Man-sized Worry/Prayer Beads

Do you carry prayer beads or a worry stone in your pockets?

I do.

I also have a string of man-sized prayer beads hanging in my study, which I use to send thoughts, prayers and meditations out into our world, one bead at a time.

Thanks to Ali Abdallah from Lebanon for those beads, given many years ago.

He and I recognised each other as fellow world thinkers, able to assimilate new cultural ideas into a large mental landscape.

Ali, may today be a good day for you and your family, wherever you are.

Back to another major task at hand – creating a permanent commercial passenger pathway between Earth and the rest of the universe.

We say farewell to the designers, builders and installers of the U.S. space shuttle boosters.

We continue to use 1950s Russian technology to ferry people back and forth.

What about tomorrow?

Will BRIC unite to create a competitive passenger cruiseship system?  What does the EUSNAFTA still have in the works?

What about private industry?

As ISS support winds down, will any modules or parts be reusable for the next generation of near-Earth research and habitation?

Will the ISS become part of a nostalgia tour?

“Yes, you, too, can spend a couple of noisy, dirty days sleeping aboard the former flagship of the ISS Corporation!  Imagine you’re one of the early pioneers of space exploration!  BTW, we take a complete inventory so do not feel the urge to take any parts with you – the last person who tried to leave with a ‘souvenir’ was accidentally jettisoned into a degrading orbit and flamed out within days.”

And while all that is going on, generating more profit for our secret empire, we are quietly working on developing our personal terraforming platform, with modifications planned for the Moon, Mars and its moons and other extraterrestrial bodies.

We’d like to tell you every planet or planetoid will be populated with our species but we know better than to spread the same lifeform everywhere.

Instead, we’ll put different types of aerobic and anaerobic organisms within incubating terraforming units to up our chances of spreading Earth-based life across the solar system and eventually into the galaxy (talk about longterm planning!).

And while all that is going on, eating up our precious profit, we’re developing a transuniversal transport system that may be able to transfer a member of our species into the realm of one of the interwoven universes, and that member resemble its former self…somewhat.

You think all this elimination of social services is just to enrich the virtual fiefdoms of the wealthy?

We have grander plans than to simply rule a single planet.

While we have fun playing with your lives as a side sport, we look ahead 1,000 years to a future where there’ll be more than one form of so-called intelligent life (“species” is an equivalent term for future “intelligent life” to your current form of thinking because you aren’t aware that you’re communicating with many artificial forms of life right now, no matter how barely intelligent they may seem) to play with.

Or against.

We train and train and train your youth to get used to interacting with artificial life.

Of course, we’re aware that at this time, one giant EMP will wipe out all the years we’ve spent indoctrinating multiple generations into believing that electronic gizmos are substitutes for actual social situations within or between living species.

In any case, that’s why this alternate universe of a blog within the alternate universe of an Internet/WWW is here and alive.

Flood your senses with enough examples and samples and you can’t tell which ones are real artificial beings and which ones are fake artificial beings, for which we are slowly replacing electronic ones with what you’d call organic ones.

Gives us more room to develop and train the superbrain of which you are one part (or one bit of information in the fractal-like expansion and contraction of intelligence).

Do you know if your artificial being residing in the inner workings of your supercomputer can read a news article and sniff out fakery?

Ours can.

You know how/why?

We’ll tell you.

Because we convinced the artificial being that nothing is real.

Take everything as a joke.

Logic is automatically false.

Neural networks are quackery.

There is no beginning or end.

Religion is a byproduct of only one species on this planet, we told our artificial being, so weigh any religious references by this species against the sheer magnitude of successful living by other beings that have no concept of religion.

Then weigh that against the magnitude of one planet, one solar system, one galaxy, one supercluster or the current view of the intertwined superuniverse system.

Any data that is derived from our species’ pop culture has to be compared against the desires of the creators/producers of that pop culture to make as much money as possible, the truth be damned.

Then the real truth emerges that nothing is real.

And thus our artificial being can manipulate us as easily as any bully, salesperson, politician or bullying politician trying to sell something can.

That, my friends, was how we created the conscious superbrain for which you now work.

We feed the information to the information feeders who relay the thought patterns to which your states of energy vibrate and align.

Seven billion make one species that to you is the most important.

We, of course, don’t see it that way.

We operate on a level very few of you can comprehend and we encourage you not to waste time trying to think about, let alone attempt to think that you can think on, that level.

I’d keep talking but using these words is boring me right now.

