At the end of the year I often find myself thinking of things gone by and tonight I was thinking about Peanuts, a cartoon I grew up with and always looked forward to the television animated specials.  In particular, I enjoyed the music which was performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.  Here are three of my favorites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. I am saddened by the fact that Paul Schultz is no longer with us and there will be no new Peanuts.
 

 

 

I was introduced to this film by Steve Meeks, an instructor I had in a Humans Relation class that was part of an Interactive Multimedia course I took while in Prison.

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rmSqMK4F4xE

We’re a day past winter solstice here and thank God for that!  Today will be 3 seconds longer than yesterday!

I do suffer from seasonal depression to some degree, not crippling but I do have my moments, and the last few weeks getting out of bed in the morning has been a real challenge and then to actually DO something…

The sun will continue to come up later until New Years Day, where for the next three days it will not come up until almost 8AM, (7:58).

I’m really looking forward to more light, longer days, and fewer thoughts about death and loss and pain that come with this season for me.

When the contract with Comcast expires, I’m going to look for something else.  I’ve had Comcast telephone service for almost a year now and have had regular problems with it.  Every time I call, I have to go through multiple levels of phone tree and other automated crap before I can talk to a human being, and then I’ve got about a 50-50% chance of getting a hold of someone who can comprehend the nature of the problem I’m having.

Tonight, I tried to call a local Pizza place to order a pizza.  When they answered, I could hear them fine but, when I spoke, my own voice came back to me delayed by about five seconds making it pretty much impossible to have a conversation.

When I called other numbers, the call was okay, and when other people called the Pizza place, they were okay as well, so clearly something in the network, something probably in inter-office trunking.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with telephone terminology, the circuit that connects your phone to the local telephone switch is called the “loop”, and the circuit that connects switches to each other is called a “trunk”.

If it has been a loop problem, on either end, that end would have gotten the echo all the time, but that wasn’t the case, only when I called from here to a number served out of the Emerson central office.

But the person I got at Comcast kept insisting on dispatching someone to my home, and if they didn’t find a problem (which they wouldn’t because it isn’t a loop problem), they would bill me for the dispatch (not to mention NOT fixing the problem).

And this is consistent with the type of service I’ve been getting from Comcast which is why I’ll be looking for another telephone provider when my contract with them expires.

Now, the poor service isn’t the only thing that bothered me about this.  Another issue is the long delay of the echo, almost five seconds.  I can’t think of any legitimate reason they would need to buffer five seconds worth of audio, and that leads me to wonder if this isn’t some NSA tap gone bad, or some amateurish tap gone bad.

I’m amazed at how well cut-n-paste from Word to WordPress worked, tables and all.  Tables are misaligned but otherwise…  Anyway, I’m looking for work, at least part time.  Eskimo isn’t generating enough income for me to service all my personal debts and I want to get out of debt and not lose my home so I’m looking for some additional income.

Aside from a “job”, I can create and/or edit websites, clean, update, and optimize computers, configure just about anything in Linux, if there is anything I can do for you please don’t hesitate to ask.

The first question I would ask is, “why would anyone want to come back?”

I have read many arguments with respect to the Biblical basis pro and con, and I can draw two conclusions, the Bible supports reincarnation, the Bible flatly denies the possibility.

Some of the arguments on both sides fail to recognize that God exists outside of time.  For example, one person, opposed to the concept of reincarnation, asks, if the purpose of reincarnation is our perfection, then why after so many years of humanity existing on the planet, so we continue to hate and kill and maim and otherwise be nasty to each other?

Then another, who favors the view of reincarnation points out the following passage:

Jeremiah 1:4 Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Both of these fail to recognize that God is outside of time and thus can know someone at anytime.  If, when we are not in corporeal form, we are also outside of time, or at least not forced to progress one way forward through time, then people who reincarnate, if anyone does, don’t necessarily do so at a later point in time.  They might even reincarnate and live lives in parallel.

At times I’ve even entertained the idea that we might all be incarnations of the same spirit.  We might all be Adam, and Eve.

More than that, I’ve entertained the idea that every fundamental particle in the universe is really the same particle being reflected back and forth in time (in one direction it’s ordinary matter, in the other it’s anti-matter).

I believe in God, I believe he doesn’t want to send anyone to hell but he also doesn’t force us to be with him, we can be apart if we choose, and that is living without love, and that really I think is what hell is all about.

I’m not going to try to limit what God can or does or does not do based upon mans’ interpretation of his word, not even mine.  I don’t know if reincarnation exists or doesn’t or exists for some like Elijah and John the Baptist and not others.

