Prince Dies, Henry Rollins Against North Carolina Anti-LGBT HB2 Law

Conservatives in North Carolina (Mississippi too for that matter). Hatred. Fear. Cowardice.

This is a short and irregular blog today as I usually release them on Mondays. I thought this important enough to share however because of all the ridiculous and disgusting actions America has been repeatedly subjected to over the past twenty years or so (which should be inclusive really of the Reagan years) from the right, the conservatives, the Republicans.

We have been abused through (anti) voter laws, gun issues, civil rights and women's issues and on and on ad naseum.

On the day that musician Prince had died, it seems especially poignant that we allow room for those Americans who are different than us. Especially those staunch conservatives. We need to be more accepting and less rigid and punitive to those different from us.

How much in our world would we not have if not for those who are different than us, be they straight, gay or whatever.

So please check out one of my favorite people, Henry Rollins, in his speaking out against North Carolina Governor Patrick McCrory's new anti LGBT "bathroom" law, disingenuous as that description by the right is and as Henry will explain if you read his statement.

Please do.

I doubt I could say here what he says there, any better.

Just a taste of what Henry says:

"HB2 is now law. There is no “walking it back.” If McCrory eventually caves and tries to repeal it, everyone will know it’s because he values money over his homophobia, which he has poorly disguised as moral rectitude and common sense. Either way he’s fucked. If I were him, I wouldn’t feel all that put out by Springsteen’s cancellation as much as I would fear PayPal scrapping its plans to locate a new operations center in his state. PayPal is bigger than any governor."

[2019 UPDATE: Someone emailed me about this so I'm adding it to this: "Did you know that 73% of LGBTQs have been harassed online due to sexual orientation or gender identity? This guide aims to empower them and give them the tools to protect themselves online."
https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/lgbtq-guide-online-safety/  ]

A Biopic of Your Most Private Moments For All To See From Big Data

We really need to start being more aware of our actions. Why? Today and each day forward will all too soon become our legacy. We are deciding each day who we are. At least who our descendants and others might one day come to believe that we were.

This is concept and info could would fit right into my continuing horror \ sci fi story, "The Unwritten" on Wattpad.

Here's the situation. We are already working on ways to access "big data", massive amounts of information that are essentially useless to a human being. Big data requires computers or a lot of people in order to make it accessible, intelligible, useful.

Without computers, information leaks containing a million pages as in the Edward Snowden situation, or more recently with the eleven million pages from the Panama Papers leak, we simply cannot make use of that much data. It's an ongoing problem the NSA deals with on a daily, even hourly basis.

But we are starting to get a handle on it. Solutions are on the horizon.

We have to assume that in merely a few years, certainly in a few generations down the line, we will have figured something out. Projecting from that we will one day quite easily and literally be able to generate an easily understandable format to receive and manipulate all that data.

The projection that one could make a movie about the life of someone from the past with all that data isn't that far fetched. It could also include far more than we would now consider possible.

It could include for instance, friends you never wanted anyone to know you had. Places you went, things you did you never wanted anyone to know about. To make it "commercially viable" in a sense, that is at least more pleasure able to view, it could even include sexual situations you were in that were never filmed.

Remember, we're talking about the future here.

Regardless of what hidden moments you have stored away, situations meant for no one ever to see, one day they may be able to see it all quite clearly. Just for purposes of speculation, from a short sci fi story of mine, "EarVu", a scientist finds a way to produce 3D videos from previously recorded audio tapes. Think about that for a moment. That technology alone could bring down the entire world.

Already we are talking about taking various random footage shot from ATM machines, people's cell phones, things posted on social media, combing them all and getting 3D representations of what happened in choosing a single element or person as focal point.

This is all rapidly becoming not, science fiction but science fact.

When viewed from the future in using massive data it's entirely possible and would be quite plausible not to mention astounding. What could be discovered about a person's very private life in hindsight?

It is in part after all why conspiracies always fall apart and come out into the light.

Time is enemy to all and friend to some.

How would you feel about one day a movie being made of your life? You would have no control over it, not say in it, and you'd never know about it.

All this from easily known historical data. Though perhaps now being from unknown data. Just information freely available through a future version of some benign entity like Ancestry.com or some other such entity. Like a library.

