I’ve been taking classes with the Red Cross and working in their office since July of this year. Being unemployed and not having my life sucked away into the corporate vortex has given me time to give back where I can and today was a great experience. I responded to a call to a fire that broke out in San Jose that affected two homes and help a family keep their lives together after being forced from their home at Christmas time. Their gratitude that Red Cross was there to help them was just awesome and being able to provide that is like being Santa every day.
If you want to make a donation to a great cause, I highly encourage you to give to Red Cross. It’s a great way to help your neighbors at a time when they really need it. http://www.redcross.org/ If you’re wondering about Red Cross’ efficiency and usage of moneys, go to Charity Navigator: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3277
I understand that the members of Congress have a lot they want to hold onto. Their benefits, their salaries, their family’s futures in education, etc. Every American should have food, shelter, and the ability to live a life of integrity that comes from education and it’s Congress’ responsibility to make sure that’s possible.
I urge you a make decisions that enforce the sharing of the wealth of this country with everyone because many will never have the opportunities for empowerment that the highly educated and financially stable have. All men are created equal only and mostly biologically, but not socially, and because greed is such an insatiable disease, some of the more fortunate must be forced into realization of the truth; that their wealth is not necessary. Many have acquired so much of it that they’ve blinded themselves to reality. That the smallest portion of their reserves could truly help their fellow man, thus strengthening the human population and helping it to survive in harmony which each other and with the planet.
Make the right decision for Americans and the world. Help to distribute the wealth of this country so that everyone has the opportunity to better themselves.
I’ve just put my money where my mouth is. I closed 3 Wells Fargo banks accounts and put all the money into my local Credit Union. The reason I did this is because I no longer believe in corporate banking. There’s no reason why banks should be allowed to screw the American public by offering loans that they know are bound to be defaulted on. I believe that there are entities in this country that profit from misinformation and deception, and a majority of those entities are associated with banking and government. Removing my money and closing my “bank” accounts is symbolic of expressing to banks and government that I’m dissatisfied with the way things are being run in this country. I believe that my community credit union is a safer and more appropriate way of holding my money in an institution that serves my community, not a board of greedy share-holders.
Setting the Stage:
Mel and I are taking an online Spanish course. I studied Spanish in college and am eager to refresh my skills since I’ve been volunteering at the Red Cross and they’re in need of interpreters, but I’m pretty rusty. Mel has always wanted to learn Spanish but hasn’t taken any classes yet, so I’ve been grilling him to help him get up to speed and learn his vocabulary.
I was on the phone with Mel this morning while he was driving. We started talking about the Spanish course. I asked him if he’d printed out the next lesson and he said, “Yes, and I started looking at it but I’m not sure that I’m ‘getting it.’ I’m having a hard time remembering the vocabulary.” I said, “Wait, back up. You’re in the process of learning the vocabulary. Stop with the self limiting behaviour. I want you to repeat 3 times, ‘Stop self limiting behaviour.’” He repeated 3 times, ‘Stop self limiting behaviour.’ Then he said, “That was weird, I was crossing the intersection and the countdown on the crosswalk sign read number 1 and the light was green when I started and went right thru but the cars that were next to me stopped even tho’ there was plenty of time to cross the intersection.” “It’s not weird”, I replied. “What do you think happened there?” He said he didn’t know what I meant. I asked him, “How was your glass?” “Half full”, he answered as I heard the light switch turn on. “And how was the glass for the other people?” I asked. “Half empty”, he replied.
You see… I had triggered a state of what I call ‘making the universe happen’ as opposed to ‘letting the universe happen to you’ in him right at an opportune moment where the Universe replied back with a statement of current Reality. That statement was that we create our realities. Science has shown that the body has an autonomic nervous system that regulates everything that the body does. Trillions of messages are sent around the body every second helping us digest food, breathe, pump our hearts, etc., etc.; the list goes on. If we had to think about all these things to make them happen, they wouldn’t because it would be overwhelming. Now, think about the brain, the senses, and the amount of processing that goes on with all of the extra sensory input that’s being processed. It’s no wonder that we easily fall into a state of not being aware that we create our realities because there’s just so much stimulus overload. We allow autopilot to happen and when we do, we lose the opportunity to be in the driver’s seat to actively create Reality. Most of the time we’re in passive mode, overwhelmed until a trigger happens like the above story, or we consciously make an effort to be actively awakened to what’s really going on around us and inside of us.
