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In the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four", the official calendar date is set as deemed necessary by the Ministry of Truth.
That means the actual year is forgotten, and meaningless. It could be this year. It could even be the next.
Neither side is facing the fact that freedom and life are the same thing. Without one, you can't have the other."
The argument is: Freedom and life. VS Slavery and death.
That's basically why I say they are fundamentally the same. Death is death no matter how it's packaged.
In our small town almost every intersection that is equipped with a signal light is also equipped with a camera that's connected to the city services office, police dept. and county sheriff's office. In the business district the number of cameras are double that with many mounted on every civic office building, and those within each of those buildings and offices. Add in the recent advances in facial recognition software and there's little privacy in public anymore.
There's no question that if you are using any electronic service, you have zero privacy. And for us in the Gulch - the only thing we have is camaraderie.
salts when I decide to enter something via keyboard
here ... what would I say if I was snooping on me?
make it fluffy and distracting;;; the joke is on them
if I maintain my discipline better than they do!!! -- j
The law is entirely on the side of the authorities in this surveillance, with many court decisions that establish that we have no assurance of privacy when we are in public. The problem today is that these laws were mostly written to protect the press and us if we take a photo that innocently includes some unrelated person in the image. That's a far cry from what we see today, the intentional recording of all people who CAN be recorded, "just it case" the data is needed latter.
I think there's a great difference between casual recording and intentional surveillance. I don't think that a good case to defend these actions have been put to the SCOTUS, but I believe it will be soon.
A key component will be the use of drones that can record us in our own back yards and even the drones that can bounce a laser off our window and record conversations within. I certainly think these are blatantly unconstitutional, but we will see how they judge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOv_BSPO...
The pinnacle of this analogy struck me most profoundly to be the case when (what I oft mockingly call) "our elite betters" of a virtual oligarchy crammed the unaffordable Affordable Health Care Act down our throats. Princess Pelosi provided the crowning touch of this Obamanation "audacity of change" when she proclaimed, "Let us pass this bill to read what is in it (etc.)"
Four legs good, two legs... better!
"I love my Obamacare". Wish I could have seen the bone head that soiled his car with that.
In the one case who was helped he and his wife were on a state subsidized ins program because they had both had cancer and were uninsurable. The state program cost them $1600 a month of their salary of $2400 a month. (Because of a business relationship I do know the real numbers) Their cost of O-care was $480 a month. These folks are employed and are trying to start a small resale business, but they were being bled dry by ins they could not live without.
As much as I'm thrilled they are being taken care of, even if it's a short time, O-care is a house of cards that WILL come falling down.
The only question is how many people like our friends will be destroyed in the collapse.
And we will all be destroyed in the end if it is not repealed. There is no good socialist healthcare system.
I know how the conspiracy between the liberals, labor and medicine got us here, but just how can we unwind the clock without leaving a lot of dieing people in the gutter? Without medical intervention this past week, I'd be dead by now, or very close. And I do have some medical coverage. People who don't and find themselves in need of emergency care can be financially wiped out in a afternoon. Many are with coverage. Had I not been healthy enough to make the 150 mile drive to "my" VA hospital last Sunday, I'd be $65,000 in debt today. I know because it's happened to me.
help when things go tragically wrong ... in a real
gulch, we surely would have a rainy day fund for
one another, like self-insurance.
we briefly borrowed to cover taxes in april, from
our credit union. this is gentler than some things! -- j
However on a policy basis - and this is going to sound harsh, but reality often is - life is not fair. Some have attained the means to procure costly medical care, and many, even most, have not. We purchase insurance so that we can pool our risk with others for items that we deem ourselves to be most needful of being protected against. But now, we have an outside entity that deems that it can step in and make those decisions for us, and force us to absorb the costs.
Just watch. The next two to three years will be game changing.
Most of those on Obamacare were just transferred over from Medicare - they weren't new signups. Repeal Obamacare and put them back on Medicare while we figure out a way to get government out of healthcare entirely.
