That's not really fair.

Corporate health care and food and drug systems have a proven track record of making everybody sick for profit, and the laws of competition simply don't work as promised in preventing this. If they did work, then Americans wouldn't be so fat and sick. At least with government there is the idea that control and regulation are in the hands of the public.

That's the dream, anyway. The reality is that the military/industrial interests have taken over the government, so democracy is a big fail.

But the original idea itself was sound. It's too bad that the real world is corrupt to the core. Thank-goodness for this coming ice age and the comets and all the other stuff which will be wiping the slate clean!

-FL

Actually, I'm glad the two of you posted. I can just add it to the list of items which seem to indicate that parts of North America are being affected differently by these weird weather patterns than is Europe.

-FL

Until you spend some time on the lonely side of the podium, it's hard to comment with a full scope of knowledge on this question.

Classes where laptops are left closed result in much more engaged and dynamic classes. Those where they are open result in the "room full of zombies" effect. There's a reason it's so annoying to talk with somebody who looks away and digs in a purse or engages elsewhere when it's your turn to speak. The bio-feedback loop collapses and the teacher might as well post lectures on YouTube and students post questions in an on-line forum somewhere. Heck; on YouTube you can pause and re-play stuff. And it's cheaper!

Universities were built and people attend them at great cost in order to assemble like-minds in one place so that everybody can benefit from those aspects of humanity which thrive on face to face communication, (also earned at great cost through the trials of evolution). There are many layers of communication taking place, both subtle and extreme, which bring a room alive when people engage in each other in meat-space, but which are stripped away when it's done through a computer screen. This doesn't mean that the virtual world is without benefit. It's not; computers are a boon. But the virtual world can be attended any time, any place you can flip open a laptop. It was built to simulate the grand effect of a campus assembly. But if you are actually attending a college assembly. . ?

Laptops need to be used responsibly. Turn off animations and distracting screen savers in respect of the people sitting near you. If you're going to take notes, then sure, do so, but have the courtesy to limit it to notes and stay engaged in discussions. If you need to look something up to aid the discussion, then sure, do that, but in general things work best when all eyes and ears are on whoever is speaking. If you want to play on Facebook or dip into a game, then that's fine by me, but please physically leave class first because you're literally sucking the life out of the room by removing your mind and leaving a vacant corpse in your chair. It's creepy.

Ideally, I like to have wifi and fluorescent lights killed and windows open for fresh air. I also like to rearrange the chairs so that we can all see each other to better engage. Do that, and everybody wakes up, but these days it's very hard to scrub an environment of all the fuzz designed to keep us zoned out.

-FL

Ok he's a scumbag for trying to build a water pipeline and sell water. So, if there is no pipline and there is a drought the city can use water rationing and raise rates, but at least they won't be buying water from the evil man. Yup makes perfect sense to me.

It doesn't matter what course you choose to take. If you leave the psychopaths in positions of power, then whatever system is used will only lead to further misery.

These problems can only be solved by the recognizing and removal of non-humans. I'd start at the banking level, remove the psychopaths from that system, undo usery, and then work down.

If the ability to experience empathy is a pre-requisite before one can be considered human, then Psychopaths are not human. They are a predator population which has embedded itself at the highest levels of power and social control. If you want to treat them kindly, then that's fine, but whatever happens, they need to be removed from their positions or we will continue to live in a state of war, poverty and misery.

-FL

I like your version of reality better than the one I live in. I'd sign up in a heartbeat if I felt you could deliver. :(

-FL

Thank you for the advice, but I'm going to ignore it. In fact, the more I learn, the more fascinating the world becomes and the less apathetic I grow. I certainly don't disagree that governments are incapable of imagination, but I don't see how that proves your point; 9/11 was utter Bruce Willis shlock designed for a low-brow TV addicted nation.

Maybe your books, people, experiences, practices and modes of thinking need to be updated?

Or maybe you need to avoid tap water? Fluoride poisoning is one of the leading causes of apathy.

-FL

Wrong. Scientific method is such a necessity because so many people refuse to do anything more than pay it lip service.

If you stop putting on a nice civilly compliant act of knowledge seeking and go and actually seek some knowledge, you'll be much richer for the experience. You'll be ostracized, of course, but only by a bunch of cognitively dissonant muggles utterly unworthy of any respect whatsoever, so who cares?

-FL

This reads like "Project Blue Book" crap, which was later admitted by those involved to be nothing more than a public relations lie factory.