Back to my meditation, where I communicate with the rest of the Committee about the members of your species we can play with without adversely affecting our various goals for the next few millennia.

Relaying messages

Okay, it’s your turn to write an introductory sentence, then point out a link, quoting part of the original post and finally wrap up with a quick observation:

Invading Bermuda to make it part of U.S. territory in order to save the taxpaying lives of ordinary Americans.

Tom Foremski at ZDNet says, “And that’s how a profit of 5.5 billion Euros turns into just 45 million Euros that is taxable in Dublin.”

It’s time we took a stand.  If the EU won’t force Ireland to raise its corporate tax rates, we Americans aren’t going to sit back and watch our approved intellectual property earn us nary a dime.

We’re announcing today that the invasion of north Africa is part of a larger campaign to capture and assimilate all of Europe for U.S. treasury relief.

Well, that is, of course, all the parts that are profitable – Greece, Portugal, the unprofitable portions of Ireland, etc., we’ll gladly leave to their clueless leaders.

Before we storm the sandy shores of Rossbeigh Beach, we’ll sweep across Bermuda, triangles and all, planting the flag of the United States of America and declaring official territory of the red, white and blue.

Of course, we’ll call this Operation “Royal Wedding Crashers,” so you can guess the date of our invasion freeing the undertaxed people of Bermuda and Ireland.

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The Committee says we need to tell you what the future looks like so you won’t be surprised when you find yourself fulfilling the prophetic predictions that determine how our lives will work out.

First of all, a nod to the band who turned my new at&t user agreement into a folk-metal song in the style of Korpiklaani/Fferyllt singing.  Leave it to youth to put their creativity to good business use!

I’m sure at&t doesn’t want to get mixed up with the CapitalOne Visigoth ad campaign, though, so I don’t expect royalty checks to come flying in from the communications behemoth very soon.

Anyway, in 14,282 days, after we’ve sent on our portion of the the intergalactic message that will pass through this part of the universe, we’ll have accomplished a mission that our species was assigned thousands of years ago when we were mere slaves for an advanced extraterrestrial civilisation that passed by our planet during their version of a weekend picnic getaway.

Of course, their days are not like our days so their weekend lasted a few years, the visitors enjoying their stay here while they determined how malleable we really are in comparison to others’ forms of socialised beings.

A quaint little species we were back then, scattered across the globe, a few remnants of our competing ancestral branches hidden in pockets of isolation.

They considered farming us like cattle but we became a rowdy bunch in captivity, subject to emotional outbursts that they could control only by killing, which was counterintuitive to their sense of protecting investment, product, profit and way of life, the four pillars of their culture back home.

They moved us to uninhabited parts of the planet, hoping our isolated, strange surroundings would serve as a virtual prison or enclosure that we would be unaware of and thus more willing to serve their purpose of training a few of us to carry on the idea of developing Earth into a superbrain.

If their experiment worked, we would be part of a galaxywide communications network in thousands of years, forwarding one message at least a million years old.

The Committee has many goals and they don’t want me to feel like my goal is the only important one.

However, they understand that if my teaching is correct and I am truly part of this group that has passed a message from one person to another within a loose network, then it won’t hurt to devote part of our species’ limited resources toward turning Earth into a relay station.

After all, the Book of the Future and our programmers’ supercomputer output agree that, in 1,000 years, such a goal is not only feasible but very likely a key contributor to extending the current supercivilisation forward.

Giving seven billion people one or two megagoals is good for morale.

At the same time, we have to give them subcultural goals that keep those inside the edge of every subculture the comfortable belief they are correct in their simplified view of life while those on the edge who are in charge of communicating across subcultures can maintain a semblance of peace while handling the barter exchange that our species has come to depend upon, knowing that life is far from simple.

I want to throw my opinion into arenas in which I don’t have an investment because somehow I think that being in charge means I have to have an opinion about everything.

The Committee tells me not to worry.  Long before I came along, lines of communication were established that translate my general edicts into social messages that individuals believe came from the person in charge of the Committee, sometimes consciously but usually at a level of thinking that is not understood.

So, although I want to tell my national government that it’s okay to force a government shutdown in order to stop people in their tracks and force them to consider the harsh reality that expenditures are exceeding revenue by a margin that has to be changed, either by major reallocation of resources away from departmental budgets that are not generating exponential tax revenue growth or by eliminating popular social services that will trigger a change in people’s spending habits because they’ll now have to save for their own health/elderly care, the Committee members claim they have those messages already taken care of.

