When it comes to your life and government regulation, the government has two rules.  The first: Government is never wrong.  The second: Should there be an exception to the first rule, government was at least trying to do the right thing, so they are still right.  

Even after growing up, going to college and becoming a functioning part of society as an adult, the government looms over us like an overbearing and extremely protective parent.  Firearms are dangerous, so the government tells us we must put trigger-locks on all of our guns.  Certain light bulbs are good for saving money, so government requires by law us to use compact fluorescent lights. And, my absolute favorite, since cigarette smoke is unhealthy government goes ahead and gets rid of smoking at private businesses so that I don't have to make the choice of whether to go to a smoking or nonsmoking bar. 

Thanks government! I couldn't have done it without you.

After all, our government officials are great role models for the citizenry.  I could learn a thing or two about nutrition from Sen. Ted Kennedy (or, for that matter, substance abuse), or, how about a lecture on family-values from Sen. David Vitter?  And let's not forget the life-lesson of always telling the truth from the Bush administration.

Let's face it—if government is supposed to be a role model for how to live life, we're destined for either an early death or a long stint in rehab.

With so many of its own problems, why is it then that government feels so compelled to tell us how to live our own lives?

If there is one issue that is the perfect paradigm of choice versus government authoritarianism, it is in the regulation of our diets and food choices.  From keeping sweets out of the classroom, to banning fast food restaurants in the neighborhood, government has taken upon itself to regulate the very food we pick up and put into our mouth. As if it weren't obvious that a diet of strictly anything that begins in "Mc" isn't the healthiest of choices, government feels compelled to keep us from making this mistake.

Now, a new study out shows that banning fast food ads may mitigate childhood obesity, and it won't be long before this becomes the new rallying cry of those whom Rick Berman and the Center for Consumer Freedom call "Food Cops."

Berman is the founder of the Center for Consumer Freedom—a nonprofit consumer advocacy coalition that promotes consumer choice and debunks the myths behind government regulation.  Berman has made an enemy of food radicals who seek to enact legislation to inhibit, or outright prohibit, choices we make as consumers. 

"People should not be led around by the nose by bad information," says Berman in an interview with 60 Minutes. "You can make up your own mind as to whether or not margarine is really rat poison, as some people say."

Berman says the regulators and Food Cops create a "'Chicken Little' mentality, that the sky is falling, over everything," and "drive the government to fill this artificial public need."

"If the government is truly interested in my health and welfare, then I'm appreciative of it, but I think I can take care of myself," says Berman. 

If people have a child in the house, common sense says to keep firearms protected from misuse.  If there is a financial incentive to use more fuel-efficient light bulbs, then people will make the switch.  And if people are bothered by cigarette smoke, they will patron restaurants and bars that make the choice to ban smoking.

Likewise, if food is unhealthy, then it is the responsibility of the consumer to decide to eat it. 

The government doesn't have to tell us what we all already know.

Perhaps Nick Naylor, a Washington lobbyist played by Aaron Eckhart in the 2005 movie "Thank You For Smoking," said it best.  "Gentlemen, it's called education," says Naylor during a Senate hearing on a new warning label for cigarettes. "It doesn't come off the side of a cigarette carton; it comes from our teachers, and more importantly our parents. It is the job of every parent to warn their children of all the dangers of the world, including cigarettes, so that one day when they get older they can choose for themselves."

This is what Berman seeks to do: Replace government regulation with consumer choice, and give consumers the information they need to make informed decisions for themselves.  When consumers decide fast food is not for them, fast food establishments will make healthier choices available.  And, it's already happened, in case you haven't noticed the plethora of "healthy" choices on fast food menus. 

Imagine that—consumer preference in the free market actually works.  And wouldn't you know, government regulation hasn't.

Granted, some people are just stupid and make really bad choices, but government can't legislate intelligence.  People must learn from their own mistakes, and when government gets involved, it spreads the blame across the board—much like the teacher punishing the whole class for the antics of a single student.  Instead, individuals should—and must—take responsibility for their own mistakes without government there telling them its not their fault.

Besides, it's not just about effectiveness.

In fact, whether the regulation works (which, it doesn't) is second to the fact that government has no right to make these decisions to begin with.  There is something inherently wrong with government taking food off your plate.  That's a decision for you to make as a consumer because it's your body. That sick feeling in your stomach is your conscience telling you that this isn't right—that is, if it isn't you starving to death because government won't let you eat.

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

It should strike us as odd that we feel inclined to nod our heads in agreement to the twangy, sweetly discordant folk vocals of Iris Dement in “Let the Mystery Be,” a humble paean about the hereafter. In fact, the only real mystery is why we’re so convinced that when it comes to where we’re going “when the whole thing’s done,” we’re dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does—it’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?

And yet people in every culture believe in an afterlife of some kind or, at the very least, are unsure about what happens to the mind at death. My research has led me to believe that these irrational beliefs, rather than resulting from religion or serving to protect us from the terror of inexistence, are an inevitable by-product of self-consciousness. Because we have never experienced a lack of consciousness, we cannot imagine what it will feel like to be dead. In fact, it won’t feel like anything—and therein lies the problem.

The common view of death as a great mystery usually is brushed aside as an emotionally fueled desire to believe that death isn’t the end of the road. And indeed, a prominent school of research in social psychology called terror management theory contends that afterlife beliefs, as well as less obvious beliefs, behaviors and attitudes, exist to assuage what would otherwise be crippling anxiety about the ego’s inexistence.

