Could it ever come to this?

Yup.

mmm tofu sticks!

Someone has spent too much time watching Alex Jones.

Didn't watch it. Judging from the options, it's some kind of conspiracy theory.

Absolutely...it is already this way.

Totally possible.

Most people have no idea the extent to which this is already true.
Web developer product emails invite me to subscribe to such information services.

I've had my bank multi-choice quiz me about my own web browsing behavior to confirm my identity. Apparently it's not too accurate though. Somehow I failed the test and was really pissed.

Just wait till products have RFID chips. The moment you walk in a store they will identify you because of your unique combination of german sandals, a bike pump, and brand of lipstick. They will then target all their in-store video advertisments to your known product interests.

Same thing with all the new video billboards. They have cameras now. combine that with license plate recognition and they will figure out if the average driver currently waiting at the intersection is an alcoholic, movie-goer, or preparing for their annual vacation.

Equipment also exists to know what radio stations passing cars are listening to. They can change video billboards to create a message in the context of what songs people are currently listening to.

From what I hear, tires now have RFID chips, traffic intersections have RFID sensors, and buying tires with cash requires filling out an identification form.

The cross-walk buttons in Santa Monica, CA have cameras combining license plate, facial recognition, and fingerprinting.

Even non-GPS cell phones have been tracking user locations since the mid 90's.

Unless you are in the forest or at the beach, I'd say it's a safe bet that your every movement and word is being tracked via artificial intelligence.

Even in the 60's, primitive as computers were back then, phone switch-works were capable of recognizing key words of a million calls at a time and triggering recording devices.

Back in the 80's thermal sattelite imaging was capable of determining what car had been in a parking lot by reverse engineering the heat scattered off the license plate onto the pavement.

maybe some of it, and I'msure it is hapening right now.

Ok now I'm scared.

Have you ever seen the movie "Eagle Eye" ? It's a really good movie.

No, but I've seen quite a few movies based on such surveillance.

> Absolutely...it is already this way.
>
>

I worked at a Pizza place not that long ago. It really isn't. We take the phone number. If you're a regular customer we do have your address, and the last thing you ordered from us (and ONLY the last thing) on our screens which helps make the process quicker, but that's it. Please stop with your paranoid delusional 1984 fantasies. kthxbai.

I had the experience about a couple years ago, that the city has your house on camera.

I called the city planner, and she asked me to go outside and look at something in front of our house, I came back into the house, and gave her the answer. She described my house, my car, and saw me in front of my house. I don't know how they did it....obviously, with cameras.

> I had the experience about a couple years ago,
> that the city has your house on camera.
>
> I called the city planner, and she asked me to
> go outside and look at something in front of our
> house, I came back into the house, and gave her
> the answer. She described my house, my car, and
> saw me in front of my house. I don't know how
> they did it....obviously, with cameras.

Do you live in a "covenant neighborhood" or a gated community?

I live on a regular neighborhood block, the same for 46 years...no gated community.

> I live on a regular neighborhood block, the same
> for 46 years...no gated community.
>
>

Well something weird's going on there, because there isn't far as I know a single non-gated community within Denver, Adams, or Jefferson county (where I live currently is in Adams, but is literally within walking distance of both Denver and Jefferson Co. Yeah, I know, odd) that has that same set-up, though frankly being in a decent sized apartment complex (comprised of THREE separate buildings) it might not be such a bad idea for us.

I think a hidden camera on a telephone pole looking down a street would be a good idea for a neighborhood. A fellow did it in his neighborhood and the thieves that were robbing the homes were caught.

I assume there is a satellite camera on the homes in the city. There is no other answer. The employee was able to see my neighborhood, my car, my house, and me. The government is too powerful.

Possible, but not likely.

I wouldn't want a camera like that in my neighborhood.

Frostbrand: I wonder if you are joking. At a pizza palace, perhaps not (no need to justify costs), but somewhere, yes.

FB & LJD: Among the many digital services offered to me back in 2000 was live sattellite coverage by the half-meter of most any non military location on the planet, including your own doormat. At that time Mapquest could switch from map view to sattelite view. They droped the service, I'm guessing because it was either too expensive or a national security risk.

Don't imagine microsoft sat dormant in the late 90's and early 2000's with nothing to show but Xp and Vista.
First they built Terraserver, the software which seams together all those sattelite images, and then they built LASAC, a system which seams together all those traffic and indoor cameras combined with image recognition software.

The technology in those sci-fi surveillance movies is not a fantasy. On the trivial side, that operating system you see on occasion in sci-fi movies with wall or desk monitors in 3D is no fantasy either, it's just a bit pricey still for public consumption. I haven't looked at Vista yet which may even have those capabilities if one has the horsepower to use them.

I don't look at this from a conspiracy perspective, but from an engineers perspective. If you can build a more powerful tool, you do.

AI camera/mic surveillance costs a minute fraction of wha patrol cars cost and is far more effective. Any government concerned with self-preseravtion would be foolish not to use it. The problem is of course public opinion, and thus it isn't used for public purposes.

What does occur publicly though is pretty significant in it's own right though.

A consortium of websites subscribes to information sharing resources. You indirectly agree when you register with these sites to share anything you might type, or even the text of the threads which attract the most of your attention. The moment you log on to such a site your IP and browsing identity is no longer anonymous between these sites, or even for any of their members whom you have no registration with. All this info is collectivized to build a user profile database of all your interests and behaviors. It's a reasonable guess that the gov't taps into this business database and incorporates it into it's tracking/recognition software. Again, for the few pennies it costs, and the additional security it provides, they'd be fools not to except for the public objection part. All digital transmissions are by law being archived these days. You're a fool if you imagine that Iron Mountain and Pine Mountain aren't secretly processing all these archives as they arrive in real time.

The only thing keeping us secure against corruption here is the fallability of human nature, the inefficiency of bureaucracy, and the ghost in the machine.

