Secret Undersea Alien Base Discovered by Satellite!

Map Source

We have no way of knowing how long the top-secret undersea alien base has existed off the coast of South America. In the top image, you can see a standard map of South America, which does not indicate the location of the base.

Below, you can see a regular night-time satellite image of the night lights of South America. There is likewise no indication of anything amiss. No unusual illumination or energy source whatsoever.

Geology.com

Classified Image -- Need to Know Only

But when you take a time-lapse night-time image with special anti-cloak filtering, the unearthly energy emissions from the undersea alien base seem to jump right off the screen! Look just off the Atlantic coast of Argentina -- on the seafloor between Argentina and the Falkland Islands.

The emissions are characteristic of mixed energies from fusion, anti-matter, micro-singularity, and trans-dimensional wormhole radiation sources. In amplitude, the emissions easily eclipse the illumination of Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paolo combined! But without special optics, radiation detectors, and classified filters, it would have been impossible to detect this gigantic undersea base.

Theoretically, it would be up to Argentina (and perhaps the UK) to deal with this unknown threat, but after several years of catastrophic mismanagement under the Kirchner family of autocrats, Argentina is in no condition to defend itself against an invasion of Emperor Penguins, much less a highly advanced civilisation from another galaxy.

It will take the mainstream media considerable time to catch up to us on this story. As soon as they find out about it they will no doubt be under a severe global security blackout from the UN World Government -- which is the only earthly power able to meet this threat head-on.

Cross your fingers, Earth citizens, and trust that your betters know exactly what to do to guarantee your safety, and that of your posterity.

Obama's Policy of Energy Starvation Hurts US, Benefits Canada

While Obama's inept moratorium on oil drilling along the US Gulf Coast heaps misery upon millions of Americans, Alberta's economy is being rejuvenated by the shift of resources northward to the oil sands. If Obama's political agenda prevents oil companies from investing in the United States, they will naturally turn to the vast hydrocarbon resources of other nations such as Canada -- while Mexico, Cuba, Russia, China, and Brasil move to take advantage of deep sea oil resources that the US government eschews.

In a research note this week, investment bank Peters & Co. said as much as $30 billion will be spent from 2011 to 2015 on mining and in situ oilsands projects to boost production by almost one million barrels per day.

"Most new sizable projects are controlled by majors with less financing risk and lower costs of capital than juniors of previous cycles," wrote research analyst Todd Garman.

"Based on our assessment of currently planned oilsands mining and in situ projects, including phase expansions, we forecast total potential production additions of about 900,000 bpd, with mining and in situ production of 300,000 bpd and 600,000 bpd, respectively."

..."Specifically, we anticipate that ConocoPhillips' Surmont, Husky's Sunrise, Imperial's Kearl, MEG's Christina Lake and Suncor's Firebag 4 projects provide potential oilsands construction growth opportunities for Flint, with these projects expected to be awarded by 2010 year-end," Garman wrote.

He said the biggest risk for development is related to oil prices -- the projects are projected to break even at between $55 and $65 US per barrel. _CalgaryHerald

As long as oil is priced in terms of the weak Obama Dollar, the price of oil is likely to be above $55 per barrel.

As peak oil drifts ever further into the distance, the more relevant and proximal causes of energy shortages derive from "political peak oil", and the disastrous decisions being made daily by incompetent clowns in public office.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

Would the World End if We Became More Optimistic?

We are living in an apocalyptic age. We have been living in the apocalyptic age for many decades -- even centuries and more. Humans are strangely attracted to the apocalyptic mindset. Perhaps the doomer mentality is an intentional but subconscious talisman, meant to protect against genuine doom. But what would happen if the media, academia, politicians, big environmental lobbies, NGOs, and the rest of the doom industry were to take a break every now and then? At least on topics such as carbon hysteria, peak oil doom, overpopulation apocalypse, and the other faux dooms that line so many pocketbooks?

Indur M. Goklany has taken a look at the state of the world, and has come to the conclusion that, overall, things are improving.

**Key points from the book** * The rates at which hunger and malnutrition have been decreasing in India since 1950 and in China since 1961 are striking. By 2002 China’s food supply had gone up 80%, and India’s increased by 50%.