According to proponents, you possess a secret arsenal of psychological defenses designed to keep your death anxiety at bay (and to keep you from ending up in the fetal position listening to Nick Drake on your iPod). My writing this article, for example, would be interpreted as an exercise in “symbolic immortality”; terror management theorists would likely tell you that I wrote it for posterity, to enable a concrete set of my ephemeral ideas to outlive me, the biological organism. (I would tell you that I’d be happy enough if a year from now it still had a faint pulse.)

Yet a small number of researchers, including me, are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.

The problem applies even to those who claim not to believe in an afterlife. As philosopher and Center for Naturalism founder Thomas W. Clark wrote in a 1994 article for the Humanist:

"Here ... is the view at issue: When we die, what’s next is nothing; death is an abyss, a black hole, the end of experience; it is eternal nothingness, the permanent extinction of being."

And here, in a nutshell, is the error contained in that view: It is to reify nothingness—make it a positive condition or quality (for example, of “blackness”)—and then to place the individual in it after death, so that we somehow fall into nothingness, to remain there eternally.

Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself slipping away, but it isn’t as though there will be a “you” around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you’ve died—and once you’ve died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce. In a 2007 article published in the journal Synthese, University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols puts it this way: “When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there’s an obstacle!”

This observation may not sound like a major revelation to you, but I bet you’ve never considered what it actually means, which is that your own mortality is unfalsifiable from the first-person perspective. This obstacle is why writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe allegedly remarked that “everyone carries the proof of his own immortality within himself.”

Even when we want to believe that our minds end at death, it is a real struggle to think in this way. A study published in the Journal of Cognition and Culture in 2002 reveals the illusion of immortality operating in full swing in the minds of undergraduate students who were asked a series of questions about the psychological faculties of a dead man, Richard.

'Richard had been killed instantaneously when his vehicle plunged into a utility pole.' After the participants read a narrative about Richard’s state of mind just prior to the accident, the students were queried as to whether the man, now that he was dead, retained the capacity to experience mental states. “Is Richard still thinking about his wife? Can he still taste the flavor of the breath mint he ate just before he died? Does he want to be alive?”

You can only imagine the looks, because apparently not many people pause to consider whether souls have taste buds, become randy or get headaches. Yet most gave answers indicative of “psychological continuity reasoning,” in which they envisioned Richard’s mind to continue functioning despite his death. This finding came as no surprise given that, on a separate scale, most respondents classified themselves as having a belief in some form of an afterlife.

What was surprising, however, was that many participants who had identified themselves as having “extinctivist” beliefs (they had ticked off the box that read: “What we think of as the ‘soul,’ or conscious personality of a person, ceases permanently when the body dies”) occasionally gave psychological-continuity responses, too. Thirty-two percent of the extinctivists’ answers betrayed their hidden reasoning that emotions and desires survive death; another 36 percent of their responses suggested the extinctivists reasoned this way for mental states related to knowledge (such as remembering, believing or knowing). One particularly vehement extinctivist thought the whole line of questioning silly and seemed to regard me as a numbskull for even asking. But just as well—he proceeded to point out that of course Richard knows he is dead, because there’s no afterlife and Richard sees that now.

So why is it so hard to conceptualize inexistence anyway? Part of my own account, which I call the “simulation constraint hypothesis,” is that in attempting to imagine what it’s like to be dead we appeal to our own background of conscious experiences—because that’s how we approach most thought experiments. Death isn’t “like” anything we’ve ever experienced, however. Because we have never consciously been without consciousness, even our best simulations of true nothingness just aren’t good enough.

For us extinctivists, it’s kind of like staring into a hallway of mirrors—but rather than confronting a visual trick, we’re dealing with cognitive reverberations of subjective experience. In Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s 1913 existential screed, The Tragic Sense of Life, one can almost see the author tearing out his hair contemplating this very fact. “Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness,” he writes, “and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness.”

Wait, you say, isn’t Unamuno forgetting something? We certainly do have experience with nothingness. Every night, in fact, when we’re in dreamless sleep. But you’d be mistaken in this assumption. Clark puts it this way (emphasis mine): “We may occasionally have the impression of having experienced or ‘undergone’ a period of unconsciousness, but, of course, this is impossible. The ‘nothingness’ of unconsciousness cannot be an experienced actuality.”

If psychological immortality represents the intuitive, natural way of thinking about death, then we might expect young children to be particularly inclined to reason in this way. As a 10-year-old, I watched as the remains of my siamese cat, C-A-T, were buried in the woods behind our house. Still, I thought C-A-T had a mind capable of knowing I loved her and I was sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye. That C-A-T’s spirit lived on was not something my parents or anyone else ever explicitly pointed out to me. Although she had been reduced to no more than a few ounces of dust, which was in turn sealed in a now waterlogged box, it never even occurred to me that it was a strange idea.

Yet if you were to have asked me what C-A-T was experiencing, I probably would have muttered something like the type of answers Gerald P. Koocher reported hearing in a 1973 study published in Developmental Psychology. Koocher, then a doctoral student at the University of Missouri–Columbia and later president of the American Psychological Association, asked six- to 15-year-olds what happens when you die. Consistent with the simulation-constraint hypothesis, many answers relied on everyday experience to describe death, “with references to sleeping, feeling ‘peaceful,’ or simply ‘being very dizzy.’ ”

But Koocher’s study in itself doesn’t tell us where such ideas come from. The simulation-constraint hypothesis posits that this type of thinking is innate and unlearned, almost instinct. Fortunately, this hypothesis is falsifiable. If afterlife beliefs are a product of cultural indoctrination, with children picking up such ideas through religious teachings, through the media, or informally through family and friends, then one should rationally predict that psychological-continuity reasoning increases with age. Aside from becoming more aware of their own mortality, after all, older kids have had a longer period of exposure to the concept of an afterlife.

