Note To Self: Linux CLI Commands

On Digg today, there's an article with 743 diggs that reads: Explained: 9 useful Linux commands everyone should use! Of all the commands mentioned, this is the only command that I didn't know:

$ free

At the end of that Digged article, there were links to the Ubuntu Community Documentation for the Terminal, which introduces new users to the command line, and a Unix commandline cheat sheet.

The following commands are new to me and will serve me well in the future:

ctrl+a or Home	Moves the cursor to the start of a line.
ctrl+e or End	Moves the cursor to the end of a line.
ctrl+b	Moves to the beginning of the previous or current word.
ctrl+k	Deletes from the current cursor position to the end of the line.
ctrl+u	Deletes the whole of the current line.
ctrl+w	Deletes the word before the cursor.

This one is worth a million dollars:

ctrl+r

Searches for commands you've already typed. When you have entered a very long, complex command and need to repeat it, using this key combination and then typing a portion of the command will search through your command history. When you find it, simply press Enter.

There are so many times when I scroll up looking of a command I used days ago that I used, but can't recall the full syntax. ctrl + r should remdy this problem. Here is another guide to Bash which clarifies how to use the CTRL + R feature:

1. Easily recall previous commands
Bash keeps track of the commands you execute in a history buffer, and allows you to recall previous commands by cycling through them with the Up and Down cursor keys. For even faster recall, "speed search" previously-executed commands by typing the first few letters of the command followed by the key combination Ctrl-R; bash will then scan the command history for matching commands and display them on the console. Type Ctrl-R repeatedly to cycle through the entire list of matching commands.

Note to self: gnome themeing

When I fix Ubuntu, use this gdm theme and try this cool gnome panel, both of which are found at gnome-look.org.

no title

Check out this atrocity committed by the British military in Iraq:


UK News Of The World Shows British Troops Beating Iraqi Youth - The most amazing videos are a click away

McCain-RP election victory, world order, China and the Middle East

If, let's say, the McCain campaign managers buy Ron Paul's recent argument (that Washington policy makers have been behaving like drug addicts since 9/11) and McCain's campaign managers pick RP as McCain's running mate on Sept. 2, promising to abolish the IRS laced with revolutionary Founding Father rhetoric, McCain-Paul would definitely win the 08 election. And let's say that over the course of 4 years in office McCain does everything Ron Paul says in his revolutionary book, then there would be a very different world order. Ron Paul opposes all supranational government bodies, like the UN so McCain would evict the UN from their NY HQ.

This probably won't happen because the Republicans prolly won't pick RP to be McCain's running mate. I'm not making predictions here. I'm just speaking hypothetically. This is an outlandish possible scenario. I'm just theorizing...for kicks.

So with a true gold standard (with the Fed abolished) the prices of goods and services (including oil) traded internationally would stay the same for Americans. Inflation would effectively be abolished. Actually, that's a half truth. Oil would no longer increase in price, as long as OPEC doesn't overcharge. And goods like electronics like computers manufactured in Chinnese factories would stay the same, as long as China doesn't start setting unfair prices, they could, after all, because they have a monopoly in this industry, if you add together all the electronics manufacturers.

Additionally, w/o an American hegemonic order on the planet, there would be a political vacuum and political crisis in Iraq with US troops arriving home before the end of 2009. All military and financial aid to Israel would cease. All 700 military bases strategically placed around the globe would be disbanded. If this were the case, with total international anarchy, then China could do what ever it pleases, perhaps establishing its own order over the planet, an anti-humanist order at that. Let's say China invades the entire middle east starting in 2012, after McCain and RP do everything RP promises. China at this point would have a monopoly over oil resources, exploiting the political crises of the US withdrawal from Iraq. If this were the case (this is a pretty flippin outrageous scenario) ALL Middle Eastern Arabs and Muslims would be united against their new imperial oppressors, a spectacular challenge for the religion of Islam. The West's War on Terror problem would be solved because America would no longer be the target of Islamic fundamentalists. Cool, eh?

I'm probably overlooking all sorts of logical possibilities resulting from an unlikely revolutionary McCain-Ron Paul election victory. What do you think could happen after US hegemony?

Now let's say some of Alex Jones' conspiracy theories are true, (not the 9/11 inside job ones, the other ones about the NWO that are argued for in Jones' (2007) "End Game") and the CFR, the Bilderbergh Group and Trilateral Commission members are indeed planning an Asian Union (AU) and North American Union (NAU) cooperating with the Chinese business class in secret, outside the public eye. What follows from this? The world's Power Elite could pull off a NAU and AU, if there were a need for it, like an inflationary crisis which provoked the ignorant public to demand a solution, trusting their governments and expert economists. If this were the case (I could be wrong, but let's pretend I am right), the Power Elite's behaviour would be tyrannical, similar to the behavior of Hitler who exploited an economic crisis to gain support from the insecure Middle Class in Wiemar Germany. Mugabe in Zimbabwe has drawn the world's attention to his tyranny based on (in part) hyper inflation. Informed Ron Paul revolutionaries (a passionate bunch) are well aware of how tyranny works. Ron Paul essentially argued this point in the senate in mid of June of this year. RP argues that governments are known for exploiting economic crises to gain more power, a humble and useful lesson. Check it.

InfoWars is Alex Jones' really intense blog, so popular among young people that it gets more comments below each story than DailyKOS stories get. "We Are Change" is Jones' legion of dangerous revolutionary activists. I am not one of these activists, but I read InfoWars every day because I am fascinated by the anarchy and freedom of the internet. Without internet censorship, conspiracy theories flourish. I suppose if these conspiracy theorists get out of hand who, by getting violent in the streets, become a danger to the peaceful domestic order provided by the state in America, then maybe the state will have to intervene and start censoring the internet.

Hitting the on switch

NATURE | Vol 448 | 23 August 2007

Erika Check
San Francisco

That looks perfect,” murmurs Robert Place as he watches a smooth line trace across his monitor. “It never works this well.” Place, a molecular biologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of California, San Francisco, is using a spectrophotometer to measure the purity of a series of samples. Every sample contains a tiny drop of micro RNA (miRNA), a type of genetic regulator that dampens gene expression — or so the story goes. The experiment Place is absorbed in is the last he must complete before he submits a publication that could upend that story. He and his colleague, Long-Cheng Li of the University of California, San Francisco, think they have found some miRNAs that boost, rather than silence, gene expression in cells.

Their work could shake the foundations of one of the hottest topics in biology — RNA interference — which studies how short pieces of RNA regulate the expression of genes. Place knows that his experiment will draw intense scrutiny from other researchers, and therefore it has to go perfectly. And as far as he can see, it has. His spectrophotometer displays a series of flawless curves, free of impurities; it looks as if he and his colleagues are finally seeing the pay-off after a three-year saga of frustration and exhilaration.

Since about the turn of this century, scientists have realized that 50 years of focus on DNA had blinded them to the wide range of biological roles held by its chemical cousin, RNA. The old view was that DNA contained life’s instructions, proteins carried them out, and RNA served as little more than a go-between. It’s now become clear that RNA has vast potential for controlling how cells interpret the instructions embedded in the genome.

The RNA revolution began in 1998 with the discovery honoured by last year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine that small strands of RNA stuck together in pairs, like the strands that make up DNA, could turn off specific genes in roundworms1. RNA interference was born.

