stop watching television already

so there used to be one show that i would adjust the antenna for…alas no longer as it has truly passed into the realm of “every other show on television”…….but this isn’t my actual point.

what i really wanted to mention, was that in waiting for that show a couple weeks back, i was so lucky to catch the grainy tail-end of that wonderful piece of drivel called grey’s anatomy. the part where they wax “philosophical.” it was absolutely infuriating. their main point was that what makes humans different or better than their animal instincts is humans can think & feel. obviously none of the writers or actors must have animal companions. even chickens have distinct personalities.

and these commercials i’ve caught that make it seem cute that the dog is owned by a human…..

animals definitely are different from humans, but it is ludicrous to assume they cannot feel or think. it is so obvious that they do, i live with enough of them to know. and yes, though chickens can be rather pea-brained most of the time, they can learn, they do exhibit intelligence….and when given a decent home, you can even see that each chicken is distinct. they aren’t all carbon copies of one another, they actually have individual distinctions in their characters. but our culture certainly prefers to prevent that from being known, or even from occurring. of course in those wretched overcrowded chicken farms, cattle pens, too quickly fattened on corn and other animals……concentration camps for animals. of course they appear to have no identity, how could they in such an environment? what do you think happens to a person’s sense of self after a lengthy imprisonment in war camps, concentration camps????

and back to the antenna-adjusting….i wonder what is in those little black boxes they want everyone to buy now besides just a digital TV receiver/converter…? you know, with the right equipment your current television can be used to see/hear you whenever plugged in (doesn’t matter if it’s on or off)….and i would have to say that any electrical wiring can be used similarly, for hearing at least. kind of creepy. like those electric meters that automatically read your KWH but don’t actually tell you what that amount is…nor can you tell if your electricity is completely turned off, like you could tell on the older models. odd odd odd.

brain-eating amoebas!

to carry on in the vein of microscopic brain infesters, here’s some clips from a little story about Naegleria (i feel like this should be an x-files episode* or something….):

Killer Amoeba Blamed for Six Deaths

...thanks to the amoeba Naegleria that is often found in fun places to swim. it likes to destroy tissue on its way to your brain. that's where the feast really begins. mm-mm-mm. braaaaiiiinnnnsssssssssssss. wait, is it the zombie apocalypse already? need to prepare pronto!

anyhoo.

read up about Naegleria in the CDC factsheet. it likes to get in through your nose. think of THAT next time you go for a swim in your local freshwater lake or river. <shudder>

and check out these photos from Thomas Buckelew’s Parisitology Images.

i am both fascinated and repulsed. bugs in my brain, ewww!

[*I was later informed that this WAS in an X-Files episode. "Darkness Falls" (1x19) in which Spirit Lake is mentioned as a place where swimmers have been infected by brain-sucking amoeba.]

maybe i'm a little bit psychic...

or maybe it’s just the heat. it’s not luck, ’cause i’m not the lucky type.

but my beau lost his place in his book, didn’t feel like looking for it, so asked me what page he was on.

of course, i had no idea–this was just a lark.

so he tells me the range of pages and without thinking i reply “213″.

he turns there and then acts a little odd.

apparently that WAS the page he was on.

RFID zapping

RFID tags are in pretty much everything you buy nowadays. they collect a lot of data which can be extracted when in range of a RFID reader. basically, the object is scanned throughout the delivery process to a store, inside a store, upon leaving the store, after you take it home, wherever you happen to take it. as long as you have a reading device, you (or anyone else) can access this info and the other data stored in the tag. it’s a tracking & monitoring device of sorts. (similar to how they can track every mile you drive in your car and where you are spending those miles to a very exact degree. i believe the chips/tags for this started to be in every vehicle in the early 1990s, but i could be misinformed. however, the information is stored indefinitely………your life private? ha!)

two simple ways you can disable an RFID tag are by cutting off their antennas or by frying them in a microwave for a bit (that is, if you want to risk those microwaves….they give me a massive headache). but what to do when they’re in your clothes or anything else sensitive to scissors & radiation boxes?

why, make an RFID zapper using a disposable camera! (see also here & the following video uploaded by tmmbach)

MAKE magazine also has lots of little articles & links to DIY RFID projects. (just do a search at their site for "rfid zapper")

get zapping!

parasitic mind control

don’t think you’re immune, ’cause you’re full of them too! every living thing is crawling with them, at least every animal. i suppose it’s only when something upsets that delicate balance called health that we might notice them. or rather, we notice their effects.