A cursory flip through these documents reveals them to be a sampling of sleep-worthy accounts, (points of light in the sky which are easily identifiable as satellites or other mundane objects) and a collection of letters written by school children and un-balanced people along with the patient responses from overwrought defense officers charged with the duty of replying to this nonsense. -Along with a bunch of internal memos where clipped newspaper articles were circulated among government staffers.

Either New Zealand's military, police and air traffic officials are blissfully excluded from the rest of the planet which has lived through hundreds of events of a far more dramatic nature and which include multiple witness accounts including people who are not allowed to omit documenting their experiences.., or this whole release is carefully edited spin.

I mean, come on. This is published by a government! As anybody who has experienced anything to do with any government anywhere, the people involved must exist in a state filled with 800 pound gorillas and the game-theory proven reality is that never, ever sticking your neck out is simply the only way to survive as a civil servant.

The only interesting point in all of this is that somebody somewhere decided that spin was in fact needed. THAT means there is a fear that the population was threatening to become a little too informed and needed to be tucked back in.

I'd say that Richard Dolan is largely responsible for this response, and he's been soundly dealt with over the last year or so; a man who was once a premier UFO researcher of impeccable academic quality and grit has been given quite the mind-fuck lately with a lot of weird influences introduced into his life. (Creepy psyops people). He's been seduced into doing those idiotic TV shows for heaven's sake!

This kind of release would help along the impression that his work is just a bunch of bunk.

Oh well.

-FL

Somebody is clearly writing this nonsense.

If their insight into the reality of what makes the human mind react is this thin, then I can only imagine that the punchline/plot-twist/grand-finale is going to be just as campy and groan-worthy.

If they hadn't already softened up (force-fed) their audience with twenty years of the most embarrassingly and increasingly low-brow circuses humanity is capable of viewing without actually drooling into their popcorn, I'd venture to guess that nobody would buy any of this farce.

-FL

Agreed, but without cameras on the cops you will never get both sides of the story. It makes sense that they should have cameras and everyone should be able to record them as well. At least in a free society.

Well, if you apply a little logic that defense seems a lot more probable than 'I was minding my own business doing nothing wrong and the officer started clubbing me.' If there are officers who beat people for no reason then they need to be sent to jail, if there are officers who use excessive force when it isn't needed then they need to be retrained or fired, and when an officer is in a situation which requires force and he uses the proper amount of force he should be commended. We can't make a judgment without seeing the full story and something captured on a cell phone camera won't cut it unless it caught the entire incident.

I kinda understand where the officer was coming from. There were some people loitering outside a gun buyback and buying guns. This in itself is not illegal, but if the owners of the property object then the loiterers can be asked to leave, or they can call the police and ask the police to make them leave. All normal. When the officer gets their CCLs that's pretty normal too, people loitering where they don't belong buying guns seems like probable cause. The problem is that the officer treated them like criminals instead of like innocent bystanders conducting a harmless transaction where they are not wanted. There was no cause for the officer to get upset with the questions being asked. The problem here comes from the police officers assumption that he is the law rather than the enforcer of laws, and sadly that is pretty common in these incidents. Once he had determined that the people there were within their legal rights he should have asked them not to loiter around there and wished them a happy holidays.

I work with an ex police officer and he's pretty set against 'civilians' recording police, in his eyes its another way to get innocent police officers in trouble since a lot of the videos that have implicated officers in the past have lacked any context. This makes sense because a clip showing police brutality could be part of a longer incident where the suspect resisted arrest and tried to hurt the officer. I understand that in the heat of the moment a person who feels their life is in jeopardy may use force which seems excessive out of context. That being said, the same officer buddy is in favor of red light cameras, the nanny state, and airport scanners that see through your clothes. You can't have it both ways in a free and just society. You can't give the police the ability to watch everyone while denying the public the ability to watch the police. I think a better solution, that nobody in law enforcement would like, would be to put cameras on police officers and also allow the public to photograph them. That way in a court of law you have evidence that can provide context to any side videos in play. If the police officer is innocent he has nothing to fear from the surveillance, that's the line they have been feeding the public in general so it's fitting for it to fly back in their faces.

Then why does the bill of rights outline the rights of individuals? Oh yeah, it doesn't. I specifically outlines the powers and rights of the federal government. Sadly most individuals and the federal government have forgotten that the government works for us at our express consent. I think it's time to remind the politicians in Washington just what WE HIRED THEM to do.