In 2001, scientists discovered that the process works in mammals, too2. They found that interference could be triggered by ‘short interfering RNAs’ (siRNAs) or ‘short hairpin RNAs’ (shRNAs). Both work by using a pair of scissors, actually a complex of proteins known as RISC, to cut apart the longer messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that take information from the genes to the cell’s protein making machinery. The small RNAs target mRNAs because their sequences match, and by destroying the messenger, RNA interference stops genes from making proteins. Both siRNAs and shRNAs are being tested in clinical trials against conditions in which an overactive gene needs to be shut down3.

Scientists then discovered miRNAs, which also trigger the interference pathway, but unlike siRNAs and shRNAs are naturally encoded by cells’ DNA. So far, more than 500 miRNAs have been identified in the human genome4. They can act like siRNAs, using the same protein complexes that slice through messenger RNA. But for the most part, miRNAs are content to muzzle the message or mark it for degradation, rather than chop it up.

All these techniques were still quite new back in 2004, when Li began to investigate RNA at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the laboratory of Rajvir Dahiya, a urologist. Li, also a urologist, was studying epigenetics — stable modifications to the genome that change how it is read without altering its sequence.

He was particularly interested in DNA methylation, the addition of chemical tags called methyl groups to regions of DNA. Methyl tags often silence nearby genes, which can be disastrous for genes that usually suppress tumours. So Li was trying to find ways to reverse this process. He decided to try an RNA-based technique to control methylation that hadn’t yet been used in animals, as far as he knew, although it had been demonstrated in plants a decade earlier5.

Unexpected boost
Li purchased two pieces of double-stranded RNA that were complementary to a DNA control sequence — known as a promoter — upstream of the gene that encodes the tumour-suppressor protein E-cadherin. Then, his colleague Hong Zhao added the doublestranded RNA to two lines of prostate cancer cells and measured how it affected E-cadherin expression. Three days later, Zhao noticed something shocking: the experiment had boosted levels of the E-cadherin protein by 4- to 14-fold. “I couldn’t believe it,” Li says. The work defied everything that scientists had ever reported about small, double-stranded RNAs. They were only supposed to dampen gene expression. Li seemed to have stumbled on a phenomenon that could rewrite the textbook understanding of RNA interference and might offer new therapeutic potential.

Li re-ran the experiment many times, each time with the same result. He found that two other cancer-related genes, VEGF and p21, could also be activated by double-stranded RNAs. The evidence seemed solid. At least in the prostate cancer cells he was working with, short, doublestranded RNAs activated genes. “It was so easy to observe — I didn’t understand how people could have ignored it for such a long time,” Li says.

But apparently they had. So Li knew he was going to have to put together a atertight case to convince other scientists. He started to realize how difficult that would be when he first submitted his work forpublication to Science in August 2004. It was promptly rejected. He then submitted his paper to Nature that December; when it was rejected, he resubmitted it with new data in April 2005. He presented his findings at the annual conference of the American Association for Cancer Research in Anaheim, California, in May 2005, and the reception wasn’t warm. “I got a lot of sceptical questions,” Li says. Then, after an extensive delay, Nature again rejected Li’s paper in December, 2005. Without evidence for a mechanism, he says he was told the results weren’t convincing enough. Unsure how to proceed, Li got some unexpected help in the form of Place, who joined the lab in October 2005. Fresh from earning his PhD, Place was excited by the novelty of Li’s findings. But he could tell that the lab had a lot of nitty-gritty molecular biology work to do. Place helped plan experiments to help convince the sceptics. For instance, he helped Li and his technician Deepa Pookot to perfect assays, called immunoblots, that detect proteins so that they could measure how RNA activation boosts levels of E-cadherin and other proteins.


Filling in the details

Place and Li also started to think about the mechanism behind RNA-directed gene activation, a major stumbling block for the editors and reviewers who had seen the paper. If it worked in the same way as gene silencing, the sequence of the trigger RNA should matter, and the pair found that it did. Changing five letters at one end of the 21-letter sequences rendered them inactive. The pair also found that activation used some of the same key proteins that are involved in silencing, such as Dicer, which cuts up strands of RNA so that they can be used by RISC to target mRNA. They began to experiment with activation, trying to find out what worked best. “We started to modify the RNA duplexes to get optimal activation, tweaking their chemical structures,” Place recalls. “There came a point when we were working in synchronization, and we really started to click.”

Li resubmitted the work to Science with Place’s additional molecular biology results, but it was again rejected. The letter he received said that because the work “would represent a substantial paradigm shift”, the evidence just wasn’t strong enough. Again, editors required demonstration of a mechanism. So, in June 2006, Li talked to leaders of the RNA-regulation field at a meeting in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York. Li recalls asking David Bartel of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, if he thought RNA activation — not just inhibition — was possible. Bartel said he didn’t think so, Li says. Bartel says he doesn’t remember the=conversation, “I was probably just trying to find out how solid the evidence for activation really was,” he explains. Li was after all a junior researcher in an unrelated field, and he hadn’t been able to publish his findings.

Exasperated, Li considered sending his findings to an online journal with less stringent criteria than Nature or Science. But Dahiya thought that the work would get buried in obscurity, and convinced Li to try the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences instead. In August 2006, the lab submitted its work there — and finally got its breakthrough.

The journal reviewed it in weeks and published the work online in November6. Two months later, vindication: another lab, led by biochemist David Corey of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas, published a paper essentially duplicating the results in Nature Chemical Biology7. “It was really good for us,” Place says. “Before that, it seemed like everyone just thought we were crazy.”

Back at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Place and Li were now working closely together, although Li was preparing to move to his own lab at the University of Califorinia, San Francisco. They had already devised a series of experiments that they hoped would bolster their activation hypothesis. Although some changes
to the sequence can render RNA useless, others fine-tune the activation. The trigger doesn’t have to match the target sequence exactly, and a few tweaks to the double-stranded RNA produces less activation. And that’s exactly how miRNA works.

So the pair started hunting for a miRNA that might activate E-cadherin. It wouldn’t prove that activation was a natural phenomenon, but it would strengthen the case, because miRNAs are encoded in the genome.

Place and Li used a bioinformatics tool to search for miRNA in the human genome that had sequences roughly complementary to the E-cadherin promoter sequence. They found a handful of candidates and transferred them into the prostate cancer cell lines. The experiment was so simple they half-expected it wouldn’t work — but it did. The pair found one miRNA, miR-373, that boosted E-cadherin expression. “When that worked, we were totally pumped, because it was a potential example of natural function,” Place says.


On the right track

But it still wasn’t proof. So Place designed an miRNA precursor that, according to the model of miRNA biogenesis, should work as well as the miRNA itself. It did. Place also found that if he knocked out Dicer, then miR-373 stopped working, and that Dicer could also activate another protein with a promoter sequence similar to E-cadherin’s. All these experiments supported the idea that miRNA could use the interference pathway to activate genes. It was a strong hint that Li and Place were on the right track. On 6 August, they submitted the work to Nature Chemical Biology.

The question now is how this work will be received. Many are still sceptical about activation, as David Corey can attest. “Last time I talked about this at a meeting, a couple of leaders in the field jumped all over me and told me it wasn’t true,” Corey says. “We’ve received grant and manuscript reviews that seem to express irritation more than anything else. I just wish they would look closely at our data.”


Indeed, it sometimes seems as though the idea of activation is struggling because it contradicts the interference dogma. The RNA interference field is quite young, but already seems to have acquired a certain amount of inflexibility. On scanning through archives of biology message forums, Place has found that other scientists — often graduate students — have also seen evidence of RNA activation. But they have been encouraged to discount it.

Phillip Sharp, a Nobel-prize-winning biologist whose lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge pioneered much of the work on RNA interference, admits that RNA-mediated activation might be possible, but says that “the results I have seen do not prove this”. Echoing the demands of manuscipt editors, he says, “I think further papers on the subject must address the mechanism if they are to be published in a high-profile journal.”


