A good analogy that would explain the concept behind the movie is a technology behind virtual machines. A virtual machine or VM as we call it in IT is a simulation of an operating system that can run on top of another operating system.

The main idea of “Inception”: if you run a VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM, everything will be very slow –
myzt

For example, Window XP could run inside of Windows 7 or even in Red Hat linux. In the movie Inception, a dream is happening within a dream within a dream. So it is like, Windows 7, within Windows XP, within Linux within Windows Vista. Each time you run another VM inside another it runs slower and slower. In Inception, each time the characters go deeper (dream with a dream) time slows down.

The interesting thing about this is that I can recall having 3 – 4 dreams at a time similar to the movie. The coolest concept in the movie is the idea of “mutual dreaming” or two people participating in the same dream. I have never had a mutual dream (or at least not that I am aware of). And you don’t find much about it online. What surprises me is that more people are not obsessed with lucid dreams and reality.

Right in the middle of the eulogy, a group of protesters arrive at the funeral. They are cursing your deceased loved one and the country from which he or she was born. They are yelling and ranting and raving about your loved ones life. They are saying that God is punishing them for their countries sins.

This would be a paragraph of twisted fiction about a sick alternate America if it weren’t based on truth. There is a group of far right wing Christian conservatives how travel the country to protest the funerals of fallen soldiers. They are called, Westboro Baptist Church. Their rationale is that God is punishing America for its acceptance of gays in the military. “God Hates Fags” and your sons and daughter are dying because America is being punished.

westboro baptist church topeka ks

Apparently, there are a group of counter protestors that show up to some of these funerals known as the Patriot Guard Riders. Now even though I did serve in the U.S. Armed Services, proudly in more than one conflict, my healthy mistrust of any government prevents me from being very patriotic. That being said reading about the Patriotic Guard Riders, brought tears to my eyes.

I think it’s the fact that they are champions of basic human dignity that did it. Its very simple need for respect of the living and dead. For me, its not about patriotism just basic human dignity. Something extremists convince themselves to forget. Maybe someone should protest their funerals with signs that say, “God Hates Stupid People”.

One day technology will seem more magical than the myth of magic. In fact, the very idea of magical power will seem weak, unimaginative and one dimensional compared to what is ahead. It will be the faded equivalent of a 100,000 year old print of a hand on a wall. Things that we cannot yet imagine are just beyond the horizon.

From our current early 21st century understanding looking at future progress, physical reality itself will be the tool of choice commanded at the whim of awareness. Religion and myth will be cherished ornaments and magic will be replaced with a series of unfathomable miracles seemingly from nowhere. I could call this miracle science, math, or technology but our current ideas of what those things are will not apply; for it is something closer to what magic is supposed to be.

Only futurists, inventors and brilliant mathmeticians have been able to catch a glimpse of the coming revolution. Some have been driven mad by its implications (ted kazinski), some driven to fear the future and others call it the Singularity (Ray Kurzweil).

Technological Singularity – The technological singularity is a theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress, caused in part by the ability of machines to improve themselves using artificial intelligence.

If human consciousness can really leave the body and operate without a brain then everything we know in neuroscience has to be questioned. If people could really gain paranormal knowledge then much of physics needs to be rewritten. This is what is at stake. Add to that the fact that most people in the population believe in some kind of life after death, and many desperately want it to be true, then you have a strong case for this research – even if the chances of success are vanishingly small. — Susan Blackmore (guardian)

I’ve got great news!! Science now knows for an absolute fact that we are the only intelligent life in the universe (so we are the center of the known universe), there is absolutely NOTHING faster than the speed of light, we know the exact moment of the big bang, there is no God, and you have no “soul”. Isn’t that awesome! There are no mysteries!

Whoo-hoo! Now I can sleep at night. All knowledge has been acquired.. our quest it over. Charles Darwin & Einstein figured it all out so we can now build churches in their names. ha!

All sarcasm aside, as awesome as science is We (the human race) don’t know shit! We really really don’t. We don’t even know 1% of shit.

Don’t jump to conclusions, I am not a creationist and I don’t’ subscribe exclusively to any ONE religion or philosophy. I am someone who believes that there is some value in religion, philosophy and science. I respect and use each of their strengths in all parts of my life where they are relevant (i.e. I don’t use science to help me explain philosophy or religion to help me explain how light works.

The great thing about science is that is grows and evolves despite the conservative establishment that see it as some sort of dogma. What I like about science is that it gets better. The theories no matter how great continue to develop the complexity and order needed to describe more of what we do know. Intrepid mavericks like Galileo, Descarte, Newton and Einstein challenge the status quo and go off the beaten path and into the previously unknown.

I think there are a lot of unexplained phenomenon that deserves our full attention and funding. One thing that bothers me about mainstream scientists is there dogmatic response to the improbable. It makes them sound as one-dimensionally boxed in as your average religious fundamentalist.

