Review of the New Bond Movie

Fighting for personal justice: Its represented in the movie poster where bond is using the AK47 as his 'weapon of choice' instead of the MI6 assigned Walther PPK and lets the viewer know that bond will going renegade if you watch this movie! Bond is typically an instrument of the state, but in this movie he fights a battle for personal reasons in the face of opposing American and British Itelligence Services. It goes to show how "revenge" and"truth" must be won by the heroe with the most virtu. Bond is sumultaneously fighting a battle where he is extracting revenge for his lovers death, while attempting to discover if his lover truly loved him. If he gives into the demands of his boss (the british government) he'll never know the truth. The movie asks the viewer to fight for truth in the face of one's own authorities. It is an excellent movie for the revolution. Viva la revolution!

Continuation on the last post

I was going to discuss the viability of ecological terrorism, but what was represented in the movie was not terrorism. The goal of the perpetrators was not to frighten or demoralize, it was to gain money.

Let me first state that I am an atheist. I am probably the most atheist atheist you will ever meet. Now then.

So lets talk about morals, and religion. Are they mutually exclusive? Of course they are, shut your god damn mouth, they are and always will be exclusive. I will fight to the death for that belief, that morals do not have to be religious. But I'd be wrong. We've made them mutually dependent, and we've completely screwed ourselves. Here's the timeline I believe we've been living in.

Prehistory. Morals are defined by religion. Up until this point morals were an abstract idea only enforceable by brute force. A large organization is required to uphold these morals, or we have anarchism.

I realize my audience here. I've been reading the posts on this site closely. I can't tell if you're all anarchists or just think you are, but I will come out and openly say that anarchism is as likely as communism to work, ie. not at all. Anarchism cant work for the same reason unorganized farming cant work. Food production dwindles, people die. The same thing happens without organization of society, laws and rules. Production fails, the economy comes unglued. People can no longer feed their families. Worse, pretend we survive this turbulent transition. Pretend (and I mean pretend, because it will never happen) that we have become an anarchist society. We're back at square one. Does anyone actually believe that barter and helping your neighbor works? What the hell do you think we did BEFORE government? Picked flowers? We brutally killed and tortured each other.

Here's my theory on government: it crystallizes. A lot of otherwise intelligent people think the universe is organized by an outside force. I believe it organizes itself through chemical and other scientific means, but I do not believe outward input is required. A self evident form of this is bees. Who decided a hexagon was the best shape for a cell? God? No. Each bee in each hive slowly but surely evolved a way to work with this shape. There is no organization. This is chaos theory at its most practical. The behavior that causes these shapes, just like salt forming a crystal, grew from otherwise "nothingness" by additive evolution. Each element piled on another element until a general 'hive' idea was formed. They just know how to be efficient. Efficiency creates itself.

A government is the most efficient way to keep people happy, to keep them productive. You can say what you want about oppression, but we have never been as free as we are now, and we have never been as efficient as we are now. We will get better.

Time-line step number 2. We have morals. Unfortunately, the group that could create enough hysteria and fear to crystallize was religion. Religion also crystallizes. You put enough humans together, fear of the unknown will create doubt in themselves. They will seek alternatives, and religion almost always fills the void. Religion becomes at this stage both hammer and sickle. It becomes the law and it becomes the provider. It crystallizes into a hive of humanity, feeding off fear. But we have morals. We have superficial morals that can be bent, but they are literally written in stone (after a few millenia) and that leads us to stage three.

Step three: we question religion. How can any person not? When science became a unified movement towards knowledge (I would love to say it was Darwin, but my hunch says it first became really important and free from religion in either early, early Greece or more likely Mesopotamia). That was the root. Obviously freedom from religion has not occured yet, and it never will. Freedom from religion is a false dichotomy. There is a spectrum of freedom from religion, right now I'd say we're at about 60%.

Now we're at this stage where we realize we've let a group of people run our lives. At one point in the middle ages it's safe to say they were an influence in every single aspect of our lives, and in many middle eastern countries I'd be surprised if someone contradicted me. So is this bad? Is religion inherently bad? I don't think anyone believes that. I can make a fairly short list of reasons I believe religion is necessary.

1. A large group of strong, powerful and charismatic people are initially needed to reform the moral system of society. Religious founders are righteous people who generally want to help people, so more the better.

2. Without a large unified group that says "don't question us" we wouldn't know we had to question them. We don't realize we dont like living in our parents house until we start questioning their rules.

3. They set societies up, they get farming working. This is not to say that an atheist society cant sort this stuff out, but historically they havent.


Now the last step (my fingers hurt from typing so I'm starting to trail off) is the point where we don't have to think about religion any more. It hasn't stopped existing, it has simply stopped mattering. As long as we have zero, AND I MEAN ZERO openly atheist politicians in the leading countries of the world, I don't see this happening.

Sounds sweet right? Step four, the last step, is where society will fail. People are starting to really get behind this anarchism bullshit. People HATE the police. I can't stand them, not because of what they are, but because they are simply annoying. Some people hate them for enforcing morals, they see them as a symbol of the old world. They want to brush them aside, get rid of them, live free and peacefully like hippies thought they were (the idea that hippies were free living is at minimum the most retarded thing anyones ever thought). Bad move. Bad, bad move.

