1          Last year (2000) I mentioned that we live in a “Wilderness of Lies.” Or at the very least, a ‘wilderness of distortions.’ As our civilization advances technologically, new capabilities enhance the ability of powerful but corrupt individuals to sustain their power faster than it allows the masses to detect deceit. (Remember: Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely). The ‘bell curve’ of technology's usefulness vs. individual power or wealth always benefits those at the right ‘tail’ of the curve the most. Products such as bio-implantable GPS receiver-transmitters, electronic bugs, digital communications monitoring (email, 'Carnivore' web monitors, etc.) give benign souls some incremental ability to fight corruption -- but give corrupt ‘cells’ or organizations vast ability to constrain, delay, or confuse the discovery of truth. The most frightening of all are recent drugs such as Rohypnol et al, which displace both free will and memory, turning victims into cooperative robots (espionage-class drugs are undoubtedly even more powerful and subtle). Rohypnol et al are available to even the amateur criminal, extortionist, politician, or character assassin, so that even clear and obvious ‘behavioral evidence’ or eyewitness accounts can no longer be trusted. Mankind’s appreciation of these capabilities must out pace their use, or we will all someday live in a fictional ‘Matrix’-like world controlled by a powerful elite. The question is: Is a large enough fraction of our population capable of imagining these developments? “Don't be simple...” And that isn’t so easy anymore!

2          The greatest danger to our civilization is not from above the sky (asteroids and comets) - but from within our national soul. It is the ignorance of truth on a massive scale and the ascendancy of trepidation over daring.

3          For a civilization to thrive its systems must damp the instinctive desire for retribution. The Christian way of suggesting this is: “Turn the other cheek.” A more global metaphor might be that of a forest. If the forest is lush and green and moist, a hot spark (as in violence or localized injustice) quickly goes out. But if the forest is dry and parched, the same hot spark will grow rapidly into a forest fire. Consider the feud between the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s. Generation after generation of violence, revenge, and misery. Or consider the never-ending religious ‘feuds’ of this last millennium. The focus is forever on past injustices, not toward preventing the endless future injustice yet to be, so still more suffer... So much nonproductive energy can be expended in this fashion that societies languish.

4          You don’t find God by studying religions, you find God by studying Truth.

5          2001-0718: What we believe does not control the ‘destination’ of our souls. How we live our lives, the good that we do or try to do, the degree to which we actually embrace truth and justice and goodwill toward others -- this is what shapes and brightens our souls to later add value to the ‘fetal God’ of Gestationism. It means exactly nothing to ‘talk the talk’-- it means everything to ‘walk the walk’. And both Gods know the difference

6          2001-0813: Irrespective of one's religious beliefs on Earth, the souls of all men and women of good will add to the growth and contribute to the enrichment of the Fetal God. However, some souls are so twisted and damaged, often through the mis-wielding of power, or through the embracing of hatred, that their inclusion by the Fetal God would cause it damage (much like DNA damage). These souls are ignored by the Fetal God, and drift in absolute solitude for the lifetime of The Universe -- perhaps 1000 billion years -- and are then destroyed when it collapses. The embracing of truth or lies, the creation of beauty or ugliness, the expression of kindness or cruelty, each leave their mark upon us. There are no weekly or deathbed absolutions -- no loopholes. A thousand choirs, a million history books, a billion sheep singing your praises* means exactly nothing to the Fetal God, who will read the whole and absolute truth that is written within your soul in the blink of eye.   (*I have in mind infamous political leaders of the last 100 years.)

7          2001-0828: “Nature is the art of God.”  - Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321  ...and Physics his palette ...and Time his canvas... and the descendants of stars his audience.

8          2001-1220: Supermassive Black Holes    Astonishing new knowledge about how nearly all galaxies develop with a huge black hole at their center. Offers the prediction that Our Galaxy will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in 3 billion years. The videotape is available at Discovery.com. “Face your fears (they are far less real than you imagine) - Live your dreams.”

9           2002-0102: “If has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence [ie: civilization] this is not correct. We soon will have exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.” - Fred Hoyle (Astronomer), 1964 (Visit:  http://www.dieoff.com/page224.htm)

10     2002-0702: In the movie City of Angels, Nicholas Cage said, “Some things are true whether you believe in them or not...” This is thought provoking... The corollary is: ‘Some things are not true whether you believe in them or not.’ Example: When Einstein first introduced his Special Theory of Relativity, many did not accept his ideas as correct. Consider the equation E=mc^2...  Is this equation more or less true because we believe in it? If every man, woman, and child on Earth denounced E=mc^2 as utter fiction, would it then be less than 100% true? Would the sun stop shining?? So what then, is the relationship between truth and belief? Answer: they are independent ‘vectors’ which may or may not coincide (or share some degree of parallelism). Truth is truth, whether you believe in it or not...

11     2002-1221: Belief should have at its heart the seed of its own evolution: the pursuit of truth. It is that critical adaptation which allows what we learn to shape what we believe... so that we may better pursue truth, ad infinitum. The key to your soul should open your mind and your heart to new truths, it should never be used to lock them out...

12     2003-0303: [The socio-economics of religion, needs much development] ...Without this seed, ‘Belief’ is simply a tool by which dominant hierarchies maintain the herdification of humanity in nested we-they topographies. The bell curve creates social dominance, and the dominant guard the source of their dominance. 1) ‘Rebels’ are gently tamed if possible, chased away or destroyed (by one means or another: through economics, violence, social rejection) if not. ‘Truth’ is whatever the dominant hierarchy says that it is, and if you don’t agree... well then, you are a rebel - GO TO 1. It is a continuously reiterative process and produces amazing stable social vortices that interact cooperatively on some planes while remaining forever in conflict at others (consider the ‘Great Red Spot’ vortex on Jupiter). Consider the splintering of religious groups into subgroups. There are 2000+ religious factions in the USA, each claiming that it is the true belief. Remember that sociologically our planet is growing smaller at a rapid rate. Read Klare’s Resource Wars.

13     2003-0304: A recent census revealed that Britain has about 300,000 citizens who name their religion as “Jedi.” All ‘Jedi’ are welcome here!

14     2003-0312a: Today the U.S. tested its largest conventional bomb, the 10-ton MOAB. I was thinking about this when I realized that the most powerful weapon on earth isn’t a bomb of any kind. The most powerful weapon is hatred... in the sense that if you can implant the seeds of hatred in someone or some group (say, through deliberate but subtle injustices - like those darts they use on bulls in a bullfight to infuriate them) and then fan the flames to life, the hatred within your target will do most of the destruction for you. The bombs are just used in the final inning. Never hate. Never!

15     2003-0312b: In the most universal sense of human behavior, the 11th Commandment is ‘Don’t Get Caught,’ and the 12th Commandment is ‘Win at all cost, no matter what. Win humanely if possible - but win.’ This is the law of the jungle... the strong and the ruthless thrive. It’s a great way to build a jungle, it’s not a very good way to build a civilization.

16     2003-0312c: “No one on this Earth knows the mind of God.” - a respected talk show host expressing his frustration with religious extremism everywhere shortly after 9/11/01. Absolutely true, sir -- including me -- but we can study his art.

17     2003-0408a: If truth is the first casualty of war, we must live in a constant state of war.

18     2003-0408b: What is it about the herdistic mind that so desperately needs a consensus of affirmation before embracing truth?

19     2003-0408c: “The Church says the Earth is flat, but I know the Earth is round. For I have seen the Earth’s shadow upon the Moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church...” Attributed to Magellan with the following comment: ‘Magellan must have been far at sea when he said this, as thousands were routinely put to the sword for far less.’ Throughout the world people are still being ‘put to the sword’ (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively) in the name of religions written by people who believed the Earth was flat. But religions don’t kill... the powerful kill to maintain their power.

20     2003-0503a: Here is a thought experiment: Swap 1000 newborn babies from families of Religion-A with those from Religion-B. The ‘A’ babies will grow up believing in ‘B’, and the ‘B’ babies will grow up believing in ‘A’. Later, in military service, the ‘A’ babies will defend Religion-B with their lives and the ‘B’ babies will defend Religion-A with their lives. Doesn’t this strike you as a little ridiculous?

21     2003-0503b: Why is this written in english and not french? French is the more beautiful language, is it not? Yet, I persist in writing in english? Why? Could it be that during my first few years of life my growing mind was ‘programmed’ to understand only english? Almost everyone would accept that as true. How is religion different than a language? Or is religion typically an accident of birth place and culture? Are all 2000+ religions in the world equally ‘The True Religion’?

22     2003-0601 a) Chess is not just a game, it is a tool for teaching about life. Why are the Bishops (as symbols of ‘politicians’ in every aspect of life) placed next to the King & Queen? Because that is where the power and money are. Why do the Bishops (‘politicians’) only attack obliquely? Because that is how they actually behave.

23     2003-0601 b) Never before in Human history has the ratio of secret knowledge to public knowledge been as high as it is now. Furthermore, the most advanced technology of our time is becoming ‘inconceivable’ to our masses -- and therefore its affects are invisible and unimaginable. We must never confuse rare events with impossible events. (If someone told you that their car mysteriously steered itself around two corners and then parallel parked itself, would you believe them? -- “Say, that sounds like an Acme 2600 remote servo unit to me.” -- or would you ask them what they had been smoking? Yet, there are people in Hollywood who do this all of the time. Your response is a matter of rarity of experience: Have you ever heard of a car steering itself?) The concentration of ‘inconceivable’ power in the hands of the hidden few will be very dangerous with respect to the survival of the human species, in that they will act to constrain the advancement of civilization to their own world view and power hierarchy (as once did the Church of Rome). The Civilization of Man can only survive if it is dedicated to the revelation of truth and the constant teaching of at least a ‘casual’ public awareness of ‘all’ knowledge and possibility. Perhaps our coins should read, “Don’t Be Simple.”

24     2003-0708: “It is not our abilities that show what we truly are, it is our choices.” - Albus Dumbledore (from Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets) This also may be said of mankind.

25     2003-0809: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” - Martin Luther King

26     2003-1015: The ideal by which our lives, our courage, our hearts, and our souls are measured... “To dream the impossible dream. To fight the unbeatable foe. To bear with unbearable sorrow. To run where the brave dare not go. To right the unrightable wrong. To laugh pure and chaste from afar. To try when your arms are too weary. To reach the unreachable star! This is my quest - to follow that star - no matter how hopeless, no matter how far! To fight for the right, without question or pause. To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause! And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest. And the world will be better for this, that one man scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage... to reach the unreachable star!  - Don Quixote (The Man of La Mancha, Track 11)

27     2003-1111 a) “Religious freedom in a culture is inversely proportional to the strength of the strongest religion.” - Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road, 1963, p228. Perhaps we can approximate the repressive strength of a religious organization as: (its degree of groupthink*) x (its ‘immune system’ response curve) x (its wealth) x (its intelligence gathering capability) x (its leadership’s ruthlessness, be it covert or overt) x (the extent of political cover available) x (its access to sophisticated technology) x (availability of unquestioning agents) x (the unavailability or impotence of protective mechanisms or agents) x (the general ignorance or apathy of the mass population) x (the complexity of the legal matrix) x ((the regard for winning)/(the regard for truth)) x (the benefit/risk ratio: the relative importance of a given act/the probability and consequences of public exposure of that act)   [and there are several more terms...] *Groupthink is the narrowness of the width of a sociological bell curve.

28     2003-1111 b) A master and his opponent sit down at a very nice restaurant to discuss their differences. The table has candles, a full length white tablecloth, and the wine and food are superb. From time to time the opponent jumps in his chair, yells, curses, and even begins to make angry, threatening gestures. The master appears clearly perplexed and solicitous at this behavior, but slowly becomes alarmed. Finally, as the opponent jumps up and draws a weapon, the master fires his weapon from under the table and the opponent is killed - everyone in the restaurant saw that it was clearly a case of self defense. As the body is dragged away only a few notice the many fresh bruises upon the opponent’s legs. (Moral: Most of what really happens everywhere happens invisibly ‘under the table’.)

29     2003-1220: As we in the northern hemisphere contemplate the darkest days of the year, we can celebrate the darkness for the opportunity it gives us to admire the majesty of this tiny region of our galaxy*, and to wonder at the cycles of light and shadow on a trillion other worlds and in the lives of a trillion other species...  *Our galaxy will be transformed in a violent merging with the Andromeda galaxy in about 3 billion years (see the video Supermassive Black Holes), and my youngest son (age 6 at the time) feels strongly that the name ‘The Milky Way’ should be retained for sentimental reasons. We considered several other possibilities: The Andromeda Way... The Milkymeda... and so forth. But he was quite insistent -- future historians please take note. [This proposal assumes that the Andromeda galaxy doesn’t have a dominant species bigger than we are.]

30     2004-0116: "There are laws which enslave men, and laws which set men free." *

                              There are beliefs which enslave men, and beliefs which set men free.

                              There are men who would enslave men, and men who would set men free.

                              There are lies which enslave men, but none which set men free.

                              There are hearts chained by darkness, by the stench and power of fear.

                              But such chains melt in daylight, even when storms rage near.

                              There are cowards of clever entrapments, who plan and plot their game.

                              But cowards can't last a moment, in the brilliant truth of day.

                              This universe was born in light, and so are each of we.

                              A free heart lives forever, and forever that will be.

                                        *King Arthur, Camelot

31     2004-0311: Those whose secrets are unimaginable and inconceivable can enslave the world. Those who extend what is imaginable and conceivable can free the world. This dichotomy creates a universal conflict.

32     2004-0420: Every multicultural civilization (culture = clusters of nations having similar needs) eventually comes to a crisis of consumption whereby the population of each cluster recognizes the approach of an inescapable reduction of its standard of living -- often meaning an increasing death rate at the margins. The driver is energy, as energy is critical to the support of civilization (most critically in the production and distribution of food and water, and in managing waste) . The most probable outcome is cluster conflict on a vast scale, since ‘The Crisis’ of peak consumption is a zero-sum game. The strongest clusters will attempt to take what they need to best maintain (or least reduce) their standard of living, with little regard to the impact this has on the lives (or deaths) of the less strong clusters. The less strong clusters will resist with increasing desperation, and with less and less concern for the consequences of resistance. Each cluster suffers growing inefficiencies as more and more effort is diverted to securing desirable resources and preventing other clusters from doing so.

33      2004-0420: This is ‘The Law of The Jungle’ as applied to cluster survival. This has begun now on Earth. The first crisis is oil and will play out this century. The second crisis will be coal depletion many centuries from now.

34      2004-0420: I have read that the exhaustion of cheap oil will result in 3 billion deaths this century (see reference elsewhere) as now-marginally fed third world regions are depopulated by starvation. Assuming that no new cheap energy source is discovered (such as fusion) before the end of the coal era, a further worldwide population reduction to 1-2 billion seems likely. It seems unlikely that a medium-efficiency, distributed quasi-agrarian civilization with limited means of transportation can support (or maintain) anywhere near the vast number of technical ‘knowledge-specializations’ that we have today, so mankind’s technological peak will probably occur in the next few centuries.

35      2004-0420: An ecologically self-sustaining quasi-agrarian civilization could probably continue for millions of years, but it must eventually fall victim to a large asteroid impact.

36       2004-0420: The techno-industrial era (say, 1900-2200) is mankind’s one and only chance at achieving a high-order, self-sustaining civilization. This is an era when we need government(s) of great maturity, true integrity, and somber intellect, carefully planning decades into the future...

37       2004-0502: It is reasonable to wonder if the development of nuclear weapons freezes the political state of a planetary civilization. If Rome of 2000 years ago had mastered nuclear fission our entire planet would now be Roman. If the British Empire of 300 years ago had mastered nuclear fission our entire planet would now be British. If a planetary civilization is politically monolithic at the moment of nuclear mastery, it remains monolithic. If it is fragmented it remains fragmented.

38       2004-0502:  Fundamental quandary: If power corrupts, and therefore every political-governmental structure rots from within, how can any civilization make and enforce forward-looking plans for its own survival? Any organization created to focus power and allocate resources immediately concerns itself with its own survival and interests first. What vessel and conduit system can contain and control the power of entire planet without being enslaved and destroyed by that very power?

39       2004-0607: The conflict between the masters of power and those who seek true understanding is not at all like the open battles of armies. It far more like a complex game of chess: a game of a thousand squares by a thousand squares, with most of the chess pieces hidden in shadow and captured in silence. Even those that are illuminated may not be what they seem - a rook appearing as a pawn is far more powerful than an ordinary rook. The recent programs on the 60th anniversary of D-day show the critical importance and startling effectiveness of deception in military conflict. Political and religious conflict is no different. In Barbara Hambly’s Darwith Trilogy (The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight - all highly recommended) a wise wizard contemplates an ancient stone bridge just ahead on his path. Worn down and covered in moss and ivy, it appears to have been there for all time. In reality, however, it is a highly competent spell woven onto a bent willow branch, which the wizard observes looking back from further up the path. Much of our complex world today is like this... like the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. Its only a question of what the audience will ‘buy’.

40       2004-0607: I have observed that artistic, skillful corruption takes a lifetime of experience -- a lifetime of continuous practice -- to know how to score a siren song of mixed and variable truths for a target audience. Of knowing their taste in instruments and which songs are popular and which have been played most recently. It takes a master of dark craftsmanship to fabricate a new jig saw puzzle piece that will cleanly fit into the moving wavefront of the present -- and to interlock with the planned fabrications of tomorrow. Often times, chess pieces must be juggled into position 5, 10, even 20 moves in advance of a master stroke that tries to capture - or weaken - an opposing piece. Close in spirit are the methodologies and techniques used by attorneys to persuade juries to see and weigh facts in the light most consistent with their portrait of ‘truth’.

41      2004-0607: (Ref #30 continued) And by the way, under Hambly’s stone bridge - there were the countless weathered bones of those who could not see the truth and stepped into the abyss. City-states, modern nations, and entire civilizations can live or die by such illusions... since ‘willow branches’ make a poor foundation for building.

42     2004-0607: Future sidebar: 2004-0609.4 am: I was awaken this morning by someone’s three sharp taps on the basement casement window below my bedroom (it happens at random, a dozen times a year - you get used to it) and I found that I couldn’t get back to sleep, my mind pondering the rather dark shift in the 3rd of the Harry Potter movies that the boys and I watched just last night, along with other misc. items in the news. Paragraph: Speaking of which, congratulations to Minister/Senator/Business Magnate John Danforth for being appointed as the new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.  While I have never met the man, I was a student of his family business, Ralston Purina, for many years -- and noted that many qualities and styles of a business hierarchy begin at the top and flow down to middle management. As a skilled and multi-disciplined leader with a large and intensely loyal Christian following, and as a friend of the powerful IBM business complex, he should fit perfectly into the Bush Administration. “I Dare You”* to succeed, Mr. Danforth...        *The title of a motivational book by his grandfather.   Paragraph: Also, to outgoing CIA Director George Tenet: I hope that the material (and copies of my May 2001 letter to President Bush... written before I was an independent) hand-carried to Representative Dick Gephart’s local office and also mailed to Senator John McCain - with the suggestion that it might be of interest to the 9/11 Commission - was in no way awkward for you during your recent trials. Perhaps, as with your predecessor, a spot can be found for you in the National Eagle Scout Association? (I happen to know this because I sent an early copy of On The Plains of Hesitation to him at NESA’s Irving, Texas office around 1998-1999... and to his assistant,  who was tragically killed in a traffic accident a short time later). [I haven’t had much luck with Texas -- it was in Dec 2001 that my first instance of ID theft occurred... an attempt to transfer $7500 from a Sears card to my VISA card, which I caught when I tried to buy a “White Christmas” DVD as a Christmas gift. The false address was: 1501 W. 18th St., Houston, TX 77008-1533, with a 3-digit apartment number.] Paragraph: And speaking of motivational materials, are you all familiar with the ‘un’-motivational Christian catalog out of Austin, Texas? It offers posters such as the one showing a beautiful ocean sunset with the bow of a sunken freighter jutting up in the foreground, offering the kind Christian thought: “Perhaps the True Purpose of Your Life is to Serve as a Warning to Others...” I remember receiving this catalog only twice. The first was in the mid-90’s after a business setback, and the second was the very day I helped my ex-wife move to her new home. I wonder how they knew? Perhaps at the heart of every ‘power hierarchy’ throughout time there lies more stick than carrot? Does power always have at its heart the dark seeds of cruelty?

43     2004-1008: Two very nice Jehovah’s Witnesses women from the local Fenton Kingdom Hall came by the house this evening - their second visit in ten days, I think - and we had a long and pleasant chat about our differing perspectives and common ground in religion. I admire the courage it takes to gently take your beliefs door-to-door in the hope of helping your fellow man. This applies also to the polite young Mormon men who stop by once a year. During our talk I whimsically speculated at the possible transmutation over time of the word “meek” (as in ‘inheriting the earth’) which in today’s usage suggests weakness and even cowardice. It happened that this was a current topic in “Watch Tower”, so we had a common point of discussion. [Paragraph] They were both unfamiliar with Gestationism so I gave them this web address (Welcome all!) and tried to offer a concise overview (they listened calmly, respectfully, and asked careful questions to be certain they understood me). I told them that they were always welcome (‘Welcome all men of good will.’). Like you, I am trying to understand the universe, ‘belief’, and truth.

44     2004-1004: “Religion isn’t about ‘truth’... it is about ‘power’.” - Anon, 2003.  Perhaps more rigorously: Religion is most commonly about herd synchronization, herd ‘binding energy’, and the establishment of a bias for automatic trust of other herd members - and most especially herd leadership. It is about a collective group symbiosis whereby individuals join a herd seeking safety and happiness, and in exchange surrender to it a portion of their earnings, skills, creativity, time, and... credulity. Every extinct religion on earth was ‘successful in its time’ (ie: Inca, Aztec, greater Pacific Ocean) while astonishingly limited in its comprehension of the true universe and patently shallow, clearly false, and even brutal by the common standards of today. [Paragraph] Perhaps the premise is true and it doesn’t matter what god you paint on your meeting hall ceiling... if the food is good and the companionship reassuring? But for myself I feel that the greatness of a civilization (or a species) is limited by the purity and magnitude of its gods. And greatness requires a reverence for truth above all else.

