tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76321002024-02-21T02:15:41.405-08:00jedcstuffRambling thoughts by JEDCline on stuff: environment, museums, marine biosphere, space advanced transportation concepts, electro-wellness experiments, grumpy politics, holistic interests, Asperger's Syndrome, tinnitus, utilization of space resourcess & access to them, computers (Mac especially), whatever.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.comBlogger567125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-18698761915495282472013-12-20T12:03:00.000-08:002013-12-20T12:05:18.328-08:00More than meets the mind's eyeThere is an old quip that “there is more going on than meets the eye,” which long ago seemed to me to only point out that one is not seeing all that is going on in the background of some events. Yet I now ponder the thought a bit more broadly.<br />
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“Meets the eye” could refer to more than just what scenes are being seen by the eyes. The visible light-waves that enter the eye’s lens to form an image on the retina, are what is meeting the eye, more specifically. Those light-waves flowing through into the eye and triggering chemical processes in the eye’s retina, and those chemical changes trigger electrical signals that head over to talk with lots of other signals from elsewhere in the retina and get compared by the brain and mind to have them trigger meaningful impressions.<br />
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However, there are lots of light waves that head towards the eye that are not detectable by the retina’s chemistry, and thus presumably do not end up as meaningfulness in the mind. For example, radio, WiFi and television waves flow into the eye yet are ignored by the eye. In fact, the vast majority of electromagnetic waves that “meet the eye” are not presented by the eye to the brain as being there. The waves “meet the eye” but do not meet the mind’s eye.<br />
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Of course, the phrase was more likely to refer to such things as the mischief that the bad boys are doing on the other side of the wall out of sight; or even the complex inner workings of a clock that all one sees is the time indication on the face of the clock.<br />
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The mind’s eye, the imagination, is usually tuned up to best-possible represent the real world out there. For example, as one drives down the road, one’s mental image of the road out there with all its implications, needs to be a close similarity with the real-physical-world out there so as to be adequately useful to help guide one’s driving of the car.<br />
Yet, as in watching a video or reading an adventure novel, the mind’s eye can also “see” that which has little if any relationship with what is physically out there right now.<br />
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And, one can imagine doing something without actually doing it. For example, I can imagine typing “mind’s eye” here before actually typing it. By doing so I can evaluate the difficulty level involved as well as probable results of the imagined action. Athletes can improve their performance by repeatedly imagining themselves performing some physical action perfectly, before actually doing it physically, I have read.<br />
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Yet also much more is received by the eye than reaches conscious awareness. One can cope with only a small fraction of the million bits of visual data coming in from the eyes each second; thus some part of the brain (or mind) has to pre-filter out nearly all that is actually meeting the eye via light waves, before passing on the selected goodies being offered up for some attention by the conscious mind.<br />
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So where this trail of thought is leading me right now, might be something like that there is more being received by the eye than am aware of, that actually could be quite interesting or informative. Did “I” set up all the pre-filter parameters that controls what reaches my consciousness? What even if something out there meeting my eye is telling my pre-filters to not “see” certain things? Such a thing could be very useful to those who seek to deceive or manipulate people.<br />
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And I have the “feeling” that even right now close to me, there is more going on than meets my conscious eye, that would be important for me to know was going on.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-86646154893062622132013-12-19T16:06:00.000-08:002013-12-19T16:06:31.270-08:00The tipping-point in a free-enterprise system turning gold into leadThere is a tipping point in a “free enterprise” system, that is a bit like alchemy’s turning lead into gold, except in this case it is like turning gold into lead.<br />
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It is the point where a business makes a subtle change in its guiding principle. It is when the dominant business motive changes from making a fine product or service and expect to receive appropriate reward for the value added by the business, into the primary goal being to make the most profit, and the provided goods or services is mere leverage to get that money. <br />
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It is when the R&D department comes up with a variety of potential new products, and management decides which to pursue. There is a choice between a product that is better for the customer and a better value for the money, VS a product that will maximize the company’s profit but provides the customer with a lesser value product. When management has to choose the inferior product that makes the company more profit, that was the tipping point.<br />
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More broadly, when you have a nation peppered with such businesses, all choosing the inferior product so as to make more money, and they have business territory control so competition cannot do anything, then you have a nation of customers stuck with the inferior products and services, and less money in the bank. That means the people of that nation have to cope and accomplish life stuck with the poorer resources of what the nation built and services provided. It is a weaker nation, due to lesser capability of resources provided by their goods and services.<br />
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It is possible that sometimes this tipping point happens when the company’s investors make demands for more dividends, applying pressure on the management. Or it might happen when a company is making good money and products and is bought at a price that cannot be refused; then new management comes in, trained only to maximize profit and invest in business territory control rather than base sales on better products for the customer. <br />
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When the larger business system collaborates to prevent customers any options other than what provides the aggregate business system with the highest profits, the tipping point has locked itself into place.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-35541032027546107732013-12-19T16:03:00.000-08:002013-12-19T16:03:04.596-08:00The why affects the what and how and who of it allJust mildly pondering the thought that the “why” people do a something, affects how they do it and also the kind of results obtained, especially the lateral effects of what was done.<br />
And also figuring out the “why” someone does something, is a bit of guessing game. It all gets quite into the “people stuff is complicated” zone. Yet it all may not be useless to contemplate all the time.<br />
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This trend of thought seems to have been triggered by the news articles about the expected launch of a lunar rover by the Chinese. Connecting human civilization with lunar resources has long been more than a casual interest in me, and I have written a lot about it during the past forty years or so. However, the responses I have gotten range from apathy to “we don’t know you” to outright hostility and undercutting. So the thought now is that it is the “why” of doing something that makes the difference.<br />
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And the “why” can be quite complex, including being variable with the situation and even self-contradictory at times.<br />
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The current articles on the Chinese launch to the Moon, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25178299 , point out that the Moon is a potential source for elements needed by industry and in short supply here on Earth, and the lunar environment be a site for man’s works including gathering solar energy to help supply civilization’s enormous need for energy.<br />
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Now, these things have been known for at least the forty years I have been making suggestions as to how to efficiently access and utilize lunar resources. Yet we here in the US, whom I have addressed over these decades, have ignored my efforts, or worse. Now the article says the Chinese are going after lunar resources, with their fledgling industrial skills. Yet America still is doing the ignoring thing re lunar resources, despite our early efforts half a century ago. It is the “why” of it that is perhaps the difference.<br />
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This blog post could get to be really long and maybe even lose the original path by doing so. I will just point to a couple of my online-avaiable writings:<br />
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/32802637/1972MooncableDocumentRev2C.pdf and in a different mode<br />
http://www.amazon.com/Torus-City-Shields-Returning-Home/dp/144212489X/ and the<br />
http://www.facebook.com/groups/185118771625919/ “Moon Space Escalator” group. All of these writings describe not only why the need but also offer efficient new ways to achieve them. Results: the big silent treatment. Consistently. I point out my efforts as an example of the “why” of doing something, strongly can affect the “what” that is done, which can even include giving the “big silent treatment” as what is done.<br />
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There is no change: the Moon is still there not that far away, the resources are known to be there, the resource needs of civilization’s thriving, continue as before. Yet the Chinese head for the Moon while America … does not head for the Moon.<br />
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So I now suggest that exploring the differences will provide a lot of answers to the differences in the “why” of doing it. I could get long is my conjectures about it right now, but there is only so much effort needed just to maybe get a little info into a responsible brain out there, somehow surviving amongst the suffocating “big silent treatment” blanket here in America.<br />
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Repeating, this is to urge exploration of the thought that the “why” of doing something can have major effects on the “how ” and “what” of doing it – and maybe there is a lot of the “who’ involved, too.<br />
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Jim ClineAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-71443388247447150652013-12-19T15:59:00.000-08:002013-12-19T15:59:15.437-08:00When are you leavingAs an Asperger I spend some time trying to understand interactions with other people. Other people tend to use verbal conversation in important ways. I do my best to participate as well as possible. Yet sometimes the verbal stuff possibly is laced into a situation in ways I don’t see at the time.<br />
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It is not that I don’t have ability to utilize words, but in writing instead of in talking. It is different. For example, I do this blog and have written technical papers of my concepts, and have written novels, eight of which are in self-published print, which several people have told me they enjoy the novels, sometimes even unable to put them down until finished reading them. So I seem to write words OK. It is the out-loud, in your face, verbal conversation that can have even magical aspects, I think, an example of which is the focus of this blog post.<br />
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About 1958 my parents bought a nice house in Albuquerque, NM. I visited there at times, and at times I sought work in the area, as my parents had a bedroom there for me to stay economically. My dad made special effort to show me the maintenance of the property, particularly how to get up on the roof and service the swamp cooler, an annual routine. He clearly intended for me to live in the house after they had passed away; I, however, was not really able to comprehend them as ever passing away. But I was assured I would have this nice house some day; I had no siblings so it would all be mine, no question.<br />
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Yet I ended up without the home, and the family heirlooms, most of the furniture and most of my large collection of things I had cherished and saved from childhood. The home all gone. And in my dim Asperger’s way I now puzzle, how did I lose all that, and instead stay in small rathole apartments, never thinking of going to stay with my parents and live in the room they had for me there? And then the house was sold after Dad passed away, gone,<br />
In my profession as an electronics engineering technician, the average duration of employment on any job was said to be two years before a RIF. So especially in the last two decades of my employed years, I would sometimes go visit my parents for a couple days, as well as I would come there sometimes on holidays or vacations. There even were several times I was in between jobs desperate for work and almost homeless, yet I did not even think of coming to stay at my parents home, while I looked for a job. I did not even think of it. Why?<br />
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Clearly there was a strong mental block that brought it about. I still struggle sometimes with these out-of-sight mental-blocks that interfere with me getting things done, very troublesome and very hard to get past. Strange stuff. Yet I need to comprehend the lessons of the past, or as it is said, one has to learn the lesson all over again until it finally gets learned. So, what happened re the loss of what there had been no question of, that I would live in and own the nice family home there in Albuquerque?<br />
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Clearly it was something in my thinking that cost me the family home and most of the collected family belongings in it (after Dad passed away Mother managed to get some things moved and into my possession, such as the furniture that Dad had built and is now in my home here.) So, what messed up my thinking? Thinking back to the home, there on the street in Albuquerque, it seems that oddly there is like a bubble of invisibility enveloping the lot and house inside it. Kind of like imagining a rounded big silver-colored bubble. Never saw anything like that before, best I remember.<br />
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As my Asperger’s mind puzzles over complex things – that has enabled me to create very nice technological concepts in the past, but it also works on trying to assemble somewhat meaningful patterns of my life experiences too. And as I was awakening this morning, another piece of the puzzle came back to me – I had remembered it several times in the past only to forget it again – and it is a strange but consistent thing that oddly fits much too well. I got up this morning with intent to get it written down as a blog post, before once again it goes pffft gone out of consciousness again.<br />
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In the over half dozen times in later years I visited at my parents home, long after my wife divorced me, and I endlessly hoped to find a woman to love, I was a young man who was instinctively attracted to nice looking women, although few were ever to be seen. I had a favorite TV show, the Dinah Shore Show I think it was called, and Dinah was so very nice, tall, thin and straight, vibrant smiling and kind. I mention that as pattern background in my mind, normally unconscious.<br />
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Anyway, my Asperger’s puzzling seeking meaningful patterning re the loss of my family home long ago, has found a match. It surely has multiple lessons for me, too, if I can understand them correctly.<br />
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It involves the woman who lived next door to my parents home there. I rarely saw her over the decades my parents lived in Albuquerque, but I knew she was attractive, ever perfectly looking and was a high socialite in the community, and she had two attractive daughters that I could never seem to meet, in my lonely life.<br />
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There was a repeating pattern, most exactly repeating each time, as I think about it, although spanning many years between repeats.<br />
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I would be visiting at my parent’s home there, out in the yard doing something, and I would suddenly see the neighbor woman – lets call her Mrs Maureen, since supposedly one is not supposed to use real names in writings about others – “Dinah Shore Image” AKA Mrs Maureen would be standing there relaxed looking at me with a small smile on her face, she perfectly attired and hair perfectly done. Clearly she wanted to talk with me. I would quickly stop what I was doing and go over to stand in front of her, I said hello.<br />
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She would each time be standing in the same place, on the edge of where their lawn ended and ours began, next to the pine tree that I had planted long ago. The small smile never left her face as she seemed to look past me at the window of my bedroom, and without a hello back, would nicely say “When are you leaving?”<br />
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Sometimes expecting a hello back, I would just say “Huh?” and she would exactly repeat the standing there looking so nice and with the small smile on her face looking in the direction of me and the window to my room in the house, and pleasantly repeat exactly “When are you leaving?” still wearing the pleasant smile. I would have to reset my thoughts and figure out when I was to end my visit there, usually in a couple of days, and I would struggle to verbalize the day I was to leave there, as she stood there with the small smile on her face sort of looking in my direction but at the house too. I expected her to continue the conversation, but each time she would then simply turn her back to me without even a goodbye and walk away back toward her house.<br />
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I would be left standing there, wondering what all that was about. The attractive very socially functional woman had clearly urged me over to greet her yet all she did was say “When are you leaving?” and then turn and walk away as soon as I had said when I was to leave. The attractive smiling woman with the two attractive daughters apparently only wanted to get me to think about when I was leaving, then she would walk away.<br />
