neoperspectives archives

4/21/08 Neoperspectives.com by Kyle Hunt

    After three long weeks of work at my new job, I needed a respite from the world of bits and pieces. I was able to find one right outside my door.

    I sat silently in the small Los Angeles courtyard, gradually forgetting the challenges and stresses of running a company. I felt the comforting presence of the tree above me, shading me from the sun when I got too hot, and breathing with me in time. The tree let little glimpses of light shine through, while its neighbors reflected the sun with their leaves, creating a dynamic, daytime star field as they swayed in the breeze – telling their ancient story:

    Throughout the history of man, trees have played a crucial role in our development. Years ago, they were our shelter, giving us a better perspective from up high and protecting us from predators. We shared this home with many other creatures who also sought a place in which to flourish. But like those other animals, we needed to leave our homes to gather resources, find mates, and exchange goods. Life was simple, but fraught with danger.

    And then man learned of fire through some act of nature, God, Prometheus, or Lucifer. He discovered how to contain the flame and then how to create it. Those with this knowledge held a clear advantage over those left in the dark.

    The carriers of the light traveled north to explore the uninhabited lands. The trees became more coniferous, the nights grew long, and the winters became a blistering cold. Trees, preferable in their decaying state, were burned to keep our internal flame going. We were safeguarded against night stalkers and hypothermia. The flame even became a sign of civilization – a gathering point around which a community of humans might form. The torch currently symbolizes this phenomenon.

    Though originally made of earth and stone, the houses of these humans once again became the trees. But this time, the trees were felled and reordered into more and more suitable shelters. They provided a sufficient barrier against the outside world, giving a sense of safety in a perilous existence.

    They even became our vessels against the sea, opening up new worlds. Man was able to move people and goods in much higher quantities, at much greater speeds, because of the amazing properties of wood. How else could so many Irish, Chinese, and African people have been shipped to labor in the New World, but for our mastery of trees?

    We can look around today and see how integral the tree has been to our way of life. But does our relationship to the tree not go any deeper? Perhaps.

    For one, we share the same calendar with trees. Trees mark their solar years in a circular fashion, while we blow out the flames of our years stuck into a cake.

    Tremendously, the most intelligent data structures imitate the tree. When organizing family histories, the internet, and knowledge in general, the tree becomes the most appropriate resulting diagram – unfortunately it is often squashed down into two-dimensions and rendered useless.

    Triumphantly, we are trees. Our toes, feet, and legs are our roots. Our trunks are.. well, our trunks. And our arms, hands and fingers branch out, probing into the world. They allow us to produce, obtain, and consume energy.

    We lack the chloroplasts of the tree, which makes us unable to sufficiently synthesize enough energy from the sun without also eating. But like most forms of life, we have melanin to protect our sensitive bodies from the sun's radiation. With the proper amount of sunlight, the melatonin hormone within us helps us to be happier, healthier, and more radiant people. Hence Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), the ridiculously acronymed "disease" that occurs when a human does not spend enough time outside.

    But unlike the tree, we can pull up our roots – our support structures – and plant ourselves all over the world. Some people are of hardier strains, with more fully developed brains containing many branches and roots. These humans are much like the hemp plant, incredibly useful, abhorred by big corporations, and able to flourish in even the harshest of conditions.

    But of course with the Tree of Life comes the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Macbeth was right to worry when 'Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane'. The wizard Sarumon could not stand the onslaught of Ent tree-herders angered out of Fanghorn Forest. Have you never seen a tree with eyes?

    They are full of power and force, and yet we take them for granted in our daily lives.

    I wonder: what would the wind be like if there were no trees to give it life and voice? and will the Cradle drop?

Taxes were on the forefront of many Americans’ minds this week as they scrambled to meet the April 15th deadline to file their returns. Tax policy in this country hurts taxpayers twice – once when they pay taxes, and then when the government spends the money. Americans are sick and tired of the financial burden and the endless forms to fill out. To add insult to injury, after collecting this money the government does some very detrimental things to the economy.

The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses and creating jobs!

Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home.

Big government is destructive when it takes your money and when it spends it. There is no economic benefit to supporting a government sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over 100 years without an income tax. Today, if you took away the income tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal to total government spending in 1990, when government was still too big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government operating within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what we need to get back to.

I have introduced legislation many times to abolish the IRS and the income tax. It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to testify against themselves and be considered guilty until proven innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of real growth in the economy.

With these financial hard times only just beginning, this would be the most efficient and logical way to get our economy growing again, and Americans would need not dread the 15th of April every year.

Pretty outrageous if you ask me, for the state to seize over 400 children from their families on what have turned out to be false charges and then fish for crimes. What happened to innocent before proven guilty?

This is not the first time we've written about Texas Child Services on this website.

