“Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.” — Murray N. Rothbard
“The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register.” — Hans F. Sennholz
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference.” — Rep. Ron Paul
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” — Carl Sagan
Is George Orwell's 1984 Here in America?
Chemtrails...why in the world are they spraying?
An Inconvenient Tooth...
Marijuana...the truth part I...
Marijuana...the truth part II...
Amazing kite choreography...
2012...the year in photos...
Dogs like to drive...
Economic history of the past 2000 years...
Sacred psychedelics maaan...
Bike parts into art...
A missing chapter in human history?
The Japanese Atlantis...
Amazing Tron choreography...
13 weird words added to the dictionary...
Use 70-20-10 to manage your career...
26 things that aren't so healthy...
The Yum!onster...KFC + Taco Bell + Pizza Hut...
Hollow be thy Earth...
Mass grave beneath Fort Greene park...
Super Mario made from 7000 post it notes...
Our 2012 transition?
10 tiny mammals...
Danger of economic collapse...
Don't mean to burst your bubble...
9/11 view from space...
Polar bear cubs at play...
Happy Holidays cooking...
The many types of salt and their uses...
Terminator bionic hand...
For the DJ in you...
Typewriter iPad...
World's oldest book...
3-D print yourself a gun...
Beautiful Noise...
How to build a mud oven...
8 ingredients you never want to see...
Mmmm...chocolate macaroons and the recipe!
Elephant rocks the harmonica...
Agenda 21...the road to the New World Order...
Speaking of which...see how the Bilderberg group encompasses...
How your bank account can disappear...
Restoring my faith in our youth...
Sacrificing our children to vaccines...
Extreme domino toppling...
Recovery reality check...
50 greatest sandwiches of all time...
Kale...it's what's for dinner...
Sacred geometry taught to Donald Duck...
Creating gasoline out of thin air...
'Mazing Matchsticks Masterpieces...
The end of cheap everything...
Do bears really hibernate?
Bear cam for the salmon hunt...
Minority Report like software...
Make your own Hostess treats...
5 year old piano prodigy...
Living like a Hobbit...
Introducing artist George Redreev...
Wall of films...
It's the real live Muppets...YAAAAYYY!
25 behind the scenes photos to mess with your minds...
Crack the code...find secret society...
Amalgam...what not to do with your teeth...
Prescription drugs kill...
Korea from different perspectives...
75 mysteries of science illustrated...
Things we can't see...
Dog likes deer...deer likes dog...
Skywalker type arm...
Which is more...grains of sand on Earth or stars in the sky?
Destroying my faith in youth...
192 wheel monster...
Election fraud is rampant...
Healthy diet = heathy teeth...
Milk does not do a body good...
Human corpse trade...
Boost your immune system naturally...
The US economy made easy...
Boat slamming in the Ozarks...
Fluoride-free pineal gland is more important than ever...
Penguins chilling in Antartica...
Buy silver now!
Fjögur Píanó...monarch mind control?
Introducing artist Andy Gillmore...
Amalgam...what not to do with your teeth part II...
Miniature Wonderland...
Dog gets new legs...
Why you should know about FEMA camps...
Was Allah originally a Babylonian god of violence?
Be vigilant with your online presence...
GE seeds = more pesticides...
Ahhh...breathe in that fresh smell of Febreze...
How to scare the shit out of your wife...
The real unemployment number...
Space junk!
Tesla on how to control gravity...
Election fraud is rampant part II...
Dancing around the world...
Masquerading fellatio...
Introducing painter John Brosio...
Weird words added to the dictionary...
Hurricane Sandy prelude to Camp FEMA?
Why Obama didn't attend Columbia...
Obamacare making us a nation of part timers...
Food stampers now equal more than 24 states combined population...
Beware the fiscal cliff!
Top 14 Reasons to Buy Silver Part I...
Top 14 Reasons to Buy Silver Part II...
Top 14 Reasons to Buy Silver Part III...