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This kind of thing happened identically several times over the span of over a decade or two. Thinking back, she always was standing in the same spot when i suddenly noticed her there looking in my direction with an inviting smile; that the spot she stood was directly across from my room in my parents home, standing directly north of the window so I had to stand with my back to the window to talk with her, now seems part of the pattern.<br />
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So I now puzzle over this rather peculiar piece of the puzzle of what cost me my home that my parents had long prepared for me to live in, their only offspring. There surely is a lesson or two for me other than mentally grousing at myself as being a goof-up; the past is past and cannot be done better, but apparently something is in that long ago repeating scenario that I need to know for my present and near future life situations.<br />
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Clearly it is not a lesson taught in the school classes or in my reading about stuff over the ages. It seems to be a pattern even with a clearly “magical” aspect as part of it. The socialite neighbor woman clearly was an expert in manipulating people – much as was my former wife. What if when she arranged those quick face-to-face meetings with me there standing on the lawn across from my room in my parents’ home, looking so nice and yet she had only one interest and that was to know when I would no longer be there, planting that thought in my mind, and now I hypothesize that she was also mentally picturing that my house was in a bubble of invisibility to me, the house not existing there for me; that strange idea would explain the “silver bubble” imagined around the property as I think back to those times now. And yes over the years I have often read of a thing where people would mentally picture something happening strongly, and then it would happen; possibly it was used for more than having a perfect parking spot suddenly open up for them in a totally filled parking area.<br />
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Why would the neighbor woman, who would never introduce me to her daughters, want me to not live there next door? I was not a bad person; I tried desperately to be accepted by people, despite my Aspergers struggle to do so. That worked well on the job and often kept me working when others were laid off before I was. But in the wider world of people’s doings, it rapidly got really complicated striving to make everybody pleased since people often had opposite wants re me, for example.<br />
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Anyway, the puzzle pieces now sort of seen, part of the puzzle piece seems to involve me struggling to make the smiling attractive woman next door happy by me being gone from the place. The place that obviously would have been my inheritance, too, as they gave their all for me, their only offspring. Apparently my striving to please an attractive woman is not always a wise thing to do.<br />
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Well, I think I have now gotten it written down here, helped a bit by first sips of morning coffee. I think I saw some patterns: the attractive neighbor lady getting my attention while she always stood in exactly the same place in front of the window to my room in my family house, getting me over there to just ask “When are you leaving?” and stand there smiling while I shifted gears to answer the question, then she simply turned and walked away.<br />
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Well, there must be some lessons in all that, but they seem vague and right now I don’t see where it fits in with my present situation, although some neighbors around me seem to always have resented me living here, despite my not being a nuisance to them. Yet I must learn the lessons or else have to repeat them the hard way. I have my own home now, far from Albuquerque and a very tiny house of far poorer quality than my parents’ home was, but this is my house, although only as long as I keep up the mortgage payments; unlike the house I would have inherited from my parents, which probably was paid for by then.<br />
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Life’s lessons. OK so I know I now know am an Asperger’s also with attention problems that cancel out the Asperger’s strengths. That wheat damage to my physiology has contributed to the early mercury damage again getting loose as a young adult, and has had a crippling effect on all my life since, is part of explanations, ought to help comprehension. But in this case, apparently it was some other person’s intention that I lose my home, was a key part of it all, is thought-provoking right now.<br />
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I am long gone from there in place and time now. So why do I so clearly see in my mind, the attractive woman smiling at me and has only to ask of me “When are you leaving?” Is there something that my subconscious is warning me to deal with, and if so, what is it?<br />
Aargh, people-stuff is complicated. And, maybe it is true that “you can’t get there from here.” But what is it now that I need to understand?<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-11752716300404241922013-09-18T08:20:00.000-07:002013-09-18T08:20:29.511-07:00Senseless tragedy patterns making senseIt takes me awhile - often hours or days, sometimes years or decades - to see the patterns that non-Asperger's apparently know instinctively. Yet occasionally I figure out patterns that only then become "obvious" to others. I don't initially know which is which, however, except maybe later getting reactions from others - but they typically either ignore me because they were born knowing the pattern; or instead were embarrassed that they had not already seen the pattern. (People-stuff is complicated.)<br />
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So this blog post is about such a basic pattern I have suddenly seen. It too is probably one that most others instinctively knew all along; but maybe not.<br />
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The pattern is one I first saw as portrayed in the movies. It is of a crime gang boss giving a member of his gang the "kiss of death" which means the man that got kissed by the gang boss has to go out and do some extremely horrible thing to targeted previously-unknown other people that will get himself killed too. The "horrible thing" was usually to do fulfillment of a "contract" the gang "wrote" to do some dirty work for a nameless client, so that it cannot be traced to the "client" but lots of people will realize what happened, yet cannot prove it, and are thus presented with having to comply with some very uncomfortable demand, or risk having another "senseless tragedy" done to them again sometime without warning.<br />
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So this insight is of that kind of pattern happening. And it seems to perfectly fit the recent "senseless tragedy" at the naval base in Washington DC a few days ago. <br />
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A perfect fit, and its scope suggests the very heavy-duty players in the game, and the real stakes involved in whatever is being pressured to happen, without being traceable to the real commanders of the events.<br />
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It takes real courage in a nation to not give in to such activities, either to comply; or for others to perpetrate; when to not comply means another bunch of innocent people will get killed, somewhere, but exactly when the gang-boss says it will. So it is "comply or innocents will die and only you will know that you could have prevented it" kind of thing.<br />
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Do I need to use the word "bullying"? Or is the huge scale and deceptions involved, able to obscure the bully mentality that plays this game?<br />
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The part that the public is shown, is the mangled mess physically done by the "suspect" who seems to have acted without reason, but yet with lots of preparation and probably key invisible support along the way - but the public is led to believe that the "suspect" just suddenly went crazy "hearing voices" or "on drugs" etc and that somehow that had caused the "suspect" to go bonkers - for the media to do otherwise might invite the crime-gang-boss to give another "kiss of death" that would result in media personnel and facilities to be next. Scary, and paranoid-inducing; much easier to comply, and besides the real targets are likely strangers anyway so who cares....<br />
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So my insight of this pattern, so closely fitting the Naval Base incident a few days ago, also suggests to me that other "inexplicable" tragedies, like the Auoura-Batman-movie-theater incident that took out the Canada-event-survivor soccer game reporter young woman, and the Tucson event including Gifford, are among the events that could be actually the playout of "contract" assaults that are intended to be untraceable to the original instigators - except perhaps by their ultimate effects. (The expertise of deception of the big-players is "people-stuff is complicated" really big-time to me. But what a waste of otherwise good human capability to be constructive and collaborate so all can live better in a long-lasting world. Their choice, not mine.)<br />
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I might also be the only one who noticed that Giffords and Kelly were both very much into expansion of support of space utilization prior to the assaults; but since the "crazy man's sudden assaults", they no longer mention space, but only gun control. Is that only an incidental effect?<br />
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To solve a problem, it must first be correctly defined. Remember? <br />
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Or is it too scary sometimes? Rightfully so; there is very little defense against the Organized Stalkers.<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-45382203636860186182013-09-17T06:02:00.000-07:002013-09-17T06:02:06.944-07:00Gang vs individual re prowessGetting attention seems involved, in some of the news media articles, and the people involved seem central to what supposedly is about events instead of about people.<br />
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Maybe it is because I grew up in a time when fantasized exceptional individuals became virtual mentors on how to be: Captain Midnight, Superman, The Lone Ranger, Tom Mix, the Green Hornet, Batman, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Roy Rogers, are some names of those exceptional individuals of fantasy and fiction that formed examples to follow by the developing kids of the time. Gangs, groups, tended to be destructive and led by a particularly mean individual, usual a male crazed with urge for power over others.<br />
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But - perhaps only in my imagination - there seems to have been a reversal and increasingly so in recent decades. The team led by a small faction portrayed as achieving great things constructive, whereas the lone individual just freaks out and causes havoc, messing things up and hurting people - just the opposite of back when I was growing up, and individuals were more self aware and responsible-acting.<br />
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Yesterday's news seems to me to show a - maybe too clear? - example of this. The big news of the day was a live video telecast on BBC showing the raising of the capsized luxury liner Costa Concordia over in Italy, the shipwreck the largest ever attempted to be moved. Over a year of work by hundreds of skilled people, guided by engineers, had built the enormous framework and mechanisms to slowly rotate the enormous vehicle, while keeping it from breaking apart and ruining the local environment. This was a constructive effort of the gang as led by the few who coordinated the whole picture to function as a whole, and was successful in uprighting the ship. It was a "yay team," kind of thing. This ought to have been the top news of the world yesterday, a "good for us we can work together and achieve great things," kind of thing as led by competent engineers. There were none of the highly visible glib politicians or wealthy businessmen portrayed as implied being the high achievers and worthy of so much attention, because in this case, the best outcome is just to get the wrecked ship far away then scrap it; and besides, remembering that the shipwreck was caused by a team, the ships crew, does not put the team portrayed better than the individual. So as the Costa Concordia got tilted over upright, it was the lead engineers themselves up front, instead of the wealthy and the politicos, for a change. Or would have been except it all got upstaged. <br />
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However, coincidentally (??) yesterday while that was going on, another of those spectacular events was going on, getting the attention, an individual who for no apparent reason had gone to great lengths to get lots of attention simply by going bang bang at a bunch of helpless people.<br />
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So yesterday's news was the gang vs the individual, but in this case the gang's constructive efforts were upstaged by the individual's long travel and clear preparation to do a freakout. <br />
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That the news will as usual just imply the, well, individuals like that get a gun and blow people away, as if spontaneous despite the obvious long preparation to do that exact freakout - why? - maybe to pass the time of day, individuals just do those kind of things, right? And as for group accomplishment that is extraordinary, well, that is noteworthy only if it has the politicos and wealthy businessmen spotlighted implying they achieved the great stuff.<br />
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People-stuff is complicated.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-9133232439829099842013-09-15T16:06:00.000-07:002013-09-15T16:29:19.652-07:00Puzzle pieces seems about kids this timeMy subconscious sometimes brings up something from long ago, and keeps reminding me of it, as if an important thing for me again in the present in some way. So, like the strange car problem event of my previous blog post here, I will describe this new piece of a puzzle seeking where to fit.<br />
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The first event was maybe a decade ago, before I moved up here; I had set out from my lowest-rent rathole apartment in Sunland in the early morning as usual, the start of my usual three hour journey of walk, wait at bus stop, ride bus, wait at another bus stop in Chinatown, ride bus, long walk, then arrive to do my volunteer job at the museum of natural history, as I had done for years. Just getting started again on this dull trip, I trudged along stoically ready to endure the three hours; the people who rode the bus system were only the poor people, the downtrodden, we all ignored each other. From my apartment, then the block long walk to the first bus stop. It was rare to see any activity there at that time of day, never anyone else out on foot, and few cars. But this time as I walked toward the bus stop as I crossed a sidestreet, I noticed there were two people walking toward me on the sidewalk, was a tall muscular man along with a small boy alongside him. Something looked odd about them, maybe not father and son; but Asperger's usually cannot figure out people, but if they are out of place at least something some times makes me notice, and puzzle. About then a white sedan comes from behind me, rapidly pulls up to park alongside me on the corner, surely not legal; a lean-mean man hurries out of the driver's side goes around back of car and next is coming up rapidly along the sidewalk behind me. Am fairly dulled, no fun the journey and in the poor parts of town one sometimes sees odd things going on. But about then the tall man and small boy are about twenty feet in front of me and the boy says "He's not the one." The tall man with the boy changes his poker face suddenly into a look of rage and he roars "What do you mean, he's not the one!" Little boy says again, he is not the one. They walk past me, the tall muscleman's face rapidly returning to a different look. I continue the plodding up the hill toward the bus stop. Clearly I was the target of something and if they were going to do it well I could not stop them. And it was silence behind me, nor did I notice anything more of that event. Other than my Asperger's sensory thing had recorded it all in detail, even though my rational mind was not comprehending a whole lot of it; I often figure out things later, much later. <br />
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I have had multiple indications that little kids were being told I was a bad person, as shown by their reactions to me. As well as some adults of some acquaintance, they being normal but then blurt out something as if they angrily thought I was a child abuser. Lots of people, like "the word was spread around". And in addition to the small boy per above incident, I suspect I have been saved several times by a perceptive and honest child refuting some adult's contention. <br />
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My subconscious has also been reminding me of another of those very peculiar happenings that my mind files away in hopes of making sense out of it. This one happened the most recent trip to Walmart, where I do most of my shopping. It was a predictable trip there, I suppose, having had to drive to a radio club coffee meeting, and since I had driven my car, I made a stop at Walmart to get things accumulated on my shopping list. I had heard from one of the radio folks that Walmart had the fine point Sharpie pens; I still have one that has not run out of ink and so I intended to see if I could find them among the other things at the huge store. I knew where the pens and pencils were along my usual route through the store, and pausing there although I was not seeing Sharpie pens at first, I eventually figured out they must be at the end of the display case, but there was a full-bearded man and a woman there, with a shopping cart; I marked time a bit, the couple seemed to just be standing there, not looking at the pens, but I could not get to where I could access pens there, as a result. I had almost decided to skip it for now, when two teenyboppers came marching past, two girls, dressed stylishly, not pushing a shopping card, just moving staring straight ahead along past me not looking at me, and I tried to figure out what was that about; unable to get to the pens yet, I turned and watched the two girls - maybe 12 years old, and marching along dressed cute but strangely, they went around the counter; I could make no sense of it. I had noticed the bearded man do something fast with his hands but otherwise act normal just when the girls walked past us, then the couple moved aside a bit and I was able to get to look for the sharpie fine point pens; it is not easy for me to identify such things among the many other similar objects. Suddenly there again the two girls were marching past, exactly same as before, apparently having just marched around behind the counter and were repeating the march past me as I looked at them, thinking they looked cute in their outfits and I know girls like to be thought of as cute. One of the girls suddenly said as they walked past me and the bearded man and woman, "thank you" but was not facing anyone, just was right next to me, but did not turn to look at me or anyone. They repeated the methodical march past, I still could not figure out what was going on, but I did think it was an odd thing happening. I finally found a package of two fine-point Sharpie pens; the package was labeled as that but they looked very different than the ones I had had for years. They did not cost much and if they were not the correct thing, not much loss.<br />
