Mindbloggled

6:12:12 AM MST

                                                      MINDBLOGGLED

     Welcome to Mindbloggled, the blog with a conscience.The blog without photos; a blog with more than 150 columns of written material. These essays cover a wide range of topics; something for almost every serious reader. These essays are grouped under specific column titles, written by different voices, which all belong to one, little me.

     Read and enjoy. Write and add comments at any time.Make this your blog too!

      At one time I wrote six columns or more per week, but for the near future I plan on adding new columns irregularly, as the mood( and time constraints) allow.

      Enjoy your times here and don't neglect to read and write at my Children First web page, the address of which lies below in several columns.

Thanks, sincerely, Mark S.

P.S. Ignore the counter in the left column, it (intelligently) resets itself every few weeks. So far, well over 4000 readers have clicked onto this blog.

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5:59:09 AM MST

                                                           NOBODY

     Nobody is a modern, American genius without compare. Whether a He, a She or an It; Nobody is perfect. Nobody is not some nobody. Nobody is the star of scores of companies who use Nobody as their mark of excellence. For example, Mida's Muffler declares that "obody beats Midas". Sara Lee claims that Nobody does it like Sara Lee.

     In fact if one looks around carefully and is exceptionally observant one will notice that Nobody's name is splashed all over, far and wide on advertisements of all kinds, selling all types of items and services at which Nobody is the best thing going. Nobody is therefore no specialist, but a blatant generalist, of the extreme kind. Nobody's has got his/her finger stuck in every single last pie in America, or so it seems. A few more unpublished feats of Nobody follow below which attempt to show his/her ingenuity and pluck.

      For instance; Nobody is richer than Bill Gates ! This is probably due to the simple fact the N<SPAN class=spell id=sp-16 title="Click here to replace with: woody, moody, goody, nobody, broody, bloody" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 2px; BACKGROUND-POSITION: left bottom; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: url(http://sdk.webmail.aol.com/sdk/20050527/images/bg_spellingErr.gif); PADDING-BOTTOM: 2px; CURSOR: pointer; COLOR: black; PADDING-TOP: 2px; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat-x; BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow" _backupTitle="null"> beats everybody else at their own game and thus reaps great profits. Nobody played a guitar better than Jimi Hendrix ! Nobody is more brilliant than Einstein or Darwin and Nobody can write great American fiction like Mark Twain. Nobody can beat up Mike Tysin with both hands tied behind his/her back. Nobody can do it all; perfectly! I've even heard it said that  Nobody can beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential race. I hope so; Nobody is good at everything!

Best regards; EL LEENYO

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2:07:54 PM MST

                                           Snow and Salty Sand

     Why is it that everytime a Midwestern or other snow-prone state, experiences more than two flakes of snow, untold tons of salty sand is unleashed from scores of trucks; yet weeks later, with the streets dry, with high winds sand-blasting vehicles and with gravel all over the roads and parking lots, nobody cares? I don't expect that anybody has a good answer for this. I do know that nobody sees a sweeper/vacuum truck come along to pick up the mess until late April, after winds and rains have deposited most of the salty sand onto our vehicles and into our homes.

     The salty sand is laid down anew, with each new snowfall, several times per month, all through the winter until it becomes a greater hazard than the ice and snow that it's supposed to protect us from. By the time that winter has ended, some streets and parking lots look like they are made of dirt rather than pavement or concrete. I personally know of bicyclists and motorcyclists who have been killed in the slippery sand and gravel left on the roads into late spring.

     There are several businesses which do profit from this governmental negligence. For one, car wash's experience their greatest business during the winter months as people attempt to keep their vehicles clean of corrosive salt and filthy dirt.Another business which profits greatly from the governmental insistence on keeping our roads dirty and slippery with sand, is the windshield industry. Without fail, I have had to replace my vehicle's windshield every single year for the last three decades in the spring due to chips and cracks caused by poor drivers who cut me off at half a car's length while passing me on the highway at 80 plus mph. Invariably these driver's vehicles throw up gravel which cracks or chips my windshield, not to mention the hood and grill of my cars.

     Rain and wind may be the cheap method of street cleaning desired by the governments, but it is very expensive for drivers; in money and sometimes, in lives!

     The salty sand is a necessity at times in the winter, but I see no good reason why it cannot be picked up periodically, cleaned and washed, then reused with the addition of more salt. It seems as if this would save money in the long run. I know it would for consumers.Is this not done because it makes sense? It's quite apparent that logic is anathema to government. Just look at our public school system to see this in action!