A film of your life could literally be made by anyone, though more probably it might be made by a descendant of yours. Perhaps simply out of curiosity.

Much as how someone can now write a biography of a historical figure from the past from existing information, photos and such. While now that is mostly limited to those highly documented individuals, many of us are already being highly documented in ways far exceeding that of anyone from the past, or of what we are even now aware of.

Something for us to ruminate over. As some people worry that God can see their most secret actions, what if literally anyone could?

I spent many years studying espionage when I was younger. I discovered from the analysis of freely available data that one can uncover, must as with statistics using available numbers, that you can uncover highly accurate details from information that is freely available.

In taking just a few things from someone's life you can find where they have been in a day on a specific date, even what they were doing. From that you can extrapolate other things. It's really quite amazing and the more you delve into it, the more you can discover.

In taking information from other individuals involved with someone, even peripherally involved in things, you can then find strikingly obvious things about that time. Things that an individual had believed was (and had been right about, except in hindsight) completely private and secret.

Just remember, Time, wears everything down. Entropy rules.

I was stunned during and after college to find what I could do with statistics, with just numbers being correctly manipulated, with reasonable levels of inaccuracy accounted for. I found I could literally foretell the future. I was a media buyer for a while for Tower Records and achieved worldwide top buyer one month for my accuracy. I didn't even have a computer at work back then in the 1980s, I did it all with pen and paper on a clipboard.

However in using computers, machines that can handle massive data, grinding it up into something intelligible, what will we be able to accomplish some day? To see? To know?

Think about it. You can now use a spreadsheet to generate very useful graphs. Even moving graphs. Computer models can generate real life-like looking characters. One day we will be able to produce a film just from big data. Or seemingly happened, might have happened, but that's another (scary) topic.

Time will tell. It surely will.

If ever you wanted to be the star of your own movie, a film about your life, it may just happen. Though it may happen many years after you've passed on.

Purpose of Government is Our Decision

It occurs to me that part of the political issue today between liberals and conservatives, or however people wish to categorize themselves, is that there is a fundemental undercurrent of misunderstanding about the purpose of government in the first place.

Bootie Cosgrove-Mather in an article titled The Purpose Of Government for CBS said:

"Call me old-fashioned, but I still hold with the ancient Greeks who said government has only one purpose, to improve the lives of citizens."

USHistory.org's article The  Purposes of Government says:

"Why do governments exist? One major reason is that they create rules. But what rules are necessary or desirable?"

Originally governments were started to protect the people. Once that is established and effective, government's purpose expands as a natural course of evolution. After having solidified its ability to protect it turns internal, taking on the actions of making the citizenry work more fluidly, enhancing and further protecting the citizens. Making the citizens more productive and enhancing the quality of their lives as a natural and necessary evolution of the purpose of government.

At some point part of the purpose of government is to maintain and protect, the government itself. Then comes a need for balance between the citizens and the government being protected. For the government to protect itself under the mistaken belief that it is more important than the citizens because IT appears to be the citizens, is a confused point of view that has led to entities such as the Soviet Union with it's leadership abuses, Communist China, North Korea, and so on.

It is not unlike the need in a company or corporation, for balance between security and business. Perfect security denies all business. Perfect business eliminates security. Too much of one destroys the other, just as too little of one can destroy the other. 

It is a balance. Just as our Founding Fathers understood and so built into the United States of America, appropriate checks and balances. In protecting the people from the government and the government branches from one another the society as a whole is protected from and within itself. 

When the initial elements of protecting the citizens and the government have been accomplished, and the basic elements involved in enhancing citizen's productivity and quality of life are in place, it is only natural that the government, as strong as it  should be by this point, would continue to strive to find more and better ways to enhancement society. Without getting in the way of the citizens needs and desires and to continue to find new ways to be more productive for the citizens in its attempt always to be considering enhancements to its purpose as time marches on.

That means that government needs to protect the citizens, the individual units from large collectives such as citizen groups and businesses and corporations. It means that rather than allowing itself to be propped up by big money, it recognizes that and takes steps to fix itself, continuing to protect its citizenry.