The anti-religious people are playing a dangerous game. They have finally succeeded in lumping morals in with religion, and forgetting they're doing so. They're fighting religion, as they should, but they're fighting the upstanding moral values they created as well. They're questioning some very important societal rules that to be honest, I have no desire to live without. Communal living leads to theft. Polygamy leads to rape, murder and for some reason, sexual deviency. I don't believe this is a fact of life, but again, history says otherwise.

So what if the anarchists win, what if they destroy this religiously saturated society? Reform? Ha! We start over. The steps I've outlined, are in my opinion, set in stone. Anarchy leads to religion, which leads to atheism, which leads people to question religion, which leads to anarchy, which leads to religion and so on.

Again, I don't believe this, but history has taught us otherwise.

Quantum of Solace made very little economic sense

I don't understand it. By stockpiling the water for an entire country, an evil fake environmentalist plans to profit off the sales of utilities to the Bolivian government. A government, I may add, that has fuck all for cash anyway. A country, I may add, that is harshly divided (like many South American countries) between Government/military and poor traditional tribesman.

So what the fuck was the plan here? Charge more for water, ya I get it. Does anyone think this would go unnoticed? I mean blocking underground rivers and whatever is fine in the short run, but I seriously doubt that that one giant underground river feeds Boliva exclusively. Ya, I get it, Quantum is some big huge organization that controls practically every government in South America. Wait. So basically the plan here is to charge... for water... a human necessity... to a continent.

For some reason I don't see that going over well. What happens when people are dying and cant AFFORD to pay the ridiculous prices? I mean this is, at best, the worlds shortest sighted scheme for domination. People get dehydrated and die in a teeny tiny amount of time, which means this brilliant scheme will dry up (laugh track) so fast that the enormous cost of DAMMING A SERIES OF UNDERGROUND RIVERS will completely bankrupt this collection of well dressed dipshits.

All in all though this movie had better just be the mediocre chapter between two very good action-thrillers. And get rid of this annoying camera-shaking fight scenes. It worked for Matt Damon, but its getting old.

If you want to see a movie that gets it right, watch this clip, it's from a movie called "Old Boy" and you will agree with me when I say:

The directors of American movies have no fucking idea how to represent the brutality of violence actually found in their subject matter. They are ignorant pansies who think this gritty camera shaking is a replica for actual story telling and clever cinematography. Shape up.

Answer: A device that will change how politics function

Question: What is a space elevator?

Let me explain. Space elevators are a device that connects the ground, literally, to space... via a cable. This was proposed in the late 19th century and has since been fodder for science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke is famous for making the device a pivotal issue and practically a character in several of his books. Why the fascination, you might ask? Well before I answer that, here's some scientific context.

A space elevator consists of three main components. A tether, an anchor, and a carriage system. The anchor consists of an orbiting satellite that (at least, as far as I can figure) will keep the cable tensioned through centripetal (not centrifugal, which is not the correct term) and allow climbers (or gondolas) to travel up the tether (but probably not down).

Probably not down, you say? Confused by the many brackets in the last paragraph? Well most people figure that the carriages used to thicken the cable (think weaving robots) will be most efficient if used to build up the counterweight at the end of the rope, and "down" will come a lot later, probably not until we start sending people.

How cool! But it gets more fantastic. They want to power the cars by either

a) Shooting lasers at them. Seriously.
b) Using the SUPERCONDUCTIVITYof the CARBON NANOTUBE structure of a second, parallel cable. This would require building two cables. Out of motherfucking carbon nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1991, and are long fibres of nano-scale carbon tubes that are both stupendously strong and fantastically light.

And the first person to sort out the counterweight, cable and car powering methods is instantly god. You will own space. Literally. No one can compete with this technology. Whichever country gets this first will lower the cost of putting objects into space by so much that chances are the economic boost gained will make that country so fabulously rich that they'll be able to construct cables anywhere and monopolize the space cable industry. Lets put it in economic context: It costs eleven thousand dollars per kilogram of whatever you want to put into space. An elevator could lower this to 200$ at the start, and who knows how little after establishment. That means space based industry, like zero gravity manufacturing and things like that will instantly be ~50 times less insane.

So there you go. If this technology is pioneered by the good old USA, good game. If its pioneered by the Japanese (who actually already have a program working on doing just that), prepare to be assaulted by the most technologically advanced space ninjas you've ever seen. I'm talking actual space pikachu robots that shoot lightning out of their eyes and crush cities with each footstep, spreading mayhem and ichiban as far as the eye can see.

The space cable is the future.

Standing in Relation to Politics

It calls me,
in the middle of the day,
as i listen to the radio for music,
it calls.

Its not peter Mansbridge,
but it mine as well be,
the voice on the radio squeaks in,
I was enjoying the solitude of my room,
and the classical music,
but the voice becomes political.

A political prisoner of doom,
sitting in my room,
i listen and consume.

Politics is no choice,
I am called to it,
By Pete Mans to the Bridge

My escape:
I turn of the radio,
if its not too late

Oh but wait,
hostages in India,
80 dead,
by brain must be fed

I want more,
and when i've had my share of indian grief,
give me some dion and harper to top it off

What a delicious recipe for an afternoon of schizophrenia

A Universal Concept of Revolution with a Cosmopolitan Intent

To Revolt is to see,
the anarchy,
within thee.
and know that the future holds,
an opportunity for change,
creating a better reality,
splendiforously

To leaders we look
but the thinking that got us here won't get us out of here
working together with our enemies,
will be our salvation,
and our downfall

Global Catharsis

Global Catharsis

 

So in class we were asked what we think is sacred

I said that everything was but can’t forget the hatred

We have family and friends with whom we break bread

And some of us make ends meet on streets we make red

I’m sure it’s right and wrong and it’s been debated

But how many soldiers in the war still feel vindicated?