Today, we are drowning in laws, we are contorted by judicial decisions, we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked.

An interesting perspective with some worthwhile facts in here; if you can cut through the rhetoric.

Kenya's expanded new government will spend 80 per cent of the entire national budget on luxury vehicles, inflated salaries for ministers and general running costs, a local anti-corruption group claimed on Wednesday.

President Mwai Kibaki's administration now boasts 43 ministries - up from 34 - in a deal with the Orange Democratic Movement, led by Raila Odinga, following the bitterly disputed election.

Of the 222 MPs, almost half now have government jobs. Cabinet members benefit from annual salaries exceeding £83,000 and numerous perks, including official cars and "entertainment" allowances of £600 per month.

What percentage of US citizens work for the government? How lucrative is it to be employed by the government as opposed to work in the private sector in the United States? The answers to these questions show we differ in scale and scope, but not in substance from Kenya. In fact, how much of Kenya's budget is from US taxpayers? Last question, how many aid groups are operating in Kenya but are not addressing the root cause of Kenya's poverty: the corruption and socialism of the Kenyan government and economy?

Half the population has received no dental care on the NHS in the last two years.

And thousands of suffering patients are turning up at hospital emergency departments for treatment because they cannot find an NHS dentist.

Dentists complain the contract does not reflect the amount of work they actually carry out - for example, they receive the same amount of money regardless of whether they provide a patient with two fillings or ten.

Last year, a survey found that one in 20 patients had resorted to DIY treatment, in some cases pulling out their own teeth.

Earlier this month Elizabeth Green, 76, from Winchester, Hampshire, told how she was turned away by 12 dentists.

A very interesting talk; a personal experience on left brain vs right brain and our perceptions of the world, related to enlightenment.

What if there was a way to artificially and safely temporarily cause the 'good' part of the effects of the stroke she had by somehow inhibiting that part of the brain?

Here is the powerpoint of the presentation given two days ago at Touro University AMSA/SOMA health policy week. It is 110 slides and the presentation lasted about two hours. There is some video and audio, recorded on digital camera and mp3 respectively, but because of technical limitations doesn't cover the whole thing and so I didn't post those. Perhaps I'll try to venture down this path again in the near future and create a more dynamic internet presentation, maybe on youtube or something.

Chen, who studies the Chinese economy, argued in a lecture Tuesday that the Chinese government ought to decrease the stake it holds in its economy in order to even income distribution among citizens.

Presenting data that he said reflected an inverse relationship between the number of state-owned enterprises and the level of economic development, Chen argued that instead of promoting economic equality, state ownership centralizes wealth and produces a wider gap between the rich and the poor.

Interesting article describing the uselessness of a half dozen California agencies. Notice that there is a 'private' tomato board, in conjunction with the state board. Best to just get rid of the state one and let these jokers manage their own companies.

Sometimes all it takes is a bit of simple math. I'd like to apologize to readers, as I quoted the $13,00 number repeatedly in 'A Charter School Tale'. Coulson makes a pretty strong case here that the number is actually twice that:

We're often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child, but total spending is close to $25,000 per child -- on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s.

What accounts for the nearly threefold difference in these numbers? The commonly cited figure counts only part of the local operating budget. To calculate total spending, we have to add up all sources of funding for education from kindergarten through 12th grade, excluding spending on charter schools and higher education. For the current school year, the local operating budget is $831 million, including relevant expenses such as the teacher retirement fund. The capital budget is $218 million. The District receives about $85.5 million in federal funding. And the D.C. Council contributes an extra $81 million. Divide all that by the 49,422 students enrolled (for the 2007-08 year) and you end up with about $24,600 per child.

For comparison, total per pupil spending at D.C. area private schools -- among the most upscale in the nation -- averages about $10,000 less. For most private schools, the difference is even greater.

(Added to 'A Charter School Tale')

A powerpoint presentation titled:

'The Virtues of Free Market Healthcare' will be given tonight (Tuesday) at 6pm at Touro University.

Touro U is on American Pacific dr, just past Gibson in Henderson near where the 515 and 215 meet. You will need to sign in at the front desk before hand. They know people not affiliated with the school will be coming. The talk will be in lecture hall two. I've been allotted two hours, although I won't use up that much, hopefully! :)

Hope to see you all there!
-Travis

DESTIN — Two years and 28 monster burgers later, Geoff Dobson’s mission is accomplished.

Let us be the first to congratulate neoperspectives contributing author Geoff Dobson on his incredible feat. :)

Why we shouldn't trust politicians. This story demonstrates a few things; an inaccurate worldview, a factual misunderstanding of the US health system, and an irresponsible, almost reckless approach to informing the public on key issues affecting the nation. For example:

Bryan Holman, had played host to Mrs. Clinton in his home before the Ohio primary. Deputy Holman said in a telephone interview that a conversation about health care led him to relate the story of Ms. Bachtel. Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel’s story only secondhand, having learned it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel’s relatives did not return phone calls Friday.