I look at the problem from a business standpoint. One of the core business fundamentals is to keep overhead (fixed costs) low so as to shift costs to variable costs which can more easily be ascertained and passed on in product costs. That means limiting or eliminating much of the bureaucratic red tape that doesn't add any value. And there is so much red tape when visiting a doctor's office, most patients (and doctors) look like mummies. One study I saw polled doctors and found out that they spent almost 50% of their time just on paperwork for regulations, while the other 50% had to get split up between running their offices and seeing patients. It's no wonder health care is so expensive!
I've already resigned myself to dying in the gutter, speaking metaphorically.
It costs me $40 a month for insurance I can't use because I can't afford the deductibles. In which case I'd rather have the $40/month.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Ignorance is bliss.
patients could be helped by just giving them the cash
and letting the bureaucrats go wanting??? -- j
What to do. Get rid of the Council on Foreign Relations, the moving force behind the changes made by most recent presidents. Get out of the UN, they are mostly communists anyway. Kick the Federal Reserve to the curb. Get rid of the Dept. of Education, heart of brainwashing future voters. Outlaw port barrel spending in finance bill, and you will take power from the corrupt legislators.
Actually, I just rewatched "1984" the other week, the Richard Burton version, and was sad to see how close we have come to Orwell's predictions.
It's extremely disturbing to see how far along that path we as a nation have gone. And also how complacent most people are about how government has insinuated itself into every aspect of our lives. I find it reprehensible and terribly sad to see such a sharp decline in freedom, free will and the right to speak out without retribution.
Also, we should have an established moon base by now and well on our way to Mars.
Scientam -- Science, learning.
Pretty much the same. Both require effort and cannot be obtained through handouts.
Lock-N-Load Ears on, Eyes open, Watch your 6.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/
These guys are at the top of the mark in their fields and have come together in a very interesting show of reason.
Peace through Power --- Free Energy!
Tech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Tec...
is a pretty good description to start.
The best story about Florida Tech is our founding. Our first president and George Skurla, then in charge of Northrop Grumman's space program efforts in 1958 were eating dinner. They suggested that a university be established to educate people for the space program. The tip was 57 cents. The waitress donated the tip as our initial endowment.
wasn't that much today.
You'd get it back in the
face.
are. Thanks for being there.
I'll be traveling with a few "toys", so if there's any firearm you've been really wanting to shoot, let me know. If I don't own one (not too likely), I know somebody who does. The only one I can't travel with is my .50 cal., It's too big for the safe in my camper.
I recall a couple days ago you mentioned some historical workshop you did and if I recall correctly, some civil war sites were a part of it - I have a 1862 Colt Musket .58 cal. that I can bring. It was the M16 of the north and is a hoot to shoot.
M.
I would go for repealing all federal and state laws, regulations, organizations, and stipends that have come into existence after a certain point - probably around WWII. This is too big a job to handle by examining the individual laws. In medieval Iceland, if a Lawspeaker forgot to recite a law for 3 Things running, and no one called him on it, it was officially 'not a law' any more. I think that if we scrap a Whole Lot of laws, we will find that most people do not miss them and will not go to the effort to re-pass them.
Keeping the whole constitution is a cheap shot - the major problems we have are not in the constitution but in the fact (my opinion) that many of the laws that have been passed have never been vetted for adherence to the Constitution, esp the Bill of Rights. This needs to be a prereq before 'something proposed' becomes 'law'. We need more than a 'pen and phone' approach to governance.
Jan
I would also support automatic twilight provisions - that every bill passed only lasted as long as the current tenure of the body passing it. If they wanted it renewed, they would have to reauthorize it.
While the surveillance is scary, the destruction of language via Newspeak goes unnoticed. How many characters to a tweet? OTOH, LMAO...
It's how I find out what Lindsey Stirling, Peter Hollens, and other Youtube artists are up to and when they have new videos out.
After offending Michelle Malkin, I learned to limit my actually commentary on twitter... :(
It is much, much deeper and tougher than Wikileaks, Snowden, twitter etc.
I would like to suggest that you read Chapter 22 in the book "Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray (The Free Press 1994). If that chapter motivates you, you can read the previous 21, which I found enormously edifying and thought provoking.
Let us know what you think.
My main reason for pointing to Bell Curve was, in the context of being warned (by Orwell and Rand) about ominous trends in the culture and the country, my belief that current policies deliberately deny the spectrum of cognitive ability. I find that just another manifestation of ignoring, denying and deliberately obfuscating reality.
