Shadowbearer by Terry Simpson
Fahrenheit 451 (reread) by Ray Bradbury
Yes, dear Americans, you saw that correctly. Your rain is not yours.
Via NaturalNews: Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I’m about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.
Check out this YouTube video of a news report out of Salt Lake City, Utah, about the issue. It’s illegal in Utah to divert rainwater without a valid water right, and Mark Miller of Mark Miller Toyota, found this out the hard way.
After constructing a large rainwater collection system at his new dealership to use for washing new cars, Miller found out that the project was actually an “unlawful diversion of rainwater.” Even though it makes logical conservation sense to collect rainwater for this type of use since rain is scarce in Utah, it’s still considered a violation of water rights which apparently belong exclusively to Utah’s various government bodies.
“Utah’s the second driest state in the nation. Our laws probably ought to catch up with that,” explained Miller in response to the state’s ridiculous rainwater collection ban.
(Follow the link to NaturalNews for the whole article.)
Okay, many Americans may not like this. I can understand that. Still, there’s a ring of truth in this article that I found at “Bananenplanet“:
10 things Americans don’t know about America.
Unless you’re speaking with a real estate agent or a prostitute, chances are they’re not going to be excited that you’re American. It’s not some badge of honor we get to parade around. Yes, we had Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison, but unless you actually are Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison (which is unlikely) then most people around the world are simply not going to care. There are exceptions of course. And those exceptions are called English and Australian people. Whoopdie-fucking-doo.
As Americans, we’re brought up our entire lives being taught that we’re the best, we did everything first and that the rest of the world follows our lead. Not only is this not true, but people get irritated when you bring it to their country with you. So don’t.
Despite the occasional eye-rolling, and complete inability to understand why anyone would vote for George W. Bush, people from other countries don’t hate us either. In fact — and I know this is a really sobering realization for us — most people in the world don’t really think about us or care about us. I know, that sounds absurd, especially with CNN and Fox News showing the same 20 angry Arab men on repeat for ten years straight. But unless we’re invading someone’s country or threatening to invade someone’s country (which is likely), then there’s a 99.99% chance they don’t care about us. Just like we rarely think about the people in Bolivia or Mongolia, most people don’t think about us much. They have jobs, kids, house payments — you know, those things called lives — to worry about. Kind of like us.
Americans tend to assume that the rest of the world either loves us or hates us (this is actually a good litmus test to tell if someone is conservative or liberal). The fact is, most people feel neither. Most people don’t think much about us.
Remember that immature girl in high school, who every little thing that happened to her meant that someone either hated her or was obsessed with her; who thought every teacher who ever gave her a bad grade was being totally unfair and everything good that happened to her was because of how amazing she was? Yeah, we’re that immature high school girl.
For all of our talk about being global leaders and how everyone follows us, we don’t seem to know much about our supposed “followers.” They often have completely different takes on history than we do. Here were some brain-stumpers for me: the Vietnamese believe the Vietnam War was about China (not us), Hitler was primarily defeated by Russia (not us), Native Americans were wiped out largely disease and plague (not us), and the American Revolution was “won” because the British cared more about beating France (not us). Notice a running theme here?
(Hint: It’s not all about us.)
We did not invent democracy. We didn’t even invent modern democracy. There were parliamentary systems in England and other parts of Europe over a hundred years before we created government. In a recent survey of young Americans , 63% could not find Iraq on a map (despite being at war with them), and 54% did not know Sudan was a country in Africa. Yet, somehow we’re positive that everyone else looks up to us.
There’s a saying about English-speakers. We say “Go fuck yourself,” when we really mean “I like you,” and we say “I like you,” when we really mean “Go fuck yourself.”
Outside of getting shit-housed drunk and screaming “I LOVE YOU, MAN!”, open displays of affection in American culture are tepid and rare. Latin and some European cultures describe us as “cold” and “passionless” and for good reason. In our social lives we don’t say what we mean and we don’t mean what we say.
In our culture, appreciation and affection are implied rather than spoken outright. Two guy friends call each other names to reinforce their friendship; men and women tease and make fun of each other to imply interest. Feelings are almost never shared openly and freely. Consumer culture has cheapened our language of gratitude. Something like, “It’s so good to see you” is empty now because it’s expected and heard from everybody.
