Imagine this: tens of thousands of people see something, but there are 'no witnesses' [TRUE STORY]

A mini furor broke out in the dying moments of a rugby game. Because the referee was unsure that the kick had gone between the posts, he had to find some other way to verify that it had. Despite there being thousands of witnesses, the problem was bias. Then the referee turned to the television broadcast and still couldn't be absolutely certain.

This shows systemic failure when the leader/authority fails to perceive accurately, and how this can lead to a cascading perversion of reality or a u-turn in one's fortunes.

There are a couple of examples of this, which I'll list below. One that came up again in a discussion I had last night is the widespread misperception of what is behind the current financial crisis/recession? What do you think caused it? Subprime mortgages? What caused those to go sour? The universal belief that property values would appreciate indefinitely/infinitely, and thus to own or sell an appreciating asset (even if the borrower defaulted) meant you couldn't lose. But they did. Property markets went down because the energy to run suburbia became to expense (and people could no longer to live and operate at these higher prices). So what has caused the current financial malaise? In simple language, what caused this Recession/Depression? High energy prices. If they're low now does it mean it's just a cycle, and we can recover? No, because what predicated high energy prices was supply limits, which means we're in for a permanent contraction.

Most of the world today doesn't understand this due to authorities/leaders/intelligent businessmen mis-perceiving reality. It happens. See below for a few analogies:

The 31-year-old flyhalf on Tuesday night gave supporters a reason to cheer at the drenched Newlands stadium when he ensured that the Emerging Springboks drew 13-13 with the tourists.

But immediately after the match there was a scramble to establish if the touring team had suffered an injustice.

Journalists approached André Watson, South Africa's chief referee, about the kick. Watson admitted that he had his doubts about whether it was a valid kick and therefore studied the visual footage.

The footage appeared to be contradictory but it was finally deduced, partly from the body language of the Lions, that the kick was valid.

"I watched it on Tuesday night in slow motion. With the shot from behind, you are looking for a moment when you see the ball and the posts disappear. You get it on two shots," said Watson.

"What is absurd, is that you are looking from the other corner if the ball disappeared behind the posts. It doesn't happen, but it could perhaps only be because the image loses focus on the replay."

"The answer probably lies with the linesmen who called it. The shoulders of one of the Lions players started hanging right before the flags were lifted and he stood behind one of the linesmen, which is a further indication that the kick was valid."

But what does the humble general of the Western Province himself think about his kick. "It was comfortably there. I don’t know why it took them so long to call it," said De Waal.

"Do you think I would have carried on like that if I had missed?"

The David Bain trial is another analogy, where the certainty that the 22 year old murdered his family is great, but since it's not absolute, he's not convicted. The flip side to this of course is religion, where we demand not absolute certainty, but hold our uncertainty up as evidence of the strength of our convictions. Which is equally dangerous. I believe we're increasingly losing the skill that is critical thinking.

Here's another example by Verashni Pillay:

Cape Town - A fake email dating from a 2006 plane crash has been revived for the Air France Flight 447 crash, with "two shots taken inside the plane before it crashed".

But the blurry shots of a passenger being sucked out of a gaping hole in an aircraft were ascertained to be screen shots from the pilot trailer for the popular series, Lost.

The hoax dates from an October 2006 posting by Brazilian blogger Carlos Cardoso, which he later revealed as an attempt to show that people are not sceptical enough of what they find on the internet.

In this case email users have proved Cardoso right, as many scanned the first few lines and hit forward - despite the email largely referring to an entirely different plane crash in the body of the email.

Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 was a scheduled passenger flight from Manaus, Brazil to Rio de Janeiro, which collided in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy business jet on September 29 2006 over the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

The US media's prosecution of the Iran election as 'unfair' and the uptake by bloggers and mainstream media (and its consumers) despite the fact that Iranians polled showed majority support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demonstrates the Flight 447 effect, which is to scan data that's built on a false premise and pass it on. It's the story of how religions come into being, and how self fulfilling prophecies become self fulfilling. But it needs your participation, and you to think, but not very far.

On Yahoo today there are 3 headlines focussed on Iran alone:
Women in Iran's protests: head scarves and rocks
Mousavi Web site: 70 professors detained in Iran

Iran's Ahmadinejad compares Obama to Bush
Knowingly or unknowling, Yahoo is peddling propaganda to demonise Iran.

Don't believe its propaganda?
The Devil Is in the Digits
The New York Times propaganda war

The Retail Scam

So there's an advertisement on television, Old Mutual I think, and the premise is these people (supposedly you and me and the guys next door) on a rollercoaster ride. They (we) are being taken upward, meanwhile down below some officious looking folks are preparing billboard sized posters to be raised to the top most spot of the rollercoaster (where it peaks and drops off). So what you see is this illusion/delusion/dream/metaphor of pictures being raised to basically frame over the rollercoaster to allow it to rise, then more pictures are added to the upward slanting ride, so that it climbs higher and higher.

Whoever conceived this ad either needs to be sent to next year's academy awards for rendering perfectly how stupid our wishful thinking has become, or should be shot on the spot for being a perpetrator of delusional thinking.