45     2004-1019: I was watching Paul Zahn discuss politics this evening, and I was struck by the realization that there are voters in this country who really believe that ANY president or ANY government can make us ‘secure’ against terrorism. U.S. soil hasn’t been attacked since 9/11 because no one very important wants to very badly. If they decide that they do, then they will. In WW-II Nazi Germany had the most intense and brutal internal security the world has ever seen. Yet the book A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson recounts dozens of daring and brilliantly successful attacks into occupied Europe. Whole dams were destroyed, critical manufacturing processes disrupted, railroads destroyed, leaders assassinated, etc. The Nazi’s could NOT stop all of the attacks from happening -- and they simply shot people they suspected... or made them disappear (“ ‘Night and fog, return not required.’ ”). And ours is a free and open nation (and may it stay that way). The world has changed and the methods and tools of high-leverage destruction are becoming ‘common knowledge’. Endless abrasive belligerence towards the other six billion people that share this planet is simply going to escalate the destruction of our planetary civilization and waste endless resources better invested elsewhere. The U.S. will be the most secure when we have the smallest possible number of determined enemies and the largest possible number of determined friends. Perhaps we really need to focus on that. It may seem counter-intuitive, but our only real security comes from outside our nation.

46     2004-1212: My compliments to Byte.com for their communicating to the public last week the devastating and ghastly potential of computer “zombie” programs to place false evidence of wrongdoing on a person’s computer. While their specific example was ‘kiddie porn’ (the placement of which on an innocent person’s computer should be designated a horrific ‘hate crime’) there is a more general alarm to be raised: Computers are becoming increasingly unreliable sources of evidence, as the sophistication of hacker-knowledge and hacker-capabilities grow faster than the ability of the public to comprehend them and the industry to limit them. The last time that I was in complete control of my computer was in the early 1990’s with DOS 5.0 or something. So enormous, complex, and fragile are our operating systems today that I question if anyone can really be said to be completely in control of their PCs (example: my up-to-date-OSX iMac freezes during boot up and ‘Mail’ crashes when it retrieves email, each about once a week), and the only question which remains is whether or not there is someone anywhere in the world motivated enough to attack you in order to economically cause damage through legal fees, public humiliation, or (as the article proposed) for purposes of extortion (which might be money... or control -- politicians, judges, witnesses, government employees -- of anyone who is inconvenient to someone. That could be a huge universe of future victims. In my opinion Microsoft and Apple have a huge responsibility to society... even to humanity... to see to it that innocent users of computers cannot be victimized-at-a-distance by data-slinging hitmen.

47     2004-1209: I happened upon an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov 28, 2004 page B3 titled: “Keeping the faith at great personal cost. Tom Doyle once dwelled in the church’s inner circle but was booted out when he uncovered a horrible secret. Today, that secret has come back to haunt the church.” It is a story of great personal courage and integrity, and of the utter failure of “big-business, big-money religion” to keep itself pure. More broadly, it is the story of religion throughout America: The abuse of [too-blind] trust, and the paramount importance of propping up the illusion of seamless organizational piety to keep the masses happy and -- above all -- to keep the money rolling in. I admire you very much, Tom. Recommended reading.

48     2004-1213: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” - Albert Einstein

49     2004-1213: As we approach the wonderful holiday of Christmas it is interesting to contemplate the history and current mythology of this holiday, which was originally (see www.Space.com/spacewatch/star_bethlehem_021220.html for the astronomical description) the “...lavish Roman festival of Saturnalia. It was a time when gifts were exchanged, homes, streets and buildings were decorated; people came home for the holidays and everybody was in a happy, party mood...”. There is another short article on the history of Christmas at www.freeradical.co.nz/content/39/39timberlake/php which I found through a Google search on the phrase ‘first early Saturnalia’. There were many other matches found.[Paragraph] I would like to see a credible poll on how many people in the U.S. believe that: 1) Christmas began with Christ. 2) The Star of Bethlehem was actually a brilliant star as depicted symbolically today. It is just a guess, but I would imagine that 98%+ would answer ‘Yes’ to both, which speaks volumes as to the state of knowledge vs. current religious mythology in the world today... By the way, I have nothing but respect and admiration for Jesus Christ the person. He was an honest rebel in a corrupt era, he spoke out against what he saw as systemically wrong and unjust, and was a major annoyance to the religious powers of his time -- so they killed him.

50     2005-0104: I would define ‘civilization’ as that state in which the total sum of a sentient species’ knowledge is generally increasing. This is keyed to labor-saving issues (machines, cheap energy, smarter processes) which allow and increase the existence of ‘surplus effort’ to invest in matters (science, math, engineering, education, etc.) that will increase thought and planning for the future (ie: it is difficult to advance civilization if every person on earth is endlessly planting, harvesting, or canning food for the winter). A good measuring stick for this state is the average quality of life for the leading subgroup.

51     2005-0104: Currently there is a true revolution occurring in our civilization. The internet. Never before in human history has the whole earth been linked together with geometrically increasing communication of knowledge and ideas. Even the most economically challenged regions today have libraries and schools with internet access. The affect will be to raise the awareness of people everywhere to the lives, situations, and knowledge bases elsewhere.

62     2005-0104: The greatest challenge we face as a species is the balancing of governments as competing “special interest groups (SIGs)”. Governments represent only their constituents, and may either act as drowning men trying to climb on each others shoulders to survive (economic- or armed-conflict for resources), or as cooperating agents (a rational world market). The difference between a free market and a rational market is the time horizon. The west has a mostly free market which works beautifully in most supply-demand environments where a short time lag exists between the demand and the supply. It is a remarkably poor system when the t5me lag becomes large, as typified by the boom and bust cycles of the petroleum business. In this situation a ‘rational’ market is needed, with a vision toward the future. This task usually falls to governments which, unfortunately, are not up to it. Governments have morphed from the role of benign shepherds to the role of self-perpetuating SIGs, surviving in power by pandering to the center of the population bell curve on the one hand (which doesn’t want to hear any bad news) and the rich and powerful on the other (who want what they want when the want it). The only way to do this is to lie artfully, called ‘politics’, and to try to keep the plebs content with bread and circuses (I’m strongly influenced in this by Heinlein, read: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Glory Road, Starship Troopers, Methuselah’s Children, Time Enough for Love, Friday, and.... oh heck -- just read all his books!). If you doubt that governments are SIGs, just look what happens to whistle blowers who reveal the truth about something relatively small -- are they promoted to head their departments? Or tossed out on their arses? It’s not what government wants to be that’s important! It’s what WE want it to be!

53     2005-0104: A suggestion for OPEC: In my opinion one of the greatest services that you could do for all of human civilization and future generations is to cease market pricing of oil -- fix the [minimum] price of a barrel of oil with a time-dependent escalator, something like: $30 + $2 per year elapsed since January 1st, 2000 and update the price monthly. Today’s price would be $40 (adjust it for currency issues as needed). Next year, $42. In 2010, $50. In 2015, $60. In 2020, $70. This would give the consumers, politicians, and oil companies of the world certainty of stable, predictable, and inescapably-real, increasing future petroleum cost and allow the gradual and rational evolution of the world’s energy infrastructure to adapt to future shortages. Else the world will someday see an energy tsunami like last month’s real tsunami, but far, far more devastating.

54     2005-0104: God will NOT save mankind from mankind’s short-term, free-market thinking (like not having a worldwide tsunami warning system - how did that work out? How much would it have cost in 2000? The U.S. government alone will spend $350 million in relief funds). That’s our job... we have to do it ourselves... or the human species will fade from the universe whimpering, “We didn’t understand...” Fred Hoyle was absolutely right - we’ll get just one chance at survival as a civilization. So far, we are doing remarkably poorly in the planning-ahead and being-prepared department. That’s largely because We The People of the United States of America -- arguably the most advanced society on earth -- can’t control their own government, and aren’t really even aware that they need to. We have the wealth of time and money and freedom to lead the world benignly into the future, but we seem to be stuck ‘fiddling while Rome burns’...

55     2005-0119: When truth becomes subjective, so does justice...

56     2005-0119: No donation has ever been received for the support of Gestationism (or myself) since its inception in 1998. Is that because I am neither owned nor controlled by the right or left? (In the U.S. that’s a recipe for slow starvation! <grin>) Or because I make no pretense of influencing access to ‘heaven’?? For that matter, I have received no letter or phone call on the topic of Gestationism (either pro nor con), even from the hundred or so college and university religion/theology departments that I have sent mailings to. I have received only one (1) email about Gestationism in 1998, within the first week of this web site being created. It said, “I forgive you.” It was unsigned (which strikes me as slightly symbolic) and I assume it was from someone at my ISP (Brick.net) with a timely sense of humor (I liked it). All genuine inquiries -- if I ever get one <grin> -- will be replied to respectfully. My email address is “johnhackett@apcconsultants.com” (and you might find that site interesting, too). I use only the one address to limit the amount of junk mail that I must shovel through.

57     2005-0119: I have often recommended the book A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson. It is the story of the immeasurable value and power of brilliant, organizational intelligence -- and its relationship to and with information, misinformation and misdirection in any conflict. Required reading.

58     2005-0120: While I may at times feel a flicker of frustration at the lack of challenging and worthy projects in my field, time itself is such a precious gift... Time to think, time to wonder, time to appreciate, time to understand. Time to savor the seconds one by one... to watch the sun glide across the sky... to memorize a child’s smile. Count your blessings, truly.

59     2005-0120: In any conflict - including the conflict with nature for survival - there are always crisis points for which it may be said, “For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost.” Last month’s tsunami deaths are a perfect - and ghastly - example of our governments’ collective inability to prepare for the future, for their failure to listen to advice and reason that they don’t want to hear. It is so often easier to pretend that no problem exists than to acknowledge it and therefore be forced to prepare for it. I read recently that a scientist in India warned his government about tsunami risks for years and was ignored. Well, he has a job now. That’s not a criticism, but a compliment to the Indian government -- in the U.S. he would have been blacklisted forever...

60     2005-0119: I wonder if a small percentage of U.S.-based Hedge Funds will ever be used as financial weapons to target specific companies (domestic or foreign) based on politics or religion? Could a religion-controlled Hedge Fund sacrifice some of its gains to attack the stock price of targeted companies (or their owners) on geopolitical or georeligious grounds? Here is an example: Candidate John Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz of the huge Heinz (Catsup) ‘Empire’. If it were hypothetically possible to defeat Kerry politically, by temporarily launching a stealth attack on the stock price of Heinz (symbol HNZ), might that have been considered? Or will it be next time? A more extreme example: If Osama Bin Laden’s personal wealth was largely tied up in ‘OsamaCorp’, would it’s stock price be attacked through the financial markets? You bet! To what extent does this occur worldwide?

61     2005-0121: The video frame “The Tools of Conquest” below is from a visit to the American History Museum in St, Louis in July of 2003. It bluntly acknowledges that religion has often been used as a tool of conquest. Simply put, if you can get a people to accept a religion that you are in charge of interpreting, you can control them extensively: “God wants you to give us all of your gold... God wants you to attack the French... God wants you to give us half of your harvest... etc., etc., etc. I suspect that Jesus - among others - taught his beliefs in order to free people from tyranny and to mitigate civilization-destabilizing practices (correct me if I’m wrong), so I can’t help but wonder what he would have thought of these uses of modern day Christianity? Does the means justify the end (see the 12th commandment -- Item 15 below)? Is religion a tool of freedom AND a tool of conquest? Do you have to be conquered before you can be free?? Or are you only free within the walls of belief others build around you?

Important Sidebar: How to Murder a Human Soul (with Impunity). A true story.  [Addendum 2016-1121: I estimate the odds of surviving TPW 'intact' at 1 in 1000. That's also mentioned on the 2007 DVD.]

2011-1012 (Pub 2012-0703): [These words are written without anger, please don’t add any]: I have made numerous veiled references in my two web sites over the years as to what was done to me in 2000, and it is finally time to clear the air and move forward.  I think it is time the ‘99%’ of you learned what the other ‘1%’ learned on April 26, 2007 when I hand-delivered the 24-minute video briefing DVD The Perfect Weapon (at right) and the accompanying data disk to embassies on and near ‘Embassy Row’ in Washington. D.C., (including The Vatican Embassy) and mailed dozens of copies to prominent persons, congressmen, the FBI, CIA, Interpol, NGOs, the ACLU, my attorney, and many others, including family and friends. I requested that embassies view and forward the DVD to their respective Intelligence organizations and to their respective Interpol offices. Each was authorized to duplicate the DVD for other embassies and for internal use... in other words -- I told everyone on earth.  ‘Secret’ weapons aren’t useful if everyone knows they exist. Further, other victims -- past, present, or future -- need to know that they can survive this vile, monstrous technology. No one from the FBI or any other investigative agency has ever spoken to me. Why not? Because it’s hazardous to your government career to investigate your masters, and the uber-rich and powerful who own them.

The name ‘The Perfect Weapon’* (TPW) describes any weapon which is essentially undetectable, inconceivable and thus unbelievable. In this case, no  victim dares to reveal the induced symptoms, which are truly horrific for about two years,  as these could -- by deliberate design and intent -- be easily mistaken as a native disorder of the victim’s brain. Please note the cyst on the top of my head in the photo at the punch-through site. Not all victims may develop this, in which case there is no macroscopic evidence whatsoever. How perfect is that? What microscopic evidence that exists resides within the brain and is inaccessible until death -- assuming that anyone would even think to look. It is a brilliant if truly evil ‘Catch-22’ gambit by the most ruthless chessmasters of our world, and a perfect weapon for use on six-sigma heretics (or whistleblowers, etc.) whose outright death would literally make them martyrs. The rich and powerful prefer that such troublemakers be deemed not credible, which makes TPW-generated symptoms, well,  ‘perfect’. It also makes the victim an example for others: annoy your masters and this Just Might Happen to you -- or to your loved ones -- as well. ‘You are servants of The Matrix, and you had better stay that way if you know what’s good for you.’

In brief (the DVD is far more detailed) TPW produces brief, never-repeated, non-native-content dream chains about 100 times more intense than normal dreaming, intended to rip apart (to murder) the human soul. The induced dreams (‘dremems’ due to their non-native qualities) produce intense distress during REM sleep with extreme, metronome-like eye movement... week after week, month after month, year after year (see the chart at right).  The most probable outcome is suicide within the first year. I was aware of the man-made nature of TPW from the beginning as I was incompletely anesthetized (deliberately, I believe -- they wanted me to know) during the ‘punch through’ of my skull - I felt and heard it happen. It was probably the most helpless and horrifying moment of my life. There still exist some minor and infrequent neurological symptoms. I think I know why there aren’t any new modern religions in the world -- their proponents are quietly destroyed as soon as they are discovered. Religion is big business, and that means big money, big power, big politics, and big secrets. Religion is supra-legal and thus 'above' the 'petty' laws of man...

(Continued from above) ...There was no response to the April 26, 2007 DVD distribution... unless you count the curiously timed death of Baptist Minister Jerry Falwell, who died 19 days later of a ‘heart attack’ on what would have been my 14th wedding anniversary [See #247]. If not coincidental, this does not automatically infer complicity, he may simply have been capable of recognizing TPW and known its point of origin. ‘Dead men tell no tales’. Or he may have been a fusible link. Many months later there were also a couple of key phrases from my DVD in President Ahmadinejad’s Columbia University speech in the autumn of 2007 (ie: “the world is in darkness,” etc.). This caught my attention but I was not surprised, as I had given several embassies extra copies with the request that they be forwarded to ‘the Clerics of Iran’. If TPW has not already been used on prospective Muslim leaders around the world, then it certainly would be when finally perfected... I may have been a ‘beta test’.  ‘If you destroy the handful of genuine leaders within a society it will collapse into chaos.’ - Robert A. Heinlein. Note that I am not taking political or religious sides, I simply want TPW destroyed before its use overseas provokes a nuclear strike on an American city. I cannot imagine a more world-unifying evil than TPW. I was and am also concerned that it might someday be used on my own children in an attempt to ‘force-fit’ our lives into esoteric aspects of Christian mythology and then be trumpeted as some donation-optimizing prophecy come true. I hope and pray that I have made that option useless. Note that what I term ‘Christian Mythology’ is quite distinct from the gentle Gandhi-like philosophy of Jesus. As to what extremist group would ever use such a weapon, consider the Operation Rescue cell that precipitated the murder of the Kansas abortion doctor. I actually saw a woman wearing an Operation Rescue T-shirt some five years ago, watching me intently as I walked my son to elementary school one morning. At the time I thought it had something to do with pets. Also read The Family by Jeff Sharlet.

The ‘microcoils’ in my dark-adapted vision (shown on my other web site) have established a slightly more extensive geometry over the years but haven’t moved otherwise.  Look up ‘blue field entoptic phenomena’ and ‘muscae volitantes’ to see how I estimated their size. The existence of these microcoils makes me extremely reluctant to ever have an MRI -- if they  possess any magnetic properties, as their linked geometry would seem to suggest, or if they should resonate with the RF imaging pulse, the consequences would be ghastly. There is a Mythbusters episode showing what happens when iron filings are placed in an MRI machine. (Continued at Ref #146 below...)

*TPW has nothing to do with female suicide bombers, presumably a ‘red herring’ announced by right-wing elements of the U.S. government c2009 to justify domestic and worldwide tracking of TPW DVD distribution and awareness.

Postscript 2001-1115: To clarify, TPW is someone's closely guarded secret. Maybe a government's, maybe a political party's, maybe a religion's, maybe a corporation's. My goal with the discussions of TPW above and below is to give the smartest people on earth (intelligence analysts worldwide among them) the information they need to discover who owns it, so that they can find it and destroy it. Before it enslaves the critical personnel (government, military, industry religions) of every nation on earth. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Key thoughts: Evolution is not simply an ‘incidental’ fact of our Universe: Evolution is the PRIMARY DESIGN METHODOLOGY utilized by the Creator God to precipitate the development of sentient life throughout the Universe.

“Nature is the art of God.”  - Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321.  If you want to understand God, study his art...

An Illustrative Overview of Gestationism...

What is Gestationism? Gestationism is a ‘minimally’ theistic religion, embracing the theory that the ‘Big Bang’ which created our universe was a deliberate act of ‘engineering’ by a Creator God or Gods. The designer(s) of our universe chose to create it with a set of properties which we are slowly coming to understand, and which we designate (simplistically) as the ‘laws of physics.’ The ‘Big Bang’ resulted in vast clouds of hydrogen which over time coalesced into galaxies and stars. Over the past 15 billion years the nuclear reactions within the stars (and during Nova and Supernova explosions) created and distributed into space all the elements of the periodic table. This element synthesis enables life as we know it to form. Gestationism advocates Darwin’s Theory of Evolution as the primary methodology by which intelligent life is formed throughout the universe, and that the widespread creation of sentient life (on millions or billions of planets) is the intermediate purpose of the universe.

“For every grain of sand on Earth there exist a million stars in the universe.”

Universal concepts:

1) The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” may be the most Universal sociological concept ever created. It may also be the single most widely violated -- as intelligent creatures vie for power, position, and access to, or control over, scarce resources for their own sake and for the sake of their progeny.

2) Truth equation:     Truth > Freedom > Life

3) “For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost.”

4) Those whose secrets are unimaginable and inconceivable can enslave the world. Those who extend what is imaginable and conceivable can free the world. This dichotomy creates a universal conflict.

5) “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” - Martin Luther King

6) In the most universal sense of human behavior, the 11th Commandment is ‘Don’t Get Caught,’ and the 12th Commandment is ‘Win at all cost, no matter what. Win humanely if possible - but win.’ This is the law of the jungle... the strong and the ruthless thrive. It’s a great way to build a jungle, it’s not a very good way to build a civilization.

7) 99.9% of all significant events are unrecorded and unknown.

Harm and Abomination (‘Treason Against God’):

Given that the Fetal-God of our universe grows and is enriched through the accretion of sentient souls, one can logically deduce that there are acts which harm this process:

Harm:

     •     Suicide: Souls become vastly richer with life experience and suicide ends this process (a rare exception is ‘heroic’ suicide, or self-sacrifice, such as in war when other lives may be saved).

     •     Species Extinction or Genocide: Whether by nuclear or biological warfare, the extinction of any sentient species (or any subgroup of it) would be the greatest harm that is possible. Not just because it would involve the deaths of some six billion people here and now, but because it would eliminate from all future history countless trillions of human lives. This might be considered to be “Darwinism” as applied to a species’ opportunity to contribute to the Fetal-God. Species which are unable to survive their own technological birth do not contribute significantly.

Abomination:

     •     Clandestine Brain-Implantation: In a few years technology may - will, I think - allow the implantation of clandestine computer micro-interface devices not just for prosthetic use, but to interrogate the human mind, to predict its responses, to bias behavior toward or away from some act, to alter a healthy and functioning persona for some political agenda, to capture visual images or an audio channel. In the same sense that our bodies consist of cells, the Fetal-God consists of sentient souls - and a soul resides in the brain. To ‘tap into’ a sentient brain with malevolent intent is to directly ‘tap into’ a cell of the Fetal-God with malevolent intent... (Read: Matrix Realized, Science News, January 29,2005, Vol 167 p72 and extrapolate into the future.)

Odds & Ends...

     •     An interesting point of speculation: While ‘billions’ of years are sufficient to populate a galaxy at sublight speeds, due to the vast distances between galaxies it is probable that every sentient species is limited to its home galaxy and perhaps one or two others nearby. This of course assumes that faster-than-light travel is not possible. If correct it is an interesting point of cosmological design, as no single species could dominate in the formation of the Fetal-God.

     •     Assuming that there exist other civilizations in the universe, they almost certainly predate our own, as we have just recently attained sentience (if we indeed have). Depending on the assumptions you choose, the Fetal-God might at this moment consist of between a thousand-trillion (1015) and a billion-trillion (1021) mostly non-human souls. One might wonder at the ‘intellectual energy’ of even so ‘youthful’ an entity as this might possess, and whether or not it is capable of intervention with physical creatures such as ourselves -- as we are essentially proto-cells of itself. I believe that we live an existence that is essentially one of ‘free will’ as opposed to one of predetermination -- and that this is in fact critical to the development of our individual souls and therefore equally critical for the development of the Fetal-God [If the Creator God(s) just wanted ‘hand puppets’ he/they wouldn’t need anything so ponderously vast and complex as a universe.] This suggests that intervention by the Fetal-God in our lives would be rare -- but I see no basis upon which to preclude the possibility of intervention in either subtle or direct ways, such as by communication (‘angels’?) or physical manipulation (‘miracles’?). With respect to the Creator-God direct intervention seems much less esthetic, except perhaps in the sense that the Fetal-God might be able to communicate with the Creator-God at some point of development. Its food for thought, anyway.