Still the economy’s recessed and press is syndicated

Do we believe what figures and figureheads have stated?

Conservatives don’t conserve and the Liberals heartless

Am I just pessimistic or are too many hard pressed?

Just trying to speak my mind as a tormented Marxist

Still searching to find global catharsis

Anarchist Potluck

Yesterday i went to an anarchist potluck and had a lot of stimulating conversation with 'anarchists'. They were selling home brewed beer at their potluck, they had cranberry, eucalyptus and peppermint flavours (the cranberry tasted like cheese but the peppermint was delicious).

Apparently they are already getting organized for protests for the 2010 olympics. It sounds as if a lot of activists are going to be helping Canadian first nations protest the olympics. The goal is to teach foreigners the truth about Canada: that we're not such a peaceful place and we have an evil state just like all other countries.

The most interesting think i heard all night was during a conversation i was having about direct action. I was considering direct action to be when a group of protestors are willing to resort to violence if the police attack them. But one anarchist thought that every moment of one's life could be direct action. Instead of buying a carrot from the grocery store, he uses direct action and grows his own carrot (and brews his own beer). Every movement of his body is an expression of his political beliefs. Pretty cool.

Global Warning

So what now in the aftermath of G twenty

And deflation in the US with people saving money

You can try fiscal stimulus by borrowing from China

But if we stay the same course then the worst is not behind ya

I speak about a coming shift of power to east

Try to appease the dragon while at home we calm the beast

Don’t get me wrong I know it’s hard to develop strategies

But global markets constrain and yet we call them free

All the while we demand to have social equality

And others take a stand to focus on ecology

Given that what do I see as a corollary?

Collapse and renewal but first catastrophe

 

 

Check out:

Beyond the Limits by Meadows, Meadows and Randers

Collapse by Jared Diamond

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer-Dixon

Evolution’s Edge by Graeme Taylor

 

The Labryinth of Freedom

Search through the labryinth,
of endless despair,
fighting for truth,
but finding none there.

But wait!
A shining light come hither,
Freedom is near,
its time to give er'.

navigating the passage,
at the speed of light,
get to the end,
and become a knight.

Trade the walls of the labryinth,
for a metal cast suit,
freedom is a drug,
that knights must shoot.

 

Free Speech

 

Interpreting interpretations

Through the double hermeneutic

Asserting verbal permutations

Some spit while others spew it

We should be deconstructing

And reconstructing structures

Now the gears are slowly rusting

So it’s time to cause a rupture

We’ll start it off with words and vids

Supported by subversive kids

Learning through discursive bids

Day by day we can disperse the grid

Is there really any doubt

That we're striving in vain?

While big businesses offshore

Are hiding their gains

It’s not worth it anymore

Who’s deciding the same?

Indeed we’re passengers

And also flying the plane

Let’s get off autopilot and

Start relying on our brains

The Charter of Rights/Restrictions and Freedoms/Unfreedoms

It is weird to think that a government document outlines our rights and freedoms. It would seem to me that anyone who goes to the government to recieve rights and freedoms is the least free person of all. The charter says i have a right to 'freedom of opinion'. Is the charter giving me the right, or is it explaining a pre-existing right. This is not clear. Maybe the charter is a useless document only to be used by lawyers.

Truduea's Counter Argument: You need the government to help you be free because you can not become free alone. Becoming free is a fight and the charter can help you in your fight. Becoming free is like paddelling a canoe against the stream of the river. Every Canadian must learn to paddle against the stream and seek their own freedom in the face of the homogenizing forces of the modern world.

My rebuttal: if every Canadian is being encouraged to paddle against the stream and find personal freedom, have we not already constructed a homogenizing concept for the freedom of canadians.

Nardwar's interuption:

Justice or Just is?

Despite uncertainty, our voices still remain

But it’s not clear to me to what extent our choices are constrained

I mean look at all the money the Fed spent for the nation

To perpetuate pervasiveness of gentrification

We can criticize the lenders but the system is to blame

Maybe AIG rejoices but the peasants feel the pain

Citizens losing houses and others questioning their pensions

Passing policies previously beyond comprehension

Struggling to work with realist and liberal assumptions

But Neoliberalism’s dead because the system doesn’t function

So what now? At least a substantial wealth transfer

We can wear a band-aid but that doesn’t cure cancer

To my fellow bloggers

I didn't feel like sending out an email to you all, and this is relevant to anyone (if we actually have readers) reading this site.

How do you like the theme? I really enjoy the graphics side of the site, and if there's anything anyone wants improved, please comment on this post. If you hate the banner, want the colors changed, whatever, just tell me. If the font is too lame and you're tired of changing it, then maybe we should change the default font. I enjoy this silly fiddling so lay it on me


Note: my sister reading over my shoulder said this sounded sarcastic. Let me assure you that I do in fact enjoy the graphics side or I wouldn't be spending tens of thousands of dollars getting a fine arts degree. I would also like to say that my sister is a doo-doo head and her face looks like a butt.

The death of Canadian landscape

Landscape painting has died. All that remains are husks, shells of soaring cedar trees that once saw the caress of Emily Carr; naive but strong. We're left with the crumbling cliffs of the group of seven, the eroding Canadian shield, barely represented in its current stage of developed exploitation by soaring brush strokes executed by our ancestral sons of industry. The beauty of Canada is a much more private pleasure now. Art has turned a blind eye to beauty. Art has laced the shoes of context and conflict to the bare, muddy feet of the running rivers of Canada.