“It hurts me that in our country, as rich and good of a country as we are, this young woman and her baby died because she couldn’t come up with $100 to see the doctor.”

Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care.

Many have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist.

Eddie Crouch, secretary of the Birmingham local dental committee, estimates that up to a third of dentists in the West Midlands have run out of work or have had to reduce the number of NHS patients they treat.

The British Dental Association fears that other dentists have been unable to meet their quotas and will be forced to pay back thousands of pounds to the NHS.

Ran across these interesting graphs comparing Canada and the United States Healthcare while compiling a 'Free Market Healthcare' Power point presentation for an upcoming talk (this ppt will be uploaded when finished).

Amid rising food and fuel costs, the assistance is becoming worth less and less.

And supplemental food programs for poor families are struggling to keep up with the added demand as donations are on the decline.

Nationally, more than 26 million Americans were on the food stamp program last year, according to the federal agriculture department.

"We never have enough food to totally give everybody what they really want," Nardella said.

IMO, these welfare agencies will never 'have enough' regardless of how many Americans are on welfare - the same welfare that is the very reason for their poverty. These agencies have already decimated Appalachia.

Despite the varied theories espoused by many establishment economists, it was none other than the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression and the horrific suffering, deprivation and dislocation America and the world experienced in its wake. At least, that's the clearly stated view of current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In "A Monetary History of the United States," Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman along with coauthor Anna J. Schwartz lay the mega-catastrophe of the Great Depression squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve.

Well, this is nice to see! However, does Bernanke apply this knowledge? Or does he believe that it was not the 'power of the Fed' to begin with that caused the great depression, but just how it was applied? He apparently believes he could do better:

Most sweeping changes since Great Depression Proposal will give the Federal Reserve new regulatory power
MSNBC ^ | March. 28, 2008 | AP writer

The proposal would designate the Fed as the primary regulator of market stability, greatly expanding the central bank's ability to examine not just commercial banks but all segments of the financial services industry.

The Associated Press obtained a 22-page executive summary of the proposal. It seeks to make sense of the mishmash of overlapping oversight in which an alphabet-soup roster of agencies regulates banks, thrifts and credit unions.

Under the current hodgepodge, institutions that take deposits and are federally insured face multiple regulatory bodies. By contrast, hedge funds, private equity firms and investment banks endure substantially less regulation.

IMO, the more power given to Federal agencies to meddle in the affairs of the market, the more likely the Fed will cause another 'great depression'.

Six young brothers and sisters face being taken from their parents and put into care because they are overweight.

Social workers have warned they will intervene if three of the youngsters – including a 12-year-old boy who weighs 16 stone – do not shed several pounds in three months.

The parents have been told they risk losing all their children if there is no improvement in the 12-year-old or two of his sisters aged 11 and three – who weigh 12 stone and four stone – by June. <.>

Last year, an eight-year-old girl from the Cumbria area was taken into care because she weighed nine stone.

Government records of political candidates are tightly restricted because of concerns they could be used against candidates or the data could be altered as part of campaign dirty tricks.

No word yet on any 'restrictive protections' for the rest of us. Government data collection on its citizens has little useful purpose IMO, and can only lead to corruption and invasion of privacy. I don't see any reason why the government should keep records of where we've gone.

Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

ETHANOL MADNESS (2006)
Executive Intelligence Review (excerpt) from Technocracy.org ^ | 06/02/2006 | Staff
Well, first, we'll get 20% less gas mileage from our fuel that way. Second, we can pay a good deal more for fuel, in direct prices and subsidies; in fact, we'll be able to use a fuel whose price is inflating much faster than the price of gasoline. Third, we'll be able to spend tens of billions of dollars more a year in tax revenues, subsidizing ethanol makers, including some of the biggest global cartels. Fourth, we can use up more petrochemical energy making ethanol than we get by using it. Fifth, we can use up large volumes of scarce regions of the country, and overburden our transport infrastructure as well. Sixth, we could soon deny corn exports to nations that need them — maybe even cut our own consumption of corn and burn it in our cars instead...

And last but not least, we can delay or cut off the revival of nuclear power for industry and economic expansion; instead, we could take a major scientific and technological step backwards, a great leap back toward primitive ages when mankind burned straw for fuel.

Is this not similar to the previously posted story on how Hydrogen cars pollute more (plus are more expensive) than regular gas cars?

