The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself

We rid ourselves of the blinders of ideology by
constantly asking ourselves: How do I feel? How's
my life? What do I want? Am I getting what I
want? If not, why not? This is being conscious of
the commonplace, being aware of your everyday
routine. That real life exists--life in which you
are active, a subject acting to achieve your
desires--is a public secret that becomes less
secret every day, as the breakdown of daily life
constructed around abstraction-based ideologies
becomes more and more obvious.

Ah, but most of us live in two worlds, living and
breathing the contradiction, about half
ideological and half of the above and blind to
the conflict.

Makes for some very strange shit, from where I
sit.

But I'm just passin' thru. Y'all just carry on
with what you were doing.

Conversely, what many leftists, therapy mongers,
racism awareness trainers, and sisterizers term
"consciousness raising" is the practice of
beating people into unconsciousness with guilt-
inducing, ideological billyclubs.

Pack your bags. You're goin' on a guilt trip
is what he's saying.

But the dude forgot the rightists and their
incessant devotion to God, the flag, duty and the
preservation of the tribe with little regard to
the conscientious objector.

And just keep packin' those bags, folks.

Now this author got it about half right, but like
many good thinkers wanders off on The Group Mind
Fuck in the last third of his piece, going on another
trip to one -ism or another.

Aack!

How will "belonging" to any "school of thought"
promote your personal (r)evolution? How is that
different from "just another ideology", that which
the author decries?

Shouldn't we leave all that shit in the
wastebasket of history where it belongs if we're
really interested in the exercise of free
will? Do we need membership cards to do it?

Isn't a personal theory a brand new bag?

What is it in us that wants to re-make the world
in a collectively inspired image rather than
concerning ourselves with just re-making our own
world in our own way?

Are we hard wired to be only leaders or followers,
that ol' 'either or' thing?

I don't believe it.

There is a third way.

Read the whole thing to see what I mean.

The final battle

The next civil rights battle in America will be
over taxation and regulation.

At some point, people will realize that the
greatest threat to their freedom comes through
onerous taxes and meddlesome regulations. At some
point, Americans will get the government out of
their wallets and out of their lives.

Coming soon, I'd say. The rest of you out there
may want to hurry up. The tax wars between
countries began some time ago in order to attract
capital. Why do you think so much business left
their country of high tax? Not just the US. Sony
has only an administration office left in Japan,
for example.

...

Every aspect of the production of a product –
and the profitability of the company that
produces it – is taxed. And that tax is
ultimately collected in the purchase price and
comes, ultimately, from your pocket.

Few realize this and I'll say it in different
words: Companies pay no tax. They just collect
it in the form of higher prices, and pass it to
the rulers. In this, they are supporters of
whatever government does. The wise companies leave
to find less regulation, lower taxes and/or lower
wages to pay to stay competitive.

There's no way to stop their exit.

You can sometimes stop people from entering a country,
but you can't stop 'em from leaving.

Read.

Via Bill St. Claire

Paybacks are a bitch

Perfect agreement is an anomaly that very rarely
occurs. Language is so inadequate in conveying
some concepts. Distortion is an inevitability.
The underlying framework of reality will
eventually require any difference come due, and
demand payment in full.

Nice, tight, concise but not the full story.

Is there ever a "full story"?

Would we know it if we heard it?

In the meantime, a very big helping of tolerance
may stall off the payment as regards the "social"
elements,i.e. about how we all best get along together.
I'm saying nothing here of Ma Nature. She is one
intolerant bitch.

I dunno.

Whadyathink?

chumpfish.

Approval

"The first step in freeing yourself from social
restrictions is the realization that there is no
such thing as a 'safe' code of conduct - one that
would earn everyone's approval. Your actions can
always be condemned by someone - for being too
bold or too apathetic, for being too conformist
or too nonconformist, for being too liberal or
too conservative. So it's necessary to decide
whose approval is important to you."
-- Harry Browne

Do you really need anyone's approval?

That's up to you to decide, ain't it.

Unintended consequences? Does it matter?

Money laundering is generally understood to
be the practice of taking ill gotten gains and
moving them through a sequence of bank accounts
so they ultimately look like the profits from
legitimate activity. Institutions, individuals,
and even governments who are believed to be
aiding and abetting the practice of money
laundering can be indicted and convicted, even
though they may be completely unaware that the
money being transferred with their help was of
criminal origin. This makes as much sense as
convicting an automobile manufacturer or dealer
because someone who has purchased a car uses it
in a criminal act, or charging the telephone
company with a crime when someone uses a
telephone to facilitate a criminal
act.

