Serapis Bey

Perhaps you are right, but perhaps there is small part of him, no bigger than a pinky fingernail, that is good natured and fun. If not, I'm sure MSK can...uh...make things happen.

Bob is a unique individual. I say he should spruce things up a bit in his online presence. What does the peanut gallery think?

Happy Birthday, yadda yadda yadda. Can I make a request? A change in avatar, perhaps? I realize you are a granny, technically, but I'd prefer not to think of granny-panties when I read your posts. You obviously have a youthful, feminine spirit and I for one would appreciate it being reflected in your cyber-attire. Of course, if you are dressing down in order to avoid the inevitable and awkward pawing from the geezers here (like Bob, for instance), please disregard this message.

Don't listen to her, Dennis! First time's free. ;) Anyway, in my disappointment over Bob's response, I have to say this is the image I have of the good Mr. Kolker in my mind:

*ahem*

Not even coffee?Come on, maaann. Don't be a square. Don't you want to be part of the Cool Crowd? Feynman did it! http://www.famousscientists.org/14-famous-scientists-inventors-who-experimented-with-drugs/ Oh well. Guess I'll have to dump my stash on Dennis then.

Boy, Kacy does a great Stephen Boydstun impression, doesn't he?

I was a member of your group long enough to get a feel for what the tenor of the discourse was (there were, in fact, multiple threads I posted in before I left). And the private group was really no different that what I've experienced on the rest of your page. Basically, all the usual suspects were there, all with the same heavily progressive mindset (excluding a handful of GOP/FOX types). When Dan was still involved in the regular discussions, he debated with most of the same people. His characterization of your private group is not arbitrary or made up out of whole cloth. I can vouch for it. Do you deny that "being on the right side of history" is a concept you have used and endorsed on multiple occassions (for instance)?

In the spirit of fairness... SB isn't really one of these guys who believes the world will end tomorrow, every single day. Rather, he believes it will end in the next 10 years. Every single year. See? There's a difference. What I have said usually involves current trends that portend bad things for the future. Feel free to disagree with my negative perspective, that's a discussion we could have. But I never said anything about "the world ending"; that is your (mis)characterization of my position. Mike provided a good example upthread of the situation in Brazil. I would take you more seriously if your argument ever got off the ground from merely speculating about people's "irrational" pessimism. But it rarely does. You apparently feel free to grab whatever factoid at the moment serves your purpose, without the need to inform yourself of the details. For example, you recently posted to FB a blurb from CNN about the Dow being at an all time high, and used the opportunity to crow about how wrong all those damn "fearmongers" are who are concerned about the economy. For one thing, did you stop to consider that much of that financial activity reflects how well CORPORATIONS are doing, and not nearly so much about the average citizen? Probably not. But I understand how "end of the world" hyperbole can be useful in getting some yuks out of the audience, by exaggerating the opposition. I can see your slavish devotion to The Daily Show has served you. Jon Stewart has trained you well, young padawan.

Do you have any actual knowledge of the subject, or do you simply regurgitate knee-jerk spasms of fear when faced with anything you are unfamiliar with? LSD is NOT physically harmful. Myths about it causing "chromosome damage" were simply hype, and have been proven wrong. There are contraindications for people who are succeptable to schizophrenia or who suffer from bipolar disease, however. LSD is derived from ergot. A natural substance. Educate yourself, and stop spreading disinformation.

Frank Lloyd Wright was a devotee of Gurdjieff, not Rand: http://www.gurdjieff.org/wright1.htm