LJD: It's an immense power. However there's no turning back and retracting that power anymore than we can now give up indoor plumbing and electrical appliances. What is required thus is public recognition, acceptance, and direct public democratic oversight of such powers.

For instance a potential abuse of this system is to incarcerate members of a political party for legal infractions while ignoring similar infractions by favored parties. If surveillance is to be used at all, it should be used with absolute justice, not with secrecy by a controlling regime as is currently the case.

As we know though, even tyranny of the majority is a problem. If 20% of the population smokes grass or has illegal sexual activity, we can't just go busting the 1% we don't like. That becomes the question "The 1% 'who' doesn't like?". The laws have to be just and uniformly enforced. If 20% of the public smokes grass, we pretty much have to accept that and instead create laws which can be uniformly enforced, for instance driving stoned, or disturbing the public peace by smoking.

Enforcement of laws through surveillance is not itself corruption. Discretionary enforcement of laws, through whatever means, is often a form of corrupt power.

I say 'often' because sometimes discretionary enforcement is the result of wise individual human judgement, for instance when a police officer sees that an offender is really causing no harm in their specific infraction. Sometimes having an open container in public is problematic, sometimes it is not. Absolute surveilance implies absolute enforceability, and thus discretionary enforcement and the foundation of common laws themselves are called into greater scrutiny in the face of such capability.

Because of public objection to surveillance, it's utilization I'm sure is reserved for secret matters of national security. In spite of there now existing several devices which see right through walls, their legal use is officially limited to fire-fighters. In all probability this means that sheriffs and the FBI use them to know what's going on, but then build their court case on other legal evidence such surveillance leads them to find, and misrepresent the circmstances which led to the finding of such evidence.

Within in a decade I'm sure a camera pointed at everyone in their home will be a legal requirement everyone is aware of. How these cameras are used is up to us to determine while we still can, and the answers do not come easily.

If we do nothing, the apparent trend will continue and our rights and public acceptance will erode as people take for granted that web providers watch us, and think nothing of how that info is used so long as life generally flows smoothly.

Generally that power is now mostly in the hands of content providers, advertisers, and merchandisers. Our american society is generally such that we give them a free pass in exchange for making our lives easier. As they control the media, the times they are not operating towards some reciprocal exchange in value are poorly publicised, and even when they are publicised, american society sees this as something mostly beyond it's control.

My own view is that the technology can be, and generally is to everyone's benefit, but the potential for abuse remains a serious threat which needs addressed before it's too late.

"I assume there is a satellite camera on the homes in the city."

Specifically there are 800 TC-42 dosimetry sattelites congress approved launch of in the late 90's.

The official motivation of these sattelites is for astronomy and tracking couriers of nuclear materials. I believe however that they are so accurate that they can identify persons by their individual dosimetry signatures of alpha, beta, and gamma radiations resulting from use of irradiated fruits, irradiated tobacco, medicines, TV exposure, and other radiation exposure sources. From what I know second hand of 80's sattelite imaging capabilities, and NASA specs for the 60's Mariner solar-flux cameras, such capability is more to be expected than questioned.

Again, it comes down not to what they can do, but how they are using it.

However it should come as some relief that the surface of the world is immense. I am also guessing that dosimetry cameras require long exposure times, perhaps even 20 seconds.

If the world surface area is 200M mi2, divide by 800 and each camera only covers 246,175 mi2.
At 20 sec. per shot per 24 hours, a camera gets 4320 shots per day. Meaning for a single daily shot a camera has to cover 57 mi2 (90.6B ft2). If the resolution of the camera only covers 40'x40', this means that a camera can only photograph 1/56610576 of that per day, or that these 800 cameras would take 155,000 years to even cover the world's surface once.
[Oops, slight error, 800 cameras therefore only 194 years.]

This implies that they really have to carefully choose what they want to photograph in the first place, or would have hardly any more resolution than that of identifying rivers and buildings. This is probably sufficient for their declared purpose, enough resolution on a daily base to pick up someone with a suitcase nuke.

..and LJD, as this is far from an impossibility, as how to build a nuke has been publicised in a popular american magazine back in the late 70's, I'd say the government is by no means being overstepping it's bounds in providing such surveillance security.

The existance of people getting away with criminal things in their homes reassures me that I'm not being watched.

No, it's just evidence that they don't waste revealing such surveillance for less significant matters like murders. It's unlikely that any agency less powerful than the FBI can even aim a sattelite. Thus nothing is available to local law enforcement much better than the aggregate sattelite photos at Google Earth or MapQuest.

Actually I'm not sure what your comment refers to, so I should discriminate my response. Live sattelites aren't available to local enforcement. AI of communications and ground cameras could be except that even tapping national archive processors is a very limited resource even if they are dedicating terabytes of bandwidth to such processes.

So to rephrase, you could be, but the odds are vastly that you are not. Every three years the processing power of computers improves 1000 fold, so that day isn't far off. Back in the 80's when home computers had 640k of RAM, gov't desktop computers had 60GB RAM cards though.

Maybe I should rephrase: It reassures me that no one is paying that kind of attention to me. I don't believe they'll be watching totally completely innocent people, just in the hopes of catching someone on an off chance.

Well for one thing it would rarely be a 'someone' in the first place unless you hung out with the wrong people that put you on a security list. If there was enough cause to do an automated AI analysis of your comunications, and that in turn revealed a high incidence of explosives vocabulary, that in in turn might lead to human ears reviewing your material, and assigning a human judged threat score to your material which aids the AI in the future of identifying true threats.

Given all I know, and my political involvement profile, I suspect I have a touch more bandwidth assigned to me, enough for AI to attempt dicriminating between subject matter and changes in intent.

