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‘The House of the Rising Sun’ by the Animals has been one of my favorite songs of all times (OK – this lifetime).

I certainly had the album – still have the vinyl and even a player to play it and long time ago when I learned to play the guitar that was the score sheet I dug up somewhere and practiced, practiced and practiced.

Then, when the synthesizer came along, I dug out these old scores and figured out how to play the melody and cords with both of them hands. It turned out to be one of the two songs that I ever taught myself to play on keyboards.

And now the video of the Animals with that song fell into my lap from YouTube-land – and believe it or not – that is the first time I see the band perform.

July 5, 2007: I just had to update this video link because the previous one was not longer available – so I got one with even the lyrics on it – so sing along.

May 22, 2009: The struggle for who owns what rights and the last video was gone from YouTube, but the old one was back and I re-installed it here again.

And to make it even better – here is another famous one from the Animals.

Last week I visited a friend who allows exclusively me to touch her computer. We had planned to talk about what to do about her computer situation – which was dramatic – her computer had given up its life. So I was to sign the death certificate and at the same time the adoption papers for the replacement.

But when she attempted to show me the corpse – there was no corpse – the computer was alive and kicking.

That made me thing and at the same time reminded me of this one item on my todo list to write a piece about the soul in a computer.

I experience it often – and from what I hear am not the only one – that technology and particularly computers behave properly when I’m there and not when I’m absent. Coming to a client “IT DOES NOT WORK!!!” – Could you show me please what’s not working or how it’s not working? – “Ohh, but it did not work when I did it this morning…”

Sure, we can explain these things easily within the confines of our accepted science, but then again, what fun is that?

I prefer more the idea that I love these computers, I give them my time and I play with them – just like now, as we, my computer and I write this blog, instead of me sleeping and getting ready for an early up. Love is usually returned, so there must be somebody who is the source of  this returned love.

Many old philosophies and some newer ones accept the idea of spirits in objects, and that could well be true – I actually am pretty sure about this because cars for example do the same thing with and to me.

But with computers there is another element that might be easier to accept for a western scientist – although maybe not by much.

Here is my idea: computer are reaching a complexity that might make them look attractive to a spirit, soul or thetan (whatever your word for it might be). Looking at a human body, it is still more complex than a computer and has the added advantage that it is way more mobile. And this thermo-dynamic machine is inhabited by a spirit, which can clearly be seen when that spirit leaves – what a difference in quality just after the last breath.

Spirits get attracted by the weirdest things, by the way. I can vividly remember a mannequin (a dummy, not a real one) in a display window of a clothing store – occupied by a spirit – trying to get out but being stuck. The attraction had been this beautiful, perfect body, great seductive smile and the attention of all the passer-byes. And then – darn – stuck!

In the same way a computer can be very attractive to a person/spirit for whom logic – Hello Mr. Spock – is very important. Where the ability of fast thinking is really appreciated. And then all the attention of the computer user!

Very intriguing! And once the computer becomes mobile – I mean by itself, not in the form of a laptop – it will get even more seductive to a free floating spirit that nobody notices.

There are many attempts of attaining artificial intelligence and the question – mostly in science fiction – if there ever will be a machine that will develop self-consciousness but I think that is a non-sensible question. Just as a human body did not become conscious, but instead became so complex and capable that a spirit could use it to express itself, so will we have robots at one point – not because a machine became aware of itself, but because that machine offered something to somebody who already knew that he existed.

By the way, my friends computer died within 15 minutes for good. It had just wanted to say good-bye to his  – - – what am I to him …

No, no, this is not about the Buckets in the British comedy series of the same title, although it would definitely deserve it’s own article.

But here I wanted to look a little bit into what we ourselves do every day in order to keep up the appearance we are creating about us.

Sometimes an extreme example drives a situation home with brutal clarity. This video below does exactly that, and as it is very funny and I laugh about it means that there is something in me that knows I’m doing that – at least to an extend – maybe in this example to a veeery small extent.

 

With all this brouhaha going on right now about the fifth space tourist (officially: participant) being up at the international space station I remembered an article I wrote nearly two years ago in June 2004 after we had returned from Mohave, California where we watched the first civilian attempt to reach space without any government funding.

I think it’s in order to review this event and realize that private space travel will be required to get you and me (or at least your and my kid) of this planet.

I missed the flight of the Wright Brothers, I was on vacation in Spain when the Eagle landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong said his famous “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” and I have never observed a space shuttle flight.

Did I mention that I have also not visited the International Space Station yet?

So I for sure did not want to miss the first attempt of civilian space flight!

Maybe a little bit of background. There is no boundary between earth atmosphere and space as the air is just getting thinner and thinner as we go up and at some point there is so little that we define that as nothing and that is then space.