The rollercoaster-with-framed-postcards-taking-the-real-world-rollercoaster-car-into
magic-happy-happy-land ends up doing one thing - disconnecting itself from the machinery, the mechanical apparatus of the actual rollercoaster, and we're left with a fantasy. If this isn't the perfect analogy for our collective delusion and self-congratulatory arrogance and hubris, I don't know what is.

In a very real sense, if you drive a car each day, you basically endorse a world food program that says food for (biofuel) and too bad the other 6th 7ths of the world population who must go without. They're expendable. Because in a very real way, each day you make that choice to carry on driving to work, to go shopping at the mall, to watch advertising and pretend this is all normal - well, you are a perpetrator.

By the way, I was at a mall this evening, Killarney Mall. I treated my landlady with my two free movie tickets. We found, let's see, at least half a dozen shops with the windows wrapped up. This is a stone's throw from suburbs like Houghton and Melville, and 6 shops are already out of business. Incidentally, in Rosebank, there's a mall that is mostly underground, and I'm guessing that 70% of it doesn't even operate. The shops are shells. Nevertheless, from what I understand a third mall is under construction in the area. This is called 'throwaway culture'. When something doesn't work we abandon it, and move on to the next thing. We do the same to people when they're not quite thin, sexy or interesting enough.

My job on NVDL is just to remind you that what you are doing has an impact, and you are culpable for your habits. It's to ingratiate a collective sense of conscience. You know that thing where you realise you might be doing something wrong and start to consider changing, making amends...yes, that. See, culpability has consequences. I'd like to avoid a mass gritting of teeth, where we collectively groan: "How did this happen?" Don't wail, don't whine. It's our everyday habits that propel us towards our future, and don't pretend you don't know where that future takes you. It's a place where everyone gets ripped off, and nobody wins. But I'm guessing you already knew that. You just haven't asked yourself: "Since I know what I am doing has no future, why am I still doing it?" The reason we don't do this is not only because we have lost the ability to think, we are also too afraid of what the answers might be. That is The Retail Scam. We hide from the true costs imbedded inside, hidden behind and within all our habits. And we are so far gone we wouldn't know where to start living any other way.

Petrol-Porn: "Petrol price won’t choke consumers"

The petrol price goes up 30% year on year but we're told it's normal, volatility is normal, don't panic. By all means, don't panic, but by the same token it's very rational that we should be VERY worried. 61cents per litre translates to a lot more money for, say, a trip to Cape Town.
With oil prices hovering around $100 and the Rand hovering at R8.00 to the Dollar, another price hike is likely.

It's stupid at this stage of the game to be spewing the public mindset with this sort of false assurance. In reality we're likely to see a longer term shift (globally) towards higher non-renewable energy prices - for goal, oil and gas. This means higher electricity prices, higher fuel prices and higher prices for everything else.

As such we need to start implementing fairly radical lifestyle shifts. Anyone telling you these price changes are not worth being concerned about should go and work for an advertising agency, or somewhere the ongoing business currency is bullshitting the masses.

More.

JSE Delusional

So here's the setup: we don't even have the electricity to run our economy, but the JSE is just ticking along as usual. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The mines are losing RX billion a day, but no probs, the prices of the metals just shoot up and everything is still hunky dory? Umm....kooo koo. Something is very wrong with this perpetual 'sunny-side-up something for nothing' approach.

The All Share is now at 25755.290, down 2.82%. It ought to be closer to 23 000.

Warming Trends: In Midwest Duck Blinds, Visions of Global Warming

RICH HILL, Mo. — After 32 years of hunting ducks in the wetlands of Missouri, Chuck Geier knows when temperatures will drop and waters will freeze. That means he also knows when the birds will fly and hunting will be best.

Except that much of what he knows is now in question.

“It used to be by Dec. 6, this place was frozen,” said Mr. Geier, 51, a national sales manager for a telecommunications company. “That’s not true anymore.”
From the “prairie potholes” of Canada and the upper Midwest to the destination states of Arkansas and Louisiana, the rhythms of the cross-continental migratory bird route known as the Mississippi Flyway are changing.

In Missouri, where the average winter temperature has been rising, hunters say birds are arriving later and sticking around longer before bolting for warmer redoubts. Elsewhere, wetlands are not freezing over the way they once did.
As hunters point their shotguns toward the sky and fire, a question echoes in the spent powder: what is up with the ducks?

“People say it’s cycles, every five to seven years, but it’s just been too long,” Mr. Geier said of the warming trend, which he traces to the late 1990s. “It’s a wake-up call.”
Five-year averages for “duck use” days on some conservation areas in Missouri show peaks that come a week or more later in the year than do the 30-year averages. Hunters have said in state surveys they want later hunting seasons, reflecting the later arrival of major weather systems that move birds into the state.

In Missouri, the average winter temperature this decade has been about 35 degrees, roughly 2 degrees higher than the previous peak around 1930.
“We’re having milder falls, later winters,” said Dave Erickson, chief of the wildlife division for the Missouri Department of Conservation. “What we don’t know is if the trend that affects migration and the hunters’ desire for a longer hunting season is a temporary fixture or a permanent fixture.”

