This blog is not dead.

I am enraged. I ran into a pack of Lyndon LaRouche supporters on the street today. They call themselves the LaRouche Pac. Normally they just hand out literature declaring some outrageous economic forecast that never comes true. Today they decided to do something a little bit more outrageous. One of them was holding a huge picture of Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache. At first i saw it, laughed, and then walked away. And then I said to myself, "self, you need to go tell these people what an innapropriate symbol that is." So I walk up to one of the 'Pac' holding a clipboard and engaged in a friendly conversation.


Me : Why?
PAC: Why what?
ME: Why do you have a picture of Barack Obama in the likeness of Hitler?
PAC: Because Barack Obama is going to make america worse than Nazi Germany. We will become a facist country that is controlled by buisneses
ME: You know hitler stood for other things like killing jews and all non-whites (the guy im talking to is black mind you)
PAC: Yea but we're just talking about his economic policies.
Me: Well don't you think that its a little irresponsible to use Hitler as a symbol? Maybe a tad extreme? Most people associate hitler with genocide and not really at all with economics.
PAC: Yes, it is ironic.
Me: That isn't irony....What is ironic is all of the anti-semetic sentiment that has come from larouche in the past 60 years. I feel like he has a lot in common with Hitler
PAC: Thats not true.
Me: Umm No it is true, but what is not true is any economic prediction made by larouche....ever.
PAC: I attended college in Maryland and......
Me(interrupting): What the fuck does that have to do with anything?
PAC: You obviously don't know what you're talking about and you don't want to listen to me so can you please leave?
Me: I don't know what I'm talking about? Would you like me to bring back documentation?
PAC: Yes please do.


So enraged, i go get some god damn documentation. I put together some shit and 30 mins later i come back at him with this :

LAROUCHE ON JUDAISM

Judaism is not a true religion, but only a half-religion, a curious appendage and sub-species of Christianity."

"Judaism is ideological abstraction of the secular life of Christianity's Jew, the Roman merchant-userer who had not yet evolved to the state of Papal enlightenment, a half-Christian, who had not developed a Christian conscience."

Source: "Zionism Is Not Judaism" Editorial, The Campaigner, December 1978.

"Judaism is the religion of a caste of subjects of Christianity, entirely molded by ingenious rabbis to fit into the ideological and secular life of Christianity. In short, a self- sustaining Judaism never existed and never could exist. As for Jewish culture otherwise, it is merely the residue left to the Jewish home after everything saleable has been marketed to the Goyim."

Source : "The Case of Ludwig Feuerbach", Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., (under pen name L. Marcus), The Campaigner, December 1973.

LA ROUSHE ON HOMOSEXUALITY

A LaRouche network newspaper insert distributed in Illinois declared that "as a category, gays and lesbians do not represent a valid voting constituency, and neither do prostitutes, drug pushers, child molesters, warlocks, witches, pornographers, or others who are morally equivalent."

Source: "End Harold Washington's Consistently Disgusting Career," Illinois Tribunal, July 7, 1986, editorial page. The Illinois Tribunal, Volume XVII, No. 36, July 7, 1986, p. 1.

Criminality

LaRouche was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for federal conspiracy, mail fraud and tax law violations.Six of LaRouche's aides and fundraisers also were convicted. Prosecutors argued that LaRouche "oversaw a fund-raising effort in which loans were solicited with false assurances to lenders," according to the Washington Post. Criminality

LaRouche was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for federal conspiracy, mail fraud and tax law violations. Six of LaRouche's aides and fundraisers also were convicted. Prosecutors argued that LaRouche "oversaw a fund-raising effort in which loans were solicited with false assurances to lenders," according to the Washington Post. Caryle Murphy.

Craziness

According to LaRouche, The Beatles (who "had no genuine musical talent") were created by the "British Psychological Warfare Division" and promoted "by agencies which are controlled by British intelligence."

Source: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "Why Your Child Became A Drug Addict," Campaigner Special Report, 1978.

LaRouche Predicted that Bloomberg would be the next president

Souce: ME

ECONOMIC FORCASTING

Meanwhile, the editors of Executive Intelligence Review were publishing every week these comparative charts between the crash of 1929-30 and of 1987-88. BUT... by mid-1988 they eventually stopped this intellectual exercise. Why? Look at this:

We talked for about 10 minutes.
He tried to deny everything.
I gave him a copy and told him to look up the sources.
Then I gave the girl holding a free hug sign next to him a hug and then he left.
These people are a fucking cult.