3/20/08 Neoperspectives.com (By Kyle Hunt)

The "news" does not interest me much these days. It is too disheartening.
I am more interested in the principles and concepts that can be considered "timeless." I have been most interested in the field of energy that sustains all life. Unfortunately, many are unable to grasp the complexities and ultimate simplicity of this concept.

In an effort to increase understanding and engage in a meaningful discussion on this topic, I would like to present some of my favorite movies that deal with the manipulation and control of energy in space-time. I could reference a bunch of books that I have read, but that would be less fun and take way too long. In an odd way, this is where I cite my sources:

Brad Pitt Understands Consumerism – Bruce Willis is sent back in time from an apocalyptic future and put in an insane asylum. There he is introduced to the evils of the world through an oddly-attractive lunatic who later goes on to be a terrorist leader.

Breaking Boundaries – A true genius attempts to find a unifying theory. The government puts him to work, he discovers too much, and is sentenced to a terrifying future of electro-shock and insanity. There are patterns everywhere.

Intro/Beginning – In this movie, there are pale/grey men who control the reality of every person alive. That sounds familiar. Also, let us not read too far into the "KH" seen on the briefcase.
The End – Mind over matter to the full extent. Jennifer Connelly has been in my thoughts since Labyrinth!

Trailer – Watch for "they made me do it" – or is it "The y made me do i x" This is touched on in X * Y. Time Travel is discussed in Continuing the Spiral.

Mad World – Great lyrics and great production design for the film by Alec Hammond.

Head Over Heels – An amazing sequence showing life in school. Reality is only a matter of perspective.

A Genius Interviews with the NSA – Although I don't like or respect many shrinks, Robin sure seems like an exception. He hits the nail right on the head. It is not uncommon that a genius lacks direction in such a society and is unable to commit in relationships. There is also a comparison drawn between Will and the Unabomber in the movie. One must be crazy to not want all of the "great things" our civilization has to offer.

Opening Scene – Chilling. "And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History Became Legend. Legend Became Myth."
Two Towers Trailer – There is an obvious Twin Towers link. The multi-cultural coalition against the powers of evil is of note. So is the ability of the pale-skinned elves to see the future possibilities.
ROTK Trailer – Neither the Stewards of Gondor nor Sauron want Aragorn to take the throne, as he would usurp their powers.
Matilda

Dancing with the World – "She's a witch.. Burn her!" (Monty Python logic)

Original Trailer – Paranoia and confusion in the high-tech age. Reality vs. illusion while waiting for a savior.
Neo Meets the Architect – The Architect is an old white male. Neo is not the first anomaly, but he is the One. Was the First Matrix that is described the Garden of Eden? Note the logical, perfectionist Father Architect and the intuitive, loving Mother Oracle. Neo chooses the non-logical choice because an emotional response – something very difficult to calculate. It is interesting to see that although the Architect and Oracle created the system, they never claim to be God.

Mad As Hell – It is pretty easy to be these days. What a great description of society.

Travolta on Energy – Mr. Kotter taught him well. I attempt an explanation in Star Theory.

An Explanation of Connection – Again, the light-skinned magician. The 3rd eye (6th chakra) is discussed. Powder's code of ethics seems strikingly similar to the Jedi's. I will admit I am very pale, but I have a bit more melanin and more of a pinkish/red tone.

Yoda's Wisdom – A discussion of the life force. Search "Yoda" on Youtube, and all you get is inanity.
Yoda on Premonition, Death, and Attachment – The Jedi have a philosophy very much in line with Buddhists and many other mystical belief systems.
The Usurpation of Power – The force is balanced much in the same way Shiva dances, but unfortunately this means the bad guys can grab the reigns of power for a time. It is interesting how the expendability and controllability of the clone army is ultimate.

Time Travel Kyle – Kyle Reese travels into the world in the infamous year of 1984 – a year after this Kyle came in. He had been sent back in time to save the future of humanity from the machines that eventually take control. He must kill a buffed up Terminator who intends to kill the mother of the resistance's leader, as he is ultimately successful. I chose this clip because Kyle Reese is the ultimate badass, eluding cops without hurting a single one.

Jean Grey Flips Out – Here is the same ultimate and total control of mind over matter. It is notable that Jean Grey ends up transforming into the Phoenix much in the same way Gandalf the Grey turns into Gandalf the White. We should also not forget the hostility that the majority of the population has for the mutants. Nor the over-priced trading cards I used to adore.

Some of these movies are better than others, but there are many important correlations between them. What I would like to suggest is that some, if not all, of the powers portrayed in these movies do, in fact, exist and will continue to become prevalent in our realities. We all know that science fiction quickly becomes science fact. Welcome to the real world.

This review should have been up a long time ago for a pretty good reason: it is simply the best book I have ever read.