Unless you are software developer or regularly scan freeware sites on a variety of subject matter applications, you are probably unaware just how much software exists out on the internet. However much software that is, it is only 45% of the software in existence, the other 55% created by the government. Unlike the software in the public sector, the 10-fold competitive duplicity does not exist in the government sector. This implies that for everything we know computers to be doing, they are doing about five times more.

Your guess as to just what this is may be no better than mine, but rest assured (or not), it's busy doing something.

Our classified government programming demands are so immense that the majority of it is actually done by Asian contractors, believe it or not. I would guess the majority of it is surveillance AI.

If number of application tools is any evidence, that there are 10 times more public tools for writing AI applications than performing graphics manipulation should itself be indicative.

I'd call the local news station. and give them the number I just called and tell them to listen to it. let the media hear it. because that is violating my privacy.

Unless you scrutinize the fine print of every agency, bank/credit account, cell phone provider, internet provider, and web site you register with, it's pretty easy to inadvertently sign those rights away.

Quite often they will share your information with their 'affiliates', which basically means anyone.

A ton of advertisers are reading everything on the pages you visit and advertising to you accordingly even if you've never signed a thing with them.

Basically anything you type or read on the internet is pretty much treated as public information these days, and this information is traded between advertisment/demographic agencies. It's nearly impossible to prevent this in spite of the dozens of software applications one can buy to help.

It is coming unfortunately. Real soon if the Democrats get thier way, not quite so soon if the Republicans get thier way... No matter who is in charge America is screwed...

Not likely, but I guess it can. The thing is though, if Pizza Hut could do this, you could probably do this too, to them as well as to yourself et all. Its just like Google Maps Street View. Anyone can see your house, but you can see theirs and yours as well, so you wouldn't be so shocked that they know all this.

AND the woman speaking and taking the order is Canadian because my voice monitoring device picked up that she said "Ay" after ascertaining sentences with a rising up tone in her voice.

It could TOTALLY happen if it hasn't already.

You know, it does strike me as funny how the same people talking about this kind of corporate invasion of privacy often have a Facebook profile containing all their personal information and photographs of them drunk and/or high.

> You know, it does strike me as funny how the same
> people talking about this kind of corporate invasion
> of privacy often have a Facebook profile containing
> all their personal information and photographs
> of them drunk and/or high.


In other words, we'll do it ourselves before the government can. It's almost (and I do say almost) a revolutionary concept; the government can't intrude on our privacy if we have none to intrude on. It's almost an ironic freedom.

Meh, I'd take ironic freedom over no freedom. How about you?

The difference is that in making a public profile, you are choosing which information to publish about yourself. I doubt many facebook users post their biggest secrets, their ssn, their health records...

I think frostbrand's sentiment can be summed up "Hey, that's personal info for ME to divulge at my own discretion, thankyouverymuch"

icu: The same people who create such private invasion in the first place probably have a Facebook page.

FB: Quite the Jesus method there. It doesn't address the leveraging issue though.

LH: Aside from the choice aspect, you seem to be drawing the line at matters which might affect one economically. I think the republican stance is more one of anything which reveals you aren't as clean cut as your public persona can be damaging.

I would say a huge difference between republicans and democrats is that democrats are still thinking 'we the people' includes the government, and republicans have evolved to not wanting much government around because it can't be trusted (rather than making it work).

The way I see it, my SSN is the least me, compared to things like being able to predict if I'd jaywalk a red light when no one's around.

I generally don't care who knows me as long as I know them. That's actually my answer to the info ago and lack of privacy, make everyone and everything known. No more secret board meetings. This demographic info is only dangerous if someone uses it against you. If we know their intent as well, we can prevent that. Democracy requires that everyone has as much knowledge power as anyone else. People running things who know us, when we don't even know they exist, upsets this balance.

Typical of the stuff I think needs to end is websites which alter their content depending on which zip code you live in.

So much of what exists now wouldn't have if the public knew about it before it became popular and voted on it.

I have a problem with everything being known. It would totally screw with things like mystique for it's own sake, 'good' secrets, surprises, creating intrigue, holding people in suspense and captivation, and playing harmless pranks. What's a movie if you know the ending? Sometimes we hide things just to know something no one else knows. I'm not sure if this is also what you had in mind, though.

But I hear you on some of the other stuff.

Something I just realized.

If insurance companies really were able to charge people more who order pizza, obviously pizza sales would go down. Like, a lot. You would think Pizza Hut et al would lobby hard to keep this from happening. I don't see a pizza company being so complacent in just adding the surcharge to their customers like that, connecting themselves to a government database. Its pretty obvious they would be smarter than that.

Only a complete idiot would order a pizza online or over the phone if this is how the future would really work. And only a complete idiot would report their customers to the government. You'd obviously buy and sell your pizzas face to face. We obviously know how black markets work. No one buys "Oxycontin" or "Marijuana". You buy "Orange Counties" and "Mary Janes".

duh

Well, it obviously can't be satellite, because satellite has a few seconds delay. And they're not reliable, as in, being there 24/7 over your house, given how few of them actually are and how much real estate they need to cover, and all the clouds in the sky. So obviously, its probably just a hidden camera on a telephone pole. Besides, you really think that a local government would have the resources to have their own satellite. duh

For someone who does so much complaining about all the crime and drug and the illegal Mexican problem, and how the government should do something about it; you are very anti-government. If government wasn't getting so powerful, it would obviously become easier for people to not get caught doing drugs and sneaking across the border.

I suppose I can't relate because I keep nothing secret, and it annoys me that anything might be kept secret from me.

We are at the point now where a person would have to be up 24hrs/day just to keep up on all the music newly recorded. No one would have time to watch the Linda Channel; On the other hand people would take turns watching the Turner, Gates, and Palin channels, or at least have their rule based search engines scanning transcripts of anything said in business contexts and such, just to have the heads up if some company is looking to weasal around environmental policies or move factories to Zaire.