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Now my subconscious today has brought up the small boy event and the two teenyboppers who appeared to be actors, at Walmart last time. <br />
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Also reminds me of another thing recently: new renters next door. Apparently have two little girls, maybe kindergarden age, both seem same size the two times I saw them, maybe twins. The first time was when I was out in my backyard at my garage, I noticed two little girls over at the fence between the two backyards, an old fence with barbed wire on top of it. One of the little girls yelled at me "You're a bad person!" I just turned away and ignored them. A few days later I was cutting weeds in my backyard, and suddenly noticed the two little brightly dressed little girls, this time they were in the space between my house and theirs, where there is no fence nor even the rosebush barrier which is along between the front yards. The one girl was smiling brightly at me while the companion girl was looking game but uncertain; the other clearly was extraverted and the leader. The smiling girl having gotten my attention, then suddenly ran a couple feet into my part of the yard, as if there were an invisible property line; she quickly jumped back onto her part of the property, still gayly laughing and watching me. I waved and said "Hi" then turned away back to my yard work, but I glanced back at them, the one girl, no longer smiling, said "He doesn't want to"; the next glance in that direction they were gone. <br />
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My subconscious says "actresses". Peculiar goings on, again. I remember the Shakespeare thing "All the world is a stage" and yet I think sometimes it is moreso a stage than other times.<br />
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My subconscious figures out associations, although seems to me to not have things correct all the time. So this blog post seems a way to deal with it. Maybe there are going to be more toughs ready to jump me, but nothing I can do about it.<br />
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Now another item my subconscious thinks is related, that repeatedly has come to my memory in recent months. It takes a stretch of imagination and fill-in pieces, however. It is the quote by Neil Armstrong, who had said a bit offline during his walking around on the lunar surface; the controllers asked him about it later but just were answered with a smile. Armstrong had said "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." The flight controllers thought Mr Gorsky was a rival Russian Cosmonaut, but could find no reference to one with that name. It was very many years later when asked again what Neil Armstrong had meant, that he finally told about it. Mr and Mrs Gorsky had passed away, and now he could speak about it. Neil as a boy playing baseball in his yard, had gone to fetch the baseball which had landed next to the neighbor's house. As he picked up the baseball next to the neighbor's bedroom window, he heard an angry woman yell "You want sex! You want sex? Well you can have sex when the boy next door walks on the Moon!" So, there on the lunar surface walking, Neil had muttered more to himself, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." <br />
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Kids remember things. I have long noticed what appears to be a widespread very influential effort to block public awareness of my space concepts that can change the future and make some people very wealthy; apparently they want it erased now and waiting for the future, perhaps intending to announce them as their own great inventions, when I am out of the picture, discredited and/or dead. The one problem could be some person who as a kid had gotten to know me and heard me tell of my space concepts, and thus refute the entrepeneur's proclamation that it was a new thing. So one way to keep little kids from becoming friends with me and learning of my space concepts, is to lay a false reputation of me being a child abuser, a bad person, and tell parents to keep their kids away from me. Well, this puzzle-fill-in seems to fit. But is it what is up? I shake my head, who knows what people are up to. <br />
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People-stuff is complicated.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-90923913360232665322013-09-14T21:48:00.000-07:002013-09-14T21:48:17.155-07:00Car power failure but no flying saucersFor the "record" - Here is a personal experience I had. A mere piece of the cosmic puzzle, but where it fits and what it means - is yet to be determined.<br />
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Time of occurrence was about 1957 plus or minus year or so. One of the rare times I was not also transporting fellow college students with me.<br />
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Place of occurrence: on the mountain highway that connected Las Cruces New Mexico, with Albuquerque New Mexico then, before the now existing freeway was built. It was a winding highway, two lane, one each direction, and at this point was winding through mountainous terrain, a nicely crafted two-lane paved highway, and no other vehicle lights were visible, nor anything but possibly starlight, my trusty 1950 Hudson's headlights serving well as always to show the path ahead. A long somewhat familiar 300 mile trip ongoing, probably eventually to Gallup New Mexico, my High School home town. Nothing unusual to the trip, often driven, as usual now a bit fast, probably 70 mph on a 60 mph highway through the winding mountains. <br />
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Then suddenly complete electrical failure. Utter darkness. Engine not running. I pressed on the hydrolic brakes as I strived to remember the shape of the S-curve I was traversing at the point of utter darkness. Pressing on the hydraulic brakes as much as possible per my memory, hopefully without skidding. While using the steering wheel to guide my car in the utter darkness up there in the mountain road, guessing where the road was. The car continued to slow yet not skid. Not into the gravel much alongside the pavement.<br />
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Then, finally stopped. Total quiet. Total darkness. Yet, stopped. <br />
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Very dark. Engine silent, not running. But I and my car was stopped and had apparently not gone off the road to crash down the side of the mountain; there were no guard rails there. <br />
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Well. Now what.<br />
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I had a flashlight and found it. I opened the door and got out of my car, to look under the hood. Suddenly by itself, the electrical system started working again. Headlights came on. I was in the gravel alongside the highway, but still safe. I opened the hood of my 1950 Hudson but it looked normal; I was not much into auto mechanics at the time; engine, radiator, battery, looked as before. The headlights continued to shine out across the mountain curve ahead. I got back into the car, shut the door, turned my flashlight off. Started the engine; it started fine. <br />
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The path ahead looked reasonable so I let in the clutch and in low gear eased out off the gravel onto the dark pavement, and soon was back up to somewhat slower speed along the curving mountain road, yet tense, waiting for the lights to go out again. Making special effort to look at the curves ahead and trying to remember them as they approached and went, on and on. The headlights kept steady and the engine kept running. The miles went under and the minutes and then hours passed by, like they always had before.<br />
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In the months after that, sometimes I tried to do something, anything, to make the electrical failure happen but in safer conditions, but it never repeated, seemed solid as always before. I could not find and fix something that was not happening.<br />
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Several decades and lots of life experiences - and cars - later, I read of "Roswell and alien abductions" and even saw movies where a flying-saucer flew over a vehicle and killed its electrical system, as part of the movie adventure. <br />
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Hmm. Really a bit similar.<br />
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However, I saw no aliens. I saw no flying saucer. No monsters or freaking critters messing around. <br />
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Yet I never was able to explain what caused the total electrical failure of my car in a very dangerous curving stretch of a high mountain highway, nor the electrical system's spontaneous coming back to normal functioning, once I had stopped the vehicle before a wreck happened, and was inspecting the engine compartment in effort to figure out what what was going on, then suddenly the headlights came back on. And back in my car, the engine stared easily, and the car drove fine after that, never repeating the phenomenon. <br />
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For the Record, if there is one, I don't know what it meant. But something very strange did happen, that was very dangerous. <br />
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And, it was curiously like something portrayed in some later movies and novels at times, associated with "flying saucers and alien abductions."<br />
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I just remember a sudden very tense scary dangerous time on the highway, involving my car's electrical system suddenly shutting down at a particularly dangerous moment. And later, starting to work again, without apparent cause.<br />
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And so I make this effort at a record of the strange event. A piece of some larger jigsaw puzzle.<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-82961168558148146682013-09-12T19:58:00.003-07:002013-09-12T19:58:44.637-07:00On Jon Rapport's post re individual imaginationWell, the articles by Jon Rapport usually most impress me by him being much better at ranting than me. His rants are on different subjects than my own, usually; but increasingly I find his articles go along with what I would say maybe 90%of the article. And some articles really get my attention, like the most recent one. I can't figure out a direct url link but at <a href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/">http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/</a> titled "What concerns all of us at this time" and a point that plugged in a missing piece to my big-puzzle ever figuring out, was where he said "That discredited and stepped-on and discounted faculty of the individual called imagination which, by the way, is not a container holding shielded secrets, but is instead a capability of invention. Everything mind control ever was, is, or will be, is ultimately aimed at producing amnesia about that capability. Therefore, when you bring up the subject of imagination, most people just shake their heads and move on. They are clueless about their own astonishing power...."<br />
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That it is possible that much of people's imagination has been usurped by television, movies and videogames, has already occurred to me. But the possibility that people don't ever utilize their imagination at times as governed by their own self-inspired direction, nor even comprehend that could be done by others (unless they have high academic degrees), has gotten me thoughtful. Could explain a few things going on.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-46406005735056464992013-09-05T12:20:00.000-07:002013-09-05T12:20:52.233-07:00A high value-adding business that vanishedSomething that has increasingly puzzled me over the past quarter century is what happened to one of the new businesses that I had fortunately discovered back in the late 1980's. Using the supposedly powerful search engines of today, produces nothing as a result of searches for anything related to the company or its innovative products and services.<br />
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Although, the supposedly omniscient eye of google sees all and knows all for its search engines, seems to have a great difficulty finding any of my kests to geo and other innovative space concepts I have made available on my websites and blogs, even google-provided blogs like this one; search engines seem to think that my kests to geo writings ceased after the ones I put on Earthlink free web pages back in the mid-1990's. Reminds me of the therm "selective blindness."<br />
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Anyway, the company that vanished mysteriously, was a very well developed system for helping people improve the capacity of their thinking, and enable self-processing of some psychological problems if applicable, along with gaining insights about one's relationships so as to improve them. <br />
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These are all things that were intended to enable people to live better lives in a great many ways, and would have enormously helped America had it become widely utilized. They innovative founders of the company had recorded a large number of audio cassette tapes, something like guided-meditations to be done with full awareness in a unique technique. And for maximum effect to be used with a special chamber they were making available for rent or sale to people.<br />
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My own access to this technology happened while I was doing my usual wandering through the Whole Life Expos that were held every two years, with a little cash available for buying self-help things that I would discover there, that would fit into my cash on hand. I vaguely recall that booth at the Whole Life Expo (one of hundreds of booths) it had some cassette tapes on the counter, some headphones where one could sample some of their tapes, and some ad-boards telling what they offered. The tapes cost $15 each and that was lots of money to me then, but I listened to parts of some tape or two, then walked on; but then I returned and invested in one of the tapes that seemed to claim it could teach me how to become more aware of my surroundings and be better integrated.All seemed a bit unlikely to me, but the one tape seemed a worthwhile investment, and I got their literature given out at the booth. I don't remember the two people manning the booth, but now I suspect they were the founders, as it turned out they had together created al the technology probably out of their own pockets and would not have money to hire staff for the booth until money started coming in. <br />
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And indeed money ought to have started rolling in, much as became clear on their tapes, an excellent investment for individuals to utilize the unique audio tapes for their own self-improvement. But, clearly something happened.<br />
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Back then, I was working as a technician in a small car alarm manufacturing company in Chatsworth. I also had a somewhat isolated test-and-repair bench job, where i could listen to the tape while working, using headphones. Clearly my work output was quite satisfactory to my managers, so the tapes did not interfere with my work on the job. It probably even improved my work, as i ever so slowly learned through the frequent repaying of that tape, practical means for enabling me to "resonate" with my environment. That was the name of that tape, something like "Environmental Resonating" I think.<br />
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Discovering my new living functionality as a result of frequent listening to that tape, I began to send for another tape or two as over the months I hd a little spare money to use for self-help. There were over a dozen tapes on their literature; I bought only the ones that sounded most helpful to me. I shifted to a series that claimed to enable integration of both sides of the brain, a goal I had had since a youth. <br />
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These tapes utilized brain-integration binaural tones not unlike commonly used all over the place nowadays, for other purposes; but their tapes required the listener to participate in imagination, according the verbalized instructions on the tapes. They pointed out that the user had to be involved actively, for it to help them. If the user had a mirror handy they said it would help more, but I did not have one for my use back then. As always, my income was little more than what was necessary to survive, little left for fluff like self-help technologies.<br />
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About this time I also connected through the National Space Society with the GEnie information network space library for people to upload their files of possible interest to others. And my thoughts were getting better organized, as enabled by the self-help tapes, and I was getting new ideas. The beginnings of my KESTS to GEO group of concepts, and the related Centristation concept, and ground-commute concepts coming back to mind from the 1970's, and my 1972 Mooncable concept got written in text file form and uploaded onto that GENie space and science library. I thought the world would think it was great that I did that, new ideas for businesses for all; but that was not heir responses - they already had their businesses long planned and did not appreciate anything that could upset their prior plans. (Took me years to figure this out, however; people-stuff is complicated.)<br />
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Then my next order for buying another of the tapes, included a note saying that they would sell me the last remaining tapes for only $10 each. So I sent for as many as I could; was a bargain yet still lots of money. <br />