A fictional epic, in the style of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, it delivers a gripping tale of fantasy adventure, as a band of advanced Pylorians, 'wizards' who are able to harness the power of the 'mind sense', fight against an evil menace rising in the east. The nations of Calmer and Zireth take sides as intrigue and treachery ensues and a princess and sorceress fight for country, honor, and love.

It is definitely a family novel. Judeochristian values predominate and the tale is rife with teaching symbolisms. I've read this book 3-4 times, the last few unintentionally because I just couldn't put it down. :)

Quote section updated! The following quotes have replaced some of the others in the quote section:

I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness.

I flatter myself [we] have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.

Matthew 17:25-26
……and Jesus said, What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take custom or taxes? From their sons, or from strangers?
Peter said to Him, from strangers. Jesus said to him, Then truly the
sons are free.

See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

After two world wars, countless smaller wars, mass murders, religious and racial persecution, several species of tyranny, punishing taxation, erosions of ancient liberties, debasement of money, and state-sponsored moral decadence, you’d think modern man would have drawn certain lessons about the modern State. All of us ought to talk about the State the way the Jews talk about Hitler.

One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted.

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man - in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished....
The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
The wisest course, then, is to keep the government simple and for it to take no action, for then the world stabilizes itself.
Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves....

When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Inside Sylvia de Vries lurked an enormous tumour and fluid totalling 18 kilograms. But not even that massive weight gain and a diagnosis of ovarian cancer could assure her timely treatment in Canada.

The Ontario Health Insurance Plan says it won't pay for the $60,000 cancer treatment because Ms. de Vries did not fill out the correct form seeking preapproval for out-of-country care.

As well, it says no medical documentation was submitted that indicated a delay in obtaining the service in Ontario would result in death or medically significant, irreversible tissue damage.

That administrative misstep has left Ms. de Vries, a 51-year-old corporate communications manager, with a staggering cancer bill.

The private funds earned an average 10 percent return since their start, ensuring that typical workers who contributed since 1981 now collect about 85 percent of their final wage upon retirement. That's more than double the average 40 percent paid to full-career, middle-income Social Security recipients in the U.S.

Public interest law professor John Banzhaf, whom the media has dubbed a "driving force behind the lawsuits that have cost tobacco companies billions of dollars," and the "law professor who masterminded litigation against the tobacco industry," has written to the health commissioners of the fifty states suggesting that they warn their state's doctors about such law suits based upon a recent article in a leading medical journal and an even more recent study about saving smoker lives.

The letter notes a recent study which shows that physicians are killing more than 40,000 American smokers each year by failing to follow federal guidelines which mandate that the doctor warn the smoking patient about the many dangers of smoking and provide effective medical treatment for the majority who wish to quit.

"Since physician malpractice kills over 40,000 smokers annually – more than motor vehicle or product liability accidents – it should not be surprising if antismoking lawyers, as well as those in private practice working on contingency fees, find physicians who deliberately flout federal guidelines to be a major target of litigation."

Lets us go back to July 5th, 1997, when the landmark tobacco settlement against Tobacco companies was being negotiated. The AMA (and one assumes the AOA) were in favor of the hundred billion dollar settlements, which, incidentally, turned many lawyers into multi millionaires.

Two public health groups, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the American Medical Association, were involved in the negotiations that led to the accord.

CHICAGO, June 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing its commitment against the dangers of cigarette smoking, the American Medical Association (AMA) this week joined several other public interest organizations in a friend-of-the-court brief reaffirming support for a Florida class-action victory against the tobacco industry.

In July 2000, the $145 billion punitive damages verdict in Engle v. Liggett Group Inc. et al sent a strong message to tobacco companies that toying with the health and lives of Americans can be a prohibitively expensive business. The damages awarded in this case, however, could be overturned because an appellate court has reconsidered the case's class certification. The AMA believes the Florida Supreme Court should overturn the appellate court's ruling and compel the tobacco defendants to pay for the damages they continue to inflict on society.

"As long as the tobacco industry profits from business as usual, they must bear responsibility for the human suffering and economic costs that result from tobacco-related illnesses," said AMA Trustee Ronald M. Davis, MD. "Preserving the penalties in this case will provide a strong incentive for tobacco companies to change their behavior."

First they went for the tobacco companies, but the doctors did not care because they disliked the tobacco companies. But when they came for the doctors there was no one was left to come to their aid.

About 20 hours of teachings, lectures, songs, chants, and other recordable events are contained in the above link. Feel free to peruse them on the other page, but the very beautiful Satsungs have been excerpted here for your listening pleasure. :)

The following recordings are from the 2008 ATTC (Advanced Yoga Teacher's Training Course). This was a month long, intensive course on yoga, meditation, and philosophy. Its prerequisite was the TTC (teachers training course), another month long course. These courses take place at Ashrams, communal type retreats, with peaceful regimented daily livings dedicated to spiritual advancements. In my personal opinion, the TTC was an immediately gratifying shock of a course, but whose main effects dissipated, while the ATTC is a more subtle course, with seemingly longer lasting effects and positive change.