You can no longer create a landscape piece. I have no problem with this. The legendary group of seven were rich kids who could afford oil paints, which were quite expensive at the time. If you think it's hard to get your hands on real cobalt blue pigment now, imagine it before the Trans Canada High-way. So this is not a eulogy. This is simply an opinion piece. I believe that the public art domain has removed any form of simple nature appreciation away from the eyes of the viewers. This has happened quite literally in our current time; landscape paintings are bought and sold by a die-hard group of fans, and patronized as wallpaper by hotels and businesses. It's as if there's nothing left to say about nature. It's become a prisoner of cliches.

A major sidestep of the issue is something I came up with when I was thinking of counter-points to my argument. There as a philosopher (epicurius?) who said that positive and negative are all matters of perception. This is obvious, but it does make a good personal mantra when you're cut off driving. It applies to my thesis in this post quite well. All you have to do to appreciate landscape art is treat it abstractly. Focus on the lines, focus on technical skill and composition rather than context and ideas. This is really easy to do with landscape, but it really doesn't get you far in the world we're currently stuck in.

One example is what I deal with the most often: Environmental Art. I capitalize Environmental because currently, it's a proper name for a movement that's been going on since the vague idea of pollution came up. Art that is a picture of a beautiful landscape is now a tool to get people to have shorter showers, and take the bus. Go to a landscape exhibition, and you WILL hear, at least once, "too bad there wont be much left of this to paint pretty soon". Really. Shut up. I don't care, and you don't get it. The world will happily float around after we fuck up the rain-forests. You think we'll run out of beautiful landscapes? Because even one of the worst consequences of desert warming, desertification, creates fantastic spirals and pinnacles of sand and dust. It creates stunning rock formations, it turns urban sprawl into beautiful desolation. Landscapes will always exist. It's the artists that need to adapt.

Leave the message to the curators, I'm tired of not being able to paint Fish Creek Park. I never will, because I personally would rather light myself on fire than paint a landscape, but the point stands.

I had a dream where I watched the tower fall from on top of it… someone else started to make it fall and I was on the roof with a large number of other people. For some reason, I ran towards the side of the roof that would have hit the ground first but I accidentally slipped because of something to do with my current state.. I slipped and a slid for a long time as the tower was already falling in the direction in which I was sliding… my feet finally hit the short wall on the edge of the building, giving the tower more momentum to fall and at that moment, people saw me , people who had been working on the tower as their job, people who depended on the employment of the tower for their living. There were 8-10 people who knew me as a fellow coworker and a few of those 8-10 who saw me at the moment I hit the edge.. For some reason, one or two of those people immediately blamed me for making the tower fall…Even though the tower was falling long before I slipped and hit the wall they blamed me for bringing about its collapse. How could that be? I spent a good part of the rest of the dream trying to convince people that I was not me who caused the initial collapse of the tower. But the crazy thing is this.. this was a real tower and it was easy to see that it was collapsing because of the angle and the time that it took for it to fall from my vantage point on top.. But in real life when you and I talk about ‘the system’ and the collapse of the system, we socially construct the system and it is not  100% clear the extent to which it is collapsing and where we locate ourselves within the tower (on the roof or close to the bottom levels). Can I still defend myself in real life by saying the system was already collapsing and I just slipped and lost control which cased me to hit the edge and further the momentum of the collapse? Or am I just as guilty as any other person trying to bring about a collapse because we are not sure what the tipping point is that will cause the system to begin to fall, unless it has already begun to do so..? There are still real people with real jobs depending on the system and I happen to be one of them, so not only am I in the tower, I am part of the tower itself.  Am I trying to bring about my own collapse? And lastly the whole metaphor of the tower is just an analogy for the way the system might be and we shouldn’t even think about the collapse as a falling tower because that is just some form of imagery I thought up in a dream.. what if the metaphor of revolution was  more like tilling the soil and planting seeds in order to make new and amazing things grow? 

They Do Not Know That They Hold Their Freedom In Their Mouths

We call ourselves civilized, however, I would rather call ourselves tamed. We are beasts of a great circus that is run by beasts. We, the people, are as a great and mighty lion, yet we are whipped and starved into a broken dependency upon our master – the ring leading lion tamer. Generations roll by and our offspring are born into the circus subservient and captives to their masters. They accept life in their cages; denied of the truth and freedom of the natural world. To the broken and caged lions, life is the circus; there is no other way to live.  They do not know that they could eat and drink freely under a shelter that is free of bars. They do not know that freedom lies in their mouths every night when the tamer is selling his show. They do not know that the tamer has no show without his lion. They do not know that freedom lies in their mouths every night when the tamer sells his show. They do not know that they have the freewill and power to bite the hand that feeds. They do not know that they hold freedom in their mouths when the lion tamer is selling his show. They do not know that they can feed themselves. We, the people, are as a mighty lion, yet we are whipped and starved into a broken dependency upon our master.

On Tom Cruise

First off: Tom Cruise is an actor. Now he seems to be an actor with an agenda. Fame brings you money, money brings you power, power buys you. However, it is rumored that Tom was more or less wrangled into scientology shortly after Top Gun had blown away the audiences of the 1980's. They kept records of all of his personality testing results. Perhaps Tom was blackmailed into Scientology. Perhaps that is why he gets so intense about what he is talking about - he's pissed off!! 