In dating, when I find a woman attractive, I almost always walk right up to her and tell her that a) I wanted to meet her, and b) she’s beautiful. In America, women usually get incredibly nervous and confused when I do this. They’ll make jokes to defuse the situation or sometimes ask me if I’m part of a TV show or something playing a prank. Even when they’re interested and go on dates with me, they get a bit disoriented when I’m so blunt with my interest. Whereas, in almost every other culture approaching women this way is met with a confident smile and a “Thank you.”
If you’re extremely talented or intelligent, the US is probably the best place in the world to live. The system is stacked heavily to allow people of talent and advantage to rise to the top quickly.
The problem with the US is that everyone thinks they are of talent and advantage. As John Steinbeck famously said, the problem with poor Americans is that “they don’t believe they’re poor, but rather temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” It’s this culture of self-delusion that allows America to continue to innovate and churn out new industry more than anyone else in the world. But this shared delusion also unfortunately keeps perpetuating large social inequalities and the quality of life for the average citizen lower than most other developed countries. It’s the price we pay to maintain our growth and economic dominance.
In my Guide to Wealth, I defined being wealthy as, “Having the freedom to maximize one’s life experiences.” In those terms, despite the average American having more material wealth than citizens of most other countries (more cars, bigger houses, nicer televisions), their overall quality of life suffers in my opinion. American people on average work more hours with less vacation, spend more time commuting every day, and are saddled with over $10,000 of debt. That’s a lot of time spent working and buying crap and little time or disposable income for relationships, activities or new experiences.
In 2010, I got into a taxi in Bangkok to take me to a new six-story cineplex. It was accessible by metro, but I chose a taxi instead. On the seat in front of me was a sign with a wifi password. Wait, what? I asked the driver if he had wifi in his taxi. He flashed a huge smile. The squat Thai man, with his pidgin English, explained that he had installed it himself. He then turned on his new sound system and disco lights. His taxi instantly became a cheesy nightclub on wheels… with free wifi.
If there’s one constant in my travels over the past three years, it has been that almost every place I’ve visited (especially in Asia and South America) is much nicer and safer than I expected it to be. Singapore is pristine. Hong Kong makes Manhattan look like a suburb. My neighborhood in Colombia is nicer than the one I lived in in Boston (and cheaper).
As Americans, we have this naïve assumption that people all over the world are struggling and way behind us. They’re not. Sweden and South Korea have more advanced high speed internet networks. Japan has the most advanced trains and transportation systems. Norwegians make more money. The biggest and most advanced plane in the world is flown out of Singapore. The tallest buildings in the world are now in Dubai and Shanghai. Meanwhile, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
What’s so surprising about the world is how unsurprising most of it is. I spent a week with some local guys in Cambodia. You know what their biggest concerns were? Paying for school, getting to work on time, and what their friends were saying about them. In Brazil, people have debt problems, hate getting stuck in traffic and complain about their overbearing mothers. Every country thinks they have the worst drivers. Every country thinks their weather is unpredictable. The world becomes, err… predictable.
Not only are we emotionally insecure as a culture, but I’ve come to realize how paranoid we are about our physical security. You don’t have to watch Fox News or CNN for more than 10 minutes to hear about how our drinking water is going to kill us, our neighbor is going to rape our children, some terrorist in Yemen is going to kill us because we didn’t torture him, Mexicans are going to kill us, or some virus from a bird is going to kill us. There’s a reason we have more guns than people.
In the US, security trumps everything, even liberty. We’re paranoid.
I’ve probably been to 10 countries now that friends and family back home told me explicitly not to go because someone was going to kill me, kidnap me, stab me, rob me, rape me, sell me into sex trade, give me HIV, or whatever else. None of that has happened. I’ve never been robbed and I’ve walked through some of the shittiest parts of Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
In fact, the experience has been the opposite. In countries like Russia, Colombia or Guatemala, people were so friendly it actually scared me. Some stranger in a bar would invite me to his house for a bar-b-que with his family, a random person on the street would offer to show me around and give me directions to a store I was trying to find. My American instincts were always that, “Wait, this guy is going to try to rob me or kill me,” but they never did. They were just insanely friendly.