Best Regards; B.S. ( Ben Skalpt)

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4:26:45 PM MST

 Link is

  http://s3phpforfree.com/forums/httpjournalsaol.html

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3:44:39 PM MST

                                                 The  Death  Penalty

      Those Americans who oppose the death penalty on moral grounds often call it "murder" to justify their position and to make the opposition seem monstrous. I don't consider the death penalty as murder, although I do object vehemently to hanging and the electric chair.I prefer putting the real monsters to "sleep" much as is done to millions of innocent dogs and cats each year. A more humane method of execution than many of those on Death Row deserve perhaps, but I am a humane person.

      One need recall that the death penalty is reserved only for those violent felons who have committed the most heinous crimes against other humans and against society itself too! To my way of thinking, an act such as to put one on Death Row is an act of Social Terrorism. Thus it is a war against law abiding people and those who we hire to protect us. These sorts of acts deserve a war-like result - Death.

     Society finds itself at War, battling against vicious thugs who place no value on human life or on the rules of social order. Base criminals of the most violent and psychotic kind have declared War on the rest of us; on Society and its rules. They thus forfeit its protections and their right to belong in it at all.

     When a soldier is killed in battle in a War, it is not considered murder by most people. This is why I support Capital Punishment - it is not murder either, but instead the results of War.

     Prisoners who spend 15-250 years on Death Row are a waste of oxygen and have no social right left to them. These rights were left behind when the criminal chose to go to War against the rest of us. Not only at War, but Traitors as well! They have betrayed the trust and rules of society. For betrayal alone, the death penalty is warranted.

     I think that if one looks at violent felons as traitorous war-makers then the death penalty will not seem harsh or inhumane.

     Look at things with an even stronger microscope, and one will see that these traitorous war-makers have another crime to die for - Desertion!  Death Row prisoners have deserted, betrayed and declared war on society and they must be put into a well earned resting place much more quickly than at present.

     The best deterrents and punishments are those which are handed out most fairly and most swiftly. I don't call an average of 14 or 15 years on Death Row as being swift or just! Four appeals should be the maximum; two for evidence and two for procedure. This must be done in less than 5 years!  years should be the maximum amount of time for an inmate on Death Row. If we are to have this tool ( the death penalty) to fight this war then we must use it properly and often!

Best regards ; EL LEENYO ( E.L.)

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3:10:27 PM MST

         The wide variety and breadth of subject matter covered by the columns in Mindbloggled is not designed, specifically, to tick off the greatest number of people possible, but rather to kick-start our brains into thinking about things logically, using facts rather than notions, opinions and assumptions. I call it Critical Thinking, and it is a method used by the greatest minds the Earth has seen, such as that of Einstein and Buddha and many others as well.

     Critical Thinking can be used to logically pursue subjects of which we may not have all the "facts". But by thinking logically, one can eliminate many false leads and come to real conclusions, which can later be used to create a testable hypothesis. Einstein became famous as much for his amazing "thought experiments" as he did for  the theories he created from them.

     Critical Thinking is a useful subject, which should be taught in all public schools, along with Logic. With these tools and enough life-experience-wisdom, and knowledge, one can deeply meditate and  thus further develop one's Philosophies of Life. One can then find and remove ambiguities, contradictions and mistakes in one's earlier thinking patterns and allow one's Philosophy of Life to mature and make Sense.

     Given that the only constant is change, it is only natural that our outlooks and our thinking should change too. Generally this is done gradually as one ages, but sometimes, when one uses the Critical Thinking skills and Logic, to meditate long and deeply about one's self and one's world, an epiphany can occur. This is a magical moment, as it was for Einstein and Buddha; a sudden Enlightenment !

     So if some of my words and columns tick you off at first; I hope they also make you think twice about some things and to question earlier assumptions and opinions. If  I can do that, then I've accomplished something useful in this Blog. And that's all I'm really trying to do; whether you agree with me or not!

Sincerely ; T.T.

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3:12:28 PM MST

                                                     Alien  Abductions

     Alien abductions and UFO encounters are Big Business these days ! At least three ( and probably more) nationally distributed, monthly magazines devote themselves exclusively to the subjects; as do scores of books on an annual basis. Although there is not a single shred of empirical evidence to support the existence of extra-terrestrial aliens, or their spaceships, some "professional" UFO-ologists claim to have a plethora of proof of such alien beings as "Grays" and "Vegans". The devotees of all things extra-, also claim proof of brain-implants ( none ever discovered) into abducted humans by a group of medically astute alien doctors. Other abducted humans are impregnated by aliens before being sent back home to tell their stories.

     Abductees are taken, unseen, from their homes, their vehicles or even from their apartments. At times they are drawn or pulled up into the unseen-by-anyone-spaceship by a ray or beam of light, which defies gravity by sucking them off of the ground, up into the sky and inside of a spaceship. !