A new pathway

As the field has moved apace, such requests are warranted, and providing proof of a mechanism is Li and Place’s main challenge. Some have suggested that activation is simply inhibition in disguise. It could be the accidental result of silencing an upstream repressor or of blocking another silencing RNA. Although they can’t rule out these possibilities, from their experiments, they say that these mechanisms look unlikely. For instance, they can elicit activation predictably at specific genes by targeting their promoters. There are intriguing differences between the known silencing pathways and the observed activation phenomenon. Silencing is triggered within hours and ceases in about seven days, whereas activation takes days to appear but can last for weeks. The different kinetics suggest that some mystery process is involved, Place says. “People say this could be RNA interference with another name, but it’s so blatantly different.” Major questions also remain about how RNA regulation might act at gene-promoter regions. In the classic interference pathway, the RISC complex guides siRNAs or miRNAs to a target mRNA in the cell’s cytoplasm. But to regulate a promoter, a small RNA would have to sneak into the cell nucleus, where DNA is transcribed. There is mounting evidence that this happens in silencing pathways, but again the mechanism is unclear.

In 2004, two groups published papers that suggested that siRNAs that target gene-promoter regions can silence genes if they are delivered into cell nuclei. Although one group has since retracted its paper, the other group, who published in Science8, showed that the inhibition was accompanied by epigenetic marks associated with silencing. Kevin Morris, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, an author of that paper, has continued to study how this occurs, and sympathizes with Li and Place’s position. “I was there in 2004, when 50% of the people love your work and the other 50% think you’re full of it,” Morris says. “It’s a frustrating place to be.”

Frustrating, indeed. As the deadline for this news feature approached, Place received word that the group’s manuscript on miRNA activation had been rejected. The reason given: without proof of a mechanism, the evidence isn’t substantial enough. Li is still adamant that the field will come around. “We have no doubt that RNA activation is an endogenous mechanism,” he says. And Place seemed unsurprised. “We knew the mechanism would be the sticking point. That’s the hardest part to prove.” But, he predicted, if the group can just get someone to just take a look at its data, the strength of its evidence will prevail. “If we can get it into review, we’ll be okay,” Place says. When RNA interference first hit the scientific radar, it was a slow climb from something written off by many as artefact to a revolutionary paradigm. That same uphill battle confronts Place, Li and their collaborators as they try to rewrite, or at least refine, the revolution. Call it what you will — stubbornness, confidence or optimism — this group just isn’t going to give up. ■


Erika Check writes for Nature from San Francisco.

© 2007 Nature Publishing Group

Endnotes

1. Fire, A. et al. Nature 391, 806–811 (1998).
2. Elbashir, S. M. et al. Nature 411, 494–498 (2001).
3. Check, E. Nature 442, 614–615 (2006).
4. http://microrna.sanger.ac.uk/sequences
5. Wassenegger, M. Cell 76, 567–576 (1994).
6. Li, L. C. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 17337–17342 (2006).
7. Janowski, B. A. et al. Nature Chem. Biol. 3, 166

Biology's Big Bang: The RNA Revolution

Abstract:

For more than half a century the fundamental story of living things has been a tale of the interplay between genes, in the form of DNA, and proteins, which the genes encode and which do the donkey work of keeping living organisms living. The past couple of years, however, have seen the rise and rise of a third type of molecule, called RNA. RNA has been known about for a long time. Until the past couple of years, however, its role had seemed restricted to fetching and carrying for DNA and proteins. Now RNA looks every bit as important as those two masters. It may, indeed, be the main regulator of what goes on in a cell--the cell's operating system, to draw a computing analogy--as well as the author of many other activities. As important, molecular biologists have gone from thinking that they know roughly what is going on in their subject to suddenly realising that they have barely a clue. That might sound a step backwards; in fact, it is how science works. It is too early to be sure if the distinguishing feature of the 21st century will be biological technology, but there is a good chance that it will be. If RNA is controlling the complexity of the whole organism, that suggests the operating system of each cell is not only running the cell in question, but is linking up with those of the other cells when a creature is developing. To push the analogy, organs such as the brain are the result of a biological internet. If that is right, the search for the essence of humanity has been looking in the wrong genetic direction.



Leaders: Biology's Big Bang: The RNA revolution

The Economist. London: Jun 16, 2007. Vol. 383, Iss. 8533; pg. 13
Periodical
Word Count = 1066
Copyright notice at the bottom of this blog post)

What physics was to the 20th century, biology will be to the 21st--and RNA will be a vital part of it

NATURE is full of surprises. When atoms were first proved to exist (and that was a mere century ago), they were thought to be made only of electrons and protons. That explained a lot, but it did not quite square with other observations. Then, in 1932, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. Suddenly everything made sense--so much sense that it took only another 13 years to build an atomic bomb.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that biology is now undergoing its "neutron moment". For more than half a century the fundamental story of living things has been a tale of the interplay between genes, in the form of DNA, and proteins, which the genes encode and which do the donkey work of keeping living organisms living. The past couple of years, however, have seen the rise and rise of a third type of molecule, called RNA.

The analogy is not perfect. Unlike the neutron, RNA has been known about for a long time. Until the past couple of years, however, its role had seemed restricted to fetching and carrying for DNA and proteins. Now RNA looks every bit as important as those two masters. It may, indeed, be the main regulator of what goes on in a cell--the cell's operating system, to draw a computing analogy--as well as the author of many other activities (see pages 91-94). As important, molecular biologists have gone from thinking that they know roughly what is going on in their subject to suddenly realising that they have barely a clue.

That might sound a step backwards; in fact, it is how science works. The analogy with physics is deeper than just that between RNA and the neutron. There is in biology at the moment a sense of barely contained expectations reminiscent of the physical sciences at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a feeling of advancing into the unknown, and that where this advance will lead is both exciting and mysterious.

Know thine enemy

As Samuel Goldwyn so wisely advised, never make predictions--especially about the future. But here is one: the analogy between 20th-century physics and 21st-century biology will continue, for both good and ill.

Physics gave two things to the 20th century. The most obvious gift was power over nature. That power was not always benign, as the atomic bomb showed. But if the 20th century was distinguished by anything from its predecessors, that distinctive feature was physical technology, from motor cars and aeroplanes to computers and the internet.

It is too early to be sure if the distinguishing feature of the 21st century will be biological technology, but there is a good chance that it will be. Simple genetic engineering is now routine; indeed, the first patent application for an artificial living organism has recently been filed (see page 96). Both the idea of such an organism and the idea that someone might own the rights to it would have been science fiction even a decade ago. And it is not merely that such things are now possible. The other driving force of technological change--necessity--is also there. Many of the big problems facing humanity are biological, or are susceptible to biological intervention. The question of how to deal with an ageing population is one example. Climate change, too, is intimately bound up with biology since it is the result of carbon dioxide going into the air faster than plants can remove it. And the risk of a new, lethal infection suddenly becoming pandemic as a result of modern transport links (see page 67) is as biological as it gets. Even the fact that such an infection might itself be the result of synthetic biology only emphasises the biological nature of future risks.

At the moment, policymakers have inadequate technological tools to deal with these questions. But it is not hard to imagine such tools. Ageing is directly biological. It probably cannot be stopped, but knowing how cells work--really knowing--will allow the process to be transformed for the better. At least part of the answer to climate change is fuel that grows, rather than fuel that is dug up. Only biotechnology can create that. And infections, pandemic or otherwise, are best dealt with by vaccines, which take a long time to develop. If cells were truly understood, that process might speed up to the point where the vaccine was ready in time to do something useful.