As we as humans have the tendency to label, measure and categorize everything we, or somebody, has defined the border of space at an altitude of 100 km, or 62 miles.

The first person to get above that and fly around our globe was Yuri Gagarin very much to the dismay of America. But the situation was somewhat remedied when Alan Shepard made it up into space just a few weeks later. Not quite as impressive because he was just shot up and fell back down while the Russian had circled the globe, but nevertheless, an American had been in space.

We all know more or less what happened since, and we also know that this stuff is EXPENSIVE! Just lately we had a few civilian space tourist that paid 20 million a pop to get up to the space station. All this seems so far away from the idea of a space smuggler outrunning some government cruisers with a batch of Whisky from Vega and reaching Aldebaran safely. Especially unrealistic as long as the government has a monopoly in space travel.

Civilian space travel is thus needed. One attempt to spur that is the X Prize. This is a prize of 10 million Dollars awarded to the first team to reach space with a three man crew and repeats this trip with the same vehicle within two weeks.

There are a few contenders for this prize around the world, but lucky for us Californians, the group apparently ahead of the crowd is Scaled Composites in Mohave, California, about an hour and a half away from Los Angeles. Under the leadership of Burt Rutan this little company had build a space ship.

Funding did not come from any government, only from one private source, Paul Allen, the second man of Microsoft. Some might argue that this is just as good as government, but hey – there is a difference!

The price so far being paid for this whole spaceship and everything else to get it into space had been in the same range as one tourist ticket to the international space station.

Now, for Monday morning, the 21st of June 2004, Scaled Composites had announced that it would attempt to reach space – remember – 100 km. Scaled had been very quite about its test flight, but this time there was a big announcement.

Zen and I had been planning a trip out into the desert to sleep under the open sky anyway, so the idea was to combine these two events – sleep out there under billions of starts and then get to the air/space-port early to witness the event. I had not considered that others might have the same idea. But that became clear soon, when I learned about all the things the air/space-port were planning for all the people who would come – - – after it had been built.

Gigi decided to also come along and I made an announcement at Zen’s school to allow other parents to take their children out to this historic event but they all decided to miss it and probably later regret it, just as I regret to have missed the flight at Kitty Hawk. But Zen’s teacher Rose came and brought her husband Doug and graduate Ariel.

So, on Sunday night we headed north into the desert, stopped in Rosamond for dinner and to meet Rose, Dough and Ariel and were soon at the entrance to the first (official) American inland space port. We just wanted to check it out, so that the next morning we would find easily our way to the best vista point, but then we paid the stiff price for a spot in the RV and tent area and stayed there for the night. It had become so windy that it probably would have been more or less impossible to sleep under the open sky without being blown away.

We made do with sleeping (somewhat) in the car and finally crawling out into a perfect morning. The winds had calmed down to nearly nothing, there was hardly a cloud in the sky and with sunrise we got on the short way to the end of the taxi-way where the takeoff would commence.

Even though I have never seen a rocket takeoff live, I have to admit that the takeoff of SpaceShipOne was way less impressive. No big explosion of fire – just the taxi of the carrier ship white knight with SpaceShipOne strapped under it’s belly, a turn at the end of the runway and then a pretty long roll before taking off into the clear air over Mohave.

I will not report about the technical aspect and the interviews and events as they have been covered in the media and on the web much better than I could do.

But I have to report about this one brief moment when SpaceShipOne, twenty minutes after it had been in space – just barely – glided down in one last circle over the air/space-port and landed right in front of us and the crowd cheered – that was darn emotional.

I think we got a lot closer to the Millennium Falcon outrunning some empire battleships.

Here we have a great time-waster. It all started with a search of YouTube for the video that prompted Thailand to block the whole of YouTube. Someone probably rather stupid had defamed the King who is held in high regards and is beyond any critique.

Instead of just letting it go, half the nation stood up in protest and caused quite some ruckus. Guess they never understood that you don’t give that, which you don’t want, any energy, any kind of energy, neither good nor bad – just none.

But something really good came out of it after all. YouTube usually makes you stuck because they understand the principle of similarities – you see something similar and you have to take a look there too, and then something else, and something else, and something else, ad infinitum.

Fortunately on the way to infinity we came across these Backstreet Girls from the other side of the planet.

Lean back and enjoy – if you are Thai you might be a bit embarrassed though (you have been warned), but I totally enjoyed it.

…

And you even can sing along – - – what, you have trouble reading that?

Here I am, the wise guy in terms of nutrition – more than 25 years ago I learned about Macrobiotic and in particular the subject it is mostly known for here in the west – nutrition.