Sure science is elusive. Scientists and state wildlife officials say there is not clear-cut data to support the reports of changes in duck behavior, but the patterns are familiar. They note that various other animal species, including songbirds, frogs and foxes, are developing different patterns for breeding and migration.

“We’re seeing northern range shifts of lots of birds and butterflies,” said Camille Parmesan, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Texas and a member of the United Nations panel that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work documenting climate change.
Many hunters, wildlife officials and scientists say the changes have added new mystery to waterfowl migration and to how to manage it. Against an uncertain future, state wildlife agencies and conservation groups that cultivate waterfowl populations are re-examining some longstanding conservation approaches and questioning whether business as usual needs to change.

Why, after all, some wildlife experts ask, should money still be poured into cultivating traditional breeding grounds like the prairie potholes of the upper Midwest if some climate forecasts prove true and those areas get too dry for ducks?

“The birds will not be there if you don’t have the same kind of general patterns of moisture and grasslands to nest in,” said Alan Wentz, who oversees conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited, a group that works to conserve and restore wetlands.
Similar questions are being raised elsewhere.

Some experts on Pacific salmon argue for diverting conservation resources away from areas where water temperatures are forecast to become too warm for survival. Some big game experts say deer and elk in many Western states might not leave higher elevations for traditional hunting areas because the weather will be milder. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is already happening. Other animals, like moose in northwest Minnesota, are disappearing from some of the southern latitudes that they have traditionally inhabited.

Matt Hogan, the executive director of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, which represents state wildlife divisions, said the prospect of climate change was presenting wildlife with a new kind of threat. The association devoted part of its annual meeting in September to climate change and wildlife management.
“I know what I can do to mitigate this housing subdivision, but how do I mitigate that?” Mr. Hogan said of climate change. “A lot of it is saying, ‘O.K., what do I have to do to address this?’”
Concern is widespread. Consensus is not.
More.
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

Mississippi Migration
Graphic
Hunters on Global Warming

NVDL: I recently read a blog which listed the blogger's top stories. I recall this person's top blog was something like 10 Reasons Not to worry about Global Warming, or 10 reasons Climate Change is a Hoax. That strikes as the sort of delusional drivel smoking companies came up with just before their advertising was phased out: 10 Myths About Smoking, Why Doctors Smoke, Smoking Is Sexy and Other Benefits. I can imagine that these sorts of bogus and brain dead stories are popular. I can also write popular popcorn crap for example:

1) Why AIDS isn't worth worrying about
2) How to succeed without a matric
3) Slag off your boss and win
4) How to cheat on your partner and get them to love you more than they do now
5) How to lose weight by eating more ice cream
6) Make more money by working less
7) How to succeed without really trying
8) How to lie to people without giving yourself away
9) 10 Reasons Not To Save
10) Why Fast Food Is Healthier Than Home cooked Meals

There's a reason people would want to read the above garbage, and it's a simple one: they want it to be true, they want a lazy, easy approach to getting what they want. In the same way, we want to NOT worry about Climate Change, because that allows us to do squat all. You telling them it's true, and the fact that your drivel is popular doesn't make it any less drivel, it just shows the extent of our delusion, the desperate buy in, and how the stupid infect one another. Today I did a statistical scan of the Top Stories on [a particular] website for the year 2007. It wasn't a story on Lucky Dube, or Gift Leremi, or a newsy political story. No, it was this:

Women now ‘raping’ men

My point is, although the populace may be entertained and moved and interested by tabloid junk, the information we disseminate (whether through talking, emailing or blogging) ought to be sensible, rational and constructive (as least to the extent that we are), and certainly not intentionally the opposite. When we do this, we do so to our collective cost. We spread mediocrity and deaden our sensitivities, our value for life and the living depreciates in favor of laziness. Are we prostitutes for popularity, like Peter Keating (living only for cheap fame and sucking up to the approval of the mob) as opposed to a deeper, more personal, more integral and integrated vision - such as Howard Roark's (in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead). Otherwise we get lost in a cycle that is neither intelligent or useful, and it says a lot about the human animal and our lot, or what our lot can conceivably be.

Wow, flew away on that thought tangent....

ALERT: Oil jumps over $90 a barrel

By Javier Blas 2 hours, 2 minutes ago
Crude oil prices on Friday rose to a fresh all-time high above $90 a barrel as the US dollar sunk to a new low against the euro.

Persistent worries about tight supplies ahead of the winter peak season and fresh geopolitical tensions also helped to push prices higher.

Nymex November West Texas Intermediate hit $90.02 a barrel in overnight trading. It later was 10 cents higher at $89.57 a barrel, extending Thursday's $2.07 price jump. It is the sixth straight trading day that oil set a record high.

Edward Morse, chief energy economist at Lehman Brothers in New York, said that financial flows betting on further US dollar weakness ahead of the Group of Seven meeting and the US Federal Reserve meeting were propping up the oil price.

The dollar traded on Friday to $1.4303 against the euro, after touching earlier a record low of $1.4311 per euro. Investors are betting on a further interest rate cut when the Federal Reserve meets on October 31.