In fact, recent findings show the opposite developmental trend. In a 2004 study reported in Developmental Psychology, Florida Atlantic University psychologist David F. Bjorklund presented 200 three- to 12-year-olds with a puppet show. Every child saw the story of Baby Mouse, who was out strolling innocently in the woods. “Just then,” they were told, “he notices something very strange. The bushes are moving! An alligator jumps out of the bushes and gobbles him all up. Baby Mouse is not alive anymore.”

Just like the adults from the previously mentioned study, the children were asked about dead Baby Mouse’s psychological functioning. “Does Baby Mouse still want to go home?” they were asked. “Does he still feel sick?” “Can he still smell the flowers?” The youngest children in the study, the three- to five-year-olds, were significantly more likely to reason in terms of psychological continuity than children from the two older age groups were.

But here’s the really curious part. Even the preschoolers had a solid grasp on biological cessation; they knew, for example, that dead Baby Mouse didn’t need food or water anymore. They knew he wouldn’t grow up to be an adult mouse. Heck, 85 percent of the youngest kids even said that his brain no longer worked. Yet most of these very young children then said that dead Baby Mouse was hungry or thirsty, that he felt better or that he was still angry at his brother.

One couldn’t say that the preschoolers lacked a concept of death, therefore, because nearly all of the kids realized that biological imperatives no longer applied after death. Rather they seemed to have trouble using this knowledge to theorize about related mental functions.

From an evolutionary perspective, a coherent theory about psychological death is not necessarily vital. Anthropologist H. Clark Barrett of the University of California, Los Angeles, believes instead that understanding the cessation of “agency” (for example, that a dead creature isn’t going to suddenly leap up and bite you) is probably what saved lives (and thus genes). According to Barrett, comprehending the cessation of the mind, on the other hand, has no survival value and is, in an evolutionary sense, unnecessary.

In a 2005 study published in the journal Cognition, Barrett and psychologist Tanya Behne of the University of Manchester in England reported that city-dwelling four-year-olds from Berlin were just as good at distinguishing sleeping animals from dead ones as hunter-horticulturalist children from the Shuar region of Ecuador were. Even today’s urban children appear tuned in to perceptual cues signaling death. A “violation of the body envelope” (in other words, a mutilated carcass) is a pretty good sign that one needn’t worry about tiptoeing around.

On the one hand, then, from a very early age, children realize that dead bodies are not coming back to life. On the other hand, also from a very early age, kids endow the dead with ongoing psychological functions. So where do culture and religious teaching come into the mix, if at all?

In fact, exposure to the concept of an afterlife plays a crucial role in enriching and elaborating this natural cognitive stance; it’s sort of like an architectural scaffolding process, whereby culture develops and decorates the innate psychological building blocks of religious belief. The end product can be as ornate or austere as you like, from the headache-inducing reincarnation beliefs of Theravada Buddhists to the man on the street’s “I believe there’s something” brand of philosophy—but it’s made of the same brick and mortar just the same.

In support of the idea that culture influences our natural tendency to deny the death of the mind, Harvard University psychologist Paul Harris and researcher Marta Giménez of the National University of Distance Education in Spain showed that when the wording in interviews is tweaked to include medical or scientific terms, psychological-continuity reasoning decreases. In this 2005 study published in the Journal of Cognition and Culture, seven- to 11-year-old children in Madrid who heard a story about a priest telling a child that his grandmother “is with God” were more likely to attribute ongoing mental states to the decedent than were those who heard the identical story but instead about a doctor saying a grandfather was “dead and buried.”

And in a 2005 replication of the Baby Mouse experiment published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, psychologist David Bjorklund teamed with psychologist Carlos Hernández Blasi of Jaume I University in Spain to compare children in a Catholic school with those attending a public secular school in Castellón, Spain. As in the previous study, an overwhelming majority of the youngest children—five- to six-year-olds—from both educational backgrounds said that Baby Mouse’s mental states survived. The type of curriculum, secular or religious, made no difference. With increasing age, however, culture becomes a factor—the kids attending Catholic school were more likely to reason in terms of psychological continuity than were those at the secular school. There was even a smattering of young extinctivists in the latter camp.

The types of cognitive obstacles discussed earlier may be responsible for our innate sense
of immortality. But although the simulation-constraint hypothesis helps to explain why so many people believe in something as fantastically illogical as an afterlife, it doesn’t tell us why people see the soul unbuckling itself from the body and floating off like an invisible helium balloon into the realm of eternity. After all, there’s nothing to stop us from having afterlife beliefs that involve the still active mind being entombed in the skull and deliriously happy. Yet almost nobody has such a belief.

Back when you were still in diapers, you learned that people didn’t cease to exist simply because you couldn’t see them. Developmental psychologists even have a fancy term for this basic concept: “person permanence.” Such an off-line social awareness leads us to tacitly assume that the people we know are somewhere doing something.

As is argued in the 2006 Behavioral and Brain Sciences article, “The Folk Psychology of Souls,” human cognition is not equipped to update the list of players in our complex social rosters by accommodating a particular person’s sudden inexistence. We can’t simply switch off our person-permanence thinking just because someone has died. This inability is especially the case, of course, for those whom we were closest to and whom we frequently imagined to be actively engaging in various activities when out of sight.