I’ve noticed that the way we Americans communicate is usually designed to create a lot of attention and hype. Again, I think this is a product of our consumer culture: the belief that something isn’t worthwhile or important unless it’s perceived to be the best (BEST EVER!!!) or unless it gets a lot of attention (see: every reality-television show ever made).
This is why Americans have a peculiar habit of thinking everything is “totally awesome,” and even the most mundane activities were “the best thing ever!” It’s the unconscious drive we share for importance and significance, this unmentioned belief, socially beaten into us since birth that if we’re not the best at something, then we don’t matter.
We’re status-obsessed. Our culture is built around achievement, production and being exceptional. Therefore comparing ourselves and attempting to out-do one another has infiltrated our social relationships as well. Who can slam the most beers first? Who can get reservations at the best restaurant? Who knows the promoter to the club? Who dated a girl on the cheerleading squad? Socializing becomes objectified and turned into a competition. And if you’re not winning, the implication is that you are not important and no one will like you.
Unless you have cancer or something equally dire, the health care system in the US sucks. The World Health Organization ranked the US 37th in the world for health care, despite the fact that we spend the most per capita by a large margin.
The hospitals are nicer in Asia (with European-educated doctors and nurses) and cost a tenth as much. Something as routine as a vaccination costs multiple hundreds of dollars in the US and less than $10 in Colombia. And before you make fun of Colombian hospitals, Colombia is 28th in the world on that WHO list, nine spots higher than us.
A routine STD test that can run you over $200 in the US is free in many countries to anyone, citizen or not. My health insurance the past year? $65 a month. Why? Because I live outside of the US. An American guy I met living in Buenos Aires got knee surgery on his ACL that would have cost $10,000 in the US… for free.
But this isn’t really getting into the real problems of our health. Our food is killing us. I’m not going to go crazy with the details, but we eat chemically-laced crap because it’s cheaper and tastes better (profit, profit). Our portion sizes are absurd (more profit). And we’re by far the most prescribed nation in the world AND our drugs cost five to ten times more than they do even in Canada (ohhhhhhh, profit, you sexy bitch).
In terms of life expectancy , despite being the richest country in the world, we come in a paltry 38th. Right behind Cuba, Malta and the United Arab Emirates, and slightly ahead of Slovenia, Kuwait and Uruguay. Enjoy your Big Mac.
The United States is a country built on the exaltation of economic growth and personal ingenuity. Small businesses and constant growth are celebrated and supported above all else — above affordable health care, above respectable education, above everything. Americans believe it’s your responsibility to take care of yourself and make something of yourself, not the state’s, not your community’s, not even your friend’s or family’s in some instances.
Comfort sells easier than happiness. Comfort is easy. It requires no effort and no work. Happiness takes effort. It requires being proactive, confronting fears, facing difficult situations, and having unpleasant conversations.
Comfort equals sales. We’ve been sold comfort for generations and for generations we bought: bigger houses, separated further and further out into the suburbs; bigger TV’s, more movies, and take-out. The American public is becoming docile and complacent. We’re obese and entitled. When we travel, we look for giant hotels that will insulate us and pamper us rather than for legitimate cultural experiences that may challenge our perspectives or help us grow as individuals.
Depression and anxiety disorders are soaring within the US. Our inability to confront anything unpleasant around us has not only created a national sense of entitlement, but it’s disconnected us from what actually drives happiness: relationships, unique experiences, feeling self-validated, achieving personal goals. It’s easier to watch a NASCAR race on television and tweet about it than to actually get out and try something new with a friend.
Unfortunately, a by-product of our massive commercial success is that we’re able to avoid the necessary emotional struggles of life in lieu of easy superficial pleasures.
Throughout history, every dominant civilization eventually collapsed because it became TOO successful. What made it powerful and unique grows out of proportion and consumes its society. I think this is true for American society. We’re complacent, entitled and unhealthy. My generation is the first generation of Americans who will be worse off than their parents, economically, physically and emotionally. And this is not due to a lack of resources, to a lack of education or to a lack of ingenuity. It’s corruption and complacency. The corruption from the massive industries that control our government’s policies, and the fat complacency of the people to sit around and let it happen.