But physics gave the 20th century a more subtle boon than mere power. It also brought an understanding of the vastness of the universe and humanity's insignificant place in it. It allowed people, in William Blake's phrase, to hold infinity in the palm of a hand, and eternity in an hour.

Know thyself

Biology, though, does more than describe humanity's place in the universe. It describes humanity itself. And here, surprisingly, the rise of RNA may be an important part of that description. Ever since the human-genome project was completed, it has puzzled biologists that animals, be they worms, flies or people, all seem to have about the same number of genes for proteins--around 20,000. Yet flies are more complex than worms, and people are more complex than either. Traditional genes are thus not as important as proponents of human nature had suspected nor as proponents of nurture had feared. Instead, the solution to the puzzle seems to lie in the RNA operating system of the cells. This gets bigger with each advance in complexity. And it is noticeably different in a human from that in the brain of a chimpanzee.

If RNA is controlling the complexity of the whole organism, that suggests the operating system of each cell is not only running the cell in question, but is linking up with those of the other cells when a creature is developing. To push the analogy, organs such as the brain are the result of a biological internet. If that is right, the search for the essence of humanity has been looking in the wrong genetic direction.

Of course, such results are speculative and primitive. But that is the point. Lord Rutherford, who proved that atoms exist, knew nothing of neutrons. Chadwick knew nothing of quarks, let alone supersymmetry. Modern biologists are equally ignorant. But eventually, the truth will out.

© 2007 The Economist. NO Rights Reserved.

Compiz Fusion cube maps

Here are some excellent cube maps for compiz fusion I wanna try (when i get a working PC)

ecomorph + e17

Check out this link I found on Google for the highly experimental ecomorph built with compiz-fusion and e17.

Here is the detour (DTR) project.

The work Alberto Castro and Hannes Janetzek do is really impressive.

InfoWars on The end of the internet which thrives on human FREEDOM?

InfoWars discusses leaked reports from Telus and Bell Canada which show that the buisness elite are decisively moving to regulate ourinternet similar to the way the Chinese government does theirs. The so called "Internet 2" seeks to make the internet a one directional medium, similar to TV. From the article:

ISP’s have resolved to restrict the Internet to a TV-like subscription model where users will be forced to pay to visit selected corporate websites by 2012, while others will be blocked, according to a leaked report. Despite some people dismissing the story as a hoax, the wider plan to kill the traditional Internet and replace it with a regulated and controlled Internet 2 is manifestly provable

Here is more from the article:

The development of a new form of internet with new regulations is also designed to create an online caste system whereby the old internet hubs would be allowed to break down and die, forcing people to use the new taxable, censored and regulated world wide web.

The only way the elite could pull this off would be when the populace is most vulnerable, during a sea of global crsies, like combinations of epidemics, natural disasters or a dollar crash.

Here is the link to the full article courtesy of InfoWars:

WARNING: radical conspiracy theories enclosed

Flash and Firefox and upgrading slackages

Flash and therefore YouTube wasn't working in Firefox 3 RC on Slackware 12.1. The solution? Install flash player from the SlackBuilds repository. Then, cd into the flash installer and copy the .so file to /usr/lib/firefox-3.0rc2/plugins/. Restart Firefox.

And to upgrade a program using an updated slackage, fred on Freenode suggests: # upgradepkg --reinstall --install-new slackage.tgz

DVDs to purchase

When I earn enough money as a food runner, I want to buy the following DVDs:

* Parallel Universes (2008) by James Arthur Ray

* Moses Code (2008)

* The Opus Movie (2008)

* Introducing Abraham - The Secret Behind "The Secret" (2005)

* Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard (and here for the trailer)

Plato's Self Help

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being ruled by your inferiors." Plato (Republic, Book I, 347c) Plato's quote is applicable to free software. The penalty for refusing to use Linux, is you end up being ruled by the chains built into Microsoft's inferior proprietary products. Plato's quote implies self help and self reliance.

Spinoza's Pantheism in an Einstein Quote

Here is a spectacular quote from Einstein mirroring Spinoza's pantheism: "A human being is a part of the whole called by us 'the universe'; a part limited in time and space. He/she experiences themselves as something separate from the rest-a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must to be to free ourselves from the prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Customizing Ubuntu

Check out this blog post which explains how to customize Grub, Ubuntu splash theme and gdm theme.

Hitler, Bush, Chomsky and Plato

On Hitler and Bush, Plato once said: “Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.” Therefore, what democracy needs is an eye of vigilance of checks and balances to prevent tyranny from bubbling up. Ad Hitlerum fallacies as found in Alex Jones’ inside job conspiracy theories, as found on Diggnation and committed by Chomsky’s slave moralists prevent the elite from transforming into a police state and carrying out false flag attacks to advance violent imperial ambitions for oil. I suppose without prosperity, in the event of economic, environmental, political, public health crises, capitalism can’t possibly remain democratic. Thus, Plato’s quote should read for 21st century scholars: “Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy especially when the economy is no longer viable.” The iPod generation over the next 30 years will spontaneously create an AIDS vaccine, create a new sustainable energy source, structurally adjust capitalism to make it more sustainably functional, and discover themselves spiritually, returning to the geocentric paradigm. I’ve seen it.

Slackware, Summer Reading List, Slamd64 Tonight, Papers

I wrote three philosophically important papers in the last month of my final year at Trent

* Review of Goldman's Imperial Nature, on resistance to the IMF.
* Contemporary Just War Theory breeds violence, which reinforces The Secret teachings
* Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals as it applies to sub prime mortgage crisis in America
* JS Mill and Singer's article on African poverty and income distribution and molotov cocktails
* Spinoza's link to the environment (maybe this essay wasn't so great)

In other news: Today I was crying because I don't have the programming skill to fix compiz-fusion myself. I wish I could make compiz-fusion more stable. Maybe I'll feel better if I nuke and then reinstall win32 before I install Slamd64 12.1 and install e17 using Stratera's SlackBuilds.

In other news, ##slackware idlers on FreeNode suggest new users read Slackbook at least twice. My summer reading list grows again. Here is what my summer reading list looks like now (sorry for the screwed up formatting):

* Slackware Essentials

* Lost in Space by Mike Dooley

* Happier than God by Neale Donald Walcshe

* Chaim Perelman, Realm of Rhetoric as I promised Tindale I would
* Slavoj Žižek, (1989)The Sublime Object of Ideology --> This book might be fun to read because of this note. (More here)

Žižek writes:

It is my belief that these three aims are deeply connected: the only way to "save Hegel" is through Lacan, and this Lacanian reading of Hegel and the Hegelian heritage opens up a new approach to ideology, allowing us to grasp contemporary ideological phenomena (cynicism, totalitarianism, the fragile status of democracy) without falling prey to any kind of postmodernist traps (such as the illusion that we live in a "post-ideological" condition). (The Sublime Object of Ideology, p. 7

Note to Self: Skydomes

Use these skydomes for compiz-fusion.

The Law of Attraction linked to the New World Order?

Here is a very rough draft of an essay I assembled. My influences are Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, New World Order conspiracy theories, Ron Paul's REVOLUTION, Antonio Gramsci and left wing activism. I put a lot of love into these ideas. If you like what you see, feel free to take some of it to create your own ideas. This essay is incomplete.