Overall, these types of increases in the food supply have reduced chronic undernourishment in developing countries from 37 to 17%, despite an overall 83% growth in their populations. * Economic freedom has increased in 102 of the 113 countries for which data is available for both 1990 and 2000. * Disability in the older population of such developed countries as the U.S., Canada, France, are in decline. In the U.S. for example, the disability rate dropped 1.3 % each year between 1982 and 1994 for persons aged 65 and over. * Between 1970 and the early 2000s, the global illiteracy rated dropped from 46 to 18 percent. * Much of the improvements in the United States for the air and water quality indicators preceded the enactment of stringent national environmental laws as the Clean Air Act of 1970, Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. * Between 1897-1902 and 1992-1994, the U.S. retail prices of flour, bacon and potatoes relative to per capita income, dropped by 92, 85, and 82 percent respectively. And, the real global price of food commodities has declined 75% since 1950. _WUWT

Matt Ridley's recent book, The Rational Optimist, dares to contradict most of the modern "dooms du jour" of modern media, academia, faux environmentalism, and popular culture.

Julian Simon was the ultimate optimist, and his most famous book -- Ultimate Resource II -- is available to read free online.

Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, was far too optimistic for the taste of faux environmentalists and the corrupt scientific : faux environmental industrial complex. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the popular and mythical dooms favoured by the media, academia, and politicians, Lomborg calmly and rationally looked at the real problems of the environment -- and finds them soluble.

Stewart Brand is the grand old man of 60s environmentalism, whose basic wisdom and honesty have led him to reject the doomerism of the faux environmentalists and the modern media. Brand has not escaped the dogmas of faux environmentalism entirely -- he lives in the San Francisco bay area -- but he promotes nuclear energy and other scientific and technological solutions to the problems that do exist.

Full disclosure: Genuine dooms exist. The Earth has suffered through several extinction episodes where life was nearly wiped out -- and perhaps events where life actually was wiped out and had to re-start from scratch.

But we need to focus on the real problems which need solutions, and do it in a systematic and dispassionate manner.

Doomers, with their constant full-volume blare of apocalypse, do not deserve to monopolize our time.

IQ and HBD Deniers Being Backed Into a Corner

The project is novel in its size; most brain-imaging studies have looked at tens to hundreds of brains. Scanning so many people will shed light on the normal variability within the brain structure of healthy adults, which will in turn provide a basis for examining how neural "wiring" differs in such disorders as autism and schizophrenia.

The researchers also plan to collect genetic and behavioral data, testing participants' sensory and motor skills, memory, and other cognitive functions, and deposit this information along with brain scans in a public database (although the patients' personal information will be stripped out). Scientists around the world can then use the database to search for the genetic and environmental factors that influence the structure of the brain. _TR

Technology Review provides more information on the Human Connectome Project, sponsored by NIH. The ambitious project aims to do far more than to build more accurate maps of the human brain connectome. This project aims to do some genuine cognitive science. And that is likely to make a lot of HBD (human biodiversity) deniers very nervous.

"We want to learn as much as we can, not only about the typical patterns of brain connectivity, but also about the differences in wiring that make each of us a unique individual," says David Van Essen, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, who is one of the project leaders. "If you're good at math, and I'm better at certain types of memory, can we identify some of the wiring characteristics that account for those differences?"

The most detailed studies to date of the neural circuits that connect one brain cell to another have focused on animal brains, because scientists can examine the animals' living tissue cells and their networks under a microscope. "We don't know how our species specifically is wired up," says Michael Huerta, associate director of the Division of Neuroscience and Basic Behavioral Science at the National Institute of Mental Health, and director of the Connectome project. "There is an entire class of data that is missing from neuroscience that is fundamentally important for how the brain works and how it breaks down in different disorders." And because researchers will be scanning only identical and fraternal twins and their siblings, the scientists can get a sense of the role that genetics and environment play in shaping brain structure. Structures of the brain that are highly dictated by genes will be more similar in identical twins than in fraternal twins, for example. _TR

There are more technical details at the link above. It promises to be a fascinating project on many levels.

