Found this pic while looking through some really old black and white photos on some site. I’m no expert but I thinks I sees a big plant that looks very familiar.
Peace brothers and sisters!

In my never ending quest to stimulate my lump of gray matter, I was browsing 43 Folders and watched a video by the writerbloggerspeaker Merlin Mann that captivated my attention for a short time. In the video he mentioned the prime number marketing technique that is so overdone these days. For those unaware, simply put, using prime numbers in a headline as a list tends to generate more clicks as it is more digestible for the average attention deficit prone, “I want it now”, internet surfer. It’s a lot easier to lose weight in 5 easy steps! right? The same principals are used in pricing any kind of ‘guru style make money now’ style ebook. ( 43folders has some good stuff and Merlin Mann is a nut-job just like me so check it out )

(note: my internet connection dropped at this point and after resetting my router I am struggling to remember where I left off…my brain obviously thought it was important enough to start a post)

Well, I could sit here for hours and not remember my initial thoughts so I will continue blabbing and hope a little current finds it’s way back into the brain cells that hold the info…

I’ve been working on my own for over 4 years now and find it’s getting harder to maintain a clear goal for myself and decide what I hope to achieve before I am the Roadrunner. Most of the things I do ‘for work’ are relatively mundane and uninteresting (searching for good keyword phrases and building sites to earn income is really kind of dull). I’ve read quite a bit of material on how to achieve a happy balance (insert all the crappy titles of all the crappy entrepreneurial books) with work and life but it always comes down to the phrase “do what you love”. I think the problem might lie in the fact I have been working for someone else’s dream since I was 12. That’s a long fucking time. I have expert level knowledge in things I have no interest in and years of management experience in an industry that bore’s me to death. My interest’s at this point in my life are varied and UN-specific, great for conversation, not so good for a business.
——-this is getting way off track methinks…and pessimistic——-

Peace!

…well, not so much (insert sad face here)
Since it’s April and 4:20 is just around the corner I thought I might bore myself with a little rambling about weed. Before I really get going however, I should mention something I noticed the other day while listening to a local rock station and then watching a re-run of Family Guy later that same day. The song in question was Aaron Lewis’s (Staind) solo album single “country boy” where the songwriter says he smokes a little weed and Family Guy Season 7: Episode 12 where there is a whole 3.24 minute song called “bag of weed” where they must say “weed” 200 times. The radio station edited the word “weed”…WTF!

I have had a long personal relationship with weed that ended tragically at the end of the year 2000 when I moved to the USSR and decided that it wasn’t worth risking getting deported over (actually I didn’t know any tokers in the US and most people think I’m a cop>>>FAIL<<<<). I was a very functional user, not lazy or too baked to do anything useful. It was great for doing martial arts kata and relaxing my mind and body.

Now I have this crazy epilepsy shit going on, I’m going to have to take serious medications for the rest of my life (think long term side effects that affect everyday life). I have to weigh the side effects of the drugs vs. their effectiveness, all of which could change at any time. I dread going through the trial and error phase of finding an effective medication. It took 2+ years to find a combo that works for my seizures and has tolerable side effects, side effects that most people, in a different scenario would find unacceptable. I hope to be able to test out the benefits of medical maryjane one day. I do know epilepsy is an accepted disease on the MM list.

That’s part of the reason why I am in support of Decriminalization. The other part is the insane hypocrisy of the government profiting from alcohol and tobacco which are obviously much worse for a person. Then there is the political process that makes the whole thing a big mess. A lot of the people that are opposed to big government, support the ‘war on drugs’ (which has been proven time and again to have been a colossal failure). Lots of misinformation, mostly from people who have zero experience, is spread, the sheeple of the country don’t care as long as they can get their 18 pack of Bud Lite and Camels. ***now I’m officially rambling***

A lot of my disdain today is a direct result from an article I read this morning regarding the difficulties Medical Marijuana distributors and growers are having due to government intervention. Mountains of regulations, $XXXXX in fees and compliance have turned this potentially lucrative industry into something akin to owning a coffee shop in a 1/2 empty strip mall.