To some extent this goes on already. If you have a bad comment about Pepsi in a forum, Pepsi can know fairly quickly. I don't like that those who control society do so through a one-way mirror. My feeling is that anything of such scope as to affect the public is something the public should be in on.

We are only a drop in the bucket as far as information processing goes. You could drown in all the information available on any topic and never find the critical needle in the hay stack. There are 10,000 unhealthy products out there, like sodas with aspartame and such. It's meaningless unless you can push a button and find which ones affect you in order of severity. No point in worrying about organic solvents in your shoe rubber if your soda will blind you and your dental fillings cause brain damage 15000 times sooner.

Google rather worries me. Of all the potential monopolies on the planet to worry about, I can't imagine a more serious concern than a monopoly on access to information. If they censor like they do in China, or even give some sites higher rankings than others they are manipulating the knowledge and beliefs of the whole planet.

Imagine if they simply decided to bury any informative websites on the keyword 'clairvoyance' on the 12th page of search results (still there somewhere to avoid accusations of censorship). Suddenly knowledge of and belief in clairvoyance recedes from public awareness. It's almost exactly like dropping vocabulary from the dictionary to control public thought as was done in '1984'. - A single software program could significantly brainwash the entire internet world and facts spread to other by shifts in prominence. If they were really clever, they'd do more so with the undescriminating gossip types, and give clever suspicious loners access to whatever info they wanted, knowing they'd be drowned out by other opinion.

The results would be epic, and yet I wouldn't call it outrageously improbable, because one company already does monopolize most searching, and one programmer such as myself could write a program with the effect above.

It's issues like this which occur to me when I wonder what the other 55% of more focused software written is engaged in doing. As is, we have no transcripts of what Google programmers are told to write, or by whom. We are at the mercy of those who control the one-way mirror.

More likely Pizza Hut would simply sell it's transaction records to insurance companies and leave the surcharge between you and your insurer.

I would hope the concern of this survey extended beyond what could occur 'when ordering pizza'.

By your 'complete idiot' logic, people wouldn't use debit cards or credit cards to buy anything either, or really type or read anything on the internet at all.

Ads on forums are tailored to current thread content, and people have become complacent with that. There was a time when people felt a spell check was invasive. I don't there's much of anything the public won't become complacent about so long as they don't become aware of some quick rate of change in their degree of hindrance or abusement.

During WW2 gun owners were concerned about the gov't having their name and addres on file. Now your bank knows what brands of breakfast cereals you eat and no one thinks a thing of it. Probably in the future advertisers will have access to your medical records, know how long it takes you to absorb different types of metaphoric jokes, and use that info to generate your ad videos, and still, no one will think a thing of it.

It's still a long way off, but if the trend continues, the internet will be a commercially controlled interactive realm which reflects with slight manipulations what is in your mind already, generating your ultimate fantasy in exchange for your buying products or voting for candidates. It will be like the three blind men and the elephant; everyone personally fed exactly what they will believe, with no boundaries between personal entertainment, corporate control, and your own mind. You don't see people boycotting movies and TV shows because of product placement or imparting messages. There's no reason to imagine things will be different when demographics and live response are combined with spontaneous video generation.

Sure, why not?

There are really only a few privacies that most people strongly value. As long as we still have those, we will be complacent giving up the other ones.

I don't care at all that after looking at dodge caravans on line, totally unrelated sites show me caravan ads all of the sudden. It's a simple software code that doesn't feel the least bit violating. I get James Taylor ads too.

Were you trying to buy James Taylor?

So when does it become violating? Does it depend on what they know about you, or how they use it?

I find nothing personal about my SSN. I didn't even get to choose the digits. I still don't want it used by others. I suppose I wouldn't mind a sex toy shop suggesting items which met my interests, but wouldn't like those interests published on a conservative church forum.

On the other hand, if the latter were true, not just for me but for everyone, the days of hypocrisy in society would come to an end.

Kind of like FB was saying, I can't be blackmailed because I've considered nothing secret in the first place.

You looked for a Caravan though. I have just increased your odds of getting ads for sex toys by mentioning them on a page you've kept open for a couple minutes. Folks like GoogleAdSense read over your shoulder and do word counts on you just like they do for finding websites themselves. If you add words to your email editor vocabulary, anyone pulling that off your machine can discern your career, degree of education, current projects, and political/social subjects, even if they don't know your views on the subject matter you concern yourself with.

I'm wondering what these last privacies people value are.

Last privacies: What they are doing inside their house. Secrets they want to keep from those close to them. It probably varies from person to person.

I've never gotten any ads for sex toys.

Let me try an experiment though...

Hamburgers! Big juicy bacon avocado mushroom cheeseburgers! Yum yum. I wonder why it is so hard to get that particular combo. BEER. I wonder why I never see ads for beer online.

Beer and cheeseburgers. mmmmm

Oh perhaps

I feel government with it's wanting control over its "subjects" will resort to this type of thing. I do feel there is a need for some surveillance against our enemies....but now the average citizen will become prey to this surveillance. There is a revolution coming...we aren't going to take slavery, lying down, we've created a monster. God warned us of this monster.

I actually play this game on another forum, where we sway what ads come our way. Sometimes of course their strategy fails without enough AI horsepower, so if you complain about herbicides they send you ads for weed killers.

Liquor and cigarette ads aren't legal in every state, and not every advertiser keeps track of exactly who is on a page.

Porn isn't either, but those guys don't operate in the country to get busted in the first place.

We have a burger stand just down the street specializing in that combo. Their name is literally something like JJ's Bacon Avocado Burgers.

As I've said I believe in surveillance against our enemies. I'm very upset over our government doing NOTHING about our borders. We have the enemy within, infiltrated in every one of our institutions....government, finance, education, all facets of media. religion. Only when we turn back to Biblical principles, and laws, respecting the Sabbath, will the nation turn around to be a Godly country. 2 Chronicles 7:14 Americans have been led down the path its on, through political correctness, education, drugs, poor nutrition, media of indoctrination, music, TV, movies ...etc. The Bible tells us, we become, what we see and hear...and what we eat/feel/think.