My thoughts, in no particular order or structure.

"Religion is the opiate of the masses" - Marx
No.
"Religion is not the opiate of the masses, it's the placebo." - Gregory House M.D. (T.V)
Yes.

Try the real thing and then you can tell when someone is bullshitting you. Let someone experience life on their own. Allow them to draw their own conclusions.
Nature creates a person who is idealistic and pragmatic. Nurture creates a person that is idealistic but submissive (ergo Obama vs Bush).
The goal of human evolution should be to create a society of optimists who can see the whole picture and will recognize pain and misfortune but not dwell on it. People need to understand that a disagreement is an opportunity for discussion, not argument.
Cynicism is a plague that leads people to warped truths and talented orators.
A person should not have to commit themselves to an idea. Idealogical commitment closes so many doors. As a human it is your duty to think ORIGINAL thoughts.

I am not going to jump on any bandwagon. Especially not a bandwagon that is thousands of years old. This bandwagon is so old that the wheels and axles have rotted and now the only source of propulsion is a billion man march holding above their heads the golden frame of a wagon in which sits an empty throne. yea.

Inspired by the averaged google images at the axiom gallery I will now try and recreate the code that built the pictures. (half java half pseudo)


//PRE-CONDITION - All images by default are 100x100 pixels though this can be changed via some codework
//POST-CONDITION - The final image will be an average 100x100 image

Public Class Main
public static void main(String args[]) {

Picture[] picArr = new Picture[100]; //this holds the 100 pictures to be averaged
/* HERE WILL GO A FUNCTION TO FILL picArr WIT PICTURES *\
Picture final; //This holds the final picture


for(int i = 0; i<100; i++) {
//This block of code goes to each pixel in the image and adds its red, green, and blue value to //the appropriate spot in the final image....Each pixel/color will later be averaged
for(into j = 0; j<100; j++) { //FUN NESTED LOOP!
final.red = final.red + picArr[i][j].red
final.blue = final.blue + picArr[i][j].blue
final.blue = final.green + picArr[i][j].green
}
}
final.finalize() //Averages all pixel/colors


}// END MAIN CLASS

Public Class Picture {
int red;
int blue;
int green;
int[][] pixel = new pixel[100][100];

public void finalize(){
for(int i = 0;i<100;i++){
for(int j = 0;j<100;j++){
this.red = this.red / 100;
this.blue = this.blue / 100;
this.green = this.green / 100;
}
}
}




And there you have it. The art would would be stored in the final variable in the main class waiting to be output. Perferable some sort of broader filter would be applied to the final image to make it a little softer but I think that would just dilute the data/art.

I am a clone.

My worst fears were realized yesterday when I got stuck on the god end of a cloning debate. Fuck that shit. I am a strong agnostic leaning toward atheism and any non refutable argument that one can bring up from the anti cloning perspective is deeply rooted in religious theology.

I hate it when people bring god into an argument and I had to do it. The idea of god is not tangible, it is not empirical, and it is not valid. Any intelligent discussion can be immediately stupefied by the introduction of the 'god' argument. It turns any well rounded intellectual sparring into a moronic repeating dialog of 'Why? Because.'

Cloning is more real than god.
Social Repercussions are TBD.
Until then, go for it.

Technology is faster than evolution.

Any future change in our bodies will happen as the result of technology way before it happens naturally. I'm pretty sure this is undeniable. The rate of evolution is constant. It has been constant for 3.8 billion years. The rate of technological progress is accelerating exponentially.

Technology has already allowed our bodies to improve on their natural functions. Take for example Penicillin. Our bodies are pretty capable of fighting off disease but when facing the challenge of certain bacteria our bodies come up fatally short. That's where technology comes in and one ups nature. All you need to do is eat a substance that your body is too simple to produce on its own and you'll be fine.

Face it, evolution as Darwin explained is over. We're done with random genetic changes occurring every thousand years that slightly improve our bodies. Today's evolution isn't random. It's well thought out and its speeding up.

Art is just a bunch of lines.