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It took dimwitted me a long time to figure out that the company had ceased to exist and had vanished. The woman of the couple had sent me the note offering the last of their tapes at a reduced price; then she too vanished.<br />
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From listening to the tapes, I learned there were many tapes, many kinds of subjects, and the special mirror chambers they had created and planned to have regional centers all over where the chambers, and the tapes could be utilized. But it became apparent to me slowly that all that was almost as if it never existed. <br />
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Now, I personally knew that the technology had helped me enormously, so i assumed they would pop up again, but that never happened. And in recent times I have realized that my most creative years re my space concepts, were achieved after I had utilized their brain-integrating tapes awhile. It had enabled me to finally put together a lot of smaller ideas for space projects i had long had, into an integrated whole, which I eventually called the "KESTS to GEO and Applications" concept group.<br />
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Then the car alarm manufacturer suddenly laid everybody off one Friday, after giving out paychecks. We were old to not come back; the company was now closed, surprise. The subsequent disruption to my life trying to find new work - already a much older man than normally employed in the field - to survive, my world was so disrupted that I mostly no longer utilized those self-help environmental awareness and brain-integration teaching tapes. <br />
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It has been only recently that I put together the unusual burst of intellectual capacity while I was doing the major concept integration for those space concepts, coincided with my use of those tapes; they were doing just what they said they could do, insofar as the listener participated in the learning per tape's instructions.<br />
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So, some months back, I suddenly thought of using the google and other search engines commonly available,including to me. I input all keywords and names I could recall about the founders and the name of the company. Nothing. Google never heard of the company or the founders, period.<br />
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Over the decades since, I have bought many tapes and CD's claiming to have brain-integration binaural and isochronic tones in them; some have helped me a little. But none had that amazing performance-enhancing quality of the original and then suddenly vanished technology.<br />
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Control of business territory by established businesses, "happens" like that infamous other stuff "happens" so it seems likely to me that the self-help brain integration and awareness etc technology had infringed on one too many other businesses profits, and so the rug was pulled out from under the business. Could be that the technology was snatched for sale at huge price to top corporates; business does things like that, I have fund, even Aspergers-afflicted me eventually figures that out.<br />
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a decade or so ago, I realized that my set of their tapes, was probably deteriorating as such cape media does; CDs were then used as a longer-lasting media that retained recording quality better too; some of my more frequently played tapes were getting a bit stretched and distorted in places. I set up a project to copy the tapes over onto CD's to preserve them best I could. And since then copied over into mp3 form for my handheld. <br />
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I have little doubt but that the intruders that plague my residences over they years stealing documents, erasing computer files and snatching small objects from my home, and expertly sabotaging some of my items, have also copied all those audio tracks. So even if I get suddenly deep-sixed, the snoops will have the info; but good luck to humanity re getting them for general use from such snoops.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-7488915108666553402013-09-05T10:39:00.000-07:002013-09-05T10:39:28.724-07:00Maybe I don't want to know re economyIt seems to me - when am feeling a bit grumpy like at the moment - that our (American) virtual unifying national religion has become "buy for the least possible, provide the least possible value-added, and sell for the maximum the market will bear." <br />
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Such a guiding principle could easily explain how those with a Midas-like compulsion have amassed such fortunes in recent decades, while the general population have greatly received much less compensation for their work. Those "super-winners" presumably approach wealth-production as simply a game playing strategy, with little or no awareness, or care for, of the consequences resulting in the real physical world. And the new conjectured national-political-religion per above, justifies the whole thing. <br />
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Gone is the chain of activities, where individual workers like myself (over more than 40 years of work) counted on employers being there to utilize my skills and pay me a little more than survival money (even without significant retirement money) in return; and those businesses in turn were founded on providing some quite needed goods and services to the American consumer. So us workers essentially traded our work hours doing some specific value-adding function, for access to the huge composite of all the goods and services provided by all the other workers, as responsibly guided by our employers. Employers did not pay themselves, especially their CEO etc, incredible huge sums of money, by cutting back on money paid workers, as they do today. Back then, if they did that, the population would have become so enraged that they would have ceased to buy goods and services from those businesses. Nowadays, something prevents people from doing that economy-balancing activity; I wonder why - or rather, how it was done.<br />
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Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe something makes me not want to know.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-5562208124972131972013-09-04T09:37:00.001-07:002013-09-04T09:37:28.769-07:00To squabble internally or externally is the questionCorrectly describing a problem is well known to be a pre-requisite activity to resolving the problem. This post is an effort to do that. <br />
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And since it involves people, there are those who resist correct solutions, and thus strive to obscure the problem. And the need for drama makes the people-stuff not just super-complicated but also can get overly dynamic.<br />
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Apparently often through history rulers have struggled with the problem of how to keep their population from getting too squabbling amongst each other, and have utilized the mechanism of arranging war. War seems to get all the squabbling brothers to stop beating up on each other, to instead be working alongside each other to repel imagined invaders by going over and beating up on the neighbors, thus requiring the population to shift from internal squabbling to cooperative interaction against external foes.<br />
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It is not just the continuing sectarian violence in the middle-eastern countries that show the problem. It seems a worldwide problem, and apparently has existed throughout history. The Roman Empire used "bread and circus" to mollify its many subjects far and wide. The brutal coliseum violence sports perhaps another type for those closer to home. Here in the US, the sports teams traveling to each others' towns sports arenas to do mock battle between football teams, for example, has long been needed to satisfy some urges among people; not just for the players, but also for the men in the stadium whooping it up rooting for their home team, but also for their women who get into the excitement too, although probably with somewhat different urges involved that also excite the men.<br />
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I have often associated it all with my conjectured basic need for "drama," but there may be another force active in the craving for team assaults with each other, on the soccer field or with tanks and airplanes on the battlefield.<br />
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America is winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think the population is getting restless and there is much stirring of internal squabbling long seething and suppressed in the need to unite to confront the external foe.<br />
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The media's focus on the NSA as the villain has recently kept it from doing the part of its job to monitor the many groups of "organized stalkers" operating in America. Thus as it is said "when the cat's away the mice will play" and the organized-stalkers seem to be getting ready to more publicly make the daring moves that satisfy their egos and cover their own misdoings.<br />
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Allowing myself only a brief bit of anger at people choosing to squabble and group-assault instead of being responsible to their world and constructive for their civilization, I write this blog post. But I doubt that it will be allowed to be heard, as there are some heavy-duty public opinion spin-masters getting into the game, I sense.<br />
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Some kinds of people prefer to engage in games or serious conflicts so as to demonstrate who is superior; another kind of people prefer to engage in building things as their teamwork activity.<br />
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The conflict-craving types seem to be needing more visibility in recent times, bread-and-circus not enough for them anymore. The focus on the lone high achiever, predominant such as up through the 1950's in America, has been beaten back by the urge for the teams to take the forefront. The schoolyard bullies that gather their following by setting the example of beating up on the lone high achiever, gets tamed a bit as less violent techniques to stay at the front of a group's attention. When this kind of activity gets controlled in a corporation to have a management chain to produce a fine product or service, it seems about an optimum activity for teams. <br />
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However, as America's business-political mode has changed enormously since the 1950's, too often businesses teams will discover that they are more interested in making money than in making a fine product for the consumer. Investors who only look at the bottom-line return on their investment, and do not care what means are used to make that maximum money, increasingly business has found that it is far more efficient to seek out and overwhelm upcoming competition and destroy it, than to invest in better internal R&D to make better products for the customers. <br />
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Tripping up the rivals is hardly new, as a means to "win." Spot someone else's fine work being completed, is arranged to be destroyed leaving only one's lesser accomplishment the remaining finest thing. However, although sometimes like the stadiums full of howling fans, where the tripping up of the "other people" is publicly accepted and even required as part of the sport, in business dealings it is generally more frowned upon; therefore using more subtle techniques need to be employed. Those who engage in this kind of thing can be lumped into a general category of "organized stalkers." <br />
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These organized-stalkers apparently enjoy the companionship and adventure involved, as motivation, providing membership belonging and status in these semi-secret sub-organizations, that seem to be quite common and hardly new.<br />
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With the internet's fairly open communications, some of those who have discovered the increasingly unlikely occurrence of specific kinds of events as they go about their daily life, if they are lucky they learn about this organized-stalker phenomenon which apparently is now stalking them. To hide the originating source of the command to stalk particular individuals, there is said to be a "list" passed around among the many groups of organized-stalkers, and once a person is on that "list" it is a lifelong thing, no way to get off the list. (The implied threat of getting put on that list probably also keeps their members in line, fearing what would happen to them if they choose to not do some particularly nefarious dirty-work for the organized-stalkers.) <br />
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One kind of person that finds themselves as apparently on that "list" is the potentially innovative but now unemployed engineer, who might come up with an idea for a technology that could compete with some corporation's products and thus reduce their profits for their investors. Keeping those loose-cannon engineers down in the trenches by increasingly obvious organized-stalking and concurrent intrusion into their residences to do document theft, and by spreading nasty rumors among the people the engineer might connect with like neighbors, are said to be common protocols for the organized-stalkers. <br />
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I suppose it must be big fun for the members of the organized-stalker vigillanties in their fantasies of the monsters they are united in harassing, to be great heroes among the teams; quite unaware of what they are actually doing to their targets, that ultimately will come around to lower the standard of living for everybody including the organized-stalkers themselves. No matter; the fun and drama of team belonging and fantasied doing drama, is going on. Staying in the herd is a place of safety even among wild mammal groups, and driving out some member, normally a male, feeds the predators and thus protects those who are in the herd for awhile longer. These instincts still lurk among humans, and sometimes find expression, such as in the teams of organized-stalkers. <br />
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So at this point, I somewhat suspect that America is once again at that tipping point where focus against a common "enemy" outside the country, fades away enough so that the possible need for those stalked engineers to get re-hired to produce means to succeed against the nation-external enemy, becomes much less than the urge to snuff out the potentially business-disruptive innovative engineers and scientists, and so the long-prepared triumphant dramas of accusatory courtroom or scared run street chases, gets the go signal. <br />
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Part of this nearly overwhelmingly complex people-stuff, is the mode among ostensibly dignified members of society and corporations, to "get something on" the others, and this apparently enables some people to feel secure in their jobs, with the implied threat of the misdoings of those other dignitaries being revealed, if the job is lost. I was quite surprised when I learned about this phenomenon many decades ago. The "getting something on" can also be deliberately arranged by such groups too, even if there is no real adequately severe mistake or misdoing having been done by the individual. The need for a high-achieving Asperger to be accepted in the apparently fun things the groups are doing, often gets them put in the position of being deliberately "left holding the bag" to take the blame for the mischief of the group, the Asperger unable to comprehend all of what is going on among people. Someone who has stumbled into "knowing too much" is at high risk for being such a target, even if not wanting to be involved. Thus there is this mass of all the things "gotten on" each other, as part of the seething people-stuff stewing.<br />
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Now, is the declaring of war or doing the equivalent, to punish some outside nation, worth doing to prevent the nation-internal fracas from getting really nasty? Hardly seems fair to me, even though I too have long been one of those technological mavericks potentially too business-disruptive with better technologies than the existing corporations employ, and thus would likely would go down in one of the first internal skirmishes. Although that does not appeal to me at all, the sacrificing of thousands of foreigners in a distracting war, is just not a rightful thing to do to prevent it.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-63592987702384000022013-08-28T18:56:00.000-07:002013-08-28T18:56:39.592-07:00Another sick people make more profit for the investors rantOccasionally I resonate quite a bit to Joh Rapport's rants. Most of them I don't, but they are colorful writings and I see his viewpoints and OK he thinks it is accurate enough to rant about, yet I know better. And I can rant too although when I do no one cares, point here is that I understand the frustration being expressed by the writer-ranter. The referenced article by Rapport, much as another recent one, goes well in many - but not all - respects. Thus is worthy of some ranting of my own here in the wilderness where no one hears. <br />
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<a href="http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/would-the-us-government-let-jesus-cure-cancer/">http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/would-the-us-government-let-jesus-cure-cancer/</a> makes some very important points. Maybe I do not agree where the blame entirely rests all the time. Yet it seems like an important viewpoint that Rapport over-empathises (to get awareness from those dulled by too many commercials) as usual. <br />
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My own experience shows that "conventional medicine" is deliberately ignoring some very functional healing modalities that could help lots of people be well and at far lower cost. I know the validity of that. I strive to comprehend the "people-stuff is complicated" behind that.<br />
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And it is really complicated people-stuff. The strangest part is that it all exists. There is a book out, which I have only heard about, which probably describes the phenomenon, titled something like "Dead Doctors Don't Lie" and supposedly points out that even doctors follow unworkable protocols to their death to protect their profession that supported them well, but did not provide the wider variety of options for enabling people - including doctors - from living better healthier lives. All were sacrificed to the god of maximum profit (and perhaps demanded by needing to pay the enormous bills.)<br />
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Healthy people do not generally provide income to the medical industry. Sick people do.<br />