And what is the "legitimate activity" he talks of
above?

Whatever your governors decide at any given
moment.

Does that make you happy?

I'm convinced that these proceedures mandated by
these governors will greatly hasten the coming
Dark Age (we're already in an intellectual Dark
Age) because all of a sudden it becomes much more
difficult to trade unless you're a state
"approved" entity like a corporation or someone
that has all his paper ducks in a row.

Makes me wanna stand on their desks and piss on
their heads, including the asshole institutions
that go along to get along by complying with that
crap.

But there are - and will be more - ways to
bypass these rules to move and store "unapproved"
money.

Read it all.

It won't fly

Damn.

These miserable shits are determined to tax all
that moves and all that doesn't move.

An influential congressional committee has
dropped a political bombshell by suggesting that
a tax originally created to pay for the Spanish
American War could be extended to all Internet
and data connections this year.

The committee, deeply involved in writing U.S.
tax laws, unexpectedly said in a report Thursday
that the 3 percent telecommunications tax could
be revised to cover "all data communications
services to end users," including broadband; dial-
up; fiber; cable modems; cellular; and DSL, or
digital subscriber line, links.

The report.

More of the increasing insanity

If one of mine had been killed on that train, I'd
pop the sombitch myself and put him outta his misery.

See how insanity breeds more insanity?

Man who failed to kill himself gets death penalty.

The Guts of it

A creative, life-sustaining society is held
together by peaceful, cooperative forms of
behavior. Voluntariness, persuasion, and a
respect for the inviolability of individuals, are
the modi operandi of social beings. The
sociopaths, however, will have none of this,
which helps to explain their unending hostility
to the marketplace, private ownership of
property, and other expressions of individual
liberty; and their attraction to political (i.e.,
coercive) forms of organization. To sociopaths,
coercion is to be preferred over cooperation,
conscription over contract. Because force must
remain the paramount virtue of state systems, no
human action can be regarded as immune from
political direction. This is a primary reason we
are witnessing an exponential increase in
government regulation of even the most personal
matters, whether it be smoking, obesity, child-
rearing, treatment of pets, or the wearing of
seat-belts. Such thinking produces a world in
which every aspect of life becomes a political
question.

And almost no one realizes they have been and are
being politicized beyond all human recognition.

When It's All Over, I suspect almost no one will
have a clue Why Everything Came Apart with all
that Order in Place.

The Fat Lady's warming up as I write.

Read it all from The Master.

Go ahead. It won't hurt ya to read it.

Skype update

At this moment, my Skype panel shows over
1.6 million users online.

Communication...the seed of commercial trade and
a whole lot more.

Over the past year and a half, Skype's
popularity has exploded. Currently, there are
about 23 million users signed up for the service,
which allows no-cost phone calls over the
Internet, according to the company. By 2008, that
number is expected to jump to between 140 million
and 245 million, says market research company
Evalueserve. As more business customers start
using the software, Skype's subscriber numbers
could grow even higher.

Read.

Going to center

As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance
strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising
on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the
Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and
the Information Age on people's left hemispheres,
the Conceptual Age is being built on people's
right hemispheres. We've progressed from a
society of farmers to a society of factory
workers to a society of knowledge workers. And
now we're progressing yet again - to a society of
creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers,
and meaning makers.

The last four things is what I'm trying to do here.

Then he goes on to say...

But let me be clear: The future is not some
Manichaean landscape in which individuals are
either left-brained and extinct or right-brained
and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga
instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub
counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear,
analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's
no longer enough.

What the dude doesn't specifically mention in
the article is the connected brain. I've said it
before: 1+1=3, i.e., left brain plus right brain
equals third brain, that all-seeing eye in the
middle of the forehead. Let me know when you've
developed it.

He closes with...

In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.

Leapfrog the right brain, left brain cults.

"Cycrops", as my Jap buddy usta say.

Go center.

Read.

A short quiz

Do you think there's any ethical difference
between choosing to do something to yourself for
your own purposes and having other people do it
to you without your consent for their
purposes?

Read it in context.