In essence it's no different than what medieval villages experienced in relation to the local bishop. Home privacy has only existed a few centuries, and even during most of that you had three generations living together.

From what I hear, there are parts of Europe where you can't toss a cigarette butt in public without a camera picking you up. You're a person who believes in laws. There's no point in having laws if you can't enforce them.

I can't imagine there would ever be a revolution over surveillance unless it was abused in ways the majority did not agree with, at which point it would be too late.

On the other hand there were in fact eventually revolutions over things like control by the pope (and thus lutheranism, calvinism, protestantism, and such), so I don't rule it out either.

I expect the same scripturul monster you refer to, people took to be the Vatican centuries ago (some still do actually).

Every religion and belief has it's own demons of some sort. I think closer to the truth is that God supplies us each our own unique demons. For you it is things like a one-world government and immigration interfering wih a simple life, something most people wouldn't be concerned with at all while watching out for their own demons.

If you listen to the armageddon guys at the bus stop, they each have their own vision of the end with freezing or famine or something, probably whatever they most personally suffer and fear.

Qualitatively, I don't see that the human condition has really changed much at all in all these millenia. The most significant thing appears to be the rate of change, but even in ancient times society changed by leaps and bounds over each generation in ways just as significant to them as going from steam carriages to moon rockets was for us. You had all those ages of reason, age of enlightenment, the reformation, etc etc., each with new arts, new engineering, new philosophy, new social structure. I get the picture you think of the world as the ways things are now, and the way they were until a century ago. The world was always changing. Still though, human nature doesn't change much, and everyone had just as much joy and misery, freedom and reponsibility, etc etc.

and they add cheese and mushrooms? Usually on menus, I see various combinations of those ingredients, but never all of them in the same burger.

When I research drug trafficking, drug use, or neurochemistry of drug use online, I get ads for drug rehab.

I believe in laws for safety, and a civilized society, but I do think laws are made frivolously, only with the intent to bring in money to the city.

What you say actually proves my point...smaller is better, and that people should live with their own kind, while being respectful of others.

http://www.infowars.com/you-are-a-slave-to-governm...

Yeah, not surprising.

As a vegetarian I haven't actually stepped in the place. I would imagine they have some variety, some variants of bacon/avo.

My fave as a teen was a burger place with 101 condiments like shrooms, pineapple, and such.

There's some to truth to that, but there's as much truth to contrary philosphies and views.

The central indisputable truth in there is that there are lobbyists looking to control the public for their own interests.

I understand.

Agreed, lobbyists are looking to control, for their self interests.

It all adds up to the individual's idea of life, and how they want to live it. There are those people on earth that have no idea what civility is, they are barbarians. Only when God returns, will there be peace.

One issue I never see addressed is this very common misconception that if you witness a crime, you are legally obligated to report it.
I don't think the government wants people knowing the truth on that one.

Good point Linda.

Are you actually distressed, and if so, is it because of your actual life, or the life you watch on the news?

I would say that day of God and peace will be there for you when you die, but it seems most likely to me that we simply reincarate anyhow.

I just learned the other day that even by 1901 the oceans had dozens of transatlantic cables connecting every contintent.
Nothing is preventing you from hanging out with like-minded people.
Taxes and internationalism give you a far better material quality of life than if we were small villages.
When you put a bunch of similar people together they still divide just as much over things like eye color or interpretation of a few sculptures.

I hope you're not waiting for the world to start over because you don't want to see kids wearing baggy pants.

What kind of peace do you really want? Really.

Small villages don't necessarily mean life would look any different than enormous metropolis's.

I would think that the difference you are really after is cultural. Do you want everyone to look and sound like you? I have a feeling that even if you lived on a planet of clones of yourself, you still wouldn't find the peace you wanted.

What could total peace look like? I'm guessing it would be people doing no more than playing cards and working without having opinions on anything. I don't think even your planet of clones could achieve that without getting restless.

What I'm getting at is that the part of the world which is most not finding the peace you want is within you yourself, and no other world or heaven can improve upon that. Half of you is a warrior. You may battle for peace, but you might not be content to go on if you found it.

To say God has an answer is to deny your own role. Either you won't be in such a place, or it won't be you. The you you are seeing through is going to see pretty much any circumstance in the same light. Jesus said to take out the eye which doesn't see heaven. That applies anywhere.

That said, back to the simpler question, and that is what you would prefer to see present in society. I find God is pretty good at wish granting. I'm guessing you're not happy with what you wish for (down at that level where your warrior has a say). ..Nothing god can do about that.

You've been mentioning a stroke lately, but not in posts to me. Are you ok? Has this done much to curtail the activities you enjoy? Hopefully not.

I want happiness in my personal life, be with people of my culture, belief, speaks my language, and are of my kind. I imagine most people want the same.

I had a stroke in late February. It's been a struggle, had to relearn many things, as my dominant side was affected. I had to learn over, how to type, eat, write again, take care of personal hygiene, brush my teeth, etc. I had to stay at a rehab center for a month...what an experience. I had speech therapy for a month, inhome physical therapy. I have not regained the use of my right leg, as I had hoped. I can walk, but with a numb heaviness. I have memory issues, swallowing problems. But, I've been told I've come along...and I do feel blessed, I saw others that were much worse off than me.

I have not been as involved with my politics, but am doing what I can do. I haven't been socializing as I once did, I really miss it. I find myself isolating too much...I know it is unhealthy. I sometimes feel like giving up, but I can't...I won't.

Please take care of yourself....a stroke sucks the life energy out of a person. The extreme tiredness gets me down. My husband has been great with me. He's not a caregiver type person, but he has done wonders since I've been down. He's been more patient, and giving than I've ever seen in 48 years.