Perhaps he knows that there was a huge opportunity to make a lot of money. Perhaps Tom saw Scientology as a business venture that prays on the stupid and confused sheep of society. After all, he could be not only be raking in the doe, but also be permanently in the limelight of believers - a new messiah.  Plus, he would also be able to create a  Tom Cruise fan base that would ensure the success of each and every one of his movies. I think Oprah gets a cut too. 

Nicole Kidman is so totally hot. She's even hotter to know that she didn't buy into this shit. 

Anti Scientology Group

sorry guys but im still not done with scientology. I found a very interesting movie that attacks scientologists now. the people that made it hold flash mob protests in the streets. they post a date and time on the internet and everyone does a brief protest where they sing songs and dance. im going to be in vancouver this weekend, i might check out the flash raid on the 15th. Even though this is just a group of religious haters, they have very interesting means of politicizing themselves in the 21st century. I think This is a well-done movie and the idea of flash mob protests is brilliant.

Remembrance Day

Was it rememberance day today? when was the moment of silence? I slept in until 3 today so maybe i was silent.

The moment of silence is a very interesting concept. It makes Canadians sit and think about something (in this case the past wars). Many canadians don't get a chance to think anymore, because they are too busy listening. I don't know what i would think about if i had to do a moment of silence. Maybe i would think of medal of honour allied assault and storming onto the beaches of normandy with my dostovel.

What am i sposed to think about? dead soldiers that got killed because they believed in defending the dominion of Canada in 1918 and 1945. I didn't live in those times, and cant possible try to understand what life was like back then. not even my parents could.

Maybe in the moment of silence, i should think about the future revolutionaries that are bound to lose their lives because they believe in the destruction of the thing called 'canada'. i think even our dead soldiers would be proud of that. even though our government would tell us revolutionary thinking is shaming the dead soldiers. when did the government get ownership of dead peoples ideas?

What is it good for? A few things, actually

I'm no expert on the wars that plague our past and present, but today I wonder what is going through people's mind at home and during ceremonies around the globe. I am reminded of a quote from a movie called History Boys whereby a professor in the movie says, "The best way to forget something is to commemorate it." I wonder if there is some truth to this.. What do do people think about for that few moments of silence when we 'remember'? Lost family members? Brave soldiers currently engaged in war? Are we grateful for what we have today? I try to be... But with what little I know about past and current wars I do not simply remember THAT we went to war. I think about WHY we went to war and although the intentions were complex, they were not always honourable. In fact, there were and continue to be instances where soldiers have died without even knowing on a grander scale what they were fighting for. Is it enough to say that we are fighting for our families fellow citizens? Or is it clear to most that the biggest war of all is over wealth and ideas? Do people recall that what largely saved us from the economic and social woes of the Great Depression was in fact the economic growth and social cohesion generated by World War II and all the death and destruction that came along with it? My intent is not to be naive or to berate those that have been deeply affected by war. Your emotions and your sentiments are warranted and real. My intent is to make sure that in addition to remembering those who fought valiantly, we also try to learn from past experience, not just the winners' past experience but the losers as well because after all, it is the actions of both that results in an escalating conflict. Those who forget their past are condemned to repeat it. We don't have to be experts on the history of war, but some knowledge could make a big difference.

Is This Progress?

We watch the world turn

With collective intentionality

Watch the world burn

Rationality’s a fallacy

Individual choices

Can equal public woes

Amidst a plethora of voices

But that’s how the struggle goes

Trying to sift through

What’s knowledge

What’s not

Does it help to go to college?

Or does it make us more distraught?

More and more we specialize

As the game becomes complex

While we’re exposed to special lies

From one leader to the next

Politicians and the rest

with 2050 projections

But no guarantees of success

With successive elections

No telling where crisis lurks

As we progress through the haze

Yet somehow we say it works

I can’t help but be amazed

Comments on the Tom Cruise video

Tom cruise talks about everything as if it were a movie preview. "It's a blast, it's a blast. I gotta tell you, it's fun". So is flying a fighter jet. Anyway. Interesting. What this is really telling me is that Scientology is for those who do not have an innate sense of morals. Tom Cruise may have been a moral person when he was born, but over the course of hollywood manipulation, he has become cynical, isolationist. He has become courageous but foolhardy. Selfless but blind. I would say then, that Tom Cruise is an example of a concept you may be familiar with: The Imaginary Modern American. Strong, powerful enough to change things, and selflessly courageous.

T.C is an example of how people often develop a reliance on religion, or another set system laid out for them. TC feels that he has to help people, and that this is because he thinks like a Scientologist (this originally said psychiatrist, I edited it). On the one hand, one can argue that cause justifies effect, since the end result is people being helped. In Tom Cruises case, and most scientologists case, they're simply drawn in by cult mentality and, due to its high profile members, some caché as well. It's a god complex, an exaggerated superiority complex.

I simply do not understand the transition stage. How do you not see yourself becoming this when the end product is so radical? This is pure brainwashing, this is the same seductive bullshit spewed by so many religions. And he needs to not pretend that Scientology is altruistic. Scientology is a business based on a commercial novel. Enough already. Fucking give it up. Dissolve your religion so we can start fearing Muslims again.

Time for Change?

