Thursday, March 31, 2005

eBay and I

I apologize for neglecting my blog in the past two or three weeks (gee, has it been THAT long??). I have been selling some stuff on eBay. And let me tell you, whoever says eBay is easy money, is WRONG. I go to bed at 3 a.m., and had my first square meal in two weeks today. This should be over soon, until the next opportunity presents itself. Still, it's worth it; may be I can finally buy books that I want, and fix my car.

Speaking of finances, more news today on the impending collapse of the US dollar. The budget deficit figures quoted in the article floored me, really did. I remembered a line from my favorite movie, Dave. The one where this dude, presidential look-alike, becomes the president. At some point, his best friend, in an effort to help save a federally funded program, looks over the the federal budget and says, 'If I run my business this way, I'd go bust in no time'. This is exactly how I feel about the current budget situation. If I balanced my family budget in the way they do there, we'd be out in the streets before you can say 'bankruptcy'.

Well, while the country is tethering on the edge of disaster, people continue to live their lives; and they still want to buy expensive apparel, albeit at serious discount. So eBay's future remains bright in times of trouble, up to a certain point of course. Meanwhile, I'll be putting my money in gold, and in more inventory of designer shoes :); with an understanding that one must remain flexible and on constant lookout.

Monday, March 14, 2005

community colleges help separate the wheat from the shaft

It is always funny to me when the left (i.e., Gatto) and the far right (i.e., Charlotte Iserbyt) point out the same problems in education, and blame the other side for them! The article below should settle the debate and make it clear that at this point in time, it is the right (eh, it is central now but it doesn't change it's nature), like I said, the right in power are destroying the education in the US.

Bush boosts nation's community colleges

President pushes for federal support of job programs
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:05 p.m. ET March 2, 2005

[both the far left and far right would have massive heart attacks upon reading the title alone]


ARNOLD, Md. - President Bush, pushing for more flexibility in job training programs, said Wednesday that the federal government needs to support community colleges because they are available and affordable to meet the needs of modern-day workers.

[he should have said 'worker-bees' to cement his point]

“We must never lose sight of the need to have an education system ... that’s capable of keeping this country competitive by adjusting to the workplace as it really is,” Bush said at Anne Arundel Community College. “I have come to herald success.”

[it all starts with the education, that' right. The education creates the modern assembly line workplace, and will do so more efficiently in the future]


Bush has proposed doubling the number of Americans who get job-training help from the government, as a way to restore lost jobs. He aims to do that in part by consolidating federal job-training programs, but is also striving for broader change.

[consolidate means cut]

He wants to require accountability in certain programs,

[like No Child Left Behind - if you don't teach to test, we'll cut your funding even more]

give states more flexibility and provide $250 million to community colleges that design courses in partnership with the needs of local employers. He also wants to create personal job training accounts that give the unemployed federal money for services aimed at helping them get back to work.

['personal job training account' is a euphemism for taking away whatever meager unemployment benefits. This expression, btw, is straight from Frank Luntz's republican speak manual, which in itself is a reason to be very, veru cautious about it]

The president’s latest budget request asks Congress for $125 million to promote dual-enrollment programs that allow high school students to earn college credit.
“Community colleges are available,” Bush said, sitting in a gymnasium in front of a sign that said “Jobs and Growth.” “They are affordable and they are flexible.”

[this is exactly what I call "sepataring the wheat from the shaft". Detour the 'dumb' kids, i.e., the majority, into community colleges for job training, and the select few will enjoy genuine education, allowing them to take their fathers' place as a ruling elite]


Bush’s proposed consolidation of federal job-training efforts is aimed at increasing the programs’ effectiveness. But it is also part of an attempt to save $1.9 billion in the next fiscal year by targeting overlapping programs that serve the same purpose.

[i told ya!]

Democrats, however, say what is needed are better job training programs, not what they say are cuts in the job-training budget.

[talk is cheap, Democrats! DO something about it, if you can, and please, NO mandated preschool as per Al Gore!]

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

secret history of the world

From the description, it seems that this book goes where Da Vinci Code dares not thread.

**********

Secret History of the World

If you heard the Truth, would you believe it? Ancient civilisations.
Hyperdimensional realities. DNA changes. Bible conspiracies. What are the
realities? What is disinformation?

The Secret History of The World and How To Get Out Alive is the definitive
book of the real answers where Truth is more fantastic than fiction. Laura
Knight-Jadczyk, wife of internationally known theoretical physicist,
Arkadiusz Jadczyk, an expert in hyperdimensional physics, draws on science
and mysticism to pierce the veil of reality. Due to the many threats on her
life from agents and agencies known and unknown, Laura left the United
States to live in France, where she is working closely with Patrick Rivière,
student of Eugene Canseliet, the only disciple of the legendary alchemist
Fulcanelli.

With sparkling humour and wisdom, she picks up where Fulcanelli left off,
sharing over thirty years of research to reveal, for the first time, The
Great Work and the esoteric Science of the Ancients in terms accessible to
scholar and layperson alike.