I remember reading somewhere that an artist could spend their whole life drawing a single line, and it is after they master that line that they can truly create something dazzling and unique. I think that holds a lot of truth. Art after all is just an array of lines of varying lengths, angles, and colors. Its up to the artist to use geometric and photonic(this might be a made of word) properties to give an image meaning.

I believe this theory is consistent with other forms of expression as well. Take music for example. You can call it a tone or a note or a sound but when you string them all together something inspiring happens. Anyone can play a song to a specific beat but the truly amazing musicians are then ones that can play a song in and out of a metronome but are seemingly always on perfect time...more on this later, time for class.

Literary terms are overrated

Reading is generally mindless. It cleverly replaces your thoughts with ones that are more intelligent and articulate than your own. I believe this is the best way to exercise your mind, by stringing together a continuous stream of ideas that would otherwise be too elaborate and prospicient for you to create on the fly. I've realized, that while reading, my only original thoughts might consist of an "oh wow!" or an "I'm confused and need to re-read that." But at the end of a long hard fought concious mind replacing read I do feel more intelligent. My thoughts as well as my speech become more fluid.
Despite of this, I do sense a few dangers in reading. In a way, the Author is imposing his mind on yours, breaking you open and inserting himself into your subconscious. I can imagine that if all you read was Poe, you would begin to feel slightly deranged.

So now the issue becomes; which authors will I allow into my head? Will I read books by authors that share a similar sentient mind? Or will I challenge my brain into syncing with an author that has an inverse mind to my own? As far as that goes, I have no idea...I'm confused and need to re-think this.

Ideas > Beliefs

Let me begin by saying that despite what others will have you believe, evolution is a fact. True, their are some minor oddities and unanswered questions but the vast repository of data regarding this topic overwhelming points to its existence. When I was ten, my science teacher began teaching my class and I about the origin of life. First she taught evolution, and then introduced this alternate method called creationism. As a ten year old, I was supremely confused. Evolution had punctured my thoughts and piqued my interest in science and the natural progression of the world. I saw innate beauty in its dual simplicity and complexity. I couldn't accept creationism as fact and grew angry with my teacher for trying to pass off this fiction for science. To this day it continues to amaze me that people cling to the idea of creationism and aim to discredit the perpetual theory of evolution.
I took up reading the bible and researching Christianity to better understand why people of denominated religious faith believe these things that seem so outlandish to me. This is what I have discovered and a few thoughts
1. The bible was written 90 years after Jesus Christ was said to have died.
I can imagine this would be like trying to write a book on Theodore Roosevelt based on hearsay.
2. It has been translated back and forth from different languages and then rewritten many times. (some dispute this...kind of like evolution)
One time I saw this version of Lord of The Rings that was translated to chinese and then from chinese back into english and dubbed over. The result was hillarious, but the movie wasn't nearly the same as the original. nuff said.
3. The bible is chock full of amazing metaphors.
Most of the metaphors were probably lost on me due to the thousands of years of evolving language and my general dissinterest in ancient languages, but it was at least clear to me that many of the points that people take literally are in fact cleverly designed metaphors.

I apologize if it seems that I'm bashing relgion...I just saw the documentary "Jesus Camp" and I got very irritated how they brainwashed and stifled all childhood imagination and creativity. This was my lash out.


To end, here's a little dialoge from "Dogma." This is exactly the way I choose to view religion and I thank Kevin Smith for articulating it so nicely for me.

"
Bethany: Having beliefs isn't good?
Rufus: I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.
"

My Cell phone is hawt

Recent class discussions have got me thinking. What is it that makes something beautiful? To me it is a certain level of ambiguity, I see beauty in things that I don't fully understand. With recognition of beauty comes a feeling of appreciation, for the artist, the piece, and one’s self. It takes commitment and critical thinking to identify beauty, it is not passive.
So now the question is…How can I relate my own definition of beauty to technology? Is my cell phone beautiful?
Aesthetically? No. It cost 10 dollars and though there may be hints of beauty in its simplicity I don’t see it. If anything I’m just angry that it’s not an iPhone.
Functionally? Absolutely. I really have very little understanding of how it works but the appreciation I have for it is astounding. Even with its limited capability it allows me to effectively navigate my social network in a way that can only be described as beautiful.