The best explanation of 9/11 comes with the law of attraction. Did innocent Yankees in the World Trade Centres attract the terrorist attack on 9/11? No. For their financial greed, America’s business elite attracted jealousy from Al Qaeda. The elite “co-created” 9/11 together with Al Qaeda. The world’s business elite are responsible for the killing of 3000 innocent Americans at the superpower’s economic financial heart. 9/11 is an example of a grave injustice. According to Canadian public intellectual Gwen Dyer, the Taliban since the 1980s increasingly became desperately resentful and jealous of the world's business elite. If it weren't for democracy, the world's business elite could impose a capitalist empire over the entire planet, similar to the way Kings of ancient Rome imposed their democratic empire all over Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, Al Qaeda wants to impose its own Islamic empire over the word. Unfortunately for Al Qaeda they are weak. So over time, they became extremely jealous. Al Qaeda was not jealous of the American middle class experience of freedom and prosperity. Al Qaeda were and are jealous of the power the world's elite have over the planet. In general, someone is mentally and spiritually unhealthy if greed, resentment and jealousy is their life experience. That kind of existence is called depression and it's not sustainable. That ugly combination has produced conflict and a “war on terror.” On the other hand, the experience of gratitude, hope and joy, the experience of the middle class, especially around the winter solstice, is healthy and produces peace and harmony.

Placing the blame on the business elite for being greedy or placing the blame on Al Qaeda for being jealous is really irrelevant for those who wish to create a peaceful world order. For believers in The Secret and the law of attraction who wish to achieve peace in the Middle East, focus on the teachings in The Moses Code.

Now, Al Qaeda is a select group of dangerously fanatical religious fundamentalists who believe in a radical ideology. The same is true about the world's ruthless business elite. The ruthless elite are a group dangerously fanatical about capitalist ideology. Will the middle class be crushed by the intense emotional battle between Al Qaeda and the elite?

Before I answer that question, first I answer: must the middle class be enlightened by The Secret teachings in order to succeed in ridding the world of war, anger, resentment, greed and jealousy? The middle class is already enlightened. We don't need to be told what the secret is, because we already know it. On the internet, according to Google, there is more, love, hope, happiness, joy and gratitude than there is fear, jealousy, greed, anger and resentment. We already think prosperous thoughts. We already know how to manifest our goals more or less successfully. This is true at least for the world's healthy middle class which has access the internet. If anything, the elite and Al Qaeda are about to be crushed by the middle class' overwhelmingly positive energy.

The world's middle class needs to continue its path along prosperity, freedom and humanism.

Since its inception, Homeland Security and the whole war on terror has only created more terrorism, according to leading professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England, Paul Rogers. According to Reuters, Paul Rogers “described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "disastrous mistake" which had helped establish a "most valued jihadist combat training zone" for al Qaeda supporters.” Paul Rogers claims, "Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs." Therefore the war against terrorism only perpetuates terrorism. The “war on terror" produces more terrorism. Byrne's success coaches teach this too. A better name for the ruthless elite's imperial ambitions is “war of terror”. The ruthless elite are losing the war of terror dismally because they don't have consent from the public. Donald Trump sums up the state of affairs in the US very concisely on CNN:



Assuming scarcity, jealousy creates greed and greed creates jealousy. Since 9/11 perhaps the elite have become more power hungry and greedy, while the same is true about Al Qaeda's jealousy.

The outrageous income of just the world’s top 691 billionaires in 2005 is spectacular. According to Lea Goldman and Luisa Kroll from Forbes magazine, “The collective net worth of the 691 billionaires we could find is $2.2 trillion, up $300 billion from the combined worth of the 587 people listed last year”( quoted from Goldman and Kroll's “The World's Richest People” in Forbes magazine, 3 October 2005). By comparison, the World Bank estimates that it would cost $600 Billion to feed and educate the world’s poor for 7 years. That is, according to page 47 of the World Banks' Millennium Development Goals, titled Agriculture and Achieving The Millennium Development Goals: Agriculture and Rural Development Department). By educating the world’s poor to read and write, the rich could simultaneously teach the world’s poor how to sustain themselves. Education is definitely a worthwhile cause. With this over abundance of wealth accumulated by the rich, the middle class in Ontario for example doesn’t need to sacrifice their warm showers nor their Christmas presents to eliminate world hunger. With this over abundance of wealth accumulated by the rich, the middle class in America for example doesn’t need to sacrifice their prosperity. The middle class is so spiritually healthy, so prosperous, we need not sacrifice our warm showers nor our Christmas presents to reduce world poverty. Heartless, the business elite are now trying to take away what the American people rely on for their prosperity: the economy. Greed is a vice. Prosperity is a virtue. It's now up to the Facebook/iPod/Google generation to dissolve this hateful war between the elite and Al Qaeda by asserting ourselves with love by sharing our prosperity and our happiness with all our neighbours and friends and especially our enemies. People who posses prosperity consciousness are protected by the universe’s spiritual energy forces, so the existing middle class in the West has nothing to fear.

END

Pretty neat eh? I came up with that argument in December 2007. It's incomplete, though. There is more. The following is extremely experimental which I may develop into a more coherent essay at a later date. If anyone reading this blog sees what they like from the following, feel free to borrow it and develop it yourself. You don't need to give me credit. Good luck:

Tangent:
(1) Speculate about Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism --> Spiritual foundation of the constitution using Graham Hancock and RObert Bauval's (2004) Talisman: Democracy is "the liberated great-grand-child of this Hermetic-Gnostic tradition."

(2) the important moral of the creation story in Genesis is that humans have free will, and therefore, the foundation of humanity's intelligence and language adventure is J S Millian negative liberty. Luckily, Millian liberalism is read into the US constituition.

(3) humans did for animals what god and the angels did for us: the angels granted humanity humanism. Millian utilitarianism and humanism is a spiritual doctrine, counter to the spiritual doctrine of Nazism. Nazism is a problem with the human soul. Nazism is a psychological and spiritual problem:

“Nazism can be explained only in terms of psychology, or rather in those of psychopathology. Hitler is looked upon as a madman or as a “neurotic,” and his followers as equally mad and mentally unbalanced…The sources of fascism are to be found in the human soul, not in economics.” (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1943: page 206)

Nazism is a spiritual problem. The spiritual is political. To Fromm, spontaneous creativity and artwork allowed in democracy provides safety. Creativity and democracy is a spiritual solution to the human condition.

Conclusion:

The US constitution is a spiritual document which haunts the greedy business elite night after night. The American public, since Bretton Woods, has developed a world view, a consciousness, which is exceptionally spiritually healthy. Their worldview is informed with revolutionary ideas of absolute political freedom and universal human and animal rights.

You know what song I listen to as I write this? Andy Hunter's “The Wonders of You” from The Matrix. Here is part of the song:



Now read my final conclusion:

The public’s worldview involves prosperity and an abundance of hope and love. Abundance out numbers scarcity on Google by a ratio of 4:1. Hope, love ,happiness and abundance is more powerful, so the spiritual consciousness of ordinary people will trump that of the consciousness of the business elite when the crisis happens before 2012. The public which assumes abundance is prepared to collide with the elite’s greedy ideology and agenda which assumes scarcity. The public, now a giant marauding bear with wings, is ready to squash Satan. [define Satan with JP2 quote from Walsch's What God Wants page 156] This is why I am so optimistic.

In an article titled, “Pentagon boosts 'media war' unit,” dated 31 October 2006, the BBC news reports that the war of ideas keeps Rumsfeld up at night.

The biggest sustained political demonstrations in world history will be spontaneous. It'll come out of nowhere, just like the amnesty protests by Hispanics in California in 2005 + 2006. Enlightened, all of us and especially young people will be conscious participants in a worldwide political demonstration and general strike made possible with the internet to defend the constitution. The answer to 1984 is 1776, as Alex Jones says in EndGame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement.