     •     The ideas presented here are original and unique to the best of the author’s knowledge.

     •     Gestationism may be the first truly ‘universal’ religion, in the sense that it would be (will be?) relatively comprehensible to extraterrestrial sentient beings who have no knowledge of human history.

     •     Creationism vs. evolution. In a way, both are true. Our universe and the rules which govern the interaction of matter, energy, time and space were created some 13.5 billion years ago in “The Big Bang.” The ‘equations’ which define how our universe behaves allow for both physical evolution (the synthesis of the chemical elements from hydrogen) and, much later, for life to appear and evolve. Species evolution is a magnificent and beautifully elegant consequence of the design of our universe. [The Big Bang created mostly hydrogen and a little helium, that’s all. In a normal star like our Sun, nuclear fusion cannot proceed beyond iron -- yet we are surrounded by copper, zinc, silver, tin, gold, lead and scores of other elements which are heavier than iron. They are only created in novas and supernovas. Take a long look at the list of minerals in your vitamins. If atoms could talk...]

     •     “Jaws... Jurassic Park... Godzilla...” Many of the world’s greatest monsters exist only in our imaginations. Some are created by the most brilliant minds of Hollywood -- some by the most twisted minds of power. Each is equally unreal. Enjoy the first group -- dismiss the second.

We live in a ‘wilderness of lies.’ Don’t be simple.

64    2005-0124: As a fan of the Hubble Space Telescope I have watched with interest and amusement the on-again / off-again nature of the mission to save the telescope from an unnecessarily early demise. If this is truly a fiscal issue, then perhaps the Bush Administration would be willing to ask other parties if they wish to step in? Perhaps the EU, Japan, China, or OPEC would be willing to fund the shuttle rescue mission (out of petty cash) in exchange for some of the future observing time for their astronomers? We’ll need a new name, of course... How about ‘The China-Hubble Telescope’ (The Chubble?) or ‘The OPEC-Hubble Telescope’ or, perhaps, ‘The Euro-Hubble Telescope’ (The Eurubble?)? Maybe Soros, Gates, or Microsoft could buy a stake? (The ‘Intergalactic Explorer Telescope’... a little Windows logo appears in the corner of every image, of course). Wouldn’t that solve the fiscal problem? If it actually is a fiscal problem? A random thought: Wouldn’t it be ironic if Hubble were fated to be the instrument to first detect - or first confirm - that an asteroid or comet were in fact headed for earth -- but it wasn’t there because this administration was ‘rightsizing’ NASA? I am reminded of a comic ad in The New Yorker magazine long, long ago. To borrow from it: ‘Scene: We are looking up at a waterfall with the Hubble Space Telescope starting to overhang the falls. Mankind is sitting atop the telescope looking backward, answering a question from other species in the universe standing on the river bank: “Our life insurance company? New England Life, of course... Why?” ’ [Just my sense of humor this morning. <grin>]

65    2005-0125: The 11th and 12th Commandments (‘Don’t get caught.’ and ‘Win no matter what.’) are basically laws of the jungle, much like ‘eat or be eaten’. They are the laws of animals - no matter how smart or clever they may be. They are the laws yielding endless conflict over control of natural resources, over control of the tools of control. I question whether or not any long-lived civilization can be founded on these two laws, and whether or not the abandonment of these two laws as the primary basis for mass behavior are the final test for a civilization to achieve ‘immortality’ (which is the final Darwinistic test for a species). To paraphrase a story about Gandhi: A reporter once asked Gandhi what he thought about human civilization. He paused for a few moments... and then replied, “I think it would be a good idea.”

66    2005-0201: Q: What do politicians call unpublicized ‘truth’?...   (Ans: ‘Trade goods.’)

67    2005-0201: Recommended reading: [The] Matrix Realized: Connecting [human] brains to computers..., Science News 2005-0129 p72, Vol 167. The benign prosthetic use of these technologies is and will be wonderful, but will governments refine these techniques into intelligence gathering tools? Or tools to keep congress or top secret personnel in line? (Would you lie to your electrodes? <humor>). Keep in mind that this article is just the published extent of technology - most governments (USA, China, Russia) will have a 5-year lead in secret research and secret synergies (such as nanotechnology). As I have previously discussed in more detail in private correspondence, the clandestine or criminal implantation of brain ‘reading’ or ‘writing’ technology is the first and only ‘abomination’ (see #68) in Gestationism.  If in the future a group of people are involved in clandestine or criminal implantation acts, only the first person to go public (and perhaps later state’s witnesses) should be spared life imprisonment. Any person, group, corporation, or government agency willfully supporting the clandestine or criminal use of brain implantation technologies (on par with NAZI medical experimentation in my opinion) MUST be exposed and their ability to function destroyed by any means whatsoever. Victims should be paid $66 million dollars each (ie: $66E6 or ‘three sixes’, an admittedly arbitrary but rather symbolically appropriate figure). I challenge all of the religious leaders of the world to create policy on this topic if they have not already done so. [Note: Using any form of clandestine implant technology to alter the mind of a child should invoke an automatic death penalty of the most ghastly nature.] President Bush should announce to the world that the U.S. Government has never - and will never - fund, support, or utilize clandestine brain implantation or clandestine implanted body-tracking technologies (see www.apcconsultants.com)...

68    2005-0202: (see #67) An approximate definition of abomination (in Gestationism) is: ‘Treason against God.’

69    2005-0201: Injustice carries with it an interest rate which varies both with the magnitude of the harm and the time before justice is perceived as occurring. Small injustices decay to zero over time, which is why we forgive and forget them. But large injustices escalate, or compound, over time. A large injustice immediately addressed can ‘balance to zero’, but unaddressed can compound into proportions which are vastly greater than the original harm (such as the Boston tea tax). There is a deep instinctive demand for justice that is probably based upon the survival needs of our animal ancestors. It is, I suspect, founded upon such primitive principles as ‘touch my food and I’ll bite you’ or ‘touch my young and I’ll attack you’. It is a primitive stimulus-response mechanism -- reciprocity with the risk of escalation. Have you ever watched squabbling children? What A does to B, B does to A back, perhaps with a little something more. There is no reasoning involved - these are animal instincts carried forward in our DNA because they are pro-survival qualities - for individuals. It takes a great deal of socialization to suppress this instinct in members of societies. To maintain that conditioning, systems of justice must remain widely available, trusted, timely, and affordable. This is especially difficult when high-contrast cultures commingle.

70     2005-0309: [Universal concept: a concept which would probably hold true for any species anywhere in the universe] “For Want of a Nail, a Kingdom was Lost.” The full version goes like this: “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, a rider was lost. For want of a rider, a message was lost. For want of a message, a battle was lost. For want of a battle, a war was lost. For want of a war, a kingdom was lost. [Thus,] for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost. - Unknown (but old).

71     2005-0309: [Universal concept:]“The struggle today is not all together about today... it is about the future.” - Abraham Lincoln on the beginning of the Civil War.

72     2005-0309: [Universal concept:] A group of people accompanied by an old indian guide were walking on a miles-wide beach on a beautiful summer’s morning, and came upon a trail of footprints. On a lark, they decided to follow the footprints to see where they went and what they could infer about their owner. On and on they tracked the footprints until the trail began to veer and loop about wildly and with no apparent reason. Eventually the footprints resumed their original course, but later again veered and curved back and forth for miles, inexplicably. Again they resumed their initial compass heading but still later wandered chaotically. The group stopped for a pack lunch and speculated upon the owner of the footprints. “A drunkard,” announced one. “A wandering idiot,” offered another. “A fool,” suggested another. “A madman,” thought another. The blue sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds and the day was gentle and warm. Birds chirped in the distance. Finally it occurred to someone to ask the old indian guide what he thought. “A pilgrim,” he stated quietly.  The group all looked at each other in utter bewilderment. Finally one of them said, “How can that be? This trail is nothing but endless, directionless wandering?...” The old indian nodded knowingly, “That was a time of the greatest storms that this world has ever seen.” And after a few seconds, he added, “It so happens that... this trail was mine.” You know nothing of a man’s life until you have walked in his shoes...

73     2005-0309: [Universal concept:] No secret tool of power is ever voluntarily shared with anyone outside its discoverers, even within the same interest group. This leads to the splintering of every power-based group into subelements jockeying for relative position.

74     2005-0309: [Universal concept:] “Live and Let Live”: Walls of stone and steel are expensive in time and materials. Build around yourselves ‘walls of tolerance’ instead and you will be far better off. And the crops need tending.

75     2005-0309: Book of the month: The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan, c1978.

76     2005-0311: A song for our time: Enya’s Pilgrim, from her album, A Day Without Rain. It is a song for all of humanity...

77     2005-0315: The only true test for a religion is the degree to which it constrains behavior when no one is looking. Much ‘belief’ throughout history has been twisted to justify (before or after the fact) ANY behavior that its practitioners or its leaders found pragmatically useful. I was once told a story about a religionist who would never cheat an individual, but who would cheat a corporation or the government whenever he could. It brings to mind a concept that I term “the radius of ‘we-ness’ ” (think of ‘radius’ in the sense of the 50% height of a three-dimensional bell curve. The steepness of the shoulder indicates narrow or broad applicability - or - high or low exclusivity). How distant from a person do you have to be before you are no longer totally within his ‘sphere of ethical applicability’. For some people the radius is ‘family’ or ‘tribe’ (‘tribe’ can mean ‘church’ or even ‘town’). For others the radius is a shared abstraction such as a flag or a religion or a skin color. Or a pragmatic political family such as loyalty to a king or a party. Theoretically the radius might be a species (humans vs. aliens). Rarely, the radius is infinite (Gandhi?). Actually, there are multiple coexisting radii (overlapping families of bell curves) within a single individual depending on the situation: Anyone on earth would help an unknown lost child, most would give food or water to a stranger, a few would save the life of an injured enemy (as in The Enemy Below). All such radii can be narrowed or widened gradually, which is why clerics speak of tolerance (widening ‘we’), and politicians beat the drums of ‘us vs. them’ and wave symbols in your face until your eyes glaze over - it narrows the ‘radius of we-ness’. Sharpening the contrast between ‘we’ and ‘they’ is the first step in orchestrating mass herd movement (armies, voting, whatever). It is important to at least intuitively understand this human quality, because this knowledge provides us with a degree of ‘immunization’ which can be the difference between thinking free minds and herd creatures stampeding toward other stampeding herds (or cliffs) at the command of a very few leaders (hopefully wise but often not). But a synchronized group exhibiting simultaneous behavior shifts is a very powerful force. I once attended an ethical society for a year or so, and I was amazed at the amount of independent thinking and action that was prevalent. Their leader sometimes wore a hat with two bills which read, “I’m their leader... which way did they go?” Social forces created this group, as these individuals found too may points of conflict with doctrine-, politics-, and belief-based paternal churches to feel any sense of belonging, so they banded together for mutual aid and comfort. The overall effect is that two groups form within societies: Those who readily ‘magnetize’ into a north-south polarity and those who remain amorphous. One’s strength is the other’s weakness, and visa versa.

78     2005-0315: Well, its been a rough week here in Fenton on the ‘kickback’ edge of the ‘chain saw’ of technology!<grin>  I think I finally have my Mac straightened out after two reformattings of the hard drive and three complete reinstalls of the operating system. I ended up only losing a few stored emails - those since the previous week’s backup. Both my ISP (Brick.net) and my DSL provider (SBCglobal.net) have reported email handling breakdowns of one kind or another in the last few days. I applaud Apple Tech Support for their sunny attitude and patient helpfulness - and the ‘hold’ times were quite reasonably short. But the company really needs to build into OS X a ‘total backup solution’ - both with respect to the incrementally-updated OS X ‘state-of-the-moment’ and personal files and settings. And both to DVD-R sets and to external hard drives. It’s too important a process to leave to the random whim or fragmented understanding of Macintosh owners. In my case I lost almost no data but the recovery process of settings and configurations was unnecessarily long and taxing, the solution to which was explained to me only after talking to a Teir-II tech. To which I replied: “Why didn’t I know that?... and... Why do I need to know that?” System backups (and restorations) on an Apple product should be as effortless as making a pot of coffee.

79     2005-0316: The following quotes were written 28 years ago in 1977, in The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan, p189-193: “...In general, human societies are not innovative. They are hierarchical and ritualistic. Suggestions for change are greeted with suspicion: they imply an unpleasant future variation in ritual and hierarchy... ‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present’ was Abraham Lincoln’s description of this truth. Much of the difficulty in attempting to restructure American and other societies arises from this resistance by groups with vested interests in the status quo... Like mutations, any random change is apt to serve less well. But also like mutations, changes are necessary if adaptation to new environmental circumstances is to be achieved. The tension between these two tendencies marks much of the political conflict of our age...[Paragraph] ...Russell commented that the development of polymaths (remarkably gifted multidisciplinary scholars) required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which a child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual. Because of the strong pressures for social conformity both by the government and by peer groups in the United States -- and even more so in the Soviet Union, Japan, and China -- I think that such countries are producing proportionately fewer polymaths, and there is evidence that Britain is in a steep decline in this respect... [Paragraph] ...Particularly today, when so many difficult and complex problems face the human species, the development of broad and powerful thinking is desperately needed... As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our governments, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies... prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.

80     2005-0323: It is sometimes lonely on this side of God, and this both tests and tempers the steel of our souls... For if you can live content with only the companionship of God, then you are finally free to love truth above all else.

81     2005-0323: It does not distress me greatly that people sell their souls for a million dollars. But it makes me ill that they sell their souls for a pat on the head.

82     2005-0323: “Fellow citizens: We cannot escape history. The fiery trials through which we pass light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation of mankind. We say that we are for truth and justice. The universe will not forget that we say this. In giving truth the freedom to be heard, we assure justice to all those who would be free. Honorable alike in what we give and in what we preserve, we shall nobly save - or meanly lose - the last best hope of earth.” -- Abraham Lincoln (paraphrased).

83     2005-0327: We just returned from a pleasant 4-day (78F deg!), mini-excursion to Memphis, visiting the National Civil Rights Center, the Children’s Museum (3 hours!), riding the Memphis Queen (chatting with an interesting couple from London), seeing the Nile River show on Imax. I was especially moved by the Civil Rights Center where M.L. King Jr. was assassinated. Walking through the exhibits you could feel the echoes of pain, hatred, and injustice. How much things have changed. My own two boys have not a trace of racial prejudice (to my pride). [Paragraph] Due to rain we returned a day early, which was fortuitous as I picked up a Memphis virus and have a 1 degree temperature. In my fevered delirium <grin> it occurred to me that the future might hold a new stealth weapon for the powerful few. Now - I don’t know about you - but for me there is no greater delight than taking away the future tools of oppression from those who would gladly use them -- if they could just get away with it! It’s a hobby <grin>. On my apcconsultants.com web site I refer to several uses of microcoils, some of them made from nickel-titanium ‘memory metal’. Here’s a new use... and I would also like to introduce (as far as I know - I’m no criminalist) the concept of a binary crime. Memory metal holds a given shape until a certain temperature, at which point it returns to its original pre-cooled shape. As the temperature cycles around this point the metal changes back and forth between the two shapes. What a wonderful (?) future weapon, if that shape-changing temperature were, say, 103F deg (speaking non-rigorously - internal body temperature is a bit higher)! The first time someone becomes seriously feverish (and this need not be a random accident) the micro-coils (or whatever shape is best) expand and damage or trigger damage in various parts of the body in which they have become lodged. Especially the brain, eyes, and whatever. This might happen many times as a fever comes and goes due to medication. Do you think this would appear as naturally occurring, virus-induced damage? Especially if it wasn’t fatal? I’d bet on it! [Paragraph] A binary crime is a two (or more) part crime by different persons, neither of whom know the significance of their actions and each act being apparently benign. Let’s say that a cook (‘A’) is bribed to put a vial of ‘micro-coils’ in your soup, believing the act to have no health consequences - which is true in a way. Months or years pass and one day the victim either accidentally or deliberately meets someone with a virus (‘B’) and becomes ill and runs a temperature to 103.5F deg, suffering brain damage in the process (because of the expanding and contracting behavior of dozens or hundreds of micro-coils). You can’t use an electron microscope on living tissue, so the secret might be safe for decades -- until the victim dies of natural causes... and by then who cares? So who committed the crime? ‘A’ or ‘B’, or the puppet master who directed the activity? Food for thought (so to speak!)...

84     2005-0328: “Our judicial system is designed to bring to the surface the truths that are sometimes hidden. The foundation of this system is built upon fairness and knowledge of all facts.” -- Senator John Ashcroft, December 8, 1999 (U.S. Attorney General, 2001-2004)... ...Is this also the reason that trials can take ten years in the United States, and why so many cases are settled on the courthouse steps? So that hidden truths can remain hidden -- until they no longer matter? Until witnesses or victims have died of illness or old age? Or until they have been starved or bought or blackmailed into silence? What, exactly, are we building here? How, exactly, does the “last best hope of earth” function with a voting base kept carefully ignorant and misinformed?

85     2005-0330: “For each grain of sand on earth there are a million stars in the universe.” Someplace a star was born today. And someplace a star died today. This day will never come again. Ever. What did each of us do with this day? Did we brighten our souls? With knowledge? With understanding? With kindness? With love? With courage? Did we raise the brilliant sword of truth high above our heads and send its light toward the stars that God’s equations placed there? Or do we fear too much what that light will reveal to us of ourselves? Our failings, our flaws, our injustice, our false beliefs? You cannot both be ‘of light’ and be hiding from light, and you cannot choose what things the light will reveal. It reveals what it will. And if you fear that what you see will wound you, then remember that wounds are followed by healing.

86     2005-0522: There was an interview about Pope John Paul II during the week after his death that I especially remember. The comment that caught my attention was that Pope John Paul II would act or speak out without “counting the cost” of his doing so. This is indicative of the highest order of sentient behavior -- the adherence to ethical (or religious) principle at ANY cost whatsoever.  It is ironic that it was more common in the distant past than today -- how many today would be willing to die, or see their family put to the sword over ethical or religious principles? New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free Or Die,” but I question how resolved most would be.

87     2005-0522: To a very few, ethics are a ‘territorial’ issue. As in the little dog defending his yard against a much larger foe, saying in effect, “This is my ‘home’. My one place within this universe. You think you can just walk over me and take what you want? Kill every little dog on the planet if you wish, but I will give you nothing... Try me.” The little dog may well die, but he will die fighting with almost unimaginable ferocity to his last breath. And other little dogs, admiring courage as they do (‘not counting the cost’), just may come to his aid. Wounded, big dogs cannot fight other big dogs... that is why most big dogs leave little dogs alone, and why some big dogs have just three legs...

88     2005-0522: While I have no objection to legal settlements - forever sealed - between private parties, when the U.S. Government is the defendant, settlements serve to deny U.S. Citizens the critically important facts that we voters need to understand and judge how our government is functioning. Settlements keep us blind to the ‘hidden truths’ that trials (per Senator John Ashcroft, later U.S. Attorney General) serve to bring to the surface. [You can read his 1999 letter on my third page at apcconsultants.com.]

89     In the April 2005 Imprimis, David McCullough wrote, “...in the 19th century... a German engineer named John Fritz came into a steel plant one morning and said, ‘alright boys, let’s start this new machinery up and see why it doesn’t work.’ That’s very American. We will find out what’s not working right and we will fix it, and then maybe it will work right. That’s been our star, that’s what we’ve guided on.” But today in the U.S. we are not permitted to see what doesn’t work. That truth is forever hidden to benefit the powerful political interests of our time and to maintain the illusion that our government is a monolith of virtue. So we never fix anything. We have lost our guiding star...

90     2005-0413: [Universal] “...By rights we shouldn’t even be here... but we are. It’s like in the great stories - the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it is only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with you... that meant something... even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand. I know now: The folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back - only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something... that there is some good [some truth] in this world... and it is worth fighting [and dying] for.”  - Samwise The Brave, Lord of the Rings, Disk 2: 2h 44m

91     2005-0721: Earlier this week on Lou Dobbs a guest commented that The Pilgrims had a very strong sense of religious freedom -- ‘if you didn’t agree with their beliefs you were free to get out of town’. I just had to laugh!! As a descendant of both Francis Cooke (Cooke-Mitchell-Hayward-Brett-Brett- Hazen-Corwin-Hackett) and Gov. William Bradford (Bradford-Bradford-Bradford-Steele- Steele-Kellogg-Seymour-Chapin-Watkins-Weller-Walton-Hackett) and therefore a fractional-pilgrim myself, I would like to apologize for any intolerance shown to others in the distant past <grin>. Having made some progress along these lines myself, my fellow non-Gestationist St. Louisians are free to stay!! (Whether they feel the same way about me remains to be seen. <grin>) [Paragraph] But on a more serious note, freedom of religion has to mean more than just ‘being free to get out of town.’ Nor is it acceptable to allow other religionists to stay on in a subservient role... as a lower class labor force, for example. Religionists which demand this exclusionary boundaryism (we/they-ism) do so to protect their herds (often their financial and political power base) from ‘different’ ideas which might destabilize the existing power structure. If you really want to see what most retail religion is all about, walk into any congregation during a sermon and quietly start passing around your own gallon-sized collection jar. In a purely economic jungle such as the U.S., money is survival. [Paragraph] FREEDOM OF RELIGION exists when you can walk into a place of worship and announce, “I’m not one of your believers and I probably never will be!”, and get the response: “You are clearly an honest man. Have you eaten? Are you thirsty? Do you need a place to sleep... or a place to work and live among us?” That is religious freedom! That is religious greatness!

