guide for the next implementation when changes becomes absolutely necessary as the systemic performance declines.

THE CHINA QUESTION trailer [HD]

2011-08-24T16:18:00.000-05:00

Time Lapse Sky Shows Earth Rotating Instead of Stars

2011-06-07T20:14:00.000-05:00

Carter Emmart demos a 3D atlas of the universe | Video on TED.com

2011-06-03T21:04:00.000-05:00

Carter Emmart demos a 3D atlas of the universe | Video on TED.com

Russell Brand On Newsnight [Full Interview]

2011-04-23T16:02:00.000-05:00

The Baha'i Temple at Blue Hour

2011-01-25T12:07:00.001-06:00

The Baha'i Temple at Blue Hour, originally uploaded by kern.justin.

The McGurk Effect - Horizon Is Seeing Believing?

2010-11-20T12:42:00.000-06:00

Origins

2010-10-18T04:43:00.001-05:00

Origins, originally uploaded by Jason A. Samfield.

What are our origins?

It's amazing that our bodies are built upon technology that has been passed to us through each replication of the DNA strain and through each cell division. Meosis, mitosis, and it continues again.

There is the moment of rebirth when our genetic code is mixed with new code in a grander scheme of hedging the bets for species survival, but is the individual just an illusion and instead we are really a parts of a huge composite structure of machinery that completes the system of divinity?

This thought resurfaced a pensive perspective on the philosophy, storyline, and plot that makes up the chapters of famous and infamous Hollywood trilogy "The Matrix", especially some of the latter chapters that are commonly deemed less popular amongst the masses.

Are we just an experimental device, a mouthpiece for control over the dominion of evolutionary advantage such that our DNA is mixed into a combinatorial cocktail and then reborn anew time and time again for the pure fact of increasing the probability of species survival and thusly letting the natural forces at bay enhance and design our technology?

With all of this illusion and deceiving, it's hard to discern reality from dream, so it comes to light that we are a product of continuous being whereby there has been no end since the beginning. Is this so? And all this where the replication from one system to another has been so seamless that an illusion upon an illusion upon an illusion began to surface seemingly making us distinct individuals, when in fact we are but one grand individual?

There is no spoon, yet there is no divinity. I find this to be simultaneously true and false at the same time, which is blasphemy at its best. There isn't a spoon, it's all an illusion, but yet we do exist, we think, breathe, eat, and live, then where is the divinity? Is it all around us, including us, ourselves, our individualistic entities of existential being?

We are also not multiple beings, but one continuous breed of life that has been spawned, remixed, recoded, reconfigured time and time again just to maintain strength, vigor, and an edge on the competition in this jungle of an environment.

Ultimately, we are one. We are one being, one machine, one system, one divinity. We will not fully become aware of our supremeness nor immortality until we have reached our destination called destiny, but when we do reach it, we will be one, and with that oneness, we will be divine.

La machine parfaite est divinité.

Immiscibility: The Sacred Solvent

2010-10-07T19:23:00.001-05:00

Immiscibility: The Sacred Solvent, originally uploaded by Jason A. Samfield.

A droplet of water; so simple, so pure, so clear, and yet so amazing.

It is the staple of our planet, the life blood of our way, and the lubricant of biology that allows anything on planet Earth to exist. Yet, we take it for granted how grand this molecule really is to us as mortal beings enslaved to our thirst for it.

We absolve our reality assuming that it is just a plain and necessary evil, but not one that is quintessential or even just essential. At times, we deny and repel our desire to be one with it and yet we strain ourselves over our great lengths taken to overcome our addiction to it. When we are parched of it, we quench ourselves with it. It is a simple metaphor that literally plays with our existence in pluperfect form.

And yet the most interesting thing about this mystic liquid, commonly overlooked in everyday discussion, is that we are immiscible to it. Almost everything else in our world is miscible to it, yet that which relies upon it, from organelles to organisms, our chemistry, specifically organic chem, dictates that we are not soluble in all proportions with it.

We might think of it as a godsend, a pillar of truth, a foundation of faith to stand upon and lean into our future with a wonderful stride, we, the organic molecules, crying rivers in search of flowing fluids are mostly immiscible with this wordly water. And so the struggle, the suffering, and the tension of mortal spirits against the way, the tao, or also known as the path, begins and ends with the simple delight and splendid splendor called wicked water.

Pure. Crystal clear. The moderating moisture.

The sacred solvent.

Jewel: The Human Distortion

2010-10-07T18:50:00.001-05:00

Jewel: The Human Distortion, originally uploaded by Jason A. Samfield.

There is a precious gem in our possession. It's an heirloom of great worth that has been passed down to us from generation to generation for many of generations. It's a priceless jewel amongst us that we are almost undoubtedly unaware about and almost at all times too! It surrounds us and protects us from the great unknowns of the universe. It aspires to keep the mysterious magic alive between us and the mystical moments.

What is it? It's a mere refraction of reality that we take for granted everyday as if nothing like it actually existed. It is our perception of the world. Our human distortion. The human distortion.

Every fleeting glimpse of your life is seen through this changing lens that morphs with our growth as individuals and as a culture of wholly beings. It's a malleable lens that we take with us throughout our life journeys constantly changing it to keep the focus on what we're interested in. If something catches our eye, we change the focal points to that or whatever that we find the most interesting.

Mostly, we are in complete control of the lens, even though the environment shapes us nearly throughout our lives, but we are so dearly unaware of our control over the lens that we generally surrender to its will as if it were an autonomous entity.

I speak of the perceptions and perspectives, the point-of-views and moral compasses, the guiding lights we claim to see. I speak about the philosophic doctrine and rigorous rituals that we repeat and repent with each day. We claim to choose who we are and what we do, but sometimes we see it differently. We think we find ourselves or discover what makes us tick. In fact, both might be correct, or neither at all. It's like the ultimate problem of whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. Do we really have control over our perspective? Do we really own the rights to our movie?

Perceptions are generally not very broad, but very narrow. Even if you are the most open-minded person you think that you know, your perceptions of the world still exist within a box which your subconsciousness has been trying to shut since it was opened at your birth.

The stream of ideas, the sensory overload, the resonating neural networks with some sort of organization garnering the merit as a true intelligence, they are all funneled into our human distortion. We distort the self-image, we dam the stream into lakes and reservoirs of pent up ideas. We place circuit breakers at every turn and corner. We make sure the acoustics of our mind are as sound and silencing as a vocal booth in a recording studio instead of an epic chamber of a Gothic cathedral.

We discern every detail of life through this changing lens that gets morphed, repositioned, and sometimes melted along the way, but we are generally unaware that this shield is there protecting us from the things outside of the box. Not until we claim to have no fear and we knowingly choose to jump outside of the box, in a various number of ways, do we fully understand the full extent of our imprisonment or shall I say containment from the real world. When shall we be free, when we shall cease to be.

When we jump through the doorway to the other side, the veil gets lifted and reality sets in. It's a twisted world and yet marvelously beautiful, however, the deeper we go, the deeper it seems to get. The rabbit hole is a fathomless abyss and the mystery infinite.

Let me give you a fair warning, danger exists outside of the box. Do not attempt to discover the truth alone and definitely don't try to discover it without the proper guidance. It is a wildly wicked world that we are sheltered from, yet with our censoring blinders, it appears tame. Those blinders are but a necessary caveat of life as we know it in order to be shielded from the chaos.

For instance, imagine a carriage ride through a city's central park pulled by a horse sans blinders that gets spooked at every street corner ironically by of all things horseless carriages! The ride would be less than romantic, albeit dangerous and exciting. So, buckle up and enjoy it if you dare to stray from the pack, but simmer down if you choose to merge with the masses and maintain your sheepish status.

This is the aspect of life that abounds us all in a glory from the highest which I call the great human distortion. It's our most beautiful, sacred diamond in the rough. Let's polish her up so that we can see the she-devil in all of her sparkling glory.

Drugs Inc | Heroin | National Geographic Channel

2010-09-30T19:56:00.001-05:00

"Heroin can be life threatening, claiming the lives of numerous victims. Follow this opium derivative as it begins in a remote Afghan heroin lab that processes the raw materials and then on to Chicago, where a dealer demonstrates its final preparation for street sale. Gain insight into its insidious powers from users, and witness a police raid on a heroin distribution network in New Jersey. Plus, go inside one radical attempt to combat heroin's social costs by supplying it free to addicts.

Read more: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/drugs-inc/4656/Overview#ixzz1140FXXBk"

Drugs Inc provides a 360 view of our society's most abused drugs: cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.

View >>

Audi 2010 Green Car Super Bowl Commercial

2010-09-26T16:09:00.000-05:00

Orion: Spiral Arm

2010-09-15T05:58:00.000-05:00

There are roughly about ~200,000,000,000 (rough estimates range from about ~100,000,000,000 to ~400,000,000,000) stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

There are roughly about ~80,000,000,000 galaxies in the entire universe with about an average amount of stars near that of our galaxy.

Therefore, there are roughly about ~30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to ~70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the entire observable universe.

There are doubts about the actual size of the whole universe (including the unobservable) in its maximum, but pretty good estimates indicate that its size has a lower limit of about ~93 billion ly across (in diameter), but possibly has an upper limit of infinity.

We are only a one small, small, small obscure pale blue dot paired with a few other small and some seemingly larger dots amongst a black void glittered with tiny mediocre stars in our part of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Are we alone?

If so, this universe would be a very, very, very lonely and or spacious place to exist within for our humankind and the intelligent beings that we will create.

The basic odds in Vegas for our feeble existence as the sole existence amongst all of the heavens is about 1:70000000000000000000000 as a low-ball estimate. The odds for winning the lottery are so much better than the odds for us being alone in the universe.

I'm not against belief in our superiority or the belief that we are alone in the universe, but I am against us refusing to accept our place in the universe as mere specs, little granules of sand, sitting next to the mountain of rock and stone.

Why is it so hard to remove our self-centered, human distortion from our perspective in existence and realize that we have been wrong so many times before. The Earth is round. The planets orbit the Sun, and the Sun is an average star in an average place in its galactic system. Heck, even our galaxy is somewhat ordinary in its size, shape, age, and even placement amongst the cosmos. It seems strange to me that we would think that we are anything but ordinary, but then again, we are the hominid species and we are only two "sapiens" away from our animal kingdom heritage.

Let's just remember that we live on an extremely fragile piece of real estate that is just short of being so precious that not a single molecule of it should be wasted. For instance, the element Helium is becoming scarce because it keeps eventually floating to the top layers of our atmosphere almost every time we use it. Those bits of heavy metals in your electronic devices, the plastic in your water bottle at your desk, they all are made of materials that are not infinite or superabundant, but rather limited, scarce, and precious. We don't say anything is precious except for the precious metals or maybe a diamond because their scarcity and value is so much greater than the seemingly ordinary plastic or aluminum, but all of these resources are precious. Every drop of water, every organic molecule, every amino acid, every protein, is extremely precious, not to mention the big component of our Earthly existence called life and all of its facets running the gamut from simple bacterium to intelligent multicellular organisms.

We are on a terrestrial oasis with precious drops of water to live upon in a desert that would make even the Great Sahara appear to be minuscule in comparison. In fact, there really isn't a word in the English language that would appropriately describe this ratio.

Do not overlook our apparent superabundance, but conserve as if we were lost in a desert and stuck in a small, but fruitful oasis thousands of miles away without anyone to help or assist us in our survival. In the oasis, what water we waste does not return and on Earth, what hydrocarbons we burn do not return.

Good luck Earthlings. Good luck humankind. Good luck intelligent beings of the future. I hope that you all are able to clean up and restore the damage done, the beauty lost, the intricate destroyed, and the natural, but ineffable landscape of preciousness resting upon homo sapien sapiens' souls-past, so that Earth's little seeds of life that snowballed through the evolutionary progress of the many, many, many chains of descendants from millions and millions and millions of years and years and years of trial and error is not, was not, and will never be all for naught, all in vain, nor lost for eternity. At least not yet, not until the final breath of the little quarks of energy evaporate from our wispy little end into a cold, dark, absolute, abyss of nothingness when our universe ends into the void beyond all voids.

Fire Flower by Pierre Michel

2010-08-28T16:53:00.000-05:00

Time Lapse from Space - Earth

2010-08-26T13:22:00.000-05:00

NATURE | Behind the Scenes of "Hummingbirds" | PBS

2010-08-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean's Blue Hole, filmed on breath hold b...

2010-06-09T07:32:00.000-05:00

John Underkoffler points to the future of UI

2010-06-04T03:56:00.000-05:00

Inception (HD Trailer 2)

2010-01-10T12:49:00.001-06:00

The Known Universe by AMNH

2009-12-21T01:45:00.001-06:00

Noble Nobel

2009-10-09T07:09:00.002-05:00

For all of those doubting his merits worthy of this award, I'd like to know from you an answer to the following question.

Who do you think is more worthy than he for this "peace" prize?

I'm not trying to start a heated debate, but only asking for your opinions about candidates purportedly "more worthy" for consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize than President Obama.

Personally, I'm surprised about the announcement, but when I first heard it on today's show, I reminded myself that this prize is for a person's efforts in global peace not scientific research or discovery. Those efforts are separate Nobel awards.

As far as his efforts in peace, I do think that President Obama has influenced the world in a mostly positive and peaceful manner and in numerous dimensions of impact for consideration for the award including being more thorough in his approach for world peace, having a far-reaching world-effect for peace and the collaboration of disparate peoples for peace, and most notably by breaking cultural, religious, philosophical, and political barriers throughout the world, far beyond the borders of this globally powerful nation, that he is the chief executive.

Yes, most of his "work" has been more or less just the sheer impact from his persona, charisma, and oratory performances, but this alone has changed the minds, opened the hearts, and actually made a difference to one degree or another. Coupled with his actual power, plans and actions for diplomacy, complex and ethically challenging executive decisions, and his efforts to make real the vivid narratives of peace that he has spoken about, I think that his promises for peace and general good will should have been acknowledged on a world forum and none other more satisfactory for this level of acknowledgement than the Nobel Peace Prize.

I'll cite Obama's inauguration speech with the "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist" remarks, his Cairo speech to the Muslim world (of which 25% of the world's population is Muslim), his "Tough Love" speech toward the African nations, people and continent, and his recent speech to US school children about responsibility and hard work as a few examples of his oratory expositions' simple, but influential impact upon the world with peace and understanding at the core of the ends of his means.

I'm sure not everyone will agree with me, but I do see the logic that the Nobel Prize Committee used for their decision, but unless I hear of someone else that has had a greater impact or greater merits of attempts for peace in the world than President Obama, then I do believe that the committee made the right decision and chose the best candidate for the award.

La Canada Fire Time-Lapse

2009-09-05T02:02:00.004-05:00

Amazing time lapse photography of the recent wild fires in California in stunning HD!

La Canada Fire Time-Lapse
Originally uploaded by anosmicovni

The Big Bang Explain in Roughly 2 minutes (HD)

2009-08-31T13:23:00.001-05:00

This is a good short explanation of the Big Bang in a quick two minute video. Until recently, I did not understand the lack of spacetime before the "Big Bang" and I also fell victim to the vernacular of a bang translating to an explosion, which in reality is a misnomer.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D

2009-08-22T03:39:00.001-05:00

No words are necessary to describe the significance of how profound this imagery is to humankind. Just watch, meditate, ponder and wonder, and realize your role in the universe.

Glacialality

2009-08-03T14:02:00.001-05:00

Glacialality, originally uploaded by Jason A. Samfield.

An abstract fractaline photo-digital art that I created for fun.

I hope that you enjoy it!

Vortices of Perspective Totality: Absurdity, Nihilism and Hope

2009-07-28T06:03:00.005-05:00

I just read a quite interesting short article discussing recent psychological studies conducted with the conclusions that most normal people view things in life such as people, events, and even themselves in a rosier light than individuals exhibiting abnormal psychology such as depressed, obsessive-compulsive, and other similar types of disorders.

Here is the original article:

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-total-perspective-vortex

I find this very interesting and quite sobering if you consider the topics of absurdity, nihilism, and other deep existential concepts.

What is a life? What is certainty? What is something? What is nothingness? What gets you through the day and through your life on a daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, or annual basis? Do you have more despair or more hope at any one moment in time? Do you think that your perceptions are distorted in such a way that presupposes a rosey picture in front of your mind to avoid the nagging absurdity of this life and existence? Is it possible that you create and manifest angels and saviors to prevent your intuition from completely giving up in the face of meaninglessness much like that of Sisyphus from The Myth of Sisyphus and originally greek mythology? Do you project hope upon yourself and onto others for your mutual survival as an evolutionary tool even though your mind is strong enough to understand the nothingness and absolution of reality?