Thesis:

The public is enlightened, 9/11 was the test. Instead of riding the insecurities of nationalism into World War 3, the youth have chosen to ride the horse of spiritual energy forces: absolute freedom, justice and humanism, into the light.

I have a strong intuition that the illuminated elite at recent Bilderberg meetings and Trilateral Commission meetings are very divided. Half the elite want to greedily horde all the money for themselves, the other half want to enlighten humanity. The elite are in crisis mode and the world is ripe for revolution. RON PAUL REVOLUTION: Think "TeaParty07" and the fifth of November in 2007. Who is Ron Paul, how does he represent indigo children and the iPod Generation? Why is Ron Paul important? See my previos post. And here is me on Ron Paul's revolutionary economics. Oh and if interested, here is me on how creationism and intelligent design will be synthesized within the next 30 years by the indigo iPod generation.

MOVE OVER, 'cause here comes the Google generation:

END

This is, by the way, good to know:

As the credits role in The Secret, Esther Hicks says: “There is nothing you are supposed to do, only that which you want to do.” This quote can be ramified by a point made by Neale Donald Walsch on his blog. Walsch says that you are perfect just the way you are, “there is nothing you have to know, nothing you have to do, and nothing you have to be except exactly what you are knowing, doing, and being Right Now.” You don't have to do anything. Participation in the war of ideas or Anonymous protests are optional. Participate only if you choose.

Here is an aphorism that doesn't quite fit yet in the above essays:

The Universe manifests abundance at a mere thought, then why is there so much poverty, starvation and death? Does the law of attraction imply that all starving children in Africa have to do is “think prosperity”? The answer to that question is yes and no. First read Bob Proctor’s explanation for how rich people maintain their power:

It is not difficult…for children today, born into families of great wealth-like the Kennedy's or the Bronfman's-to think these prosperous thoughts and to have this prosperity consciousness, since that is the only type of thinking they were subjected to, right from birth. We say they have been conditioned in, or to, prosperity. However, the majority of people have not been born into that kind of an environment and so they were not surrounded by that type of thinking. (See Bob Procter's You Were Born Rich, p11)

Bob Proctor’s point about rich people maintaining prosperity consciousness is related to why starving children in Africa are stuck in what I call, “poverty consciousness.” Poor people maintain their adversity, not because they choose to, but because it’s probably excruciating difficult to think prosperity if you are always hungry. It’s not their fault they’re poor.

Here is another great aphorism that sorta belongs in the above essay, but doesn't fit very well:

Success guru Bob Proctor provides a concise social class analysis in The Secret. Bob Proctor asks, “Why do you think that one percent of the population earns around ninety six percent of all the money that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's no accident! It's designed that way.” Who is “they”? Bob Proctor is referring to the business elite of course, “They understand something. They understand the secret. And you are being introduced to the secret.” Whatever special knowledge the business elite have, we are being introduced to it. From this, what can I infer about world order? Maybe the law of attraction was discovered by John Davison Rockefeller and Henry Ford in the early 1900s; and, in 1913, conspiring with Woodrow Wilson, the elite committed a discrete coup d'état, creating a central American bank, the Federal Reserve system (Zeitgeist, 2007).

“Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws.” Baron Rothschild

I’m guessing that Baron Rothschild is illuminated. Rockefeller, Rothschild, Ford, Warburg, Aldrich and other American elites in the early 1900s, perhaps, asked the universe for consent using hermetic abilities similar to the law of attraction.

more tags: Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, nwo, capitalism, law of attraction, conspiracy theories, corruption, Demartini, social justice, bob proctor, anarchy, 9/11, world, us, the left, sustainable, taxes, the left, world, life, hitmen, globalization, future, emotions, empire, HOPE, ron paul, asdf, ronpaul2008, ronpaul

cubereflex

Check out this new cubereflex plugin for compiz fusion. Here are some more screenshots of compiz-fusion customized by artists passionate about desktop GUIs.

MS Office 2007 on Linux

Here is an Ubuntu blogpost explaining how to emulate Microsoft Office 2007 on Linux.

Or maybe...

Maybe instead of building a new expensive PC from scratch, I'll just upgrade my existing system. Here are some nice fanless graphics cards which should fit into my existing PC.

$90. MSI NX8600GT-TD512EZ GeForce 8600GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

$85. XFX PVT86JYAHG GeForce 8500GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

These cards might not fit because there is a peg jutting out in one of the corners which might interfere with my very tall heatsink:

$140. MSI NX8600GTS-T2D512EZ HD GeForce 8600GTS 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

$125. ECS N8600GT-512MX HS GeForce 8600GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Check out these Kingston ram sticks.

$80. Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) System Memory Model KVR400X64C3AK2/2G - Retail

This one is dual channel:

$75. Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR400AK2/2GR - Retail

Slamd64 PC this summer

I am going to build a PC from scratch this summer. My new PC will have GBs of ram, a quad core processor. The processor will be virtualization capable so i can run Crysis on linux. Crysis is the most hardware intensive violent videogame on the market. And by Linux I mean Slamd64, of course. To play Crysis, I will pirate win32 (arrr). Virtualizing win32 will also enable me to play CS Source, so I can pug using the GameSurge network on irc. I'll get flash running on Slamd64 using nspluginwrapper. Apparently there is a forum post on the Slamd64 forums on nspluginwrapper. Then I plan on installing e17 on Slamd64 using modified SlackBuilds. Here are some of the system specs for my new PC:

$110. OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

$299. Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor - Retail

$230. MSI N9600GT-T2D1G OC GeForce 9600GT 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

$165. MSI P7N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Prices from newegg.com
I will use this guide to build my PC.

"Plotinus and the Gnostics"

Here is quote from a scholarly source I found on JSTOR on Plotinus and Gnosticism with two footnotes:

In Plotinus' system too identification with the One is the ultimate goal of human endeavor. The self in its upward flight does not stop at the level of nous in a mere contemplation of the highest existence-as do the redeemed in Christianity. Plotinus too holds something like the Gnostic notion of the divine spark when he says, in more Aristotelian language, that ascent to and union with the One means the reawakening of the psyche's potentialities? [21] or when he declares that the supreme part of the psyche is forever united with the One.[22]

21 Enn. VT ix 11, IV viii 1.

22 Enn. I1 ix 2

Citation: Katz, Joseph. “Plotinus and the Gnostics” (Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 15, No. 2. Apr., 1954) pp. 289-298.

Spice Girls -- Move Over

Here is a TV commercial me and my little brothers loved when we were kids:

Motherboard information

These commands will print detailed specifications of my mobo in linux:

dmidecode
lshw
lspci
lshal
lsusb
dmesg

enouf in ##linux just suggested:

if you want something pretty you can print, do as root; lshw -html > ~/lshw-output.html then go view it, print it ;-)

I entered the command but the output won't parse in the blogspot filter. I'll try a real converter later. Maybe I'll e-mail Brainyron.

Special thanks goes out to enouf!

Amy Walker

Here is an actress named Amy Walker who can do 21 different English accents:
Chick Does 21 Different Accents - Watch more free videos

I don't know what it is about her, but I think Amy Walker is smoking hot. Here is Amy Walker's website which shows off her portfolio and resume.

The New Era of Attraction

There will new a mew magazine called "Succeed" featuring Bob Procter. It looks like he will be coaching leaders of the environmental movement, just as I hoped!

The guru of The Law of Attraction, Bob Proctor, believes our leaders are missing the point when it comes to climate change and other problems facing the world's six billion-plus inhabitants.

"The current problems we have in the world are the results of ignorance; we need to elevate our awareness so that change comes for the better. Increase our awareness and things will change," says Proctor.