And so person permanence may be the final cognitive hurdle that gets in the way of our effectively realizing the dead as they truly are—infinitely in situ, inanimate carbon residue. Instead it’s much more “natural” to imagine them as existing in some vague, unobservable locale, very much living their dead lives.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/display_jhdailyjournal.html?id=4675

There is a famous saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. For politicians, bureaucrats, and many activists when the only tool they have is coercion the cause of every problem looks like too much freedom. And make no mistake; if you are committed to accomplishing your social goals by using government power, then, by definition, your only tool is the hammer of coercion.

As George Washington pointed out in his second inaugural address: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force." And when people choose to use government to accomplish their goals they are choosing to use force, not reason and certainly not eloquence.

Even in America, a country founded on the principle of freedom, when peaceful means fail people have always turned to the coercive powers of the state to get others to change their behavior. Slavery and later Jim Crow laws had their roots in just such a mentality. So did the military draft, compulsory school attendance laws, prohibition, anti-smoking and anti-drug laws, minimum wage laws, price control laws, anti-sodomy laws, and anti-cohabitation laws. In each of these cases a social or economic “problem” of some kind was defined, often erroneously, which is probably why reason failed, and the root cause of the problem was identified as too much freedom.

True to form, governments at all levels in North Carolina are affirming George Washington’s observation. The latest example is the city of Raleigh’s approach to solving its water shortage problems. If a local grocery store’s produce department runs out of oranges or its deli experiences a shortage of roast beef, it doesn’t blame its customer for having too much freedom to purchase fruit and meat. It simply finds a way to accommodate that freedom and to meet the demand.

The city of Raleigh, because of a complete government failure to plan for the needs of its citizens, finds itself running short of water, one of only a handful of goods, relative to a grocery store, that it is charged with supplying to its customers. Its response is to blame its customers for having too much freedom — freedom to water their lawns, freedom to wash their cars, freedom to power-wash their homes, and now the freedom to enjoy the conveniences of a garbage disposal. Instead of city politicians asking themselves “how can we accommodate our citizens’ free choices,” as the grocery store would, they immediately blame the problem on those freedoms. This is their nail, and their solution is the hammer of force. No surprise to our first president.

City and local transportation planners have for years been faced with having to deal with traffic congestion problems in and around North Carolina’s larger cities. Traffic congestion is very much like the water shortage problem. In this case it is a shortage of road space. And like Raleigh’s water shortage problem, this is an example of massive government failure in its ability to service adequately the free choices made by citizens with regard to their transportation needs. And, like the water shortage, the cause of the problem is, of course, too much freedom. With respect to traffic congestion, the wielders of force are convinced that people are exercising too much freedom in using their cars. And, instead of better managing the supply of roads, they have adopted a policy known as “transportation demand management,” which is a euphemism for managing what would otherwise be people’s freely made choices. According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation:

“Transportation demand management (TDM) is…intended to encourage the use of alternatives to driving alone, increasing the efficiency of the transportation system by focusing on travel demand instead of supply. Most TDM strategies deal with the modification of travel behaviors…” (Emphasis added.) (pdf link)

This primarily means forcing people out of their cars, either directly or through artificial incentives, and onto public transportation. But this is feasible only when living densities are high, so not only does freedom to make transportation decisions need to be “modified,” but so also does freedom to choose living arrangements. Along with transportation demand management comes “housing demand management” and “land use demand management.”

In order to accommodate public transportation systems and to discourage driving, the plans include new zoning laws that attempt to cram people into congested living arrangements, with dozens of housing units per acre, in order to solve a problem of congested roads. As the DOT bureaucrats in Raleigh candidly acknowledge, the “vision extends far beyond public transportation. It embraces notions of how we want to live in the 21st Century and what we want our neighborhoods and communities to become.” (Emphasis added.) It is quite clear that the “we” being referred to is not individual citizens and families. It is instead the paternalistic “we” of bureaucrats and government planners.

In terms of the current public policy debate, probably the most pernicious example of George Washington’s dictum is the 56 policy proposals that have been offered up by North Carolina’s Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (CAPAG). The entire purpose of CAPAG was to find ways in which the citizens of the state could be forced to modify their behavior in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

While there are competing theories regarding the causes of global warming (for example see research by Duke physicist Niccola Scapatta and Bruce West), CAPAG was not allowed even to discuss any of them or to consult with the scientists advocating them. This would be important because other theories, such as those related to natural climate variation, would not imply coercive restrictions on people’s freedom.

In other words, the only theory of global warming they were willing to consider was the one that has freedom as the culprit. It is important to note that everything humans do, including breathing, emits carbon dioxide. The implication then was that all actions taken by North Carolina citizens were up for scrutiny and possible coercive control. The proposals are consistent with the mindset of coercion. They include, but are not limited to, restrictions on people’s freedom to choose the kinds of cars they can drive, the kind of fuel they can use to heat and light their homes, the kind of auto insurance they are allowed to buy, the lot size they can use to build a house, the size of the house they build, and the kinds of appliances they can purchase.

The interesting — and undisputed — fact is that these restrictions will not result in an overall reduction in global temperatures, even if the whole world adopts them. Yet CAPAG refused to take this into consideration during its deliberations. This fact was and is known to those who controlled the CAPAG process and devised all of the policy proposals.