Mel saw a green light and went thru the intersection. The people next to him saw a yellow light and stopped. What colour was the light, really? There was no light. There was an experience that Mel created so that he could teach himself an understanding about his actively creating Reality. What is Reality? Whatever you create and however you perceive it to be.
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
2. Congress (past, present &future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.
I was digging thru some stacks of magazines and papers searching for something I never found and what I came across was really interesting. No, I mean REALLY interesting. I’ve been a subscriber of Wired magazine for eons. It’s a magazine that closely aligns with my sense of design and my desire for information that feels relevant and untainted, sometimes controversial, and often enlightening.
This article in particular was enlightening because my education in the sciences was minimal. I always leaned toward the liberal arts and away from anything that required too much memorization of intangible concepts and “things.” Thorium can be found on the periodic table along with other actinides like uranium and plutonium that are currently used in 100% of the world’s nuclear reactors. Interesting that I found this article right when Japan is having a serious problems with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. I don’t believe “authorities” to tell you the truth when it comes to the risk involved in the radiation that’s leaching from the plant and how it will affect the planet at large when that radiation gets spread about the planet by our weather system.
Enter thorium… a once upon a time contender for the energy that would feed nuclear power plants. It lost out to uranium, not because it’s not clean burning, not because it’s less bi-product producing, and not because it’s mostly harmless (you can carry it in your pocket), and not because it’s hyper abundant. It lost to uranium because uranium’s by-product, plutonium is what war mongers like to use most in bombs. Isn’t that lovely? We have the radioactive by-products of nuclear calamities like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now the Japan crisis poisoning our plaent, and they could have been averted if we had chosen to not make bombs.
Take the time to read this article in the 2010 issue of Wired. It’s well worth the read: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
1. Power on camera.
2. Hit the menu button and scroll to VCR SET. Set A/V->DV OUT to ON.
3. Use Sony i.Link cable to connect DV end to camera and FireWire end to computer.
4. Open iMovie or app of choice and it should connect to the camera and allow you to import.
iMovie will rewind the tape for you but you may not necessarily want it to do that. If you don’t, just start the import process from anywhere on the tape. Since it’s going to happen in real-time meaning that if you have 40 minutes of video, it will take 40 minutes of playback time to get the video off the MiniDV cartridge, plus the app’s processing time of the video. You can stop the import process at any time.
There’s a tree outside my window.
Window: Human created object thru which I can use my eyes to see thru.
Eyes: My eyes are parts of my body that are connected to my brain and interpret light.
Tree: I’m told it’s a tree by people that have studied and named such items that dot our planet. I don’t know the people who came up with the word, “tree”, nor do how they came up with the word. I know the tree is there because I “see” it with my eyes. The image of the tree is translated and connected to the part of my brain that uses language to describe the image.
Brain: I’ve been told that I’m part of the human species, and all humans have brains. I have no proof that I have a brain, it’s only circumspect. I imagine that the prospect of my seeing my own brain with my eyes and translating that image with the object that I’m perceiving it with to be something that might only happen in a laboratory of which I’m unlikely to visit. I must rely on what I’ve been told about other people’s research in brains, that I too possess a brain and that it operates in the way that it does, which means that it’s only hearsay. The truth is that there is only other people’s so called brains that allows them to perceive the brain in the way they do, which also means they could be completely wrong by two possible incedences.
1) The brain has a built-in security mechanism that allows itself to not be decompiled and artificially manufactured.
2) The brain has an inability to understand itself.
The result is that the brain alone is insufficient to describe itself, thus, insufficient to describe anything else around it.
Humanity has created an incredibly complex system by which it explains everything around us but is still insufficient in describing anything beyond what the brain can interpret and classify, in which case it is safe to say that nothing is as we describe it because our tools for comprehension are inadequate.
Excerpt:
“THE debate over gay marriage is at the heart of many races in America’s mid-term elections. On Sunday October 10th Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, said that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable and that he would veto any gay-marriage bill.”
My retort:
Mr. Paladino… You yourself have been brainwashed into thinking that it’s not acceptable. Can’t you open your eyes and see the irony. Your biggest fears are staring you right in the face. Your biggest opportunities to personal growth and happiness are obviously your acceptance of others differences. Amazing that you’re a leader with this kind of bigotry and hatred in your soul. You can do better.