From time to time any entity needs to reflect, to reevaluate its original purpose, to review if that is truly what it is still doing. By that concept, people should not be working more hours for less, but less hours for more. They should be paying less for more and better healthcare.

If at some point the care by the government reaches the pinnacle of no one needing to work, because they have finally been freed up to do what they wish, it is not for others who think work is the only way to live, to judge and apply their beliefs onto others. If and when the government should be able to support that.

If the government is on that path and at some point it changes direction, someone needs to look to see why that is happening, who or what caused it, and how to get back on track. 

When people have reached a point that they no longer have to work, or even more so, no longer have to work in jobs they find despicable, it doesn't mean people will no longer need to work but that our orientation as a nation has morphed into allowing people to find what they enjoy doing and pursue that. Be it in the arts, sciences, labor force, or what have you.

My personal belief is that work enhances people's lives. If one is doing the right work for who they are.

Not however the kind of work many of us are currently being forced to do now a days. Not the stress and numbers of hours required per week for a family to be able to support themselves. Not the need of some families who have to have two jobs, three, four or five jobs when there was once a time when only one person needed to have a job to support their family. When they didn't have to work unreasonable days each week if not all, and too many hours per day.

We should not be working more than eight hours a day, more than five days a week and yet, many of us are. We have been hearing how we are slackers, lazy if we don't work twelve hour days five, days a week.

Yet we should be striving hard toward working less days and hours per week. We should be striving toward four day work weeks, six hour days. We should be working half days at full pay so two people could do the work of what one person is doing now. Those are directions, goals, we should be considering, working toward.

People may scoff at that contention. But they scoff because of how things are, not because of how things could be. The reason things cannot be that way now is because of how big money has brainwashed us all to think it's not possible. All while corporations and the very wealthy syphon off all the money so there is so very little left for the masses. 

We have to decide first, just what do we want the purpose of our government to be?

Then we can make that happen. 

Something Bit The Republican Party. Was it the Tea Party?

The Republican Party over the past 20-30 years has built an environment that has finally paid off in having the likes of the blowhard Donald Trump and the despicable Ted Cruz as Presidential nominee frontrunners.

Yet, that wasn't their intent. Although forewarned, they wouldn't listen even to themselves in order to avoid this. They knew it back in 2012, claimed they would fix it, then went on like the Zombie Party they are, with business as usual.

Now they think that using Ted Cruz to neutralize Trump is a pretty durn good idea. It actually is a really neato idea... with the exception of one thing.

Over the years the GOP has shown itself to be exceptionally adept at actions based on bad ideals. Ideals that merely sound good in sound bites but lack substance under deeper consideration. Someone once said that Republicans are great at selling bad ideas (or can sell lies better than truth) and Democrats are bad at selling great ideas.

Their ability to hang onto power with dirty tricks has proven exceptional. Even at the expense of the American citizen and in how this country is perceived worldwide. Except of course where, for instance, Republican Governors have been found to be criminals, again through ideals based upon the ideologies of their party. Or simply, greed.

Essentially exhibiting a lack of self-discipline to do what is right, or perhaps simply to judge between right and wrong. The Party of Business is about profit, not people. And yet they wish to govern over people. 

They frequently have no shame. But then as I have pointed out in a previous blog, that has a lot to do with the right's extreme religious slant even as it signals their demise. 

Once again they have made a choice that is not good for them, or us, and based on a concept that arises all because of a situation they themselves have set upon this country.

If Cruz beats out Trump or forcibly replaces him it would be merely one more bad idea in a very, very long line of them. 

Trump would be an embarrassment AND a Danger to America as well as the world. Cruz would be a Danger and we'd never even get to the embarrassment stage of things.

Then again Bill Maher @billmaher Tweeted this week:

Cruz would be our worst President. 
But Trump might well be our last.
#BetterTedThanDead

Possibly so. We keep hearing from Republicans how they are going to do this or that to fix their problems and yet, so much of the time they are merely scrambling about, sometimes in a panic, trying to fix things they did themselves. To us. On purpose. 

Sometimes bad things happen they didn't foresee or desire. Yet unbelievably as we're seeing, sometimes they are getting exactly the situation they wanted. At times using plausible deniability to defend themselves. At others not even bothering to deny it.