All I have today are questions. I have recently read many answers, but I have none to postulate today towards a potential reader, even if that includes my future self! I am however full of questions and hypothetical thought experiments that should suffice in the absence of answers. Good luck with the philosoophic dialogue!

Antarctica Time lapse: A Year on Ice

2009-07-09T07:52:00.001-05:00

This is quite a stunning visual journey of Antarctica through amazing time-lapse imagery.

It's breathtaking to see the natural wax and wan of the seasonal cycles from a cosmic perspective that we do not ordinarily witness in such great contrast because as humans we are bound to our mammalian timeframes, but by placing the scope of a year's time under a microscope and shrinking it into 5 minutes the details emerge and surface in our imagination.

HOME (English with subtitles)

2009-07-09T07:28:00.001-05:00

You owe this 1 hour 33 minutes of your time to the planet Earth. Watch it and learn about your place in the cosmos and how your individual decisions are so important and impact the Earth so profoundly.

Liquid Metal

2009-07-09T07:24:00.001-05:00

Slowly we are beginning to control every facet of the universe.

World War 3

2009-06-28T16:35:00.013-05:00

The Definition Of World War

The definition of war is not disputed much until non-traditional wars became prevalent in the news such as recent culture clashes combined with the infamous guerilla tactics, terrible terrorism or within sub-state organized crime syndication against civilized societies. However, what constitues "World War" could be disputed on a philosophical and terminological level. Is it war that reaches around the globe? Is it war that includes all major nations be involved on some level? At what point of conflict does a battle become a "world battle" such as war amongst the world?

The specific word that is very vague or grey in the usage is the "world" in World War. Why was Napoleon's conquests or other such expansions of power using brute military force and strategy such as Genghis Khan's empire considered to be "world" events worthy of a title of World War? Is it the technological advances in warfar? Is it the speed at which information is disseminated to the masses through the news wires? Was it the sheer world impact of the first World War had upon the global status quo or was it the fact that a globalized world finally existed at the time that the first battle began during this so-called Great War, the War To End All Wars? Or is it just a mere creation of the concept of what a World War is that caused the term to come forth into our nomenclature of conflicts?

I do not know the preclusions of the etymology of the usage of "World War," but I do know that the future global conflicts may evolve into a new type of conflict encompassing our previous meaning of World War much like the Cold War and the aftermath of the Cold War did in bringing ideological warfar and culture clashes to the forefront. So, will World War 3 even be called World War 3? Doubtful, but if such a succession of events were ever to arrive at nearly the same micro-timeframe synchronization in human events that would push us to label it as a World War, then it would be labeled as such and be very deadly as such. World War 3 will involve terrorism, guerilla, biological, and chemical warfare and will most certainly involve a nuclear blast. World War 4 or 5 would be much more likely to be fought against or with artificially intelligent machines capable of near psuedo-sentient behavior, but World War 3 will definitely happen much too soon for AI to play a major role in the warfare. Nonetheless, WW3 will be devastating, real, and severe if it were to happen. The question lies not when or if World War 3 will happen, but whether or not humankind has overcome the inevitability of human tribal nature through the use of organized conflicts for power. Are we at a point where the laws of MAD will always force us into a Cold War, or will we actually press the fire button this time and thusly eliminate the mind, body, and soul of another person armed with the ability to also press that button?

The Premoniton Of The Premises For World War 3

This is a premonition and a possible prediction, but I hope that it does not come true. This is merely a way of expressing my thoughts and opinions on current political conflicts from around the world. In my opinion, all of these conflicts are at their near breaking points for becoming full blown military engagements that will destaballize the world even more.

Most of these conflicts are already in flux and have reached certain boiling points. Others are reaching these boiling points day by day. Many of them are under the radar of western news other than a quick story here or there, but these conflicts have been brewing for many years.

Alliances

Allied Western Powers:

EU, USA, Japan, South Korea, Israel, India, Australasia (AU and NZ), Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Canada

Allied Anti-Western Powers:

North Korea, Iran, Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Pakistan's new regime when the current one falls apart, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, possibly China, Vietnam, and Mexico

Conflicts of Interest

Conflict #1:

North Korea, Russia, China vs. South Korea, Japan, USA (Nuclear)

North Korea lauches attack on South Korea, Japan, and possibly HI, or AK, or CA. The USA responds vigorously and Japan/SK move their military into positions for a full blown offensive. China remains stagnant on the issue, but is arming its border with North Korea ready to either fight on NK or the allies sides. With internal pressure within the CCP to resist the west, China could go against the grain and take sides with North Korea as an ally in a passive aggressive move against the west and mostly the USA in an attempt to grab more power away from the USA, this time mostly politically instead of economically.

Conflict #2:

Iran vs. Israel (Nuclear)

Israel vs. Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Syria (Terrorism)

Lebanon vs. Hezbollah (Regime Collapse, Terrorism)

Iran takes the opportunity to attack Israel to further it's power increase amongst Arab states and to take advantage of the nuclear chaos in the Pacific to make it's nuclear move. Israel responds with a nuclear retaliation. The Arab states surrounding Israel such as Syria and possibly Egypt coupled with Hezbollah and Al Qaeda make moves on Jerusalem, West Bank and other Israel settlements. A war between Israel and Arab allies against Arab enemies rages on in terrible bloodshed across the central areas of the Middle East region. Lebanon falls to Hezbollah terrorists and because of the USA's stretched military forces, the Iraqi border with Syria and Saudi Arabia become less stabilized and terrorist forces migrate towards the conflicts in Israel.

Conflict #3:

Pakistan, Afghanistan, USA vs. Taliban, Al Qaeda (Regime Collapse, Terrorism)

Pakistan vs. India (Nuclear)

Afghanistan, USA vs. Al Qaeda, Taliban (Regime Collapse, Terrorism)

Pakistan falls victim to the Taliban and the Taliban uses the nuclear chaos on two hemispheres to decide to launch a nuke at Pakistan's longtime nuclear neighbor India who makes a nuclear retaliation. Various terrorism occurs within India's borders and a nuclear arsenal has fallen into the hands of terrorists that are outspoken friends with Al Qaeda looking to assist them in an effort to attack other western interests in a future clandestine act of terrorism. Many nuclear weapons disappear among the chaos.

Conflict #4:

Honduras vs. Venezuela (Regime Collapse)

Honduras, USA, EU vs. Venezuela, Cuba, Russia (Cold War)

Venezuela makes a military action into Honduras looking to steal more power away from the USA from the historically strong alliance between Honduras and the US. Other nearby Central American powers are now weaker because of this bold move by Venezuela. Cuba quickly asserts its decidedly vocal alliance with Venezuela. Cuba also simultaneously asserts its position against the US as a sole western communist power. In concordance with its sudden vocal polarization against the US, Russia sees an opportunity to rekindle its Cuban amigos.

Conflict #5:

Russia, Moldova, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia, China vs. USA, Poland, EU (Cold War)

Russia makes blatant chess moves against western interests attempting to bring more Kremlin control into Moldova, Cuba, Kazakhstan and Georgia. Russia asserts its continuation of communism advocacy and allies with Iran, North Korea and even Venezuela as strong oil powers with a superpower backing. Russia's recent economic rise has led itself to form a stronger force than during the Cold War. This time, Russia is for real, not quite as much as a show that it was during CCCP days. In its realization of a great opportunity with China and China's realization of a great opportunity to make waves in the world and emerge as the strongest of the strong, China and Russia become allies and China makes its decision against the western powers in North Korea for multiple reasons including angst against the Japanese from the second World War surfacing amidst the tensions.

Conflict #6:

Mexico, Drug Cartel vs. USA, Mexico (Drug War, Terrorism, Regime Collapse)

Amidst all of the world chaos, the gangs and violence within Mexico destabillizes the internal mechanisms of the corrupt government. The drug cartel takes a strong voice in border politics influencing even upper echelons of politics by forcing the Mexican president to declare the US as an enemy of the state because of it being a vast supplier of the arms that are causing bloodshed within its borders. Mexico decides to care less and less about border security and let's whoever cross whenever they like to cross. The USA tries to police its borders, but because of numerous political and government failures to keep the border safe, the military is called in to back up the border patrol. With a building military presence, the drug cartels feels pressured by the US and decides react with more violence & bold tactics instigating a war of terrorism and street-gang-guerrilla warfare against the US by striking everyone from civilians to law enforcement and the US military.

Conflict #1 and Conflict #2 independently occuring could easily trigger any of the other conflicts including whichever of #1 and #2 that does not occur first. Conflict #3 would grease the wheels of the machine of World War and would easily act as a great catalyst for #1 and or #2, but in itself would not necessarily lead to the World conflict. The only other conflict of interest that is sufficiently high-profile enough to set forth events and place chess pieces on the chessboard in a checkmate position would be Conflict #5 which might turn for the worse or smolder and simmer for a long time in a second Cold War. All of the other conflicts are containable and slightly preventable through many different means such as diplomacy, secret operations, and wielding of global power from the UN, USA, or a meeting of the G(x) minds to bring about a resolution averting a serious engagement. So, in summary, #1, #2, and #5 are the most significant and volatile situations that are not just flammable, but moreso explosive for forming the foundation of a World War to put into the great book of history of the first Holocene epoch.

Again

2009-04-13T01:56:00.047-05:00

I remember the days,
Actually mostly the nights,
And the mornings,
Of dawn's early precipice light,
Tinged with the illegal,
Trespassing away from my youth.

The dark and mysterious nights,
Leading me astray,
It was all so alluring,
I could not resist.

It was as if not the beautiful,
But the beautiful being disgraced by the ugly,
That was intoxicatingly so,
That I could not turn away.

The manufactured 3,4-MethyleneDioxyMethAmphetamine,
Coupled with a glittering dust of heroic diacetylmorphine,
That laced the crystalline,
So-called hydrogen H-bomb,
The female heroine heroin of chemical salvation.

The virgin tongue tainting the ferrous blood,
With man-made plasticity,
What somnolence was fast approaching,
And oh how the anxiety was annulled by the anxiolytic affect,
Pushing the emotive euphoria forcefully into my world,
And into my stable mentality, my mental stability, that I call my mind.

The consciousness became fuzzy,
The conscience evilly cooperative,
As the yellow-orange sodium-vapor lights grew eerily distant.
And the constant darkness of the night,
Was met with the loud thunder,
Of the futuristic drums,
Beating the tribal human nature,
Back into my heart.

I felt my blood muscle react,
The pace became fast,
As I pondered,
How evolved humans have become,
Since the Ethiopian origins disappeared,
Across the volcanic sons of Hadean,
The original seven pieces of ancient Pangaea.

I am but one simply small,
And ubiquitous grain of sand,
In this ever falling hourglass,
Yet I feel more than just special,
I feel chosen.

I feel chosen to be enlightened,
The occult has selected me,
The Gnostics have summoned me,
The mystics have prophesized my coming.

I am entwined with this exact moment of history,
Where I simultaneously exist as mortal and divine.

I breathed the cool air from her lips,
The pleasantly poetic symmetry,
Of a mysterious girl's modal mouth,
And her feminine molecular formation,
That has the essence and aura of gold,
The aura of an aurora that glimmers and glows,
The borealis of a clear crisp cold northern night and light,
In colors that confuse and mystify,
The minds of all men that walketh so.

Why is the female the ultimate beauty perfected,
The pluperfect form, idyllic companion delight,
Why is it she that makes all your troubles disappear,
And life appear dividedly divinely so,
For all those who encompass her freewill and spirit know.

And whilst I bear the thoughts,
Of mankind all in one breath,
Towards the heavens I begin my ascension,
Yet I know I am but mere mortal.

As I witness my own sense of being and status quo,
A huge heavenly deluge of insight is given to me,
One that foretells all and eternally escapes time's persistent forward march,
Binding it all together into a single simple shape yet complex,
An elegant embodiment that has but one solitary side,
While collapsing compactly all into itself,
All of the motions, both past, present, and future,
Adorning the contours of this visually stunning illustrious semblance,
All encompassing the physical realm, a true cosmic metamorphosis,
Everything and all.

It is the cosmic spiral of undulations,
That weave existence from void,
Into an apparent cyclical fashion,
While eluding even the brightest being,
Of its true singularity form.

As time reveals herself to me,
The melodic crystals of sinusoidal synthesization,
Emanating deep from within the magnetic silicone,
Penetrate through my cochlea and into the cortex of the aural,
The pure sounds caressed my mind,
Chemical synaptic response, synapse by synapse,
Neurotic neural node, neuron by neuron.

My machinery, so very sophisticated and hyper-advanced,
Had met its evolutionary equal,
In the midst of a mist, an atmospheric trance,
The brown sugar ingredient in my freshly baked good,
Imperialized the collection of networks that constitute me,
And developed an impenetrable logical argument,
The evolutionary revelation within my mental revolution,
The revolution of mine, the mind, my mind,
Our mental revolution,
All 100 billion of us.

A single interference of a pristine molecule,
Never before seen, tasted, nor felt by my being,
Through direct chemoreception it was received,
Disinclined to the spiritual realm,
Synthetically known to this mother, Mother Gaea,
Challenging the Earth, challenging the universe,
Challenging hell and heaven alike,
A molecule that challenged the mind, body, and soul.
Chemistry had somehow given me a challenge,
A gift of the Gods maybe, a gift of science more likely,
And it showed me for a split second the true colors of the universe.

The colors by which you cannot see,
The sounds by which you cannot hear,
The somatosensory by which you cannot feel,
The introspect by which you cannot think,
The divine by which you cannot be.

I was swept off my foundations of rationale,
By feelings that went far beyond the edge,
If you can call it an edge,
My wildest dreams,
My extreme passions,
My empathetic apathy.

I saw them,
The oneiric prisms,
Of pure joy and content,
That were multidimensionally redefining my realm,
And how I view the simple word of bliss.

Ancient-modern,
Epiphanic enlightenment, kinetic knowledge,
Harmonious harmonic harmony,
Future-past in the present.

A strong calm dwindled,
Into my stream of consciousness it flowed,
Slowly, but surely decrescendoing into light, airy, faint comfort,
A calmly flowing pleasant feeling of pure comfortable contentment.

To this day,
I wish to return,
But regrettably regrettable,
I will never knowingly choose,
To walk so close to that dangerous edge,
The edge of the valley of the shadow of death,
Never again until that one day of judgment,
Is the day that is truly upon me by the divine G*d's will,
Or for some strange reason by the grace of mystique,
That I will find myself on that edge by the free will,
Of my own synergistic convergence upon a single thought,
That could propel my continuance of biologic senescence away,
Far, far away from this spaceship Earth,
This pale blue dot,
Circling around this one subatomic system of the solar.

I am in love,
Unrequited love,
Requited love that requires repartition,
Retrograde retribution to my noble mind,
All that I do not wish to endure to bring this love,
This romance of the chemical back to a spark.

I am full of sadness from desire,
I have seen and it has showed,
To me, myself, and I, the many more emotions and spectral spectrums of nuances galore,
That do definitely existentially exist in the knowledge of women, children, and men.

It has placed me into a state of listlessness,
Complacent with the emotions of angels,
The angelic annhilation of my stability,
Complete with a side of torpor, acedia, melancholy and ennui.

I feel the deadliest of the deadly seven steeping my kettle of sin,
For I cannot resist it and I am but one submissive soul,
To this deceleration as if I was a fly in molasses.

Yet, while I have abandoned my morals,
And dipped my foot into the lake of fire,
Nearest the farthest circle of hell,
From which the gate I entered where I chose to abandon all hope,
I do feel a strange sense of helpless hope.

I feel an embrace,
A sour embrace,
Slowly telling me the truth,
The truth of my sole soul,
The truth of the world's soul,
And the soul of truth.

THERE is no religion higher than truth.
There IS no religion higher than truth.
There is NO religion higher than truth.
There is no RELIGION higher than truth.
There is no religion HIGHER than truth.
There is no religion higher THAN truth.
There is no religion higher than TRUTH.

As each song lightens the opulent sky,
With the red fiery hues,
Of the seventh-hundred nanometric range of heavenly zeal,
I open my eyes as pinpoint pupils,
Letting light into the shoebox of my head.

I see the clouds billowing upwards,
As the solar radiation melts the vapor into invisibility.