Proctor says the law of attraction is always working – always – so what mankind is experiencing is the result of what mankind attracts to it and at the moment it's ignorance. "Leaders are like most people – they may be brilliant in one area but ignorant in another. Just because they are a leader doesn't mean they know anything," says Proctor.

"Look at the history of global warming – global warming has been around for decades and some
people such as Al Gore (former US Presidential contender) were warning us about it 10 years ago
and only now are people starting to listen and
respect him.

Proctor says whenever someone or something new comes along it is standard human behaviour to mock – new technology, new music, new thinking are challenges to our accepted sense of how we are, so in many cases it's easier to be ignorant rather than embrace new thinking, or at least consider it. "If someone is enlightened in a certain area we tend to laugh at them because we don't understand them.
At the moment our awareness as a race of people is
in the wrong place," says Proctor.

Bob Proctor has been teaching these messages for more than 30 years. He has built a multi-million dollar business spanning the globe based around the principals of the psychology of wealth creation and happiness.

The Law of Attraction features strongly in his teachings because he believes that people attract to them the things and relationships they are most aware of. We don't need a great education or genetic makeup to succeed.

This Law works in strange ways, for example, if a person is worried about debt it is most likely that their awareness is constantly on debt and thereby creating negative emotions and propelling the person into more debt. What they are really saying is 'give me more debt'.

The solution here is for the person to change their awareness to wealth and abundance and not just be a little aware – they need to believe, ask and be prepared to receive. They also need to take action because "nature hates a vacuum."

Proctor believes in paradigms. We are all programmed or conditioned from a very early age to believe in and expect the things and outcomes that we do. This is a limiting set of beliefs that inhibits creativity and act as a self-imposed prison to a person's potential and capacity in all areas of life.

"Some people lack the awareness to create or be happy and are controlled by what is going on around them and this starts in school," says Proctor.

"The report card controls what we think – it tells us if we are a good or bad person but what it really tells us is what we were like for a brief period of time several weeks before.

"People are learning and a global shift is happening. The Secret is impacting upon the entire world and
the fact that is has such an impact is a symptom that the world was ready for this type of information,"
he concludes.

Bob Proctor's paradigm
No more effort or energy is required in order to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty. The difference between the two lies in your level of awareness.

The information I'm about to share with you is extremely powerful and, in many cases, could set you free from the constraints that keep you from realising your full potential, and freedom to all of the good you desire.

Yet you cannot be free until you know exactly what it is that governs, shapes, and directs your behaviour and ultimately, your results. If you're not careful, your thinking and results can be controlled by your paradigms.

Paradigms are your mindsets. They are your ideas; the little habits that your brain has developed over the years. The 'operating system' on which your mental processes run.

Your paradigms create the prism through which most people view and make sense of the world around them. Information is presented to your mind in one-way or another. Your mind runs through all of the things it already knows about that piece of information and figures out where it fits in with the bigger picture. Your mind then makes a determination whether the information is good or bad, desirable or undesirable, possible or not — all of which can be influenced by your existing paradigms.
Like most things, paradigms in and of themselves are neutral. If your paradigms are positive, you will have a happy, growth-oriented life, a healthy self-image, and the ability to adapt successfully to changes, upsets and unforeseen events.

Conversely, negative, limiting paradigms can keep you stuck in old ways of thinking that can be very limiting. Negative paradigms keep you as imprisoned as do a cell and a set of iron bars. Maybe even more so, since it imprisons you in the place where all true freedom resides: the mind. It follows, then, that if you want to create change in your life and start getting new and different results—you have to change your paradigms.

How do you go about that?
Step One: Write down one thing -- that goal, dream, challenge that you have not yet resolved in your life. The subconscious mind thrives on detail, so describe it to yourself as vividly as you can.

Step Two: Write down every association that you connect to this thing: everything you think about it, good and bad, everything that the thought of it brings to your mind. One approach I have found extremely effective is to 'map' it in much the same way writers come up with plot concepts.

Draw a circle around the words or sentence you came up with in Step One. Then, in the space around that circle, write down your associations as they come to you, encircling each one and connecting it with a line to the original encircled goal. When you feel like you've come up with a substantial number of associations, take a good look at what your mind has shown you.

Step Three: It's time to address your paradigms and ask 'why?' I suggest that you zero in on a few of the most powerful paradigms, the ones that have the biggest negative impact.

Ask yourself, "Why do I think this? Where does it come from? Where did I get such an idea?" Keep on digging until you've exhausted every possible scenario. And finally, now that you know what your paradigm is on any given topic, create an affirmation that will assist you in re-programming your mind, something that is the opposite of your paradigm.

For example, if your paradigm is you'll never earn a lot of money, your affirmation might be: I am so happy and grateful now that money comes to me on a continual basis through multiple sources of income. I am a magnet to money; I now have all that I want.

Write your affirmation on a 3x5 card and repeat it daily, as many times as possible. In time, you'll begin to notice yourself thinking and acting in a different way. And, just when you think you've got it, it will be time to work on another paradigm!

Timing is
Everything

When coaching teams and individuals I'm often asked 'Why do some people achieve so much while I struggle just to get by?' The latest psychological research into personal productivity and time management shows that the mindsets we apply can pay big dividends in how much we accomplish. In fact, they are far more important than the number of hours we invest in any given task.

Here are 7 Taylor-Made Champion Mindsets that will help you increase personal effectiveness in your personal and professional life. The more mindsets you adopt, the more automatic and effortless time management will become for you.

1. The 'GO FOR IT' MINDSET!
In your job, do you consciously seek ways to challenge yourself and stretch your skills? If you're a terrific time manager, you probably answered 'yes'. Working
at your 'cutting edge' and finding ways to extend yourself increases productivity and willingness to manage time effectively. (It increases your value in
the job market, too!)

2. The 'WANT TO' not 'HAVE TO' MINDSET!
Do you tackle tasks at work because you want to or because you have to? Most people agree that approaching something from a 'have to' point of view results in an unwilling attitude, lack of satisfaction and a mediocre outcome. It also leads to procrastination and poor time management.

3. The 'CAN DO' MINDSET!
Do you expect the best of yourself, for yourself, and from everyone around you? Unless you believe you have what it takes, you'll never improve time management or achieve the things you want to achieve. Set high standards; 'expect the best' is a good motto to adopt.
4. The 'PRESENT' MINDSET!
Do you ever feel in a rut with your job; that it's just the same old thing, day after day? 'We've always done it this way' thinking leads us to just go through the motions in a rigid and automatic way. And it's very easy to burn out when we face the same old problems without solutions.

Terrific time managers don't get into ruts. That's because they're mindful that there can be multiple solutions to almost anything. They keep thoughts, words, deeds and mental pictures sharply focused on what they intend to achieve. This prevents burnout and leads to better time management. Keep looking for better, easier, more efficient ways to achieve results. Ask yourself 'How can I streamline this? How can I add more value'?

5. The 'WELLNESS' MINDSET!
If we feel energetic, we're more likely to have a go at tasks that, if we're tired, might overwhelm us. This is important, because it's not the tasks we've completed that make us tired or wake us up at 2 am; it's worrying about the tasks we haven't done!
Exercise boosts stamina, strength and suppleness, and reduces stress. It also increases self-confidence and self-esteem, improves your mood and, as a result, you can achieve more. Experiment to find the level of exercise that makes you feel physically and psychologically 'raring to go'. This is the 'WELLNESS' mindset.