92     2005-0727: I continue to reread Jane Jacobs’ Dark Age Ahead and recommend it highly. It is far from apocalyptic and full of keen observations. Here is just one: “...Behind the success of plausible denial is an already long established North American disconnect from reality: the substitution of image for substance. The idea is that a presentable image makes substance immaterial... False image making has become a very big business throughout North America and is a stable of the U.S. Government [and politics and religion in general -- any place where there is money or power at stake. -JGH]. Legions of hired liars labor to disconnect reality from all manner of images -- images of personalities, of legislation, of corporations, of places, and of activities. Spin doctors, virtuosos of deceptive image making and damage control, have become authoritative spokespersons in political campaigns and troubled institutions, able not only to disconnect reality but to construct new reality. If that sounds confusing about the reality of reality, it is: that is the purpose of spin doctoring.” (p136) (Paragraph) 2005-0805: (Continued...) “The collapse of one sustaining cultural institution enfeebles others, making it more likely that they will also give way. With each collapse, still further ruin becomes likely, until finally the whole enfeebled, intractable contraption crashes..... A culture is unsalvageable if stabilizing forces themselves become ruined and irrelevant. This is what I fear for our own culture, and why I have written this cautionary book...” (p24). (Paragraph) “The enemy of truth is untruth, whatever its motivation...” (p70). (Paragraph) “Ironically, societies that were great cultural winners in the past are in special peril of failing to adapt successfully in the face of new realities... Formerly vigorous cultures typically fall prey to the arrogant self-deception for which the Greeks had a word, hubris, that we still use... History has repeatedly demonstrated that empires seldom seem to retain sufficient cultural self-awareness to prevent them from overreaching and over-grasping... the true power of a successful culture resides in its example.” (p176). (Paragraph) “Important consequences do not necessarily have important causes or widely known motives - especially when decisions are made by small elites who choose to be secretive.” (p181).

93     2005-0822: I highly recommend the History Channel program “Ape -to- Man” which I believe aired for the first time in mid-August. I also recommend the movie “Spy Game” (starring Robert Redford) for its portrayal of standardized methodologies by which the powerful manipulate the lives of persons of interest or usefulness.

94     2005-0901: Breaking News from National Geographic News and Nature: Scientists have sequenced the genome of the chimpanzee and found that the human genome (our complete book of DNA ‘assembly’ instructions) is 96% identical to the great ape genome. “Darwin wasn’t just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes -- he didn’t go far enough,” said Frans de Waal, a primate scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. “We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.” ...The breakthrough will aid scientists in their mission to learn what sets us apart from other animals... The number of genetic differences between humans and chimps is ten times smaller than that between mice and rats... Humans and chimps originate from a common ancestor and scientists believe they diverged some six million years ago.

95     2005-0901: As I watch the tragic aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans I cannot help but feel grief over the many wasted opportunities to prevent this tragedy (an ounce of prevention vs. a pound of cure). The local, state, and national politicians overruled engineers and bet that Category-3 hurricane defenses in a Category-5 world would be ‘cost effective’ in protecting a million lives and the economy and infrastructure of one of the largest shipping ports on earth. They lost -- but we all pay the price (to be fair, they only lost once...). There are many lessons to be learned, especially as to how fragile our civilization is... everything is connected to everything else. Also obvious is that self-sufficiency in the short term is still critically important. I once heard that there was a time when a Mormon family was expected to have enough food, available water, medicine, and ammunition (for hunting) to live for a year without outside help. That was a good idea in its time. Today, it is probably sufficient for a family to have a month’s supply of food, water (one gallon per person per day), vitamins, and medicine. A few waterproof, long-running LED flashlights with spare batteries (or the kind that you shake), a solar-charged or crank-powered AM/FM radio, a family band radio, a 12V cell phone charger, and so forth. It doesn’t really cost much money to prepare - it just takes forethought. Be prepared. Especially you Californians living near earthquake zones (who will have NO warning). As you can plainly see on TV, disaster only has to hit you once!

96     2005-0920: In pondering the 96% identical DNA genomes of humans and chimps, I can’t help but wonder if the memory storage chemicals in both brains might not be identical? Has anyone ever transferred human memory molecules (from cadavers) to the brains of chimps? Has anyone ever transferred memory molecules from one human brain to another? I can ‘see’ my memories if I choose to. Could someone else ‘see’ another brain’s memory? Surely the mechanism for chemical recording and playback, however subtle and complex, must be identical from mind to mind. Could the memory chemicals from a cadaver be used to determine the circumstances of death? I remember a wonderful science fiction story called The Forever War by Joe Haldeman which suggested military officers might be trained in a similar fashion. (I actually met Joe and his wife briefly in 1999 or 2000 at a science fiction convention and gave him a copy of my eBook, On The Plains of Hesitation, which discussed my asteroid deflection nuclear designs, mostly ‘fission penetrators’. I suggested to him that my mirrored fusion secondary ‘comet buster’ might be his ‘nova bomb’!). Another story along these lines was My Brother’s Keeper by Charles Sheffield, in which some organs and brain tissue of two identical twins involved in a terrible helicopter accident were combined to ensure one survivor - who had some of the memories and training of the other. I wonder if you could create a ‘super-mind’ by injecting the memories (faces, names, knowledge, experience) of a thousand other minds into just one person? Would that work best with adults or children? And to what end? It is a truly horrifying thought... and I wonder who else has thought of it?

97     2005-0920: I have been thinking about the John McCain story, Faith of My Fathers, aired on Dish this past weekend, and I realized that the puppet masters of this world (including POW wardens) use a common three step technique in bending the human spirit to their purposes: 1) Pain and disorientation, 2) Isolation, and 3) Presenting ONLY desirable directions of escape. These may be employed in any order, repeatedly, until the subject is either broken or dies. For example, in the movie, Step 3 was the offer to McCain to be released from the POW prison early, which would be highly useful to the propaganda needs of the state. In a domestic civilian situation, Step 3 might be any behavior which was useful to the mastering hierarchy in question. Possible masters include high-level political, religious, military, financial, and industrial cliques. Offered directions of escape might include either preselected self-constructive or preselected self-destructive choices, depending upon the purpose at hand. Naturally, a targeted individual may always choose the ‘no escape’ option, as did McCain, which then renews steps 1 & 2. I am reminded of a poster at www.evolvefish.com which depicts a religious technique from the dark ages, that of hammering a wooden cross on the head of a non-believer while yelling, “Heal!” until the victim ‘finds inspiration’... or dies. (Is it just coincidence that that same sounding word is used in training dogs to walk at your side?)

98     2005-1012: I note that this site was first created seven years ago today. Is there a statue of limitations for the crime of creating a non-Christian religion within a (more or less) Christian society?...  No, probably not. <grin>.

99     2005-1015: I have created a new chart (below) called The Evolution of Dominant Behavioral Control Modes in Sentient Species. This will be discussed in the near future. ‘Civvival’ (siv-viv-al) is coined from the words ‘CIVilization’ and ‘surVIVAL’ (sir-viv-al). Civvival is to a sentient species’ civilization what survival is to an individual. The topic relates to the constraint of human and organizational behavior, ranging from the animal extreme of brute force (above or below the table) and mindless, gluttonous consumption -to- world resource wars -to- the far extreme of a stable, knowledge-growing civilization surviving in perpetuity. Civvival requires an extremely difficult shift of ‘species mindset’ to a kind of ‘in perpetuity’ planetary husbandry of natural and human resources. I believe that many sentient species do not civvive -- although their species may survive for millions of years. The greatest difficulty in this transition in the simple fact that elements from the lower portion of the curve have fewer restraints in attacking those more ethical, constantly dragging them leftward on the chart. Many brilliant science fiction writers have explored aspects of this problem. To paraphrase a wonderful line from The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl... “We’d better start believing in civvival stories -- we’re in one!!!”    [2005-1021: Note that individuals on the chart at right are not represented by single points, but horizontal lines (actually squashed bell curves) of varying lengths. Individuals spend varying amounts of time at various points on the line. The chart is intended to describe a time-average of all individuals from all regions of the earth.]

100  2005-1025: Author’s comment: I try to write these thoughts with a reasonable degree of emotional detachment. This is, to me, a serious study of an important subject. But I have observed many arguments on many internet message boards ignited through someone reading into a comment an emotion not intended by its author (which resulted in the development of ‘emoticons’ for clarification). You will find no anger or hatred within this web site, but you will find a great love of truth and a great concern for the future of human civilization: This is a most precarious time for our species and we desperately need far-sighted, benign world leadership not owned or controlled by special interest groups. Currently, the most powerful force on earth is a democracy kept ignorant by a government that can barely function, and that irrationally votes based upon artful, emotion-pumping commercials dealing with irrelevant issues of 40 years ago rather than the growing list of pressing, complex problems facing our children. There is reason for great concern. (Matt Santos, we need you... and a thousand more like you. ‘Matt Santos’ is a character on the TV series The West Wing. Especially watch the episodes leading up to “2162 Votes” -- the last one that I have viewed).

101     2005-1025: “The difference between a citizen and a civilian is that a citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility.” Starship Troopers (the movie) based on the book by Robert A. Heinlein (the book is better).

102     2005-1025: World peace is no farther away than world justice... but there are VAST sums of money to be made via injustice. The Roman Empire was literally built upon such injustice (war plunder).

103     2005-1025: Politicians ‘live’ to rule. Engineers ‘live’ to build. Personally, I could do with a lot less ruling and a lot more building. Also, it is often between 1000 and 100,000 times easier to destroy something than it is to build it in the first place*. That’s a pretty good argument for at least respecting the concept of world justice. And engineers.      *[In the History Channel video Engineering an Empire, Rome finally collapsed through the destruction of a dozen viaducts bringing water into the city. The city’s population was reduced from one million to 10,000 (that’s 99%) in one year! A hundred rag-tag warriors with hand tools made greatest city on earth uninhabitable. Every society has its ‘Achilles Heel’.

104     2005-1025: I recommend all of the Ancient Discoveries series from The History Channel, but especially Heron of Alexandria which discusses Roman religions and the first use of mechanical devices to help collect money. “The key to every successful religion is [collecting] money.”

105     2005-1102: I sent an email over the weekend to islam@irf.net from the main web site in Pakistan. The loss of life - especially that of children - due to the earthquake in Islamabad is too painful to contemplate. Because so many deaths were due to collapsing buildings - even schools - I respectfully suggested that perhaps a new class of cleric be created: A cleric-engineer or a cleric-inspector. These incorruptible (!!) specialists would be guardians of the building standards and the actual construction, and owe their allegiance (and employment) to the religious hierarchy (and therefore to the people of their regions) rather than to the builders or politicians, so that disasters of this magnitude never happen again. Especially schools! Every new building should carry three 200mm bronze seals near the main entrance: That of the architect, that of the builder, and that of the cleric-engineer -- so that if the building should ever fail the responsibility would be clear. That is similar to how Professional Engineers in the western world are held to high standards. If a religious hierarchy puts its seal on a building, it puts its reputation on the line. [Addendum: There has been no reply to date.]

106     2005-1102: I have been thinking about Rosa Parks this last week, and what lessons we might all learn from her life: Rosa Parks showed us how a single, defiant act of courage in the pursuit of justice can change the world! And there is a second, more subtle lesson: If you possess the tools of power, use them wisely and with restraint, or they will be taken away from you!

107     2005-1102: I suppose it was due to Rosa Parks’ death that my thoughts touched momentarily upon ‘deathbed conversions’ recently. Consider that in chess, ‘bishops’ are adjacent to the most powerful pieces... and that they only attack obliquely, never head-on? Do you really think that is accidental? Those who create new religious concepts do so from the very center of their souls: Anyone (in the far future!) telling you that I have made a ‘deathbed’ or ‘last minute’ conversion to another religion is a liar. (And yes, there are drugs which can get anyone to either appear to cooperate, or to even actually cooperate* with any charade... so even if a videotape showed my lips moving and my voice speaking... they would still be liars. What a world we live in!!) This shouldn’t be too shocking to you -- Heinlein once wrote that “there were a lot of liars in the world... approximately as many as mouths.” Heinlein was probably the most unbounded mind of the last century.   *[In the late 1990s there were reports in the media about precisely-drugged victims in South America ‘willingly’ going into their banks and signing over financial assets to clever criminals. Curiously, the reports faded away (old news?). The interesting challenge of proving ‘sentient authentication’ of one’s own free will is addressed briefly in the science fiction The Gripping Hand by Niven and Pournelle (recommended reading, by the way). See page 326-327 at “The authentication was more trouble than the message had been...” The discussion of the process runs on for about a page. I am also reminded of the complex process for detecting replicants in Blade Runner].

108     2005-1108: Recommended viewing: Digging for the Truth. A History Channel program on religious archaeology.

109     2005-1108: I have decided to term Gestationism’s Second Abomination ‘Sanity Weapons’. The use of any technology or technique for the malevolent destruction or diminution of any sentient mind for any purpose, such as discrediting, crippling, enslaving, or, limiting or preventing the dissemination of ideas or the communication of personal knowledge. Some possibilities include the clandestine use of: chemicals, pharmaceuticals, the transfer of brain chemistry (human to human or animal to human), the disruption of brain chemistry or electrical function, conditioning techniques, acoustical weapons such as infrasound, EMR, induced tinnitus, implanted microelectronic devices (such as the Eardrum Micro-Harpoon transducer), sensory deprivation, forced visual imagery (such as a contact lens or intra-eye display), REM sleep deprivation, radiation, and so forth. The same reasoning as in the First Abomination applies.

110     2005-1111: My compliments to the people of Dover, Pennsylvania for having the resolute courage to take back their schools from those whose stealthy purpose is to plant within the tender minds of all children the levers by which to later demand fealty. Teach your children the truth as best you can. You owe them that above all else.

111     2005-1112: [2005-1110 rewrite, this is a tough topic] The principle immediate concern of Gestationism is working (or at least ‘thinking’) toward a perpetual high-level planetary civilization. By ‘high-level’, I mean approximately the technological state of the USA today and not some optimized agrarian civilization focused on ‘not starving’ in the immediate future. A key measure of success is the positive growth in total knowledge. The most obvious starting point is the world’s only remaining superpower: the USA, whose economy might be described as a dangerously-flawed implementation of ‘special-interest-group capitalism’ (think of our tax code). Pure capitalism is what Lenin described (and this is the only thing I know about Lenin) when he said, “capitalists would sell you the rope with which to hang them.” Pure capitalism would sell H5N1 vaccine to the highest bidder, and the rest of you can die or not, as chance dictates... how does that sound? Pure capitalism works well about 95% of the time in optimizing routine supply and demand. It fails  miserably when there are large time lags between supply and demand (as the long history of boom and bust cycles in the oil industry demonstrate) or when non-renewable resources need to be conserved, or thoughtful future planning is required. The planet as a whole is close to being purely capitalistic, with vast corruption and mafia-like transnational aspects assuring that the rich and powerful get what they want. In other words, our planet is literally an economic jungle of animals trying to survive. It is collectively so bad that the utter mess in the USA looks - and is - relatively sterling in comparison. The risk that lays just ahead is that the competition for national survival could easily reach the level were conflicts become destructive on a global scale: deliberate viruses or hand-carried nukes unleashed to devastate some economies and benefit others. So clever are the planetary puppet masters of earth, and so easy is destruction to implement, that no one will ever know who is behind what catastrophe, or even if they are manmade or natural... but the risk of a downward global spiral is very high. [Paragraph] Symptoms of how far short of ‘intelligent capitalism’ we in the USA really are, are everywhere: Corporate bonuses, political pork, health care, homeland security, reengineering, de-manufacturing, outsourcing. We can ‘feel it’ happening, though we don’t understand why, exactly. While an ‘economic biomass’ can get by with just a pulse, nations need a ‘heart’ and a ‘soul’. Today’s politicians owe their allegiance to those tiny factions who really put them in power and whom they will rejoin after their term in office -- all of the patriotic sugar water ‘rainbirded’ in all directions not withstanding. Our political system is almost automated: Secure the free and dedicated labor of activist volunteers (and by implication, their blessing) at the far left or far right. Raise money by incurring implied obligations. Stampede the central herds to swell the numbers. That’s how you win elections, not how you build civilizations. And if you think winning elections is all that matters, take a long look at all of the other democracies of the world. Our founders did NOT design our democracy 225 years ago to optimize the performance of government -- they designed it solely to limit it’s power (!!) and vote out tyrannies! We need something more: A government loyal to all of us. A government that can build a civilization -- not just unleash havoc on one. More on this later...

112     2005-1112: I was surprised at the vigorous attack by a number of Catholic organizations against what appeared to be a historically accurate, if brief, history behind the holiday we call Christmas. Given that Walmart is simply a competent distributor of goods (while practicing atypically good corporate citizenship) the threat of economic bludgeoning over what was probably just ‘canned’ email text seems a rather petty and overzealous response. I know a number of very fine Catholics and I thought the tactic rather beneath you. It is interesting but unsurprising that your first thought was economic warfare... that seems to be a central Christian theme. My only disappointment in Walmart was the rather cowardly firing of the employee who sent the message (unless there are unreported aspects to the situation). I am reminded of a line in The Majestic attributed to a WW-II soldier who died in Europe. The letter falls from a book copy of the U.S. Constitution, “Please do not mourn my passing, but move on and live your life to the fullest in order to give mine meaning and to honor the cause we are over here fighting to achieve. When bullies rise up the rest of us must join together to beat them down, whatever the cost. Its a simple idea I suppose but one worth giving everything for.” Bullies do come in so many different forms... I would urge you good people at Walmart to have a large display of the DVD The Majestic on sale over... The Holidays? [Paragraph] I also enjoy John Denver’s movie, “Oh, God!” A thought for touchy Christians everywhere: If the intent is sincere, there is no ‘wrong way’ to wish someone happiness. While I am not a student of Christianity, it seems to me that Christmas is not about Christ. It is about the principles that he hoped to teach. You could call it Saturnmas or Kindmas or Giftmas or Familymas or Santamas -- and I suspect that he would be the first to say that his name is the least important aspect of the holiday. Correct me if I’m wrong?

113     2005-1205: Religion by its nature is supra-legal, commanding devotion far above ‘the petty laws of man’: Murder is ‘okay’, bearing false witness is ‘honorable’ and so forth if one’s belief’s - or the guardians of those beliefs - demand it, often in the name of the 12th Commandment. Religious devotion need not be to a god, it can also be to a king, a politician, a benefactor, an organization or a symbol. Or money. Or some combination. One’s loyalty to children, family, tribe, or church are almost always supra-legal to some degree. Much depends on whether the system of law is perceived as impartial and just - ‘of’ a society - or simply a tool of the powerful allowed the useful illusion of being ‘of’ a society. If we are a nation of laws, then we are a nation whose justice must be its highest religion and worthy of belief. Otherwise we are a nation that believes in something other than itself...

114     2005-1205: If, as I have read, large megawatt windmills cost $2/watt to build, then the $500 billion spent on the war in Iraq (ignoring the loss of life) would have purchased 250 billion watts of wind generator capacity (over a decade) and created tens of thousands of meaningful technical and construction jobs. If these wind generators were to run about a third of the time on average, they would have provided about 7% of total U.S. electricity (7% of 1.1 terawatts) and slightly reduced our consumption of natural gas and coal. It’s an interesting ‘guns vs. butter’ comparison. Check my math. (Note: The final total may be $1 - $2 trillion).

115     2005-1205: I have been reading the detailed accounts of ‘extraordinary rendition’ and subsequent torture of individuals kidnapped from... everywhere... with horror.  If the reaction to the west’s presence in Iraq might be termed a ‘cultural immune response’ then why are we now further inoculating the rest of the world against us? If the McCain Amendment passes but is prosecution-crippled into uselessness (so that we voters will never learn in open court of the state-of-the-art torture techniques available at political command, and) so that torture may continue effectively unimpeded, there is the real potential for reciprocal escalation more terrible than anything ever seen before: If you torture a person and they live, they (and their families and tribes) will almost always dedicate their lives to destroying you (the west) in return. So... is the CIA murdering all these people afterward? Or did you wish to create a dedicated field of enemies (perhaps to carry implanted passive tracking and audio monitoring instrumentation)? Is this just a ‘tag and release’ program with torture providing motivational hatred?

116     2005-1205: May you each enjoy and celebrate the winter holidays in exactly the manner that you choose!

117     2005-1206: I sent emails yesterday to about 20 U.S. manufacturers of standby power generators suggesting that they lobby congress for generous tax credits for gas stations and convenience marts who install standby generators to pump gas during a wide area power failure -- especially during the evacuation of a city. I also suggested that they ask Homeland Security/FEMA for support in this effort. Note that gasoline pumps, cash registers, and lighting are relatively low power and that  store air conditioning and refrigeration compressors are of secondary importance -- so I am suggesting modest standby power systems similar to those available to homeowners.

118     2005-1206: In the same spirit as Mormon preparation for troubled times I would suggest that families (of four) accumulate over time about a cubic yard (3’ x 3’ x 3’) of canned goods for an emergency (stews, heavy soups, chili, vitamins, etc) and a reasonable amount of water (one gallon per person per day). Slowly consume and replace this food to keep it from becoming too dated.

119     2005-1215: (#111 continued) In round numbers, our congressional salaries total $100 million. This is 0.004% of our $2.5 trillion budget -- much of which is poorly spent or outright wasted. The living costs of a congressman are so high that they are constantly looking for speaking engagements, free lunches, free vacations, free travel, and so on, unless they are wealthy when they arrive. This makes them vulnerable to almost every lobbyist or big money vendor in Washington, D.C. If we were to pay every congressman $1 million dollars per year we would be spending only 0.02% of our budget on congressional salaries (a highly efficient mutual fund expends 0.25% in fees -- ten times more -- and that is a vastly simpler management environment). We could then insist that no other income was permissible and no freebie was allowed, period!  You are there to work for us and WE  - on behalf of our children - demand your complete loyalty. In Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, his Chapter 14: Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions summarizes a number of problematic social and governmental  conditions which are collectively, disturbingly close to describing the U.S. today. I especially call your attention to the part about ‘leaders no longer sharing a common fate with the masses,’ but the entire chapter is devastatingly on target. This will be the book studied a thousand years from now when future scholars want to understand ‘what happened.’

120     2005-1221: Those wishing lighthearted winter reading might try to find a copy of Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg, c1979.