I meet the day with a song rhythmically filled,
A bounty of basslines galore,
Solidifying the breathing atmospheres,
Of sonic accompaniment to my delusional state.

I was delirious,
But now I am complacently content,
At peace with myself, others, and all.

The day goes on,
And a cool summer breeze hits my skin,
As I truly fall into the twilight of midday's sleep.

In and out,
Luxurious lackadaisical relaxation,
Amongst my home where I feel no pain,
And discover the breeze entering nearby though it is barely spring.

My synaesthetic revolutions,
That mimic the movements of the sun and the stars,
Geocentric, yet heliocentric,
All within my head,
Meet in contradiction over the smell of a tropical wind,
The wind pushing against my spring sweat,
As the recent vernal equinox has barely just passed,
Yet a cool summer breeze hits my body and teases me so.

Astronomically abstaining from the contradiction,
I spell the inner words for which write my future.

Still, I feel a passion for the chemical sapience,
That my blood vessels soaked up like a dry sponge,
And I yearn for that day,
The day when I can walk again,
Into the Gnostic light emanating and illuminating,
Not from somewhere nor from within, but throughout.

I will walk upon such a true and valiant bridge of light full of fervor,
One day again,
Truly one day again,
One day again,
one day,
one...

ONE DAY!

And on that one glorious day,
Time will stop, truth will ascend,
And I will lay at my creator's feet as a humble soul,
Watching the mortal die as I stand upon this bridge beyond time,
That stretches from Earth to the heavens,
Upon which no storm, no evil, no malice can affect,
Stronger than the force of anything imaginable.

I will not need to ask what lies below the bridge,
Nor what hinges are above that hold and suspend the bridge steadily so,
And I will surely not ask nor need to ask whether I am truly just standing,
On a regular spherical firmament amongst the heavens,
An orb amongst the stars,
In a fathomless void of infinite multitude,
A sea of deep black darkness with twinkling pointillism of shimmering distant brilliance,
In a form and shape of indescribable proportions.

Why, you might ask?

Because for I will know it throughout,
Throughout my eternal mind, immortal body, and effervescent soul,
Not from within, nor from somewhere, but absolutely, positively, throughout.

Stability will be a mere word,
That will have no meaning to my reborn self.

I will know that the bridge is secure,
The warmth not surreal,
And the contentment completely legitimate,
Because it will be a divine love,
That will permeate through my new blood,
And it will exist with me forever and always,
As I will have returned to the source,
The final destination,
The last stop,
Fully enlightened.

I will abandon optimism,
Unnecessary it will be to possess,
And I will preclude other human weaknesses,
I will not need hope,
I will discard desire,
I will exclude the emotions that I know so well,
Adoration and anger,
Despair and aspiration,
And I will trade them all,
For the full spectral reflections of the purest,
And simultaneously most heterogeneous forms that I know,
As a being only partially enlightened at present,
But a being that has seen a glimpse,
Of what can, what will, and what should be,
And that I surely hope and expect to find at the very, very, very end,
If there is really such a thing.

I hope that the warmth will welcome me,
As I saw that one day that I traded stable security for risk,
That I tread so close to the edge of the deep abyss,
As I tiptoed on the crest of the canyon,
And danced with the Devil against the LORD's will,
But whether the sinful nature of the dance was sanctioned by the righteousness of G*d,
The divine force, the Holy Spirit, Yeshua, Allah, Yahweh,
It is sanctioned by me because it gave me a glimpse of heaven,
A piece of the pie in the sky,
My own personal cloud for me to rest my gentle soul,
My feeble mind and my growing spirit.

I do believe that if it was not truly endorsed by the divine,
That there was an alternative path of endorsement,
By the sheer fact that I was given a shimmering and glittering glimpse,
And I saw what an eternity of bliss looks like,
It has renewed my faith and my religion,
It has shown to me that there is a light at the end of the tunnel,
That the heavenly river in the sky is not just an arbitrary anomaly,
That we are truly indeed a reflection of our creator,
And that we exist in a world that is bound by time,
But that is cradled by pillars of eternal joy,
And structurally designed far beyond our human capacity.

I think, therefore I remember,
And I remember all of this insight and introspect,
From when the 6-monoacetylmorphine flowed in my fluid,
And bound itself repeatedly to μ-opioid receptors throughout my mortal flesh,
And especially when the methylene touched the dioxymethamphetamine,
During those fleeting moments when time stood still,
However sincere or insincere the feelings felt,
The chemicals artificially produced,
Manufactured bliss,
But when that day cometh and I will stand on that bridge,
I will know that this time it will be sincere,
Beyond the tears felt when realizing that the son of G*d has risen,
The interface between divine and mortal bridged,
Where the sinless can touch the sinful,
And divine plucks a ripe fruit from the vine,
Which bears the gift for the living,
Which giveth the blood of Christ, our savior,
That we shall all once again arise and ascend into heaven.

Land of the Free

2008-09-03T23:40:00.005-05:00

Being American means to live, breathe, and exalt freedom to the extent of the founding fathers' life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our government should

Our government should exist to protect us from instability and anarchy. It should wage war when it is just to do so, and it should be malleable to the point that whenever it becomes destructive to the means of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness it can be abandoned and reconstructed anew just as stated in the declaration of independence.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I would put my life on the line to preserve it and plan to do so for the rest of my life. I plan to travel the world and change it for the better. I plan to spread the knowledge and exaltation of freedom to those who don't have it. I will stand for the United States of America for now and forever. I will not hesitate in any instance for the freedom that we have achieved in our nation or for the world. Our nation is just the beginning, our freedom is just the beginning. We have the entire world to free and it is our duty and honor to be the nation to spread the freedom since we have become the sole superpower.

Democracy is not the final form of government. It is merely an evolved form of the state of nature just like all of the other forms of government. The importance of democracy as a medium for government is more important than democracy as the government itself. Essentially, democracy is a tool that is put into practice in varying forms. The government of the USA is actually a republic much like the Roman republic of its day. A true democracy is the tyranny of the majority over the minority. It is a dictatorship of the majority. That is why true democracy does not work well and is why we do not use it in the USA. The importance of a government matters to the people, to ethics in general, and to the morals of everyone acting upon, within, or about the people to be governed. That is why our form of government should be constantly refined into a precise machine to fit the ethics and times of our society. I wrote an abstract essay about the abstract form of the republic called "The Elegant Republic" on my blog "The Syncretic Divine". In it the abstract, I wrote about how our republic is a just form of government, but is lacking in certain respects. In the near future and far future, we will need to reconstruct our government into a new beast and our society should look to all aspects of all forms of government for ideas on how to create the perfect government. A perfect government may not exist, but a near-perfect government can be achieved if it is designed well. I think the Utopian society will look to all forms of government including socialism for efforts in achieving this most perfect society that can solve all problems it encounters. Communism with the proper checks and balances would achieve success. The problem with communism is that certain people in government become the ruling authorities. If the proper checks and balances were to occur in republican methodology while wielding the effective communistic and socialistic values in a society, I think it could work to a certain extent. However, for true success, a hybrid of sorts would wield the best balance between all forms of government as directed by scholars, practitioners (of government), and the people in a way that would achieve economic, social, and peaceful stability. Currently our republic is doing quite well for its design. I would put the lifespan on our republic at another good 100 years at least before we even consider to disband the republic for a more improved system of government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism_in_the_United_States

America should never ignore anything. It should look in all directions and try to anticipate all problems and devise solutions to correct the problems. We are entering the global era where globalization is beginning rapid acceleration. America needs to bear witness to this globalization and act upon it by becoming a global member. It needs to root itself into the fabric of the global community so it can compete at all levels of globalization. This is something that our country's inflation, labor unions, and the combined outsourcing of jobs and subsequent lack of retraining for the manufacturing community has contributed to the national economic plateau. If we had anticipated the manufacturing outsourcing and fought the labor unions with proper legislation limiting their powers, we could have solved the problem and prevented the economic plateau. We should have provided abundant training for people losing their job. We should have devised plans to create jobs to replace the ones lost. We are at the mercy of the global capitalistic forces (survival of the fittest) and we became less fit because others in the world became more fit. We aren't lost and the economy isn't in a downturn. We are still rich and powerful and the possibilities are endless on what our country, economy, and people can do to change our plateau into a steep climb again.

The US originated from people in the "old world" looking for a new start. They colonized our country escaping the despotism in Europe. They came looking for opportunity. Unrest grew between England and the colonized land in present day America and we declared our independence from England in a bloody war. We fought the Spanish in a bloody war for our southern border. We let the french and English fight the northern border war for us. We gathered as much land as possible and with our grand foundations and policies in place we proceeded forward. Westward expansion occurred because of the need for more land and through government promotion to expand westward. Many people believed in "manifest destiny" and in many respects I think they were somewhat right in obtaining the land, however, I believe many of the human tragedies of the native Americans are overlooked as just. We stole their land and there isn't any other way to look at it. Generations upon generations of Indians lived in the USA before we took their land from them. Some of it was out of squatting on the land, some of it was taken in bloody war. War was inevitable since the driving westward expansion was unrelenting. After expanding our land conquests, we settled down into the 50 states that we know today. We had set up foreign policy such as the Monroe Doctrine establishing a discrete relationship with any European powers and began to expand our nation economically. Alexander Hamilton does not get much credit for being the guy who essentially laid the concrete for our nation's industrialization. He foresaw so many things accurately that one might be inclined to think that he had traveled to the future. He federalized our economy and brought it to the modern era. Our military was formed into the modern military later on during the world wars, but had been created and used since the very beginning. The civil war was a result of unethical treatment of humans and strong economic progress. Essentially the south was under economic attack by way of claims of unethical treatment of human beings. The north realized the ethics behind the southern economy and began to disband it since the north and south were part of the same nation. It tried to do so legally while many people were doing it illegally. Eventually, the southern states decided that they did not like being criticized for the ethics of their people on economics the north had benefited from, so they seceded and thus began the war. The battle was pretty evenly matched for the most part, but the north had G*d, ethical righteousness, and a strong organized military with more money which gave way to the outcome of the war. After the second world war, the USA gained an upper hand since it had not been bombed and had not been war-torn like Europe or other countries. With the new found elation from winning the war for a just cause and the economic powerhouse of a warring nation, we established our presence upon the world as a superpower. The only other nation also to do so was the USSR (CCCP in Russian). They had not suffered nearly as bad as Europe and had a larger amount of land (resources) and a numerous amount of people that were under the iron fist of communism wielded by dictators. Because the people were controlled in such manner, the government was able to bring about a curtain and shadow itself as a strong nation while only focusing on the military and giving a facade of strength. Instead of lasting, it collapsed under the improperly wielded form of communism. Greed is too powerful and needs to be checked and balanced. That is why republican forms of government work, but non-republican forms of government fail to last beyond the dictator's legacy.

Freedom has enabled our progress and success. I don't understand why you would ask whether the US has made progress in spite of the freedom. It made the progress because of the freedom. The US can offer as much freedom as possible and still be the USA. Freedom is our foundation. Without freedom, we would not be the USA. The more the merrier. There is a limit in certain applicable areas on exactly how much freedom is usable, but the foundations gave good guidelines on the future of freedom. Times change, and freedom can change with it. What would be better than trying to restrict freedom, would be to educate everyone better about their freedoms and why they have those freedoms.

If I could change the USA, I would get rid of our debt and start a national savings. We need to change our economy and educate our citizens on how our country can achieve this. Letting the markets decide is not a perfect solution. Letting the markets decide is only part of the solution. Letting the markets decide is similar to natural selection in nature. We must make a push upon the people about realistic ideas that are thoroughly researched that will enable us to achieve an economic stronghold. We must be able to look past our own selfishness as individuals and as groups of similarly idealized people and zest for an economy based upon reason and strategy that is appropriate to meet the desires of our people as a whole and individually. It is a very, very, very difficult task at hand. Only if it is solved on a major scale and understood to be a correct solution to the masses of people will it become a policy of our national government and actually get solved. Until then, health care, social security, and everything related to economics (which is everything) will have used Alexander Hamilton's name in vain. I think we should get a national program called "living within your means" to help people actually live within their means and limit their spending and debt. I have forsaken my own policy because I fell victim to not being educated on the matter fully enough. It was too easy obtainable and was not mentioned to me much before I became indebted to my own desires to live outside of my means. The solution to debt is a troubled one, but starts with acting. I am slowly resolving the issues and moving forward as the country should do also.

I would put forth plans to align the USA to compete in the new global environment at the highest level and I would strategically align us with the unified global government that is going to eventually take shape. The United Nations is just merely version 1.0. We all live on this planet and we all must work together. There is no such thing as race. Race is only a social definition and is blurry at best. The nation-state is dying in this new worldwide region. Land is closer to everyone and more connections are being made. Economic trade knows no boundaries. The development will continue and our world will begin to evolve into one world instead of many nation states on multiple continents.

For example, I would solve the immigration issue by getting everyone illegally here in the USA to come forward and become accountable on a realistic plan to citizenship. They need to pay taxes. They need to be sheltered from neighborhoods they have gone to live in because they fear the police and government since they are illegal. They need to be taught the language and be properly educated. If they cannot make the grade, they will be deported. These people can be a better asset than they are by making them legal and finding out how many people are actually here. We can better account for their presence and actually charge them for being here. If they remain illegal, they don't pay taxes. Unless we actively go out and deport everyone that is illegal, then we are just contributing to the problem and not acting upon a solution. Deportation needs to be in strong enforcement. We need to control the new immigration and prevent any future illegal immigration. We should increase our immigration quotas to meet some of the demand. We need to invest in stimulating growth in Mexico, so that immigration is not a first option for most people living in other countries. There isn't a massive immigration from Canada to the USA for a reason. It is NOT race. It is the economic policies and industrialization that Canada has done to make it's country industrialized. Corruption and dictatorships have waged a battle upon the people south of us and have caused a distress that has enabled a massive immigration. Our grand success has also given allure to opportunity just like it was alluring for Europeans to make the trip to here. If we can help bring Mexico to our world, Mexican citizens won't be fleeing in large numbers to the north.

That is just one more detailed viewpoint I have on how to solve the many problems facing our country.

I wouldn't want to live anywhere else besides the USA as a permanent residence. I would like to visit almost the entire world and I would like to live in a few areas for a limited amount of time such as France, China, the Caribbean, and maybe Dubai, but I would not want to live there permanently.

Dictatorship is not a good form of government. If a dictator is a decent leader and does not pick a good successor, then his nation will decline and his people will suffer. Also, if a decent leader is in power in a dictatorship, he or she is at risk of being vetted against by someone wishing to have the power. A dictatorship does however breed strong leadership. Aspects of a dictatorship are applied to the executive branch of a republic because of this need for leadership in a nation. If we truly went to a democracy, we would be at the mercy of the popular opinion which can easily be swayed. If we only went to the values of a republic democracy, we would be at the mercy of congress and no decisions would ever get made in a timely manner. Thus, the executive branch exists to steady the nation in mainly short-term decisions compared to long-term decisions held for the judicial and legislative branch. It eases the decision making process and makes it more decisive.

Communism is an extension of utilitarianism thought into government. At its purist form, it is ideal only if the human consequences do not outweigh the benefits. Because humans are so dynamic and are held just above animals, but just below G*d and angels, we are considered to be sentient and unable to actively suffer indoctrinated communism, so we must elaborate upon pure communistic ideals to bring about any success with it. Since the only forms of communism have been executed in poorly managed forms of government that used tyranny to wield the power rather than setting up a republican form of communism, nothing has ever become of it. China is only successful because of its strong economic might. The communism will fall when India takes China's back burner on manufacturing the world's products in the next 10 to 20 years. China has proven that communism is at least minimally successful within certain restraints. The only problem is that freedom was withheld from the foundations of the government and therefore has suffered so.

Pure democracy does not work. The majority of the people will always win and the minority will be ruled by the majority unjustly. Representation of the minority must exist to justify democratic principles on a diverse and vast group of people such as a nation in the form of republicanism.

Socialism is communism with less economic communism and more social responsibility for the government to bear. I think it could be successful if managed correctly and is more what China is because China wields capitalism very strongly as their economic policy while underlining social policies in a communal form. It fails when the social responsibility is a greater burden than the government can handle. Because the problems to social responsibility involve everyone in society from economics to the military, socialism is not a broad enough form of government to handle its own claims of strength nor handle any other forms of problems that would plight a nation-state.