I took a quick look at the posting and comments on the "bell curve URL" you indicated. I see a lot of misunderstandings. Individuals are parts of groups. Statistics are meaningful only in adequate size samples representative of a group one wishes to evaluate. The most fundamental question is do you believe that cognitive ability is objectively measurable? I do. But, as the book says, cognitive ability is only about 60% inherited. Consequently ...
Real life is different than games. In real warfare, as an old Serbian proverb says: "Two bad ones killed the hero." Team sports are a ritualized battle and despite different contributions of individual members of the team, the victory belongs to the team. A superstar soccer player cannot beet a full high school team. If one craves for recognition of the individual, let him choose singles tennis, not football.
I have seldom seen, in one sentence, brilliance and depth expressed so clearly to me as Milton Freedman's comment on the book. That is exactly what I thought after having read the book. Except that probably I would have taken half a page to say the same thing.
I have only small amount of time that I can dedicate to the Gulch. I would love to discuss more in detail the implications of that book. If we want to do it, and if you have the patience with the infrequency of my response in the conversation, should we move that conversation to the other post?
Yes we were. Orwell and Huxley had exchanges and discussed whose vision would be more likely and accurate. I believe we are seeing much of both.
Regards,
O.A.
We will have to pick up the slack. I encourage people, especially my nieces and nephews, to read these materials and I will even lend them my copies, but I am a ruthless librarian. I demand they read and return them promptly. If they don't they can forget about birthday presents etc. :)
Regards,
O.A.
You too. If we all reach just a few and they reach few... Like staring with a penny and doubling your money every day... We may end up with a fortune!
Carpe diem!
Regards,
O.A.
They are the zombies they seem to be fascinated with on so many shows and video games they engage in. We must edify them ourselves.
Regards,
O.A.
Waaaaaaay off-topic, but in writing my my previous comment, I was inspired with a scene I plan to add to "Roarke's Drift" (yes, khalling, I haven't given up on it... SSQQ*, that's me).
It's tornado season again, and Roarke and his crew are battling to secure the Drift with several of them on the way. Roarke is agonizing whether it would be safer (for the Drift) to batten her down or to try outrunning the storm.
His future love-interest (still an eco-fascist at this point, and antagonist) sees the frenzied preparation, and his final decision. She looks in his face and sees a look of absolute, desperate terror. Fear that all he's worked for, all that he's built, is going to be destroyed in an eyeblink.
She asks herself why it bothered her so much; this was her enemy, who would poison the Earth for profit. She'd seen men afraid before; delighted in making them afraid, so why does it bother her this time?
Then she thinks of the adversity she'd seen him weather calmly, confidently, already. She looked up at the hated thing he'd created from his imagination and creativity. This indomitable enemy, now humbled and mortal because of nature's fury. She should feel the joy of triumph, and yet... "It's not fair!" the little girl still in her cried out.
And for the first time in her life, she hated Mother Nature.
Roarke's Drift isn't intended as a polemic like "1984" or "Fallen Angels", however. It's just meant to be a middle-finger extended to the left.
*(SSQQ = 2S2Q = "Too Stupid To Quit.")
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/06717...
The difference is that "Fallen Angels" has an optimistic ending; Fandom built a bridge to a Gulch in the sky.
(if you don't get it... read the darned book!)
There are a LOT of references to science fiction and its fans in the book; it's actually dedicated to fandom.
Wade Curtis == Jerry Pournelle
Nat Reynolds == Larry Niven (I think)
Other famous writers and SF "celebrities" are referenced, but not being in fandom, I have no way of knowing who they are. At one point, though, they meet my namesake (minus the "gh") :)
So many lines from it that I like... among my favorites:
"We'll get them high with illegal droogs".
"The sister of misfortune is hope"
"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in"
And probably my absolute favorite...
"Ninety-nine out of a hundred dreams came crashing down around you. But if life always fell short of your expectations, that was no argument for lowering them. There was always the hundredth dream."
I keep wanting to do a movie trailer video for the book, as if it were going to be made into a movie (Pournelle and Niven would never allow that, after "Starshit Troupers"). But, I never have the time and resources. Mostly resources these days (sigh)