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A clever industry does not work itself out of a job.<br />
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Non-healthy people are good for the profit of the medical industry. Implications may be brutally apparent to the CEO's of the medical industry. Comply or lose your job.<br />
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Many corporations get started with a great product line that provide the customer base with really great new products. But - in time there is an evolution going on. The investors in the company want more dividends, not better products. Management that survives to the top realizes that. It has become profit, dividends, that matters to their investors in general. The numbers of the stock market have hypnotized the investors into forgetting the need for better products for the customers including they themselves. <br />
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The principle of efficacy, too often gets ignored in the health industry. The excuse it that it is too hard to prove the snake-oil con artists, thus anything not "licensed" per Rapport's article, and therefore all that is not from the approved corporations, is snake-oil and to be trashed. <br />
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The Scientific Method is touted as the foundation on which the conventional medicine system is based. I could point out that the majority of conventional medical practice has never been subject to the Scientific Method's methodical process. But far more importantly I point out that Conventional Medicine does not allow the use of the Scientific Method to test the validity of the "alternative protocols" of well being.<br />
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The way this happens is that by making it cost enormous money to do FDA approval, only corporations have such money. And Corporations sometimes become guided by restricting what they do to only that which increases the investor's income the most. No one is there to fully utilize the Scientific Method to evaluate the efficacy of the alternative health protocols, to separate the rare con folks from the actual high achievers.<br />
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Again note the disconnection from the goal of wellbeing and the improvement of the customers, all sacrificed to the bottom line of the corporations.<br />
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And the "Dead Doctors Don't Lie" principle shows we have painted ourselves into this terrible priced corner. Something went wrong somewhere. <br />
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Maybe we can fix it. Do we want to.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-46162277028128880482013-08-03T09:33:00.003-07:002013-08-03T09:35:41.836-07:00Paperclips clothespins pencils and small spoonsThere is a phenomenon that seems to have persisted for many decades and places, one that is so ... silly ... that it hardly ever gets mentioned. It is one of those things that even sometimes gets one to wonder if one remembers correctly - but occasionally it is a definite memory item, impossible to ignore.<br />
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It is the phenomenon of the vanishing small items that one handles a lot, that are fairly low-cost disposable and usually widely available in stores, surely no need to steal them from someone else. The items disappear off one's working space while one is away for a brief time - and on return, when reaching for the small item, it is no longer there and even if an intense effort is made, the item is just definitely not there anymore.<br />
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In my experience, many decades ago, the items were paperclips, pencils and disposable ball point pens. All were low-cost items that people could get easily at stores, and one would think there would be no need for people to snatch the items from one's desk or other workspace while one was away for awhile. Nowadays the vanishing items are primarily the two-piece wooden clothespins I use for re-closing opened packages in my kitchen. Also the small plastic spoons I normally use when eating, the kind of spoons that are sturdy and for camping and come in sets with forks and knives - I don't much use the forks and knives and they don't seem to vanish, but the spoons that I handle a lot, do the vanishing. Last I looked, was only one of them left, and I had bought at least three sets of them each set with four of each item, that would be 12 of those small spoons, and only one is left. I recall one broke its handle and was tossed, but that leaves at least ten of the spoons vanished out of my kitchen in recent years.<br />
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In fact, the significant part, the commonality part I think, after sifting memories of this seemingly insignificant thing happening over many decades and places, is that the items are small and had been handled by me a significant amount. And that they are normally expendable low cost items that it is hard to see why anyone would go out of their way to snatch them off my workspace - or from my kitchen, in the case of the clothespins and spoons. The items normally are very cheap and easy to buy for themselves. Like, even if intruders bothered to stalk me and know I was away from home when they do a routine intrusion into my home, why snatch the small items that surely will get my attention to their loss when I reach for them and they are gone? Is it an infamous "Killroy was here" kind of message, or just sheer mischief knowing it will puzzle me?<br />
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The occasion for writing this blog post is the missing clothespins. Problem is, I don't know where to buy any more of them; they were common in my youth but now people use clothes dryers not clotheslines to dry their clothes anymore, as I do too. Many years ago I had bought a small sack of the old original two-piece clothespins, the kind with a spring in the middle, and has been my little stash of them ever since. I never throw a clothespin away. So when I suddenly need a clothespin to close a newly opened food package, and see none are where I keep the ones I have taken off emptied bags, and indeed a check in the kitchen and fridge discovers that they all or maybe only one is left in use, and all the others are gone; this only happens after I have been away from home awhile such as out shopping.<br />
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So I am stuck with having to leave the bags open, or going to my little stash of new wooden clothespins, now getting a bit low, and get out another half dozen of them. That is my current situation at present - if I don't get out some of my few remaining new clothespins, they won't vanish next time I leave home to go do something. <br />
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Now, I would think it would be an enormous effort to stalk me and intrude into my residence just to snatch my small spoons and wooden clothespins. People just do not go to all that trouble to burglarize someone's home to get such low-cost items.<br />
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Unless there were some value in that they were items that I had personally handled a lot and were small and I probably kept them in back of my mind as to their being used and where they were. Who would find value in such items, and why, I wonder.<br />
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Yes, it seems a silly subject, paper clips and clothespins vanishing.<br />
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One possible correlation seems farfetched, but comes to mind, that the people who have the expertise and equipment to do something called "Radionics" - a really weird thing seems to me but apparently utilized by a large number of people who do not seem weird at all - they use a small object that a target person has handled to place in the machine as a "Witness" and it somehow enables the radionics practitioner do something related to the person associated with that "Witness" small item. I have heard of it because sometimes such a thing is used to help in healing someone, I have heard, and healing is a long time interest I have. But I get the impression that most of the users of the Radionics thingys use them more to get information than to heal. <br />
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And that is a whole different subject - or is it?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-82015101298222959882013-07-24T08:51:00.000-07:002013-07-24T09:07:02.721-07:00Using methane hydrates before they cause disasterRef <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23432769">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23432769</a> Arctic methane economic time bomb....<br />
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I have written about this several times over the years and as usual nobody cares what I think. So I will write a bit more now, helps vent exasperation and frustration about people-stuff too complicated for everybody's good.<br />
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Again I point out that we ought to be putting our effort into harvesting the methane ice as our major energy source, ceasing use of coal and oil at least for the present, as rapidly as possible in the changing over of hydrocarbon energy sources. This would both provide the world with abundant - and somewhat cleaner - energy for the foreseeable future - yet at a CO2 increase and O2 loss little different from existing coal and oil use - while slowly reducing the energy stored in the "time bomb" which the article points will involve an estimated $60 trillion in economic losses, a year's world produce lost - and note the article does not mention associated human misery involved, either. Dollars often is not really the total measure, but it is the easier one to calculate and talk about as business bottom line stuff.<br />
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The problems include developing the techniques for responsibly harvesting that tundra and undersea methane hydrates and using it in our powerplants and shipping, as well as getting Big Coal and Big Oil to rapidly transfer their efforts into methane hydrate harvesting while shutting down their coal and oil well production as fast as possible in the situation. Definitely not something big business would choose to do voluntarily, understandably, when business-as-usual is providing them the cushy life as-is; and obviously they do not consider the fate of the world's long term prospects as any business of theirs, as usual. <br />
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Same attitude that has crippled the "hoop kests to geo space escalator" technology for providing abundant economical energy for the world over the past twenty-four years: would compete with big oil and coal. Business games are quite out of my expertise, but it is in my expertise to see the disasters we are powerfully headed for largely due to the human ego thing and King Midas singleminded mentality.<br />
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Yet naive Asperger me still fantasizes that humanity could act responsibly in these things - the ideas all seem quite within easy technological reach, both the methane hydrate thing and the hoop space access thing. And they both could provide great constructive adventure for humanity, lots more fun than the current beating up on each other stuff. Plenty of drama potential, drama of the good kind in these large scale projects.<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-89393287377908396442013-07-23T08:57:00.002-07:002013-07-23T09:40:06.045-07:00Some of why people-stuff is complicated to meMaybe it is only that the morning cup of coffee is still too hot to have had enough caffein this morning, but once again I have been recalling a peculiar event in my life, so why not write about it here in my blog, maybe that will satisfy whatever subconscious thing that is trying to point something out to me that I need to be aware of now.<br />
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The event's scenario was that I was in tech school, on my honeymoon too, and the abundant lovemaking was invigorating me enough that my brain was working again lots better. I was doing quite well in the classes, which were eight hours a day on electronics, some theoretical and some applied. In the evenings, I would explain what i was learning in class, explaining to my wife - who knew when to nod her head yes she understood - electronics, and I had to start with basic physics and work up to the present lesson's subject; it was a delightful time in my life.<br />
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However, there was a subset of the class members, who once came to me and invited me to spend my evenings studying with them. <br />
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That did not seem at all appealing to me, when I could be spending my evenings with my wife on my honeymoon. (Maybe I ought to have tried to explain that to them, now that I look back.)<br />
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Anyway, the group subsequently began to act a bit strange towards me, not friendly. That was a time when most people smoked; most of the others in class smoked cigarettes, but I smoked a pipe. Once I noticed one of the group smiling at me and making a show of writing something on a piece of paper, then hiding it in his cigarette pack; it appeared to me that he was suggesting make notes for cheating on tests; a pipe tobacco pouch would also make a place to hide notes, could be. But I had no need to cheat on tests, nor would I even if I needed to do that.<br />
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Then I noticed the same guy who had been acting out the cigarette package note thing, talking to the the instructor and pointing at me, waving his cigarette package. The instructor then turned and glared a long time at me, then looked away. <br />
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People-stuff is complicated. Probably moreso to me, having Aspergers social ineptitude; but back then, I did not know I had that dysfunction.<br />
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In class, eventually the next test had come and gone, and the instructor spoke in front of the class, carefully not looking at me with glares anymore. He announced to the class that he had heard of cheating going on, and so he had made up a brand new test, given for the first time (unlike other tests, apparently - and probably passed around from class to class among the in-group folks.) And he continued, saying that I was the person who got the highest grade on the exam. <br />
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All the rest of the class then suddenly kept too-busy at their desks, no longer giving me angry looks. And there was no further grousing about me during that electronics tech class, from then on. <br />
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I did not much think about that event back then; I was enjoying my new wife and the joy of learning fascinating electronics and sharing my learning with her in the evenings. Electronics theory was full of very interesting things to contemplate, and the gadgetry utilizing these principles were also fascinating to me, especially with the evoked implications of what else could be done; what wonders.<br />
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But working relationships with co-workers always was a bit strained for me, like it was in that class, and then back on the job applying the new knowledge. The people-stuff part of it was real hard for me, although I did my best to be helpful and friendly to others, there always seemed to be some kind of stress present. I tended to get put on jobs where I worked alone, unlike most of the co-workers who worked in pairs much of the time. Not a problem for me; dealing with another person, particularly another man, often made things just harder for me, not easier.<br />
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It was not until after many decades later and I found that I no longer could get electronics employment - too old they thought - and thus figured out I was probably retired, that I became cognizant of the fact that psychological testing by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator testing, which I took a couple of times (and later confirmed by Temperament typing testing and info) when related to fields of associated endeavor, pointed out that my psychetype - INFP - was the opposite type for doing technician type hands-on physical gadgetry work - I would have found it much easier doing teaching or writing, the testing showed. That my career as a technician was a hard way for me to go, is less important for this post, than to point out - hopefully to myself more clearly to get aware - that the psychological typing also pointed out that for people to feel easy with someone else, they needed to be the same psychological type. Thus this seems to maybe explain the uneasiness between me and my technician type co-workers many times over the four decades of my work.<br />
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And it may well explain the classroom scenario re the testing - and it may well be that the group actually believed that I was cheating since I did not spend my evenings studying with them. That they attempted to make the instructor think I was cheating, however, is another part of the people-stuff that is so complicated to me.<br />
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Some things like that just give me a feeling of exasperation.<br />
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Yet, I too was part of the series of events that put me on the difficult career path in electronics as a technician, as a result of dropping out of the co-op program with WSMR as a physics major, and subsequent dropping out of college completely, the sudden extreme tinnitus and ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder, that canceled out the Asperger's strength of focused attention on a subject of special interest) and all being quite a struggle for me for studying. Electronics I had chosen for my co-op student path at WSMR (White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico) - radio telemetry, quite interesting - and so electronics was how I could best earn a living after college dropout, and thus the career in electronics happened. So, that ought to be part of my exasperation - it is partly me and not just those other folks.<br />
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I have often mentioned in this blog my hypothesis that people have a need for drama in their life, a basic need like food and shelter. So, maybe the above is part of my unconscious setting up drama for myself.... I guess drama is drama, whether or not it is of a preferred type.<br />
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Writing high tech sci fi is more fun. Would be lots more fun if I had a good woman's comforts in my intimate ongoing life too; but, looking back, a woman in my life tends to bring on a huge amount of drama for Aspergers me - usually nice drama, but sometimes lots of struggle too, unfortunately. But looking back, rarely was the spice of life too hot to fully enjoy with woman, if ever.<br />