Via John Lopez

That hamster's treadmill we're still on

What most logically answers questions, a human
mind with no other illusions of resources, or a
person who relies upon guns, prisons, laws, lies,
titles, credentials, institutional references,
seized money, illusions of superiority and other
rhetorical devices which are already
categorically proven by the test of time to have
flawed the ability of the human mind? Are you of
your mind, or of a bag full of rhetorical titles
held by adults who have not just failed to solve
the problems they keep creating, but keep
creating them and keep complaining about them?

Looks like insanity to me.

Howboucho?

But if these titled folks solved problems, who
would need them anymore? Then they'd have to go look
for honest work instead of pitching bullshit.

As it is, they have to do nothing more than appear to
be at work on solutions to maintain their titles.

Read.

Instant justice

Coupla ol' farts dispensed it.

Nice to see someone still knows how.

Read.

An idea whose time has come

See what Andy Stedman says about the inauguration.

Then there were two, then three, four...how many more?

Do I hear millions?

One can only hope.

But hope in one hand and shit in the other and see
which one fills up first.

See? I'm a romantic realist...today anyway.

Learning early

Fred did what I did at that age, but I never worried
about my parents disapproval. They would never
interrupt a quiet boy. I don't either. It's so
rare to find one.

But I don't worry about anyone's approval. See
what he says about fooling his parents...

The drug store sold Hardy Boys books, Tom Swift,
the Lone Ranger, long rows of them. Presumably
they weren’t there exclusively for me. I remember
inventing what I called "sneak reading." When
supposedly I was going to sleep, I held the plug
of my reading lamp just far enough into the
socket to turn it on, so that I could quietly
turn it off by pulling it out slightly should I
hear creaking floorboards. I was fooling my
parents less than I thought I was, but this
revelation came later. At various times I used
flashlights and candles. (Book matches don't
work. I know.)

I have since learned that all sorts of kids did
the same thing. So much for my uniqueness in the
universe.

Fred's whole rant on why learning isn't a big deal.

Some fart science

Link.

Heavenly workplace?

If you've gotta work for someone else, this looks
like the kind of place to do it. Too bad there's
no interview with an employee in the report.

Read.

When blogging can get you locked up

Javad Gholam Tamayomi, Omid Memarian, Shahram
Rafihzadeh, Hanif Mazroi, Rozbeh Mir Ebrahimi,
Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh and Fereshteh Ghazi are
some of the most courageous people you've never
met.

Not exactly household names, but each deserves a
standing ovation.

During a crackdown against Iran's nascent online
press last year, these sundry online journalists
and bloggers got chucked into jail. The cyber
seven were subsequently released but continue to
invite the periodic and not-so-tender attention
of the local police.

Yo, Amerikans. You don't think that can happen
here?

Think again.

Full report.

Cancer cured

A small U.S. company - already raking in
revenues of more than $1 billion and showing net
profits of over $150 million - will post
explosive gains in both sales and profits in the
weeks ahead. Those who own the stock are - in
effect - holding a winning lottery ticket.

1.3 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer
each year. And, sadly, more than 1,500 people in
the U.S. die from it every day.

But one company is doing something about it.
No... not a biotech company hoping to make it
through Phase III trials, but rather a medical
technology firm whose products are actually
killing cancer tumors right now in hundreds of
hospitals around the world.

The whole report.

Another invention by Troy Hurtubise

This guy is either another Tesla or the biggest
scam artist to hit the scene in a long time.

Stay tuned to find out.

The cushions can be attached to jeeps, Humvees
and other light personnel carriers using magnets.
Passengers in the vehicles would also be able to
sit on the cushions for added protection.

“They’re able to not only withstand bullets and
explosions, but also provide protection from
blunt trauma,” said Hurtubise, 39.

“It’s Herculean protection with simplicity.”

Edit:

Thanks to thogsez for pointing out in the comment
section here that the original link expired. Here's
another one:

The article.

And don't miss clicking on the photo gallery at
the end of the article.

Who ya gonna whine to?

It is true that sexual repression makes one
miserable, but so does sexual license, the more
so if one is female. Sex is not the problem,
contrary to Sigmund Freud. The problem is life.
When Faust tells Mephistopheles that he wants to
experience life with all its joys and sorrows,
the devil answers pityingly, "Believe me - I've
been chewing on this hard cookie for thousands of
years, and from cradle to grave, no one has ever
been able to digest this sourdough." Life by
definition is a failure. First you will grow old
(if you are lucky) and then die. Family,
religion, culture and nation offer consolations
in the face of death, within limits.