6. The 'GOAL GETTER' MINDSET!
Do you routinely establish both long- and short-term goals for your business? Do you have a business plan? Study after study has found that goal setting – more than any other technique (including pay rises!) – increases productivity in terms of both quality and quantity. Setting explicit, worthwhile goals can help you accomplish anything. Short-term goals make long-term goals seem more realistic and achievable. They're also easier to meet, so start by breaking your large, long-term goals into weekly and daily goals. Create daily or weekly 'To Do' lists and use them as a guide to manage your time.

7. The 'TAKE RESPONSIBILITY' MINDSET!
Who's driving your bus? Are you calling the shots? Poor time managers are often obsessed with being busy. But if this is unfocused it can lead to poor goal achievement and low productivity. Don't let your environment or other people dictate your activities.
It's a recipe for stress. Know your priorities – anything that moves you closer to your goals – and work to them. The more you control your environment, the more you'll achieve.

Here is the Note from the universe for 27 Feb 2008:

Don't you think it should work like this:

You have a desire, you dwell upon it, move with it, and presto, it manifests?

Or, you fall in love at the right time, with the right person, they fall in love, the timing is perfect, and bingo, the earth moves.

Or, you have a huge question, you turn it over to me, forget about it, and ta-da, you just know.

Me, too. Which, actually, is exactly how it does work, Daniel, in the absence of fear.

Cool, huh?
The Universe

PHP

Today I was chatting with my friend Brainyron over MSN and we talked about writing my first PHP script. See, in 2005 Ron prescribed for me the SAMS PHP 5 in 24 hours. In summer 2006 I copied out examples but none of them made any sense. And now that I am taking first year C# at Trent University, PHP is making a little more sense. So I asked him to give me an assignment. I'm going to create a "hit counter"

pseudo code1:

count the number of hits the website received

pseudo code2:

every time someone visits the site, PHP will one to the last number it showed, and then save that so it can recall it later

pseudo code3:

it needs to open a text file
then read it
read the number out of there
add one
display that number
save it back to the file

And then we realized that I had no idea what was going on, so we agreed that i need to start copying out examples from SAMS PHP again; except this time, when i don't understand the explanations, i'll ask him questions. Ron gave me his other e-mail address. I suppose I could ask these questions also in the php freaks forums.

edit: For when I eventually get around to creating this script, use this guide to echo the date: http://ca3.php.net/date

Self Help and Hacking Linux

This conversation happened between me and a elite hacker, Fenix-Dark, in #slackman on FreeNode.

Fenix-Dark:

for the sake of learning, you're better off figuring stuff out on your own than having someone hold your hand

me:

i miss ryan holding my hand

Fenix-Dark:

but there's a point where you need to cut the umbilical cord

me:

are you saying that i don't belong here because i am too old and i sitll ask newb questions?

Fenix-Dark:

no. i was just pointing out that one of slackware's benefits is that it allows you to learn alot about linux, you negate said benefit by having other people 'fix' every little problem you encounter. if you have someone help you for every insignificant issue you encounter you'll build up bad habbits that will extend beyond computer operating systems

me:

any more useful advice?

Fenix-Dark:

yeah, floss your teeth

we laugh together

This is how the central bank works:

This is a documentry covering the centralization of the American economy and its inevitable collapse. Debt -- government, coporate and hosehold has reached astronomical propotions. Where does all this money come from? How could there be that mouch money to lend? The answer is...there isn't! Today, money is debt. If there were no debt, there would be no money. If this is puzzling to you, you are not alone. Very few people understand, even though all of us are affected. This fast paced and highly entertaining animated feature by artist and videographer, Paul Grignon explains today's magically perverse debt-money system in terms that are easyy to understand.

Quote from Astonishing Power of Emotions

Check out this quote from Abraham Hicks' (2007) Astonishing Power of Emotions. Abraham explains how manifestation works:

Creating is not about making things happen through action. In fact, creating is not about making things happen at all. Creating is about allowing the thing that you desire to happen, and the allowing happens through Energy alignment, not through action.

This is from page 57. Here is an excerpt from the book.

"Ten rules for being human"

I found this philosophy of life when I Googled "Ten Rules for Being Human". I Googled "Ten Rules for Being Human" because it was mentioned at this Amazon.com link. I was directed to that Amazon.com link from Bob Proctor's insight of the day for 4 Feb. 2008.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life".

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately
"work".

4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're "alive", that means there are still lessons to be learned.

6. "There" is no better a place than "here". When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here".

7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10. You will forget all this.

Why Secret Societies are kept secret

Here is a really interesting insight about religion and conspiracy theories I found (I think) on Digg:

"However they deck it out with the rhetoric of mystery and wonder, theirs is a universe of blind force," Booth writes, and you don't have to believe in Isis and the philosopher's stone to see his point. Most people will still choose to believe in something "more," whether it's the ninefold path of the Buddha or the pillars of Islam or pyramid power. Chances are that whatever they choose will sound ridiculous to anyone who doesn't also believe. That's something religion has always had in common with sex: If you're not into it, it looks silly. Which explains why all the really clever people do it behind closed doors."

Feyzi Baban’s (2006), “Living with Difference: Cosmopolitanism, Modernity, and Political Community"

Here are some quotes and corresponding footnotes I have copied and pasted from Feyzi Baban’s (2006), “Living with Difference: Cosmopolitanism, Modernity, and PoliticalCommunity,” Studies in Political Economy 77 (spring): pp. 107-128.

cosmopolitan thinking encourages us to rethink how sameness and difference is dealt with in a highly complex globalized world.5 In a series of well articulated books and articles, Held and Archibugi have been defining the blueprint for a world polity that needs to be reimagined outside the scope of state sovereignty.⁶

6. D. Archibugi and D. Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy: An Agenda for a New World Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); D. Archibugi and D. Held, (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998); D. Held, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); D. Held, Globalization-anti-globalization (Cambridge: Polity, 2002); D. Archibugi, (ed.), Debating Cosmopolitics (London: Verso, 2003).

Central to these and other works explaining the “cosmopolitan condition” is the need to redefine world politics that cannot be managed by states alone. Held argues that, as a result of the growing number of complex global issues. such as regulation of trade, poverty, and the environment, we can no longer sustain the assumption that nations can control their own destinies alone. He then asserts that, as a result, we either leave our destiny at the hands of the market or try to create new forms of democracy, regulation, and accountability to subject global forces to effective political control.⁷

7. M. Guibernau, “Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and Democracy: An Interview with David Held,” Constellations 8/4 (2001), pp. 427–41.

Proponents of cosmopolitan theory remind us that we need to reimagine a political community that is not bounded by borders, one that would include all human beings as its members and adopt democracy as a cosmopolitan ideal implemented on a global level.⁸

8. D. Held, “Globalization and Cosmopolitan Democracy,” Peace Review 9/3 (1997), pp. 309–14.

This cosmopolitan democratic ideal requires a paradigm shift in international relations and should base itself not on international law, but on cosmopolitan law that “would guarantee the fundamental rights of every individual human being whether or not such rights were respected by their ‘own’ nation-states.”⁹

9. R. Fine and R. Cohen, “Four Cosmopolitanism Moments,” Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, (eds.), S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 137–62.

This shift entails removing nation-states from their privileged status in international politics and extends the concept of sovereignty to individuals who would be the legitimate agents of the international domain.¹⁰

10. D. Archibugi, “Principles of Cosmopolitan Democracy,” Re-imagining Political Community, (eds.), D. Archibugi, D. Held, and M. Kohler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 198–230.

Laying the groundwork for democratic global order is one of the principal objectives of cosmopolitan theorizing.(110)

...cosmopolitanism should be imagined and read within the context of margins, local experiences, and cultures.(109)