...and I mean it. I am but a simple man. I've taken a few classes -- calculus, physics, electronic engineering, etc. But I'm still left with barely a layman's understanding of the Higher Mysteries. However, when I was younger, I had my Drug Days where I dove headfirst into the world of psychedelics. Many things were learned, transformations took place, many things fell by the wayside. They are no panacea. But one impression I was left with just how powerful such substances were in opening the mind to new vistas of perception. There are many in the "underground" who lament the way such drugs became popularlized by folks like Timothy Leary and others as sort of "hippy" "party" thing, and I concur with that assessment. Rick Strassman is one such scholar. The negative press brought on by the abuse of such chemicals sounded the death knell for any serious investigation into what might be possible. Everyone has their own take on what the experience is like, but since I pride myself on being exceptionally self-aware during such experiences, I'll offer my impressions as one who, at the time, was a devotee of Rand and rationality. First of all, nothing in your sober, conscious imagination could ever produce the phantasmagoria experienced while under the influence. It is clear that unused portions of the brain are "awakened." Gurdjieff has his concept of the "kundebuffer" which is the idea that we are still animals who by necessity have to filter out a vast portion of all the available sensory input in order to secure basic survival needs. Drugs like LSD remove this filter and allow one to be flooded with novel sensory input. Furthermore, it seems that what occurs under the inflluence is that the "normal" state of consciousness turns inward to the fundamental physiological and neurochemical processes which produce the phenomenon of consciousness in the first place. One is, in effect, closer to the physical medium in our meat-brains from whence consciousness arises. An example: many people have reported the experience of "knowing" what it is to be some other organism or object. A story that comes to mind is an individual who stated he knew intimately what it was like to be some prehistoric reptile, how it felt to be on a warm rock as a cold-blooded creature soaking in the rays of the sun in order to foster the heating of one's blood. I'm sure many reading can imagine in mental images what this would be like, and scoff at the suggestion that such an experience is any different, no doubt aided by the "hallucinatory" effects of the drug. As someone who has "been there", I can assure you the experience is utterly unlike anything you can imagine while sober. Could this be "cellular memory" recapitulating our evolutionary phylogeny? Furthermore, others have similar tales about being objects like a table. Even more interesting are those who have experienced what it is like to be an atom. Delusion? Perhaps. But getting back to the title of this post, I have had powerful experiences where the very nature of reality itself was impressed upon me, but I didn't have the mental horsepower to properly decode it. As a relatively simple person, I can only tell you that I was flooded with impressions about the nature of light, the speed of light and its upper boundary, and how much of that was of Prime Importance. Notions of asymptotes also spun around my brain. One time I found myself staring at a point source, and winding out of that point were four animals. I later learned that what I was observing were the 4 Fundamental Forces, (weak, strong, EM, and Gravity), even though I had no conscious knowledge of such! I suspect my brain was anthropomorphizing my perception through primitive symbols. All of this is to say that there is something there. I recall WISHING I was smarter in order to make sense of it all, but barring that, wishing that smarter folks than I could go through the experience to draw something authoritative from it. I recall thinking, "if only serious physicists could look at this..." Since I have now had the pleasure of reading Kolker's exceptional comprehension of such things, I can't help but remember my previous sentiments, and now wish for someone as buttoned-down and straight-laced as he to undergo the experience. Wishful thinking? Probably. Nevertheless, rumor has it that Feynman was someone who partook of such chemicals. And here is an article which shows that Francis Crick's discovery of the helical nature of DNA was born out of his experience with LSD. An interesting YouTube video: Help us Bobi Ba'al Kenobi, you're our only hope Help us Bobi Ba'al Kenobi, you're our only hope Help us Bobi Ba'al Kenobi, you're our only hope...

