Lightning in a Jar

[Note to reader: The following came to me as a PowerPoint slideshow attachment forwarded by my pal Darcey Bellington. The slideshow features some haunting background music, and some gorgeous graphics. Since I am PowerPoint-illiterate, I have chosen to re-type the powerful message so that I can share it with a wide audience. If you would like to get the slideshow, send me an email or a private message, and I will forward it to you.]

If you could fit the entire population of the world into a village consisting of 100 people, maintaining the proportions of all the people living on Earth, that village would consist of:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 Americans (North, Central and South)
8 Africans

There would be

52 women
48 men
30 Caucasians
70 non-Caucasians
30 Christians
70 non-Christians
89 heterosexuals
11 homosexuals

Six people would possess 59% of the wealth, and they would all come from the USA.

80 would live in poverty
70 would be illiterate
50 would suffer from hunger and malnutrition
1 would be dying
1 would be being born
1 would own a computer
1 would have a university degree

If we looked at the world this way, the need for acceptance and understanding would be obvious. But consider again the following:

If you woke up this morning in good health, you have more luck than one million people, who won't live through the week.

If you have never experienced the horror of war, the solitude of prison, the pain of torture, or were not close to death from starvation, then you are better off than 500 million people.

If you can go to your place of worship without fear that someone will assault or kill you, then you are luckier than 3 billion people.

If you have a full fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, you are wealthier than 75% of the world's population.

If you currently have money in the bank, in your wallet, and a few coins in your purse, you are one of 8 of the privileged few amongst the 100 people in the world.

If your parents are still alive and still married, you are a rare individual.

If someone sent you this message, you're extremely lucky, because someone is thinking of you, and because you don't comprise one of those 2 billion people who cannot read.


And so?


Work like you don't need the money.

Love like nobody has ever hurt you.

Dance like nobody is watching.

Sing like nobody is listening.

Live as if this was paradise on Earth.


Send this message to your friends.

Bypass those who are determined to see the worst in the world, no matter what.

If you don't send it, nothing will happen.

If you do send it, someone might smile while they are reading it, and that will be a positive.

Apart from that, simply have a nice day.



-- Author unknown, circa June 15, 2010.

It's Time to Stop Rewarding Bad Behavior

All of the yelling about the AIG bonuses, and the multiple abuses of the system by executives at that company and dozens of other companies (can you say "O-I-L"?) in recent years won't die down any time soon, and with good reason: the American people "have had it up to here" with rewarding bad behavior, one of the more dubious hallmarks of the past eight years. Time was, if you did something wrong, you bore the consequences of your actions. Lately, if you were crafty enough, rich enough, and had the right friends in the right places, you could get away with almost anything. Finally, the people in this country are standing up and saying "ENOUGH!"

It's about time.

Once upon a time in America, when you screwed up and did a lousy job, you paid the price (whatever the price was) for your failure: if you owned a business, and times got tough for the business, you, as the business owner, took a hit. Employees were generally spared, and at least kept their jobs, albeit stagnantly, and the boss went home at the end of the week with a lighter envelope. Gradually, it has become the norm that the lowest level workers are the ones to pay the price for any economic calamities, which those at the top continue to collect their princely sums unabated.

Part of this problem is the rise of the corporation as a legal entity: not only did the creation of corporations serve to distribute risk and expand investment, it also waived away liability of individuals -- real people -- and put responsibility on the amorphous corporation. Then, the corporation is punished for wrongdoing, but the punishment meted out is usually monetary in some fashion, and the real wrongdoers -- the real people running the corporation -- are left unscathed, and eventually, their malfeasance and misfeasance is repeated because the punishment did not fall on them. They learned nothing. When a small child ignores warnings and touches a hot stove, learning immediately takes place. Most executives in corporate America could sit on a hot stove and come away with nothing but scorched trousers.

Since we are on a warpath here, calling for reform, here's an idea: Maybe we ought to abolish the corporation. Eliminate it, and return to personal responsibility and individual liability.

It works with hot stoves.


March 26, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

Hi, I'm Ignorant, and This Bumper Sticker of Mine Proves It

March 21, 2009: Boy, are all those wingnuts over on the far right freaking out now. Here's a sampling of their latest patriotic fervor, from an email I got the other day (yes, checking on what they are up to is part of the territory). These are actual bumper stickers that are for sale to help fill the coffers of the "Oh-My-God-America-Won't-Be-Lilly-White-Much-Longer" set:

B.A.I.L.O.U.T. Bums Accepting Illicit Loot -- Obama Underwriting Theft!

OBAMA-NOMICS: The "Change" I Have Left After Paying Your Bills.

WORK HARDER Democrats Want To Spend Your Money!

SOCIALISM: "CHAINS" WE CAN'T AFFORD

TRAUMA [featuring a faux-Obama logo]

COMRADE OBAMA U.S.S.A. "CHANGE WE CAN'T AFFORD"

YOUR "FAIR SHARE" IS NOT IN MY WALLET!

got a birth certificate? [featuring a faux-Obama logo]

Obama bin Lyin' IMPEACH NOW!

