Verwirrung

The United States’ Presidential Election 2008 is proving to be an excellent case study in the realm of “Think For Yourself, Schmuck”  I say that because, more than ever, the media has become pervasive and invasive in our daily lives.  I’m not just talking about the 24-hour Cable News cycles.  You also have to include the internet media, the blogs, the political forums, anyone with a little bandwidth and an opinion. 

 The daily drumbeat of this Presidential Election, has been polls, polls, polls.  Or I should say, that is part of it.  The other part has been this Reality-TV style coverage of every utterance, every breath, every movement each of the candidates have made.  Now, this might be okay, if it were on C-Span, where you have little commentary.  You just get to see what is happening and decide for yourself what’s going on and what it means.  But it isn’t C-Span.  It’s MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, and all of the Internet “news” outlets.  So there is a barrage of “what’s really going on” messages. 

 ”Oh my God!  Obama is a horrible bowler!!!!  If he can’t handle some 10-pin, how’s he going to handle Iran???”

Yes, I know that’s one of those trivial little things that happen on the campaign trail, and it doesn’t compare to more important “scandals” like Rev. Wright, bitter comments, phantom sniper fire, nut-job pastors endorsing candidates, and the like.  But the point is, at every turn someone is telling you how you should think about these things.  Or, if you are getting multiple scenarios, it’s typically an either/or paradigm. 

We’ve all heard how a candidate is all style and no substance, an empty suit.  That he or she is relying on soundbites and talking points.  But the thing of it is, the media who is telling us that is doing the same thing.  Their coverage is all about soundbites and talking points.  Save for the debates, how much actual coverage of actual policy proposals do we get?  And so this is why Joe Schmoe is so easily swayed by the talking heads, because he has little else to go upon.  And he certainly isn’t going to give up his nightly ritual of worshipping the boob-tube while swigging some PBR, to go do some actual research on the candidates. 

What does this mean for the future of U.S.A. Democracy(tm)? 

We will explore this next week….

http://www.megaupload.com/es/?d=27X5LIHF 227 MB download

Download mirror:

http://www.mediafire.com/?mdcyy3zlswz - Part 1
http://www.mediafire.com/?4xyydjxngwn - Part 2
http://www.mediafire.com/?2ugg32×9syb - Part 3

Titles are:

The Structure of the Mind - Ben Goertzel
The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences (1999) - Robert A Wilson and Frank C Keil
The Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology - Edited by Charles Spielberger
Putting a new spin on groups - The science of of Chaos - Bud A McClure
Billion Dollar Bunko - Simon Lovell
The Changing Images of Man by Stanford Research Institute
Derren Brown - Behind the Screen
Derren Brown - Pure Effect
Get Anyone to do Anything - David J Lieberman
Undoing Yourself - Christopher Hyatt
Theory of Power - Jeff Vail
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley
PsyOps and Ethics - Michael Aquino
Propaganda - Edward Bernays
Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson
The role of cognitive and socio-cognitive conflict in learning to reason - Katiuscia Sacco and Monica Bucciarelli
Secret Incunabula.org paper - Joesph Matheny (?)
Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
Stealth Marketing - Jay Abraham
Strategic Information Warfare (RAND corporation) - Roger C Molander, Andrew S Riddle, Peter A Wilson
The Strategic Game of ? And ? - Unknown
The Power of Persuasion: How We’re Bought and Sold - Robert Levine
The Selfish Meme - Kate Distin
The Advertised Mind - Erik du Plessis
The Art of Memetics - Wes Unruh and Edward Wilson
The Authoritarians - Bob Altemeyer
The Origin and Evolution of Cultures - Robert Boyd and Peter J Richerson
The Psychology of Entertainment Media - Edited by L. J. Shrum
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Think Two Products Ahead - Ben Mack
This Is Not A Game (extract) - Dave Szulborski

All these books are pretty heavy on psychology, NLP and marketing, and are low on actual pranks and tricks. The idea is more to condition your mind to think about how other people think, then exploit that knowledge.

Lets see:

* Golden Apple (well, golden-ish)
* Talk of illumination
* Colbert complains he is not listed as a Saint
* Colbert suggests making everyone else infalliable and the Pope himself falliable

I think it would be hard to get any better evidence than this.