Peace

This is really cool and creepy, but more cool… A little parasite lays it’s eggs in an ants head and then once the the egg hatches it eats the BRAINS of the ant …I actually didn’t know that ants had brains, but whatever. The ant goes crazy and eventually dies and a fungus grows out of its head and infects more ants.
I’m guessing that once the ant population is completely infected they will decide to attack humans, you know, cause that’s what zombies do. The human population will then be left to fight off the ants or face extinction. I should point out at this juncture that I AM NOT AN EXPERT and any advice I give should not be considered an expert’s opinion.
That said I’m running out to Walmart and stocking up on Raid and Size 14 Converse high tops for my family.
Peace out!

Great writer if you know how to read.  He writes stuff  for Rolling Stone among various other publications ect… His latest book, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America is really good…again if you know how to read.

Here’s a quick interview on his latest article in RS I found on Youtube

I was kind of interested in why the US was hesitant about jumping into Egypt to save the day and effectively occupy another country.  On the surface it seems like it would be perfect timing, secure another Mid East country, further isolating Iran and later use it as a nice jumping point to go after African resources when needed.  I realize that the military is stretched thin, the economy is still tanking and the American public would be opposed…but that hasn’t stopped us before.  After doing bit of independent reading over the last week I discovered some interesting things that I didn’t find in the mainstream media.  By “independent reading” I mean reading information from sources other than US based ‘news’ outlets.

Turns out the US has been supporting this Dick-Tator for a long time and it’s been paying off big time.  On Jan 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s top spy chief, was announced vice president by the Dick-Tator, Hosni Mubarak.  Suleiman is part of a shake-up of the politics in an attempt to appease the masses of protesters and retain his own grip on the presidency, Mubarak has really not given up anything.  Suleiman has long been favored by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamic views and dislike of Iran. He is the CIA’s main man in Cairo.

The point is that the US is in a much better position if it simply lets a torturing, murdering scum bag run Egypt…as long as he’s working for us that is.  Won’t cost the US much at all in comparison.  Real Democracy in Egypt?  Not very fucking likely.  That would be bad for the US.  Imagine the instability in the region if a new Egyptian Democracy arose in the middle east.  They might just tell us to go fuck ourselves and stop spending money on our fancy fighter planes (see below) or re-ignite their long standing opposition to Israel occupying Palestinian territories.  Worse yet they might create an economy drawn form their educated cheap labor pool like India and China and shake up the Global Economy (they are the 16th largest country after all).
Anyway, I think the US Gov is pretty concerned and the people in the know (another Dick, btw), don’t want an empowered Egypt just yet.

BTW; Hosni Mubarak’s personal wealth is estimated between 60 and 70 billion dollars, has homes in LA, New York, London, real estate, Swiss bank accounts ect…and 2 Billionaire sons to carry on his proud legacy.  Halve of Egypts 80 million residents live on less than $2 a day.

An important pillar of the bilateral relationship remains U.S. security and economic assistance to Egypt, which expanded significantly in the wake of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty in 1979. U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually. In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided over $28 billion in economic and development assistance to Egypt since 1975. The Commodity Import Program, through which USAID provided hundreds of millions of dollars in financing to enable the Egyptian private sector to import U.S. goods, was one of the largest and most popular USAID programs.

U.S. military cooperation has helped Egypt modernize its armed forces and strengthen regional security and stability. Under Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programs, the U.S. has provided F-4 jet aircraft, F-16 jet fighters, M-60A3 and M1A1 tanks, armored personnel carriers, Apache helicopters, antiaircraft missile batteries, aerial surveillance aircraft, and other equipment. The U.S. and Egypt also participate in combined military exercises, including deployments of U.S. troops to Egypt. Every other year, Egypt hosts Operation Bright Star, a multilateral military exercise with the U.S., and the largest military exercise in the region. Units of the U.S. 6th Fleet are regular visitors to Egyptian ports.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm

other sources;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/04/hosni-mubarak-family-fortune

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112611181593381.html

The basic idea is that at some point in the near future, we will create artificial intelligence that rivals the human brain.  Technology has been growing exponentially for the last fifty years or thereabouts, meaning the advances in tech double every couple of years while our biological systems develop over thousands of years.  When we reach the point of “Singularity”, life as we know it will reach a tipping point.  The AI we will have created will continue to advance exponentially(in theory), while the biological organisms, people, will not advance at the same rate.  That’s where the problem lay, in a matter of years the sentient machine will have far surpassed our limited intelligence.