I don't view the situation as quite as hopeless or inevitable as the author. He sees the number of such undesirables as fixed and unchanging, a given in a "post-scarcity" society. I see individuals as more malleable and swayed by public policy. Basic economics tells us that if we subsidize an activity, we get more of it. We might not have a choice. You propose involuntary conscription, but the political feasibility of that is questionable (time will tell). More to the point, when you say, "preparing them with life skills for the possibility of returning to the market economy in the future", what reason do you have for supposing there will be any jobs suitable for such people in this rapidly accelerating technological society? Did you happen to miss this article when I first posted it? I believe we are in a new epoch where analogies to the Industrial Revolution are no longer germane. The jump in competency required to go from "weaver" to "power loom operator" is an order of magnitude different than going from "factory line worker" to "computer programmer." Of course, my analysis is moot if you (like most Objectivists) consider intelligence to be infinitely malleable, such that a toothless hillbilly can become a physicist with just enough education, volition and Rea$on. I'm not so sanguine. In order for immortality to exist, most of the human race will need to be destroyed -- and it will be. At first, of course, there will be the obligatory moaning over the "tragedy." But, within a few months, this destruction will be seen as a happy and necessary event, just as euthanasia will, in time, be seen as a "new" solution to the "problems" of over-population and the funding of Social Security systems. (The scenes at the conclusion of Stanley Kubrick's brilliant movie Dr. Strangelove present an excellent example of this process[...] Even with horror and death aside, few can tolerate complete success. It leads to boredom and to the final realization that we are all food within the belly of a giant monster whose final goals we only have a glimmer of -- and the glimmer we see is not comforting[...] Everything is part of the problem and there are no solutions from a conventional point of view...millions die daily and millions are born to take their place...the planet is alive as a stomach is alive -- it digests everything. -- C.S. Hyatt, 1994 Do you recall the discussion we had some years ago where I brought up the possibility of a Minimum Consumption Entitlement? I was just chewing ideas at the time, but perhaps I was more prescient than you? (Damn, I'm good) It looks like with the way things are going, we just might end up with some socialism in this country, not because of Marxists, but by the cruel hand of reality. So who's crying now, Mr. LiberTARDian? HAVE AT ME BRO

Perhaps. But RB and I have been birthed from the same pits of Hell. Wanna join our gang?

You might want to get out your grade school rules of addition and subtraction on that one and an 1800's high school textbook on the Constitution to understand the enumerated powers. Dennis Kacy, a quick (1 minute) Google search turned this up. Feel free to dispute the source, I have a feeling the numbers can be confirmed elsewhere. One simple line in the report: In 2012 entitlements were nearly 62 percent of total spending, while defense dropped to less than one-fifth (18.7 percent) of the budget.I can understand why liberals say things like "war is the cause of our debt crisis" -- because they're...like, farging liberals. Why do you do it? EDIT: This is a prettier graph:

Not unlike Middletown USA, no? Adapt or Die. Good advice, all things considered. Please expand on this? Who are the Mafia in this example, for starters?

The challenges extend far beyond federal debt, which is actually public debt, owed by you and me, our children, and our children's children. Utilitarians, such as progressives, are quick to accept collectivist redistribution as a price that must be paid to stave off violence against us from the lower classes. The immediate problem, even within this framework - and as always happens in collectivist systems - is that the "price" we must pay has been increasing at an exponential rate as more and more become dependent upon the self-perpetuating political spoils system that feeds and incentivises them. One need only examine what has developed with SSDI over the past 15 years: recipients have more than doubled in both real and percentage terms, now over 10 million Americans. A trivial number of these individuals are actually so disabled they can't perform meaningful work, yet all are now living off of quite-generous government checks for the rest of their lives while producing nothing in return. It is the expanding administrative state and its progressive enthusiasts that have expanded this system of producers and takers to an alarming degree over the past decade. Kacy's laser-like focus on the religious, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and the like is misplaced at best and destructive at worst. He is free to disagree with religious views or conspiracy theories, and as such, they pose little real threat to him or his standard of living. Conversely, he is not free to "disagree" to hand over an ever-increasing portion of his income to the state, or to live under the mandates and restrictions of socialized insurance and health care. He is not free to live in a society which passes roughly 40,000 new federal, state, and municipal laws every year, all of which he is "on notice" for and must be in compliance. Whatever else Alex Jones may believe, he is an opponent of this systematic encroachment on our individualism. If we are going to publicly ridicule and shame these entertainers - who are in no way intended for Kacy's audience in the first place - then we should focus on those pundits who are actively promoting expansion of the administrative and welfare state rather than opposing it, even if they do so from a religious standpoint that Kacy happens to find distasteful. RB, you strike me as an intelligent fellow. I'd be interested in your opinion of the latest TLP article: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/04/the_terrible_awful_truth_about_5.html#more By the way, welcome to OL.