Sick of the Flying Spaghetti Monster being the only Neophillic Irreligion available for kids? Here’s a quick jake for the children.

hxxp://www.gogoddess.com/

Some background on the site, from the PARENTS section:

Why go goddess?
Rather than by age, tweens are best defined by their state of mind as they enter a transition period between childhood and adolescence. go goddess! is a brand focusing exclusively on the development of self-esteem for tween girls by encouraging self-discovery, self-expression, and self-awareness. The purpose of the go goddess! concept is to encourage tweens to discover their talents and interests, and to emphasize the importance of embracing their inner beauty and unique attitudes as they navigate the tough world of being a tween.

Why focus on tweens?
Experts suggest that it is during the tween years that girls begin to pay attention to their “inner voice.” They begin to compare themselves to their peers, which can result in self-doubt. “Tween-agers” also begin to question their individual idea of what is right and what is wrong, rather than solely relying on their parents’ opinions. The intent of the go goddess! concept is to provide girls with a healthy outlet to explore their unique and budding interests during this impressionable period.

consider the above when writing letters.

If you sign up, play nice on the site, there are kids there. But go ahead and try every trick in the book to get them to take us seriously.

(credit to Lysergic for finding this joint)

PS: I DON’T EVEN HAVE A DAUGHTER!

And that is not something I say lightly. But then again, its not every day I find a cam-whoring, ex-stripper, who trolls for cash…and so, having done so, I find her somewhat fascinating.

For those of you who don’t have a finger on the pulse of mainstream/left-wing blogging in the UK, I am talking of the delectable Ruth Fowler. She of Comment is Free infamy. Over the last week or so, she has pretty much managed to wind up much of the UK left wing blogosphere. Well, at least the parts of it I have visited.

And when you look at some of her articles, it is not hard to see why she has caused such a stir. Here are a few selected articles and their subtitles, links provided.

The antichrist for feminists

There I was, thinking I was just making a quick buck, when all the time I was illustrating that feminism is about choice

Club rules
Lefties are supposed to be the nice ones. But increasingly, liberals are just puritanical hypocrites

Flab isn’t fab
You don’t get fat by accident. Eating so much requires Olympic-class stamina and athleticism

And imagine lobbing these into the sort of people who frequent the Guardian for anything except entertainment. Well, actually you don’t even have to, just read the comments below the article. Yeah, precisely, its hilarious and designed to do only 2 things:

wind people up
get her name better known (for her book)

And of course, it does help that Ms Fowler is not only getting paid to troll, which is enough to earn my respect, and is fairly intelligent and well-read, which catches my interest. She is also quite the looker. Here is one of the more…work safe pictures from her site (although most of them are fairly tasteful, so if your employers have a liberal policy, feel free to sneak a look).

Yeah, precisely. I shall have to watch her future articles very closely, I think. I love a trouble-maker, especially of her potential.

The hope for the future lies in our past.  I believe this to be true. 

But, not as a collective.  Not as a society, or as a country, or as a race.  The hope is in our individual past.  It is in, The Spark. 

It’s that moment, or series of moments that we’ve all had.  Perhaps for some it has long been buried by years of apathy and the leavings of a crumbling self.  Perhaps for some it was squelched by an overbearing parent or militant grade-school teacher.  Regardless, I believe we all have had it. 

What is The Spark?  It’s when you discovered you could be Ian Paice using the pots and pans in your mother‚Äôs kitchen.  It‚Äôs when you figured out how to turn a piece of paper into a soaring jet plane.  It’s when you strummed your first E5 with the gain turned up to 10.  It’s when you blew out your gut onto a piece of lined paper.  It was when you help hope and promise, not for the world, but for YOU.

Youthful exuberance.  Vim and vigor.  As you think about it now you are probably remembering back to fond times of yesteryear.  That’s good.  Because when you become reacquainted with that feeling, you need to drag it back with you.  Reinstall it into your psyche, your personality, your YOU. 

It’s hard to think that The Spark was what landed the Accounts Payable position for the financial institution.  It’s hard to conceive that it was The Spark that lead to the junkie with the needle in his arm.  It’s unimaginable that it was The Spark that has us deep into a conflict in the desert that is seemingly endless.  No, it would seem in these cases, and many, many more, that The Spark was relegated to the back seat while The Retreat was riding shotgun. 