It's as if, they are insane. At very least emotionally and mentally unbalanced. 

The GOP is the Koyaanisqatsi of American politics (from the film and Hopi People word, Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance).

It is as if they were bitten by some diseased animal years ago, perhaps in the mid 1990s and we've been watching the progress of this disease as it kills the Party animal while damaging all those around it. Perhaps a political form of rabies. 

From Rabies Alliance.org:

Often you can’t tell by looking. - We thought for years after the infected bite that Republicans were normal. We didn't at first notice. 

However, a rabid animal may stagger or stumble. It may display unprovoked aggressive behavior or be over-friendly. - Yes, quite so. 

Animals with advanced rabies may foam at the mouth. This is because the rabies virus affects the salivary glands causing hyper-salivation. They may also develop hydrophobia (fear of water). - I suspect a metaphorical approach to this one. It snaps in like it was built for it. Water substituting for xenophobia and a fear of non-whites or illegal aliens. I wonder what would happen if ever any extraterrestrial aliens were to show up?

If an animal shows any of these signs, you should contain it to prevent possible exposure either to you, your family, or another animal. - If only we could contain the GOP and their conservative puppet masters. It does point out however just how badly we do need to attempt to stay away from them (to not vote for them). 

However, none of these symptoms are definitive signs that an animal has rabies. - Oh, great!

To verify an infection, a brain tissue sample must be tested for rabies. For this the animal must be euthanized. - And, there it is. My ex-girlfriend back in college was a Vet. Tech and said she'd see a frozen dog or animal head sometimes in the Veterinarian's freezer waiting on a rabies test. They would send it frozen to have the brain cells tested. Typically the bitten individual would start the painful rabies series of shots just to be safe if deemed necessary.

Whatever happens to the GOP now, it's going to be painful. Painful for them, but more importantly painful for the rest of us. Even those of us who shouldn't have to suffer because of them. But then maybe we all are to blame in putting up with big money in politics for so long and allowing media to turn into entertainment as a profit driven venture.

We have turned over one of the most important elements in our checks and balances in the American system to Corporate thinking. A system that runs best toward not Truth but sales and profit. Is that the rabies of the American system itself?

I doubt we should wait to definitely discover via post mortem analysis if the GOP was infected, regardless what you call it. Rabies, extreme conservatism, religion, Tea Party, fascist extremist groups, or whatever. 

It seems quite obvious what's going on. And action is required... now.

Happy April Fool's Day (and no, this ain't no joke).

I wanted to come up with an April Fool's kind of story to offer for a free download (I just now thought about this, so I have to choose from what there is).

"Japheth, Ishvi and The Light"

Free download coupon code (expires 4/4/2016): LF98T

The closest thing I have written I can think of that fits today as there is a kind of joke built into the story.

It's a Zombie story, and yet... more.

Sláinte!

Education - America is Waiting

It occurs to me that the issue with conservatives about education is that they have redefined Human Capital to equal zero. Look up the history of America and free education back in the 1800s and see how they talk about human capital.

Back when children worked in factories it was deemed worthy to invest in human capital...in people. Thomas Paine, Horace Mann (I went to a Mann elementary school myself), John Dewey and others spoke out and evoked change. They could see the value of increasing the education of all Americans to the point that we as a nation should invest in it to assure that it happens. We then made it a law that you had to attend school. For a reason.

If we now educate people up beyond literacy, into primary and secondary education (K-12) we could enhance the entire lot of our citizens overall, as well as our nation's status in the world.

Education became free through high school which was originally considered only college prep school. It was made legal that you have to attend to fourteen but your schooling was paid for through the senior (12th) year of high school.

The benefits of these changes were pretty immediate and obvious.

Now college (two or four year, depending) is the equivalent to how high school was back then and for many decades since, until we became an information society. We now need to expand that well established free education from K-12 to K-16. Then we will start to regain our intellectual status worldwide once again.

We will NOT do this by giving all our money and benefits free to the 1% wealthy class. How does that make any sense? How stupid does one have to be to believe in trickledown economics, or to think we'd buy that for very long as we watch everything erode around us including us?

While only a few reap these benefits, they then say that they have and should have everything in being job creators, when it is really the middle class who are. They say that to give back (what they stole, what they got us to legislate for them) is giving freebies to the unwashed masses.