"I want happiness in my personal life, be with people of my culture, belief, speaks my language, and are of my kind. I imagine most people want the same." - I imagine most people succeed. They're more likely to find each other as like minded artists or engineers though. There are places folks like artists gather, so it's not hard to find other artists.

The thing is most people consider being an artist far more of their choice, and far more them than say being Irish-German, otherwise there would be official Irish-German hangouts.

San Francisco actually does a bit of that where some boulvards are a different ethnicity every three blocks. There's a bit of that here in LA too. I live near the hindu, jewish, brazilian, mid-eastern, and ethiopian sections. As far as I know though it only pertains to the businesses on the boulevards and not so so much to the homes behind them, though I imagine that's a partial influence at least.

Here in LA it appears most people don't even consider their neighbors. Friends are people they meet elsewhere like at work, school, bars, or wherever they meet people, and they seem to think nothing of driving a half dozen miles every night to go do things with friends.

Wow, as much as we talked, I had no idea what you were going through. No wonder you wanted to keep responses short. I'm slow and tired enough already without a stroke.

My city is divided. My city I've lived for 46 years is unrecognizable. No socializing in my neighborhood. I have three white neighbors, been here for many years, I talk to at times, good neighbors. I have two original neighbors of hispanic dissent, I talk to on occasion, never socialized, but, good neighbors. One asian neighbor I talk to on occasion, good neighbor. Many years ago, the white neighbors always socialized...no longer. Of course, many of our original neighbors moved away, I miss them, but, we are friends to this day. I feel most people want to be in contact with those that they feel most comfortable, have more in common, it's natural.

Kristal Rose, I beg you to take care of yourself. You never want to have a stroke....even though I was "one of the lucky ones" to not have a sagging face...I can talk, but it's an effort to talk. It's a living death.

I chalk it up to physical INACTIVITY...sedentary lifestyle, I become a computer addict. I rarely watch TV. The sadness, worry amongst other emotions was harmful. Watch what you eat, how you sleep, notice any change in your body, love well.

Yeah, I'm trying to become less sedentary by making a bike trailer and getting out more. I've actually made my apartment less efficient so I can no longer reach anything I might be interested in doing just by swiveling my chair.

I think neighbors not socialising has more to do with things other than similarity of neighbors, things like computers and how people are expected to get along, like requiring some specific thematic purpose. Life is unfortunately perhaps seen as too short to hang out with just anybody without meeting perosonal goals simultaneously. ..or maybe that's just what happened to me.

Here on the internet you might find the person you have the most common views with turns out in fact to be Turkish, Japanese, or something. I think that's a good thing. I think in any culture there is a similar spread of sentiments amongst people. You are more likely to find your persona type amongst mixed races than with those tightly similar. Sticking with your own kind, like sticking with whatever neighbors providence has landed you is likely to result in even more persona diversity, even if the cultural beliefs are similar.

I think you'll find a lot of people have international friends to find people more like themselves, rather than less; people sharing the same views on business enterprise or type of humor or something. If you are something rare like an inventor or mystic, you pretty much have to leave your own racial kind to find those similar in sentiments and interests.

The way religions have spread the odds aren't far greater that your white neighbor is Christian than your Japanese neighbor is. If similar people are to hang out together, it makes more sense to me that hindus, buddhists, and christians hang out with each other than germans, mexicans, and polynesians.

Do you not find people interesting? I'm still trying to understand why you would find similar people more comfortable. Do you find others difficult to understand? Are you afraid of not being accepted for your beliefs?

Maybe my own views are shaped from living in California where people accept each other equally regardless of what they might believe. If anything, the divisions here are of class, where mgmt, labor, educated, or homeless count for far more than racial divisions.

I understand your fear of racial crime (don't hold the same view, but at least understand what you imagine), but it seems to me that your interest in grouping similar people comes from something much deeper which otherwise makes you weary. My first guess is simply that you'd prefer to be able to know who's who simply by looking at them, that you're uncomfortable unless you have a solid estimation of what surrounds you. If that were the case, I don't think racial similarity would help you any. No race has a monopoly on hidden dark secrets. You can't trust irish/germans more than japanese. The spread of sweet and devious is the same in any race, as it seems to be in any career or class as well these days. Ethics is a person by person thing.

I don't see sharing an interest in corned beef & cabbage and Guiness, and knowing the tales of King Arthur instead of how Buddha calmed the raging elephant as all that important a distinction to make friends over. Character, temperament, and common career interests mean far more to me. I'll take a considerate creative ethiopian over a swindling grouchy swede any day.

Trying to understand you, I recall time and again your key word 'confusion'. All 'race' is going to tell you is if a person is familiar with cabbage, potatoes, and bagpipes, and nothing important like whethar they are responsible, kind, or spiritually devout. I would imagine the latter is the security you really want, but you have confused yourself if you think that racial/cultural separation could in any way achieve this. The important characteristics of mankind have no corallation with race. Perhaps you imagine so, but there is no evidence for it.

Your desire for such separation leaves you looking superficial, as if you can't tell the difference between a good person and a bad one, so opt instead simply for those who appear similar.

If it's nothing like anything I've described, then all I can imagine is that your parents really did a number on you ingraining a belief system you've never rationally challenged.

To be sure, cultural heritage can be fun, but going off to see bagpipers and highland country dancers is on the par with going to adventureland at Disneyland, and seeing gamelan musicians and Balinese puppet shows is no less interesting even if you can't claim it as your own. I claim as my own anything I understand and like. My DNA has no more affinity to bagpipes than gamelan.