A lower dollar cuts the purchasing power of the barrel, suggesting that producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, would try to keep the oil price higher to compensate for it. The strength of the euro, the sterling pound and other currencies also mean that some countries, particularly in Europe, are partially insulated from the oil price rally.

From Yahoo News. For more go here.

NVDL: Brent Crude - which is the price SA pays for crude - is $83.88, down from $85 last night. That these prices aren't making front page headlines* demonstrates the extent of our chronic delusion and distraction. Also, yes there is a relationship between the high oil price and the low dollar. Read the implications for this here.

In the face of these headlines we still see stories in the paper gleefully shouting: Petrol Prices Likely to Fall. What this does is send out a mixed message, effectively transforming an attitude of rational panic to paralysis and even serenity. Not good.

Kunstler: The Casino Syndrome

The current mania to expand legalized gambling around the country is a clear symptom of how desperate and crazy this society has become. In a culture where anything goes and nothing matters, it is perhaps hard for the public to understand what's wrong with it.

The gambling "industry" itself has very successfully masked its pernicious nature by putting across the idea that it is just another form of innocent "entertainment," on a par with pro sports, theme parkery, and Hollywood.

In fact, gambling, or "gaming," as it cynically calls itself, has hijacked elements of all these other activities to conceal its main business, which is the systematic hosing of those who can least afford to be hosed. What's wrong with state-sponsored gambling is simple: it promotes the idea -- inconsistent with the realities of the universe -- that it's possible to get something for nothing.

It is unhealthy to an extreme for a society to make this idea normal because it defeats another idea that a society absolutely depends on for survival -- namely that earnest effort matters. It conditions the public to magical thinking -- a characteristic of children-- and disables their ability to function as adults. The expansion of gambling is especially tragic at a time when this society faces epochal economic problems that threaten its existence, and by this I mean the permanent global energy crisis that will require us to reorganize virtually all the crucial activities of daily life. This is a time when the nation can least afford to disable adult thinking and earnest effort.

I was out in Iowa last week, in the vicinity of Waterloo, where the John Deere corporation has laid off hundreds of workers in recent years. The town's solution to this problem was to invite a casino to town, and it now stands out above the cornfields like a grinning Moloch, mocking the aspirations of those who remain in the area -- and reinforcing the other foolish and destructive activity going on there, which is the corn-to-ethanol racket aimed at propping up American car dependency. Of course the idea that the backwaters of Iowa might compete with Las Vegas or even the ghastly Atlantic City for gambling tourism is laughable, so who exactly did the local officials imagine would be patronizing the blackjack tables of Waterloo at eleven o'clock in the morning?

Of course, practically every state has some kind if lottery. I have not been in a so-called convenience store (i.e. gas station with snacks) the past year without standing in a long line of grubby, pathetic people spending their scant dollars on lotto tickets (and cigarettes) -- instead of paying the utility bill that would perhaps allow them to bathe and apply for a job.

I don't entertain fantasies that gambling can be eliminated from any society, but inviting it to operate in the mainstream under state sponsorship is just tragically stupid. There is a rightful place for gambling: on the margins of society -- and the crippling ideas that go hand-in-hand with it belong on the margins, too, like the belief that it's possible to get something for nothing. Real political leadership would take stand on this, even if it was unpopular.

Anyway, I predict the time is not far off when an even-more-desperate public itself recognizes that we can't afford either the systematic hosing or the suicidal thinking that comes with gambling. They are going to shut it down. When they do, they will do it harshly and violently. They will turn on those behind it and blame them for promoting the idea that anything goes and nothing matters.
From Kunstler.com.

NVDL: Jim Kunstler is one of the few sane voices in an incredibly deluded world.

BBC admits new breaches of trust

The BBC has confirmed children's show Blue Peter broke guidelines in a vote to name its cat, as it revealed three other breaches of editorial rules. The cat was called Socks after staff changed the results of an online poll. Viewers wanted the cat named Cookie.

BBC 6 Music's head of programmes Ric Blaxill has resigned after two further instances of fictional competition winners on his station were revealed. Another rule breach concerned a film show on the Asian Network.

The BBC said a number of disciplinary proceedings had been undertaken.
From BBC.com

More on this riveting topic:
CRISIS HITS TV INDUSTRY
GMTV's phone-in boss steps down
PM wants TV row 'sorted out' fast
GMTV boss resigns over quiz row
ITV 'expects' phone-in criticism
'Tougher rules' for TV phone-ins
Record fine over TV quiz phone-in
Five in record Brainteaser fine
BBC COMPETITIONS CRISIS
BBC admits new breaches of trust
Producer fired over phone row
BBC sets up standards panel
Editorial leaders suspended
BBC suspends all competitions
Q&A: BBC's editorial lapses
Director general's key points

NVDL: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the sort of stuff making the news...

Beware: The Voice In Your Head

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and die to find out there is."

NVDL: I've heard this sort of thing a lot. It's difficult to convey just how NUTS it is. It basically operates out of a mindset of: 'oh well, I give up. I'm not sure of my beliefs but I'll basically keep up the habit because it seems to be working.'