Well said, and I quite agree. Kacy's had this pointed out to him by myself and others in the past, and left us scratching our heads. I tell you Mike, something just ain't right with that boy. On his propaganda arm...er...I mean, Facebook page, one would find an endless stream of "Beck this" and "Limbaugh that", "Palin this" and "O'Reilly that"; now Alex Jones will be added to that list, one presumes. Kacy Ray, welcome to This Is Your Life. Can you identify the individual who once said this on your Facebook post? [from behind the curtain]: --------------------------------- Media Matters? Just change "political views" on your page to "liberal" and be done with this middle-aged political identity crisis already. -------------------- So you're against welfare... Yet you still spend 90% of your political energy blasting conservatives and libertarians and using your social network to circulate liberal propaganda videos. Beck is a dope, but so are most people in this country and that's why he resonates with them. He has done more to turn people against big government than perhaps anyone in the past century and you constantly attack him - why? Turn your energy against the Progressives in this country who preach that the ends justify the means in achieving their Utopian vision of social justice. I have to assume that this anti-conservative crusade of yours has to do with the "religious right" that you detest so much, because there is no other explanation for it. At the risk of sounding like a Randroid, it is worse than irrational to rally against a group that agrees with 70% of your platform while dangerous radicals who agree with 10% of your platform are successfully hijacking every level of our government, it is self-destructive. Religion has been steadily declining for the past 80 years, it doesn't need your help over the edge. I know it scarred you when you were a kid, but get over it. There are plenty of blubbery black whales to be slaughtered while you chase after that elusive white one. ---------------------------- We live in a democratic society. It's a cruel system and an arbitrary system, but it's what we have.The fact is that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are successfully convincing millions of voting morons across our nation to fear big government. This is a GOOD THING. Meanwhile, you have hateful socialist zealots like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on the other side of the debate, urging people each and every day to sign their rights away to a leviathan nanny state and to bow down to an intellectual ruling class (themselves). You leave them to their evil works, and focus exclusively on Beck and Palin. This is what is so puzzling. Yes, Beck is a fearmonger. He tells lies. He says silly things. He is religious. He is a hypocrite. He is an entertainer. But would you rather live in his world or a warped progressive commune of a country in which bureaucrats decide how much grain should cost and how much doctors should be paid? Beck resorts to the lowest common denominator to get his message out because it works. Let him beat back collectivism on that most basic level, he's doing a good job.

The administration might not crumble. Look how they got away with BenghaziGate. Doesn't mean they didn't lie or cover up. I seem to recall that whole debacle was never FB-worthy for you. You had more important matters to address. Like the hair-splitting pedantry over whether Obama did or did not specifically say "terrorism" or "acts of terror" or whatever that whole mess was about. The Administration's actions led to the needless deaths of Americans overseas, but you were more interested in scoring points against those abomindable "rad-cons."

But Michael, Kacy gets his info from ThinkProgress and RightWingWatch. Are you suggesting such sources are not objective??? Say it isn't so!

Not quite correct. It seems he didn't go so far as to become a Rabbi, but he studied Judaism. Brutha Nathanael seems a little bit off to me in more ways than one. Aside from his loopiness, he seems to be a Universalist (like most Progressives) in his indictment of Israelis wanting to defend their culture and homeland. That said, I commend his independent thinking in realizing that Christianity is a far better and more fecund Spaghetti Monster to believe in than what is contained in Judaism. But then again, are Jews a race? A religion? An ethnic group? Whoa, let's not open that can of worms. Kolker: you think you could talk to your people on our behalf? Make any inroads, possibly? You talk to your people and we'll talk to ours. Let's do some business.

I'll save you the time: INFP

Here's a humorous guide/FAQ for non-INTJs to better understand the INTJs in their lives. More than a grain of truth there as well. I think Bob in particular will enjoy it.

That about sums it up, I'd say. There aren't enough years in my life to keep up with his output. But when he is good, he is really good.

Holy smokes...*raises hand* Another INTJ over here. (I'm not really surprised though.) We could have a party. We'd all hunker down in strategic positions while taking swipes at each other across the room. PDS, I'm no expert, but my understanding of the N in the MBTI is that it's not so much about "intuitiveness" as in "woman's intuition", but more the tendency to apprehend the world in a highly systematized way. More induction, less direct observation in other words. Bob's aspieness has something to do with that, I imagine. Putting it in Randian terms, you could say N's are Rationalists and the S's are Concrete Bound.