I suppose we all have our limits of what we can accept as real. Even Einstein fought the fundamental (probabilistic) ideas of quantum mechanics that are now not only fully accepted but proven and used.

For me the mystery is the beauty of our 99.999999 percent unknown universe. The conquest of each piece of this infinity puzzle is pure orgasmic rapture.

To that unknown, I say bring it on! When the singularity comes, infinity will be our collective bitch!

The bad guy in the movie Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Borden, is a sociopathic killer who’s been sent to retrieve drug money is a very memorable, shadowy character that is so merciless that he is more like a plot device than a character.

I really liked this movie. It was really the story line that kept asking the question, “what does your life mean?” “all the choices you’ve made have brought you to this point.. what do think about that” (or something to that effect) The killer Chigurh asks the question before he kills people and the protagonist Sheriff Ed Tom Bell played by Tommy Lee Jones is introspective about the question of why? Why is there so much violence? What was the purpose of the victims deaths? And he can’t answer it at all.

The story was so compelling that It makes me want to read the book & and buy the movie. Because I’ve been plagued by the same questions my whole life. An like the story, I’ve got no answers… just questions and reflections.

In the end, the view is left with the killer not merely getting away but succeeding in killing and innocent protagonist victim. It’s a “pull the wings off of a fly” moment, but the killers reasons are that he “made a promise”. The kicker is that as he is driving away from the victim’s house he broadsided by a station wagon. He is hurt badly. He’s got a compound fracture with a bone sticking out of his arm. He pays a couple of kids to shut their mouths about seeing him walk away from the accident.

For me, this was a powerful scene because it underlines that NOBODY is exempt from mortality and seems to be the authors way of saying that violence has no explanation, it just happens. Even the Anton Chigurh’s existence as a merciless killer, it just happened. I don’t know if I completely agree with that, but it is a very interesting perspective on reality.

That is what I said when I saw the Exxon Regular gas prices for the first time while driving around in Sacramento, California. I was angry, shocked and wanted amazed that there were no riots. I glanced over at the docile faces in the cars and SUV to my left and right. “Are they seeing these prices,” I thought. Every seemed to have the same complacent cattle-like expressions of business as usual.

Then it dawned on me that my state, Colorado, and the rest of the country was next. Indeed, $4.00+ a gallon gas was already happening all over the country. Its ironic that everyone talks shit about California, but don’t notice that as the most populace state (over 33 Million+ about 10% of the US population), most mass social issues happen there first. Examples include: Environmental issues, rolling black outs, serious immigration issues, gay marriage ect. Those issues then follow California’s lead or are able to hedge challenges as they develop.

The energy crisis really make me upset. Mainly because I believe that there are solutions RIGHT now to this “problem”. In fact, I believe we had solution decades ago. Moreover, the writing was on the wall in 1973 when member of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) decided that they would no longer ship oil to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt. These countries were: Parts of Europe, Japan and the U.S.). Europe and Japan were smart enough to adjust their dependence on foreign oil, but for some reason the Unites States did NOTHING but beg, borrow and threaten. We sent Henry Kissinger to beg and lie to the Saudi’s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

Months later Project Independence was born. It was the definition of “fucking pathetic”:

Project Independence was an initiative announced by U.S. President Richard Nixon on November 7, 1973, in reaction to the OPEC oil embargo and the resulting 1973 oil crisis. Recalling the Manhattan Project, the stated goal of Project Independence was to achieve energy self-sufficiency for the United States by 1980[1] through a national commitment to energy conservation and development of alternative sources of energy.[2] Nixon declared that American science, technology and industry could free America from dependence on imported oil. [3]

Some of the important initiatives to emerge from Project Independence included lowering highway speeds to 55 MPH, converting oil power plants to coal, completion of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline and diverting federal funds from highway construction to mass transit

They planed on reducing oil dependency by “lowering highway speeds to 55MPH”! That nor anything else they did got us off of foreign oil. With some of the greatest scientific minds in the world, the most daring innovative thinkers on EARTH “lowering highway speeds to 55MPH” is the best that we could do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Independence

As the richest most powerful nation in the world, I find it hard to believe we are in this crisis by accident. I don’t know why this would be by design and I am skeptical of “conspiracy” to break the US economy, but a collusion of super rich global countries to make more money by suppressing REAL alternatives seems about right to me.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

When you look at the death of the electric car in California (where it started to happen first), its easy to see greed as a serious motivation behind keeping the status quo at all costs. Why would multi-billion dollar automotive companies, oil and gas companies allow their money tree to wither & die? Why would they support a new technology that might cut into their profits? Why would they take a chance on such a volatile market? How could they have known there would be this kind of crisis today?