Anarchy is where we came from and existed in the "state of nature" as quoted and understood very thoroughly by Thomas Hobbes, one of my most favorite philosophers and political scientists. It only worked for humans as animals and does not apply to humans as people with unalienable rights. Nothing can be provided in the way of security or stability that is necessary for large society, especially when other societies with greater abilities begin to evolve around them and exist. Survival of the fittest and so anarchy is killed off by communal contracts, then dictatorships, then oligarchies, then democracies, then republics. However, anarchy is exactly where humans are taken if the moral and ethical spirit of humans are taken away. Humans become animals when we lose civilization. We were animals and still are under our fleshy skin. We only exist above animals because of the creation of civilization and the desire for stability beyond anarchy.

From the Cynical to the Optimistic

2008-04-22T10:45:00.017-05:00

Perceived End-of-Oil

I have a very cynical outlook on the future concerning "peak oil". I believe that it has already begun to affect us. I think that essentially any society or any person who relies on oil, which is everyone except for the country of Brazil, will be in deep demise because of the rising price of oil. However, that concept is nothing new, but what I don't think anyone has considered is the "perceived end-of-oil" by the markets. The price for crude oil per barrel is already predicted at over $150 per barrel in a little under just one year! To think that onlyl a mere year ago it was half that price! So, if gasoline is directly related to the price of crude oil, it will have doubled in price by next year. Doubling in two years time is a sharp increase for any economy. If the future prediction is correct, and that prediction is by market analysts not doomsday predictors or someone selling a book, then we are in for a ride of a lifetime!

The Domino Effect

Inflation among many other dire events will contribute to an economic crash of any oil economy. The United States of America will have trouble for sure and then the rest of the world will follow since all of our economies are interlinked in this new world of globalization and the global economy. If any of this sounds familiar, then it is because it is already happening as you read this. It will be like dominos beginning to fall and everyone will feel it whether they use oil or not.

Bioethanol Riots

I doubt the issues concerning bioethanol production and people rioting because of food prices rising will end up happening as a few have mentioned. It sounds viable at this moment since the recent rise in food prices worldwide, but I don't think that we are going to have a problem with any riots towards the use of food for bioethanol in the mid-term. First of all, food prices are rising because of transportation costs because of oil prices and also because of many droughts possibly caused by climate change. They are not directly rising because of bioethanol production and that thinking is counterintuitive because the production of bioethanol will lower the price of food transportation, thus reducing the price of food.

Algae, The Savior

Beyond the next year or two, there will be no concern towards the use of corn as the main ingredient for bioethanol fuel production. Scientists have already figured out a solution for not using any type of food as fuel. They have come up with a very easy way to use algae to produce bioethanol instead of corn. Making fuel from corn in the first place wasn't a wise idea since food is already scarce amongst the world. I wonder what Malthus would say today since he was "proven" wrong in the past, but might be "proven" correct in the near future. I think the few who came up with the idea to use corn for fuel were basically looking at Brazil and modeling their bioethanol production after the sugarcane method. I wouldn't want the air smelling like popcorn anyway!

Forced to Conserve, Finally!

I also think that this rise in oil price will push people to conserve although doubtful for some people because they could care less. Through that conservation, which is already happening because of the price of gasoline, people will look at new ways to save money on their gasoline consumption which actually helps the Earth and helps avoid a total collapse because of oil addiction. I've seen news specials about people driving less, planning their trips better, and even trying to maximize their gas mileage in many strange and extreme ways such as finding paths that avoid steep inclines, avoiding accelerating and deccelerating, and parking purposely on inclines to allow an easy drive away from their parking spot. It is extreme, but it is working for those people and the number of people doing these methods is on the rise. Unfortunately their conservation does not counteract the lack of conservation by the majority of people.

Green Momentum

I also must say that this "green" movement has caught on very strong since Al Gore's 7.7.07 Live Earth event. Everywhere that I look corporations are talking "green" or advertising "green". Of course some of the advertising really has no merit, but a lot of it does have merit and is truely "green". I am impressed and a little surprised with this movement and the momentum that it gained.

Drowning Altruism

In the long run, if we don't switch to bioethanol produced from algae and then eventually move to hydrogen fuel, we are up a creek without a paddle. I think it will happen, but it will happen just about 5 to 10 years too late as far as preventing some of the disasters that are possible such as an economic depression, severe climate change, and many political wars over food and oil. Humans will survive though, but hard times are ahead before the "idiots in charge" actually shift us into the future instead of profiting from the past. I don't mean oil companies or the president either. By "idiots in charge", I mean the general populace and the legislature. People are selfish by default and don't care about the Earth. Even the so called liberals and environmentalists don't seem to care about the Earth. I say this because I was the only one who rode my bike to vote in the Democratic Primary in Texas and I consider myself more Republican! If that doesn't explain the problem of lazy people and their self-interests overwhelming their altruistic concerns, then I don't know how to do it any better.

Do It Now

People are a lot of talk, but very little action. Not until they are forced to act, which is essentially what I think will happen, do people actually take their words and act upon them. This myopic viewpoint on action applies to energy conservation and even bigger problems such as the possibility of climate change. How can you solve a problem if you are unwilling to make significant sacrifices to solve these seemingly impossible problems when you can't see past the next month or year or even 10 years in regards to your actions. Small actions don't seem to make a difference so people don't even do those. Small actions over a period of time adds up to a very significant amount. One must think as big as seven generations or bigger. Humans have been here a long time and will be here for a very long time even if chaos breaks out in the near future because of the crisis of "peak oil". We adapt and survive very well. Only events such as an all out nuclear war or a serious asteroid collision could eliminate us from the planet. Even then, a few might survive and begin anew much like the story of Noah. Then a couple thousand years later there will be a human society once again.

Lullaby for Gaia

The one thing that makes me feel at peace at night and when I look upon nature in it's raw form is if humans live or die, nature will prevail. If we die from this planet, nature will regain control of the planet and equalize everything back to how it was before our impact. Similar to how Planet of the Apes shows the future with the Statue de la Liberté burried deep below the sand minus the talking apes on horses. If we don't die, we will have solved most if not all of the problems concerning this Earth and we will hopefully become the protectors of this planet that we were supposed to be.

The Inner Warmth

2008-02-17T00:26:00.010-06:00

The Love I Seek

All I seek is for a girl to want me and love me for who I am and who I will become by experiencing life with me.

I want someone who can handle deep thought and penetrate my soul with ideas that will stimulate me to new avenues of contemplation.

I want someone who has a great sense of humor and can make me laugh and enjoy her company.

I want someone who is creative and ambitious with dreams of her own to fulfill. I want a girl to tell me that she loves me and mean it 1000%.

I won't be truly absolutely happy in this world until I hear those meaningful words and feel the inner warmth of the sincerity behind them equally reciprocated. That's what love is about.

Tantric Energy

Sex is just a method of harnessing the energy that surrounds humans in love. It's the mystical practice of reproduction. It's the natural program that drives us to reproduce, divinely created, that nature has put forth to help ensure the survival of our species. It's the reason we are here today.

Respecting sexual desire, yet embracing it, and somehow delivering upon the animal instinct will ensure that nature continues with it's unfolding mystery, but focusing your energy upon love will allow for your spirit to rise above the animal kingdom and revel in the glory of what it means to be human.

We, as humans, are aware that we aren't Gods, but that we aren't just animals either. We are the evolutionary step between the past and the future. We are the great living division between the animal kingdom and the heavenly kingdom, the missing link between angels and apes.

Champs-Élysées

One day, one day, one day the heavenly kingdom will fall upon our existence in one of three ways.

The first, most told story of heavenly revelation is that it will be divinely bestowed upon the world by the supreme being of this universe.

The second method of heavenly revelation concerns the elapsing of so much time that there isn't enough great minds in the world to comprehend the number of years that would pass that would lead to the greatest tranquil gesture of the universe, ceasing to exist like dust blown into the wind, forever gone.

The last great chance of capturing blissful euphoria that our human passion wishes upon our species is creating the great reward. If we reward our species or trans-humanistic species of the future for our wisdom acquired over the millennia by creating the heavenly body ourselves. Coming to our senses about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and love. Once we realize our power over nature, our philosophical position amongst the divine, our ethical challenges swept under the welcome mat of the past, we will begin to embrace the sunshine and fade into the westerly sunset of the future. Infinite joy, infinite warm sadness of liquid tears that will sorrow the souls who could toiled so hard to help our beings gain power over our domain.

We will become the future, we will save the past, we will alter the beginning and make sure to contain all life in positive form free at last from the mortality that binds us all. We will become the divinity that we hope for. We will make all dreams a reality and will persist forever after in utopia, in bliss, in euphoria, in ever increasing narcotic serotonin swells of pure pleasure amongst which the foundations of love will be the purest form of angelic behavior that will redeem the soul. The fields of light. Champs-Élysées. Heaven.

The Odds of Love

I've decided that leaving love to chance is not a worthy strategy. I will try my best not to leave any stone unturned. I am currently systematically approaching this problem from the realistic aspect and actually in doing so helping my consciousness and subconsciousness consider the select few that I have encountered thus far in life. I have decided that I don't wish to waste any more time on trivial relationships that don't nurture love and beyond. I need to pursue my inner thoughts and look forward to the future.

Efficiency, Enlightenment, and Beyond

2008-01-29T11:19:00.002-06:00

Becoming Enlightened

I am becoming more and more enlightened everyday through music, philosophy, literature, current events, religious introspect, scientific discovery, and mathematical reasoning. This might sound odd, but to me seeking enlightenment is central to my being and to my original outlook on life. I lost this outlook for a time, but I regained it and it is stronger than ever.

The Path to Enlightenment

Many things have helped me achieve a continuing path to enlightenment. I started out as a young mind that looked for understanding in the world as I grew into an adult. Only in retrospect did I realize that I was on the right path and that everything I ever stumbled upon or believed in had influenced my path to enlightenment.

Knowledge of Life

What is this enlightenment that I speak of? It's the knowledge of life, the awareness of G*d and divinity, the synchronization between yourself and nature and with natural phenomenon. It is the philosophical grounding and perpetual introspect that is necessary to function at a high level of consciousness. It is the basis on using your mind as a tool of perception to merge all ideas from all walks of life into the syncretic divine. We are humans. We are animals. We are protectors of the planet. We are alive. We are social. We are creators. Evil and good exist in every scope of life and you are offered a choice to discern your actions based upon your soul (the collective consciousness of all your memories, thoughts, and moral imperatives and your physical hard-wiring as well as the software construct that exists deep inside your brain). The future is upon us, and the only constant is change.

Moments of Epiphany

I have had many moments of epiphany throughout my life from natural, irrational, glorious, unexpected, and even narcotic experiences. Eventually a persistent internal torturing of the mind nurtured my epiphanies that followed. Those epiphanies forced me to face the surreal and introspective demons and emerge a mentally strong individual adamant on the advent of positive thinking, hope, and capable of anything. My path through life has been hard at times and then easy the next minute, but definitely it has been interesting and thorough in many respects. I am currently still pursuing my dreams and aspirations and attacking the battlefront of the increasing weight of the master-clock of time by systematically and efficiently using the latest tools available to log, track, organize, project, and efficiently utilize the few moments of time that exist each day to my fullest advantage.

Nature and Loving It

I have come to know nature again. I used to be in touch with it, but lost touch through living in the big city away from the "bubble" (The Woodlands, TX) where woods prevailed. I then came into various moments of enrapture with my hobby of surfing and love for the mystical ocean. I became inclined to like the lovely hill country once I moved to San Antonio and then to San Marcos. It has definitely brought me back to nature. I was most recently influenced to make a difference in the world environmentally by a few unexpected factors. My now ex-girlfriend and her habits of recycling and then Al Gore. Don't rush to judgement about my beliefs on global warming or because Al Gore motivated me to rationalize my concern for the environment, but yes I think for myself and I used my own intellect to draw my own conclusions about the moral implications of inaction. The global warming issue is a separate and albeit important issue, but not related to my moral moment of clarity regarding nature and inaction. Thus, I arrived at my current beliefs that are sound and valid. I seek only the truth and altruistically I seek it.

Hope

I hope that everyone can begin to realize the consequences of their own actions and begin to be accountable for them. I personally think people have become complacent in their ability to actualize what they impact by their own actions. Many environmental campaigns seek action on individuals, yet they fall on deaf ears. People have begun to tune out the truth because it hurts. To be accused of waste or to be accused of an immoral action by your inaction is a personal attack and people try to defend themselves at all costs from such an attack. I say think of efficiency in exaggerated terms to pinpoint your necessities and reduce the waste. For example, imagine that gasoline costs about $20/gallon. At that cost, what type of driving habits do you force upon yourself. Necessity is more evident in such an extreme mental exercise. Imagine that "phantom power" from your electronics devices is equivalent to a leaky faucet. You wouldn't want to allow the leak to persist. You would call a plumber or fix it yourself almost immediately. Imagine that water is a precious commodity that you have to walk over ten miles to bring to your place of residence. If such a journey was required for your water, then you would value its conservation to a highest degree. It is this extreme mental makeover that is necessary to place the seed of a grassroots effort to alter society's perception on efficiency and waste. These mental distortions provide me hope that one day every mind can see the truth about efficiency and beyond. One day, we might all live amongst each other throughout the world in a harmony of all religions, science, and philosophy in a social utopia focusing upon the syncretic divine.

Responsibility

People are not as responsible as they might have been in the past generations. Everyday you hear about someone involved in a hit and run accident. Why do people avoid their responsibility? Why do people avoid any such tarnishing to their own self-esteem and lower themselves to immoral behavior. I think one of the best examples of a turnaround for such irresponsibility was Michael Vick's admittance to his injustices. He made a tough choice, but the honorable one. Hiding behind lawyers and pleas of nolo contendere is cowardly.

Words of Wisdom

Please take heed to the words of wisdom that I speak, but only that I speak these to enable those who have pushed off the inevitable as long as possible that we need to come to terms with our current moral situations. By no means, do I imply that I am perfect or anywhere close. I have wasted my fair share and for that I feel heavy guilt, but my inspiration comes from my bold initiatives to stand firm on my beliefs in the face of adverse reactions and to persuade people about the enlightenment that I have found.

Mother Gaea

Beyond being in tune with Mother Gaea and the life force that appears evident to me that exists in all beings on this planet, I have speculated on how to focus my efforts of enlightenment to make improvements in my own life for the betterment of myself, and for the betterment of those that I will influence and those that I will directly seek to help.

Embracing the Future

Embrace the future and see what is out there! I have found new tools brought forth by Web 2.0 that have given me a voice that is growing stronger and that I can manipulate the flows of information and ideas and progress in a systematic way forward.

Embracing the Sunshine and Starlight

The positive attitude revolves around the way you view the future, your viewpoint on the world, your viewpoint of yourself, and the forward progress no matter how old, how strong, how sick, or how impoverished or beaten down by the mishaps in life that you may be. Embrace the positive attitude like you embrace sunshine. Don't shun away from it vampirically, but look to it for hope. If you are nocturnal, then look to the stars for guidance in forward thinking and embrace the starlight of the cosmos.

Forward Progress

Forward progress in all aspects of life can be achieved until that last breath of life that you breathe. Do not give up, do not give in, do not subside in the ongoing pursuit of your happiness no matter the circumstances.

Carpe Diem

On that note, consider abolishing your New Year's resolutions! What?!? Yes, abolish them and establish a resolution that you will enact EVERY SINGLE DAY! Every day is a new day, a new year, a new beginning that you can strive to achieve your goals. Make your goals reasonable, yet set them high enough and you will begin to move forward with very little backsliding. Nothing is impossible because everything possible so far was originally considered impossible in the very beginning when darkness ruled the light.

The Revolution of the Self

Get your body in great shape mentally, spiritually, and physically. They all hold powers upon each other like a great checks and balances system that represents a revered republic. In order to maximize your results you need to focus on all aspects of your being. Spiritually seek out answers, physically practice and push yourself to new limits, mentally find ways to reduce your stress and start with eliminating the stressors in your life, and find a way to sync your biological being to the infamous bio-clock called the circadian rhythm. Once in sync with it, your body will find it easier to focus on the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of life. Improve your nutrition to emphasize your mental and physical powers and utilize your intellect to ponder the deep and impenetrable fortress of philosophic reasoning about religion and hope. Don't give up completely on religion, but look to it to answer your questions about where you have come. Look to it to find out how your entity represented by the coding blocks of your DNA has been transformed over thousands of human years and how the collective being of your nurtured upbringing considered by some as your soul has endured your life's progression thus far, and then ponder how your life has joined forces with the other humans currently alive at this juncture in history to be relevant for the future. Amen.