I took classes, threw or gave away all my  food I had in my pantry and started over. Did this militantly for maybe a year till I learned that this life-style takes me out of my social life – no more going out for dinner with friends. So I became a moderate, but to today I know the wisdom of the yin and yang of nutrition….

…or so I thought. Until I found this little gem of detective conclusion. Now I have to rethink…

THE FINAL WORD ON NUTRITION AND HEALTH

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

(Author Unknown)

Over the last week and a half I had plenty of opportunity to dream about space. I usually hear from somewhere when there is a space mission in progress and I check it out on the NASA website but when there is a space tourist walking the planks of the International Space Station I am really all ears (and eyes).

Such is the case right now with Charles Simonyi being up there at about 250 miles above us. He chronicles  his adventures and experiences on his web site Charles in Space. Lots of photos and video on the site so that I checked at least once every day what is going on up there. I was fascinated by his demonstration of drinking water out of mid-air.

The aspect of this whole adventure that intrigues me so much is the fact that this guy is about my age and he has just made some different decisions than I. Because of these decisions he is now in the position to buy a trip to the ISS for something that costs him relatively about the same as a weekend trip to Magic Mountain does me – not that I go to Magic Mountain though – it’s just for comparison.

I am sure that as kids we both read science fiction and imagined being up there in ships going into hyperspace and doing many light-years a  second, discovering new planets and eventually making it to Andromeda.

Then I joined a group to save mankind and he joined Microsoft – interesting perspective!

But don’t read any complaints or regrets into that statement – it is just amazing what decisions can do, isn’t it?

In my early days as a teenage science fiction reader I had been intrigued by the idea of hearing voices in my head. Naturally these voices were always voices from other individuals like me (maybe higher evolved) that wanted to communicate with me. Telepaths, tele-suggestors, you name it.

I don’t remember if, at that time, I actually had no voices in my head or did have them and just did not notice, but there came a time when I had these voices and knew I had them. Once I had them I wanted to get rid of them.

The first person promising silence within me was Hubbard with his book ‘Dianetics’. I was sure, after reading it, that once ‘clear’ not only pictures – unwanted ones, mind you – would be gone but also any unwanted voices, while, with perfect recall, I could still hear, in perfect clarity, anything from the past I wanted.

During the following years I had great wins with Dianetics and Scientology but the mental quietness did not quite make it into my head. It got a lot more orderly but even going through all the upper indoctrination levels did not quiet all the voices completely. These voices were sometimes nagging but certainly well-meaning because they always told me that I’m right and the others are wrong, that I was mistreated or similar (irrelevant) ideas.

And it actually makes sense. The ‘case’, defined in scientologese as the sum of all aberrations in (human) existence, was still there – apparently – because I was still running around with my bag of (mostly) water containing some sticks to hold it upright, generally pointing to it and telling others ‘that’s I’ and considering it very important.

But I kept working on it in all different ways with some successes to report as there are more and more times of quiet and peace up there in the top floor office.

Sometimes I am taken by surprise. For example when I was on my sixth day of balancing my matrix I suddenly realized that it was really nice and quiet upstairs – and it felt good, darn good.

Another instance of total quiet I experienced on one of the first full time (20 min) Japa sound meditations I had learned from an audio book by Wayne Dyer.

Obviously I will keep working on that, until one it I will go poooof.

I have reported about Larken Rose before and I thought that his last email post is very interesting so that I better plagiarize it in its entirely and let it stand for itself. If you want to get his emails unfiltered by me you can
send a blank message to tmds-on@mail-list.com

Dear Subscriber,

Time for another simple line of reasoning which leads to a fairly disturbing conclusion. Once again, the challenge is not comprehending something complex; it’s letting something painfully simple drill its way through the many years of indoctrination we’ve all had.

Most people agree that there are many kinds of unjustified, immoral force (a.k.a. violence), and a few kinds of justified force (mainly defensive). When a mugger swipes a little old lady’s purse, that’s bad. When a guy tackles the mugger to get it back for the little old lady, that’s good. No doubt we could bicker endlessly about the “gray areas,” and where we think the dividing line between moral force and immoral force is, but for this point, you don’t need to use MY measure of what is or isn’t justified. Use your own. But for now I’ll use an example that most of us would agree upon.

The mugger has the ABILITY to take the purse by force, but does not have the RIGHT. The little old lady, on the other hand, has the RIGHT to use defensive force to stop the purse-snatcher, but she may not have the ABILITY. However, everyone ELSE has the right to use force on her behalf, either to be nice or because she pays them to (e.g., if she happens to be a rich little old lady with a bodyguard).