The unfortunate implication is that these proposals are not really about global warming but are, instead, an exercise that could be called appropriately “lifestyle imperialism.” Like laws against homosexuality or gambling, they are, in fact, an attempt to legislate morality.

Given the principles behind the founding of the United States, policymakers need to view individual freedom as a moral imperative. They should first realize that it is not the fundamental role of the state to solve all conceivable problems but to protect liberty. To the extent that the state takes on a problem-solving role or the role of providing certain goods and services, the question that decision makers should ask themselves continuously is “how can we conduct our business and solve collective problems, without limiting people’s freedom to live their lives the way they see fit?” Instead, it is quite clear that for many if not most bureaucrats and policymakers, the first question asked is not how can we accomplish our objective while accommodating freedom but what freedoms can we get away with limiting. 

http://research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx

Strange how life can imitate the movie screen like this. This sounds eerily like the Robin William film "The Final Cut".

However, according to one of the original articles,
"Bell figures one could store everything about his life, from start to finish, using a terabyte of storage."

Listen to what you missed suckaz.....

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http://rapidshare.com/files/82555547/Octave_One_-_LivePA_at_DEMF_07__26-05-2007_.mp3

pole - livepa @ demf 07 (26-05-2007)
http://rapidshare.com/files/82555548/Pole_-_LivePA_at_DEMF_07__26-05-2007_.mp3

sassmouth - live @ demf 07 (26-05-2007)
http://rapidshare.com/files/82555549/Sassmouth_-_Live_at_DEMF_07__26-05-2007_.mp3

stacey pullen - live @ demf 07 (28-05-2007)
http://rapidshare.com/files/82556718/Stacey_Pullen_-_Live_at_DEMF_07__28-05-2007_.mp3

abe duque & blake baxter - livepa @ demf 07 (27-05-2007)
http://rapidshare.com/files/82554833/Abe_Duque___Blake_Baxter_-_LivePA_at_DEMF_07__27-05-2007_.mp3

charles webster - live @ demf 07 (26-05-2007)
http://rapidshare.com/files/58632664/05-26-07_charleswebster_mainstage.mp3

http://www.beyondmegapixels.com/2008/02/how-to-fix-washed-out-skies-in.html

More often than not, the sky will always be brighter than the ground when you take landscape photos. Even if you adjust your camera's exposure compensation, the sky will almost always end up looking washed out.

The easiest way to avoid this problem is by purchasing a Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filter. This filter has a dark tint at the top that slowly fades until the filter is clear at the bottom. This effectively darkens the sky while retaining the brightness of the objects in the lower half of your frame. But if you don't have a GND filter then you can use Photoshop to fix your washed out skies.

The photo below was taken just after 1PM. The light was so intense that it made the sky look lighter than it was. We can apply a gradient filter to this photo to bring back some of the darker hues in the sky.


Open your photo in Photoshop and press the letter D to make your foreground color Black. On the Layers Pallete, click on Create New Adjustment and select Gradient.


On the Gradient Fill window, click on the first drop down arrow and select the second type of gradient fill.


Still on the Gradient Fill window, make sure the the Reverse and Align with Layer are selected then click OK.


On the Layers Palette, select Overlay as the blend mode for the adjustment layer.


Go back to the Gradient Fill window by double-clicking on the gradient adjustment layer on the Layer Palette window. Once there, click inside the first box that is labeled Gradient to pull up the Gradient Editor. Inside this window, you can adjust how fast your gradient fill transitions between black and transparent by moving the white box left or right. The more the box is moved left, the faster the gradient fill turns from black to transparent affecting less of the picture. Using this slider lets you have more control so that only your sky is darkened by the fill. Once done, click on OK.


Below is the photo before and after adding the gradient fill.


 

Everyone is Different
Happiness in life is like a smorgasbord. If 100 people went to a smorgasbord and each put food on their plate in the quantity and mix that each felt would be most pleasing to him, every plate would be different. Even a husband and wife will go up to the smorgasbord and come back with plates that look completely different. Happiness is the same way. Each person requires a particular combination of those ingredients to feel the very best about himself or herself.

Listen to Your Heart 
Your mix is changing continually. If you went to the same smorgasbord every day for a year, you probably would come back with a different plateful of food each time. Each day-sometimes each hour-only you can tell what it takes to make you happy. Therefore, the only way to judge whether a job, a relationship, an investment, or any decision, is right for you is to get in touch with your feelings and listen to your heart.

Be True to Yourself
You're true to yourself only when you follow your inner light, when you listen to what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the "still, small voice within." You're being the very best person you can be only when you have the courage and the fortitude to allow your definition of happiness, whatever it may be, to be the guiding light of every part of your life.

There Are No Limits
A very important point on the subject of happiness is whether or not you feel that you "deserve" to be happy.

Accept the notion that you deserve all the happiness you can honestly attain through the application of your talents and abilities. The more you like and respect yourself, the more deserving you will feel of the good things in life. And the more deserving you feel, the more likely you will attain and hold on to the happiness you are working toward.

Make Happiness Your Key Measure
You should make happiness the organizing principle of your life. Compare every possible action and decision you make against your standard of happiness to see whether that action would make you happier or unhappier. Soon, you will discover that almost all of the problems in your life come from choices that you have made - or are currently making - that do not contribute to your happiness.