The recordings below can be downloaded by left clicking on them and saving them to your computer. They are all WAV files. You will need to turn the volume up. If it is still too low try right clicking on the sound icon on the lower right hand corner of your menu bar and finagling with it. Feel free to convert these WAV files to MP3s and play them on your Ipod or MP3 player!

If you are new to the subject of Yoga, the philosophy, or even if you are not :), I recommend you start with the 'Satsungs'. Satsungs are the equivalent of church gatherings, and the 'preaching' parts have been recorded here. These particular Satsungs are taught by Swami Sadasivananda, a friend, teacher, and spiritual leader. He lives what he espouses and these brief teachings are truly joys to behold.

If you are considering taking the Sivananda Teacher's Training Course, you can hear Swami Sadasivananda give an introduction below under 'Miscellaneous'. And if you are looking for a great yoga class, especially if you are familiar with Sivananda yoga, the 95 minute Yoga 'meditation' class also under 'Miscellaneous' will take you to a whole new level. This is truly how Yoga was meant to be practiced. It was the last class of our course.

Rush pens, or should I say, orates, a touching tribute to a giant in the conservative movement. A highlight:

I went through one year of college and I was having trouble, flunked speech, should have called the course Outline 101. Flunked speech, did every speech, showed up at every class and still flunked it. I said, "This is not for me." And one morning I was sitting in the house at 20 years old and I said, "I'm quitting." I told my dad, "I'm quitting. I can't handle this. I'm leaving. I've got a job offer in Pittsburgh, and I'm going to go there." And, of course, he came from the Great Depression, and that was the worst news he could hear. The formative years of his life were the Great Depression and World War II. You go through the Great Depression, and if you didn't have a college degree you had no chance of getting a job.

He had great fears. I'm the only member of my family I think that doesn't have a college degree. He was very concerned he was a failure as a father, and I remember telling him, "Well, I want to be like Bill Buckley." He said, "What do you mean?" "Well, I want to be able to sit around and write and think and speak," and so forth, and my dad blew up at me. "What are you talking about?" He gave me a two-hour lecture on, "Where do you think Bill Buckley went to become what he is? Do you think Bill Buckley just sits around and writes and thinks and speaks, and people like you have this reaction to him?" I got a serious lecture on how hard and time-consuming achievement is. When you see the output of someone's work but you don't see what goes into it, you can make the mistake of assuming it comes easy to them, especially those who are great at what they do. They make it look so easy that you think you could do it, too. And you form impressions of how they do it, and you see these people on television and so forth, you really don't see any of the prep or any of the hard work that goes into the final product, and my dad was right about that.

So it wasn't until I left the formal academic setting at age 20, that I got serious about education above and beyond what I'd learned at home. I was reading omnivorously and voluminously, meaning anything I could get my hands on that was of interest to me.

Isn't it interesting? Rush Limbaugh flunking speech in college? Rush's Dad was right about what it takes to succeed and the humility necessary to achieve accomplishment, but wrong about the importance of college.

The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.

The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality — not star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives — is the crucial ingredient for success.

“I would much rather put a phenomenal, great teacher in a field with 30 kids and nothing else than take the mediocre teacher and give them half the number of students and give them all the technology in the world,” said Mr. Vanderhoek, 31, a Yale graduate and former middle school teacher who built a test preparation company that pays its tutors far more than the competition.

In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and discipline deans. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp elsewhere. <.>

Ernest A. Logan, president of the city principals’ union, called the notion of paying the principal less than the teachers “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called the hefty salaries “a good experiment.” But she said that when teachers were not unionized, and most charter school teachers are not, their performance can be hampered by a lack of power in dealing with the principal. “What happens the first time a teacher says something like, ‘I don’t agree with you?’ ”

Only when teachers and the educational system is outside the control of the teachers unions can these sorts of experiments happen. This decentralized control, bottom up approach to education with the money going strait to the classroom might just work.

While millions of Haitians go hungry, containers full of food are stacking up in the nation's ports because of government red tape — leaving tons of beans, rice and other staples to rot under a sweltering sun or be devoured by vermin. <.>

Jean-Paul Michaud, a Canadian, said he sailed to the capital of Port-au-Prince late last year carrying 60 pounds of donated clothing and medicine — and that port authorities demanded $10,000 in "customs fees" — code for a bribe to make the fees disappear.

"I'd have rather thrown the aid in the water," said Michaud. The Canadian Embassy intervened and the fee was later waived.