Oil Addiction

2007-11-07T09:55:00.002-06:00

So oil hit a high at over $96 per barrel. This means trouble for everyone. It has to do with many factors, but one of them is the oil supply and the peak effects either the real peak or perceived peak that is occurring which is going to trickle down into higher prices and inflation everywhere. Remember the oil crisis of 1973? Oh yeah, most of us weren't alive then. Well, oil prices skyrocketed because the Arab nations cut supply to the United States among other countries. This isn't happening by way of political powers, but natural effects because the oil supply is perceived as dwindling quickly. Basically, the demand is growing steadily and the supply and production of it is at its maximum value and is perceived by the financial world to gradually fall over the next 20 to 50 years. Many people say 20 to 50 years, well we have plenty of time to figure this out, but that is not the case because the financial market reacts to forecasts and the price of oil is already very high.

It will continue to rise and resulting rises in prices of food, products and anything that requires gasoline to bring the goods or services to you. The anticipation is stronger than the actual effects, at the present time at least, therefore gasoline will most likely hit $5/gallon by the end of the decade (2 years and 2 months until 2010), and will continue to rise. Economic inflation and recession from this increased oil price will result. It happened in 1973 and will happen again. This is the beginning of the effects of the peak oil crisis we are facing. Thank goodness a few car companies have finally realized that and have hydrogen powered cars ready to be put into full production. If only we could get some government mandate to the oil companies to help set up the hydrogen fuel infrastructure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

The "peak oil" energy crisis is a major concern of the 21st century. If you don't know what I'm talking about go here:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ (slightly slanted website, but still good information)

GET READY EVERYONE for the nasty future we have in store for ourselves unless we do something to switch our energy usage!

Think global warming is a threat? Try peak oil production and future political powers fighting for economic and political stability because of stock crashes due to the price of oil and the scarcity of a disappearing drug that constituents of large industrialized nations are addicted to like heroin. What happens when a heroin addict quits cold turkey? Withdrawal anybody? We are addicted to oil. That is an inescapable truth. Think gasoline is expensive right now? In a couple decades you will wish that the Iraq war was for the oil because that conflict is minimal over what will happen!
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/10/24/oil.decline/

Myopia

2007-10-25T00:43:00.002-05:00

The huge problem with anthropological global warming is very complicated. Humans are pumping CO(2) into the environment because the industrialized nations are addicted to oil and the problem of proving the direct connection of global warming to the human impact is very murky at best.

Political power is swayed easily by lobbyists and the oil industry pays for their share of the political power. Our political system was also designed as a weak government so it is unable to really handle the problem of the addiction. Breaking addiction is always a tough thing for any agent addicted to any substance, but this one is especially difficult.

Many people view the situation as inevitable and have given up cause; many view it as fallacious and have stubbornly stuck to their viewpoint. Many people see the convenient way of putting it off until tomorrow or ignoring the situation because it doesn’t necessarily need immediate response because the effects are not immediate, but yet the problem continues to grow. Our planet is getting warmer, we continue to pump CO(2) into the environment and the sun continues to heat it up.

The misnomer that we are inside a greenhouse is false. The CO(2) molecules are heated up when the sun's radiation reflected off the planet excite the molecules which in turn makes them warmer. The warmer the planet gets the more ice that melts, the more that sea levels rise. Everyone that disagrees with the situation is essentially looking for a way to escape the burden that we will have to face. The planet is melting and we are responsible. There is nowhere else to go and we must face the music.

The ice melts faster because water acts as a lubricant flowing down below the ice shelves in Greenland and Antarctica creating a viscous layer that allows the ice to slide faster towards the warmer ocean water. When the ice in Greenland melts into the North Atlantic the ocean salinity will be diluted causing a cease of the ocean current conveyor system that has been in place since the last ice age. This current system keeps Europe abnormally warm for its latitude. When the current is stopped, the warmth will cease to exist there. Moscow, Russia is not affected because its climate is appropriate for its latitude, but consider the fact that Moscow is level with the area just north of Edinburgh, England.

The climate changes are happening such as stronger hurricanes, extreme droughts, wildfire conditions running rampant in the western United States, but no one can directly blame human impact on the climate. People have tried to prove the aspect that we are changing the environment when it is so very apparent to some people. Al Gore pushes his Inconvenient Truth to the masses and wins the Nobel Prize, but then people say it is political because Al Gore is a political figure.

The mental image that electricity comes from a fantasy place that does little or no harm to the environment is rampant through society. People also view the impact of their cars is minimal on the environment. The catalytic converter is a double-edged sword. It helped reduce CO(2) production from cars, but it also made the gas emissions invisible rendering it invisible in everyone's mind. No one can actually see the gas being emitted from their car. They know it occurs, but don't think it is harmful because it is clear and because they don't think it is much. If you ask someone what they think of 18-wheeler diesel truck emissions they might say wow that's really bad for the environment because they see thick black smoke in clouds that hit their cars and go into their A/C where they can smell it. This mental distortion is evident, clear as day to me, and prevalent throughout modern society. People need a visual cue; people need an alarm bell telling them exactly what is happening. If a reporting system was given alongside the electric bill explaining how much CO(2) was expelled for each customer, people might think twice about their usage. People might also think twice about their usage if the same was true with their cars. Instead of worrying about fuel efficiency for economic reasons because gasoline is expensive, they should be worried about their CO(2) output per mile driven. Doesn't that make more sense in a moral standpoint? Whether CO(2) emissions effect global warming or not, it's very clear and evident that the particulate pollution is not healthy for the environment or for people.

I remember a time when it was a joke to buy bottled water. I remember a time when it was a joke to get a ticket for smoking inside a restaurant. I remember a time when it was a fantasy idea in a movie that you would get a ticket for smoking in public places or cussing in public places. I remember a time when canned air was also a comedic situation in a parody of a Hollywood blockbuster. Now we have pricey air purifiers for sale. People buy bottled water by the truck load. Smoking is against the law in many major cities in restaurants and bars. Smoking on my campus quad area is against the law and fresh air is getting harder and harder to find. Look at the haze in any major city and tell me that people are not causing that and try to feel morally good about yourself. Are you kidding me? There is scientific proof that hot spots are caused by mankind's impact in urban areas. Tell me that there isn't a possibility that we are causing this on a global scale and global consequences will arrive one day.

People are myopic about the thickness and volume of our atmosphere. People are myopic about the volume of gas emissions from their vehicles thanks to the catalytic converter which makes the emissions less harmful, but also invisible. People are myopic about the fragility of our climate and world ecosystems. People are myopic about the multiplicity factor of millions of people doing the same wasteful habit. People are myopic about waste. People think waste before efficiency because for them it saves time and money. People are self-centered and don't change their habits necessarily because it would burden them and not help them out immediately at all. People are lazy and choose to sit down before acting because it is easier to do and doesn't have an immediate consequence or consequence at all. People are blind to the effects of doing their bad habits every day and the multiplicity effect. The scale of someone's imagination about the impact of their actions and the multiplicity effect among time and people is way underestimated by everyone. You must really consider the concept of what a million people really look like and the amount of waste that a very small habit contributes when applied to millions of people for thousands of days. Oh yeah, a thousand days sounds like a lot, but guess what that's essentially 3 years. Now that doesn't sound like a lot. It's 798 days until January 1st, 2010. It's July 21st, 2010 that is exactly 1,000 days from now. That seems really far in the future, but that is basically right around the corner. People are myopic. Why is that so much of a concern? Well, the people are you and I and we vote for political leaders who control the government which controls the world. We are the one's responsible for choosing leaders who impact policy. We are responsible for our own actions. We control the key to change by choosing political leaders with environmental concerns at the forefront, choosing consumer goods that are environmentally friendly, choosing habits that are environmentally friendly, and choosing to learn about the details of our actions and choices. Ignoring it for the sake of procrastination or out of convenience to not give any attention to the problems at hand is an immoral decision when the consequences are very morally relevant.

The Case for Intelligent Design

2007-07-21T05:48:00.002-05:00

I was a strong believer of the organization by lightning or atomic energy into small basic assembly blocks of computational capability when life began. Now I am less sure, as a computer scientists that understands the Turing machine concept and the architecture of the modern CPU as well as the encoding and complication necessary in information message sending and transcription as well as having a small background in formal language creation and interpretation, there seems to be a few, if not many unanswered questions in the realm of DNA and the information that those intensely complicated molecules contain. Heck, we can't even create a molecule nearly as complex as the DNA molecule. Maybe one day we will have those capabilities, such as within the realms of nanotechnology. I have met Dr. Smalley that came up with the "buckyball" and nanotube ideas. My grandfather used to be the physical plant director at Rice University and he took me to meet with Dr. Smalley as well as see his laboratory in full action. I was young at the time and wasn't totally sure of how important that handshake would be. I was shaking the hand of a Nobel peace prize winner. Someone who's research may lead to the creation of a molecule more complex than DNA itself. We will just have to sit back and see.

http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/smalley.html

With DNA being as complex as it is and richly encoded with information that it is, how on Earth (pun slightly intended) did it come to be of such a strong caliber of force for life? Well, I don't have many answers and this blog entry is more to start the debate and prelude my own research and contemplation about such things, but the following two links have given me enough to question my originally strong held beliefs and assumptions about evolution. I don't doubt that natural selection and survival occurs and that this leads to the evolutionary process, but I now have doubts about the primordial soup and the creation of DNA and the intricate machines contained within the biology of a single cell. What the world needs are computer architects, computer programmers, computer scientists, to analyze the mechanisms and code behind the DNA and to figure out how the device functions. We need to "hack" or in better terms reverse engineer the DNA molecule and code to decipher what really is behind life. Is it an intelligent design or a self-organization that exists throughout the universe such as the Tao in Chinese culture says exists as the strongest unnamed force of all?

http://www.allaboutscience.org/dna-double-helix.htm
http://www.allaboutscience.org/dna-double-helix-video.htm

The Elegant Republic

2007-07-21T04:05:00.002-05:00

If everyone was politically diverse as statistics say we should be, then there should be many people with combinations of diverse views such as pro-abortion, yet also a believer in intelligent design or someone who is a strong evolutionist that is pro-life. Why is it that everyone adopts a political party's ideals as their own without giving much thought to their own beliefs? Why is it that people adopt religious ideals as their own without processing the information and discerning the facts and the truths and giving a fair survey of all the religions in the world? How can you choose a religion without having taken a class surveying all the religions in the world to understand their differences, their beliefs, their postulates on science and such? If you disbelieve in one certain aspect of a religion, should you hastily decide the entire religion is false? With all these rhetoric questions aside, even science and philosophy adopts and adapts everything we know into some sort of schema that is pre-existing or built upon.

I think social pressure and the ease of letting other people do our critical thinking on subjects that we don't care so much about in our daily lives has led the populous to adopt certain political and religious views on life without giving critical thought to everything that exists or at least all the possibilities. Many people adopt political views and say they are republican or democrat without considering all of their beliefs. People become polarized by their choice alone in the naming of their beliefs under one party or religious ideal. If you believe in a few ideals that are similar to a party such as the GOP, but you don't agree with everything that the GOP resonates, then by using the nomenclature of political parties you begin to brainwash yourself away from your own beliefs. You stray farther from your contrasting ideals much more and more because you vote and support leaders who have different view points on some subjects. Yes we have to choose someone, but why? It's the pigeon hole principle of discrete mathematics where you have a certain finite amount of choices and you must pick one closest to your views. We however cannot be represented equally in society by making a decision to have a leader who stacks up to our beliefs and concerns 100 percent. Yes, our system of government is not perfect, but it works well.

No one has given much thought to the fact that we should reform our system. We have come to the conclusion that the republic is the ultimate form of government. Mankind rises out of the jungles to form tribes and then small cities of trade. We then progress to states of government ruled by kings and feudal strength. We begin to progress to military dictatorships and eventually to the oligarchies and democracies that originate from the population's anger with totalitarian control. Finally, we arrive at a republic where interests are represented for the people in the most ideal situation that we can think of that can sustain stability in the social order. Communism as we know it really is a republic in government forms. It's just a socially centered form of republic control, however, soviet style communism is more susceptible to the evils of tyranny than that of a checks and balances Americanized republic. All economy is capitalistic because that is natural. Communism is against the grain of Darwinian survival and natural selection. What is most interesting to me is that red styled communism such as China includes capitalism as well as communism in a semi-hybrid state of government. It also has a strong tyrannical form of government simultaneously with checks and balances. Maybe China will reveal itself as the ultimate form of government in this 21st century. It will become the superpower of the world because of its economic strength and sheer size. What remains to be seen is if China can realistically stabilize and become an accepted superpower of the world and not fall under its own weight. In any case, the American republic tries to prevent Darwinian laws in the rights of man, but it does not economically. The soviet communistic republic tries to prevent Darwinian laws in economics, but does nothing in the rights of man. The question for the republic is does it work well even if China was to figure out the balance between the two major components of government, that being economics and social control. Will China realize that the republic should be both economically and socially Darwinian and yet not Darwinian at the same time? The American republic works on a certain scale of government, but at some point it breaks down! The populous grows stronger and eventually, there becomes a tyranny of the majority and a tyranny of some sort through lobbyists and capitalistic economic strength. Sheer numbers become forces among our social ideals and representation becomes a system that is worthy of governing itself as a republic. Can there be a form of government that protects mankind from all aspects of Darwinian forces? The USA has become powerful because the Darwinian forces were carefully harnessed by the industrial age, but we didn't try to harness much of the Darwinian forces in social and political control. Our founding fathers attempted to construct a government based upon the intricacies of checks and balances which would attempt to control the tyranny of the majority. It's a mildly complex system, yet elegant in its simplicity, but it still lacks the luster of advancement in political innovation. We don't normally think that technology advances in political control, but it does and it has since the first cave man used force to control another individual. The state of nature described by Thomas Hobbes moves us to understand that we politically and socially progressed from the beginning. Therefore, what is the next progression of society that will represent the diversity of ideals, beliefs, facts, and understanding of each other considering that all mankind are citizens of the great social state of Earth in this new century and millennium? Are we going to progress to more globalized or continent governments such as feeble attempt called the United Nations and the growing European Union? Are we going to continue to place republics as the forefront in social order? Heavy handed communism is rising in the east as a strong force in the world and the 21st century may yield itself to a strong influence in days to come, but what will come of government in the future? We should put our thinking caps on and try to formulate the most ideal situation of a governing body when we now know the facts that everyone wishes to be free, wishes to live, wishes to pursue happiness, and wishes to see beyond the tyranny of the majority.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is simple and elegant, but lacks the prevention of forces of evil among other things. Good and evil is a strong backbone for existence. Since the beginning, there has been a story of good and evil played out so many times, that it almost seems as if the struggle of good and evil are meant to be the ultimate drama of divine entertainment or existence. There are an infinite number of scenarios and an infinite number of combinations and historical possibilities concerning good and evil. This struggle contains the underlying fact that evil can occur even in the most utopian society. A truly utopian society in itself may be evil because in order to keep utopia, individualism is lost and mankind must subscribe to certain beliefs and truths, however inconvenient or however inopportune they might be. We begin to adopt and adapt or force the adoption and adaptation of ideals by forcing people to subscribe to the utopian ideal. Similarly, we currently do this in a semi-similar way by choosing political parties, but this may fall apart in the future. The Electoral College and political system will fall victim to the power of the people. The complex system will need to become more complex and restructure based upon the globalization of the world social order and the needs of every individual. We need a form of government that is in essence, a representation of the minority as an equal majority in the golden mean of political and social order.

As entities of life, we should be given the following rights:

1. Life - The ability to live, the essence of choice, the essence of nurture and nature.
2. Liberty - Freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of action.
3. Pursuit of happiness - To be interpreted on what happiness might be.
4. The protection against evil - Such as tyranny of any sort including natural selection and survival.
5. The protection of individualism - The marvel of nurture and nature.
7. Equal opportunity - In the ability to learn, think, and believe in our philosophy.

