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jstan
climber
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Aug 27, 2010 - 12:42am PT
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"A bigger long term problem than this in my view, is that the mainland Japanese are slowly buying up the island and driving up the cost of living.This is useful to the mainland as it provides lots of cheap temporary Okinawan workers who are easily laid off from the mainland factories."
Something like this could be coming our way because the Chinese are swimming in dollars. All they have to do is start using those dollars to buy properties in the US, companies, whatever. Since they have so many dollars and we have only the debts we floated to allow the dollars to go over in the first place
it could get difficult here.
If we get something like a bottom in the prices of commercial property in New York City and Boston that's where I would start. Then they could build rapid rail between the two cities they own and make it into a powerful economic center, as they seem to be doing in China. Start generating even more dollars right here in the US. US labor will have to be "reallocated" the way labor was reallocated in China. If their economic power gets big enough they might even be able to set up something akin to what the British did in Hong Kong.
They would want to set up US shell corporationsso that they can make unlimited secret political contributions. Once the elections are going their way getting us "reallocated" won't be a problem.
The last few years tells us that.
Interesting.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Aug 27, 2010 - 12:42am PT
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not very good fotos--just my cellphone camera.
the security guard noticed me taking pictures and he came up and asked if i could find president reagan in the mural. the federal courthouse building is named for reagan. i looked for quite awhile before he told me. reagan is way in the background, towards the right of the chinese woman, under a yellow balloon.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Aug 27, 2010 - 02:54am PT
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Tony, so was I wrong about it actually being President Obama, or was it just a coincidental likeness to a young B.O. with a White Sox hat?
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
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Aug 27, 2010 - 08:04am PT
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Looks more like a young Tiger Woods to me. But you're right, it's probably some sort of Illuminati mind game they're playing on us sheep...
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Aug 27, 2010 - 10:19am PT
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obama supposedly wore that cap often during his campaign. white sox--that's the team in santa ana, right?
every professional investigator will tell you that there is no such thing as a coincidence. they get paid to believe that, and they're usually right, but sometimes there are coincidences and they make for spectacular acquittals--or wrongful executions. here we have not one, but two coincidences--obama late 90s likeness, chicago baseball cap. perhaps even, or some might say quite obviously, a third--he's about to step onto a skateboard and enter this strange and diverse scene, prominently positioned as a key figure in the language of artistic composition. could have put him back there next to ronald reagan, under that yellow balloon.
it's just a mural, right? decoration of a wall. you can bet an expensive one, paid for with public money for a high-profile building, a federal courthouse. a lot of people in big trouble, and their handlers, get to look at it. i found out about it from a chance acquaintance who went there to pick up the papers he needed to file suit against the federal government. he said he couldn't believe looking up and seeing obama. for him, the baseball cap made the point beyond a doubt, a point which skeptimistic seems to have caught effortlessly. i couldn't believe all this either, which was why i took pains to see for myself. the artist's name is john valadez, grew up in los angeles, a world-famous muralist and also an occasional filmmaker. on the inside track in the art world, not on the outside looking in like every artist i've ever known.
you will find strange murals in public places these days. they tell me the one in the denver airport is quite disturbing. contrast these with the wonderful county courthouse murals of the 1930s, where WPA artists really portrayed the "culturally significant achievements which our great nation is famous for", to use tripl's words. let's take a closer look at this one.
lots of diversity here. many nations. lots of confusion and strangeness, but there's barack. was he a prominent figure in 1997, when valadez started painting this? and notice how he's about to mount a skateboard, as though he's about to take charge of the whole phantasmagoria.
now look at the other prominent figures. the tough latina and her high-strung son, most prominent of all, the arizona rednecks' worst nightmare. how many cases from the border merry-go-round get tried here? the chinese woman seems to be offering dry goods, as if for sale. she wears a yellow tunic, offers red goods. ever go shopping these days? and oh, haha, notice her shiny gold cap?
over to the left you'll see a strange tug of war taking place, a cowcart with a flamenco dancer and a dominatrix in black lingerie pulling against a bunch of grown white men in boy scout uniforms, tied and harnessed with bedsheets, one of them wearing a chief's headdress.
just what some flaky artist dreamed up. art is stupid, but you have to put something up on a blank wall like that. over at the far left stands a white suburban couple, bewildered, defensive. i'd be interested in that article you read, tripl, and how i'm sure it tries to explain this monster back to normalcy.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
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Aug 27, 2010 - 02:11pm PT
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Wow. How do you people sleep at night, knowing that shadow forces are feeding us cryptic prescient messages through public art that foretell the coming New World Order?
Whom should we trust? Who will break us free from the impending bondage and misery of Satan that is surely to follow? Will the magic imaginary friend descend from the sky (as foretold in the world's oldest compendium of fairy tales) to lay waste to all non-believers? Will Glenn Beck be our spokesman?