Krabacher's group says it has paid nearly $16,000 in fees in the first six weeks of 2008 alone, compared to $23,418 for all of 2007.

British charity Oxfam has had to pay the Sri Lankan government $1m in import duty for vehicles used in tsunami reconstruction work.

As oft stated: it is not lack of food, commodities, health care, etc.. which cause a lack of these things. Socialism causes shortages of these things. The people of Haiti could produce all they need and more if it wasn't for the criminals running their government. Even without the corruption, this aid is a major reason for perpetuating and encouraging the socialism already present in Haiti, and further disrupting their economy. Indeed, throw the aid in the water! And burn our tax dollars! Better that than have our government spend our money hurting the good people of Haiti.

DiFiore said in a letter to the clinic’s owners that Desai ordered his nurses to reuse syringes and reuse single-dose vials of medication when administering anesthesia to patients who received endoscopic procedures. The practice, which allowed cross contamination of patients’ blood, caused six people to become infected with hepatitis C.

Desai, who was a member of Gov. Jim Gibbons’ transition team in 2006, is the majority owner of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada

Desai used to sit on the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners, which has now launched an investigation into the clinic. <.>

Thank goodness we have medical licensing by the government. Who knows what horrors free enterprise would yield?

“The fact that, once caught, you have agreed not to engage in a technique well known to the medical community to subject patients to death or serious illness again does not persuade me that you won’t do it again,” DiFiore wrote.

Regardless, this scandal has been rocking the Las Vegas medical community since the beginning of this week. Our office has had over 50 lab referrals to check for Hep A, B, and C. The staff has been quite frustrated with all the calls coming in as well. The papers told people they could get tested at UMC Quick Cares, but the UMC gubermint people who told the papers this forgot to tell their employees, and so people were getting turned away and being told to 'see their primary care physician'. So, it's been one screw up and mix up after another...

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

When pain enters the consciousness the soul uplifts, the mind becomes joyful, and thanks and praise is given to God. What a wonderful opportunity, delivered by pure grace, sent by the wings of angels. Oh pain, oh suffering, oh teacher, lead me to the light and fill me with your blessings. How grateful am I for your coming.

Previously it was discussed that happiness does not arise from external events; life experience does not emerge from the set, but from the camera; our current perceptions, our very consciousness, arises entirely from within, and changing the processing, without exclusive focus on the input is the key to increasing our happiness and understanding.

If this premise is true, then pain and suffering must be viewed quite different from standard convention. Pain is a red flag, a blaring "fix me!", a lighthouse in a frothy sea of turbulent emotion and thought. Pain is our imperfections jumping out at us, allowing us to address them and increase our understandings.

In fact, should we not be as thankful for pain as we are for so-called 'gems' (vexing persons that appear to give us pain)? If not for pain how can we know we are walking in the wrong direction, with our habits, values, and ways of thinking askew? Look around, what it is that really gives us pain shall be our greatest uplifter if we open our hearts to it and act and address it in the proper way.

Of course, it is easiest to blame the outside world for pain in order to temporarily ignore or suppress these negative thoughts and feelings. These maneuvers are undertaken as true self revelation about the nature of the pain would cause much angst and violently shake our egos and worldviews, causing great further discomfort in the short term. It is not human nature to ponder and philosophize and think of long term happiness during a painful experience, rather we become emotionally fixed and attached to our immediate experience and seek to relieve it through any means necessary. It requires great concentration and strengthening of the higher thought processes to detach from the immediacy of painful sensual experience and emotion. Indeed, much of our conscious experiences could be said to resolve around this constant mental battle between short and long term pleasure. The simplest example is one we've all experienced: eating those chocolates and feeling immediate gratification vs long term tummy ache and accompanying mental cloudiness. The way we feel after such a sugary gorge tells us many things if we care to listen.

If viewed correctly and carefully pain could even become a central plank of spiritual and emotional development. It is sought out joyously (although not sadistically), for each new discovery means more eventual healing, greater enlightenment and increased emotional maturity. But these advances are only possible if pain is viewed as almost a form of pleasure, an apparent oxymoron except that one attempts to witness the pain as third party, to detach from suffering in order to appreciate beauty in its meaning. In other words, when the intellectual joy, the higher thought processes overcomes the natural emotional fixation of pain, true learning and permanent happiness unfold.

Phobias are the easiest pains to cure because they are obvious and blatant, as by definition we understand their nature. Most people with phobias understand their sufferings are irrational and so the higher mind already has a decent jumpstart. It is the deeper fears which are tricky enough to entice the logical reasoning part of our mind into believing we are justified in our fear (or that our fear comes from an external event). It is necessary to cure these phobias not because of the inconvenient avoidance of said phobia, but because the emotion of fear itself, our emotional wrong understanding of the world is rooted in our phobias. Better said, a phobia is worth eliminating because the very idea of fear in an external event is incorrect and strongly perpetuated (emotionally) by a phobia.