121     2005-1231: A Parable of Secrets: Of three organizations, ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’; ‘A’ doesn’t know of the existence of ‘B’. ‘B’ doesn’t know of the existence of ‘C’. ‘B’ knows the secrets of ‘A’, ‘C’ knows the secrets of ‘B’ and therefore also knows the secrets of ‘A’. Like this: A<B<C. Perhaps ‘B’ was created by a stealth ‘A’ defector, perhaps ‘C’ was created by a stealth ‘B’ defector. And there are many other possibilities as to how these factions emerged: nationalistic, political, financial, religious, combinations of these and so on. To test the integrity of the (complex) links sometimes an innocent independent (unrelated) person or organization ‘i’ is used as bait. The greater the potential of ‘i’ the greater the ‘splash’ and the stronger the reaction is to the ‘ripples on the pond’ and the wave-reflections of hidden objects which result. This is of paramount importance to ‘C’ to test that it is still the final link in the chain -- otherwise it is just a pawn to a hypothetical ‘D’. So who is really running the show? Why, ‘E’ of course. Because the existence of ‘E’ is unimaginable. If this isn’t in the book, The Art of War, it really should be. [Paragraph] Most of the traditional power sought by ambitious people is in reality very limited and small. The real power of this world lies in quietly steering the fate of the human race over the course of centuries...

122     2006-0108: “No ‘bound mind’ ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” - Helen Keller, paraphrased. She used the word ‘pessimist’, but I think it too narrow a term for such an elegant truth. If you strive to achieve any of these things, you must first dismantle the provincial walls of comfortable illusion, brick by brick, in whose shadows you cower-- and bare your soul to the light of truth. Embrace it. Welcome it. Let it fill your heart and soul. And you will never know darkness again.

123     2006-0127: Half of the misery and injustice which has ever existed in this universe can be attributed to the following rationalization: “God’s ends justify whatever means His servants choose to employ.” The Armies of Daylight by Barbara Hambly, p130. Note: There are many whose ‘god’ is power or money or social position, no matter what they loudly profess to believe in. Most ‘beliefs’ are not chosen because they call to your soul, but because they offer positive economic and social consequences.

124     2006-0127: As your mind and spirit grow, you must continually reevaluate the foundations of your beliefs.

125     2006-0211: (#111 continued) The greatest flaw in the design of the U.S. Government is that it is almost impossible to ‘prune’ or reshape its structure. An analogy might be that our nation is a giant oak tree supporting - and intertwined with - a vast, often parasitic/sometimes symbiotic vine (with leaves red on one side and blue on the other) whose burden (weight, nutrient and water theft, wind and snow loads, etc.) is approaching the upper limit of what the tree can withstand. Each spring the oak tree chooses whether the vine’s red leaves or blue leaves get to face the sun, but this changes very little. Since by the rules the vine is making most of the important decisions as to their combined future, logic would suggest that the likely outcomes for the oak tree are rather bleak. Hurricane Katrina, for example, cost the tree an entire branch, but the vine itself  lost almost nothing. One might well inquire whether our nation is defined as the tree or the vine? [Paragraph] The only hope that I see for the oak tree is for it to awaken to its precarious situation and gather the systemic will to do some very serious pruning and shaping -- irrespective of the vine’s soothing lullabies or dire predictions -- in order to belatedly try to protect its own survival. But simply choosing red leaves or blue leaves will achieve nothing. You are going to have to choose a new kind of leaf... or watch your nation ‘wither on the vine’...

126     2006-0226: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. ” - Martin Luther King, Jr. (The preface in my son’s school library book: The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau.)

127     2006-0226: One of this week’s news items was that after 17 years -- 1/4th of an adult life span -- the last Exxon Valdez damage suit might  be settled in the next year or so. What kind of a nation allows such delays? A nation by the people for the people? Or a nation by the rich and powerful for the rich and powerful? If some giant corporation stepped all over your life, would you be content to wait and/or starve 11-17 years for justice? There is always an election coming up. Why not send a clear message and vote for change? And WHY are you letting the politicians tell you what they want to talk about? Why don’t you tell them. Mute ALL election commercials - they are purely emotion-pumping garbage. Democracies always get what the majority deserve... good or bad. Choose the future...  you’ll be living in it.

128     2006-0228: Proactive U.S. Crude Oil Pricing: Our energy crisis is permanent. In fact, it will eventually get far worse. If we prepare for this inescapable reality modern civilization can take it more-or-less in stride. If we don’t, it will be catastrophic. The problem with a simple free market is that it cannot see very far into the future -- thus the endless boom and bust cycles of the oil industry... and the boom and bust cycles of research and national attentiveness. The purpose of the proactive pricing model (at right) is to guarantee the absolute certainty of gradually increasing crude oil pricing, month by month  -- within which framework  our U.S. free market can then work efficiently. This is achieved simply by establishing a minimum pricing line below which the U.S. crude oil market price may not fall. When the world market price drops below this line the government reaps bonus tax revenue (which incidentally encourages a more stable world). If the world market price surges above this line the higher price must be passed on to consumers. But within the mind of every consumer is the utter certainty of a steady increase in crude oil products’ cost. This is the key to adapting our economy to our new energy realities through conservation, vehicle engine downsizing, better use of insulation, and the broader universe of all energy-related economic interrelationships. It will also serve to prevent the killing off of alternatives-research and alternatives-economics every time world crude oil pricing drops for a couple of years. Something similar is probably desirable for natural gas. From this point forward we dare not deal with our energy economy simplistically.

145     2011-0828: To paraphrase the Rev. John McDowell: “No social collective can be great unless it is first good. When it ceases to be good, it is no longer great.”

146    2011-1012: (continued from Thought of the Month at top. I will gladly take a polygraph test to confirm that all of this is true. ): Neurologists around the world should look for certain measurable TPW effects, assuming that the process is similar with every victim - but I can’t guess to what extent TPW is customized. All of the following occurred only at the transition into sleep: The most severe symptom is what I term a Total Body Start (or Spasm). Every muscle in the body contracts for an instant, and it was literally over with before I was aware that it had happened. A single neurological cascade of perhaps 10 milliseconds duration. It was most disquieting, but rapidly diminished in frequency from once every 4 days to once a month. This spanned about six months, the last one was c2001. Concurrently and lasting to the present day was a jaw-slam impulse, which I coined a ‘j.exe’. In the first year I bit my tongue badly a few times, but the intensity diminished. At present they are merely a twitch. These occasionally occur when I am awake and daydreaming, too. Describing the dremem chains (coined from ‘dream’ and ‘memory’) is difficult, but I will try: Do you remember the final scene in the movie Twister where the two main characters were being lifted into the F5 vortex? There was an inner vortex and and outer vortex. Imagine them at much slower speed. Dremems are driven by a meandering ‘audio narration track’ which is like the inner vortex, and the visual imagery sort of lazily morphs along in tow like the outer vortex. On a few occasions I had to consult a dictionary upon awakening to look up dremem words not in my vocabulary. I also have experienced death several times in the first person, but it wasn’t my own, it was the character whose eyes I was drememing through... very much like when Harry Potter dream-witnessed the snake attacking Mr. Weasley in The Order of the Phoenix (at 1h 08m). For example, c2001 during a subjective 25-second episode placed in an aging middle-eastern hotel conference room ‘I’ was shot twice in the chest. I felt the wounds as only a tingle, the dremem ended and I woke up breathless, my heart pounding. I have also dreamed of feeling ‘at home’ in about 30 different homes and neighborhoods that I have never seen or been in. I deduce that the memory of ‘home’ is a very powerful one to the human ‘heart’. I am reminded of the 1950s experiments done with flatworms. A flatworm is shocked after a light comes on and twitches. After awhile the flatworm twitches just from the light coming on, without a shock. The trained flatworm is ground up and fed to an untrained flatworm, and lo, the second flatworm twitches when the light comes on. Technology has come a long way. In twelve years I have experienced (at 20 dremem chains per night) about 87,000 dremem chains. Thankfully the intensity of those dremem began dropping off rapidly in 2002. [2016-1130: I have abandoned 'dremem chains' as too difficult to define. I now use a dremem sentences.] I thought perhaps these intense non-native memories would be burned into my mind forever, but I noticed c2008 that they were starting to fade. The non-native aspect of TPW dremems beg the question, is someone trying to develop the technology to extract intel from deceased agents, assets, or captives? Now read Ref #147 (next), with the understanding that ‘god’ is definitely in lower case in this instance. [Paragraph] There is an enslavement movie that you need to watch, Point of No Return starring Bridget Fonda. Now note the Circle-D reference on the timeline chart (July 2001). That designates a brief ‘drugged’ or ‘trance-state’ interrogation at about 5% consciousness. I was asked, “What would you do if your wife asked for a divorce.” I was completely taken aback. It would be 21 months before I would face that question in real life. For those of you bored with the daily humdrum of life, I highly recommend the simultaneous stresses of TPW and divorce. [Paragraph] 2012-0731: I remembered another neurological symptom which is still measurable. I call it a Sleep Apnea Interrupt and it occurs about twice a month. Beginning with TPW, my occasional apnea lapses are interrupted after a few seconds with brief loud sounds which startle me wide awake. The sound duration is 0.1 to 0.2 seconds, and the specific sound effect rarely reoccurs. On one occasion it might be a single  beep of an alarm clock, on another a single chime of a doorbell. Or a short car horn blast, or a partial whoop of a siren, and so forth. The sound effects do eventually reoccur, but there must be at least 20 different effects. The phenomena seems deliberately engineered to me, and I speculate that prior TPW versions lost subjects to apnea-related deaths.

147     “He who learns must suffer, and even in our sleep pain that cannot forget Falls drop by drop upon the heart, And in our own despite, against our will, Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” -Aeschylus, 460 BCE. Greek playwright and soldier, often described as the father of tragedy.

148     2011-1012: I find this profound passage in Dark Age Ahead (p69) applicable to religion: “...Most people do not enjoy having their entire worldview discredited; it sets them uncomfortably adrift... A paradigm tends to be so greatly cherished that, as new knowledge or evidence turns up that contradicts it or calls it into question, the paradigm is embroidered with with qualifications and exceptions, along with labored pseudo-explanations -- anything, no matter how intellectually disreputable or craven, to avoid losing the paradigm. If a paradigm is truly obsolete, it must finally give way, discredited by the testing of the real world. But outworn paradigms ordinarily stand staunchly until somebody within the field makes a leap of insight, imagination, and courage sufficient to dislodge the obsolete paradigm and replace it...  The enemy of truth is untruth, whatever its motivation.”

149     2011-1012:The greater the crime, the geometrically greater the desperation to keep it covered up. Extreme acts by fringe members of an organization tend to ensnare the entire organization in a desperate cover-up of the act lest the entire organization be ‘painted with the same brush’. This is especially true for organizations which project the illusion that they are monoliths of virtue. Obvious examples that come to mind are U.S Government agencies, the military, corporate America, and religious hierarchies. This is greatly amplified in democratic societies where mass approval (or at least the avoidance of mass disapproval) is critically necessary on short time scales for economic and political sustenance. As these organizations cantilever further and further from the bedrock of truth they, and sometimes portions of their supporting societies, become destabilized like a wobbling top. We are seeing something very similar in the United States now. Jared Diamond’s Collapse describes the underlying causes in his 14th Chapter.

150     2011-1012:“All men need something greater than themselves to look up to.” From the movie Elizabeth.

151     2011-1012: All human organizations and societies practice selective suppression and amplification of good and bad, pro and con. Within a social ‘tribe’ (large or small)  the good is trumpeted and the bad goes ‘unseen’. The reverse is often true when one tribe views a competing tribe. This can apply to sports teams, political parties, nations, or religions. In the same sense there is a selective permeability of opportunity and advancement within tribes for individuals with qualities apparently most aligned to the tribal interests. This produces stable social ‘vortices’. Individuals enter, live their lives, and retire, but the vortices remain essentially unaltered. It commonly  produces ‘group think’, a condition where no individual dares to stray from the tribe’s perspective or consensus for fear of losing status or even being expelled... typically with punitive economic consequences and as an object lesson for other closet ‘free thinkers’. ‘You will think (or pretend to think) the way we tell you to think, or else this could happen to you, too.’ ‘Conform or suffer.’ ‘You work in our mines at the wages we choose to pay, or your family will starve.’ It is the law of the inquisition, the unrestrained corporation, and countless other petty, ruthless, vicious puppet master regimes. And it is the most common reflection of mankind’s might-makes-right animal instinct.

152     2011-1021: In the last few years I think I have discovered the whereabouts of the missing ‘AntiChrist’.  Do you remember at the end of the Terminator-3 movie the revelation of the nature of SkyNet? That’s right, ‘the AntiChrist’ exists as distributed ‘fearware’ and ‘hateware’ within the hearts and souls of Christians everywhere (shall we call it ‘HerdNet’?).  He resides within the human R-brain -- that ancient, primitive seat of evolved instinctive behavior -- and plucks the strings of territoriality and herd conformity*. He urges you to follow your leaders, as doing so increases herd unity -- and as with sheep and horses it is vastly easier to control just the single lead animal. Thinking results in herd diffusion**.  Thus, if you wish to find the ‘AntiChrist’,  allow yourself to be filled with fear and hatred... then look in any mirror. Or surrender your proxy vote to Operation Rescue and other quasi-assassination cells of the Christian Underground (the all-inclusive superset of Jeff Sharlet’s The Family).   *[Conformity is pro-survival for the individual, but anti-survival for societies.]    **[In the early 2000s the leader of the St. Louis Ethical Society sometimes wore a ball cap with two sun-visors -- one offset left and one offset right. The cap read: “I’m their leader, which way did they go?” SLES is for the most part an ‘assembly of independent thinkers’ (albeit leftish ones) and thus a little chaotic. I was a member of SLES for a year and enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of their varied programs. In 2002 I showed them how to put a year’s worth of their weekly program audio tapes onto a CD-R and created sample cover art, although I could not commit to donating the massive effort of converting 52 hours of tapes. In 2003 they had a fundraiser to reseal their novel conical roof, and when I was called for a donation I told the woman that, ‘I was sorry I couldn’t do more, but I was in mid-divorce and my $100 per quarter donation was my limit at that time’. She then said, quite pleasantly, “Well, then, let’s just make this an ‘exit interview’.” As soon as I could assimilate her meaning, I was content to go along her suggestion. Smart, caring people for the most part, but I’m not sure I understand them. Or them, me. Perhaps I wasn’t sufficiently liberal... or rich?

153     2011-1021: The evolutionary qualities which optimize individual survival are often counterproductive with respect to ‘civvival’. As an example consider China’s severe but critically important population controls which fly in the face of half a billion years of reproductive animal instincts. Yet those same unrestrained instincts would create a society in which billions would starve. China saw long ago that which the rest of the world still prefers not to face -- civvival resources are finite.

154     2011-1021: If you define someone outside your control as sub-human, if you define them as inadmissible to ‘heaven’, it is much easier to treat them as animals and destroy them. ‘Liberty and Justice for All’ doesn’t apply to animals. Ironically, it makes you less human and less admissible to ‘heaven’ to do so.  A man’s understanding of God can be no greater than his own heart, mind and soul [See IEI]. For any person on earth to believe for a single moment that the creator of an entire universe of endless trillions of galaxies (or the fetal God growing within it) can be ‘snowed’ by the clever loophole gamesmanship of insect-level minds such as ours is the highest form of human hubris, and pulls away the velvet curtain of Oz to reveal the raw manipulative motives behind it.  If you want to understand God, study his art.

155     2011-1021: It takes a great deal of conditioning for people to believe they are forgiven every wrongdoing just because they ‘wish upon a star’. If you really want to be forgiven, communicate with those you have harmed and make restitution. Otherwise stop pretending that you care.

156     2011-1021: While the creator God exists outside our universe and cannot (I think) intervene in its development, the fetal God exists and grows as part of our universe (its purpose in fact) in other dimensions we cannot comprehend (ie: ‘soul space’). Through either a collective or fractional ‘node’ of will, the fetal God may have prerogatives of interaction whose terms, rules, and limitations I am uncertain of. I am certain, however, that the fetal god will not intervene to save mankind from its own stupidity and folly. Our species and our planet’s future is our challenge to deal with, successfully or not. So far I don’t think we are doing very well -- we are squandering resources like there is no tomorrow and appear unable to organize the collective will to get out of the rain -- more difficult issues are simply left unspoken. It’s more comfortable to just leave our heads in the sand and pretend the consequences of folly will not arrive in our lifetimes -- a philosophy of species cowardice which will reverberate for millennia.

157     2011-1103: Perfect crimes can be either undetectable or unbelievable. The first rumors of WW-II Nazi extermination camps where dismissed as too horrific to be credible. And yet they were real.

158     2011-1103: On the front page of the Jan 28 - Feb 3, 2000 issue of the South County Times newspaper, Vol 53, No. 39, there is an article about my work titled Saving The Earth from Asteroids. The article includes an illustration of my FP-4 fission penetrator design, intended to blast some 4000 tons of rock from the surface of an asteroid as reaction mass, to minutely deflect the orbit of an asteroid. The article is available to interested parties.

159     2011-1103: I sometimes wonder if the revelation of the existence of The Perfect Weapon as possibly being a private weapon averted or delayed a second 9/11... or worse. Do you remember the sly motive in The Sum of All Fears to precipitate war? Victims of peak-TPW feel a desperate compulsion to strike out at their invisible and absent attackers. Eventually they will just ‘make do’ with their historical enemies. I would say to Washington, D.C.: Whether this is your ‘deep black’ technology stolen for private use, or a corruption of  private university research, you had  better get it under control, because (just like an ICBM trajectory) TPW now has a return address. It is: St. Louis County, Missouri, Bible Belt, USA. That fact can be used... or misused. I do not know what will happen the next time TPW is used overseas, but they will know that you knew...

160     2011-1103: ‘Theology’ is like R&D. ‘Religion’ is like Sales & Marketing. Most people believe more in religion than in God. A belief in God constrains one’s behavior, a believe in the sociological force of religion does not.

161     2011-1103: Persons who spend their entire lives learning how to ‘manage’ and ‘control’ people can get to be very, very good at it. Their motives can be altruistic or selfish. The latter is the way to bet.

162     2011-1103: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke.

163     2011-1103: Every church is believed by it’s congregation to be the center of the universe and they are the only ‘true’ believers. Thus ‘God’ loves them the most... though it is understood that He is too polite to embarrass all the others by saying so...

164     2011-1103: Historically the best way to wear down a tenacious opponent is to alternatingly supply ‘peace’ in order to be able to take it away. Peace then conflict, peace then conflict. The ‘conflict’ need not be earth-shattering -- often it is the tiniest and most trivial frustrations which penetrate our self-control: ‘Your car is totaled? These things happen. A tiny door ding? That’s wanton carelessness!’ Human souls suffer ‘fatigue’ just as metal does, and eventually most ‘break’.

165     2011-1103: “There have been tyrannical gods, and there is the God who makes us free. Tyrant gods, nowadays, do not, as a rule, assume the names of gods. They prefer pseudonyms. But their tyranny remains the same.” -Henri de Lubac, Cardinal of the Catholic Church 1896-1991.

166     2011-1103: Laws cease to have meaning for criminals who are many times smarter than law enforcement agencies,  when legal complexities (like classified technologies) postpone justice forever, or when terminal illnesses place criminal pawns beyond the reach of deposition or punishment. Do you suppose that there is a cell within the Christian Underground named The Terminal Corp.? I imagine they could do anything they wanted to do.

167     2011-1103: I recently ran across a humorous but meritorious story in the internet called Survival of the Stupidest by Johannes Koelman. The point of the article was that mass-stupidity creates  pressures which force smart people to  behave co-stupidly. Funny but true. For example, if the masses are irrationally hoarding (say) rice, so that it cannot be found on store shelves, then on the rare occasion when I happen to find it in stock, I must buy much more than I really need or want, because it is so rarely available. There is also a photo of a (stupid) beaver which was squashed by the falling tree which the beaver itself cut down. A metaphor for a fair amount of  human behavior, I suspect. Easter Island comes to mind, for example.

168     2011-1109: During the 2008 election circus there was an interview by or with a religious leader who said, approximately, “Every religion in the USA competes for [dues-paying, vote wielding] members.” I remember thinking how true that was. How sad that social institutions fundamentally intended -- and certainly advertised -- as being ethically pure should prostitute themselves via commercial and political pandering. Shall there be a race to the bottom with free lunches and carte blanche revolving-door ‘forgiveness’ for all members’ deeds, providing that your donations are above a reasonable minimum? Upon arrival at the pearly gates will St. Peter check a roster and say, “Well, let’s see... you were a lying, cheating, backstabbing, scheming, hateful, hurtful, unrepentant SOB... but, hey, you gave money to your church, AND you know how to spell J-E-S-U-S. You’re in, buddy!” If so, heaven must be a ghastly  place -- I  hope there is a third choice. Valhalla maybe?

169     2011-1109: Modern Christianity, as a business and political enterprise, and perhaps most historical religions as well, desperately need -- and foster -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt in order to bind together their herds, otherwise they would disintegrate into a thousand bickering factions.

170     2012-0501: Think of me as a sort of ‘real life’ Harry Potter...  I’m ‘the heretic’ who lived, I have a ‘scar’ on my head, and I have suffered horrible non-native dreams.  I was pleased to see that Harry lived ‘happily ever after,’ though I can permit myself no such illusions. <g>

171     2012-0501: “Power is the only truth.” - A Lion In Winter. When all of history exists only via the internet, it can be re-written at the whim of those in power. Burn this to DVD.

172     2012-0703: If the collective will of the uber-rich and powerful dominates the future, they will all end up living in huge, lavish estates surrounded by tall walls with broken glass embedded in the top, and armed guards with guard dogs, afraid to venture out into the world they have made. Wealth divergence is the natural outcome of the instinct for territorial expansion and dominance.