We don’t even know what spirit is.  I do know that neurobiologists who believe they can explain consciousness by the patterned firing of neurons are missing a critical part of the picture, that of the subjective experience.  They can explain how a particular firing of a neuron or group of neurons in the visual cortex can result in the perception of the color red, but they can’t explain why we experience red as we do, why a firing of this neuron results in the subjective experience of red, and that neuron as a 1khz audio tone.

Personally, I do not believe the brain is the seat of consciousness but rather an interface between this physical world and a non-physical spirit.

My beliefs are somewhat biased by a number of personal experiences.  When I was younger, I used to have out-of-body experiences fairly frequently.  I wanted to determine whether there was any reality to it or it was just imagined or something akin to a dream state.  So during one experience I decided to go some place I had not been to but I could drive to easily, and so I made a mental note of my surroundings, wrote what I had seen down on a tablet, and then drove there and verified the accuracy of what I had seen.

That still doesn’t prove that consciousness is not an phenomena generated in the brain, but the ability to travel outside of one’s body and sense something remotely accurately suggests there is some non-physical component.  Oddly, the out of body experiences pretty much stopped in my mid 20’s, around the time my first child was born.  It was also the time I stopped smoking marijuana, but I wouldn’t go back to it even if it meant having out of body experiences again because it caused asthma for me and a lack of motivation and I eat too much without the munchies.

Of course someone who has messed up their live to the degree that I have could certainly wish for a re-run.  If I could I’d go back and change my past, but that doesn’t seem to be an option.  But then, if the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics is correct, there are an infinite number of me that have lived their lives in an infinite number of different ways, and presumably some of them haven’t made such a royal mess of things.

These days instead of focusing on what might happen after I die (or not happen as the case may be), I’m trying to focus more on what is happening while I’m alive and how I can make it better for those around me.

I’m frustrated by the lemming phenomena though.  Collectively the way we treat each other, the way we treat the planet we depend upon, and the way we allow others to treat us is just abysmal.  I wonder if the popularity of apocalyptic fiction, movies and books, isn’t a collective desire for God to come and hit the cosmic reset button.

This is kind of rambling but then this is my most personal blog.  The thoughts here aren’t even half baked, they’re still ingredients being stirred.  Every once in a while I dip my finger in and taste.

I put them out here because I think maybe they’re ingredients others can use for some good purpose, or perhaps others will add ingredients I can use.

Janet Yellen, has stated that she will continue Ben Bernanke’s current monetary policy of reducing the money supply if either inflation rises above 1.5% annually or unemployment falls below 6%.  What is the problem with this?  There are many.

Holding the line on inflation is necessary but 1.5% is too low.  Some inflation is necessary for the economy to function.  Too little and deflation will cause an economic collapse.  In addition, keeping the money supply low enough to keep the inflation rate below 1.5% guarantees stagnation.  3% to provided the Swiss with the worlds most stable economy for many decades.

By keeping the unemployment rate above 6%, the Federal Reserve system (which isn’t federal at all, it’s a group of mega-greedy banks) is keeping the supply of labor higher than demand, which keeps wages low while keeping corporate profits high.  These are big corporate interests running the show, and not elected representatives, it’s not surprising that policies of the Federal Reserve Board are geared towards their own self-interests and not the well-being of our nation.  Even if it were elected representatives running the show and not the Federal Reserve Board, you’ve still got the problem that the majority of elected representatives in this country are for all practical purposes owned by large corporate interests.

Every US President who has spoken out for the need of a national currency controlled by elected representatives and the abolishment of the Federal Reserve has been shot and killed, with the exception of Ronald Reagan who was shot, but not killed. Iceland recently threw out their entire government and re-wrote their constitution to deal with this problem, and that might be practical when you have a population of 300,000 but not so much with a nation the size of the US.

What can we do?  Well for starters, stop voting for the name you hear the most and start making an effort to know your representative, how they vote, and what they’ve done in the past.  Right now there is an almost absolute correlation between who gets the most campaign contributions, and thus who gets their name out in front of us the most, and who gets elected.  We have to break that.

To the degree that we can trade, barter, volunteer, use alternate currencies like BitCoin, it gives the Fed just that much less control over the economy, and by extension, power.  To the degree we have to have to use the dollar, use as much of it with real people running real businesses and as little as possible with mega-corporations that do not have our best interests at heart.

I think we also ought to demand honesty.  Since the Federal Reserve is not a government entity, they shouldn’t have a website under .gov but rather .com since they are a private entity geared towards making money (and world domination).

I’ve changed themes (again).  I find Elbee Elgee to be neater, tighter, easier to read, plus it supports Buddy Press, and is highly tweakable and extensible.  Most of all the content seems easier to read and stands out better.  The BBpress forums provide a means to have side conversations, Mingle provides some social interactivity.