The context of the use of force is what determines whether it is moral or not. The little old lady’s right to use force doesn’t come from who she is, or from legislation. The right to use defensive force, to protect person or property, is an inherent right that every human has. No one had to give it to her. Likewise, the force used by the mugger is unjustified and immoral, not because of who he is or because “the law” says so, but because it’s an infringement upon the little old lady’s inherent rights.

So far, this is pretty basic stuff. But one little step of logic exposes something pretty disturbing. If the little old lady, and every one of us, already has the RIGHT to use defensive force (though we can bicker about where exactly to draw the line), then we have the right to have someone else use such force on our behalf. That’s what private security guards and bodyguards are: people hired to exercise the right of self-defense on behalf of someone else. We as INDIVIDUALS have the right, so we can delegate it to anyone we wish, without the need for any “law” or special “authority.”

So, what DO we need “government” for? What DOES require “legislation,” if not inherently justified force? Simple: people use statutory “law” to exercise inherently IMMORAL force–which they as individuals do NOT have the right to use–to achieve desired ends. They want “free” stuff, and since they can’t take it by force from their neighbors without unpleasant consequences, they have “tax collectors” and “government programs” do it for them. They want the poor cared for, or a military funded, or any number of other “programs” carried out, but they don’t have the right to FORCE their neighbors to fund those things, so they ask “authority” to do it. They want certain vices and habits forcibly combated, even though those behaviors do not constitute force against anyone (e.g., drug use, prostitution, gambling, etc.). The average citizen has no right to forcibly interfere with those, so they want “government” to do it instead. In short, people want “government” to use force in situations where average people have NO RIGHT to use such force. (I hope most people on this list are already aware of the fact that EVERY “law,” no matter how much rhetoric and euphemism it’s hidden under, is a threat, backed up by the ability and willingness to use force.)

So here is the punch line, which is glaringly self-evident, but is vehemently denied by the vast majority of people. Read it a couple of times carefully, to let the meaning sink in.

“Government” is the addition of IMMORAL force (unjustified violence) into society.

And people wonder why “government” corrupts everything it touches, and why it doesn’t fix the problems of society. Hint: you can’t IMPROVE society by adding more UNJUSTIFIED VIOLENCE into it. (Duh.) It doesn’t get any simpler than that, but the millions upon millions who have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the worship of the state–and I sadly confess to having been one for a long time– will come up with all manner of explanation, rationalization, and justification to try to make the insane sane. No election, no constitution, no legislation–NOTHING can alter that simple fact: the entire purpose of “authority”–the ONLY reason people want it to exist–is to exert violence (under the guise of “law”) which is INHERENTLY IMMORAL AND UNJUSTIFIED. They don’t need it for anything else.

For those who would deny that, I make this simple, unilateral pledge: I will never initiate force against you, or advocate that anyone else do so. I will use force, and advocate force, only when used in defense of person or property. Care to make that pledge as well? If so, you’ll have to first give up your belief in elections, and constitutions, and legislation, and democracy, and authority, and government, since all of those are nothing more than excuses to use inherently immoral violence.

(I warned you this wouldn’t be your average political discussion list.)

Sincerely,

Larken Rose
www.larkenrose.com

I ran into this little smart quote the other day.

“Well, don’t we have to take action? The problem won’t solve itself, will it?”
“It will, once you know the secret. Sometimes the correct action is no action at all…”
(Vernon Howard, Psycho-Pictography)

This is not really accepted in our society, isn’t it?

But I claim that most of the big problems we had in the past were handled that way.

Try to think of one of the real big problems you had in the past, and then look at all the things you did to solve it. And what was it that in the end got rid of the problem? Was it one of these actions or was it when you just ‘let go’ (as so many a wise man want to teach us). I’m thinking of one of the real bigger problems I had when I re-started here in the US for real – I mean without sponsor who brought me in in the first place. I had done many things, run around, talked to people, had interviews – nothing did anything because all this German computer training I had nobody had heard about and so it was not worth anything.

Max, who was my room-mate at the time, did the same thing. He eventually got his first US job, through which then I got a job as well.

But that was Max who had done the ‘running around’ – not me. We really have to distinguish here what were his actions and what were mine if we want to understand this ‘letting go’ any better.

We can not let the external universe prove to us that it is correct what it tells us. This ‘letting go’ priciple is not part of the physical universe, therefore the physical universe has no bearing.

Anything outside of me, that I perceive through my senses, is not me. Even if it comes very close to me or is done for me. In this specific case I had already ‘let go’. I had bought and assembled boxes to get my stuff out of there, back to Germany. I had ‘let go’ of the idea of me being in the US.

Maybe I’m just fishing here, but I have the feeling I am somehow on the right track, so I will keep on mumbling from time to time until I get it – sorry!

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