173     2012-0706: Foreign governments wishing to interview me about TPW (and I have much more detailed information to share) may arrange for a two or three day debriefing at a neutral location. I strongly prefer the Swiss Embassy in Washington, D.C.  I have no idea if you will be allowed to contact me -- I assume not -- so you will probably have to send a determined courier to my home with a proposed meeting date. To prevent harassment scams, the courier must deliver $5000 in cash as a bond that the meeting is real and to cover travel expenses. Any unused funds will be returned. The proposed date should be at least 30 days in advance. Please include an additional member of  the Swiss Embassy staff for my personal security. Organizers may include a representative of the U.S. Government in the debriefing if they wish, but he must sit in the back row and may not speak... they haven’t earned that right. The conference should be video recorded for study and for posterity, but all must agree that it will not be used for commercial purposes without my permission.  I will retain the copyright on all video and printed materials. I would ask that an ACLU staff member known to me be present, as well as representatives of three additional nations of my choosing, for a minimum of eight total. I will ask to be introduced to some of the attendees within their respective Embassies the day or two prior to the conference.  Note that the original 2007 TPW data DVD-R (not the video DVD-R) contains my biometric data in the hopes of  making ID fraud more difficult, but ‘buyer beware’ - the kind of people who field TPW exist in ‘a wilderness of mirrors.’ It’s all they do and they’re good at it. Further, I suggest that you not wait too long... powerful people will want this story covered up or discredited through disinformation.

174     2012-0708: “I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” - Thomas Jefferson. Beautiful words, long forgotten.

175     2012-0708: “Nor do the gods appear in warrior’s armour clad, to strike them down with sword and spear. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” -Bhartrhari, c600 CE. (With respect to The Perfect Weapon, ‘gods’ is definitely lower case).

176     2012-0709: It is the solemn duty of journalists everywhere to comfort the shareholders and share the comforts. (New corporate version. I prefer the original myself.)

177     2012-0715: It was reported by CNN in December 2001 that a commercial airline pilot over Europe used his intercom to inform his passengers that, “Anyone who isn’t Christian must be crazy.” That is not an evaluation, it is a definition. It’s very tribal, meaning that ‘they’ are not part of ‘us’ and are thus subhuman and unworthy of human rights and consideration. That reminds me of... Nazi Germany and the Jews. What has changed in the hearts of man beyond the sloshing waves momentarily defining ‘we’ and ‘they’?

178     2012-0715: “If someone has something that you want, make them your enemy so that you can take it away from them.” -Avatar training manual (the movie).

179     2012-0717: Advice to all TPW victims: Wait 1-3 hours after waking before making any important decisions. Longer in the early years, less in the later years. A night of intense violent dremems (emotional discharging) will be followed by a morning of emotional tranquility, but a night of tranquil dremems (no discharging) may be followed by a morning peppered with angry thoughts. DO NOT hold on to any anger. Release it from your heart and soul at once. All of it! Without anger to work upon, TPW is merely a pesky burden, not your master. Your ‘Id’ may groan at the constraints that you place upon it, but you will discover that your ‘Id’ wants to survive, too. What you understand, it understands. You can gradually relax your self-control in the 4th and 5th years. One extra word of warning: The unjustly and hideously abused emotional animal portion of your mind (the ‘Id’) can react to unexpected provocations much faster than the reasoning portion of your mind can countermand it. By about a half-second. Until the 4th or 5th year post-TPW, you must constrain your ‘Id’ to act only with the delayed approval of your integrated mind. You can train your mind to always keep it’s guard up. Avoid any alcohol consumption until years 4 or 5.  I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO HEAR FROM, OR OF, OTHER TPW VICTIMS. If any have survived.

180     2012-0721: “...creation stories [of the distant past] gave the members of each tribe an explanation for their existence. It made them feel loved and protected above all other tribes.  In return, their gods demanded absolute belief and obedience... The creation myth was the essential bond that held the tribe together. It provided its believers with a unique identity, commanded their fidelity, strengthened order, vouchsafed law, encouraged valor and sacrifice, and offered meaning to the cycles of life and death..... The creation myth is a Darwinian device for [group] survival... The truth of each myth lived in the heart, not in the rational mind.” -Edward O. Wilson in The Social Conquest of Earth, p8.

181     2012-0722: “Over the years, I have come to recognize a principle relevant to our understanding of the evolutionary origin of the ants and other social insects: the more elaborate and expensive the nest is in energy and time, the greater the fierceness of the ants that defend it.” -Edward O. Wilson in The Social Conquest of Earth, p130. I am inspired to suggest that this is a subset of a universal principle that I would term ‘preservation of social infrastructure’ applicable to all societies - especially man’s - in defending ‘nests’, ‘crops’, ‘herds’, ‘territories’, and the control systems which interconnect them, in the preservation of an existing social  structure. Further, the higher up the social hierarchy you go, the more unbounded and ruthless the determination to maintain or advance the social infrastructure underpinning it. For example, a dictator may fight social change ‘to the death’ with all the weapons he has at hand even to the complete destruction of his society... for if deposed he (and his family and loyal staff) will likely be  powerless for life (if they live at all). More generally, people will do almost anything to obtain power... they will do anything to keep it. Those who commit crimes will expend vastly more effort and expense to cover them up... and for the same reason. This might be globally termed the ‘hysteresis of social status’ where the ‘cost’ paid to advance is dwarfed by the ‘cost’ of falling. The human species is ‘eusocial’ at the family level, but less and less so at higher levels.

182     2012-0731: “All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmond Burke, British Statesman. This strikes me as a cosmological truth. Throughout the universe societies must struggle with the balance between those who selfishly wish to feed their personal or group appetites for ‘more’ and those who seek fair and just balances. This is individual instinct conflicting with the limited resources in any society.

183     2012-0731: I had an interesting conversation with an atheist today. He was as confident of his perspective as I am of mine, and he gently challenged me on several points and made me think about what I am attempting to say with Gestationism: I think that religion can serve or enslave. Religion can heal or wound. Religion can align a society to work toward a common ascendancy, or toward a common destruction. Religion employees a degree of conformity to work toward a common goal, but excessive conformity is apocalyptic -- ask any lemming. Ask Nazi Germany. Ask Stalinist Russia. Ask all the societies of Jared Diamond’s Collapse. All Believed, and all perished.  It is not belief that sustains a species’ existence, it is behavior relative to environment. When Dante was inspired to write, “Nature is the art of God,” he elegantly expressed the single most central truth in the universe.  If you want to understand man, study religion. If you want to understand God, study his art. Mankind needs to move on to a higher and a brighter guiding star of behavior. And with such collective cooperation as has never been seen before. The alternative is to collapse in a feeding frenzy of resource consumption from which mankind may never recover. Assuming no new magic cheap energy source, I regret that this is the way to bet. Geological eons of accumulated instinct call out from seven billion human hearts: More for me! More for my tribe! Conquer, grow, win, control, influence, bribe, suborn, lie, cheat, steal, don’t get caught! More for me! More for my tribe! Mankind is presently mired on a suboptimal plateau of  behavior. Good enough to survive... for now. But not much longer. As on Easter Island, the world expends finite resources on foolish goals, and trips more and more often over the growing debris of  past decisions and past injustices. My atheist acquaintance is correct that religion isn’t the answer. ‘Behavior’ is the answer. God doesn’t care what you believe, only how you behave. But perhaps all of mankind can agree to believe in the art of God, even if some prefer to call it ‘nature’? That’s a beginning.

184     2012-1005: “I want to go after the hand the holds the whip.” -James Bond. [Don't forget the hand that writes the check!] From the ‘history of’ program on DISH at 8PM. Good for you 007! A word of advice for all Bond-kind: Technology has allowed the creation of whips that lash only the soul and leave almost no visible scar. They are held in the hands of jackals with an unquenchable thirst for absolute domination, and the genius and training for subtlety and obliqueness. It is not enough to simply kill them, for there are a hundred more willing to take their place. You must make their deaths so anomalously horrific that every other jackal in the world will pale at the thought of following in their footsteps. “[Predators] only understand pain,” for death and torment are their food.  Mr. Bond, be gentle with those who are hearts are benign, be savage with those who are malevolent, and for God’s sake learn to distinguish between the two -- tortured innocents can become militant, that does not make them malevolent. That is fairly rare. Extend your pithy metaphor to include those who profit by making and selling the whips and slaves, those minds who enslave the hands, and the untouchable few who manipulate, prod, and provoke the world for their own secret ambitions and greed. The world is too complex an ecosystem of power and money for simple solutions. Godspeed, Mr. Bond. 2012-1008: Put less colorfully and more generally: Every sentient species must control the destructive potential of the lower tail of the  ethical bell curve... and the measure of this planar slice through it’s society’s multi-dimensional topography must be defined with the greatest rational care, or in the extreme it ends up killing all Jews, all Blacks, everyone in Tribe ‘B’, every ‘heretic’ in every field of thought, and so on. Furthermore, competing special interest groups must never be permitted to define their own criteria, else every tail of every possible planar slice will be destroyed, resulting a society consisting only of a central blob of conformist mediocrity. Consider that every revolutionary advancement in human history has been the brainchild of one solitary individual and accepted with reluctance or even outright opposition. (Galileo and the church of Rome for example, one could list a thousand others. The aging Archimedes being killed by an ignorant, annoyed soldier is the perfect example of the lower end of the bell curve destroying the upper. If a sentient species does not absolutely forbid this, perhaps it isn’t so sentient after all? Civvival [Ref 99] requires advancement no matter whose ox is gored: those of every established power hierarchy included. Indeed, it is the ‘pinnacle of power’ hierarchies (states, departments, churches, political parties, corporations, etc.) that must be watched most closely, as they have the greatest means, motives, opportunities, and significant control of information and disinformation. You don’t attain any power in any corner of the universe without an appreciation of ruthlessness,  the subtlety of preemptive action, and other ‘non-team-player’ management ‘solutions’. In a tighter and faster society, perhaps Galileo would have had an ‘accident’? Perhaps Darwin’s Beagle would have been lost at sea? Perhaps Einstein would have been hit by a car? How many geniuses (genii)  have we never heard of because they were culled by some petty lord and master who obeyed only the 11th and 12th commandments? Who ‘owned’ his law enforcement administration? Or who controlled the flow of information and disinformation? Jesus Christ was culled in just such a manner. As a thought experiment, crucify the thousand greatest minds in human history, and project their absence into today’s world. Civvival demands ‘troublemakers’ and ‘whistleblowers’. Demands them! I apologize in advance to all the petty tyrants, Enron-wannabes, economic royals, and bureaucrat empire-builders of the world that this inconveniences.

185     2012-1005: I sincerely urge all INTERNET NEWS SITES to include, in fine print, the editorial staff’s physical mailing address (or P.O. Box) for FIRST CLASS MAIL ONLY on their home page. You see, the act of selecting a “Contact Us” link telegraphs to monitoring agents, legal or otherwise, human or automated, the possible intent to send physical mail, and thus makes the successful reporting of esoteric issues to the press (perhaps embarrassing to the U.S. Government, such as whistle-blowing) much less probable. It is, after all, the U.S. Postal Service, and their routing equipment scans all addresses on an envelope. But if every one of a million hits per day on a news site receives the physical address, monitoring agents will never know which 0.00001% will actually send mail, nor when. This makes news suppression much more difficult. If the governments of the world haven’t thought of this yet, they soon will.  Email is too easily inspected, altered, or deleted in transit by automated puppet masters. Phone calls are logged, recorded, and analyzed by computers.  Only mail, by it’s sheer anonymous volume, is reasonably confidential. Our future liberty may require this minor change. The bandwidth cost is negligible -- and it would be cached most of the time anyway. Yes, you may incur some minor additional mailroom handling costs... deal with it! A few good leads each year could justify the inconvenience. “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” -Napoleon

186     2012-1006: All of the easy paths in life are downhill. Both for individuals and entire civilizations.

187     2012-1006: ‘The rich and powerful do as they please, and the poor and powerless endure what they must.’ - Early Man, 150,000 BCE. [Universal]

188     2012-1006: [Duplicate]

189     2012-1006: “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” - Herman Goering, Nazi Germany. [Probably Universal.]

190     2012-1006: “Success is not measured by what you have accomplished, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.” -Orison Swett Marden

191     2012-1202: “The pen is ONLY mightier than the sword” if someone dares pick up the pen, and many dare spread its message.  You must choose to live in a world of ‘pens’, or you will live in a world of ‘swords’.   - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1839, paraphrased. [Universal]

192     2013-0430: “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” -Anderson Cooper’s mother (Gloria Vanderbilt)

193     2013-0521: “I do not intend to tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at death.” -attributed originally to Eleanor Roosevelt

194     2013-0801: “The Gods are best served by those who want their help least.” -Zeus (in Jason and the Argonauts)

195     2013-0801: “...we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.” - from the movie ‘Chocolat’

196     2013-0801: “Too many people in our world disappear. They fall into the chasm between what is said and what is done.” “Lies are NOT freedom.” -William Hurt’s

                               character in Gorky Park

197     2013-0801: There are some people who believe that if they destroy everything they dislike, they will like all that remains. In reality, nothing will remain.

198     2013-0801: “Morality in its highest form consists of being good regardless of what befalls us.” - David J. Wolpe in Why Faith Matters

199     2013-1115: In her new book What If, Shirley Maclaine writes, “What if the ignorance of truth is the root of all evil?”  I rather like that, and I agree that ignorance of truth is the root of some evil. But I suspect that it is the utter indifference to, and irrelevance of truth, that is the root of most evil. Truth gores oxen, so oxen are protected from truth. And there are a lot of oxen... approximately as many as there are people.

200     2013-1115: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”  -Ralph Waldo Emerson.

201     2013-1115: ‘Noble Cause corruption’ is one of the most insidious, and most common mechanisms by which good people go wrong. For example, when you taint or suppress evidence - truth - you damage the very ‘ecosystem of faith’ that sustains us all.

202     2013-1117: The really clever way to enslave a unique and unbidable high-value asset (or enemy) is to provoke them to commit an unforgivable felony recorded by a hidden camera (say, the murder of a spouse during a divorce). Then instantly offer to have it officially declared ‘an accident’ in exchange for a lifetime of servitude. Only the master and the slave would ever know.

203     2013-1117: The really clever way for a close-knit  group of radical 2nd tier politicians (and their financial backers) to ascend to power, would be to provoke an incident whereby the entire 1st tier is vaporized. And  they would then be granted... “powers that would make martial law seem like anarchy.”

204     2014-0411: The USA has been nicknamed ‘The Great Satan’ in some quarters, but this is hyperbole. Any evil that is done is a consequence of a society ruled not by principle or constitution, but by a worldwide oligarchical dominance game founded upon the 11th & 12th Commandments, hidden behind a train wreck of twisted laws, bread and circuses;  with a corporatized news media selectively muzzled or unleashed by the intertwining interests of their masters with others. Where once stood a nation of  pioneers and builders, now kneel servants of economic royalty, clothed in decay and conformity, grateful for each pat on the head (good dog). By your leave, this land should be known by a epitaph far less grand... and it will be. I am inclined to suggest some variation of the book title, ‘A Legacy of Ashes’. I once heard it said, “Never has a nation been so determined to destroy itself.” Perhaps that might read, ‘Never has a house been so indifferent to the destruction of its own foundation.’

205     2014-0411: “The incompetence of [government] is not [necessarily] a reflection of the competence or intelligence of [its] managers -- it is the intrinsic consequence of their limited control of complex systems. If the system has reached the point of being ungovernable, even the most brilliant and experienced managers will fail because it’s not the managers who are incompetent, it’s the organization itself that is incompetent.”  -Charles Hugh Smith, The Incompetence of The... Deep State is Unavoidable, March 25, 2014.

206     2014-0411: A few months ago I happened to watch an unusual movie, Cloud Atlas, that overlaid genuine points of wisdom on scenes that were at times a bit too raw for comfort. These are the thoughts which caught my attention: 1) “The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds, that go and impressionate themselves throughout all time.” 2) “Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness we birth our future.” 3) “All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.” 4) “All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.” 5) “Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principles of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives.” 6) “I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head.” 7) “Truth is singular. It’s ‘versions’ are mistruths.” 8) “Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”

207     2014-0411: The status of one’s soul in the afterlife is determined, in part, by how many dogs that will vouch for you. Probably cats and other pets, too, but I’m certain about dogs. (Dogs are about the most intelligent creatures on earth incapable of duplicity. In contrast, chimps are just capable of duplicity. Dogs are especially popular in Washington, D.C. for this reason.)

208     2014-0514: I have just finished Mitchell Stephen’s Imagine There’s No Heaven and there are so many excellent quotes and insightful passages that I don’t know where to begin. You will just have to read it, but here are a couple of my favorites: “Tolerance is always easier to support when you need to be tolerated than when you are being asked to tolerate.” (p159)  I am reminded of the ‘tyranny of the majority.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein was once asked by a minister if he believed in God? “Yes I do,” he answered, “but the difference between what you believe and what I believe may be infinite.” (p206)  That strikes me as a Universal Truth.

209     2014-0514: The Universe’s religions might be portrayed as leaves on a vast theological tree. All of Earth’s past religions and beliefs (including atheism) are like tiny leaves along a twig. Gestationism is not so much a new sprouting leaf as it is an awareness of the tree and the nature of leaves. In contrast to Earth’s lone twig, the tree itself may be miles tall and  miles wide... and growing. Every leaf has some structural qualities similar to every other leaf, which I refer to as ‘universal’ as they are a consequence of the evolution of sentient minds within evolving social matrices. The ‘Golden Rule’ is a good example of a quality likely to be found among sentient creatures everywhere in the Universe. As an aside, while I think it likely that there are handfuls of sentient civilizations per galaxy, communication between any two of them is most unlikely. The distances are too vast, the speed of light too slow, and they may not exist at the same time. That’s a shame, as we could learn a lot from such different minds.

210     2014-0514: CORRESPONDENCE: I welcome correspondence from any author whose work I have listed below, others I have reached out to, and those sincerely interested in an occasional and tolerant intellectual discussion. For email, follow the instructions at the bottom of this web page. Because of the shear mass of telemarketing and robo-calls, I do not answer phone calls from blank or unrecognized numbers, but you may leave a clear, noncommercial message and a call back number. Email is preferred.

211     2015-0219: Judgement at Nuremberg starring Spencer Tracy was on TCM tonight. Here are the somber  words of Judge Dan Haywood (Tracy): “The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime, is guilty.” “This trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary, even able and extraordinary men, can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination.” “There are those in our own country, too, who today speak of the protection of country, of survival. A decision must be made in the life of every nation, at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. When it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. The answer to that is: Survival as what? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the world let it now be noted that here in our decision, this is what we stand for: Justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.” “Herr Janning, ‘I didn’t know it would come to this.’ Judge Haywood, ‘It came to you the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.’”

212     2015-0219: I have written in the past of stable social vortices (akin to the great red spot on Jupiter). One of the most powerful forces in regulating social vortices is economic survival, as proxy to actual survival.  Upton Sinclair put this very neatly when he wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Of course,  in this context he is referring to ‘functional behavior’ rather than ‘intellectual comprehension’. A man may know that he is wrong but nevertheless continue to act to preserve his income and social position - as proxy for his and his family’s survival.  This is by far the single most powerful force in social vortices. It is also the most potentially self-destructive, as it reiteratively narrows conformity until a society splinters apart, often violently. This is an aspect of the evolutionary principle of Directional Selection, called ‘Stabilizing Selection’ which acts to narrow the distribution of key characteristics of a species. If it narrows too far - like a species of  bird dependent upon just one flower - existence becomes precarious... and potentially impossible.

213     2015-0220: “I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they come from.” - The recent movie and character, Captain America.

214     2015-0220: “The only time the truth comes out is when one side is going after the other.” -Unknown, heard on MSNBC Dec 11, 2014 at 7:15 AM.

215     2015-0315: “I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” -Thomas Jefferson, c1780.

216     2015-0315: In the past week or so I have emailed a dozen distant neurology scholars and researchers - hopefully beyond  the latent repressive control of St. Louis ultra-conservative power players - in an attempt to begin correspondence to gradually disseminate the many unpublished details of the symptoms induced by the invasive brain technology I call The Perfect Weapon, and to further destroy its usefulness as a ‘secret’ or classified weapon. I would like every neurologist on the planet to be aware of this technology... and its likely future refinements. Not one has replied by any medium (at least I have received no replies) even to state they were too occupied, or to suggest another researcher. I am certain my inquires made it as far as distant servers based upon the new spam-splash-back. I can understand how researchers dependent upon government funding and good will would be reluctant to entangle themselves in illegal pinnacle weapons experimentation. Perhaps the United Nations or The Hague ICJ or ICC would be less intimidated? With the magnitude of media and communications suppression available to local and national ultra-conservative groups, it will be difficult for them to ever become aware of my situation. To be clear, I have never and will never speak to local neurology researchers about any aspect of TPW. I would strongly prefer that even distant specialists in this field be avowed agnostics or atheists, and independent of financial, religious, or government leverage. I’m sure it is short list. By the way, except for the minor residual effects of TPW, I am in excellent health. Naturally, if the ultra-conservatives can keep my story bottled up long enough I’ll be dead, and they can make up any story they wish. Is that the plan?

217     2015-0319: Ironically, there is a lot of wisdom in the action movie Shooter (2007), starring Mark Wahlberg, regarding human nature. Our species is trapped between the instinctive behavior which gave us evolutionary success, and the need to rise above it. We constantly produce local, regional, and national bullies who ruthlessly fight to create economic, religious, and political power-dynasties for their own benefit - the Roman Senate comes to mind. And Napoleon. And Stalin. And the endless parade of bought-and-paid-for marionettes in Washington, D.C. (selected for their extortional controllability, never for their leadership potential). Throughout history, what have they achieved? Death, injustice, gluttony, dysfunction, and waste on a planetary scale? In this country, the ‘rule of law’ is supposed to bind all of our government officials. Does it? Does it even slightly? The ‘rule of law’ is a EF-5 debris field of ruin. It was just too damned inconvenient to the powerful (and their invisible minions) to be allowed to function as the founders intended. In chapter 14 of Collapse, Diamond writes that beyond a certain size, governments loose sight of the needs of the society as a whole and behave with increasing dysfunctionally. Complex systems grow their complexity to the point of collapse. Both appear to be happening in the U.S.

218     2015-0319: “Politics makes lies truthful and murder invisible, and gives an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” -George Orwell, paraphrased.

219     2015-0319: “Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart.” -unknown.  It’s true. I have to watch that.