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jstan
climber
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Aug 27, 2010 - 02:15pm PT
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Glenn Beck is not available to be our spokesman. He has been called back for a conference at the space ship on the moon.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
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Aug 27, 2010 - 04:41pm PT
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Obama supposedly wore that cap often during his campaign. white sox... there is no such thing as a coincidence. ... here we have not one, but two coincidences ... some might say quite obviously, a third ... it's just a mural, right? ... they (edit: who exactly?) tell me the one in the denver airport is quite disturbing. contrast these with the wonderful county courthouse murals of the 1930s, ... notice how he's about to mount a skateboard, as though he's about to take charge of the whole phantasmagoria ... the chinese woman seems to be offering dry goods, as if for sale. she wears a yellow tunic, offers red goods. ever go shopping these days? ... just what some flaky artist dreamed up. ... explain this monster back to normalcy.
I guess the above isn't implying some sort of secret conspiracy?
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Aug 27, 2010 - 04:43pm PT
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interesting--didn't know about barbee, but it sure doesn't look like him--and he's not from chicago. um, do "they all look the same" to you, wes?
i did live through california in the 90s, however, and never saw anything like grown men in scout uniforms being tugged by latina babes with a cowcart. never got into the mainstream, my bad.
china keeps sucking our money, dood. we don't have choices in the stores. but that's "free" enterprise, right? must have a pretty good system there under communism if they can produce everything that cheap. maybe we'll get that here too.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Aug 27, 2010 - 05:03pm PT
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wiki says barbee born in '71 in san jose. that vid was a teen, so therefore wes is bringing up a possibility. if he's a cult figure in skateboarding, it could well be. but for my money, it doesn't look like him at all. an obama face on a barbee persona would be a great camouflage. i know one thing about artists--there's a reason for everything, and the subtler the better.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Aug 27, 2010 - 06:14pm PT
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k, wes, you win. it's obviously a mural of commonplace occurences like whiteguy boy scouts trying to out-tug latina dominatrices with cowcarts. gotta lay off that bong--i just don't see the world as it is.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Aug 28, 2010 - 12:09pm PT
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if you paid attention through the politics of the past 40 years, you would have noticed a constant "yellowing" of republicans, beginning with nixon's so-called "opening" to china, reagan's high-profile visit in 1984 and george bush sr.'s backing of the brutal repression at tian an men square. during the bush jr. years, china took over our retail markets COMPLETELY.
the talk about freedom and the evils of communism from these people might make me laugh, but my mouth fills up with puke first.
oh, the dems always carry the same ball, but they don't seem to do it quite so well.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Aug 30, 2010 - 11:24am PT
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the art game is a sly one, wes, and you obviously haven't played it. interpretations can never be more than conjectural, and artists never tell.
you got me digging on the denver airport too, a far higher profile there and a storm of conjecture, such that the artist apparently went into hiding for awhile.
here's an example of how subtle it gets. look at what valadez chose for the background for his picture on his website:
http://www.johnvaladezart.com/
coinkydink? he'll never tell.
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pc
climber
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Story about Stephen Hawking changing his position on God.
God did not create the universe, says Hawking
Buzz up!326 votes Share
By Michael Holden – Thu Sep 2, 9:08 am ET
LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.
In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.
Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.
His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.
He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."
In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.
"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.
Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.
He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."
Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.
"The Grand Design" is due to go on sale next week.
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brotherbbock
Trad climber
Alta Loma, CA
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It may not be necessary to invoke God to explain the existence of the universe, but God is still not dismissed as an explanation.
No one can explain the random quantum level effects that drive evolution or any other natural process. The element of randomness in quantum effects is the very process that drives evolution and makes life possible.
There is still plenty of room in our 100% naturally existing world to permit a god to be present.
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jstan
climber
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There can be a god. But it is not necessary that that god created the universe. We have a perfectly adequate natural process for the creation of the universe. If a god exists it could well have just been a bystander during the creation of the universe.
The god may even be all-powerful
just inactive during the big bang.
Which brings me back to square 1.
Does anyone have actual data showing an incident in which a god actually was active.
Edit:
Such as cases where ten or twenty amputees all read the bible for the first time and all woke up the next morning with perfect limbs? That would not be conclusive but it would cause others to conduct tests.
The second test might involve two groups of Muslims one reading the bible and the other the Koran. And a similar test for christians.
We could begin to learn something about god if god were to start doing something.
We might then even start to read the bible more carefully than we do at present.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Yer all gonna...
DIE!
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Starting right now on NOVA on your television, the descent of man.
Showing clearly how modern humans evolved over the past 200,000 years.
Seems appropriate for the god thread.
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go-B
climber
In God We Trust
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Ask, and It Will Be Given
Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
The Golden Rule
12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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i don't like hawking. i suspect that his spectacular handicap has made him a bit of a dog in the manger. his declarations are the sort that get revised in nanoseconds at every turn in the esoteric game of physics cosmology. i wouldn't take sleeping pills over anything he says. now a gobee quote--where are those pills?
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