Water 4 Fuel – Urban Legend or Epic Historical Tyranny

One legend you can see all over the web is water for fuel mythos. The story is that a brilliant man created a machine that run a car for miles and miles on nothing put water. Its seen by main stream science and engineering as a ridiculous myth that is believed only by those would have no understanding of basic scientific principals. Its one of those odd ball fringe fascinations that are immediately dismissed and categorized with Alien encounters and Big Foot sightings. But What if..? What if it were real? Imagine for a second that this technology has been around since the 70’s. Imagine that it could be put in almost any automobile engine to convert tap water into hydrogen.

Well there are a couple of people who have say that this is not only true but have working prototypes. Their names are Stan Meyer & Dennis Klein. How is this possible without being all over the national news?! Such a discovery would change the world. The oil industry would die out fast. Stan Meyer claimed that the Saudis and others attempted to bribe him to simply sit on the invention or allow him to purchase the device for about 1 billion dollars. He also claims to have been silenced by certain government agencies. He later poisoned. Is this story true? You be the judge. If it is true, humanity has suffered a great, great injustice. Such an invention could have taken us in a whole new direction of less war for resources, a weaker set of oil baron tyrants and war profiteers. Less poverty due to an invention that is powered off of the most abundant element in the known universe (hydrogen) and less famine and death world wide.

Instead, we must suffer at the pump as prices go up and up with no end in sight. And there is seemingly nothing we can do about it but work more to pay more on everything as the dollar is inflated away from its previous value causing us to work more for less and less and less. One must wonder, what is the end goal of a fiat monetary system and what is the meaning of life according to capitalism? To work? Is our life then measured by our networth? Is Fiat paper money’s market value more important that human life?

I question any system that puts an imaginary value over the worth on living breathing sentient souls. “To be” is an immeasurable worth that can NOT be captured by any monetary, political, religious, or philosophical system.

- Synaptic Bursts - Completely meaningless dreams; an Rapid Eye Movement brain fart; generated by repetive body behaviors or just the random noise of life.
- Subconscious Dreams – Message from the dormant, wise and highly perceptive part of the mind that sees and factors the other 90% of life that happens just at our peripheral; often catches cues that our narrow conscious selves do not then gives hints, warnings or information
- Spiritual Dreams – From the hire self; waken in tears of joy or laughing; followed by day of smiling euphoria; difficult to remember sometimes impossible to understand if we are not ready
*there is some overlap – the over all effect of the dream is very telling.

Like Tibetan Dream Yogas of Sleep and Dreams says, I believe it is more important to be awakened in dreams than to interpret the content of the dreams. Like staring at a piece of Art, I believe that the meaning behind the dream can ultimately only be determined by the one who created it, everyone else will see something completely different.

When trying to determine the meaning, it is important to remember that YOU are every part of the dream. All elements in the dream represent some part of you. Even the bad parts. So if you are getting chased by a ghoul, remember that the ghoul is some latent part of you or situation, person, place or thing in your life. You must look inside yourself to determine what part of you that ghoul represents.

To determine what objects in the dream represent what parts of you, it is important to “follow the feeling”. So it is imperative that you be very truthful with yourself. If you can not face how you truly feel about something in ‘waking’ life, it will often manifest itself in your dream. If the dream is important, it will sometimes be a recurring dream.

When I am really wrapped up in the “worldliness”, stresses, distractions of life, work, family, friends I’ve noticed that I often do not remember my dreams. When I am focused and calm in the morning the dreams come to me easily. Sometimes there is more than I have time to write down.

Writing down dreams is a great way to begin to recall the dreams.

YOUR OWN DREAM SYMBOLS
You are the best interpreter of your dream symbols. Dream sites and books can be a good guide. But the dream master is within you. Water to a professional scuba diver is going to mean something entirely different to a hypochondriac.

Regardless of belief, faith or scientific method our real enemy is ignorance. No matter how foul our nemesis, whether terrorist, communist, imperialist and no matter what tactic “they” choose nothing will defeat “us” like our own ignorance.

Wisdom favors untainted facts. But too often a nation, a man, a woman, an organization, an establishment chooses to build up their wisdom on myths, half-truths and bias; a house of matches in the middle of a forest fire. The real enemy is our own ignorance. Any perceived enemies are only the puppets and pawns of ones own master, ignorance.

Even forces of nature and states of human suffering are not the enemy. Famine, poverty, sickness can all be defeated with the proper knowledge of “how”. What defeats us is lack of knowledge, ignorance.

The human species is capable of knowing but we project our enemies outside of our selves. The real enemy is within… it is ignorance. There is not a single person, place or thing, no force of nature more cruel and unforgiving as our own unchecked ignorance.

Why do we continue to serve this callous master? Sufferings seems limitless and our ignorance is no excuse. Above all hypothesis, and bias, and prejudging assumptions and long held beliefs, factual information is the greatest ally of humanity.