220     2015-0319: You all understand that the phone system in this country is just a huge computer network, with all the flexibility and vulnerabilities (hacking) of any computer system. AT&T is required by law to make a connection between a caller and a callee, but no law specifies the nature of that connection. For example, if you are not on a computer’s hypothetical ‘white list’ and repeatedly get only busy signals, I (or others) have probably just answered an instantly switched-in canned robocall or telemarking call. Heaven knows I get enough of them! Probably 80% of my inbound calls! Interestingly, there appear to be bursts of such nuisance calls correlating with past communication attempts on my part. Most callers would simply give up after a few attempts. Furthermore, I know of no laws requiring email to be delivered to an addressee, and without modification or substitution. O’ Brave New Controlled World. New laws need to be passed to prevent such heinous abuses.

221     2015-0719: Some weeks ago the news agencies reported that more than 20 million government employ records were hacked. I would request of the hackers (if they should read this) that they check to see if my name is on that list, and to publish that fact if it is. This would directly implicate the U.S Government in, at minimum, the coverup of TPW, and would be (I think) legally actionable by my attorneys.

222     2015-0719: “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” -Ayn Rand. A brilliantly accurate observation, but I can’t help wondering how we ‘Matrix dwellers’ can discern reality in order to embrace it, with every important and revealing reality suppressed or spun by the many institutions of power that depend upon the ignorance of the masses and must at all costs avoid the illumination of their self-serving works?

223     2015-0719: I have never appointed anyone to speak on my behalf and have never granted anyone my power of attorney.

224     2015-0719: The distinction between ‘line’ and ‘staff’ authority is one of the critical elements in human systems. The power to act or choose lies solely with ‘line’ personnel. ‘Staff’ personnel can only advise.  The separation between line and staff authority is central to understanding the nature of human organizations. A related concept  is what I term the ‘Radius of Concern’. Selfish people have a very small Radius of Concern. Selfless people have a large Radius of Concern. Naturally the radius varies by topic, immediacy of impact, and personal profit motive (think of a spectrum chart). The Radius of Concern is often entangled in conflict from the need to balance multi-varied interests through compromise. Persons with line authority typically have a small radius of concern (self, employment survival, not making a mistake) whereas those with only staff authority can embrace a larger Radius of Concern as they look beyond short term issues. Hierarchies naturally prefer to incorporate persons with small Radii of Concern as they are more predictably loyal to the short-radius interests of the organization. In contrast, a whistleblower’s Radius of Concern is typically larger than the radius of the organization.

225     2015-0719: Those purple and red vertical bars in the early portion of the TPW Timeline Chart represent more or less bi-monthly ‘calibration & conditioning’. I recall bits and pieces of many of them (and have contemporaneous notes). As best I can deduce, there were two groups, call them ‘A’ and ‘B’. I think the ‘A’ group was playing the ‘B’ group using me as either bait or as a trusted medium of (mis)information. The ‘B’ group was probably unaware of ‘A’s existence. I recall one question about the HNT protocol, “How do you stop neutrons?” (relating to an HNT-defense scenario), but I didn’t have the functional capacity ‘in trance’ to clarify their fundamental misconceptions (it’s complicated).   I do recall on a dozen occasions providing answers to questions while in an odd kind of light sleep (but not at all like a dream or dremem), most often speaking misinformation before I could even process an honest answer. I was vaguely aware of this as a ‘dispassionate observer’ and could remember bits and pieces upon awakening. I was allowed to answer a few questions honestly: An elderly man asked me c2000, “Would you like to do something important with your life?” That was easy, I replied, “Yes.” (Who would reply otherwise, even in trance?...  And how am I doing, old timer?) While I was not aware of any recording equipment being present, it seems likely that after my death audio or video snips will be released of me saying (or doing?)  whatever I was made to say (or do?). If so, they are pure fiction.

226     2015-0719: I recently emailed Archive.org to request that archived copies of my web sites be protected from modification and deletion. I doubt that this is possible in the long run as there is always someone somewhere who can be bribed or extorted to misdeeds. But there is always hope.

227     2015-0815: This is one of my notes from my logbook as a TPW survivor (see the illustration below): 2005-0601 4:30 pm: While scanning in [family] photos on my Mac, I noted a small and annoying visual artifact in my left eye which was blocking my lower left central vision, like a blind spot. The artifact started quite small (like covering one word of this) and then slowly grew larger. The egg-shaped perimeter had a serrated edge like this: VVVVVVV (like the edge of a gold paper seal) where the legs of the serrated edge were (pulsing) very bright white or sometimes colored brilliant red or blue (the eye was covered and closed for this observation) as they seemed to dissolve like some kind of [radially migrating]  failure. The vaguely egg-shaped region slowly grew over 20 minutes to encompass the entire left eye visual field. It was difficult to read text in the early stages (I was ‘slightly’ alarmed for a few minutes), then text reading became easier again as the region became larger. After 30 minutes the anomaly grew larger to the point of being beyond my peripheral vision. At 5:05 pm as I write this, there is no further affect and my vision seems normal in every respect. This visual anomaly only occurred on this one occasion. I’ve always assumed it was a microcoil array ‘seal’ failure (see ‘microcoils’ on my APC Consultants page), either in my eye or in my brain. But that is just an ‘educated guess’.

Suggested reading (in the order that I discovered them)...

     •     Zenna Henderson’s Ingathering is a joyful and beautifully written fiction offering an unusual and comforting religious perspective. The stories are mirrors by which we can see the best and worst that humanity can be.

     •     C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet, written in the early 1900’s, offers unusual religious imagery.

     •     Wall Chart: There is a fantastic wall chart available at:  http://www.wmnh.com/wmgsche.htm  called A Correlated History of Planet Earth documenting 4.5 billion years of Earth’s past in incredible detail. Included are plate tectonic maps, mountain building events, volcanic episodes, glacial epochs, magnetic reversals, asteroid and comets impacts, and the development and evolution of life on Earth. A stunning presentation of man’s accumulated knowledge in diverse fields of science. About $20-$25. Highly recommended!

     •     Resource Wars by Michael Klare. As the world becomes smaller and the competition over limited resources (oil, fresh water, timber, etc.) becomes more heated, worldwide conflicts will grow in number and severity.

     •     The Mote in God’s Eye by Pournelle & Niven. An alien species trapped in a distant solar system experiences endless cycles of civilization and collapse. Robert A. Heinlein said that it was “possibly the best science fiction I have ever read.”

     •     The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight by Barbara Hambly. A delightfully written and engaging trilogy that also serves to metaphorically describe and contrast many of the conflicts between power and truth in today’s world. Highly recommended.

     •     Imperial Hubris by Anonymous. A hard look at governments and world wide religious conflicts. My highest recommendation - ‘required’ reading.

     •     A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson. The true story of how British espionage in World War-II was vastly more important in winning the war than armies. But it also demonstrates the enormous power of misinformation and misdirection -- necessary in war but frightening in peace. (Did you know that Stalin murdered 30,000 of his best troops due to four forged letters planted by Nazi Germany?) ‘Required’ reading. It suggests the question: ‘What is truth’ when letters can be forged, fingerprints reproduced, DNA stolen and planted, witnesses suborned or relocated, email edited or deleted or faked in transit?... These are perilous times for ‘truth’.

     •     The End of Oil by Paul Roberts

     •     Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (Extremely recommended)

     •     Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs, see item #92 above.

     •     The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

     •     The Battle for Peace by Tony Zinni and Tom Koltz (recommended immediately after Diamond’s Collapse)

     •     The Family by Jeff Sharlet. ‘The Family’ is the political and apex-economic wing of the Christian Underground.

     •     An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus, 1798  (Extremely recommended) 2011-11: you reflect upon the projected population increases expected this century with the peak availability of cheap natural resources -- oil, coal, natural gas, fertilizers, fish populations, etc., it becomes obvious that the human population will peak late this century in a desperate feeding frenzy of resource consumption for food production, ‘civvival’ essentials, and energy. Since our Earth can only sustain 1-2 billion people in perpetuity (without vast new cheap-energy sources), the process of population reduction will almost certainly be horrific. The best but most unlikely alternative is birthrate limitation on a planetary scale. It is not inconceivable that faced with the unpredictable risks associated with natural mass-death scenarios, that a farsighted if ruthless handful in many governments will prefer ‘managed’ population reductions for their food and energy competitors through deliberate pandemics or by magnifying naturally occurring starvation events... but likely not through war, as that would both consume and destroy needed resources. It is not the case that mankind is too stupid to survive, but that the systems of governance which evolved over generations and consequently control us, are too stupid to survive. Mankind has created mammoth lemmings upon which we collectively ride as fleas, but which we scarcely control, and we will plunge into the sea with them. As anyone can tell by observing Washington, D.C., the U.S. Government was deliberately designed to prevent the formation of tyranny at the price of efficient functionality. As a result we have two competing and vastly powerful political engines each of which believes it is infinitely better ‘to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven’. In such a system the eventual arrival of ‘hell’ is the way to bet. The human species will undoubtedly exist -- at least in dribs and drabs -- for millions of years, but the height and breadth of future civilizations, constrained by post-21st century energy and resource levels,  is in grave doubt... for the most part they will be concerned with feeding themselves and husbanding resources. It is not clear to me that future societies can even maintain the technological levels we will see this century.

     •     Survival of the Stupidest by Johannes Koelman (a short article on the internet). Humorous but with genuine points of merit.

     •     The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson, 2012.  (Excellent).

     •     The Happiness Hypothesis, and The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt (Excellent; and a ‘keystone’ achievement, respectively).

     •     Why Faith Matters by David J. Wolpe

     •     Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

     •     American Nations by Colin Woodard (Very clarifying. The U.S. is ‘a sack of cats’ because it has always been ‘a sack of cats’.

     •     Imagine There’s No Heaven by Mitchell Stephens. A very thorough and readable history of religion and gradations of belief and disbelief.

     •     Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein, and  The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. My Brother’s Keeper by Charles Sheffield. (All brain-related.)

Suggested viewing...

     •     Powers of Ten video, at http://www.eamesoffice.com/films/Powers_of_Ten.html

     •     At www.Discovery.com:  Humans: Who Are We?,  Seeking Noah’s Flood, Who was Moses?, The Real Eve, If We Had No Moon

     •     Hyperspace mini-series as seen on The Learning Channel (TLC). Created by TLC and the BBC, and hosted by Sam Neill, the three programs: Life, Survival, and Destiny present and integrate many of the concepts of Gestationism with superb special effects. Nice job, Sam (et al)!!! At www.Discovery.com

     •     Supermassive Black Holes    Astonishing new knowledge about how galaxies develop. Offers the prediction that Our Galaxy will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in 3 billion years. At Discovery.com

     •     Who Wrote The Bible?    A most interesting two-hour video on the multiple origins and authors of the Bible, including the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. At www.HistoryChannel.com

     •     Jesus: The Complete Story   An amazing anthropological study of the life of Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity.

     •     The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan, Subtitle: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. I pulled this book from my library recently, not having read it since it was given to me in the late 1970’s. It is one of the milestones of human self-awareness.

     •     Ape -to- Man (2005) available through The History Channel. A superb presentation of the ‘evolution of evolution’.

     •     Spy Game (starring Robert Redford) for its portrayal of standardized methodologies by which the powerful manipulate the lives of persons of interest or usefulness.

     •     Ancient Discoveries: Heron of Alexandria available through The History Channel, presents a few interesting comments and examples as to how Roman religions collected money via early mechanical devices. “The key to every successful religion is [collecting] money.”

     •     Digging for the Truth. A History Channel program on recent religious archaeology.

     •     The Crusades: The Crescent and the Cross. A History Channel two-part program.

     •     How The Universe Works - SuperNovas (2010). A Science Channel program.

     •     Who Really Killed Jesus? . A National Geographic Channel program

     •     The Mortal Storm . A 1940 Jimmy Stewart movie about... conformity.

     •     Judgement at Nuremberg starring Spencer Tracy.

     •     Two of my favorite movies are Joe vs. The Volcano (1990) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000).

     •     Rules for Rulers (YouTube), 19 minutes. A humorous but accurate discussion of governance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

256     2016-1015: “Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.” - Gandhi

257    2016-1029: I have a statistical universe of dremem experience on which to base the opinion that The Perfect Weapon (TPW) isn't simply a murder weapon. It would be more accurately described as an advanced  psy-ops technology, with murder being at the far end of the 'dial'. Its primary value is to obtain 'base response previews' by subjecting a targeted individual to a directed 'dremem' storylines and observing the responses at various points in the story. Perhaps this feedback is obtained by observing breathing patterns (via a 'bug' in the bedroom), or perhaps via some classified form of remotely powered 'neural dust' (see #251). I am fairly certain that the feedback signal is very coarse --  akin to an integer scale from -3 to +3 with zero being either neutral or indicating a lack of comprehension -- requiring a reformulation of the storyline to obtain a useful response. Example: Let's say that you wish to 'preview' the likely responses of key players in Moscow. Or Tehran. Or at the Pentagon. Or at Microsoft, or in Hollywood. Using a gentler application of TPW you slowly build a map of how these players will react. Let's say that you have managed to install TPW on 500 subjects. Some of those subjects are 'hawks', some are 'doves', some are ambivalent, some crave money, or power, or sex, or escape.  You discover that some of those people are unbidable, but others can be bent -- or are already aligned -- to your will. The former group you try to shift from pivotal positions of power, the latter group you try to shift into pivotal positions. In this manner you can dramatically alter the odds of success in future real-world gambits, such as enabling the collapse of the USSR, or in other ways reshaping the world power and economic structure as you wish. All of which are controlled by people, individually or in fairly concentrated political or economic groups. There isn't a power in the world that wouldn't want TPW as a lever of invisible influence.

I was awakened at 5:55 AM this morning by a complaining bladder (I then slept several more hours). The 'complaint level' increases so slowly -- and diminishes the depth of sleep so gradually -- that I can remember as much as ten minutes of drememing before I finally awaken. As is often the case, I become aware of the dremem storyline already underway. The tone of this dremem storyline was 'friendly' for a change. While always fragmented, in this case each fragment related to aspects of espionage training. Someone showed 'me' in clear visual detail how on his smartphone or speciality PDA of some kind (shielded keypad at the top) that '3311' (as seen) or '4411' (as heard) would bring up a 'foreign directory'. This shifted seamlessly from sub-story to sub-story, all apparently testing my base responses to various espionage topics.  Let me offer an integrated response: I certainly don't want to become an analyst for 'A Legacy Of Ashes' (the book title on the history of the CIA by Tim Weiner). Perhaps you ruthless TPW jackals would have better luck picking on innocent, defenseless youths? Or have you already? Always a pleasure to expose your inane, elementary games.

258    2016-1108: "You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom."  – William Wallace (Braveheart)

259     2016-1108: I have always appreciated the simple elegance of Richard J. Maybury's Two Laws, which I first encountered in the late 1990s as a subscriber to his newsletter. Mr. Maybury bases his work on common law, namely

      • Do all you have agreed to do

      • Do not encroach on other persons or their property.

The first law is related to contract law. A contract is an agreement between two or more parties, in which they promise to perform certain actions for and recognize certain rights of the other parties. The second law is related to some criminal law and tort law. Violators of these types of laws have committed acts like theft or violence against other people. (When referencing these two laws, Maybury has at times requested they be known as "Maybury's Laws," and stated exactly as above.) He has also mentioned that there may be an other (or others) undiscovered law related to the subjects of law that the two he shows don't cover. (From Wikipedia)

261     2016-1112: “You look like you got run over in your sleep." A line from the Falling Water TV series trailer. Been there!

262     2016-1114: I truly wish President-elect Trump success during his administration – we're all in the same boat in a stormy sea. My greatest concern is that he will immediately be wrapped in an isolating cocoon of professional managers who are themselves controlled by wealthy interest groups and lobbyists. The job is vastly too large for one man to comprehend, let alone manage, so cocooning is almost impossible to avoid to some degree. My second concern is that his powerful retaliation-reflex will be exploited to push America down some god-forsaken path. By the right, the left, Russia, or others. Being President will be frustrating for a do-it-now businessman: The founders of our nation didn't design for competent, efficient government. They wished only to prevent tyranny though the separation of powers.

Back on May 6th I offered his campaign, via his web form, the following non-partisan advice:  1) Keep the rabid-right out of your administration [the rabid-left, too].  2) Put people on your staff who have the spine to respectfully disagree with you [to avoid future 'Bay-of-Pigs'-type calamities].  3) Beware of Groupthink.  4) Beware of poor quality and biased information sources, like 'the system' in D.C.  You can be controlled by the information and misinformation that you are spoon fed. Seek outside sources, and arrange for a constant flow of fresh, non-homogenous, unprocessed ideas [and hard data. Perhaps you should allow the citizens of this country to mail ideas via a fully staffed White House 'Registered Suggestion Box' that is more than just a dark pit? You can avoid most noise by requiring that it be sent by registered mail (it's expensive). I guarantee you there are more good, honest ideas out here than in D.C.].   5) Appreciate the horror of the dark side of government, per this web site's top story.

263    2016-1121: Some memorable ‘dremem quotes’ from my notes (there have been thousands)  [Some of these are duplications shown elsewhere on this page. Keep in mind that these may have been staged – deliberately engineered – solely for their desired destabilizing impact, or to mislead me as to TPW ownership.]:

               01) c2000-06, “... he is uncontrollable...” [middle-aged woman’s voice, educated, no accent]

               02) c2000-06, "Anyone who hurts you, dies."  [same woman's voice]

               03) c2000-08, “...he has been horribly wounded...” [same woman’s voice]

               04) c2002, “...right here in your own back yard...” [middle-aged male voice]

               05) c2002, “...most amateur murderers fail the first time.” “Him?” “Well, no.” [young male voices]

               06) c2002, “...when he dies, you die...” [permanently ended the most malevolent dremem content, elder male voice]

               07) c2003, “...he’ll never trust again...” [post-divorce, young adult male voice]

               08) c2003, “...why don’t you go to Ralston Purina’s main entrance and blow your brains out?...” [young adult male voice, refers to my and my associate’s

                         blacklisting over the required use of incompetently written HMI PC software, and the professional 'dust-up' which resulted. The suggestion

                         shocked me awake and I wrote it down.]

               09) c2004, “...the wrong side of God...” [Refers to a Gestationism comment?]

               10) c2005, “...we could have kept this secret for another 20 years...” [young adult male voice]

               11) c2007, “...animals only understand pain...” [middle-aged male voice]

               12) 2009-0910, “...I hate these Gandhi-types. They’re impossible to provoke...” [elder male voice, irritated and loud]

               13) 2009-1001 4:30 AM “...if he dies in a state of grace, we will all burn in hell...”[elder male voice] [Refers to the 'rigged' nature of Christian rules.

                         Evidently their God is so inane that he can't comprehend deliberately and viciously provoked behavior, and doesn't hold the perpetrators

                         accountable for their clever crimes. It must be nice to have a 'pet' God on call and willing to bless and instantly forgive your every

                         criminal act in real time. That's a nifty racket you've got going! I'm curious, just how do you pay him off? Cash? Bitcoins? Extra

                         Hail Marys?]

               14) c2010, “...they aren’t trying to vet him, they are trying to kill him!...” [young adult male voice]

               And this one, whose date I can't lay my hands on but I think it was from the early years: "It [TPW] has never been used this way before." [male voice]

               2007 post- Embassy Row trip: "Well, he almost died", "We paid for death, not for almost dead." [Young man's voice, then elder man's voice.]

                                                              "He walked up to edge, dropped a hand grenade into the machinery, then left." [Older male voice.]

                                                              "He took some paint off the bow that time." [Older male voice. Referring to a 'warning shot across the bow,' I think.]

                                                              "We didn't know he could do this." Probably referred to consolidating and distributing the data on the video DVD.

               2016-1121: There was one specific 'dream experience', late 2002, that transcended into daily real life in a very unmistakable way. It's a bit complicated

                         to relate here, but future investigators (if there ever are any) can ask me about it. That account demonstrates that this was far more than

                         just an 'in my head' high-tech psy-ops game. It was absolutely real. The lack of any investigation to date strongly suggests that this was

                         done by one of the many corrupt cells in government – and was deliberately of a classified nature to keep anyone from ever investigating,

                         and to also suppress the existence of a new theology that might, in the distant future, cut into the profit margin of mainstream Christian

                         religious enterprises – which are vastly more about money and herd control than about God.

               c2001: "Cast him out!" An angry elder male voice. I'm not sure if he meant the out of city or out of the country?

               c2000-2001: "How much did this cost?", "$35,000 out of New York." [Two young adult male voices.]  I assume 'this' refers to TPW and the cyst.

               c2012: "HAVEN'T YOU EVER HEARD OF LAWRENCE OF ARABIA?" [Middle-aged male voice, yelling.]  Whether that was directed at me or I was

                         overhearing it – Yes, I have seen the movie, and no, I don't care to be cast in such a role.

               c2000-2001: "I'll be there for you at Potosi." [Elder male speaking softly in my right ear. I was distantly aware that he was sitting there]. Potosi is the

                         Missouri prison where convicted murders are put to death, suggesting he/they believed I could be compelled to murder for their convenience. (That

                         was actually reasonable, most people could be under TPW).

               2017-0724:  "Please don't turn our own citizens against us." Mature adult male voice, flat-toned with a hint of irritation. There was no context. It felt like a

                          politician's comment to another government official.

264     2016-1121: Continuing with the theme of 'experiences in daily real life', some of the local kids have (in the distant past) communicated their theological objections to my beliefs. There was the 'dog poop proclamation' (left, below) of August 2007 – note the plastic collection bag near the chair leg. I didn't even attempt to salvage the door mat. Then there was the 'ice ball sermon' (right, below) of January 2010. The shattered plastic garage door 'sunburst' inserts were no longer available for my old door, so I spent most of a week routing out eight replacements from plywood, then priming, painting, and installing them with new acrylic panels. The new ones do look much nicer, but it was a considerable and not inexpensive effort. These were just spontaneous acts by local kids who had learned that aggression and hatred were less objectionable so long as they were outside their local religious society. I blame their ministers and priests for their sloppy moral education. <grin>  And for not teaching them to never leave physical evidence of their crimes. But they will learn that as they gain adult experience. (Sigh.)