Not so sure about the system

So take some time to discuss its fate

I'm seeing fallout from the victims

While we're trying to resuscitate

In a world where what we know 

Is esoteric or cryptic

Deficits hit you like body blows

And ideas are ballistics

Although some of us react

Rather nonchalantly

Now the president is black

And he promotes a vision staunchly

"Yes we can," he says

To the vacillating masses

Dispensing promises like pez

To calm the clash between the classes

Far from crass or brash

And a survivor of the lashes

But can the USA last 

Or will it slowly turn to ashes?

Watch how the game is played

Does it depend upon the dissidents?

Can tough decisions be made

Or be upended by diffidence?

How do you tell consumers 

That they're victims of their vices?

Possessions serve as tumors 

But friends and family are priceless

Tom Cruise the Scientologist

Th video closes with the words "the world of tom cruise the scientologist has only just begun." If this is true, the world could be in store for a reality worse than the robot aliens that invaded in "War of the worlds." In this post i will take quotes from the video (in italics) and offer my critique of them.

"A scientologist 'does'! they have the ability to create better realities." This is such horse-shit. Which reality is TC talking about? God's objective reality or his own subjective reality? The first one doesn't exist, so therefore tom cruise is shoving his own definitions of "a good reality" onto everyone else. why should a scientologist 'do'? This means they are doing something to effect people and make the world better. They should just mind their own business and cultivate their own personal realities, rather than shoving their definitions of betterment onto everyone else. It seems that scientology is creating totalitarians.

"I won't hesitate to put ethics into someone else". Of course you won't TC. Your totalitarian ways are always trying to make people live by your own standards and ethics. TC should really learn to let each human being live by his own ethics. unforunately, there are no religions in the world that allow every human being to live by their own ethics. all religions share the same principle that every human being should live and act in a certain way in relation to society and humanity>>>>>>morality. When TC says "We can unite culture", he means that if scientology takes over the world and destroys all other cultures then cultures might be united. i dont see a religion being something able to unite cultures... not even government policies of multiculturalism can unite cultures.

"You're either in or you're out, the spectator is something we have no time for right now." This is the first thing he says that makes sense, only because i am assuming that TC would consider me a spectator. At least he is saying that he has "no time" for spectators, which means he won't waste his time trying to convert me. The spectator can live in their own reality, and the scientologists can try cultivating some value laden idealistic reality.

"We have to educate and create the new reality" First of all, why is everyone supposed to abandon their own personal subjective reality to be educated on a stupid mass scientology reality? secondly, education is the worst way to get people to do anything because it proves that your reality does not exist on its own. If the reality did exist on its own, people wouldn't need to be educated and they could just find the reality themselves. Education proves that you are creating a fake reality.

Valkyrie will be released December 26, 2008. Even though Tom Cruise is crazy, i will definitely be there cause it looks like an awesome movie. Its about the attempted assasination of adolf hitler.

a critique of TC

i was hoping the entire hubbubists crew could get on board and critique this tom cruise video. everyone has seen the simple-minded critiques that youtube has offered. theres usually south park style anectdotes about the crazy unreleased bibles of scientology. but considering that oprah is turning housewives across america into scientologists, it is important to look deeper into this matter. lets have our intellectual think-tank analyze the type of world and human being created by these type of scientological ideas.

Election

I am heading to my Obama/McCain class. I can't stand to hear any information on the election, so i will hand in my paper and leave. I read some really intellectual coverage of the election on another blog today.

>Link<


Nemmy puts it all on perspevtice. He understands how to be a team player. when George Bush Sr. lost the election in 1992 to Clinton, Bush said "I know i lost but its time to rally behind your new president." In Canada you would never get this. Dion hates harper more than he hates high school english teachers

The Politics of Cool

This is a post i made 9 months ago concerning Obama. I was really on the ball. i feel i attacked CNN viewers and Oprah Winfrey a little too harshly (but only a little).

Earlier this week, Rolling Stone Magazine announced that they would put Barack Obama on next month's issue. This is the first time that Rolling Stone has ever made a cover story out of a nominee for the leader of a party. In the past, they have made cover stories out of Democratic Presidential candidates. But 'the curse of the rolling stone' proved fatal for both Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama will get his issue now, and it would not be surprising to see him get another cover story, during the weeks leading up to the presidential election this Novemberish. Obama has a knack for capitalizing on crowds that are unable to think for themselves. Earlier in January, he got the free-spirited Oprah Winfrey to tour on his campaign trail, and also appeared on Oprah's show, where she fully endorsed him.

Even with Barack's appeal to all these forms of 'cool' media, the race does not seem to be over. Anybody that has followed the Democratic election (meaning anybody bored out of their mind, who has a full selection of cable channels, yet out of complete disrespect for their own intellectual well-being, decides to watch CNN), has been told several times that election is nearly over. All of January, we were told that Super Tuesday (in early February), would determine the Democratic nominee. When that didn't pan out, CNN told us it would be the next state election. And when that didn't pan out, they said it would be the next one; and this pattern continued for quite a while. Well, there have been numerous state elections, and CNN has been wrong numerous times. But for some reason, i keep tuning in.

This is very reminiscent to the 'kiefer Sutherland effect'. Anybody that has watched the tv show 24, knows that at the end of every episode, there is a delightful cliffhanger and then footage from next weeks show. If you own the dvd's, you have no choice but to watch the next show immediately. If it's on cable television, you book off your next tuesday at 9pm. I fell under the spell of the 'Kiefer Sutherland effect' during my final exams at the end of my second year at Uvic. I awoke in a daze, back in calgary, having done very poorly on many of my exams.