Considering your view on education, I'm inclined to think that keeping up with the variety the world offers is too much for you, and you would like to reduce the variety of what you are exposed to. That's fine, to each their own, but don't confuse this interest of yours with what comes naturally to people. What comes naturally to people is what people do. There's nothing unnatural about what the world has come to be. Unnatural to you perhaps, but not unnatural. I think you would live in much greater peace if you came to accept this distinction. Love and accept yourself and your view of what the world should be, and love and accept the world and what it actually is, knowing that they were never meant to be the same thing. If that were true we would have 7 billion planets. At some mystic depths a person and the world which surrounds them are the same thing, but I'm speaking from a sociological context at the moment.

I might suggest to you that some selfishness is the wisest and most generous cause you might take up in your latter years. You've been fighting some causes for others that they never asked for, apparently believing you knew what was better for them than they did. Go find and live what you want for yourself. Nothing could be more exemplarary. If you want to live with similar people, do that. Don't deny yourself that to make it more likely for others, when the majority of them never asked for such circumstances in the first place. If you can't find similar others who want to live together, then it really wasn't anything wanted in the first place.

Personally I'm aghast at the idea, but see it as a sort of right none-the-less, the right of free association. I urge you to at least not discriminate, which is to say, find similar people, but don't shut out others who wish to join you. It's not like the 60's when whites wanted to shut blacks out of the better neighborhoods. You aren't in a position to monopolize 'better', just white.

Really though I wish you'd just come to realize what an inconsequential superficial distinction you were making. Do you ever actually attend ceilidhs or oktoberfests? Probably not. Possibly the issue here is even that you romantically wish you actually had a culture, and can't see your actual immersion in american culture because you have nothing outside to compare it to. As diverse as american culture is, from punk rock to amish, I assure you that you are product of american culture, far more so than say irish or german culture.

I think, as you say, I am a product, as most people are, of the environment they grew up in. I was raised in an all white neighborhood, calm, not wealthy, no violence.

I think the way I feel, comes from my observation of the way other people live, and their belief or non belief system. I know you live amongst many cultures and races. This will be the downfall for our country. I do not hate anyone else, but I feel it wasn’t meant to be.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/lamm.asp

The snopes site has two commentaries by Governor Richard Lamm, he is so correct.

I think many white people have been too dumbed down, they just join in the political correctness because they feel they have no alternative than to cave in. I don’t agree.

I was raised by good parents, very spiritual, God loving. My siblings and I often say, we were fortunate. God, recognizing the Sabbath was a must. Grace before a meal as must, prayers before bedtime. There was never a swear word, drugging or drinking, fighting. We were taught to treat our elders with respect. I realize they weren’t perfect, (none of us are) but they did well.

My parents did not have to tell me intermarriage was wrong, I read it in the Bible. I can see how others believe and live, and its not for me…I think intermarriage should be against the law, and once was, according to the Bible, but some ungodly people had it repealed.

I don’t have to look to other philosophies, beliefs…I can see between right and wrong.

I am always courteous to others, can carry a conversation with any ethnic person (if I can understand them), or any person, no matter where they are in life.

I think higher education has brought this world to where it is…ungodly. I believe in some education, some not.

I know we'll never see eye to eye on these issues, but we can agree to disagree. Take care of yourself, God bless.

I grew up in all white neighborhoods too, and it took some time living in 98% black Oakland and my current 70% hispanic neighborhood to get over discomfort. It's nothing but fear of the unknown. Once you gleefully accept it it's nothing much different really. Their was drug crime in Oakland but nothing much here to speak of. Even in Oakland 97% of the locals are trying to keep things civil and as prosperous as possible.

To be sure there are cultural differences. Drunken hispanic guys are more likely to try to pick up on you for instance, and blacks are more likely to yell across the street and obey traffic laws. Hispanics do more activities with their neighbors. Asians tend to be quieter.

I expect 85% of people abide by political correctness because they see it as wise and just, not unlike avoiding street fights. As with street-fighting you'll have plenty who would like to, but see that no one around them would accept their choice.

Speaking of drugs, I've come across two interesting things. It seems historically evident that Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin were all weed smokers. By the 1850 census there were 8400 commercial hemp farms no including private use. The other interesting thing is that Mexico has just as much a problem with people bringing in the newer drugs from the US as we have with people bringing weed over the border.

Where intermarriage is widespread it becomes insignificant. Mexicans are spanish mayans. Brazilians are portuguese black incas. Today you would just call them Brazilians. I've got my eye on moving to Trinidad which contains irish blooded french-speaking hindus. Every one of the 7000 carribean islands has it's own uniquely exotic mix like that. The kind of racial purity you would like to see is almost impossible to achieve. It would require everyone staying put, in which case the US would still be natives now. As is, everyone moved here, just as they moved everywhere else. Unless your mate has centuries of pedigree, racial mixing will inevitably happen no matter what policy is enforced. It's just a matter of how quickly.

I doubt there's much evidence to support this age being any less godly than any other. I doubt either temperaments or percentage of those with genuine faith has ever changed. I would also suggest that this age is more civil than those which came before. Hearing tales of my parents and grandparents generations, it's apparent that we're even more civil with each generation. The sort of teen pranks pulled then would be labelled terrorism today. The closest we have to settling matters with a fight or duel is civil court.

You grew up in the 50's which was a very brief period of fearful conservative subdued civility like the world had never seen before or since. It's your point of reference, but not the reference of history. My own childhood reference is the 70's & 80's, and so there's a socially reformational adventurous magic I now see lacking from my standard. You grew up with conservative prayers, I grew up with meditation, dream interpretations, and exploring world religions. The young adults today grew up on video games and the internet, and will thus be something different than either of us. Every generation can say the same. In the 60's it was telephones, drive-in movies, westerns, and rocket chemistry kits.