There are things I love about my country. I don’t hate the US and I still return to it a few times a year. But I think the greatest flaw of American culture is our blind self-absorption. In the past it only hurt other countries. But now it’s starting to hurt ourselves.
(Credit: the original article was written by Mark Manson.)
A cat can jump up to five times its own height in a single bound.
The little tufts of hair in a cat’s ear that help keep out dirt direct sounds into the ear, and insulate the ears are called “ear furnishings.”
The ability of a cat to find its way home is called “psi-traveling.” Experts think cats either use the angle of the sunlight to find their way or that cats have magnetized cells in their brains that act as compasses.
One reason that kittens sleep so much is because a growth hormone is released only during sleep.
A cat has 230 bones in its body. A human has 206. A cat has no collarbone, so it can fit through any opening the size of its head.
A cat’s nose pad is ridged with a unique pattern, just like the fingerprint of a human.
If they have ample water, cats can tolerate temperatures up to 133 °F.
A cat’s heart beats nearly twice as fast as a human heart, at 110 to 140 beats a minute.
Cats don’t have sweat glands over their bodies like humans do. Instead, they sweat only through their paws.
The claws on the cat’s back paws aren’t as sharp as the claws on the front paws because the claws in the back don’t retract and, consequently, become worn.
Cats make about 100 different sounds. Dogs make only about 10.
Researchers are unsure exactly how a cat purrs. Most veterinarians believe that a cat purrs by vibrating vocal folds deep in the throat. To do this, a muscle in the larynx opens and closes the air passage about 25 times per second.
A cat almost never meows at another cat, mostly just humans. Cats typically will spit, purr, and hiss at other cats.
A cat’s back is extremely flexible because it has up to 53 loosely fitting vertebrae. Humans only have 34.
Some cats have survived falls of over 65 feet (20 meters), due largely to their “righting reflex.” The eyes and balance organs in the inner ear tell it where it is in space so the cat can land on its feet. Even cats without a tail have this ability.
A cat can travel at a top speed of approximately 31 mph (49 km) over a short distance.
A cat’s hearing is better than a dog’s. And a cat can hear high-frequency sounds up to two octaves higher than a human.
A cat’s brain is biologically more similar to a human brain than it is to a dog’s. Both humans and cats have identical regions in their brains that are responsible for emotions.
#stopcispa
IT Administrator Song, or A Few Of My Fav’rite Net Things. This is a pretty old video (this version was uploaded in 2008) but check out this prescient verse: When my page stalls, Or they pass laws to invade free net speech I simply remember that it could be worse. At least there’re still sites i reach!
The full lyrics:
Route aggregation and increasing payload
Multiway peering and net-friendly C code
Boxes that filter on source-routed pings
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
Multicast native and option-free packets
VLANs that don’t break and short A.S. path lengths
End-to-end measures with meaning to bring
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
When my link’s toast
When the spam grows
When my throughput hits ground
i simply remember my fav’rite net things
and then i don’t feeeel sooo down
Far reaching coverage and routing that’s stable
Aggregate flow stats and mice that are able
to back off when shown that the Net’s being zinged
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
Routers that do red and balanced net loading
Video apps with hierarchical coding
Raw packet traces to dissect and see
all of my absolute fav’rite net things
when DNS freaks
when my routes leak
when i lose a peer
I try to remember my favorite net things
and then go buy more net gear
Visualizations of virtual networks
Discovering “features” in new IOS quirks
Vendor built stacks that respect TCP
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
SNMP tools like MRTG
Knowing how to unconfig your P.V.C.’s
Measurement boxes that sniff OC3
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
When my page stalls
Or they pass laws
to invade free net speech
i simply remember that it could be worse
at least there’re still sites i reach
Cool network geeks and their company perks
Analysis tools in which true insight lurks
Stable peer sessions and route symmetry
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
Multi-mode fiber with an optical splitter
BGP sessions config’d not to litter
Reverting from ATM back to IP
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
When popups leap
when copyrights creep
into my browser’s cache
i simply remember that SDMI
will most likely buuurn & crash
Stock trading web sites that haven’t yet crashed
MP3 players with plenty of flash
having my cell phone talk to my PC
These are a few of my fav’rite net things
Linux and Open- and FreeBSD
Persistence in TCP’s HTTP
Finally remembering my PGP key
All of my abosolute fav’rite net things
When Backhoes sting
or TIME_WAITs bring
servers to the ground
i simply remember my fav’rite net things
and then i don’t feeeel sooo down
(None of this is my work, I just copied it from Google+ for posterity and entertainment.)
