COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Living Longer in Costa Rica

The best way to discover the meaning of life or lack thereof is to live longer:


18 comments:

  1. To live longer is to know the meaning of life.

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  2. A rising GOP star in Santa Fe

    When she takes the oath of office Saturday morning in Santa Fe's historic plaza, Susana Martinez will become New Mexico's — and the nation's — first elected Latina governor.

    The 51-year-old, four-term Doña Ana County district attorney is also a rising star in national Republican circles, already being mentioned in the blogosphere as a potential vice presidential candidate in 2012.

    But as she takes over from Bill Richardson — a termed-out Democrat whose final two years in office were clouded by federal investigations into pay-for-play allegations — Martinez faces stiff challenges as New Mexico deals with a high unemployment rate and a hefty budget deficit.

    "We have to start cutting back on the wasteful spending," Martinez said in a telephone interview last week as she drove to her hometown of Las Cruces. She wants to sell the state's $5.5-million jet, pare administrative costs in the education budget and put the state's generous film industry incentives under the microscope.

    Martinez is also considering scaling back the Rail Runner Express commuter train service and is looking to privatize operations at Spaceport America, where Virgin Galactic soon hopes to launch suborbital space flights. She has also promised to reverse a policy of issuing driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants and to fight for reinstatement of the death penalty.

    Each of these proposals could be seen as a repudiation of Richardson and his expansive approach to state government. "We're asking people to cut back and not spend as much, but government has not been able to do that," Martinez said.
    ---

    As district attorney, she was known for her tough prosecution of child abuse cases and crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

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  3. 211. buddy larsen

    hyk/209, LOL –the empty lunch table –i sat down at it a few days after the BP thingie of April 20, when i started learning about what happened on the rig floor and in the mud pits that day. being an old oild field hand who’s been where they were, I could not understand the contract hands actually going thru that set of BP orders, until i read of their resignation to the soon need to shut in the well at the BOP. But the BOP failed. So i watched to see if any monkey business would take place on the exam of that BOP once back on the bank. Sure enough, the funny biz is ensuing, with panache and alacrity –and precisely as by the manufactured crisis coverup playbook. So around April i starts looking into BP, and –oh.my.God.

    A name for you: ex-Schlumberger hand Ira R. Crain. find his 5 part series –start with part 5 and work backards.

    Crain, he’s just for starters. Next you want to take a general look at Lord John Browne. That’s still just for starters, along but one tentacle of the octopus. The financial meltdown, the sequence, the 08 energy manipulations (even FBI says ”manipulation”, tho a little elaboration wouldn’t hurt), i understand those too, as well as i do what happened on the rig floor, becuz i has studied the subject and been a half-assed trader for decades. So two lines of this attack stand out like bright lines to me, and flash “alarm” with great intensity.

    So why does a renegade clique inside an oil company mean anything to the world? Only that the same bunch is running a lot of other crises too, some of them known as ”governments”, agencies thereof.

    ...more here:

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  4. 143. Keith

    Privatised Social Security – 30 years on!

    John Lott linked to this,
    The Chilean Model

    Chile privatised its social security 30 years ago, and it is now debt free.

    An actual example we can point to of where it has been tried, and surprise surprise (well no surprise to Belmont Clubbers anyway) it worked almost twice as well as forecast.

    Would that Margaret Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan had stuck as close to Hayek’s & Friedman’s ideas as their friend Augusto Pinochet did.

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  5. Mythbusters is dimpling a car like a golf ball, it is supposed to go faster and use less fuel.

    Campbell told the story about the 432 golf ball, which of course, had 432 dimples. It did indeed fly further than the others.

    But he associated it with the old sumarian and hindu end of the world numbers 43200000 or whatever, and as also the ages of the patriarchs in the Bible.

    Putting it all together perhaps our astrologers would do well to get into numerology:)



    To live longer is to know the meaning of life.

    But Ernest Hemingway in For Whom The Bell Tolls made the myth that you could get the whole experience in three days, done with intensity.



    Jesus is it cold here now. It is going lower than last night. The Thatuna Range, aka, Moscow Mountains had this beautiful pink blueish white glow coming back from Wal-Mart.
    Beautiful. Really indescribable.

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  6. Last night at the motel. I'd rather sleep over there, but she says we paid for it we're sleeping here!


    hmmphh!

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  7. People in rest homes live longer and some of them know absolutely nothing :)

    A fate I am determined to avoid.

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  8. Now we are over on Antique Road Show, which she went to once. Fraud of a show.

    She had grandfather's lion painting appraised.

    Wasn't worth much.

    According to them.

    Lots of mischief on pricing and fleecing the consumers.

    It will be wonderful when I have my own room back!

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  9. aha!

    A dimpled car actually does go faster and more economically.

    Kinda like that dimpled look, too.

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  10. Only The Good Die Young


    My own view after a lifetime is it makes little difference as the same transcendental experience awaits us all.

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  11. MeLoDy said...
    To live longer is to know the meaning of life.



    wow... really?

    now that's deep...

    I guess all those Christians in Egypt that were blow to hamburger will never know the meaning of life... Just death...

    Thank you Muzzies once again for denying people the ability to learn the meaning of life...

    Our fair President Obama, or as I like to call him, that Muzzie goat fucking squatter, could not even condemn directly the muzzies that butchered 20 people in Alexandria today...

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  12. On the other hand there are it seems to me some kinds of knowledge, of the heart maybe, and family relations, etc. that really do come only with getting a little older. I don't buy into Hemingway's crap at all. And there is that knowledge past knowledge of gramps and grams and the grandchildren that Campbell talked about - the knowledge that really there's not that much to know - it's all play, and it's the people in the serious middle years, yoked to making a living, that get things all fucked up. So maybe she's not so far wrong after all.

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  13. Well, Mr McSmartypants, I was only referring to the clip and thought that Deuce's words above it were a little backwards.

    Just because the Christians in Egypt died an early death doesn't mean that they didn't know the meaning of life.

    Someone who dies at the age of 30 could easily have the same knowledge of the meaning as the old lady in the video.

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  14. Mel, I just used your statement to make a comment about the muzzies..

    get a thicker skin

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  15. heh
    Last post until I get my new digs wired up for internet and regain my privacy and am able to catch up on business and write what I have been meaning to.

    Who says To live longer is to know the meaning of life isn't the truth?

    I wish I had Joe, who is out in a garage in a box, so this won't be exactly right, but -

    (from one of the 'old boys' - one of the oriental sages) -

    At ten -- an idiot

    At twenty -- a sexual psychopath

    At thirty -- worn out by work worry wife and kids

    At forty -- either dead or a moderate success

    At fifty -- a glimmer of ease and reflection

    At sixty -- the beginning of the grip of political opinion

    At seventy -- true political opinion

    At eighty -- true doubts about political opinion

    And at ninety -- having seen the truth, I hold my position, and remanin silent



    :):):)

    To live longer is to know the meaning of life

    See ya in a few days, gnite

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