I'd laugh if it wasn't such a travesty.

Corporate thinking means only sure things are worth anything, only profit is worthy of contemplation. That becomes, any expenditure in people per se is a complete waste of profit. Nothing beyond mere surface efforts should be tried. Only superficial efforts for people should be done, and only to shut up their outcries.

Thus conservatives, republicans, the rich elite are against more schooling, against K-16 being free. As i is they have been doing their best to decrease what we have already achieved.

They are against now even K-12 being free.

Let's face it, they are against people. Citizens are an ugly necessity. If and when they can do away with them, with people...we be all gone. Except for those elites. Which won't work, someone has to do the labor. But that is what they want it would seem. A binary nation of those few who have supported by those who do not and are too afraid to do anything about it. Afraid to vote for the candidate who can do, for the one who will kind of do.

Act now. Not, when you are being hustled into prison for speaking out. Not once they have monetized our rights, our water, our air, our privacy, our freedom.

So called "Patriot militias" are a voice, typically yelling about things that are counterproductive to all this because of their slight knowledge of all the wrong things. They are merely a distraction and the rich love them.

What they fear is real action.

People abandoning the rotting carcass of the GOP, the Conservative movement, the religious political movement, all the groups so easily deluded. If they once stop, look around, see what insanity they have been immersed in and leave, then we all win.

But they want to keep people ignorant. Or better, stupid. It is a feather in their cap. When they say free education is impossible all while the rest of the world does it before us, listen to your heart, not the rich, not their politicians disassembling among you.

They are not our friend. They (and you) only think they are.

Next time you drive over a bridge and realize that you may die before you get to the other end, wonder where the money went to maintain it.

When your 18 year old child cannot get a job because you and they cannot afford college for them, ask why.

WAKE UP to reality!

Face slap yourself! Shock your mind. Quit your somnambulance.

Come back out into the world if you've ever even been out here. This has been going on for that long. Cold water on your face now, up into your consciousness.

We're all here waiting for you. The few and slightly aware because that's all it takes, having even a partial realization.

America Is Waiting for some sort of a message or another. Well, here it was.

The End is Nigh... But Not How You Might Think

What is the first stage of religious freedom?

No, ot freedom to worship your religions of choice.
No, not freedom to have many religions in a country.
But true religious freedom.
Free of religious thought, constraints and diatribe.

We have here in the United States of America seen an upswing in mostly Christians openly speaking out (other religions are probably afraid to speak out because of them) about their religion. In some cases they demand to be given total freedom in this country for their religion in order to spread the "Word" to everyone, through government and therefore down onto the heads of the people. Believers and unbelievers alike.

Why? Why is this happening?

First off, some people have tried reading the Bible. And became atheists.

The religious, that is theists, have had to live in shame for a long time. Good people just didn't share their religion outside of their home, their tribe, their church, their religion. Back in the 1970s however we started to hear from these people about the word of Jesus Christ. And that opened a flood gate. People began to realize that this was indeed, America. We have freedom here, and the first amendment.

The protests of the 1960s were still fresh in people's minds. Evangelical churches started to get bigger eventually becoming mega churches. Because it enriched their leaders. Some of those who went to prison because of it. Most of them got carried away with it and their rock star status. That even led to some of those leaders enjoying buying sex with their profits.

America

Freedom of Speech.
Freedom to pursue happiness.
Freedom of religion.

That last one has turned into a killer, as we've seen of late. People began to lose their shame about speaking out. The internet increased that euphoria and if there's one thing theists know, it's how to exploit euphoria in their chosen beliefs.

Religion loves putting shame upon people. Like in the Catholic Church with its concept of "Original Sin" that you are born born with. A sin that was passed down from Adam and Eve. Because Eve ate a piece of fruit and talked Adam into it.

The creation of "confession" in the Middle Ages (AKA, the Dark Ages) allowed some priests an amazing amounts of power and leeway in their potential for blackmail of prominent citizens. That is, the ability to "convince" people of doing their bidding, "for the Lord."