     The frightened abductees are met in the ship's foyer, or perhaps parlor, by small, 3-4 foot tall, gray-colored beings, with tiny, dark, beady eyes, who ready themselves for surgery upon their helpless, hapless, human victim.

     The alien's massive spaceship ( enormous because of the powerful engines and fuels capable of 52 light years distance ( about 306 trillion miles), then scoot about our towns and cities, unseen, unheard, unsmelled and undetected by human technology, by humans, dogs, geese, other pets or other domesticated animals. ( when they aren't being mutilated)

     But, according to the faithful believers of the UFO cult, the unethical, immoral, interstellar space traveler who have "beamed up" the abducted humans, now proceed to implant a tracking device and a though reading instrument; basically invisible, undetectable nanotechnology, into the brains of their human subjects.

     These Nazi-like aliens who experiment on living humans, also, somehow, impregnate women, with a hybrid, human/alien embryo !This defies common sense and sound more like Star Trek than of reality. A union between a human and an alien could only be reproductively successful if the two races were the same, exact  species, since this is the definition of species.If we are the same species, then they aren't aliens. Abductees have also claimed repeated abductions, extensive medical examinations; and travels to the stars, and the home planets of the aliens !

      It's time in this column to step in with some logic and common sense. Stop here if logic and common sense offend thee. Ha! You wouldn't be here if that were the case !

     First, it must be pointed out, that just because we have no solid, unequivocal evidence of UFOs and abductions does not mean for certain that they do not exists. In other words,the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.

      That being said, let's look at the specific claims of the self-proclaimed "experts" of UFOology through the lens of logic.Let's consider, for the sake of argument, for just a moment, that these aliens are real and are here on Earth.

       Consider that we must be dealing with a species of aliens, so advanced and so wealthy that they can afford to fly fleets of 100 spaceships or more, in different groups, through interstellar space, observing other planets and gathering information on their inhabitants. Vega, one of the stars of origin of the purported aliens, is 26 light years away from Earth. Of course they may be so advanced that they can travel at 10% of light speed; somehow. That's still 260 years to just get here, one way.So, we know that they are wealthy, and old too

     These Grays and Vegans are intelligent enough and technologically superior enough to design, build, and pilot these large, interstellar spaceships; they can use beams of light to defy gravity; and can avoid being seen or heard or detected in any way by anyone or anything; and in fact, further, they can defy the laws of physics( gravity)and biology ( interstellar breeding), can implant invisible nanotechnologies into human brains: yet, with all of this knowledge, they can't figure out how to make humans forget what they have seen and experienced. According to many abductees, the aliens try to make the humans forget their abductions, examinations, etc., but the humans always outwit the dumb aliens, when it comes to memory.That should be a cinch compared to the other fields they've conquered.

     I have also heard speculation that the female humans impregnated by their close relatives, the aliens (?), are having their babies adopted by the aliens who are from a dying planet. They are trying to rejuvenate their dying species with human genes (?) Huh?

     Now if that's not stupid, then I don't know what is. If one's planet is dying, why try to repopulate it with "inferior" human hybrids, when it would be much simpler to colonize another, different planet, without any sentient life on it yet. For as techno-advanced and super-intelligent as they must be to travel interstellar space, those aliens act more stupid than a mouse on peyote.

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10:27:24 AM MST

                                     Does  Non-Linguistic Thought  Exist?

     In other words, can thinking be done without recourse to language? Many Western scientists think not, while many Eastern thinkers, think so.Some Tibetan Buddhists in fact, accord animals conciousness and also the ability to think conceptually, without a syntactic language, as humans have. I tend to side with the Buddhists on this question.

     I believe that artists and musicians convey thoughts into abstract or organized forms, without any necessary recourse to language. I also think that human, newborns and infants too,, without knowledge of language, can think in a rudimentary fashion.

     When we dream, are we not thinking, albeit unconciously ? If so, we do so non-linguistically. I also think that there is no doubt at all, even amongst zoologists that some mammal and bird species are capable of thought, and do think, despite the fact that these species have no languages in which to frame their thoughts.

     If we go back in time, to the long-ago era before humans could speak in a coherent, syntactic language, we have evidence of tool use and of  tool construction, both of which suggest an organizational thought process, based on something other than language; something like concepts, ideas or pictures in the mind.

     Those unfortunates who are born deaf, dumb and blind can only process sensory stimulation through the nerves of touch, taste and smell. This is how they  learn of the world and learn to think in terms of, since language is closed to them forever (recall here that Helen Keller was not born with her afflictions, but was struck with being blind, deaf and dumb after her 6th birthday as a result. and side-effect, of a serious illness).It is thought that most verbal learning is done, through listening to others for the most part, by the time one is 7 years old, and that before this age, it is the easiest time to learn a new language ( something Bilingual Education should pay attention to).