This is known as 'the psychology of previous investment'. It's why people stay in doomed relationships, it's why we spend a fortune on fixing a car (ultimately more than the car is worth), it's why we spend the whole weekend watching TV. We do it because we're too lazy to THINK. Real thinking is difficult and painful. It requires concentration and discipline. Think critically, and once you find your answers - through careful consideration - new choices, new actions are required. This involves more painstaking decision making. All other 'thinking' is mindless meaningless rumination.

So the next time someone speaks or emails the delusional sentence quoted above (or if you're a subscriber), bear this in mind: Don't guess. Don't assume. Find your answers. Knock on the door. Otherwise you're a fool living on delusions, and that makes you a danger to yourself and to society in general.

Northern Rock and Bio-Bullshit

From Dr Keith Anderson, lecturer in finance at Durham University:

I hope you are being entertained as I am by the current turbulence around Northern Rock. I went up to photograph the queue outside their branch in Durham yesterday. It is the first physical sign that as a Doctor of Finance I might be able to afford to buy a modest house in Durham in a couple of years’ time, once house prices have dropped by 30%… It was reported that £1bn had been withdrawn on Friday, amounting to 4% of Northern Rock’s deposits. The amazing thing to me is that 96% of people DIDN’T withdraw their money on Friday. If I had had any savings with them, I would have been in the queue at 9.00 on Friday morning. Figures in authority say that there is nothing to be afraid of...

From Engineeringnews.co.za: CEO Madi Ramsamy said that Siyanda had secured a supply of soya bean seed from New Crop Seed, and was planning to plant the first crop in October, near Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal.

The project includes the development of a proposed 100 000 t/y soya bean-based biodiesel plant valued at between R1,2-billion and R1,3-billion. It includes the construction of the soya bean processing plant, an oil cake manufacturing facility, an oil extraction facility and a biodiesel refinery.

The project, should it go ahead, will be a joint venture (JV) between petrochemicals giant Sasol, the State-owned Central Energy Fund and Siyanda.Siyanda has also secured contracts for the supply of fuel and fertiliser for the farms.

However, Ramsamy said that JV partner Sasol wanted to delay the project until a policy was in place. Sasol's widely reported standpoint is that a biodiesel plant in South Africa is not economically viable without government support.

NVDL: The Northern Rock thing just shows the extent to which the stock markets, money markets are operating in a grand delusion. This is just the beginning of the Housing Bubble/Credit Crunch. It's not 'entertainment'; it's in fact something to be very afraid of. Why? Because it spells a global recession, which will make 1927 look like a Fairground Attraction.

The Biofuels Brou ha ha is almost as laughable as the Northern Rock delusion. What happened at Bothaville? The enthusiasm to make money seems to cloud the perception completely. The math is simple: add up all the inputs (not just of harvesting, but preparing the land, planting and irrigation) and then compare these to the outputs. If you get a marginal profit (in terms of total energy output) congrats, you score. Unfortunately, this reality remains incontrovertible (to quote Jim Kunstler):

We cannot run the world's highway systems the way we are running them now on any combination (including all combinations) of alternative technologies. Thus, we have to look at alternative transport infrastructure (rail for example), and not keep forcing the issue of cheap and easy motoring. It's simply not going to happen.

If the USA dedicated all of its arable landmass to bio-fuel development, it might have the energy to run its vehicle fleets. But then there would be nothing left for food. See the dilemma?

Is God for Real?

Making sense out of the nonsense

Over the last 6 six weeks, I’ve attended the Alpha Course. Basically it’s an excellent introduction to Christianity. In exchange for attendance, the prospective Christian gets to meet the local community and imbibe a three course dinner once a week. So, have I learnt anything? Yes! I’ve learn that it is vital that all people connect themselves to the local community, and by implication, give up their hyper individualism.

Aplha is a dated set of DVD’s presented by the charmingly articulate and intelligent Englishman Nicky Gumbel (an ex-barrister). Alpha is very affirming and positive and Gumbel’s analogies are always constructive, and often humorous. Even if you’re not a Christian, his ‘take’ is worth noting.

Christians will argue with this position, naturally. They will say there are many ways to go to heaven, to be saved, as long as it is through Jesus. The idea is that we are born into sin, so basically you’re indebted from the word go, and God, like a benign bank manager, will bail you out of your bankruptcy once you’ve made the appropriate declarations. Really?

This concept makes sense to some Christians; who believe that God is pulling all the strings (you can ask God to organize you parking, give you a nice day, and give your team victory over another). But it becomes difficult to reconcile this ‘reality’ when you start to imagine more than one person praying the same wallowing prayer: “Help me. Give Me. Save Me.” Bruce Almighty found himself in the selfsame predicament.

Flight 93 provides another succinct analogy for how ridiculous our thinking (or lack of thinking) can be: the airplane is in a terminal nosedive and the suicidal hijacker is praying, shouting desperately to Allah, while behind him all the passengers are praying, screaming to God. The airplane nevertheless slams into a Pennsylvania field, killing Christian and Muslim alike.