What consolations?

Like the lady said, "The universe doesn't give
a shit about you." And neither do all those
other abstractions above.

You're on your own.

Make the best of it. No one can do that better
than you, can they.

The whole article.

Looking thru walls

I'm skeptical about almost everything. This is no
exception but, I wonder...

There's some strange shit going on here, if it works
as advertised.

Troy Hurtubise has done the seemingly impossible
with his newest invention and defied all known
rules of physics, he says.

The Angel Light—Hurtubise claims the concept
came to him in a recurring dream—can reportedly
see through walls, as if there was no barrier at
all.

That’s not all, though.

Read.

That broken and very expensive crystal ball

For the most part, all these evidences of a
world coming unglued fall in the tragic category;
we can only chronicle them, and weep. But one
massive fiasco promises high comedy: that of the
so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs," the
vast Pentagon money tit through which an army of
Congressmen, contractors and colonels is sucking
the country dry. Based on hucksters' promises of
video game war, where General Swami "sees all,
knows all" through a vast array of hyper-priced
"systems," the RMA is coming unglued in Iraq's
gritty streets. To the grunt on the ground, it
has proven as useless as a regiment of lancers.

The reason?

When a small team with a coupla hundred dollar weapon
(RPG-7) can take out a multi-million dollar piece
of equipment like an Abrams tank, one would think
General Swami would get the picture.

The article.

Via chumpfish.

That boring fucking job you have.

Obviously, I'm back to kick some more ass.

In the meantime, I checked my blog using IE and found
that the living room is in the bathroom.

I apologize but I despise IE so much that I didn't
use it to see the layout, as I only use Firefox.

Anyway, IE users, stick with me while I move the
living room (the links etc.) back where it belongs.

Anyone else who doesn't see the links on the right
side where they belong, please let me know.

Now to the topic of this post.

************

What's so sick about what the guy in Billy's post
said is that he thinks he has no choice but to
work a job he hates.

Jeez.

When I got bored with working one job, I quit it
and went somewhere else.

It's a big world out there.

This is the sort of lost conceptual train that I
have in mind when I cite Endarkenment. That
people could sink to such sub-human levels in a
culture descended (the only apt word) from
America is the most profound tragedy of our time.

"Endarkenment" is a good description in one word
of what's going on.

Billy's short post.

Vacation

I'm going off for some surf, sand and sun for a
couple of weeks.

Y'all come back now.

Easy does it

You won't hear an argument from me on this.
If you were to watch me in my chair, you might be
asking yourself, "Is it alive?"

And you'll never see me pounding the pavement or the
treadmill at the gym like some hamster. I can get
my endorphin high without it.

In a new book called The Joy of Laziness: How to
slow down and live longer, Dr Peter Axt, retired
professor of health science at Fulda University
near Frankfurt, and his daughter, Dr Michaela Axt-
Gadermann, a GP, say that everybody has a limited
amount of "life energy" and that the speed with
which it is consumed determines their life span.

Read.

Report on the bird droppings

Covering the flopping of these single-winged birds,
(left wing, right wing) Fred sees 'em pretty much
as they are. Gimpy...

In my capacity as Western Civilization’s
principal moral compass and intellectual
lighthouse, I thought I might explain politics
once and forever. There are altogether too many
television shows about politics, too many books
by people who would better pass their time in
drinking. Newspapers have gotten above
themselves. They are full of columnists. A final
explanation of all things political will allow
the papers to concern themselves entirely with
coverage of ghastly murders, divorcing
celebrities, and the incursions of space aliens
into Puerto Rico.

The rant.

Where do you fit?

"To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be
stripped of his individual identity and
distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans,
Ivan or Tadao- a human atom with an existence
bounded by birth and death. The most drastic way
to achieve this end is by complete assimilation
of the individual into a collective body. The
fully assimilated individual does not see himself
and others as human beings. When asked who he is,
his automatic response is that he is a German, a
Russian, a Japanese, a Christian, a Moslem, a
member of a certain tribe or family. He has no
purpose, worth and destiny apart from his
collective body; and as long as that body lives
he cannot really die." -- Eric Hoffer

I've posted this before on my previous blog. I
bring it up again because I think it's the disease-
possibly terminal-of the human race.

Why, you say?