Geothermal Heat Pumps: Letting The Earth Provide
Man’s ability to harvest the earth’s immense bounty has been the key to human prosperity and societal development over the past several thousand years. Even when once-mighty empires have crumbled and formerly dominant cultures and peoples have fallen into obscurity, new societies have always risen from the ashes to achieve unique and remarkable things. Unquestionably, this pattern of irrepressible accomplishment has its foundation in the ability of human beings to come up with increasingly more clever and inventive ways of efficiently capturing and using the limitless resources that creation so generously provides.
In the past, much propaganda was generated in praise of man’s supposed ability to “conquer” nature through science and technology. But this sort of metaphor has now gone out of fashion, as thoughtful people have come to recognize that our species’ incredible record of success is based more on our ability to work with the forces of nature rather than against them. Cooperation, not exploitation, has fueled the furnaces of human achievement, and when formerly great societies have forgotten this truth, they have inevitably lost their innovative edge and begun a long gradual descent into extinction.
Read more...
MIT's
Milli-Motein: Things Just Got a Lot More Interesting
| If the idea that matter can be organized
in a way that's similar to binary code seems implausible, get ready for
a shock: It can. An MIT team has created a milli-motein -- a tiny device
made of millimeter- sized components with a motorized design inspired by
proteins. Milli- moteins can naturally fold themselves into almost any
shape imaginable. [See Full Story] | |
The AquaJelly Robotic Jellyfish from Festo
Lee Teschler of Machine Design magazine talks to Frank Langro of Festo about the AquaJelly, a robotic jellyfish that shows off their technology in a creative way inspired by nature.
A Visual Treat Awaits Visitors at Stony Brook University's New Reality Deck
Project director Dr. Arie Kaufman explains the purpose and engineering work that went into building the four-walled surround view theater at the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT).
How to Teach Simple-Minded People about Economics
Bill Sherk mentions that a list has circulated throughout the United States since around 1936 under the title “Parable of the Isms.” A column in The Chicago Daily Tribune in 1938 attributes a version involving socialism, communism, fascism and New Dealism to an address by Silas Strawn to the Economic Club of Chicago on November 29, 1935.
Here are some of the better Two Cow Isms. I’ve tinkered with some of them:
BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. The government takes both cows, loses one while giving the cow to people who don’t know anything about cows because that’s what the regulations told them to do.
CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
COMMUNISM (1): You have two cows. The government takes both of them and gives you some of the milk.
COMMUNISM (2): You have two cows. The government takes both cows. The government sells the milk in government stores. You can’t afford the milk. You starve to death.
COMMUNISM (3): You have two cows. The State takes both, and gives you a little milk . . . once.
COMMUNISM (4): You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you spoiled milk.
CUBAN COMMUNISM: You no longer have any cows. You risk your life by escaping from Cuba so you can buy some cows and a bull in Miami.
DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both cows and drafts you to make sure he stays in power.
FASCISM: You have two cows. You give the milk to the government and the government sells it.
FREE ENTERPRISE: You have two cows. They get jobs working for Chick-fil-A for the company’s “Eat Mor Chikin” campaign. The chickens get upset and call for a boycott.
LIBERALISM: You have two cows. You sell both of them to the rich. The government then taxes the rich the price of one cow and gives it to the poor who slaughter it. When they finish eating it, they demand the other cow.
NEW DEAL LIBERALISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and pours the milk down the drain insisting there is a giant storage tank where all the milk goes. Think Social Security.
POLITICAL CORRECTISM: The idea of “ownership’ is a holdover from the pre-Enlightenment era. Humans and cows are equal. The use of the word “cow” is demeaning. Cows should be allowed to vote.