     Although I believe that at very young ages, humans can think conceptually, with pictures, and thus can think without resort to language skills.I also think that we gradually lose this skill, through disuse, as language becomes more and more a part of our daily lives. Some mammals too, can think quite well, without need for a concrete language.

     What if the opposite is true ? If we can think only in terms of our language, this would explain the degeneration of Critical Thinking; Reasoning and Logic in America today, since our language skills are so greatly diminished.

      Americans are not fluent in their own language and illiteracy is quite high, for an economic giant. This may explain why common sense is so uncommon these days. It's quite apparent, if this is all true and correct, that Reading and Writing are of the Utmost Imporatnce ! These two subjects must be taught vigorously and tenaciously in our public schools, without let-up ! They are skills which are needed, to succeed in all other subjects in school, or in Life ! Reading, Writing, Spelling and Good Grammar.

     We do know that the subjects of Critical Thinking, Reasoning, and Logic are not directly taucght in public schools, no matter the benefit to the students; most teachers just can't teach it ! But we must, at least, be certain that the basic tools of language, skills and vocabulary are well taught, so that Students and Parents can use those tools to mend the many gaps left by the public schools in the three areas of Critical Thinking, Reasoning and Logic.

      If our thinking is limited by our language skills, then if the latter is substandard, the former suffers as well.Many educators are "Book-Learned" only, just as many individual engineers, and  people in dozens of other professions are. But Book-Learning is not enough, especially if the books use erroneous logic to reach an errant conclusion based on poor data. A lot of our public school, science textbooks meet this description.

     If our children are educated, but possess no Critical Thinking skills, they are more vulnerable to swallowing the fraudulent garbage, as if it were true, which is  fed loud and often to all who will bite, from those fundamentalists of all stripes who turn to hate in desperation; as do many of their teachers !

     Try thinking without words or language. You are left with pictures which may be worth a thousand words; but one must think them into existence first, if one knows the proper words, that is.

Sincerely ; The Professor

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4:00:10 PM MST

     Some Upcoming Columns include; one by Time Traveler describing his trip to the troubled Mar's colony in the year 2058 C.E.. Also watch for EL LEENYO's column on Observations about whether all of our thoughts are contingent on linguistics. You will want to check out Blog Daddy's column, "Extra Bloggage" which will describe the claims about UFO's and their occupants, and then logically dissect these claims.

     Their will be more food for thought in the Children First webpages too, so don't forget about them.

      Vocabularious will be tossing in a column in his 'Fun With Words"  format and much else is forthcoming as well, so stay tuned, because this baby Blog will keep rolling on!

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3:37:22 PM MST

                                       Morning  Music Station  DJ'S

     During the all important "drive time" of morning radio, the stations which normally play music all day and all night - do NOT ! Instead, these "music " stations hire two or perhaps three self-styled clowns, who spend their entire morning shift, on-air, laughing stupidly at their own pitiful "jokes". I suppose one could characterize these insipid and usually obscene attempts at comedy as "teenage bathroom humor".

     Apparently, however, people of all ages ( but only one level of maturity) listen to this trash talking "humor" and raucous, non-stop laughter, because this format is a nationwide phenomenon.

     Music is outlawed on these music radio station morning shows, in favor of this nauseating toilet-bowl humor, as two or three idiotic baboons trade quips and guffaw hysterically for several houirs at a time.

     I realize that I am odd - that's a given; nevertheless, I deplore this radio rubbish and am astonished that people get paid great sums of money for behaving like drunk, immature lunatics. Some job ! And what a fantastic contribution to society ! Pathetic.

     But, if folks didn't listen, by the milions, this kind of useless crap would vanish overnight ! I can almost understand that some on-the-fringe, teenage boys, aged 13 to 15 might get some sort of sick thrill from listening to this poor excuse for radio programming. But adults !?! Come on !

      But as has been noted by people far wiser than I - nobody has ever gone broke by underestimatimg the intelligence of the average American. And it was P.T. Barnum who said that," There's a sucker born every minute." I suppose that if people can bear to listen to the strangled yelps of tryouts for American Idol - which sets new ratings records in the process - then perhaps folks can also be persuaded to listen to darn near anything - like the squeaks of a hamster's running wheel - in record numbers ! I'd rather watch grass grow and listen to paint dry - it's more exciting and bearable.

     But that's just me, and it has already been well established that when compared to the average American, I am very, very weird, indeedy !

Sincerely; Son Of Odd ( S.O.O.) A drive time CD listener.

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