PS) the republicans and democrats have probably begun working on the campaigns for the next election. the party nominee process begins in 2 years. My hope for the next campaign: Obama vs. Shwartzennegger. Or Obama choosing shwartzenneger as his VP so they can run on the ticket: the Obamanator.

Don't let your guard down

Obama will be the next president of the United States. This is certain. Or at least I hope it is. But we cant simply forget the last 8 years, and more importantly, we cannot forget the last 50. Obama has already been called "the new Reagan" and if that's true, he is soon to be the most polarizing president in the history of the United States. The election was far from a landslide, a 3 percent difference. 3 million people. Half of the country down there doesn't want Obama to represent them. There will be tension, there will be horrible things said, racism will become a new issue in the forefront of our minds.

We also cannot forget that Obama is a religious man. He's a step away from the evangelical policies, true, but he is not a secular man. I hope he, being by far the most secular since... well since Clinton, we'll see some more progression in the school systems and text book authorities, but we must never let that thought leave our mind.

We must also not forget that he is an American president. He is not a representative of the world. He is going to fix his country first, most likely at the detriment of Canada's economy and welfare. Maybe even at the expense of Mexico. We may see a shift away from a strong united North America through free trade to a more globally minded trade system.

Regardless, be vigilant and never forget that yes, this is a significant day for change politics, but simply being a dynamic leader of a large government is not enough. All those people we hated with Bush are still in middle management, in the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the school boards. New face, yes. New body, no. In the spirit of this blog, embrace and celebrate this man's journey, but do not let your guard down.

Liveblog of the Daily Show, Colbert Report... ELECTION NIGHT

12:11 - Man with a cockatoo comes on, it's beautiful wildlife with wicked amazing puns by colbert, and deadman insanity. Stewart plays straight man, colbert has a motherfucking bird on his shoulder

12:12 - Election talk! Colbert says Idaho is fucking Cuba. NY is Obama, incredibly surprising that is.

12:14 - Cockatoo still on colbert's shoulder. Jersey for Obama. Dorito Colbert is the greatest thing to ever happen.

12:15 - Wow, first commercial break, this show is amazing. The chemistry between Colbert and Stewart is so perfect I almost forgot for a second they had separate shows. This show makes Stewart's straight faced and stereotyping self deprecating humor seem like a circus act in comparison to his solo work; Colbert's jokes collide with Stewart's like fireworks.

12:20 - First Jason Jones segment, this guy is my favorite field reporter, he's really the anti-news anchor. Very smarmy but smart societal critiques. Woodland creatures are apprehensive. You'll see these images on the internet.

12:23 - John Oliver, my least favorite but most subversive field man is on his A-game, and is actually pretty funny. Worst french accent ever, no new ideas really but some good historical jokes that are actually pretty clever.

12:23a - Commercial! Phew, not as hilarious as first segment but still very clever. I thought they'd both run out of jokes when the bush administration wound down, but they still manage to keep the satire there, and have instead moved into (here ve go!) a Hegelian dialectic. They're now working in opposition towards each other to keep afloat, and can do this successfully with even generic politics. This is philosophically interesting but an interesting TV tactic. Kind of like Ren and Stimpy.

12:28 - Stewart is relaxed, cool as a cucumber. Some advisor guy. Predictably a Gore voter.

12:30 - Advisor is even funny!

12:32 - Commercial!

12:33 - I'm watching Obama's acceptance speach, and it's beautifully amazingly good. Jesse Jackson cries when he sees the results.

12:35 - Louisiana chose Mcain, because all the black people were killed by the Bush administration. Hey now!

12:36 - John Oliver segment, god he's a dick. Samantha B is the only funny female commedian.

12:38 - John Oliver is such a racially motivated comedian, which should be funny but it's counter to what he should be doing. Focusing on race should not be a core issue anymore, I wish there was some way to get rid of peoples vision for 18 months leading up to the election. Commercial right after that segment. Creepy "just for laughs" commercial.

12:44 - Colbert/Stewart banter is great here. Aasif mandvi is predictably funny as the whitest Indian man I've ever seen. He's like an Indian Chow. Sounds like Ron Burgundy. Colbert steals the show!

12:46 - commmmmerrrcial

12:51 - Barack and Michelle Obama's old harvard law professor is hilarious and honest, he said he thought michelle would be the candidate. Hilarious! As if America is ready for a black and female president!

1:33 - I started watching south park

Newton as God

The reason that religion was so useful as a mechanism of society, is that it homogenized society. Everyone believed in the same thing (that goodness was everywhere thanks to the grace of god), and therefore people were better off at relating to each other.

One day god died (or maybe he never existed) and religion was no longer able to homogenize the masses because many people viewed religion as not true. Welcome the world of science and the religion of the true. Newton's goal (Newton was the evilist man in the history of earth) was to create a universal system of communication that could be used by humans to make sense of the world. The typical aethiest, in the aftermath of finding out that god doesn't exist, turns and clings tightly to something else (scientific rationalism). But at no point does the Human question why they must cling to something at all. Scientific rationalism is always already a deeep faith for all of western thought... even for me. But it is nothing more than a faith that makes us modern western individuals.

There is no way to think outside of scientific rationalism. People that are capable of thinking outside scientific rationalism, are thrown in insane asylums because they can not objectify the world any longer. The only attempts to think outside the scientific rationalism that makes us human beings, is to tell ironical stories like mine yesterday. That is as close as possible without going insane (but what is insane?). Of course time exists, but at the same time, time doesn't exist.