Literature reflects society. There's nothing in Shakespeare or the literature of centuries earlier to suggest society was any more godly in any respect than now. You had, even for your time, an uncommonly rare structured and religious upbringing which you haven't seen since, seem to take as how the world was before then, and compare the world now to. As with you ideas of our national origins and lack of overall picture of how the world operated in biblical times, you want the world to return to something it never was in the first place. Many of us, my self especially, have visions of what the world could be. You just make life more oppressive on yourself by additionally seeing the world as fallen in the meantime. I do the opposite. Much as like my Disneyland style utopias, I see God's perfection in the design as it exists now, complete with all order of mayhem and heartbreaks, yet staying consistently on course century after century.

I noticed you're the same age as my youngest son.

I feel this world will never be the way it should be until God makes it so. No man is going to make it so. As the Bible says...when you hear the cry of peace, peace, the time is nigh.

How did you end up in LA? Oakland is bad enough, are you a brute for punishment, going to LA?

I have always been a bit of a worrier, been political since my 20's, lots of stress with some of my choices in life, but overall, I feel I've been blessed.

I hitch-hiked to LA and stayed here for the warmth and multi-media software opportunities, and now I can't afford to move. Oakland is definitely worse, all the same problems without any of the benefits.

Looking to a future vision is better than imagining one existed in the past. I had roommate point out to me that one day I'd be looking back on that moment as the 'good old days' when sodas were a dollar, cars ran on gas, etc. etc., and forget all the miseries that went hand in hand with the experiences of such days. Fortunately I think his remark allowed me now to look back at all my life with balanced objectivity.

I need to get sleep now; Trying not to let Summer 'days' pass me by.

Kristal Rose, are you a nightowl?

The memories of my childhood were basically very good, for that I'm thankful.

I sure am a nightowl.

I went to bed at midnight and woke up at 5pm anyhow. I have tried several strategies over the years and don't know how to get on a day schedule.

Not being able to sleep during nighttime hours is bad for the body...I'm sure you know that. I've suffered with insomnia for many years, and my health has suffered for it. I believe an ideal time to quiet the body down is 10:00 to 11:00PM. From my understanding of the Chinese Five Element theory, from 11:00 to 1:00am, the gallbladder is doing it's job. From 1:00 to 3am, the liver is trying to do it's job, repairing, doing it's work. From 3 to 5am...the lung is trying to do its job. If we wake up, or we can't get to sleep during these periods it means, the systems are struggling, having difficulty. So if we wake up, or can't get to sleep during the liver time, we need to take a liver formula. You've often heard of people waking up at 3 or a little later, having to use oxygen masks at night...it's because their lungs are struggling....take a lung formula...etc. If there has been much damage, a person has several problems, they take a kidney formula....

I wish you good health...try to go to bed earlier....I'm ready to go to sleep now myself. I had to wait up for my 19 year old grandson to come in, as he left his keys to my house in his locker. He stays with us 2 to 3 days a week, as his job and school is nearby. He lives with his mom in Tracy, an hour away. He stays the rest of the time with his dad, my son.

To any extent I might believe in an hourly thing like that, I'd think it would be relative to ones own natural hours, and mine seem to be bed at 6am, awake at 4pm. No matter what hours I'm on, there's a pull to to sleep and wake at those hours. I'll sleep 17 hours through alarms if that's what it take to wake at 4pm.

I'm sure missing out on the sunlight is unhealthy though. I much prefer the quiet of the night though. 3am is especially meditative, where I feel I can connect to the inner churnings of the world and stars. I discovered today that starting at 6am I have to turn the TV up three times as loud just to hear over the dull murmur of the freeway which I normally don't notice. Apparently that's what I usually sleep through. When I first moved here I just pretended it was the ocean. Now I don't notice it, except that one has to turn the TV louder.

When I was a kid in the summer I'd stay up till 3am, and likewise through high school. Then I worked for years 7pm-3am. Ever since then, even though that was 20 years ago, I still get a second wind at 11pm, and another at 2am.

My daughter may be returning today from her first attempt at a solo bicycle camping trip. It was lonelier, more difficult, and more expensive than she expected. She picked very touristy islands, not the best place for bike camping.

Oh my gosh...I don't know how you did it...keeping those hours. From what I've studied, you have your whole system off.

It all starts with bad working hours, activities. They have proved that people who work nights, don't live as long. I worked for 8 years at night, 11:00pm to 7:00am, graveyard shift...I can see why they call it that....it will send you to the graveyard fast. I thought I'd die working nights....had to quit.

You have a good mind, take care of it. Loud sounds, music can mess with a persons internal body rhythm.

I'm sure your daughter had a great trip, BUT I hate to see a young lady solo cycling because of the kooks out there. I imagine you were concerned the whole time. I have to put the worry away at times, hard though. Why didn't she take a friend along, for companionship, and safety? I could never be alone, she's brave.

She tried a couple of times to bring companions but they had other obligations. Learning to navigate kooks is a useful life skill. She shared a campsite one night with a nice guy who was a descendant of extra-terrestrial royalty. She did find it lonely travelling alone.

Working nights wasn't a problem for me. Mixing that with interspersed day activities was, and I thus never had enough sleep back then. Until the job, and after the job, late hours appeared to be my natural choice. I was born at 8:15 PM and some people say that influences one's natural rhythm.

I'm glad your daughter made it home safe and sound, and had a good time. I suspect she's into fitness, taking care of herself, and that is good. I'm sure you've given her the dad/daughter talk about safety and strangers. She's a brave young lady, and I guess has an instinct to size someone up with regards to trust.

Sleep is imperative. I always took sleep for granted, and now I crave it. The down side is the tiredness of a stroke, it's almost a painful tiredness, having to sleep too much. But, if I can remember right, REM sleep is accumulative...maybe my body is trying to catch up?

Take care of yourself, never take your health for granted, and be active, I found out the hard way, inactivity is a killer. Your daughter has the right idea....keep moving.

That was funny. Who sponsored it and requests watchers take action?

soooooooooooooooooooooooooon

google earth shows me on my back porch with a beer

Precious.

*waves upward*

Man I'm jealous.