i will finish with human parasites in a moment. here are some interesting insect/animal parasite stories:

apparently, there is a type of parasite (“hairworms”) that likes to live off grasshoppers. when it is ready to reproduce, it excretes neurotoxic chemicals that cause the grasshopper to essentially commit suicide by leaping into water. while its host is drowning, the parasite safely swims away to breed in the water. no kidding. read it at national geographic.

there is another parasite who spends part of its youth in ants. however, once it matures enough, it really would rather move to birds. how to solve this problem? easy! control the mind of the ant, causing it to attach itself to the top of a blade of grass, where the ant is more likely to be eaten by a bird. science says it’s the Dicrocoelium dendriticum, a lancet fluke. (the ant section is in the middle of the article, more or less, but you should read all of it anyways.)

three’s the charm, right? so when mice smell cat urine, it normally causes high anxiety and other fear reactions in them, and they avoid those areas. but there is a certain parasite that spends part of its life cycle in a mouse and at a certain point wishes to advance to cats. in order to get to the cats, the parasite causes a mouse to no longer have a reaction to cat urine, thus giving it a better chance of wandering across the path of a hungry kitty. don’t believe me? it’s the Toxoplasma parasite. (see here too)

and you thought your thoughts were yours and yours alone!

now, people can get parasites in their brains too, just like this lady who ate a bad taco in 2001. the worm (at first just an egg) goes from her gut to her bloodstream, then makes it's way through the bloodstream to her brain. everything's fine & dandy until it the grown worm dies, starts decaying, and makes her brain inflamed. that's when her brain finally notices there's a foreign object lodged in it...

And finally, here are some examples of the types of parasites probably enjoying you RIGHT NOW as you sit here reading about them:

A SMALL SAMPLE OF HUMAN PARASITES

• GIARDIA
• Cryptosporidium
• Genital Protozoa = TRICHOMONAS
• Nervous System Protozoa = NAEGLERIA FOWLERI
• Tissue Protozoa = ACANTHAMOEBA, PNEUMOCYSTIS CARINII, TRICHINELLA SPIRALIS
• Blood Parasites = MALARIA, BABESIA SPP.
• Intestinal Nematodes = ASCARIS LUMRICOIDES, E. VERMICULARIS, TRICHURIS TRICHIURA, HOOKWORMS, TRICHOSTRONGYLUS SPP.
• Liver & Lung Trematodes or Flukes = Clonorchis, Opisthorchis, Fasciola, PARAGONIMUS SPP.
• Blood Trematodes or Flukes = SCHISTOSOMES

 do take note that in many of these cases--including the insect/mice stories--the key to becoming infected with the parasite is ingesting the flesh of another animal. (of course if you eat unwashed fruits & veggies or drink from a water source that something has crapped on or in at some point, that won’t help you out either.)

doesn’t it just make you feel all warm & fuzzy?

why sometimes it’s ok to disobey

i assume Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority (& those of others) are known, but if not, wikipedia has some articles (try here & here) to start you off.

what no longer amazes me is how so many people heedlessly obey a perceived “higher authority.” yes perhaps nothing constructive would ever get done if we didn’t, but personally i see this subconcious kowtowing as mostly causing destruction anyway. think of the military. wouldn’t it be great if every one of us lackeys just refused to go off & kill people we’d never met? like that will ever happen. but it’s a thought.

in 1961, Robert J. Lifton described the brainwashing model of the chinese in the 1950s as follows (i):

• milieu control (controlled relations with the outer world)
• mystic manipulation (planned spontaneity–events are orchestrated or attributed to group’s power or omniscience)
• confession (confess past and present sins)
• self-sanctification through purity (pushing the individual towards a not-attainable perfection)
• aura of sacred science (beliefs of the group are sacrosanct and perfect)
• loaded language (new meanings to words, encouraging black-white thinking)
• doctrine over person (the group is more important than the individual)
• dispensed existence (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed)

Margaret Singer noted these conditions present in mind control (ii):

• controlling a person’s time and environment, leaving no time for thought
• creating a sense of powerlessness, fear and dependency
• manipulating rewards and punishments to suppress former social behaviour
• manipulating rewards and punishments to elicit the desired behaviour
• creating a closed system of logic which makes dissenters feel as if something was wrong with them
• keeping recruits unaware about any agenda to control or change them

and in 2004, Anthony Stahelski described five phases of social pyschological conditioning (iii):