The is a lot of talk about about when the “Singularity” might occur, some say as soon as 2012, other say not until closer to 2055.  They all seem to agree its going to happen this century.  I read something a few weeks ago that leads me to believe its not going to happen next year.  Engineers were lamenting about the fact that they are running out of room on the silicone wafers.  They have trying to miniaturize the transistors and combat the never ending problem of heat generated by the power needed to run them.  Remember computers are run by an antiquated system of ones and zeros and transistors basically open and close to make those simple 1 and 0 actions possible.

The theory is pretty much scientifically sound with few exceptions.  The debate, and their has been a shit ton of scientists theorizing about this upcoming event, is mostly about what will happen next, not if.  Will we maintain control(unlikely) or will the new “life form” take matters into their own hands and determine our fate for us?  Once the initial “singularity” is achieved it is totally feasible, actually most likely, that exponential growth curve would take a sharp upturn as machines build better machines.  You can imagine the possibilities from there, space travel, terra-farming distant worlds, technological advances beyond our wildest dreams, a life of luxury for us biologicals, amazing medical advances ect…remind you of many movies…yeah.  OR the machines will go the other way and focus on themselves at some point.  Our brains have the unique ability of judgment and recognizing the right(moral) course of action and the wrong(immoral)…well most of us do.  Would a sentient machine have the same psychological imprint?

I think it’s in our genetic code to want to form societies or tribes in an effort to survive.  If cavemen were loners, they wouldn’t last very long in most cases.  We as a global entity have failed in a big way in that respect and there is no way going to change.  Everybody seems to have their own “magic unicorn” that they worship and most of those people are not tolerant of any kind of dissenting voice or different view.  The planets already set up for a network of sentient machines to communicate, at least until they create a much more efficient system.  They could work as one.  Any logical person(or theoretical sentient machine) can take a look at where we are now and look at where we started and see that we haven’t evolved as much as we like to tell ourselves.  People are still slaves to their impulses and desires, the only difference is now we have more time to succumb to them.  Cavemen couldn’t spend a day talking on facebook, tweeting every time they take a piss…unless they wanted to go hungry.  A logic driven entity would most likely see this behavior as pointless.

Maybe a sentient race would choose to click Save
or…
Ctrl+Alt+Delete

I had some time this morning before the wife and kids were awake and was reading about quantum physics and Robert Lanza’s theory of  Biocentrism.  I haven’t read his book on the subject but I’ve read just about everything else he has written on the topic.  Basically it boils down to space and time are not physical realities but rather things (or tools as he says) that exist in our minds and that our consciousness creates the universe and not the other way around.  The theory is similar to the philosophy of Solipsism but based on quantum physics not just philosophy.

Naturally some people agree with his theory in principal and of course some stuffy science dorks try to bash anything that’s not familiar but that’s not really the point.  There are a shit load of opinions and ideas about the nature of our existence.  More often than not people like to create a fantasy to help ease their lack of understanding.  Just look at all the different religions throughout the world.  Some are literally created out of nothing but one guy’s imagination/insanity (…cough…Scientology).  I’ve never been a fan of religion, it all seems a bit silly to me, but I understand how it helps people and recognize the fact that there is some value in it for some people.  The thing that bugs me is it dumb’s down people…they serve not lead.

At this point in our evolution we can’t understand what it’s all about…maybe it’s about nothing…but in my mind I always come back to this…The human brain uses about 20 watts of energy…science says that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

It seems to me that the vast majority of people that believe in aliens seem to think that the little green dudes are a lot smarter than humans.  It must be human nature to assume that things we don’t understand are more intelligent than us, otherwise that would mean we should have the answers.  I also think most people who believe in aliens hope that they are a much more advanced species…it would suck if they had a shit load of their own problems and that was the reason for contacting us in the first place.  It is fairly obvious that we don’t have the answers…well to fair, I think we have some, but most are being suppressed for the greed of a few.  We, as an organism have the potential for amazing advances but it seems that we are very much stuck within our animalistic nature to dominate others by whatever means necessary.

That movie ‘District 9′ was a cool example of a different way to look at the possibilities of an extra terrestrial race.  In my mind it’s a lot more plausible that another alien race would be so radically different from ours we wouldn’t be able to understand what we were experiencing.  Last month scientist discovered a bacteria that is based on arsenic…what would an evolved version of that look like?

I do believe that it makes sense that there would be other life forms in the universe just going by the odds alone

overwhelmed ; past tense of o·ver·whelm (Verb)