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I think that lots of men consider their wife mostly just a bragging symbol to others of how successful the man is - especially how much better they are than the men who have not been able to have a wife at the time - and so I doubt they would understand much of what I have written here. Many people seem to me to have the "whose-better-than-whom" guiding-light thing.<br />
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Anyway, I hope writing this blog post will help me to comprehend more of my ongoing life. Life is easier and less exasperating when I have some reasonable comprehension of what is going on. Maybe this blog post will help some other poor Asperger someday, too.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-54744831205172479912013-07-20T11:55:00.003-07:002013-07-20T11:57:05.508-07:00Space Day 2013 - the Moon - and Sci FiWell, am still here on this Space Day in 2013, so it is time for me to do my usual blog post about space.<br />
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"Space" in this context means the immense volume that is above the atmosphere of Earth, as opposed to the remaining space in one's crowded closet, for example. The International Space Station is up there in space, in Low Earth Orbit, along with a growing horde of smaller objects in low earth orbit. They tend to stay up there because there is a nice balance between their forward earth-horizontal velocity straight line trajectory leading up and away from the planet, is exactly balanced by the force of gravity pulling down on the mass of the object, so it just goes round and round the round planet.<br />
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Another way to look at it is the angular momentum of the circling object generates a centrifugal force that exactly balances the opposite direction downward force of gravity.<br />
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Getting up there into orbit from the surface of the earth, takes a lot of effort, however.<br />
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But don't worry, am not going to use this place do another grouse about my concepts for hoop-type space escalators and even anchored tether space elevators, for high efficiency space orbital access, as having been suppressed and ignored, by some influence-expert folks behind the scenes.<br />
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What this post is about is celebrating that day when humans first set foot on our Moon, on July 20,1969. <br />
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As I have often said, people-stuff is complicated - especially to an Asperger's socially-dimwit viewpoint. In that frame of mind, the achievement of Apollo 11 setting people on the Moon briefly, is analogous to a can of fishing worms in the fisherman's bait can, all roiling around in coping struggle, and yet somehow the cooperate enough to manage to boos a couple of their kind up to the edge of the bait can - before they fall back in again. A highly unlikely thing to happen; but people did it, brought back some rocks and regolith from the Moon, and left some Earth stuff on the moon in repayment.<br />
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There are other viewpoints. One of my good friends who is quite intelligent and caring about people, says he believes that no humans actually landed on the Moon; that all the videos and pictures of those times were fabricated, as a NASA contract, by the moviemaker Stanley Kubrick. All fakery. However, I never could find out why my friend has this belief. Anyway, people do not have to agree about all things, Neither he nor I were there on the Moon to verify what happened, so it is all conjecture for both of us.<br />
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I used the Moon as environment most extensively in my high tech sci fi novels "The Ark of 1984's Future" and "The Torus City Ice Shields Returning Home" and those both involved rather detailed utilization of the Moon's environment.<br />
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In sci fi fantasy adventures, and in real life adventures like Apollo 11, the people-stuff is complex. Much like the aforementioned can of worms that somehow do make quite an achievement despite mostly just busy surviving while getting in each others' way. Indeed, is amazing to me that humans have not exterminated themselves long before this. Still, there is some good stuff despite the Machiavallian kind of stuff. <br />
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Drama, the hunger for drama, seems to be the motivator. Like in the years I was trying to get people to pay attention to my Mooncable Project concept of a lunar space elevator built using existing materials, for the benefit of civilization, a concept that assumed that people automatically worked together so all would thrive better, that by the mid-1970's it was still sandbagged while the public was starting to become enthralled by the "Star Wars" movies into which the put millions of dollars, but not one penny for my Mooncable project to enable those people live much better. With their dollars they showed that they much preferred the battles and heroes of Star Wars than the Mooncable Project adventures providing people with space resources in their time. I thin part of it is because with Star Wars movies, in a couple of hours of excitement, the movie is over and they can go back to their familiar world with which they know how to cope; no new stuff there to deal with for those moviegoers, for better or worse. <br />
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So I can take a hint. Sometimes, anyway, given time to figure it out, of course. So I write high tech sci fi. And I finally now have available in print a new high tech sci fi novel, this one about a generation starship in process of seeding a new planet; title is "Planetfall Twenty-Seven" and can be gotten from CreateSpace or Amazon. This is the one I wrote in 2011; in 2012 I wrote most of its sequel, but still needs a chapter or two and then the long left-brain struggle to format it for printing. CreateSpace had a new interior template, nice to have, but maybe I ought to put my time into getting the template to work with my Mac software with less endless chapter by chapter adding stuff afterwards; then put what I have of the novel into the template, so when inspiration arrives, I can just plug the finishing up of the novel and send off for a first proof copy. What fun. Yet it is the best I can do to help people eventually have real-life adventures, like that landing and foot-setting on the Moon on July 20, 1969; without the prior direction-pointg by sci fi writers, back then people would probably have settled their posturing by using a few nukes on each other before saying enough is enough. Yay space race team even if they did not like me. <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-28430226571068036122013-07-19T09:43:00.000-07:002013-07-19T09:43:05.719-07:00A high valence puzzleSometimes life presents a puzzle to a socially-dimwit Asperger that the usual wait-I-will-figure-this-out-give-me-time process does not provide an explanation, despite returning to the memory to process it much later, after more of life experiences have provided new data about the people-stuff puzzle. So as an effort to reconcile, even though not comprehend, one such experience I had, and the some ... forty years since it happened, still no adequate answer has shown up, and so is likely to remain a mystery to me along with its high valence content, needs to be resolved insofar as possible, so making this blog post is maybe a way to deal with the thing. Or at least shine new light on it, air it out.<br />
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As I said, this happened about forty years ago. It is time to let it go, insofar as possible.<br />
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The situation was that my wife of 12 years had divorced me, and I had been participating with a church singles group for a long time, and it was at one of their group events I now found myself. The off-site group activities were all quite different and interesting, although Aspergers-me could at best only be a fringe person watching what others did, as I tried to comprehend so as to participate a bit better. I also always had the desperate hope I could find a new woman for my life among the group, a desperately hoped-for thing that I could not physically express. <br />
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The singles group had moved to a fairly large empty room, and we all were asked to line up in a straight line, and stand facing away from the line.<br />
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I found myself down near the end of the line of about twenty people, because it took me a bit to figure out what others were doing so I could then try to fit in. I had no idea what it was for, but I had some curiosity blended in with my usual lonely despair.<br />
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One of the members I recognized came out of a door near the far end of the line of people; he was a benign person, and he announced to us that he sometimes functioned as a psychic for police work, and he was going to demonstrate that skill to us. So he stood in front of the first person on the far end of the line, paused a moment, then spoke outloud so all could hear, something that apparently made sense to the person there. Then he would shift to stand in front of the next person in the line, pause thoughtfully, then speak something about that person. I listened in, and the things being said were all quite different kinds of things, but meant little to me. He slowly worked his way down the line toward where I stood.<br />
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Eventually he had worked his way down the line of people to stand thoughtfully in front of me a moment. Then to my surprise he said something unlike said to any of the others. He said that I was very intelligent, had a high IQ of 165, and a bit more. Then he shifted to the next person in line. <br />
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So I was standing there with those words "IQ of 165, highly intelligent" yet in reality I felt quite squashed and ruined and unable to think of much of anything useful, barely surviving. Surely he had been wrong. Yet at one time the high IQ kind of thing had applied to me, but decades before.<br />
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The man had finished going down the line telling each person something they needed to know about themselves, then he said to all of us to stay in line where we were, and he then left the room. <br />
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A moment after he left the room, another man popped out of that door, a man who walked with the physique of muscles under the formal clothing and he had a curious air of utter confidence. He walked straight at where I was standing, but as he got closer, I noticed that he was walking powerfully to the spot I stood, but did not appear to see me standing there. At the last instant I stepped back to keep from getting rammed by him; he then turned and stood as if he belonged in the line. I was now standing a bit in back of the line, quite puzzled.<br />
<br />
Then out of the door came a very attractive young woman, clearly one who would have made a fine companion for me, but of course she would not ever notice a miserable man like me. She started walking a bit away from the line of people starting at the far end, clearly she was counting people as she walked. Then she stopped right in front of the man who had taken my place in the line, and started talking to him, introducing herself.<br />
<br />
The line of people broke up and people drifted off, and the attractive young woman who continued to talk softly with the man who had taken my place in the line, and they slowly moved off and eventually out the door together.<br />
<br />
As usual I was then left alone, and so I made my way out of the door, quite baffled by it all. As usual, people-stuff was complicated. Yet I had figured out that I had been cheated out of my desperately needed opportunity for a new woman in my life. And the manner in which it was done was a multiple puzzle. I needed time to figure it out.<br />
<br />
Forty years later now and despite occasional replay of that event in my mind, I have come up with little in subsequent life experiences to figure it out. That I remain lonely miserable mateless without woman, is apparent; and that my unexpected big chance to have not have that miserable thing happen, had been cheated from me by some really peculiar ongoings long ago.<br />
<br />
So I write it here in my blog, to air it out and let it go a bit. People-stuff is complicated, the past is past and gone and cannot be rescued from the far away from here and now; I need to realize some puzzles will remain, but they don't have to have such high valence emotional content anymore. I hope.<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-55106369083877354722013-07-18T09:36:00.001-07:002013-07-18T09:56:51.981-07:00Doing the energy numbers for lifting way upProbably not many people are much interested in how much energy it takes to lift something, starting, say a few planetary radii above the Earth. Still, if one needs to figure that out - as I once did over four decades ago - it might be nice to have some hints about how to do that. It is surprising to me that the calculation is still not readily available in the usual physics software nowadays.<br />
<br />
I resist the urge to describe the long struggling search it took me to figure it out, back then. Nor tell you of the many uses I have had for the equation since then. My math skills are not easy for me, but sometimes one just has to do the numbers to show something very interesting can be done. (And unfortunately sometimes doing the numbers does not show that the something can be done; but, that is the way the cookie crumbles. There are lots of other things yet to explore; and one blocked path invites looking for another path toward the goal.)<br />
<br />
Lifting something takes energy to do. And in lifting something a ways up, it gains energy thereby. The amount of effort exerted to get the mass lifted up there, however, can be considerably more than what is given to that which is raised up. For the following analysis, only the amount of energy that is received by the lifted mass, is what is of concern.<br />
<br />
Lifting something up a short ways, we simplify the calculations. But if we are contemplating lifting something up a significant portion of a planetary radius or more, now we have to consider that the force of gravity varies with height above the planet. It is an inverse-square function kind of thing, meaning that if one squares - that is, multiply itself by its own self - the altitude in planetary radii, and take the inverse of that - meaning divide that quantity into 1, that gives one the gravitational force up at that number of planetary radii up there.<br />
<br />
This means that figuring out how much energy it takes to lift something a specific distance, gets less the further one gets from the Earth - or other planetary body or moon. It takes doing the numbers to figure out exactly how much less, however. And that can be of interest if one is figuring out a rocket traveling up or figuring out an anchored tether space elevator. OK so not many people are interested in doing that, most likely. But to those who are, the following might save them lots of struggle in figuring out how do do that.<br />
<br />
The task is to find out how much energy is given to a specific mass to lift it between two planetary radii altitudes. To lift it up from the ground, it is the difference between one planetary radius and the radius of its target altitude. Say, up to Geostationary Earth Orbit, from the ground.<br />
<br />
Note that this is the energy to lift it straight up, not to put it in orbit up there.<br />
<br />
The key to calculating the energy from one altitude to another, is to calculate the energy it takes to lift the mass to an infinite distance - an easy calculation - from one altitude, and then calculate the same thing only starting from the high endpoint altitude to an infinite distance, and subtract the two.<br />
<br />
One can calculate the energy required to give the mass escape velocity starting from the upper altitude, from the escape velocity from the lower starting point, to get the result. But that is a way to check easier forms of calculation.<br />
<br />
Remember, distances are considered straight up along a line to the center of the Earth or other planetary body, and expressed in terms of planetary radii. Thus, the ground level is a planetary radius of 1. Another example, for the Earth in 24 hour rotation, geostationary orbital altitude is about 6.6 radii.<br />
<br />
So the asy equation is create a constant that is the product of the gravitational constant times the mass of teh earth (or other planet or moon) times the mass of the object being lifted. Then multiply that times the difference between the inverse ratios of the two altitudes expressed in planetary radii.<br />
<br />
That is, Work (energy) = GMm((1/r0)- (1/r1))<br />
<br />
I made a nice gif of the equation long ago, so here it is:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXbADCC4CFnifxqkE33hvX0LAlgzn6MFj5gUIRl1hGsWEZjzHpC26jw6xPxA8LQ93HtNu2ALQnj0jK7O_3tOI7Zqph6iX4dLNLZ04WEas4r_eVXtpFKhmXr-p4kf-ZHdPRqmVyQ/s1600/gmm1r.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-
TiRdhQBuxcc/UegVD4CUZbI/AAAAAAAAAKg/WvSncGAKC9M/s320/gmm1r.gif" /></a></div><br />
As an example taken from my web page <a href="http://www.kestsgeo.com/1techconcepts/energygroundtogeo/energygroundtogeo.html">http://www.kestsgeo.com/1techconcepts/energygroundtogeo/energygroundtogeo.html</a> to use this to calculate the energy added to mass by lifting it from the ground straight up to geostationary earth orbit altitude:<br />
<br />
W = GMm ((1 / R0) - (1 / RGEO))<br />
<br />
W = (6.67E-11)(5.983E24)((1 / 6.378E6) - (1 / 4.23E7))<br />
<br />
W = (4E14)(1.33E-7) = 5.31E7 Joules / Kg to GEO = 14.76 KwHr / Kg; @2.2 Kg / lbm = 6.71 KwHr per pound to GEO <br />
<br />
That is the theoretical energy needed to lift one pound mass up to GEO; but to stay up there it also needs to be given orbital velocity, an additional 0.96 KwHr/ Kg to orbit at GEO (see the referenced web page to calculate that if need be.)<br />
<br />
So, it is not that hard to calculate the energy given to the mass of an object lifted up to high altitudes. <br />
<br />