If you're part of one of these collectives you
think along the collective (party) line, questioning
the collective group think little if at all. And
if you do you're easily dissuaded or intimidated.
The name of the collective is irrelevent.

When some leader steps forth, you follow without
thinking, translike.

The crowd and its feelings reign. Damn, it's so
contagious.

The individual mind shuts down.

The emotions rule. The leader knows how to orchestrate
these, or he wouldn't be a leader.

He plays on fear and your desire to be told what
to do because so few like to exercise independent
judgment. After all, I could be wrong, says the
follower, not knowing leaders are just as humanly
fallable. It's so easy to be assimilated.

Is that what you want?

The Borg or The I.

Your choice.

The process is very subtle. Few see it when emotions
predominate.

Think about it.

More of the Divine Comedy

Kinda like I've been saying...

"As Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we
really so different? Must we stereotype those who
disagree with us? Do we truly believe that all
red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist
knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying
roadkill-eating tobacco-juice-dribbling gun-
fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that all
blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic
pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-
wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping
holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?
Yes. This is called 'diversity,' and it is why we
are such a great nation -- a nation that has
given the world both nuclear weapons and
SpongeBob SquarePants." -- Dave Barry

Via Bill St. Claire

Left out and loving every moment

Red state, blue state?

What's a person gonna do in a purple state?

Just be left out, I suppose.

Suits me fine.

How about you?

The most probable reason for the US invasion of Iraq

Or what if, long before that comes to pass,
exporters of oil simply cease to price it in ever-
devaluing dollars, and instead make a mint by
switching to the rising euro and/or a basket of
East Asian currencies? That would at one stroke
vastly diminish the world demand for and price of
dollars by obliging anyone who wants to buy oil
to purchase and increase the demand price of the
euro or yen/yuan instead of the dollar. That
would crash the dollar and tumble Uncle Sam in
one fell swoop, as foreign - and even domestic -
owners of dollars would sell off as many of them
as fast as they could, and other countries'
central banks would switch their reserves out of
dollars and away from Uncle Sam's no-longer-safe
haven. That would drive the dollar down even
more, and of course halt any more dollar inflow
to Uncle Sam from the foreigners who have been
financing his consumption spree. Since selling
oil for falling dollars instead of rising euros
is evidently bad business, the world's largest
oil exporters in Russia and OPEC have been
considering doing just that. In the meantime,
they have only raised the dollar price of oil, so
that in euro terms it has remained approximately
stable since 2000. So far, many oil exporters and
others still place their increased amount of
dollars with Uncle Sam, even though he now offers
an ever less attractive and less safe haven, but
Russia is now buying more euros with some of its
dollars.

I'm convinced this is why Uncle Sam is in
Iraq. It's a central staging area in the oil rich
Middle East to attempt to prevent the use
of euros for oil payments.

The rest.

Even though reading of the political economy's
machinations shown in the article below give me hives,
I think they're important to know.

Iraq suspended "Oil for Food" program sales,
under which Iraqi oil is traded -- more than two
thirds of it to U.S. concerns -- in exchange for
currency. Iraq formally asked the United Nations,
which administers "Oil for Food," to change the
currency in Iraq's U.N.-managed accounts from
dollars to euros. That may well have been
Saddam's greatest mistake.

In due course, the U.N. bureaucrats ruled that
Iraq could indeed sell it's oil for any currency
it chose. Iraqi oil is now paid for mainly in
euros. Uh-oh!

The evidence.

Panning for gold

"Everything great and intelligent is in the minority."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To find it is akin to panning for gold. It's
exceedingly hard to do.

My attempt on this blog is to do the panning for
you, to go for the gold and show it.

Praise

"The readiness to praise others indicates a desire
for excellence and perhaps an ability to realize it."
-- Eric Hoffer

How one man defeated the US Army

Think bigger than the US Army here.

Now you know how easy it is to 'Just say no'.

Most people think that they could never defeat
United States Army. The Army possesses nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons and knows how to
use them. They have Apache helicopters, Abrams
tanks, and more depleted uranium rounds than you
can shake a stick at! No one would believe that
one man, not even one as strong as Arnold
Schwarzenegger, could defeat the Army. Yet using
my method, I was able to defeat the entire United
States Army and gain my freedom – armed with
nothing but my underpants. I have a certified
letter from the US government to prove it!

The entire hilarious success story of one man.

