No original thoughts this afternoon. I am tired.
Urban Survival... 'Death of the Dollar' Department
The 'death of the dollar' is something which has been kicking around predictive linguistic modelspace up at www.halfpasthuman.com for several years now. And since we've got a working Theorem that 'the further in advance we see something in modelspace, the larger the impact of the event seems to be' and since we've had a couple of years of 'November' references, it seems that by the end of this year, the Barak Obama is likely to be facing one of the worst crisis ever to confront a President. Not only will he be facing a country full of social unrest in the wake of the "summer of hell/200', but we read now today how "China calls for a new reserve currency" which will be a financial nightmare of the worst possible sort.
As we've been expecting, this will r4eally 'get traction' in May, but already the Russians have been making similar noises and Vlad Putin will be putting on a pitch at the April G20 meetings.
True, yesterday's rally in the stock market was impressive as the Washington Post headlined it "Stocks Soar Most Since November On Toxic Asset Plan, Rise in Home Sales." but already weighing whether our long awaited springs rally might finally be arriving, or, a bit more darkly, if this is just the professionals having a fine 'running of the shorts' so they won't be hurt when a final bottom carved out in the next few weeks.
Not that it matters. If the kind of inflation that bailout seems to infer becomes real, gold's fall over the past couple of days may become the 'last train out'. Or, will we go back down to the $700 range one more time? Careful judgment is required and there's no 'one-size-fits-all' answer.
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There are times in the past that I've used commodity price movement for clues and sure enough, those Capitalist Tools over at Forbes are reporting that "Key commodities jump on US plan to clean up banks." Sooner, or later, those are going to show up in the grocery stores.
In addition to food commodities, the headlines also crossed this morning that the "OPEC basket price continues to gain, reches USF 50.18 pb" and with oil hitting those per barrel levels, the input costs for ag are bound to be heading up, too. Time to do more stocking up, if you're a farmer.
... Longage of Humans, Redux
Jay Hanson, who performed a huge public service with his legendary http://dieoff.org/ site, was the first writer I encountered to use the term 'longage' of something. It's the opposite or a 'shortage.'
Longages of anything cause interesting effects, not the least of which is the financial mess humanity finds itself in today. It's pretty obvious that the ideal thing to do would be to crunch down the number of humans to perhaps 5% of what it is today and start over with a little higher consciousness about how things develop. naturally, the PowersThatBe have figured this out, but lots of others have arrived at the same thoughtstination.
One of Gordo (the gold and mint seller) Brown's green advisors, Jonathon Porritt says that in order to achieve a sustainable society, the UK must cut its population in half.
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Of course, that begs the question of the selection process by which this all happens. I'm partial to environmental collapse because that would be a pretty decent/impartial way to sort out who's got hard work and survival skills, but I'm sure government will have some other plan in time. ... Making the Rounds
A reader sends in this one:
"Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers, so we can identify their corporate sponsors."
Of course, it would never work. The print would be too fine to read.
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Coping: Silently Self-Profiling -- YOU
A couple of readers have asked me lately "Is there some stuff on your mind that's bothering you? You sound kinda bleak lately." Well, yeah, kinda sorta maybe. Let me share just one of those things that's been bothering me; perhaps you'll understand. Here's what's going on:
It starts off simply enough...you get an email from a friend and it says something like: "OMG You have to see this video about [fill in the blank]. Because you're very interested in [fill in the blank] as a topic, you click over to the link to see what's a highly charged video about [fill in the blank] and the video urges you to 'tell all your friends about this video and send them the link...'.
If you're not computer/military/PowersThatBe savvy, you're likely to pass on the link without giving it a second thought. But you should give it some serious thought whenever you follow links because when you follow links you may be self-profiling yourself to the government.
Amazing? Well, no, pretty simple programming exercise, really. And, if you had the 'summer of hell/2009' coming up due to all kinds of social stresses and the breakdown of the social contract, right about now if you were trying to defend the existing social paradigm, you'd be doing the same thing, too.