Conspiracies have existed since the time of Cain and Abel. Facts of history
have been altered to support the illusion. The question today is whether a
sufficient number of people will see through the deceptions, thus creating a
counter-force for positive change - the gold of humanity - during the
upcoming times of Macro-Cosmic Quantum Shift. Laura argues convincingly,
based on the revelations of the deepest of esoteric secrets, that the
present is a time of potential transition, an extraordinary opportunity for
individual and collective renewal: a quantum shift of awareness and
perception which could see the birth of true creativity in the fields of
science, art and spirituality. The Secret History of the World allows us to
redefine our interpretation of the universe, history, and culture and to
thereby navigate a path through this darkness. In this way, Laura Knight-
Jadczyk shows us how we may extend the possibilities for all our different
futures in literal terms.

With over 850 pages of fascinating reading, The Secret History of The World
and How to Get Out Alive is rapidly being acknowledged as a classic with
profound implications for the destiny of the human race. With painstakingly
researched facts and figures, the author overturns long-held conventional
ideas on religion, philosophy, Grail legends, science, and alchemy,
presenting a cohesive narrative pointing to the existence of an ancient
techno-spirituality of the Golden Age which included a mastery of space and
time: the Holy Grail, the Philosopher's Stone, the True Process of
Ascension. Laura provides the evidence for the advanced level of scientific
and metaphysical wisdom possessed by the greatest of lost ancient
civilizations - a culture so advanced that none of the trappings of
civilization as we know it were needed, explaining why there is no
'evidence' of civilization as we know it left to testify to its existence.
The author's consummate synthesis reveals the Message in a Bottle reserved
for humanity, including the Cosmology and Mysticism of mankind Before the
Fall when, as the ancient texts tell us, man walked and talked with the
gods. Laura shows us that the upcoming shift is that point in the vast
cosmological cycle when mankind - or at least a portion of mankind - has the
opportunity to regain his standing as The Child of the King in the Golden
Age.

If ever there was a book that can answer the questions of those who are
seeking Truth in the spiritual wilderness of this world, then surely The
Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive is it.

The Secret History of The World and How To Get Out Alive by Laura Knight-
Jadczyk, published by Red Pill Press, Preface by Patrick Rivière €35.00 (867
pages).

http://www.qfgpublishing.com/

Monday, March 07, 2005

tonight's find

I was browsing my evening news, and the following piece caught my eyes:

Aliens Don't Like to Eat People That Smoke! (obviously, here they mean the ILlegal aliens, the little green (or grey) men that fly saucers and mess with us at night, or so some otherwise sane people believe).

Jokes aside, everybody knows about health risks associated with smocking (lung cancer being one of them). It gets overlooked, however, that the carcinogenic effect in that cigarette comes from all the junk, tar, and other garbage that accumulates in thtough modern processing. The addictive substance itself, nicotine, is non-carcinogenic amd has interesting properties in the brain:

" Nicotine mimics one of the body's most significant neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. This is the neurotransmitter most often associated with cognition in the cerebral cortex. Acetylcholine is the primary carrier of thought and memory in the brain. It is essential to have appropriate levels of acetylcholine to have new memories or recall old memories.

[..]

Acetyl-L-Carnitine (ALC) is the acetyl ester of carnitine, the carrier of fatty acids across Mitochondrial membranes. Like carnitine, ALC is naturally produced in the body and found in small amounts in some foods. ...Research in recent years has hoisted ALC from its somewhat mundane role in energy production to nutritional cognitive enhancer and neuroprotective agent extraordinaire. Indeed, taken in its entirety, ALC has become one of the premiere “anti-aging” compounds under scientific investigation, especially in relation to brain and nervous system deterioration.

ALC is found in various concentrations in the brain, and its levels are significantly reduced with aging.(1) In numerous studies in animal models, ALC administration has been shown to have the remarkable ability of improving not only cognitive changes, but also morphological (structural) and neurochemical changes. ...ALC has varied effects on cholinergic activity, including promoting the release(2) and synthesis(3) of acetylcholine. Additionally, ALC promotes high affinity uptake of choline, which declines significantly with age.(4) While these cholinergic effects were first described almost a quarter of a century ago,(5) it now appears that this is only the tip of the ALC iceberg. [Gissen, VRP's Nutritional News, March, 1995]

[..]

...We have shown that numbers and function of diverse nAChR subtypes can be influenced by many biologically active substances, ranging from steroids to local anesthetics, and by agents acting on the extracellular matrix, the cytoskeleton, on second messenger signaling, and at the nucleus. We also have shown that chronic nicotine exposure induces numerical upregulation of many diverse nAChR subtypes via a post-transcriptional process that is dominated by effects on intracellular pools of receptors or their precursors."

the above simply means that you'll have more ACL receptors if you smoke. Which is why probably that there may be possible BENEFITS of nicotine for certain brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease (that's associated with low levels of ACL), see here .