We Can Tell the Government What to Do
As a side note, for Christians who claim they must remain silent when government acts, keep in mind that the Constitution — our “Caesar” (Matt. 22:21) — gives us the right and duty to question its decisions and authority. The President of the United States took an oath before God to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” At the start of each new Congressional year, those newly elected or re-elected Congressmen — the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate — must recite an oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.There is no violation of Romans 13:1–7 to petition any elected official because what is “due them” (v. 7) is found in the Constitution, a Constitution they took an oath to “support and defend.” The Constitution was designed by “We the People.” The Constitution is not designed for their protection but for ours. The powers of the President, Congress, and the Courts are limited according to the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
In Book 1, Chapter 1 of Blackstone’s Commentaries the point is made that “every individual” has “the right of petitioning the king, or either house of parliament, for the redress of grievance.” Eleven years later, the Declaration of Independence listed King George’s failure to respond to the grievances listed in colonial petitions, such as the Olive Branch Petition of 1775, as a legal justification to declare independence:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.As far back as Magna Carta (1215) and the later Bill of Rights 1689, which explicitly declared the “right of the subjects to petition the king,” the people had a fundamental right to make their grievances known to those holding civil office.
Protests, tea parties, putting politicians and their policies on electoral notice, and packing Town Hall meetings to ask questions and voice grievances about legislative policies are fundamental freedoms that go back nearly 800 years. The Constitution codifies these freedoms. Of course, if our elected officials don’t read the bills they vote on, what makes us think they’ve read the Constitution? And even if they have read the Constitution, what makes us think they care what it says? The Constitution is a prop to keep the people in check — until they read it. I’m surprised that almost nothing has been said about the First Amendment in this debate over the Tea Party movement. It’s time that we read the Constitution and throw it back in their faces, metaphorically speaking, of course.
We are not a Democracy, but you wouldn’t know it
I begin my opus with a simple proclamation: We are not a Democracy, nor were we ever, nor was it intended that we be so. Our Founding Fathers decried democracy ( mob rule as they called it ), and not one of them ever argued for democracy in this country. The prevailing objections of our founding fathers against Democracy can be surmised as follows and it contains 5 key elements:
1. It is impossible for the people as a whole to intelligently make public policy over a wide range of issues. Most people lack the time, energy, and interest to give such a high level of ongoing personal attention to politics and public affairs. Also, they are inarguably without the necessary education, information, and political skills. This is even more true today – just look at the losers on YouTube declaring their support for Obama because “he’s gonna give me free stuff…”. These losers typify the Obama support base – people living off welfare, persons who know nothing what-so-ever about politics, sociology, or history, but instead vote with their gonads and their “me me me” mentality, or worse yet, they are the epitome of the very racism that they accuse Conservatives of – voting for a man because of his color.So to sum up our founding fathers objections to Democracy: the masses cannot be trusted with political authority. The masses lack the wisdom, education, morals, and plain good judgment needed to provide good government, i.e., to govern effectively and, at the same time, preserve liberty and ensure justice, and that the people lack the capacity to govern society effectively, wisely and justly, but are quite capable of choosing a small group of highly educated experienced leaders who are to govern society in their stead. While it is impractical to expect the people to directly govern society, it is quite practical to expect them to choose society’s rulers from among and the highly educated and informed few who shall rule until after the next election, when their terms of office expire.
2. Direct democracy is an impractical system of government. When legislative authority is exercised by the masses, they frequently make hasty and unwise decisions on public policy, arriving at such decisions on the basis of momentary popular wishes and passions, through ignorance or lack of education into the multifaceted nuances that attend matters of State.
3. Direct democracy makes it virtually impossible to negotiate political bargains and compromises among opposing groups with conflicting views and interests. In every political controversy, one side emerges the total victor and the other side the total loser, leaving the losing side dissatisfied, alienated, and determined to reverse the decision, regardless of the costs and consequences. Political conflict over the issue continues, even though negotiation and bargaining might have discovered a middle ground acceptable to both sides. This makes for a high level of social tension and tends to destabilize the society and its government.
4. In a direct democracy, there is the ever-present danger of tyranny of the majority. In a political community where all adult citizens are members of the legislature, it is virtually impossible to limit the power of the majority. There are no institutional safeguards to moderate and restrain the exercise of governmental power and prevent the majority from riding roughshod over the rights and vital interests of members of the minority.