265     2016-1127: I just finished reading the third volume of Manchester’s The Last Lion about Winston Churchill's life during WW-II (1050 pages). I recommend the entire three-volume set (his entire life) if you have the time – 2600 pages. A few days later I happened to wonder how many book-equivalents I have 'drememed' while asleep. I used The Last Lion volume 2 as a typical-sized book, at 689 pages of about 444 words per page. The dremem sentences imposed upon me are typically about seven words per sentence, so there are about 63 dremem-equivalent sentences per page. The calculations at Ref #239 show a 15-year total of 10.5 million dremem sentences. Divided by 63 sentences per page results in a total of 166,666 pages. The Last Lion volume 2 is 689 pages long, so that yields 241 books of this size. Dremem sentences never repeat, and neither does the typical book, so that is a similarity. In contrast, however, dremem content is non sequitur, nearly devoid of proper names, and without any discernable plot or purpose 99.9% of the time, as if every single sentence in a book were being pulled at random from a hat and then spoken (phone companies and all signals intelligence agency employees – like the NSA – have access to an enormous mass of voice recordings, and the software to select by voice type, subject, and the absence of proper names). It is important to understand that this book count  is a very conservative estimate, as over the years I have been awakened by outside noises (thunder, pine cones hitting the roof, rain, loud cars, an owl, car alarm, barking dogs, etc.) at random times through the night (a 'statistical universe'), and each time I am aware that I am drememing. Thus TWP may create REM sleep periods much longer than the 1.6 hour average figure used in Ref #239 calculations. In the early brutal years I would prepare for sleep by saying to myself, "Dinner... and now a show."

Below are 240 books – 10.5 million dremem sentences equivalent – as an approximate comparison. Each additional year that passes adds 16 more such books – or the audio file or brain-injected engram equivalents of books (depending on TPW's actual causal technology, about which I am uncertain). This illustration should consist of 240 different books, of course, but I am just trying to communicate an order of magnitude.

Continued in Column 2 at top right...

2005-0601: Time-lapse animated GIF of one-time-only visual anomaly (best guess – interface failure?)

This GIF represents only about the central third of the radial truss visual field. The actual progression

was smoothly analog, not digitally jumpy as shown, but the GIF roughly illustrates my perception of

this TPW symptom over about 10-minutes. The actual truss probably had twice the detail shown below,

and the vertices (truss ring points) actually touched one another, but that was too difficult to animate.

266     2016-1130: There are two mantras that have helped keep my course steady in the stormy seas of TPW. The first is: "I will not live my life in fear, even if this hastens my death." The second is: "I'll believe it when I see it," the perfect response to endless TPW ying and yang manipulations. The first I say monthly. The second I say daily.

267    2016-1130: "The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of civilization without its mercy." – Macaulay.  "When one has reached the summit of power and surmounted so many obstacles, there is danger of becoming convinced that one can do anything one likes, and that any strong personal view is necessarily acceptable to the nation and can be enforced upon one's subordinates." – Lloyd George. From The Last Lion, Vol III, p694-695.

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." – Ayn Rand

268     2016-1211: Honest people who follow laws cannot economically compete with dishonest people who do not. In the absence of competent, rational, and honest laws and law enforcement at every social and intellectual level of society, 'honesty' is a serious competitive disadvantage. Where an honest person may have to comply with 100 rules (and their costs), a dishonest person need only comply with the 11th and 12th Commandments: 'don't get caught', and 'win'. To paraphrase Ayn Rand, "Life in nature, without the structures of civilization, is wholesale death." Given that the 11th and 12th Commandments are 'the laws of the jungle' from which we have painfully distanced ourselves over thousands of years, in order to survive and advance as a high level civilization there must exist an incorruptible matrix of rational law, and  incorruptible rational mechanisms to enforce it. When laws become corrupt or irrational, or when enforcement becomes corrupt or irrational, the foundation of civilization is eroded and it will eventually collapse – like a sinkhole – back down to the laws of the jungle.

Here are some of the systemic problems:  1) Rich and powerful people – some of them the (stealth) feudal lord want-to-be's of our time – find laws and law enforcement constraining. Therefore they corrupt and cripple both the law makers and law enforcers, and no one can stop them because such things are done invisibly or buried in incomprehensible complexity. Law enforcement can have their budgets cut and their sharpest underpaid minds hired away by the rich and powerful.  2) Whistleblowers are crucified as a suppressive disincentive to other honest people. This is one of the most self-destructive aspects for any civilization – for without the public awareness of truth how can any civilization exist but as an illusion convenient to the powerful? Law enforcement can't be everywhere, whereas people are everywhere. Whistleblowers are a godsend to any honest society and should be treated as such. They know what is really going on when no one else has a clue.  3) The exponential explosion of fake truth is blinding everyone to the real truth – just as chaff blinds radar. As Will Rogers aptly said, "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that isn't true." A democratic, voting civilization cannot function when drowning in a sea of manipulative lies.   4) A number of authors have written about the rapidly increasing complexity of our society as a burden and cost. I would suggest it is even more important to consider this burden multiplied by the incompetence and suboptimization of the complexity. Rational complexity can increase the systemic structural intelligence of a civilization, where irrational complexity can dumb it down to the point of complete dysfunctionality! Bureaucracies are great bastions of self-serving irrational complexity.   5) There is a professional class termed Professional Engineer (PE). PE's are licensed by society to protect society from overzealous profit motives posing a danger to society – such as the desire of a business magnate to substitute cheap steel in a bridge or a building. If the P.E. doesn't do his job competently and honestly he can lose his license forever. Perhaps this concept needs to be expanded into other realms of society? Should we bring back the hands-off independent Professional Newscasters (PNs?) that we had decades ago when news was independent of ratings? Is a few percentage points of corporate media's profit more important than unbiased news delivery to an ENTIRE SOCIETY? Furthermore, how do we keep every professional person and their respective licensing process independent and honest? Perhaps by rewarding them appropriately for their integrity, rather than punishing them for it? Is it not the case that a society becomes corrupt because it is more rewarding for those who profit from it? And when a 'critical mass' of the population must conform to corruption or perish, the entire society becomes corrupt. Corruption is the only path allowed.

269     The bell curve of thought-process of our national population has shifted significantly over the past 30-40 years. Today there is less reasoning and more emotion, because emotion is faster and easier to control and profit from: Why reason when you can stampede?  Reasoning takes time and hard work, and even then the outcome is uncertain. The inflection point of change came with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 when politicians and the public at large saw the unifying existential threat to our nation apparently vanish, and it was no longer necessary for the left and right to cooperate for mutual survival. A complex society can not and will not survive without the predominance of reason over emotion, especially in government. Unfortunately we see the least reasoning and the most reflexive, fearful, evasive, territorial, pandering, and dismissive emotions in government – which appears more and more to be our national collective id-monsters of Forbidden Planet fame: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." – Walt Kelly, c1971. We have become our own existential threat: the left to the right, and the right to the left. A house divided against itself...

270      2016-1215: "The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." – Albert Einstein.

271     2016-1222: You should read the Science Advances 09 Dec 2016 article, Implantable microcoils for intracortical magnetic stimulation by WooLee, wondrous, et al. It is the smallest and most advanced public technology that I know of, although it is still a far cry from the presumably-classified technology of TPW. It is close in spirit however. I emailed their contact person, but received no reply.

272     2016-1222: I was awakened by very loud analog tinnitus at 3:07 AM. It had been absent for months. AT 3:15 AM I heard in my mind, very faintly, the stern directive, "Turn it off." It was not a product of my mind because I was surprised, nor did I believe that it would be 'turned off' (I never believe dremems, I'm just an involuntary observer). However, at 3:40 AM I first noticed that the tinnitus was less loud and decreasing minute by minute, and about 15 minutes later I fell asleep. This is consistent with past observations that once tinnitus 'spins up' it can take a long time to subside. The ratio is in the ballpark of four times longer, but may not be linear. In the distant past it has taken half a day to several days to subside. I did recall prior to awakening (that would have been at about 3 AM) the sharp but faint command, "MOVE!" If that was directed at me – and I can't be certain [It is a little ambiguous. Can't you people be more specific with your clever technology?] – then the TPW-masters wish me to leave right-wing dominated St. Louis. They may be worried that they can't control their own radical zealots (like Operation Rescue personnel, who are akin to autonomous, not-too-bright antibodies), and therefore fear that if I am killed, St. Louis – or parts of St. Louis – will face geopolitical-class retribution for what has been done to me. There is some anecdotal dremem evidence to suggest this, but I have zero confidence in it. Perhaps I was only intended to think this?

One observation that I can make with certainty is that to religious zealot organizations (think: 'Opus Dei' in The Da Vinci Code) all technology – classified or not – that they can get their hands on is theirs to use to further their oblique conquest of mankind. This is all sanctioned 'by God' because the elders say so. (It would be more correct to say that it is sanctioned 'by power' because the elders say so.) To a religious zealot, any oath of fealty to a government is just a facade to obtain what their true masters wish, and/or to block what they don't wish. Even if they must sacrifice their lives for 'their team.' They all begin as sacrificial pawns and the most clever and ruthless work their way up the (profitable) ladder. Come to think of it, very much like a mafia. This quality of tribal and power-group loyalty is deeply ingrained in human instinct, adjacent to and relating to the instinct to protect your children. Indeed, such loyalty is a fine quality in moderation. Absent moderation it always leads to death and war, the final arguments of animal man.

273     2016-1222: If you actively block every path to accomplishing good that a man tries to take, then by definition, the only remaining paths for him are doing nothing, and doing evil.  Such a strategy is itself fully responsible for whatever lost good that might have been done, and whatever evil that occurs, forever darkening the souls of those who use such monstrous power. God (anyone's God) is utterly unimpressed with the chest-pounding claim: "But our team won!" Be sure to shout that at the future extinction of man. No doubt the empty void will salute your ruthless prowess.

274     2016-1224, 9:30 AM: I'm struggling a bit this morning. The perpetual tinnitus that I have come to know so well ceased suddenly in late June 2016, but returned with renewed force Wednesday night, December 21st. There were brief flareups during those months – but only hours-long. Loud tinnitus effects ones ability to fall asleep like a toothache or painful wound would do – a constant background irritation. You also awaken sooner. I had become accustomed to an average 8 hours of sleep during this quiet window, and the occasional 8.5 or 9 hours of sleep were a joy beyond measure. But 4.5 hours of sleep last night, and 6.5 hours the two previous nights leave me very draggy... a nap later may help. If the tinnitus is deliberately externally stimulated – and it often seems so – then one has to wonder what they have been doing this past six months? Trying to suppress the functional intellect of key people on one side during the election? (Perhaps they succeeded, perhaps not?) Before you ask who would want to do that, ask yourself: Who on Earth would not want to do that? The stakes are as high as they can be. Is TPW also a political destabilizer? 'For want of sleep a kingdom was lost?'

275     2016-1224: In the sixteen years of dremems that I have experienced under TPW, there have been three or four occasions when I have drememed words not in my vocabulary. This is mentioned in the 2007 briefing DVD pictured at the top of this web site, but most of you will not have seen it. For example, the use of the word 'abatement' in a legal sense, related to houses or property. ‘Noise abatement' I have have heard of, but never 'real estate abatement'.

276     2016-1224: “All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Commonly attributed to Schopenhauer, c1800s.

277     2016-1224: “Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” – Thomas Paine, c1800

278     2016-1224: "How can a man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?" – Macaulay

279     2016-1226: The dremem intensity chart below shows how intensity varies with hours of sleep this year. In the early years the entire blue curve would have shifted vertically upwards 100%, so that the minimum dremem strength back then would have been what I now call 'strong' (orange line). In other words, the curve started much higher than this and has been slowly drifting downward over the years. A well-rested mind can dream more intensely than a tired mind. Note that sleep might not begin until midnight and/or might end at 5 AM. It depends on tinnitus strength and other factors.

280      2016-1231: As large governments become increasingly dysfunctional they increasingly achieve their goals via destructive actions. Creating and building are 1000-10,000 times more difficult per unit effort expended.

281     2016-1231: "When you are going through hell, you keep going." -Winston Churchill.

282     2016-1231: c2014: A tiny number of dremems – only a few dozen through the years – are stunningly beautiful 'stills' in vivid detail. One image that I dreamed for perhaps ten seconds was from the back yard of a large ranch house (that I had never seen before). It was summer and I was facing south, about 100 feet north of the house.  There was only one mid-sized deciduous tree nearby... on the left somewhere. The cloudless sky was blue and the lawn was perfect, as if it had just been mowed but without marks from the mower tires. It was probably about 3 PM. Across the celestial equator at even intervals – I'd guess every 1h 20m of longitude – there were about nine moderately bright diffuse objects that showed a hint of structure, perhaps half the angular diameter of the moon. While or immediately after dreaming, I was at first perplexed as to what they might be, and then it dawned on me that these might be power satellites (PowerSats) beaming energy to Earth. Each object was identical to all the others, and this was a subtle but serious flaw in the scene – there should have been a smooth gradient in the PowerSats appearance based on the incident angle of the sun relative to me. (You will understand what I mean if you have ever watched a satellite cross the sky after sunset: As the angle to the sun and you varies, first it is dim, then brightens, sometimes 'flares' very brightly for a few seconds, and then slowly dims again.) Since my image was flawed it must have been constructed as an artist's concept image. I have never seen any illustration even remotely like this particular PowerSat image in books or movies, to the best of my knowledge. It felt new and wondrous. While intriguing, I would gladly give up these few beautiful images to be rid of all the other horrible nonsense. [Later:] I wish to clarify that the experience wasn't like looking at a photo, it was like being at a place. I suspect it would be similar to using virtual reality goggles (which I have yet to experience). When I looked slightly left I saw the eastern sky. When looking slightly right I saw the western sky. The celestial equator was an arc from east to west, peaking at about 40°- 45° above the southern horizon, suggesting an observer latitude of about 45° - 50° (similar to that of North and South Dakota). Angular estimates from a dream are obviously suspect, so this guess is just the best that I can make. The local terrain seemed very flat. The long axis of the ranch house was east-west. The roof design was simple, of average slope for the midwest. I don't have a good recollection of it's color, or the color of the siding. Neither caught my attention as being unusual. This dremem 'still' imagery appeared instantly, lasted about ten seconds of subjective dream time, and then disappeared instantly.

283     2017-0112: This morning's final dremem woke me in distress. As always I was experiencing the dremem through another's eyes (like in some of the Harry Potter scenes) presumably the result of a million transplanted engrams in 2000 (long term memory in the brain is based upon chains of molecules) being 'played back' one by one (and never repeating). I was vaguely aware of some narration, but the dremem experience dominated. The imagery was superbly detailed, yet foreign to me – I had never seen it before. 'I' was standing on a twenty-foot wide beach which felt native to 'me', gazing along it's long, gentle rightward arc, the father of a teenager of perhaps 17 years leaving me on a journey of some duration. My left hand was still raised in farewell, 'my' son fifty yards distant and walking away. He bent down to pick up a small object that I couldn't see, and after standing for a moment, collapsed dead upon the beach. My left hand was still raised, and 'I' slowly lowered it, palm up, down to stomach level. 'My' anguished tears pelted down upon my palm like large rain drops. Then I awoke, my heart pounding. I'm not certain, but I suspect that someone with a weak heart could die during such a dremem, especially in the early 'saturation' years. Such horrors – and worse – have awakened me thousands of times.

TPW is impressive, truly evil technology and will enslave every authority on Earth, high and low, if it isn't discovered and 'outed'. And it will become more refined over time. Alas, these very accounts with which I warn the world will be used to refine it further. It is a race between those without TPW who would be free, and those with it who would enslave them all. The final outcome is not clear to me. What was it that Edward R. Murrow used to say? "Good night, and good luck."

The movie Inception (2010) contains a few points in common with TPW, but Inception is a thousand times more expansive. (And a great movie!)

The process of drememing has two and only two modes. The vast majority (99.99%) are like a smoothly flowing small river (say, 50 feet across). Dremems uncritically morph into one another gracefully, seemingly for hours. The second mode is very rare. I call it an 'interrupt'. This is much like a someone dropping a telephone pole to 'belly flop' in the river. It completely and aggressively rips the attention of the sleeping mind away from the smoothly flowing storyline, which is then quickly forgotten. Both the dremems of #282 and #283 were interrupts.

While storyline dremems never repeat, I have on dozens of occasions noted that background imagery can be consistent between dremems widely separated in time. For example, I have drememed of a medium-sized, fairly modern city bounded on the east by a north-south medium-sized river with a sprawl to the west. There is an unpopulated northern geographic boundary of some kind, perhaps foothills. I am not aware of a southern boundary. About four miles west of the eastern north-south river boundary there seems to be a smaller north-south river requiring elaborate bridges and on- and off-ramps. There is a ~40-story building among lesser buildings in the northeast area, and an older five or six story shopping district in the southwest area. The westward sprawl is residential. I have 'resided' in one apartment in the north east area and a home among the north-western sprawl. I have been inside the 40-story building, near the top, but have no memory of any other floors. I have in earlier dremems walked on a concrete apron near it's base. The city is more or less rectangularly laid out. I have no idea where this city might be, and have only come to know it through hundreds of brief glimpses over perhaps a year. My 'map' of this city is rather fragmented and disjointed, but I did have a sense of 'home', however. I would guess that this city is about a tenth the size of St. Louis (ie: about a half million people in the greater area), but with a completely different – yet flat – topography. That's all that I can remember. None of this city is familiar to me from my own real life experiences. Speaking of apartments and homes, over the past 16 years I have probably drememed over fifty distinctly different residences, each (at that moment) feeling like 'home'. This is one of the clues from which I deduce engram transplantation from multiple donors, perhaps a dozen or two. Such an act is likely the most cruel and ruthless that has ever occurred in human history, and would in almost every case result in the glacially slow destruction of the victim's mind and soul. In contrast to TPW, crucifixion – Rome's terror weapon against dissent – is fast, gentle, and humane. TPW is The Perfect Weapon of terror to keep any modern uppity 'peasants' in line.

284     2017-0116: One of the effects of TPW is the desperate compulsion to strike back, whose intensity follows the TPW intensity curve at the top of this web page. I chose to strike back via publication – probably not the anticipated or desired outlet. Each time I published some hint about TPW – and carefully oblique during the early period when I had young children at home – I felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction and relief. Then the compulsion would build slowly over a week or two and I would feel the pressing need to publish some new tidbit of insight or revelation. This compulsion may have been an intentional consequence of the TPW process, or it may have simply been a natural consequence of my Id being unmercifully tormented every night.

285     2017-0116: We now live in a world were TPW-induced effects (gentle to terminal) can change the course of human history. In any situation where a single person is empowered to make critical decisions, that individual can be targeted by ANY group that has created, reverse engineered, or stolen TPW technology. TPW's only disadvantage is that it takes time, access to the victim during vulnerable windows of opportunity, and extraordinary expertise. But that isn't as constraining as it might seem – even billionaires and presidential candidates aren't protected 100% of the time – although sitting Presidents come close. It may be tragically ironic that most employees of The Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, even missile silo officers, go to work at the most secure locations in human history... and each evening return to a home protected only by cheap 'hardware store' door locks which can be opened with a $20 pin-vibrator. How many of these personnel are going to go to their seniors and say, "It may be that my mind has been tampered with." That would pretty much sideline or end their careers, would it not? It is utterly against human nature to embrace personal sacrifice for the sake of one's fellow man, or even for the human species as a whole – especially in an economic environment very much "every man for himself." Thus, victims of TPW will hold out for as long as they can, functioning at greatly diminished and destabilized capacity, no matter the consequences to the organizational and social structures of which they are a critical element.

286     2017-0206:  Fascism is capitalism plus murder.   – Upton Sinclair, 1944.

287     2017-0207:  There are three categories of Time: 1) Plenty of Time, 2) Just In Time, and 3) Too Late. It is best to achieve goals within the first category. "Just In Time" is a warning signal to step up your game. "Too Late" can be costly and painful.

288     2017-0320:  "Thou shall not be a perpetrator, thou shall not be a victim, and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander." – Yehuda Bauer. I first heard these 'three new commandments' in the closing minutes of Ann Frank's Holocaust (2015), and later found this: "Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  We must always take sides... Silence encourages the oppressor." – Elie Weisel

289     2017-0509:  Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (specifically rule #13) was mentioned in passing during a news discussion yesterday. I'd never heard of it, and Wikipedia has an overview. I think it might be more universally titled 'Rules for Social Warfare and Disintegration', as anyone can use them to attack anyone. They remind me of both the 12th Commandment ('Win' no matter what you have to do) and Sun-Tsu's The Art of War.  ALL of these are utilized by TPW:

                    1) Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. (Power is derived from two main sources – money and people.)

                    2) Never go outside the expertise of your people. (It results in confusion, fear, and retreat.)

                    3) Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. (Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.)

                    4) Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. (In the extreme, no one can obey all of their own rules all of the time.)

                    5) Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. (There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating.)

                    6) A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. (They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more.)

                    7) A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. (Don't become old news.)

                    8) Keep the pressure on. Never let up. (Keep trying new things to keep the enemy off-balance.)

                    9) The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. (Imagination and ego can dream up more consequences than any activist.)

                  10) The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the enemy.

                  11) If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. (Try to drive your enemy to violence to gain public sympathy. Your

                              own pawns are expendable, but innocent bystanders are free and there is no connection to your group.)

                  12) The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. (Never let the enemy score points. Have canned solutions at the ready.)

                  13) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. (Cut off the support network [aka 'divide and conquer'] and isolate the target from

                              sympathy  –  lie profusely. Go after people rather than institutions – people hurt faster than institutions.)

Now imagine a society where everyone is doing this to everyone else. It would create a rapid descent into social fragmentation (balkanization) and multilateral social destruction. Welcome to the USA.

In any system of government where power players would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven, 'hell' is the most likely outcome.

290     2017-0509: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. – John Stuart Mill, 1867.  "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." – Edmund Burke, 1770.  What is the fate of a society when the cost to do other than 'look on and do nothing' becomes too high for good men to pay?

Continued in Column 3 on Gestationism p2 (see  the navigation bar at the very top left of this window)...