But the power of prayer, while we’re still making up our minds what to do, and who we intend to be, can’t be dismissed. Prayer is very effective in bringing about specific manifestations in reality. It’s important for people to meditate in a deep, quiet place, on those things of the universe that are important to Being. The act of prayer also does a great deal to reset our paradigms; we are placed once more into the clockwork of the universe, and we’re able to measure our respect for ourselves and others in the world. This is a vitally important practice.

Whereas Christians believe prayer to be a conversation with God, they also concede that it is the person praying who changes, not God. This is interesting, because it presupposes a scenario in which God does not need to do anything. The onus is on the ardent praying person to recognize what needs to change, and take action accordingly.

Those Christians who profess to ‘hear’ God speaking to them actually mean that they read particular verses (even a number of corresponding verses) and then develop a strong response to these messages. Others will describe God’s voice as a ‘feeling’, and often, especially in conversations Christians have with one another, God’s thoughts seem interchangeable with their own. But God’s voice is really man’s voice, and man – whether well or ill-intentioned – gets what he needs done through leveraging the persona of God.

An example: I was in a massive Baptist Church building earlier this year and listened to the pastor (who happened to be blind) saying: “God will provide the poor with food.” It all sounded wonderful, except that this statement required an addendum: “If God speaks to your heart, please respond with tins of food, whatever you’re led to bring.” George W. did the same thing to mobilize his army into Iraq. People understood the move as “God’s work’ and ‘God’s will’. God of course had nothing to do with it, except that when enough people consented to ‘God’s will’, it became God’s will. That’s what faith en mass does.

Thus God’s actions are our actions. This is the reality of the world; it is not the narrow definition of a Christian God, or a Jewish God, or any other God. That God exists there is no doubt. Even Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s foremost intellectuals, would probably agree that the idea of ‘God’ is interchangeable with ‘all that is’. And yes, even you, and even I, contribute to this Isness that is all around us, being created in the present moment.

But is this Isness a God with a personality, an identity, or is the Isness less personal? The answer depends entirely on you. It’s the same answer to this question: what is the meaning of life? No one can provide you with the answer, that’s your domain, for you will someday find yourself pondering the meaning (or lack of) in your own life, and then it is you, and you alone who needs to develop a Life Appropriate and Life Specific response.

The same is true of God. How did God come about? A great way to begin to answer all the most fundamental questions: birth, death, the afterlife, love and God, is to look at powerful firsthand experience. What, really, is your experience of God? Well, that’s what God is for you.

Is there life after death? It’s a question a lot like this one: when you’re sleeping are you awake? Ultimately of course, the question ought to answer itself. In the conventional wisdom of the world, sleep is sleep, and being awake – being conscious – is being awake. So to wonder, as we do, and as we must, about life after death, we are really coming to the core of what we believe.

If Christians really believed that paradise waited for them, why would they and their families endure the burdens of life and work? Why not go there immediately? It may seem like an absurd question, but it isn’t. Fundamentalist Christianity is really taking the bible at its word, and if we did, homosexuals would be jailed or worse, adulterers put to death, and infidels slaughtered on the battlefield.

But many Christians focus on the warm fuzzy stuff in the bible. They say to ‘love one another’ is what the bible is all about. If our idea of the world and God is Isness, then being nice towards one another certainly isn’t a bad idea. Do we need God to tell us what is self-evident: treat people nicely because the world has a way of paying you back for all your misdeeds. This is basic reality.

One argument that is almost never raised when non-Christians converse with Christians is this one: Why would an all-Powerful God have to resort to an elaborate drama that is the life and times of Jesus Christ? To put this into pure and simple terms: if you have a child that has misbehaved (because you said so), would it really be necessary to slaughter someone that is very close to you (as a substitute for yourself) as a way to say, “Okay, I forgive you, everything is fine.”

Is it so hard for human beings to imagine that things are as simple as they seem? Death is the thing that ought to make us think a few times before we do the things we do? We ought to drive more carefully, exercise, treat others well, because after this life, it’s over.

The idea of a second chance, rewards and paradise (effectively for doing nothing but having faith) is the delusion that will doom our civilization. The ‘something-for-nothing’ psychology is an unnatural and insidious deception that most people somehow accept as true. We wish to be celebrities based on our appearance, or win the lottery, or find the perfect partner; forgetting that chance governs a small subset of the universe. Work and deeds governs most of reality.

The idea that each of us (separately and as a collective) are responsible for creating the Isness, is how we save each other and ourselves. Reality is our choice, and each and every day we have a chance to make new choices. Do we accept or reject what is self evident? That’s the choice God has left to us, whatever we may believe.

Kunstler: Shocked!

From kunstler.com:

>Kunstler doesn't pull any punches in this instalment. Easy guy! Waitaminute, then again, let 'em fly Jim.<

Shocked, shocked! Alan Greenspan's memoirs are being flogged across the airwaves, bandwidths and printing presses, and the cohort of those who comment on public affairs in these media are shocked by the Maestro's confessions -- first, that a housing bubble emerged out of his leadership in the banking sector, and second that the Iraq war is about oil. As usual, they're getting it all wrong -- about as wrong as Al himself got it. But that is the way of things in this age of cultural dissipation and gross cognitive dissonance.