5. In a large population, the logistics and realities of Mass Assembly and a Popular vote become too problematic. An example is the election screw-ups in Florida – imagine that on a national level! And Florida’s election snafu’s culpability I lay entirely at the feet of the bozos that were too stupid to read a ballot; I had no trouble reading it. This is a PRIME example of why ignorant people should not vote – they cannot even read and decipher a ballot correctly, yet they are to be trusted with choosing the next leader of our planet? Hardly…..
James Madison was among those who decried and lobbied against direct democracy and in favor of representative government. Madison was influential in the convening of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 and played an important role in the drafting of the United States Constitution and in securing its ratification and adoption. In Federalist 10, Madison maintained that, of the different types of government, direct democracy was the least likely to effectively limit governmental power, safeguard liberty and ensure justice, that tyrannical rule by a self-interested and overbearing majority was bound to be the consequence of government by a common mass of impassioned and ill-informed electorate ( boy was he right ).
Yet the Electoral College is not full proof against the folly of riding the wave of mass popularity, instead of attending to reason, experience, and ‘resume’s, the Electoral college has abandon its original charter. Witness our current President and the election that surrounded his quite scary rise to power. At the risk of being called a racist again, this President was elected for no reason OTHER than he was black. He received 90% of the Black vote, which is in itself racist. Samuel L. Jackson and many other left wing Blacks have come out publicly and stated, on live TV, that they voted for Obama because he was black. This is the epitome of racism, the most basic definition of the word.
The Electoral College was designed to prevent the popular hysteria of the excitable, ignorant masses from unduly influencing the election, yet even this is not sufficient, as The Electoral College no longer functions as it was intended – it was intended to prevent a popular vote, yet fallible and corrupt men have suborned its original intent; a discussion for another article. Just ask anyone WHY they voted for Obama if not for his race or out of political correctness ( white guilt ); what credentials did he have that swayed them to vote for him, what experience did he have that convinced them that he was qualified to run the United States of America?
The man had NO resume, no experience of any sort in business, never had to make a payroll, never had to work 80 hrs a week at two jobs to feed his family, never owned a business or had any experience in the business sector, never been in the military or had any military experience, had zero foreign policy experience, zero intelligence community experience, zero economic experience or credentials, zero scientific knowledge….I could go on, but my point being made I take it. No one can point to ANY experience or credentials that qualified this man to be President.
Functioning as our forefathers intended, the Electoral College would have seen to it that Obama was not elected, as their original charter did not bind them to their party vote, nor the popular vote, but to cast their electoral vote for the candidate that the Elector felt best served his constituency.
That said, it is clear our system no longer works. But this is not to disparage our Founding Fathers – the simple fact is the face of America, and the World, has changed beyond anything that our Founding Fathers could ever have imagined or foreseen. Vast technological advances, population explosions, exponential industrialization advances, unimaginable military might, along with a vastly different and complex national and global economy, are not things our original governmental framework was designed to handle. It’s like expecting to run current software on Windows XP – you can keep patching it to try and make it keep up, but in the end the operating system needs to be re-written.
So, how would we tweak things to insure that we do not become a democracy as our forefathers intended?
We can start with the body of the electorate – the rank and file voters. As the reasons why should be abundantly clear and I shan’t revisit them here, suffice it to say that this should be changed, at a minimum, to only an educated electorate, which everyone from Washington, to Jefferson to Hamilton to Madison supported.
Additionally no one on welfare or public assistance should be allowed to vote; to allow this would be a conflict of interest. When those who do nothing & exist off the fruits of the industrious, just like a wild animal, they will lose the desire and skills to feed themselves, and will always vote for that party whose politics will keep them at the public feeding trough for the longest time. Soon the industrious will grow weary of working, only to have that which they worked for given to those who do not pull their own weight, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see where that will end up. This is one of many examples why persons on welfare should not vote, but it is a good example. If my logic is in error, I invite your comments.