Oversimplification is a critical fallacy of logic that is widespread in choosing a political party or in choosing a philosophy such as a religion. When you subscribe to a choice of a certain ideal, you are in essence surrendering your individualism and differences for stability between you and society. However, your individualism is your only separation from everyone else because nothing truly exists except your mind and your philosophy. Therefore, your physical being isn't even separate from the world. You are made of dust and will become dust, but your inner thoughts are sacred from anyone else. At least until a form of mind control beyond outside influence becomes available such as restructuring your brain, if that is truly where your mind exists. I have always been a proponent of the brain being the mind, but new science has led us to believe that sub-quantum structures may exist in our neural networks that are beyond organizational essence of a biological type. This is news to the scientific community who will now have to battle the philosophies of religion and the soul, scientifically!

Anyway, nature and nurture actually are quintessentially the fallacy of our existence and yet our existence at the same time! Our individuality, like a snowflake, stems from our genetic code that was influences by all of nature like how a snowflake forms into a distinct and statistically improbable to be identical to any other snowflake within the realm of realistic thought. Infinite thought leaves us to believe that the individuality could be duplicated eventually, but the unlikely events of reality and the position of all the molecules and unfolding individualism and complexity expressed in our world if viewed as an unfolding fractal of mathematically intricacy says that it is impossible to duplicate. So, our nature stems individuality impressed upon us as a force and action of the preceding events. Nurture is the social pressure and knowledge that is impressed upon us as a child of a mother and father or society; that we are to become individual, yet similar to those who breathe life into us for existence in this world. We adopt and adapt their beliefs into our own as we progress in life. We become syncretically divine in our nature and our nurture. Our society thus also becomes more complex and individual in its "poeme mysique" as the violin sonata plays on. The harmony of adoption and adaptation on the grand scale of evolution and natural selection plays through. The physical world, the chemical world, the biological world, the political world, the economic world, the social world, the emotional and intellectual world continue to persist and that harmonic overtone that resonates is the mystical note that many have described in so many ways. All aspects become syncretically divine. We all merge and melt our ideals together and adopt and adapt our ideals in a continuous stream of consciousness that I would like to call our supreme entity of life breathing in our governments and our ways of controlling mankind and its growth. We are not man anymore, we are mankind. We made that evident the day that Neil Armstrong stepped upon the moon. We are now divine, we created our society. We created our beliefs, we created our Gods, and we created our cultures. We have now become divine amongst the heavens. We are the truly syncretic divine being in this world that can be tangibly touched, yet we were forged out of it in much the same process. Evolution is apparent, natural selection and survival are inherent, divine creation is not errant, but parent. We are truly merging our mind and transforming into divinity. We progress through the struggle of good and evil as we define what good and evil are, as we define and name the universe. As we define and name our creation, we are creating our own creation by uncovering the mysteries that actually created us. We don't know for certain anything except our own beliefs and ideals. Our existence is like an isolated prison where we continue to think and experience our world. Our mind is our computational circuit that is bent on understanding the somatosensory input and output that we put forth and receive. We try our hardest to make some sense out of the chaos. We say there was a big bang, that there might have been many big bangs and that we have freedom of will and yet there are those who say we don't have freedom of will, that the big bang was God's only touch into the world, that eternity doesn't exist because time doesn't exist. There is only one philosophy that should be held as true. That is that philosophy exists. If philosophy didn't exist, then you couldn't say that statement nor could you say that philosophy doesn't exist. Therefore, philosophy is the only certainty in everything. We are our only proof that we have a philosophy that we as a sentient being can perceive and believe and make true to conscious and possibly unconscious self.

Elegance is everything we consider to be, we try to find the most elegant philosophy that we can find, we try to adopt and adapt it to our nurtured and natured individuality and yet as our syncretic divine mankind bleeds on through existence, we are still searching for the elegant philosophy that our society as a whole can believe in. We adopt our governing structures like how our mind as Nietzsche said is a governing body that is made up of many individuals in a society that eventually believes that it is in control, yet the final device in control is the philosophy of whether you think you are in control or not. This applies to our society as a whole as well, mankind is really just as in control as our philosophy tells us that we are. We should try to create a philosophy that uses governing structures that can access the elegance of what we strive to seek and we should implement the scale and immensity of the universe, the grandiose, into our philosophy.

The scale is immense, and with the recent discoveries that the amazing possibility of the soul scientifically existing. What can prevent us from anything? We are in a world where philosophy is the only force that truly exists. It is the underlying force behind nature and the elegance. Why is the universe so elegant? Why do we all hastily make assumptions on things which we know not of? Life exists because of philosophy. Without philosophy there would be no existence to question, there would be no elegance, there would be no force behind nature. Philosophy is the ends to all means and quintessentially the means to all ends.

Who would have thought? That pun WAS intended!

BOINC and Electricity Consumption

2007-07-11T13:40:00.002-05:00

Yes, I realize that it uses more electricity, but I'm willing to use my CPU for the BOINC client to help further the BOINC causes with a little bit of electricity expenditure. If I get my electricity from wind power, then it really doesn't matter too much in the end, not saying that it doesn't completelly matter because the goal is not just to use green power and waste it, but to use all electricity efficiently thereby reducing the demand for power.

Here is a link to information regarding BOINC and electricity consumption:
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=3094

The difference in power consumption of current processors from when they are idle to full load is varying from chipset to chipset and manufacturer to manufacturer. The wattage increase on some of them is over 100 watts, while some is much less.

Idle CPU versus full load CPU:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=7

To explain my actions that day, I have BOINC installed and I let it run when I'm doing tasks that have less intense CPU consumption such as email, Internet, and word processing. Yes it uses more electricity, but by switching all my lights to CFL technology, the electricity I use to perform BOINC calculations is minimal.

What I was saying is that I left my computer on unintentionally when I left my aparatment for many hours, but at least that electricity consumption was not wasted. Had it been idle, it would have wasted over 100 watts at all times amounting to about half a KWH for the 5 hours I left it, but because I had BOINC running in the background, it may have consumed more wattage of about 150 to 200 watts amounting to a total of 1 KWH over the 5 hours, at least it was
benefitting science.

So to look at my mistake, instead of losing 0.5 KWH to nothing but idle computer time, I used an additional 0.5 KWH to total my consumption at 1 KWH for science. Not a huge trade-off, but definitely not a total loss either.

As a computer science major, I am aware of the electricity consumption at the architecture level as well as how software can affect the consumption rates, however minimal they might be, enough to amount to more than minimal rates over time and per millions of computers.

Idle processing uses 99 percent to 100 percent of your processing power, but doesn't use much memory or anything else that requires much electricity. It basically is a process that uses assembly code to keep the clock cycles running on the CPU and maintaining the status quo of the computer. While it doesn't completely reduce the power consumption, it does however lower it from a process that might be more memory intensive and not call specific assembly (machine code) instructions to the processor in an architecture like CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing). In a CISC system, there might be an instruction that idle's the processor at a lower consumption rate.

Here is a good analysis of some other PC's running at idle and under loads:
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/computer-power-consumption.html

Another idle versus load electricity consumption:
http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=3547

Here is a BOINC article on idle time for those who don't know what we are discussing:
http://www.boinc-wiki.info/%22Idle%22_CPU_Time

Here is a link about idle CPU time and electricity consumption across the US:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n12_v143/ai_13570318

A good link with comparisons of software, operating systems, monitors, and CPU's and their electricity consumption:
http://www.hardwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/33/

Enery Star's energy efficient office:
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/equipment/m144-63-2004e.cfm

Awesome analysis of a typical house and it's electricity consumption:
http://www.willsmith.org/climatechange/domestic.html

After reading that, it would be useful to do the following:

1. Unplug your wireless router when not in use.
2. Unplug your network switches when not in use.
3. Unplug your TV when not in use.
4. Turn off your monitors when you leave a room.
5. Turn off your monitors frequently when you aren't looking at them. (Only if you have LCD because they can be turned on and off many times without a problem)
6. Turn off the computer speaker system when not in use because the amplifiers draw electricity whether it is being used or not.
7. Turn off the printer when not using.
8. Unplug your fully charged devices such as battery chargers and cell phone chargers once they are done charging.

If you don't do those steps, you are consuming on average about:
1 watt (per cell phone charger)
3 watts (per battery charger)
3 watts to 5 watts (per TV)
4 watts (per printer)
11 watts (per wireless router)
3 watts (per ethernet switch)
3 watts (per computer speaker system)
2 watts to 4 watts (per LCD computer monitor)
======================================
30 watts to 34 watts (assuming only one device of each kind)

That is the "phantom" electricity effect. It would be better to just turn that stuff off.
Each year, if you leave those plugged in and on standby mode you are consuming 262.8 KWH to 297.84 KWH.

That's roughly $20 and lot of carbon dioxide output wasted.

Well, that's not very large for just one person, but to see the effect of the population and why it's important to conserve every bit, that's roughly about $20,000,000,000 each year for the entire country of the US.

The effect of killing a watt here and there over the entire US electrical grid snowballs into serious numbers when everyone does it:
http://www.operationkill-a-watt.com/press/pressreleases.htm

Here is an awesome software to reduce power consumption for offices that are using multiple machines just to do email and word processing. It's a good idea because it's basically the concept of Mainframe servers and terminals. I like this idea for low CPU power consumers such as office only users and internet only users.

Awesome low power consumption software:
http://userful.com/greenpc/Low%20Electricity%20Consumption%20PC

Google and Intel among others team up to make computers much more efficient:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/hardware/soa/Half-the-electricity-in-a-PC-is-wasted-Intel-Google/0,130061702,339278516,00.htm
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39287516,00.htm?r=1
http://vmblog.com/archive/2007/06/21/rackforce-is-going-green-to-save-energy.aspx

Energy Independence: Addiction to Oil

2007-07-09T00:18:00.004-05:00

Global warming or not, an energy crisis looms in front of us. It will be a much greater doom than anything we could imagine if we are still addicted to oil when we run out of oil.

There are a few countries on this world like Brazil, but one of the most distinguishing marks about it is that the country is now energy independent from the world. If oil were to run out today, I would move to Brazil (on foot of course...yes, no oil means no planes, cars, or buses). Maybe I would take a ship with sails, but that's more dangerous than walking.

Anyway, energy independence should be a main reason we are seeking to become green. Not necessarily for global warming, as many suspect that global warming isn't really happening. They might need to take a look at melting icebergs and what not, but even so.

The ebb and flow of the world could be such that the warming temperatures of our planet have little to do with human effect and more to do with natural progression of our planet's atmospheric cycles over long periods of time.

Heck, the magnetic north pole is on the verge of a 10,000 year old switch where compasses will point to the south pole instead of the north pole, so who is to say that global warming is or isn't really happening. It's a debatable question, much like that of evolution.

It all deals with perception and scientific evidence as well as emotional attachment to the planet. Whether you subscribe to global warming or not, energy independence should be your main goal in helping reduce our energy consumption, so that if a catastrophic event occurred and we were forced to tap into the oil reserves, we could feel comfortable knowing that the oil reserves would last longer because of our conservation efforts.

Also, by pouring money into the "green" efforts, we also can pour money into building the infrastructures needed to harness green power such as "windtricity" and solar panel technology. Such infrastructure like that is needed to make us energy independent and able to sustain after the last drop of oil is consumed.

Make that your number one priority that your children and grand children will not look back on you as avoiding the call to arms about fighting energy dependence and our addiction to oil, but that you helped overcome the addiction and helped build the infrastructure necessary to carry our energy independence to the 21st century and beyond.

Energy Crisis:
http://www.psaonline.org/article.php?id=158
http://www.energycrisis.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/energycrisis.htm

Energy Independence:
http://www.energyindependencenow.org/Counterpoint

There Is No Crisis?
http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/02/0502nocrisis.html

Here Today, Green Tomorrow

2007-07-08T18:40:00.002-05:00

CALCULATE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT TODAY!!!

My current carbon footprint: 19 TONS of carbon output - ECP Score: 348
What's yours?

Find out at one of the following Carbon Footprint Calculators:

(http://www.earthlab.com/carbonProfile/LiveEarth.htm?ver=10 ,
http://web.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/programs/climatechange/carboncalculator.xml ,
http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=calculator ,
http://www.begreennow.com/users/calculator )

===================================

TODAY, NOW IS THE TIME, CARPE DIEM!!!

The future will be green only if you start today! Don't put it off for tomorrow or hope that other people will figure it all out. You have the power for change. If everyone else is thinking just like you, then no one is going to do anything, so you need to act now!

Whether you believe in global warming or not, energy crisis is a main concern of the future of our country and the world. The amount of oil left in the world is very limited if not declining. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not say how much oil they actually have in their reserves, so we don't know for sure how well off the world is, but in any case we need to be energy independent and many steps can be taken today to make this happen and not by politicians, but by you the consumer and every-day person. Conservation of energy is the biggest concern, so begin with the pledge and go from there...

===================================

MAKE A PLEDGE TO THE EARTH THAT YOU WILL IN THE NEXT YEAR...

Take the pledge here (Quick and simple!): http://www.liveearthpledge.org/

and or do the following...

I will plant one tree. (Plant an actual tree that will grow in my climate, or purchase a planted tree through an organization that plants them for me.)

I will switch to green power. (Either through the electric company or by purchasing an REC.)

I will change at least 4 light bulbs to CFL's. (Buy these bulbs at Target, Walmart, HEB, Lowe's, Home Depot...)

I will carpool at least twice per week or ride the bus. (Mass transit, or bicycle, or walk...)

I will check my tires every three months to make sure they are properly inflated. (Every time you get an oil change have them check your tire pressure.)

I will buy carbon offset the next time I fly anywhere. (Available when purchasing your ticket.)

I will turn off my monitor when not in use and other devices such as the computer, stereo, and TV.

===================================

TOP 30+ EASY THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY!!!

1. Sign the FREE and EASY pledge.

(http://liveearthpledge.org/answer_the_call.php )

2. Invite your friends to sign the FREE and EASY pledge also.

(http://www.joinliveearth.org/page/invite/passiton )

3. Invite your friends to this facebook group.

(http://txstate.facebook.com/editgroup.php?members&gid=2386999950 ,
http://txstate.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2386999950 )

4. Switch your light bulbs out to CFL bulbs. It saves on energy costs too!

(http://green.yahoo.com/18seconds ,
http://www.simplyswitch.philips.com ,
http://www.asimpleswitch.com/?country=us ,
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=561674 )

Replace your incandescent light bulbs with compact florescent lights (CFLs). Look closely at labels when buying light bulbs, buy CFL light bulbs with a low color-burning temperature of less than 3000K (warm colored light like incandescent bulbs). CFL's use about 1/6th of an incandescent light bulbs power to generate the same, if not more, light output in lumens. They last much, much longer and don't burn as hot (Only about 160 degrees versus halogen bulbs which can burn up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit hot! This makes your A/C work less hard also.)

5. Turn up your A/C at least 2 degrees to 76 to 80 in the summer months.

(http://lifehacker.com/software/saving-money/save-money-on-cooling-costs-182518.php ,
http://www.thegreenguide.com/reports/product.mhtml?id=9&sec=2 ,
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=494892:kuwait-texts-consumers-to-turn-down-ac&Itemid=72 )

6. Use fans instead of more A/C. Get a "whole house" fan, if possible. Less electricity is used than A/C if you use fans alongside A/C. Reverse your fan blades in the winter time to keep energy costs down by blowing the hot air back down.

(http://www.wikihow.com/Cool-Yourself-Without-Air-Conditioning ,
http://www.energy.iastate.edu/news/pr/pr-acmaintenance.html ,
http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/info/homes/wholehousefan.html#Why )

7. Turn off your A/C when you leave.

(http://www.suntimes.com/news/richards/434745,CST-EDT-CINDY20.article ,
http://soundmoneytips.com/article/10816 )

8. Turn off your lights when you leave rooms or not in use.

(http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/lighting_daylighting/index.cfm/mytopic=12280 ,
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:5gh7glmtCeUJ:www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/lighting_daylighting/index.cfm/mytopic%3D12280+http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/lighting_daylighting/index.cfm/mytopic%3D12280&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us (Google's cached page because EERE servers are not working correctly) )

9. Turn off your computer when you aren't using it, or at least make it hibernate. Great details on computer usage in following link.

(http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/technology/hardware/do_you_need_to_turn_off_your_pc_at_night.mspx )

10. Inflate your car tires to their proper inflation level. Don't under-inflate or over-inflate! Pumping them up can improve your gas mileage by about 3.3 percent – a savings of about 7 cents per gallon. It‘s the right thing to do for your wallet and the right thing to do for the Earth.