Perhaps the scientists involved in the huge project have not yet taken the pledge of strict political correctness. Perhaps they have not gotten the memo directing them to avoid any research which might be used to explain cognitive or behavioural differences on the basis of genetics.

All issues of political correctness aside, the modern tools of science and computation are giving us the potential to finally understand many aspects of ourselves which had been closed to us. Some of these things may prove unsavoury, but in order to wisely move into the future we must be honest about our past and present.

Micro-Electronic Brain Implant Supervises Brain Re-Wiring

When the human brain is damaged from trauma, stroke, infection, or tumour etc., the damaged tissue does not re-grow itself spontaneously. Instead, the person must learn to compensate for the loss of function. Some brain plasticity may occur, as undamaged parts of the brain take responsibility for some of the functions which the destroyed parts previously carried out. But damaged brain does not heal.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University intend to change that, by using implanted electronics devices which can help teach the brain how to re-wire itself to allow disconnected parts of the brain to become connected -- and functional -- again.

Pedram Mohseni, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western Reserve University, and Randolph J. Nudo, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at Kansas University Medical Center, believe repeated communications between distant neurons in the weeks after injury may spark long-reaching axons to form and connect.

Their work is inspired by the traumatic brain injuries suffered by ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

...Mohseni has been building a multichannel microelectronic device to bypass the gap left by injury. The device, which he calls a brain-machine-brain interface, includes a microchip on a circuit board smaller than a quarter. The microchip amplifies signals, called neural action potentials, produced by the neurons in one part of the brain and uses an algorithm to separate these signals – brain spike activity - from noise and other artifacts. Upon spike discrimination, the microchip sends a current pulse to stimulate neurons in another part of the brain, artificially connecting the two brain regions.

...During the next four years, they expect to understand the ability to rewire the brain in a rat model and to determine whether the technology is safe enough to test in non-human primates. If tests show the treatment is successful in helping recovery from traumatic brain injury, the researchers foresee the possibility of using the approach in patients 10 years from now. _Eurekalert

Here is an abstract of a paper published by Mohseni in an IEEE publication from 2008:

This paper reports on the design, implementation, and performance characterization of a high-output-impedance current microstimulator fabricated using the TSMC 0.35 mum 2P/4M n-well CMOS process as part of a fully integrated neural implant for reshaping long-range intracortical connectivity patterns in an injured brain. It can deliver a maximum current of 94.5 muA to the target cortical tissue with current efficiency of 86% and voltage compliance of 4.7 V with a 5-V power supply. The stimulus current can be programmed via a 6-bit DAC with an accuracy better than 0.47 LSB. Stimulator functionality is also verified with in vitro experiments in saline using a silicon microelectrode with iridium oxide (IrO) stimulation sites. _IEEEXplore

The technology for such interventions is in the early stages. The researchers are also working on devices which can be used for a broad range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, and in conjunction with neurosurgery and standard post-surgical rehabilitation.

Eventually such devices will probably be implanted into a damaged area of brain, along with an artificial matrix seeded with a person's own stem cells and growth factors. The devices will be wired to "bridge" from healthy brain on one side of the lesion to healthy brain on other sides of the lesion (corresponding to interrupted pathways). The electronic signals will not only help guide a re-wiring of the brain, but they should also guide the re-growth of new replacement brain tissue of specific replacement types.

Anyone who has read the science fiction novel "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, should recognise some of the intent behind the early stage, rudimentary devices being developed at Case Western -- and to see where the technology may be heading.

More on a related topic from Brian Wang

Evolution of Civilisations: Prelude to Collapse

19th Century American artist Thomas Cole's 5-part series of paintings, The Course of Empire, beautifully portrays the evolutionary rise and fall of an arbitrary civilisation in history. The theme of civilisational rise and fall has been replayed so many times that it has become a cliche -- and yet each civilisation believes itself immune to the universal mechanisms which guided the ascent and descent of its predecessors.