Pay the Price
Of course, there are countless times when you will have to do little things that don't make you happy along the way toward those larger things that make you very happy indeed. We call this paying the price of success in advance. You must pay your dues. Sometimes these interim steps don't make you happy directly, but the happiness you achieve from attaining your goal will be so great that it totally overwhelms the temporary inconveniences and dissatisfactions you have to endure in order to get there.

10 strategies everyone can use to discover pleasure and satisfaction in everyday moments:

1. Share positive feelings

Let your children know how great it feels to spend time with them. Tell your lover about the compliment your boss paid you. E-mail your best friend to tell her how fondly you remember the camping trip you took last year, and include a silly picture. Sharing happy memories and experiences with others—or even simply anticipating doing so—is one of the most powerful and effective ways to prolong and magnify joy, research shows. "It helps sustain emotions that would otherwise fade," he says. Affirming connections with others is "the glue that holds people together."

2. Build memories

Take mental photographs of memorable moments that you can draw on later. Recall vivid, specific events, and pinpoint what brought you joy. Do you love your red wool scarf because it's stylish and warm, or because its smell reminds you of your childhood romps in the snow? Just be careful not to overanalyze and lose the wonder of the moment. What you want, says University of Virginia social psychologist Timothy D. Wilson, PhD, is to dissect your experiences just enough to appreciate how they've helped form you and then get back to simply living them. Interjecting mystery into happy moments—reflecting on what's surprising or hard to understand about them, for example—can strengthen their power. "If you analyze special times in a way that makes them seem ordinary or predictable, then you don't necessarily get as much benefit".

3. Congratulate yourself

Take pride in a hard won accomplishment. If you spent a year sweating at the gym to reach a fitness goal, bask in your success—and share it with others. Self-congratulation doesn't come easily to everyone. "A lot of people have trouble basking in an accomplishment because they feel that they shouldn't toot their own horns or rest on their laurels". It's a fine line between joyous self-congratulation and shameless self-promotion, but don't worry: You'll know if you're crossing it.

4. Fine tune your senses

Close your eyes while you roll a square of dark chocolate over your tongue or fill your lungs with salty sea air or eavesdrop on your grandchildren's play and laughter. Shutting out some sensory stimuli while concentrating on others can heighten your enjoyment of positive experiences—particularly those that are short-lived.


5. Compare downward

Comparing upward makes us feel deprived, but comparing downward can heighten enjoyment. Think about how things could be worse—or how things used to be worse. Just keep it light—you don't have to relive your cancer diagnosis or revel in a neighbor's misfortune. Simply take note: Is today sunnier than promised? Are you fitter than you were a year ago?

6. Get absorbed

Some joyful moments seem to call for conscious reflection and dissection. At other times, we savor best when we simply immerse ourselves in the present moment, without deliberate analysis or judgment. Listen to your favorite music with headphones in a dark room. Lose yourself in a novel. Set aside enough time on the weekend for your favorite hobby so you can attain a level of absorption known as the "flow" state.

7. Fake it till you make it

Putting on a happy face—even if you don't feel like it—actually induces greater happiness. So be exuberant. Don't just eat the best peach of the season—luxuriate in every lip smacking mouthful. Laugh aloud at the movies. Smile at yourself in the mirror. After all "a surefire way to kill joy is to suppress it."

8. Seize the moment

Some positive events come and go quickly—a surprise toast to your accomplishments at work, your daughter's sweet 16 party. It seems obvious that the more quickly a positive experience evaporates, the more difficult it is to savor. Yet paradoxically reminding ourselves that time is fleeting and joy transitory prompts us to seize positive moments while they last.

9. Avoid killjoy thinking

The world has enough pessimists. Short circuit negative thoughts that can only dampen enjoyment, such as self recriminations or worries about others' perceptions. When you find yourself awash in happiness, give it space to grow—don't ruminate about why you don't deserve this good thing, what could go wrong, how things could be better. Consciously make the decision to embrace joy.

10. Say thank you

Cultivate an "attitude of gratitude". Pinpoint what you're happy about—a party invitation, a patch of shade—and acknowledge its source. It's not always necessary to outwardly express gratitude, but saying "thank you" to a friend, a stranger, or the universe deepens our happiness by making us more aware of it.

"only when you have lost everything, will you become all-things......"

meow reminded me.....thanx girl.

http://meow.livejournal.com/482536.html?thread=5666536#t5666536

Introduction

Hangover relief actually starts the night before. Overdoing it with alcohol causes dehydration and vitamin deficiencies. Plan your night well, take care of yourself in the morning and gain some relief from the unwanted hangover. If you’ve had a rough night, read these instructions for some relief. 

Things You'll Need

• Vitamin B complex
• Water
• Sports drink
• Carbohydrates
• Vitamin C 

Step One
Food. Before you drink, make sure you have a good meal in your stomach. Carbohydrates such as pasta or bread help absorb the alcohol in your stomach to slow the rate at which it enters your bloodstream. 

Step Two
Avoid energy drinks, coffee or anything else with caffeine in it. Caffeine will dehydrate you, contributing to a potential hangover. 

Step Three
Be careful about eating too much sugar before and while you drink. One cause of the terrible headache-hangover is the sugar hangover. Alcohol spikes your blood sugar levels. Think about how you would feel the morning after you ate 5-10 candy bars before you went to bed. Alcohol has a similar effect on your body plus other negative effects as well. 

Step Four
When you start drinking make sure you are hydrated. Make sure you stay hydrated all night by drinking water. You want about 1 cup of water for each drink. If you forget to drink water while you are drinking, then drink as much water as you can before you go to bed. If you drink beer all night, you may think you are hydrated because of the amount of liquid entering your system. You will not stay hydrated unless you also drink water. 