It's called 'memeering' and according to our predictive linguistics friends at www.halfpasthuman.com the program is already underway. Toward what end? Well, what's a low-cost way to find out who is what kind of potential threat to your paradigm? I'll show you how it works, step-by-step so you 'get it'.
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It begins with a government setting up a web site with an emotionally charged video about something like 'black powder' or 'inter-racial relations'.
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Then a series of postings is put out on the net in places where such a video would likely get a lot of attention. Say, in a 'black powder' kind of video they will post something emotionally compelling to a bunch of gun web sites and discussion groups.
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Next, when someone goes to the web site involved, it's a simple matter for the site to log your internet protocol address. Skeptical? go to www.whatismyip.com and your 'net address comes up.
Congratulations! You have just gotten yourself into a government database of people who have an 'interest in black powder'. Since you probably don't spend as much 'head space' as we do, thinking about such computer applications, what this looks like in database set theory can be visualized this way:
So far, so good. Now, let's further suppose that want to narrow down the kind of people that would also be interested in anti-establishment direct action. Next step? Another video (or web site) only this time, we are going to use a topic like, oh, say "Startling New WTO video!" Such that folks going to this second vid site will likely include some people who also have an interest in black powder, like so:
Now, it becomes a simple matter to say "Hey! See that IP Address 12.191.191.5? That shows up in BOTH groups. This intersection between sets in database operations is the vesica pisces.
But now, let's take it one step further, because so far, it's still far too many people to round up and throw in special 'camps' should the country get into a period of social unrest; say over a 'summer of hell/2009' period. So we will put up another site, only this time it might be something like "List of upcoming "Tea Party" events. Like so:
So, you see, it's all very simple, once you get the basis concept down: How will you be self-selecting whether you get judged a 'threat' or not is a simple matter of keeping track of which links you followed to get where.
More important? There's also a simple way to build 'social networks' this way because not only is your IP address logged, but so is the time of your visit. So as this kind of data snooping continues - as long as lots of folks don't understand it, when you forward one of these sites, you are then in effect telling whatever government "Hey, I am linked to Joe your bother-in-law over here"...and pretty quick not only do they know who has an interest in guns, WTO demonstrations, and upcoming Tea Party events, but they also know that when your IP address shows up, in say half a dozen such exercises, that "Joe your brother-in-law" shows up within a day or two, and he's already on their 'threats to society' list because he actually carried a sign and was ID'ed at some other kind of event...maybe an environmentalist affair of some kind. And they get all Joe your brother-in-laws connections, too, until pretty quick you get a map in a social networking application that might look like this:
So here's my bottom line: When you do any kind of social networking, be extremely careful with whom you associate. Or, in the case of Cliff and me, simply don't follow unknown links. Nothing wrong with YouTube and Google video, but even there, the IP snooping that goes on at the phone company level is pretty awesome,; which is what the privacy people get all worked up about.
Why am I bringing this up today? Because the web bot project has been running across more of these kinds of memeering operations lately which means one of these days, one or more of them will show up in your email. And, as they do, no matter how tempting it may seem to follow this emotionally highly-charged link just remember that in the process you are self-sorting yourself into some kind of a government profile as part of 'total information awareness' programs designed to enable preemptions, national security rating, and in a worst of all cases scenario, your round-up priority if you've identified yourself as a 'risk' to the existing paradigm.
Although it may be too late to do anything about it, if you've already gotten such emails and followed them. But WTF, its easier to explain it now than waiting till the October-November period when there is a small, but non-zero, chance some rounding up will be done.
Oh...one more thing: If you think you can 'beat the system' by using an open access proxy server somewhere? Are you kidding? Those would be almost the very first people to round up because they're smart enough to 'get it' and therefore are the most threatening there are to the existing paradigm, are you kidding?
Yes, this is exactly what the electronic freedom fighters are all about, but that battle's been over for a long time. Sorry. You lost. Oh sure, something like the Google Street View controversy seems like the right fight, but are you kidding? Hell no, it's a minor distraction to keep the public off the real deal memeering.
. Great refresher, once you've tasted what its like to be in an open wheel car going 100+ and heading into 