Perhaps the best known scholarly look at this phenomenon is Caroll Quigley's The Evolution of Civilizations. Quigley's treatment is a masterpiece of penetration, worth the time of any student of history. Such a book is more properly described as "meta-history", since it carefully examines the mechanisms behind repetitive and cyclical historical processes.

Earlier this year, John Robb took a look at Quigley's Evolution of Civilizations (TEOC), in an attempt to fit some of Quigley's ideas into his own program to modify society to create more resilient communities and societies. Robb made some unexpected discoveries in his study of Quigley, as is likely to happen to most thinkers who had not been exposed to "TEOC" before.

Many modern historians and thinkers are contemplating whether our civilisation has reached the end-game stage. Among them is Niall Ferguson, who suggested earlier this year that the collapse of the US hegemony may occur quite suddenly and unexpectedly as a result of uncontrollable complexities inherent in the modern system.

Great powers and empires are, I would suggest, complex systems, made up of a very large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organized, which means their construction more resembles a termite hill than an Egyptian pyramid. They operate somewhere between order and disorder -- on "the edge of chaos," in the phrase of the computer scientist Christopher Langton. Such systems can appear to operate quite stably for some time; they seem to be in equilibrium but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems "go critical." A very small trigger can set off a "phase transition" from a benign equilibrium to a crisis -- a single grain of sand causes a whole pile to collapse, or a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and brings about a hurricane in southeastern England. _Ferguson_February 26, 2010 "Foreign Affairs" - March/April 2010 Edition

Thomas Cole paintings courtesy of Wikipedia

The short lifespan of humans -- a matter of mere decades -- combined with a relatively low average intelligence, leads to inevitable instabilities and tendencies to the dissolution of polities over time. This is due to the way that power is actually seized, controlled, and administered at various levels of complex societies, in a short-lived, semi-intelligent species of barely advanced apes.

The type of disorder within Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Iraq, Pakistan -- or any number of third world states -- that one may have observed from afar, can easily visit your home town without so much as a by-your-leave. Violent dissolution needs no excuse to intrude in a highly complex civilisation. It only needs a few tumblers to fall in the proper places, to merely get its foot in the door.

Safest and Most Dangerous Areas in the US

City-Data.com Top 101 Cities Crime Index
City to City crime comparisons
Crime stats city search
AreaVibes area scouting website

Source

Demographically, most crime in the US is committed by young black males. This is reflected by the prison populations as well as arrest records and crime reports. A glance below at the table of the safest and most dangerous cities in the US provides further corroboration.
Source for table below:

OVERALL: (369 cities)
SAFEST 25:		MOST DANGEROUS 25:
1	Newton, MA	1	Camden, NJ
2	Clarkstown, NY	2	Detroit, MI
3	Amherst, NY	3	St. Louis, MO
4	Mission Viejo, CA	4	Flint, MI
5	Brick Twnshp, NJ	5	Richmond, VA
6	Troy, MI	6	Baltimore, MD
7	Thousand Oaks, CA	7	Atlanta, GA
8	Round Rock, TX	8	New Orleans, LA
9	Lake Forest, CA	9	Gary, IN
10	Cary, NC	10	Birmingham, AL
11	Colonie, NY	11	Richmond, CA
12	Fargo, ND	12	Cleveland, OH
13	Irvine, CA	13	Washington, DC
14	Orem, UT	14	West Palm Beach, FL
15	Dover Twnshp, NJ	15	Compton, CA
16	Warwick, RI	16	Memphis, TN
17	Sunnyvale, CA	17	Dayton, OH
18	Hamilton Twnshp, NJ*	18	San Bernardino, CA
19	Parma, OH	19	Springfield, MA
20	Canton Twnshp, MI	20	Cincinnati, OH
21	Greece, NY	21	Oakland, CA
22	Simi Valley, CA	22	Dallas, TX
23	Coral Springs, FL	23	Newark, NJ
24	Port St. Lucie, FL	24	Hartford, CT
25	Centennial, CO	25	Little Rock, AR
Back to the Top *Mercer County
CITIES OF 500,000 OR MORE POPULATION: (32 cities)
Safest 10:		Most Dangerous 10:
1	San Jose, CA	1	Detroit, MI
2	El Paso, TX	2	Baltimore, MD
3	Honolulu, HI	3	Washington, DC
4	New York, NY	4	Memphis, TN
5	Austin, TX	5	Dallas, TX
6	San Diego, CA	6	Philadelphia, PA
7	Louisville, KY	7	Columbus, OH
8	San Antonio, TX	8	Nashville, TN
9	Fort Worth, TX	9	Houston, TX
10	Jacksonville, FL	10	Charlotte, NC
Back to the Top
CITIES OF 100,000 TO 499,999 POPULATION: (208 cities)
Safest 10:		Most Dangerous 10:
1	Amherst, NY	1	St. Louis, MO
2	Thousand Oaks, CA	2	Flint, MI
3	Cary, NC	3	Richmond, VA
4	Irvine, CA	4	Atlanta, GA
5	Sunnyvale, CA	5	New Orleans, LA
6	Simi Valley, CA	6	Gary, IN
7	Coral Springs, FL	7	Birmingham, AL
8	Port St. Lucie, FL	8	Richmond, CA
9	Glendale, CA	9	Cleveland, OH
10	Provo, UT	10	Dayton, OH
Back to the Top
CITIES OF 75,000 TO 99,999 POPULATION: (129 cities)
Safest 10:		Most Dangerous 10:
1	Newton, MA	1	Camden, NJ
2	Clarkstown, NY	2	West Palm Beach, FL
3	Mission Viejo, CA	3	Compton, CA
4	Brick Twnshp, NJ	4	Trenton, NJ
5	Troy, MI	5	Reading, PA
6	Round Rock, TX	6	Canton, OH
7	Lake Forest, CA	7	Youngstown, OH
8	Colonie, NY	8	Miami Beach, FL
9	Fargo, ND	9	North Charleston, SC
10	Orem, UT	10	Macon, GA*
Back to the Top *Albany, NY was erroneously listed as 10th.  It is 12th

It should be noted that in the US, males are far more likely to commit crime than females. Juvenile males are more likely to commit crime than middle aged and older males. And black males commit more crime than hispanic males who commit more crime than white males who commit more crime than asian males.

One scholar's look at some of the reasons for the demographic discrepancies.

Keep in mind that in the US, neighboring cities may have drastically different crime rates. Even different parts of the same city may present distinctly different pictures in terms of crime and predation. Persons who live in these areas can tell you which areas are safer than others -- although it often seems that college professors, journalists, and politicians would rather choke on their own political correctness than to tell the truth about crime.

The crime rates of Europe and Canada have changed to reflect an increasing diversity, even as crime rates across much of the US have declined to reflect a changing population pyramid (fewer youths proportionately) -- and perhaps to reflect tougher sentencing laws.

Below you can see population "diversity" by county across the US. You may be told that any correlation between crime rates and specific types of diversity are purely coincidental. But if you are making a choice as to where to locate yourself and your family, you may want to do more digging.

The point of this article is to keep a clear head when traveling and relocating. Political correctness may help you get elected, but it can also get you killed if you take it too seriously. Unfortunately, many of the same problems associated with crime and diversity in the US are beginning to be a problem in Holland, Sweden, France, parts of Canada, and even parts of Australia.

Cultivate situational awareness, and always carry at least 10 concealed weapons at all times.
;-)

If You're Feeling a Bit Down, This May Cheer You Up

via Impactlab

The reason why watching the Earth turned into a seething mass of flame may cheer you up is by comparing the way things are with how bad things could be. Things could always be worse.

This Japanese video has been on the web for years, but with a Japanese language narration. The National Film Board of Canada has kindly provided English language narration with expert commentary.

You might also think about how your local chapter of the Society for Creative Apocalyptology might plan ahead in order to survive such a disaster. For this exercise, you are not allowed to flee to an extraterrestrial refuge.

Obama Pelosi: Pretending the US has No Budgetary Crisis

NG

The Obama Pelosi regime would like us to believe that 1 $trillion deficits are a normal way to run a country, and that nothing bad will happen as a result. As $trillion upon $trillion is piled onto the national debt, anyone with a functioning brain has to understand that interest rates on the debt will necessarily rise -- to keep the investors interested, as they notice that the dollar keeps getting weaker and the US is losing its edge economically, militarily, diplomatically.