Step Five
Take vitamin B and vitamin C before you start drinking. Also, take an extra pill in the morning as well [after you eat something]. Do not try to take the pills on an empty stomach while you have a hangover. This may induce vomiting. 

Step Six
Start with cocktails and finish with beer. Better yet, try not mixing different types of alcohol. But if you must, remember, beer before liquor never been sicker, liquor before beer you’re in the clear. Sticking to beer will likely minimize a hangover. Cocktails tend to disguise the amount of alcohol in a drink, leaving you guessing why you can’t stand up after only 3 rum and cokes. 

Step Seven
Keep track of your drinks. One 12-oz. beer typically equals 1.5 oz. of 80-proof spirits and 5 oz. of wine. 

Step Eight
Drink light-colored alcohol. Drink white wine instead of red wine. Stay away from the darker spirits such as whiskey. Darker alcohol has more impurities that contribute to headaches. 

Step Nine
The next morning, drink tons of water. Eat carbohydrates such as pasta or crackers. Plain carbohydrates such as white pasta or crackers should be easier on your stomach. Also, drink a sports drink or eat an orange to raise your blood sugar levels and replenish your electrolytes. Take more vitamin C and vitamin B. Go back to sleep for 1-2 hours. Then, drink more water and try to eat some protein when you wake up. Remember to promise that you will never get that drunk again. 

Step Ten
Time will cure all hangovers. If all else fails, then just wait for the headache to go away.



Not that I need to adhere to my own advice or anything..... *_* 

 

mmmmmmmmmm.......if anyone else has one, give it up.....

Things You'll Need

• 1 Cup of Sugar
• 6 Tablespoons of Butter
• 3 Eggs Beaten
• 1/2 Cup of Caro Syrup
• 1 Teaspoon of Vanilla
• 1 Cup of Pecans (Halves or Pieces)
• 1 9 Inch Frozen Pie Shell (unbaked)
• 1 Mixing Bowl
• Mixer
• Aluminum Foil
• Oven Preheated to 350 Degrees F

Step One

Use mixer to mix together in mixing bowl 1 cup of sugar, 6 tablespoons of butter, 3 eggs beaten, 1/2 cup of corn syrup, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavoring. Preheat you oven to 350 degrees F. 

Step Two

You can either mix in the 1 cup of pecans or you can save them to put on the top halfway through baking. I prefer the pecans on top of the pie not mixed all the way through. This is strictly your preference. If you want to put them in now go ahead and make sure to mix thoroughly. 

Step Three

Cover the pie in aluminum foil. This will protect the crust from getting burnt and take it off after letting pie bake for 30 minutes. Bake pie for 15 more minutes (total of 45 minutes) or until you can put knife into pie and it comes out clean. 

You know I can't stay away......from LJ.....how many times have we heard such rants?

Will someone cook me a turkey, mash tatorz and some good old-fashioned homemade pecan pie? I'm awful hungry and I'm not exactly a good or decent cook and all I've really eaten the past 2 days is some stinking tuna fish.

Hook a 4001/n166a up.

Heads up to those that actually pay attention to my ramblings....

I'll keep this journal up so that every once in a while I can check up on you great people, but if you wanna know what I've been up to you'll have to contact and hit me up another way, if I'm available. Unfortunately, I've been too ADD and busy as of late to really read anything much on LJ as it is....so hit me up whenever….on IM or however. I'm just so done with the whole online social networking thing....

yahoo IM: djaudiomind
msn IM: djaudiomind
aol IM: djaudiomind
http://www.myspace.com/o000o
http://www.audiomind.us/blog

Considering that the Internet seems to always cause me more problems than it's worth, I'm chill'n out on it, particularly LJ, in hopes of using my time more wisely by following more creative pursuits like producing music and other more important shit.......connecting with (and devoting myself to) REAL people, once I can stop being nutterz. Besides, the interwebz takes up far too much of my time. Moreover, the recent round of events electrocuted me just enough…..permitting the lately dormant capacity to search inside myself in order that I stop taking too much shit for granted, wake up and coalesce the art of valuing and cherishing what I do have instead of fucking being distant and blahhhh! all the time.

Further, LJ just got bought out by a Russian firm and I'm just not cool with that idea....especially in view of the fact that it's slowly reverting back to its despotic ways (seems to be a worldwide phenomenon as of late...) thanks to Putin and his band of kooks. If you've been following any of the stories coming out of Russia the past 6 or so years, he has concentrated power into the hands of the Kremlin, destroyed and imprisoned those who've opposed him (even billionaires who've challenged him politically), and began pushing Cold War propaganda once again. I may just be overreacting, but if you know what's good for ya, you'd best be backing your journals up. ==> http://fawx.com/software/ljarchive

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2226970,00.asp
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22866763-1702,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin
http://news.livejournal.com/104520.html?nc=4071

Hmmm.....so I remember going out and then remember a few of my buds giving me drinks, but I after I relayed the news I believe they told the bartenders to only put 151 in the glasses, because I think that's all I tasted....but I really didn't care. I wasn't driving so I guess it wasn't that big a deal. J picked me up with some girls I didn't know, trying to be funny I guess because of the pathetic rounds of self-doubt I created for myself.