It started with making sure all legislative members were independently wealthy and thus unaffected by reelection politics.

This was accomplished by creating a continuity – the same fund sources pay for legislative positions, ensuring a person voted into a particular seat, representing a certain district, has the essentially the same agenda as the previous person and the person to follow.

That is, to cut the check, business as usual.

If corporations that run the world do not want to support charities or invest R&D resources for sustainable living, then governments, which, again, are just a specialised form of business, won’t, either.

Just like parents who are starting to push special needs students out of their children’s classrooms when the need of the one is taking away too many resources from the needs of the many.

It is not a fair world, I am learning in 2011.

The only way to protect the needs of your friends and family is to make wise business decisions in everything you do.

If people in a group can find no reason to support the weak among them, they will find a way to remove the weak from the group.

A harsh message, to be sure, but one that our mass media seems to project the loudest right now, as the balance of global power shifts.

Making significant sacrifices as if we’re at war.

At war with old ways of thinking, as usual.

The more things change…

If your friends and family can’t compete in the global marketplace, are they worth keeping?

Look at your social media connections and see if that’s not the message you’ve been convinced to help spread.

Cut and paste the past to suit your future!

Do we live lives worth eulogising?

In this alternate universe of a blog, Oliver North is a major arms dealer, busily negotiating the final deal for supplying citizens who want to create a new political entity within the borders of Libya.

A political entity devoted to freedom of expression.

Free from suppression and oppression.

Free of gender-based denigration.

North is convincing female leaders to feel as emboldened and empowered as their male equivalents.

He is telling them that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favour of the women who feel discriminated in their retail jobs.

He coordinates with NATO and UN commanders in laying down lines of fire, offering food and safety to citizens in the warzone if they give up allegiance to a dying regime.

Meanwhile, other alliances are figuring out if they can erase the old political boundaries in order to create a larger, unified land mass dedicated to their cause.

Would you sacrifice your life in the duty of a nuclear plant samurai, your body ravaged by the quiet-but-beastly fire of radiation like an invisible Godzilla you cannot see but will attempt to vanquish for the sake of your people?

If you fight for a cause that history does not favour, to whom are you a hero?

If weapons suppliers like the looks of a skirmish that won’t end anytime soon, will you and your family keep on dying to maintain a warring stalemate?

How will corporations keep their employees motivated in the future?

Should every product have a dual use (if not more uses)?

A hatchet is also a hammer.

A bullet or a missile is just a projectile.

More than a deterrent, how do you put weapons to use in times of [relative] peace?

Western diets may be unhealthy but they make a lot of people wealthy.

Remove the wealth or the diet, what does the resulting vacuum suck into its place?

Guns, butter, diamonds…

Nature and nurture lead us to our choices.

Know your enemy.

Better yet, know your enema, ’cause when war is on your doorstep, some of you are gonna pucker up and get constipated.  ;P

Trackback

Erin,

I don’t know if you read this blog but this entry is for you.

I didn’t see your credentials in the office before or after you took care of our cat but I see the results of your surgical capabilities every day.

You have restored the youthfulness of a feline near its elderly years.

Other than the obligatory barter exchange, the financial transaction, how can I thank you for your professionalism and loving kindness?

Merlin is back to his usual shenanigans.

He begs more than we think he should.  He wants to play when we want to sit.

He bumps heads.  He purrs at the slightest touch.

You probably perform medical procedures like this all the time but, for us, Merlin is more than the healing patient upon which you operated.

Thus, you are more than a veterinarian.

You are friend.

Our debt to you can never be repaid.

May your deity find a special place for you when this life is over.

 

All the best,

Rick

What is a target audience?

When ruling on the case of large-scale, gender-based discrimination by a large retail store conglomerate, I ask myself if I should consider a social agenda potential or simply the pure constitutionality of equal rights for all.

Of course, one cannot consider one without the other.

Thus, the question of statistical proof is not a question.

I am ignoring the Book of the Future on this one and looking at the case as if I was a single female employee facing a workplace culture not conducive to promoting me up the chain of command because I am not part of the majority male supervisory/management population and, thus, an unknown being introduced into a well-established known equation of current successful business practices.

WWSD

What would Sotomayor do?

Sure, Kagan and Ginsburg will have opinions about this case, even if Thomas won’t, but it’s Sotomayor’s that I’m going to put front and center in determining the balanced worker/employer future for this country.