Works on the lunar surface too, starting with the 1/6 earth gravity as the starting point. That is where I had to use this kind of calculation back circa 1970 as part of my hobby project to figure out if a tapered fiberglass anchored tether could be made of an existing material anchored on the moon and balanced weight across the Lagrange-1 point of the earth-moon system, between the Earth and the Moon. Months and months of tedious hand calculations back then, using a slide rule and doing the sums and difference by pen and paper, in my limited free time at home. Turned out, it could be done. But nobody cared back then but me; all the doers were too busy doing other things. As I said, that is the way the cookie crumbles; but in this case it is not the physics or the math that failed, it was the people stuff that failed to make the mark. Nowadays with a simple calculator one can do it easily, however. Works for Earth anchored tether space elevator calculations too.<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-43221562126548569372013-07-17T21:02:00.003-07:002013-07-17T21:46:55.895-07:00Women essential at the dawn of American space explorationRef <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23349135">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23349135</a> "female rocket propellant designer for Explorer I" reminded me of another female who was essential at the dawn of America's space program, Donna Wilson, who was a person with whom I was acquainted at one time.<br />
<br />
Struggling to figure out how to write something comprehensible about what was my related experience, it is just too much for my Asperger's inept social capacity. So I will struggle to write what I write, maybe add a bit to ... history's possible recording, given permission from the Internet Trolls who control my communications availability... or should I say that usually sandbag my efforts to communicate. Anyway, from my Asperger's viewpoint, such as it is now and it was back then:<br />
<br />
My first awareness of Donna Wilson's existence was seeing her give a presentation to the small group of Los Angeles chapter of the ISSS, being given at a room loaned by the RAND Corp in Santa Monica, after hours. Being signed in and on the acceptance list, itself was a bit of adventure for me, at each of the meetings there at the somewhat famous place. <br />
<br />
Nevermind how out of place I felt there; I have attempted to explain my connection with the L A Chapter of the ISSS elsewhere. (International Society of System Scientists) (For example <a href="http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/2471/1/a-potential-application-of-general-systems-theory-kests-a-unique-transportation-technology-concept-implications-1994">http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/2471/1/a-potential-application-of-general-systems-theory-kests-a-unique-transportation-technology-concept-implications-1994</a> )<br />
<br />
Anyway I had signed in and found the room, deep into the after-hours fairly empty halls of the RAND Corporation. And was seated with the others of the ISSS there, awaiting whatever was to transpire. A tall thin fairly attractive middle aged woman stood up, and began her presentation. Donna Wilson, by name. She spoke of her role at the beginning of America's space activities, she an astronomer, and she taught the essentials of orbital mechanics to the rocket scientists back then, who knew of rockets but not much of how to calculate what they did once in space, in orbit. Donna described briefly how she was key in their learning how to mathematically connect their rocketry to satellites in elliptical orbits, not coming down, at least for awhile. Her mathematical expertise in astronomy that routinely was able to calculate planetary orbits in the past, now worked quite well also in calculating what orbiting satellites would do. <br />
<br />
So, like the woman of the referenced article who was essential for rocket propellent craftsmanship at the dawn of America's space age, so also was Donna Wilson key to having the early rocket scientists figure out where their orbiting objects were likely to go.<br />
<br />
Being a lonely single man, at that meeting of the ISSS, I noticed the late middle aged tall thin attractive Donna Wilson with more than one viewpoint; I knew she was out of my reach, but still I had longings. Perhaps she somehow was aware of that, because during her talk there at the ISSS meeting, she only gave me a brief look that was sheer hostility, although we had never met. That look clearly erased my interest in her.<br />
<br />
The LA Chapter of ISSS knew me as both a space concept dreamer from my Mooncable concept of the early 1970's and of my more recent Centristation and KESTS to GEO conceptual designs. To the ISSS these all were interesting thoughts to briefly contemplate before moving on to other things; yet, I who had few academic credentials, seemed to be tolerated by those intellectuals, and they had some things to talk about that were very stimulating to my imagination too; and Donna's presentation stimulated me in more than one way. Yet clearly she did not like me or my concepts. As I have often written, people-stuff is complicated.<br />
<br />
Some years later I learned of a holistic bookstore being opened in an area near where I often traveled, Woodland Hills, CA. It was called the Ginko Leaf Bookstore; and finding it in an out of the way quiet street one day, I explored its nice selection of books which well fit in with my interest in holistic concepts, something that I felt I needed to comprehend yet at that point it was mostly not yet understood, but tantalizing; maybe it all could enable me to resolve the mysterious problems I had long had.<br />
<br />
Buying a book I had picked out, the lady behind the counter surprisingly was Donna Wilson. This time she had no evident hostility toward me. She was all bookstore business. Later visits, she ordered some books for me that she did not have on her bookshelves. Could be she never connected me with the ISSS meeting years before. <br />
<br />
But I did discover she was still married, to some man who lived in the northern part of California. <br />
<br />
I visited the Ginko Leaf bookstore <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-12-31/news/vw-7867_1_bodhi-tree">http://articles.latimes.com/1987-12-31/news/vw-7867_1_bodhi-tree</a> many times, even though it was a bit out of my way of usual travels, mostly to get a lonely glimpse of her, yet on the surface to search her bookshelves for interesting books to buy. There was a back room that always had one of the ISSS members, a muscular man who would only give me a smirk when I encountered him there in an otherwise empty meeting room. I felt the two were involved and he was ready to give me the boot if I got friendly with Donna.<br />
<br />
This went on for a couple of years, best I remember. Donna would order me a book and email me when it came in, so I could visit and buy it. One time I noticed on the desk there, one of many holistic exploration items, a rubber ball of a few inches diameter and with projections all over it, said to enhance the effectiveness of laundry detergents, enabling use of less soap in doing laundry. I had heard of the item elsewhere, but had not tried it. Then I learned that the huge soap manufacturers were initiating a huge lawsuit against all the sellers of the rubber ball that claimed to reduce the need for soap to do laundry. Donna's bookstore was being sued for all she was worth. I felt helpless and in dismay; although she did not seem to do anything except her routine at the counter at the Ginko Tree, although the soap rubber ball was now gone from the counter, the one time I visited there afterwards.<br />
<br />
Then I learned that the Ginko Tree Bookstore was closed; Donna Wilson was dead.<br />
<br />
I never new how she died until this evening, doing an internet search that showed up " <a href="http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Wilson,_Donna">http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Wilson,_Donna</a> : "American macrobiotic teacher, bookstore owner, owned the Gingko Leaf bookstore in Woodland Hills, California; previously owned natural foods store, married twice, one child.<br />
Death 28 May 1998, 10:50 p.m. PDT, following car crash of 22 May 1998.""<br />
<br />
The whole scenario is like the usual plate of spaghetti insofar as my understanding it all. So I merely write the above in hopes it means something to somebody in the future, if it can get past the Internet Trolls that suppress public awareness of my writings lots of times.<br />
<br />
And I remember the image of Donna as an attractive woman, who could have been helpful in my space efforts and holistic interests and my need for a woman to make love to, if it were not for the .... I don't know what they/it is, but it is quite aware of me and is utterly hostile to me and my doings. <br />
<br />
And some years later, from a different source, I obtained one of those rubber spiked balls to be used in one's washing machine to reduce the need for laundry soap. It has been used for many years and is still in my washing machine, ready to again do its thing when I wash clothes next time.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the world ought to know of the enormous benefit the woman named Donna Wilson provided to America's space race at the beginning, by her teaching of orbital mechanics to the early rocket pioneers in America.<br />
<br />
Jim Cline<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-30496466098296568732013-07-06T20:02:00.000-07:002013-07-06T20:03:46.067-07:00People who succeed by causing others to failPerhaps this post is only for those with "Asperger's Syndrome"; although to me, it seems a universal alarm signal.<br />
<br />
There apparently actually are people who have an operating principle that they succeed by causing others to fail.<br />
<br />
Yes, I know that this seems irrational. But, lots of observation strongly indicates that statement is accurate.<br />
<br />
Although it is a symbolic example, note that in some sports, such as football or basketball, part of the requirement of players is to strive mightily to cause the opponent team members to fail in their endeavors. And, assume that they will treat you the same way.<br />
<br />
In the real world, there are people who similarly function that way in daily life.<br />
<br />
So beware, there are - insane? - people out there who may strive to cause you to fail; and to their limited thinking, that enables them to succeed.<br />
<br />
Sorry, but that is the way it seems to be. Abundantly reality-tested. You must strive to cope with such nuts while getting your life tasks done.<br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-35320589914254243272013-07-03T12:37:00.000-07:002013-07-03T13:16:51.679-07:00Shared values are what is too often missing in America nowadaysThe post by Robert Reich today <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/serve-society_b_3540394.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/serve-society_b_3540394.html</a> "To Serve Society" seems to me to very insightfully see the larger pattern of what is going on regarding the relationship of the individual American and America.<br />
<br />
The tragic loss of 19 young firefighters in an Arizona wildfire, was the article's focus on people being of service to America as a whole, vs the currently dominant philosophy that, like the stealthy serpent, has taken over the country: " ... selfishness is the only honest and justifiable motive. By looking out for Number One, we accomplish everything that's necessary...." "... The magic of the marketplace can be relied on to allocate resources to their highest and best uses. Anything "public" is suspect...." "...The titans of Wall Street and the CEOs of our major corporations have put this narrow principle into everyday practice. In their view, the aggregation of great wealth and maximization of profit is the only justifiable motive. Greed is good. Eight-figure compensation packages are their due....."<br />
<br />
I have personally seen how these forces have cost America - and probably civilization overall - at least 50 years of robust development of desperately needed resources, at a time when business-as-usual is going along like the old saw about "the clerks are selling everything like mad, but nobody is minding the store."<br />
<br />
Something about it all also reminds me of the sign I saw in the local library, about the squabbling 2-year-old group's philosophy: "Everything I have is mine, and anything I can see is mine too."<br />
<br />
Anyway, Robert Reich's post goes on with what is missing: "This crimped perspective misses what's most important. Shared values are the essence of a society."<br />
<br />
If the "Number One" that we are looking out for totally, becomes our larger self that includes family and the larger whole of America and indeed civilization, perhaps that Ayn Rand-associated principle would work. Using our power to benefit our self and all of humanity, is involved.<br />
<br />
Those 19 firefighters were being paid to do that job, true. The 20th of the team apparently did not have the tools to function adequately as a lookout to spot and figure out the implications of wind direction shifts and velocity. Although whoever was guiding the overall task needed the same info and projection skill. <br />
<br />
Cutting brush is a hard physical work job, very close to the earth, and not often focussed on the larger picture ongoing. A very busy busy activity, nose to the grindstone kind of thing. Yet potentially very dangerous; somebody has got to be "minding the store" or chances are, there is going to be a big problem eventually.<br />
<br />
I hope there can be some innovative R&D on both high lookout capability - perhaps using satellite optics with radar bounce wind pattern evaluation - and predictive analysis real time for dealing with such tasks, as well as innovative R&D on practical field pack emergency sheltering when being overrun by a brush fire... maybe something like the existing reflective bubble pack with a face mask and small oxygen supply, the whole being filled by foamed fire retardant deployed in seconds. Like a car's airbag rapid response thing.<br />
<br />
But who is going to guide such R&D intelligently, and it all be paid for being done ... where does that fit in with the CEO's awarding themselves 8 figure compensation packages in total greed as purest expression of good ... what is their opinion of the 19 firefighters and their task .. hopefully something different than considering they were not making money on it all so is not their concern, and besides, plenty more sheeple are out there waiting to take their place.<br />
<br />
How long can it all tolerate with resiliency, before the lack of somebody minding the store brings on the end of the partying. <br />
<br />
So if some overlord is appointed by unthinking investors to "mind the store" will they not simply do it to maximize profits instead of equally maximizing value added to benefit the society, the nation, that is getting more and more like a car that is not designed and built as a whole, but instead as a bunch of nice looking parts in a heap but not designed to function as a whole car on the road, all fun to do and wealth producing for a few, but when it is time to drive the car somewhere, reality sets in.<br />
<br />
When reality suddenly set in for those nineteen hardworking young firefighters, I can imagine it was very unpleasant to experience. Similarly, America as a whole is at risk the way things are going, for equivalent unpleasant experiences. No fun when the resource-ravishing greed-worshipping partytime runs out of game pieces.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-39718905568192264592013-06-22T12:51:00.000-07:002013-06-22T12:51:25.130-07:00Grading on the curve's long term consequencesSome sadness in my life has finally made some sense to me, regarding why people do not acknowledge my innovative technological concepts to help all our lives. The missing piece of this long-time puzzle has been the realization that if something requires the participation of other people, then it has to be done by their rules. Implementing most of my large-scale space transportation and utilization concepts would require the "participation" of large numbers of people, who are considering themselves much better than I am. And most of those people are mentally wired to be ever climbing around in a social pyramid structure of who is better than whom, technical concepts are mere pawns for their game playing.<br />
<br />
As I have said many times before - maybe more in hopes I myself will hear it more than others - people-stuff is complicated. To write anything here that is meaningful requires discarding 99.9% of the background data in my mind - so I might as well not even try to explain more than bits and pieces of the basis. <br />
<br />
The part that sifts out seems to be this: <br />
<br />
When the education system switched to grading on the curve, it not only made it easier for teachers to pass more students, but it also changed the rules by which students learn. And those changed rules for being students, later became rules for living life and especially doing business and corporate philosophy.<br />
<br />
And of course what I am commenting on here is a bell-curve thing; there are exceptions to it all, off on the slopes of the bell curve.<br />
<br />
In school, grading on the curve made no difference to me, as a student - I think I was in high school by then. I was not particularly interested in what my grades were anyway - I was just eager to learn, particularly science and philosophy; and my main learning was through the books, since teacher's lectures were difficult for me to follow, being verbal-audio. The written word and graphics were what poured the wonders of learning into my eager learning.<br />
<br />
But for most of the other students around me - of whom I was not very aware, as became more obvious in education after high school, grades were more important to them than the material they were to learn. They had to learn the material to get a good grade, and a good grade made very important rewards for them. <br />
<br />
Team sports like football and basketball included implicit permission and even requirement to take thought and action to cause handicap to the opponent, as part of winning. Winning was part handicapping the opponent, and was part doing excellently as a team and individual in that team. The part about it being part of the activity to be handicapping the opponent, easily transferred over to the classroom situation, once grading under the curve was implemented. <br />
<br />
Thus handicapping the student that got good grades easily, would drop his test scores, and thus raise the grades of everybody else in the class. This was a much easier thing to do than to study harder to learn more to get better grades.<br />
<br />
Getting better grades in school was already part of the "who-is-better-than-whom" social framework through which most of life's goodies flowed. In higher education, there was a "publish or perish" struggle that probably really put pressure on some people. And again was part of the "who-is-better-than-whom" thing. <br />
<br />
Thus when I was proposing my hard dreamed up technological concepts, yet to me wonderful new opportunities that could result if implemented, a huge number of other folks into the presenting of technical papers at space conferences, would see it as merely upsmanship effort by me, which is a normal thing to do as a next step in the higher levels of academics. But when they found out that I had not done the long and difficult climb up the social structure, which in academics requires advancing in formal education, it apparently seemed to them like I was cheating big-time. <br />
<br />