The Retreat is where we went, and where we still go, when we don’t want to cause trouble.  It is where we, well, retreat to when we don’t wish to take on the challenge of choice.  When we fear the choice of becoming a professional Clown, egged on by The Spark, we then decide to pursue the safety of becoming an insurance salesmen presented at the job-fair hosted at The Retreat.  We’ve learned from others that The Retreat is safe and will allow us to live a life of comfort and a resulting joy.  The edges are all smoothed to keep us from harming ourselves. 

The Spark is rough and ragged.  It is possible that it can hurl us off a cliff into a crevice of danger, yet it also can propel us to the pastures of potential.  We could go all in, sell our stuff, hop on a bike with just a guitar and some gusto and maybe make it as a well-known musician.  In the effort, we may have to wait tables to put food on our own table.  We may have to forgo owning IPODS and cellphones while forging ahead.  But, the potential rewards for the soul, I would argue, are much richer than those who languish in the lap of luxury. 

It would seem that far too many have forgotten their Spark while living in their Retreat.  Many are unconscionably ignorant to the lack of fire burning within, while simultaneously feeling the chill coming, unheeded, through the windows of their Retreat.  And so, that’s where we find things.  Those in the cold far outnumbering those still yearning and burning for what tomorrow will hold.  But, it is not lost.  We simply need to form the search parties to explore and excavate that which was left in the dead days’ dust.  Meanwhile, for those who have managed to maintain their fire, we need to keep stoking it and assuring that it is never quashed.  It is this hope from our past that is going to give us the promise for the future…

Pungenday, Discord 28, YoLD 3174
A new spin on Mafia, by Pope Telarus, KSC, Tender to the Edible Zen Garden.

The Cards:

“The portrait of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs is a trademark of SubGenius Foundation, Inc. and is used with permission.”

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It’s a strange, chaotic world out there. It’s incomprehensibly huge and also so tiny it’s like your own personal cell. It’s miraculously beautiful and suicidally ugly. It’s both claustrophobically overcrowded and desolately lonely.

There are a lot of people - in this case I’ll use that nebulous “us” - who use weirdness, humor, and insanity as a means of coping. Perhaps lunacy allows some to achieve a sort of homeostasis, an equilibrium with the ubiquitious dynamics and pressures of modern living.

Over at the PD Forums we had a debacle yesterday. One of our newer members, Daruko, had a sort of “internet breakdown” when confronted by some opposition. It was both funny and hard to watch. The guy in question is a 25-year old father of two, who is “in dire need of some sillyness in his life.”

Somebody asked Tim Leary what to do after they had Turned On. He said, “Find the others.” And then they show up at our door.

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It can be difficult to want to move forward, when all you see are potholes and tears in the trail ahead.  No not tears, tears, rips, chasms, breaks.  There is no crying in abject uncertainty. 

I think many have been feeling this, for the past 7 years or so.  Quite a few give voice to their fears and apprehension about the future.  But even more have swallowed it in the name of ideological loyalty or just not wanting to be labeled a heretic, or worse, a terrorist.  And no, it’s not just The War, it’s more than that.  The happy times of joy and surplus of the 90s seem so far away now.  It’s kind of like we were having this 8 year party, we drank a bit too much, and passed out.  So now, in 2008 many are finally sobering up and realizing what’s been transpiring during this 7 year hangover. 

The regret is starting to sink in.  The  “Oh My God, what the fuck did I do last night?” questions are emerging.  And it isn’t just the mortgage brokers and the over-extended home owners.  It’s pretty much, to a man, everyone.  Those who aren’t questioning are certainly delusional and should be checked into an institution.  They will be the lucky ones, along with, perhaps, the dead.

But will the future really be that bad?  It’s hard to tell for sure.  But at this current juncture, viewing the different paths before us, as a collective of humanity, there certainly doesn’t appear to be any easy road to travel.  There seemingly are choices between physical safety and financial ruin, between global strife and a flourishing currency, between cheap energy and Ocean Front property in Vermont. 

And so we are in this time of confounding confusion and uncertainty.  What steps do we take next?  Who do we appoint to lead the way?  How much do we surrender to our leaders to lead?  And perhaps the most important, what can and will we do to master our own individual destinies?  Because, in my estimation, how that last question is answered in the years to come, will be the actual determination of where we end up. 

Nothing more needs to be said.