1. Depluralization: stripping away all other group member identities
2. Self-deindividuation: stripping away each member’s personal identity
3. Other-deindividuation: stripping away the personal identities of enemies
4. Dehumanization: identifying enemies as subhuman or nonhuman
5. Demonization: identifying enemies as evil

now, of course these principles are applied mostly to cults* & terrorists groups & Hitler’s regime. but i can see a lot of these traits blatently at work in our everyday lives (not to mention subliminals…)–in families, in social groups, in vocations, in government, in the military, and in society as a whole (local, national, and global). in essence, life itself is a form of mind control.

so the question is, which form of mind control is the least detrimental to your overall well-being? which allows you the most individual freedom? which allows you full & free access to all other manners of mind control out there? which allows you to choose your own form of mind control? and which doesn’t force its own mind control on others?

are we (in general) that frightened of refusing? of saying no? of acting of our own free will, especially when it goes against the familial/social/political/religious grain? i think we should try to act just so as often as possible. we don’t need permission to live our lives, despite opinions (conscious & not) to the contrary.

*******************************************************

this is very interesting. i have a friend that lives in chicago. she used to work for a large communications company while she was going to law school. she is very level-headed and not prone to such ramblings as mine. however…the company she worked for was bought by a bigger one, and subsequently all the top management personnel were replaced. oddly enough, all the replacements were scientologists! (they were open about this…) in fact, they had these little meetings that the rest of the staff could attend if they wanted to–not at all mandatory, they said. these meetings were essentially for the indoctrination & recruitment of the workers into the scientology cult (aye!). when my friend realized this, and refused to go, they fired her (remember how these meetings weren’t mandatory?) she, of course, knowing the law, said that they could not fire her for that reason. the response was that her life, should she seek legal retribution, would be made miserable….in effect, they would make sure she could never hold a job, and threatened harm to her & her family.

*******************************************************

now that the scientologists will soon be after me, i just want to mention how this kind of insanity is not limited to power-hungry religious hacks that think they are aliens (and many of our celebrities enjoy this kind of thought). no, no. it’s everywhere. maybe they don’t all believe they’re from another planet, but hey. the end results are the same.

the washington times is the moonies, by the way.

BIG BROTHER DOES NOT KNOW BEST. YOUR DOCTOR DOES NOT KNOW BEST. YOUR MINISTER/GURU DOES NOT KNOW BEST. YOUR PARENTS DO NOT KNOW BEST. YOU DO NOT KNOW BEST. I DON’T KNOW WHO KNOWS BEST. PROBABLY NO ONE.

*please remember that lots of things can be considered cults if you just read the definition…..including every major religion. ha-ha.

(i) Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China, Norton (New York City), 1961

(ii) Six Conditions for Thought Reform, by Margaret T. Singer, Ph.D., 1990.  

(iii) Stahelski, Anthony: Terrorists Are Made, Not Born: Creating Terrorists Using Social Psychological Conditioning, Journal of Homeland Security, March 2004

slipstream spinning

i have not had internet for a while and there are no convenient cafés offering wi-fi in the woods 

i do prefer fall, what little we have of it anymore. i always feel more like myself. 

though really i have not much to say at this moment. it is tiresome professing opinions and very trying hearing them. 

silence can be a very dear friend. 

but i will listen to the wind when she is speaking. that opinion i do not mind for it is truth untainted. 

“kaze yo watashi wa tachimukau
yukou kurushimi no umi e to
kizuna kono mune ni kizande
kudakeru nami wa hatenaku tomo . . .
kaze yo watashi wa tachimukau
yokou kagayaki wo mezashite
inori kono mune ni dakishime
samayou yami no you na mirai . . .
kaze yo watashi wa osorenai
ai koso mitsukedashite kiseki yo
kimi wo shinjite’ru yorokobi
arashi wa ai ni kizuku tame ni fuite’ru”  

--"Kiseki No Umi" / Maaya Sakamoto, from the anime series Record of Lodoss War  

and the water too. i will hear her. 

“well the lush separation unfolds you
and the products of wealth
push you along on the bow wave
of the spiritless undying selves.
and you press on god’s waiter your last dime
as he hands you the bill.
and you spin in the slipstream
tideless – unreasoning -
paddle right out of the mess.
and you paddle right out of the mess” 

--"Slipstream" / Jethro Tull, from the album Aqualung