I personally don't smoke, never tried to, and never had any desire to try. But, in an unlikely event that I were to take it up, I would probably roll my own out of organic tobacco. That is, if there still were a freedom to do so, which is really unlikely, judging from the recent moves towards anti-smoking laws.

homeschooling -part III

I realized today that a book I have been wanting to buy and read, The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto, is available online at his site. Now I can read it there whenever I have a chance. I am still plannin to buy it though. John Taylor Gatto is a former teacher with 30+ years of experience teaching in public schools system, who became a whistleblower and an outspoken critic of modern education system.

Here are some quotes from his well researched newest book:

"The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”"

[..]

"In a speech he gave before businessmen prior to the First World War, Woodrow Wilson made this unabashed disclosure:


We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another
class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege
of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific
difficult manual tasks."

and more horrors along these lines. If you didn't know this, read and wheep.

However, there is hope, and it is illustrated by the following passage (my favorite):

"In the northeast corner of an island a long way from here, a woman sells plates of cooked shrimp and rice from out of an old white truck. Her truck is worth $5,000 at most. She sells only that one thing plus hot dogs for the kids and canned soda. The license to do this costs $500 a year, or $43.25 a month, a little over a dollar a day. The shrimp lady is fifty-nine years old. She has a high school diploma and a nice smile. Her truck parks on a gravel pull-off from the main highway in a nondescript location. No one else is around, not because the shrimp lady has a protected location but because no one else wants to be there. A hand-lettered sign advertises, "$9.95 Shrimp and Rice. Soda $1.00. Hot Dogs $1.25."

The day I stood in line for a shrimp plate, five customers were in front of me. They bought fourteen plates among them and fourteen sodas. I bought two and two when it came my turn, and by that time five new customers had arrived behind me. I was intrigued.

The next day Janet and I returned. We parked across the road where we could watch the truck but not make the shrimp lady nervous. In two hours, forty-one plates and forty-one sodas were handed out of the old truck, and maybe ten hot dogs. A week later we came back and watched again as nearly the same thing happened. Janet, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, estimated that $7 of the $10.95 for shrimp and soda was profit, after all costs.

Later we chatted with the lady in a quiet moment. The truck sits there eight hours a day, seven days a week, 364 days a year (the island is warm year round). It averages 100 to 150 shrimp sales a day, but has sold as many as 300. When the owner-proprietress isn’t there, one of her three daughters takes over. Each is only a high school graduate. For all I know, the only thing saleable any of them knows how to do is cook shrimp and rice, but they do that very well. The family earns in excess of a quarter million dollars a year selling shrimp plates out of an old truck. They have no interest in expanding or franchising the business. Another thing I noticed: all the customers seemed pleased; many were friendly and joked with the lady, myself included. She looked happy to be alive.

[..]

At the heart of any school reforms that aren’t simply tuning the mudsill mechanism lie two beliefs: 1) That talent, intelligence, grace, and high accomplishment are within the reach of every kid, and 2) That we are better off working for ourselves than for a boss.3 But how on earth can you believe these things in the face of a century of institution-shaping/economy-shaping monopoly schooling which claims something different? Or in the face of a constant stream of media menace that jobs are vanishing, that the workplace demands more regulation and discipline, that "foreign competition" will bury us if we don’t comply with expert prescriptions in the years ahead? One powerful antidote to such propaganda comes from looking at evidence which contradicts official propaganda—like women who earn as much as doctors by selling shrimp from old white trucks parked beside the road, or thirteen-year-old boys who don’t have time to waste in school because they expect to be independent businessmen before most kids are out of college. Meet Stanley:

I once had a thirteen-year-old Greek boy named Stanley who only came to school one day a month and got away with it because I was his homeroom teacher and doctored the records. I did it because Stanley explained to me where he spent the time instead. It seems Stanley had five aunts and uncles, all in business for themselves before they were twenty-one. A florist, an unfinished furniture builder, a delicatessen owner, a small restauranteur, and a delivery service operator. Stanley was passed from store to store doing free labor in exchange for an opportunity to learn the business. "This way I decide which business I like well enough to set up for myself," he told me. "You tell me what books to read and I’ll read them, but I don’t have time to waste in school unless I want to end up like the rest of these people, working for somebody else." After I heard that I couldn’t in good conscience keep him locked up. Could you? If you say yes, tell me why."

This is my reason #1 (out of 1631 and counting) for homeschooling. I hope that it will help my children to be independent. They may want to start their own business, or launch a career of some kind, but there's the same mindset that comes with it, which is priceless, and which very few of us posess.

Another good book that comes to mind is The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn. This one is geared towards teenagers:

"You won't find this book on a school library shelf--it's pure teenage anarchy. While many homeschooling authors hem and haw that learning at home isn't for everyone, this manifesto practically tells kids they're losers if they do otherwise. With the exception of a forwarding note to parents, this book is written entirely for teenagers, and the first 75 pages explain why school is a waste of time. Grace Llewellyn insists that people learn better when they are self-motivated and not confined by school walls."

Also, did you know that
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith opt to homeschool their children?

Rock on, Niobe!

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