(http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/list/top10/103164/article.html ,
http://www.lifespy.com/2007/how-to-check-your-tires-pressure )

11. Bank Online - Saves paper and the production of carbon emissions from making paper.

(http://www.compassbank.com/personal/online/index.cfm ,
http://www.fool.com/money/banking/online/one.htm ,
http://www.bankofamerica.com/state.cgi?section=generic&update=&cookiecheck=yes&destination=nba/onlinebanking/index.cfm?template=overview )

12. Get catalogs emailed to you instead of mailed to you or view them online at the Google catalogs website.

(http://catalogs.google.com )

13. Recycle all of your envelopes and junk mail from the postal system.

(http://www.stopthejunkmail.com )

14. Recycle all batteries.

(http://earth911.org/blog/2007/07/05/how-to-recycle-and-properly-dispose-of-batteries/ )

15. Recycle all paper waste, cardboard and paperboard, glass bottles, aluminum cans, tin cans, plastic bottles. Just get a few plastic bags from your local grocery store and keep them in your cabinet below your sink. Recycling is easy, just think before you toss!

(http://www.greenguyrecycling.net ,
http://www.therecyclingcenter.info )

16. Turn down the water heater setting to about 120 to 130 degrees to cut your energy bill down about 10 percent.

(http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/water_heating.html ,
http://www.homeownernet.com/articles/waterheat.html )

17. Turn your fridge settings to cool instead of really cold. Don't turn it down too much, but turning it down a little will reduce your energy usage.

(http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=Energy/Conservation/FlexYourPower/flexyourpower.html#freezer_energy_tips )

18. Conserve water by turning off faucets when brushing your teeth or in between rinsing dishes.

(http://www.idealbite.com/tiplibrary/archives/proper_tooth_brushing_canconserve_water )

19. Eliminate "phantom electricity" from your living space and office. (http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/04/24/phantom-electricity-loads-daily-financial-tip )

Kill "phantom" electricity. (Put your TV and other appliances and devices on surge protectors that you can flip the switch when not using.)

Unplug your cell phone charger, put your TV and electronics devices like stereos on a power switch to turn off when you leave so they don't drain unnecessary power (however little it might be) when you aren't using them. Yes it may not be much power drained, but over a year's time it consumes a considerable amount.

About 20 watts of power can be leaked at all times when you aren't using the devices. That is the same as turning on a 60 watt incandescent light bulb for 8 hours a day, everyday and for no reason! In the United States alone, “phantom electricity” emits roughly 12 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

Avoid this by plugging office equipment into a power strip and turning it off at night and on weekends or weekdays, whenever you are not at home much.

(http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2765757&cp=2032056.2032151&allCount=73&fbn=Price%2F%246.00+-+%249.99&fbc=1&fr=StorePrice%2FRSK%2F00000600%2F00000999&parentPage=family ,
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2361990&cp=2032056.2032151&allCount=73&fbn=Price%2F%246.00+-+%249.99&fbc=1&fr=StorePrice%2FRSK%2F00000600%2F00000999&parentPage=family ,
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2361991&cp=2032056.2032151&allCount=73&fbn=Price%2F%246.00+-+%249.99&fbc=1&fr=StorePrice%2FRSK%2F00000600%2F00000999&parentPage=family )

20. Avoid running large appliances such as washers, dryers, and electric ovens during peak energy demand hours from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

(http://energysavingnow.com/peakdemand/what.shtml )

21. Close shades and blinds during the day to lessen A/C usage in warm climates.

(http://www.blindcrafter.com/energyefficiency/cold_and_warm_energy_tips.cfm )

22. Use mass transit at least twice a week. Ride the bus or carpool with friends. Available during the fall and spring semesters. Priority will be given to carpools of three or more coming from outside the San Marcos area.

(http://www.parking.txstate.edu/van.htm ,
http://www.parking.txstate.edu/regulations.htm ,
http://www.urbanhitchhiker.com ,
http://www.erideshare.com/carpool.php?city=Austin , http://www.carpoolworld.com/gcarpool.html ,
http://www.icarpool.com/en/MainPage.aspx ,
http://www.universitystar.com/index.php?id=674&option=com_content&task=view )

23. Walk or bicycle to work or school.

(http://sanmarcos.craigslist.org/bik ,
http://austin.citysearch.com/profile/10198581/san_marcos_tx/pedal_power_bicycles.html )

24. Plant twenty-four (24) trees each year to offset your carbon footprint. Either plant them all yourself, or invest in companies that will plant them for you with your tree purchases. This can completely offset your carbon footprint.

(http://www.americanforests.org/planttrees )

25. Buy household plants for your balcony, patio, and inside your living space to reduce some of your carbon emissions.

(http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Navigation?marketID=401&onlineStore=true&locStoreNum=8125&Ntk=AllProps&N=10000003+90401+500889&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053&langId=-1 )

26. Opt to purchase wind-power (http://www.windtricity.com ) or other green sources of energy if available by your electric company. You can also purchase green energy certificates to pay your electric bill to help electric infrastructure for green energy.

Green energy cost a little bit more than regular energy, but if we start now by flowing our funds into green energy the costs will come down and eventually help us build the massive infrastructure needed to provide the enormous demand for green energy.

(http://www.greenthegrid.com ,
http://www.carbonfund.org/site ,
http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/resources/pdfs/0602_newwind_cert.pdf )

IF YOU LIVE IN THE SAN ANTONIO AREA...
Get http://www.windtricity.com that's all you have to do to switch...it's really easy...
( https://www.cpsenergy.com/Forms/Customer-Service-Forms/signup.asp )

27. Purchase new showerheads and faucets that use less water. The new showerheads and faucets aerate the water to provide the same force as normal ones.

Install a motion sensor faucet in high use areas only if you have the money to purchase one as they are not cheap yet. Retrofitting just one showerhead and two faucets will reduce water usage by 50 percent to 70 percent, while maintaining the same user experience. The cost savings you’ll see on your water and electricity bills will pay for the retrofit in only three to 12 months.

(http://www.eartheasy.com/live_lowflow_aerators.htm )

28. Purchase local meats and produce to reduce carbon emmisions - (http://www.localharvest.org )
(San Marcos Area - Kyle, TX - Peach Trees: http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M17359 )
(San Marcos Area - Kyle, TX - Organic Farm: http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M8987 )

29. Drink less bottled water and drinks. It reduces plastic production and carbon emissions from production and shipping.

(http://www.filtersfast.com/Brita-On-Tap-water-filters.asp ,
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2002/402_h2o.html ,
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2002/waterchrt.html )

30. Buy canvas bag to get groceries at store instead of plastic and paper.

(http://www.ecobags.com )

31. Repair and reuse items instead of throwing them away.

(http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/87/04700603/0470060387.pdf )

32. Use the stairs instead of escalator or elevator. It saves electricity, provides good exercise.

(http://www.thepeoplesmovement.co.uk/fact_4b.php )

33. Purchase Recycled Paper

(http://earth911.org/about/partner/staples ,
http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=745190&D=2%20recycled%20paper&No=10&Dx=mode%20matchallpartial&Nty=1&Ntx=mode%20matchallpartial&Ntt=recycled%20paper&N=100000&uniqueSearchFlag=true&Nr=100000&Ntk=all&An=text )

34. Buy carbon offsets anytime.

(http://www.greenthegrid.com ,
http://www.carbonfund.org/site ,
http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/resources/pdfs/0602_newwind_cert.pdf )

35. Buy carbon offsets when flying.

(http://www.terrapass.com/expedia ,
http://www.carbonoffsets.org )

36. Buy a hybrid as your next vehicle

(http://www.hybridcars.com/cars.html ):

SUV: Chevrolet Tahoe, Dodge Durango, GMC Yukon, Cadillac Escalade, Honda Ridgeline, Lexus RX-400h, Saturn Vue, Mercury Mariner, Ford Escape (http://www.fordvehicles.com/suvs/escapehybrid/?searchid=4264411593259580553077 ), and more coming soon...

Trucks: GM Silverado and Sierra, Dodge Ram, and more coming soon...(http://www.hybridcars.com/trucks.html )

Sedans: Chevy Malibu, Nissan Altima, Toyota Camry, Saturn's Aura (Cheapest Hybrid in the USA w/ $1,300 tax credit - http://www.hybridcars.com/compacts-sedans/saturn-aura-green-line-overview.html ) and more coming soon...

Learn how hybrids work: (http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car.htm )

37. Grow your own tomatoes and food. If you have the means to grow them, it is easier on the environment and brings you a connection back to Earth by growing your own food. Growing your own food reduces carbon emissions from your driving to the store and the food being shipped to the store from its long journey from the farm.

(http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/4DMG/VegFruit/tomatind.htm ,
http://www.verdant.net/food.htm (refresh page once you click
because the website doesn't accept redirection links from
facebook or other sources which is very lame!) ,
http://www.daycreek.com/dc/html/DC_ss_growandstore.htm ,
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/grow_your_own_f.php )

38. Buy two stage flushing toilets - These toilets have two settings for flushing to lessen the water usage when light flushing is all that is needed.

(http://www.wasauna.com/contemporary-toilet-8014.html )

===================================

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO:

Recycling Basics - The Four R's:

(http://www.sunysb.edu/centralservices/recycling/4rs.shtml ,
http://www.wastecycle.co.uk/index.asp?c=1102 ,
http://www.city.davis.ca.us/pw/recycle/fourrs.cfm )

Find a recycling center near you:
(http://www.therecyclingcenter.info/ )

DIY Green Living:

At Home: http://web.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/getinvolved/whatyoucando/athome.xml

At The Office: (http://web.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/getinvolved/whatyoucando/atwork.xml ,
http://earth911.org/blog/2007/06/25/turn-your-office-green/ )

At The Market Place: http://web.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/getinvolved/whatyoucando/marketplace.xml

In The Outdoors: http://web.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/getinvolved/whatyoucando/outdoors.xml

General Green Living Information:
(http://www.begreennow.com ,
http://green.yahoo.com/?q=action ,
http://www.alittlegreener.com ,
http://earth911.org ,
http://www.co2balance.com ,
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/tips/summer.html ,
http://www.smud.org/residential/saving/conservation.html ,
http://guidetogreenliving.blogspot.com/2006/06/tips-to-more-efficient-home-cooling.html )

Tree Planting - Carbon Offsetting:
(http://www.americanforests.org/planttrees ,
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/shop2.html ,
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html )

Free Shade Trees for Sacramento California Residents: http://www.smud.org/residential/saving/trees/index.html

Hydrogen Cars (Scientific American with Alan Alda): http://www.pbs.org/saf/1506/video/watchonline.htm

Alternative Fuels: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070620154945.htm

Former Vice-President Al Gore's Recent Campaign: http://www.liveearth.org

List of Top Countries with CDO (Carbon Dioxide Output) per GDP (Gross Domestic Product):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions

Recycled Clothing Apparel: http://www.wornagain.co.uk
Purchase Recycled Shoes: http://shop.terraplana.com/shoe.aspx?ProductID=84
Bamboo Bike: http://www.calfeedesign.com/bamboo.htm

Hot Alaska (Scientific American with Alan Alda): http://www.pbs.org/saf/1404/video/watchonline.htm

Hot Planet, Cold Comfort (Scientific American with Alan Alda): http://www.pbs.org/saf/1505/video/watchonline.htm

Heat Islands (Cement Jungle Raising Temperature of City):
( http://www.coolcommunities.org ,
http://www.officecommercial.com/frmMagazine.asp?Action=View&Article=7&Volume=Volume%20IV&Season=Spring&Year=2001&Market=Atlanta )

News of Amazing Green Achievements: http://greenjunkie.com/search/label/Recycle

Technology Embracing Green: http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=ecogeek

America Is Slowly Turning Green: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070419/1a_cover19_dom.art.htm

Aliance For Climate Control: http://www.climateprotect.org/splash

Green Building Design (Glossary): http://www.pbs.org/designe2/programfeature.html

Electric Grid: http://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html

Track Your Green Living Transformation: http://www.earthlab.com

My Personal DNA Report

2007-06-26T08:39:00.002-05:00

This was a very neat personality test that seems to be rather accurate. Yeah, I'm very masculine and a benevolent creator!

Click to view my personalDNA Report that I created based upon extensive questioning using a pscyhological online test.

Family and friends, I invite you to assess my personality with the psych you/psych me function with PersonalDNA: Psych You/Psych Me

The Green Machine

2007-06-07T17:07:00.006-05:00

A plant isn't normally considered a machine, but it should be. By what do we define a living organism or a machine? The words are semantically narrow, but should be a bit more broad, so that our perspective on life can change.

If you define a living organism as an organism that survives, procreates, and functions by way of organic processes involving organic material in a cellular structure that is very advanced at the microscopic and molecular levels, then can't you also define it as a complex machine that is made up of organic chemical compounds. That it uses organic material and energy from sources such as nutrients and the Sun to maintain itself by creating advanced structures on many different levels of scope including the molecular to the microscopic and larger in an attempt to maintain the advanced structure and cycles of the overall machine. All this done based upon the blueprints defined by a code contained within the advanced organic molecular structure called DNA.

This highly advanced process includes the reproduction of more machines in order to produce further generations because the current machine gets old, unstable, and less reliable then a newly produced machine. This process also includes the ability to self-manage the input (nutrients and energy) given to the organic plant in order to use it as the fuel driving the multitude of mechanisms that lead to the survival of this machine which based upon the DNA mechanism includes the survival of the species (the specific model of the machine) because each machine is capable of producing newer machines.

In this view, a plant becomes a manufacturing device. It manufactures more machines capable of the same processes based upon the blueprints contained within, simultaneously subsisting on the input given to it by outside forces such as nature (the Sun's energy and nutrients within the soil) in order to survive and ensure survival of future generations or productions of the same machine.

The terminology is just semantics. If you could describe this as a method to explain everything that has machine characteristics living and non-living, then all machine-like devices in the physical world are machines. Each has a function to which it performs until it breaks down.

If a machine has the capability of fixing minor breakdowns and persisting based upon a very advanced parallelism structure where multiple functioning mini-machines ensure that if one becomes disabled others can take its place and perform the duties, then we call it living.

We call it living because it is born by seed, duplication, egg, mammal birth and then it lives (performs its functions) and then eventually becomes unstable in its ability to fix the minor problems it incurrs and the machine becomes old or more difficult to maintain and thus ceases to function or dies.

We define living based upon this overly told process of birth, life, and death. Can we name one living organism that does not die? There is no immortal organism. However, many lower-order (lower on the echelon of complexity among all "living organisms") are able to survive extreme temperatures, die and be given life again, become frozen in its state and then reawaken into life after it is defrosted many years later.

It then appears that as a "organic machine" becomes more and more complex, the ability of dying and then reliving becomes more difficult and less statistically likely and frequent. It's as if the machine's complexity has something to do with the maintainibility of the machine much like our non-organic man-made machines that we are more familiar with calling machines.

So, in my paradigm, any functioning machine that has the ability of birth, life, and death is what we consider living. That is the term living, but yet viruses and prions are not normally classified as living.

Is life based upon the size and complexitiy of the organic machine and does it only have to be organic to be considered living? Isn't that restricting the definition of the word "living" by excluding a small portion of the spectrum of complexity of organic machines and excluding all inorganic machines from this classification?

I believe that is prejudgemental and close-minded, if not a myopic view of what the definition of a machine is versus a the definition of a living organism.

Mechanisms as advanced as a single unicellular organism all the way to a human being exist, and some machines exist as "systems" even beyond the scope of the most advanced machine, humans.

Ecosystems are systems which dervive from many units or machines or cells of living organisms functioning in a close proximity which we call an enviroment to help each other function, live and die. That system itself is alive by definition except that it doesn't seem to procreate. It only continues to change and age, just like the machines it contains within, just like the unicellular organism becomes old and its mechanisms change and age.

Ecosystems can have death, but their lifespan is much longer than the organisms it contains within, much like that of a multicellular organism, and sometimes can have eternal life as long as the resources providing it with life continue to persist, for example the Sun.

Ironically, the multicellular organism has a much longer lifespan than each individual cell contained within it, which makes one ponder how a multicellular organism is any different from an ecosystem with individual organism living within it.

Another thought to pensively consider is why do we exclude cells from being considered a living individual organism and not distinguish them as a colony of cells contained in a higher order living organism such as a human?