Where the two political parties accept trillion dollar deficits, The Tea Party demands draconian change in our system of governance. They recognize the need for the coming Great Deconstruction. _NewGeography

NG

You can't blame the Cato Institute for trying to grab a little of the enthusiasm coming from the grass roots Tea Party movement.

The Cato Institute has offered a website dedicated to downsizing the federal government. Cato outlines clear and concise methods to reduce spending and deconstruct the various departments of government as the Tea Party is demanding. Cato’s author, Chris Edwards, envisions the elimination of entire branches of the federal government by “devolving” various programs to the states.

The annual savings proposed by the Cato Institute study total more than $400 billion per year. Some call the recommendations draconian and outrageous. Yet the savings represent just 11% of current spending – a critical way to adjust to the new realities of the deconstruction.

_NewGeography

It is amazing that cutting just $400 billion a year in federal spending could be called draconian and outrageous. Yet Obama Pelosi has the media, academia, and the punditry so bamboozled by flamboyant over-spending that any ideas of fiscal responsibility are immediately seen as unacceptable.

The US is in trouble. Its leadership is taking the nation on a path of suicidal insanity, and most of the population of the US is so dependent upon the federal government that breaking away from the addiction will cause real pain to tens of millions of people, at least. But they will live, if the rehabilitation and recovery is done carefully and judiciously. If nothing is done to stop the train wreck currently in progress, however, it is certain that large numbers will die -- and not just in the US.

Giulio Tononi's Theory of Consciousness

The New York Times recently did a piece on University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, which like most mainstream treatments of science failed to penetrate at all closely to the core. Instead, one would need to read this 2004 paper by Tononi to understand a bit of what Tononi wants to achieve.

Tononi has collaborated with Nobel Prize winning scientist Gerald Edelman on a number of books and studies. So you might think that Edelman's theory of consciousness would have influenced the younger Tononi's development of his own theory of consciousness.

There are bound to be similarities between Tononi and his mentor Edelman, but Tononi seems to be cutting his own path through the wilderness of consciousness. Unlike Edelman or Antonio Damasio -- another famous cognitive scientist -- Tononi does not appear to be as aware of his own body and the crucial role the body plays in generating consciousness.

Tononi's theory of consciousness penetrates more deeply into neurobiological realities than the philosophical work of David Chalmers and than the computational neurophilosophical work of Paul or Patricia Churchill. Yet it seems as if Tononi remains largely "stuck in his head" when attempting to tease the roots of consciousness.

Consciousness is extremely complex, but it is often made far more complicated than it needs to be. One of the favourite bugaboos of "philosophers of mind" is "qualia," or experiential quanta. Philosophers such as Chalmers enjoy riding mental merry-go-rounds such as qualia, because it provides them with arcane areas of expertise and plenty of material to publish -- regardless of any lack of practical significance in the real world. Academia is academia, and "publish or perish" says nothing about grounded relevance to the actual world. (For an interesting "party crashing" of some of the sensory phenomena related to qualia, see this [via commenter Loren])

And yet consciousness cannot mean anything unless it is indeed grounded to the real world. And consciousness cannot ground to the world by means of words. Even the best verbal metaphors of mentation cannot connect consciousness to physical existence. This failure of words is often the takeoff point for computational neurophilosophers and neuroscientists and theoreticians of sophisticated computational neural networks including Bayesian approaches.

But to be brutally honest, most scholars of consciousness do not even give lip service to the bare necessities of the physical underpinnings of conscious awareness and higher level consciousness. What about Tononi? I'm not sure yet. He showed a lot of promise in his earlier collaborations with Edelman. His "Integrated Information" theory of consciousness suggests some interesting possibilities, but so far I have not seen the necessary connecting, or grounding, of the mental processes with the bodily processes -- which are absolutely crucial.