Misfortune

"Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his
greatest and highest interests are directed by
reason throughout the course of life." --Epicurus

Who's in control?

While Gato Relajado undergoes some quite muddled
thinking about who's in control, (Nobody is. Shit
happens.) he has the eminent solution at the end
of his article.

Let's do some reality-based thinking ...

Let's forget about the Islamic and Christian
extremists, and jihadists of all sorts for the
moment. Let's temporarily put aside concerns
about politics, border disputes and culture wars.
For the moment let's focus on Planet Earth as a
big, increasingly integrated economic system.

It's a dirty job. I'm happy to see someone else is
making an attempt.

The transformation is now complete, Igor.

I'll bet you're not gonna believe this either.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- It may surprise some people
to learn that one of the linchpins in this
nation's war on terrorism is the Bin & Barrel
Mini Mart in Fremont, Calif.

Read.

(Title to this post created by L. R. White)

Snug and warm?

If you don't believe any of this, if you think
this is some 'short story', you haven't been paying
attention.

Time to wake up.

But let’s say you’re lucky. You’ve somehow
managed to keep your house. And you’re cozied up
snug and warm in your bed. It’s after midnight.
You don’t know there’s a dozen very large men
gathered on your front lawn, trampling your
petunias. They’re festooned in paramilitary
Kevlar from jackboot to tinted helmet visor and
they’re stoned on adrenaline and testosterone.
They bash in your door with a custom door basher.
They scream letters from a Post Alpha-Bits cereal
box like "FBI!" and "DEA!" and "BATF!" and
challenge you to the children’s tag game of
"Freeze!" They point muzzles of seriously lethal
weaponry in your face. They drag you out of bed,
dressed only in your boxer shorts with the little
red hearts and cupids, and cuff your wrists
behind your back. Then they spend the next three
hours ransacking your house from soap dish to
breadbox. Eventually, someone with keys and bad
breath removes your handcuffs with a muttered,
"Oops, wrong house."

It’s at this precise moment that I want you to
turn to your partner in home ownership and say,
"Libertarians are always bashing government. If
it wasn’t for government we’d have nothing but
chaos."

Then these same Libertoonians jump up and run for
political office, and by doing so sanction the
idea they're bashing.

Why do you suppose they continue to play their
enemy's game, by their enemy's rules...and continue
losing?

Looks like a form of fundamental stupidity to
me.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just thump their little
Libertoonian heads against a well-constructed wall?

Time for another solution, boys and girls, but
you'll just have to work it out yourselves, one
at a time.

And keep ur guns at home, on a rack in ur pick-em-up
or on the firing range. I don' wanna hear about
mobs of you runnin' down the street with guns and
wavin' magical shit like flags and Constiytushuns
at the idiots to get whut u want.

Patience, with a little help from ur friends and
very few folks will get hurt.

And it'll be a helluva lot more fun.

Read it all if you wanna know why you propity owners
is fucked.

Ambrose Bierce on debt

DEBT, n.

An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave- driver.

As, pent in an aquarium, the troutlet
Swims round and round his tank to find an outlet,
Pressing his nose against the glass that holds him,
Nor ever sees the prison that enfolds him;
So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him,
Yet feels the narrow limits that impound him,
Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it,
And finds at last he might as well have paid it.

--Barlow S. Vode

Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

Did a big rock fall from the sky?

As more scientific information begins to become
available relating to the events surrounding the
9.0 earthquake off of the Northern Coast of
Sumatra on December 26th, it is being reported
that the depth was 10km. More importantly
perhaps are the growing signs surrounding this
event that rather than being caused by internal
earth dynamics, as is being widely reported, it
was instead caused by an extraterrestrial event,
a meteorite strike into the ocean having come
from the Southern Hemispheric skies.

Not likely. Take a look at the seismic history of
the area.

Now, examine this map.

It should be fairly easy to spot a crater from the
air in what appears to be shallow water, assuming
the quake was properly located. (Yellow star)
The water could be quite murky so it might be a
good idea to wait a while.

I have little doubt that meteorites have hit the
ocean somewhere in the past, causing huge tsunamis
much larger than the one in Sumatra. Velikovsky
made a good case for that even tho I disagree with
a close pass by Venus as the cause.

Big rocks traveling at high speeds thrown into ponds
make big waves.

It ain't rock science.

All us kids know that.

I'd say tectonic plate theory is still safe,
no matter what the dude above says.