One proven method of curing phobias is by desensitization. What is your phobia? Heights? Force yourself to the tallest place you can tolerate and embrace the fear as it envelops you. Observe it as a scientist would observe electrical fear impulses in a brain on a machine. It will soon lessen. Bugs, insects, bees, wasps, spiders? Seek out these creatures and meditate upon them, observe the mind as it recoils in abject terror; think, 'silly mind, bless the fear in thee'; laugh at the mind as you would a young child. Such phobias are more disturbing and their effects more widespread then we realize. They invade even our dreams, unsettling the subconscious, enabling nighterrors, and ruining countless hours of sleep.

I recall a story by a lecturing psychologist about a woman who had been in a horrible car wreck and thereafter had a panic attack every time she sat behind the wheel. He put her in his car and said, "we're going to stay here until you can drive." She immediately had a panic attack, but didn't leave the car. She had another one when she started to drive. His response, "go ahead wreck it!". She pulled over and recovered and then drove and drove. It took them all afternoon, but she was cured. It felt as if a great weight had been lifted and her whole emotional state shifted, better sleep, and sense of well being ensued. That she is now able to drive is somewhat irrelevant, the improvement of her life and PTSD symptoms is the real story.

Dislikes are more insidious than phobias because there often appears to be some valid reasonings for them. In other words, the higher thinking mind will often concur with the lower emotional mind. When we smell putrid milk, we actually feel emotions of disgust. These emotions are painful (smelling putrid milk is not fun!), yet we reason this pain is natural and is there to tell us not to drink the milk. Now this is true, from an evolutionary perspective, but why can't we function without being consumed by these negative emotions arising? There is nothing intrinsically 'bad' or 'negative' about putrid milk. It simply is what it is. The qualities we assign it are false, arising from imperfections within us. In fact, could one not experience the beauty of spoiled milk, and still refrain from drinking it? Certainly there is something beautiful about the unique sensation of spoiled milk as it percolates through our consciousness. Indeed, there is something glorious about the very nature of consciousness itself, regardless of origin and flavor.

Upon reflection, we might even find our sensation of the spoiled milk, negative though it may be, highly dynamic, with our given experience greatly dependent on our immediate mood. For example, if we are already stressed and late to work vs on the phone with a loved one sharing a happy moment, our discovery of the spoiled milk will manifest quite differently. If we could raise our base happiness to a certain bar, we might even find our experience of the spoiled milk not painful at all. In fact, we might find very little actual pain in life, a goal only achievable by the embrace of the very pain we seek to eliminate. In fact, theoretically, pain and suffering cannot truly cease and joy, knowledge, and understanding cannot permeate in everything we do until our desire to eliminate pain is extinguished, along with, finally, even our joyous desire for pain to show us the nature of ourselves.

Similar to phobias, taming our likes and dislikes involves some manner of desensitization technique, going against the grain, prodding our stubborn minds, until we realize our dislikes are also our own creations. People we dislike reflect things about ourselves we dislike. When we judge or insult or slander, we really judge, insult, and slander ourselves, and stain only our own character. Practically there exists much difficulty in how the mind processes an attempt down this path. For example, consider 'Dharma', an Hindi yogic term, which can be defined as a combination of individual fate, duty, and talents (and which will be subject of a future essay :)). We like what we are good at, are drawn to do our part in the world, and are naturally attracted to people who help us facilitate beneficial information exchange, ie aid us in accomplishing various physical and mental tasks. How one can walk this razors edge, this fine line, between discomforting the mind to awareness of its fallacious dislikes and the danger of straying from one's Dharma, really has no logical answer. Increased discernment and perceptions of the finer points in this balancing act will surely become clearer with judicious meditation and spiritual practice.

Some of those versed in western psychology and psychiatry have arrived at many of these conclusions independently of our friends to the east. For example, Dr Frattaroli in the previously reviewed 'Healing the Soul in the age of the Brain', describes depression as the body/subconscious telling the conscious mind something relevant and important. He describes cases where a change in job, relationship, or other major ( or even occasionally minor) life adjustment completely cured a patient's depressive state. In effect, listen to the pain, what is it telling you, where is it coming from? When the mind is calm, ideally a

Most sweeping changes since Great Depression Proposal will give the Federal Reserve new regulatory power MSNBC ^ | March. 28, 2008 | AP writer

Most sweeping changes since Great Depression Proposal will give the Federal Reserve new regulatory power
MSNBC ^ | March. 28, 2008 | AP writer