Misconception 1: I’m not flexible enough to meditate.
Yoga pose
This is probably what most people think of when you say you do yoga. Well, it can be. It can be a lot ‘worse’ ( = difficult ) too, but yoga won’t force you to do anything your body can’t take. Note that this does not mean you should at least try. There are also many forms of meditation that don’t require complicated poses; if you can sit down or lie down, you’re all set.
Misconception 2: you need to be a member of some sect or weird cult to meditate.
Wrong. Anyone can meditate. Meditation is a technique, for some a way of life, but for a normal form of meditation you don’t have to join any group, wear orange robes or shave your head. Again, there are people who feel like that, but it’s never a requirement.
Misconception 3: you can’t be a Christian and meditate.
Wrong. There are plenty of Christians who meditate. What else is prayer than a form of meditation, when you look at it from a logical point of view?
Misconception 4: when I meditate, nothing happens so I’m doing it wrong.
Wrong again. When you meditate, things happen on many levels, and the levels that need most attention get that. Not always are you aware that something happens, so please don’t stop but persist. At one point, and yes that can take a demotivatingly long time, you will feel something happen.
For more information on meditation misconceptions you can have a look at Susan Piver’s site, or this page on About.com.
Unwoman? Strange name, you may say. Unwoman is a San Francisco based Steampunk artist. She’s unique in my opinion. The way she uses a cello (well, several cellos) in her music is very special, very different to e.g. Rasputina.
I have all her work, including her latest achievement, “Lemniscate, uncovered 2″, which is an amazing collection of covers of more or less known music. (This of course depends on what you know.)
Unwoman
I had the pleasure of meeting her once in London, where she was on her first ever tour outside the United States. With each album she produces I appreciate her music more. She’s still growing as an artist and performer, and helping her achieve her goals (through several kickstarter projects) is really something worthwhile.
Here is a youtube video of one of her amazing songs, The City:
If you want to learn more about her, do visit her website at www.unwoman.com.
Here a computer is delivered. The photo is from 1957. Let that humongous thing sink in and then realise that your smartphone or tablet outpowers that thing…
Enough talk about the how and what of meditation, don’t you agree? Why do people meditate? What’s the goal, what do they want to achieve with it?
Short answer: whatever you like.
Long answer: you can meditate to find peace and rest. Meditation can be employed to calm yourself down, to relax and unwind from the day. Depending on the way you meditate you can also taken on stress. Stress is like a fine layer of dust that falls down on your mind, your nerves, your Self. After a while this thin layer becomes thick, sinks in, and becomes a massive clot of misery that is difficult to get rid of. Using the proper forms of meditation you can use it as a chisel to chop away bits of that stress-blob, and slowly free yourself from it. When you’ve removed all the stress you keep meditating to prevent stress from getting to you.
You can also meditate to find answers to questions. Meditation lifts you up from the normal level of thinking and worrying. As you ascend from that level, you get a far better overview and insight of the problem you are facing. Since a problem usually is not solved on the level where it originated, this way to deal with a problem is very good as you can approach it with a different, far clearer and cleaner attitude.
“Ars Technica’s Peter Bright reports on a Netware 3.12 server that has been decommissioned after over 16 years of continuous operation. The plug was pulled when noise from the server’s hard drives become intolerable. From the article: ‘It’s September 23, 1996. It’s a Monday. The Macarena is pumping out of the office radio, mid-way through its 14 week run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, doing little to improve the usual Monday gloom…Sixteen and a half years later, INTEL’s hard disks—a pair of full height 5.25 inch 800 MB Quantum SCSI devices—are making some disconcerting noises from their bearings, and you’re tired of the complaints. It’s time to turn off the old warhorse.’”
(Found on Slashdot.)
![[FSF Associate Member]](http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/associate/fsf-11339.png)