However, people that need science to make sense of the world, are no different than religious people. They need a faith to cling to. Scientific rationalism emerged out of an era deeply indebted to christian thought. Newton's rules of objective truth are narratives that are fed to society... naratives of truth. But when will society learn to make sense of the world for themselves? when will the kid with the tonka truck take over?

Destroy your paintings

We as Canadians have a rich artistic history, but it is surprisingly antique, and depressingly shallow. The group of seven were Canada's answer to the fat republican party of today, they were old white men, born rich, with enough time on their hands to paint landscapes. Emily Carr was born wealthy, her parents sent her to Paris, London and San Francisco to study art, which at the time was a journey all combined of more than 3 years travelling. Her parents were ridin dirty on dubs, they were sipin on gin and juice, so to speak.

And now we're fucked. We've spent so long idolizing and enshrining these 20~ish rotating members of the group of seven and that Victorian matriarch Emily Carr, and here's the result: 4 degree granting art schools in a country of 30 million. Iceland has more. Only the continent of Africa has less, with 1 single art school in South Africa. We're told we're a cultured people with diverse art, but imagine what we're missing! There's a migration process to art. You score your undergrad degree at a pretty good school, make art for a year, get your masters, try to succeed, if not, teach. Sometimes people skip to teaching because they enjoy it, but it's rare.

That's all well and good. When you live in Toronto, when you live so close to New York, it's a small migration to the capital city of art. Better yet, when you're on the west side you've got Los Angeles, an emerging city that saw its peak in 60's and after. You've got San Francisco, Colorado, all these great schools to chose from. Canadian art is the undergraduate section, it's where you start, and then peace out to good old NY.

Almost no one stays in Canada to make their fortune. Glass ceilings suck.

Time does exist, the word is just misleading

First of all, tip of the hat and a "well said" badge to Mr. Self Destruct.


Time is decay. Time is literally the decay of atoms, the deceleration of light, and the breakdown of order. Time is chaos. Time does not have to be something we can travel through, it is simply a fact of life.

I would say that the word "time" needs to be separated from its fictional history. The only reason we can measure time to its most exact proportions is because of the decay of a Cesium atom in a laboratory, forming an atomic clock. Time is not real as a word, but time certainly exists as a function of the universe.

TIME

Time is a human word. A human idea. Yet succumbing to natural aging is inescapable. Unless you can stop the world from turning and the Earth from rotating around the sun, etc, we are all destined to grow a little older every second of every minute of everyday. 

If anyone wants to see death. Take a trip to your local hospital, befriend a fellow senior citizen in a hospice, or watch Al Jazeera. 

Death was around long before the idea of religion was ever muttered. 

What the sacred and the secular have in common: When we die, we like to think that the suffering of our existence is over. 

No one knows what happens after death, either than flesh rotting and being eaten by insects, and those who claim to know are liars. 

We are all dying right now. Take a look in the mirror. If you have just done this, then you were experiencing death. Your own death. 

Leaving a tombstone, or even a stick in the ground, or scattering ashes in a river, or even being put in a burning boat riding the waves of the ocean are all forms of benevolent gestures if these actions were performed by loved ones.

Sure religious people think of death as a ticket to an afterlife, but not all people are religious. 

Religious people are crazy.

There does not need to be a religious message attached to death. Sure the majority of people are religious, and yeah they have a religious stigma attached to death, but if they renounce their atheism at the end, then they were never really an atheist. 

Born and raised as an atheist, I conclude that religious people are crazy and the majority of the world is insane and unable to cope with reality so they make shit up. However, I think that the religious leaders of the world know that the whole 'God' thing is ridiculous, but that is another can of worms.

Death is natural and we and all other organic creatures are all dying. Think of it this way and suddenly death is now seen in all aspects of life. 

Spread the word brother, and teach your children the objective truth. WE KNOW NOTHING EXCEPT THAT DEATH IS INEVITABLE AND ALWAYS NEAR!!!

Assumptions involved in the word Death

Obviously our ideas on death are influenced by our western metaphysical gaze. Let us look deeper into the issue, and analyze the assumptions that this group of whities is making when we talk about death

assumptions: time, life, beginnings and ends, somethingness to nothingness.

Lets try and think our way outside of death, by thinking our way outside of time. According to my physicist friend Mann, it is a scientific fact that time does not exist. Rather, it is a construct of the human mind that helps explain the world (why humans need to explain the world is beyond me). The human being has senses, and they use these senses to bring the outside world into their mind. The mind is the only playing field the human can operate with (the computer screen you are looking at exists only in your mind; nobody has access to the computer screen "in itself"). The outside universe is an eternal existing realm that has been around forever (the big bang is just a conspiracy theory). The universe has always been and will always be; the earth is only a hot piece of molten rock that somehow formed in the universe.

Lets take the optimistic young kid that believes that he will never die. Rather, he becomes like the universe (eternal and always having been). He abandons notions of time and decides to sit and play tonka trunks, in that moment, for eternity. That moment never ends. He plays with tonka trunks forever; continously dumping gravel to bring pleasure to imaginary school yard playgrounds. Unfortunately for the kid, the tonka truck becomes boring, and he eventually gets his mom to make him a grilled cheese. He had eternity in his hand, and he abandoned it for mere melted cheese! I curse time and its seductive partner: the grilling of cheese.