From there it would be easy for them to conjecture that I had not derived the concepts myself, or wrote them up myself; I must have stolen the ideas from others or others had coached me from a hiding place. Thus the onlookers response would be to just assume I was not actually the author, thus either totally ignore me as if I did not exist, or else make effort to find out where I stole the ideas, from what high academic did I get them. Thusly their place in the social pyramid was again solidly assured, all based on their ability to climb up by getting good grades - grades derived by grading under the curve by then long established. There were ever so many cunning tricks to jerk the rug out from under those who did not comply with the social hierarchy keeping their place, and that included not getting better grades. Football ramming the opponents was by the rules, but rules also required ramming the opponent - and the smart aleck's who did not know their place and thus dared present technical papers better than theirs, were automatically open season targets to the team mentality. Sink the socially-naive brilliant person, makes all the others rise higher thereby, and thus the ones who sunk the high achievers were heroes to the team.<br />
<br />
Now being one of those targets to be sunk by the team so all the team can look better, it makes much more sense to me why my technological concepts rarely have been acknowledged - only a couple of exceptionally honorable folks gave me a chance, like Stewart W Johnson of ASCE - although why he gave me a chance to write and present technical papers on my hoop-type space transportation structure and its applications, is not known to me, other than he must have read what I had written and was not threatened by fancied loss of his status were I acknowledged for my work.<br />
<br />
Grading on the curve's resulting mentality by the larger number of students in classes, added the tool of seeking to handicap the ones who would get high grades easily, was added to the part of learning the lesson material long enough to pass the tests on it. Thus they more easily reached for those academic scores that led to higher earning jobs and thus more wealth and finer mates and more kids - all it took was to dispose of those few higher-grade-getting class students. <br />
<br />
Before the grading on the curve principle came along, there were a few like me, then called geniuses, little professors. A novelty, and ultimately employed where those qualities were needed. But most jobs require avoidance of innovation, going off on your own, management is to dictate every step of the way, and thus only that which management can conceive, is allowed to happen. Nice and orderly, all the ducks in a row. Not much need for the natural innovators anymore, in the massive business machine that large corporations tended to become. <br />
<br />
Thus no equitable employment for the little geniuses, the little professors when grown up - now called Aspergers or even "high functioning autistic" and thus considered broken, ill, dysfunctional, instead of potential leaders in new paths for the success for all. And since they were so disdained, they attracted few mates and thus their genes increasingly were fading out of the human gene pool, especially where grading on the curve was going on.<br />
<br />
And another result the famed ingenuity of Americans, ability to innovate with leaps of comprehension and application, were of no use unless the ideas got snatched by management somewhere, who would run with the idea as if it were not something new, and of no connection to the actual originator. Thus the famed Yankee Ingenuity seems to be gone nowadays - we largely have a few leaders like Steve Jobs who sidestepped the system and made a business go, when business territory was not so locked-down as it is today by the giant corporations.<br />
<br />
Result is that innovation has greatly slowed in America. We require bringing in people from other nations who can provide those leaps of insight that provide opportunities and solve the big problems. <br />
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Grading on the curve, along with the team principle of causing handicap to the ones with the higher grades especially if the person were a social nobody, led to that mentality having built much of the business and political world we now live in. Grading on the curve did enable more students to hang in there and graduate, and hopefully learn a bit more along the way as compared to what tended to happen before grading on the curve; thus this has been a helpful effect of grading on the curve. But it has cost the nation much of its ability to go for the great achievements that help everybody. Thus the nation crumbles into unemployment of its most valuable resource, its people.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-24974281730366289042013-05-23T13:21:00.000-07:002013-05-23T19:08:33.527-07:00We are all bit-players in each other's life-moviesThe viewpoint that we are all bit-players in each other's life-movies was briefly talked about several decades ago, but it has been a long time since I heard that concept again, so here it is again.<br />
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The associated quote from Shakespeare "All the world is a stage" implies the same concept, I think.<br />
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Now, the inherent artificiality of a movie, even moreso of the making of a movie with its scriptwriters, directors, actors, stage props and their setup crews, and the cut and paste and add musical soundtracks afterwards, all so that the finished product will flow well and tell a story that most viewers will agree on what the story was about, reeks of fakery; yet the audience is there to enjoy the story, artificial tale or effort to portray some actual event of the past, does not matter.<br />
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So to claim that each individual is living the making of his/her life movie in real-time and usually without a film record being made of it, may sound farfetched. Yet the concept that each of us is the star of our own ongoing life-movie, and all other people are bit-players in our life-movie, and all the stuff of the world is mere props for the movie, may be a worthwhile viewpoint. Along with its corollary, that we each are also a bit player in all those other people's life-movies being made, of course. <br />
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The less-than-physically-real aspect does fit well with the viewpoint that the world each of us lives in is an individual world made up of our myriad interpretations of the incoming sensory stimuli and fitted in bit by bit into our mental model of the world and its events. Our imagination is what we experience, not so much the raw physical stimuli of our sensory impressions, and even less so of direct connection with the physical world's stuff itself.<br />
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And so in social interactions, each of the participants is experiencing their own life movie's ongoing imaginary interpretation of it all; and each person may well be perceiving the social interaction as being quite different from the other participant's interpretation of the ongoings transpiring - and not realize they are different, perhaps very different.<br />
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Does the difference matter? Probably not so much. Especially if we are there only to enjoy the show.<br />
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Now, as the years go on, I have sometimes conjectured that an even different form of the life-movie might also be being made. Frequent peculiar happenings, such as apparent invasions of my residence, when I am easily stalked - even by security cameras - such as when out shopping in a big market chain store; the small things noticed subsequent to my return home - bottles of favorite nutritional supplements seem much emptier than before, fluid containers now having different volumes, and more strange, finding a bunch of my favorite clothing stuffed in the wrong place in my closet, clothing clearly commercially cleaned, unlike my own home laundry looks. Shoes vanish; sometimes return after months, or never return. All very peculiar. <br />
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Also the occasional contact with some stranger who appears to think they know me and also have a strong opinion of me that is quite incorrect - such as apparently thinking I were a homosexual, for example, or some knife-wielding maniac that might go gersprung at any moment, or a child-abuser or wife-stealer - and it is impossible to get rational communication going with these folks who think they are talking with some other person. <br />
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A psychologically-apt friend has assured me that I am not the dual-personality type; I recall seeing a silent movie long ago where the actor portrayed two sisters living in different bedrooms of the same house, and they disliked each other, leaving messages for each other too; when one of them finally poisons the other one, the final scene is that the one personality killed the other personality, same dead person, however; a very graphic demo of the concept. <br />
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Since I was not that kind of person, then the thought eventually seeped into my consciousness, that there might be some long-ongoing movie-making supposedly of my life going on, filmed by persons unknown, using my residence sometimes as the stage, and actors using my favorite clothing, but doing things that were not what I would do at all. <br />
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As to why such a movie would be made, is only guessable. Probably mostly just for the entertainment of other people, as well as of the participants in the sport of movie-making. I have vaguely heard of something called a "reality show" but have not actually seen one; it has been many years since I have had a TV, could be involved in my missing out on learning about that kind of thing. And such an obnoxious character as I described above, would surely be more entertaining to an audience, than is the real me in my rather dull life, living below poverty level and suffering from the lack of a good woman as my partner - women do not want a socially-inept Asperger man as a partner, especially one that has little money to spend on her. Yet if this is going on, the making of my life-movie to be something quite different than it really is, it probably has some fitting nasty end planned for it, that may well involve the real physical me at the end, with the audience declaring righteously that it served him right. Popcorn and soda consumed, they can then leave the theater and go be entertained by something else next. <br />
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Yet another possible interpretation is that it is actually a form of identity-theft going on, perhaps to reap rewards that were due me; a signature-maker thought to be legal. Thus the "real me" would be but a bit-player in my own supposed life-movie.<br />
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There is an expectation in movies, that the person seen on screen seems to be the real person being portrayed, but really is not the real person. It could be that the conditioning to this phenomenon from childhood on, that the distinction between the real person of apparent identity, and someone else who in some way is a satisfactory imitation of the "real" person, may tend to fade out at times.<br />
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This phenomenon type perhaps could explain a fairly new phenomenon I have endured in the past half dozen years. A multiply puzzling phenomenon, with several seemingly impossible factors, yet very repeating and quite peculiar if not outright obnoxious at times. I hypothesize that a unifying factor could be that not only has someone else been apparently groomed to be considered me to others, that I have been groomed to be someone that I am not, as assumed by others. <br />
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At one time, this might have been called a "switcheroo." It could explain the repeating phenomena of having my movements be synchronized to that of others; for example, when I first moved here, when I would back out of my driveway onto the very quiet residential street on which I had not seen any traffic at all, the neighbors had a shrub growing in the corner of their lot which would briefly block my view of oncoming traffic from one direction. At that precise instant when I was backing out onto the street unable to clearly see the street where there had been no traffic for at least five minutes, there would be a vehicle traveling at high speed exactly where it would broadside my car; fortunately, I have learned in driving hundreds of thousands of miles to always double-check when the view is uncertain, and thus I would pause my movement at the point of view being blocked by the shrub, and cautiously get a look down the street, and there would be a vehicle zooming right there which would have hit me. <br />
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Happening once would be strange, but by the fourth or fifth time it happened in a row when I backed out of my driveway, I switched to backing into my driveway, so when leaving home I would be driving forward into the street and thus was able to see around the shrub at the moment of entering the street. And the phenomenon of precisely-timed vehicles ceased to happen after that. Another thing was that when I would be leaving my home, there would always be someone at a vehicle - on the essentially otherwise deserted street - who would look up to look where a passenger would be sitting if I had one. Or a car would just happen to be cruising past out of nowhere, the driver also turning at the exact instant to glance at my passenger seat side. My telephone was besieged by robot phone calls for several people who apparently had left a lot of bills unpaid; snail mail came for them too sometimes, including brown envelopes saying it was only for the addressee to open - and no such person lived here. This kind of thing has gone on for half a dozen years. <br />
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Then a few months back, a knock on the door, a young man handed me a sheaf of legal papers. I looked at them, they were for a couple who I had not heard of before, were not even any of the names claimed to be at my residence per phone calls and snail mail; the papers did not have an address on them either. I handed them back to the young man, and told them it was the wrong person and the wrong house. Two days later he came to my door again, again attempted to give me the papers, he saying that his employer demanded that these papers be left here at my residence. He left them on the front porch; they stayed there for a month or so, getting more weathered. No one came by to get them; I had thought that maybe the real people would have done that, possibly it was for some of the furtive folks I had glimpsed at times. I examined the papers more carefully for a return address; the only address was for sending monthly child support money to the state capital. My address was not on the papers, nor my name on them. I dimly recalled seen a news article saying that the State was cracking down of child-support fugitives; maybe that was involved too. But the continuing surveillance that was increasingly apparent when I was outside in my yard or out shopping, the phenomenon could be that a lot of people think I am someone else; and some folks have deliberately created that false identity. So this explanation of the stalking going on year after year, and in recent months a worsening of the beamed-energy assaults on me using the through-the-wall harassment & observation technologies originally developed for better purposes, it is likely that people have lost the need to actually identify people before they harass them, no doubt feeling righteous about their clever unprovable abuse. Likely it is the excitement of the team sport of stalking and hazing, is what pulls the operators into the activity. <br />
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But why me as a target? Well, I can only guess, but part of it could be like that in the game of football, something has to be the football and get kicked around, or the game could not be played for the enjoyment of the players and fans. In my case I can conjecture more specific reasons to target me, but that is beyond the theme of this post about the life movies that we all play in as bit players, except the life movie that is our own, in which we are the star actor. <br />
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But in my case lately, it seems that even that even my own life movie perhaps is not entirely my own; the surrounding various groups of organized-stalkers apparently have taken my identity and put it on some other actor the world thinks is me, while I have been enduring the hazing intended for some wrongdoer, at the same time. And in the hypothesized common psychological condition of people being raised watching TV where all the people seen are not who they pretend to be, it could be that people do not really care if the target is who it is said to be. All that matters is that the movie be played. <br />
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Where this will lead, seems to be at high risk for people in general to increasingly lose connection with the real world; and that will mean not being able to respond in effective ways to the challenges the world provides. Our minds are built to experience the mental model that is the movie set for our individual life movies; but, that mental model really needs frequent actual reality checks to be useful for getting correct answers to the problems we face and the opportunities we might have.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00927865458234596408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7632100.post-66525179534553357292013-04-28T10:06:00.000-07:002013-04-28T10:06:07.196-07:00Noticing presenceOne of the most enjoyable articles I have seen in the news lately is at <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/04/23/178467726/noticing-how-to-take-a-walk-in-the-woods">http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/04/23/178467726/noticing-how-to-take-a-walk-in-the-woods</a> "Noticing: How To Take A Walk In The Woods" by ADAM FRANK. <br />
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It is so refreshing to read a news article that is life-affirming, offering some helpful wisdom for everyday life.<br />
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It also is a plus to me for bring up the point that we all are a scientist, from when a kid playing in the yard or splashing in the bathtub, noticing what happens to the water shapes and feel in the happy splash; or putting mud and sticks together to make something imaginative. The article uses a cute description of taking a walk in the woods "getting your naturalist on." And points out it is all about presence, learning to have presence in observing the magnificent world around oneself.<br />
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