LOVE Your Country . . . FEAR Your Government!

GIVE ME LIBERTY NOT A BAILOUT

January 20, 2009 THE BEGINNING OF AN ERROR

BRING HOME OUR TROOPS! SEND THE DEMOCRATS!

OBAMA LIED . . . THE ECONOMY DIED

1.20.2013 OBAMA'S LAST DAY

RUSH IS RIGHT LIMBAUGH 2012

$ GO GREEN $ ABOLISH THE IRS

PIECE-KEEPERS KEEP THE PEACE [featuring an image of a semi-automatic handgun]

I VOTED FOR A HERO NOT A HANDOUT

CONSERVATIVE IN EXILE

GOD'S GIVEN US A SAVIOR I'M LOOKING FOR A PRESIDENT

O NO! THE PRESIDENT?


It is of course, nearly impossible to think of a collection of slogans that could be more desperate in their message or their creation.

Oh, and keep in mind, these people are self-styled "patriots."

Talk about helping the terr'ists win.

Report on Massive Fraud and Domestic Spying Shelved

I am sorry to have to announce that my report on a massive fraud and domestic spying, which I have referred to here back in December, has been shelved, at least for the near future. There are still too many unanswered questions, and too many connections for which I do not have adequate independent corroboration, and so it will sit on the shelf until such time as I am able to obtain the necessary information. Part of the problem, just so readers will understand a bit, is that nearly all of the prinicpal actors have been quite adept at covering their tracks, and so documentation is extremely difficult to find.

Without the full picture, and corroborated facts, I won't publish a story, even one that I believe is as important as this one.

And of course, the guilty parties will read this, and figure that they are in the clear, and have gotten away with it. We shall see about that.

Not Quite Ready for Primetime

My report on the massive fraud and domestic spying, upon careful review, still has some critical, unanswered questions, which I have been working on today, but which will clearly require more time to nail down. I do not intend to publish this as an incomplete work, and so as soon as I am satisfied that I have all the questions answered, and all the relevant facts assembled, you will see it here.

I do plan to check in to the tibu2.com Talkshoe show in a few minutes, and explain this to everyone who is listening/watching over there.

I hope everyone understands that some good journalism just cannot be rushed.

A Massive Fraud, Complete with Domestic Spying

It is a story, in the post-9/11 era, that will surprise some, not surprise some others, but probably will scare everyone that reads it. Because chances are, if you are reading this, you are one of its victims. To its creator, and sponsors (more on them later), it was known as Project Leviathan, and it was created, I believe, in 2005, and put into operation late that year and in early 2006. For those of us who are not major computer geeks (or hackers), the details of how it works, and what it does, are a little difficult to plumb; but in a nutshell, this hacker program runs invisibly wherever the hacker plants it, and it captures whatever information the hacker wants it to capture, including, if the hacker chooses, every keystroke you make. If PL is planted on a site that you, the reader, has used, PL has captured everything you typed on that site, including your password, and any non-public information that would ordinarily not appear on the website.

It is impossible to know which, or how many websites have had PL implanted on them. My guess, knowing who sponsored PL, is at least hundreds, perhaps thousands. I know of at least one affected website, and considering those involved, it is not the only one; considering their aims, they cast as wide a net as possible "in order to protect the homeland."

Oh, and the massive fraud? Well, suppose you launched a website with a stated purpose, advertised it on Craigslist, and waited for folks to come and sign up? Suppose then, that your marketing pitch was so well-crafted, and the folks that you attracted to your website were so talented, that soon thousands were joining and participating? And suppose that while your site was making good on its promises to registered users, it was also performing psychological experiments on them, using group dynamics to test out social theories, and using PL to capture every bit of private, confidential, sensitive information about each and every one of them? That last part would be the massive fraud.

PL is invisible to almost every security firewall software that has been written. It will not be picked up by scans. It will not be detected by network searches. It runs silent, and deep, and does not go away until the person who implanted it removes it. In many ways, it may the greatest hacker software ever written. Its author is certainly going to be well-known for it. Its author? Oh, yes, I know who wrote PL. You will too, when my full report is posted.

I have finished my reporting on this story, but need another day to edit it and make sure that I have not missed anything important. I hope to have the full report done and posted tomorrow, so watch this space.

A Story Coming That Is Huge

I have a story that I am about to start working on researching that is huge. It may turn out to be one of the biggest stories of the past decade, and involves manipulation, invasion of privacy, domestic spying and psychological testing of thousands of people without their knowledge. And it is coming to an end on February 1, 2009, largely, I believe, because there is a new Administration coming in that would quickly shut it down if they learned of its existence. It involves people inside and outside of the Federal government, and lest you think I am just another conspiracy theorist, well, I'm not, and I never have been. But the evidence that I have begun to accumulate is convincing me that this may have been the largest-scale defrauding of Americans (and non-Americans, since its reach was worldwide via the Internet) in years.

So watch this space.

Copyright 2008, Ricky A. Pursley.