Human or Zombie? The Answer May Surprise You

SD

Can you focus your mind on the things that need doing, or does your mind seem to focus itself on whatever pops up? Humans spend most of their lives immersed in everyday trance states -- almost indistinguishable from the mental states of zombies. It happens when the mind goes on auto-pilot, and may occur on the road, at work, in a lecture, or almost anywhere the mind feels safe enough to "zone."

Mindfulness is the opposite of a trance zone. Mindfulness is on the human end of the spectrum, with trance zones being on the zombie end. If a child is raised well, she will be the master of her attentional apparatus rather than the zombie slave. But if she is like most children, she will grow up to join the zombie horde of like-minded consumers of the trite and stylish fads of the mainstream.

In fact, most people fall into a number of destructive thought patterns and habits. Once the instigating thought or event occurs, it can be almost impossible to turn the mind away from the compelling grip of the habitual pattern. Mental exhaustion can easily set in after just a few seconds of such struggle, leaving the person defeated, falling once again into the same pattern.

It is possible to learn self-control, even as an adult who was not carefully trained as a child. But it generally takes more work than most people are willing to put in. The challenge for therapists and counselors is to make such late training of attention and executive functions fun. The alternative is a life of zombie trance zoning, leading to self-defeating habits.

Interestingly, the brain wave patterns of persons in hypnotic trance are different from the wave patterns of someone in a deep meditative state (PDF). I suspect that the wave pattern would be even more complex for persons specifically trained in mindfulness meditation.

We all have brains, but they do not all work the same. Very rarely do they work at optimal levels, regardless of the genetic and environmental advantages we may have been given.

Are you human or zombie, in the way you spend most of your time? What about your children? Would you spend $200,000 to send a zombie child to university, to concentrate on queer ethnic studies and semiotic basket weaving -- between binge drinking, fornicating, and academic lobotomising? If you did, what sort of person would he turn out to be?

De Obama Dolla Goin' "Cheep Cheep Cheep!"

Gold has been surging of late, and yesterday it hit an all-time high of roughly $1,280/ounce. Supply/demand theory would likely say that demand for the yellow metal is outstripping supply, but this would be mistaken thinking.

Instead, gold is expensive right now because the dollar is cheap. _RCM

The price of gold has risen to record levels recently, in terms of the US dollar. But pricing things in terms of the US dollar can be deceiving if one does not correct for government-induced shrinkage.

Unique among commodities, nearly every ounce of gold ever mined is still with us today. In numerical terms, there are roughly 148,000 metric tons of gold on earth, and the supply of newly discovered gold each year usually works out to 2,000 metric tons.

The above-mentioned stock/flow disparity explains neatly why gold has been used as a money measure for thousands of years. Lacking any major industrial purposes that lead to its consumption like oil, gold discoveries are merely additive to the global stock, and with new, annual discoveries very small relative to the total supply, the price of gold is enormously stable in real terms.

To put it more simply, when the price of gold fluctuates it's a signal of dollar (the currency in which it's priced) instability, as opposed to a gyrating price of the metal itself. And with gold presently more expensive in dollars that it's ever been in history, the most monetary of all metals is signaling that the dollar is the weakest it's ever been.

The culprit for the dollar's decline is pretty basic. Despite the fact that the Federal Reserve issues dollars, it's the U.S. Treasury that is the dollar's mouthpiece, and just last week Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner signaled his and the Obama administration's preference for a weaker greenback. _RealClearMarkets

By similar logic, the current price of oil is not nearly as high as you might think, given the amazing, the shrinking, Obama dollar (it be cheep, mon!).

The cheap dollar is not the main cause of the dismal outlook for the US economy, but it doesn't help. As the hyper-leveraged, hyper-regulated US economy tries desperately to find a way out of its government-induced and bottomless recession (you don't believe those government numbers, do you?), the Obama Pelosi regime simply passes new legislation to shut any peepholes of economic sunshine that may remain.

Remember: no matter what the Fed decides on interest rates, US interest rates will be headed up. Otherwise, no one will buy US debt in the near to intermediate future. That would only leave the printing press to pump out the Obama dollas as payment for goods and services rendered. But remember: One trillion multiplied by zero still equals zero.