Greenspan claims he had no idea that his cutting of interest rates to near zero would produce any irregularities in the US economy. Apparently he hadn't noticed that the Big Fund Boyz called him "Easy Al" for a reason. Or that when you introduce nearly free "money" (as in "available for lending") into a system of financial trade, the recognition of moral hazard tends to evaporate. As the nation's chief bank regulator, Greenspan also apparently failed to notice the upsurge in dodgy lending practices previously only seen among mafia loan sharks, drug dealers, or twelve-year-olds playing Monopoly.

But the really funny part of all this is that the media columnists are acting as though the American public got hoodwinked by Al. Which raises the question: just what the fuck was the public thinking when they bought half-million dollar houses on salaries under 60-K, taking out no-money-down, interest-optional balloon mortgages and other tricked-up contracts? The answer is: they walked into these arrangements with their eyes open because they thought they could get something for nothing.

They thought the trend of steeply rising house prices would continue indefinitely and enable them to wiggle free of any hazard by flipping their houses to an endless supply of greater fools who would be there waiting to turn the very same trick. And the smoothies downstream in the mortgage and banking rackets were no less guided by avarice when they cooked up their formulas for bundling half-baked mortgages into tranches of tradeable securities. Easy Al may have failed to notice what was going on here, but then so did everybody else from The Wall Street Journal to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This, of course, represents an insidious psychology. It could only happen in a culture that has come off the rails mentally, so to speak, as ours has in the sense that nobody has any sense of consequence, neither the leaders nor those who affect to follow the leaders. The leading religion in America is not evangelical Christianity, it is the worship of unearned riches, and its golden rule is the belief that is is possible to get something for nothing. Its holy shrines are Las Vegas and Wall Street. (And, by the way, has anybody heard the evangelical Christians complain about Las Vegas? They complain about a lot of things, but are themselves among the greatest believers in unearned riches -- given their preference for prayer over earnest effort in the service of solving life's problems.)

No, the American public, including the cheerleaders in the media, have only themselves to blame for the bitter harvest now underway in the asset and credit markets. And thus it would be salutary thing for Baby Jeezus, or the forces of nature, or whatever powers guide the universe, to now kick the shit out of them, so to speak, financially, because that is exactly what the American public is full of, from top to bottom, from George W. Bush at his lonely desk on Pennsylvania Avenue to the pitiful, bankrupt householders of Orange County and Boca Raton.

Now, as to the shock of Al's revelation that the Iraq war is about oil -- the media and the public has got this all wrong, too. The logic here seems to be that because the Iraq war is about oil it is therefore unnecessary, optional, a mistake, an indulgence, something we should not dirty our hands in.

In fact, the Iraq war is not about oil, per se, so much as it is about America's behavior here at home, about the choices we make for how we live on this continent. None of those who complain most loudly about our military presence in Iraq have advanced any proposals for reforming how we live here -- and hence for our enslavement to oil, much of the world's remaining supply of which happens to be in the neighborhood of Iraq.

When these complainers start complaining about the ubiquitous acceptance of suburban sprawl and abject car-dependency -- and this includes the environmental boy scouts out there who want to get merit badges for buying hybrid cars -- then they will deserve to be taken seriously. Until then, the American people have got exactly the grinding war that they deserve. Let them whine about it all the way to the Nascar tracks, and let them console themselves with giant plastic bottles of Pepsi Cola and buckets of chicken raised on corn grown with oil byproducts.

On CBS's "60-Minutes" show last night, Greenspan, in his new role as a private sector economic consultant made predictions for the coming months in the US economy. He declared that the financial sector would get over the current credit squeeze as if it were a mild case of indigestion brought on by one too many fried won-tons at the all-you-can-eat buffet, a mere burp, allowing the public to move on to the crab Rangoon and a helping of General Tsao's chicken. This gets back to the previous point about the Iraq war and oil in particular. Al doesn't get it. CBS's sycophant reporters don't get it. Nobody gets it.

We are entering the zone of the long emergency in which the primary resource needed to run the industrial economies will become scarce, expensive, and profoundly destabilizing to markets and to normal life, such as it is known in this country. And the current problem in the markets is a reflection of the resource bankruptcy we are facing. Our problems are not about credit, they are about permanent insolvency.

In his old age, Alan Greenspan's face -- once darkly handsome in his youthful years as a jazz musician -- has taken on the strange appearance of a circus clown. Something about the way his lips have settled into a kind of thick fatuous smile, even when he is apparently not amused by anything. Is it one of God's clever little tricks to leave him looking like a clown in his valedictory years, or has his face just resolved into the perfect embodiment of leadership for a clown nation?

The Vitamin Conspiracy

Are our attempts to boost immunity doing more harm than good?

It was in a Biology class when I was a teenager, that I first learned the concept that excess Vitamin C is carcinogenic. I remember reading the section of text a few times over, and then passing it around. It was hard to believe then, and now, years later, people use vitamins even more, far in excess of recommended levels.

Dr. Michael Leitzmann and his colleagues have discovered that men who ingest excess vitamins are particularly vulnerable to cancer of the prostate. When men habitually ingest more than the 7 recommended doses in a given week, their chances of contracting an advanced cancer spikes 30%; the chance of contracting a deadly cancer doubles through this same habit of consuming excess multivitamins. These findings are based on almost 300 000 men who were studied over a 5 year period to determine a link between prostate cancer and multivitamin use.

