(no subject)
Read a great book this weekend - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The main character has Asperger's Syndrome and it's quite interesting to see him interact with the world without all the pretense and emotional baggage. . . with this character, the internal dialog is not hidden. Understanding this, you are never caught off-guard by how the character acts or reacts. Insightfully, I found a lot of this internal-type dialog to be very similar to my own, the difference being that by the time my internal dialog is expressed externally, it has been filtered and processed . . . and perhaps not always appropriately.
I also watched K-PAX again, starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. I just love content that includes psychological perspectives, especially if it has a sci-fi element. K-PAX leaves you guessing if Spacey's character can be summarily dismissed as a classic split-personality. Many parts of Prot's personality make sense if you consider it a response to stripping away completely, any association with Robert Porter's identity. The vegetarian characteristic is about as far removed as one can be from working in a slaughterhouse. Also, Prot's description of reproduction is painful and family attachment is non-existent for K-Paxians, very telling given Porter's tragic experience of losing his wife and daughter. But there are also parts of Prot's personality that cannot be so easily dismissed - the astrophysical knowledge, sensitivity to wavelengths of light beyond normal human capacity. These parts of the film leave one open to believe . . .
And just because I haven't updated in awhile - here is an article exploring alternative medicine, with a little critical reasoning from the laws of physics. I found it interesting that traditional homeopathic remedies should not be effective due to exceeding the dilution limit - essentially these remedies contain no trace of the homeopathic element, yet are somehow believed to remain effective. Could this simply be a placebo effect? The article explores this in more depth.
It's becoming more difficult for me to hide my cynicism, especially with regard to the blatant desecration of our civil liberties and all the nutcases we have in various political offices. Some days I consider the possibility of wiping my memory and rejoining the matrix . . . but I digress. This is a few weeks old, but very significant, and if I were a believer in end-time hysteria, I would almost say this is a prelude to being apocalyptic. Let me bottom-line the article in simplest terms. National Security trumps any rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The government decides what is a matter of national security. Any accusation of wrong-doing levied towards the government can be conveniently dismissed by declaring the matter to be incidental to national security.
This issue seems to have most Americans divided by a false dichotomy - the misinterpretation being that if you call into question the governments methods, ethics or integrity, you are endangering our national security - in other words you are on the side of terrorists. This is the fascist form of patriotism, and it excludes those of us who prefer that patriotism be based on a form of accountable ethics. No aspect of our government should be above the law. A free society demands clear responsibility and oversight. Anything short of this - and it's no better than the iron curtain.
The uneducated masses make the atrocity currently taking place possible. If you don't know what your rights are, you can hardly cry foul when they are trampled. And even elected officials fail at basic history.
But let me end on a positive note - this woman absolutely made my day.
I also watched K-PAX again, starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. I just love content that includes psychological perspectives, especially if it has a sci-fi element. K-PAX leaves you guessing if Spacey's character can be summarily dismissed as a classic split-personality. Many parts of Prot's personality make sense if you consider it a response to stripping away completely, any association with Robert Porter's identity. The vegetarian characteristic is about as far removed as one can be from working in a slaughterhouse. Also, Prot's description of reproduction is painful and family attachment is non-existent for K-Paxians, very telling given Porter's tragic experience of losing his wife and daughter. But there are also parts of Prot's personality that cannot be so easily dismissed - the astrophysical knowledge, sensitivity to wavelengths of light beyond normal human capacity. These parts of the film leave one open to believe . . .
And just because I haven't updated in awhile - here is an article exploring alternative medicine, with a little critical reasoning from the laws of physics. I found it interesting that traditional homeopathic remedies should not be effective due to exceeding the dilution limit - essentially these remedies contain no trace of the homeopathic element, yet are somehow believed to remain effective. Could this simply be a placebo effect? The article explores this in more depth.
It's becoming more difficult for me to hide my cynicism, especially with regard to the blatant desecration of our civil liberties and all the nutcases we have in various political offices. Some days I consider the possibility of wiping my memory and rejoining the matrix . . . but I digress. This is a few weeks old, but very significant, and if I were a believer in end-time hysteria, I would almost say this is a prelude to being apocalyptic. Let me bottom-line the article in simplest terms. National Security trumps any rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The government decides what is a matter of national security. Any accusation of wrong-doing levied towards the government can be conveniently dismissed by declaring the matter to be incidental to national security.
This issue seems to have most Americans divided by a false dichotomy - the misinterpretation being that if you call into question the governments methods, ethics or integrity, you are endangering our national security - in other words you are on the side of terrorists. This is the fascist form of patriotism, and it excludes those of us who prefer that patriotism be based on a form of accountable ethics. No aspect of our government should be above the law. A free society demands clear responsibility and oversight. Anything short of this - and it's no better than the iron curtain.
The uneducated masses make the atrocity currently taking place possible. If you don't know what your rights are, you can hardly cry foul when they are trampled. And even elected officials fail at basic history.
But let me end on a positive note - this woman absolutely made my day.