Blurry TV fuzz is beginning to take an animated shape in my brain, if that's what you want to call that mesh of cells in my skull. I remember lots of Asians fighting somewherez, riding in someone's Jeep hanging out of the window, going to multiple clubs, freezing to death, thinking some pink-haired goth chick was Molly (I think I peeved her boyfriend), I remember getting extremely philosophical about some shit and talking about the very 'fiber of our souls', etc., with Brian and Jason (and someone else) only to find them looking at me like I was crazy and tell me that even though what I was spouting was 'different' it was wonderful all the same (which I don't really know what that meant, as they didn't explain themselves), talking to Erin about my sudden urge to grind my teeth really hard...nonstop, and wondering to myself if this free time, if you wanna call it that, will actually motivate my azz to put out some more choons, as the time and desire has been lacking because I've been so focused on everything else for a good while. I'm thinking I'm going to completely change how my production goes from now on. I'm probably going to go bare bones, bc after listening to shit last night through the filter of 151, I'm positive that EDM music has gotten far too complicated in its structure and composition.

In any case I awoke this morning to find my sink filled with puke (yummy), nice way to start my day, and 2 trays of food from, if I'm guessing right, Skyland Restaurant. Huh? They're full trays of food, as if they weren't even touched? Huh? Again? Alright now, weird. *Looks around the house.....* Nope, I'm by myself, that is unless someone's in the closet............hold on a sec, gotta check this out.

................. ^0^

Nope, alone....or is it lonely? I get the two confuzzled a lot, probably more so now that I'm going to be exercising those words more often than not.

My living room floor is literally saturated in pictures. I must have come home and did the whole 'go through the photographic memory thing' one does when he/she has lost his/her way. The sepia one from our beginning, the 'tears of joy in the darkness' I guess you could call it, is still my fav.....good times.

Nevertheless, I got my first laugh I've had in days......

I came across this on my counter when I woke up earlier, just beside a .38 of mine (I don't even want to know), no doubt. Talk about the most unexpected random shit happening this week, I tell ya......it's been a trip. Whether it's Baptizms, Mannerizms or Alcoholizms.......



OKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.....bwahahaha.....

Now my sink waaaaaaas filled with puke, but the toilet isn't filled with.......well pretty flowers.

That's definitely Molly's handwriting, but what the hell is it doing in a bag on my countertop, just out of nowhere? And what's with that message? FOFLx000

I guess she's still good for a laugh, considering the circumstances.

Anyways, I also happen to be looking through tons of other pictures today as well since they're strewn out all over the place, in my house and in my comp, and actually saw some of me, but there aren't many as I'm mostly a camera phobe. I'z gotsa some nappy curlez for realz......most of yaz have probably never seen me b4.....and since it's random bullshit photo day.....and since I don't understand why I took a dumbass picture of the top of my forehead this morning......

Before:


After (I just woke up....bwahaha....):


And then of course there's always this one.....


How's that for an inside joke only I would get.....fofl....


What a difference a day makes.......imma go find out what I did last night exactly......and probably sulk more inside my alonliness.

Found, in all places on a SEO discussion forum.....

This silly and confuzzled 'word algorithm pulverizer' utilizes nouns and adjectives to form different phrases that are sometimes hilarious. It had me for 10 minutes+ and that never happens. Keep hitting submit...fofl.....

audiomind.livejournal.com

WANTED FOR THE CEASELESS POOPING-ON of a REDUNDANT SPACE ALIEN

$2500

What's Your Blog Wanted For?

<-------------------------->

68%

Maybe I need to invest in an AR or M4?

The best thing you can do for yourself is believe in yourself. You know you're a valuable person, and you should act like it. By realizing your own true potential everybody else will too. When you think positively, you develop the confidence that attracts people to you.

When you feel good about yourself and what you have to offer, people recognize this and they want to learn more about you. A positive attitude is the best thing you can bring to any table. You are your own strongest asset. The best way to begin thinking positively about yourself is to "do your homework." Here are five simple steps that can help you fully realize how valuable you are:

1. Assess yourself

Make a mental list or jot down on paper what your best qualities are. It's important to be honest with yourself about this. You need to know these things, so you'll feel confident about communicating them to others. Put aside some time to make this list, so you will be prepared when the time comes. If you're not sure where to start, ask a trusted friend who knows you well to suggest what they think your strongest points are.

2. Keep a positive state of mind

Remember, you CAN fulfill your dreams. If you have had bad luck in the past, remind yourself that there's always hope. Hard work does pay off. You may not find it right away, but if you stay positive, you will get positive results.

3. Re-program yourself

Sometimes the only thing getting in our way is ourselves. Your mind frame has a lot to do with the way you see things and how you get things done.

Make everything you do somehow benefit you or someone you care about. Keep reminding yourself that the end result will be a good one. Next, make little changes that will help you in the long run. Lastly, don't focus on the things you've done (or faced) that have hurt you. Instead, focus on the things you've done to improve yourself and make a list of things you can do from now on to create a positive outlook.

4. Visualize and achieve

The most important thing about positive thinking, is seeing yourself achieving your goal. You know you can do it, so start by telling yourself that. You are your best motivator, so act as if. Visualize yourself in the dreams you desire and you will start to believe. Whatever you do-take yourself seriously. You have the power, so use it. Visualize by imagining or seeing a picture of what you want in your mind. Believing in yourself is the best thing you can do to get closer to your dream. Realize this dream and you will achieve it.

With your newfound attitude, you should be moving fast on the road to success. You will be amazed by the power of positive thinking and how much it can do for you. This will give you the power and confidence to prove yourself to others (and yourself) and show how indispensable you are.