Next, the qualifications for Presidency should be overhauled, vastly. If a person is not qualified to make change at a 7-11 ( Obama ), then how is it that he is qualified to run the largest economy on earth? If a person does not have the credentials and experience to be hired at a Fortune 500 company as its CFO, how is it that this same person is qualified to run the world’s largest economy? If a person has no experience in the military, how is it he is qualified to be Commander-in-Chief of something he knows nothing about?
When you apply for a position at a corporation or business, you must show that you are qualified for that position; you have to produce a resume and proofs showing experience and education in the area(s) that you are applying for, and demonstrating a history of success in your previous positions. Certainly no lesser standards should be applied to the Presidency, members of Congress, and the Senate, and the Judiciary. These positions, at a minimum, should be restricted to well-educated persons with very impressive resumes, including a minimum experience requirement.
The President should be required to have had many years of military service, hold multi-disciplinary degrees in economics, politics, military strategy, history, sociology, international disciplines, be educated or have great experience in matters of State, and international politics. A Presidential Candidate should have a resume that would get him hired as CEO/CFO/COO of any Fortune 500 company – why would a person accept less? Similar requirements should be paced on members of Congress, the Senate, Cabinet, and all appointed Federal posts.
As to the mechanics of the election process itself, I see no reason to abolish the Electoral College, just tweak it a bit. Only three time since the Civil War has a candidate won the popular vote but not the Electoral vote. But this is a red herring anyway, as the President is not supposed to be elected by popular vote ( ignorant populace, myriad other reasons, remember? ). The “Electoral College Members” should be similarly endowed with impressive educational and experience credentials. The winner-take-all system of the States should be revised to a 2/3 majority, upon which all Electoral Votes must go to the winning candidate, however, less than a 2/3 popular state majority vote, and the Electors are free to vote for their conscious, party candidate, the candidate that won in their district, or that the Elector feels would best serve the interests of the people.
The mechanisms described should make it abundantly clear that we are not a democracy. Our history and the words of our Founding Fathers are quite clear on this subject, but the Constitution is the last word, and conveniently is the clearest, to wit;
“SECTION 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence”.If one’s education has ill-equipped one to comprehend the above, or to understand what a republic is, and if one was not paying attention in junior high and high school where it was explained that we are NOT a democracy and that our founding fathers decried democracy, then I suggest that such a person enroll in some remedial classes in American Government and American History.
But please, let us have an end to this nonsense about us being a democracy; we most certainly are not, nor did any of our forefathers intend that we be so.
And that’s just the way it is.
I'll bet most people have a positive response to the phrase, "newly approved drug."
There's a promise of hope in those three words. And if a drug is new, well then it's the cutting edge of modern medicine. Right?
Wrong.
In fact, a new drug is a mystery. And it's probably more of a mystery than your doctor even realizes.
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What you don't know CAN hurt you
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Nobody knows how effective or safe a new drug is. Only time will tell. And you know what that means. The first million users are guinea pigs.
Most pre-approval clinical trials last only a few months. So nobody has any idea how patients will react over the long term.
The perfect example is Lipitor, the best selling drug in history. Just this year -- 16 YEARS after approval -- the FDA admitted that the drug increases risk of cognitive dysfunction and type 2 diabetes.
Think of that. A full decade and a half after FDA approval, your doctor STILL might not have an accurate safety profile.
Recent British Medical Journal studies reveal why doctors are in the dark.
UK researchers examined the reporting of clinical trial results. They discovered "haphazard publication and incomplete data disclosure."
In one BMJ study, researchers looked at trials funded by the NIH. Less than half of the trials received peer-reviewed publication 30 months after the trials were completed.
The UK team says that this situation "is a disservice to research participants, patients, health systems, and the whole endeavour of clinical medicine."
The researchers also note that the problem of inadequate data disclosure is so bad that it's "almost impossible" to accurately judge a drug's benefits and harms.
Almost impossible! And yet, FDA officials take pride in improving their quick rate of new drug approvals.
If your doctor wants to prescribe a new drug, tell him you'll consider it in 10 years.
Better yet, make it 20.
Peace, love, and happiness...until next time...
“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”
— James Madison
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