No general cancer risk was evident; instead the risk was related to a more aggressive cancer, capable of moving beyond the prostate gland. The message then is directed at men; that if they must take multivitamins, to stick to the prescribed doses.

In terms of the anti-oxidants (A, E and beta-carotene), 47 clinical trials conducted by the Cochrane Centre on 180 000 volunteers determined a greater risk of death as a result of merely making use of these supplements. No evidence, for example, was found that anti-oxidants were able to prevent cardiovascular infections. It was also determined that the consumption of these supplements did more harm than good in healthy subjects, as opposed to pregnant women or others (e.g. those HIV positive) suffering from chronic vitamin deficiencies.

Vitamin C and selenium was found to neither decrease the risk of death, or increase it (at the correct dosage), meaning, there was a negligible benefit if any.

The trend is that although many people aren’t sure that vitamins are effective, they consume and use them on the off chance that they might be. Now we have clinical evidence to prove the cardinal error in this line of thinking.

Prof. Jimmy Volmink (of the South African Cochrane Centre) commenting on research conducted by the Cochrane Centre, recommends that vitamins be sought directly at source: in produce, such as fruits and vegetables.

Volmink also added that it is more beneficial to one’s health to go on a long holiday, than to take anti-oxidants.

Of course, the reason millions of people use vitamins in the first place is because it is Big Business, and Big Business sells it to consumers under the guise of supposed (potential but not proven) efficacy. AC Nielsen pegged the total sales value of vitamins sold in 2006 (in South Africa) at R570 million. This figure is increasing at over 25% a year, according to the report by AC Nielsen.

For some years, aware of the fallacy surrounding vitamins, I have critically looked at the language advertisers use to promote everything from anti-aging creams to vitamins. In almost every case, the emotive language makes use of crucial qualifiers, like ‘can’, or ‘may’, and in some cases ‘helps’.
Example:
So Vitamin X can bring health to your whole family. Be vigilant! Be discerning!
Sure it can, but not in terms of the way it is packaged. Vitamins that are packaged are seldom, if ever, effective, and even when they might be they need to be absorbed at the correct levels and often in combination with other substances such as minerals, enzymes etc. Buying vitamins off a shelf as the product advertised is simply a deception. In the same way that misleading tobacco advertising has been addressed, the same generally misrepresentative advertising and labelling ought to be nipped in the bud with regard to vitamin products.

Being aware of this, I asked my doctor to prescribe something that would really help boost immunity (following a secondary lung infection). He suggested Moducare, a formula which contains plant sterols and sterolins. On the packaging it claims to be: The only formula proven in extensive research. The dosage is high, 1 tablet 3 times daily.

Once again it seems as though laziness is what drives us to put our faith in vitamins in pill form. We are a society wanting to eat junk which robs the body of vital nutrients – such as the diuretics: caffeine and alcohol – but then we think we can play catch-up by fueling up on vitamins. It doesn’t happen that way. This approach costs us not only our health, but money otherwise better spent.

The way to health then is a straightforward but not necessarily convenient approach: regularly purchase fruit and vegetables. Preparing vegetables is also important when we’re conscious of their vitamin value. Avoid microwaving. Rather steam your vegetables until they are soft enough to eat. Boiling is best to avoid too since what the heat doesn’t kill, the goodness that remains goes into the water poured out of the pot.

Fruits can be consumed as is, but not substituted for fruit juice. The reason why fruits have vitamins and not fruit juices was explained to me once by a Hungarian doctor. It made an impression that stayed with me ever since. As soon as you kill an animal, or pluck a fruit from a tree, the vitality in the tissues of that plant or animal immediately begin to fall. Vitamins are precious threads of vitality in living organisms, but once the tissue is dead, the vitamin quality erodes quickly. Imagine it as a gas that seeps out with the spent lifeforce. The next step is imagining the storage of these vitamins, for days, weeks and months, alongside preservatives and other chemicals. The life and goodness has long since left the building. Thus the idea that consuming fruit juice as a credible substitute for the source fruit is simply crazy. Orange juice for example is rarely orange, and tastes nothing like freshly squeezed oranges. Also, original orange juice does not preserve well, nor for very long (as do many other juices). Even when natural preservatives are used (such as from apples and grapes), in the end it is still an artificial beverage that often has more sugar than soda pop, and very limited nutritional value.

Vitamins packed on shelves in pharmacies and supermarkets are therefore a big con. Why? Because vitamins, the vitality of the host, cannot be stored. Minerals, of course can be.
So if you are serious about looking after your health, or boosting your immunity, bear in mind The Vitamin Conspiracy. The old tried and trusted common denominators are free or cheap, and will add years of quality to your life: eat fresh produce every day, exercise, get enough sleep, rest and find time to live and laugh.

Background for this article sourced and translated from an article by Diana-Marie Strydom: Antioksidante kan jou dood beteken, se navorsers (Antioxidants kan kill you, researchers say).