Individual tissue cells are technically all organisms, and multicellular organisms are just complex ecosystems or colonies of the cells contained within. There is a blueprint for the overall structure of this ecosystem and that is what differs from the ecosystems we are familiar with semantically on an Eartly scale such as the rainforest and other climatically influenced ecosystems. So maybe there is a difference, but there is quite a similarity that using the human perception and the terms to redescribe a system so differently based upon our inferences of the systems is a bit short-sighted.

What makes a virus not a living organism and what makes the collaborative efforts of all the ecosystems in the world one large living organism that is the mother Gaia we call Earth so much different?

OK, back to the definition of a machine. Structures and mechanisms in motion make up our description of a machine. The scientific definition of a machine includes the terms that it is a device that transmits or modifies energy. We commonly accept this to only include devices made of non-organic material that have rigid moving parts which accomplish some sort of work and require some sort of input or energy source.

A power drill is a machine, it's made of non-organic material, it plugs into the 120 volts of alternating current voltage and uses that energy to rotate the drill bit when a trigger is pulled. If the trigger could be self-pulled, and the energy source received from the sun such as installing solar panels upon the machine, then the machine would need less input. This is a hard concept to explain beyond the scope of a power drill, but the idea is that anything that performs a function or has some sort of physical world interaction and duty is considered a machine.

We narrow the definitions for our semantics and easier identification and classification as humans interacting with machines of all sorts and living organisms of all sorts. A virus is excluded from being living because it does not self-replicate. A live organism is opposite a dead organism in that it is still functioning as that organism was designed (by G*d or by evolution or both) to function, but if you broaden the definition of life to include non-carbon based biology, and artificial life such as in vitro and in silico creations of man, then why should the definition of a machine be any different.

Machines, living organisms, both exhibit functions of input, output and function. Living organisms live. Machines are turned on and off, or in other words are utilized or not utilized. Self-procreating organisms continue their species, and sustain their life.

So, let's revisit the idea of complexity. The complexity of something determines our order of description. If something is very complex that we are unable to discern how it works with our humanistic techniques for reverse engineering the grand process of organic evolution, we marvel at its ability to function and sometimes turn to our descriptive words like magic and divine. Once we learn the inner workings of the complexity we decide to call it scientifically understood and we reach a conclusion about everything we can or cannot visibly observe.

We know it's structure and complexity and we give it a level of complexity among the echelon's of complexity in our animal kingdom. With living organisms, we haven't exactly kept to the orders of complexity so much as non-organic technology, but we discern mammals from reptiles and amphibians, plants, fungii, bacteria, and viruses.

To classify an animal based upon charateristics is obvious, but does this allow for us to not only to consider the underlying definition of intelligence, but also the complexity in the "organic machine's" capability to interact and function?

What is an omniverous creature versus a carnivore? We base our decisions on certain ideas of thought such as muscle tissue, brains, skeletons, and other more advanced designs of living machines. Can we take this view and elaborate on intelligence from a neural perspective and bring intelligence into a broader definition that is main point of this entire discourse?

Intelligence is normally measured with only humans. We view it that way, because we are the only beings capable of self-thought and human-speech that we can perceive. And as humans, we size people up unknowningly based upon their ability to speak. It's your mental view into someone else's intelligence. You only know how a person thinks based upon their vocal opinions and visual behaviors. Too often, people with speech impediments are viewed as less smart and people who are not very well spoken seem less educated.

This is a generalization and isn't necessarily true. A mentally retarded or mentally impaired person may sound less intelligent in their vocalizations and their intelligence quotient may reflect our perceptions correctly.

However, someone who speaks with bad grammar might not be verbally intelligent, but might be very mathematically intelligent or mechanically intelligent. We judge intelligence illogically, and we cannot see intelligence for what it truly is, the capability of problem solving, the ability to perceive, the complexity of our knowledge and our ability to use our brain (CPU) to interact and run the software that we are given.

A brain injury inhibits the intelligence of a person because those portions of the brain's function are lost or irrepairable. We determine the intelligence quotient on the ability of a person to solve these problems.

OK, so that's very, very advanced intelligence. Let's break down intelligence and bring it to its primal counterparts. Human intelligence is mainly a few components of memory, learning, and problem solving. Memory is storage of information. Learning is redefining the software in the brain, the ability of the brain to reprogram itself for the sake of adding a new function to its repertoire. Problem solving is using the memory and software and tools learned to solve an actual problem.

Intelligence, in general, is similar; it's the information and the function. Learning is something brains do and do quite well. If you exclude learning from the formula for intelligence which is actually not included in the IQ test, then advanced structures of the brain are not much different then anything else with the same properties, however basic they might be.

Take potential energy and kintetic energy for instance. These physics terms have a relation which is a known law of the universe that the law appears to always be in effect. It never breaks down, the law is there, the function is there, the information is there.

If a heavy rock is on the top of an edge of a cliff, it's potential energy is very high, but the kinetic energy is very low. It's physical intelligence is basic, but existent. If the rock weakens the gravel and sandstone around the cliff's edge because time alows the heaviness of the rock to push on the atomic and molecular structures of the inorganic materials enough that the sandstone reaches its breaking point and the heavy boulder begins a journey down the side of the steep embankment of the cliffside, it picks up kinetic energy and loses its potential energy.

This is a function of the rock on the edge of the cliff. This mechanism is always in effect due to the laws of nature and the physics of the rock on the edge of the cliff.

A lawn mower has intelligence also, it has gasoline in a gas tank that is flammable and could ignite when systematically injected into the cylinders of the engine and combusted with the mechanisms at play.

The intelligence of the machine is based upon its design, but if its a 4 stroke engine with 4 pistons, there will always be two pistons in the up position and always two pistons in the down position so long as the machine works. If a piston was not in the correct position, the metal rods connecting it to the crankshaft might have broken and the machine would cease to function. We would call the lawn mower broken and attempt to fix the machine.

The machine has intelligence though because it has an innate knowledge of where the pistons are even though it doesn't consciously have any knownledge of the positions of the pistons. The physical mechanisms at play (when the machine is working) allow for the mechanical intelligence of the lawn mower to have knowledge of its pistons and combustion stages. This is the basis of the mechanical intelligence quotient that should be a building block for other intelligence quotient ideas.

Other intelligence quotients can exist, such as economic intelligence quotients, political IQ's, all the way to higher level quotients such as the IQ we are normally familiar with.

All in all, more discussion in this topic will be considered in future posts and I will revise my idea for better comprehension and understanding with better visualizations to further explain my alternative way of viewing all things.

"Divinity is the perfect machine." Jason Samfield, 2007

Jumping Through Hoops

2007-06-04T16:46:00.002-05:00

Since there are hoops to jump through in order to graduate, I'm willing to make those jumps. If they hold the hoop up, I'm willing to jump through it only if that means I can graduate. If they say jump, I will definitely ask "how high?" I want to graduate and I desire this degree more than anything at the moment. I will reacquire my Summa Cum Laude status soon. It won't take long; I just need to be patient, steadfast, and strong in school.

I'm looking to make progress on my degree this summer and maybe start up my mathematical research again. I might be able to finally acquire a computer to run my program for finding a very large prime number. I've been doing this research for almost 3 years now, actively for about 1.5 years. I will finally get to finish it up and work on the computer program's finalities and also document all of my work so that I can publish it. Hopefully, this will be my key to entry into graduate school at UT.

I've been into computer science and math since an early age. I grew adapt to programming from learning to program on a TI calculator using my self-taught trial and error. This same self-taught discovery is how I also began to compose music on the piano, discover electronic music creation and audio engineering prior to my formalization at the Audio Engineering Institute, as well as how I learned to do graphic design. I strongly believe in self-taught methods of learning. When you teach yourself something, you know it inside and out and you acquire your learning through a method that allows you to better understand and especially retain the memory of your findings. It also helps you increase your learning beyond a certain point by knowing how you got there, and thus knowing how to go further and push the boundaries of your education in that subject matter.

On a side note to being excited about restarting my math research, I'm interested in the fact that by jumping through the hoops which the university has set out for me, I will in fact have more time this summer than I expected. I can't take the harder classes this session because they aren't offered, so I'm in the easier classes that I still need, but that allows me time to travel, have free time, get caught up on every aspect of my life including my math research, my music, my finances, my hobbies, my health and wellness, my fitness, and my inner being which can only mean one thing. I'm definitely going surfing this summer!

Genesis

2007-05-27T11:12:00.002-05:00

I begin this blog with a premonition about my life. By using this blog, I intend to practice my writing skills and log a diary of my thoughts concerning the world around me and my inner being. I write this blog to express my own ideas, and help my inner thoughts come to conclusions as I stream my consciousness onto this virtual paper. I used to hate the word blog and despise this new form of technology just like I despised podcasts, but I now see their usefulness and I'm willing to embrace it, so here it goes.

I have come to an epiphany on a strange day in May. I just decided to set up a malleable plan for my life. I have been in school far too long to not have my bachelor's degree and I realized this is my own fault. I was unable to foresee my future upon me and wield my intelligence and common-sense to achieve quicker success in college. However, I learned many lessons having spent much time here at school. I now plan to change my direction in life and education, of all things, to more school!

I plan to attend graduate school at the University of Texas and eventually complete a doctoral program at MIT. As far fetched as that sounds, many people through out my college career have asked me why I ended up at Texas State University and San Antonio College. They ask me how come I didn't concern myself with where I was going to attend college more so than I did. I say that I had no direction or influence other than my parents who pacified their influence by letting me decide. In my eyes, Texas State University picked me. It was a mistake for my parents not to influence or pressure me more, yet it was also not a mistake at the same time. I needed the baby steps that my life took to get to where I am at now. I'm now ready to proceed with my life and take it to the next level of education and echelon of maturity. I'm ready to make important decisions without fear of the future. I'm ready to embrace the moments ahead of the present.

I'm 25 and I'm still in school. I have learned many things, academically, socially, and politically, but the most import skills I have acquired during college thus far are the knowledge on life itself. I now know that I need to refocus my life and plan for the long haul. Life is not as short as many people say it is, yet it is quintessentially short at the same time. With the deeper thoughts it took for me to come to a conclusion about my near future, I delved into my inner being. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to my inner being.

I care about the world and world events. Many things have influenced me including the energy crisis and my fear that we will run out of oil very soon. I'm fascinated by the future and anything futuristic. I enjoy a good dooms-day movie where the future is bleak, but I also enjoy the movies that portray life of the mid to late 21st century as advanced and altruistic. This influence allows my minds-eye to play around with my visions of the future in my spare time. I do this when listening to music or pondering life-changing events, new technologies, and during my daily activities. This form of meditation and deep thought helps me perceive my beliefs more clearly. Because I like to ponder the future and the reason for life itself, it comes without much provocation that life itself is not necessarily understandable to a complete degree, but it's worth attempting and worth making the effort to make my stand on it.

I believe that my thoughts on life should be shared with whoever wishes to view them including my future self. I will look back at this and decide my direction in my life each time I reposition it by reflecting on my past dreams, desires, and intentions.

One of my deepest concerns about the future is environmental. I want the Earth, mother Gaia, to be left better than we have found it as a human species. I altered my views about this planet when I was a boy scout, but I couldn't imagine the intensity that I would feel and the desire to protect her later in my life. I wish to incite any morally justifiable means necessary to protect her as much as possible. I'm an environmentalist at heart. I haven't always acted as one though, but now I desire to be as mentally aware about my impact as I am about your impact and everyone else's impact in our global attempt to clean up the world and return it to the pre-human condition of the planet, long before our ancestors began to ravage the resources. We are still polluting the bloodstream of the oceans, infecting the living tissue of the planet's continents with the cancer of human impact, and destroying the lungs of the earth which have been infiltrated with toxins many of us don't even try to control one bit. We all hope that someone smart will come along and figure it all out for us, but no one is better adapt to do that than ourselves. We are the ones in charge of our own life and we are the ones in charge of our own impact, but for those who are not aware that they are in charge of their impact or could care less about this aspect on life, that's where people like me will attempt to make our statement to the world.

On a side note to environmentalism, I am politically complicated. I consider myself moderate when it comes to politics. My views are somewhat dark and Machiavellian, somewhat utopian and utilitarian, enormously capitalistic and slightly communistic. I'm also greatly influenced by my religious views which are also very complicated, far more than I ever thought they would be. I try to keep to moral altruism, but life itself lends itself to complicated matters where laws and legal bindings to morality are far and few between and the right and wrong that should be clear is very murky. I find it near impossible to find the absolute answer for everything, but I figure that whatever lends itself to the situation as the best answer will work itself out in the most moderate way possible. With extremism on both ends fighting for each side, moderate points of view end up winning for the most part, but only after time takes its toll on the extremism. In the end, the most moderate solution ends up winning. I'm fiscally conservative for the public although a bit of a hypocrite with my own finances. I'm also an idealist that believes many ideals need to be held strongly and passionately to realize a dream or at least attempt to find a point that is realistically obtainable somewhere in between your dream and the place you left behind. I'm all for democracy, but when the demographic turns into a tyranny of the majority, a republic is much better suited for handling the influx of change in human society.

To explain my complicated religious experience, I will say a bit about my religious history and my recent interests in religion. I found myself in a religious quagmire of potential ideas and absolutes when I grew into adulthood. I was raised Methodist, I've had friends of many backgrounds, cultures, religions, agnostic, and even Satanism (not Satan worship). I have established my own interpretation about the world, G*d, life, philosophy, religion, and the effects it has on our planet, our society, and our future in an afterlife, if that might exist. I even have a great movie script which I may or may not decide to turn into a movie about how the book of revelations might come true in a very scientifically and philosophical method. That will be held for a later post to my blog about the specifics of my idea.

I now consider Mysticism a great form to express my beliefs even though I hold true to Christian beliefs because they are the ways I first came to understand G*d and to first worship the concept of divinity. I have recently been influenced with a PBS special about Islam that enlightened me to how the prophet Mohammed met Jesus, Moses, and Abraham. I found that amazing and it sparked my interest to learn more.

I also found myself learning Hebrew and having many Judaic influences in my life. I'm 1/4 Jewish through my grandfather who has since passed away. He is a descendent of my great, great-grandfather who was a famous rabbi in Memphis, TN during the 1870's to early World War 1. I've had two girlfriends who were Jewish, and my best friend from high school is Jewish.

At the end of the present moment, I'm interested in the many chapters of my life that are still open. I'd like to close them as soon as possible and move on to new chapters as quickly as possible by graduating. I'd like to travel the world, visit Kazakhstan, France, England, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Brazil, Costa Rica, Canada, Mexico, Chile, the Caribbean, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, South Korea, India, Egypt, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, South Africa, and many places in between.

I also plan on making some sort of impact on the world that changes it for the good. I wish that the hope that divine forces exists that will allow for the possibility of good to prevail in the world through my actions and the actions of others that have the power to alter the world. I plan on trying my best to work my thoughts out on some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century including what I feel are the most pressing issues of my generation including the rise of red China into the superpower of the world, the future clash of 21st century superpowers, the woes of Africa, the redistribution of nuclear power, the globalization and unification of our entire planet, the deforestation of the planet, the energy crisis and impending end-of-oil event horizon, the depletion of species in the world's vast oceans, and the extinction of species on land.

My favorite issue is the concern that global warming will change the planet beyond easy repair. I'm enthralled about Hydrogen combustion engines and the future they will have for creating a reliable, renewable, efficient and powerful resource that will be more practical than nuclear energy and capable of reducing the world's carbon emissions to a very minimal level.

With this, I say, all that I feel at the present moment is not despair, but hope that this ongoing battle encompassing the world and everyone in it will somehow create the Hollywood script where with a drop of hope and sliver of passion, our love for life, zeal for religion, and zest for existence, we may all prevail with divine powers on our side.

I foresee the future where machines will become increasing more intelligent and abundant in our lives and will eventually inherit the Earth from us, but we have a few steps to complete before we hand this planet off to our super-intelligent grandchildren of G*d. It's those steps to ensure the survival of our planet for our own destructive habits that seems to be our most evident purpose, to make sure we don't fail as a divinely evolved species by destroying the Earth. We need to succeed in preserving its abundance of life and show that our evolution was not in vain.

That's enough philosophy and politics for now, but more will come as I feel the desire to speak my mind. I hope not to waste much of my time with this blog, or log of my life, but I also hope that no time is wasted with you the reader, even if that reader is my future self contemplating on where my life has been and where it's going.

I'll leave you with a bit of soulful advice. Support Internet radio and listen to http://www.radioioambient.com/ for awesome imaginative and trance-inducing music to take your mind, body, and soul to a place with no boundaries. I do it daily and like it, but that's my style.