You are therefore born losing and so are beholding to the Church to save you. You have to be brought into the Church as an infant through baptism, thus washing away your "sin" and avoiding ending up in at very least, Limbo. Pretty ridiculous. But it begins "The Shaming".

Once you realize that isn't a concern, then you can speak outwardly and openly.

The trouble is that once you begin to lose your shame, you also begin the long journey of losing your religion. So the 1960s for many was the beginning of the end. Though it really began long before that. This was just its coming out in public, openly, therein laying the foundation for the public origin of the reason of what we're seeing today.

Intelligence, education, even the Internet, are all antithetical to religion. Religion teaches to not think too much about its teachings or else it quickly evaporates in a puff of logic.

Religion has to reward ignorance.

So here we are today with new a generation, a new population of religious ignorants and emboldened shameless people.

It is the beginning of the end of religion but, they cannot see this... yet.

Go out into the wild and fatally wound a wild animal. Let it lay there in pain as it dies. Then try walking up to it and poke its wound.

Would you do that? No? Why not? Because it would be dangerous? Because it is dying, in pain and in its death throes? Because it is using all its power in a binary all or nothing attempt to protect itself at all costs? Yes, quite so.

We see this in many of the religious and religions today. We are seeing the spiritual death throes of many of the religious and many of their religions. It is merely matter of time now that will disintegrate in a serious of half lifes, like with radioactive decay.

Some are dying slower than others, some are younger than others and so will have further to go before they fall. So they will seemingly be around forever, and yet they will be zombie religions. Much as it is now with many, who believe but do nothing about it.

It is happening now all around us.

Religious death cults are not helping things much, in groups like ISIS and other Islamic based death Jihadi type groups. Although all the desert Abrahamic religions are really death oriented and capitalistic in nature. You receive your "just rewards" after death in going to heaven. You receive more of something in death for something lesser in life and so isn't death rather attractive? Proximity to the Lord in Heaven, or 72 virgins, or whatever.

Islamic extremist Jihadis have certainly keyed into that one.

Christian right wing types and apocalyptic versions of religions are looking all the time more the fool to mature rational people. They exemplify the worst religion has to offer and in their actions showcase their ignorance and even that of others who normally are more rational, albeit still religious creatures. Most use it as a method for what they could do with other forms of thought but find beauty in ancient religions. So it's an aesthetic choice.

Still the first signs are in seeing their lack of shame in public, and their inability to any longer be humble. To maintain one's religion in a private belief should require no support from others. It should require no one other than those in one's chosen religion in order to maintain or alter their lifestyles because of their beliefs.

And yet, we are seeing that happening just about everywhere. It will pass, though with time.We are seeing the adolescent phase of religious belief as humanity grows beyond the need for religion as a race of beings. So far we have advanced through paganism, Polytheism, into monotheism and finally in the closing chapter, we will see the advent of atheism spreading far and wide to be replaced by rationality, science and reason.

We see it now in religions in people being of their religion identifying with it (frequently out of fear to do otherwise) while not actively practicing their faith. A good sign that they treat it lightly. Then they get upset when called out about it, as they fear being outed. But to whom? God? Others? Society in general so they have to admit the demise of their beliefs?

What is sad and curious is we began with atheism. Before we even knew what we were doing we had fallen into giving ourselves over to fantastic explanations of the mundane, what really required only simple scientific explanations for and that we did not have, yet.

It is as if we decided to take a boat out from a lakeside dock we are standing on. We decide through new beliefs presented to us, to walk all around the lake first, only then we find our way to other lakes, as more people show up and convince us they are the ones with the magic. Until finally we arrive right back to what had been directly in front of us to being with. That which was in fact originally right under our feet, all along.

Well, at least we're finally getting there.

We just need to continue for the time being to help others along. Those who are still struggling with finding that dock. While there are many fishermen already out on the lake enjoying themselves and having far less trouble existing than the many, than those who are simply lost and continuing to think they have to find some magic element in life.

Even though it is right there before them.

It is and has been, as the Buddha said, always right there before you and within you. You have merely to see it, to recognize it. It's no magic elixir, no magic fix, no ghost in the sky. It's you. You just have to not be so scared that you cannot see it there, right there before you.

Don't worry. We'll get there.

As long as we don't destroy ourselves over literally nothing along the way.